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playing wizard101 is fun because it’s a kids game from twenty years ago but 90% of its current user base is grown ass adults playing for nostalgia’s sake

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my pirate101 and wizard101 ocs respectively! her name is zia and his is shane. they were friends for a while, got together and then split apart again over the course of the story. they still like hanging out, sparring and getting up to mischief tho. more to come!

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all politics about ai aside if you use it to create fanwork you're just a fucking dweeb

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This is probably a good way to get myself blocked by people, but I have such a problem with how normalized it's become for fanartists to have a Patreon and lock so much of their art behind a paywall. It's not about copyright infringement. Like whatever, I don't care about that. It's about the fact that it goes against what fandom is supposed to be about. It takes something that's supposed to be about freely sharing and turns it into a business proposition. Fandom is supposed to be a gift economy, where we do this for the community and social bonds it brings, where we give generously with no expectation of getting compensated for it.

And beyond that (and at the risk of sounding petulant), it's not fair. Imagine how much (justified) shit a writer would get for posting like, the first paragraph of a fic and then going, "To read the rest of this, first subscribe to my Patreon!!" I'm not saying I have any desire to make money off of fanfiction. I don't. But I do think it's strange that the labor of not only writing but of gif making and fanvid making and writing meta and even commenting and reblogging, all these things that make up the backbone of a fandom, is done for free, and fanart has become a thing where it's almost expected that every artist will have a Patreon and lock much of their art. I really hate it, if I'm being honest.

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Yves Olade, from Bloodsport; “When rome falls”

[Text ID: “You can have my heart if you have the stomach to take it.”]

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Re-uploaded to make some minor edits lol

Yes the Young Wizard is the smallest siblit of the three

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Content Warning for Suicidal ideation, unhealthy coping mechanisms, dead bodies & burials, nightmares.

(Ao3 Link)

All of the schools were up late.

Storm wizards were far too caffeinated for their own good, working on their current project. Their work was sloppy, something the perfectionist in them would hate come tomorrow morning. They would end up covered in smudges of graphite and charcoal and ink, none of it quite matching the purple-gray of the bags under their eyes. They'd yawn, laughing in that half-delirious state only acquired by the truly sleep deprived, and promise just a few more minutes, it's almost done, it's almost perfect. They wouldn't talk about why they won't sleep, why they have to work themself into exhaustion. The dreams of drowning, sinking deep into the same abyssal depths their spells come from. The dreams of crackling lightning, stretching unfathomably across the entire sky, the ones where they'd wake with electricity sparking from their fingers and through their veins.

Ice wizards were able to get away with it because of their reputation, their need to complete their assignments perfectly. Long nights spent studying, ink smudging their stiff, cold fingers. At some point in the night they'd move from their essays and worksheets into studying, rereading passages until their eyes blurred, marking pages for further review. They'd yawn, and then remind themself they can't sleep, they'll fall behind. Every other thaumaturge was hard at work at the late hour and they had to be the best of them. They wouldn't examine why they wanted to be the best, what they had to prove, just that they needed to prove it. They wouldn't mention the dreams, freezing in an endless blizzard, curling up in the snow and feeling it pile over them, finally feeling warm for the first time in years only to drift off into the waking world again. They wouldn't mention that every time, it felt more like a temptation than anything else, and they were terrified to acknowledge that some part of them wanted to sleep forever in the warmth under the snow.

Fire wizards had a dozen reasons why they were up late. Maybe it was a sleepover with their peers, all of them chatting late into the night, sometimes with the game that whoever fell asleep first would be pranked. Maybe they were finishing an assignment last minute, having procrastinated until they realized it was due tomorrow morning. Whatever the reason, they were the type to get giggly just past midnight, more susceptible to that sleep deprived delirium than most. They'd laugh and joke, brushing off any insistence that they sleep. They'd yawn and it'd be another joke, pointing at others who followed suit. There was no need to talk about why they weren't sleeping. The dreams of burning things they hold dear, the strange relief of being unbound by anything overwhelmed by the horror of everything's destruction at their hands. Watching priceless things smolder and ignite, a massive bonfire of beloved objects and people alike, as if they were in any way equivalent in value. All from their fire.

Death wizards were never asked why they weren't sleeping. Everyone knew why. They were haunted in a literal sense, from spirits in need of rest and ghosts that loved annoying necromancers. They had seen so much death, had dealt with the aftermath that others rarely saw, and could not be expected to sleep normally. They stayed up late doing assignments, maybe, but they might also be preparing a body. People died every day, and not even other necromancers could always handle the work that came with it. Long late nights spent preparing bodies for burial, painstakingly keeping to one of the traditions from the dozens of cultures and religions Wizard City's people were a part of. They'd yawn, scent of flowers and chemicals almost lulling them to sleep, whispering an apology to the recently departed. They avoided dreams of death, either messages from spirits or simply memories. Maybe they hadn't even seen those deaths, but the mind was a wonderful and terrible thing and could easily reconstruct from what they had been told. It felt disrespectful to not want to see it, to refuse to see what had been another person's reality, their last moments. And so it was easier to stay up, and hope the endless void embraced them when they finally passed out.

Myth wizards had schoolwork to do. Cyrus Drake was known to be a demanding professor, so it was rarely remarked upon. At some point these conjurers wouldn't really be working to perfect Professor Drake's assignments, knowing that even their best would never match up to his exacting standards. Instead they could read and say it was studying. Histories from other worlds, mythologies from other cultures, meticulous notes taken just so they could justify the simple happiness that reading brought them. In their sleep deprived state, they might even dog-ear the pages as they yawned, a sin to their fully awake mind, yet they were too tired to reach for a bookmark. It was understandable to try and avoid the dreams they had, the visions. Futures and pasts they never should see, visions that they can't help but burden themself with and feel responsible for, even if they can't change it. Especially if they can't change it, watching it happen and knowing that fate was never as malleable as others thought. It was easier to read, to pretend like they hadn't seen the events in their history books.

Life wizards needed to stay awake. There was so much to study, and if they couldn't learn it all they might be the reason someone died. If they didn't learn it all, they'd fall behind and their peers would find them an easy target or weak link. Long nights of studying, staring at anatomy diagrams of species they'd never even met in case they did meet one day and their healing magic was needed. Long nights thinking about how easily people could die, how hard it was to save them. Disregard the fact that being so sleep deprived made it so easy to make a mistake. Disregard that no one was demanding they be able to save everyone, only that they did their best. Disregard that Professor Wu never held them to this standard, neither did the previous Professor Drake, it was solely the product of the students' hierarchy and competition. They'd yawn and scowl down at the textbook in hand, trying to fight the inevitable. If they fell asleep, they'd dream of nature, listening to the Song of Creation trying to lull them to a sense of safety. It wasn't that the dream was terrible, it was just that reality would come creeping in and they'd have to tear themself away from it, which hurt so much that feeling that peace wasn't worth it.

Balance wizards spent long nights learning dead languages, translating old texts, trying to keep the past alive. To not let it erode away into nothingness. To remain relevant, needed, wanted, learned from. They would murmur in tongues no one else understood, the feeling of sand on their tongue either from magic or sleep deprivation, they didn't know anymore. They'd yawn and admit they needed to sleep, but meditating was basically the same thing anyway, right? They didn't want to dream. They didn't want to see these past civilizations so clearly, living in them, watching them be alive, speak their languages and understand who they were. Because they'd wake up, and they'd forget. They'd struggle in vain to try and remember, and they'd fail. It was so hard to remember dreams, after all.

Their poorly written assignments and half-forgotten studying wouldn't be worth the time spent damaging their mind and body. Eventually they'd all succumb to sleep, eventually the dreams would come for them anyway, and any amount of sleep lost beforehand meant nothing.

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I need to inject other peoples' wiz ocs into my veins. btw

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This is a sign for you to write that self-indulgent fic

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"The bottom line isn't how Israel treats queer people... it would still be a country that's committing genocide and killing 100,000 Palestinians... It is important to point out that this [pinkwashing] is also a lie and propaganda, but the bottom line is that it doesn't matter. There is no amount of 'progressivism' a country can achieve that could permit it to commit genocide and mass starvation. [...]

The bottom line of my refusal [to join the Israeli military] is that no aid, no resources, no cooperation should be given to a state that's committing genocide. And of course, that's not to say that before October 7th, Israel was a 'moral' state that was 'suddenly corrupted.' Obviously it's a state that's upholding an apartheid system that's been committing ethnic cleansing for 77 years. But the reality as it exists today makes the question of what is to be done very simple: We need to employ every tool that we have to withhold as much help as we can from [Israel] to continue advancing its goals.

For me, it's withholding myself as a resource for the continuation of genocide. For people living abroad, it's putting pressure on governments, institutions, businesses, to cut all ties and aid with the state of Israel, and to take matters into their own hands and block the flow of weapons into the state of Israel... What I'd encourage everyone to do is to find a group that wants to exert as much pressure as possible, and organize with them, and do it, because that's what needs to be done."

- Yona Roseman, "The Trans Teen Imprisoned for Refusing to Join the IDF" | matt bernstein

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Every time someone comments on my old fic, i feel like I'm an old actor getting paid residuals. Appreciate you, old-fic-commenters. Key source of emotional income, tbh.

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So happy how this turned out I want to share here too (if anyone wants to play with me I’m down)

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watching a video and realizing I miss the term "flame war", it was JUST tongue-in-cheek goofy enough of a term to describe how silly it was to carry on long arguments online over shit that doesn't matter and was often started/spurned by a troll. Now ALL of it is just "discourse" or "engagement" which feels like they put a godawful slap of PR paint over the surface of flame wars like a cheap landlord looking to charge 1000 dollars more for the same crumbling walls

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"i asked grok" "i asked chatgpt" ok well I asked the Auroracle and she told me the Spiral shall end as it began... with a broken Heart.