imma be level with you, the way fandom talks about “angst” reeks of the contentification of media. reducing a rich panoply of emotional dynamics down to one ‘feels bad man’ label :/

“here’s some <character> angst.” “gimme <ship> angst.”

let me out of here

• don’t even get me started about whump
• not a vague post btw
• this has been on my mind for a while

i’ve really got to get back to working on corrupt combustion. if yall thought the sandbox executions we’ve seen so far are cool, wait till you see ⸢Collector of the Ineffable and Forgotten⸥

or the Nori‍-​Yeva sandbox fusion. aka i win forever

• heartbreaking: this makes it just like rain world
• but i have played rain world
• just not enough of it

there’s this one song where for years i had a corrupted mp3 of it and even years later, every time i get to the once‍-​corrupted section, i expect that muted, distorted skip back into the chorus. it’s lasered into my understanding of the song

purrple‍-​bat asked:

Part of me think the company wouldn’t pay for Microsoft 365 so J would have to pay out of her own ‘money’ to get it.

And I could see Uzi being able to find a way to get all the functionalities for free without issues and getting it to J as a gift (or as a bargaining chip). Avatar

Anonymous asked:

YOU (Insert that one image of the cat here)

I NEED A PART 2 / AFTERCARE / SOMETHING FOR ARTIFICIAL INSTINCTS IM GOING CRAZYYYY IM FOAMING AT THE MOUTHHH

(SLASH POS SLASH NF IM NOT TRYING TO BE RUDE I SWEAR JUST GOING A LITTLE INSANE AFTER READING IT)

not me coming up with a couple of DD OCs for J’s squad to kill and getting super invested and attached to them already

oh no. oh nooo.

was briefly struck by the thought of cynessa looking down on j, seeing how pathetic she looks, realizing she could do anything to j‍ ‍‍—‍ she has nothing else left‍ ‍‍—‍ and finding endless amusement in that desperation, that reversal of position

• i cant ship this
• begone demons
• BEGONE

Flesha is a lot like Sukuna in that i lost all respect for them once they lost. they’re just annoying to me now. their appeal was their menace, their unstoppable presence. but they got clowned on in the end. like get out of here little bitch lol

a thread ranting about character.ai and telling them to roleplay instead

not to defend c.ai (llm slop has never interested me), but this kind of misunderstands what c.ai is. it’s a toy. the use case, the appeal, is that you can type whatever you want into it, it’s unfiltered fucking around

this is not what roleplay is. when you rp with someone, it’s a social interaction. you need to be mindful of their boundaries and interests, you need to care and think

telling people to stop using c.ai and roleplay is like seeing someone shooting up random civilians in GTA and saying “go outside”. going outside is good! but um. they should be going outside for different reasons, i think?

c.ai is something there isn’t really an equivalent to. it’s consequence‍-​free, there’s no timezone constraints or interruptions or waiting for someone to think and compose.

and it’s awful. it’s fast food content, and i can see how it’d be almost addictive. worse than fast food, it doesn’t have a business model that’ll last decades.

don’t talk to someone’s unethically trained, loss leader llm‍ ‍‍—‍ not least of all because you shouldn’t get used to something that won’t stick around

TADC is finally good

three episode rule is written into the fabric of the universe, huh

writing more of that thing nobody asked for from two weeks back

(it’s dragon yuri(?? maybe). and im realizing to my great chagrin it also probably counts as found family)

sorry but if i dont write about Lyn and Piscez soon im gonna nighttime radio broadcast

mutual returns right after i finish scrolling the past eight hours of posts. i pass the baton

realizing this self care shit’s p difficult when your reaction to noticing you feel bad and could probably do something about it is “eh who gives a shit if i feel bad or not. we move” tho we aint movin lmao

• too tired to tag headmates
• probably val maybe haven

watching line get appended to a log file. reading the electricity flowing back and forth down wires to servos not in use. listening to your robot’s heartbeat

every time i crack open the internals of my site i feel like i’m stepping into inverted containment to witness the horrors that always surrounded me. i aint cut out for this async research shit

• there is no antimemetics division
• you’re only as good at antimemetics on your first day as you ever are
• and chat i would be COOKED

i love because i’m a hater who hates acting like a hater

i spent all day adding a feature to my site nobody will notice 🥳

anyway hi what did i miss

ladydaybreaker posted:

AYYYYYY WE DID IT! PINGS ARE CANONIZED IN AO3 TAG SORTING!!

• i may be stupid but what does this tag entail (curious)

it’s a shared headcanon. banyanas is Nosferatank, and you can see subtle glimpses of it in action in their fics like Fourth Law or the new one, Sense of Home.

but the chief vector for the spread of the idea has been through authors chatting with each other‍ ‍‍—‍ notable early uses of this being the OP of this thread, LadyDaybreaker, as well as her close associates like SilverTails, TheCaretaker, and doodlingNutjob

the core premise with Pings is a semi‍-​bestial interpretation of disassembly and solver drones‍ ‍‍—‍ the “pings” it endows them with are essentially animal calls used to communicate when hunting

unfortunately, probably the best use of‍ ‍‍—‍ and clearest introduction to to‍ ‍‍—‍ the concept is in the fic sileNce, where it’s not just a part of the fic, but serves to profound underscore its themes and impact.

(i say unfortunate in this case, because that fic relies in an especially abusive interpretation of J and N’s relationship‍ ‍‍—‍ the sort of characterization that gets dozens of people unanimously cheering for her death in the comment section. suffice it to say, i’d recommend the fic to many, but probably not to you)

if you want to see it in action, here’s some random excerpts below the cut

Through the Looking Glass (SilverTails):

Sorry! Hurts. Sorry! Friend! Here! B warbled as he shrank into his shoulders and hugged himself, listening to his noise quietly bouncing along the walls around him as his optics tracked the nearest trail of oil down one of the hallways and got him to start following it.

There was no whistle or call in reply from D.

sileNce (doodlingNutjob):

It was just in [N’s] nature to fill the silence with joyful noise! It made being out here a lot more pleasant. When he was alone and between hunts he really liked to warble and chirp to the sky, calling to squadmates he couldn’t see.

Hello! Where are you? Friends! I found food!

Often, he would be met with no response…or when he did get a response, he would be hit with a hiss or a growl or a squawk that said Quiet or Bring it here or Go away.

Retrospect (TheCaretaker):

[N] could probably think of something to do tomorrow, whenever that was. Then his intake jackknifed and rammed a needle through his core.

Pain! he keened, hands flying to his abdomen. Hungry! Hurt! Empty!

His vocal synthesizer strained under the weight of infrasound vocalization, pinging to a broken squad that wasn’t present in the spire.

What Friends are For (LadyDaybreaker):

“…Hurt me?” she whispered, “What…you…why?” 

Scared…scared hurts pain! Warbled unbidden from her as she took another step back, holding her hands up around her core to protect it. She needed to get out of here. She needed to run. Needed to flee. If she stayed she die…

“Uzi…no! Nononono!” N pleaded, “It’s nothing! It’s going to be ok! Promise!” Safe! Here! Safe! He tried to sooth her, reaching for her again.

Scared! Scared! Scared! THREAT! THREAT! THREAT! Her hand came up again and golden sparks flared from her fingers as they twisted into an unfamiliar configuration…one she had no memory of consciously making.

[Null]

and of course, here’s two from the originator themself, both Fourth Law (Nosferatank):

V, who had been uncharacteristically quiet thus far, was the final trigger. Her infrasound‍-​dipped ping called the rest of the squad’s attention to threat‍-​threat‍-​threat like a metronome. Weak threats, but they were outnumbered, with a downed and fear‍-​flightless squadmate‍-​

Just as Tessa guessed, there was a mantis‍-​poised figure planted at the front door, tall enough that she had to bend down to use the intercom connected to the front door. Familiar white pigtails almost glowed with the reflected yellow hue of her rapidly‍-​flicking stinger, but after everything that happened, N still couldn’t be sure that really was J…

Without thought, N parted his fangs and pinged at her‍-​ a ‘who?’, ‘where?’, and ‘here’, all in one subaudible vocalization, just like when he was calling for Tessa in the ballroom.

which sort of illustrates what i mean when i said they’re the most subtle with it. there, it’s always semi‍-​described or alluded to; i’m not sure i’ve ever seen them quote pings like dialogue, the way everyone else does

and if you check the tag, you’ll find that i’ve tagged Hostile Takeover with it as well. it’s a consequence of the changes that happened during the rewrite. i don’t consider my work to be a true instance of the concept‍ ‍‍—‍ while i take undeniable influence from it, it’s more of a reaction to or reconstruction of the concept than a faithful execution of it.

i don’t find the headcanon fits with the way i approach disassembly drones‍ ‍‍—‍ i don’t buy sound as a reasonable medium for propagating these signals, and i think animal psychology evoked through means of a limited vocabulary requires special care to be made compelling. i don’t think there’s any escaping that to me, disassembly drones are robots first, where others find it more appealing to focus on their predatory traits

so in Hostile Takeover, disassembly drones instinctively communicate via radio signals

«Yo,» V broadcast over shortwave, «are we flying in circles or do you actually know where we’re going?»

V liked to keep it casual over shortwave. Conversational. This body wanted every note to be growled or screeched like animal calls. J wanted it to be a protocol, all terse information‍‍-​​packets.

But it was all the same wiggles as sound in air. Nothing special about it.

«Sorry! Prey soon? Promise.» Except when N said it, it wasn’t animalistic or efficient. Just… simple. Like the transmissions let him bare intent without anything getting in the way. «I know it’s around here… somewhere.»

«‘It’ being…»

There was a thoughtful, acknowledgement‍‍-​​rumble in response, N chewing on how to explain. «J talked about factories, right? Saying prey was… multiplying? It reminded me of something I saw on patrol. If we took one of them down, I think she’d like that.» Then, with it all laid out, N finally found a concise transmission. «Target: nest!» He laughed.

but when there’s lines like

A roar of jamming shortwave static purred from their transceivers, an instinct‍‍-​​refrain of «Prey spotted! Let’s hunt! Devour them!»

i think all the attempts to distinguish it melt away‍ ‍‍—‍ if someone wants more Ping Communication, i don’t think they’re going to crack open HT and be disappointed my take on it is a little different.

especially not when i’m doing shit like what you see in chapter 3[3: [Error 36:48.58/Connection Lost]]

WAIT

i’d prolly look unhinged rereblogging this to go off on a tangent but when i tagged a mutual’s post about HDG there was something i knew i forgot

my biggest complaint about the setting by far is that if it keeps getting more popular and if i ever get around to writing Aurora Moonrise or anything else in the cometverse, people are gonna think nature spirits are affini expies. fuck my baka life

the fact that i have to remember to delete the 1GB+ of tumblr site data every few weeks is one of the most unhinged parts of this site by far. frontend webdevs created a fucking digital lint trap. why.

sometimes a merely okay post crosses your dash a few times and each time you proudly refuse to like it and you get to feel like a discerning tastemaker. haha, this post was not a hit with the me audience‍ ‍‍—‍ what a blunder

werecoyotl asked:

• what are some of your favorites ?? #Id love to hearr

…having the question turned back around makes me realize how difficult it is.

Mechina gets top billing, i think. i don’t think i’m allowed to listen a band’s ten album (main) discography innumerable times for years till i know it by and heart and not call them my favorite. i think there was a period back in i believe 2020 when i listened to nothing but Mechina and podcasts. i think “When Virtue Meets Steel” might be literally be responsible for getting me to start imitating harsh vocals

and if i’m going by the standard of “regularly binge their entire discography”, i think Krallice of all things has shot up to the next spot. it’s hard to explain, their music is complex and doesnt click with a lot of people (i was quite familiar with them for almost a decade without considering them more than a curiosity), but inexplicably, something changed the past month that made their music sound amazingly cathartic to me, and it’s now one of my favorites to put on while writing.

(as much as i care for instrumentation over lyrics, when it comes to my favorites lyrics play a huge role‍ ‍‍—‍ Krallice is unique, then, for getting to this spot purely on the strength of their composition. i have no idea what the guy is screaming about) and the last spot… would probably have to be Gojira, just because From Mars to Sirius is flat out my favorite album of all time, and i love The Way of All Flesh so much that the current arc of my Murder Drones fanfic has been stealing chapter titles from the song list.

(if i can cheat and name honorable mentions, it’d go to Alkaloid (first metal band i ever listened to, still love em), Cattle Decapitation (Death Atlas is my other all‍-​time fav), and Schammasch (big aesthetic touchstone for Black Nerve))

sorry for the yap >.>

Gnostic Last Thursdayism: we live in a false world crafted by the demiurge, but they were a bit late to the party so for most of human history we actually did get to experience mystic divinity. you’re born too late for that now tho

Apocalyptic Pre‍-​gnostism: we haven’t actually even experienced the horrors of the false material world but the demiurge is working on it. soon™

Gnostic Accelerationism: we should help the demiurge craft the false world to create the conditions for humanity’s greater enlightenment

• this post is actually about black nerve

sapphofinch posted

does anyone else have like. a writing Enemy that they just hate doing. mine is room descriptions

• btw sorry for all the notif spam and blog stalking i was looking for the link to “i want you to be here” to reblog

entitiy‍-​4 replied:

Technically Uzi has both Cyn & Doll in her after episode 8 (once again you predicted the future) so there’s that maybe?

hot take tbh, but my feelings on this have only gotten clearer as the dust has settled: i aggressively don’t care for this headcanon

i dont actually think slapping three people in the same head makes for a compelling plural character. there’s no intimacy, no kindred origin, no chemistry.

cyn nor doll have an interesting relationship with uzi established on screen, they might as well be strangers. why should i care about them sharing a head? they don’t even not get along in an entertaining way.

(who is doll, now that her attempts at vengeance and salvation have failed? who is cyn, now that her plans to control and consume are utterly thwarted? i dont think there are characters left, just aesthetic tendencies)

either way, they don’t share an identity, and i can’t really relate to that

whenever i see a fic tagged “plural uzi doorman” i get so excited, and then the tags clarify that it’s just cyn and doll in her head and i’m left so disappointed.

i’ve really got to publish An Opaque Heart

working on a setting for five years will drive you crazy. i’ll pull up black nerve docs from 2022 and i’m there confidently whipping out just‍-​made‍-​up terminology and even i dont know what it means. the hell is an umbracog’s “antumbra”? the need for a glossary is DIRE at this point dude

they say tumblr is a fate‍-​driven website but you can master the art of manipulating the strands of fate (asking your mutuals if they remember a post.)

• n is in The Device

entitiy‍-​4 asked:

I was reading Artificial Instincts again (bc of course I am it’s gonna sit in my tab bar for weeks) and my brain went “Uzi would probably enjoy doing something like what happens in Goth Girl Anime Lover and Wholesome Killer Boy with J, wouldn’t she” Avatar

unexpected way to have a reason to get out of bed in the morning: don’t have tumblr on my phone, schedule a post to go up tomorrow, forget about it, wake up needing to unschedule it

• the hard part is remembering this when you get to the computer

i swear every day this week it’s been “alright the burnout’s done, we can get back to work now”

and then i blink and i’m just

AU where Uzi eats J’s core singularity in episode two and they have to share a head for the rest of the show

or maybe Uzi doesn’t even realize anything’s different till she loses control in episode four

pigtails tail

• stealing purrple‍-​bat’s idea

you’ve seen authors bemoaning how often people hide discussions of their fics in private discords where they can’t see, but this might take the cake for how odd it is

a while back someone got caught up on my fic, and we got to talk about other fics, i mentioned one that inspired me, they mentioned some that i’d already read. but point is, they wanted to know what my favorites were

so i named a few of course, and leave it at that

a few weeks later, they come back and tell me how much they liked those fics

which, great! glad they liked em!

but i got curious what their full thoughts were so i checked the comment section on those other fics, and‍ ‍‍—‍ nothing! no new comments!

“i have to personally thank you,” they say‍ ‍‍—‍ really? i’m the one you should be thanking?

better to remain on hiatus and be thought to have peaked than to finally update and remove all doubt

another feature of all time in this webbed site is that the animation of a heart ascending when you click like must be achieved by animating the element itself‍ ‍‍—‍ this means if you click the animation, you interact with the heart again.

because the like button is positioned below the three dot menu, this mean a workflow where you like post then go to copy the link introduces a failure state where you instead unlike the post in the process!

web design!

there’s something that breaks deep in your spirit when you realize quietly accepting minor bullshit gets you better results than trying to correct or communicate anything

honestly oneshots are so ass. you have to name them? fuck off

never understood people who complain about naming fics but it’s so much easier with longfics. this is purgatory

today on “hold on wait, what the fuck is black nerve”, i forgot that i took the hyperauthoritarian half‍-​bat god‍-​empress of mantiskind and gave her a a failgirl side hoe so down bad she created a whole fashy proto‍-​nationalist revivalist movement to worship her mistress

(her plan involved ovipositing a brood of half‍-​mantis half‍-​spider children with the messiah‍-​priestess leading the species‍-​wide spider cult the through the power of interspecies monster yuri. it was an effective plan.)

anyway this lead to numerous genocides so uh. we do not stan unfortunately

• past self what the FUCK were you cooking with this

the tricolon needs to be studied. no, not studied, put that thing on a surgery bed and vivisect it. what is it about that exact number‍ ‍‍—‍ to what to we owe the unreasonable effectiveness of listing off three things in row. why does it turn every sentence magical. it hits harder than a drug.

The beautiful thing about dialogue, I think, is that every character is a story, a great conflict churning beneath their façade; and yet from those untold depths only a few words can emerge, like jets of steam venting from a geyser under great pressure‍ ‍‍—‍ their words are selected by some intention, which doubly endows them with meaning, a specular highlight of eyes that shine from out an inner star.

diamantis gf who marks you with her mantibles, drawing blood and running keenly‍-​tasting palps along it like paint‍-​brushes upon her own canvas. she pins you, raptorial forelegs gripping you, vice‍-​spines piercing you like a prey item. stridulating palps rasp out orders and insinuations and you’re eager to accept.
you can tell by the shadows in her eyes when she’s in a hunting mood or a dancing mood. sometimes she flares out her wing’s eyespots and fluffs her antennae‍-​setae when she just wants to display dominance, but sometimes her feelers curl into tight balls and she lunges, staring you down like you’re nothing but an object or game to her.
and you swoon and submit, and that recognition is what she hunts. she runs a raptorial through your hair like a comb, and protects you like treasure.

chorus roach gf who squeaks and hisses whenever she sees you, bouncing on those little spiked legs. she wears dresses cut to show off the colorful patterns on her chitin, and they flutters when she scurries toward you, rubbing her head against your leg like a cat, antennae as long as her body curling and caressing, smell‍-​touching all of you.
she cooks you four meals a day, even if she ends up eating most of them. the weight goes to her abdomen and hindlegs, thick and round beneath her soft exoskeleton. she lays on you a lot when you sit down, and weighs enough that it’s hard to get up. but why would you disturb her? you can see how the pigment drains from her eyes, even her ever‍-​twitching antennae relaxing.
she doesn’t purr, she sings, the air whistling through her spiracles, as her abdomen rises and falls. she loves to sing‍ ‍‍—‍ on your anniversary, she surprised you with a song composed just for the two of you. it was a duet and she bounced so excitedly when you gave your parts a try, as embarrassed as you were of your efforts.

euvespid wf who tried to kill you, running zer stinger like a knife into your flesh, the venom pouring in a river of barbs until a nausea‍-​headache whited your vision moments later, blanking your thoughts. the wound never heals, and the black venom discolors your flesh and still aches of zer.
it’s not the last time ze tries to kill you, though there’s something off about the attempts. ze carefully sets traps that misfire and leave barely able to escape‍ ‍‍—‍ and you find messages written upon zer own chewed paper, zer heartful letter triumphant monologue relishing your defeat. ze duels you, and is always eager to grab and grapple you‍ ‍‍—‍ a nuzzle if ze wasn’t snarling, a hug if ze wasn’t so forceful.
ze’s always watching you, stalking you like prey, because the sting that never heals still has zer venom. ze still feels it, feels you, always‍ ‍‍—‍ like the one that got away. that’s why she never lets go.
when ze signs the paperwork to officially court you, ze loudly clarifies that ze’s only doing this for the sake of zer queen, to study and exploit you for the good of the hive.
(you find folded papers left in zer study, hastily hidden‍ ‍‍—‍ portraits of you drawn in zer own venom‍-​ink)

therid gf who crafts tight bonds of silk to suspend you in her web, every limb restrained, the soft rope cradling and comforting you. she likes to chew up her prey, and then kiss you, pedipalps rubbing your cheeks as she feeds you a meal digested with her own enzymes. it flows smoothly into you and tastes like her.
she can’t hear you, if you say anything. she doesn’t need a gag, though you might like one anyway. she only feels the vibrations on her web as you wiggle and tremble. with eight legs to hold you, she’s attentive to everything your body is saying, and she gives you everything you ask for.
she draws new webs as you hang there, sometimes contorting your body, sometimes framing it with beautiful woven patterns. she likes to twist around her massive abdomen, the rear end pressing against you as her spinnerets work, depositing sticky new silk directly against your flesh.
when you walk through her colony the next day, you see other skeinlings waving at you with grin‍-​curled pedipalps, and a few gesture congratulations or envy. that’s how you find out that your therid gf wrote about everything the two of you did, weaving it into the public web.

everyone’s all like “make your own personal website” but they don’t tell you that web design brain will have friends link you an article on someone’s personal site then you spend fifteen minutes stealing their css instead of reading the article

you know, reading a story whose protagonist is autistic with very little social awareness is expectedly painful‍ ‍‍—‍ there are passages borderline unreadable from social anxiety, where it takes me minutes to endure sentences

but, as someone who couldn’t mask harder if i didn’t have a face, there’s something weirdly satisfying about watching a character just scream at people when the inconsiderate overstimulation and social bullshit gets to be too much

i think it would be comfy to go lie down in bed rn but it’s so close to bed time that i may as well brush my stuff and shut everything down and suddenly the prospect of lying down that way seems a lot less comfy

the problem with getting good at programming is you lose the ability to look at a hard problem go “well how hard could it be lol?” and get right to work. but that’s one of the strongest tools u have

i raged the gods above for their silence and cruelty, and i took up my sword with shouted cries of defiance and revolution. every prayer a failure, every temple a slaughterhouse of dignity! let us storm through heavens’ gates and place tender hearts and tearful eyes upon that highest mantle of the world‍ ‍‍—‍ for love! for justice! and my legs grew weary with each step i climbed nearer the firmament, and a lonely chill gripped my soul. i look down below, and i see no rally nor great cheer; precious few dare share nor endorse my ambition. this endeavor taxes my body till each action must be selected with miserly efficiency, and the coldness feels foreign no longer. when i draw upon the last reserve of my strength to cast down the doors of the great hall, i gaze now upon a mirror, and that wearied visage does not even have the courtesy to look surprised nor enlightened at this my fate: for the defiant mortal heart, only enantiodromia

i sit upon my throne with all the weathered benevolence of stone

you ever think about the existence of wikis. so much information about so much media existing for no reason other than the power of autism and general fixation.

i wonder how far we are from a world where it’s not something you could take for granted‍ ‍‍—‍ how lucky did we get?

you can’t post for the audience you want. you have to post for the audience you have so hard you buffer overflow into success

we posters have to believe there’s an afterlife for flop posts. even the posts only a mutual could like must get a warrior’s burial

“how much mana does this spell require to cast” if you have to ask you can’t afford it

crashing from overwork then getting anxious over whether i’m relaxing correctly

a skill issue with neopronouns is the prosody of them. when you’re unfamiliar, it’s easy to put stress on them as if they were a significant word, but a key feature of pronouns is that they aren’t stressed. i imagine fluency rids oneself of this

there is a poem in the fact that spending enough time reading on my screen burns the afterimage of white text on black background into my eyes, such that when i look away and witness the world around me, the lines of a page are superimposed upon my vision, framing every sight

“how autistic are you about typography” i notice when authors use en dashes instead of em dashes.

honestly? worst of both worlds. i don’t like it when they use hyphens, but at least i can understand simply using what your keyboard gives you; there’s a compelling elegance

but if you’re going out of your way‍—or simply have the software support‍—to insert unicode symbols, why are you using the wrong one

2025‍-​02‍-​13

this is hell for real. i always notice. not all authors appreciate typo reports, and i feel it’s got to be doubly unhinged to slide into a comment section like “your dashes are a few pixels shorter than they should be, please fix”, but it’s genuinely distracting. get me out of here

2025‍-​06‍-​18

dawg i just spotted this in a peer‍-​reviewed academic paper. what has the world come to. save us

2025‍-​10‍-​10

i’ve had arguments with a writer who uses en dashes on purpose‍—they don’t like how long they are‍—but they also put spaces around their dashes so it’s kind of a problem they created. still, i guess people who use en dashes also put spaces around them, so in a way it’s kind of equivalent to the people who use the ascii hyphen‍-​minus but nope, today i am reading a fic that uses unspaced en dashes are writers looking at the text? how do you catch typos and misplaced commas but not notice the words dashed too close together?

• “except the jellyfishes” i mutter

• it’s been years and the people i started doing it for arent even around anymore
• but idk

you’re in for a good time when you scroll down and see a mutual going “ok i’m done now” or “last one sorry”

there’s a fantasy trope that’s bothered me for a long time. it shows up in all sorts of stories (and fanfics of stories) with advanced magics systems.

the breadth of magic system is always a told‍-​not‍-​shown informed attribute. one distinct pet peeve i have is whenever characters need to have a confidential conversations, they always cast various privacy spells or activate privacy wards or whatever, and it’s never spelled out (heh) what privacy they actually, specifically afford you do, their differences and strengths, the utility of layering them

worse, there’s frequently a beat where the strength and/or number and/or rarity of the privacy effects that a characters applies is a marker of how seriously they’re taking the situation

and this is entirely informed! we’re given no tools to actually understand or appreciate anything about the privacy spells, besides the reassurance that they’re really powerful, trust me

and just once, i want to see an author get autistic about it. hell, make a challenge of it‍ ‍‍—‍ make every spell cast on the page named (if not exhaustively spelled out). in the appendices if you have to.

i’m probably going to try to do this with a black nerve story, someday

and like, obviously this is going to lead to writing issues. there’s a very popular superhero story available online that intends to portray a superhero origin story in all its gory details. no timeskips or montages, no skills they picked up in the backstory‍ ‍‍—‍ and people have already cited pacing problems with this story

but there’s a better analogue. i have similar frustrations with counting bullets or mana pool percentages‍ ‍‍—‍ i’m disappointed stories are always so vague about resource management, and leads the stakes and resolution of the fight to feel like they come down to author fiat.

and yet, if you try actually writing like this, you quickly understand exactly why almost as a rule authors approach the way they do

(uncharitably, privacy wards are the author signalling “don’t worry about people overhearing, it doesn’t matter, shut up”)

still, i want it, just as a indulgence, for bragging rights or as a cautionary tale.

nightmare difficulty: under these constraints, write one of those “knows a thousand techniques” characters who actually, genuinely, does

thinking back to this, and it’s not just privacy spells, is it? i do mention this applies to all spells, but the nonspecificity of privacy spells is symptomatic of slightly more general incuriosity.

wards in general seem to persistently have this shortcoming.

fantasy stories always throw out ‘this place has powerful wards’ as a trope‍-​gesture. wards can detect this, wards can prevent that, but your understanding of what wards entail and how they work has to come vibes‍-​osmosis.

it’s hard to recall stories that have interest in furnishing specific mechanics vs letting the presence of wards be a semantic stopsign to tell the reader to stop thinking, a ward‍-​wizard did it

todays walk had some big breakthroughs in diamantis psychology worldbuilding. gonna try for a more detailed write up shortly but the funny version is

me (cautiously): mantes… fight a lot?
audience: (understanding nod)
me (gauging reaction): in fact, mantes… don’t have a concept of friendship, just rivalry and allyship, which creates friction with more social and agreeable species, like roaches
audience: (approving chuckle)
intrusive thoughts grabbing the mic: MANTIS BITCHES FUCK ROACHES BECAUSE THEY’RE ALL DOMMES AND ONLY ROACHES ARE GOOD LITTLE BOYS
audience: (raucous, terrifying applause)

think i’m gonna start outlining a new project‍—working title is With Gnawed Wings Defending‍—a (hopefully!) novel‍-​length Black Nerve piece exploring the life of a street level ninja‍-​mantis mercenary gang

is there anyone who’d be interested in helping me workshop this?

i think it would be funny to write scriberpunk. shadowcouriers doing secret quests for the megaguilds. upgrading their plateware, but carefully lest they go metal‍-​mad

people are always like “how are you”. there’s no good answer to that question. “doing well?” embarrassing. “doing ok”? boring. “doing bad?” i’m sorry for killing the mood.

i’m not even paying enough attention to tell which is which half the time

i often wish to invoke the cadence of “what fool you are. divine skeleton death blast”‍—but few affront me enough to warrant that level of wrath. instead, i’ve taken to invoking “skeleton blast” cantrips to punctuate my disregard

if you look up the word “ophiophily” you can find a bunch of study aid and definition type sites that assert it’s the term for pollination by snakes (no academic source lists it), and occasionally the Santalum genus (sandalwood trees) is fingered as the plants in question, and if you broaden your search a little, you can find some dubious sources suggesting a close association between snakes and sandalwood trees‍ ‍‍—‍ though generally based on scent or microclimate rather than proposed anthophagy

at no point can you find papers or even reputable‍-​feeling sources picking up on these fun facts. the idea of plants pollinated by snakes is fascinating, and yet this closest i can find in the world of trustworthy facts is lizard pollination (e.g., the wikipedia page on zoogamy)

what this all feels like, remarkably, is an instance of citogenesis that somehow doesn’t involve wikipedia

how cooked is my brain that i didnt understand the appeal of puppygirl stuff until i imagined a mantis and her roach gf

• workaholic demons still frown at me tho

living in a society is writing a story about bugs and enduring everyone you tell about it saying “hollow knight vibes”

mantis girl interlocking the spines of her forelegs with the spines and grooves of another mantis

if you’ve ever lived with a cat, it never fully goes away. i turn to see a pile of clothes in a dimly like room, and startle expecting the beast to startle too. i pull open a device and the whine of the hinges is a meowo

had an interesting realization last night‍—my teeth are still there

ok that needs some elaboration. i’ve been having a recurring nightmare (more of a dream spook, really), where my teeth crack and fall apart and i have a handful of teeth shards. and i remember it happening. at least in some persistent dream cache, so every time it happens i’m like what the fuck, this isn’t good, at this rate i won’t have any teeth left and i can NOT afford a dentist. wait, why aren’t i in pain? is this normal? i thought if like, half a teeth fell off there’d be some exposed nerve or something. oh well, i’m not gonna question my luck.

last night was the first time i woke up soon enough after that to realize it was a dream, rather than just drifting into the next dream‍—meaning it’s the first time i realized it was always a dream, and i don’t have a running problem of my teeth cracking to pieces and falling a bloody pile in my palm

honestly the most unsettling part of that dream is the sensation‍—of teeth tearing lose, of tension released into cracks‍—felt good

concept: the MtG color pie, but the central metaphor is musical

1. Bass is red (forceful, primal, felt in the bones)
2. Harmony is Green (do i even need to explain this one?)
3. Melody is blue (clear motifs and figures, novel expressions, perfect climaxes)

White and Black could be conductors and drummers, respectively? both ways of keeping time, but drumming I associate more immediately associated with improvisation

Hm, blue could be lyrics instead?

but probably the best way to approach this is to ditch a 1:1 match with the color piece and do something distinctly different

• game dont wait
• it’s time to grind motherfucker cant be late