#and blacksmithing

[makkoskafanfic]

Chapters: oneshot Fandom: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore Rating: Explicit Relationships: Ares/Hephaestus (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore)

Summary: Hephaestus isn’t like the other gods, not with his deformed, imperfect looks. Ares isn’t like them either, he’s too brutal, too primal for them. At times, these two shunned Olympians can find a moment of understanding in each other’s company.

Notes: Through a chain of events that are hard to recount at full, but involved idealised reminiscing about the olden days of World of Warcraft PvP battlefields and chain-watching animated little TED-Ed videos on Youtube about Greek mythology, I concluded that not only do I need stories with Ares, but also that I need Ares/Hephaestus slash, because nothing shows appreciation more than smut, right? Right.

[brewerssupplies]

Man. I have the want to do so many different projects and pursue so many different art forms. I want to do it all at once and since I can't, I don't do any of it.

[eyeofthechasm]

yall ever just randomly discover that you really like something by stumbling across it randomly one day.

[henk-heijmans]

Blacksmith, 2020 - by Maciek Przeklasa (1984), Polish

[heartfullofleeches]

"My Lord? Permission to relieve myself to your image?"

"What? Like- crank one out to me? Ain't none of my business so do whatever you want."

"But is it. The desires I bare for you would have me hanged for a century in my time."

"That's cool, but in human society that's a bit of an extreme punishment for jerking off to someone."

"Very well then. To balance out the weight of my son's I shall bring you the head of a criminal as payment for every release."

"Sure, man- Whatever makes you happy."

And that's the story of how Y/n woke up the next morning with the decapitated heads of twenty wanted criminals in their backyard.

[alienbycomics]

A comic about forging my chosen name! 🏳️‍⚧️ Does your chosen name have a story behind it? What kind of sword/equipment would you picture your name as? ⚔️

[caffeinewitchcraft]

You are a Blacksmith

Set in the universe where your destiny is written on your arm

(The Hero and Hope) (Being Villagers) (You are the Demon King)

You are a Blacksmith.

That’s why the dragon’s fire doesn’t burn you.

“Pretty sure dragon fire is hotter than a forge,” your party’s leader pants. Kent is a veteran adventurer of twenty years to your two years and he’s seen his fair share of dragon fire before today. There are curling scars dragging the corner of his mouth down into a permanent scowl that pairs oddly with how high he has his salt-and-pepper eyebrows. He exhales noisily. “I think you’re just a freak, actually.”

“Not nice,” Sella says. The archer is your age with twice your experience. Her leather armor is well-beaten by four years running around with Kent and getting far closer to battle than an archer should. Her red hair is tied with golden thread that matches the golden charms dangling from her necklace. She adds a new one with every successful monster kill. It’s lucky she’s so stealthy or else she’d be jingling with every step. “Mande is an exception, not a freak.”

You’re a party of exceptions. Most adventurers are Villagers or Guards, common destinies that don’t always find a place within a town or village that have so many of each already. There are days you report for a mission, and you’re offered a blacksmith’s job on the spot just because of the mark on your arm.

Kent is a landless Lord. There’s a story there, you know, but it’s not one he’s ever volunteered. You can see his destiny pull at him in the remote reaches of the Kingdom, where no Lord has laid roots and the monsters run roughshod across the barren soil. Nights where you’re too far from civilization find him gazing up into the stars, his fingers curled like claws into the earth. The look on his face then is so hungry that the first time you saw it, you offered him provisions from your own pack. He’d shaken his head wryly, his scarred frown twisting, and walked off into the night by himself, only returning in the morning light.

Sella is a Guardian without anyone to look after. You knew her story before she told it to you, whispering it like a bedtime story before the end of the world. She was part of a traveling theater group. She looked after them, feeding them and retrieving those with wanderlust from their journeys before curtain call. When a monster siege led by a Demon King fell upon the city they were performing in, the Lord called his people into his castle and locked the doors.

The troupe were not his people. But they were Sella’s.

Until they weren’t.

You drag your battle hammer up and over your shoulder. Conveniently, the dragon fire has burned away the wet viscera that had been clinging to it. The metal is dark with soot, but undamaged.

The things you smith can’t be melted by any fire except your own.

The skeletal trees make the scene of this final battle oddly silent. Ash drifts from the sky, carried by a wind too high to feel. You can hear your party sniping at each other behind you and the gentle gurgle of the beast’s body settling comfortably into death.

The red dragon is beautiful. Its scales gleam and sparkle like rubies in the late afternoon sun and its talons shine like obsidian. Each part of the creature could make an average family rich for a month. You consider it from an arm’s reach away. You chew your bottom lip as you think. Your adventures have taken you across the continent from the southern coast you call your home, to the western land of rivers, to the northern desert and then here, to the eastern dry lands. After all your travels, you find yourself still thinking of home often. Crab is a delicacy where you’re from despite being so close to the water. The preparation can be tedious which makes it a dish reserved from significant occasions. Cracking the shell was always your job…

“Oh,” Sella says faintly. She makes an attempt to rise and nearly tips over in the process. If it weren’t for her bow, she’d be on the ground. Her knees shake as she uses a combination of a tree and her bow to pull herself up. “Mande, rest first! In an hour I can help you—”

You bring your hammer down on the jaw of the dragon. The bone shatters after just two blows. It’s best not to think about how beautiful it looked flying overhead or the intelligence in its eyes. You’ve always had a single-minded focus and you rely on that now.

“Leave her to her dismantling,” Kent grumbles. He’s now curled up on the ground is if in his sleeping roll, hands tucked neatly under his chin. It can’t be a comfortable position given his full suit of armor no matter how peaceful his expression. “If she’s got the energy for it, who are we to argue? Just keep the ribs intact. That’s what the client wants.”

Smash!

“It’s our turn to do the dismantling,” Sella says. She glares down at Kent. “Mande already did last week’s gryphon and the hydra. Get up!”

Smash!

“I’m an old man who needs his nap time.”

“You’re an irresponsible leader who needs to do his part.”

Smash!

“Once Mande stops swinging that thing around, I will.”

“She won’t hit you—”

“She hit me last week!”

“And I apologized for that,” you say through gritted teeth. You let your hammer fall by your feet. Your last blow sent tremors through your arms. The dragon’s jaw is like glass compared to its skull. “Sincerely.”

Sella makes a gagging sound when you fall to your knees next to the cracked skull. “Mande, don’t put your hand in there, that’s – oh, that’s so gross.”

“The book I read said it’d be…aha!” Your fingers graze something cool and metallic. You abruptly feel like crying. It’s been seven months. Seven long months of endless missions and danger and being away from home. This entire dragon is priceless, but you’ve forfeited your share for this. You blink rapidly to keep your tears at bay. You aren’t going to cry. Not until you’re sure that you’ve really found it. “Quick, hand me my waterskin.”

Your urgency gets even Kent up and bustling towards the dragon’s corpse. With trembling fingers you accept the water from Stella, pulling out your prize. It’s smaller than you thought, only about the length of your arm or a third the length of the dragon’s skull.

With bated breath, you gently trickle water over the length of it. Your party kneels beside you, watching just as raptly.

“What is it?” Sella breathes.

Kent is wide-eyed as, inch by inch, your treasure reveals itself.

“A dragon’s silver wit,” you say. The silver is mottled by the dragon’s black blood and grey brain matter. “The last ingredient I need for a Hero’s Sword.”

-----.

“You can’t just make a Hero’s Sword,” Kent is still saying a week later. He throws his hands up to the sky. “Heroes make them from air and magic and righteousness. Blacksmiths just repair them!”

You didn’t ask for Sella or Kent to follow you home. In fact, you assumed they wouldn’t. The slaying of the red dragon marked the end of your time in the Adventurer’s Guild. Now you’re ready to return to your position as the southern port’s best blacksmith and you thought they’d be ready to return to the best two adventurers the Capital Guild had.

“I’ve heard legends about it,” Sella says. She’s walking backward. You’ve already warned her that the roads this far away from Capital aren’t as smooth, but she’d scoffed at your concern. Now it’s pure stubbornness to prove you wrong that has her continuing to walk backwards despite nearly tripping twice already. “Excalibur was manmade.”

“The legend of Hero Arthur is manmade,” Kent retorts.

“If you believe that,” you say, “you really don’t need to come home with me.”

Kent blinks. “Well,” he says slowly, “on the off chance it’s not a fairytale, I desperately want to see it.”

“Then shut up and follow Mande,” Sella says. She elbows him and mutters under her breath. “Or else she might not let us stay at her house.”

You roll your eyes. “I’m sure the dragon fetched enough coin for the both of you to get your own rooms at the inn.”

“Sure,” Kent agrees. He grins wickedly and the expression makes him look ten years younger. “But we’re not going to do that, are we Sella?”

“Nope,” Sella chirps. She loops an arm through yours before you can protest and squints at the horizon. “Is that your hometown over there?”

A hazy line of blue and white roofs is barely distinguishable in the fading light of day. Sella has better vision than you. You’re sure she can see the masts of ships in port, the green and yellow flag waving over the chief’s house, maybe even the orchard that creeps right up to the edge of the bluffs.

You can’t wait to see it yourself.

You aren’t sure how long you’ve been smiling, but your face hurts by the time you find your voice. “Yes. Yes, it is.”

----------.

Mom hurls a loaf of bread at your head when you walk through the front door, Kent and Sella in tow.

Kent catches it an inch from your face. “Whoa, whoa!” He waves the bread as if unsure whether he should drop it or throw it back. “It’s your daughter! Mande! Put down the bread basket!”

“Mande and friends,” Sella says cheerfully. She waves at your Mom, Dad, and little brother. “Hello! I’m Sella.”

“I threw it because I know who it is,” your mom says. The grey streaks on either side of her temple are wider. Her round, kind face is pale with anger. “We thought you were dead.”

“We got your letters,” your dad says before you can ask. His hair hasn’t changed; he’s bald. He’s wearing his leather apron from the forge at the table. He takes a bite of soup. “All three of them.”

“Not nearly enough,” Mom snaps. Then, “And they could have been forgeries.”

“Who would forge a blacksmith’s letters home?” you ask in exasperation. Is that why she never replied? “Mom, please.”

“Don’t giveme that when you’ve been dead for seven months,” she says. She stands abruptly. “Three of you? Sit down. I don’t have enough soup, but bread will fill anyone’s stomach.”

“I’m Kent,” Kent blurts out before Sella can push him into a chair. He sits with a thud. “Sella, it’s rude to sit before introducing yourself!”

“Ruder than not knocking or coming for dinner without an invitation?” Sella hisses at him. She turns a charming smile on your little brother. “Sorry to intrude. You must be Axton. A pleasure to meet you.”

Axton doesn’t return her greetings. His eyes are fixed to the package strapped to your back. “Is that…?”

You swallow hard as your family’s eyes turn to you. You carefully pull the cloth-wrapped rod from your back. Your little brother isn’t so little anymore. You can see he’s taller than you as he stands in unison with Dad to clear a spot on the table. His long, thin hands make quick work of the ties.

There’s complete silence as the burlap falls away to reveal gleaming silver.

Axton’s throat bobs. He’s barely eighteen with the soft look of a fawn hovering around the edges of his jaw and cheekbones. Mom and Dad have done a good job feeding him while you’ve been gone. Seven months ago your brother looked like a wraith, all the light taken from him as if it all came from his hero’s sword.

“You’re going to make me a sword,” Axton says at last.

You’ve thought about this moment for seven months. You imagined you would say something like it’s okay now or maybe big sister fixed it. When his hero’s sword was taken from him, you thought about all sorts of things. It took a month for you to set out on this quest rather than one of revenge. It wouldn’t have helped Axton if you’d forged a hundred weapons of war to punish those who’d hurt him. It wouldn’t help Axton to pretend you fixed anything.

So instead you tell the truth.

“It won’t be the same,” you say. “It won’t work the way you want it to. Not right away. You’ll need to train with it and learn it as you would any other weapon. Your instincts won’t help you. But…it won’t break when I’m done. It won’t bend or chip. It won’t melt. It will serve you, Axton, until the exact moment you don’t need it anymore.”

Axton flies around the table to throw his arms around you. It’s amazing you came from the same parents. Where you are short and stocky, he’s really like a deer. His long arms could encircle you twice as he lifts you with a hero’s strength. “Thank you, thank you, thank you—”

And then you’re being hugged all around. Your dad’s strong, Blacksmith arms are crushing you to your brother, your mother’s soft cheek is against your shoulder, and there’s plate mail digging into your spleen while a sharp elbow digs into your spine.

You manage to turn your head just enough to see Kent hugging your from behind and Sella hugging him from behind. It’s her elbow that’s jabbing you.

“This is sweet,” she says. Her voice is a little muffled from how her face is pressed against Kent’s back. “We should hug more.”

“Does this make your brother a Hero?” Kent asks.

“This is a family hug,” you say.

“Duh,” Sella says. “That’s why we joined.”

You really can’t argue with that.

-

(Patreon)

Next week's story: Everyone in LA has two job. You've got a big smile and a talent for seeing ghosts. It's no surprise what your jobs are.

[buried-in-stardust]

打鐵花 (da2tie3hua1; struck iron fireworks) is a traditional folk firework that began in Henan and Shanxi, first arising in Queshan county, Henan and later circulating through the whole country. It had first appeared during the Northern Song dynasty, and was most popular during the Ming and Qing dynasties.

For Queshan struck iron fireworks, a two-layer pergola is built and covered with willow branches for performances, under which the molten iron is struck up with two willow sticks to create a rain of fire.

[eng by me + edited an ad out]

(On top of the information in the video, I have some more about its recent history under the cut.)

*Also, a note about one of the subtitles: I realized later that "going into battle without a shield" actually just meant going shirtless. I was only confused about this phrasing while translating because she didn't go shirtless, although that is for obvious reasons

Queshan struck iron fireworks had almost been lost before Yang Jianjun unearthed it again in 1988. It had almost died out in the early years of the Republic of China being established, after which there had only been three performances until 1988: 1952, 1956, 1962. Yang Jianjun had seen the 1956 performance as a 7-8 year old and later on as the director of a cultural centre, began digging up the skill and its history. In the process, he became an apprentice to Li Wanfa, who had been the last head of the Queshan Struck Iron Fireworks Society. He practised with sand and water, learning of its historical origin, its ancestral inheritors, craftsmanship and performance arts, but didn't touch the real thing until 1988. Through Yang Jianjun's efforts and investment, the first struck iron fireworks performance in more than 25 years took place in Nanshan Square (then a deserted area) in Queshan county.

Queshan struck iron fireworks are different from other struck iron fireworks in that it requires a wide area to perform, whereas others only needed a wall or could be hit straight up into the air, and it costs much more money to set up.

The names of inheritors are difficult to trace, and can only be traced back to the Qing dynasty during the Qianlong period, making Yang Jianjun a sixth-generation inheritor, and Jiang Xunqian (OP) the first woman and a seventh-generation inheritor.

[min-play]

banned from woodwork class

[mister-carnival]

Cost of Creation

[wuzeio]

i have been playing this game from morning to night everyday and i cant believe i have to wait another year for the full game (withers away) anyways march my beloved :)

[cosmetichorror]

Lu au where everyone is the age of their game

Wild is 7

Warriors is 10

Sky is 13

Twilight is 18

Four is 20

Wind is 22

Time is 26

Legend is 33

Hyrule is 37

Warriors and Wild are LITERALLY child soldiers, Sky is in middle school (and is more than happy to travel as it means he has less homework to do…)

Twilight is a fresh adult and doesn’t know what he’s doing with his life

Four is still as short as he is in the comic. Also much to Sky’s dismay Four basically becomes his teacher so he doesn’t fall behind in his studies.

Wind finally can legally drink…. He’s the wine aunt. He’s a nut case. The kids love him. He and Time were babysitting Warriors during the WAR and they’re both still mad they put a like, 9 year old into a war.

Time is freshly married…. He’s as bad (if not worse) then Sky ever could be when it comes to being lovey dovey.

Legend is mad he has to go on another adventure after he’s been comfortably retired for a decade. He becomes the new old man, despite Rulie being older…. And btw Hyrule is still his little brother.

Hyrule is aging wonderfully much to everyone’s surprise. He looks 25. He still can’t read btw but he has mastered life in the wilderness. He is like a mountain lion, he can hide behind anything and sneak anywhere now. Give him a leaf and he’ll find a way to hide behind it and you’ll never see him….

They would’ve never found Hyrule if they didn’t have Warriors and Wild with them, and even then them finding Hyrule was more so Hyrule allowing them to find him so he could check on the kids.

[hypnosees]

marchie (♡˙︶˙♡)

[heartfullofleeches]

(Minor Blood)

"May eternity never do us part, My Lord..."

A quick doodle of a traditional wedding ring in The Blacksmith's culture. There are a few varieties. None any less pain as that is the way of old gods.

Will you accept their proposal?

[avelera]

My could-be-controversial take on Jayce Talis is that if he lived in a universe or city where you could just go study to become a wizard, like the Baldur's Gate 3/D&D universe for example, he never would have bothered with blacksmithing or Hextech in general, he would have gone straight to esoteric magic school and never come out again. He'd be Gale Dekarios. Blacksmithing and Hextech were always about him finding a workaround within his own available skills and background for what was possibly the most heartbreaking moment of his young life: that he didn't have any actual, inherent magical ability of his own.

(Which just makes the fact that his mage also didn't have inherent magical ability, that Viktor gained it through his association with Jayce, all the more delicious.)

[leidensygdom]

And another outfit for the OC Outfit challenge! This time it's Adallind, a Centaur forge Cleric for @/seanjhermanart on instagram! I have never drawn a horse centaur until now which I'm a bit ashamed to admit. I've had dragontaurs, griffontaurs, mantaurs, but somehow not a normal horse centaur. Not like I've drawn many horses--

Anyhow, I wanted to play a lot with the forge aesthetic and went with a blacksmith/fire theme here. And somehow, green is also on the menu, since it's Adallind's favourite. All in all a very challenging piece, but one I'm quite proud of!