#mostly for my own reference

[livingininsomnia]

Origins of Briar Valley

Once upon a time, there lived a simple fairy. Simple, in that she was made purely of ambition, and nothing else.

She lived upon a withered land, cold and dreary, filled of ugly, evil things.

How dreary. How drab and boring, she thought.

In this desolate land, any finery she desired must be crafted with her own hands, any luxury brought into the world through her talents.

And talented she was. She of a thousand spells, who had spun a dozen tapestries in a fortnight, who brought forth a castle into being simply through desire, what could she not do?

Yet it still wasn’t enough. All that surrounded her was an unchanging landscape of grey. But this land was resistant and unyielding. How could anyone live here but for her?

And so, she brought forth her magic, her will upon this world, and swallowed those ugly things, one after another, until all that remained were the black thorns of her will.

All that power, all that magic, she drove into the earth, fed and fed until life burst forth. First, from storm and lightning, rain to flood the lands, carving rivers and lakes into the earth.

And from that water came life. All across the land grew grass, then shrubbery and trees, until whole forests burst forth to cover the land.

And that is how Briar Valley came into life.

[nihils-trolls]

finding a voice claim for this girl (kind of) is so hard for some reason. so a chart, it is-

[goldenwanderer]

Books I Read in 2023

Thanks to a new job and a new e-reader, I managed to read 30 books this year (in contrast to only 12 in 2022).

By genre, the vast majority are fantasy, often with LGBTQ+ themes (wlw specifically). There's a bit of science fiction in here too, and a tiny sprinkling of non-fiction.

Out of the thirty, ten books were first-time reads. The rest were books I've read before. (Though one book made it on both lists - I read A Memory Called Empire early in the year, only to reread it months later before starting the sequel.)

New reads:

I Think I Might Be Autistic | Cynthia Kim

A Memory Called Empire | Arkady Martine

Harrow the Ninth | Tamsyn Muir

Rhythm of War | Brandon Sanderson

The Lost Metal | Brandon Sanderson

Tress of the Emerald Sea | Brandon Sanderson

Shorefall | Robert Jackson Bennett

Legends & Lattes | Travis Baldree

A Dawn of Onyx | Kate Golden

A Desolation Called Peace | Arkady Martine

Rereads:

Shadows of Self | Brandon Sanderson

The Bands of Mourning | Brandon Sanderson

Mistborn: The Final Empire | Brandon Sanderson

The Well of Ascension | Brandon Sanderson

The Hero of Ages | Brandon Sanderson

Beyond the Summerland | L.B. Graham

Gideon the Ninth | Tamsyn Muir

The Priory of the Orange Tree | Samantha Shannon

Elantris | Brandon Sanderson

Warbreaker | Brandon Sanderson

The Way of Kings | Brandon Sanderson

Foundryside | Robert Jackson Bennett

Words of Radiance | Brandon Sanderson

A Memory Called Empire | Arkady Martine

The Great Hunt | Robert Jordan

Skyward | Brandon Sanderson

The Unspoken Name | A.K. Larkwood

The Dragon Reborn | Robert Jordan

Oathbringer | Brandon Sanderson

Starsight | Brandon Sanderson

[softgrungeprophet]

doing something a little extra only because i wanted to see how windy/loopy i could get this route.

this is the route i ended up deciding on for kaine chasing ben across the country 😂 probably most of these stops won't get specific scenes but it's useful for me figuring out my general timespan and what scenes i do want if/when i eventually write that... various colors just cause that makes it easier to see where they've doubled back or crossed through a place again...

not pictured: hauling ass to nyc from santa cruz; and no my use of santa cruz does not adhere to canon in the way one might assume

[decanard]

Muses to be officially added to the muse page by this weekend

-Edric Blight -Kikimora -Caleb Wittebane -Lilith Clawthorne  -Aibek (The Collector) -Varian 

-Tails

-Buster  -Danielle

-Martin Brisby  -Teresa Brisby 

Muses I will either add or make a new blog 

-Sohma Momiji  -Sohma Hiro 

-Jeevas Mail (Matt)

[theramblingvoid]

Low level/continuous pain tips for writing

Want to avoid the action movie effect and make your character's injuries have realistic lasting impacts? Have a sick character you're using as hurt/comfort fodder? Everyone has tips for how to write Dramatic Intense Agony, but the smaller human details of lasting or low-level discomfort are rarely written in. Here are a few pain mannerisms I like to use as reference:

General

Continuously gritted teeth (may cause headaches or additional jaw pain over time)

Irritability, increased sensitivity to lights, sounds, etc

Repetitive movements (fidgeting, unable to sit still, slight rocking or other habitual movement to self-soothe)

Soft groaning or whimpering, when pain increases or when others aren't around

Heavier breathing, panting, may be deeper or shallower than normal

Moving less quickly, resistant to unnecessary movement

Itching in the case of healing wounds

Subconsciously hunching around the pain (eg. slumped shoulders or bad posture for gut pain)

Using a hand to steady themself when walking past walls, counters, etc (also applies to illness)

Narration-wise: may not notice the pain was there until it's gone because they got so used to it, or may not realize how bad it was until it gets better

May stop mentioning it outright to other people unless they specifically ask or the pain increases

Limb pain

Subtly leaning on surfaces whenever possible to take weight off foot/leg pain

Rubbing sore spots while thinking or resting

Wincing and switching to using other limb frequently (new/forgettable pain) or developed habit of using non dominant limb for tasks (constant/long term pain)

Propping leg up when sitting to reduce inflammation

Holding arm closer to body/moving it less

Moving differently to avoid bending joints (eg. bending at the waist instead of the knees to pick something up)

Nausea/fever/non-pain discomfort

Many of the same things as above (groaning, leaning, differences in movement)

May avoid sudden movements or turning head for nausea

Urge to press up against cold surfaces for fever

Glazed eyes, fixed stare, may take longer to process words or get their attention

Shivering, shaking, loss of fine motor control

If you have any more details that you personally use to bring characters to life in these situations, I'd love to hear them! I'm always looking for ways to make my guys suffer more write people with more realism :)

[doubleslashkarma]

Characters who made it onto the boat, in order are: (time left on the timer when they made it in brackets)

Fit [4:29] (flew w rockets, + went back to rescue people)

Philza [2:47] (flew w grappling)

Tubbo [2:47] (rescued by Phil)

Charlie [1:45] (ran)

Roier [1:13] (ran)

Bagi [0:02] (rescued by Fit)

Etoiles [0:00] (grappled/ran)

Pierre [0:00] (ran/flew)

Characters A) weren't fast enough or B) chose to stay behind are:

Cellbit (A)

Foolish (A)

Ironmouse? (A) (She made it on while everyone else had the cutscene playing, it was broken for her. I dunno if that counts or not)

Tina (A)

Bad + Dapper (A)

Baghera (B)

Characters who are, at this point in time, confirmed dead:

Max (RIP o7)

BONUS "FUN" FACTS:

Cellbit, Foolish, and Tina were in sight of the boat when their time ran out

Foolish would have made it if he didn't stop and wait to make sure everyone was going before he did

Cellbit likely would have made it if he didn't run back down to the egg room after he died in the earthquake

Both Pierre and Etoiles grappled onto the side of/landed on the boat between the time hitting zero and the cutscene starting

[7cfc00]

Cast: Hermie the Unworthy as Theatre Kid with Identity Issues!

[lucyvaleheart]

Mutual aid post

💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖

So....

...things have been goin not so great lately

I've been putting this off but my bank account went negative a little bit ago, and it's taken me about a week to get around to it.... But I made a gofundme to just kinda..... Try and catch some breathing room, yknow..?

Please do not feel obligated to donate, and don't feel bad for scrolling past, either. Trust me, I get it; and while I do desperately and immensely appreciate anyone who donates or shares this, I wouldn't dream of trying to guilt anyone into anything. Thank you for even reading all this, genuinely; and whatever I do get, I am so, so grateful for each and every one of you. 💖

[sukimas]

I made a height chart for the Touhou characters that show up in AoCF based on Hasshaku-sama's height because the one that I have seen hanging around disappeared somewhere. I converted the characters' heights in pixels to cm and inches, and put them all next to each other for a nice comparison.

[beebeedibapbeediboop]

Hi I absolutely love your art first off, I would just like to know how you manage to make your ocs look the same in EVERY SINGLE FRAME, I just never feel I can never get the resemblance I wanted.

I have to tell a secret.... I trace my own drawings of my own ocs LMFAOOO

[flickerintwilights]

on the road to hell

[operationtimeguard]

sable ward lore

Sable figured she had to be adopted. No way was she the progeny of her insanely perky mom and her grinning, golf-playing, frat boy of a dad. They didn’t understand the first thing about her. No one in Greenvile did. Except for Mikaela. They were fast friends since third grade. Up until then Sable had no friends. She wasn’t into ponies or dolls or tea parties with teddy bears. She liked bugs, lizards riding bikes and dirt cloc fights.Her favorite holiday was Halloween and Mikaela was the only one who didn't think she was crazy when she dyed her hair purple in eighth grade. Sable's mom was furious. Her dad didn't even notice. Mikaela went with her to the mall when she got her ears pierced and helped her pick out her first tattoo. An occult symbol hidden in a place her parents would never see. Mikaela declined to get her own tattoo. She flirted with the dark side, but she didn't live it. Not like Sable. The dark side made sense to Sable, and she reveled in it. Partly because it freaked out her parents and teachers. Partly because it felt like who she was. Some called her a goth because of the way she presented herself. But she wasn't into labels. She loved horror movies and found the occult exciting. It made sense to her. She knew that the shiny suburban world of her mom and dad had a dark underbelly. They were afraid to confront their fear, so they pretended everything was perfect and that they would live forever. But Sable knew better. Death stalked us all and no one was getting out alive.

Mikaela got Sable a job at Moonstone. Probably the only place in town that would have hired her. She took classes at the local college and produced a guerilla radio show on the shortwave in her attic. All Things Wicked This Night was about the world's dark underbelly. The occult. Urban legends. Horror. And often there were heated discussions with Mikaela about the horror movies they'd catch at the only theater in Greenville. Mikaela liked her horror with a little comedy, but Sable liked it meaner. Scarier. Bloodier. She relished the gore. Enjoyed the terror. Liked to feel the adrenaline rush. And their debates were entertaining to say the least.

When searching for inspiration for her show, Sable would take walks in the cemetery with all the statues and headstones of early settlers who had founded the town as a sanctuary for those escaping persecution. She often talked about that history on her show, and she formed a theory that the uncanny sightings and disappearances were somehow linked to the town's history. One caller suggested the town was built on top of a fracture. The caller went on to describe a fracture as an overlap between worlds. Another caller said these fractures were created by an ancient cult devoted to forgotten demons. Another caller defined fractures as a cosmic buffet for an elder god that fed on pain, fear, and misery. And one caller even argued that it wasn't a fracture but The Unknown, a mysterious creature that consumed anyone who dared to imagine it. All the theories made for fun and inspiring debates, and she loved nothing more than to discuss real-life horror until the horror became personal.

One evening Sable had challenged Mikaela to tell a real horror story at Moonstone's Annual Halloween Festival. Scare the crap out of people. Stop dancing around the horror and embrace it. Tell a story about The Unknown. Make them imagine it. Make them believe The Unknown will show up on stage. Nothing terrifies an audience more than a show that could potentially kill them. Mikaela laughed at the idea and declined the challenge because she was working on another story with her roommate. 

But a strange, black fog had taken Mikaela during her performance and Sable felt the icy hand of guilt grab her by the back of the neck. She was convinced that she had somehow sent Mikaela to her doom. Did The Unknown take her? Did she try to define The Unknown? What about her roommate? Her roommate disappeared as well. But then she realized Mikaela's story wasn't about The Unknown. It was about something else. Another dimension. A dimension filled with terrifying creatures, sadistic killers, and endless horror.

This was not The Unknown.

With this realization, Sable began to investigate other disappearances in Greenville. Before long, she realized most of the disappearances occurred at the theater or somewhere close by. Investigating further, she discovered the theater was built over the ruins of an old, one-room schoolhouse that had burned to the ground in the 1920s. Somehow the students couldn't get out and everyone perished in the flames. Feeling close to an answer, she continued her research and discovered two teenage brothers had recently disappeared from the theater. Elias and Elan. The only witness, their younger sister, Ellen, was committed to an institution after ripping her eyes out. And so, pretending to be a relative, Sable went to talk to Ellen who admitted she and her brothers had been trying to steal old movie posters from the storage room behind the movie screen. She then described a secret door in the basement and a passageway that led to another Place.

A dark place.

A cold place.

An evil place.

Stay away from there, she begged. Stay

Away.

But Sable wasn't about to stay away.

Not after that story.

Determined to see Mikaela again, Sable hitched a ride to the theater and soon found the door behind the movie screen. In the darkness she jimmied the door open with a crowbar and headed down a creaking, wooden stairway to the dank cellar. A light switch activated flickering fluorescent lights that illuminated a room filled with broken theater seats and old movie posters dating back eighty years. She searched the sprawling basement and found a thick wooden door hidden behind a poster of the original Frankenstein. She pushed and shoved the door open to reveal an endless circular stairway descending into perfect darkness. Using a penlight to navigate, she descended for ten minutes before she noticed the cold, black fog rising from the lower depths.

The same cold, black fog that had taken Mikaela.

Sable considered running back up the stairs to where she would be safe. But then she thought about the terrifying creatures and the sadistic killers and the endless horror, and she quickly decided she wasn't going to let her best friend have all the fun.

[pizzaqueen]

Steve’s underwear for science someone on discord. Seen in S01E01: The Vanishing of Will Byers

@eriquin thought they might be Fruit of the Loom or Hanes

I found these Fruit of the Loom (L) and then these by Stafford came up (R) and they seem to still make briefs with the same band, so they could be those because the stripes are the right way around

And that’s all the time I’m going to spend looking at vintage men’s underwear today

[paarthursass]

Drow naming tables from 3.5e's Drow of the Underdark

[jenna-louise-jamie]

thinking about yassen gregorovich instead of sleeping (because i love him) and how he is a catalyst. yassen stabbs ash -> ash kills john rider -> ian rider raises alex -> yassen kills ian rider -> mi6 blackmails alex into becoming a teenage spy.

i have so many thoughts that i can't properly articulate. obviously this is a simplified chain of events, but yassen and his choices set off a chain reaction of the world's most unfortunate dominos. especially when you read russian roulette. to be clear im not necessarily trying to blame him for everything because that feels very mean. he was also just a 14 year old kid when everything in his life went wrong, just like alex. only difference being yassen literally had no one.

i think i should write an essay about this because i haven't even gotten into my thoughts about what yassen and alex's dynamic would look like past eagle strike. i would imagine it'd be similar to ellie and joel from the last of us part 2.

where obviously yassen loves alex and alex on some level cares for yassen back but struggles to reconcile that with the fact that yassen is responsible for his uncle's death. a very unforgivable act. it would be so messy and complicated and angsty, because on one hand here is an adult who truly cares about him and has a connection with him through his father. yassen could tell alex about john, and trust that yassen truly wants whats best for him. but he killed ian, and he cannot take that back.

while alex reels from those feelings, yassen is also trying to reconcile his love of alex with the knowledge that he on some level is responsible for the suffering alex endured at the hands of mi6. and possibly even the fact that alex's godfather is the one who killed john and helen.