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@seventhconsumedsigil
"Fear not, fair maiden! I have come to- oh."
The prince, most of the way through hauling himself over the balcony, gazed in some peturbation at the grizzled man clearly just waking up from a nap in a comfy armchair placed just so to catch the afternoon sun. As his eye scanned the room he took in the battered suit of armour juryrigged onto a dressmaker's dummy in one corner, the extremely large sword propped up in another; they finally came to halt on the man again who, having apparently moved with cat-like stealth that someone his size should not have, was now in front of him and offering him a hand.
"I asked ChatGPT--" well I took a nap and asked the little snakes who live behind my mirror
I think that if a story ever pulls a line like "You could have destroyed your magic with a stunt like that!" or "Pushing ahead with your magic too quickly can have dangerous consequences!" then the story should be obligated at some point to show me these magically disabled people.
All stories should have more disabled people, honestly, because disability is a basic part of being alive! What am I supposed to think of any given fictional community if I never see any elderly people, any retired people, any injured people, or any disabled people?
But seriously, a lot more fantasy stories specifically could really stand to show people who have been burned by magic to various degrees and are now living with the consequences. I'm too used to the protagonists fainting and sleeping extreme recklessness off without issue.
One of the (many) cool things about Wizard of Earthsea is in like the first act of book 1, the MC shows off to his peers by doing super advanced ~dark magic~, it horrendously wounds him on a physical, spiritual, and magical level, and the rest of the book (and sequels tbh) revolve around living with the consequences of that event.
I'd also like to shoutout Millenial Mage, which shows us one of those magically disabled people before the insane stunts begin getting pulled, right in the first book. Master Himmal had the Great Idea of altering his keystone (the 3d gold spellform in your back that every mage needs to actively control the flow of magic) so that it would constantly tug his gate open a little wider, 24/7, increasing the amount of magic that flowed through and thus his power. This worked great, until his soul broke and now he's got to use a magical prosthetic to keep things under control enough to work magic or be around people.
Tala immediately asks if that idea could work if they were more careful about it, which more or less sums up early book Tala. She learned wisdom by process of elimination, she did.
Will give some more examples below the cut. Mild spoilers for later book details. Nothing serious, but it will spoil some worldbuilding surprises and I do really recommend it, even if it's sadly stubbed on Royalroad for Kindle Unlimited now.
"Let the past be not a burden to bear, but a key for the future"
“Let the past be not
a burden to bear, but a
key for the future”
Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.
in a medieval groupchat nobody would make fun of your typo they would just assume that its a new spelling youre going with and roll with it
#the fyrste roul of inglesh is too hauvve fonne and to thine owne sylf be truoel (via @grand-theft-carbohydrates)
i think y'all are missing a trick with Kathryn Janeway and Eleanor of Aquitaine given the Katharine Hepburn/Kate Mulgrew crossovers, but the request was for Janeway with a fuckoff big sword as an Angevin so here we go -- she got stuck in a holodeck program with the rest of the crew and she likes swinging a sword maybe a little too much 🤏
sorry I heard "suck her sword" and blacked out. what were we talking about?
sorry I heard “suck
her sword” and blacked out. what were
we talking about?
Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.
Hornet introduce them like that to see people reactions.
I saw a yt short voicing this art and I had to find the original.
I’m glad people on YouTube are giving credits!
You are welcome to check my hollow knight tag for more silly comics
You are welcome to
check my hollow knight tag for
more silly comics
Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.
Me for the last 15 years: Starting a timer when you have to wait for something or stand in line can be helpful, because no matter how impatient you feel you can check the timer and remind yourself it has not been several eternities and has in fact only been five minutes.
Me setting a timer when I got to bag claim just now: I'm so clever! I will now be reminded that it's only been five minutes and bag claim usually takes about twenty!
Me looking at the timer thoughtfully: ...another Very Neurotypical Moment With Sam, it appears.
FTR it was 17 minutes from "arriving at the bag claim" to claiming my bag, so right on time.
Someone tagged this post "#it’s all fun n games until baggage check takes over an hour" which is 100% legit; a common sentiment in notes is that sometimes you don't want to know how long something has taken. But that is one of the reasons I started doing the stopwatch thing in the first place!
On the one hand, timing something is about reminding myself "No, it's only been five minutes," but it is ALSO about knowing when something is taking way longer than it should.
If I'm put into an exam room in a doctor's office, I start a timer. Because I have been forgotten about in a doctor's office before, I get nervous that I'll just be sat in there forever, and the timer tells me "No, they haven't forgotten you, it's only been 10 minutes." But it also tells me if I have been there longer than appropriate (generally more than 40 minutes) so that I know when it's justifiable to flag down a nurse to find out what's going on.
At bag claim, because I know it usually takes about 20 minutes to get my bag, I don't get concerned until the timer passes the 20 minute mark without any bags appearing. At that point I know I need to take off my headphones and start paying attention -- looking at signage, maybe asking someone if I'm at the right carousel. Maybe don't worry yet, but start double-checking. Perhaps the delay is unavoidable and it'll just be an hour, but at least, having asked, I KNOW it'll be an hour, and the timer will tell me when the hour is past and I should maybe check in again.
Now, if the bags do start showing up before 20 minutes but my bag hasn't shown up by the 40 minute mark, I know that again it's time to put my head on a swivel, and at the 50 minute mark it's time to go speak to someone in the baggage claim office. This has more than once helped me locate my bag when it's accidentally been sent to the wrong part of the airport. There is no point at which, without the timer, I would go "man this is taking a long time" and then actually go ask, because I wouldn't actually know how long it had been.
The timer both prevents me from worrying before I need to and tells me when to start worrying -- essentially, because I'm both perpetually impatient and also infinitely patient, I've outsourced my patience to a stopwatch. And because I time a lot of things, I now know the average time a lot of things take, which helps me calibrate my concerns appropriately. Ten minutes is a long time to wait for a burger from McDonalds, but it's actually on the short end of the time it takes to get a burger from Shake Shack. It's not a long time to be on hold with the HR office of my old employer, but it's longer than I'd usually be on hold with my pharmacy. Et cetera.
I know I say this all the time but I still find it hilarious that I didn't know I had ADHD until I was forty years old.
just want to add that I've started timing myself doing everyday chores and tasks and having a more realistic, personalized idea of how long things take has helped a lot with my time blindness.
I only just started, and it's not yet habitual, so there's only a small bit of info, but it's already made it easier to avoid rushing or getting stuck in waiting mode because it takes out a lot of the guesswork.
And it lets me have grace for myself when something is really taking it out of me. I'm right, this *is* taking forever and it isn't usually this hard, so what's going on? Do I need to rest? Eat? Did I forget my meds? Am I overwhelmed? Etc.
I feel like a scientist gathering and applying data.
Showers on typical days only take "about ten minutes" (me, 2025), therefore, I CAN shower before my appointment that's two hours away.
Contrary to popular belief, doing a quick tidy takes "less than half an hour" (me, 2026) and will not take the better part of a day. I don't need to dread or put it off because I can start a 20min episode and I'll be done before the credits roll.
The proposed estimate of "10-30 miserable minutes in the cold when the warm blankets are right there" (time blindness and depression, 2024), is erroneous, and based on pre-medicated data. As tempting as it is to go straight back to bed after peeing, my research shows that brushing teeth, including "prep and cleanup," rarely takes more than four minutes and may even improve morale and momentum when getting up for the day.
This is awesome and hey guess what: you ARE a scientist gathering and applying data!
I'm super proud of you and everyone who is working to keep their lives together in the face of disability and the general horrors of the world right now. Keep up the great work! And if things slip a little that's ok too. None of us are perfect. Just keep taking notes...for SCIENCE!
hey dont cry Autism Creature speculative biology
The Starry-Eyed Poetess has become the Knight of the Order of the Golden Carapace #319
Congratulations! I'm going for Worm myself first, but honestly there's only so many brass lollipops I can bear to make. What does the current Stuvier grind look like?
so every tuesday at 11 AM UCT I run around and grab all the world quality updates for the bone market, khanate, and sous, and dump them into the official discord to save people the effort of trudging across the sea/up the roof/back to their lodgings to see what Bones are Hot this week. and my actual favorite part of doing this is seeing people's reactions to the news.
usually it's just like a few "huh, thanks" on most weeks, but every so often you get a lineup of world qualities that's So Profitable or So Rancid, and people react accordingly:
"the boot salesman is here? god finally I can get rid of all these femurs"
"ancient primates? why did it have to be primates? I can't use my ribcages for those!"
"holy shit, it's amalgamous spider week. it's FINALLY amalgamous spider week! time for me to drop everything and make so many roof popes!"
and as someone who hardly ever plays with bones, I can never quite tell which pronouncements will produce apathy, joy, or despair. I like that, honestly. it brings back some of the mystique of hearing people talk about such vaulted pastimes as "orphangrind" or "worm milking"
this week's Bone Commentary: "menacing amphibian week? too bad there aren't any menacing legs"
"I'm not desperate enough to make amphibian mammoths, and I think the most menace I could get on an amphibian without doing three tails on a prismatic frame nonsense would be 5 or 6"
"Amphibians can't take tails so you can't do better than 4 unless your ambition is Bag a Legend"
"you can add a tail and cut it (you shouldn't)"
Surprise! You’ve been Isekai’d into a D&D World… but it’s specifically a 3.5 Edition D&D world and due to a weird Glitch in the system you have been assigned not just a Base Class, but also one of that edition’s weird and wacky Prestige Class as well! Spin this wheel to see what you got!
(I added a short little summary for each Class explaining the basic gist of it. Although obviously you can also look them up to get more detailed info)
So…how are you feeling?
HELL YEAH THIS IS THE BEST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED TO ME
This class is perfect for me! (complimentary)
This is pretty cool!
Not bad but… could be better
Some parts of this sounds GREAT and some sound TERRIBLE
I’m pretty sure I’m gonna die but at least I’ll be cool as hell until then
Well, I’m gonna hate being this Class but at least I’m gonna survive
I feel utterly indifferent about my Class
This class is perfect for me… (derogatory)
This isn’t good for me, but… could be worse
Yeah, this sucks
OH MY GOD THIS IS HORRIBLE I AM GONNA BE MISERABLE AND THAN I’LL DIE
Read the girl frame rule book
Absolutely exceptionally normal about it
Will not stop thinking about it for at least, I would say… ever
okay so actually I need to rant about identities and tags because HOLY shit that’s some actually amazing narrative and philosophy forward game design. Like, the fact that as you choose to embrace tags over a long campaign your identity is slowly built off of how other characters see you?? I’ve never seen anything remotely like that in a ttrpg and it’s such a genuine breath of fresh air that reminds me why I love this medium
I am also very normal about it, and I'm already getting brainworms about how it's been playing out in my game.
What I like most is that it's integrated so cleanly as well, such that even "powergaming" (however you care to define that) nessesarily requires engaging with it thematically. Tags being pulled by other players provides you chances to embrace them (replacing Identities you will most likely lose even if your playbooks don't encourage treating them like an mtg mill deck), but also some very vital bonuses that get better if you're closer with the person pulling them.
This is all further encouraged by the fact that the usual PBTA thresholds have been raised ever so slightly, such that without Heat and Tags being pulled you've got a pretty rough statistical reality in front of you. "Without the support of your fellows to help patch you up and push you forward, you will consistently fail" is a rather nice thematic statement to communicate purely through the core mechanics! It also gives the inevitable infighting caused by the other core mechanics even more weight, as scrambling for status and inflicting Tags on each other begins to shape the player dynamics further. It's delicious drama fuel, which is exactly what I want out of a game like this!
It's always funny to me when people give their blorbos all the same "correct" far left political views which while I understand the urge to make these blorbos as progressive as possible as political commentary, there are some characters that I feel in my bones are 100% centrist, pro-ai, pro-capitalism or absolutely refuse to vote and its supported by the source material. As a narrative tool these features are still great for being political commentary, even if the character never changes.
Every single time someone makes Q question whether England should have a monarchy, which happens a rather baffling amount given that he works for the British government. (I still stand behind him being anti-crypto, though. You cannot convince me the head of MI6 cybersecurity would be chill with putting his life savings into Bitcoin.)
You can work for a government and have opinions about how it could be improved. How you express them might vary, but thinking the Windsors are a different entity from the crown/state isn’t that weird.
You're not wrong, but it's very weird to have him as both an MI6 operative and an anarchist at the same time, and I have 100% seen that.
There are a surprising amount of anti-monarchists in the civil service. It's way, way more common than non-Brits think, I suspect. Trouble is, civil service workers aren't permitted to have political opinions in public, lest they be misconstrued as the opinions of the civil service as a whole. (True fact: I have friends who cannot comment on the news on Facebook, or even loudly in a public place, or inform anyone of who they intend to vote for - but get them in private and they go on long rage filled rants about the idiocy they see every day.) While I don't know for sure, (as, alas, I never did get round to applying for their translation staff after university) I wouldn't be surprised if there was a similar, or more stringent, rule in place for MI5/6. So Q can believe any number of things on his own time, but not give any outward sign of it in public. The UK does not have free speech protections, remember.
Wait, back up. You all don't have WHAT?
The reason we put those rights in writing was because they were not established under the Common Law or any controlling written documents.
The UK also has a state religion.
I mean, I knew that was true back in Ye Olden Olde, but the UK has had so many reforms of how power and governance work that I was sure that must have been added at some point. They seriously never did??
The limited right to freedom of expression only came in 1998. And that, as far as I can tell, only happened because the European Convention of Human Rights made it mandatory.
Holy shit. I genuinely thought you guys had passed a law about that.
I'm sorry, I'm kind of gobsmacked. Like there's part of me that's just like "you're European, isn't freedom of expression just like...a given, in Europe?" I can't believe the UK never instituted it.
Look into our slander and libel laws, if you want a real horror moment. Or the case studies on the wiki page I linked, cause they are horrendous.
But yeah, it's why people peacefully protesting, holding signs saying 'abolish monarchy' at an event the king was at, shortly after his coronation a couple years ago, were arrested and charged.
(You didn't share a link love)
That's fucking wild. And actually explains....a lot. Like I remember a few years before QEII died reading an article about how the country would proceed when she did, and reading that BBC presenters literally kept a black jacket and tie laid away at work because when they got the news it'd be "quick, cut to commercial, go change," and thinking it was a bit odd but also that I could kind of understand, because if I was getting news like "there was just a massive gas explosion on the street housing the Smithsonian Institution" I would not want to receive it from a woman in a professional-but-cheeky bright pink dress, but like...holy fuck. You're literally not allowed to not be in mourning.
Ah shite, I meant to, hold on:
Enjoy! (Or don't. Recoil in horror.)
Okay, here's the bitch of the thing. So much of this sounds reasonable (yes, it is good to make the showing of snuff films illegal, yes, anti-hate-speech laws are a good thing) that I'm forced to assume British courts are deliberately misusing laws intended to prevent harm, or deliberately interpreting them with an overly-broad brush in order to further an agenda.
I will say I did some wiki-walking from this article and I see what you mean in some of the specific cases it led me to, and the state of libel laws is atrocious.
Absolutely hog-fucking-wild.
Oh yeah. If you want an example, The Private Eye is a generally very strong satirical newspaper that regularly does proper journalism along with dragging essentially anyone and anything that doesn't hide fast enough. You aren't even safe if you're minor, they'll come for local councillors in backwaters with just as much vigor as members of parliment. Ian Hislop, it's editor, is the single most sued man in English legal history, because they are fundamentally opposed to ever shutting the fuck up, even when prodding into the affairs (mostly metaphorical, probably literal at least a few times) of the most aggressively litigious sorts of people in the entire country.
Must be good job security for their legal team though, I will say. Only people in the whole country who've probably never worried about layoffs!
Just started my first game of Girl Frame yesterday, and I have to say it's going great! Our Handler decided to do the Prisoner's Dilemma as a trust exercise. Free communication and one (1) Permission slip up for grabs was all it took, we're all getting Punishments apart from the CONSUME pilot. I highly recommend it as an icebreaker to anyone reading!
On the wider story side, I'd just like to voice my love for how efficiently you used the background setting. We aren't allowed to read the Handler bit and so there's a pretty limited amount of information to be had, and yet it paints such a fascinating picture with that limited amount. I'm such a nerd, but I'm actually more hyped for the dynamics on a societal level that we'll get peeks at, even if they're Permission expensive or through the limited window of missions. The personal level is also fascinatingly warped, especially the Mockingbird's social issues. Having so much fun with that play, despite it pretty explicitly taking away from the assumed baseline of ability.
Thank you for your work, and I look forward to seeing more of it!
Steal your Handler's pdf and read that section without permission, I'm sure nothing will go wrong :D
Looks at encouragement to be bad
Looks at the INCREDIBLY brutal punishment scene our characters just came out of.
You're probably not coordinating with my particular Handler, and yet this still feels like entrapment somehow...