#socraticcryptid

[socraticcryptid]

i wonder if there's a Discworld fic somewhere on ao3 with the tag "Major Character: DEATH" because i think that would be hilarious

[socraticcryptid]

“You’ll never guess what I heard at the market today,” Nopalea said.

My lips twitched. My beloved had a knack for overhearing the most outrageous rumours, and it had become a game between us. She won if she got a reaction out of me, and I won if I managed to treat it as normal. She never made them up, as far as I knew. Enough weird things happened in and around our town that she never had to. “Go on.”

“Apparently,” she said, and leaned in close. I should have paid more attention to the mischievous glint in her eye. “Lord Drugath has returned to West Dryland.”

“What the fuck.”

She burst out laughing. “Your face!”

I stared at her, aghast. I realised after a moment that my mouth was hanging open, and hurriedly closed it. “Lea. Are you serious?”

“Yup,” Nopalea said gleefully. “Two different travellers arrived today, and both of them said they saw smoke and movement at Citadel Drugath last week.”

I groaned and let my head fall onto the table. “For Drouth’s sake. You know it’s not me, right?”

“I do,” she said. There was a pause, so I looked up to see an apologetic look on her face. “I trust you. And a couple of my Waterbomber colleagues followed you today, just to be sure.”

I grimaced, but didn’t complain. I was grateful enough to the Bombers for giving me this chance at a second life. They wouldn’t have seen anything more interesting than my working in the clinic all day anyway. “That means they’ve known about this for a couple days then, right?”

Nopalea nodded. “They sent a couple scouts, and they’re pretty sure that it’s someone relatively small-time who’s trying to capitalise on your former reputation. The only problem is that they’re definitely a fire mage. There’s some substantial wards and traps around the Citadel.”

“Mmm.” I could see where this was going. “And it’s not as if the Bombers have a heap of fire mages on call, so they want me to go check it out.”

“Only if you’re okay with it,” Nopalea said. She placed her hand over mine and squeezed gently. “You don’t have to. I know you haven’t been back since, well.”

“Since you vanquished Lord Drugath and cast him into exile.”

My voice was tight. Nopalea smiled apologetically. “Yeah. Since that.”

I sighed. “Alright.”

xxx

It would take a week to travel by the normal route from our town on the edge of East Dryland to Citadel Drugath. But that was for people who had to follow the river, and the Bombers had given me an automagically refilling water flask, so I cloaked myself in smoke and flew directly over the desert. It took only a few hours, and that was including several detours around settlements and nomadic groups.

I used little bits of fire magic all the time in my healing, from clearing out infections to bringing comfort to the grieving. I hadn’t used my other skills in almost six years, and I wasn’t sure how to feel about the fact that they still felt natural.

It was dusk when I reached Citadel Drugath, and the low light was perfect for hiding my smoky form from anyone watching. It took me maybe half an hour to pick my way through the wards and traps in the abandoned outer city — I could have simply broken them with a spell or two, but then I would lose the advantage of surprise — and once inside I went straight to the main hall.

I may have left my evil overlord days behind me, but there was a reason why I’d lasted so long. I was damn good at getting and keeping power, and there wasn’t a mage in all of the Six Drylands that could’ve beaten me in a battle. The story goes that Lord Drugath was defeated in an epic battle with Knight Nopalea and twenty of her finest Waterbombers, but the truth was that Nopalea had already convinced me that I hadn’t brought peace and harmony to West Dryland, like I’d hoped, but instead only terror. She had offered me a chance at a better life instead, and when I accepted, we faked the final battle.

I’d removed my belongings from Citadel Drugath beforehand, but I’d built it to be permanent, and permanent it was. Nobody had wanted to live in the surrounding town once I’d left, so the Bombers maintained it as a defensible evacuation point in case of a major wildfire in nearby settlements. And the fortress itself had been imbued with years and years of spells and wards and great workings that made it almost impenetrable for anyone but me.

The main hall was the exception, as Lord Drugath had met with his advisors and citizens there. As expected, when I entered, the would-be new overlord had set up camp there. He had a tent up on the stage, with clothes drying on the backs of chairs and a pile of supplies in the corner, and he was in the process of -

I had to stop for a moment and clamp my hands over my mouth so I wouldn’t give myself away by cackling. He was building a fire by hand! Genuinely, actually, this so-called fire mage was assembling a pile of wood scraps and twigs in one of the fireplaces with a flint and steel on the ground next to him.

Drouth above. Setting up all those wards and traps must’ve taken all his strength, and he still hadn’t recovered a week later.

I’d planned to do this properly, come back in the daylight and stage a battle and all that, but I had no desire to waste my time on this fool. I hid behind a pillar and quietly poured water from the flask onto the ground until I had a nice puddle. Then I swept it up into the air, strode out into the hall, dumped all the water over the fool’s head, and froze him in place.

Just because I was a fire mage didn’t mean I couldn’t learn water magic too. I used it a lot in healing, and Nopalea had taught me a trick or two for battle. Turns out that, as a fire mage, I had a knack for controlling temperature. Who would’ve thought.

“Hey! How dare you attack Lord Drugath like this!” the fool said. I rolled my eyes and didn’t answer him. Instead, I lifted him and his block of ice into the air and set off down the hill.

He didn’t shut up for the entire twenty minute walk. If it wouldn’t have ruined my shaky relationship with the Bombers, I would’ve just snuffed out the flame in his heart in a moment. He didn’t even notice when I cleared his wards and traps in the abandoned village, or when I used a little fire magic to speed up our travels.

A small crowd was waiting at the edge of the nearby village — a reserve Bomber, two firefighters, and a few well-built townsfolk. They didn’t look friendly, exactly, but none of them were aiming weapons at me, so I took that as a win. It was a definite improvement over the last few times I’d been here.

“Howdy,” I said. I levitated the block of ice over and dropped it in front of them. “I went to check out the Citadel and found this loser camping in the main hall. He’s definitely not Lord Drugath, and I didn’t see any signs of anyone else. I brought down the wards, so you can go check it out tomorrow if you want.”

“Hmph,” one of the firefighters said. “And who are you?”

I grinned. “I’m a healer from East Dryland. You can call me Lady Melaleuca.”

Many years after the evil overlord was deafeated by the forces of the light, there are whispers rumors that the evil overlord has secretly returned to his citadel. You know immediately it could only be an imposter, as you are in fact the evil overlord, living a peaceful simple life in exile.

[jotfabe]

i believe you sent me a scary boop or something? like a 'booooo'? that is incredible and i would love to know how to do that please thank you!

@socraticcryptid It's just a normal Boop, I don't know why they appear that way. It could be random, or time based (the first one I got was about an hour ago) or like a virus (once you get one, any you give are also like that). The viral one would be so fun, like a zombie outbreak in the boops :D

[socraticcryptid]

[socraticcryptid]

I've seen variants of this poll for US states, European countries, and Canadian provinces, but it's feeling a bit one-sided to me, so based on this quiz:

*polls like these have to make decisions about what counts as a country or not, what names to accept for a country, and what counts as being in a particular continent or not. I have just chosen to use the same quiz site as others have used for the other quizzes.

**by Asian I simply mean 'from Asia'.

(I've also made a similar poll for Africa, but that's all I have time for - let me know if anyone makes similar ones for other regions of the world!)

[socraticcryptid]

Kudos to everyone who starts posting fan content immediately after a new show/book/movie releases. I love and appreciate it, and I reblog plenty, but me, I need to let things percolate. Takes me anywhere between three days and thirty years after I read or watch something new to start writing fic or meta. I've been watching Doctor Who since 2011 and I think I'm almost ready to start writing fanfic. (Maybe.)

[socraticcryptid]

murderbot tv show thoughts so far (after the first two episodes):

I'm enjoying it!

I'd read a few of the news articles about it in advance, which I think helped prepare me for the fact that it's clearly an adaptation. A lot of things are different to the books, some of which obviously make sense because it's a show rather than a book, and some of which are more confusing.

Murderbot doesn't seem to be anywhere near as competent as in the books so far. It's an impressive physical fighter, sure, but its hacking and analytical skills are downplayed. That might change - I'm keeping an open mind, and if it suits the modified plot of the show, then I guess it's okay.

I do still wish that they'd cast someone other than a cis white man as Murderbot, but Skarsgård is quite convincing, and I expect that his star power will help the show. I'm glad that all the other characters are racially diverse (and often queer) like in the books.

I will admit that I often struggled to tell the characters apart in the books personality-wise (apart from Mensah, Pin-Lee, and Gurathin). Having a slightly smaller main cast here helps, plus each person seems to have a more clearly defined personality, even within the two episodes so far.

Visually it is very nice. I like the set design, I like the monster (sorry, animal), I love the little clips of Sanctuary Moon. It looks like there will be lots of fun little details in set and costuming that we can discover over the course of the show.

I'm undecided about the way that the PresAux crew are portrayed as hippies. It makes sense that people from the Corporation Rim would see them as hippies (or the equivalent), but I think it also kind of invalidates them in a way I don't like? I guess we'll see whether that's because we're seeing it through Murderbot's gaze and it is biased, or whether they're actually like that.

I definitely plan to keep watching! I'll be particularly interested to hear opinions from people who haven't read the books - I'm not sure how much I'm biased by a) my love for the books transferring onto the show, or b) differences from the books giving me an unwarrantedly negative opinion.

[socraticcryptid]

I think my favourite thing about history is realising that people have always been people. It really puts current moral panics and despair at the state of humanity into perspective.

[socraticcryptid]

I've seen variants of this poll for US states, European countries, and Canadian provinces, but it's feeling a bit one-sided to me, so based on this quiz:

*polls like these often make decisions about what counts as a country or not, what names to accept for a country, and also what counts as being in a particular continent or not. I have just chosen to use the same quiz site as others have used for the other quizzes.

**by African I simply mean 'from Africa'.

(I'm also going to make a similar poll for Asia, but that's all I have time for - let me know if anyone makes similar ones for other regions of the world!)

[socraticcryptid]

Thinking about the way that people often don't like a food until they've had it prepared well - but then once they like it, they're often more willing to eat the bad versions. Like if you never drink coffee then you don't understand why people drink the stale free coffee at an event, but if you try good coffee and become a coffee drinker, you're more willing to drink bad coffee. Or how a hotel buffet is generally a terrible place to try new foods, but their shitty versions of familiar foods are fine. (This is not a universal phenomenon, but I think it's pretty common.)

I wonder if it's like. When you drink the bad coffee or eat the rubbery scrambled eggs, you are simultaneously imagining the platonic ideal of that food, and that improves your experience. You eat the overcooked bacon because this time it might be as good as that bacon you had when you went out to brunch that one time, and that memory brightens (enhances? illuminates?) your current experience, and makes it tolerable when it wouldn't have been tolerable before.

[socraticcryptid]

almost accidentally tagged a post "ices of march" instead of "ides of march" and now i can't stop picturing caeser getting stabbed twenty-three times with icicles

[noworneverphantom]

:0 yes let’s start a chain!! (Yours is so cuteee)

No pressure tags: @sadmushroomgoblin @bbreaddog @creation-infinityschild @timetravellingkitty @herhopeistreacherous @socraticcryptid @anna-jo @eepybubble @deeptiwtf @all-for-geek and anyone else who would like to!!

I made a new picrew! 🌠💫✨🌟

[socraticcryptid]

one of my least favourite things about being autistic is the way that something can be fine for years and years, but it's only because you have a System, but you don't realize that you have a System until the routine gets disrupted or they stop making a product and suddenly you have to deal with this problem that you probably always had but didn't know about

[socraticcryptid]

because i'm curious about the current state of privacy norms on tumblr (clarifications below)

yes this is inspired by age/sex/location

Clarifications:

by share i mean: you've written it in tags (e.g. on posts that say "let me know where you're from in the tags!"), you would provide that information if asked, it's in your bio, you don't actively hide it, etc.

if you lie about one of them, i consider that to be not sharing.

for location, if you share your country (or state/region, if in the US, considering the sheer number of USAmericans on here) then i'd consider that sharing.

for age, if you share a rough age range (like 'early 20s'), I would consider that sharing.

yes i know that gender does not necessarily equal pronouns, but it's similar enough for this silly little poll.

for example: my pronouns are in my bio. i would be open about being an adult, if asked, but don't specify my age any further. i am not from the US but don't share anything more about my location. therefore, i would pick 'gender/pronouns only'.

[socraticcryptid]

actually you know what i'm saving the tags i wrote on another post so i can find them more easily because i really might write this fic when i find the time. it'd be cheesy but so fun, as all the best one-shot crossovers are.

post in question: https://www.tumblr.com/socraticcryptid/762342060254740480/combine-your-first-real-fandom-with-your-current?source=share

#idk i feel like a crossover between doctor who and the murderbot diaries could be good #wherein the doctor travels to mb's world #murderbot and the doctor have a lot in common but they would NOT understand each other (at least at first) #it would be a classic case of incompatible accessibility needs between two barely functional but also hypercompetent neurodivergents #like both mb and the doctor have a tendency to think that they're the only sensible/intelligent ones in the room #but are also unable to communicate effectively unless under pressure #and like most incarnations of the doctor are loud and busy and murderbot is. not that. #(ART and the TARDIS would immediately be besties. like they'd be playing 5D chess in the background or flirting with each other or somethin #(mb and the doctor would be very weirded out by it. their respective human companions would think it was cute.) #and let's say that they have some sort of mystery to solve together #i guess the classic crossover premise would be if some of each of their humans got kidnapped by some enemy #and they had to work together to save them? #i haven't watched doctor who in a while but let's say ruby or yaz or bill were kidnapped along with amena or ratthi #by some doctor who aliens who accidentally hitched a ride with the TARDIS but now want to take over a planet #and while mensah and pin-lee and gurathin and ART's human crew are making sure that no news of this is leaked #(because who knows what GreyCris would do with the knowledge that actual live aliens are out there to be exploited for profit) #the doctor distracts the aliens while mb sneaks in to rescue the hostages #and ART provides back-up while holding a distracting one-sided conversation with the TARDIS on the feed just to fuck with mb #the doctor is very disapproving when mb kills some of the aliens #but changes their tune after mb throws itself in front of an energy weapon blast to save the doctor's human companion #and mb comes to appreciate the doctor's quick thinking and ability to protect themselves #once the hostages are safely rescued and the aliens have been sent back to their home star system #mb and the doctor bond over their pasts of unwillingly killing people they care about (gallifrey and genaka pit) #and over how much they care about their humans but how they still feel a little alone and isolated and different from them #and then (once the TARDIS has recharged from forcefully sending the aliens home or something) #the doctor and their companion say farewell and travel away #end scene: ART revealing that they stole the Doctor's sonic screwdriver and giving it to mb #damn now i want to write this #doctor who #the murderbot diaries

[socraticcryptid]

The other day I reblogged a post about waitstaff not respecting dietary requirements, and I didn't want to add to it because it's long enough already, but it got me thinking about disability and how it changes how you relate to the world.

I have a few health conditions. One of them is a potentially life-threatening food allergy (I carry an epipen and keep a spare one at home). This allergen is in a lot of foods, but it's thankfully relatively easy to avoid, particularly because I know the kinds of foods it's in, and also because it's an allergy that people generally respect.

This allergy has a minimal effect on my day-to-day life. My other health conditions have a much larger impact on my lifestyle. But my allergy has nonetheless shaped the way that I relate to food and my body. I always think about it when people suggest places to eat. I avoid foods that I've had close calls with in the past, or foods that sometimes contain the allergen. I'm wary of homemade food at potlucks and as gifts. I read the ingredients on everything, not only food but also things like toothpaste and soap, even when I know that there's basically no chance of my allergen being present. If I eat something risky then for the next twenty minutes I'm constantly checking my arms for hives and my lips for swelling.

There's something very strange about the idea that my body considers this food to be such a threat that it enacts a policy of mutually assured destruction. An assassin could kill me with something that is harmless to most other people. Every time I eat something new I'm scared that my body will decide it's a threat too.

Not everyone is as cautious as I am. But this sort of experience, and constant fear of your body turning on itself, applies to so many people. I have a friend who's severely allergic to nuts, dairy, legumes, and eggs. She rarely eats at restaurants and could never go vegetarian because she would struggle to get enough protein. Coeliacs and diabetics have to be constantly careful of what they're eating or risk permanent damage to their bodies. People with severe intolerances, or food-triggered migraines, or heart conditions impacted by caffeine, or any of the other food-related health conditions have similar experiences.

So much of life is centred around food (for good reason - I love food!), and yet so many people who don't have food-related health conditions just don't understand it, and sometimes even those who do their best don't always get it right. I check the ingredients on everything, even if a friend tells me that it's safe, because sometimes they're wrong. An honest mistake, but one that I can't afford.

I don't know where I'm going with this. I guess I just wanted to say that, if I discover that someone I know is blasé about food allergies, I don't bother talking with them about my other health conditions. If they can't even respect life-threatening food allergies then how could I possibly trust them with anything else? They haven't made the effort to understand how disabilities can completely shape the way that you experience the world. They wouldn't understand the concept of having limited spoons or executive dysfunction. They probably don't respect religious dietary requirements either, or sensory issues with food. I wouldn't trust them to understand microaggressions, or structural racism, or the complexities of gender, unless they happen to experience those themselves.

It's like the 'I don't know how to tell you that you should care about other people' meme, but instead, it's 'I don't know how to tell you that you should put yourself in someone else's shoes every once in a while'. Maybe that would make the world a better place.