#PoisonHemloc's rambles

[poisonhemloc]

In line with my general need to make aliens weirder-

Raven gets seriously hurt on a mission to the point where the ac has to autopilot back, and Walter gets down there because his one of a kind, 'best mercenary ever' that he accidentally pulled out of a human bargain bin is very badly injured and he's gotta try to do something.

He gets the core open and Raven's unconscious. And completely covered in Coral. And it's, if not actually fixing them, at least stabilizing them. Because Ayre's not willing to just let them die either.

And there's a minute of. Hey, that's not supposed to happen, Coral doesn't just. Do that. before his brain kicks back into gear and he drags Raven off to whatever passes as a medical area.

Then. Once Raven's up. They are gonna have a conversation about. 'Hey so that’s 100% Not Normal' v 'yeah I told you, that was the voice in my head, she said she was helping'

And then Walter just. nods. leaves. calls Carla. 'hey so I think I'm losing it but-'

[poisonhemloc]

I don't think anything I do is unhinged? but

Nothing gets posted til it's done and I've been over it a few/many times, and I write pretty much exclusively in comic sans (comic sans doesn't judge you)

@cannonburn (fics, rpgs, same thing) @hatchetdraws

What do you think your most unhinged writing habit is? I'll go first...

I often work independently on multiple paragraphs in the same scene. So the in progress parts of my WIP's end up looking like:

"Character runs to catch the-

But it makes them really sad that-

At least there's tea."

Tagging some mutuals cause I'm curious (y'all aren't obligated to participate of course.)

@poisonhemloc @archetypal-archivist @the-feels-assassin @homeagainrose @rejectscanon

And anyone who wants to participate!

[poisonhemloc]

hey y'all there's a new outer wilds lego set up on the lego ideas page- its at 792 supports as of right now and needs 10k.

We got the last one to 10k, and this looks a little better built and there's more too it, so uh. Please support? You do have to make an account (or recover the one you used for the last attempt)

[poisonhemloc]

We're Going Home

short little fic about one of Feldspar's end-of-loop experiences

[poisonhemloc]

Next Possible Unfortunate Candidate

y'all wanted a Hornfels centric fic right? Right? How about a Hornfels gets stuck in the time loop fic like uh. This one^

[poisonhemloc]

Okay, personal recommendation is start with Guards! Guards! or Going Postal.

Guards! Guards! is the all but defunct Night Watch getting a new member who is unfortunately keen and then something starts lighting big magical fires around the city. It’s on a lot of people’s “start with” lists because it starts the Watch series and its good. Like, Thud! (several along) is high key one of my favorite books all the time good. It’s also early in Discworld as a whole? Technology advances with the books and this is before that happens.

Going Postal is a conman is hung to death, then wakes up and is given a government job, making the post office run again. It’ll have some spoilers for the Watch series but honestly unless you do start with the watch a lot of things will.

Also good starts: Wyrd Sisters (Macbeth, and Hamlet, running together, from the three witches point of view)(don’t start with Equal Rights trust me it’s good to go back too but not start with) and The Wee Free Men (Nine year old girl’s brother is kidnapped and she decides to take on whatever thing took him to get him back, because that is Her Brother)

Honorable mention is Monstrous Regiment because it’s a standalone (little Watch spoilers) and I love it; Polly Perks dresses up like a boy to go get her brother back from the war and uh. Her squad is. A little strange.

...if you want Pratchett recommendations. Like every other discworld fan. I have recommendations on where to start.

grabby hands

I have always wanted to read discworld but I've NEVER known where to begin pls bestow your wisdom on me

[poisonhemloc]

It's not done but it's good enough for the event I'm going to tonight/the probable event on Tuesday!

[poisonhemloc]

Gabbro is lazy. No way around it. They’re in a time loop, aware of the time loop, and they’re spending the whole thing playing their flute in their hammock. 

But. If Gabbro wasn’t, they’d be a lot harder for us to find- always on a different planet. Since we have a traveler who also knows about the time loop, they have to be someone who won’t move around. But, they can’t be stranded- one, because there is an astronaut already stranded, and two, because the stranded astronaut can not be the other member of the time loop. Feldspar is in a difficult to reach place on purpose, because their spot in the Eye Coordinates puzzle requires them to be stuck and hard to reach.

Gabbro? You can go find Gabbro, first loop, knowing nothing about the game, easy. You’re actually pushed in that direction a little- Gabbro went back to Giant’s Deep to learn about the statue that just made weird eye contact with you, Hal tells you, maybe go talk to them? 

While you can feasibly go find Feldspar on your very first loop of the game while not knowing anything about it, it’s much, much lower odds. Like finding the Vessel first loop. 

So Gabbro, to fulfill what they need to be for the story, is lazy, and is not going to be getting up from their hammock for this, thank you. They’ve done their exploring- the quantum grove on Timber Hearth, they’ve been to Giant’s Deep at least once before the current trip and I will argue minimum twice before- they were just on the Statue Island, and now, they’re gonna stay put. 

So, why are they on Giant’s Deep? When it comes to relaxation… well, Ember Twin (if you’re not in a valley filling with sand) is calmer, the Hanging City isn’t in danger of falling or being hit with projectiles, the Attlerock has nothing dangerous going on, and they’re relaxing on a planet that periodically flings them into space. But they can’t switch places with Chert or Riebeck- there can’t be an astronomer* on Giant’s Deep due to the atmosphere, and Gabbro would be in the Hanging City, not signposting the crossroads like Riebeck needs to be (...that write up is coming I promise). And they can’t swap with Esker- the Attlerock is good to do nothing on, but Esker can’t have an effective ship-fixing base on the planet with the highest gravity in the system.

*Part of the. Our time buddy is lazy. Astronomer!Gabbro who becomes incoherent half way through the loop- and then shuts down entirely when they realize what’s going on? Not useful to the player. Archeologist!Gabbro who’s either scared of space and in a time loop or goes ‘nothing can kill me forever!’ and goes on an exploring spree? Also not great- we’re supposed to be the explorers here, not Gabbro. Adventurer!Gabbro who’s never in one spot is a pain to find- you won’t go talk to them nearly as much if you can’t reliably find them, and if you’re chasing them into areas you haven’t been, it means you’re not exploring the way the game is trying to get you to explore, chasing clues and old messages deeper and deeper, you’re just wandering into a late game area unaware of it’s significance because you’re looking for Gabbro. They’re moral support, your one other person who knows, so they can’t be useless to you or moving around. 

So. Giant’s Deep. I think Gabbro being there also helps incentivise players to come back. You can explore all the easy stuff on Giant’s Deep in a few loops- the islands you can see might take two or three, one for the cannon and one for the quantum tower, and a final one for the module. It’s the easiest, or at least the fastest, to explore after Timber Hearth (I know Dark Bramble has less and you can do everything in one to two loops, but, Dark Bramble has the entrance requirement of Anglerfish Outlook in the Sunless City and realizing how you can use that knowledge). The Twins and Brittle Hollow all have a lot of other stuff going on- two separate cities that are both big and practically require you to find the secret entrances before you can really get things done, plus other areas, and Ash Twin might be quick once you know what’s up but it has a lot to figure out with the towers and the warping and all, plus the Sun Station and the ATP. 

There are only two islands on Giant’s Deep that actually have Nomai stuff on them that you can find easily when you get there the first time- the other two are Gabbro’s island and the bramble island, and you don’t know about the tower of quantum trials your first time there unless you’re really a fan of your signalscope and the quantum fluctuation sounds. But, you’ll come back to it more frequently because your time buddy is there! Go talk to them! Think about quantum stuff ‘cause the game set up that Gabbro is the quantum expert no matter what Hornfels thinks! Maybe go find the tower on accident and despair that you can’t tell Gabbro about it.…

Gabbro is also the second clue in the beginning of the DLC, pointing you at the DLC, which. I’m not sure why Gabbro of everyone was chosen to start that- Chert makes sense too, being sent out to check on a satellite- except that Gabbro you can talk to at any point during the loop and get a coherent answer, and Chert. You can’t.

[poisonhemloc]

He Just Died For You And You're Celebrating Your Promotion

little foray into writing for AC6. I have uh... two? other fics I have ideas for that have to be on the backburner right now.

[poisonhemloc]

Okay Maybe There Was One Death From The Space Program

Campfire fest day one, prompt: Slate

[poisonhemloc]

talking with a friend a few weeks back and. he mentioned a headcanon that i stole wholeheartedly and am now shocked I haven't seen it anywhere else

Anyway G6 Red is a trans guy and seeing Michigan during the Jupiter war is what cracked his egg and I will not be convinced otherwise

[poisonhemloc]

'okay im not doing anything friday but i have fabric and all so i can start sewing the Actual Gabbro Cosplay'-

med withdrawal fatigue: 'how about no?'

[poisonhemloc]

fully finished my first proper quilt. Calling it 'this is why we remember to slow down and take our time and measure properly' (alt 'thats the cats quilt now'

[poisonhemloc]

no reasoning but Vibes but I feel like every RaD core has a minifridge in it, somewhere. you might have to look around a bit to find it

Carla seems like the kinda person to make sure that happens

[poisonhemloc]

Please tell me more about Neil transitioning. Would it have saved her or made her worse

listen im thinking these thoughts as i write it was a spur of the moment thing

100% would not have saved her. I know im the everyone lives!au guy but she's doomed from the start due to backstory reasons. Neil is always gonna die.

She might have been a little happier? That's One More Thing she was ignoring and now not ignoring. I feel like she'd be getting in on the 'posing wearing skimpy bikinis' thing the other gals are doing

...but also. There's gonna be 'mom and dad and amy never got to know about this' and 'would they approve? would they be happy? Amy woulda had an older sister at the cost of an older brother' But Also Also 'Hey Lyle doesn't have a brother to measure up to anymore! He's got another sister... can I tell him? Should I?'

Which. Lyle in this case isn't trans. And if he hears about it from the rest of the crew i think he'd rather throw the entire box of feelings away rather than deal with them

And All Of That Said my everyone lives!au Neil maybe argued someone into getting her hormones while she's otherwise healing from. Everything. and yet there's still gonna be someone mistaking one for the other at least once a week

[poisonhemloc]

@outerwilds-events campfire fest is done! I wrote nine fics for the week, and I've been posting them but here's the full list.

Day one, prompt: Slate

Okay Maybe There Was One Death From The Space Program

Day two, prompt: Music

If You're Gonna Play 'Round A Campfire (You Gotta Have A Fiddle In The Band)

Technically Kazoos Are After Mirlitons Timeline-Wise But

Day three, prompt: Warp

Good Thing No One's Watching The Black Hole And About To Freak Out

Day four, prompt: Humor

This Is A Speedrunning Strat

Day five, prompt: Horror

I Like To Think They're More Salamanders Than Fish (comes with semi-comprehensible companion fic)

Day six, prompt: Hal and Hal and Romance

River Chats

If You Can't Talk Someone Into Being Your Weighted Blanket Homemade Is Fine

Day seven, prompt: Wild Card

Just A Weird AU Started By A Fall Out Boy Song