Be Inspired!

Although we have channels on our Discord for sharing things we like, such as writing or music, this thread will serve as a stable place to post your favorite pieces or even just flavor-of-the-month feelings. At the end of the month, we will feature one main piece and several mentions, if enough things are posted in the month!

The aim of this is to share our various tastes and try to get exposure to the artists we love; and if the piece is self-made, including fanfictions, we would love to feature your work above others! We have a ton of talented people in this community and your own exposure is important to us if you would like to share :)

What can I share?

Whatever inspires you! It can be any kind of writing (books, fanfiction, etc.,), music, games, shows or movies, and even art. If you have a favorite artist in any category, feel free to share with us!

Monthly Features

At the end of each month, we will compile a few things from the thread to share as a small news post. To view previous monthly features, click on the corresponding image below which showcases the main feature from the thread.

Are you self-published or write your own content somewhere? Let us know, we would love to share your work as the main feature and provide ways others can follow you, if you would like!

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Previous Monthly Features

Click any of the months below to view the feature thread! (Opens in a new tab.)

JAN19 Aerwild Adventures; Zevruu fanfics; Devilman Crybaby OST	FEB19 Zevruu fanfics; Nightfall and Edgeland; Farseer Trilogy	MAR19 Riftmaster; Origin RPG Trailer	APR19 TBD	MAY19 TBD

ok so, first things first, a bit of self-advertising. i write fanfics and publish them here.

Now, for the actual thing I want to post here:

This fanfic is by one of my favorite fanfic authors. I didn't really realize just how great their fanfic writing is until they started writing a multichap fic that i just love. buuuut that's not what i'm making this about. yesterday, they wrote a one-shot that i just. adore. it's so adorable and pure and cute and i love it. even if you know nothing of wicked, of elphaba and glinda, you can still appreciate this fic for the beauty it is.

Click here to see the fic

it's so cute guys. i love it.

hey guys!! for my post this month I definitely wanna give a shout out to Madison! she had just self-published the first in the Aerwild Adventures series, The Vanishing Tomb! (actually it has been available since June, but I wanted to share it with you guys if you haven't seen it yet!) you can check out more of madison's stuff on her website!

i highly recommend checking out her Wattpad as well! ;)


as for my other inspirations, i am always listening to and loving imagine dragons! but for this month, i have been in love with the soundtrack for devilman crybaby: listen to the soundtrack on youtube! the show itself is on netflix but should be noted for content warning!! it is not afraid to be graphic. the music has some good jams though!

recently i discovered tumblr user pocketss and their artwork is really nice, but also cracks me up. i love the silly comics and images they draw of their flight rising dragons, hahaha.

i also really enjoy looking at the pixel work by deviantART user chigle, who has a lot of other great art as well!

Ooh, I'd like to recommend the Earthsea Trilogy to anyone who hasn't read it. Ursula K. Le Guin is a fantastic author. It's a fantasy tale, and the writing is phenomenal. It's definitely worth a read.

If anyone wants to read a piece of her work kind of as a preview--and also an unforgettable, if mildly horrific, standalone piece (seriously, this thing has stuck with me sharply for years), find "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas." She wrote this piece as a kind of philosophical question, and I won't spoiler it for you but it really, really makes you think. It upset me to read it, a little, because god DAMN it's an unfair choice, but it's worth a read for sure.

Here's some of my favorite quotes from Earthsea, though, to sample her writing style:

"To light a candle is to cast a shadow...”

“You thought, as a boy, that a mage is one who can do anything. So I thought, once. So did we all. And the truth is that as a man's real power grows and his knowledge widens, ever the way he can follow grows narrower: until at last he chooses nothing, but does only and wholly what he must do...'

"Seabirds cried wheeling over the breakers, and smoke of the hearthfires of small villages drifted blue on the wind."

"but there was never any change in the sea, for the ever-changing does not change"

"You will not live forever. Nor will any man nor any thing. Nothing is immortal. But only to us is it given to know that we must die. And that is a great gift: the gift of selfhood."

"Arren did not speak, but he thought: I do not care what comes after; I have seen the dragons on the wind of morning."

"I crave to walk on the mountain, the mountain of Gont, in the forests, in the autumn when the leaves are bright. There is no kingdom like the forests. It is time I went there, went in silence, went alone. And maybe there I would learn at last what no act or art or power can teach me, what I have never learned."
(This one is hugely poignant b/c the character saying it left that region in the first book, and said he would miss the forests etc)

And a last bit, with humor (for context, Ged is badly hurt, and Arren is trying to take him away when the dragon arrives):

But as he bent to lift Ged up, the dragon put out a great, mailed foot, almost touching him. The talons of that foot were four, with a spur behind such as a cock's foot has, but these were spurs of steel, and as long as scythe- blades.

"Sobriost," said the dragon, like a January wind through frozen reeds.

"Let my lord be. He has saved us all, and doing so has spent his strength and maybe his life with it. Let him be!"

So Arren spoke, fiercely and with command. He had been overawed and frightened too much, he had been filled up with fear, and had got sick of it and would not have it any more. He was angry with the dragon for its brute strength and size, its unjust advantage. He had seen death, he had tasted death, and no threat had power over him.

The old dragon Kalessin looked at him from one long, awful, golden eye. There were ages beyond ages in the depths of that eye; the morning of the world was deep in it. Though Arren did not look into it, he knew that it looked upon him with profound and mild hilarity.

"Arw sobriost," said the dragon, and its rusty nostrils widened so that the banked and stifled fire deep within them glittered.

Arren had his arm under Ged's shoulders, having been in the act of lifting him when Kalessin's movement stopped him, and now he felt Ged's head turn a little and heard his voice: "It means, mount here."

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For music, I totally recommend 21 Pilots & Woodkid (also an Imagine Dragons fan lol). Woodkid has some really beautiful stuff; 21 Pilots more catchy. I didn't actually know that a lot of their music has a Christian/humanitarian subtext but it's pretty wholesome either way!

So, for those of yall who don't know, I just finished studying for a degree in game design at university. I tried to post this on the discord at the time but the video wouldn't show properly.

For my final project, I produced an educational game about an animal called the black-footed ferret, which is an endangered species of mustelid from north america. The end goal was to make a game in which the player takes control of one of these ferrets and plays as one, tries to survive for as long as they can and in the process learns why they're endangered and how they live their lives in the wild.

At the beginning of my project I didn't even know about the black-footed ferret and part of my project was also studying them by looking at conservation reports and behavioural studies.

It doesn't look like much, but a lot of work went into this; everything you see was drawn, animated, and programmed by me. It is, in essence, a prototype or proof of concept. It's not very big or impressive but my heart and soul went into this little game.

I have to share about these books I just finished a bit ago. Nightfall and Edgeland by Jake Halpern and Peter Kujawinski. Link It's advertised as being a youth fiction/horror. I love the overall unsettling feeling they gave it. They also made a very alien and unrealistic world (daylight last 7 years and then 7 years of night in the first book. Not quite as long in Edgeland since they are closer to the equator, I think it's only a week of each) surprisingly real feeling. I enjoyed both, but I love Nightfall better as the 3 kids have their individual struggles as well as mutual struggle of survival. If you're looking to write something with an unsettling feel to it, this is a good suggestion.