ask me where the thirtieth bird went. i dare you

novalo | 24 | canada | occasional fic-writer | pwm, ultrakill

[twentyninebirds]

novalo's fic list

hi. hello. did you know that i sometimes write fic? i know. it surprises me too. as i would very much not like to make individual posts for all the fics i've written, i'm collecting them here.

Xenoblade Chronicles

maybe the real chain attack was the friends we made along the way (19.8k, colony 9 NPCs vs. the world, G): xenoblade chronicles 3 future redeemed oneshot in which the NPCs of colony 9 attempt to fill out the enemypedia and come to realize a whole bunch of unfortunate things about the world.

snowglobe's broke (42.6k, future connected squad vs. the world, T): time travel canon divergence ng+ speedrun fic in which shulk, melia, tyrea, and the ponspectors brute-force their way through the plot of xenoblade chronicles 1.

ephemera (8.4k, alvis & shulk, G): in which shulk and alvis contemplate mortality, creation, and loneliness while a dead god mourns on a beach.

Ace Combat

thirty birds (47.7k, cipher/pixy, T): a treatise on the perils of nihilism, the nature of belief, and the human condition with an ace combat zero spin. second person POV character study of pixy during and after the belkan war. i had approximately five separate existential crises writing this.

Persona 5

a glove, a bolt, and an atom bomb (14.7k, shuake, T): time loop goro akechi character study. likely to be part of a larger series. affectionately referred to by me as "monoliths".

an accidental interruption and a final day (19.1k, shuake, T): pt. 2 WIP of monoliths, in which goro akechi makes friends (?), tests deadly cosplay props, and navigates life, all while a cast of an unnamed play watches quietly.

Yugioh

small town, big flame (28.6k, yugi & OCs vs. the world, T): in which two ghost hunter content creators who have a worrying amount of experience with the supernatural meet yugi mutou in a haunted town. cue shenanigans. probably my favourite fic i've written. if you find the despite it all references you deserve a medal.

Fullmetal Alchemist

maestoso (33.1k, ed & al vs. the world, T): time travel orchestra AU fix-it AU in which ed and al have the chance to do the plot of FMAB all over and go about in the most convoluted way possible. involves the typical vigilantism and a bit more soloist bravado than strictly necessary. what do you get when you toss the central symphony orchestra into a coup against a fascist state? i dunno but let's hope it's better funding for the arts

Fire Emblem

goat milk and oats (25.9k, grima vs. the world, G): in which grima isn't as horrible as he could be, accidentally invents existentialism, and is reborn as a pet snake. this changes everything and nothing. the title is very literal.

as virtuous men pass mildly away (4.1k, byleth & ghosts, T): FE3H WIP in which byleth can see ghosts and recruits one glenn fraldarius (deceased). somehow this changes nothing.

MDZS

despite it all (292k, lwj/wwx but mostly gen focus, T): WIP in which wwx comes back a little more lucky and a little more godly and picks up young cultivator-apprentice a-qing, sword spirit xue yang, and fledgling array specialist mxy. features a subplot about dead gods who are a bit too good at haunting the living and themselves and a 70k+ chapter. heavily AU. i subtly but gleefully refer to this fic in most of my newer ones. i am both normal and sane.

to the venerable dragons of lotus pier (19k, wwx & yunmeng sibs, T): mdzs/the ocean at the end of the lane AU. in attempting to fix everything wwx rearranges the fabric of reality. cue memory alteration, convoluted fix-its, and immortal keepers of time. i'm not sure if i can adequately summarize how surreal this fic is and i wrote it.

a sky 1300 years wide (17.6k, wwx & wen sibs, T): mdzs/norgami WIP in which wwx is reborn and immediately becomes a local menace to a small town and a handyman.

places we saw and made and lost (2.3k, wwx/lwj but mostly gen, G): collection of short prose snippets, mostly character studies.

BNHA

brilliant lights will cease to burn (206k, izuku & everyone, T): bnha/ccs WIP where izuku becomes a cardcaptor and makes it everyone's problem, especially his own. so many shenanigans.

enbu (7k, midoriya izuku and his violent friends vs. the world, G): bnha/kny AU in which midoriya izuku is part of the kamado family line, lands a ghost tanjirou, and convinces his friends to terrorize the local demon population.

eater (10.6k, midoriya izuku & everyone, T): WIP in which izuku is an eldritch abomination who can eat literally everything, including abstract concepts and nothingness itself. he's chill, don't worry about it.

love's labour's only slightly singed (1.9k, hatsume & yaoyorozu, G): oneshot written for hatsume mei zine. hatsume and momo navigate the beginnings of a terrifying friendship.

yagyo (8.4k, izuku & anyone unfortunate enough to cross him, T): WIP in which izuku becomes a spirit-walker, treading in places that really aren't healthy for a sane human being.

The Legend of Zelda

the wind guides us (8.7k, link & introspection, G): character study of BOTW link, featuring loneliness, solitude, the nature of memory, heroism, and a warm campfire.

Voltron

even as its petals scatter (3.2k, lance & allura, T): character study of lance and the ache to lay down your arms and stop chasing ideals of heroism.

[yorickless]

and so what if I do? it's a nice room

[beardedmrbean]

[6qubed]

that was everything I was hoping it would be. marvelous

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

I love this because you know exactly where it's going and you're not disappointed

[charlesoberonn]

I was so looking forward for the Jupiter gravity and it didn't disappoint and THEN THE SUN GRAVITY MADE ME HOLLER

[bunjywunjy]

i think you could reach escape velocity on pluto by just jumping really hard

[mokimo-art]

THWE DRAMATIC PAUSE IN THE SUN GRAVITY HAD ME

[homunculus-argument]

I can understand how "modern person thrown into the past gets by pretending to be a healer/doctor" is as surprisingly common of a trope as it is. I mean I'm fluent enough at bullshitting to be pretty sure I could pull it off to impersonate a doctor in any time pre-1800s. If I have no idea what something is or how to treat it, I could just get the opinion of the other whatever-passes-as-medical-professionals around, but if their suggestions sound like bullshit I'm not doing it. And I'll beat the shit out of anyone suggesting bloodletting or mercury. With my healing stick. I've tied little bells on it, that jingle comically with every smack.

The awesome curative powers of my healing stick come from two separate sources: Placebo, and me using it to beat anyone trying to give my patients mercury.

[alexaloraetheris]

Ooooh you reminded me of that protocol I wrote about how to reinvent penicilin with only alchemical tools. You know. Just in case I did end up dumped in the past and needed a stable income.

[i-have-n0-idea-what-im-d0ing]

w

what's the protocol?

[alexaloraetheris]

I am so glad you asked! I unfortunately lost the protocol because it was probably on my laptop, but I remember the broad strokes. So! In case anyone does end up stuck in the middle ages and can find a kindly old alchemist willing to lend you his gear, here's the revamped Penicilin (Re)Discovery Protocol!

0. WASH YOUR GODDAMN HANDS.

We're not working in a lab here, cross-conatamination WILL happen. Your job is to minimize it as much as possible. If you end up in a place where soap hasn't been invented yet, wash your hands in distilled alcohol. Your skin won't thank you, but you can afford all the nice hand creams after you cure the plague and get rich.

Find some Penicillium mushrooms!

Yes, penicilin is produced by mushrooms, though Ascomycotes are usually called moulds, it's a fungus, and it makes me laugh to call it a mushroom. Plus, in the middle ages, mushrooms were known to have medicinal properties, so you'll get a lot farther by calling them mushrooms rather than molds.

First thing you need: mouldy fruit. Oranges, or cantaloupes are preferred.

Here's the thing: mold is everywhere, so getting it will be the easiest part. The tricky part start with identifying the correct mold. You don't want to feed your patients black mold, do you?

So. Leave some fruit out. The more the better, because you want to up your chances. Then let it rot in warm and humid places. After a while, pick any fruit that looks white on the outside and green in the middle:

Not the best picture, but that's what it should look like.

2. Transplanting your (potential) Penicillium mushrooms

Until you get it on a plate it's damn near impossible to tell which mold you got. Get ready for some trial and error because you will have to sift through a lot of unwanted mold. You might want to wear a mask.

First you need something to transplant it onto. Making modern agar plates is probably impossible but thankfully not needed. You just need:

Glass plates (the kind that can be closed, you want to minimize cross contamination)

1-2 cup of Hot water (preferably distilled, ask your alchemist if he can do that)

1 cup whole milk (should be 13g of lactose per cup, if your Penicillium won't grow adjust the water-milk ration in favor of milk)

If available: Instead of milk use corn steep liquor. Unfortunately only available after America was discovered, so YMMW, but Penicillium LOVES this stuff. It will make your life SO much easier if it's available.

Pinch of salt

1 teaspoon Yeast extract (get it from a baker)

3-6 teaspoons Gelatin (get it from a butcher)

Disclaimer: The ratio of each of the ingredients will have to be adjusted depending on the purity of the ingredients and on the conventional measuring sizes of the place you end up.

Gently mix it all in and pour out into the plates, let it solidify. If you end up dumped far enough that such refinement isn't possible, make bone broth and strain it through cheesecloth several times to make it as clear as possible, then mix it 5/6 broth and 1/6 milk. Again, if available, use corn steep liquor, but if not milk is fine. Add gelatin (should still be able to get it from the butcher) as needed to solidify it. I'm afraid experimentation will be needed depending on the resources you will be working with.

When you're done, you should have something like this:

Now that you have your plates, run an inoculation loop through a flame to sterilize it.

Something like this. Wave it through the air to cool it so you don't kill your mold, grab it from your fruit and geeeeeently spread it on top of your improvised agar without breaking the surface of the gelatin!

You can see the motions on this one pretty well. Close your plates, stack them about a meter/3ft from the fireplace. Judge for yourself, but ideally somewhere you would consider comfortably warm (20-24°C).

3. Identifying your Penicillium Mushrooms

If all went well, you are going to have something that looks like this:

Well, realistically, it will look something like this:

We're not actually doing it in a lab, after all. But IDEALLY, it will look like the above. It doesn't have to be perfect, you just need to be able to identify Penicillium molds for now.

IDEALLY, on the plate that matches the description of the penicillium mold you'll see an exclusion zone of bacteria around the mold, like the fourth plate in the second row, so you know you have a potential winner, but if you managed to avoid bacterial growth you need to take a few extra steps.

Penicillium molds have characteristic rings of growth, grey-green-white rings. They're easy to differentiate from bacteria because the molds are fuzzy and the bacteria as smooth and slimy. In the above picture, there are four plates that potentially have what we want, and two are less certain than others. Wash out the unwanted ones, make new agar plates, sterilize your inoculation loop and transplant your best candidates. You might need to do this several times.

Two types are confirmed to produce penicilin: P. chrysogenum and P. rubens.

The former is far more widely used today, but since we're sourcing them from literally thin air, we're more likely to get P. rubens, but unless you're a mycologist you probably won't be able to tell the difference. Thankfully you won't need to, because they both produce penicillin. Which brings me to the next step.

4. Confirming it's the penicillin producing mushroom

We're gonna need more agar plates for this one, and believe it or not, you're gonna need to mix blood into your agar. Wash your hands THROUGHLY.

(Theoretically you can get away with just milk, but identifying the correct bacterial colony on white agar is going to be a nightmare, so just add some sheep blood to your agar, conventionally it's about 5% by volume but you might need more to make it)

You need some gram-positive bacteria, preferably of the Bacillota type. Please don't go out and find a patient with fucking botulism or tetanus, you need to live long enough to make the cure. Instead, if you have a vagina, scrape some of the white, mucousy stuff from there and plant it on your plate. If you don't have your own vagina, a borrowed one is fine. Penicilin also works on Treponema pallidum, so if you get a syphilis-affected prostitute that should also work. Just wear gloves.

Ideally you get something like this.

This is actually Lactobacillus brevis, but Lactobacillus colonies all look relatively the same. The important thing is that it's all gram-positive, and will therefore be affected by penicillin.

Take new plates again, plant your Penicillium mold in the middle, and the bacteria all around it, getting as close to the center as possible. You can put down a paper marker for the mold. Wait for about 20 days.

Ideally, on at least one plate, you will get something like this:

This is literally a textbook example of testing antibiotics, but the Zone of Inhibition is what you're looking for. It means the mold is releasing a compound to kill the competing bacteria for resources, in this case, Beta-lactam antibiotic, or penicillin. Make sure to pick the one with the WIDEST ZoI, because that's the one that produces most penicillin.

So now we have the root stock, but our problems have just begun. This is the part where you're absolutely going to need an alchemist's help.

The problem is that a human body is not a petri dish. It's quite a bit larger. And you want the good bacteria destroying stuff without all the nasty contaminants, so you need a SHITLOAD of mold producing a LOT of penicillin, and then you need a way to filter it. You are going to need actual lab equipment for that, or near as they had it.

Since I lost the original protocol I'm going to need to do research all over again how to do that with alchemy equipment (or at least a microbrewery), so that will be in the next installment.

[ospreyonthemoon]

Fascinating.

[punkahudsonia]

Concept: generic fantasy adventure where the wizard has a crackpot assistant and he explains sadly that while Hreithbert is an excellent person for keeping the wizard tower tidy and the homonculi fed they're obsessed with cooking like ten million plates of inedible goop but it makes them happy so he permits it

And at the end of the story the big reveal is Hreithbert is a time displaced biochemist who has finally fucking refined their process for penicillin.

[spin-the-wheel-polls]

You have became this medieval role, how do you feel about it

you are in the medieval era and you have this role!

How do you feel?

great!! I love this

good!

It's okay

So bad. I hate this

This is similar to my real job!

Results/other

Voting ended onJul 18

[theowlseye-deactivated20240403]

Obsessed with how some people get so attached to their own headcanons that they get mad when they see a character presented as they are in canon

[poetikat]

via @ourlordapollo

[orcboxer]

got a crick in my neck and a frog in my throat and a chip on my shoulder and a stick up my ass and now you're gonna stand there puttin words in my mouth? haven't I been through enough?

[gay--dog]

man half of my mutuals are named some shit like Snooble at this point im doing some poob as bullshit in my life

[discount--dracula]

wbat the hell you weren't even exaggerating

[parkayquarts]

EVERYTHING HAPPENS TO ME

[bisexualhunterbiden]

Something that annoys me is the constant whining about "more queer spaces, more queer communities" but then they're immediately like "yeah! And we need ones that don't cost money or require a purchase!"

Girl that's exactly why they close down after a year. You NEED money to keep these places open. There's no magic Gay Money Pot with endless cash to keep these places open. It requires YOU to put your money where your values are!!

[bisexualhunterbiden]

Like there was a queer coffee shop in my city. Owned and operated by a bunch of LGBT people. Not a cishet on the schedule. Tons of young people raved about it.

And it made it about 2 years before shutting down completely. Because all those young people who begged for a place exactly like this would just show up, not buy a single thing, and leave. You cannot build a community without putting your money into it. This isn't about capitalism, this is just reality. You can't open a restaurant where no one buys your food. You can't have a gay bar that only serves 5% of the population and actively excludes everyone else. This is what I mean when I say people confuse "community" and "friend group." You're not obligated to spend money when hanging out with your friend group. But if you want a lasting community centered space, you need to open up that wallet.

[fightingbymoonlight]

Seeing people I know and like using AI is making me understand the protagonists of those old time sci fi dystopia's.

"Oh I don't normally use AI, I just wanted it to plan my trip"

You lived on this planet for decades, you know what you like, there are hundreds of websites where you can type into any search engine " things to do in [area]" and have at least a hundred different options.

"Oh I only use it so I can figure out what to make during the week with what I have"

The most popular website as you type in "recipes" into google have sections where you click dinner- quick and easy and those usually rely on staples + 1 or 2 items. I found 30 recipes on chicken alone.

"I had a writing idea, so I typed a few sentences into Chat GPT and I was able to write 20 pages with it."

Youdidn'twriteit.Youdidn'twriteit.youdidn'twriteit.youdidn'twriteit.YOUDIDN'TWRITEIT.YOUDIDN'TWRITEIT.YOUDIDN'TWRITEIT.

[pinklocksoflove]

[headslikekites]

don't think about your life past 9pm teto

[catasters]

[i-shall-not-show-mercy]

[platonbatonn]

love my disabled son

[funstyle]

[recommending something i sincerely love] ok so the thing about it is it kinda sucks

[tatzelwurming]

in the dungeon you will have to face a monster with the nose of a tiger, the teeth of a tiger, the ears of a tiger the eyes of a tiger , the cheeks of a tiger , the neck of a tiger, the torso of a tiger, the arms of a tiger, the paws of a tiger, the belly of a tiger the back of a tiger, the the legs of a tiger, the claws of a tiger, the ankles of a tiger, the tail of the tiger, the mind of a tiger, and the power of a tiger