#its so much more fun writing for actual characters

[royalydamned]

I want to formally thank the Sonic team for actually not making Stobotnik and its shippers the butt of a joke? Like you see this treatment of fans especially shippers so much like haha these silly little queers drawing and writing porn of these two characters it's so funny haha. You poor delusional bastards.

And before anyone goes, uhm ☝️ but they called them friends. They didn't make them lovers. Ok maybe, but not even Tom and Maddie act too romantic, so it's not I expected any tongue action or anything.

But what I mean is, instead of mocking their relationship and making someone call Stone Robotnik's boyfriend to laugh at it we got an actually meaningful and emotional scene about them and their own little subplot. I feel more validated than by the hatecrime of a love confession Destiel was.

Like the bar is so low I am grateful not being made fun of by the creators and/or actors and instead doing anything to deny it they went "you know what? Sure why not" and I am kissing your feet giving you my firstborn I hope you continue succeeding.

[eurydicees]

re what they are saying about fiyero on twitter - gosh there is too much stuff. they talk about how uninteresting he is, how his presence has no effect on the leads, how he shouldn’t be elphaba’s endgame and doesnt deserve to be, how they want to delete him from the plot (somewhere along those line), how they want to block anyone making any fiyeraba or fiyero tweets or content and much, much, MUCH more like i genuinely do not understand the obsession?

i of course get not liking him, thats normal about any character lol but the way they just cannot shut up about how they dislike him is so….. like really no one is challenging your gelphie content 😭 we really are not interested to challenge your ship. you really dont need to focus on this guy 24/7 but ig you do you i hope they remain sane amidst all the apparent misery lol

well. you know. disappointed by not surprised. a partial fiyero ted talk under the cut. sorry.

it's like. it's just so frustrating to write him off as uninteresting and as having no effect on either elphaba (or glinda). like guys why is the media literacy not happening right now. also how the fuck would you delete him from the plot???? guys his plan is literally how elphaba escapes dorothy. he's the one who saves her from the gale force, TWICE. he literally sacrifices himself for her escape and its his sacrifice that makes her spiral into "wickedness" during no good deed.

also, fiyero is elphaba's endgame in part because he does what glinda cannot bring herself to do. WHICH IS SO VITAL TO THE ENDING. fiyero is the one who makes all of the sacrifices for elphaba that glinda refused, and he both pays the price for it and reaps the reward of it.

glinda and elphaba have a profound effect on each other, obviously, but it's not like fiyero is left unchanged by elphaba. i dont get where this idea that fiyero and elphaba have no dynamic because like??? that's just not true?????

fiyero goes from refusing to confront the difficulties of life to choosing the more difficult path for the sake of morality and loyalty and love because of elphaba (which is also really interesting given how he's, like, kind of a casualty of war in the book more than he is an actual rebel....mostly fiyero's book to musical adapation is #Rough but that's a cool parallel i hadn't noticed before).

glinda begins to see the flaws in the wizard's society, but she actively chooses to be a part of the system anyway. and she regrets it. that's the whole thing abt thank goodness!!!

fiyero, on the other hand, begins to see the flaws in this society and he chooses elphaba--and the life of rebellion that she's chosen--over everything that glinda admits to being unable to resist.

and GOD. guys that's so interesting. HES SO INTERESTING!!! how are you not interested by all of this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

wicked is such a cool study on morality and what the "right" thing to do in such a world is, and what it means to make the decision to do the right thing vs the comfortable thing. fiyero chooses to follow elphaba and he pays the price, but he also doesn't regret it. glinda chooses the "safe" option--but in the end, even if she chooses good then, she's entirely alone in it all.

and that's SO INTERESTING!!!!!!!!! god. whatever. twitter just doesn't get him like you and me get him, anon.

just. it's totally fine to dislike him! i'm not refuting people's right to dislike him. the nature of fictional characters is that sometimes people will dislike them. like that's fine.

but being incapable of shutting up about how much you hate a character just...it stops being "harmlessly disliking a fictional character" and starts being "you are insufferable to talk to." like sorry you're so miserable about fiyeraba but i'm gonna be over here just having fun because that's what fandom is supposed to be about :)

(also, just a major issue with breaking this movie up into two films released a year apart is that any movie-only fans just don't get the point of fiyero's character. it's kind of devastating. ik not all of the people saying that stuff are movie-only but man. the people who are...im BEGGING you to give him a chance in part 2. literally BEGGING you. fiyero is such a good character. he has so many good moments. let the green girl go lives in my head rent free and if they cut that i'll riot.)

tldr; fiyero is SO neat and twitter is just full of cowards.

[brella-boi]

Okay guys this is becoming a tradition of me seeing films recently so heres a

Sonic 3 review from a technical standpoint

Look im no film critic or anything, but i AM an animator and theres a lot of. Things. I see whether I want to or not. Its just how my brain is wired because of my profession lol

(This is full of spoilers btw so now's your time to fast scroll away)

Anyway lets begin!

The movie is great. Cool even. I liked it! But theres a lot of direction decision that I am just. Baffled by I guess?

First of all- the models are different. (Httyd ass moment) And the way they sculpted the characters lips absolutely destroys anything theyre trying to emote. It looks like theyre CONSTANTLY pursing their lips. Like they ate a lemon. Do you understand? Sonic also has much more pronounced brows which makes him look more pissed off constantly LOL

[Sonic 1 model vs sonic 3 models, pay attention to the lips]

Eggman and Dr Stone had possibly the best interactions in the entire movie. Their dynamic was fantastic, and I would argue they kinda carried the movie. Unfortunately! The ending left their issues unresolved. And Dr Stone looked entirely unbothered by the possible death of Eggman.

This brings me to some writing choices that I feel may be due to... Either infantalising or time cuts. The storyboarding of this film was just. God how do I even describe this. It feels like a lot of crucial scenes where cherry picked to be deleted between shots. Thats not good at all- and while character continuity WAS there, it really did feel like something crucial was missing in some scenes. This is especially evident in the Chao Garden scenes. Specifically when the general dies (WHY DOES HE DIE LIKE THAT. WE DIDNT EVEN SEE THE RUBBLE GO ANYWHERE OR PIN ANYONE DOWN OR SEE MASS PANIC FOR PEOPLE TO DIE?) The characters COMPLETELY gloss over his death- a death that feels like its out of a show for 8 year olds Im not going to lie to you. He just flops, delivers a line, and thats it.

It feels like the two halves of the movie were written by two different writers.

The first half is weak. The jokes are stale. And the storybeats almost feel off. The actions scenes- while there's nothing particularly offendish about them- don't *hit*. If you're an animator or writer you understand that important beats need to pack a punch. It was severely lacking in packing punches in the first half.

I also wanna speak to the animators. Are you okay? Was this made on tight deadlines? Where is the fun and whimsy? Did you outsource this? Did you give your workers a good environment or were they crunching and hating life? Or did you hire younger animators with no senior feedback because they're cheaper to hire?

Look, the animation is good. Just that. Its good. Its TV show standard, not movie standard. Its lacking a good push to the poses, its using slow keyframing between poses instead of it being snappy, with good silhouettes, with good visual gags. Instead were left with this.. subpar passable animation for every character instead of something energetic and snappy like Sonics personality. I think this is where I take the most issue with because guys come on. You didnt push the models to their limits at ALL. And Sonics speedy running is... Well read my previous points. Where are the fundamentals of animation about exaggeration? Not in Sonics run cycle.

The second half of the movie carried the first half on its back thanks to Eggman. I am SO GLAD to see giant spaceships and mechs and whatnot. Thats great! Loved to see the lovely mech models and once again- interactions between Eggman and Dr Stone. Id go as far as say they should be gay tbh (hello? The scene where theyre tied up?)

I didn't bring up Shadow entirely so far. And honestly Ive no notes about him. All my notes are entirely about just the animation and not hitting the beats well. His characterisation was great- it actually explains his aggression pretty well and then redemption. Genuinely the last arc of the movie was fantastic. And finally we got to hear a rock score to go with it. Maria was fun, the flashbacks were fun, the scientific exploration was fun. All in the second half of the movie of course!

My overall score is 6/10.

To untrained eyes the movie is going to be extremely fun- if a little more childish in some parts than others. I'm glad they took some risky moments, I'm glad the characterisation is well written. I just wish other aspects were tightened down, mainly animation and storyboarding.

6/10 but I never thought Id leave the cinema with the thoughts "I could storyboard some of these scenes in a lot more meaningful way, and Im not even a storyboarder."

I recommend a watch! Its not a bad movie. Its not a rock-it-out-of-the-park movie either though. I feel like maybe all the anticipation and high expectations maybe made it not as gut punching for me as it couldve been. Overall, all I can gleam from it is theres a lot of things to improve on! But nothing that really destroys it or makes it bad. Just a lot of room for improvement.

Thanks for reading!

[sappho-rose]

"The world doesn't know me yet."

[silverwhittlingknife]

hi Silver! o/ because that fanart made me wonder - would you happen to know when/where Dick's stuffed elephant plush Zitka turns up in the comics?

GREETINGS CAM <3333 THAT ART WAS SO CUTE

Yeah, I think your instincts are right - it's a truly adorable bit of transformative fandom, but I'm 95% percent sure it's not comics canon. Barbara has canon plushies, but I don't think anyone else does.

I got kinda invested in the investigation (it's hard to prove a negative!) and I ended up typing out an entire History of Elinore/Zitka, so, uh, if you're curious, meet me below the cut for:

Where does Elinore / Zitka - the animal - appear in comics?

Did Dick ever have a stuffed elephant toy in comics?

Where does Elinore / Zitka appear in comics?

We're gonna go in chronological order!

Dick's circus elephant friend was first created for practical reasons: in Batman 436, Marv Wolfman does a big expanded flashback to Dick's circus backstory as a way to subtly show us Tim before officially introducing him (so that we can have a technically-solvable mystery-of-Tim's-identity in LPoD). In this comic, there's an elephant named Elinore who loves Dick:

Aww. Such a cute elephant!

Batman 436 comes out in August 1989. New Titans 60 comes out a few months later, in November, and guess what? When Dick visits the circus, he is suddenly surprised by an unexpected blast from the past! It turns out that even though it's been years, Elinore still remembers him!

Here's the part where Elinore remembers Dick:

SUCH a cute elephant. I love her.

(Guess who else still remembers Dick even though it was so long ago. Guess which other character is about to be an unexpected blast from the past. Guess which character Elinore is directly paralleling guess guess guess sorry everything is about Dick and Tim in my mind but I can focus I swear)

Four years later, in 1993, Batman: The Animated Series retells Dick's origin story. They like and keep Wolfman's elephant, but they change her name to Zitka:

Wolfman doesn't return to the elephant beyond those two appearances, and a few years down the line, New Titans gets cancelled and Wolfman's not writing Dick anymore anyway. So the animal gets abandoned for a while, until Devin Grayson, a fan of both Wolfman and B:tAS, revives the Wolfman-era Titans team in JLA/Titans and then the ongoing series Titans 1999.

Grayson then brings back the elephant in a flashback to Dick's past in Titans 16 (Jun 2000), where she imports the B:tAS name. Sometimes I'm skeptical of TV-to-comics imports, but honestly, I endorse this one. You lose the alliteration, which is a shame, but IMO Zitka is a better elephant name than Elinore.

Here's Dick with the newly-christened Zitka in Titans 16:

Grayson also briefly references the elephant in Gotham Knights 20 and - in a final angsty callback - in Nightwing 88 (Feb 2004), where Zitka tries futilely to comfort Dick in the midst of his trauma conga line:

... And... honestly, I think that's it for comic appearances? The two Wolfman comics plus the three Grayson comics.

Both Wolfman and Grayson are writing multiple titles - Batman, New Titans, Titans, Gotham Knights, and Nightwing between the two of them, spanning a big chunk of Dick's post-Crisis canon - and both writers use the elephant for heartwarming moments of nostalgia, which means if you're doing a post-Crisis readthrough for Dick, Elinore/Zitka feels memorable. But I don't think she actually shows up that much.

For post-2011, I am not as well-informed - throwing this out to the dash? anyone know? - but I feel like Zitka the heartwarming symbol of Dick's heartwarming circus past is, uh, thematically very at odds with the Court of Owls evil!circus vibes, so my instinct is that this story element was almost certainly dropped in the reboot.

Did Dick ever have a stuffed elephant toy in comics?

In WFA, yes; in main comics continuity, no. Technically, I have not read every comic ever published, so I could be wrong!! But I don't think so.

Below, find my rambling reasoning on the tonal vibes of pre-Crisis, post-Crisis, and post-2011, and why this particular story element doesn't seem right to me for the first two.

Pre-Crisis (...okay, mostly the Silver Age): stuffed animal, yes or no?

tl;dr no, requires too much background knowledge on the part of the reader, plus the elephant wasn't a thing until later

Elinore doesn't get created until post-Crisis, but also just generally, pre-Crisis callbacks are more along the lines of this reference in Batman 129 (published in 1960), where, wow, Batman and Robin are hunting jewel thieves - and it turns out Robin recognized this strongman! BUT HOW?!

The comic goes on to recap Dick's entire origin story in flashback, on the assumption that you may not know it.

(BTW, if you'd like to know more about Haly's Circus throughout the years, nightwingology has a great post here summarizing a lot of fun plotlines and characters!)

Basically: Silver Age comics are very self-consciously episodic and kid-friendly; they're not generally gonna do overly-elaborate callbacks because they don't know what comics their kid readers may have randomly picked up or remember.

By the time of post-Crisis, comic books were being written for an adult audience buying from the direct market, i.e. readers who are collecting whole runs & don't need or want Dick's origin story to be recapped to us in full every time it's referenced. That's why in post-Crisis, we get stuff like "hey, neat, this particular soda brand is getting mentioned in several different books!!" or "in order to understand this story arc, buy SIXTEEN DIFFERENT COMICS in FIVE DIFFERENT RUNS and read them ALL ACCORDING TO A NUMBERED ORDER and also you better be following the individual plotlines and recognize these five minor characters who we don't bother to introduce!! Good luck!!" But the elaborate post-Crisis plotlines - and subtler worldbuilding like a stuffed animal callback to Dick's backstory - don't make a lot of story sense UNLESS you're imagining your readers as completionist adult fans.

So IMO a stuffed animal wouldn't be a pre-Crisis thing unless it was The Episodic Story Of the Week, and I don't think a stuffed animal is action-adventure-y enough for the fast-paced storytelling of the Silver Age. (Unless it, like, came to life and tried to eat you or something.)

Post-Crisis: stuffed animals, yes or no?

tl;dr: no, Dick's a manly tough guy, he's not gonna have a stuffed animal, that'd be lame, like something Tim might do

Part of the edgy grimdark adult vibes in 80s/90s comics is that some characters who used to be kinda silly & goofy & lighthearted - like Batman and Robin - get reimagined as Serious and Angsty and Edgy in a Tough Cool Manly Brooding Way. This massively affects characterization for Bruce, Dick, and Bruce and Dick's relationship.

(I obviously love this change & love the tense Bruce-and-Dick interactions, but plenty of fans of the earlier fluffy comics really disliked the edgy retcons of Miller / Wolfman / Starlin / et al.)

The upshot is that post-Crisis is a period when you could have a recurring reference like a stuffed elephant, but you wouldn't have a stuffed elephant, not for Dick. I think a toy like that would be too cutesy / childish / effeminate to give a male character in post-Crisis, unless you were poking fun at him.

Now, you could probably let Tim have a stuffed animal, because Tim is sometimes cool but also sometimes a tryhard loser who is faking being cool and not entirely pulling it off (see e.g. the Robin comic where he practices tough-guy faces in the mirror, or the Teen Titans comic where Conner discovers his cringy Enya CD, or when he's fanboying over Connor and it's awkward, etc etc.). A stuffed animal would be deeply embarrassing, and you'd have to be careful to compensate by having Tim do something cool afterward - but Tim's character concept allows for "he's kind of a loser sometimes."

But Dick isn't!! In post-Crisis, Dick's a tough / impressive / "cool guy" character, the kind of guy anyone would want to be, even in the flashbacks where he's Robin, and even in the stories where he's more lighthearted than angsty. It'd be kinda lame for Dick to have a stuffed elephant, so he wouldn't. I feel like Dick would be more likely to poke fun at it if someone had one, like when he's making fun of Wally for liking the Hardy Boys. Dick could have a Batman action figure, at most, and if he had one he would have it ironically.

Basically: in post-Crisis, a male character hugging a stuffed elephant feels more likely to be a punchline to me, not something poignant. (Even with Tim, Tim could have an embarrassing stuffed animal, but he couldn't hug it when sad - that's too far. Maybe Booster Gold might do this. Probably he wouldn't, but spiritually, he would. Sorry Booster ilu! <3)

Instead, Dick instinctively deals with his inner turmoil like the TORTURED ACTION HERO he is: by punching things and brooding and yelling and joining the mob and sleeping on rooftops and going on obsessive secret missions and acquiring Angsty Stubble!! Just like Batman!

(Technically I don't know if Bruce ever joined the mob but you know he would.)

Anyway as you know this is my favorite continuity and I am poking fun affectionately, but uh, yeah sdfsfdsfs. No stuffed animals.

Post-2011 / Infinite Frontier / Wayne Family Adventures: stuffed animals, yes or no?

tl;dr it's in WFA! Probably not anywhere else, but it could be.

Post-2011 stuff tends to be cutesier overall, most of all in the current Infinite Frontier era. So I don't feel like this would be tonally out-of-line with IF comics. Taylor tends to go for more meme-y references rather than fanfic references, though.

So the obvious best fit is WFA, which is aiming for a rough approximation of Silver Age family-friendly vibes - wholesome, episodic plots, Teaching Good Moral Lessons For The Youth, etc. - plus lots of Easter eggs for fanfic readers and some comic references.

And look, here we are:

Aww.

Whew - that's everything I could find!

Anyway as you can probably tell, I LOVE the elephant, so this was a very entertaining rabbit hole to go down, thank you <3

[kasper7489]

I kinda hopped into the dc fandom by reading fics (I know I know lmao)

But as I've read more comics and looked into different characterization and analysis I now have a more developed idea as to how I view a lot of the characters and have preferences to how their written. I'm def the type to click out a fic if I find myself thinking 'he would not fucking say that'

Anyway this is just to say it's very funny to me when I go thru some of the fics I bookmarked at the begining of my interest and find myself going Uh Oh! I don't think I can read this anymore!

[icewindandboringhorror]

finally finished all of one character's entire quests/optional dialogue/questions/etc.... 100,000 words... .... aughhh

[every-sanji]

[just-mebs]

I finally finished playing Outer Wilds and I'm like,, this game has completely crushed me

[seventh-district]

not even gonna tag this properly bc i don't wanna get Involved but i do have some Thoughts i need to get out into the void so here we go

(aaa quick edit: CW for mention/discussion of Boothill leaks)

[good-beanswrites]

hello beans!! hope you're doing well 💜 ^w^ I know you've probably gotten a lot of requests - but I'm gonna add to that pile anyway because it's fun and also your writing is wonderful and always cheers me up to read!! I'm so inspired by your drabbles and you really bring these characters and this little world to life ;w;

From drabble list #1:

14. "Please tell me, this is not why you woke me up."

Character(s): honestly anyone, but my gut was saying Es as soon as I saw that sentence so... up to you!

Woo thank you pal, same to you!! Thanks for your kind words ah ;--; This is the perfect line for Es omg, I've been cracking up over it for so long 😂 I was tempted to write them waking up for T2, taking one look around and going "uh-uh," but decided on some T1 comedy...

Es rarely dreamed. Usually it was vague images and thoughts. Sometimes it was just them thinking about breakfast the following morning. Occasionally they were plagued by a nightmare of being forced to sing karaoke with the prisoners. Most of the time, though, it was just silence that welcomed them at the end of the day. Wonderful, peaceful, silence.

BANG-BANG-BANG!

Someone slammed their fist on the door. Es just about fell out of bed.

Mikoto’s voice came from outside. “Oi, get up! There’s been… uh… an incident!”

That was the last thing a prison guard wanted to hear at -- Es checked the clock -- 2am. Damn. 

They muttered to themself as they threw on their uniform. Why the prison’s cells didn’t lock was beyond them. Some of the prisoners were more troublesome than others, but the first trial had been going smoothly thus far. Why now? 

Their mind flashed with various possibilities, each one worse than the last, all urging them forward. By the time they were running down the hallway, their shirt buttons were a row off, and they had to switch their shoes to the opposite foot. They adjusted the cap clumsily on their head.

Fear gripped their chest as they heard Jackalope’s voice crying out for help from the panopticon. Jackalope never called for help. 

Es burst into the room. The prisoners froze, looking up guiltily. 

They sat in a huddle on the floor. Yuno and Muu held the little furry warden over a tub of sudsy water. Bottles of soap and shampoo sat nearby. An assortment of brushes and combs sat to the side. Splashes of water spread across the prisoners and ground, speaking to several failed attempts at getting Jackalope into the bath.

Nearby, Mahiru was holding up the tiny guard’s uniform, her sewing kit spread out on her lap. Es spotted bandages on Yuno’s and Kazui’s fingers. Shidou was currently dabbing blood off Fuuta’s nose as he fumed. Jackalope leaned over to nip at the hands holding him, but Yuno and Muu held him fast.

“Es!” came his frantic voice as he thrashed around. “You gotta help me! Make them stop, dammit!” 

From the group of prisoners who had been watching from a distance, Haruka turned to them. “Oh! Es! Th-they thought that he needed a -- uh, a bath! His uniform had a h-hole, and Mahiru can s-sew! And they thought, they thought we could do it all t-together… Muu called it a -- a spa night…” 

“At two in the morning?” Was all that came to mind.

“We tried to get him to do it earlier today,” Muu said, “but we didn’t get a chance until now.”

“They didn’t get a chance to kidnap me, she means!” He squirmed around some more, swinging his antlers wildly. “They hid around the corner and nabbed me like the filthy criminals they are!!”

Yuno said, “hold still,” as she brought him closer to the water. He kicked his feet wildly, screaming at Es to show a little authority and do something. 

���Hold on a second,” they stopped her.

They closed their eyes, pinching the bridge of their nose. They took a measured breath. They were here to contemplate sin and crime, guilt and forgiveness. Their job should have consisted of questions about morality and life and death; they never anticipated looking around their prison and asking, “is human shampoo even safe for his fur?”

Kotoko spoke up from the other side of the room. “That’s what I thought, but is he really a rabbit? He eats human food and everything, we didn’t think a bit of soap was that different.”

Jackalope disagreed (“that stuff is as bad as poison -- poison I tell you!”) but the others chimed in with their agreement. From around the room came promises that they were being gentle with him, and that they’d keep quiet, and that they’d dry and brush his fur really well when they’d finished, and that they’d feed him treats, and that his uniform was already good as new, and so on. A few complaints at getting bit mingled with Jackalope’s own insults. 

“-- Alright.” Es held up a hand to silence them all. They knew a warden shouldn’t be making compromises with their prisoners. At the same time, they didn’t have the energy to argue about bunny baths at this time of night. “You can continue, but wash him outside of the tub. And go easy on the shampoo. Any mess you make must be cleaned by morning.” 

They were met with excitement and thanks. Jackalope grumbled that they were too soft, but he sounded relieved as he was whisked away from the dreaded bathwater. 

Es sighed. There may have been a few bites and bumps, but that was all. No emergency, no fight, no danger plagued Milgram tonight. Their relief quickly turned to annoyance. They leveled their gaze at Mikoto as he entered from the hallway behind.

“Please tell me this isn’t why you woke me up.”

“Huh? Oh, this? No, no -- we have everything under control. Aw, Mappi, that looks great!”

He pointed at her sewing job, revealing bandages on his hands as well. It looked like no one was safe from the rabbit’s little teeth… Then Mikoto jabbed a thumb casually over his shoulder. “Nah, the faucet in the men’s room broke when we tried filling the basin. The whole room’s flooded now. I think it’s gonna start spilling into the hallway soon.”

“WHAT?”

[arolesbianism]

Take some Fydd's I just realized I never posted

[vampiricsheep]

so since I may be free this summer after all, would anyone be interested in an RP event that's a potluck? I've been wanting to do it for ages but there's never any interest compared to other themes

for a discord rp, I would make a separate server explicitly for this purpose so you don't have to be in any guilds or anything! I would also delete the server (or at least channel, if people would like an event-planning server long-term) after a week - enough time for people to read over their stuff but not preserved forever and ever.

[decepti-geek]

for all that I love Ghosts, I've been getting a very different kind of joy out of watching uploads of a very, very similar show on youtube - The Ghosts of Motley Hall.

Like, a setup where the ghosts actually mostly like each other from the off, so that a huge chunk of the dialogue just goes towards establishing more and more of their meandering, idiosyncratic shared history (especially because the budget was clearly about £1.50 so they have to establish most things through dialogue)... that has its own kind of charm.

[puhpandas]

going on my ao3 and seeing 29 fnaf works and 1 pokemon fic I posted last year is so 😭

[court-of-constellations]

Hello everyone!! I'm back with another post about my original universe, this time about nymphs!

This is even longer than the vampire one so the rambling is under the cut, and I was so tempted to include information about my inspiration for certain things and why I made the creative decisions I did, but I refrained because I wanted to keep this focused and not go off on tangents (however, if you do want to hear about that stuff, feel free to send me an ask at any time! I'm always happy to ramble about this universe!)

So. Nymphs. They're typically defined (by humans) as nature spirits, but what does that mean?

Well, the literal dictionary definition is "a spirit born from the earth or water; a being connected to the earth." Nymphs are, in short, personifications of nature. That's not to say that every little aspect of nature has a corresponding nymph- but there are several kinds of nymphs for several different types of nature.

Nymphs, as a whole, can be divided into two categories: land and water. There are a couple types of nymph that could fit into both categories, and one specific type of nymph that doesn't fit into either, but most nymphs can be clearly defined as one or the other.

Nymphs frequently spawn in areas with high magical concentration; why this is, nobody knows, and most other scholars have put it down to those areas being sacred in some way. These scholars are the same ones that hail nymphs as creations of the divine, made to safeguard the lands that are rightfully ours, so any conclusion of theirs must be taken with several grains of salt. I find that many scholars who subscribe to this field of thinking have never even seen a nymph in their lives, and assume that they are all perfectly like us humans (despite their appearances). This is a lie, one that continues to be retold despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

To understand nymphs, one must first understand that they are not human. They are sentient, intelligent, and quite interesting, but no matter how humanoid their shape might be, they are not and never will be even close to human beings. The exceptions to this rule will be covered later, but true nymphs are nature in its purest form: wild, unpredictable, and untameable. Like fairies, they operate on an entirely separate morality than humans, but unlike fairies, there are no clever tricks you can use to escape them, no set rules you may follow. If fairies are order, nymphs are chaos. If you should encounter a nymph, then by all means converse with them and befriend them if you like, but never forget that they are not the same as you, and no matter how benevolent they may seem, they could turn on you in an instant.

With all of this out of the way, let's finally get to the types of nymphs and their origins.

Land Nymphs

This category of nymph, as the name suggests, are tied to the land. There are several kinds of nymphs who fall under this category, and those nymphs have so many subspecies among them that if I listed them all, this text would be thicker than my torso.

Still, I shall endeavor to at least impress upon you the general idea of which nymphs come from where, so that you might know to use the correct terminology when describing to a friend and encounter you may have had in the woods or fields. Any further study into the subspecies can be found in other, more involved texts, ones whose authors were compensated enough to care about listing every type of nymph that could possibly be found in our lovely lands.

The first to be aware of are dryads, nymphs who have spawned from trees. It is unknown how long a tree must live before becoming a dryad, but this author suspects it to be somewhere in the hundreds, if only for the fact that cutting down younger trees has not as of yet brought a furious dryad out for my blood into my path. Should this change, this text will naturally be updated should I survive long enough to do so.

There are as many types of dryads as there are types of trees, and though there are certainly scientific names for each and every one, I personally have found that simply using the name of whichever tree they spawned from is quite sufficient. A dryad who spawned from an ash tree is an ash dryad, from an oak tree is an oak dryad and so on and so forth; I am quite sure I need not recount the name of every tree for the reader to understand my point.

True dryads, once born from whichever tree they are, are from then on about as attached to the tree as a human might be their parents; their personal feelings vary from nymph to nymph, but in terms of life force, they can and will live even if their tree has been cut down. Unlike humans, the only thing that can kill a true dryad is when the last trace of their tree has disappeared from this world; be it by decay or fire or a misplaced disintegration spell, once the tree is well and truly gone, so too is the dryad.

In terms of a dryad's appearance, their skin will be made out of the same bark as their tree, their hair the same leaves, their innards the same wood. Their eyes may have fruits or flowers in them depending on the tree and time of year, but they may simply be empty sockets. In any case, you should know a dryad at first sight, for unless walking trees are quite common in your place of residence, there's really nothing you can mistake them for.

I would give a description of a dryad's typical personality, as so many others have in their own texts, but my experiences with them have made me aware that they differ in personality as much as humans do; this holds true for all nymphs and I will not repeat such trite and blatantly untrue statements as "all dryads are nurturing, all naiads are mischievous," etc. That is my final statement on this matter and if I receive one more letter from my editor asking where the personality descriptions are, I swear I will-

(Editor's Note: The rest of this tirade had to be cut for its vulgarity and surprisingly creative threats towards me, my place of work, the scholars that continue to perpetuate these stereotypes, their families, and oddly enough, any cows they may have in their possession. Rest assured it was very much unsuited for such a text, but I preserved as much as I was morally able to.)

The florae, nymphs born from flowers, differ from dryads in appearance and origin, and that is where the differences end. They are comparatively rarer as flowers are quite fragile and much more likely to be destroyed, but so long as the vine or shrub or roots survive, so too will the flora. Oddly enough, trees that produce a dryad may also produce a flora from its flowers.

Florae are typically made out of whatever their flower bloomed on, be it vines or stems or branches. Whatever their flower was, replicas of it will be blooming all over their body, including in their eyes, and their hair will be made out of its petals. I have encountered florae many times, and I have yet to figure out just how some of the hairstyles they have are physically possible. One of the many mysteries of life, I suppose.

I suppose now that we have discussed dryads and florae, we must now discuss the dragon in the room: the dryads and florae that were once human beings.

There are many, many different theories of why and how this phenomenon occurs, but there are three facts we know: one, that if a human being is turned into a plant, they will inevitably become a nymph, two, that these humans are visually indistinguishable from true nymphs, and three, they are much more fragile- if their tree is cut down or their flower dies, they will die too and there is nothing that can be done about it.

It is for this reason that turning people into plants is so harshly punished, for you have condemned them to either an early death or a painfully prolonged life that could easily be cut short by anyone unaware of their plant"s true nature. But this is not a book about ethics or law, and if you wish to know more, than you must look elsewhere, for I have shared everything that is relevant.

With that out of the way, let's talk about (gods save me) the other land nymphs.

There are nymphs far older than human civilization, and indeed, humanity as a whole. These nymphs are known to the particularly religious as "The Elder Ones" and to the rest of us as simply the land nymphs.

The best way to explain these nymphs is to take a quick look at history. All throughout time, the earth has been shifting and changing, and as it changes, so too do the nymphs who personify it. These nymphs are fluid and ever changing, their types only vague classifications that serve to describe just what they represent at the moment. They are old, wise, and frustratingly reclusive, and the only reason we know they exist is because of what other nymphs have told us.

Thus far, the classifications are:

Oreads (mountain nymphs)

Valleaeae (valley/pasture/glen nymphs)

Pratae (meadow nymphs (Editor's Note: I personally don't understand the point of this distinction))

Napaeae (dell nymphs)

Haliae (seashore nymphs)

Umidae (wetland nymphs)

This is all we really know about them, and though other nymphs claim that it was them who created all other nymphs, that sounds far too religious for this book.

Water Nymphs

Water nymphs are far less varied than land nymphs (thank the gods, this chapter is getting long enough as it is) and they are all, in terms of origin and appearance, functionally the same.

Naiads (the term for water nymphs in general) spawn from a water source that isn't the open sea (why, this is still unknown.) They are made out of water and may adorn themselves with objects found in their water source, such as colorful rocks or flowers and things of that nature.

The subspecies of naiads are:

Lacuae (lake nymphs)

Pegaeae (spring nymphs

Fluminae (river nymphs)

Naiads are a curious case. Unlike land nymphs, they cannot be killed by any means. Instead, they will spawn, live as long as they like, and then once they're done they will dissolve into the water from whence they came, and another naiad will spawn and the cycle will start anew.

There will never be more than one naiad at a time from one water source, and we have yet to discover any nymphs born from the ocean.

Underworld Nymphs

Underworld nymphs have only been said to exist by the precious few undead who are willing to discuss such matters. They are not proven to be anything more than the dreams of a dying mind, and thus I will not be including them in this text no matter how much my editor begs me to.

If you wish to research them, there are a number of scholarly texts that hotly debate their existence, role in the Underworld, origin, and quite literally every little thing about them.

Vagari

Whatever Vagari may be, they almost certainly aren't nymphs. Some say that they are the children stolen away by fairies, others say that they are the tormented souls of lost travelers. All that can concretely be proven about them is that they can be seen wandering the woods, wearing clothes made out of animal skins and leaves, and wearing a mask in the shape of an animal's head.

I write about them in this text solely because we are just uncertain enough of their true nature that they could, possibly, be some form of nymph.

And with that, this text comes to a close. I hope this will serve you well wherever you may be, and always remember: if you should meet a nymph, treat them and their source with respect, never forget that they are as wild as the earth that formed them, and don't get too attached to any objects they may see in your possession. Or just run. That would work as well.