#//for some reason its not letting me put the readmore

[mamadarama]

Just curious on your opinion here do you have any thoughts on the way Madara is being written? Recently I came to the realization that enstars writers aren't all that great,, and I notice that Madara at least in my opinion has had very little development and progression as a character but I'm genuinely hoping I'm wrong but I don't see much difference. And I do hope I'm wrong cuz I definitely haven't read every single story ever in Enstars and it could just really be Madara's character but it feels like he hasn't budged an inch and when DF rolled around it seems like he's gonna progress only for the writers to make him wanna split up literal months after (SS) and it was fine the first time since we explored that part of his character but right after that we got the Spring event and he's?? Back on his bullshit as if whatever happened during Secret Service didn't have much impact. And I do understand his character and all but I often wonder how much of that is just his character (immovable mountain with deep roots that will take years of continuous effort to move) or just the writers half assing because they can't think of a more compelling narrative for double face other than Madara wanting a breakup. It's especially sad to me with Last Mission because as much as I can understand DF being temporary and meant to end, it feels like nothing has changed in Madara during !! Era. I'm hoping that new gen Madara can change that since he's already featured in the new shuffle and scout story, and it does look like he's changing the vibes a little. Idk what are your thoughts and genuinely no hate here I love Madara and I'd love to hear your opinion :)

i think the writers do a pretty good job with the story actually !! i ended up spending a few hours writing like 3 pages of stuff so this one gets a readmore ^^;

theres a tldr at the end though if you dont wanna hear me talk in circles like some kind of maniac (understandable i dont either)

at this point madaras story is a tragedy and hes not really supposed to be a satisfying character . youre supposed to be some degree of frustrated with him like all the other characters are. the story isnt over yet though and maybe he will get a satisfying happy ending someday , but this is all buildup. having madara go through negative character development while the rest of the 3rd years have significant positive character development puts emphasis on one of the main points of his character: you cant help someone who doesnt want to be helped . shu wanted to become more empathetic. eichi wanted to unlearn his bitterness. kaoru wanted to leave his playboy reputation behind. izumi wanted to learn to control his emotions . madara has two sides to him that refuse to coexist— anger and misery. the angry side of him has given up on himself and leans into his perceived role as a villain because he believes alienating his friends is the only way to save them and for once be the hero. the miserable side of him is the sad and "selfish" part that keeps him returning to his friends again and again despite believing hes a bad influence on them, because he still seeks acknowledgment and praise from others and doesnt want to believe its too late for him. he bounces between these like a metronome . (maybe thats another layer of reasoning behind double faces name, idk) so, he doesnt know if he wants to be helped. he thinks he doesnt deserve it. pulling someone out of a ditch that deep requires some legwork on their part too, and if they wont put in that legwork, well... then there's nothing you can do. madara isnt quite a rooted mountain that takes a long time to move... hes more like an injured tiger pacing in its pit , so fixated on looking for a way out that it wont look up and see the entire top is open where its keepers are waiting to take it out and treat its wounds . now suppose this tiger is sentient enough to worry it might hurt someone on impulse when the disinfectant stings its wounds. additionally, lets say the tigers wounds came from falling and cutting itself on something in its habitat while making a risky jump , and it believes it deserves to be hurt for such a stupid misjudgment. so even when it notices the top of the pit is open, it will continue pacing pretending like it didnt. thats where madara is at right now .

madara broke up double face partly out of self sabotage, and partly out of a twisted attempt to "save" kohaku from him. kohaku and madara are an interesting contrast because their characters are set up in a very similar way. the difference between them is that kohaku doesnt hate himself even close to as much as madara does, and as a result he IS getting better. kohaku believes hes always going to be part of the underbelly of society doing dirty work and hes resolved to that like madara is, but he doesnt believe that means he has to do it alone . he acknowledges that hes not alone, he has the rest of alkakurei, the sweets club, jun, his sisters and tsukasa.... and madara. the first part of beating loneliness is recognizing youre not alone. madara thinks no one understands him (which in itself is its own kind of loneliness) and that if his friends understood "what he really is", they wouldnt love him. so in a way their presence eases one kind of loneliness and reinforces another. in his mind the only person who understands him is himself and therefore the only one who can save people from himself is also him.

theres a scene in last mission where madara says his reason for disbanding double face is something along the lines of wanting kohaku to live where he can feel the sun on him , and kohaku asks "what about my feelings?" . that pretty much sums up madaras entire thought process and why he isnt making any positive progress .

tldr; madara does have character development between es! and es!! , but its not positive. to have such a stubborn self loathing character make positive progress without a slow burn of warring with themself and dragging their feet would soften those traits. they want him to stand out and make you to go "ohh ok so this guy is MISERABLE miserable" .

so anyways i dont think its lazy writing its just character loyalty. but the fact that you noticed all that means youre reading him the way hes intended to be read. so congratulations!! you now understand what its like to be kohaku oukawa :) if he does get positive character development i hope its really slow though cuz if its too fast it would feel kinda abrupt. it needs to feel like hes fighting the writers for it to truly be madara

[ouroborosorder]

OK but when you're free of all the other obligations and able to do it can we get the Ines skin writeup anyway because I liked the Eine Variation one and why do they keep giving Caprinae ops skin like this do they just hate goats at hypergryph or what

Okay so I got this ask a month and a half ago and am just now getting to responding to it. In that time, I got a job as a professional VFX artist so my opinion means double what it did before. So that's fun! Respect me and bow to me, peasants.

I wrote a massively long writeup here and then my page refreshed and I lost all of it twice. Let's speedrun this shit, alright? (She says, immediately writing a 5 page unhinged rant.)

This skin sucks because of the exact opposite reason Eine Variation does, it's just too fucking detailed for its own good.

...Also what the fuck is that in the background is that a goddamned alien spaceship has anyone else noticed this?? This is a bloodline of combat skin this is canon does ines just fight aliens at some point what the FUCK?

Anwyay VFX in the readmore.

Deploy animation. I hate you. I hate this. I hate it.

It's rare I get to see an entire skin's mistakes in microcosm like this! That's fun!

This is so detailed that it actually ceases to have any real shape or identity. This doesn't look like shadow, because skins can just. Change character lore to make something look cool yes I'm still mad. Is it stars? That would explain the weird yellow dots, and there are stars in the art. Fire? No, it's not actually fire, there'd be fire here. Burning fabric? It only looks like that if I squint and zoom in, but I can't... think of anything else.

The colors are so awful. The way that there is a hard line between the dark lavender and the scarlet which then fades into orange is. A choice. I would not have made. At all. In any way. Ever. At any point. Also the random dots of yellow are very funny because they are so clearly just random pixels of yellow. Some of them even aren't in the orange, so they're just like, highlights that have decided to break out of the highlighted areas. Did they.. want this to look like her burning dress? In which case, why are they.. blue? Her dress is black with orange embers, I don't GET IT.

Also small thing but it has a drop shadow, but like. She's literally in all black until she fully appears. And the swirling ribbons are dark-colored. There's no worry about them not standing out against a light background. Is that just supposed to look like she's surrounded by shadow if that's the case then why isn't the rest of this shadow AGH.

This looks weirdly... JPEG compressed??? Like, you can kiiinda see it in the big version, but if I shrink this down to phone resolution...

GOOD LORD SHE'S BEEN DEEP-FRIED.

S1 is good. I like it. It's simple, elegant. Good use of colors, and I think the impact looks great, good use of red and orange to create visual interest. Not gonna bother to screenshot it, it's not that interesting NEXT

S2!

Stop it. Stop it. Put a few colors away. I am counting 8 distinct colors in this one swing alone, and then two more for Ines herself. Stop it. That is too many colors. Add less colors.

I don't even see what the colors are there FOR. Are they selling the tip of the swing? That's not right, because the red highlights start at the tip, then swirl inwards until the red is in the inner part.

I do actually think this one is a lot better at actual resolution.

It's still too detailed, and that detail ends up being crunched and not really... serving any purpose in the grand scheme of the effect, but I do think it is... better. It makes it more clearly light on the outside, dark on the inside.

Also I hate the ends of this swing. I hate it. Why is one a perfect circle that's been stretched out and the other end a rectangle that's fading out. Why is that how you did this. This effect looks like two different swings that have been stapled together like goddamned Catdog.

BUT WHEN IT FADES IT HAS AN INKBRUSH LOOK SO WHAT IS THIS EFFECT.

Why not lean into the burning dress look? Have it be a black trail that like, burns away when it fades? That would be STUNNING, anything but. Whatever is happening here. Mrgrgr okay fine it can't get worse right

DEAR READER. I PRESENT. S3. THE CULMINATION OF EVERY SINGLE PROBLEM.

So this IS a stars theme after all. This IS stars? Just wanna make sure we're all on the same fucking page here.

Dear reader. I hate this. So fucking much. This may be, and I do truly mean this, the worst piece of VFX I have ever seen in any game. This doesn't read as a piece of VFX in an anime game, it reads like the background of a YA fantasy novel's cover.

The nebula doesn't move. It's static. It is clearly just a jpeg. It's not even doing the Chowder screen-space orientation thing. It's just. There. Inescapable.

The comet itself just. Ends. It doesn't fade out or taper. It just. Stops. There's barely any anti-aliasing here. It's just a hard line between the comet and the background.

Ines herself is surrounded by identical dark lavender and orange energy, so there's no visible difference between the effect and herself. Sure. It's not going to be onscreen long anyway. Who cares.

The center of the comet is bright white as if it's the highlight of the effect, but it's... it's off-center?? so it's ultimately... Highlighting something. is it highlighting the sword? Is it supposed to be a haze that shows you the sword? But it doesn't look like it because it took me 15 minutes while writing this to realize that the sword was there at all because it's the same orange color as all the other highlights and so it gets eaten. If your highlight color stops drawing my eye, then you've fucked up because that is literally what a highlight color is supposed to do. Where am I supposed to look at this thing, where is the focus, the shape?

It's even funnier that the blade leaves a little cartoony goofy team rocket blink when it leaves, before immediately turning into whatever public domain NASA star image they're using for the comet. A real glimpse into what it would look like if Spiderverse sucked ass. (I do like the blink itself tho, a small little blue haze to add color and contrast against light backgrounds, smart touch.)

Explosion sucks. Suddenly they decide the palette is something entirely different. Where did the yellow come from. Yellow isn't even on the art. I guess when your palette is that big, you can change them up how you want. I would actually like this effect if it was slightly less detailed and in a skin that had actually used this pallette. It reminds me a bit of Specter the Laurentina. But with this level of detail and these colors... This somehow looks more like a YA book cover. A Sword of Goats and Stars. Fuck me I hate it.

I almost like this buff uptime indicator, It's just that the red from the swords fades into the orange on her dress and makes the whole thing muddy. Also she has an actual roiling flame behind her LMAO GET DUNKED ON HOEDERER THAT'S RIGHT I WILL DUNK ON HIM EVERY TIME EVEN THIS PIECE OF TRASH HAS ONE UP ON THE HOE LMAOOOOO

(In fact I actually... think this might be a recurring texture? It looks familiar, but I can't pin down from where. This is a bad screenshot for showing it but I'm not bothering to get a new one. This is my mental breakdown and I get to choose the visual aids.)

Anyway, maybe I'm being mean. After all I'm criticizing an effect for being too detailed when I am actively zooming in and looking at the details. So let's shrink down to the resolution of my phone just to see how it would-

Ah.

Final Ouroboros VFX ranking: A jpeg compressed photo of a wizard airbrushed on a van / 18 Originium Prime. Actually wait no that sounds too cool. Uh. The wizard is also racefaking. Now it's no longer cool. Nailed it.

[thatdeadaquarius]

hi! quick tip: if you’re on mobile type ‘:readmore:’ then hit enter! i dunno if you’ve been told but. yeah :)

also, your recent piece on apd was incredible!! very nice to see representation!! keep up the excellent work <3 it did get me thinking though: reader with vocal stims, cementing it in the acolytes’ minds that you don’t speak the language of teyvat, and then you’re all just stuck in this loop of “oh man they don’t speak the same language of me” but they DO

if asks are closed or this is outside of your comfort zone then feel free to delete! have a lovely day <3

AHFJLAKLOSUDBABWB U FELT REPRESENTED YAY!!

A cookie for thee, and also extra for telling me how to do Expand thingy on mobile ilysm 🤲🍩🍪✨️ (pspspsps all askers,, u get cookies,,cometothedarksidepspspspspsss)

I was so worried bc it wasnt like super all the aspects of Apd issues, and it was very based on my personal experience w/ similar symptoms + other bits of ppl's experience so i was hoping it still felt somewhat recognizable for ppl w/APD!! Tysm for the feedback :D

NOTE ABOUT VOCAL STIM DEPICTED:

So i think ive experienced verbal stims, so this is a combination of others shared experiences + personal experience, and while everybody experiences things individually/their own way, please let me know if there is something obviously inaccurate/maybe even offensive.

You will definitely not make me mad or otherwise offended, I really want to hear that kind of feedback from others who vocal stim!

Thank you so much for reading! :)

___________________♡_____________________

So lets just say that ur vocal stims r pretty non-verbal or non-sensical ("her sister was a WITCH BRO-" like memes that dont make sense to them)

Or like, u have verbal stims that r actual language but they dont hang around long enough to hear it maybe ??

♤

So like, this ends up happening

Chongyun was exploring near Qingce village for supernatural stuff as usual

And U were just vibin, chillin near Qingce village livin ur best Creator god cottagecore life

And ur like planting a new seedbed, Jueyun Chilis :) (bc jfc however bad it was to collect them in game, its 10x worse in person, ur tired of running around town getting chilis, Qingce isnt exactly flat 💀)

♡

And every seed u put in the dirt ur like "boop!"

And Chongyun comes by, bc u at edge of town, and the villagers mentioned a strange new traveler settling here

He immediately feels a wave of that same feeling he used to feel when the Creator god had their eyes on him, or would assist him in battles

So poor boy almost overheats trying to climb up the hill to ur house

And is like "??...Creator??"

Then kinda stops bc ur just like-

"Boop!" "Boop!" "Boop!" ☺️ LMAO

And then u finish planting seeds, get the watering can,,

And everytime u pour it just-

... "EJACK! Come, water!"

(Ur saying it so fast too, and he's still somewhat farther away, so he cant rlly hear that well too)

...

..

And its just so incomprehensible to Chongyun he's deadass like "A DIFFERENT LANGUAGE??!"

So of course,

He waves, 👋

And ur like omg icy boy!! :D 🧊💙

But u dont say anything yet, and then he starts,, miming?? He points at u? Then like?? Points up? The sky?? Then like, mimes swinging his claymore???

(ARE U THE CREATOR??!!)

U look up, very confused 🧐

He seemes frustrated.

Then he just kinda, bows and leaves?

...

...oh no.

Do Teyvat people speak that crazy language that u saw in game?

Instead of English??

Well.

Shit.

...

.... U havent rlly talked to anyone in Qingce yet since u just got here in Teyvat like a week ago

And found this abandoned house

♧

It just gets worse 😭

Bc slowly, one by one,

Each playable character in Liyue comes to attempt to talk to you

(And since u have a farm, and they keep giving u food/goods? For some reason?? U still dont need to go into town)

☆

At one point, even Zhongli shows up

And thru complex miming and hand motions u think he means dont worry abt him? Like just go back to what u were doing?? Okay??

U guess he's just gonna chill here for now?

...

...Zhongli just kinda,, squints, and puts his hand on his chin in his classic "thinking very hard" face

So ur tending to the garden saying,

" FREDDY! You're supposed to be on lockdown!Vanessa...I'm... a Material Gworl✨️"💀

...Just, on an endless loop LMAO-

...

(Hes trying to see if he recognizes any part of ur language, poor old man 🤔🤔😭)

♤

And it just snowballs even more, and now,

None of you have even tried to say a word to each other. 🤡

(Other than ur vocal stims)

...

Keqing: "Perhaps, it's similar to Fontaine's native language?"

You, in the background: "🎵 dUdE,,, sHe'S jUsT nOt InTo YoU 🎵" (mimicking the autotune and everything)

Ganyu & Keqing: "..."

You: " 🎵 gOtTa MoVe On, mOvE oN-🎵 Hurricane Katrina?? More like Hurricane Tortilla!"

Ganyu & Keqing: "...Can't be,"

"what else do we got? Should we call Yunjin to better mime for us??"

♡

Xiao's the first one to even get close to knowing u can actually talk to each other, bc he's always checking in on u most often <3

And he only heard u bc u swore u heard a monster outside ur house one night and came out ur house with a pitchfork, very nervous,

"...Hey there demons.. it's me.. ya boy."

(And u just keep stimming that out of nervousness to make urself feel better as u check around ur house lol)

Xiao: "??? Demons???!! WAIT-"

♧

By then, it literally took like 6 months for yall to finally have a real conversation 💀💀

...

(Chongyun got so embarassed bc he was one of the first few to misunderstand he overheated rip🙏)

Im. So. Sorry. This. Is. ✨️Ass✨️

Twas the best scenario i could come up with, im telling yall, im not as funny as the ppl who send in these asks 😔

Keep in mind, I never claimed i was funny or a good writer, u cant hold it against me lol /lh

Lower ur expectations LMAO

Well i hope u got sm enjoyment outta this anon, sorry abt the quality!! :)

Cheers,

🌒🌊🌧Aquarius♒️🌌🌘

[rosanna-writer]

we said hello and your eyes look like coming home (20/?)

Summary: A canon-divergent AU where the bond snaps for Rhys on Calanmai, Feyre unwittingly accepts it, and Fire Night magic proves to be more transformative than anyone bargained for. Feyre drags a mate she hardly knows out from Under the Mountain, then puts him back together as war with Hybern approaches. Warnings: dubious consent, canon-typical sexual violence, canon-typical violence Rating: Explicit Chapter Word Count: ~5k

ch. 1 - 10 | ch. 11 - she underestimated just who she was stealing from | ch. 12 - no amount of freedom gets you clean | ch. 13 - stay stay stay | ch. 14 - call it what you want to | ch. 15 - even when you're sleeping, keep your eyes open | ch. 16 - you drew stars around my scars | ch. 17 - do you remember all the city lights on the water? | ch. 18 - and it smells like me | ch. 19 - your mom's ring in your pocket | ch. 20 - she is here to destroy you

Content warning for canon-typical violence and animal death. Some text in this chapter is taken directly from A Court of Mist and Fury.

Read on AO3 or you can find the twentieth chapter below the readmore.

Mud didn't seep through Illyrian leathers. A small mercy, perhaps, but after sitting in it for a few hours, the cold was infinitely more tolerable when I stayed dry. I couldn't move, not without scaring away the ducks that were finally beginning to forget that I was sitting on the edge of the pond.

And I'd been dispatched to find dinner.

We'd fanned out to cover more ground—someone in Windhaven must have tipped the rogue war-bands off, and they'd retreated deeper into the forest. Rhys, Cassian, and Azriel took turns flying circles overhead, looking for signs of movement.

We'd likely be out here several days, too long to carry enough food to last the whole time. Though I knew it was to put some distance between me and an initial confrontation with hotheaded warriors with a hatred for humans, I didn't mind. The work needed to get done anyway.

I still hated hunting, but being out in the woods alone cleared my head. There was a quiet and stillness that was impossible to find in a city, even one as lovely as Velaris. I let my mind wander, and I considered how to best capture the dappled sunlight on the water if I ever painted this view. Filling a full canvas still felt like a long way off, but…perhaps a landscape would be the way to ease back into it. Maybe I'd paint a mountain before I tackled everything that had happened under one.

But I could only think of painting for so long, and the ducks were still flitting about too nervously for my liking. I sat a bit longer, and my mind drifted to other things.

Rhys never told me if he was proposing or not. I hadn't asked again. In truth, I had no idea what I was supposed to do after recovering the ring—return it to him? I couldn't wear it openly, at least not without inviting questions we weren't ready to answer. But I hadn't seen a faerie wear a wedding band or use a surname or even known someone else with a mate.

And if faerie funerals were so different from mortal ones, then I supposed weddings would be, too. Especially when a High Lord was involved. Gods, the only person I'd talked to about the difference between marriage and mating had been Tamlin—there was no reason to believe anything he'd told me was accurate.

I was out of my depth. But the ducks had finally settled, so I did the one thing I was good for and let an arrow fly. It speared a bird through the neck, killing it instantly.

The rest of the flock alighted—I had to move quickly. Half on instinct, I aimed, accounting for their speed and direction as I shot down three more, one right after the other. Every arrow found its mark, and the unlucky ducks dropped to the ground as the rest soared away.

My hips and knees barked in protest as I stood; crouching in the mud for so long had left me stiff. At least nothing had gone numb this time.

I felt better, though, even with the tedious task of retrieving, cleaning, and cooking the game ahead of me. In the Spring Court, I'd gotten comfortable and let my guard down far too easily. I'd never felt safer or more taken care of in my life than I had in these last two weeks with Rhys in Velaris, but…I'd worried, on some level, that I'd gotten soft or lost my skills because of it. Bagging those ducks proved I hadn't.

Being loved didn't make me any less a wolf.

I gathered the birds and made my way to the place we'd agreed to meet up at sunset. Without wax or even a large pot of water, I'd either have to breast them out—which would waste some of the meat—or pluck the feathers one by one to roast them whole. And we needed to get a fire started.

I was still plucking the first bird when Azriel arrived. There was a smear of blood on his leathers, and that told me enough—whatever had happened resulted in no survivors. Wordlessly, he grabbed a carcass, sat down next to me, and began ripping the feathers off, too.

No one had ever done that for me. Not my sisters or my father, not even when I'd asked for help.

Cassian landed not long after that, grim-faced and slightly bloodied. He nodded a greeting, then crouched and began coaxing a fire to life. "We're lucky to have a professional around," he said, indicating the carcasses with a jerk of his head.

"Did I catch enough?" I said.

"More than enough to ensure we don't have to listen to Cassian's stomach growl all night," Azriel said.

Knowing that none of us would go hungry set me at ease. The duck in my hand felt like even more of a tangible contribution, proof that it hadn't been a mistake to bring me to Illyria. I smiled to myself and kept ripping out feathers.

I hadn't heard him winnow in, but I felt the familiar darkness of Rhys's power reaching for me again. I turned to see him walking towards us through the trees. As he got closer, my eyes drifted to a scratch on his cheek. Then all my attention locked onto it.

Hardly a scrape—whoever had done it hadn't even broken the skin, and his magic was already halfway done healing it. My blood boiled anyway. Someone had gotten close enough to get a talon or a weapon on him.

"Who," I said, though the word was more growl than speech.

"They're dead," Rhys said.

I was on my feet without even realizing it, closing the distance between us in long strides. "Good. Did you—"

"Yes. All by my hand."

The scratch had faded completely, but I reached for the place it had been. Rhys caught my wrist and tugged me to him. The momentum made my greeting more collision than kiss. I nearly knocked us both over, but Rhys was solid and steady as his other arm twined around my waist to crush me against him.

We'd only been apart a few hours, but someone had almost drawn blood from my mate; an utterly irrational wave of guilt that I hadn't been there to stop it and relief that he was fine had swept away my good sense. I was already pawing at him with my free hand.

The pointed clearing of a throat cut through the mating-bond-induced madness. Without looking up from the bird he was still plucking, Azriel said, "I'd like to remind everyone that we agreed no sharing bedrolls on this mission."

I didn't have it in me to feel embarrassed. Perhaps I couldn't feel ashamed of anything when Rhys had an arm around me. I interlaced our fingers and pulled him back towards the fire.

We sat down, and Cassian dug a rag out of his pack and tossed it in our direction. I reached up to catch it, but it snagged on one of Rhys's talons.

Cassian grinned. "That's for Feyre. I can tell she's dying to clean you off."

Rhys narrowed his eyes, flicking a finger towards the rag, and it dissolved into mist. "I'm not an invalid," he grumbled. On my other side, Azriel chuckled.

Cassian took over the rest of the cooking after that, and one knowing look we shared across the fire was enough to tell me he'd made do with unseasoned game and campfires plenty of times before. Roasted whole, the duck wasn't half-bad.

Before long, night fell, and we were divvying up shifts to keep watch. I took the first, then had no trouble falling asleep—not in the open air, underneath the stars. The next day was more of the same as we tracked the rogue war-bands deeper into the forest.

On the third day of hunting, I was crouched up a tree when a glint of something bright green tore my attention away from the forest floor. I'd assumed the shape circling above had been a bird, perhaps a hawk or a vulture, and hadn't thought much about it.

But birds didn't sparkle. That was an emerald-colored siphon.

The path the Illyrian was taking brought him closer, but I didn't think he'd spotted me. I froze. He flew closer, almost in range of my bow.

I didn't dare even breathe too loudly. Keen faerie senses were difficult to hide from, and even if I stayed hidden, his looping flight pattern would send him back in the opposite direction and I'd miss an opportunity.

He came closer. And closer. There was no time to run.

I grabbed an ash arrow and took the shot.

The arrow ripped a hole in one of his wings, and the Illyrian plummeted to the ground like a stone in water. I scrambled down from my perch and barreled through the trees. As I ran, I pulled another ash arrow from my quiver—a fall from that height could have been deadly, but if not, an injured Illyrian warrior could still find a way to bury a dagger in my belly.

I heard him moaning in pain before I stepped into the clearing where he'd fallen. He'd landed on his back, torso twisted and his legs bent at unnatural angles. A shattered pelvis at the least, maybe even a snapped spine. Healing magic was the only thing keeping him alive. The siphon on his chest flickered weakly, like a heart struggling to beat.

At the sound of my footsteps, his head turned. His eyes burned with hate as he reached for a knife strapped to his belt. I nocked the ash arrow, aiming directly for his face as I took a step closer. His hand stilled.

"Tell me where the others are hiding," I said. "Don't bother lying. The High Lord is on his way."

"I won't take orders from Rhysand's human whore," he spat.

"The best outcome you can hope for is a mercy kill before he arrives. Give up their locations, and I'll consider it."

For a long moment, he said nothing. My arm began to ache from keeping the bowstring pulled back, and I prayed my fingers wouldn't start shaking. I said nothing either, just tried to emulate Azriel's deadly, stone-faced resolve.

The Illyrian's hand twitched, but his fingers never closed around the hilt of the knife. Instead, through clenched teeth, he recited the litany of names and locations I was after. I believed him—I doubted he was in a state to lie convincingly.

As I listened, I gave one insistent tug on the bond and dropped my shields so Rhys could hear it all, too. The beast that had once rested in my mind became a furious thing growling and snapping its jaws.

The clearing plunged into darkness. I couldn't see where Rhys was, but I felt his power sliding along my skin all the same.

"Is that all?" I said, my voice so cold I hardly recognized it as my own.

The Illyrian whimpered something that might have been "yes." I loosed the arrow; even under the cover of Rhys's darkness, my aim stayed true. The point landed in the Illyrian's eye, buried deep enough in his skull to render him still and silent forever.

Just like Andras.

Even with the threat gone, the darkness didn't clear. I glanced up, and my vision had adjusted enough to make out Rhys's silhouette, his wings flared and hands shaking.

"You should have called me the moment you spotted him," Rhys said, voice ragged.

"I handled it," I said simply.

Rhys growled. At me. And the fact that I was too human to properly bare my teeth and return the favor—rage bubbled under my skin. If he'd been closer, I would have shoved him.

"Then why bring me here?" I hissed. "Just to humor me?"

I felt like such a fool for not having realized it sooner. Killing a few ducks was hardly a real contribution—they might as well have patted me on the head and told the High Lord's little human mate she'd done such a good job. Shame made my cheeks go hot.

"Don't be stupid, Feyre," Rhys snapped.

The darkness rippled and churned around us, like a storm at sea. The tendrils seemed to lap at me, pressing close then retreating, even as they skittered down my spine. Magic thrummed in the air.

I crossed my arms. "I'm not."

"You could have gotten yourself killed. Even Cassian won't run into a fight without backup if it's available. There were three of us who could have gone with you, but for reasons I can't even begin to fathom, you waited until the very last second."

I'd never seen Rhys this…undone. Not even when I'd first gone Under the Mountain. His breathing was ragged, and there was a note of panic in his voice I'd never heard before.

"I…I didn't think to ask. At least not at first. I called for you as soon as I remembered." As ridiculous as it sounded when I said it aloud, it was true. But the habit of doing everything on my own was a difficult one to break.

Rhys sighed, his shoulders slumping as the fight went out of him. The darkness seemed to lift, but before I could be sure, he'd winnowed closer and pulled me against his chest. I couldn't see much other than his wings cocooning me.

He pressed a kiss to the top of my head. "I love your fearlessness just as much as every other part of you, but please remember that you're not alone anymore. I can't lose you, Feyre."

"I love you too," I said, voice thick. I set my bow down and hugged him back.

Both ends of the bond seemed to settle as we held each other. I savored it—the heat of him against me, the sun shining through his wings, the soft scrape of the scales of his leathers against my cheek.

"You are your own person, and I will not dictate your choices. Ever." Rhys picked a twig out of my hair; it must have gotten lodged in my braid when I'd climbed down from the tree. "If you'd told me what you were doing, I would only have asked you to allow me to come with for my own peace of mind."

I'd never asked why he'd gone alone to that cursed party fifty years ago. Maybe he'd insisted on it; maybe he'd also forgotten to ask for backup, then paid a terrible price. It seemed better not to bring it up.

"You aren't alone either," was all I said.

There was a pulse of something down the bond that I couldn't quite identify, then he stepped back, tucking his wings in tight. His expression was unreadable—a wall had gone back up.

"I've passed all the information on to Azriel, and his shadows are scouting out the locations we were given. Will you be able to keep going? It's alright if you're rattled—you did just kill someone."

There was nothing but a howling void where my guilt should have been. Perhaps I'd lost that piece of myself when I'd killed Andras. If anything, I just felt…numb. "He deserved it."

"I don't disagree."

Rhys let me into his mind as he conferred with the others. I relaxed when Azriel's shadows confirmed that the information I'd gathered was correct—at the very least, I'd saved us time trekking through the woods. I wasn't useless, hadn't been brought here for nothing after all.

Once the first war-band had been hauled back to Windhaven, Rhys wanted me to stay there. I didn't mind. Another set of eyes and ears on the camp was prudent, and I was still technically his emissary.

It was barely even noon when we returned. On Rhys's orders, Devlon's men had set up a line of wooden poles at the center of the camp, the area used for public gatherings. A small crowd had already begun to form. Among them, I spotted Devlon and the warriors who'd been flanking him earlier.

Cassian had wanted those poles burned. And after this, they would be. For the last fifty years, females had been tied to them when their wings had been clipped. The sight of them alone turned my stomach.

Rhys loosened his grip on his power, and from my place next to him, I could feel the magic radiating off him like heat. A gust of night-kissed wind had every member of the rebel war-band silent and tied to the posts.

"There is no tolerance for treason in the Night Court," Rhys said. His voice cut like a knife through the murmuring of the crowd. Pure command—the voice of the High Lord of the Night Court. "And to bow before an invading general who would butcher and enslave humans is particularly heinous. It spits on the graves of the soldiers who died for the mortals' freedom during the War. I'll leave your fate up to the human in our midst, Feyre Cursebreaker."

Every single set of eyes slid to me. The attention had my heart hammering in my chest, but I forced myself to mimic the small, cold smile I'd seen on Amren's face from time to time. When I'd yanked the ash arrow out of the dead warrior's eye, I hadn't bothered to clean it off, just returned it to my quiver.

The gore peeking over my shoulder was message enough.

"I'll make a final decision when the rest are captured. Flaying their skin from their bones seems merciful, but perhaps there's some creature in the Middle that might enjoy hunting them for sport," I said, making myself sound bored and aloof.

The spark of Rhys's approval down the bond bolstered my confidence for what I'd planned to do next. I stepped closer to one of the bound Illyrians and circled my hand around the thin, delicate bone at the edge of his wing, then snapped it in two.

I'd know that cracking sound anywhere. The air reeked of Wyrm shit again, mud clung to my skin, and the slithering behind me was getting closer and closer.

I was running, and—

It's over, Feyre. We got out.

Rhys's voice in my head jolted me out of the memory. I gripped one of his talons and pulled myself back to the present.

I'd survived. And no matter how much of a monster it made me, I'd ensure that no one, not even the most powerful faerie, would hurt me or anyone I loved. Not again.

Before Rhys could fuss, I was breaking the bones in the next Illyrian's wings. I gritted my teeth and ignored their cries of pain until I'd rendered every single one of them incapable of flight.

We locked eyes when it was done, but Rhys's beautiful face was an impenetrable mask I still hadn't learned to see past. "I'll be waiting here for you to bring me the rest," I said. No title or honorific—I'd let them all wonder why he hadn't misted me for speaking to him like that.

Rhys nodded once. He said nothing, but there was a question in the hesitant brush against my shields.

I'm fine. Really. Just bring me the rest so we can finish this quickly.

For a moment, the bond thrummed with wicked delight. Try not to burn down Windhaven while I'm gone.

He took to the sky. Without carrying a passenger, the movement was all perfect, lethal grace, and sometimes I wondered how I could possibly forget that Rhys was anything but an absurdly beautiful predator. I watched until he was out of sight, marveling that he was mine.

The crowd dispersed, and for a moment, I just stood there, unsure what to do with myself. Perhaps I'd spend the rest of the day being ignored by Illyrians. I wouldn't blame them for that—as faeries went about their business, I caught a few wary glances in my direction.

But I supposed I should probably clean off the bloodied arrows in my quiver. And my hands were badly in need of washing.

I made my way to the water pump at the center of the camp. An Illyrian female—around my age, if I had to guess, though it was impossible to be sure with immortals—had just started using using it. Large, brutal scars ran down both of her wings.

"I'll be a while. You can go first," she said, sliding her empty bucket out of the way with her foot. Now that I was closer, I spotted a bruise darkening her cheek, too.

"There's no need. I wouldn't want to waste your time if there are chores to be done," I said.

"You'd be doing me a favor—I'll take any excuse to be out of the house for a little while longer."

I understood—there had been countless days I'd dragged my feet because I hadn't wanted to face Nesta's barbed insults, my father's sad eyes, or Elain's clueless whining. And none of them had even raised a hand to me.

I gave the female a nod, pulled the bloody arrow from my quiver, and rinsed it off under the stream. Silence fell. The female said nothing else, and perhaps it would have been best to let the quiet stay unbroken. The chances were high a trip to gather water was a rare respite for her.

But I could feel her assessing gaze, and I struggled not to squirm under it. "Illyria is very beautiful," I blurted out awkwardly.

"It's a shithole."

"My shithole across the Wall didn't have mountains. It's prettier here, at least," I shook the excess water off the newly-clean arrow and slid it back into the quiver.

She snorted, lips tugging upward at the corners. "I'm Emerie."

"Feyre."

"I know. You're the Cursebreaker." Not awed, just matter-of-fact, which was a bit of a relief.

I scrubbed away the last of the dirt, dried off as best I could, then offered a hand to shake. Emerie took it, and I wasn't surprised that her grip was like iron, not with that straight-backed posture and sharp stare of hers.

I stayed while Emerie filled up her bucket, just talking a bit about Windhaven. She didn't offer up much about herself, and I didn't pry. But by the time she returned home, I'd learned what spices were in the Illyrian dish Cassian had brought to the townhouse the day I'd first trained with Rhys. Emerie had barked a laugh when I told her not to bother with advice on preparing it because I was an utterly hopeless cook.

Maybe I'd made a friend. But I'd also thought Lucien was a friend and he'd turned out to be assisting my kidnapper—I wasn't sure I trusted my judgement on that front anymore.

By the end of the day, Rhys, Cassian, and Azriel, had rounded up the rest of the rogue war-bands, and I'd broken the wings of the survivors. And as much as I wanted to go straight to the Weaver's cottage, I knew it was foolish to go so close to dark. Cassian planned to stay in Illyria, and Devlon was loyal enough not to release the prisoners under his nose in the dead of night or allow anyone else to manage it.

Rhys and I returned to the townhouse in need of a bath, so we took one together. We were both utterly exhausted—his eyes roved over me as I shucked off my leathers, but for once, he was silent.

I'd still snatched the long-handled sponge out of his hands and washed his wings for him. Even drained of energy, I wasn't about to forgo an opportunity to get my hands all over them. I took my time, appreciating the way the powerful muscles in his back rippled with every brush of my fingertips.

And once we were clean, he laid me out on his bed and licked until he'd wrung so much pleasure from me that I drifted into an easy sleep in his arms.

It had been exactly what we both needed. I could guess how he was feeling about a trip to Illyria with still-healing wings, and my mind was unable to keep replaying the sound of bones cracking when Rhys's tongue was sliding inside me.

My dreams were still horrifying—a bone-spear lancing through Rhys's eye, my hands covered in his blood—but I slept through the night and kept my dinner down. I woke alone in Rhys's bed that morning, which meant he'd probably slipped out once I'd drifted off. I suspected he'd had nightmares of his own, too.

I was pulling the belt of knives from my dresser when he winnowed behind me. "Allow me," he purred, right into my ear.

"I can do it myself," I said. After I'd mentioned chucking that knife at Tamlin, Azriel had showed me how to strap it on as part of my training to go Under the Mountain.

"I'm aware. That doesn't mean you have to."

He had a point, so I let him take it from me. I turned, and for a moment, we were chest-to-chest. He inhaled, drinking in my scent, and I lifted a hand to touch him.

But he dropped to his knees before I could. Flashing me a roguish grin, he spread open the web of leather and steel. My toes curled in my boots.

"Remind me of what you've been briefed on," he said as I stepped through the loops.

I did my best to ignore the steady brush of his hands as he set about adjusting and buckling and tightening things. "Knives only—no sword or bow or arrows. Don't touch anything that doesn't belong to me. Take my time to think about loopholes before agreeing on a bargain. Call for help if I need it. And stay alive before everything else," I recited.

"Precisely." He braced those strong, capable hands on my thighs and looked up at me. "You are more valuable than any treasure the Weaver could ever posses. If you need to leave the ring behind to come home to me, then that's what you do."

"I won't let it come to that."

Rhys got to his feet and kissed my cheek. "I believe you."

He winnowed us into a wood that was older, more aware, than any place I’d been.

The gnarled beech trees were tightly woven together, splattered and draped so thoroughly with moss and lichen that it was nearly impossible to see the bark beneath. The trees groaned—though there was no breeze to shift them. No, the air here was tight and stale.

So this was the Middle.

I followed Rhys through the trees, and the only sound was our footsteps. No birdsong or the snapping of twigs, nothing I was used to hearing in a forest. Just unnatural, ancient stillness.

We stopped before a clearing. A small, whitewashed cottage with a thatched roof and half-crumbling chimney sat in the center. Ordinary—almost mortal. There was even a well, its bucket perched on the stone lip, and a wood pile beneath one of the round windows of the cottage. No sound or light within—not even smoke puffed from the chimney.

I could hear faint, pretty humming coming from the cottage. Soothing, almost mesmerizing—it would have set me at ease if I didn't already know it was coming from the monster within. The sort of thing that might lure quarry into a snare.

But I was not prey. No—I was a huntress. A wolf. It took much more than that to fool me.

I started down the mossy earth path that paved the way to the door and didn't look back once. When I reached the threshold, I could hear her voice through the door. The Weaver's voice was sweet, clear, and beautiful.

“There were two sisters, they went playing, To see their father’s ships come sailing… And when they came unto the sea-brim The elder did push the younger in.”

I'd heard the song before, from humans. It was a favorite of the traveling musicians who sometimes passed through our village. And perhaps…she knew that, and the familiarity was intended to lull me, too.

I stayed perfectly still on the threshold for a long moment, the same freeze-watch-listen pattern I fell into as I hunted in the woods. Along with her voice, I could only hear the clatter of some device. So she was alone, then.

“Sometimes she sank, and sometimes she swam, Til her corpse came to the miller’s dam.”

I raised a hand to knock, but the door swung open on silent hinges, as if she'd rolled out a welcome mat just for me. I didn't move, just peered inside. My chest went tight, and I forced myself to keep my breathing even.

A large main room, with a small, shut door in the back. Floor-to-ceiling shelves lined the walls, crammed with bric-a-brac: books, shells, dolls, herbs, pottery, shoes, crystals, more books, jewels…From the ceiling and wood rafters hung all manner of chains, dead birds, dresses, ribbons, gnarled bits of wood, strands of pearls…

A junk shop—of some immortal hoarder.

I waited to feel power calling out to me, but…nothing happened. Perhaps, as part of the bargain, I'd need to ask her to hand the ring to me directly. If she even remembered where it was.

The Weaver of the Wood herself sat with her back to me. In the gloom of the cottage, I could just make out the ancient, cracked spinning wheel I'd heard along with her singing. In the cottage, it was far too dim to make out the thin white thread she was spinning. Was she blind, like the Wyrm….or could she see in the dark?

My eyes drifted to the soft fiber she was feeding into the wheel. It looked like wool, but some deep-seated instinct in the back of my brain told me it was not. The question wasn't what she was spinning, but who.

The shelf above her head was filled with cones upon cones of thread, and large bolts of woven fabric filled up the space next to her. Mother above, she must have made it from entire cities, whole armies or even nations. A handful of rebel Illyrians suddenly seemed like a pitiful offering.

But I still, I had to try. And if there really were some power for me to detect, perhaps I needed to be a bit closer. Out here, nothing was pulling me towards one object in particular.

As silently as I could, I took a step into the cottage. I froze, waited, breathed. Nothing. I took another, and then the door slammed shut.

The Weaver turned her face toward me.

Above her young, supple body, beneath her black, beautiful hair, her skin was gray—wrinkled and sagging and dry. And where eyes should have gleamed instead lay rotting black pits. Her lips had withered to nothing but deep, dark lines around a hole full of jagged stumps of teeth—like she had gnawed on too many bones.

Her nose—perhaps once pert and pretty, now half-caved in—flared as she sniffed in my direction. "Well met, High Lady."

[beesmygod]

today is webcomics day. i am bea and i make "A Ghost Story" - part 3: sketch 1

ed note from the future: this got long. its going mostly under a readmore for everyone's sake. and i didnt even finish sketching, just trying to explain what is going through my mind while trying to sketch. look, if i write down my process in exhausting detail people will realize im completely insane. this is a net benefit to anyone trying to interact with me in the future who thinks i can be reasoned with. community service. thank you for allowing me to post this shit lol

hmmm. giving up on the first few panels for right now. here's what i'm thinking about as i sketch this:

too many of my panels were talking heads or constantly relied on one point perspective. i have been trying to work against this for a while with mixed results. sometimes the result is so bad i have to scrap what i did and start over but sometimes it's "good enough for TV"* and i hit publish on it. no risks, no reward after all. can't get better if you don't try.

in this first panel, i have two people having a back and forth conversation through a weird magic hole in the floor/wall. maxine is laying on a couch with hole right above her head. homestar runner will demonstrate what i mean:

however, there are logistical problems with maxine that homestar runner doesnt have. maxine's right shoulder is dislocated, so she can't lay on that side, or any side that would put pressure on the joint. im realizing i don't actually know what position would be most comfortable in her situation or how she would instinctually arrange her body to avoid pain. i start looking up videos from physical therapists on how they recommend patients sleep for some ideas.

also i start looking up what women look like sleeping on couches. how does the human body fold up. because this isn't it.

anyway, this was my first effort with the first panels.

for reference, the last page ends like this:

the top left of the sketch would have been the hopi clown back on the shelf with the "camera" tilting above it to reveal maxine. while this keeps the relevant object from the previous page in frame as a piece of connective tissue between updates....i'm struggling to fit the second character in. the one talking from the hole. maybe there's still hope for this? it's not terrible. initially i nuked it but maybe i can make this work.

fuck! she needs a pillow or two to make this work. this video is right, that DOES look naturally comfortable compared to the standard fetal position that would pull the affected shoulder inward. i didn't draw any pillows into the stupid establishing shot of the office bc its not the kind of couch you are expected to sleep on!!! this is a man's business office!!! i thought i was so smart!!

basically every couch comes with decorative pillows though, and the shot of the room didn't include the wall the "camera" was up against. my 2-point perspective failure might have paid off here lol. if i can establish that the second character is talking through the hole, he can use his rayman hands to reach across the room and get the pillow for her. it can be part of his personal campaign to show maxine he means her no immediate harm. the pillows were just out of frame. lurking. ok let's try it again. uhhhh after i eat some lunch

---

*my friend kelly had an anecdote from working in animation that im going to retell badly from memory. her boss would take the work she labored over to meet by deadline and would laugh at it, saying "ah, its terrible! but good enough for TV". and while extremely mean, he had a salient point: it never has to be perfect. it just needs to be good enough to be seen. sometimes i seriously think about this anecdote when im dissatisfied with my own art. it's bad. but it's good enough for tv.

[peachiseas]

okay i am very new here, so i need a through introduction to your mcs! like eve for example, pls post his whole biography o(╥﹏╥)o

fr tho, tell me anything and everything :D

TOOK SO DAMN LONG SINCE I WANTED TO DRAW A STEP ONE REF OF EVE BUT ITS GONNA TAKE A MINUTE so here are the sketches,,, Anyways- gonna introduce the main two mcs/ocs you'll see here: Eve Cortez Williams and Aaliyah Dubious

(dont mind my ipad scribbles on the screenshot iofqiowogi) Lemme put this under a readmore actually so yall dont get slammed with a long ass post:

Starting with Eve:

He's my Tamarack MC, but I figured since uh. all my art that was a given

He has a strained relationship with Qiu in step 1 but they become besties by step 2 and by step 3, they are like family to each other. If no one got Eve, Eve knows Qiu got them, amen 🙏

He comes out as transmasc by step 2, and by step 3 he gets top surgery and starts taking testosterone and firmly identifies as a butch lesbian

He's from the southern part of Miami, Florida. He's Golden Grove's residential florida man

He practices martial arts religiously, he's a big fan of Goku and Dragonball in general so he wants to be like his idol

His story deviates a bit from the OL2 generic mc story, he did have a dad! Opal and his dad wanted a kid but they both didn't want to get married and since the two of them were best friends, they decided to have a kid together (or well two but we'll talk about that later)

What's important to note from above is that his dad isn't around anymore because his father passed away a few months ago due to a car accident and Eve was hospitalized as a result

So by the time he's at Golden Grove, he's in anger stages of his grief and he doesn't want to be bothered. Which sucks cause hes neighbors with the two loudest kids on the block

Doesn't help he's a ESL speaker (English as a Second Language) and Golden Grove's population is majorly white so he has even harder of a time adjusting to it

He gets into fights in step 1... a Lot. Someone will look at him funny and they'll get punched in the face

He does adjust but he still doesn't like Golden Grove by step 3 but funnily enough, he moves away at the end of step 3 for treatment but moves back in step 4, crazy how that shit works huh

He has two emotional support bunnies; Bulma and Chi-Chi! He gets them in step 2, Qiu and Eve bond over them LMFAO

As for Aaliyah:

She's my Qiu MC, to the shocker of no one. Tamarack is also her best friend <3

Aaliyah is from New Orleans, Louisiana! She's full blooded Haitian and she has family in Haiti

She's also transfem! She passes for cis in step 1 thanks to hormone blockers and some makeup and then starts taking estrogen in step 2 and onwards

Her being black and transfemme is integral to her character and how she navigates around Golden Grove, she doesn't tell anyone she's trans until near the end of step 1. By step 3, the girl gang and Qiu knows shes trans

^^ That's because she had a very negative experience coming out to her community who previously loved her but flipped on her just as fast

So moving to Golden Grove was supposed to be a fresh start for her as herself but by that point she feels like she has to keep up her "cis-sona" lest she gets bullied again

She still gets bullied for other reasons in step 2 though (being a pretty black girl and the one person who has a crush on her is the most popular kid in school... its rough! 😭)

By step 4 though she is proud to call herself trans and will let people know!

She lovessss animals! And the animals love her back! She feeds them all the time and keeps animal food on her for that purpose when she goes to the park to read by herself, she got a flock of crows and stray cats that like to follow her

She has a cat named Kiki!!! Kiki loves everyone except Qiu though, Aaliyah doesnt know that though-

I hope that was enough of a info-dump! If anyone has anymore questions please ask i have so much lore please-

[psihawaii]

i know nothing about mashup week but i do wanna hear ur thoughts on trans scott

first of all: thank you for indulging me!!

second of all: obligatory LISTEN/READ MASHUP WEEK: MEGAMIX!! ill probably make a separate propaganda post anyway but plsss. mashup tournament that scott won three years ago that he now has to host and interview every1 and i like how he’s written better than most collabs (where hes not just. himself obviously.) write him. host says the tournament is a lot more like wii sports resort now and doesnt elaborate.

third of all: ooooooooookay so. This really got away from me im gonna put the rest under a readmore.

i’m gonna refer to them w/ they/them just for simplicity, but let the record show i don’t think they care that much either way/i switch up pronouns whenever i talk abt stw AHDHDJ (my main hc for a while was no pronouns scott just bc of how the descriptions are written hahahahahaha get itttttttttt)

i’ve Alwaysssss thought scott (the character obvi. do i have to keep clarifying that here too, im always gonna be referring to the character in this postSHDJDJ) was trans ever. since i joined the fandom in late 2021. Partly because borderline forever reminds me a lot of how i realized i was nonbinary (realizing somethings wrong and then course correcting by just… doing the opposite and wondering why that couldnt possibly be the solution.) but mostly because borderline forever is just Like That. . But more on that later

OUTSIDE OF THAT so much of how they act is sosososo deeply trans to me, or at the very least very egg-like and in denial deeply. THE THING that got me deep into stw initially was gifts of gaming because what the fuck man. scott’s very public breakdown because they feel extremely alienated from their peers and that this isn’t an isolated incident!!!!!! (finding other people unrelatable that is (and that’s probably also an autism and/or aroace thing but it can be all of those at once. Smile.) like so often is scott self deprecating abt how nobody cares abt them or their interests or how desperate they are for attention. dude.)

and like. okay so i made an entire nonbinary dysphoria comp already but there are so many. weird throwaway jokes. that aren’t… you know directly about them being trans/dysphoric but about how they hate facial hair or their voice or hated that they couldn’t have ‘girl toys’ growing up or that they shower fully clothed or that they’ll just. roleplay as a girl.

(and i was gonna have a whole bit about… i think you could make some kind of point about how scott ‘roleplays’ as a girl in specifically romantic/flirting contexts (tinder + speed dating) and how that could play jnto their dysphoria, but i also do just think they’re aroace. but there’s something there)

and no matter the intention of the jokes they’re still like. canon. (and i was gonna do a whole thing abt how scott the woz (the show) treats continuity basically being that. jokes + ‘throwaway lines’ establish canon things because they keep being brought back, and that lore is (with few exceptions) consistent. it’s fun. and meaning that these things are (assumedly) things scott thinks/does/how they act even off screen.)

and also i guess if im gonna talk abt trans scott i could At Least dedicate an entire paragraph to borderline forever because holy shit man. Before i rewatched a bunch of episodes this year, i of course had it in my head that borderline forever was totally trans coded but i sorta reasoned that that was my own headcanon clouding my perception and that it wouldnt be that blatant (<in quotes because im sure The Man Himself didnt intend for it to be read this way, but its fun to interpret it as such) but no it really is.

what do u mean theres been an unseen force in your life that’s always been there but you hadn’t noticed until you experienced internalized transphobia talked about something tangentially related, that’s now preventing you from living your life and doing the things you want to do. That isn’t directly harming you, and that other people can’t notice so they dismiss you. What do u mean.

Closing in is literally a song about how they can’t believe they’ve been living their life like this and how they feel like they’re suffocating from the idea of continuing to live like this. They saw the border glow. If you will (sorry.)

The ending of borderline forever is pretty… its… well i guess for me to really have definitive thoughts on it i would have to decide on what i think the allegory is because scott taking the border back serves different purposes for different ones, good and bad. In terms of the trans allegory, I initially considered that it was like him. Accepting transness as part of themselves and learning to live with it and move on from that (effectively transitioning just not. Outwardly (?)). Until my boyfriend (forced to watch every scott the woz lore episode for (for the most part) the first time with me) pointed out n. No it kinda just seems like they can’t imagine themselves as any different/better and thinks This Is As Good As It Gets so they retreat back to their status quo. And like. Huh. Yeah. 100% it’s still affecting them negatively and they hate it but they’re ignoring it now they saved the world and they never have to succumb to the horror of being understood and perceived i mean no one else has to worry abt this ever again.

like… two years ago i wrote a fic about nonbinary scott called Abiura Di Me (it’s never getting finished, i was originally gonna do a little comic to end things off but it felt kind of ehh. the only way i’m finishing it is if i completely start over. which who knows.) and, despite not rlly having this interpretation at the time, i did want to kind of explore scott like that, thinking they’re ‘content’ with their life now and wondering why they still feel unhappy/unfulfilled.

In general scott feels like a character that’s so… rigid and strict with their identity/attributes of themselves in a way that, often, makes them miserable, or at the very least in a way that they’re self deprecating abt like i said b4. (i.e. their virginity, and how it oscillates something they take pride in vs. something that they’re ashamed of (b4 accepting it in barrel blast)(youtuber slash tumblr user prim m, in description of their barrel blast mashup did a rlly interesting lil. few sentences of analysis abt this in particular!!), but is, to them at least, a key part of who they are that they have to keep asserting + how they talk abt themselves liking video games and how, similarly it oscillates between smthn that brings them a lot of joy and again, smthn that they’re ashamed of thats another reason they feel isolated, but is nonetheless. Probably THE defining thing about scott.)

And while this^ feels like a general internalized transphobia thing, it’s probably THE reason i think they’re nonbinary specifically, although i fuck with transfem scott severely. I really like the idea of scott unburdening themselves from any kind of labels and kinda just being happy Existing, it’s essentially what they already want/think they already have just with less expectation put upon them to perform. You could say. Preventing themselves from being put into a box or. Or yknow… some kind of blue borde-[i am killed.]

But anyway to answer your question trans scott is my lifeblood i love them a lot. I like… half joke their egg has been fully cracked now bc of the bits they’re pulling now (mainly. Changing their name in same name, different game and. all of gamer products.) (and side note even though i can glean Transness from any1 of these jokes and that… in a lot of cases scott Is the butt of the joke in them they don’t rlly feel meanspirited most of the time. whether thats bc im in denial ro theres smthn to it thats any1s guess. Tee hee.) i think they’re figuring stuff out and how they want to be perceived and if this is really something they want for themselves (is, but going abt it weirdly/making a joke of it and not taking it seriously (again, goes w the whole self deprecating rigid identity thing!!)

I don’t think scott changes much upon transitioning. Even though i think in the stw universe hrt/gender affirming surgery does… pretty much whatever you want it to and none of what you don’t want (i’m going off the… one ama where he said smthn along the lines of the stw universe is a perfect bubble where nothing bad happens + being able to get treated for murder + how i think scott the real person would think that kinda stuff works AHDNDIJDDJ and also cus i think its funny) i dont think scott would Want to change much physically. But i really like the idea of them keeping dyed blue bits framing their face (get it.) + slightly longer hair. and boobs cause i think thats awesome. personality wise they’re exactly the same and still suck though. But w/o shame and i love them

[fishing-lesbian-catgirl]

genuine question: how can we use this website to be less annoying to others?

Glad to give my thoughts. Like I said, I’m very petty and most of this stuff probably isn’t as big a deal to most people. Anyway I’m bad at being brief so I added a readmore. Here are my personal rules:

1: Don’t add anything to the body of a post unless you have something that you really feel will add some degree of value, meaning, humor, context, or at least something to people further down the reblog chain.

This is the most important rule. Adding something to a post makes it longer, it makes it so everyone who reblogs it in the chain after you has to see it. If you have nothing to add but “wow” or “holy shit” you are lengthening the post for no reason. Those reactions can easily go in the tags.

This is also the reason I think gimmick blogs are so annoying. It’s one thing for a “heritage post” blog to reblog things related to its respective gimmick. Simply reblogging them puts that thing on their blog, so anyone looking at it or following them because they want to see “heritage posts” will see it. But they go a step further and add “X heritage post” for no real reason other than to brand the post as theirs.

When I see a post that I like that has useless additions that take up space while adding nothing I get mildly annoyed and go to the reblog of the person who reblogged it before they did just to trim the useless comments off. But if that person deactivated then I can’t trim the comment. Tumblr lets you trim to the original post without any of the additions regardless of if op is deactivated or not with the little X on the reblog menu, but only to the original post. It’s better than nothing though

This whole point is, to me, a bit of tumblr etiquette that makes it so you don’t have to see unrelated comments from someone you don’t follow just because they thought to add a pointless comment way up the chain. This definitely is petty, but if you remember how the old tumblr formatting worked, this was extremely important because each addition took up even more screen space with the line to the next persons url and squished the original post into smaller and smaller spaces. So that’s probably why I feel so strongly about it even though it doesn’t matter as much anymore.

2: The tags are mostly your free space to say what you want, BUT try and respect that OP will likely see them.

A LOT of communication done on this website is done through talking in the tags. That’s not what they were originally meant for but that doesn’t matter anymore. People will likely be looking in their notes to see tags by their mutuals.

The original poster can and will see every tag on a post, unless they delete the post or mute notifications. Mute notifications seems like it doesn’t work, but that’s because it only mutes future notifications on the post, the tags in your notes before muting will still be there regardless

This is to say that in most situations, if the op is someone like me who uses their notes to communicate with their mutuals and others in their communities, your irrelevant tags might also be there and annoy them. So use courtesy when tagging. Thankfully tumblr cuts off tags after a certain point on the notes page but still keep it in mind. I go overboard writing mini essays in the tags all the time, and while I do think that is a little annoying I do it anyway so I can’t blame people.

3: Keep blorbo tagging to a minimum if you can help it.

This is probably my most controversial stance, but blorbo tagging can be really annoying in certain circumstances.

The biggest offender to me are tagging make characters on posts about women. I don’t care that you think he’s your babygirl or whatever, I find this extremely annoying. I get it, sometimes a post fits your character really closely but the gender is wrong, but usually it doesn’t and they’re just doing this on any post even slightly related to a single aspect of a male character they care about. Often because most tumblr fandom people couldn’t be bothered to care about female characters if that was the only way to escape a saw trap alive.

There are other blorbo tag type things that annoy me, and again I’m a petty bitch, so take it with a grain of salt. But to me this one is a little personal (for lack of a better word). One of my first big posts on this blog was about wizard girls leaning in to kiss and having the brims of their hats get in the way. I didn’t mind the blorbo tagging about men that much, but they got less and less related to the post that it was annoying. The last straw before I deleted the post (back when I didn’t realize mute notifications actually worked. It might not have at the time) was a tag about their male blorbos leaning in to kiss and their belt buckles got in the way???

Idk I just find blorbo tagging in general mildly annoying and only do it when the post is an extremely perfect fit for on the characters I care about. I often block people for blorbo tagging about characters from things I dislike, I’m petty and the block button is fun for me to press, so I do that often. :)

4: NOT EVERY POST IS ABOUT YOU!!!

If you see a post that isn’t about you or your demographics or gender or whatever, you really don’t need to make it about you. That will very likely annoy op, especially because no one would have anything against you if you went and wrote your own post inspired by whatever the post in question said.

Not every post about lesbians needs to be made about gay men. Not every post about trans women needs to be made about trans men. Not every post about women needs to be made about men. And probably most important:

Not every post needs to be made about white people!

I know you might be thinking how writing something in the tags about your experience as a white person relating to what op is talking about, but I promise you they don’t want to hear it from us. They almost certainly are seeing tags from other white people because for some reason we can’t seem to see someone posting about issues of racism without having either the “I’m sorry for being white” or “white devils advocate” voices appear in our heads, just ignore it. Bite your tongue and reblog or move on for the love of god stop pestering the op.

Obviously the lesbian, trans women, and women ones are the ones I see in my notes that are annoying. But I can’t pretend I haven’t seen other white people say some really unnecessary shit in the tags / haven’t seen posts by nonwhite people who are clearly annoyed about how we always make everything about us.

Remember, you can always write your own post!

5: OP didn’t “turn off replies”

This feels like something that wouldn’t happen that often, but multiple times when I’ve made even mildly controversial takes about like video games or whatever, people will either add in a reblog or send me an ask complaining that I “turned off replies because I was afraid of hearing them disagree” usually followed by them calling me a coward. It’s very simple, I have reply settings so that people I follow and people who have followed me for at least like a week can reply, that’s it. I don’t have replies from everyone on because most people outside of those categories I don’t care about their opinions and they are annoying. If you can’t reply, that’s probably why. And if they actually did turn off replies, that’s because they don’t want replies, especially from people like the ones I just described.

6: I actually don’t have a problem with spam reblogging

This might seem backwards given my other stances on things taking up unnecessary space like useless comments, but I really don’t mind spam reblogs. I frequently do it when I see art I really like or when there’s a post that really resonates with me. Yes, it is annoying! No, I probably won’t stop. I do it so I can’t judge other people who do too. I am trying to keep it to like 5 times at most though, any more is just overkill.

7: OP is a stranger, not your friend

This one applies basically everywhere on the internet, but unless the person who made the post is someone who is like a mutual or someone that’s you’ve interacted with a lot before, they’re probably a stranger. Don’t try to be “playfully rude” or overly familiar. It’s annoying and weird and you will get blocked.

8: If you’re sending an anonymous ask, remember that OP is not going to take you in good faith most of the time

A lot of anon asks aren’t meant to be malicious, but a lot of others are. Bait, hate mail, insults, you name it, there’s a very good reason people like me assume every anon is sent in bad faith for some purpose. If you are going to send an anon ask, try to make it clear that you genuinely just want to ask a question and that you aren’t trying to trick op into saying something you can use to write a callout post against her or whatever.

You did that in this very ask thing and that’s why I’m writing out this long post instead of deleting it or letting it rot in the inbox.

9: Prev Tags etiquette / “Peer Reviewed” Tags

The usage of “prev tags” is controversial, a lot of people have different opinions on it. But with all the changes they made last year that made it harder to see the tags of the person before the person who’s reblog you are viewing, I think prev tags etiquette has changed.

My personal rules for prev tags are to copy the tags into my own tags, and then follow them up with a tag that says “<- prev tags”. Unfortunately tumblr tags convert dashes into spaces for some reason so it ends up looking like “< prev tags”. I’m stubborn and don’t want to like use an emoji arrow though. Anyway, tumblr mobile conveniently allows you to copy the tags of the person you are reblogging from surprisingly easily which I appreciate.

Unlike previous tags, which stay in the tags and don’t turn into an addition to the post, “peer reviewed” tags as they are sometimes called do get added to the post permanently for the remaining blog chain.

The unfortunate truth about this website is that some people have bad opinions on what qualifies as being meaningful enough to be cemented as an addition to the post via “peer review”. As such, the phrase “how could you leave this in the tags 🤣” has essentially become another “you sir have won the internet 🤣”

The shitty part about that is sometimes there are good and meaningful additions in the tags that are worth being added to the post as a whole. But you can add someone’s tags to a post without saying “how could you leave this in the tags”. Anyway this one is more subjective and hard to define so I hope I got my point across at least somewhat.

Anyway, there are probably a few other rules I personally follow that I’m not thinking about right now, but just follow general internet etiquette and try to keep in mind that op is a person who will likely read whatever you type, that covers most things tbh! Thanks for reading if you somehow read this far. Hope this helped! If it didn’t, oh well, I did try and warn you I’m petty and have strong opinions about things that usually don’t matter afterall

[inkblackorchid]

Sigh.

Screw it, I have to talk about it. Watching episodes 56 and 57, but especially the latter, hurts my heart every time I do it. Yusei has had some emotional moments up until this point, but I would, without the shadow of a doubt, claim that this is definitely his most emotional moment in the entire show. And the thing is, it's so unnecessary, and not in the "this is a poor writing decision"-kind of way. Quite the opposite. Allow me to elaborate under the readmore because I have a feeling this post is going to get long.

A question I had for a long while before I really started bothering to analyse the show, especially for fic writing, was when and how Yusei found out that his parents were leading developers in the Moment reactor that ended up causing Satellite's separation, killed presumably hundreds of people, and caused a lot of the misery in his own life, too. The thing is, the show never gives a definitive answer to that. Only context clues. We can infer from Yusei's reaction the first time Goodwin mentions his father and the Moment research before the signers depart for Satellite that this circumstance isn't news to him. Furthermore, we can infer from Crow's reaction to the impassioned speech Yusei gives in episode 57 that he must have known about his parents' identities for a while.

Personally, I take this to mean that Yusei has known about his parents' involvement in the Moment research for several years at this point—in fact, I'd go as far as saying that he's known about it since his childhood, and there's a reason why I think that: To a child, the line of thinking "my dad developed this giant machine that ended up blowing up and killing a lot of people, even many of my friends' parents" makes complete sense. (Even taking into account the cover-up the city did, pretending the whole explosion was a tectonic shift—because you can't convince me even for one second that the people in Satellite who lived close enough to the reactor didn't see that the Moment explosion happened first.) And I really feel the need to stress that this explanation is something I think especially a child could have come up with. Because with all the context the show gives us about the Zero Reverse incident, it's easy to see that there were a lot more factors involved there than just "man built bad machine, bad machine exploded". In fact, this drives me up a wall so badly I need to dig into it for a second.

With all the exposition Roman/Rudger gives us in this duel, we learn several things about the late Professor Fudo. Chiefly among them, three things: He was extremely smart, he had a project with the potential to change the future on his hands, and most of all, he was extremely passionate about that project, to the point of Roman/Rudger making this comparison:

The reason I'm mentioning that is because despite all the above-mentioned factors, Professor Fudo was 100%, completely ready to shut down his entire project when he realised it could become dangerous for the city and its people. And as someone who's worked with people engrossed in their own research projects, albeit in a completely different field, let me just say this: Giving up a project of this scale is not a decision you make lightly. Scientific research, as intriguing as it sounds and looks from the outside, can be an absolutely draining affair of trying to get funding for an idea, and fighting to keep that funding later down the line, sometimes even forcing you to pay for things with your own money for a while just to keep the project alive. At a point like the one Yusei's dad was at here, this project would have already had exorbitant amounts of money put towards it, not to speak of countless hours of labour from qualified professionals. This would have been a humongous undertaking, not to speak of the fact that it was likely to be the thing that could have defined the Professor's entire career (even though I don't think that's why he was so invested in it). So I'm going to say it again, because this drives me nuts: Deciding to not simply change the direction of a project like this, to not simply try a different approach, but to instead step away, install containment seals and shut the thing down entirely, taking the whole damned idea back to the drawing board, is. not. a decision any self-respecting researcher would have made lightly. And that's without talking about the sponsors' reactions to the Professor deciding to shut the project down.

The Professor may not have been willing to risk the city populace's lives for this project, but the sponsors certainly were. And so was Roman/Rudger, because by that point, he'd already been tempted by the darkness to give in to his worst impulses. It's honestly tragic because with all the facts laid out like that—everything from the project going out of control due to factors Yusei's father couldn't control, to him deciding to shut down what would have been the project of a lifetime, to Iliaster using their shadowy machinations to tempt Roman/Rudger, to him replacing the Professor as head of the project at the sponsors' behest because they wanted a return on what money they invested into it, all the way up to Roman/Rudger purposefully blowing up the reactor in order to be reborn as a dark signer—I, for my part, couldn't find it in me to blame Yusei's dad for everything that happened. Sure, he's somewhere at the start of the causal chain that lead to the Zero Reverse, but saying it was his fault is vastly oversimplifying the whole dilemma, in my opinion. Unfortunately, we all know that there's one person who can't find it in himself to forgive Professor Fudo for being part of the chain of events that led to the Zero Reverse.

And you know what makes this extra painful? Not only is Yusei blaming his dad, who was trying his damndest to prevent this catastrophe, for what happened, he goes as far as blaming himself for it, too, on behalf of being the late Professor's son. What drives me absolutely insane about this is that there's no need for him to. Even if the Professor had, somehow, been directly responsible for the Zero Reverse, that would still not make Yusei, his son, in any way culpable. None of what happened was even remotely Yusei's fault, and he couldn't have done anything to prevent it, either. He was an infant. This is what I meant by it being unnecessary above—Yusei is carrying this insane amount of guilt around, even though there's no reason for him to. Though I don't think he could be convinced of it, come hell or high water, Yusei is blameless when it comes to the Zero Reverse. What kills me is that Crow even tells him as much:

But. BUT. There's one more thing I absolutely need to stress: While seeing Yusei shoulder all this blame for a thing he's not responsible for and that I don't consider his father responsible for, either, is painful to watch, my frustration with it does not come from the fact that I consider it sloppy writing, or a character inconsistency, or any other such thing. In fact, I think it's the opposite. Granted, this is obviously built on my headcanon that Yusei has known who his parents were since he was a child, and thus came up with his rather simplistic, causal explanation of "my father invented a thing that caused a horrible catastrophe" without looking at (or even being able to look at, considering how hush-hush the public maintenance department and M.I.D.S. apparently kept the Zero Reverse thing) all the additional factors surrounding the Zero Reverse. And that this simplistic, condemning view of his father and his past had several years to fester, at that. But assuming for a second that this guess of mine is correct, I think the writing around Yusei's guilt complex is actually spot-on. Being confronted with this as a child, he would jump to the conclusion that his father was the reason the catastrophe that changed the lives of everyone he cares about for the worse happened. He would think that as that man's son, he has a responsibility to make up for his father's devastating mistake. And he would willingly put on blinkers, never stopping to consider whether there could have been other factors that contributed to causing the catastrophe, and never stopping to consider whether the friends he's so dedicated to compensating for the losses his father caused them even actually think that he's to blame.

It's like. My frustration with this aspect of Yusei's character is endless. I want to shake him and tell him to stop being so stupid and taking the blame for this insane thing. But at the same time? That's good character writing. That makes perfect sense. And my frustration is earned because I can't help but feel that this is exactly what Yusei's complex is supposed to evoke. So yeah. I love this writing choice, and I want to throw something against the wall every time Yusei gives this speech.

[emstargazer]

Not sure if these will turn out to be just recurring OCs with a brief backstory or a full-on written fanfic centered around these two or some other format, but either way... Berserker Armor inspired Titan whose Pilot mimics the arsenal Guts uses throughout the manga when paired together with the Titan's loadout and whose relationship with them has an ominous side reminiscent of Guts and the Beast of Darkness.

Does anyone on planet Earth see the vision?

For which audience is this post supposed to cater, you ask?

Me, I am the audience.

Don't worry, I'll be reasonable and put my self-indulgent rambling under a readmore. Beware of some minor spoilers for Berserk.

Considering Vanguard-class Titans are "almost as well armored as a Legion, with the dash capacity of a Ronin" I feel like it fits best class-wise, but it would be a heavily modified Vanguard-based that sacrifices a lot of its defensive capabilities for an incredibly aggressive self-destructive approach to combat. It would also take some design inspiration from Ronin Prime, specifically the concept art (inheriting similar legs and the plates on its sides that remind me of air vents, which I may repurpose to introduce a cooling system) while still preserving the overall structure of a Vanguard. So think of Ronin Prime(Concept) +BT(or FS-1014 or SDV) +The Armor.

They utilize a unique Sword Core that would at first be identical to the regular until it one day develops to have the same, yet way amplified benefits with one additional being the ability to "keep itself together". What I mean by that is while the core's active it's able to keep most of its components functional despite sustaining damage that would otherwise prove to be fatal by using technology similar to the Gravity Star ordnance which upon activation would bend space so that said components can still work in unison, albeit semi-efficiently. It doesn't necessarily repair, but it does let you keep on going for longer even after your Doomed State health bar has completely depleted(yeah, I'm also trying to look at this from a gameplay perspective).

Hmm, sounds familiar.

But the real fun lies in its major drawbacks. First of all, if it does get to a certain point of no return, you won't be able to eject and once the Titan Core ability ends an explosion is imminent. Basically making every instance you use the core into a likely suicide mission. A risky last resort rather than an ultimate ability.

Secondly‚ after every usage the neural link gnaws at your psyche, leaving you with a mental scar, meaning your mind(notably your judgement and self-control) gradually deteriorates over time.

This issue derives from the very nature of the Titan, because its AI is designed to have such a strong link that it inadvertently has access to something which can only be detrimental in the long run and that is the deeper unconscious layer of the Pilot's Mind.

Initially, Titan's AI will have its own set of characteristics, but the better the link becomes, the Titan's control over filtering those unconscious thoughts will falter. Until eventually, the AI splits into 2:

The seemingly original, true self(I know, one may argue that's not the right choice of words, but I disagree considering we've seen how far the Titan's AI can evolve with BT)

An independent personification of the Pilot's Jungian Shadow(I wonder what kind of dynamic will they and the Pilot have, image below definitely unrelated c;)

Now, about the Pilot. Anything relating to their backstory before being assigned with [insert Titan's designated name](been researching military alphabet and code words for ideas, still haven't thought of something that sticks) is currently undetermined.

What is set in stone is they don't have any idea either due to being revived as an advanced simulacrum, until they achieve a complete awakening(like Ash or Revenant) by the unique link they've established as such. The Titan could give insight into the inner workings of their mind that they couldn't fathom as a human, let alone a digital backup of human consciousness with restrictions(ego retention system).

Once awakened, their main objective is to uncover lost memories through the use of said link. The catch is in the drawbacks and the eventual separation of the Titan's AI.

First one is mostly self-explanatory, even in the case that the Pilot's mind component remains intact and gets miraculously brought back into a spare robotic body, it would certainly be a limited resource(same with the Titan) and there would always be a high chance of data corruption.

Second one turns their journey into a ticking time bomb, making every subsequent combat encounter push the Pilot closer to inescapable insanity.

Birth of the second AI inside the datacore causes the Titan's original self to fight for control and question whether the other one is a part of who they are despite originating from someone else, while the Pilot can only bring words of encouragement from inside the chassis.

A story about a Titan and Pilot who both struggle with their identity leading them to form a connection that goes beyond the neural link itself. Exploring how in the journey of self-discovery what one might find to be a part of who they are may in fact be working against them and despite that one should learn to accept it and acknowledge its existence in order to have any control over it. All while affirming interpersonal connection as one of the necessary steps in learning such a lesson.

With hopefully a lot of emotional damage sprinkled along the road.

c:

To the arsenal we go, Titan's loadout would consist of:

an energy-based weapon with a repeating crossbow-like mechanism visually resembling the Ballista from Doom Eternal.

And, you guessed it, The Giant Ass Sword which is preferably going to be unnecessarily longer and thicker than Ronin's canon broadsword to the point where it should theoretically be ineffective, but as a consequence of their unique fighting style and years of accumulated battle experience they'd be able to find unconventional ways to use such attributes to their advantage. Why not use a standard edition broadsword like all the others? Both of them got too attached to their sweet heap of metal^_^. Another significant distinction from it is that instead of using electric charge to produce the Arc Wave, it would harness it to send a shockwave through both the "phase dimension"(one used by Ronin, Simulacra Pilots and others) and our own making it able to damage even those currently occupying the alternate dimension.

Again, one might guess where the general idea comes from.

When it comes to the Pilot's design, I'm keeping it mostly unknown for now. They will be using Pulse Blade since it's the closest thing to Guts' throwing knives and one of their arms will have a use as an Anti-Titan weapon. As ordnance, a large amount of miniature frag grenades.

Ok, I think going into deeper intricacies would be overkill, so I'll put my foot on the brake here.

If you've read this far, I'm beyond grateful you took your time to go through the amalgam of my sporadic unorganized ideas.

Here's a treat!

[solarishashernoseinabook]

SOLAR okay hi!! So I’ve noticed a while ago that some people will write image IDs in alt text and also paste them in the post! And I was wondering the purpose of that- but I sorta just forgot about it!

But!! I always write alt texts for my art, and other posts I make with images. Someone reblogged some of them and tagged “undescribed” and that confused me (for clarity, note that I am not like, offended by this or anything, only confused! I just don’t understand why :]!!)

so I was wondering if you know why that might be? The reason I ask you is because I don’t know who else I would ask D:

Basically I’m wondering if I should be putting the IDs in the post as well as in alt texts, or if it’s simply a matter of preference!

okay SO! This isn't necessarily an easy answer. There's a few components to this and different things to consider, so let's take it step by step, go over obvious information, and then get to the root of your question. This is not going under a cut, sorry folks but tumblr can be finicky and information under a readmore can get lost fairly easily.

DISCLAIMER: I don't require image descriptions in my daily life, but i've been writing them for four-ish years at this point. The information below is what I've gathered from several "how to do image descriptions" posts over the years. I'm open to any corrections, feedback, or additional information anyone can provide!

Why do people require image descriptions? Pretty simply, for one reason or another, a person can't access the contents of an image. They could be blind or low vision, or have a learning disability that makes reading difficult. An image description can either transcribe text in an image (e.g., a description might read "text saying i love birds") or describe the contents of a picture (e.g., "a cartoon image of a bird on a nest"). People with low/no vision, or who can't read, use a variety of accessibility aids to help them navigate the 'net.

What are some of these accessibility aids? They take various forms - and that's more important than you might think! Screen readers are the most obvious, but they're not used by everyone. Other people use dyslexia-friendly fonts, magnify text, or invert colours or use high-contrast mode to make reading text easier. However, none of these options work with plain images! Someone with dyslexia could probably see the image of a bird on a nest just fine, but may not be able to read the words "I love birds" in a screenshot. Someone with low vision might not be able to see either image. If an image has a description attached, the text of the description will be magnified, or its font will be changed, or it'll be high contrast, or whatever else that person needs, and they can access the image via its description.

Alt text, image descriptions, and pros and cons of each So, what are some of the benefits of alt text? Because alt text is attached to an image, people using screen readers will have the description read to them as soon as they get to the image (if an image has no alt text, the screen reader will just say "image"). Because it's attached to an image, it's harder to lose it - if a post originally doesn't contain image descriptions and someone reblogs with a description later on, there are still going to be reblog chains that don't have the description attached to them. Some people also prefer alt text because image descriptions can make a post look "messy" - some people are less likely to reblog posts with visible image descriptions attached to them. And, for people who use screen readers, it can be really annoying to just hear "image" without knowing if it's followed by a description or not. But as we established, not all people who need image descriptions use screen readers, and not all accessibility aids work with alt text. For people who magnify text, for example, alt text often gets cut off. This is a bit easier to deal with on desktop - there's an XKit extension that puts alt text in a grey box below the image - but on mobile, this can be a real problem. As yet, I don't know for sure if high contrast, inverted colours, or accessible fonts work with alt text on mobile or in the visible alt text the XKit extension provides (if you know, please, tell me!) - but I know they work for image descriptions posted after an image. Alt text is great, but image descriptions are, at the moment, more consistently accessible.

So what should I use? Both? While either alt text or image descriptions are good, the consensus among those who need them seems to be to use one or the other, not both on the same post. For people who use screen readers, hearing the alt text only to immediately hear it repeated can be annoying. I'll use alt text if it's only going to be a couple of words or a single line, but otherwise I tend to use the alt text to say "image described below" to reassure those with screen readers.

But WHY are people tagging my post as undescribed? Bestie you wouldn't believe what people can miss. I've got a viral post that's got a GIF followed by a very obvious image description and it gets tagged as undescribed every so often. If you're using mainly alt text, it's possible that it's not visible on mobile yet - the tumblr app only shows the little alt text box about half the time. Or people get lazy and forget to check, or force of habit means they tag undescribed even though they did notice. Just tag them in the replies and point out that the description is actually there - the undescribed tag exists because a lot of people who need descriptions filter that tag so they don't waste their time on posts they can't access, and they deserve to see accessible posts!

[hiemaldesirae]

Question: how would your characterization of demon Alastor react to finding out for the last 60+ years that what he thought was Vox breaking up with him was actually Demon!Valentino drugging/r**ping him with his venom/aphrodisiac and Vox has No memory of what he and Alastor actually had? No memory of anything except maybe the last month? And to find out Valentino only did this so Vox (who was becoming a TV mogul) would put his pornos on the tv. How would he help Vox remember? What would he do to Valentino? Would Velvette also suffer?

okay so. nonny, i wont blame you for not knowing, especially since ive never explicitly talked about it on main, but for future reference, im not that big on the whole abusive staticmoth dynamic. i can see why others enjoy it, and i do read stories with it from time to time simply because the premise captivates me that much, but in general id say i much more prefer a version where val and vox are at the very least best friends if not crossing into the sort of blurry best friends who smooch sometimes territory.

now having said that, i'll still answer your question because again, not very fair of me to just brush you off for no reason when i never made my preferences clear beforehand. (this gets long, so i'll leave a readmore.) warning: my demon radiostatics are always freak4freak no matter what. so this does get a little iffy in terms of ethics

my favourite interpretation of radiostatic is two sickos who are just as closely obsessed with each other, so in the unlikely case that al would let vox go for that long, when he realizes again the first thing he's going to do is go and. well. for lack of a better term, atticwife him (i hope to god this isn't just a term used in east asian fandoms because if i have to explain this ill eat lead). maybe after a little bit of time, he'll allow vox some liberties, but even then it'd be very little. ill put it this way- imagine the most toxic irl relationship you can: someone who tracks and micromanages their partners every move, barely lets them outside the house without going with them, monitors every friendship that they allow their partner to have, and there you have it. thats radiostatic! ah, young love. so sweet, dont you think? after all, alastor can't risk his muse's eyes slipping off him again. he's been deprived of that attention for far too long, and it wasn't even by his own doing! that's an offense in and of itself.

now im assuming that its only val who's doing the exploitation here so presumably vel would have no hand in any of the mess, and perhaps not even be fully aware of the nuances behind the scenes. i mean, it wouldn't really matter either way because once alastor finds out the reason why his other half hasnt been reciprocating their insane little song and dance he's getting rid of any and all obstacles, permanently. vox doesnt need anyone else so long as he has him- and hey, he was friends with him, rosie and husk first, so its not even as if its much of a loss. the only people he'd presumably leave alive would be voxs own contracted souls, and even then thats a bit of a gamble depending on just how bad i want the both of them to be: without his contracted souls, vox would be weaker and more susceptible to whatever alastor wants, so i guess its a matter of whether or not i want the freak4freak relationship where theyre both equally strong but vox willingly submits because he gets more thrill out of it that way or whether i want freak4freak where vox has to struggle way harder and still ends up giving in anyway because al is simply stronger

as for what he'd actually *do* to val. i mean. he does still have that radio broadcast of his, doesn't he? i think you can probably put the pieces together. the thing with animal sinners is that theres simply so many parts of them to break... show-wise, i never understood how overlords like alastor or val could even rise to their position, with the amount of weak spots they must have. that broken antenna vox and val share is certainly something that speaks to their higher vulnerability. and moth wings are especially fragile: i owned little silkworm moths at one point (they were my babies, i loved them for the month or so i got to care for them) but their wings were so thin they were wearing holes in them by the second or third day. val's coat-wings look much thicker in comparison, but of course, my perception is limited by the show only. so i mean, who knows? im sure whatever happens, itll make the best entertainment in al's eyes :)

[gren-arlio]

Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to Part 3 of Waku Puyo Extras. (And a fairly big announcement for translations.)

Ah, I'm running out of images, the Waku Puyo images, so the tride and true "Post Manga panels I do understand," got me covered. If I don't got anyone on my side, I know the Waku Puyo Manga does. Amen.

(Context for this page and a few others is Satan having a nightmare about Schezo and Arle marrying, and wakes up in a cold sweat. It's so goofy, and seems exactly like a Satan Nightmare, but the art goes hard.)

Heya, Gren here, and welcome to Part 3 of Waku Puyo Extras, the series where I find random videos about a route and go off from there because, even though I'm in the English Puyo Puyo Community Discord and have been lurking in the lore channel for like 3 years, I'm not verified yet because I'm scared to speak to the Ciel Bot. So if a mod or something SOMEHOW sees this...what're the odds for one, and two, idk we can talk via DM's or somethin' about lore.

(I really do want to speak there someday. Seems fun, I'll probably quietly add some details for this game onto specific characters pages.)

That aside, I'm here today to provide the community with more text and stuff to read.

Today's post will cover the following scraps I found while looking for stuff:

A video where Serilly appears again. Once again, Schezo and Serilly speak to each other, small but interesting.

A video that has a Rulue encounter and...that's about it. I'm really looking for scraps. Today doesn't have a whole lot.

Talk about the Manga for a bit. I plan to do this for most of the Extra Episodes, since it seems fun to do. Gonna specifically talk about Schezo and Serilly because...you know with everything going on, I think it's a nice start.

However, the scraps will become actual meals sooner or later because of two simple reasons. The first is that there's a whole video I'll translate that...has ALL 3 CHARACTERS...trading with Witch, starting next week, and that'll be Waku Puyo Extras Episode 4.

Yeah this girl really won't leave alone, its been like half a year of this stuff. Oh, what I do to translate. Oh and the video has Succubus too IG

Witch still is my 3rd favorite character though for the lunacy I've dealt with from her. Joking aside:

The REAL announcement:

About 2 weeks from now, I'll be trying my best to translate Arle's Route for this silly game.

That's right, I'm gonna do another Route that totally didn't take me 6 months to finish the main storyline. Waku Puyo Extras will still be real, trust me, but they'll be like filler episodes like in Dragon Ball, bits I release if the current video I'm translating is taking too long and/or if I just randomly feel like it. I will still also be doing minor Schezo Route stuff as well, and still take requests for all routes, so as usual, if you got a goofy screenshot to send me, DM me.

Big announcement away, it's time for the videos themselves, starting with:

Serilly Stuff:

...I did say I'm scraping for stuff. These things are so miniscule in the grand scheme that you could probably come to these posts just for the comedy act I try to put up.

The episode posted has been fully translated already, being Episode 3, for the record. Imma just translate the Serilly stuff.

But with that;

Timestamps: (...They're at the start of the video, but there's 2 different occasions, so...rip?)

Serilly 1: (0:05)

Serilly 2 (0:32)

...I wish I were kidding, it's that little. Lmao

With that out of the way, this marks the Readmore section of the post. Thanks for reading if you're not interested, and let's continue if you're enjoying this.

Serilly 1: (0:05)

Schezo:

This is such clean water, I can cleanse my heart there...

...Wait! What's a Dark Mage doing getting cleansed!?

Woman's Voice:

What're you doing here huffing by yourself?

Schezo:

Hm? I remember this voice from Water Paradise...

Serilly:

It's me, Serilly.

Schezo:

Oh, what're you doing here?

Serilly:

When I'm here, it feels like my mind and body are at ease.

Schezo:

...Yeah, seems like it.

Serilly:

I know, right?

(...And so, Schezo talked to Serilly for a bit.)

Schezo:

...I better get going.

Serilly;

Okay, but...come back soon!

Schezo:

Yeah, if I ever feel like it.

-----

Serilly 2:

Serilly:

Oh! Mr. Schezo!

Schezo:

Hey.

Serilly:

You're really here again!

Schezo:

(W-Why am I blushing!?)

Serilly:

???

(Schezo had a small chat with Serilly.)

Schezo:

...I'd better get going.

Serilly:

Okay, but...come back soon!

Schezo:

Yeah, if I feel like it.

-----

Yeah, so some speech repeats itself at the end, but hey, Schezo seems to enjoy her company, a rarity nowadays. I'll go deeper when the manga portion comes up but so far, that's what you're getting.

And now, The Rulue Stuff:

This goofy video here is actually Episode 6 of the translations I've done here. I just missed a single talk coming from Schezo and Rulue. (Not even Minotauros. Guy is just nothing now.)

I'm not gonna timestamp this one because it's a SINGLE interaction at the start. I promise I'll make this up somehow.

So, with that...here's the interaction.

-----

Rulue Interaction: (Start of the video)

Rulue:

Oh, you haven't given up your chase, have you?

Schezo:

Mind your own business. In fact, you should be the one to give up!

Rulue:

No more from you. That magical item will be mine.

Oh-ho-ho-ho, good luck on your wasted endeavors. (She says efforts here but...why not make her sound more sophisticated?)

Schezo:

That magic item will be useless for a meathead like you.

Yes, for the sake of the treasure, I cannot lose!

-----

And...that's all for the translations. Not much, but I'll compensate with the manga.

For those who are unaware, Waku Puyo has a manga that wildly differs from the story of the game. Lot of characters got redesigns, most notably Witch, Incubus and Honey Bee have a MUCH bigger role, Lagnus is real, and tags along with Arle, (I'll talk about that next Extras Episode.) and even some new faces.

Since the 10 image limit is goofy, I'm gonna limit myself to specific things about the Manga. Plan is:

Talk about Schezo and Serilly because there seems to be a lot with them going on in Waku Puyo as a whole. I'll also mention Honey Bee too.

Lagnus tagging along with Arle, along with a couple of goofy pages I found.

Maybe Rulue's side of stuff...? This one I'm iffy on right now so currently it's in the air.

Since I'm unfortunately incredibly committed to my work, I decided to translate the Serilly section of Volume 2 and 3 of the Waku Puyo Manga. (For the most part...)

Here's how it goes.

It actually starts with Serilly hearing noises from the lower floors and becomes nervous at that fact, hoping her only friend, Satan, will come to help her. Schezo and Honey Bee (his ally who has the hots for him,) find her and realize that during the fight with Suketoudara, he said that she isn't exactly a fighter, and they should try to reason with her.

Due to the 10 image limit, I'm skipping a good amount of pages and really showing off highlights. However, I'll explain the thing entirely. Here is the Google Drive with the Manga, courteously given by Puyo Preservation.

Schezo then tries to chase her, scaring her, and he grabs her arm, which leads to this page.

Honey Bee is pissed at the fact that they're holding hands and all that, meanwhile Schezo and Serilly are about as shocked. Serilly begins to actually sob, asking them to not bully her, while Schezo asks to give him the orb, and if she does, she won't get hurt. However, he's swinging his sword, which causes Serilly to get more nervous, leading to Schezo giving Bee his sword to not scare her off.

Surprisingly...it works. Serilly isn't as afraid as she was before, and Schezo asks if she know where the orb is, to which Serilly stutters a bit. For no reason, Honey Bee tries to threaten her, leading to Schezo hitting Bee away.

Serilly says they can't have the orb because her "friend," Satan, told her to guard it. Schezo gets mad at that, saying that a friend should be there for you, not be barking orders, and Bee herself adds onto that, saying that if he was her friend, why did he lock her in a room?

Unfortunately, Serilly says that she doesn't mind being locked here forever, as if she leaves, Satan will hate her, and she'll lose her only friend. She explains that she's never had a friend and was bullied all her life, so she doesn't want to risk it.

Finally, Schezo has enough and says that she Satan isn't her friend, and that he manipulated her, leading to a similar case of what happening during the game...Schezo giving therapy.

Honey Bee insults Serilly AGAIN for her actions, and Serilly sobs while saying she's sorry for everything, leaving Schezo speechless after smaking Bee away. (Unfortunately, 10 image limit. Won't be seen.)

However, the 3rd picture below is when Schezo tells her to stop crying and that he'll...be her friend, if only she gives up her unhappiness, which she agrees to.

The events are similar to the Game, even the part where Schezo thinks that he feels like he's preaching, and doesn't care if she's happy or not.

As Honey Bee basically insults her more, Suketoudara appears absolutely livid at what Schezo is doing to Serilly, and...basically tries to drown him. However, Serilly doesn't want to lose her new friend, so she rescues him, leaving Bee and Suketoudara shocked, even though Schezo had to save her too.

Leading to this.

This beautiful artwork.

Schezo knocks out Suke for a bit, and he and Serilly look at each other, before looking away, blushing, leading Bee to get upset with both of them, saying they probably flirted in the water.

Even though Bee is pissed at how Schezo is carrying Serilly, they're both ok, but Schezo sustained a injury to his forehead, which leads to Bee comically trying to wrap band-aids around him.

Suke wakes up, saying that was the first time he ever saw Serilly help someone like that, which even she's shocked by. Bee though, says that it's natural to help someone you care for. Serilly goes up to Schezo, and gives him the key to the orbs. After that, Schezo tells Suke to bring Serilly away from the place, which angers him, but agrees to, before Schezo and Bee walk away.

However, Serilly yells at them to stop, before asking Schezo if he'll meet with her again.

Shown below is Schezo saying yes, if he ever feels like it, much to Bee's chargin, before they set for the door...which has Incubus in it.

While it's just a section, it's a really, REALLY good section, and I feel like a writer/developer really wanted Schezo/Serilly to be real so they went all out here. And props to them, they did it well, and made some cool scenes.

With that...I believe this it the end. See you all next week.

Hope you enjoyed the show.

[rosanna-writer]

we said hello and your eyes look like coming home (19/?)

Summary: A canon-divergent AU where the bond snaps for Rhys on Calanmai, Feyre unwittingly accepts it, and Fire Night magic proves to be more transformative than anyone bargained for. Feyre drags a mate she hardly knows out from Under the Mountain, then puts him back together as war with Hybern approaches. Warnings: dubious consent, canon-typical sexual violence, canon-typical violence Rating: Explicit Chapter Word Count: ~3.2k

More of Feyre settling into her place in the Night Court and understanding exactly what it means to be Lady of Night. Some dialogue and text is lifted directly from A Court of Mist and Fury.

Read on AO3 or you can find the nineteenth chapter below the readmore.

ch. 1 - 10 | ch. 11 - she underestimated just who she was stealing from | ch. 12 - no amount of freedom gets you clean | ch. 13 - stay stay stay | ch. 14 - call it what you want to | ch. 15 - even when you're sleeping, keep your eyes open | ch. 16 - you drew stars around my scars | ch. 17 - do you remember all the city lights on the water? | ch. 18 - and it smells like me | ch. 19 - your mom's ring in your pocket

The next morning, I ate breakfast standing in the space between Rhys's back and his wing, peering over his shoulder as we both read the latest report from Azriel. The spymaster's words were short and to the point—I understood most of it, and Rhys answered my questions about what I didn't.

The conclusions were clear enough. Despite Azriel's extensive network of informants, there was no new evidence of the attackers' identity, and the Cesere trove had been completely looted. Nothing had turned up for sale on the black market. And strangely, a complete accounting of whatever had been inside of the temple was impossible to find. No survivors meant nothing but dead ends.

I was still finishing my tea when Amren arrived with a stack of books that was nearly half her height. Slips of paper with handwritten notes were shoved between the pages of all of them, and some of the titles were in languages I didn't recognize.

Amren dropped the stack unceremoniously onto the kitchen table. "Research. As requested before you leave for Illyria, Rhysand."

"Research on what?" I said.

"On you, girl. And whatever power has been thrumming in your veins since you were Made."

I downed the last of my tea—I wasn't sure I wanted to talk about whatever remnant of the Great Rite still lived within me. It was something I tried not to think about. In the past couple of months, I'd gotten used to ignoring it, though the echo was still constant.

"And I assume you found something, or we wouldn't be having this conversation," Rhys said.

"I have theories, but books aren't enough to prove anything—we'll have to run tests."

I set down my empty cup, and Rhys rested a hand on my lower back. If Amren hadn't been there, I would have leaned into his touch.

"We don't have time for dramatics today. Please explain," Rhys said, and it was the closest anyone, even a High Lord, ever got to barking an order at her. From the way Rhys stood a hair closer to me than usual, I could tell it stemmed from protective instinct.

"Feyre has been claimed by the Night Court, and she's mated to its High Lord. It stands to reason that she's a creature of Night. But at the same time, her Making was a boon from Spring Court magic after taking Tamlin's place in the Great Rite. She may be…something else entirely."

An oily knot of dread settled in the pit of my stomach. "If Tamlin thinks I stole power from him and swore fealty to Rhys on Calanmai…" I said.

Perhaps being the Cursebreaker wouldn't be enough to keep Tamlin from hunting me and seeking revenge if he thought I'd worked against him. Saving all of Prythian might not matter in the face of the feud between Night and Spring.

Rhys let out a low growl. He must have been thinking along the same lines.

"Agreed," Amren said with a curt nod in his direction, "and because treasure troves with objects from both Spring and Night are few and far between, it's time to stop stalling. You have a promise to keep."

"Find another method," Rhys said. Darkness began to leak from him, the inky whorls stretching in my direction. Tendrils wound around my arm but didn't squeeze.

"Feyre has to go claim it anyway."

"She's already proven more than enough."

"Spare me, Rhysand. We all know what you were thinking when you put that bargain tattoo on her finger."

A muscle feathered in Rhys's jaw. Amren rolled her eyes.

"Tell me what you're talking about this before this comes to blows," I snapped, shrugging Rhys's hand off my back.

When he glamoured me, Rhys kept the bargain tattoo visible on my ring finger now that we were back in the Night Court. He'd never actually promised me that the morning after Calanmai wouldn't be the last time we saw each other, so it had never faded. In truth, I'd grown a bit fond of it. But if there was something I hadn't been told about it…

Amren looked at Rhys, and there was something almost amused about the way the silver in her eyes swirled. He took a deep breath, clearly gathering himself. I crossed my arms and waited.

"There's a ring," Rhys said, and each word sounded as if it were ripped out of him. "An heirloom of my family, passed down from female to female. My sister wasn't born yet, so my mother gave it to me when I was a boy. A reminder that she was always with me, even during the worst of my training, and I safeguarded it with preserving spells, the way our kind do for anything valuable. When I reached my majority, she took the ring away and gave it to an ancient, wicked creature called the Weaver, who added it to the collection of treasures she amassed over millennia."

A hoard of spelled objects from all over Prythian, the perfect setting to test what magic matched the echo still within me. Assuming, of course, that I could avoid the monster guarding it.

There was one aspect of it I couldn't quite follow. "Why would your mother give it away?"

Amren's answering serpentine smile made my blood run cold, though I doubted the look that Rhys shot her in response could have been any more murderous.

"Another test. If I were to marry or mate, then the female would either have to be smart or strong enough to get the ring back. And if she wasn’t either of those things, then she wouldn’t survive the marriage. I promised my mother that any potential bride or mate would have to pass, but I think if she were still here…she'd agree that you've already done more than enough."

I froze. And nearly forgot to breathe until I blurted out, "A wedding ring?"

My wedding ring, really. It sounded so human. Rhys was my mate, my soul-bonded partner—husband didn't even begin to cover it.

"Yes, but you're under no obligation to—"

I cut him off; a horrible thought had just occurred to me, and I needed to ask, even though Amren was growing impatient. "You— You haven't…sent someone after it before me, have you?"

"Cauldron, no," he said, horrorstruck. I felt a bit better, though, knowing that there wasn't some poor female who'd died attempting to marry Rhys a few centuries before I was born.

"And this isn't— You're not…proposing?"

For a moment, Rhys just stared at me with the wide-eyed expression I'd last seen Under the Mountain when I'd told him I was nineteen. Amren rapped her nails against the table.

But a pounding against the front door saved him from having to answer my question. Cassian, Azriel, and Mor had arrived, and there were more urgent matters at hand. The door unlocked with a gesture from Rhys, and Amren muttered something about leashing his dogs as we made our way to the sitting room.

Cassian wasted no time reporting on everything he'd learned about the rogue war-bands—their numbers, their movements through the forest, who in Windhaven sympathized with them. I wasn't familiar enough with Illyria to follow all of it. But I still listened carefully, waiting for a chance to suggest I go with.

The conversation turned to exactly what to do with the ringleaders. It was obvious enough that they couldn't be allowed to live, not after they'd supported Amarantha. Killing them in woods would be most efficient. But it would be out of the public eye, a missed opportunity to send a message, albeit a bloody one.

Perhaps it was the question of how to claim my wedding ring still being fresh in my mind, but a thought struck me. It might have been ridiculous—I wasn't entirely sure what sort of creature the Weaver even was—but it seemed worth considering.

"If we need to make a statement to keep control of Illyria," I said, cutting in, "then we could give them to the Weaver and kill two birds with stone."

Five pairs of eyes landed on me, all with naked shock.

Rhys was the first to smile. "Are you suggesting that we allow a death-god to eat a few rogue Illyrians in exchange for the return of your wedding ring?"

I couldn't tell if he was mocking me—it did sound ridiculous when he put it like that. In truth, I didn't care enough about the ring that I was willing to kill for it, but the Illyrians who'd gleefully bowed to Amarantha would be put to death anyway. And years of hunting had taught me to wring every last ounce of utility from a kill.

I lifted my chin. "Amarantha refused to free her human slaves. I'm the Night Court's resident human. What better way to punish them for supporting her than turning them over to me?"

Azriel's brows flicked up in approval. After our conversation in the training ring yesterday, the sight of it made me feel a bit more sure of myself.

"If we're cracking a few wing bones, Feyre might as well get a turn," Cassian said. Breaking an Illyrian's wing bones—ideally leaving enough jagged edges to tear holes in the membrane—was one of their most severe punishments, I'd learned, a favored way of preventing prisoners from escaping to the skies.

"It's Illyria, not Velaris, so word will get out, which we can spin in our favor. Distaste for slavery instead of petty revenge against those who supported the bitch who made Rhys her—" Mor said, choking back that last word with a grimace. Her throat bobbed. "The bitch who hurt him."

"I'll never be offended by you telling the truth. Even about that," Rhys said softly.

On the other side of the sofa, Mor took his hand and squeezed it. "No one reasonable would fault you for slaughtering your rapist's supporters. But for the unreasonable ones…it's also true that involving Feyre could help dispel the rumors that Prythian's savior is a pawn you intend to discard."

"Assuming the Weaver is willing to bargain, it's not a bad plan," Azriel said.

"Hell of an assumption, though," Cassian added. He crossed his arms, the siphons on his hands glinting in the sunlight streaming in through the window.

My eyes slid to Rhys—I had their support, but as High Lord, this would be his call. If he wanted me to stay out of it and find another way to get the ring…I'd understand.

"All of it is your choice, Feyre. If you don't want to risk leaving Velaris, no one will force you," Rhys said.

I hadn't thought of it like that. I'd been so prepared to prove myself useful, ready to argue that a human wouldn't slow the rest of them down or get in the way. But Rhys's concern was the burden it placed on me.

Perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised—after Calanmai, he'd told me that if nothing else, I needed to understand there was a target on my back. I was safe behind Velaris's wards, hidden away in an untouched city like a gem in a vault.

No one would blame me for staying behind. I'd nearly lost my life countless times since Tamlin dragged me over the Wall, and continuing to push my luck might be a bit…insane.

But when Rhys's mother had left that ring with the Weaver, it had been a message. The test wasn't about whether I was worthy of her son—after all, the Cauldron itself had matched us—but rather a statement about what it meant to share your life with the High Lord of the Night Court, hard-won wisdom wrapped up in a challenge she'd designed to outlive her when the worst came to pass.

Lady of the Night Court wasn't just a title…it was a mantle to take on.

"I'm not shying away from any of it. I'll go," I said.

There was a flicker of pride down the bond, identical to the one I'd felt the first time I'd landed a hit to Rhys's jaw. And apparently he wasn't the only one who felt that way—from where he'd been leaning against the doorway, Cassian reached over and mussed my hair. I hissed, batting his hand away.

"Send your mate and your dogs out to the yard if they insist on playing, Rhysand. The adults still have matters to discuss," Amren said.

Cassian's smile turned predatory. "Amren, if you wanted to play—"

"Can we not?" Mor said with a groan. "We're supposed to be working."

To his credit, Cassian said nothing after that, just smoothed my bangs back into place apologetically. Rhys watched for a moment, expression soft, before turning his attention back to the task at hand.

Amren had a point; there was plenty to plan with Rhys being away from Velaris for a while, the priestesses still in need of support, and more information about the state of disarray in other courts filtering in daily. We were at it for a while, making plans and setting priorities.

It was another early night, followed by another early morning.

For the first time since Calanmai, I strapped a quiver to my back, a hunting knife to my thigh, and slung a bow over one shoulder. The familiar weight made my stomach churn. Even though I'd eaten breakfast, fear that the food would run out came roaring back, and for a moment, I felt as if I were still starving in the winter woods.

I forced myself to breathe. That part of my life was over. I wouldn't let it get the best of me now.

Dawn was breaking when I met Rhys in the foyer. His wings were still too weak to manage the long-haul flight from Velaris to Illyria—we'd winnow most of the way, then land. With the bow and quiver, it was a bit awkward, but Rhys scooped me up in his arms easily.

My unease disappeared, so quickly that for a moment I thought he might have pushed past my shields and slashed it with a talon. But no, I just…felt better with Rhys holding me. The scales of his leathers brushed my cheek as I pressed myself closer.

I felt a rumble in his chest as he chuckled, low and soft. "Good morning to you, too," he said.

"We have somewhere to be," I grumbled.

Rhys kissed my temple as the world disappeared into smoke and shadow. In an instant, we were high above the ground, falling fast. I yelped and held on tighter as his wings snapped open.

We pitched forward, and the wind died down as we settled into a smooth glide. The air smelled strongly of pine, and I breathed it in deeply as I lifted my head and beheld Illyria for the first time.

This high up, the tents and buildings were little more than dots on the mountain. And we were far from the only ones in the air—everywhere, winged males were soaring to and from Windhaven. Two of them drew closer, and flashes of cobalt and crimson in the morning sun were enough to identify them as Cassian and Azriel.

As curious as I was about Illyria, there wasn't much to see as the ground rushed up to meet us. Fire pits, the grey stone of the mountain, a few squat permanent buildings. Not much else.

Rhys's wings flapped occasionally, enough to keep our descent slow and controlled. With my arm hooked around his shoulders, I could feel the strain in his muscles. But he was managing—and making it look effortless.

Rhys, Cassian, and Azriel landed in perfect synchrony, with the ease of seasoned warriors who'd trained to fly in formations. Rhys set me down, and I found myself wishing there was a more graceful way to stand up after being carried.

Because people were staring.

The High Lord had returned after fifty years Under the Mountain, with a human girl cradled in his arms. I drew myself up to my full height and met their stares. There was no warmth here, no joy. But there hadn't been much of that in my ramshackle village below the Wall, either. I might have been the only person without wings for miles, but in a way, Illyria seemed familiar.

An older male approached, flanked by a small group of warriors with their hands near their weapons and their wings tucked in tight. As they took in my Illyrian leathers and the ash arrows peeking over my shoulder, I tried not to fidget.

"Your dog," the male said, indicating Cassian with a jerk of his head, "already completed camp inspections yesterday. Don't tell me you've brought a human to check for dust in the barracks, too."

He'd said human, but from the way he spat the word, he might as well have called me a cockroach instead.

"After fifty years away, it's good to see your sparkle hasn't dimmed, Devlon," Rhys drawled. "Feyre Cursebreaker is a member of my Inner Circle, and she wouldn't be here to clean up a mess if you'd kept a tighter leash on your men."

I didn't feel much like a threat, not surrounded by winged warriors twice my size. But I knew better than to let that show. With practiced ease, I pulled an ash arrow from my quiver and gave them a small smile as I tapped it on my thigh.

Devlon hated Rhys—I'd knew that much from all the planning we'd done the day before. I wasn't sure if he was bold enough to call his High Lord a whore to his face, though. From the way he'd narrowed his eyes, I could tell he wanted to. My grip on the ash arrow tightened.

"These last fifty years have been difficult for us all," he said through clenched teeth.

"I'm not interested in hearing your excuses. The current state of your camp is pathetic, and if I see one more misstep, you can consider yourself court-martialed."

Rhys turned and started walking towards the tree line, not bothering with a dismissal. Azriel, Cassian, and I followed without another word.

There were more stares as we crossed the camp, not just from the warriors, but from Illyrians who'd clearly been in the middle of chores or going about their business, too. If Windhaven was anything like my village below the Wall—and I suspected it was—word traveled fast. I focused on matching the quick pace Rhys was setting with his stupidly long legs, lest the gossip be about Prythian's savior jogging to catch up and falling on her face.

It wasn't until we'd stepped into the forest that Rhys's wicked amusement slid through the crack I kept open in my shields for him. Stupidly long legs? But you look so delicious framed between them.

"Save it for when we're back home, Rhys," I muttered, and I could've sworn I heard a snicker, either from Cassian or Azriel. We reached the edge of the camp not long after that.

There had been days those first steps into the woods had taken everything out of me. Days I'd been weak from hunger, exhausted from hours on my feet, but alive and determined to stay that way. To ensure my family stayed that way.

Enough food and rest made a difference, but the weight of memory was a heavy one, something that had lodged itself deep in my bones. It might still have dragged me under. But I had a lifeline, an unbreakable cord to grip, and for once, I was working as part of a team.

The work ahead of us might be grisly, but nocking the arrow in my hand had never been easier.

[trigunwritings]

So I have some THOUGHTS about episode 9 now that I finally was able to watch it, so I’m gonna ramble on about them below the readmore

- The brief flashback to Knives and Vash playing the piano together was interesting, not only in that it means both of them are fairly talented on the instrument, but also because it means the song that Knives has been playing in the times we’ve seen him has been only one-half of the full thing perhaps? I’m sure there’s something quite symbolic about it and how it pertains to the brothers being so interconnected, so I wonder how that might show up later 🤔

- Though I would have preferred to get some more depth to Knives via the scenes with Tesla (since that both showcases the stark difference between their viewpoints and establishes a really good reason for Knives to fear/hate humans so much) I did like that we got to see a direct act that shows the audience just how little the common population thinks of plants as anything more than tools

- “We’ve hit the production limit. They put too great a load on the plants, it cut them off from the higher dimension. They can’t maintain their bodies.” <- I have no clue what the hell that’s supposed to mean but, as the person becoming known in this fandom as the feral plant headcanon-er, I am VERY interested to see if they’ll ever elaborate on that since the manga/first anime never did. *shakes the Stampede series* LET ME KNOW THE SECRETS OF THE INTER-DIMENSIONAL ALIENS

- The ‘Last Run’ scene in general was fairly disturbing, but I know that was the point in order to hit home how Knives so far has interacted with humans (the mental pain had to be horrible, given how bad the distress of a single plant had affected Vash)—but who was the man he was with? Was that supposed to be Conrad? Has Knives already started up his cult?

- Even though Knives totally murdered some dudes, he sure did look cool while doing it

- “Outside of human control, plants use up all their energy in one burst and die.” / “So you bought into that nonsense… No matter how comfortable, chains are still chains.” 🫣

- WHAT THE HELL WAS GOING ON WITH VASH’S ARM

- “Is that… a gate?” WILL SOMEONE PLEASE EXPLAIN THAT AT SOME POINT THANK YOU

- I find it interesting how Vash losing his arm was not from the direct influence of Knives—either his Angel Arm doesn’t exist, or its a wildly different kind of power. Either way, Knives having to make a split-second decision to remove his brother’s arm in order to keep that ‘gate’ (looks like a black hole to me tbh) from swallowing up everything is a really neat twist on intention.

- I saw a post recently joking about Knives being utterly obsessed with his brother and I thought it was hyperbole. I SEE THAT IT IN FACT ISNT. Knives you are a lonely fucker I swear to god.

- Last episode I was so confused on the timeline and was worried that they had shortened the time between the flashbacks to the present day—and I’m super happy to be wrong! Putting Luida and Bradley in cryosleep in order to prolonged their lives was a very creative way to keep those characters interacting with Vash.

- Meryl being SO surprised and impressed by flowers really hit home that they straight up DON’T exist on Noman’s Land…. which, jesus, that was a surprise. I assumed at best sickly little potted plants might have existed, but none? Very interesting…

- Roberto being pessimistic is really hitting home that I know he’s going to die soon and will likely be replaced with Milly in the following seasons. I really enjoy the way his character pairs with Meryl’s energy and positive realism 😭

- Ngl Zazie the Beast is lightly growing on me, mostly as a neat antagonist since they represent the native species on Noman’s Land before anyone else arrived. Wonder if their alliance will alter at any point…

- “Outside of human control, plants use up all their energy in one burst and die.” / “So you bought into that nonsense… No matter how comfortable, chains are still chains.” 🫣

- Totally thought Luida was going to die either by Vash (accidentally) or Knives (purposefully).

[purlturtle]

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers. Let’s spread the self-love 💗

Another one! Thank you Anon! ♥️♥️♥️

Let's see, I already put a first round of five out there, now let's maybe go with five that don't see a lot of engagement but that I still like a lot and think they're very worthwhile!

Flying was prompted to me by @sralinchen, and boy did I have a blast with it! It's an AU with no artifacts or anything, in which Myka flies to where Claudia lives, in order to surprise her - but Claudia has flown to where Myka lives, for the same reason, and so now they're very much not in the same place - and then Claudia asks a friend who lives in the same building to help Myka out. And that friend turns out to be a certain dark-haired British person, in this case with a very sassy non-binary kid. So. Much. Fun!!

Roppongi Tokyo Butler Café was a gift for my wife - we both love Japan, and have traveled there twice, and I hope that a bit of the feeling for that country comes across. It's another "no artifacts" AU, and told in 2nd person POV, which I know is not everyone's cuppa. It has a vibe to it that I find hard to describe - ephemeral perhaps? Eclectic? Let me know which word you'd use!

(adding a readmore because this is getting long too! Some fics that aren't Bering and Wells under the cut!)

Through tensed stillness is a little fic in which [spoilers spoilers spoilers] - a continuation of two stories, one by Ericine and one by @ussjellyfish! It's a concoction containing Philippa Georgiou, Ezri Dax, and in the margins Kathryn Janeway and Beverly Crusher too!

Coffee and Chocolate Cake is a little one-shot in which Kathryn Janeway, fresh from the Delta Quadrant, sees Deanna Troi for a psych eval. It's hard to open up - but a little coffee and chocolate cake helps pave the way.

And last but not least, I'll list 1899 (The Prequel? Sequel? Another Reboot?) here as a stand-in for several story premises/set-ups/beginnings that I will probably never finish but wish I could (So Many Wips, So Little Time). There have been several fics and Tumblr essays about how it would go if Myka found herself in 1899, a fish out of water on Helena's turf, and this is my take on it. I still like what my brain came up with, a lot, but the story doesn't have the "keeps me in its grip until I've written all of it" power, unfortunately! I did make a Tumblr post with ideas for how it could go on, and linked it in the AO3 fic, but yeah, that's all there is.