#i have three different versions of my calculations

[angelichavenhasideas]

Age headcanons for the LU boys

So, for Gift Of Family I need to know all of the boys ages for when they're adopted and when the last of them is adopted. However, this meant that I had to figure out not only their age order but how close I could get the boys to their canonical ages as possible. So, I'm going to share with you my findings of not only how old I think each Link is in Jojo's comic but also how old I think they are in each of their games based on vibes, official nintendo art, Jojo's art, and Jojo's past QnA stuff. Let's begin.

Time

Time is both the easiest and trickiest. To avoid the trickiness, I decided to ignore his mental age and just focused on his physical age.

For Ocarina of Time, I've put Time as 9/16. First of all, we know he's a kid, maybe the youngest of all the Links, though I doubt it. But most of my reasoning for putting Time at 9 when he starts his adventure is simply because, ever since I was a kid, I thought it was a canonical fact that Time was 9 when he left Kokiri Forest. I don't know where I got this information, I can't find any proof of this being true, but nostalgia is very good at her job and I haven't seen anything from Jojo disproving this fact. So Time starts OoT at 9 and travels seven years in the future, making him also 16 at the same time.

Majora's mask was much easier. I hadn't made Time age up from 9 to 10 during OoT and, when MM opens, Time is actively trying to hunt Navi down. So i don't believe Time can be any younger than 10 when he runs into the Skull Kid. In fact, I believe he is ten during the entirety of MM, seeing as it only takes three days and Time doesn't really look any different then he did in OoT except maybe a little bit more maturity in promotional art. So, Time is no younger then 10 but no older then 12.

During LU I'd bargain that Time is exactly 30 years old. Jojo has stated that not only is Time the physically oldest of the Chain but she's also stated that it's been around 20 years since the end of his last adventure. I took the 20 year limit literally and decided that it'd been exactly 20 years since MM ended. And since I figure that Time was 10 at the time, Time is now 30 years old. I can see an argument for both 29 and 31 but there's not much of an argument outside of that.

Warriors

Canonically the comic's second oldest Link, Warriors is also one of the oldest heroes in his own game. Asuming that his only game inspiration is Hyrule Warriors, Definitive Edition not included, we can assume that Jojo's statement of Warriors being "about 6-7 years" out of his initial adventure is the only numbers we need.

We'll be basing Sky and Twi off of Warriors age scoring too but Warriors age actually came down to US military ages. While you can join the military at 16 (as far as I understand it) most people in training are 18 or older. While Hyrule is a fictional nation, we can assume that their age of maturity is either 17 or 18, seeing as BotW is very dependent on the Calamity arriving on Zelda's 17th birthday because she can only go to the Spring of Wisdom at the age of 17.

So with the numbers 17 and 18 to work with, my new moto was established. "When in doubt, go for the higher number." With this moto in mind, I decided that, as a recruit/trainee/whatever Warriors is at the beginning of his game, he's probably 18. And, with the idea that HW took around a year to finish, if not longer, then Warriors would end his adventure at 19.

So with Warriors at 19 by the end of his adventure, we can take Jojo's higher break number (BN for short), Warriors would have had 7 years between HW and LU. So one simple math problem later, I've figured out that the most likely age for Warriors to be is 26. I would have personally liked him to be a year older so he can be even closer to Time's age but he's more likely to be 25 than he is 27, so 26 it is.

Twilight

The third oldest, this is the first big age gap of the Chain (not taking Time into account because there was always going to be a large gap for him). Now, despite how old he seems in TP, I don't actually think he reaches the age of maturity, which, for the context of the Chain in particular, we will not be counting as anything younger than 19 because of Jojo's words early on in LU's existence.

I don't believe it's Nintendo canon but when I was younger I'd heard somewhere that Twi's age was 16 and, later on, learned that he was more likely 17. So I decided that 17 was the number I would be going with. Twi's BN was 4-5 so I took the 5 and made 17 into 22. Therefore, Twilight is the easiest Link to figure out and sits as a young adult which, yes, contradicts some of Jojo's earlier statements but I've taken Jojo's latest QnA as gospel for most all of my headcanons and anything that contradicts that is free game to be thrown out the window. Besides, it's not all a contradiction for Twi because...

Sky

Sky was another big dictator for the Chain's ages as a whole for one big reason. Early on, Jojo had considered Sky and Twi to be of similar age but Twi was probably older because he acted more mature. So, for a long time, I just considered them being the same age but, after doing the math, I have come to realize that Jojo has a little more grounds in saying that Twi is not part of the young adult gang. Not a lot more ground, but still more.

My first clue to this was that Twi's BN was 4-5 while Sky's was 1-2. This seemed like a large problem but then I remembered that Sky is one of the oldest canonical Links, if not the oldest in canon games (not counting Wild in TotK, who is an actual adult).

My next clue for Sky's age was the Knight's Academy. Though I could have gone with military age like I did with Warriors, as Sky is a newly minted knight, I decided to go by the educational system. In the US, high school ends at 12th grade, which makes most every student 18/19 when they graduate. For the Knights Academy I compared it to your average boarding school with high school grades. So that would make Sky, at youngest, 18 at the start of his adventure. And, to stay with my moto, I decided he could age to be 19 during his adventure.

With Sky now at 19, we can now add two years to make 21. Not as old as I would like Sky to be, as I love thinking about Sky and Twi being twins, but it's a lot closer then I could have hoped for in any form of canon.

Wild

The Chain's perpetual middle child, he is both, very technically, the youngest and the oldest of the heroes depending on how you look at it and how you count his age. However, since we're going for physical age, it's actually easy to figure out Wild's age.

Though there's an argument for everything from Wild being 16 during BotW all the way to being around 20, I believe he's actually 18 when he wakes up in the shrine. This is for three reasons.

The first is that Wild can't get a noble pursuit, so at the very least he is not past the age of maturity.

The second reason is that he is allowed to go to the Spring of Wisdom with Zelda. While he doesn't go into the spring himself, I doubt he would have been allowed near it if he wasn't at least 17. We've seen that Zelda had other people to travel with when Link was unavailable, as seen whenever she's in Gerudo Town without enemies pursuing her. It's clear no one was expecting the Calamity to start on Zelda's birthday, so there wouldn't be an immediate need for Link to break tradition just to protect Zelda.

The third reason is that adults flirt with Link after he wakes up. This may seem strange to point out because flirty characters are in many Zelda game but in BotW it's almost like there are no weird connotations, it's just adults interacting with each other. Still suggestive but it's silly and relaxed in most cases instead of a gross joke or something to appeal to teen boys. This implies that Link is at least recognized as an adult. And since, in BotW, the age of maturity is 17 at the youngest, I went a year higher and decided Wild was probably 18, maybe being 19 by the end of his adventure.

With the added fact that LU starts a handful of months after BotW, Wild can be no younger than 19 in LU. However, as the moto goes, older is always better and, because I think BotW takes nearly two years for Wild to finish, I decided that Wild was more likely to be 20 by the beginning of LU.

Legend

The last of the young adult squad, this guy was a challenge to pin down. He's done so much and it's so tricky to just choose time periods for him, it was nearly impossible to decide where to start or end. However, to make things simpler, I decided that each adventure takes a year to complete and the next adventure will only start around a year later. the exception to this is me mixing OoS/OoA/LA together for one long year of crazy adventures.

First thing's first, let's start going backwards. Jojo says it's only been around a year since Legend's last adventure, which is where I took the 1 year BN rule from. So, with that in mind, I wanted to find a number that kept him as young as possible while still making him undeniably an adult in the LoZ canon. So, 19 was my ending number for his age in LU.

After that was ALBW. Subtracting one year, he would be 18 by the end of that. And because of all that goes on in the story and that fact Legend is still very close to Ravio, I decided they knew each other for at least a year during that adventure. That puts Legend at 17 when he first encounter's Yuga and Ravio.

Subtracting a year from that, we get LA and Legend is now at sweet 16. This was honestly a surprise because I thought for sure Legend would be too young at this point to feel genuine feelings of romantic love but when I did the math I got 16 and it finally made sense why Marin would have such a big impact on him. As a person who struggles to have an understanding of romance, 16 was when I started understanding why people got crushes in the first place. So this makes perfect sense to me and matches Jojo's Legend sketches from this time period, as well as Jojo's design of Marin.

Now subtracting a year, which I will explain in a moment, we have Legend at 15 for the Oracle games. This came as a relief to me because seeing Din and Nayru for the first time, I immediately thought they looked too old to be shipped with Link. However, this feels slightly less creepy, but only slightly. Now, I subtracted a year because I had lumped these games together, and combining that with the two ocean travel times, decided that the ocean trifecta games had probably passed his birthday before he ever got back to Hyrule. So Legend is 15 when he lands in one of the countries.

Subtracting a year, we're all the way to the beginning with Legend being 14 when he defeats Ganon for the first time. However, I wasn't satisfied with him starting at the age of 14. Despite Nintendo's official art having Legend look like a teen in ALttP promotional material, art for later games in his story have him looking vaguely, if not noticeably younger. So I decided to play it safe and hack off one more year from the poor guy, making him unlucky 13. I honestly thought he would be twelve but him landing on a notoriously unlucky number just felt right and, honestly, it felt like it was destiny. Legend probably hates the number 13 now.

Before you ask me where Triforce Heroes comes into this mess, please don't. Not only does that game have three Links, not just Legend, Jojo has confirmed that Legend is not one of the heroes from Triforce Heroes. So let that mess stay in it's own little corner of the universe. We can question it another day.

Hyrule

For Hyrule, I actually have a semi-canonical age to work with. I can't find the evidence anymore because I forgot where it was, but in AoL, Hyrule is 16 when he saves the sleeping Zelda. And with Jojo's confirmation that LU takes place around two years after his adventure ended, that makes Hyrule 18. Hyrule is the entire reason I have such a weird maturity line, because Jojo categorized him as a teen but he's more likely to be considered an adult in Hyrule by now. Whatever.

The tricky one is the original LoZ. In promotional art he looks significantly younger but there's no way to cross reference this with Jojo's work because all of her Hyrule art is from AoL and after, as far as I can tell. So I had to get creative.

The age I think of for most Links in the LoZ universe is 12. This is for a specific reason I won't get into (Wind) but essentially all of the Links look like kids and teenagers, especially the toon Links and the pixelated Links. So I debated putting him at twelve but, when comparing the official art to the 12 year olds in my life, I decided he looked slightly older and settled on him being 13.

Four

Our next age gap, Four is a tricky one. He acts super mature and confident for his age but he's also super small for his age. So literally any age could be argued for him. In fact, I've seen arguments for everything from 12 to 30. So I had to start from the canon.

Jojo has stated that it's been two years since Four finished his last adventure. From this point forward, because Four knows who Ganon is, we'll be assuming that FSA is one of his adventures. So, assuming Four took one year between adventures, Four starts adventuring at 14. This is the oldest Four could be when he started his first adventure, not considering the times it took to complete his adventures and considering that out maturity age line is 19, Four being categorized as a teen with Hyrule and Wind.

Moving on with the number 14, I decided to start adding the adventure times. MC canonically takes a day, so that was out of the equation already. I don't know the canonical time progression of the FS games so I decided that they would each take half a year because they're rather short games. This now leaves our highest number at 13.

Now, unlike Legend, a one year break between games doesn't make sense for Four. He's more relaxed then Legend, with his confidence coming from him working on himself rather than from experience like Legend. So Four probably had a little more free time. So I added another year for each of our two free break periods. This now brings our biggest number down to 11.

Still, I wasn't satisfied. Four didn't strike me as being 18 when reading LU and he didn't strike me at 11 when studying MC's promo art. He looked younger. Much younger than any other Link, even considering the toon style and naturally short figure. So this was when I decided he was around Time's age when he started. But, to make things funny, I decided Four was 8 during MC.

Now with a starting age and two year BN rule established, my job became simple. Four would be 10 at the start of FS and, for the fun of it, I said he could celebrate his birthday halfway through, making him 11 by the end. Then, for FSA, Four would be 13 at the beginning of his journey. That leaves him at 15 by the time of LU. Maybe if we push he could be 16 but I'm not going to because I've already fudged his age enough for the hell of it.

Wind

Absolutely easiest of the bunch, we already have all of his canon ages. In WW and PH he's 12 years old, Nintendo certified and everything, seeing as WW happens on his 12th birthday. By the time of LU, Wind is canonically 13, going on 14. He is the last and smallest age gap for the chain but that just makes him even younger in all of their eyes. No wonder the chain tries to baby him. He's nearly a decade younger than Twi and nearly two decades younger than Time. Geez kid, slow your role! You don't need to keep defying the laws of the universe to show the other heroes how cool you are!

And that's the list. Honestly, I have more ages I could share, specifically the two Links we haven't met yet that I think I already know the identities of, including which hidden Link is which of the remaining Links in the timeline. But I'm not gonna do that because those two have little to nothing confirmed about them and trying to give you anyone else's ages without any Jojo support at all would have me pulling my hair out within seconds of researching. Therefore, this is where I end it until more information is available. Though I can tell you that Legend and Ravio are basically twins in all but blood and Malon is likely to be a year or two younger than Time because of her in game models in OoT. That's all I've really got though.

I hope you enjoyed this rant and have a lovely day!

[flawseer]

#18 - "Fire"

Smaugust 2024

The last few submissions have been mostly visual, but today I want to do something more text-based. I'm always looking for opportunities to ramble ad nauseam about my headcanons and thoughts, but am usually hesitant if I don't think I can make a subject interesting or particularly insightful.

A few months back I was playing with the thought of publishing a speculative analysis on Pyrrhian dragon breath weapons, and how they might differ between tribes. I got up to the conceptualization stage, but then @sidyashchiy-na-plakhe came out with a better and more put-together version of what I was thinking about and touched on some similar points, so I filed those plans away to not step on any toes. If you're enjoying this type of deliberation, I recommend that you check out his take, as it is very thoughtfully put together with some cool visuals.

But, seeing as I have no other ideas for this prompt, and since it's been a while since then, I'm going to air out my scrapped draft here. I guess this is a mixture between canon information and headcanons, with a bias toward the latter.

General Information

Each of the seven Pyrrhian tribes is capable of using a kind of orally-discharged means of attack. For the purpose of this deliberation, I am going to refer to all of these as "breath weapons", even though not all of them are activated via exhalation. It will make things easier to talk about.

There are three general factors to each type of breath weapon, those being potency, range, and start-up time. In the case of fire breath--the most ubiquitous type of breath weapon on the continent--these would roughly correlate to the temperature of the flames, how far they can travel from the source while maintaining their shape and intensity, and for how long the fire must be stoked inside of the user before it can be expelled.

How developed these factors are differs for every dragon, but the two biggest determining modifiers are constitution and age. Being physically fit will make your breath weapon more efficient--and thus stronger--because you have better control over your breathing after exertion. As a dragon advances in age, the three factors all increase proportionally. A Mudwing hatchling can produce a puff of flame very quickly, but it will barely heat up the surrounding air. An elder meanwhile might take several minutes to get their fire going, but when they do, the result will be fearsome and devastating.

Fire is the most common element on the continent, with four of the seven tribes being able to command it. I will go through those first and then follow up with the other variants .

Nightwing fire is a dark purple in color, due to a slight variation in the gas component that fuels the flames.

The flames have no particularly outstanding properties strength-wise, but they emit comparatively little light, meaning they don't stand out as much against the night sky. This makes them ideal for low-profile ambushing, but very unsuitable as signal flares.

If a Nightwing ignites an object, the flames will gradually lose this characteristic as they will begin to consume the air around them and turn into ordinary, orange fire.

Nightwing flames are sometimes colloquially referred to as "Moonfire".

Sandwing fire is, on average, the least powerful among all the fire-breathing dragons. In terms of potency and range, flames emitted by a Sandwing of 20 years will be roughly equivalent to those of a twelve-year-old from the other fire-breathing tribes.

Their unique advantage is that Sandwings can produce these flames extremely quickly, usually within seconds. If readying fire takes a dragon 30 seconds, an equivalent Sandwing can do it in 5.

While for most other dragons the use of their breath weapon is a deliberate and calculated affair, the severely reduced start-up time allows Sandwings to "shoot from the hip" without having to commit to the action, making them less predictable in combat.

A popular Sandwing combat technique is to open a fight by blowing a quick plume of weak fire into an opponent's face and then using the resulting distraction to strike with their venomous tails.

Skywings command the strongest and purest variation of fire among all tribes. Their flames come out very straight and can maintain their shape over vast distances.

They can "cook" their fire by holding it inside themselves for longer than necessary. While this becomes unpleasant or even painful if done for long, it will increase the temperature and purity of the resulting flames far beyond what any of the other tribes are capable of.

Flames emitted after doing this for long enough will come out with an intense blue color that can cut through stone.

For dragons afflicted with firescales, all of the fire they breathe will be like this, as their bodies are already channeling flames at all times to fuel the burning scales.

Because Skywing fire is so intense, it is at times difficult to control. Skywings who become emotional will often start smoking from their nostrils involuntarily.

Mudwing fire, sometimes referred to as "moody fire", is very temperamental. Its strength will vary widely based on a number of different factors, not all of them fully understood, making it appear random at times.

The most commonly understood factor that influences a Mudwing's fire is the ambient temperature. Mudwings will struggle to produce flames in environments that are too cold (close to freezing weather, very cold water, etc.). This can be partially mitigated by ingesting hot stews, soups, or beverages before fire usage.

A factor that isn't as well documented is that the Mudwing's fire breath and their uncanny healing factor are fueled by the same source. This means a Mudwing's fire will be strongest when they are healthy, and begin to diminish if they become injured, as their body will divert resources away from the breath weapon to prioritize keeping itself alive, functioning, and mobile.

Mudwings hatched from blood eggs have a tendency to develop poor breath weapons, as their super-charged healing factor--while potent enough to outpace most damage sustained from fire--is even more resource-hungry than that of a regular Mudwing.

Icewings don't breathe fire. Instead, they are able to exhale a stream of frost magic. There is nothing I can think of to scientifically explain all the properties of frostbreath as they are presented in canon, especially with regards to Queen Battlewinner. Ice that makes you lava-proof? Nah, this is straight-up magic. All Icewings are born with a small piece of magic and this is how it expresses itself.

Contrary to popular belief, frostbreath is not stronger than firebreath. In terms of general characteristics, Icewings and Nightwings are actually roughly equivalent.

What makes frostbreath more overtly lethal than fire breath is the magical component. When frostbreath comes in contact with living tissue, it will form ice crystals on and inside the surface. All flesh in contact with these crystals will gradually turn necrotic. This process is very painful.

The crystals are very persistent and it requires sustained exposure to intense heat to melt them. The best way to accomplish this is via prolonged bath in warm water (close to boiling). This method, if applied quickly after the injury, will usually result in recovery after a few hours of bathing.

Getting hit while in a situation with no access to warm water is very dangerous and potentially lethal. If treatment does not begin soon after, the crystals will begin to spread, killing more tissue and making recovery increasingly less likely, especially once the injury spreads to internal organs.

It is not uncommon for soldiers who get hit by frost breath and are caught out in the open with no treatment options to cut off the afflicted body part to minimize tissue loss.

Icewings are more resistant to frostbreath than other dragons, but not fully immune. They can succumb to the same injuries.

If an Icewing suffers an intense burn, particularly in and around the face, they become completely unable to exhale frost until the burn begins to heal.

Rainwings do not have a breath weapon. Instead, they produce an acidic venom within their bodies, which can be administered through biting, or launched at targets through a pair of collapsible, hollow fangs.

The gland that produces this venom needs sunlight to develop properly. Once the Rainwing has been exposed to sufficient sunlight, venom production will begin, and may even continue without further exposure, but it is recommended to sunbathe for at least 5 hours a week to keep the gland healthy and the venom potent.

The venom is strongly corrosive and able to dissolve most organic materials like wood, plant matter, and flesh. It is potent enough that, if it enters another creature's blood stream directly (via bite, an open wound, or the eyes), that creature will die within seconds.

The venom's lethality will rapidly decrease once it separates from the user. If it hits surface tissue and has to burn through layers flesh, it will usually lose too much of its toxicity before it reaches the blood stream (though it will still function as acid and be excruciatingly painful).

Rainwings are immune to their own venom, but not the venom of other Rainwings. Mixing a sample of venom with the venom of a close blood relative will cancel out the destructive properties of both.

Seawings are amphibious dragons who prefer to live in water, but can also go on land and exist there in relative comfort for a decent while. Their body contains an organ that stores water, from which it periodically draws to keep the Seawing's skin from drying out.

When under duress, a Seawing can forcefully expel the contents of this organ through their mouth as a pressurized jet of water. While this is not very destructive, it can momentarily stun aggressors and allow the Seawing to retreat to the safety of a nearby lake or river.

If the blast is held inside and charged up similar to the fire breath of other tribes, the Seawing is able to draw from their body heat to increase the water's temperature to scalding degrees.

[kaciidubs]

#LALALALA_Challenge

❣ Summary: Minho really wanted to see stays do the LALALALA challenge, so you decided to take a shot at it too. ❣  ❣ Word Count: 748 ❣ Warnings: Fluff, humor, reader can't dance, supportive bf! Minho, appearance of SoonieDoongieDori ❣  ❣ Female! Reader [No use of Y/N] | You/Your pronouns ❣  ❣ Additional Tags: Lee Know is referred to as Minho, Min, and Lee Minho, reader is referred to as kitten and darling, barely edited ❣ Stray Kids Masterlist ❣ General Masterlist

"Cross, down, cross, down... right- no, left? Left, right, left- up?!"

Groaning softly, you snatched your phone from it's propped position on the TV stand and swiped your thumb across the progress bar, watching the video rewind to the beginning of the tutorial yet again.

Was this your personal hell? Yes.

Were you determined to get this choreography down to impress your dancer boyfriend? Also yes.

You knew the exact moment your fate was sealed for the evening; stumbling across a clip of your boyfriend encouraging thousands of stays to learn the dance and participate in their comeback challenge - and who were you to shy away?

You were a stay, too, which meant you had all the right to attempt the challenge!

Now, if only you didn't have two left feet and the memory of a hamster, then maybe this challenge wouldn't have been so... challenging.

Listening to the extremely familiar song play through your phone again, you watched as the Instagram reel of Minho go on, eyes locked onto every calculated, practiced movement his body made to the rhythm of the song and the mental count of each step.

"Right, left, up-right, left, swing arms down..." A soft meow sounded behind you, the brief interruptions keeping you sane for the past 10 minutes of practicing. "Soonie, you'd think that dating him would give me some magical dance ability, right?"

Another meow, one that sounded oddly sassy, practically telling you that 'We both know that's not how it works'.

"You could've just humored me like Doongie, you know." You mumbled, watching as the clip continued onto the slowed down version of the tutorial, "Okay, let's do this!"

Propping your phone up again, you followed along with his mirrored arm movements, simulating the steps with your upper body as best as you could - you already foolishly attempted the full body test three times, and after nearly twisting your ankle, you decided half your body would suffice.

"Left arm block, chest explode- la, la, la, head nod- la, la, la, la-"

The chorus played out and you sighed heavily, arms sore and your once comfortable t-shirt feeling all too heavy - it had to have been attempt number four, maybe five, and you were finally getting familiar with the normal speed.

"Kitten."

"AH!"

Nearly jumping out of your skin, you spun around to see none other than the same person you were painstakingly following on your phone, watching you with amused eyes and a familiar brown cat nuzzled in his arms.

"Minho?! How long were you watching me?!"

"Long enough to see you miscount the same move three times and counting." He smirked, humor sparkling in his eyes, "You're close though, I'm proud."

Huffing, your crossed your arms over your chest, wincing at the slight strain in your right bicep, "You didn't think to, oh, I don't know, tell me you're home? Maybe even correct me?!"

He gave a few scratches to Dori's head before setting him down on the couch cushion, "I texted you that I was on my way home, you were the one who didn't respond! Plus, you were doing so well, I didn't want to ruin your focus!"

"In other words, you liked watching me mess up."

"It's like watching a child learn that they can move parts of their body in different directions at the same time."

You rolled your eyes, pouting as he pushed himself up from the couch and stride over to you; his hands winding your hips and holding you close.

"I meant it when I said I was proud of you, darling," he cooed, pressing a feather light kiss to your pout, watching your lips turn up slightly. "It doesn't matter if you were the worlds best dancer, or the ace of one step out of the whole song - I saw the effort you were putting into learning it and that's more than enough. I said I wanted to see stays learn and try it, I never said that it had to be perfect."

His soft words melted your heart, your body relaxing in his hold with a soft breath as you blinked up at him with soft eyes. "Can you help me fix where I keep messing up?"

Laughing gently, he nodded, "Of course - next, I'll help you put it together with the steps."

"You have way too much faith in me, Min."

"Or, maybe I want to see you look like a baby deer."

"I love you too, Lee Minho."

✧. ┊Tagged lovelies: @goblinracha, @having-an-internal-crisis-rn, @midnightfrog625, @anyhow-everything, @bangchanbabygirlx, @sweetracha, @j-onedrabbles, @happilydeepestwonderland, @nightimescapes, @caitlyn98s, @ch4nn13luv, @ihrtlix, @sometimesleeknows, @jeonjungkookenthusiast1997, @instabull

✧. ┊If your username is in bold italics that means tumblr won't let me tag you. If you’d like to be added to the taglist, fill out this form!

[youremyheaven]

Jupiter & Rahu : Ditziness & Weird Girl Humor

This post is inspired by an ask I received a while ago

Jupiter & Rahu girls in comedy cinema/television often play airheaded characters who are a bit ditzy and zany. Another feature is that all these characters are mostly harmless, good natured people. They can be mean/blunt but its because of their ditzy, airheaded nature and not out of malice.

All 3 Jupiter naks belong mostly to air signs (Punarvasu- Gemini, Vishaka-Libra, Purvabhadrapada- Aquarius) and same goes for all 3 Rahu naks (Ardra-Gemini, Swati-Libra, Shatabhisha-Aquarius) in fact all Rahu naks come right before a Jupiter nak. I have always personally believed that Rahu & Jupiter are similar in many ways but obviously different as well. Rahu is limitless expansion. Jupiter is boundless expansion within principles.

But all that aside, Jupiter & Rahu are literally air influenced and I do think its the presence of an excess of Air that makes someone come across as "airheaded".

The etymology of the word "airhead" is that one's head is filled with air and is thus empty. I have talked about Jupiter & even Rahu's limitless nature feeling "empty" for the natives themselves. Out of all the elements, air is the only one that can really said to be boundless, its not measurable or calculable, its just there, unlike water or earth or fire. but air has no physical form and while that is liberating, it also makes one feel empty and untethered and these are all emotional issues that a lot of Jupiter/Rahu people deal with.

But anyyywayys,

Cat Valentine on Victorious played by Ariana Grande is a really good example of an airheaded, zany comic character.

Ari has Ardra Sun & Mercury in Punarvasu (Rahu + Jupiter influence)

I will include Mercury placements because Mercury is literally how we communicate with others??

Phoebe Buffay from Friends is another good example of this type of comedy. She is played by Lisa Kudrow's who has Rahu conjunct Ascendant in Punarvasu

Kelly Kapoor from The Office is the ditzy zany delusional gal played by Mindy Kaling who is Ardra Sun & Moon, with Mercury in Punarvasu

Jackie Burkhart on The 70s Show played by Mila Kunis, Swati Moon is a meaner version of this archetype

Meryl Streep- Ardra Sun often speaks and talks this way. Just watch any of her interviews and you can sense that Rahu/Jupiter airy nature/demeanour/comic sense

Janhvi Kapoor, Purvabhadrapada Sun, Mercury in Shatabhisha is known for her "dumb girl persona" that most people think is fake but tbh I just think she's a little slow due to all that Air influence lol

Gracie Allen, Mercury in Punarvasu conjunct Jupiter is an early example of this type of humour and comedy

Cheryl Tunt on Archer voiced by Judy Greer, Mercury in Punarvasu (Saturn in Punarvasu atmakaraka)

Chrissy Snow from Three's Company played by Suzane Somers, Punarvasu Moon & Mercury in Vishaka is a classic example of a ditz

There are notable male ditzy characters as well

Andy from Parks & Rec played by Chris Pratt, Mercury in Punarvasu & Swati Rising

(there's a 10 video limit per post so I cant attach more vids)

Joey Tribbiani, played by Matt LeBlanc, Purvabhadrapada Moon, Mercury in Ardra & Punarvasu Rising is a great example of a male ditz

Harpo Marx- Punarvasu Moon, Mercury in Vishaka he was a silent comedian known for his highly exaggerated physical comedy that was very pantomime/clown-like. This is another aspect of the airhead/ditz, they don't just say dumb things, they do dumb things. Physical comedy is a big part of it.

London Tipton played by Brenda Song, Mercury conjunct Rahu in Purvabhadrapada

Christina Applegate, Shatabhisha Moon played a very ditzy character on Married With Children

These are all the examples off the top of my head. I feel like many Disney princesses will also fit this bill lol

lmk if you have other examples

hope this was interesting xx

[knight-a3]

So Transformers is a thing I like. Mostly "Transformers Animated". Because TFA Blitzwing is my favorite. I've got a backlog of stuff I've been meaning to share but just never got around to.

Like others, I have speculated what he must've been like before he became a triple changer. My current headcanon is that he was similar to G1 in appearance. His face is white, and is shaped like if Icy wore Hothead's visor. And his personality is a mix between all three of his faces. He's rambunctious and loud, but surprisingly strategic in and capable in battle, but also has a relatively short temper.

More about my Blizwing headcanons under the cut.

Becoming a triple changer basically ripped those aspects of his personality apart, and each one became an extreme version of those traits. To have any semblance of his original personality would require rapid shifting between the faces, but that's disorienting for everyone while also not really succeeding.

Blitzwing does not have DID(Disassociative Identity Disorder), nor a fictional variant of it. The faces are not different characters, and none of them are the "original" face. And they are all equally intelligent and aware(meaning Hothead isn't dumb and Random is not a innocent baby). The main difference is how each face makes decisions and expresses himself. They are all the same Blitzwing, each face just represents an isolated aspect of his original personality, and the jarring mood shift between them.

Icy, Random, and Hothead are not their names. They're just labels to clarify what behavior set is being referred to. He'll get upset if he's referred to them as if they're his name. As he said in the first episode, "The name's Blitzwing!" Using them as a descriptive prefix is acceptable (ie "Icy Blitzwing" is calm and calculated), but just barely; it's a reminder of how fractured his mind has become.

Despite the everyday struggles, each face has its benefits.

Icy is strategic, observant, and calculating. Hothead is powerful, resilient, and persistent. Random is versatile, quick-witted, unpredictable, and adaptable.

On the downside, Hothead and Random are prone to brash decisions. Hothead is easily provoked, and Random is easily distracted and is distracting. Icy lacks passion or ambition and is overall subdued.

Overall, Icy is the most stable of the three. And is the most tolerable for the other Decepticons to deal with(more tolerable than his original personality, even). Blitzwing used to switch between the faces more wildly and leaving him more disoriented. So he had to train himself to switch smoothly and default to Icy(partly so he doesn't piss off Megatron too much).

And as a final note! He was best buddies with Astrotrain. But things ended tragically. I don't have details set in stone, but I have a few ideas I'll throw out later.

[ozai-the-bonsai]

Cry for the Moon

| Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 |

Pairing: Zuko x firebender!reader

Important Notes: I don’t think there is any use of she/her in this chapter but for future chapters, please don’t be surprised if other characters refer to the reader as she/her. And just like any other Fire Nation citizen, the reader has amber eyes. Other than that, I have given my best to avoid any further details about the reader but constructive criticism is always welcome!

Warnings: none

A/N: I am looking forward to your feedback on this very first chapter, personally the first ones are the hardest :) if you want to be added to the taglist, let me know!

Taglist: @annonymatic @yoongiesstar @lost-inthe-v0id @lokigodofmyheart

Credits to @lost-inthe-v0id for the main idea behind the story

“This is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life,” you spoke with a low voice as your hands reached the necklace Zuko was holding. It was past midnight, and you two had to be sleeping but – as always – you decided to sneak out to lay under the moonlight, enjoying the peace the night brought to the palace. “Did you do it yourself?”

Zuko nodded in a proud manner. “I have always loved the way the moonlight reflected from your amber eyes,” his words made you turn your gaze away, feeling heat rushing to your face. “So I wanted to capture that beautiful light in this amber stone as well.”

Apparently, he had somehow managed to melt the amber, place some tiny silver pieces which looked like stars, and then form the amber in a crescent moon.

“Do you want me to help you put it on?”

You nodded, gathering your hair on your left shoulder. “I love it,” you spoke as you laid your left hand on the necklace, your eyes finding Zuko’s. “Thank you.”

Slowly, Zuko’s left hand found your right one, which was resting on the grass, and held it tight. “Once I become the Fire Lord and make you my Fire Lady, I will gift you the finest of jewels.”

A small smile formed on your lips, he was always so eager to show his love – you adored it. “That sounds lovely,” your left hand was still on the necklace as you spoke. “But I cannot imagine a better gift than this.” Zuko’s face lit up almost immediately. “Every time I look at it, I will remember how lucky we are to have each other.”

Zuko left an innocent kiss on your forehead, his lips were warm against your skin. “You are my favourite person in this world.”

Waves crashing against the ship woke you up from the dream – a memory from the life of a different person. Unconsciously, you moved your left hand to your neck, only to find emptiness there. There was no necklace. There hasn’t been a necklace for over three years.

Your mind was playing tricks on you now that you knew it was only a matter of time before you saw the Banished Prince.

Realising that sleep was not going to be easy to find, you wrapped yourself in your red gown and went outside, only to find the Princess there on the front deck. The cold wind of the ocean was causing you to use your breath of fire as you walked towards her.

Azula didn’t even look to see the owner of the footsteps, she could recognise you anytime. “Having trouble sleeping?” She asked, but it was rather a rhetorical question.

You nodded as you stood next to her, your hands rested on the railings. “Sometimes I feel like my dreams hate me,” you muttered. “What’s your excuse? Please don’t tell me you have been up all night, again.”

The Princess simply shrugged; her amber eyes were fixed on the waves. You heaved a sigh.

“Azula, darling, even you need to sleep once in a while.” You spoke with a tender voice, which caused Azula to look at you. “Do you really want your failure of a brother to see a slipping version of yourself just because you were too stubborn to admit that you were sleepy?”

“But I am not done calculating all the possible scenarios for tomorrow,” she spoke with a low voice that wanted to sound stubborn but in the end, she was just tired. “I must be ready for anything.”

Gently, you wrapped your left arm around Azula’s waist. Growing up together – and especially after Zuko was banished – you two had developed a special bond, perhaps such that Azula hadn’t shared with anyone before. Not even with her mother.

“Sleep deprived Azula won’t have the same capacity as a well-rested Azula – we have talked about this before.” You were slowly making both of you walk inside. “Your body needs to rest, your mind as well. With a crystal-clear mind, you will finish your calculations in no time tomorrow, I am sure of it.”

She would never admit it, but Azula loved the way you had this soft spot for her – it was too easy to read it from her eyes if one had known her long enough.

“Plus, sleep deprivation is bad for your skin – you will get dark rings under your eyes. Nobody wants that.”

Azula let out a chuckle as you stopped in front of her chambers. “You do know how to get to me.”

You let her waist go as you adjusted your red gown. “As long as you allow me to, Princess.” Your voice carried the hints of affection, sympathy, and loyalty. “I intend to be there to get to you, to assist you, and to kill for you, when you need me to.”

The edge of Azula’s lips curled upwards upon hearing you. “Allow yourself to rest,” she spoke as she walked into her chamber. “I can see that having to see Zuzu after all these years is starting to trouble you – I need you to bury the ghosts from the past.”

“We both know that the ghosts have all been buried long ago,” you said before heading back to your room. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t be standing here with you today.”

At least, that was what you had believed for the past three years – that all the flames from the past were snuffed out – until Azula visited you in your chambers a week ago.

[Flashback]

You giggled as you ran your fingers through Shuzi’s smooth, dark hair; his head was rested on your lap as he laid on your bed. It had been a peaceful morning with Shuzi surprising you with breakfast in bed – apparently, he had been in the kitchens, preparing your breakfast on his own, declining any kind of help offered by the servants.

“Do you have any plans for today?” Shuzi asked, his amber eyes wandering on your face.

“You know that I need to keep up with learning the languages,” you responded as your hand moved down to cup his face. “And I have this family dinner later today.”

Shuzi pouted in a playful way. “Won’t I get to see my girlfriend for the rest of the day?” he spoke imitating a baby’s voice, which caused you to giggle once again. “That’s too long!”

Before you could lean in and leave a small kiss on his nose, the doors to your chambers were opened to reveal Azula standing outside. She was already in her royal uniforms but without the armour – compared to the sleeping robes you still wore. Which made you realise that you hadn’t even combed your hair.

“Aw, adorable,” Azula spoke with a rather soft tone which sounded a bit too sarcastic and caused Shuzi you sit up straight. “Shuzi, give us a moment.”

Of course, just like everyone else in the Fire Nation, Shuzi wouldn’t dare make the Princess repeat herself. Hence, he quickly stood up, gathered his stuff, placed a quick kiss on your lips and left your chambers. As the servants closed the doors, you raised a questioning eyebrow at Azula.

“He is not a puppy, you know.”

Azula made herself comfortable on your couch while watching you walk towards the table to pour yourself some tea – it was still warm enough. “Well, he certainly allows himself to be used as one.” She responded, causing you to heave an exaggerated sigh. “Oh, please – only a fool could miss the way you get him to do everything for you.” Azula crossed her right leg over the left one. “A little bit girlish coquetry, a little bit kissing and congratulations! You get the finest top knot pin with rubies and black diamonds.”

Holding the tea with your both hands, you turned back to face Azula, the eyebrow still arched. “Azula, there is no need to be jealous over something so small – you are the princess, you can literally get anything you want at any time.”

“Me? Jealous?” Azula let out her well-known, condescending laughter. “You have said it yourself – I am the Princess. There isn’t possibly a person in this world that I could ever be jealous of.”

Once again, you heaved a sigh – Azula knew very well that you could see through her almost all the time for you knew her way too well. However, at moments like this, she would show the Ozai in herself by pretending that the deep connection you shared didn’t even exist.

Sometimes, you tended to get mad at her for such behaviour, but you tried to remind yourself why Azula acted the way she did and how you could heal her – and it wasn’t by approaching her the same horrible way Ozai had been doing for all these years.

“Azula..?”

The Princess brushed you off and you decided not to push further, you would probably have more private time with her after the day was over. “Anyways, I have some exceptionally important news for you.”

You took a long sip from your tea as you leant the table behind you. “I am all ears.”

“Father has assigned me a crucial task after the recent outrageous failure in the North,” Azula began explaining and you simply nodded – not that you believed the failure to be outrageous but to signal her to continue.

The moment you had heard about the plans to siege the Northern Watertribe from your father, you had known it was not going to work out the way Ozai had fashioned it to. There was a reason why the North hadn’t even received a single blow in the last hundred years.

Azula slowly stood up. “I am to stop Zuzu and Uncle from further disgracing my family. Father wants me to capture them and bring back as prisoners of the Fire Nation.”

“Will you be sailing to Earth Kingdom, then?” You asked with a curious look in your amber eyes.

“We will be sailing to Earth Kingdom.” Azula corrected you with a smirk on her lips. “I want you to come with me on this mission.”

The teacup between your hands fell down onto the ground, breaking into million pieces.

[Flashback ends]

Sleep hadn’t been eager to pull you into its soothing embrace that night. Before going on to this mission with Azula, your only concern had been whether you would miss Shuzi or not – well, you two hadn’t really spent several days apart ever since you got together. You being a noble resident in the Royal Palace due to your father’s military work and Shuzi’s family being the Fire Lord’s foremost advisors, you two could easily spend any night together at your chambers.

However, instead of missing Shuzi’s arms wrapped around your body at night, you had found yourself missing the peaceful sleep which wasn’t haunted by the ghosts from your past. It disturbed you greatly that even the anticipation of getting to see Zuko after three long years was starting to disrupt everything you had built since he was gone.

It hadn’t been easy to rebuild – no, it had been the most painful thing you had ever done in your sixteen years of life and you certainly did not intend to let the Banished Prince burn your whole world to ashes.

Not this time.

[moonpie016]

Aaahhhhhh....!!! It's done. It's finally done. A!!

Mind. Teehee.

---

---

Now how would I explain this calculated individual?

Well, that he's big brained (no pun intended). Actually, he says smart stuff to make himself seem responsible, and at points, it is. It can hold itself to the ground and verbally fight for what it deams as justice. ... doesn't do well physically though. While having a broader build, he lacks in actual strength. Just how Heart is strong in a physical sense, his feelings get the hold of his decisions. Fast paste. Opposites yet similar.

He's the youngest of the three, why? Because feelings seem like they'd come first then logic or critical thinking?? (I'm just guessing at this point). Mind being in power wouldn't necessarily crumble everything, it'd just be.... difficult to care for anything. Finding certain things insignificant. (Like memories, connections, literally relationships and just anything that would make Whole fully happy.) It cares. It just wants nothing bad to happen, and will do anything to prevent that.

Y'know how when you get hugged, and just sometimes don't want to be hugged, yet you want to do it to someone else. Because it feels nice. Yeah that's Sol. Physical affection? What's that?/j

Now I was going to have Mind in a skirt, but since I'll also be posting it on Instagram as well, I had to commit to pants. Though maybe I'll make a different version with a skirt. I draw Mind in dresses a lot. Idk, it just looks cool.

I also was going to put him in glasses, but I guess I forgot about that entirely. Yes he has glasses and reads. He has a whole (no pun intended) bookshelf in his room and living area.

I committed to giving HMS tails, not just Soul but the other two as well. Yippy! (<- Is this the normal way to spell it?? Have I just forgotten.....?)

Oh! Crown. Its crown can disappear and reappear whenever, likes it always being there to a symbol of respect.

---

My brain is already done with the words? But it feels like more could be added. Maybe.

Though I don't want this to be too long. This ain't the end of these character references though. >:]

Hope you enjoy.

---

[referrix]

Dorm Floor Plan

"I have a floor plan I'm pretty happy with" I said 4 iterations in. This is... maybe seven eight. And three days later. I've just gotta fling this one out, I can't keep nitpicking it.

I'm still not entirely happy with the nook, I probably could have gotten the proper fit if I'd been willing to move the bathroom out (and mirror it over to the other side) but I need to be done with this or I'm going to send myself completely barmy.

fellow tumblrina @dagstar7 passed along a link to a copy they'd made of what may have been the official copy of the dormitory floor plan, unfortunately the source has been lost to the depths of the internet, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I was however pretty pleased to discover that my floor plan looked pretty similar, although their copy's nook was slightly more rupee shaped, and their bathroom was flat.

I've assumed a bit of mirroring in the dorm that should be just the other side of Stella's wall judging by the windows and balconies from the outside. (the windows and balconies that really don't work once you start measuring from the inside...)

My last edit was to slim the common room from 5m to 3.5m. I have previously calculated the balcony windows/doors to be at least 4m across, but looking at the space they have I realised it looked pretty similar to one of the main living spaces in my house which is also 3m (and change) across, and it's more than enough space for that.

*Edited the pics as I was typing, just greyed some step lines in the rooms and removed the outer stair line on the nook. The steps in the room are only two deep, but they do have a different colour than the rest of the carpet in the bedrooms, so the original step outlines included that, making it look like there was three steps per room.

Apart from the nook and the bathrooms, the biggest liberty I've taken is centralizing the window in Stella's upstairs room, because her bedroom window is mostly central in her room, the only window above it should be directly above it, and there's just not reasonably enough space between floors for the stairs to wind back and forth for them to come out where they do, unless the stairs are a ladder.

I was actually looking for a shot of someone falling down Stella's stairs when I found the bathroom, because I remembered it happening, and I feel certain I remember a shot looking down the stairs proving they go in a straight line, but the only fall down the stairs I can find is in episode 6.19, which is the new apartments, not the old dorm, and didn't have the angle I remembered.

Here are some older iterations, staring with the one with the "5m" wide common room on the left, and a more squared in version of the nook in blue.

Actually, it's a little weird/interesting, but for the last iteration I actually flipped which way I was viewing the map?

[teleit]

Questions I would like to ask Rhaenyra, part 2

These questions are still not the result of long and careful thought, but rather spontaneous nonsense that came to my mind, but someone has to ask, why not me?

11) Aegon's Prophecy - by what criteria did Viserys determine that the promised prince would be born through YOUR line? The only fundamental difference between Targtowers and you is Aemma Arryn. So the Arryns are the cornerstone of the promised prince's birth?

12) The prophecy again. Why did Viserys decide that HE had any relation to the promised prince? If there was no gender inequality in Old Valyria, then Rhaenys and Laena are the true heirs, so either Baela or Rhaena bears the burden of being the progenitor of the promised prince. Viserys was not chosen for any merit, but for having a penis.

13) And again - the prophecy. If this is a Targaryen prophecy, isn't it undermined by the dilution of blood? The Arryns, Strongs, and Velaryons all dilute the blood of true dragonriders (Velaryons are questionable, but still). If the blood is strong (heh), then with each generation, if Jace becomes king, not only the distinctive appearance but also the special magic of Valyria is lost, replaced by the magic of the Andals and the First Men? Appoint your Aegon as your heir, in that case.

14) Prophecy, fuck. Why do you think the prophecy will only come true if you are crowned? If the promised prince is born from your blood, just betroth your child/grandchild to the child/grandchild of King Aegon II, and there will be no need for war, bloodshed, and dragon slaying. Or do you care not about the fate of the world, but about power?

15) Are you sure, absolutely sure, that Aegon and Viserys won't grow up jealous of your three eldest children, who will get more than them, despite being bastards? Yes, the little ones idolize Jace as children, but is there any guarantee that Aegon will never feel bitter that as the first legitimate son of Queen Rhaenyra, he gets crumbs compared to a bastard? Daemon is their father, if there's one thing that man has in abundance, it's stupidity, impudence, and arrogance.

16) What makes YOU a special woman? Why should your rights be the only ones respected, and your ambitions respected? Why can't the daughters of House Stokeworth and House Rosby become heirs? If it's about your Varilian heritage and dragon ownership, why can't Baela, the eldest daughter of the eldest daughter of Corlys and Rhaenys, rule Driftmark?

17) What the hell is up with your inept wartime leadership? Why are you as unprepared to rule as your younger brother, who is only 21 and has never been trained to be a king? You've been an heir for 20+ years, why are you wringing your hands and acting like a fool during a crisis?

18) Why did Vermithor listen to you (I already know the answer - a pathetic shark jump, but I want to hear Rhaenyra's version)? It makes no sense, contradicts the lore, has no plot importance, and just looks forced and stupid.

19) Why, with THREE dragons at your disposal, didn't you go after Aemond? He killed your son, and you stand there grinning like an idiot!

20) What kind of mental gymnastics did you need to do to "son for son"? If we follow your reasoning, then for the death of your second son, Aemond should die as the second son, for the death of Jaeherys, Jacaerys or his and Baela's firstborn should be killed, if you want Aegon to die, then you can kill your Aegon as a namesake, or your firstborn. If you also want "a daughter for a daughter", then who should be killed for Visenya - Helaena or Jaehaera? What parameters should be entered into these calculations?

21) Speaking of Visenya. Why the fuck do you blame the greens for the death of your unviable child? The girl had a hole in her chest, it's not something that can be fixed by simply carrying her to term.

I was promised protection, so I'm not afraid to ask these questions =) Maybe there will be a third part, if I still delve into this topic, and not catch what is on the surface.

[the-nosy-neighbor]

Looky Loo Puzzle

Looky Loo Code

I’ve been wrestling with this thing for a couple of weeks now, so I’m passing this on in the hopes that it makes sense to someone, or sparks an idea of their own.  I just ask that you let me know what you think, so I can stop making myself crazy.  I am very bad at puzzles as much as I like them.  We start with the stickers page.

Notes on the stickers: 

Directions they are looking

Wally looking left

Julie is closing one eye and winking with the other; the text in news says “keep an eye on” which makes me think this is a major clue, but I’m not getting it.

Frank is looking off to the right

Howdy is looking to the center

Home is looking off to the right

Poppy is looking up and to the right

Eddie is looking down and to the right

Sally is looking up and to the right

Barnaby is looking to the left.

Characters they are looking at if you follow the gaze:

Wally is looking at no one, unless off page counts as a continuance, then it would be Frank

Julie is looking at Frank

Frank, same as Wally but reversed (and I kind of have them as adversaries in my head)

Howdy is looking at Poppy

Poppy is looking off screen, or at Wally

Eddie is looking off screen or at the mail or at Julie

Sally is looking at Poppy

Barnaby appears to be looking at Sally

Additional details:

Almost all of the water balls have a character with their eyes closed.  The exceptions are Howdy (in between two characters with their eyes closed) and Wally (eyes seem to be open but facing away from us)

3 characters (plus 2 of Howdy’s family members) are singing

On the sparkly versions of the gifs, Poppy’s and Eddie’s mouths are moving

Some of the characters have sparkles on their blue areas only.  Exceptions are Julie (full sparkle below the neck), Frank (sparkles on the black, he doesn’t have much blue), Poppy (all of Poppy, but not her nest, Howdy (full sparkle)

Only on blue:  Wally, Eddie, Sally, Barnaby

So, I have two different methods I was considering:

 Use an alphabet cypher, with the alphabet listed out in rows of five, with one square housing 2 numbers.  I used c/k as it was the example I found, but I/J or X/Y makes more sense.

That one doesn’t really use the stickers page, so in trying to adapt the model to the stickers page, I thought maybe the characters need to be turned into the alphabet code, with three letters for each character, and one for home.

Using the first method, I solved for two variables.  Everyone is pointing to the “start with a musical monster” as the instruction as to where to start, but I’m torn between starting with J for Julie or M for Musical Monster.  So I did both.  The way this went was laying out the alphabet in a 5 x 5, with C/K:

And then I used the directional arrows to take me to the next letter.  If on an edge and told to go northwest, for example, I would move one line up and then one line west. In the instance of V, that would be U.  There is the difficulty of what to do with the eyes that are looking straight ahead, but I used that as a repeat of the letter before.  On other matches, I treated those directions as individual.  So if I started on M, it would be S then Y.

Starting with M (Remember C/K is shared):

SYZDY/XCGCI/DCWQM/HMMMS

Starting with J:

LRSWR/QVEVB/WVUOJ/AJJJL

Obviously, this makes no sense, so I put it in a substitution cipher decoder and got things that looked almost like words:

M—CTINTHERMONEDASUSSSC

IN THERE

J—NTISTHEREASEDCOLOOON

IS THERE A SECOND LONT; THERE IS A SECOND

There is also the option of treating the repeated directions as the same letter, in which case it is:

M—SSTXS/RWAWC/XWQQM/HMMMS

J—LLMQL/PUYUV/QUOOJ/AJJJL

Through the decoder, and it is:

M—TTHETWASAREALLINIIIT

THE REAL WAS A LINIT TT; THERE WAS A

J—TTINTHEREONELLSASSST

THERE IS ONE LAST TT

Also almost words.  These seem to be more words than the above.  I have also considered that the repeated positions indicate a capital.

I went ahead and calculated for a shared I/J and got:

M Repeated=TTONTHEREANESSIMIT

M No repeated=MONTOHEREDSTICALAM

J Repeated=OOSHOWERETHELLINIO

J Not repeated=URPARTISIONATHELEC

Shared W/X:

M Repeated=OODCONTHERIESSANAL

M No repeated=CISMORELETTHEYCANAM

J Repeated=RMCOMANINGONTHESNER

J No repeated=TTINTHEREANESSOFOT

Now for 2: 

Seeing as there were some references to brickwork/masons, the pig pen cypher seems like a logical choice.  Also, there are 4 images for each character. 

Based on the 4 gif being very different and the letters of the alphabet, I went with 3 for each character and one for Home:

And so on, with Home being N and a shared I/J

The weakness of this theory is that I have no indication of which letter in the grid to select for each character.  I could take the doubled symbols at an indication it is the second letter, but there isn’t really any indicator for the third. 

Or it could be that closed/open eyes are an indicator?

I have also tried the straight up follow it around the stickers and use the first letter of the names, but Home and Howdy kind of ruin that to start with, and it is a very limited set of letters.

I have tried converting the positions to numbers, starting with 1 at Julie and going clockwise (because we have had a couple of clocks, as well as Julie’s one eye is closed and the other is open and looking to the right). 

I used 9 for home in one string and 0 for home in the next.  I also considered the centered eyes on row 5 to be home:

W=8

J=1

F=2

H=7

00,99

P=3

E=6

S=5

B=4

I also reversed it into counterclockwise, because why not.

44361755241788236994

If it is going to be analogous to letters, there can be no value greater than 26.  I decided to try to assign each number to a letter, using two integers when it wasn’t over 26

4 4 3 6 17 5 5 24 17 8 8 23 6 9 9 4

4 4 3 6 17 5 5 24 17 8 8 23 6 0 0 4

(there is no letter for zero)

Adding is an idea, but I don’t know what quantities to group.  I could go as high as possible without going over 26, I could do pairs?

25 24 21 17 13

25 24 21 10

These aren’t many, so it doesn’t seem to work

8 9 8 10 6 8 16 5 15 13

Not a lot of variety in pairs.

And what to do with those?  I can give them a letter assignment:

4 4 3 6 17 5 5 24 17 8 8 23 6 9 9 4

D D C F Q  E E  X  Q  H H W F I I D

But what to do then, I would assume the same decoder as before:

RRENATTHASSINGGR

Nothing stands out there.  I’m at a loss.  Ideas?

[kfcdoubledown]

I bought an 8bitdo Retro mechanical keyboard!

(Picture not mine, source from PC World.)

I wanted a plastic keyboard, I really do not actually use the knob on a Keychron board I have, it still comes in a scooped keycap profile, and it has a companion numpad with a calculator built in. Win/win/win!

This keyboard comes in four designs (not colorways, full designs) themed after the NES, the Famicom, the IBM Model M, and the Commodore 64 keyboard. The NES keycaps have multiple different fonts on them, the Famicom keycaps have Japanese sublegends, the Model M keycaps have a mock stepped Caps Lock key, and the Commodore 64 keycaps are an apparently off-the-shelf SA set from one of many, many, many keycap companies floating around China (I recognize their font and profile shape from Akko ASA keycaps and numerous other scooped profile keycap sets you can have cheaply off of Aliexpress and Amazon. Do check those out, genuinely, you'd struggle to find a bad scooped keycap set these days and I love scooped profiles over Cherry and OEM.)

The build quality of the actual keyboard itself is good, feels like a very similar plastic blend to what 8bitdo uses for its controllers like their Pro 2. Stabilizers are smooth and don't rattle, the legends on the keycaps are reasonably sharp and in NES-appropriate font, the keycaps themselves are MDA profile (I would prefer SA, but beggars can't be choosers) and are somewhat thin but still good quality, dye-sublimated PBT, no warp on the spacebar. Arrow keys are a separate color from the two tones that make up the main keycap set and made to resemble a d-pad. The keyboard itself is somewhat light, but my perception is skewed from using a metal keyboard for a long time, and this is after all a plastic shell, top-mounted keyboard. Even so I think I'll probably end up cracking open the keyboard and putting in some liquid silicone as noise-dampening and additional weight.

Two knobs control both wireless functionality and computer software volume, the wireless knob is heavy with only three options while the volume one is light with many individual steps. The volume knob can be somewhat unresponsive on individual steps. Bluetooth is very responsive and wants to pair with my computer the moment it's flicked over to, and 2.4ghz wireless comes with a receiver that slots into the back of the keyboard magnetically for storage. A power light on the right of the keyboard mimics the NES power light and pulses while charging, is steady while using wireless or when fully charged and connected over USB.

The underlying PCB is south-facing hotswap sockets (who the hell cares their orientation, this only matters for lighting, which this keyboard doesn't have). By default the keyboard comes with Kailh box whites, a very light clicky switch. I yanked them out immediately and put Boba U4T tactiles in because they're the king of all switches. They thunk nicely in this chassis, the Kailh whites weren't slouches either, they did pick a good stock choice for switch without resorting to Gateron or Outemu blue horseshit.

The NES version of the keyboard came with a two-button macro pad that hooks over TRRS cable (you recognize it as a 3.5mm jack or headphone cable) to one of four ports on the top-right of the keyboard. These are essentially just two keyboard switches with giant keycaps on a separate board and the buttons are populated by Gateron greens. The switches are nowhere close to heavy enough to approximate a button, and I gave them Kailh box navies. Still not enough, but better.

These keyboards also come wiiiiiith a companion number pad!

(Picture credit the 8bitdo store.)

While I don't actually have this one in hand just yet I do have it on order. It looks like it'll be about the same build quality as the main keyboard, and it caught my eye for four reasons and ended up making me purchase the full set as a result:

The numpad has a built in calculator.

Same aesthetic choices as the main keyboard (NES, Famicom, IBM Model M, Commodore 64)

Magnetically attaches to the right side of the keyboard to transform it into a more era appropriate full-size.

Far and away the cheapest wireless mechanical numpad with calculator on the market, sitting at $45.

An important note though is that the Famicom and NES keypads don't attach to their respective keyboards, simply because their respective keyboards don't have magnets inside the sides of the chassis to allow for it. I have some cheap button magnets laying around that I'll use for this purpose and probably see if they're strong enough to be placed on the inside of the board and allow for the numpad to connect to it. I also imagine there's going to be a repop or v2 of this keyboard in the future that has this done already, seeing as the Commodore 64 version of the board and I believe the Model M version of the board already have that.

I'll reblog this and give some actual definitive thoughts on the numpad once it's in my hands.

As far as the board itself is concerned, I quite like it. The keycap profile is agreeable, the nostalgia pandering targeted me with laser precision, the board sounds quite good acoustically (especially for being a top-mount keyboard!) and it has a volume knob I'll see if I can reprogram some day. While I normally hate TKL layouts, I'm putting up with it because it will eventually be a fullsize with the numpad. Worth $150 total? Don't know, can't answer that for you, it's worth it to me but I very specifically wanted a keyboard themed after an old Nintendo console with no setup required and no chasing down or commissioning GMK keycap sets. I also wanted a calculator numpad.

[elkement]

I've recently started to create geometric drawings (axonometry) of mathematical functions, the same ones I usually tackle with code.

One could say it does not make sense to painstakingly draw what code could create quickly. But for me the interesting thing is to grasp these functions on a different, more intuitive level - compared to mentally processing mathematical formulae or casting it into computer code. After literally decades of dealing with mathematical expressions and code I have rediscovered descriptive geometry, as sort of a "third language" (in addition to math or code) to say the same things. I am also fascinated by the little math puzzles that pop up when I create these drawings, and which require a completely different approach than calculations or programming.

I am usually drawing them at least three times, until I am somewhat satisfied. The journey is the reward anyway :-)

Here is the work-in-progress photo of my taming two favorite functions of mine - often already used in my creative coding art. I called them "Reality and Imagination" as these are two "towers" or "trumpets" that represent real and imaginary part of the complex function 1/z. Grand words, but you also describe them as: Stack circular rings upon each, ring diameter decreasing reciprocally with height, align along the circumference. Then flip over, and then rotate by 90 degrees.

Circles are just ellipses, seems to be easy, but the 2D projections overlap greatly with the 3D axonometric image as I am currently using "small" A4 watercolor paper. The real challenge will be to convey the spirit of this trumpet-like surface without of course create all the giant circles.... as moving closer to the origin of the vertical axis, the radii of the circles get larger and larger, and finally the straight axis is the "circle with infinite radius".

Anyway, I actually do not really want to "explain math", I am more meditating upon these structures :-) I am drawing two versions in parallel - with slightly differently positioned 2D projections, and different sizes of the circles. The version were I colored the ellipses / circles already was the first, more rough one - and I guess I will test something more bold with that one. The other one will maybe become a more delicate drawing. I also admit, that I take a look at the code-generated structures - not for comparing details, but to get the overall look right :-)

[univac1219]

Hello! Welcome to tumblr, I'm already a massive fan and I was wondering what exactly the UNIVAC was used for back in the day and what kind of functions you have it perform for demonstrations now? Thank you!

Oh my goodness, my first question! Well, in a sentence, the UNIVAC 1219 was used to point and fire missiles at enemy aircraft. Now, we can break this down:

The UNIVAC 1219 is a militarized version of the UNIVAC 418. This thing has better resistance to salty air and other things you’d want a seafaring computer going into battle to have, but at their hearts they’re the same. There were three different missile systems the UNIVAC was a part of: Talos, Terrier, and Tartar. These three systems were among the first sea-to-air missile systems fielded by the U.S. Navy.

The UNIVAC 1219 would receive data from the AN/SPG-55 radar and analyze the data it received. Running one of dozens of programs lost to time (or on a single last-of-its-kind magnetic tape we are worried about damaging), it will pass on the results of its calculations to the missile system itself. The missile will go where it is told, and hit an enemy plane.

But our UNIVAC 1219 is unique! The specific machines here are from the John Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. At John Hopkins, they developed the fire control programs ran on Navy ships! They had a radar and everything, and I only wish we had a radar and missile battery too ;D.

As for what we do for demonstrations, we have assortments of cool programs we run, and I encourage you to swing by and see for yourself. Our oldest party trick is printing ASCII art of Spock and George Washington, but maybe if this post performs well I will divulge some other cool things we do ;).

Thank you for the question! I am loving this blog rn and appreciate the great support you all have given me.

[aztarion]

Hiii omg its so good to see a fellow book of hungry names enjoyer out there.... i was wondering if u managed to get sex scenes with podge ingame? Bcuz I've seen people mention it's possible and ever since then I have been desperately trying to no avail 😩 it's cool if you didn't, just thought i'd shoot my shot (also im literally obsessed with your art its so good)

omg HIIIIII thank you 😭 i actually look cuckoo bananas in the tag but it & night road reignited my love for world of darkness so idc lmao

anyway shitty diy romance guide under the cut

including other companions bc ive seen ppl have problems hooking up with melodie too but there is/was a podge-specific bug ill get to after the general stuff. disclaimer first tho english is not my native language & i dont play on steam so cant code dive properly BUT essentially:

podge, elton & melodie’s routes require some initial investment in charisma—not a lot (2 dots is fine) but the higher ur charisma the higher the modifier will be during romance checks, which will help you pass even if your relationship score with them isnt the best/mid range 2/3 dots. in the same vein some of the convictions your character can have also act as modifiers. what ive been able to piece together is that:

melodie likes when you uphold & respect the litany/tradition & the three families, but keep humans/nomi at a distance or out of the picture entirely for their own safety

elton likes when you maintain dignity in your situations, are logical/calculative making decisions & successful in your chosen means to an end (failing rolls is swagless behavior he will judge you)

podge likes when you weaponize your Rage—not necessarily escalating everything to violence (but it is a fair bit of that lmao) but in terms of like challenging the litany/tradition/authority, protecting the weak/disadvantaged

nin likes when you remain level-headed/composed, keep an open mind, respect her as a person/don’t treat her different as a wolfborn, utilize & accept your spiritual third as garou—recognize that cultivating gaia with kindness & hope are as important as protecting her with teeth & claws

TLDR for best relationship modifiers:

Elton: 2 or more dots in Charisma, high Find Purpose Through Dignity conviction

Melodie: 2 or more dots in Charisma, high The Litany Sustains Us conviction

Podge: 2 or more dots in Charisma, high Our Weapon Is Rage conviction

Nin: 2 or more dots in Composure, high Our Answer Is Spirit conviction

so the issue with podge’s route from what i can tell was a coding error that has since been fixed by kyle, basically during the first date most people opt to kiss podge back, which obviously boosts your romance score but at that point in time it boosted it past the threshold check for the sex scene & locked you out of it for both opportunities LOL. this is no longer the case but if your game hasn’t updated since May (not on version: 52507) you will have to play hard to get with podge (dont kiss him back) or your ass is NAWT getting dicked down later. all other scenes proceeds as normal tho

hopefully this helps!! im currently (slowly) playing thru again testing more stuff so i might update this or make a more detailed cleaner post in the future ^^

[anim-ttrpgs]

Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy Rulebook June 6th 2024 Update and Changelog

It’s the first Thursday of the first month of us doing a regular patreon rulebook update on the first Thursday of every month, and that means a major update!

It has been so nice to be able to finally work on the rulebook again instead of doing nothing but Kickstarter prep and promotion, and man have I been hard at work. Last week, if you count my A.N.I.M. job and my “normal” job, the shortest workday I had was 9 hours and several of them were 14 hours. At least I enjoy both jobs!

We have started getting more art into the rulebook, and getting those stretch goals taken care of. One stretch goal (the forgery rules) has already been added in full, with another stretch goal about 75% done, plus a complete overhaul of how Chase Scenes work and a whole new mechanic for determining how the police react to the actions of the PCs. Now, as the PCs are investigating crimes, if they’re not careful, the police could be investigating their crimes in the background too!

In addition to all the changes from the changelog below, we now have new and improved character sheets, and the Eureka adventure module “FORIVA: The Angel Game” is now fully finished, not counting the artwork, but that is going to get its own post.

Here is the full changelog! Remember, you can get a copy of this beta version of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy, along with three adventure modules, two short stories, and a novella, all for just $5 on our patreon page. And there’s no better time to do so, because of the Gorgon Initiative! Long story short, the playable gorgon monster type is a Kickstarter stretch goal we didn’t hit, but if we can reach 50 total patreon subscribers before the end of June, we’re going to be adding it to the book anyway! At the time of writing this, we’re at 41/50! You could make the difference, and get all this new Eureka content to boot!

CHAPTER 1

Have started working on replacing the examples of play with updated ones that actually fit the current and slightly more stable version of the rules. These will be found in various chapters. You can see them in the table of contents.

Added a Foreword, a section on other media to offer you inspiration when playing eureka, and a section on some of the subtler themes of eureka

Copy-edited Foreword

A few minor clarifications in the Making Rolls section

Added a chart explaining the percentage chances of failures, partial successes, and full successes for modifiers from -7 to +7. 

Added Heat optional rule. A whole new set of mechanics for tracking how much police attention the investigators may be drawing, as well as how law enforcement will respond. Currently a work-in-progress, but mostly functional already.

CHAPTER 2

Added the Forgery skill to write-in skills

Many new snoops have been added. 

Removed the “Seating” stat for vehicles, you know how many people can safely fit in a car

Removed the placeholder boat entries from the item list because we did not hit that kickstarter stretch goal

Added Skateboard to item list. 

Added four-wheeler to item list. 

Added Acceleration values to all vehicles in the vehicle list. Acceleration is a new stat used with the new way that Speed is calculated for Chases.

Adjusted the Driving bonus of motorcycles and dirtbikes.

Changed Large Mansion cost to 25 Wealth Points in character creation.

Started copy-editing this chapter.

CHAPTER 3

Added vehicle crashes to irregular forms of damage section

Tiny tweak to Drowning/Suffocation rules.

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

Completely revamped the way that Speed is calculated. 

Added a mechanic to determine how many nodes ahead a fleeing character starts.

Added an optional rule for bringing an end to chases 

Added vehicle attack rules for use during car chases

Added more guidelines for how to make your own obstacles

Added recommended numbers of nodes for chases and recommended distance between obstacles 

Added the work-in-progress random obstacle tables

On-Foot Urban Chase Obstacles table is finished but not edited

Vehicle Urban Chase Obstacles table is finished but not edited

On-Foot Wilderness Chase Obstacles table is finished but not edited. 

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

Increased capacity of an unfurled thing from beyond’s ‘stomach’ from three to fourteen.

Thing from beyond can now more easily attempt to engulf more victims after already containing one or more. This now prompts an escape attempt by victims inside rather than automatic escape.

Thing from beyond can now get a bonus to mimicry attempts by consuming a sample of the intended mimicry target’s DNA. 

Thing from beyond can now attempt to mimic a person they have never seen or heard by consuming a sample of their DNA, but narrator makes a hidden roll about it, so accuracy of mimicry will be unknown.

Gave acceleration value to witch’s brooms and other flying transportation

Gave Acceleration of +6 to Superhuman Speed trait

Gave vampire small bat manifestation +2 Acceleration

Gave vampire wolf manifestation +4 Acceleration 

Gave vampire massive bat beast manifestation +4 Acceleration

Gave wolfman wolf form +4 Acceleration

Gave lycanthrope wolf form +4 Acceleration

Added ability to resist curses to fairy and witch

Added ability for fairy to transfer curses to different names as a means of protecting themselves from curses. This gives them more of an incentive to collect names. 

Added a tiny bit about the fairy world

Added Monsters Eating Monsters section to provide rulings for some edge cases where monsters might eat other monsters and what would happen if they did

Stay tuned for a post about "FORIVA: The Angel Game", a terrifying Eureka adventure module, soon!

Elegantly designed and thoroughly playtested, Eureka represents the culmination of three years of near-daily work from our team, as well as a lot of our own money. If you’re just now reading this and learning about Eureka for the first time, you missed the crowdfunding window unfortunately, but our Kickstarter page is still the best place to learn more about what Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy actually is, as that is where we have all the fancy art assets, the animated trailer, links to video reviews by podcasts and youtubers, and where we post regular updates on the status of our progress finishing the game and getting it ready for final release.

Beta Copies through the Patreon

If you want more than just status updates, going forward you can download regularly updated playable beta versions of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy and it’s adventure modules by subscribing to our Patreon at the $5 tier or higher. Subscribing to our patreon also grants you access to our patreon discord server where you can talk to us directly and offer valuable feedback on our progress and projects.

The A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club

If you would like to meet the A.N.I.M. team and even have a chance to play Eureka with us, you can join the A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club discord server. It’s also just a great place to talk and discuss TTRPGs, so there is no schedule obligation, but the main purpose of it is to nominate, vote on, then read, discuss, and play different indie TTRPGs. We put playgroups together based on scheduling compatibility, so it’s all extremely flexible. This is a free discord server, separate from our patreon exclusive one. https://discord.gg/7jdP8FBPes

Other Stuff

We also have a ko-fi and merchandise if you just wanna give us more money for any reason.

We hope to see you there, and that you will help our dreams come true and launch our careers as indie TTRPG developers with a bang by getting us to our base goal and blowing those stretch goals out of the water, and fight back against WotC's monopoly on the entire hobby. Wish us luck.

[isabeljkim]

What the hell is going on with Day Ten Thousand:

Day Ten Thousand was weird enough that I felt like it deserved directors commentary, even though I’ve stopped explaining myself mostly except when I do.

Here’s a disclaimer before we begin: don’t read too much into it. I've noticed our culture wants to explain young womens’ art as some sort of public confessional booth and our current culture has a fetish for the autobiographical. Fuck that. I didn’t write three different POVs and three interlocking nonlinear narratives about the nature of storytelling as a psychic technology to be told that my writing isn’t a calculated Craft with a capital C. Now whether it is good Craft is a decision for you, not for me. 

Anyway. 

Day Ten Thousand is a satire of an Isabel story by way of Vonnegut pastiche. We’ll come back to this. 

I called Day Ten Thousand “psychoanalysis bait” on twitter so I shall put all my cards on the table so that your psychoanalysis is at least accurate. Note that these are only my cards, because other people deserve their privacy. I guess you could probably Google all of this but like, jeez. Don’t.

I had a pretty regular time in college except for the tangential deaths. 

When I was twenty, I was the opinion editor for my university newspaper and a girl who was a friend of a friend killed herself by walking in front of a subway. There was then a sort of a small suicide bubble which was a little bit public because we were an Ivy, and one of my opinion columnists was kinda suicidal, and I, without any training, ended up in charge of writing a front page editorial about the mental health crisis on campus on account of the dead kids, etc, and talk to administration about the dead kids. 

I hate talking about dead kids. Don’t ask me about it, or about the reporting. I don’t want to talk about it. 

The whole thing sucked shit and it’s why I’m a lawyer now and not a reporter. 

If this was a story that would be the only fact, but this is reality so I have to mention that a couple years later a guy I knew got literally hate crimed and murdered in a forest. I found out about that because I saw his friend crying in public and didn’t stop to ask what was wrong. Later I heard about this in the news, and realized my acquaintance had been Literally Fucking Murdered. A few months ago I had been arguing with him in the literary magazine editors meeting about whether a poem was good or not. I think he won that argument. Then he was murdered for being gay. 

These were my introductions to the specific emotion of “sometimes people die and you don’t feel like you get to feel bad about their deaths and you still think about it a couple times a month seven years later.” 

You can probably guess where the subject material of this story came from.

Day Ten Thousand was a story about inevitable deaths, and the difference between a death in a story and a death in reality, and about…the way a death marks a narrative and a real life and how it becomes fictionalized over time. I also saw a clean way to finally do my deep time / far future story, which was something I had been thinking about on and off for a couple of years (the original version was about a shaman in the deep-time era who has a vision about having to do a murder re: preserving genetic material for the future, but it never really gelled in a way that made sense). 

I had also been wanting to write something a little metafictional, because I felt like I was writing the same story over and over (if you’ve noticed my stuff getting weirder, that’s why. I was on a bit of an experimentalist kick late last year and early this year). 

So it’s a satire of an Isabel story. I’m self-aware enough to note my obvious recurring motifs: time travel, dead people, grief, people who have a weird relationship to each other, a third-act twist, the tendency to punctuate with in-universe facts to imply emotion, to tell x in order to show y, egregious and blatant use of the second person. And then there’s the stuff that you wouldn’t know, but I do: I dislike writing in the first person, I wanted to do something nonlinear, I think a lot about stories about stories, about the idea of a story as a technology, I find myself dropped into recursive fate-like thought patterns. So a lot of this story is both my self-deprecating poking fun at myself and my habits, and also my thesis statement about…what is the point of fiction if not to make sense of the past and the future, I suppose.

The reason it is a Vonnegut pastiche is because I like Vonnegut a lot and I was trying to do something Slaughterhouse-5-ish with drastically less fucked source material. Sorry Kurt. 

There are three stories happening in Day Ten Thousand, and a secret fourth story. Each story is a suicide loop. The protagonist is trying to break a specific loop by telling a story. This story is about accepting what you have to, and changing what you can. This is a story about letting go and also not letting go. The emotional range of each narrative affects the other psychically, because by changing the vibe of the metanarrative, the individual narratives are allowed to change. 

The story in the archaic is a story that is being told postmortem, it is all hypotheticals based on fact. The story in the future is a singular narrative happening in real time until it isn't. And the story in the present is a guy telling the story about the future, which requires him to tell the story about the past as well, and mostly what Dave is doing here is avoiding the question, but it reflects how Dave thinks about the girl dying in front of the train. 

Does that make sense? No? That’s fair. That’s a postmortem explanation of what actually happened. What actually happened is that I rewrote Day Ten Thousand six times, each time more frustrating than the last, each time with the neutral-ish narrator taking up more and more air. And over time the narrator became a participant, and that’s what created the secret fourth story between “you” and the narrator. 

I had thought there were only three loops that needed to be escaped - the past (archaic, pinned story), and the future (space station, mutable fact), and that the present (the narrator’s world) was something that was static (pinned fact). After all, the girl’s already dead. She’s already stepped in front of the train. 

But the narrator isn’t doing so hot. The narrator is also Dave. And the narrator is telling the story to someone. Somewhere between version one and version six, I realized the only version of this story that makes sense is the one where the story is a conversation, and that you and I, as the narrator and the person at the other end, were also in a loop. 

So. That's whats happening.

I’m not sure if I love the ending. But I rewrote it six times and this one felt as final as it is going to get. I am done reinventing the fucking wheel. You know how it is with spaghetti. Promise I’ll write you something normal next time, I think I’ve gotten the avant- garde out of my system for a few months. 

And hey, I know I said all cards on the table but people deserve their privacy and that includes the kid i used to be when I was twenty, sitting in the shitty little windowless opinion column office, writing about suicide. 

Anyway. Day Ten Thousand is about stuff and things. Themes. So it goes. 

Thanks for reading. I’ll see you later. 

If that was too depressing for you, here are some fun facts: 

The main character is Dave after 2001: A Space Odyssey because I had wanted to make a “I’m sorry Dave I can’t do that” joke, but I couldn’t shove it in :( 

I just thought that phlebotomist was a funny word but I also fucked myself because I misspelled it every time. 

I reread half of Slaughterhouse Five to write this but then my copy got returned to the library automatically so I didn’t finish it. (yes, I’ve read it before, like three times)  

I took one single evolutionary anthropology course in college and it shows.  

I did end up looking at the wikipedia page for “the wheel” for this and then wondering exactly what I was doing with my life. 

About half the facts in this are real, and I read a couple of papers for a couple of things in it (that I promptly then ignored), but the rockets-rome-horse’s ass thing is specifically a story that my friend Max H. likes to tell.