#[There will be a *LOT* of worldbuilding to be done but hey! Anything for my boos]

[caeca-iustitia]

Really tempted to add one or two new muses.

They'd actually be fandomless for once since they (technically) have their own little worlds connected to random characters I've been playing around with in my free time.

But you can bet your butts that I'm giving them FF7 Verses to satiate my love for this game lmao

Also!

Does anyone want my discord? That way ya'll can harass me whenever.

I thought about it before but was reminded by something fairly recently that I do- in fact- have a discord lol

[comicaurora]

Hey, sorry if you’ve been asked this before, but I have ADHD and I’ve been following your comic for years and just now have started to write my own comic (partially because you really inspired me). But I’m really struggling with staying on the project even when it’s boring and getting myself to work on it in the first place. Do you have any tips on how to keep your brain invested or just to make yourself do the work at all?

I have excellent news, I literally just figured out something really important about this.

So when you're an ADHD kiddo or otherwise have difficulty staying on task in a structured environment where Task is the Priority, the main way people try to MAKE you stay on task is by removing your access to anything that is not The Task. No phone, no TV, no doodling, no going outside, etc. In practice, this just makes us miserable because it takes the boredom that's always simmering around a 2 or 3 and cranks it all the way up to 11. In the same way that you would have difficulty staying on task if you were in physical pain, this crushing existential monotony makes it very difficult to work. The work might get done simply because you have no other options, but it will not be done quickly or well, and it will take a while to recover from how much it hurt.

What I realized earlier this week is I caught myself doing this to myself. I had 42 pages of background colors to do, and I thought to myself "this sounds really tedious, but I suppose I have nothing better I can do." And I realized what I'd just thought, and got very alarmed.

Because back when I was an ADHD kiddo imprisoned by school scheduling and a million little factors that keep children immobile and restrained, I couldn't stop thinking about how big and exciting the world was, and how much I wanted to be anywhere but here. When I was feeling really crushed in I'd pick a random spot on the maps on my wall and just imagine being there instead of my bedroom. This was the impetus behind almost all of my creative energy. I've said it before - anything is a prison if you can't leave, and being in a prison makes it easy to imagine how amazing things could be outside of it. Aurora's initial worldbuilding was forged in the crucible of fifth grade misery. My enthusiasm for art and my creative drive are inextricable from my sense of wonder and yearning for excitement in the real world. Not escapism, but appreciation. Wonders unimaginable are out there, and I gain just as much joy seeking them out as I do conjuring them up in my head and sharing them with all of you.

So now that I'm a grown-up with actual freedom in every way I've been able to get, the idea that I was staying on task by making myself believe the world was small and not worth seeing was extremely alarming. It could keep me on task for an afternoon, but at the cost of slowly extinguishing the thing that made me want to make art in the first place - the hunger to experience and draw inspiration from all the myriad complexities in the world.

So what I've been doing is I've been purposefully and intentionally taking excursions whenever I catch myself thinking "I could take a break but it wouldn't be worth it, it's the same outdoors as always, I'll be uncomfy and unproductive and tired." Because that is never true. Every time I've put down the stylus and gone out, I've been renewed in one way or another, and when I come back to comfort fully recharged I get a lot of shit done. Because it is easier to work on anything if you remember why you wanted to make it in the first place, and it is self-defeating misery to just lock yourself in with it and tell yourself you're a bad person if you can't get it done.

I honestly don't know how widely applicable this is. I have worse wanderlust than anyone I know, so for me this has always been modeled as imprisonment vs freedom. I've also been extremely lucky to find myself in a profession that lets me set my own pace on literally everything I do. But I genuinely believe that when it comes to making art with ADHD, you need to give yourself freedom to move laterally, not just in the direction of obvious forward progress. We don't think linearly in any other part of our lives - art is no different.

[tallseaweed]

Buddy Request: are you a Loki obsessed high fantasy lover?

I would really like to connect with fellow Loki fans who want to rant about/analyze Loki and Thor's psychology, family dynamics, Asgardian society, Jotunheim, magic/seiðr, and the Nine Realms. Ideas/thoughts that aren't canon-compliant with the MCU are more than welcome!

Here are some fics with these types of themes that I have thoroughly enjoyed and been inspired by:

Ásgarðrian Galdr by Valerie_Vancollie

Bargaining by proantagonist ( @proantagonista ) [thank you SO MUCH for the rec @alwida10!]

Frostbite by Maiden_of_Asgard

Once More With Empathy by Kairyn ( @bfaymiller )

A Fairytale Beginning by the_lady_amphitrite ( @the-lady-amphitrite )

Let me set the scene:

For the past year and a half, I've been working on developing a longfic featuring a Thor 2011 Loki and an OC Sigyn. Honestly, I don't think that I'll get around to posting it anytime soon (there's still so much work to be done on it), but it's constantly on my mind. It's sort of a hybrid concept of the MCU, Norse Mythology, my own ideas, OCs, and magic systems. It has an epic scope with multiple arcs and characters from most of the Nine Realms. Do you like characters with wings? I got you covered. An imminent threat to the Nine Realms? Check. An in-depth analysis of Ásgarðr and Jǫtunheimr's history uncovered during Loki's identity crisis? A Jǫtunn OC? A Laufey that never wanted to lose his child? Check, check, and check.

I've found it hard to talk to people about all this because it involves a LOT of worldbuilding. Epic fantasy definitely isn't for everyone and this will not be a "light" read. Some non-fanfic stories that have inspired me along the way include the Roots of Chaos series by Samantha Shannon (The Priory of the Orange Tree and A Day of Fallen Night) and Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. So if you like those types of stories, you might like the ideas I come up with.

If you relate to anything I've said, I also want to mention that I would love to hear about your ideas as well! If you feel trapped inside your own head and feel hesitant to "info-dump" on people, I am the person for you. And hey, maybe we can inspire each other :) Fanfiction is not about gatekeeping, and I have been unabashedly inspired by so many different takes on Loki that I've read along the way.

Sending this out into the Tumblr void, hoping it finds the right people!

[crimeronan]

hey kitkat, if its not too much trouble, could you make a propaganda post for the silt verses? I've been seeing you talk about it a lot (i have spoilers marked dw) but im afraid to look up anything about it. is it horror? all i know about it is val <- horrible woman(?) so im intrigued. was wondering if it'd be possible for a silt verses post a la that trc post you made a while back

OH, ABSOLUTELY. i think about 95% of my followers have no idea what this media is about, so this ask is very exciting. i'll preface it by saying that i think it's edged out the dreamer trilogy for my favorite story Ever -- it's exactly on par with the first two books in terms of Reading My Heart Off The Page.

the premise:

the silt verses is a now-complete horror-tragedy narrative podcast set in a fantasy world that has many parallels to our own. this fantasy world is embroiled in late-stage corporate capitalism and is ravaged by the effects of colonialism, war, and oppression.

in this world, gods are created through sacrifice and belief. there are thousands of them, with thousands of individual religions.

the problem is that gods must be fed through human sacrifice. and if they aren't fed, they die.

and people are very invested in keeping their gods alive.

sacrifice is considered a necessary part of society, something that's as essential as breathing. the idea of simply not making sacrifices is considered a violent, radical, leftist anarchist position that is simply unsustainable. or so the state would have you believe!

but. SOME gods have been outlawed, and worshiping them WILL get you killed by the government.

the state says that it's because these gods are uniquely evil, and too dangerous or sadistic or wild to be fed.

in actuality, gods are outlawed when they don't serve the state or corporations' purposes. the question at the heart of the worldbuilding is always, "is Anything you've been told about the gods and the magic true? how much of this world is socially constructed? who benefits from the way things are?"

Metaphors Abound.

-

the cast:

the first season follows four key narrators; the second season introduces a fifth; the third a sixth.

-

carpenter - sister carpenter is an older woman who was born into an outlawed river-worshiping faith. she has seen her entire family murdered by the state, including her brother, parents, and grandmother. she briefly left the faith but returned to the parish because she had nowhere else to go; her relationship with her river and her church is complicated at best.

carpenter begins the series as a """devout""" disciple of the river parish. in actuality, her faith has been slipping for a Long Time. she's no longer certain that she loves this god she's been killing for for her entire life.

she begins the series investigating some unexplained "miracles," aka Deeply Fucking Horrific Murders, that appear to have been done by her god.

alongside her is brother faulkner.

-

faulkner - faulkner is a kid, somewhere around 19 or 20 years old when the story starts. he was NOT born into the river faith, but was instead called to it, back when he was still a rural farm boy living with his father and brothers. his first sacrifice was his brother, who he drowned on the farm. he later left home to find the parish.

faulkner has been with the parish for a pretty short period of time, but he truly IS a devout fanatic. because of this, he does not get along with carpenter. the two of them bicker a lot. carpenter thinks that faulkner is a stupid country bumpkin who's naive and full of starry-eyed optimism, and he annoys the piss out of her.

faulkner is not a dumb country bumpkin.

but he knows how he sounds and he knows how he looks. so he plays the part of the starry-eyed child with ease.

he is planning to kill carpenter.

he knows she's slipping, he knows she's losing her faith, and he wants her dead. he's been asked to keep an eye on her because the parish knows she's slipping, too.

uh oh!

-

hayward - investigating officer hayward is a police officer in the religious homicides division of the greater glottage police force. this police force has jurisdiction over outlawed gods. hayward's job is to find outlawed gods, arrest/kill their worshipers, and report them to the government.

he is the main antagonist of season one. crucially, he's a Good Cop - he's friendly, affable, funny and likable. he's kind of a dickhead bastard, but in the way that the protagonists of Cop Tv Shows (TM) often are. he offers to "help" the people he's arresting. he's good at playing the role of a good guy who just needs to uphold the status quo for the good of society.

but. he is, first and foremost, a cop. and the narrative has a Lot to say about cops. and about other people whose job is to Enforce The Law.

so. don't think that him being a Good Cop means that he's Actually a good guy or that he's not dangerous to the protagonists. Hoo Boy.

-

paige - paige duplass is a corporate boardroom executive who works for a marketing firm that creates gods. her job is to do all the marketing and branding for new corporate mascots. what does the god look like? how does the worship work? how are the sacrifices made?

but her company's profits are waning. and they need to return value to the shareholders.

so. they're going to kill their employees.

not paige, of course! she's a highly valued member of the team. she just has to keep everyone calm and be a kind, upbeat manager while the Layoffs approach. everything is fine, everyone. we aren't going to kill you :) don't worry :) just keep smiling :)

the horror of this gives her a crisis of conscience; after all the murder goes down, she leaves to go on a long drive.

which becomes longer still when she's taken hostage by carpenter and faulkner.

-

shrue - season two introduces shrue, a spineless liberal politician who runs on a """left-wing""" platform but really could not care less about anything except polling numbers. they're willing to do rotten, ugly propagandist things for their campaign -- including killing the river god. and all of its followers. for the good PR! :)

not great news for carpenter, faulkner, or their people.

but then shrue experiences Actual Violence up close for the first time. and it Shakes Them To Their Core.

and, well. suddenly they're not so comfortable being a spineless liberal politician anymore.

too bad they've locked themselves into their role and cannot fucking escape it!!

-

val - introduced in season three, VAL is the saint of a god of liars, purposefully created by the government for use as a weapon. she is the remnants of a woman who killed herself to serve her country. she does not remember who she is or what else she wanted, aside from her mother's approval.

as the saint of a god of liars, whatever VAL says becomes true..... as long as someone is there to listen. you're a loyal soldier? no, you died of a tumor as a child. you're a politician begging for mercy for the sake of your infant child? no, your baby has an insatiable taste for flesh and ate your sorry ass. etc

she's a monster and a sadist; she enjoys killing people to try to fill the emptiness in her. she is in terrible pain all the time and does not understand why. and she is becoming increasingly disillusioned and sick with herself, the government she serves, and the Utter Pointlessness of all this systemic violence.

but how do you break a cycle when you Are the cycle?? how do you get better?? how do you change anything??

much to consider.

-

overall, it's as close to a perfect story as it gets imo. literally every detail is carefully, painstakingly chosen to further the themes, arcs, characterization, etc. the plotting is suspenseful, the horror is Deeply Fucking Scary, the storylines are gutwrenching, the voice acting is spine-chilling, and the characters are So Fucking Compelling.

also, i get frustrated by representation-first fiction recs, but if you get this far and want to know: it's Deeply queer. faulkner, paige, and shrue are all trans (shrue is they/them, paige is a post-transition trans woman, faulkner is a trans guy who's recently started T). carpenter is aroace, there's casual representation and normalization of trans n gay people throughout the ensemble cast.

and more importantly, it's just. So Damn Good.

@valtsv @deermouth you two are the other main silt verses bloggers i know, so if you want a pitch for your followers.... here is this!

[luztoyeweek]

Can you rec your top five luztoye fics to get us in the vibe?

Beloved, can I! With this, I went with fics that I don't see recced a lot for Luztoye, so if there's anything anyone wants added on to the list, feel free to do so!

Since this gave me a bit of freedom, I went with non-canon era fics, mainly to shake it up a bit. If someone would like a canon list, feel free to let me know, and I'd be delighted to :). With that, let's get into it below the cut. (Fics in no particular order).

- each and every day (of the year) by bruce_the_shark

Joe grins, lifts his hand from George’s hip to grip him by the chin, twists his face around to catch his lips in a bruising kiss. George relishes in it, likes how the taste of Joe’s preferred brand of liquor mixes with the taste of his own on his tongue. He grins against Joe’s lips, knows it’s going to be a good year.

rated m | 21.6k | modern au | granted, i haven't read this one in a while, but it's very sweet and has a very nice montage-esq vibe to it. very lovely read, especially if you're not in the mood for heavy angst :).

- the road is long, we carry on by rebelsquad (wolveheart)

“There is no good ending for people like us, George.” George says what he always says and what always feels like a half-truth, like there could be more to it but it won’t come out of his mouth. “If the ending sucks, we should make the story before as good as we can.��

unrated | 4k | mob au | this fic changed something in my mind, i'm not even kidding. very well done luz pov, very sweet, with an open ending and that good ol' yearning. not very big on mob aus, but this one was so well done that i enjoyed it very much <3.

- You Got The Best of Me by roaroftheninth/@almost-a-class-act

People assume that when Joe thinks about his life, it’s in terms of before the accident and after. Instead, he thinks about it in terms of before and after meeting George.

rated m | 61.3k | modern au | it wouldn't be a luztoye rec list without something by sam, but this fic is also just genuinely so wonderfully done and thought out. you can tell how i feel about it by seeing the completely normal and hinged comments i left on it, if you need more persuasion.

- Punch-Up by Disastrous_Canasta/@disastrouscanasta

It was in no way picture-perfect, or even anything like what George had imagined he’d love doing, but it was them. It was something they’d figured out through trial and error, learning what worked for them and what didn’t. They’d meant to share relief, ages ago. But had somehow stumbled down this path of showers and mornings and late nights, but he wasn’t sure what he’d do without it. OR A surprisingly uncomplicated “It’s complicated” dynamic.

rated e | 13.3k | film industry au | genuinely one of my favorite characterization fics for luztoye, as well as some top-notch worldbuilding and wonderful prose. <3

- meet me on the dancefloor by brokenarrows5

“Hey there stranger!” George yells, eyes crinkling. “Thought there’d be no chance of you out here!” “Changed my mind,” Joe responds.

rated t | 1k | modern au | very very short and sweet, but with wonderful voices and humor throughout. a very nice read :)

[silverskye13]

Augh that last oneshot was wonderfully painful. I think if I was in that world, and learned I had a hels, I would be SO horribly angry at the universe. Like, how dare it say this other person's life is worth less than mine? How dare it create a whole person, say that they're only a part of me, when they're distinct and independent? How dare it put someone's blood on my hands to change me for the better? I think I'd become a knight just to crusade against the universe.

Heyo! Didn't mean to leave you in suspense, and absolutely no harm done <3 I am really busy throughout the day, and most of the time the one or two asks I manage to answer for these one-shots is all I have time for before sleep.

I'm glad you like the worldbuilding [and also the one-shots so far!]

I feel like "the universe" is almost becoming its own, somewhat meta character at this point, like a stand in for the hand of the author almost, but more mindless. It's anything unfair about one world and favorable about the next, and I like how it's starting to work as a kind of... Forced perspective. As a reader [or a writer] we're always aware that for most stories, an antagonist is only ever a change in perspective. If we had the whole story, the line between "good" and "bad" would be a lot harder to distinguish. Since a protagonist is well established though, "good" and "bad" sort themselves neatly, and you have the benefit of rooting for your perspective to win.

But "the universe" vs hels has turned into the idea of that forced perspective being biased. The "good guys" really are only good by benefit of perspective, and when you're locked on the other side of that wall, pigeon-holed into the karmic retribution of being the antagonist, the uphill battles you fight when the "good guys" win are uniquely unfair. It's added a new layer to the story I didn't anticipate, a god-like narrative character that everybody gets to squint at skeptically and go, "Hey, wait, that's not fair." Maybe you don't want any character to come to harm -- maybe you very much do. But regardless, you would expect "the universe" to at least have the decency to be fair about it and not pick favorites. Something as inherent to character-ing as simply existing in the story shouldn't be biased... But it is.

Anyway all that to say, I endorse you becoming a knight of The Order of Balanced Scales, and wish you luck on your crusade!

[solarpunkaestheticweek]

How do you do solarpunk aesthetic week when you live in a tiny apartment with no outside access? I always want to participate but I feel like most stuff y'all post is geared towards people who live in houses...

Hey, thanks for sending in the ask!

We put our heads together and came up with a few ideas for you!

Grow plants indoors! You could grow a few houseplants to green up your space, or even try growing some vegetables and/or herbs indoors! I've heard people have lots of luck with basil indoors, and my freshman year of college I grew cherry tomatoes and peppers in my dorm room! Maybe check out information on semi or full-hydroponic setups? You can also propagate a lot with a few cuttings and a glass of water! If you have a balcony with your apartment, that could also be a good place to grow flowers or vegetables--depending on the season and temps where you are, it might be a bit cold to start things out there right now, but you could always start planning!

Crafting could be another fun idea! You could try your hand at mending clothes, or making your own clothes from scratch! I (Ani) am learning crochet, if you wanna join me in spirit and pick it up as well! Kala/Fennopunk (who lives in a small apartment 👀) also knows a lot about crocheting, its a pretty nice winter craft! You could also try embroidery, so you can add unique designs onto your clothes! Other options are things like knitting, sewing, leatherwork, jewelrymaking, soap making, and maybe even woodworking or soldering if that interests you!

Learning how to repair tech would be cool! Honestly, learning how to repair anything sounds super cool and is pretty solarpunk! This can also kinda go hand-in-hand with learning how to build your own things (one of my friends knows how to repair and build computers, for example). Try finding some information on something you're interested in and going wild!

Decorate your home in a way that feels Solarpunk to you! Even if you don't get it all done during the event week, I think its definitely a nice way to bring joy! Look into ways your apartment can change with the seasons, ways to keep yourself cozy and warm in winter but cool and bright during the summer! If you get started, feel free to send in progress images, we'd love to see!

Guerrilla gardening! Winter's a great time to scatter wildflower seeds (at least here in the states for me) as it gives the seeds time to acclimate to weather conditions! if you want flowers in spring, you plant seeds in winter! Maybe find a place you wanna target if you go out, think about what seeds you want to plant, and start planning? Or if you have seeds on hand already, you know what to do! Honestly, I also kinda view picking up litter as hand-in-hand with guerrilla gardening, if you've got the vibes for that at all.

Build community with your neighbors! Even if its just saying hi, or talking about what you're up to!

Maybe guerrilla art as well? Moss graffiti, spray painting, or even plastering a couple of stickers up counts as solarpunk! I will give a general warning that doing stuff seen as illegal probably shouldn't be posted online, but hey, you can participate in the week without telling us what you do!

Speaking of art! Maybe you could make art at home! Whether you use chalk, or pastels, or paint, or pencils, or if you've got a tablet you can use--find some inspiration and draw! I've seen lots of people draw solarpunk fashion ideas, solarpunk building concepts, or just general vibe art!

You could also take a crack at writing! You could write a short story, or get started on a longer project idea! You could even just write worldbuilding-type stuff, like examples of event listings or building histories you imagine a solarpunk society would have, or ideas for holidays and festivals!

Learning an instrument feels pretty solarpunk to me! I (Ani) say this as someone who has 2 guitars around and has forgotten 80% of the stuff she learned in her lessons back in high school. Just in general, picking up an old hobby you miss, or starting a new one works great for this event honestly!

You can also check out the Apartment Solarpunk tag on the Practical Solarpunk blog, it may have more ideas for you!

We hope this helps! Either way, I hope you enjoy the event week!

[tinypinkmouse]

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers (except me because obvs I have done it). Spread the self-love ❤

Five is way too few and the fic far too many to choose from. At least I've been reminded how much I enjoy the majority of my fic, and that's a good thing. So this isn't some kind of top five really. On another day I'd probably pick five entirely different fics. But these are some of my favourites.

Rust in My Mouth, Guardian, Mature (for injuries/violence), Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan. This is a pre-canon story where Shen Wei and Zhao Yunlan meet earlier (I love the basic premise of earlier first meeting and have written many different variations on that idea). This involves quite a bit of worldbuilding for Shen Wei and Dixing to give Shen Wei a hobby of underground fights. I felt like I was missing stories that focus on Shen Wei's fighting abilities. We don't really even mention him training or anything all that often, surely he must sometimes? This fic was mostly me trying to work out the worldbuilding of Dixing having some kind of fighting tradition, and then throwing in a first meeting on top. In retrospect I ended up liking the mood of it a lot and then wrote a sequel to it as well (I think there's another sequel lingering in my WIPs). The worldbuilding is not the most original, but I like it well enough. And I'm very happy with how I wrote the bits where actual fighting happens (I'm generally not very confident in writing that sort of action).

Like It's the Very First Time, Guardian, Explicit, Shen Wei/Ye Zun/Zhao Yunlan. (CW: incest) This is an AU where the twins are living together when Zhao Yunlan meets them. Also there's a few gender changes here, both Zhao Yunlan and Ye Zun are women. Shen Wei is a man, though his feelings on that could change. The twins come with shapechanging powers where they can change their body to fit their gender if they choose to. Honestly, other than including some of my ambiguous feelings on gender (a lot of it in my head, because it's from Zhao Yunlan's POV and she is not aware of what's going on with the twins and gender) I love this purely because of the complete bisexual disaster that Zhao Yunlan manages to be (I'm very proud of that).

Spiders Crawling, Guardian, Explicit, Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan. This is a monster AU, because I love all of my various monster AUs and I have to include at least one. And I love spiders!Shen Wei to bits, so spiders!Shen Wei it is. He is made of lots and lots of tiny spiders, except for when he comes together and looks like Shen Wei. I don't even know what else to say about this, other than spiders!Shen Wei! Oh, yes, Zhao Yunlan will fuck that, because that's Zhao Yunlan and he can be horny about a bunch of spiders, thank you (it's a bit of an adjustment even for Zhao Yunlan). Writing the sex was interesting, and took me a bit of figuring out (how do you make a hoard of tiny spiders sexy) and yes I am extremely proud of it.

Be Who You Are, Embrace Again/The Fraud Love Group, Explicit, Yang Xiuxian/Ye Ziyang. I wanted to include so many weilan derivatives (I think I've written some of my very best stuff there) I love my weilan derivative fics to a ridiculous degree. In the end I went with this one because it might just be one of the best things I've ever written (at least in my opinion). Sure I'm extrapolating characters from a trailer (that's all that was out for Embrace Again at the time) and the about seven minutes where Yang Xiuxian appears in his movie, but hey, that's the fun of it all, right?

As Always, Just You, Beast Wars/Machines, G, gen. This is a very short post-canon thing where Cheetor is having feelings and contemplating his life as he grows closer to death. Quite an old thing to include and not exactly a huge fandom either (and definitely makes no sense without the context of canon), but it still makes me all emotional, even if it could have been written better.

[dedalvs]

Hi!

Just came to ask on an issue I've ran into regarding neography.

People in my circle of conlangers/worldbuilders/neographists say that what I do isn't right and is not to be considered neography - here's what I did:

I made over 500 neographies made since the creation of my Reddit account last year, all documented on @thecrazyneographist

And while some of them are seen as cool and all, most are trash bullshit I throw at the wall waiting for something to stick. I literally have diamonds laying under heaps of crap.

I love neographying, this is out of question. But I, despite making a couple WIPs, cannot make a conlang for every script aesthetic I come up with, thus, 90% of my works are just English ciphers (and a devastating part of them are alphabets).

Question:

Am I a valid neographist if most of my creations are nothing more than "children-level ciphers" for English, or not? No matter the answer I will continue making them because that's what I like to do.

Thanks in advance.

Hey, sorry I didn't respond to this sooner, but there are a lot of issues in here, and I wanted to tease them apart, so I can be quite clear on each one.

First, "I am a valid x", where x refers to some sort of artist, is always kind of a sad question to me, because those who ask it are undoubtedly asking it as a result of one kind of gatekeeping or another. For example, fanfic authors who ask "Am I real writer?" are undoubtedly asking it because someone (or several someones) have told them that they're not because all they write is fanfic. There are often a set of assumptions that come with the definition of a given art, such that the belief is if you haven't fulfilled certain criteria, you can't claim to be an artist in that field. For me, I think the definition is rather simpler.

In any artistic field, you qualify as that type of artist if you attempt that type of art. Notice I didn't say finish. This is especially clear for conlangs, as no conlang is finished. If the criteria for being a conlanger is having one finished conlang then there are no conlangers, and there never have been. There's no such thing as a finished conlang. There is such a thing as a finished painting, though, but I don't think you have to have finished a painting to be a painter. You need to be working at, but you don't need to have finished anything.

This doesn't mean that anyone is an anything. For example, to be a novelist, you have to be in the process of writing at least one novel. If all you've ever written is short stories, you're not a novelist. You are a writer, though.

For a neographer (or orthographer or conscriptor or whatever term is in vogue), all you have to do is attempt to create one conscript. That is the only criterion that needs to be satisfied. You've done that in spades, so you are a valid neographer.

Now, when it comes to an invented script, there are a number of elements involved—or that may be involved. They are as follows:

A unique set of glyphs (i.e. letterforms that are crucially different from any other glyphs in any other script—at least partially).

A unique flow (i.e how the glyphs look when lined up to make wordforms).

A specific instantiation or presentation (e.g. the Roman script has a unique set of glyphs and a unique flow, but in presenting a script, Copperlate looks different from Arial, Times, Palatino, Verdana, etc. Each one is a specific presentation or font face or style).

A unique assignment to a set of sounds and/or words/concepts.

Each of these involve artistic decisions, and they all can be assigned different levels of importance/interest. The fourth bullet above seems to be where unhelpful people in your circle are complaining. That is, one thing to do with a script is assign it to, say, the English version of the Roman alphabet. This is a cipher. Here's an example that's used on the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland:

Let's evaluate this based on the criteria above:

There are a unique set of glyphs—kind of. However, if you kind of stand back and evaluate, you'll see that in fact, every letter is a stylized variant of a letter in the Roman alphabet—with, perhaps, the slight exception of I, which looks like a stylized eye (because this is for Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Forbidden Eye. It's a theme). So, actually, it's not super unique. Additionally, making each vowel glyph red is rather silly.

When written together, the script has a unique flow, but that flow is actually pretty poor. It's a bit like writing in all caps in English, but even all caps Roman has a better balance than this script. It's honestly kind of tiresome looking at this script on the wall. For an alphabet, the characters aren't distinct enough, so it gets poor marks there.

The style of the swooshes/wedges/talons is nice, for the most part (I and U cause me to raise an eyebrow—O, too). The distinction between the very short wedges (as in A, B, and N) and the dots (as in J, L, and M), and the few characters with an even smaller dot (E, X, S, and Y) is, frankly, baffling. Additionally, sometimes the wedges are balanced nicely (A and N are great examples), and sometimes they're way too close (cf. B and Z). While the line work is clean, this honestly even the best version of this style of this script, which is unfortunate, to say the least.

This is a straight-up English cipher. That can only be evaluated based on the goals of the script designer. If the script creator is doing it for fun, then there's nothing to say. That's their choice. If this were done for an Indiana Jones movie or television show, I'd cry foul (cf. Star Wars and their incredibly lazy work). However, this is for a ride. The intended level of interaction for this script is for fans who are standing in line anywhere from 15 minutes to two hours, depending on the time of year and time of day. There are actual messages written in this writing system that fans are supposed to decode. Given the time allotted, I think a cipher—and, in fact, a cipher that can be somewhat easily deciphered—was the right way to go. It's either do a cipher so park goers can actually read the messages without working at it beforehand and have some fun as they're waiting in line, or go all-out stylewise with the expectation that NO rider will ever figure out what's been written.

That's how a script needs to be evaluated. Sometimes purpose overrides style; sometimes not. It totally depends.

It SHOULD go without saying that if you're doing this for your own purposes, then no one can say shit about its intended purpose, or lack thereof. I always thought that in fora like r/neography posters share their script for the look of it, unless they say otherwise. There's both positives and negatives to that. Sometimes the way a script is used makes it cool, so presented without that background renders the script a bit less interesting, but other times, as with your scripts, it should be rather freeing. That is, it doesn't matter if the script is a cipher, is for a conlang, or is asemic: The question is, does it look good? If it does, it shouldn't matter what the hell it's for.

I've looked at your scriptwork here, and I've also seen it on r/neography before. Yes, some of it's a little sloppy, some of it's a little basic (i.e. variation on a theme without thought to how the system as a whole hangs together), and the presentation of some of it could use polishing, but a lot of it is quite interesting, quite striking, and presented quite well. Given the volume of work you've done, it's not surprising that some of it isn't as interesting, but by percentage, your work, on the whole, is outstanding. I honestly never noticed they were ciphers because it's, frankly, totally irrelevant. It'd be like going to an art exhibition and complaining that the titles of all the paintings start with the letter s. lol Like who gives af. That level of criticism is uncalled for and plain silly. Unless someone posts and says, "What do you think about this writing system that I created for a conlang?", I don't see the relevance of commenting on how the script ties to a phonology.

I would also like to take a moment to comment specifically on r/neography. I've frequented there for some time now, and I've seen a lot of good work, but the percentage of good work to bad work (or even relevant work) is extremely low. This is why I say so:

My biggest complaint is there are a metric ton of posts that are Romanization systems or Cyrillicization systems or the like. There is absolutely nothing ne about that ography. I joined that subreddit to see some NEW scripts, not already existing ones assigned to some phonology. There can be interesting discussions about that, sure, and I'm happy to see those types of discussions if I go to a forum specifically for those discussions. A place that purports to be about creating new scripts is not that place—period. If I were a mod, I would ban all of those posts as wholly irrelevant—and yet it is the majority of posts there on any given day.

The presentation of scripts is often abysmal. I mean ABYSMAL. For example, take an English-speaking preschooler writing their name. That's an example of the Roman script. Now imagine presenting that—and only that—as an example of the Roman script, which the viewer has never seen before. What would you say about that? I mean, it looks like garbage. You can't evaluate a writing system if it looks like it's written with one's offhand on a crowded train. And yet that is precisely the type of work that is OFTEN presented there. How can anyone expect to have their script evaluated if the way they present it makes it look like someone tried to handwrite "happy birthday" on a card but started too close to the edge? It's embarrassing—or should be, anyway. I couldn't imagine presenting my own work like that to anyone for critique or showcasing.

The scriptwork itself is often poor. Honestly, there's nothing much to say about this. I rarely comment there, because sometimes the most helpful comment I can think of is, "Maybe creating conscripts isn't for you", which is not a comment worth sharing. Part of it is talent, but part of it is patience and knowing (a) what makes a good glyph, and (b) what makes a good flow for your glyphs. A lot of it is subjective, but "subjective" means that there will be some scripts that 90% of viewers will think is subjectively good; some that 60% will think is "good"; some 20%... So even though it's subjective, it doesn't mean that every single script is equal. There's a lot of room for improvement.

Because of the above, the kind of feedback you get at a place like r/neography is, frankly, suspect, and often not worth the effort it took to type. For my own stuff, I respect the opinions of people whose work I respect. If I don't respect someone's script work, their criticism is worthless. For your own work, I'd recommend you adopt a similar approach.

Finally, I'd like to applaud you for the very last thing you wrote—that you were set to continue whatever I wrote. Because if you enjoy it, you should keep at it. There's no other reason to do it.

Thanks for the ask, and keep it up!

[starflungwaddledee]

Hey one of my mutuals reblogged a comic from your “awdty” au and it looks really cool! Is there a way to read all the comics/posts in order? Also, what does awdty stand for? I skimmed through the tag on your blog and had a hard time finding info

hello there!!

aaaa thank you so much, this is such a nice and exciting ask for me to read!! just to think that you saw a little of my work and it's compelling enough that you wanted to read more just makes me very happy!!

there aren't a lot of posts about it yet as i'm pretty new here still, and there's no start-to-finish comic presented in order or anything like that. i'm delivering little snackbites of information (mostly as oneshots in response to asks!) that come all over the chronology of the au itself so the 'order' is a bit... flippertygibberty haha 😂

but here is the entire awtdy tag in chronological order from when i first started posting (not necessarily chronological order of the story, though), here is a lengthy ask answer where i give a rough outline of the premise of the AU and its spin-offs, here is my comics tag which includes all the comics i've done so far (including some for other AUs or for halloween interactions with mutuals)

and lastly here is the answer to the acronym question, also presented in comic form! for clarification just in case it isn't clear in the comic, awtdy stands for A World That Deserves You.

thank you again so much for your interest!! it really means so much to me that people are wanting to consume this story or have any interest at all in my worldbuilding and headcanons... truly it utterly makes my day to receive questions and curiosities from folks who saw and enjoyed my work! thank you!!

[alpacaparkaseok]

(unhinged) life update woot woot

helloooooo

I just - how are you? Good? Great? Having the worst day of your life thus far?

Whatever it is, I hope you're gonna have the best day ever starting now. I've missed chatting with everyone one here (I just lurk around and reblog stuff lol). And BEFORE you start asking, "B, what the frick frack snick snack. We were promised chapters. Part 2's and juicy goodness."

You're right. You were. You'll probably get them eventually. BUT.

I've come to explain myself ☺️

For the past seven months, I've been planning and writing and scrapping and starting all over again and again because thanks to you guys, your support and the amazing support of my hoosband and family/friends, I'm chasing the craziest dream ever.

I'm writing a book.

I'M WRITING IT. RIGHT NOW. It's like two tabs over, in all its glorious, rough-draft, unfinished glory.

Like, a book that gets published and sits on shelves and has a picture of me cheesin on the jacket.

SO, the moral of the story is that, yes, I have been writing, but it's been like 350 pages of scraps (literally wish that I was joking about the sheer amount) and worldbuilding and having the most fun ever trying to figure this crap out.

I haven't been writing a ton of Tumblr stuff :( but that doesn't mean I'm done with it. I have drafts of chapters just hanging out, but that's not the focus right now (understandably).

Just wanted to inform you all because 1) I love you and 2) you're a huge reason for this. I know I have a lot to learn and I'm going to be in for a LONG ride - if this ever gets picked up by anyone, which there's a very strong chance that it won't. For now, I'm working on draft 1 and loving my life because I'm right where I belong.

For those of you that have read this far (so sorry is so long, I'm listening to "Cold Blooded" by Jessi and she's just giving me all the hype I need to write for dayssss), here's a few little facts about the book.

It's based off of HTSS *screaming*

Set in a brand new world

Our cast of characters has EVOLVED into a beautiful array of male and female characters (i.e. Jimin's character is a fabulous, well-connected girl from a country based off of India and the sass is lifeblood for me)

I've learned more about what matters to me this year as I've written about themes of family, found-family, and self-reliance and it's been kinda hard ngl

I LOVE YOU

don't worry this blog is still a bts blog don't worry about me completely changing it lol

ok that's all for now, I love you (just in case you didn't catch that WHOLE vibe) and hey, if you ever wanna see a moodboard or beta read or anything, you know where to find me ;))

[alexanderwales]

The Slumbering Projects List

The Current WIP List is anything that I've done some small amount of work on in the last year (with some of them having substantial amounts of work). This is a list of dead slumbering projects, some of which have been slumbering for a long time, as well as some reflection on what went wrong, if anything.

~~~~

The Timewise Tales is a stable time loop fantasy story that revolves around three different characters. The genesis of this one was an old /r/worldbuilding contest entry that I wrote. All it really needs is an ending to be first draft complete, and I know what the ending is, but this is early early work, and it shows.

Sidebar: my enjoyment of my own work follows a pretty predictable curve.

I start with a lot of energy, grind through some of the middle with maybe a slight bump near the end, then have a rut after I've finished where I think the thing sucks. After enough time has passed, I finally have enough distance to think "hey wait, that was actually pretty good".

The curve looks different for different projects, but going into any of them, I have an understanding that my emotional relationship with the work is going to change in this way. The "middling grind" part can sometimes last a long time, and the trough of disappointment is sometimes short, but I would say this is generally how it works for me.

Timewise Tales is not something I've grown to appreciate more with time, so there's a chance that it's just Actually Bad. I don't know what there is that can be saved from it, but probably something. It's 90K words and would probably be complete in another 10K words, but making it good would be more some effort, especially because I would want to rewrite substantial portions. The magic system is cool though, and I think the characters and plot are solid.

~~~~

Robot, Wizard, Vampire is a follow-up to my novella Contratto, which is just about vampires taking over the world. It's a story about two young people who are the last remnants of their underground cell of wizards who are using magic to make robots that fight the vampires. The setting is the late 70s and the two teenage boys are expies of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. The genesis for this one was someone making a post saying what a terrible idea it would be to include a bunch of dissonant themes in a book. It's 27K words, and from the plot outline, that's about a third of the way through. I reread this recently and think it's fairly good, but didn't put any more effort into it.

~~~~

The Gift and the Burden is about hereditary wizards, following two friends who are divided by one having the gift and the other not. The one with the gift becomes a soldier, the one without a proto-scientist. The outline calls for three acts, and it's stuck toward the end of the second act. 60K words, and in theory outlined for 100K. There's a lot that I like in this one, though it's early work, and definitely a lot to punch up and sand down. I keep meaning to go back to this one.

~~~~

A Series of Fights Without Any Meaning was a battle school type thing, mostly revolving around magical swordplay, which is used by the society to settle disputes via swordfights, something that highly favors the nobility. 16K words. Part of the conceit is that the newest generation has a non-noble who is absurdly good with a blade, and we follow her through the perspective of other characters, always unsure of her thoughts. I wasn't a huge fan of the magic system I came up with, and some of the other worldbuilding is irritating in retrospect, but neither of those are huge unfixable flaws at this point. Probably will never get more work put into it though.

~~~~

The Wayward Souls is a novel about a detective who dies and gets awakened three centuries later in a different body. It's a world where souls are real and can be extracted to be stored in glass jars. There's a version of this that's 45K and a different rewrite version that's 21K, and I don't actually think they share much in common. The main plot is that someone has stolen the emperor's soul, but the secondary plot is the fish out of water stuff. I think this had a few influences that were probably too strong, and a few things that annoyed me, but I can't recall what without doing some rereading. Almost certainly dead in the water.

~~~~

Pub Crawl is based off a meme I saw once that said "you meet in a tavern" and then "you open the door to leave and it's another tavern" and then "it's all taverns, the whole campaign is taverns". And I thought: I can write that! Currently 40K words, at some point I thought this was going to be my next web serial. I think the characters weren't quite right though, and lost steam, even though the outline was very solid. I had this great idea for a "pub map" that would update every few chapters, showing the known pub space as it sprawled out into strange areas.

~~~~

There are lots of others, but those are the substantial ones, the ones that really had a chance to become something and are now sleeping, most of them never to wake up again. I had high hopes for all these at one point, but my time and ability to write is precious, and must be jealously guarded against false pretenders.

[abitofafreudmoment]

HELLO IRL FRIEND OF NICO

i have noticed that you are into discworld and would like to hear more about it bc i am interested in reading it but am incapable of getting into anything unless it's been hyped up to me enough and you seem like you'd be willing to ramble lovingly about this series so uhh. favorite characters? what's it about? themes? fun tidbits?

(no pressure though and sorry if this is a weird way to introduce myself hi im luce)

lol no worries Luce! yes I'm very happy to ramble for you. (post-writing here, this is so all over the place sorry for like not sticking to one area but hey it's defos a loving ramble - kinda just talked about vague stuff, but I can 100% go into specifics).

So. . . where do I begin?

40 books in the series, he wrote right up until his death. NOT a continuous plotline through all 40. In fact, I recommend not starting with the first one (two actually)as it's not spectacular (that being said, it is still worth reading once you're in the series, good for the overall worldbuilding if memory serves). below is a sorta ok guide to how they connect - I have my issues with it but it's the best I've found.

I wouldn't recommend starting with Sourcery, but that's cuz Rincewind isn't my favorite character - I'd start with either equal rites or Lords and Ladies or Mort or The Truth or The Fifth Elephant or just wherever really as long as it isn't the Colour of Magic or the Light Fantastic.

A few crucial ordering things - READ THUD AND SNUFF (and ig Making Money and Going Postal) BEFORE RAISING STEAM. READ THIEF OF TIME BEFORE NIGHT WATCH. Those are the really imperative ones that you gotta order right, generally do it vaguely chronologically and yeah. Have at it.

The Hedgehog Song - this is a tidbit that shows up a lot in the Witches books as a very rude song that Nanny Ogg sings, BUT WE NEVER GET THE WORDS and I so want them.

Because it was written over 32 years, there are so many characters that just like slowly worm their way into it and I love watching a character turn from like a single footnote into a fully-fledged, important-to-the-plot character (I'm looking at YOU, Cassanunda)

SPEAKING OF FOOTNOTES OMG the books are riddled with them and. . . chef's kiss they add So Much to the series. They're so funny.

Pratchett is actually just like so funny as an author in general, but wittily so. Not saying he does pure comedy - he doesn't. Many a time have I cried over a Pratchett book. He's also great at taking stuff and . . . twisting it ig into something brilliantly new - Take, for instance, Maskerade, which is the Phantom of the Opera but Pratchettifyed (New word! yay! I'll be using it a lot I'm sure.). or like just what he does with Fairy Tales in general (Witches Abroad, Lords and Ladies sorta)

Also his MAGIC omg - soft magic system done right. I also love like the different approaches to magic that the witches and wizard have to it. Also how like the Creatures from the Dungeon Dimensions get [spoilers removed]

The gods man. Love them. They exist, they feed off of raw belief (Small Gods' premise is that people start believing in the institution formed around a god as opposed to the god itself and then that god like almost dies cuz no-one believes in him. (surprise surprise it's a commentary on the Church)) and they play games with the lives of men (the Last Hero). Love Granny Weatherwax's opinion on them which goes smthn like this: "No use believin' in 'em, it only serves to encourage 'em." <-- As a concept belief is not simply tied to the gods either. He does a lot of stuff about how what people believe to be true can affect how they perceive things around them.

THE FOOLS. Pratchett understood the tragedy of clowns and as such his fools are so insanely sad - the Fools' Guild is the least happy of all the guilds. I love them so much

Speaking of guilds: the Guild of Thieves. is a legit guild set up by Vetenarii to do crime to the socially acceptable level and no higher - I'm doing a bad job explaining it but it's ingenious.

Vetenarii is probably one of my favorite characters in the entire series. He, above all else, understands how humans work and he uses that skill to get people to do what he wants.

Pratchett does not pull the punches when it comes to messaging and such - very anti-war, anti-racism, anti-sexism etc. Also love what he does with People and how they can/can't be controlled (The human condition as a whole ig) - one of my fav quotes from the series is Vimes saying "They're scared. You can't expect much from people when they're scared."

My personal fav book is Monstrous Regiment, which is relatively standalone. Very good. Very "horrors of war"-y with a touch of the classic [redacted due to spoilers].

I could go on, but this post is getting very long so if I do continue I'll do it in another post.

TL;DR: Pratchett = FUCKING BRILLIANT

[mymo-in-bb]

Intro Post / pana open

(toki pona li lon anpa)

Okay so. I thought maybe making an intro post might be a good idea, but I have no idea what I'm doing, so I analysed the intro posts of some of the blogs I follow and I'll try to do something similar.

Hi! My name is Rosalind, (she/her, though they is fine too i guess)

Between struggling with uni, I sometimes make music. I'll try to post most of it here. I play the saxophone, clarinet and piano. If you hear any other instruments in my music, I used a sampler. Right now I'm mainly focusing on Jazz, though a lot of my music really isn't that. I don't know what genre I'd label it as.

I also worldbuild quite a bit, which includes conlanging. I really love linguistics, but I'm very much an amateur. I might post some worldbuilding or conlanging related stuff here and there.

I don't expect to post any programming related stuff here, but hey, it might happen.

This blog is supposed to be a more of an "artist-like" sideblog, about the things I create, but I also have a personal blog where I mostly just reblog things I like: @bbmymo

So, you can expect music, worldbuilding, conlanging and very amateur linguistics from this blog. I will post very infrequently.

Last things to say: feel free to ask about anything, if you think something here is wrong or poorly done please let me know.

I will try to post in English and toki pona, but I'll see how that goes for me, I am still very much new to the language. If my toki pona translations are bad or could be improved, please rub it in my face

-----

a, mi pilin e ni: ken la, pali pi pana open li pona. taso, mi sona ala e pali mi. ni la, mi lukin e pana open pi lipu toki ante, li alasa pali e ijo sama.

toki a! mi jan Losalin (nimi meli).

mi utala ala tan tomo sona la, mi pali e kalama musi. mi alasa pana e ona ala tawa lipu ni. mi musi e ilo kalama Sakasa, e ilo kalama Lalinete, e ilo kalama Pijano. sina kute e ilo kalama ante lon kalama musi mi la, mi kepeken ilo kalama nanpa. tenpo ni la, mi lukin suli e kalama musi Jasi. taso, kalama musi mi mute li kalama musi Jasi ala. mi sona ala e nasin ona.

kin la, mi pali e ma pali: mi pali kin e toki pali. mi olin a e sona toki. taso, mi jan sona ala. ken la, mi pana e ma pali mi e toki pali mi lon ni.

mi pilin e ni: mi pana ala e ijo pi toki nanpa lon ni. taso, mi sona ala.

lipu ni li sama lipu pi jan mama musi. kin la, mi jo e lipu jan mi: @bbmymo. lipu ni la, mi pana lipu e ijo pona: jan ante li pali e ona.

kin la, sina ken alasa e kalama musi mi, e ma pali mi, e toki pali mi, e sona toki pi jan sona ala, lon lipu ni. mi pana sin lon tenpo mute ala.

pini la mi wile toki e ni: sina ken toki alasa e ale. sina pilin e ni: ijo li ike la: o toki e ni tawa mi.

mi alasa pana e pana kepeken toki Inli kepeken toki pona. taso, mi sin lon toki pona. mi kama lukin e ni pini tawa mi. toki pona mi li ike la, o toki e ni tawa mi a!

[corvuscorona]

STATUS REPORT:

AFM sequel - had some fun w/ this one over the weekend. it's like:

[ ❚_❚__||||____|||❚||❚|❚|❚❚❚ ] ← it's this many done. p.s. why won't tumblr let me use red at all what ....... dude.

Long Thing - chunk 1 (small) and chunk 2 (medium-big) have a HEAVY-DUTY outline with almost no bullshit in it now. chunk 3 (BIG) might also have that; I just haven't actually manifested it into a document yet (ran out of sunday). chunk 4 (medium-big again) has the makings of Real Outlineability as well but it'll probably fight me more when I start actually trying to make it real. chunk 5 (medium?) is slowly orbiting closer and closer to me in my dreams. 6 (???) and 7 (small) are phantoms still; don't rush them. they're shy.

Highly E-Rated Thing - haven't worked on it because the 2 above projects are so Perfectly Balanced. it will choose its moment.

AFM chapter 5 - similarly it will choose its moment. for instance a moment when I am like way too full of beans & need something to put a lot of brain thoughts into.

I may not have anything specific to contribute to Jackstos June or most likely Jackstos July either but everyone else has been BRINGING IT so hey. *offers a gay little applause that pisses you off*.

next: I'm gonna talk to myself below the cut I'm thinking about THE PROCESS.

*elaborates on Long Fucking Thing some more because that's what I use like 3/4 of my brain for all the time now* it's interesting to see plot arcs shape up / to have a way to really consciously note "this part still might need This kind of thing," for reasons:

because both the story & the way I'm working on it are nonlinear, sometimes the note I'm making is "if you haven't established that Event A happened by this point, the scene that has to go here for thematic coherency reasons will not make. logical sense" (genuinely very funny thing to have to consider)

a LOT of the places where I currently have "uh think harder about this later" types of notes are like. have directly to do w/ Facts And Lore that are tangential to the story but critical to the worldbuilding (which REALLY makes them NOT tangential to the story. they're formative and important it's just that I have to Decide Them backwards to make sure they're forming the story elements in the direction I already want those to be going)

I'm realizing by thinking about the Process in this way that this is all very related to the Reasons the latter half of the fic is still pretty up in the air. It works like this okay bear with me:

I start with emotional beats I find compelling. Then I string together facts and events that make them important + create a compelling narrative arcs-and-themes-ways. Then I retroactively define the worldstate and LoreFacts based on "what would make this string of happenings happen in a way that isn't stupid". (I Am Currently Here). As the World Facts become more rigidly defined, I run into "things I should either address or change an existing Something to avoid addressing," and like this the places where there aren't currently things like "scenes" or "concrete events" gradually get filled in.

The concrete Things That Need To Happen in the final 3 chunks of this fic depend so heavily on the WORLDSTATE that it's been impossible to generate most of them up until now. I have to finish (~) defining Facts (based on the emotional beats I already know how I'll be covering in the first half of the story) before I can get my gay little fingers in there and start tying things into cute little bows. THIS MAKES A SHOCKING AMOUNT OF SENSE SOMEHOW I'M so used to writing smedium-length things where half the time I write the VERY end first because that's where ALL the emotional payoff lives.

NOT SO THIS TIME. THERE IS EMOTIONAL PAYOFF ALL OVER THE FIRST HALF OF THIS THING & it would probably be difficult and inadvisable to do a whole lot more with the second half before I make sure I know what shrimplications I'm shrimplying based on (checks my watch for some reason) like 3 entire Structural Plot Arcs of Gay BullShit. huh.

[ladyswillmart]

Now that I'm on the subject of Writing That I've Done And Need To Archive On My Website, I think the best writing I've done recently is probably that Soul Blazer short fic, followed by the Hivallion/LotRO shorts which I actually went back and read recently and I was like "Oh, these are so cute".

I don't know why but I find LotR a little intimidating as a... Thing To Write In so I never really attempted anything that might resemble a more formal kind of fic. 🤔 I don't know if I ever will? Maybe? If I can ever get over the feeling that I'm taking a dump in Tolkien's church, maybe LOL

The Ultima 7/Serpent Isle fics I did more recently were okay. Like they're... fine! I don't hate them. I even like them a little. They're not grrrrrrrrrreat but not like anything that makes me want to vaporize everything I've ever written out of pure shame. I think with "Meadowtron" I was trying to create a kind of worldbuilding framework in which I could do like a little character ensemble series. I know not many people are familiar with Ultima anymore so I really wanted to make something that my friends could enjoy reading even if they haven't played the game. Along those lines, I created an introduction that elaborates on the setting I was going for: Basically, it's a postgame, semi-Fix-It AU comedy that sees the survivors of our bogus journey trying to scratch out a living in Moonshade. Rather than focusing on the Avatar and her companions, this story would flesh out the less-developed NPCs of Serpent Isle. I still really want to make this a reality and do at least ONE story in this setting (I have one outlined in full), but over the past few months I've kinda psyched myself out of writing fics completely so I'll need to find a way to trick my idiot albatross brain into starting it. 🤪 Maybe I'll make the main characters in Hero Forge, that might get the ball rolling (or not, but hey, it'll be fun so)...

I guess when I think of "purely self-indulgent fun" I immediately think of Ultima. Old old old habits never die I guess.

I think out of all the fandoms I've been in, FF14 was probably the most frustrating in terms of lost potential. Specifically, writing Nero fics—I started and abandoned SO MANY FICS. I had a lot of ideas that just never came to fruition, maybe because I had too many ideas and got overwhelmed, or because the ideas themselves were all half-baked anyway. I'm thinking it was some accursed combination of the two; the fact that I finished (and published!) anything at all is a GD miracle.

The Secret World was so much fun. I think it's the first and maybe only fandom I've been in where I actually felt like a part of the fandom, and like not some leering dork on the sidelines making unwanted commentary. I'll always treasure the time I had and the friends I made there. I'm not 100% sure yet how I'm going to organize my loose and chaotic collection of Secret World stuff on my website but I'll have to think of something.

Ah yes, I did write a few Dragon Age fics too! Inquisitor Arlen was so so funny. I'm not sure where I have these stories saved but if I can find them, I'll make a space for them on the website too. Same for Elder Scrolls I guess?? That's going pretty far back but I'm sure this stuff still exists somewhere, even if it's just in some weirdly named text file.

Yes, anything that's on my AO3 will go on the website, including the Portal stuff eventually though I am not looking forward to having to reformat/repost all those fics again LOL Well, at least I have the markup this time...