#as far as names have power thing

[maelstrom007]

Malcontent

A look into Mal's origin story, my oc from @ghouljams cod Fae!au.

Warnings: Child in distress, and risk of drowning. The child doesn't actually drown, and the situation is resolved by the end.

In the moment, it didn’t occur to Maeve how sad it was that she was the only person struck with a sense of urgency at the noise coming from the well. No, it took her several days before the anguish, anger, and despair properly took her body and froze it stone cold. But we’re not there yet. We’re here in the now. And right now, there is a haunting, bone chilling wailing emanating from the well. 

Maeve nearly falls in herself with how quickly she runs, pail forgotten as she peers over the edge. The desperate sound of a child’s scream echoes off of the stone walls and pierces her ears. But it’s the sight of the small child, face contorted in fear and confusion as it tries to find purchase on the wet stone that truly breaks her. 

“Shhh, sweetheart. Ye’re alright, I’ll get you out don’t ye worry,” Maeve called down, calm and steady. 

Unfortunately the communal bucket and rope were down the well with the child, who most likely pulled the free end of the rope out of its temporary mooring in an attempt to climb out. There would never be a time where Maeve was happiest to be a crafter, pulling a long length of cordage from her rucksack and tying a large loop on one end of it. When she was done she tossed it down, keeping a firm grip on the free end. 

Over the continued panicking cries of the child she yelled, “Put your legs through and rest the loop under your bum sweet thing. Now grab the rope and hold tight.” 

Fear and determination fuelled Maeve as she heaved, struggling against the weight of a sopping wet child as she slowly pulled them out of the well. There was a brief moment of terror where her hands slipped on the second half of the cordage that had become wet when it landed in the water. Despite the burning feeling of rough and woody fiber pulling through her palms she held fast, regaining her grip and pulling with all her strength. Bright red hair peaked over the edge of the well, and Maeve desperately held the tension in the cord with one hand  as she reached out with the other, scooping up the child into her arms. They latched onto her like a leech, nearly squeezing the life out of her as they cried into her neck. 

“There there, I’ve got ye now. Don’ worry a thing lovely,” she murmured, wrapping the child in her cloak, the bright yellow accompanying the mop of fiery red hair nicely. 

By the time they walked home, the child had settled down somewhat in her arms, no longer crying the blood curdling scream from earlier, but still shouting and bawling something fierce. Out from the front door rushed her daughter, long flaxen hair streaming behind her as she came to investigate. 

“Ma, who’s this?”, she said, poking at the bundle in her arms.

“I haven’t a clue darling, But first, let's get them warmed up. Feed the fire will you Niamh.”

Maeve sat in front of the fire, cradling the bundle in her arms as Niamh set it blazing hot. She cooed, humming under her breath and rocking gently. Niamh sat down next to her, watching intently as the child continued to cry, but said nothing. They sat there so long that her daughter fell asleep on her shoulder, snoring gently. And still they cried, and still Maeve soothed, all the way until the morning dawn. Only then, did the cries turn to sniffles, until finally they stopped completely. 

“There we are,” she murmured, “feeling better darling?”

Pulling away from Maeve's shoulder, the child finally turned to face her for the first time, face still scrunched tight and wet with tears. 

“Come now, relax,” she gently brushed her fingers over the child’s face, soothing worry lines and wrinkles until their face was lax and still in her hands. 

“Open your eyes wee thing.” 

Now, there were plenty of things Maeve was expecting, such as brown or maybe even blue eyes to peer back at her with the whites bloodshot and red from the river of tears. 

What she was not expecting was the set of four large, perfectly circular black eyes staring back at her. To her credit, she did not flinch or otherwise spook at the sight, peculiar though it was. At that point in time, all she was concerned about was making sure the poor thing was alright. 

The next thing that happened though, she did startle at. The child began to squirm, turning their head this way and that desperately in search of something. It wasn’t until they spotted Niamh did they stop their search, going stock still as they looked upon her daughter. Almost imperceptibly, the child pivoted their head at multiple angles, as if they were studying her. Then, their outline began to blur into the surrounding air, as if looking at a mirage on a hot day. Suddenly, they came back into crystal clear focus, except now in the shape of her sleeping daughter. 

Maeve’s eyes widened in shock, arms squeezing slightly at the new development. Had she had too much to drink? Was this some elaborate nightmare? But the more she looked, the more she saw the differences. For a start their hair was still shockingly red as ever, but there were other things too. The mole was on the wrong side, and the scar across the brow Niamh had gotten as a toddler was missing, and a multitude of other small discrepancies revealed the poor attempt at what Maeve assumed was blending in. 

She’d heard about creatures like this. Faeries swapping a human child with their own, tormenting their new family until it drove them into destitution and ruin. The child's eyes were still large and black, although seemingly reduced from four to two in the mimicking attempt. How could anyone believe that those eyes wished them harm? Staring up trustingly at her, completely at her mercy. She could have let them drown, or tossed them into the hot fire, and yet it trusted her not to. 

“Do you have a name?” She wondered aloud. Just as she wondered if they knew how to talk, the child spoke. 

“My name is Malcontent,” they whispered, thankfully not in Niamh’s voice. Maeve didn’t know if she could keep it together if they did. 

Pity crossed her features, “What a terrible name for a child. We should change it to something more pleasant.”

“NO!” Malcontent screamed, face contorted in anger, “My name is Malcontent!” 

The irony of the situation did not escape her, “Why would your parents give you such a name?” 

Like a switch, anger was replaced with sadness, “My parents didn’t give me that name. The ones they left me with gave it to me. Kept saying how I couldn’t be their child cause their angel was never as unhappy and angry as I was. I just wanted to go home. But I don’t know how.”

Maeve listened intently, tears poking at the corners of her eyes, “You sure have a lot of words for a child so small.” To that, Malcontent had no response, so she continued, “It was unfair of them to give you such a burdening name. Names have power, and what else could you do but be upset and angry and sad being called something like Malcontent all day?”

“But I was sad and angry and upset before them. And I always will be,” they mutter determinedly. 

Maeve made one last attempt, “I think you should consider trying another name for a while. See how it feels?”

“Fine. But I don’t know many names.” they scowled, as if inconvenienced by the fact that Maeve was trying to save them from the most upsetting name she had ever heard. 

She paused, thinking of the options. There were a multitude of names to choose from, many of which could be a fitting and pleasant name to bear. However, it also felt wrong to completely wash over and erase a part of this child's history and experiences. 

“How about Mal?”

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Party of one (divided into four)

[luck-of-the-drawings]

two wrongs WILL make a right! ive got another lease on life, and im using it well, who cares if this is all fucked up cause we're all GOING TO HELL! IM JUST WILLIAM WHO SHOULD BE DEAD, HAD TO FOLLOW THE THREAD, thought he was just chillin! now he is a villain! HES ALWAYS SUCH A BUMMER, HE WANTS TO TRUST HIS BROTHER WILLIAM IN A HALLWAY BY HIMSEEEEEEEEEEEELLLLLFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

[novella-november]

Is this fanfic friendly? I feel like an outlier.

I guess this is my sign it's time to throw together a FAQ post to link to lol.

Yes, every event for this blog is fanfic friendly :D

Though as I mentioned on my Ominous October post, for events that include multiple short stories, I encourage everyone to flex their creativity and take one of their planned short story fanfics, and at least *attempt* to turn one of them into something entirely original; rebuilding a character and story from the ground up to stand on its own two legs is no easy feat, and that is what makes it so fun!

It really gets your creative gears turning, to make an "au of an existing material" to be something entirely original, and you can be pleasantly surprised about the things you come up with!

As a few people say, its not just a matter of "filing the serial numbers off" -- you have to add in just as much *or more* as what you take out when you are turning a fanfiction into something that is original and completely divorced from its original source material / inspiration, and that is a hard, but very rewarding challenge!

Obviously, this is not a requirement (there's no hard requirements for any of the challenges, other than no cheating, including no using AI),

but if you would like an extra challenge for the short story events and you're planning on doing entirely fan-fiction, I highly recommend trying it out at least once, and seeing where it leads you--

you may find yourself pleasantly surprised by what you find down that rabbit hole!

[loveguts]

i’m not a transandrophobia truther in the slightest don’t get me wrong, but i think some people on here really need to realize and comprehend the fact that cis women, way WAY more often than not, hold extremely significant social and political power over trans men the vast majority of the time in our day to day lives

[theragamuffininitiative]

.

[cuteniaarts]

The weight of the world is a heavy burden

Especially for a child

(Or, in slightly less dramatic terms – I imagine that the first of her past lives that Avatar Suiren [who is the Avatar after Aang instead of Korra in my AU, and also Ghazan and Ming-Hua’s daughter] gets to talk to is Yangchen, because she is too plagued by memories not her own [including Jetsun’s death, fun fact]. And Yangchen wouldn’t want another child to go through what she did on their own)

(Or maybe someone just needed an excuse to draw @katkastrofa’s latest obsession in a context that interests them as well, just in time to maybe cheer her up a little? You can’t prove anything)

[kjzx]

Finally got my grabby hands on stardew valley and this might just be love at first sight

[100-gar]

Controversial take but i watched all of jjk, in subbed, so it had my full attention 100% of the time, and i am of the opinion that it just fucking sucks.

So me and my wife were talking about it, and we were trying to figure out why people like it and we've come up short. I do not understand what's so appealing about this show for so many people. Can someone PLEASE tell me.

[freakinator]

i tthink the reason why i have such a skewed perception of what discourse is is cause its such a formal and impersonal word yanno? like it implies the shit we say on here is some critical academic study about the greater trends of media and how itll affect the general populace when it really is at the end of the day just a bunch shitheads whining and whinging about a relatively large yet at the end of the day still niche series

anyways ii think we should go back to calling it fandom wanking--

[koicrimes]

literally only 16 minutes into megan's documentary and im already on the verge of tears.. hell, I was on the verge of tears by the five minute mark. lol I don't usually care for celebrity docs but I am just soooo fucking proud of her. I mentioned before I only recently got into rap fr fr and she's one of my reasons. I love the persona she plays. I love her confidence, her work ethic, her ability to rose above when people try to tear her down and I love that she's one of the faces of black American culture rn and she's a fucking proud nerd.. like, the shit I used to get made fun of and told horrible shit for loving is part of HER BRAND and there's just something so fucking motivating about a beautiful, young black woman being this successful and still being herself. no matter what people have to say about it.

she represents an image of something that i was made to feel was impossible growing up. and it warms my heart so much.

[fideidefenswhore]

There is a saying that when Anne Boleyn was not the queen, she had greater power than the queen's three years. What do you think?

I think this rather limits the sphere of influence of royal woman (or, as it was for the former period, royal-in-waiting, Anne was a noblewoman, not a royal one, until she became Queen); to, how to put this...the 'domestic'?

Ie, it's known that Henry had mistresses while Anne was Queen, but not queen-in-waiting; I feel like when this is argued that's mainly what the gist of the argument is, she was his ultimate priority and singular love, then they married and the 'chase ran out' and the disillusionment was quick and debasing. And so her influence reduced concurrently.

And...while I find that summary rather specious anyways on whole, for the sake of argument, even if the former part were true, political power is something else. Queen-in-waiting was Anne at "I beseech your grace with all my heart to remember the parson of Honey Lane for my sake shortly", Queen Anne was Anne at seven of her own evangelical clients appointed bishops. After the fall of Wolsey we get "above all, the Lady Anne" re: Henry's councilors from the French ambassador, after Anne becomes Queen we get the contemporary remarks that she has the most influence with the King, beyond any other person, her time in power is referred to as her "reign". Even contemporary remarks after her fall are testament to the influence she had as Queen, "the fall of Queen Anne was like the fall of Lucifer", a parallel to God's most favoured angel being cast down...nobody remarks that it was evident her power had diminished once she married Henry.

Tl;dr, even following the paradigm of loss of love = loss of influence, I don't think...we have that much evidence of the former; the narrative is popular...well, because it's popular, if that makes sense? There's not much of an attempt to understand Henry as his own person, as an individual, particularly when it comes to his relationships with his wives. He was very ostentatious about what he felt for Anne: he "preferred the love of the queen to half his realm", he would "beg alms door to door" before he would forsake her, it's easy to dismiss this all as Henry being glib, knowing the ending, however...I believe he felt and meant these sentiments in the moments he said them, despite that, I think even had the ending been different, these expressions were both to Anne's benefit and detriment, really-- she was regarded as someone whose favour it was important to gain and keep circa as early as 1528, at the latest, all the way through to the end... but because of the common bruit of them, she was also, sometimes solely, blamed for Henry's unpopular decisions.

[shiverhohojiro]

beyond figuring out what an oc's actual title would be, I think it is fun to determine what title pieces they'd be drawn to using... How they'd describe themselves, what they think is funny. Sometimes along the way you find out who would use the head suffix for nefarious purposes.

[morninkim]

Rise of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers - Z-Putties

After recruiting former Count Dregon associates in Rito, Mordant and Scorpina, Zedd has Dr. Finster conduct further research into Putty Patroller creation, utilizing the Dark Specter's crystal shard energy with molten rock to create a new variant of Putty: the Z-Putty.

Much stronger and able to withstand the strongest attacks from a Power Ranger, the Z-Putties prove to be a valuable asset to Zedd's growing forces.

[wonder-worker]

"It is difficult to argue that [Edward IV] was wrong in what he did. His advancement of [Richard of Gloucester] can be criticized only by those who believe that the only good nobleman is an impotent nobleman. Medieval kings did not think in these terms. Gloucester’s power was valuable because it ensured royal control of a significant and troublesome part of the country. Nor can Edward be blamed for not foreseeing the ends to which Gloucester might put his power. The duke had been a loyal upholder of the house of York, a central figure in Edward’s polity*; there was no obvious reason why he should not occupy the same role under Edward V. In this respect, precedent was on Edward’s side. Previous minorities had seen squabbles over the distribution of power, but no young king had ever been deposed. Even royal uncles traditionally drew a line at that, something which explains why Gloucester’s actions seemed so shocking to contemporaries and, perhaps, the reason why he got away with it so easily in the short term.

In the immediate sense, Gloucester must take final responsibility for what happened in 1483. However one explains the motives behind his actions, things happened because he chose that they should: there is nothing in the previous reign which compelled him to act as he did."

-Rosemary Horrox, Richard III: A Study of Service

*Richard was also, yk, Edward's own brother who had been entirely loyal to him during his life. The problem wasn’t that Edward trusted Richard (why wouldn't he?), the problem is that Richard broke that trust in a horrible and unprecedented way to usurp a 12-year-old. Please understand the difference.

[reanimatestar]

quick sketch of my best friends clark kent and superman

[image description: two pencil portraits of clark kent (also known as superman) from dc. the first drawing is him as clark kent while the second is him as superman. he is smiling in both portraits. /end description]