Maybe you’re having a stressful day. Maybe you just need a deep breath. Maybe you just didn’t realize how stressed you are. It’s okay! You deserve love and warmth in your life.
It’s going to be okay. Today may be the worst day of your life – but tomorrow won’t be. Life is a series of ups and downs, and that means there’s going to be good and bad. Drink some water, let yourself cry if you need to, and get a good night’s sleep. You’ll feel better in the morning.
It’s a short, old-style fairy tale kind of story. I’ve personally never done anything like this, so I’m just learning as I go along. But I hope that the story will be a fun little piece of escapism for anyone who reads it!
The prologue is up and available to read if you’d like to 😀 in the meantime, these are some out of context panels from the comic! Patrons of the Lark&Wren patreon got to see all the pages as they were being made, so they’ve all seen this stuff already ❤
RENO MY RENO! Canadians fix people’s home improvement mistakes and are super nice about it but FIRM with man who don’t finish projects!
so far some shows that have worked for me:
Lord & Ladles – scottish chefs cook historical feasts in historical mansions! you meet wacky old money people and learn about strange things their ancestors got up to! you get to watch as world-renowned chefs fail at catching a fish! someone makes a hedgehog out of marzipan! people in the olden times ate some crazy shit! every episode ends with the chefs cheersing each other while lying on vintage furniture!
Big Dreams, Small Spaces – cute british people have cute yards that cute gardening man helps to make into much cuter yards. one lady wants to grow vegetables to share with her neighborhood. one lady wants to sculpt a huge mud head covered in moss coming out of the ground. one dad wants a garden for his down’s syndrome kid so he makes a sensory garden with a thousand different smells and textures. one couple wants to grow flowers for their wedding. it’s all wonderful.
Nailed It! – a bunch of people probably got high and decided to throw money at this show idea. everybody tries their best and everybody comes away either having learned something helpful, having had a rollicking good time, or having won a bunch of money. all the judges are good sports and nobody is made to feel bad for doing bad. also there’s some fucking crazy shit they get up to with modeling chocolate i tell you what.
Skin Wars – actually a lot about artists and their craft??? not really at all about sexy ladies being naked??? very cool stuff done by people with atrocious fashion sense and a complete willingness to buy into the moment. a few bad apples but mostly the reality-show-ness is pretty toned down and people are there to make cool art.
A Cook Abroad – chefs go to different parts of the world and learn about food there. A dumb white guy makes bread with adorable egyptian ladies! A british man gets exhausted by the length of roads in argentina and is only recharged by steak! An awesome woman makes cheese in france!
Love Your Garden – british man does garden makeovers for wholesome deserving families with special needs. Maybe a little bit on the weepy side of things but his assistants are all great and have fantastic hairstyles and people in wheelchairs deserve flowers!
Puffin Rock – this show is supposedly for babies but it is SO PRETTY and SO CHARMING and it’s about animals and nature and stuff and doesn’t really completely shy away from that?? like, one of the characters is a little rodent and the seagulls are the bad guys and he’s actually afraid of getting eaten?? anyway baby birds sing songs with baby bunnies and play splishsplash with baby seals and snuggle with baby animals of all sorts in a beautiful hand painted island.
Animal Airport – hey did you know some crazy shit goes down in Heathrow?? Did you know that there isn’t rabies in the UK? Everyone’s doggies and kitties have a long trip but they all get home in the end and also there are turtles and cheetahs and bugs and fish and everything!!!
this list is so relevant to my interests it hurts.
i’d also suggest the bbc historical farms series–it’s not on netflix, but it *is* mostly on youtube. the metafilter guide that originally introduced me to it is here. there are a bunch of different series of it, now, and each one is a group of archaeologists and historians living on a period location–victorian farm, they live in a farmhouse from the era, and they farm and raise animals and etc wearing period clothing, using period tools and sources as guides. and it sounds like it could be cringey, but they’re all experts in their fields and actually really invested in trying to do things well, so instead it’s a bunch of shows about teamwork and being friends (most of the core team stays the same) and learning things, and it’s delightful.
similarly, the sweet makers and victorian bakers have modern confectioners and bakers recreating period foods wearing appropriate clothing and using cookbooks from the era to guide them. (warning that one of the sweet makers episodes deals heavily with the history of sugar, and the slavery and horrific abuses associated with the same.)
If you want something positive, somewhat peaceful, and food craft related to watch on YouTube, look up loftypursuits (they make candy if you’re unfamiliar) and manaboutcakes (I might have a bit of a crush on the host)
I need my Netflix to have this category.
While I’m at it, I need Netflix to have the ability to make, curate and share playlists. Why isn’t that a thing?
Escape to the Country – British people looking for pretty houses in the country.
when your otp has an honest talk only in dire situations, like when they’re running full tilt being carried by the wind shouting at the top of their lungs
(the movie made this flying thing so romantic, but the book version is basically ‘howl and sophie scream into the wind as it slams them back to the castle’)
Howl’s Moving Castle was written by Diana Wynne Jones? I’m going to have to look for it now.
IT WAS A BOOK???
There’s three books in the universe they’re friccin good my dude
hey guys, op here, dwj’s books are sometimes really hard to find physically so im here to tell you that there’s a free audiobook of Howl’s Moving Castle and its sequels Castle in the Air and House of Many Ways on youtube by jenny sterling, who is a fantastic narrator.
hi guys!!! long time no see LOL i finally released the first episode of my webtoon if anyone’s interested in taking a peek :^)) and i started streaming again, so drop by if you like!!
Make sure the system you use matches the kind of players you have, for an optimal experience
Admin Note: This is part of the ongoing series called “D&D isn’t the only TTRPG if you don’t want fantasy play another goddamn game!”
I already reblogged this once but this is important:
Like I run a D&D blog. I understand that D&D is the most well-known and popular RPG in the world. But a lot of the time I see people going like “Hey I want to run a D&D campaign and throw out all the D&Disms and here’s all the notes I have for running a campaign about courtly romance and chivalry in a historical setting” and I’m just like STOP YOU DON’T NEED TO RUN THIS USING D&D
There’s a sort of a mistaken assumption that because D&D is the biggest game on the market and that it’s fantasy that it should be the go-to fantasy game but look it’s not D&D isn’t a generic fantasy game it’s a very specific kind of fantasy all of its own, one that steals liberally from swords & sorcery and high fantasy and adds fucking extradimensional cube robots for good measure
So next time you’re thinking about a fantasy campaign in a decidedly non-D&Dish setting consider instead of jamming the square peg that is D&D into a round hole trying to find a system that actually supports what you’re trying to do
And this is not to say that you shouldn’t play D&D: D&D is hella fun. But there’s a lot of genres and styles that D&D does a piss-poor job of doing, and because of that it’s so good we’ve got other games
*cracks knuckles*
All right then. I’ve been meaning to dust off my own D&D sideblog for a while, so here we go with providing some examples. I’m limiting this specifically to other types of fantasy outside of the standard high fantasy and sword & sorcery millieu.
Courtly Romance and Chivalry
There are a number of options for this, and they range from standard secondary world fantasy to more historical and mythological settings. My list here shouldn’t be treated as fully extensive.
Blue Rose – based on the romantic fantasy subgenre, specifically as seen in the works of Tamora Pierce and Mercedes Lackey. A lot of courtly drama and intrigue and swashbuckling, based in a fictional world.
Pendragon – naturally based off of Arthurian mythology, and having a lot of stuff given over to the court of Camelot and the chivalric adventures of the various knights. The same company also has a kickstarter for a spin-off called Paladin: Warriors of Charlemagne that might be worth checking out.
Historical Fantasy
This one’s a bit more prominent as historical settings serve as an inspiration for a variety of fantasy worlds and games, and this of course invariably extends to settings that actually use historical settings with a degree of fantasy elements thrown in. Note that I’m going to emphasise Europe here simply due to greater familiarity with games in that millieu, and as a European myself I’m ill-equipped to judge how accurate or respectful games using other settings actually are.
Because of this, feel free to add other examples in reblogs
Chivalry & Sorcery – one of the early tabletop games inspired by D&D, taking a more pseudo-historical approach.
It’s based on 12th century France and strives for a degree of historical accuracy and medieval politics.
World of Darkness, Dark Ages (including Vampire and Mage) – while the World of Darkness has earned some negative attention lately (and for good reason), the dark ages RPGs are still an old favourite of mine. Also worth checking out is Mage: The Sorcerer’s Crusade, set during the Renaissance. The Mage stuff has a really cool open-ended magic system worth checking out.
Ars Magica – this exists along very similar lines to the dark age material above, based around mages and magic-users in a ‘Mythic Europe’ setting. It also has a really cool open-ended magic system, and one of my personal favourites.
Awwww shit heck yes I might want to add to this list but this is a really good starting point
Made the index image for the forthcoming FOURTH AND FINAL BOOK of Vattu, the fantasy-biography graphic novel I’ve been working on for EIGHT YEARS. Book 3 is ending on Monday and I think that might be a good time to read it if you’re interested
This is a story about you. A tale about the inside of your body… According to a new study, the human body consists of approximately 37 trillion cells. These cells are hard at work every day within a world that is your body. From the oxygen-carrying red blood cells to the bacteria-fighting white blood cells, get to know the unsung heroes and the drama that unfolds inside of you! It’s the oddly relatable and interesting story that is the life of cells!
IF YOU HAVE ANY SORT OF KNOWLEDGE ABOUT THE HUMAN BODY AND HOW IT FUNCTIONS – PLEASE WATCH THIS ANIME
IT IS ABSOLUTELY AMAZING AND THE TINY REFERENCES TO EVERYTHING HOW THE BODY WORKS IS HILARIOUSLY ACCURATE
JUST WATCH THE OP AND FIGURE OUT HOW MANY CELLS YOU CAN RECOGNISE AND THEIR FUNCTION IN THE BODY
SO YOU GET THE RED BLOOD CELLS [X 4 MILLION]
THE BADASS NEUTROPHILS
AND KILLER [CYTOTOXIC] T CELLS
THE GLORIOUS MACROPHAGES
ABSOLUTELY F-ING ADORABLE PLATELETS
THE GERMS ARE F-ING CUTE ALSO
SERIOUSLY THIS SHOW IS TRIGGERING ALL MY MEMORY OF MY IMMUNOLOGY STUDY BACK IN UNI
With Book I now complete, now is the perfect time to start reading (or heck, REread) my comic Daughter of the Lilies: an epic fantasy about love, theology, mental illness, and the realities of life as an adventurer, with colors by @yokoboo!
Thistle is just your average masked mage with a mysterious power, an enigmatic past, and, of course, the great burden of Destiny on her shoulders. She’s chased out of every town with torches and pitchforks when the locals see her face, and is eagerly sought after by a great and terrible figure who defines most of her dark thoughts towards herself. Out of a desperate need to make a quick buck so she can move on to a new quiet place to live, she joins up with a small band of Mercenaries, but quickly finds herself unwittingly swept up in and caught off guard by their bonds of loyalty.
Will these unruly, uncultured, rough-around-the-edge fighters be the ones to help Thistle realize her sense of self-worth in time to stop the shadows of her past from overwhelming and consuming the world? Time will tell, I suppose.
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