#on mortality like as a concept. she would and she wouldnt. shes never cared about someone who could die (ie: bot herself)

[butchyena]

fionna and cake ruined me. thinking about an AU where marceline, alone, finds the crown first ):

[swampgallows]

it took a long time for me to get the ball rolling but i’m really feeling a lot more confident. im getting better too at not criticizing myself about how long it took me to start driving more. not even like “better late than never” type stuff but just that i wasnt ready. i still wouldnt even call myself a casual or regular driver yet at all, and i haven’t driven the freeways yet by myself, but at least i can get in the car and pretty effortlessly get on the road without being nervous or panicking. 

i turned 29 yesterday, and as i enter the final year of my twenties i reflect on how i’ve spent them, which can basically be summarized as one word: growing. i have spent the last decade of my life healing from trauma and having more traumatizing experiences on top of that, but also having a lot of fortifying and unparalleled adventures. i’ve made friends for life—darnjam, my second family—and have had amazing experiences.

when i was a teenager, i had a very clear cut view of who i was. i knew my limits and my passions, and i had perfectly arranged the exact centers of my world [incidentally, warcraft and raving]. a dear friend of mine had commented, back then, that she feared that i deemed myself “plateaued”, when really i had the rest of my life to keep changing and growing. other people, ones who do not understand me, criticize my interests for being “insular” and have cited my esoterica as the source of my mental illness. i was frustrated by both of these statements because my vision of my self in my teen years has endured; at my heart, i feel that my self-assessments from then are still true. 

however, my twenties have taught me not who i am but the kind of person i want to become. it is good to recognize my faults and strengths, but also to recognize my possibilities for myself, and that it is not a betrayal of my then-self to do so. it took a long, long time of healing and learning and unlearning and growing to get to that point. it has taken me until now to come to the conclusion that whatever i do, i want love to be my guide. i want to take time to show love to myself, and part of that means living for myself. doing things that i want to do that make me happy and that i am passionate about and proud of. sharing that love with people who understand and support that love.

i never understood what it meant to “live for yourself”. i always thought it was foolish and selfish. i thought it meant doing whatever you want without caring about anyone else. but coming from a childhood where guilt was a major tenet of my development, i’m realizing that i do not always agree with my parents or the people around me, and frankly i do not care to live my life according to their parameters of what is correct. it’s not that i never had to question their authority before; it’s that i couldn’t. to live for myself means to seek to fulfill my own expectations for life instead of living out someone else’s hopes and dreams for me. it can take a long time to discover which motives are yours or someone else’s, especially as someone who struggles with codependency, and becoming more independent has given more clarity to my heart.

i remember being 19 years old and dancing in my room to no doubt’s just a girl when i had a sudden realization of my own mortality. it was as if there was a palpable moment where i knew my childhood had ended. i had a thought of “I will never be this young again. I am becoming an adult now. I am no longer a child, which means i am closer to death.” it sent a shiver down my spine and i immediately crumpled to the ground and sobbed. looking through no doubt’s discography, i discovered the concept of the saturn return. although i had felt something novel had taken place that night, i was still ten years off from mine at the time. in a way, i had been sort of looking forward to this birthday, wondering what kind of epiphany would be awaiting me at my return of saturn.

and now i’m here. but there is no eureka moment; not a single, isolated one, anyway. it has been lots of moments, big and small and quiet and loud, that have led me up to this. being able to drive casually is certainly a significant turning point, but there was no specific time that i knew, from then on, that i had passed the hurdle. one time i couldn’t, and the next time, i could. you never know how soon that time will come, but the more attempts you make, the closer you’ll be to it.

so, let this be my return of saturn. i have endured a lot of pain, treachery, trauma, and sabotage to get here. more than others. but healing is part of growing, and that is what i have been doing. my journey has taken longer than others because the path was more difficult and i hadn’t yet had the resources to surpass those challenges. but i am not falling behind. i had to do all of those things to get here and to be ready now. i am exactly where i am supposed to be.

[tumblunni]

Bwoop! Cathedral tower defense ideas! Havent really made much damn progress on this game since I havent got a design for the protagonist yet, but at least now I have designs for two of the party members. (Thanks @summon-daze!) So for now lets just have some rambling ideas for potential sidequests you could have with these two!

BRIEF SUMMARY TIME Amity: Protagonist. A gruff and badass wandering priestess whose homeland was destroyed in the war. Now she’s joined another church in a foreign land and is dertermined to defend it against the demons, and never let that tragedy happen again! But she has to win the trust of these strangers first, and teach them how to survive... Florin: First and only party member you begin with at the start, deuterogonist, cute sidekick of sass and pep. He’s a plant type demon who’s haunting Amity for reasons unknown, and refuses to leave! Now she’s stuck trying to get rid of him, while he insists on being annoyingly helpful yet comically lazy at the same time. Also, as an incidental fact, he suffers from narcolepsy. Malachi: Optional party member, and the only other demon in the cast. An adorable little choir boy who doesn’t seem entirely aware that he’s become a demon. It’d be cruel to judge him the same as the others, we need to keep him safe! He’s quiet and cuddly and comically oblivious. What do you mean humans don’t enjoy eating rocks??

THUS, SIDEQUEST IDEAS

* Multiple different attempts to get rid of Florin, which all inevitably fail and end up causing him and Amity to become closer buddies. TFW you try to exorcise a guy and end up frolicking through the fields of friendship~! * Similarly, it could be fun to have some silly plans to trick him into being less lazy. Predictably the answer is just gonna be ‘when you’re nicer to him, he actually wants to put in the effort’, but that doesnt mean we cant have some fun shenanigans in the process! * Amity sneaking around trying to spy on Florin and find him doing something evil. He’s GOT to be here to pull off some ultimate plot, right?? Lol, 90% of their friendship is just Amity being suspicious as heck and Florin rudely persisting in being harmless. * A plot where somehow they actually do get separated, and Amity begins to realise how helpful her lil demon sidekick has actually become, and how much she genuinely appreciates him as a friend. Could possibly be that instead of being gone, Florin is ill with some sort of demon sickness and you need to go on a grand quest to save him? or maybe he’s been kidnapped by a villain who wants to use his powers for nefarious purposes, and accuses you of doing the same thing because why on earth else would you pretend to care about this monster? (And then when you rescue him you can have the grumpy excuse that of course you only did it because he’d be dangerous as anyone else’s sidekick. No affection was involved at all!!) * Mysterious flowers are appearing around the cathedral, and Amity starts to suspect that Florin is setting up some sort of evil demon plan. But she actually discovers that this is a sign of how much he’s genuinely begun caring about the other npcs, he’s been paying attention to their troubles and secretly giving them the flowers he thinks they’d most like, without wanting to take any credit for it. So you get a sassy friendship scene of Amity blackmailing him by threatening to reveal he’s been being nice! Thus florin gains the bonus skill of opening a little flower store. (And blushing himself to death every time anyone says thank you) * A conflict between Amity and Florin, where she accuses him of just being lazy as always, but this time he really was trying! He started off not caring about anyone, and only working when it benefitted him, but now he’s working his butt off and has become really self-concious about the fact he’s not really able to keep up with the rest of the party. And so he ends up talking about his narcolepsy problem with her, and if they have enough friendship points she starts being more considerate and trying to help him out with it. And maybe unlocks a longer quest chain of improving the home base’s medical facilities? * Florin hibernates in winter, everyone has to cope without him and realises how much they miss him. Like a repeat of the earlier quest where he’s kidnapped, but this is a new perspective on how Amity feels about it now they’ve been close friends for a while. And also how everyone else around the church feels. Maybe a plot of them all deciding to write down letters for him to read when he wakes up? And maybe tensions getting high when some sort of disaster happens, and Amity is like ‘oh god i dont want to have to tell Florin that this place fell apart without him’. (With it being up to player choice whether you include the bad points in the letter, or try and hide it from him.) * A potential bad ending for Florin, and how things continue afterwards. I think he’d be one of the characters who (initially at least) doesnt die when defeated in battle. If he’s taken out, he’s just near-mortally wounded and recovers after a very tense period where he’s in a coma. And then the plot explores everyone’s feelings at almost losing him, and his own feelings of uselessness now he’s too injured to go back to the fight. And because malachi can become like an adoptive brother to florin, they can still have a happy ending together even if florin has been removed from the party like this. He retires to take care of his lil bro full time, and he doesnt worry about feeling useless when he knows he’s got someone who thinks the world of him. And Malachi can inherit some of his skills and equipment since now Florin can devote all his time to tutoring him into taking up his former place in the army. * Oh, and of course Malachi’s recruitment sidequest! You’d first encounter him as a feral rock beast in a dungeon somewhere, and there’s a conflict between Amity and Florin because she believes this thing needs to be destroyed and he insists that they can redeem it. He can sense it’s a demon, and its got to be corrupted if it’s going wild like this! But Amity believes that demons are inherantly evil, so this one’s behaviour isnt unusual like florin thinks. She’s aknowledged that florin isn’t evil, but she still feels he’s an exception amoung demons! But eventually she’s convinced to take a chance on florin’s convictions, because its rare for him to be so un-lazy about something, and to defend something even at the risk of his own life. So they manage to find a way to purify the monster, and find out that it was a very young child, underneath all that scary rock armour. So if they’d slain it without a second thought, they would have committed an unforgiveable sin... * Malachi’s next sidequest would be convincing him to leave the ruins and come home with them, while exploring the dungeon to try and find out what exactly happened to turn such a sweet kid into a demon. (Not to mention the fact he was absolutely crazed with corruption!) I don’t wanna spoil the ending to this, but I have a lot of Sad Ideas for this charrie, hee hee~ * A potential plotline that once Malachi joins the church base, he could have trouble making friends with the normal human children. I Had an idea of a bully character who’d get redeemed and ultimately become accepted as his friend after a big ol sad apology scene, and then they become this misfit buddies duo. And the ostracization from the other kids doesnt hurt as much when he’s got this tough former-bully lady defending him against her former-comrades. * And he also grows closer to Florin as theyre the only two demons, and florin was the one who saved him. Plus they both enjoy sitting buried in the flowerbed and eating dirt! I think the relationship wouldnt start off this close though, Mal would initially be scared of Florin. Since he doesnt know that he himself is a demon, he just thinks florin is the only demon and he has much the same fears as Amity once had when the story began. But it could be more comical, because its inherantly silly when you have this kid with giant horns yelling ‘ITS A DEMON’ and hiding behind the couch XD And eventually he does grow to love florin like a parent, but he’s still comically oblivious. He just decides that florin ISNT a demon, of course! He’s just... a little more green than other people!! * Possibly a plot of everyone holding a funeral for malachi to cheer him up, since he never had one when he died as a human. But since malachi doesnt comprehend the whole concept, he’s just like ‘when normal people get put in the ground they sleep forever, why did i wake up? is it because i never got tucked in like they did?’ And then it could be funny like bender’s fake funeral in futurama, but also a bit bittersweet and sad and heartwarming. * Sudden panic! Malachi accidentally calls florin ‘dad’, and florin FREAKS THE FRICKLE FRACK OUT! ‘I’m not a good influence, amity! aaaaa!!!’ Worries too much about not being good enough, maybe comically tries to change his personality into a generic sitcom father and malachi is like ‘wtf’ * Possibly a plot about malachi and florin bonding as demons, and figuring out what being demons even necessarily means. I’m thinking florin might be a bit scared by seeing how malachi can sometimes hulk out and run on pure instinct. Its such a huge contrast that this sweet kind child can have such bloodthirstiness inside him, he doesnt understand how malachi seems to enjoy fighting. And he doesnt understand how malachi can think he can control it! He gets a bit scared that this means the fighting side of him is the real side, and the childlike side is just a front, just a lie like everyone says demons manipulate everyone. And does this mean that florin himself is the same? Is he just deluding himself that he can be good? So the resolution is florin being able to accept that both parts of malachi are still malachi, and its completely possible to have both sides without being evil. It is indeed in the nature of demons to fight, but they dont enjoy destruction or evil, its not like holding back some horrible monster who’ll murder everyone you love. And florin has always been holding back this side, he’s been afraid of using his powers too much, worrying he only exists to kill. Malachi helps him accept that his powers have equal potential to heal and to harm, and that it IS possible to control them, that the choice between good and evil is indeed his own choice. At the same time this helps malachi accept that he is indeed a demon, and cope with remembering his horrifying backstory. Knowing that he isnt alone, and that demons dont have to be evil, he’ll be able to be okay, and he has this other demon friend who can help him though it. And they’re able to work out the whole Fearsome Demonic Instincts by doing some playfight sparring together like total dorks XD If you’re worried about your sense of control, then never using your powers wont help! Gotta actually practise! * Possibly florin officially adopting malachi as his son, and its possible for the player to expand out and make more bases once you’ve fully upgraded the cathedral. And maybe florin could become the boss of this new place, and turn it into like an orphange for malachi and others? it could be a big sign of his character development that he’s come this far! Also it could just be hilarious to imagine how baffled travellers would be. “Aaaa there’s a demon and he’s... looking after small children??” “We must rescue the small children from that horrible demon and take them to the orphanage!” *knocks on the door and its florin again*