#Or just in general

[vhstown]

please stop scrolling and take the time to read this.

i don't think people understand the extent of the horror happening in palestine right now. "death" means nothing to people because of desensitisation so let me just tell you what white phosphorus is. it's being used in israeli munitions and has been and will continue to be fired across gaza and the palestinian borders.

white phosphorus burns when it comes into contact with oxygen (at nearly 800°C or 1500°F. the human body can withstand ~50°C for reference.) the air you breathe in ignites and it is near impossible extinguish. it sticks to clothing and skin and is very difficult to remove because it will continue to ignite in air. it burns flesh up to the bone and even past the bone because it penetrates tissue and is absorbed VERY easily. if you inhale it it'll destroy your respiratory tract and lungs. it can cause failure in multiple organs including the liver, kidneys and heart. it is being released in one of the most densely populated places on earth.

the only way to treat someone exposed to white phosphorus is to submerge them in saline or water and to pick out the substance with forceps, and when you undress a wound the substance can re-ignite. this is just ONE weapon that is being used to kill palestinian people right now. palestine does not have access to medical care, humanitarian aid, power, or internet. their hospitals are being bombed. gaza is one of the most densely populated places in the world with over 50% of the population being children. many children are the sole survivors of their families. there are videos of children experiencing panic attacks and symptoms of ptsd. the fact that israel has committed war crimes in plain sight means that we can only imagine what will happen to the palestinians in complete darkness.

israel has and will continue to deny this. your interests and fandom will still be here, you will wake up tomorrow morning and see your friends and family, but an entire nation of people are being wiped off the map. being silent is being complacent. reblog, spread information, tell people in real life, attend protests, sign petitions, call your government offices, at the very least be angry and upset and horrified because once you become numb and indifferent and hopeless the oppressors will have already won.

what's happening right now is more than a genocide and once it becomes a part of history we'll wonder how the world let this happen. genocides have been part of all nations. just because it is far away does not mean you don't have to be concerned. the fact that YOUR governments and YOUR idols and the people around YOU are supporting the mass eradication of an entire group of people should scare you. it shouldn't make you feel anything less than sick and angry and disgusted. DO something about it, no matter how small you feel your voice is, because palestinians no longer have one.

[edit] links to some helpful reblogs: one & two

post on how you can help palestine

learn about palestine with this masterlist of info

+ a further reblog of mine

[edit 2] about palestinians "not having a voice" at the time i wrote this post internet connection was cut off entirely and even journalists weren't able to report for a period of time — that is all i meant by that. they of course have a voice and i never meant to undermine how people are risking their lives in gaza to get information out there and i apologise if thats what people took from it, it was not my intention but it is entirely my bad. please continue to spread information and updates from gaza as they come.

[mxmarsbars]

happy pride month

[bsd-verse]

How many people know about Arahabaki? I'm talking about both the ADA and Port Mafia here, can you just imagine how shocked the ADA would be once they find out Chuuya is that powerful? I'm pretty sure they already know how strong he is, but with that oh boy he's even more.

[maraune]

For fucks sake, if you don't know the artist REVERSE GOOGLE SEARCH IT

[aesthetic-bbyg]

I WANT DIIIIICK😭

[multifandotakugirl]

As it is canon that Charlotte and George knew about Brimsley and Reynolds (they saw them dancing and figured out that way, in the books, I think). I choose to believe that Charlotte’s line “Do not hover” also meant that he was free to go to Reynolds. Idc.

[karimimi]

they r literally the chipettes

[hypotheticalprose]

The Benefits of Narrative Jazz

CAUTION: I am not a jazz musician, I have no real skill in music, and I am generally always talking out of my ass on this blog. Great, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, I will now attempt to use jazz as a metaphor for storytelling.

I love TTRPGs, watch my fair share of actual-plays, and have a handful of hypothetical game systems rattling around in my head that I’ll definitely get around to at some point. However, I was a latecomer to the art form. Unlike many of my friends, I didn’t play DnD until my senior year of high school. I originally only got into it because my little brother was getting into it, and I wanted to be supportive.

Because of this, I have a clear moment in my life where my creative writing work was irrevocably contaminated by my ongoing love affair with random tables and collaborative storytelling. Comparing my mindset before and after that point, the best thing I can compare it to is the difference between classical composing and performing a jazz piece.

When I was younger, I had far more experience with building LEGOs and drawing maps as creative outlets, and I took a similar structural approach to my writing. My work was focused on putting pieces in the right place, making sure everything fit, and killing any narrative dissonance I found with extreme prejudice. In my mind, there was a thing called The Story, and The Story was essentially a window into a realistic, internally consistent alternate World that I constructed myself. It’s the mindset of a guy who obsessively read Wookipedia all throughout middle school to make sure that his homemade Star Wars faction was exactly as cool as the canon allowed.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I started running games of DnD in my speech and debate class (why weren’t we doing, you know, speech and debate? What are you, a narc?) and I discovered the joys of riffing. I approached each session with my meticulously crafted notes, and my grimdark villains, and my Map, and despite my best efforts my players transformed the game into Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Luckily, I am only sometimes an utter killjoy, so I found myself really enjoying the game despite the fact that it wasn’t a perfect Story in a perfect World.

Today, I mostly play rather than DM, but I’ve definitely DM’d more games than I have played in em. I also write professionally and personally. As it turns out, the skills that make for good improvisational, collaborative storytelling are just as useful when sitting down and writing a screenplay or narrative.

This is where the jazz comparison comes in. In jazz, a performance typically begins with the bassist playing a pedal point, a single note that the rest of the band builds the song around. There’s also usually a basic melody that they riff off of for their solos. Oftentimes, the performers only have a vague idea of what they will improvise during their solos. Sometimes, the best of the best would completely wing it. But of course, they have that foundation they’re building off of. And even the wildest performers are tethered to that pedal point.

For writers, the pedal point is the thing that makes the story worth writing. I’m aiming abstract here, because it could be a lot of things. A theme they find compelling, a neat character, a specific emotion, whatever. It can even be practical like “I need to write a story that I can use to pay the bills.” No judgement here, we’ve all done it.

The melody is essentially the story’s starting premise. This is the “idea” in its most basic, barebones form. A chord progression and time signature become setting, premise, etc.

It’s the riffing that makes things interesting. None of the players in a jazz band are going to know what the final song will sound like. That means they have to adjust on the fly. They have to connect with what the other players are doing. If inspiration strikes, they use the fundamentals as the tether that prevents them from going too far from the basic premise. When you record a jazz performance, you do slightly kill this magic, right? But here’s the thing: if no one recorded jazz, we’d all have a lot less jazz in our day to day lives.

Every story that exists today is essentially an example of this process. No story remains unchanged. For a younger me, that was a challenging thing to accept. I clung to every idea I had. Every new idea had to fit into my existing framework. It was, essentially, creative constipation. I was writing orchestral pieces where instead of getting rid of my older, amateur work, I was layering more parts over it.

The irony of treating every part of a story as sacred is, after a certain point, you might have a hard time remembering what the original idea that propelled you was. At that point, you’re kinda screwed.

I have found that in my own work, the method that I try to use for everything I do is this:

Follow your story’s guiding light with religious fervor. If you find yourself losing sight of it, your story is in jeopardy. if you have an idea that doesn’t fit the guiding light, consider an alternative home for that story. Alternatively, if you find that you need to change your pedal point out of necessity, recognize that you’re gonna have to retool everything built on it to avoid dissonance.

Be open to inspiration when it strikes, even if it means changing the planned meat and bones of your story quite a bit. If your guiding light is strengthened by the new idea, you will be glad you did it.

In situations where you are releasing episodic content (comics, fanfiction, ttrpg campaign, tv shows, whatever) and retooling past work is not ideal, aim for lean, mean storytelling. Don’t establish things “just because;” it can close you off to better ideas down the line, when it really matters. Don’t write the beginning as though you have a finished story already. Focus on your basic melody, then elaborate as needed.

Writing is output, and existence is input. The latter is the fuel that drives the former. You won’t have a new, better idea if you haven’t experienced anything new. Read something, go for a walk, whatever. Greedily swallow novel concepts and sensations, see what that does to your story. Watch how other people riff on similar melodies, get inspired. A closed system is a system that will put nothing out. If this advice happens to be life affirming, it’s purely tangential to my monomaniacal desire to write stories and shit.

You don’t have to be improvising stories on the spot for a live audience to find these things useful. It is fundamentally a matter of mindset, allowing you to build more effective stories at a high speed. Also, my general need for structure is still totally a thing, don’t get it twisted. I just have a more well-rounded tool kit. But I’ll still make a good fuckin map. With rivers and shit.

[magpie-to-the-morning]

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[vergol]

i’m gonna be honest… this is not surprising at all

[y2kbugs]

Rincewind totally does wild hand gestures while ranting

[mxmarsbars]

old clock duo art i finally got around to coloring ^_^

[cronchy-cryptid]

So I'm playing Apollo Justice after finishing the og ace attorney trilogy and I'm loving it!

But this poster in the background caught my attention

Of course, I see a possible reference to Detective Conan aka Cased Closed,

but when I looked up whether this reference this was intentional, I found this old movie

Hmmmmmmm.....🧐🤔

Either way, both feel very intentional at least by the translators if not the og versions.

[5-turtleducks-in-a-trenchcoat]

I really wish more Frankenstein adaptations would lean into how fucked up Victor and Elizabeth's relationship (and generally the entire family) is.

I admittedly don't know much about many adaptations but from what I can tell Elizabeth is pretty much always portrayed as just Victor's love interest and all the messed up parts of their relationship are left out.

But I feel like utilizing them could add so much to the story.

How both are being pressured into marriage from a young age on even though they don't really want to but Victor's parents did so much for them, their marriage was his mother's dying wish and after all it's what they've been told all their life, so there can’t be anything wrong with it, right?

All the fucked up things in their family could be used to make the characters and mostly the audience uncomfortable.

I bet there’s a way to show how their lives are being controlled by others and not having the autonomy to freely decide how to live their life (especially for Elizabeth) in a way that makes people a little uneasy.

I really want to see their fucked up family dynamic used as a source of horror instead of ignoring these undertones in the book and taking everything said by Victor (who's an unreliable narrator) at face value and making them into a happy little family and also Victor and Elizabeth into a loving couple.

There's so much potential there and in my eyes that would be a lot more interesting than what I perceive to be the common understanding of the book in both adaptations and people's minds in general.

[naoa-ao3]

They're all completed and they'll all get posted eventually but I'm dragging my feet. One and two are chapter fics. Some of these I wrote a while ago but haven't gotten back to to actually revise. Help kick my ass into gear!