#pigeonfancier

[fallingawkwardly]

Eee, good! Here's some q's, then - please feel free to disregard whatever ones you don't feel like answering.1) You said the setting was "modern-day yorkshire town" - are we *secret* space alchemists? Is the setting Wynne Jones style pastiche fantasy, or more/less on the nose? 2) What's your favorite bit (or part, or process!) that you've written so far? 3) What character has been the most fun or interesting for you to create so far?

Oh god. Thank you. Chymicalia brainspill incoming. Please don't judge my writing on any of this, I multiple edit pass in real life.

1) You said the setting was "modern-day yorkshire town" - are we secret space alchemists? Is the setting Wynne Jones style pastiche fantasy, or more/less on the nose?

We are secret space alchemists! Albeit ones in an alternate universe where there are also more legitimate, less secret alchemists, we're just not that kind. We're ~renegades~, it would be very cool and sexy, except that it is absolutely neither, and at least for this protagonist, actually just hideously abusive indentured servitude to a mysterious disembodied entity known only as "the Shop".

The Wynne Jones reference is on point actually, in that there are Howl-like secret magical contracts, plus dimensional-shifting-via-a-magical-building, done by someone who is originally from Earth, but trying to play themselves off as a powerful Alchemist to bewildered otherplanetary denizens.

Generally speaking, though, it's not pastiche, and mostly doesn't come over as fantasy at all, tone-wise. Urban fantasy, I guess? Tone-wise, we're very much in Yorkshire, and Yorkshire is nothing if not no-nonsense. (check out that quadruple-negative!)

Anyway, I can tell I'm not writing fantasy, because I have to constantly check real world historical dates and legalities, instead of just making up some cool-sounding bullshit. I have to constantly google shit like "football team formations" and "is it illegal to steal cuttings in the UK". This "real world" setting is exhausting and infinite, how do people do this all the time, what the fuck.

2) What's your favorite bit (or part, or process!) that you've written so far?

I'm really enjoying writing the text messages you can send and receive from various characters, and how different people express themselves via that medium.

3) What character has been the most fun or interesting for you to create so far?

See: who's the most disastrous, because it's the same thing, innit? Although I also like Chrissie, who is a peak weird-girl six year old, constantly hunting for bones for her imaginary friend, Jinny Vinegar. (Jinny has no bones, and it makes her sad.) Chrissie isn't disastrous, she knows exactly what she's about.

Oh, and Yaz, the worst librarian ever, who is just a receptacle for all my dayjob librarianship frustrations.

[I'm adding the rest of your questions from your second ask here!]

4) Do you have a core cast of characters, or is this ala a lot of various simulation / visual novel-esque games, where who the PC is exposed to will depend on what choices they make?

There's a core cast. Besides the central protagonist and antagonist, there are four major characters (Ana, Bern, Nimone and Voss) whom you can form relationships with and become catastrophically intertwined with the problems they have, some of which are caused by the solutions you gave them to the problems they had before that. Then there are around ten minor characters who have problems, or cause problems, or ARE problems, often relating to the main cast, etc etc.

It's also one of those "ooooh, the LOCATION is a character, ooooh" type of things. But virtually everyone's issues relate in some way to the town's history, and how to try and fucking live in this place.

5) What inspired you to make it?

I played a couple of customer-service simulator type games, especially the lovely Coffee Talk (the author of which really sadly died recently, I'm gutted) …and basically, I thought it was a really enjoyable mechanic, but a lot of games I found were quite linear and in a certain stylistic mould. Neither of which are bad things! But I started thinking about how to take that mechanic and do something a bit tonally different with it, with different kinds of choices and implications, and more opportunity to make drastic/arguably terrible choices about what you think the customer "ought to" receive, and how that might change things.

Anyway, I'm not trying to pretend I'm revolutionising the medium - it's a crafting sim/visual novel! - but I haven't seen anything quite like this, and I want to play it, so I've got to make it.

6) of your cast so far, who's your most disastrous and least?

I mean… making characters is just making flavours of disaster, yeah? It is in a game like this, anyway, where your customers need to constantly have problems for you to "FIX!!!".

The obvious answer here is Voss, with his catalogue of failed jobs, relationships, exams, rental agreements, you name it. But really, Voss is just the most VISIBLE disaster, because he's a critical mass of untreated ADHD.

You can argue that Bern's actually more of a disaster, because he's quietly pretending he's not a disaster and is ignoring the huge flaming mass of disasterstuff about to engulf him, while at least Voss is aware of the fact, and is trying (disastrously) to dodge.

Ana is a disaster because she's trying so hard to NOT be a disaster, and getting everything wrong.

Nimone is the least disaster, to the point that's she's just another kind of disaster, and embracing being more of a disaster would actually be good for her, because being at least a little bit disastrous is essential to human relationships both with others and with yourself, there is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in, etc.

Unfortunately for everyone, the REAL biggest disaster in town is the person behind the counter who's totally going to fix all their problems!

Welcome to Chymicalia, We Have Solutions!

[toushindai]

⭐ for your latest fic! :)

Thank you!!

So the fic that falls at the conjunction of “most recently finished AND posted” (as opposed to older fics I’ve cross-posted recently, or the ficlet I recently finished but haven’t posted yet) is “Discoveries,” which I’ve described as a “five-chapter one-shot” because it. got away from me!

This is a smut fic so let’s tuck these details under a cut--

What happened is, I had written what turned into the first chapter (in which Zag gets turned on by Meg pinning him to a wall and threatening him in what should have been a thoroughly nonsexual context) about a year before I wrote the second chapter. It didn’t stand well on its own, not least because I kind of just started right in the middle of things and wasn’t inclined to figure out the details. Really, what Zag was being threatened over wasn’t the point! But, when I finished the second chapter--this being the “one-shot” I cheekily refer to--I realized that I could combine the two. And I could write a second (aka, a third) chapter from Meg’s POV. And then, once I had that written (which took a stupid number of drafts, including one which started from Zag’s POV), well they weren’t really getting along great, so I needed a fourth chapter; but surely that would be even shorter than the first, it’s really just to wrap up and get them kind of understanding each other again... nope, it’s 1965 words long!! And at this point I had realized that I wanted to tweak chapter 1, too, because this damn smutfic grew itself a theme, but if I was going to do that, I might as well post those tweaks at the same time that I posted... chapter five... of what was supposed to just be a sexy little one-shot about Zagreus and Megaera finding common ground over having fun with pain.

Really, this is just how my brain works.

Because here’s the thing, I got the dialogue that implies that Hades forced Meg and Zag together about two weeks into my experience with the game (so, late December 2018), and my brain has never, not once, put that idea down since. I’m absolutely neck-deep in this elaborate headcanon where their prescribed relationship--Megaera assigned to make Zagreus grow the fuck up--conflicts against their accidentally discovered sexual compatibility and the interest in each other that grows out of that. So it’s hardly surprising that writing that discovery turned into writing Zagreus going “wait, now that I don’t hate her... MAYBE I’LL FALL IN LOVE WITH HER??” and Megaera running into inner turmoil between gaining an interest in Zagreus as a person and how she’s supposed to regard him as part of her job. Of course I was drawn to write something where, even as they were drawn to each other, even as they made the decision yes, this is something we’re going to pursue and keep doing on purpose, the attitudes that would eventually drive them apart before the game timeframe (Zagreus’s recklessness with his own emotions, Megaera’s holding fast to her duty when given the choice between that and personal interaction) were already beginning to show.

-----------!!!!!! 1.0 spoilers below this line !!!!!!-----------

This isn’t directly related to this fic, necessarily, but now that it’s clear that Hades/Persephone was a result of Zeus plopping Persephone down into the Underworld and saying “here! you two are cute together” and neither Hades nor Persephone being like totally off-board with this but Persephone especially not having a real choice in the matter had she not been on board, because Zeus; now that it’s clear that this did, in fact, strike Hades as kind of fucked up at the time... this makes arranged-betrothal!ZagMeg... weirder. Somehow. I honestly have not figured out how those two things fit together just yet, I only know I want to have some kind of opinion on it. Now that it’s legal to treat Hades as a somewhat sympathetic character, I’ve gotta figure out what was going on in his head at that point. ...Oh, god, you know what it probably is? He refers to bringing Persephone down to the Underworld as “tantamount to kidnapping.” The issue being that Demeter is kept in the dark. He probably doesn’t conflate that with forcing ZagMeg together because Nyx is on board with it. Maybe?? Maybe. Still weird, dude.

[cumaeansibyl]

Your opinion on the Stepford Wives! Book, old movie, new movie, whichever.

Only thing I know about the new movie is that the wives can be cured, which really fucks up the entire premise imo -- Nicole Kidman was also in an Invasion of the Body Snatchers adaptation around the same time where that was some sort of curable parasitic infection and not a total replacement, and that’s a weird comment on the 2010s, isn’t it? can’t live with the irrevocable, I guess. Even in the original Body Snatchers where they drive the alien invasion away, which is a much happier ending than later versions, the people who got replaced are still dead.

anyway! between Rosemary’s Baby and Stepford Wives, I am extremely impressed with how Ira Levin unerringly strikes at the vulnerability of women in relationships with men, and the fears we can’t quite shake. In Stepford Wives, it’s the fear that, no matter what your Good Husband says, what he really wants is one of those cheery domestic slaves, happy to be used. That when he says he values your individuality, he’s secretly fantasizing about a woman with no mind of her own. That if he can’t get you to be that woman, he’ll happily replace you.

(Rosemary’s Baby is the same set of fears at a different angle -- Rosemary is already a fairly good wife by those standards, but her husband Guy, all loving and indulgent as he seems, is willing to let Actual Satan knock up his wife for career advancement. What’s the point of having a wife if you can’t use her?)

[ladytrollfishes]

ID. uwu

I got sliiiiightly carried away i think?

a very fun draw

[prince-liest]

Curse of Strahd: An Angel, a Devil, and a Grandmother Walk into a Bar

Basic session summary for the Curse of Strahd campaign I’m DMing for @pigeonfancier, @cloudbatcave, and @rebatrolls. We had our second session today, in which they successfully defeated a potentially haunted suit of armor using what was technically a sword-and-board, in the sense that it was a sword permanently attached to a decorative board backing used to hang it on a wall.

CAST LIST

Rose (Aasimar Cleric), played by Mar (@pigeonfancier)

Ursa (Dwarf Sorcerer), played by Cloudy (@cloudbatcave)

Faithfulness (Tiefling Paladin), played by Reba (@rebatrolls)

SESSION SUMMARY 2 (1/15/19)

The three of you entered the Durst household at the behest of two young children waiting outside, who had pleaded with you to rescue their crying baby brother from his nursery on the third floor. Wary of a monster in the basement and nervous about your lack of equipment, Faithfulness immediately burgled a decorative shield hanging from a wall, and subsequently a similarly decorative sword attached to a wooden backing mount. Now marginally more equipped, you began your search for the missing child, making your way to the third floor nursery.

Before entering the nursery, you encountered a suit of armor - which Faithfulness immediately prodded with his sword, prompting the previously still object to animate and attack the closest party member. After an awkward and damaging battle that ranged up and down the manor’s spiral staircase, Rose managed to lever his decorative sword into a hole that Ursa and Faith magically burned into the chest of the suit of armor, and hauled it over the staircase banister, sending it crashing to its destruction on the first floor. And then proceeded to magically mend and burgle that, too.

Thus armored, you explored the nursery, discovering that the crying baby was but a disappearing apparition, and meeting the ghostly figure of the baby’s nursemaid. Unable or unwilling to communicate, she eventually watched Faithfulness from the nurse’s suit mirror as the party discovered a hidden door to the attic, where you plotted to open a locked door before barricading yourselves in an empty room for a long rest.

HIGHLIGHT REEL

Rose seems to be determined to burn the house down, and has alluded to attempting to do so several times - seemingly not entirely sure if he’s willing to wait until the party is out of the house.

Ursa, delighted at the party’s success, attempts to high-five Faith... who stares blankly and leaves her hanging. Good will? What’s that?

Rose: “Warlocks fuck!” / Ursa: “Of course warlocks fuck, it’s just... but... I lost my train of thought.”

Rose excitedly declaring that he has discovered that the nursemaid is, in fact, a ghost! ... Several minutes after Ursa and Faith had reached the conclusion themselves and were already debating what to do about that.

[cloudbatcave]

@rebatrolls and I drag @pigeonfancier and their attempts to understand geography, and their ‘DO ISLANDS FLOAT’ question

[circlingbirds]

The temp dropped at all the pidges went *poof*

[weiy1ng]

47, 54 or 53, 1, 95!

1: 6 of the songs you listen to most?

Boy, how do you even answer this one? I’ll just list some recent favorites:

Follow You Down - Zedd

Andromeda - Gorillaz

Emotion - Carly Rae Jepson

Superheroes - Daft Punk

Midnight - Caravan Palace

Fake Happy - Paramore

47: Do you have any obsessions right now?

Cooking shows and like, special interest videos about things nobody really talks about. Like odd gadgets, dead malls and defunct companies.

53: Do you save money or spend it?

I try to but my finances being what it is I often end up using my reserves on some minor disaster and having to use credit -_-

Been doing pretty good the past few months though mostly because im adamant on having money to donate to my school club’s new york trip.

54: What’s the last thing you purchased?

A carton of almond milk and arizona green tea.

95:You just got a free plane ticket to anywhere. You have to depart right now. Where are you gonna go?

We Goin’ To Japan BayBee!!!!!!!!!