make bad art for the love of the game now!

First rule of volcano climbing is stay hydrated. Water in, water out. You only control one of those, so match the flow.

Second rule is have fun! A good rule-of-thumb is 2 per km climbed, but spares are always handy.

Third rule is carry a 10-foot pole, preferably something flammable. Sounds counter-intuitive, but if something is going to spontaneously combust, then better it than you.

Rule four is watch out for the Gougar. This is why you bring spares.

I'm fucking with you. They entombed the Gougar in '98.

Rule six, don't get too comfortable. That's when the mountain smiles.

The planet Century was not named by scientists, but they would be proud of its literalness.

With proportions and an orbital period similar to Earth, in the goldilocks zone of a yellow dwarf, it was a winning lottery ticket of terran conditions. That is until we saw the rotational period. Just over a year, slightly longer than its orbit. Mere megaannums from tidal lock.

If you live a day on century, count yourself lucky. The sluggish turning of the world waddles after a retreating star, making sunrise somewhere to visit. Such is the geography of time, a century a day.

Breathe in for four, hold for four, out for eight.
You're here, you're now. Don't lose this again.

Why was this even an issue, it was literally nothing? You just talked about your weekend. Forgot to ask how they're doing. Rounded the corner and realized. Body locked up. Punched the wall in your mind. Bloody knuckles straight through and you're there again, its now again, just a papercut but you hold it open to let the guilt out with the blood and you pull too hard and skin tears and

Breathe in for four, hold for four, out for eight.

i love starting and ending with the same line so much, it's kind of a problem

Working crete is a little like working the forge of creation, if you squint and tilt your head to the side. It all starts with a melting, shedding mass at an inconceivable heat. As the last of the Impurities bubble and scrape away, the oozing block is ready to be shaped. A few quick strikes loosen a section, then a steady breath from the mouthpiece blows the newly liquid crete into a cogent form. Hammer, blow, inspect. Create, imbue, judge. Mold new forms and breath life into them. I'm not saying that I'm a god, I'm just saying I sympathize.

idk why but the game overgrowth, with its empty world and monolithic, geometric formations, has been a huge inspiration for me over the years. that's where "crete" comes from. it might actually be from the therium-2 mod, i don't remember

Usually smoke from an access shaft is a bad sign. A heart thudding, boot pounding, comms blasting bad time. Not when it smells this good though.

I pull off the grate and drop into the shaft, taking care not to trip on the loose wiring. Another laz-patch fix, added on the rest. My home is coming apart at the seams and I'm powerless to stop it. That roasting hopper smells delicious though.

Sitting 10 meters down the tunnel, three techs orbit an insect laden grill. A raise of my toolbelt, a nod, and I've got a seat and a plate.

One last careful stroke and his latest phrase is complete. "Generations churn beneath heedlessly blazing beacons" emblazoned across the tavern wall. He tilts back to examine his work, finally seeing with his eyes what his mind knew to be there all along. This canvas was stubborn, the wood shrugging off acid where limestone would have bubbled away under his maxillae. He doesn't mind. His tunnels were as in need of shaping as anywhere, but the density of history unwritten out here pulls him like a lighthouse. He will make it real, he knows, as he skitters off into the dark.

this writing is inspired by a creature in a cosmic-horror shadowdark game I ran that my players named the bookwyrm. here is a drawing of it that i made based on this diving beetle larva

Troubleshooting is simple. First, define what the correct behavior is, what you're actually seeing, and if there's a difference. Sometimes they're the same, and the "problem" you saw was with your expectations.

If they're different, you start the loop: Replicate the problem, change something, repeat. Preferably change pieces in isolation, and zoom in on changes that have an effect. Once you can't replicate the problem anymore, you've either succeeded, or bungled it so bad you can't even see what you've done. Hopefully the former.

This isn't really a creative writing. It's 2AM and my home server finally boots. Sleep time.

this project was my weekend. could not get any output from the damn thing. i assumed it was cause the cpu had been left in a snowbank for 3 months, but i tested it in another computer and it worked fine. eventually i started cannibalizing my desktop to swap in known-to-be-working parts. it was the damn ram. works fine, but is apparently incompatible with my mobo

Triangular grass crunches under my reinforced boots as I leave the hab. Not grass. Not even "plants" as far as taxonomy is concerned. Doesn't matter. I'd have told the xenobiologist to shove it if they hadn't saved me from a foot kebab day one. Little three-sided railroad spikes, as far as the eye can see. In a moment of weakness, the xenobiologist called them "sedges from satan's nethers". None of us knew what they were saying, but their tone communicated well enough. It's nice when they come out of their shell, even if it's usually to talk about their cult.

They say there's only 5 platonic solids, 6 if you count tucking your homie in for bed. I bet Plato never visited Prismatia. Ok, so there's still only 5 (you've gotta go to Quahalia for more), but you've never seen them like this before! Vibrant, Iridescent, perfectly geometric and endlessly rotating in the infinite, luminescent void. Running the half finished M-line tracks early into a high, anything synth in the cans, is transcendental. It'll make a pretty picture out the train window once Miper gets their shit together, but for now it's a living, vibrating synthwave screensaver to escape into.

slugblaster

Gnashing fangs block the doorway, frozen mid-bite. His worklight glints off steel stalactites, their tips dripping with ferric venom onto red stained stalagmites rising up to pincer their prey. He swallows and steps through. It's just a burst pipe and some centuries.

He continues down the corridor beyond the metal maw, footsteps echoing down the infinite corridors surrounding him. Entombing him.

The dripping doorway behind him doesn't bode well for functioning nodes, but he's put off coming this way long enough. He spies a maintenance port and jacks in. This metal shell of a world will give up its secrets.

inspired by the password "||24^Steel^Grew^Hello^90||". im completely devoid of inspiration today so i got a seed from an xkcd password generator

When I think, which is always, it is in words. I have a very strong internal monologue. If I really try, I can think in pure thoughts, but it takes effort and words usually still slip in. The only times I pursue this are when I'm being creative. While writing, my internal monologue is important as a translator, but the original voice is something wordless and oblique. Following it feels like writing something true, not as in non-fiction, but as in genuine and meaningful. The more I introspect, the more I feel that I am multiple. You might be too.

Meltwater pond the color of rust. 5 centimeters of oily slush coating a stubborn ice sheet stained with fumes. Runoff from the lifeless surrounds washes past spiky, leafless trees bordering the flooded depression. No frogs croak among the dead husks crowding the waterline. Reeds and sedges hunch, lifeless, as if for one last drink.

Sometime soon, this crater will explode. Seeds popping like slow-motion sodium pellets under rolling spring rainstorms that tear up the ground then leave it steaming in the sun. Insects will creak and rodents will burrow and the frogs will return. Oasis in dead expanse of tar.

Snow. It piles and it drifts and it swirls and gusts and flurrys. It's a hail of pricks on the face as the wind picks up, and a treat on the tongue as you breathe heavy from stomping through it. It's a pillow and a bed and a wall and a shelter. It's a soundless white void in the woods, or an unreadable static on the horizon. A delicious treat with maple syrup, a delightful surprise from a pot of boiling water thrown, a vanishing ball for a dog to catch. Snow. Beautiful and malleable and fleeting. I love it.

When things seem bleak, I like to think in the long-term. I'm an optimist, so even if the world is undeniably shitty right now, wait long enough and things will get better. I'm not trying to justify inaction, just overcome paralysis. Sometimes long-term is a week. Today sucks, tomorrow will too, but I get to play pretend on Sunday. Sometimes its a decade. This country is fascist and getting worse, maybe it wont be in 10 years. Only 1 way to find out. Sometimes its a millennia. We may all die from climate change, but something will live. It helps.

Being seen by someone, being known and understood, is a wonderful feeling. I want to understand my friends and I want them to know me. That's what friendship is, yea?

I don't know why it feels so good to be known. Probably people caring about you is really evolutionarily adaptive? Doesn't matter.

It comes out in the simplest of ways. Someone finishes your joke, or knows what you're saying before you do. Beach moment. Someone casually describes you in a way that you've never heard before, but is so fundamentally true.

You fell for obvious connectionbait bro, I love you.

Sometimes when you're going through the motions, you accidentally bump a precarious glass. There's a freeze frame moment as you see it tipping, the product of just one careless moment, and yet all you can do is watch it plummet.

He'd been distracted, fighting with half his mind on dinner. His rote front kick still sent her spinning, and he turned to the next combatant. Something was wrong. She kept spinning. His kick wasn't that good? Her leg raised and time froze. Heel poised over his temple like priceless crystal over granite tiles. Her axe kick fell and he shattered.

based on a true me eating a spinning axe kick while tournament sparring. twice.

Her shedfur coat held all eyes as she crossed the near empty bar. Not many nursing a drink on a Tuesday afternoon, especially not in this rain. A halo of headlight glare hid her face as she slid into the booth across from me. I had my usual corner table in the taillight, my back to the wall. Just out of the the plastic window behind her Plumb street bustled, but I didn't notice it through the deafening silence in the booth. Finally, she produced from her coat a picture of a fancied-up child. "I need this pup" she said.

i found this after coming up with the title, but apparently there's a forged in the dark game with this exact vibe

SPPS had a snow day last Monday.

We talk a lot about seasonal depression, as we should. If you live far away from the equator and you're not taking vitamin D (you should take vitamin D), you almost definitely experience it.

It was 25 C° and sunny today.

Quiet streets were bustling like the fair. Biking down river road, every bench was full. At Minnehaha falls grill smoke filled the air and a stream of families hopped the pointless gate to climb down to the chilly creek. Stepping outside felt like entering a communal caffeine high (sans anxiety). Pure bliss.

Every tabletop game needs some Karst topography. Like, c'mon, it's the caves one! How could you not??? Disappearing streams? Sharp stone spires?? Sinkholes??? I'm convinced that every fantasy game world is primarily Karst and the GM just doesn't know it. Look up the Wulong Karst and their 3 natural bridges. Look up El Nido and the sheer, bladed cliff faces. Coldwater Cave is pretty cool, god I love the driftless area.

Look at this image, does this not look one loot table away from a dungeon map?

ITS NATURAL LABYRINTHS DUG OUT BY ACID RAIN WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT???

Ash flecks her faceplate as she picks her way down the crumbling incline. The gusts have died down, but the updraft of the inferno they incensed pushes her back. She's leaning down into it when a spear of iron crashes through the ceiling above and I lose sight of her amidst a geyser of sparks.

Papa finishes poking the logs into place and, satisfied, sits back down. I scan the new terrain for my explorer. There she is, swinging down from some kindling. Intently I watch as she picks her way through wooden caverns towards the heart of the blaze.

i loved envisioning little guys doing things as a kid. exploring the ever shifting landscape of a fireplace, or jumping between cars and running along barriers out the window on roadtrips, or building little civilizations along the river i just made with the hose. i should do that as an adult. i guess thats why i like ttrpgs. id love to try some raw playing pretend again though

I forgot to write today, but I did just spend llike 30 mins making a meme, so here's that and me counting from 0 to 63 in binary by capitalizing different letters of the word "equine"

equine equinE equiNe equiNE equIne equInE equINe equINE eqUine eqUinE eqUiNe eqUiNE eqUIne eqUInE eqUINe eqUINE equine equinE equiNe equiNE eQuIne eQuInE eQuINe eQuINE eQUine eQUinE eQUiNe eQUiNE eQUIne eQUInE eQUINe eQUINE Equine EquinE EquiNe EquiNE EquIne EquInE EquINe EquINE EqUine EqUinE EqUiNe EqUiNE EqUIne EqUInE EqUINe EqUINE Equine EquinE EquiNe EquiNE EQuIne EQuInE EQuINe EQuINE EQUine EQUinE EQUiNe EQUiNE EQUIne EQUInE EQUINe EQUINE

One of my favorite character archetypes is the defender, ideally with one pauldron and an impractically large shield. I'm not a fan of competitive games, but when I play I usually play support. Halo holds a special place in my heart, but I don't really care for Mr. Chief. What drew me in as a kid was inserting and extracting my friends in the Falcon (god I yearned for a flyable Pelican), and I always ran drop shield in case someone needed a heal. I don't particularly care if my team wins, but I won't let you fucking hurt them.

We live in the wreckage of an age gone by. Life quickly forgets, blanketing the new scars and bumps with a fresh coat of green, but the land remembers. Drumlins dot the landscape in a loose phalanx, pointing in unison towards an onrushing tide of ice long gone. They are the survivors. The remains of their fallen comrades form moraines and boulder fields, decimated yet still monolithic. The glaciers' retreat is written in kettle lakes and deep river valleys and estuaries cutting far inland from where the rising sea chased back frozen walls. Read the bones, they tell stories gladly.

thanks to my intro earth science class, this minute earth video for the estuary thing, and the boundary waters and st. croix river valley for sparking my interest in landscapes formed by glaciers and their retreat. (p.s. did you know long island is a big moraine? sick af, right?)

Can humans get stack overflows by repeating the same mistake too many times? I'm not even talking about the big stuff, I just mean opening up shorts at bedtime or procrastinating something really easy knowing damn well that you'll spend 10 times the effort it would take to just do the thing by worrying about it. The simple decisions that form well trod paths through the flower gardens of our lives. I know I should plant more resilient flowers, or put walls around them, or restructure the bed. Instead I just take the shortcut and sigh at the trampled buds.

Graffiti might be the oldest human art form. That's not based on anything concrete, its based on sandstone. The bluffs of the Mississippi around here are covered in throwaway messages scrawled with fingers and sticks. This vast communal canvas is adorned with penises and pledges of love and plain old "_____ was here" shouts into the void. The desire to be known and remembered runs deep, so we make our little marks, but if we're honest we know they wont last. Sandstone weathers quickly, and soon enough the canvas will be washed clean, ready for a new generation to deface.

Deep breath in. He doesn't even taste the sulfur smoke. Deep breath out. He trained for this. Breath in. His face burning with radiated heat, his mind empty. Breath out. He broke every seal, developed sundering techniques that would be named after him if anyone could know they existed. In. The ground begins to tremble. Out. The hardest thing he had to learn was how to let go. He returns to awareness as the stone splits into a grinning cave mouth before him, feels his bag for the shaped charge, allows himself a small smile. The Gougar will be free.

An eerie is a large, reinforced depression in the moss, usually found in the emergent layer (155) of the skyline. They vary from 2-4 meters in diameter, and are invariably semi-spherical. The moss walls are woven with piping, rebar, and other elements of the surrounding building. Where eeries intersect with pre-existing structures, they integrate them with minimal disruption: There are reports of water pipes and data lines being diverted up to 2 meters and continuing to function unimpeded.^[1] Because of this eeries are not considered hazardous, and have not received as much study as their more disruptive counterparts.^{[Citation needed]} Eeries are usually littered with electronics, bones, and varied organic detritus. This has lead to the popular hypothesis that they are the nests of some massive, as-of-yet unidentified birds, but there is no solid evidence to support this position and it's proponents should try doing some actual field work for once.^[Opinion]

1. Overgrowth incidents at launch point Vermilion (266)

What are you, little guy? You're not a Manulea complana, coloration's wrong, but you're damn close. Whatever you are, you're everywhere. Voracious too. Who thought even moths would chip in to hold back the green tide (173), eh? Exercise in futility. What I wanna know is where's your adult stage (98)? All I see are very hungry larvae.

The ground layer, colloquially known as dirtside, is the surface that Earth had for most of its history.^[Disputed] It is the highest layer in the groundline, and the most geographically stable.^[1] The ground layer is typically the most populous layer, although this varies by region, and population movements have been trending upwards.

The ecology of the ground layer is still recovering from a drastic reduction in sunlight caused by the rise of the skyline. Umbral flora dominates the ecosystem, but small populations of solar flora remain and grow explosively when exposed by a levitation failure (409). In volcanic areas, bacterial mats and symbiotic host plants support new biomes of adapted flora and fauna.^[2] Large unadapted fauna is rare, with smaller species faring much better in their new environment. Birds have done best, often feeding in higher layers and returning to the ground layer to roost. Squirrels are doing fine.^[Importance]

Earthquakes are common in the groundline, outside of geologic shields, but typically originte in deeper layers. The ground layer sees a minimum of volcanic activity, but hotspots opened by the rise of natural skyscrapers (184) still spill out onto the surface. Columnar joining is incredibly common and geometrically exact at these hotspots, predominantly forming hexagonal columns although more complex tiling patterns have been observed.^[3]

1. Subterranean drift (112) in the lower groundline
2. Boiling moose (91)
3. Snub square tiling in columnar jointed volcanics at Big Willis (67)

Some pairings are meant to be. Peanut butter and chocolate, coffee and croissants, weed and stump stomp (111). The pathetic squish of pure feather moss underfoot reminds me of soggy cereal left to soak too long. There are no pines here to lend their needles, no satisfying crunch with every bootfall.

Instead, competing monocultures coat the ground each night, invading through cracks and covering paths like creeping charlie in a time-lapse. Serrated rake-shovels keep them at bay, but spork warriors (217) can only do so much. You can't hold back the tide (173).

Most of the old-growth forests are gone, sun starved, but I brought a few cones with me. The moss won, but maybe in 20 years these feathered towertops (184) will crunch.