#corpus clock

[thesargasmicgoddess]

Today, I say goodbye to England...

**warning: emotions and ramblings ahead. 😆

I'm toasting the end of what I'm fondly calling my "2023 World Tour" 😆 I've been home for exactly 7 days since the end of May. I've traveled over 25000 miles over 7 weeks to Asia and England. I've packed and unpacked over 20 times and have been on countless planes, trains, and automobiles.

This last week, I've been overwhelmed with emotions I can't quite fully place yet--but they all seemingly revolve around an aching theme of feeling bittersweet about new and old experiences and longings.

(Well, THAT was a plot twist I didn't expect on this trip. 😂)

There are certain growths that can only be experienced through pushing beyond comfort zones. I was, surprisingly, stronger, less introverted, and more flexible than I ever expected. There were challenges and new things: the nostalgia of old friends and old haunts; the paying of respects to those that are no longer with us; the visiting of those I grew up with; the first time meeting of a longtime online friend.

As exciting as all of this travel has been, I'm ready for home. Maybe it's the absence of routine and home comforts, or maybe it's the mental shifts required for traveling this long and traveling alone, but I seem to be more emotionally vulnerable during this last week. That bittersweet feeling I've had all week hasn't wanted to let up, and I've been trying to chase down all the reasons behind this feeling.

Visiting places that had helped shape the person I am today, 22 years ago, is in itself, bittersweet. I remember 20 year old me thinking about the passions of the future and yearning for more. I've changed quite a bit, yet the buildings and memories remain. It is an odd feeling of time flying by, yet standing still.

I've pondered a lot about the magic of connections on this trip, juxtaposed with the blessed angst of being someone who feels too much. Every touch, every step, every memory, every feel--I want to capture it all like lightning in a bottle, yet it's almost too much to take in all at once some days. I tell myself to breathe, but sometimes I can't quite catch my breath because I feel so much. Wanting to live a full life can be quite overwhelming for introverted souls who feel too much, but I am so blessed to have the fortitude and opportunities to live fully--albeit sometimes a bit crazily 😆

When you think about the growth of a person throughout their lifetime and the range of intense emotions, experiences, thoughts--it's really quite amazing.

I know my blog hasn't exactly been on "fun smut" brand this last week, but I've always been authentic here. And what has been authentic this week has been....well...a lot of writing, emotions, and processing. I believe in balance-- and I believe that to each irreverent light fun side, there is a darker, more soulful, extremely sensitive side lurking right beneath the surface. I've definitely been more of the latter this last week.

If you've read this far, thank you. This was a needed catharsis for me and a step in processing everything.

So, where to go from here?

I'm not sure. It will take me a minute to mentally and emotionally decompress, unpack, and process all the experiences I've had over the last 2 months. My posts have always been mood-dependent and my moods have been all over the place so......stay tuned 😆😂

Since I can't do anything in a normal, typical fashion--I just have to go with the flow and say cheers to adventures and unexpected soul-searching vacations. I will still take living passionately and deeply over feeling nothing at all most days....

But a break for the rest of today might be a good idea. Or else I'm drinking on the plane.😂

After all this rambling, The Corpus Clock and all that it represents seems appropriate for this post 😂

Onward...

[moonywalker]

• C O R P U S C L O C K

The weird grasshopper-like creature (lovingly nicknamed ‘Hopsie’ by the local students), is actually a ‘chronophage’ which means a ‘time-eater’. It is constantly eating away at our time. The  inscription at the bottom reads:

“The world will end, and all it’s lust thereof.”

[bkh-s-7449]

In the morning, Florix wakes up early, like he always does. 

Lucidity comes slowly. His fingers unfold from his palm, and he can feel them. His long legs are tucked close, knees nearly beneath his chin. How newly sore everything is. It is his body, the one he’s always occupied. The one given to him. His Corpus’ first gift, alongside life and consciousness. It feels heavy, but not so much that it cannot be moved. He is just tired. 

Just himself. Just tired. 

Even with the dosage of painkillers he’d been given eased back, the clan would not let him clock in to his shift if he wanted to. It is no small part of him that does, naturally — the urge to be of service so entangled with his identity that he cannot always tell who he is in these moments of stillness. Necessary stillness. To what end do you hold a lamb that kicks and cries? Maybe for its own good. So he will be still. So he will learn his own name, his own face. These things are significantly more difficult than clocking into a shift at work. More difficult than being busy. More difficult than being obedient. 

Florix and The Highwayman’s dormitory is fitted with a bathroom. It is a cramped, tiny space — a willing concession on behalf of the lodging plans for Florix’s sake. Sanitary to an obsessive degree, yet cowed away from the public baths, discovering him apologetic and skittish in the emergency decontamination showers off of the laboratory had happened one too many times. While embarrassing in the moment, it is a constant relief. Especially now. After everything, he feels like he cannot get clean enough. It is the first place he goes upon dragging himself out of bed, fawn-stepping the entire way on wobbly legs, reaching without looking up to undo the closures around the neckline of his nightclothes. He shudders out of them, an uncomfortable second skin. He does not want to linger in the space outside of the shower. He does not want to do anything but stand underneath water so hot that it hurts, and hope the process purifies something out of him, chases it out from beneath his skin. 

He reaches for the faucet, then stops, his eye catching on the dressings around his wrists. Those have to come off, first. Simple. Obvious. Just think. Just think before you do things. 

He withdraws like an animal caught misbehaving, despite being alone, despite having done nothing much at all. Slim fingers slip beneath where the gauze folds over itself at its very ends, loosening it, then unraveling. The septic scent underneath makes him flinch, and in his effort to look away from it, from the raw and bleeding wounds where his skin had sloughed off, looks up at his reflection in the mirror over the sink. Something strange and sallow peers back at him. Its mouth splits at the corner. It has only one eye with which to look. 

It’s just himself. 

It is not often Florix looks at himself. Really looks, past the soothing ritual of getting himself ready for work. He does not want to. Had he changed? It is the logical thing he knows to be true, but he is not sure he would recognize himself, even if he hadn’t. Did any of it matter? He was made for a purpose, and it wasn’t gawking at himself. 

His fingers brush over the tender skin, shaking, from his shoulder to his sternum, over the stand-out relief of his ribcage. If his eye follows the lines of his tattoos, he can pretend he is not grotesque. If he does not acknowledge the other half, the lack of symmetry. If he can. He cannot. The lesions in his skin glimmer queasily, glaring at him through the mirror, all guttered flesh and infested filth. It is as if a part of himself had been flayed down to the sinew. His palm rests over one small breast, consumed by scar tissue, and if it is rough to the touch he cannot tell because his hand is rough, too. It is not an idea he entertains. He is disgusting. Humiliation stings at the corner of his eye. His jaw sets, clamping down on something swelling in his chest, crawling up the back of his throat. 

Florix-S never cries. Not on the clock, at least. 

He needs perfection. 

When he turns his head, he can see faint, discolored impressions on his face, an ugly forming bruise. This, he remembers. A wire cage fitted over his mouth, tightened restraints to keep it in place. An awful taste that still lingered on his tongue, condemning. But why? He was good, he is good. He cannot imagine behaving in a way that would warrant that type of retaliation. Did he have to imagine? Where had he gone, in that moment? He tries to move his hand to cover his eye, but even without fetters it stops halfway, bid to stillness by something else that he cannot name. There is an ache at the back of his head; a hole yawning wider, angrier. He had not gone anywhere. Fragmented, maybe, frightened into delirious submission, but never left. He can remember, if he tries. 

Pop! the stitches in his uniform. Lay bare the thing underneath. Worse still, touch it. Her hand had passed his face. Seething, terrified, he had lunged off of the table and bit. Bit until he heard a pop of his own. Until he tasted blood in his mouth, until it spilled over his lip, until it ran back his throat. He would have kept going. The hive would have kept going. 

He watches the way his chest flutters rapidly in his reflection, nearing hysteria. How his body heaves, fragile as bird’s wings. This time his hand manages to lift, pressing over his mouth. He gags into his palm.

Florix-S never raises his voice. He does not like to. 

He needs control. 

He screams.

In a fit of panic, he grabs the first thing in reach on the counter and swings it at the mirror, watching it shatter. It is not enough. Again. Again. He drops what he holds with a rattle, driving the heel of his palm into the splintering glass instead. It burns when he cries. A cold sheen of sweat prickles at his skin, growing feverish with exertion. In his agitation he nearly crawls up onto the sink, clawing at the hairline fractures webbed across the mirror’s surface. 

He finds only that he has brought himself closer to his reflection. That he moves in fractals, the image repeating.

That big blue eye stares back at him, a thousand times over. 

[have-you-been-here]

Corpus Christi Clock, Cambridge, UK

[yuucandoit]

Separated them bc they are long. I suppose I should make a mer form.. but I'll come back to that

My Hook twst guy - wasn't sure if he would be a ghost or alive

credit to https://picrew.me/en/image_maker/716126 and https://picrew.me/en/image_maker/611021

@chaoticgremlinbrainspace

Jas Blacklock (Hook twst)

Octavinelle 3rd year (he's an (crocodile) icefish mer. Because they have white blood and I thought it was kind of ironic that his issues could line up in that way (Hook hates the sight of his own blood). He has a prosthetic left hand that can be switched to a hook.

Age: 18

Height: 182cm

Homeland: Coral Sea/Sunshine Lands

Birthday: March 15

Likes: Spatchcock duck

Dislikes: Oysters

UM Corpus Croc - it's basically a targeted magic attack with all sound being slowly drowned out until the only thing that the person affected by the magic can hear is the sound of many many ticking clocks - meant to induce a state of delirium/hysteria/displaced sense of time

[cheekiepascal]

Chapter 1: Across the Way

Pairing: Joel Miller X fem!reader (No Breakout)

Rating: 18+, no minors 🔞

Chapter Summary: You wake up late for work and are scrambling to get there on time, but someone's truck blocked you in ;)

Word Count: 1.8K

Chapter Triggers: Tiny meniscal amount of tension, sassy Joel Miller, sass female reader, mentions of sex

Series Warning: Age Gap (21/45), alcohol, Eventual toe curling smut (will specify with each chapter), fluff, secret relationship

A/N: This is my first EVER fanfic so please be gentle with me. I don’t expect people to read this at all, I’m just having a good time sitting down and actually trying my hand at writing!

Next

A loud bang abruptly woke you up from deep sleep. You sit up quickly, squinting at the harsh light that’s coming in from the window, and look over to see what time it is.

“Fuckkkk”

The clock reads 10:15 am and your shift at the town's local diner starts at 10:45. You groan and fumble out the bed scrambling into the bathroom. After running a comb through your hair and brushing your teeth in record time, you grab your work shirt and shorts and jam them on as fast as you can.

You can’t be late again, Billy already scolded you twice this week for being late, and you knew he’d write you up if you were late again today.

Billy was the most greasy and senile boss you’ve ever had, but dealing with him for the summers was worth it for the money he pays. His waitresses were the best paid in town, so It was either deal with his bullshit for a few months and have a lot of spending money during the school year or be stuck at the Waffle House waitressing and live off of the school's disgusting cafeteria food.

Grabbing your bag and jogging down the stairs, you almost run headfirst into your mom.

“Where are you going in such a hurry?” She says Crossing her arms with a cigarette hanging out the corner of her mouth.

Shannon wasn’t a terrible mother, she was just never present. She still isn’t. So it’s safe to say it’s honestly shocking that she’s even home right now. She has a tendency to run off and play house with men. Specifically, men who have money. She’s definitely not ugly by any means, blonde, leggy, and has the figure of Heidi Klum. But, she has the mouth of a sailor and departs all relationships the second she smells serious commitment.

On one of her escapades, she accidentally got pregnant with you and decided that she couldn’t continue her current way of living. So She cleaned up, got a normal 9-5, and raised you until you were old enough to cook yourself dinner on the stove. Then she met a guy at work, spent every night over at his place, and the cycle continued over and over since then. She always made sure you had food in the kitchen and clothes on your back but you knew that wasn’t what made a woman a mother.

“Work. I’m supposed to be there in 15 minutes” You say, side-stepping around her to skip the rest of the way down the stairs, pausing at the entryway to slip on your shoes.

“Alright well, I ain’t gonna be home for a few weeks, Steve is takin’ me to Corpus Cristi while he finishes some big plumbin’ job he got down there,” She says, taking a long drag from her cigarette.

Steve is her latest fling whom she met at the local bar conveniently 20 minutes after dumping her previous “boyfriend” Jake via text message. She was quick, I’ll give her that. And poor Jake never saw it coming.

“There’s food in the fridge and cash on the counter,” she continued “Let me know if you run out. I’ll have Steve send you some more if need be”

“Okay that’s fine,” You say turning your head towards her while lacing your shoes up. “I’m working until 9 tonight, will you still be here when I get back?”

You mentally cross your fingers, hoping she says no. You had plans to veg out on the couch and binge-read a new smutty romance novel you just got off Amazon.

“Naw we’ll be gone by then.” She says as you watch her tap the ash from her cigarette in a nearby ashtray making you grimace. You hated it when she smoked in the house. The smell is putrid, which makes you constantly have to spray shit and deep clean when she comes home just to keep the smell at bay.

“Alright, I guess I’ll catch you later then,” You say heading over to the door and opening it.

“Bye, watch out for them trucks outside on the street. Someone is movin’ in across the way, and them damn trucks are all out in the road. I tried tellin’ them to move but them stupid asses didn’t even give me the time of day.” She says as she turns around and heads into the kitchen

“Okay!” You reply back, slipping out the door and closing it behind you.

You quickly rush off the porch and down the sidewalk towards your car, trying to dig out the keys from your bag. After you finally find them at the very bottom, you look up and see a huge moving truck at the top of your driveway blocking you in. After scanning the road looking for anyone who could move it, you see nothing but two other huge moving trucks. No people in sight.

You look up at the hot Texas sun and sigh loudly trying to collect your thoughts. Why me? Why today? Billy is definitely going to write me up now.

After taking a second to calm down, you huff your way down the driveway and across the street, in search of the nearest human you can find to move the damn truck. After getting about halfway down the new neighbor’s driveway, you can see that there is a man lifting boxes onto shelves in the garage.

Targeting him, you march down the rest of the driveway to get closer.

“Hey!” You shout. “Can you move your damn truck out of the front of my driveway? I’m fucking late for work dude.”

The man turns around looking severely confused. He’s clearly in his 40’s, mid-height, with tanned skin. Just an average everyday-looking guy. But when he steps a bit closer, and you finally get a good look at him, you have to admit that he’s actually…hot. His hair is a tawny shade of brown, with calm brown eyes, and arms that are just the perfect level of muscular. He’s wearing a blue t-shirt and basic denim jeans that hug him in the most perfect way possible. Pretty good looking for a mover in your opinion. But nevertheless, this asshole is responsible for making you late.

Wiping his hands on the front of his pants he finally speaks. “Calm down little lady, I’ll get the truck moved. Just lemme grab the keys from one of the guys”

Slightly triggered at the fact that he called you “little lady” you ignored his sly remark and continued putting your hands on your hips. “Why would you even think it was okay to park that thing there in the first place, huh? Riddle me that.”

He turns to you with a shocked expression, “Listen I said I was gonna get the keys to move it. No need to get all huffy with me now”

“I’m not ‘huffy’ I’m annoyed. I need to get to work like now, dude.” You said while tapping your foot on the hot summer concrete as he walked away.

He comes back after a few minutes dangling the keys at you while walking towards you to get to the end of the driveway.

“You coming or what? Aren’t you in some kind of rush?” He says with a grunt brushing past you walking towards the truck and hopping inside.

You roll your eyes at him and grumpily walk back towards your car. You unlock the driver's door throwing your bag inside. You look back and see the mystery guy crank the truck and roll his window down.

“What’s your name?” You shout towards his open window

“Why does it matter?” He says impatiently resting his hand on the top of the truck's steering wheel and laying his head back on the headrest. “Don’t you got somewhere to be?”

“I was just curious since we’ll probably never see each other again.” You reply “Just trying to be friendly is all”

He rolls his head slightly towards you to look at you, “Well that’ll be kinda hard considerin’ I moved right across the street from ya’”

Shocked. You reply “Oh, tell me your name anyway. Or should I just call you ‘the grumpy neighbor’?"

The man snorts and says “I don’t know if I should tell you my name or not, you seem kinda crazy to me”

Rolling your eyes annoyed, you turn around and get ready to hop into your front seat when he finally says,

“Joel.”

You turn back around quickly. “Huh?”

“Joel Miller”

After taking a pause you reply back with your name. Unsure what he’s about to say next.

“Nice name,” He says.

“Thanks” You mutter shifting your weight and staring back at him.

Why does this man just ooze sexiness? You’ve had your fair share of boyfriends and boy toys, but this felt so different. The ache in your lower stomach was so intoxicating and needy. You needed to act natural, but how could you? You were imagining all the different ways that Joel could fuck you. This was insane, he’s a literal stranger off the street.

“Alright well, I gotta go,” you said about to turn and settle into the driver's seat. You nervously glance back at him, half expecting him to be driving off, but he’s not he’s still sitting there.

He stares at you, scanning your body from head to toe, and you instantly become hyper-aware of what you are wearing. Your work uniform consists of a red v-neck t-shirt that's tied in a knot at the middle of your back and a pair of short jean shorts. Your boobs aren’t spilling out, but they are present and perky. Billy “heavily suggests” that all the girls wear short shorts to work because the restaurant is half inside and half outside, but we all know he’s just a pervert. But none of us complain. We get tipped generously for it.

His eyes finally land on yours and says, “Hope you’re a lot nicer at your job than you are out here on the streets”

“Well, you’ll have to find out for yourself. I work at the BayLeaf up on Front Street if you’re ever hungry.” You replied while leaning on the car door, giving him a nice view of your plump ass.

He nods his head “Maybe I will.”

After rolling his window up, he finally drove the truck down the street and out of the way.

You smile to yourself and shake your head as you climb into the car, taking off in the direction of the Bayleaf. You have a feeling that this won’t be the last time you deal with Joel Miller.

Next

[open-hearth-rpg]

Open Hearth Video Roundup - December 2, 2024

Welcome to the monthly Open Hearth Gaming video roundup!

These recorded sessions represent only a portion of the games we play every month, and anyone is welcome to join the fun! If you'd like to play in games like these, join our Playabl community and click on the "Calendar" tab to sign up for upcoming games. To browse our entire library of session videos, please visit our YouTube Playlists page. To hear our recorded sessions in audio-only form, please check out our Playing at the Hearth podcast.

Discussions, Panels, and Seminars

Talking Game Facilitation Lowell Francis A talk on running games in our community and generally. Chapters marked to make it easier to find material.

Open Hearth Gaming Calendar

Eclipse Phase - DECAY: Season One (Episode 2) Paul Rivers runs for Horst Wurst, Lowell Francis, Puckett, and Will H The team finally escape the Titan Quarantine Zone (TQZ) heading for the city of Noctis. A worrying pattern emerges within the group when many of them recognise that they are all missing roughly six months worth of memories. This gets confirmed as the enter the city when they learn they are only beta forks of themselves. With clock now ticking on their legal status and the status of Dr Mobius unconfirmed they rush to locate the only person that my know where their true selves are. They arrive at the doctors residence to find that chaos software has been released onto the house AGI and the doctors faithful friend Habeas Corpus down for the count. Can the team discover what has happened to Mobius, and can they find their original selves before they are outlawed and sentenced to erasure?

Eclipse Phase - DECAY: Season One (Episode 3) Paul Rivers runs for Horst Wurst, Lowell Francis, and Will H The group navigated through a chaotic situation at Dr. Morbius's residence in the city of Noctis. They discussed various scenarios involving a synth, a skinned body, and a telepresence robot, as well as making decisions about the game's progression and exploring the situation. The team also discussed strategies for dealing with a robot attack, the identity of Dr. Klatu, and the connection between the killer robot and the warehouse. They finally discover what is behind the Titan Quarantine Zone (TQZ) disturbance, but are still left without the knowledge of their true selves or what has happened in the missing six months they cannot remember.

Girl by Moonlight: Lumina Danny Rutherford runs for Clarisse, David S., Fumi, and Will S. A group of magical girls use the powers of friendship, expression, and starlight to contend with the strict social hierarchies of the mundane world and the nefarious plots of an abyssal court of nobles. With each of their victories, a long-absent star returns to the night sky.

Heart: The City Beneath (Session 1 of 4) Marc Majcher runs for Eliot, Nic, and Sabine V. Our new Deadwalker, Junk Mage, and Deep Apiarist set out from Grip Station to acquire some totally safe fungus for a Legitimate Doctor from Redcap Grove. Surely the Druid syndicate there will be no trouble at all.

Star Wars Saturday

Swoop Gangs: Niamos (Session 5) Rich Rogers runs for Anders, Cody Eastlick, and Steven Watkins The Gundarks run roughshod over the Gilded Fangs, party, and meet with the Three Hooks.

Swoop Gangs: Niamos (Session 6) Rich Rogers runs for Anders, Greg, Marc Majcher, and Steven Watkins The big Limmie game happens! The gang drives out their rivals! Party party.

Swoop Gangs: Niamos (Session 7) Rich Rogers runs for Anders, Cody Eastlick, Greg, Marc Majcher, and Steven Watkins Sen dies and Slise rises!

Outblastered (Session 1) Anders runs for Greg G., Rich Rogers, and Steven Watkins Escape from Corellia - The first session in a monthly run of Outgunned set in Star Wars. Iceman, Leblanc, and Azer get run out of Corellia by the Pyke Syndicate. Surely nothing worse will happen in this series.

Outblastered (Session 2) Anders runs for Greg G., Marc Majcher, Rich Rogers, and Steven Watkins Betrayal of the Crimson Dawn

Outblastered (Session 3) Anders runs for Greg G., Marc Majcher, Rich Rogers, and Steven Watkins Showdown on Mustafar! - Our intrepid heroes face the many dangers of Mustafar in their desperate attempt to find the ancient Sith artifact. Will they succeed? Will they survive? Will the dice roller be more annoying than usual?

Off-Calendar Highlights

Hearts of Wulin: Numberless Secrets: Gaze into Silken Night, Season Two (Episode 3) Madelancholy runs for Jonn, Michael D., and Rod Santos Jade Starlight lets his friend Pan Haoran know what he really thinks of Soup. Mu gets some good advice from an elder then causes some misunderstanding when he tries to help out an acquaintance. Pan starts to become suspicious of Soup, especially after talking with Mu. Jade has lunch with one of the competitors. Mu enters the tournament only to find a very familiar face lined up as his first match.

Hearts of Wulin: Numberless Secrets: Gaze into Silken Night, Season Two (Episode 4) Madelancholy runs for Jonn, Michael D., and Rod Santos An accidental dinner date, stalked, is ambushed. Well-meaning advice becomes a calculated way to get information. And a practice match is filled with amusement and bemusement. Another competitor is dead by the end of the night...

Hearts of Wulin: Numberless Secrets: Gaze into Silken Night, Season Two (Session 5) Madelancholy runs for Agatha, Jonn, Michael D., Rod Santos, and Thomas Manuel Soup blames Pan for Radish getting hurt in the ambush at the tea and dumpling shop. Jade applies a temporary balm to Jintong's rapidly advancing condition. So much unsaid between Jintong and Soup. A Puzzle Sword could be a motive for murder... During a sabotaged match where Mu and River Glass compete honestly, yet another ambush awaits Pan where he found the coded message.

Hearts of Wulin: Numberless Secrets: Gaze into Silken Night, Season Two (Episode 6) Madelancholy runs for Agatha, Jonn, and Rod Santos Pan Haoran survives the ambush, but in his delirium reveals more than he should. Jintong thinks to take care of this threat once and for all but River Glass intervenes. Mu checks on the King of Pearls, concerned about his success. Jintong has a drink or two with Skycast Red to find out more about last year's competition. The players take some time to go through the Revelation Move.

[swampert]

✨ 🌠 🔥 for the ttrpg ask game!!!

ooooh yayyy i get to answer questions

✨ A game I wish more people were talking about.

there's so many!! but i think i'll choose DOMINOES by @jeffstormer which is an incredible game about playing as bronze age superheroes, low-powered vigilantes who stand against a threat to their city and hope to survive on the other end. it's incredibly well designed - a Doomsday Clock hangs over the whole game which you're filling up with dice as you roll throughout the game, and at the end when you come face to face with the ultimate threat and the clock is filled, all the dice are rolled and we see how each die result describes a moment of the final battle! sick as shit and designed with such absolute love and understanding of the genre.

jeff's also putting out Back Issues that you can modulate the game with, which are also incredibly worth picking up. imo this should be getting talked about in every conversation about superhero ttrpgs

🌠 A game with a mechanic I love.

obviously there's a million games with a million mechanics i love, but the one i'm thinking about right now is A Place to Fuck Each Other, a three player game about queer women and the complex relationships they build together. scenes proceed in a rather freeform way, but (this is the mechanic i love here) as soon as one of the characters thinks to themself "i shouldn't be here," the scene IMMEDIATELY ends.

setting up your room in your new partner's house when you see a picture of them with your ex? hooking up with that cute girl from the bar in the woods at night when you hear an unexpected shuffling of feet coming closer? interrupted by a call from your bestie after you skipped out on them to go to a concert with an old flame who's back in town? "i shouldn't be here." "we shouldn't be here." "i shouldn't have done this." the scene ends, and instead of playing out the conflict we come back to this character later in the game at a later point in their life, seeing how they've reinvented themself or reimagined their needs.

🔥 A game designer whose whole design corpus I admire.

again, there are SO many, but i think here i want to bring up sniperserpent who is just constantly putting out games that are thoughtfully made with regards to genre, how simple mechanical tools like table rolling and card draws can be used to drive a game's theme forward, and the importance of yuri.

[theresattrpgforthat]

🌠 🔥

🌠 A game with a mechanic I love.

Okay, this is hard. I have a lot of mechanics that I think are really cool. I could talk about Clocks from Forged in the Dark Games, which really heighten the pressure and keep the players on a timeline. I could talk about the Theorize Roll from games like ECB and Apocalypse Keys, which allows the players to generate the mystery organically, rather than expecting the GM to figure it all out. I want to give an honourable mention to Troika's initiative mechanic, which has the GM draw random tokens from a bag that represent players and NPCs.

I think that instead I'm going to focus on a mechanic that has a different name depending on the system it's in. Willpower (WoD), Player Intrusions (Numenera), Tokens (BoB), Force Points (Star Wars FFG), Momentum (Scion), Fate Points (FATE). You get the picture.

Basically, it's a personal or communal pool of an abstract resource that allows the players to tweak fate, add a narrative detail, or re-try a failed action.

It's such a ubiquitous thing; I think every game has it in some shape or form. It's a nod towards the players, telling them that they have the ability to change the story. It's not all up to the GM. Perhaps that's supposed to be a given but I think it's something that seasoned role-players take for granted, something that someone new to the table might not realize they have the power to do. It reminds us that we are telling a story together, and that's my favourite part of TTRPGs.

🔥 A game designer whose whole design corpus I admire.

Gotta be John Harper. Their games got me into roleplaying, with the extremely easy-to-learn Lady Blackbird. One year later, a friend of mine introduced me to Blades in the Dark, and it took one read-through for me to fall in love with clocks. And then last year I picked up AGON and ran it and was impressed all over again. I haven't played Lasers and Feelings yet, but I have my eye on it and I have a feeling it will be a fun time.

[grandhotelabyss]

What's your opinion on MFA writing programs? Not a very favorable one, I suspect. I'm not living in the States now, but it seems to me the Iowa Writers' Workshop doesn't enjoy quite the same reputation it did when luminaries like Cheever and Salter taught there. Am I right?

The network it makes available is still the only way into the husk that remains of literary publishing. (Note how all the tributes and elegies to Louise Glück are from her former students or colleagues; I may be the only "common reader," and I am just a common reader when it comes to poetry, who has written anything about her.) But as literary publishing has lost prestige, so has the program. I didn't get an MFA, so I can't comment on the quality of the pedagogy. I'm sure everyone is trying their best. Obviously, however, the whole idea seems misconceived from the start, and not only because of the CIA seed money.

In reducing art either to craft or to psychology, the MFA has made fiction into a set of routinized procedures (show don't tell) and a form of group therapy (find your voice). You do have to learn techniques, but techniques alone cannot create great art, and the very greatest art has often been careless of technique. And individuation is part of the writerly vocation, but you're not finding your voice per se; you're finding a much larger, much more agonized and conflicted thing, which is the whole of your sensibility. If you want to write more than one book, this had better contain a veritable pandemonium of voices.

Such an education keeps you, almost as if it were calculated to do so, from the only true literary education: an encounter with the best literary works of the past, with the main line of the tradition. (There are non-literary educations that will also shape you as a writer, both in life and in school, everything from what you learn as a person in the world to what you learn as a student in physics class or history class, but those aren't my concern here.) The purpose of this encounter is not to make you slavishly worship literary tradition, but to enable you to transform it, even to escape it, intelligently; if you don't know your tradition, you are the one who will only be repeating it. But no, we have taken Hemingway's canny modernist streamlining of a vast corpus he had tenderly internalized—he did this for a good reason: a chivalric kitsch version of the canon had been used as propaganda to lead a whole generation of young men to their slaughter—and we have made an idol and a fetish of it, so that educated people today can no longer appreciate, perhaps can no longer even comprehend, a complex periodic sentence. I hold the MFA partly responsible for this decline in the general intelligence.

Meanwhile, the academic setting of the MFA turns the literary enterprise into a game of social oneupmanship, the pettiest form of competition. In the same way that runners and swimmers say you'll only make your best time if you race the clock rather than your competitors, you should be writing with and against Shakespeare, Austen, Woolf, and Faulkner, not some random matriculates on either side of you, themselves as stupid as you are, in a cramped and sweaty seminar room. Such environments—small groups full of young people either trying to be nice to one another or, more likely, trying to be cruel to one another in subliminal and deniable ways—also encourage the ideological herding we've seen in recent years. This helps to account for the vaguely "Soviet" feel of contemporary mainstream fiction: its endless promotion in book after book of the same collectivist ideological pieties, its implicit disparagement of strong imagination, unless this take the form of tediously allegorical fantasy.

In general, MFA fiction feels both overworked and underthought, the product of much tinkering but little experience (personal or mental), a filigreed little balsa wood figurine, and nowadays moreover inevitably carved into the shape of our age's political idols. To quote the old headline the malicious LRB editors slapped onto Elif Batuman's 13-year-old essay, whose arguments I have rehearsed above: "Get a real degree."

[bearsinpotatosacks]

For the Rest of Her Life - a Penrole Fic

Carole's sick with cancer and everyone's working around the clock to make sure she's as well as can be, including Penny. Late one evening, she starts to have some realisations about how she feels towards Carole, and recognises what she's wearing too.

~~~

For the prompt challenge I'm doing, this one was "A wearing B's clothing"

Words: 1471

Nighttime was drawing in as Penny placed the medicine bottles and a glass of water on a tray and made her way upstairs. Despite feeling deeply tired, she could, and would, do this all day. It had been six months since Carole started treatment and they’d fallen into a routine, her, Bradley and Pete. 

Pete would wake up Carole, help her with breakfast and make sure she took her meds. She’d get up and see Bradley off to school, even if she could barely walk from fatigue, she loved her boy in a way she just didn't understand. Penny would take over caring for her in the afternoon, cooking, cleaning, making sure Carole was okay and taking care of Bradley.

They’d all had to adjust to deal with her cancer. Carole was on sick leave from work. Her colleagues had been great, cooking food for them, helping Bradley with school work, going grocery shopping and even helping Pete and Penny clean the house. Bradley’s friends had been surprisingly helpful too, he’d been having more sleepovers, especially after her treatments, and they'd been helping him with getting to baseball games. Pete had Iceman, Slider, Merlin, all the navy guys really, apparently he'd done more than his fair share of sobbing on their shoulders.

And Penny? Well, she was lacking in the support area of her life. Her dad was busy commanding trainee aviators back in Pensacola, her brothers were all on boats or stationed on bases all over the world. Her mother had been better, asking about Carole everytime she called, making sure she wasn’t getting too stressed through the whole ordeal. 

But no one visited, not even for a weekend. Pete managed to get a temporary role at Corpus Christi, Viper pulled some strings for him, but her Dad, an Admiral higher than Viper, couldn’t even get an afternoon off to spend the weekend with her? And of course her brother’s couldn’t find a phone to save their lives, it was almost like there wasn’t a connecting phone line to anyone she knew that would lead to her. 

And her boyfriend was being less than helpful. Penny was working full-time shifts at a cafe nearby, getting up at five in the morning and racing here after her shifts ended to make sure Carole was okay, getting home at nine o’clock at night to collapse into bed. 

She knew she didn’t have to, she wasn’t her carer or anything, but she wanted to. Since she moved out here a few years ago, her and Carole had been as thick as thieves. She’d been the only person she knew, and she hadn’t heard much off her since Goose died, so they had a lot to catch up on. From there, it was like they’d been friends for life, not that she was just her friend’s ex- although she'd always been the friendliest person in the room.

She couldn’t stand around and watch her get sicker as she fought this disease. Penny would help her even if it meant barely getting any time for herself. 

Her boyfriend didn’t see any of this, of course. On top of all of this, he’d been starting arguments about her avoiding him on purpose, of her being back with Pete behind his back like he couldn’t see she was stressed up to her eyeballs. She’d just stopped caring about his fights now, if he thought that, so be it, they’d deal with this when Carole got better and she wasn’t effectively working two jobs.

Shaking herself out of thoughts, she made her way up the stairs and heard the distant sound of the ER intro music. Apparently there was a character who looked suspiciously like Goose on there, she didn't see it.

"Hey," she called, pushing the door open with her foot.

Carole sat up in bed. The television lit the room blue. Her book sat beside her, she'd been reading them like mad, and her knitting, she'd been doing that obsessively too, kept joking that she was getting ahead for Christmas.

"Hey, any fun drugs there?" Carole said.

"Nope, sorry, just anti-sickness and some painkillers,"

Her eyebrows raised at the word 'painkillers' as she turned down the volume on the television.

"Sorry, just boring prescription ones,"

She deflated as a joke, but perked up and patted next to her.

Penny placed the glass of water in her hand and the pills in the other, putting the tray aside. She took them with a trained hand, at first she had to take them one at a time with practically a pint of water with each. Now, she could almost swallow them dry.

After she'd taken them, she placed the glass down and lay her hand on her face, "You should go home, you look exhausted,"

Penny shook her head. Here was Carole, sick with one of the worst diseases in the world, and still thinking of her first.

"Come on, it's the weekend, you should be out partying, not watching ER with me," 

"What if I want to watch ER with you?"

Carole squeezed her hand and smirked, "Why can't you watch ER with that boyfriend of yours, huh?"

"He hates ER," she said. "Says George Clooney can't act to save his life."

"But he is hot though,"

She pondered it, "Yeah, he is hot."

They giggled. She loved how Carole could make her feel like a teenager with no cares in the world. Just seeing her could make her feel like the world was okay.

As the laughter subsided, Carole's eyes turned serious. Penny could almost see her staring into her soul. She knew people well, although sometimes she didn't know when and when not to tell people of what she saw.

"Fine," she said, feeling the pressure to talk. "He's not exactly making things easy."

"How'd'ya mean?"

"He's making it all about him, says I'm avoiding him, cheating on him or something."

"Ugh, get rid of him,"

"Yeah, I might," she chuckled, she didn't even think she could say she loved the guy.

"Anyone else caught your eye?"

Penny looked at her. Her pale face, sullen cheeks and bald head were constant reminders of her illness. But she also saw the sparkle in her eye, how smooth her hand felt, how deep she cared for her. It was nice to be cared for so deeply despite everything.

"Maybe,"

"Do I know them?"

"Maybe."

"Ooh," she clapped her hands together. "Let me guess!"

"Slider?" 

She shook her head.

"Ice?"

She shook her head again.

"Your feelings for Pete aren't back, are they?"

"God no, that ship's sailed."

She furrowed her brow and stroked her chin, "And I know them?"

"Uh huh,"

Looking down at her, she was a few inches taller, she noticed her t-shirt was familiar. It hung off her body, bright blue with large white letters beginning to peel with age.

"I'll have to ponder it some more," she said, then noticed the time. "Oh wow, you should get going, it's past nine, I don't want to keep you."

"That's my t-shirt," 

She recognised the words, now. It was her college lacrosse jersey, she'd been on the team and had been one of the best. She'd had a shower here a few days ago after getting herself messy making lunch, she'd borrowed something of Carole’s to wear, and must've left this here.

"Oh, sorry, just threw it on this morning after-erm-"

"Vomiting?"

She nodded and looked away. Despite trying so hard to stay positive, to accept it, it still hurt to admit that she was ill sometimes. For all of them. After a few moments, her smile returned. Yet, Penny could tell it was a little faked, not entirely, but it was stretched.

"It's comfy, though, soft and smells nice," she smoothed it in her hands. "Do you want it back?"

"No, no, you keep it,"

"Thanks," she said, then added. "Actually, it smells of you, kinda."

She smiled. There was that feeling again, the one that made her realise that she’d be happy to do this for the rest of her life if it meant making her smile like that.

Their moment was ended by the ads ending on the TV. Penny here thought of how there was nothing waiting at home for her, not really. Her boyfriend would be out partying, not thinking of her. And it hadn't been much of home lately, she spent way more time here.

"Hey, move up will you?" She gently moved her along.

"Aren't you going home?" 

Her smile told her she didn't want that. She didn't either.

"Nope, not yet."

Carole rested her head on her shoulder and hummed. Penny placed an arm around her shoulder. Yes, she thought as George Clooney's face came on screen, she could do this for the rest of her life.

I've been running out of inspiration recently so decided to do a prompt list. I"ve put them in a wheel and my top gun ships and am spinning them each day to write something.

I love these two, don't know why, just do, hope you do too. Thanks for reading!

[kafkaoftherubble]

^THAT'S exactly why!

I mean, I (presumably; never went for any diagnosis /scratches head) don't have ADHD, and still "time lost in a bathroom" is a problem.

Yo, if I manage to make more people hang clocks in their bathrooms, that's gonna be so sick. I contributed to the grand growing corpus of Pragmatic Organizational & Living Solutions, y'all!

From the book Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD:

Putting a coat on the back of a chair by the door is fine, but if you prefer, use coat hooks and a large catch-all basket for dropping keys, hats, gloves.

Small bookcase end-table next to the couch to store craft projects, books, and other things being worked on for easy access.

Add a storage unit near the dining room table to transition between eating and working there.

Daily toiletry items should be stored in a basket that you can move easily

Extra toiletries and medicine cabinet items go in open shelf/basket storage so they can be seen and used easily. If items no longer fit, purge the excess. Don’t obscure the view!

If you disrobe in the bathroom, place a tall hamper in there.

Keep a set of cleaning supplies in each bathroom

[itsmoosetx]

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[bkh-s-7449]

Immediately on hearing that a gesture would be appropriate, Tolya had disappeared with an intent that couldn't be any clearer. They need to scavenge something up that feels right for BKHS, or. Florix. Even without what feels like their intrusion to make up for, they'd like this to feel like a kind occasion for him. It's his day, and that matters. It simply matters.

But what would get this across? How do they communicate something meaningful? He doesn't need anything from them.. even if they suspect a lot more in common between them than would be comfortable conversation. They spend a while thinking, a while tripping into their own swarming emotions, escalating until they find themself struck by a shaky, unnecessary breathing. And then it fades back to stillness. An idea eventually crystalizes out of racing thoughts.

Is he like they were? Needing to do, to give, to serve, to justify? Can creating help fill the need, the way it had for them? It's a leap of faith. Florix is deft when it comes to movement. What about more careful dexterity? Something precise and intricate and methodical? He seems to enjoy intricacies. What about bringing creative choice into something like that?

When they present their gift, it's wrapped not in paper but in vibrant purple leaves veined through with dark green, like the leaves of a Persian shield plant. Inside of this bundle, plastic bags hold masses of metal clay, each a different composition. Alongside that, a thin leather bag of tools not human in origin, but intuitive enough at a glance. These are for shaping and carving.

There's a note that explains each tool and that each clay integrates metals found in Yorshov, where they were from. These are unique, with different visual textures and physical properties, luminescent, magnetic, conductive. It lists firing temperatures and times, and finally, tells the story that in Yorshov, there's a culture of gifting mine workers charms, pendants or figurines carved specifically for them as gifts. These trinkets were meant to bring good luck and safety through the work day, especially when brushed against and dusted in the luminescent spores used to light the mine shafts. The tradition has since broadened, but the intent has stayed the same.

Maybe he would like to try his hand at carving?

Florix’s batch-date — his birthday — is an exceedingly unusual occasion, this year. It would have been unusual anyways, for a myriad of reasons. In the Corpus, for a person of his standing, it was a purely transactional, brief affair, more often a spectral reminder of compounding debts and a shortened clock. A passing coincidence, the day his serial number went on the books. It is not something he is accustomed to celebrating. Even in a world where it was, a decade of his life had been lost to the dark. There had been nothing and no-one left to celebrate in the derelict, if they’d ever have felt so inclined. It hurts his head to try and put a number to his age, to count the years since. Nausea churns, restless, in his stomach, until it begins to creep up the back of his throat, his mouth dry, the beginning prickle of a shiver coiling around the nape of his neck. 

A soft, heavy sigh. A working set of spiracles in an iron-wrought form. The Harrower’s breath is warm on his skin, and he grows quiet and still again. He spends most of the day like that, in the gentle circle of the warframe’s arms, where The Highwayman had been reunited with them. The small dormitory they occupy is modestly decorated, furniture donated from the clan’s efforts, a curious mixture of salvage and both Florix and Highway’s sensibilities. It is also where, per Florix’s insistence that The Harrower remain at rest in a makeshift nest of bedding, they end up hosting an array of fretful visitors coming to check in on him. 

It is strange, to see the room so full, filtered in and out. A little overwhelming. The queasiness inherent is quelled by gratitude. That so many people would come to see him, his Highway, to remind him they were counting on his recovery. That it would be okay. 

It is also strange to realize that they are visiting him as well — BKH-S serial number 7449-0938, Florix-S. That they worried over him, too, and more than that, they wanted to celebrate his batch-date with him. Tolya is among them, someone Florix wishes desperately to have met under different circumstances, to have made a better impression on than the one at current: curled up frailly in Harrow’s grasp, a sheen of sweat on his pale skin, stammering almost uncontrollably if he tries to speak over a murmur. Shy, and scared. Unpresentable. He feels ridiculous. It’s the last thing he should be worrying about. 

Despite it all, Tolya did not seem to pass an unkind judgement. 

By the time they chose to disappear, the swell of visitors had calmed, in no small part thanks to their efforts redirecting The Harrower’s frantic faithful so that he could actually rest. The hush is welcome. A gift in itself. A chance for Florix to catch his breath. And upon their return, it is peaceful still. Florix had managed to crawl to his feet in fleeting stints, putting tea on the hot plate in the tiny kitchen, or lighting the incense in the corner of the dormitory dedicated to Harrow’s prayer. It smells nice. 

When Florix accepts the gift (over a cup of the tea he poured Tolya, he insisted, a Venusian mint), he seems faintly confused — perhaps not by the gesture, the mechanical idea that a person might receive a present on their birthday — but that it should be applied to him. Guilty, almost. Tolya had already done plenty for him by coming here in the first place. He does not know how to pay them back for it. He doesn’t quite meet their gaze, looking somewhere beneath, a stream of thank-yous spilling from him before he’d so much as dared to touch the parcel.

He wears gloves. They’re sanitary. They hide the unpleasantness on the left side of his body, at least on his hand. Still, when his fine-boned fingers run over the packaging, it is like he is trying to feel the leaves through the material, curious in spite of himself. It is a ritual he is unfamiliar with. Should he open it now? Would it please them? He hesitates, hoping to, by some miracle, gain some sort of innate understanding of how this all works, now that he’s in it. Naturally, he does not. He pauses a long moment, and, suddenly fretting over making his guest feel uncertain or unwelcome, he reaches out to bring the gift closer. Managing at last to unwrap the fronds from the bundle, they come away surgical and precise, left whole. 

The gift is laid bare, and Florix tilts his head. His ears (odd little things, an excess of infested material refined by some esoteric process to resemble the delicate structure of feathers), which had spent most of the day pinned back, lift suddenly, betraying an inquisitiveness. He looks very silly. If it is truly for him — it is acceptable to touch? After a moment spent waffling, one of his hands runs over the surface of the plastic covering. He applies the lightest of pressure, leaving a small, nearly imperceptible dimple in the clay beneath, feeling its give. It seems to delight and fascinate him, beneath a thin veneer of professionalism he wears like a reflex. His touch travels over the neatly arranged tools, then finds the note. 

Florix likes to work with his hands. For the vast majority of his life, it has been completely utilitarian in nature. The shaping and repair of proxies, while immensely engaging for him, had never been done just for the sake of it. Even here, under new employment, in the laboratory, he only ever follows the blueprints as they’ve always been laid out when the Tenno brought him salvaged robotics. He put them back together again, but he did not try to make something new. He reprogrammed them, but only as they would have been programmed to behave before. It is uncertainty. That he did not have the ability or the right to create, nor express something in himself. Someone made for a purpose does not deviate. 

Well, but he had — once before, earlier this year, for Highway’s own birthday. He’d made a wind-up kaithe, tiny and mechanical, composed of scrap. It served no purpose but to make The Highwayman happy. It had been a purpose Florix deemed acceptable, when weighed against the enormity of his guilt and anxiety. It had felt completely foreign in his hands. But he’d enjoyed it. And the result. Him, smiling.

Would he enjoy it again? 

When he thanks Tolya again, he briefly meets their eyes.

[recidivist]

Watching the Watchers

There is a constant stream of people (tourists) looking at the clock that you cannot see in the photograph, The location is the former entrance of a branch of Natwest Bank, Before that it was the London County Bank. Now it is the library of Corpus Christi College. And set into the doorway, behind glass, is the clock. It is a large gold-plated disc above which a giant grasshopper turns the…

[zephzephyrus]

one of my favourite things about work is that someone will say something and suddenly everyone working that day will be involved. one of us mentioned lobotomies and then all of us were talking about them for a good 15-20 minutes. my manager pulled out their phone and started looking up pics/facts. while on the sales floor. on the clock. not only that, but someone slipped in the topic of corpus callosum and then we talked about that for a few minutes as well. love my work lol