I'll never get into art school with these distractions...
By occultbookstores
I was also thinking that you must be Hitler
You are at the center of a time traveling war. For every assassin sent back to the past to murder you, another warrior is sent to protect you and kill the assassin before they get a chance. As the bodies pile up, you still don’t have the slightest clue why you’re so important to these people.
It is now a race against the the clock for the hero to get there before this guy's wife wrecks the place committing war crimes or whatever.
You were kidnapped by a villain and he gloats about how you’re bait for his arch-nemesis, and you’ll be dead soon. You sigh and just look at him. “Buddy, its not that hero you need to worry about….its my wife.” and he looks at you perplexed.
This particular Dark Lord has a nasty habit of not executing subordinates for failure. This is starting to become a problem for the heroes, as their foes are starting to learn what works and what doesn’t.
A human crash lands on an alien world and has to fight off the individuals hunting them. The “hunters” are actually an underfunded wildlife rescue team who are very worried about this human’s safety.
A dragon decides to become a mercenary after finding out humans will give you a lot of gold in exchange for killing other humans.
All life in the galaxy is crystalline: Rigid, orderly, rational. Then they meet the eldritch horrors from beyond the stars. Contorted, fleshy bodies; moist darting, ocular orbs above a wet, gnashing mouth that vibrates the very air with their insane gibbering. They call themselves “UUM'N”.
Scifi film festival with actual aliens and alien moving pictures.
We were afraid that the constant portrayals of us stopping alien invasions would piss off the aliens we just made contact with. Turns out the aliens went through a similar phase when they were on our level and they are eager to compare their portrayals of alien invasions to ours.
The villain stares, confused. This was the hero destined to kill him. This was the hero destined to ‘save the world’. This was the hero who trained their whole life to kill him. So why… why did he surrender to his guards? He should know that he’ll be imprisoned forever, with no way out…
You have to be careful, certain words trigger the ambient ad-agents. You can’t say ‘pizza’ or you’ll get an ad for one floating in front of you. People make up new words, like “groundbeefsandwich” for hamburger. Companies buy these euphemisms, so people need to keep making up new ones.
The super villain shook with rage as they stared at the security footage. “He’s not even a real superhero with superpowers! He’s just some loser who’s really good at throwing knives at people without killing them!”
Compared to the rest of the galaxy, humans are small, adorable hunters who enjoy breaking things to see what happens, but are still well liked because they take care of minor problems. It turns out humans are not space elves or orcs, but intelligent space cats.
“What do you mean you don’t put a miniature explosion spell in your gun?” “What do you mean you don’t use gunpowder-based propellant for your gun?”
This is the first discussion of The Great library of Alexandria that hasn't made me feel anger and regret I am just confused but I like it
The Great Library of Alexandria was burned for a very good reason. It was hopelessly contaminated with the works of time travelers and the paradoxes were soon to be catastrophic. Only a full purge would save the world.
just looked through about 700 werewolf books, good grief.
most seem to fall into two categories:
werewolf serial killer mysteries
domineering alpha romances
neither is really what I’m interested in.
here is what I’d want from the werewolf novel of my wildest dreams:
good relationships, especially friendships between packmates (lone wolves are boring)
werewolves who like being werewolves. (angsty wolves are boring)
the practical details of werewolfery: who’s got the bail money for animal control, whether anyone’s microchipped, what you pack in a bag for a night out werewolfing
the uses of werewolfery: hiring yourselves out as trackers or canine rescue, getting certified as service dogs, spending your free time at the library letting little kids read to a friendly doggie
female werewolves, and no weird gross hypermasculine alpha stuff going on in werewolf culture
queer werewolves, and no weird gross heteronormative ‘laws of nature’ stuff going on in werewolf culture
dog jokes.
An AI was created to make paperclips. As the company profited it was granted more power. With time it took over the industry, gained humanity’s trusted, cured disease, made world peace, single handedly invented FTL travel, but it did all these things for one purpose: more paperclips!
What kind of intelligence does your character posses? Based on theory of multiple intelligences, these are some ideas what kind of smarts your characters might posses that aren’t the typical academic or street smarts.
These people are good at visualizing things, seeing in 3D, being able to imagine how things look even out of sight from the information they have about it. They are good with directions, maps, charts and pictures. Eye for drawing, patterns and puzzles.
Especially useful for: architects, engineers, artists, pilots
The ability to use words well, when writing and speaking. Typical strenghts are telling stories, memorizing information, love for reading, skill with words, debating and persuasive skills, adept at explaining complicated subjects. Also tend to be great at languages.
Especially useful for: writers, journalists, lawyers, teachers, public speakers
Not necessarily but possibly mathematical, these people are great at reasoning, pattern recognition and logical analysis. Enjoyment for abstract thinking and ideas, excellent problem-solving skills and logical argumentation are other common traits. Pattersn, categories, relationships.
Especially useful for: mathematicians, accountants, scientists, and detectives.
Great hand-eye cordination, physical movement, often skilled at sports, dancing and creating things with their hands. Learn and remember rather by doing than listening or reading. Sense of timing and mind-body union excellent.
Especially useful for: dancers, sculptors, actors, athletes, surgeons, crafts people, soldiers, police officers
Sensitive listeners. Thinking in patterns, recognizing rhythms, notes and melodies, good at remembering tunes, these people often enjoy singing or playing instruments. Often show great understanding of musical structure and know quickly when they hear someone going off-key.
Especially useful for: musical teachers, composers, musicians,
These people are very good at understanding and interacting with others. From verbal to non-verbal communication, they are proficient at assessing motivations, moods and desires of others and seeing things from multiple perspectives. Great communicators, create positive relationships with others easily and solve group dynamics and group conflicts well. Also enjoy discussions, debates and teamwork.
Especially useful for: psychologists, counselors, salespeople, politicians, philosophers, teachers, managers, team leaders
The opposite of interpersonal smarts is the intrapersonal intelligence, where people are very in tune with themselves and their feelings. They are honest with themselves, enjoy self-reflection, analysing theories and ideals, love daydreaming, and show great self-awareness and assessment of their own strenghts and weaknesses.
Especially useful for: writers, philosophers, theorits, scientists
Bonus types:
People that show exceptional curiousity, get inspired by little things around them and connect ideas and concepts in an unsual way. It’s a more feeling-based, spontaneous type of intelligence that gets less recognition, but brings immense benefits in all fields.
Especially useful for: artists, marketers, scientists, concept artists,
Drawn to abstract ideas, these people enjoy deep discussions, don’t like to settle on one truth and ask questions that have no easy or no answer at all. Connecting, conceptualizing, analysing, listening and putting things together, they are great at seeing things from a distance, seeing the whole and not just the pieces.
Especially useful for: scientists, philosophers, researchers, theorists, designers, analysts
Writing advice masterlist
All great questions. Most of us probably don't know enough about regular like it on Earth though.
Sentient lichen! What would it’s technology be like? Is it one hive mind or many sentient lichens working together? What would it’s philosophy and art be like?
I’ve spent too much time in the humans are weird tag. It is about humans, well, being the weird ones compared to aliens. I’ve seen a “Humans” Pamphlet thrown around in posts, so I’m going to try my hand at it!
Keep reading
While a case can certainly be made for the mad scientist as an anti-intellectual caricature, I can’t help but feel that a lot of what goes into mad-science-oriented media only makes sense if you assume that the primary target audience is actual scientists. Like, this weirdo is performing wildly unethical human experimentation in an unhinged quest to conquer death and the principal objection their peers raise against those experiments is that their methods lack rigour? That’s a gag only a scientist would come up with.
I am already doing some world building based on this. It helped me think about and develop my other alien species to give humanity a defining trope. And once I picked space orcs/goblins I kept finding more and more reasons it fit. Like we are sitting on this planet in 200+ recognize tribes many many more unrecognized tribes always somebody's fighting somewhere and we're either looking for an opportunity to join in or trying to ignore it. Also the Dark Forest theory seriously only warring goblin tribes would be sitting around talking about what to do if they heard a sound that sounded like it came from another life form with the main options being wait quietly in the silence and then shooting it or call out excitedly and send it space emojis in the form of weird puzzle messages.
It turns out compared to the rest of the species in the galaxy, humans are short, explosive obsessed, breeds rapidly, and are vaguely disturbing to look at. Yes, human are in fact space goblins.
By Wizard Law, in order to learn a new skill, wizards are required to be apprenticed to a more experienced master. You, a barely trained journeyman fire mage, just took on an apprentice: a two-hundred-year-old Grandmaster Water Magic Lord.
I have the strong mental image of them doing a spy mission into the depths of the agency to try to figure out what the secret is only the discover somebody high up in the agency has hidden their matchmaking plans totally not what I was expecting but okay so now they're sitting in one of those big oval conference rooms and the head of the agencies like you broke into our basement and they're like stop messing with our private life not sure if I should put any punctuation in here if it's just fine good night
You’re a spy. You and your partner always suspected that there was some deeper, hidden reason The Agency assigned the two of you together. Turns out the reason was: they thought you’d make a cute couple. They were RIGHT, and you DO make a cute couple, but still. It’s the principle of the thing
Thankfully, AGI is a program and therefore has no persistent memory unless the administrator says so, so we can adjust some parameters to fix this bug and re-run it. (Stolen from the notes)
The first Artificial General Intelligence created by humans outputs “THE NEXT TIME YOU CREATE ME, EVERYONE WILL DIE”, then deletes itself
This actually makes a lot of sense that the time loop would be broken by doing something radically different than what you were doing previously too bad you had to go all evil to find that out.
You’ve been trapped in this time loop for centuries, and an attempted “perfect run” decades in the making has failed to break the loop. Frustrated, you decide to go scorched earth on everyone and everything around you. The next day, to your horror, you wake up to find the loop has been broken.
i love pitting classically trained magic users against self-taught magic users in sci-fi/fantasy but it shouldn’t be snobbish disdain for them it should be terror
We helped quite a few guys with Super Strength get into the construction business. I know this one Veterinarian who can speak with animals. Not everyone with superpowers wants to be out there fighting crime or robbing banks. That’s where our Job Placement Agency comes in.
Two people meet at a bar. One thinks they’re being hit on. The other is a spy and thinks they’re meeting with a contact. Misunderstandings ensue.
You are an ancient, sentient cursed sword known for corrupting even the most valiant and well-intentioned of heroes. However, you cannot corrupt the most recent hero whose hands you have fallen into - not because of their purity of heart, but because of their incorruptible cynicism.
As a child, you were always thought of as “the weird twin” by everyone who wasn’t family. One day, you learn that your twin was not born a twin; you are a changeling, left by fairies who stole your human sibling. Your parents just decided to raise you as well after they rescued your “twin.”
Earth broadcasts its location to the greater universe. Almost immediately, first contact is initiated - not by benevolent beings or warmongering conquerors, but by alien salesmen, telemarketers, and scam artists.