Someone made Preston upset

Now he's doomed to live his days in Preston's magical story. To his own ruin, his very fate written by that little playwright himself.

Posting dumb stuff on Tumblr taught me more about writing yet again. You can use the same metaphor and just change the words and get totally different people. What is that magic? Like there's a huge difference between-

"He follows us across all realms. There is a most unspeakable phenomenon in goldfish, where its feces travels behind it- yes. Much like that."

and

"So the goldfish shit finally decided to come to the party."

My queues post on my dash did a thing...

Which I think proves just what @neil-gaiman does is actual magic aka Modern Witchcraft.

I don't think many people realize how much they've been turned into a bunch of casually cynical jerks.

Someone may come to their parents and say "I want to write a book" and their parents will say "it's really hard to get published".

Someone might confide in their sibling and say "I want to sell my art on "x" platform" and that sibling will say "do you know how many people you'd be competing with? Do you know how many shops are even on that platform?"

I know a kid who once told his best friend "I think I wanna start a dnd podcast" and the friend was like "do you know what the word "oversaturation" means?"

Personally, I don't know why any of that matters? And even if it did, perhaps your response should be "Do it! Do it and see where it goes!"

Given how wizards are themed around higher education, with their universities and ivory towers, I wanna see more fiction that goes into their published papers.

Like, there should be massive drama in the Wizarding world about how Fantasy Wikipedia says "There's no consensus about the origins of skydoves" when in fact, there very much is, everyone knows they were created in the first or second dragon wars, and that's uncontroversial. One single wizard at the University of Towers who thinks they're an offshoot of mermaids DOES NOT MEAN IT'S AN OPEN ISSUE.

Papers that are rebuttals to other magical discoveries. Like, look, that spell just won't work, and you can't call it a "theoretical exercise" just to cover up the fact that you've not been able to cast it. You can't combine Ichthyomancy with completely unrelated elemental summonings, that's just not how magic works, in all due respect.

Thesis defense would be significantly scarier when all your reviewers can cast Everburning Fireball on your ass.

Learning Theoretical Evocation from a hungover lizardman TA at 8am, because the professor for this course has been off on the Elemental Plane of Circles for half the semester trying to finish her paper on how Centaurs predate horses rather than the other way around.

Speaking of which, the life of a wizard graduate student... You keep getting called to go on "quests" which are just overgrown research expeditions to help out some professor's project. You spent nearly a month in that damp castle capturing all the spinfrogs you could find, all to help your professor's project on the possibilities of concentrated soul essences. To this day, you still get dizzy whenever you see battlements, let alone a donjon.

Reblog to curse your followers and mutuals.

fionna and cake drawings before and after watching the episodes so far. it’s nostalgic and somehow cathartic and poignant and relatable and—it just started

Ways to solve the Why Can’t They Use Magic To Fix Everything problem:

•Magic has a cost. The more powerful the spell, the more it drains the caster’s life.

•’We tried that ages ago.The gods grew angry at our arrogance and stripped most of our powers away.’

•Magic is tied to the stars and planets. Its full potential can only manifest on certain astrological events.(And these are once-in-a-millennia type events)

•Only one will a pure heart and selfless intentions can use their full power.

•All magic users are descendants of a (god/spirit). As the years have gone by, the blood has become more diluted, and magic has grown weaker as a result.

•Spell casters can only cast (finite number of spells). They end up using their gift on trivial matters.

•’After the war, we realized the dangers that magic presented. And so we sealed it away, lest it destroy the world.’

•Everyone has magic. Trying to solve one problem is futile as it can be easily undone(often violently and with much destruction)

•inverse of the above: everyone has magic, but their powers are limited and (mostly) harmless.

•Individual, company, or nation has a monopoly on the only substance that can negate magic. As they rule the world, they have installed anti-magic devices everywhere.

•Individual, group, company, or nation has a monopoly on magic. To insure their grip on power, all magic users that do not submit to them are killed.

•An act of good will spawn one of evil. The use of fire will cause somewhere to grow cold and dark. And to save a life, one must sacrifice another.

•The only magic people have access to is Chaos Magic. No one uses it, for obvious reasons.

—••• •• ——• ——• • ••• —•• •• —•—• —•— ••— •••

Season 1 Rarijack is really funny

It's good and cool to give your characters a single simple, straightforward, non-urgent, super-achievable goal that shouldn't really cost anything or hurt anyone, make that the driving factor for most of their decisions, and then have the Plot do everything in its power to stop them.

helpful sites for writers

i have a little collection of websites i tend to use for coming up with ideas, naming people or places, keeping clear visuals or logistics, writing basics about places i've never been to, and so on. i tend to do a lot of research, but sometimes you just need quick references, right? so i thought i'd share some of them!

Behind the Name; good for name meanings but also just random name ideas, regardless of meanings.

Fantasy Name Generator; this link goes to the town name generator, which i use most, but there are lots of silly/fun/good inspo generators on there!

Age Calculator; for remembering how old characters are in Y month in Z year. i use this constantly.

Height Comparison; i love this for the height visuals; does character A come up to character B's shoulder? are they a head taller? what does that look like, height-wise? the chart feature is great!

Child Development Guide; what can a (neurotypical, average) 5-year-old do at that age? this is a super handy quickguide for that, with the obviously huge caveat that children develop at different paces and this is not comprehensive or accurate for every child ever. i like it as a starting point, though!

Weather Spark; good for average temperatures and weather checking!

Green's Dictionary of Slang; good for looking up "would x say this?" or "what does this phrase mean in this context?" i love the timeline because it shows when the phrase was historically in use. this is english only, though; i dig a little harder for resources like this in other languages.

It's not.like he wanted to be here, Jesus.

Not that he'd leave either knowing where they are right now— mind you.

"And who is this, Cap?" Shazam screaming child gives a strained smile, back straight and answers.

"My colleague–"

Danny interrupts, face finally away from the glass that separates him and space. "Shazam over here got grounded by mom, and since he had a JL meeting, I was to come along as supervision."

Batman is eerily still, staring at them.

Poor Billy, he's gonna deal with this alone next time.

I love being a writer

I love being a writer.

I love being a writer despite: -how over looked it is in art spaces -how stressfull it can be -how tedious it can be -how much my self doubt tries to convince me otherwise -how harshly people judge it -how much I might complain

I love being a writer.

I love creating words for others to escape into the way I've escaped into world. I love challenging myself to learn about things I never would have before, all because a character demanded it. I love putting together the puzzles of words in my head. I love creating new characters and watching them come to life.

Being a writer is magical and nothing can stop me from loving it.

A blade of swirling smoke and reddened eyes 💨🍃

This started as a joke but I think I committed to hard - happy 420 😎

you can support me on Patreon for £1 and help me keep making art!

Bad idea: Age gap discourse but in a fantasy land where there's multiple races who have vastly different lifespans and life styles.

Is it wrong for a 27 year old human to date a 140 year old stone elf, considering most stone elves don't get out of diapers till their 30s?

Is it wrong for a 80 year old dwarf to date a two year old fire wisp, when fire wisps only live up to 5 years (between the eruptions) and have memories of their past lives, so in a way they're "born" at age 400,000+? That octogenarian dwarf is way younger than the fire wisp that's only physically younger than some of the socks the dwarf has!

Is it wrong for a chronomancer who was never born to date, well, anyone? They are zero years old and infinity years old and negative one hundred and seventeen years old all at once. They look like an old human, sure, with the long white beard and the wrinkly skin, but as far as anyone can tell, they've always looked like that. We've seen the cave paintings.

Is it wrong for a 30 year old lizardman (that's old in lizardman years) to date a human who is 60 years old in biological years (because of aging spells), 26 years old in lived-experience years, but only 13 years old in calendar years? (ie, they were born 13 years ago, but spent some of that time in sideways timelines, so they've lived more years than have passed in their home timeline?)

Is it wrong for a 12,000 year old dragon date a pile of 400 kobolds when kobolds only live like 10 years on average, but reach full maturity in one year? And if you disagree, can you do anything about it? You do know what happened to the last policeman who tried to arrest a dragon, right? Their city is still smoldering, 50 years later.

Is it wrong for anyone to date the time worm? It's the same age, every year. So the age gap can only intensify. If you start dating the time worm when you're both the same age, when do you break it off because you've become too much older than them?

And most confusing of all... What about the fairies? They could be anything between a thousand and a day old, they would lie about their age either way, and they can look like whatever they want. There's fairies we know for a fact have been around since the founding of The City of Towers, who met the silent mother herself, and also look like they're at most ten years old. Is it wrong to date them, or just really uncomfortable for everyone who sees it? And on the other side there's fairies who are "born" (hatched? They come from plants, I'm not sure what the verb even would be. Seeded? Sprouted, maybe) this week who are already appearing like middle-aged men and dancing with widows in what looks like a scheme to run off with her fortune but they never take the money, because what would a fairy want with worthless metal discs? Maybe fairies have a hive mind or genetic memory or reincarnation with full memories, they'd never tell you or give you a straight (or consistent) answer anyway.

Stonefolk are really the only inter-race dating situation anyone can agree on. They're unthinking & unmoving solid rock during the day, so those hours don't count. Thus their "real age" is a nice even half of their true age. So if you meet a stonefolk who was dug out 30 years ago, watch out: that's a 15 year old, and if you're a 25 year human, that's too young for you, even though their dig-date is five years before your birth-date.

EDIT: 2024/01/12: Changed the name of the Stonefolk