#also i... well i won't go into how i much i hate how they just doubled down on the concept of Surpassing rw instead of allowing vbs to forge

[bomberqueen17]

how the writing is going

Ok so. LOL. About the only thing I am effectively achieving this week *is* writing, and even that is not really..... I don't have a draft. But I have a whole bunch of sample snippets I've written to try and feel my way through the worldbuilding and discover the sorts of things the characters are likely to be preoccupied with, which is often how I figure out what a plot should be.

The next thing I thought about after dolphins was modes of transport besides sailing ships.

So this is a fairly high-tech society, but they do not have fossil fuels, and they don't have a large-scale power grid. I decided that for aesthetics, but as I'm unpicking my plot, I'm realizing that it makes sense. See, the main driver for all my plot devices is that there's a lot of sun activity-- sunspots, coronal mass ejections, magnetic field anomalies, that sort of shit. A power grid could not survive on a large scale. So all power generation is done in small, local installations-- some very local indeed, panels on rooftops, little waterwheels, tiny wind turbines. Industrial-scale power is generated in hydro plants and used right at the site for hydro-powered manufacturing-- much of it direct hydro-power, not converted to electricity. Just direct drive waterwheel shit. Because the sun can throw whatever shit it wants at the planet and your waterwheel won't notice or care.

That said. Communication over long ranges does pose a significant challenge. You're going to need line-of-sight semaphores and shit, which I had not worldbuilt in the earlier versions but absolutely could add in.

There should be trains, and I haven't really pondered those yet because I need to know more about my geography. Please, god, don't make me draw a map, but I'm gonna have to. Oh well.

But the other thing I thought of and got really excited about was

DIRIGIBLES

It's feasible with technology we currently have, and this is a thing that some large companies are pursuing, to make very large, hydrogen-filled, entirely solar-powered dirigibles for long-distance cargo transportation, faster than ships, the same speed as trucks/trains but more direct, slower than airplanes but INFINITELY lower carbon footprint. And hydrogen is outlawed by the FAA as a lifting gas, not because of the Hindenberg (which had many contributing factors) but because of a Congressional hearing which was presented by the helium lobby in the 20s. Hmmmmm.

A fascinating detail is that you could make a solar-powered lighter-than-air craft operate day and night seamlessly by having a power generation process where some of the day's collected solar energy directly powers the thing, and some of it goes toward... I forget the details but it powers a chemical reaction that, come nightfall, is simply set to reverse itself, which will then release most of the energy that it took to power the reaction in the first place, which you can now use to power your aircraft. Which is not a thing I knew about and I now have to research how that would work because, fascinating.

Anyway. In Fantasy World, there are totally dirigibles, and they're also probably operated by the Navy, and the water-ship sailors fucking hate them, LOL. This will be a wildly entertaining dynamic and I am rubbing my little paws together.

Also.

While feeling sort of brain-dead and stupid, I got a sheet of paper, went through a bunch of lists of historic names and lists of like, suggested baby names from various ethnicities, and I just made lists on this sheet of paper of men's names, women's names, arguably gender-neutral names, and then a huge pile of surnames, and then I sat down with a bullet-pointed list cribbed from the website of the museum of the USS Constitution of all the personnel that would be on a 44-gun frigate ca. 1812, and I first pondered each of the jobs, added some, took some away, came up with my own numbers of how many guys I needed, and then I just sat there and combined the first and last names in aesthetically pleasing ways to generate characters, lightly crossing out ones I'd used. (and sometimes googling them to make sure they're not somebody famous or something, which i always recommend with fictional character creation, especially if you're as oblivious as I am.)

I was unable to resist also coming up with some backstories-- siblings, little work histories, criminal pasts, notable traits, that sort of thing-- for many of the characters.

I did not make up names for every individual person on this ship, which I decided should have a crew of about 150-180, but I made up some names for every position, and considered age and gender as well for all of them.

I will not use many of the characters I've created this way, I'm sure, but the ones with interrelationships will totally somehow get used, and this way as I'm writing if I need a character I can find them already made, and if that person has a defined role, I already know which one and won't lose track of them.

This also got me to consider why people wind up in the jobs they do in this society, what drives them to seek out certain things, and that gave me a lot of background as to what's going on onshore.

I should try to find a list of a dirigible's crew and think about them, too, and build out the train people and routes and whatnot.

I also bought a used older edition on Thriftbooks of The Annapolis Book Of Seamanship and have been reading that with... more interest than I expected actually. I have the 1983 edition and it has a really moving little plea to let the women on your ship also learn to sail because it is foolish to relegate them to the kitchen when if only they were taught how it works, they could save you all in an emergency. LOL I wonder if that's worded differently in the updated new version or not.

[quaranmine]

Re: your 2000 word fic

Jimmys relationship to the watchers is so interesting, especially compared to Martyn’s, because they’re in the same realm of thought with different means of approach (doubly if Martyn wasn’t born into the cult like Jimmy was).

Martyn’s realm of thought: God is real and hates me and I hate it back

Jimmy: God is real and everyone seems to hate that, and I’m not sure if I do

And like. Jimmy as a character is so [synonym of interesting] because he’s sort of a sheep. He has his own personality and opinions of course, but they are largely formed off of others and how they perceive him. Jimmy works well in group situations, but when he has to be alone, he flounders. So of COURSE when left in a high stress environment and isolated because of his red life, he’s gonna go back and try to find comfort in the gods that had a community. And Martyn, in turn, is going to see this and go “what the fuck are you doing, this isn’t good, the watchers are evil remember” to which Jimmy goes “they’re the only thing that loved me at face value”

Normal about this excited to see where this goes 👍

oh this ask is making me EXCITED again!

So, we're pretty close to the same page on this. Also this story is super duper AU to Evo. I'm keeping the same major story beats of things like 1) Martyn attempting to leave 2) the Listeners contacting them 3) the dragon fight & all of that 4) Jimmy being given a mission from the Listeners and 5) the Evolutionists leaving with the help of the Listeners. But the setting itself is very altered and the day-to-day life of the series is way different. (I.e. cult-commune.) It also won't be totally compliant with Martyn's eyesandears life series AU, just in the sense that I don't care enough to meticulously adhere to all the details. It'll just be kind of loosely influenced by all of the above.

You've also hit the same idea as me on Martyn not (fully) being raised in it. For what I wrote last night, Martyn was brought in to Evo with his family around age 12 ish, and allowed to continue outside education (Jimmy is very very homeschooled.) This basically means Martyn was old enough when introduced to the Watchers to not ever really be a true believer, and also a bit of a bad influence on Jimmy. Well, a good influence in this case. So Martyn definitely grows quite bitter about it as he gets older.

And in this case, when I say "true believer" I mostly mean that they believe in worshipping the Watchers and that they're a force for good. There isn't really much of a "are they real" for any of the Evolutionists because they demonstratively are. Now, for Life Series members who are not former Evolutionists, they may not realize Watchers exist at all. And for later in life, the Evolutionists may question if the Watchers are truthful in just how god-like they really are.

Anyway. Yeah Martyn's very much like "God is real and hates me and I hate it back."

Jimmy, at least in the backstory part I've written, is a lot more like "God is real and hates me because I'm a bad person, and I hate myself because I can't figure out how to be a good one." In this case, he feels super trapped in his incredibly sheltered life and questions a lot of stuff. But he knows he shouldn't question this. Doubting the Watchers is wrong. So he wants to be good. But he can't shake all of his, like, existential anxiety about being trapped. And then he hates himself more for that. He's kind of killing himself from the inside out with cognitive dissonance. He's finding it harder and harder every day to believe but he thinks that's his own personal shortcoming.

Martyn has kind of arrived at a "I need out because the Watchers suck." He has more anger about the situation and less self-hatred. Jimmy is not there yet and is instead more like "the Watchers are right and good and I'm the problem."

(This is also pretty in line with your comment of Jimmy being kind of a sheep--he is struggling much more than some of other former Evolutionists to put aside how he was raised.) (I haven't mentioned Grian much but I think he was also raised in it like Jimmy, but unlike Jimmy he's pretty defiant of the Watchers. Which gets him nothing good in the end.)

It doesn't help that being constantly literally watched is like psychological torture? No wonder the guy's mentally ill. Which I think feeds into the eyesandears concept of Watchers feeding on negative energy. Jimmy's general existential distress is like catnip to them.

And like, he DOES join the Listeners. They DO leave Evo. He does leave, and live normally. But that doesn't mean that he comes out of his choice to turn his back on the Watchers unscathed, and that he doesn't feel guilty. I think the "I'm the problem" mindset leaves him vulnerable to going back to worshipping the Watchers again later. He still carries this deep seated sense that they're right.

So when the Watchers strike back, and he's placed over and over in horrible circumstances like death games, at some point it's all got to snap right?

"they’re the only thing that loved me at face value” - it's completely untrue and exactly the type of thing he still believes. He's the one that left, after all.

[liquidorcard]

Lily Orchard is very politically opportunistic and her posts on Palestine show how blatant this is. She presents herself as militantly anti-fascist and anti-hate, she claims to hate centrists who try to give fascists a space to speak (instead implying she'd be willing to use violence to stop them). But like, as soon as it comes to electoral topics, she aggressively, AGGRESSIGELY insists that the liberal centrist parties are the only viable option. Like, the guys she pretends to hate. To the point where she's victim blaming activists for Democrats losing the election and telling people not to listen to activists when they call for a boycott against the liberal centrists who are upholding the right for fascists to speak and politically act. She pretends to be a leftist, but it's blatantly performative, the reality is that she is centre right and she seems to hate herself for it. Kind of sad, honestly.

I've said something before here that Lily and I grew up in similar environments? Well, I honestly think that has something to do with it.

I grew up in a very right-wing household in a very right-wing community that like, I knew I knew from a very young age I wasn't ever going to be accepted in. Assigned Reject at Birth. You know, it's one of the many ways religious and right-wing spaces just tare apart interpersonal connections important to the human psyche. That makes a wound in people. I won't go into detail, but my home life was bad to begin with. Being queer just made it that much worse.

Before moving away for college, I very much believed I was the most left-wing any human being on this earth could possibly be. I thought I was going to be met with open arms and the unconditional human acceptance I had always wanted, even though I wasn't fully cognitively aware of that.

I wasn't. And I feel people were even less forgiving of my lack of leftist literacy because I was a queer AFAB and concluded there was no excuse for me to be as ignorant as I was.

Now, I know the discussion of the social policing and virtue grandstanding gets flattened of any nuance online so the right can use it against the left, so I want to make sure I'm clear with what I'm about to say. No, the left should not be tolerant of bigotry. No, not every right-wing nut job can be deradicalized by hand-holding them through their own come to Jesus moment. Nor is anyone owed that emotional energy from you. But when you were raised right-wing, even if you grew to resent it, a person needs time to be deprogrammed. And, I know this might upset people to hear, but you won't understand how much of a privilege it is to be raised in a more liberal household unless you weren't. People who were can sometimes be, what I feel is unreasonably hostile to those of us who don't know any better because we haven't had the chance to learn.

It also just so happens I started college in 2015, right when gamergate went down. And it was an art school. Really, it was a uniquely not very ideal environment to rid myself of right-wing brain worms. And in a very real way, it retraumatized me getting rejected for not having the sociopolitical context to understand everything I was expected to. I'm not blaming anyone in particular for that-- that is more an unfortunate symptom of the anti-social rot the right causes, but it wasn't a good time. I think some people could have been kinder, and to this day I do my best to be charitable with meeting people where they're at myself. And I do think there is a problem in the left, especially online, failing to read between the lines and respond appropriately-- especially when it comes to vocabulary choice. You know, sometimes people use dogwhistles without the proper context to understand they are dogwhistling, sometimes people are just genuinely misinformed and lack the language to ask the questions they have, and vocabulary does shape perception. Right-wing ideology only can survive on the basis of rigid, strict, conceptually or literally divine hierarchy. Right-wing language is shaped on the premise of that hierarchy. The reason why a lot of social progress doesn't make sense to right-wingers and is almost impossible to communicate properly in right-wing language is because it disregards the premise of that hierarchy. Right-wingers don't literally live in a separate reality, but they kind of functionally do. Mentally. For people who are more on the right, but open minded enough to genuinely learn and want to, it's better to use as their language as much as possible to explain to them things that can ease them out of the premise of that mental trap of explicit social hierarchy in a gentler fashion.

With all that said, the root cause was still that right-wing upbringing.

I feel I have more than enough reason to very confidently say Lily went through a very similar experience to me. A shitty childhood for a lot of reasons, but one of them for sure being a queer person in an extremely right-wing household. She has a hypersensitivity to feeling shame and will go to extreme measures to avoid it, she feels isolated and desperate for acceptance in an extremely unhealthy way. In one regard she was knee-capped significantly in her ability to function socially that I wasn't, in that her parents decided she was a simpleton when she was very young, basically wrote her off and conditioned her to never take accountability. Though being overly critical of children is equally harmful (though in different ways), dismissing a child of all agency because you think they're too stupid to handle it can result in a lot more damage to everyone around them aswell as themselves and is a form of emotional neglect.

Online I think she searched out for a community that would accept her, and when that did not work out for her, when she experienced that retraumatization again of rejection . . . She took some very interesting lessons away from that. The wrong ones.

And, glass houses, it took me a whole journey aswell to get where I am. But I was conditioned to internalize social rejection, for better or worse. Lily was not. She is aggressively, profoundly, depressingly incapable of self-reflection, in healthy or in unhealthy amounts-- and even though that's not wholly her fault, she's a big girl now, and she's the only one left to accept responsibility for that. As someone myself who feels deeply angry at the ways I was psychologically damaged, I'm speaking as someone who has accepted that dwelling on how unfair it is that I have to be held accountable for that isn't going to improve my situation.

Believe it or not, I don't think Lily is inherently stupid. I think she was treated like she was stupid since she was young, and has put a lot of energy into pantomiming intellectualism instead of actually learning stuff. Again, glass houses, I also learned how to pretend I am smarter than I actually am out of an extreme aversion to shame-- but I can tell I have more actual knowledge, interest and curiosity to learn than Lily does.

I don't think Lily has any interest in learning about left-wing politics, and I don't think she has actually deprogrammed herself from the right-wing environment she was raised in. She has no motivation to care, and likely still is deeply bitter about the social rejection she's experienced in left-wing spaces. However, she has a lot of social capital to gain by PRETENDING she is.

And pretending is enough for the people she courts in her audience.

[koka-mi]

Oh my gosh whyyyy am I so obsessed with numbers I don't like it at all this is driving me INSANEEEE😭😭IT'S GETTING WORSE AND WORSE AS THE DAYS GO BY AAAA

[smile-files]

there's something interesting to be said about how nickel's female friends have to constantly school him on how horrible he is but animationepic won't say it

[mymarifae]

have you seen the new kohane untrained!!! vbs looks so cute :D

it's cute yes but how am i supposed to focus on that when meiko is right there looking like this

[batemanofficial]

hello upper middle class northern usamerican tumblr user. i want to play a game. you will notice that you are in a super america convenience store in rural kentucky - you have three minutes to purchase a snack and drink of your choice and make normal small talk with the cashier. however, if you use the word "cryptid" or generally make reference to appalachia and its inhabitants as "wild", uncivilized, or lacking restraint around alcoholic beverages during your time here, i will personally tie you to the chassis of a four wheeler and tip it into the river. live or die. make your choice

[babacontainsmultitudes]

[just venting a bit into the void you understand you understand 😌] Lately I've been feeling very caught between "I have a lot of thoughts on Sparrow and Normal and all that with the ending and teen talk and feel like I need to get them out and voice them for my own piece of mind and resolution" and "I am lacking the strength and energy to actually sit down and write it all out and kind of really just want to fully move on to other things (AUs, fics, anything else)" but my brain can't seem to commit to either and that's quite frustrating cause it's just left me very restless. *Sigh*. Idk! Just needed to complain about that a bit ig, it's silly but this is what has been ailing me as of late.

[roombagreyjoy]

*said with increasing distress, eyes blodshot and an empty mug in hand* you guys remember writing right????? you guys remember posting fic and publishing things and talking to editors about potential projects right???? you guys remember being creative in your creative jobs and not just rereading old work and having a panic attack over the time wasted over curating hyperspecific character playlists that you get mad about five minutes later right????? i'm not insane right????? creative block is normal even if it lasts for months right???? i haven't written a fic in YEARS but it's ok i'm ok i have to finish TWO original pieces for next week that I haven't even started but it'll probably be fineeeee I'm totally not being a complete and raving lunatic about it it's probably gonna be okay <3 yay <3

[mostofthingsmostofthetime]

Sorry, still following the serise. Just can't post much right now coz of real life commitments. So have a tier list -

[dredshirtroberts]

it is not slacking off to write or create it is not slacking off to do things that are fun i am not slacking off or procrastinating right now i'm allowed to do things i enjoy doing for fun including playing games and writing and such

[keeps-ache]

i should learn to make hash browns

[notthestarwar]

Snippet from: When is a monster not a monster? Oh, when you love it. Chapter 5

Ghost Mace speaks to past Jaster (alive) and tells him what he knows of Jango's future, in the life he lived.

Mace's brow stiffened. "When we realised what we had done, we tried to find him but we could not."

"We tried to find the True Mandolorian's but the survivors had fled in all directions. We did try and see justice done, there was an overhaul of our internal mission preparation process. We changed our training. Dooku left the order as did his apprentice."

"None of it could make up for what we did. Years after the fact, I learnt that Jango was sold in to slavery by the governor. It took him years to escape. I learnt of the weight of what we had done in helping end the True Mandolorian's. In leaving Death Watch unchecked."

He meets Jaster's eyes. "We are here to discuss why we haunt Jango, but it would be remiss of me to not tell you that your son has haunted me every single day since the day I left on a mission to retrieve him; to attempt to offer reparations for what my peoples neglect brought down on him, and came home empty handed."

" We thought him dead, but I did not forget him. From that day, I've carried the weight of what we did to him. I have often thought of him over the years." Mace shook his head.

"You hold no blame here, but we just might."

And isn't that a thing. His son haunting a Jedi even before that Jedi might haunt him.

Jango is tangled up in something here far beyond Jaster's reckoning.

Mace is laying out the constituent parts that when put together, make Jango in to the man that is responsible for the death of every single person standing in that warehouse. Jaster isn't sure where that leaves him, because once he's done hearing this story, in the years that lay ahead of them yet, every single one of these horrible pieces is going to fall in to place. Tragedy after Tragedy ready to be pasted and slapped on to the boy he loves, his son, in order to make him in to the man that did this.

How the hell can Jaster stand by and let that happen?

There are no rules that apply to Jaster, not anymore. He doesn't care about morality or the ethics of fucking with a future that's apparently already happened. He has no care for his own code, not now. None of it matters.

Jaster is Jango's buir, before all else. He has been from the day he stepped in to a smoldering farmhouse and against the odds saw signs of life dancing across his HUD. The Ka'ra gave him Jango and by god, it can stand back while he brings his son back from the abyss.

Mace is watching him. "Jaster, you had no hand in making Jango Fett the man he became at the end. You did not abandon him, you were taken from him. I need you to know this. You should know that none of this was your fault. "

Jaster doesn't care. It doesn't matter if its his fault or not, he is responsible all the same; because he wants to be. He didn't fall in to parenthood, he walked in to it willingly. For Jango, there is no monster that Jaster will not face.

The ka'ra has given him one last gift. The opportunity to see Jango's life after Jaster, and a few precious years in which to try and change them. It may not be in Jaster's power to save his son from himself but by god, he'll die trying.

He looks at the Jedi.  "Tell me the rest."

Some of my thoughts below the cut

Some of my thoughts (because clearly rambling in the comments hasn't been enough for me lol)

I had a lot of fun with this one. I've written about ghosts before but with this one, I went at it from another angle. In this au, ghosts aren't bound by linear time. If you do something that leaves a ghost tied to your soul, they are tied to you in the past as well as the future. Jango and Jaster are both Force Sensitive (tho with a Mando understanding of it. They call it 'star touched') and so can see ghosts.

In this fic, moving in with Jaster sets Jango on the path that brings him to the prequels. Once he's on that path, the ghosts that'll be tied to him in his future, can move freely along the timeline, with each of them pulled to a particular version of Jango. Jango will obviously be responsible for the deaths of quite a few people, there are his bounties, the Jedi and the clones and so on; but when the first ghost appears he's just a kid. The story deals with Jaster coming to terms with the fact that his kid, who he loves beyond reason, even if he stumbled upon him quite by accident, one day becomes the person that will make all these ghosts.

At first there's only one ghost in their time, but Jaster can't let it go (tho he knows he should), he needs to know what happens. So he keeps asking until she admits that she isn't the only ghost and that they are tied to Jango as he's responsible for their deaths. Then, he keeps pushing until she introduces him to the others. She gathers them in a warehouse (so Jango doesn't see) and takes Jaster there.

In the part of the story this snippet is from, Jaster has just been confronted with an excessive number of people (including children) who are all tied to Jango as he's responsible for their deaths. He's had a (understandable) freak out, and ghost Mace has taken him aside and offered to tell him what he knows of Jango's future, and how it led to the death of so many people.

What follows is a buddy up adventure between Mace and Jaster (unlikely duo) in which Jaster tries to come to terms with what Mace has told him, and the horrible events that led to Jango becoming the man that would one day be responsible for all these ghosts. While he tries to save Jango from himself, long before he needs saving.

The idea behind the fic is the inevitability of a tragedy. There's a feeling when you're watching a tragedy play out, that it's all so unnecessary, that it didn't need to happen, but you only know that because as the audience you know that they are in a tragedy, the characters don't know. So what if a character did know? Jaster is served advance notice, will having that allow him to save Jango, or will it just feed in to the fulfillment of this prophetic future?

I wanted to explore the fact that there's only so much one particular character can do, in trying to prevent the end another is headed towards and also, the power of familial love, even when it's found somewhere unexpected. Jaster isn't Jango's blood family, he didn't even know him till he was an older child, which I think makes his love for Jango in spite of knowing what he will become, all the more powerful. The glimpse of Jango's future is disgusting to Jaster, it goes against all he believes in, but its Jango so he can't hate him for it, he loves him too much and so, he's determined to save him from himself. He's willing to do the impossible.

Then there's Mace: so in this au, Mace is sent out shortly after Galidraan, when it becomes clear to the order that they've made a mistake, to find the survivor they left in the hands of the Governor, and to right a wrong. He isn't successful, he looks everywhere but he can't find him, and in the end the order write him off as dead. In this au, Jango was 18 on Galidraan and what Mace sees as his failure to save someone that was little more as a child, and suffered so greatly thanks to what the order see as their own neglect, haunts him for the rest of his career.

Its that idea of 'the one case you couldn't close'. It's at the start of his career and he goes on to do amazing things, Mace is peak Jedi, he invents a new form, he's one of the youngest Jedi to be elected to the council, he ends up heading that council, but he is still human (or near human lol sw complicates everything. he's 100% human in a fallible/emotional/sapient sense) I think that as a Master Jedi he's very aware of his own weaknesses, and he tries to work through it, he talks to it with other Jedi, and he certainly doesn't let it affect his judgement, but he can't forget it all the same.

So it's this version of Mace that ended up meeting Jango in the arena. Which I think adds such an interesting angle.

[salsflore]

⠀

[therevengeoffrankenstein]

i kinda wanna make a critical post about Some Notable People not speaking up and outright endorsing anyone this election but i also know that it probably wouldn't've changed very much and therefore 'doesn't matter' but actually, yes, it does matter because it sets a good precedent. and besides. why would they be out there hyping obama or even biden the fuck up but then talking about voting harris in hushed voices. like it's probably a mix of misogyny and just plain old liberal democrat cowardice. because i KNOW these People probably don't care that much about any differences in their policies, at least not significantly enough for it to seem unreasonable to hype up harris as the better choice.

[whispering-kavka]

the struggles of today proved to me that i might indeed be a little mentally unwell