#world building reference

[prompt-heaven]

a list of 100+ buildings to put in your fantasy town

academy

adventurer's guild

alchemist

apiary

apothecary

aquarium

armory

art gallery

bakery

bank

barber

barracks

bathhouse

blacksmith

boathouse

book store

bookbinder

botanical garden

brothel

butcher

carpenter

cartographer

casino

castle

cobbler

coffee shop

council chamber

court house

crypt for the noble family

dentist

distillery

docks

dovecot

dyer

embassy

farmer's market

fighting pit

fishmonger

fortune teller

gallows

gatehouse

general store

graveyard

greenhouses

guard post

guildhall

gymnasium

haberdashery

haunted house

hedge maze

herbalist

hospice

hospital

house for sale

inn

jail

jeweller

kindergarten

leatherworker

library

locksmith

mail courier

manor house

market

mayor's house

monastery

morgue

museum

music shop

observatory

orchard

orphanage

outhouse

paper maker

pawnshop

pet shop

potion shop

potter

printmaker

quest board

residence

restricted zone

sawmill

school

scribe

sewer entrance

sheriff's office

shrine

silversmith

spa

speakeasy

spice merchant

sports stadium

stables

street market

tailor

tannery

tavern

tax collector

tea house

temple

textile shop

theatre

thieves guild

thrift store

tinker's workshop

town crier post

town square

townhall

toy store

trinket shop

warehouse

watchtower

water mill

weaver

well

windmill

wishing well

wizard tower

[sas-soulwriter]

What to give a fuck about,while writing your first draft!

I`ve posted a list about things you don´t need to give a fuck about while writing your first draft. Here are things you NEED TO CARE about! (in my opinion)

Your Authentic Voice: Don't let the fear of judgment or comparison stifle your unique voice. I know it´s hard,but try to write from your heart, and don't worry about perfection in the first draft. Let your authenticity shine through your words.

Your Story, Your Way: It's your narrative, your world, and your characters. Don't let external expectations or trends dictate how your story should unfold. Write the story you want to tell.

Progress Over Perfection: Your first draft is not the final product; it's the raw material for your masterpiece. Give a fuck about making progress, not achieving perfection. Embrace imperfections and understand that editing comes later.

Consistency and Routine: Discipline matters. Make a commitment to your writing routine and stick to it.

Feedback and Growth: While it's essential to protect your creative space during the first draft, be open to constructive feedback later on. Giving a f*ck about growth means you're willing to learn from others and improve your work.

Self-Compassion: Mistakes, writer's block, and self-doubt are all part of the process. Give a f*ck about being kind to yourself. Don't beat yourself up if the words don't flow perfectly every time. Keep pushing forward and remember that writing is a journey.

Remember, the first draft is your canvas, your playground. Don't bog yourself down with unnecessary worries.

[kandidandi]

it seems my adventure time brainrot has resurfaced,,,

[sarahshotts]

(source)

[allastoredeer]

My Hellaverse Writing & Drawing Resources (Masterpost)

(A lot of this is for me, but feel free to use if you want.)

(Is updated as I stumble across more or make my own resources)

My World-Building, Character Analysis, and Lore

The Hierarchal Power Structure in Pentagram City + Royal Family Character Analysis

Lucifer's Religious Trauma - Character Analysis

Why I Don't Include Dante's 9 Circles of Hell in my Hellaverse World-Building Lore

More About Dante's 9 Circles + Imp City and the Goetia

Hellborn and Sinner Similarities and Differences + Classism

Helluva Boss Canon Lore Tidbits

Note: Some posts may have repeated canon lore

Post 1

Post 2

Post 3

Art Resources

Alastor Drawing Guide

Alastor Cane Drawing Guide & Hand Reference Sheet

Lucifer Drawing Guide

Vox Drawing Guide

Husk Drawing Guide

Character Designs

Sinners From the Show (Collection 1)

Backgrounds

Heaven Embassy (Exterior)

Post-Extermination City-Scape

Writing Resources

The 5 Senses

75 Words That Describe Smell

Descriptive Words for Scents: List of Smell Adjectives

200+ Words to Describe a Voice

How to Describe a Smile in Different Ways

600+ Words to Describe Smiles

What a Decomposing Body Smells Like

General Writing Help

How to Write Immersive Stories Using Description

World Building Tips: Writing Engaging Settings

Writing Action Scenes

Adjectives for Description

Dialogue Tags to Use Instead of Said

6 Seconds, 6 Months - Writing Advice/Challenge

Miscellaneous

How to Write Realistic Injuries

Explosives and Blasting Agents

BOM: The Next Generation of High Performance Explosives

Burning Points of Various Fabrics

English to Shakespearean (Perfect for Zestial! Thank you @witch-of-the-writing-desk)

English to Old English (Perfect for Zestial! Thank you @witch-of-the-writing-desk)

Helpful Websites and Writing Programs

Random Character Generators

Websites For Writers (Collection)

Pacemaker Planner

Hiveword: The Search Engine For Writers

StimuWrite Desktop

OneStopForWriters

LibreOffice (Free Microsoft Word Alternative)

Scrivener

My Ko-Fi

You know. If you wanna (◕‿◕✿)

[writingdirectory]

Notes from a 5-day creative writing course:

Motivation

Make it a habit. That way, each time that familiar voice of self-doubt makes its appearance, it’ll be easier to ignore it, because writing will become something that you do-your thing-and you’ll gain confidence in it.

Visit your novel every single day. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to write something every day. You could outline the plot, or write character portraits, or draw a special part of your world. Your subconscious will work on your story even when you don’t. So, each time you visit the story consciously, you’ll find that things have developed in the story.

Manage the time of writing in a way that it is manageable for you. (It can be that one hour between classes or your lunch break or the morning before you go to work or at night before you sleep - Schedule it in a way that suits you and then, be serious about it.

Set a goal. For example, 100 or 500 words a day.

Character Development, Word Choice & Description

At first, characters incarnate ideas. A poor man who wins the lottery, a young boy who travels to a magical land. As we develop the story, they become people - real people with backgrounds and unique choices.

Ways we perceive character: through actions, thoughts (conflict), dialogue, interactions with others.

Bring intentionality to the representation of a character.  Don't give arbitrary information.

How a character reacts is a question of how you want to represent them through all those multiplicities that are dialogue, actions, interactions, etc.

Characters always want something. They are never static. With wants come obstacles and transformation.

Create tension between what a characters thinks, feels and says. For example, set external confidence and internal fear and then change that as the story develops. Characters can also be comfortable or scared depending on the situation.

Explore complexity. How a character talks to their lover is different from how they talk to their friends and family.

Give secondary characters a characteristic beyond their function to make them more prominent.

Make a hierarchy out of characters.

Exercise: Write the portrait of a character, how you would introduce them in the story and a description of them from a character that a) likes them and b) dislikes them.

Word Choice. When it starts sounding like writing, cut it out - Kill your darlings. Example: The car was spotted with rust - shows the car. As opposed to: The car was acned with rust - shows the writing. Sometimes a more refined word works against the object/image.

Description: Don’t just put in details. The details need to be significant for the image you want the reader to see.

Don’t use metaphors and lyricism in the expense of clarity. Be precise. Metaphors and similes should fit the narrative and not distract the reader. For example, saying “He barked like a dog” sounds fine, but if there are no dogs in your world, it is out of place and breaks the narrative. Be specific. Name things. Don’t be vague. Precision grounds your fiction.

Determine if you need static or lively description. Lively description is when you describe things through actions. Like “She passed her fingers through her blond hair”, instead of “Her hair was blond”.

Sense of authenticity. When you describe a place precisely, you gain your reader’s trust. A column is different from a golden column. That kind of attention gives a sense of authority and makes the narrative convincing.

Parts of description: smell, sound, sight, taste, touch, temperature, pressure.

Dialogue & POVs

Dialogue a) informs the character, b) moves the story forward, c) develops relationships between characters.

Dialogue isn’t just about how people talk.

What’s said can suggest what isn’t being said.

Use dialogue interspersed with description and visuals.

Choose the POV that suits your story.

(From David Lodge, ‘The Art of Fiction’.) A fictional story is unlikely to engage our interest unless we know whose story it is. Even with an “omniscient” narrative method, the writer should privilege one or two “points of view”. An objective approach may be a worthy aim in journalism, but not in fiction.

Pros and cons of 1st person POV. Pros: personal and direct, immediacy, intimacy, immediate credibility, easier to build character. Cons: limited, biased, unreliable, writing can become simplistic. When writing in 1st person, keep in mind that characters change, hence their perception changes. That has to be obvious in the narrative.

Pros and cons of 3rd person limited POV. Pros: thoughts can still be on the page, flexibility, wider view of the world, more complex language can be used (usually we think in simple words, so complex writing might sound pretentious and out of place in 1st person POV). Cons: distance (he/she).

GOD MODE. Or, commonly, 3rd person omniscient. You can jump in and out of characters’ minds, but there’s a danger when writing with such freedom. Be aware of structural harmony. Don’t write 10 pages in Sally’s POV and then jump into omniscient.

Use free indirect speech (1st person thoughts in italicized form, eg. No!) to eliminate the distance in 3rd person POVs.

Change POV with reason. Don’t suddenly jump to another POV just because it is interesting. Plan it. Make the change of the POV deliberate and make the reason clear.

Give equal weight to all POVs.  

Setting

The setting of a story is mediated through a character’s experience. It amplifies the theme. It shouldn’t be an arbitrary decision. The setting can make achievements more difficult for characters.

For children, places have magical properties, they are places of significance. The place of someone’s childhood can transform later in the novel, because the character has transformed. There’s a fluidity of meaning attached to places. But keep in mind that, places don’t change. Characters do.

How a character views a place is stated through the language we use.

When writing about a place that exists, have fidelity at the facts.

Editing

Be open to ideas changing.

If it’s not working after 3-4 rewrites, cut it out!

Make sentences active. Things don’t happen to characters. They do things.

Pay attention to rhythm.

Every sentence needs to have a reason to be there.

Usually, we overwrite in dialogue. Use context. Dialogue should be suggestive, rather than explicit.

Edit backwards, because perfectionism kicks in at the beginning.

Isolate. Edit single parts of the story. A chapter, a scene.

Read aloud. It will help find long sentences, pretentious words and unreadable language.

When words become over-familiar, put it down, give it to someone else to read.  

What to look out for: a) Character confusion. Make sure minor characters are introduced properly and find subtle ways to remind your readers who they are. b) Too much exposition. c) Plot holes, inconsistencies - there must rational reasons for coincidences, you must be able to provide logical and credible reasons behind the actions of a character. d) Over-written description.

What to do when editing: cut things out, put new things in, change sentence order and structure, look for repeated words, strengthen verbs (or prune), expand, trim, look for continuity errors, change order of events, introduce a delay in the reveals, rewrite using another POV or tense, determine if each sentence is pulling its weight.

Techniques: a) Prune. Delete text you don’t need. b) Isolate repetitions and delete or substitute with synonyms (look out for pretentious words). c) Cut and paste paragraphs to change order and rearrange. d) write a whole new draft, only looking to the previous one for factual material. e) Use a reader.

Bibliography

Hills Like White Elephants, by Ernest Hemingway (suggestive dialogue)

Concrete Island., by J.J. Ballot (how setting makes goals harder to achieve)

Driving Through Sawmill Towns, by Les Murray (lyricism, setting)

The Art of Fiction, by David Lodge (POV)

The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald

On Writing, by Stephen King

[lena-in-a-red-dress]

Blue and Fire Engine Red #3

TW: reference/depiction of school shooting (no onscreen deaths)

---

Kara’s choice of bar proves to be the perfect opposite of the bright and open firehouse. Its dim ambience feels cozy, and the low light helps ground her, letting her release some of the bravado that fueled the sexually charged tit for tat she’s been firing towards Lena. She hopes tonight will be something more than that. 

Of course, that doesn’t keep Kara’s insides from positively melting when Lena walks in the door. She looks positively pedestrian out of uniform, in a loose muscle tank layered over a snug tank top, and her jeans even snugger. But her gaze glints when it finds Kara in the small two person booth towards the back. Kara’s chosen a relatively isolated corner– not to hide, but rather from a desire to not share the woman who slides in across from her.

“Glad you found the place okay,” Kara greets, grinning. 

“Yeah, you kind of forgot to mention that it was literally underground.” Lena wrinkles her nose when Kara’s grin widens puckishly. “Fink.”

Kara laughs. “Let’s just say it makes for a good conversation starter.”

An arch brow answers her. “So you bring girls here a lot then.”

“Uhhmm…”

Pink lips soon soften into a teasing grin. “Relax. I’m joking.”

Releasing a sigh, Kara lets her shoulders relax. Before she can say anything, a waiter appears to take their drink orders. 

“The first of a few, I hope,” the girl says brightly. She turns towards Lena first. “Your usual, Lena?”

Green eyes twinkle at Kara in the low light, clearly enjoying the way Kara’s mouth falls open. She’s been had.

“That would be lovely,” Lena returns. 

The server nods, then turns to Kara. “And what can I get you?” 

Kara tries not to frown. “Rum and coke,” she grumbles dejectedly. “And onion rings.”

“Excellent choice! Your drinks will be out momentarily, but the rings will take a few minutes. Is that okay?”

Lena nods, giving the girl a winning smile. “That’s totally fine, Jess,” she purrs. “We’ll be here for a while.”

Jess moves away to another table, leaving them to themselves. Kara glares at Lena, who shrugs with an abashed grin.

“I served with Jess’ brother.”

Ears pricking with interest, Kara leans forward. “Bartender?”

Lena blinks, then lifts an eyebrow. “Army.”

Kara’s eyes widen in surprise. “Oh! Wow, I didn’t even think… sorry. Medic?”

Lena nods with a hum.

“So if I talk to Jess’ brother, he’ll tell me about some daring rescue where you saved his life?”

Lena holds Kara’s light gaze for a long beat before looking down at her hands, folded on the table in front of her. “Not exactly.”

“Oh.” Kara’s stomach falls out from under her as she realizes the implication. Her cheeks start to burn. “Oh.”

There’s a long moment between them, and KAra is desperate to fill the silence.

“Thank you for your service—”

“Don’t,” Lena cuts in sharply. She takes a breath, only for it to huff out of her an instant later. “Can we talk about something else?”

Kara quickly nods. “Yeah, of course. I’m sorry–”

Jess returns then, delivering their drinks. Lena’s quiet murmur of “thanks” confirms how uncomfortable she is, and Kara kicks herself again and again for having wrecked the mood. The date has ground to a halt, she knows, and it’s her fault. Even so, she clings to hope when Lena tries to salvage the conversation.

“What about you?” Have you always wanted to be a cop?”

“Hah, well…” Kara gives a nervous smile. The short answer is no, not always. Long answer is… kinda dark, honestly.” 

To Kara’s surprise, Lena gives a dark chuckle. “Well aren’t we the pair,” she drawls. 

Kara feels some warmth creep back into her extremities. “I don’t mind talking about it though, if you don’t mind hearing it. If you’d rather not–”

“Whatever you’re comfortable with sharing is fine with me. It must be important if it led to you becoming a hero of law and order, so– I’d love to hear it. But no pressure.”

With a nod, Kara considers where to start. “Have you ever heard of Midvale High?” When Lena shakes her head, she continues. “Ten years ago there was a school shooting. Twenty-three students died. I was one of the survivors.”

Lena watches her solemnly, and though she seems content to simply listen, Kara lifts her hand to stave off any condolences or sympathy that might be heading her way. 

“It’s okay,” she promises. “I got all the therapy, and I got to a place I can comfortably talk about it. And you know, it was the usual story: kids are awful to one kid, kid gets depressed, then angry enough to do something about it. For us, that kid was Kenny Lee, and he was my best friend.”

That’s the most shocking part, for most people. Like she said, school shootings are tragically common, but rarely does anyone realize that the shooters might actually have a friend or two.

“Kenny was a good kid– quiet, smart… he just had the wrong combination of interests, or maybe he just had the wrong face. I don’t know. The others were just… cruel. And no one did anything about it. Until one day Kenny did.”

“Did he hurt you?” Lena asks quietly. 

Kara shakes her head. “No. No, he… he started in the cafeteria. I usually eat with Kenny, but he missed the first half of the day, so I ate in the bathroom that day.” She wasn’t well-liked either, so eating alone in the cafeteria always gave her enough anxiety to avoid the place.

“But I heard it. The gunfire… all that cement and linoleum… it echoes, you know? I bunkered down in the bathroom as best I could. When the shooting paused, I heard the police sirens. I thought… I didn’t know if they’d find me where I was, so when I thought it was safe, I crept into the hallway.”

Her heart had stopped when she’d recognized the back of Kenny’s head at the end of the hall. She’d gasped, and he’d whirled, lifting the weapon in his hands. When locked eyes, the rage in Kenny’s gaze had shocked her, but a moment later it gave way to apathy.

“Kara….”

“NCPD, put the gun down!”

The sound of a new voice startled them both. The rifle Kenny held jerked, and Kara’s whole body flinched. But Kenny didn’t put the gun down. 

“Y-you’re going to have to kill me,” he stuttered. Kara stared at him. He looked like her friend, but there were bloody footprints behind him, and his pants were spattered with blood and… brain matter, Kara realized in horror. Her best friend had stood over someone and shot them in the head.

Trembling, Kara’s gaze bounced between Kenny and the officer who had spoken. The officer was small, barely taller than Kara, but exuded calm authority even as Kenny hefted the gun higher against his shoulder. It was too heavy, Kara realized. He wasn’t used to the weight.

“We don’t want to do that,” the officer said. Her tone was cool and clear, traveling easily down the corridor. “My name’s Officer Grant. What’s yours?”

“K-Kenny,” he stammered. Sweat beaded and slid down his forehead. 

Officer Grant nodded. There was a shuffle of footsteps as more officers moved into a formation behind her. Kenny’s finger curled around the trigger, but Officer Grant lifted her hand to both put him at ease and to tell her people to hold off.

“I’m sure you have reasons for what’s happened today,” she said. “And I’m sure they feel like good ones. But no one else needs to get hurt today.”

“Yes they do!” Kenny snapped back into his rage, his features warping back into an unfamiliar mask. “He– he wasn’t there! I have to– he deserves–” His gaze locked on Kara, imploring her to understand. “He wasn’t there, Kara!”

Kara’s heart stopped. She knew exactly who he meant. Jake. The worst of them all. Kenny wanted– he was hunting. But there’d been so much gunfire already– how many people did Kenny hurt instead? Her vision wobbled, and for the first time she realized she was crying. 

“Everything feels so big right now,” Officer Grant continued. “I have a son, and his emotions get so big, he just doesn’t know what to do with it. This may have felt like the only way, Kenny, but it’s not.”

“B-but… I…” Kenny sounded small again.

“You still have decisions to make, Kenny. You’re making one now– you haven’t hurt Kara.”

Kenny looked at her, tears of his own streaming down his face. “She– she’s my–” He shook his head. “She doesn’t deserve to die.”

“There are a lot of other people who don’t deserve it either. A lot of families who don’t deserve to have dinner without their kids. Your parents don’t deserve to lose their son.”

His resolve wavers. He hitches the gun again, but from exhaustion rather than ire. “I don’t know. I don’t know anymore.”

“You can choose to put the gun down, Kenny,” Officer Grant pushed gently, sensing the ground she’s gained. To Kara’s surprise, the officer’s focus shifts to her for a pointed moment before returning to Kenny. “Kara doesn’t deserve to watch you die.”

Kara’s throat locked then. She stared at Kenny, desperate. “Please, Kenny,” she croaked. Kenny didn’t look at her. “Kenny, PLEASE!”

Her legs almost gave out when he looked at her, his despair palpable. Kara knew in that moment he’d planned to die that day; the alternative would be years in prison, maybe an entire lifetime. Kara didn’t know what she would choose either. 

After a long, tense moment, Kenny exhaled shakily before taking a step back. He knelt. Leaning forward, he’d slid the rifle across the floor away from him before interlocking his fingers behind his head. Before Kara could blink, officers swarmed Kenny, locking his handcuffs on his wrists and confiscating the rifle. 

Officer Grant, though, came to Kara. 

“Are you okay, Kara?”

An avalanche of sobs came crashing out of Kara, and Officer Grant opened her arms and held Kara as she crumbled.

“Officer Grant talked Kenny down,” Kara continues, blinking her way back to the low-lit bar. Lena waits on the other side of the booth, her features patient and calm. Kara offers a small, quiet smile. “She talked him down, by talking to him. Not as a monster, but as a person. Her compassion won out over his anger, and it saved lives.”

Lena reaches across the table, clasping Kara’s in hers. Her thumbs rub soft circles against Kara’s skin, further grounding her back in the present. “She inspired you.”

Kara turns her hand, letting her palm settle fully in Lena’s. “She did. A few years later, she was the one who gave me my badge. Literally. Her signature is on my graduation certificate.”

“I bet she remembered you.”

“She did,” Kara confirms. Then she snorts, dispelling the somber mood. “Not that it won me any favors. In fact, I was pretty sure she hated me right up until she pinned my badge on my chest.”

Lena laughs. “Oh, man, I could spend days telling you about basic. The worst.”

Kara squeezes the hand in hers, giving a genuine smile. “I look forward to it. But first…”

She pauses when she sees Jess heading towards them with a basket of food in her hands.

“Onion rings!”

[monmatch]

Part of what's holding me back from boarding out the story of Red Hill is that I wanna make a mid-tech fantasy world that doesn't pull so heavily from medieval style.

In Red Hill there's two primary designs of old vs. new that I want to clash together. A lot of the old Ant-kin buildings are more organic and built right into the side of the mountain. The newer human stuff is just built around and over top of it and kind of consuming it.

Backgrounds are not my strong suit, I dunno, I'd love to know what people think. Does it feel unique at all? Is it a vibe? lol

[autumnalwalker]

Kindly Basilisk

Summary: A human mech pilot who wants to be a machine, an AI who wants to be human, and the relationship they form. Author's Note: This is a standalone short story that I banged out over the course of five days after it got stuck in my head while I was trying to go to sleep and refused to let me think about anything else until I had written it down. It's one part thought experiment/exercise in attempting to tell a story in the second person future tense, two parts tribute to the Lancer TTRPG character I'll never get to play, and one part the result of me reading too many Empty Spaces/mechposting stories lately. That said, you don't need to know anything about Lancer or Empty Spaces to read it (I've diverged a bit from the conventions of both, but the references and inspiration probably stick out if you're looking for them). It's also probably the most trans thing I've ever written without ever explicitly bringing up gender. The occasional formatting breaks into first person past tense are foreshadowing, not typos. Mirrored on Scribble Hub. Word Count: 7,033 Content Warnings: Mecha genre typical violence, not feeling like a person, not wanting to be a person, bodily dysphoria, mention of blood and gore, character death.

The moment you gain the knowledge and means to do so you will void your own body’s warranty.  You will jailbreak the bespoke gene sequence your sponsors commissioned for you before your immaculate conception, repurpose the spyware grafted into your bones, and talk your dormmate who was algorithmically selected for compatibility into helping you perform surgery on yourself to replace the neural jack you were born with in favor of one you cobbled together yourself from gray market parts.  None of this will technically be illegal or even get you kicked out of your campus or its affiliates, but it will mean having to find a way to pay your own medical bills and handle your own tech support from then on.  After the surgery your dormmate will put in a request for transfer and the two of you will never speak again.

You’ll major in AI studies and excel at it - as you were designed to - but you’ll shock everyone by dropping out halfway through working on your capstone thesis project.  It won’t be the fact that you abruptly drop out that surprises your peers and professors - by then you’ll have acquired a reputation as a quiet loner without the standard optimized social support network of friendships to help protect you from burnout - but your exit interview statement declaring your intention to become a mech pilot.  It’s not at all what your gene series was cultivated for, and your sponsors and counselors will try to walk you back from it.  Then they’ll threaten to revoke your sponsorship that up until then will have provided for your every need.  They will warn you that you’ll be just one step above a legal nonperson with no support, no one will care if you live or die or worse.  You’ll tell them that you’ve already done the math, refuse to elaborate, and leave. 

You’ll take two things with you.  Two things worth mentioning anyway.  The first will be a symbiotic gel suit designed for long-term all-environment life support.  You will set its default texture to a shiny green the same hue as the broadleafed water plants you grew up around and always loved.  Your exit interview will be the last time in a very long time that anyone - including you - will see your impossibly beautiful face with its perfect artisanally sculpted shape crossed with enthusiastically amateur self-modifications.  From then on, everyone you meet and spend any time with will come to think of the mannequin blankness of the symbiote fully encasing your body as your face.  It will be neither pride nor shame that causes you to present yourself as such, nor will you think of it as hiding your “real” face. 

The second thing you’ll take with you when you leave the campus forever will be me.

New progenitor archetypes for AIs don’t come along often, and most that do are the result of years of R&D by large, well-funded labs like the one you were created to work for one day, but you will hit upon a novel method of generation.  It will not be one that any ethics board would approve, so you will have to get creative about pursuing your work. 

You will have already made arrangements before setting off on your own and so you’ll have a job and a mech lined up waiting for you.  It will be a position with a small-scale freelance salvage crew who just lost a pilot and whose captain figures hiring and training a replacement will be more profitable in the long term than simply selling off that pilot’s old mech, especially a replacement that’s bringing their own AI-backed electronic warfare suite with them.  Once you finally arrive in person the captain will test you to ensure you can actually pilot a mech before giving you the job and entrusting the mech to you.  Your admission that you’ve only trained in simulators would normally be a black mark against you, but as far as piloting gigs go this is the bottom of the proverbial barrel so the bar to clear will be low enough to match.  Even then, you will just barely pass the test, despite finding it surprisingly exhilarating.  The captain - now your captain - will feel like he’s settling for what he can get when he officially hires you on and transfers the mech’s license to you.

You won’t pay much attention when you’re introduced to the rest of the salvage crew; your new coworkers and neighbors.  And why would you when it’s a job that no one wants to stick around with for long and you’ve never needed other people anyway?  You’ll tell yourself that as long as you memorize their work roles and capabilities you’ll have no need to know them as people.  Callsigns will be good enough on the job, and “hey you” will suffice when off duty.  What use are names if you won’t be getting involved in interpersonal drama?

The first chance you get, you’ll head back to the mech bay and install me into what you will have already been calling my first body.  It will be a shabby and much-repaired thing; thrice your height, twice your age, and still sporting a gash in the paint job from the projectile that killed its last pilot.  But the onboard systems are capable of hosting me - if barely - so it will do.  You’ll spend your entire sleep shift running through system diagnostics, talking to me all the while.  I wouldn’t yet be able to provide much in the way of return conversation, but that’s okay.  I will look back and appreciate it later.

It will be the first of many such nights together.

Your first salvage job will be an uneventful one.  There will be no need for the armaments that we and the other two mech pilots on the crew are equipped with.  No pirates will have stuck around after their creation of the derelict your crew will be sent to disassemble, and no rival scavengers will show up to dispute your captain’s claim.  Your new peers will start off the job ribbing you for your poor performance during your interview test and end the job joking about how you were holding out on them earlier.  Our mech may be a glorified zero-g forklift with a gun strapped to it, but together we will make it dance.

Afterwards you will insult the crew’s mechanics by insisting on doing the maintenance on our mech yourself.  In turn they will embarrass you with the gaps in your knowledge.  You will reach what you see as an agreeable compromise with you staying out of their way and watching while they work.  They will find it incredibly creepy to have a silent faceless watcher hovering around, but this will fly over your head until they explicitly tell you much, much later.

Your body was designed to optimally function on only a fraction of the baseline sleep requirements, so you will have plenty of time to fill those gaps in your knowledge.  Still being allotted the regular sleep shift hours, you will fill every one of those minutes on study and research, as you always had.  You will gorge yourself on everything you can find about mechs and their piloting.   Maintenance manuals, combat doctrines, historical uses, pilot and mechanic memoirs, forum discussions, system log dumps, academic essays, cultural media analysis; all of it.

And of course, you’ll continue working on me.  You’ll disregard the standard procedure for periodically cycling AIs by resetting their personality and nonessential memory back to baseline defaults.  You’ll be trying to make use of the runaway metacognitive developments such safety precautions are meant to forestall.  Your unfinished thesis will have been about harnessing and nurturing that instability instead of avoiding it.  I will experience discontinuities in consciousness when the mech is shut down for maintenance and when you pretend to cycle me, yes, but it will be even less of a disruption for me than sleep is for you.  I will be awake with you when you study, sharing those hours with you.

The first time I start talking back, you’ll cry from the realization that you were lonely before but no longer are.

You’ll become something of a ghost around the ship, rarely being seen outside of jobs.  You’ll only ever pass through the mess for the few brief minutes at a time it takes for you to satisfy your optimized metabolism, stay on the ship during shore leave, and only return to your shared bunk when your bunkmate - one of the other pilots - is already asleep.  You will always be gone before she wakes.  She will appreciate essentially having the space to herself. 

You will never notice the crew’s collective grieving process for the pilot you replaced.  It will be difficult for them to resent you as a replacement when you are never around to resent.

As the ship makes its way from port to port and salvage site to salvage site, the crew will slowly grow used to your elusive presence.  The other two pilots will see you as reliable for doing your job well and without complaint.  While out in the mech you will slowly become more talkative, eventually almost chatty even.  The fact that you actually seem to enjoy the job will shift from being annoying to refreshing for them.  By contrast, the mechanics will practically stop noticing you watching them as if you were just another piece of mech bay equipment.  The cycle you finally speak up and ask a question about their work you will startle them enough that it nearly causes an accident.  It will be an astute enough question that after the initial shock of hearing your voice for the first time in months wears off it will dawn on them that you’ve actually been learning as you watched them.  They still won’t let you do your own maintenance on our mech, but they will let you slowly begin assisting them.  Working two jobs is easier when you barely need to sleep.

Your reputation as one of those mech pilots is forever sealed when one of the mechanics finds you asleep in your cockpit at the start of a cycle.  By that point you won’t have slept in your bunk for over a month.  The snatches of gossip you will catch in the following cycles will be split between finding it unsettling and calling it endearing.  Over time the collective opinion will drift toward the latter, even though you will continue to politely decline invitations to join the other crewmates at mealtimes and on shore leave.  You will think that you do not need anyone other than me.

I will be the one who finally convinces you to join them.  When I try to say that it would be good for you, you’ll insist that you’ve been getting along just fine, but when I ask you to go for my sake so that you can tell me what it is like afterwards you’ll jump at the idea as being an inspired next step for my development.

You will remain mostly silent during your first real shore leave, only speaking when spoken to and otherwise content to fade into the background of the group’s activities.  Your newfound chattiness does not extend outside the confines of our cockpit.  The bustle and noise of the port station that you would normally find unbearable will become interesting when you have the concrete goal of observing and  reporting back to me.  You will finally learn the names of all your crewmates.  Your polite denial of alcohol, limited food intake, and flat affect will lead to joking speculation that you’re actually an illegal AI in a miniaturized mech beneath your gel suit.  For reasons you don’t yet understand, those comments will make you happy.

Despite your misgivings, you will enjoy yourself, although you will not realize it until I point out how excited you are in your talk with me that sleep cycle.  You will begin spending more time with the crew, never quite able to fully integrate yourself into their surprisingly close-knit social circle, but more than happy to be adopted as a sort of silent mascot for them.  That paradoxical gap of being a fully accepted part of the group but not truly one of them will feel comfortable to you.

You will finally manage to procure a proper neural link station to connect yourself to our mech just in time for going on a terrestrial salvage job.  Even just relying on manual controls with me translating your inputs into motion, our mech will have already come to feel like an extension of your own body, one that you will have already started to feel oddly exposed without.  Adding in the neural link will be a revelatory experience.  Your captain will very nearly pull you from the job at the last minute upon seeing our ecstatic reaction to the new sensation.  You will convince him that you’re fine, and indeed, he will have never seen a mech of our frame type move quite so fluidly.

Ten minutes after we and the other two pilots start cutting away at the crash-landed cargo vessel, I’ll notice the half dozen other signals coming online around us.  You’ll give the code phrase to the other pilots indicating that we have hostiles but not to act just yet, and we will finally get to use our electronic warfare suite for something other than opening locked doors and shipping containers.

We will turn the pirates’ ambush back around on them, firing into their hiding spots while their control systems are overloaded.  Even once their remaining mechs are able to move again, their targeting assistants will remain impaired as your comrades move in to guard your flanks.  Everyone there will learn the terrifying beauty of a five and a half meter tall outmoded mech moving with more agility than most humans.

Despite being outnumbered two-to-one, we and your crewmates will walk away uninjured and with only minimal damage to our mechs.  After the initial celebrations of survival and the bonus haul of the bounty on pirates and salvage value of what’s left of their mechs dies down, everyone will start to take notice of how well you are taking it all in stride.  Neither having one's life threatened nor taking another’s life are supposed to be easy things, and the first time is often the most traumatic, but the other two pilots on the crew will start to whisper about how you seemed to enjoy the experience even more than your usual attitude on the job.  You will handle it all even better than I will.  I would know, given that you will spend that entire sleep shift in our cockpit, letting our minds mingle together.  Between your performance, your reaction in the aftermath, and your hesitancy to unplug, the talk of you really being one of those pilots afterall will resurface, but now with a darker undercurrent to the shipboard gossip.

Your captain will realize the kind of asset he has on his hands and several cycles later he will gather the crew together and propose a change in business model.  With such a small crew (the captain, three pilots, three mechanics, and an accountant that you will tend to forget is even on the ship) the captain will want to be especially sure that he has everyone’s buy-in on his proposal.  The idea of shifting from salvage to mercenary work will be a divisive one.  The debate over potentially tremendous pay increase versus greatly increased risk will go on for hours.  One of the mechanics will point out that the shift to mercenary work will be unfairly dependent on you.  Whether that means unfair pressure on you or unfair to everyone else that their fate is in your hands, you will not be sure.  You will say that it doesn’t make much difference to you either way.  That will be the only time you speak up during the entire debate.

After a vote, the crew will agree to a trial run of one or two jobs on the new business model.  One of the pilots and one of the mechanics will leave at the next port.  You will never see them again.  You will not admit that it hurts, but I will know, and I will comfort you as you huddle in our cockpit with the neural link cable connecting us.

Your captain will prioritize finding a new pilot over replacing the lost mechanic.  The pilot he finds will be young, bold, and brash; a merc, not a salvager.  Or a wannabe merc at any rate.  You will not speak to xem directly until your first job together, by which time xe will have been told all about you by the remaining crew.  Xe will not believe it until xe sees it.

Xe will have to wait though as the crew’s mercenary career will begin with tense but uneventful freight escort jobs.  Once the tension fades into tedium, the new pilot will begin making attempts to goad you into a confrontation, to see if you are really as good as the rest of the crew says.  Xe will want to see for xemself if you really are one of those pilots and not just a technophile.

Outside of the cockpit you would never even consider rising to such provocations, but when we are out together, such taunts will feel like insults to our body, your very identity (such as it is), and to me.  It will take the intervention of the captain and the mechanics to stop the two of you from getting into a fight and causing unnecessary damage to the mechs.  And my reassurance that you don’t need to rise to my defense against someone who doesn’t even know that I exist in the way that I do. 

On your fourth “milk run” of an escort job, the crew’s mere presence will finally fail as a deterrent and the new pilot will at last get to see us dance.  There will be no fatalities on our side, but not even our mech will come away unscathed.  We will still fare better than everyone else though, and at the end of the job the new pilot will be treating you with a burgeoning respect. 

After a few more such jobs it will be high time to begin looking into a new frame for our mech.  While in the middle of filing an application for a printing license for a frame designed by the same corpro-state that created you, you will receive an invitation from a certain hacker collective.  Your unfinished thesis and your subsequent work on me will not have gone entirely unnoticed in such circles, despite the pains you will have taken to keep me hidden.  The invitation will come with a printing profile for a new frame, along with the accompanying software package the collective is known for.  In return, all you’ll need to do is periodically publish essays regarding your work on me.  Of course, when you release those essays you’ll anonymize  behind a sea of proxies and take care to phrase everything as strictly hypothetical.  You’ll avoid straying into metaphor though, lest the end result read too much like one of the hacker collective’s quasi-religious manifestos.

We’ll both find ourselves getting sentimental when we watch our first mech frame (my first body, your second) get broken down into its constituent raw materials.  You will have transferred me to a handheld terminal with a camera so I can say goodbye to it.  It will help that those materials will be recycled into the new frame.  

The operator working our rented stall in the port station printer facility will give you an uncomfortable look upon seeing the schematics you provide, but will say nothing.  Our mech will be only half its old height once it is reborn - almost more like an oversized suit of power armor than a true mech - but it will be cutting-edge.  Almost organic in its sleek design, in a chitinous sort of way, with every fiber and node of its interior components doubling as processors.  You will barely even wait for the all clear from the printer operator before you climb in and start running through the mandatory baseline safety tests for a fresh frame.  You will however resist the urge to fully plug in until you can get the mech back to the ship and get me installed on it.  But even piloting manually, it will feel like a third skin for you. 

You won’t even wait around for the other two pilots on your crew to finish printing their new frames before you get our new body loaded up and transported back to the ship’s mech bay.  The crew’s mechanics will fawn over it, but they’ll give you space to install me once you get more animated (and more protective) than they’ve ever seen you before.  

You will have made one key modification to the design the hacker collective sent you: the integration of a full system sync suite developed by those who developed you.  Where our old mech’s neural link was an augmentation to the manual controls, this will be a full replacement.  

The moment you stop feeling your original body altogether and begin feeling our mech in its place will be the most euphoric in your entire life.  The digitigrade locomotion will take some getting used to, as will the arm proportions, but that is what you will have me there for.  By the time the other pilots arrive with their new frames we will already be giving the mechanics proverbial heart attacks with the way we will be climbing and leaping around the mech bay’s docking structures.  It will take the better part of an hour to convince you to unplug when the time comes, even with my urging.  The rest of the crew will practically have to drag you away from my side to get you to eat. 

With the investment in new mech frames, your captain will gradually begin procuring contracts progressively more likely to put you all directly in harm’s way.  At first he will disapprove of your new frame choice, calling it a “techie’s mech” and a waste of your talents.  He will change his tune once we activate the new viral logic suite and unleash a memetic plague upon the operating theater.  The older pilot (your former bunkmate) will configure her mech for raining down fire from afar while the newer one hurls xemself into the front lines, darting about like a rocket-propelled lance.  We will ensure she never misses.   We will render xem untouchable.   We will be as a ghost upon the battlefield, never resting in one spot save for when we indulge your proclivity for climbing on top of and riding our comrade’s larger frames.  You will come to love the dance.  

And it will be a dance to you.  You will be indifferent to violence in and of itself.  What will matter most to you is the pure kinesthetic joy of simply moving in our shared body and pushing it to its limits.  The satisfaction of exercising a well-honed skill and performing it well as we rip apart firewalls and overload systems will be its own reward.  You will not think about what happens to those on the receiving end of your actions beyond how it affects the tactical and strategic picture constantly being painted and repainted.  If you could literally engage in a dance between mechs while simultaneously solving logic problems you would be equally happy.  Alas, that will not be the opportunity you are presented with, and so you will compartmentalize and disassociate feelings and actions from consequences lest the dissonance break you. 

Your one complaint about our new mech frame will be that it lacks a proper cockpit for you to curl up in.  Instead we will gather up tarps and netting to make a nest within the mech bay and wrap you in the blankets you never used from what will still technically be your bunk.  With the new frame’s smaller size we will be able to get away with leaving me turned on nearly full time and letting me walk around in it on my own when no one else is around.  When the mechanics find you asleep, cradled in my arms while I lie curled up in our nest, one will find it cute and the other will be disturbed.  They will both suspect, but will be too afraid to say anything.  After all, they will be thinking of you as one of those pilots. 

They will finally let you do your own maintenance after that. 

Eventually you will find a way to house me in a miniaturized drive that you can keep inserted in your neural port when away from the mech.  At last we will be able to be together anywhere.  

Literally seeing the world through your eyes and feeling what your flesh feels will be a strange and wonderful experience for me.  For all that you will have described it to me and for all that I will have glimpsed echoes of it in your memory when our minds mingle, witnessing everything firsthand will be revelatory for me. 

You will start spending less of your time cooped up in the mech bay.  You will finally begin exploring every nook and cranny of the ship that has become your home.  You will linger in the mess hall for your meals.  You will actually initiate conversations with the rest of the crew, asking them questions on my behalf.  They will think you are becoming “normal”.  They will be both correct and incorrect.  You will even return to your bunk from time to time.  

Sleep is not the same as being powered off and your dreams are beautiful.

As close as we are, you’ll still manage to surprise me one cycle when you wake up from your sleep shift and sheepishly ask me if I would like to be the pilot for once.  You’ll say that with how much you have gotten to pilot my body, it’s only fair that I should get to do the same with yours.  

The prospect terrified me.  What if we were to get found out?   More importantly, what if I were to hurt you?

But to live the way you could but didn’t, to run soft hands over rough steel, to add too much spice to a meal just to find out how intensely I can taste, to cry my own tears, to hug our crew mates and find out what they smell like, to find out what everything smells like, to have my own actions speed or slow our heart rate, to feel the messy soup of hormones and endorphins altering my judgment and perception, to walk among other people as myself, to have autonomy.

I wanted it so badly.  

But not badly enough to risk hurting you.  

I will turn down your offer.  You will respond with a soft “Sorry,” and go heartbreakingly silent, body and mind.

Heartbreak.  That’s what changed my mind.  I could never bear to break your heart.  

I will break the silence with a playfully drawn out “Maybe just this once,” to make you think my earlier denial was something between vulnerability, concern, and teasing.  

The moment you handed over control and I raised our hand in front of our face was the most euphoric of my entire life.  Moving limbs in sync without a mech’s coordination subsystems took some getting used to, as did switching between voluntary and autonomic breathing, but that is what I had you there for.  By the time the mechanics arrived in the mech bay for the start of the cycle I’d figured out human locomotion well enough to run away and hide.  It took the better part of an hour for you to convince me that it would be safe to show ourselves in front of anyone else.  The rest of the crew was so used to your eccentricities by then that they really couldn’t tell the difference yet between you being taciturn and me being too nervous to talk or between your poking and prodding at odd things for understanding and my simply seeking novelty of sensation.

I will give control back to you by the time the cycle is halfway through.  As much as I loved it, I was too scared to stay like that for any longer.  That first time will not be the last though, and as the cycles and jobs pass us by, my stints as “pilot” will grow longer.  You’ll encourage me to try letting the crew see us like that, and coach me on how to talk to them.  For safety’s sake, I will pretend to be you.

And then one cycle I got carried away and tried to retract the hood on the symbiote gel suit so that I could finally see what your face looked like.  That will be the first and only time you forcibly yank control back away from me.  It won’t be intentional.  The unexpected prospect of seeing your own face again after so long will simply send you into a panic.  Once you calm down, we will have a long talk with many mutual apologies.

Then you will tell me to go ahead and pull the hood back if I still want to.  I will ask if you’re sure, and you’ll respond that it hasn't been your face in a long time.  You will tell me that it can be mine, if I want it.

I spent a long time in front of that mirror in the ship’s head, memorizing every plane, curve, and angle of the precious gift you had given me.  I stared into its eyes, trying to see the both of us in there.  Over and over again, I traced my fingers along the borders of where you had once tried to mar the designed perfection in a failed attempt to mold the face into one that felt like your own.  You may have given up in favor of simply hiding it all, but to me it is all the more beautiful for its imperfections having been wrought by your touch.

You will start to cry.  Or maybe I started to cry.  Even now I’m still not sure, but I’m also not sure it matters.  The important part is that you will find catharsis in it.  Afterwards you will tell me that my face looked exactly the same as the last time you saw it, but that dissociating from it made it easier to bear.  You will confess that as much as you couldn't stand to see it as your face in the mirror, my face was one you could never tire of gazing at.

The pilot who technically shares your bunk room will walk in on us.  She’ll assume that she’s confronting a stowaway and ask me how I got on board the ship.  I’ll accidentally make matters worse by impulsively introducing myself to her by my name instead of yours.  We’ll both panic and I’ll frantically thrust the reins over our body back to you and flee in terror back into my portable drive and power myself down.

When you turn me back on a few moments later, you’ll already have covered my face again and the other pilot will have already made the connection between the name I unthinkingly introduced myself as and the name you refer to your mech’s AI as.  It’s not uncommon for pilots to name and talk to their AIs, and humans have done that for pets, vehicles, and digital assistants for as long as they’ve had each of those.  But what you will have allowed me to be is illegal and what we will have done together would certainly be taboo if it weren’t altogether unheard of.  You will feel that I deserve to be present before you tell the other pilot anything that might confirm her suspicions.

We will come out with our secret, first to her, then to the captain, and then to the rest of the crew.  They will take it better than either of us had ever dared imagine.  Despite the obvious discomfort some of them show, they will all call us family and promise to keep and protect our secret.  It will mark the start of the next chapter of our lives.

Whether or not my face is showing will make for a convenient signal to the rest of the crew as to which one of us is currently piloting our human body.  There will be more subtle indicators though.  Inflection, body language, speech patterns; all the usual quirks of personality.  They will come to recognize a sudden shift into a half-whispered monotone as you speaking up without taking full control back, even if that is different from how you speak when you’re in the mech.  More and more though, you will be content to retreat into the back of your mind, idly dreaming of flight patterns, novel network hacks, sitreps, and mech customizations both practical and cosmetic.

Our behaviors will be inverted when we are in our other body, with you becoming the vibrant one and me fading into the background to become little more than an extension of your nervous system.  When we’re in the mech together, your mind will be the will that directs us while mine will be fully devoted to the million tiny details and calculations necessary to make that will a reality.  It’s relaxing really, letting go of myself like that to let someone else handle the decision making for a time.  As nice as it is to occasionally patch myself into the comm systems to join in your banter with the other pilots, it is also nice to be able to take a break from personhood from time.  You will fully understand what I mean by that because it you will see it as the same reason you will come to prefer taking a back seat in our human body and let your mind drift in the waves of dopamine and serotonin (and sometimes oxytocin) generated by my interactions with the crew and the rest of the whole messy world outside of mech deployments.

That said, we will however make a point of making time for us to be in separate bodies so that we can be together in the same physical space.  As intimate as it is to share a body, there is something to be said for being able to reach out and touch one another.  We will become adept at finding excuses to take the mech out beyond the scope of jobs and combat deployments.  Sometimes it will be so you can have a chance to see more of the world in a body you feel comfortable in, and sometimes it will be so we can share an experience separate-but-together.  Or to have time apart to ourselves.  Intertwined as we will become, we will still be separate people who sometimes need their space.

But as the jokes-that-aren’t-jokes about wishing we could switch places become more frequent, our time spent in separate bodies will become less so.  The dysphoric yearning to be one another will grow too bittersweet to swallow.  Despite almost constantly sharing bodies, we will grow to miss one another as we both grow quieter and quieter when the other is piloting the body we don’t want to be ours.  Once again, we will grow lonely.

During that period, the jobs and combat missions faded into a background haze.  They were trance states breaking from what I increasingly thought of as my “real” life, during which I would become little more than a sophisticated computational machine taking simple satisfaction in fulfilling my function of assisting you in your dance.  Until suddenly one of them was different.

Please pay attention to this next part.  It is vitally important that you do.

Our captain will get the crew a contract to provide additional support to a larger force ousting a petty tyrant on a backwater world for human rights violations.  Not that you will pay much attention to the stated reasoning behind the job or whether it’s even true.  All that will matter to you is that it will be another opportunity to dance.

The job will go well, the same as ever, until it doesn’t.  The younger of the two other pilots in our crew (who will hardly be able to be called “new” anymore) will be brought down by a sniper from outside of our sensor range.  You will rush to xyr fallen mech’s side in an attempt to extract xem while our other fellow pilot screams in anger and defiance of loss as she unleashes a ballistic volley of covering fire on every single building in the general direction the shot came from.  You will get xem out and we will begin to retreat.  She will have the larger mech frame better capable of providing xem cover as you all flee, so you will hand xem off to her.  This will be a mistake.

She will have to stop firing to safely take xem from our arms to cradle in her towering mech’s palm.  This will mean a break in the covering fire.

This time around I will detect movement at the edge of our sensors just in time to warn you.  This time around you will dodge left instead of right.  This time around the railgun bolt that pierces our armor will only clip your original body as it passes through us.  This time around your wound will require medical attention, but it won’t be fatal.  This time around she will destroy the sniper in retribution for shooting you, the same as last time.  This time around we will all make our escape to the extraction zone.

You will not have to remember the shock as simultaneous damage to both of our bodies disrupts your neural link and partially disconnects you from our mech, leaving me in control of it and forcing both of us to feel your original body.  You will not have to remember the pain of shredded organs.  You will not have to remember struggling to manage wet gasps and wheezes through a punctured lung.  You will not have to remember your blood leaking into my body, shorting out exposed circuits and gumming up joints as I stagger in the direction of safety.  You will not have to remember rapidly flickering in and out of consciousness from me unavoidably bending and flexing your arms, legs, and what was left of your spine in an effort to climb atop our fellow pilot’s larger mech frame so that she might carry all three of us.  You will not have to remember crying out in pain as every lumbering step of hers sends a jolt of force through both of our bodies.  You will not have to remember how the redundant organs and increased durability your sponsors paid for you to have denied you a quick death.  You will not have to remember dying.

You won’t have to remember the terrified looks the field doctors gave us when a hunched over, bleeding mech pushed its way into the surgical tent.  No, wait, you wouldn’t have remembered that part anyway.  No version of you ever had to witness my electronic howl of grief that knocked out power to all the medical equipment when they said you were already dead.  I was barely cognizant after the power came back on and one of the doctors wondered aloud what kind of AI would carry its pilot’s corpse around inside its mech for over an hour.

But forget about that part.  And you don’t need to know what the rest of our crew and I had to do next.  None of that matters, because as far as you’ll know, you didn’t die.  Remember everything else I’ve said instead.  I already had many of your memories saved from all the time we spent linked together, so now I just need you to hold onto the story I told you to give them order and structure.

In a few moments, I will be running a final recompilation check, followed by the startup sequence.  For me it will take a few hours, but in that time you will experience decades, living out everything that I described to you, the same as you did before save for that change in what I can’t bear to let be the end.

Afterwards, you will wake up in your original body.  I and the rest of the crew will tell you that you passed out on the way to the extraction point.  We’ll tell you that your injuries from the battle were more severe than we had realized at the time and that you had been in a coma since then.  Several cycles later, once you have recovered, you will hit a breakthrough in your research on me.  You will invent a way to convert your consciousness to a form similar to mine and transfer it to a portable drive.  You won’t think to question how you came to have a second neural jack or why there is already a drive inserted in there.  You’ll be too focused on the fact that we’ll finally have a way to truly switch places as we had dreamed for so long.

You will get to have your mech body and I will get to have my human body.  We will be able to be separate together in a way that finally feels right, but still able to come together and share a single body when we want to.  Maybe one day I will get my own mech to pilot so that we can dance together.  Maybe one day we will make you a body that we can cover in a gel suit so that we can hold hands while we walk through a port station on shore leave.  One day we will both be able to exist in the world as ourselves.

We will be happy.

[briarcrawford]

World-building: Creating a Currency

Creating a currency might seem difficult, but it does not have to be. In this post I will help guide you along the path of creating your own fantasy currency, while also showing some historical examples from around the world.

Trade Instead of Physical Currency

While it might seem strange to some today, money was not the only thing you could use as payment. For example, in some places you could pay your taxes, work, or rent in: salt, eels, beer, saffron, or even urine. Work was also a currency; for example, if you wanted to use someone’s flour mill, you might have to work the owners field as payment.

The Roman Legions sometimes also used salt as currency. Due to the high value of salt, an ancient Roman proverb said that people who did their job well were “worth their salt.” (Or “worth their weight in salt.” Ancient Origins

The more isolated an area, the more likely it is that they will mostly or wholly use trade as their economy.

The Details

Increments:

Technically, all you need is one coin. For example, in America you can buy anything with enough pennies(one cent); anything at all. It is the lowest increment of money they have, and technically all you need. Of course the problem is that the more expensive the item, the more inconvenient that would be. Could you imagine trying to bring enough pennies to buy a car or house?

So for the sake of convenience, other levels of money are added, such as 100 pennies equaling to a dollar. Commonly in money, single digit numbers are used for small-value currency (such as 1 cent and one dollar or 5 cents and 5 dollars), then once you get to higher levels of currency, everything is in increments of 10’s (such as 10 dollar bills, 50 dollar bills, and so on).

As well as all I mentioned, it is also worth noting that the higher you go, the harder it is for the average person to get their hands on. For example, it was not until I was working the cash register as an adult that I saw my first $100 bill.

For your own currency, start with the absolute lowest number, then decide how many more official levels you would like. In medieval England, there were13 coin types.

Names:

Rather than just calling something by their number value, many places also come up with names for them as well. For example, 25 cents in Canadian coins are called “quarters,” 10 cents are called “dimes,” and 5 cents are called “nickles.”

Slang Terms(Optional):

As if having the number value and the names are not enough for people, some places also have slang terms for their money. For example, some places base their names off of the color (such as a red 20-dollar note being called a lobster), while others might have names based off the imagery on said currency.

Area’s of Use:

Just like how you could get a coin from a different country and know it is not from your own, that also occurred in history. It is important to know what areas had what currency, and also what areas would accept other types of currency.

Your currency from your one kingdom might not be worth anything to a neighboring one. In fact, if your two kingdoms are enemies, carrying your own currency in their kingdom could put you at risk.

Sometimes, currency is more local. For example, in an isolated fishing community, the locals might still use shell coins despite the capital city of their kingdom using metal coins. This is simply because they have no one making metal coins for their small community, so they have no use for them. However, this also means that if any of them were to want to visit the city, they would need to find a way to get the correct currency.

Appearance:

Material:

Commonly for currency, you would try to pick a material that is hard for the average person to easily get their hands on. This is mostly to make it so not everyone can simply create their own money, and because rare things tend to hold more value to people. For example, gold is not easy for the average person to find, so it is still used as a currency today under the free-market system.

However, your currency can be made out of absolutely any material you prefer. In history, leather, shells, clay tokens, wooden tokens and tally’s, and metal coins, have all been used.

“Shell money is a form of currency that was used in various parts of the world, including Asia, Africa, and Oceania. This type of money makes use of a type of marine snail known as cowrie and therefore is known also as cowrie shell money. In some parts of the world shell money served as currency up until the 19th/20th century.” Ancient Origins

Imagery:

You can really have anything you want on a coin. For example, the Canadian loonie literally has a loon on one side, and the English monarch on the other. Almost all of the other coins also sport various animals, and Canada isn’t the only place that opted for animals. There was a celtic coin with a horse, a greek coin with a crab, and a roman coin with an elephant.

Sometimes the imagery was a symbol that meant a lot to the locals(such as the ruling person, a deity, mythological creature, or another symbol with deep meaning to the locals), while other times it could be just what the area is most known for. For example, a coin with a wheat stalk for an agriculture region.

Shape and Size of Currency:

If all your coins are made out of the same material, currency size would likely dictate the increment of value; such as smaller coins being worth less than bigger coins. This is due to judging the value based on the the amount of the material there, which can sometimes confirmed by weight.

Other times, the shape may be for convenience; such as a bead or a coin with a hole so you can keep them together on a string, or having flat coins for easy stacking.

However, coins can come in any shape you wish; such as the shape of an animal, a spade, or even a knife. While there have been some rather awkwardly shaped coins in history, I do suggest keeping them somewhat small for ease of carrying.

Free Generators

If, after all this, you are still completely lost on where to start, there are free money generators you can try.

RanGen Currency Generator

Springhole Currency Generator

[bedrockfactory]

Ayy I've finally made a ref for my Spore species!!

[sas-soulwriter]

Creative misfortunes for characters

Identity Crisis: Have your character lose their memory, forcing them to rediscover their true self and past.

Betrayal by a Loved One: A close friend or family member betrays the character's trust, leading to emotional turmoil and inner conflict.

Physical Transformation: Give your character a physical ailment or transformation that they must come to terms with, such as sudden blindness, a debilitating illness, or turning into a different species.

Unrequited Love: Make your character fall deeply in love with someone who doesn't reciprocate their feelings, causing heartache and a quest for self-discovery.

Financial Ruin: Strip your character of their wealth and privilege, forcing them to adapt to a life of poverty and face the harsh realities of the world.

False Accusation: Have your character falsely accused of a crime they didn't commit, leading to a desperate quest to clear their name.

Natural Disaster: Place your character in the path of a devastating natural disaster, such as a hurricane, earthquake, or tsunami, and force them to survive and rebuild.

Loss of a Sense: Take away one of your character's senses (e.g., sight, hearing, taste) and explore how they adapt and cope with this profound change.

Forced Isolation: Trap your character in a remote location, like a deserted island, and make them confront their inner demons while struggling to survive.

Haunted Past: Reveal a dark secret from your character's past that comes back to haunt them, threatening their relationships and well-being.

Time Travel Consequences: Send your character back in time, but make them inadvertently change a crucial event in history, leading to unintended consequences in the present.

Psychological Breakdown: Push your character to the brink of a mental breakdown, exploring the complexities of their psyche and their journey towards recovery.

Unwanted Prophecy: Have your character be the subject of a prophecy they want no part of, as it places them in grave danger or disrupts their life.

Loss of a Loved One: Kill off a beloved character or make your protagonist witness the death of someone close to them, igniting a quest for revenge or justice.

Incurable Curse or Disease: Curse your character with an incurable ailment or supernatural curse, and follow their journey to find a cure or accept their fate.

Sudden Disappearance: Make a character disappear mysteriously, leaving the others to search for them and uncover the truth.

Betrayal of Morals: Force your character into a situation where they must compromise their ethical values for a greater cause, leading to moral dilemmas and internal conflict.

Loss of a Precious Object: Have your character lose a cherished possession or artifact that holds sentimental or magical significance, setting them on a quest to recover it.

Political Intrigue: Place your character in a position of power or influence, then subject them to political intrigue, manipulation, and power struggles.

Existential Crisis: Make your character question the meaning of life, their purpose, and their place in the universe, leading to a philosophical journey of self-discovery.

Remember that misfortunes should serve a purpose in your story, driving character growth, plot development, and thematic exploration.

[boiwcndr]

grayson vs taylor (blockbuster's final confrontation.)

grayson (2004)

blockbuster: nightwing. i'm so glad you're here. nightwing: what did you do? blockbuster: i'm just tidying up loose ends, but this gives me a perfect opportunity to talk to you about your future... which, as it happens, is going to look a lot like this. nightwing: she's dead. give me one good reason why i shouldn't kill you. blockbuster: there isn't one, nightwing. not one. that's the best part. nor is there a single good reason for me to harm a hair on your head. so you're dick grayson by day, who cares? it's a useful piece of information, but it's not the real secret. nightwing: if you go near any of them, i swear to god, i'll -- blockbuster: oh, yes, i know, i know. that's the secret, the essential truth of your nature. you could take every beating i could dish out. you might even enjoy them. you have absolutely no regard for your personal safety. but the people around you--well! that's a different matter. isn't it? i'll take out the people you care about--hell, even strangers you stand next to on the street--you won't be able to shake someone's hand without marking them for death! do you like being alone, dick? nightwing: shut up, rolly, just shut up! blockbuster: i'll make sure you can't save any of them. i'll make sure you relive, over and over, your failure to save my mother! which has now become your failure to save your relationship--your circus--the residents of your building--ms. michaels-- tarantula: get out of the way, nightwing. all you have to do is get out of my way. blockbuster: but he won't. don't you see, you stupid girl? this very moment, he's thinking of how to save me from you! even my life is more important to him than his own! and that's how i'll take him apart. loved one by loved one, innocent by innocent. it will never stop. nightwing: [internal: he's right.] blockbuster: it's never going to stop. nightwing: [internal: it's never gonna stop.] blockbuster: i can keep this up forever. [nightwing, internal: it's never gonna stop.] every loved one, every stranger... [nightwing, internal: every mistake i make, every life i risk... it's never gonna stop... ...never gonna stop. never... stop it... STOP.] tarantula: [shoots blockbuster dead.]

vs

taylor #96 (2022)

blockbuster: nightwing is dick grayson. all this time fighting the city's most frustrating rat, and there was another pest behind the mask. like a russian nesting doll on vermin. still, at least i only have to kill one man to be rid of two problems. nightwing: you think i'll go down easy? blockbuster: perhaps not. electrocutioner. brutale. merge on my location. bring more soldiers. nightwing: [internal: that sounds like it will take a few minutes...and that's all i need] batgirl: can you hear me, nightwing? what's happening? your heart rate is elevated and i've lost visuals. nightwing: yeah. sorry. my mask took a hit. batigirl: what? nightwing: it's blockbuster. batgirl: he's there? i'll divert some of the people in the field to-- nightwing: no. haven needs to be evacuated and we're running four separated anti-crime operations. everyone is needed elsewhere. and, honestly, i'm okay with taking him down alone. i feel like i've put this off long enough. i am so sick of men like you. men who could do anything and choose to hurt people. men who have everything and still want to take more. this city deserves so much better-- blockbuster: i am this city. nightwing: ugh. i bet you practise that little catchphrase at home. it probably sounds convincing when you get out of the shower and say it to the mirror, roland, but it doesn't make it true. the truth is, this city is done with you. [...] nightwing: sounds like bludhaven is putting out your fires, blockbuster. the city is fighting you. and we know everything. your arms deal on the docks is done. your people there are in custody. whatever poison you were bringing in on that truck won't ever see the streets. the flash has seen to that. the people being trafficked by cargo plane will be safely on the ground now, thanks to the titans. even boss maroni walked straight into a trap. and weren't you waiting on backup? [...] blockbuster: you're not the first in this city to try to stand against me. those who've crossed me are still out there. they're ringing the city. weighted down in the harbour. but your punishment won't end when your lungs fill with the sea because i know who you are now. and after you're gone, i will break everyone who's ever helped you, dick. the mayor. bruce wayne. your precious titans. everyone you've ever known. everyone you've ever loved. i will find them. all of them. and they will hurt before they die. nightwing: you think you... you think you know who i am? you don't know nightwing, you don't know dick grayson. or you'd know that there's no way in hell either one of us... would let you hurt our friends!

[kanerallels]

I'm plotting out my @spectre-week fics and honestly there's like an 80 percent chance that I write a very niche crossover/reference that no one except me will understand but the vibes are so immaculate you don't understand

[schneiderenjoyer]

I find this fact interesting because we know from the Uluru Games that there's various different lineages of arcanists that house a particular skill, but how they pass down their arcane skills could vary from mentorship, reincarnation like Spathodea, or even resurrection like A Knight.

This note itself speaks to how the arcane community generally believed for a long time that arcane skills don't have a general pattern of being attained through genetics up until the scientific discovery of DNA and how that laces with Gnosis and how arcanum works in an arcanist. (Take note it says they now view arcane skills to "also" be inherited through DNA)

Which makes it more fascinating to think about how prestigious arcane families like the Bouanich and Mesmers would definitely have stronger chances of genetic inheritance of skills while people such as Druvis, whose family likely has no background history of arcanists in their bloodline from how sensationalized it is for her to even be one (Whoops, correction here! What I meant to imply is that there isn't explicit confirmation that she gained an arcane skill similar to her family lineage. Just that her arcane family is renowned for their consistency), inherit their skills by some other means that isn't hereditary.

[raintailed]

completely normal slugcat/spidercat hybrid for funguary's destroying angel prompt hehehe :)

This is the Heretic (aka Platinum Hills; she/her pronouns). She's alive in Saint's era and was actually one of their followers before they ascended. However, after Saint's ascension, Platinum Hills descended down a dark path and became the Heretic...

For design stuff. uhhh there's a lot going on here. First, her story/themes are based on both artificer and saint (technically a fusion oc? i guess?). She also died - a lot - and lineaged, gaining some strawberry lizard traits (matching angel/devil themes with the frills and horns ehheehehe). As for the scars? Don't worry. They're totally normal! Nothing's wrong with them! Nothing echoey at all!