merlinsbudgiesmugglers

[itsokbbygrl]

thanks for tagging me in this lil game, @joelsgreenflannel and @sugarcoated-lame! 💞

last song i listened to: HOT TO GO!, Chappell Roan

currently watching: hockey! Watching the Detroit Red Wings vs Colorado Avalanche to see if I can catch Mads @javierpena-inatacvest up in the nosebleeds. As a Chicago Blackhawks fan, I can't believe I'm going to say this, but LGRW 🥴

currently obsessed with: home design (I'm working on buying a house) and our favorite bby boy, our Papicito, my little pigeon (Pedro, obv, it's never going to end i hope fear)

npt for some sweet mutuals: @tightjeansjavi, @swiftispunk, @5oh5, @netherfeildren, @merci-killing, @javierpena-inatacvest, @mermaidgirl30, @sawymredfox

[toointofiction]

"You know your problem?”

“A predilection for first editions and women who like to lecture me about myself?”

I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU SAY, THIS IS A LOVE CONFESSION AND YOU CAN'T CHANGE MY MIND!!!!

[revenantghost]

So with my Mom’s cancer being back, my own health stuff, and everything else going on, I’m not sure I’ll be able to be the most active in this round of bookclub (and I do have a lot of words muted and stuff hidden because of mental health and streamlining things and Tumblr's an ass about showing posts sometimes—so if I miss a post, please don’t take it personally!). ): It honestly makes me super upset

But I really hope that everyone has a good time and I can’t wait to see what people cook up! <3 Last time was SO MUCH FUN it makes me a little nervous about living up to those expectations aksjdkajsn But as long as someone has a good time, that's what counts :3

[ennyxy]

Platinum bones real

Haven't slept in more than a day so brain n body no workie, but I needed to doodle smth real fast after how wild of a day today was. Post Hoot made me very happy and Dana's art was cherry on top so I HAD to get this out of my system before going to sleep, so here, hugs QwQ

[ornithic]

i've been playing the new update and i thought this was Cute <3

[kazz-brekker]

let out the MOST unholy and delighted cackle that you can possibly imagine when daemon mentioned aemond to alys

[bacchuschucklefuck]

Can you expand on what you mean by Baron being "too cool" to really fit a horror monster? It's a very interesting concept and I'd love to hear your thoughts. Is it that they're too active/involved/tangible and it detracts from their scariness?

I feel like I should preface this with a wall of disclaimers lmao 1/I am a hardcore, down-to-the-marrow, avid, deeply sincere horror enthusiast, esp. horror creatures. this usually means my mileage is vastly different from the average populace's, and my scaredy bone has been disintegrated by longterm exposure. most things in a piece of horror media won't scare me! so I practically never use that on its own as the scale to talk abt horror experiences, but when something does scare me it's always a special occasion to be treasured. 2/canon d20 is never really meant to be horror horror, and for good reasons: it doesn't fit the company's output, it takes a kind of carelessness in production estimation that is always a huge risk, it's often vulnerable in a way that kinda goes against how TTRPGs usually facilitates vulnerability, and for most people it's just! stressful! d20, even with the "horror-themed" seasons, generally just plays with horror tropes and stays focused in its goal of being a comedy improv tabletop theater show. 3/fantasy high's chosen system is DnD, which as I've mentioned before is before all a combat-based game system, which means the magic circle of play is drawn based on stats that facilitate and prioritize combat. want or not this affects every interaction you have in the game, and given fantasy high's concept from the ground up (everyone's going to school of DnD stuff to get better at DnD) it's doubly relevant. 4/This Is Fine I have no quarrel with this. my meters are internal, I do not ask this show to be anything it doesn't advertise itself to be, and what it is is fucking great! I like it! when I expand on this ask's question it will be like a physicist going insane in a lab. that's the mindset we're going in with.

disclaimers done. my stance on horror as a genre is that it's a utility genre rather than a content genre or a demographic genre; it is the discard of narratives. it's the trash pile. horror, above being scary, is about being ugly and messy, it's the cracks on the ground any story inevitably steps over to stay a genre that isn't horror. the genre's been around long enough to develop a codex and a general language that medias and makers and enthusiasts of the genre can use to talk about and build onto, but if you go into individual pieces there's really no unifying Horror Story. one person's beautiful life can be another's horror story, it's just how it is.

this makes The Monster a deeply intriguing piece of the genre. thing is a monster is in a decent percentage of any story - it's just when the antagonist force steps into something past a certain line traced out in the story's world. monstrousness is in pretty much every western fantasy story, it's in any story with a hero and something to vanquish or win; more than anything it's a proxy of that thing up there. the line in a narrative's world. the monster is the guard of the unknown lands, where heroic, civilized people don't tread.

what does this mean in the context of horror? the genre is about that perceived lawlessness, that "unknown land" so to say. we're in the monster's home. that's the literary context that we often walk into a horror piece with; the monster knows more than you about where you are. it may not understand you, but it holds more information than you, and with that it moves swifter than you, has more covered than you, and is more assured in its existence in this context than you. it's a struggle to catch up to it, it's nigh impossible to get one over it, and you're never sure it'll 100% work, because you just don't have the information necessary to.

with that framing you can kinda see where I'm coming from here: horror's often about the breaking of rules. I always think a monster's most effective when it breaks well-established rules of both existence and visual storytelling. think Possum (2018) or Undertale's Omega Flowey or the Xenomorph Queen - unique change in medium, unique change in graphic, unique change in design language, etc. in that sense I actually really like how canon baron plays out: they don't really function like anything else in the fantasy high universe, the bad kids have not managed to kill them when they've felled literal gods, their domain in fhjy literally introduces new mechanics to encompass their existence! from an experience design standpoint they slap mad shit. BUT! I can't help finding their character, like as a character riz (and the other bad kids, eventually) interact with, to be very... coherent? in design. this is kinda hard for me to articulate in words, it's more often a sense you get once you've looked at enough of these scrumptious fuckers, their general design and the way they show up is just kinda too clean, so to say. always kinda newly made? fresh unboxed. it, once again, makes sense for their lore - they are looking for more about themself from riz - and their function - they're an antagonist in a game experience, they're meant to be interacted with in a way that produces results and meshes with the existing magic circle - but that shininess takes away from the implied history they should have dominion over and the person they're haunting doesn't.

from another angle there is kinda something there about how put-together canon baron is as a concept; the domain they call home is riz's deep-seeded fears, extremely vulnerable things he's drawn borders around to quarantine and refused to walk into. things that from his perspective would irreversibly shatter certain pleasant fictions his world is built on top of. canon baron, While Extremely Cool, I feel is kinda too neat to connect with and signify the apocalyticized mess that'd result from this paradigm shift. the part where they're in riz's briefcase and looking through every mirror is Very Cool And Fucked Up! but ultimately the show draws a line around them as well, by making game-physical, tangible spaces they're in (the mirrors and the haunted mordred manor) and put riz and the bad kids there only when they need to confront stuff. riz is meaningfully narratively away from baron's unknown land for most of fantasy high.

with that and all of my disclaimers in mind my conclusion here is if canon baron wants to be a Horror Monster they'd have to cross way more lines. be a Lot more invasive. hence (holds up my class swap baron like a long cat)

[lieutenantselnia]

I was looking through my 2D Doof image folder and randomly came across this picture I didn't remember I had saved, please he looks so adorable😭💕

[bees-and-stuff-to-buzz-about]

While I'm in a rental and I know it can't be guaranteed to stay, I'm going to plant Richmond Birdwing Vine (pararistolochia praevenosa), Purple Violet (viola betonicifolia), and Native Violet (viola hederacea).

They're the host plants for the Richmond Birdwing and Australian Fritillary butterflies, and I keep seeing that post about a man in America who helped out significantly I think with the California pipevine swallowtail.

There's so much I can't do to help with the environment, but planting a vine I'll need to trim in my own yard alongside a handful of other native plants and having a bit of a veggie garden helps myself, my family, and some animals in the area.

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

y'all i've been upset about nanowrimo's shenanigans since last year, when kids weren't safe, and now there's this AI shitshow, and i want to cry about it again, because nano has been SO IMPORTANT to me since 2008--it helped me hack my writing process and make a bunch of cool shit, and i've written so many stories i love using it as a jumping off point. but. we gotta protect kids, and we gotta get the fuck out of here with AI bullshit.

so. the decision i have come to is that i will still be participating in nano. but now it stands for "now a's [that's me] novel writing month." i'm still going to write a book in november, and i'm still going to shoot for the 1,667 words/day (even though my finished projects wind up way longer than that, invariably), because i've structured my creative life around this routine, but i won't be using their site any more.

i will also not be tagging my november project posts as nanowrimo, but i WILL still be tagging them as "nano[YEAR]" (because that's been my tagging system for untitled projects for uh. years.). and it's now a's novel writing month :)

[navree]

"can we stop pretending the evil stepmother trope is bad and boring" oh my FUCKING GOD just reread the book!!!! just reread the fucking book!!!!!! if you want the book canon so bad it's right there, go read it!!!!! you've got to have it in your possession since you talk about it all the fucking time and i'd be astounded if someone this fucking pressed hasn't actually read it!!!!!! the change to rhaenyra and alicent's relationship has been known since they first cast the fucking show!!!!! it's been there since episode one!!!!!!! if you don't like it don't watch the show and just REREAD THE FUCKING BOOK!!!!!!

[moregraceful]

Tagged by @soyouwinagain to post 6 photos from my camera roll in the past week, thank you comrade, I was hoping someone would tag me 🫡🫡 except then I had to go back a couple weeks otherwise all six photos would have been my dog at a cocktail garden.

Ivan Fedotov and Erik Johnson at Flyers training camp, Fedotov in full Russian saint mode; a flower outside of an Indian restaurant; Yankees outfielders running away from each other and I'm so mad I only got them running back to position bc they were being SO cute while a reliever was warming up; Keats at the aforementioned cocktail garden, he was sweatin'; giant rotting boat outside of Ikea; boxes containing all of my earthly possessions.

[youngblood-valkyrie]

Prepare... for unforseen consequences...

[rubenesque-as-fuck]

Anyway I got notified that I'll be getting a nice $$ bonus from work today and I wish that I could celebrate with someone in a way that didn't just feel like obnoxious bragging. Like beyond the financial aspect, it's just nice to be recognized for good work and I actually feel... good?? about this job??

But it feels so silly to say I want to celebrate when I just got back from what felt like my first real vacation in a very long time and am doing cool comic con stuff this weekend and am scheduled for a new tattoo next weekend. I am already doing lots of things to try to make myself feel good! It feels selfish to want more!

But I guess even with all of that, there's just still a hunger for external validation from trusted sources. Will I ever grow out of wanting someone to be proud of me?

[yansurnummu]

WIP Wriday

tagged by @captain-of-silvenar!

here's a bit from a chapter of THIKL I've been working on, ft. Drals' first time meeting Torvesard :)

-

“Of all the realms I’ve walked, I somehow always end up here,” a voice said to Drals’ right. “Fargrave. Beautiful, isn't it?”

Drals glanced towards the voice’s owner. The sound was clearly Dremora, harsh and grating yet with a tone that he would almost describe as soft. He was tall and broad, bare-chested with scarred reddish skin, his features strong and pointed with black horns that curved back over his head. His cloudy gaze was focused away from Drals, over the city below.

Drals took a quick look behind him for anyone else, wondering why, of all people, this Dremora was accosting him.

“Weird place,” Drals muttered dismissively. “Weird people.”

The Dremora’s attention snapped quickly towards him.

“And what of you, mortal?” He cocked his head to the side, his eyes sizing Drals up. “What business might a servant of Hermaeus Mora have in this plane between planes?”

“I’m no one’s servant,” Drals hissed, his upper lip twitching. “If anything, he’s more like a terrible landlord. If I stink like ink, it’s because he won’t fix the leaks in my bloody ceiling.”

“Hmph.” There was something almost like a smirk on the Dremora’s face, though it was hard to tell. “Perhaps you and I aren’t so different after all.” He stepped closer, coming to a stop at Drals’ side.

“Who are you supposed to be, then?” Drals asked, barely masking his curiosity.

“I am someone who has searched millenia for purpose,” he said, his eyes narrowing. “And now that I am as close as I am to finding it, I will not have it torn from my grasp.”

Drals eyed the Dremora, taken aback by the sudden intensity behind his words. “Do you understand me, mortal?”

[chiropteracupola]

The love of the Wanderer is to wanderers.