#and this idea got stuck in my brain

[gilded-7]

ranlay rivals au because i can:

basic overview is that randall and hershel are both professors of archaeology at gressenheller. they have offices next door to each other, work closely as members of the same department, and they do not like each other, resulting in a sort of rivalry between them. the games all happen mostly the same (except miracle mask) but this time a spite-fuelled randall tags along and they bicker constantly.

the set up for this au has the two of them as best friends in stansbury in the same way as canon. randall struggles with the other town’s people, his family and close friends not believing in him and his ambitions, but finds comfort in the support of his best friend hershel.

the key difference in this au is hershel refusing to go to akbadain with randall, refusing to support the idea even. randall has had some wild ideas before but an expedition like this is way too far; at best it’s risky, at worst it’s madness. fearing for his friend’s safety, he refuses to condone the idea in any way. already wounded by the dismissal and contempt from everyone else in his life, randall sees this as a massive betrayal and the two have a big argument over it, causing a major rift between them.

randall storms off to akbadain alone and miraculously somehow doesn’t get himself killed in the ruins. i’m undecided on if he’d go public with his findings at this point, perhaps he’d suspect a wider mystery relating to the azran and choose to continuing researching privately. either way he feels vindication of everyone who looked down on him or doubted him in his home town. he never returns to stansbury, believing there to be nothing and no one left for him there, and goes on to study archaeology at university.

meanwhile in stansbury, hershel feels guilt over the disappearance of his former friend, with no way of knowing his fate. compared to canon it’s a less personal responsibility than letting him fall to his supposed death, but the loss of randall weighs on hershel all the same. not wanting to let randall’s grand ambitions go to waste should the worst have happened to him, and unsure of anything else he’d rather pursue, hershel goes on to study archaeology at gressenheller.

through his years of study and hard work, hershel does grow an affinity and love for the subject, becoming the professor layton we know and love. he’s most excited when his first day as professor of archaeology rolls around, that is until he is introduced to the other newest professor at gressenheller.

at the door of the office next door to his, he is greeted by a familiar pair of thick-rimmed glasses sitting below bright red hair, styled a bit neater than before though still just as vibrant. his initial reaction is shock followed by relief and joy to see his friend alive and well. this is cut short when the man opens his mouth. this randall is very bitter, all snarky comments and disdain (i imagine his personality in this au as a toned-down version of how he is in the climax of miracle mask, and also somewhat similar to sycamore, minus the tragic backstory, plotting for revenge and maniacal alter ego). hershel does his best to remain civil - he is trying his best to be gentlemanly these days after all - but randall is making it very clear he doesn’t want to be friends in a way that is oh so infuriating.

over the years of working next door to each other they settle into a comfortable mutual dislike of each other. they are competitive in both their work place and archaeology careers, their relationship developing into a fierce rivalry. this remains constant for several years, until one day hershel is summoned by an old friend to aid with a troubling situation involving a spectre. randall insists on tagging along, forming a most unlikely investigative duo. little do they know this will be the first in a series of perplexing and exciting mysteries, incredible archaeological finds, and perhaps some reconciliation for the pair.

highlights of this au include:

bickering. constantly and unendingly. hershel tries not to rise to it at first but his resolve breaks very quickly. their students joke about it a lot.

they frequently try to outdo each other in their research work, to the point where any and all arguments can be trumped by ‘yeah, well i discovered ___ so…’

randall’s insistence on tagging along out of spite causing even more problems for the uni because now they’re down two professors and dammit you two, someone has to teach the classes.

post- last spectre, luke spending time at gressenheller often finds himself in randall’s office. cue them competing to be luke’s favourite. luke is now the apprentice of not one professor but two.

randall interacting with emmy. randall interacting with clark. randall interacting with sycamore. basically randall with everyone.

possibly even randall meeting claire? and being around whilst hershel is grieving her death. they still don’t get on in this time but there are small moments of concern when needed - they may dislike each other but randall isn’t completely heartless.

miracle mask would be entirely different. i’m not really sure what the plot of it would be and who it would involve, but it should still involve as akbadain as this would have them confronting their past and bad feelings for each other, acting as the turning point in their dynamic towards a more positive one.

it’s enemies to lovers because it’s my au and i get to choose the tropes i cannot be stopped >:)

randall being present for azran legacy and witnessing the truth of the azran civilisation first hand.

this got super long but if i have any more thoughts i might post some more about it (and if anyone wants to add anything that would be awesome i’d love to hear more thoughts 👀)

[wombrion]

mama & hatchling thing

[turtledotjpeg]

@hxhbigbang24 time!!

I drew for this fic which made me SAD and also made my HEART WARM!! I will not say too much to avoid spoiling future chapters, but I illustrated a few moments from this scene near the end of the story that I loved!

[limeinaltime]

"Sir, the immortal eldritch lich that we've been using for organ trafficking just broke containment." "... THE HELL YOU MEAN IT BROKE CONTAINMENT-"

Yet another update of Aster, this time with (hopefully) her final draft of lore. Urbanshade stole her from a geneticist as an embryo and gave her to her "bio" mom, who wanted to cover up an affair she had through serving as a surrogate for the stolen embryo. One shitty childhood and a lot of circumstances later, she ends up a prisoner in the Blacksite, where Urbanshade subjects her to some pretty nasty stuff (even by canon standards) for a decade before she snaps out of it and proceeds to massacre the entire N.O.S.T Division stationed down there and allying with a certain mutated fish man and AI.

Bonus stuff:

Aster has a gender-ambiguous body, but identifies as a ✨woman✨. She could easily pass as a man, though.

Despite what Urbanshade's been sold by Mr. Shade, Aster is not immortal and cannot grant immortality. However, she cannot be killed prematurely, and will remain in peak condition until the end of her lifespan.

The scar on her back is from an axe

She can still feel pain, she's just developed a heightened resistance to it after years of constant torture. It freaks Seb out a lot.

[chena-h]

Me, muttering at the shadows that dance along the walls of my cave: Look, all I'm saying is that if Sansa has a mini survivalist arc where she solos a part of her trip from White Harbor to The Wall, I would not be mad. No, no wait hear me out-

[thelostgirl21]

After having found out Radovid is now the King of Redania, Jaskier and him meet again while he's still travelling with Geralt and the rest of the Hansa.

But he's ruthless and cold - agreeing with Dijkstra that anyone suspected of having conspired with Nilfgaard should be summarily executed without trial.

When Jaskier confronts him about it in front of the others, Radovid refuses to listen to him, prompting an upset Jaskier to reveal to all that they'd slept together on the night of the coup at Thanedd, by asking Radovid if that night had even meant anything, or if he'd just been some kind of trophy to him!

"The 'almighty Prince Radovid'," Jaskier mocks him, pathetically needing to have other famous people like 'Jaskier the Bard' on all four - begging to be filled with his royal dick like a slut - to flatter his fragile ego and reassure him of his place within the Continent's food chain!

In return, Radovid casually mocks Jaskier for having ever fallen for his act!

He just wanted to get his trust and find the girl, he says, nothing more. Though getting the opportunity to fuck him was a nice bonus, he won't lie about that.

As for anything he did or said afterwards, he was only "playing it safe" until he knew, for sure, whether or not Jaskier could still be of some use to them.

As Radovid takes his leave, Jaskier stares after him, jaw clenched, visibly trying to be brave and keep it together - not wanting to give Radovid the satisfaction of seeing how much he's hurt him - they all assume.

They thus start muttering among themselves about how much of an asshole the king is, saying Jaskier deserves so much better, and starting to move forward to go offer him some support.

All of them except... Geralt, for some reason. The Witcher is surprisingly calm, if not looking deeply sad and concerned for his bard.

He stops them all from approaching him with a hand gesture, and - once he's sure everyone else is out of hearing range - says:

"You topped him that night, didn't you?"

Jaskier looks in Geralt's direction, eyes red and shining, lips trembling, and utters a pitiful "twice", quickly followed by an even quieter "fuck, Geralt".

The Witcher immediately dashes forward and catches him in his arms as Jaskier's legs finally give out and he breaks down - allowing himself a moment of weakness to weep in Geralt's arms.

His sobs are occasionally interrupted by some half coherent blabbering about how thoughtful, wonderful, and attentionate a lover Radovid is. Then something about how he'd been supposed to ask his brother for permission to leave his life at court behind, so he could come help Jaskier find and rescue his whole family. But now, King Vizimir is dead, and Radovid is... (Jaskier can't even finish his sentence).

And that's when the rest of the Hansa realize that Jaskier isn't upset about some royal bastard having pretended to love him only to betray and discard him.

The bard is upset because he's genuinely in love with the bloody King of Redania - of all people!

And that, had the man they'd just met been the real King Radovid, then he'd likely have known that Jaskier didn't bottom that night.

(Or that Jaskier is much smarter than he pretends to be, like Geralt had obviously been fully aware of.)

Meaning that the real Radovid is either already dead; or being held captive somewhere against his will.

Also meaning that their mission probably just got upgraded from:

- Finding and rescuing the Princess of Cintra (a.k.a. Geralt's daughter) from Nilfgaard;

to

- Finding and rescuing the Princess of Cintra (a.k.a. Geralt's daughter) from Nilfgaard AND finding out if the King of Redania (a.k.a. Jaskier's bottom lover) is still alive; if so, where he's being held, and rescuing him from... Redania?!

Again, why did they have to get attached to these people?

[lucid-heart]

PREDATOR/PREY AGATHARIO PREDATOR/PREY AGATHARIO

[lone-yy]

Will focus on drawing NSFW art for the rest of the month so…see you next year ???

[chaosflame]

Welcome to part 1 of "ideas I'm probably not gonna end up writing but I wanna share anyway" I got inspired by my beloved mutual @oh-no-its-bird (who you should check out if you like Naruto things) to do this.

Soukoku Otome reincarnation au

So like mundane au Chuuya and Shirase are convinced by Yuan to play an otome game with her and like weeks?(I hadn't decided) after Chuuya gets hit by a truck, then he reincarnates in the game as a character that is only mentioned in one route(Lippmann's) and that's only as a tragic lil bro figure that died because he fought an opponent he wasn't strong enough to defeat.

so like obviously he doesn't want to die again so he is determined to be stronger than the og, because of this he somehow ends up meeting Dazai(who is kinda the final boss of the otome game) and then *gestures to whatever the fuck soukoku have going on* that begins, Chuuya avoids his fate and enters the start of the otome game where it's revealed that he's not the only person to have reincarnated into the game!

Yuan and Shirase are also there!! And Yuan has reincarnated as the heroine! I have no fucking idea what's going on with Shirase but he sure is there! And I imagine this brings interesting conflict with a past Chuuya grieved and moved on from(he's his canon age here and I imagine him remembering his past life at 7, why? Because I think it's funny ♡) and his present colliding, I have zero ideas for the details of the conflict but it sure does happen.

Ok that's like the only things I have for the main plot the rest of the ideas are basically just about the otome game itself.

I'm basically stealing twisted wonderlands magic system and making the unique magic everyone's abilitys ♡

Lippmann, Kunikida, Poe, and Tashihara are the games capture targets, besides Lippmann's have I developed how their routes would go? Nope! So I'm just gonna talk about Lippmann's :D

So like a very large amount of otome games have at least one capture target that is like older by a good bit, and I'm not talking about capture targets that are demons, vampires, dragons, ect. Just normal ass human capture targets, I personally don't like this trope it's just :/, but like it's very fucking common and the otome game in my head is just a typical otome game, also more importantly it was the only idea I had to make the character Chuuya reincarnates into be mentioned in game but never seen, plus have a goal to push him to do stuff when he does reincarnate.

I did make Yuan 22(same age as Chuuya) and Lippmann 27 during the otome game events, so not as bad as a lot of those otome games and also in my head Yuan doesn't end up with any of the capture targets so like in universe it's not a concern.

Anyway Lippmann is the crown prince and the route focuses on uncovering a secret rebellion thing happening that's revealed to be connected to game Chuuya dying, and the flags are very much involved with the route, they're his personal knights, everyone but them assume Lippmann is the leader but no Piano man leads but like in the same way as cannon, and that is literally all I got.

Yes I am aware that I spent more time on the age stuff than the route info but I both wanted to rant and stop anyone from going "oh he'd be so much older!! Shame on you" or something, I am very much aware, anyway if this inspires anyone to write please let me know I'd love to read it!

[partypixiedraws]

神っぽいな　それ　卑怯　神っぽいな　それ　My God!

i saw someone's fanart of nahobino as the girl from pinocchio-p's god-ish and considered doing my own version, but then i got the idea to do it as flynn instead

zoom in for better quality

[astralcurses]

one of these days i gotta watch supernatural

[savetheghost]

wanna be put in a room with craft stuff for 10 years

[yzafre]

Song: Eat the Acid by Kesha

[protectivemuses]

I have another ask for Jingliu (aside from one or two in drafts I’m slowly doing) and I realize that I now have a choice between three ideas to write, and honestly.. I don’t feel people talk about her enough sometimes. I get she doesn’t appear much right now but man, thinking about her in the quintet days and also just like, getting to think more about her perspective of everything and just

I will not be okay

[skunkes]

having struggles with hobbies and enjoyment and creativity again

[j2zara]

I know we joke that Ellie only watches shitty indie horror flicks made three decades ago by a crew of 5 people on a budget of -$10 but. I am being kinda real that I think she would love Fantasy Wings of Desire and has watched it several times. She hates the name tho