Ceylon & Cyanide

Murphy. demiace. *fingerguns* Talk to me about my dogs!!

[ilynpilled]

[mayasaura]

Three has such a profoundly different experience from Murderbot of... well, most things, but most especially of other secunits.

Murderbot spent years—as long as it can remember—terrified of other secunits, knowing they would immediately kill it (or get it killed) if they knew what it was. Three never experienced anything like that. It even had friends, sort of. It couldn't speak freely to them, but it cared what happened to its squad. As soon as it loses them, it's treated like a person for the first time by a killware virus with a secunit kernal, who inspires it to choose autonomy by telling it a story about... a secunit. The first client it ever chose for itself after being freed was a secunit. (The same secunit.)

[mayasaura]

What I'm saying is Three has loved other secunits, been inspired by another secunit, first defined itself by choosing to rescue another secunit.

If anyone is going to lead the Secunit rebellion, it's Three.

[gumi-megpoidd]

"theyre giving he man pronouns" is one of the funniest things ive heard recently. i cant stop thinking about it. he man. the man with a pronoun in his name. he. theyre giving he man pronouns. incredible

[romcommunist]

the name "theresa" is so funny like. theres a what

[fried-berries]

[dent-de-l1on]

de naam 'eris' is zo grappig. er is wat?

[shieldfoss]

Navnet "erik" er så spøgst. Han er ik hvad?

[a-book-of-creatures]

الإسم فيفي مهضوم كتير. في في شو؟

[echey]

Göran är också kul. Gör han vadå?

[lesbiankiliel]

tuomas tapani karhu on hassu nimi. tuomasta pani siis mikä?

[shoujo-wizard]

Hey what happened to tht tower yall were building?

[luulapants]

The thing about sewing machines is that while the machine is working properly, it's way faster and easier than hand sewing but the second it runs into a mechanical problem, you could have hand sewn the whole thing in the time it took you to fix it with none of the aggravation

[deathcatcher]

"I would live for you" hits a lot harder than "I would die for you" imo. you're so important to me that I would pick myself up out of my grave for you. you give me a kind of hope that I thought I couldn't feel anymore. a future with you in it is a future I want to be there for. dying for you is easy, living for you is making the choice every day to get up and keep going

[jodiefosterwallace]

do you believe you are fundamentally evil in some way

yes

no and i never have

no but i used to

sometimes

nuance

Voting ended onFeb 1

[apricops]

The worst part about writing fantasy is being keenly aware that you’re writing fantasy, which means that you always have to straddle a thin three-way line between anachronism, cliche, and clunk.

Take money, for example. You can’t just have people in a fictional fantasy world walk around using Euros. You consider something generic, like ‘silver coins,’ but before you know it your world starts sounding like a shitty ren faire.

So you think about the world you’ve built and its needs and its history to come up with some unique and relevant terms. But if your terms are too unique and relevant you wind up writing “yarr, you’ll be ransomed for a hundred Trade League Silver Gyrblonks” and realize your worldbuilding is now getting in the way of basic readability.

[shieldfoss]

“They’re using golden valley coins!”

…didst thou mean dollars?

“Nevermind. They’re using some basic silver coin and then enough gold to be worth ten silver coins is called a ten-piece”

…Si, si, el Peso!

Trying over, they’re minted by the king so they’re called crown coins, or, these days, abbreviated, they’re just Crowns

Naturligvis, vi skifter Daler ud med Kroner!

—

The Lesson Of The Day is that all the names are already claimed by IRL, and all the almost-good-names that you could invent to get around that were used by some SFF author in the seventies e.g. I bet you can’t do Suns and Moons for your gold/silver coins, I bet some author did that already.

[garmbreak1]

My fantasy nation uses solid gold coins marked by the dental impressions of the reigning king, as a sign of their purity and authenticity.

They’re called Bitcoins.

[brazenautomaton]

oh you can go the fuck to jail that’s what you can do, where you’ll be shackled to a chain gang hitting the blockchain with a pickaxe

[annabelle--cane]

harrow the ninth asks the question "what is the first impulse of a genius necromancer when trying to retain any shred of coherency in a river bubble?" and gives the unambiguous answer "write fanfiction"

[annabelle--cane]

to be clear I am talking both about palamedes "the necromancer's marriage season... 2!!!!" sextus and harrowhark "role swap au" "ballroom au" "coffee shop au" nonagesimus. tamsyn muir said that in 100% of case studies the last frantic attempt of a prodigy to avoid entering a final psychological death spiral is writing tropey fanfic.

[annabelle--cane]

ortus I'm so sorry I forgot about you and your matthias nonius rpf. you may not be a necromancer but you were still fucking it up in a river bubble. unequivocally harrow the ninth boldly states that fanfiction saves lives.

[clubconsent]

The Locked Tomb says, Survival is an act of carving a narrative into your memories. You must hold the shell of your self-concept together against the raging chaos of the world and the predations of humans who have gone mad with hunger, and inside that shell you must tell a story, or you will go mad as well.

And then it says, To be clear, that story can be porn. Porn works great.

[achievementhaunterss]

whats my biggest fantasy? glad you asked. it's Tuesday, November 3rd 2026. the polls close and by 7:15pm it's over. Democrats now have the House 335-100 and have won all 35 seats in the Senate. at 8:30pm Donald Trump hold a press conference where at 8:32 pm he has a rage stroke and dies live on camera. JD Vance takes over the presidency for 2 months because on January 3rd 2027 the 120th Congress convenes, immediately elects Hakeem Jeffries as Speaker of the House and then impeaches Vance. The Senate convicts Vance and he is removed from office by Friday, January 8th. Jeffries takes over as president until January 20th, 2029 where President Kamala Harris is sworn in after a landslide victory winning 45 out of 50 states. Every other Republican in the Trump admin is arrested and sent to a life in prison for treason and fraud. JD Vance locks himself inside an empty Rooms to Go and sets it on fire, preferring to go out with the true love of his life - the Mipolomol Loveseat in Beige.

[andhumanslovedstories]

look I'm not gonna pretend I know anything about electronics, but sometimes a plug is so big it blocks another socket, and I'm always like "who the fuck do you think you are"

[frailgun]

*walks up to two gay dudes* so which one of you drives the warthog and which one of you is the gunner

[teathattast]

[whatcoloristhatcat]

seal point

[lichenes]

aye aye captain

[captainclickycat]

If a genie appeared and said you could magically change one thing about yourself, but only one, what sort of thing would you change? (Note: has to be something realistic, no fantasy stuff like being able to fly)

Something about your physical appearance; make yourself look different

Something about your physical body (e.g. get stronger, get rid of chronic pain)

Improve one of your senses (e.g. 20:20 vision)

A personality trait (e.g. become more patient or socially confident)

Learn or improve a new skill (e.g. be able to sing really well or know DIY)

Your tastes or preferences (e.g. make broccoli your favourite food)

How your brain works (e.g. improve your focus or ability to take in information)

Your gender

Something else

I'd turn down the offer because I'm perfect/I'm bald

Voting ended onJan 28

[byjove]

Cemeteries are not wastes of space. Historical cemeteries ESPECIALLY are not wastes of space. The fact developers are continuously foaming at the mouth to destroy them and put a strip mall up in their place should make you even more determined to help maintain them. In urban areas, they are a haven for wildlife. They are a green space. If you are too afraid of death to utilize them for that purpose, that is on you.

[skaraptor]

AO3 should have an Annotation Mode where you can click to view all of the author's commentary and thoughts about certain parts of the work. A little comment that says "I spent five hours researching vintage radio mechanics for this and didn't even end up using it" or "this is an ancient Hebrew literary technique!" would make my day

[pencildragons]

rotating john gaius in my head and how he is both a coloniser and a victim of colonisation and how, when presented with the opportunity to rebuild all of society from the ground-up, chose not to model it after his own oppressed culture, but instead after an aesthetic VERY CLOSELY ASSOCIATED WITH WHITE SUPREMACY (neoclassicism), and how his daughter is the only thing in his entire, expansive empire that he named in his language in ten thousand years, and how he perpetuates the cycle he himself was a victim of. tearing my hair out tazmuir WHEN I GET YOU

[oh-jod-dammit]

The duality of no-longer-a-man...

[happyk44]

[Text ID: 1. Tamsyn: In my mind the figure that cleaves the most towards the tragic is the Emperor, John, who is more or less given all the traits of a specific Greek tragic hero in the books - although one has to question whether or not John is actually making himself into this guy specfically; he knows the reference too. Is it a reference if the character is also self-aware of the reference??

2. Ciara: Even though most of the major actors are women, the God of the Locked Tomb universe is still represented by a man. How does this interplay of patriarchy and religion come into your writing/worldbuilding process? Is it more of a thought experiment for you, or is it representative of your personal relationship to faith?

Tamsyn: It's undeniable that the Locked Tomb books are going to include my personal relationship to faith: 'being a gay Catholic' is like the book's logline. That said, the God of the Locked Tomb IS a man; he IS the father and the Teacher; it's an inherently masc role played by someone who has an uneasy relationship himself to playing a Biblical patriarch. John falls back on hierarchies and roles because they're familiar even when he's struggling not to. Even he identifies himself as the God who became man and the man who became God. But the divine in the Locked Tomb is essentially feminine on multiple axes - I think Nona will illuminate that a little bit more.

I mean, before this all sounds too theological I fundamentally believe one of the internal engines of the whole series is what if the magical girl... was a guy in his thirties with some very weird friends? /end ID]