#n00b series

[upsidedownlurker]

n00b characters + memes

yes I did have to pause the show and take pics of the screen with my phone why do you ask

yes I will go back to posting stranger things when mORE STUFF COMES OUT!!!1!!!1!

[baseballmomlesbiandad]

Random QL Superlatives/Favs 2k24

I've been shuffling around these QL streets for a few years now but I typically stay in the shadows and lurk on everyone else's wonderful meta, gifsets, and discussions. This year, I thought I should take a step into the light and reveal a little bit of my heart for y'all. Thanks for keeping me laughing and crying throughout 2024!

Top-tier cuddling award

OonMay, Pluto the Series

May’s neck is the perfect spot for Oon nuzzles. I get her, I wouldn’t ever want to move from that spot, either. For a series that has the first meeting between the leads start with a passionate kiss, it isn’t totally surprising to me that they can rock a cuddle but the sheer amount of time these women spend in May’s bedroom gives us many an opportunity to see them comfy in bed together. Namtan and Film seem so comfortable with each other and I’m really looking forward to seeing them in more GL’s in the future (give me Girl Rules NOW).

Runner up: At 25:00 in Akasaka

Hayama and Shirasaki didn’t have the opportunity to share a bed much in the show (well, as much as OonMay) but when they finally got together and cuddled in the afterglow, I was gobsmacked by this shot. I think ‘Tattoo it on my eyelids’ was my specific response.

The year of tattoos, the best and the worst

Best: Reverse 4 You/4 Minutes

I’ve gotta make this a tie because while Bible’s thigh tattoo in 4 Minutes is particularly popular throughout the community (and I agree!), I went weak in the knees when they showed Christine Gulastree’s tattoos during FourWa’s first hookup. That line all the way down her spine? Idk about y’all but I immediately started drooling. Wa you are so lucky. Christine, are you free this thursday

Worst: The Heart Killers

Oh Kant. Buddy. The tattoo near his wrist was literally smudged. Please, y'all. 

Honorable tattoo mention: Jack & Joker

Listen, most of Joke’s prison tatts are ridiculous but luckily for me, I’m into that shit. I will be getting at least two of Joke’s tattoos permanently placed on my body. No regerts. You’re welcome to guess which ones.

Best kiss

Hotae and Donghee, The Time of Fever bedroom kiss

A year filled with great kisses! But I know from other lists that I'm not alone with this pick. This show was my most anticipated of the year since Donghee and Hotae caught me hook, line, and sinker in Unintentional Love Story. The moment that show ended, I wanted more of them. And then they did give us more (and premiered it on my birthday, no less) and they didn’t disappoint!! Especially by giving us the bedroom make-out with that immediate change of tension in the air when Hotae fed Donghee the orange and touched his lips; Hotae fully shaking with desire and begging to be kissed again; a heater in between them!! the breathing sounds!!! Won Tae Min is such a delight to watch, a great actor in all of his projects and Do Woo is so pretty and holds his own against Tae Min. I love them. I still want more. Give us the sequel to ULS, cowards!!! 

Best almost kiss

X and Namping, Every You, Every Me

Though later in this list I continuously sing praises about Top Piyawat's beauty, the reason why I'm so hung up on this almost kiss really goes to Mick Monthon here. X wants it sooo bad. He is struck stupid by being this close and held this tender by Namping and if I were him, I would simply perish on the spot. I truly loved this show while it was on, had complete brainrot about it, and this storyline in particular fucking ended me (affectionate).

BL Characters that shove me back down the Kinsey scale a la Jin Guangyao at Carp Tower

Tharn from The Sign

via @guzhufuren

IRL I typically self-identify as a lesbian (but like *shrug*) however, every now and then I become infatuated with one of these BL boys and Tharn really did a number on me. I mean c’mon. Babe babygirl Thanatat playing this tiny, feisty, sad, gorgeous man. The mole(s). A snake princess of indiscriminate gender. She is everything to me. He was the moment. Remember when he was so horny that he tried to smother Phaya to death? Obsessed with everything about him. BillyBabe continue to torture me. I don’t think I need to explain further, many of y’all were right there on the crazy train with me.

Namping from Every You, Every Me

I thought no one could tempt me like this after Tharn but then Top Piyawat came in with the steel chair that was Namping in episodes 3 and 4 of Every You, Every Me. What I loved particularly about this show was the dominance swapping between storylines and there’s something so sexy about someone being able to lean into both his feminine and masculine qualities so masterfully (Mick does a good job with this, too). Namping was BEAUTIFUL, his shoulders and slutty tops made me absolutely weak to my knees. I have rewatched these eps multiple times even though they make me snotty cry bc I just can’t get enough of X and Namping. And in the next eps the way Top had me thirsting over him as a fuckboy musician who never wears sleeves? He should be in jail for that. Anyway, Top, will you be my wife.

Most Sensual Pasta Making

At 25:00 in Akasaka

This show had me by the throat while it was airing and I can’t fully explain why other than I tend to feel this way about certain Japanese BL’s with a blonde and brunette pairing (Candy Color Paradox was not a great show but I was obsessed and still don’t know why)—having two nickels, etc., etc. Anyway, the gnocchi making? It was hot, what the hell. As someone who moonlights as a fresh pasta vendor at a weekend farmer’s market, this scene was specifically made for me. As an aside, I didn’t watch My Love Doesn’t Have Long Beans so if they sensually make pasta in that and aren’t just violating OSHA regulations all over the kitchen then I’m sorry!

screenshot via @my-rose-tinted-glasses

Silliest character that had me in stitches of laughter

Shiba Ryoma in Love is Like a Poison

The amount of times this man had me laughing out loud is in the 100s. It’s the stark contrast of his straight-laced, deadpan, almost robotic personality with his silly quirks and impossible-to-hide reactions, especially as Haruto comes onto him more and more as the series progresses. Highlights include every time he has a ‘gay seizure’ as @guzhufuren coined, his knees buckling when Haruto starts sweet-talking his plants, throwing the napkin in ep 4, literally every single thought that crosses his mind eps 1-4, when he tries to make AI Clippy be his 101st partner, the PICTURES, and so much more. The actor who played him, Shogo Hama, gave me everything and Haruto and Ryoma as a couple had me crawling up the walls, particularly in the first few episodes.

Runners up: Ishida in Mr. Mitsuya’s Planned Feeding and Qian in Unknown (Chris Chiu!!)

GL woman I would follow around on my knees for the rest of my life if she asked

Pat, Unlock Your Love

Cake Nawanine. A beautiful brat who knows exactly what she wants, which is that hot soft butch tattoo artist, and will fight all of her evil ex-girlfriends to prove her love. Deane is truly wild for continuing to fumble this absolute goddess of a woman, but what can I say, Deane is basically the Thai equivalent of a ‘hey mamas’ lesbian. Even so, their make-out scenes together were scorching and Pat’s flirting game was top-tier. I had a lot of fun with this little show and will continue watching series with B Mine and Near if they keep making them. And Cake! Please come back to my screen, I love you, I WILL treat you right. 

Thank you @khaopybara for sustaining my lust and love by being one of the few people making beautiful gifsets of my girl.

Most surprising chemistry between an already beloved pair

JoongDunk in The Heart Killers

Hear me out!!! I enjoyed Joongdunk in Star in my Mind and Hidden Agenda and I even thought their intimate scenes and sex scenes in both were pretty good. I was not prepared for The Heart Killers though, like I am really blown away by them as Fadel and Style and they are quickly rising to be one of my favorite branded pairs. I’m sorry it took me so long to recognize real!! As someone (probably a few) mentioned on here, I came to The Heart Killers mainly for FirstKhao, my loves, but am sticking around to see JoongDunk and what else these absolute psychos have in store for us.

Most used show tag that automatically populates first whenever I make a new post on tumblr dot com

The Sign the series

This makes sense because I was unhinged about this show and Babe, in particular. Thank you Saint Suppapong for giving us feral idiots exactly what we want, which is total nonsense, hot hot hot chemistry, and beautiful men wearing dresses. I’m glad I spent the end of 2023 and the beginning of 2024 with this show and I feel very much the same way about The Heart Killers for this year.

Blorbo(s) from my show(s) i.e., characters I have imprinted on like a duckling

I already gushed about Namping, love of my life, will not elaborate more or we’ll be here all week.

Hayama from At 25:00 in Akasaka. I love a quiet yearner, that’s no surprise, but something about Hayama in particular really resonated with me. It’s the LWJ effect, I think, someone who seems to not emote at all on the surface but is really a storm of feelings underneath and Kiita plays it so quietly and intensely. His backstory episode was so good I watched it again immediately after finishing it the first time. Hayama’s friend telling him that Hayama has so many walls up that even he himself doesn’t know what he’s thinking or what he wants? Ooof that hit right where it hurts. 

Mole Goddess possessing the teacher in Caged Again. All of the actors that get to play the Mole Goddess look like they’re having so much fun but her in particular had me rolling with laughter when she was first introduced, looking at herself in the mirror and practicing scolding students to get into character. What a diva. Who is this actress?!

Way from Pit Babe. I know this show started in 2023 but I binge-watched the show a week leading up to the finale in February and was assaulted by the purest pathetic energy of anything I’ve ever seen radiating off of Way. My morning commutes were hell until i took on this endeavor and it was one of the best decisions I made this year. I could not control my laughter on those crowded train cars, I did not care how crazed I looked. Way, you are everything, RIP to the realest (bc allegedly only Way’s lookalike is coming back in season 2?!). Thank you, Nut <3 

Style from The Heart Killers. Again, this is another one that i don't need to explain. I am similar to Fadel in that I like his cockiness...and his lips. Also Style is named appropriately bc i want, nay NEED, his entire wardrobe (and dorito looking ass body).

Other shows this year that have left a mark on me:

Takara no vidro, Ayaka is in love with Hiroko, Fangs of Fortune (not a BL but queer as hell), Love for Love’s Sake, Love in the Big City, 23.5, Cherry Magic TH, Deep Night, Wandee Goodday, Monster Next Door, Let Free the Curse of TaeKwonDo, The On1y One, See Your Love, Dead Friend Forever, Twins the Series, Petrichor

Shows I didn’t watch/finish but have on my list

The Trainee, The Affair, The Loyal Pin, My Stand-In, and probably a lot more, there was so much this year and I'm still catching my breath. If you have any recs for me, i welcome them!

Special shout-out to those who probably see me pop up in their notifs always, particularly @absolutebl, @heretherebedork, @guzhufuren, @respectthepetty, @waitmyturtles, @negrowhat, @yinwaryuri, @lurkingshan, @bengiyo, @spicyvampire, @pharawee and many more. thank you for all you create for little ole fans like me!

Looking forward to what 2025 brings us!

[olderthannetfic]

So I watched that movie you recced, and it hit all my favorite relationship tropes and I really want more of those two. The youtube comments seemed to indicate there’s a book series, but I cannot read Chinese and am deeply unlikely to learn in the near future. Do you know if there’s an English translation somewhere (and also what the name of the series even is)?

--

Ohohohoho!

Okay, so, I will preface all this by saying that I haven't read most of the books and have only seen like half of the adaptations, so talking about this franchise in public is a little like being stupid about Sherlock Holmes stories in front of the ravening hordes of ACD fans who have Opinions™.

(In fact, Holmes is a pretty good analogy in terms of there being one original author, a lot of broad popularity, and a bajillion adaptations with new ones coming out all the time and many of them causing anger over the OOC.)

--

Big picture, the franchise is DMBJ/Graverobber Chronicles/Lost Tomb. (Not Locked Tomb—that's the lesbian necromancers—but Lost Tomb.) It's a series of mega-popular webnovels about a naive young guy from a family of tomb robbers and his two besties he runs into at the beginning of the series. None of these three characters appear in the tentacle movie.

In addition to finishing the main novel series, the author has written a number of side stories or stories set in the future after the main plot. A lot of this stuff is unfinished. Multiple WIPs is not only the fanfic author way but the webnovel author way!

At some point in the books, our three heroes encounter various cool and mysterious side characters, including Black Glasses/Shades/Hei Xiazi/Hei Yanjing and Xiao Hua/Xie Yuchen.

In Ultimate Note, the actors had fantastic chemistry. The characterization was a little off from the books, and the timeline was butchered, so the Trufen™ were annoyed, but everybody else was like "That! Now! Yes!" The characters seem much younger there and Xie Yuchen is supposed to be actually young. The vibe is different than in the movie, but I ship both versions hard.

The author has teamed them up in some stories (as a consequence? Was this after Ultimate Note came out? I'm still a n00b to this vast and confusing fandom).

The book you're looking for is the adventure in Russia that is referenced in the final scene of the tentacle movie. The fan translation is machine translation that has been cleaned up, but the fan has done some research to clarify cultural points and improve the translation, so it's pretty decent as these things go. Would I love a really artistic, skilled translation by a bilingual fan? Sure, but them's the breaks. I thought it was still a fun read, and it's quite slashy.

I will say that some fans interpret "immortal" in the scene where Xiao Hua talks to the corpse as being the same kind of immortal as Hei Xiazi, and this is something a better translation could address. But even if they're different types of immortal, I still find the scene very interesting in light of how shippy I find heihua (the smooshname for our two dudes) and the fact that Hei Xiazi is listening to Xiao Hua's whole speech. I just... have a lot of feelings! You'll see what I mean when you get there.

--

In terms of the franchise overall, the main three are Wu Xie (young, naive, goes through his "mob widow era" later and gets all dark), Zhang Qiling/Xiaoge (amnesiac, mysterious, turns up to save Wu Xie a lot, often with his shirt off and tattoos on display), and Wang Pangzi (The Fat One™ but also the hottest in some adaptations, fight me!).

Fandom mostly ships Wu Xie/Xiaoge (smushname "pingxie"), but some people—who are correct and right—ship OT3.

My faves are partly popular as a ship because they're fun together and partly because it gets both of them out of the way of pingxie. Hahaha.

--

Anyway, the side character side story novel is Moving Forward Through the Flowery Night; The End Comes Without A Sound.

Black Glasses and Xie Yuchen head to Russia to investigate a mysterious floating corpse in an Orthodox Church. In the midst of it all, they are recruited to help protect a Russian family from a deadly attack by a feng shui master.

The main fan translation is by merebear. You can find it here.

[i-put-the-milk-before-the-cereal]

BESTIE TELL ME ABOUT YOUR OC’S LORE :3

( DONT EVEN GIVE ME A SUMMARY GIVE ME THE WHOLE BOOK SERIES AND THE MOVIE)

YAYAYYAYAYA LEMME LORE DUMP ON N00B

So they were bullied irl and online, but the bullying got so bad irl that they dropped out of school and went online wayyy too often. But the bullying got worse there 2 so they were just there. But then they pulled a Kromer LC and thought “this world is too fucked up I need to purify it” and kinda. Killed themself to get into Roblox. Their plan is to trap people with them to “fix them” (they’re killing) but when they try to leave they get mad and starts killing again. Just think of Static by Flavor Foley and Internet Yamero

i project too much on my oc’s HELP

[ghostofbambifanfiction]

opening line patterns

Rules: List the first line of your last 10 (or however many you have) posted fics and see if there's a pattern!

Thank you for the tag @thequibblah!

Choose Your Own (sexy) Adventure

James, Couple of things for you today.

Wherefore Art Thou, James Potter?

"Drop your bag, Potter, and sit back down at once."

Chance Encounters of the Irresponsible Kind

Kingsley Shacklebolt: COME OUT TONIGHT

Scooby Doodles

Lily Evans is stunned by what greets her in her garden on the last Monday morning in March.

Everything but the Kitchen Sink

"So I was your second choice?" she demands, tears glistening in her eyes. "All this time?"

Covet Thy Neighbour

She's heard it told that bad things come in threes, but most proverbs are garbage.

A Series of Unfortunate French Events

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing James Potter that St. Tropez was just a certain kind of fake tan.

n00b

hi mates, it is i, james lancelot potter, your fearless leader and devoted friend. 

A Thursday of Unappetising Lunches

Lily Evans: I HATE that you're so consistently right about this

The Viscount's Daughter

"I have news," said James urgently.

So apparently my pattern is that more often than not I open with dialogue of some kind, which for some reason I wasn't expecting? Four out of ten of these openers feature someone talking to/communicating with James! Who knew? I'm also quite gratified to find that my opening lines tend to be quite short and succinct, because I worry often that I have a bad habit of waffling on too much.

Tagging: @oyprongs and @wearingaberetinparis (and anyone else who wants to do it!)

[straycalamities]

Still confused on how this AU will work on a fandom wide scale; can you elaborate on that? You mentioned not everyone has to be familiar with MH to join in but IDK how we could participate if we don't. You see my confusion lel

that's because it's not a Marble Hornets AU, it's a slenderverse AU and the thing with slenderverse stuff...be it series, args, or whatever, is they always have their kinda own version of the lore

think about how all the onceler askblogs have their own take or spin on the original onceler. it's like that but with slender-lore in general and how it works. you don't always need to have seen The Lorax (2012) or read the book to enjoy the askblogs and this will be the same gist. it's not as involved as if i, say, made a Magnus Archives AU or something. with that you definitely would need to research TMA to be able to join in or follow along in an engaging way

so this au will be pretty n00b-friendly. me and the bestie came up with our own version of the lore we'd like to use and that's what will be established in a way that everyone will get the gist of what's going on and can play inside of it and be on the same page!

you can like look up on whatever websites that list out all the vague versions of the lore that are out there and you'd be on equal footing with everyone else tbqh is the goal

it's like how Truffula Flu is pretty easy to grasp because it's Zombie Apocalypse Genre. and all the specifics about it are homebrewed so you can get it from the people who started it or came up with things along the way. same idear just different horror genre. though this one is more niche, it's just as easy to pick up the rhythm and tone and it'll have the same amount of freedom

[jeremy-ken-anderson]

Community Teaching of Game Features

One of the wildest contradictions of game development comes from the question of how much to tutorialize and how to go about it.

For games with relatively simple controls like Megaman X, you can do the fancy invisible tutorial of its prologue level where it quietly teaches you individual concepts, only moving on - literally only allowing YOU to move on - when you've mastered them. Basic l/r movement? Starts you in a basic screen with nothing. Shooting? Enemy too big to jump over. Jumping? Bottomless pits. Wall-jumping? Pit that DOES have a bottom that you have to wall-jump back out of. Hollow Knight also does this beautifully. Both games have several videos, with Arin Hanson's Sequelitis vid probably being the most famous.

But back when I was playing Pokemon Emerald, I looked up how you get some of the pokemon I hadn't found yet and...there was no way to expect a person to discover the information about how they could be found in game. And when I shared this complaint with my friend with a PHD in Japanese media studies - a literal Pokemon Professor, as she bragged when she first got said degree - she said that the way I'd discovered where they were was probably the way I was supposed to. Gamefreak wants people to share wikis and talk on the playground about the Mew under the truck (it isn't) and make guides and videos about how to get all the Cursed Beasts in Scarlet/Violet and so on.

And I saw a video series from a while ago where Razbuten shared his wife's experience with learning the vocabulary of games later in life (than childhood; I'm pretty sure she's a good deal younger than I am). And something struck me during that explanation: He talked about how many of the lessons he'd probably learned from message boards, guides, or just having someone tell him "you can push b to run in Mario," but here he was trying to have her learn the same lessons in a vacuum. To his credit, one of his conclusions on the same video is, "Don't do that."

But it left me wondering: How much effort should a developer spend on teaching new players? Part of why tutorials trend toward kind of low-effort is because a game can reasonably expect that 80%+ of its audience already knows almost everything about its control scheme, if said scheme is following conventions of the genre - be that mouse-aim on a shooter, the function of HUD compasses with quest markers, or something as seemingly obvious as "press A to jump." Of the remaining 20%, 80% of them can be expected to pick up the controls of the individual game swiftly because they're relatively familiar with games in general. So in terms of True N00bs who need to be taught how to traverse a game, any game, in your tutorial? That's like 4% of your audience. Is it worth tutorializing heavily in a way that some of them won't even read and which might reduce the fun of the first level (that is, the level roughly all of your players are guaranteed to play)? It makes sense that so many tutorials end up feeling so low-effort. And on the other end, if you want one that's glorious and teaches everything while never getting in the way of great players, how much money and dev time has to go into making a masterful experience like the one that Arin Hanson gushes over in his Sequelitis video? Is that worth having one less level in your game? Two? What's the cutoff?

My suspicion is that some studios see the 4% and opt to go low-effort, and others do their best to elegantly include something that at least somewhat gives totally new players a handle on the situation.

The two bits of Secret Sauce I've taken away from this and would offer to fellow devs:

The Safe Zone. Hollow Knight has platforming areas with few or no enemies and with no penalty for falling. Super Mario 64 has the lawn in front of the palace where you can just mess around with the controls and explore.

Fun Controls. One of the things that has helped maintain Nintendo's place at or near the top of the industry for so long is that the movement style for its characters is just fun. Mario in Super Mario 64 is fun to run around the palace lawn in spite of there being no objectives there! This in turn gives incentive for players to experiment with the system and discover moves for themselves.

Blarg, this is neat but got far afield from the point.

The point was that even basic controls of your game can be community-taught, and that will usually be better than you can teach them because it can be responsive to the individual queries the player has. I've experienced the same when trying to figure out how to write a rulebook for a board game. You need one person in the community of people who plays your board game to be able to learn the game from your rulebook, if that. It's possible they'll learn from videos online anyway.

At that point, the value of having your rulebook be effective as a guidebook, a set of examples, and a place to find answers to frequently asked questions quickly gets bumped up over having it be a straightforward how-to tutorial. Doesn't necessarily change how much you write but rather changes the style of what you write, possibly even the format.

[krinsbez]

The Warlord's Swords 3.0: a 40K Homebrew/Crossover, part of the Pulp Primarchs Project

(please provide feedback; while I am proud of what I've done so far, I am very aware that I am an ignorant n00b and that there's a lot more work to be done)

(initial note: this project is built around imagining SM Chapters with an invented additional Primarch based around Pulp Heroes; in this case, John Carter of Mars, initial star of the Barsoom stories by Edgar Rice Burroughs. More notes on my thoughts, etc. at end.)

Primarch: John Carter

Homeworld: Barsoom, a world settled by several successive waves of colonists, that suffered a massive ecological catastrophe and is only habitable due to a network of canals and an atmosphere generating factory. In addition to the obvious problems inherent on living on a mummifed corpse of a world, only the toughest and most ferocious fauna survived the ecological collapse, and they’re all hungry. And of course, the humans survivors were constantly at war for resources. The immortal Chaos sorceress manipulating everyone through a series of nested cults was almost icing on the cake. This, of course, was before John Carter united the world under his leadership and changed everything

Notes:

Battlecries include “I/We Still Live”, meaning that so long as they continue to draw breath, their victory is inevitable; and “For the Golden Jeddak and the Warlord!”, these being their titles for the Emperor and their Primarch

Hold to a stringent, chilvaric honor code. Most notably, when engaged in infantry combat, they will, whenever possible, attempt to match their opponents with “equal or lesser” weapons. Because of this, have a preference for swordplay, and have occasionally been known to go into battle without the Astartes’ signature Power Armor. (Also have A Thing about not harming and being respectful to women, but that comes up a lot less)

Despite the above, are masters of naval and aerial combat, with one of the largest spacefleets of any Space Marine faction. Will not acknowledge the inherent contradiction.

On-planet, specialize in operating behind enemy lines.

During the Great Crusade, rather than direct conquest, would prefer to find a dissident faction and support them in rising up and overthrowing the current rulers; the new rulers would then, of course, accept Imperial rule. It was not unusual for members of the Legion to allow themselves to be captured to facilitate finding these dissidents. Again, will not acknowledge the contradiction between this and their ideals.

Where particularly strong proponents of the Imperial Truth, and remain disdainful of religion and irrationality to this day. Which doesn't stop them from revering the Emperor, their Primarch, their predecessors, etc. as much as other Astartes. Again, will not acknowledge the contradiction.

When the Horus Heresy began, they were in the midst of fighting an invasion of their portion of the Imperium by a race of xenos known as morgors. Predictably, their Primarch ended up alone, behind enemy lines. Unexpectedly, things went more pearshaped than usual, and he disappeared; his damaged, empty armor was found surrounded by the bodies of many hundreds of morgor warriors, leading to the conclusion that he was grievously wounded and instinctively teleported himself...somewhere else, which he'd done before. This time, however, they had no idea where. Still haven't found him. As a result, largely stayed out of the Heresy, which they still feel guilty about it.

Make extensive use of auxiliaries made of the Barsoomian abhumans called Green Men; who are hairless, stick-thin, 12-15 feet tall, and have green skin, tusks, bulging red eyes, an extra set of limbs that can be either arms or legs, and some really ridiculous lifespans. Resemblance to Orks is entirely coincidental and cosmetic. Green Men are their most vicious and brutal fighters, but also, paradoxically, the most committed to the honor code. Note that in addition to their obvious physical prowess, their primary combat role is as snipers, and secondarily as cavalry.

Librarians are experts in Teleportation and Astral Projection.

Utilize traditional Barsoomian military structure. To wit:

A land formation of 100 men is an Utan, commanded by a Dwar, assisted by two Padwars. 1,000 men form a Dar, commanded by a Teedwar. 10,000 men from an Umak commanded by an Odwar. The highest military rank is a Jedwar, who is outranked only by royalty. During the Great Crusade, this is what they used, with the title of Jedwar being held by their First Captain.

Said Jedwar was Tars Tarkas, a Green Man who was John Carter’s best friend, who in defiance of all logic was able to take the Warlord’s geneseed and become an Astartes (which made him even bigger than he already was), despite his age and abhumanity. It is said that it was his innate nobility and/or the fact that this worked that convinced the Emperor to accept that the Green Men were, in fact, abhumans, and not xenos.

Come the Second Founding, each individual Dar became it's own Chapter. It was assumed that Tars Tarkas would become a Chapter Master, but mourning the loss of John Carter, and wracked with guilt for (in his mind) failing both him and the Imperium generally, chose to instead take the lesser post of Chapter Champion. That said, the Chapter Master of the Warlord's Swords is still called the Jedwar.

At the present time, the Warlord's Swords are fairly Codex Compliant, and have actually become more so with the introduction of the Lieutenant rank. They do however, continue to use their own terminology for things. Some of this is from the continued use of traditional Barsoomian military terms: Utan for Company, Than for a Battle-Brother, Padwar for Lieutenant, Dwar for Captain, the aforementioned Jedwar for Chapter Master, and so on. They have also used the title Dator, originated by the (literally) black-skinned Barsoomian people called the First Born, for Company Champions. Finally, they have chosen to refer to different types of Marine with color designations referencing stereotypes about the various Barsoomian ethnic groups, in subtly insulting ways, in order to break down barriers between Thans of different ethnicities.

Ordinary Battle-Brothers are Red Thans, referencing both the fact the (again, literally) red-skinned Red Men are the dominant majority, and that they were a "mongrel race" once held as slaves by the older and more advanced peoples before the ecological collapse, and achieved their current dominion primarily because everyone else almost died out (asides from the Green Men)...which didn't stop said older peoples from manipulating and preying on them from behind the scenes before the coming of John Cater

Librarians are White Thans, referencing the famous Psyker prowess of the pale-skinned Orovars...and also the fact that the Orovars are now extinct, and their most notable descendants, the Therns, are widely agreed to have been the most corrupt and immoral of the Barsoomian peoples before the coming of John Carter.

Apothecaries are Green Thans, referencing the fact the greatest masters of medical arts on Barsoom are found amongst the Green Men...or more specifically, the Green Women, as healing is considered by those savage warriors to be women's work, just as much as child-rearing (also torture, but let's not get into that)

Chaplains are Black Thans, referencing that the aforementioned First Born were the wealthiest of the Barsoomian peoples...because they were notorious pirates who formed the highest level of the series of interlocked cults that the Chaos sorceress Issus used to control the planet before the coming of John Carter.

Techmarines are Yellow Thans, referencing the (again, literally) yellow-skinned Okar, who's climate-controlled domed cities are wonder of ancient technology...in which they hid from the rest of the world.

Some notable heroes of the Chapter in the Era Indomitus:

Tars Tarkas, once John Carter's strong right arms, is astoundingly still around and not entombed in a Dreadnought, serves as Chapter Champion, or Dator-Chieftain. It should be noted that, he was tall for a Green Man even before becoming an Astartes, and got even bigger afterwords. and more recently, he has Crossed the Rubicon Primaris. In his relic armor, the Sacrifice of Gozava, he stands over twenty feet tall, is almost eight feet wide, and moves much, MUCH faster than anything that big has any right too. He has been known to fight a Questoris Traitoris hand-to-hand and win.

Kantos Kan, Jedwar (Chapter Master). As one expects from the Chapter Master of a First Founding Chapter, he is a warrior of superlative skill and valor, and an inspiring commander who brings it both in the war room and on the battlefield. But he really shines in the void and behind enemy lines, being one of the Imperium's greatest naval commanders, and a master of infiltration and sabotage (occasional jokes are made about him being an Alpha Legion plant. Obviously, not where any Warlord's Swords can hear them).

Carthoris, Red Dwar of the First Utan (Captain of the First Company). His elevation to the post is somewhat controversial, since A: he is way, WAY younger than usual to be IN the 1st Company, much less leading it, and B: the Yellow Thans (Techmarines) still think he should have been sent to Mars to be trained in the ways of the Cult Mechanicus, as he is as noted for his skill with machines as in the ways of war. Was given the epithet "The Son of John Carter" for his combat prowess and devotion to the Chapter's honor code.

Xodar, Red Dator of the 1st Utan (Champion of the 1st Company). One of the First Born ethnic group. Specifically, was born into a band that rejected the Warlord's Peace and lived as pirates and reavers. When the Astartes hunted them down and brought them to justice, he was in that liminal spot where, despite being old enough (by Ancient Barsoomian standards) to fight, he was young enough they weren't sure it was just to execute him. Except he turned out to also be old enough to have started understanding that what his family was doing was wrong, and the obvious valor, etc. of his captors was enough to settle his mind, resulting in his requesting to be executed for his crimes. Which rather settled things in the opposite direction for the Astartes, who instead offered him the possibility of redemption by becoming an Aspirant (is that the right word?)

Ulysses Paxton, Green Dwar (Master of the Apothecarion). Was formerly a Scout for a Successor Chapter that was otherwise annihilated. Ended up serving in the entourage of the Genetor-turned-Rogue Trader Ras Thavas, who treated him as a protege and taught him a bunch of stuff the AdMech would be unhappy if they knew, but eventually was adopted by the Warlord's Swords. Sometimes called Vad Varo, a name given to him by Ras Thavas.

Ghek is the name taken by every White Dwar (Chief Librarian), in honor of a rather.... unique individual, a member of the Chaos-worshiping, psyker xenos called kaldanes. Said individual rejected his people and their allegiance to Tzeentch and Slaanesh, ultimately dying using his native Psyker powers to aid the Warlord's Swords in defending civilians. For obvious reasons the Warlord's Swords do NOT talk about the origins of the name except when it needs to be explained to the next to bear it. Also, they, uh, have mythologized things a LOT.

Doylist Thoughts:

-Alt. titles/Successor chapters/internal formations: Immortals, Peacebringers, Red Fliers, Green Horde, Black Pirates, Yellow Survivors, White Penitents.

-Please, please, please, give constructive criticism and suggestions, I am well aware that this could be better, and would welcome pretty much any help.

-Admission, this project exists in it's current form in large part because, being under the (false, as i have since learned) impression that Luther was a full Space Marine, when I started thinking about John Carter as a Primarch, the thought "imagine how awesomely badass the already awesomely badass Tars Tarkas would be if he got Astartes enhancements" popped into my head and wouldn't leave, so that concept stays, no matter what.

-That said, as you can see, I eventually decided that most of the other characters would work better as Present Day guys. Speaking of, I want to do stuff with some of the other characters, like Gahan, Tan Hadron, and Vor Daj, and would like to have a Chaplain, a Techmarine, and a Dreadnaught, but haven't got anything in mind ATM.

-Do need to figure out how their space and air assets work, but I know even less about that than about 40K generally.

-Really wanted to include some stuff involving Barsoomian technology but not sure how to do that without messing up the setting or getting into VS Debate territory. Also wanted to address the chivalric romance aspect of the source material, but not sure how given how Space Marines work.

-Also wanna figure out how to fit John Carter's story into a 40K box.

-Also, also, wanna come up with relics and such.

*sigh*

[spiderculechronicals]

Ughhhh ok I need to soak up more unhinged spidypool soon, my Wade character is falling flat. Also it might be good to figure out how to organize my giant documents into chapters that I can navigate? I like the switch to Libre writer, but these 400+ page behemoths are not easy to re-read. And I'd like to see how to carve things down into material worth posting. It's not very narrative, there's not a central plot it's all... world building and smut and fluff and it's very much not Canon compliant. There are maybe some chunks I could shape up into pieces in a series that's more free form. Plus the rating and tags would be all over the place for a single work. Like, I would not try to read this if I saw it from someone else, but I would probably read sections of it.

No idea how to do that. Once upon a time when I was like 18 my impulse would be to write an html thing to organize it, but there's a thing called a "master document" on writer that might be what I'm hoping for? Not sure.

Steadfastly writing freak-grade fic to spit in the face of the scandalized fandom n00bs that don't understand how fanfic works and are big mad about it.

Also apparently people don't write third person past tense anymore? I'm weird for that I guess.

[upsidedownlurker]

attention my fellow tv series enjoyers

if you like fanfiction, my chemical romance, heartbreak high (2022), comedy and/or gay people then PLEASE watch n00b (2024) on Netflix AU (even if you have to use a vpn sfjdhgksjdkh)

It's a vERY underrated miniseries set in 2005 in which a high school dude gets outed for writing gay fanfiction, and drama ensues. There are a lot of funny moments and some genuinely touching ones, too.

Hopefully this post makes it out of the void :P

[olderthannetfic]

Hi hi! I have a question and I apologise if it's impertinent but I really didn't have anyone else to ask. I'm new to ao3 and I'm still figuring out how it works. The problem is this- when I look up a character x reader, I'll see the tag included in many works that have oneshots but since it's a side character, more often than not the oneshot for the character hasn't been written and the tag has been there for months. Is it okay to do that or is it tagging something incorrectly? They say they'll write one eventually but they never do, y'know? To me it kind of feels like they're just trying to reach a wider audience but because of this I can't even filter tags and I have to manually search through the book to check if the character is included, especially when the chapters are titled only by numbers :')

Is it okay to tag things in advance like that?

--

Oh boy...

Wattpad refugees do tend to use AO3 "wrong", sometimes in ways that break the rules and sometimes just in ways I find annoying and against typical AO3 culture.

I'm assuming you are coming from Wattpad based on you calling a work or a fic a "book", which is a very, very Wattpad thing to do.

I'm assuming they are coming from Wattpad given the bad behavior you're describing and the fact that they're a x reader writer.

--

So, here's the thing, if you start writing a fic and there's any amount of the actual fic, even if it's pretty short and bad or in a weird format or whatever, it's still a valid fanwork. Most of the time, AO3 leaves it to the author to decide how to tag (aside from a very few things like death threats in the tags or failing to use the required archive warnings).

AO3 won't stop someone from tagging a future pairing that hasn't appeared yet.

--

But "books" of "oneshots" are such an obnoxious Wattpad thing. This is a completely stupid use of AO3 from the "Please send me prompts" part that is usually in there to the way that unrelated fics are smashed together.

It's not against the rules, but it's a crappy use of AO3 befitting of n00bs.

Sadly, old hands at AO3 also make shitty works that are unrelated stories mashed together. They're often a whole set of kinktober fics or something where the trope tags and the ship tags are accurate, but you can't tell which ones go with which ones without searching the whole fic.

We regularly complain about that on here.

--

A much better way to use AO3 is to make a series titled "My x Reader Oneshots" or "All of my kinktober fics" where each separate story is its own work with its own tags.

My assumption is that this person is using the inaccurate tag both to get more eyeballs on their existing work and because they probably take prompts for that ship or something. (I'm basing this on the kinds of things people say on their oneshot books on Wattpad. Maybe they don't actually take prompts since you haven't mentioned it.)

Some people just don't care that they're annoying others and messing up the tags, but I think some actually don't realize how AO3 filtering works and have no idea this behavior is a nuisance.

On a lot of sites, both Wattpad and algorithm-driven social media, unless a post/work is very popular, it disappears out of sight. Even an inaccurate tag doesn't do that much.

On AO3, one is getting a full list of everything with the tag, going back however far. It's a library catalogue for which you should use accurate data. But this writer is probably thinking of tags more as advertising and a way to get their name out there so readers can follow them pre-emptively. They mean to write the ship in the future, so it's not really inaccurate... (And, tbh, if it were a single work and the ship just hadn't appeared yet, I would agree with them even though those are frustrating too.)

--

So no, they should not do this.

But it's not actually against the rules.

I would mute the annoying people who do this.

[ghostofbambifanfiction]

are u not writing A Series of Unfortunate French Events and n00b anymore ???

Where did you get that idea??

[smitemeister]

[skrillien]

good chance i might try to read the entire skrillmau5 ao3 tag at some point

[measureyourlifeincake]

i know people make these kinds of posts with fictional characters a lot but like. hank green truly is one of The Most Guys Ever. like. he's one of the earliest youtubers who is still on there. he's a 43-year-old tiktok star. he's a science educator. he got cancer and his response was to make a tier list of the press's coverage of his cancer announcement. the president of the united states sent him a message of support and he told the president that he was pissing out the cancer. years earlier he was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis and his response was to write a polka song about it. he created vidcon. he's the ceo of a company that produces a shitton of educational series (well, not acting ceo at the moment due to the aforementioned cancer). his guitar says "this machine pwns n00bs" on it. he invented 2D glasses. one of his earliest videos to get popular was about animal sex. between him and his brother, he was known as "the science one" (or "the music one") while his brother was "the writer one," and then he wrote two new york times bestselling novels. his most controversial opinion is that butt is legs. he's done so many things that there is a website dedicated to counting the number of days since he started a new thing. he and his brother use their internet following to (among other things) fight maternal/infant mortality in sierra leone. he has a baked bean furby. hes even bisexual

[clatterbane]

After someone asked me a while back, I have utterly failed so far to post some basic beginner resources for wading into homebrewing. This happened for a variety of neurospicy reasons, and has had absolutely nothing to do with not wanting to do the thing! (Sorry @slashmarks!)

Anyway, here are finally a few things that I have found useful getting started, focused on the wine/cider/mead side of things.

For a lot of basic info and beginner advice:

The r/mead wiki: https://meadmaking.wiki (Not just useful for mead. It includes links to handy calculators, and a lot of general info.)

Getting super basic: A Hooch primer for N00Bs (r/prisonhooch was actually the place that really sparked my interest, with the easygoing experimental approach there.)

I have always personally learned well from watching people do stuff, while explaining what they're doing and preferably why. So, a lot of the rest that I would point someone at is in video format. (Which I thought I still had sitting in open browser tabs, but evidently not.)

One series playlist from an overall excellent channel: How to Homebrew Beer, Wine, Cider, or Mead | So You Want...

Another from the same guy: Homebrewing hacks, tips, and tricks

From a different great channel, on the nerdier side: Beginner Mead Making Videos

How to Make Insanely Cheap and Simple Grocery Store Alcohol (No Equipment Needed)

Another good channel, with a lot of beginner-friendly walkthroughs (where I honestly had a hard time picking a good starting point): DIY Fermentation

That's most of what I can think of offhand right at the moment, but it should hopefully give a few starting points at least. One of the reasons I had gotten stalled was not being sure how thoroughly to geek out at other people over a relatively new hobby interest, but better to go ahead and get something posted! 🙄