#Aurelius lives

[realitybitesyouknowit]

Chapters: 39/39 Fandom: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Lucius Malfoy/Harry Potter, Regulus Black/Severus Snape, Draco Malfoy & Harry Potter, Draco Malfoy/Neville Longbottom, Pandora Lovegood/Xenophilius Lovegood, Peter Pettigrew/Lily Evans Potter Characters: Harry Potter, Dobby (Harry Potter), Lucius Malfoy, Draco Malfoy, Severus Snape, Xenophilius Lovegood, Abraxas Malfoy, Luna Lovegood, Nymphadora Tonks, Andromeda Black Tonks, Neville Longbottom, Lily Evans Potter Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Time Turner (Harry Potter), Time Travelling Harry Potter, Fae Lucius Malfoy, Good Lucius Malfoy, Good Dark Side, bad light side, Albus Dumbledore Bashing, Manipulative Albus Dumbledore, Lucius and Xenophilius are brothers, Harry Potter is a Member of the House of Black, Severitus | Severus Snape is Harry Potter's Parent, Character Bashing, Harry Potter is Draco's Parent, Good Malfoy Family (Harry Potter), Good Draco Malfoy, Mpreg, Light side bashing, Morally Grey Harry Potter, Out of Character, Not Beta Read, Weasley Family Bashing (Harry Potter), Hermione Granger Bashing, Draco Malfoy & Harry Potter Friendship, Marauders Bashing, POV Multiple, Harry has multiple names or Dumbledore and uses them, Enemies to Family, Good Peter Pettigrew, Molly Weasley Bashing, Arthur Weasley Bashing, Ron Weasley Bashing Summary:

A malfunction with a Time Turner sends Harry back to 1973 where he learns a dark secret about the Light side, finds his family and love.

[1978-combo-organ]

supposed to be a redraw of this drawing i did february last year. might be a secret other thing now

[beccawise7]

"What a privilege to live our lives in such a manner that those who no longer walk this earth may be represented in our passion for living fearlessly."

~beccawise7 💜🖤

[simpleman193]

[singing-melliot-headcanons]

Beatrix after the pyre scene struggled a lot - Everything that wasn’t relating to the Phaethon, Vincent, or Portia basically felt numb or pointless. And everything that wasn’t Portia made them feel like shit. Worse of all, the school year wasn’t over yet. So the next day they had to just go to their classes like Vincent hadn’t died. And had so many people congratulating them on winning the Phaethon they couldn’t take it. Portia found them in the middle of the day sobbing in the Daily trying to write up who won for the Prize Section. They basically spent the rest of their senior year either around Portia or attending classes and mostly zoning out. The emotions of the Phaeton and Vincent was too much for them at the time - Spending a few months just living with their Abuela as they tried to become mentally stable again.

After the Pyre scene Quincy tried to get through senior year for a week. But every time they attended philosophy class they thought of Vincent. And every day returning back to their dorm knowing he was dead was too much. He basically broke down in his dorm after a week and chose to drop out. They struggled a lot to even consider going back to school because everything reminded them of Vincent. A solid period of time they could barely hold social interactions without starting to cry or having to hold back tears because something made him think of Vincent. Quincy’s aunt had to try for a while to find out what she could actually do to support him. Trying to improve Quincy’s mental health after the Phaethon and Ardess was a long and tedious process.

Quincy and Beatrix get along pretty well, but their relationship is heavily strained because of everything that happened. They mostly bond over their experiences with Vincent and Portia.

clutching this headcanon to my chest and shaking violently

[averlym]

miscellany (again),, tags in the last image by @pyrotechnicarus

[macrolit]

Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now, take what's left and live it properly.

Marcus Aurelius

[drifthail]

me, a queer asian artist, when the asian character is queer and an artist and unhinged (i love vincent so much)

[itseasierthanithought]

"Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself in your way of thinking."

~ Marcus Aurelius - "Meditations"

[jakey-beefed-it]

Annual Ides of March reminder that while Caesar was promoting/planning to enact policies that would have benefitted the Roman plebeians and that's the main reason the Senate turned on him, it doesn't mean he was some kind of 'good guy'. Just ask the Gauls. Even his contemporaries thought his bloody campaigns (arguably genocidal, inarguably extravagantly violent beyond any argument of necessity) were 'a bit much' which, given the Roman attitudes toward 'barbarians', is saying a lot.

Shithead rich men ganged up on and stabbed another shithead rich man because he was costing them money and power to exalt himself as a proto-Emperor. Celebrate the ides as an example of instant karma, but don't make the mistake of thinking there were any 'good guys' involved.

[aureli-us]

wip wednesday‼️

was inspired by @hircines-hunter to post something for wip wednesday😎 i'm taking a little break after finishing TWH, but this project (dubbed "the morthal minific") is super fun and i've been working on it slowly!! anyone who wants to do a wip wednesday, consider yourself tagged!

“Get back!” Tharya barked, grabbing her spear and swinging its bright tip out at the faces. They gasped as they dissolved under the golden glow, shocked and confused. Some reached out for her as if begging, but vanished as she cut through their hold. The boat rocked dangerously as she and Bhijirio tried to balance their weight out, twisting around to watch the creatures retreat back into the fog. Bhijirio whimpered as he knelt, clutching at his stomach and looking gaunt. 

“I fucking hate this place,” he wheezed, taking in shoddy breaths. Frowning, Tharya scooted a bit closer to offer her hand for him to hold. He snatched it up, squeezing her knuckles to the bone.

"It was always like this, but...it got worse after the Civil War," she said in a soft voice, dampened by the humidity on all sides. "Plenty of soldiers lost their lives in this marsh. Hundreds. It hasn't been the same since then, it's a more...more malicious place. I try to avoid it," she whispered, shivering. “The marsh is almost...living.”

[valeriefauxnom]

A Dangerous Balance

So I was thinking last night (as one does), when suddenly an idea struck me: the Alberian royal family might have been on a long and slow collision course in their entire 300 year history.

Let me explain.

First, dragonblood, which is essential to maintaining the status quo in the kingdom, even being required for ascension to the throne, isn't a given when producing descendants. This is one of the sources of Yurius' angsts in Dragalia, as he descends from a offshoot branch of the royal family and thus has some dragonblood, but not the kind or enough to be 'functional' and create pacts and shapeshift. It's not a trait that will stick around forever without 'upkeep'.

Since Dragalia Lost more seems to use the idea of the blood 'thinning out' rather than simple genetics 'you inherit it or you don't, but you still can carry the genes for it' (and they do have some understanding of genetics!) when referencing why some people descended from dragonblood can't use it, I'm making the unfortunate guess that in history there's been some cases of Ye Olde Royale Inbreeding to this end.

Royalty in real life did so quite often even without a 'need' to inherit an ability, this just ups that drive to 11, to say nothing of the standard 'keep the lineage pure' reasoning, which interestingly also seems to exist in Dragalia per Emile's line: "That's not true! I am blue-blooded royalty!" For those that don't know, the concept of 'blue-blood' was thought to come from Spain, in which the nobility were proud of not having to intermingle with the Moors, and used their pale, vein-showing skin as proof of their 'pure ancestry'. Even taken in a more gracious potential origin that 'blue-blooded' in Dragalia more originates from not having to work in the sun all day rather than antiquated ideas of race and race-mixing, it still has interesting implications regarding the royal family's norms they are supposed to adhere to, appearance-wise.

But let's put that aside. Now, one of the biggest, well-known results of royal interbreeding is diseases, inherited illnesses that otherwise would be quite rare that instead pop up with disturbing frequency in inbred families. And what can we see but the current iteration of the royal family doesn't exactly seem to be the healthiest. Of Aurelius' 8 natural children, 3 have/had serious conditions, 2 of which had a disease only known to occur in the royal family (wyrmscale).

3/8 doesn't sound big, but that could be huge implications wise. That's 37.5% of the current generation. Even just the 2/8 with wyrmscale is 25% of the family impacted with a fatal disease that's confined to your bloodline. And even if we stretch beyond the canon main world, some of our world-travelers, like Audric, suggest that their family isn't 100% well, either. This might not just be an unlucky iteration of the family:

Beren died, not from being caged or killed, but from whatever black-mana condition that overloads him, and his Euden was healthy... until he hit his later teens.

Beren himself states that he's the only iteration of him to make it to his current age of 21. While some of those deaths can likely be attributed to people killing him out of caution/fear, others due to poor conditions in imprisonment, some of them most likely are due to his condition itself.

This might be a stretch, but Zena's Euden also might have been in a similar situation with Nedrick or Phares.

As we know, Nedrick died from wyrmscale about a month after he was born, but Bahamut brought the baby back to use as a tool. Phares died from wyrmscale as a child about 12, but the Progenitor brought him back to use as a tool. This Euden claims to have been possessed when he, too, was a baby. Was Zena's Euden born sickly/prone to illness, died, and the gods of Dragalia did their standard 'it's free real estate' and revived him to use as a tool? I think the odds are fair, given how well it fits the pattern they seem to love.

This already is a pickle: they need to maintain a strong enough version of dragonblood to continue their kingdom, but 'maintaining' it might already be becoming an increasing detriment to the odds of good health in the family. But there's a third knot in this whole situation: the simultaneous need to dilute their dragonblood, per Alberius.

Alberius' plan when using the Blood Casket relies on the idea that the dragonblood in his lineage will be diluted through the generations until Morsayati is so split into so many different minor bits he can't reform himself or possess them. And, well. 300 years later, and Morsayati seems to have no trouble possessing them.

And there we see the dangerous balance they never will be able to fully right. They have three conflicting needs:

-Maintain functional dragonblood

-Stay healthy enough to continue the royal family

-Dilute their dragonblood so that Morsayati can't return or possess them

Goals 1&3 are inverse to eachother, and 2 rests on which goal they pursue. The 'best' idea I can think of to resolve this pickle is that the royal family needs to bet on trying to find another family with functional dragonblood that's somehow survived since it first emerged (which is doubly hard since many of those who received dragonblood died outright upon getting it), and mix with them. That would allow functional dragonblood, and hopefully would still 'dilute' the 'corrupted' dragonblood that has Morsayati in it. But even that might not help goal 2, potentially even hurt it, if the mere presence or intensity of dragonblood is what ups the risks for diseases or outright causes them like wyrmscale. No matter what, they might never be able to win all three goals.

All I can say to that is ouch, and good luck, Dragalia Alberian royal family. Aside from being royalty and all the privilege that enables, they sure have the short end of the stick, huh?

[kazanskydesigns]

[conscious-pisces]

“Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.”

—Marcus Aurelius

In other words, we gotta say bye to victim mentality.

[poligraf]

In the end, what would you gain from everlasting remembrance? Absolutely nothing. So what is left worth living for? This alone: justice in thought, goodness in action, speech that cannot deceive, and a disposition glad of whatever comes, welcoming it as necessary, as familiar, as flowing from the same source and fountain as yourself.

— Marcus Aurelius

[singing-melliot-headcanons]

Modern AU. Vincent uses trans tape

not necessarily safely