#sableghoste

[guysarestripping]

hi!! i LOVED your kcd series so much, your writing is so clear and beautiful!! can you share anything about your process, how do you get your ideas to translate so cleanly onto the page? ♥️♥️

hi! thank you for the kind words (i’ll get to your ao3 comment soon), i’m glad the series resonated so well with you :-) 

i do want to immediately note that i’ve recently discovered beta readers (very notably @sableghost and @magnuspuerauritus) which as a concept, which has upped my game an infinite amount. jayce rawdogging my writing and cracking down on a lot of latvian-core non-sensibilities made me learn a lot! 

how the sausage gets made under the cut:

for kcd i spend most of the time working out the aged english lol!

the main thing though is just that english itself isn’t my first language—which (i think) actually helps more than it hurts. latvian sentence rhythm is heavier on aspect and vowel length, so when i write in english it’s like i’m naturally hunting for mouth-feel: i read every paragraph aloud and listen, and then anything that clunks gets reworked (but by latvian standards lol). i’m milking the power that comes with being a non-native speaker bc you hear the language at a tilt, which is where all the more interesting shadows fall for me.

when enough concrete nouns pile up, scenes begin to auto-populate: if the rapeseed is blooming, then the air has that stink; if the yard is downslope, rinse water will pool by the gate. etc etc. specificity buys credibility imo, and credibility buys room to get a little operatic (?) elsewhere. once that happens, i know the reader will feel mud in their boots whether they want it or not.

when the lexicon is generally in place, as an ex-film student and minor actor, i run any scene like blocking a shot: camera height, distance, light source, message. i need to convey how a gambeson rides up or how a draft combs the hairs on the back of a hand. if the image stays fuzzy still, i sometimes rope in my bf to act it out and to catch the microscopic things that make prose behave.

sensory scenes all come from experiences i already know and deeply love. example: the bohemian meadows of kcd map right onto the latvian selia. i think it’s very important to passionately and intimately see™ what you’re trying to tell™, and then telling™ it in the way that you feel™ it. i tend to put down whole scenes, and then run over them again and again, moving things around, fleshing out what i specifically want to be said out loud until it feels right, but there is no real science to it and i've never studied writing.

if this makes any sense or helps, you’re welcome!?!

[beetlebabe]

Beetlekid OCs. Creepie belongs to Sableghost and pox is my boy ❤️

[a-crab-called-diz]

@sableghoste @raeseddon

exchanging headcanons and AUs with friends like

[solaroppositesyaoi]

From a request:

[ckret2]

Mutant Dorat (Part 1)

That’s a placeholder name, it’ll probably be changed later.

Written as the first part of a commission for @sableghoste​: an AU where Rodan is a mutant dorat created in a Xilien government experiment who’s been rescued and sent to be raised among normal dorats, where he meets Ichi, Ni, & San (who are three normal, separate dorats, not having been experimented on to be fused into Ghidorah... yet). In this segment, Rodan meets Ichi. But like. Awkward adolescent kitten Ichi.

Headcanons for this ‘verse: Xiliens go by either “she” or “xe” pronouns, Xiliens refer to all dorats (and most other animals) as “he” regardless of their sex, and normal dorat sexes are “spinetail” (small wings/big tails with spikes on the end) and “flight” (gigantic wings/shorter narrow tails). Anything else is sorta self-explanatory as it goes.

I ain’t proofed this because I wrote it in a desperate midnight burst of “I wanna work on something other than NaNoWriMo.” Proofing comes after sleep.

###

"Here he is," the soldier said, voice hushed, holding out the large plastic bucket.

ME-319 popped the lid on the bucket to inspect its cargo, and let out a long, pained hiss. She'd been warned that this dorat had been the subject of some awful experimentation. She'd been told that the experimentation had tried to alter its natural biology so that instead of only pooling trace amounts of gold in its scales, it could also gild its scales with other metals and minerals, but instead the other metals had formed strange growths—and that in the process of experimentation, multiple other aspects of the dorat hatchling's biology had been messed up.

But she hadn't expected anything like this. Even in the middle of the night, meeting next to an abandoned rural convenience store, the starlight was bright enough for her to see just how badly mutated the hatchling was as he stuck his face out of the bucket. The "growths" across the entire surface of his body where he should have scales were so thick and chunky they looked like a hide of solid rock. His snout had collapsed down to a thin, sharp, bony point, the nostrils flattened along the sides. Where he should have been developing a whole crown of horns, he instead only had two oversized ones, twisted together and swept back. Worst of all were his wings—where he should have had only a single exposed thumb while his full "hand" of long fingers held wing membranes in between them, instead his first few fingers were stunted down to the length of his thumb and a single wing membrane only stretched from his long pinky down his sides. The wing, too, was covered in a rocky layer.

"He's hot." She could feel the heat radiating through the bucket. "Does he have a fever, or...?"

"No, that's his natural body temperature. We tried cooling him down and it distressed him," the soldier said. "Give him somewhere hot to sleep, as hot as you can get. He's very heat-resistant—one of the only things the experiment got right."

ME-319 nodded as she took the bucket from xem.

"He usually doesn't act like he's in pain," the soldier went on. "A small mercy.” Xe reached in and ran one gloved hand affectionately along the crown of the poor mutant dorat's head, earning a twisted-sounding cawing sound. "I'll miss you, too," xe said, then gently pushed him back inside, pressed the lid down, and resealed the bucket. Xe set a booklet on top of the bucket—physical pages with thin latex sheets, not a digital document. To prevent Controller 0 from remotely finding or corrupting the data, no doubt. "This is everything we know about how his biology differs from normal dorats'," xe said. "Beyond that, if anybody can take care of him, it's you."

Big responsibility. ME-319 hefted the bucket all the same. "I'll do my best for him."

###

Misshapen wings and a stunted, stubby tail—ME-319 wouldn't be able to get this poor hatchling sexed as a spinetail or a flight without either prodding into his genitals or finding a vet she could trust to examine a stolen government experiment.

Undersized, potentially stunted growth—he was apparently about the same age as her current batch of adolescents, but only two-thirds their average length, not counting tails.

No empathic powers. That could be a big problem. Other dorats could passively pick up his emotions the same way they could detect the emotions of members of different species, but he couldn't sense theirs, and because of his inability to receive or transmit emotions, they treated him like he was a different species rather than a dorat.

ME-319 turned the pages of the booklet the soldier had given her, more dismayed with each page. She'd promised to do her best for the little mutant dorat, and she would—but her work was certainly cut out for her.

She looked up from the booklet to the aerie full of the dorats she was in charge of—a three-story-tall cylindrical room with nests at varying heights dangling from chains. The rescued experiment was chasing after the other adolescents, trying to play with them, as they darted away from him. At least he seemed healthy; but if other dorats didn't recognize him as one of them, he was going to lead a very lonely life. Dorats were highly social. Could he handle that kind of loneliness? She hoped that the dorats his age would get used to him and come to see him as one of their own, but she had no idea how long that was going to take. If his brain and his physical appearance were too different for them to register him as their own kind, there was little she could do to force them to see him as one of their own.

It could be months. Perhaps years.

That was a long time for a dorat to be ostracized, especially at that age.

###

Meanwhile, a pale white gold-ish dorat, his little heart fit to pound straight out of his little chest, was leaning so far over the edge of a nest to try to study the strange newly arrived dorat that he lost his balance and toppled ten feet to the ground. The nearby dorats scattered.

The new arrival—all dangerous copper-black spines and the most dazzling golden eyes—hopped closer and leaned forward to inspect him, head tilted curiously. The white gold dorat could have died from embarrassment.

The new arrival leaned down, bunted their foreheads together with a solid smack, and hopped off to explore some more.

The white gold dorat flopped his head to the floor.

###

[rockformed]

👠🔮🐼

fancy fortune reader......... with panda ear buns!!

working name is Jia but i dont have a last name ;;;;;

[fakeosirian]

just another night in the dms

[remaining-head-spirit]

4 and 14!

4. do you like your name? why?

my real name is Katarina. its alright, but it has lead to almost everyone i meet to mess it up or confuse it with the billions of girl names that sound similar. (Karen, Katrine, Christine, Karoline etc etc.) but other than that i like it, it’s pretty sounding.

14. if you can live anywhere in the world where would it be? why?

possibly scotland, everything i know about the place and culture appeals to me.

[halfys]

I bet Tamatoa has a jealous streak a mile wide.

Oh my God does he ever

[s1mong4ostr1ley]

A ghostgraves masterpiece by yours truly and @sableghost.

Would greatly appreciate any feedback =] we worked super hard on it!

[rooniegrumps]

YES absolutely!! paflur bby @sableghoste

[rocky-road-art]

HOLIDAY GIFTS!!! for @whodoyouc, @fungusry and @sableghoste respectively :3c

[lgp]

Episode 7: Supper Surprises

Anchor: https://anchor.fm/lg65-kmh/episodes/Episode-7-Supper-Surprises-e1dif86 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2SQIxmiOVaAZUSBKRBIHij?si=8Ihd1iAFQjeBfw-_FuMH6w Kari arrives at T.K.'s new apartment for dinner. But was surprised to see someone show up as well... In the Digital World, the other Digidestined came upon a threat that may have something to do with one of their own...

Cast list:

LG65 as Narrator

Cryshulvo as Takeru “T.K.” Takaishi & DemiVeemon

Falon Echo as Hikari “Kari” Kamiya/Yagami

Julius Alfaro as Daisuke “Davis” Motomiya

Merodi as Miyako “Yolei” Inoue

Greg Vinciguerra as Iori “Cody” Hida

SableGhoste as Ms. Nancy Takaishi

LaniEuwer as Maiko “May” Hanaka

Korisuoh as Koushiro “Izzy” Izumi

Maddie Penn as Patamon

Japananimationgirl as Gatomon

Instrumentals:

"The Light of Hope (Title Screen ver.)" by Tomoya Ohtani

"Frightful Reflection" by Takahito Eguchi

Songs:

"Troubled Boy" by Brown Bird

"Fist Bump" by Douglas Robb of Hoobastank

Mixed and Engineered by LG65

[hanari502]

sableghoste replied to your post: Oh I know what's you're becoming. You've been...

Dude i feel you on the triple cheeseburgers they are the perfect bread-to-meat ratio.

SOMEONE UNDERSTANDS

[solaroppositesyaoi]

I actually think they’d get a long

[ckret2]

I like reading those posts where humans and other earth creatures are basically Space Orcs in terms of being hard to kill, or eating various 'poisons' for flavoring and spice reasons. Do you think Ghodorah has ever seen the humans, or Rodan for that matter, bounce back from or eat something he's quite sure should be lethal?

Did you know that holly berries are fatal to humans but a bunch of birds eat them happily? And capsaicin, the chemical in peppers that makes them spicy, is actually intended to be painful enough to drive mammals away from eating a food that plants want birds to eat instead—because birds aren't affected by capsaicin.

Deadly nightshade, which is so poisonous it had "deadly" in the name, is eaten happily by cattle, horses, goats, and rabbits, with no ill effects.

Monarch butterflies eat toxic milkweed plants, which makes the butterflies toxic to other species.

Conversely, some foods that are harmless to humans, like chocolate and grapes, are toxic to dogs, who evolved on a carnivorous diet.

Mongooses are extremely resistant to the venom of the cobras they hunt.

There are birds that eat coca seeds and insects that eat coca sprouts—parts of the plant that produces cocaine.

Parrots in western South America swarm to clay walls to lick up the dirt, and scientists think it's because there's a lower salt content in parrots' food in the west side of the continent than in the east, so they get the salt they need straight from clay.

There's a species of bacteria that's evolved for one purpose and one purpose only, and that is eating the Titanic. Eating the Titanic is the one thing this bacteria does. Within a couple of decades the wreck of the Titanic, a giant man-made metal ship, is gonna be dust, because there are a bunch of bacteria deep deep down in the cold dark sea that have decided to specialize in devouring it and only it.

A lot of "humans are space orcs" posts rely on the assumption of human exceptionalism—that some feature we evolved is just so damn weird that aliens across the galaxy will stand up and take notice—and, most particularly, those posts rely on the universal assumption that aliens, despite being aliens who are intelligent and sentient and explorers of the universe and know lots of other aliens, are so sheltered and inexperienced that they've never encountered other creatures with different physical/mental capabilities, different cultural mores and philosophies, different food habits, different tolerances for different substances...

We're surrounded by space orcs on our own planet, and the space orcs that surround us aren't flabbergastingly astounding Unique Creatures that we Just Can't Believe can do This Thing That We Can't. They're just animals with an ability we don't have. Kinda neat but ain't mind blowing. Nobody looks at a cow eating deadly nightshade and goes "HOW can this CREATURE eat POISON, that's ASTOUNDING!!" They go "oh, so that plant's not poisonous to this creature." Because we know that other creature have capabilities and limitations that we don't, and that there aren't any single species loaded down with traits so impressive that they stand out from all the other species with odd traits.

And that's just what we see on our own planet.

Ghidorah's been to, and destroyed, countless worlds. Everything that something could possibly evolve to eat, somewhere he's seen someone that evolved to eat it. And if for some reason there's one weird thing on Earth that something can eat that he hasn't seen eaten somewhere else? Well, it's not going to be weirder than anything he has seen. Mammals can't eat capsaicin without burning, but birds can? Plants and animals on billions of planets evolve odd relations so that what's poison to one predator isn't to another. One animal is immune to another's venom? Sure, common defense. Animals that can't eat super common foods? "Super common" is relative, everything's toxic to someone and every toxin is harmless to someone else. Birds that eat dirt, and bacteria that eat metal? Ghidorah eats dirt and metal, so what. Ghidorah gets drunk on gasoline, he's not gonna bat an eye at humans munching on ghost chilis or snorting coke. (At least, he wouldn't bat an eye at seeing it if 1) he ever had the slightest inclination to watch a human long enough to see it stick something in its mouth, and 2) he had the slightest idea that they considered their bland-ass local plants to be some sort of terrible irritants or powerful drugs.)

He sees Rodan eating still-molten lava, and he doesn't go "WHAT, creatures can't eat LAVA, that's IMPOSSIBLE." He goes "His species has way higher heat tolerance than me. Makes sense, if they evolved in volcanoes."

Ghidorah sees other species eating things all the time that would be toxic to him—at least, he does when he bothers to pay attention to mere aliens eating things—and what does that tell him? Just that he's a stranger in a strange land, as he had been for millions of years. Earth is, of course, unique, but so is every other planet Ghidorah's visited. Earth's not more unique than the rest.