whodoyouthinkithinkiam

[whodoyouthinkithinkiam]

Also, here are the two of my AMVs that have been in contests!

and

[whodoyouthinkithinkiam]

i get grumpy about christians' constant No True Scotsman shit but to be fair the religion's branding IS pretty confusing

[whodoyouthinkithinkiam]

Oh ye gods what if people are still watching The Simpsons in 2353.

I don't know if you will be horrified or fascinated by this, but someone has written a serious play about that what-if:

It's about people after the apocalypse quoting The Simpsons, and the way their children reinterpret and re-imagine it as a Greek-style epic. I am not a fan of The Simpsons but I have wanted to watch this play since I first read about it because "reinterpreting things into radical new forms" is one of my special interests.

But what I CAN do is...

"Seriously, kid, I know you think you want to manipulate the memories of the entire world, but that's a terrible idea that causes all sorts of weird multiverse nonsense."

[whodoyouthinkithinkiam]

[whodoyouthinkithinkiam]

Every time one of these companies gives me another reason to hate them I catch my stupid brain thinking, "I wish I hadn't already been avoiding that so I could boycott it now."

BOYCOTT AIRBNB

These people are trying to take over every aspect of our lives.

[whodoyouthinkithinkiam]

Don't worry, no one in our family is [REDACTED]

[whodoyouthinkithinkiam]

I'm not sure how much these are the numbers people would have written in if it were a freeform question, but... wow, that's some great poll design. The numbers make a perfect curve.

We ask your questions anonymously so you don’t have to! Submissions are open on the 1st and 15th of the month.

[whodoyouthinkithinkiam]

In a fantasy setting, my job would be exactly the same

[whodoyouthinkithinkiam]

One of the best shot of Total Solar Eclipse from 08-04-2024.

Via @nasa-official

[whodoyouthinkithinkiam]

Inspired by the ship ask meme. Specifically, inspired by these answers about Dex and Hermosa. Two color variants, because I tried a couple different things with the art-nouveau background.

Support Leif & Thorn on Patreon to get access to the high-res versions!

[whodoyouthinkithinkiam]

RPGs have taught me that skeletons are scary and dangerous monsters, but you know what? They really aren't. An adult skeleton weighs 23 pounds. Absolute lightweight. I don't know who needs to hear this but humans are just skeletons with additional armor. Skeletons are easy mode.

[whodoyouthinkithinkiam]

You are absolutely right about every one of those sayings.

I'd just like to reiterate, though, that one bad apple spoils the barrel.

I don't actually think every problematic expression has a better, longer version with the opposite meaning that oddly enough no one heard of until it surfaced on the internet like ten years ago. I think that is potentially not true

[whodoyouthinkithinkiam]

Happy Valentine’s Day, my friends and my followers. My latest campaign setting for Chuubo’s Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine, which is also my first campaign setting for Chuubo’s, is now available on my Itch page in Beta form. 

Rustic Vale: Life in the Shadow of Adventure is a lot of things. It’s a story about being the average people in a city on the edge of a bunch of fantasy dungeons. It’s a story about rebuilding a world after it all comes crashing down. And it’s a story about me. If you don’t want the essay, that’s cool! Click on the link, and tell me what you think. I hope you love it.

But if you do want that background…

2015 and 2016 were not good years for me. I’d given up on my dream of being a writer as my primary trade, thrown myself into my secondary passion to become a professional fundraiser, and was struggling with a tough job market, stringing together contract work and part-time jobs to make ends meet. My romantic life was a bit of a mess, my personal life was a lot of a mess, and the world didn’t seem to be going great.

So I did what I often did when I was depressed. I created. And what I built was a little town, where people who were ordinary went about their days surrounded by things that were big, and magical, and dangerous, and they focused on their day-to-day lives because making changes there was what would save them. 

I built a hero who just wanted to live a normal life, and a fortune teller who just wanted an exceptional one. I built a kid who wanted to grow up too fast, and a merchant who was losing sight of her goals. An old man who’d forgotten the things he sacrificed everything for, and a young one who was quietly rebuilding without anyone knowing. A priest who had seen the world pass them by and didn’t know how to reach out, and a mechanic who was reaching out and didn’t know how to stop. All of them were my own fears, my hopes, and my dreams. These little folks were living the life I was, or the life I wanted or the life I was afraid was waiting for me. 

And in the middle of all of that, I got a bit of encouragement. Jenna Moran, the creator of Chuubo’s, happened to see Rustic Vale, and she let me know that she thought it was good. It meant a lot, and I set about turning it from a campaign into a project - something that I could actually share with the world.

Which is where things kind of changed. I’m in a better place these days. The world is still a mess, but I have a job that I care about, a spouse I love deeply, and a life that I’m proud of. I’ve published two novels, I’ve written commission work that inspired me, and I’ve got a raft of little RPG projects that people like to read.

But I never published Rustic Vale.

I wanted it to be perfect. I wanted it to be professionally laid out, with gorgeous artwork and careful editing. I wanted it polished, and finished, and I kept making little changes and shifts. Along the way, the mechanics I’d used to build the characters changed as Jenna continued her own work on the Book of Golden Hours, and suddenly the characters were going to need substantial fixes. And releasing the book incomplete felt wrong. It felt like a betrayal.

But it’s not. The world is in a bad place, and maybe what some of you need right now is what I needed back then - just a little bit of a window into a place that lost everything, and built it back up. It’s not much. It’s not finished, and maybe it never will be. But it’s mine. It’s Rustic Vale.

I hope you love it half as much as I do.

[whodoyouthinkithinkiam]

Hey!! This week there are a couple fandom events involving leaving comments on things, and I'd like to encourage folks to do that for some KC fics by other people; writing for a tiny fandom is often thankless work, I wanna help promote them a little :D

The main tag is here but it's mostly my work y'all have seen already, here are some recent Things if you'd like some more kc stuff:

Wounds harm all (the) Time by LikeMe

Toulouse is tired. (Green Thousand Sing page 190+ spoilers)

Hulled Husks by Inchoatl

Spent seed shells, old and splintered.

(Inchoatl has a few other kc fics on their profile I highly recommend checking out too!)

Will Alone by Boss Duck

A little Phin love letter!

Thank y'all for making the effort to help keep this thing alive you're really doin the lord's work. Happy reading!

[whodoyouthinkithinkiam]

I guess that makes him the Equestria Girls version of Cheese Sandwich?

[whodoyouthinkithinkiam]

4, 6, and/or 12 for Dex/Hermosa? For 12 I'm specifically thinking before Hermosa got his injury, as it's kind of too obvious after.

4. are they opposites? parallels? reflections? something else?

6. why are they drawn to each other? what fuels the attraction? why is it this person, as opposed to anyone else?

...these are so relevant to the current storyline, wow. Somebody come back to this post in a couple weeks, and remind me to reblog with no-longer-spoilery commentary.

12. who is the mask and who is the voice? who is the weapon and who is the wielder? who watches and who performs? who shines and who reflects? 

Normally Dex is the mask and Hermosa is the voice, although when Hermosa was working in Northwind he did a lot of being-the-mask.

Dex is the weapon, Hermosa is the wielder.

Both of them watch (they were both talented spies, it's second nature by now), Dex performs and enjoys it, Hermosa performs as necessary.

"Not shining" is also second nature (hard to be a spy if you draw a lot of attention). Dex reflects in the sense of amplifying and spotlighting Hermosa's good qualities. Hermosa reflects in the sense of getting Dex to look at what they're doing, and maybe re-evaluate.