windyfiend

[windyfiend]

Where does the idea that Connor would go back to the DPD even come from? 😭

It's so much more likely that Hank would leave the force instead of Connor going back there. They wouldn't want him back! He wouldn't want them back! He was never a real cop there, he was only sent by Cyberlife to assist in the deviant cases, likely because Cyberlife HAD to step in somehow since it was their responsibility and their androids who deviated.

I don't mean fanfiction, write whatever your hearts desire, but people actually believe this is what would happen after the credits. But why?

Markus tells him like 5 times that his place is with his people, he frees a gazillion of androids to shift the balance of power in the androids' benefit, he even stands on that podium with the Jericho crew. So why would he abandon them - his people who need his skill and whatever he can offer the android movement WHO DON'T EVEN HAVE RIGHTS YET, to assist the human cops who bullied him instead?

[windyfiend]

A little obsessed lately with researching novel-writing, and writing as a medium different from screenplay.

I pulled all my favorite books from my own shelves and wrote down the patterns in their first paragraphs, which generally match the advice in writing books and youtube essays:

Begin with the motive, then introduce the main character who carries that motive through the story (A Psalm for the Wild-Built, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan) - mood: determined

Begin with the main character doing what they love/what they do best, which is juxtaposed with expectation (Fahrenheit 451, I Who Have Never Known Men, Grendel, Legends and Lattes, House in the Cerulean Sea, Murderbot Diaries) - mood: curious

Begin with a description of a place, then how this place is changed on this particular eventful day (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Titus Groan) - mood: anticipation

Begin with a description of a place, then how the main character feels about it (Dealing with Dragons, Howl's Moving Castle) - mood: interest in the character

Begin with a side-character finding the main character in the aftermath of the inciting incident (Babel) - mood: empathy

Begin with a character monologue explaining their ideas that carry the rest of the story (A Tale for the Time Being, Harriet the Spy) - mood: fascination with a character's obsession

Begin at the moment routine is interrupted by something unique (Piranesi, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, Stargate) - mood: mystery

[windyfiend]

FMA is fascinating because there aren't many works about what it means to be an atheist and a heretic to a god that you can not only see, but who has personally snatched body parts off of your living body and made fun of you for it.

[windyfiend]

Pros of re-reading your own fic

a good time;

Has exactly the tropes you like and the characterization you want to read;

Gratification: yes you did finish a thing and yes you did do good;

just a very fun time all around.

Cons of re-reading your own fic:

Is that another TYpO

[windyfiend]

Bluesky & fandom education data

I'm on bsky now. I'm mildly active on Bluesky now (or "bisky" as I say it in my head thanks to the urls) at destinationtoast.bsky.social. Mostly meaning I'll be crossposting my more major fandom stats there and responding to being tagged, as I used to do on Twitter.

How educated is fandom? I just got tagged in a thread asking if I knew of any data about fandom education levels:

#FanStudies folks, I'm looking for information on educational attainment in fandom, particularly adult fans (≥25 yo). I've been through the Ao3 2013 & 2024 surveys; Fansplaining 2019 shipping & Overflow survey. No ?. I know acafans are a thing, but not numbers. Any suggestions?

— Justine Debelius (@jwoodelius.bsky.social) December 1, 2024 at 12:14 PM

I don't know any relevant research. If you do, please share!

For the heck of it, let's run an unscientific poll here, because everyone loves polls. Sorry for any US-centric terminology; I modified the categories from the US census but tried to internationalize.

(For those of you currently working on degrees, I salute you and wish you the best! 🫡 )

[windyfiend]

Asexuality is just constantly wondering if you're missing out and having to remind yourself you can't miss out on a activity that you had no interest in to begin with

[windyfiend]

Continued from Chapter 1

Gray-blue water gurgled at her knees where she knelt in the bottom of the boat, her arms aching with the fury of paddling as fast as she could go, her throat sore from panicked breath, her wounded hand leaking blood with every throb of sharp pain. The distance to the island dock wasn’t closing fast enough. The thin blanket, which had blocked the leak for a short heroic time, now loosed and floated in the murky water that rose inside the boat.

The edge of the dock drew so slowly nearer, almost close enough for Stella to reach, while the boat sagged and dipped with the weight of the water. Stella sloshed to the bow, stretched her body precariously over the edge and, with the shining oar, touched the corner of the dock. A flash of light sparked gold, and the oar thinned into a sparkling rope that wrapped the wooden piling and tied itself in a knot. Stella tightened the rope around her arm and hauled herself up to the dock before the boat sank like a ghost beneath the ripples.

Stella crumpled against the piling. She clung to the wood, her eyes squeezed shut, her body swaying with the memory of water.

The rope of light dispersed into golden ribbons that reformed against her belt and settled there as a shining buckle.

The midday sun warmed her back and dried her clothes stiff and salty. Stella stared across the waves toward the way she had come: the thin horizon where the water bled from blue to red. There was no sign of the drowned trees or the stone bridge to nowhere.

She crawled shakily to her feet. Blood dripped from her fingers. Stella examined the slick gash in her palm. She felt pain, but otherwise nothing.

Behind her, somewhere on the island that had saved her, a tiny melody echoed. It sounded like a music box.

The village was long abandoned. Weeds grew in the jagged cracks of the street and clung to the dirty stucco walls, gashed by boarded windows, that stood silenced by doors nailed shut. Rooftops sagged and eaves collapsed. High grasses buzzed where gardens had been. A tree grew out of the crumbled remains of a rusted car.

Stella followed a ragged path where bramble and thorned vines tugged on her clothes as she passed. On the other side of a narrow alley, a salty breeze hissed through the scrub that had buried the village in their tangled roots.

The music was coming from above.

Stella cradled her injured hand against her chest, found a stick among the broken flagstones and used it to hack her way between the high weeds until she stood at the threshold of an abandoned flower shop. The door bowed off its hinges, the frame shattered as if it had been bludgeoned in. The glass of the front display cut sharp and frosted with salt and age. Stella ventured inside, where the curled black stems of dead flowers crackled under her feet, strewn across the floor like the carnage of war.

The ceiling above her creaked with movement. Stella caught her breath and looked up, listening to the second floor where light footsteps clicked and swished to the song of a music box. Someone above was dancing.

Stella rubbed the dust from her hair and thought she should call for the dancer’s attention, but her pounding heart stayed her voice. She listened to the shuffling steps and she imagined a person up there happily alone with their thoughts, undisturbed, with no expectation of visitors on this vacant island. To interrupt would be to cause annoyance. No, she couldn’t bring herself to change someone else’s day. Stella would find another way; she would take care of herself without inconveniencing anyone else. She would be fine on her own.

Stella turned back toward the open doorway when her foot struck an empty vase that lay among the dead flowers. The vase rolled loud and rumbling across the wooden floor.

Above, the footsteps stopped. The dancer’s muffled voice lilted smooth as a breath of cigarette smoke. “Who’s there?”

“I’m sorry!” Stella blurted, and her voice sounded too loud in the ruin. Her throat scratched dry, her heart hammering. “I didn’t mean to intrude. I’m going now!”

The music stopped. The footsteps tapped quietly across the ceiling. “No, you can stay. There’s nowhere else to go. I’ve tried.”

Dribbles of sawdust shook loose from the ceiling and filled the room with a dreamy haze. Movement shifted at the top of the stairs, where a tall, pink-cloaked shape appeared with a silver music box cradled in one hand and a cigarette holder in the other. Shining white eyes blinked at Stella out of the darkness that would be their face. “You’re not what I expected,” they thought aloud.

Stella shifted from one foot to the other and glanced down at her salty, blood-streaked clothes. She kept her head down. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry for what?” There was a drawl of a smile in the smoky voice.

For being a disappointment. For drawing attention. For interrupting. For existing. Stella stared at the floor and shrugged.

The stranger inhaled on the cigarette holder. Its end glowed hot orange and faded. “I meant, I thought you were Charon or one of his goons. You don’t look like a goon to me. You’re not, are you?”

“I don’t know who Charon is.” Stella watched while the stranger descended the staircase with the poised grace of a movie star.

“Charon is the ferryman,” the stranger explained over the creaking steps. “The Spiritfarer. He can’t leave his boat anymore, so he sends his minions to find runaway souls--”

They stopped on the last step, frozen with the cigarette holder suspended in their fingers, their shining eyes locked on the light that glowed at Stella’s belt. “Are you sure you don’t know Charon?” A quiet sharpness ticked into their voice. “He’s as tall as this room, has terrible posture, wears an ugly gray cloak, and has a light just like that one?”

Stella felt suddenly cold and sweaty. She looked down at the bright light at her belt.

The stranger jabbed the cigarette holder in their mouth, inhaled deeply, and exhaled a long swirl of blue smoke. “There’s only one Everlight, and you have it. Charon’s gone, isn’t he. It’s you now.”

“I didn’t mean it!” Stella shuffled a step forward, her voice squeaking with fluttery panic. “He tried to take this gash on my hand, and it was hurting him so I just didn’t think, I took the light and I used it to take back the pain that’s really mine, and I didn’t know that doing that would kill him, it was an accident--”

“Shoooosh, shush, shush, sshhhh!” The stranger waved their cigarette in bright orange patterns as if casting a magic sigil of calm. “Shh. I see. You didn’t kill him, let’s get that straight. We’re all spirits of people who are already dead, including Charon. The Everlight chose you and let him off the hook, so he finally moved on. Honestly he’s been talking about retirement for months. You did him a favor.”

Stella breathed and listened to the subtle slowing of her own heart. She didn’t kill him. Charon had been waiting for someone to take the Everlight from him so that he could leave. She’d done the right thing.

With a nervous swallow, Stella plucked the Everlight from her belt and held it out. It shone like a tiny sun in her wounded palm. “You can have it. You know more about everything than I do.”

The stranger hummed with an amused sound. They held out their hand but, when Stella placed the Everlight in their palm, the golden light dispersed into a flurry of ribbons that reformed at Stella’s belt like a child skittering back to its mother.

The stranger pinched the cigarette holder from their mouth and tapped the ashes in a trickle of dust. “It chose you. Nobody else can use it. You’re the Spiritfarer now, whether or not you want to be.”

“I don’t know what that means.” Stella wrinkled her nose and held the Everlight between her hands, her skin glowing red with its brightness. She thought back to the stranger’s description of Charon. “You mean I’m the ferryman? But Charon’s boat sank at the dock. I can’t be a ferryman without a boat.”

“I can help you with that.” The stranger spoke smooth and smiling. “On the condition that you take me with you, off this disgusting island.”

Stella’s eyes widened. “But weren’t you hiding from the Spiritfarer?”

“All Charon cared about was shoving me through the Everdoor,” the stranger huffed through a billow of smoke. “Like he had a quota to meet and I was his last chance. I’m not going out like that. So this was the last place he would look for me, and I’ve been stuck here alone for a week with only sardines and cigarettes to keep me sane, and I’m all out of sardines. So come with me and let’s find you a boat, Spiritfarer.”

The stranger strode primly past, the music box in one hand and the cigarette in the other, their tiny steps tapping over the dead husks of flowers. They were almost out the door when the Spiritfarer called: “My name’s Stella.”

The stranger looked back. There was a smile in their shining eyes. “Gwen. Now let’s go, Stella. You and I are getting out of here.”

[windyfiend]

Kara Detroit spam cuz what else is new with me

I drew the 3rd one in ms paint and didn't notice the circle was off center 😎

Also did the Madra album cover trend , I might redraw tho

[windyfiend]

Reblog if you’re over 20 and still read/write fan fiction.

I’m curious!

[windyfiend]

Your gender is now the first randomized wikipedia article you get. No rerolls.

[windyfiend]

The ocean loomed in the night, a thunder of mountain waves and shrieking wind surged and exploded violent white. The water roared, lightning cackled bright behind stormclouds, and Stella was about to die.

She could no longer feel the cold. She couldn’t move her limbs, her torn muscles, her stiff hands on the edge of the bucking boat, her face numb from the striking waves. Freezing water crashed over her until she couldn’t tell if she was above or below the waves and each burning breath was thick with saltwater, every gulp of air was a convulsing gasp and the boat tossed, catching the skin of her palm in nails and splintered wood before the vessel twisted out of her reach and flung her into the knives of water and froth.

She spun with the foam that rushed in her nose and burned her throat, all she could hear was the pressing snarl of muffled waves and the hiss of the bubbling deep and there was no more air, no sky, no ground, only darkness and endless spinning while somewhere lightning flashed and the storm, the air, the world fell away.

She sank, pulled down and down by the devouring depths, and

for the first time since she was small, 

Stella felt at peace.

--

A universe of water suspended her body in weightless dark where the storm could not reach. Little fish wiggled close and darted away.

In the shadows, a monstrous shape slithered.

It circled her with a writhe of scales, spinning a current that swung her feet around her head. Stella did not wake. The beast slipped into the dark and was gone.

Her spinning slowed. Her body sagged and tilted in the space of open water, her short hair floating like jellyfish tendrils, her throat stretched toward the blackness below, her feet curled to the flashes of watery light above.

Teeth emerged from below. Great jaws inhaled her and closed like a casket.

After a bubbling swish of scales and fins, nothing remained in the watery space where Stella had been.

--

A gentle glow warmed her sleeping face. Her body sank heavy in a pile of blankets that swayed to the gurgle of lapping water. A minty breeze rustled in distant branches.

Stella squinted in the light. Blurrily she blinked at the shapes above her until she discerned knobby fingers, long gray claws, and a seed of light pinched between them.

Her body slacked among the blankets, her limbs asleep. Stella thought she should be afraid of the faceless giant that hunched misshapen over her, masked by jagged tatters of cloth, but there was no malice in the curl of their bony hand on the staff, a glint of lace at their wrist.

The long claws let go of the light, which brightly ribboned through the air and suspended in the spiral top of the staff like a shining spider in its web. 

Stella remembered the spinning water. She had struggled like a fly in the foam and shrieking wind until the deep had consumed her in cold. She could no longer taste saltwater. Her limbs no longer ached from clinging to the boat.

Hot tears pressed behind her eyes. She was dead, but the storm still chased her.

The hooded figure hummed in a low, thoughtful rumble. Gray claws touched her wrist, gently turned her hand open, and revealed the angry red wound that pitted her palm. Stella recalled the bent nail and splintered wood, the twist of metal while the boat wrenched out of her grip in the waves.

While Stella stared at the deep scar, contemplating the link between body and spirit, the figure lowered their staff over Stella’s wound. The light flared once, and the scar faded away as if smoothed by a sculptor’s touch.

The hooded figure showed Stella their own open hand as if asking her to read their palm. While Stella watched, the skin of the stranger’s palm split open and the same pitted scar spread deep into their gray flesh.

Horror dropped cold in Stella’s stomach. Her throat choked hot.

This person had taken her wound. They suffered because they chose to take her pain, and she trembled with the storm in her mind. If she hadn’t been here, they would not now be in pain. If she hadn’t been hurt, there would be no pain to take! If she had done better at hiding herself, if she had only died faster, their paths would never have crossed and this stranger would be better off for having never met her. If only, if only she didn’t exist!

Determined to make right her mistakes, Stella leaped out of the blankets, pulled down the stranger’s staff, snatched the seed out of its suspended spiral, gripped the figure’s bony wrist and pressed the light over the stolen scar. Give it back! she screamed in her head. If someone deserved to suffer, it should be her.

The light flashed and sparkled. Through her tears and shaking breaths, Stella watched the wound fade from her protector’s brittle hand. A moment later, she felt the splitting skin in her own palm: a warm, throbbing ache spread in her hand and wrist, and the wound and its accompanying pain returned to her.

After the transference was complete-- when the wound and its pain pulsed hot in Stella’s hand, and the gray hooded figure stretched their healed palm --the cloak bowed deep and bent as if in mourning. Their low, sighing breath swirled with sparkling gold. Their healed hand grasped the twisted staff and braced for what was next.

The cloaked figure shimmered and began to fade.

Stella choked on a breath. She leaped forward with the seed shining through her fingers, and she shoved the light at the darkness under the cloak, illuminating the inside of the tattered fabric, searching for the person who needed and deserved what she could now give, but all she found where a face should have been was nothing.

There was nothing left.

Stella stumbled into the empty bow of the narrow boat.

Overhead, the round arch of a stone bridge sparkled and faded as if a small sun had just passed beneath.

She sank to her knees in the blankets.

With a stifled sob, Stella hid the light against her chest.

--

She knelt alone in the weathered wooden boat, floating in a blood-red sea. The tops of albino trees peeked over the surface of the crimson-flooded valley, their bright white leaves waving toward the sky as if they were drowning.

Water seeped at her knees.

Stella wrestled with the quilts, scrambled to her feet and pulled the pile away from the bottom of the boat, where a trickle of pink water pooled and rippled at her ankles.

She was sinking.

Memories of ocean waves shivered in the back of her throat and panicked in her chest while Stella gathered up the heaviest blankets and rolled them overboard with a dull slop and a heavy splash. The boat buoyed lighter, its bow higher above the bloody water, but the leak still trickled a slow, cruel threat.

She searched the boat for a cup or a bowl, and the seed of light made a shimmering sound before a golden bucket appeared between her hands. Stella paused a small slack-jawed moment before the water at her feet shocked her into action and she proceeded to bail blood-water out of the sinking boat. She stoppered the leak by shoving a thin blanket into the crack then, breathing through her hammering heart, Stella searched the horizon for land.

There was something in the haze in the distance: a tree, a straight wall, maybe the point of a rooftop on a little island. There would be people there who could help her, or who would lock her away for killing the kind savior in the tattered cloak.

Stella searched the boat, but there was no motor and no oars. Cautiously, with a braced grimace, she held the golden bucket in front of her and directed toward it a hesitant, silent request.

The bucket disintegrated into ribboning light, which eagerly reformed in her hands as a golden oar.

Stella gently cradled the warm shimmering oar  as if it were alive, but the urgent sound of trickling water compelled her to paddle with all her strength toward the rooftop on the island in the distance.

--

Behind her, a quiet slither of scales slipped beneath the red water, following the shadow of the sinking boat.

--

On to Chapter 2

[windyfiend]

Honestly I am very okay with getting a finale movie.

Ninety minutes is a movie. That's pacing and story beats and consistent quality from beginning to end. Because it's a movie. Because it's one script. Because focus and resources and creativity are condensed into one collective vision and I am here for it.

So, yes! GO finale movie all the way!

[windyfiend]

"love is what makes us human" actually it's 'select all images with boat' but go off I guess

[windyfiend]

today's bug things are these metal pill bugs by Matt Noris!

[windyfiend]

This user supports AO3

This user is anti-censorship

This user believes in “don’t like, don’t read”

This user believes in “ship and let ship”

This user believes that fiction tastes and preferences do not dictate moral character

[windyfiend]

The more I think about Spiritfarer, the more I really need to write fic because I'm mad about it. I'm mad because the characters made me care, I identify too deeply with them, and some things need to be explored in another format in a slightly separate AU.

It's been a really long time since I've written out of anger.

*checks ao3*

There are 88 fics for Spiritfarer?? Just 88?!

I'm fixing this.

And also probably adding an epic world-ending plot because it's me and I am contractually obligated to end the world.

[windyfiend]

I think I need to run another forum rpg to get back into the writing and worldbuilding mindset, but I don't want to deal with the drama of supervising players.

This is where AI would actually be great. I'll be the GM. AI can run 3-4 players to respond to my prompts. Then I have to steer the plot and setting according to whatever the AI characters do.