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cuubism · 2 years

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actor hob, and pretentious asshole film director dream

[ this got so long and so weird and specific i'm so sorry ]

so hob is an everyman actor. a good actor, charismatic, funny, fan favorite, but not the type that gets cast in highbrow art films. mostly he does like romcoms, mid-budget action movies, feel-good family films, etc etc. and he's totally cool with that, he's good at what he does, and people enjoy those films, anyway. he might be getting a bit bored though, a bit stagnant. might be thinking it's time for some reinvention. and there might be a certain director whose ridiculous and nonsensical but dreamy films he's particularly enamored with...

dream makes REALLY pretentious art films. the types that get studied in graduate level film classes and have fifty different academic papers with fifty different theses trying to puzzle them out. dream is a master of themes and images and subtle construction. he is also a COMPLETE asshole and impossible to work with, an auteur in the most stereotypical way possible, he writes and directs, he micromanages all his projects, he asserts his vision and god help anyone who goes against it. nobody can handle him, nobody can STAND him, and the only reason he still gets funding for these projects is because they win awards, so many awards, and the studios want to ride on the coattails of those awards. but it's getting to the point where even his most ride-or-die producers are ready to give up.

right off the back of dream's most recent bafta, a rather naive Big Exec approaches him to direct the next installment of his Big Superhero Franchise. dream is immediately like fuck off with that bullshit but the exec pleads with him that the franchise is flagging and they really need something new to spice it up. plus the pay will be enough for dream to finance like 10 of his own ridiculous art films without having to rely on producers for money. and dream really is about to get cut off for being a complete insufferable asshole so he takes the gig. it kind of feels like prison though.

anyway, he gets to work trying to make this shitty boring film at least marginally less shitty and boring. he doesn't have a lot of leeway -- a lot of the story is locked in, half the cast is set from prior installments etc. dream immediately regrets taking this job, he'd rather die in actual prison than work on this mindnumbing piece of trash. it feels like it's taking an eternity and who could possibly stand an eternity of this???

well. enter hob, whose agent managed to snag him a 2nd-lead sort of role in this thing. it's not QUITE the reinvention he was going for but the pay and exposure are really good -- and even if they weren't, the moment hob saw that dream was attached he was immediately on board.

cue dream tearing his fucking hair out and basically being a complete menace and diva on set -- no that wasn't good, yes we have to do a 57th take, oh my god this dialogue is horrible give me that shitty script i'm writing my own thing, what do you mean the plot is linear???, wait there are how many cgi aliens????? i'm going to kill myself -- and Hob, pretty much Just Happy To Be There as always, takes one look at this beautiful dramatic emo asshole and is like oh. yes. i don't know what i'm saying yes to, but i'm saying yes. just immediately enamored with this bitch against all logic, he's like i've seen all your films i know how your mind works you brilliant nihilistic mess of a person. i'm on board. let's go.

first scene that hob's in dream is once again ranting about the atrocious script, which he did not write and is hardly allowed to change -- or, every change he makes is too weird and the studio keeps nixing it. everyone keeps sighing and being like oh my god can we please just shoot i wanna go home, meanwhile hob's like alright then. let's workshop it. and dream's just like. what. you aren't just gonna tell me to shut up? and hob's like no, youre right, this script is trash, but i know you're just going to write something really weird and psychedelic that they won't let you shoot. and dream's like you dare to speak to me that way??? and hob just puts his hands on his hips and is like listen, i actually know more about this sort of general audience family film thing than you do, mister arthouse, so are you going to work with me or not? and dream's just like what... is happening... because usually people who try to 'handle' him either just cave to his every demand like wimps, or just fight him on everything to 'prove' that they're in control, and hob is just kind of... not doing either of those? anyway dream doesn't know what to do with him.

so they workshop it. turns out hob actually DOES know how these sort of general audience all-follow-the-same-three-act-structure films work and how to improve things within those confines, and also he understands what like, normal people like, you know, casual feel good movies, not everything has to be a mindbender, jesus. so they bounce ideas off each other for like 3 hours until they finally get something that's okay enough that dream no longer wants to fling himself into the sun. meanwhile everyone on set is staring at them like 👀. then dream is like come back to my trailer we are rewriting the other 116 pages of this script right NOW. what else is hob supposed to do but follow.

then hob becomes the designated Dream Handler on set. dream starts using him as his barometer for what 'normal people' would like because he does not understand that at all. ("hob, will 'people' accept this?" "well considering youre spinning the camera around on a string i'm gonna go out on a limb and say no"). dream becomes kind of obsessed with him because his life is so like, normal, and he's okay with it?? he doesn't find existence to be an insufferable prison from which there is no escape?? and hob is like aw i know you're such a tortured artistic soul *pats him on the head*. plus, hob is actually a good actor, and he's able to put a lot of heart into even this mediocre big budget film, and kind of forces dream to confront the idea that there's more than one good type of story. that different stories serve different purposes and a straightforward happy story is okay, actually.

(and that the problem is the corporatization of the storytelling, not the story itself)

anyway the movie ends up being pretty good, dream still kind of hates it because he wasn't given full artistic license but he has to grudgingly admit that it has at least some merit. after the premiere hob is like (cheekily) so you gonna direct the sequel? and dream is like i did not write that to have a sequel. and hob's like it has a cliffhanger? and dream's like so???? and hob's like well theyre definitely gonna make a sequel. and dream's like i hate this planet. also no i'm not going to make the sequel. i'm going to fuck off to the woods and make a movie about teeth. do you want to star in it? and hob's like you're so fucking weird i'm obsessed with you i'm going to kiss you now.

so yeah, that.

#dreamling #the sandman #just chuckin aus into the void cuz who knows if i'll ever actually write them #sorry this au became insane XD #it got SO much longer and more meandering than i was aiming for i just wanted to write a little 2 paragraph summary LOL #then it grew several legs #long post #anyway dream doesn't have a 'full name' in this btw he just directs under Dream like he's beyonce or something 😂#you can think of dream as sort of like ingmar bergman or luis bunuel #and hob is like. mark ruffalo. so you can try to imagine that dynamic if you wish XD #sort of inspired by the way art film directors keep getting roped into directing marvel and disney films for some reason??#my writing

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peapodsplace · 1 month

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Hey Baba, it seems like you've been seeing a lot of yucky stuff online right now. A lot of people who aren't remembering their manners and are forgetting that there's people behind a screen. I know you like your screen time but please remember that the world isn't all like that okay? Some people are different online and forget their values and let's remember that these days, algorithms perpously show you things that'll make you upset. Yes, yes it's not very fair, is it sweetheart. Please remember to take some breaks and that the world isn't really like that. It's so important to protect yourself. Yes, silly even if you think you don't deserve it; because you do.

#todd talks #🫛#agere #agere text #age regression #caregiver blog #caregiver text #agere reminders #inspired by my instagram filling up with really scary & unhelpful advice and people who are just coming out to bully people #please remember everyone that the hot market these days isnt real estate or stocks it is peoples attention spans and companies want to show #you the cherry-picked very best and the tailor made worst just for you #for years i only had tumblr reddit and youtube because i dont want a big digital footprint and i dont think much good comes from it #but i got instagram a few months ago so i can stay in touch with people and oh my gosh its vile #even when youre so particular about what you like/watch #but!!#as long as youre being aware you are already doing great. if you catch your self going hang on. this is a rubbish post. thats you recognisi #whats going on. which makes it a lot harder for it to get to you #sorry if this is a bit much but its something thats really important to me.. i just think social media is so evil these days.#be your online body guard!!! protect your feed!! keep your head up!!!#and if you feel you cant??? i can take care of it for you raaaa!

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neriyon · 6 months

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Not all who wander are lost - South Shroud

South Shroud Landing │ Upper Paths │ Buscarron's Druthers │ Urth's Gift

"During my travels, I met a man who mentioned visiting the Black Shroud as a young lad. He talked about the forest with both reverence and fear in his voice. Of lush trees that seemed to drown out the sun itself. Of bubbling streams that hosted beastkin larger than fully grown hyur. Of roots so big and old they were tearing apart ancient fortresses.

It got me thinking.

Of the trees that gave shade during warm summer days. Of beasts that my sisters hunted for food. Of stories of past civilizations told by elders. Curious how things I'd grown to find pleasant during my childhood seemed to scare this traveller, who'd only heard the deafening silence of the cold nights and missed the warm laughter of a family around the campfire."

Bonus! Alternative pic of Urth's Gift since I really liked the colors on it

#ffxiv #ffxiv screenshots #neri's screens #sorry it's a bit of a long post #i got way too into formatting that story blurb #anyway uhhhh. a thing! with oc lore! kinda!#my writing's so rusty after all these years but uhhhh i'm happy so that's enough i guess?#not all who wander are lost but i sure as hell am #< we're gonna be using that as a tag for these!#since the whole thing was inspired by some azem art with that quoted on it #it's going to be mostly landscape shots with hawu'li included as a minor detail #and it'll be through all overworld areas #roughly in similar order as hawu'li went through them in his canon #it's also supposed to be sort of a showcase for cool in game locations!#i'm gonna go hide now k ty bye

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merry-the-cookie · 1 year

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GUYS!!!! GUYS!!!!!!!!!!! i commissioned the incredibly talented insanely cool and radical jay @tacogrande to draw my favorite dudes and im so happy loOK AT THEM........ ashtons lil smile 😭 michaels sleepy eyes 🥺 all of it so gorgeous

pls go give her a follow and check out all her socials and if you can commission her i cannot recommend it enough, i mean look at this dreamy lil portrait 🥺🥰💖💖💖

alt version under the cut cus yea i got tWO VERSIONSSS

jay has been an inspiration to me for so many years since i was a wee little teenager and ive learned soooo much from them and to commission her again after so long whilst still being a huge fan of their art felt like a full circle moment hehe will definitely do again <3 maybe complete the 5sos set dfhjGHFD

#my goal in life now is to get as many people as possible to draw mike and ash gfhjkHDFHJAGHJDFGHJDFGDHJF #me trying to keep myself from gushing too much about jays art in the post #very hard 🧍🧍🧍#fr tho i commissioned them for the first time in like 2016 for my fav glee trio and then my fav tokyo ghoul characters in 2017 #this is long overdUE!!!!#its been incredible seeing her art grow through the years and im always in awe of her flowy lines and stylization of people #honestly my thought process for the commish was 'i wanna see ashton in jays style' gfhjkGHJFDGHJDF i just knew she would draw him good ehehe #and the coloring style!!! and the palettes!!! so pretty im so #always looking to their art for inspiration!!!!#ALSO jay was the first 'big artist' to give me time of day if that makes sense gfhjGHJFDGDFJ like i vividly remember them being such a cool #person in the glee fandom esp if u did fanart cus a lot of big fanartists would only share other popular artists #and jay was out there giving space and attention to us lil guys startin out #i know it sounds a lil stupid but it meant everything to my lil 17yo self! built up my confidence like crazy #forever grateful for that!!!#ok i have rambled enough gfhjkGHJGDHFJ SORRY i just rlly appreciate jay and if u got the means id defo encourage you to commission her <3333 #michael clifford #ashton irwin #5sos #mashton #5sos art #EDIT ALSO JAY BOUGHT THE FIRST KEYCHAIN I DID EVEN THO SHE DONT GIVE A FUCK ABOUT DEAR EVAN HANSEN a real one fr fr

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sunnimint · 7 months

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As someone who is now writing a longfic about Metal Sonic pretty much as a direct inspiration from you, I wanted to ask- how do you do it? How do you stick with it? What's your writing and editing process? How do you like to post your fics? etc etc etc please tell me anything and everything

Oh? You are writing a long fic about Metal Sonic? DROP LINK NOW

In all seriousness, let me answer those questions in order. Buckle up and sit down for this one.

I like Metal Sonic. He is, undeniably, one of my favorite characters. The Sonic OVA really fleshed out his character and personality (honorable mention for the Sonic Mania Adventures holiday episode which i also adored to pieces). Not to mention the amazing fic that is Iron Oxide, which promptly made me a metonic shipper for life. It's this combination that practically motivates me to write. And as I mentioned in the other question I answered, writing Metal is a lot of fun simply because of the endless possibilities of how to make a machine go from lifeless to alive. Bonus points for making him fall in love with the blue rat he's always trying to kill. Obsession, after all, can go a long way.

In terms of writing process... whenever I am struck by an idea or a concept, I immediately write it down. A couple of sentences, nothing more. If the idea/concept refuses to leave me alone, then I write an outline for it. I think about how the story will begin and how it will end. I then think how I can go from point A, B, C, etc, all the way until it connects to the end. Once I'm done with the outline, I look back through it and make sure that it works and that the plot makes sense. Everything has to come together because otherwise, the story will become a mess. This whole process takes me anywhere from a day to weeks. It is only until I like how the outline is structured, that I finally begin to WRITE.

As organized as I am with the outline, I don't follow it strictly. The outline is more of a guideline. It helps me stay on track, to get to the end of the fic. Sometimes, when I'm writing, the story takes a slightly different direction. Having an outline helps, because that means I can come back to it, and change little things here and there to accommodate the new stuff I brought in.

Editing process. I don't read my chapters until i finish writing it first. But once I finish a chapter, I don't read them until the next day, that way I have a fresh look at it. Honestly, I kind of wing it when it comes to editing. The only exception to this is Halves of the Same Coin, where I had an amazing beta reader (@soft-anomaly) to help me once I realize the fic was going out of control (Og plan for HotSC was initially 30k words. It ended at 75k+ words)

My general rule of thumb for chapters is 3k words, minimum. However, if the chapter has sensitive material or essential plot stuff, then I write until I'm satisfied with the results. This can end with a 7k word chapter. That's what I did with HotSC. Beginnings of an End is different. It's not as plot heavy as HotSC, hence the shorter chapters. Shorter chapters also mean faster updates.

Posting fics. I like to post fics at night for one reason only. I'm too anxious and nervous by how it will be received 🥲 I'm not perfect, sometimes I'm self conscious about what I write because then I think what if no one likes it?? it's why I sleep it off 😅 these fears are always gone in the morning tho, when I look at the comments and kudos ^-^

#mint.txt #my questions #questions.txt #also i do try to keep a weekly schedule when it comes to posting fics #but when life gets busy there's nothing i can do and hope i can have time to post next week #sorry for the long answer but heyy you wanted to know everything ;)#IM ALSO CRYING WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOURE WRITING BECAUSE YOU GOT INSPIRED BY ME that's so sweet i really hope my answer helped you out

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revelisms · 10 months

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Do you even remember?

Arcane moodboard — Silco + poetry

untitled, m.h. / handwritten draft of 'Come, said my Soul,' Walt Whitman / 'Speeches for Doctor Frankenstein,' Margaret Atwood / 'Angelfall,' Susan Ee

#i got inspired by the folks in the poetry tags #still on this moodboard train i stg #i miss photo editing #sorry for the long post yall i got carried away aslkdf #arcane #silco arcane #character aesthetic #moodboard #poetry #poems and quotes #body horror tw #blood tw #injury tw #suppose we can also tag this as #zaundads #vanco #also on the angst train ig #but when am i not

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hopeformankind · 10 months

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Open Starter.

Every kingdom, in itself, needed a man that could be considered a Devil.

A man that could send people to their deaths, carry the weight of unending casualties on their shoulders and still press on without falter. A man that could dig his nails into the very goal he fought for and never let go, not once, for anything else-- a man that could do everything necessary to keep clinging to it.

A kingdom needed a Devil that wore the skin of a human to be able to make the toughest choices that no one would dare make-- it was an ideal situation to have everybody come back alive... but it was never realistic. What was needed was realism, not falsities and lies that could lead to so many being killed just to try to reach that ideal scenario. The Walls, with his Wings of Freedom slathered in the crimson of the lost soldiers, had Commander Erwin Smith of the Survey Corps.

Erwin Smith was a man that many considered to be untouchable and downright unstoppable. He was the one who made the Long-Distance Scouting Formation. He was the one who knew of a possible traitor in their ranks and someone that, too, wore human skin just as he did to slaughter his soldiers. He was the one who continued their advance against the Armored and Colossal Titans to get Eren Jaeger back, the one that exposed the corruption of the nobility and the false King on the throne, the one that executed their plans to kill Rod Reiss's deformed Titan, the one that led their mission to retake Shiganshina.

But, it was at Shiganshina that this all had devolved into insanity.

Young recruits led to die against the Beast Titan, whole squadrons pelted with speeding rocks and the air turning red from the blood mist, dust and smoke and even remnants of flames pluming upward to the cloudy skies as the hot steam of the Colossal Titan, houses completely displaced and left as mere scraps in the remnants of the District. So many casualties. So many screams.

He was a man many wouldn't consider human-- a man who hid his humanity deep down to make the choices that many wouldn't dare try, locked up his emotions and held them tight if it meant using his logic and rationale to calculate what they could of every scenario. And many would say he was a betting man, gambling the lives of everybody as if they were mere pawns-- but he wasn't a man who toyed with the flames of life as if he were God. He wasn't a man that hid behind his soldiers, no. He would always lead the charge-- no matter what, on his white steed as his eyes as solid as ice would survey everything of their situation and guess on what needed to be done next. Despite Erwin's own feelings of himself, he wasn't truly a con-man.

Perhaps he tricked himself into believing his goal was to fight for Humanity-- perhaps he'd lied to himself and believed he lied to others, but when it came to the graduation ceremony and the very end, he spoke the truth to the best of his ability. Casualty rates were high. There was the biggest chance that none of your friends, nor you, would make it back alive. And yet, for some reason, people still joined their cause. And in the end, Erwin refused to let his soldiers die alone-- he joined them right to the very end, and was the first to be struck and trampled in his charge under the hooves of many as he was left lying in the mud. He held not just his own dreams to such level of importance, but the dreams of the collective as a whole. Their faces were still etched into his mind-- and in this moment, as Erwin Smith lied on the bed he'd been originally laid to rest upon by Hange and Levi, he still remembered all of them.

No human should've been able to survive anything like that-- a speeding rock to the body would kill anybody, and it should've killed Erwin. But, for some reason, a Scout that still believed in him that survived the charge had let him live. Maybe it was out of desperation-- maybe it was out of Floch's explanation of what they needed: a Devil, to help lead them, or even out of genuine loyalty to Erwin-- either way, the Commander, left in that abandoned home in Shiganshina was alive. Barely conscious... but alive. Alive, raging against the dying of the light and continuing to keep his nails buried deep in the emptiness of his old cause to try to scavenge for something new.

Only someone as mad as Erwin would try to find the Commander-- the sounds of footsteps creaked through the old home as Erwin's body barely twitched when hearing it. With all of that blood loss, how his guts nearly fell out of him, any man would be left comatose if they somehow miraculously lived, but even so, he still heard things-- the calls of birds, the wind rushing past the buildings-- many things, so this new sound of footsteps going through the abandoned house was easily noticed despite his catatonic state. Erwin's fingers twitched on his chest, his eyes moving in his head as if to try to pinpoint those footsteps, figure out who they belonged to.

Someone had come for him for some reason or another. Perhaps to pay respects-- though he couldn't understand why, with everything he'd done. The bodies of those in his suicide charge had long since decomposed by this time, outside Wall Maria, and those killed by the Colossal Titan were no doubt left as remnants of ashes and soot within the Walls. Maybe Humanity did succeed... but at what cost?

The door creaked open, and the Commander could only brace himself for whoever would enter. His fate was in their hands.

#[ i believe in those who believe in themselves | open starter . ]#//ANYONE CAN REPLY!!!!!#//im SO sorry this is long i just got SUPER inspired and BHUAWH #ask to tag tw #death tw #mass death tw #blood tw #injury tw #graphic injury tw #coma tw #comatose tw #violence tw #long post tw

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coratorium · 2 months

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to kind of elaborate on a tangent off my last reblog i was talking recently about An Incident that occurred a few years ago in a discord community i used to be a part of, that was primarily run by a twitch streamer. long rambling post about arguing and shit-slinging to follow.

to make a long story short there was some long-term resentment building between the streamer and some of their moderators and popular users. this eventually broke out into a large, extremely public argument that lasted multiple days (it was a server full of leftists, so... people loved to debate). the argument ultimately lead to about half the users (a couple hundred people) leaving the discord for another community.

at the time i was heavily involved in damage control. it was probably the most i ever got involved in that community, ironically- i spent a lot of hours staying up extremely late talking things out with people, trying to sort out who had said what and when, what we could learn from that, how we could make amends and move forward. i ended up giving up after the users in question all either left or got banned, and the streamer seemed too defensive to change in any meaningful way.

i think i, at least, learned something from all of that mess. there were so many accusations being slung around that basically boiled down to "you made me feel uncomfortable, and i didn't know what to do about that". i'm not trying to downplay the seriousness of that- when negative feelings like that fester with no outlet, it can have a serious effect on your life. i've spent years in a precarious living situation with people i have to appease to ensure my survival. like, i get it.

however, people really liked to take this and spin it as clinically as they could- as if it were a moral failing on the streamer's part. i saw a lot of terms being used like "emotional abuse", "toxic relationship", "abuse of power", etc, that i honestly feel were exaggerations. in fact, a lot of the people i saw making these claims went on to act the same way themselves in the future... one of the moderators who claimed the streamer was abusing their power by making unilateral decisions did the same thing to me when i was in their server, overriding their mod team to punish me directly.

i don't think they were power tripping or abusing me or anything. i think they just didn't like me, and were willing to compromise their own principles to get me to stop. sometimes that's... all there is to it, really?

it feels better if you have a "good reason" not to like someone or something, and that can drive people to come up with excuses but, at the end of the day, sometimes you just don't like a guy! that's okay! you can find someone fucking obnoxious without having to have a reason for it! you don't have to spend hours debating whether them making a joke at your expense one time was an act of abuse or not. you don't have to dig for dirt on someone to justify blocking them on twitter. you don't have to find reasons not to make an account on a website! you can just not do that! you can just not like a guy!

i think the internet would be a better place if more people had this mindset about relationships. a friend invited me to their personal discord a couple days ago and i met their friends and we talked a bit. we had a lot in common but we didn't quite click... someone picked a fight with me, i made some jokes that didn't land, people didn't really seem to like me. after a while i realized that i had started only reading the server out of a sense of obligation, at which point i questioned why i was even doing it. i barely know these people. i don't owe them shit. i can just leave! i can mute the server and never talk there again! it can just end there! and, again, i don't think any of them were bad people, or being malicious, or anything like that. i don't think they truly caused harm to me in any way. we just didn't get along. that's fine. you can break ties with people without a callout post getting involved.

hell, it would probably even have been better to get confrontational about it. air the bad feelings out before they have any time to fester. that's also an option. a lot of people are too scared to say anything when they have a problem with somebody... i know i've been there. you can just talk it out. what's the worst that happens? it escalates and now you have a real reason never to talk to each other again? seems better than pretending to not have an issue for months or years while slowly building up to a huge and very public fight.

i think people get kind of attached to this idea they have in their minds of... being able to tell their whole side of the story and have everyone support them. see all of the little ways that they have been done wrong by this other person and agree with them, tell them at last "YES you're right that's so bad! that wasn't your fault!" and then just have it all be over immediately, their antagonist fleeing into the sunset never to be seen again, humiliated at having been so thoroughly exposed for their shameless behavior.

nothing is ever that simple. most of the time, the people who are making you feel bad have no idea they did it. sometimes, YOU'RE also making THEM feel bad. but people try to stick to their narrative anyway- i'm the victim here, these are my complaints, anything i did to the other guy was justified by them being worse than me. nothing they did could possibly be justified at all. please agree with me so they'll have to leave me alone and then i'll feel better. it's sickening.

you can't carry around grievances like that. being frustrated with other people is a normal part of life and you need to find an outlet for it. find friends you trust who you can bitch to when you're having a bad time. learn to actually talk to people, or just learn to leave and move on with your life. do something besides stockpiling bad experiences to use as ammunition for your callout posts.

and yes, before i get some smarmy comment, obviously there are actual cases of people doing shit heinous enough that you need to make the general public aware of it or need help dealing with the situation. most interpersonal conflicts i see online are far pettier than this and could be easily solved with better communication. use your own judgement.

#sorry this got so long. autistic woman finally figures out basic conflict resolution at age 27 #post partially inspired by me reminiscing about this situation with some other people who were there for it #and me saying that i felt like everyone involved had kind of sucked ass #a friend was like 'oh x and y arent so bad they really mean well'#and i said 'yeah let me be clear. i dont think they are bad people. they just fucking annoy me.'#so i do not talk to them anymore. they are not in my life. and that's fine

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griseldabanks · 4 months

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Had a facepalm moment earlier of discovering the brilliant fic you wrote for someone’s Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan prompt and hoping you’d write more, and then…several days later…realizing…PROMPTS. That’s how this works. Anyway, can’t believe I didn’t send you one earlier, but: Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan for "I missed you”, if you’re up for it?

Let Me Count the Ways ask game

It had been a long, exhausting day, but Obi-Wan didn't feel tired in the least. Packing up all of his belongings (few as they were) and moving them across the Dune Sea would have been a tiring endeavor, even if he hadn't just come from a harrowing trip halfway across the galaxy. And then, of course, there was a new cave to find, preliminary preparations to be made before nightfall in order to make his new home habitable...but none of that mattered.

Wrapping his cloak around himself against the chill of the desert night, Obi-Wan sat on the shelf of rock where he'd placed his bedroll. He pulled his legs up onto the blanket, closed his eyes, and opened himself to the Force.

Warmth and light that had nothing to do with his small heating unit suffused him from the inside out. For a moment, he hesitated. Then he reached out tentatively and murmured, “Master Qui-Gon?”

“Obi-Wan.”

His eyes popped open, and there, sitting beside him on the rock as if he'd been there the whole time, was Qui-Gon. Translucent and tinged blue—like a hologram and yet not—Qui-Gon looked the same as he had the day he'd died. The same twinkle in his eyes, the same hint of humor lingering in the creases at the corners of his eyes, in the twitch of his beard, in the lilt of his voice....

“You're here,” was all Obi-Wan could think to say.

Qui-Gon nodded patiently. “So I am.”

“I missed you.” Unbidden, tears welled up in his eyes. “I missed you so much, Qui-Gon.”

Qui-Gon's eyebrows knitted together with a look of sympathy. “I know.”

If he'd been here physically, he would have reached out and placed a reassuring hand on Obi-Wan's shoulder. Now, he didn't move, but Obi-Wan felt a gentle ripple in the Force washing over him, warm and familiar. Obi-Wan closed his eyes to savor that feeling, something he hadn't experienced in so long.

How many times a day would Obi-Wan feel that presence brush against his, like the touch of a hand? Checking to see where the other was, reassurance in a moment of trouble, a brief reminder or admonishment that needed no words. As unique and unmistakable as a voice, as a fingerprint forever marked in his soul.

And yet, for some twenty-odd years, he hadn't felt Qui-Gon's presence even once.

When Obi-Wan opened his eyes, he felt like a boy again. Like that twelve-year-old boy who had just become a Padawan and wondered if he would ever truly please his Master.

“I needed you,” he whispered, the desperation in his own voice surprising him. “I called to you, again and again. Where were you?”

Qui-Gon's eyes were as kind as ever as he folded his arms inside the voluminous sleeves of his robe. “Tell me, Padawan: What happens to us when we die?”

Now he really did feel like a boy again. This was a question even the youngest of younglings could answer. “We become one with the Force.”

Qui-Gon nodded, as though that settled the matter.

It didn't take a genius to understand what Qui-Gon was getting at. The dead became one with the Force, and the Force was a Jedi's constant companion. In a way, Qui-Gon had never really left.

And yet, Obi-Wan still couldn't shake the feeling of abandonment. He dropped his gaze to his hands clasped in his lap. “There have been so many times I needed your guidance, Master,” he whispered. “And never, not once, did I hear your voice.”

“And were you listening?” Qui-Gon's voice was gentle, oh so gentle, but still it made shame swirl in Obi-Wan's gut.

Because he hadn't been listening. He had closed himself off from the Force for so long, terrified of being found out, of being hunted down, of unintentionally betraying Luke to those who would kill him in an instant. And if he didn't leave even the slightest crack open for the Force to seep through, that meant Qui-Gon couldn't reach him either.

He really was like a child. A child with his fingers in his ears, demanding to know why no one would talk to him.

A warm brush of the Force, like a consoling hand placed on his back. Qui-Gon didn't even have to say anything, because he had already said it a thousand times, in a thousand situations over the years they'd worked together. Accept the shame, then let it go. You are not your mistakes. Learn from them, and they will help you grow.

Taking a deep breath, Obi-Wan envisioned his lungs filling with stale air from the years he had languished here on Tatooine. The years he had let the burden of his guilt press down on his shoulders till he could hardly raise his head in the morning. Then he breathed out, imagining the guilt and shame floating out like wisps of smoke on the air.

Opening eyes he hadn't realized he'd closed, Obi-Wan turned to look at Qui-Gon again. “I called to you when I went to face Vader.”

Qui-Gon nodded, eyes warm with compassion. “I was there.”

“I needed you...so many times...here on Tatooine.”

“I was there.”

Qui-Gon's form wavered, and Obi-Wan blinked, letting tears trickle into his beard. “When...I went to confront Anakin...on Mustafar...when I-I thought that I had...that I had....”

All he could see was his master's eyes, full of sympathy and compassion, understanding and acceptance. “I was there, Obi-Wan.”

For a moment, he held Qui-Gon's gaze. Then he dropped his head into his hands and let the tears flow. “So...every time....”

“Always.”

“You saw...every time I've failed....”

“And every success.” Like a warm blanket, Qui-Gon's presence folded around him in an embrace he felt in the depths of his soul. “I am proud of you, Obi-Wan. You have become a greater man and a greater Jedi than I ever could have foreseen.”

The heat of the twin suns seemed lodged permanently in Obi-Wan's chest. “Only because of your guidance, Master.”

They smiled at each other, and even though they looked nothing like they had when Obi-Wan had been an apprentice, the connection between them was as strong as ever.

#ask and you shall receive #pathetic-life-form #let me count the ways #ask games #star wars #obi-wan kenobi #qui-gon jinn #post-kenobi show #(but not really any spoilers for it)#this is a fic idea i've had ever since i first watched the show #originally it was going to be a 5+1 thing but i never got enough inspiration for that #so i was really glad to have this excuse to write the main scene i was actually interested in writing!#even so i'm kind of ambivalent about how it turned out #mostly because i stalled out for like a month in the middle of this #burnout + the sickest i've been in ten years will do that to ya x.x #anyway sorry it took so long to get to but i hope you like this!#p.s. kudos to anyone who noticed the cs lewis influence on this scene (i couldn't resist!) :P

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vairiance · 1 year

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I really think Pokemon should go back to 2D. Not even necessarily like HD 2D or whatever like Octopath Traveler (although that'd be cool I guess), but just what they had going in Gen 4/5, but polished up to modern tech standards.

So much charm was lost in the shift to 3D (not without benefit, of course, but still), and it brought a whole host of space issues, all in the name of making Pokemon look less appealing and having awkward movements. Like, compare these images of Hippowdon:

Leftmost is Gen 5, middle is modern, and rightmost is the (leaked) sprite from S/V.

Gen 5's is awesome! Grainy, obviously, by design, but otherwise it's super cool. You see a fierce looking hippo, posed threateningly, spewing sand to demonstrate its signature mechanic. Perfect.

Modern Hippowdon makes me sad. It's still kind of grainy (beyond what the resolution change of this image did to it), and it just looks like me on a Monday morning. You'd have no idea that this thing shoots sand, and you'd only get to see it look cool for a fraction of a second when it attacks, sometimes.

Then there's S/V Hippowdon. It's just a menu sprite icon, but look how clean it looks compared to modern Hippowdon! Imagine the Gen 5 Hippowdon pose, with the SV Hippowdon style. That'd be ideal for me I think.

3D has its benefits for sure, obviously, but I think 3D should be saved for spinoffs where a smaller scale can be enforced, and thus more care can be put into what is in the game. Comparing the 3D animations of Pokemon Colosseum/XD and what we have now proves this; in the Orre games, the Pokemon really feel alive, because they move in a way natural to what you'd expect, whereas in the modern era, everyone stands there idly and twitches once in a while to attack or get hit.

Move animations suffer as well. Let's compare the animation of Earthquake, a move that's supposed to be a terrifying massive quake of the earth. Here's how it's depicted in Gen 4:

Pretty cool, right? The magnitude of the quake is shown by literally everything shaking violently, with some dramatic flashes and rock effects. Not bad. But this could really benefit from 3D, let's take a look at how a powerful explosion of the earth is shown with the cutting edge graphics of Gen 8:

It is what would be considered a god awful green screen effect if seen in a movie.

Sure, but how much better could a 3D Earthquake animation be? Well, let's turn to the love of my life, Pokemon XD, to see how it's done:

Look, maybe you disagree with my assessment of these images, and that's fine. But I strongly encourage you to go back and play, say, Emerald, or Platinum, or what have you, if you haven't recently. You'll be able to palpably feel the difference between it and the newer games, and the visuals are just the surface of this. They're just what tends to come to mind whenever I think about it.

Idk I just miss when Pokemon games were delivered as strong single player games with multiplayer capabilities meant to last a decent while and then be put down, and returned to in a few years when you're feeling wistful, as opposed to increasingly lightweight multiplayer focused games with increasingly less single player endgame content so that they can push subscriptions of the god awful online pass

#i hate modern gaming #i hate it so so much #im literally having a breakdown about it right now #games are my only outlet i have literally got nothing else to look forward to in my life #and im slowly losing them to senseless greed and dispassionate companies #i mean thats not new obviously but it is hitting me hard as i play old classics and new games concurrently #anyway this post is inspired by the leaks seeming to confirm that there is no battle tower at all in gen 9 #the only feature that actually matters to me #sorry if you count that as a spoiler but better to be disappointed now than later #i hinged my entire mental health on gen 9 and now it looks like its starting with a massive disappointment #so if the rest of the games arent absolutely perfect im no longer going to have anything to live for #sorry if that sounds dramatic and trust me i know how stupid it sounds to say this as a 28 year old about a game made for infants #thats just what my pointless empty shell of a wasted life is like now #why did i even make this post #nothing here isnt common knowledge #long post #pokemon #sorry i forgot the tags while i was whining #hippowdon

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someoneimsure · 1 year

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I saw that you like red wall(I've only watched the animated series), and I was wondering if you've also seen the secret of nimh?

Hell yeah I have! It's one of my favorite Don Bluth films, right next to the original Land Before Time.

Did you know the book and movie are two vastly different experiences?

The Book:

The Movie:

It helps that the book has no magical elements at all and is just showing the lives of rats with human intelligence--and of course Mrs Frisby and her sick son, Timothy.

Did you know that the original book was actually written and published in response to real life treatment of rats? Specifically, an experiment by John Calhoun from a real life research facility called National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)? The experiment is on overpopulation and how it affects the health and mentality of animals, with rats and mice natural being a general stand-in for humans. The results are actually horrific.

TL;DR: When space and available mates become scarce, animals stop reproducing and become depressed because they can't travel to find new mates and fulfill their purpose in life. No brainer, right?

Though... The research might be more applicable to studying potential problems from colonizing other planets that require us to create spaces for our species to survive. Humans tend to be one of the most adaptable species on the planet, even more adaptable than rodents since they have to evolve to fit the environments and humans just make machines that supplant evolution entirely, so the research might not be as helpful as we might like. Just another reason to can it entirely.

I have a question for you! <3 Have you ever heard of this book series?

If you really like the Secret of Nimh movie, I highly recommend checking this out. And if you really like Redwall and want something more grown-up and sci-fi, check out the book: Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh.

I can happily report that the Redwall series and the books are extremely similar, though Brian tends to add paragraphs of food descriptions. Where are they getting the milk, Brian?? Who are they milking!? Why are they baking things that need eggs, Brian?? Birds are people, too!

In the Redwall book, there's a lot of continuity weirdness. Scourge shows up in a giant horse-drawn carriage containing thousands of rats when later books have no horses and also the carriages are more badger-sized. It's an awesome image, though, so I can't complain. It's a real shame they didn't make a dark movie about it.

I caution you about some of the things Brian writes. He rarely has good "verminbeast" characters (and those usually are simpletons) and even characters that should be considered good are treated by the narrative as evil (Outcast of Redwall is a whiplash of emotions, let me tell you, and Triss and Taggerung are both basically Mary/Gary-stus respectively.) And some tropes are extremely repetitive. A lot of the villains are cartoonishly evil to an almost hilarious degree--even as a kid I was laughing at Gabool the Wild and his absolutely insane obsession with a bell.

I would recommend Martin the Warrior and the sequel Mossflower, Mariel of Redwall and the sequel Bellmaker, Marlfox (for the chaotic fox family), Pearls of Lutra (for the nuance in the cats), The Long Patrol (for the bunnies and actual nuance), and of course Redwall and the sequel Mattimeo for the best Basil Stag Hare moments. Outcast of Redwall is my personal fav, but my boy Veil was done dirty at the end there.

And if you like to read a story and universe similar to Redwall but is more linear and focused on one small cast, there's the Mistmantle Chronicles.

I am missing one book in the series so I can't say if it's all good. I find the lack of descriptors boring. These books are hard to find so I would just start looking for pdfs. Who knows? You might like the series better than I did.

#long post #sorry the long reply i got carried away #book recs #i once created a redwall fanfic that i planned to turn into an epic but eventually i canned the idea #and decided to use it as inspiration for original fiction #the book has been in progress for five years with no sign of actually getting written lol #asks #thanks for the ask! <3 #oh shit i forgot to recommend Rakkety Tam #that book sends me to a higher plane of existence with how wild everyone is #they fight fucking cannibal Wolverines in that one #and those things are monsters #the only shame is there wasn't a badger vs wolverine fight #totally missing out

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taags-old-account · 2 years

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Things I Wish Would Be Added To Minecraft, But Probably Will Never Happen Because Mojang Are A Bunch Of Cowards:

Hydration bar. Similar to the food bar, but for water. The more you sprint and jump the faster you lose the bar. Add canteens that start from leather and work their way up to a diamond level that holds more water. Add a system where you need to heat your water or you get nausea and poison effect. Like to heat up the water you could put a bucket or canteen of water on a campfire. Allowing campfires to have more use than just ambiance.

Temperature bar. I've seen a lot of concepts surrounding this one and I like it, so here is my little take on it. So to start biomes that have any snow in them ranging from mountains to snow plains all are very cold, so in order not to get a hypothermia effect (several potion effects like slowness, weakness, etc) you would need to move around constantly, or be near a fire source. Including campfires, and regular fire. Torches, candles, and lanterns would not count because the source is too small. Soul fire does not count either. f you do get manage to get the hypothermia effect, you would have to stand by a campfire or fire for a minute. Otherwise, the effect will just remain. In warmer biomes like the mesa, desert, and jungle. If you moved too much you would get some sort of overheating effect (maybe you just got set on fire, that would be funny). To combat that effect and tie it into the hydration bar, maybe you need to drink a lot more water.

Seasons. I swear I have been thinking about this for years. This would be most noticeable in biomes like forests and plains. Where tree leaves and the grass would change colour over time. Add bunches of leaves on the ground for added effect and decoration. Maybe they are only collectible in the fall season when the leaves fall off their trees. The temperature bar could also apply to this where you need more water in the summer and to move around more in the winter. Seasons would last around 40 minecraft days. Just so have enough time to get around and get things done. Whenever you create a new world you would start on Spring 1. Like Stardew Valley.

More weather. Please I want wind added to the game. Maybe to add to the fallen leaves decoration, you can also collect leaves when it is windy. Wind can move banners and leaves around when it's only slightly breezy. Fog could be something that happens once in a while, and mist could settle over a lake for the first minute in a minecraft morning. Different types of rain, torrential downpours, and light rain. Light rain in the sun has a 50% chance of creating a rainbow. Gentle snow vs blizzards in the colder regions.

Natural disasters could be once a year thing (applying to the seasons bit), where depending on the biome you would receive some form of a natural disaster. For example:

Ocean - A tsunami or hurricane.

Plains or forests - Tornado.

Mountains - Avalanche.

Jungle - Flooding.

Desert - Massive Heat Wave/Drought

Snow Biomes - Massive Snow Storm

Once again popping off on the seasons bit, let's add calendars to the list. This could be crafted using some paper and a clock in the exact way you would craft a locator map. And using a cartographers table you could customize your calendar to be a different colour using dye. This could allow you to track when the next season is coming, so you don't have to guesstimate.

New Crops. Please we would go feral for more crops. Corn, tomatoes, cucumber, garlic, etc. Add more stuff to the farming mechanics. Be able to trade more crops to villagers. Add crops that need to be watered daily, and add sprinklers that can tackle that issue. Which also have different tiers which you can upgrade over time. Crops need to be harvested in the fall or else they will die in the winter cold. In the fall you happen to have a 75% chance of gaining bonus crops or treasures when harvesting.

Fruit trees, like while you could get apples from oak trees, you could also get them from apple trees, and instead of cutting them down, you could use shears to gather the apples which take maybe 7 minecraft days to all come in. And every 7 minecraft days from the beginning of the spring season to the end of the fall season. Maybe some fruit trees are rarer and that gives people a thing to search for and maybe they can only be found in certain biomes. Maybe there is a rare possibility to find a golden apple tree or even an enchanted golden apple tree.

Herbs. I mean fancy little herb guys that could be used for seasoning on foods to add hunger points to food. Or decoration. You could put them in flower pots. Be able to combine different herbs into pepper.

Cooking. Holy shit we have all wanted cooking or at least more food right? Let's add frying pans and pots. just being able to combine food with other foods is awesome. Let's say the more ingredients the food requires to make the more hunger points it gives you. Just cooking. Please.

Salt. Just salt. You could be able to find it in ores in oceans on the seafloor or be able to trade for it with villagers in its cooking form. The ore would be mined into its cooking form as well. When the salt is put in a 3x3 on a crafting table you can get a block of salt that can be used for decoration. Just let us add salt and pepper to our foods.

More fish. In general. Be able to catch certain fish in certain biomes. An actual nautilus animal where you can either wait for them to drop their shells and pick a new one every 2 minecraft days or kill them (if you are cruel enough) for the shell immediately. Octopus, they don't have any use other than adding more to oceans and looking pretty. Which is fine because they are adorable.

Sharks! They only hunt down cod, salmon, and drowned and are considered a neutral mob similar to wolves. If you hit them or get too close they will attack you. They're smooth little friends!

Hermit crabs and seashells! Seashell blocks!!! Hermit crabs, similar to nautilus will drop their seashells every two minecraft days, collect nine seashells, and put them in a 3x3 on the crafting table and you now have a new pretty block!

Add random barrels on the ocean floor which can contain things like dyes, gold, tree saplings, seeds, herbs, treasure maps, etc.

Backpacks. We all want them. Be able to dye them different colours on their first leather tier. and upgrade them to the point where they carry two double chests worth at netherite. 'Hidden' clutch is that you can put backpacks in shulker boxes. And then the shulker boxes inside of an ender chest. :)

Sleeping bags. Made almost exactly like a bed except for its just 3 wool with no wood. The sleeping bag does not set your spawn point so if you want to skip the night somewhere but don't want to break your bed, end up dying, and then respawning at spawn (especially if you settled far away) this would be a useful thing to have. It could be used as a mainly aesthetic thing. But still neat to have!

Putting banner designs on beds. Being able to design a banner and put it on our beds would make so many people happy! Also, new banner templates would be a small but nice thing to add to the game.

Rope. Can be created by using a lot of string and some leads. This could be helpful because you could attach a rope to the top of a block anywhere and be able to travel down. This could be used in large caves that you don't want to deal with navigating all around. Also could be used for decoration (maybe treehouses?)

Stackable books. It's mainly an aesthetic thing, but it looks nice! Maybe you could hide a written book in the stacks!

Being able to put lanterns on walls. Another aesthetic thing. But it needs to happen.

Sawmill/woodcutter. Back into the more technical stuff, this would work similarly to a stonecutter where you could put a piece of planks in and make slabs, stairs, doors, etc. Instead of spending 6 planks on a couple slabs, you spend one plank for one slab.

Redstone on walls. Let the redstoners go nuts.

Fluffy leaves on trees. I mean sure there are texture packs, but fluffy leaves my beloved.

Forest improvements in general, like adding songbirds and mushrooms and moss on trees. Mossy rock piles in forests as well. More bush variants other than sweet berries. Like blueberries or raspberries. Fallen logs for java (bedrock has those). Twigs will naturally spawn on the ground in forests, you can pick them up and they'll give you sticks.

Deer and fawns added the game. 25% chance of a deer spawning with antlers when killing an antlered deer there's another 25% chance of an antler dropping. So a bit of a challenge to get a set of deer antlers. Then you have these though, you can create a mount and hang up the antlers as a decoration.

Fireflies. Yep. Add these to the list now because Mojang continues to be cowards. Little fireflies in bottles! Placable bottles. Similar to the stackable books, but for bottles. For aesthetic reasons and to have a standing bottle of little fireflies.

Pet training. There would be different tiers that you would have. In the beginning, you would only have the sit option, from the standard game mode and what we already have. Introduce the options to pet your pets and play with them. For example with a dog, you would be able to throw a bone and they would catch it. Over time, the dog's skills would increase and you would be able to make them do tricks and stuff. Like making them lay down or stay while standing. You could be able to check the dog's stats in some way to see their health and skill level.

Tumbleweeds. They appear in the desert and mesa biomes during windy weather. if you can hit them with an ax, they'll break and give you a bunch of sticks. Sometimes treasures can be hidden inside!

Lizards. Little guys :D. You can tame them using some spider eyes, and they come in all sorts of variants. They can be found literally anywhere but cold biomes. Though they are most common in jungles, mesas, and deserts.

Wagons that you could attach to horses, donkeys, and mules. Which can drag things behind you, the wagon has the storage of a single double chest. And wagons can be crafted using wood, slabs, and some sticks.

Dyable sand. Dyable sandstone. Just for more block variants.

Mice/Rats. More little guys! Maybe you have the ability to turn milk into cheese and tame them with the cheese. Not much to them but being adorable but that is fine!

Concrete slabs, stairs, walls, etc. We need them c'mon.

Filling a barrel with certain things like apples, fish, etc will have a new barrel texture where the top of the barrel is open it shows the item you put in. They had concept photos for barrels like that but it was never given. So yeah.

When killing a goat you also have the chance of gaining a goat hoove which you can add to your boots using a smithing table, this allows you to jump an extra block higher and take a little less fall damage. Useful for climbing mountains.

More birds like turkeys, geese, flamingos, pheasant, owls, eagles, and vultures. All drop different meats. Though owls and eagles can occasionally drop their talons. Turkey, geese, pheasant, and eagles all spawn in forest and plains biomes. Flamingos spawn by rivers in the savanna and jungle. Owls spawn in snowy biomes. And vultures spawn in the desert and mesa. Vultures will hunt down husks for rotten flesh. With all the meats the different birds drop they can be traded with butchers for more emeralds.

Different nether brick variants, it would be cool if there could be more to do with it. More stuff to do with netherack too. Like infusing blocks with netherack to make them fireproof.

Semi-obvious but craftable saddles, horse armor, chainmail armor, and name tags. Not sure what the recipes would be but most of the ideas have a similar concept.

A special ax that can chop down a tree by hitting the bottom block. But the ax only takes one durability point away when doing so.

Improved generated structures. Jungle temples right now are not very useful. Improve them by adding several more layers with more traps and better loot as you go down. To make them more appealing.

Add cattails and reeds to swamps for more ambiance, as well as swamp flowers that spawn on lily pads. Alligators spawn there and are fairly neutral mobs like sharks.

More flowers. I'm not even sure what kind of flowers, just more flowers would be nice. Also more colours of dye. Like darker and lighter versions of the colours. Instead of only being able to get something like that through a cauldron and leather armour.

Palm trees and coconuts can occasionally spawn in a desert oasis, or on a beach.

Major improvements are needed to the end to make it more appealing. But I'm not sure what exactly could be done there. Possibly something to do with different end biomes with new rare mobs, blocks, and loot.

More difficult to obtain music discs. We like the challenge and music.

The Deep Dark hasn't even been released yet and I already have ideas. To start, we could say that there is in fact a portal that leads to a new dimension. Said new dimension could give you all sorts of new loot, blocks, and items that are helpful for later game stuff. Also instead of dropping something inherently useless, the Warden drops maybe a new and extremely rare item. Not sure what it could be, but yeah.

As of 2022/05/17 this list is extremely long. So I'll call it quits here. But if anybody else has any cool ideas add it!

#I got some of my inspiration from a bunch of posts here and a youtube video by SystemZee (go check 'em out)#All these ideas essentially have been created by someone else. And these are just my takes on them #So this is essentially a giant list compiling of all these ideas in a singular tumblr post because I was bored #I know a lot of these are about building. I'm sorry I'm a builder at heart #minecraft #mineblr #minecraft update #minecraft update ideas #minecraft ideas #long post

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the-antiapocalyptic-man · 1 year

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What is Mr. Freeze and Nora like in Headverse?

(I have this little personal canon where Nora actually became friends with a young Harvey Dent during her illness, but most of that would be it's own post)

I really like the idea of Nora befriending little Harvey!

As Headverse Victor and Nora, they were Austrian immigrants to Gotham City during the city's Golden Age. Victor is still a scientist and brought over all his research into advanced cryogenics, getting work with Ferris Boyle's Gotham Corporation, while Nora used her ballet training to land various film roles, most famously as the superhuman villainess Lazara Zero, an American take on the Irma Vep archetype in the League of Shadows serials (the bulk of which are now considered lost media). They ran in the same circles as Dr. Aloysius Fox, Adrian Arkham, "Ol' Calamity" Silverlock, Alan Scott, Sammy Zhao, and of course Alfie Pennyworth and his bankroller Pat Wayne.

After being diagnosed with MacGregor's Syndrome, Nora retired from acting and Victor threw himself into his work, doing whatever he could to give her more time, to save her. Boyle, unsatisfied with his results and unconcerned with Nora's eventual fate after she rebuffed his own advances years earlier, cut Victor's funding. Desperate to complete his research and safely freeze Nora while he researched a cure, Victor adopted the persona of "Mister Zero" began robbing various business (almost all subsidiaries for the Gotham Corporation) using an experimental direct-cryonic beam emitter (it would be a few decades before he caved to calling it a "Freeze Gun" as was already in popular use by the press at the time).

After a confrontation with Batman (Aloysius) and Eagle, Victor was changed forever: while the process was still misunderstood at the time, Aloysius exploding Victor's freeze gun in his face to save Boyle's life had the unintended consequence of activating Fries's latent metagene. While his altered biology gave him the ability to withstand extreme cold temperatures that would kill most baseline humans, it also left him unable to survive outside the cold.

With the compromise of Boyle's arrest and a promise of funding from Wayne, Victor retreated to a private laboratory with a frozen Nora, both of them unseen for decades, visited only by Aloysius and Pat's children and then grandchildren from time to time.

It was during a visit by Lucius Fox and a young Bruce Wayne that everything went sideways. While Victor's body hadn't aged in all this time, his extreme isolation and obsession had aggravated existing mental illness in full blown delusion. Now calling himself Mister Freeze and guided by hallucinations of Nora--awake and reborn as his White Queen--Victor had outlined plans to freeze all of Gotham before upgrading to an impossible attempt at plunging the entire world into a new ice age.

While Bruce--now having taken up Al's old identity as the Batman--stopped Victor's plan, he was forced to move him to a special facility at Arkham Psychiatric Hospital. While Bruce advocated for allowing Victor special permission to continue living with Nora, he was overruled by Doctors Hugo Strange and Jeremiah Arkham--the former out of an obscene urge to see how far he could plunge the various costumed criminals Batman brought him into madness, and the latter out of a petty urge to undermine his cousin.

It was under these circumstances that Nora was kidnapped by the League of Assassins--inspiration for the very films that had made her famous--disappeared into their ranks. Victor never forgave Bruce for this failure to protect the only person he ever truly loved, antagonizing the Wayne family into the Beyond era and Terry McGinnis's time as Batman.

tl;dr cold wife guy really hates rich people, mostly for good reasons

#dc #headverse #ask #videodromeda #mister freeze #mister zero #lazara #victor fries #nora fries #nora faria #ferris boyle #long post #lol sorry this one got away from me #I was watching a really good Tyrone Power movie and his my all time Bruce fancast so I was feeling inspired #anyway

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