#that doesn't necessarily mean i will POST twice a week

[wordwizards]

My new goal for the weekend is to get my September WC total to 15000 :-)

(Month Total: 9595 / Today's Total: 1015)

[putschki1969]

hi puts, how are you reading all the current drama, its sad that there are fans who say that kalafina better to be stay disbanded rather than forming new kalafina 2.0 without Yuki Kajiura :(

Hello there!

It is indeed very sad. I understand being skeptical but to dismiss the idea entirely seems excessive.

I actually talked about this topic in my most recent reply post.

I am probably one of the few people who will be supporting Kalafina no matter what. I am pretty sure I would like new music from them even if it wasn’t written by YK because my love for Kalafina as a group goes far beyond my appreciation for Yuki Kajiura’s music. I just love the girls themselves, their vocals and their harmony.

I sometimes have to wonder if all those so-called Kalafina fans really don't see anything of value in the members themselves... Are they just replaceable tools for Yuki to use? Because yes, Yuki's music is without a doubt very beautiful and an important part of what makes up Kalafina's current discography but that doesn't mean just anyone can sing it and do it proper justice. It's Wakana, Keiko and Hikaru who add a lot of the unique charm to Kalafina's music. They made it their own with their excellent ensemble work. The girls are a well-coordinated team, they know how to make each other shine and how to compensate for each other's weaknesses. Together they can create gorgeous harmonies and they don't necessarily need pointers from Yuki Kajiura anymore, they have long outgrown their apprentice role.

Would I prefer potential new releases to be written by YK? Of course! But I am also open-minded to the idea of other composers being invited to write/arrange for the girls. Yuki is not the only person on the planet capable of writing good music. It will probably be hit-and-miss but that would also be the case if YK were in charge of the music. After all, a lot of her music isn't particularly well-received (even among hardcore fans) so it's not like everything she touches instantly turns to gold.

Either way, it's completely pointless to get upset about this right now because so far, there are no concrete plans for future Kalafina releases, all we've got so far is the reunion live, nothing else. And from what we know, they will be singing existing Kalafina songs (written by Yuki Kajiura) during this concert.

PS: There is no need to send the same message twice (especially if it has just been a day or two since the last message). Unless it's something super urgent that can't wait due to a certain deadline, I usually won't be replying right away. It can take me several days to work through my inbox and if the message/ask requires a more in-depth analysis, it can take even longer (up to several weeks). So I kindly ask everyone to please be patient with me! Allow for at least a week to pass before you resend an ask/a message. Thank you!

[vintage-tech]

further thoughts on old sewing machines

I've read the replies and comments on the thing I reblogged about sewing machines and planned obsolescence / "they don't make 'em like they used to." You know me, I have more words to offer, and the basis here is the people saying "damn, I want one", "wow, how can I get one for reasonable?" and "you can get parts?" Read on...

First, let me show you what my friend sent me yesterday in a text. She was so jazzed that she wanted me to see it, and she doesn't even know I run a blog like this.

So here you see a White trundle sewing machine from the late 1910s to early 1920s. You can also see that it was either taken very good care of or completely restored, or both, and you have little doubt in looking at the first picture that it'll put together a prom dress or hem your cuffs at a moment's notice, and this isn't just a museum piece. In the below, I'm not just talking about the big ol' centagenarians, I mean pre-1990 Singers and everything inbetween.

You ask: Where can I find a hardy old sewing machine? The obvious answer of antique stores aside, you can find them in thrifts. Not necessarily Goodwill because they're capitalists who have tried to get away from furniture and heavy stuff, but most of the others have them and I warn you that you may have to cut a bitch (or be cut) if one shows up at Deseret Industries. I wish I still had the photo of the time a now-departed St. Vincent de Paul near me had TWO different White models on the floor, each for less than what some people pay for Starbucks in a week, and my memory says that if they didn't spin like a top right that second a couple hours with household products and maybe a Google search plus shipping time would have these things in a functional state your great-grandmother would approve of. It's a regular thing that I go into thrifts and there's a sewing machine case on a low shelf near the electronics that is older than your mother and twice as reliable.

You ask: How much will this set me back? Depends upon where you're shopping. Obviously antique stores will have them for more than thrifts, and sometimes you find them at estate sales (again, expect to cut a bitch) for either an antique price or a "take it away" solid price. Consider it a great day if you spend $10-$25 to get this off someone's shelf and out of someone's life.

You ask: Repairs and maintenance, what about that? I don't know a lot about the mechanics but the older they are, the simpler they get. Resources are out there on how to fix problems (books and YouTube videos) and obtain parts, and professionals exist who live to do both. You probably know someone who has machine sewed for decades; you could ask them for insight on how to get things back into shape. People in comments on that post named some sources for replacement parts after others said they were stymied by trying to find the doodad they needed.

You didn't ask: You seem to have some passion about this despite not being a sewing machine owner or user. What machines did you grow up with? My sainted grandmother had a 1960s Singer 401A. (Photos are NOT of her machine, I nabbed them from teh interweb.)

My mother still has and uses periodically her 1970s Singer 758. (Again, not my photo and I haven't seen hers out when I've visited lately.)

[hikennosabo]

trimax vol 12 random thoughts

okayyy i'm FINALLY done with all the art i had to do this week so i can focus on writing this post lol. this volume is so much, i don't know if i want to read it again...

i love that vash is ourple on the cover <3

chapter 1:

i like domina, she's cute. tbh i wasn't sure whether she was a plant at first because i assumed they were all blonde...

wait, pause, tell me about this. what are the circumstances of the other plant fusion incidents. were they rebelling against humans, same as knives? or were there other reasons??

vash's black hair is so STRIKING. i'm sad about it but i also kind of love how it looks...

the memory montage has been talked about like a dozen times by now, so idk if i can add anything that hasn't already been said... LOL. there's some deep cuts in here, i don't even remember them all... it really speaks to vash's memory of people. and there are anime-only characters too, which is cool! part of me wants to go through each page and label everyone but... nah.

ik they've taken a bit of a backseat in the latter half of the manga, but i feel like meryl and milly's section should be larger. :( and for that matter, legato takes up a lot of real estate on his page?! that's kind of unexpected... although legato and vash DID have that seven-month-long psychic battle... and i guess legato is on vash's mind rn because of the coins... so i suppose it makes sense...

a few things about the ghg page - first of all, WHO is that on the top right?! is that supposed to be elendira??? is it??? because it's not like vash doesn't know what she looks like, they've met face to face!

secondly... livio. this is his old self. face in shadow, skull mask visible. i don't think this necessarily means vash still views livio like this; that's unlike vash. livio's face is obscured while his mask and long hair are highlighted, both things that he has discarded along with his identity as a gung-ho gun. this is vash remembering the gung-ho guns specifically. it IS a bit sad that this is what livio gets... i suppose drawing him twice might've been redundant, but still...

a bunch of people have already pointed out wolfwood's grave being depicted next to rem and given equal weight/importance (page space) as her, so all i'll say is that scrolling through the pages and expecting to see wolfwood but getting hit with his grave instead was a fucking gut punch that i DID NOT need.

anti-plant missiles... so plant incidents have been common enough that they'd need to be built in the first place, and built into the fleet at that...

so they CAN be broken apart?! i see...

domina is so funny.

the ark just straight up vanishing really had me think for a second "wow! so that's the power of thor's hammer!" but no it just teleported. LOL

knives... oh, knives... he's looking less and less like a person. i'm probably supposed to be horrified, but i'm just sad.

chapter 2:

knives is the first creature in the universe to warp... wow... he's so talented~ i'm proud of him~

domina is so CUTE!!!! it's too bad what happens to her right after this... and it's impressive how likable she becomes in just a few short scenes. it makes her death more effective than it would be otherwise.

nothing to say, i just think they're cute.

knives putting his feelers out to interfere with the earth fleet was brought up in... volume 9, i think... so it's not like this was completely unexpected. (also "feelers" is kinda cute... like a bug...) wow... knives is fighting so smartly~ i'm proud of him~

i speculated a few volumes ago if knives would try to "save" the earth plants, but he just want to kill them... or at least kill the independents. i still feel like i don't have a full picture of what it's like for plants on earth or the relationship between humans and independents. either way, it's unconscionable to knives that independents would work with humans like this...

chapter 3:

perhaps i shouldn't laugh but shooting straight up into the air is such a dumb thing to do. haha get rained on idiots.

brad is stunned at their idiocy, lol.

chronica worrying over domina is sweet. she's not always "cold and calculating"...

i love how this spread is framed, with the black bars on the top and the bottom. it's cool.

and the double meaning of the chapter title. "the interceptor"... knives intercepting the earth fleet and vash intercepting knives's connection to the fleet...

uhhh... i don't have that much to say about this chapter...

chapter 4:

the universe conspired to deal me massive psychic damage by having 'brother' by gerard way start playing on shuffle while i was rereading this bit... i don't NEED this right now!!!!!

NOT THE IMAGE OF THEM AS KIDS

I'M EATING ROOOOOCCKKKKSSSS!!!!!!!

people have already pointed out knives covering his eyes (and vash covering his own with his sunglasses), it was a fucking punch to the gut the first time i read this chapter and it still is and i am fucking EATING!!!! ROCKS!!!!!!

is that REALLY the reason why you don't want to see your brother's corpse, knives?? is it really???

people have already talked about vash's little gunman speech so i won't say too much about it, except that it's fitting that we started this story with vash being just that - a gunman - we didn't even know about him being a plant - and now vash is determined to end this story as a gunman. well, "end," sort of. there's still 2 volumes left.

also, we're recycling chapter titles again for some reason... we already had a chapter titled "the gunslinger" in volume 6...

chapter 5:

should i call these their "teenage years"? ...i'm writing that in my notes.

i wish i could express my emotions about the plant twins beyond incomprehensible screaming and eating various things (rocks, glass, drywall...) because then i might have more substantial things to say LOL...

the virgin "did you really just shoot me?!" 98 knives vs the chad "if you're going to shoot me, improve your aim" manga knives

y'know, up until now, i never really bought the claim that "tristamp made knives more morally grey," because i was thinking along the lines of "the morality of his actions didn't change, orange just took a magnifying glass to his emotions, so he's easier to sympathize with," but... they COMPLETELY changed the context of knives cutting off vash's arm, huh?! i guess they DID make him more morally grey...

he's ready to go down with knives. if you'll excuse me, i'll be crunching on some more rocks.

chapter 6:

can't help but remember baby knives saying "we can work through a few little differences if we just talk to each other" :')

trying to talk to the plants... yeah... good idea! it's too little too late for knives because EVERYTHING is for him, but... it's a good idea!

okay, so the story of the village. they got kicked out of the city for being "contaminated," so they built their own village and had to resort to stealing from travelers to survive. right... chaining vash up is pretty extreme but i suppose it's indicative of their level of desperation. (especially since vash still looks like a teenager, like, as far as the villagers knew, the person they attacked was just a normal human kid...)

obviously this story doesn't move knives in the slightest, but even with the explanation for the villagers' actions, the bit about "the contaminated humans being kicked out of the city" is a different example of human cruelty that knives could've spat back at vash, lol. like, they were kicked out, and just left out there to die i guess? with no resources or plan to supply them with anything? except for the lone girl who seemed to be bringing canned goods back, but 1. this wasn't a regular thing for her since she hadn't been back in three years, 2. she was literally the only person trying to help, and 3. it was just luck that she wasn't contaminated to begin with - if it weren't for that there would be NO ONE trying to help. not trying to justify knives's worldview or anything but i just think this is interesting because even though now we know and understand the villagers' situation, there's still an undercurrent of human cruelty in this story, and that's something that can't be erased and something that knives invariably clings to to justify his actions.

and his worldview gets even further reinforced in this moment because the military starts shooting at the ark lmao. but then it's vash's friends to the rescue...! the takeaway from all this and the entire ethos of this story as a whole is "humans are complicated," they're not all bad and not all good, vash acknowledges that and tries to see it, and knives does not, blahblahblah it's been said a hundred times...

microorganisms :)

someone in the tag pointed this out already, but the way the earth fleet talks about independent plants is weird. "salvage," "persona," "repair"... that's weird, right? in my last post i said they were giving like, advanced-AI-robot vibes, and this is doing nothing to change that impression. but they're made of flesh and blood...

chapter 7:

knives is wrong about human nature but there sure are a lot of humans in this story who piss me off. fuck you, military guy!!

we all knew that vash was going in to this fight prepared to die, that his plan is to bring knives down with him, but actually seeing him bleeding so much... hurts.

LIVIOOOOO!!! I LOVE YOUUUUU!!!

he's so cute, what the fuck!!!! "i'm mr livio"?!?! oh my god. i'm sobbing. he's so cute.

gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss. manipulate, mansplain, malewife.

this image of a single man facing down an entire military...!!! he's so cool!!!!!! also he's kinda caked up too

and he just bowls through them like it's nothing!!! i LOVE watching him fight, livio is one of the coolest fighters in this entire story, i'm so glad we get to watch him kick some ass!!!

chapter 8:

they said it's just a projection, but this is what i was imagining the "consciousness" of the merged plants to look like...

no concept of the self except for independents, i suppose. so do all plants think the same? last volume, vash said something about billions of thoughts being "exchanged," so there is SOME mental distinction between individuals, i think...

i wonder what information chronica is gathering from this, exactly. just the essentials, since time is limited? or all of it, every single detail?? knives's past and trauma included??

he's talking as if this is a mercy. i wonder if that's really how he's justifying this to himself.

oh, just this panel by itself is a fun dynamic. i don't actually expect elendira to live to the end (sadly...) but i AM looking forward to seeing these two fight again. interestingly, she doesn't seem surprised that livio is still alive...

this last bit of the chapter feels like all the dominoes falling at once, lol. elendira and livio, chronica and knives... and then BOOM! LEGATO JUMPSCARE!! ...from. seemingly nowhere. where did he come from. also i still don't know what to make of his... iron maiden... giant matryoshka... i don't know what or who this is!! it's driving me nuts!! is it going to be explained?!?!

chapter 9:

it's SO funny that vash says this because I WAS ALSO WONDERING THE SAME THING!!! the previous volume put so much emphasis on the coins that i assumed vash would fight legato FIRST and THEN move on to knives. but he never wanted to fight legato to begin with, so it makes sense that he'd skip right to knives LOL.

knives GRINNING when the earth ship appears and then staring straight down the barrel of their cannon... he's not afraid at all. dare i say this scene is pretty cool. knives and chronica are now on even ground in terms of knowledge about each other, and knives probably knows this, but he's still so confident. and then the cannon fires and he BLOCKS it. i shouldn't be complimenting him so much in this post. but i must give cool credit where cool credit is due. this scene is COOL!!!!

oh, so this IS how his powers worked all along, okay... i was confused. i guess this means his power in tristamp is different... because it's clearly NOT strings... it's just straightforward telekenisis i think... hmmm...

... i'd previously heard about what legato's backstory entails, but actually seeing it...

...

knives isn't even visible in this spread. legato hasn't even seen knives yet. but the framing of legato looking at the vast sky, the light, is evocative enough.

legato being able to even control knives with his strings... well, he was able to (somewhat) control vash, so it makes sense that he could, but i've never really thought about the implications until now. under different circumstances he could've been a massive obstacle to knives, if not outright stopped him.

new hair, new outlook, right?

and okay, sure, it's likely that knives's train of thought was "i could use this power for myself, so i won't kill him," but i want to believe there was something else... legato was used and abused by humans, and knives isn't stupid, he can see that just from looking at the state legato's body is in. so maybe knives recognized there's a kinship between them, even if he'd never admit it... i dunno, it's just, his expression here... it's hard for me to describe, but it's something...

oh, this is making me feel something. this is implying knives gave legato his name, right? that's... oh man. i want to say that it was kind. i don't know if i can call it a bond, but their relationship, whatever it is, is deeper than i imagined.

"...but in that moment, i was reborn." new name, new life, new purpose...

on a lighter note, now i'm thinking about where legato's name actually comes from, and i'm remembering this comment from nightow:

i want to believe knives thought the same thing... LOL. as for "bluesummers," "blue" obviously came from his hair, but "summers"... i want to say maybe it was summer at the time of this flashback, but i'm not actually sure if this planet has seasons...? do they ever say if it does??

oh, legato... my legatito... i should've known he'd be one of my favorite characters the instant he showed up in tristamp voiced by kouki uchiyama LOL. i've laughed at him a lot and made fun of him a lot but i really do genuinely love him.

i fully do not expect him to live to the end... but i'm looking forward to seeing whatever else he does before he goes...

[winterrose527]

I saw some post on instagram the other day about how at 33 women age out of the male gaze. I think if I had seen that at 30 I would have really freaked out, but seeing it now at 33 it was really just sort of... relaxing? I am not someone who has ever felt like I exist for men, but I have very much felt the familial and societal pressure to find one. I look forward to getting older, when those questions will stop and I can just exist in the space that I've created for myself.

It did make me think, though, and I don't know, in some ways I feel older than 33? My family is going out of town this weekend and I'm excited not only because I want time to myself but also because it will give me quiet uninterrupted time to do my taxes? Because I love filing my taxes early. I always have. My mom bought dish soap and I had genuine feelings about it not being the brand that I like. I have become especially attuned, more so now than ever before, to expressions of bad manners. The complaints I have had recently about the behavior of other people have all boiled down to that. The phrase and that isn't how they were raised has left my lips twice in the past week.

Over the past year, with leaving New York and really settling into my new job, ending things with a wonderful man, getting a dog, filling a house, I am really feeling that not necessarily final but definitive transformation. I am looking at the things in my life and wondering whether they work for me. I have come to the realization that it was not all talk, that it really will be just me, and therefore I have a responsibility and a freedom to make my life look exactly the way I want it to, because it will never have to conform to someone else's vision for themselves. It's really liberating and exciting, and it's a little sad and it's okay that it is, because that doesn't mean that it isn't right.

Is anyone else feeling this way at all?

[bitletsanddrabbles]

Thomas-As-Heir Novel in Search of Beta Readers

I wanted to get this post up before my Tumblr hiatus next month, which will last somewhere between one and four weeks, depending on how sane I'm feeling.

Right, so, here's the deal. As anyone who follows me is undoubtedly quite aware, I have been working on my Thomas as Heir piece off and on since 2017. Last month I finished a second complete draft and while it's looking good, it still needs some work. Still, if all goes well, I should reasonably have it ready to start posting by the end of 2024, if not before, and believe you me - I want to post this thing. We are hitting the 'never want to think about it again' point that you do when you've gone over something until your eyes want to fall out. Which leads me to the point of this post.

I'd like a couple more beta readers. I currently have two: Hinney_B, who regular readers will know as my standard beta, and my long time online friend, Marbletoast, who is one of the best editors I've ever met. Both have been helping me with this thing pretty much since the beginning and, while neither of them are fast (one is the head of the herpetology department at the local zoo, the other is a full time mom, plus they have their normal hobbies) they both work well with me and are good at pointing out flaws, making suggestions, etc.

The problem is that neither of them have seen Downton Abbey in it's entirety. Hinney_B has at least seen the first three seasons and both movies. Marbletoast knows it exists. This leaves some…knowledge gaps in rather inconvenient places. I am the resident expert on English culture of the period, the history, and all things upstairs-downstairs which is less than optimal since I'm not an expert in any of that. Since this is set between season six and the first movie (I originally wanted it to be able to be read as canon compliant, if one wished, although the movies shot that), I don't really have anyone to fact check my memory of the series or comment on the characterization.

I really, really want this story to be the best it can be. I don't need someone who has betaed before - I've had some very good results with new readers in the past. What I do need is as follows:

Someone who has seen the show.

Someone who can help me improve the story I am telling rather than telling me what to write. One of my past betas basically tried to get me to write the stories she wanted to read all of the time, never mind what I wanted to write, and got very tetchy if I ignored her demands 'advice'. Even if your advice is wonderful, I won't necessarily take it. That doesn't mean I don't want to hear it.

Someone who's not afraid to have a discussion about the text. The extreme opposite problem of the previous beta was the friend who tried to beta for me exactly once who suggested a rather drastic change to my work. I noted it, then informed her of what I'd been originally aiming for. I told her this so that she could weight my intent against her suggestion, decide which she liked more, and, if she preferred mine, help me get it across better. Instead she apologized profusely for angering me and no amount of explaining that I wasn't angry would coax her back. Good beta work is a conversation. We need to be able to converse.

And that's really all I absolutely need. Speed is obviously not an issue. Seriously, I hear from Marbletoast once or twice a year. Things that would be helpful are:

Good grasp on history. I don't have that.

Good grasp on English culture, especially at the time period. I don't have that either.

Even handed attitude toward all of the characters. I hate character bastardization and am trying to avoid it like the plague. On the other hand, Downton is not a house full of saints and I like it that way.

And that's basically all I can think of. For the curious, we are currently sitting at 52,696 words, so I'm aware that this is not a light commitment, especially for no pay. My method of betaing so far is to toss a piece up on Google Drive and give people commenting access, which requires a GMail account and willingness to give me your email. If you can think of a better way to do it, I'm open to suggestions. Interested parties may comment here, shoot me an Ask, or message me. Uninterested parties may have a nice day, stay safe and healthy, and I will let you all know when I start posting this monstrosity.

[wenevergotusedtoegypt]

To be honest, I don't really have that many non-Jewish friends anymore. Apart from a few months living with my parents between seminary and moving here, I've both lived and studied or worked in frum communities for almost a decade. I don't live near either my hometown or my college city, so I only keep up with a select few people from those places.

On top of that, for those I do still actively keep in touch with or am Facebook friends with, I've never really bought into the idea that so many other Jews I know seem to be obsessing over lately that someone who isn't addressing Hamas's attack/antisemitism in general on social media and/or reaching out to the Jews they know to ask how they are is necessarily some big antisemite or at best someone who doesn't care about Jews. All of this feels SO close and all-consuming to us, but that's because it's our people. There are all kinds of devastating events, natural disasters, etc. happening all over the world. No one addresses every single one. Most of us don't address most of the things that happen "far away over there" at all. And to a lot of non-Jews, all of this IS "far away over there." They don't understand how deeply connected we all are to it. And the antisemitism that is local isn't on their radar the same way it is for us.

Yes, it's nice if they condemn the terror and mourn the victims. Yes, it's nice if they check in with us. No, it doesn't necessarily mean they're terrible people if they don't.

That said.

I had a non-Jewish college friend reach out and ask how I was doing given everything going on. So I told her. I told her that we're physically ok but it's been an emotionally very intense few weeks. I told her that I have 3 cousins currently called up to the army, and that my husband and I both have tons of civilian friends and relatives in Eretz Yisroel who we're worried about, and that I've been working overtime at work on projects related to the conflict such that I hardly ever stop thinking about it, and that I can't stop thinking about the children and babies taken hostage, and that my coworker was the victim of antisemitic attacks twice in one day.

Silence.

It's been 6 days. She read the message within minutes of my sending it. And then silence.

It's possible that her silence has nothing to do with me or what I shared. Technically. I know she's faced mental health issues at various times.

But the thing is, I have no way of knowing without some level of confrontation.

She knows I lived in Eretz Yisroel for a year. I'm pretty sure she knows the story of my confronting a professor about his antisemitism in the guise of "antizionism" in college. Surely she shouldn't have been surprised by my concern for my Israeli family, friends, the hostages. She hasn't publicly posted anything about the conflict, so while her politics generally lean left, I don't have any specific reason to think she's pro-Hamas.

Was I supposed to be a good little Jew and only be concerned about antisemitism here where I am? Was I supposed to hate my Israeli cousins who are in the IDF and not care about my other friends and family there because they should just leave, or they deserve what they're getting? Is that what she's thinking?

I don't know.

I don't want to think that of her. But the problem is that the void left by her silence is so easy to explain with antisemitism, and not as easy to excuse away with something more benign.

I would've rather she hadn't reached out at all than leave me wondering like this.

[fishrpg]

Laying Out The Ground Rules

In a few days I'm planning on starting the Hexplore24 challenge. It's based on an idea by the Monsters and Mazes blog to replace the ritual of this year's Dungeon23. Basically you create a solo campaign that you play effectively in real time. One day of game time is one day in the real world.

Unfortunately, the challenge as written doesn't really jive with my workflow. That's because if I'm playing a solo game, I'll want to document EVERYTHING and that takes a lot of time and brain power that I can't necessarily spare with work and school obligations. Also I tend to prefer my hexes to be relatively densely populated with content so there aren't really truly empty hexes. I want to do something where I can legitimately spend only a few minutes doing each day without the extra pressure of longform solo journally. That means I'll need to tweak the specifics of the challenge a bit. This is just as much for me as it is for anyone following along, because I'll probably be periodically adjusting the rules and stuff to suit my schedule.

But as it stands today, here's what I'm thinking my Hexplore24 challenge will entail:

Create one or two hex's worth (or hex equivalent) of stuff each day. This might be a landmark, a questgiver, an encounter, a dungeon, or something else.

Every month, I'll change up the theme so I don't get bored. The theme for January rooted in the traditional D&D wilderness aesthetic.

The theme for the next month will generally be selected at random from a list, and there won't be any duplicates. Every fourth month, though, I'll allow myself the privilege of manually choosing a theme so I can keep my personal interest up in case I get several months of prompts that aren't terribly interesting to me.

Although I will be working on this project every day and will want to post every day, I'm only going to publicly commit to posting twice a week so that I won't feel like a failure if I miss a day. I'll probably post more than that, but I need to make space for those times when I can't churn out stuff like a machine.

I'm not going to be creating a character or party who interacts with the world in a sandbox adventure; this is to be more of a neutral observer or cartographer who merely documents the world as it is explored.

I'm also toying with the idea of including a few "freestyle days," which are days where I can go back to a previous day and flesh it out more. Like adding a map to a town, or a layout to a dungeon, or extra steps and treasure to quest. The exact scope of this section is still to be determined.

Oh, and here's the table I'll be using to choose my themes!

Hexplore24 Potential Themes

Generic Fantasy (City Exploration)

Western (Traditional) (October)

Western (Weird) (August)

Sci-Fi (Planetary)

Sci-Fi (Space) (November)

Cyberpunk (June)

Post-Apocalyptic

Folklore/Mythology (April)

Steampunk

Ancient Culture

Modern (December)

Pirates (May)

Cartoon (September)

Pulp Martial Arts

Spooky/Horror (December)

Superhero

Pulp Prehistoric (March)

Grimdark Fantasy

Redwall-Inspired (July)

Undersea (February)

Feel free to send me asks or suggestions of stuff you would like to see!

[ralofofriverwoods]

1, 3, 9, and 12 for the weird oc questions ask games for any of your lads?

Apparently this did not post so. Im so very sorry I did not ignore ur ask on purpose :(

- -

Doing some for different characters this time!!! I love my dragonborn trinity but my other guys need some love too <3

Also this took. So much longer than i thought it would I am so sorry haha I promise I was not intending to take so long😭

1. what’s the lie your character says most often

"it's whatever. Don't look into it." Wrong. Look into it so much. Technically not a lie, but it's the opposite of what ithvozal would actually want to happen, so it could be called a lie if u look at it at a 37 degree angle. The best way to describe it would be kind of a tsundere thing?? They just aren't used to being nice to people on purpose, so when they are they get a little cagey and annoyed about it.

As for real lies, they avoid them as much as possible. Things always get confusing when all the info doesn't line up, which is something they hate more than anything

Alriac doesn’t make a habit of lying, but out of everything he’s prolly lied most about his ability to just kinda. Turn into a merman on command. And everything related to that. He also lies quite a lot about where he goes to anyone that asks. He’s never said the same place twice.

3. how often do they show emotion to others versus just the audience knowing?

Ithvozal didn't grow up around a lot of new ish people, like travelers and whatnot, and most of the people they grew up with didn't have the expectation of performing emotions to the degree that most people would consider normal. Because of this they appear to be very stoic to the usual traveler or surface dweller. If you know them well it's very obvious that they emote quite a lot, if not as strongly. They're the type of character that gets accused of being emotionless and cold by the fandom

Oh alriac absolutely wears his heart on his sleeve. He's never concealed anything a day in his life and everyone he's ever known knows that. He cried because he accidentally startled a really cute fish. He cried because he thought birds didn't live any longer than a week. He's been absolutely ecstatic over a bee landing on his arm. He is so full of joy and whimsy that it's physically impossible to keep it all in.

9. do they give tough love or gentle love most often? Which do they prefer to receive?

Oh ithvozal gives only the toughest of love! When demonstrating it via things like gifts and actions it's very obvious that they're extremely thoughtful about what they're doing, but when it comes to more direct things like physical affection or thankfulness it's a lot harder to tell that it's love and not just how you'd affectionately bully a friend. They mostly use weaker punches when doing physical affection, but their version of a weak punch is the same as most people trying to actually fight. Hence a lot of the meaning kind of gets misconstrued with those. They prefer indirect things like actions and gifts, but they're not opposed to other types of love from the right people. They're used to tough love, but gentle love is also very appreciated.

Alriac doesn't necessarily have gentle love, per se, but it's not tough love. It's more extremely intense than anything else. Like when a cat loves you so much they're very strongly kneading against your leg, and like yeah those claws are digging into your skin like hell but theyre just so cute and sweet and they mean so well, so can you really blame em?? He needs to get told to calm down sometimes, but he doesn't mind. As long as he can still demonstrate his love he's happy. He likes it when people match his energy, no matter what type of love it is. Ithvozal is great friends with him for this reason! They get pretty close to matching it in his eyes.

12. what’s something that makes them laugh a little every time? Be specific!

Ithvozal doesn’t really surround themselves with things that would be considered funny/particularly joyful by most standards, but they always get a kick out of the dwarven automata being a little dumb. Between the spiders that are prone to falling off ledges and getting startled to the spheres that smack their heads on shelves, there’s plenty of things to laugh at with them. Alriac is also a rather large source of laughs for them :)

Alriac finds quite a few things laughable, but his favorite is when he messes with sailors as they panic over a ‘ghost’ on their ship(which is just him climbing up there and spooking people and messing with stuff lol). He collects jokes and stories to tell to Ithvozal as well, to try and get at least a smirk outta em! He’s gotta make up for lost time, since they didn’t become friends until about 100 years into their lives.

[nanuk-dain]

Twenty Questions for Fic Writers

A huge thank you to @ableedingpen for tagging me. It's my very first time doing something like this, and it's so much fun ^_^

How many works do you have on ao3?

301. Although I have some fics posted as a series and additionally as a chaptered fic, so it's probably three or four works less than that.

What's your total ao3 word count?

2,478,092. But again, some fics are posted twice in a different format, so it's less.

What fandoms do you write for?

More than I can count... The big ones are Generation Kill, Band of Brothers, Pacific Rim, Lord of the Rings, The Mummy, RED, Bourne Trilogy, Rambo (yes, really, you read that correctly XD), Avengers, NUMA, Oregon Files, The Sinking of the Laconia...

But I also have tons of really small and rare fandoms and if I name them all, we'll be here a while ;D

For the past three years I've been mostly active in Generation Kill, though.

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Primal Instinct (9-1-1): 2.132

A Never-Ending Dance (The Mummy): 1.110

Marks (The Mummy): 910

More Than A Thousand Words (Avengers): 637

Claim (Fast and Furious): 473

Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

Yes! Or at least I try. I'm not always as good at it as I wish I was... I always feel terrible when I haven't replied to a comment, because somebody took the time to write me and I want to honour that because it means the world to me. I love comments so much, and I think that the least I can do is to tell that to the person who left me a wee word.

What is a fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Of Losses and Promises, no doubt. Although it's not necessarily the ending, but the fic itself.

What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Too many to count, I guess? But I think that In An Ideal Word, Things Would Have Been Different qualifies, especially given the WWII setting and the stuff I put the poor guys through.

Do you get hate on fics?

I never did - until I got some really strange comments on an Avengers fic by an anonymous commenter (no AO3 account) a few weeks ago. I was really bewildered, because it wasn't really blind hate or something. I think they just got really upset, but they took the time to write long and detailed comments that said not one single good thing about the fic. Since it was a fic of almost 32k and the first comment was on chapter 3, I just wondered why the heck they kept reading it if they found it so horrible... Don't like, don't read. It's that easy. Just walk away for your own sanity.

I still haven't decided how to proceed with those comments. On one hand I don't want that under my fic, but deleting it feels wrong too, because it wasn't pure hate just to be spiteful, but somebody who felt really triggered in a way I still don't get... Replying to it is probably pointless, but maybe I will sit down done day and write an objective, reasonable reply. I don't know.

Do you write smut?

*cackles* Oh, you could say that. I think my longest smut scene to date (yes, just one scene) is about 17k... I tend to go into detail and then include the mushy feelings and all the sensations that the five senses feed into the brain and boom, you get a really long juicy scene. Happens to me all the time ^_^V

Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

Rarely, because I'm not a big fan of crossovers. They need to be really well done in order to work (for me, at least), and the only occasion where I really really really had to write a crossover is Touched, which is Generation Kill and Band of Brothers, where I get Doc Bryan and Doc Roe to meet, but without changing the canon timelines or playing with time travel or something like that - so old medic meets and mentors young corpsman, with some extra plot thrown in. Well, who doesn't love the HBO War medics...? ;D

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

No. Not that I know of, anyway. So I hope not? My art gets reposted without permission quite a lot, though. Even had some of my manips manipped over by somebody and they cut out my signature. That sucked.

Have you ever had a fic translated?

Several. I think there's Chinese, German, Russian and Spanish among the languages some fics got translated into.

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Not before a few weeks ago, when @mac-and-geese and I started a wee pet project. It's still in the works, but it will be awesome!

What's your all-time favourite ship?

Oh dear, how am I supposed to answer that? There are so many fantastic pairings out there...

If I look at it from a reader's perspective, then it's Fraser/RayK from dueSouth. In the fandoms I write for, I would have to say Ray Person/Doc Bryan from Generation Kill.

What's a wip you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

Actually, I don't have one that I doubt I will ever finish. It may take time (because damn my busy RL, and why do I have to work to pay rent?!?), but I will finish all of them (to be fair, I only have four wips that I have posted). I'm tenacious like that. I simply can't bear leaving things unfinished. It eats me up inside, so I finish my fics for the sake of my inner peace alone XD

What are you writing strengths?

I think I'm quite good at crawling into many different character's minds, getting comfy there, absorb their personality and then write from their POV. Even for characters I don't actually like.

What are your writing weaknesses?

I'm too wordy. I just can't keep it short. I don't think I'll ever be able to write a drabble, not even if my life depended on it...

Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

If it's one of my languages, okay, but if it's one I'm not able to speak, it's bound to end up being very wrong and cringy (yes, google translate, I'm looking at you). Especially if it's longer sections of dialogue I prefer to mark it in some way that there's a language switch, like italics or something like that, and still write it in English. It's easier to read for people, and not everybody will know the respective language, so it'll screw up the flow. I personally hate having to search for the translation at the end of the fic, so I don't do that to my readers. I have no issues with using words/nicknames etc in another language, though, especially when they're easily understandable or I can include the meaning/translation in the story.

First fandom you wrote for?

Lord of the Rings, Éomer/Haldir. No, wait, before that there was a Pirates of the Caribbean fic that was so bad that I don't even have it anymore and I'm glad that the archive where I posted it doesn't exist anymore XD

Favourite fic you've written?

Oh my, that's difficult... I think I'd have to say Like A Kitten On Truth Serum because it's the funniest fic writing experience I've had so far. If we go for the other end of the spectrum, then Of Losses and Promises is probably my favourite sad/angsty fic I've written so far.

All right, so my turn to tag (I hope I'm doing it right): @anthrobrat @mac-and-geese @jenkil @bookishdea

[act-novel]

Development Notes #2 | First Layer Release!

Note: This development notes entry was originally posted to act-novel.itch.io on February 14th, 2023. It has been carried over to this blog for posterity.

Hello, again. This is Garrett Thompson, sole member of Act-Novel.

As promised in the previous Development Notes entry, I've been hard at work finishing the first major "chunk" of content for this project-- the first "layer", or "act", as I called it in said entry.

As anticipated, audio production took up the bulk of development time between October and December, as well as a bit of time in January. During this period, I wrote and produced 17 musical tracks (not including adaptive variants) as well as 173(!!) distinct sound effects. This was difficult, and I never want to do it ever again. But... I almost certainly will. Sigh...

Starting in mid-January, I conducted a small closed beta test of the game, partly to iron out its (many, many) performance and stability issues prior to releasing at a wider scale, and partly to gather general feedback from friends and acquaintances about its creative direction. Apart from a few especially tricky-to-diagnose bottlenecks,  the technical deficiencies of the project were simple to resolve, and the state of the code is much more solid than it was two months ago.

"More solid" doesn't necessarily mean "solid", of course. There is an understandable limit to how many different hardware configurations I can test the game on using this methodology. Thus, how these improvements will translate to the game's release into the wider world is anyone's guess. I can only pledge that I will do my utmost to continue supporting the game in the weeks following release as bug reports continue to roll in, as they almost certainly will. 

Did I mention that Act-Novel has an official support email, support@realitylayerzero.com? I hear it's a good place to send bug reports and other technical issues...

Fortunately as far as "my pride" is concerned, the creative side of the project was not the subject of any significant grievances during this test. How this will translate to the wider release, much like the technical side of things, is also anyone's guess. However, also fortunately for "my pride", grievances tend to manifest as apathy rather than outrage for a project of this size and level of visibility, meaning I won't be able to tell if people hate it or not. That means there's basically no pressure. Whew!

More to the point, as I'm sure you can infer from the paragraphs above (as well as the header image), the first "layer" of Reality Layer Zero is, at this time, finished! It's sitting on my hard drive (and in other places as well, in case of arson or unexpected volcanic activity), fully playable and feature-complete. Wow! So what's the hold-up? Why not release it right now??

Well, several reasons. Here they are in bulleted-list form:

It seems like a good idea to me to let the small following I have know about the release date in advance. More chances for people to hear about it, and fewer chances for people to miss it-- I'm generally amenable to both of those effects. 

I still want to run through the "release candidate" build of the game once or twice, myself, to see if there's anything in there that 1). would drive me crazy if I left it in there for the release, and 2). might not have been noticed by a playtester. This encompasses silly or esoteric bugs, subtle mistakes in the script or artwork, audio issues, and the like. At the moment, I'm quite exhausted from having just recently finished developing all of the content, though, so I don't want to dive back into testing just yet. A two-week buffer guarantees I have a comfortable amount of time to do this and, subsequently, fix the problems that I find.

It's good to wait before releasing something, just as a general rule. Not only does it grant you the ability to make last-minute corrections, waiting also allows you to acquire some level of emotional distance from the outcome of the release. That is to say, the distance makes the unpleasant emotions one tends to feel during this immediately-post-release period (both external and internal in origin) somewhat easier to cope with. I find the release of a project, in many regards, the most disagreeable part of its lifecycle, so this waiting period is necessary just for my own sake.

I (probably) need to update the store pages to better reflect the Visual Novel-y aspects of the game more, which have a greater emphasis than I had previously stated. I also need to take screenshots from moments in the game that didn't exist at the time I created the store pages.

That's broadly the reasoning. As you can tell from the header image, the current planned release date is February 28th, 2023 (the last day of the month, in fact). This is not likely to change... but there's nothing specifically holding me to that date, so, you know, maybe it will. 

... Probably not, though.

As mentioned in the header image, the release of the first layer will be temporarily restricted to itch.io. I do, of course, plan on eventually releasing the first layer onto Steam. For now, though, this will be the place for it. My reasoning here is pretty simple: I expect the volume of players on Itch to be orders of magnitude lower than on Steam. Itch is a smaller platform, after all. I hope that this will make the process of addressing issues discovered post-launch far less hectic for me. I hope. 

Once I feel that the itch.io release is solid, the very same version will be made downloadable through the Steam client as a public demo.  If you'd prefer to download the game through Steam, you will not likely have to wait for very long following the Itch release to do that. As to specifically how long you'll have to wait, I'm not quite sure yet, but I think less than one month is probably a reasonable estimate.

In summary: Game done, short wait. First Itch, then Steam. Please play! I'm tired.

Thank you for reading. As always, thoughts or questions are welcome. 

I hope you come back on February 28th (or, you know, whenever) to play through the first layer!

[variousqueerthings]

EDIT AFTER REREADING THE BELOW... I HAVE GONE SO FAR FROM THE ORIGINAL MANDATE OF THIS POST BUT WHAT ELSE IS A BRAND NEW ADHD DIAGNOSIS FOR??????????

started writing some thing about diefenbaker taking more of a backseat overall in s2 and while that is true, i did realise the themes that exist with him are still pretty strong as they pertain to fraser's relationships with meg and ray as metaphor for... stuff

there's an ongoing thing about how he's become addicted to junk food (played for laughs but still) and also that fraser is trying to make sure his senses stay sharp because he's getting sloppy, while fraser also has several episodes in which he is aware of the way he's becoming ever more... domesticated, shall we say (this is spoken to him both by people he knows from back home who are Tsimshian, and by a rambo-esque PTSD-suffering environmentalist who recognises a kinship with him)

in that sense, while dief doesn't lead parts of the narrative like he did in s1 (especially in the episode where fraser is almost driven to shooting him -- as dictated he must do by Society's Laws) it does give a certain... enkidu the wild man who is forever brought closer and closer to civilisation and further from nature and is this what's right actually?

fraser is being pulled by two things -- on the one side, represented by diefenbaker, the place he came from and it's suggested in many ways deeply misses (i mean, the lyrics of the theme song itself are very obvious "you know you have to leave here / you wish that you could stay / there's four directions on this map but you're only going one way / due south"), and on the other by his deepening human connections with especially ray and meg, compelling him to acclimatise for reasons beyond his initial banishment (and the fact ofc that it is banishment, he's not in chicago of his own free will, so is it kind of a cage? one he's forgetting exists bit by bit?)

that being said, am rewatching and need to remember what happens in the back-half of s2. my memory says that meg doesn't really interact much with diefenbaker at all/tends to pretend he's not there (which is in and of itself quite interesting -- is there an emotional threat there of some kind?) while ray's and diefenbaker's relationship i think runs pretty similar to how it was for most of s1, just more settled on the whole

questions here about meg -- who is also rcmp and isn't exactly a wilting flower by any stretch of the imagination and whom i don't necessarily connect with The City other than the fact that she's the inspector of the consulate -- and her role as pulling fraser away from diefenbaker a little? i may be reaching, i need more data! something perhaps of her masking her own true self because of her experiences as a woman in a canonically highly misogynistic space and fraser on the other side gently opening the possibility up for her of being less Proper and her fighting it tooth and nail and not acknowledging the wolf in the room!

and ray, who is domesticating both human and wolf simultaneously

ok let me make this about kink again somehow: you can put a leash on fraser for fun but recognise he's gotta go out somewhere and build a cabin with his bare hands or rescue people from a burning house or something along either of those lines at least twice a week or else he will fade away and die. try to put a leash on diefenbaker and he'd probably bite your hand off

i think both meg and ray know this and respect this, in each their own way...

smthin important for me in my understanding of mr benton bentoni fraser is that yes he's got the martyr syndrome and yes he was raised in a pretty austere (but loving) environment and was probably one of those kids with an unnervingly large vocabulary and he has real issues related to living up to his father's "image" and that image itself being tarnished and doesn't often allow himself to feel his feelings and has definitely always been an outsider to his peers but...

he is also an adrenaline junkie

my man isn't just jumping off moving cars and getting in trouble and putting himself in hospital a few times a month solely for the sake of the good of the people, he is in danger to Feel Alive and if some smart mean-for-fun dommy sadist figured this out he could get himself bruised (and bossed around) whenever he wanted..... oh look, the show introduced her in s2 👀👀👀

[dribs-and-drabbles]

Enchanté ep 4 - Red and blue (and white) details

This episode, I felt like these colours weren't necessarily driving the storyline, more that they were being used as gentle reminders of the world that we're in. They were used in background elements or with side characters rather than directly with Akk and Theo...and I think that's significant somehow...that Akk and Theo aren't linked by these colours - by the French theme - because as Akk says himself, he's not been there, he doesn't know what it's like, what things are called.

I might be wrong...

Anyway, there are so many extra side-characters I love in this series...and this cleaning lady is one of them. With her blue cloth, the red wall, and the white paper...all the colours are covered in this little scene.

I rave about orange and blue in another post but I love that the blue water bottle makes up the colour combination with the red of the gym equipment (and with Theo's white vest - 👀💪🏼).

Red and blue (and white) are also used a lot in the decorations for the zine fair - in the books hanging on the tree, the sign on the stall, the various objects on Theo's stall (and the stalls themselves). I loved the Cotton Candy sign behind Akk as he's dancing away from Theo...because they literally are that sweet!

Out of the four 'Enchantés', only Natee and Wayo have red, blue and white elements this week...and both twice 👀🤔 I'm not sure what this might mean in terms of the four 'Enchantés' but both Phupha and Saifa have elements of brown...so maybe they've just divided the colours between them...or maybe it's separating them out to characters who have genuine (Phupha and Saifa) and false (Natee and Wayo) intentions? But I don't believe Phupha is being truly genuine so... 🤷🏽‍♀️

And lastly the lovely JJ...sorry, Ton...with the stripes on his shoulders. 💙🤍❤️

This week I really disliked Wayo (as well as Phupha of course) and it's difficult to say whether Saifa was trying to help or hinder Akk and Theo by asking for that photo op...but I like that we see different sides of these characters all the time, leaving us questioning their intentions.

[blue and orange details]

[random things of importance]

[archesa]

Love 12 & Domestic 9 for Anwen/Trahearne?

Thanks for the ask! I can't have enough of Anwen/Trahearne fluff!! 🥰🥰🥰

Love - 12 : What kind of nicknames do they call each other?

Anwen has fully embraced the sylvari term of endearment "dearheart", which she finds fittingly sweet and poetic for Trahearne. She might also let a few "honey" slip (mainly to make that incorrect quote canon ^^ but also as a loving allusion to his eyes, and a little confidence boost regarding *very minor spoilers* the change of colour of his glow post-Mordremoth).

As for Trahearne, "dearheart" applies, out of cultural habit, if that makes sense, but he also uses the variation "dear one", and "my friend" is quite naturally replaced with "my love".

They also occasionally resort to their old titles, Commander and Marshal, if they happen to be in anyone's presence other than that of close friends. They're not secretive about their relationship, persay, but come what may, it might be of use to remind some of their status and what they've already accomplished and would be able to do, should shadow rise again. (not spoiler alert at all, it will! their retirement from public affairs doesn't last as long as they'd wish!)

Domestic - 9 : Who’s more likely to convince the other to come back to sleep in the morning?

Trick question ^^ The answer is both!

Depending on what they have to do in the morning, and the urgency of aforementioned tasks, it really could be either, luring the other to bed for cuddles/a few extra hours of sleep ^^

Bonus point for Trahearne who as a huge advantage when it comes to dragging Anwen back to bed. Nope, not even mentioning the fact that he’s now twice as tall as her, which is an advantage. Not mentioning that either, you naughties! 😏

Nah I mean that :

(All due credit to @novakricff for this beauty! I don’t know how to insert images from another blog to an answer to an ask T_T)

How could you refuse anything to this man?

Well Anwen can’t for sure! (and that’s not a reason she can exactly give to her sparring partner for her more than frequent tardiness to training sessions! )

As for staying in bed in general, but not necessarily sleeping (still not that 😏😉 ), it’s Trahearne! No doubt!

In the weeks and months following the campaign of Maguuma and his rescue from the Heart of Thorns, he comes to appreciate the luxury of a quiet, lazy day.

Even with appropriate care and healing it takes some time for his legs to recover from his forced fusion to Mordremoth and prolonged stay in that pod, so a lot of these days are spent reading, writing or studying in bed, far away from the agitation of the outside world lest there were yet another end of the world crisis.

Leaning on Trahearne's shoulder, reading poetry, marking thesis for scholars who'd hope to make Orr their chosen subject of study or raging together against a blattant translation mistake in the analysis of some ancient artifact, while buried in the safety of a sturdy pillow fort seems to have a wonderful effect of Anwen's "can't sit still or I'll explode" dicease ^^

[rayveewrites]

I am not immune to the Hels Hermits brainrot, it seems.

So because I apparently love giving myself big writing projects, I've decided to essentially writing the entirety of the Scattered AU. Every Hermit, plus a few extras: two mystery characters, Evil X, Helsknight, and this fella. HesitateVS, the living embodiment of ImpulseSV's worst personality traits and moral failings. Or something.

Because he's the only original character (or the closes to one, or whatever) that'll be involved in Scattered Across the Map, I figured I should probably introduce him.

Infodump, both for the world of Hels and for the personality and history of Hesitate, is, as always, under the cut to avoid clogging people's dashboards:

(Wait, what do you mean there's a limit to how long posts can be?! You mean I have to reblog with the rest?!)

Hels is not a good place. Contrary to popular belief, it isn't just The Nether But Worse Somehow- it has Overworld resources and mobs in there too! (So what if all the normally harmless mobs can and will kill you?) There's even water! (Ninety-seven percent of the time it's poisoned) Hels is entirely underground, and the vast majority of its inhabitants have never seen the sky- some aren't even aware such a thing exists. Another thing about Hels: there is no Admin. What happens in Hermitcraft is often reflected in Hels- including members. While Hermits can come and go as they please, the Helsmits are essentially stuck where they are. So when a player leaves the Hermitcraft Server, their Hels equivalent... loses the ability to respawn. Yeah. The Helsmits don't know this- and, presumably, neither do the Hermits- as far as they're concerned, it's random and unpredictable. Denizens appear and disappear, and none of them are entirely sure why. The thing is, while things match up, they're not necessarily 1:1. So, while GenerikB was happy to pass admin status on to Xisuma when he left, Hels!Generik... didn't even know his time was limited. And, even if he had, he wouldn't give power to another player. In Hels, that sort of thing's a terrible idea. Fast-forward a few years. Hels has physically collapsed in on itself- twice- and the Hermits are in the middle of Season 3. Evil Xisuma, Hels!Mumbo, and (Tango equivalent) Disco hit on the utterly horrible idea of trying to bring (their) Generik back from the dead. They steal books from AngelCleo, navigate the complete headache that is bluestone (which is like redstone but worse in every conceivable way), perform the ritual, aaaand... It doesn't work. Or, more accurately, it does work, just not in the way it was supposed to. Instead of Generik, they get a fairly average-looking dude, dressed in a t-shirt and cargo pants, named HesitateVS. Hesitate is confused- who are these people? Where is he? And he's pretty sure he hadn't existed before now, but he knows how to build and fight and do bluestone and basic survival skills and that he can't trust anyone and that he fears death. Disappointed with their failure, the three more established Helsmits leave; the only guidance any of them give the new player is Disco pointing him in the general direction of wood. So Hesitate is on his own at the ripe old age of about ten minutes. He goes through the motions- wood, stone, iron, food. He learns to navigate the treacherous terrain, to avoid... uh... literally everyone, to carve out a living in the rocky walls. He learns, he adapts, and he's about three weeks old when he accidentally gets caught deep inside AngelCleo's territory. A thing about Angel: like her Hermit counterpart, she's completely insane. Unlike her Hermit counterpart, it's not in a fun way. So Hesitate has to run from an axe-wielding maniac- with wings- and while he's reasonably strong he's also Just Some Human, being chased by a literal angel. Fun. Hesitate digs down once he's gotten enough distance to do so, and he tunnels for a while. Angel either gets bored or gets distracted, because she seems to give up pretty quickly. Hesitate continues to burrow, until he digs into a small, abandoned room. It's not a normal room- far from it. It might have been a temple at one point, all quartz and emeralds and gold. It's circular, with the only entrance being where Hesitate busted through the wall. There's an altar in the middle, and on the altar floats what appears to be a Totem of Undying. Now, it's worth noting that, at the time, Totems of Undying didn't exist, and as such Hesitate had no idea what he was looking at. It's also worth mentioning that it was floating, above an altar, in a hidden room, and presumably had been for a while. Grabbing it would probably be a pretty terrible idea, considering the bit where everything in Hels was designed to kill you. Now, in Hesitate's defence, he's only existed for about three weeks. He grabs the totem.

[brideofcthulhu10]

More headcanons to help me work through the dreaded writer's block! Hope you guys don't mind it's a bit slow right now, I plan on posting another tonight and hopefully I'll be able to get to some asks once my brain is no longer fried

Dwayne Headcanons

When he was responsible for Laddie, Dwayne would often take him out to the boardwalk whenever Star was busy. Sometimes he’d even choose to take him along even if they were with Star just to hang with the munchkin

If anyone told him he was too short Dwayne would hypnotize them into letting him one. He wasn't exactly worried about the kid being flung from the roller coaster, he could easily catch him if it happened. It felt awesome impressing him at the strength test, just watching him jump up and down as the attendant handed him a giant blue monkey which of course he'd give to Laddie. The boy was such a hyper, sunny child it was hard not to laugh when this spritely eight year old would play a water gun game and yell “this is a load of bullshit” when he lost. Well, he did grow up around four teenage guys, two having the worst language you could imagine. David used the word "fuck" like it was going out of style. At one point some lady in her thirties tried to lecture Laddie about watching his language, to which Dwayne had immediately stepped in after he said “piss off lady”. Again he had to choke back a laugh, pushing the kid behind him before this lady throttled him. To save face Dwayne feigned some half assed “shame on you” to Laddie just so she would piss off, and then ushered him away- for an ice cream sundae. Granted while he couldn’t condone a kid cussing up a storm, he did find it utterly hilarious watching this uppity chick squawk like a hen in outrage.

“Seriously though I don’t know where the hell you learned all that from-”

“Paul taught me.”

“Yeah, well, Paul probably isn’t the best guy to copy, kiddo. "

Chinese food isn’t his favorite, but he knows it’s Markos so he doesn’t complain when they have it at least once a week. Actually, his favorite is probably Hispanic. Many forget much of California was once Mexico, and as such the culture still thrived even into the early 1900s. Santa Carla flourished, and between pick pocketing gigs and heavy labor on the docks, Dwayne could always count on there being fresh tortillas for a few dollars after a long day. Elotes with extra chili powder, huarache, freshly brewed horchata on ice? Utterly delicious! Nothing can compare to freshly made tamales by a sweet abuela in a tiny food truck cooing to you in Spanish. Even he can blush when they pinch his cheeks gushing about what a skinny man he is. Paul and Marko love it as well and will often tag along when Dwayne goes to Mama Rosa’s, although he often has to elbow Paul in the gut because he’ll flirt with the cooks in the back into getting a free taco.

“Ay, Paul, mi angelito querido cielito, you’re skin and bones!”

“Well, I always skip a meal before coming here, abuela. Your cooking is too epic to have anything else in my stomach!”

“Dude, will you stop flirting with that poor woman before you give her a heart attack, you ass?”

Dwayne had a brother many years ago who was lost after being caught in direct sunlight during the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906. Since then on April 18th he holds a small memorial for his brother Jasper, who died pulling the curtains shut to shield them from the sun. Some years David, Paul and Marko will join him, silently drinking to their fallen friend. It's a rare moment of seriousness for these wild boys, sitting beside an altar crudely constructed atop a wooden crate, draped over with the jacket once worn by Jasper that survived the flames. Decorated in worn candles melted by decades of use, a bottle of rum from over eighty years ago still untouched with an empty shot glass beside it caked in dust and cobwebs, worn flowers shriveled into darkened husks, a glass of blood they keep freshly filled with each visit, feathers of birds to help carry him to the sky. Every time he adds something new, a gift from every era. Recently he brought Jasper a Def Leppard vinyl record, propped against a sketch of his brother drawn before his passing by an admirer who had died long ago. Paul left a little toy motorcycle for him, Marko brought an old pocket watch he found at an antique store that bore a striking resemblance to one he had admired long ago, and David brought him a hunting knife

“You would’ve loved hair bands, Jas. Everything’s changed now, its crazy. It sucks you never got a bike of your own,” Dwayne would say, sitting in the dark with only the tender flicker of candles brushing away the dark. Never again would he let the sun take him. It was the darkest, deepest cave in the hotel. And there, Dwayne spoke more than he ever does outside “Horses were cool, but it’s better to have something that doesn’t stop every time it takes a shit, you know?”

Unfortunately Dwayne sucks at video games. It’s not that he doesn’t get it, but he has the worst gamer rage. Now, Dwayne doesn’t often get legitimately mad, but when he’s been playing the same god damn stupid water level for the past hour and a half just to be killed by a squid-! Well, lets just say Paul practically dove to catch the controller before it was chucked at the tv, and cue a dirty look towards Dwayne for nearly smashing his “baby”. He wasn’t about to have him break ANOTHER controller. Yeah that wasn’t the first. At this point he’s content just watching from afar and sometimes back seat gaming when Marko is going the wrong way. He’s not nearly as bad as David who will openly call someone stupid after dying. 

Dwayne is definitely the type to nap after a long night. Truthfully he misses when he could just lay out in the sun like a lizard on a hot rock after a long day, it’d feel incredible. Instead he’s resorted to a hot water bottle or a heating pad. Yeah, he loves hot weather. Summertime is his favorite time, just savoring the toasted air blowing in his face on rides over the beaches. Sometimes he’ll try to wake up early to watch the sunset from within the cave, although it’s burnt him on more than one occasion he will still try to get a glimpse. Winter is the worst for him, he hates, absolutely despises the cold. Even though he doesn't technically get cold anymore, everything seems to die away in the winter leaving only twisted branches and grey skies. David may enjoy all that gloomy melancholy but not him.

One wouldn’t assume Dwayne to have much of a sweet tooth. That’s because they’re wrong. While he isn’t into the marshmallow caramel double candy bars deep fried and dipped in chocolate like Marko or Laddie, he has a serious weakness for chocolate. Like, a major weakness. Paul is still searching for his stash, tucked away somewhere secret in the hotel. Any time he thinks he’s close to finding it, Dwayne moves it again.

“Dude, sharing is fucking caring you greedy bastard”

“Get your own candy asshole, why do you think I keep my stash hidden from you guys?”

Now the whole hoity toity fancy chocolate isn’t what appeals to him. He can certainly appreciate a well made chunk of dark chocolate sprinkled with chili powder, but he’ll settle for a cheap bar snatched from a gas station. Most sweets weigh heavy on him, but chocolate is such a unique medium that can be changed into almost anything, appealing to every taste imaginable. Sweet, savory, spicy, bitter, semi-sweet, rich, dense, light. Chocolate cake, chocolate doughnut, hot chocolate, fudge, and of course the traditional candy bar. You make him a mug of Mexican hot chocolate and he is putty in your hands. You couldn’t necessarily bribe him with food. But you could certainly butter him up to suggestions when he’s crunching down on a candy bar. Paul knows this, and at this point Dwayne knows this guy has royally fucked up if he comes up to him with a stack of chocolate bars.

“Heeeeey, Dwayne, buddy, old pal, chum, lookie what I found, all for you man how cool is that?”

“....,” Dwayne glances up from his book at the handful of chocolate and slowly lowers it with a firm sigh. “What the hell did you do now?”

“Wha-Whaaa-? Oh! Okay, wow. Woooow. Offend much? I go out of my way- I mean, can’t a guy just, you know, do something nice for his best friend-?”

“Paul. What. did. you. do?”  

“Okay okay, well you see David made me go fill up his stupid bike, and there was this hot chick at the gas station, I mean perfect fuckin ten man, she had the biggest frickin tits- okay anyway! Well, next thing I know the keys are gone, the chick's gone, the fuckin bike- You gotta help me man he’s gonna fucking kill me and dance on my grave!”

Of course Dwayne will help… in exchange for twice the chocolate. Like I said, it won’t always work as a bribe, but it’ll certainly help your cause if you go in with some incentive.