#worth a shot yeah?

[gatheredfates]

SEA'S COMMUNITY COMPENDIUM

Earlier today, I made this post asking if people might be interested in a directory of active XIV roleplay communities/discords that got a bit of traction.

Given the response that post got, I put one together. Say hello to Sea's Community Compendium, a little side-project I'll (attempt) to maintain with the help of this community to serve as launch pad for roleplayers to get a feel for what kind of roleplay, events and communities exist.

All the information you need to know for the compendium is contained within the document, so I encourage everyone to have a read and get in touch with their server owners/fc leads to see if they'd like their content featured.

This project will not exist without people submitting to it. If no one contributes, then it won't be successful.

If you have any questions, suggestions, etc. my askbox/message box is open. If the project is successful, I'll post monthly reminding people it exists and encouraging them to submit their content. If not... well, I tried!

If you know of links to large-scale, publicly available discords (think the XIV Reddit Discord, hunts, etc.) or miscellaneous resources like lore guides, community blogs, etc. you can let me know via this post. For everything else, please read the document and use the google form created here.

I will start adding links and such tomorrow after I sleep so please don't hesitate to suggest something even if you think I probably already know about it (I probably don't).

[vaguely-concerned]

what would I do without you. indeed illario.

lucanis trust me! indeed illario. the ea-nasir vibes on this shitty little rat of a man (somehow still slightly affectionate despite myself)

I am obsessed with WHERE this letter is found and what we're meant to read into those context clues. I don't have a handy save for this mission right now to double check the details, but from memory: It's the room across from what seems implied to be Caterina's room (Lucanis says these are the family quarters, so Illario has kept her locked in her own room all this time probably?? Oh oh house arrest, house arrest for grandmother for ten thousand years style)? We find the scraps of a letter from Zara to Illario, torn to pieces with one fragment still in the empty fireplace so presumably we're meant to assume he burned it, and this old letter from Illario to Lucanis lying neatly on a table. Whose room is this? Because here's a theory one could put together that has some real crazymaking potential for me specifically at least:

Considering that we're helpfully down to only three Dellamortes to account for, it's likely either Lucanis' or Illario's room. If I'm remembering right/let's for a moment assume that Caterina is being confined to her own rooms -- the fact that Lucanis is her favourite and also heir apparent I'd say tips the scales for me that it's likely she'd keep him closest, whenever he's home. Thus opening for the possibility that all this time Illario has been staying in the room of the cousin he murdered but as it turns out not hard enough that he didn't come back again like a haunting, reading his own old letters to him that Lucanis apparently kept all this time (!!! ow !!!), and sparing them from the spiteful fate he gave Zara's 'aww chin up you'll get 'em next time babe' one, right across the hall from where the grandmother he apparently can't bring himself to kill or seriously hurt even with everything else he's done is imprisoned and i n c r e d i b l y pissed off, if she gets out of there while he's sleeping or something he's fucked. Has he been sleeping in Lucanis' bed since kidnapping Caterina????? (did they ever share a bed, when they were children? for comfort if not ever out of real necessity?) is this some kind of incredibly fucked up way to try to be close to them both somehow even when he is the one who messed it all up to begin with? no matter what I have so many questions here what is WRONG with this family???????? (well I don't think we have time to get into all that right now that's a novel not a text post probably fhsdkj)

[ryuusei-boi]

Inazuma Eleven Opening 3 - "Tsunagariyo"

Taken from TODOS LOS OPENINGS del ANIME de INAZUMA ELEVEN 4K by Angelico and edited by me

[xxplastic-cubexx]

im forcing you all to look shady-car-salesman erik

[What If Magneto Had Formed The X-Men With Professor X?]

[quibbs126]

I had another thought with that one megop sparkling idea I keep bringing up but never fully committing to because I can’t decide on any one idea and at this rate I think I’m just annoying people

But yeah, I had another thought, one that I just thought was funny. I want to draw it out, but I’m lazy and also I have a test tomorrow that I have to study for, so I’m not doing it now. But I’m also impatient, so I’m giving you the bullet points/written version. If I’m sensible, I’ll take this post down after I finish the actual thing so I’m not too repetitive

Anyways, so there’s the kid, who is the child of the two leaders of the Autobot and Decepticon factions, and thus, potentially, holds a lot of value as a hostage and bargaining chip. Granted, I don’t know how known they actually are, there might just be a rumor going around that the two leaders have a secret kid somewhere

But anyways, someone (I don’t know who) gets the idea to capitalize on this, and afterwards calls up Optimus and Megatron, who are up to their usual things, claiming they have taken their sparkling captive and want some demands or other if the two ever want to see them again

Now both of them are very confused by this turn of events. Optimus has no goddamn clue what this guy’s talking about, because he’s pretty sure he knows the two of them definitely don’t have a sparkling. Megatron meanwhile does know they definitely had a sparkling, but he’s cycling through his head the possibilities of if this guy’s telling the truth. Because he was pretty sure no one knew about them, how did this person find out? How many people know? Do they really have their sparkling or is it just a trap to kill them? Or is it some idiot claiming this status, while probably not being aware there is a genuine one out there? Or did they just pick up an innocent bot who just happens to kind of look like them? How close is his secret to getting out, especially to Optimus?

But yeah basically meanwhile, while Megatron is somewhat internally panicking and trying to assess the most likely severity of this situation, Optimus is just like, “…I have absolutely no clue what you’re talking about, Megatron and I don’t have a sparkling, isn’t that right Megatron?”, thinking Megatron is on the same page of this being absolutely absurd as him

But because Megatron is thinking and stopped paying much attention, he doesn’t answer at all. And the silence goes on long enough that it’s getting questionable, especially since Megatron isn’t jumping in to defend his own honor that he did not have a baby with his sworn enemy. His silence is starting to become an admission, and the possibility of this actually being legit is starting to freak Optimus out, because again, he doesn’t know about any of this

Okay explaining it out loud does not bring out the comedy the situation is supposed to have. Probably because there’s no visuals and my description of the narrative rather than just dialogue. So like, the comedy doesn’t happen like it’s supposed to, this isn’t the format for the joke. But the image is funny in my head, okay?

I’ll make the picture either tomorrow or Friday or something, since I have things to do tomorrow. I was just trying to explain it so that you could understand my vision before I can make it

[recurring-polynya]

just a normal outfit that you would wear on your vacation to go play soccer with some middle schoolers in a different dimension

he added a blazer

animators were so proud of it they gave us this loving pan

[wildsaltair]

the way Gladiator is just instant gratification for me. my serotonin levels shoot through the roof as soon as that first note of music hits. Maximus’ face appears onscreen and I immediately am launched into a catatonic state

[sainteclectic]

working on a long analysis of Whole's presence in the album btw. so look out for that

[turnedpalefromlackofsun]

i wrote a fanfic

[pseudophan]

hi i'm gonna treat your inbox like a skycards forum (should we make a community?) for a second bc the aviation nerds on reddit scare me

do the daily missions randomly change in the middle of the day for anyone else? i swear i've had this happen like 3 times now - i check my missions, it wants me to catch a specific plane, i manage to find that one and catch it, i go back to my missions and suddenly it wants me to catch another plane. sometimes it changes back to the earlier version after a few hours. yesterday one of my missions kept switching between a pilatus and a cessna. i caught both, didn't tick off. in the end it ticked off after i caught a boeing. is it a bug, is it me? make it make sense

the missions have been a bit weird yeah, i haven't paid enough attention to them to say if it's been that bad for me but they've clearly got some bugs since it gave everyone the arctic circle mission three days in a row lmao. personally i just accidentally complete missions, going after them on purpose just costs way more coins than i earn from completing them so i'm like whatever

[etherealashworks]

Wolfstar Top Gear AU

Chapter 2

Alastor "Mad-Eye" Moody - formidable executive producer of British television's foremost motoring show, Full Throttle - has a problem. The broadcaster has his balls in a vice, and because of middling ratings for their second series, he must find a third presenter to join - and control - Potter and Black, the too-posh, too-chaotic presenters already in place. And he has to do it quick .

Remus "Moony" Lupin - shy researcher on said motoring show - has thousands of problems, including but in no way limited to: a catastrophic hangover; the dodgy leg from his failed karting career; and the extremely unwanted resurgence of his worst childhood crush.

Sirius "Padfoot" Black - charismatic presenter of said motoring show - has a motorbike, a sexy rockstar girlfriend, and absolutely no problems whatsoever. Until, one day, he does.

---- A Top Gear AU in which Remus is a disaster from the off, Sirius unravels at the seams, James grows a frontal lobe, and Lily has a secret. Throughout, there will be cars, catastrophes, and caravan conkers. And lots of swearing (sorry).

[astrangertomykin]

The first time Essek felt a wave of Dunamancy pass over him felt like freedom. Each spark shooting through his veins helped ease the tension in his muscles until they were just a dull throb instead of a burning star. His bones, which were usually so heavy, floated as if he was gliding on air; it wouldn't be long until he actually was.

There was something different from any school of magic he had tried before, something that made him feel like he was breathing for the first time. There was an electricity underneath his skin that awakened every nerve ending. Not in the painful, stabbing way that had accompanied him since his youth but something that left him wanting more.

When the magic ebbed from his fingers, the coldest drew closure. The weight of the world slowly crushed Essek back down to Exandria until the world was suffocating him again. The withdrawal shooting ice through his veins until his body was screaming for the warmth it had only just come to know. The moment Dunamancy first flowed through his essence, Essek knew, was the day he was truly lost. He would chase that feeling for the rest of his days to chase the pain away. Essek would be the one to decipher Dunamancy's mysteries and make that power his own, that first wave of freedom his call from the Universe that he was made for this purpose. He would do anything to feel a single second of that spark beneath his skin again, anything to unravel that feeling and never let it go; no matter the cost.

[a-bottle-of-tyelenol]

(Going off anon for this one wish me luck)

How

How do you write over a couple hundred words

Like genuinely how?? I struggle so much with keeping a continuous plot and keeping things interesting that i just,, cant. If youve any tips please feel free to share with the poor 💔

Omg hi!! Going off anon is scary lol I’m very proud of you!

I think a lot of authors’ first answer to this would be to practice, which is definitely true and very fair. No beginner will ever be able to write tens of thousands of words on their first try. I’ve been writing for over a decade by now and I remember when even a thousand words would take me hours and hours. The speed and comfortability comes with experience.

That being said, it’s not the most satisfying answer so I’ll try my best to tell you what helps me! Just keep in mind that I’m audhd so some of this might not help if you have one, the other, neither, or just a different flavor of it.

Putting it under the cut because I yap a lot.

First of all, find a piece of media that makes your brain go brrr. It’s a very common piece of advice in art to find a blorbo and just keep drawing the shit out of them over and over again until you’re good at drawing, and this is basically the same idea. It doesn’t have to be a show or movie for fanfic, it can be a trope or genre for original fiction too (I, for example, am obsessed with fictional politics and government dynamics so writing about them is really fun for me and every single one of my book ideas involves those things), but whatever it is, it has to make your brain go brrr. Hyperfixations or special interests are highly encouraged here! The more you like it and can talk about it, the more you can write about it!

Secondly, what helps me is asking myself why I’m writing something. It’s a question with double meanings— why do I want to write this in terms of commentary and why do I physically want to write this. A lot of my fics are born out of my need to fill specific niches. I’m the first agere writer in three separate, relatively popular, fandoms because I saw something I liked, wanted to read agere for it, and realized there was none. I also coined a ship in the Bungou Stray Dogs fandom and wrote the first fics for it after I realized no one else thought of them. I had a need and I filled it— this is what people mean when they say to write for yourself or to write what you want to read.

Now, the more important part of the question is in terms of commentary. Very, very few of my fics are mindless fluff because I actually struggle a lot with it. I don’t know if you’re a Hunger Games fan but the author of that series often says that she only writes when she has a reason to— when she has something she wants to say. I’m the same way. Even my one shots have some kind of purpose to them; sometimes it’s as simple as a character study (or me wanting to force people to consider how I interpret a character) and other times, it’s answering a question or exploring a theme that is really meaningful to me. The story I’m working on right now is a MHA fic where Bakugou runs away and joins a circus. The message of this fic is all about how free will and the choice to be what you want can lead to someone thriving. It was also born out of my want to explore a particularly fascinating aspect of circus culture and my love of depicting arcs about self-discovery and identity!

When you know what you want to write and why, it can lead you down the rabbit-hole of how you want to express those ideas in a way that fulfills that need!

It’s a series of asking yourself questions. Why is my main character here? What are they doing? Where are they at in the beginning of the story and where do I want them to be by the end? Who do I want them to interact with? How do I want them to showcase this thing I want to talk about? Ect ect ect

Using that circus fic as an example: asking myself why Bakugou is at the circus leads me to plan out his backstory (his family wanted him to take over the family business, something he didn’t want to do. This lends itself well to that idea of choice and freedom). What is Bakugou doing? Well, if he’s joining the circus then he should probably be a performer (which leads me to making up an act for him). So on and so forth. You ask yourself a million questions, which will lead to more questions.

And then, you can use those questions to figure out plotpoints. If Bakugou isn’t born in circus and he didn’t become a performer until he joined, I therefore need to figure out how he becomes one and plot that out. Then, I can inject scenes of him practicing and using that as ways to have him interact with other characters!

Which leads to my third point! The idea is to use all of this to make an outline. Every single fic I write has one and, in my opinion, it is extremely hard (bordering on impossible) to write a cohesive story without one, even if it’s only a one shot.

Plotting out each point (being plotpoints and how you want specific scenes to go) lets you keep things consistent and makes it easier to stay on track. If all I know is that I want Bakugou to join a circus and become a trapeze artist, it can be really easy to lose track of everything that comes before and after that if I’m just winging it. I often get really overwhelmed thinking of things on the fly and it’s the easiest way to kill a story idea for me.

But if I break it down into:

- Bakugou gets picked up by the circus

- Bakugou decides to stay because his parents would never think to find him here

- Bakugou joins ring crew (basically like the technical side of circus)

- Bakugou meets the trapeze troupe

- Bakugou tries trapeze and realizes he’s really good at it (meanwhile, the trapeze act is on the brink of being cut because they’re down a member)

- Bakugou becomes a trapeze artist and performs with the circus

Then it suddenly becomes a lot easier to then break things down even more. Suddenly, I have a lot of space to inject other scenes— like him being convinced to join ring crew, him discovering that the troupe is on the brink of being cut and deciding to help them, him practicing, him convincing the circus owner to let him perform, ect

I also had a subplot about Bakugou hiding his identity because his parents are well known fashion designers and he’s a big enough name as their son and a model that he’s scared of anyone finding out who he is and telling his parents (or, more importantly, forcing him to reconcile with an identity he no longer wants anything to do with). This adds scenes of inner turmoil as he decides not to tell people, anxiety as he fears someone knowing, scenes where someone does find out, scenes where he purposefully tells someone, and (for my plot) scenes where he discovers that he no longer wants to reject such a core part of himself.

Just explaining this to you has already given me a couple hundred words! Now imagine how much I have actually written for it!

(100k— the answer is 100k.)

I’m not the most consistent with my outlines ngl and mine are all really sloppy but it genuinely helps keep you on track and makes it way easier to cut things out that aren’t interesting. What I like to do is write out a chapter as just “he does this and says this and then meets her and she does this” until I have enough plot to fill a chapter. I’m pretty good at figuring out how many actions it takes to fill my word count (something that just comes with practice) so it might not be the best way to do it for a beginner. I’d recommend experimenting with your planning and figuring out what lengths you like for chapters and how much you can plan to put in them.

I play DND occasionally as a dungeon master so I got a lot of these skills from session planning. I had to learn roughly how long it would take my players to do a set number of plot points in 3-4 hours max so I could then plan the right number of things for them to do each session. My first ever session as a dm took six hours and, ever since then, I’ve never been wrong in how long I think a session will take. I just need the data to base things off of first. Chapter planning works pretty much the same way with me having a wordcount of roughly 10k-20k each chapter and being able to guess how much I can plan out that’ll fit within that cap.

(This also works for one shots btw! Those outlines are just shorter or, in my case, less constricted because I don’t put wordcount caps on one shots.)

Fourthly, I talk a whole lot and I’m incredibly long winded (as you can probably tell xd) so I’ve never actually struggled that much with word count. I was fifteen years old writing 10k in like four hours after school because I’d been hyperfixating on my beyblade fics lol. It’s honestly one of my weaknesses as a writer— that and pacing, which kind of goes hand in hand with my inability to shut up LMAO

Part of it comes in the fact that I do a lot of internal monologuing and I try to be super conscious of adding immersive details— focusing on the senses (taste, touch, smell, ect). Of everything, I struggle the most with action scenes (fights, as an example) and dialogue. I prefer doing a lot of character work and find it fun to focus on internal conflicts and arcs so it’s a bit hard to give advice for something that just comes kind of naturally. It does help me to excessively use metaphors or allegories— like I use water in my circus fic to represent freedom so I go on a lot of tangents about it (sections that depict bakugou drowning metaphorically, sections that depict his love of swimming, sections about storms and rainfall, ect). I do this with everything and usually assign every character or conflict some kind of other thing, like water or cards or something else tangible, that I can use for metaphors.

I would recommend picking focal points in each scene to really focus on— whether that be an important character moment internally or some kind of setting description that matters a lot to the scene. Remember that everything you say, and purposefully don’t say, matters a lot. You don’t have to describe your character getting out of bed and getting ready for school because that stuff can just be implied. What you CAN focus on is the fact that their alarm clock says the wrong time, despite every other clock saying the right one. Why is the alarm clock different?

Finally, don’t push yourself to write. Let yourself get in the groove but if it isn’t working then it isn’t working. It’s fine to take breaks and only write a couple words at a time. Progress is progress, regardless of how much. If something isn’t working for you, try something else! There is no shame in rewriting something or just scrapping it entirely and working on something new.

I didn’t finish regressuary because I needed to write for something else before my head exploded. I’ve been taking a small break on my main fic because I’m really struggling with where I’m at in it, plot-wise. Hell, my circus fic had last been updated nearly a year ago because I lost interest. I read somewhere that if you’re bored, so are your readers and I think that’s good to internalize as something to remember. People will always prefer reading something that you’re clearly passionate about and writing is supposed to be fun! Every rule placed on it is self imposed. Word count doesn’t actually matter, and it’s fine to just do whatever feels the most comfortable.

Doing what feels good is always better than forcing yourself to do something— that’s really the best way to keep writing.

For me, a lot of being able to write comes with my hyperfixations because those are fun and engaging. If I’m not hyperfixated (if I’m not ENGAGED), I can’t write. I’ve only very recently gotten any kind of ability to write regardless what my interest is, but a lot of these longer fics are ones that I still have a fixation on (they’re just not as all consuming). Always write what YOU want.

Anyways!!! Yeah I don’t know if this actually helps but this is just a whole lot of things I could thing of that help me! I hope you get something out of this jumble of rambles lolol

[victorluvsalice]

Happy Valicertine's Day, everyone! :D Time to celebrate my OT3 once again as if we're not always doing that around here. Once again, I raided the archives of the sadly-defunct Chill Valicer Save for fun screenshots I could turn into my required three Valicertine's -- but this year, I somehow ended up making three "sequels" to previous Valicetines and Valicertine's I've made. Allow me to explain further in the traditionally-mandated descriptions below (though all the images are alt-texted as well):

(a screenshot from the Spooky Day date the trio took at the Haunted Museum, with Smiler in their dark form watching Space Ranger!Victor massage Pizza Deliverer!Alice's shoulders with a smile) "COMPERSION! It remains pretty awesome. Happy Valicertine's Day!" -- This one is obviously a sequel to the first Valicertine in the 2024 Collection! I wanted to do a follow-up with Smiler looking lovingly at Victor and Alice being cute/romantic together, and of the shots I got of such a thing, I like this one from their Spooky Day date the best. Just that little smile! It's so cute. :)

(a screenshot of the trio dancing together in the Gnome's Arms of Henford-On-Bagley, with Victor looking lovingly at his partners while they smile back at him) "Yup -- two years on, and you two still give me...ideas. ;) Happy Valicertine's Day!" -- And this one is a sequel to the first Valicertine in the 2023 Collection! I stumbled across this shot while looking for other good potential Valicertine images, thought it was cute -- and then remembered "hey, I did something similar for my very first Valicertine! And the other one I've made so far this year is already a follow-up to an older Valicertine...why not go ahead and make this one a sequel too?" So I did. :) I do love them dancing together -- always gives me the fuzzies. <3

(a screenshot of Smiler at the Copperdale Weenie Roast, playing their guitar as Victor and Alice watch on and the rest of the guests do their thing at the campfire behind them) "Love Is...supporting your partner/metamour when they break out 'Wonderwall' at the party. Happy Valicertine's Day!" -- And finally, we have a sequel to, of all things, the 2017 Collection of Valicetines! You know, the one I had to repost because, for reasons I will never understand, the original post was flagged for adult content. *shakehead* Anyway, what happened is, I was doing another trawl of the Chill Valicer Save screenshots, saw this shot, and was like "Oh hey, what if I made a joke about 'love is being supportive when your partner breaks out Wonderwall' or something like that?" ...and then was like "hang on, didn't I do some Valicetines like that one year?" Leading to me looking them up, and deciding to ape the style of them just for the hell of it. XD Took a little fiddling to make it look good, but I'm pretty happy with the end result!

And there we have it! Enjoy these sort-of-blasts from the past! XD

[raayllum]

When you love Rayla so much it makes you look stupid

Bonus Ezran in the novelization:

Ezran felt bad for Rayla and her fear of water, but he knew she could face the fear again. He was about to encourage her to cross the bay when Callum jumped in.

“You know what?” Callum said. “We’ll just walk around it somehow. With our legs.”

Ezran couldn’t believe what he was hearing. But thankfully, Rayla shook her head no.

[thethiefandtheairbender]

hi!! i’ve been reading your atla metas and i know there’s been some conspiracy theories about aaron ehasz in the writer’s room, but i think you would be very happy to know that he recently liked a tweet acknowledging how azula and katara are narrative foils in zuko’s life! your meta on that was excellent btw

I think that might've been my tweet tbh! He and I are actually mutuals on twitter cause I mostly post about his show The Dragon Prince (TDP) (which imo makes the preferences pretty clear as a result, but I'll get more to that in a minute) and one of my friends has interviewed him a few times for it

I bring this up because years ago (well before I was on twitter) he expressed interest in reading a meta I wrote regarding Katara/Aang's romantic development with the main ship of TDP, Callum/Rayla. This was noteworthy because at the time, Callum and Rayla were heavily implied but not actually canon.

The reason I say it makes the preference(s), if they are some, clear is because Callum and Rayla, although not initially planned, have parallels to both Katara and Aang as well as Mai and Zuko:

They are literally Moon, Ocean, and Sky per the show's magic system. Rayla is a Moonshadow elf, linked to life and death, and Callum becomes a Sky and Ocean mage

There are parallels between bloodbending and dark magic (including evil puppetmasters) in which, like how Katara breaks and learns bloodbending to save Aang's life in S3, Callum likewise uses dark magic to save Rayla even after claiming he'd never use it

Rayla and Zuko both leave their partners apologies and goodbye letters before they go on quests they don't want to drag the other person into

"No, I think it's great! You're like a secret hero!" / "It's because Rayla is a hero."

Rayla being a little older and bit of a magical instructor for Callum in a similar manner to how Katara teaches Aang waterbending

[in defense of "you ran away"] "Aang is the bravest person I know. He's done nothing but help people and save lives since I met him!" / [in defense of "you ran away"] "Rayla's brave. She saves people [...] Rayla, you're the most amazing person I've ever met."

Callum and Aang asking Rayla and Katara, respectively, to trust enemies who could be allies (Claudia, Zuko) due to their past history, and the girls reluctantly going along with it

There's also this post again from pre-Callum and Rayla going canon in S3:

Although there's some overlap perhaps with how Zuko helps Katara in show re: her mother's death, as Callum will be helping Rayla get her parents' back and give closure that way, but it's framed very differently. Whereas Zuko is surprised by how Katara responds to Yon Rha and Aang is ultimately portrayed as the one who knows her better ("You were right about what Katara needed"), the closure Callum offers is more in line with how Aang reaffirms Katara's ability to choose, as Rayla was going to stay behind and die for her parents' perceived failure and has to reevaluate upon finding out the truth:

Katara: But now that I know he's out there, I feel like I don't have a choice. Aang: Katara, you do have a choice.

Rayla: What does this mean? What should I do? Callum: I don't know. But it's your choice. No one else's. Rayla: We should decide together.

There are more parallels, and nothing in TDP is a 1:1 by any means - every character / couple / aspect of the show is its own unique thing - but like... you can see where they're pulling more inspiration from, I think, and I expect there'll be more parallels going into S6-S7 for TDP.