#and also is involved in the same kind of work i am (as side project stuff)

[solarisposting]

i grew up entrenched in the culture of camp crushes™️ from things like church camp and deca camp, and it's only now, well into adulthood, that i've learned that the matured version is professional conference crushes. loving life!!

#and as always this is like. 24 hour infatuation with a cool person #not 'im ending my relationship!' bc of someone i enjoyed talking to #but yeah a woman my age at this workshop who is bi with adhd and has a million other little similarities #and also is involved in the same kind of work i am (as side project stuff) #who happened to be so so so damn pretty and had great style and was just plainly fun to chat with #literally 'i want to be you and be your friend and also kiss you' #love it. bisexuality is a curse (affectionate. mostly. )

[allastoredeer]

Discussing fandom and its trends is one of my favorite things 🤓 I hope you don't mind me sharing some of the pseudotheories and pseudoanalyses I've seen before (to me they're all fun and I don't think they should be taken 100% seriously, please no one be offended)

1 The name of the boat that goes first is the favorite.

Quite funny in my opinion and from what I have seen it is not necessarily false, but many times it is that putting it differently sounds *wrong*, especially when they are combinations of the name

(Although after seeing that apparently apple radio and radioapple are not the same now I need an explanation of what radiosilent is as opposed to radiostatic)

2 The sub is The favorite

The first time I saw this was in a SW comment thread with a Chinese reader who was commenting with the author about top/Bottom preferences for the language and commented on this theory. They said that the Bottom gets all the love and since you want your favorite character to be adored that's why you write it like that

3 you project yourself into the Bottom

This came from another fandom, things got heated and toxic and a common accusation from a ship is that half the ship "had no personality" and they were using it to project themselves into a relationship whith the top

Personally I think they are all true to some extent, but I also see them as renunciationist and I myself am not without my own prejudices.

Part of the problem is that in relationships m/m and w/w, they continue to be written as one part a hairy-chested alpha male and the other part a blushing, submissive (and I have a weakness for ABO bulbs but there the problem is worse). In the case of radioapple Alastor has been reduced to his ego and need for control (so he could never let go. And is there something strangely allosexual about the way they write it?) and Lucifer to his depression (so he needs to be adored... And the truth is, I do think 3 applies here)

With what we see, I think that Lucifer has no problem being at the bottom, but his preference is at the top, even bordering on the Dom.Lucifer has insecurity and depression but he also knows he is powerful and we see him being authoritarian even if he later recants.He seems to be the type who would enjoy being the one to give pleasure to his partner, but I also don't see him giving up control easily when there are already so many things in his life out of control.Lucifer doesn't want someone to come in and take control by emptying his head, he wants something he can control and show exactly how good he is at it.

Alastor, on the other hand (this is where my prejudice comes in): what does he gain by being the top? Some kind of power play? Because I feel like Alastor can find that high without involving genital play.How ace (and probably aroace and almost certainly on the gray or demi side for most fics to work) Alastor would need something more to really get involved like that, which is why I feel like the top Alastor fics almost always feel too Allo for my taste, he just fucks like anyone else.When Alastor is the Bottom the writer gives him a little more nuance.

So that's my two cents to the discussion 🙃

Honestly, I think you're on point with most of these. (I too would like to know the difference between radiosilence and radiostatic - i see a lot of different names pop up for Alastor/Vox, whether its reciprocal or unrequited, and I can't keep up with it. I think radiosilence means the attraction is one-side? Maybe?? I think??

I can see the logic behind people having their fav be the bottom because they want them to feel loved and adored. I, too, am guilty of this. It also probably helps that the top is usually depicted as doing most of work LOL (Bringing Doms and Subs into this, there are a lot of fics that explore sub-drop, usually with their fav character--which I totally get--but it'd be interesting to read more fics that explore dom-drop too).

Personally, I've never felt any real attraction towards the characters I like, so I've never projected myself as a bottom or top through a pairing to be with one of the character. I project my insecurities and life experiences on them 🤓☝️ LMAO same basic concept, just a different shades But characterXreader fics/posts are super popular! So, I see that one too.

Part of the problem is that in relationships m/m and w/w, they continue to be written as one part a hairy-chested alpha male and the other part a blushing, submissive (and I have a weakness for ABO bulbs but there the problem is worse). In the case of radioapple Alastor has been reduced to his ego and need for control (so he could never let go. And is there something strangely allosexual about the way they write it?) and Lucifer to his depression (so he needs to be adored... And the truth is, I do think 3 applies here)

Very much agreed. I enjoy Omegaverse fics too, but it's one of those fanfic tropes that I'm picky about. It needs to be written a certain way for me to really enjoy it.

I don't know, just the default that one person has to be dominate and the other has to submissive never sat right with me. For a long time, I was super squicked out by even the thought of being in a relationship because of this. I'm a small person, most people are taller than me, and I'm pretty thin, so the mental assumption that I'd have to be "the submissive one," considering that's what almost always happens in these depicted relationships, made me feel so much anger, anxiety, and discomfort. I hated the thought that that's what would be expected of me. (Personal lore drop: considering I also grew up in a hyper-religious, extremely patriarchal town, the expectation felt 10x worse and 100x more real. I dreaded getting older and starting romantic/sexual relationships).

Also, yes, with a lot of top!Alastor content I've seen, there is something very strangely allosexual about it. Or, at least that's how it comes off to me. Asexuality is a spectrum, so there's no "perfect" way to be ace, it's just...there's just something about it that feels very allosexual, and maybe why I keep shying away from it. It squicks me out a bit, ngl.

People keep saying they see Lucifer as a switch, and funnily enough, it was actually confirmed by Vivenne Mendrano that he canonically is a switch! Of course, if people want to see him exclusively as a bottom or top, that's fair. You do you, boo. We're here to have a good time. But I'm very happy with his canon sexuality, so that's where I keep him. I can see him as a sub and a dom, too.

I also see Lucifer as the type who enjoys giving his partner pleasure! Be it bottoming, topping, subbing, or domming. He'll try out kinks and position and role-play, because I headcanon him and Lilith having a very healthy, very explorative sex-life. They were freaks in the sheets, and they tried all the new, crazy shit sinners brought with them into Hell.

I keep Alastor exclusively as a bottom, though. Some of it is because I see him being kind of grossed out with the idea of a part of him going into someone else (hello self projection!) but I also see him generally being sex-indifferent. Like, he'll have sex, and he'll enjoy it, but it's not something he typically seeks out for himself. Maybe once in a way, when he's in the ✨mood✨ he'll initiate. If his partner wants sex and he doesn't, he's not forcing himself. If his partner wants sex and he's kind of just vibing--not feeling horny, but not really against it either--yeah, he'll have sex. It's not like he's getting nothing out of it, he still feels and enjoys the pleasure in the act, even if he's generally indifferent towards doing it.

If he's comfortable with it he'll even indulge their kinks (and indulge his own 😉 not all kinks have to be sexual, afterall. And even if his are, that is still valid and does not take away from his sexuality because aces can still have sexual kinks 🫵 I'm looking at you, people who assume aces can't have sexual desires). (I also gave Alastor a power kink 😏 because I think he'd be into his partner displaying immense amounts of power. It doesn't even have to be directed at him. He'll watch his boo destroy a city block and then fuck them later because that was hawt.)

A lot of it could also be because he feels too allo for me when he is written as a top. Lol "he fucks like everyone else," is a very good way to put it 😂 When he bottoms, it feels like he's written with more of his ace-identity in mind, which I love!

But also, I like Alastor being a bottom just because. I vibe with it. 'Nuff said.

Thank you for your two cents!

#i don't know #i just don't know #there's a lot that goes into it #sometimes you can just tell when Alastor is written by someone who' isn't ace #or someone who doesn't really understand asexuality #the amount of times I've seen it implied or directly stated that he was “taught” how to love 😤 #its my biggest pet peeve #it doesnt matter how well written the story is #if i see that shit im clicking out immediately #but yeah #idk he always does feel very allo when he's written or drawn as a top #i think you hit the nail on the head with that one #ace's can top for sure #there's just #there's just SOMETHING about how its generally depicted that irks me #hazbin hotel #alastor #hazbin alastor #hazbin hotel alastor #the radio demon #lucifer magne #asks #anon #anonymous #lucifer morningstar #radioapple #appleradio #bottom!Alastor #top!Lucifer #switch!Lucifer

[queengiuliettafirstlady]

The Royal Archives Keith Characteristics

Welcome back you all to the sequel of Exploring Keith, after talking about what makes them switch I am at it again with a deep study about the characteristics of each side. 🧐

Duties

It seem from the knowledge we have collected until now that both sides are deeply involved in working for their Kingdom but in different ways.

The surprise of his attendant show us that, as diligent Kind Keith is, Dark Keith seem to be an even harder worker than him, may hap because Kind Keith usually stop to help people around at the contrary of Dark Keith as shown in More Love with the Beast, where he plainly ignore the man on the ground, he swept in to save, only to continue looking for the cat with the keys for the handcuffs.

Plans

The attendant help us once more, revealing the fact that Dark Keith likes to plan dates while Kind Keith to improvise them, in this dialogue we discover also that not only the attendant knows of Keith sides, but that he is not pleased to see Dark Keith showing up.

Fidgeting

It seem another shared traits of theirs is to fidget with things, be it fingers or coins.

Dark Keith

He tap his fingers on surfaces to show anger or annoyance in a situation, like when the attendant is scolding him, same reason that push him to fidget with the coins, probably more out of boredom for wasting time in unproductive or not funny ways.

Kind Keith

He instead, kind sensitive man he is, fidget with the coins to keep at bay anxiety or nervousness, in an attempt to calm himself down enough to remain in control of the situation, without Dark Keith pushing him away and taking the lead.

Positions

Dark Keith

Another sign Dark Keith likes to give as being in command of the situation is staring at the other with superiority, bordering in arrogance, leaning his back on the place where he is sitting on, showing either disinterest and haughtiness, like in Be my lover be my beast when the attendant is speaking to him, or deep interest, studying her reactions when they got locked together in the room To catch a bunny rabbit Epilogue, placing the arm on the nearest surface and lean his chin on his hand, be it on his fist or on his own fingers.

The sense of superiority, both physical and psychological he has, show off in in his posture, underlined by his crossing one knee over the other, considered a power move to show off dominance by taking more space and thus asserting one self in the situation, like he is doing with the attendant, remembering he is in charge being the Prince.

Tagging @itsmyara @kissmetwicekissmedeadly @candied-boys Thank you for the support to this project 🤗

@aquagirl1978 @violettduchess @atelieredux @randonauticrap @thewitchofbooks @princess-pray-a @itsjudesfault

#ikemen theories #my writing #ikemen prince #ikemen prince keith #ikepri keith #ikepri

[sakascal]

With Her as Our Witness, Final Chapter

So, this is it! The final chapter. To everyone, who's been reading along: Thank you very much! I hope you enjoyed this little story of mine.

As always, kudos, comments and shares are very appreciated! I may write for my own enjoyment, but it's even more fun, when I know other people are reading it and enjoying it as well.

This time, the notes section on the chapter is a bit longer. I had some things I wanted to clarify up front, in case it wasn't obvious. And needed to add a summary of another story of mine (Like Twinkling Stars) because this is set directly after it. And when I say "directly" I mean mere moments. ;)

Summary:

Aziraphale is back from Heaven. Our boys need to have a serious talk. The Bentley gets involved. She is a bit angry and making it known. Also, without her help, nothing would ever get done. Oh, and there is some serious snogging going on. Just saying.

Excerpt:

“What are you doing? Get in, angel.” Crowley was looking at him over the roof of the Bentley.

“I’m trying. I’m afraid the door won’t open.”

“It was open.” Crowley said helpfully, as if that would solve anything.

“Yes, I am aware of that, thank you. It shut just as I reached for it. And now I can’t seem to open it.”

“Shut? On its own?”

Aziraphale nodded and huffed, then looked around. His absence in Heaven wouldn’t go unnoticed forever.

“One moment,” Crowley mumbled and got back in the Bentley. Aziraphale watched as he tried to open the car from the inside but with the same result. His lips pursed, as he studied his car.

“Oi, what’s this, girl?”

Music started playing, Aziraphale could hear it loud and clear. Louder than it needed to be. The song was a few decades old if he remembered it right, might have heard it in some café or shop at some point. It wasn’t his kind of music, but that wasn’t the point. The song didn’t start playing at the beginning, either. It started up somewhere in the middle - where the Bentley wanted it to start, he assumed.

Now you're back From outer space And I find you here With that sad look upon your face I should've changed that stupid lock Or made you leave your key If I'd've known for a second You'd be back to bother me

“Yeah, yeah, I get it. But I’m letting him in. So, shut it,” Crowley was saying right on top of the music. And he tried to open the door again.

Which still wouldn’t budge. Instead, the driver’s side door closed as well.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!”

#good omens #good omens fanfiction #crowley #aziraphale #aziracrow #ineffable idiots

[shadowmaat]

No fun allowed

Internet drama and controversy can be fun to watch, but I also love silly things, feel good stories, and other harmless fun that gets shared on the internet.

I am, however, exhausted by the ever-increasing number of people who feel compelled to state that something-or-other is "obviously fake" or to otherwise question the validity/intentions of the poster.

Look. Kids. Sometimes, yes, it's important to clarify when something being shared is verifiably false. Especially if what's being shared contains dangerous misinformation that could cause harm to someone else.

Most of the time, though, it doesn't matter. And just because you personally believe something is fake doesn't mean you're right. Stop being an asshole just for the sake of trying to prove how much smarter and better you are than everyone else. Stop trying to discredit strangers on the internet who aren't hurting anyone and are very likely telling the truth. Stop assuming everything is fake. There's a time and a place for those kind of conversations and accusations. Learn how to tell the difference.

The most recent example I've seen is on a video of someone unrolling their knitting project only for it to roll off the end of the bed and startle a cat the maker didn't realize was there. Cute. Funny. No harm done.

Someone in the comments questioned why they were filming if they didn't know the cat was there. Condescending. Accusatory. Rude.

The person was clearly intending to show off all the work they'd accomplished on their knitting project. Very cool and stripey and either a scarf or possibly one side of a to-be-completed blanket. Or a bed for a boa constrictor, who knows? Point is, someone was trying to show off something they were proud of and then got a startled cat as a bonus.

Even if it had been a "set-up" though, so what? Is it hurting anyone? No. Does it change the context of what's seen in the video? No. There's no harm and no foul and no goddamn reason to be a petty suspicious jerk about it.

Another example would be any of Seanan McGuire's Tales of Animal Rehab and Chaos. Some of these do sound bizarre, like the alligator lizard in the leg story, but weird things DO happen (especially around Seanan) and accusing her of making stuff up for attention/clout is fucking rude. Sure, she's a storyteller, but some things she doesn't need to make up. Especially if she isn't getting paid for it. lol

Again, no one gets hurt by stories like that (ignoring the injuries sustained in the story itself) and it's also a good example of what NOT to do if you find an alligator lizard in your tent/sleeping bag. Important safety tip: don't try stabbing something anywhere near your own body.

People can, however, get hurt by constant accusations of lying. Seanan no longer shares those awesome stories because when she did it always resulted in a bunch of armchair fact-checkers calling her a liar and demanding "proof" that any of it happened.

When it comes to stuff like AITA or that Neighborhood thing or whatever, sure, some of those stories are made up. But again, who cares? Do you think you'll get points for calling out an obviously fake story about, I dunno, some dude replacing his gf's perfume for skunk spray because he's convinced she's cheating on him? No. No one cares. Other than maybe reassuring people that so-and-so isn't in any danger, you gain literally nothing by outing it as fake.

Sometimes those things are done for fun. And sometimes they're based on real examples of the kinds of things that have happened. And even when they're fake they can act as cautionary tales to help folks identify potentially dangerous behaviors. Maybe a guy hasn't actually replaced a wife's/girlfriend's perfume with skunk spray, but people of all identities have engaged in paranoid, possessive behavior and if you know what the warning signs look like you can take precautions. Same with tall tales from the workplace. Or involving neighbors. Or whatever. If it isn't hurting anyone and isn't spreading dangerous misinformation, maybe consider leaving it alone.

[thepixelelf]

this is definitely a stretch but a slightly off kilter dimension 20: mentopolis au where, consider Jeon Wonwoo, "junior researcher at Gobstopper Industries, a retro-futurist conglomerate, working on all sorts of amazing art deco technology in a gilded, non descript, past-like past..." ("gah, he paints a picture with his words!" 03:12) who works in the neuroscience department, kind of a loner, always focused on his research. Often closed off because he is led by his logic and ambition. Pushed down his sense of conscience years ago because of an incident involving an ice skate to the face but he doesn't like to talk about that or frankly even think about it so... work it is.

Anyway, one day Mr Big Boss Guy walks into Wonwoo's office/lab with you, and he introduces you to him as a specialist in projectiles. You two are going to be working on the new Psychometer project together. Wonwoo just nods, shakes your hand, and registers your sweet nice to meet you smile too late because he's already turned back to his calculations and now it would be too awkward to say nice to meet you too and damn it, why is he so damn awkward?

You don't pay it much mind— you've met plenty of awkward, shy nerds at Gobstopper Industries and while Wonwoo is maybe one of the nicer looking ones, you're no stranger to clipped greetings and noses buried in research. You yourself are quite the nerd, anyway, so it's no skin off your back.

[warning: fake science ahead! also cw for guns!]

For a while you two just work on your own things— him with his weird neuro something something tech, and you with your projectile prototypes. You're signed on as a temporary contract, so Mr Big Boss Guy never really told you what kind of thing you're making the projectiles for. But it does occur to you at some point... why would you put a projectiles guy and a neuro guy on the same project? What the heck are you even building?

So you ask him. "Hey, Jeon. Can I call you Jeon?"

He seems a bit jumpy at the sudden appearance of your voice, which is fair since you guys haven't really talked in the days since you started working together, but he turns to look at you and eventually nods.

"What is it exactly that you're researching?"

"Well... it's— it's... uh..." And it takes him a couple seconds to get his bearings, but then he goes on about brain waves and electrons and oxytocin and aromatherapy and a lot of other stuff that you honestly don't understand much of, but the more he speaks, the more you realize he's very much into all this research he's done. "It'll be a pioneer in mental health, this machine. If we can go into the mind and find exactly what's wrong— just imagine what that can do for the world."

You try to. You think about how the whole "mental health" thing is just starting to get on the public's radar, and what it would mean if doctors could just... look in there and then tweak the undesirable bits. Huh.

"That's fascinating," you tell him, not seeing the way his eyes practically light up at your, albeit monotone, interest. "And... why am I making it into a gun?"

At that, Wonwoo just blinks. "I... don't know. I think the decision came from marketing? Perhaps they think it will be more valuable if the machine is portable."

"Portable, huh," you mumble, but you don't say anything else. Wonwoo goes silent too because he literally cannot carry a conversation (esp with someone he finds smart and attractive) unless he is answering questions. So, you both just go on with your work.

Until another day, after you dropped off the latest prototype on the boss' desk, when you ask Wonwoo, "Hey, Jeon, with your mind reader thingy—"

"It's not a 'thingy'," he interrupts with an almost imperceptible pout, but you catch it and smile at how oddly cute your fellow researcher is.

"Okay, your Psychometer..."

(His eyes light up again. They keep doing that.)

"...is it only for looking?"

He frowns, not understanding. "What do you mean?"

You tilt your head to the side, tapping your sharpened pencil on your desk. "I mean... can you use it to do anything about the stuff it sees?"

"Tampering with the brain is an extremely dangerous endeavour. There's no telling what could happen if the Psychometer were used to manipulate emotions or desires—"

"Wait, so it can be used like that?"

Wonwoo's frown deepens, he scoots to the edge of his chair towards you, one hand on his knee. "No. The technology could potentially be altered to manipulate the brain, yes, but the result could be disastrous—"

You jolt up onto your feet. "It's a mind control device???"

"I don't think you understand—"

But you're not listening to him anymore. You lean over your workspace, eyes darting over all your blueprints and scrap metal prototypes. "Holy shit," you mutter to yourself. "And I designed it into a weapon..."

You didn't always know there was something off about Big Boss Guy, but after meeting and getting to know Wonwoo and his research, you thought it was a little strange. Big tech industries like Gobstopper don't care about the good of the people like Wonwoo does... they care about money. And Big Boss Guy always seemed so smug when you updated him on the Psychometer project... yeah, a patent for a brain scanner would probably make him millions... but a mind control device? He could move to fucking Mars if he sold it to the right people.

Or used it on the right people.

In a frenzied panic, you begin swiping your hands over your desk to try and collect all of your research into a pile, while Wonwoo watches you with his confusion mounting.

"What are you—"

"Wonwoo," you breathe out, heart beating much faster than healthy. "Can I call you Wonwoo?" You don't wait for his answer; you're not even looking at him. "You need to get all your shit on a hard drive, and then you need to delete it from every Gobstopper computer—"

"What? Why would I—"

You walk straight up to him and put both your hands on his arms. If he wasn't confused and defensive right now, he'd probably be flustered.

"We made a fucking mind control gun, Wonwoo. Do you know what that means?"

Who is he kidding? He's flustered. He shakes his head.

You close your eyes as you let out a sigh. "We made a weapon. A very dangerous weapon. And the only way to stop it from going to the wrong people is if—"

Wonwoo watches you stop, and it's not like when he can't continue speaking because he doesn't know the answer, or when you pause because you thought of something funny, like you often do, but you actually freeze. Your mouth stays slightly open, caught in whatever you were going to say next, and your arms go stiff. Wonwoo is about to speak when he hears his boss' voice from the entryway.

"The wrong people?" he says, calm as ever as he lowers the Psychometer prototype he'd just had pointed in your direction. "C'mon, Jeon. You know I'd never put this in the wrong hands." He admires the machine in his hand. "It's much better off with me, don't you think?"

It's not that Wonwoo has no idea what the fuck is going on. In fact, thanks to you and your recent revelation, he finally actually knows what the fuck is going on.

It's just that he has no idea what the fuck to do now.

"You can't— this—" He looks at you, who have never been so close to him for so long, and right now it's completely against your will. He hates that thought. "Whatever you did with the Psychometer, turn it off! Reverse it, just— let them go!"

His boss shows off a mocking pout. "But they were saying such mean lies, Jeon. I told you: this machine is going to change the world. Don't you want that?"

"Not like this!"

"Tell you what, Jeon," his boss says, unfazed. "How about you finish doing your job like you were asked, and I make your little projectile friend fall in love with you, eh? You'd like that, wouldn't you? I see the way you look at them when you think no one's watching."

Bile threatens to rise up Wonwoo's throat. To make you like him— no, he never wanted that.

"Don't," he growls.

"Alright, alright. Then I guess I'll just have to offer a slightly worse deal. You make me my fully functional Psychometer, and I don't go through all the steps up to making their death look like an accident." He pulls out a sleek, silver gun and points it straight at you.

"Fine— fine!" Wonwoo holds out a hand, the other one now holding onto your arm. "I'll build it, but..." He bites the inside of his lip. He hasn't taken anything close to risk in years. "...but I need their help."

His boss raises a brow. "I don't think they're gonna want to be helpful."

"I'll make sure the comply," Wonwoo assures him, although he's not that confident in his ability to convince you.

He just needs you back to normal.

His boss clicks his tongue and tucks away his gun. A long time ago, he told Wonwoo he liked him because he listens well to authority. "Alright, Jeon, but make sure they do, and fast. Otherwise, I'll have to find somebody else for the job."

Wonwoo doesn't miss the thinly veiled threat, but he pays no attention to it. His boss points the Psychometer at you once again, and with a gasping breath, you fall to your knees. Wonwoo immediately joins you at your side, not hugging you like he kind of wants to, but patting your back as you cough.

Faintly, he hears his boss ordering people to barricade both exits from the lab.

"Holy..." You gag, and cough, and almost throw up, but don't. "...shit."

"Are you alright?" Wonwoo asks.

You whip your head to glare at him. "Am I alri— Wonwoo, do you know what you just agreed to?!"

So you heard everything, huh.

(It's not what he should think about first, he knows that, but Wonwoo feels heat on his face knowing that you heard his boss talking about the way he looks at you.)

"It was the only way for him to unfreeze you..."

At that, your panic and anger soften. You sigh. "I... Thank you."

"You're welcome," he says automatically, then cringes at how the words sound.

"You know I'm not helping you make that thing, right?"

Wonwoo nods. "I don't want to make it either."

"Good, then..." You stand up, Wonwoo keeping his hands hovered only inches away in case you're unsteady on your feet, and you reach into one the the inner pockets of your labcoat.

From which you pull out a grappling hook.

Wonwoo's eyes widen, and he has half the mind to ask you if you keep one of those on you at all times (???), but you stride past him to look out the floor to ceiling windows of the lab— which is four floors off the ground.

You turn to him with a sickeningly sly grin. "You ever looked at a window and asked yourself if you could break it with a good ol' shove?"

Wonwoo shakes his head, incredulous. "No!"

"Well." You shrug, going to grab as much of his and your paperwork as you can and stuffing it into your bag. "It's either the window, or mister 'I'm gonna rule the world' out there."

Wonwoo weighs his options. On the one hand, you're...

Well, you're there.

And, okay, on the other is a guy with two different guns, so...

Wonwoo goes over to his computer, taps at a fews keys, and initiates a total manual reset.

Once he turns back around, you've already started tying rope around yourself. "Get over here," you grunt.

And so Wonwoo lets you literally tie him to you, and then he jumps out of a god damn fucking window.

and that's all for this episode of diMEN—

#the venn diagram of carats and d20 fans is probably just two separate circles <3 #svtbits.tpe #ideas.tpe #stickynotes.tpe

[evelhak]

📚

Since some people have evidently found my books through Tumblr despite of me not being very active on the Finnish side of it, I thought: why shouldn't I post about my books? It doesn't matter they are not available in English (yet, anyway) because I would be curious enough to read about stuff my mutuals do even if I couldn't read the actual material.

So, I plan to make a post about every book I write, do cover art for, or am otherwise involved with. Best case scenario is someone finds something new to read, worst case scenario is someone is bored.

This time, I'll introduce you to my debut novel:

☁️ Unitytöt ☁️

(dream girls)

Published: 2021 by Nysalor

Genre: New Adult, Fantasy, Slice of Life, LGBT+

Certainly not the first book that I wrote but this is my first published novel and my first cover project. ✨ I wrote this book in 2017 when I was about to graduate university, trying to juggle a full-time job as a mail carrier, nearly daily ballet training and writing both my original work and fanfiction which I also started doing the same year. The schedule turned out to be too much for my autistic brain and physical conditions. Regardless, I'm so happy I wrote this book!

It's a story about a technically bodiless creature, Venna, and a human, Aiju. Venna's species lives in people's heads or musical instruments because they need music to live. Venna is an outcast, and has been living in a wind chime to avoid people and their overwhelming array of feelings, which Venna's kind experiences directly in the human brain they are living in. Circumstances force Venna to move into the head of a young woman, Aiju, who is starting her studies at a temple (=a magic university). Unlike Venna's previous humans, Aiju can hear and feel Venna and is curious for, rather than scared of a new friend in her head. Aiju is also able to control and create elaborate dreamworlds where she and Venna can meet in their own separate forms. The two begin to live their life together, studying, enjoying music, maybe even falling in love when an older student is intrigued by Aiju's peculiar behaviour. It's a story about sharing a body and partially a mind, about merging, sense of self, neurodiversity and particularly sensitivity, and also abuse and healing. It's a slow love story, a fantastical exploration of the subconscious, a fantasy focused on characters and dreams that also touches on the larger context of the universe and existence.

I wrote this book because I had read many body sharing stories and was dissatisfied with the lack of portrayal of the ordinary every day experiences that would come with it, as well as I was with the ease with which body shifting creatures always seem to adapt to their new circumstances. I wanted to see more of the reality. I wrote this book because I had briefly introduced and later edited out a music eating demon in another fantasy story of mine, who possessed a girl and made her dance in a tavern until she fainted. I was curious what a story about a similar but gentle creature would be like. I wrote this book because themes of merging and separating your sense of self were relevant to me and I wanted to explore them through a fantastical world but also reality based concepts.

I was so much more nervous about the cover project than I was about actually publishing the story. I had zero experience apart from my personal cover doodles, no graphic design studies, and had only recently started learning Photoshop. Thankfully I'm still pretty happy with the cover, although there are technical details I would do differently. The most glaringly obvious one is the ginormous bar code. It was hard to tell how big it would actually look and my publisher had warned me not to make it too small, so I overdid it. My publisher is small so there are no resources to make test copies of the books, and it's due to the smallness of my publisher that I even had the opportunity to design the cover myself despite having no experience, just some visual skills.

I still like the cover art itself, the only problem which I did suspect back then too, is that in an attempt to make the cover dreamlike, it turned out a bit like children's literature. I was the only one who was worried about it, but in some libraries people have clearly thought this is aimed at 12-year-olds. I'm sure some of them would enjoy this, but it's a bit off. A lot of people have told me not to underestimate children, but it's not that I'm doing that, I'm simply aware that this book is not written in a way nor does it contain themes or life events that are relevant to very young people. It's a very psychological story and its issues are the most relevant to people in their late teens and early twenties. It's not that there's anything in this book that a 12-year-old couldn't handle, it's just going to be boring for most of them because it would be a lot to ask from a child's attention span to be interested in stuff they can't relate to for 400 pages. Even if many 12-year-olds still like to read about characters older than them, characters they can look up to, this book is written with people in mind who can relate to 20-year-olds. Of course there are exceptions. I probably would have loved this book as a 12-year-old. But I'm sure 90% of my peers would not have cared enough to finish it.

The cover seems to have done some of its job well too, because I know some people (adults) bought this book because they thought the cover was pretty, so that's good at least. Most of the feedback I've received has been really positive, the book seems to have found some of the readers it was clearly meant for. Some relevant criticism has also come my way and I believe I've learned some things since writing this book. The only really negative review I came across so far contained so many factual errors that it seemed the reviewer had been too busy to actually process the book. From that perspective it seems like the cover has also worked well enough to draw mostly the intended people towards the book.

The most memorable experience in its publication process was probably how it was chosen for an interview at the biggest national book fair by high school presentation/communication students who hold interviews on one of the stages there every year. It was such a good interview because the two students interviewing me clearly loved the book, related to it, and were excited to talk about it with me, and asked really thoughtful questions. I couldn't imagine a better first interview as an author. It was also the day the book officially came out. It was also my first time at that book fair (I don't often visit the capital) and I was the first author from my publisher to land an interview there, so I was really very nervous at first. I was unfortunately a COVID debut author so this was the only place I was able to present my book physically that year, which obviously affected its already marginal distribution. But it was such a lovely event for me that it is the more memorable for it.

I wish this book would find more readers who love dreamy, character driven and fairytale-esque fantasy. It's not without plot, mystery, or danger, but it's definitely not the best pick for someone who needs an epic, fast paced and world-shaking chain of events from their reading experience. This is for the other sensitive dreamers out there who just love to drown in characters, experiences and subtle magic, and would rather stop to contemplate it than to rush forward at all times.

#eve's books #cover art #unitytöt #finnish books #nysalor #author life

[awkwardgtace]

For the ask game, 🔪, ❄️ and 🦴 :3

ask game

❄️ ⇢ what's your dream theme/plot for a fic, and who would write it best?

ohh ok this is hard. A dream theme would probably be a good mystery I can't start piecing together or a horror novel that scares me. For mystery I oddly enough think Brandon Sanderson would be good. I've been unable to predict things moving forward in the Stormlight Archives. But honestly I think it would be written best by someone who hasn't even tried before. There's a way of placing clues in a mystery I feel a lot of people follow. Most of the time those clues placed by someone new wouldn't have the same easy to tell hints and tips.

For horror I kind of am expecting Lydia Prime to do it. She's a newer author on the horror scene (actually have a book she just managed to publish I plan to pick up). I also some comedians would be good at it. Comedy is kind of the other side, takes a lot to do it. I don't know who would be best for this outside of like a pro author. I'm pretty hard to scare, make a habit of marathoning horror games and horror movies just because. That does mean I get psyched to read any horror sent my way that might be good!

For a dream plot it's kinda hard to say. I know how my brain works, but honestly even if i'm not super into it I just like seeing people posting/sharing the stuff they put their time into. It's so scary to take that first step so it's really amazing when someone does and they keep going.

🦴 ⇢ is there a piece of media that inspires your writing? 

Ok so this one is kind of a lot. For some of my stories it's probably some myth, post, or my own daydream mixed from anime/games/books throughout the years.

Specific media would be MTG Streets of New Capenna set (Mafia AU), Fenyx Rising (Delphia rising), FF14 (some fanfics and an au i am working on), Oddly enough a story I have on and off struggled with was inspired by a yugioh series, Godzilla vs Kong (the fight for Rhys and Felix in mafia au). My gods might have been inspired by the old hercules disney movie.

Oh Delphia is a bit inspired by an Kagome in Inuyasha (got me looking into reincarnation). oh and a book series I read forever and ever ago. The Eternal Ones by Kirsten Miller. (I went to my bookshelf to find this title.)

I also do love mythology and folklore so I'm sure that's a big inspiration even if it's not obvious. (obsessed with fairies since I was like born. My sister can't even remember a time i wasn't).

Basically it's everything? I have a few characters I've realized over time fit a meme a little or i put together match someone i loved from a game.

Oh last one I can think of. Alice in Wonderland. I loved that from the disney movie, to the books, to the manga based in it, to the new tim burton movies. Pretty much the only time I haven't liked it was in RWBY 😅

🔪 ⇢ what's the weirdest topic you researched for a writing project? I feel weird leaving this one out in the open, but like also it's not exactly nsfw. just a little insight into my weird thought process at times

ok so originally it was gonna be the general size of a dick/vagina of the average person to then do the ratio for how big it should be for a giant/how small for a tiny. In searching for this math (cause ofc i only shared it on discord) I realized i had an entire discussion that involved at least a little research where i determined it's incredibly viable that if giants and tinies are under the same homo species it would possible to successfully get pregnant in a multisize couple with the question being the survival rate of the child/birth parent dependent on a number of factors....

I used the dick knowledge in one (1) specific story i wrote on ao3. The pregnancy knowledge was lost until now.

Most likely to get me arrested was how much a person could move after a stab wound

for those curious this was the percentages i came up with are under the cut

balls: 2.7% of total height per ball dick: 6.9% of total height pussy opening: 4.8% of total height pussy depth: 6.3% of total height

#awkwardanswers #lore about mee! #my brain is all over the place sometimes lol

[alarawriting]

52 Project #52: Nate and the Hyperpurples

A device was singing. Blearily Nate opened his eyes and stared at it for several seconds, momentarily confused as to what it was and why it was singing to him, loudly.

Right. That was a phone. And that was the ringtone he’d set for calls to his jobsearch number. He reached out and swiveled the face of the phone toward him, swiping to accept the call. The phone’s settings would automatically reskin his face as looking perky, awake, and probably fully dressed, and also definitely not wearing his sleep bonnet, but he had to at least orient himself vertically to the phone or it would produce some really bizarre artifacts. Since being actually vertical would involve more wakefulness than he wanted, he spun the phone so that it was horizontal, just like him. He did have to raise his head off the pillow, though; the software wasn’t quite good enough to compensate for some of his head disappearing into a pillow.

“Hello!” said the giant chicken on the screen. “You are Nate Wheeler, I hope? I took the liberty of checking your time zone and it is typical for humans to be awake at this hour, so I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

Wait a minute. That was not a skin for video calls. That was an actual giant chicken.

“Uh, yes, this is Nate Wheeler,” he said, staring at the… well, okay, it wasn’t exactly a giant chicken. Its very, very bright blue, very, very tall crest was made of feathers, like a cockatoo, rather than the fleshy crest of a rooster. And it had more of a lizardy snout than a beak. Most of its facial feathers were brown, a shade only slightly lighter than Nate’s own skin, and its eyes were less like a chicken’s side-facing eyes and more like the close-centered eyes of a bird of prey, but without the hooding that predatory birds usually had.

“Honored!” the not-a-giant-chicken-or-even-quite-a-bird said. “I am frequently known by the name Bakoon! You are the Nate Wheeler who is seeking work as an engineer, I hope?”

“Spaceship. Yes. Uh, but I’d take a wide variety of different engineering jobs, but I was specifically looking for work on a spaceship.” The not-a-giant-chicken was a Diwar. The aliens who had given humanity the stars, at the expense of a good bit of collective self-esteem and most of the engineering jobs that were remotely interesting. Diwar did not hire humans as engineers for the same reason that medical hospitals did not hire clowns as nurses. “Um, is this about a job?”

“I am hopeful,” Bakoon the Diwar said cheerfully. His voice was masculine and had traces of a European accent of some kind, which meant absolutely nothing because Diwar were mimics like parrots or mynah birds, and would usually end up with the exact same voice as whatever trainer they’d studied English from. But a crest that big usually meant a male. Usually. “Would you still have an interest?”

“Um, yeah, I’m still looking.” This was worth sitting up. Nate did so, spinning the phone around on its holder’s axis so that it was now vertical, just like him. The image would have frozen while the phone was in motion or as soon as the cameras detected that his head was moving out of frame, so he wasn’t worried that the Diwar would see that he was getting out of bed. And the bedroom behind him wouldn’t show on his call skin; he’d recorded himself at the university library, in front of shelves of books, as his job search skin. “What kind of job?”

“Well, an engineering job of course, but the details are… somewhat confidential. I would like to meet with you and discuss! I will say that this role would be highly compensated, with great opportunity for advancement, fame and fortune.”

Nate blinked. “Fame?” Since when did engineers get famous?

“I can see my tailfeathers, so far ahead of myself I’ve become! If this proposition intrigues you, please come to Disque Hall at Drexel University, at 3 pm today. I will hope to see you!”

The Diwar ended the call. Nate looked at the time. Already 11:30 am. Shit. Bakoon hadn’t given him a chance to object to the time; he barely had time for a shower and shave if he wanted to make it.

On the other hand, if he was meeting with Diwar… would they really care if a human was showing some scruffy facial hair? Maybe he had time to grab breakfast? No, he couldn’t take the risk; there might be other humans involved in the hiring process for whatever this was. Shower, shave, deodorize, grab some clean clothes, and that was all he’d have time for.

***

Nate had been living off UBI, trying to find a job in the field he’d trained in, for a year and a half at this point.

There were human engineers who worked on building spaceships, or keeping them maintained while they were in space. They generally worked under the supervision of a Diwar; the aliens seemed to find it hard to believe that humans were remotely competent at anything related to STEM, and liked to insert themselves into any industry that used their technology, which nowadays was most of them. And there weren’t very many of them, and most of them came from Europe or Japan, not the US.

Nate’s mom had been on him, the entire time he’d been in college, that he should pursue acting instead. “There’s no jobs left for people who want to use their brains on Earth,” she’d say, with no small amount of bitterness – Ava Wheeler had been a physicist before the Diwar had shown up and more or less handed humanity the answers to all the questions physicists had been trying to solve, and she’d been considered too old to retrain to the level that Diwar physicists were at. She’d spent Nate and his sister’s lives raising them, trying to catch up to Diwar physics, and trying to push them into entertainment careers like the most infamous of stage moms.

The thing was, Nate knew he was a decent actor, nothing particularly special, and he knew that almost every young person on the planet who didn’t want to work in a restaurant or live off UBI was trying to get into entertainment in some way. Writers, artists, gamers, athletes, anybody who could create amusing videos of themselves doing normal human things like playing with dogs… and actors. The competition was enormous. And he didn’t think he was anywhere near good enough to break in to interstellar work, not like his sister, and he wasn’t going to trade on her name to get a better break than he deserved.

He was good at engineering. He loved it. It was what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. It was also even harder to break into than acting. It’d have been different if he’d wanted to be a civil engineer and build roads and bridges, or something else that stayed on Earth and hadn’t been completely revolutionized by Diwar technology. But Nate wanted to work in space. Or work at space. Space something. And most of the work in space was relatively menial, because it was the Diwar who genuinely understood the technology and who owned most of the ships. Earth was building ships of their own, but even there, Diwar did most of the design and engineering work.

If the Diwar were hiring human engineers for something… why?

***

The maglev dropped him at one of the two stations at the university.

Nate had actually graduated from Drexel, so he was familiar with the campus. It was a short walk to Disque Hall, where Drexel’s department of physics had historically been, and which nowadays had a heavy Diwar presence. Bakoon hadn’t told him which room number, so he asked at the security desk. The security desk had no idea.

Then the giant fluffy chicken stepped off the elevator and made a beeline for Nate. “Welcome! Welcome, my boy! You are a boy, am I correct? I did not mistake your gender?”

Bakoon looked much more like a giant chicken in person than he had on the phone, to be honest. He was about five and a half feet tall, wearing a blue-feathered cape in the same color as his crest, with a downy golden interior. He had two legs, heavily feathered, his thick talons almost covered in his fluffy brown feathers, and four arms – two long, ape-like arms connected to his body on the sides, with four thick, finger-like appendages, and two small ones close to his body, positioned like a velociraptor or a T. rex, with four delicate, slim talons. The large-arms were heavily feathered, like they hadn’t quite made it all the way to evolving into wings but they were giving it their all, and the small-arms had feathers at the top above the elbow, and then bare wrinkly skin and bone like a bird talon. All of the claws on the talons had been blunted and then painted with elaborate red whorls. Something tunic-like hung from his large-arm shoulders, essentially just two rectangular pieces of cloth held together by golden clasps on his neck. They left his large-arms completely free; there were flamboyantly large and flared sleeves in the front for his small-arms, which he held clasped in front of him. There was a gold-colored belt around his middle and up around his back; loops on the belt held multiple pouches and sheaths for tools.

“Uh, yeah, I’m male,” Nate said. He’d met Diwar before, but this one dressed much more flamboyantly than any of the ones he’d met in college.

Bakoon’s head went up higher than a typical bird head, his beak-like snout distinctly lower than the level of his golden eyes, which focused front, but were wide apart and seemed to lay directly on his head, not in sunken orbits like a hawk. The blue feather crest was in full display, lifted high and fanned out on the top of his head. When he spoke, Nate could see serrations inside his mouth, like he was in the process of evolving from a reptile snout with teeth into a bird beak, but hadn’t quite finished the transition. He was gesturing expansively with one of the large-arms. “We have all been veritable tension belts, awaiting you! Come, come!”

Nate followed Bakoon into the elevator. “So, can you tell me about the job?”

“Not yet! The walls still have ears. That’s how you say it, correct? To express that there might be people listening to you, who should not be?”

“Yeah, that’s the right expression.” They got off the elevator. “Can you at least tell me if it involves going to space?”

“Maybe! All your questions will be answered momentarily.” They reached a room with no sign on it labeling what it was for, and Bakoon swung the door open. May I refresh you? A snack, a drink?”

“You got a bagel with melted cheese and a Coke?”

“Of course!” Bakoon went to an inner door and yelled. “Rikwaal! A bagel with melted cheese and a Coke for our guest?”

“What kind of cheese?” a feminine voice called back. “Cream cheese is typical with bagels but isn’t usually melted! Also what kind of bagel and what flavor Coke?”

“Hey, I don’t want to put you guys to a lot of trouble,” Nate said.

“Nonsense! The food printer is entirely capable of making such a basic human dish! Just let Rikwaal know your specifications!”

A white not-exactly-chicken head stuck through the door. She actually looked a lot like a cockatoo; her crest was pale yellow. “I didn’t spend all this time configuring and programming this thing to never use it. We can’t put fruit in the bagels, but I’m sure we can do anything else.” Her voice was crisp, with an American East Coast generic accent, similar to Nate’s own when he was code-switched into mainstream.

“Make it a poppyseed bagel, melted provolone, and just a normal regular Coke, no special flavors or anything.”

“With ice? You’re American, so I’m guessing ice.”

“Yeah, I like ice.”

As the white-feathered Diwar retreated back behind her door, Nate said, “So, can you tell me any more about this job?”

“Direct and businesslike! Well done,” Bakoon said. “Too often your fellow Humans waste precious time talking about things of no relevance. Time, after all, is the one commodity none of us can buy!”

Given how many Humans were employed doing menial jobs for aliens in space because it was the only way they could get the opportunity to see other worlds, Nate could have argued that point; anyone wealthy enough could buy people to do jobs for them, thus saving themselves the time. He could also have pointed out that right now, Bakoon was wasting his time talking about time wasting. He said neither of those things. “Do I need to sign some kind of NDA? You said this was confidential.”

“Yes, yes, that’s exactly what we planned. Rikwaal! You have a contract for non-disclosure ready, isn’t that so?”

“On the tablet,” Rikwaal yelled back.

“Of course, of course!” Bakoon picked up a tablet sitting on the unmanned reception desk. “Rikwaal has prepared this for you. She’s our project manager, by the by.”

Nate raised his eyebrows as he read it. It had normal NDA language throughout most of it, but was significantly more restrictive. He wasn’t allowed to talk about the fact that he’d been recruited by the Diwar for a job whether he got the job or not. If he was hired, he wasn’t allowed to tell anyone who had hired him or why or what he was doing. These restrictions would be in place until a press release went out about his position. “I can’t even tell my mom I got a job?”

“Oh, by all means, tell her you’ve acquired a job. You simply cannot tell her what the job is or that it involves Diwar in any form until the press release goes out.”

“This is the kind of job where you send information about it to the press? I’m looking for an engineering job, not some kind of… I don’t even know, what kind of job involves press releases?”

“This one,” Bakoon said. “Which I am positively dying to tell you all about, as soon as you sign that contract.”

Well, it wasn’t like he had any better opportunities. Nate signed the contract. If he got the job he’d be able to tell Mom about it eventually (press releases? Why?), and if he didn’t then there was nothing to tell her about.

“Delightful!” Bakoon pronounced, throwing his large-arms wide. Nate actually had to step out of the way. “Have you, by any chance, ever heard of the Great Build?”

“Uh… I think so. Isn’t it some kind of Diwar sports competition?”

“Sports!” Bakoon flung his large-arms up again. “If by ‘sport’ you mean ‘tedious competition of physical bodies performing a task no one cares about’, then hardly! But if by ‘sport’ you mean ‘rigorous intellectual challenge undertaken in competition between the best and brightest’, then yes, by all means!”

“Okay…”

“The Great Build is the ultimate challenge to the Diwar! A year – which is approximately thirteen and a half of your months – spent creating something, overcoming technical limitations and solving engineering problems, to eventually present to a body of judges to be awarded accolades, or dismissed as lesser!”

“So it’s a contest.”

Bakoon snorted. “If one wishes to describe it with such mundane terms, then yes, I suppose it’s a contest.”

Rikwaal came out with Nate’s bagel and Coke. “Sorry for the delay. The food printer is acting up. Again.”

“I told you we should bring Mip along,” Bakoon said.

“Mip said, very clearly, and I quote, ‘No, I’m not going to go to Earth with you! You people want to be insane, then fine, but leave me out of it.’”

“By the most technical of definitions, that was a translation, not a quote.”

“By the most technical of definitions, you are being a pedantic smear.” She turned to Nate. “Let me know how it came out, okay? It wrecked my breakfast and I had to order out. Did you know there are only three restaurants in Philadelphia that make Diwar cuisine?”

“I have solved this difficulty by ordering from sushi restaurants. The poke bowl is quite appealing,” Bakoon said.

“Yeah, they’re not open at breakfast time. Something about, Humans don’t eat sushi for breakfast.”

“A lot of us would like to,” Nate said. “But I guess not enough of us to keep the restaurants in business that early.”

Rikwaal was dressed the way Nate expected Diwar to dress. No cape. A similar tunic-like garment like the one Bakoon was wearing, but with straps made of the same fabric rather than clasps, and it was plain and dark blue, a nice contrast to her white feathers. Hers had additional straps holding the tunic together across her middle, approximating the shape of a human blouse with very, very wide sleeves. She was also wearing a belt in roughly the same place as Bakoon, but hers was white and had only a holder for a tablet and a small purse-like object large enough to hold a few credit cards hanging from it. Unlike Bakoon, she was wearing something that resembled short pants, except that it had a hole for her tail. The pants were a complementary shade of blue to her tunic, not quite as dark. She held out the plate with his bagel with one short-arm, and a cup of Coke with the other. Both the cup and the plate had obviously been recently printed, little bits on the edge still soft.

He bit into the bagel. “This is pretty good. I’m usually not a super big fan of printed food, but this one actually got the cheese right. That’s usually the biggest challenge; it’s hard for them to mess up breads unless they’re really delicate, but cheese is… well, it sits on a really fine line. It’s easy to make the oils separate from the curd, or make the cheese too hard or too soft, and I guess your printer toasts it too. That can be a challenge. A lot of food printers with toast functions will either burn your food or, like, heat it up two degrees and call it a day.” He realized that he was rambling about a subject that most likely Bakoon would consider ‘a thing of no relevance’, and shut himself up.

But Rikwaal responded, animated. “I know! I spent half a day programming the thing and I think the hardest part was that it didn’t want to follow my toast protocols. I ended up having to hack it and to stick a sensor on it to detect the start of a burn right before you can taste it.”

Nate wasn’t used to project managers who could hack food printers. “I never thought of that. Sounds like a good way to handle it.”

“On the subject of the Great Build,” Bakoon said, “in which we do not create or reprogram food printers. We are participants in the Great Build. Our team is known as the Proud-Crested Hyperpurples.”

“Hyperpurples?”

“Ah. We see into the range you refer to as ‘ultraviolet’. Since Humans cannot see these colors, you have no native words for them, so we Diwar, when speaking English, refer to the colors as ‘superpurple’, ‘hyperpurple’, and ‘ultrapurple’. To us they actually look quite distinct, as unlike each other as red from orange and yellow, so it perhaps is not the best naming convention, suggesting as it does that these are somehow all fundamentally the same color. But, it is the convention the Diwar chose years ago.”

“We had a committee analyze your languages and figure out how to express things you don’t have words for, about thirty years ago. The surprising thing was how many words we have to describe beer flavors that we had to translate as things that don’t really sound at all like beer flavors, like fruity.”

“Fruity actually is a beer flavor,” Nate said.

“A connoisseur of beer? Dare I hope?” A beak could not actually smile, and though a Diwar snout wasn’t quite a beak, it was too beaky for smiles. But somehow Bakoon’s facial expression looked like he was broadly smiling, even though there was literally no way he could do that. Nate had seen similar expressions on parrots before and had always wondered exactly what about their faces was making them look like they were smiling.

“Uh, yeah, I guess so. I mean, I drink microbrews, not like Budweiser and that kind of thing.”

“Delightful! Perhaps you can introduce us to some local brews!”

“Stay on topic, Bakoon,” Rikwaal said. “The Build?”

“Oh, yes. We are the Proud-Crested Hyperpurples… as I mentioned. The only team ever to come from Fillit Province!”

“Unfortunately there’s a reason for that,” Rikwaal said.

Bakoon tilted his head to look at her, and then leaned his head forward in a way that seemed almost aggressive. Rikwaal tilted hers, and Bakoon moved his head back. Nate had no idea what any of that meant.

“And you want me to…?”

“Join the team!” Bakoon swept his large arm out and fluffed his crest. “Be the first Human to participate on a Diwar Great Build team. Help us in designing and building something so audacious, so creative, so amazing, that we cannot help but gain positive attention, even if we don’t win.”

“Wow,” Nate said, taken aback. “Uh. Yeah, that sounds amazing! I mean… that would be fantastic. But why me, specifically, and also why a Human?”

“As to you, I have business dealings here with the university. I spoke to some of the professors, and perused school records, and came to the conclusion that you would be an excellent candidate. You’re not the only Human we’ve approached with the opportunity, but we’ve prepared a simple test to see if you have what we require to assure our place within the Build for years to come.”

“What he’s not telling you,” Rikwaal said, “is that we suck. Our team has literally come in last for four years. Any team that can’t make it out of the 10th percentile for five years in a row gets booted. And if we get booted I will never hear the end of it from my mother, not to mention that none of us would exactly have great career prospects. So the team decided that adding a Human to the mix would maybe inject some creativity and unpredictability into our performance.”

Bakoon did the head-tilt-and-lean-forward again, which Rikwaal ignored serenely. Nate guessed that that was the equivalent of a glare, for people who couldn’t substantially change the shape of their eyes’ appearance on their face.

This was all starting to make sense now. “I get it,” he said. “You don’t need me for engineering skills, you need me to be a performing monkey. A dancing bear. No one cares how well the bear dances, the thing everyone cares about is that it can dance at all.” He didn’t raise his voice, but the bitterness and anger came through more and more clearly as he spoke.

“Mm, you are not entirely wrong,” Bakoon said, “but also, not entirely right. You see, the competition rates us in three domains – creativity, skill of implementation, and followership. The number of watchers who’ve chosen us as a team to follow.”

“We suck at implementation,” Rikwaal said bluntly. “And we haven’t managed to be particularly creative, the last four years, either. Bakoon and Le’ir manage to get us some followers through showmanship, but there’s nothing much to follow, so most of the audience tunes out.”

Nate scowled. “And my job is to be a performing monkey, so everyone wants to watch.”

“One could say that, but you are mistaken if you think no one cares how well the bear dances. The Great Build demands rigor! Competence in the extreme! You would, at the very least, need to be able to transcend what our audience thinks Humans to be capable of. Show yourself to be on the level of at the very least, an inexperienced Diwar engineer.”

Rikwaal added, “And I imagine that some performing monkeys are just trained, pushing buttons for a treat… but some are actually good at getting the audience’s attention and running with it. I mean, I don’t know anything about monkeys, we don’t have any primates on Diw, but they’re your close cousins, right? They’re pretty smart for animals?”

Nate swallowed his deep irritation at being compared to a monkey. It wasn’t a racist microaggression. The Diwar were dinosaurs, by human standards; from their perspective, every human being was a kind of monkey. “So you figure, Humans are good at entertainment, you’ll pick a Human to entertain your audience?”

“Exactly!” Bakoon said.

“Not exactly.” Rikwaal lowered her head and glared at Bakoon. At least, Nate was no expert on Diwar body language, but that sure looked like a glare. “There’s definitely more to it than that.”

“Yes, of course,” Bakoon said. “We Diwar generally see Humans as creative but impractical. We want you to give us ideas that sound ludicrous, and then help us bring those ideas to glorious realization. While being a better engineer than anyone has ever seen a Human be, and while being charismatic and showmanlike so you can get and hold the audience’s attention even after the novelty of your presence wears off. The Build lasts for a year. No one’s going to watch a dancing bear for a year, unless the bear dances superbly.”

“So you picked me because you know about my drama minor?” Nate said sharply.

“You have a drama minor?” Bakoon perked up.

“You’re Human. We assumed you’d be good in front of a camera,” Rikwaal said.

“Not all Humans are good at performing, at all. Before you people came along, we thought of ourselves as a species that invents, and discovers, as well as a species that creates art and performance. Most of us aren’t any good at performing.”

“And not one single one of my extended family has ever been an engineer,” Bakoon said. “Or a performer. They consider me a genetic sport. Had I not so closely resembled my father, there might have been questions as to who, exactly, fertilized my mother’s egg.”

“Yeah, okay, everyone’s got their own preconceptions about other species, but you Diwar really did take over all our engineering and science. We didn’t take over your native entertainment industry.”

“You actually did,” Rikwaal said. “Mostly because Diwar suck at story telling.”

“Speak for yourself, friend,” Bakoon said. “I excel at spinning tales.”

“We had some tests planned for how you’d do in front of a livestream recorder, but if you were a drama minor, you might have some records of past performances we could look at instead. We really did pick you based on what your advisors said about engineering aptitude.”

“Perhaps we should have been looking for showmanship as a criterion! I will admit, it was short-sighted of us to imagine that a good Human engineer would also be good in front of a recorder, simply on the basis of being Human. But if indeed you studied drama as well, then perhaps our choice of you was purely serendipitous.”

“Where do you guys come from again?” Nate asked.

“The Hyperpurples all hail from the quaint fishing province of Fillit! We supply all of Diw with… I don’t know how to translate the specific words.”

“Crabs, mostly,” Rikwaal said. “Crabs are like felines. You see them on every planet.”

“Well, yes, crabs, but I was thinking of the ri’heenyu.”

“Oh, yeah. Picture salmon, but they’re saltwater only, and they don’t go home to spawn, and they have green flesh from all the algae they eat, not pink.”

“So not like salmon at all,” Nate said.

“Eh, the taste is kind of similar, and it’s a similarly fleshy fish.”

“My parents are fishers,” Bakoon said, “as are my siblings, my cousins, my avunes, my grandparents, and so on and so forth. But I have always heard the siren call of invention! To build things, to make ideas into a reality, was my only interest as a child!”

“If you’re trying to figure out why he talks like that, it’s because he went to college in Herwun. Our capital city. And then he decided he was ashamed of being a Fillito, so he adopted the most not-Fillito speech pattern he could come up with. It’s not an English language thing, he talks like that in Diwar, too.”

Bakoon frowned. Nate had no idea why his expression looked like a frown, given that he could not in fact frown with his snout-beak, but he had the very strong impression that it was a frown. Maybe it was because Diwar eyes could scowl, and Bakoon was not quite scowling, but not quite not scowling. “I was never ashamed of Fillit Province,” Bakoon said. “I merely felt it was misleading to imply to those who are non-Fillito that I share the knowledge and interests one would expect from a Fillito.”

“Like how to fish,” Rikwaal said. “They haven’t let him fish since the time he tried to electrify an inlet to stun the fish.”

“My plan was mathematically quite sound.”

“Except for how many fish it would have killed, and ruined the freshness.”

“You are hardly an expert fisher yourself, Rikwaal.”

“Never was. I kept the metrics on my family’s fleet of fishing boats.”

If he took this job, and so far he wasn’t at all convinced he should, Nate could see he was going to have to put up with a lot of these two verbally sparring with each other. “So let me get this straight. You want me to give you stupid ideas, help you build them, and perform in front of the cameras in front of an audience of thousands of Diwar—”

“Millions,” Rikwaal said.

“I dare say it may be in the billions now.”

“No, it’s not. I manage the metrics, remember? The Great Build is regularly viewed by 720 million Diwar on a yearly basis, with an additional 200 million occasionally tuning in during some years, or popping in to watch for a few days and then leaving.”

“920 million is close to a billion.”

“Fine, millions of Diwar, then,” Nate said. “Does that basically sum it up?”

“That sums up what you’d do for the competition, but your actual job would involve a lot of training and study on top of that.”

“A great deal. We must bring you up to Diwar levels of knowledge within the first few months. It will be challenging! Rigorous! If you consider yourself unable to manage such an intense course of study, you are of course not obligated to take this position.”

Nate wasn’t going to let Bakoon use reverse psychology on him, but this – minus Bakoon’s passive-aggressive comments – was the first thing he’d heard that left him strongly in favor of taking the job. The Diwar trained very few humans, and there were entire domains of their knowledge that they simply didn’t share. “Does that include the Interdicted Disciplines?”

“If you sign a pledge that you will not share your knowledge for the purpose of making war, nor will you share it with anyone who does not sign a similar pledge, then yes, we have absolute authority to train you in any discipline that seems relevant.”

“Your planet still doesn’t have a unified central government,” Rikwaal said. “We can’t take the risk that your existing separate states might make war on each other with our technology.”

“Come on. Humanity’s been in space for forty years now. The UN has a lot more teeth in it than it used to, before you guys came along.”

“Yes, yes, but the decision is unfortunately not in our hands. We are merely a sporting team from Fillit Province, not politicians or influential leading lights of society, as yet.”

Well. It wasn’t as if Nate disagreed with the restriction against using Diwar technology for war; tensions between human nations still existed, and war was overall pretty terrible. Maybe it made sense that they wouldn’t teach humans certain things unless the humans pledged to never use those things for war. The thought of actually getting to learn Diwar physics and engineering in the Interdicted Disciplines was heady. He’d be able to write his own ticket anywhere on Earth that did engineering at all, or become a professor with near-instant tenure if the college could enforce his students pledging against war.

“Ok. I’m sold, I guess. Happy to be a dancing bear for a year if it means I have a chance of learning the advanced stuff you guys won’t teach the rest of us.”

“Excellent!” Bakoon declared. “I will inform the rest of the team!”

“You will not,” Rikwaal said. “He’s gotta pass the test first.”

“Oh. Ahem.” He actually said “ahem” rather than making a throat-clearing noise. “Yes, of course.”

“What kind of test?”

“A test of thinking outside boxes! A challenge to your creativity and skill!”

Rikwaal sighed.

***

They brought him to a room where there was a chaotic pile of transparent chips that were about the size of his pinky fingernail, all over a table and spilling onto the floor. There was also a small robot. The robot, about a foot tall, was built in a Diwar-like shape rather than a humanoid shape, but it had very large eyes, proportionately much bigger than Diwar eyes, or human eyes for that matter. It was as if a Japanese animator had been given the task of making a cute Diwar robot, and had applied extremely large eyes for cuteness. The robot was painted in bright primary colors, with a thin visible speaker grille in its slightly open beaklike mouth.

“This,” Bakoon said in an apologetic tone, “is your assistive equipment. It will follow voice commands in English, to assist you with the task.”

“We figured you needed something,” Rikwaal said, “since you only have two arms.”

“Humans are pretty good at getting by with our two arms,” Nate said, in a mild tone of voice because sounding as irritated with the condescension as he felt would be a good way to not get the job.

“Most Diwar engineers working on a task have robotic assistance,” Bakoon said. “We regret, though, that all we’re able to offer you for assistance is… this.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

Bakoon became very interested in smoothing down the feathers of his left large-arm. “It’s… well, it’s hardly up to the standards we’d prefer to use—”

“It’s a child’s toy,” Rikwaal said. “We borrowed it from Le’ir because the budget wouldn’t support buying anything more sophisticated and bringing it to Earth. Or buying anything, really. He’s held onto it since he was a kid.”

“In English, we would call it something like a… Buildy Buddy.” Bakoon was still very interested in preening his arm. This looked like it was conveying the same emotions humans would by staring at the floor or ostentatiously not making eye contact.

“A Buildy Buddy,” Nate repeated.

“Well, of course the name in Diwar Standard isn’t quite the same. It’s more of a portmanteau word than alliterative, but I thought this would be the best translation.”

“It’s not like you’re likely to need it for much,” Rikwaal said. “Maybe bringing you tools or something.” There was a large collection of tools, electronics boards, and various doodads all over a table that ran along the wall.

“Okay,” Nate said, hiding his impatience. “So, what’s the job?”

“These are memory chips. Most of them can hold a petabyte of data,” Rikwaal said. Nate whistled. The solid state memory chips humans used in their tablets and phones were a little bit smaller – not much, they were close to the limit of what humans could usefully manipulate and not lose in a carpet – but typically held only a few terabytes. “But about ten percent of them—” she held one up against the light with her small-arm’s talons—“are double capacity.” She picked up another and held them both up. “Take a look.”

Both were transparent. Both were the exact same color. Both had a numeric sequence on them that was too tiny to read and was written with Diwar hexadecimal numerals anyway, but looked to be about the same length. But when Rikwaal held them in front of the light, Nate could see that one of them was very slightly darker on the inside.

“And… what? I’m supposed to separate the two-petabyte chips from the one-petabytes?”

“In three hours,” Bakoon said.

Nate looked at the pile of what had to be thousands of the chips. He looked at the two Rikwaal was holding. “Is there any significant difference between them? Like… am I supposed to plug them all into that laptop to check their size?”

“You can’t plug any of them into the laptop,” Rikwaal said, “since this is a Diwar standard and that is a human laptop. Also that would take you much too long.”

Well, he definitely had to agree with that. Finding ten percent of several thousand, when they weren’t visibly different unless held to the light, was already the kind of task a fairy tale character would probably need the help of a kindly bird bringing her flock in to help after the hero had put the bird’s babies back in her nest for her, or something.

“As for any other indicator of the difference,” Bakoon said, “you have your two examples and you have your tools, and components for various devices you might choose to build. The rest is up to you to resolve!”

Great. Nate hadn’t saved any baby birds recently.

***

The two Diwar left the room, leaving Nate to his own devices… as many of them as he might decide to build in three hours, anyway. What he really wanted to do was rant about how ridiculous and unreasonable this task was, but he considered it very likely that they were watching and listening, so he needed to stay professional.

He decided to get acquainted with his tools. “Hey, Buildy Buddy.” Nothing. “Hey, little robot.” Shit, why hadn’t he asked how he was supposed to address the thing to get it to respond? They’d said it understood English. “Robot guy! Buildy Buddy! You dude!” Nothing. “Can you hear me, little robot dude?”

The robot chirped.

“Oh, ok. So I’m supposed to call you ‘little robot dude’?” Nothing. “Shit. Um, do you understand English?” Chirp. “Can I call you Buildy Buddy?” Chirp. “What happens if I ask you something that’s more complicated than yes or no?” Nothing. “Is it okay if I jump out a window and kill myself?” This time the sound wasn’t a chirp, more like a squawk. “Ok! Yes and no! We’re getting somewhere!”

So Buildy Buddy understood English, but could only say yes or no, in… Diwar Standard? Baby talk? Some made-up toy language? And if the question was more complicated than yes or no, Buildy Buddy couldn’t answer. “Buildy Buddy, can you go get me a screwdriver?” Chirp, and the little robot rolled along the table full of tools, found a screwdriver, picked it up with a large-arm, rolled back, and handed it to Nate. Its lower body had wheels rather than Diwar legs.

“Buildy Buddy, is this a double-capacity disk?” He held one of the chips up in front of it. Nothing. “Buildy Buddy, can you tell the difference between a single-capacity and double-capacity?” Squawk, but not exactly the same squawk. The response to his query about committing suicide had been loud and somewhat angry-sounding, like an infuriated chicken. This squawk was quieter. Maybe Buildy Buddy was programmed to alert parents if the kids were trying to do something dangerous? It still probably meant no, though. Nate hadn’t seriously expected that to work, but he’d had to try.

He inventoried his tools and components. There was a lot. Lasers. Scales. A centrifuge. Screwdrivers, hex drivers, crimpers, wire, a tiny soldering iron, an AR visor… what was that for? Nate put it on, and saw the words “Magnification: 100%” floating in the top right corner. “Visor, increase magnification to 200%.” Nothing happened. Then he found the up and down buttons on the right temple. Yep, that was a magnifier. Maybe there were other things it could do, but if it wouldn’t respond to voice commands, Nate had no idea how to get it to do anything.

The laptop was running LonelyIX, a variety of Unix with all the networking protocols stripped out aside from direct ethernet cable connectivity. It could be connected to a single other machine, or to a LAN running specific protocols, but it had no ability to connect to the internet. The OS was generally used on servers where it was important to keep them isolated from the Net, such as AI research or top secret projects. So the Hyperpurples thought it was very important that he not have Internet access for this test. That made sense, as annoying as it might be. Its lock screen had a timer on it, showing Nate’s time ticking down.

He tried weighing the two chips on a very tiny scale that had been provided. The double capacity was, in fact, slightly heavier, in the nanogram range. Nate tried weighing the chips; at twenty-three chips he found one of the double-sided ones. He realized there was no way he could separate the chips out just by weighing them, in the time frame he was given.

Could he do something with weighing large groups? There were larger scales that had the capacity… but no. There were thousands of chips. He’d have to weigh in small enough batches that he could get some idea of how many double-sided might be in a particular group.

OK. Inspect the chips with high magnification. See if there was any other trait he could use to separate them. He had two examples of the double capacity, and twenty-three of the single, counting the original sample he’d been given.

Wait a minute. Was that… seriously?

“Buildy Buddy, can you read the serial number on these chips?” Chirp. “Do you recognize the first character in the serial number on this chip?” Chirp. “If I show a new chip to you, can you say yes if the chip serial number starts with this character?” Chirp. “Can you say no if it doesn’t start with this character?” Chirp. “Am I wearing a purple hat?” Squawk. OK, it wasn’t stuck. It legitimately was answering yes to his questions.

“Let’s see how fast you can read,” he muttered.

He laid out chips for Buildy Buddy to chirp or squawk at. For the first fifty, he tossed them on the scale first to make sure they were, in fact, following the pattern he’d noticed. One of the fifty came up wrong, and he observed that it started with a different character than any of the others had. Meanwhile, of the forty-three he’d identified as single-sided on the basis of the serial number, there were seven that started with a fourth character. So it looked like the chips could have at least four separate kinds of serial numbers, starting with different characters.

“Buildy Buddy! We’re going to change it up some. Say yes if the serial number starts with the same character as either of these two chips, and no if it starts with the serial number of either of these two. If you see any other character outside of one of these four, I want you to roll backward five centimeters and then roll forward five centimeters. Got it?” Chirp.

What followed was an hour of lining up chips for Buildy Buddy to check, pulling out all the ones it chirped at, shoving aside all the ones it squawked at, and on three occasions, pulling out one it rolled back and forth on to weigh it, then modifying his instructions. All the chips he tested turned out to either weigh the same as the other single sided chips, or the same as the other double sided chips; there was no weight variance.

He was now two hours into his allotted three when the thought occurred to him. “Buildy Buddy, are you able to pick up these chips?” Chirp. “Can you put them in a pile?” Chirp. “I want you to take the ones where the serial number starts with one of these three characters, and pile them here. The ones where the serial number is any of these four, pile them here. If you find any other characters starting the serial number, give the chip to me. Can you do that?” Chirp.

There was his friendly bird. Buildy Buddy was not quite as fast as he was at picking up chips, but by now he had memorized what the characters on the chips looked like, and could identify them for itself. So while Buildy Buddy was going through the pile autonomously, he could sweep chips in front of himself, use the magnification on the visor to check the initial character of the serial number, and pull out the double-sided ones.

The laptop had a camera. If he had thought of it earlier, he could maybe have written a program that let the laptop use its camera to check his work, or maybe to check chips on its own… Buildy Buddy had two large-arms. It could have been stacking chips for the laptop camera and assigning them to one pile or the other, while it was picking chips up with its other arm. But it was too late to make use of the laptop now.

He was working on the last three when the door opened and Bakoon entered. “Time!” the Diwar called. “The test is over!”

On the assumption that at a 10 to 1 ratio, the last three he hadn’t looked at were probably single-sided, Nate swept them into that pile. “Done.” He stood up. “These two piles are double capacity. The rest are single.”

Bakoon cocked his head. “You are sure of this result?”

“Pretty sure,” Nate said.

Rikwaal poked her head into the room as Bakoon strode over to the table and stared at the Buildy Buddy. “Well, that was… interesting,” she said.

“You used a child’s toy,” Bakoon said, still staring at the Buildy Buddy. “All of these tools and instruments, and you used a toy.”

“And the fact that these are all the same brand of chip and apparently they have some coding in the serial number,” Rikwaal said. “I had no idea. I’ve never even looked at these serial numbers.”

“Yes,” Bakoon said. “Nor have I. You know that wouldn’t have worked if by coincidence the company who makes these hadn’t decided to use different characters for the single vs double capacity?”

“You’re Diwar,” Nate said. “It’d be efficient for a company to differentiate the serial numbers of separate products so they can’t overlap, and you guys usually go for efficiency.”

“True, but…”

“So, did I pass or not?”

Bakoon was plainly struggling. “We expected… an engineering solution of some type? Create an algorithm to allow you to identify the chips by differential weight. Use the magnifier and the laser in combination to detect the differential refraction of light passing through the singles and doubles. Something like that. Not… you just had the toy read the serial numbers and do the job for you!”

Nate shrugged. “You give your kids some pretty sophisticated toys.”

“We will have to check to see if your solution produced the correct results before we can say if you’ve passed the test—”

“No, we won’t,” Rikwaal interrupted. “You’re hired.”

“What do you mean?” Bakoon asked, aggrieved. “Of course we have to check if his solution worked!”

“I’d welcome that, actually,” Nate said.

“Sure, but it’s not necessary for him to join the team. We didn’t come to recruit a human whose solutions are always accurate. We came to recruit a human who could think of things none of us would. And using a kid’s toy to help him scan the serial number instead of using some more traditional engineering solution is exactly the kind of thing we were hoping for.”

Bakoon’s crest, which had puffed when he became agitated, slumped back against his head. “I… suppose you’re right. It is a very… different… solution.”

“I mean, go ahead and check it,” Nate said. “I’m pretty sure it’s accurate, regardless of what you think of the method.”

“What made you think of such a thing?” Bakoon asked.

Nate laughed with a mixture of embarrassment and pride. “So, on Earth, we have stories for children that we call ‘fairy tales’. A lot of these stories involve some witch or monster setting the main character an impossible task. Sort this entire bag of grains and separate the rice from the barley, that kind of thing. Only, the main character is so good and kind, they’ve helped some kind of magic creature early in the story. I remembered one where the character saved a bunch of baby birds that fell out of a nest, and the mother bird was so grateful, that she said the kid could call on her any time he was desperate for help. So this witch makes him do this sorting task, and he calls the bird, and she comes with her whole flock and they sort the grain for him. Or whatever it was. I was really, really young when I read the story.”

“And you took inspiration from this story?” Bakoon asked.

“Well… Buildy Buddy was chirping. I mean, the sound it makes when it means ‘yes’ sounds exactly like a chirp from an Earth songbird of some kind. And I made the connection. Buildy Buddy sounds like a bird, a bird helped the character in the fairy tale, maybe it can help me. Also, after I tried weighing them and realized it would take me way too long to weigh them all, I was inspecting them to see if there was anything I could see that was different about the chips, and I saw that all the ones whose weight was the same as my example of a single capacity disk had the same squiggle starting the serial number, and the two I had that I thought were double capacity based on their weight had a different squiggle. And I can’t read Diwar fast enough to be able to identify those squiggles, especially how small they are, but I decided to see if Buildy Buddy could do it. Turns out it could.”

“So,” Rikwaal said to Bakoon. “The human used a story to help him solve an engineering problem. You see how this sells itself, right?”

“I mean, I don’t usually solve engineering problems with fairy tales,” Nate said, feeling like this might be going in the wrong direction. “Usually I use math.”

“But the audience,” Bakoon said, his crest starting to lift again. “Yes. The audience will expect the human to know stories and be good at presenting them in some way; if he uses a story to solve a problem, they’ll be riveted! Who knew you could even use stories to solve problems?”

“We actually do that a lot,” Nate said. “We’ve built things because someone wrote a story about the thing and an inventor read the story and thought, Hey, I bet I could actually make that thing.”

“Amazing!”

“You guys do tell stories, though, right? I mean, you’re not… it’s not like you don’t have an imagination for fiction.”

“Of course we do,” Rikwaal said, “but humans are just better at it.”

“I think that’s probably a cultural thing. Diwar could probably learn to come up with amazing stories, too, if you wanted to. I mean, I was in Florida for spring break a couple of years ago and I met a Kai who was learning to scuba dive. She worked at the beach gift shop selling hermit crabs and shells.”

Both crests lifted. Nate got the impression that that particular lift indicated being taken aback. “A Kai, swimming? Earth is full of wonders,” Bakoon said.

Nate had felt the same way when he’d met the catlike alien – Kai famously did not like water, the same way Earth cats didn’t. It had made him realize that a lot of what the Diwar, the Kai, and all the other aliens thought about each other, or humans, was probably pretty close to human racist beliefs like “black people have rhythm” and “Asians are really good at math.” The Diwar really did know a lot more than humans, and had a culture built around excelling at STEM fields, but biologically he very much doubted they were actually better than humans.

And he might have the opportunity to prove it.

“So. Do I get a salary on this job?”

“We all do,” Rikwaal said. “Until the Build, at which point we will probably lose and be kicked out of the competition and we’ll all have to get real jobs.”

“All the skies forfend,” Bakoon said fervently. “Let us hope this strategy saves us from that fate!”

“What’s the next step, then?”

“Do you have an interstellar passport?” Rikwaal asked.

“Uh… no.”

“Then the next step is, I get you an appointment to get an emergency same-day passport because this specific country of all your nations refuses to modernize, and I book you a ticket on our flight back to Diw, and we all go back home and introduce you to the rest of the team. You’ll like Le’ir. You won’t like Enshru, nobody likes Enshru. Irta and Mip, depends on how they feel that day.”

“Be fair,” Bakoon said. “She’s had a difficult life. I am moderately fond of Enshru.”

“Wow. Uh, when I got up this morning I was not expecting to get a job out-system. How long do I have to pack? What am I allowed to bring? And how long before the Build, like, how long will I be out there with you guys?”

“Bakoon, we’ve got his email, right?” Bakoon nodded at Rikwaal’s question. She continued. “I’ll send all that to you in email, then. The Build is about ten of your months away; it’s annual, but Diwar years are shorter than Terran.”

“Or, looking at it a different way, the Build begins now,” Bakoon said, “and what is ten months from now is our opportunity to show off what we have made in the intervening ten months.”

Ten months on an alien world. Not just offplanet, but outside Sol System entirely. Nate had never even been to the Moon.

A grin slowly spread across his face, and grew bigger uncontrollably until he was smiling so wide, he was almost laughing. At this point he didn’t care what the salary actually was, as long as it was enough to afford room and board and some souvenirs on an alien world. This was a job he’d have taken for free.

#52 project #kai diwar universe

[astriiformes]

For reasons, I am once again thinking about the ideal TOH Star Wars AU that I might not ever write but lives in my head and haunts me regularly

Can't decide if I would age some of the kids up by a couple years or just continue in the grand Star Wars tradition of harm and too much responsibility to literal children but Luz is a young Force-sensitive human maybe more around 16-18 (still not THAT old) living on a backwater planet who convinces Eda to take her on as an apprentice

Eda is an ex-Jedi who has been on the run since Order 66, now working as a smuggler. I think people are cowards about never interpreting anyone as aliens in Star Wars AUs and think she's a good candidate but haven't narrowed down exactly the species, although the whole Togruta-are-obligate-carnivores thing make them a tempting choice. The Empire has probably been around a little longer than in SW canon to make things line up right and I think she was an older teen during the Clone Wars, and also Bump's padawan before everything fell apart.

King is a small alien of indeterminate species that she found in a mysterious older-than-the-Jedi temple while mucking around the galaxy. Not sure exactly what his deal is but some kind of weird Mortis/the Ones/Force nonsense long since forgotten about by modern Force users feels about right.

Lilith is also a former Jedi (I know by canon Jedi rules they probably wouldn't have had two siblings training at the same time, but also, I can poke at Star Wars canon too), now Head of the Inquisitorius dead-set on tracking her sister down and recruiting her as another Inquisitor. Was probably Belos' padawan and got roped into his own fall to the Dark Side as a result.

Gus is a young (human?) Force-sensitive rebel, as is Willow (although I think she is a green twi'lek); I have not decided exactly how they are affiliated with the Rebellion since they are both YOUNG (although again, maybe more in the 16-18 range, Gus is still the youngest of the kids for sure) but I think having their parents involved might make sense, especially if it's in part an attempt to keep their kids safe from the Purges/Inquisitors. Doing something with the Emerald Entrails as an X-Wing squadron is also very tempting (Emerald Squadron, with Willow as Emerald Leader??)

Raine is in a sort of Bail Organa double agent senator/Rebellion leader style position and YES this means that they and Eda were basically doing a whole "what if Padmé and Anakin were just a tiny bit smarter, but not by much" illicit senator/Jedi romance when they were younger, so I think it would be funny if they were from Naboo. They definitely think Eda died in Order 66 and Eda definitely thinks they, as a member of the Imperial Senate, have bought into the whole "the Jedi were bad, actually" thing which is why the two haven't spoken in decades. Darius and Eberwolf might be Senate colleagues? (Maybe a Fulcrum agent kind of situation?)

Not sure what is going on with the Blights. I think maybe Alador is an Imperial scientist and Amity might end up involved via a not-quite-Rogue-One, but a little inspired by it heist situation just to get her in contact with the rebels. Her parents have worked very hard to keep her Force sensitivity on the down-low. Also I think it's funny that in canon Pantorans can have the same gold eyes/lavender hair look Amity does (just, you know, blue) so while it doesn't work for the whole family I think Alador being a Pantoran and Amity taking more after him than her mother works amusingly well.

Hunter is Belos' Mara Jade-style Emperor's Hand (obviously) but ALSO a clone (obviously) who probably has an Order 66-style chip implanted in him somewhere for maximum angst potential, because this is Hunter and also Star Wars. He was definitely a pet project independent of the clone troopers, probably an attempt to do something weird with the Force to create a perfect Jedi killer. I'm honestly not sure if he's Force-sensitive or not, it could really go either way. Also I would be broadly interpreting all palismen as droids, but Flapjack in particular has to be an old, beat-up little guy he found on a mission and has been tinkering with against his better judgement since.

Belos is probably creating some Force-draining superweapon; a Star Wars AU is interesting for him because making him a Sith makes him one of the weird "magic" folks himself, but obviously the Jedi purges are still a good equivalent to his whole deal in canon. He and his brother were both Jedi and Caleb almost definitely tried to stop his fall to the dark side in a very Mustafar-but-if-Anakin-won situation, just because I think the parallel there is tasty.

#i've been reading a toh star wars au fic that does just enough things i find interesting while also going some very different directions #(and making a few choices i am less into personally but you know; to each their own with AUs especially) #that i have been like 'it really is the perfect au concept for this show' again while also thinking about my ideal take on it #still not sure i would write it (maybe??) but also. if anyone ever wants to ask or bother me about it. PLEASE do #convor crew au #f: us weirdos have to stick together

[dearweirdme]

Hi :)

I’ve watched a few of Taes videos about him explaining his album and what I found interesting was that he said he’s plans changed for his original album. That makes me think the whole Taennie thing was also for his promotions too but since it changed last December, there was no need for him to be connected with her again. Thats why he wasn’t connected to her since late of last year. The Paris walk thing seemed so forced and fast especially right before the release of her show. It seems like Jennie’s company asked Tae for one last cover up before letting it go. Since the Paris walk thing, he’s been distant and Jennie has been doing the most work. Which is why we all thought that it was only for her.

I think the original album that he was working on got postponed and it seems like it was a grand project. I’m sure he would’ve promoted big time like Jungkook and Jimin in US. In that original plan it would make sense for him to be connected to Jennie since she was already in the West for Idol show and it would’ve made a powerful impact. But since his plans changed and idol was a disaster he wants nothing to do with it anymore.

That’s why he kept this album short and low key and doesn’t care much about it being on the charts and all. It was just a filler or experiment for now. What do you think?

Hi anon!

I think I’ve kinda settled on the following as to how everything fits together.

Tae accidentally followed Jennie, which gave some people the idea to use him and Jennie dor some kind of powerplay towards Bighit/YG. I have not ruled out the companies being involved (I think at least staff from Jennie’s side was) but it wasn’t necessarily promo for Tae back then. Bighit basically denied those pictures being them by calling it ‘defamation’. But the rumor was spread widely enough to not go away.

Tae talked quite about about his song making process, and I tend to think he is truthful about not being satisfied and wanting different things constantly. It fits what we have heard before. I don’t know what the actual reason of him not releasing the album in December was, but.. it being a completely different one now is curious. The thing I find hard to deduce is how finished the initial album was. Was it set to go? Did Tae pull the plug? Was it the company? I am still guessing at all of this a lot. But Tae makes it come across like he wanted something else, he contacted Min Hee-jin, they clicked. He received songs and picked the ones he felt suited him best. And.. ideas about his mv’s formed. So at that point, the queercoded-ness would also have become apparent.

That is when I feel the Taennie walk was introduced. The timing was perfect for both Jennie and Tae’s ‘needs’. It was quick and simple and the had an already established rumor to go from. Imagine the Taennie walk without Gurumi’s work beforehand for a second. Would it have had the same impact? I think not. I think it would have been denied as ‘not being them’ way more.

After the Taennie walk Tae did absolutely nothing that links him to Jennie in any way. He even untagged Taennies. He is quite obviously happy as well. Jennie took it a bit further (I think encouraged by YG) by posting those pics on her Instagram. But she now also seems to not play any longer.

I think Tae is happy with what he put out, but I also think it’s clear he sees this as an actual layover. It not being his own songs does make me think he didn’t want those connected to her at times, but I am not entirely sure that is part of the reason why we got this album. I believe Tae when he says he wants this album and the promo to reflect him. I’ve at times wondered if Tae was comfortable with showhosts like James Cordon etc. I think he actually does prefer it like this. I know doing promo abroad is part of their jobs and they are used to it, but I can very much understand why Tae, who has felt weird too often, would want to be as comfortable as he can be for once.

#tae solo #taennope

[pixiedoodlein]

Wellllll amazing babysitter was short-lived. Turned out to be kind of a psycho then went AWOL before I fired. Friend from the org I worked at when we first moved to the country just got fired (by the jerk who was our jerky boss, who then got fired for firing her) and is going to help me w/ the kiddos a bit. I love my new (not so new anymore, 2.5 mos) reentry/ comms job, work a ton (too much, should lower the bar, but it’s fun and I like it), and have a v full plate— returning to grad school to finally finish my MFA and it was a real cartwheel trying to schedule my 4 hours/month of (virtual) grad projects meetings. A will be working 24/7 til mid-Oct, some weeks somewhere a few hours away. M is coming back to home school (she tried the local little pub school last year, was adored for being the awesome smarty pants she is, decided it’s too easy/ too full of republicans, decided she was over it) + has forest school one day a week (half hour away) she needs to get taken to/ picked up from, zooms throughout the week (piano, Spanish, math) she may need adult assistance navigating and sometimes I have work zooms at the same exact moment. Little guy (who is almost 3, HOW) is starting a preschool coop 2.5 hours, 2x week he’ll also need to get taken to/ taken home from (also half hour away, thankful for the existence of the high-end hippie town to the west). Not sure how I’ll be in 50 places at once so my work friend having time/ desire to be our part-time caregiver/ lifesaver is incredibly helpful (plus I love her and love having her around; I didn’t love having the not-actually-awesome-AWOL-sitter around, I’m antisocial and don’t like having many around, etc).

This is a really boring update; everyone’s busy, blah blah blah. I used to use this space to process, share about deep shit, connect. When I first started posting here, after lurking a while, I was a (sorta, somewhat, at least by NYC standards) young (ish) single mom who’d been through the systems’ wringer, grappling with aftershocks of said systems involvement while living with the ongoing impacts of A’s, he was still in prison and we were kinda romantically back together but not always totally yet. It was enlightening and fascinating to me to be able to share experiences w/ other women, other moms, also in some way navigating the child welfare system, from different vantage points— foster parent, adoptive parent, professional in the field, foster parent and professional, etc. I went through the family court world and I went through the criminal court world but demographically I am not the typical person to be on the defendant side of those worlds; though I experienced and struggled with many of the things the “bios” experience and struggle with, demographically I was more like the foster moms in this online community. I’d read the foster mom perspectives— generally well-meaning, well-off, well-educated, cool liberal ladies— and sometimes I’d cringe at the lack of empathy for their foster kids’ moms & dads, the absence of acknowledgment of how horrendously horrible it is to have your beloved children snatched from you (even if you did something wrong), the occasional desire for kids not to go home, the wish for someone else’s baby to be their baby.

But because I connected with these humans in so many ways, related to and liked them, I was able to see and hear the different perspectives, which sometimes I agreed with and sometimes I didn’t, but it was a special and amazing thing to have this weird digital space where we came to be honest and vulnerable together. I hoped that by being honest and vulnerable too, I could also share a different perspective, like they’d entrusted me with their different perspectives, tell what it was like to be on the other side of the court room, articulate things that maybe the parents of the kids they were caring for might also be feeling but might not be able to, or have opportunity to, say, or might not be able to say the things that needed saying in a way that could be heard.

Over the years my life has changed a lot; over the years everyone’s lives have changed a lot. While the trauma and PTSD of systemic involvement is still very real to me, I no longer relate in the way I once did to the role assigned to me during that involvement. Some of the people here I was so drawn to, so invested in, are no longer posting; most are no longer fostering; everyone has moved on in one way or another. Over the years I was so privileged to be granted a window into experiences, and to see perspectives shift— people here thinking deeply about the system, reevaluating their place in it, realizing that so many times so much pain could be avoided by just giving people money instead of the state spending tons of it tearing families apart to spend buckets more trying, supposedly and ineffectively, to velcro those same families back together via absurd hoops in a Kafka-esque vortex of a dysfunctional legal system, people here living through various versions of it with various details, and learning more and seeing more and sharing stories and heartbreaks here, grappling with big questions of equity and family and future here.

I firmly believe that the child welfare system is the most fucked up and flawed of all the fucked up flawed systems in this country. Even before defund the police, defund CPS. Abolish it, burn it down, build something vastly different, it inherently can’t and shouldn’t be salvaged. I believe it’s a system that causes massive amounts of very real trauma taking kids from parents to prevent possible or suspected or unproven trauma, that the needless damage inflicted far outweighs the needed interventions, and I believe these things far more now than I ever did then when I was at its mercy. Having glimpses into other people’s experiences with this system, elsewhere and here, but especially here, carried me to this conclusion. I appreciate the trust and care and reflection and vulnerability that lived in this space, as so many of us struggled with the meanings of this system that so many of us were touched by in so many varying ways.

What this place used to be isn’t what it is anymore, for me. Maybe it’s that so much of my life has changed. I feel like when I come here now it’s to talk about the weather: childcare challenges, is it cove or is it flu, what should I make for dinner, and that’s not what I loved about coming here. Anyway. I think my Tumblr time has ended. If you want to see pictures of what I ended up making for dinner, follow me on the Insta.

It’s been real, ladies. Love many of you lots.

[unpassive-viewer]

The Bear: Season 2 Thoughts (Mild Spoilers)

Hey y’all,

I binged The Bear S2 this week and I have things to say.

This show is so visually beautiful, the shots of the food, the tight shots on the actors - everything was gorgeous. The cinematography impacted the story so perfectly in a way that I am not used to witnessing in television versus movies. 

I was rooting for every single character so much. Their stories were all expanded upon so well, and none of them were static. The acting was 10/10, I really bought the development of the relationships even though some of them seemed a little random coming off of S1. The writing for Carmy was perfect as a product of his dysfunctional environment (disclosure: my family is very similar to his, it was like watching myself in a character). Jamie Lee Curtis’ acting made me want to crawl out of my skin, which is a testament to how well she played the part. 

In particular, I fell in love with Richie and Tina this season. 

Richie got the perfect redemption arc - this season was truly his and I loved it. I could not stand him in S1, but S2 fleshed out his character so well. I want his character to get win after win, and I think he has has a long way to go in S3 (should we get it). Matty Matheson’s character was also a great counterweight to Ebon’s pessimism, I thought their dynamic was a lot of fun. 

I feel similarly about Tina’s character. This season you’re really able to understand their motivations and fears, which I always adore. Liza was incredible in the role. On one hand I think the show is best as a stand-alone, but I could also watch Tina’s story by itself. Both she and Richie get a huge dose of self-confidence this season and it makes for a very endearing, relatable story. I think very often stories that involve that kind of realization are very commodified and dramatized when it comes to middle-aged protagonists, but the growth of these characters felt very real and well-deserved. (Side note - I follow Liza on Instagram now and she’s such a sweet lady. She reminds me so much of my mom.)

Sydney - Ayo Edebiri - is an incredible character and Ayo’s writing was perfection. Syd’s and Carmy’s signing “I’m sorry” was a really interesting touch and encapsulates their dynamic so well. I also oddly love the way she’s styled. When she’s not wearing her work clothes, her style isn’t flashy, but she looks fantastic always. Her style is so reflective of her character - often slouched, baggy styles with pops of colour. In my opinion she looks like an artist - a creative - which I’d say is pretty accurate to her reality. 

Lionel Boyce’s portrayal of Marcus was once again very sweet, and I liked his somewhat less dramatic character arc. I didn’t love his little outburst at the end of the season, but as a character that’s been such a consistent teddy bear it’s nice to see some more conflict introduced to his story. 

After this season, I want more Will Poulter and Olivia Colman. I am very much in love with them, and their brief parts in the series were so lovely (despite feeling a little random). Olivia Colman brings the most incredible energy to every project I have seen her in, she is radiant and I love her. I also love the attention to detail with Poulter’s tattoos having a story behind them. 

Claire was a good character as well, but she didn’t have the same effect on me as Poulter and Colman. While they’re all static characters, Claire was just... too perfect. Not entirely manic pixie dream girl perfect, but I didn’t find her particularly compelling. For what the character was, she was played well by Molly Gordon, and it was nice to see Carmy get the chance to be something other than an anxious unhappy wreck for a few episodes. 

My singular big criticism as of now is that there was so much compressed into this season that it all felt a little random. There were a lot of characters introduced in a very short period of time. While it was nice to see the environment external to the restaurant and I think all of those characters fit very well, it was just a lot. I think the Christmas dinner episode was very important to the story, but the rest of the season could have used a little more breathing room that that episode took up. 

I binged it, but this show deserves to be mulled over. 

#mild spoilers #the bear #carmy berzatto #tv series #jeremy allen white #ayo edebiri #liza colón zayas #matty matheson #Edwin lee gibson #ebon moss bachrach #lionel boyce #gillian jacobs #jamie lee curtis #jon bernthal #will poulter #john mulaney #olivia colman #bob odenkirk #sarah paulson #oliver platt #molly gordon #corey hendrix #chris witaske #abby elliott

[hezuart]

I will start this by saying I do think Vivziepop is a good creator.

But

Reading about the production of HH and Helluva Boss worries me. In Twitter, Vivziepop is alway talking about how she is tired and overworked, because she has to work on two shows at the same time.

While I do feel bad for her, I am also thinking, “why is she trying to do it all at once?” Like, if Hazbin Hotel is already a huge project to manage, why is she trying to do it while completing a completely different spinoff?

I get the feeling that this might be one of the reasons the world building in Helluva Boss is so weird. Maybe she is rushing writing each script of each episode? I don’t know if that might be true.

If it is true, it is strange she is organizing it this way. Like, she doesn’t have to produce it all at once. She is literally her own boss.

I don’t know. What do you think?

Yes, I've mentioned this before I believe. I'd be foolish to say I don't understand the struggle, the compulsion to jump from project to project and multi-task. I do that myself.

But that isn't something you can do in a corporate setting. She is 100% overworking herself and burning out. Her tweets have concerned me, and so many others.

It wasn't even just Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss. She made that Addicted music video, and a pilot episode for Zootopia, and back then also made that Holidaze short. If she had focused on just making shorts, that would be one thing, but the fact that she has to commit to not only one show, but two, is also just not possible. It's too much to keep consistent or even separate sometimes, especially for someone who is not used to that kind of work schedule. She even does all-nighters. It's not healthy.

She might not be the boss for Hazbin Hotel in its entirety, because she sold the rights to A24, but for Helluva Boss then yes.

However, I personally don't think she rushed the Circus episode because she made this tweet a month after the release:

"I'm proud to be making shows that come directly from and deeply involve a queer perspective. It's not always a norm but it's happening more and more! The shows are for everyone, but they are rooted in what we want to see and tell!"

Instead of the show's original premise of being a dark comedy featuring Blitzo's crew in Hell and how despite being bad people, still have intriguing relationships with reason, she decided to flatten and focus on the side character Stolas for the sake of turning him into a pure-hearted baby boy who was a closeted gay that suffered for years against an evil straight woman he was forced to marry.

and that is apparently something she wanted to tell, since she wrote that episode herself. It makes it seem like she's proud to tell this "queer story" in, unfortunately, a very very poor way.

Would not be surprised if some episodes were indeed rushed, but the Circus has layers to its writing and implications. Unfortunately, Helluva Boss has lost sight of what it wants to be. I wonder if it ever knew what it wanted to be. It's gone from dark comedy to romantic drama. Helluva Boss can't write funny dark comedy. Most of the punch lines are sex jokes, swearing, and screaming. It's gotten pretty old and repetitive. Fandoms are more drawn towards romantic drama, so it feels like they attempted to merge or switch the genres to cater to fans, but they fell flat. It's ironic, because, the skimmed-down romantic drama was doing just fine until the Circus episode, where they doubled down and took it the opposite direction of where it was initially heading.

But I digress. Viv has some great ideas but needs help to implement them since she's not always the best at making those ideas work for the better. She's overworking herself through her multi-tasking and burning out, and through it all, her fellow employees are suffering for it. I hope she has learned from this experience and will know to try and focus on one show at a time from now on, or just stick to shorts to make things easier for herself.

#vivziepop #ask #text post #i love that queer characters are in hazbin hotel and helluva boss #but charlie and vaggie are already girlfriends we don't get to see how that relationship came to be #its offscreen unless we get a flashback episode #and stolas as a queer guy who didn't realize he was gay until late in his marriage #who now has to deal with the fallout from his wife and daughter AND his love interest #is a really great queer story to tell that is very relatable #for him to know he was gay and fantasized about a childhood friend of his that doesn't love him back #thats harsh and kind of confusing and convoluted #and ironically the straight pairing moxie and millie are the flattest most boring relationship in the show #the villains of this show are more interesting than the main characters! #thats a problem!! #but yeah viv gurl i critique you and your shows a lot #just pls remember this stress and dont repeat the same mistake of taking on so many things at once #because u are a fellow creator and you still need to take care of yourself #maybe helluva boss wouldnt have been so messy if you could focus more energy on it #one thing at a time

[thegoodceai]

afddighadfi <3333 sending all the hearts <33, sry for the late reply I had a Long Time at work but I had read your message and was also liek *twirling hair, kicking feet* trying to think of a fitting response !

Letsgo!! IF is soo good, I need to get more into IF if anything. Fallen Hero is Top Tier. Got a top three IF? And Nice! U a player or dming for them?

Aww! I'd love to know any info about her! Plz feel free to yell at me about her. Wuts her (current) name, design?, sign, The Demons (the story ur putting her through lol).

Bro! I've relatively done the same, I had waited so long to play Retri, wut ending did u get 👀👀👀. Ortega is just 😩😩😩

I hadn't heard of her nor the song, but checking it out I can definitely see why it's been on repeat <333.

We love little sharp bbies <3. Do u have a preference for color? Got a name picked out already lol?

Fair Enough, least they chase u with a stake. The Aesthetic and Seduction are unmatched I will give em that ;p. Oh! I know Of the series, but next to nothing what its about, wuts it about/what drew you into it? ((I know I could Google it, butt any excuse to get you to chat/yell more <3))

Thank you for replying to all my random questions lol. Been following for a long time, and in my mind ur already a Friend :))))

<3333 sending all the good vibes, i know we've been mutuals for a while and truly the one reaction i have every time we interact is Friend!!!!!

i am DMing for my friends, it was the only way to get them to play. i started out with only 2 players, just for some light fun, but i ended up with 5 now and a whole homebrew campaign that they can play around in and so far they do seem to be enjoying being chaotic gremlins with the side of Mystery Plot i threw at them

IF is amazing, i love the versatility of the format. idk if i could pick a true top 3, but for ones in progress ones i keep going back and replaying there's A Tale of Crowns (a favorite and one of the first ones i played, like 2 years ago when it was first released), Project Hadea, and Attolo. i love all of them dearly and cannot wait to see how they end up. for finished ones, i loveeeee Way Walkers University (i feel like it's so underrated, but i really like the style it is written in and how well developed the world of it is, there just so much and the variations you can play are huge), The Passenger (Roach my beloved), and i really liked I, The Forgotten One (been following this one before it was published, and it's truly not everyones' cup, but i found it compelling)

the story i'm working on is kind of fantasy adventure, heavily based on mythology and folklore (specifically romanian one), and i am planning to like, make it public at some point this year (still ironing and detailing some stuff, but the bones are solid, it's been rooting around in my brain for A While). the main cast are all variations of very very old ocs i have (originally for another story sort of in the same vein, but i'd like to think i grew a bit as a writer and they're more put together now, as well as the story itself). so imma hold on to the details about this whole thing for now but aaah thank u for being interested in it <3333

aah first ending i got was accident as sidestep, stayed as sidestep, and got the whole old gang involved in breaking them out of the hospital. i've been playing sidestep as a reluctant villain that's gunning for justice/exposing what the Powers That Be are actually up to (anarchist villain baby), all while being friendly with the Rangers and ended up keeping the cover so none of them know about the villain sidegig lmao. been trying to psych myself to play a fully evil sidestep but. it's hard. and i loooove playing reluctant and tired mcs that are done with everything but ultimately will do the right thing at any cost (tragic heroes my beloved)

16 year old me would have given anything to have a black cat named either Loki or Thanatos and you know what? they were right. but in reality i will probably just end up adopting a bunch of stray animals and naming them like. normal human names. or food names (i am very fond of the name Clementine, but it is kind of a mouthful)

lmao i remember next to nothing of the series, i've read it forever ago (i was like, maybe 13?? when i got the first book). all i remember was that i liked Sookie very much at the time. it was i think the first like, adult book series i read and it was fascinating to my young brain, seeing a fully developed female main character being badass and resourceful and kinda doing her own thing (the series is from her perspective, so that was also kind of novel at the time, after reading a lot of like, classical literature and school stuff). idk if i'd recommend it now, but it was definitely formative for me. it's also the series that got me into like, modern fantasy (both reading and writing it)

#aah this is so fun thank u so much again 🖤🖤🖤 #ask #personal #phantom-tiger

[jankwritten]

hi hello I saw hockey au in your tags and came as fast as I could. hand it over

OAIOSUdoiaSUDoiASUdoAISduAISODu Oh buddy it's my. PJO OMG Check Please crossover fic right. Consuming my life. The thing is it's like, over 600 pages but it's nowhere NEAR ready to see the light of day *i am hiding* but i will give a summary synopsis because oh my god i love it so fuCKING MUCH

Percy and Nico are on the Falcs alongside the canon OMGCP Falcs, and there are 2 sides to the story - Percy and Will's side, and Jason and Nico's side. Lately I've been focusing on Jason and Nico's side.

It's kind of just following them in their lives. Jason is the top prospect for the upcoming draft, Nico is the backup goalie for the Falcs who got drafted the year before (he's like, UNREALISTICALLY good because I wanted to make him Special oaiudsoaisudaoiuds) and they meet in a bar in Vegas after the Falcs get their asses kicked by the Aces. Jason, unsurprisingly, is friends with/mentored by Kent Parson, they met once after an Aces game and the rest is history. Jason and Nico are both like, trying to teach each other about hockey and falling in love but they're not boyfriends but they want to be but they can't and they're supporting each other even though Shit keeps Happening.

Will and Percy's side of the story is kind of similar, except Percy has been with the Falcs for a few years. I honestly need to rewrite their side because So Much has changed in my views of their characters and the characters involved with their side that it's just not accurate anymore. There are moments where it crosses over with Jason and Nico's side too which don't align anymore since I've edited it to death, but basically Will and Percy's side is like, meetcute moment turns into a weirdly coincidental second meeting which turns into an "are you stalking me?" third meeting kind of vibe (Will works for the Stars and Percy just doesn't pick up on the Stars being in town every time he bumps into Will LMAO). It deals a lot with Percy figuring some shit out about himself and his past and his emotional situation.

I'm half considering adding more of the actual demigods from PJO in as the other characters on the Falcs/Aces - right now I have OCs, because it seemed easier and gave me more room to play with, but also the idea of like. Frank being the Aces goalie is....very fun, even though I also HC that Swoops is the Aces goalie

All the ages are fucked with because I Wanted To - all the Falcs/Aces are like, as old as they would be in 2018/19, but then the PJO characters are ALL fucked up. Percy Annabeth and Will are all around the same age, Jason and Nico are 18, Hazel is 16ish, and then I haven't really used any other PJO characters (though Leo and Piper have made an appearance in a side story that is becoming more and more canon, they are also both 18-19 ish). Frank is also around Jason's age I think, but he was only ever mentioned in reference to Jason's backstory and never in the actual story (yet).

SO YEAH HOCKEY AU MY BIG PROJECT MY BABYGIRL MY EMOTIoNAL SUPPORT FIC I have written up a full Falcs roster of OCs and have made timelines of events and even created my own hockey team set in Maine specifically so if I ever wanted to make this into an original fiction piece one day I could.

#THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ASKING ABOUT IT HONESTLY i love this story with my whole heart and I WANT to start sharing it #i just cannot stop editing it ioausdoiausiodu #hockey au #pjo #omgcp #pjo/omgcp crossover #percy jackson #jason grace #nico di angelo #will solace #i am going to post hockey au to tumblr/ao3 one day though i swear it #i also cannot claim that the characters are....enTIRELY in character because they're like absolutely not the same people they were in pjo #like Nico still has some of his original PJO personality but he's also quieter in a different way #like not in an emo way but in an analytical kind of way #also the autism is cranked way up to a 9 #Will is WAY more southern Texan pretty boy and he's also trans because i said so #Jason is also trans in this and he didn't start off that way he gained that along the journey (thank mars for that one) #it adds a little more Spice to his fears about joining the NHL and also I Said So #i have so many more thoughts but my fingers are too cold to type more SOIuOAISUDAODU