#I might go on later on but I'm tired

[elbiotipo]

Notes on technology in Campoestela:

Most spaceships are single-stage-to-orbit. They have rather standard jet engines to lift off from the ground like a standard plane.

To get into orbit, they use a rocket engine that uses a solid fuel made of a HIGHLY combustible (yet stable) carbon-nitrogen compound which allows a better fuel than anything previous. This was first discovered by Iranian scientists who named it "Nafta".

(sí, Beto tiene que estacionar su camión espacial para cargar nafta)

Nafta was a big discovery on its time, allowing cheap SSTO rockets. Nowadays it's produced in many worlds and widely available. It also has uses as weaponry, but it's not that efficient.

Nafta is used for lift-off and orbital burns. For manuevering in space, there are small jets on the nose and tail of spaceships, similar to the Space Shuttle.

Spaceship piloting is still not an easy task, but it's comparable to being a jet pilot, about 4 or 5 years to master. Hard, but something on the reach of many people. People from the generation ship clans are a bit more used to it and often represent an outsized part of space pilots, but there's always many wellers (from down the gravity well) who get their licenses too.

The hardest thing is always landing. Especially given all the different gravities, atmospheres, orbits and such you have to learn in each different case, even with all the automation in the world. Many spacers feel confident sticking to one or at most two or three planets they know.

Pilots that only do shuttle or cargo runs in the same star system or planet are called "Starters", because they go around the same star. It's rude, but many spacers do it.

FTL travel is another thing. FTL travel is done using a ring-like structure that projects a bubble around the ship and takes it to a (completely made-up for the setting) dimension called the Aether. The Aether is one of the meta-dimensions (there might be more) that uphold reality. Conveniently, you can use it as a shortcut to travel between stars, which project "shadows" on the Aether.

The Aether has its own navigation, with currents and whirpools and areas of thick dark matter (which, for cinematic purposes, actually look like bright nebulae) There are routes that are easier to travel and navigate, and these are where the most visited worlds are. Even stars that are close in real space might be very hard to get in Aetheric space, so there's routes that can take you all over the galaxy in a week, while many other places are out of reach.

Navigating the Aether is very similar to flying a plane through a cloudy sky. Some spacer says it's even easier than flying in real space.

Staying on the aether depends on how much you can keep the fields upholding your "bubble". This depends on the energy of your ship. Big ships can travel all over the galaxy but they have enormous energy consumption requirements.

Smaller ships (such as Beto's Mastropiero) dock with a ring-like structure that allows them to make short jumps. The average jump in an explored route is about 12-48 hours, so it's much like aircraft flights.

Exploring new aetheric routes is something that is very romanticized but in reality is a tedious process of jumping, cataloguing new systems (many of them empty and useful only as refuelling stations), seeing where the streams go and end, how they change, and more.

There is no FTL radio or live communication. There is a kind of aetheric radar that allows you to see incoming ships and do some morse-like communication, but it's not very efficient, there is no such thing as a galactic internet (though it's said ancient civilizations had one)

Aether travel engines require very sophisticated manufacturing and materials, which were hard for humans to develop. This was long only in the hands of governments and corporations, but after the Machine War, accessible aether starships hit the civilian market.

Smaller ships are still used by governments (more like loose "leagues") to do what big ships can't: supply satellites and equipment to remote bases, small-scale transport of engineers, researchers, aether "meteorology" and exploration, etc. This is very much like bush planes in remote regions or the role of Aeroflot in developing the USSR.

While humans in the setting, like most species, are composed of many different leagues, cultures and organizations, their technology is remarkably consistent. This is because cheap and reliable spaceflight depends on very reliable standarization. Some of the spaceship parts used six centuries after Gagarin are still the same used in the Soyuz. The ISO is perhaps one of the most enduring legacies of human civilization, along with FIFA.

[desertduality]

gigs phasmo but the ghost is just confused mumbo jumbo

physically unable to write a snippet so here's a whole oneshot AKJSDKJ I hope you like it!! Personally I had a ton of fun lmao

-------

The house was nice, as far as haunted locations went. The flowers out front were dead, sure, but that was probably on account of their caretaker being dead as well.

The neighbors had been the ones to call this address in, claiming that although the owner of the property had died quite some months ago, lights frequently turned on and off in the house. The police had been by several times to check for intruders, and had come up empty every time. Finally, some desperate neighbor had given in and called paranormal investigators.

So there they were, Impulse pulling up on the curb just as the sun dipped below the horizon. Prime ghost hunting time, for some reason; Scar hadn’t really paid attention to the science and research when he’d signed up for the job. Besides, the other three had all that handled quite nicely. Scar was just along for the ride. 

“Scar, you know what you’re doing?” Impulse asked, grabbing a flashlight off the wall and clipping his walkie onto his belt. 

“Sir, yes sir!” Scar quipped, scanning the gear for his usual fare. “One paraba-dolical microphone coming up.”

“Grab a thermometer, too,” Impulse suggested, clapping him on the shoulder on his way out of the van. “Let’s try to keep this one clean! The company is running low on cursed items with resurrection abilities.”

“I know for a fact we’ve made the biggest dent in that,” Skizz’s voice crackled out of the walkie, changing to a slight echo as he presumably walked in the house.

“Why do you sound proud of that?” Grian asked, speaking into the radio as he grabbed a salt canister. Scar snickered, reaching over him to grab the thermometer. 

“We’ve got a record going, man! No one can stop us!”

“You have to admire his positivity,” Scar said brightly, clicking his flashlight to make sure it worked. 

“Yeah, I guess he’s got that going for him,” Grian replied, giving a short wave as he left the van. “See you on the inside, Scar.”

Scar gave a jaunty wave, doing one last check on his equipment before starting after him. A voice cut him off before he could leave. 

“Did anyone check the name?” Impulse asked, and Scar turned around to squint at the corkboard, eyes catching on the top. 

Huh. Interesting. 

Scar clicked the talk button on his walkie. “Looks like… Mumbo Jumbo?”

There was a long pause, and Scar almost thought they had missed it somehow. Then the response came.

“Scar,” Grian said, sounding tiredly amused. “If you can’t pronounce it, don’t just make something up.”

“No, It— It literally says Mumbo Jumbo,” Scar replied, glancing up to double check. “Don’t make me waste a photo to prove it. I will, you know I will.”

“Don’t, Scar,” Impulse jumped in, so quickly that the start of his sentence cut out. “We believe you.”

“Get in here before I come and drag you, Face,” Skizz chimed in, and Scar rolled his eyes with a chuckle, stepping out of the van. 

The house was warmer than the air outside, so Scar took that as a sign that someone had gotten to the fuse box. He wandered around with the paradabolic microphone for a few minutes, watching closely for big leaps in the readings. Eventually, Impulse called out from upstairs, claiming that he’d found the room. Scar hurried towards him, making it there just in time to watch him set up the video camera, fiddling with the tripod and muttering complaints about its stability. 

The room was a bedroom, a large bed against one wall and a shelf full of dead plants on the other. Everything was covered with a thin layer of dust, but that was pretty usual. Obviously no one had been keeping up with the cleaning.   

“Anyone done spirit box?” Grian asked, and Scar jumped and whirled around, finding him in the doorway. Grian giggled, and Scar huffed. 

“Not yet,” Impulse said, finally getting the tripod to settle. He looked over at them. “Want us to leave?”

“Not really,” Grian grumbled, starting to power up the spirit box. “But yes.”

Scar walked out of the door and Impulse followed him, closing it and leaving Grian in the room alone. Immediately, they heard the telltale singing introduction of Grian beginning to ask questions. The rest of the house was quiet. So far, everything had been entirely unremarkable.

“I’m going to go grab D.O.T.S and a book,” Impulse spoke suddenly, starting to walk away. “Maybe you could start grabbing some stuff for a polty pile?”

“Sure, will do,” Scar said, and started picking up objects from the table in the hallway. A lot of picture frames and spare wires, for whatever reason.

Grian opened the door to the room just as Scar arrived with his arms full, and Scar tilted his head at the odd look on the other’s face. His eyebrows were furrowed and he was wearing a faint frown. 

“What’s wrong?” Scar asked, curious. Normally, Grian came out of a spirit box session with wide eyes and immediately ran to the van. This was out of character.

“I think…” Grian started, contemplative frown getting more pronounced. “I think the ghost apologized to me.”

“...huh?”

“I asked where it was,” Grian said, spirit box slack in his hand. “And then it said something, and then I screamed, and then it— I could have sworn it said sorry. Like, for scaring me.”

“Oh,” Scar said, tilting his head. “Has that happened before?”

Grian shook his head slowly, staring at the spirit box for a minute before exhaling forcefully. “Let’s just keep going,” he said, shoving the device in his pocket. “We still have a job to do.” Then, into his walkie: “We’ve got spirit box, guys. One thing down.”

They kept doing their jobs like they normally would, but none of them could quite shake the sense of something being different.

Usually, the haunted locations they visited had a foreboding sort of feeling to them. They get in and out of those places as soon as possible, the feeling of imminent danger settling on their shoulders like a heavy jacket. There was none of that, here. It was obviously haunted, but it still just felt like... a house. It didn’t feel malicious at all. 

Impulse put a book down, and writing appeared a few minutes later. Just a single sentence, asking if they would water the plants on their way out.

They laid down D.O.T.S and stayed out in the van for a while, eventually seeing a tall, hazy figure pass quickly through. 

They caught ghost orbs on the video surveillance.

Impulse took the Ultraviolet flashlight and found fingerprints on the side of the video camera, like the ghost had been curious about it. 

The salt Grian had placed on the ground was smeared and scattered, almost as if the ghost had slipped on it instead of stepped in it. 

“If we discovered some new type of ghost,” Grian said eventually, muffled through his own hands covering his face, after hours of pouring over the conflicting evidence. “I am going to be upset.”

“None of this makes sense!” Impulse complained, flipping through the research journal that Scar had never touched. He was scowling at the pages like they’d personally offended him. “It won’t even hunt!”

“He seems kinda friendly,” Scar said, staring at the steady line of the EMF reader on the screen. “The poor guy just wants his plants watered. I don’t even have the heart to tell him that it probably wouldn’t help. Those things are dead dead.”

Impulse’s head thunked down on the table in front of him. “We’re so fired.”

In the silence following that statement, Skizz burst into the van, holding an object aloft in celebration.

“I found it!” Skizz yelled triumphantly, the wrinkly figure of the monkey paw clutched in his hand. “It fell behind some boxes. I told you it was here.”

“Oooh,” Scar said, rushing over in excitement. “What should we wish for?”

“A quick death?” Grian said flatly.

Scar waved a dismissive hand. “I’ve had too many of those. It gets kind of boring, believe it or not.”

“Let’s just wish to see it,” Impulse said, heaving himself up from his hunched position by the monitor. “We’ve done everything else we could do, let’s just do it.”

“Sure, why not,” Grian said, shrugging. “Let’s go out in a blaze of glory, then.”

“That’s the spirit!” Skizz laughed, and together the four of them marched back into the house.

The room was exactly as they’d left it, and Impulse took a moment to turn off the D.O.T.S. Then they stood in a loose circle, tense and determined. Whatever was happening here, it would be over soon. One way or the other. Maybe the company wouldn’t even bother to bring them back, this time. 

Skizz held the monkey paw aloft, dim light casting dramatic shadows on his face. “I wish to see the ghost!”

A finger on the monkey paw cracked and groaned as it bent down, and a chill swept across the room, quick and encompassing. Their flashlights flickered, and then died, leaving them in complete darkness. For a long moment, the only sound was their chorus of quick and shaky breathing.

When the lights turned back on, Scar was face to face with a ghost. A ghost that looked equally as startled as he was. 

Scar yelped and stumbled backwards, tripping over the open book on the ground and hurtling towards the bed. The ghost — a tall man with dark hair and an absolutely wonderful mustache — lunged forward and reached out as if to catch him, eyes wide and panicked. To be fair to the dead man, it absolutely would have worked if his hands were still a tangible thing; As it were, his attempt at grabbing Scar to keep him upright was rather rudely foiled by his outstretched hand passing right through Scar’s flailing arm.

Scar hit the bed with a grunt as various cries of alarm sounded out around him, light bouncing around the room haphazardly as the sound of clattering reached his ears; someone had dropped their flashlight, apparently. Scar laid on the bed and stared at the ceiling, dazed. 

“Oh gosh! I’m so— I didn’t mean to pop in like that, I—”

Scar looked up just in time to watch a crucifix fly through the air and pass harmlessly through the ghost’s head, hitting the wall with a thud and falling gracelessly to the floor. The ghost yelped and ducked — much too late, not that it mattered, anyway — and Scar’s gaze next landed on Grian, still standing there with his arm extended in a throwing motion, hand empty and eyes wide.

“What was that gonna do, G?!” Skizz asked hysterically, fumbling for his camera, accidentally snapping a picture of his own face and swearing when the light blinded him. 

Impulse had knocked over the tripod in all of the chaos, and was now frantically attempting to set it back upright. The ghost — Mumbo Jumbo — turned his anxious eyes on Scar, who for once was struck speechless, jaw slack. 

“Are you alright, mate?” Mumbo Jumbo asked, hands fidgeting together. “I didn’t mean to scare you, but— Well, you summoned me. There’s only so much to be done for that.”

With everyone else still scrambling about the room, Scar allowed himself a few seconds to process things. Most ghosts they’d come across — all of them, actually — had been nothing less than murderous and bloodthirsty. The cordial ghost of a perfectly normal man was not something they had been trained for, but that didn’t exactly mean that it was impossible. Sure, maybe it had come way, way out of left field, but Scar prided himself on rolling with the punches. He pushed himself up from the bed with a sheepish, charming smile. 

“It’s all good,” Scar said, bright and friendly. “For sure our fault, we summoned you and got surprised when you showed up. Kind of rude of us, I think. Your mattress is super comfortable, by the way.”

Mumbo Jumbo blinked, as if surprised by the onslaught of words, a confused little furrow appearing between his brows. “Thank you?” he said, glancing behind him at the bed. “It was…expensive.”

“I mean, hey! We spend a lot of our lifetime in a bed, right? Might as well shell out some cash for quality.”

“What are we doing?” Grian asked quickly, almost like he was talking to himself, hands pressed to his head in utter bafflement. “This is insane, what is happening.”

“Grian! Don’t be rude,” Scar admonished playfully, then turned back to grin at the ghost. “Mumbo Jumbo, right?”

The man nodded faintly. “Just…Mumbo is fine.”

“Sweet! I’m Scar,” Scar said, and then started pointing to his friends, all standing stock still in various stages of shock and confusion. “The rude one who throws stuff is Grian, that’s Impulse by the window, and over there is Skizz!”

“Nice to meet you?” Mumbo said, glancing around nervously. “I would offer to shake your hand, but…”

“God, this is weird,” Skizz blurted, eyes still wide but starting to relax his stance. “You do know you’re dead, right? We never actually get to ask any of the ghosts we meet.”

“Oh, I— Yeah, I’m well aware,” Mumbo said, laughing a little. “You’ve met other ghosts, then?”

“We’re ghost hunters,” Impulse said, and now that the shock was fading, Scar could see a spark of excitement in his eyes. “But I mean— We’ve never met any like you.”

“Mostly they want to kill us,” Grian said, stepping up next to Scar. “Are you sure you don’t want to kill us?”

“I don’t think I know how, much less want to,” Mumbo said, glancing out the window. “Did someone call you to find me? I’ve been trying not to scare anyone, but I suppose the lights might’ve done me in.”

“Yeah, that was pretty much what tipped them off,” Scar said apologetically. “A few too many weird things happen and boom, here we are.”

“What happens now?” Mumbo asked, chuckling nervously. “I mean, you found me. Job done, yeah?”

“Usually we figure out what type of ghost it is and the company sends out a specialized team to evict it,” Impulse answered, brow pinched in thought. “But normally that’s for safety reasons. You don’t seem like a threat. No offense.”

“Oh, none taken.”

“Can I ask how you died?” Skizz asked, eyes alight with curiosity. 

“Skizz,” Grian hissed. “You can’t just ask people how they died!”

“I was just wondering!”

“No, it’s— it’s fine,” Mumbo stuttered, and Scar had a feeling that if ghosts could blush, he would be doing it. “I… fell down the stairs.”

Scar nodded solemnly. “Could have happened to anyone.”

“So what are we actually going to do about this?” Grian asked, vaguely gesturing at the room. “It feels like it would be wrong to kick this guy out of his own house. He’s not really causing trouble.”

“Yeah, I— I do like my house,” Mumbo interjected, awkward smile on his face. “I’d rather stay, if that’s alright.”

“Someone’s bound to move in eventually, you know,” Skizz said, pitying frown on his face. “There’s already a for sale sign in the yard. The new owners might not be super ghost-friendly.”

Mumbo’s shoulders slumped, a dejected look on his face as he frowned at the floor. Scar felt a pang of sympathy grow in his chest, and he glanced out the window at the rows of houses down the street. 

It really was quite a nice neighborhood. 

“...You know,” Scar started, gaze drifting over to Grian, a slow smile forming on his face. “Our lease is almost up.”

Grian looked over at him, eyes already resigned, and sighed. 

Scar laughed, grinning, and Mumbo slowly smiled back.

[parkersloths]

A bit late but oh well, it's still the 21st somewhere and this is more of a bday week thing anyway ;u;

I actually didn't have time to draw a new pic cause I've been super busy but I still wanted to do something so here's an edited/more finished version of the first Käärijä pic I tried drawing then left as a WIP, with a little bday tiara of course! Seriously though, I hope he had the best day, his music and general silliness have brought me a lot of joy and smiles and other nice vibes so yeah I just really appreciate this weird little green guy ;u;

[lord-squiggletits]

The reason this fandom hates IDW Optimus isn't because he's a cop (plenty of people are fine with Prowl) or because he's a bastard (most characters in IDW are) but because he commits the crime of being an actual person who's messy, flawed, and makes a shitload of high stakes mistakes fitting for the intense situations and pressure he's put under constantly.

But we can't have Optimus actually react to his situations by lashing out or being unpleasant, no, he has to have the personality of a cardboard cutout of G1 whose only defining personality traits are "dad, funny, nice," and if he ever vents negative emotions it can only ever be #relatable depression or him being sad on his own without ever letting it show during the important parts of the story. If Optimus dares do things like be angry or frustrated or bitter it's just a sign that he's a bastard and LITERALLY the worst Optimus ever. If Optimus ever makes mistakes or does wrong things in the heat of anger/frustration/stress it's because he's just an evil bastard with no redeeming traits.

God forbid Optimus go through an unending gauntlet of war, politics, atrocities, near-complete loneliness, and a seemingly endless cycle of violence for his entire life and come out of it kind of bitter, angry, and tired of dealing with people's shit. He's not allowed to be a realistic person, context doesn't matter, sympathy doesnt matter. IDW Optimus doesn't fulfill the fandom's fantasies of Father Figure or Perfect Cultural Icon or Twinky Fucktoy and since that's the only reason most people care about Optimus in general, the fandom collectively trashes on IDW OP.

All because he can't fit into the overly simplified and childlike double standard the fandom has where if any other character is messy and flawed, that's good writing and interesting and compelling, but if OPTIMUS is messy and flawed, he's Literally The Worst and he's an asshole for no other reason than He Sucks, context be damned

[mischievouslittlecreature]

I'm really genuinely so confused as to why I keep getting asks from people telling me that they hope Tommy dumps or even kills Lucy and ends up with Lizzie instead. I've gotten multiple variations at this point of "Lucy deserves to be raped/killed/otherwise hurt because how dare she get in the way of Tommy and Lizzie's happiness." I've just been deleting and ignoring them, but it's gotten to the point where there've been so many that I legitimately do not understand what is happening or what I did to cause this kind of reaction.

Like, I get it. A lot of you love Lizzie and ship her with Tommy. I have never had any problem with that. But if that's the type of story you're after, GO READ SOME FUCKING LIZZIE X TOMMY FICS AND LEAVE ME ALONE.

This series has never been marked as a Lizzie x Tommy story. I'm so confused as to why so many seem to expect that relationship to be the endgame of the series, and not the one that the series is actually tagged with and written around. I'm really starting to question my own writing abilities at this point. Has my depiction of Tommy and Lucy's relationship actually been that off-putting? Is Lucy really that unlikable that everyone hopes she ends up alone and miserable for the rest of her life, or even fucking dead?

I just don't understand. Someone please explain it to me.

[morrigan-sims]

Knight-Commander Theodore Marshall

Carrion's former mentor and father figure, and the commander of the Knights of the Silver Order. Just a Dad trying his best. Regrets nothing more than leaving the boy he knew as Reverence for dead. Unfortunately for him, Reverence Carrion is alive, and wants him dead...

[closeup of his face and official art reference under the cut]

[corvid-language-library]

Someone yell at me to get things done

[void019]

Bomby bfb :]

Silly doodle. Hello!

Aaand felt like doing a couple banner things too. :]

[upsidedownsmore]

Thud Blood Loss

the goth shark girl with gravity magic

this is going to be a very dumb homebrew campaign lmfao

[queer-omens-in-the-archives]

Immense willingness to write VS absolutely shot visual/word processing that makes it hard to read: battle to the death right now

[elenadoeslife]

🎢

[devilsskettle]

lurking on desktop. hey

[voidpersonthing]

Do I have to make a pinned saying that I:

Don't have money to spare at the moment

Even if I did, my money is worth less than pennies nowadays

Have No Reach

Just so I stop getting DMs, asks and the like asking me for donations?

[ilkkawhat]

you've heard of anxiety attacks now get ready for guilt attacks

[head-empty-river]

godfeels, fuck you (affectionate)

i need to do homework but instead i spent like two and a half days reading 403,043 fucking words (up to the end of interlude before side a and b) and today i started writing an offshoot right after where i stopped reading

bc i got fucking possessed to make an "everyone lives au" with the doomed june who met vv/VV trying to save them, and i've written 3000 words and change already. gotta go back and do all the quirks and colors when i'm done (won't be for a while bc it's a whole thing).

and also might pull some ideas from the crow strider au bc if i'm doing a hopeful story that's like a pinnacle to aspire to. btw it's not a fix it fic bc i don't think anything with the og is wrong; i'm just exploring what could be, in the open space that is left between this june and her obliteration in canon. and i think any roxy would be proud of this june, even if the canon one can't experience the spoils.

anyway. fanfic of fanfic aside. holy shit?

a story (especially a written one bc i got worse at reading after highschool lol, burnout go brr) hasn't gripped me this hard in fucking forever. i have shit to do rn but i'm fucking entranced.

ngl i recommend godfeels, BUT. with the caveat that it is a fucked up rough read. it's immeasurably good, but at the same time honestly more fucked in some places than the epilogues. so very fucked up. but it's so good.

like i feel bad recommending rough reads/listens/watches (like disco elysium, dark [that one show in german on netflix iykyk], hello from the hallowoods, both magnus podcasts, and more; bc i guess i'm just a fucked up little guy [gender neutral] idk), but they can be life altering in a good way. i don't regret my time spent on/in any of those stories. they made me who i am, and i am making myself through one rn.

i avoided homestuck anything for so long and finally dived in headfirst on a reading of it (guilty flygon, my fave terezi voice imo) in early december bc i needed a distraction from, like, everything; and i get the hype now. i think i wouldn't've been able to handle it when i was younger so i'm glad i waited.

since then (gods, only two months wtf) i've consumed the whole og comic, the epilogues, and am up to date on beyond canon as of early feb. i also read all of crow strider and watched mayhaps too many comic dubs, before stumbling upon the godfeels podcast from a post on the voft discord. after listening to all six episodes, i immediately started reading and now i'm here.

fuck.

idk if i even want people to read this or respond to it but if i utter that i read anything homestuck related to people irl... well, yeah. people are judgemental, surprise surprise. so here i am ig. yeeting a journal entry rant thing into schrodinger's void. bc there might be someone looking back.

btw i might post that fanfic of a fanfic on ao3 eventually (only when it's completed, or i know it'll stay unfinished forever), or maybe just keep it as something for myself. we'll see.

[seaofreverie]

Anyway how is everyone doing