#theres weird time travel involved

[vyoleya]

i have a. really normal and comprehensible dragons rising au.

i may post actual art from it sometime . perhaps. in the meantime enjoy these doodles

[achillean-knight]

I love how I'm in both the FNAF and KH fandoms, I love to torture myself with theories and convoluted stores both featuring kids who have passed, a murder plot point and a mysterious black box that nobody knows the contents of. Also love how there's a substance that's basically darkness and light that possess it's host and there's a nut-so villain pulling the strings along.

Love FNAF and KH sm LMAO

[arolesbianism]

Sigh. Nikola why must you be one of the more interesting oni characters. I don't wanna think abt you with your stupid spiky blond hair and your unethical science that mostly just serves to make Jackie more shitty by proxy. But I do. Because you're kind of orbo blorbo. Fuck you Nikola I hope you explode again

[imprettysureicanhearyou]

okay I had the strangest experience because I watched the first 3 episodes and went "this is great! a little silly but thats to be expected, no where near as bad as season 3" and then the last 3 episodes happened !! anyways

thoughts/take aways :

ty for letting them say fuck

aidan gallagher get out of the writers room and get a girlfriend

baby shark, seriously, that was at least 4 years ago

lila character assasination is CRAZY omg. she would never?? do anything with five 😭 her and five have hated eachother this entire time no matter how many years they were in a train station she would not get w his dusty ass

I dont understand how this happened except somehow aidan got leverage with the plot bc the GREENHOUSE?? SHOTS??? ARE LIKE IDENTICAL?? TO HIS WEIRD INSTAGRAM SELF INSERT FIC?? i hate this boy, get ur hands off my tua

also generally the way they have Lila act abt her family??? idk it feels like such a bland plotline to make her and diego hate being parents

the chubby jokes about diego are also crazy

the fives scene was so cringey 😭 i see what u were going for but it literally just gave citadel of ricks it was not good, and the rain man joke.

the plotline of klaus getting kidnapped was genuinely crazy to toss in there and play for jokes, they only acted like it was serious when the guy threatened allison like no he has been sex trafficking the hargreeves on screen for an entire episode

also while klaus being really paranoid of dying without his powers COULD have been a good plot line I feel like they did not do it well and it just ended up feeling like promoting his addiction

that goop ending was really weird, why'd they get gooped, what if they all died normally no goop involved, they window breaking shot was cool just have that massive monster kick their asses why goop

why did they imply Viktor is like treating all the women in town badly in the first episode 😭 viktor has NEVER acted like this. like please let trans men be GOOD men it doesnt men them girly to not treat women like shit

they act like sloan died and then never elaborated on it???

please explore why raymond left allison and fire aidan gallagher

klaus immediately going for the dog tags was actually rlly sweet almost cried

the two seconds of young apocalypse five were the best moments of the whole season

plot holes bc i was gonna be nice but you did this to yourself :

why is everyone calling it marigold like its not just random thing harlan came up with

"power up" THIS IS NOT WHAT ANY OF UR POWERS LOOKED LIKE UNTIL RN WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING

and fives jumps are purple??? for the reason of ??? ??? why??

and WHY THE HELL DOES LILA HAVE LaZER EYES. ALL THEIR POWERS ARE LIKE THEIRS BUT SLIGHTLY DIF/MORE POWERFUL AND SHES JUST GOT LAZER EYES 😭

why were lila and five living like they were in the apocalypse in that train station when they clearly could pop up and time travel around??? like go up take a shower, time travel to sometime with stores, buy some meat, why are you hunting rats, theres literally a deli in there

also they were in there for SEVEN YEARS and never saw another five until the last episode????

I also really heavily doubt it would take five 7+ years to figure out the train system

also the way allison pours the marigold directly into klaus' wound and it just works 😭 how does it work both by drinking it AND ALSO BY POURING IT DIRECTLY IN A MANS GUNSOHT WOULD

what? was going on w Sy Grossman ?? did we ever figure that out?? did they just kill him off and leave us wondering?? why did he say he was Jennifers dad? was he actually with the Keepers? was he just working for Abigail?? no fucking clue

one of the hargreeves (i think luther) called bens death the jennifer incident in s3,,,, but they did not know the girls name and also allegedly had their memories wiped???? okay,,,

also i thought sparrow ben KNEW jennifer already cuz he had her name in his journal or whatever?? but now he doesn't???

why was she in the squid 😭 ?

honestly im sure theres more ive forgotton but omg, that was not good 😭

[spiderziege]

can you tell us more about your characters please please please???

ooohh yes i will tho i honestly dont have that much actual story, im just. worldbuilding atm. heres a map! (i posted this before but i cleaned it up a bit and improved the dragon, it was looking kinda weird before lol)

still work in progress though! the dragon is asleep under the earth and has been there for a long long time, shaping the landscape. most people believe its some sort of legend but some do believe its real and might wake up on day and destroy everything

and here's the 6 main guys and also their locations in the world (roughly)

Eshiel & Luz both didnt grow up in the steppe/plains area they live in now; Eshiel grew up very far west deep in the forest pretty isolated from the rest of the land. Luz was born in the mountainrange along the dragons spine, but he spent most his childhood travelling with a circus so i dont think he'd really think of that as home anyway. those two are sort of runaway criminals (as in they pissed off one very powerful and very evil guy). also Eshiel isnt her real name she just changed it so its harder to find her

The town Valérie lives in is very historic, not technically a capital city but sort of a central point for travel and trade. Valérie grew up there and works as a farrier. i havent really decided in what way magic exists here but Val is definitely the one who'd be into it the most.

everything south from that city until you reach the ocean (basically along the dragons neck & shoulders) is completely abandoned and forbidden to enter except for once every couple years for a tournament where people try to cross that land on horseback. which is dangeorus cause theres monsters/sort of demonic forces down there but theres good prize money & glory involved so people do it anyway. all 6 of them end up taking part for various reasons

The last three all come from the snow kingdom in the northeast. Kokoro is a princess and Caliott & Cäcilia are both knights. Koko basically runs off on her own to search for her older brother who took part in that tournament a few years ago and never returned, Caliott & Cäcilia are sent after her to protect her

i think thats it? heres a pinterest board lol. thank you for asking about them :') hope this all makes sense kinda. talking about ocs is so scary why is it so scary

[kaidatheghostdragon]

So i decided to rewatch static shock and now i have Ideas(tm)

IDEA 1

Amity and dakota are neighboring and/or sister cities, and virgil and danny are the same age or one is only a few years older than the other.

A few things about dakota's location:

It has miles of waterfront on its east side to Lake Dakota, which has ocean access. The lake has a golden gate sized bridge over it, but the other side is never shown. An extremely large artificial lake from a dammed up river that leads to the atlantic makes the most sense to me. A fictional Great Lake is also entirely possible. Either option probably still limits Dakota to east of (or connected to?) the mississippi, especially when combined with the point below.

Its implied to be close enough to gotham for virgil to signal batman in the sky, and to quickly fly over. There's still plenty of room for reinterpretation, though.

Its large enough to have 'miles' of waterfront, and to have stadiums hosting major sports events, so its safely larger than amity park.

I was looking at a map and thought it would be great if dakota was between or encompassed toledo and detroit (i got the impression it was an expy of chicago or detroit anyways), with lake eerie and lake st clair on its east. Lake st clair would be renamed dakota lake and lake erie is the lake eerie that danny and his dad visit. Amity park is in ohio instead of illinois (which is fanon anyways).

(Also, hilariously, dakota has a poorer neighborhood called the fenton projects. Do with that what you will.)

So basically, dakota is the closest "big city" to amity park, so theres a lot of cross travel. Both cities get their vigilantes at the same time and bond over the mutual weirdness, and team phantom and team shock are close allies that constantly fly over to help each other out.

OR, one of the origin stories happened 2-5 years after the other, and whichever one is younger goes to the other for vigilante advise and training.

IDEA 2

The chemical that caused the big bang is some form of ecto, and all the bang babies are liminal. In this idea, i imagined team phantom closer to batman's age instead of static's. The (adult) team is investigating ecto-shipments in dakota when or shortly after the big bang event happens, connect alva to vlad and/or the giw, and discover a conspiracy to deliberately create liminals 'for science' (ie the chemicals were purposefully placed at the docks and a gang war deliberately incited).

Team phantom set up a bang baby outreach program at the community center with virgil's dad and quickly identify virgil as static. They train virgil (and eventually richie) and cover their patrols under the excuse that the two are extremely involved in the outreach program (which they are - static recommends the program to all of his rogues).

Danny's team is able to help the various bang babies develop and control their powers, has the resources to help anyone who doesnt want to be associated with ebon's gang, and has a way to safely subdue and contain the bang babies that refuse any help and continue to be a danger to others. And they can show up in a mask if they want to hide their identity while learning to control their powers (not that it would actually stop the team from being able to identify them). The team is also monitoring the bang baby population to make sure the giw or anyone else arent disappearing them.

The team would also take great offense to how the cure was ethically handled at the end of the series, especially if retconning the bang babies as liminals means that 'curing' them would actually hurt them.

Anyways, more danny phantom x static shock crossovers, please.

[klm-zoflorr]

It's PROPAGANDA TIME.

So me an @unending-vigil made a thang 👉👈☺️ it contains 19th century jonagh magnus..... Interacting with Elias stepping unarmed into the lion's den... Yes theres time travel involved. Anyways they're being mega Weird about each other and doing Beholding stuff and I thought that was pretty entertaining. Go check it out.

[dang-orange]

dang-orange makes a list of characters he'd shake inside a glass jar:

i decided to be insane while i wait for the Methylphenidate pill to hit (i was thought to have adhd and still have some leftovers from trying to treat that) so i can study. so i made a list of what i think are kins? i refuse to look up what that actually means so im going by the context that a thousand years of reading tumblr posts on pintrest gave me.

Okay! so:

Kinger is a new one, he seems like such a funny silly guy who is kind of out of it, something i absolutely get! so he goes there.

Izzy Hands has been a cause of insanity for me since season one, but season two got me worse. what a funny fellow. i get the whole being a tryhard thing, and sort of losing it a bit over having to change your ways. havent had to eat own my toes, lost a leg or done drag while singing in french, so those things i just find amusing.

Peter B. Parker! what a funny guy, i didnt expect him to actually come back on the second spiderverse movie. being a cool mentor is something admirable i think, and the scene with aunt may made me spend way too many hours on ao3 as i thought that could have been more of a thing (in my head the movie would have done well as a series, more time to explore the really cool characters they had). Also: him being a version of spiderman ''were things didnt go well'' that doesnt go in a morbid direction is very baller.

Doctor Twobrains i only know of from fandom osmosis. i did watch the series as a kid, but i really cant remember shit. the rat brain is funny, and i love anything involving inventors with a theme (i had to fight myself a few too many times to not include doofenshmirtz). the manerisms and vibe are very silly, the excentricities vibe with me.

Agent Stone was the only reason i watched the sonic movie. i saw a trailer and thought, huh i dont think i remember ever seeing this fellow on anything sonic. turns out, he was a new character and very, very funny. what a guy! i can imagine going that far being a henchman. i, however, do have a deep hatred against the guy that does robotnick, so i havent seen much else other than the first film (that i very much pirated).

Pyro is such a mistery. they just burn things and act jolly, the whole pyroland thing is also so stupid. i mained him when i played tf2, but for now i just save fanart of her burning shit and think about how cool it'd be to have a full body suit, be unintelligible and get to burn stuff. absolute 10/10.

Hazel from The Umbrella Academy was fun while he lasted. The idea of being a time traveling mercenary and still getting shitty hotel rooms is hilarious to me. made me really want to get suspenders, but i dont think that'll happen.

Scar (from Hermitcraft) is such a chaotically silly guy. i wish i could pull that off. going from scam, to huge incredible creations, to changing allies on a dime, to playing games by any other rules than the ones stabilished? i wish i could do that! btw the fanart is by reddit user dead_cricket_ (i didnt want to use a minecraft skin but wanted to make sure that I AM TALKING ABOUT THE FANON CHARACTER NOT THE REAL DUDE THAT MAKES VIDEOS)

Elliot Gussman from The Umbrella Academy was also fun while he lasted. i also have some really, really weird paranoia problems and would act the same if i had alien strangers in my house. there isnt a lot of fandom stuff on him, as he's such a minor character, so i just juggle a few too many head canons on this silly guy.

Aziraphale. hehe. haha. im absolutely normal about this guy. being an angel and having the ideology of heaven hammered into your head, and complying with things you know you shouldnt because you know the consequences and that theres someone all-seeing always watching you? i get that 100%. Two other things: the constant forced smiles that are clearly unnatural and doing silly things you know you arent good at are also relatable.

i really like Abner Krill. this is so long already, but i just, really like him. i wish he didnt get killed, that movie is my favourite and i wish it could get a sequel. i'll be short on the whole thing by saying that being the weirdest one on a bunch of batman villans is very funny, and his powers are very fucked up in a cool way.

Oswald Cobblepot was the only reason i saw Gothan. him going from just a guy to.. The Penguin?? absolutely crazy. i really got the whole bit where he was getting higher on the crime scene by biting small bits and getting big results.

I could write 20.000 words on each of these, but this formatting is ass and i think the Methylphenidate is working (it's been a bit more than 40 minutes between writing and looking up images that werent so bad), so i should go study/work. if anyone wants me to go insane again, dont worry! i absolutelly will. i made an account here for a reason.

[alexmey-does-an-arts]

me yapping about natlan from last night:

ok so i am VERY mixed on natlan quests. the final boss was the coolest shit ever but also leading up to it there was a lot of ehhhhghh stuff. especially in the last act

also pyro traveler is AWFUL. all of the constellations are specifically designed ONLY to be used in that final bossfight and have no utility outside of it. and the thing is the final boss fight is AWESOME but like. pyro traveler is just kinda insanely mid normally now.

leading up to the fight theres also just like. a TON of exposition about a bunch of shit just sort of dumped on you. like i LOVED capitano and his story but so much of it was just sorta slapped in there right near the end it felt like we really never got to know the character at all before his huge tragic death

again though the like. fetch quests and dialogue shit reeeaaaly pulled it down for me. there's segments of the climax of the story where you're doing like. boring ehhh puzzle shit which should NOT be in like. the final fight of your story that it has all been leading up to.

plus theres this bit near the end where like the whole crowd of characters is like cheering for you and its like the power of friendship n shit which is fine but. its already happened like 3 other times in the natlan story and just breaks up the tension for no real reason there was this whole thing about like some of the diff natlan characters being like heroes brough back from 500 years ago to help save the day but. they're not involved in the final fight at all, just the big penultimate thing which imo SHOULD have been the final fight it was way more interesting

idk i also feel ehhh about natlan in general. i feel like it didn't take as much from its inspiration cultures as the other regions and it also didn't have enough unique stuff to balance out. i think they picked out too many differing cultures as inspirations instead of focusing harder on one plus the natlan charactgers and setting feels. Weird. time and technology-wise.

i feel like a lot of natlan's flaws can be compared with fontaine or liyue, which in contrast

adhere well to their cultural/historical inspiration with architecture, aesthetics, cultural values, and have detailed long histories

also incorporate plenty of original and fantasy elements (automatons, dragons, adepti)

the culture and history of the area are represented in writing, quests, design, and visually

have characters with aesthetics that both fit well within their regions culture/aesthetics and fit genshin's general time period and style

when more modern elements or aesthetics are incorporated, it's usually in a way that doesn't feel immersion-breaking (such as how there's like dubstep and shit in fontaine's soundtrack: this works because the only times electronic music is being used is when something fucked up and otherwordly is happening, like in the bossfight with the whale)

natlan on the other hand

has much less detail in its culture and history explained other than major plot-relevant things

while the saurians are an interesting element, they're not really incorporated into the design of natlan as a whole. the people in natlan don't seem to use saurians for much other than pets or bodyguards, and they don't really change the way cities or villages are designed. just sort of plonked in there.

natlan's elements just aren't very cohesive. i kind of get what they're trying to go for, but it's not working. there's grafitti, yeah, but we've seen a total of 1 graffiti artist and she was in a limited time event that's over now. why are there giant paintings on the mountains? who put them there? we don't know! characters talk about having saurian pets and friends and how the saurians are like part of their households, but we almost never see characters other than the traveler interact with saurians for more than like a minute!

character aesthetics. this is one of the worst ones for me. why do kinich and ajaw have a fucking pixel glitch aesthetic going on? it doesn't really say anything about kinich's character or contribute to it, and feels SO out of place in genshin's setting. why does mavuika have a fucking motorcycle? because we wanted fun biker girl aesthetic i guess??? you can't just keep saying "its phlogiston" every time thats BORING its a boring explanation

the aesthetics in general are kind of one-note and boring. the people of the springs area literally looks like a goofy water park and their personalities are "we like to swim and have parties" because they're the water tribe i guess.

and also everyone's pale as fuck.

plus the nightsoul mechanics. only natlan characters can have nightsoul stuff which means you're incentivized to have multiple natlan characters in your party for most of the dps characters, and these dps characters get bigger boosts from natlan supports. it's blatantly unbalanced to get you to pull new characters and its the reason i haven't pulled on a lot of the natlan banners. plus the pretty blatant powercreep with mavuika over other pyro dps characters at least with arlecchino she has different weaknesses that can help balance out her high dps, like her inablility to heal from other characters in combat which requires you to think differently about how you build a team

natlan feels both like some of the core elements of its story weren't put in place right and it also doesn't have enough meat on its bones somehow. which sucks because there's great stuff in there! i enjoyed the battle sequences a lot, the character stories have been pretty compelling, and most of the archon quest stuff was interesting! which makes it so much worse that it just doesn't measure up. bleh.

in short natlan's story is kind of meh, the worldbuilding is bad, and the character mechanics are bad.

and to top it all off: capitano non-playable

[thettrpgtournament]

Why you should vote for each of them and full art below!

Rishika Díaz (by @flockofdoves for Masks)

(art by @flockofdoves)

in the year 202X, local Halcyon City newspapers report occasional spottings of a new superhero in town, a teenage girl with portal and teleportation powers calling herself “The Future Violent”.

in a different timeline some ambiguous amount of generations later, capitalism and global warming have gotten even worse, and superheroes are recruited to serve the interests of a few big corporations, who now even more explicitly are in control of the state and have a monopoly on legitimate violence. a 17 year old pores over a very old family photo, family from his dad’s side generations ago, smiling happily in their living room. he hopes that maybe, just maybe, he can take his ability to teleport anywhere he has a clear sensory grasp on to its most extreme, and do something he’s never done before, travel to the the past. to him it feels like the only hope at saving the world.

somehow, they succeed! they pop into their ancestor’s living room right after the picture was taken, aged picture in hand. in stuttering through an explanation in a post time travel haze, the name they’ve always gone by is misheard as Rishika, and on a whim, they go along with it.

rishika’s family (who are now referred to as her aunt, uncle, grandma, and nieces and nephews) fully accept rishika into their home. rishika is open with them from the beginning about their goals of stopping evil corporations, which is all well and good to their family as long as he’s safe about it, but he still needs to go to school and get decent grades while he’s at it.

using their powers for something as extreme as time travel has scrambled their brain a bit. their memory of the future is very spotty. in their meandering first attempts at stopping evil corporations, they end up encountering two other teens with powers from their school, and begin to work as a superhero, getting involved with situations not directly related to preventing their future, developing a costume and superhero name, and omitting all this while talking with family so as to not worry them too much.

when the first news reports of Rishika’s team’s activity refer to The Future Violent as a girl, for some reason rishika really enjoys that. she might as well have her teammates always refer to her as such when in costume, after all it’ll help make it harder to find out her secret identity as a boy!

when not spending increasing amounts of time embroiled in heroic situations, rishika loves getting to listen to long lost recordings of their favorite “retro” emo bands, running a fanblog for future revolutionary martyrs and now famous on the local scene band made up entirely of superheroes, The Gawth Chix, and modifying clothes in baffling ways (her friends aren’t sure what is future fashion and what is just rishika being rishika).

coming from their even more abysmal capitalist propaganda filled future education, history is by far their favorite school subject, but their history teacher is never quite sure what to do with the combination of their clear enthusiasm and huge gaps in basic historical knowledge.

rishika is open about casually mentioning they came from the future, but theres no real precedent for that, and most people just dismiss it as some sort of weird joke.

between their gaps in memory and knowledge both of past and future, juggling a new and dramatically different school system, a new family life, and a new identity as a superhero, and the nagging but vague feelings about identity starting to emerge for them, rishika has a lot of growing and reflecting to do, even as she feels the constant weight of saving the entire world on her back!

(a note on pronouns: if its not obvious, i intend rishika to be a trans girl or nonbinary transfem person who has not really consciously connected that for herself yet, but who is on the way to soon realizing that. in school and at home she uses he pronouns by default, but uses she pronouns in her superhero identity. her closest friends are also her superhero teammates, and they have started to occasionally slip up and use she and they pronouns even sometimes outside of superhero contexts. despite how this technically could help people connect her hero and personal identities, she hasn’t corrected this any time its happened, instead just privately going like .’whoa..’ when referring to her as a character, i mostly use she and sometimes they, but he can contextually make sense too like how i used it here. so feel free to use your judgement when referring to her)

Benedikt Ignatov (by @19orionis for Dungeons & Dragons)

(art by @19orionis)

Benedikt has learned not to fly off the handle very often, appearing relaxed and even at times sleepy, making his disastrous slip-up (more on that below) all the more difficult for him to think about. In daily life, he’s a chill, artsy guy, who, aside from living off the land, occasionally ventured into town to sell his colorful work. He says the occasional weird, funny thing and would be a great guy to smoke with. Despite not having as much in the way of physical strength as one might expect, his tall, large stature lends him skill in quiet intimidation. Initially coming off as a chaotic neutral, he does find fulfillment in listening to and protecting those who need it.

After being robbed and accidentally decimating his home woods in a firey rage of his own making, mortified, Benedikt fled his home continent by stowing away on a ship, and traveling to a new frontier where he is currently posing as a naturalist researcher, using his sketching abilities and background as a forester to make the act all the more convincing. As a totally human sorcerer with wild magic, he’s never had any idea where his powers came from, and is using the adventuring opportunity to hopefully gain some insight on what he is. And maybe find some community along the way. He’s always wanted a nicer family.

[slutforwings]

books i read in 2023 that i recommend :) mainly because i am trying to find new books to read in the 'book rec' tag and none of these people give summaries so I shall bravely do it instead for others!

wrong place wrong time - gillian mcallister (mystery)

Blurb: a woman sees her son killing someone in front of her, then wakes up the next morning only to realise it's the day before the murder. she keeps traveling back in time, unraveling the reason for the murder and trying to stop it along the way Review: i misread the back and thought it was gonna be a time loop but this was even better actually. i fucking devoured this book it was so compelling. i tend to devour mystery books like these regardless of their well-writtenness but this was genuinely really good and tied up everything neatly at the end.

autobiography of a corpse - sigizmund krzhizhanovsky (short stories)

Blurb: bunch of fantastical short stories like about the people living in your pupil, a society that deals in anger and malcontent, a guy trying to bite his elbow Review: this book made me realise i love short stories, but then it turned out i mainly love THIS GUY'S short stories. they were just that good. slavic writers are built different

the secret history - donna tartt (psychological fiction)

Blurb: cult group of pretentious college kids study greek and turn it into a personality trait. also theyre gonna conspire to kill one of their own and then try to hide it Review: all of these characters are cunts and i love them so much. do not believe the dark academia girlies peddling this book, these people are stupid and pretentious and morally corrupt and theyre SO MUCH FUN!! the internal monologues are fantastic, i want to study Dick's brain. its a very Long book and absolutely takes its time and yet it does not feel like any parts are really unnecessary. really good.

this is how you lose the time war - amal el-mohtar & max gladstone (sci-fi)

Blurb: two time travelers from opposing agencies each have a mission (the mission involves historic meddling through time travel but is honestly not as important) and keep encountering each other and leaving letters to taunt, falling in love throughout the story Review: listen i saw that tweet 'do not look up anything about this book and just read it' and i did and i had zero regrets. i bought the paperback after reading the ebook bc it was just that good. beautiful prose, fantastic worldbuilding that is sometimes only hinted at but everything made me go !!! can you tell i love time travel.

notes on an execution - danya kukafka (pyschological fiction)

Blurb: serial killer on death row recounts his life, as well as pov of the police officer that investigated the cases and got him in jail + pov's of the family of the victims Review: incredible story about family, morality and love. raises a lot of questions about criminals and 'evil' and does not answer them because that's the whole point. insane quotes too. also very vivid storytelling in the way that i could picture all the locations perfectly despite them not being described in detail. i think it was due to the intense Vibe

bunny - mona awad (uh. horror?)

Blurb: um. goth/'not like other girls' girl gets indoctrinated into joins a cult group of really girly girls that all call each other bunny and have kind of weird rituals meetings. Review: listen. i hate when people do this to me but. just read it. if you're a fan of magical realism and cult-y things, you're in for a treat. this book made me bike home in a daze. i love stream of consciousness where you as the reader are just as lost as the character! i love you bunny!

instructions for a heatwave - maggie o'farrel (fiction)

Blurb: a pensioned father leaves the house for his newspaper and then doesnt return. all the children are gathered by the mother to try and figure out what the fuck happened. Review: not so much a 'hey where'd he go' as it is a rumination on family and unconditional love. ofc theres some family secrets that get revealed but i found it more interesting to watch the family dynamic and the changes the secrets brought to it. bittersweet :)

[wingsfromwhere]

I will post 4 out of my 5 dreams because the first one was kinda weird

5th

I have a revolver with a hammer with 4 shots, 6 cylinders, i find old friends with the military, i hug one i know her face not her name. I see old towers in my training brought down and replaced with inflatable one

I go inside the van playing music on my phone, want to find more ammo, go underneath the van floorboards where i know theres a box of random things. Old friend's coworker is there, i offer candy i found. Everyone else has left, its just us, theres a tv in the van, its playing an emergency braodcast, the coworker sees it, i find one extra round, its pointy instead of round. I break a line of empty capsules that holds each round, i load the capsule with the round, none of the others use capsules.

The emergency broadcast is the president, i remember being here before, i dont look at the tv, i wont look, i need to not look, i hear "...use you nail to dig into dirt, dogs, your face, anything that it takes to survive..." the coworker walks very slowly out of the van without word, i wait till he leaves, im alone with 5 shots, 4 round, 1 pointy. I step outside. Im alone. I need to find my friend, i need to survive, there is something wrong going on

This feels like the 2nd time ive had this dream, the first time my pillars of training were not involved, i dont remember this dream at all, but i feel like i know its the 2nd time

4th

Kevin spacey mobile game add, real game is dumb stick figures running thru tubes

Ad shows it as an intense 3rd person omnipresence camera locked to the character, 80s tron stylized, very fun, not real gameplay.

Kevin spacy and other people are skating on rails like sonic and shadow

Kevin spacey because i saw a clogne ad with him irl yesterday

3rd

Im the presidents advisor, i see a rockformation that looks like a cross section of a rhino, the president doesnt see it when i tell him.

We go to a hallway, stakley, my old coworker, an asshole and a coward, but somewhat a good person. is introduced to the president related to his hit book he released. I dont think it was that good, i have a figurine from his book, a turtle with a valkeries helmet and a human head on the neck, the helmet doesnt belong, i have a soldiers helmet, i put it on the mans head, it belongs, but it doesnt fit, the mans neck extends, at its end of travel a monsters head replaces the mans. The president walks away, stakley is very happy the president told him he loved the book. I dont think the president even know who he was or that he wrote a book, but because security let him in he thought it was probably a good book

2nd

Im in a muddy flatland, maybe the bottom of an empty dam. Old man i work for want me to get at tractor, his other tractor at work isnt enough, or isnt the right one. I need to get the ti-15 , i get bags of hydralic fluid and some kind of worm gears, 3 of them, they are burred, one isnt burred, but its incredibliy worn to the point of perfect smoothness. It looks like swirling oval, like oval shaped double helix, sortof like the special bullets from wanted, but with deep grooves instead of solid lead. the unworn but burred 2 look like metal drill bits for a lathe, also helix patterned cutting surfaces. i use the side of drillbits to cut off burrs, i put fluid in bads and enter tubes to feed the system of the tractor, there are people with me giving genuine if bad advice, one man asks why i dont have a saftey vest on, i raise my coat to show i do have one, one of the bags is torn open, it doesnt matter. The fluid just needs a bag for some reason, doesnt matter, it doesn't need to hold the fluid

[kozykricket]

i wont lie, terraria shimmer teeters very close to too much quality of life for me. to the point if it had any more perma buffs id probably call it a bit of powercreep but also like. with terraria, i really dont care what the devs do because i trust in them a Lot and. the game is a smorgasbord anyways yknow? funny thing is, shimmer is probably one of my fav things to introduce people to in terraria, because its so cool. and it feels like... hidden cheat codes, almost. like. theres some merit i think to having really obscure and impossible to figure out mechanics, because. yes. it makes the game a "wiki game" sometimes but then i get to feel really cool showing my friends all the special transmutations that exist, like the peddlers satchel. its like. yeah okay why is qol for traveling merchant selling more locked behind that? its kinda weird. but. its cool cus i get to feel cool and clever doing it. again terraria shows its mastery of making u feel cool for being able to do something or being able to know something or maybe thats just me loving my fixation on terraria and knowing everything about games that i play

oh right i said i think shimmers close to too much qol yea i think sometimes theres like. ways it reduces grind where its like i dont mind the grind in terraria ive been over this. and so. do i really want them to reduce the grind? but for one, theres the "it feels like a cheatcode, not just some recipe" as well as like its a way to keep low droprates for things like say, the adhesive bandage. to keep it from dropping a crapton. so .. .you can shimmer a bezoar for it yet still it makes people grind for Something for it and... reward their unluckiness for being so lucky they happen to get more bezoars than they need like, theres still the grind of killing an enemy involved. same for the magma stone to lava charm conversion. that just means you get to pick "im gonna farm hell bats instead of chests around the area"

which like. is . an option. and options for doing things are good! its just if one option is blatantly easier than another one, that it gets to be. weird I also appreciate fishing in terraria as being an alternative for many things! yes it can be grindy, but also. tbh? fishing can be pretty darn easy, if you just do some angler quests and use some potions. ive fished for rare stuff i dont have before. and sometimes it sucks, but ... its usually not that bad. its fair as a last resort for getting stuff that you can otherwise get i suppose this turned into a ramble about just, the methods of getting stuff in terraria in general but anyways, point is i like shimmer, but it was so close to being something i couldve very much hated. and in terms of the permabuffs, they're very very negligible, if you told me they were just placebo and did nothing id believe you. which is good. they shouldnt be that much and... for stuff like swapping class emblems? now thats just fantastic. not every single piece of loot should be able to be swapped out for another piece of loot! i think grinding bosses is good sometimes! but for the WALL of FLESH of all things, and for something as important as a class damage accessory? entirely fair all in all i really appreciate the time relogic puts into thinking about stuff

[prism-empurress]

you want xehanort lore? here is my best attempt based on what i know. i havent beaten the game where time travel got involved so this is uh. before things got too bad

so xehanort was a keyblade master who was training this kid ventus. then one day he felt a bit silly and wanted to restart a war for science so he stabbed a child to split his heart into two halves (ventus, pure light, and vanitas, pure dark) and then gave ventus (actively dying because of having his heart you know. ripped in half) to his old pal eraqus to deal with and kept vanitas. his GOAL was that vanitas and ventus would eventually fight and somehow form this old weapon called the x-blade (not to be confused with the keyblade despite being pronounced the same) because something something it forms when equal light and dark powers clash i think? idk. anyways i literally have no clue what happened at the end of bbs because i wasnt paying attention but iirc that plan only semi worked and ventus ended up in a fucking coma for 10 years. in the meantime i think xehanort was uh. i feel like his goal was immortality but i could be mixing him up with william afton. anyways he norted a boy. that boy was terra. basically he just possessed him. so theres terranort now. then aqua i think beat him up then dropped him off in radiant garden before going to the void

terranort then took a quick detour to get a phd in unethical science with notoriously totally definitely not the worst character ever ansem the wise. he learned about how to release peoples hearts and then uh. idr how this happened exactly BUT HE DID IT TO HIMSELF AND MAYBE CONVINCED ANSEM TW's OTHER APPRENTICES TO DO IT TOO????? anyways so oops! he now has split himself in half. not the same way he split ventus in half though he split himself in half in like a normal way, aka into a heartless and a nobody

tldr explanation for heartless and nobodies, heartless are peoples hearts that have succumbed to darkness and nobodies are the body they leave behind. if you have a strong will, your nobody is basically just a kinda funky copy of yourself without a heart. also if you choose to succumb to darkness instead of being overtaken by it, then you remain sentient as a heartless <-(this is also why sora was a very polite heartless, since he released his own heart). xehanort filled both of those conditions, so his heartless was ansem seeker of darkness and his nobody was xemnas. neither of them are ansem in any way shape or form and i genuinely cannot remember if there was a reason for him naming himself after ansem besides spite.

anyways. xemnas goes on to form a cult of nobodies with the other 5 apprentices that lost their hearts and a handful of other people he found. meanwhile, ansem sod is hanging out on the island sora and riku live on and is being weird to children. riku is feeling a bit silly and also jealous that his crush doesnt need him and so he accidentally destroys his home and starts hanging out with the demons. ansem sod decides that it would be really funny to possess this kid and so he tells riku that the darkness holds the secrets to free robux if he just succumbs to it. unfortunately no free robux awaits riku and ansem sod norts his second boy. its fine though, sora got exorcised him and then killed him with the power of friendship.

meanwhile, xemnas' cult is thriving. until it isnt. sora killed like half their members then tripped and fell so hard that he got amnesia and now hes in a coma while namine tries to fix him. theyve recruited soras nobody, this weird quiet kid named roxas, to go kill a bunch of heartless with the goal of completing kingdom hearts. what is kingdom hearts? great question im not sure. its like this big heart moon / the heart of all worlds? idk its where hearts go when theyre not heartless. xemnas tells his cult that completing kingdom hearts will give them all back their hearts and so they all are going along with it because they want their hearts back. except roxas who doesnt really care about this whole humanity thing but hes being bribed to stay with ice cream. but soon not even ice cream is enough to get him to stay. roxas decides to go out and find himself (literally!) and then immediately gets kidnapped by riku who is sad that his boyfriend is in a coma and snatched roxas to bring back to ansemtw so they could wake sora up. roxas then dies tragically. goodbye roxas!

sora then goes on to kill pretty much the rest of their members (except for axel who kills himself) and then tells xemnas to go die and then he and riku kill him with the power of... friendship........ totally just friendship

and then i stopped paying attention! hope this helps :>>

holy fucking shit, you really went above and beyond for this and I really must thank you more than just typing "thank you" here. THIS IS SO CRAZY!!! I'm fucking cackling over the robux bit too, that was brilliantly placed. I know NOTHING of kingdom hearts, but now I know...this guy! kinda! Again thank you, holy shit, I hope you have a wonderful rest of the day!

[vyrim]

Having put 30+ hours into Fear and Hunger 2 with two completed runs amidst the carnage, I can say the game is a strong "I fucking hate it and love it" kinda deal.

The world involved in both it and its predecessor are so cool, and are a great blend of fucked up but really beautiful art. Alot of the designs are wonderful range of horror and gore, but theres also some really cool ideas of how the gods are portrayed by man and what they look like in physical form. If you dont find all the penises and weird coochie monsters running around unbearable to look at its a pretty great gallery that you wont really find anywhere, let alone a video game.

The concept of gameplay is also pretty brutal, every action has a risk to it, a price. You see this the most in combat. Most enemies are equipped with weapons or magic capable of outright dismembering your party if they dont simply die, and this has real implications because it stops you from sprinting or holding weapons. Both of your characters legs are gone? Crawl. Arms gone too? You dont die, you lie there and have to CHOOSE to die. It makes every combat against a new enemy a huge danger since you have no idea if a single attack from one of their limbs is gonna reduce you to a meat cube.

This isnt even touching on the fact that alot of enemies and the overworld itself have insta kill mechanics that can only be circumvented by a calling the right side of a coin flip, which in turn can only be reduced in rng by adding a lucky coin you may find to the coin toss. Theres nothing as humbling as having a well equipped character simply die because a coin flip failure led to a giant ghost owl pecking there head into a blood mist, or realizing that theres no coin flip for a pitfall so failing to see past the fog and camouflage is just insta death.

The game is a learning experience in the harshest way possible, you are expected to die, and even then it doesnt tell you shit about anything. Some stuff outside of death are hinted at, but even those are easily miss-able. Theres nothing that tells you that getting 16 agility gives you two actions a turn, or that theres not one but two different types of fast travel that need to be unlocked by gaining favor with the gods through scarcely designated ritual circles.

This brutality is its biggest flaw as well though because youre punished for doing anything and everything, this includes saving. You have three days to beat the game, each day divided up into a morning, afternoon, and night. There are only three means of saving: resting (which transitions the game to the next part of the day), a rare book, and/or using one of the special ritual circles to summon a specific god (which gives up a fast travel point), both being a one time use (or three times for the ritual on easy mode). You are punished regardless the method of saving, and alot can happen when the day transitions. The only way you'll know something bad has happened to a potential party member is through trial and error, and that means the game demands an immense amount of your time and patience. This translates to inbetween events too as party will stay dead after combat unless using a very specific ability, and they can lose limbs as well.

All this compounds into how problematic the engine is, everything follows a single script. If anything is done in contrast to that script, like saving a character or doing an event out of order, alot of the programming will react poorly. My last playthrough had a guy outright vanish until the ending screen because I told him about the newly discovered safe zone too early. So its outright possible to miss things because of how unstable the game can get from your actions.

RPG maker also just kinda sucks for overworld stuff. The angled perspective of the game and the various props littered around the overworld make it very easy to get caught on things when youre moving around, and can outright doom you when youre trying to outmaneuver dangerous enemies. Movement itself is also clunky as hell, good luck trying to move diagonally consistently, and that really puts you at a disadvantage against the ai that can move without issue most of the time. Its also buggy as hell, I watched a character die despite saving them from another npc because the game still played out their death scene had I ignored them instead. I remember being a serious problem with the the first game too, and I really wish they were both on a different engine because it was alot of frustration for very artifical difficulty.

I wont complain too much about the rng. I hate excessive rng in general, and this game makes literally everything rng, even the items you get from random containers. Theres nothing that takes the wind out of your sails than finally managing to commit to a run only to find out that you were unlucky enough to not get a single recipe book, bible, or even the ingredients to make fucking necessary healing items. It sucks, fuck that.

Anyway, final run I managed to get the best items, and while I didnt manage to solo my desired ending that allowed everyone to survive, the people I wanted to live on through my sacrifice did. The only guy who didnt deserves to be a fucked up monster in the sewer because hes a child killer and a rapist so good riddance.

The game sucks in the early half, but once you figure shit out, or do the smart thing like me by looking at the wiki because I cherish my mental health, then you can spend the time admiring the actual presentation of the game's art, music, and writing. I hope if another one comes out that its no longer in rpg maker but thats a little bit of a pipe dream given how complex the game is. Oh well.

[omegasmileyface]

What is Chulip?

Chulip (Chu♡lip) (thats a link to its wiki!) is a cute, weird little ps2 game! youre a kid who moves into a new town with your dad, and there's this girl who you really like! you want to confess your crush to her, but she doesnt like you back (duh, you just moved here) and you have a weak heart, so the heartbreak of her rejection is enough to Straight Up Kill You. time to either get her to like you back or build up enough strength to habdle the rejection!

a self-peoclaimed expert in love instructs you to write her a letter with a very special love letter set and then confess under the Lover's Tree (a sentient tree with a face who can commune with your dad telepathically for some reason), but the letter set is scattered about. so you have to do a bunch of quests to get people to give you their parts of the set and move you along your journey!

the game functions via kisses— every time you have satisfied a character's storyline, you get their kiss! its based on the experience the writer had when he went to Europe and people would platonically kiss in greeting. he thought it was interesting enough to imagine a society where kisses were more free. the more people you kiss for the first time, the more your health and reputation grow! to finish the game, you will have gotten everyone's kiss (your crush's kiss is the last one)

it has a wonderful charm. the art style is adorable and varied, there are a few completely different locations you can travel between by train, and the soundtrack fucks hard. it has that sort of charm you often see in weird, unapologetically Japanese games from the first 2 generations of 3d games. think animal crossing, katamari damacy, seaman, etc. the major characters (and some of the minor characters) have interesting, nuanced, connected backstories, and at least 1 in every 6 characters will make you say "oh what the fuck" out loud.

theres a psychological opera finale because of course there is.

a lot of the kisses have really difficult or specific tasks involved, including "puzzles" that you could never ever figure out without a guide. it is such a mean game <3 and i love it all my heart