#bad fortune

[artimis-anime]

Inktober drawings:

Prompt(s), Date finished, time spent drawing

Weeping, October 17, 1 and a half hours

Fog, October 13, 1 hour

Lost in the woods, October 14, 1 hour 10 min

Fortune, October 17, 50 min

Light, October 16, 1 and a half hours

Seeping, October 17, 25 min

Folklore, October 18, 34 min

Season/ Bugs , October 23, 50 min

Guardian of the books, October 23,40 min

Keeper of the keys, October 24, 1 hour 44 min

[soupbender]

I'd love the see the notes for Bad Fortune AU, on Tumblr or AO3 or wherever! Even a bulleted outline can be very entertaining 👀

I love your drawings about the AU where Zuko is a fortune teller!! Thank you for making them!! - AnonFisio

SORRY FOR REPLYING TO THIS SO SO LATE i am trying to finally shake off my hiatus a bit… and okay my notes are thee most confusing thing like even i barely understand looking at them now. but i do have a little segment of the first chapter written in that same document so im including that below:] if i reorganize the notes i may post them sometime since i will never ever finish this particular au tbh 😭

The midwives track rain-wet feet into the delivery room. Outside, the clouds are swirling so dark they blend into the night sky, thick and unforgiving, highlighted only in passing with the full moon.

These are not the proper conditions for a royal birth. Funny, how the heavens do not care about that.

(Or, perhaps, they do. Perhaps that is worse.)

It is nearly dawn by the time Ursa cradles her baby. She lies on a pillowed ledge by the round window, overlooking the gardens. Wind and water whip at the just-blooming flowers; scatter the fragile leaves. There is not a hint of thunder in the sky. No lightning cracking through the stars.

Zuko’s skin is cold as rain against hers.

The sun bursts over the horizon line just as Prince Ozai breaks into the room. Ursa holds Zuko tighter to her bare chest and privately wonders what it would be like to have a husband who she would hold her child out to. Who she would trust to cradle him.

Ozai barely glances at the boy before announcing, “The doctor will prepare a solution. The child will die peacefully.”

“No, please,” says Ursa, thinking she rarely says anything else these days.

Ozai considers, “Fine. Out of my mercy, he shall be left upon a cliff face. If the Spirits—“ here he raises a mocking brow, unimpressed as always in his wife’s belief in such things— “see fit, then the boy will be taken in by some other wretched soul.”

Ursa had not wanted the child, had not wanted the husband, had not wanted the marriage. This is a poorly-kept secret. But with Zuko pressed to her now, her heart speeds at the idea of leaving him (a feeling that will reoccur in her life, but thankfully she is no prophet and does not know this.) “What do the Fire Sages say?”

Ozai’s lip curls, “A reading, that’s what you want?” He gestures to the puddles in the grass, the overflowed pond, “Even I could spout that nonsense with omens like these. Clearly, he shall be no bender. He was not even born under the right stars.”

Here lies the center of the problem. Every member of the royal family has been born by the sign of the Dragon—Ursa had learned, upon her arrival at the palace, that the wedding time was very planned. It made her a little sick. Maybe it was this same sickness which had carried through her pregnancy, maybe that is why the child has been born a month too early. Maybe that is why he has been born a Rabbit—a sign of kindness. Of virtue. The same sign, incidentally, as his mother.

An embarrassment to the royal name.

“Let the Sages tell it,” Ursa begs, a choking sensation rising in her throat, “please, my dear. At least—consult the Firelord first.”

It sends a chill down her spine, the way Ozai’s eyes land on her, the gaze somewhere between wrath and disgust. But it unnerves her nowhere near as much as the way he looks at Zuko.

+++

“You must already know,” is what he says. The words are quiet, gentled by pity. He says them only to her, carefully lowered that her husband looming in the corner might not hear.

Ursa gulps, considering pulling her baby right to her heart and running fast from the Head Sage.

“Get on with it,” Ozai snaps.

The sage’s eyes flick between them, panicked, before he collects himself; before he focuses on Zuko, asleep in his mother’s arms, this child cursed by his very birth. This child born too early and too cold. This child born with clouds over his head; without sun; without spark. Without any great glory. This child whose only piece of luck, it seems, is in being born at all.

“The level of prowess he will reach with bending is… unclear,” he announces, and Ursa’s heart drops to her stomach.

“He’s a bender?” Ozai asks, too calmly.

The sage’s eyes flash, frown deepening, recognizing the awfulness of his own honesty when he replies, “…It is unclear.”

“Roku’s granddaughter,” Ozai scoffs, “the result is just as worthless as his bearer.”

Ursa does not sob. She holds an eruption behind her throat��kept at bay, lock and key. She holds herself inside herself. She holds her heart with hedge cutters.

“But,” the Sage puts in, “he may yet have other talents. I foresee the possibility of a… truly glorious future for him.”

Ozai snorts, “The mightiest non-bender is still a non-bender. It’s a stain upon the royal name.”

“What other talents?” Ursa asks, except it sounds more like begging.

“A special ability,” the Sage answers, “unlike anything the Royal family has seen before. It could be the difference between the Nation’s victory or defeat.”

It is an act of courage, however meek, that the man looks her husband right in the eye when he speaks. That he emphasizes the sentence with care.

Ozai lets out a low, exasperated growl. It is an act of begrudgement that he says, “The boy has six months to spark.”

It is only after the prince and the sage leave that Zuko starts to cry.

“Good job, Zuko,” Ursa mumbles, half-mad and half-asleep, “Good job, darling.”

***

In a month’s time, the Fire Sages will lie about the date of Prince Zuko’s birth. In a month’s time, the entire nation will celebrate Ozai’s heir. In a month’s time, no one outside of Caldera will know the truth surrounding the little prince’s birth.

In six month’s time, Ursa will feed her son a spoonful of ground fire-flower. She will hate herself as she brings him coughing ash to her husband, as he hums his approval of his firstborn bender.

In nine month’s time, Azula will be born a dragon. The sunlight will reflect off Ozai’s sharp teeth, and only then will Ursa realize that he did not smile once the day of his son’s birth. Now here he is, bathed in midday light and summer heat, grin closer to a shark’s than a father’s.

[theblackestofsuns]

"Bad Fortune"

Human Diastrophism (2007)

Gilbert Hernandez

Fantagraphics Books

[bc-byron]

Misfortune Cookie

It's nice to follow fried ricewith a helpful fortune cookie,but the message that Jan got this timewas ominous and spooky."So sorry for this awful news,and the mind which you will shortly lose." It's just a piece of paper, right?She shouldn't be concerned.Jan opened up another one,but the fortune was confirmed."You'll certainly go crazy soon.Most likely by this afternoon." So, stubbornly Jan…

[thebramblewood]

Hot off the presses, it's the first (and probably only) issue of Vatore Magazine! Pick up your copy now to see all 22 (!) looks in detail, shop the must-have CC, and - most importantly - collect some new scraps of coveted Vatore lore. 👀

READ VATORE MAGAZINE (PDF)

So, yeah, guess who thought they were going to do a straightforward decades lookbook and ended up making things entirely too complicated? 🙋‍♀️ The visual side of my brain is always tickled when CC creators put together little catalogs for their collections. That was my initial inspiration. Then I did a half-baked magazine cover concept and wanted to make a better one. I used this template as a base, and the headlines ended up being the most fun part. Anyway, I don't know how many people will click the link let alone scroll through the entire thing, but you'll be rewarded with several paragraphs of Vatore history if you do. I did this more to properly establish their timeline for myself than anything else, but I put a lot of care and time into it, so I appreciate anyone who reads. ❤️

[no1boa]

yeri ⟡

'one of these nights' 20160319

[kimquatz]

doodled a quick sea goat jishen for mermay teehee 🎣 ^_^

[mrsnaildood]

The Liberator fell in love with Wonder Incarnate

[usertoxicyaoi]

"You must have felt it, too."

FANGS OF FORTUNE (2024). EPISODE TWENTY THREE -> EPISODE TWENTY FIVE -> EPISODE THIRTY THREE.

[littleouroboros]

I wouldn't recommend getting this close to anything with a deck-sweeper, tbh

[silusvesuius]

properly drew my 2 skyrimlians; Agnes, the tryhard failure, and the recently born Gorshi, the 'neat' one.. sometimes a good guy, sometimes a bad guy. sort of polar opposites maybe.

and their respective horses !!! 😝🐎🐎🐎🐎🐎

[jinjeriffic]

Funny DcxDp idea

Okay, remember how Princess Dorothea hosted a beauty pageant to find Aragon a wife? What if some enterprising ghost lady looks at the Gotham's Most Eligible Bachelor poll results and promptly absconds with one of the Batboys. Cue Danny having to go on a rescue mission.

Danny: If I had a nickel for every time I had to rescue someone from ghostly matrimony I'd have two nickels. It's not much, but it's weird that this happened twice.

[magicalgrimm]

The real reason black hat needs a business:

[utilitycaster]

Because I saw a post about this again: I find the common fandom belief that Laura is a particularly chaotic player baffling. She is a great player! She is an exceptional actor! She is also easily one of the most cautious players in popular actual play. The cupcake move was great as a narrative/character choice, but it relied entirely on an existing item and spell, and the stakes, while high, were unlikely to be lethal and certainly not game-breaking. I would ALSO push back on the idea of calling players "chaotic" when you actually mean "makes bold choices" or "made the GM laugh;" Emily Axford is a genuinely bold player and also has a profound respect for GMs and the stories they are telling.

[feral-geges]

Fangs of Fortune Ep.32 (2024)

[homo-trashcanicus]

sorry still thinking about how zhuo yichen's strategy after having the cloud light sword broken devolves into throwing elbows, getting choked out, getting stepped on, throwing a haymaker at li lun's dick, getting choked out pt. ii, enduring a brutal facemask violation, and last but not least biting with his actual teeth - all while being the only one with the truth eyes, so to passersby this is the commander of the demon hunting bureau getting into a knockdown drag out fight with a 13yr old who had a go with his older sister's disney villains eyeshadow palette and their mum's nice black dress she wears to funerals of people she actually likes. and losing