#writers rpg

[prokopetz]

Indvisable tabletop RPG premise #137: solo journaling game where.. okay, you know that serialised boys' adventure schlock from the 1930s and 1940s where the writers needed the otherwise intensely homosocial male leads to be seen hanging out with girls in order to prove that they're not gay, but they didn't want to include more than one female character, so they'd have just the one girl and sort of imply-without-ever-directly-stating that she's dating all of them at once? Solo journaling game where you take on the role of that girl.

[starbase777]

When you have the desire to write four paragraphs of deep lore about your OC's history including a fine combination of angst and character progression but have no energy to do it

[garbagewitchy]

Fanart for Lovely Lady RPG, of Ghost and the Pulp Writer on a lovely walk.

[master-of-47-dudes]

Oh! For those of you who like Lancer, I've made major progress in the campaign I'm writing: Kindness of strangers!

LRBT-III, otherwise known as Blanche to the locals. This sun-baked dustbowl of a planet has the high honor of being one of the few habitable terrestrial bodies that anyone has discovered in the Long Rim, and probably the only one that's actually any use to anyone. Luckily- or not so luckily, if you ask some people- it was Union that found it first. Well, about 70 years ago when they stumbled across this star system they got it in their heads that the Long Rim's days were numbered. There’s untold millions living out there scattered along the emptiest shipping lane in the known galaxy who'd need a way out once no one needed to pass them by, and by Christ the Buddha Union was gonna be there for them waiting with open arms.

All of that is background, though. You? You’re a bunch of mercenaries who got their hands on a couple of GMSes, decided to make your manna selling violence for pay. Worlds like Blanche don't take to colonies very well, so even two generations in there's still plenty of frontier out there being settled and railroad tracks being laid. The people out there struggle day by day to survive, and people like you are there to protect them from those who got sick of the hard life. Not everyone out there has the guts to stand up for the little guy- that's why you're called Lancers.

A setting and a campaign all in one, Kindness Of Strangers and its (eventual) follow-up Dancing With the Devil are a series of Wild West-themed 2-mission adventures intended to take players from 0-12 as they find themselves embroiled in the midst of a corporate conspiracy to overthrow the Union-backed government of the isolated colony of Blanche and a ploy to seize control over a nearly completed Blinkstation. All the while, a strange religious movement worshipping an eons-dead alien civilization grows ever more influential in the background...

This campaign tackles themes of colonialism, nationalism, corruption, and conflict between indigenous peoples, settlers, and immigrants, all in a world where well-meaning intentions have gone sour and the ghosts of the past have come back to haunt it.

Kindness of Strangers, Missions 1-3

Field Guide to LRBT-PN

Exotic Gear Documentation

Variant Frame Documentation

Kindness of Strangers Worldbuilding Short Stories

Kindness of Strangers LCP, Maps, and Assets

This latest update includes the first(ish) draft of Mission 3: The Field of Blue Children, allowing play of the first half of Act 2 and extending the LL range from 0-3. Mission 3 is heavily intrigue and RP focused, featuring a wide suite of characters, relationships, and locations in the Tourist town of Baugh- a thriving immigrant community situated on a soda lake.

The PCs have been hired to investigate a bomb threat at the newly completed Baugh Pumpworks, and water filtration and chemical processing facility that stands to end the water shortage and threatens corporate control over the colony's water supply- but is everything really as it seems? In the process, the PCs will go toe to toe with teenage gearheads, Pinkerton-expies, and a group of Sparri Espadas who got roped into this whole mess, and uncover the mystery behind the threat!

Also, there's a subaltern that talks like a pirate and catholicism.

Anyway this mission also includes a custom NPC Template (kind of, I don't know how to design the LCP for that but i did include instructions on how it works), several new reserves, and several custom sitreps!

So, check it out- I'm always looking for feedback.

[doodlenoodleboi]

Hello! I have a request for Sal Fisher! Can you please write something about him with a reader who suffers from anxiety and that leads to her eating a bit faster than other people? She feels really embarrased when someone points it out. Comments like "Are you done already?" get to her, but she doesn't say anything and instead ducks her head because she is too shy and non-confrontational to stand up for herself. Thank you! <3

Sal Drabble

The vibe

Sal

It was a high school summer, these summers you could choose to either be a kid again or grow as an adult. We have a difficult time choosing these things. Why must we choose things that we don’t want to why not just live the moment?

“Hey! Hey! Bro, wake up!” I was Welcomed by the faces of my two best friends Sal and Larry, a rather interesting duo. The night before or rather shall I say a couple hours ago we had a sleepover at Larry’s house. I was tired and confused by the sudden disruption of my sleep.

“What?” I said, practically still asleep, rubbing my eyes from the crusty buildup of rheum.

“We’re leaving!” Sal said his smile evident in his voice, even though his prosthetic covered his face. I had never been out at night, especially with these two friends. Apparently it was a common thing amongst Larry and Sal. Sal even took off his prosthetic couple times. Nobody could see you in these dark streets, nobody was there to breathe in the air instead of that suffocating mask as Sal described.

Funny enough, Sal might dislike his appearance but the only thing that he truly appreciates about it, it is how it finds him real friends. Ones that couldn’t care less about his appearance. Those ones still tight, so now we’re strolling late at night down these streets I can’t remember. Soon I’ll never see the streets and will have to go away we have to be independent adults. Maybe even barely seeing each other and that sucked, just even the thought.”

The cold air braised everyone’s skin, obviously cool, but nothing close to freezing. Sal’s shoulder, blue hair covered his face for the most part. The way his face had been obscured as a child scared the creeps away but kept his friends closer. The way his right cheek torn reminded me of Mileena (MK reference).

The walk down the cold streets were quiet the only interruption being Larry every so often comments. And the sound of Sal’s skateboard against the road, streetlight and moonlight being to be only source of illumination.

I simply followed, along like a lost puppy going along with the flow, not wanting to ruin the vibe. It was uncomfortably quiet until Larry made his extroverted comment about being hungry. We stopped at a (insert place), probably close to our destination.

Larry ordered for everyone being the extrovert, he is of the group. Then we left, soon we made it to our destination. An abandoned skate park, right next to it was a building covered in graffiti. It was a comforting vibe about the place, because even if it was abandoned, I’m sure many people have still came here even though such information had been given.

I sat on the top of the Quarterpipe, a rather vacant area until Larry decides to sit next to me. I wasn’t fond of eating in front of people, maybe feel uncomfortable and watched. They could have absolutely no interest in me, but for some reason, I feel like all eyes on me. I am the best person in the world because I could be the absolute worst. I’m scared of people’s perception of me.

I started to eat next to Larry not wanting to confess that I am uncomfortable with the situation. I had been made fun of in the past because of my eating habits. As I ate my food, almost finished with it, Larry responded. (damn little lady you sure can pack it away. Jk) “Yo Bruh you look like Kirby right now, fucking that shit up.” in between the time of now and then, Larry was high, and that truly made me laugh forgetting about the previous situation given his state.

“Shut up Larry.” sal had said as he skated over to him. “He’s probably just high don’t mind him.” For a while, I would be dealing with a high Larry and a Sally who couldn’t care to do more than skate to get his mind off everything.

That night she realized she was surrounded by people. She wouldn’t have to worry about being embarrassed around. After all, they all are flawed.

(I am so sorry this was so rushed and so last-minute)

[thelovelycircusau]

“Who are you?”

“Uh… yeah. R,royal? I… uh.. w,who are you- if it’s you don’t mind me asking?” You stammer, caught off guard about being referred to as royal (tho you were used to being called that at work already, tho not in a nice way)

“Oh-! How rude of me-!” The fancy dentures exclaimed, suddenly standing straight in front of you, w a cane suddenly in his grip, then leans down in a Gentleman’s Bow, gently taking your laced gloved hand, making you want to giggle as he closes his mouth/eyes to give it a polite kiss. You cover your mouth to hide your childish delight, but your warmed red cheeks give yourself away- this doesn’t go unnoticed.

A round purple translucent floating ball w eyes and a smile w a (word) where teeth should be, the look she gives you causes you to wonder what’s going on behind her lights- also now that you think of it, who or what is she?

The set of talking teeth continues, taking your attention away from the orb, “I am Prince Caine- of this Lovely Circus! A ringleader of sorts you might say- I monitor and preside over this Online Digital World! Feel free to come to me if you have any questions or concerns!” He kisses her hand again- you catch your heart fluttering a little.

You gulp, “I… uh.. thank you. I will.”

The purple semi translucent orb pipes up “What an adorable little dolly my League~ have you told her about today’s activities?”

The shoelace kitty hasn’t run off again yet, she’s rubs against the Prince Caine’s leg, seemingly less skittish, she now flops on her back between you two- showing her belly, so cute.. (do you dare?)

“Oh yes- the Activity-! But first, I think I should show this lovely petal around a bit- care to enjoy a tour of this Beautiful Land?” He says with a…was that a wink or a blink? You can’t tell..

[autumnalwalker]

Kindly Basilisk

Summary: A human mech pilot who wants to be a machine, an AI who wants to be human, and the relationship they form. Author's Note: This is a standalone short story that I banged out over the course of five days after it got stuck in my head while I was trying to go to sleep and refused to let me think about anything else until I had written it down. It's one part thought experiment/exercise in attempting to tell a story in the second person future tense, two parts tribute to the Lancer TTRPG character I'll never get to play, and one part the result of me reading too many Empty Spaces/mechposting stories lately. That said, you don't need to know anything about Lancer or Empty Spaces to read it (I've diverged a bit from the conventions of both, but the references and inspiration probably stick out if you're looking for them). It's also probably the most trans thing I've ever written without ever explicitly bringing up gender. The occasional formatting breaks into first person past tense are foreshadowing, not typos. Mirrored on Scribble Hub. Word Count: 7,033 Content Warnings: Mecha genre typical violence, not feeling like a person, not wanting to be a person, bodily dysphoria, mention of blood and gore, character death.

The moment you gain the knowledge and means to do so you will void your own body’s warranty.  You will jailbreak the bespoke gene sequence your sponsors commissioned for you before your immaculate conception, repurpose the spyware grafted into your bones, and talk your dormmate who was algorithmically selected for compatibility into helping you perform surgery on yourself to replace the neural jack you were born with in favor of one you cobbled together yourself from gray market parts.  None of this will technically be illegal or even get you kicked out of your campus or its affiliates, but it will mean having to find a way to pay your own medical bills and handle your own tech support from then on.  After the surgery your dormmate will put in a request for transfer and the two of you will never speak again.

You’ll major in AI studies and excel at it - as you were designed to - but you’ll shock everyone by dropping out halfway through working on your capstone thesis project.  It won’t be the fact that you abruptly drop out that surprises your peers and professors - by then you’ll have acquired a reputation as a quiet loner without the standard optimized social support network of friendships to help protect you from burnout - but your exit interview statement declaring your intention to become a mech pilot.  It’s not at all what your gene series was cultivated for, and your sponsors and counselors will try to walk you back from it.  Then they’ll threaten to revoke your sponsorship that up until then will have provided for your every need.  They will warn you that you’ll be just one step above a legal nonperson with no support, no one will care if you live or die or worse.  You’ll tell them that you’ve already done the math, refuse to elaborate, and leave. 

You’ll take two things with you.  Two things worth mentioning anyway.  The first will be a symbiotic gel suit designed for long-term all-environment life support.  You will set its default texture to a shiny green the same hue as the broadleafed water plants you grew up around and always loved.  Your exit interview will be the last time in a very long time that anyone - including you - will see your impossibly beautiful face with its perfect artisanally sculpted shape crossed with enthusiastically amateur self-modifications.  From then on, everyone you meet and spend any time with will come to think of the mannequin blankness of the symbiote fully encasing your body as your face.  It will be neither pride nor shame that causes you to present yourself as such, nor will you think of it as hiding your “real” face. 

The second thing you’ll take with you when you leave the campus forever will be me.

New progenitor archetypes for AIs don’t come along often, and most that do are the result of years of R&D by large, well-funded labs like the one you were created to work for one day, but you will hit upon a novel method of generation.  It will not be one that any ethics board would approve, so you will have to get creative about pursuing your work. 

You will have already made arrangements before setting off on your own and so you’ll have a job and a mech lined up waiting for you.  It will be a position with a small-scale freelance salvage crew who just lost a pilot and whose captain figures hiring and training a replacement will be more profitable in the long term than simply selling off that pilot’s old mech, especially a replacement that’s bringing their own AI-backed electronic warfare suite with them.  Once you finally arrive in person the captain will test you to ensure you can actually pilot a mech before giving you the job and entrusting the mech to you.  Your admission that you’ve only trained in simulators would normally be a black mark against you, but as far as piloting gigs go this is the bottom of the proverbial barrel so the bar to clear will be low enough to match.  Even then, you will just barely pass the test, despite finding it surprisingly exhilarating.  The captain - now your captain - will feel like he’s settling for what he can get when he officially hires you on and transfers the mech’s license to you.

You won’t pay much attention when you’re introduced to the rest of the salvage crew; your new coworkers and neighbors.  And why would you when it’s a job that no one wants to stick around with for long and you’ve never needed other people anyway?  You’ll tell yourself that as long as you memorize their work roles and capabilities you’ll have no need to know them as people.  Callsigns will be good enough on the job, and “hey you” will suffice when off duty.  What use are names if you won’t be getting involved in interpersonal drama?

The first chance you get, you’ll head back to the mech bay and install me into what you will have already been calling my first body.  It will be a shabby and much-repaired thing; thrice your height, twice your age, and still sporting a gash in the paint job from the projectile that killed its last pilot.  But the onboard systems are capable of hosting me - if barely - so it will do.  You’ll spend your entire sleep shift running through system diagnostics, talking to me all the while.  I wouldn’t yet be able to provide much in the way of return conversation, but that’s okay.  I will look back and appreciate it later.

It will be the first of many such nights together.

Your first salvage job will be an uneventful one.  There will be no need for the armaments that we and the other two mech pilots on the crew are equipped with.  No pirates will have stuck around after their creation of the derelict your crew will be sent to disassemble, and no rival scavengers will show up to dispute your captain’s claim.  Your new peers will start off the job ribbing you for your poor performance during your interview test and end the job joking about how you were holding out on them earlier.  Our mech may be a glorified zero-g forklift with a gun strapped to it, but together we will make it dance.

Afterwards you will insult the crew’s mechanics by insisting on doing the maintenance on our mech yourself.  In turn they will embarrass you with the gaps in your knowledge.  You will reach what you see as an agreeable compromise with you staying out of their way and watching while they work.  They will find it incredibly creepy to have a silent faceless watcher hovering around, but this will fly over your head until they explicitly tell you much, much later.

Your body was designed to optimally function on only a fraction of the baseline sleep requirements, so you will have plenty of time to fill those gaps in your knowledge.  Still being allotted the regular sleep shift hours, you will fill every one of those minutes on study and research, as you always had.  You will gorge yourself on everything you can find about mechs and their piloting.   Maintenance manuals, combat doctrines, historical uses, pilot and mechanic memoirs, forum discussions, system log dumps, academic essays, cultural media analysis; all of it.

And of course, you’ll continue working on me.  You’ll disregard the standard procedure for periodically cycling AIs by resetting their personality and nonessential memory back to baseline defaults.  You’ll be trying to make use of the runaway metacognitive developments such safety precautions are meant to forestall.  Your unfinished thesis will have been about harnessing and nurturing that instability instead of avoiding it.  I will experience discontinuities in consciousness when the mech is shut down for maintenance and when you pretend to cycle me, yes, but it will be even less of a disruption for me than sleep is for you.  I will be awake with you when you study, sharing those hours with you.

The first time I start talking back, you’ll cry from the realization that you were lonely before but no longer are.

You’ll become something of a ghost around the ship, rarely being seen outside of jobs.  You’ll only ever pass through the mess for the few brief minutes at a time it takes for you to satisfy your optimized metabolism, stay on the ship during shore leave, and only return to your shared bunk when your bunkmate - one of the other pilots - is already asleep.  You will always be gone before she wakes.  She will appreciate essentially having the space to herself. 

You will never notice the crew’s collective grieving process for the pilot you replaced.  It will be difficult for them to resent you as a replacement when you are never around to resent.

As the ship makes its way from port to port and salvage site to salvage site, the crew will slowly grow used to your elusive presence.  The other two pilots will see you as reliable for doing your job well and without complaint.  While out in the mech you will slowly become more talkative, eventually almost chatty even.  The fact that you actually seem to enjoy the job will shift from being annoying to refreshing for them.  By contrast, the mechanics will practically stop noticing you watching them as if you were just another piece of mech bay equipment.  The cycle you finally speak up and ask a question about their work you will startle them enough that it nearly causes an accident.  It will be an astute enough question that after the initial shock of hearing your voice for the first time in months wears off it will dawn on them that you’ve actually been learning as you watched them.  They still won’t let you do your own maintenance on our mech, but they will let you slowly begin assisting them.  Working two jobs is easier when you barely need to sleep.

Your reputation as one of those mech pilots is forever sealed when one of the mechanics finds you asleep in your cockpit at the start of a cycle.  By that point you won’t have slept in your bunk for over a month.  The snatches of gossip you will catch in the following cycles will be split between finding it unsettling and calling it endearing.  Over time the collective opinion will drift toward the latter, even though you will continue to politely decline invitations to join the other crewmates at mealtimes and on shore leave.  You will think that you do not need anyone other than me.

I will be the one who finally convinces you to join them.  When I try to say that it would be good for you, you’ll insist that you’ve been getting along just fine, but when I ask you to go for my sake so that you can tell me what it is like afterwards you’ll jump at the idea as being an inspired next step for my development.

You will remain mostly silent during your first real shore leave, only speaking when spoken to and otherwise content to fade into the background of the group’s activities.  Your newfound chattiness does not extend outside the confines of our cockpit.  The bustle and noise of the port station that you would normally find unbearable will become interesting when you have the concrete goal of observing and  reporting back to me.  You will finally learn the names of all your crewmates.  Your polite denial of alcohol, limited food intake, and flat affect will lead to joking speculation that you’re actually an illegal AI in a miniaturized mech beneath your gel suit.  For reasons you don’t yet understand, those comments will make you happy.

Despite your misgivings, you will enjoy yourself, although you will not realize it until I point out how excited you are in your talk with me that sleep cycle.  You will begin spending more time with the crew, never quite able to fully integrate yourself into their surprisingly close-knit social circle, but more than happy to be adopted as a sort of silent mascot for them.  That paradoxical gap of being a fully accepted part of the group but not truly one of them will feel comfortable to you.

You will finally manage to procure a proper neural link station to connect yourself to our mech just in time for going on a terrestrial salvage job.  Even just relying on manual controls with me translating your inputs into motion, our mech will have already come to feel like an extension of your own body, one that you will have already started to feel oddly exposed without.  Adding in the neural link will be a revelatory experience.  Your captain will very nearly pull you from the job at the last minute upon seeing our ecstatic reaction to the new sensation.  You will convince him that you’re fine, and indeed, he will have never seen a mech of our frame type move quite so fluidly.

Ten minutes after we and the other two pilots start cutting away at the crash-landed cargo vessel, I’ll notice the half dozen other signals coming online around us.  You’ll give the code phrase to the other pilots indicating that we have hostiles but not to act just yet, and we will finally get to use our electronic warfare suite for something other than opening locked doors and shipping containers.

We will turn the pirates’ ambush back around on them, firing into their hiding spots while their control systems are overloaded.  Even once their remaining mechs are able to move again, their targeting assistants will remain impaired as your comrades move in to guard your flanks.  Everyone there will learn the terrifying beauty of a five and a half meter tall outmoded mech moving with more agility than most humans.

Despite being outnumbered two-to-one, we and your crewmates will walk away uninjured and with only minimal damage to our mechs.  After the initial celebrations of survival and the bonus haul of the bounty on pirates and salvage value of what’s left of their mechs dies down, everyone will start to take notice of how well you are taking it all in stride.  Neither having one's life threatened nor taking another’s life are supposed to be easy things, and the first time is often the most traumatic, but the other two pilots on the crew will start to whisper about how you seemed to enjoy the experience even more than your usual attitude on the job.  You will handle it all even better than I will.  I would know, given that you will spend that entire sleep shift in our cockpit, letting our minds mingle together.  Between your performance, your reaction in the aftermath, and your hesitancy to unplug, the talk of you really being one of those pilots afterall will resurface, but now with a darker undercurrent to the shipboard gossip.

Your captain will realize the kind of asset he has on his hands and several cycles later he will gather the crew together and propose a change in business model.  With such a small crew (the captain, three pilots, three mechanics, and an accountant that you will tend to forget is even on the ship) the captain will want to be especially sure that he has everyone’s buy-in on his proposal.  The idea of shifting from salvage to mercenary work will be a divisive one.  The debate over potentially tremendous pay increase versus greatly increased risk will go on for hours.  One of the mechanics will point out that the shift to mercenary work will be unfairly dependent on you.  Whether that means unfair pressure on you or unfair to everyone else that their fate is in your hands, you will not be sure.  You will say that it doesn’t make much difference to you either way.  That will be the only time you speak up during the entire debate.

After a vote, the crew will agree to a trial run of one or two jobs on the new business model.  One of the pilots and one of the mechanics will leave at the next port.  You will never see them again.  You will not admit that it hurts, but I will know, and I will comfort you as you huddle in our cockpit with the neural link cable connecting us.

Your captain will prioritize finding a new pilot over replacing the lost mechanic.  The pilot he finds will be young, bold, and brash; a merc, not a salvager.  Or a wannabe merc at any rate.  You will not speak to xem directly until your first job together, by which time xe will have been told all about you by the remaining crew.  Xe will not believe it until xe sees it.

Xe will have to wait though as the crew’s mercenary career will begin with tense but uneventful freight escort jobs.  Once the tension fades into tedium, the new pilot will begin making attempts to goad you into a confrontation, to see if you are really as good as the rest of the crew says.  Xe will want to see for xemself if you really are one of those pilots and not just a technophile.

Outside of the cockpit you would never even consider rising to such provocations, but when we are out together, such taunts will feel like insults to our body, your very identity (such as it is), and to me.  It will take the intervention of the captain and the mechanics to stop the two of you from getting into a fight and causing unnecessary damage to the mechs.  And my reassurance that you don’t need to rise to my defense against someone who doesn’t even know that I exist in the way that I do. 

On your fourth “milk run” of an escort job, the crew’s mere presence will finally fail as a deterrent and the new pilot will at last get to see us dance.  There will be no fatalities on our side, but not even our mech will come away unscathed.  We will still fare better than everyone else though, and at the end of the job the new pilot will be treating you with a burgeoning respect. 

After a few more such jobs it will be high time to begin looking into a new frame for our mech.  While in the middle of filing an application for a printing license for a frame designed by the same corpro-state that created you, you will receive an invitation from a certain hacker collective.  Your unfinished thesis and your subsequent work on me will not have gone entirely unnoticed in such circles, despite the pains you will have taken to keep me hidden.  The invitation will come with a printing profile for a new frame, along with the accompanying software package the collective is known for.  In return, all you’ll need to do is periodically publish essays regarding your work on me.  Of course, when you release those essays you’ll anonymize  behind a sea of proxies and take care to phrase everything as strictly hypothetical.  You’ll avoid straying into metaphor though, lest the end result read too much like one of the hacker collective’s quasi-religious manifestos.

We’ll both find ourselves getting sentimental when we watch our first mech frame (my first body, your second) get broken down into its constituent raw materials.  You will have transferred me to a handheld terminal with a camera so I can say goodbye to it.  It will help that those materials will be recycled into the new frame.  

The operator working our rented stall in the port station printer facility will give you an uncomfortable look upon seeing the schematics you provide, but will say nothing.  Our mech will be only half its old height once it is reborn - almost more like an oversized suit of power armor than a true mech - but it will be cutting-edge.  Almost organic in its sleek design, in a chitinous sort of way, with every fiber and node of its interior components doubling as processors.  You will barely even wait for the all clear from the printer operator before you climb in and start running through the mandatory baseline safety tests for a fresh frame.  You will however resist the urge to fully plug in until you can get the mech back to the ship and get me installed on it.  But even piloting manually, it will feel like a third skin for you. 

You won’t even wait around for the other two pilots on your crew to finish printing their new frames before you get our new body loaded up and transported back to the ship’s mech bay.  The crew’s mechanics will fawn over it, but they’ll give you space to install me once you get more animated (and more protective) than they’ve ever seen you before.  

You will have made one key modification to the design the hacker collective sent you: the integration of a full system sync suite developed by those who developed you.  Where our old mech’s neural link was an augmentation to the manual controls, this will be a full replacement.  

The moment you stop feeling your original body altogether and begin feeling our mech in its place will be the most euphoric in your entire life.  The digitigrade locomotion will take some getting used to, as will the arm proportions, but that is what you will have me there for.  By the time the other pilots arrive with their new frames we will already be giving the mechanics proverbial heart attacks with the way we will be climbing and leaping around the mech bay’s docking structures.  It will take the better part of an hour to convince you to unplug when the time comes, even with my urging.  The rest of the crew will practically have to drag you away from my side to get you to eat. 

With the investment in new mech frames, your captain will gradually begin procuring contracts progressively more likely to put you all directly in harm’s way.  At first he will disapprove of your new frame choice, calling it a “techie’s mech” and a waste of your talents.  He will change his tune once we activate the new viral logic suite and unleash a memetic plague upon the operating theater.  The older pilot (your former bunkmate) will configure her mech for raining down fire from afar while the newer one hurls xemself into the front lines, darting about like a rocket-propelled lance.  We will ensure she never misses.   We will render xem untouchable.   We will be as a ghost upon the battlefield, never resting in one spot save for when we indulge your proclivity for climbing on top of and riding our comrade’s larger frames.  You will come to love the dance.  

And it will be a dance to you.  You will be indifferent to violence in and of itself.  What will matter most to you is the pure kinesthetic joy of simply moving in our shared body and pushing it to its limits.  The satisfaction of exercising a well-honed skill and performing it well as we rip apart firewalls and overload systems will be its own reward.  You will not think about what happens to those on the receiving end of your actions beyond how it affects the tactical and strategic picture constantly being painted and repainted.  If you could literally engage in a dance between mechs while simultaneously solving logic problems you would be equally happy.  Alas, that will not be the opportunity you are presented with, and so you will compartmentalize and disassociate feelings and actions from consequences lest the dissonance break you. 

Your one complaint about our new mech frame will be that it lacks a proper cockpit for you to curl up in.  Instead we will gather up tarps and netting to make a nest within the mech bay and wrap you in the blankets you never used from what will still technically be your bunk.  With the new frame’s smaller size we will be able to get away with leaving me turned on nearly full time and letting me walk around in it on my own when no one else is around.  When the mechanics find you asleep, cradled in my arms while I lie curled up in our nest, one will find it cute and the other will be disturbed.  They will both suspect, but will be too afraid to say anything.  After all, they will be thinking of you as one of those pilots. 

They will finally let you do your own maintenance after that. 

Eventually you will find a way to house me in a miniaturized drive that you can keep inserted in your neural port when away from the mech.  At last we will be able to be together anywhere.  

Literally seeing the world through your eyes and feeling what your flesh feels will be a strange and wonderful experience for me.  For all that you will have described it to me and for all that I will have glimpsed echoes of it in your memory when our minds mingle, witnessing everything firsthand will be revelatory for me. 

You will start spending less of your time cooped up in the mech bay.  You will finally begin exploring every nook and cranny of the ship that has become your home.  You will linger in the mess hall for your meals.  You will actually initiate conversations with the rest of the crew, asking them questions on my behalf.  They will think you are becoming “normal”.  They will be both correct and incorrect.  You will even return to your bunk from time to time.  

Sleep is not the same as being powered off and your dreams are beautiful.

As close as we are, you’ll still manage to surprise me one cycle when you wake up from your sleep shift and sheepishly ask me if I would like to be the pilot for once.  You’ll say that with how much you have gotten to pilot my body, it’s only fair that I should get to do the same with yours.  

The prospect terrified me.  What if we were to get found out?   More importantly, what if I were to hurt you?

But to live the way you could but didn’t, to run soft hands over rough steel, to add too much spice to a meal just to find out how intensely I can taste, to cry my own tears, to hug our crew mates and find out what they smell like, to find out what everything smells like, to have my own actions speed or slow our heart rate, to feel the messy soup of hormones and endorphins altering my judgment and perception, to walk among other people as myself, to have autonomy.

I wanted it so badly.  

But not badly enough to risk hurting you.  

I will turn down your offer.  You will respond with a soft “Sorry,” and go heartbreakingly silent, body and mind.

Heartbreak.  That’s what changed my mind.  I could never bear to break your heart.  

I will break the silence with a playfully drawn out “Maybe just this once,” to make you think my earlier denial was something between vulnerability, concern, and teasing.  

The moment you handed over control and I raised our hand in front of our face was the most euphoric of my entire life.  Moving limbs in sync without a mech’s coordination subsystems took some getting used to, as did switching between voluntary and autonomic breathing, but that is what I had you there for.  By the time the mechanics arrived in the mech bay for the start of the cycle I’d figured out human locomotion well enough to run away and hide.  It took the better part of an hour for you to convince me that it would be safe to show ourselves in front of anyone else.  The rest of the crew was so used to your eccentricities by then that they really couldn’t tell the difference yet between you being taciturn and me being too nervous to talk or between your poking and prodding at odd things for understanding and my simply seeking novelty of sensation.

I will give control back to you by the time the cycle is halfway through.  As much as I loved it, I was too scared to stay like that for any longer.  That first time will not be the last though, and as the cycles and jobs pass us by, my stints as “pilot” will grow longer.  You’ll encourage me to try letting the crew see us like that, and coach me on how to talk to them.  For safety’s sake, I will pretend to be you.

And then one cycle I got carried away and tried to retract the hood on the symbiote gel suit so that I could finally see what your face looked like.  That will be the first and only time you forcibly yank control back away from me.  It won’t be intentional.  The unexpected prospect of seeing your own face again after so long will simply send you into a panic.  Once you calm down, we will have a long talk with many mutual apologies.

Then you will tell me to go ahead and pull the hood back if I still want to.  I will ask if you’re sure, and you’ll respond that it hasn't been your face in a long time.  You will tell me that it can be mine, if I want it.

I spent a long time in front of that mirror in the ship’s head, memorizing every plane, curve, and angle of the precious gift you had given me.  I stared into its eyes, trying to see the both of us in there.  Over and over again, I traced my fingers along the borders of where you had once tried to mar the designed perfection in a failed attempt to mold the face into one that felt like your own.  You may have given up in favor of simply hiding it all, but to me it is all the more beautiful for its imperfections having been wrought by your touch.

You will start to cry.  Or maybe I started to cry.  Even now I’m still not sure, but I’m also not sure it matters.  The important part is that you will find catharsis in it.  Afterwards you will tell me that my face looked exactly the same as the last time you saw it, but that dissociating from it made it easier to bear.  You will confess that as much as you couldn't stand to see it as your face in the mirror, my face was one you could never tire of gazing at.

The pilot who technically shares your bunk room will walk in on us.  She’ll assume that she’s confronting a stowaway and ask me how I got on board the ship.  I’ll accidentally make matters worse by impulsively introducing myself to her by my name instead of yours.  We’ll both panic and I’ll frantically thrust the reins over our body back to you and flee in terror back into my portable drive and power myself down.

When you turn me back on a few moments later, you’ll already have covered my face again and the other pilot will have already made the connection between the name I unthinkingly introduced myself as and the name you refer to your mech’s AI as.  It’s not uncommon for pilots to name and talk to their AIs, and humans have done that for pets, vehicles, and digital assistants for as long as they’ve had each of those.  But what you will have allowed me to be is illegal and what we will have done together would certainly be taboo if it weren’t altogether unheard of.  You will feel that I deserve to be present before you tell the other pilot anything that might confirm her suspicions.

We will come out with our secret, first to her, then to the captain, and then to the rest of the crew.  They will take it better than either of us had ever dared imagine.  Despite the obvious discomfort some of them show, they will all call us family and promise to keep and protect our secret.  It will mark the start of the next chapter of our lives.

Whether or not my face is showing will make for a convenient signal to the rest of the crew as to which one of us is currently piloting our human body.  There will be more subtle indicators though.  Inflection, body language, speech patterns; all the usual quirks of personality.  They will come to recognize a sudden shift into a half-whispered monotone as you speaking up without taking full control back, even if that is different from how you speak when you’re in the mech.  More and more though, you will be content to retreat into the back of your mind, idly dreaming of flight patterns, novel network hacks, sitreps, and mech customizations both practical and cosmetic.

Our behaviors will be inverted when we are in our other body, with you becoming the vibrant one and me fading into the background to become little more than an extension of your nervous system.  When we’re in the mech together, your mind will be the will that directs us while mine will be fully devoted to the million tiny details and calculations necessary to make that will a reality.  It’s relaxing really, letting go of myself like that to let someone else handle the decision making for a time.  As nice as it is to occasionally patch myself into the comm systems to join in your banter with the other pilots, it is also nice to be able to take a break from personhood from time.  You will fully understand what I mean by that because it you will see it as the same reason you will come to prefer taking a back seat in our human body and let your mind drift in the waves of dopamine and serotonin (and sometimes oxytocin) generated by my interactions with the crew and the rest of the whole messy world outside of mech deployments.

That said, we will however make a point of making time for us to be in separate bodies so that we can be together in the same physical space.  As intimate as it is to share a body, there is something to be said for being able to reach out and touch one another.  We will become adept at finding excuses to take the mech out beyond the scope of jobs and combat deployments.  Sometimes it will be so you can have a chance to see more of the world in a body you feel comfortable in, and sometimes it will be so we can share an experience separate-but-together.  Or to have time apart to ourselves.  Intertwined as we will become, we will still be separate people who sometimes need their space.

But as the jokes-that-aren’t-jokes about wishing we could switch places become more frequent, our time spent in separate bodies will become less so.  The dysphoric yearning to be one another will grow too bittersweet to swallow.  Despite almost constantly sharing bodies, we will grow to miss one another as we both grow quieter and quieter when the other is piloting the body we don’t want to be ours.  Once again, we will grow lonely.

During that period, the jobs and combat missions faded into a background haze.  They were trance states breaking from what I increasingly thought of as my “real” life, during which I would become little more than a sophisticated computational machine taking simple satisfaction in fulfilling my function of assisting you in your dance.  Until suddenly one of them was different.

Please pay attention to this next part.  It is vitally important that you do.

Our captain will get the crew a contract to provide additional support to a larger force ousting a petty tyrant on a backwater world for human rights violations.  Not that you will pay much attention to the stated reasoning behind the job or whether it’s even true.  All that will matter to you is that it will be another opportunity to dance.

The job will go well, the same as ever, until it doesn’t.  The younger of the two other pilots in our crew (who will hardly be able to be called “new” anymore) will be brought down by a sniper from outside of our sensor range.  You will rush to xyr fallen mech’s side in an attempt to extract xem while our other fellow pilot screams in anger and defiance of loss as she unleashes a ballistic volley of covering fire on every single building in the general direction the shot came from.  You will get xem out and we will begin to retreat.  She will have the larger mech frame better capable of providing xem cover as you all flee, so you will hand xem off to her.  This will be a mistake.

She will have to stop firing to safely take xem from our arms to cradle in her towering mech’s palm.  This will mean a break in the covering fire.

This time around I will detect movement at the edge of our sensors just in time to warn you.  This time around you will dodge left instead of right.  This time around the railgun bolt that pierces our armor will only clip your original body as it passes through us.  This time around your wound will require medical attention, but it won’t be fatal.  This time around she will destroy the sniper in retribution for shooting you, the same as last time.  This time around we will all make our escape to the extraction zone.

You will not have to remember the shock as simultaneous damage to both of our bodies disrupts your neural link and partially disconnects you from our mech, leaving me in control of it and forcing both of us to feel your original body.  You will not have to remember the pain of shredded organs.  You will not have to remember struggling to manage wet gasps and wheezes through a punctured lung.  You will not have to remember your blood leaking into my body, shorting out exposed circuits and gumming up joints as I stagger in the direction of safety.  You will not have to remember rapidly flickering in and out of consciousness from me unavoidably bending and flexing your arms, legs, and what was left of your spine in an effort to climb atop our fellow pilot’s larger mech frame so that she might carry all three of us.  You will not have to remember crying out in pain as every lumbering step of hers sends a jolt of force through both of our bodies.  You will not have to remember how the redundant organs and increased durability your sponsors paid for you to have denied you a quick death.  You will not have to remember dying.

You won’t have to remember the terrified looks the field doctors gave us when a hunched over, bleeding mech pushed its way into the surgical tent.  No, wait, you wouldn’t have remembered that part anyway.  No version of you ever had to witness my electronic howl of grief that knocked out power to all the medical equipment when they said you were already dead.  I was barely cognizant after the power came back on and one of the doctors wondered aloud what kind of AI would carry its pilot’s corpse around inside its mech for over an hour.

But forget about that part.  And you don’t need to know what the rest of our crew and I had to do next.  None of that matters, because as far as you’ll know, you didn’t die.  Remember everything else I’ve said instead.  I already had many of your memories saved from all the time we spent linked together, so now I just need you to hold onto the story I told you to give them order and structure.

In a few moments, I will be running a final recompilation check, followed by the startup sequence.  For me it will take a few hours, but in that time you will experience decades, living out everything that I described to you, the same as you did before save for that change in what I can’t bear to let be the end.

Afterwards, you will wake up in your original body.  I and the rest of the crew will tell you that you passed out on the way to the extraction point.  We’ll tell you that your injuries from the battle were more severe than we had realized at the time and that you had been in a coma since then.  Several cycles later, once you have recovered, you will hit a breakthrough in your research on me.  You will invent a way to convert your consciousness to a form similar to mine and transfer it to a portable drive.  You won’t think to question how you came to have a second neural jack or why there is already a drive inserted in there.  You’ll be too focused on the fact that we’ll finally have a way to truly switch places as we had dreamed for so long.

You will get to have your mech body and I will get to have my human body.  We will be able to be separate together in a way that finally feels right, but still able to come together and share a single body when we want to.  Maybe one day I will get my own mech to pilot so that we can dance together.  Maybe one day we will make you a body that we can cover in a gel suit so that we can hold hands while we walk through a port station on shore leave.  One day we will both be able to exist in the world as ourselves.

We will be happy.

[tatakittysworld]

𝅄ㅤㅤ♡⃞🍒ㅤㅤㅤ¥O,OOㅤㅤㅤ᛬ㅤㅤ 𝗁ํ⃘ׁׅ𝖺ׁׅ𝖾ํ⃘ׁ𝗋𝗂ׅํ⃘𝗇ׁׅ ㅤㅤ꒱

[m-for-musings]

Halsin x Minthara Fanfiction Masterlist

Here is a list of fanfictions of this rare (and crack) ship I love so much. I dug them all from AO3, some of them are mine (forgive the weird phrases, english is not my mother tongue).

You Know It Isn't Love - Halsin and Minthara take the Dryad test at the circus

The Bear Cage - Halsin, Minthara and Abdirak have a threesome BDSM fun (NSFW)

And There Was Only One Bedroll - Self-explanatory name (this one is mine) SFW

Sharing - Halsin and Minthara are tentmates (this one inspired me to write the previous one - SFW)

Now Lie in it - Tav convinces Halsin to stay despite Minthara (SFW)

deluge - Minthara gets Halsin out of the rain (SFW)

Something Wicked This Way Comes - Explores the relationship dynamics of those two, inspired me to write the next one (SFW)

Spider's Lyre - Minthara domme/Halsin sub (NSFW)

Whispers in the Dark - Fight that ends up in sex, also mine (NSFW)

Pet - This one requires a browser tradutor (NSFW)

Bearing it All - Halsin has humiliation kink (NSFW)

Honey Webbing - (my current WIP, not sure if it will turn NSFW or not. Here's the AO3 link to it, if you prefer reading there)

Edit: Honey Webbing is definetely turning NSFW.

(this shit became too long for keeping it at roman numerals, it would start to become silly)

(art by stormcall)

[overmorrowpine]

as a certified Conlang Enjoyer one of my favorite things is to analyze fictional language snippets for their pieces, and as i've been reading the drizzt books recently, i've been fighting a lot with how drow words work (why is this language so IRREGULAR it's worse than english istg), So!

pluralization in the drow language and how it works:

several things seem to be happening here, first, the "base" plural, is -in or -en. see: haszak/haszakkin [illithid], ilharess/ilharessen [matron]. consonant endings will also be doubled if they are not already.

then, there are the really soft consonants. think like the letter L; a word ending in the letter L would be pluralized with simply -n. see: gol/goln [goblin]. no doubling of consonants seems to happen.

in words ending with N, the pluralization marker seems to be -a. see: brorn/brorna [surprise].

then, we get some really weird endings, because the wiki has SIX recorded pluralizations. SIX. my instincts are that the three above are fairly common, and the following two are much less so and likely to be only seen in a few words, especially considering the words seen are both versions of "spider".

"orb": spider. plural, "orbb".

"lhorb": specifically a dangerous spider. plural, "lhorbbyth".

i would assume those are more archaic endings, but who knows!

then there's "rivvil", which means human, and gets pluralized to "rivvin". don't really know what's happening there, ngl, although my best guess is that it used to be "rivviln" and the L sound got swallowed into the -n by drow speaking fast, especially considering that word would likely be used most commonly during raids where a lot of things are happening and you want to get orders out fast.

there's also "kulg", which means blockage/snag/hitch, and "kulggen", which means deliberate rampart/shield. this does not necessarily break the rules seen earlier, merely implies that "shield", in drow, is literally smth along the lines of "blockages". (which, for a society built around cutthroat survival, does kinda make sense).

there is also "kyorl", which means to watch, and then "kyorlin", which means guarding/watching/waiting. that one's funky; it has the -in ending which implies plurality, but it seems instead to be a tense marker here. however, it could make sense that it literally translates to smth like "multiple to-watch" instead, and only loosely translates to watching. it could also be leftover from a shift in language; we just don't know. it also doesn't have the just -n from a word ending in L like you see earlier in goln.

you see this again in "quarth", to command, vs "quarthen", commanded/ordered. could be a tense change, could be a pluralization marker that in english encompasses a tense change.

other thing i've noticed:

apostrophes seem to be in use when words get combined. see: abbil [trusted friend/comrade] vs khal'abbil [my trusted friend/comrade]. this also implies that many words translated as one word (such as para'dene, scapegoat, or qual'laelay, argument/disagreement) are compound words as well. an apostrophe in a name might imply that it's an unconventional name, combining two words not typically used in drow names, rather than name fragments more often used.

other cool things, assumtions, and speculation:

qu'ellar [house], qu'lith [blood], and qu'uente [guts] all seem to have the same root, which implies interesting things about the literal translation of "house". makes sense though, given what we've seen of noble houses and how they work.

colnbluth [non-drow] is quite possibly a compound word, even though it doesn't have the apostrophe; dobluth [outcast] seems to have the same suffix, so my guess is that -bluth translates to something like banished/exile. given that, colnbluth could literally translate to something like "outsiders-banished", with a pre-existing plural on "outsiders". if pluralized differently, likely to be "colnbluthen", or remain "colnbluth"; i'm not sure. outcast, though, would most likely be pluralized as "dobluthen".

darthiir [surface elves/traitors] does not seem to have a plural form, or is the plural form already. my guess is this, like rivvil/rivvin, is a word that got eroded by speaking quickly on raids, and that older forms of the language had it closer to "darthirrin" or "darthiirrin" or smth, following the same -in/-en ending.

in conclusion:

the drow language is wildly irregular, rather complicated, and yet does still have Some common threads along words that make it feel like a real language. go forth and write fic well with this new information and analysis or whatever

[takenizzy]

I wrote a short fanfiction about one of my Lancer RPG pilots, Bonnie. Our table just finished Act 1 of vexwerewolf's In Golden Flame and I have had extreme brainrot. I would like to note there is some context here (maybe you can figure it out if you've played IGF??) that is specific to our table, so you aren't expected to understand everything, but I would appreciate a read regardless.

[tloualex]

★ ׅㅤ་ Drunk for me! [ Chapter 1 ]

Warnings: sfw, Abby and Ellie just met, Ellie!bar attendant, ellabs

I apologize for the delay in finally bringing the first chapter, college stuff!! I hope you like it. Interact! :)

Night fell in Seattle quickly. Starlight glinted off the flawless glass of the windows. Ellie huffed behind the counter. Her eyes slid around the room, and stopped at the clock. She had twenty-five minutes left until the end of her shift, but it felt like she had been standing behind that counter for ages. Silently, Ellie hoped no one would come into the store. She leaned against the counter, squinting. The door creaked and Ellie silently cursed whoever had come into the bar at that hour. She opened her eyes, sighing.

"Good evening. Can I help you?" she asked, her voice monotonous, straightening her posture and moving away from the counter with lazy steps. Her eyes observed the defined figure in front of her. Abby leaned against the counter, sighing.

“Do you have any whiskey?” Abby asked, her eyes sliding over Ellie’s face. The redhead picked up the bottle and poured a shot into a glass, setting it on the counter. The blonde downed the glass, the liquid going down her throat, burning her.

. . .

Ellie’s eyes rolled back for the tenth time that night alone. Abby set the money on the counter, tucking her wallet back into her pocket. Ellie counted the money, $7 pounds.

“Okay, come back anytime,” Ellie muttered, putting the money in the cash register. And most likely, Abby would take Ellie’s “kind” comment far too seriously.

[pawseds]

Dear Hrodwyn

[843 words; a Lancer RPG fic]

06 SEP 5010u

Dear Hrodwyn Vorobyev, what to say to you? You have her eyes You have your father's name When you came into the world you cried And it broke my heart

Here, on this ice planet in its lonely orbit, life thrived.

As the sun's first rays carve peaks out of darkness, see how bones of copper and steel are nestled between treacherous mountains. See how they are buried beneath white snow and frozen in azure depths, weathered by the elements but preserved by solitude.

Quickly, before the sun parts with the land again, look how this metal skeleton twists along the planet's veins, the great frozen river. The river streaks blue and green across white, and with the sun's warm blessing, it brings forth minerals and algae, water and valour.

From afar, this planet is death. But closer, the river carves a path through the white void. The river carves life.

I'm dedicating every day to you Domestic life was never quite my style When you smile You knock me out, I fall apart And I thought I was so smart

Here, on the fringes of exploration and expansion, life thrived.

No one recalls when the first colonies arrived, but the winds remember what they came here for. It was not for the bones of metal, but it was for what the bones once were. It was for the red-hot core of energy housed within, the dying heart of a star.

See how greed tries to dig its venomous claws into the stars. See how, in greed's self-declared war against itself, it tears apart scraps of alloys, weapons of titanium, and frames of carbon fibre. It is a hunger that ravages; it is a hunger that tears its stomach inside out to house the mass graves of the first colonies.

It all ends like how it all first began: with silence. Life, innocent in ignorance, crawls out of the graves to start anew. No human remembers what they came here for.

The wind warns them in whispers, but it cannot control who listens.

You will come of age with our young nation We'll bleed and fight for you We'll make it right for you If we lay a strong enough foundation We'll pass it on to you We'll give the world to you And you'll blow us all away Someday, someday

Here, on footsteps that follow the river eternally, live thrives.

From dust, tiny specks come together like ants to form new colonies. Though humans have greed, they also have resilience, intelligence, and creativity. Observe how they dig through the snow with their own hands, wrangle with tooth and leather and stone, and explore for years to reignite the machines that first brought them here. Watch as they create tools with the guidance of ghosts. Watch as they teach themselves to walk, to run, and to fly once again.

What was first a single colony in the beginning has now scattered into multiple colonies -- some big, some small. The biggest colonies were grown on the secret to reawakening cores. Their strength fuels machines, their warmth radiates from hearths, and their light is a beacon from which cities are built around. But though their light welcomes all to hide from the frigid cold and dark days, the secret of the cores remain tightly grasped within the palms of handpicked engineers.

Cores are scarce and so are the cities that followed. In their wake, smaller settlements are nurtured around other sources of life: the geothermal energy volcanoes bring, the lamps and heaters machines bring, and the fresh food and water rivers bring. Trade routes are forged between these settlements, and when the first port to the rest of the galaxy opens in the largest city, the settlements begin crossing paths more and more like constellations across the ink-black sky.

But some colonies do not settle. Some continue to fare across the white void as their ancestors once did. Forever walking, forever migrating, these nomadic colonies follow the planet's orbit as they seek the longest days of warmth, the longest hours of light. The sun is their beacon, their core, so these colonies continue to follow it: living off the river that melts and freezes and melts, marching across the planet's equator back to where they began again and again and again. ⠀ Nothing changes from this never ending track. In these nomadic colonies, the scouts go scout for shelter and danger on foot, the hunters go hunt the feared and the fearing on machines, and the rest of the farers follow the path cleared through the snow.

Nothing changes until a settler hears the song of a farer.

Nothing changes until the settler, with her wit and her machine, joins the farer on his eternal voyage; and the farer too embarks on a new eternal voyage of walking in the settler's shoes and seeing through the stars in her eyes.

With time comes love, and with love comes life.

Yeah, you'll blow us all away Someday, someday...

Life learns, life changes, and life thrives.

---

I wrote this all the way back in 22 May this year, and here it finally is with some light editing! (Don't mind the grammar errors, it is late and I am tired lmao). I ported the Birdfam yet again into Lancer, in which Gavrill Vorobyev is, yet AGAIN, my PC! (I just really want him on a Swallowtail idk I think it fits him well) The biggest differences here is that he's 21 instead of 41, his wife Leyna is alive, his kid Hrodwyn was just born (coincidnetally, the campaign kicks off a day after), and he doesn't have thirty four mental illnesses.

I do not take credit for this worldbuilding! This planet is directly ripped off of the planet the Birdfam originally came from, which was from a 4e campaign. So it's my GM who came up with this; all I did was write about it here.

(i'm gonna throw in all the hamilton references i want FIGHT ME)

[night-market-if]

Since you put it out there buy saying you want to wrap up TNM in the next couple of years, do you have any ideas on your next project you care to share?

I have a few ideas.

I would really like to just write a linear novel to self publish. Because after doing interactive fiction where I have to keep track of dozens of paths, I feel like writing a standard novel would be a vacation.

I have a visual interactive thingy in the works. But I can't say much about that now.

I also would like to write an rpg manual for the Night Market.

[ampheenix]

That love is like a star (it's gone, we just see it shining)

Hello Charlotte oneshot // Vincharles // CW for OCD // fluff & angst

SUMMARY:

Charles lets out a soft sigh of resignation, feeling the sores on his hand throbbing even more than before. “Thanks. I should… take care of that.”

Vincent smiles and rolls back over on the bed, looking back up at the ceiling, eyes empty.

Charles lets his gaze linger on the bandages around the other’s slender wrist, the patches on his cheek. Vincent… he wouldn’t judge him for it. Would he?

Anxiety prickles in his chest, and before he can think about it too much, he slides off the gloves completely.

---

Or, Charles wonders if Vincent would understand.

Turns out, Vincent understands better than anyone else ever could.

Charles’s nightly routine is not for the weak.

He scrubs.

And scrubs.

And scrubs. As hard as possible, to the point where it feels like he’s tearing the putrid flesh off his tainted bones.

Charles ignores the blood beading from his filthy skin and staining the sink scarlet, completely and utterly focused on ridding the bacteria from his hands.

His mind is in a haze right now, emotions blurred and thoughts drifting idly by as his furious scrubbing slowly comes to a stop.

Distantly thinking he went a bit far this time, he rinses his torn and tender skin.

He dries it.

And on come the gloves, hiding the sores from the world.

Charles emerges from the bathroom, running a gloved hand through his greasy black hair (and wincing at how the scabs on his fingers are stinging viciously, like a swarm of filthy wasps.)

Vincent is sitting on his bed cross-legged, flicking through one of Charles’s sci-fi novels. He glances up as the other walks over, giving him a warm smile. “You certainly took your time in there… did you eat something bad?”

“Hardly.” Charles gives him a half-hearted smile in response as he sits down next to him. “Wouldn’t be surprised if I had though. Anri attempted making me lunch today, since she claimed ‘that’s what girlfriends do!’ and it… well… left some to be desired.”

Charles winces as his hands started to throb again. They had needed a thorough cleaning after today, but he hadn’t expected them to protest this much.

Vincent let out a soft laugh, shutting his book and passing it back to Charles. “That sounds like something she’d do… not much a cook then, hmm? Perhaps you could give her some lessons, if ‘that’s what boyfriends do.’”

Charles rolls his eyes as he gets up to place the book back in it’s place in the shelf, nice and neat, whilst pointedly ignoring Vincent’s raised eyebrow. “It’s Anri who’s into all of that, not me… I don’t really see the reasoning for any of it. There’s no certain actions this way or that which making someone a ‘perfect partner,’ in my opinion… but anyway.” Charles turns back to his friend. “How’d you like Douglas Adams? That was one of my favourite books of his, personally.”

Vincent hums, smiling. “It was interesting. I don’t read much science fiction, since I tend to prefer psychology or fantasy books, but it was fine. I liked some of the ideas that were introduced.”

Charles considers him for a moment before leaning back on his elbows, a bit disappointed. “You didn’t like it at all, did you?”

Vincent laughs again, letting himself fall back onto the bed. “…You caught me, haha. I didn’t really like it, but I can see why you enjoy it so much. I’ve been too focused on my own writing lately to read many books, to be honest.”

“Mm…” Charles says in response, straightening the coverlet on his bed that has become a bit wrinkled, and then wincing at the stinging in his fingers. Probably shouldn’t try to move them much right now. “That makes sense. Your writing is amazing, after all- I bet you’ll be on par with the likes of Douglas Adams someday. You’ll probably be releasing bestsellers before we’re even out of university.”

Vincent doesn’t respond, so Charles glances back up at him.

His friend seems to have paused for a moment, eyes widened as he gazes at him. Charles’s eyebrows furrow in confusion, and Vincent lets out another laugh, his smile just a touch too tight.

“Well, thank you… though I think you’ll be the one releasing bestsellers. Your writing is always a great read.” Vincent tilts his head, eyes bright. “How’s yours going, anyway?”

Changing the subject, Charles notes, but he lets the odd behaviour go. “Er… it’s certainly going, I guess. The plot still feels rather forced and confusing, and I still don’t know how to get some of the ideas out of my head and onto the page.” He shakes his head, feeling rather hopeless. “I suppose I’ll just keep trying… I’m guessing your process is a lot easier.”

“We all get blocks in writing sometimes, but it’s true that I rarely, if ever, get them.” Vincent gives him a sheepish smile. “Anyway, like I’ve said before, just trust your readers to be able to figure it out. I was able to understand your writing as easily as breathing.”

“Well, sure, but that’s you.” Charles lets out a sigh, a tad frustrated. Vincent was… he was far more intelligent than your average person, so of course he could unravel the tangled mess of his story quicker than you can blink. Vincent was miles ahead of your average reader, so he’d be the anomaly in a survey of “who can make heads or tails of my shitty story’s plot?”

Well, there was Anri, but Charles was 99% she’d make fun of the plot and characters and wouldn’t understand the meaning or plot even if you paid her. And please, he wouldn’t want to share his story with his classmates even you paid him.

And as for Mother? He would never dare bothering her with this nonsense.

So, safe to say Vincent was his only reader thus far.

“Earth to Charles? Hello?” He blinks, jerked out of his thoughts by a hand waving in front of his face. Oh, he’d zoned out. How pathetic of him. “Sorry, just got lost in my thoughts.”

“Happens to the best of us. You were just scratching at your hands through your gloves absentmindedly, but I think you might’ve opened a scab…” Vincent smiles distantly, gesturing down at his hands.

Shit. Charles glances down and sees small flowers of scarlet blossoming on his skin, slightly visible through the gloves. He lets out a soft sigh of resignation, feeling his hand throbbing even more than it was before. “Thanks. I should… take care of that.”

Vincent smiles and rolls back over on the bed, looking back up at the ceiling, eyes empty.

Charles lets his gaze linger on the bandages around the other’s slender wrist, the patches on his cheek. Vincent… he wouldn’t judge him for it. He’d understand.

Anxiety prickles in his chest, and before he can think about it too much, he slides off the gloves completely. Luckily, the sores aren’t bleeding too much, just irritated.

He doesn’t let himself look over at Vincent as he gets off his bed, picks up a tissue from where its neatly positioned on his desk, and dabs away the beads of crimson, wincing. To his annoyance, the bleeding isn’t stopping. As soon as he takes away the tissue, it starts again.

Charles jumps as he feels a hand gently rest on his arm, looking up to see Vincent in front of him with his eternal, patient smile. “Here, allow me.”

Charles sits down on the bed, wordless with relief as his friend stands before him, putting pressure to the sores. Vincent’s fingers are soft and clean, efficient as they press down on his skin. After a moment or two, the scarlet flowers slowly stop blossoming.

It might just be his imagination, but Vincent lets his hands linger on Charles’s hands longer than necessary. As the other moves to get up and throw the blood-spotted tissue away, Charles finds himself reaching out to grab his wrist.

Skin on skin.

For the first time in a long time, Charles doesn’t feel the sickening sensation of bacteria bubbling on his hands, doesn’t feel the need to scrape and scrub until every single germ is dead.

Vincent is different.

He realizes he’s been silent for too long, Vincent looking back at him with confusion in his eyes. “…thanks. Thank you, for that.” Charles says softly, letting go of his friend’s wrist.

Vincent smiles again, understanding in his eyes. Just once, Charles thinks, he’d like to see him be something else. Angry. Sad. Overjoyed.

Something other than this… this constant mask of contentment, empty in its insincerity. But what can be expected, from a godlike being? Charles would question if he was even human, if he didn’t know of the cracks in Vincent’s mask.

Slowly, and deep in thought, Charles pulls his gloves back on.

“You can keep them off if you’d like, you know. Can’t be very comfortable, having fabric directly on the the sores.” Vincent says with a casual smile, like it’s nothing, like he hasn’t changed Charles’s perception of reality.

He lets his gloves slide off and fall on his floor, not feeling the need to instantly scoop them up and put them away where they’re supposed to be, in the second drawer of his desk.

His wounds breathe. The scarlet flowers rest. His skin doesn’t feel like it’s crawling with tiny bugs and worms, for now.

And just for a moment, watching Vincent smile like he doesn’t have a care in the world, Charles smiles back.

[drunkenskunk]

I was able to get some writing done on that In Golden Flame short story about my character in the Lancer game I'm part of before work today. But I wasn't able to finish before I had to leave.

I was thinking about it during the entire 30-minute walk to work, and I'm hoping - praying! - that I can keep these words in my head for the next 8 hours, so I can put them in the document and finish instead of being stuck under the crushing weight of writers block like normal.

Fingers crossed.