#self insert: centauri

[dudebro-doodlez]

"you're six days late for Valentine's Day!!" shut up you're lucky i didnt post this on march 1st like i usually do

anyways heres some bloodorange art for you FREAKS /silly

[centaurisocs]

Holidays with Dropway and Marisol

Dropway just found out that they dont like being dressed up

[itsskoll]

Nils my beloved Second FoM insert! This guy was a witch before his chronic spinal condition degraded to the point of crippling him. So he left his coven (lowkey exiled) and ended up in Mistria where he learns to reconnect with normal people and work on self care AKA stop using ur goddamn magic to dull the pain you are not helping yourself.

He can shapeshift freely between human and raven form, including picking how his gender is expressed which is fun.

He's about 42 in human years, in his prime, but is a few centauries old. Definitely younger than Caldarus but they can still have old man yaoi

His raven form is based on a Pied Raven. His crutch is made of white oak. His farm is mostly field-fed animals with some re-growing crops here and there. He tends to cheat his way through the mines using magic.

I think if he had in-game stats it would be like 40 orbs of magic and 100 stamina on a good day lmfao

He gets along with Valen, Hayden, Elsie and the kids. Juniper is lowkey scared of him because that's a wholeass valravn just chilling. He does not like March bc of his attitude.

[kleiner-ghost]

I really wanna do that art vs artist trend for all my self inserts, but I'm really struggling to find 8 of them T.T

I mean, I'm pretty sure I have made more over the years, but for a lot of them I never wrote anything down, or drew anything.

So far I have my 2 DX girls (hesitant to include JC as well, because she's somewhere between a charachter I RPd and an OC), my Sole Survivor, and an MCU self insert (I only remembered she existed when going through an old sketchbook ^^;).

I guess I could stretch it a bit, and add my Stalker, my Jedi, and my Centauri (B5) OCs, but I'd still be one short. Problem with them is that they aren't really inserts.

Eh, let's do this!

[myweirdassthoughts69]

So I’m doing a biographies about important people in the 20th and 21st centaury and at the more I research the more I find these people funny, like atm I have made an biography for an insane neurodivergent queer electricity genius and a chick whose self-insert story somehow got really popular, I wonder how my opinion of MLK will change.

[pixelgrotto]

D&D With My Bro: The Case of the Almost Assassination

For the last four months, my brother and I have been playing a Dungeons & Dragons campaign that I whipped up called The Case of the Almost Assassination, and we came to a triumphant finale the other night. My bro’s called it a “steampunk mystery set in a fantasy world,” which is a good description, but on a more detailed level, the campaign was also heavily influenced by the Ace Attorney and Professor Layton games and exists in the universe of The Thirteenth Hour, a series of fantasy stories self-published by my brother that are inspired by 80s movies and cartoons. So the whole thing is one huge ball of fun nerdiness, and figuring that it might be cool to chronicle the campaign as we played, I captured each of our sessions on video. You can watch the whole thing on YouTube here in convenient playlist format (listening to it in the background like a podcast is also pretty nice, I gotta say), and there’s over 20 hours there, which is longer than some of the video games I’ve blogged about! 

This wasn’t the first time that my brother and I had played D&D, since I’d previously introduced the game to him via a small four hour mini-campaign last time I visited his house. (He’s written some great thoughts on that adventure, as well as the experience of missing out on D&D in his childhood but getting the chance to discover it as an adult here.) But this was certainly the first time we’d played something long that continued from week to week, and it was also the first time we’d used virtual tabletop software - in this case the very useful Roll 20 - to play online. Minus a few minor internet hiccups, it ran smoothly, and I think both of us had a great time. The experience also made me ruminate on three interesting facts about D&D that I think not enough people write about, and I’m going to jot off a few thoughts on them here. Without further ado...

1) It is perfectly possible, and sometimes even more fun, to play D&D with just one other person. 

Normally, Dungeons & Dragons conjures up images of a bunch of people - usually three or four at minimum - sitting at a table listening to instructions given to them by the Dungeon/Game Master, or DM. But the hardest part of D&D isn’t juggling rules or even fighting Challenge Rating 30 monsters - it’s getting a group of three or four people to meet up together on a consistent basis! This is why you can tell that anyone who still thinks of D&D as an activity for anti-social basement dwellers hasn’t actually played it, because in truth, the game is a demanding social commitment, especially for adults.

Thankfully, while it might be a less common way to play, you can totally enjoy D&D with just two people. Usually this means that someone more familiar with the rules has to be the DM while the other person acts as the player, which is what my brother and I did. Sometimes, the DM will also have to create a player character for themselves, and I did that in order to assist my bro with various battles and tricky scenes. This is more work for the DM, since they’ll have to juggle both their own character as well as the various non-playable characters (NPCs) encountered in the story, but if you’re up for it, it’s a rewarding exercise.

The best thing about playing D&D with just one DM and one player is how efficient it is. Three or four player D&D (to say nothing of five, six, or even more players) can get slowed down by arguments about how to progress or share loot, not to mention downtime in battles when a player who has a bazillion spells at his disposal deliberates on the one he wants to use that will both do the most damage and look the coolest. Don’t get me wrong, I actually love these sorts of interactions, but it’s also nice to strip all that fat away. 

When it’s just one player and the DM, the DM also has the chance to make that player feel pivotally important by basing the story around them. Usually, the “unit” of D&D is the adventuring party, but in a one person + one DM game, the player gets to shine as the main character. Thus, it’s a good idea to choose the sort of story that can emphasize the important actions of an individual, and in my opinion the best ones for this are heavy on role-playing and character interaction rather than dungeon crawling and monster slaying. For example, a rogue adventure in an urban environment might fit the bill...or maybe even a mystery. Which leads me to my second point...

2) If you’re a DM making a homebrew campaign, try utilizing a setting that your players are already familiar with.

When my brother initially agreed to play a long campaign with me, I first thought that we might attempt one of the many published Forgotten Realms adventures that have been released for 5th Edition D&D. But then I realized that while my brother is mildly familiar with the Forgotten Realms, thanks to old comics and fantasy art from the 80s and 90s, he’s much more familiar with the setting that he created for his own fantasy novel, The Thirteenth Hour. My bro originally wrote this book when he was a high school kid and finally published it a few years ago, and in the time since, he’s written some short spin-offs and outlined ideas for a sequel. In the mini-campaign we’d played in October, his character was actually a half-elf ranger named the Wayfarer who’ll play a pivotal role in book two, and I initially pitched the whole idea of D&D to him as “Hey, this can help you brainstorm your sequel concepts before you put them down to paper.” 

Once I began toying with the idea of making a homebrew campaign set in The Thirteenth Hour world, I started worrying that my brother’s universe was limited when compared to the “fantasy kitchen sink” setting of the Forgotten Realms. I mean, my bro’s book didn’t even have orcs! Or dwarves! What was I gonna do! But then I stopped being reliant on fantasy tropes and actually re-read The Thirteenth Hour, quickly finding that there was plenty I could work with.The universe that my brother created doesn’t have all of the races that Tolkien coined, but it’s still full of magic and wonder - a place where crafty old wizards inspired by The Last Starfighter’s Centauri run amok, strange technological anomalies like hover boards occasionally pop up and an otherworldly gatekeeper known as the Dreamweaver lets the spirits of the deceased visit their loved ones in dreams. And there’s also a large kingdom called Tartec ruled over by a vaguely Trump-esque king named Darian, who thinks he’s found the elixir of immortality when actually all he’s discovered is coffee. (If you think this sounds amusing, you can pick up a digital copy of my bro’s book on Amazon for less than a cup of Starbucks!)

Darian’s a funny character, and in one of the spin-off short stories that my brother wrote, an older and slightly wiser version of him reflects on how an assassin nearly took his head off with a dagger. This one sentence got me thinking who that assassin might be, and before I knew it I’d come up with the basic hook of a campaign. At the time, I was also reading Xanathar’s Guide to Everything, a D&D book that introduces 5th Edition’s Inquisitive subclass, which is basically a fantasy Sherlock Holmes. Suddenly, the ideas began bubbling in my head - the campaign would be a detective story set in Tartec with two leads trying to determine the identity of King Darian’s would-be assassins. Once I had this hook, I decided to draw further inspiration from the two video game series I think of when I hear the word “detective” - the Professor Layton games (which I like the style of but am rubbish at, since puzzles confound me) and the Ace Attorney series, which I’ve written about before. My brother would be the main character Lester LeFoe (patterned slightly after Phoenix Wright, the star of Ace Attorney), and I’d be the spunky female assistant Claudia Copperhoof (a little similar to Phoenix’s assistant Maya Fey). 

I hoped that situating these characters in my brother’s world would breed a quicker sense of familiarity than he’d get from playing a generic warrior in the Forgotten Realms, and I think it’s safe to say that the experiment succeeded. Thus, even though 5th Edition D&D products all use the Realms as their default setting, it’s worth remembering that you don’t have to follow this lead, and can always tailor your campaign to a world that your players are already familiar with. In my brother’s case, he’s a writer who made his own world, but for someone else this can easily be Middle-Earth or the Hyborian Age of Robert E. Howard’s Conan books. The D&D Player’s Handbook and Dungeon Master’s Guide actively encourage modifying published adventures to appeal to your players’ favorite settings, in fact, and not only will this potentially help to decrease the amount of lore you need to explain as a Dungeon Master, but it’ll also help keep the attention of everybody listening to you. Because who wouldn’t want to insert themselves into their favorite bit of genre fiction as a legendary figure? In many ways, the whole point of D&D is to give people a framework to do that!

3) If you’re DMing for someone who doesn’t have much time to play, remember that a linear campaign is not necessarily a bad thing, and simplify the more complicated rules - making stuff up whenever necessary!

On page six of the 5th Edition Dungeon Master’s Guide, there’s a whole section entitled “Know Your Players,” which is all about altering your game to appeal to the personalities at your table. If you’re DMing for people who like acting and appreciate in-depth stories, give them plenty of role-playing opportunities and narrative twists, for instance, and if you’re dealing with folks who’d rather just make their characters look cool, try having them fight lots of monsters who reward snazzy armor and weapons. 

There should really be a sub-section there entitled “How to run a game for players who are low on time.” Because that’s my brother in a nutshell. He’s a late 30s dude who works a demanding job and has two small children to take care of, one of whom is barely half a year old. (You can hear my nephew gurgling in the background in a few of our videos, and sometimes we’d even have to stop playing when the baby woke up from a snooze, which is a situation that I’m sure all new parents can relate to.) I know for a fact that my brother is also the type of guy whose eyes will glaze over when presented with a lot of complicated rules - as is probably the case for anyone who only has at most an hour or two, often in the late evening, to sit down to play a game when the rest of the family is in bed. 

In my opinion, the way to tailor your game to such a player is to make a brisk, well-paced story that they can actually see to a satisfying conclusion. This means that the campaign might be fairly linear - a word which seems to have bizarre negative connotations to some D&D players out there, who are always ranting about “railroading,” which is when a DM puts players down a predetermined path without any wiggle room. I think it’s important to note that “linear” does NOT necessarily equate to “railroading,” however, and that a sprawling campaign with a trillion different outcomes and choices to make at every interval isn’t necessarily the best approach for someone who can only play a little bit each week and might get bored if they feel like they aren’t making tangible progress. 

Let me put it this way - the campaign that I made for my brother was tightly designed. Instead of giving Lester and Claudia a vast landscape to explore, everything was confined to the city of Tartec, and I made an effort to nudge the characters towards certain objectives that they had to complete in order to solve the mystery, such infiltrating a manor house in the upper class section of town. But I also made sure to flesh out these few areas (quality over quantity) and allowed a certain degree of freedom in how the objectives could be cleared. For instance, I initially thought that Lester and Claudia might sneak into the manor house through the sewers. But as I was brainstorming strategies with my bro, the topic of disguises came up, because Claudia owned a disguise kit. And eventually we decided to infiltrate the party with Lester masquerading as a nutty old lady and Claudia as his keeper, which was a fun improvisation that I never would’ve anticipated - but still a viable way to complete the main objective that didn’t negatively impact the story’s pacing. 

On the topic of keeping the pace of the story brisk for a player low on time, I feel like it’s also important to minimize the number crunching and reduce D&D’s more complicated rules whenever possible. In practice, this meant that I took care of as much behind-the-scenes stats management as possible so my bro wouldn’t have to, though I did always try to explain to him what was going on (and what all of those funky dice rolls meant) so he’d have some understanding of the game’s mechanics. Also, whenever we were in a situation where I wasn’t sure of a rule, instead of wasting time looking at the Player’s Handbook, nine times out of ten I’d just make something up on the fly. For example, our adventure had a friendly NPC orangutan in it (specifically chosen because I know my brother likes backflipping primates) and she was supposed to be a super strong, unpredictable force of nature in the final battle. I’d lost the stats that I’d used for her when she first appeared, and instead of looking for them, I decided to just roll a d20 for her damage, figuring that the end result would be close enough. In that same vein, there were a few instances where I made mistakes, since I’m still a relatively new DM. Once I totally miscalculated a character’s special attack, leading to a funny NPC death (which I’d expected but not exactly in that way) and on multiple occasions I flat out forgot to apply modifiers to attack rolls. But instead of going back to redo everything I’d either just laugh it off or forge ahead, hoping that my bro didn’t notice, which he never did. 

Ultimately, my philosophy for DMing is to not sweat the small stuff TOO much if it probably doesn’t matter in the long run, especially if you’re running a game for just one person whose free hours are precious. I believe this sort of approach might be sacrilegious to some of the more rules-oriented DMs out there, like the ones who spend hundreds of words arguing over damage variables on the D&D Subreddit. But I’m not one of those folks, and I’d prefer to follow the advice of Sly Flourish, a DM who has a great website where he advocates a “lazy” style of Dungeon Mastering which de-emphasizes nitpicking over rules in favor of just having fun. 

At the end of the day, having fun is what D&D is all about. It’s a game of make believe that can really bring out your inner storytelling-loving child, and in an era where very few adults are encouraged to even consider the concept of “make believe,” it can be a truly wonderful breath of fresh air. And if you don’t believe me...I encourage you to watch The Case of the Almost Assassination and try not to crack up at some of the situations that Lester LeFoe and Claudia Copperhoof found themselves in. :)

The pics above are either art that I assembled for our adventure or screenshots that I took while we were playing! The little figurines I designed via HeroForge.

[kijiboop]

MCU Original Characters +Thanos: Unbowed - Prologue

A/N: This is setup for the original characters. Eventually, there will be dom/sub, slavery mentions, potential sexual violence, and a particularly huge grape boi. So, be forewarned. Also, this builds on my head-canons for the Centaurian race as well as mentioning my original race, the Sigma Centaurians.

“Captain Furlan.”

Kris blinked and looked up from the screen that had been occupying his attention for the last hour. He was grateful for the break from bureaucratic red tape and shipping manifests, but was surprised to see his first mate, Esi Okorie standing at formal attention beside his desk. The formality was unnerving: usually, Esi was full of laughter and easy comradery, snuggles and teasing. She was easily the most gregarious member of his small crew and he wasn’t quite sure what to make of her rigid posture and firmly retracted Talhei crest. “Yeah, Esi, what’s up?”

The Centaurian shifted her feet almost nervously without meeting his eyes and said, “I have a personal favor to ask of you, Captain.”

Kris slowly tilted his head to one side and rubbed the back of his neck. “Okorie,” he sighed and she blinked, finally meeting his gaze, “just tell me what you want. I’ve had a long fucking day and I still need to finish this last manifest before we arrive in port on Xandar.”

Esi’s posture relaxed, but she didn’t seem any more comfortable with the situation. She hugged one arm in front her, tapping her dark blue fingers together. “I’m trying,” she said softly, “but it’s easier if it’s formal.” When he just watched her with his eyebrows raised, she sighed and squirmed. “Sir, I’d like to request the use of your reproductive capabilities.”

“Repro…” Kris stared at her as the meaning of her words sank slowly into his brain. “You’re asking to have my baby?”

“I’ve already talked it over with Risa in the medlab,” Esi gasped and started to pace, her hands fluttering in complicated patterns that Kris thought might be the hand signs native to the Centaurian’s cousin race, the Sigma Centaurians. “She can take a sample and insert it directly for optimal insemination. You wouldn’t have to worry about any parental obligations; I can pouch them once they’re born and take care of them.” She paused long enough to look at him pleadingly. “I’m ready for this responsibility, sir. I’m ready and I want it. I just… I can’t get back to Alpha Centauri and it’ll take forever to screen a proper candidate and… well, you’re here and it would be so much simpler.”

Kris stayed where he was, still trying to process everything she was saying. “Wait a minute, you want to have my baby?” he repeated helplessly.

Esi stopped pacing to look at him in surprise. She took a little longer than before, her red-toned eyes searching his face and his body language, the way he was sitting and then her cheeks flushed dark purple. “Captain, I don’t mean anything untoward with this. My people only come together to reproduce. I’m not saying I have feelings toward you other than my immense respect and admiration for you.”

“And my people usually get married before they start talking about kids,” Kris said with a shrug. “We’re kind of coming from opposite ends of the spectrum here.”

“No,” Esi said with a sneer of disgust, “Sigmas and Alphas are opposite ends of the spectrum. The little sluts.”

They looked at each other for a few more moments and when Esi opened her mouth to say something, Kris rushed to interject, “I’m just really confused. I understand basically the ideas your people hold about relationships and child rearing, but I can’t for the life of me think of why you would want to have mine. Aren’t half-breeds taboo on your world?”

Esi looked away from him and hugged her arm to her chest again, rubbing her forearm. Kris realized most of her body language was below the neck: her Talhei hadn’t moved at all. That on its own was unusual, given how expressively she normally used it. Even now, she wasn’t reaching up to self-comfort by stroking it, the way she usually did. “I don’t want to go home,” she finally admitted in a soft voice. “I’m not exactly from a great family to begin with and I’ve been a slave for years. I don’t think there are many eligible prospects that would be open to me, even if I did go back.”

“Better a half-breed than no baby at all?”

“It’s not like that!” Esi protested and Kris had the satisfaction of seeing her drop all remains of formality. She crossed the room and hugged him tightly, her crest flaring high and wobbling in distress. “I respect you,” she said, her voice muffled into his shoulder. “You’re intelligent and strong. You know how to make decisions quickly and you can even negotiate a good deal with the Broker.” Kris sighed and put his arms around her, rubbing her lower back just below the base of her crest. This was the Esi he and the rest of the crew knew. “Kris, I want a baby and I’d be really proud if that baby was yours.”

Kris sighed and reached to tip her head so she was looking at him, then kissed her forehead. “I’d be honored.”

Esi’s brilliant, sharp-toothed grin warmed him and Kris smiled back at her. “Thank you.” Almost immediately, she pulled back and started to pace. “So, if you can give a sample to Risa, she can implant it and maybe this god-awful aching will stop. It’s driving me insane and I’m about ready to fuck Lleeyis into the mattress until he stops bothering me--” She gasped when Kris caught her wrist and turned her back to face him, then kissed her. “Oh,” she said in a small voice. “Um…”

“I know the limits,” Kris murmured to her. “I know this is only a physical thing, but I’d rather enjoy it with you than jizz in a cup.”

“Are you sure?” Esi asked in a small voice and Kris grinned when he noticed her crest was rising steadily. “I mean, from what I’ve heard, our drive when we’re in estrus is kind of terrifying to singles.”

“I don’t mind a challenge.” Kris leaned in, then paused, his lips barely brushing hers. “As long as you’ll let me get some food and sleep once in a while…”

Her mouth met his and it was Kris’s turn to gasp at the intensity of her kiss. Esi brought her hands up to the sides of his face and held him there while she kissed him. They were close to the same height and Kris rocked a little with the sensation, dizzy and almost drunk. Slowly, reluctantly, she let him go again and Kris blinked at the shade her Talhei cast over his face, stretched tall and magnificent. The added expanse of bright red-orange put her height almost a full foot taller than he was and Kris felt briefly dwarfed by her sexual presence. “You know how I ask for a week off every three months or so?” she whispered in a husky voice and Kris nodded. “It’s because I can’t focus on anything when I’m in full estrus. I basically spend a week hiding in the closet with a vibrator. Do you have a week of leave to burn, Captain?”

“I do,” Kris whispered.

“Are you sure you want to do this the old-fashioned way?” Her voice was almost a purr and Kris swayed towards her. He had never noticed how good her skin smelled, but it was utterly distracting now.

“I’m not sure I can say no now,” he said in a small voice. He was straining against his fly, embarrassed by how fast he was reacting to her now that the agreement had been made.

Esi looked at him seriously and pulled herself back a little so they could see each other at a more normal distance. “You can always say no, Kris.” She waited for his answer and when he just swayed closer, she gave him a short shake. “Captain, look at me.” Kris blinked and his head cleared a little until he could look at her just as seriously. “You can always say no,” she repeated.

Kris leaned back and realized that it was a little easier to breathe with distance. He backed away from her a few steps, then sat in a chair, trying to ignore the tent his pants were making. “I would be lying if I said I didn’t want to say yes,” he informed her, “but maybe we would be better off using Risa’s services. You’re not even in full estrus yet, are you?”

Esi smiled. “I’ve probably got another 48 hours before it hits fully. It’s bad now, but it’s going to so much worse then.” Her crest bobbed a little and she reached up to gently push it back. “That’s why I’m making arrangements now, when I still have the ability to focus.”

“How about this,” Kris said and leaned forward in his chair, elbows on his knees. “I give Risa a sample and we agree to three days. After three days, I go back to work and you finish out your leave.”

“That would probably work,” Esi said with a thoughtful nod. “Especially if she inseminates me beforehand. Then, I’ll have a chance to catch from that before running you into the ground.” She looked at him and her smile was warm. “This means the world to me, Kris. Thank you.”

“It’s my pleasure,” he smiled back.

@lucifers-trash-stash @vizhi0n @lissachan504 @even-the-sparrow @genevievedarcygranger @ladylorelitany

[thecosydragon]

My latest blog post from the cosy dragon: Guest Post: Robert Eggleton on ‘Reality-Based Inspiration’

IGuest Post with Robert Eggleton

Robert Eggleton has served as a children’s advocate in an impoverished state for over forty years. He is best known for his investigative reports about children’s programs, most of which were published by the West Virginia Supreme Court where he worked from1982 through 1997, and which also included publication of models of serving disadvantaged and homeless children in the community instead of in large institutions, research into foster care drift involving children bouncing from one home to the next — never finding a permanent loving family, and statistical reports on the occurrence and correlates of child abuse and delinquency.

Today, he is a retired children’s psychotherapist from the mental health center in Charleston, West Virginia, where he specialized in helping victims cope with and overcome physical and sexual abuse, and other mental health concerns. Rarity from the Hollow is his debut novel. Its release followed publication of three short Lacy Dawn Adventures in magazines: Wingspan Quarterly, Beyond Centauri, and Atomjack Science Fiction. The Advance Review Copy of Rarity from the Hollow received considerable praise through Robert learning about the world of books as a novice. The final edition was released to Amazon on December 5, 2016. Author proceeds have been donated to a child abuse prevention program operated by Children’s Home Society of West Virginia. http://ift.tt/1G6nS6o Robert worked for this agency in the early ‘80s and stands by its good works. He continues to write fiction with new adventures based on a protagonist that is a composite character of children that he met when delivering group psychotherapy services. The overall theme of his stories remains victimization to empowerment.

Rarity from the Hollow

Lacy Dawn’s father relives the Gulf War, her mother’s teeth are rotting out, and her best friend is murdered by the meanest daddy on Earth. Life in the hollow is hard. She has one advantage — an android was inserted into her life and is working with her to cure her parents. But, he wants something in exchange. It’s up to her to save the Universe. Lacy Dawn doesn’t mind saving the universe, but her family and friends come first.

    The Past is the Past Reality-Based Inspiration in Fiction

Originally rejected by elitist publishers, George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London (1933), semiautobiographical, is still regarded as one of fiction’s most inspiring works. The Cancer Ward by Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1967) similarly inspired people concerning a disease that continues to devastate families worldwide. Separated by decades, what do these two books have in common? In addition to great writing styles, the technique used to inspire readers is similar. There are many other examples of books that inspire by: if you think that your life sucks, read this. It will make you feel better. This book helps you appreciate what is going right in your life because what’s going on in the lives of the lives of characters in the story is awful.

Several notches above listening to an inspirational speaker selling a get-rich scheme, such as was once popular in real estate, other books reach for human drive and ambitions to inspire. How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie (1938) is the best selling self-help book of all time. A cornerstone was its wisdom on how to increase earning power – you can influence the behavior of others by how you behave toward them. A son of a poor farmer, Carnegie’s success (except in marriage) made fiction writers of millions of people in their relationships with others. As a former door-to-door Amway salesperson during college, attitudes and skills shared by Carnegie did prove effective in me paying for my books and tuition. I became a master of the compliment, heartfelt or not. Yes, we can become inspired to achieve material success.

Not counting the thousands of other great books which have inspired us to diet, eat more nutritionally…, one of my personal favorite inspirational books was The Art of Happiness (1998) by Dalai Lama. In contrast to books that inspired pursuit of materialism, this one encouraged us to reflect on our inner selves and to find out what happiness truly means. It questioned whether material success equates with true happiness. I don’t know about you, but I have a hard time concentrating on self-reflection if I’m worried about paying the electricity bill. For those who have achieved financial security, and who have found that happiness is elusive despite wealth, books like this one have been successful even if many of the concepts promoted in them cannot be proven to be fact.

Of course, The Bible has inspired countless individuals worldwide. So have Shruti for believers of Hinduism, The Tripitaka for those holding faith in Buddhism, Tanakh – the Hebrew Bible, and several other religious texts. For me, while most familiar with Christianity, the inspirational technique employed is fear: to prevent one’s eternal damnation to everlasting Hell – comply with the scriptures.

Apparently, threats can be inspiring. Quite a few folks who post on Facebook seem to believe so. The principle religious text of Islam is the Qur’an. It would be impossible to count the number of hate posts in recent months that inspire people to vote for politicians and policies because if you don’t, in effect, Muslims will rape all white Christian women unless they marry them first during childhood – all supposedly found in this book.

Have I gotten off on a tangent? This article was supposed to be about inspiration in fiction. Before I consider addressing superheroes, John Wayne-type characters, and the G.I. Joes, please note that, depending on reader interpretation, there may be a fine line between fiction and nonfiction. I’ll stop there because I don’t want to offend any readers of this blog. And, because that was precisely my dilemma as I wrote my debut novel, Rarity from the Hollow. How could I inspire sensitivity to the plight of maltreated children without taking readers outside of their comfort zones?

All things considered, I knew that I didn’t want to: (1) write something so tragic that it merely promoted readers to be grateful that their own childhoods had not been filled with horror; (2) sell the prevention of child maltreatment based on the positive economic impact that it would have on society or as a tax deductible contribution; (3) promise people that they will feel better about themselves if they contribute to the prevention of child maltreatment; (4) threaten people with damnation if they ignore needful kids; (5) or, warn people that maltreated children will grow up to victimize others, such as increased crime, if they don’t do something to help them now. All that has been tried before and child victimization rates are going up: new federal data shows nearly 3-percent rise in child abuse.

On the other hand, I also didn’t want to draw a veil over such a huge social problem as child maltreatment when writing Rarity from the Hollow. Some Young Adult novels that I’ve read, authors address childhood maltreatment without pulling a single one of my heart strings. Yes, there are wonderful books for children similar to Bobby and Mandee’s Good Touch / Bad Touch by Robert Kahn (2011), but as a retired children’s psychotherapist determined to write a novel that could potentially impact social policy, I knew that my book wouldn’t target children or even teens consumed with plot-driven escapist fiction.

I decided that Rarity from the Hollow would sensitize and inspire adult readers who were not prudish, faint-of-heart, or easily offended. I later realized, as the Advance Review Copy of my novel was being circulated, this designation carried an unintended message about my story to some potential readers and book reviewers – that it contained heavy sexual or violent content. Before the release of the final edition of my novel to Amazon on December 5, 2016, I wrote an article that was published on a book blog in an effort to clarify its content.

I’m a retired children’s psychotherapist. While participating with the editor on the final edition, as mentioned above, I sure had collected a bunch of elements that I didn’t want to portray in my debut novel. Most of the writing had been done after coming home drained from having worked at the local mental health center all day. Exhausted, at some point I made a very inspirational decision for me. Half of author proceeds are donated to the prevention of child maltreatment. http://childhswv.org I’m not sure if this aspect of the project has inspired others, but it did the trick for me.

Rarity from the Hollow uses soft science fiction as a backdrop, but has elements of other genres: fantasy, everyday horror, a ghost — so it’s a little paranormal, true-love type romance, mystery, and adventure. The content addresses social issues: poverty, domestic violence, child maltreatment, local and intergalactic economics, mental health concerns – including PTSD experienced by Veterans and the medicinal use of marijuana for treatment of Bipolar Disorder, Capitalism, and touches on the role of Jesus: “Jesus is everybody’s friend, not just humans.”

Several book reviewers have commented that the story is unique. Here’s one: “…soon I found myself immersed in the bizarre world… weeping for the victim and standing up to the oppressor…solace and healing in the power of love, laughing at the often comical thoughts… marveling at ancient alien encounters… As a rape survivor… found myself relating easily to Lacy Dawn… style of writing which I would describe as beautifully honest. Rarity from the Hollow is different from anything I have ever read, and in today’s world of cookie-cutter cloned books, that’s pretty refreshing… whimsical and endearing world of Appalachian Science Fiction, taking you on a wild ride you won’t soon forget….”

I selected science fiction as the backdrop because it was the best fit by process of elimination. The way I see it, the systems in place to help maltreated children are woefully inadequate. I felt that the straight literary, biographical, exposé, memoir, or nonfiction genres wouldn’t work because the story would have been so depressing that only the most determined would have finished it.

I felt that Rarity form the Hollow had to be hopeful. I wanted it to inspire survivors of child maltreatment toward competitiveness within our existing economic structures, instead of folks using past victimization as an excuse for inactivity – living in the past. I didn’t think that anybody would bite on the theme of a knight on a white stallion galloping off a hillside to swoop victims into safety, like in the traditional romance genre.  That almost never actually happens in real life, so that genre was too unrealistic as the primary. There was already enough horror in the story, so that genre was out too. What could be more horrific than child abuse?

Readers who are used to the fantastical may feel less inspired about my bottom line to achieve a HEA ending for Rarity from the Hollow. While I don’t want to spoil anything for prospective readers, and I don’t think that this will, in the spaceship on their way home after saving the universe, Lacy Dawn’s father asks her, “Will you ever forgive me?” She answers, “No, but I will always love you.” Such is the optimal resolution of real-life child maltreatment cases. While it may never be forgotten or forgiven, the ability to put the past in the past and to move on with our lives regardless of the pain that we all have suffered from time to time, is the key to achieving true inspiration in fiction and in life.

from http://ift.tt/2pWMQrV

[dudebro-doodlez]

random doodles and stuff idk what to do with

[centaurisocs]

This went from trying out a new brush to making it two characters talking to each other on the canvas lmao!

Ocs used: Marisol, Dropway

[dudebro-doodlez]

FINALLY DONE WITH ANOTHER TLAT REFERENCE PIC....

centauri my goobie schnoobert ily <3

[centaurisocs]

Oh hey! A recreation meme!!

The ocs in use: Marisol, Dropway/Alex, and Trailfire/Lyla

And a few rotb characters for a in the knightverse continuity with a splash of fan continuity I’m thinking of.

Original meme down below:

[dudebro-doodlez]

figured its about time i post about this guy on here

this is centauri! he's my dsaf oc/self-insert! he's a former coworker of henry (and got killed because of him-) but now he works at a new location with jack and him and jack are dating!

i've posted a lot more about him on my scratch account, that_dayshifter