#progress nonetheless

[chryblossomjjk]

still sad n struggling but am thankfully in a much better place than i was in the beginning of the year

[lemon-up]

I can only watch Supernatural while eating something and it’s great because this is what Dean Winchester would have wanted

[marlynnofmany]

Clues

Even though it was mid-afternoon on our spaceship, the local time for this part of the planet was early morning. Zhee and I strolled over from the spaceport to the store where a package was waiting for pickup, expecting to arrive right when it opened, but nope: we were early. Most of the stores on this city street were still closed and dark, lit by the vivid pink sunrise and ignored by passing hovercars. Window cleaners soaped up the big front windows of our destination: a good-sized jewelry/accessory store.

The cleaners were a pair of Strongarms, which made this a fascinating career choice. I’d seen Mimi climb all over the engine parts on our ship. I knew his tentacles had good enough suction for this sort of thing. But these two were small and particularly athletic, and they had climbed to the top of the window, cleaning from the top down, erasing their suction cup marks as they went. If their cleaning tools had been the messy old-fashioned kind, there probably would have been too much dripping to make that possible, but these professionals were cleaning fast with nary a slip.

Zhee didn’t care. “How inconsiderate of the proprietor to not be here early to meet us,” he said with an irritated click of his pincher arms. The pink sunrise reflected off his purple exoskeleton, making him more colorful than usual. He probably would have been proud of that if he wasn’t busy being annoyed. “Waiting here is boring. Let’s see if that shop has anything worth looking at.” He flicked an antenna at the storefront two doors over, which had just turned on its light.

“Sure,” I agreed, “We can at least look through the window if they’re not open yet.”

Zhee grumbled something that made me suspect he might badger them into letting us in even if they weren’t.

Luckily I didn’t have to talk him out of being rude; the store was open after all. It was a little shop full of miscellaneous knickknacks and multi-species food items. Plenty of things to look at. The Frillian shopkeep was delighted to sell us both snacks: gummy intestine candy for Zhee (ew) and mixed nuts for me. I’d had that brand before, and was sure that it didn’t hold anything alien that would give me unexpected allergies.

(I haven’t been allergic to any food yet that was rated for human consumption, but I wasn’t about to take chances.)

I also picked up a packet of the heat stickers that Paint and the others liked, since they were on sale and the shopkeep was excited about this new item.

“Do you get a lot of Heatseekers here?” I asked.

“Oh no, but these have many uses,” she told me, typing in the price. “Other species like to be warm as well, especially if they are headed in a cold direction. And my cousin uses them to warm food! I expect these will be very popular.”

“I expect so,” I agreed.

Zhee was at the door, looking toward the other shop, and he made a little “aha” noise. I finished my purchase, thanked the shopkeep, then joined him in heading back toward the place we’d meant to visit.

I carried my purchases in a nifty Waterwill bag; the shopkeep hadn’t been as excited about that as the heat stickers, so maybe they were old hat here. But I still found the concept of hard water fascinating. It occurred to me that the waterbag and the heat stickers could probably make an awful lot of steam together, especially if handled improperly. I’d be back on the ship soon, though, and the bag could melt into regular water safely in the sink.

The window cleaners were just packing up as we arrived, and the angle of the sun made their work shine. Not a suction cup mark to be seen. I gave them a polite nod while Zhee tried the doors. Still locked, but lights were on inside, as well as the morning sun. Someone moved near the counter. When Zhee rapped on the door and waved a pincher, they hurried forward. It looked like another Mesmer.

The door opened. “Are you the couriers?” snapped a blue-white bug man who was slightly shorter than Zhee. I was a terrible judge of Mesmer ages, but he sounded older. He spoke directly to Zhee.

“Yes,” Zhee said. “From the good ship Slap the Stars.”

“Great. Come with me.” He ushered us inside and re-locked the door, not so much as batting an antenna at our excellent ship name. No sense of fun, this guy.

As we walked between the aisles of shiny merchandise — bracelets and bangles and exoskeleton accents — distant shouting filtered through the closed door in the back. Somebody sounded mad.

“Wait here,” said the Mesmer, gesturing toward the front counter. Then he disappeared into the back room.

Somebody was definitely mad. When the door opened, I caught something about professionalism, in a tone that suggested this was a boss dressing down employees.

A glance at Zhee told me he had no idea either.

When the Mesmer came back — who never did introduce himself, I realized — he was carrying a high-end stasis case for shipping, and he walked quickly. I still caught a few words that sounded like a demand for someone to fess up.

“Everything okay back there?” I asked.

He ignored me. “This must arrive in pristine condition,” he told Zhee, setting the case on the counter.

“Of course,” Zhee said.

I had the tablet for him to sign for the pickup, and I held it out wordlessly. The guy snatched it out of my hands, holding it with one pincher arm and typing with the little wrist fingers on his other. His antennae were scowling.

Zhee gestured to the back room. “Is someone being disappointing?”

“Yes!” he snapped. “One of the night workers has been coming out to the storefront, and leaving display items on the floor! And they refuse to admit who!” He shove the tablet back at me, waving at one of the aisles. Now that he mentioned it, there was an empty display case at the top, with the glass door swung wide.

“Foolish thing to do,” Zhee said.

“Extremely! There is no reason for it, and we are going to find out who!”

Since he was ranting at Zhee and not me, I stepped over to where I could see better. A half-dozen glittery arm cuffs were arranged in a circle on the floor. Weird.

He kept going. “I’m sure it was a human, because of those filthy little marks they leave on everything they touch. The only reason we employ them in the crafting sector is because all the items are cleaned before they’re presented to paying customers. The only one who works up front is under strict orders to wear gloves at all times. But now one of them is sneaking out here and fondling the merchandise! And leaving it on the floor!”

I took a closer look at the door to the display case. Yeah, those looked like human fingerprints, lit up guiltily by the morning sun.

Zhee asked, “Any clues about which human it is?”

“No. I’m not even ruling out the one with the gloves, because this behavior makes no sense, and gloves can be taken off. I swear, I’m this close to firing the lot of them.”

I walked back over to join them. “You know every human’s fingerprint is different, right?”

They both looked at me in silence, which was answer enough.

I said, “If you have your employees all leave prints on something else, you should be able to just match them up.”

The shopkeep’s antennae and mandibles flared into a complicated shape. “WHAT.”

“Sure.” I looked at my own fingers. “Mine are a kind of oval loop, though some people have perfect spirals or a gentle wave.”

He clacked both pinchers. “And you would be able to say which one matches those marks?”

“I should be,” I said, hurrying back over for a closer look. “At the very least, I can narrow it down for you. These are nice and clear. We just need to get a clean set from everybody else that’s not smudged.”

“Yes.” He looked around the storefront full of shiny, valuable things. He frowned. “We’ll have to let them touch something.”

I looked too. “Oh! What about the window?”

He stared at it for a moment. “Acceptable.”

Zhee was skeptical. “Will the culprit deliberately smear their marks?”

“Then that will be a sign of guilt,” the shopkeep hissed.

“What if there are multiple smudges from clumsiness? You might want to prepare for more than one round of dirtying your window.”

He hissed again. “I will make them do it right the first time.”

I had an idea. “What if you told them they were touching the window for a different reason?”

Both sets of bug eye turned toward me. “Such as?”

I fished the pack of heat stickers out of my bag. “Do you think they know what these are?”

The shopkeep leaned his head forward. “What are they?”

“Heat stickers. But! We could pretend they’re lie detectors.”

We could, and we did. It was a silly way to get fingerprints, but I’d read about fictional detectives who’d gone to more elaborate lengths to solve a mystery than this. And it might even work.

The big front windows had a row of shelves under them that meant our suspects would have to lean forward slightly in order to whisper their statements of innocence. They would need to press their hands against the window for balance.

I let Zhee pretend to be the visiting expert while I stuck heat stickers to the window. He did a good job of acting mysterious and aloof while he explained things to the gaggle of employees that the other Mesmer herded out.

As promised, only some were humans. The others were Strongarms with a couple Waterwills. No Heatseekers ready to ask awkward questions about the suspiciously familiar looking “lie detectors made for banks.”

(They had to be mounted somewhere stable, you see, and the suspect had to be close enough to breathe on them. They were normally warm, and would change colors and turn cold when they detected lies. Totally believable.)

Really, it didn’t matter if they believed it or not. They all lined up, looking baffled, and did as their two hissing bosses commanded. The Mesmer from the back room, a large green-and-brown lady who would have been great at hide and seek in the forests of my home, told the humans to go first.

Then when they had all left prints on the window, she told the rest not to bother. While they looked even more confused, she waved me forward with the door to the display case. It had detached neatly, perfect for carrying around and comparing fingerprints.

I held it by the corners and took a close look at the first set. “Not this one,” I announced. “Too triangular.”

Behind me, a human woman asked incredulously, “Are you checking fingerprints?”

“Yup!” I told her, moving on to the next.

The other humans had a variety of reactions to that. An older guy laughed, a younger woman was worried that her hands might be dirty with crafting materials, and others made indistinct noises. Some of the non-human employees asked for an explanation of what was happening.

I kept up my sleuthing, hoping that the prints were all as different as the first couple. I didn’t want to look like I didn’t actually know what I was doing.

“OH MY GOD,” a guy burst out. “It was a marriage proposal, okay? I thought Sierra would be the one to find it.”

I turned around at that, and found one of the humans spilling the beans.

“I’m sorry I didn’t just ask you,” he said to the woman next to him. “I wanted it to be special, like the rock circles we used to leave each other under the tree. I put a note at the top of the earring display, because it looks like a tree.”

I looked at the display he pointed at. I couldn’t see a note from here, but it was distinctly tree-shaped.

The two Mesmer bosses loomed over the guy. “This was courtship?” asked the tall one. “Not a deliberate effort to let our valuables get stepped on or stolen?”

“No!” the guy said. “I’d never do that! I really thought she’d be the only one to see it in the morning, and she’d just put them back and find my note.”

The woman, Sierra, shook her head. “I got moved to the adhesives section. I haven’t been over here all week.”

The man put his hands over his face while the bosses conferred.

“If you promise to never tamper with the displays again, you may keep your job,” the tall one told him.

“I’ll never do it again,” he said. “I don’t have to — I think?” That last was aimed at Sierra.

Her answer was a dramatic kiss that made the rest of the humans applaud and the Mesmers step back in distaste.

“If you are quite done eating each other’s faces,” said the smaller Mesmer, “You are both assigned to cleaning the window and the display of all traces of human filth. Do not leave more.”

“Yes sir,” they chorused.

The other humans gave them congratulatory pats on the back, and exclamations of relief that the whole mess was over. The non-humans seemed mostly relieved. A couple still looked confused, but clearly didn’t want to ask for details.

I handed over the display case door, then peeled a heat sticker off the window. “Guess we won’t need these anymore.”

Everybody went back to what they were supposed to be doing. The night shift got their things together to go home, while the day shift took over the crafting section and opened the store for business. More lights came on. Someone unlocked the front door. Zhee convinced the bosses to reimburse us for the heat stickers. That was nice; I still had more in the pack. And these would be warm for a while still.

I peeled off the last one and decided against putting them in the waterbag. No good making the thing evaporate on the way back to the ship. Instead, I stuck a finger between each and got a fistful of stickers held by their edges. My hand was only a little hot, and it would be a short walk. Speaking of which…

“Let’s go,” Zhee said, pincher arms full of the shipping case.

I opened the door and held it while he passed. Taking up my position at the window was the happy couple, equipped with their own window-cleaning supplies. Luckily they wouldn’t have to reach as far up as the Strongarms had.

They were talking quietly about finding new jobs where they could have the same sleep schedule. And hopefully bosses that didn’t mind a fingerprint or two.

I smiled and let the door shut, leaving fingerprints only on the handle.

~~~

These are the ongoing backstory adventures of the main character from this book.

Shared early on Patreon! There’s even a free tier to get them on the same day as the rest of the world.

The sequel novel is in progress (and will include characters from these stories. I hadn’t thought all of them up when I wrote the first book, but they’re too much fun to leave out of the second).

[tadc-survival-isles]

And this was the thing that informed me I forgot to enable asks /silly

Ngl I got this question while I was at work and it caused my brain to spin with a bunch of possibilities I haven't thought about so needless to say this may change :]

It depends on what you define by life. I'm assuming you mean life as in "another persons" life to which the answer is: No (for the most part).

There has been several incidents where someone almost took the life of another (either intentional or not), but luckily they weren't able to. There is one however...

To answer your second question: A few of them would, but even then they are more likely to look towards other options first.

To note: Death on the Isles isn't like regular TADC. You can die and once you do you don't come back even if your body does.

(@rorydrawsandwrites)

[eddis-not-eeddis]

I have another Japanese lesson under my belt! I can actually say a few words outside of a basic greeting and I'm going to practice the kanji in them like my life depends on it!

[quirkle2]

JUST READ EVERYTHING THERE IS ABOUT THE ZOMBIE AU !!!!! LOVE THIS SO MUCH WAAAA

you mentioned that ritsu, by the end of the story, is broken and practically insane. once shigeo is cured and "back to normal," i'm guessing that ritsu doesn't exactly go back to "being normal" either :( he'd gone through too much to be the same after everything... do you think he ever goes back to old habits and treats mob like he's still a zombie, only to be shellshocked at the fact that it's all over?

also this au is very reminiscent of this post (grieving the undead) https://www.tumblr.com/applejuicewerewolf/735120232698593280/no-need-to-keep-this-in-the-tags-youre

WEEEE IMSO GLAD U LIKE IT it's the direct result of my brainworms

yes ritsu is definitely Not Normal by the end and he should be put into therapy immediately. poor kid's seen way too much at way too young of an age, and he's been put through unreal amounts of stress that is definitely not good for a growing brain. he most certainly does not go back to "normal" when mob is cured, and much like his brother, he's never quite the same as he was before

he Absolutely has trouble squashing old habits, yes. he tends to just Do Shit for mob that he's fully capable of doing now, no matter how simple, bc as a zombie mob couldn't rly do all that. he opens food packages for him automatically, he unlatches doors even though mob is perfectly capable of Figuring Out a Lock. sometimes when it's raining ritsu will even pull mob's hood over his head—he used to do that for him when he was a zombie, to keep the rain off him, even if zombie mob didn't rly give a damn if it was raining or not

if mob were anybody else, he'd prolly find it a bit insulting, but instead he finds it kind of amusing most of the time

sometimes he grabs mob's hand and leads him around and it's only when they're like halfway there that he realizes what he's doing. mob doesn't particularly mind, but when his goal is elsewhere and they're aiming for different places he has to go "ritsu ..." and it's this awkward blinking session like . oh .right. yes.ofc

i think mob would ? maybe get a little annoyed at the hovering that ritsu totally unintentionally does. he hovers so closely bc zombie mob never rly minded, or ,, noticed. so now that he's back to "human" levels of awareness it is . extremely obvious. and it's not even that ritsu is Worried, it's just like he's spent so long Hovering and Fretting that it's just kinda second nature to him now

it's a strange role-reversal—it's very weird for mob to wake up and have scattered memories of the last two years, and suddenly feel like he's the younger brother instead. ritsu is now the caretaker, and it's... strange. and honestly, the first real goal mob has in mind after waking up and recovering for a while is settling back into the role of older brother. it's important to him

but much like how reigen now has trouble corralling that kid, mob has some difficulty getting ritsu to settle back into it too. he's too high-strung and stressed and permanently scarred to rest and let people take care of him, too used to being the caretaker himself. for the longest time he was forced into the mindset of, "you stop, you die," so ritsu keeps going bc his instincts r shot and he feels like he's in danger all the time

after a while of gentle nudging, mob gets the hang of convincing ritsu to lean on people, to lean on him, but mob is quietly distraught at the overall state of ritsu's mental well-being. it takes him a while to rly get a grasp of how bad it truly is, but once he realizes the damage, he's .. so fuckin upset w himself for letting this happen to his brother

as if it's rly his fault at all, but he regrets being slow and getting overrun by that zombie horde to begin with. maybe if he hadn't turned, ritsu would be a lot better off now—they woulda been able to join a settlement, and live in a place where there is supplies and food and clothing and other people to talk to other than your mumbling brother who no longer fully understands you. it likely would've spared him a lot of trauma

and alsoYES that post is EXACTLY it the concept of mourning a person u still see every day is ougougouhoguhg ,., .,witsu ..................

[un-pearable]

angus is still a fascinating character to me. clearly a j jonah jameson ripoff but with a bit of CringeFail that jonah didn’t really pick up until later. and then when he starts getting the side stories it just gets crazy. like getting run out of new zealand for investigative journalism re: nuclear weapons crazy

[disabled-dragoon]

I've really been pushing to find a job and took an unexpected but much needed social media break this last month, but now I'm back!

Archive posting will resume in the next couple of days, and if anyone has any ideas for Halloween posts I'd love to hear them!

I'll be spending the next couple of days preparing some things and getting back to all of my messages, and I'm going to be working out a more consistent posting schedule to begin next year so that the archive isn't radio silent next time I need to take a break.

There are a couple of donation posts in my inbox I need to go through, so if you've sent me something and I haven't gotten back to you I hope to do so in the next few days.

And hopefully you'll be seeing a lot more of me across the next couple of weeks :)

[a-different-way-of-life]

"I may not like Joja...but I don't like seeing someone in a situation like this, even if it's you...and by the way, you didn't answer my question...what are you doing here in the tunnel...?"

*The woman asks as she continues to look at Morris with her serious gaze.*

“I don’t have much of my pride left, but… I’d appreciate it if you could leave me alone and keep the memory of who I once was in your mind instead.”

[rawliverandgoronspice]

old goron yells at gerudo wizard, more at 5

[eddiechim]

redraw of my favourite special birthday boy. feb vs aug

[athofear]

anonymous request for some bloodmoon, or as they called it, watchhunter :)

bloodmoon has always been a big favourite of mine so it was only about time i drew something for it. They consume mine thoughts.

also, anonymous asking is enabled now, don’t know why it was turned off… fixed!

[thegoldenshi-shi]

Almost forgot I made this.

[dandyshucks]

guzm.a and me shaking hands about being poor and eligible for welfare 🤝🤝🤝🤝

[wildflowercryptid]

i think it's neat when a character's personal growth and healing is reflected in a visual way, like through their fashion, so i really like the idea of poppy getting into whimsigoth fashion. she'd still have the gothic aesthetic that she's come to enjoy while embracing some of the softness and color that she left behind...

[selwynsel]

i rly like fallen london and all its associated games; the tone of the writing, the style of the game mechanics, the perspective it uses to analyze history - it’s all very fun, and interesting, and oozing with talent. but at the same time, i HAAATE how it’s so deeply steeped in the west’s own myth-making. past all its beautiful layers and interesting ideas, it’s still another stupid brit-bit about mysterious, ineffable, fantastical, etc etc london is, like every other tired-ass fantasy piece about london.