#what is a sensible answer?

[popfizzles]

[from this prompt list]

Smith had a different image in mind when Val said she wanted to join him at work... Oh well.

[canisalbus]

I have a phobia of dogs like can't stand seeing images of them phobia but I love your work so much, I don't know what it is but there's something beautiful about how I can look at it without feeling that phobia. Like being on top of a mountain and seeing the view of the world below or how fire looks pretty close up. Your art to me feels like that scene in fantastic mr fox with the wolf.

Ah, that's both heartwarming and very interesting, I've never heard of any cynophobes liking my work! Thank you!

(I won't bother you about it of course, but I can't help but wonder if it's the same thing for all furry/anthro art you see or for some reason just me, and if it's the latter, what could be making my stuff more palatable for someone who is that intensely uncomfortable with canines. My style isn't realistic but it isn't super stylized and exaggerated either. Is it about the anthropomorphization and the humanlike features, expressions and behavior? When I draw actual dog-shaped-dogs, are they harder to look at?).

[glassedplanets]

a few months ago giffy was like "haha hear me out, what if tattoo au" and then we blacked out and talked about nothing else for like three weeks

[gingermintpepper]

Hi!! I don't know if you remember me, but I'm the person you explained the Castalia thing to a few days ago. I've been following you for a while now, but I just managed to go through your blog well and proper, and I'm here to express both my gratitude for the amount of info and links you've shared (I did NOT know about the hepatoscopy and haruspicy, and I'm about to go down a lengthy rabbit hole) and my horror at once again being given a new hyperfixation (I didn't imagine wanting to read about liver-divination help).

Also, also, are you the author of Exeunt Phoebus Apollo on AO3 because that was the fic that sent me on this greek mythology spree, and it's so good I got obsessed with Apollo, and he's everywhere around me now. Thank you for writing it!

AAAAAA THIS IS SO SWEET?? THANK YOU!! I do remember you and hey man, I'm always happy to help <33

I'm so glad to recruit someone else to my hepatoscopy group because it is a long and storied tradition with many many different types of study and schools of thought dating all the way back to the Sumerians! It's an extremely underrated bit of study when it comes to sketching portraits of divination and prophecy when it comes to adaptations of imaginings of greek myth works - similar to bird augury (which was such a widespread skill that most people had some level of understanding of the basics of what the omens of common birds meant the way people now can look at the clouds over head and know if it'll rain and when approximately that rain'll happen).

It's a great and common misunderstanding that things like prophecy and magic were these fantastic elements that had no tangible features to their practices and while there's nothing wrong with interpreting things as more fantastical for the sake of coolness or aesthetic, I personally think these elements are interesting enough to be worth looking into and portraying!

Also yes, I did write Exeunt 😳I'm very very honoured that you enjoyed my work so much and I'm even more grateful that it could let you see the Apollo in everything 💖 Thank you for reading it!!

[rxttenfish]

How do the merfolk sound like? What kinds of noises can they make?

the short answer is: real big and spooky

it's actually kind of relevant to this chapter in caecilian, mostly because i realized there was a lot more focus that'd have to be put onto merfolk language here with aaravi's particular... Interaction. in longer terms, their vocalizations are complex and multi-faceted, utilizing the full breadth of sound available to them and within the medium of water.

merfolk have an incredibly large vocal organ that spans the length down their throat and to the bottom of their ribs. i haven't fully detailed out how it works because i still need to do a lot more research on specifically underwater vocalizations (and my personal pet theory that i think this is extremely under-researched for marine life beyond whales...), but i know it's huge, complex, and extremely important for merfolk interactions. it's capable of producing a wide variety of sounds, both high-frequency and low-frequency, and is capable of achieving some impressive volume.

it also means they're capable of closed-mouth vocalizations, which is why you get those descriptions of merfolk talking with their mouth closed and why holding their mouth closed won't necessarily stop them from speaking. for most merfolk, it's the norm. i'm not sure how much they actually use their mouth itself for vocalizations? their lips aren't very mobile, they don't like to reveal their teeth a whole lot, they don't have cheeks and have a much weaker seal for suction than a mammal. the most they use it for is the noise produced by snapping their jaws or clattering their teeth together.

merfolk also have some impressive auditory capabilities to match. this is another thing that i really need to do more research in... but it's also why their earfins are like that. merfolk very much did end up co-opting their external gills to also perform as external ears. they were already serving a role as a sensory organ, able to pick up vibrations in the water, temperature, differences in depth, etc etc, so it wasn't a huge jump to make, especially when they're already in the same place as the ear (since they're external gills. and earbones are modified gill arches). they almost certainly have some sort of "fat pad" in their internal ears as well to help pick up on vibrations as well — and there seems to be evidence that, because fish live in water and hearing is just a means of detecting vibrations, and as opposed to air which doesn't carry those vibrations as well as water, they can just... use their entire bodies as an ear? again, really need to go into it, but also i can't help but feel this is going to be woefully under-researched to begin with.

i've gone back and forth on it, especially with that research i still need to do... but the structure of the external gills themselves also helps act as an external ear. as in, they're large and sensitive to help them have this wide range of hearing and sound on land as well, potentially also helping in the water?, and help to guide sound back to their inner ear, with their ability to reposition themselves assisting to "refine" that sound. this is also an additional benefit to the cheek fluff and why i put it there in the first place. it serves the same purpose as the facial disk on an owl, further refining and detailing those sounds and providing multi-dimensionality. again, don't know how well this will hold up underwater! still need to work on that! but it's there!

anyhow. all of this is important, because merfolk are most adapted for long-range sound. visibility is poor in even the clearest of ocean water, and they're already playing with long distances between themselves and everything else and long distances even between other merfolk. light doesn't penetrate very far in water, and they can't rely on their sight even in good conditions, made worse if they dive to pursue prey or for safety or for any other reason. they're also highly social, with high social cohesion allowing them to hit far above their own weight and working together with more merfolk had greatly compounding positive effects on their own survival. they need to stay in touch, they need to work together, they need to know what other merfolk are doing and to reinforce those bonds.

most merfolk vocalizations, then, follow in the same trend as other large marine animals. they're noted as sounding very "musical", with similar long, haunting songs as whales and leopard seals, although with distinct features that makes it easy to tell them apart at a distance. they tend on the deeper side - they're large animals, and their vocal organs are large, and those deeper sounds travel further too. i've compared them to sounding like what a whale mixed with a tiger or crocodile would sound like, or to the person version of a cello or bass. it might be described as "growly", but think like how someone with a very low, smooth voice might still be described that way. they do have some infrasonic rumbles as an important component of their typical repertoire, so they can also come off like standing too close to a bass speaker. you can usually feel a merfolk talking as much as hear them.

however, compounding this is the complexity of their vocalizations. most merfolk have a tendency to "play" with sound - stretching it out further than it has to be, or trying to make syllables rhyme when they don't, things very odd for a human to listen to. it's like they're trying to sing but there's no rhythm or beat to it yet, disjointed sound that's almost a tune but not there yet. accents complicate this further, although the full diversity tends to be lost on landfolk, because this usually manifests in them "playing" with their words slightly differently, producing slightly different almost-songs.

they also tend to just play with sound in the typical way. merfolk retain a heightened degree of playfulness throughout their entire lives, with a high neuroplasticity to match, and so they get an urge to "remix" sounds or just to roll them around and try them out, stretching them out like taffy or squashing them together. sometimes this means they'll repeat an interesting word or sound until it stops sounding anything like what it means, sometimes they'll just repeat and shuffle around sounds they know, sometimes they just try to come up with new sounds or stretch their vocal organ in new and interesting ways. this also means they're highly skilled as mimics - though, this is a learned behavior, not an innate one, and one that's mostly treated like a party trick by other merfolk.

they also intersperse their language with other sounds and vocalizations. merfolk are very used to trying to talk to each other without being actually able to see each other, so a part of this includes needing to pass along that emotional information as well. plus, beyond their fins, they just aren't very expressive, with far more limited body language than most.

but, mostly, this manifests in their language getting increasingly more complex. merfolk brains are already primed to quickly process and sort out a lot of different auditory information at once, and they take full advantage of their wide range of sounds in order to communicate, with their language, then, favoring a multi-layered approach that's very hard for other species to understand or decipher.

for instance, they might have a single word that they use when in close contact with the subject they're referring to. this word already has a sandwich of different vocal elements to it, forming one meaning when put all together. but, a merfolk will seldom ever use that word alone, because in order to grammatically make it work and string it together with another word, they have to move those different vocal elements so that the two words weave together and naturally "flow" into each other in accordance to a cultural sense of rhythm. then, this has to be repeated with the entire sentence, making sure that it naturally forms one whole block of sound that composes a series of sounds that all fit together properly with each other. also changing this is when they add in grammatical signifiers of emotion on top of their verbal cues and components, and they might add in locational signifiers to it as well, to create different clauses within the same sentence that weave over each other to make a string of meaning.

worse yet, merfolk can also shorten these sentences too, with rules for how to do so, effectively reducing entire sentences down to singular contractions.

and merfolk do like packing as much meaning as they can into their sentences as possible! i take a LOT of liberties when writing out the translated dialogue, mostly favoring what works best narratively over the transliteration of what's going on, not least of all because to literally translate what's being said would be to create a lot of run-on sentences with repeat information, even information that might be immediately obvious.

this occurs because there's also another mode of their languages: the fact that it's happening over distances to assumed lots of other merfolk.

merfolk are simply... very used to hearing other merfolk, all the time, at all hours of the day. and this is very important information to them! it helps them keep up with the social environment on top of the literal environment, evolved out of a need to be able to quickly coordinate themselves in groups when on hunts or in danger, each needing to immediately react to something that only one other merfolk might have seen.

and the modern extension of this is the fact that merfolk end up forming mental projections and maps of their entire environment and are able to know at any given time what's happening in any given place within it, regardless of how involved they actually are. they have to be able to quickly respond to social changes and alterations in dynamics, so constantly communicating what's going on and what any given merfolk's feelings are is important. their relationship hierarchy determines so much of their life and how they navigate the world and the other merfolk within it, that they need to immediately tell what the entire complex social dynamic is of any potential merfolk upon first meeting. they need to know what's going on over there in case someone's in danger, and they need to protect those close to them and respond to threats swiftly so that those relationships can be preserved.

it's a lot! it's a lot, and it can be even harder for other species to conceptualize, especially because merfolk tend to "think in 3d". as in, they already live their entire lives within a place where moving up/down is just as easy as moving front/back or left/right. they have to navigate three dimensional environments in a way a lot of terrestrial life doesn't have to, and they have to get used to quick changes within that. so, they tend to map their thoughts more like physical objects, with locational markers allowing them to sort through it more easily, or think about how things might connect or layer over each other in complex ways. this gets attached to words and grammatical units, but it also means a merfolk can mentally map out the exact physical location of all this auditory information with greater ease, and this can have a major impact on how they converse with each other.

a merfolk, even when alone, or with a group, or at any given point when they're not engaged in any other conversation, will often feel an impulse to... fundamentally, start narrating what's happening. as in, their languages also have a component that allows them to strip down to solely physical information too, allowing any given merfolk to map out a location without it necessarily needing to be a grammatically correct sentence in other ways. and this is because of that mental mapping through sound and conversation, that it's seen as polite to do so and helps others navigate and respond accurately to what's going on, but it also gives the participating merfolk a sense of community and interconnectedness.

this, all of this, can also be stripped down even further, in the same reason why all these strict rules about making all the different elements "match" is so important to them. as in, to a group of merfolk who are used to each other and used to each other's verbal patterns, they can be stripped down so far as to become shorthand for more complex locations and events. think of it like doctor's handwriting, and how they can write a full chemical name out with a gesture. it's complex information relayed quickly, which is EXACTLY what merfolk want when they go hunting.

merfolk hunts are... kind of terrifying to witness for this reason. all this care and effort becomes immediately clear as they are seemingly able to act as one, seemingly reading each other's minds to become one well-oiled machine. this is the end culmination of all of their thoughts of communal identity, the evolutionary pressure that led to their complex languages and complex relationship hierarchies and everything - that they can move and act so effectively that they're one body in many.

of course, this gets done for multiple other reasons in the modern day, but the whale and leviathan hunts still are a well-loved tradition and way of life, especially celebrated by many great nomadic families.

that said, some other sounds i've described merfolk as making, though usually more in the line of their vocal expressions of emotion than language proper: chirps, chirrups, whistles, clicks, chattering, trills, chittering, squeaks, honks, grunts, growls, rumbles, huffing, braying, purring, hissing, wailing, screeching, screaming, thumping, chuffing, and more! they cannot roar, but they can make infrasonic rumbles like crocodiles or large dinosaurs are theorized, and they do tend to scream like parrots in order to show extreme emotions (distress, yes, but also joy or excitement). i have some example audio here and there as demonstrations of what they sound like, and it swings wildly from cute and precious to horror movie soundtrack. :3

[crossbackpoke-check]

the pics of morgan and joel are from travis sanheim's wedding this weekend!

^^^me experiencing the one-two knockout punch of “oh they WERE each other’s wedding date” followed by the realization that sanny finally got married 🥹😭 cheers indeed!!!

[doodlebeeberry]

what implications do u think the amelia investigations episode (possibly) being last has......

thinking about it im not sure implications is the word i was really looking for, rather i think theres like. a particular weight, to me, in placing her episode as the last one (presuming, of course, that there are only 5 episodes in investigations like is generally whats being assumed. for all we know though there could be more than that but thats the assumption im working off of)

ive always read the lack of any particularly tangible details about her pre-plane life, let alone the lake of an actual disappearance scene for her, as a means of further alienating her from her previous life. It drives in this wedge between Amelia and Scenty, such that even though shes probably the most vocal (at least throughout s1) about wanting to go home, her desire is countered by the fact that pretty much her entire existence in the show is defined by exclusively her time on the plane. The lack of a background for her (as absolutely crazy as it drives me) does play a pretty notable role in how her relationship to earth and the plane and herself are laid out.

This, in my mind, creates a bit of an interesting situation for investigations to play with. seemingly, investigations kinda requires an exploration into everyone's pre-plane lives, a certain insight into their lives that amelia just doesnt have. so, unless they do something a bit radical in the presentation of that episode in particular, youd have to explore her old life on some level without undermining the dynamic with it that we already have. I guess the most obvious answer is that it wont be amelia telling her own story to the audience. We wont be hearing her explain or be in her perspective, we'll be hearing from (presumably) garret. Its a story about her that isnt her story to tell. even when we do finally get to see it, her life, her disappearance isnt hers. not really. and i think placing it last in the sequence, the final mystery to unravel, the hardest answer to get, implies at the very least an acknowledgement of that.

but i do have a degree in Reading Into Things so like. who knows. maybe thats just what i want

[fallingbyjuleecruise]

every day i think about the ansur plot in act 3 could've actually had emotional weight if larian studios gave a shit about wyll. damn.

[eddieydewr]

did you see what happened on kalemyname's ig, he posted a collaboration with noah (but the video he recorded with noah is already a few months old) but he posted it like 3 days ago, god the comments are a war between people who support noah and those who love to spill hate wherever they go 💀even noah's mom was replying comments, i love this lady, i mean if it was my son i would also come out to defend my baby on ig.

but I really saw a lot of people defending noah, and they weren't even stan or from the fandom.

omg i went to look and i’m ??? why am i emotional

i’m upset just reading what karine wrote bc i was hoping the rumours were exaggerated but no, people actually put noah and his family through hell online and irl since october. she seems so sweet and genuine, and ofc grateful to noah’s true fans, but she’s clearly done with hateful people’s bullshit. noah’s her baby and she ADORES that boy. don’t mess with mama bears, see.

also kara!!! if you’re seeing this, lemme give you a smooch (with consent). or if you’re a babby, we can do a high five 😭 i’ve been liking your replies; how thoughtful and articulate you are. it must be a huge relief for karine to read your kind words, knowing that not everyone hates her kid and is out to ruin his life. i’m sure she’ll be letting him know about the positive messages from his true fans :’)

hopefully the tides are turning. there always will be haters but this excessive hate campaign will die down eventually. let the idiots flap their gums and run out of hot air. and good riddance 🙏🏻

[bethanydelleman]

Would you do a poll on worst Jane Austen heroine? I know most people hate Emma, but for me Marriane is the worst Austen heroine. EVERYONE indulged her till the end, and I do not see her temperament improving in the end. It's just that she ultimately fell in love with a rich guy, so going forward no one would provide any resistance to her ideologies and vanities and indulgences. I wish Elinor and Edward would transfer to some other clergy. Eh, but I digress.

So no, I will not make or reblog that poll. Mostly because I find it boring. I know the answer. The least liked heroines are Emma Woodhouse, Fanny Price, and Marianne Dashwood. People also dislike Catherine Morland for being "stupid" though her book is read less so she'll be in the middle. The most admired heroines are Elizabeth Bennet, Anne Elliot, Jane Bennet, and Elinor Dashwood.

But also, this here is a Emma, Marianne, Catherine, and Fanny defense blog. And, more importantly, Elinor loves Marianne. The reconciliation between the two sisters is a beautiful part of Sense & Sensibility! They love living beside each other. And Marianne is going to keep maturing, she's only seventeen when we have her last quoted speech.

Also, this sounds like a much more mature and less selfish Marianne, "Marianne found her own happiness in forming his." The ending of Sense & Sensibility is beautiful in that the sisters find their love of each other:

Between Barton and Delaford, there was that constant communication which strong family affection would naturally dictate; and among the merits and the happiness of Elinor and Marianne, let it not be ranked as the least considerable, that though sisters, and living almost within sight of each other, they could live without disagreement between themselves, or producing coolness between their husbands.

As for indulging her, Mrs. Jennings makes fun of Marianne's behaviour, Elinor occasionally calls her out on it, and if Mrs. Dashwood doesn't it's because they are very similar people and their father/husband died like 6 months ago. If Marianne is indulged, it's because she is young and pretty harmless. She doesn't usually insult people to their face, she just stays silent if she disagrees with them or dislikes them. And honestly, Elinor is a saint for not punching her brother and/or SIL in their stupid faces.

I also will not make or reblog polls of favourite Austen novel (P&P wins, MP loses, yay...), favourite hero (it's always Darcy), least favouite hero (Edward or Edmund), or least favourite pairing (either E&F because of the first cousin thing or one of the big age gaps, because of age gap). Not only is it completely predictable, it's not even fun to discuss.

[majorproblems77]

What are your favorite characters or ships (if any), besides Sky?

Ohhh good question!

I really enjoy working with Warriors when I'm writing, he's very quickly become a second fave and has potential for Blorbo status later down the line. And Wind! The small chaos gremlin has stolen my heart and these two give the best brother combo that I just love so much.

[thedevotionaltour]

i havent even read enough gl to justify the feelings and emotions i have about kyle i just have the lovers heart and also something wrong with me. and my projection. in my mind he's just like me. and he would have loved college vending machine frozen cheeseburger and heating it up in the microwave at 1 in the morning because he was bored and didn't want to work on a drawing assignment on 20" x 30" paper that was due tomorrow in his freshman year. he would have loved going to the club to push off finals work that's creating the worst stress known to man in his brain. and he would love to annoy the fuck out of his roommate when high and avoiding homework on a saturday.

[hazeism]

hi!! wanted to ask if you have any favorite books, either that you've read recently or of all time. Your prose is insane and I need to broaden my own vocabulary so if you have any book recs, fiction or nonfiction, I'd love to know :')

Hii :D ! ahaha, what a well-timed question; lately I've become the kind of guy who just really wants to talk about what people are reading, or are planning to read, and responding in kind, so thanks for giving me an opportunity to indulge that, haha. What a wicked invention the printing press was!!! (Also--thank you!! I'm glad my prose is to your taste. I'm happy !💕)

If you don't mind, I'll put a cut on this right away, because I know I'm very talkative, but let me put a TLDR above for all the novels/authors I mention here. Disclaimer also that I am kind of a dunce (I think you know this) so I like silly shit a lot of times . please be nice to me adfhbjkdg. :D

(No nonfiction also because I'm a frivolous and unworldly little sprite or something but if you want straight philosophy [which counts] come back and I'll do my Top Ten Epic Platonic Dialogues Compilation for you .)

TLDR: Read any UKLG you get your hands on, Cain by Jose Saramago, or any Saramago (though maybe not Skylight, which is not a good introduction to Saramago), very much enjoyed Sartre's The Age of Reason recently, Shadow & Claw or The Fifth Head of Cerberus by Gene Wolfe. If you feel like it, come off anon and tell me what you like, so I can give more tailored recommendations!!

Now if you're asking for favorites, like just the particular and arbitrary objects of my partiality, that stir my stupid little heart, the true answer is probably UKLG's The Farthest Shore, just because it is very special to me. I can't, of course, in good conscience, recommend the third novel of a six-novel fantasy series to someone (but of course read Le Guin, everyone should be reading Le Guin, it's dire for universal soteriology that we all read Le Guin; You'll probably get told to start with Left Hand of Darkness, and that's pretty solid. I liked The Lathe of Heaven as well. And if you read any Le Guin it doesn't hurt to pick up a copy of the Tao. I love the Tao man.)

Some friendlier recommendations, though:

José Saramago is someone I really consider peerless; There's no way to pick up a Saramago and not know who's written it. Cain is a bit drier, a bit more abrasive (almost accusatory, in that particular way you'll find in a Buddhist parable) and bleak than some other Saramagos, but it's one I like (perhaps for the trite reason that I like bucolic atmospheres and Classical antiquity as a setting) so it's the one I'll put forward.

Uhh, I've also been enjoying Sartre's Roads to Freedom lately, starting with The Age Of Reason. I'm partway through the second novel and umm... despite all the other things you could say about Sartre, lmfao, let it not be said that he is not a serious literary force. Serious is maybe the only word for it. Dire, too. I keep a commonplace book, so usually I take excerpts, but this was the first time in memory that I felt compelled to commit entire pages, ahah (I just took pictures though, fuck copying all that).

If you're itching for esoteric language, Shadow of the Torturer (as usually collected with Claw of the Conciliator in a single omnibus edition titled Shadow & Claw; the first of the give-or-take five volume Urth series) by Gene Wolfe will scratch you BLOODY. If you're particularly fussy, you might be irritated by your compulsion to Google, but I find it really makes the experience when you type in a word and the only results are "what the fuck did Gene Wolfe mean by this?" hahaha; Honestly, though, those kinds of complaints are borne from a lack of immersion, but you'll notice pretty quickly that the verbiage is a pretty crucial vehicle OF the immersion.

It may or may not become a commitment, though, if you like Urth enough to want to read through, so if you want Wolfe without the strings--though less of the exciting vocabulary, which is pretty necessarily constrained to Urth--I'd really highly recommend The Fifth Head of Cerberus (the novella OR the novel, I mean the former is volumized in the latter so just start it and if you feel like stopping then stop, haha). Mr. Terminal E is incredible but I scrape enough time out of my daily life to gush about his crazy literary density so I won't do it again here (you should ask my coworker, lmfao, who one time went "stop, hold on, hold on." because my face started getting really red while I was explaining to him some Wolfean gesture). If you read any Wolfe, and I mean ANY Wolfe, because his permatypes and his manipulations of them are endlessly interesting, feel free to come back and chat with me over it!!!

I guess I have to disclaim that my habit is mostly to pick through an author's corpus over a course of, usually, a couple years, and then sometimes I'll read things that will inform my understanding of the genre conventions or currents that the author is writing in (been enjoying Golden Age sci-fi recently)--it's not really as deliberate of a process as it sounds, but I think if you were to map my habits, that's the landscape of it. This means, though, that my reading is actually pretty narrow in scope, and I am not very well read or very knowledgeable in general (who is, in this economy) but it does mean that of the authors I do like, I can probably find the novel that'll work best for your taste.

If you want to come off anon, or I guess just leave another message, haha, (or if someone else wants to, idgaf, we're all friends here at tumblr user hazeism) describing the things you like or look for in a novel I can probably give you a more relevant recommendation. I've been dosing people up a lot lately tbh, it's like a parlor trick I've been doing; I have a conversation with someone and afterwards they'll have a PDF with a relevant Asimov story in their messages, hahaha. I can't help myself sometimes.

Come back anyway, though, if you read anything I talked about, okay? I want to hear about it 🥺

And alsooo (turning to face the audience) if anyone ever wants to put recs in my inbox (or my dms : ) slow replies though sorry I'm a hermit) I'd be happy to take 'em down. Can't guarantee I'll read them in a timely manner, or that you'll ever find out if/when I do, but it's good for me to leave my comfort zone.

[spyglassrealms]

how hard is it to be a world builder? do you like... build them one brick at a time? Does it take you seven days too? Are you God? Or is it more like... like minecraft? Are you minecraft?

For me, it comes as easily as breathing. I'm a worldbuilder by nature: I love learning about how the real world works, turning the pieces of it over in my mind, and putting them together in new configurations. In that sense it's very much like building with bricks, though more the Lego kind than clay. Not only that, but I have strong escapist tendencies –what better refuge, then, than a haven I've built myself? I don't consider myself a god to these worlds –many are canonically godless– but I do have a sort of parental fondness for them. After all, I've put several years of my life into each of them.

So in that sense, it's not very hard for me! But that's just me. For some people it doesn't come as naturally, but that's okay! That doesn't mean you shouldn't do it, if you want to. Worldbuilding, storytelling... these arts are an inherent facet of human expression, rooted deeply in our ancestral desire to wander and explore. Even if you struggle with it, it's worthwhile, because you are making something that is uniquely yours, and that matters. And don't forget: there's no right or wrong way to worldbuild. Your process of creation is as unique as the art that results!

And no, I'm not Minecraft, but I do adore Minecraft for all of the above reasons!!!

[frenchtwistresistance]

Another Match Game exchange (Match Game PM Episode 19) I think about all the time is when the question was about a woman so liberated that she not only burned her bra, she burned her blank.

Fannie: Do you know that Richard is a feminist?

Gene: Is he a feminist? Why do you say that?

Fannie: Because he marched with me in an Alice Doesn’t Do Anything Anymore march.

Gene: And where did you march?

Richard: Alice Doesn’t Day. Right?

Fannie: Yes, darling.

Gene: Alice Doesn’t Day?

Richard: That was the day that the women, who, you know, that they can’t get credit and they don’t get paid equal money for jobs, and they protested that day. And men that think that their cause is right were allowed to march with them.

Fannie: But, uh, I didn’t understand because the march went through Westwood. He and I— You marched me into Encino at some motel… I was confused…

Richard: Trying to get another march going.

Fannie: You said that was the rally point.

[aardvaark]

tags by @lindseymcdonaldseyelashes :

omg i forgot there were other branches! perfect, it’s a home ground job. for extra messed up points about parker’s past -

parker: archie wasn’t the only old british guy who wanted to teach me, but the first guy kept talking about me being "chosen" and a "hero" and stuff instead of stealing. and he kept calling me "slayer" even though i’d clearly said my name was parker. thief training was way more fun.

eliot, who has come into a decent amount of contact with demons & the watchers council: [stares into the distance while losing his fucking mind]

Leverage episode where they have a job in LA and the evil rich asshole of the episode’s lawyers are from this very weird firm called Wolfram & Hart. and Hardison looks into it and is just like. hey guys why do they have deliveries of actual human blood listed under catering expenses