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fandom-trash-goblin

we've got a life to love living.

literaryvein

L. V., excerpts from the epilogue

dsmsix

naamahdarling

"In the same way that your heart feels and your mind thinks, you, mortal beings, are the instrument by which the universe cares. If you choose to care, then the universe cares. If you don't, then it doesn't." -- Brennan Lee Mulligan, D20, Fantasy High

peigslayers

obsessed with stories where you can never go home

peigslayers

you can never go home because you fell asleep for a thousand years and when you woke up and returned there, your society had changed, your house had fallen and all of your friends were dead. you can never go home because you made a choice and were shattered into pieces and your home was destroyed in your wake. you can never go home because someone took you and changed you against your will and although your home is the same, the person who belonged there is dead. you can never go home because you committed a crime and your family expelled you and even as they extend a hand of reconciliation, you will never forgive them. you can never go home because your home was a person and someone murdered her and now you drift and grieve to the point of insanity. you can never go home because you never knew your sister but she gave you every opportunity you have and now she's dead and your parents see nothing but her in your eyes.

currentlycryingaboutlancelot

i know you probably get this question a lot so feel free to ignore lol but do you have any recs for anyone just getting into arthurian lit? theres so much its kinda crazy

yes there is so much - but have fun with it and embrace how silly and crazy it is and you will be fine :)

some easier stand alone medieval arthurian texts that are pretty straightforward and don't pull in an additional like 15 storylines that never come up again confusing one to no end (cough cough malory) would be

Lanval by Marie France (super short!)

sad overlooked knight finally gets beautiful (magical?) girlfriend. but unfortunately not everyone is happy about this. ends up getting in a legal battle with the queen.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (anonymous)

magical horrifying green monstrous knight rolls up to arthur's court and says one of the knights here can deal me any blow, as long as i can repay the exact same blow. arthur's nephew, sir gawain, goes count me in and cuts the guy's head right off. unfortunately the green guy survives this and now gawain has a problem

Knight of the Cart by Chrétien de Troyes

the queen is kidnapped. a nameless knight goes to retrieve her and faces all sorts of mysterious and strange trials such as bed that lights on fire and bridge made out of sword. turns out this nameless knight, as you will find out midway through the poem, is not just any ordinary knight but quite a well known one. and he is unfortunately very in love with the queen

Tristan by Gottfried von Strassburg

born out of a tragic love story between his own parents, young sir tristan's life is not exactly looking great either, seeing as he ends up getting poisoned by an enemy he kills and the only one with the cure is his enemy's sister. yikes. who has a super hot daughter. yikes. a daughter who ends up, by complicated circumstances, marrying tristan's uncle. yikes. and who also ends up accidentally sharing a love potion with tristan on the way to her wedding. YIKES.

I also happen to think all of these texts are pretty fun and not like obscure or hard to understand. good starting points! if you want to know more about like arthurian lit generally:

the english speaking arthurian world is largely informed by Le Morte d'Arthur by Thomas Malory (15th century) which has kind of the grand arthurian arcs that we often associate with legend of king arthur now - sword in the stone, holy grail, lancelot/guinevere, fall of arthur's kingdom, etc. but the narrative tbh i find pretty hard to read so if you're like omg what's going on that's just what it's like. it's totally fine to skip around that text. it doesn't necessarily need to be read in order. Gareth's story in le morte is a fun one and again pretty straightforward and can be read without the context of the rest of le morte. also john steinbeck adapted a few chapters of malory's work which i really loved and it might be a good intro if you're having trouble getting into the original.

the arthurian vulgate cycle is kind of the main source that Malory draws from - it's an incredibly long and complicated french work (13th century) that combines a lot of arthurian works before it. full disclosure it's like 1000 or more pages. but it's fun to hop around because there is some crazy stuff in there (including guinevere's imposter sister who kicks her off the throne, lancelot getting trapped in a magical dance, sir gawain finding out merlin is magically trapped and just kind of abandoning him because what is gawain going to do about it, etc). if you want to browse the first two volumes it's here on archive.org. you probably don't want to spend 45 dollars on a summary text of the vulgate cycle that includes select passages to give you an idea of what's all in it without having to read 1000 pages, but if for any reason you did, amazon sells this book that i think is very clutch

vulgate and le morte i explained for context, but give those texts at the beginning of my post a shot as intro texts and see how you like them! i know @queer-ragnelle also has like a ton of med lit/arthurian lit resources on her blog and more links than i have so her stuff is for sure worth checking out if you want more options.

the thing about arthurian lit is that it gets retold over and over and over again in many ways at many times by many people and it's kind of a never ending fascinating web of stories and characters who are in some ways related but in many texts stand alone. embrace the silliness and whimsy and confusion of it and hop around as needed. hope this helps and im happy to answer any other questions! dm or comment or ask or whatever. <3

hopelessvalentines

i am asking you to endure it

spacecowbabe

when Brennan said "The first rule of existence is: as above, so below. People are fractal images of the universe. You are as we are. In the same way your heart feels and your mind thinks, you, mortal beings are the instrument by which the universe cares. If you choose to care, then the universe cares. If you don't, then it doesn't."

when Brennan said "It is a horrifying responsibility to think because things cannot remain the same, each and every one of us must shoulder some responsibility for how they will become different."

when Brennan said "Sometimes decisions are not difficult. Sometimes they are just hard."

when Brennan said "There is no moral. The Wolf eats you one day and until it does, the forest is beautiful."

when Brennan said "I always felt the fundamental substance of the universe is creation. None of this makes any sense, when you really break it down. It's like, none of this had to happen, but it's beautiful and art is the definition of 'this didn't have to happen, but it's beautiful.' [...] It resonates with the universe because the universe is consciousness playing with itself."

when Brennan said

valtsv

tantalus remains the most enduringly horrifying of the greek mythological figures for me because his punishment is so miserably uncircumnavigable in its brutal simplicity. the idea that everything you could ever want is forever just beyond your reach, and it's an indelible quality in yourself that makes it so. one must imagine sisyphus happy, one must imagine that icarus died free with the sun warming his skin and clean sea air in his lungs that had only ever known the damp chill of stone, one must imagine euridyce understood that orpheus loved her too much not to look back and forgave him in an instant, but the tantaluses of the world will never reach a resolution that makes all their suffering and deprivation worthwhile. it's in their nature not to.

valtsv

karvina

the really crazy thing about cooking is that once you practice it enough (for all the gamers reading this: "grind enough exp") your threshold for wuat counts as a low effort / depression / I Dont Really Want To Cook meal rises steadily and you can feel yourself becoming the kind of person whose "chill dinner" takes 1h45 and involves three pans

broghini

ok but how do I get there from "assembling a sandwich is too much work"

silverjirachi

As someone who went through this and struggles with chronic pain and fatigue, add 1 thing semi regularly. And I do mean just 1 thing.

When I first moved out most my meals were instant ramen. Then I started adding 1 egg to that ramen to get a little protein in. In a couple months, 1 egg became two. Then it was 2 eggs and 1 chopped green onion. Then a couple months later I was adding carrots and other vegetables. In about two years I was able to skip the instant ramen part altogether and now use chicken broth and noodles and I’m basically making a ramenesque soup from scratch when I’m craving ramen. It took 2+ years total of just gradually, one at a time, adding one ingredient. Over a period of months/weeks.

Start with where you’re able. If a sandwich is too much, maybe try just a piece of bread and some meat or cheese. Focus on where you can be gradually introducing more nutrients into your body. 1 slice of deli meat. A couple weeks later, that plus 1 slice of cheese. Then 1 vegetable. Maybe they don’t all make it into sandwich form and that’s ok. But if you keep what’s the most basic and simple for yourself and slowly add 1 thing that’s not too much of a hassle, over a couple months you might start toasting the bread before putting cheese and meat on it. Then one day there’s more vegetables. Years down the line you might find yourself owning a panini press or slicing your own bread.

Most of us will never be gourmet chefs and that shouldn’t be the goal. You might not ever get to the point where you own a panini press. But the more important thing is that you’re finding ways that work, for you, gradually, in order to make your meals more nutritious. The expectation to cook a full, unique meal every night for dinner is a relatively new phenomenon and completely unrealistic for most people. Having the same 3 things you can make consistently and keep on rotation is plenty fine, especially if you get to the point where you can mix it up a little bit by adding ingredients in the method stated above. Feeding yourself should be the #1 goal, getting more nutrients in #2, and stepping it up to the next level #3 when you have the capacity to. Like with a lot of things, it’s really just about consistency. Start with where you can be consistent. If that’s 1 meal a week you cook yourself and the rest is hot pockets, but you can do that 1 meal consistently, then that’s where you start. Then when you have that down, maybe try two (of the same) meals a week, or ask what you can add to your hot pocket to make it a little better for you. (Some vegetables on the side for instance).

Don’t try to jump in from 0 to full course meal all at once or you’ll overwhelm yourself. Building a meal outward from bread and butter over a period of weeks is incredibly possible. No two peoples’ timelines will be the same, but it is entirely possible and that success will look different for everyone, and that’s also ok. As long as you’re feeding yourself, that’s what’s most important.

broghini

this is so helpful. too many times when I ask how to do something, people tell me to "just do it" like I'm supposed to already know what steps to take. and I almost never know what steps to take. someone actually telling me is so refreshing

kedreeva

For me, it was a matter of simplifying the process as well. Like, there's some merit to acquiring tools meant to reduce prep time/effort. If I had to hand chop an onion and mince garlic every time I wanted to cook, I would literally never cook anything that needed those and practically everything I cook needs those.

But this thing does all the work. I can quarter an onion half in like five seconds, and have it chopped into small pieces in 15 seconds by slapping this bad boy on the hood.

Pre-prepared foods can help, too. Jarred minced garlic isn't quite as good as fresh imo, but saving myself 15 minutes of peeling garlic and mincing it by hand means I actually use it and cook stuff because I don't have to mince garlic by hand, so it's worth it. There's even whole cloves like this now, if I want to mince but not peel, or if I need cloves not minced.

I also think that like... Finding actually simple recipes (difficult, but possible) helps. I just recently had to sift through a ton of recipes to find just one that was simple enough pickles for my taste. I just wanted to pickle some cucumber. Nothing fancy! I picked up cucumbers and dill at the produce market and wanted pickles. But every recipe I was finding had all these extra steps and ingredients that made it seem like so much work and complicated. But it wasn't! When I finally found a bare bones recipe, it was "put water, vinegar, salt, and sugar into a pot, bring to a boil and cool, pour into jars with cucumbers and dill, refrigerate 1-2 weeks" and I added garlic, because I had garlic. It didn't need to be more complicated than that. But everyone was making it seem really complicated and if I had to do all that crap I would never have made pickles.

So if you're struggling, take something you have to do and are struggling with and 1) ask if there's a tool/method to make this task easier, 2) ask if there's a pre-made version of ingredients or even a base item, and 3) ask if there's a simpler recipe.

For example your Sandwich is too much- 1) there's not really a tool to make this easier but 2) there are some frozen premade sandwiches/burgers that you could always thaw/heat and later on add something to and 3) like the person above said, you can just eat the ingredients, you don't have to put them into sandwich form. It's basically a charcuterie board at that point, and if you 2) keep some eating-ready nuts on hand you can add a handful of those and maybe later on 2) fruit that doesn't take prep like grapes (or very little prep, like an apple you can 1) cut with an apple slicing tool), and now you've gone and turned "a sandwich is too much" to "fancy little dinner involving sandwich ingredients." For less effort than a sandwich.

So that's where I started. Figuring out what part was holding me up and sneaking past it with tools and tricks.

anim-ttrpgs

Character Creation in Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy in Under 30 Minutes

We just finally finished another one of our Eureka quick start videos, Character Creation.

In this video I go through all the instructions and steps for character creation in a way that should be easy to follow along with.

And here’s a playlist containing all the quick start videos we’ve made so far.

onlessdev

In my last Thirsty Sword Lesbians one shot, PHD student Jane Hemsworth who is from earth (Investigator), Cordelia Briarheart who is an elf princess estranged from her family (Infamous), and Svartal who is an elf raised by the dwarven kingdom’s second highest authority (Scoundrel) were selected by the gods of the Nine Realms to make sure that a diplomatic wedding between the elven heir and the dwarf master crafter went smoothly. But the heir (Eldalota Silvertongue) vanished the night before the wedding! The heroes convince Eldalota’s maid (also an accomplished surveyer) to confess that Eldalota had recently requested a copy of a geological survey which shows an notable cave deep within the enchanted forest. They also find a dragon scale.

In Eldalota’s room, they also found signs she had been doing fire magic, her wedding dress was missing, and she had left behind her flaming sword along with a broken ceremonial crown. Meanwhile, Eldalota’s best friend was trying to break into the trunk that held the sword and crown. The heroes fight her (she also seems to only own crop tops) to win a clue.

They then confronted Azaril, the dwarf master crafter who was to be married to Eldalota. Azaril was happy to see Svartal and shared a nerdy moment with Jane, promising future collaboration. They also pointedly repeated that today was a great day for a picnic and drew them a map to a familiar cave. They also confessed they planned to abdicate.

The heroes braved the forest, encountering some tree spirits who oddly enough said they were going to a wedding at a certain cave. The heroes checked out the cave - and found partying spirits, music, food and dancing, and Eldalota and Runa, the dwarf who had raised Svartal.

While Eldalota didn’t want to return, she agreed that she would, finally, if her sister Cordelia agreed to start a new form of government with her. Her eyes gleamed with a draconic aura. Runa agreed that she would also return and they would make an alliance, like originally planned, but this time without forcing Azaril and Eldalota to marry.

Jane and Svartal eventually get together in the future, and Cordelia reconciles with her family.

lelif

the beauty of life

- // @fairycosmos // ? // - // @cassidyshotchocolate // - // - // elsie de wolfe// @podencos // afternoon on a hill, edna st. vincent millay// rien ne va plus, margarita karapanou, tr. by karen emmerich// - // - // @ annalauraart on instagram// culpable, joy sullivan// - // @ jordanklancaster on instagram// @ niall.breen.comics on instagram// agatha christie// @plasticlove1984 //sweeter than fiction, taylor swift// the summer day, mary oliver

heavensickness

there is not a single day i don't think about this quote in relation to tragedies

araekniarchive

Aeschylus, The Oresteia

onlyloverleft

Richard Siken, Planet of Love

listentothepages

The Lumineers, Cleopatra

pigeondyke

the novelisation of The Revenge of the Sith (via @nonbinarydin)

spacecowbabe

when Brennan said "It is a horrifying responsibility to think because things cannot remain the same, each and every one of us must shoulder some responsibility for how they will become different."

when Brennan said "Sometimes decisions are not difficult. Sometimes they are just hard."

when Brennan said "There is no moral. The Wolf eats you one day and until it does, the forest is beautiful."

when Brennan said

decepticonsensual

Fascinated by stories of the - I guess you'd call it the "stolen identity" genre, like, of the Anastasia Romanov variety. But - from both sides.

Your husband has been at war for thirty years. You married when you were teenagers. The man who returns bearing his name looks... plausible, you don't remember his eyes being quite so blue, but it's been thirty years and it's not like you could ever afford to have a portrait painted. He knows your name and the names of your children and your parents, but there are curious gaps in what he remembers. But war does things to the mind. And if he's kinder than you remember? Kind enough that, maybe, you let yourself believe...

No one has ever looked twice at you, since you're just the maid, until the day a revolutionary bomb goes off, blowing a crater in the summer palace. The famously reclusive duchess and the rest of her household lie dead in the rubble. You know that you and she were the same dress size. You know where her jewels are kept. Most importantly, you know the location of the secret tunnel that leads down to the docks, and to a life overseas that would be torturously hard going for a poor maid, especially one suspected as a thief, but a lot more comfortable for a royal in exile...

The old king's most faithful retainer swears this is the heir to the throne, raised in secret and trained to one day step into his father's shoes. As the usurper as dragged off the throne, she screams that the old king's children are all dead, she made sure of it; no one pays her any heed. (Maybe they should have...)

The man in the tavern is buying drinks for the whole bar before he sets sail tomorrow for the far side of the world. He's got it all figured out - a ship of his own, retirement to a tropical paradise when he gets sick of the pirating life. His lip curls as he talks about the stultifying boredom of the aristocratic world he's already left behind. You find out that his parents recently died, and the estate is in the care of his younger sister, who was only six when her brother first left home two decades since. Between the lines, they sound like a good family; they sound like they love him, the way your family never did. Your heart aches. He shows you portraits, letters, before shoving them carelessly back in his coat pocket. They would be so easy to lift...

It's a surprisingly common concept and I just love it. It's The Return of Martin Guerre; it's multiple 90s romcoms; Agatha Christie pulls it half a dozen times. Sooner or later, it crops up in fanfic for just about any fandom with a royal or aristocratic main character.

And I can see why, because there's so much richness to it. From the outside, it can be anything from a horror story to an unlikely love story; from the perspective of the person pulling off the con, a heist movie or a tragedy or a heartwarming tale of found family. And then there are the longer-term implications: What happens if you wear a mask so long that it becomes who you are? What happens if you come to love the "replacement" to the point where you don't want to find out the truth? What is it like to uncover such a deception a century down the line, to find out that your great-grandfather... wasn't?

Just. Identity stories, man. <3

theresattrpgforthat

#mint this is the second time where I crave a recommendation#we're still waiting for the pigeon god

@cakeswithsnakes is referring to this post that I reblogged a while back and... I don't know how to answer either of these. Maybe I can try.

For the identity stories:

I could recommend Changeling: The Lost, albeit with a very specific premise - rather than playing Changelings, you're playing the fetches the Faerie Folk left behind. Your memories are intact, but they're not... yours. They were implanted to make you a better fake. But you still have emotions, desires, a life. There are some pretty funky Fetch powers in the Autumn Nightmares sourcebook for 1e. (I don't know how 2e handles Fetches.)

You could also try Fetch, by Grant Howitt, if you want a solo experience.

The other game I think about is Nibiru, a science-fiction far-future game about Vagabonds, people who have lost their memories, and slowly regain those memories as they rediscover their strengths and weaknesses. There are some interesting character options that might be interesting to play with - a character from the Dreamlands experiences other people's memories, rather than their own, while a character from the Dreadlands has their memories poisoned by an entity that lives within them.

For the Pigeon God:

Maybe Little Gods by Far Horizons Co-Op? One of you is a Newcomer to a strange city, while the rest of you play small gods that represent elements of the city. Together you will strengthen and embody four key traits, and overcome personal crises in order to discover who you are.

There's also Godling, a two-player game about an infant god and the person trying to raise them.

Or, if you want a slightly less-godlike experience, you might like Psychic Trash Detectives, a game about animals solving mysteries by reading the memories humans throw out with their trash.

i-aint-even-bovvered

Oathbreaker? No. Give me a character who cannot break their oath, no matter how much they may want to. The oath is a yoke they cannot take off. They are physically unable to do anything that would cause their oath to break. Their oath is a leash made of unbreakable chain and held in the hand of their patron. If it was chosen, it became too much to bear, and yet they were forced to bear it. If it was thrust upon them, there was no ability to say no. The oath as a cage. The oath as a curse.

sandersstudies

I’m sure other people have talked about this more at length and know more than me but I would like to see a true-life rendition of the Middle Ages and Renaissance where gay marriage is on the table.

Because it actually is very diplomatically useful! One thing you want as a member of the ruling class is children to 1) inherit your lands and titles and 2) to make alliances with other rulers. However, there are many cases where marriages made for alliances resulted in children that disrupt the line of succession or planned inheritance (differently under primogeniture than under split systems). (See Henry VI)

If rich people in that time weren’t pretty solidly convinced that marriages were solely between one man and one woman, they could have had the benefit of alliance without the muddling of the inheritance tree.

A lot of wealthy young men and women, even members of the ruling class, were committed to the church partially (there are a host of other reasons) to avoid their offspring making competition for their siblings (this was largely centered around gender, too, in eras where women came after their brothers in succession). (See Queen* Matilda) A child living as a member of the church can do you some favors, but arguably so can a child in a guaranteed-childless marriage.

And then there’s sooooo much diplomacy required to feel out this stuff. If you offer a childless marriage to another ruler who NEEDS descendants, he’s going to take offense, whereas if the marriage seems like your own family grabbing for his power via succession, he might prefer a childless one. Think of how courting and arranged marriages would be handled differently, and the amount of intrigue required.

Oh, the third son stood to inherit little, and was betrothed to a man, but then his elder brothers die and he is suddenly in need of an heir? Alas! Whatever shall he do!

Oh, the most eligible bachelorette in the land is seeking male OR female suitors… how interesting… I wonder why her father has arranged it so…

Oh, the lord chose to marry another man for love and lo and behold! This man hath conceived, and his family confirms that he in his childhood bore a girl’s countenance and bearing!

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