#seriously it's a fun exercise!!

[shefellofftheworld]

the practical aspects of worldbuilding might seem needlessly granular if you’re just trying to make a cool setting for your story, but they make a huge difference!

It doesn’t all have to be conlangs and magic systems, either. Something as simple as a family tree/relationship web or a map of your setting can be really effective, whether you make that available to your audience or not. I remember when I was studying the ancient near east our teacher had us do a lot of comparison between written sources and geographical evidence. He made us learn the geology of the eastern mediterranean. I was completely baffled as to the relevance of the rock composition until he pointed out that it would affect the arability of the land. The position of mountains and valleys and plateaus determines things like the positions of roads, or access to fresh water, or what crops can be reliably farmed. He showed us how, by simply understanding the land, we could predict which areas would be fought over and why. Whoever controls this region controls the trade routes, whoever controls this region controls access to food, the people living here will eat different foods to the people living there. 

If deep diving into geography really isn’t your thing, a simpler way to go about it would be to use The Quiet Year’s system--name a few things any given community has in abundance, and a few things it needs but either doesn’t have or only has a limited supply. If one community has easy access to food and drink but little to no textiles, then they’ll probably want to trade with a community who can provide them with things like clothes and bedding. Now you can create a relationship between those two communities--do they like each other? Are they constantly trying to get one over on each other? Do they intermingle culturally and socially, or is their relationship purely business? Or maybe there’s just enough fabric to go around, but only the very rich can own more than one or two sets of clothing. Now it’s a mark of how wealthy a character is if they change clothes before dinner. Do the less wealthy resent them for the waste? Do those with extra clothes look down on those without? If the majority of your community only has the one set, does that change standards of modesty? Maybe people have to schedule isolated times and spaces to bathe and wash their clothes, or maybe wash day is a community event and everyone gets naked in the river. Maybe the very wealthy have different standards of modesty to the very poor, because they don’t have to contend with the same practicalities. 

I know I’ve gotten very detailed there, but I’m always fascinated by the way that a practical understanding of how your characters’ basic needs are met can inform a world. Without needing to invent a magic system or a religion or a language we can create a totally different cultural context that not only makes sense within the story, but makes your narrative stronger! You can use these factors to inform characters and relationships, and even to move the plot along if it needs a push. Pick one detail, then ask the first questions that come to your mind and find an answer to them. Maybe this gives you a broad sketch of the community, or maybe it plugs a plot hole. Either way, you understand your story better--and your audience will too, whether they realise it or not, because now your setting feels like a real space, and your characters feel like real people living in it. 

any magic worldbuilding where light is 'free' (does not require oil/candles/other material goods/etc) and people still live in completely medieval-style environments - or where this doesn't have a tremendous impact on architecture and lifestyle, bare minimum, is incomprehensible to me... access to light is like. So critical

[a-s-levynn]

wait.. what if

what if there is no vessel like.. as a person, at all

what if there is literally only just a vessel in a sense that it is sleep wearing a skin suit

what then

[itsrhodi]

dragon ball !! got a little caught up with some other stuff so it took longer than i wanted but here's a full sheet of flats lol. uncolored under the cut

[starbuck]

See, Ravenous is really fun because it is so perfect that I would never actually want the story to go any other way, but the characters are so fun and interesting that I also feel encouraged to make a bunch of AUs where different groups of characters survive the initial Colqhoun situation just to see what they do…

[captainhysunstuff]

Received an ask/thought that suggested the scenario of Alastor and Lucifer ending up handcuffed to each other like how Death Note's Light and L were during the amnesia Yotsuba arc as a Charlie-induced trust exercise~.

Link to the ask

Vaggie's supposed to be holding volume 7 of the manga, which shows how much good that endeavor did for the chained participants, lol.

[utilitycaster]

Imogen and Laudna (and to be fair FCG though that one felt a bit more justified given Chetney's resistance to the exercise, and also was very funny) remind me of how a friend astutely once pointed out that "I think you suck" is technically an "I statement", or how, if you're using the "When you do X, I think Y, and it makes me feel Z" format can in fact be used to say "When you don't do what I want you to, I think that's unfair, and it makes me feel like you should do everything I say."

[onbearfeet]

Bloodstone Manor Location Masterpost

Okay, since the next bit of Monster Mash is gonna have to happen at/near Bloodstone Manor and Ted needs to go for a walk in the woods nearby, where do we think it is? The US and UK are the leading candidates in the fandom, but I need to pick a spot so my characters can get the fuck out of Ohio. My money is on the US, but I'm open to counterpoints.

Things to bear in mind:

1. Ulysses had a British accent. Elsa's accent is posh British. Verussa had an American accent, with some Broadway Mid-Atlantic that could suggest fancy New England OR just putting on airs. It's entirely possible one of the couple moved to be with the other, but that doesn’t settle which side of the ocean it happened on. Elsa's accent could be from a UK childhood OR a UK boarding school OR a choice to emulate her mother and annoy Verussa.

2. The house is old--or at least full of old stuff--but there's something of a history of Europeans bringing their weird-ass shit across the Atlantic and building absolutely batshit mansions in the US. Probably because there's more open space for it here.

3. The establishing shot of the rotunda shows it in hilly or mountainous terrain, with what looks like pine forest around it, and it sits on a parcel that is either big enough or far enough from neighbors that no one expects any outside response to roars, screams, explosions, etc. Either there's no one around to hear it or people REALLY mind their own business.

4. Of the hunters who make it to the funeral, one has a Scottish accent, two have American or Canadian accents, and one has what sounds like a South Korean accent (although apparently the actor was born in Argentina and moved to the US in the 90s, and I'm going off the many Korean-American voices I've heard at work, so "Korean-American" might be a better descriptor). Those are the people with connections to Ulysses and the time, resources, and motivation to show up to wherever this is. That suggests the location is most accessible to these people and not others. (Yes, I know, I've left out Jack's accent, but he was going to travel to wherever Ted was anyway; he had enough motivation that distance alone wasn't going to stop him.) North America has the numbers here; it's more likely that one Scot got on an international flight than that two North Americans did.

5. The guards are wearing "tacticool" BDUs and carrying some kind of zappy sticks or stun batons. The lack of guns is interesting and may indicate a location with stricter gun laws than the US ... or just that Verussa didn't want to accidentally kill her captive and that a lot of monsters are bulletproof anyway. The guards look and move a hell of a lot like an American tactical team and sound vaguely American when they're screaming. Would Verussa import guards, or hire local muscle? My money is on the latter.

6. Ulysses was old as balls. In the comics, he was positively ancient, and the opening narration implies he was old enough to be wearing pre-20th-century clothes in a flashback. He's definitely old enough to have gotten his hands on a nice piece of property in the UK, but also rich enough to have just bought a mountain in the US. He was also around for the last century-plus of history, and that may have affected his choice of headquarters. If the original Bloodstone Manor got bombed out during World War 2, for example, he might have moved to a less bomb-filled location.

7. Corpse Muppet! Verussa found somebody willing to turn her husband's remains into a Cryptkeeper animatronic. I have no idea whether that's a thing in the UK, but there are definitely enough weirdo taxidermists, puppeteers, and general pieces of work here that someone would take Verussa's money to do it. There are even subcultures here that traditionally sit the corpse up at the table for the wake, so it might not even be that weird to the right professional.

8. Flaming Tuba Guy is available for the funeral. Real Flaming Tuba Guy is American and takes his flaming tuba to Burning Man. I have no idea whether the UK is also a likely place to find a dude with a flaming tuba, but I have difficulty imagining a smooth process for getting a combination brass instrument/flamethrower through customs. I don't think there's a lot of international Flaming Tuba action unless private jets get involved. Wherever Flaming Tuba is from, I'm betting that's the jurisdiction where Bloodstone Manor is.

9. Jack makes it to Bloodstone Manor. Now, I've talked before about his being highly motivated and distance not being an obstacle for him, but if we assume he didn't use a magic portal or something (big if, I know), he had to go by land, sea, or air, and that takes time, no matter how motivated he is. Jack is centuries old, has a history of involvement with violence, and speaks with a Mexican accent. Wherever the Manor is, a dude matching that description was able to get there in time without setting off a ton of international alerts. The fact that Jack is as old as he is AND unknown to the hunters despite being a werewolf suggests that he prefers to keep a low profile, and by now he's practiced at it. He wouldn't want to leave a paper trail, especially when he's on a rescue mission that he knows will likely involve killing people. (I know he doesn't WANT to kill anybody, but the odds of him and Ted getting out of there with a zero body count were always slim. And he brought a bomb in his pocket.) Between his money and his accent, Jack would have an easier time moving around undetected in North America; he could reach a North American Manor by car rather than having to smuggle himself on a boat, charter a private plane (with a flight plan!), or go through customs at Heathrow or wherever. Not that he wouldn't risk getting on SHIELD's radar to save Ted, but if the hunt happened soon after Ted's capture, Jack would be more likely to physically reach the Manor in time if it were in North America.

10. Ted! Ted is at the funeral, obviously. In the comics, Ted canonically lives in the Everglades and honestly that's the best place for him. Verussa would have to have Ted transported from Florida to wherever the Manor is. All the logistical problems of moving Jack across an ocean are magnified in moving TED across an ocean. Again, it's much easier to move him within North America, which I'd consider a point in favor of a North American Manor. If the Manor were in the UK, wouldn't Verussa have gone for a victim based closer to home?

11. Sushi. "Let's do sushi; I owe you that." Apparently Jack and Ted have a history with sushi. I have absolutely no idea how common sushi restaurants are in the UK, but on the west coast of North America, you can pretty much throw a stick and hit one. (I know this because I moved last fall, and one of my first priorities in the new place was Find The Good Local Restaurants. Google was like OH, YOU WANT SUSHI?! HERE ARE TWENTY PLACES. Seriously, it's almost as common as pizza, at least in California.) I assume the boys aren't heading into a major urban center for food after their escape, so wherever Bloodstone Manor is, Jack thinks he can find a rural, exurban, or suburban sushi restaurant within a couple hours' travel (close enough that he can go, pick up their order, and make it back to Ted before raw fish goes funky). Sushi restaurants, at least in the western US, tend to be run by East Asian immigrants--part of the larger culture of immigrants starting restaurants within the first or second generation of arriving here. For stupid racist reasons, most East Asian immigration to the US took place after 1965, so there are a lot of sushi restaurants here that were established in or after the 1980s. Sushi restaurants also tend to be more common in coastal regions here, presumably because REALLY fresh ocean fish get more expensive and harder to acquire farther inland. Jack proposing sushi, if he and Ted are sitting on a log in the US, suggests they're somewhere near a coast, in a region with a sizable post-1965 East Asian immigrant population. (BTW, the reason I keep saying "East Asian" instead of "Japanese" is because a LOT of these restaurants in my area are run by Korean families, more rarely Chinese or Vietnamese ones. I've been in exactly one sushi restaurant here that was run by a Japanese family, and it was 40 years old.) Of course, I don't know shit about the takeout culture of the UK; maybe Yorkshire is full of sushi restaurants or something.

Conclusions.

Between the geography, the accents, the material culture, and the logistics, I think the balance of probability suggests that Bloodstone Manor is in North America, most likely the United States. There are multiple hilly or mountainous regions with pine forests near coasts, close enough to centers of East Asian immigration that the boys can reliably get their sushi.

So with all that in mind ...

[averlym]

lost a bet to a guy in a chiffon skirt (but i make these high heels work)

[jadedloverart]

33. “can i ask you something?” for supercorp please :)

For Kara, love has always been a beast of constant evolution- a creature of many faces, named by all yet known by too few, and for her entire life she has tried to make sense of it.

One late summer night in their youth, she and Alex had lain themselves out across their family's worn plaid couch, listening quietly to the garbled whine of Beauty and the Beast as it spun backwards upon its tape.

"Can I ask you something?"

Kara had whispered, gathering her knees up below her chin as she dwelled on enchanted roses; on Belle and the different sorts of loves she had experienced, and as Alex whispered back in stilted sentences she learned yet another one of its names: a name whose shadowed face she would glimpse in the handwriting of sweet, pining classmates; in every passing crowd; in the whispered promises of men who hung themselves about her heart like a winter frost.

Nine long years lay themselves out between that gentle summer and now- now, as white text ascends silently into the darkness Lena snores softly against her shoulder, and it is with sudden, jarring clarity that she sees what has eluded her for all this time- like nothing she has ever known; like gazing upon Rao: beautiful, terrible, altering.

[kuromi-hoemie]

hhhh talking about my writing was fun but 30 tags is not enough.. yes i have 3 major influences but i have minor ones too.. it is a lovechild of my favorite things.. writing is so fun and i have no self control or a concept of pacing myself i will sit there for 16 hours and get hit with every status effect but by god does it all just flow out of me. I've always been a music person yes but i also used to write a lot into early adulthood until The Incident™

but i am ready 2 jump back into it. i think comics are a great middle ground between the two mediums so i don't get As into writing bc i kind of started going crazy last time 🫡 i can take a more structured approach to it that forces me to pace myself and think about it differently. i love art.... i love making things i love knowing how to do things i love knowing how to play things i love having so many creative outlets, even if i don't do a lot of them regularly lol. it is enriching 😳 and nice to know that it's always there to come back to when u want.

[true-bluesargent]

new workout idea i put on a pop playlist and then just dance like a crazy person all around my room while unpacking for an hour. im so serious when i say my heart rate hit 179 beats per minute

[calamitydarcy]

this is I think the first time it's gotten bad enough to where I can't even go sit at my desk I need to lie down in bed

[dayurno]

HELLO i just wanted to say that i love you so muuuch!! i recently finished reading playing for keeps and oh. my. god.

your kevin is the most adorable thing I've ever seen i want to eat him alive (sorry, I'm vegan actually but...)

tntg and pfk is the masterpieces i know what I'm talking about. perhaps you can give some advice for fic writers? i love you sm 😩🤚🏼

OH WOW nice to me thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!! and wanting to eat kevin alive is the average kevin day experience he is just chewable!!!! i guarantee

and aiya advice for fic writers huh. i dont know if my advice is worth much if anything at all but from the top of my head here are some things ive picked up over the years that will hopefully serve someone somewhere

presentation actually matters!!!! a properly formatted fic is not only delicious to read but also helps with keeping you in the story, i know this because i am a bad formatter (so sorry) and whenever i go through my fics and see a mistake i'm immediately taken out of it! just make sure it's easy to read and you have formatted it to the best of your abilities

brevity is the soul of wit. unfortunately. this is by no means i'm advocating for only short sentences (we all love tangents!) but i think it is good to vary on sentence length and save your longer lines for things that are important to note down! this image has been going around for years now but i still think its one of the most helpful pieces of writing advice ive ever seen

side characters are your best friends!!!!! i think as fanfic writers sometimes we want to get to the point and focus only on our mains, but it does add a lot of flavor and texture when you have small storylines happening along with your main plot, especially if you're doing an in-depth character study. life exists even when we're not seeing it!!!! give your side characters interesting stories and relationships!!!!

writing is about FUN and your questions regarding your storyline should never be "what is the most logical thing that could happen now?" but "what is the most interesting thing that could happen now?". this is a sin aftg fans commit the most when talking about aftg but i am here to tell you that no plot is too ambitious. nothing is so out there that you can't write about it! no concept is too wacky! interesting should come first; you worry about the logic in later edits. most readers are more willing to forgive an interesting plot with technical problems than they are willing to forgive a boring story that is perfect writing-wise

i think this is all i have! if anyone would like to add something theyre more than welcome to

[storybounded]

Cayenne

Everyone says that you're so bright, so loud, so much and maybe you are or maybe you're covering up that gaping wound in your chest with fireworks. Or maybe you really are so bright so warm so hot but sometimes you wonder if anything will ever be enough to soothe that aching burning cold fire in your chest. You don't know what it is, can't ever let yourself close enough to that pyre to know if it's anger or fear or loneliness or grief but it's there and if you're good enough, funny enough, bold enough, maybe you can hide it from everyone else. Maybe there's enough of you and enough of the world that you can outrun it forever, your own fire bright enough to put that wound to shame. Bright enough to prove to everyone, anyone, yourself, your mother, your father, your friends, your classmates, the world, that you're enough. You're enough. You're enough.

what kind of herb are you?

[mehoymalloy]

sorry I said 'fuck you (affectionate)' in that reblog. pls know that I meant no disrespect. I'm just bad at.. well. anything, really. especially talking to people who are pretty dang rad.

You are absolutely fine!! I just take way longer to craft opinion than fic for some reason. All that eloquence I can scrounge up while writing just goes fully out the window when trying to repsond to an ask or reblog.

Blanket Permission for absolutely anyone to say "fuck you (affectionate)" and the like toward me. I'm generally pretty chill about that sort of thing!

[m0onjellies]

I have a week and a half of finals left and I am not making it through y’all 🙏