jupitermelichios

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so much of the experience of being a person who enjoys reading bdsm fic written by adults who know what they're talking about and aren't ashamed to get a bit weird with it is just opening AO3, desperately hunting for anything in your fandom de jour as good as what the stucky writers will give you, and most of the time, failing to find it and resigning yourself to spending yet another evening in the MCU trenches

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So I decided to play around with letting Astarion go full mad with power supervillain as research for a fic and uh...

This legit might be the single horniest animation in one of the horniest games of the last decade, and yes i am including the bear-fucking in that

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the cool and fun thing about having a tumblr is that i have somewhere to go when i want to dunk on noted papier mache ghost enthusiast helena blavatsky and my partner is asleep and the joke isn't funny enough to be worth waking him up for

the downside is that i was halfway through editting a video and i only meant to make that one post and leave but now it's been two hours 😔

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(spoilers for the ending of assassins creed 1, and i guess technically the whole franchise)

Her name was Helena Petrovna Hahn von Rottenstern, aka Madame Helena Blavatsky, and she's one of the most influential people of the 19th century, and for some reason we don't talk about her

in response to being married at 17 to a man 40 years older than her, she ran away and travelled around for a bit (we do not know where, because she lied about literally everything all the time and 99% of the things she said about her own life were probably bollocks - we only know for certain when and where she was born because her mother was a reasonably well-known writer and her life was therefore documented by people who weren't compulsive liars!). She claims these travels included going to tibet - as it was a closed country at the time which did not allow foreigners to visit, this is probably bollocks, but who knows

eventually she washed up in america in the 1870s with minimal money and a hundred-a-day smoking habit to fund, so she immediately starts running the popular scam at the time of pretending to be nobility in hiding so people will let you stay with them for free (she was from a noble family, but a pretty minor and unexciting one). While doing this, she encounters spiritualism, and claims to be an immediate convert. Actually, she's just spotted a good grift.

she works as a medium for a few years, conning people in a very mundane and kind of sad way, and then has the genius idea that actually the best way to make money from this would be to start a religion, so she does.

it was called theosophy, and it was mostly based on the Edward Bulwar-Lytton novel fantasy novel Zanoni, which she was very familiar with because her mother did the russian translation for it, with a big dose of spiritualism and orientalism on top, and its big innovation in the cult and spirituality space was the "secret masters"

see actually madame blavatsky wasn't a fake medium, she was the student of an immortal enlightened being from tibet (because being a closed country meant it was cool and mysterious and also you can't prove it's not full of immortal wizards) called koot hoomi, who was part of an order of ancient beings who had been guiding humanity from the shadows for centuries. (in some accounts they specifically lived inside the earth which was hollow, but i can't remember if she introduced that or one of her followers later on. probably once tibet opened its borders and everyone realised it was just a normal country full of normal humans)

for the low low price of massive donations to her cult, and also maybe moving to india to live in their compound, you too could become a student of the secret masters and learn the wisdom of the ancients!

my favourite thing about this grift is that she had a papier mache koot hoomi head which would get pulled up on a wire during seances to convince people he was a) real, and b) physically mannifesting in their house.

(she also convinced her followers she could teleport, and to do this she'd pay their servants to drop cigarette buts and ash in their houses and then tell them they were from her cigarette when she teleported in earlier. no really, she was here, she left just before you got in. the 'i have a girlfriend she just goes to a different school' of fake magic powers)

my least favourite thing about the grift is that a group of her followers calling themselves the order of the star in the east became convinced that the son of one of the compounds gardeners in india was actually the messiah so they basically purchased this kid off his dad and raised him in the cult to be the messiah, and she was cool with this. (he ended up shockingly well adjusted, basically did a press conference when he turned 20 where he publically announced that he was definitely not the messiah, and moved away to the country to live a pretty normal life)

the big long term effect of theosophy is a) every modern cult that isn't just 'existing mainstream religion but real extreme' is just theosophy in a funny hat, and b) the idea of this super intelligent powerful ancient race that taught humanity everything they know and you too can gain their knowledge for the low low price of loosing all your friends as you fall down a conspiracy rabbit hole caught on in a massive way.

this leads to a whole of lot very bad nazi and nazi-adjacent beliefs (the nazi spin is that the aryan race were the secret masters and all blonde people are their direct descendants). then in the 50s you get roswell and the alien sighting craze, and suddenly everyone's asking 'but what if the secret masters were aliens'

that gets us to another horribly influential terrible person, Erich von Däniken, who publishes Chariots of the Gods in 1968 about how ancient brown people were too stupid to do anything and actually everything cool they did was done by aliens who visited them (and probably looked like white people - not all ancient astronaut belief systems are racist, but like 99% are)

this book became massively popular and pushed the secret masters idea fully mainstream, and you started getting a whole lot of pop culture stuff based on it (so much of marvel comics. so much. jack kirby fucking loved that stupid book. the Eternals are literally just chariots of the gods fanfic)

from there, it's a straight step to Assassins Creed, a game about how the bible and also greek mythology is actually just describing a race of super-advanced immortal aliens who have guided humanity and gave them technology etc etc (if you did not know that's what those games were about and instead thought they were about being a cool assassin doing stealth missions, sorry for the spoilers. this tumblr post is allowing you to experience first hand how fucking jarring the final act reveal of that game was without needing to spend $20 and 30 hours playing it - a bargain!)

and then michael fassbender made one of the worst decisions of his whole career, and now I have to get jumpscared by a 19th century conwoman and her stupid papier mache ghost when i'm just trying to learn about d&d mechanics, lmao

tl;dr - conartist creates a cult around the idea of secret immortal beings guiding humanity, second different conartist goes 'yes but what if they were aliens and also racist', this idea goes on to be central to way too many marvel comics and also the assassins creed franchise

i was watching a video about d&d and the creator said he thought it would be cool to have a setting where elves are a lost race of powerful ancients rather than a current-day player race, so now i'm thinking about how much of modern pop culture wouldn't exist without one specific 19th century conartist again

(also cults. so many cults. minimum 50% of modern cult belief systems wouldn't exist without her)

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i was watching a video about d&d and the creator said he thought it would be cool to have a setting where elves are a lost race of powerful ancients rather than a current-day player race, so now i'm thinking about how much of modern pop culture wouldn't exist without one specific 19th century conartist again

(also cults. so many cults. minimum 50% of modern cult belief systems wouldn't exist without her)

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i was accidentally a pretty funny red flag for my brother's gf - me and my partner, and my mum and her 3 dogs, managed to independantly crash the same date

it was their first date

it wasn't even at home or anything - my partner and i got to my mums house for a family dinner and no one was there so thought maybe they'd gone to the pub down the road and went to join them, saw brother and a woman, but he's got a lot of female friends and he didn't want to just tell us to fuck off when he was trying to make a good impression, so we didn't realise until after we'd bought drinks and sat down at their table that it was a date. i thought it would be weirder if i drew attention to it so just tried to finish the drink super quick and leave, but at that point my mum got home from walking the dogs, found there was no one there, and thought we'd probably gone to the pub, and since it allows dogs in the garden and it was a nice day, brought all three with her. then also didn't realise what was going on until after she'd bought a drink and sat down 😭 (he did tell us to fuck off soon after, but he waited until his date went to the bathroom 😂)

any other woman would have been like 'this guys family are insane stalkers imma dip' but it turns out the reason they were at the pub next to my mums house was because they'd tried to go somewhere further away... only for her dad and brother to turn up with no idea she was there on a date and join their table!

my poor brother was mortified at the time, understandably, and i still feel so bad about it, but theyve been together four years now so it didn't do any actual harm! (i guess there's something to be said for just speedrunning the 'meet the family' so you don't have to worry about when the right time to do it is 😂)

okay unrelated but what was the funniest red flag in ur worst relationship

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even if this was going into production to be sold, when's the last time you saw a Ferrari FXX on the road? An Aston Martin Valkyrie? How about a Lambourghini Essenza? A Bugatti Bolide?

Trick question: the answer is never. They're all commerically available sports cars, and none of them are road-legal.

The most expensive designer cars these days mostly aren't. (and BMW, who made the concept car we're talking about, were one of the first companies to start this trend, so we know they follow it). The majority of them are track only (meaning you can drive them on properly inspected and liscenced racetracks, but not the road), but in the case of the Ferarri XX cars, you can't even take them on racetracks, you can drive them on your own property or on Ferrarri's property only.

we might, in 30 years time, be seeing cars based on this design on the roads, but if BMW do start selling something using this, we'll almost certainly see two or three generations of eye-wateringly expensive track-only cars before they ever consider trying to make something that's certificed road-legal. and once it is, it'll be a limited run bought by people with seven zeroes on their monthly pay check. and then a marginally less limited run purched by people with six zeroes. And only after that will we reach a point were there's any chance that you will actually see something based on this on the road. that's how it goes with cool interesting new car tech - especially when it's cool interesting new tech designed to make your car lighter (and therefore faster) or weirder looking (and therefor cooler).

worrying about BMW's cutting edge sportscar concepts backing into you on the street makes about as much sense as worrying that everyone who owns a light aircraft is going to start taxing it down the road to take their kids to school. that's not the environment that vehical is designed for, and its not going to be where anyone uses it.

BMW's concept car: give it a carussy and a gear shift that looks like a clit. men aren't gonna know how to drive this thing

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Of to surgery number 7 in the saga that is my cancer. Wish me luck!

Hopefully this won't be the beginning of them telling it's come back and I need even more surgeries, because I'm running out of skin!

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This needs to reach more marvel readers, clearly. Doc oc was literally spiderman for over a year, and magneto has led the xmen multiple times. Flash is definitely the most likely of the dc heroes but afaik none of the rogues has ever literally been the flash?

Also the fact that batman is beating supes is sending me. Lex started declaring himself a superhero and building powerarmour every time dc editorial run out of ideas, just to get told he's less of a hero than the fucking joker 😭

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the creators haven't said anything about it afaik, but having now finished arcane s2, i'm absolutely certain they had planned for 3 more seasons, and got told pretty late into pre-production that it was only going to be 1.

you can even see pretty clearly where the season breaks would be - s2 would end with the vander/warwick reveal, s3 would end with the attack on victor's commune, and s4 would be the robot apocalypse stuff. (alternatively it might have been 2 seasons, in which case you could break it at either warwick or the commune, depending on how much time they were planning to spend on the multiverse stuff)

you wouldn't even need to add all that much completely new content to make it work, there's so much stuff that's fudged or skipped over for time, and multiple montage sequences that could be entire episodes by themselves. (in the case of martial law being implemented in xorn, multiple entire episodes). there's also moments and characters that feel like they should be entire episodes or major storylines that just aren't - vander's flashbacks really feel to me like they were once an entire episode. likewise, i cannot believe there was never a plan for an episode focussing entirely on isha, she has the weird quality of being super important and yet a total stranger to the audience at the same time. I can't believe we weren't supposed to get to know her properly.

my biggest evidence for this theory is the black rose stuff, which just screams 'multi season subplot that got condensed into a couple of episodes'. it has '30 volume manga gets 90 minute movie adaptation' energy. there's no set up for it, which i assume was going to be a season long arc that got cut entirely, then mel is captured and escapes in the course of 2 scenes, which again feels like it was probably a season long, or at least multi-episode, arc being condensed. that shot of mel walking out of the prison now with magic? you cannot tell me that wasn't at one point a season finale moment. then we never actually get a satisfying answer for how ambessa is involved or how mel's brother died, which is compounded by the fact that we really have no idea how magic works in this world or what being a mage actually means in any meaningful sense, all of which could have been very easily solved if we'd had a season, or at least a bunch of episodes, in which mel figures out how to navigate now being magic and learns to use her powers.

there's also so many instances of the show assuming we remember everything from s1 despite the multiyear gap between seasons in ways that are frankly just bad writing, but which make total sense if you assume they're desperately trying to find anything to cut or condense for time. is not reminding the audience of jayce's magic bracelet backstory before it becomes plot-relevant bad writing? yes. is it one of the first things i'd cut if i was condensing this severely? also yes.

like i said, i don't know if that's what happened. but as much as i hate good shows getting screwed over by networks, i kind of hope it is, if only because i don't want to believe these writers are capable of making those mistakes without outside interferance.

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but you have to give bethesda some credit - unlike the oblivion mages guild quest, you cannot complete the skyrim college of winterhold quest without performing at least one (1) spell. whereas previously the requirement for becoming head wizard of an entire country was zero spells.

that is undeniably an improvement on the writers' part, and no one can take that away from them.

when I feel bad about my ability to write interesting stories I try to think about the skyrim wizard college questline

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(sorry if this was just a vent and not a request for help, feel free to ignore me if so!)

As writers, I think we all have particular types of body language we gravitate towards when describing characters emotions (for me it's smiles) and that's just part of what makes every person's writing unique, but if you're at the point of noticing your own repeated use of a specific description, it's usually a sign you need to switch up what bit of body language you're focussing on. What are your glaring characters doing with their hands? How are they standing? What does their overall expression look like? Do they keep their distance or get up in the other character's face? How are they holding their mouth or jaw? If you're writing in a fantasy or scifi setting, is there any culture or species specific body language they might be using, like a character with wings fluffing up their feathers, or a werewolf growling? Do they have a weapon they might reach for when angered, or some plot-specific object like a phone they're threatening to call the cops with?

If the scene includes dialogue, it might also be a sign you need to take a look at your dialogue tags - if someone snarls a line, for example, the reader will assume they're also glaring without it needing to be said. Unusual dialogue tags should usually be used pretty sparingly, but that just means they hit hard when you do use them.

Some suggestions of things you could use instead are

Synonyms: frowned, scowled

Adjectives you can use to describe an angry look, tone, or expression: furious, angry, suspicous, menacing, heated, sharp, hot, dark

Other body language cues that convey anger: tensing jaw, crossing arms, tapping foot, balling hands into fists, baring teeth, narrowing eyes, reaching for a weapon, angry pointing (stabbing the air), dramatically turning away, squaring shoulders, stepping into their personal space, barging past someone, throwing up their hands in exasperation

Dialogue tags that convey anger: snapped, growled, snarled, barked, hissed, roared, yelled, demanded, belowed

Good luck with your writing, I hope some of this is useful!

I need more words for "looking at someone angrily" because I've typed "glare" so many times it's starting to not look like a word to me

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A+ suggestion there, googledocs. I coudn't possibly have typed is instead of it, I obviously meant is n't...

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nothing but love and light to 911 fans, i'm glad you're eating so well rn, but man we really need to find some way to ration white american boy names for shippable fictional characters. my dash was already full of people talking about buckies and eddies and 911 has only made the situation more confusing!

i've got halfway through reading so many posts only to realise that this not my boy, this boy is a stranger to me. i don't care if this boy is in heat or fake dating his secret crush, i don't even know him!

this is not the fault of fans obviously, i just think TPTB should be required to check for existing popular characters before they start dropping meat into fandom's enclosure.

anyway if any tv writers are reading this, we're all full up on edwards, we need at least a 5 year moritorium on new shippable edwards.

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incredibly niche question for the probably 3 other people with this exact combo deal of brainrot

this poll was inspired by this piece of gorgeous fanart by @ondust - their hannibal design was just giving me nergal vibes yk?

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obviously shapeshifting would be the best superpower, but if I had to have a very specific/mostly useless power, it would be the ability to set randos on the internet homework, like i'm a prefect on a power trip.

i follow a lot of evangelical/fundie nonsense, and forcing grifter "pastors" to learn actual theology and biblical exegesis would be so satisfying! 'oh, you think a woman's worth is inherently tied to virginity? write me 3000 words on how your beliefs would be fundamentally different if it weren't for the empress theodora'. 'oh you're citing the story of sodom to justify your homophobia? 10 pages on Ezekiel 16:49 due on my desk by monday'.

making every politician who scaremongers about the evils of socialism write essays on marxist theory and basic economics. making GamersTM write essays on the history of representation in gaming. making terfs write papers on actual human biology?

i'm not an advocate for punitive justice, but i do think forcing jacob rees moggs to write feminist analysis of barney the dinosaur would make the world very slightly better, if only because it would take up some of time he'd otherwise spend talking absolutely bollocks!

i could make kemi badenoch watch dr who. tell me you don't also want the power to force kemi badenoch to analyse dr who? it wouldn't be hurting her, after all she's been very clear that she's definitely not frightened of dr who, but boy would it piss her off!

it wouldn't fix any of them, but it would give me the ability to significantly inconvinience so many deeply unpleasant people, and it would be very very funny

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