yes i’m here to claim my prize for scrolling through 45 hours of dashboard backlog. working hard clicking ♥ and 🔁 like the emperor giving a thumbs up at the gladitorium

hope yall appreciate the spam lmao

• and now for a special surprise
• i came back for a reason
• after all

i was so tired after writing 15k words of corrrupt combustion in four days. i really needed the break.

which is why i spent the last two days writing 13k words of a brand new au

i hope you can forgive me

• i think that adds up to 30k words in one week?
• imagine if i put that energy to serious writing instead of yapping about silly lil fanfic aus

Like Shadows Chasing the Balance

what if J and Uzi swapped places? okay, that doesn’t work, you couldn’t find two drones more inseparable from their identities as disassembler and worker. but what if you swapped some other things around? how close could you get?

would they still fall in love? obviously. but how?

i may have had a few ideas, so here’s a quick lil write‍-​up

Like Shadows Chasing the Balance

• call that ship jayz

people are always like “what advice would you give you to your past self” nah i already knew everything i needed to hear i just thought i was different. better than the gods

if i could advise my past self all i’d say is “you’re a stubborn bitch and you’re gonna find out the hard way. good luck & have fun”

when you do your second pass of the morning dashboard and discover you were spamming reblogs at the same time as one of your mutuals. kinda gay tbh

entitiy‍-​4 asked:

You know I just realized the connection between CC solver threat levels and driver access levels. Damn that’s cool. Avatar

yeah, i thought it was a cute way to flavor it

can’t take full credit for it though; i tip my hat to @interstyx

people often talk about how they goof off on discord or social media instead of getting things done but man, feels like all i do is get things done anymore. my social connections are withering.

but it’s so hard to interact with people and productivity is so much more rewarding

anyway i wrote some not corrupt combustion notes

you know how in JJK there’s that fiddly distinction that confuses a bunch of people between “reverse cursed technique” and “cursed technique reversal”?

you MUST protect those people from the knowledge that in CC, there is corruption cancelling, data recovery, reversed corrupt combustion, metacorruption, metacombustion, and inverse function execution and these are NOT the same things

The Fundamentals of Corruption

bogleech posted:

What really struck me most about those horrible recent changes to Google docs though was my surprise that so many people use it to write their fanfiction and articles and other projects.

What are its advantages? For as long as I’ve had a computer I’ve used the notepad and wordpad that come with windows and they do all I need. It never crosses my mind to sign up for a website to do the same thing??? 😧

i personally use plaintext markdown files that i compile to html through a build system taped together with makefiles and shell scripts

however, i’ve used google docs in the past and the killer feature you’re missing imo is that gdocs allows you to straightforwardly leave comments on people’s stuff.

pretty common in fanfiction communities to have beta readers, proofreaders, editors, etc. who get a link to the google doc and they go in, read the chapter & leave feedback. if you have a google account (and these days everyone does), it’s as simple as clicking the link and editing it normally

i think programs like libreoffice or ms word also have the ability to create annotated documents‍ ‍‍—‍ i’ve heard of professional editors doing this‍ ‍‍—‍ but it definitely has a few points of friction compared to this workflow

do you think any of the great literary masterminds could know the torment of trying to write a fanfic where gay robots kiss.

• that outline got hands man

there’s like one or two people who know enough about the corrupt combustion au and jjk to get why this is funny but trust me it is

• toxic yuri is back on the menu girls

• yes this is about J

you know that discourse that’s like “stop calling art content and artists content creators, it’s warps things into a corporately reductive consumerist lens”

does the shift towards calling any act of creation “cooking” and new works “food” the exact opposite or a reiteration

the juzi novice considers the possibility that nuzi works so much easier, so much more naturally on every level, and thinks this is an obstacle to shipping them, or worse, denies it.

the juzi adept understands this fact is double‍-​edged, a key ingredient in the explosive chemistry, the faultline on which things can break

because it’s not toxic yuri if no one gets hurt

• yeah i figured out how the decisive battle in corrupt combustion works
• how could you tell?
• she asks while radiating genuinely nefarious intent
• it’s gonna h u r t
• i do think managing the nuzi gravity is something you have to learn to grapple with when writing juzi
• struggled with this in hostile takeover but i’ve navigated around it so much more elegantly in subsequent attempts

on that weird part of the ace spectrum where i get so caught up in my enthusiasm for the sex meta that i forget i dont really care for the game itself

finally got around to watching the intermission

personally i wasnt quite on board with the first half of it, a few mixed feelings, didnt really start vibing till they split up

and then i got to that one. fucking. scene.

in a single frame it reached right into my chest and wrenched

instantly teared up and spent the next few minutes crying

so uh

i think that adds up to “yeah it’s pretty good”

guess what i had in the fridge. new juzi! more is on the way :3

Even in Debt — Dreams

entitiy‍-​4 asked:

Interesting thought about Corrupt Combustion ‍-​ drivers get a power up if one explains them.

Cyn states her movements and feelings. And she’s a mass of corruption.

IDK I feel like there’s something there.

entitiy‍-​4 asked:

So I was reading through the JJK manga and got to the point with Choso & Yuji have their brotherly bond, and my brain went “Does Beau have a Disassembly Drone squad he’s part of thanks to his arm?”

Who knows, that could be S’s team.

no comment on beau’s relations‍ ‍‍—‍ though you have given me a new angle to think about‍ ‍‍—‍ but i will say i’ve been working on plans for S’s team, renamed E & A

it’s a cool idea, so i don’t want to spoil everything till i can cook up a fuller write up, but do you remember your idea for a mimick zombie? yeah, i figured out a great place to work it into the place

another teaser for that plot: i’m finally doing something about uzi’s limited plot role early in the fic.

“does this mean more suffering?” :3

What Does it Take to (Re)Write a Scene?

Flesh on the Wrong Bone

new essay’s out, explaining my new understanding of what it means to render a scene. i’ve written about scenes at length before, but with about a year’s more experience writing (and agonizing about) stories at various levels of fidelity has made the mechanisms and purpose of detail click into place

if you want insight on what you need to turn an outline into a draft, what an unbaked first draft might be missing, or just hone your understanding of what makes scenes tick, i’ve got you covered.

i was planning to put this up on patreon early access for a bit (and i do need the money lol), but i crave the attention too much rip

In the Formel’s Garden

and now for uh, this.

don’t have much experience writing flash fiction. wanted to try doing some drabbles exploring the psychology of the different species in my giant insects setting.

the result is neither a drabble nor shows off the thing i was trying to do. idk. is this anything

there’s a thing you notice with discord servers of varying size. larger servers means more issues means the mods get more practice solving issues. small servers have to contend with a kind of social rot, where what small issues they do have can be brushed aside and looked past, only to persist and compound until inevitably blowing up.

having really good systems for solving problems comes hand in hand with having a lot of problems, and without those systems, those few problems get magnified by mishandling.

a kind of conservation of drama

Patient Upon a Cragged Coast

more black nerve bug flash fiction, this time with the actual xenosemiotics i was trying to experiment with in the first one

working this one out took a while, prospects are not looking good for the much weirder ideas i have for euvespids and gestalte bees.

anyway, you get four hundred words of raw mantis pov

black nerve as a setting is crazy to think about because it’s the high fantasy equivalent of if you wrote your typical secret world urban fantasy series where there’s this magical world hidden away from the ordinary one and we spend all our time exclusively focused on the concerns of magical life

that is, if you wrote that story knowing full well that the “ordinary world” is a cyberpunk weirdtopia where fungal aliens arrived to forge an uneasy alliance with with the fractured continental governments after octupuses in barnacle‍-​encrusted mechs arose from the ocean to seize control of the international shipping industry, and now the three species struggle to build a society that respects the rights of all sapients involved

and it’s like ok yes, your wizard duels and witch coven intrigue is pretty neat, but wait what was that about shroom aliens and squid mechs. WHY arent we seeing any of that.

• it’s because the wizard duels are super cool man
• please understand

the fact there can be something like “oh yeah there’s 5‍-​6 subspecies of euvespid from the different waves of exodus from wasp omelas and except for the initial post‍-​formation wave all of their descendants have an inbuilt urge to perform a ritual to receive a vision of wasp omelas which grants the option to mind upload or pilgrimage there and the three most recent exodus waves are considered ‘cursed’ with madness and deformation but it’s actually omelian biomagic used for telecommunications and morphological freedom but the mindwipe on those who sail away from wasp omelas had the side effect of crippling their cultural understanding of how to use it safely and those malfunctions can cross the inheritance vector”

and this is a tertiary background detail! for a single species! there’s almost a dozen and half of them have something about as unhinged going on

cursed tumblr feature idea: every user gains a ghost feed of anonymous posts. when you follow someone, you subscribe to their posts and their anon posts. cant see who sent anon posts (obviously), but you can unsub from the feed that sent the anon post, independent of their named blog. to close loopholes, your dash wont show anon posts before you followed nor will unfollowing someone unfollow their ghost feed

would the results be net negative? probably! but they would be net interesting

• give this idea to the mad sociologists

go read City of Angles

you ever have something sitting in your tabs for weeks after someone said something to make it seem interesting but you never get around to looking at it

then when you finally give it literally a moment of your time you immediately get sucked in and read a 17k word chapter one in a single sitting?

https://stefangagne.com/cityofangles/

i think city of angles is pretty dang good! promising start, at least, and a bunch of people i trust rec it (h/t @bedlam‍-​moon for getting me to try it)

so far it’s an intriguing bit of urban new weird. immediately solid characterization and premise. protag is shut‍-​in with anxiety that overflowed into the negatives, thrown into a world where cubism is life‍-​threatening and a thing called “picasso” is a genuinely unsettling threat

closest touchstone i can think of is qntm, though i don’t know if that name means anything to my followers. the writing is of a similar caliber, and with style and subject matter in common, but the prose has a more expressive grasp of metaphor. it never verges on being outright flowery, but it’s definitely more colorful than the cool, crisp sense of cinema qntm cultivates

as said, this first chapter pretty long, but stick it out until the transaction (deliberately vague, you’ll know it when you get to it). that’s the first moment that paid off for me. after that look forward to susan’s law, the climax of the chapter. (and the ending is of course a banger, but if you’re still not sold at that point, i can’t help you)

>someone posts a gif of maid J
>hauve covid

i think it’s genuinely too late for me bros. how does it even get this bad

• she’s just so perfect

alexanderwales posted:

I’ve been listening to a lot of music lately, and one of the things that’s crazy to me is how few songs any given artist or band actually produces over the course of their career. Harvey Danger was active for a little less than two decades, and they had three studio albums, which is like … two hours and change of listening. And that’s it.

Sometimes as a writer I get people saying “yeah, I blasted through Worth the Candle in like two weeks” and I think “that was four years of my life”, which is humbling and sometimes depressing. But I can listen through a whole discography on a single road trip, which is wild.

• fun fact: i have put out four albums in five years
• and music isnt even my main thing

platforms where you can leave reactions on posts are lowkey goated for adding a way to signal “i have seen and appreciate your last post, but i have nothing more to add”. excellent way to dodge the “no you hang up” regress

don’t let the haters tell you it’s unhealthy. when they love each other, when it’s real yuri, the aftercare is the afterlife <3

• thinking about hostile takeover again

“did you forget to update Even in Debt‍ ‍‍—‍ Dreams today” yes but also: what if the last chapter sucks actually.

putting together a team of humankind’s greatest minds to workshop a juzi isotope with a half life greater than five chapters

iveraines asked:

what is your ideal evil lair

not sure we could agree on one

Ambivalence would want a ruined lighthouse, whose guttering light shines like a fading hope in the fog of the world, with collapsing stone walls that form perches on which to brood and ponder the desolation of all things

Astore would want a resplendent castle, staffed with servants, ornamented with gilded and crystalline wonders, vaults collecting treasures only rivaled by libraries cataloguing rare tomes, together a hoard of glory and wisdom, as secure as it is envied

Amiri would want a underground lab filled with greenhouses and gadgets. halls trailing with cords and creeping vines. automatic doors, automatic dispensers, little robots, and except the central computer is half digital half fungus, interfacing with mycorhizzal network. imagine a mycellia with cable management.

Selena would want a colorful little house in the clouds, plush with fluffy carpets and furry animals, and maybe a dungeon to chain up cute girls. there would be spooky thunder sometimes to make it look menacing from afar (and also very cozy inside). maybe it’s always raining a little bit

Haven would want… okay Haven can’t be assed to come up with one, so i guess she’s cool being the monster in Selena’s dungeon. or just taking a page from Vera’s book and sinking into the depths of the abyss

and like, i guess they’re not so incompatible you couldn’t combine this all together into one mega‍-​lair for the whole system, with a little compromise

not sure if that’s a complete answer to the question but it is past 2 am over here

irl we’re pretty notorious as “the neutral one” for whom expressing preferences or making any decision at all is like pulling teeth

kinda shook by the sudden thought that this isnt really a character trait this might just be masking plurality in such a way that any honest answer as to what we want is a nonstarter, requiring grappling with a whole dimension of identity i keep pretty close to my chest

a simple answer would be wrong but i dont want make things complicated for people by giving the right answer

them: “hey bro do you want anything from the store”

me, mindful of five different and conflicting set of desires and priorities: “um. idk im cool with whatever. shrug”

“why are you obsessed with juzi” because it’s two girls who desperately need love and wouldn’t be caught dead admitting it. because they’re literally me. i’m a weird edgy loner whose next project is gonna Show Them All For Sure and i’m a contemptuous workholic unable to relate to people outside of a self‍-​destructively rigid script. there just isn’t a relationship dynamic that makes more sense to me than this. and because murder is hot

• for some reason like three of my juzi fics have turned into vents about past relationship problems
• not sure what’s up with that

about a day of toil, my site now has the technological sophistication of a blog from 1999*

which is to say i finally added RSS (technically, atom) feeds and an index of recent posts.

*actually not even, because it doesnt have an archive unless you count the sitemap, but

• i also can’t be assed to add generated archives to the essay or story or black nerve pages
• one day i promise

what if the radiance x spins wheel of ships herrah the beast

• i think they’d be beautiful together ngl

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpR64j8qskM

these guys broke up and reformed as The Otolith, and their new album is pretty good (lowkey one song on there is a touchpoint for the new HT chapter). but i’ve been spinning Folium Limina so much i’ve let myself forget how unhinged SubRosa could get

this one is for the mentally unwell girlies.

if the back to back one‍-​two punch of “Despair is a Siren” and “Black Majesty” doesn’t fuck you up, what are doing on my blog

video game bosses that are just two guys are the backbone of our economy

hate being a creature of flesh except whenever people go on about how horrifying it is that actually makes me like it more. the freaky bits are the upside i think

• not sure what it is i actually dislike come to think of it

local fool had the hubris of opening up an art program

• these pixels beating her ass man :c

you know, when people imagine “what if a bunch of bugs acted like a person”, they usually go for some worm that walks type thing. a swarm that that clusters into a humanoid shape, perhaps under a cloak so they could pass as just some dude at a distance

but honestly i think i think something a lot more reasonable in practice would be something more like a mobile hive

let me explain:

the core mechanism would be pretty much like a bike, a pedal gear turning a sprocket to generate force that’s then used to drive some wheels. but instead of like, pedals, you’d have a hundreds of workers tugging on the ropes directly.

i imagine the way it’d work is you’ve have a bunch of tiny threads tied to the main chain/rope. there’s a fixed shaft that the workers can climb up, dragging their thread with them, tugging on the main chain as they climb upward, then riding it back to the bottom before the next cycle starts.

there’s gears in the main platform that convert their work into energy for the treads. the treads are usually these spike wheels which can roll over slightly uneven ground, but there’d be a carriage under the platform with various supplies, including replacement wheels that they can swap out to optimize for different terrain conditions.

(the reason there’s four wheels is that one can be lifted for that swapping without compromising tripod stability)

in more advanced bugbikes there might even be flat treads, with complicated gears and jointed legs that let the hive straight up walk. (or even climb!) but rolling around is simpler and more efficient.

there’s probably be more outlets for the mechanical energy of the pedals than just the legs. in the pic i drew a lil bucket that can raise and lower which would be a nice way to get water and other resources to the hive efficiently

but it would make sense for there to be a whole suite of mechanisms for manipulating the world. sticks for poking things (perhaps violently), grasper than can pick things up and move them around, and so on. i cant imagine quite what it’d look like atm. i feel like bugs would trick out their hives with all sorts of nifty automations

(i also gave them a bunch of telescopes, which seems like a logical way to compensate for the really shitty acuity of compond eyes.)

but yeah. imagine having a buddy who is just a bunch of bugs tinkering with gears and pulleys and dohickeys rolling around in their pedal‍-​operating bike tank. i think that’d be pretty cool

Tessa pointedly kept her gaze level so she wouldn’t ogle that gaping impalement wound

Having a normal one in today’s Tessaract chapter

the sixth time i disconnected and reconnected to wifi tumblr started working again

i am praying we never figure out what to call juzi. the current state of affairs where literally everyone comes up with their own name is the funniest outcome by far. let it never end

yall really took this to heart. just so we’re keeping score, i’ve seen

• brandedgun
• spaceink
• oilbites
• company‍-​issued punk
• businesscrows
• passion fruit soda
• brandedbats
• dangerbats
• purpleink
• CorporateCrow
• BusinessBites

honorary mention to the joke suggestions

• PTO
• jacuzzi
• sour grape
• unethical consumption
• HR Nightmare
• CorporateMechanic
• the insidious tendency of capitalism to subsume and incorporate its own critique, commodifying contradiction

don’t stop! make that line go up!

actually critical support to jangst bc i’m gambling on uzi catching the rebound

• dw about why we were rewatching ep5
• >:3

Anonymous asked:

You throw crumbs of Dollzi at the us but never have you satisfied the beast.

nah, Like Shadows Chasing the Balance is more than crumbs

plus Corrupt Combustion (and its precursor, Circuits Turn to Stone) are foundationally dollzi in both premise and conclusion. but that’s a bit more trust me bro‍ ‍‍—‍ though i think even if people could see where i was going with with that, it’d just hurt dollzi fans more

or maybe yall are freaks like juzi nation

• wont lie i’ve been rotating some dollzi smut
• since it’d take less setup to explore those ideas than doing it with juzi
• nothing to show for it though

shift+enter lets you insert line breaks mid paragraph

this is dangerous knowledge to have because ctrl+enter will send the post early without any dialogue for confirmation

• i have accidentally send a draft post prematurely twice now
• sorry to watching their dashboard like a hawk lol

genuinely what is it about V that gets the waterworks on a hair trigger

i swear i dont even like the bitch

• reading the V chapters of Retrospect when they’re finished is probably gonna destroy me

the day i go from toxic yuri sowing to toxic yuri reaping is gonna change me

• and you
• if you can read this you are at risk

in my ongoing quest to make give every species of bug its own weird little (eu)social system, today i realized traditional euvespid culture are simultaneously strictly monogamous and aroallo‍-​normative

one of my specific yet most frequent annoyance with mid video essays is when they taking the idea of decreasing attention spans, or that screens or social media is rotting our ability to focus, entirely for granted.

like we’re not even going to take a moment to substantiate any of this? no skepticism at all for one of the most popular narratives about technology?

• gellman amnesia moment i guess
• solid demonstrate of what rigor the field (doesn’t) have

i’m gonna be real, four spaces = code block is the dumbest part of markdown. pretty great except for that one thing. if i want a code block i’ll fence it off with the gravitas it deserves, none of this under the radar character counting shit

in my darkest moments this is the panel that keeps me going

• when nobody else got me cog mentality got me

fantasy knight who says “this trifling manure beeth middling orthodox” to mean “this shit is straight mid”

i can count to fifteen

HER

• i need her

im not sure why i hit post today honestly

https://archiveofourown.org/chapters/148139710

looking into some indieweb stuff and seeing a sphere that’s bunch of dudes operating under their real names. idk there is something indescribably off‍-​vibe about this. not my scene

clocking out a bit early after knocking out an oddly intense bit of the new HT chapter that had been looming in my mind for a week. started to get a bit proud of what i’m cooking up

for the rest of you, be advised: something malicious is brewing

fuck it im gonna populate the #dinner for two tag

• juziv
• when the toxic yuri goes multidimensional
• lowkey the only context in which i countenance vuzi

entitiy‍-​4 asked:

Honestly dinner for two is the funniest ship name. I don’t think Uzi could get any more flustered unless Doll was getting in on the action too, but I think that would probably end with her dying due to lack of oil.

the word “agnize” has the most 9/10 orthogaphy and definition hamstrung by the most ungodly 4/10 pronunciation there is. downright unusable in conventional meta.

who designed this? what’s their address? i just wanna send a letter

the nature of HT is that every 100k words J and Uzi will get thirty minutes alone, take it or leave it

morale is low and the diet of lentils and oatmeal aint cuttin it so i’m breaking out the 1 remaining hashbrown i was saving for a special occasion. i’m counting on you dude

they should invent a 16k word chapter that has natural stopping points

Hostile Takeover, chapter 16

https://archiveofourown.org/works/51409288/chapters/148563991

should probably have split this.

idk what to say, i still think this arc is kinda ass

watching people’s reactions to ep8 being the finale is wild as someone who

1. joined the fandom right before e6 dropped,
2. is too depressed to have a sense of hope or future,
3. or to invest in anything beyond arms length,
4. primarily engages in fanfic, and
5. writes so much fanfic that every episode is colored by a sense of deadline‍-​dread of how it’s going to reshape the fanfic landscape when i still have things to say in the current context

so it’s like.

1. i never engaged with murder drones as something with installments, a moving target as opposed to a single static text;
2. i’m incapable of really looking forward to anything (and consequently feel no disappointment when possibilities are denied);
3. murder drones never gave me more than entertainment and a sense of community (which no announcement could take away);
4. the show itself was already not the primarily thing keeping it relevant in my mind, anyway;
5. and the unfortunate fact is repeatedly pushing myself to get chapters out ahead of episodes, persistently worried about episodes invalidating or obviating old ideas‍ ‍‍—‍ despite ep7 (for me) demonstrating i personally had little to worry about‍ ‍‍—‍ means i’ve let it get to a point where even my feelings about the very prospect of more murder drones have become irrationally mixed

to me, all things have already ended, and any updates are no more than a fleeting interruption of that fact. i’m satisfied with what exists or not at all.

getting therapy not for any life improvement reasons but solely so that i can process my weird hangups about jessa and vuzi and nuzi and enjoy more gay robot art.

Hostile Takeover kinda fell off didnt it

to truly master juzi i think i need to become less normal about uzi

contemplating touching up Hostile Takeover chapters 3‍-​6 (3 in particular is by far the worst chapter atm). no full rewrites, but i might be able to put things on firmer foundations. in particular, i have an idea for significantly recontextualizing J & Uzi’s debugging thing.

not finished figuring it all out yet (and who knows how the new episode is gonna derail me >.>)

but here’s a treat: a whole new mini‍-​scene in between J flying back to the spire and waking up from Uzi’s headshot :3

3: [Error 36:48.58/Connection Lost]

to analyze murder drones episode 8 by the most objective standards

1. uzi didn’t even talk to her girlfriend j :/
2. the keybug lived

impossible to say if it’s good or not

my kneejerk reaction to the finale climax was ‘that looks cool, but it’s kind of underwhelming and underbaked. what does any of this mean in the end?’

but i decided to actually give it a moment of thought and no, the show actually does hangs together thematically and this is what it’s been building to all along

i did ramble on discord about this a bit. i take it anyone here is interested? be warned though, it’s not a very clever insight, just a basic bitch analysis

Thoughts on the Murder Drones Finale

palace‍-​of‍-​glass’s reply

• you really tightened this analysis
• great insight & a worthwhile addition
• thank u for reading and elaborating

btw my thematic analysis of murdrones has convinced me that juzicyn is the way. the potential is THERE. im not crazy i saw a vision

Anonymous asked:

So memes aside, whats you actual opinión on the MD finale?

Ps: im gonna asume that the whole “J was working with Cyn” twist is not gonna apear on hostile takeover

i guess i already explained a bit of this in my post analyzing the themes of the series, but after rewatching the episode i think my opinion has soared a bit higher.

i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again: i came expecting to have a good time, and i did. i don’t tee myself up for disappointment by expecting more than that

i could say what we’ve seen self‍-​evidently seen‍ ‍‍—‍ the visuals were gorgeous, the music slapped, the imagery was otherworldly, the poses and gags were so much fun, the sheer creative vision on display was, in a word, peak.

but i’d guess this question is really about the writing

if i read this conclusion in a fic, i might not find it that fulfilling. i certainly wouldn’t publish it myself without another drafting pass or two

but in a way, i find the lack of answers about the solver, cyn, or tessa to be a relief. it leaves so much room open for fanfic and closes off almost none of it. and i’ve spent far more time reading fanfic than watching the show, so the utilitarian calculus is clear

and when the thing practically ends on a highlight reel of fanfic prompts? yeah no, my looming uncertain fear going into this was how it’d impact the writing scene and i think the reasonable conclusion is that we have been fed

(it’s always the flawed shows that spawn the most productive fandoms, anyway)

but it’s clear that what all this is circling around is me outright saying i found the writing to not be up to par. but i dont want to say that, not least of all because i think the episode rocked, but because whatever sins i might tally on its back‍ ‍‍—‍ for all that we could do with more setup, more context, more closure…

…i dont think i can blame any of that on the episode itself, anymore than i might fault a glass of water in the desert for not being a gallon jug. maybe it’d be nice if murder drones had more conventional writing merits, but the thing you’re imagining isn’t “what if he wrote it better 5head”, it’s “what if we lived in a world where murder drones isn’t an indie animation with a limited budget”

…ok no, the thing i’m imagining is what if J and Uzi said anything to each other. ANYTHING

as for hostile takeover… :3

ok silliness aside, i’ve had detailed plans for a long time. my outlines are flexible but i’ve known how it ends for months‍ ‍‍—‍ so trust me, it hasn’t resembled canon in quite a while. we’re far from the beaten track

say what you will about how murder drones treated j in the finale, but i realized

if this how much the show cares, then why should i constrain myself to rigidly respecting her characterization every time i write her

maybe i can just do whatever i want

i could write soft j

Anonymous asked:

Considering that both Doll and Cyn seems to live on inside Uzi, how would that affect the toxic yuri levels?

being real, between the similarity between the three of them and the fact that uzi has so much love and support in her life, i think the toxins will be seriously denatured.

uzi’s getting what either of them needed emotionally, where the two of them were too caught up in their violent antisocial coping to try. this probably sounds funny coming from someone whose written so much angst and despair but i genuinely dont see things going sour from here.

if doll and cyn are entangled enough with uzi to share her experiences‍ ‍‍—‍ or better yet, uzi comes out to her friends who will absolutely accept her‍ ‍‍—‍ then it’s smooth sailing. i guess the only angle for angst is if you go really hard on uzi hiding what’s she become (but that borders on an idiot plot tbh), doll & cyn either desperately wanting to interact with others or hide away (or better yet, they each want different things).

also my honest hot take is i’ve never really been sold on uzi & doll having a deep relationship or any chemistry, and i think canon cyn reads pretty aro

no yuri imo but i think the potential for even more fucked up and fun qpr girls goes hard

Anonymous asked:

hi what is ur insight on j’s relationship with the solver

i guess i can say i don’t quite agree with all the people emphatically saying this is a terrible botching of J’s character or doesnt make sense or anything.

the idea that J cared deeply about Tessa is just a headcanon. a headcanon that adds depth, life, and relatability to her, yes, but fanfics (mine included) place such profound yet unjustified importance on her. don’t let it blind you to canon, where there’s no evidence they had anything more profound than an affable business relationship

go back and watch the scenes of Tessa and J, and it’s not even hard to read it counter to convention‍ ‍‍—‍ really, the sweet lilt in J’s tone at the beginning of e2 makes more sense as a purely ingratiating affection anyway, a friendly service mask. and notice how it immediately turns to tired disdain for Tessa bringing in another drone. that sense of tiredness carries through to her appearance in e5‍ ‍‍—‍ notice the narrowed eyes, the exasperated looks. J does emote concerns for Tessa, and of course she defends her from V

but the bottom line: if you walk in with the assumption that Tessa is just her boss, what do you have any trouble explaining? Tessa was a good boss, certainly better than her superiors or her replacement, but what i’m driving at here is that it’s entirely consistent if J’s positive disposition toward Tessa is a consequence of her loyalty to whoever’s employing her, not the other way around.

am i saying that this interpretation makes for a better character, or that i’ve changed my mind? no, i’m just raising the possibility. if we’re talking about the show, we’ve got to meet it on its own terms.

i think it’s possible and indeed likely that between the Gala and arriving on Copper‍-​9 the first (or second) time, J did mourn Tessa, agonized about what Cyn was demanding of her, spent every cycle of her processor turning over whether there was anything else she could do. but J’s never been someone who had much trouble falling in line‍ ‍‍—‍ even when it runs counter to Tessa’s interests.

(“Sorry, boss, corporate’s spoken.”‍ ‍‍—‍ i think if you wanted to bash J, you could go far in framing her as complicit in Tessa’s abuse. i imagine most people don’t stop to think about this moment, but taken seriously, analyzed uncharitably, and it says some dire things about J’s character)

at the end of the day, when it comes to J’s “decision” to side with the solver, i think all that needs to be said is what else could she have done.

Tessa is dead. what would sentimental loyalty to her corpse have gained? what could her defiance against the solver have ever accomplished? it had the admin access to move her like a puppet!

if you read them as caring about each other, i can’t imagine Tessa would have wanted her to throw it all anyway to rage against the dying light when she’s already beyond the event horizon of a goddamn black hole

and then, after coming to grips with what she has to do, after spending who knows how long doing Cyn’s dirty work across earth and the exoplanets, is she supposed to take one look at Uzi’s childish opposition and think her old team stands any chance against a world‍-​devouring robo‍-​demon?

my conclusion is that J played the hand that she was dealt, but the cards were marked.

i love my ideas my brain da real mvp

less is more, more is also more, but mid is less. few understand all of this.

every time i open my dashboard i embark on a grand trek to the last time i reblogged something. wish me luck

HT AU where Cyn is completely chill with Uzi coming back to life, no strings attached, so every week or so she shows back up in the manor‍-​dream‍-​sim‍-​thing with J’s latest enthusiasm fresh on her character model. V doesn’t even attack her anymore, just gives a feral scoff and hands over the reins to Cyn’s possession.

"Sigh. Dear J got carried away again?"

“No! …Yeah. Shut up. Just rez me already!”

i don’t ship cyn/uzi

oh, but i do see the vision. the biting, the tongues, the clawing ‍-​ so much tearing, twisting insides out. all the snark and the mutual, disaffected self‍-​awareness even as they keep going anyway. violent intimacy with a dash of obsession, or just fascination

but romance? no, what cyn wants from a relationship is far weirder. and honestly, i think she’d find the label quite boring ‍-​ annoying, even

• is this qpr

the closer i come to going wild with juzi the more the gods curse me with burnout and immobilizing depression. we truly live in a society

• “stop pushing yourself harder than you can sustain”
• who said that. show yourself

juzi crumbs in the oven

• maybe

Anonymous asked:

Just a crumb of juzi

if you cant afford therapy try getting a god run in binding of isaac. works for me

the brainworms are starving and cannibalizing each other now. torn between working any one of several murder drones projects or one of multiple original projects. this shit is agonizing man what the fuck do i do

the existence of praying mantis people is one of the things in black nerve where it’s really difficult to appreciate how weird it is

there are a lot of sapient bugs in the heartlands: two kinds of ant, a wasp, a bee, a termite (unfortunately extinct, RIP), an ambrosia beetle, a roach, a spider specially inspired and named after Anelosimus eximius (rather than the much more popular jumping spiders, who are simple pets in the heartlands), and of course a species of moth.

one of these things is not like the other. every single intelligent bug in the heartlands is based on a species that’s either eusocial, or notably social/gregarious (hissing roaches, social spiders, ambrosia beetles)

the exception is the moths, who are just silkmoths‍ ‍‍—‍ except it’s established that the reason moths are sapient at all is due a species‍-​wide curse[Moths, Gifts, Curses]

in other words, for every species in the heartlands, there’s a good explanation for why they they would evolve or otherwise be saddled with intelligence.

but mantes are solitary predators.

…the irony is, because every heartlands story is about mantids to the near‍-​exclusion of everything else, every reader understandably just ends up taking the intelligence of mantes as a part of the premise rather than something to be interrogated. alas.

sometimes one of your WIPs latches onto a song and it’s shit man, this whole album’s haunted. cant listen to any of it unless you want thoughts about it to sprout like mushrooms after the rain

it’s bug horror time

feels like it’s been a good minute since i cooked up some proper lore. today i tried to explain how the shadow clone bloodlimit clan works, but in classic moon‍-​aiming stars‍-​as‍-​consolation‍-​prize fashion, i realized i first needed to write a few thousands words explaining how the praying mantis people have innate psychic powers but lost them

A Mind Like a Massacre

twisalis walked so juzi could run

there’s actually a huge difference between a good fic and a mid fic with enough pieces to let you imagine a fic that would be great. few appreciate this

entitiy‍-​4 asked:

Here’s (maybe) a fun one for the ship game: J/doll

the funny thing about this one is that i actually have a the start of an plot outline for a jolly fic sitting in my tumblr drafts but i forgor

mainly ship it on account of the artists who draw cute pics of it, but it’s also pretty convenient that it’s very plausible for J and Doll to have room to have gotten along in the canon timeline. (my jolly plot, written before e7, mainly grappled with the angst of Doll catching feelings for J when J’s devoted to Tessa‍ ‍‍—‍ now, with the reveal that J knew Tessa was dead, it’s even more plausible!)

i think it’s funny to imagine J and Doll both seething over their respective defeats by Uzi, or that Doll’s Dollness might make J the impulsive, emotional one in their relationship.

hard to have an unpopular opinion when i’m not sure if there’s enough jolly shippers for there to be a popular opinion

entitiy‍-​4 asked:

Thoughts on Thad/N?

i respect the bromance. one of my unwritten juzi premises changes the way pilot plays out so that N raids Outpost‍-​3 with V‍ ‍‍—‍ and here, Thad’s the one who convinces N side with the works. i think he could do it. he’s got both determination and wants to have a good time and i think N would vibe with both

vision’s pretty foggy if i’m being honest because i feel like a chinese room whenever i’m writing or talking about N

entitiy‍-​4 asked:

Thoughts on Khan/Nori?

1. i ship it in the sense that i care about resembling canon. that one pair of pics by @confettiiz is the closest i’ve come to seeing a vision of the ship i care for.https://www.tumblr.com/confettiiz/756305215595102208
2. what i like about the ship is nori.
3. i might have unpopular opinions, but for me the essence of a hot take is having some insight or humor to offer. ‘im not a fan of popular thing’ is not worth the breath it takes

tired: finishing the current arc of HT so i can return to writing juzi
wired: rewriting old sections of HT to add more juzi retroactively

lord tell me i didnt spend this evening write a thousand and a half entirely unnecessary words of a new scene for old HT

• only tomorrow will tell
• but it’s not looking good chat

iveraines asked:

i am asking about your ocs give me a yap about one of your favorites >:3

you asked this in the middle of me trying to edit HT so i hope you know what you’ve done >.>

so um. my favorite is probably Mewla Asetari but i don’t think the world is ready for the Mewla yap yet

“squiggleyapper, tell me about your favorite oc”
“you couldn’t handle my favorite oc, mutual. my favorite oc is fit for book, let alone a blogpost. you better go to a yapper who cooks normaler characters”^note[Potion Seller]

taunting aside, the problem with mewla is that she’s such a damn complex girlboss queenfailure. to understand her, you need to know about the noble clan of asetari (importantly, her mother uvema, and to understand her you need to cover the second grand trial at least) as well as how their bloodline abilities works (which has at least three separate mechanics), and you need to understand the deal with the unbrood black ops, and as well as the context of the third grand trial

and even that’s skipping over all the background needed to understand black nerve in the first place, which at this point is an intimidatingly complex setting to get into. and if you think any of that sounds interesting, i haven’t even mentioned how her husband was a failed prophet or how she split in two then repeatedly cheated death to master the impossible art of intangibility, or the mundane stuff like her anti‍-​fascist terrorism arc

…honestly, maybe it’s me who’s not ready to write about mewla :s

instead, i think i’ll try someone simpler first. (this is not me tempting fate, do not curl O monkey’s paw). Vexed Nobility and Salvation by Fire

gimme the storytelling mistakes TO SEEK LIKE A MOTH TO A FLAME when writing

oatsugardonut asked:

I have a question, how do you structure your stories? like Hostile Takeover for example. What is your technique on plotting?

entitiy‍-​4 asked:

I do wanna ask: thoughts on eldritchterrors (j x Cyn)?

i dont vibe with it at all

admittedly these days i’m pretty grouchy about any other ship that involves j and uzi, but i find in my head, j and cyn have no chemistry. you can contrast this with cynzi, or of course juzi, and the difference is while both of those ships can be toxic, they’re toxic within overlapping value systems‍ ‍‍—‍ there’s a potential for rivalry, respect, begruding appreciation.

in either of those other ships, the two of them are similar enough to get under each other’s skin. an uncanny valley of just different enough that they can’t stand it. but with j and cyn, they’re different flat out. they don’t challenge each other’s value systems; they fit right in as the very thing the other despises and strives not to be

as per my previous advocacy of juzicyn, this does suggest that uzi could be the glue that makes makes the relationship work. not just because they’d be forced into proximity, but because if they share an fascination with uzi, then they finally share something and now chemistry is on the table

but actually, i lied. i can see an angle for chemistry between them even without bringing uzi into the question‍ ‍‍—‍ there was a j/cyn oneshot i liked that proposed that the two of them could bond over a shared love of art.

as for unpopular opinions, this time i think i actually have one and it’s definitely not going over well with my followers

cynessa/j is the worst of j/cyn and jessa combined. all of the lack of chemistry of j/cyn, all of the power dynamics and relationship imbalance of jessa (but unambiguously bad, now!). the only advantage it has over j/cyn is there’s actual reason for it to happen and the advantage it has over jessa is that it involves an interesting character

the fixation so many people have with cynessa angst is something i do not get, and it’s the first time i’ve ever understood the impulse other people have to tell people to stop having fun?

Anonymous asked:

What is your read on what the Solver is and to what extent it and Cyn are separate identities? I’ve found that this is something people tend to have strong opinions about.

i think it’s a bit silly to have strong opinions about something with no more than glancing implication one way or the other in canon.

the text on Cyn’s screen at the beginning of episode 5 strongly hints at her making a deal with something to gain her powers. i think it’s simple extrapolation that solver powers have a source‍ ‍‍—‍ metaphysical, alien, a rogue superintelligence, universe sim console commands‍ ‍‍—‍ and it grants powers for a reason. likely resource collection, expansion and assimilation.

i dont think there’s a compelling reason to assume more than that.

i think you can tell an interesting story where Cyn is a manipulator who was putting on an act from the beginning until she was in a position to discard the mask (if you’ve seen my analysis of the series, i think this is the most thematically consonant reading)

i think you can tell an interesting story where Cyn is locked away and forced to watch as her body is used to commit atrocities. i’ve seen one reading where Cyn cedes control to the solver when she talks back to Lousia; everything before that was Cyn, everything after Solver. i’ve seen one fic where there’s an intermediate identity, the original Cyn locked away and forced to watch herself be controlled by someone crueler, and this is still separate from the inhumanity of the undiluted Solver

something i don’t think i’ve seen enough people discuss is how material collection (see: Eldritch J) and possession (Nori, Uzi) fits into this picture. which one are they? treating “one Cyn or Cyn+Solver” as a dichotomy is a lack of imagination. there’s enough dots here that you can draw any number of pictures between them

in short, the canonical answer is: it doesn’t matter, and “Cyn’s all there is” is the simple application of Occam’s Razor. the fanfic answer is: whatever makes for a more interesting story. what answer i go for depends on what the plot demands

ok man the HT rework is turning into a whole Thing

i might need someone to tell me if i’m getting lost in the sauce

everyone always praises that one mutual that gives you a dozen likes and reblogs whenever they wake up, but unsung is the mutual who mostly watches quietly and only ever interacts once every few days, if that

like hell yeah i got the legendary drop

not me about to write uzi making j swoon with khan‍-​tier rizz

hit her with the “shall i compare thee to a rocket equation” pick up

send the assassins after me i’ve been goofing off on discord instead of doing the last proofreading pass on the oneshot

it’s gonna feel really weird if post late at night (and i’m lowkey worried less ao3 people will see it at this hour), but i also wanna share this already lol

also when i took a break for fresh air after finishing the draft, i was blasted with random inspiration for a pre‍-​cabin fever labs fic. so if anyone wants to hear about that i have a pitch ready to go

Witchhunter, Heretic, Holy Reckoner!

entitiy‍-​4 asked:

You know I just realized Tines of the Devil’s Fork and The Headhunter and Her Stubborn Game make a lot of sense (or at least don’t actively conflict) in the same continuity. Was this planned? Or just a happy accident? Avatar

the resonance did occur to me as i wrote Headhunter. main reason i didn’t make the connection explicit is, well, it feels a bit tonally dubious to put stark serious prose poetry in direct continuity with pure indulgent lezzing out.

i also think if i was going to confirm the connection, it feels like a missed opportunity not to allude to any of the electromagnetic horror that was the whole undercurrent of Tines

now, it probably won’t shock you to learn that when i started drafting Tines, i was in fact setting up a confrontation with J; the pacing just didnt work out and i had to adapt

gratifying to know that someone caught that tho <3

i woke up feeling pretty down today, but had the inexplicable urge to put on my (technically unreleased) electronic album to listen to

and it filled me with determination? the sheer feeling of “wait a minute… i’m awesome actually” gave me the motivation to do something i’d be putting off and procrastinating for one month shy of a year now

so yeah. my fourth album is finally officially available on my bandcamp!

https://inneraporia.bandcamp.com/album/prefigurations

please listen to it. if you don’t have the time to sit down with an hour long album, here are some highlight tracks:

1. A Well‍-​Kept Garden
2. Sublime Pixelated Apparition
3. The Myth of New Beginnings
4. Scholars of Unknown Slumber

tumblr reblogging really has a secret of the stairway ass effect where you dont figure out what to tag a reblog until after you hit send

watching a video about ferrofluids and by god that one pydrasplatling image has ruined me. do they still have free covid tests

• if i’m being real i didnt get it at first
• thought it was just random technobabble
• but now that i’m reminded what ferrofluids look like
• oh i see the vision
• >.<

pydrasplatling asked:

I would kill for you to write something about Alice /nf

She just fascinates me and I’m so fucking sad she was introduced just for her to go splat Avatar

idk if you’ve seen the pitch i wrote for a Nori vs Alice centric fic a few days ago. i don’t want to give people the impression that i’m going to write that fic, but i figure it may be of interest as a look as to how i might approach something close.

problem with writing alice is she only shows up in parts of the world and timeline that are far from what i have experience writing, so the conceptual work it would take to execute cabin fever labs to my standards is pretty disqualifying unfortunately

and that’s on top of the thinking required to get a handle on her and the characters around her. it’d be good practice, so i do have an intellectual interest in giving it a shot, but it’s tough competition in my head these days

actually wait, i’m wrong‍ ‍‍—‍ alice makes several appearances in corrupt combustion already and plays a pivotal role there. so i guess if more alice writing is going to happen, it’s going to happen there

• she also technically gets a few lines in like shadows chasing the balance
• bit of an L tho tbh because she really deserves more of a spotlight there

entitiy‍-​4 replied:

perfect vessel nori???

oh i guess i never did talk about These Dying Star‍-​Lit Streets in public did i?

it’s another fic idea that only exists in pitch form now, one of the things i was mildly obsessed with back when episode eight just dropped

pitch is a bit longer now, though

These Dying Star-Lit Streets

that’s the background setup but none of that helps you understand the perfect vessel comment. that’s something that occurred to me during a discord convo. i’ll quote it under the cut

…ok so like
the whole thematic point of These Dying Star‍-​Lit Streets is that there’s no villain or great evil making the world suck
but i just got hit with the image of Nori consuming Cyn’s core when she defeats her
and just taking her place as the host of the solver
on some hollow knight type shit
chained up beneath outpost‍-​3 or back in cabin fever or something

hm, one way to have an eaten cake is to put emphasis on that last bit
hollow knight type shit‍ ‍‍—‍ nori isn’t the mastermind orchestrating anything, she’s keeping things contained as best she can
still leaks through and she’s faltering, but the bad stuff that comes arises not from any intent, but the lack of it

actually omg
i might genuinely have to go through with this angle
bc one of the biggest open questions is “how tf did uzi slip through the cracks and become an orphan in this au? does no one know who her parents are?”
but what if that was intentional‍ ‍‍—‍ specifically because if uzi was known to be nori’s daughter, she would have been expected and groomed to sacrifice herself just like her mother as soon as nori failed and they needed a new containing vessel
so whoever did this for uzi wanted her to have a life of her own, even if it kinda sucked
question is who. immediate thought is nori herself, but a more interesting option is someone (like yeva) doing this in spite of nori being in favor or ambivalent with what uzi’d be expected to become
(maybe nori thought it was ridiculous to think she’d ever fail or need backup)

…weird thought though
what if yeva did this‍ ‍‍—‍ and the C9PD figured it out and hunted her down to interrogate her on the whereabouts of the savior’s daughter
but even with a knife to her throat, yeva remains steadfast
and this is how V ends up killing doll’s parents

when someone twenty years ago says “i hate my wife”, it’s cringe boomer humor, but when some chick says it these days it’s toxic yuri and cool? okay…

J has ruined me. Any time I read about a female character as wearing business suits or business casual I’m like 👀 even when I didn’t like her before

A powerful weapon against our class consciousness…

• yes this is about the new chapter of claw

kneels in meditation for one hour before opening eyes of secular light

Taylor Hebert/Sophia Hess has the juzi nature

• if you even care

There’s something ephemeral and magical about songs that don’t make sense. Evocative, indecipherable lyrics, a new dance of ambiguity every time to listen. Lady Mondegreen…

Which makes it so paralyzingly disappointing to learn what the song is actually about, because the correct interpretation has a gravity to it. even reading the lyrics unweaves the illusion, because as soon as your brain is primed you can never fail to parse the sound again.

It’s akin to spoilers if even watching a movie didn’t spoil you.

I’m not a TADC fan I’m just saying Zooble x Gangle is kinda on something

• imagine if they were in a better show

chat forgive me but i am opening a new text document

why does the wikipedia article for spitting cobras have a video essayist ass cadence in how it starts talking about the benefits of that behavior

Benefits [edit]
There are many reasons why an organism undergoes evolution

if you care about me youll send me posts of dragons and kobolds

what is it about naps that makes them so much more appealing than going to sleep? i suppose a night’s sleep is routine, obligatory, but a nap is succumbing, indulging to your body’s demands in spite of yourself‍ ‍‍—‍ a lurid thrill. of all the bodily functions, naptime is truly the bodice ripper

weird thing about the weevils of ambrosia is that they have every trapping of an mysterious and wise elder race that had profound magic that begot wonder and foolish atrocity only to suffer a terrible if ironic downfall long before the events of the main story’s timeline

as far as the narrative is concerned, they had their climax and denouement. they tried to build the world‍-​tree and watched it be cut down by the kingslash. even if that wasn’t the end of it, centuries later the third dominion explicitly tried to exterminate them all

dead species aren’t out of character for the setting‍ ‍‍—‍ black nerve’s got plenty who aren’t around anymore. the termites, the snow scorpions, the dragonbats

and yet, the weevils are still there? they don’t even do anything anymore but frolic in their rainforest quarantine. there is seemingly no narrative purpose to this loose end, aside from dabbing on the extinction of their erstwhile oppressors (packwatch for every termite queen?)

it raises so many questions tbh but i guess weevils stay silly

an increasing number of gay thoughts about zenin maki…

for a while now, i’ve observed that there’s a funny bell curve to my social media activity. if i feel like shit, i’m not very active, i’m just lying around useless. if i feel great, then i’m busy doing stuff. i give my middest days to my strongest mutuals

anyway what’s funny is that these usually aren’t back to back, but yesterday was awful and today kinda banged. so yeah. that’s it that’s the blogpost

• what i’m saying is that the secret mission to retroactively murder hostile takeover’s pacing is proceeding apace

i’m almost done with the HT retcons and tweaks. technically, i’ve only reread half of the fic, but it’s the half where most of the changes i wanted to make were located, and i dont know if i will comb over the rest and if i’ll even make changes significant enough to keep anyone in the loop

but i’m posting what i’ve got early because god damn i need someone to see what i’ve been working on or i’ll go mad. i think i really got lost in the sauce this time yall

did a word count and i think HT has become 10k words fatter from this edit pass already, somehow???

Recent Revisions

i think some of the changes are cool but lowkey i think i’m murdering the pacing and muddling the structure

can anyone hear me. am i making sense

thunder has the whole sky in a rumble‍-​blanket rn. it’s vast and i think it’s friendly

i get comments from people claiming i’ve converting them to shipping juzi, but only a few people who’ve proven that by brainrotting about juzi with me. yall are the real ones

as fun as it is to write juzi, it hits different from reading it, so unlike a lot of my readers, i’m a lot less familiar with what it’s like to read juzi. enough that it always catches me off guard to go “oh wait. i do want to read juzi. that is a thing that i enjoy, i forgot”

sometimes i get those glimpses that make me understand why some of my fans are so rabid…

• maybe it’s arrogant
• but sometimes it feels like i’m harvesting juzi crop after a year working the fields

i guess this isn’t more than a teaser, but a conversation on discord the other day made me realize i never shared the planned arc list for corrupt combustion‍ ‍‍—‍ i never even saved it! so i had to remember/regenerate it

but the new plan divides into something like five or six parts

0. Corrupt Combustion Zero (Flash Memory)

1. CC1: Compression & Extraction

   1. The Fearsome Rootkit Incident
   2. Warpath to the Corpse Spire
   3. Introject Prisoner and Renegade Double

2. CC2: Deadlocked & Thrashing

   1. The Advanced Placement Exams
   2. Blackhat Suppression Mission
   3. The Uzi Retrieval Arc

3. CC3: CVE 3071‍-​0606 (“Citadel”)

   1. The Nameless and the Dead
   2. False Power, False Demise
   3. The Citadel Incident

4. CC4: Hell’s Sorting Algorithm

   1. Poisoned Chalice, Parched Throat
   2. A Reckoning Withheld
   3. Dead Store Read

5. CC5: Exit Code Zero

   1. Nightshade and Hidden Inventory
   2. Decisive Battle in the Uninhabited, Zombie‍-​Infested Ruins of Citadel‍-​3
   3. The Remote Host Protocol

was searching a general tag on ao3 and got jumpscared by my own fic >.>

anyway this is how i discovered that HT now has 700 kudos

how’d that happen

scrolling your dash till you reach yesterday’s posts is akin to reaching bonfire

• bonfires are the 2020s version of “fills you with determintion”

last night, or maybe it was when i woke up early this morning, i had a good idea for a post

where the hell did it go

an opaque heart breaks invisibly

should i post that juzi one shot to ao3. feels like it’s not really up to par but idk. maybe some day i’ll polish it somehow

• maybe i could make a oneshot compilation fic
• in case i ever end up writing others

i bring a sort of i’m worthless and unloved vibe to the group chat that the people who care about me dont really like

you ever watch normal people converse in ways you could never and you’re just like damn i wasn’t cut out to exist was i

• they’re autistic too so it’s not even that
• i’m just bad at the whole
• everything

i wonder how many people have browsed my site long enough to notice i have a discord server

• used to be more obvious i guess

yeah sure stepping on a lego sucks

moth@lamplight:serpentsquiggles$ grep 'chapter.html' deps.mk | wc -l
134

but can you comprehend the subtle vexation of discovering a minor oversight in a template that a hundred pages depend on, so patching it means spending minutes watching half the site recompile

The Woes of Writing Markdown

it’s been a while and i’m rereading Like Shadows Chasing the Balance and god damn, why did Serial Designation D go so hard in every single line

• was rereading it to take inspiration from one very specific scene
• i always thought LSCB was underbaked and kinda mid
• but starting to think i mightve cooked with it

actually instead of juziv it’d be kinda funny to call it juvi

chat i’m in the kitchen do yall want anything