#thedancingwalrus-blog

[wordsandrobots]

7, 12, 13

For this ask game.

7. Any worldbuilding you’re particularly proud of?

In terms of Iron-Blooded Orphans and Wishing on Space Hardware, I've enjoyed the heck out of playing with the Martian climate.

It bugs me inordinately when fic treats Chryse like a 'standard temperate region' because there so many fascinating details in the imagery. Like, notice how there are no trees at all outside the nicer areas of the city? And that the farmland is nestled inside a ring of hills/mountains? The ways the architecture of the place shifts depending on whether we're looking at the upmarket down-town areas or the poorer districts and slums?

Basically, I took the idea water is quite limited and Orga's comment from Episode 1 about how the reactor hall being the only warm place in the CGS base and ran with them. It's a desert but it's not a *hot* desert. For one thing, despite all the shirtlessness, Tekkadan's default uniform is not designed for somewhere warm. Those coats are thick. And perhaps the reason all of them look so dehydrated all the time is because they are? (OK, I'm not really being serious with that one but there are too many six-packs on display not to make the joke.)

So I wound up sprinkling in a lot of little details about water management and settled on a range of temperatures that are basically 'tolerable'. Chryse doesn't get very warm and it doesn't get especially cold during the day, either. It's the night you have to watch out for. Mars is arid; agriculture relies on stored water and irrigation. The city has lots of parks that have been carefully built up for the purposes of looking nice. Most people make do with showers; you probably have to be quite rich to bathe regularly. Rain, when it comes, is something of an event and heavily dependent on the season. Snow is vanishingly rare; at most you'd get hard frosts.

It's not a massively uncomfortable place to live. This is centuries into terraforming and a very established population centre; exposure is a risk but not necessarily an immediate death sentence. But I enjoyed thinking about ways it worked, even if they were never the focus of the story. And it feeds in to a recurring motif of water representing power and wealth which I liked threading through the whole thing.

12. Are there any tropes you used to dislike but have grown on you?

13. Are there any tropes you used to like but don’t anymore?

I'm not sure how to answer either of these, because it's pretty much always been the case that I can be sold on any premise if the writing is interesting enough. Even the most staid, played-out tropes can be fun if the story in which they appear is entertainingly written and cleverly constructed. There are things I wouldn't seek out, sure, but I can't say they've really changed much over the years.

I guess I'm writing a lot more polyamory than I used to? Not really a change in taste though, so much as meeting more people and finding the right opportunity.

Oh, I suppose as a lapsed Transformers fan -- I think I used to enjoy the 'both sides in a conflict team up against a third faction' trope more than I do now. It makes for fun fight scenes, but the older I've gotten, the more it's seemed to me like it short-circuits a lot of the ideological and moral aspects of a conflict in ways that can go in some fairly noxious directions. Again, if it's done well and with nuance, you could absolutely get me to enjoy it but in crude outline, it leans too close to some fascist shit for my liking.

[caparrucia]

Weird Writing questions 15, 16 and 28 please!

15. Do you write in the margins of your books? Dog-ear your pages? Read in the bath? Why or why not? Do you judge people who do these things? Can we still be friends?

I was taught very early on to not "deface" books at all, mostly because most of the books I read are not mine so no, I do not leave marks on them. And even the ones I do own, I feel weird writing/marking in some way. Instead I write notes in a notebook/word document as I read, and keep a mess of color coded nonsense to organize my thoughts on anything I read.

I'm also 100% aware this is a Me thing and not a Right thing, so no, I absolutely do not judge people who write in books and I think that's cool that they can do that, leave bits and pieces of themselves in it. I love finding annotations in books at the thrift store and they weight a lot in my decision to buy them.

16. What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever used as a bookmark?

Technically speaking, blood. Bear with me: when I was in high school, my last year was spent in a lab, making microscope slides for my grade. I fucked up the blood slide so many time I had dozens of them. The biohazard disposal was not available that week (I know, I know, sorry!) and I didn't want to put them in the case with the success slides, because what if they cross contaminated or, more realistically, what if my entirely stupid idiot self misclassified one and accidentally submitted a dud for grading?

So I stuck them into my books.

So yeah. Microscope slides of my own blood as bookmarks. There you go.

28. Who is the most delightful character you’ve ever written? Why?

The old favorites are always Squalo and Izaya for completely different reasons: Squalo is delightful because he's a very frayed, broken straight man in a comedy of errors, and he KNOWS it and he HATES it but it's his own doing, so he's committing. Izaya is just an asshole on a scope that's both ridiculous and intensely grounded to reality and that makes him monstrous in ways that my brain loves de-tangling.

Recently Ardyn has also been a delight, because he's fucked up in very nuanced, very flexible ways and he's a walking cliche waiting to be made into something interesting and good lord, XV, you didn't have to but you did. Thank you.

And then there's Childe.

Childe is going to get ME bitten, I'm sure. I look forward to it! :D

[awkwardbirdsdreaming]

Bird #49 - the kea (EN) [juvenile depicted]

This parrot is known for being one of the smartest (and probably most mischievous) birds in the world! Visitors to the South Island of New Zealand might find these birds chewing their car or hiking gear. I remember a security camera video of one sneaking into a restaurant at night and stealing a tub of butter. Kea are the only parrots to live in an alpine habitat, and the difficulty of finding food in the snowy, rocky landscape is probably why they like to investigate everything.

@thedancingwalrus-blog now I have :D They're super cool birds, though I've only ever seen them at zoos so far. ty for the ask!

[haveyoureadthisfanfic]

Summary: It was like an acid burn, for a moment everything felt normal and then it was like Barry's whole body was on fire. It was like the biggest shot of adrenaline, like he was suddenly way too aware of everything from the pain in his ribs to the smell of the front offices. He gasped at the same time Snart did, hand going up to his cheek which was still too hot and- He turned, it felt like it took a lifetime, and Snart was on the floor staring up at him- His whole hand had turned a red so dark it was almost black. A Lichtenberg figure, the analytical part of Barry’s brain supplied, Leonard’s Mark looked like a lightning burn.

Author: @thedancingwalrus-blog

[asidian]

Post 6 sentences from a WIP and then tag 6 people.

tagged by @anonyhex

===

"I thought you liked me in the leather," Karlach tells him, a touch teasing, the grin on her lips going crooked.

"Of course I like you in the leather," says Astarion, and waves one elegant hand, dismissive. "But I don't like that you hadn't the choice, you know."

Karlach glances over at him, sidelong. She's looking at him the way she does sometimes, as though she's seeing rather more than he intended her to see.

"The choice, huh," she says, she says it sort of flat, without much inflection.

===

Tagging @zigraves @thedancingwalrus-blog @mikkeneko

...everyone else I can think of who might be interested has been tagged already. Please consider yourself tagged if you want to be tagged, though o/

[phynali]

tag and wip ask game

i was tagged by the wonderful and lovely @prince-of-elsinore -- thank you!!

Rules: Post the names of all of the files in your WIP folder regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet of it or tell them something about it.

Focusing on my semi-active to actively-being-written fics (and not just everything in that folder), we've got:

desiderata

folded at the edges - complete

quaecumquae vera

lesser evils part 3

the Renegade 2 point 0

As you can see, I name my files similar to the fic names themselves. Or more accurately, I often rename my document to the working/actual title of the fic once I foreclose on a title. Or, alternately, name a file as what the fic is about, like "possession fic" being the filename for "like a ghost with two voices". I also marked "folded at the edges" as "complete" for editing purposes since i'm hoping to finish proofreading and get it up in the next day.

these are all supernatural fics (and i'm happy to answer questions about them here or on @dyed-red), but my mostly-stagnant coldflash folder technically/sorta also has:

mighty fine predicament

to ensnare the senses

But alas, my coldflash readers who know me at @coldtomyflash know that it's been quite a while since i touched these ^^;

-

Tagging: @thedancingwalrus-blog, @applecrumbledore, @zmediaoutlet and @according2thelore

[wordsandrobots]

@thedancingwalrus-blog You're keeping the old traditions alive.

TikTokers are such pussies when it comes to ships. “B-but they’re not canon 🥺🥺🥺😭😭😖😖” honey back in my day we shipped characters from entirely different medias uphill both ways in the snow

[wordsandrobots]

Ask 001, for two ships:

Ed/Winry

Mikazuki/Atra/Kudelia

For this ask game.

Ed/Winry (Fullmetal Alchemist)

when I started shipping it if I did:

So, the thing about me and shipping is that I don't do it much, or didn't for the longest time. I just didn't come into fandom via that avenue, which is why most of the relationships I have written are fairly solidly the canon ones. So the honest answer is, when FMA!2003 did.

my thoughts:

Again, to caveat: I've a bigger soft spot for the 2003 anime adaptation than I do the manga (Brotherhood I don't count at all). So my baseline is an anaemic version of Ed and Winry's 'intended' relationship. But I've always liked that 2003!Winry gets to be a proactive part of the goings-on, and her friendship with Sheska, and I like the sense of the person she is come Conqueror of Shambala. Similarly, I could always think of more to do with the broken version of Ed that ends the anime. He's a quieter, gentler character than his manga counterpart and I think that's why what I ended up writing for them coming together at last was almost a sigh of relief. It's not a deeply complicated relationship, they just share a lot of friendship, mutual attraction and feel safe in each other's company. It's hardly the romance of the century but then they're neither of them especially romantic people.

What makes me happy about them:

That they're prodigies in completely separate fields, who dazzle the socks off the people around them smart enough to know what they're doing, who're nevertheless hopeless dorks on a personal level and will, with perfect hypocrisy, call each other out for being so. Also, there is nothing quite like sticking Ed in a room with the auto-mail people who fawn over Winry's genius. It's the perfect collision of 'my girlfriend is so cool' and 'I haven't a fucking clue what these people are talking about and this is a scary new experience.'

What makes me sad about them:

Probably the fact that I can't imagine them ever losing the compartmentalisation in their lives. For both of them, there are areas that the other just Will Not Get, no matter how long they're together.

things done in fanfic that annoys me:

Not directly related to Ed or Winry but I kind of don't like it when people pair Winry with Al as a means of freeing up Ed for another relationship. That's never worked for me, with their personalities.

things I look for in fanfic:

It's been years since I read FMA fanfic regularly. But I think it'd be people leaning into them both being bloody knowledgeable, bloody-minded people and also Winry's lock-picking skills.

Who I’d be comfortable them ending up with, if not each other: 

Winry and Paninya, naturally. Ed . . . genuinely I'm not sure I'd pair him with anyone else. I read him as being fairly slow to form attraction to people and I'm too much of a Mustang/Hawkeye sap to go for the obvious choice. (I never did get to explore it much but in my fics, Russell Tringham is very much fuck why are you hot about Ed but that was entirely one-sided. Still, that could be funny.)

My happily ever after for them:

Winry is a fabulously rich and renowned auto-mail mechanic and Ed helps by coming up with ever-better materials for her to work with.

who is the big spoon/little spoon:

(They switch and try very hard to avoid auto-mail-induced bruises.

what is their favorite non-sexual activity:

I reckon they make for a very sweet pair of sappy nerds reading on a sofa together, off in their own separate worlds but sprawled over each other.

Mikazuki/Atra/Kudelia (Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans)

when I started shipping it if I did:

Roughly two seconds after Atra did in-canon.

my thoughts:

OK, look, do you have any idea how refreshing it is to have a show eject love-triangle/pining nonsense in favour of explicit, no-holds-barred polyamory? Like -- push all the male-power-fantasy stuff aside for a moment and try to remember the last time you saw a character respond to nascent 'oh no my crush is talking to someone attractive' with 'but actually there's a way this can work out where everyone's happy', and then proceed to symbolically marry the three of them together? I love Atra so much.

I love how it plays with those power fantasy tropes, too, because you have to remember Mika isn't actually one of those, he's gradual decay dressed up to look like a power fantasy in certain lights. He doesn't just passively collect two girlfriends. He's the one who comes on to Kudelia (with a customary lack of manners) and repeatedly shows warmth and care towards Atra. Likewise, Atra is pushing them all together every way she can, having learned from the Turbines that it's possible to have that kind of family and determined to make it work. Kudelia meanwhile . . . well, Kudelia has no idea what's going on but these are her two favourite people in the world now.

None of this is one-sided, or 'just because'; they each have reasons to care about the others and they respect each other enormously, and it's all jumbled up with the immense pressures they're all suffering under. It's lovely.

What makes me happy about them:

All of the above but also that it's so very . . . not a big deal. It's good for them, they make each other happy, and it's very easy to imagine them just chilling together doing normal stuff. In the middle of everything, I think that was the perfect choice for this kind of relationship, for how it throws the rest into sharp relief.

What makes me sad about them:

Well. This story is a tragedy so no way was it ending well. And I wouldn't change that. That's too much the point. Mikazuki was always going to let go his happiness for the sake of following Orga and there was nothing either of the other two could do to hold on to him.

things done in fanfic that annoys me:

Bearing in mind that I regard Orga Itsuki as the most asexual man on Mars, I don't have a problem with Mika/Orga as a pairing. But I've read at least one fic that got on my nerves by too readily detaching Mika from Atra and Kudelia to make it work. It also gave Atra this long speech about how terrible it was for her to try to hold on to him by getting pregnant, that was clearly expressing the author's bugbear with what is, in-story, an act of desperation at a point where Mika is loudly committing to fighting 'til he's dead on account of his increasing disability (can we please not cram the literal child soldiers into some drive to acknowledge 'problematic' behaviour, they have enough going on already, thank you). BUT ANYWAY, my point is, it's not like you can't easily fold Orga into this relationship. If he wants to be Mika's wife too, that's fine.

things I look for in fanfic:

More IBO fanfic generally.

I mean, probably the fact Mika is a lazy bum who needs to be nagged into helping with the chores he doesn't like, Atra is a walking ray of sunshine who can handle the most cripplingly dark shit like it's nothing, and Kudelia blushes like a tomato over intimate stuff.

Who I’d be comfortable them ending up with, if not each other: 

Well canonically --

The legal team has informed me this is the kind of behaviour that will get my kneecaps turned into castanets so --

Mika is surprisingly easy to picture shacking up with virtually anyone (he's like Shino in that regard), but the right answer is Hush. Just your average disabled mobile suit pilot and his service dog.

Kudelia . . . honestly, there is something in the idea of her and Orga as a couple, given the few times they get to work in sync on-screen.

And Atra . . . hmm. No one person per se but she'd fit right in, working with the Turbines.

My happily ever after for them:

Mika and Atra run a farm while Kudelia commutes to her job taking down the government. Not that I'd change a thing about the actual ending, mind you.

who is the big spoon/little spoon:

Kudelia is the big spoon by default. I don't think she minds.

what is their favorite non-sexual activity:

Cooking together, eating together, bullying Mika into helping with the washing up together.

[caparrucia]

@thedancingwalrus-blog replied to your post “Weird Writing questions 15, 16 and 28 please!”:

BLOOD! Rie I do not what I expected but I never doubted you.

​LOOK. It makes sense in context! (All of my life makes sense in context. Barely.)

[asidian]

Got tagged by @flowercitti so I will give this a try o/

RULES: post the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet or tell them something about it! and then tag as many people as you have WIPs

I don't actually have a WIP folder, I just shove everything into folder by fandom and have to try and remember later what's finished aksdjlksd

But here are my current Baldur's Gate 3 WIP files that have not been posted:

a right of refusal

another path 8

another path 9

cazador takes him

exposure

good boy

hiding in plain sight 3

hunger

old breaks

sunlight badtimes

warmth

wyll talk

And I guess I will tag, uh, @mikkeneko @foxflowering @thedancingwalrus-blog

[wordsandrobots]

Writing game

7 and 16

7. What is your deepest joy about writing?

Already answered!

16. What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever used as a bookmark?

I think bus tickets are about as wild as I've ever gotten. Possibly a museum leaflet?

A free reroll on the questions is available as consolation for being so terribly boring.

(There would be no cost anyway but seriously, if you want to ask something else, do.)

For an ask game

[caparrucia]

Writie questions: 6, 10, 28

6. What is your darkest fear about writing?

To have my work used to hurt people. I write for fun, not for profit. I don't get anything out of my writing except the enjoyment I had writing it, and the enjoyment my readers got out of reading it. Having someone use my work to hurt someone else would definitely sap the joy out of it immediately.

10. Has a piece of writing ever “haunted” you? Has your own writing haunted you? What does that mean to you?

A lot of Ted Hughes (All the Crow poems, really) and Philip Larkin has really stuck with me since I first read them. I have since then inflicted them on friends who also went on to be haunted. It's like the Ring, you are broken by it and then you move on and break someone else with it. Crow's Theology will never not live rent free in my head:

Crow realized God loved him – Otherwise, he would have dropped dead. So that was proved. Crow reclined, marvelling, on his heart-beat.

And he realized that God spoke Crow – Just existing was His revelation.

But what Loved the stones and spoke stone? They seemed to exist too. And what spoke that strange silence After his clamour of caws faded?

And what loved the shot-pellets That dribbled from those strung-up mummifying crows? What spoke the silence of lead?

Crow realized there were two Gods –

One of them much bigger than the other, Loving his enemies And having all the weapons.

28. Who is the most delightful character you’ve ever written? Why?

SiO!Nyx has his moments, and fake-dating!Nyx has that same manic energy but turned up to a thousand, and I've recently started writing Kaveh and he's just... a whole deal, but truly, the OG is always the OG:

Superbi Squalo and his fucking VOOOOII.

[wordsandrobots]

Current minor-major quibble with GQuuuuuuX:

Why isn't killing people in the sport battles where you're only supposed to chop off the enemy mobile suits' heads a bigger deal?

I don't mean in the characters-confront-the-harsh-reality-of-war sense. I mean in the oh-shit-pack-it-up-boys-we-need-to-run-like-hell-or-we're-all-going-to-jail-forever sense. As @thedancingwalrus-blog noted last week, the Pomeranians seem remarkably sanguine about one of their team executing an opponent on live TV when we haven't really had much indication this is meant to be more than a particularly risky game. I get that the Side 6 authorities aren't being depicted in the best light here, but you'd think someone somewhere in the political establishment would be a little leery of getting a reputation as the place where murder is legal so long as you do it in giant, public-property-endangering robots.

It's just one of those details that is bugging me, especially now it's happened twice and indications are it's not likely to upset the status quo on its own.

[phynali]

@thedancingwalrus-blog

NEW !!! SNAKE DISCOVERED

ITS CALLED THE LIMESTONE EYELASH PIT VIPER. THAT iS SO CUTE. ITS SO PRETTY

[wordsandrobots]

I mean, fair play to the developers at FromSoft, it is truly inspiring to see them turn their considerable talents toward creating the mecha equivalent of Melania, the Blade of Miquella. It's even bird-themed!

Just when I thought the BWAS missile massacre and the Vespers spamming repair kits were going to be the height of my frustration with Armored Core 6, *this* flibbertigibbet rolls out a second health bar.

Given that my victory over Melania in Elden Ring was entirely contingent on having Black Knife Tiche tank 60% of the fight while I got in hits with the Moonveil and Azure Comet, I am not hopeful about this going well. Time to flail about wildly searching for the right combination of weapons to let me squeak through on 1 hit point again!

. . . I am going to *empty* Rubicon of plasma missiles before I'm done, aren't I?

(@thedancingwalrus-blog's contribution to today's gaming efforts consisted entirely of asking if the mecha was hot too. Reader, I am compelled to report that unfortunately, yes, yes it is.)

[wordsandrobots]

Been up in Harrogate for this year's Thought Bubble convention, during the course of which, @thedancingwalrus-blog and I got talking about how you might do a Gundam (specifically Iron-Blooded Orphans but probably generally applicable) TTRPG.

Because, while I have flicked through Lancer, that seems to follow a very combat-focused Armoured Core-like model, which is not how Gundam tends to operate. I'm not saying one couldn't adapt it (and I'm sure some people are already on that), but at base, I think you'd want a system that would allow you to incorporate a lot more non-pilot roles into a party. Your C&C, your mechanics, and so on. Essentially, if you actually wanted to capture something akin to how Gundam has traditionally operated, you need to be able to do both Epic Giant Robot Fights with appropriate aircraft carrier support, and the obligatory dramatic/homoerotic fencing as you corner your rival in an exploding space fortress.

I think, based on my limited experiences and @thedancingwalrus-blog's considerably greater knowledge, that means skewing more towards character-based gameplay than machinery. Obviously, the mecha are important, but in Gundam, it's always the pilot that makes the difference, and there's always more than pilots contributing. (I'm aware of Mekton, which I think did something similar, putting character-building first; it just doesn't sound like my idea of fun.)

Thus maybe a three by three set of attributes like Vampire the Masquerade?

Physical

Endurance -- what can you take?

Reflex -- how fast can you react?

Training -- do you know what you are doing?

Mental

Intelligence -- how smart are you?

Awareness -- are you paying attention?

Education -- did you go to school?

Social

Social standing -- how does society view you?

Charisma -- how do others react to you?

Experience -- do you know what's going on?

I think this probably captures most of what you'd what to quantify from a Gundam character, with its spacenoid/earthnoid, earthian/spacian, colonist/core kind of divisions and all manner of silver-tongued aces and psychic teenagers.

Then you could have Newtype powers to boost awareness, Alaya-Vijnana systems to boost reflex, being the president's daughter to boost experience, and so on. You could do backgrounds that would set bonuses or penalties to various attributes e.g. for social standing: Human Debris = -3, Martian war orphan = -2, space colonist = -1, Gjallarhorn aristocrat = +2 (or the equivalent). And you could do experience gain -- quite literally -- by boosting the 'learning' stats.

But then of course at some point you have to weld this to a combat mechanic and I'm not sure of that part. Certainly I think having some kind of initiative order where you can have mecha fighting, captains surveying the battlefield and directing ship fire, mechanics doing repairs/optimisation and so on, and having the order they go in mattering. Like, a pilot can race ahead of their captain, but that'll mean not getting the help of a tactical overview. That could model something like Judau charging ahead of the Agama, without getting a full view of what's actually going on, leaving Bright to frantically play catch-up. Or they could wait, holding their turn until their captain can give them a better idea of what they're up against.

Beyond that . . . well, mecha specs would obviously have to play some a part. IBO has the frames, which could provide discrete base stats like Lancer, that you then build out with armour and weaponry. I don't think you'd need much in the way of scale variation. Then again, I suppose mobile worker -> mobile suit -> mobile armour would work as another division.

I'm thinking some sort of base power stat (Ahab reactor) that then gets split between attack, speed and defence . . . but really I need to work out what kind of basic mechanic to adapt before I try to go further with this idea.

(Please note: I am not a big TTRPG person *at all*. But it might be fun and I really like the Post Disaster setting would be good for running games in.)