bookish-library

[bookish-library]

I FUCKING LOVE IT WHEN PEOPLE OVERANALYZE MY ART AND STORIES!!! PICK APART THAT SYMBOLISM! FIND ALL THE LITTLE DETAILS, BABY! YEAH!

[bookish-library]

Is it really choir sheet music if it isn't a photocopy that says "do not photocopy this copyrighted material" at the bottom?

[bookish-library]

learning that people want you in their lives is a skill you can develop if it does not come naturally

[bookish-library]

underworld saga has broken something inside of me...

[bookish-library]

April 27th is International Crow and Raven Appreciation Day! My comic Crow time is pretty much stuffed to the brim with crows, so it's a good way to celebrate these goth little dudes.

READ CROW TIME!

OR GET PLUSH GOTH BOI?? WOW!

[bookish-library]

[bookish-library]

can i interest u in a box of friend??

#Friend!!!

[bookish-library]

there's something kinda funny to me about certain ways scar tends to be drawn because it's like. okay imagine hypothetically you took a distillation of fanon scar designs and showed it to someone who's never even heard of a minecraft, and asked them what they think this guy might be like. we're ignoring context here, pretend we're showing them a ref sheet. and it's like, alright, here's a rugged looking buff guy. nice abs. lots of scars. he's got a smug grin on his face. very shirtless. he looks like the love interest in a bodice ripper. i bet he's got some dark angsty secret he keeps buried underneath that suave facade. but not buried too deeply, just enough to intrigue.

and then you go watch third life and he is like a cat whose owner keeps desperately trying to make him stop eating plastic.

[bookish-library]

Do you think Odysseus realizes that Tiresias never refers to “them” getting home in the plural sense? It’s only singular. It’s only Odysseus. Do you think he realizes that?? Odysseus uses plural terms to refer to him and his men, and Tiresias is very careful and cryptic with his words, but his prophecies are true, even if the meaning is not clear at the time, and he is referring to a single, not a plural, for the entire prophecy.

[bookish-library]

My new YouTube video: A DM’s Guide to Ranged Combat is now live! Please go give it a watch!

If you’re a DM looking for a way to challenge your overspecced crossbow player, or just generally make mixed-range combat more interesting and enjoyable, it’s full of helpful tips and visualisations. Plus, supporting these long videos really helps keep my channel alive and funds more future content!

#Lolll #The woosh woosh middle finger got me #To show my roommate

[bookish-library]

The Underworld stretches before a ship that seems starkly out of place, vibrant in color and teeming with a life that the abyss did not have. The crew peers around the ship, mist obscuring any hope they had of a clear path. Screams echo throughout the cavern, seeming to not only come from the river below, but also from around the ship, putting the crew on edge.

"Help me!" they beg, "Please, I was not meant to be here!"

But the crew, steadfastly following the orders of their Captain, carry on, glancing warily around at the mist around them as if they expected the screams to gain a body and leap at them. Some glances travel ahead to land on the captain, heading the ship from the bow. His gaze scans the misty landscape in hopes of finding a path to the prophet Tiresias, the only hope of getting back home.

Home. That was a place he thought of often. Everything I do is for them. In his mind's eye, an oft-remembered scene plays. His wife, his beloved, holding in her arms the reason he went off to war. Telemachus.

Wait for me, my loves, I am coming.

His longings for home are interrupted by a piercing scream, one that tugs at his heart and makes his breath skip.

"CAPTAIN!"

He turns to face his crew, cloak nearly catching on the railing in his haste. His eyes dart over his ship, landing on each of his crew members, but nothing seems amiss.

"CAPTAIN!" the disjointed cry comes, echoing around, above and below.

The captain rushes to the side, fearing the worst. But what he finds are not the cries of a crew member fallen overboard, callused hands reaching to other members of the crew for rescue. Instead, peering out from the misty river below, are faces.

Faces, once known and treasured, are now disfigured and almost unrecognizable, appearing in the sea of faces one moment, only to melt into the crowd and be replaced with another the next. Ghostly hands reach up towards the ship, only to be pulled down and quickly replaced with another. As the captain stares in horror at the sight below him, his ears begin to make sense of their keening cries.

"Captain! Captain, you left us! How could you let the thing that killed us live?"

"I have a wife and daughter, I just want to see them again!"

"Captain, please, help us!"

"You've become a monster, taking mercy on things that have none!"

"You mock us! Ruthlessness is the only MERCY!"

The captain staggers back, hands raising involuntarily to block out the screams of his dead crew still rising all around the ship. His eyes squeeze shut in some desperate hope that that would help erase the sight of his crew’s fate. 

As the ship continues on, the screams begin to quiet. But to the man on the bow of the ship, there is one that remains, a reminder of that fateful night. An echoing cry that rings only in his mind, bringing to mind the image of a child, wrapped in cloth. 

A touch on the shoulder startles him back into the moment. The first mate says nothing, only gestures to a ghostly stone wall that has appeared to the right of the bow. The captain, cries of a child unknown and a child loved echoing in his mind, steps forward to analyze this new obstacle in their path. The echoes of metal clashing can be heard faintly in the distance, seeming to come from behind the wall that stretches ahead and behind without end. 

In the distance, there is a figure on the top of the wall, shoulders hunched with the weight of the bundle in its arms. The captain can do nothing but watch as the figure raises up the bundle and, with a ghostly sigh that seems to come from all around, lets it fall. Withdrawing an outstretched hand, the man given the responsibility of captain clutches his cloak to his chest in a desperate bid to keep from echoing the cries that have faded from his ears but not his mind.

The man’s legs shake, threatening to give out. He reaches for the railing, knuckles white. Heaving breaths consume him as he tries to hold his composure. Nononono, I did this to get us home, I did this to make us safe. Mind spiraling, the words that float through the air are nearly missed. The ghostly words seem to dispel the wall and wrap the ship in a ghostly embrace. 

“This life is amazing, when you greet it with open arms…”

“Polites…” the whispered name slips out of the captain’s mouth, uttered for the first time since the man’s death. 

“Whatever we face, we’ll be fine if we’re leading from the heart…”

Spinning to face the direction of the voice, the captain rushes to the other side of the bow. In the distance, a figure slowly becomes clearer, a hand lifted above its head in a greeting. Hand moving almost automatically, the captain returns it as the ship moves closer. Can it be…?

Surrounded by lush greenery and standing on a sandy path, the figure looks content, even in death. A smile on its face, only slightly obscured by the mist, the figure reaches out, not in a cry for help, but as if to invite its listener in.  

“No matter the place, we can light up the world, here’s how to start: greet the world with open arms…”

The captain chokes back a cry, as he lays eyes on a man he never thought he would be able to again. The ship, nearly past the figure, continues on, the captain nearly hanging off the side as he listens to the figure’s fading last words.

“Greet the world with open arms!”

The silence left by the figure is filled only by the rocking of the ship, then, a broken whisper, “Polites…”

The captain, a semblance of a goodbye said, inhales, turns his back on the ghost of his friend, and stops short at the sight of another spirit wandering past, ghostly call echoing throughout the cavern.

“Waiting, waiting…”

It can’t be. Please, no! 

“Mom?” The man’s voice cracks at the sight a child never hopes to see but knows one day must come. 

“Waiting… Odysseus when you come home, I’ll be waiting…”

The figure, a woman, wanders through the river, hands cupped to her face as if to help amplify her message to a son that could never hear her in life.

“Even if you’re the last thing I see, I’ll be waiting…”

The captain rushes to the bow of the ship, calling in desperate hopes of being heard over the spirit’s echoing “waiting…”

 “I’m right here, Mom! Can’t you see, I’m waiting!”

The spirit calls on, the echo of the captain’s call seeming to never reach it. 

I’ve been gone too long, the captain despairs, I ventured too far. Oh, forgive me!

In spite of, or perhaps without knowledge of, that her son would never hear her in life, the spirit continues calling, desperate to comfort the son she would never see again. 

“I’ll always love you. I’ll stay in your life, waiting…”

“Waiting…”

“Waiting…”

“Waiting…” the captain echoes, voice trailing off, unable to bear the thought of the figure’s broken heart.

But as the reverberations start to fade, the spirit turns, not in surprise, but with acceptance written on her face. Lips parting in a sad smile, eyes full of love, the spirit raises her hand in farewell, her call echoing in tandem with the captain’s whisper, “waiting…”

Her figure, once again becoming enshrouded in shadow, turns to begin its wandering once more, its call silenced in the peace of knowing it has been heard. 

“Goodbye, Mom.”

The silence that the two spirits brought is shattered as screams once again pierce the air. The man, taking a deep breath to fortify himself in the peace of a goodbye he didn’t know he needed to make, once again dons the mask of the captain and turns back to the bow of his ship, leaving the screams to echo behind him.

“Please, help!”

“Have mercy!”

“Don’t leave us!”

“Captain!”

Your past is always close behind, down in the Underworld!

#epic the musical #epic the underworld saga #fanfic #wow this took a long time #my first ever posted fanfic! #Should I put this up on ao3? i'm curious if theres an interest in that if that makes things easier #for the library #this started as an animatic idea and ended as a story LOL #if you want to listen to “The underworld” as you read it should fit well(ish) timing wise #reblogs welcomed!

[bookish-library]

The “oh I could definitely write this fanfic in under 5000 words and it really wouldn’t take me that long” voice in your head is actually the devil speaking

#Me rn

[bookish-library]

I must not mock Gen Alpha. Mocking Gen Alpha is the mind killer. Mocking Gen Alpha is the little-death that brings total generational solidarity obliteration. I will engage with Gen Alpha lovingly. I will permit them to be cringe. And when they grow up I will turn my eye to their accomplishments. Where mocking has gone there will be nothing. Only generational solidarity remains

[bookish-library]

Thinking of doing something I've never done before....posting a fanfic!

Its Epic: the musical related, and as soon as it gets out of my head and onto paper I'll post it!

#epic the musical #epic the underworld saga

[bookish-library]

(from Phil's 15th March stream VOD, at 4:41:16)

[viewer question is at 4:40:48]

phil: "[reads chat, refers back to a prior viewer question] It was Origins? Uhh... [he rereads the question again]."

'"'What led Origin Philza on the path he's on? What happened differently this time that didn't happen to the other Philza variants?'"'

"Uh, so, he was an orphan, and... he liked to believe that his parents were, like, super rich. But they weren't, and... and he just wanted to be, like-- He wanted to have everything, and own everything, and rule everything, so that he could eventually enlist the help of the people to find his parents. Because he truly believes they are still alive."

"[laughs] That's it! Origins Philza wanted to be king, by any means necessary, to find his parents. [laughs] That was the underlying thing that I was gonna reveal eventually, but we'll-- we'll never reveal it now. Like, officially-- on the server, y'know. That was like... the bit that I was gonna like--"

"It was gonna be this whole thing, where I was gonna control the server, take over everything, eventually start handing out jobs to people. And then eventually those jobs would stop being, like, interesting. They wouldn't be like, 'Build a village! Build this, build that, bababababah! Gift something to a friend.' I was gonna give people, like, literal tasks."

"And then, the tasks were gonna slowly start changing to: 'Travel 20,000 blocks in this direction, and tell me what you find.' 'Look for a tall man, with a scar on his left eye.' Like, just really obscure shit."

"And then people would be starting to worry about me, and I would stop being mean, and I'd start being really scared. [laughs] And then people would come to me and be like, "What's wrong?", and then I'd-- I'd break down. I was gonna have a breakdown, essentially... where my character just, like... either cries, or lashes out, because he just wants his parents back." [laughs]""

"[laughs, reads chat] 'WE WERE ROBBED' [responds] It's fine, now you know! Now you know. And all the riches in the world won't be able to bring them back. [laughs]"

[bookish-library]

#Recepies

[bookish-library]

Monk: Pros of being a Blue Dragonborn--you can puke lightning from your face.

DM: Cons of being a Blue Dragonborn--everyone thinks you're untrustworthy. Or that you are plotting something.

Monk: But I am a Monk--a luminous being! I am above such petty things.

DM: Everyone still thinks you're planning something. Or you have plans going within plans...

Warlock: Which is hilarious because Monk really is like the most unsubtle person ever.

Paladin (Silver Dragonborn): She's planning something, I just know it...

Monk: Boy do I love punching bad people in the face! :)