#forever project

[nacricissa]

Hey, if someone would be willing to ask me a bunch of questions so I can finish fleshing out my alternate history religion wherein Christianity adopted Greek mythological figures to retell the gospel in an effort to get it to catch on more easily in Greece that would be much appreciated!

[lemonplanter]

In good-er news, I actually finished a forever project once. It was the Howl's Moving Castle Sweater

It took like 100 hours and wasn't worth it, but I love it

[nacricissa]

She was always described as exotic, first. I think this is mostly racism, but even beyond being a person of colour in nineteenth century Europe she had an otherworldly quality to her, a posture of such complete confidence that when she looked you in the eye and told you she knew the secrets to the universe, it was startlingly easy to believe her.

Eric's mother was still the only reason she got as far as she did. It is startling what a woman who has lost that much is still capable of believing, and she believed it strongly enough that [Mlle Nefera], as she preferred to be called, was able to survive on no faith but hers for long months after being infected, and even before that few of the illusions she performed would have been possible without the countess's patronage. The inexpensive ways to make an object seem to move without being touched were well known, by this point, to the audience she was trying to reach, after all.

Of course, this is not to discount the other believers, or the travelers that had been willing to take her from her native France, or was it Switzerland, to the western reaches of the Russian Empire. I have looked to find which other souls from which [Mlle Nefera] cannot be divided without losing all that she built, and while they are few they are more than you might think. Such is always the case, with these things. However, there is no other soul, even among those that have travelled similar paths who could have done what she did. Without any of those souls upon which she relied, and moreover without her, myself and Eric would never have become connected in the way we did, and we could have done nothing of what we did next. I am called Timeeater, and it is only Eric's reassurance that we can yet do more good that prevents me from annihilating her soul, and with it every timeline which relies on her unique talents. I think we should have been stopped, and she is the narrowest lynchpin to stop it.

https://www.instagram.com/theresafractale/

[anxiouslittlecarrot]

I want everybody who’s calling Ken a Trophy Husband to know that he’s actually a Trophy Boyfriend, because when Ruth Handler invented Ken in the 1960s, she was adamant that he would never marry her and instead be her “handsome steady”, so that Barbie remained a figure of independence for the little girls and was never put in the position of housewife.

Her house is hers. She bought it and furnished it with money she made in her own job. In STEM, in politics, in healthcare, in fashion, in academy, in customer service. Her credit card is in her name (women in the US couldn’t have their own regardless of marital status until 1974). And it’s all pink and fashionable because femininity and badassness aren’t mutually exclusive. No matter who you are, you can be anything.

That’s why Barbie’s slogan is “you can be anything”. Teaching these ideals to little girls is why Barbie was created. Empowering women and empowering femininity is the original meaning of the Barbie doll. It’s not that you have to be all this to be a woman, but if you are all or some of this, you too are awesome.

And somehow pop culture deliberately changed that narrative. Sexualised, bimbofied, and villainised her, when she actually isn’t responsible for the impossible beauty standards — people are, she’s just a stylised, not-to-scale toy like most others.

Men are frothing because he’s just Ken and I guess they were expecting her to be just Barbie, but that’s exactly what Ken is. Canonically. A badass woman’s himbo boyfriend.

This movie has the potential to radically change the way we collectively see Barbie into what Ruth Handler originally intended, I’m so very excited

[ameetoe]

mikuuuuuu my best friend mikuuuuuuuuuu

[yellowflowrs]

when u think bae is ignoring u but turns out theyre just autistic

[nacricissa]

I was still naked. It did not bother me in the other form, but in this one, it feels wrong. This form has never been seen by any human eyes. Sure, I was naked often enough as a baby, but since I turned about nine my fathers left me roughly to myself, and so I have always changed alone. In the bathrooms before gym. With the door locked at home. Eyes rivetted to the flimsy curtain that divided the cubicle from the rest of the public swimming pool changeroom. I can feel the hundreds of thousands of minds that are now connected to mine, so much time having passed. These are all minds capable of shame. Capable of wondering why I do not have it.

I did not know how to use my magic. I will do, I'm sure of it, these thousands of minds can teach me, but I need to go to them. Severing the thread that would have allowed them to read my mind meant I could not read theirs. And I could not add a one-way adjustment, because again, I did not know how to use my magic.

So I needed to work with what I had. I found the strands of time that wound through the air, through the light, and began to experiment. They were much easier to grasp on to, to manipulate, than it was to hope that whatever mechanism that had allowed me to make this place just because I thought it should exist would kick in and just do whatever it was I wanted.

I was able to fashion for myself solid weaves of air, but these were still see-through. However, if I built areas of greater and lesser time dilation within the air, the light would refract, casting beams. These I could in turn slow down until they appeared opaque. I bent crease upon crease of air around me, until it almost formed a dress. And then, as I began to see it, as the vision took hold, the vague, obscuring lights turned to a gorgeous fall of light like a waterfall turning to fire. It felt enough that it should be there, that it was. I was adept enough, now, that I was able to grasp the magic, to keep it from slipping more consciously than I had before.

I was clothed enough. It was time to follow one of the myriad threads connecting me to the conscious life of this planet until I found someone who could teach me.

Starfire Dance~

[bananakeiky]

Choose your fighter

instagram | carrd

[nacricissa]

Roast your OC's tag

@forthesanityofstorytellers has been keeping me FED with these tag games to flesh out my OCs thank you very much. Today's, I'm told, has been brought to me by the letter M.

Rules: boil your OC down to their barest, most cliche, stereotypical essentials, and phrase it like a headline

I refuse to let myself be held back by not knowing who to tag and so have taken random replies/reblogs from this post:

@arrowmoose @purplehandshumanfeelings @draculinawrites @solardescension @spentimental

Elise: Tumblr girl discovers being the most magic makes her problems worse, not better

Davriel: Precocious genius misses nuance of situation

Eric: Greatest Generation aristocrat fears dishonor if he does not trample human rights

Sorceress: Academic loner forced to explain herself to save the world, struggles immensely

[nacricissa]

and this is why my forever project will probably never be published, because I cannot stay away from this theme but I don't trust myself to portray some of the terrible things my protag does for a more general audience in a responsible way.

i loooooove giving my ocs perpetrator trauma. you hurt people, used and abused and destroyed them, and you will never wash out that stain. you will grow resentful of forgiveness because you refuse to forgive yourself. they don't know what you did like you do. you wear that knowledge like armor, like a sick badge of shameful pride. you can't cut off the hand that struck out and throw it away. you can't pull out your teeth and become something kinder, something more vulnerable.

[lemonplanter]

Not exactly a forever project, but I've loved the idea if making lil character parody videos of creators that I like, but in their style of video.

I don't actually have any experience with video tho, (and not a huge inclination to do it, beyond a general fascination) I think it's mostly just my ability to audiate well getting away from me

I DO really like talking about things that interest me, but that's all that's really going for it

[soapyakships]

i feel like ive seen you in a dream once

[signanothername]

Misplaced hatred

I always thought that if Nightmare got to see the younger version of Dream he wouldn’t be able to contain his hatred regardless, only to realize how misplaced his hatred is and that he fucked up later down the line

I had a part 1 sketched that had smol Night but my chronic pain said fuck you and i haven’t cleaned it up much so no part one just this shhshshsh

Edit: finally made part 1

[nacricissa]

The plants of the Desert Ocean are rootless things. Brig doesn't know why they're even called plants, when they look more like jellyfish, floating on the ebbing tide and mindlessly slipping down until the sacs of air and filtered water that once supported their unmoored life now fail to support the weight of their leaves and flowers.

The flowers are why ey's here. They've been tinting the waters with the reds and purples of their flowers cascading down the waves long enough for some of them to have gotten pollinated, and so the trip along the mud and quicksand that is still covered in water as ey goes further south is worth the risk because it might mean jellyfruit.

Brig is sure that the fruit of these plants is called jellyfruit because ey's not the first one to have confused the two. Ey's big sister says it's obvious, that you can tell it's not a jellyfish because those lay their fruit on the bottom, instead of letting them grow on their bodies, but Brig knows that's not true because ey knows that jellyfish fruits aren't fruits they're called polyps.

If ey finds any polyps while ey's down here, though, ey will certainly pick them too. Jellyfruit and jellyfish polyps both taste great. Ey'll only give the polyps to eir sister if she admits she was wrong though, so ey'll have to be careful to sneak them past the priests when ey returns to Nadastat, cause them would make em share. That means ey has to hurry up, so ey can find something and then return before the city starts to float again and ey'll have to clamber up in a way that would make eir hidden fruits obvious.

Cascading Violet

[heartorbit]

halloween emukasas 🍬🌟👻🃏

[nacricissa]

Magic cannot touch wielders of magic. But what is a wielder of magic? Is it the body? The mind? What happens to things like parasites, or water? At what point does it become part of you enough that an opposing sorcerer cannot turn it to steam within you?

The answer to this question is self-perception. To wield magic this is one of the basic requirements (no magic babies here, grow a self-concept first). Magic rolls off of anything you consider to be “you”, which for most people includes the air in their lungs, and, regrettably, most infections. It also includes things you’re holding, your clothes, things that when you go to move them, you do not think of how to move your body so that they move, you simply think “I will move the end of this stick over” and so it goes.

Warriors are thus strongly incentivized to internalize any weapon they wield as part of themselves, as much of their environment as possible, their armor, everything, so that magic cannot be used against them directly.

It is near impossible to change one’s own shape with magic, but near is not true, and so it can be done. In the moments after victory, when the bloody warriors stare at the fallen and feel empty of their souls, dissociated from all they are, disgusted by the hand that wields the sword, they place enough distance between themselves and their bodies that magic can for once touch them, but their training does not lapse, and so their weapons they tell themselves, are as one with their bodies. The bridge leaks through their worn resolve, and makes it so, each battle won another risk of irreparable fusion of man with steel.

After the mechanized suits of armor are invented, this effect is encouraged. It means the steel warriors never lose their invulnerability to magic, even if the person inside sleeps, or doubts, or dies.

whenever someone in a story tells a character they're training to fight to treat their weapon like an extension of themselves i always feel like more weight should be put on that statement. on the implication that in learning to wield a weapon you must become it. you must make it a part of you. you must walk down a path from which you will never be able to come back from.