#living land

[the-bl0b-x]

the living land.

[abigailbozarthart]

Torg art dump! It's a genrebending tabletop RPG of variety pack characters with reality powers trying to save Earth from extradimensional invaders from various genre flavored worlds, each with their own twist. My dad runs a couple games of it- on in the pulp action Nile Empire, another in the primeval Living Land. Our Nile group is a super cleric of Horus-Re who used to be a pyramid toaur guide, a braniac German aerospace engineer with super smarts and a lightning ray gun, a psychotic berserker demon slaying Russian gunman, a Japanese policeman who's a minor wizard, an elven archer/ranger with a wolf and a small dragon, and a psionic electroninja with demontechnoswords. The Living Land group is made up of a hockey mom turned warrior barbarian life priestess, a lizardman beastmaster, a blind teenage French white witch from a place called the Cyberpapacy, a paleontology professor turned Indiana Jones-esque explorer with a whip and fedora and everything, and a lucky truck driver.

This is normal for Torg.

OC rant time! The super braniac and the truck driver are both mine. Heidi Eklund the aerospace engineer, weird cat lady, and eclectic aunt was visiting the Great Pyramids on vacation when the Maelstrom Bridge of the Nile Empire dropped and the Reality Storm engulfed the land in the axioms and laws of another world. She transformed into Captain Quasar!, superhero of mighty brain and wielding a goofy zappy ray gun she called the Ultrazonic Fulmonizer. She has since invented a couple more gadgets; the Electrokinetic Replusion Shield Generator (a force field) and her much less fancy but signature duct tape guantlet. She loves witty combat banter and bonkers over the top pun cascades, and has an almost beat poet style even in battle. Her nemesis is Professor Plasmo, who also wields SCIENCE, but for evil, not good!

Captain Quasar! is my favorite tabletop rpg character I have ever played, which is funny because she started as a pregen character for a two session intro to the game but became Mine. I love her so much that she became something of an online persona. Now that I've actually designed an intentional persona, she's not the main one anymore, but she is 100% an aspirational character (mostly by accident) and remains a major persona for me. There is so much nice art of her by other lovely artists; it can be beheld and gazed upon here. https://toyhou.se/22797747.captain-quasar-heidi-eklund

Bud is just a dude! He's just a guy! He's very American- pretty stereotypically so in fact, except that he's probably a lot nicer and more polite than average. He does not seem like the type of guy to be of much use on an adventure into dinosaur infested jungles, And Yet. He has a knack for...whatever needs to get done, most of the time, and is just vaguely lucky, plucky, and hard to keep down, with an indomitable positivity and relentless spirit. He supports his companions and is a tremedous help to have around, even if he's not usually the one doing dramatic stunts and wild combat maneuvers. He definitely pulls his own weight, lack of pizazz or no, and is decently capable with a gun and in melee, and can handle himself and a variety of tasks. He doesn't lose his head easily, and is overall fairly sensible and insightful. But you wouldn't guess it, because he's not exactly the brains of the operation; school smarts were never his specialty, and he's never claimed to be clever.

[perfectlyripeclementine]

calling my lover "mine" but not in the way that my toothbrush or notebook are mine, mine in the way my neighborhood is mine, and also everybody else's, "mine" like mine to tend to, mine to care for, mine to love. "mine" not like possession but devotion.

[embraceyourdestiny]

to any americans who feel "paralyzed" and "dont know what to do" to help with gaza:

reading a fucking book. i beg of you.

in a time of knowledge suppression is it your duty to arm yourself with knowledge.

read about americas occupations in the middle east.

read about 9/11 from outside of america and see how they inflicted senseless harm and violence to countless amounts of people and have been suppressing your rights for the past 2 fucking decades.

read about any of the countless wars from the past 30 years. especially from a civilian's. and the victims and survivors' perspective. listen to the horror stories and do not plug your fucking ears as to what your country is doing.

and read about fucking gaza and palestine and keep up with what is happening no matter how "sad" or "uncountable" you might get.

dont look away from this.

you dont have the right to be comfortable during countless active genocides.

if you're knowledgeable, you're powerful, and our current state doesnt fucking want that.

you have the power to change things if you open your eyes and scream to the world.

wake the fuck up.

Edit: please check the reblogs there are readings and ways to help

[violottie]

"They've been gone for years and I haven't forgotten" 🇵🇸, from Randi, 16/May/2024:

[kensatou]

j… jesus oppa ;____;

[miikpal]

to partake in creation. happy tdov !

[sakuravalelp]

A dream land - DP X DC Prompt

Okay, so I was thinking about that episode "Perchance to dream" where Bruce is trapped in a dream world and this, even thought really different, came to my mind.

Danny is king or prince of the infinite realms. He's been working on personalizing/decorating his castle in the infinite realms. When he feels someone walking just outside the castles walls. The thing is, that someone isn't a denizen, they aren't in a corporeal body, but he can feel that they are very much alive and feel distinctly human. He approaches the person to ask why and how they are in the infinite realms, but they fade away before he gets the opportunity.

Clockwork, who was with him at the moment, tells him that the visitor from the living, was just the soul projection of someone that was sleeping, and then refuses to elaborate further. Since it's something that was to do with sleeping, Danny decides to go and ask Nocturn, it seemed like a reasonable assumption that he was the one at fault for the soul projection.

Contrary to what he thought, Nocturn informed Danny that Sleeping soul projection was a natural phenomenon that he didn't control. The land of dreams, ("My domain" - Nocturn reminds him), was in the infinite realm after all, and those who have been close to death sometimes slipped they're whole soul instead of just their mind, and ended up all over the infinite realms.

It isn't too different from a lucid dream for them, the body gets all the benefit of the sleep, the mind feels rested if they had a good time in the realms. Except, if they hurt their soul too bad during their little trip, it would have real consequences. Loosing memories, abilities regression, migraine, pain that reflects the soul damage, all either temporary until the soul healed, or permanent and deteriorating, and in some occasions finishing in the persons death. In the latter, the soul is usually too damaged and cease it's existence, or have enough ectoplasm and emotion to form into ghosts with crack cores whose existence is instantly in danger.

Danny clearly didn't like the image that was painted to him, so he asked Nocturn if there was really nothing that he could do. It took a lot of talking and convincing, but eventually Nocturn admitted he could be able to direct the soul projecting to appear on a certain place, but he refused to babysit anyone. Which was enough for Danny, all he needed to do was make another expansion in his castle.

He decided to make a garden to receive their soul projecting guests. The garden was enormous, with all kinds of spaced within it. Playgrounds, picnic spaces, soft benches, tables with ghost and space teamed board games, fountains, and of course, the beautiful flowers that surrounded and decorated the place. Once he got ghosts with gardening, protection and caring obsessions on the place to look out for the souls, he was ready to receive them. It took him by surprise the amount of people that came, the garden was never crowded, but was never empty either, and souls of all ages and places were visiting at all times.

He kept expanding the garden as he heard of new things their guests wished for. He enjoyed spending time in the middle of the garden where souls passed by but rarely appeared, it was calm, but not completly quite with the background noice of the soul enjoying their dreams, and he could do the more mundane king/prince work. Until, he starts getting a regular visitor on his little space of the garden.

Choose the DC character you prefer, my idea is for people who hasn't died in the past but has been in the doors of death (so died and came back would be disqualified but you do as you prefer), but I'm going with Tim.

The soul of a boy around his age appears just in front of him, as usual when he greets new arriving soul, he welcomes him with a gentle smile and tells him he is free to explore the garden. A ghost taker is assign to him. The soul, as usual, seems confused and like he wished to asks questions, but seems content to ask them to his tour guide, and Danny continues with his own duties.

But then, the same soul continues to appear in the same place every two or three days, they exchange greetings and every time talk for a bit longer before the boy leaves to explore once more. It's rear to have multiple visits from one soul, even more so for said soul to appear in the same place every time. By the four time, Danny decides to take a break on his royal duties and accompany his new friend.

~ They get close, and have cute scenes, Tim asks a lot of questions and Danny answers and not-answers a lot of questions ~

One day, Tim shows up as usual, but he is in full Red Robin costume, and well, Danny wasn't expecting an identity reveal.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

On the Bats side:

There's an attack of some villain that's able to put Red Robin (or character of your choice) on a sleeping beauty type of sleep while carrying a serious injury, were he stays sleep until teammates or backup gets him out of it. The event affects his soul, making him disconnect partially from the land of dreams and making his soul sleep project almost every time he sleeps.

Tim starts sleeping more often. It's worrying at first, Bruce being paranoid does every test in the book, despite Tim saying he's just finding sleep easier now. But, he was just affected by sleeping magic and suddenly his sleeping easier? Seems like a side effect, and that makes it worrying.

Tim's health in general improve, just like he's concentration and productivity. Who would have thought that working rested actually was more productive than working on less than three hours of sleep and missing obvious details and clues due to how tired you are.

With everything not only being okay, but better than before, paranoia about Tim's new sleeping schedule soon dies, and instead is replaced with teasing about how he used to refuse to rest kicking and screaming, and now he may sleep more than any of them.

On Tim's side, he's loving being able to soul project so often. He knew from the start he was in a different dimension, and he just wanted to know the hows, whys, and everything else. So far, he seems to do it at least once every three days, and he's even gone two times in a row a couple of times.

The garden had a lot of things to do, but Tim doesn't care about that, he's more interested in all the information he's getting. The first 3 times he was given different ghost nanny's, who were more focus on entertaining him and didn't really answer direct question. But then king/prince Phantom decided to accompany him personally, and everything went smoother. He was going back to get to know more about this new world, and maybe to know more about the cute prince/king too. He might also have gotten some better looking pajamas.

Now, he has a mission that takes more than a couple days with some people in his team that hasn't yet sen his face. He didn't realize how difficult it would be to do all nighters after getting used to a sleep schedule. He would usually try to go as long as possible without sleeping, but he decides that he should take advantage of the safety of where they're staying and sleep a bit too. He ended up soul projecting in full Red Robin costume. He tried to play it cool, maybe Phantom wouldn't know it was him.

"Red Robin, even if you didn't appear on the same spot as always, I can feel your soul. I know who you are."

[egophiliac]

this is basically what happened, right?

(these guys are very lucky that everyone at NRC 1) has the combined intelligence of a sack of bricks, and 2) is easily distracted by shiny things.)

[dreemurr-skelememer]

keep fighting

[ammascrellin]

And when I'm back in Chicago, I feel it Another version of me, I was in it

lady bird (2017) / the bear (2022–) / frances ha (2012) / past lives (2023) / good will hunting (1997) / lost in translation (2003) / fleabag (2016–2019) / normal people (2020) / la la land (2016) / moonlight (2016) / sharp objects (2018) / the worst person in the world (2021) / call me by your name (2017) / shiva baby (2020)

[the-bl0b-x]

X in the living land (inktober day 11)

[gentlemanmotorslifestyle]

[hellish-cruelty]

Of lost chances, forbidden love and remorse.

It's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

Films in frame: Past lives, La la land, Fleabag, Normal People, In the mood for love, Atonement, Potrait of a lady on fire, Maurice, Blue Valentine, Her

[fairuzfan]

Palestinians are blamed for not being kind enough to their occupiers again and again. For not using the right words to describe them. And then they turn around and try to preach politics to us, how we're "oversimplifying" things. I promise you — we know how the system works better than you do. That is why it is all of our dreams to change it. To continue to play in this system is acceptance of the occupier's logic and practices. We will not accept such a thing because their goals are antithetical to our lives. Do not fall for their propaganda — their goal is to obfuscate the truth with half truths and incomparable circumstances.

[sarahreesbrennan]

Are all the themes in “in other lands” supposed to be a commentary on something? Or do you just like writing sex scenes between minors, age gaps, and reverse misogyny?

Genuine question.

Ohhh, my dear anon, I don't believe this is a genuine question.

But it does bring up something I've been meaning to talk about. So I'll take the bait.

Firstly. Yes, my work contains a commentary on the world around us. I wonder what I could be doing with the child soldiers being sexually active in their teens (people hook up right after battles), and the age gap relationship ending in the younger one being too mature for the elder. What could I possibly have been attempting when I said 'how absurd gender roles are, when projected onto people we haven't been accustomed by our own society to see that way'? I wasn't being subtle, that's for sure.

Secondly. Yes I do enjoy writing! I think I should, it's my life's work. Am I titillated by my own writing, no - though I think it's fine to be. The sex scenes of In Other Lands aren't especially titillating, to be honest. It is interesting to me how often people sneer at women for writing romance and sex scenes, having 'book boyfriends,' insinuating women writers fancy their own characters. Women having too much immoral fun! Whereas men clearly write about sex for high literary purposes.

… I have to say from my experience of women and men's writing, I haven't found that to be true.

I’m not in this to have an internet argument. Mostly people use bad faith takes to poke at others from the other side of a screen for kicks. But I do know some truly internalise the attitude that writing certain things is wrong, that anyone who makes mistakes must be shunned as impure, and that is a deeply Victorian and restrictive attitude that guarantees unhappiness.

I've become increasingly troubled by the very binary and extreme ways of thinking I see arising on the internet. They come naturally from people being in echo chambers, becoming hostile to differing opinions, and the age-old conundrum of wanting to be good, fearing you aren't, and making the futile effort to be free of sin. It makes me think of Tennyson, who when travelling through Ireland at the time of the Great Famine, said nobody should talk about the 'Irish distress' to him and insisted the window shades of his carriage be shut as he went from castle to castle. So he wouldn't see the bodies. But that didn't make the bodies cease to be.

In Les Mis, Victor Hugo explores why someone might steal, what that means about them and their circumstances, and who they might be - and explores why someone else is made terribly unhappy, and endangers others, through their own too rigid adherence to judgement and condemnation without pity. The story understands both Jean Valjean the thief and Javert the policeman. Javert’s way of thinking is the one that inevitably leads to tragedy.

Depiction isn't endorsement. Depiction is discussion.

Many of my loved ones have had widely varying relationships to and experience of sex (including 'none'). They've felt all different types of ways about it. If writing about them is not permissible, I close them out. I'd much rather a dialogue be open than closed.

I do understand the urge to write what seems right to others. I've been brain-poisoned that way myself. I used to worry so much about my female characters doing the wrong things, because then they'd be justly hated! Then I noted which of my writer friends had people love their female characters the most - and it was the one who wrote their female characters as screwing up massively, making rash and sometimes wrong decisions. Who wrote them as people. Because that's what people do. That's what feels true to readers.

I want my characters to feel true to readers. I want my characters to react in messy ways to imperfect situations. I love fantasy, I love wild action and I love deep thought, and I want to engage. That's what In Other Lands is about. That's even more what Long Live Evil is about. That sexy lady who sashays in to have sexy sex with the hero - what is her deal? Someone who tricks and lies to others - why are they doing that, how did they get so skilled at it? What makes one person cruelly judgemental, and another ignore all boundaries? What makes Carmen Maria Machado describe ‘fictional queer villains’ as ‘by far the most interesting characters’? What irritates people about women having a great time? What attracts us to power, to fiction, and to transgression?

I don’t know the answers to all those questions, but I know I want to explore them. And I know one more thing.

If the moral thing to do is shut people out and shut people up? Count me among the villains.