#this one is one ill be thinking abt for a very very long time

[curiosityjams]

FINALLY watched eeaao last night.

[luck-of-the-drawings]

OH ARTHUR BENNETT.. such a gorgeous and intriguing character. terribly burdened by a GRUESOME set of crimes, his light suffocated by a HEAVY century of GUILT. so tragic, so dark and broody, and yet PAINFULLY awkward in any social setting ever

[dennisboobs]

Dennis says the L word

[toastsnaffler]

yeah I'm not gonna talk abt it am I...

[fellhellion]

🚬….

[waywardsalt]

oh yeah i’ve got a bunch of loz aus that i haven’t really talked about. a few of them are listed and slightly explained in this poll and explanation reblog but i haven’t gone out of my way to actually list the aus i have and really explain them. so that’s what this post is for. here are some... decently simple explanations of my major aus and what they're generally about

i have two kinds of aus: original aus (loz aus that are set in their own kinds of worlds with their own stories and twists on character roles) and then crossover aus (we all know how this works i just mash loz and a thing i like together)

original aus: (many currently dont have actual titles, so the titles will often just be concept shorthand)

in the court of the crimson king/crimson king au: probably the most developed and closest to being written out. it's got one of the longer premises; set in a industrial-esque hyrule city, following linebeck as the main character, as the adoptive older brother of link and aryll, living with them and their grandmother as the only one able to reliably make money to pay for rent and food, leaving every other week to do jobs, but he moonlights as the 'demon of the gray moon', a masked persona he'd created as a child that had long since become a city-wide urban legend, anonymously taking unsavory jobs from whomever can contact him and offer pay, often working directly for bellum, a childhood friend, the one who enabled and trained him to become the demon, and one of five anonymous leaders of the city. linebeck effectively lives a double life, and tries to stay out of too much trouble to avoid drawing attention to himself or making his adoptive family worry, but he gets dragged into more and more danger as bellum becomes curious about the identities of the city's other leaders, and linebeck falls in love with a man named ganondorf, suspected to be one of those other city leaders. ive got a few posts related to it already: this one being another vague concept descriptor, this one being an actual scene i have written out.

'gimmick' au: i cannot explain the gimmick without spoiling the au. put simply, in this au, hyrule as a whole has been at war for ten years, every race and kingdom taking sides in a conflict that seems to be going nowhere. link joined the hylian army young, and has made his way up the ranks to become trusted by queen zelda herself, and things in the war take an interesting turn as he and zelda discover a new faction, unaligned with any particular kingdom and with unknown motives, and zelda decides to set out to the different parts of hyrule, link and a chosen group of trusted allies in tow, intending to try negotiation one more time before things take a turn for the worse.

sci-fi/space au: the fun one that probably would need to be done in a visual medium. it takes place in a solar system of a few planets, link growing up on the planet hyrule and occasionally traveling to the others as a knight specializing in investigating and taking down dangerous bounty hunters, working for zelda as a friend. he and zelda uncover a plot by the yiga clan to accumulate a number of highly dangerous research and weapons held by each species as they aim to resurrect a demon to wreck havoc on the solar system- the b plot being about the top bounty hunters in the solar system screwing around, eventually colliding with link and zelda's a plot as it begins to involve them.

murder mystery(?) au: one of the older ones, maybe one of the oldest that i still stick with. this might actually be one of the first ones i tried writing. the plot begins when zelda returns to hyrule city years after her father- the former mayor- was murdered, finding that he has been replaced by ganondorf and that while things seem fine enough on the surface, random and organized crime run the show, and she begins a private detective agency as 'sheik', a masked young man, and with the help of impa, and old friend and confidant, she moonlights as sheik and uses her daytime identity as zelda to help chip away at some of the city's biggest problems and finds herself drawn into a long string of murders that appear to be anything but random violence.

ruined hyrule 1: i have two au’s with the premise of hyrule being ruined. neither of them have more specific names yet. this one begins with the majority of greater hyrule's population having long since locked themselves in hyrule castle town in order to escape the increasingly dangerous wildlife. zelda, a young girl at the beginning, becomes curious about what lies beyond the city walls, and makes friends with many other children within this sheltered hyrule, and as they grow up together, aim to eventually venture out into the wilderness to see what may have caused the outside world to become so incredibly hostile.

ruined hyrule 2: the other ruined hyrule. set in a devastated hyrule, roughly ten years after the royal family was killed, link failing to save them or hyrule in the time since. he now resolves to set out and indiscriminately destroy every demon that plagues the ruined hyrule, meeting and bringing along various allies, each of which has been uniquely affected by and have different lived in this altered, dangerous shell of hyrule.

modern (school): i also have two modern aus. this one isn’t plot driven, just a concept i have, would work best as little vignettes or something. essentially just the idea of a group of loz characters hanging out together in a modern high school (or college?) setting.

modern: this is the one with an actual plot. follows the general idea of zelda characters living in a modern world only for the typical legends to begin resurfacing and heralding dark events. plot specifics are murky, but that's the general idea.

dark mage: this is the au that where the seas meet the sands takes place in. basically just ganondorf x linebeck shenanigans in this alternate hyrule while actual plot sneaks up on them. named 'dark mage' mostly because the initial idea behind this au was that linebeck would learn magic.

horror au: doesn't have the best name, and it's ended up just being a personal sandbox for me. constantly changing, with the cast and setting often altering if i find that something isn't working or sticking. it's an au i've considered (and even briefly tried) writing in the past, but it's still too fluid, and writing horror effectively is difficult. it's a fun au, though.

mecha au: spawned because i watched neon genesis evangelion. a lot of this au's basic concepts can be found here: x but the short version is that hyrule is being besiged by massive monsters, but each race has created their own mechs to combat them. link is just a farmer who happens to have a strange knack for being a mech user, so is brought in by zelda as a gamble to bolster their chances, and he is tasked with working with a new and less-than-trustworthy crew to help fight those monsters.

'amnesia link' au: an au that sprang up in about a day and hasn't gotten too far since. basic premise being that three years prior to the story, link and a group of allies has faced off against ganondorf and, despite their best efforts, lost, with link being presumed dead by their enemies. now, link has woken up from his coma, his memories gone and hyrule taken over, and, with guidance, must once again travel across hyrule, aiming to rediscover his allies and try to face ganondorf once more.

A quick list of crossovers: I won't explain these in length, since they can range from having their own plot to just being a fun mental concept. So, the things I have made crossover aus with are:

Warrior Cats

Batman

Jojo's Bizarre Adventure

Persona 5

Pokemon

(there are other, smaller ones, these are just the ones i consistently pay attention to)

So! These are the majority of my legend of zelda aus, some of which I may write, some of which just exist in my mind for fun, all of which I wouldn't mind talking more about if anyone is curious!

[mantisgodsdomain]

Okay we're done getting really mad about bug game worldbuilding. If you are interested in seeing us get extremely mad about Bug Fables' consistently shoddy worldbuilding, then it is below the cut. We'll tag this properly in like a week so it doesn't haunt the main tag for everyone who might not want to read 1.8k words of a random author getting really fucking mad about shoddy worldbuilding.

We've done a lot of stuff with worldbuilding for Bug Fables. Our handling of Bugaria itself is, we will admit, not quite canon-typical. There's a lot going on, and not all is easy to work with. We know from the game itself that Bugaria is surrounded by hostile deadlands, making outside trade difficult and often-lethal - we also know, from being able to observe the in-game map as a human with outside perspective, that Bugaria is contained within a single backyard.

For the game proper, this is fine. It lends itself well to the "borrower" type aesthetic that the devs appear to prefer, limits the scope of the in-game map, and allows for them to do significantly less legwork trying to figure out how to design things. We, however, are a man obsessed with semantics, and we know too much about the amount of food and territory generally required for one hive of wasps or bees to buy into one suburban backyard that's... what, 60 square meters of backyard?

IRL honeybees alone will forage up to, on average, 1-6 km away from their hives, potentially going up to 13 km, and though there's been less research done into the habits of other colony bugs, it's fairly safe to assume they'd need similar range - more likely greater range, actually, as any form of what we humans call "higher intelligence" is incredibly demanding, resource-wise. Bugaria has four different kingdoms of social bugs, many of which would have overlapping needs for resources, combined with a whole load of other miscellanous solitary bugs. loaded into the space of a single backyard that likely wouldn't account for the range of a single hive of honeybees, let alone four hives of miscellaneous bugs and venus-knows-how-many solitaries.

In order to survive in any place, you need to fulfil the requirements of life. Food, water, and shelter are basic needs for a reason, and without access to all three, settlements are likely to quickly peter out. In order for The Hive to process nectar into honey, they first need nectar, which would have to come from flowers, which would be the exact same food source that wasps, butterflies, and moths would need, which clearly aren't growing in the needed

Put quite simply, it would be really fucking difficult for a space of this size to support the presented numbers of bugs. Plants are not an infinite resource, and even assuming that there's a density of flowers far beyond what's shown in-game, there's still predatory bugs to consider. Wasps and ants need protein to feed their grubs, dragonflies and damselflies need protein to feed themselves, mantises and mantidflies are obligate carnivores that cannot survive without a steady supply of prey- you can't survive if you never eat, and Bug Fables is incredibly low on lesser bugs that could potentially serve as food for the more predatory bugs.

Canon offers only aphids and cochineals as cattle, and those still wouldn't really serve to feed larger predatory bugs - and that's even without noting the ecological desert that results from only ever having a handful of enemies. We know that there are limits to what you can do in a game, but the second you want to expand on life beyond what's shown, you run straight into the lack of known prey and wildlife like smacking right into a brick wall. Roaches raise scorpions in a wasteland that seems to have only Mystery Berries for food unless they're trying to hunt Deadlanders, which we doubt are particularly edible. The Royal Blade of the Ant kingdom is an obligate carnivore, and there's nowhere he can go if he wants to buy lunch.

Realistically, we know that the answer is "the devs didn't really think about it". This game is built on the work of devs who persistently place "because it looks cool" over doing any of the worldbuilding work to integrate their existing story elements into the world. You only have to look to Yin to see just how many parts of the game are riddled with things added purely because Someone Thought It Might Be Cool, and no one did any further legwork to make it WORK. The Termacade is a living monument to the philosophy, being added A WEEK before release without anyone so much as communicating it was going to happen before it was in active development. 

Unfortunately, we are permanently obsessed with semantics, we can't stand "because magic" as an answer to important worldbuilding questions, and every time we have to do all the legwork to fill massive holes in the setting where no one ever thought that the answers to questions like "how the fuck do these people feed themselves" is relevant, we will be sadly prone to falling into madness.

There is no canon answer to how these bugs feed themselves. There is no indication as to how things that should be basic parts of the setting WORK. The bugs, in the first place, are written persistently as more People With Hats than actual BUGS - there are nods made to biology, sure, but the difference between a wasp and a bee is little more than a set of aesthetics and a silly hat. There are enough elements in the game that are simply thrown in without care of how they interlock that it sometimes becomes genuinely maddening.

Some people, sure, are satisfied with this - there is a madness that we have that we lack, a need for SUBSTANCE that is prone to driving us to inadvisable lengths hunting for a hint - any hint - that there was care put into this detail, rather than a single flippant comment. We have no complaint with things left vague, but we VERY MUCH have a problem when the setting is consigned to being little more than a backdrop decorated with random glittery ideas to act out anime tropes on, rather than something that should be paid attention to all its own.

We've said this before, and we'll say it many times again, but worldbuilding is important for a REASON. Your setting will affect your characters just as strongly as it will affect your story - your plot, your setting, and your characters are fundamentally inertwined, and to affect ANY part of the story will have rippling impacts on the rest of it. Your characters are not created in a void! Whatever structures created one person MUST still be present to shape others! You cannot throw shiny ideas on a canvas slapdash and expect it to turn out well! It's a miracle that the character writing in this game turned out as well as it did, considering that massive swathes of the setting are loosely assembled from anime without even taking the time to learn how certain aspects WORK in their home media!

We enjoy writing. We enjoy crafting plots, doing worldbuilding, tinkering with the little pieces of setting that we feel might create something interesting. We wouldn't be writing at all if we didn't enjoy it on some level, though we sometimes wonder if it's more masochism than care for some aspects. This is the trade that we have chosen to work towards working. Perhaps it is this that makes it so violently infuriating when we run into people who don't seem to care for that which we pay attention to.

There are a handful of aspects in this game that are well done. There are far more aspects in this game that are half-baked at best and actively difficult to work into the rest of the world at worst. There is a particular handful of aspects that are so poorly done that they could pass as active malice, towards one group or another. Unfortunately, as with many things, to assume ill will often overlooks the far more pervasive, far more common culprit of simple negligence.

Bug Fables, at its core, is a game made by devs with chronic shiny-object syndrome. There is little care spared to its worldbuilding, to the implications of its setting, to the implications of character actions, because the devs have never cared to think on it. It takes tropes from a hundred and one different animes without caring to learn what makes them work in their home context - just that they're cool, and that the authors want them in their own work.

It's something that we've been guilty of ourself, in previous works, but that only makes it easier for us to spot it here. There is an mirror of mistakes we have made ourself written on the walls, and it echoes with every step. We are the sort of author who learned to build worlds by stealing shards from different worlds and patching them into a new quilt. This is a work that takes does much the same, taking pieces from other works to make a new whole, but it makes the mistake of not spending the time to make sure those pieces FIT.

The mosaic on the floor is made of broken, disparate parts that are only partially fit together. The world falls apart more and more the closer you look at its shards. There are pieces of harm in this painting, pictures of pain, things put together and only barely examined. There is prejudice that could pass for malice woven into the threads of even the more comedic writing, an undercurrent commonly present in society and rarely examined. They've made an entire species of bugs into an incomprehensibly racist trope. Perhaps it's foolish of us to spend so much time and energy on a world that does not love us back, but we care for this setting, and we care for the potential of what it could have been.

The prejudice and shoddiness and pieces of poorly-thought-out and tropey writing in this work are not an act of malice. They are an act of ignorance, left over from a development team that wanted to add the latest shiny thing without stopping to think that their favorite anime tropes might have roots in something rotten.

Anyways, the reason that we wind up putting so many fucking footnotes on our fics is that every time we have to answer basic questions like "how does the wasp kingdom fucking feed itself" we have to rewrite, like, half a dozen tropes ripped off from shitty isekai anime, come up with an entire power structure and system of government that could potentially exist in this universe, write 2000 words of geopolitical bullshit minimum, reinvent animal agriculture, create at least one brand new species of bug, and then battle our conviction to avoid cushioning or avoiding the implied Fucked Up Elements that are Very Much Present In The Base Work if chronically ill-addressed vs the question of if we Want to include this particular brand of Fucked Up Bullshit or if we'd actually rather avoid having to reckon with the aftermath of yet another poorly-thought-out trope ripped from Trapped In Another World With My Smartphone.

[4giorno]

dealing with my post game depression by celebrating that i finally have enough fave screenshots of my beloved character to make a 3x3

[lanshappycorner]

.

[izzy-b-hands]

finally convinced myself to apply for the Folx fund help since otherwise im just. not making enough to cover regular doc visits and T rn.

(more venting abt this stuff below the cut feel free to skip)

And as of tonight im out of the vial my housemate generously offered since ae is changing up T methods rn anyway (tho i did try to get out any leftover T from previous syringes in my sharps box into the current vial, in an attempt to save any i could, but it didn't work as well as i wanted it to unfortunately)

I don't want to detransition. I'm genuinely terrified of it bc even just my period returning these last months has sent me spiraling each time. I'm the happiest I've ever been since transitioning (despite any additional Life Horrors occurring alongside it) and i just. I don't want to go back. but I'm not going to rely on my friends and family to bankroll this too while i try and get back on my feet

im nervous to have applied and tbh don't anticipate getting it simply bc goodness knows there's a fuck ton of us in need of help like this, and im just one of many. but holy fucking shit a year of paid for care would make a huge difference. one less expense to weigh on me for at least a little bit, enough time to hopefully get into a better more consistently paying job so i could just afford the usual Folx membership as I would like to rn if it wasn't $89/mo (and even switch back to gel to have a break from the injections for a bit, but that's an extra $50, so nearly $150 for that which rn is Ouch and just not possible to give out monthly which makes me feel so pathetic and shit but i just. Don't have it at a consistent rate rn with the polling center job fuckery and my anxiety with the job)

I don't want to be taking help from someone who needs it more, but if they can spare a spot for me i would be in their debt for the rest of my life and beyond grateful

[satellitesunset]

myle.txt

[snickeringdragon]

would any of your blorbos say this

im gonna be honest i think i would say this actually

WAIT HANG ON I KNOW WHO WOULD SAY THIS. oh my god ive posted her here maybe once but my fucking. oc. calico. she would say this to andromeda. you dont know who EITHER of those characters are.

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[marsbotz]

slamming my fists against the floor like an animal thinkinh abt dadfario

[adore-gregor]

my perception of grades totally changed since i started uni

[waywardsalt]

maybe it would be better if i. let myself write the bellum x linebeck fic while i finish up the ganonbeck one. there’s not much point in restricting what i write esp if i’m inspired