Just a spider hanging in a swamp

million dollar question for Last Days: how well/badly would it have gone if Joe and Cleo decided that actually, they needed enough help that contacting Horse Head Farms was worth the risk? (i am predictable) ~@betweenlands

so fun fact: in some original draft they WERE going to meet horse head farms i just realized i had to cut that for the story to have decent pacing. in the original actually instead of the wels thing in the church horse head farms and cleo were going to make some fast deals and that's how they were going to get their "in". however it worked better for that part to more focus on "people joe and cleo have helped in the past", thematically.

however like. it's very fun to think about. so okay my thoughts after i finished last days is that in SOME version of this story, hypno and xb are. hypno is a mage - not actually a necromancer but very good at magic - and xb is just. also a demon. he's just chilling though. like, he slipped through the cracks the man in the striped suit left and went "this is neat i'm in the human world. i'm deserting now." and then he just did. he meets hypno, they somehow befriend each other in a strangely elaborate dance around each other, and then somewhere they establish horse head farms. most people don't know xb is a demon but they DO know horse head farms deals in souls and deals and ious and that you cannot trade away anything to them that they won't come calling for. but they can get you what you want.

this, hilariously, i think makes horse head farms the neat demon parallel to the atsign agency? and if i watched more hypno and xb i'd almost be tempted to write that now.

anyway joe and xb can't meet, but not for the reasons cleo and hypno think. cleo thinks joe can't meet xb because she doesn't want horse head farms to have the soul of an angel on call, joe has enough on his plate and they have no idea what would happen if they had an iou from an angel, retired or not. she does not know xb is a demon. hypno thinks joe and xb can't meet because joe is weirdly well-known for talking circles into tasks, not even to be tricksy, but because he's like that, and like, hypno has no idea how xb would handle someone fulfilling the iou technically correctly but actually entirely wrong, and also an iou like that, as much as hypno knows the two of them would want one from joe, probably isn't worth much if they can't sell it again as something useful.

the ACTUAL reason joe and xb can't meet is that they'd immediately recognize what each other are, freeze staring at each other while they both decide whether they're supposed to blow their cover to attack or what, and have to get extracted from doing something stupid by their respective partners.

this only like, half answers your question at best, and has invented an entire extra buddy comedy that once again i don't watch enough hypno and xb to write but. it is the answer i have. so there you go. last days horse head farms.

🌈and🤍perhaps? ~@betweenlands

🌈is there a fic that you worked *really fucking hard on* that no one would ever know? maybe a scene/theme you struggled with?

Yeah Chapter 9 of Hound's Tooth. That chapter kicked my ass. The first half of the chapter was a flashback, and it wasn't too hard to write. The second half, however, was an intense, inside-Doc's-head-the-whole-time panic attack. It took ages to make. I deleted and restarted it at least 5 times. I isolated it in its own document so I could rewrite parts and compare to the first draft. I sent it to three different people to proofread, with a checklist of what needed accomplished during the scene. I have never struggled so much with a chapter in my life.

🤍what's one fic of yours you think people didn't "get"?

Not that people didn't "get" per se, but that enough people didn't focus on.

Casting Rain was an anti-war story. Which, most people got the impression of "war is hell" by the end of it, but mostly with the caveat "which is why we fight for our friends/take solace in our friends." That wasn't my intention. My intention was "War will destroy everyone, everything, unapologetically." I probably could've gotten there if I had given the story an unhappy ending, but I needed that catharsis XD

I'm trying it again with MSH, and I think I'm pulling it off better. People really seem to be latching onto the "This community is deeply traumatized by its past violence, and its ripples are still actively destroying the people living there," themes. If/when I get that far, I want people to deeply, deeply dread the coming conflict, even if the main characters desperately want it. If I can do that, I'll have achieved my goal I think.

Real Fic Writer Ask Meme

welcome to the dominion fandom welcome to also insane about vikingpilot. have a good bell noises ~@betweenlands

:0 i have been bell noised!

@betweenlands replied to your post:

LUMIANS FIXXIVERSE MY FAVORITE TOPIC OF FUCKERY

HAHA YES

okay. this is going to be long. because i have an above-average number of thoughts. somehow a joke headcanon became a major element of how i draw fv fanart and it's not leaving anytime soon

so, real quick: what are lumians? lumians/lumins/lumiens are an alien species made collectively by the yogscast fandom. i admittedly don't know a lot about the origins because i was mostly in the flux buddies corner of the fandom in 2015, but the general idea is: Xephos, one of the protagonists of Shadow of Israphel, is referred to as "spaceman" several times by other characters. what this is supposed to be is a reference to the fact that xephos's very first skin was william riker from star trek, and the person playing him has always intended for him to be human afaik. what the fandom took this as is "oh, yep, he's an alien, he crash-landed on minecraftia and honeydew found him". the generally agreed-upon traits of a lumian are glowing eyes & bioluminescent freckles, usually pointy ears, and sometimes tails and paws.

now that we have this context out of the way, rewind to me watching through fixxiverse for the first time totally blind. 3 videos in i get to 100 Days Colony Edition, which opens with an escape pod landing on a planet after an accident and the protagonist, a member of the crew, stumbling around trying to orient himself on this new world. so im ALREADY losing my mind

and then we get to one (1) line Ross says offhandedly:

"I have no idea what these things are, but I'm fairly certain they eat spacemen for midnight snack."

at which point i go SPACEMAN? LUMIAN FIX LOL? and latch onto this concept with all of the strength in my puny body.

This action will have consequences.

i get to Lore of Tovalyn and go, oh hey, these are the guys that're on the same ship Ross was! okay, they're lumians now too. because at this point i have no context for anything asides from "these guys are from space in a setting where that's an oddity". ramirez's phrasing when talking about the wandering traders on tovalyn in colony edition made it sound like just the wandering traders were descended from the sheriff crew, so i constructed a plotline in my head where tovalyn was populated by normal humans and the wandering traders were part lumian and were in hiding and pretending to be normal humans to avoid the wrath of the inquisitors. makes sense so far.

a quick sidebar: while watching 100 Days Mage Edition, i called a shot that bob is fred's grandpa (percy tells him "You were named Bob after your grandfather" in 100 Days Fallout Bunker, which was later clarified to be as a "close friend of the family" meaning and not a biological relation meaning but later was "after i'd ran with it A Lot"), which meant that percy was bob's son and therefore half-lumian, and therefore fred is also part lumian. this is why i draw fred with glowy freckles despite him otherwise looking human.

back on track: i now have this fully-fledged narrative in my brain that is entirely based off a joke headcanon i had before i knew everything was one big connected storyline. then we get to the end of 1 Year Of Minecraft, and uh.. oop. turns out everyone's human. that's a canonical plot point. they are all from original earth, and the inquisitors' plan to cause the singularity was specifically to terraform planets on a wide scale so that humankind would be spread throughout the cosmos and free from potential extinction. ramirez outright states that there was no other life out there until after the singularity.

whoops. WELL, I ALREADY HAVE ALL THIS FANART, MAY AS WELL COMMIT

ur xb art fucking Exploding Me holy shit it slams ~@betweenlands

thank you :^D!!! i am an enjoyer of big fish. i once did nothing but play subnautica all day for a week straight while i had the flu many years ago and it changed smth about my brain chemistry permanently

betweenlandsposting incoming

you wanna know something i really like about the betweenlands? even though the whole environment is hostile, the whole fuckin dimension is fuckin eating you alive, breaking you down to parts as it has done so many others, there are still little joys. growing a small pear plant. keeping an emberling. raising your own chiromaw. the beautiful sheen of valonite. the wisps, riding a giant frog, living sheltered in a giant tree, figuring out what a simulacrum does....the world hates you. but you love it. you love its little pieces and you can always find something more to keep you going, to keep you coming back.

for the music thing, have two very different ones -- i really like Marble Cake by Aesop Rock and Human In The Evening by Fox Stevenson ~@betweenlands

FOX STEVENSON I LOVE THAT GUY!! that's one of my favorite songs from his new album too!! marble cake was interesting too! definitely not my normal jam but it's fun to hear this kinda stuff that's so far outside my normal field.

in return i provide Dead by Stan SB (Stan SB being a pseudonym of Fox Stevenson), and Borax by Patrick O'Neill

i feel like you would be the "loL RaNdOm xD" sort of character without there being any basis to it in canon. people would just decide you had a scenecore or 2010s Disney Channel aesthetic. for no reason.

i am sorry ~@betweenlands

…no i think you’re right, i’d get anime scourge-ified in an instant

ik this is unrelated to the coldplayposting but it reminded me we share a musical artist in common. have u heard like. fox stevenson's latest 4 or so songs. music of explode my bones ~@betweenlands

YEEEEEAAAAAAA VICTORY OVER TRUTH AND GET THROUGH ARE INSANE !!! get through is actually in my techno playlist for Reasons augh i love that one <3

I loved Elden Ring. What an awesome game

grian? ~@betweenlands

First impression: dang this guy plays minecraft a lot differently than paulsoaresjr

Impression now: the man finally learned how to play modern survival so he’s going back to his roots as a lore gamer

Favorite moment: that time he wrote Iskall an honest to god letter for ‘Iskall Architechs lol’

Idea for a story: well time’s given me iremi grian brainrot so i’d love to write about a riddlefisher showing up in london to harass grian

alternatively just for normal minecraft stuff i feel like the giant eye of sauron iskall built on his s6 base was underused in potential. give me a crackfic where sauron shows up in hermitcraft and chaos ensues

Unpopular opinion: he’s a grown man stop treating him like a child. also i HATE watcher/avian grian. i just do! but it’s an opinion and an unpopular one at that so no hate to anybody who does enjoy it ofc

Favorite relationship: he and mumbo are just. so good together. i remember learning about mumbo through grians videos and being like ‘hey this man seems normal apart from the fact that he’s being harassed by grian’ and then he was not normal and i love them both

Favorite headcanon: the one where he and pearl are siblings is pretty neat, and actually i lord before! chicken avian grian would be hilarious in s6 with the poultryman shenanigans

for the ask game, how about... 7 and/or 22? ~@betweenlands

7. How do you choose which POV to write from?

it comes to me in a vision? i have no idea how to answer this, honestly; the pov is normally one of the first things that comes hand-in-hand with the idea for the fic, you know? sometimes i have to do more deciding about it, and then i think it is "who's limited pov is more interesting here" that decides it, but for basically anything longer by the time i'm seriously considering the idea i already mostly know what pov it will be in. the major exception to this is the (discontinued) dsmp fic, san luis, which the CONCEPT for was actually originally to have it be in i think wilbur's pov, but i realized the first chapter worked better from phil's and then that actually thematically the whole fic worked better from phil's and then i never looked back, but most of the time? the pov character is like... integral to the idea.

22. Are there certain types of writing you won’t do? (style, pov, genre, tropes, etc)

i'm definitely not great with first person, although i'll try it sometimes as needed (especially if stylistically it's like, say, someone writing a letter or something, where 'first person' basically just means 'dialogue'). i tend to be pretty open to TRY writing anything, but it's got to be interesting to me. like, i probably wouldn't write most traditional like... soulmate or slice-of-life stuff, because it wouldn't hold my attention, if that makes sense. i can normally find a way to tweak a lot of tropes i don't like into stuff that i do, but often my "i don't like to read this" tropes in fanfic have less to do with the trope and more to do with "i have a very limited tolerance for a certain kind of schmoop", you know? i try to keep my horizons wide!

5 and 28 for the ask game? ~@betweenlands

5. Do you have any writing superstitions? What are they and why are they 100% true?

Anything you write while you're cold will be cold. This is good for trying to write snow and mountains, but bad for everything else. It's 100% true because you cannot write about heat while you're shivering. Being cold is miserable and terrible and is only made bearable by blankets. I have lap blankets expressly for writing and drawing.

Maybe I'm just angry about getting cold lol

28. What is the most delightful character you've ever written? Why?

Already answered! But on the list of delightful characters, Gem is also pretty high up there. She is mischievous. She is pleasant. She has rabies.

Dayyum Guuuuurrrrlllll

☀ and ⚔ but you can't pick mtau. or maybe you can if nobody else sends you ⚔ idk ~@betweenlands

MEAN TO ME..

☀️ - Favorite moment from season 1? From season 2 so far?

ohhh difficult........

season 1: I Will Not Be Afraid is pretty good. exorcising the evil with an 80s power ballad is one hell of a power move and i love that for fix. also the ghost's vault reveal in legundo's pov.

season 2: "what's the interest rate like on your word?" (also nuke asking viking if he can play WAP + "can you leave?") (also also viking playing the piano on stream and then pigstep starts playing. bonus points bc i went afk, came back, and slowly realized that it was in game and not viking's background music.)

⚔️ - Give an AU concept that you think would be cool!

something that's been in the back of my head for a while now, kinda-sorta related to midas touch au bc faexxit but also works outside of that: what if welsknight stuck around? like, ghost of dominion future wels keeping an eye on fix as he tries to change his ways, only for everything to go horribly wrong and wels can't do anything but be frustrated even though he knew this was how it was gonna turn out anyway. i was really rooting for you this time.