#atrus is BUILDING these worlds

[mothshrub]

Someday I want to write an entire essay about the very specific flavor of steampunk that this game has. Because so much of this fucking machinery is steam based, and the way it leans into the extremely sensorial experience of being around so much heavy machinery is absolutely fascinating, both in the viewer's relationship to the environment and to the devices and also when compared and contrasted to the sepia-toned, aesthetic driven relationship that a lot of steampunk otherwise generally has. Like--I'm vaguely reminded of some of the differences some scifi nerds will compare and contrast between Star Wars and Star Trek's handling of technology.

Of course, one important distinction might be that maybe this shouldn't be called steampunk, but instead some other weird category entirely. Both Steampunk and whatever Myst does are images of quaint, strange, and unfamiliar technology seen through the eyes of 20th/21st century fans, but Myst seems to embrace varying times of 20th century industry chique, whereas steampunk as a genre looks further back, even going into previous centuries.

[elysia-nsimp]

Hello!

Welcome to a new series of posts kinda. I thought it would be a good idea to write down official OC intros somewhere so y’all would have something to look to for information.

I won’t give you all the information, some of it is for y’all to find out via asking questions or stories I may or may not finish, but I will give you all the basics and things you need to know.

Please note that this is currently a massive WIP, so there’s not much here yet! You can at least see what my plans are for the future right now.

Let’s get into it!

Asterial / Entropy Cirque OCs

Asteria is the name of my fantasy universe. Takes place in modern day, in a universe parallel to our own. We used to live in harmony with magical beings, but after the Great War, they fled our half of the world and build a new home in a realm invisible to humans.

Entropy Cirque is an interdimensional circus (made by my friend @aetherphobia) where characters from all sorts of different universes can meet and interact. Many Asterian characters find themselves in the Cirque.

Charles Duras

Head CEO of Duras Corp. and one of the most famous Asterian figures. One of the few royal angels left in the world, he runs pretty much the entire transportation industry. He’s also the richest man in Perzion City.

Twisted Wonderland OCs

Takes place in an AU similar to canon, with Comet Yuusonya as the main character.

Comet Yuusonya

Main protagonist, Ramshackle Prefect turned Housewarden. Based on Rapunzel and Anna primarily (and myself of course).

Heaven

Twisted from the bride of the Haunted Mansion (and maybe the Mayor from NmBC). Considered a walking bad omen to most.

Ignacio Hayes

An Ignihyde student—based on Pain and Panic.

James Steelclaw

His real name is actually James From Savanaclaw /j, based on the jaguars from Emperor’s New Groove.

Orville “Buggie” Becket

Buggie is an Octavinelle student… much to Azul’s dismay. It’s based on Oogie Boogie.

Wade Krillis (WIP)

A very secretive Diasomnia student. Not based on any actual Disney character, rather… an offshoot oc from canon Twst characters.

Neisha Faez (WIP)

Twisted from Jasmine from Aladdin (mostly the live action version), also distant cousins with Kalim!

Malina Esperanza (WIP)

Twisted from Asha, from Disney’s Wish. A strong-willed girl who loves to chart the stars and works hard to make her wishes and dreams come true.

Denzel Marley (WIP)

A lowkey and chill kinda guy who likes sushi on the beach and sailing. Being twisted from Max (Eric’s dog), I bet it’s no surprise he’s a dog person.

Graham Amato (WIP)

A hard worker who enjoys cooking and roller skating! Twisted from Tiana. Rivals with Azul <3

Atrus O’Keeffe (WIP)

Twisted from Merida! A headstrong jack-of-all-trades kind of guy with a whole lot of confidence. Ask him about the time he fought a wild boar, he loves to tell that story.

Jonah Cainwell

The Vice Student Council President of Noble Bell Collage, twisted from Prince Hans from Frozen! (Yes this is indeed bad news for Comet, who’s based on Anna.)

More may come, these are just the main ones.

Obey Me! OCs

An AU that follows canon pretty closely… except there’s several exchange students from the human realm! At least three of those exchange students are not my OCs, so these are only my own.

Dove Shepard (WIP)

The closest character to MC among the exchange students…the brothers love her.

Toby (WIP)

Not part of the exchange program, but… you know, he summoned himself in the Devildom anyway.

Gabriel (WIP)

An angel the brothers used to know. He visits occasionally.

Cookie Run: Kingdom

This sure diverges from canon, huh? It’s mostly slice of life while Gingerbrave & CO are away from their kingdom.

Elysian Cookie

oim haary stoyles/j

Pizookie Cookie (WIP)

Maybe you know him as DPRizz online, music producer, remixer, and faceless CookieTuber! He is B.A.D.4’s BIGGEST fan!

Lava Cake Cookie (WIP)

Mad scientist cookie of darkness bwahahahaha

More will come, but I want to focus on these sections right now.

Stay tuned!

[kitkatt0430]

Wooo! The Riven HD remake has been released.

The graphics look gorgeous. And it looks the way I remember the game looking since my brain gave the OG version a free HD upgrade in my memories. (lol)

Seriously, though, the original game came out in 1997. I was eight years old (dating myself, I know) and I'd already played Myst, the game Riven was a sequel to, rather obsessively. As beautiful as Myst's graphics were at the time, Riven's were even that much more gorgeous. I remember swapping discs out - there were five if I am remembering correctly, one for each island of Riven - and being in awe the entire time I played of just how beautiful the scenery is and how intricate the world building was. At one point I had the D'ni numerical system from this, and the later games, memorized and would doodle them on the margins of my school notes.

The games included some live action actors in it, which it looks like the remake didn't keep. Might be the only place where the new games are less pretty than the originals.

grabbed a comparison video and just... once through the linking book to Riven after the prologue... wow, that's when you really get the full impact of the updated graphics. It's gorgeous. And to be honest, much as I'll miss the live action video prologue I can think of a number of good reasons why it probably wasn't kept or re-filmed. And I do think the CGI version of Atrus is a decent match for Rand Miller's appearance, though I think the clothing and hair being less floofy is what really detracts from the CGI version the most.

Cannot wait to find the time to actually dive into this remake and once again enjoy the beautiful, dying world of Riven.

[leothelionsaysgrrrr]

World building Wednesday for ol’ Rexus!

It’s technically Monday but who cares about words and days of the week, right? Not me, that’s for sure.

B A S I C S

Full name: Rexus Aemilius Maro Leventis

Gender: cis male

Sexuality: pansexual

Pronouns: he/him

O T H E R S

Family: Father: Gratian Leventis, Mother: Atilia Curio, Brother: Caius Leventis, Sister-in-law: Thalia Lutorius, Nephew: Atrus Leventis, several uncles, cousins, and distant relations.

Birthplace: Minrathous, Tevinter Imperium

Job: Frumentarius, an all-purpose spy, thug, and general doer of dirty work for the Magisterium

Phobias: commitment, sobriety, genuine concern for the happiness and wellbeing of others. Losing the few people he bothers caring about.

Guilty pleasures: caring about those few people. Otherwise let’s be real, if Rexus finds pleasure in something, he hardly feels guilty about it.

M O R A L S

Morality alignment: chaotic neutral (I did do a test for him once and got chaotic evil, which, I’m sure would apply at certain points in his life.

Sins: all of them. Mostly envy, though.

Virtues: pffffff

T H I S - O R - T H A T

Introvert/extrovert

Organized/disorganized

Calm/anxious

Disagreeable/agreeable

Cautious/reckless

Patient/impatient

Outspoken/reserved

Leader/follower

Empathetic/unemphatic

Optimistic/pessimistic

Traditional/modern

Hardworking/lazy

R E L A T I O N S H I P S

Otp: Silver :3

Ot3: I don’t generally do ot3’s.

Brotp: Felran Lavellan

Notp: Any of the canon LIs, pretty much. I would never inflict him on them any more than I already have. Darren Miller. Sylathi Lavellan. Basically any exceptionally Good, must-be-protected ocs must be protected from him. 🤷🏻‍♀️

(Felran belongs to @bladeverbena, Darren is @thereluctantinquisitor’s, and Sylathi belongs to @saphyremelodies.)

Thank you!!

[aplaceofstone]

AO3: faceofstone

(with treats enabled!)

Dear Yuletide Writer,

thank you for offering one of the small surreal-ish fandoms of my heart and I hope you will have fun writing for it. Anything can happen! Symbols! Meaningful non sequiturs! Things! Stuff!

All prompts and ideas are just suggestions, if you are the kind of Yuletide writer who likes to follow them. If not, cool, they are certainly not the end-all of what I love about these fandoms and characters.

If you like visual prompts, this entire blog is 20% recipes and 80% aesthetics that mostly fit my requested fandoms…

I like found families, oddball friendships, sympathy toward outcasts, characters who fully embrace being outcasts, melancholy, a sense of place, bittersweet accomplishments, and a stubborn flicker of hope in an overall bleak world. Dreamlike atmospheres that aren’t necessarily scary, some sort of reassurance that can be found in the weird and the profoundly unnatural.

Myst - worldbuilding (badum tsssssss)

This went too well last year not to ask for it again ç^ç Worldbuilding as an expansion of any of the Ages we don't know too much about - Eder Gira's huts in the distance, Tay stuff inside the hive a/o above the cliffs, Myst's underground rooms, strange sightings on Todelmer, you name 'em. But also world-building as in good old-fashioned focus on the Art, whether it's about a canon Age (anyone else think about instancing too much and get a headache, for one? I think Relto and the instanced Cavern itself are fertile ground for dreamy-weird-spooky fic...) or a made-up Age.

I love the whole cast, so feel free to pin that worldbuilding to any era of canon, following pretty much anyone. I nominated Atrus, Catherine and Yeesha because I love them so much and they all have interesting approaches to Writing, but if your idea works better with, idk, Ri'neref or the Watcher or Gehn or Esher or Zandi or Nelah or some schmuck on Releeshahn or whatever, go for it! I am not particularly well-versed in pre-Fall D'ni shenanigans - I'd be interested in reading something set anywhere in those millennia, just please write it assuming that your reader may not be already up to speed on what was going on historically at the time.

Twin Peaks - Tammy Preston

I see a Twin Peaks character, I want to see them face the unknown, cross a threshold, tread into a different world, have a terrifying epiphany. You know, as they do. Tammy, though, more so than Albert, has a way of being down to earth as we see in the books, and she's got some breathing space between herself and the trauma that keeps propagating itself through Blue Rose on one side (the loss of Phil, of Chet, Sam, Coop) and the town of Twin Peaks on the other (Laura, Maddie, Annie, Audrey, gonna go out on a limb and say Donna and Harry too). Does shooting Diane shift something in her? Or does she remain a potential anchor for others who are adrift? Cynthia could be a fun partner for supernatural casefic, shippy or not. She's the Air Force side of Blue Rose to Tammy's FBI, like Milford and Gordon in The Secret History, and later Garland and Cooper... we don't know much about her but I love her attitude, I think they'd be a formidable team. ...or they could simply go out one night in Buckhorn before Cynthia flies back. And find a ghost or something. There was an old interview where CB was asked whether she felt that Tammy was “the new Cooper” and she said no but Tammy is trying her best!!! And that Coop is more open to the unknown, and Tammy is only just starting. As I think that Cooper's failures are a big part of the narrative, I'm not sure anyone should aspire to be the new Cooper, but anyway, I've been wondering about these two characters interacting (in dreams?) ever since. Reaching out to her as the new Blue Rose agent and/or as someone who is just starting to peek 'between two worlds', warning her, teaching her, getting to know her and even seeing shades of Albert and Gordon in her. And what would she think of him? And maybe Laura is with him, or maybe it's just Laura and Tammy, secrets whispered to her ear, a world just for them. Maybe Laura could be a better teacher. She knows the darkness. Or maybe she would be too intense.

Codex Seraphinianus - worldbuilding

Take a page, any page, and tell me more about it! The rainbows thing, the potted deer, the swimming trees, the literally any illustration in here, look at them, they're great. Translate the text! Connect... things? Are there narrative paths through this copious amount of nonsense? Go fake academia on this - considering the text a total cipher or pretending we can read it? If you want to get philosophical, metaphysical and/or high concept in any other way, go for it! As long as it's all weird.

I have the recent edition with the extra pages; it's easy to find low-res pdfs around the internet or random pages via image search! Here’s a few:

[roxaeri]

because you reblogged the post about mr. Barlog smale horse sleeping on his bed. would slepnir do it too in atreus bed? Like the fam is staying over at the farm and slepnir comes in and adds himself to the dogs. atrus luckely being slowly squished out. basicaly the next morning waking up and seeing all his pets on his bed still sleeping and piled atop of each other. (he maybe should consider to not adopt more)

Alright, I decided I’m gonna two for one on this, because world building~But First: MDD SleipnirEven as a pony, Sleipnir’s just too damn big to fit into Grandma’s house when Atreus and Aloy and Calliope spend—hm, maybe about a week on the rez. Because sometimes you just need to go home, but Io:nhiòte also wants her friends along because it’s been A While since she’s seen Calliope and she only has so long before she goes back home to France.So’s, how I’m thinking this goes down, since Sleipnir has fulfilled the shunka (dog) part of shunka wakan (horse; there’s no English equivalent for wakan but one of the closest things would be Sacred, or holy. So Sacred Dog, if you want a literal translation)–Sleipnir is the house horse. He hangs around outside with any of the dogs or tame rez dogs that wander through.He peeks in the window of whatever room Atreus in is. Bedroom. Living room. Hangs around the porch.“Alright, kid.”“What?”“Borrowed a saddle from my cousin that’ll fit you. Probably make it easier for you on the ride. Now, so your father doesn’t kill and/or sue me if you get sick or something down here—you don’t have to do the whole ride. Unci’s got a trailer for Sleipnir if you get tired. And he’s a pretty chill pony, but this is his first ride and I don’t know how he’ll react to being around the other horses.”“And what does that mean?”“He could get excited and want to run with the horses at the front. Happened to me on my first ride when I was little. But we’re going to try to keep our little group towards the back near the roads just in case any of you get tired.”“Okay.”“But we’ll see how he does when it’s just us. Calliope. You’ll be taking Unci’s horse. She’s older, so she’s calmer.”“Come, winyan, I’ll show you while they’re busy.”Growing up with Rost, I’m sure Aloy knows how to ride. Positive he would show her.“Okay, since I don’t know your land even half as well as you do, you’re the one who’s going ahead, right?”“Yeah. Atreus, Aloy’ll help you keep him calm, alright?”“Yeah, okay.”“Nervous?”“A little, but I trust you.”And maybe Sleipnir’s skittish at first. He’s worn a saddle before, but he’s never had a rider out in the field. At first he does try to run with Io:nhiòte’s horse when she goes past, but they get it to the point where he keeps pace with Aloy’s.“It’ll be better when there’s more than just me helping you out.”“Okay.”And it is when they finally go out as a group during the ride. Atreus makes it through the whole day and ride to the next stop. They’ve all decided to camp out there.But kid can’t sleep and wanders just a bit away from their little group to see Sleipnir in the little corral that’s set up.Horse wanders over and just kinda stands by him.Io:nhiòte doesn’t see him around camp and finds him by the corral and good lord her heart–Kratos gets texted a picture of Atreus asleep against Sleipnir through the bars of the corral, who’s lying down himself. And when Atreus calls him the next day–“You’re not bringing the horse home.”“Dad–”“An entire field is better than a stable here in the city.”“But dad–”“You already have three animals here. And I’m sure Io:nhiòte and her grandmother wouldn’t mind you going back to see it.”

––

Secondly: Trickster Atreus, even further in the timeline than Future Mythos and Modern Mythos, because I love Trickster Fam just as much as Awkward FamDefinitely when he’s past Adult and Mature (physical wise, I guess, since he’s a full blown trickster here)Atreus at this point has been A Dad for awhile and Sleipnir—wouldn’t be so much a newborn? Like, I’m not sure what to call him but he is still a Small Pony. Maybe only knee high to Atreus and Sleipnir is just Dad is TallBut he’s also really young, like still a baby compared to the rest of his siblings. So of course, little eight-legged pony just cuddling with his trickster dad. Usually falls asleep like that.And Atreus waking up, just expecting his youngest baby—but they’re all there.Jörmungandr’s draped across his neck and Hela’s head in buried into his back and Fenrir is sprawled across his legs and his face tucked beside Sleipnir. As always, the pony’s curled in arms against his chest.“I didn’t hear any of you come in.”“We know you best, and we know how to sneak around you.”“Yeah, I guess. Wait, how did you get inside? Brok and Sindri made that lock.”“Fenrir broke it.”“… You know what, yeah. I guess you would.”

[terramythos]

Review: Myst by Cyan Worlds, Inc (1993)

Genre/Tags: Silent Protagonist, First-Person, Atmospheric, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Great Story, Lore Heavy, Classic, Puzzle, Parallel Worlds, Moral Choice, Multiple Endings, Strong Worldbuilding

Warnings: Lots of unsavory things such as torture, murder, drug use, and genocide are all implied by context, but not directly shown or described in detail.

Playthrough notes: With my sister, I played a remastered version of this game called realMyst. It was a pretty good port with updated graphics and some minor glitches. There is a free-roam option in this version as well as a bonus postgame Age (world). I played the game in classic mode (no free-roam) and explored the bonus world, which includes some lore for the sequel. 

My Rating: 4/5 (Recommended)

**Minor Spoilers and My Thoughts Follow** 

“I realized, the moment I fell into the fissure, that the Book would not be destroyed as I had planned. It continued falling into that starry expanse, of which I had only a fleeting glimpse. I have tried to speculate where it might have landed—I must admit, however, such conjecture is futile. Still, the question of whose hands might one day hold my Myst Book are unsettling to me. I know my apprehensions might never be allayed, and so I close, realizing that perhaps the ending has not yet been written.” -Atrus

My Summary: You play a mysterious stranger who falls into an alternate world after opening up a book. Waking up on the seemingly abandoned island of Myst, you are confronted by odd buildings and machines. Using what few context clues you have, you discover a few intact journals in a burned library, which are written by a man named Atrus and describe alternate worlds. Also to be found are two mysterious books which display static on the pages when you open them. With some puzzle solving, you are able to find hidden books on the island which teleport you to the worlds described in Atrus’ journals.

After a point, you find torn book pages in each world and re-unite them with the strange static books. As you piece the two books together, you discover they are prisons for two brothers-- Sirrus and Achenar. Both claim to have been trapped by their father Atrus, victimized by the other brother’s lies. By solving cryptic puzzles and traveling to the different Ages (worlds), you decide who to believe while discovering some of the mysteries of this universe.

The Good:

To say this game is genre-defining or ahead of its time would be a severe understatement. Countless Myst-clones, including many recent games such as Obduction (made by the same studio), The Talos Principle, The Witness, and more have been released. The fact that games like this continue to be produced almost 24 years later-- with only minor technological advances-- says something. It was successful and critically well-received, which allowed it several sequels. Even puzzle games that fall outside of this type of experience take pointers from the design, and the atmospheric storytelling is emulated in a variety of titles and genres.

This game is five days younger than me and in many aspects it is difficult to tell. There may be games like it today, but there were none at the time. It’s truly a unique experience.

This is the earliest video game I can think of that has anything approaching a moral choice system. Deciding to trust either Sirrus or Achenar requires you to pay attention to the atmosphere of the different locations and piece things together on your own. The game also features detailed multiple endings based on your choices-- I counted 4 total, which is just crazy for the time.

This game manages a difficult task of (1) creating a player-driven experience while also (2) creating a rich and compelling story. The game gives you clues, but it never holds your hand. You choose what order to explore each Age, and you have to use logical thought to solve puzzles and navigate out of them. At the same time, Atrus’ journals, level design, and limited dialogue build an intriguing world and central conflict.

I usually don’t harp on graphics, but this game aged well visually. The version I played was a remaster, but even so, looking at the original renders and considering its age, the game looks impressive. This game also uses a rare version of mo-cap in which live actors were recorded and the footage was rendered almost seamlessly in the game-world rather than creating character models. It’s impressive, especially for the time. It’s not up to modern standards by any means, but it’s still a landmark.

As mentioned, a lot of the story is conveyed through the world and level design. Journals give you glimpses and lore hints, but there’s nothing quite like finding a character’s secret torture chamber (not essential to the level at all), or realizing a once lively and abundant world is abandoned, or even noting the contents of a character’s desk, in order to piece together a complex narrative and influence your decisions.

The actors for Sirrus and Achenar really ham it up and I enjoy it immensely. It’s even more unsettling the more you learn about them through context.

The Ages were just neat in general. There were four in the base game-- Channelwood, Stoneship, Mechanical, and Selenitic (Stoneship is probably my ultimate aesthetic). The remaster includes a fifth one called Rime. They all had unique and strong aesthetics; they felt like other worlds, but had enough connection to ours that they did not seem completely alien. This seems intentional, based on some story things, and the more otherworldly design in future titles.

Honestly it’s just a cool concept to me in general. There’s a lot that’s implied and left to speculation. Is Atrus creating the worlds by writing about them? He mentions writing things and having them appear in the world. But it’s also implied they exist and have their own histories that he is unaware of, and he still brings in supplies from outside? What is it about the books that creates or facilitates travel between worlds? What is Riven, the Age that gets referenced several times but can’t be visited? It makes me want more lore (which we get, thankfully, in the sequels and tie-in novels).

The Mediocre:

Some of the controls did not age especially well; the port I played was overly sensitive so my character would often overshoot where I meant for them to go. The individual screen renders limit the degree to which you can move, and while that’s an artifact of the time, it takes some getting used to. The port had a free-roam option, but I wanted to play something close to the original experience.

The Bad:

There were bugs, and while most were liveable, I ran into a potentially gamebreaking one in which an elevator despawned on reloading the game. There is no way to exit the Age in question, so if it was my only save file I would be completely screwed. Luckily, it wasn’t, but I had to replay a good chunk of the game to re-progress. I am under the impression there are several bugs of this nature that I was fortunate enough to miss.

There’s one puzzle that’s just a terrible design. There are NO hints for it on the world in question. It’s the only puzzle in the entire game based on hints from a completely different Age, and there is no way for someone to know to write down the insanely specific information (which is used for a puzzle on that world, so why would you even think you’d need the info later?). Even IF you figure it out, the way the hint incorporates into the puzzle is difficult to parse. The game is designed to be completed in any order, so if you went to this world first and not the one the hint is on, you’re also completely screwed. The only saving grace is the puzzle CAN be brute forced (it’s a maze), but it’s an extremely long and tedious process. I appreciate the idea of rewarding a player for thinking outside the box, but this is the completely wrong way to do it.

Final Thoughts:  

I got into most of my opinion already, but Myst is a good game. Over time it has evolved into a meme, but I think it deserves way more than that. I would credit this game, originally released on September 24, 1993, with a variety of innovations which are still present in modern games. As I mentioned, Myst clones still exist over 20 years later, with only minor variations to account for new technology. It’s a genre creator and it still plays well. The story feels more modern than its original release would imply.

The story and lore is not something I see discussed very often. But it is a damn cool and appealing story, and I appreciate how much the game lets you draw your own conclusions based on evidence. In an age before widespread Internet usage, that meant you had to solve most of this game on your own. I think the reliance of many modern games on checkpoints leading you to a given goal takes something away from narrative and level design, especially for a puzzle game whose very name is meant to invoke the mystery of it all. I’m glad that the modern port didn’t feel the need to point me to my goals and just… let me find them.

My sister and I played this together, and it was fun to put our heads together to try and solve the puzzles. Many thanks for her writing down the puzzle hints (a necessity to beat the game!) While no remasters of the next two games-- Riven and Exile-- have been released, we plan to play those two as well and get a more complete view of the story. Riven has already proven buggy to run on Windows 10, but it’s interesting and distinct from Myst so far-- certainly more cryptic.

Overall, though, if you haven’t played Myst I highly recommend picking it up. The realMyst port was quite good, and it’s available on Steam for only $5.99. It’s a historic title and I hope you will play it and appreciate how much the game has contributed to gaming as a whole.

[earthbounddreamers]

👴👣😷😍✏️🤑❤️🗣️

👴: Which OC is your oldest, creation wise?Scarlet. I made her when I was like 14. Based on a writing prompt in a book I had I wanted to write a teenager stuck on what was basically a prison bus, headed to a boot camp. The dialogue that inspired her was "Stupid parents. Stupid school. Stupid bootcamp. Stupid party. So what I got drunk? So what I was tripping on acid? Why do I have to go to bootcamp?" 👣: Which OC is your newest?Tyler Lopez, from the GLGLC universe, bff of Rory and the reason Rory and Mei ended up confessing their crushed for each other. 😷: Have you ever scrapped one of your ocs and used their backstory / interests / ect. for a newer one?This fandom OC I made for this kinda self insert The World Ends With You fic, Naomi, was basically Mei but more shy and less developed as a character. Same with the main character of that, Roxy, went on to influence Rory. 😍: Which OC is your favorite? Unexpected favorite?Scarlet is my favourite for a lot of reasons. She was my first serious OC and there was actually a lot of change as I developed her. At first she was basically a badass me, but I gave her such a heartwrenching backstory so she could feel pain like I always has. She's since developed into her own character, but her roots lie in my own life and personality. ✏: Do you have a process when it comes to making OCs? Can you make one out of thin air or do you take months to build them?I just need a base to start on, then it's snowball effect from there. White demigirl, gets in trouble, gay as fuck: Rory. Chinese girl, shy but confident if someone can back her up, strict parents, huge lesbian: Mei. Tyler as my latest character was developed with the help of my big bro @atrue-whovian. Our base was a boy from Mexico who was best friends with Rory and goes on to find out he is bi. It kept rolling and within the hour I had a fully developed character. 🖓: Is there a OC you have that just doesn't click with you yet?🤑: Do you mostly fandom OCs or purely original ones? If original, do you have any plans for them in terms of producing a short film, book?I used to do some fandom OCs but now I only do original ones. I have two books I'm writing, Missing Streams which is kinda on the back burner and will have a sequel after I write it. That has Scar, James, and Simon as main characters, and Sam and Max only show up in memories until the end of the second book. Then Girl Like Girls Like Crime is one I'm writing now, starring Rory and Mei with Katie and Tyler as supporting characters. I plan to write a sequel about their senior year from the pov of Tyler and his boyfriend he's gonna get. ❤: Do you ship any of your OCs together? Or do you ship them with friend's?Scar/Sam/James is canon, Simon/Max is canon, Rory/Mei is clearly canon, and I have yet to design Tyler's boyfriend. I don't really have any conflicting ships. Well before Scar/Sam conflicted with Scar/James but then I just merged them together and problem solved! 🗣: Historically, the internet has never been too kind to OCs. What's one thing you wish people realized about OCs?They are the results of people creating! Fuck cringe culture. Go ahead and make your OCs, even if no one will listen just make them! Create and love it! Write stories, draw pictures, anything. Creating is amazing and you deserve to love your creations.

[iamthespineofmybook]

D&D Campaign Idea

While browsing through some stuff last night, I happened to think of an interesting idea for a campaign. It starts off as a normal adventure, clearing out a goblin warren or adolescent dragon cave, but in the treasure hoard is a strange book.

Opening it to a random page reveals bizarre circular glyphs no one can make heads or tails of, even if they have a special ability to read any language. But, examining the book closer, the very very first page has on it a strange, moving picture. If none of the players know what’s going on, you might have to manipulate one of them into actually touching the picture, but doing so causes them to vanish from the point of view of the others.

Hopefully, your party is one where the others will follow after, because it’s the crux of the adventure. You see, they just found an old D’ni Linking Book.

The party then has to travel through this strange world they found themselves on, it would have to have monsters, since D&D is built around combat, but otherwise they’d find a building full of puzzles that lead to another Linking Book.

But that one doesn’t take them home either. The story then becomes Sliders, but with the scattered Linking Books, rather than a device that needs recharging. There are two ways I can think of to end this leg of the adventure: they either find a Star Fissure that takes them to where the Myst book lies, leading them to Atrus (who just happens to have the a Linking Book to their world already on his shelves), or they do manage to find a Linking Book back to their original world.

I think it’d be an interesting and unusual campaign, and, depending on your party, there could be people back in their world who are worried about them, and surprised when they finally reappear, far stronger than they were when they vanished.

[aion-rsa]

Myst: Creators Rand and Robyn Miller Unlock the Secrets of the PC Classic

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In 1991, two brothers—Rand and Robyn Miller—along with a handful of artists and engineers, set out to create a game unlike anything that had come before it, harnessing powerful new PC technology to immerse players in a fantastical island world inside a book. The game was called Myst, a point-and-click adventure full of infuriatingly difficult puzzles and driven by a twisted, fantastical story about a tragically dysfunctional family

Released in 1993, the game was lauded by fans and critics alike, became a killer app for CD-ROM drives, and went on to become the best selling PC game ever (over 6.3 million copies sold by 2000) until The Sims dethroned it in 2002. More than two decades after its release, there are even plans to turn the game into a movie and TV series. Myst is one of the most unlikely commercial success stories in gaming history, particularly due to the fact that the game was so strange, so notoriously difficult, and was made by such a small team (Cyan Worlds, founded by the Miller brothers in 1987).

“I was more of a gamer than Robyn, but both of us settled with Myst on the idea that, well let’s not have people die and start over, because that irritated both of us. We felt like we were building a real world, and in a real world, you don’t just die and start over every five minutes.” Rand says of the initial conceit that led to the creation of the game. “We wanted to add friction that would slow you down but we didn’t think that there were rules to video games necessarily, so we’ll pull out the dying and see if we could do it without that.” 

Indeed, there’s no dying in Myst, a revolutionary idea at a time when “Game Over”s  were a staple in virtually every game on the market. Instead, Myst tasked players with exploring its world and decrypting its story, eschewing combat for puzzles that challenged and engaged you but weren’t life-or-death ordeals.

“I’d love to tell you we knew exactly what we were doing, but we didn’t,” Rand says. “It was just another experiment along the scale of how to make things a little more sophisticated, and even within the game itself, you can see how we were expanding and building more cohesiveness into the worlds as we went.”

Despite its humble origins, Myst was a huge deal for a lot of people in the ‘90s, including me. I remember the thrill of watching it run on the new PC my parents bought for me and my brothers in the mid-90s, marveling at the FMV elements combined with the detailed pre-rendered environments.

“For me, Myst was for games what Star Wars was for movies,” explains Philip Shane, a filmmaker who’s launched a Kickstarter for a documentary about the making of the PC classic. Shane previously co-wrote the Sundance Special Jury Prize-winning documentary Being Elmo (2011). “I was 10 years old when Star Wars came out and, in my mind, I was the same age when I played Myst. Just like with Star Wars today, when you look back on Myst, it was the first time you ever saw something with that level of detail. It was an odd game, but for me it was huge.”

Read more

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By John Saavedra

Myst is responsible for a wave of cinematic, immersive games with rich storytelling that are as popular in 2020 as they ever were. Games like The Witness, Outer Wilds, and Quern draw inspiration from Myst’s original puzzle-adventure formula, while Dear Esther, Gone Home, and The Stanley Parable are heavily influenced by the world-building and environmental storytelling Myst pioneered. 

“I think in our minds, it does feel like we’re building worlds and not necessarily games,” says Rand of Cyan’s approach to making games. “We try so hard to create this consistent flow in our worlds. It’s not easy. It takes a lot of effort to tie the environment with the story and the puzzles. It’s not always perfect. But we make that attempt to make it seem viable as far as worlds go.”

“And so we started coming up with [Myst’s] backstory,” Robyn adds. “And it helped to give us a better understanding of the entire world and maybe a better understanding of where the world should move onto for where we were going with it. We filled out the details, the empty spaces in our minds.”

Rand says that The Lord of the Rings books by J.R.R. Tolkien were a particular inspiration when building the world of Myst. 

“[The Lord of the Rings] felt like you’re just reading one of the books, but the world was much bigger than that. It felt like you had a window. You were just experiencing a small window into a much larger world. And for some reason, that really resonated with us.” Rand explains. “That made those worlds seem so much more real to us. And so, when it came time to do our worlds, that’s naturally where we land. We build backstory and wrapped stuff around the family and what had happened. Stuff that didn’t even need to be told in the little window of the Myst game. But in our world, it gave it weight and I love that.”

The brothers also credit Alice in Wonderland, Tintin comics, and Jules Verne’s The Mysterious Island as major influences on Myst.

“We had a couple of months to design the thing, and so it was more of a regurgitation of everything we had collectively in our psyches and aesthetic selves and whatever those influences were,” Robyn says. “Tonally it created something that was mysterious and weird, but it was all these things pressed together into this weirdness.”

Myst’s central tale, of Atrus and his warring sons Achenar and Sirrus, stretches far beyond the original game, to tie-in novels and its four sequels (one of which was developed by Ubisoft independently). Due to budgetary restrictions, Rand and Robyn were forced to act in the game themselves, with Rand playing Atrus and Achenar, and Robyn playing Sirrus (Rand continued to play Atrus in the game’s sequels).

“I would not call it acting,” Robyn says. “The fact that we got anything that looked good out of what we did is a miracle. It was just me and Rand really, and the thing I remember most is that we were laughing hysterically through it.”

“Like Robyn said, it’s a wonder we got anything out of us,” Rand says. “Looking back, in spite of the fact that we would not have cast ourselves had we had a real budget and to do things the way we wanted to, it’s cool again that we as brothers got to play those brothers and look back and laugh at it. I’ve got tapes.”

Though he was a longtime fan of Myst, Shane had never thought to make a documentary about the game until he met with the Miller brothers at a games convention in 2016, where they were presenting a keynote. At an after party, he approached them as a fan, without an inkling that the ensuing conversation would launch him into the next stage of his career.

“I was terrified,” Shane recalls of meeting the Millers. “I went up to them and immediately I thought, ‘Surely someone has made a documentary about Myst.’ So I said, ‘Has anyone ever made a documentary about Myst? And they were like, ‘No.’ And so I was like, ‘Could I?’ And they were like, ‘Really? Yeah.’ In spite of the making of Myst being a 25-year-long story, this was the fastest I’ve ever gone from conception of a documentary idea to green light. It was as fast as the neurons of three people could go. Just a couple of weeks later, my camera person, my cinematographer Kyle Kelly, and I flew out to Spokane and started filming.”

Spokane is the home of Cyan Worlds and the birthplace of Myst, its sequel Riven (1997), spiritual successor Obduction (2016), and the forthcoming Firmament, the studio’s first major VR release. Shane remembers watching a short, grainy documentary clip of the brothers talking about the making of Myst on a disc included with the original game’s release. “There were these two guys making the game at home,” he recalls. “At one point, the camera pans away and you see all these trees. I was like, ‘Those are the trees from Myst.’ It was like they lived in the game.”

With his documentary, Shane endeavoured to delve into the lives of the Miller brothers on a personal level, which meant spending a lot of time talking to them and picking their brains. Looking back on the making of Myst over a quarter of a century after its release has been an unexpectedly profound experience for Robyn in particular, who hasn’t been involved in making video games hands-on for decades now. Robyn left the company after the release of Riven in 1997 while Rand stayed on as CEO of Cyan Worlds.

“Well, I’d forgotten about Myst,” Robyn says of revisiting the game almost 30 years later. “If I play Myst today, it’s like I’m actually playing Myst [for the first time] and I have to remember things. It’s weird. I haven’t worked on any of that stuff in such a long time, so it’s fun to talk about Myst now.”

Shane says he has every intention of going through the brothers’ archive of tapes but that the success of the Kickstarter will largely determine how much he’ll be able to comb through for the documentary. “Research for a documentary is more time-intensive and expensive than people might know,” he explains. “And a big part of it is time. The more successful we are with the Kickstarter, the deeper I’m going to be able to go [into the archives]. I can’t promise anything, but I want to get that stuff. Rand has a ton of home movies. They both have a lot of stuff that they’ve saved up.”

Currently, Cyan is hard at work on its forthcoming puzzle-adventure game, Firmament. The studio is deep into development, and while Cyan originally targeted a July 2020 release date, the COVID-19 pandemic caused the team to push the release back, announcing in a recent Kickstarter backers’ update that the game likely wouldn’t be finished until 2022. But the team is still working hard on the game from home, and according to Rand, they were largely prepared to work remotely and continue development.

“Firmament‘s probably one of the best storylines we’ve done in a game since I’ve been doing this. It’s really cool,” Rand says. “Whether we can pull it off, I think, Robyn and I talked about this so many years ago is, even for Myst and Riven: you can have big plans for a story, but at some level, it’s about being able to communicate it. Sometimes you just have to simplify it so that it’s satisfying and people get it. So we’ll see what we can do with Firmament, but it’s a great, great storyline.”

When it does arrive, Firmament will be the latest in a long line of memorable experiences from Cyan Worlds. But Myst will always be their crowning achievement, a game that continues to impact its players today. The Miller brothers admit that Myst grew beyond anything they could have possibly imagined.

Robyn puts the enduring legacy of this game best: “We made Myst and we never expected it to continue on this many years later especially. Now it’s so much larger than Myst. It’s got a life of its own. There are so many people who are involved in — whether it’s creating, writing their own stories about it, or painting pictures, or having guilds, or the Mysterium [an annual celebration of the game] getting together every year. It just goes on and on and on, it’s this world that exists out there. This massive thing that is much larger than the Myst games. We feel privileged and humbled to be a part of that, privileged and humbled to have been there at the beginning.”   Shane’s The Myst Documentary is currently in pre-production and will cover both the origin of Myst as well as the current work being done at Cyan Worlds. The project has more than 2,000 backers as of this writing. Check out the Kickstarter here.

The post Myst: Creators Rand and Robyn Miller Unlock the Secrets of the PC Classic appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[bestforlessmove]

Amazon Presents a Prime Opportunity to Transform a City's Housing Market-but Where?

Mike Kane/Getty Images; iStock; realtor.com

Amazon's announcement that it plans to build a second headquarters somewhere in North America to employ tens of thousands of well-paid workers has set off a frenzy of let's-make-a-deal maneuvering among the nation's urban officials, all desperately vying to land the online retailer. The winning city will be announced sometime in 2018. Suspenseful much?

So why are cities tripping over themselves to win the contract? It's simple: The new Amazon HQ could become atrue game-changer for most metros.

What's at stake is as many as 50,000 workers-with an average salary topping $100,000-moving in over the next 10 to 15 years. That's larger than the population of many small cities, and it doesn't even include workers' families and the array of support companies that will crop up wherever Amazon goes. It's a big boon to local businesses and the coffers of citieswhich can collect higher tax revenue from its new residents. Plus, Amazon has pledged to invest about $5 billion in the construction and operation of its new facility. (It will maintain its original headquarters in Seattle as well.)

This kind of investment could turn a smaller, second-tier city into a superhot metropolis. It could reverse the fortunes of a long-struggling metro. Or it could be a feather in the cap of one of the country'salready desirable cities.

The new headquarters will, by necessity,profoundly transform the area's housing market.

Rental and home sale prices are likely to rise sharply as builders race to put up amenity-laden condo and apartment towers near the new HQ, along with creating new master-planned communities of single-family homes in the suburbs, say real estate and corporation relocation experts.

This projected is so highly coveted that even being on the short list will jump-start a lot of [residential] development activity, says John Boyd, principal of the Boyd Company, based in Princeton, NJ, a corporate relocation specialist.

What sorts of cities are most likely to make Amazon's short list?

Citiesmight throw every tax incentive imaginable to lure Amazon, but the online giant is looking for very specific qualifications for its second home. (Company officials declined to speak with realtor.com, but the retailer outlined what it's looking for in a request for proposalslast month.)

The inventor of 1-Click shopping is seeking metros with more than a million people, for starters. Theseareas must also be stable, business-friendly,andattractive to potential employees. (The latter tips the odds against a Rust Belt citysuch as Detroit, despite its resurgence.)

The site will need to accommodate about 30 buildings and be within 30 miles of the population center and 45 minutes of a major airport. It will also need easy access to major highways and public transit.

But the thing Amazon will need most is lots of skilled workers, say corporate relocation experts. That means they'll want to be close to top universities, and be in a place where young talentwants to live.

All the major cities that are competing for this are all markets that are consistently ranked as one of the most millennial-friendly, Boyd says.

Despitesuch tall demands, it's likely that Amazon will receive free land on which to build its headquarters and won't pay a dime of property, corporate income, sales, and other local and state taxes, saysChicago-based attorney Andrew Scott, who specializes in corporate site selections at Dykema.

Cities can offset some of those lossesby taxing the new residents the internet giant will bring in. And that money can go toward building new schools, expanding existing public transportation systems, and adding new government services for residents.

Whatever city lands this thing, their reputation is going to go through the roof,Scott says. A lot of folks will say, 'if this is good enough for Amazon, it's certainly good enough for my company.'

Amazon claims its investments in Seattle-where it has more than 40,000 employees-pumped about $38 billion into the city's economy from 2010 to 2016. It also claims to have spurred an additional 53,000 jobs in the city as a result of its investments. (It has more than 380,000 workers and countless outposts, offices, and warehouses worldwide, with more opening eachyear.)

How important is housing to Amazon?

Thequestion of just whereall of these workers are going to liveis usually the last piece of the puzzle, Boyd says.

Officialstypicallytake stock of the housing within a 70-mile radius of their new site, he says. They look at what sorts of homes currently exist; what kinds of buildings could be repurposed, such as old malls and factories; and the supply of land to build rental and condo towers in the city and single-familyhomes in the suburbs.

These could be former industrial zones on the edges of a metropolis-areas that have fallen into disarray over the years or aren't fully built out.

If Amazon's new headquarterssettle on the outskirts of a city, it could create a thriving second-city-type area,says Chief Economist Danielle Hale of realtor.com.It will become a new center that people want to live around.

Wherever Jeff Bezos' all-powerful company touches down, the apartment market is likely to spike, says Annie Radecki, senior manager at John Burns Real Estate Consulting. Many of thefirm's younger, singleworkers are likely to prefer to rent inside city centers, particularly job hoppers whowant to hedge their bets and might notintend to stay at Amazon long.Older workers, even older millennials with families, are more likely to veer toward single-familyliving in the suburbs.

Right now, [developers and builders] assume Amazon is a gold rush, Radecki says. But it's going to make affordability worse. Traffic will go up. Schools will get overcrowded. Services take time to catch up.

And itmight actually take longer to build new housing than the second headquarters.The problem is that the chosen city will need to create tens of thousands of new or retrofitted housing units in a short period of time,says Robert Dietz, chief economist of the National Association of Home Builders.

That's a tough ask, he adds.

It's tougher still when you factor in the national shortage of skilled construction workers-exacerbated by the rebuilding needs in hurricane-ravaged Houston and Florida.

What happens when a metro receives an influx of workers?

For a clueon theimpact Amazonmight eventually have, it's helpful to look at Texas-in particular, Dallas. The citylured companies from all over the world with low taxes, an inexpensive cost of living, and affordable real estate. Itboasts good universities and an educated workforce, making it catnip toemployers seeking to leave costly, coastal metros and the high wages they have to pay there.

The Dallas metro area began seeing an influx of companies relocating and expanding there in 2008, when AT&Trelocated its corporate headquarters, and about 700 jobs, from San Antonio, nearly 300 miles away. Since 2010, more than 200 companies have moved into the region with many more expanding in it. That's added about 500,000 jobs to the area.

Not surprisingly, there's been a corresponding population surge in the Dallas area, which includes Fort Worth, Arlington, and other smaller cities. It rose bynearly 1.36 million people from 2006 to 2016, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

The cost of housing has definitely been affected, says Dallas-area RealtorDebbie Murray, ofAllie Beth Allman & Associates.

And home prices have surged. In 2008, the median home price in the Dallas metro was $145,800, according to National Association of Realtors data. Fast-forward to 2016, and the median home price jumped nearly 56%, to $227,100. Nationally, prices rose only about19.8% over the same period.

Theinflux of new companiesis now revitalizingsmaller cities and suburbs around Dallas, too, turning places like Frisco,Plano,McKinney, and Alleninto destinations in their own right, Murray says. Many companies are opening operations in these places, and workers are reluctant to live more than a 30-minute commute away.

It completely changed the market, Murray says of the influx of new residents. It's crazy.

What's the catch to Amazon moving in?

Amazon'sbounty isn't likely to be shared by all-particularly by lower-income renterswhomight be forced out of their communities by rapidly rising housing prices.

There's going to be some pushing out,says Andre Perry, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington, DCbased think tank.

He worries that minorities, especially, will suffer the negative effects of gentrification in Amazon's future home city, as their neighborhoods see an influx of wealthierskilledworkers flooding in. And after presumably giving the online behemoth a massive tax break, city government will have to strainto provide services for the new residents (eventhough those residents will pay individual taxes).

Cities shouldn't sell the farm to bring in a company because that tax revenue is needed so they can have adequate transportation systems for people to get to work, so they can have quality schools and universities, Perry says.

And, of course, even Bezos' monster corporation could suffer thevicissitudesof an economic downturn.

Any time you have that number of jobs resting on one company, your fate really depends on what that company does, says real estate consultant Radecki. And with advancements in automation, artificial intelligence, and the rise in telecommuting, you may announce 1,000 jobs today and then later automate 900 of them.

There [are] huge technical shifts going on, she says. What Amazon's looking for today may not be what they need in five to 10 years.

A bigger city would be able to absorblarge job losses easier as it would have other high-paying industries to prop it up. But it could devastate the economy-and housing market-of a smaller one.

Cities need to understand the risk of attracting Amazon, Radecki says.

The post Amazon Presents a Prime Opportunity to Transform a City's Housing Market-but Where? appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com.

[krissysbookshelf]

The Book of Atrus (Myst #1) by Rand Miller, Robyn Miller, David Wingrove

Based on the best-selling CD-ROM game, a fantasy novel fills out the lives of the game's characters, tracing the strange apprenticeship of Atrus to his father, Gehn, who wields the power to create worlds.

  For those of you who may have played the game during its early days you'll recognize many of its cast players and the world its its signature world building in the pages of this book. 

The Myst series that stretched across the games Myst, Riven, Myst III, Myst IV, Myst V, and Uru - Ages Beyond Myst is further explored and explained in the Book of Atrus who writes the books with the ability to create worlds and portals to new worlds. Gehn a familiar name from the series creates these worlds along with his son Atrus who carries on the traits of his father only to realize that his father has created some seriously dire situations he has to follow using the books to fix the damage his father has done. 

Readers get to journey into the position as both a witness and creator from the ground up in both the journey that Atrus takes following his father and learning what has come before him and what has happened in his fathers wake. 

Good vs Evil, evil from good intentions and the grey lines between will open places for the reader to question who will ultimately come out on top and who lands on the side of right and wrong. 

Robyn Miller

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Krissy's Bookshelf Reviews purchased a print copy. All thoughts, comments and ratings are my own.

Krissy's Bookshelf Reviews purchased a print copy for personal collection.

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[aplaceofstone]

AO3: faceofstone

Dear Yuletide Writer,

thank you for offering one of the small surreal fandoms of my heart and I hope you will have fun writing for it. Anything can happen! Symbols! Meaningful non sequiturs! Things! Stuff!

All prompts and ideas are just suggestions, if you are the kind of Yuletide writer who likes to follow them. If not, cool, they are certainly not the end-all of what I love about these fandoms and characters.

If you like visual prompts, this entire blog is 20% recipes and 80% aesthetics that mostly fit my requested fandoms...

I like found families, oddball friendships, sympathy toward outcasts, characters who fully embrace being outcasts, melancholy, a sense of place, bittersweet accomplishments, and a stubborn flicker of hope in an overall bleak world. Dreamlike atmospheres that aren’t necessarily scary, some sort of reassurance that can be found in the weird and the profoundly unnatural.

All fic formats, tenses, povs are fine.

± canon-compliant levels of assorted grimdark are fine, so eg I have no problems with characters dealing with canon rape in Twin Peaks but would rather avoid it elsewhere, whereas murderous infradimensional overgrown ants are better suited to specific Myst fic.

Myst: Any (Jeff, Atrus, Calam, Yeesha)

Having recently visited a few caverns irl, I am struck by a feeling of longing for the capital-letter-Cavern, its heavy voids and silences. Any of these four characters, alone or in bundle, had the chance to wander down after the Fall and experience some kind of reflection or adventure. I am equally interested in the more rational kind of plots that are normally associated with Myst-era characters and in the thrill of the unexplainable that comes with Uru territory, and in mixing it up. Any of these characters could walk into some meaningful building with some history that resonates with them, meet a bahro or twenty-five, follow the mysterious rowboat that can be spotted in the farthest waters of the lake, hear a ghost story...

If you have cool visuals or worldbuilding in mind for an Age, go wild. But when it comes to canon settings, this year I am mostly interested in D'ni and the tunnels and the desert above.

Jeff could be meeting Yeesha for the first time, and/or first following his father and his DRF pals to the City, coming to terms with the Call... if you feel like writing DRF people, I certainly feel like reading them. Jeff cautiously spending time with Yeesha, whom he likes to think of as a friend but is as skittish as the roadrunner painted on her chest. Roasting marshmallows around a bonfire? On a road trip for the sake of it? Jeff observing the first explorers, or following his father's footsteps and trying to come to terms with his death?

Atrus could be searching for Yeesha a few years after she left them and find... something else instead. He could link to D'ni incognito a couple of years after End of Ages and see the Cavern lit up anew, breathing with new life and speaking with new voices. Maybe Yeesha could accompany him (although, good luck with the incognito part in that case). Before writing Releeshahn, he could reflect on some meaningful bit of D'ni history, maybe along with Catherine or Marrim. He could explore the desert before building Tomahna. He could probably see a stalagmite grow faster than D'ni did in between failed attempts at a restoration. He could find beauty in many things and be kind and avoidant to many creatures.

For more specific Yeesha&Calam ideas (along with a very specific BoD-era Atrus prompt), last year's letter still applies. Calam solo fic would probably be the best fit for a spooky story in the Cavern... or what did this master writer Write after the Fall? This is an interesting post for Calam fic, I think.

Yeesha simply yeesha-ing around makes for great fic. Did she first see D'ni as a child, with her parents? Maybe she felt something so clearly and then struggled to find it again when she started her journey as a teenager. Maybe she finds Catherine's journals long before the DRF do and reads something about her parents' past, maybe she somehow feels a connection with Catherine after her death. Slice of life fic where she sometimes drops by to care for an aging Atrus on Releeshahn and allow herself to be his daughter is always welcome... any plot that gives her something nice for a change, some positive connection.

DNW: non-canon ships, character bashing (just to play it safe with Yeesha. I like to see her flaws and contradictions explored but I like her!)

Twin Peaks: Tammy Preston

She didn't get to do much on her own in the show, which only makes me want to read a hundred fic about her... away from the intimidating aura of her two mentors (being the teacher's pet can be stressful!) and of Diane “told me to go fuck myself and I was thankful, 10/10 would be insulted again” Evans, would she still be kinda introverted and so very awkward, or would her nerdiness shine like it does in her written notes in The Secret History? Or would it be a blend where she speaks up more... and regularly infodumps like a champ? After all, her diligence and awkwardness in the show go along well with her geeky side in the book. I know some people feel that they're two very different portrayals but I enjoy them both and I think they dovetail pretty neatly to boot, as it's not unusual for someone who's not the best at social cues to be more open in writing. Chrysta Bell said that one thing she has in common with her character is that they both feel the need to be thoroughly prepared for an upcoming situation and that's an interesting trait too.

In general, I don't have any strong preferences for Tammy ships, I just want her with a girl and for the fic to make me get why she likes the other girl and why the other girl likes her. If you're into any option in the tagset, barring Blackie, Denise, Diane and Doris because the age difference would be excessive for me, and adding Shelly and Donna to round it up, go for it, I'm eager to be convinced!

Starting with the more out there prompts, there was an interview where CB was asked whether she felt that Tammy was “the new Cooper” and she said no but Tammy is trying her best!!! And that Coop is more open to the unknown, and Tammy is only just starting. As I think that Cooper's failures are a big part of the narrative, I'm not sure anyone should aspire to be the new Cooper, but anyway, I've been wondering about these two characters interacting (in dreams?) ever since. Reaching out to her as the new Blue Rose agent and/or as someone who is just starting to peek 'between two worlds', warning her, teaching her, getting to know her and even seeing shades of Albert and Gordon in her. And what would she think of him? And maybe Laura is with him, or maybe it's just Laura and Tammy, secrets whispered to her ear, a world just for them. Maybe Laura could be a better teacher. She knows the darkness. Or maybe she would be too intense. Or maybe she got ripped out of the timeline thanks to sOMEONE and still hasn't fully found herself again so Tammy would meet Carrie instead, how'd that go?

I have also been thinking about this post and how cool it would be see Tammy go through shifted realities, and how she would relate to Audrey, and Audrey to her. I don't know if The Final Dossier will tell us anything about how the rest of the town perceives Audrey's absence, but Tammy could find a clue and start a little investigation of her own?

Cynthia could be a fun partner for supernatural casefic. She's the Air Force side of Blue Rose to Tammy's FBI, like Milford and Gordon in The Secret History, and later Garland and Cooper... we don't know much about her but I love her attitude, I think they'd be a formidable team. ...or they could simply go out one night in Buckhorn before Cynthia flies back. And find a ghost or something.

The lack of scenes with just Tammy and Diane is one of my biggest regrets. I was expecting some follow-up to the “fuck you, Tammy” scene, maybe with Tammy a little starstruck and Diane seeing both herself and Coop in this young, naive agent and... trying to open her eyes. Or just them talking about cats, and/or Tammy is surprisingly proficient at mixing a Cosmopolitan, and/or something spooky and surreal happens while they're having breakfast.

Albert and Denise are her mentors – we see Albert mother-henning her all the time and Denise seems very protective of Tammy specifically, and I eat up platonic mentor-pupil dynamics with a spoon. Any adventures with either of them? If we swap out Gordon for Denise, what's Tammy's average day with FBI dad and FBI mom (but no shipping them, please) instead of FBI dad and FBI grandpa?

Or if you can think of any plot that would involve Tammy and Constance, Candie, Jade or Darya, go for it instead.

DNW: character bashing, Dale/Audrey on Coop's part (whereas Audrey fondly remembering her teen crush, like the stuff Richard mentions, is okay)

THE FINAL DOSSIER UPDATE: Can you believe Mark Frost single-handedly saved fanfiction by having Tammy stay in town for a whole year. amazing. I’m not too interested in how she researched the mythology stuff, but anything that might’ve happened in the year she remained there? Please yes.

Europe After the Rain II - Max Ernst (Painting)

Biggest version I could find online: https://www.artsy.net/artwork/max-ernst-europe-after-the-rain#!

Nominating De Chirico and Magritte has been a winning move these past two Yuletides, so, without further ado, onto my third fave... the aspect of his work I love the most is basically landscapes – among those, I picked one that felt a little more narrative, with more potential background to explore, and clearly 'post-apocalyptic surrealism' are two great tastes that go great together.

This painting feels like grief etched into moss-covered stone. What kind of war is called a rain, or are the war that ravaged this land and the rain in the title two separate things, and what is growing on these ruins? How 'after' is this? Are the figures strangers travelling through this landscape or did they survive its destruction? Are there any promises left on the horizon? Are there any promises left here? Are you mostly inspired by the palette and texture?

You are of course welcome to integrate elements from other Ernst works, both settings (I am oh so fond of his forests and their suns) and characters (Loplop, assorted bird people...), if your story moves away from the confines of the nominated painting and you're looking for inspiration. If you do so, please drop the titles in the notes so I won't miss any references?

Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou: Alpha, Kokone

I finally got around to reading this manga this year after a decade or so since I first saw it recced and I was delighted to see it in the tagset! Especially with just the two characters who made me fall in love with it. What I enjoyed the most overall is the manga’s relaxed attitude, especially considering its end-of-the-world setting, and its focus on small joys and small adventures. I enjoy slice of life stories with a creative setting in general, like Aria and Haibane Renmei, so that specific mood is a big draw for me. The more it draws on the uniqueness of the setting, the better!

Alpha and Kokone had a delightful dynamic from the get-go and their chapters were always my faves, so the ending made me so, so happy. I’d like to see them ride off into the sunset to explore some place together, but warm and fuzzy Café Alpha mood is also great. Or maybe they have an adventure in some abandoned place and the go back to warm and fuzzy Café Alpha! Established relationships are always great for me, but we also missed an actual get-together moment, when they realized they had each other and wanted to remain with each other as humanity faded away. I’m interested in some focus on the fact that they’re androids (different sensory experiences, parts glitching or breaking etc) if that’s a kind of thing you enjoy writing.

I’d be perfectly happy with just them and an empty world, but if you want to use other characters, my faves are Sensei, Ayase, Maruko and Nai.