#no living off the grid fantasies for me then

[geminison]

I want to run in meadow but I'm fatally allergic to wild grass and also have a crippling insectophobia how unfortunate

[samwisethewitch]

Homemaking, gardening, and self-sufficiency resources that won't radicalize you into a hate group

It seems like self-sufficiency and homemaking skills are blowing up right now. With the COVID-19 pandemic and the current economic crisis, a lot of folks, especially young people, are looking to develop skills that will help them be a little bit less dependent on our consumerist economy. And I think that's generally a good thing. I think more of us should know how to cook a meal from scratch, grow our own vegetables, and mend our own clothes. Those are good skills to have.

Unfortunately, these "self-sufficiency" skills are often used as a recruiting tactic by white supremacists, TERFs, and other hate groups. They become a way to reconnect to or relive the "good old days," a romanticized (false) past before modern society and civil rights. And for a lot of people, these skills are inseparably connected to their politics and may even be used as a tool to indoctrinate new people.

In the spirit of building safe communities, here's a complete list of the safe resources I've found for learning homemaking, gardening, and related skills. Safe for me means queer- and trans-friendly, inclusive of different races and cultures, does not contain Christian preaching, and does not contain white supremacist or TERF dog whistles.

Homemaking/Housekeeping/Caring for your home:

Making It by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen [book] (The big crunchy household DIY book; includes every level of self-sufficiency from making your own toothpaste and laundry soap to setting up raised beds to butchering a chicken. Authors are explicitly left-leaning.)

Safe and Sound: A Renter-Friendly Guide to Home Repair by Mercury Stardust [book] (A guide to simple home repair tasks, written with rentals in mind; very compassionate and accessible language.)

How To Keep House While Drowning by KC Davis [book] (The book about cleaning and housework for people who get overwhelmed by cleaning and housework, based on the premise that messiness is not a moral failing; disability and neurodivergence friendly; genuinely changed how I approach cleaning tasks.)

Gardening

Rebel Gardening by Alessandro Vitale [book] (Really great introduction to urban gardening; explicitly discusses renter-friendly garden designs in small spaces; lots of DIY solutions using recycled materials; note that the author lives in England, so check if plants are invasive in your area before putting them in the ground.)

Country/Rural Living:

Woodsqueer by Gretchen Legler [book] (Memoir of a lesbian who lives and works on a rural farm in Maine with her wife; does a good job of showing what it's like to be queer in a rural space; CW for mentions of domestic violence, infidelity/cheating, and internalized homophobia)

"Debunking the Off-Grid Fantasy" by Maggie Mae Fish [video essay] (Deconstructs the off-grid lifestyle and the myth of self-reliance)

Sewing/Mending:

Annika Victoria [YouTube channel] (No longer active, but their videos are still a great resource for anyone learning to sew; check out the beginner project playlist to start. This is where I learned a lot of what I know about sewing.)

Make, Sew, and Mend by Bernadette Banner [book] (A very thorough written introduction to hand-sewing, written by a clothing historian; lots of fun garment history facts; explicitly inclusive of BIPOC, queer, and trans sewists.)

Sustainability/Land Stewardship

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer [book] (Most of you have probably already read this one or had it recommended to you, but it really is that good; excellent example of how traditional animist beliefs -- in this case, indigenous American beliefs -- can exist in healthy symbiosis with science; more philosophy than how-to, but a great foundational resource.)

Wild Witchcraft by Rebecca Beyer [book] (This one is for my fellow witches; one of my favorite witchcraft books, and an excellent example of a place-based practice deeply rooted in the land.)

Avoiding the "Crunchy to Alt Right Pipeline"

Note: the "crunchy to alt-right pipeline" is a term used to describe how white supremacists and other far right groups use "crunchy" spaces (i.e., spaces dedicated to farming, homemaking, alternative medicine, simple living/slow living, etc.) to recruit and indoctrinate people into their movements. Knowing how this recruitment works can help you recognize it when you do encounter it and avoid being influenced by it.

"The Crunchy-to-Alt-Right Pipeline" by Kathleen Belew [magazine article] (Good, short introduction to this issue and its history.)

Sisters in Hate by Seyward Darby (I feel like I need to give a content warning: this book contains explicit descriptions of racism, white supremacy, and Neo Nazis, and it's a very difficult read, but it really is a great, in-depth breakdown of the role women play in the alt-right; also explicitly addresses the crunchy to alt-right pipeline.)

These are just the resources I've personally found helpful, so if anyone else has any they want to add, please, please do!

[the-soliloquies-of-sadists]

#354

“Hey faggot get over here.  Well I see you ain’t a stupid cunt.  You can follow orders.  Naked except for that pecker cage and your shoes.  Did you strip down behind the gas station and throw everything in the dumpster including your phone?  Was it dark when you got here?  Anyone see you walking here?  It’s a three-mile trek, in the middle of the night so no one would have been on the road.  You really must want to drop off the grid bad…. I don’t give a flying fuck about the reason.  I don’t care a single thing of the life you led before today, not your name, not your age, address, family situation, your job, nothing.  Nod if you understand.  Good….

“You must be thirsty.  Here let me get something for you to drink….  I want you to chug this down.  It’s the piss bottle from a driver friend of mine.  He gave it to me this morning when I told him I was getting a new slavecunt.  Go on.  Drink it all down…. You said you love drinking piss….  Atta fag.

“You got a nice body.  Perfect size for a slave.  Did you stop eating solid foods three days ago like I told you?... Good.  From this moment forward, I will be controlling what goes in and out of your body.  Everything.  You will live on slave chow and piss.  I will be controlling when you piss and shit.  I’ll be controlling every dick, finger, fist, whatever that uses you.  Even down to how you breathe.  You got all that?  I’m in fucking control. 

“I got some piss for ya.  I told you that you’ll see my dick when we meet.  Well here it is.  On your knees.  It’s eight inches long and eight inches around.  Most fags can’t take its thickness.  Other fags can’t stand the nastiness under the skin.  Smells nasty hunh?  That’s your fucking job going forward.  I never clean off my dick after I fuck.  This morning I was part of a gang bang along with my buddy whose piss you chugged.  I was churning a cunt after a half-dozen other drivers dumped in it.

“You’ll clean that off in a bit.  But first, see this pill in my hand.  Once you take it, there’s no turning back.  I don’t plan on telling you what it does.  It’s a tiny little pill that does a lot.

“I don’t trust you to take it.  You might pocket it under your tongue then spit it out later.  So this is what I do when I take on new fag slaves.  The pill goes in here… in my piss slit.  My semi hardon goes in your mouth….  Last chance to back out?...  Good.  Open up that throat.

“There!  With that little spurt of piss, that pill is in your stomach ready to do whatever it does.  Drink the rest of my bladder then start cleaning me up. 

“Man does that look good.  A naked fag on his knees outside slobbering on my cock, wanting me to enslave him.  You fags are all alike.  You have this fantasy of submitting to a truck driver.  You have no idea what real slavery is like.  But you are going to find out.  Get up in the cab.  My buddy whose piss you drank is in the bunk ready to take your cunt.  Or rather, that’s my cunt now.  He’s going to be with us for a couple days.  He and I go way back.  He and I share our love for torturing faggots.  Go on, get up there.  Let’s get you suffering.”

[literary-illuminati]

2024 Book Review #19 – Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

This is the third book I’ve picked up as part of my whole aspirational ‘read a piece of non-SFF capital-l Literature every month’ New Years resolution. Of those three, it is the second I opened only to discover it actually is science fiction and/or fantasy after all. Which is just a very funny thing to happen twice, and also meant the book was significantly less outside my comfort zone than I’d expected. Which did make it quite a pleasant read.

The story follows Klara, an AF (Artificial Friend, a companion robot for children) in a broadly sketched and mildly dystopian future America. At first it just follows her life in the shop where she’s kept, observing the world around her and interacting with the store manager and the other AFs, but the meat of the book is her life with the family who buys her. Over time you learn that Josie, her child, suffers from severe and increasing health issues as a consequence of being ‘lifted’ (genetically enhanced, in some unclear way) in the womb. Klara, being solar-powered and having quietly developed a one-robot religion underpinned by a firm belief in the power and benevolence of Mr. Sun (and a moral opposition to Pollution, which obscures and drives him away) does her best to invoke his help in nourishing and restoring Josie. At the same time, she learns that her job is not just to comfort Josie but, should she die, to be her mother’s replacement goldfish and imitate her perfectly.

The setting is broadly sketched and never really exposited upon – it’s just not something Klara is particularly interested in – but it’s a very modern sort of dystopia. Much of the populace, even among the American professional elite, have been left ‘post-employed’ by robotic automation. The remaining meritocratic elite have embraced novel and risky genetic enhancements for their children, as the only possible way of ensuring they get into a good school and one of the few good careers left. There are fascist militia compounds off in the distance somewhere. The overall feeling is that of a society dimly aware it’s midway through collapsing, but with no ideas of how to arrest its fall. But since Klara has no interest at all in either politics or economics, we only see this as it directly intrudes upon the story, with nary a lecture or manifesto to be seen.

I’ve only ever read one other book by Ishiguro, so I really don’t know how much this generalizes, but the similarities to Never Let Me Go really were striking. Both books are set in really rather horrifying societies, but portrayed in an utterly normalized way by someone who never even thinks to question the real rules they live under. Which is even more striking because in both cases the protagonist is seen by society as only quasi-human – like a person, but existing only in relation to and for the benefit of the people who really matter. And in both cases the story follows the protagonist who lives their life moving through the role they were made for without ever really resisting it, let alone changing it. Not that the roles of ‘friend to sick child’ and ‘mandatory organ donor’ are exactly comparable but, you know.

A definition I’ve always kind of liked for what makes literary fiction, well, literary is that it’s as or more concerned with the beauty and presentation of its prose than it is on the information the prose is conveying. Not at all true in terms of how the term’s actually used (genre is marketing), but it works for me, and lets this book count as literature quite handily. The whole story is told quite tightly from Klara’s point of view, and it’s a pleasure to read. Even if it took me more than a few pages to really understand how she described scenes, always foregrounding the ways they were divided by grids or patterns of the sun’s light.

Portraying the normal human society through the eyes of a naive and somewhat alien narrator to get away without explaining everything is a classic sci fi trope for a reason, but it’s overall used really well here as well.

I’m still not entirely sure how to interpret the sudden intrusion of magical realism with the ending. But otherwise, really quite a good read.

[jewishbarbies]

The image of Swift living in the 1830s gave me such a laughing fit. She could never live without the constant social media attention and marketing tactics. I’m just picturing her as a town crier screaming “Bartholomew has not requested my hand! Shame! Shame!”

There’s nothing appealing about that time period and if she wants the fashion or the aesthetic or books or whatever else like, she can still get all of that now. We still have access to all that history plus even more now, why go back. Go off grid, dress in period clothing, READ, like she’s richer than everybody nothing could stop her from living some weird old timey fantasy.

[wealmostaneckbeard]

Minecraft always sucked

I dislike minceraft because it started off as a neckbearded-internet-libertarian's fantasy simulation of "living off the grid," in the mid-2000s. Since then it's been bought by Microsoft and marketed by YouTube's algorithm, two massive mostly untrustworthy corporations.

Okay, it's origins and current state are obnoxiously capitalistic but the gameplay is cool, right?

Yes, it is cool that people can express themselves through in-game architectural/interior designs, or learn about programming automation. But last I checked the unmodded game doesn't teach people how to live sustainably by keeping industrial/agricultural pollutants out of the water table. Or how replacing biomes with urban development can result in natural disasters such as floods and disease outbreaks. The game is basically teaching people that the destruction/exploitation of nature for industry and self-expression is an unavoidable necessity with barely any downsides. And as I've implied that is so very wrong!

Which brings me to my last point: The problem with a lot of survival-crafting games is that it reinforces the libertarian homesteader delusion. That society (with all it's efficient conveniences and life saving public services) can collapse and every one will be fine because they can just live off the bounty of the land. Therefore it's okay that in real life, corporate lobbying destroys governments around the world while corporate industry renders the earth uninhabitable for all life. As long as you have the ownership your little plot of land with your little log cabin, everything is okay! Fuck the rest of the world and everyone in it!

[northern-passage]

Hope you don’t mind this question but how did you get into writing

mostly by reading!

i was one of those kids that read nonstop up until college, and i started writing mostly due to the books i was reading. i started out roleplaying various stuff at an age that was certainly too young to be on the internet at the time, and then in high school i had a close friend that was both my reading and writing buddy, and we would occasionally write stuff together in a shared fantasy world we created. in college i kinda lost a lot of my motivation for that stuff and didn't read or write for a really long time except for picking up the occasional book here or there.

i started a job back in 2020 where i was living full time off the grid with no internet & i started writing again for lack of anything else to do (and the environment was pretty inspiring). and then when i lost that job & had to get a worse, shittier job during covid i got really into visual novels which i had played a lot previously, and then from there i slowly got into text-based games and IF. and then i started writing more because i wanted to play a type of fantasy game that i couldn't find so i decided to make it myself lmao. and i know there are a lot of people that had a similar motivation in 2020 due to covid and IF was really popular then with people either in lockdown or people like me who were "essential workers" trying to find something to distract ourselves with. since then i've written a lot, from various short text-based games to unpublished stuff behind the scenes and of course the first 3 chapters of tnp.

[invisibleraven]

There was Only One Bed for any OT3?

"Why did I agree to this again?" Alex asked as Reggie's truck pulled into the campground.

"Because you love us?" Willie replied.

"Because you picked paint ball last time, and bruised me so hard that Tia thought I got into a fight," Reggie added. "So you owe me, and it was my turn to pick."

"But camping?" Alex whined.

"It's hardly camping," Willie retorted. "We're in a cabin, with running water and power, not in a tent on the ground."

"I know you're like, allergic to the great wide wilderness, but suck it up and enjoy being off the grid for a hot second," Reggie said, opening up the door to the cabin.

Alex grumbled but entered the space, pleasantly surprised to see a clean little space, with a real fireplace, a stocked bookshelf, a pile of board games, and a modern looking kitchen. "Okay, fine, I can live with this for a few days."

"Cool, I'm gonna go get some firewood," Reggie said. "Wils, you wanna start on food? Lexie, you go unpack."

Willie gave a salute and Alex dragged the bags back, opening one door to find a fairly nice bathroom-thank goodness for that, because he drew the line at peeing outside. But there was only one other door, and sure enough when he opened it, there lay only one (admittedly huge) bed.

"Just. Great."

Look, being in a band, Alex was used to sharing a bunk. Or the back of a van, or a few blankets on the floor of a club, if it came to it. So he knew beggars couldn't be choosers. But he also tried to avoid sharing a bed with Reggie and Willie, two of the cuddliest motherfuckers there were who also happened to be the subjects of his nighttime fantasies.

It wasn't his fault his friends were hot okay?

Alex glanced back to the living room and wondered how much the couch would murder his back, and sighed before resigning himself to a few uncomfortable nights, and started putting away their stuff.

He came back out to the main room, but instead of finding Willie making food, he was standing looking out the window, completely enraptured. And no wonder, since when Alex went to see what was so fascinating, he got an eyeful of Reggie, chopping wood.

In his black tank, flannel tied around his waist, looking like the yummiest lumberjack there was.

"Fuck me," Alex breathed out.

"Oh I wish he would," Willie sighed, then snickered. "Come on, we got enough eye candy, let's make something to eat."

They made a simple salad and some sandwiches, but Willie also pulled out a coconut cream pie for dessert-Alex's favourite. Reggie soon came in and started the fire going, the three of them eating in front of it before starting a rambunctious game of Scrabble.

"Quilty isn't a word!" Reggie protested as Willie earned another triple word score.

"Sure it is," Willie replied.

"Use it in a sentence then," Alex retorted.

"I'm feeling positively quilty," Willie said, sticking his tongue out. "Get a dictionary if you want."

"Eh, I'm too lazy for that," Reggie said around a yawn. He looked to the dwindling embers of the fire. "Bedtime?"

They all agreed, getting ready, but Alex stood in the doorway, rubbing his socked foot into the floor as he watched Reggie and Willie take the bed. "I can stay on the couch if you two want..."

"Nonsense Lexi, plenty of room, come on," Reggie urged, patting the open space next to him.

Alex cautiously slipped into the bed, gulping as Reggie snuggled into his side, and Willie spooned his other side, the two of them drifting off almost instantly.

Alex was sure he wasn't going to sleep, too wound up by being surrounded by his crushes, but eventually their soft breathing lulled him into slumber.

It ended up being a pretty good night's sleep, thankfully without embarrassing incidents popping up in the night.

But Alex swore he was going to kill whichever one of them left the window open a crack when he discovered the giant spider crawling across the bathroom floor when he went to brush his teeth.

"Hey at least it wasn't a possum or something," Willie rationalized.

"Yeah, then you two would be trying to make it your pet," Alex grumbled as Reggie swept the spider back outside.

"We would... totally do that yeah," Reggie admitted.

Alex sighed. "And this is the real reason I came, so you two don't end up with rabies."

"I mean that's not the main reason," Willie replied. "But it was a contributing factor."

"What was the main reason then?" Alex asked, watching as the other two exchanged glances.

The answer involved the bed, the three of them, and an afternoon that was a lot more exciting then a game of Scrabble. But in the end, Alex felt positively quilty.

And he definitely had a better appreciation of camping-but he was making sure the window was closed before they went to bed that night, lest a possum actually get in.

[iliveforyouilongforyouvesuvia]

i love when the subject of modern au for the arcana comes up cause my only metric of judgement for it is What are you gonna do with Muriel. is he still. you know. practically homeless

cause it can be done well i believe it!! but i mean its interesting to me cause theres so many um. cultural differences i guess i can call it, and ramifications and implications and fucking more thesaurus words we get it to consider in comparing our "everyone has to have a document about *Everything*, whats your assigned number at birth, let me record you with 50 cameras at all times just in case, gimme your PapERS HOW OLD ARE YOU WHATS YOUR GRANDMAS MAIDEN NAME NO IM NOT SELLING YOU THIS CARTON OF EGGS UNTIL YOU TELL ME" society (Admittedly! not every single place in the world today is like this necessarily!!! so you can just put them someplace else and work from there!!! but youd have to know how life there actually looks like And also wait whats the point of this au if everything ends up the same lmao i wanted asra to have tiktok and work at starbucks what are we doing here) vs the old timey fantasy world presented in the game where its just "yeah sure you can go live in a forest theres no fences here lol bye dont get dysentery" which is how the world used to be i guess and thats so fun to ponder for me lol we really were just monkeys fucking about with sticks huh. good times

man this is why i dont actually write fanfics i get too lost in four different trains of thought and dont finish any of them lmao and i guess also cause of the "i Cant POSSIBLY write this story about kissing a dude if i cant describe the sociopolitical climate in this neighbourhood in the netherlands after the Batavian Rebellion and how it influenced the contemporaneous fauvistic arT MOVEMENT with UTMOST ACCURACY cause THATS WHAT HIS FAVOURITE PAINTING WAS THE ONE THAT SHOWS UP IN THIS THREE SECOND BLURRY BACKGROUND CLIP OF THIS SCENE IN HIS APARTMENT AND IS CRUCIAL TO HIS CHARACTER AND I HAVE TO NAIL IT WHAT DONT YOU GET" type personality i got going which i guess writers deal with by just going full "lol whatever i am god here and i make law" mode

i just started thinking about this cause of the new story on dorian in a modern au i got pretty hype about it teehee but yeah muriel hasnt shown up yet so i got into that whole spiral about wHERE ARE THEY GONNA PUT ME BOYE AAAGJHFN i hope he gets a good outfit lmao i love jules' vibe but i looked at asra n went aw Hell naw hed be way better dripped out you done my boy dirty cmon man. pashas hawaiian shirt tho fucking we're so back lets go lesbians hkdyyifulj Anyway they made lucio a wholeass bilionaire which had me shook a lil for some reason but i can see him as a total ~Musk-esque~ archetype lmaooo like that is literally so him, just barges in and makes people have good ideas for him gikgststnv oh god i hope theres not any elon fans reading this cause theyre not gonna appreciate that oh fudge ok lets get back to the point which was uuuuhhhhhhhhhh oh yeah i liked your muriel lives in a van concept i thought its good! yeah thats what i wanted to say. what a tumultuous journey i just had to invent to arrive here.

Oh yeah, I've been seeing a lot more posts and questions about the arcana's modern au, and it's why I was so happy to dig up all those old ask arcana posts! I'm so glad we have all that canon content from way back when, it was so sad that I could only put ten images in one post T~T

And Muriel definitely lives off the grid - I also remember another ask arcana that said in modern times he'd wear a cable knit sweater on top and leather pants and demonias on bottom and that works so well for him XD

Here's the screenshots since the links haven't been working:

[nicoline1998enilocin]

500-follower special poll 🖤

I have a few ideas to write, but I'd like your opinions, please! Down below, you can find short summaries of the fics. Eventually, I will write all of them, but this is to know what to prioritize first! 🩵

Please reblog this after answering for a bigger reach; thank you! 🖤

Bucky Barnes x Fem!Reader | Thin line between love and hate After the Winter Soldier ripped your best friend out of your life, your life was completely uprooted. When you eventually live your lifelong dream of becoming an Avenger, you have to work with the former assassin, but you're not able to be in the same room as him, let alone go on missions together. Over time, the tension between you two reaches an all-time high, and a fight has you spilling more than just tears, showing you how much he has hurt you by ripping your best friend away from you, even if he was brainwashed at the time. Virgin!Shy!Ransom Drysdale x Experienced!Fem!Reader | Start of something new Ransom is ready to take the next step in your relationship after dating for about a year and a half. What will ensue is the sweetest, most romantic time he could wish for, and he falls even more in love with you. Your shy boyfriend suddenly turns into an insatiable man who cannot keep his hands (or mouth) off you. Boyfriend!Bucky Barnes x Girlfriend!Fem!Reader | Naughty fantasies Bucky has a specific fantasy he's been wanting to fulfill for a while. You two have never experimented with roleplaying before, but when he brings up the idea of a Student-Teacher roleplay, you're instantly on board with every last fantasy he has. Though it might not be in the way you had initially thought... Bakery Owner!Neighbor!Bucky Barnes x Artist!Neighbor!Steve Rogers | Whisk-y business Steve moves back to New York after years of living off the grid, and it just so happens his new neighbor is a strong, well-built, sweet, and incredibly kind baker. The two of them fall into a friendship and love like neither has ever felt before, and they couldn't be happier to be in each other's company. Boyfriend!Sub!Young!Tony Stark x Girlfriend!Soft Dom!Female!Reader | Control Tony and you have been enjoying getting to know each other physically. After a few months together, Tony has finally built up the courage to ask you for what he wants: to be dominated by you. After a few long talks, you have the ideal plan in place where you can experiment in your own safe environment, bringing the pleasure to an entirely new level for both.

[eldritchamy]

@creative-sparx replied to your post “science fantasy is such a hard genre to be into...”:

The magic system in Diane Duane's Young Wizards series is handled very much like a science with many different categories, grounded mostly in the concept of entropy I believe; I would say it is very much a fantasy using science elements rather than science fiction using fantasy. As a bonus, Diane is a very active and friendly Tumblr user who often engages in the specifics of the system with fans, and has a lot of writing credentials in both fantasy and science fiction.

Now that sounds like something me and my own magic system might be interested in reading.

I think what I'm looking for is not Science Fantasy, (which seems to be just a synonym for science fiction), but Scientific Fantasy.

I want a world where magic is just a fact of the world and is studied like any other science. It's just part of how the world works, as recognized and math'd out as gravity.

So much of Urban Fantasy fucks up the worldbuilding by just slapping a magic system on top of a world that is otherwise exactly like ours. And a world exactly like ours wouldn't exist at all if there were magic. If magic was a TOOL that people could use to SOLVE PROBLEMS, it would be USED to solve problems the same way we would think to use machines and electricity. Those solutions, and the new problems people would discover by using them, would look nothing like our world at all.

In a world that has had access to magic over a long period of time, the kinds of problems you CAN solve, and even the kinds of problems you would THINK OF AS PROBLEMS IN NEED OF SOLVING, would be radically different from the problems our world, and our technology, has developed to deal with.

Long range communication wouldn't be solved by a box with electricity trapped inside it. There would be magical approaches to solving that problem. Okay, MAYBE a crystal tablet that can display information is a good enough idea that someone would think of it. If the world is old enough? Sure, someone has probably figured out that electricity exists and can be used by people who are less skilled or comfortable with magic to solve similar problems, but magic wouldn't just be slapped onto the surface of an otherwise unchanged world. The entire structure of society and the tools it creates and uses would be completely different.

Like Senshi using earth golems as a kind of farmland that manages its own water supply and fights off pests. LIVING HYDROPONIC CONSTRUCTS. That's brilliant.

The entire fucking world would be radically changed in more ways than even a very dedicated worldbuilder could ever really imagine. Public transit could be magic based, even teleportation based. Energy grids could be powered by magic. Something equivalent to an elevator could be done through levitation fields. Shipping could be managed through demiplanes that open in multiple places. Medical science could incorporate magic as a diagnostic tool. With an extreme level of fine control, surgeons could heal incisions or tissue damage without stitches. Magic wouldn't need to be a separate form of education, the basics would just be taught alongside the water cycle or the respiratory cycle.

People would make jokes 20 years after graduating about how mana is the powerhouse of the soul.

THERE'S NO GODDAMN REASON FOR A WORLD WITH MAGIC TO BE LOCKED TO THE AESTHETIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE.

Magical constructs could be teleported into orbit for space research. Think of the possibilities of a magic space race! Astromancy wizards summoning familiars on the moon!

There's so much more you can do with a magical setting than mud and castles and dragons and liches and horses. It's FANTASY! FANTASIZE! IMAGINE SOMETHING!

What if instead of meeting in a tavern you were stuck on a 3 hour connecting flight together on a sky train. You meet at the airport on your way to a tourist trap in the fey realm for spring break while working towards a degree in Arcanodynamics, and bond over the fact that it kinda sucks, and that pixiedust pretzel was in no way worth SEVEN gold, and their internship at the alchemical research hospital doesn't pay enough for this shit.

[libertarian-druid-in-greater-vt]

New goal, save up $40k and buy a random lot in the Adirondacks. The van still covers almost all of my living, but the lot let's me have access to freshwater fishing, an outhouse, farming, and a larger solar grid or diesel generator (maybe converted to run on biodiesel) for the winter. Granted, that'll take about three years of scrimping, but from then on, completely self sufficient OTG living where I only need to buy insulin and car parts.

I can actually do it for half that, but $40k basically guarantees lake access with fishing. And if my smithing takes off after that with the comic, I won't even need to have a job. I buy analog insulin and it works for me so no need for insurance.

I will become a cryptid. This is my goal in life now. I mean I'm already close, but full time innawoods cryptid. No commune though, this ain't some ancom fantasy land, I'm planning on selling my excess crops and making knives to sell. Trade will still exist in Adirondancapistan (name for my future homestead) but the anthem absolutely has to be @blurrymango 's suggestion

Because I will absolutely live almost entirely as an Anprim would. Just with the crutch of tech keeping my ass alive and sane.

But yeah, 9 acres in the Adirondack wilderness isn't too bad of a price even with lake access. And as long as there's one permanent structure there, I can own a rifle, in this case specifically for hunting. Thinking a Krag or Mosin if I can't get a Sharps.

[echoequinox]

Just flew on a plane for the first time in a few months and forgot how much I love them and I took notes about her the whole time, waxing poetic about how beautiful and graceful she is

---

She's flexing her little wings before takeoff :) Making sure she's ready

Latios and Latias arent enough we need a sexy plane woman Pokemon, like those planes the furries wanna fuck

The little narrow struts on the undersides of her wings... little aerodynamic things with antennae like quills

We're passing a truck yard for like, construction equipment and they're the kobolds to my big plane dragon wife

Magical draconic runway in the shape of a big rune that eases in traveling dragons while also serving as a landing strip

The rumble as we take off, that ROAR of hers. She's so beautiful and powerful. The speed that pushes you back in your seat and pops your ears and shakes you around and then the DIP as you take off and that feeling of disorientation but she's fine. She loves it. And in SECONDS, the ground is like toys, like ants beneath us. It took less time than writing this for cars to be the size of bugs. The world is so small to her. She's so beautiful and strong and carries us aloft with such grace. I love you plane

Oh those little struts I mentioned move as we do!! They help guide her just a little bit! Probably help with banking and shit

Cartography wizards (cartogramancers? Lol) astride enormous dragons who keep note of all the changes in the landscape below. Listing every road, every footpath, every river, scribing it into an endlessly long magical atlas. Noting how the roads below form glyphs and runes, how they mirror the natural magic of rivers and tributaries, how homes and castles are built in the most defensible - or beautiful - positions and seeing vistas groundbound humans could never dream of seeing. The beauty of it all.

Fantasy alternate history ww1 where biplanes are replaced with steampunky dragons

Walter White looks up and sees two dragons fucking *lighthouse awed face meme*

This is getting away from airplanes and more toward dragons, I love the plane I think that a machine with the sole purpose of holding people tight and carrying them to far away places to see loved ones and new experiences is so beautiful, it's such a FASCINATING marvel of engineering prowess. This thing is BUILT on math and that's so cool. Every inch of her frame, every cubic centimeter of metal and plastic and cloth, are all accounted for in every flight equation. It's amazing. She's amazing.

I could *feel* her start to dip. That's another amazing thing - every single thing she does is NOTICEABLE. Every dip, every shudder, every increase or decrease in speed. My heart is pumping in time to her turbines, the electricity that runs through her veins is nearly palpable as we prepare for our descent

I'm polyamorous the way a plane is, compared to private jets and shit - they want to please everyone, they just want everyone to be happy and loved and safe, they want to deliver them with speed and safety and warmth and just. I love u miss plane

When my dog first came home with us, only a couple weeks old, he'd sit in the yard and look up at the sky as planes went by and made noise and he had a sense of total awe. I wonder how many dogs are looking up at me now while I look back down at the ground with equal splendor

Very funny to still see those pizza huts with the red rooves

The lights come on as we descend. She's been half asleep, coasting on air currents and pointing herself where she needed to go and now that we're dropping she's awake and aware. She's circling the landing strip like some kind of predator, watching and waiting for an opening so she can swoop down and attack the tarmac

Seeing the way cities are laid out, in perfect little beautiful grids, is so relaxing. Suburban sprawls packed with strange, enormous lives in little blocks of land, chunk by chunk, eventually touching residential, long strips of business and economy, commerce and trade and social lives, into the large, messy, chaotic industry beyond that. Infrastructure is beautiful. The leylines upon which planes were borne.

Water towers are so funny, why the hell did we refurbish an outdated means of water reservoirs, surely there could be a way to store more water more efficiently in treatment plants. Are they just for the Fun Cultural Aesthetic? Are they REALLY still that useful as a buffer?

Those little struts *are* at least partially used for banking but I think they're probably more like communications arrays combined with.. ballast isn't the right word. Counterweight? Idk. Beautiful regardless. Still love the little antennae

A little boat skims across a river, under a bridge where a highway passes over. I can tell it's moving fast, even from this high up. Tiny ecosystems exist beneath the hull, trillions of microbes, so far down beneath me now it's hard to make out any details other than the trail of white foam spray behind the boat.

Another water tower.

And another. Wild.

She rumbles as she drops, like she's grumpy, like she doesn't want to be on the ground. Silly girl, you can't fly forever. You need fuel and new passengers. She's flexing the little bits along her wings again, preparing for true descent now. The whistling is getting lower and lower pitched as we lose speed. I'm sure she isn't happy about it, but it's only going to be probably a half an hour or less before she's up in the air again. Calm down, girl.

And...

Touchdown.

One last roar as we slow. Beautiful. 💖

[voodoodaaddy]

🧠 + You want to go live a cottagecore fantasy life with cute outfits in a cozy little cottage and be off the grid

Send 🧠 + an intrusive thought for my muse to have, and they'll react to having it!

It's a wild idea, and no matter how many people he killed to distract himself today, he cannot shake it!

A cozy cottage, a fireplace, and perhaps a garden outback. He can still bury bodies there. He'll wear knitted sweaters and smoke a pipe while he looks outback where his husband will be taking the laundry off the line. He can wear a frilly white dress to go with those red rosy cheeks.....

Alastor shook his head. "Someone definitely cursed me."

[0-nouke-0]

Tag Game for Historical Simblrs! 📖

1. What has been your favorite time period to play in or which one are you most excited for?  

I’m loving 1800-1900 right now but i really love the fashion of 1700-1800.

2. Do you have a favorite piece of historical cc? (CAS or BB)  

I love all of the vintagesimstress creations but this dress is my fav

https://vintagesimstress.tumblr.com/downloads 

3. Who is your favorite sim currently?  

Really like Rose but i still love Selena.

4. What is your favorite world?  

Glimmerbrook and Newcrest, i love the woods of glimmerbrook but just aren’t enough lots.

5. Are you more gameplay or story focused?  

i’m a gameplay blog, yes there is a story but i don’t write it out my writting skills in english just aren’t strong enough, i’m  fluent in english but i have dyslexia so writting is a struggle.

6. Do you like to play with pets in your historical saves?  

I try to, but honestly they’re so annoying to deal with.  Like why are you running away?? you have food, pets all the time and there is always somebody on the lot.

7. What’s your biggest immersion breaking pet peeve with the game?  

NPCs.... I delete them, if they’re lucky they get an outfit pasted

8. What’s your favorite in-game historical item? (CAS or BB)  

The Vampires gamepack. I always use cc for everything but there are some good pieces in that pack

9. What would you like to see as a new pack or asset to the game?  

right now not a lot i would just love it if they fixed all the buggs. one of my sims was aged up from toddler to child with a dirty diaper she is now a teen and the stink is still following her.

10. What pack do you think is invaluable as a historical simmer?  

Cottage Living. The farming part. Even if all my chickens want to leave.

11. Do you have a favorite mod to enhance historical gameplay?  

There’s so many, but i love  Regency Romance.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/regency-romance-71308728

but they have so many small mods to help the  immersion.

12. What’s your ideal family size for playing?  

For gameplay, I  prefer families of 6. but if i have a specific story 3-4

13. Do you use poses?

Only for if i like the sim.....

14. Do you use any overrides in your game?

I don’t really know. my sims skincolors aren’t ea if that counts.

15. Do you, or did you, play off-the-grid during your game?  

I play on the grid, there are to many things that need to be.

16. What lifespan do you play on?  

normal/custom lifespan settings! infant is 5days toddler is 15days child is 15days teen is 35days youngadult is 30days adult is 25days elder is 15days. this is just what works for me.

17. What inspired you to start playing a historically?  

I started in fantasy gameplay. i started watching historical movies and series and the fantasy part started fading out.

please remember that english is not my native language

Thank you so much for tagging me  @heartblobs

I’ll tag @katssimsdecades​   @ottersinhats   @carousel-of-sims

[windermeresimblr]

Get To Know Me, Simblr Edition

Rules: you can use any sims game to answer these questions.

Thank you, @ice-creamforbreakfast, for tagging me!

1. Your three traits: Neurotic, Bookworm, and Perfectionist.

2. Your aspiration: Knowledge/Grilled Cheese. (Pepper Jack preferred.)

3. In game world you’d live in: Probably Twinbrook or Bridgeport for EAXIS worlds; for custom worlds, I'd love to live in Sao Paten.

4. Most used packs: World Adventures, Supernatural, Island Paradise, and (weirdly) Showtime. The last two are solely for the "Spanish Colonial" architecture and, of course, the lantanas. Gosh I miss lantanas.

5. Favorite decor object (no cc): Anything fabric-related, followed by books and newspapers, though I also really like the fake stained glass windows from Showtime...

6. Something you want in the game: A historical or fantasy world that is fully immersive. Dragon Valley gets a C+ for effort. Make it actually off-grid! Make everyone wear appropriate clothes and hairs, from babies to elders! No modern tourists--Bella and Mortimer can suck it up and wear loaner garb.

Also, mammalian mermaids.

7. What color is your plumbob right now: Spring green, on the yellowish side.

If you haven't done it, and want to do it, tag! You're it!