#advanced elements

[holocene-sims]

next // previous

august 26, 2021 4:00 a.m. a balcony, somewhere

time somehow seems to simultaneously slow to a crawl and race beyond the speed of light. grant doesn’t remember when they’d ended up perched like lovebirds at the pinnacle of a staircase, peering out over the night-drenched landscape, but it must have been a while ago. customers have long since stopped streaming in and out of the restaurant on the street below.

he remembers in better detail the stream of their conversation–they’d shifted from food and a strangely peaceful, humorous discussion of kicking the bucket to movies, and at some point, paranormal stories came up along the way.

it’d be hard to forget talking to yunha.

there’s something curiously enrapturing about her, something that had drawn him to her when he first made eye-contact with her.

the look in her eyes, maybe. it’s piercing, like she’s baring right through your skin and into your soul, but not malicious or judgmental. it’s friendly, it’s curious, it’s playful.

the way she speaks, maybe. she’s the most engaged conversationalist he’s ever encountered. everything you say, whether she agrees or disagrees, is met with affirmations and a lot of nodding. yes, yes, of course. i see, i see. i understand. ohhh, wow! really?

she’s unraveling every shard of the puzzle that is his personality and piecing it back together in one whole picture, analyzing it. figuring it out. appreciating it.

or maybe it’s the sweetness that radiates off her. she appears unafraid to smile, instead all too happy to flash those pretty, crooked bunny teeth for the world to see.

“so, i'm going to guess you’re not accidentally good at singing.”

she seems not to mind revealing her own puzzle pieces either, and the more she says about herself, the more fascinated he is with her. with who she is. with what makes her tick.

“i hope it’s not an accident,” yunha replies, laughing, “because shit, then years worth of practice was a waste.”

“time enjoyed is never time wasted.”

the unabashed cringe of the line garners an immediate eye roll, but she still seems to find it funny.

they’ve definitely been sitting here a while. grant straightens his back, fixing his gradually slouching posture, and is is met with an immediate flash of pain, distinct from the chronic dull ache underlying every day of his life, that radiates down every vertebra.

“what got you into music, though?”

yunha’s rosy pink lips purse in thought as she dwells on the question.

“a lot of things. my parents like music. i listened to a lot of different kinds of songs my whole life, first with them, and then later with my friends. i had some time between classes and studying to spend having fun, but i couldn't spend any money, so my friends and i would go to this music store. we walked around and picked random albums to listen to on the headphones. we never bought anything.”

grant nods supportively. “what’s, like, the first album you remember really liking? or albums. you don’t have to pick one.”

“ah! i treasure so many albums. seo taiji and boys IV. i think that’s still my favorite nostalgic album ever. i also remember fondly, um, this girl’s in love with you by aretha franklin. i heard that at the music store, and i was so impressed by her talent. i still am.”

“i'm not a music expert. surprise! i know, i know, i'm sorry to tell you, i did not practice for centuries for that wonderful spice girls performance earlier. no, but seriously, i most often just listen to the same old emo stuff i liked when i was 13. so, unfortunately i don’t know the first album at all, at least not yet, but i do know the second one. you have fantastic taste, that’s a classic.”

despite his ignorance, yunha still smiles from ear to ear. “you should look up the first one! look up, like, seo taiji ‘come back home.’ that’s the most popular song on the album. i don’t wanna bias you, so listen on your own and make your own opinions.”

“wilco. and if you don’t mind me asking, how’d you turn the interest in music into a skill? you are talented, but i know it's very much a skill. it does take a lot of practice to become tangibly good at music.”

“to express myself,” yunha says plainly, “it’s easier to tell your story in art than talking about it, and singing is free. you don’t need supplies to learn it. but yes, i needed that kind of outlet, you know? i always liked singing, always did it, but i needed more than only entertainment from it over time.”

“oh yeah, art is helpful. i really should have gotten on that train earlier. i got on board about a year ago. it's much better for you than intellectualizing everything. or at least that's what i tend to do. do you perform, by the way? outside of karaoke, that is."

"sometimes. but also, not in a long time."

there falls a brief, but peaceful lull in the conversation. grant’s eyes draw to black night sky as he recalls the last haphazard art he’d created–the mushy-gushy attempt at processing the universe. seeing it hanging above him now, his thoughts are no less conflicting. light pollution washes out the shining sea of stars, but the sky still retains its beauty, its bewilderment. visible or not, an infinite chain of dimensions and celestial bodies exist in the vacuum of space, orbiting independent of him, yet factoring in the tiny fraction of his mass on the mass of the earth in their delicate ballerina dance across the fabric of spacetime.

the universe must have created me for some reason, for something other than anguish.

his own words. again. ever-present.

“i miss seeing the stars.” yunha’s buttery soft voice breaks his concentration. “you can’t see anything here.”

“polaris.” grant raises his left arm and draws his index finger across the sky until it hovers above the only star he’s seen thus far. “technically, that means we should be able to see sirius, too, but we don’t need to get all science-y and talk about magnitude and that polaris isn’t–”

“i would like it if you did.”

she was thinking of the stars, too.

synchronicity.

“aw shucks! well. i’ll say this, polaris isn’t the brightest star. we just talk about it way more frequently because it has the most cultural significance in the northern hemisphere for, you know, navigation reasons. but hey, give it about 12,000 more years, and it even won’t be the north star anymore. thank you, wobbly earth axis. but also boo, woobly earth axis, because it's a little sad to think about.”

yunha’s eyes glitter with fascination. “it’ll be something else?”

“yep! the next north star will be vega,” he explains, “come on down, you’re the next contestant!”

“maybe we’ll see it happen.”

“if my consciousness is still floating around as little dust particles, that’d be pretty sick. you know? forget fly me to the moon, fly me to vega. why not?”

“i don’t think i'll be dust,” yunha says, not missing a beat at all, even as her focus remains fixed on the faintest twinkle emanating from polaris, “it’s kind of troubling. you don’t want to be, like, stuck in the whole cycle of the universe, but if you’re still here, you can see some really beautiful things.”

“ah. reincarnation?”

“if you’re asking me, you’re not going to be dust. either you escape the suffering or you come back in some kind of physical form, human or not, and you try again.”

grant thinks about it for a moment. and then the feelings, like usual, spill out at once.

“i'm not going to lie, that idea has always given me the heebie-jeebies. i think it’s very cool as a concept, but i'm, like, man, i don’t want to do this shit again. also, look, we're doing the thing again. oh, and shit, that sounded judgmental. i just run my mouth too much."

"most people don't know they lived before. you can't really remember your other lives without a lot of study," she answers, "and no, you don't. i prefer to hear your real opinion. it's actually stupid when people tell you what they think you want to hear."

"do you ever wonder what you were up to last go-around?"

"not too much, but i always heard strange birthmarks and scars are signs from your last death. fears, too. things you avoid. so, i guess, like, a clown stabbed me in the neck with needles."

"are you afraid of storm drains, by any chance? if so, i think pennywise had it out for you."

"hahaha." yunha shakes her head. "wait, i have to ask. is it not worse thinking you can only live once? that's not uncomfortable? feeling like you have to make everything perfect in your one lifetime?"

"oh no, it's terrifying. dying and just being done with everything is eerie, too, because there are nice things to do and see here in the real world. you’re right about that. and yeah, there is a lot of pressure to get it all right. also, that's not even mentioning that there are people i love that i don’t want to be gone forever. i'd like to think they remain somehow. conscious or not. i kind of think they do, but i don’t know. am i contradicting myself? capital-P probably."

“you don’t know what to think.”

grant immediately bursts out laughing. “yeah, no, absolutely not. i do not know. i just kinda waffle around and hope some scientist throws out some numbers and whatnot that proves some explanation of everything correct. but that’s impossible. it’s literally impossible. we can’t even simulate or predict the wacky physics that were going on at the exact moment the big bang happened.”

“not to be, like, all quirky, but...” yunha reaches over, patting him on the shoulder. “maybe don’t think about it? you’re gonna go crazy. you can just not know? and it's fine. this doesn’t mean anything anyway. the answer to anything is already in you, it’s not out there.”

and then she, too, starts giggling all over again and her cheeks blush deep red from sheepish cringe.

another stereotypical line, but he doesn't mind. they sound better coming from her than him anyhow.

a second later and she checks the time on her phone. her cheesy smile erodes into a slight frown.

“ahh, i really need to leave soon. i have a schedule in the morning.”

grant checks the time as well, drawing the sleeve of his hoodie up just enough to read the minuscule roman numerals on his watch.

on the watch an ex-girlfriend gifted him. not päivi, but...

4:00 a.m.

fuck.

right.

you’re leaving the country in two hours.

#ts4 #the sims 4 #sims 4 #sims 4 story #sims 4 storytelling #simblr #hlcn: everything the stars promised #GUYS GUYS GUYS GUYS GUYS #*screams into the void* #i have too many thoughts and i need to WATCH IT in my tags gushing because i will reveal too much either way #all i'm gonna say for now is ermmmmm i've been thinking about these scenes for literal years and i am pretty happy with how they came out #also i needed to advance the plot a bit for [REDACTED] story elements hence the unusual conversations #but nonetheless i love people getting to be a little funky and weird with each other and idk i've had similar encounters with random people #classmates and whatnot and you just find yourself talking about topics that are hard to get into but somehow you did #holocene.docx #holocene.png #hlcn: grant #hlcn: yunha

[gamevecanti]

(Erementar Gerad: Tozasareshi Uta, GBA)

#video game #import game #gameboy advance #gba #Elemental Gelade #Erementar Gerad #エレメンタル ジェレイド

[uncharted-constellations]

Also knowing me ill edit this post 900 times as i think of things to add or change but a Dick Timeline, obviously i cut out a lot of suits but sliding timeline means that many costumes is ridiculous and also my poor wrist. I drew him as tiny as physically fucking possible for the first one until i wanted to wrap him in a blanket and give him a juice box so i figured it was Correct regardless of how tall an actual 8 year old should be because my only reference is my youngest cousin who is a giant

Also i made discowing both more edgy and more tacky, he’s mixing metallics like a goddamn fool, theres sparkles everywhere, the mullet is terrible, he absolutely still has and wears that jacket.

I put red nightwing Early and then had blue nightwing later because going blue -> red -> blue makes no sense in terms of realistic costume development, just assume he briefly went back to the red costume after batman while he was finishing making the blue suit or he finished it after the agent grayson shit or whatever that arcs called. “Theres not enough nightwing costumes for the ric grayson arc” you say, making up a whole arc that clearly never existed, dick was merely in a coma for several months while the others covered as nightwing, dont worry about it

#dick grayson #robin #discowing #nightwing #batman #art #my art #redesign #but yeah im trying to give them all some kind of design element that exists throughout all of their costumes #so for dick its the trapeze boots and the kind of angling that starts on his chest snd later also occurs on the hips #also i wanted to include the sort of super tech advancements #so like its not one of those things where necessarily dick Couldnt’ve had a domino mask younger than he did #but at the time it wouldnt have been practical for him because a) #super people didnt really have side kicks yet so the domino mask wasnt very popular #and b) he is a tiny boy and it would not have been comfy #i wanted there to be a kind of line where like #yeah theres enough people doing this kind of style of mask where they figured out #a domino mask that you Could wear for 8 hours and not get skin rashes #or like he starts out with just normal color change contacts because the white out kind usually fucks with your vision #Until they later find some kind of advancement where its feasible #its not necessarily accurate for a sliding timescale #which is why i didnt really go into knifeproof or bulletproofing details #but since the domino mask is Visual i thought it was neat to think about #also i love those camera contacts from the new movie #but are they feasible for that early in the comics timeline? absolutely not #but yeah so little baby robin has green contacts #also kind of like the steph batgirl redesigns i imagine theres a few different pieces for each version #so hes probably got a black domino for his current outfit and a red one for his old one #different aerial/trapeze boots for over his shoes etc #also yes i do darker skin and lighter hair for kids because its usually true or it was for me anyways

[dnd-smash-pass-vs]

16 feet (4.9 m) tall, thicc as they can get themselves, and apparently like to play games where they see how many people they can fit in thier mouth without swallowing! Remember that we're talking about the whole species, even if giant is often used as a gendered term. On the right are fire elementals, 4 foot (1.2 m) arsonists who rarely speak, but some grow up to 10 times as big! It's literally just sentient fire, idk what you want me to say, you know what fire is.

#hill giant #fire elemental #DnD 5e #d&d 5e #dnd5e #dnd #dungeons and dragons #5e #smash or pass #d&d 5e #you want to know how dedicated I am to fairness? #Not one of you would've noticed if I'd swapped this to the other side of the bracket #Would've given one of my top picks another shot #Instead they'll die a second death to the winter wolf or shrieker #I'm guessing wolf as I'm writing this over a week in advance #We support a chubby dumbass around here #even when they aren't me

[fishybehavior]

Yo make an elemental master of life and make them malicious

#thinking about rougelike jay au thingy #basically alternative merge rift #jay gets thrown into an advanced realms gane #*game #where your stuck inside this big evershifting “colosseum' where the only goal is to escape #but its very deadly #but if you die the gamemaster will just bring you back to life and you get to try again #whether you like it or not #gamemaster is somekind of elemental master of life or restoration or something #and livestreams the contestants game #jay is unfortunately popular due to his own elemental powers #ninjago #ninjago au #jay ninjago

[ecto-stone]

ƚ DannyMay - Day 12 : 𝐸𝓁𝑒𝓂𝑒𝓃𝓉𝓈 ƚ

#dannymay2022 #Danny Phantom #vlad plasmius #personal headcanon vlad dual element is Fire (advance into Electric)/Earth (advance into metal) #like how could i not give him metal #that literally a vlad impaller refence waitting to happened #hachi art

[stabbyfoxandrew]

does anyone have any book recs where there's a good poly relationship? pls put them in my askbox or reply?

#i just wanna read smth with a good ol ot3 for me to go insane about :3 #bonus points if there are supernatural elements and a happy ending! ty in advance fellow gays <3333 #diaerie

[tmos-time]

having a moment trying to worldbuild

#tmos talks #doing zodiac stuff with advanced elements rooted from the original four. sagittarius is the poor shmuck who got smoke o7 #it is so hard finding a good creature to represent sagittarius when i already gave capricorn the hippokampos. i cannot horse my way out of- #--this one sadly #what the hell ever i might just create Another creature from out of my ass. i already made two + modified melalo the demon bird technically #time to make a smoke beast!!!

[botanybulbasaur]

,,miitopia reverse 1999 au?

look, i know i sound ridiculous, but please hear me out for a minute. (reverse 1999 spoilers below cut!!)

cool fantasy setting. schneider lives. the ring and isabella live. great sage madam z. tootz. john garcia and his mom get to live happily in greenhorne. horropedia is the fuckin quiz guy because of course he is— i’ll figure it out as i keep playing.

so uh pollmadoob below my good fellows is this a cool idea or should i hold off

:3

#humoring my mii interest #reverse 1999 #r1999 #re1999 #vertin and schneider’s miis keep. keep advancing their relationship faster #i put them and sonetto on the same relationship level to start #and sonetto and bertín room together— but no #man #these damn lesbians #isabella and the ring get a prolonged cameo because i fucking love them #schneider #vertin #schneider reverse 1999 #i wanna include tk14 elements but #i don’t know how :( #sonetto #yelena greco #matilda gets to be here too because i love her dearly #ao3

[bleaksqueak]

Devil Elias... so Angel/Seraphim Audric?

Okay, that's definitely a good one to remember for next year! I guess I'll plan for next year's illo to be either solo Audric or Audric with his partner. Fitting, for bimbo satan.

#soli asks #eli's portrait was made up as I went along this year becuase I couldn't decide on a theme or image #it was fun but stressful since I like to have compositions planned out #and adding elements as I went along made that difficult #so it will be fitting if audric is nice and planned out a year in advance #very in character

[icicleteeth]

Every time a post either mentions TES 6 or makes me think about TES 6 I'm that spongebob meme of the guy with the spear, stopping myself from blackpilling all over again....

#nevermind how long we've been waiting for it #i really fear that beth's fascination with like. “look at how much BIGGER our worlds are and how much HOURS OF CONTENT our game has!” #like looking back that the trend of “more content for the sake of it” was a thing even with skyrim and the radiant quest system #and the trend with ai becoming even more prevalent and advanced and bragged as a way to make so much MORE CONTENT! #i would not be surprised one bit if we got a new “advanced randiant quest” system or w/e and it's ai generated writing #i can't speak on starfield bc i didn't play it but looking at the state of bethesda and making stuff like tes castles or w/e it's called #the only thing i expect is wondering what new way they're going to strip even more rpg elements and commodify this franchise into something #that is bragged about not for its rich rpg world you can have adventures in but bragged about as an infinite content machine #and like i want to believe because bg3 was so successful that it would wake corpos up to the fact that people WANT actual rpgs but #with the eternity tes 6 has been in the works (allegedly) it might be too late #and like Infinite Content Machines have their place but i just think back to that one post that talked about the massive cultural impact #deficit with starfield vs the impact skyrim and fallout 4 (and hell even 76) had. tes 6 will sell well no matter what #but. yeah

[thatlittledandere]

Ok this is some CLEVER use of the medium!

#venlapost #venla experiences homestuck #homestuck #caliborn #playing around with diagetic vs non-diagetic elements is my SHIT #AND I HAD TO HUNT DOWN THE BLUE ARROW AND CLICK IT TO ADVANCE #ARROW KEYS DIDN'T WORK LIKE THEY USUALLY DO #THAT'S FUN DESIGN!!

[svtskneecaps]

guys. guys. look me in my eyes. ok. nothing can happen during evening pst on thursday and friday. NOTHING. i'm talking no timers, no lore, no kidnapping, no federation, no codes, no nether, no elquackity, NADA. i work 1-8pm pst both days and i REFUSE to miss anything of great importance but MOST ESPECIALLY NEW MEMBERS.

NOTHING IS ALLOWED TO HAPPEN. NO ANNOUNCEMENTS. APOLLO I AM MANIFESTING YOU. MORE THAN MANIFESTING I AM DRAGGING YOU BY THE COLLAR TOGETHER WE WILL MAKE THIS HAPPEN. ENJOY YOUR QUIET EVENINGS QSMPERS I WILL MAKE IT HAPPEN BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY, BE IT FORCE OR VIOLENCE OR BRIBERY. DO YOU HEAR ME ADMINS!!!!!!!!

#qsmp #shut up vic #block game brainrot #you can post ONE teaser image #but i SWEAR ON ALL THAT IS HOLY if something like the flippa plot or tazercraft advances while i am making money #HANDS WILL BE THROWN. EVEN OVERSEAS. OCEANS CAN'T SAVE YOU MIKE CRAFT. OK. #you guys can have aypierre being a furry or something ok. forever and bad can do their will they won't they. #senhora neide and elisangela can go on another date that would be cute #felps can dig his square. baghera can choose her element. #NO LORE. NO MYSTERY. NO HORRORS

[leofrith]

acv hate on my dash and i can't even be mad about it because they make some good points 😶

#like yes it was extremely fucking weird to have us play as a viking with all the violence that entails #while conveniently sidestepping any real consequences for that violence or contending with the results of that violence #because you're too afraid that lingering on it for too long might make your protag look bad #it's like they suddenly decided that their audience is too stupid to deal with moral ambiguity. in the moral ambiguity franchise. #this is once again drifting towards my forever argument that making these games rpgs was a mistake #or rather making these games *half-assed* rpgs was a mistake #and weakens the narrative bc there's never any meaningful follow through for any decisions #including some of the decisions that we the player don't even get to make ourselves #like i think having a set narrative would eliminate a lot of the problems with this game's writing #because they clearly weren't willing to take the rpg elements all the way #also just... make it smaller. there's too many arcs and too many diversions from the main narrative #which while a lot of them admittedly have some fun character moments they probably should not have been required to advance the main story #and with no mission replay or ng+ it's just so prohibitive to replay unless you're like me (deeply mentally ill and in love with eivor) #the point being that dissonance has always bugged me about this game. i could fix her i could fix her i could fix her #anyway. hi i'm gonna go do that ask game now ajdgjhdsf #the nerve pain last night was making it difficult to be on the computer. tbh it also is right now but we soldier on 🫠 #ky posts text #ac.txt

[shopcat]

i've decided if some sort of theoretical atla animated film about the earth avatar has to be set in the modern verse it should either be like INCREDIBLY different from ours to stop things from being ... bad. and that the spirit world influences have really ramped up so that it still feels like magical realism or w/e. but alternatively it would just be really good if it wasn't set in like the 2020s but very obviously the 70s-90s that would be awesome for me personally

#🐾 #like yeah yeah nostalgia media isn't all that different #but i would probably be a little disappointed if it's just incredibly normal modern worlds and they've all got smartphones #i feel like the point of atla being set in these different times is to highlight these particular differences #like it ISNT the normal world there's spirits and magical bending of the elements and now the spirits have been free to come and go #for 80+ years. #i also was brainstorming what a vaguely engaging story could be that didn't feel like just a repeat of atla and tlok #and i feel like there being no actual tangible Big Bad would be good #also thought about like. maybe bending and spirituality itself has dwindled in a way or bending in particular #and maybe people who bend are seen as these like really spiritual people and there's just not as much faith around it anymore as technology #advanced. also how the politics of nonbenders affects that ... #like an avatar whose job it is to restore balance back in the world bc no one is bending anymore. or doing it the right way #BUUT i also don't know if i like that bc again i like that their society does hinge on bending and it's what makes it unique #but maybe bc it'd be a movie it wouldn't feel weird bc it'd be a shorter story #like lightning benders run their electricity .. cmon #anywya other than that i'd like the ways things could all interact. in my dream world if it's super modern it'd be solarpunky #like how korra was steampunky... would make sense w the spirit worlds connection to plants #and nature :)

[thisgodwontforgiveyou]

blacklisting the 196 tag is so awesome

#mostly for the human watching and anthropological element of being informed on what posts are made by 196 moogles #but also for the benefit of protecting me from seeing the most unfunny shit ever devised by human hands without advance warning