Hello!

This is my personal blog. I also run ktlightplaque.tumblr.com, where I sell light up plaque thingies! This blog is so I can keep my "announcevertisements" of the stuff I sell and my random whatevers that show up here separate. I'll probably be posting a lot of my story ideas here. I'm great at coming up with ideas, but I don't quite have the stamina to follow through with them, so feel free to use my ideas if they inspire you! I'll also probably post images or gifs, too, and maybe some fractal art or other inventions if I make something cool.

[elemental-nova]

To friends

My previous post is a goodbye to Tumblr, but that’s not a goodbye to you all.  I’ll still be checking the messenger and inbox for a while, so if you want to get other contact info to stay in touch, send me a message.

[elemental-nova]

Taking another break...

Personal details time:

Tumblr is my only social media.  I’m not on facebook or twitter or anything like that.  I mean, I’ve got a few accounts here and there across the internet on forums and fanfiction sites and places that I’ve forgotten, so it’s not like I’ve got zero digital trace, but I always avoided getting my own social media thing because I feel obligated to make it worthy.  For me, personally, I would only feel comfortable if I was a meaningful contributor, finding a balance between posting everything about my life without being inane while also participating in dialogues in constructive ways.  And I knew that I would not be able to do that.  I’d either become obsessed and become an annoyance, or I’d just never do anything and let the account stagnate, both of which would stress me out and make me feel like I was failing at an important job even though no one asked me to do it.  (I’m not calling anyone out or trying to make any sort of social media good-conduct rules, I’m just explaining that I know how my mind reacts to things I do).

I joined Tumblr because that’s where fans of things were, and I was making things that I thought fans would like.  I briefly got some attention, received a polite Cease-and-Desist that was actually pretty nonthreatening and gave me some insight into how intellectual property works and what I was doing wrong (thanks for being friendly, RoosterTeeth!), and started to explore a bit.  I made this blog to exercise my fanboyness.

But the problem with following people is it becomes an echo chamber and my blog became increasingly just a small sample of the things I like, repeated over and over.  And I was not very effective at finding fellow fans of some of my other favorite things.  I tried contributing original content, but didn’t have anything to really get attention so no one noticed me.  The one thing I was okay at was making friends and chatting with people, though.  And that’s honestly why I returned to Tumblr after my mission instead of just letting it fade away.

But lately it’s just been too much.  I see discussions that I want to add my own opinions to, but am held back by the fear of being dragged through the mud by people who know that clever insults and rhetoric prove a point better than detailed analysis, and who can make my ten paragraphs of factual background look stupid with ten words of callout.  I see art that looks amazing that I want to reblog, but then get overwhelmed by how much there is and end up reflexively ignoring all of it.  I have things I want to say, but would take way too many words (like this) or just be too out-of-context for anyone to care about, and I also know that as much as I want to, I wouldn’t be able to commit to continuing the dialogue.  And then there’s the backlog.  I’m sure people would advise me “dude, you don’t need to read every post.  Just start from today.” but I seem to be mentally incapable of ignoring someone’s post.  After all, they had a reason for making it, and even if it is two weeks old, I don’t want to ignore it!  It’s part of them!  And then there’s also life stresses.  Things are busy.  I’ve already figured out for me that this is a tempting outlet but a very unhealthy one for me personally, and it also is another responsibility that I don’t need.  To state it simply: there’s so much that I want to do that I end up doing nothing and then feeling bad about being pointless.

Right now the only thing keeping me here is my friends for whom I only have Tumblr for communication.  But I need to leave.  I may return when I finally have time to realistically start making games and books and need social pressure to keep me on my deadlines, or if I learn different coping skills to make it easier to handle the culture of reblogging.  Or maybe if I become famous enough to gain instant followers enough to have my voice be heard, so my out-of-context reactions to books will lead to an increase in their sales instead of an increase in audience confusion.  But for now, I’m taking a long break.

Sorry, Tumblr.  It has been fun.  You’ve given me good things.  Friends, a way to briefly show off my wrist computer, a way to use anxiety itself to give me power over anxiety-induced panic attacks, insight into memes, insight into how groups of humans interact with entertainment media, and other good stuff.  But I’m leaving now.  It’s not you, it’s me.  I just can’t do this anymore.

[fjjdnxjskakxnxnsjeifuchhs-deact]

my favourite thing to do with my internet friends is pretend i don’t know what shit like “juice” is because it’s “just not a thing here”. so like, i love that kind of joke as much as the next girl, but what the fuck is a pep rally

[fjjdnxjskakxnxnsjeifuchhs-deact]

guys this wasn’t a girl who cried wolf bit of humour i legit haven’t the foggiest clue as to what a pep rally is

[bellaswansong]

its where everyone in the entire school goes into the gym and sits on the bleachers arranged by what grade youre in, and the band plays and the cheerleaders do a routine and then someone yells through a megaphone for ten minutes straight about how Our School Is The Best School And We Are Great

and then they pick the most Popular kids from each grade and do a Battle Of The Classes and basically see who can scream the loudest while the popular kids play tug of war or eat donuts off a string or something

[fjjdnxjskakxnxnsjeifuchhs-deact]

is american education just a cult that tens of millions of people are in on

[penningtoninkwell]

Oh, and here in Texas, they have them every day that there’s going to be a football game for the entire season, home or away, and attendance is mandatory.

If you don’t like your school, you’d better not say anything. Speak no words against the pep rallies. If you have headphones or try to lay down over a few seats, the teachers will spot you and come for you.

Some kids sneak out and don’t get caught, they’re the lucky ones. Teachers literally get posted to guard the exits. I got out twice through all of high school.

[elemental-nova]

by Randall Munroe https://xkcd.com/588/

[elemental-nova]

So I’m not too into the Five Nights At Freddy’s thing, but I know enough about the games, and I want to see one from the perspective of the animatronics.  You control the various animatronics and have to coordinate and micro-manage all of their moves simultaneously to scare the crap out of the night guard before killing him.  You’d have to carefully craft the jumpscares, manage the technical issues and other startling things, deal with the night guard’s own defense mechanisms, and all within the time limit of the night.  But you can’t just outright run straight for him from the get-go and kill him.  He needs to be terrified out of his mind first.

Otherwise he just pulls out a gun and shoots you.

Okay, confession, I don’t care about a scare game, what I really want is to see all the let’s players screaming “WHERE WAS THAT WHEN I WAS THE NIGHT GUARD!?!?!?!?!”

[brynwrites]

Conveying Worldbuilding Without Exposition!

(As requested by both an anon and @my-words-are-light​)

One of the hardest parts of writing speculative fiction is presenting readers with a world that’s interesting and different from our own in a way that’s both immersive and understandable at the same time. 

Thankfully, there are a few techniques that can help you present worldbuilding information to your readers in a natural way, as well as many tricks to tweaking the presentation until it’s just right.

Four basic techniques:

1. The ignorant character. 

By introducing a character who doesn’t know about the aspects of the world building you’re trying to convey, you can let the ignorant character voice the questions the reader naturally wants to ask. This is commonly seen in cases where the protagonist is brought into a new world, society, organization, etc, but non-PoV character put under the same circumstances can be equally useful.

It works best when the inclusion of the ignorant character feels natural. They must have a purpose in the story outside of simply asking questions.  

2. Conflicting opinions.

A fantastic way to convey detailed world building concepts is to have characters with conflicting viewpoints discuss or argue about them. Unless you’re working with a brainwashed society, every character should hold their own set of religious, political, and social beliefs. 

Examples of this kind of dialogue:

Keep reading

[elemental-nova]

Very wise words here.  Thanks!

[spillywolf-deactivated20190920]

Me: okay, we need to eat and take a shower

My brain: acknowledged

Me: …… so uh why aren’t we doing that

My brain: I acknowledged it what more can I do

[outofcontextdnd]

Is “demolitions” a charisma skill?

[elemental-nova]

Depends on who you’re charisma-fying.

[wellfuckthishellsiteiguess-deac]

i made this instead of writing

[elemental-nova]

Me: ahhh I have so many things to do in such a short time I'm so stressed--

Brain: Don't do it

Me: What?

Brain: The things. Don't do it. Pretend they don't exist until the last possible second.

Me:

Brain:

Me:

Brain:

Me: Anyways--

[elemental-nova]

I saw a post with a news headline and some charged commentary by the poster.  The headline was quite shocking, so I looked up the article itself.  Although the commenter’s sentiment was accurate (if a bit hyperbolic) the sheer amount of bias in the article was galling.  I created a massive post with multiple sources, clear summaries, and opposing viewpoints to salve my wounded sense of journalistic integrity and save the citizens of the internet from blindly accepting out-of-context spin-doctoring, but then just deleted it and figured, why bother?  A) I have no online influence, so all I’d do is make a couple enemies if anyone did notice and assumed that by going after the article I was going after the politics behind the commentary on the story.  B) It was waaaaay too long for anyone to bother reading it and I couldn’t condense it without losing facts.  C) Correcting people who are wrong on the internet is a dark path for me.  If I go after one, I will be compelled to go after them ALL.

[foxy-mulder-deactivated20190929]

some guy: uhhh there’s a leaf in your water

person who’s about to invent tea: oh haven’t you heard?

[foxy-mulder-deactivated20190929]

I’M SCREAMING I DID NOT KNOW THIS

[elemental-nova]

My first thought was “this would make a good crossover with the Isaac Newton story about the apple” and my second thought was “I have been reading too much fanfiction.”

[elemental-nova]

World idea

So I don’t really have a story for this world (well, not a well-crafted one yet), but I like the set-up, so...story world free to a good home, anyone!  (Just let me know what you end up doing with it)

Basically, scientists determine that the moon’s orbit is decaying.  (Either it was hit by a meteor or a nuclear moon mission went catastrophically wrong or astronomer’s just somehow hadn’t noticed it until now, take your pick, they’re all equally wrong and will be picked apart by pedantics, so just don’t explain it and let suspension of disbelief do its job.)  Y’know, have some scene where science guy is talking to the President/King/Minister/etc. and some staff and says the moon is falling and they’re like “how much time do we have?” and he pulls out a counting-down seven-segment-display clock and slams it on the table in reply and they’re like “oh, you even made a doomsday clock for this” and it’s showing something like 120:115:3:25:58.  “So...we’ve got one hundred and twenty years?” one asks.  “No,” he replies.  “That’s time until impact.  As the moon gets closer, it’s going to impact the oceans, which will in turn play havoc with the weather.  Land will be affected too, so earthquakes and volcanoes can be thrown into the mix with hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and all that.  Also, at some point the moon will be close enough that its gravity will start stripping away some of the atmosphere.  Don’t worry, we still do have time before the surface becomes uninhabitable.  But it’s more like eighty years instead of one hundred and twenty, with the last decade or two being pretty rough.”  So, faced with such a challenge, everyone in the world stops fighting and teams up to do science and engineer a solution.  And it ends up with humanity moving underground.  Basically, engineering techniques and materials are invented that allow chambers to be built as far down as Earth’s mantle where cities can be built and people can live.  And while they’ve braced for impact pretty well, there’s only just guesses as to whether or not the surface will ever be habitable again.  Potential stories would take place in this underground world a few years to a few months before moonfall.

Worldbuilding points:

>We’re in deep underground caverns.  Exhaust from burning fossil fuels is a bad idea.  Fortunately, the mantle of the Earth is really, really hot, so geothermal energy is easy to harvest.  The walls (and top and bottom) of the city chambers are built to take full advantage of this.  (That, and also keep the heat out of the cities themselves so people can live.  They’re multi-layered like that.  And very very very very thick.  Because pressure.)  So, everything is electric, but everything is physically connected to the grid in some way.

>>An alternative to a futuristic-looking everything-is-sleek-and-neon electricity-based world, they could use geothermal to steam-power everything in a steampunk world.  Either way works

>The cities are crowded, but do have their urban/suburban/rural groupings, so neighborhoods aren’t shoved together like stores are.  However, cities are only connected to other cities by tunnel/tube things, so to keep congestion down (and also maintenance needs), there’s a whole hassle of paperwork and visas and waiting to get permission to visit another town.

>We’re underground.  No satellites.  Wireless short-range communication is feasible, but long-range needs wires.  So, datapads or phones or signallers or whatever can exchange data if you’re both on the same monorail car, but if you want to call your friend in another part of town, it’s back to payphone technology.  (If you need to justify why this society is advanced enough to live in the freakin’ mantle of the Earth but not have wireless relays or anything, just say they were too busy putting ALL of their R&D into the living underground thing and so all other tech stagnated)

>Lots of different groups have different opinions about the events.  Some feverishly await the return to the surface for various reasons, such as “that is where humanity belongs” or “nature is better than having to scientifically irrigate our crops and get artificially generate vitamin-D sunlight”.  Some are set on remaining underground, preferring “I kinda like the isolation” or “hey, it got the whole world to work together and war is harder now”.  Both sides could have terrorist militant adherents, particularly in a story set very close to moonfall.  Another group could believe the whole thing is made up by the government and that secretly 90% of humanity is still on the surface in the normal cities and they were part of a 10% forcibly evacuated to these underground “test chambers” for experiments.  And of course a doomsday cult that sees the moonfall as the natural time for the extinction of man and sees the underground cities as attempts to thwart God/fate/nature/whatever and actively tries to sabotage the engineering of the cities.  (It’d make for a fun police procedural story following cops with engineers vs break-the-walls-and-let-in-the-lava vandals)

>While the city chambers can stand up the the pressure at that depth and also the earthquakes and shifting heat patterns, that’s only on a macro level.  Individual homes can be damaged by earthquakes, and the job of being an engineer to double-check and triple-check the integrity of the chamber walls and repair minor damage before it becomes major damage is one of the most in-demand jobs.  But overall, nothing’s too threatening.  Except for The Big One when the moon hits and we find out if the cities can stand up to that level of seismic impact.  Most people have emergency kits and rations, but that also means most people are targets for theft by those who want to have their emergency supplies and eat them too (by eating the ones of other people).

>The migration took place over a decade or two, not all at once.  By the time of any story, everyone should’ve been down there for a at least a few years, but while some people are still relatively new, others have been born underground and have never seen the sun.

>We’ve broken science enough, so nothing says the story can’t have zombies or monsters or other supernatural things caused/found by the new environment if you want to add them.  I’ve gotta admit, as ambivalent as I am about zombies in my own stories, the whole pretty-much-confined-to-the-city aspect would be good for a zombie outbreak, justified by “genetic engineering went wrong” or “turns out lack of sunlight makes people turn into zombies when they die” or “oh no underground zombie gas no one discovered when we were on the surface because it was so far underground leaked in!”

[elemental-nova]

Until I took a Japanese Literature class, all I knew about Hiraga Gennai was that he was famous for the elekiter and dabbled in lots of other sciences too, and that he was a character in Read or Die.

Now I know that he also wrote a famous short story about two people discussing the artistic and moral merit of a farting cover artist.

Way to go, crazy science man.  Way to go.

(He also wrote a hilarious story where the King of Hell wants to outlaw and punish homosexuality but then falls in love with this beautiful boy and wants to abdicate the throne of Hell for him but is talked into making crazy plans to kidnap him instead.)

[elemental-nova]

Imagine a fake ad blocker that doesn’t actually block ads but instead blocks the “Click here to skip this ad” button.

[pokemon-personalities]

she snooze

[floralfirewitch-blog]

I raise you a sleepy boi

[pokemon-personalities]

thank you so much….

[vulpinemage-deactivated20221220]

I also have a sleepy boi

[pokemon-personalities]

BLESSED

[logan-berrii]

I too have a sleepy boy

[pokemon-personalities]

soft…

[prismia]

me too!!

[pokemon-personalities]

;____;

[littlestwolf234]

My sleepy girl!

[pokemon-personalities]

look at her go…

[riinchuu]

i also have a soft,  sleepy boy

[pokemon-personalities]

c o z y

[megchan87]

I have a soft baby boi

[pokemon-personalities]

we’ve almost collected the entire family c’:

[lormaggot]

cold girl here!

[pokemon-personalities]

SLEEPY FAMILY COMPLETE!!!!

[thespectacularspider-girl]

This is so pure

[elemental-nova]

@penningtoninkwell

[elemental-nova]

Story Idea

I may have posted this one already, but I can’t remember and am too lazy to check my archive, so here it is possibly again.

So there are these two evil mad scientists who have a brilliant plan.  They make a superpower serum, designed to give the consumer flight, super strength, laser vision, etc., but also include a weakness to garnet (or talc or some other mineral that’s uncommon but not expensive or prohibitive), but instead of drinking it themselves, they spike someone else’s drink, planning on using the programmed weakness to garnet to be able to control and bully their subject into committing the crimes for them so they won’t get caught.

So they spike this kid’s drink, and he passes out, and when he wakes up there’s these two dudes in lab coats standing over him with gloating expressions who explain that he has superpowers now, but he’s going to listen to them and go rob a bank “because we have...this!” as one of them holds up a chunk of garnet.  Which the kid casually walks forward and grabs and crushes to powder with his superstrength.  Cue face-faulting on the part of the mad scientists.

See, turns out they’re not actually very good at what they do.  Yeah, they made him a super, but not how they wanted.  So the kid picks them up and intimidates them into helping him figure out what his powers are and how to use them to save the day.  And so the hapless mad scientists are forced to use their secret lair and lab equipment to run him through tests, support him in the field, make gadgets for him, etc.

For instance, they take him to a roof and explain “okay, so you should be able to fly just by jumping, so try jumping off this ledge.”  He wakes up in a hospital bed with them leaning over him.  “Okay, uhh, well, the good news is you have regeneration, and we hadn’t planned on that...”

Or he manages to shapeshift, but doesn’t know what he did to do it and how to turn back, and they have to help him figure it out.

Also, he can’t fly, so he needs them to make him a grappling hook.  They proudly deliver a gun-like weapon and explain that the top barrel is for the grappling hook, the bottom one is for bullets, and the three buttons on the side can change the bullet type from normal to freeze to shock.  And he throws it back at them and demands a plain, non-lethal grappling hook.  So a few days later they bring him a new one.  He fires it and it works, but then asks what the other button does as he pushes it.  It activates flamethrower mode and he nearly burns down the room.  “I said non-lethal!”  So he rejects the gun and a few days later they bring him another one.  It looks like a normal grappling hook, works like a normal grappling hook, everything is good.  So he congratulates them and goes to stow it in a utility belt.  At which point one of the scientists, caught up in his praise, adds that “it’s also poison-tipped!”  Cue rejection of gun.

Of course, the scientists end up helping him because SCIENCE and don’t try to trick or betray him.  But they still have their villain streaks, and are constantly begging him to commit crimes in exchange for their help.  He usually points out that he can just punch them through a wall instead.  So you’ve got the dynamic of two hyper-but-ineffectual mad scientists training a perpetually annoyed and flustered superhero, sometimes providing mission support as he attempts to battle a kaiju while stuck to it because he figured out how to stick to surfaces but not how to unstick, and sometimes running him through a torturous gauntlet of tests to see if he can turn into flames that he only survives because of regeneration and law of comedic injury.  All while begging him to maybe just steal a car for them because they’ve been on their best behavior and really helpful this time.

[elaho]

Metru Nui Patches

I’ve been looking forward to this project for a while now, and I’m really glad the timing lined up this year to finally do it. I was always kinda bummed that LEGO never came out with any kind of patches or buttons for Bionicle, especially since I think a lot of people would have liked to have them. 

So, I decided to make my own :)

The Metru Nui arc was always one of my favorites and I thought it would be nice to show “district pride” through something tangible, like patches. :D I’ve put them on Etsy if anyone else would like one; all the details can be found on the page here: https://www.etsy.com/ca/shop/TongassAndTaiga I’m thinking of making some more patches from the G1 series too, like the Nuva Symbols and the Ta-Koro Ensign Badge, but I think it will depend on how much spare time I have. Let me know if you have any thoughts or suggestions!