#i've done more worldbuilding that i like

[anxietywriter]

betrayal

It wasn't his fault he died. Not the first time. Nor the second.

Do you know why the gods don't interfere with mortals?

Because even they feel shame and pity. Even they cringe away at the thought of grief. Timeless beings were always unsettled by death.

They killed him, though. Memories bled, from one life into the next. From the next back. He couldn't separate one lifetime from the other. What happened when.

Mercy, they said.

An injustice. Corrected.

And they let him rest in an opulent room that simultaneously seemed too much and not enough. His. His room. He had a room.

It felt like they expected him to know. Know where the lights were and which door led to the bathroom.

A god, was he a god, now? A god shouldn't yearn for mortality. They should think it a curse, a cage.

Mortal life is a terrible, wretched thing. It was his prison sentence. Meant to torment him with the struggles of humanity compared to the ease of godhood.

His memories bled.

Was his mortal life so terrible? And this life so wonderful? Was he doing something wrong? To feel so suffocated? To feel such deep resentment?

They all stared at him like they were waiting for something. Like he was a dog about to jump through a hoop. It was unnerving. Why did they stare?

What did his first life entail?

Why did it end?

He had a headache.

Were gods meant to feel this way?

[icewindandboringhorror]

................ he 

[longagoitwastuesday]

Kusakabe, dear, you're too beautiful to be saying that kind of stuff

[cupcakes-and-pain]

Shoutout to my siblings for putting up with my neurodivergent ass. Just now I remembered how multiple times I tried to convince them that we should roleplay a complex trading system between towns and/or nations. I wanted no plot, one dimensional characters, and all the focus on trade. It's a miracle they didn't tease me more lol

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

in tonight's endeavor to be distracted from Everything, i have painstakingly jotted down the base, beginning ideas for a modern human au. it includes a gap-year group road trip in Wally's RV, Home

[batfossil-fr]

I am taking The Step and being a very brave boy and I am going to start setting up my non fr art account. for REAL this time. no “I say I will do this and oops I don’t” it’s For Real and if it’s not up soon you have permission to kick me. I wrote some introduction post the other day that turned into a million page long essay so i’ve gotta like... actually draw shit, instead of just wall of text worldbuilding infodump lmao. I thought, hey let’s give a little primer into my world. and then I immediately went into a rant about geological history i didn’t even GET to the main species until like 2/3 of the way down lmfao

but I have spent too long letting that account haunt the back of my brain. its posting time!!! (I am utterly terrified to post things you have no idea.) but that’s how it goes. soon. maybe this week once i get some exams out of the way. it WILL happen

[arolesbianism]

Oh god the new cotl trailer is dragging me right back in... Damn you goat why must you relight my interest in this game so

[piplupod]

i need more sitting-down activities that i can do outside urghghh i want to sew but it's too windy (even just a small breeze is too much) to be working with little pieces of fabric and thread. also sidenote hey guess who learned they've been tying knots in the thread the wrong way their entire life (Kam says we did actually know the correct way to tie a knot years ago but that knowledge didn't get passed to me as a part but I don't know if I believe that fsdjkl). i've been doing some arcane wizard shit with tying the thread after threading the needle and I watched a video a few days ago of someone sewing something and saw the way they looped it around their finger and pulled it through and my brain just about exploded HFDSGJKL

anyways. i usually end up drawing outside but sometimes I simply do not want to draw. same with crochet. but I don't know any other easy sitting-down activities that i can do outside so then i don't get outside as often as I'd like to because I cannot think of anything to do AUGH

[ehlnofay]

19 for the worldbuilding prompts + Torr?

the profound quiet of a small settlement at night

North Eastmarch is freezing cold all over, but it wears different outside the city than within.

Torr would never call Windhelm warm – not even in summer months, no matter how used to it they are – but what little heat it has it clings to with great determination. The walls huddle together, trapping the air so that it’s either still and muggy or a howling wind, like each close-knit house is breathing in tandem. The heat of the people run up and down its streets, blood through its knotted stone veins. The city is alive, an ecosystem unto itself; its snow, dark with footprints, runs sludgy down the roads; a fireplace is always burning somewhere.

Outside of the walls, surrounded by nothing but empty air and snow-laden trees, a slow-moving stream running with barely a burble – it feels dead, in contrast. Silent. Branches reach needle-sharp across the blue-black sky, the ground is gleaming white and undisturbed by anyone else’s footprints, and the nearest fire is the barely visible gleam of the Kynesgrove mining camp, up the hill and through the sporadic spindles of the trees. The breeze ghosts past Torr’s neck and whips the mud-stained snow into a flurry.

In the city, Torr’s comfortable sleeping almost anywhere – as comfortable as they ever get, anyway. Some of the buildings have great gaps under the porch where the snow can’t reach and no-one ever finds them; there’s places in the nooks of the walls, and sheds built into the side of the house that people don’t lock, and Torr knows a few people besides who don’t mind him kipping on their floor every now and again, as long as he doesn’t ask too often. The outside isn’t like that. There’s not many places to go. He’s lurking around Kynesgrove tonight – on his way back from a quick venture out to get some things done that pay better than running errands around the markets – and there aren’t many options. The inn, which he can’t afford – the mine, which would be warm but is very guarded – the miner’s encampment or someone’s house, both of which would most likely result in being chased off. Besides, there’s a performative element to meeting people, especially adults, in strange places, and Torr’s not in the mood to play to strangers. So much of his being is caught up in Windhelm’s grimy alleys, tangled in the hair and fingers of its discarded children; he doesn’t know how to be himself away from it all.

But they don’t have to, seeing as there’s the rickety old sawmill on the edge of a stream feeding into the harbour. It’s not bad, as shelter goes; no walls, so the wind rubs its fingers wraithlike down Torr’s cheeks and tangles them in his hair, but at least there’s a roof. It looks newly thatched, too, the floorboards free of rot, the water-wheel still chugging creakily along. There’s no wood to cut here, all the nearby surrounding trees too scraggy to be worth the bother. The only big ones are part of the grove up on the hill. There’s no point in keeping the mill running, but Torr is glad it is; he watches the distant firelight flickering through the scrub, and listens to the splashing of the wheel. It’s proof that people and the things they make do still exist – if not necessarily here.

It really feels dead, out in the cold, with the leafless trees and the wind that doesn’t even whisper. It always does. It’s a bit discomfiting, which is maybe why Torr doesn’t go on out-of-city endeavours as often as perhaps he could; but really, there’s not work out here enough to make it worth it. There’s always problems with bandits on the road, but Torr’s not a good enough fighter for bounty work; there’s collecting plants and things to sell Nurelion, but that’s easy enough to do on a day trip. (And, really, it’s more for Torr’s own enjoyment, besides. They never even venture far south enough to get to the sulphur pools, which is where the more interesting things grow.)

This trip, though, is an outlier. Unusually efficient. Just a quick job for Niranye, scouting a merchant’s cart on the road – almost definitely for something shady, but that’s not Torr’s business, and it was too much money too easy to turn down. And then – just earlier today, foraging out in the wilderness as best as Torr (a distinctly urban animal) knows how – they’d come across a giant’s corpse, stiff and white as the snow it lay in. Torr’s no master alchemist but they know the value of a cadaver when it comes to brewing alloys and admixtures, so they set to with their blunt-edged dagger and now they’ve got a sack full of what may as well be gold. (Long as it doesn’t start to rot before they can get Nurelion to preserve it, anyway.)

Torr’s going to be rolling in it when they get back to Windhelm. They could use that money for nearly anything – pay off a few things they borrowed, new warm things now that winter’s coming back strong, bedrolls, waterskins. Endless options – which, strangely, is more exciting than it is burdensome.

It’s all the sort of decision that would ordinarily feel life-or-death urgent but right now feels – not small. Not insignificant, not at all, but distant. A choice to be made at another time, by another person.

(Torr’s whole being belongs to Windhelm’s back streets. They’re someone else, away from it all.)

That’s the other thing about leaving the city, spending time in the discomfiting slow-paced ghost-world outside. It’s quiet. Torr sits surrounded by the wind in the trees, the lazy murmur of the stream, the creak of the water-wheel, and nothing else.

He’s been called a worrywart (mostly by Griss in a strop) but to tell the truth he doesn’t think that’s true. Torr doesn’t fuss for the sake of fussing, he just doesn’t like to leave things undone; can’t stop until he finds a solution. Out here, alone, in the empty cold, there are no solutions to find – same old problems back home, he knows, but no steps he can take at this time to right them. That’s never true while he’s in the city, so he can never stop thinking about it, every choice and action accompanied by a buzzing background chorus of everything else he really should be doing – that really should have been done by now – that should never have been left undone this long, what was he thinking? Everything is urgent when it’s doable. But here and now, there’s nothing to do.

So Torr sits hunched on the board floor of the ramshackle watermill, huddled among their heaps of bags and blankets, and thinks of nothing at all.

Not strictly true. They think of supper – haven’t eaten since an apple this morning, except for some snowberries they found around noon, and it’s been a long day. They nabbed some turnips from the garden of the Kynesgrove inn on their way to the mill. They’re fresh, if nothing else – also covered in dirt, so Torr rises reluctantly from their pile of stuff to crouch on the banks of the stream and dip the vegetables in to clean them off. It aches like hell, the frozen water turning their joints to ice – they almost drop the turnip they’re washing, so they scrub it as best they can with the frigid pad of their thumb and whip their hands out of the water soon as they’re able. They stick their fingers in their mouth to warm them back up.

Even after all that time spent warming up their hands, arraying all their belongings back around themself to conserve body heat, the turnips are still cold enough to hurt Torr’s teeth when he bites in. He eats them anyway, relishing a little in the unearthly silence and the aching of his lips and palms. They taste delicious.

With nothing else to do after, the gnawing of his stomach sated, he wraps himself in his shawl and stares up the hill at the camp’s fire until it goes out. The stars wink into brighter being. The wind whistles through the whip-thin branches of the trees. The water-wheel creaks.

Torr sleeps, but he feels like he hears it all – a silent observer, an echo, a beginning – until morning.

[aroaessidhe]

2023 reads // twitter thread

Star Eater

fantasy world under religious rule by an order of nuns who practice ritualistic cannibalism to gain magic

one young Sister who’s plagued by visions wants to get out, and ends up caught in the complex politics between factions vying for power and the revolution wanting to get rid of them

[icewindandboringhorror]

recent lounging babey images

[fragmentedblade]

I don't know, it's silly, but I really love this story. I fell in love with the details and how everything cohered beyond my expectations, how the little details in worldbuilding made big things click and make sense even though they seemed typical fiction "too much but you have to suspend belief" things at first. And I actually honestly think most of the things some parts of fandom complain about are not only coherent, but some of the best more nuanced aspects of the writing. Everything that I thought and interpreted, even to the most minute details, was confirmed. Even, again, to the most minute details I loved but thought I was being stupid for paying so much attention to, because surely they couldn't mean as much as I thought they did. Yet they did.

[alphascorpiixx]

I’ve gotten most of the way through totk (i think) and I’m pretty sure at this point the sages are never going to get names/face reveals

like before the game’s release I didn’t want the champions to return because they died a hundred years ago and their spirits are at peace now they don’t need to be brought back for some plot contrivance

but in comparison the sages preform the same narrative role (warriors from the past who fought ganon and are now passing on their powers to help the future generation suceed this time) yet they’re such a downgrade to the champions. Like at this point I’d rather have beloved established characters return then have them replaced with lackluster characters who don’t even have names

[englishflagcumrag]

this is kalevi he's a cunty middle aged man who likes horror films

[lesbianwords]

i’m gonna be ambitious and try nanowrimo again this year!! i wanted to do it last year but i gave up pretty quick, i’ll try to take it seriously this time lmao

i’ll be working on “queen’s echo” (i’ve actually just been calling it “echo” recently) which used to be a lighthearted fantasy romance but has now become darker and horror-ish? idk if it’ll be that scary and i’m not really committed to the genre yet but there will be some horror elements i think. i want to just write it out and see what happens! basically the previous idea was like fun celebrity wedding planning shenanigans in a hotel that’s possessed (in a fun quirky way) but now the wedding happens in the beginning and the bride and groom die bc the spirit possessing the hotel actually possesses one of them and kills the other that way. so yea. the main cast of characters (who all work at the hotel) is pretty much the same the plot is just more unhinged

[saintlesbian]

*squints* *adjusts glasses*

*sees your (very neat) “Ask Me About My Paradise State Lore” shirt*

hm…

good day! ✨

could you tell me about this “Paradise State”? :D

(if it’s too much feel free to make it reallll short)

Paradise State (work in progress) is my furry soap opera comic project I've been working on since late 2022 (around the same time my soap opera obsession started 😅). Originally it served as a personal dumping ground for various characters and stories that I had previously created and abandoned over the years, but over time has evolved into a sort of serial drama sandbox for me to play around in.

The story itself primarily takes place in Felicity, a fictional 50th state on the east coast of the USA (Hawaii is a separate country in this universe don't worry about it 😁). Within Felicity is Calico City, the major metropolitan area that most of the cast come from, with a thriving nightlife scene and plenty of economic enterprises ruling the the city.

Being a soap opera with an ensemble cast, Paradise State doesn't have a singular main protagonist: characters come in and out of focus based on the importance of whatever storyline they're actively involved in. For example:

One the first story arcs of Paradise State centers around Emmeline Fairchild, a struggling actress returning to the east coast in search of work, trying desperately to move on from her troubled past in Hollywood. She reunites with old friends and family in Calico City, hoping to make a fresh start after all the time she's spent away from home. But in spite of her best efforts, her past seems intent on catching up with her...

Another story arc focuses on Ruthie Campbell, a humble farmhand toiling away on her family's ranch just west of Clover Hills. She doesn't want much from life; just to work hard and maintain her maternal grandfather's legacy. However, an unexpected visit from her long lost father threatens the peaceful life she's worked so hard to build...

And yet another story arc centers Sylvia Carmichael, a rich spoiled brat used to getting everything she wants (with the help of her father's money). Her father threatens to withhold her trust fund unless she shapes up and proves herself a worthy heiress, so she decides to worm her way into another rich man's heart. Little does she know, her newest sugar daddy has some long forgotten ties to her real daddy, and her gold digging schemes fan the flames of a decades old revenge plot...

These are just a tiny fraction of the plots and characters of Paradise State for now. It's a little harder to talk about Paradise State as a whole unit since the stories are meant to be more character driven, but that's just a little peek into my sandbox for now! :3