#wizardly things

[void-botanist]

OC Kiss 2023 Day 1: Dance

[Image description: a digital color drawing of two men, Keearo and Kirnus, kissing while slow dancing on a mottled blue and purple background. Keearo has medium brown skin and dark brown hair in an angled bob with thick bangs. He's wearing a black choker, a short sleeveless light turquoise dress and matching eyeshadow and nail polish. His hands rest on Kirnus's shoulders, fingers mostly curled, but starting to loosen up. Kirnus has light skin and short, messy dirty-blond curls, and is wearing a dark green shirt with a collar and short sleeves and khaki shorts. He faces away from the viewer, arms around Keearo's waist, leaning into the kiss. /End description.]

Tomorrow's OC Kiss will be more timely, but for now, enjoy Kirnus and Keearo being cute and gay. This is based on nothing - I don't even know where they're slow dancing or why - but I like the idea of them slowly opening up to each other in the process.

Also they have body hair I swear I just forgot it (I forgot Keearo's matrimonial choker too at first but it was faster to draw in than hair). But I would believe that Kirnus shaved his face for whatever this event is.

[wrathfulwizard]

I gift thee with the greatest gift I possess: *this pebble I found on the roadside*

[void-botanist]

I'm a full time online grad student. I also have occasional freelance web design work. This semester I'm trying to both be more efficient with my classes (hello Trello boards with padded deadlines I made yesterday) and have some protected free time at the end of the day. But I suspect I'm still gonna be writing at random times (I don't really have classes that meet, just weekly deadlines). Sometimes the mood strikes me and I spend my free time writing almost entirely; sometimes I think about my blorbos and then go play video games.

Roll call: writer time

Who works either part or full time

Who is a student either part or full time

Combos? Neither?

I'm just wondering who of us has what kind of time technically available to write (golly that sentence)

I'll start. I work full-time. I am not a student, and I have exactly two non-work engagements that eat into my "writing time". Chances are, when "I really should be writing" I really should be working. Or sleeping.

[pokeharvest]

okay this is totally going to be a long shot but does anyone have the original screenshots of gale in this pose I have been searching for hours and have found nothing

I found them from vintage bootleg style t-shirts (full versions under the cut) but I have Not been able to find this pose in particular </3

Also if anyone knows where the og screenshot for the top right pose of the right pic but that seems even more difficult to identify/locate LOL

[meringuejellyfish]

old er. not particularly creative but its healthy to draw quickly without tons and tons of planning every once in a while. the apprentices have a lot of potential for interesting and fulfilling designs of which ive already seen a drawing or two of which makes me feel like i cant really do much better and also a bit of it being too early in my eyes to land on clever motifs for a future agott and coco (versus tetia and richeh which do have material) Bye

[deconstructthesoup]

All right, made the decision---

Riz's look in the Junior Year timeline of Closer To Fine (my Fantasy High class swap AU) is gonna be heavily inspired by Edwin Payne of Dead Boy Detectives fame

[thats-a-lot-of-cortisol]

new hair new hair!

Before:

After:

[void-botanist]

🖊 for anyone in the fourth android? :0

Oh boy that's so many options. I changed my mind at least five times about who to talk about, because I'm thinking about at least five of them at every moment. But I finally settled on Anni.

As I'm restructuring the beginning of TFA I'm adding in more scenes with her, which I'm happy about, even though I keep second guessing how good I am at writing from her POV. But I enjoy writing about her putting on her headphones (they're cool headphones with light-up stripes) and one of her like twenty curated playlists and getting in the coding zone. Approaching fictional android problems with the same kinds of strategies and frustrations that I have when I code. And having an excellent dynamic with her primary coworker at the bookstore, Urma (they/them), who is a (human) cryptid with a taste for this world's equivalent of any peach-flavored alcohol and the daily newspaper crossword (for solving, not imbibing). Anni spends a lot of time with Zel in this book, obviously, and I'm slowly figuring out how to show what their dynamic is, partly by showing everything around it (family, friends, jobs, etc.). And I am so excited for when I eventually get to the point of writing Anni having "gossip hour" with her older sister Halli (she/her) and younger brother Brandon (he/they) when she goes home for solstice. After a day's happenings they can all pile into someone's bedroom and speak of their dark secrets, such as "do you know where they store the solstice lights the rest of the season???" (Bran knows. He works for the city) and "I think I'm getting serious about Zel. should I be getting serious about Zel? is Zel getting serious about me?? is it too soon to ask??? Halli you're engaged please advise me how to gay correctly????" (Halli is engaged. in a beautiful t4t sapphic romance. and betrothed too I guess).

Also, I remembered that in an earlier draft of TFA it was important to the plot that Anni used to be really into cosplay, because Dez swiped some of her stuff to attempt to pass as human while he ran away. I kinda want to explore that side of her even though I don't think it's super directly relevant to this draft of TFA. Did the cosplay stuff just sort of fade into the background because she got into other stuff? Did she get frustrated with it for some reason? Did Bran do duo costumes with her all the time and were they always extremely cute? (That one is obviously a yes.) I also wonder what kinds of cosplays she would do. It's probably the one area of her life where she dresses in colors that are not primarily blue. Maybe she got into cosplay because of Bran, who got into it because he wanted an excuse to dress up and look cool, and Halli could connect him with her community theatre friends for sharing/making costume pieces. Anni and Bran used to play her favorite MMO together, but while Anni wants to play the game more or less as intended, with all the grinding and gearing and guilds that entails, Bran just wants to take in the world, find some shiny rocks, and do every possible sidequest (thinking about it in Breath of the Wild terms: "yeah it would be tough but I bet I could do a no Beasts speedrun" vs. "the Stone Talus on the Great Plateau is the most breathtaking and terrifying thing I've ever seen in my life. What do you mean there's 29 more"). So it was fun until he started being chronically underleveled and kind of lost interest in the game. So then they started cosplaying to have something related to do together? (I should clearly write more of these character rambles because I'm figuring stuff out.)

Anyway, Anni is fun, and I need to get her talking to Julian more and figure out what she knows about sailboats.

[the-real-list-of-ominous-threats]

I am going to make a wizard tumblr

[void-botanist]

Thanks for the tag! I had to think for a bit about what customs I'd built around weddings and funerals themselves since neither have had much opportunity to feature in my work (yet) but I came up with a few things.

Zalen, Zel, and Keearo are all Toru-Kavran, though their experiences and practices vary due to the specific contexts they're from. But one thing that they all do share is the matrimonial choker, which you can see Keearo wearing (Aza wears one too, but I apparently never drew that). It's a black leather band with a metal ring in the middle that acts as the clasp. Where Keearo is from, it's common to have a gold ring for the engagement period, a silver ring when you're married, and in the case of his widowed parent, a transparent ring. One idea from Triad that I still really like is Aza and Keearo putting their gold engagement rings on a leather cord for Kirnus as a token of their affection and a going-away present when he heads back home. I suspect based on other worldbuilding that the custom in Zalen and Zel's part of the world is to swap out the band itself instead of the ring, with different colors and possibly shapes associated with different stages. There are also specific intricate ceremony hairstyles that their grandmother has always been in charge of crafting upon their heads (in their cases, for graduations).

But the most unique perspective on marriage as an institution comes from Hoven's society. Sha-nawwenn are bipedal goat people based on chamois, and because chamois generally divide themselves based on sex and age, the small country, Litroj, that sha-nawwenn come from is similarly split: women live in West Town, men live in East Town, and River City, built around the river in the middle of the country, is where they come together (figuratively and literally - it's where you go for both grand libraries and grand love hotels). (Both towns include trans/nonbinary people who have chosen to live there, though many opt to live in River City long term.) Marriage was initially conceived as a way to codify connections between West Towners and East Towners, which in some ways was just a legal system for getting dibs on the person you planned to have kids with. The Elders (panel of government leaders, who are in fact actually old) added other incentives over time to help encourage people to have more kids, which eventually made the gays go, "hey can we have that too?" They got it after a lot of hemming and hawing that had nothing to do with anti-gayness and everything to do with the Elders not wanting to lose the power of their incentives.

The more contentious thing about sha-nawwen marriage now is whether this legal marriage should apply to couples made up of different sapient bipedal species. People like Hoven's brother, who married an orea-nawwen guy (like Cirrus, a bipedal goat person based on mountain goats), currently have to get their legal marriages done elsewhere, and usually end up living there. So anytime someone sees a sha-nawwen outside of Litroj the first thing they look for is the horn rings that would suggest said nawwen left Litroj for a marriage.

HAPPY WORLDBUILDING WEDNESDAY!

I’ve been doing a lot of cultural worldbuilding for a couple of my wips, and something I’ve really come to appreciate are fictional wedding and funeral customs! So, what are, if any, some traditions and/or customs when it comes wedding and funerals in your world? Do the societies in your world look at death or marriage in a particularly unique way?

This is a little late arriving for Worldbuilding Wednesday, but it’s here nevertheless! I wanted to put something out there for all of the new writeblrs I’ve gotten to check out over the past couple of days, so, if you’re one them, then definitely this applies to you! Tagging is a nightmare, but I’ll try my best! And, this should also go w/o saying, but if you see this and you just want to participate, then please feel free to!

Tagging some new followers (with no pressure, obviously!): @toribookworm22, @calicojackofficial, @westcountrygothic, @mz-elysium, @wearfinethingsalltoowell, @leighvalentin, @happystarfishnightmare, @an-elegant-void, @littlepatchofhell, @spookyceph, @thatndginger, @aesa, @theskeletonprior

Also tagging some OGs (again, with no pressure): @thetruearchmagos, @cryptid-s-wips, @citruswords, @reowrites, @highlycosmic, @make-the-heteros-upseteros-2022, @blackwidow2005, @ellatholmes, @floppydiskdoc

[patchworkgargoyle]

Why are you up at 5:35am though? 🤨

Sneaky wizardly reasons*

(*My brain kicked me awake at like 4:30am and I haven't been able to get back to sleep xD)

[wizardly-waves]

One of the best things I've ever read for this fandom is not just ace!douxie, it's ace!douxie being so fucking done with the aphobia. Like. I don't uuuusually go in for specific queer headcanons, even though I do love love love it when they're ace-coded. But that? That is absolutely fucking golden. Not funny-golden, but like, the most DELICIOUS concept in the world.

[chiropteracupola]

experiencing a spellbinding moment of nostalgia upon rereading the entire menu of the taqueria I used to go to as a very little kid

[void-botanist]

[Image description: a digital illustration of Ravenot and their weapons on a grey gradient background. The colors are mostly muted purples, with some darker tones and lighter silvery tones for decorative detailing on many of the items. Arranged along the left side are a thurible (a censer with a chain attached to it; this one is shaped like a handbell), a sleigh bell on a string, a long-stemmed trumpet with a banner hanging from it, and a sword with a dark blade. A few plant cuttings are scattered around the sword that look like herbs and lily of the valley. On the right side is Ravenot, fully covered in a long dark tunic and pieces of medieval European style armor. The symbol worn over their scale mail shirt is a balanced scale. Their beret-like headpiece has a veil on the back and sides and their face is completely covered by a dark mask with silver filigree patterns and friendly, upturned eye holes. A few locks of dark wavy hair are visible over the mask. They are waving with their right hand, and on their right wrist is a bracelet that appears to be made of large pearls. /End image description.]

Ahah you reblogged the thing….now I am contractually obligated (but genuinely curious) to ask about Ravenot! Can you give some information about what he is/what he does? :3c

Don't mind if I do! This is also a moment for me to showcase the very good art you made of them so that everyone else can see it too. <3

Ravenot (he/they), third to bear that name, is the Unmade of the Order of Balances, a clerical order devoted to maintaining the coexistence between the living and the un/dead. At all times, there is one Unmade, a skeleton knight created by an act of willing sacrifice, who strips themself of their former identity to become a being capable of venturing into perils where the living can never go. Ravenot travels the realm, undying, following what he calls 'the path,' a guiding instinct which bears him towards disturbances in the natural balance. The Unmade is sworn body and soul to the Order of Balances, and must serve unwaveringly. As long as they obey, the Order of Balances fuels the magic which animates them, but an unruly servant might be severed of that magic, and left to pass into Death. The Unmade is, at all times, able to resign themselves to that fate, should they no longer possess the will to continue on the path. So far, this third Ravenot has neither strayed, nor lost the driving force that spurs them on. It is the sole mission of the Unmade to oppose those who might bend Death to unjust ends. This can mean disposing of a necromancer who is raising the dead without their consent, or destroying the undead when such beings misuse their power and do harm to the living. It may also mean performing burial rites, or guiding lost spirits to their rest. Other agents of the Order of Balances do the same, but when the task reaches the edges of their skill, or they become compromised by the forces of darkness, Ravenot will be there.

[sylkys0f7]

finals are coming up and I've done so good this semester hell fuckin yeah ;u;

[yamimichi]

Inpatient in the Waiting Room

I had an appointment with my therapist today and she was running a little late. The waiting room got crowded and people were talking to each other, loudly. That wouldn't have been too bad except my husband and I had to keep our opinions to ourselves. They were talking about stuff that we didn't agree with. Like that new wizard school game. Some of them were saying how much they loved it and it was really good. Others were mentioning family members who were into HP. My husband and I just sat there quietly, waiting for what felt like an eternity for my therapist to come get me. There was talk of other things too. Sports and teams that we aren't fond of. That's okay. People are entitled to their opinions. There was a man there talking about guns and hunting. He described himself as a "good ol' country boy" and said he'd been shooting guns since he was 8. Politics never came up but he screamed MAGA. When it comes down to it though, our biggest problem (I won't misuse the word trigger here) was the wizarding talk. It seemed like forever until they shut up and changed subjects. I don't think any of them know about the controversy. And they probably wouldn't care. I hate TERFS and antisemitic people. I can't stand "her" and her wizard stuff. But I and my husband had to hold our tongues. Finally my therapist came and saved us.