#those questions are pretty cool

[anna-hawk]

🙋‍♀️💖🦅💞 and 🧠 for uhhh the Mute? (I have too many questions oops 😅)

Oh wow, thanks, Lucy for sending in so many 🤗🤗.

🙋‍♀️Do any irl people know you write fanfic?

Oh yeah, definitely. I don't hide it. Most of the time I just say that I write but don't go into details because fanfiction isn't something commonly known around me. I will try to explain a bit more if people are curious about it, and the reactions are always funny. Especially when I tell them that I write smut 😆. Otherwise I have my sister and a very good friend who know stuff in details. Neither has ever read anything, though.

💖 What made you start writing?

That is actually a very good question. I started writing in my early teens. I just loved writing, holding a journal and stuff like that, imagine stuff. Fanfiction wise, what made me write (without knowing what fanfiction is because internet was pretty new where I'm from), was Hugh Jackman. My then best friend and I were huge Wolverine fans and I wrote her a couple of fics and she for me. Good times. I still have them on my laptop. Oh, the cringe of reading something of a 17yo me 😬😂.

🦅 Do you outline fics or fly by the seat of your pants?

Depends of its length. If it's something short-ish, I go with the general idea. I'll add a couple notes if something comes to mind, but that's about it. If it's a chaptered fic then yeah, I definitely outline. Admittedly, the outline can be a bit vague at first. Most of the time, I get a better feel for it once I've written a whole chapter and gotten into the story and the characters. At least that was the case for my last 2 longer fics. I keep opening and closing the doc anytime I get a new idea and build up the plot.

💞 Who's your comfort character?

Always and forever Frank Castle. The character who got me from writing for myself to posting. I will always go back to him.

🧠 Pick a character, and I'll tell you my favorite headcanon for them.

The Mute, huh? Hmmm... My favorite headcanon is pretty simple and what many of us probably want. He survives the end and finds peace with someone, living in a small cottage and just living his life.

Fanfic Writer Emoji Ask

[selfdiagnosedeyemotif]

Hope I get the one you want, though I am not confident in it

5 (this ones personal curiosity), 13, 27 and 30, for the 30 one answer the question you want to answer, but don't say which one it is (if you think this is cheating too much then I suppose just don't do it, you can do 15 instead)

5. Favourite form of potato?

i do really love poutine which is crazy because im from canada but also baked potatoes are ostensibly the best form of potato

13. What's the first thing you'd do in the purge?

steal a sword. open carry.

27. What's your go-to outfit?

ive got this green and navy blue plaid shirt that i thrifted recently that i love a ton, and then also some camouflage cargo pants. ive got a skirt that im making that im hoping to oust the pants but its also fully just fabric right now so we'll see

now. you said question 30 to answer the question i wanted. with question 15 as a backup.

question fifteen was the question that i specifically wanted. that being said.

15. Rank the methods of death: freezing, burning, drowning.

so just getting the ranking out of the way before i explain. drowning > freezing > burning.

BURNING is a good method. its definitely not bad. its loaded and symbolic as hell (witch trials) which is a plus and is VERY evocative, but its just... missing something to me. like theres not enough on the part of the person burning. you cant really talk because the fire is going to just kinda force you to scream (WHICH SIDE NOTE. CAN BE COOL. DEPRIVATION OF AGENCY IN DEATH. ESPECIALLY WITH HOW YOURE OFTEN TIED UP WHILST BEING BURNED). but overall its a good death but doesnt measure up to the others

FREEZING is more my speed. freezing requires time more than anything, which sets it apart from most forms of death. most of the time when someone dies its either quick, or slow in the sense that it takes maybe a few hours. PERSONALLY. i prefer infection in this regard. but overall the main difference between these two is that infection is wet and freezing is dry. but yeah freezing slowly sucks the life out of you and breaks you. it wears you down until theres nothing left. the last stage of hypothermia is also notably a sense of calm and warmth and tiredness. you just need to lie down for a moment. which to me is actually fucking horrifying if im being real with you. that is SURRENDER. which is always awesome. narratively. again infection is a better way to do this (its grosser) but freezing to death will fill its place quite nicely.

now. DROWNING is the shit. because here's the thing. it is mechanically very similar to burning to death. you cant talk (water). its VERY fast with shades of panic involved. but heres the thing. first of all its dark and wet which i think im already on record as saying i prefer. but heres the thing. drowning has a few things running for it that are UNIQUE to it that i think really pushes it over the edge.

Drowning has a specific, short time limit. Most people will last about six minutes without air. Some can stretch it to ten. But there is, effectively, an actual clock ticking on a drowning. With exsanguination (bleeding out), that doesn't exist. You could bleed out super quick or last hours. With burning, that doesn't exist. You're gone too fast. Drowning, unlike most forms of death, gives you a bit of information by its nature, and offers room for suspense. You'd better hurry up. There isn't much time left.

Drowning forces you to betray yourself. The natural bodily response to asphyxiation is to attempt to breathe, and you can only suppress that response for so long. Normally this is good; you don't have air, so you get some by breathing. Easy. But with drowning, that is the specific thing you don't want to do. Attempting to breathe, a thing that you cannot prevent from happening, kills you faster. And additionally, it just looks sick as hell to gasp for air whilst underwater. You get those bubbles, your last lifeline, rising up and away from you while you sink further and further from the surface. You're never getting those back.

Drowning better utilizes light and darkness than most forms of death. (Quick side tangent: this is one scenario where sometimes burning does it better. Death through light can be using to spotlight that which is true while killing someone, which can definitely be cool. It is impossible to hide that which is true whilst burning; every feature is highlighted, which can be great for both just and unjust deaths in cases where a lack of ambiguity works in the death's favour. Anyways, back to the actual point i was making). By the way drowning works most of the time (put a pin in that for point four), you are dragged further from the surface as you die. The surface, generally, is also the main source of light in these situations. In pulling someone into the dark while killing them, it can really emphasize both a hopeless feeling and a feeling of pointlessness and loss. This death will not be honourable. It will be obscure and lost forever, a footnote at the bottom of the sea. You will not be remembered.

Drowning also has another unique way of demonstrating obscurity that I'm personally a huge fan of. Usually drowning involves a deep body of water, but so long as your mouth and nose are submerged and cannot reach air, you can drown. Ergo, a person can drown in a few inches of water which is so COOL. Like. You were so close to being pulled back into the world of the living you just needed a little PUSH. A little HELP. But you died ANYWAY because you, again, were so crushingly alone, so buried beneath obscura even before you died, that no one COULD help you. And for those same reasons you will AGAIN be forgotten.

The mafia put people's feet in concrete and sink them into rivers and I think that's a very evocative image.

[guaxinimraccoon]

idk if you’ve done this already but has Brad ever used the shrinking potion to hang out with Toby face to face? love your blog!!

This a great question!

Toby wishes he could make a shrinking potion for his bud, but those potions were strictly banned from the Colony and some of it's essential materials are gatekeeped by the council. To produce them is to commit a crime and the imp or fairy who disobeys shall face severe punishments.

They were already very dangerous before being banned for good, but there weren't any laws nor rules that prohibit people from making them.

Buuuuut they added a new rule for it after a certain imp used a shrinking potion to infiltrate a human inside the Colony and then proceeded to give birth to hybrids...

[front-facing-pokemon]

[tj-crochets]

Hey y'all! Weird question time again, this time about push-ups! So I have a weird assortment of health issues, which makes most exercise in general somewhere between difficult, impossible, and inadvisable, but back before I got sick I was learning to do handstands and I loved it. Long story short, my new meds are helping, but it's been more than a decade and I want to work myself into being able to do handstands again without my arms collapsing and landing on my head, so I've been trying to strengthen my arms a little at a time So far, that's mostly been pushups*, but today I tried pushups with my feet elevated and that was significantly easier than normal pushups??? I'm pretty sure it's working different muscles, but it's also closer to a handstand, so have I been doing pushups wrong this whole time if my goal is handstands??? Also, are there other exercises you'd recommend if my goal is handstands? I want to really overprepare my arms in particular, because sometimes when my blood pressure is wonky my muscles are weaker than they should be, so I can't rely on them reacting correctly and I really don't want to fall on my head

*I also have a weird headstand trainer contraption thing that's basically like a shoulder rest so you can be upside down, like a headstand, without putting all your weight on your head? idk how to describe it but it helps practice the "being upside down" and "various torso muscles keeping you balanced while upside down" parts of handstands. I have no idea what it's called my mom was thrilled I wanted to do handstands and sent it to me

[juney-blues]

99% of conversations on anarchism about here are hampered by people having no clue what anarchists are talking about when they refer to "the state", including, it seems, the anarchists themselves.

[musical-chick-13]

Regarding the previous post, I think the way I approach trying to evaluate a piece of art is asking "Do I think the positive things I get out of it outweigh the parts of it that I don't like?" And when I call something a "guilty pleasure" song/show/book/piece of media/etc. it's really more in the sense of, "Given who I am as a person, the flaws I've found in this should be complete dealbreakers for me, but somehow they aren't, and it makes me feel like I'm having an identity crisis."

[whumpiary]

How much does Future!Cass maintain his French and Mandarin from Bergen?

Also, I love the detail that his Mandarin is better, both with how logical its grammar is, and also I assume that characters suit his dyslexia better than French spelling. There's something fun and unexpected about Cass projecting nonchalance yet enjoying a language which is tonal. For a person from a non-tonal language, especially the relative flatness of English, Mandarin demands a kind of rhythm and attention which doesn't come naturally.

Also also, who do the tutors who come to the Estate tend to be? How much do they know/suspect?

Future Cass absolutely maintains his languages! He falls off the wagon a little while he's at the Facility, but his languages are actually one of the things he comes back to through his recovery later on, and maintaining them become really important to him. I've had in my head for a while that he probably joins a Tai Chi class so he has a bit more of an excuse to maintain the Mandarin.

Cass has a talent for languages, which Christopher figures out and encourages him toward, because he knows its a lucrative skill. Cass learns mostly aurally from language tapes and conversation, which means he speaks both languages better than he can write or read them.

He's better at Mandarin than French, and generally prefers it too. He really likes the tonality of it, and copying the sounds just so is something he gets fixated on early on while learning it. He also likes that he's better at picking it up than some of the other charges who pick up the same languages. It's not often he feels book-smart, so he latches to it

The tutors are just tutors! They are carefully vetted and have... an awful lot of NDAs to sign. For the privacy of the charges of course, they understand. And they're also prepped and primed for tall tales their students might spin about how they're treated on grounds. But they've seen the facilities. Does it look like anyone's getting abused?

The people who run the tutoring program are absolutely in Christopher's pockets however, so if a tutor was to show any amount of inappropriate concern... well maybe they're just not a great culture fit for the company.

[greekromann]

the version of tashigi that lives in my head is soooo much cooler than anything oda could ever hope to write about women. oda doesnt understand her I Do Though

[brown-little-robin]

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[tanadrin]

One of the random ruler names for the Maya in Age of Empires 2 is Lady Great Skull Zero, and since that’s such a distinctive and interesting name, I’ve been trying this evening to find out what the underlying Maya name is and how it is written. A Google search turns up the Wikipedia page for Lady Eveningstar, whose name is also given as Lady Ik’ Skull of Calakmul. She is the wife of Itzamnaaj B’alam (”Shield Jaguar;” one paper I found gives his regnal number as I, but the Wikipedia page gives it as III; I don’t know why), of the powerful B’alam/Bahlam family, who ruled Yaxchilan. Although not the first wife, her son Yaxun B’alam IV (”Bird Jaguar IV”) succeeded to the throne, after a possible interregnum of ten years or so, in unclear circumstances--most of the history we have here is from monumental inscriptions, and a lot of the details are missing. Ik’ Skull is depicted on Yaxchilan Stela 35.

Yaxun B’alam IV was married to (among others) Ix Chak Joloom, whose name is translated Lady Great Skull. This page shows her name as this:

Incidentally, it shows Ik Skull’s name as this:

While a separate drawing from this collection shows the full name and titles of Ik’ Skull.

It’s really hard for me to tell what are the distinctive features of Maya writing, because each glyph is so complicated, and each square seems to be a combination of 2-3 actual characters, but I think you can identify the basic elements of the short version of the name above in the second square from the left in the larger drawing. Or some of them, at least; there’s a left-facing head with a small mark on the forehead, something that looks like a skull with another symbol on top, and on the right side of the square at the bottom a horizontal glyph that looks like the bottom glyph of the second square on the first drawing. But I’m really not sure! I’d love a more detailed breakdown of how Maya writing functions in practice.

Lady Chak Joloom/Great Skull Zero seems to have been the brother of a sahal, a military chief, also called Chak Joloom/Great Skull Zero. The Chak Joloom lineage seems to have been fairly powerful in Yaxchilan, and may have contributed to Yaxun B’alam IV’s rise to power.

As far as I can tell, ���Great Skull Zero” is a fairly literalistic reading of the glyphs that make up the name, not a translation: Mayan glyphs could stand for words, or sounds (usually syllables; but like Linear B, Mayan phonotactics are more complicated than simple CV combinations, so underspelling or overspelling was common), or could be used as phonetic determiners attached to glyphs a la cuneiform, so teasing out which glyph is being used in what way is difficult.

Yaxchilan and Calakmul are both in the southern-middle bit of the Yucatan peninsula. Yaxun B’alam IV succeeded to the rulership of Yaxchilan around 752 CE, at age forty-three; Itzamnaaj B’alam had died around ten years earlier; the nature of the interregnum is not known, and may have involved a power struggle for the throne. In the Old World around this time, the Umayyad Caliphate is being overthrown, and the Ruthwell Cross was being carved in England, just for context.

I’m not sure why Lady Chak Joloom is included in the AoE2 ruler list. She does not seem to have reigned on her own--though it’s conjectured that her mother-in-law, Ik’ Skull, might have been regent during the time between Izamnaaj B’alam’s death and Yaxun B’alam’s accession. I’d also really like to know 1) what the literal meaning of “chak joloom” is, if any; 2) how you get “ik’ skull” from “uh chan” (ix is clear enough--it just means “woman;” sometimes it’s attached to ajaw, “lord” to indicate a noblewoman), and 3) where the “zero” in “Great Skull Zero” comes from. “Eveningstar” as a reading for Ik’ Skull’s name also seems to be a bit of a puzzle--I found a passing reference to a temple inscription involving the phases of Venus? But now I can’t find the page I originally found that on.

[the-maddened-hatter]

The battle of the constant desire to obtain blatantly queer goodies (clothes, stickers, mugs, ect) vs the need to stay low-key in my deep south state :(

[heybaetae]

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[t4tbedehopmar]

GM i had a super cool dream tonight

[lovesick-level-up]

hello! question time! would you be comfortable making a freminet edit? I wouldn't request any underwater imagery of course but maybe it's an inevitable association with him, you know how it is

hey, anon! that's totally fine, though we would prefer if you wait until the official art of him has been properly released. it'll just make it easier for us to make edits of him. we actually really like freminet from what we've seen, his penguin is cute, and his gameplay leaks look fun. we're also excited for lyney and lynette! we're probably gonna have to get over our fear of being underwater for fontaine... or maybe ajax can just play those parts. because he's the only one who doesn't mind water stuff lol.

~ andromeda 🌸💫🌈

[grimmjowjaegerjaquez]

oh yeah this is jun btw. five foot six king.