From The 3AM Epiphany

Exercise 18: "TV. Write a short interior scene during which a TV is on. Let the words and images on the screen interact interestingly with the activity going on in the room...500 words"

Rob

The vase teetered on the edge of the table, then tipped over with a CRASH, smashing to smithereens on the floor in an explosion of white and blue.

Robert held his breath, cradling the figurine he’d barely managed to catch to his chest. The living room was awash in the soft blue glow of the television screen and the cackling of the old bat in the armchair. The cartoon dog that had bumped the table in the show attempted to flee, doing that thing where a character tries to run but momentarily stays in place, arms pinwheeling ridiculously.

Heart still racing, Robert looked back down. He never understood why old people like to keep such creepy mementos around. Shuddering, he replaced the demonic-looking cherub carefully on the doily-covered table. Luckily the scene had been loud enough to cover up any sounds he’d made.

Robert cast a quick eye around. The glint of something shiny drew his eye, and he instantly recognized the iconic, man-shaped trophy. Bingo.

A slide-whistle sound effect interrupted his thoughts as the dog onscreen relieved itself on a shoe.

Something wet soaked into his pant leg. He looked down.

A tiny white dog with scraggly hair that made it look like a walking, breathing mop had lifted its leg over his ankle. 

“What the–hey! Get away!” he whisper-yelled, stumbling ungracefully and trying to shoo the little monster off. It bared a set of miniature teeth at him and made a sound like a lawnmower on helium, then gave a series of squeaky-toy barks.

“Chi-Chi? Where did you get off to?” Oh, great. The old woman’s wheezy voice interrupted the canned laughter that boomed from the speakers. Robert whipped his head from left to right. He could risk making a dive for the kitchen, or escape upstairs.

Unfortunately, Chi-Chi had other plans. It sank its tiny jaws into his ankle, and he bit back a yelp of pain. The armchair trembled, as if its occupant was attempting to climb out.

Robert dragged the dog with him along the worn carpet, trying not to curse out loud as he limped as quickly as he could around the other side of the armchair. On the TV, someone tripped on a banana pee, landing on their backside with a cymbal crash. As if on cue, his foot catches on the edge of the hideous rug—

And with a magnificent WHUMP that shook the room, suddenly he’s on his belly, staring right into the vomit-green pattern of repeating triangles on the rug. Chi-Chi is barking at him, and he looks up in a daze to see two-time Academy Award winning screenwriter Greta Frendler peering down at him, lips pursed and eyes squinting from a face so wrinkled it looked like a prune.

“I assume you’re here to rob me?”

Before he can answer, she shuffles off to the kitchen in her carpet slippers.

“I have to say, you’re one of the less creative ones. Come have a cup of tea. I put the kettle on when I heard you knock over the mirror upstairs.”

Every coin has two sides

Separate variants + Athena Under the cut

(CW: blood)

Goddammit, Klaasje! I have distrusted this woman since the first time I talk to her and almost 250 in game hours later I finally get it. She's a goddam spy for Wild Pines.

Everything below this is probably crazy:

So first, Klaasje is a liar. Nothing she says in true. I've never belived her story that she is on the run from being burned by her former employers. The fact that she confesses this is enough for me to think it's not true, at least not totally. Yes, I have trust issues. But she also knows way more about espionage then she lets on. For instance, her knowledge of telecommunications and radios:

You did what with the what now? That's class A espionage stuff right there. She obviously knows how to do more then just flirt and steal documents like she claims.

She also arrives in November.

What does that matter? Ok, bear with me:

At some point in there is a raid on the abandoned church in Martinaise. Something top secret, undercover, that multiple precincts where involved in, including 41, and Harry was most likely a part of. Drug dealers might have been involved, the place was shot up and people were probably killed. Ruby is running from La Puta Madre because she betrayed them in some way and she knows all about Harry the can opener, so I suspect she was a part of this raid in some way. And according to Titus the only drug dealers in Martinaise are Union approved one's like Ruby. What exactly happened is a mystery (one that niggles and crunches my brain at 3am sometimes), but I suspect it happened right before November. Why?

Harry gets a new badge in November. Perhaps he lost his old one in a shootout in a church? Or perhaps he got a promotion for a shoot out in a church? (November's seem bad for Harry).

So November Harry got a new badge, Klaasje rolls into town, so what? Well, the strike starts in December. I think what ever happened in that church peaked someone's interest in Martinaise, in the Union, or both, so they sent in Klaasje. I don't think it's a coincidence she immediately makes friends with the Hardie Boys and Ruby. She targeted them to "party" with. Even her affair with Lely was probably at the behest of her real employer wanting to keep an eye on Krenel. I also think that whatever happened in that church lead to the strike. Perhaps too many people were getting too close to the Claire's drug running scheme so he locked up the harbor as a distraction. I suspect Klaasje isn't the only spy keeping an eye on things.

The Sunday Friend always seems so out of place. Why would a high ranking bureaucrat who is supposedly in town for a booty call with a sex worker WANT to talk to the police? He doesn't offer that much to the case and Mr Martin Martinaise could just as easily have given the police his friends testimony. But he wants to meet them in person. It sounds like he makes a special trip out. Probably because the smoker on the balconey is actually a Moralintern spy and the Sunday Friday is his handler. He wants the RCM to know they are being watched by their "boss". I don't think it's a coincidence that the Smoker plants himself in the middle of the Whirling in Rags after you interview his friend. He's keeping an obvious eye on the Hardie Boys, Harry, and probably Klaasje as well.

And technically, Harry is also a there as a kind of spy for the RCM. Harry isn't just there to solve a murder, he's also supposed to be investigating Krenel.

Plus there are a number of unseen spies, spies for the Union, Spies for Krenel, ect.

I wondered at first if Klaasje was a spy for some other, unnamed, company, but then I remembered this:

She's got a great vantage point up on the roof, where she stays all day until 11pm, after which she mysteriously vanishes.

Anyway, I'm probably crazy so if you got this far... sorry? I don't know, I need a nap.

WAS SHUFFLING OVER THE 2000S SONGS ON SPOTIFY AND KISS WITH A FIST PLAYS AND IF THAT ISNT AKAI AND FURUYA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Friends, this next chapter of Sweet Adventure was fighting me hard, so I literally gutted it and am effectively starting the chapter over. It was horrifying, but liberating and necessary, it already feels so much smoother.

oh. the reason i couldnt sleep wasnt bc of the caffeine. it was the adrenaline kicking in bc of the blood sugar falling

I see it now... tumblr is like a park......and the posts....they are seeds......we are all pigeons...

It was 330am the other night and I realized wow, I really enjoy cities a lot more than I ever thought. For reference I used to always think I'd live in the countryside, I found cities crowded and overstimulating at best and disgustingly plague ridden at worst. Then I went to Chicago and let me tell you something about the windy city hit just a bit different. Is the public transit perfect? No. Sadly America is lagging severely in that department, but you can still get almost anywhere in the city via train, bus, walking or biking for a measly $5 a day. I came from Cleveland which has very minimal public transit to speak of, and my only other experience had been Boston which I found difficult to navigate. The L at least for me is super easy to navigate, decently affordable, and user friendly. Then there's the diversity and culture, Cleveland is a vanilla cake with chocolate sprinkles, you'll get a black person here and there but it's mostly white. Chicago is the largest most diverse city I'd ever visited and I love trying all the different foods, hearing the different languages, just experiencing everything. And yeah, the city is noisy, but I don't find it overstimulating for some reason. Honestly I like how alive the city feels and I hope to one day live in Chicago proper instead of just the suburbs.

I'm Dom in the streets and sub in the sheets.

I had this incredible epiphany at about 3am one time and I wrote it down before I went to sleep so I didn't forget this extremely important information.

I looked at it the next morning and scrawled across the paper it said: "Sleep is like turning a computer on and off, but for humans."

So if you'll excuse me, I'm off to go collect my Berggruen prize.

ffff I just need to read silly manga and watch soap operas and relax

From The 3 A.M. Epiphany

Exercise 17: "SYNESTHESIA. Use synesthesia...in a short scene—surreptitiously, without drawing too much attention to it—to convey to your reader an important understanding of some ineffable sensory experience. Use sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell. 600 words"

Level 4

The sky was purple-green in the distance, sour and sharp like an unripe grape. The taste was unpleasant on Proctor’s tongue. That color indicated that the air was thick with Crustium…Level 4? Overhead, sea bats screeched warnings to each other. The waves shoved at The Storm, boiling up and sinking back into the depths. She could taste the approaching hurricane on the wind, the clouds crowded on the horizon in a wooly mess of gray shot through the metallic taste of a battery. The metal eyepiece of the telescope was warm from being held against her face. The world shrank into a circle.

They’d never come up against anything higher than a Level 3. Proctor strained her eye. Her lips were salty. The silhouette of something dark and huge snaked out of the water, no bigger than her thumb at this distance—a tentacle? An arm? It vanished back down just as quickly, and Proctor closed the telescope, stomach curdling. Her clothes flapped in the wind, which had risen sharply as if to hurry her along. Jethro barked, flicking his stump of a left ear as he observed her from his usual perch next to the steering wheel. That’s right, she wasn’t alone.

“Are you ready, boy?” She squatted, trying to calm herself by patting his head. His hair was matted, as always. He gave a happy bark and licked her hand.

Jethro followed her around as Proctor swept around the deck, jerking on the knots to guy lines to ensure they were tied down tight. All her books were already safe downstairs, and she’d locked up the rest of the rations in the cabinets.

When did it get so dark? The world seemed to have dropped into a minor key; just twenty minutes earlier the water had been a sparkling turquoise and the sky was a crisp pink, the color of a freshly sliced watermelon. Now it looked like the sun had been swathed in layers of green and purple tulle, light barely reaching a boiling dark sea that looked thick and poisonous. The sound of the crashing waves was drowned out by screams and distant splashes that echoed from the inside of her head. Bodies in the water, their staring eyes bloated with salt and webbed over with death.

Not like last time.

Proctor leapt up the stairs to the helm, dimly hearing the clack-clacking of nails behind her and felt a wet nose nudging at her hip. It took her two tries to pull up the digital navigator. The edges of the screensaver were pulsing red, warning her of the approaching threat. She’d jabbed at the glowing “Combat Mode” option on the dropdown menu when the First Call came.

It was so short.

 The deck tilted under her feet.

The other Gaunters had sounded exactly like she’d read about: deep, extended rumbling that sounded like the earth itself was splitting apart, hundreds of miles beneath the water.

But all she heard was a single clear note, silvery and cold as glass, as if someone had tapped on the side of a champagne flute.

Sweat trickled, gray and cold, down her back.

Had she made a mistake? With shaking hands she consulted the Axiom. Proctor’s eyes kept flicking around the screen. The sea was churning now, but there was no sign of the Gaunter.

Level 4 and above— Purple/Green/Blue Horizon.

Signs of approach: deep vibrations, rumbling, low roaring. Possible visual indicators of entity appendages or attack technique (see also: Identifying Gaunters, Preparing for Combat/Capture).

That couldn’t be right. Jethro whined at her feet.

Desperately, she clicked back to the search page.

A flume of water exploded upwards in a roar of white two feet from her face, and all she could think was no no no this was all wrong, all wrong—

cecelia and her selfhood by villagers truly the most narrative song of all time. it's not as much of a banger as, say, the mariner's revenge song, but it does make the little Opinionated About Statues brain go Wheeee

Well hello there Kinito community <3

Guess. Guess who finished his Kinito cast designs :)

I'm totally normal about them /silly

A glimpse of lore but it's actually a scene I talked about before when I posted that 10 pics of 3am yapping session from my notes app

Still gotta figure out Sam(i.e. Sonny actually)'s "hair"??? idk how you call that but like, you get the point it's quite the silly scrimblo I lob heem just gotta get used to drawing him more eueue

BONUS‼️

Featuring @goldenstrwbrry 's Sentient Kinito because silly 🫶

Epiphany club except one toasted his user alive and the other is just a silly gay boy /JOKING

dumping fuckboy leon ramblings because i need to post it somewhere.

fuckboy leon would remember all the miniscule details about your life and he'd surprise you. he'd take you out on some shitty date and act like an asshole, and then hold his arm out before you eat your food and he's like "wait, dude aren't you allergic to soy or something? i think its in that."

he'd remember your favorite flower. and he'd huff and groan over you borrowing his sweatshirts but he'd never want to take them back unless its to get them smelling like him again. he'd accidentally say some stupid shitty thing about your appearance because that's all he knows from his friends and when he sees you get upset there's gears that turn in his head like. is that...not normal? why are they mad???? should i be getting mad ????

and you'd fall asleep on him and his entire left side would fall asleep and he'd be annoyed but he wouldn't be able to bring himself to wake you up.

and he'd ruin all your fucking attempts at dating. it wouldnt read as jealousy. not at first. he'd just do some shit. see you hitting on someone and he'd walk up, wrap an arm around you and be like "hey, how's your diarrhea going?" just to skeeve out the other person and you'd get so pissed and ask him why the fuck he did that and he'd just shrug "its funny."

fuckboy leon's epiphany moment would be so cute but it would make me cry.

him realizing he's in love. and he loves you. and what that means. and the inevitable fallout of him dealing with that and all the feelings.

i know he's terrified of commitment. he would not want to go for it. he'd maybe try and say "maybe i can just do FWB for a while and it'll be okay. maybe ill be okay with that".

but it makes him feel worse.

he tries every trick in the book but his book SUCKS.

so he tries to cut you off.

goes distant.

flings himself into other women to try and forget.

it makes him feel worse.

he picks fights with you. "maybe if they hate me i'll move on."

it makes him feel worse.

him finally breaking down at 3am calling you while he's out cross faded as fuck. dumps everything on you.

he regrets it in the morning. he does. he tries to backpedal. tries to say "wow i was sooo fucked up i don't even remember".

but you remember.

and you wont let him get away with it.

he needs you to chase him a little bit. he needs you to reassure him that there's something in him worth trying for, because otherwise what's the point. you're just there to make fun of him, right?

but once he's yours he's yours.

and it'll take a long time to undo all the things he was forced to teach himself. all the ways he was forced to hate himself. ohhh it'd be infuriating but at the end of it all you'll have a soft, sad man who wants to know love and he wants to love you so intimately and he'll do anything it takes to fight for you.

If you read Xem's post, you will see that she states you should know the basics about that animal before confirming it. You should know that a wolf is a canine that is a pack hunter that lives mostly in the northern hemisphere. That they howl and usually hunt deer or some deer relative. The have fur and are pursuit predators. Those are the basics. No one except you and your friends said you're only a real wolf therian if you can name top ten unusual facts about wolves. How can someone confirm a wolf if they do not know what a wolf is? You yourself said that you differ from wild wolf behaviours. So you know you're not a wild wolf because of that. But twist words and play the victim I guess.

The OP claimed, very blatantly, that if you make a mistake about some species fact that someone else considers "basic knowledge" then they shouldn't be allowed to identify as that species anymore and should be gatekept from the label. Said basic knowledge included very common and easy-to-make mistakes. Someone can identify as a hyena without knowing at first they are feliforms and not caniforms, the OP said that they can't. Someone can identify as a wolfdog or a leopard, and mistake a wolfdog for a husky mix or a jaguar for a leopard in a photo. That happens, they can look very similar to each other. Idk how to explain that a hyena looks like a dog(canine), just like a thylacine looks like a dog. You can go most of your life before finding out the former is related to cats and the latter is related to kangaroos. You can put a leopard and a jaguar next to each other and it is difficult as hell to tell the difference a lot of times. Not all wolfdogs look like wolves, some just look like dogs especially if they're low content. Some dogs just look like wolfdogs or wolves without being wolf hybrids. See: the pile of movies and shows with "wolves" in it (it's wolf-like dogs being casted as wolves, lots of people don't notice). It's not common knowledge, it's fun facts you might stumble across in a "10 Things You Didn't Know About These Strange Animals" YouTube compilation at 3am.

The OP was stating very clearly that your identity becomes invalid the moment you fail a game of spot-the-difference. The OP post is capped off with:

"So yeah. You should know a lot about the animal you claim to be. If not? Don’t claim it."

I'm gonna be blunt that the OP had one of the most rancid takes I'd seen in a while. Knowing the creature exists was not stated anywhere in the post to be enough, you have to "know a lot".

Someone might not know that animal's realistic behaviors, or where they all live geologically, or what all of their body language means. Someone can know their theriotype before they figure out that later stuff, it's happened all the time and continues to happen. This also isn't covering non-earthly animal identities and how you can't even do ecological research on those. Someone can't go on wikipedia and read up on the ecology of their specific dragon species that has zero record of ever existing. Plenty of those with non-earthly animal identities are not less real as a result, it is an absolute buckwild take that earthly animal identities are somehow different with a higher bar of entry. That's not even mentioning people that identify as earthly animals with unrealistic ecology, because that's also a thing.

For the second part of your ask, I'm guessing you're referring to this recent one. You missed this entire chunk of the post:

"...I do not know most things about wolves off the top of my head. Don't ask me anything about wolf ecology outside the bare basics, I couldn't tell you. When I was really young I thought my nonhuman identity was a dog until one day I had the epiphany that I was actually a wolf. I didn't have to bury my head in research to figure that out, I just knew for not much reason. Any information on wolves I know today is stuff I picked up here and there over the years, independent of my identity"

To condense all of that into something shorter: I just knew I was a wolf before I knew much of anything about wolves. I didn't know I wasn't a wild wolf because I know a lot about wild wolf behavior. I genuinely don't know how that conclusion was drawn after reading that.

"Wolves are canines that live in packs and eat deer" isn't research, that's "I watched a movie once that had wolves in it", which is honestly the extent of what a lot of people know about wolves unless they're invested or something. That's not enough according to the OP, and if that's not what was meant then the entirety of the post was worded extremely poorly.

And this last part isn't related to anon, but I've seen a lot of responses since yesterday about "but why is research bad"? No one has said that it was, and I scroll the alterhuman tags almost daily. That's not something people are arguing. The point isn't "research bad, grr learning about animals sucks", the point is that this discourse is old. Like, old as hell. We're not gatekeeping nonhuman identities based on if you "know a lot" going in. We're not going to claim someone isn't a "real therian" if they get one thing wrong about their theriotype.

Let's say that someone is a leopard therian and posts a picture of a jaguar in some moodboard or something. You know the decent thing to do? You might let them know one of the photos is actually a jaguar, which will usually get you a "oh huh, thanks. didn't catch that". At no point do you suddenly have imply they aren't a "real" leopard therian. You can ask if they've maybe considered jaguars, but they are fully able to respond "yeah but no, I'm a leopard". And that's fine. Someone can be a hyena therian, accidentally say that hyenas are canines. It is absolutely fine and possible to say that hyenas are feliforms without pointing fingers and going "you're not a real hyena, because real hyenas would've known that already".

It's not 2012 anymore, we've grown past this. It is the strangest thing ever to see in the year two-thousand-twenty-four.