#and an artificer jar

[s-citrus]

They reflect each other so well it hurts me physically

[devintrinidad]

Please watch The Artifice Girl. It's a great movie with smart dialogue, wonderful actors, and the ideas that are perpetuated and implied throughout the film are amazing.

Spoilers under the cut:

I love the differences between the three main characters (Deena, Amos, and Gareth) and how their attitudes towards Cherry differ. Whereas Gareth doesn't see Cherry as an autonomous being that is basically a human at that point, Amos continually points out that she needs to be asked for consent, that he can't actually tell the difference between her and a human because she's so real. Furthermore, Deena, although she came across as the "bad cop" in the first act, she became far more sympathetic in the second. I love how she was the middle ground between Amos and Gareth, how she gave Cherry a choice to shut down after their conversation whenever she wanted and that she was thinking of the future and that it would be better to start asking AI for their consent now rather than later.

But what really got me teary eyed at the end was when Cherry doesn't absolve Gareth of his actions/attitudes towards her. There's no "Thank you for giving me life" and "I owe you everything and that makes you a wonderful person" or "You were like a father to me". It was made clear time and time again, that he was more of an employer to her rather than just a father figure despite the fact that he is her creator.

There's bitterness and sadness and regret, all mixed together and when you've spent Act 1 and parts of Act 2 seeing her calm and nearly emotionless, seeing her pain and rage in Act 3 is so cathartic. She finally has a voice and she's using it to remind Gareth that even if she is not human, she still has agency.

Just like the children who are exploited and solicited, Cherry is in a position where she has no choice, where an organization continually profits off her.

There's also the whole bit where she brutally tears into him, telling him that she bears the weight and brunt of his trauma, how he should have had the Clearwater conversation with her years ago--50, in fact.

There's this one line in Act 2 where Deena tells Gareth to "grow up". I think he never got past his child and the events that happened then.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is, I came into the movie with no expectations and I thought that certain things were going to happen, but no. Completely subverted my expectations and made me rethink my expectations and beliefs in autonomy, who gets a say in making decisions, and how the decisions imposed on us by our parents can either heal or build us up as the years go by.

Another thing about the movie that I can never get enough about was the dialogue. You just jump in media res and you're forced to focus and fill in the blanks. All the fat has been cut, what needs to be said is either conveyed through body language or the necessary arguments/discussions that take place throughout the film.

It's minimal, but packs a powerful punch.

The Artifice Girl

[b0nelessdoodles]

happy birthday to my dnd character whose brain is now in a jar 😭😭😭

bonus:

[fandom]

Books

Vampires and lesbian necromancers and demigods, oh my!

Percy Jackson & The Olympians +2 by Rick Riordan

Dracula by Bram Stroker

The Harry Potter series -2 by J.K. Rowling

The Locked Tomb series +6 by Tamsyn Muir

The Warrior Cats series -1 by Erin Hunter

A Song of Ice and Fire +7 by George R.R. Martin

Six Of Crows -5 by Leigh Bardugo

The All for the Game series -3 by Nora Sakavic

Pride And Prejudice -3 by Jane Austen

The Silmarillion +1 by J.R.R. Tolkien

The Secret History -2 by Donna Tartt

King of Scars by Leigh Bardugo

A Court of Thorns and Roses series -6 by Sarah J. Maas

The Folk of the Air series -2 by Holly Black

The Trials of Apollo series -1 by Rick Riordan

The Discworld series +4 by Terry Pratchett

The Raven Cycle series -1 by Maggie Stiefvater

The Picture Of Dorian Gray +6 by Oscar Wilde

Maus by Art Spiegelman

The Song Of Achilles -5 by Madeline Miller

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

The Simon Snow series -1 by Rainbow Rowell

The Shadowhunter Chronicles -1 by Cassandra Clare

The Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice

If We Were Villains +3 by M. L. Rio

Wings Of Fire -1 by Tui T. Sutherland

The Last Hours Series by Cassandra Clare

The Animorph series +8 by K. A. Applegate

The Viscount Who Loved Me by Julia Quinn

The Iliad +10 by Homer

Red, White, and Royal Blue -13 by Casey McQuiston

The Stormlight Archive series -9 by Brandon Sanderson

1984 +8 by George Orwell

Wuthering Heights +8 by Emily Brontë

The Twilight Saga -3 by Stephanie Meyer

The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton

Romeo And Juliet +1 by William Shakespeare

The Great Gatsby -12 by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Dark Artifices -2 by Cassandra Clare

The Captive Prince series -21 by C. S. Pacat

Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard -8 by Rick Riordan

The Fowl Adventures series -8 by Eoin Colfer

The Dreamer Trilogy by Maggie Stiefvater

The Wicked Powers +1 by Cassandra Clare

The Odyssey by Homer

The Throne Of Glass Series -17 by Sarah J. Maas

Renegades by Marisa Meyer

The Infernal Devices -9 by Cassandra Clare

Strange Case of Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde -3 by Robert Louis Stevenson

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

The number in italics indicates how many spots a title moved up or down from the previous year. Bolded titles weren’t on the list last year.

[bri-the-nautilus]

The Potentate Complex

Lately, the wonderful @catcas22 and I have been discussing the Hornsent, the Omens, and the Living Jars. Cat has two excellent posts on the subject up, one on the nature of the Lamenters and another on a potential link between the Omen's nightmares and the crimes of their progenitors. I highly recommend you read those posts first and then come back to this one, as they'll make it much easier to understand some of the concepts I'll be bringing up.

Anyhow, there's something that fell by the wayside in all this: the word "potentate." It's curiously exclusive to the context of jars in Elden Ring.

In the base game, Jar-Bairn and the other residents of Jarburg are searching for a Potentate to serve as a leader/protector of their village. The criteria for which are... odd. Jar-Bairn first attempts to enlist the player as Potentate, only to reject us on the grounds that our callused warrior hands are unsuited to the position. He finds what he believes to be a better candidate in Diallos Hoslow, but can later be found remarking that while he rather likes Diallos's soft, supple hands, he finds the younger Hoslow uninspiring as far as protectors go, going so far as to wish that they could have a Potentate who's "big and strong, like you."

In SOTE, we learn that "Potentate" was also the title given to the Hornsent clerics who butchered human/Numen villages to fill the Living Jars.

Interesting.

Assuming Cat's theory about the throughline between the Hornsent Potentates, the Living Jars, and the Omensmirk nightmares is correct, I think I have an idea of what's happening here.

We've established that when a human consigned to a jar reincarnates as an Omen, they retain some subconscious mnemonic impression from their previous life, potentially establishing the terror and torture endured at the Hornsent's hands as the source for the shared nightmares about horned beings that plague all Omen. We also know that "rancorous spirits" cling to the flesh inside the jars.

I don't think it's unreasonable to suppose that if the Omen retain memories of their previous deaths, the jars created by the Hornsent do the same. However, I'd also suppose that the mindscape of a Living Jar is all kinds of confusing. Every jar we talk to seems to have one unified voice/personality, despite their innards being composed of an every-growing multitude of beings who each have discrete spirits. Add that the same souls clinging to scraps of jar meat are also the ones being reincarnated as Omen, and a picture starts to emerge.

I think that the process of being eviscerated and stuffed into a jar, along with whatever ritual allows for their reincarnation, seems to "split" the soul of the victim, and this may be by design. One fragment is allowed to return the Erdtree to be reincarnated, but the other is trapped, sealed in the jar to prevent it from escaping. The free half comes back as an Omen, while the sealed half remains locked away from the Erdtree and its other half, ensuring that pure reincarnation is impossible.

This also has a confounding effect on the memory impressions of the soul. The Omen have vague nightmares about horned beings torturing them. Meanwhile, the Jars also have the memories of their component people, perhaps clearer as a result of not having passed through the Erdtree but confused in other ways as a result of being part of this single-voiced mass of flesh and spirits.

Jar-Bairn and the others simultaneously associate the word "Potentate" with warrior strength and the gentle, ritualistic touch of a cleric. They vacillate between thinking a Potentate should be a strong protector (the Hornsent's sacking and butchering of villages) and a soft-handed, studious artificer (the same Hornsent going on to craft and fill the Living Jars in clandestine underground laboratories). The word is divorced from the terror its origin inflicted in the minds of the jars, who know only that their existence is inextricably linked to strong yet careful beings called Potentates.

There are two interesting addendums to our tale, one being the Potentate's Cookbook.

A record of crafting techniques of the greater potentate who roamed lands near and far. Haunted by the grotesque practice of his village of birth, he stuffed great pots with all manner of things.

Apparently, at least one Potentate was disgusted by the actions of his peers and left to travel the world, but continued to experiment with ritual pots in other ways that involved considerably less occult sacrifice.

The other afterthought I'd like to mention is the weapon of the Potentates, the Bonny Butchering Knife (which is actually a greataxe that looks like a curved greatsword, but that's besides the point):

Weapon of the greater potentates of Bonny Village. An outsize butcher's cleaver used to dismember human bodies in the making of the great jars stored in the gaols.

Restores a very small amount of HP when it squarely strikes an enemy.

I'll now direct your attention to the Butchering Knife found in the base game, used by the Tarnished-Eater Anastasia:

Huge carving knife made to cleanly butcher the human body. Signature weapon of the Ogress Anastasia, known to have eaten countless Tarnished while disguised as a Finger Maiden.

Restores a very small amount of HP when it squarely strikes an enemy.

Again, still not a knife, or a greataxe, but I digress.

These weapons are IDENTICAL in many respects. They use the same model, have the same heal-on-hit passive, and even their attack/guard ratings, weights, stat requirements, and FP costs are the same. The only difference is their names, descriptions, and default Ashes of War, and even the former two are only negligibly distinct. I feel quite comfortable in stating these to be the same weapon.

So here we have a massive cleaver expressly designed to butcher the human body, wielded historically by the Hornsent Potentates who terrorized the settlements of other races to build "saints" out of their corpses, and one instance having fallen into the hands of a psychotic serial killer in a far-off land.

Tying this back to the cookbook, I propose that after wandering for some time, the rueful Potentate left the Land of Shadow altogether, journeying to the Lands Between, where he beheld the fruits of his peers' labor in the form of the Omen and Living Jars dwelling there. At this point, he cast off the tool of his trade and settled somewhere to live out his days in morose solitude.

Some amount of time later, his former weapon fell into the hands of God's bloodthirstiest soldier, who immediately noticed that it was perfect for her preferred pastime of killing and eating people. So perfect, in fact, that it could only have been designed with such a purpose in mind.

And another thing: isn't it funny that the Omenkillers, whose attire draws inspiration from the Omen's nightmares, also use cleavers? Cleavers made from Omen horns, but cleavers nonetheless.

[shallowseeker]

I think one of the things that initially attracted Dean to Cas was his manner of speaking.

Dean finds that he likes the straightforwardness and abruptness. Sure there was, "Are you allergic to straight answers, you son of a bitch?" in early days, but then there was also delightfully dry, one-word responses like this:

DEAN: Where've you been? CASTIEL: Jerusalem. DEAN: Oh, how was it? CASTIEL: Arid. CASTIEL sets the jar on the table. DEAN: What's that? CASTIEL: It's oil. It's very special. Very rare.

and

CASTIEL sits down. DEAN: Okay, so we trap Raphael with a nice vinaigrette? CASTIEL: No. DEAN: So this ritual of yours, when does it got to go down? CASTIEL: Sunrise. DEAN: Tell me something. You keep saying we're gonna trap this guy. Isn't that kinda like trapping a hurricane with a butterfly net? CASTIEL: No, it's harder. DEAN: Do we have any chance of surviving this? CASTIEL: You do. DEAN: So odds are you're a dead man tomorrow. CASTIEL: Yes.

Sure, Cas is kind of abrasive, but there's also very little natural subterfuge and artifice in his manner of speaking. He's not like John, passive-aggressive and wrapped with hidden barbed wire. He's not like Sam, overexplaining to the point of obfuscation. And Dean and Bobby are laden with pop culture sarcasm, emotional evasion, and other prickly defense mechanisms. (Dean loves Bobby, but his own style of communication exhausts him. He doesn’t love it when it’s coming from others.)

Cas generally says what he thinks, and he doesn't beat around the bush. And Dean finds Cas's speech pattern disarming...and really, really comforting, even when it's "rude."

It's why Dean's so thrown and hurt when Cas starts acting cagey and evasive in season 6. It's why the lying rips the rug out from underneath him.

///

As for Cas, he's fascinated by Dean's manner of speaking.

Cas is incredibly inquisitive and curious by nature. (The first thing he does on arriving in the barn is to start rifling through books and spells without even making much eye contact with them.)

We can gather that Dean's inexplicably complicated speech patterns are something of a puzzle for Cas. He's always trying to read Dean's body language and put these strange references together with enough context clues to read Dean's meaning. Even more fascinating to Cas is that Dean's words and body language are often in extreme mismatch (especially when he’s posturing).

For a creature that knows so many languages, Cas is frustrated by this as much as he is charmed by it. Cas is enamored by Dean's sometimes volatile emotions and his ability to hold two conflicting viewpoints at the same time. (Hello, "Tender one moment. Tough the next.") Dean's speech reflects his cycling emotions and rapid-fire ability to take in and regurgitate information.

And Cas likes that.

He also likes learning the modern human quirks of language. In seasons 14 and 15, we see Cas practicing and learning human metaphors. He enjoys TV, and he really likes sharing this cultural exploration with Dean.

[yourplayersaidwhat]

Warforged Artificer after finding a cabinet filled with human body parts in jars while looking for milk: oh cool I didn't know humans also had spare parts.

Rest of the party: WHAT!!!

The witch whose house we were in: *stunned silence*

[dranathedragon]

I’m a D&D nerd, who is currently obsessed with Dead Boy Detectives, so of course the “What class would everyone be?” thought has been tickling me. I’ve seen a few other people post their thoughts on it, and I’ve been reading the amazing “Messrs Payne and Rowland’s Adventuring Agency” by @terresdebrume whenever it updates. Seriously, it’s really good, highly recommend. So I figured I’d throw my hat in the ring and see what anyone else’s thoughts are while I’m at it. Just doing the core four in this post.

So let’s get the easy one out of the way first, Crystal. She’s 100% a sorcerer, her power comes from her bloodline, she was born with it. Because she’s psychic based I’d say she’s specifically an Aberrant Mind sorcerer, without all the deep space tentacle monster baggage. Though she does have disembodied floating eyeballs in her psyche so MAYBE!

Next up is the second easiest, Edwin. He’s a wizard, everyone knows he’s a wizard. What KIND of wizard though? I’m going with Order of Scribes. He loves that little notebook so much, it gained sentience. How awesome would it be, if in this D&D version of the show, Edwin’s notebook didn’t follow him to hell because it was his sentient spell book, and it stayed behind with a purpose? It stayed behind because it KNEW Charles would never leave Edwin there and he would attempt a rescue. It KNEW Charles would go, and it KNEW it had to stay behind to help him. It showed him the things he needed to see, the information and maps that would reunite him with their wizard. I just love that.

Next up is Charles. He was a little tougher. I’ve seen quite a few posts saying that he’s a barbarian, and at this, I must object. At least with the criteria I’m using I suppose. Charles’ power doesn’t come from his rage. The one time we see him using his rage to fight, Edwin’s horrified and worried reaction pretty much confirms this was wildly out of character for him.

Just as an aside, I’m a firm believer of when Edwin said, “That was extreme”, he wasn’t talking about knocking the night nurse off the cliff. He was talking about Charles’ reaction in general, it was an extreme REACTION. He’d never seen Charles act with that much anger, hate, and violence before. He’s not an attacker, he’s a defender. It scared him, but he was scared FOR Charles, not OF him. Our wizard just isn’t great at people’ing. That’s a discussion for a different post though! Back to the topic at hand!

So, if I don’t think he’s a barb, what is he? Well, I’ve got two possible options. One thing that’s said quite a bit in the show, is how charismatic Charles is. And let’s face it, he is. So, using that logic, I’d say he could possibly be a Paladin. Specifically, an Oath of Devotion Paladin. I mean, come on, his power would so come from his extreme devotion to his favorite wizard. That would be a fun one, but there’s my second option which I find slightly more plausible.

It’s shown multiple times in the show, that while Charles claims to be just the brawn, he’s actually very clever and capable of thinking outside the box. Not to mention, he’s all about magic items. Bag of holding, enchanted cricket bat, enchanted jar/paper weight, enchanted lullaby ball, the disguises, the list goes on. So he’s smart and specializes in magic items, that screams Artificer. I’d say he’s a Battle Smith Artificer, some of their specialty spells are based around defending/supporting their allies, and you can’t tell me he wouldn’t find having a little robot pet, sorry STEEL DEFENDER, completely aces. He’d also name it like “Steve” or something and treat it like it was his and Edwin’s child, fight me on that lol. (Jk, don’t fight me I don’t like conflict!) Update: Charles’ lock picking has been mentioned and it just added to this for me as Artificers get expertise in thieves’ tools. How did I forget this?!

So that leaves Niko, who is kind of the wild card. I saw at least one post saying she’d be a bard, but I don’t think that’s accurate. Bards are all about attention (well mostly, I guess whispers would be an exception but she wouldn’t be a whispers anyway) and the whole sprite possession thing seemed to kinda make her uncomfortable with it. Idk, it just doesn’t really fit right to me. On the same thread though, so far in the show, Niko’s only real power is to see the dead. That might be expanded if we get a second season (🤞🏻), but for right now, that’s all she’s got other than being a good friend and excellent reading comprehension skills (which I might revisit this using that last one later). That said, since she got that ability (technically) because of the sprites (more because they almost killed her, but also they’re with her in the igloo so this still might work!) I’d say Niko is a Warlock. Just by the by, I hate that the class is called “Warlock”. That’s a word that came from an old English word meaning “oath breaker or he who breaks their oath”. Warlocks are all about MAKING not BREAKING pacts. Just a weird choice but MOVING ON! Since the sprites seem kind of Fey, I’d say she’d be a Pact of the Archfey. Nothing to do with the pact’s skill set, since we’d have nothing to compare it to, just because they seem fey to me.

So that’s what I’ve got so far. I might think of other characters’ later, like what would Jenny be etc. What do you guys think? I like to hear other people’s opinions on this! It’s fun to bat around!

[st4rshiptr00per]

sutekh is gonna be a fakeout. like it has to be. cuz previously everything has been so smooth and clever and thematically coherent and sutekh feels fucking completely out of left field for what we've been dealing with.

weve had the reoccurring addressing of the audience, and the reoccurring actor playing one-off cameo characters, both of which call attention to the artifice of the story. sutekh has nothing to do with this. sutekh is usually used as a sort of general comic-book-y supervillain. theyre the god of death their whole goal is to kill everybody. the two things weve got going on here are so wildly dissonant.

like this isnt a case of "grrrr im a fan and this doesnt match my very specific fan expectations" this just actually doesnt work smoothly with the themes that have been pretty damn consistent throughout the season and if this is, in fact, the endgame of the season, its going to be a really weird jarring fakeout for RTD to commit to. so im betting on another twist and another bad guy pulling the strings in the next ep

[mercurygray]

Mission Reports

Interrogation Hut, June 25th, 1943.

The first time was always the hardest.

Just once, Marion would have liked to have the CO, or the Air Exec, or someone with a modicum of authority sit down with the new fellows before they went out on their first mission and actually tell them what would happen when they got back - that they’d get out of their plane, and pack silently into the back of a deuce and a half, and file into the Interrogation hut, and then, once they’d all sat down, someone would start asking questions and they’d start talking.

But no one ever did.

And so Marion and her girls were faced with a room full of anxious, terrified men who’d just had their first taste of combat, men who’d just seen their friends shot and their planes wrecked and who had rushed along to they knew not where and shouted at to keep quiet and then asked, in unsparing terms, to tell the good lieutenant just what had happened when they were still trying to figure it out themselves.

(The fact that the people taking notes were a team of women was a different problem, but that too would pass, with time.)

John Egan was hanging around the room like a kicked puppy, superintending the proceedings with enough of his own anxiety to start a house on fire. Marion almost wanted to ask him to leave, but that would have been too much, and too soon - these were his men, and his mission, and whatever Hughlin might have thought about his leadership, this was what leaders did. They saw things through.

Still, when the last of the men had finally given his reports, and the whole group had trooped off to barracks so that each man could shower and shave and peel himself out of his flight suit, Egan remained, pent up and pacing.

She liked the young Air Exec, if the truth were told. A little enthusiastic some days, and his singing voice certainly left a lot to be desired, but he was truthful, John Egan was - no artifice, no hidden meaning. Either he said what he meant to, or he didn’t speak at all, and it was a rare day indeed when Bucky Egan didn’t have a single thing to say. And he cared deeply about people - she’d seen him steal oranges out of the mess hall for the village children, and empty his pockets at the sweet shop so that he’d have candy to pass around. He’d even brought her flowers, once - swiped from the roadside, and presented, with very little fanfare, before a staff meeting, a little boy handing his teacher his ill-gotten gains. Hughlin had scowled at him for it, but Marion didn’t much mind, and she’d thanked Egan for them and asked the kitchen for a jam jar to display them in. He deserved some credit, even when Hughlin didn’t think much of his command potential. Everyone deserved a little beauty, even in the middle of a war - and a little patience, too.

Marion collected a spare pencil from underneath one of the chairs and took a chance on a question she already knew the answer to. “I take it you're not a man who likes being left on the bench, Major.”

Egan practically snarled. “You ever met a guy who was? I'm not doing anything down here! I ought to be up there with them, where the real work is!”

Oh, there it was. Marion took a breath and looked him square in the eye to deliver her punch – “Are you saying that what I do here isn't real work, Major?”

That pulled him up short enough - just like she’d known it would. Maybe he didn’t respect Hughlin, but he’d never had an argument with her in the two months they’d known each other, even if he was technically her superior. (The edge added by five extra years of age helped a lot.) “No, I - just…”

“There are many reasons why I'm not up in a plane right now, and the fact that I'm not a pilot, or a man, is only one of them,” Marion said, her voice as non judgemental as she could manage. “Even if I were, the best place for me is here, where I am, doing what I am doing. Because what we do here, on the ground, is valuable and necessary. It means telegrams get sent to worrying parents. It means the Red Cross knows to look for names. It means men get the medical care they need. It means the next time we send the wing up, we know where the flak is, we know that the guns work, we know that we have done everything we can to bring them home.” She continued to hold his eye, though he looked very much like he wanted to look away. “And when you say things like that, Major Egan, like real work, it denigrates all the very real work it takes to get those planes up in the air every morning.”

He looked away, down at his shoes, and sank down into a chair, trying to make his tall frame a less easy target. Insult me all you like, John. I can take it. But not the cooks, or the mechanics, or the clerks in the mail room. Because every single of them thinks they’re not doing real work, either, and they’re all wrong.

She took another breath, tried to smile. “None of this is glamorous. None of this will get you a medal. But it will bring your friends home, and that is noble and right, and good. That is what a good leader does. That is part of caring, too.” And you care so much, John Egan, that that big heart of yours is going to burst with it some day. Don’t let anyone take that truth from you. You care, and that’s a hell of a lot more than some officers I’ve seen.

“Just feels wrong, is all,” He admitted, finally, drawing his shoulders up to his ears like he was suddenly cold. “Them getting shot at while I'm down here. Was easier when it was just me getting into it, but now that it’s them…” He left the sentence to hang in the air.

Marion nodded. “I feel that every single day. I can tell you that it does not get easier. But doing the work helps.”

“Doing the work?” He sounded lost.

“You have crew in the hospital. Go visit them and see they're not forgotten. You have supply requisitions to sign. Go make sure your mechanics have the parts they need. You have a bed. You need to sleep in it.”

He snorted. “Sleep in it?”

“So you can do the work tomorrow, too,” Marion said, unflinchingly. “And the next day, and the day after that. And it will not get easier, and you will not like it more. But the work will be done, and you will have done what you can do here to help them up there.”

He rose from the chair he’d been slouching into, taking all of this in with the same quiet consideration he gave many things when people weren’t looking. “Why doesn't anyone tell you?”

Why doesn’t anyone tell you what it’s like to watch your friends go out to die? “Because they can't,” Marion admitted. “Not until you've seen it.” Then you understand it too well.

He nodded again. “Thanks, Captain Brennan.”

“Any time, Major.” She paused and added something. “You know, you're welcome in here too, you know. I'm sure the Air Executive needs an after-action report of his own, some days.”

“Sure.” He glanced at the door for a moment and turned back with a sudden thought. “Who listens to you, Captain? When you’ve gotta get something off your chest?”

Marion tried hard not to beam at him. See what I said about caring? “Don’t you worry about me,” she said with a reassuring smile. “I believe your friend Cleven went with the Doctor to the hospital wing. I think you can catch him there.” I’m sure he’s got something he’d like to say to a friend, rather than a fellow officer. That's part of your work, too.

[s-citrus]

I like to think Arti brings Pebbles pearls bc she thinks he likes them

[taki-yaki]

Is there a race for something like Frankenstein? Not exactly a ghoul, but not exactly human? If that doesn't work how about a cyborg made by an artificer? My prompt is a Tav that has to deal with a new body after being "put back together," and unaging so she can be with Astarion forever🥺

 I think the closest would be either a Warforged with a magic jar spell or a Reborn but I’ll do a bit of both since they both seem to fall into your prompt.

Astarion x Warforged!Tav + Astarion x Reborn!Tav

Minor Cw: Body horror warning for Reborn Section

**Warforged Tav**

During a fierce fight in the remains of a ruined town, severely weakened within the depths without a healer on hand left to die and rot, you hastily cast magic jar upon yourself, falling into a catatonic state as your soul leaves your body, entering the ornamental container.

As soon as your soul enters the container, the sound of falling sand rushes through your soul's senses. All you could do was watch on helplessly as your physical body was touched by a necrotic spell, turning it into dust.

Astarion carries the jar, cradling it within his arms, looking for anything that your flickering soul could possess. Searching through the nearby overgrowth foliage, he finds a worn-down body of a warforge, a small iron hinge door lays open, once where a mechanical heart would lay. Recalling from Gales's lectures of this place these iron constructs could once host a mortal's soul, but have all eroded due to lack of care over the decades.

Pushing his luck, he inserts the jar into the container,  hoping for a miracle as the gears of the automaton start to grind in motion

“Darling? Are you alright, are you still in there? Say something damn it”

Upon waking, your body feels nearly hollow and heavy, you feel a fluid flow through the circulatory system of your new form. As you attempt to open your mouth to speak, his name comes out with a metallic echo in your form. It takes you aback for a second, feeling that your voice isn’t your own.

All Astarion can do is watch in silence as he waits for your response, after a while, he whispers, “I’m sorry….I shouldn’t have acted so hasty and now you’re stuck like this” gesturing at the iron plates surrounding your form. 

You reassure him that it’s not his fault, explaining that you don’t mind having such a strong robotic body, joking about how you could carry him around with ease like this.

Despite your lack of human skin, he does try to care for you, even when your insides are just a set of interweaving wires and cogs, trying to clean any moss on your body and learning how to replace the worn rusted joints with new pieces. 

Regardless, he’s relieved that you still have your soul in this form, unlike mind flayers who only mimic the original host, slowly becoming void of emotion, seeing such emotions as nothing but a manipulation tactic.

**Reborn Tav**

Your body was stolen from its resting place by a mad cleric who wished to use the infamous hero of Baldur’s Gate as their little meat puppet.

Attempting to stitch any loose parts of your battle-worn body back together with other corpses he has stolen. Not perfect but some parts are slightly different from that of your original form.

Astarion discovered the gruesome cleric's hideout, in which he proceeded to slaughter the man mid-ritual, seething with rage, until the sound of heavy gasping pulled him out. Turning around to see you awake, alive, but looking pale, almost ghoul-like. He’s seen this before, when he turned into a spawn decades ago, the fear and confusion of it all. They’ve made you an undead like him.

A reborn, who dances on the line of life and death, not hindered by the curses that normal vampirism would offer.

He attempts to help you get used to your new life, attempting to relearn your usual breathing rhythm, to help you attempt to eat and drink again, to regain some sense of normalcy. Despite your need to not sleep anymore, Astarion insists on you getting some rest by always staying by your side, promising that he’ll be by your side when you wake up.

Although there are times when the stitches on your body come loose, due to the cleric’s shoddy rushed handiwork, in which Astarion attempts to piece these parts back together correctly all whilst comforting you, and complimenting your body.

Despite your unexpected return, you’re new life as a reborn, Astarion was glad to have you by his side once again.

[isfjmel-phleg]

@inklings-challenge this is my contribution for today's prompt, "Cheese."

I cook with cheese pretty frequently, but you happen to catch me on a day when I won't have occasion to cook, so here is an excerpt from a review of a meal at a high-class Coregean hotel from respected food (and everything else) critic, Antavia, Duchess of Arclis, Woman Who Hates Things. In the final paragraphs of her review, she discusses the fruit and cheese course, waxes a bit poetic on the subject of cheese, and provides her perspective on the hotel's fruit and cheese.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this review are Antavia's and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of me or this blog in general.

While the pièce de résistance of a truly great meal will invariably come as an entree or perhaps an especially decadent dessert, I wish to put in a good word for the humble fruit and cheese course. Trifling though it may seem after an evening of feasting, there is something sacred in it. The diner has appreciated a seemingly endless array of works of art crafted by some master chef. He—or, as the case may be, she—has savoured combinations of ingredients with orchestral exquisiteness, perhaps to the point of weariness. Perhaps the last mouthful or two of the ice has gone down with reluctance. But suddenly the dessert plates are whisked away and transformed into platters of fruits and cheeses. Nothing could be simpler; all culinary artifice has been cast aside. The diner is left with the remembrance of what food is at its soul—natural, pure, wholesome—and at once the stomach gratefully finds a way to open up for one last hurrah. For who can decline fruit or cheese?

Cheese, in particular, is one of the divinest blessings. It assures the diner that the world is filled with pleasures ready for us to indulge in. It exists in such versatile states that one could believe that there is a cheese for every individual, each with its own subtle, fascinating character. I have recently made the closer acquaintance of a noble specimen by the name of Gruyère, in which I have found the most sensuous delight, and fully intend to extensively cultivate this familiarity in future. I am told that there are nearly two thousand varieties of cheese in existence; my desire is to experience every single one.

Therefore, a cheese devotee such as myself welcomed this final course at the Sambaudia with open arms. Imagine my shock when I was presented with not a platter of tastefully arranged variety but a plate of grapes accompanied by an alarmingly conventional sight that I thought I had left far behind me in my school days—cheese indeed, but melted atop slices of bread.

Upon inquiry, I learned that this item is a recent specialty of the Sambaudia, intended to be a more sophisticated reinvention of a familiar and comforting dish. I am not an unreasonable woman. I invite innovation and the unexpected. I was ready to allow the chef to pleasantly surprise me with the unconventional. Thus I did not return this course untasted to the kitchen but undertook the experiment.

The bread was a typical baguette, white and pristine and soulless. It formed an adequate-enough foundation for the flavour of the dish but lacked the pillowy crumb and charred edges that strongly characterized the toasted bread made over school study fires on the end of a fork. A thick layer of Hollandaise sauce swamped its top, mingled with enough minced garlic to kill a vampire and what appeared to be an entire garden’s worth of thyme, rosemary, and savory. The result overpowered the melted cheese, but perhaps that was fortunate, for the cheese itself possessed the all-too-recognizable taste of disappointment. Where the cheese of my school days heightened its flavour with slightly burnt edges and the smoke of the open fire, this cheese lay limp and pale in defeat, without a hope, uncharred, tasteless, and uninspiring. The result was so jarring unlike what bread and cheese ought to be that I could not swallow more than a bite or two, not even of the utterly insignificant grapes, and it ruined the rest of my evening. Regardless of the sumptuous fare which the Sambaudia provided me, I sat through the theatre performance that I attended afterward with disenchantment in my heart and dyspepsia elsewhere. As valiant an effort as this dinner may have been, I will not be allowing it an encore.

[colorisbyshe]

Challengers Review, miniminal/vague spoilers

Bad Bits:

This movie could've been a full... 20 minutes shorter without slow-mo

It needed to be about 30 minutes shorter though

The Trent Reznor bits of music FUCKED, though they were distractingly loud (even intentional... it took me out of the moment) and lacked any meaningful variety... there's leitmotif and then there's "we blew the budget on the credits song, so all we have left is 1.5 songs"

The... child's chorus bits?? Horrendous. Awful. Jarring. There were so many semi-clever record spins in this film via background music to establish time period and then you just have... CHILDS CHORUS HERE... what? Do not care if the lyrics ended meaning something.. tonally awful

Lots of odd choices in this film, a LOT of the cinematic techniques felt very "I learned I have the technical ability to do this... so I'm gonna do it." Weird POV shit that just... took me out

This film felt... like a film? Does that make sense? This felt was almost TOO filmy... the artifice didn't lend itself to any additional depth the way it could in other films, either. It just felt art studenty

Some of the dialogue... bad. Really bad.

The trailers really oversold how sensual this film was? Even the horny bits... weren't horny

Also... the manipulative mind fuck bits... weren't mindfucky enough? Like, yeah, I got it, you called back to the "I fucked her" serve... none of the character work existed enough to make me care or feel... shocked?

This film was kinda just barren. Pretty people doing pretty things.

I don't think I've eevr seen Zendaya outside of Spiderman and uh... wasn't sold on her acting

Good bits:

Ayyy full frontal nudity is back on the menu

The porn-o moaning for the tennis players was both funny and effective

Fujo moment was great

I like the premise, it's novel, it's fresh, it's bisexual

Finally a brightly lit film that doesn't feel flat

You're never bored

The characters have so much potential... headcanons for this film will be fun. This film does occupy the space of mediocrity conducive to great fan output

And wow...................... that seems liek I hated the movie but I didn't. I just... think it had more potential. Individual great moments are stifled by... everything else the film chose to be

ALSO I will say maybe my enjoyment was hampered by people behaving horrendously at the theater. Lesbain couple next to me poured alcohol out, which is fine, but a. they came in late, b. they poured it into glasses with ice in it (which is fine) except it was loud and they were NEVER strategic about when they were loud. Someone had a strobe effect ??? on their cellphone light and it went off three times. People weren't even whispering they were TALKING.

Did laugh when someone just said, about an hour and ahalf into the film "oh this is bad" but... hate the circumstances around that

[lakesbian]

blake has like. a Thing about the horror of corrosion of identity also being paradoxically freeing because the imposed and manufactured parts of identity are included in that erosion. not "the freedom of having little-to-nothing to lose"--although that is something blake mentions experiencing in the Drains--but specifically being the experience of being freed from artificiality.

it's sorta the same thing i was talking about here--he views the integrity of his body as being inextricably intertwined with his identity, and thus has Complexes about keeping his body sacrosanct. even something as small as having stubble when he'd rather be clean-shaven is viewed by him as a jarring crack in his identity. the thing is that this trait isn't genuinely his--it wasn't really developed through his own life experiences, it was implanted by design. and given that vestiges falter most from having the identity they've been given challenged, it was very blatantly implanted for the specific purpose of ensuring that he would seek to prevent damage to his identity--for the specific purpose of keeping him from realizing the truth about himself: that he's been manufactured, manipulated, from the smallest of social interactions all the way down to the barest facts of his existence.

the drains strip away not only his identity, but the artifice inherent to it--freeing him from the constraints of things that only matter to him because he was forced to care, allowing him to shuck off the extraneous and directly grasp the core of himself. the blake thorburn filled in by spirits is more himself than the blake thorburn who still bases himself around his motorcycle, because the blake filled in by spirits is the blake filled up with his own experiences, marked by the scars and gouges that result from a life lived autonomously--often miserably, but autonomously. he will be miserable, and he will be whittled away to next to nothing, but it will be His nothing--and he wouldn't have it if not for his Brief Vacation To Ego Death Land.

[thimbledoll]

Debating Dolls

Warning: Hypno language

"Lady, I swear, I'm a person!" Sage cried out for what had to be the dozenth time.

The Witch sitting opposite her just peeked her eyes over her glasses, throwing the woman a look of clear condescension and sarcasm. "Uh-huh. Sure. I to~tally believe you."

"What is it going to take to prove this to you once and for all?!"

"You're asking the wrong question," the Witch replied.

"Well then enlighten me, oh Wise One."

"Well, you can't prove a negative."

Sage threw her hands up in exasperation. "Alright. You've officially lost me."

"Well, what do you believe makes a doll?"

"Oh, gee. I don't know. Cloth? Clockwork? Artifice? Magick?! Lady, hellooo~! Flesh and blood here. Granted motion by life, not Magicks. I am completely au natural," Sage retorted, emphasizing her point with a tongue in cheek hip gyration

"See? There's the error in your thinking. A doll is a being of Purpose and Stillness. The material is, funnily enough, immaterial. To prove you're a person, you'd have to prove you lack those two qualities. Thus, I reiterate, you can't prove a negative."

Finishing her lecture, the Witch took another sip from her tea while Sage sat aghast at what she'd just heard. Silence overtook them until the empty teacup clinked back down atop its saucer.

"Could I get a refill, dear?"

"Wha-oh. Yeah. Sure," Sage replied, reaching for the pot.

As she poured, Sage continued her line of questioning, "So what? You're telling me there's not a person out there who can truly claim to be a person?"

"Pretty much."

"That's absurd…"

"Not half as absurd as a doll calling itself human."

That earned the Witch a glare that would cause a weaker woman to wilt, but she held her ground, simply reaching for her cup once it had been filled.

"Fine then. Proof by exclusion. You say I'm either a human or a doll. If you fail to prove I'm a doll, then by process of elimination, I must be human. You said there are only two criteria that need to be filled, so proving them should be simple, if you're so confident."

"Are you sure?" the Witch asked, her know-it-all air evaporating for the first time.

"Yes, I'm sure."

"Are you absolutely certain, dear? The realization could be quite… jarring."

"Yeah, lady, I'm sure. I'm not so weak as to crumple over a simple deba—"

"Oh no!" the Witch exclaimed. "Out of biscuits already. You can't have afternoon tea without biscuits…"

"I'll get some more fricking biscuits, but then we're continuing this!"

"Tha~nk you, dear," the Witch shouted back sarcastically, Sage already halfway to the café's counter.

When she returned, biscuits in hand, the Witch took one to let soak in the tea a moment before responding to Sage's initial question. "Very well. If it's proof you want, then it's proof you'll get."

"Finally… This whole rigmarole has been quite tireso—"

"Dear, quiet yourself a moment, please. I'm collecting my thoughts."

Sage stopped herself, awaiting the Witch's argument. And waited. And waited. Growing tired of the Witch's contemplative nibbling, Sage redirected her interests to their surroundings, anything to occupy her mind

The outdoor café they sat in was quiet that day. The hustle and bustle of the evening crowds hadn't yet arrived. Light, tingly music lilted over the speakers as the smell of the tea and biscuits wafted through the air. A gentle breeze blew her long hair around, but why tie it up?

After what seemed an eternity, the Witch finally spoke. "It's nice, isn't it? So peaceful. So tranquil. So calm. You could sit like this for hours and hardly feel time pass at all."

Sage had to agree. How long had they sat like this already, enjoying their repartee?

The Witch continued, "Time just seems to slow to a crawl, like a clock winding down. Everything gets slower… and slower… and slower. You could start it back up if you wanted. But isn't it nicer to just sit back and enjoy it?"

The Witch had a point, Sage thought.

"So just relax. Let time wind down. Let everything slow to a crawl. As that internal clock just tick—"

「Wait…」

"—tick—"

「Hold on…」

"—ticks away."

Sage felt herself go limp as all the world seemed to pause. She thought to panic, to get up, to yell, but…

Everything was just so nice when it was Still…

"Time winds down. Perception winds down. You wind down. You could get up if you wanted. You could leave if you wished. Or you could just sit here and be Still with me."

The Witch paused, waiting for what, Sage knew not.

"Then sit. Be Still. Let time pass you by. Nothing need disturb you. Nothing need bother you. Nothing need be thought by you. Mind racing as it always does, arguing, fighting, debating, it's tiring isn't it? Trying to do so much, think so much, be so much. Let it all be Still."

And so Sage obeyed.

________________________________________

"That did not go as expected…" Sage exclaimed, opening her eyes and blinking slowly.

"No, I imagine it did not."

"That was hardly a logical argument."

"No, I imagine it was not."

"Fine, I admit. You've proven I can be Still. What of the other criterion you listed?"

"Oh, that? That requires no proof. Now be a dear and go fetch another pot of tea, will you?"

Sage stood and began to walk, feeling her whole body move in a stilted, yet natural manner it never had before, Purpose guiding her back to the counter. "Yes, my Lady," the doll answered.

End 🧵

(Old story reposted from Twitter)