#Don't question it and don't draw any inferences from this point

[mintharabaenrelore]

Minthara & the High Priestess of House Vandree

A breathtaking- literally- portrayal of this relationship and its sad ending by @faun-draws.

I asked @lunastrophe about this at one point; her answer was a huge help for this!

We know about Minthara's first lover from Act 3 banter, if the player character is romancing her.

Karlach: It's funny seeing you so smitten, Minthara. Didn't think you were able.

Minthara: I took my first lover before you were a spark in your father's eye, child.

Karlach: Go on.

Minthara: She was a high priestess of House Vandree. Beautiful, elegant, ruthless.

Minthara: I adored her, and had been sharing her bed for some time when the order came that she must die.

Minthara: I stayed with her while the poison did its work, and whispered words of comfort as she slipped away.

Karlach: Oh no.

So, there's the information, but what can we infer?

As this was Minthara's first lover, it was before any of her many suitors ("I had a thousand suitors. Some were only attracted by my status, many wanted my body, and a rare few wanted all of me") and before she graduated Arach-Tinilith, part of Tier Breche.

Minthara likely joined Arach-Tinilith at age 40, being born around 1280 DR and likely adhering to that custom rather than the one of 1361 that had students enter by 25 years old. (Reminder that, either way, Minthara was very young for a drow at this time!)

Priestesses are expected to study there for 50 years.

I'm not sure when Minthara's romance with the high priestess occurred. I have two theories:

When Minthara was beginning her education there.

The Ceremony of Graduation.

We'll discuss the Ceremony of Graduation later.

Minthara states she was sharing her bed, so we can infer she was going to her bedroom, not the other way around. Only older priestesses and instructors have single rooms, while novices have to share with one or two others for the first several years. Considering the relationship lasted for "some time", I think this confirms that the high priestess was a fellow student, and quite a bit older- although the fact that she was a high priestess in the first place (which takes some time to do) makes that obvious.

I don't think it was one of Minthara's instructors at the school because I can't think of any who match the description- House Vandree, high priestess, etc.

There is a power imbalance in this relationship, as @lunastrophe pointed out to me. House Vandree is by no means unimportant, but House Baenre is the most powerful family in Menzoberranzan, by far- by 1480 DR, House Vandree was at their most powerful as a member of the Ruling Council, but still several spots below House Baenre. Then again, Minthara's lover was older and a high priestess.

If they were sleeping together for "some time", if Minthara "adored" her, and if House Baenre and House Vandree were allies, why was Minthara ordered to kill her?

Perhaps Minthara got too attached. Perhaps the high priestess was deemed a threat. Perhaps it was just the sadistic whim of someone in power. Maybe it was just a test- to see if Minthara had what it took to be a "soldier in Lolth's service", a paladin. A Baenre princess. Perhaps it was a test from Lolth herself.

Knowing how close Minthara was to her mother, I assume- if it was an order from the Ruling Council- it would have come directly from her.

How did Minthara kill her, is the question? I like to speculate that, since Minthara was clearly keen on granting her mercy- why bother with words of comfort if you wanted to make the death unpleasant?- the poison was in Ulaver wine, a delicacy in Menzoberranzan. Most likely, the poison was something obscure and expensive, as 1. a Baenre could afford such a thing and 2. Minthara is not the only drow to dose herself with toxins to build up immunity. I imagine it was Belbol d'Elghinn ("Gift of Death"), as it is a powerful poison drow nobles prize for assassinations, one that works remarkably swiftly.

Of course, it's possible that it was her famous poisoned kiss, but as darkly romantic as that would be, it's unlikely considering that if Minthara used such powerful poison, she could have died in the process.

The aftermath was probably... minimal. Approval from Lolth and her mother, fear and respect from her peers. The drow philosophy is basically "If we can't prove it, it never happened" and considering that Minthara says she "slipped away", not "loudly screamed and flailed and summoned all of Menzoberranzan to her aid", I think that's about it. I'm not sure how the high priestess would have been dealt with after death- most likely used as a food source for spiders, as she died in subtlety and disgrace.

A very unlikely theory that I have- wishful thinking, really- is that the High Priestess betrayed Lolth by turning to Eilistraee, and Lolth punished her by having her lover, Minthara, end her, and in those dying moments, Minthara learned the word "Alurlssrin" from her.

Remember, Minthara is praying to Lolth in the prisons of Moonrise Towers up until the PC rescues her, and then she turns her back on her goddess- abruptly, it seems, but is it really? Did this test, if it was a test, if it originated from Lolth, sow the seeds of rebellion in a young Minthara? Perhaps the abandonment in her hour of need was just the final push.

It's unusual that Minthara stayed with her lover as she died, offering comfort- risking Lolth's wrath, and defying drow culture in general. This proves she wasn't exaggerating things when she said she'd "adored" her- she did, and does, if her praise is anything to go by. In Minthara's world, it wasn't an act of cruelty to kill her; a betrayal, yes, but it was mercy for it to have been Minthara rather than someone who would have done it far more brutally and with far less remorse. If Minthara had tried to reject this order, things would have gone worse for them both.

About the Ceremony of Graduation: This high priestess having been Minthara's first lover aligns with the theory that their laison began at the infamous ceremony. Minthara's only dialogue about that is this: "Straj. This reminds me of my ceremony of graduation. *laugh* What a day that was" which I found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vYBaYJgz_c. @mogruith discovered that line triggers in Philgraves Mansion.

Anyways, the Ceremony of Graduation is a drow rite of passage for the graduates of Tier Breche as of early 14th century DR (which aligns with Minthara's timeline, if I'm not mistaken). I won't go into details about the Ceremony of Graduation, as I'm going to make a separate post about Minthara's role in said Ceremony, but it's worth noting.

Minthara appears to remember this fleeting romance vividly, which is telling. This relationship evidently, left a lasting mark on the young Minthara- from her anxieties about poison and her paranoia when it comes to lovers and people in general.

Remember, Minthara- if romanced- doses the PC with poison, to help them build an immunity. She says it's in case they visit Menzoberranzan, but I'm not so sure that's her only motive. I think she's trying to protect them from her first lover's tragic fate.

For a beautiful- and sad- portrayal of this story, I suggest "Her Priestess" by @faun-draws on AO3.

[66sharkteeth]

HIIII omg i am a H U G E fan of you and cob! cob is literally my favorite webtoon ever.... its not enough to just read it, i feel like i need to be enveloped in it (if that even makes sense 😭) every episode literally leaves me shaking with adrenilineeeEEEEE!! (side note i dont have a question i j wanted some way to communicate to you and im sorta new to tumblr so idk any other way lmfao) i literally talk about cob atleast once a day. at this point its an addiction lmfaoo

ive noticed that your tumblr posts are so sad and frustrated recently and i wish there was some way i could help :( if you ever wanted to share ocs or just talk im here and im sure all of your fans would appreciate your art too! maybe you could make another tumblr acct devoted to ocs - ik id definitely follow it immediately :D

also if you decided to take a mental health hiatus your fans wouldnt mind and would in fact encourage it! (ok sure wed be upset cause cob is SO GOOD but overall health is more important!!!) and youd also have more time to work on ocs and to just relax and think about yourslef for once (AND TO NOT LOOK AT THE MEAN COMMENTS ON UR POSTS FROM JEALOUS MEAN PEOPLE WHO HAVE NOTHING BETTER TO DO THAN CRITICIZE PEOPLE WHO ARE BETTER THAN THEM >:( )

also side note but the more popular you are the more haters you have...its just statistics! so in some twisted overly optimistic way its actually a positive 😉 anyway those ppl r just jealous and have terrible taste.

anyway idk where this is going im j rambling at this point but idk i obviously know barely anything about you but what i can inference from ur posts is that you seriously need a break!!!!! we love cob ofc but we love the health of the creater (YOU) more!!! and if you ever want to talk to anyone or to share ocs youre exited about you can always reach out to me or anything :DDDDD or like anyone you know in real life too lmfaooo--

so uh idk how to end this....so BYE YOURE AWESOME YOURE SLAYING <3333333333

lol you're too sweet! i appreciate every word.

tho unfortunately, taking breaks aren't that easy, since when i don't make episodes, i just don't make money. besides, i actually don't mind the workload that much? it's everything...outside of working that seems to bum me out haha. i kind of like turning off my brain for 10 hours each day to draw episodes. usually when i'm sad, it's after work when that distraction is gone.

also, i do post more freely here already as is! i tend to be a bit more selective about what i share on twitter and IG, but since like 20 people follow me here, i'm a bit more open and share more things, both personal and CoB/OC related lol. i just haven't had a ton to share lately outside of text essays and answering asks.

[callme-whatever-youlike]

I broke down a small scene from ep4 (Don't quote me on this. I'm drafting this at 3 am) for a friend, and they said I should share it on here. I'm shy about my observations, so I'm doing so reluctantly. Anyway, here's the little breakdown thing – spoiler free.

Right, so the lighting in the Imperial palace is super diverse. Dark, bright, cold and warm, it has it all. The Cleons' colors are various shades of blue, ranging from the near grey scale turquoise seen on Dawn majority of the time to this almost lapus lazuli shade on Day which is a super dark yet rich color which contrasts very nicely with the golds and warm lighting in the room. Naturally, I'm focusing on Day during this because he's the primary focus I can bring attention to without spoiling any of the plot.

I also want to point out how the lapus color brings out the darkest shades in Lee's eyes. It's really insane what color can do when it comes to tone and appearance, and the Foundation team knows this. You can see the greyish turquoise color I mentioned on Dawn in the back. The area around the thrones is shadowed, which creates a primarily cold, almost ominous feel whenever we see any of them seated there, but at the early and mid hours of the day this room just lights up and the entire feel changes. In this scene, it seems like it's late afternoon, which brings lots of dynamic to the lighting.

Just like that, the whole feel changes. Another beautiful contrast is that despite the feeling of warmth brought about by the cinematography, the tone of the scene is cold and sharp, which one can also infer via Lee's body language. He's a fantastic actor to watch.

Huge shift in nature here.

Lovely dynamic camera work. There's a back and forth going on, an aggressive push and pull to see who's really in control in this situation. Day barks at this point. Pretty much telling the character he's at odds with to fight him if that's what they so desperately want to do. The character holds their ground, and we get more of that push and pull in dialog and demeanor. Who's fighting who? Who's got the upper hand? Who's really yielding to the other? Also, keep an eye on the lighting.

This isn't anger. This is assertiveness. Day tells the character to guess what answer he's searching for. He makes them question his goal and his motives. Now, look at his eyes. The light has changed them entirely. They're no longer a color akin to the dephs of the ocean. They're bright and steely.

Reins it in, yet doubles down, his gaze unwavering and that authority he conveys even stronger now that it's composed.

He got what he wanted. That smirk is so suble. It hardly draws his lips up enough to complete the expression, but it reaches his eyes. I actually slowed this down by a frame just to point that out.

Magnificent scene with incredible actors and beautiful cinematography that conveys conflict nonverbally.

Proof that danger still lurks in daylight.

[keikakudom]

Agsudisg I'm so glad you liked it, Kazi, I literally sat down the moment I finished reading and started drawing cuz you freaking killed me, I MEAN, vox being stubborn and denying help, and Alastor stubbornly giving him the aid he needs, but crouched in their respective toxic egos and self-image? So delicious. Alastor, who needs to know why he was left behind, and vox who's desperately pouring himself into the new thing... Ahhhh...

The part where he implies he really was running off to die...and Alastor goes all soft...the shared frequency, the antenna petting... I reread that multiple times bc it's so good...and the claws, the claws, vox denies wanting help from alastor to the last, but the claws!

(also we tots need full seasons and reruns of 'Let's Shit on Vox', I bet Alastor even encourages to call in with more info, not that anyone would bc they're too scared. Hey, does carmilla have to listen his obsession LOL)

Btw for the artist questions, if you want, 9, 14, 30?

YOU NEVER FAIL TO MAKE ME GUSH, ES AAAA...oh lemme tell you when I lock-in, i do NOT fuck around with toxic old men yaoi. When I get better at writing, I hope to capture all their glory✨

I have never really written in this particular weird genre, I don't even know what to call it? Disgustingly intimate love/hate? At least, that's what I aspire for it to be XD

Heheh the part where "Alastor goes all soft" is also a little on the part of RR!AU characterization, so it's a bit exaggerated. He's trying to ween his way in appealing to Vox again, but RR!AU Vox is just so tired. Alastor keeps bringing up the past....This was kind of a wacky scenario to write because it does skip/make you infer a lot of stages of development, but the AU is close enough to canon that I think it's not far to imagine filling in the gaps hhh....

LMFAO yes, Alastor def encourages call-ins, "The 'Let's Shit on Vox' show, your one-stop opportunity to diss Hell's most saturated overlord!" -- on the rare occasion someone actually called in, Alastor killed whoever said something off about Vox that wasn't to his "flavor" of hate.

Carmilla has already read through these two idiots and just rolls her eyes at their immaturity. If she's there for Alastor's radio show, she's just in the background, utterly done and convinced they're playing everything up for entertainment at this point. Now that has me thinking, if Alastor ever started feeling something unfamiliar and god-forbid genuinely *good*(????), he would probably consult Rosie or Carmilla for it first........and Vox would ask Charlie.....oh..........

Aaaand Artist Questions under the cut, TYSM for the ask <33

9. What are your file name conventions?

I have terrible file organization. Many of them are named "a", "aa3", "asgv", "fhgh", or other random keyboard smashes. Recently, I have a bad habit of naming files "sketch1", "sk1", "skht1", or some misspelled way-- it's gotten so bad I'm up to "sketch22".... I find things by icon only.

14. Any favorite motifs?

Straight edges and shapes, maybe? I started drawing with an anime style though I'm mostly into western media-- I think it's very satisfying to have nice shape design/silhouettes though, but I don't draw in a super cartoony or exaggerated style so it's kind of hard to tell that I like and have fun doing it. I'm kind of scattered and like to dip my foot into everything unfortunately.

30. What piece of yours do you think is underrated?

None really, but if I had to pick one for HH, maybe this one.

For my older art, definitely this one. I mean, I don't love it anymore, but I really thought I ATE with the concept at the time.

[just-horrible-things]

Loiral and Marcus - Routine - 8.ii

[First | Prev | Contents]

"Work" as it turns out is not the ordeal Loiral is expecting. He sits at the table with Marcus, and answers questions about politics. They refer frequently to the map as Loiral dredges his memory for troop numbers and movements, past skirmishes, trade deals and supposed alliances, and Marcus takes copious notes in an unfamiliar script.

He thinks about lying, but it seems unwise. It's difficult to sabotage an endeavour with misinformation when you don't have the first idea what that endeavour might be. And he's acutely conscious of the consequences of being caught out. He can't start to guess what the surfacer might already know, and that's before the possibility of magic for catching lies.

Marcus' attention seems to centre on Houses Det'tar and Noquvalin and their territories and affairs. What Loiral can infer from that he's not yet sure, but if he keeps his ears open maybe he will start to understand what is going on. Not having any personal history with Det'tar or Noquvalin, he struggles to answer many of the questions in much detail. To his profound relief, Marcus doesn't press him for information he doesn't have.

"I'm not a library," he grumbles sourly, unable to come up with anything about hypothetical dealings between Houses Det'tar and Barrahel. "Don't worry," Marcus smiles, "A library visit is in our itinerary. How about House Al'Sekath?" "We've probably bought something from them, or sold to them." "Come now, you can be more specific than that." "I'm thinking," Loiral protests plaintively. "I don't think I've seen anything with their stamp on it recently..." "And can you draw that stamp for me?" "I can try..." Reluctantly he sketches, on a new page, the stylised execution scene of the Det'tar sigil. It comes out lopsided and not looking much like the original. "Just look at their front gates," he jabs a finger at the map, "it's blazoned twelve feet tall."

"Hm. So, nothing recent, you say... what about less recently?" "I think we bought some maille from Det'tar when I was younger... just a few coats, nothing to wage war over." He remembers getting to touch it -- dark links that ran over his hands like water -- but it was meant for someone more important than Loiral. His aunt made the deal, he thinks. "If not Det'tar, from whom would you normally purchase arms and armour?" "House Orlivayas," he lies easily. "And does Det'tar export a lot of metalwork?" "I don't think so. They have an excellent smith and she does piecework for the occasional client, but as far as I know they don't have extensive forges..."

And so it goes on.

Nothing about this exercise ought to be particularly strenuous, but Loiral finds he is flagging by the time he's finally dismissed. His thoughts are sluggish and a headache is building behind his eyes. "Weapons practice in an hour," Marcus tells the drow. "You may do as you will until then." "Yes, master." Best behaviour. "Thank you, master." This is tolerable. If things stay this way, he can survive this. He will mind his manners and not provoke the human and maybe he can survive this.

Do as you will. He doesn’t know what to do. There is nothing in this bright, foreign house that he wants to do. The closest thing to want is he does not want to still be in the same room as his master. So he slinks back toward the pitiful bed that is his to rest in. He’ll rest for an hour, and then they’ll let him spar, and maybe he will feel a little more like himself for it.

Except he doesn’t get all the way to his bed. He meets one of the juveniles in the hall, the one – he thinks – who hit him in the face by mistake. The same whip is coiled on her hip, the same arrogant strut marks her gait. She grins when she sees Loiral, showing off a crooked mouthful of broad, oversized teeth.

He doesn't know the word she uses as a command, but the gesture is clear enough. One hand extended in front of her, a single finger pointed at the floor and then jabbed sharply downward. It can only be "Down."

Loiral's soul aches with humiliation. His hands itch to lash out. 

When he doesn’t move fast enough, the girl sticks her hand out again and confidently grasps the front of Loiral's collar. She doesn’t have Marcus' terrible strength, but Loiral lets her force him to his knees anyway.

Even absent, the priest stands behind Loiral, controlling his every move.

He lets his head drop as the human lets go of his collar. Her hands run through his hair, invasive. Shame burns across his skin. One hand cups the back of his skull and pushes him down further. He folds like a doll.

She’s talking, jabbering in her own tongue, cooing like a woman with a favourite lover. The sheer perversity of it turns Loiral’s stomach. He could kill her, if her clumsiness with the whip is any indication of her general competence. She’s barely even bigger than him. He could kill her, and mutilate her corpse, and feed it to the lizards.

But instead he grovels at her feet, and her hands roam over his back, and he does nothing to stop her.

Even when the knife comes out, he does nothing. The edge kisses his skin. Cold – and then warm as blood wells. It’s sharp enough that it barely stings. Or she’s picked a line of scar tissue where he’s lost more sensation than he thought. Or his ordeal under the scourge has destroyed his perspective and his ability to tell what is damaging him.

She lifts his head, fingers tangled in his hair, and the tug on his scalp doesn’t really hurt either.

She speaks, the words loud and slow and drawn-out as if that could somehow breach the language barrier. Loiral watches mutely. Lack of reaction is most likely the best way to convey that he doesn’t understand.

Using his hair as a handle still, she sits him back on his heels. When her grip releases, he stays where he is put. More pointless, incomprehensible words, guttural even in her youth’s voice. She holds one hand out towards Loiral, palm up, as if pantomiming a request for something to be handed over.

Loiral has nothing, just the clothes on his back. He stares blankly at her hand. She sighs, and that at least seems to be universal. Not that it helps him to know that she is growing frustrated.

She grabs his wrist, moves his arm through the same motion, and he understands enough to present his hand, palm up. Another word. When she lets go, he holds still. Same pantomime, other arm. He offers her his other hand also. The same word again. Praise, perhaps. Or maybe she’s trying to teach him the word for hand, or for this gesture. He has no way to know.

It should, he thinks, be an effort to keep his palms out and vulnerable like this. He knows that nothing good is about to happen. But a strange calm has settled into the crevices of his soul, and he feels nothing but dull disgust for the girl.

Whatever damage she does, Marcus will fix it. He’s fixed everything he’s done so far, so it’s clear he wants his property fit and whole.

The knife is no surprise. The tip traces the lines of his palm, grazing the skin just enough that a barely-felt sting trails a few seconds in its wake. He watches, disinterested, as she presses a little firmer. It’s sharp. The tip sinks into the heel of his hand without resistance, without even exerting the pressure that might make him flinch downwards away from it.

It hurts a little. But it doesn’t matter. Less pain than biting his tongue, less than a deep bruise, less pain than the morning after a hard training session.

The knife comes away with just the barest hint of his blood still clinging to it. She’s scared to cut any deeper, Loiral surmises, more scared of the consequences than he is, somehow.

Instead she scores another shallow cut. The skin parts like paper, blood welling slowly to fill the indentation. What a nuisance. How is he to touch anything without leaving prints of blood now? Two, three, four lines, none of them deep enough to nick the sinews. One palm and then the other, and he doesn’t even lower his hands. 

Blood trickles across his skin, runs round the sides of his hands, gathers underneath and drips from his knuckles onto his knees. Is it less red than usual? Diminished, perhaps, by how much he lost, and not quite fully restored by the magic he received?

Maybe he’s imagining it. Maybe it’s just his soul that is dimmer and drained of its vitality.

The human girl is exclaiming something. Impressed or annoyed by his lack of reaction, perhaps?

There – that feeling in his chest is fear, putting in an appearance at last. Not sharp terror, nor the suffocating anxiety of the priest’s presence, but a low, dull pang as he wonders how far she’ll go to get the results she wants. Should he be faking a response? Cowering, crying, begging her for mercy?

He can do it, he thinks, if he has to. He will do it, if it starts to be too much. The throb of his sliced palms is bearable, but he doesn’t want to know if he can bear losing a finger.

But all she does is lay the blade flat against one of Loiral’s palms, and close his fingers around it. He holds on, tentatively. The sharp edges are more painful buried in the flesh and shifting with every twitch of his muscles than they were just gliding across the skin and departing. But it’s bearable.

She lets go of the hilt. The absurdity of handing Loiral a weapon very nearly makes him laugh, but he schools his features to stillness. No need to warn her, if – if he – 

His heart is pounding, thundering in his ears. He could kill her, right here, right now. He could open her throat and it would feel so good to take back that power. To take her life from her and watch the shock fade from her idiot, animal eyes.

It isn’t worth the price.

She’s pantomiming flipping his hand over, fist still closed. Loiral obeys, demonstrating that he’s really holding onto the blade. The metal bites a little deeper. It’s nothing more than a bravado trick. He’s seen more than one young soldier do it to themselves just for the social kudos.

The same idiots who really do lose fingers trying to catch blades barehanded once they’ve convinced themselves that it’s not so bad. 

Loiral’s never felt the need to hurt himself participating in that kind of one-upmanship, but he supposes he could now without flinching. If he survives this, will it be the dead calm that persists, or the suffocating fear, the twitching at stray footfalls? Is there anything he can do to choose one over the other?

He’s almost sliding towards reverie as he watches the blood drip from between his fingers, but he jolts back to the present the instant the girl moves. She snatches her knife back, but she’s not quick, and Loiral is able to loosen his grip enough that he doesn’t think anything important is severed as it slides from his grasp.

She wipes it on his clothes, and even the deliberate slight doesn’t really sting either, because they aren’t his clothes and because he’s been filthy enough that he doesn’t care.

She wants to see the damage, of course, before she’s willing to move on. It does burn, loosening his fingers to let her see, and reluctance starts to well up from that ache in Loiral’s chest.

Those last cuts are deep. At rest the edges don’t sit closed, and white is visible in the wound as well as red. A little grimace from the human tells him she didn’t quite mean to do so much damage.

He wonders if she’ll be in trouble with Marcus. He hopes so. He remembers her fear.

She closes his fingers again like she doesn’t want to see, and Loiral keeps the hand fisted as away to apply pressure and slow the bleeding. Not that it matters. He won’t lose enough to die before Marcus finds him again and fixes it.

Her knee knocks his shoulder as she brushes past. The drow waits until she’s gone, then picks himself up.

Back to his mat he slinks, because he doesn’t know what else to do with himself. Especially now that he’d paint anything he touched with his blood. He lies down, curls up, and closes his eyes to feign sleep. They usually leave him alone when his eyes are shut.

His hands throb. The pain is ramping up now as his body realises the damage. He keeps them balled tight, as if he could crush the pain into submission along with the blood flow. 

And then he’s crying.

One second he’s just annoyed at the indignity, the next the pain and helplessness and indignity hit him like a wall. He can’t believe he just sat there and let her do that. He can’t believe he didn’t even try to protest or pull away. And now he’s crying again, how pathetic, how spineless is he.

He rolls over to face the wall, as if it could hide his tears. He curls up tight around his hands. And, teeth gritted, telling himself over and over to just pull himself together, he sobs into his knees.

[overlyimmersed]

Fireworks

Maranwe had saved Helbram from dying at the hand of their best friend, and by some miraculous force he'd even been healed. But shortly after the healing light had washed over the capital Helbram had collapsed again. Nervous about being vulnerable in a human settlement, Maranwe hid Helbram in a tree hollow in some nearby woods.

Maranwe jumps and gives a squeaky yelp as the sound of an explosion shatters the evening quiet. Though her initial reaction had been to tuck into a ball, she quickly recovers and rushes to the hollow's entrance intent on putting herself between danger and her barely conscious friend.

Though when she gets there, she gasps and freezes, completely stunned by what she sees.

Colors.

Colored lights in the sky like rainbow lightning, bathing everything in sight in brilliant hues with each explosion.

"Wow… What…" she breathes to herself.

"Fireworks." a weak answer comes from behind her, causing her to start a little and look over her shoulder. It hadn't come to mind that the explosions would have woken Helbram.

"Fireworks." she parrots. An old familiar response that makes his chest feel warm. "That's fireworks!?" she says in realization, before whipping her head back around to watch them. "I've heard of them, heard the explosions before but I've never…seen them…"

He stares at her for a long second, watching the fireworks intermittently color the edges of her silhouette. How do you hear fireworks but never see them… That confusion mixes with a hazy memory from the other day. She'd been…doing something… he can't really recall what it was, but she was looking after him somehow that made her arms close to his face. He noticed lines on her upper forearms. Scars, he's sure. But he hadn't had the presence of mind to question them at the time… And of course there's the holes in her wings that she refuses to explain.

"Where…" he starts slow, as much from wanting to be careful as from his general lethargy, "Where were you all this time…?"

She doesn't answer right away, but he can tell from the twitch in her wings that she heard him. After a moment's silence she turns completely around a face him, a less than convincing smile plastered on her face, and rocks on her heals before walking back to his side.

"Oh, don't worry about that right now," she says gently as she settles down on the floor next to him and brushes a strand of hair from his face. "you should focus on feeling better." she's clearly dodging the question, but it's not exactly untrue. As another round of fireworks burst, the higher contrast of light and shadow doesn't exactly make him look any healthier. Though she's not terribly inclined to complain. There's sort of magical feeling about the way the colors wash over him.

Helbram frowns and draws a breath, meaning to insist, but Maranwe cuts him off.

"Is there a festival? I know that's what fireworks are for…" She turns her head to look out the mouth of the hollow. From down on the floor the sky isn't as visible, but she can still see the forest changing colors.

He notices a slightly haunted look to her otherwise neutral expression… None of these pieces really make any sense together. He really does wish she'd just have a serious conversation with him already.

"Yeah." He answers after a moment, "It should be… Liones' founding festival…"

"Founding festival?" she asks, turning to look at him again. He doesn't answer her right away, so she quickly infers that it must wear him out to talk a lot and tries to figure it out herself. "They're…" information flits quickly through her mind as she searches for a reference point. She finds a vague idea relating to fireworks and the word 'founding', though she automatically wants to follow it with 'fathers' and she doesn't know why. Either way, it gives her her reference point. "…Celebrating the anniversary of…when they settled here?" she asks, a more deliberately questioning tone this time.

Helbram smiles a little and gives a nod. She echoes the movement and returns her attention to the forest. She's not really sure how she feels about that idea. Her gut reaction is the think it's stupid. What a dumb thing to celebrate. Then again… why should there even have to be a reason to celebrate? Festivals are fun… probably. The little girls from the family would always tell her it's fun. And she knows what other kinds of celebrations are like and those are fun...

"Maybe it'd be fun…" the idea just sort of slips from her mouth, barely even audible, like she hadn't meant to say it out loud.

Helbram looks at her face again and sees that same haunted look. Why won't she just tell him what happened… Moving isn't easy right now. The last few days he's hardly felt like he has enough energy to lay still nevermind trying to move on his own. Even so he pours effort into moving his hand, just till it brushes against one of hers. She jumps at the unexpected touch, but upon seeing it isn't a snake or something, she takes his hand securely but much too gently too, and returns to watching to forest.

[xflashbastardx]

I hope this isn't rude because I'm not trying to be I'm just curious why you don't hc Azi and Crowley as ace?

Ask me questions about my character(s)

{ Not rude at all! I never have problems with people asking why I do/write certain things as long as they're not asked rudely, and this wasn't, so you're all good.

First I do want to point out that I consider them both to be demisexual, which is on the ace spectrum.

I know it's canon that angels and demons are literally physically without sex (unless they make the effort to manifest it), and we can infer from the series that most of them don't bother and probably not only lack interest in sex, but may even be put off by the concept. Assuming they even know what it is, because the whole scene with Job and Sitis seemed to imply they have no clue.

But I'm treebranching. Back to the topic at hand.

I've talked a bit about Michael Sheen specifically, and the expressions he makes and line deliveries. But it's more than that.

Time and time again, the show goes out of its way to emphasize that both Aziraphale and Crowley partake in human activities. Things they do not need to partake in. Crowley loves to sleep. Aziraphale loves to eat. They both drink. They travel via human methods. They have human hobbies. They enjoy things that other angels/demons consider beneath them. The show highlights this multiple times, even drawing attention to it in some scenes.

Personally, I don't see any reason why intimacy would be the exception, specifically with one another. I don't really think they have any interest in anyone else, or even in sex in general terms. But I think there's definitely an interest in it specifically regarding each other. It's not so much about the act as it is about experiencing it together, engaging and indulging in something so human together.

As always I have utmost respect for people with different views on it! But this is my takeaway, and how I interpret their characters. }

[faunastanza]

Circlet of the Sun pt. 2

(part 1) (part 3)

There's more ranting and then another repetition of the same thing we've heard over and over. Harmonitor says that it must not have been clear enough or must not have been sending the right signals, because why would Sir Press be doing the exact opposite otherwise? It's not your fault, it must be something with me! That must be it! I don't know if Glip realizes how many times they say this or how passive-aggressive it is.

Sila says that they didn't hear Harmonitor and that if they try to disengage then they'll freak out and kill themselves and it'll be all your fault. Right after, Harmonitor says that Sila never actually said any of those things, they're just what Harmonitor inferred from her behavior.

an implicit threat

Harmonitor dissociates which seems to be the solution to everything in this comic. There's a bunch more vague-ing about Discord drama, including a reference to a character named Ciero. Apparently Ciero and another character acted out what Sila was doing wrong in an RP or something, while Glip yells THIS IS YOU, THIS IS YOU, IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT THEN MAYBE YOU SHOULDN'T SILENCE ME. Sila and Glip have a stilted conversation and Sila tells Glip to stop vagueposting about her lol.

vaguepost, me??

Glip protests, asking why Sila thinks it was vagueposting and what they were vagueposting about. Sila responds saying that Glip said that she was playing the victim and didn't know it. In response to this Glip/Harmonitor seems to have a panic attack about how they can never write or draw again, and then explains that they made Harmonitor to symbolize that they're only here to help.

Glip posts some more snippets from the conversation, apparently unaware that it doesn't make them look good.

why did you make a little play with characters about your feelings instead of talking to me directly about them

Glip doesn't answer because all of Sila's questions feel like traps and Sila doesn't listen to their answers anyway. Sila says that they saw feelings that Glip had kept hidden from them in the play and felt bad about it, particularly because they had asked Sila to open up to them. Glip says that they (drumroll) forget, and asks if they always kept their feelings hidden from Sila.

Sir Press, now with ANOTHER new name, Selfish-Harm (Get it) doesn't respond as Glip says that she never wants to hear criticism from nobody, and if they told Selfish-Harm their feelings then Selfish-Harm would just flip out and hurt someone. Glip explains that the name Selfish-Harm means that they hurt themselves and then blame others for it, just in case you couldn't catch that.

There's a bunch more yelling and rambling, with Glip at one point comparing Selfish-Harm to their abusive dad and one time that he flipped out and punched them and threatened to kill their mom and himself. Apparently they tried to tell Selfish-Harm this at some point but she didn't see the resemblance. She apologizes for triggering that memory but says she didn't need to remember it, so they're even and she implores Glip not to be mad anymore or they'll stay in the memory forever. In the end Selfish-Harm lets Harmonitor go.

Harmonitor/Glip starts to head off for rest and Selfish-Harm stops them to say one more thing. "I should get off the stage right now. I have a hard time saying 'no' to you because I trust you so much." she says.

Harmonitor is taken aback, thinking that if Selfish-Harm didn't want to go on stage then they didn't have to, they could have just talked about it privately. The cleaver shows up all evil and bloody to say what that really means is that if she does anything she doesn't want to do then it's because Glip coerced her, and she'll tell everyone.

so scary

I mentioned scenes up there. My memory of this is fuzzy, but there were these intense sessions on Glip's discord server where people acted out their arguments in front of other people who may or may not have decided who was wrong or right, I forget. You'd have to agree to do a scene with someone else and there were a bunch of weird rules to it, and unsurprisingly it resulted in a lot of drama. When Sila/Glip talks about scenes or stages in this huge thing, that's what they're talking about.

Anyway, the blade comes down on Harmonitor who convulses oh no a Glipsert is being mutilated again by evil people, it's a moebius strip, but Harmonitor does say that they wanted to talk to Selfish-Harm in public on stage because they were scared of her, but didn't tell her that.

really does look like random white and red scribbles now

Anyway, Harmonitor decides that this means that she can never express any feelings around Selfish-Harm ever again about anything and can only do what she wants and has a breakdown. I feel sort of like a parent hearing two children crying about how the other one hurt their feelings. I just want to know what's happening to the actual characters in this comic. Remember when there were gay my little ponies with giant yaoi hands? who could forget.

Selfish-Harm cleaver talks about how they think girls getting caught and punished for being in the wrong place at the wrong time is hot. Also apparently Sila said they thought Glip had some kind of undiagnosed disorder at some point lol.

took it just the way you'd expect

There's more and more and more yelling. Apparently at one point Sila said that although their community was against call-outs they'd been trigger happy with them lately. This made Glip so angry that they made this huge callout. Sure proved them wrong there, huh.

join our community today! this won't happen to you! (maybe)

There's more yelling now with Harmonitor with the screw eye we've seen sometimes on Scissors. Not sure what that signified before now, but in this it seems to signify that Harmonitor is just Glip again but angry. Another layer of nesting dolls.... all Glips....

Speaking of, Hothead screams about how much they hate Sila and how everyone in the discord hates Sila actually and to stop acting like a creep. We abruptly cut to Quill trying to write. He's happy with his work and while it'll NEVER be good as Papaya's obviously, he hopes it's worth gracing her presence and that she might find something she can use in her better plays. Quill's creator writes guest stories for Floraverse. Just bringing that up again, no reason. There's a big long thing with Sir Press riding Quill like a horse (but he goes by Quibble here) that's just more yelling about Sir Press treating everyone bad.

Out of nowhere in the middle of it though, plot shows up again.

like a jumpscare, these returns to the plot

Quibble says that they find the place where the seeds would have been planted and the blood would have been spilled and where something was supposed to grow. But Sir Press told them that kind of thing could hurt someone so it's better that it doesn't exist. But I thought Sir Press liked violence and suffering! Now I don't know what's going on!

It goes right back into angry whining and yelling and this goes on for a while. It's all the same thing we've already heard but that's not going to stop Glip I guess. It goes on and on and on. Euphobia is at a jail cell in Clear Watching, which it describes as the Eternal Labryinth. Glip does seem to get defensive about people not liking Call-Clout which, lol.

paige and cc just had a fun party together before, it's fine

A new character pops up that looks like a bad creepypasta villain named Encore, Pain Whore. But... there's already a character called Encore... a pretty significant character... why are you using the same name for this new one... what are you doing...

encore.exe

Unless this is supposed to be some kind of warped version of Encore but in the process of typing that I realized I don't care. It's just another mouthpiece for Glip anyway. I don't know why Glip comes up with all these different variations of a character when they all just say the same thing. A scribble that might be CC says they know that Sila won't take this seriously or learn from it and that they're not welcome back into their community. So this really is just shouting at an empty chair.

They also threaten to kill Sila if she ever says she cares again, which is nice.

i don't think the odds of that are very high

They say they hate Sila and that they've never known her and can never say that they knew her, and they don't know anyone by her name and she'll never be whole. They then say maybe they should make it a funny violent story so Sila will listen, then says "gosh, anyone hurt by this story must REALLY deserve it". They then say that Sila said that it'd be a funny gag when she died in that script she wrote but it makes them gag! Get it!! Get it!!!

Glip then clarifies that when they said they wanted to kill Sila it was just a gag in a sarcastic way.

are those little bug teeth

There's more and more along the same lines, and since this was supposedly put together by a bunch of people I'd wonder if that's why it repeats so much but I think it's easily as likely that Glip just does this. There's a hilarious bit where Glip points at the screen basically to go YOU, THIS IS YOU like you're trying to threaten your little sibling into doing something.

this is you! [knocks over lamp] don't mess with me!

After some more yelling, Sila comes back this time as a giant foot, saying she has a play for Papaya to put on. Name's Extoenerate, because of course.

referred to as a foot man but this is still sila, so

Extoenerate starts getting off on asking Papaya her opinion. Papaya looks at the scripts and keeps her feelings hidden so she can try to get a read on what Extoenerate is like. It's the same script of Papaya killing someone which she is again horrified by. Stuck in a moebius strip with this, I told you.

Papaya expresses reservations about the script while keeping actual explanations for her feelings to herself. It's okay when she does it though. Extoenerate keeps getting off on the conversation. She asks why Extoe needs her help, and she says she always finishes too fast by herself. Get it.

say my feelings to someone's face? nope

It goes back and forth with the foot suggesting a way for the feet to exposed when she dies. It'll be very hot when the shopkeeper yells at the other person, the foot says, they were inspired by seeing Papaya tell at someone in her shop the other day. The foot gets mad that Papaya is kinkshaming her lol.

what if kinkshaming IS my kink

The foot rants about how unfair it is that Papaya didn't like her script and threatens to kill her. No one understands!! Papaya then says fine, we should put the story on the stage (with site under it get it, ON THE SITE, GET IT) because she wouldn't want to KINKSHAME them. That whole bit at the beginning with the fox coming into the story? That was Sila's script. what a twist.

Glip/Papaya says that Sila walked right into their trap, thinking that they wouldn't say any of this. They then post what I assume is a list of rules you have to agree to to RP in Glip's server which are bonkers. They're in a full apoplectic rage now, I think because Sila implied they also signed the rules? Or maybe it's because Sila signed the rules but is still upset. I'm not sure but boy they're angry.

imagine showing this to someone out of context. wait

Glip then vaguely threatens to choke Sila to death.

just a joke! i promise! (maybe)

There's also some more out of context discord screencaps. Personally, I don't think Glip's server sounds like a fun place to be.

everyone seems really angry there

Two more victims show up who are also actual people in the discord who decided to join in on this fun callout party. They then throw Extoe into an extremely funny panel.

each glip consists of four glips simultaneously

Look at that. Just look at it lololol. Anyway, this is related to another thing if I remember right, although again, my memory of things are hazy. There was a channel on the server I think called Clear Watching, where you could be sent if people wanted to yell at you or if you broke the rules or something. There I think you'd be muted and people could just say whatever to you until you repented and got to leave? Something like that. It was a punitive thing I'm almost sure and selective muting was a part of it.

Anyway, Ash and Zen or maybe Glip or just everyone I guess continues to be mad, forever. They say they wrote a story about how awful Sila is and Sila didn't want to see it and that hurt them real bad. They say Sila didn't want to see it because it didn't have her fetish or fighting in it but I am skeptical. Sila apparently said she didn't want them using her characters in their hate story and this also hurt their feelings because she said they had blanket permission to do whatever with her character when she signed up into this loony bin of a discord.

i tried to respect that you didn't want me to write a hate story about your character but it was really hard

There isn't even any art at this point, it's just caps on white.

hearing this in robocop's voice

There are some more Discord screencaps, along with that same "why would you think that if it wasn't true? I guess i'm just bad and stupid then!" line of logic that shows up everywhere.

guess so!

I guess Sila and Glip talked about Glip making a hateful cameo with them and Sila didn't like that. Glip shouts that it was supposed to hurt them, duh! Idiot!! I wanted to hurt you for hurting me!! But it's okay when I do it.

although, didn't glip say they didn't expect sila to read this? who IS this for then?

Glip has reached full rage meltdown at this point.

you are just mad because you are angry

In the middle of this there's a "maybe it's because violence sucks, and you suck too!" which is kind of hilariously mild compared to the rest of it. Anyway it clarifies that Papaya didn't say any of this out loud because she didn't want to make Sila have some kind of unreasonable meltdown over being told to die because she wrote a bad script. Papaya tries to give Sila concrit on her scripts and it has another hilarious bit with Papaya saying that characters shouldn't just be black and white.

lol

She also says she doesn't think that the flowercat would just enjoy yelling that she's right, which is even funnier considering that this VN is like two hours of them doing just that.

evidence works against you here

Papaya asks why the flowercat wouldn't defend herself, and Sila says that her Mary Sue character has a special ability where she can wipe the memories of people she attacks, and she's able to strike people's worst vulnerabilities in a way that causes the most harm without actually hurting them, whatever that means. Glip says harm without hurt is gaslighting and that Sila is threatening to literally wipe their memories. When I say literally I do mean literally.

don't give me amnesia, internet person

Just gonna toss this little guy in here because I think the face is funny.

9_6

[xtrablak674]

Decompress

Haven't journaled in a few days, so much has been going on that I didn't have enough clarity in my thoughts to actually write about anything. So far I have had the opportunity to speak consistently with three of my late brother's children six children.

I already have the sense that one will betray this relationship, and has already spilled the tea with his grandmother, that I am now aware of my brother's passing. I don't think this was accidental, I think it was deliberate and intentional even if subconsciously. This particular nephew who is my brother's eldest child, drank a bit deeper of the delusion tainted Kool-Aid that his grandmother served up about me, and isn't giving me the benefit of the doubt. His grandmother raised all of the children to choose between her or their moms family and their dads family. Its sad because I know he's smarter than that but a lifetime of indoctrination can be difficult to shake off.

The case I have made to the other children has been simple, I first state clearly that I have never at anytime had any 'beef' with their grandmother and that this is a construct of her mind that begin when I was a very small child. (about the age pictured above). My nephew pointed out in our interactions that my sense of humor, mannerisms and delivery were very similar to his own, and I underlined for him these kind of traits, which I can draw a direct line right back to his grandfather are exactly the reason his grandmother didn't like me. I was a spitting image of my father, and at that age was actively trying to emulate him as many kids do. This realization made the irrational behavior of their grandmother so much more apparent.

I have positioned myself as a fact-checker of sorts utilizing the misinformation the grandmother and sometimes their aunt said about me and showing actual evidence to dispute these stories. Their aunt had tried to infer when I had first met the children back in '09 that she didn't know me. I pulled out my vast collection of family photos and texted the kids evidence of the opposite and let them know, we only lived together a few summers, but every time my dad bought me down to the city, he made a huge effort to not only include her mom and daughter in his family events, she even accompanied him to his parents church.

The interaction was good for the kids, they had some questions and I answered to the best of my ability. I had to take a care to answer things but not be critical of the decisions their adoptive mother had made, and I did apologize for my inappropriate comments about her not putting my nephew in a better high school. I made it clear to the children, that I have no kids of my own, and its not appropriate for me to comment on or judge another parents decisions related to the children in their care. I was sure she was doing the best that she could do, and I was clearly swerving out of my lane.

It was important to me that they know that I respected any rules and regulations that the adults in their lives had put in place and wasn't in anyway trying to subvert these things. Albeit they are my nieces and nephew with the exception of the eldest they weren't of legal age and my contact should actually be approved by whomever their legal guardian was. I didn't say any of this to them, but it has been something I have always respected even with my 29 yo niece, who I had been in touch before she turned eighteen with only birthday wishes and afterwards I pursued a bit more contact. Ten years later we now chat via DM a few times a week.

The most difficult thing with my interactions with these kids is the fact that they all seem to smoke or vape and they clearly know their dad died from COPD directly connected to his excessive smoking. But I have noted that this isn't the only niece, nibling or nephew I have who has a very debilitating habit, one that could potentially put their health at risk. Its upsetting for me, because I see the very clear effects of living in low-income neighborhoods without the kinds of opportunities that I have had. The seventeen year old nephew I am thinking about is in a high school with little to no resources, no sports team and little to no extracurricular activities, which is why he thinks its perfectly acceptable to sit around the house all day and vape pot...

I have decided that I need to let go of this and try to be there for the things that I may be able to effect. But it is very difficult knowing clearly their father died at forty-three exactly one year before the age his father died.

[Photo by Brown Estate]

[way-to-the-future]

God/goddess/deity? -shieldbcund

Perched atop a steed broken by his own hand, he rides before that most fearsome of chariots, ever in the watchful gaze of his mother, she who gives what is due. His approach signals both woe and weal, for it is his magmatic gaze and hard-won esteem that forestall death. In his right hand, he bears the murdering spear and in his left, the conquering bow. Where he rides, soon are heard the exultant laughter of Enyo, sacker of cities, and the shrill cries of pitiless Eris. Behind them, his divine brother makes ready for the slaughter in a cart driven by his sons, fear and panic. Yet that fearsome warrior did not share a womb with the rider. In this respect, beauty and majesty were his true sisters; joy and sweetness his adored brother. He loves them well, but among them his youngest sister remembered best their birthright, she who with awful wit and the haft of her bloodied axe drew the dread price of obligation and vows unfulfilled – and for this reason she is dearest to him.

               He recalls, fondly and frequently, their youth in the unwalled city of his birth, despite the bitter pain of a mortal father’s heartbreak and a mortal mother’s disdain, despite the hard lessons that earned him the right to call himself a man, a warrior, and a god. The sorrow of such memories pales before the truth of his lineage, for his mother is the wrath of justice and the venomous hate of the wronged, and his father is thundering pride, royal prerogative and appetite unchallenged. He dreams with an as-yet boyish heart of the glories that he can win in their name, and more importantly, in his own; for he has inherited his father’s arrogance as surely as his mother’s fury.

               Though he is never so loved as his twin, as desired as one sister or as loathed as another, he is all these things to some degree. Only his siblings can lift the veil that blinds his better senses when his spirit is called to battle. He is the lesser part of a whole, yet he fancies himself more complete by his rage, the impetus of stalwart rancor that lets him master stallions and by which he won his inheritance. He is fond of horses as any man of Thessaly, for they are haughty and unruly creatures like he. He hears the prayers of those who wander unfamiliar roads and those who seek to prove themselves by the strength of their arm or their keen wit; he heals as surely he harms, and once gained, his trust is as sure a boon as any blade.

               Each second day, he walks the world as a man again, a blessing and a debt incurred for his youthful theft. In those moments when the glory of his mantle recedes, he finds that he misses his sisters; he longs for the days when they hunted and wrestled together. He wishes he could have saved them from grief and desolation, and that they might have changed their fate as had he and his brother. To grieve is a mortal reflex, and one of which he takes great advantage in those seldom dark hours of silence when he can walk, not run, and dream of what might have been, rather than what will be.

(Tysm for the ask!)

[comicaurora]

Okay so 1: Absolutely spectacular visuals this page. Like desperate threads reaching to weave back into one another, those lightning strands. But also this page made me notice 2: I can't pluck from my memory a time when a page in Aurora Felt Like a transition. Like as in the narrative momentum throughout the comic is regularly at a rhythm and tempo and new story and character elements are slotted into place in such a way that makes each page feel like a piece of a tightly woven braid where we occasionally linger over the overlapping bends. Which left me kinda boggled when I realized this page felt much less like an intersection and very distinctly like a joint. Like 'Oh that is supposed to be there, it is serving a purpuse, but it's Full Transition and I'm not used to that happening'.

So to get to the question(s?) this prelude was meant to contextualize: What's your general north star for the flow you build up in the story? How big a role does that little 'better writer in the back of your brain' play in the zoomed out view of the comic vs moment to moment? Does it get particularly unwieldy, and do knots to the momentum sneak up on you?

Pacing is absolutely the hardest part of comic-making for me, and I tend to take a more diagnostic approach to it - it's more about fixing problems than laying rails. So when I'm laying out pages and rereading, I tend to consider these:

Is this scene feeling aimless? The problem is probably that I started on it before I found the next anchor event - the next key thing that I know is going to happen. I never start a scene before I know what point it's going to serve and what event it's going to establish. Every scene has at least one point to make, and sometimes the problem is the anchor point I'm aiming for is actually too far away - I need something to happen sooner.

Am I stuck, even though I know what happens next? Then I'm probably stalling on ending the scene and moving on to the next one. Scenes don't need to keep going past their logical breakpoints. Sometimes I just need to draw the next panel, even if I'm not positive what'll go in it, and then feel it out from there.

Am I dreading laying out the buildup to an event or reveal but feel I need the buildup to pace the impact? Then I don't have enough things happening in that buildup. Dread is the result of tedium, and if the buildup is just mandatory spacefiller it will result in tedium. Either the buildup needs to be shorter or more stuff needs to happen in it. This is when I have a lot of luck in letting the characters surprise me, since juicy character drama can fill a lot of holes that the plot leaves bare.

Am I spending all this time on the reread wondering "what happened to the other thing that's happening?" This is the danger with running arcs in parallel; if I leave one storyline unattended at a cliffhanger moment, I might be too hung up on wondering what's going on there to pay any attention to what's going on currently. As a result, I try to end scenes when the audience is given enough information to infer what those characters will continue doing offscreen. Running from point A to point B, invoking a spell, evenly matched in combat, etc etc. This usually means I need to adjust how the scene ended when it transitioned into the new scene - tie up at least one loose end before moving on.

When it comes to pacing, I think the moment-to-moment flow matters a lot more than the top-down roadmap of the plot. Something can look extremely simple point-A-to-point-B on paper, but translate to something a lot more involved when it's actually put on the page - in the same way that the script notes for an entire fight scene can just be "they fight and X wins."

The thing I struggle with most is balancing the Cool Moments with how much buildup is required to make those moments Suitably Cool. If I start dropping in random awesome moments with no buildup, they won't hit how I want. I've watched enough out-of-context "top 10 anime fight scenes" to know they only hit as hard as they should when you have the full context for why they mean so much. Without that it's just a bunch of noise and one-liners. I want to jump right to the good stuff, but if I do, it won't be as good. But pacing isn't just packing in filler between the Awesome Moments - that space is where you can fit all kinds of character moments that are impactful in other ways.

I wish I had a more eloquent explanation for what I think the rules of pacing are, but I really do just feel it out and go by the vibes. I'm glad it seems to be working so far!

[the-lincyclopedia]

I'm going to answer these questions/points in order.

Do I find myself horrifying too? Sure, sometimes. I have OCD and intense intrusive thoughts. I don't think it's surprising that I sometimes find myself horrifying, given that context. My knowledge of the Chicago Manual of Style is generally not one of the facets of myself that I find horrifying, though.

Does the idea of someone who knows even more punctuation and grammar than I do reading one of my stories and finding errors horrify me? No. It would be somewhat embarrassing, sure, but not horrifying.

Is my horror unique to your obsessions? Well, first of all, I think my obsessions aren't directly analogous to yours, in this case--I'm fixated on punctuation and grammar, which is usually pretty easy to fix if someone points out an error. You're fixated on numbers in worldbuilding. If someone has used or implied numbers that don't fit with each other or the rest of the story, a single error could have a bunch of domino effects on the whole narrative. Errors in punctuation and grammar are very unlikely to have similar domino effects. Secondly, I don't make posts about how people are using certain patterns of punctuation and grammar in order to "actively try to remove the source of my joy from their fiction." The fact that you're making snarky, judgmental posts about how other people choose to write is relevant here.

"I'm not trying to get you to do something that is horrifying to you. I'm trying to get you not to be terrified of me." This feels to me like it's in conflict with "let your world struggle against you. let yourself make mistakes, and let everyone notice those mistakes." If letting my world struggle against me and putting my mistakes on display for the world is horrifying to me, the use of the imperative in those lines about letting your world struggle against you and letting yourself make noticeable mistakes is, inherently, trying to to get me to do something that is horrifying to me. That's the thing about using the imperative form without caveats. And, again, making snarky, judgmental posts about how other people "aren't subtle," are doing things that "disrupt the flow" of their writing, don't "experience joy," are "actively trying to remove the source of your joy from their fiction," etc. is not going to make people less terrified of your future judgment.

"If you are an autistic pedant, then we are doing the same thing. You're just scared of me doing it." The difference in what we're doing is the degree to which we're being pedantic in public. When I see a piece of writing with terrible punctuation and grammar, I back-button out, criticize in my head, or occasionally send a message to a single close friend. It is not a double standard to say that the post that kicked off this argument was more public than any of those actions. Being pedantic in private, in a way that will never reach anyone it applies to, is different than being pedantic into the void of Tumblr, where there's a decent chance you'll reach someone you're talking about.

"Notice please that I've mentioned no derision. I don't know where you got that from." Once again: saying that other people "aren't subtle," are doing things that "disrupt the flow" of their writing, don't "experience joy," are "actively trying to remove the source of your joy from their fiction," etc. is, in itself, derisive. Telling them to "let everyone notice those mistakes," in the context of the rest of what you have said, certainly sounds like you're telling people to open themselves up to targeted derision. Maybe that's not what you meant when you mentioned everyone noticing their mistakes, but in context, it's not a strange or unwarranted inference to draw.

writers who refuse to put numbers in your stories:

you need to understand that you are not subtle, i always notice, and take breaks to make estimates and put the numbers back in. it disrupts the flow. i don't tell you about this because what it successfully communicates is that you are touchy about it.

numbers are like. convenient handles to use to rotate the story in my mind. i put them back in because i want to do that. is that not what you want me to do here. to imagine this world and wonder about it.

do you not experience joy?

[dailyadventureprompts]

Wanna start this off by saying that your stuff is inspiring and I read and reread it all the time for help. So big thank you for that!

That being said, I was wondering if you could give any advice on building kingdoms/nations. Your advice on deities helped me to create the gods of my own original universe so I figured you'd have tips on other world building aspects.

Drafting the Adventure: Cities, Settlements, & Nations

Hey friend, I just so happened to be writing a DTA post that mapped onto your question, so I hope you don't mind if I start with the small scale and work up to the big stuff. I think you'll find my methodology works regardless of the size of polity you're creating.

Like any act of worldbuilding, creating an iconic settlement or realm to serve as the backdrop or hub for your adventures is a tricky process, in no small part because just like their IRL counterparts, there’s a theoretically infinite amount of time and effort you as a creator could spend detailing the goings-on of the settlement and the histories of its inhabitants in the surrounding lands.   Too much detail and you risk choking on your own meticulously crafted set dressing, not enough and you risk your settlement being a generic placeholder that your audience can’t get invested in.

The solution to this issue is figuring out what detail you need to prioritize when creating your settlement, and what you can leave as an inference. You want your settlement to both draw the party in, and to serve as a rich canvas with which you can paint the context of your stories.  There are plenty of tutorials out there about how to generate street layouts or determine the demographics of your city, but this isn’t one of them. as a story focused DM, my framework for building settlements only requires me to have an idea about three simple factors:

The Geography of where this settlement ( and surrounding ones) are located.

The Economic engines that drive the city’s growth

The Culture of the People who founded the city, and how the history of the settlement and surrounding lands have shaped the people who live there.

Once I have even a vague idea of those three things I’m off to the races, as they let me extrapolate out any details I might need the same way that a few details about an NPC can provide the skeleton on which a real story can be built.

Below the cut I’ll go into detail about the three factors, how they interact with each other, and how you can use them to build out the local map of your settling.

Before we go on, I realized that there’s a bit of information I have from previous editions of d&d that wasn’t carried over into 5e, which is settlement sizes: a useful guide for how big a setting might be, and a benchmark for us going forward.

Thorp: 20-80

Hamlet:81-400

Village: 401-900

Small town: 901-2000

Large town: 2001-5000

Small city: 5001-12,000

Large city: 12,001-25,000

Metropolis: 25,001-

Likewise, anything in italic text is going to be purely optional advice that will help with your worldbuilding. Just being able to guess at a settlement’s four factors is enough, unless you’re someone who likes getting into the fine details.

Regional Geography:

The reason I start with geography is that it’s impossible to figure out the nature of a settlement without at least a vague understanding of the lands that surround it. This isn’t to say you need to generate a whole worldmap and then work in to the fine details, but knowing what your party sees when they cast their gaze in the four cardinal directions is important when figuring out the basis of your settlement.

The one piece of advice you’re going to find in nearly every settlement creation guide is “ Settlements are constructed near a source of fresh water”, which is universally true and a great jumping off point. That said, most guides I’ve seen stop there, and negate several other important concerns when it comes to deciding where a settlement might be placed.

Food: everybody needs food to live just as much as they need water, which means your settlement will be constructed with easy access to fertile land capable of sustaining it. A good rule of thumb is that a settlement is going to require one constant foodsource per size category, with a thorp requiring one, a small town requiring four, and a metropolis requiring at least eight. Hunting/gathering in the local wilderness is going to be able to sustain anything up to the size of a village, but beyond that, the land will need to be developed in order to sustain population size. A settlement can also count a neighboring settlement of two size categories or smaller as a food source, which will encourage the development of roads across the land.   You can use this system to build out a map of your campaign world, surrounding settlements with different kinds of farmland and connecting them with rivers and roads.

Natural Resources: People will set up camp anywhere, but what allows a settlement to grow and prosper is access to plentiful resources ( fertile land, building/crafting materials, luxury goods).  It will be a rare thing for a settlement to boast more than one material/luxury resource,  so spread them out across your map.  Small to medium settlements will be centered around the extraction/processing of these goods, while larger settlements will sit in a nexus of these smaller settlements, hosting the markets and trade ports.

Transportation: Unless it was founded by isolationists, your settlement will need avenues of supply and trade, which will also determine the limits of your local authority. A good adage that I learned from one of my favorite history professors is that an army can only march for seven days without breaking, which means the limits of your settlements and its hinterlands is seven days march/ride/sail away from the last point of resupply. This is why empires build roads, and cultures most often develop along rivers: they’re both means of getting your troops from one end of your territory to the other so that you can project/consolidate power over a larger region.

Defense: Mostly an afterthought unless your settlement is near the border of whatever realm it happens to occupy.  No one likes it when someone takes their stuff, so settlements will be built in a way that makes them difficult to attack, or with a large natural barrier (forest, mountains, swamps, wide or deep rivers, canyons) between them and their nearest enemy. These natural barriers end up creating the borders of nations as when it comes to founding a kingdom, neighbors with permeable borders quickly become subjects. That said, internal barriers will often define the settlement patterns of your surrounding region, and how that region will fair given the outbreak of civil or external conflict.

Ecconomic Engines:

“Money makes the world go round” is an old adage, but when it comes to worldbuilding, it’s absolutely true. People move and settle into regions because the land there offers the promise of a better life, and the dynasties of the powerful live and die over the rights to who gets to exploit what.

Just like with food, every settlement above a certain size is going to need at least one economic engine to ensure the prosperity of its people, which will in turn give you as the worldbuilder a firm idea about the characteristics of your settlement, the lives of its people, and how it relates to its neighbors. (This time though, the count starts at 1 engine for a village, 2 for a small town, etc.)

Here’s some ideas:

Food: While there’s a baseline of food required to keep everyone alive, no one is going to say no to a more varied diet and the wealth that comes from exporting surplus to neighboring markets. Most feudal economies start as food economies, initially trying to ensure enough of a stockpile to get through winter/lean seasons but eventually self optimizing to produce wealth in vast excess of what any one population could consume.

Building Materials: An expanding populace is going to need wood, bricks, tile,  and stone, to say nothing of timber for boats or the metal required for tools. Whole industries pop up around the gathering and transport of these goods.

Textiles; Never EVER discount the essential nature of textiles, whether it comes from rough homespun wool to luxury silk. In addition to providing clothing for the populace, crops like cotton and linen both have a myriad of side uses that end up forming the economic backbone of societies.

Trade: Commerce can be it’s own economic engine, as towns with markets and Foreign ports boast those who’ve grown skilled at hawking goods and directing the flow of mercantalistic investment where it needs to go.

Industry: some things are better done in bulk, and when it comes to trades that require something to be smelted, dyed, or produced en-masse, you can expect people to double down. Only available to settlements of small town size or lager.

Tourism: It may seem like a modern concept, but people have been traveling for education and pleasure for as long as there’s been the capability to travel. Pilgrimage sites, cultural monuments, and natural wonders can all provide a destination, as well as numerous amenities for travelers along the way.

Conflict: Grim to say, but economies run as well on blood as they do on anything else, and plenty of cultures will boast mercenaries, pirates, or slavers as central pillars of their economy

Luxury goods: Art, Spices, Drugs, Precious stones, these things provide enrichment at all walks of life while giving the rich something to pour their wealth back into the economy.

Culture & History:

Culture provides the pallet with which you paint the character of your settlement, and while it might be easy enough to say that a settlement was founded by halfling clans  or by a feudalistic human monarchy, no society stays static as it is put through the rigors of growth and survival. What happens when a group that was a bit player in the social hierarchy unexpectedly accrues power? What happens when a city is conquered by an outside culture, and how do they end up integrating? These changes end up having knock on effects that define how your settlement operates, the ways in which it might differ from the “default” fantasy backdrop which will in turn help it stand out in your player’s minds.

One of the best ways to detail a settlement is through an understanding of Crisis and Power. Innumerable crises affect the world at any given time, and by virtue of living in both a medeival-ish, fantasy-ish world these disasters can be quite dramatic. Invading armies, marauding monsters, plagues, the death/birth/whims of gods, famines, financial crashes, wizard fuckery, all of them can spell death or doom for a culture.

I talked here about the best way to set up the power structures for a courtly drama was to understand the most recent crisis faced by the kingdom, and how those in power dealt with it. As it turns out, the method is much the same for doing the groundwork on your settlement's history, instead focusing on the BIGGEST disaster that would've affected your populace in the last 200 years, rather than the most recent. As a student of history, it's bad form for me to set any hard and fast rules, but 200 years (or a proportional chunk of time for longer lived peoples) is a good meterstick to see a culture totally reinvent itself, bearing only passing similarities to what it was before.

Mapping a Kingdom: Before you go mapping out your entire fantasy world, remember that such a exercise is mostly a time sync that is irrelevant to most campaigns. The stories of 90% of adventuring groups take place in the same general area, with brief forays into other dimensions or vacation length visits to foreign lands. You'd be best served by keeping things vague, focusing your detail work on the local area and having only a vague idea what's going on in the rest of the world. If your campaign revolves around borders and the play between cities/provinces/kingdoms, a map might be important, so consider my earlier advice regarding settlement founding and defense. The boundaries of nations form along natural barriers that makes it easier for the defender to hold the territory. Fights are most often over areas that have a lot of economic engines, and the very worst fighting comes in prosperous areas that don't have a lot of natural barriers between them. Small states are frequently absorbed into larger ones, and large ones frequently fracture into competing states, each centered around a cluster of economic engines.

[indiaalphawhiskey]

Hi,

I have a question, because I keep on reading and listening to affirmations like “since Olivia wasn’t aloud to mention Harry in Vogue’s” or “she cannot use his name so she uses his merch” … like if it was some sort of punishment out of a wrong behavior or tool to control this stunt because of some disagreement.

We are constantly talking about armored contracts, clauses, etc. Is Harry’s team always the weak? Always played? Always taken advantage of? Always choosing the wrong candidate? Feels like people build up excuses to the unexplained and usually it draws a victim profile on Harry. Maybe admitting that he went into this as we get it is too much to take in, but he is a grown man, hopefully mature enough to deal with the odds of his profession and for whatever reasons he finds worth it to be where he is now.

I am not defending O at all, her reputation is not helping at all and the intensity of the stunt magnifies everything…not in a positive way; but I wonder how people know about these things kept in a confidential contract to the point that it has become a fandom confirmation.

Have a nice day

Hi, love!

I'm going to link you to my STUNT DISCUSSION tag, because it's going to give you a better context of everything I've answered so far, in terms of Holivia. Especially because I have actually cautioned against approaching this discussion as though Harry/his team are in any way helpless or did not do a decent level of research before agreeing to this stunt, but also acknowledge that there are factors he/his team could not have accounted for, which affect the way things are playing out at the moment.

That said, I'm going to go to your question to avoid repeating myself. (Gonna get long again, sorry.)

You're right. As far as we (I, really) know, there's no physical confirmation of a social media and print media gag order on Olivia, and it is very healthy to call that out and acknowledge that, without physical proof, we are only inferring through observation, and should not take that inference as law.

However, because we as a fandom have been observing Harry, his colleagues, and his stunts for years, there are pretty hefty hints that this is, in fact, the case.

Let me start by saying gag orders are not "punishment". They're not sanctions given as a result of "wrong behavior" or "disagreement". Rather, they are a legal tool used to protect people in the public eye from their names (and brands) being used in ways they are either unaware of or do not agree with. Gag orders are very reasonable limitations to ensure that the official (print media, social media, advertisements, etc.) use of a celebrity/public figure's name is always aligned with that celebrity's image and branding. It also protects that celebrity's name from being (accidentally or otherwise) tied to anything that might increase their reputational risk, without their consent (like, for example, a stunt partner deciding to go rogue), and it's only natural to assume that Harry, who's name is constantly used as tabloid fodder (sheep placenta facial, anyone?) would be smart enough to ensure he could benefit from that kind of protection when going into an official contract with someone else.

Why do I highlight "official"? Because one of the biggest clues that Olivia has a gag order has been the difference in the way she interacts with Harry on social and print media, and the way his inner circle/professional acquaintances interact with him.

Olivia has only mentioned Harry directly on social media twice (as in tagged him) -- when she announced his role as Jack, and when she thanked him at the end of filming. Both those moments were clearly done in a professional capacity, and directly related to DWD.

It's very similar to the way The Love Band interact with Harry on social media, which is usually to thank him and in direct relation to their shows. They don't post about him outside a professional context, likely because their employment contracts have a similar limitation. In fact, in an interview with Ny Oh, a publication outright said she "was limited on what she could share about her experience on tour, but said she really loved working for Styles, and he was the best boss she'd ever had." (A second clue that Harry does employ restrictions on his name and brand within the confines of professional contracts.)

If we compare this to the way Harry's inner circle/industry acquaintances interact with him on social media, there's a stark difference. Molly Hawkins, Harry Lambert, Kid Harpoon, Ben Winston, etc have posted relatively freely about Harry in a personal context a handful of times (though not so much recently, which I suspect is out of respect for him not wanting to be on social media). His family, his LA friends (who posted unseen videos on his birthday), Gemma Chan (BTS Eternals photos), even Lizzo, all interact with him on social media casually enough for us to know that it is possible, however rare.

So, you would think someone who's around him all the time (and in a "personal" relationship with him, no less) could do the same, because, what reason would she have not to...

...if not for a binding and official contractual limitation.

You can argue that she's private -- that they're private about their relationship. But... is she really? Because, even if you dismiss every pap shot of them and every picture of her in his merch/shared clothing, her social media habits still tell a different story. How many times has she needlessly posted a picture of her painted nails, only for us to see Harry in similar nail colors in a fan photo? Last week, her friend Babs posted her in a hat, conveniently mentioning she wasn't getting it back and therefore insinuating Olivia was in Dublin with Harry.

More than that, these sneaky ways of linking herself to Harry reek of taking advantage of loopholes, because a contract, no matter how solid, will have them for anyone determined to find them. So, can we really argue that a person is "private" if they're actually consistently taking every available opportunity to link themselves to the person they're "dating"?

So, in conclusion, yes, I personally do not have physical evidence of these gag orders, and yes, it's healthy to question that, especially in fandom, when the line between what's solidly confirmed and what's only widely inferred is often blurred. But again, it's also healthy to use logic and pattern-based evidence and rationale to cut through the smoke and mirrors of PR and Marketing when you're discussing something as entangled, complex, and deliberately opaque as celebrity stunting.

[vampxrebarbie]

an entire fucking thesis could be written on the evolution of vernacular and linguistics in online social culture among the 'online generation(s)'

like. text is flat, which is why punctuation is ungodly important in written fiction. use it right and the audience will read it with the right mental inflection.

that's why tone reading falls flat as soon as you hit online social spaces--we arent narrating in places like tumblr or twitter, we're TALKING. sure we've got exclamation points and question marks and periods and all, but there isnt anywhere near enough punctuation marks in existence to properly convey every little nuance present in speech. in text you have no vocal intonation, no nonverbal communication (expressions, gestures, tics) to further clarify what's being said behind what's being actually said.

so those of us present in online social circles invented our own social intonation to help each other communicate as many of the little nuances not present in text as possible.

like, i'm putting a flat period here at the end of a sentence.

just one.

to most of us who've been communicating online for years, that 'flat' period reads as incredibly harsh and borderline hostile depending on context, so a lot of us tend to omit it entirely in casual dialogue.

the more punctuation marks you use at once, the stronger the 'tone' it conveys. for example:

this topic is so exciting??? i love it so much???

doesnt so much read as a question as the mark implies. willing to bet most people in online social circles will 'hear' disbelief, shock, or excitement from an overabundance of question marks.

overabundance of exclamation points? you are feeling A WHOLE LOT and just NEED TO GET IT OUT!!!!!! doesnt matter what it is you're feeling but you SURE ARE FEELING IT!!

periods? well they sure do draw things out...........and depending on context can function either like a comedic twist on the traditional use of ellipses or a purposeful extension of spoken Dramatic Pauses those traditional dot-dot-dots just don't properly convey.

then there are the little oddball vernacular rules such as:

using a question mark at the end of what would otherwise be a flat statement because, somehow, our brains translate that to a verbal uptick in tone, basically the text format of a shrug, and if someone asks what for all you can do is say "idk it just feels right?"

keysmashes. we all know. we just do.

you're in the middle of typing something and decide you Need To Capitilize These Specific Words. why?

and jumping off of that:

MEMES oh my god. memes. m e m e s. let's talk about memes. i love memes as a method of communication i love them so much. why?

because i can post this

and theres a good chance a majority of you who've been around online social spaces (specifically tumblr) for long enough will know exactly what This Specific Meme is saying without needing a caption or context to infer it.

you just know.

you know the origin of it, you know how it was first used or have seen it used the way it's been traditionally used before, and because of that you can pretty much context clue your way into understanding what it's conveying when used at any other time provided it's being used in a similar way.

and that brand of communication can stack!

take any meme that began with a subtitle/caption that's been in circulation long enough for your brain auto-translate it on sight, have someone else add another caption-less meme in response, and anyone who knows the vernacular of online social spaces will know exactly what the two of you are communicating without a single word being typed/spoken.

we've reinvented fucking hieroglyphics, people!!!

all because us humans are so gosh-darned SOCIAL as a species that we're willing to rearrange our own learned grammar structures and methods of speech for the express purpose of communicating as clearly as possible in a medium that wasnt originally and to an extent still isnt meant to be used for casual dialogue and interaction with complete strangers.

this is why there's such a hard disconnect in online communication between anyone who spent most of their life offline versus those of us--primarily millenials and Gen Z--who grew up online.

we are literally speaking a completely different language from older generations.

[anodyne-violence]

Voted Larb because his status as the one who took Vort feels interesting to me.

Vort WAS an important target. We can infer this from details in the show and the comics. Vortians designed the Massive itself, along with various other warships -- said warships might not be as powerful as what they gave the irkens, but they still pack a punch. When the planet was taken, the Empire didn't actually terraform it into anything obviously useful, it just became a military prison, my guess is so they could squeeze more research out of the goatmen. In the comics, their brains are harvested seemingly to boost irken IQs. There is a weird respect* there. (((*of course, the Empire's """"respect"""" of other lifeforms requires way more quotations than even I put down, but you get what I mean. A practice like this requires them to at least ACKNOWLEDGE Vortian intelligence, potentially to the point that it's naturally superior to their own. Good luck trying to get them to do that with any other species))). Even though the planet is a "cushy" assignment, I doubt it was as insignificant as Blortch turned out to be in the galactic conquest.

And Larb was given this target by a complete fluke.

From what little we saw of him, he was openly timid in the face of danger by episode 1(I don't remember if he tears up or not when he asks "why did you draw that?", but he was openly distressed). Yet, when we see him next, Vort is on fire and he's napping on that couch. Irkens don't need to sleep. My man is REVELLING. What kind of arc did he have on that planet? Did he start as frail as he seemed, only to awaken a true monster inside him during the conquest? Did he become so arrogant, he thought they couldn't scratch him, even when they had nothing left to lose? Was there ever even any malice in him, like, did he just see it as a job and nothing else so took the couch as a little treat? Am I off the money completely and something else was going on? I don't know. None of us do.

Man. Still not even done with the questions. How did he go about taking the planet from the Empire's then-closest friends? Did he hack into and access their own weaponry? Did he set up conflicts within different regions on the planet to start civil wars that he reaped the rewards of? Did he just use his own weaponry and burnt it all by hand? Was he ever actually as timid as he seemed an episode 1, or was that just a ruse, an attempt on the Tallests' mercy to get an assignment that wasn't terrible? The question here is whether he went from unconfident zero to inverted hero, or if he was always a snake, and honestly, both make for a potentially fascinating character in my opinion.

(There's also fun room to contrast him with Skoodge. Larb was notably short, short enough to be considered for Blortch before even Skoodge, but he was rewarded for a sudden growth spurt. Would he remember his former mistreatment? Or would he revel in the new privileges of being tallish by his society's metrics, spitting on people who used to be like him? Would there be any resentment on Skoodge's end if they ever met again? Aghh.)

Skoodge has been excluded in the name of actually underrated characters. Had the series not been canceled, he was already on schedule to join the main cast on Earth anyway.

Tak was never officially an invader to begin with.

And Tenn’s unfortunately failed in her mission, as far as implications go.