Mercury

they/them・20-something mainly critical role, deltarune & star trek TOS sometimes i write on ao3

[stardustcleaningguy]

WHAT

[aphrostiel]

we're on a voyage home 🌈

i love this movie with every inch of my soul

[aphrostiel]

some of my favorite star trek ships

[yuttikkele]

hey gamers I’ve started watching star trek does anyone else see the romantic tension between captain kirk and mr. spock

[captainofthetidesbreath]

[mercuswar]

AGREED with your post about bolaire. everything about that kind of rp style just reminds me of when youre talking to someone and you can just tell that instead of listening they are just repeating what they want to say next in their head. ever since the 'i kick' moment with lady cormoray i havent stopped noticing it.

It's such a shame to say, but yes absolutely, 100%

I really hope this attitude changes down the line but at this point I have to admit I'm pretty pessimistic about it. But who knows?

[mercuswar]

"I was the bastard son of a noble" who "grew up with fleas in [his] hair, sleeping on the floor with dogs". And "I was raised by the lord's kennel master."

King Augustus Valian has the same backstory as FitzChivalry Farseer.

[mercuswar]

Deeply negative vent about Bolaire in CR4 coming up so please skip this one if you happen upon this and don't want to read about that.

Rarely do I ever air out my complaints about things like this but for the life of me I Could Not get through a single moment of that conversation with Tsul'rekshi in the recent CR episode without wanting Bolaire to shuttttttt the fuck upppppp

It feels constant at this point. Him running his mouth while saying basically nothing of value and jumping into character moments that are not!!! about him!!!! at all!! This was only one of many examples I clocked, but why was it necessary for him to say Anything when Araq was reaching out for Tyranny. Shut up!! Shut the fuck up. Dear lord.

It's gotten to the point where it annoys me so much that I skip 90% of Bolaire's dialogue. I wish Taliesin would lock in for like two seconds and actually pay attention to what other people at the table are saying and doing, and realize when it's not his turn.

[sunny-sourzii]

They make me sick btw

[eisenkrahe]

Yes!

[x-v4mp3y3lin3r-x]

I view reading fantasy/sci-fi stuff as "this work of fiction is being translated into english so that I can understand it, meaning some phrases should not be taken literally" lord of the rings style, and then I meet people who nitpick every word or phrase that "shouldn't exist in this story" and I'm like wow you guys are truly miserable and unimaginative. and also you tend to assume that english words all popped up in the 19th century and you never bother to check the etymology of the words you're claiming "shouldn't exist in this universe"

like sorry but in an apocalyptic alternate-universe earth, the phrase "train of thought" is plausible even in a world without locomotives, because the word "train" comes from the 14th century, and it meant "to drag"

that's why we call dress trains "trains". because they drag. the word wasn't invented for locomotives.

y'all say shit so definitively like idk man I think it depends. the english language is OLD AS FUCK. a lot of words you believe are modern just aren't

[jennelikejennay]

I get so annoyed at the anachronism in fantasy conversation because shouldn't we begin with the assumption that the author is creating a coherent world that makes internal sense?

Of course it might be that the worldbuilding is simply sloppy but what if it's not? What if they know what they're talking about? If you assume you know better, you're going to miss out on the cleverness of what they're actually doing.

And then there's the fact that language is so deeply entwined with time and place that every word has a history. A good chunk of English comes from Latin: did this world have Romans? A lot comes from sailing vocabulary: do they have ships? How much do we have to pare down and strip our language before it's believable?

Once you do pare it down, once you've taken out all the place names and all the idioms and all the metaphors you don't realize are metaphors like sincere (means without wax) or candidate (means dressed in white) then what's left? A barren, sterile kind of language. It feels flat, especially the dialogue.

So you build it back up. Fresh metaphors, fresh idioms, new speech patterns that evoke a time and place that matches your vibes.

Now people are going to say it's unreadable. Sounds like Middle English, what are all these weird words, and so on. There's no winning.

So I say it's a fool's game. Your book is translated anyway. Pick the language that feels the most vibey for your setting and hope the reader will come along for the ride.

[jennelikejennay]

That said—I would pay cash money for a thesaurus which would let you set a date and not offer you any words that were not extant on that date.

Because I do like to write historical stuff in our world and if it's our world (or closely similar) there is simply no way I want to be using okay.

Meanwhile I wrote a series that takes place a thousand years or so in the future but there are regency vibes and I can't tell you how often beta readers twigged on words that sounded "too modern." Wtf do you mean too modern. They are literally on Mars! But the real reason was—the vibes were off. So I changed some of the words, because the plausibility had to come second to the vibes.

Never neglect the vibes, the vibes are everything.

[zmeess]

take me with you, or let me follow

tip jar

[1-jar-of-stars]

i fear tumblr has this issue where they think being queer or neurodivergent cancels out being racist

[shitpostingkats]

The way all of Qifrey's signature spells aren't just water, they're water formed into sculptures, flowers and creatures and creations. The way his most signature spell, the water dragon, is a spell he crafted for Beldaruit, a spell that does nothing at all. It just looks pretty. The way Agott is fascinated with the old creature glyphs, because they dont serve a purpose, they don't need to, they just make a spell more beautiful. How freeing she finds that idea, of not needing to be useful. Her sharing the glyphs with Coco and asking her to just make magic for herself. Olruggio burning himself out creating contraptions, and not finding drive again until he heads up on the roof and weaves creatures of light that do absolutely nothing.

"A gentler kind of magic" indeed. It's art. It's art all the way down.

[thehobbitwithstickyuppyhair]

*staggers out of the room covered in blood* is it thursday yet

[lowercass]

Probably a photo Hal would take and pin up on his fridge yk

[gros-chat-fait]

King Gus and the coolest wizard in Dol-Makjar.