#scifi currency

[tlaquetzqui]

In my SF future history, the UN has given way to the Alliance of Nations. It retains a lot of UN organs (the UN retains a lot of League of Nations ones), including the IMF. In my future it issues a currency, called the “right”, short for Alliance Drawing Right, derived from the IMF Special Drawing Right of our day. Since the government issuing it is the “AN”, and it’s the currency used by everyone, its symbol is the one used in logic for “for all”: ∀. (I think it was adopted partly in a situation analogous to the creation of the Allied Military Currency and Military Payment Certificates after World War Two: the AN having arisen to replace the UN for similar reasons to the UN replacing the League, namely a big fuckoff war the previous organization didn’t prevent.)

My main aliens, on the other hand, use what is technically a representative currency, like the gold standard, but based on an abstraction: the price of enough of an idealized animal fat (they’re obligate carnivores) to supply their metabolism with a given amount of energy. A hundredth of a Planck energy is about the daily calorie intake of a predator in the jaguar-to-tiger size range, like the aliens. (Unlike most Planck units, the energy one is huge: about 2 gigajoules, because the others are so small and there’s division involved.) I’m still trying to figure out what they call it, though—might just be the “energy, dietary”, and they just measure it in actual energy-units.

I think the aliens using, basically, calories-worth of lard, as a currency standard, grew out of similar causes to the aforementioned Allied Military Currency and Military Payment Certificates, but less catastrophic. Something like, people near the forts of the various empires accepted military ration points as legal tender, so those became a standard medium of exchange, eventually spreading over their world like the Spanish dollar. Obviously, of course, you aren’t originally measuring that directly in calories, but in volumes of fat—like how the productivity of a daimyō’s domain in feudal and shogunate Japan was assessed in units of koku (about 180 liters), generally considered the rice required to feed a person for a year.

[simulamortem]

IS ANYTHING REAL ?

Yes. Lots of things are real. Like that time you drowned because no one heard you banging against the ice. Or when that bomb went off and you learned what it felt like when your eyeballs melted in their sockets. Or the time you refused to beg for your life, even as the knife plunged into your chest, and you heard the sound of your own skin tearing, and the blade scraping against the bone inside you.

HITMEN DON’T DIE PEACEFULLY IN THEIR SLEEP.

18+ / indie / mutuals only REVENANT from APEX LEGENDS

[grayrazor]

This isn't a videogame thing. It's not even a TTRPG thing. These are standard speculative fiction rules that were set in the 1930s and people have just followed them without question ever since.

i'm guessing at some point someone in charge must've been like "if there's swords in the game then the currency is gold. if there's spaceships the currency is credits. if you do otherwise i will kill you"

[battlecrazed-axe-mage]

I bought the wizard game because all the troons were making a big fuss about it. jk rowling did nothing wrong.

Okay look, I need you to take a step back from yourself and your in-group and really see that message, because to a normal person it's nonsensical. I acknowledge that you are trying to insult me, but it's not hitting the mark because "troon" just sounds like something a scifi character would use as currency. This is like when incels were calling women "femoids" like that's supposed to mean something. Get better writers.

[probablybadrpgideas]

For a RPG set in modern day or cyberpunk or scifi:

Cryptocurrency that changes in value every day with a dice roll. When the players are on a campaign that lasts more than two weeks ingame, the currency crashes and they have to find a new one.

­

[sprintingowl]

Pay What You Want TTRPG Bundle II

From June 12 2024 to July 10 2024 the PWYWII Bundle is running!

It's got titles from across the indie space, covering fantasy, scifi, horror, fencing, snails, mechs, tower defense, fishing, geese, and more!

And it's all available at any price you'd like (please currency only we cannot accept auguries, tamed spirits, or orbital laser timeshares.)

There's 78 TTRPGs total, including my tactical merchant action rpg Leadbellies. Grab them all at the link below.

[vintagegeekculture]

“Fnord!”

One of the best running jokes in Robert Anton Wilson’s Illuminatus books is that of the word “Fnord,” which is a phrase that people in modern society have been trained from birth to entirely ignore and have no perception of, and most people cannot even see the word “fnord” consciously without training or concentration. But all the same, due to social conditioning by the sinister conspiracy and Powers That Be that rule all our lives secretly, the word has a hypnotic sensation of fear and confusion overcome anyone who reads it, even though they are not aware of this word or can consciously perceive it. 

Newspapers, for example, and television broadcasts, acording to Robert Anton Wilson, are entirely filled with fnords, as is most currency. Obviously, this was a joke in a satirical novel, but it is true that there are some things that are absolutely invisible....until you know how to look for them, and suddenly they are everywhere. 

Using the word fnord or saying you could “see the fnords” a lot was a sign, particularly in the early pre-1993 internet when it was almost all nerdy scifi loving engineers, that you were hip, enlightened and could see through the illusion of society (the Illuminatus books were rather like the Matrix of the 70s and 80s). 

[amethystsoda]

What is time princess about? I've been seeing it on the Play store but I have no idea if to download it

hello anon! I'd be glad to give you an overview and some tips for starting out! :D

Time Princess is what happens when all your childhood dreams of getting transported into a book come true.

At heart, the game is a set of continual isekai stories, transporting you to different "books" with the help of a magic desk and giving you "create your own adventure" options to see how the story plays out.

Your fairy companion Isabelle helps you learn the ropes, and you have to go through one mandatory book (a Marie Antoinette themed story) to get access to your room and the larger bookstore

(I'll put the rest under a read more bc it'll get long)

For each chapter you complete, you earn 1-3 tickets. With these tickets, you can unlock new books! The more you play, the more you earn towards new stories.

The game currency works on a coins and diamonds system--you don't NEED to purchase anything to play (though it may make the game a bit easier in some areas)

You get free stamina to access books and crafting materials every 11 hours and the Time Princess discord server has codes pretty frequently for diamonds, tickets, etc.

I personally splurge for the Fashion Booster every 2 months because I know it helps support the game and the artists! I try not to use real money on the random outfits unless I REALLY want one bc it can get addictive.

One of my favorite parts of the game is that, as you play, you unlock "album" art (full color illustrations that tie into the story!!)

One other thing I love is that the game is very targeted towards Bisexuals, as there are TONS of queer wlw story lines (though because of the games' popularity overseas and censorship, often gets called "best friends" etc)

Another fun part is the variety of stories!!!! There's art history!! There's stuff based on old fairy tales like Swan Lake. There's fantasy stories like The Apothecary. There's a Pirate story!!! There's Chinese, Japanese, and Korean stories. There's a western cowboy story! There's futuristic scifi!!! There's a victorian flavored horror story!!!

Most, if not all, of the stories are with adult characters and have adult storylines!! (the books will also give you a content warning before downloading)

On top of the stories, there's plenty of other fun aspects--mini games, fashion challenges, checking in with your companions every day to earn crafting materials, joining a society, playing events, and just playing dress up with your outfits and taking pics for fun.

The discord community is great too, and there's often interview nights with some of the book authors and giveaways of materials and prizes (I actually ended up winning a plushie Lafayette one time!)

The discord server also has game guides and walkthroughs for everything!

Everyone who plays the game gets really into the stories and characters, so even though the tumblr presence of fans may be smaller, you have an immediate bond with the other players!!!

They've also done some really cool collabs with museums like The Louvre and the Flamenco museum. You get to earn clothes from famous paintings or historical ones during that event period!

Finally, don't forget to save your big clothing crafting for Saturdays! You get double the materials!!

[ghostofadragon]

i do intend to clean this chart up/add more detail but i've been doing a lot of really repetitive art projects lately and it's going to be a while before i have it in me to line/color this many dragons, so i'm posting this as it is for posterity.

dragon species in sun of alcoritrés, my analog-scifi dragonrider oc universe! SoA dragons are quasi-sentient aliens who had their own developed cultures before humans crash-landed a generation ship on their planet and were forced to stay there indefinitely. the story takes place about 3000 years after the crash. dragons barter and sell their own unhatched eggs as fair currency, which is why specific 'breeds' can be cultivated without immense psychological fallout to any party involved.

[nellasbookplanet]

Book recs: great, unique and creative worldbuilding in sci-fi

A note: most of the books on this list are ones I cherish very highly (some are on my all time favorites list!). A few had a lower overall rating for me personally but still stellar worldbuilding and are of what I'd consider good objective quality even if I subjectively didn’t super enjoy them.

For details on the books, continue under the readmore!

Other book rec posts:

Really cool fantasy worldbuilding

Mermaid books

Dark sapphic romances

Vampire books

Feed (Newsflesh series) by Mira Grant

Zombies and news bloggers and presidential elections, oh my! A look at the world post-post zombie apocalypse, when society has gotten back to its feet but the zombie virus is still very much active. Humanity as a whole has been forced to adapt to the ever-present threat. Largely political, character and worldbuilding focused. There is some zombie action, but it’s far from the central focus.

Shades of Grey (Shades of Grey series) by Jasper Fforde

Walking the very thin line of giving you just enough information to follow the plot and grasp the overall idea of the world, but not enough to create info dumps or hand you answers not yet earned, Shades of Grey presents a world in black and white, where your perception of color determines your place in society. Is it fantasy? Scifi? Post apocalypse? Who knows! I sure don’t! Occasionally it hands you a tidbit of information that seems like a remnant of our world and you feel like you're onto something, but then some pages later said tidbit is turned on its head and you're back to square one. It’s delightful.

This Alien Shore (Alien Shores series) by C.S. Friedman

Space opera in which humanity found a way to faster than light travel and began establishing colonies all over the galaxy, only to belatedly realize the method of FTL caused irreversible mutations and disabilities and leaving their nascent colonies to die. Much later, many of the colonies have survived and thrived, and one has found a new way of FTL travel, allowing an interconnected space society to grow. However, Earth is on the hunt for their method and is prepared to do anything to steal it. Aside from cool worldbuilding, This Alien Shore also features some interesting commentary on disability and accommodation. And there are extra-dimensional space dragons!

Ninefox Gambit (Machineries of Empire trilogy) by Yoon Ha Lee

Military space opera where belief and culture shape the laws of reality, causing all kinds of atrocities as empires do everything in their power to force as many people as possible to conform to their way of life to strengthen their technology and weapons. It’s also very queer, with gay, lesbian and trans major characters, albeit little to no romance.

Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch series) by Ann Leckie

Another space opera, in which sentient spaceships can walk the ground in stolen human bodies, so called ancillaries. One of these ancillaries, the sole survivor after the complete destruction of her ship and crew, is one the hunt for revenge. This series also does very cool things with gender!

The Quantum Thief (Jean le Flambeur series) by Hannu Rajaniemi

Place this one in the category of 'accept that you're gonna be confused as hell and just let the world wash over you'. The singularity has come and gone and humans can now easily upload, download and copy themselves into new bodies, not all of them human and not always willingly. Consciousnesses and time has become something close to currency. Follows a murder mystery on Mars.

Stray (Touchstone trilogy) by Andrea K. Höst

Young Adult. Cassandra accidentally walks through a wormhole and ends up on another planet, where she tries to survive in the abandoned ruins of a long since gone civilization. When rescue finally arrives, she soon finds her troubles are far from over as she gets embroiled in a war between her rescuers and monstrous creatures from dreamlike other dimensions. Mixes scifi elements such as space travel, vr and nanomachinery with fantasy tropes such as psychic powers, monsters, and interdimensional portals.

The Peacekeeper (The Good Lands series) by B.L. Blanchard

Alternate history in which Europe never colonized the Americas. Follow Ojibwe detective Chibenashi as he travels from his small home village to a city of living skyscrapers to solve a murder. While I found the mystery somewhat lacking, the worldbuilding and look at a contemporary North America never touched by European colonization is absolutely aces.

The Prey of Gods by Nicky Drayden

South African-set scifi featuring gods ancient and new, robots, dik-diks, and a gay teen with mind control abilities. An ancient goddess seeks to return to her true power no matter how many humans she has to sacrifice to get there. A little bit all over the place but very creative and fresh.

Leech by Hiron Ennes

I mean, this is probably scifi? Like Shades of Grey it hands you only just enough information to get by, and whether its historical fantasy, an alternate timeline, or futuristic post apocalypse is hard to determine. A sentient hive mind have taken over the entire medical profession to ensure the health of their host species. One of their doctors is sent off to an isolated location where they’re cut off from the rest of the hive mind, only to realize they’re faced with a rivaling parasitic entity.

Children of Time (Children of Time series) by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Millenia and generation spanning scifi. After the collapse of an empire, a planet once part of a project to uplift other species to sentience is left to develop on its own, resulting not in the intelligent monkeys once intended but in sentient giant spiders. Millenia later, what remains of humanity arrives looking for a new home.

Dreamsnake by Vonda N. McIntyre

A classic following a healer as she travels a post apocalyptic Earth with an alien dreamsnake to help people. When her snake dies, she must go on a journey to find a new one. The worldbuilding feels fairly vague, but not in an annoying way but in one that makes the world feel vast and mysterious and lived in. Just like in the real world you won’t get all the answers, but you do get the feeling of the world as a whole being much larger than the character and her quest.

The Outside (The Outside trilogy) by Ada Hoffman

AKA the book the put me in an existenial crisis. Souls are real, and they are used to feed AI gods in this lovecraftian inspired scifi where reality is warped and artifical gods stand against real, unfathomable ones. Autistic scientist Yasira is accused of heresy and, to save her eternal soul, is recruited by post-human cybernetic 'angels' to help hunt down her own former mentor, who is threatening to tear reality itself apart.

The Three-Body Problem (The Three-Body Problem series) Cixin Liu

While I felt the characters could’ve been better developed, this is undeniably a well-written novel featuring an alien race and culture developed on a planet vastly different from ours. Firmly in the realm of hard scifi, this is a realistic, fascinating and slightly terrifying look at how first contact may look.

Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente

Eurovision in space! If you lose, humanity is doomed! Good luck! The sentient species of the galaxy have chosen to face each other not in war but in a musical contest, and now humanity is invited to partake. The problem? If we lose, our species as a whole will be exterminated. While I found this book as a whole slightly gimmicky, it’s a fun and flashy experience with some wild and creative alien species.

Escaping Exodus (Escaping Exodus series) by Nicky Drayden

Seske is the heir to the leader of a clan living inside a gigantic, spacefaring beast, of which they frequently need to catch a new one to reside in as their presence slowly kills the beast from the inside. While I found the ending rushed with regards to plot and character, the worldbuilding is very fresh and the overall plot of survival and class struggle an interesting one.

The Stars are Legion by Kameron Hurley

More fucked up biological spaceships, this time all women edition! It’s weird, it's gross, there’s So Much Viscera, it has biotech but in the most horrific way imaginable. Had I to categorize it I would call it grimdark military sf. It’s an experience but not necessarily a pleasant one. Features a mass of slowly dying world-ships, and the conflicts arising between them as they struggle to survive. It’s also sapphic but not what I'd call romantic.

Isle of Broken Years by Jane Fletcher

Young spanish noblewoman Catalina thinks she’s done for when the ship she’s traveling on is attacked by pirates and she’s captured. Things gets worse when the entire crew is stranded on an inhospitable island where time works strangely, dangerous monsters terrorize the woods and something alien stops them from leaving. Strong Lost vibes. Lesbian romance. Admittedly quite indulgent but very fun and creative.

Vagabonds by Hao Jingfang

Slow and long and literary, Vagabonds presents a world a hundred years post a war of independence between Earth and Mars, after which two vastly different societies have grown. A close look at the impossibility of a utopia and how different circumstances allow for different cultures to grow, and how the two aren’t always compatible while neither is necessarily better or worse than the other.

Mortal Engines (Mortal Engines quartet) by Philip Reeve

Young Adult. On a barely survivable Earth humanity has taken to living on great wandering cities, hunting each other across the plains for resources. Tom lives in London, but when he intervenes to stop a murder, he falls off the city alongside a strange and hostile girl on the hunt for revenge. Aside from excellent worldbuilding this also features one of my most favorit female characters ever in Hester Shaw. If you’ve seen the movie, forget about it and read the book instead.

Too Like the Lightning (Terra Ignota series) by Ada Palmer

Centuries in the future, humanity has deliberatly engineered society to be as utopian as possible, politically, socially, sexually, religiously. Written in an enlightenment style and featuring questions of human nature and whether it’s possible to change it, and what price we're prepared to pay for peace, this book is simultaneously very heavy and very funny, and written in a very unique style. While still human, the society presented often feels starkly alien.

A Memory Called Empire (Teixcalaan duology) by Arkady Martine

Mahit, ambassador of a small station nation, arrives at the heart of the Teixcalaanli Empire, ready to battle for the continued independence of her people. In her head she carries part of the personality of her predecessor, there to guide her. A look at imperialism and the conflicting feelings of hate, fear and even admiration one can have towards empire. Also features a sapphic romance!

Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb series) by Tamsyn Muir

I mean, you're on tumblr, you probably already know about this one. Trust me when I say it's exactly as good as people claim. There are indeed lesbian necromancers is space (quite a lot of them, actually), but also incredible worldbuilding that keeps growing with every new installment, interesting political commentary, morally complex characters with fucked up dynamics, and well-thought out plot that keeps you guessing until the last.

Railhead (Railhead trilogy) by Philip Reeve

Young Adult. Listen, Philip Reeve is so good at absolutely wild worldbuilding, I nearly included a third series of his on this list (hey go look up Larklight okay!). In a future where humanity travel between the stars using not spaceships but a portal-connected system of sentient trains, a young thief and street urchin is hired to steal something off of the Emperor's train.

Bonus AKA I haven't read these yet but they seem really cool

The Archive Undying by Emma Mieko Candon

More AI gods!

A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe by Alex White

Magic in space!

The Genesis of Misery by Neon Yang

Angels in space!

[joviantwelve]

absolutely hate that bitcoin is a go-to currency for like, scifi/cyberpunk-aesthetic settings now. can we go back to generic "credits" please I actually prefer those

[tired-fandom-ndn]

I've never heard of broken dreams. Is there a link to it somewhere? I kind of want to try it! XD

Broken Dreams Correctional Center [link] is a free-to-play erotic text-based scifi furry game where the player is undergoing a sentence in a space prison. It can be played on browser on itch.io or downloaded as an actual computer program.

There's some really nice character customization and a matching avatar for the player (which moves!), including being able to change your character's pronouns (they/them and it/its are options!) regardless of their sex/genitals at any point throughout the game. Which is neat. You can be a number of furries (felines, canines, horses, dragons, and demons with hooves and horns), a hybrid with whatever combo of features you want, or a boring human.

Like I said, the story is still lacking and it can be buggy (the gender and species preferences for encounters don't work great and the game can sometimes get confused when generating text and get genitals mixed up lmao), but the available sex content so far is really nice. There's more violent options than DOL has AND for people who like that kind of thing, there's way more opportunities to actually be the aggressor in noncon situations (that was what first got me interested tbh). There's pregnancy that can be turned off at the beginning of the game (and that has no real consequences for the player, you never interact with the babies) and options for turning off specific kinks. If you turn on the debug/cheat menu, you can also change anything and everything about your character whenever you want, including their species and genitals.

You can level up after encounters and increase your strength/agility/stamina/sex appeal and you can earn perks in specific things (like BDSM, exhibitionism, fertility, etc) as you do scenes related to them with perks that can be TURNED OFF!! That's something I really like lmao. It's a very BDSM heavy game with a lot of sex toys that are very dynamic and affect how your character moves and communicates, and they can be used against other characters in encounters too. And if you're bored and looking for a scene, there's a specific "look for trouble" option that automatically triggers a scene. There's also medical experimation scenes that your character can opt-in to for in-game currency, which can get a bit intense with things like mind control and tentacles.

The preview images available don't show it, but a recent update also included skins for your characters with some really fun patterns that you can mix and match and three custom colors that you can choose for each pattern on different parts of your character's body. My character rn is a kitty cat with black, gray, and lavender lynx spots :)

Warning that there are some scenes in the animated section that glitch and flicker, if you're photosensitive.

[nettlewildfairy]

ok so the credits and gold post I reblogged earlier is funny but for the curious there is like a real reason it works like that.

The real reason scifi tends to go with credits as the currency and fantasy goes with gold, especially in games is because of cognitive load, or in more common vernacular, gimme points.

I.e. people have a limited amount of memory space to learn new words at once, or they will start to have a less fun experience. This number isnt static and varies person to person but generally in a sci-fi or fantasy scenario the writer or game designer has a bunch of things they want you to learn, the names of places and people and countries and spaceships and enemy factions and what the magic system is or how laser guns and robots work here and every one of those takes a little bit of mental energy to absorb. If a book throws an entire page of words you don’t understand at you at once it’s like reading a brand new language with no context clues, that’s not great.

And games put a lot of the cognitive load points into learning new mechanics to solve puzzles and hinting at things the player can do for plots and quest lines, battle tactics for which cool sci-fi gun to use, etc.

and unless the game is medieval a currency trading sim or space currency stock trading sim it’s unlikely to be a major part of the gameplay. At that point is it worth using your limited gimme points on inventing a new word for currency that will require tutorials and in game dialogue and context to explain or teach? Probably not.

(That said someone please make a medieval currency trading sim, it sounds like it would rule)

[improbable-implosions]

Like I mention in the show notes this time, I've been really enjoying the more modern books we're showing off on the podcast. Honestly, I'd really love to work out some way to feature more short story collections that aren't public domain, or at the very least, more specific modern short stories. I read a lot of them, after all, and there's been a good few that've really stuck with me.

For example, I've been looking for one who's title didn't quite stick with me. Thankfully, two stories from the same collection spring to mind, but I'll talk about the one I'm looking for most, first.

It's set in a society where time is used as currency, which opens with a scene of a group of street buskers doing some performance art, wherein they set their internal clocks to tick down simultaneously, such that the mob they were standing in instead causes them to fall, spelling out MEMENTO MORI in a town square. I have a faint impression of them describing the time bank as a series of analog babbage-engine style computers extending down and down for what feels like forever, but I'm not quite so sure of that as I am of the memento mori scene.

The second story, in this same black-covered scifi collection, swings a bit more horriffic, as a young woman struggles against the thrall of a claude glass, each time she stares, finding herself more and more strongly compelled to never look at anything else. There's a particularly vivid passage of her describing how a lizard that wandered into the house looks after staring into the claude glass, her perception of color forced into eye-popping contrast in comparison to life as it was before.

As for other details, I can tell you it's probably one of those "year's best scifi" collections, likely from sometime in the 90s, as it was being weeded from the school library in 2015ish. I have a faint impression of the cover having a ringed planet on it, and it was a standard-sized paperback on pretty cheap, well-yellowed paper. If you've got any guesses, feel free to reach out!

On a similar note, if you've got a story you feel is a good fit for paper cuts, I'd be happy to consider it. Doesn't even necessarily have to be something published, either, but I've found the show is solid cross-promotion for the tales within!

[lynmars79]

— MUTUAL CATCHUP —

tagged by @rinzukodas

LAST SONG: "Flow" from FF14 Endwalker. I was listening to a bunch of FF music earlier and that's one of the last ones on that playlist.

CURRENTLY WATCHING: Just Candela Obscura at the moment; haven't really been following the main Critical Role campaign for a few weeks. There's a buncha shows and films I do want to catch up on though...

THREE SHIPS:

Goliath/Elisa Maza (saw some saucy art the other day)

John Sheridan/Delenn (Reactor Mag's starting a B5 rewatch)

Clive Rosfield/Jill Warrick (Fire & Ice slowburn in FF16)

FAVORITE COLOR(s): Blues.

CURRENTLY INTO: Agreeing with Rin's change of wording here. So in no particular order:

Midst - Podcast, weird scifi western, 3 unreliable narrators, a fascinating cast and unique setting. Morally questionable people who think they're each in control of things (they're not) and a cult/government that uses morality for currency and social status. Hosted by Critical Role, but they let Third Person do their own thing. The videos are mildly animated art, the sound and music are amazing, I love how they use words and like combing through the transcripts, there are appendices with lore each episode. It's in its 3rd and final season, wrapping up a distinct story. Episodes are only 15-40ish mins long, 19 episodes a season. It's great please listen (with headphones on for the sound design).

FF7 Rebirth - Watching a friend play. It's pretty great but oh so many sidequests and minigames! The story changes are fascinating and often clarifies or explains things that were nonsense or ignored in the original. Adds new mysteries and oddities all its own. Adds in some things from side games in the same world (like Cissnei).

FF16 - Have to watch friends play this too as I have no PS5 and am waiting for the PC release. I love the characters and the overall story (tho I have my quibbles). Also could use some more sidequests and minigames, but Rebirth took all of them.

Flight Rising - clicky browser game where you breed pretty dragons, giving them patterns they can pass on to offspring. Can dress them up, give them familiars, play games, fight coliseum battles. I've been playing to one degree or another for 10+ years. I'm currently trying to catch up my neglected familiars and max out their bonds.

FIRST SHIP: Probably from the 1980s cartoons when I was a kid. I don't remember. There's been so many.

PLACE OF BIRTH: The clinic no longer exists, actually.

CURRENT LOCATION: My bedroom.

RELATIONSHIP STATUS: Happily Single

LAST MOVIE: Legit cannot remember; rarely watch movies, though there's plenty on my To Watch list…

CURRENTLY WORKING ON: an original fantasy story. I know the characters, I know the plot. I know the world state. Backstories. Figuring out where and when it starts, how characters get to various points and places (and what they change in my plans along the way). Have more research to do but want to have the general shape wrangled into place to narrow that down.

TAGGING: whoever wants to!

[ghostly-rantings]

okay i know this is a total derailment & im so sorry but i have to say this bc its been in the back of my mind for like 17 years so- when i wrote that i was specifically thinking of that one magic tree house book where the kids go back to the great depression and pay their cab driver with a $20 bill, to which he responds with great gratitude

however, Magic Tree House: Blizzard of the Blue Moon was published in 2006. and this is what a $20 bill looked like back then

and THIS was the most recent $20 bill design in 1938 (when they traveled back to)

not to mention, back then, $20 was an INSANE amount of money, and people would likely know how they look due to the rich and famous flaunting their wealth in the roaring 20s, just the previous decade (when this bill was first printed)

so for a poor cab driver during the great depression to not be suspicious of two kids with a $20 bill that looks absolutely NOTHING like what would be considered "real money" back then and accepting it with no questions asked was very immersion breaking to say the least. countries constantly change their currencies' designs to counter counterfeits, meaning any time someone travels back in time more than a few decades or so, their money is going to Look Fake to most people who handle cash daily (which was Most People)!

but its so often skipped over in scifi, ive seen some shows and movies reference it but it always bothers me when it's not , especially now, as a former cashier, i would absolutely Not be accepting a Time Traveler From The Future's fake monopoly money looking ass bills

In time travel movies, when the time traveler asks 'What year is this?!?' they're always treated like they're being weird for asking.

When in reality, if you go 'What year is this?!?' people will just say '2024. Crazy huh.' and you go 'Wtf where has my youth gone.'

And if you ask 'And what month??' people won't judge you, they'll just go like 'SEPTEMBER!!! Can you believe it?!?!' and you go 'WHAT?!? Last time I checked we were in May?!?'