#i wrote this like a wiki page whatever

[chadillacboseman]

Fuck it, I created a new Mortal Kombat race for an OC.

Race: Strakteran

History: The Strakteran were once one and the same with the Kytinn, a race of insectoid hive-mind creatures that hail from the island of Arnyek. At some point in their timeline, after the introduction of outside life forms, the species began to branch and evolve. While Kytinn are winged and form from larvae implanted into hosts, Strakteran take their characteristics from arachnids. It is theorized that many other insectoid races branched off as well, adapting to survive in various climates and against various threats.

Distribution: The Strakteran are a matriarchal society that hails from Ondarak, a rocky and rather inhospitable world comprised of deep cave systems and short daylight hours.

Etymology: Strakteran can have various levels of resemblance to their arachnid counterparts, with some sporting eight eyes, while others have six or four. Occasionally, a Strakteran will be born with only two, but they typically dwell closer to the surface in more well-lit areas or have had inter-breeding with binocular races. Most, if not all, have eight appendages, with four dedicated to movement and four that function as arms.

Strakteran possess mouths equipped with mandibles and venomous fangs; the level of toxicity in their venom is dependent on their subspecies.

Strakteran use many different methods of hunting, much like their arachnid counterparts. Most weave webs, while some prefer to chase prey, and still others use traps.

Strakteran are oviparous, reproducing by laying eggs in large clutches. The highly competitive pursuit of prey and territory often results in eggs being the target of rival clans.

Society: Unlike Kytinn, Strakteran do not have a hive mind, allowing each to act independently, though the matriarchal nature of their society does mean that females hold a higher rank.

Strakteran form "clans", small to midsize pods that center around the most mature female.

Envoys from various realms have attempted to make contact with the Strakteran, but are almost always met with violence. After Shao Kahn's annexation of Arnyek, they became wary of and hostile toward outsiders.

Culture: Though at first glance they may seem barbaric, Strakteran do have some semblance of culture; researchers have observed them vocalizing in what resembles song and have also recorded art on cave walls.

Strakteran young are cared for by the females of the clan in a communal setting, and orphans from other clans have been observed being accepted by former rivals.

[owlf45]

Sorry for being shippy but… does dabi like, like-like hawks in imaginary? Or is it a “i pity you moderately good looking bird” situation?

ill be fr, i've never gotten to the part in the anime/manga where dabi and hawks interact. i might joke around with them and if i ever catch up on the series, we'll see how it goes from there

[kakusu-shipping]

Forcibly taught today that Gali is not the ship tag for Gajeel/Lily but instead Gajeel/Lisanna and I cannot for the life of me think why

[kasarasun]

what if I made a thing or it already was that while Airplane wrote the world, Peerless Cucumber illustrated it (only the animals. And Binghe, fighting the animals.) And then then then

He'd totally do it on an alt account, right?? Peerless Cucumber can't be seen making fanart!! (And he's good at it. Like, wiki is using his art in the monsters and beasts pages (that Peerless Cucumber volleyed for. He also separated it from the plant section.) Because 1 its good 2 the artstyle is consistent 3 there isn't a lot of monster official art, other than that one with the black moon rhinoceros python and those other ones and 4 it's really that good)

Haha incomprehensible parenthesis nesting aside, Airplane is watching the forums, right? Not sure about other stuff in canon but he looks at the forums and the fanart and the fiction and most of it is probably corn and binghe and just a little bit of mobei-jun and also the wives tm but!! There's also that guy!!! The monsters guy!! (People would probably suspect 'Drawing the Beast's Ire'- or some other sex euphemism I'm not good at making those- of being Peerless Cucumber because 1 the writing style is the same 2 Peerless Cucumber is the number 1 contributor to the PIDW wiki and a lot of it is the monsters and beasts section and it makes sense, yes??) Anyway, Airplane shooting towards the sky suspects but not too seriously suspects Mr ire of being cucumber's fanart alt but uh uh that ends pre-transmigration section

So, Shen Yuan starts running about, right? Things seem really... familiar, maybe thats the word?- for some reason. This is because every animal and plant he's ever drawn, sketched- maybe even thought about but that's a stretch?- is his design. The firefly parallels hold their forelimbs like butterflies. That is how far down it goes. Maybe it doesn't come up until later, but beasts and monsters from fanfiction get involved, oc species, too... anyway,

Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky transmigrates 30 years (iirc) before Peerless Cucumber. He was an avid enough follower of Drawing the Beast's Ire to recognize that these are their designs! Here's where it gets really crazy. Xiao-Mobei comes along, and while he's still pretty young, Airplane can tell that this is Drawing Ire's design! Some aspect, maybe his ears or teeth, (this isn't a well built theoretical tangent) of Mobei isnt canon. Its Drawing Ire's. From that one Northern Kingdom collection. Whatever stretched his world building into coherence, completion, didn't just pull from fanwork, official art, whatever it could find, it went for Drawing the Beast's Ire's designs specifically. Damn that's crazy Airplane ahahaha moving on,

This is getting really long so I'll be a bit more concise, (want to know more? Talk to me. Please talk to me. I want to interact with the fandom. Ask me questions. Poke your fingers into my cage.) This all comes to head at the Immortal alliance conference. The monsters and beasts really start pouring in! And Shen Qingqiu/Yuan remembers his creations. However, he assumes that this is because like 1 other person maybe was Drawing ghost head spiders.

Hey, Peerless Cucumber really liked the monsters, right? The deadlier, crazier, more intricate, the design the better! So maybe, when he was drawing, he... added some things, really believable, logical additions, really just small creative decisions...

Anyway, the monsters that Drawing the Beast's Ire made were where it came to a head.

Lets have another Canon divergence. Maybe, during or after Binghe gets pushed in, out of the rifts comes a species that Drawing Ire created. It's beautiful, poisonous, beloved, and really quite deadly. Shen Yuan/Qingqiu, Peerless Cucumber, Drawing the Beast's Ire... realizes, quite like airplane before him, that he's illustrated, practically sculpted with his own hands, monsters from the Endless Abyss with claws and teeth and poisons as deadly as Peerless Cucumber thought that the really cool monsters could deserve. It feels like he's the one cutting, biting, poisoning his sweet little sheep. It feels like he's digging out the marrow from his little white lotus disciple's bones.

Ok it is shut up time 👍

[olderthannetfic]

A fandom friend is convinced there's something wrong with me and I must have self-worth issues because normal people with healthy self-esteem and self-image wrote OCs as a kid that were self-inserts. I didn't, I wrote characters who were basically whatever I thought was cool at the time (which changed a lot over the years) and into something weird to add flavor to them. So instead of my Arab, ADHD AFAB self writing Arab ADHD AFAB OCs who shared my interests, I'd have a white autistic guy whose special interest was geology and who also loved basketball (I hate sports), or a black agender kid who had some symptoms of schizoaffective disorder, was really into art and art history and loved sweets. One character would be cool like my dad, always witty and ready to say a cool one liner, and another would be cool like my mom, calm, controlled and never responding to haters. None of them share much in common with me. And my friend is convinced this is a mental health red flag, because normal people and even abnormal people always write OCs who are like themselves, idealized versions of themselves, or otherwise are some degree of self-insert.

The more I think about it, the weirder I feel for not doing this. It feels like I didn't do fandom correctly, but also, maybe she's right? Maybe there is something wrong with not putting myself into my narratives. Why wouldn't I put myself in my fics if I liked myself? It's really unsettling to think about but I think I've realized she might have a point.

Then I thought of you. You've been in fandom way longer than either of us (we're both teenagers, for context) and you know a lot about fandom and psychology. So I figured if anyone could tell me what this says about me, it'd be you. What does it mean if you never wrote any OCs with self-insertion components and just kind of wrote random things instead? Does it mean anything bad?

--

Your friend is a moron.

'Fantasies about self' vs. 'no fantasies about self' is a major division among people. It's not just a page on the asexuality wiki about sex fantasies but an entire axis of interest. Hang around slash/BL fandom in particular and you will find a metric fuckton of people who never self-inserted.

Self inserts make my skin crawl.

It is a feeling of visceral disgust that was always there. How can anyone like that? Don't ask me to. Don't tell me about it. Ew, ew, ew, ew. It's like a mild form of dysphoria it's that bad sometimes.

Tell your friend to stop using Wattpad as the litmus test for normalcy.

Some of us were always more AO3.

[manonblaqkbeak]

Iced Tea and Writing

Day 17 - Hobby @rowaelinscourt

just some more fluff lol with a lil mention of sex at the end.

cw: none words: 900+

enjoy!! xx

{ also, there's a tiny easter egg in this fic if you've looked at rowan's wiki page ;) }

Aelin was hiding something, and Rowan was determined to figure it out.

She wasn't scheming anything, he was confident in that, and it wasn't a policy that she was hiding from him because while he was busy rebuilding Orynth and Terrasen's army and navy, councilmen and women still managed to find him and rattled off about their plans that they wanted his support on.

He listened, because it was his duty as king-consort to do so, but he always told Aelin about it before they unwound from their day.

That very thing happened yesterday, and as Rowan walked into his shared study with his mate, Aelin slammed shut a drawer in her desk and turned to face him fully.

He could have sworn that there was a faint blush on her cheeks. He had asked her if she was alright and she said she was, but he sensed the white lie.

And that was when his curiosity was born.

So, with a rare day off for both of them, he told Aelin that he would soon join her in the Queen's Garden but for now, he was pretending to be busy when in actuality, he was going to shift and fly into the garden to see what his wife was up to, as he saw that bundle of paper under her arms this morning, with an ink-pot and glass pen in the other.

Using his magic, he made sure to send his scent the other way as he perched within an orange tree, the branches bursting with fresh, ripe fruit.

He heard the scribble of the glass pen against the paper, her beautiful face scrunched in concentration. She was lying on a thick picnic blanket, a tray full of fresh fruits, cheeses and iced tea laid on top of it.

A pitcher of iced tea that was now empty and Aelin realised it. Huffing, she got up, holding the empty pitcher as she left to refill it.

When he heard the garden door close, Rowan swooped down and read what his mate was hiding.

And became so engrossed in it that he didn't hear Aelin's approach until she hissed in surprised several minutes later.

“Buzzard, put that down!” Rowan didn't and kept on reading. Aelin rushed forward, putting the iced tea away before she extended her hand towards him, silently asking for the papers.

Childishly, Rowan didn't and even extended it into the air where she couldn't reach. His smile was wide enough that Aelin could count nearly all his teeth, his canines gleaming in the sun.

“You're writing a romance story, based on us?”

Aelin scoffed. “It isn't based on us, you territorial beast.”

Rowan's smile grew. “The Fae male is called Raonn, and the half-fae female is called Ayla, how else am I meant to interpret it?”

“It's just a coincidence, Rowan.”

“Raonn is an inch shorter than me, with white hair and hazel eyes and powers of water and invisibility and Ayla—”

“I'm aware of their powers buzzard, as I wrote them.” Her hand was still stretched out, flexing her fingers to hand the papers over.

“Why did you hide it from me?”

“I didn't hide it, I just...kept it locked up from prying eyes. And it's just some stupid scribbles—”

“It's not stupid,” Rowan said, interrupting her. “It's good Aelin.”

“You're just saying that.”

“I'm not,” he insisted, meaning it. “It's descriptive without droning on, the imagery is clear. It's good,” he promised her.

Aelin smiled sweetly at the truth she sensed in Rowan's words. “It's still not based on us.”

Rowan hummed and handed her the papers. “Whatever you say, Fireheart.”

Rowan joined her on the picnic blanket, leaning against the same orange tree he used to hide in. Aelin leaned against his shoulder, handing over the tray of fruits and cheeses. Rowan picked out what he wanted, which he ended up just giving to Aelin as she kept stealing them-pay back for not handing over the papers straight away, most likely.

“I just wanted to do something different,” Aelin said eventually. “After dealing with demon hordes and politics, I just needed to do something that didn't involve the world being at stake.”

“I understand,” Rowan said, “it's good to have a hobby.”

Aelin looked up at her mate, his eyes thoughtful as he stared at her. “You should take up a hobby, too, like drawing. You're good at that.” And he was, her tattooed back was proof of his skills.

His smile from before returned. “Maybe I'll draw Raonn and Ayla, give you some more inspiration. Or,” he begun to say as Aelin opened her mouth to again deny any similarities, “I could draw you in your gold nightgown.”

“I have other colours, you know,” she said, now running a lazy hand up and down his thigh and her mates dark eyes zeroed in on her hand. She had a whole closest full of nightgowns, all different colours and cuts and fabrics. She kept them locked away, however, as she liked to surprise him.

“I know, but it's my favourite.” Which was an understatement, because whenever she wore metallic gold, Rowan fucked her so hard that afterwards she saw stars. “And maybe, right now, I can give you inspiration in the physical sense.”

Aelin snorted as Rowan softly placed her on her back and did give her ideas for her story for later—although she would still deny that it wasn't based on her and Rowan.

Having a hobby was indeed a very good use of her time.

[sovonight]

hey! been an enjoyer of your art for a while now (been offline Tumblr for a sec) and noticed you do BG art!

I low-key wanna get into BG but I don't know where to start or even what to expect. Do you have any tips for anyone wanting to get into the og BG games? (I don't wanna play BG3 rn I wanna start with the OG games)

sure! i wrote up a quick rundown here of the series + dlc + the enhanced editions. as for tips:

play the tutorial! don't skip this, bg's gameplay is not as self-explanatory as it is for modern games. xan also shows up here to teach you how to cast spells, so it's just nice to bother him

play on pc, not on an app (if for whatever reason you were considering the app version). not only is it really annoying playing on the app with a touchscreen, but you can't install any significant mods either, and it's a pain to even access the files in the first place

holding tab highlights all the interactable objects on the screen, like loot on the ground & chests you can open. there's also a magnifying glass button that does the same thing (in the ee version only, i believe)

in the main gameplay screen, hovering over icons brings up a quick tooltip that tells you what the icon is, but for full info on item/spell descriptions you'll have to click into the character's inventory/spellbook/etc and right click on them there

i regularly look things up on the wiki, because one of the things you'll probably be wondering once you enter combat is "how do i get rid of this negative status effect?!" status effects show up as tiny icons on the character portraits, and you'll have to click into the character page to see the actual name of the status effect, at which point you can drop it into the wiki search bar and find out how to get rid of it

another reason to keep the wiki open is to find out your enemies' weaknesses, so that when your companions are like "my weapon/spell has no effect!" you can change tactics

keep an eye on the log (that text box at the bottom of the screen)! i know, it fills up with a lot of information during combat, but you should keep an eye on how much damage you're doing, especially if you find out you're doing no damage at all

i regularly play with a walkthrough (bg1, bg1, bg2) because i hate backtracking and never want to miss a thing (you don't have to use the walkthroughs i linked, they're just what i have on hand). they are filled with spoilers, so i'd recommend trying your first playthrough without a walkthrough, but if you get stuck they're helpful for telling you what you need to do to get back on track with the main quest. bg doesn't have quest markers or individual quest trackers or anything, just one journal that every single quest update gets piled into (wow, just like real life!) so it's definitely possible to lose track of where you are if you're too deep in side quests or if you stop playing for a week

[sol-draws-sometimes]

Let's go, your girl wrote an entry for THE new season(it's kinda incomplete cause only one ep is out)

Also, it seeeems like the wiki is back to normal???? Whatever admins that were trying to turn the fanwiki into amino(which my sister said and OH WOW SHE'S SO RIGHT), seem to have left or taken a chill pill! They're currently still working to bring everything back to normal tho.

I literally don't have the energy to try and help add everything from the previous seasons, BUT, since only one ep is out, I may try to help out with any entries about season 3. Tho, it seems that some Freddy fan already did a page for Tony Collette so LETS GOOO. I have to do other stuff so if anyone's interested yall can do the other character(or I'll do them when I have time). But yah, I realized there wasn't a page for the new season, so at least other people can start editing it and what not. Also did a little bit, like add guests under S1 and other small edits.

[lime1991]

hold on i have to recraft my trolls age hc... i just learned there was a brozone website and on said site we have:

January 2nd 1999 is, maybe, Branch's birthday? And instead of being like "awesome im a big brother" Floyd just goes "thank god im not the baby anymore" after hes born.

Baby Branch's oldest message is this:

February 26th 1999. He's over a month old at this point, but the phrasing of "tonight's show" leads me to believe he was part of the band from literal birth (also why Floyd's first reaction to his birth is "thank you for saving me") and therefore this isnt his first show.

The last logins for all of the brothers is March 11th 1999

And just a day before, according to John Dory, new merch dropped

Soooo i think its safe to say around March 11th 1999 is when the band broke up after their ruined performance, which makes sense that it was also the last time any of them logged into the website. (though i think it would be sad and sweet if it showed branch had logged into it sometime recently but whatever)

So that brings me back around to the age thing.

The trollspedia page states Poppy is around 21-23, and I agree and am more inclined towards 22-23 personally. Seeing as Branch was born in January 1999, he'd be 24 in 2023. But the only thing that confuses me a little is Branch saying its been 20 years since the band broke up:

For 1999 to be 20 years ago, that would mean the movie takes place in 2019. And... honestly that's not too far off from 2023 so i don't mind that being the case, its always vague about what year its meant to be, a lot of animated movies are like this. Also i wanna bring up that the song Bridget and Poppy sing in the beginning (Good As Hell by Lizzo) came out in 2019, SO... its not impossible that the movie is meant to take place in 2019.

SO... with this all in mind... my new theory/headcanon:

As of 2019...

John Dory - 39 Bruce - 38 Clay - 33 Floyd - 28 Branch - 20

And as of 1999...

John Dory - 19 Spruce - 18 Clay - 13 Floyd - 8 Branch - 2 months

ALSO lets not forget the fact that troll age stages are different from humans', a 2 month old is singing and dancing in a boyband. They tend to mature past their actual age really quickly.

(i know these are country trolls, but the idea is still there. as soon as they pop out the egg, trolls are basically toddlers)

And I've tried to keep my theory compliant with what the wikia says (like how Clay's 1999 self is referred to as a teenager, therefore i made him 13) because i believe theyre mostly right. however. i also believe the movie takes place in 2019, not 2023. even if that wasnt the intention of dreamworks, they wrote in the script that its been 20 years since 1999... that can literally only be 2019 lol.

But if we want to imagine it takes place in 2023, heres age hcs for that too:

John Dory - 43 Bruce - 42 Clay - 37 Floyd - 32 Branch - 24

Btw this means, in my hc, Poppy is 19 in 2019 and 23 in 2023, as is implied in the wiki. Which makes sense to me, because Branch is obviously older than her by at least a year. With my hc that Bruce and JD are only a year apart (again, in compliance with the wikia that claims JD was a teenager in 1999 and therefore not 20 like i want him to be. and making the "heart throb" not a minor bc thats weird to me) the moment where Poppy calls JD the "old one" but later fawns over Bruce is made extra funny when the two of them are so close in age.

But i want to say for the millionth time so nobody gets confused bc of all these numbers: I THINK BAND TOGETHER TAKES PLACE IN 2019!!! not 2023. And don't even ask about how the first movie truly fits into this, I DONT KNOW, they definitely did not fully think through a trilogy in 2016. Some things are just a product of when they came out and thats ok.

[autistichalsin]

Okay I shouldn't have to defend myself for doing something that makes me happy but I am going to anyway because the comments making fun of me for analyzing things about Halsin are starting to hurt my feelings

I am autistic. Analyzing things is how I relate to the world. Sometimes I read what others have to say on the subject; I will read everything written about it that I can get my hands on. When my hyperfixation was the Space Shuttles Columbia and Challenger, I was literally reading official government documents archived online because I was not going to be satisfied until I understood everything about how those shuttles got destroyed. I once read every single page for a game fandom's Wiki (100+ pages) solely to be sure I understood all of the lore info I had gathered.

When it comes to fiction, analyzing it is how I understand not only the media, but the characters. I do it for all media I enjoy, not just for BG3/Halsin; I once wrote a 2000 word essay analyzing a certain character arc from one of my favorite Broadway musicals, and before I found BG3/Halsin and started making these posts, there were many, many other characters I did it with in other fandoms, ranging from characters from games I was so terrible at that I downloaded them on an emulator to use cheat codes, to characters in animated series that had no more than 20 spoken lines in the series who I would hunt down in the background of EVERY frame they were in. I don't do the "make an essay" stuff to be pretentious or because I "have no life" or whatever. It's because working through these thoughts are genuinely my framework for relating to what I enjoy.

Some people draw. Some people write stories (And I do do this, sometimes). Some people write poetry or songs. I analyze things. Sometimes in my head. Sometimes on paper (/a computer screen).

You don't have to like it, or understand it, but it would be really nice if people (you know who you are) would stop making fun of me for how I as an autistic person choose to understand the world around me. I have mentioned that I am autistic and this is my special interest more than enough times- this is starting to feel less like you just not getting it and more like you're deliberately doing that thing where you bully an autistic person for autistic behaviors, and then deny you are bullying people for being autistic because "we're actually doing it because you're a weirdo" when the traits you're labeling as weirdo traits ARE TRAITS AUTISTIC PEOPLE HAVE.

Please just let me enjoy my special interests in peace. Thank you.

[ougougougoug]

😅👉🏽

this is a haiku that uses just two symbols.

so, let me explain:

(while editing this post i found out that a few emojis i use are not supported on certain browsers. clearly im being silenced.

if you paste them in discord, then they should display, otherwise, suffer?)

haikus are simple, but have a rigid structure, which is why they’re fun. just five syllables, then seven, then five again, arranged in three lines.

what I think is fun is what I like to call a ‘minimal haiku,' which is where you try to use as few symbols as possible to write all three lines of a haiku. so, for example, we start with numbers.

7 is so cool everybody likes 7 7 is funky

in this haiku here, although '7' is only one symbol, it counts as two syllables, because that's how it's pronounced. so, obviously, we can just kind of run with that, right?

so here is the smallest haiku i think you can make using numbers in this way.

here is the haiku:

77 707 77

"seventy seven seven hundred and seven seventy seven"

this haiku uses (fittingly) seven symbols, but it kind of sucks. we're playing fast and loose with what we're calling a haiku, but it would still be nice if the minimal haikus we wrote kind of, at least, sort of made sense, i think.

so here's the smallest haiku i have written so far using only numbers and letters.

alright, here is the haiku:

33 x 3 funny 700x 69 ha ha

"thirty three times three funny seven hundred times sixty nine ha ha"

its not exactly high art, but it's technically comprehensible as a series of words that express a full thought, and that's good enough.

obviously, you can go further than this, and the next logical step is ascii. I don't think there's any ascii symbols that can be pronounced as seven syllables, but there are a few that can do five.

so here's the smallest haiku i could make using just ascii symbols:

) :) !

"close parentheses colon, close parentheses exclamation mark"

wow! just four symbols, which tell the relatable story of a guy who wakes up and sees that he's slept through his alarm. (it conveys this thought pictorially, but it does convey a thought.)

of course, we can go further.

our next stop is emojis.

now, one thing that's problematic about these is that not everyone might agree on how they should be pronounced, but i say we just play with this, and use whatever makes our haikus work, because, well, it's more fun that way.

so, here's a fun haiku:

🌑 🌓 🌕

"new moon emoji first quarter moon emoji full moon emoji"

wow! just three symbols.

here's a haiku about a working class trans girl:

🧑‍🏭 👩‍🏭 ⚧️

"factory worker woman factory worker transgender symbol"

so, we've managed to make some haikus with just three symbols. but i think we can go smaller.

ive been limiting myself to writing haikus with three visible lines when written down, but you can't do that with just two symbols. so we're just gonna forget about that from this point on.

(as a quick little aside, i said before that, using just numbers,

77 707 77

was the best i could do, but if you ignore how it is written down,

77777

"seventy seven thousand seven hundred and seventy seven"

is a haiku in just one number. anyways, back to emojis)

😵‍💫 🤢

this is a haiku. let me explain to you why.

most emojis are single unicode characters. but some of them are secretly just combinations of two other emojis with a symbol called a 'zero width joiner' between them, which means, although they're displayed as just one symbol, you can break them up into three. here's the wiki page for 'face with spiral eyes', which lists the three unicode symbols that make up the emoji. with that knowledge, you can pronounce this fun haiku as:

"face with crossed out eyes zero width joiner, dizzy nauseated face"

which is a haiku about a person who's sick and might just frow up.

one common type of emoji sequence is for modifying the skin tone of certain emojis. for these, we won't think about what the zero width joiner is doing (in fact, i think some, but not all, of these don't even have one? it's unclear to me, but all the more reason to ignore them.) what we'll do instead is just use the 'CLDR Short Name', which you can find listed here and here on unicode.org. These are about as official as you can get with emoji names, and will cover the emojis i'll be using for the last haikus.

so let's look back at the haiku at the top of this post, shown again:

😅👉🏽

"grinning face with sweat backhand index pointing right medium skin tone"

this takes advantage of the skin colour of the pointing emoji.

so that's another haiku that uses just two symbols, which depicts an anxious person doing finger guns (perhaps they're anxious because they spilled some yellow paint on their face. who knows. like any great artist, my works are up to interpretation.) so this leaves us all asking...

is it possible?

we've done two symbol haikus, but what about...

one?

any emoji which shows a person can be modified both by skin colour and by gender. if there is more than one person in an emoji, then each person can be given their own modifiers.

This means it's just a matter of going through the list of emojis and hoping that you can find one that works.

and, well that's just what i did:

👨🏾‍❤️‍👨🏽

couple with heart: man, man, medium-dark skin tone, medium skin tone

this is the smallest haiku possible to write. it's just a single symbol.

and it's two gay men. a wonderful queer couple. and i think that's great.

[mutatedfish]

and here’s my theory about how the half life funny streams are a lot like dante’s inferno. no wait come back where are you going

so to start off with both of them are working within familiar architecture but end up flipping expectations on their head. the intended/imagined audience for both inferno & hlvr are already familiar w the framework the story takes place in. for inferno, it’s assumed that the audience are some sect of christian & thus believe in the ideas of hell/purgatory/heaven as well as the idea of different levels of sin significance. for hlvr, the audience knows the general plot & game mechanics of half life/hlalyx even if they’ve never played themselves, as well as knowing abt the concept of machinima and rtvs’ improv through internet (plus for hlage they had the context of hlvrai). 

in inferno, hell’s physical design is very very important to the narrative (as well as purgatory and heaven but i haven’t actually read those two so moving on). i could say a lot about it but tldr the settings are described in detail and have a lot of meaning both thematically and literally. in hlvr there’s storytelling/worldbuilding through the environment as well. from the half life 2 wiki page:

partially this is just due to half life being a good game in and of itself. however the thing that inferno and hlvr have in common is that they take these pre-existing conceptual settings and add the creators’ own meaning to them. 

in inferno, dante descends into hell, but when he reaches the very bottom where satan is he finds out that he’s actually been going up the whole time. to be clear he is going down but then he & virgil reach the bottom and have to do a 180 and go back up, but “back up” is actually transcending hell and beginning the ascension to purgatory. essentially you’re actually at the very very bottom/furthest from god when you’re on earth’s surface and you have to go through hell to get to heaven blah blah blah. map linked here if you’d like to see a visual. the point is that this isn’t the typical view of ascension to heaven and therefore not what the reader is expecting; the structure of hell & the world that dante presents is altered to make an impact on the reader and tell the story. hlvr is similar in that it’s the pre-existing game (moreso for hlage, but i’d argue that hlvrai is still half life, just in a platform allowing for multiplayer goofs) but altered to tell a different story. the journey of hlvr is still that of the original game but the ending (benrey in xen, the gnome in the vault) emphasizes the importance of the altered world around the characters as much as the other changes that have been made from the original games.

this brings us to another important thing, namely the fact that hlvr are still games being played. there’s a concept we used when we read inferno in class like a year ago where we talked abt two different guys named dante: dante the poet, who physically wrote inferno and came up with the ideas in it and whatever, and dante the pilgrim, who is the character we experience the story as. dante-pilgrim brings all his biases and thoughts to what’s happening and, most importantly, is the actual guy going on the journey physically & spiritually, whereas dante-poet has already (spiritually) completed this journey. dante-poet didn’t go on the journey physically bc that’s not how the world works, but he is writing and portraying dante-pilgrim to be the character of himself (dante-poet) as he developed spiritually throughout time. essentially dante-poet is writing from the end of the story because he already knows what’s going to happen and how he ended up here, whereas dante-pilgrim is witnessing the story start to finish bc he is the vehicle through which it is told.

the same principle can be applied to wayne. wayne the streamer, who is physically playing the game and thanking donos and editing the videos post-stream, and wayne the player, who is the Character Of Wayne. like. in hlage, wayne-streamer did not literally get turned into a gnome, but wayne-player did bc wayne-player exists as one of the storytelling tools that wayne-streamer & rtvs are using to write the narrative. for hlvr, the division of waynes is partially for practical reasons (imo, writing/editing/publishing a poem is not the same as Doing It Live, e.g. dante probably didn’t have to deal with the limitations/issues of his medium at the exact same time as he was writing the poem (i am not a dante historian though so don’t quote me on this)) but it’s also for narrative reasons bc wayne-player is a consistent character throughout the hlvr series.

like. obviously the gnome refers to him as gordon in hlage to connect w/ hlvrai and whatnot, but wayne-player is also consistent in his reactions/intent/behavior. (also, i can’t concretely say this is a wayne-player effect, but the similarities between the “big bad” of each game so far is also interesting to me. both the gnome and benrey vaguely antagonize wayne-player and express a desire to go back/stay put/deter him from the journey despite his own wishes. other gnome/benrey similarities: acting sus as hell and wayne-player disregards it either through party opinion or his own. “you made me like this … i was innocent before i met you” (36:07 in the hlage finale) and “i was supposed to be nice but you forced me to be baaaad”. presumably this pattern will continue in hl2vrai) i believe that even if it has little-to-no effect on hl2vrai, the whole end sequence of hlage (particularly the vault & theater/woods scene but we’ll get to that later) is a canon thing that happened to wayne-player that will end up affecting at the very least the conclusion of the half life 2 streams.

in terms of characters within the story, another place i see similarities is the limitations they experience. you could argue the gnome and benrey similarities are due to similar limitations that they experience as members of the trio referenced in the peppa pig movie, but i wanna look at a more specific example. returning to inferno: there’s a scene in canto 21 where virgil essentially asks for directions bc the road is closed and his google maps isn’t working. unfortunately bc he’s in hell there are only demons and sinners around to ask, so he asks a demon who lies to him and they have a momentary diversion bc of it. note that virgil’s limitations aren’t a secret or anything— he’s only dante’s guide for inferno bc he represents human reason, and then ascending past there he gets a special divine guide and the point is that human reason has limitations that god doesn’t have blah blah blah— but this scene does stand out as a Thing. virgil doesn’t intentionally lead dante astray, nor does he realize the demon is lying, but it’s still a thing that happens bc he’s fallible.

in hlvrai, coomer realizes some aspects of what is happening (the setting is a game, he’s a computer construct, wayne-player is not a computer construct, benrey is an unintended feature in the game, etc) but whether bc he physically can’t or bc he’s preoccupied, he does not seem to piece things together fully and come to the conclusion that he’s in hlvrai. likewise, according to wayne, the blue gnome is right but his limitation is that he’s a freak. right before his demise the blue gnome tells wayne not to make a mistake he “can’t even begin to know and understand” in taking the red gnome. unfortunately he’s so consistently horny in such a unique and upsetting way that it has ruined his credibility for anything ever even if he managed to be not horny about it. i have more thoughts on blue gnome’s role but this post is already going to be so so long.

anyway you could claim this is just a thing in all stories bc characters have to be unaware of or unable to do certain things bc that’s how plot progresses, but i think there’s something special about characters being unable to do or see something even though it seems like they should.

the final bit of hlage is what made me sit down and actually start writing this whole thing out so let’s get into it. comparing canto 34 lines 22-24:

to gabe newman’s final commentary box in hlage, i can see a lot of similarities. i think the vagueness of both can be at least partially attributed to how writing works; sometimes the most effect technique is just to hint at something rather than describe it fully bc the audience will mentally fill in whatever fits best for them personally. however, a lot of gabe’s lines (references to the obsidian seal, the dread and the nightmares, “and that was the day he appeared”, “do NOT proceed any farther”, etc) read to me very much like appeals to pathos in the same way that lines 22-24 are. like it hurts gabe & dante to even just reference, let alone recall, what they’re talking about. tbh i just greatly enjoy this comparison idk how much meat there is to it but it’s a good writing decision imo

the trio in the peppa pig movie (man in blue, little man in red hat, and someone else (she/her)) corresponds to benrey, the gnome, and whatever we’ll see in hl2vrai (possibly alyx's shadow but who's to say). they don’t really exist solely within their respective games and have some sort of influence on the outside world (this being another setting of the player, essentially wayne-player’s world rather than wayne-streamer’s world) as seen w/ the gnome theater scene. in the vault the gnome states that it wasn’t wayne-player’s challenge and that he (the gnome) has won; the clear assumption here is that it was the gnome’s challenge. however, i think it’s worth considering that the challenge may not necessarily be the gnome’s either. the peppa pig movie claims it was made by gordon (which would correspond to wayne-player, but obviously it wasn't) and the gnome supports this, even saying that the theater is gordon’s “mind palace”. 

so, the question arises: is there another gordon of some kind? i don’t think it would be that far-fetched to say that there is a character within the hlvr series that wayne-player has been taking the place of (whether purposefully, knowingly, maliciously, or not) and since original gordon doesn’t have a place within the games, perhaps he is assuming the metaphorical place of satan here; a sort of container for the peppa pig movie trio when they are not participating in their respective hlvr games.

anyway some other things that i thought were interesting but not enough to write whole paragraphs on:

the autobiographical aspects of inferno compared to hlage being a reflection of wayne’s experiences

dante-pilgrim’s swooning as a way of transitioning in location compared to going to sleep as a way of transitioning between acts

it would be cool to find a stage adaptation of inferno and compare it to hlvr bc the formats would be more similar

something something how contrapasso is applied in hlvr (particularly hlvrai)

the professor who taught the class i learned this shit in would be really really upset if he knew i was applying my analysis to half life funny

obligatory disclaimers and qualifiers: i’ve interpreted the half life funny streams extremely seriously despite the fact that the purpose of 90% of it is half life funny. i only watched the hlage commentary stream when it originally aired and i didn’t bother going back to rewatch it so if anything i say here is blatantly untrue sorry. for the sake of simplicity i’ve referred to the stream on the 16th as hl2vrai because it’s probably gonna be some variation on that even if that’s not the exact title. the 16th stream (brbavrai) was not hl2 but i consider all of this to still hold true for hl2vrai. all inferno quotes were taken from the ciardi translation on archive.org

[bluntforcefem]

the thing is, right. that i wrote 75 fics for blaseball. more, if you count tumblr prompts - more if you count wiki pages. over the course of late 2020 to the very beginning of 2023, i wrote more for blaseball than i have for anything else, except maybe my friends' oc rp. maybe i'll never write that much for fandom again. my writing developed so much over that period of time - blaseball gave me a lot of inspiration and a lot of practice!! i met incredible writers through it who inspire me so much To This Day. i met incredible people with incredible ideas. i still lurk around in the crabitat, because the community there is lovely and i love looking for secondhand recommendations in the media channels. i could list a lot of regulars i've just... seen around, for about 2, 3 years. blaseball offered me both the opportunity to grow as a writer and the opportunity to find communities that, even if some of them fell apart, taught me a lot of things anyways. i'm still in contact with a lot of people i met through blaseball, and that's fucking lovely!!

i can't say i'm sad it's over. i guess i'm a little sad. but blaseball's been dying for a while, now, and it's the kinda thing you sorta see on the horizon. i'm one of the people who distanced themself from it before it came, and i'm a little grateful to my past self for that - i've got so much going on that i don't have quite enough room for a "i just moved across the country and also tot clark died in my funny game so i'm going to lose it for 5 hours" kind of night. i still have everything that matters. the experience, the community, the funny little guys. but blaseball did a lot for me, so i wanted to say goodbye. here's goodbye.

there is a radio.

sometimes it's in the crabitat. sometimes it's in other stadiums, darkened locker rooms slowly collecting dust; maybe there's the occasional visitor, casting light across worn benches, footsteps leaving imprints on the tile. but there's less and less visitors.

most of the time, it's at home.

you can tune it, if you're careful. it likes to play what it wants, though, and so not-players-mostly-people just let it go, when they find it - whatever jaunty commentator/clawmentator voice it wants to remind them of, games stretching from the very first season to the very last, it gets to do that. it keeps playing, however distorted by static it gets.

time goes on.

there are less people to visit, as time goes on. some people grow old and die. some people don't die, but they do move on, and the radio knows it'd be an unwelcome reminder. but there's always a handful to visit, to comfort, to celebrate with. immortals at a graveyard that used to be a field with strings of pearls in their pockets. the handful of players that kept playing, in the after, maybe other splorts or other games - but they kept playing, and they had fun, eventually. parties of people that used to be on different teams and now just share jerseys like old sweaters, trading stories of how their hometowns have changed since it ended.

sometimes the radio sticks around with someone for a while. sometimes it changes hands every day, every hour, switching its tune to match. sometimes nobody sees it for a very long time, and sometimes people forget it exists entirely. but it always comes back for a visit. a little memory, a little burst of joy-in-static. hello- hello- blaseball fans!

there is a radio. it's lasted for a long time, and it'll last for a while longer, even in the absence of blaseball itself. it lasted through ascension, after all. it lasted through siesta after siesta after siesta.

there is a radio, and there is a world moving on from blaseball.

there is a radio, and there is the lilt of old words, phrases quickly becoming antiquated, kept alive through pick-ups and muscle memory.

there is a radio, and there are people who used to be players.

there is a radio, and there are people who used to be fans, who still are fans, who still will be fans.

there is a radio, and it still loves.

there is a radio, and it still is loved.

(that's all for today's game, folks!)

there is a radio.

[misc-obeyme]

i just had a major breakthrough last night and wrote four pages of bullet points with random plot ideas, scenarios, and dialogue in my sketchbook 😅 IT WAS SO LATE AT NIGHT I CAN BARELY READ MY OWN HANDWRITING

I'm still trying to figure out the proper term, but Solomon is majoring in music composition !! Wiki says his favorite genre is classical music, and I like the idea he would want to create his own. His main instrument is piano !! But he has basic knowledge of guitar and the violin. (It'll be mainly running into the coffee shop together separately and living their lives, but once they get closer, Sol tries teaching me piano because i wanted to learn- THERE'S A BACKSTORY TO THIS AND ANOTHER PLOT IDEA !!!)

Simeon is also studying at the same college, and is writing TSL online. He has his own website, and Solomon creates pieces to go along with scenes in the book. (This is a whole other plot point)

I think right now it's going "Horror Night/Realizations" (the three of them going to see a movie that Solomon was excited to see, end up at a diner afterwards) -> "Burned CD's/Mammon Playlist Drama" (hehehe- WAIT IT'S NOT ANGST, GOTTA CLARIFY THE RECORD STORE DOES N O T BURN DOWN) -> "Halloween Party w/ Asmo" (A vampire, a werewolf, and a devil. What could go wrong? Or right? 👀) -> "Retail Therapy/Talks" (bookstores are a girl's best friend)

I haven't decided what role every character will play, but Levi makes an appearance with the CD stuff, Asmo throws the party and is studying to be a fashion designer, Satan owns a bookstore that I frequently visit (ANOTHER PLOT POINT AHAH), and Lucifer makes another appearance.

i keep writing things down and then getting more ideas and it feels like one big web, BUT IT'S ALL CONNECTED !! This is so much fun !! So technically yes, apprentice ish on the side, and Mammon does confess (kinda). I HAVE THIS PLANNED OUT BUT I DIDN'T WANT THIS TO GET LONG (IT DID ANYWAY), I JUST WANTED TO SHARE BECAUSE I'M WRITING THIS AS I GET READY FOR WORK AJDJJSD OKAY BYEEE

- ✨ anon

Wow this really is turning into an epic love story for the ages!! I love it lol!

Ohhhh music major, eh?!? My main instrument is also the piano! What a coincidence! Okay, actually, that's really easy to figure out considering my OC is a music demon and he is also known for his piano skills alskdfj. But Arsenios is a demon so he has magical talent that allows him to play any instrument. He's like everything I wish I could be as a musician lol!!! But anyway, got a bit sidetracked there, sorry. I love Solomon as a composer. That just feels like something he'd get lost in, you know? Music can be simple, but it can also be really complicated. And just imagine that guy getting lost in writing some kinda orchestral masterpiece... Or if he did a little conducting too, that baton is basically a magic wand...

Anyway, I love how we're getting all the other characters involved now, too!

See, you've already got the timeline, too!

I mean, what you're doing right now is basically outlining a story! I never outline anything because I am a degenerate, but that's exactly the kinda thing that a lot of people do before writing. So you're setting yourself up for success, I'd say! I mean, it's all whatever, writing is a personal process!

I'm loving your ideas and I'm loving the enthusiasm!! This right here is exactly why I write - because it's fun!

I hope you continue to enjoy coming up with ideas and if you do decide to write it, I hope you enjoy yourself!!

[joandfriedrich]

My Trip to Concord: Part Two

Location 2: Orchard House

We went up the path that lead to the church, and there was a table for guests to sign in with their info and whatever message they’d like to leave. I wrote something like “Best birthday ever for the biggest Little Women fan.” Beside it was a small garden and while it didn’t have any flowers, it was nice to imagine what could have been, and it being the cutest garden.

The tour started in the church, and I was able to get these photos.

Apologizes that the cabinet picture isn’t the greatest, but it was a picture of what appears to be Joan of Arc, and my friend wondered if perhaps Abigail had painted that too. While we waited, we watched this documentary piece (we did miss part of the beginning because we ran a little late at the cemetery) where an actress played LMA and gave a small tour of the house. Something worth noting, and it will be particularly sweet to a certain demographic, when the fictional LMA was showing the pictures from the house, she referred Thoreau as a “very, very, very special friend”. It made me smile like an idiot.

When it finished, our guide told us that this was the school of Philosophy, where Bronson was the superintendent. The bench by the tree was the bench Bronson often sat at. Then moving into the house, we started in the kitchen and I snuck this picture in before being told that we were not allowed any pictures. If you want a good idea of how the interior looks, the 1994 film did a phenomenal job with the design, the colors are a bit different, but the structure is pretty much the same.

This was where the well was, and it was protected by plexiglass. It’s interesting, because in October I got to see Edgar Allan Poe’s house in Baltimore, and Orchard house is so much bigger than that, and it really did feel as cozy and inviting as you’d imagine. From the kitchen to the dining room, it had a picture of LMA over the mantel by the stairs, one that was done after her illness and by the same painter who did Abraham Lincoln. The china in the cabinet was the family china, belonging to her mother, which is why it has “May” engraved as it was her maiden name.

The only bedrooms we saw were the parents, which had a small offshoot of Anna’s twin boys’ room, Abigail and, of course, Louisa. The rooms were all very good size, though Abigail's was smaller than the other two, but I get it, she was the youngest, and if remembering correctly, she moved out/was in Europe at an early age, and didn't need the space. What was so cool as seeing her artwork all around her room, protected by plexiglass, and a copy of her painting La Négresse, was featured in her room.

Louisa's room was my favorite, not just because it's Louisa, but because it had the coziest feel, was sunny, and had such a great history there. Our guide shared that Louisa stayed in this room primarily when she was sick during the war, and Abigail would keep her company, and while she lamented she couldn't get Louisa flowers (as they were pricey), she painted flowers in her room, and it's still there, and very beautiful. It's a black background, with calla lilies and some red flower I am not sure of (you can see a part of it if you look at Abigail's wiki page.).

Something to note, at various places around the house, there were small baskets of fake apples, and my mom asked me "what's with the apples", and I said, "well, it is called orchard house." And then a few minutes later, the guide said that there used to be apple trees that grew nearby and Bronson was known to give people apples even if they didn't ask for it. His study was pretty cool, saw a pocket watch holder that worked as well as a clock. On the shelf, the people of the museum filled it with different versions of LMA's works from all over the world, both in style and in language.

Off from there was Abigail's small art studio, which had a dollhouse like case where different scenes from Little Women are played out. And they discovered underneath the wallpaper and whatnot, outlines of Abigail's artwork, profiles of people that had come to visit, and the museum had protected it with plexiglass, and on that highlighted the profiles.

At the end, we were in the store and there were so many awesome things there that I could have wasted my money there, but I settled on a few things.

Starting at the top and going clockwise, a magnet with Louisa on it with the quote "Nothing is impossible to a determined woman". Next is a small book called "The Language of Flowers" which is, as the cover says, flowers and their meanings". Next is "Merry Christmas and Other Christmas Stories" written by LMA. "Orchard House: Home of Little Women" is a Emmy winning documentary, and was the one that played in the church, and next to it is the Katharine Hepburn Little Women (they had the 33, 94, 19 versions, but I was surprised they didn't have the 17 or even the 49 film, though that is apparently a tough find). Above her, is little kids book called "Little Women: A Playtime Primer", and it's going to be a gift for my nephew. Above that is an ornament of Orchard house with an engraving of LMA, and in the center is a tote bag.

I also got a candle that's called Pickled Limes, and holy crap it smells amazing! A sweet limey scent, which reminded me of @thegamineingrey post of how they were like candy back in the day, and I totally get it. Also, bonus inside, an umbrella charm which was what really sealed the deal, if not for the scent.

Here are pics of the outside of Orchard House, many of which were taken by my mom, since I was too busy just admiring the place.

Suffice to say, it is a beautiful house, full of a rich history and, just as the book, still feels relevant and like going home. I am glad we were able to make the trip out to see this amazing house.

[rileyslibrary]

M’AM. M’AM,

How do you write Ghost so amazingly? How can you capture that science of his, that scent, that aura— Im very intrigued!

Please teach me your ways!

How would you describe Simon? Which taste, which color, which smell, which time of the day, and, if an scenery, which?

Do you feel you know any fictional character besides him, that inspired you to write him the way you do?

Or, which is your method that works so well?

Im just mesmerized by the way you do it, and oh! I need to learn and understand if I see something this good!

Hey, anon? What is that orange comma doing in your ask?

Anyway. What I do is pretty simple, to be honest: I eat, digest, and poop.

Hear me out.

I eat the source material both for the OG Ghost plus the comics and the reboot. I don’t write based on them, but I use them to study his character. Most of the time, I read the Wiki pages, watch some cutscenes or let the entire campaign play in the background to “cleanse my palate”.

I digest them with whatever feelings, imagines, or scenarios I have in mind or requests that might inspire me. If I can’t relate to a request or a scenario and can’t picture Ghost in it, I won’t do it.

And then, though it might sound vile and off-putting, I poop the stories, meaning I use whatever build-up emotion or inspiration I have in mind and put it into something tangible.

As for another fictional character that could have inspired me to write him, the answer is no. I feel it’s a betrayal towards the reader and a great injustice for the character to do such a thing. If, for whatever reason, I see that I drift away from Ghost’s personality, I stop writing, sleep on it and possibly revisit it the next day. Or I go through the wiki and cutscenes again. Though the wiki isn’t official, it helps by relating to the character faster than watching/playing the games. As in “ah, I remember this happened, he must have felt like this” or justify a reaction based on the evidence seen in front of me.

And I know what you might say. “If you were so stuck on the source material, what the fuck is Ghost doing searching for a missing cat or attending a career fair at a school?” The key here is imagination. How would a character like Ghost approach such a scenario if he had no choice but to do that? Fiction allows you to bend some rules and reach beyond the source material to ask the “what if” question. You can play with canon, fool around with it, poke it with a stick, as long as you know what happened in canon. And, don’t think you can fool the readers. They can tell if you abuse that freedom, and they end up with a character that doesn’t feel like him.

So there you go; that’s the gist of it. I think that’s the first time I wrote about how I do things, and I don’t know if that’s exactly what you were asking me for, but I hope I helped!