#bc they were for specific skeletons

[starry-bi-sky]

tales of the passerine - danny fenton being bruce wayne's first kid

okay okay. so this is like a continuation/elaboration of my oneshot/prompt i wrote about the idea that Danny was the first batkid. We have a lot of aus where he joins the family after the rest of the bats do, right? So hey! Lets shake things up a bit. Danny is the first to be adopted by Bruce Wayne.

Danny's parents and unfortunately Jazz die shortly after the events of TUE -- how so? I was gonna say an ecto-filter explosion, that would call back to the TUE explosion and trauma behind that. But lets do something new! Carbon-monoxide poisoning.

It's not too unexpected for something to break in the Fenton house, especially with the Fenton parents' questionable understanding of proper weapon handling and lab safety. The water heater broke from a stray shot by one of the weapons, and was promptly MacGyver'd incorrectly. Danny went to stay with Tucker for a guys' night, and came back to a dead silent house.

(Danny's neighbors got a very unfortunate shock when he ran to the next house over in hysterics.)

There was a lot of shuffling around with CPS, the police. People had to be called in to handle the equipment in the lab, and the GIW was rumoring to show up in aid to clearing the scene. When Danny heard of that, he immediately went and dismantled the ghost portal to the best of his abilities. He burned the physical blueprints of all his parents' inventions, their blueprints on the ghost portal, and their most dangerous weapons were destroyed beyond recognition. Anything to prevent the GIW from getting their hands on his parents' tech.

It opened up another investigation, but he was not under the list of suspects. He was placed in the care of Vlad Masters, where they then went back to the rebuilt castle mansion in Wisconsin. Danny, terrified of the future that has once passed and may do so again, shuts down in his grief. Inadvertently, he ends up somewhat repressing his ghost half. Something Vlad, who is grieving Madeline but relishing in Jack's demise and his custody of Daniel, is not very happy with.

Vlad's... gone into a bit of a mental health spiral. He's becoming increasingly possessive over Daniel, the final remnants of his friends and a liminal being like him. He doesn't like that Danny's repressing his ghost half -- both out of genuine concern as a ghost, but also because of his desire to control Danny and groom him into the perfect son. If you ever had a phase where you read Dark SBI found family fics, first off; me too bro, and second off; those are the vibes I'm thinking of.

Danny's mentally shut down from grief! And fear. He's dropped into a bad depressive state -- paralyzed with grief and the terror of the inevitable. Clockwork saved his parents because he believes in second chances, but what's the point of that when his family ended up dead anyways? Danny doesn't wanna believe that he's destined to become evil, and he's holding out onto that hope, but it's a thin line, and he feels utterly hopeless and trapped. He hasn't used his powers or ghost form since he trashed the lab, and Vlad has alarms set up to prevent him from trying to escape.

He's also unintentionally cut off Sam and Tucker -- both of whom are so scared and concerned for Danny too, and are trying their damndest to reach out to him. He keeps ignoring their texts. Danny basically haunts Vlad's manor. He goes out to eat if he has to, attends parties Vlad drags him to, and stays in his room all day if he can.

At parties, Vlad doesn't allow Danny to leave his side, or really talk to anyone -- not that Danny wants to. A product of Vlad's increasing possessiveness. Well, he almost doesn't let Danny leave his side. Danny has a habit of slipping off to hide somewhere for the parties whenever he can, and Vlad reluctantly allows it so long as he stays alone.

This becomes an advantage when eventually, Bruce Wayne returns to Gotham after missing for years, and holds a bright charity ball to celebrate the return. Vlad has been chomping at the bits to get his hands on Wayne Industries, and with the return of its owner there is no better opportunity to wipe out his rival. He goes, and he as normal, brings Daniel with him.

Vlad thinks Wayne will bleed his little heart out for Daniel's poor orphan sob story -- he's a fellow orphan himself, after all. He's not wrong; Wayne's little heart will bleed, just not in the way that benefits him.

Bruce sees Vlad and Danny approaching before they're even close enough to introduce themselves - and like with many of the children he will soon come to care for, it's like someone set a mirror into the past right in front of him.

Danny Fenton's suit is tailor-made for him, and despite the fact that it's his perfect size, the sag in his shoulders, the ducked down head, and the way he hunches into himself all pictures the image of a child in shoes too big for him. There's a far away, glazed over look in his eyes and grief marble-cut into the lines of his face. There's not enough makeup in the world that will hide the dark circles under his eyes.

("My nephew, Daniel Fenton." Vlad's hands are possessive on Danny's shoulders. Bruce immediately notices the way the boy tenses under his touch. "His parents passed recently, and as his godfather I was designated his guardian.") ("I'm so sorry, the loss must've been terrible.") ("Yes, carbon-monoxide poisoning caused it. Daniel was out with friends, when he came home... they had already passed.") (Bruce immediately dislikes that Vlad shared the details of their death unprompted -- he likes it even less when Danny flinches at the reminder and hunches into himself.)

Danny runs off at some point earlier into the charity. At this point, parties are still being held at Wayne Manor (because iirc google search mentioned that was a thing at first before it was changed), so he disappears and hides in one of the empty rooms nearby. It just so happens to be the same room Bruce Wayne hides in when he needs a break from all of the socialization.

Thus begins a long, long process of trust. Bruce can't reveal his hand as being smarter than he looks, but he can be compassionate. Kindness needs no measure of intelligence. He keeps Danny company for as long as he can before he runs the risk of being found.

Rinse and repeat. Vlad insistently wants Wayne Industries, and he'll go to as many Wayne parties as he can to get his hooks into the man. The problem is that Bruce Wayne is never alone, and getting him alone is impossible. Finding him too. It's like the man never stops moving. Always talking to someone, always circling somewhere. He orbits around the room as if he isn't the sun of the Gotham Elite's solar system.

Danny's had such repetitive behavior that Vlad never thinks to believe that Bruce Wayne is disappearing to go talk to him. That "Vlad's" son is even interacting with him at all. Danny never gives him a reason to think so, and neither does Bruce.

Danny doesn't actually acknowledge Bruce until a handful of parties in, where he hands Bruce a small slip of paper he smuggled in that says; "don't trust Vlad". Danny's face stays carefully blank, but he's so tense that his hands are trembling, and he's purposely looking away from him. Bruce plasters a smile onto his face, slips the paper into his pocket, and tells him "okay".

(he's been busy with his own goals with the mafia, but he sets aside time to investigate Vlad Masters. He was holding off. Until now.)

Danny does eventually start speaking to Bruce, he's starting to really like the guy. He's starting to see a little hope, even as Vlad is starting to get more and more agitated with him the more he refuses to use his powers.

He reaches out to Sam and Tucker again, and starts trying to reconnect with them. Vlad has spyware on his phone, and he limits the amount of times he can talk to them. A weird parental control lock of some sort that leaves a time limit on how long he can talk to them for. 30 minutes. Danny doesn't tell them anything about Mr. Wayne.

Danny, slowly, wants out of here, and he's slowly gathering the motivation to do it. Vlad is genuinely scaring him -- and Danny wonders just how truthful the past-future Vlad was when he told him that Danny wanted his ghost half separate. He starts trying to come up with an escape plan.

Vlad has anti-ghost wards everywhere around the mansion, and while they're always on, they boost to full power at sunset. The doors and windows are always locked, all main exits have alarms set on them. The only reason it's not super extensive is because Danny hasn't tried leaving at all yet, so Vlad hasn't had to tighten anything.

At night, Vlad locks the door to his room and puts up an anti-ghost ward around the room. The mansion is on the outside westward side of Madison, more entrenched in rural Wisconsin. The closest town is a four-way stop sign with one house on three corners, and an open bar on the fourth. Not much to go.

He refuses to go to Sam and Tucker; Vlad would look there first. It's too dangerous. Vlad would sound alarm bells and have a manhunt looking for him, Danny can't risk going just anywhere. Too much risk of being found, sold out, or caught. There's really nowhere for him to hide.

Until there is. Bruce is telling Danny about the history of Wayne Manor, and says, as casually as saying the weather; "The manor has dozens of empty rooms, I'm sure Alfred wouldn't mind filling another one if he could." And quietly, hesitantly, Bruce places a careful hand on Danny's shoulder, unrestrictive and gentle; "He wouldn't mind getting one ready for you if you need one."

And there it is. There's his out.

Danny, just as quietly, replies; "I'll keep that in mind."

The ball starts rolling.

Now I've been trying to summarize this au as much as possible for length convenience, but Vlad has been steadily growing more and more controlling. More emotionally manipulative. More agitated at Danny for not using his powers.

He wants Wayne Industries under his thumb but he's been steadily growing more and more concerned with Danny. He's started grabbing him, yanking him around, shaking him; trying to goad him into using his powers. He gets angry when Danny doesn't react, or tells him he doesn't want to use his powers. He hasn't outright attacked him, but he's getting there. This has been happening over the time it takes for Bruce to indirectly offer Danny sanctuary at his home.

It all comes to a head when Vlad stops going to parties at all -- something Danny has to pretend he isn't upset about -- because Vlad doesn't want him around other people anymore. Vlad rarely goes now without him, and only leaves to go to a Wayne function or to handle something at VladCo.

Danny can't wait for Vlad to leave long enough to escape. So he leaves during the night of a big storm. Vlad's locked him in his room, but Danny doesn't bother trying to go for it; he goes to the alarmed window instead. Danny's been repressing his ghost half so long that he can't access his powers immediately anymore -- he can feel it, he knows its there, but he can't quite reach it.

He breaks the lock by hand.

Immediately the alarm goes off through the entire castle, filling the room with red, and he scrambles for the rope the Wisconsin Ghost left for him a few months back. Danny's already out and climbing down the side of the castle before Vlad even reaches his door -- the only good thing about the entire room being ghost-proof is that Vlad can't get in that way.

The rope ends before it reaches the bottom, and he's still twenty feet in the air. It won't kill him if he lands it right. Danny takes his chances, and drops. He breaks his ankle, but he survives.

And he fucking books it to the back garden. He hears Vlad shrieking over the thunder and rain.

I'll save the full experience for a future oneshot, but Danny makes it out into the nearby woods and forcibly experiences what it's like to be in a horror game, trying to hide from the thing that's hunting you. There's only one thing going through his mind; "i'm going to die"

I have this mental image for this scene. Very stereotypical horror imo. Where Danny is hiding behind a tree, with a hand over his mouth, and Vlad is a few feet away from him, glowing ominously red through the trees, trying to search for him.

Danny doesn't get away from this unscathed, but he does get away alive. That's all he could ask for. He gets away by getting his ghost half awakened long enough to transform into Phantom and fly to Gotham.

But he gets to Wayne Manor, he gets to Bruce. Or, at least, Alfred answers the door from his insistent pounding. Danny's just in tears and Alfred gets him in the living room, wrapped in a towel, with ice on his swollen leg before he has to step out and alert Bruce.

Bruce already breaks multiple traffic laws on a nightly basis. And that's just with the sheer existence of the batmobile itself, not including the speeding and military artillery attached. He breaks double the amount trying to speed back to the cave and get out of the suit.

Right off the bat: Bruce will know, at least before Dick enters the picture, about danny's powers. He'll figure out something considering the fact that Danny traveled from Wisconsin to New York in a single night. That'll be a bit of complicated affair, but I've already got something in mind.

Actually it'll probably be very soon after Danny joins the family, because Bruce tries to offer to fight for custody for Danny - the state Danny was in at arrival is clear enough evidence for a trial. But Danny immediately shuts it down, says it's not going to work and then Vlad will know Danny's with him and he won't be safe. He tells him that Vlad cannot know Danny was with Bruce.

Danny's biggest regret was not telling his parents he was a halfa, and while he doesn't want to tell mister wayne (yet), he does tell him about Vlad being one. He needs to know why Danny can't be seen with Bruce. So he tells him, and Danny's current plan is to just hide out from Vlad until he turns 18. That way, he has no more legal jurisdiction over him. After that? He's not sure.

And to wrap this up, since this has already gotten very long and I can make more posts about this au later; I've thought about it, and I'm going to say that Danny does become a vigilante before Dick enters the scene. He goes by, as you probably guessed; Nightingale. "Gale" for short.

[emperorundying]

💀The Locked Tomb Dashboard Simulator Part 4💀

🤐 necromancer-confessions

Anonymous asked:

i'm a third house non magic user and i've started hanging out with more necros lately and... i think i didnt realize how much of hanging out consisted of talking about the eroticism of the flesh !! and i dont want to judge them but u hear the words 'viscera' 'adipose' and 'sounding' in the same sentence one too many times and u kinda wonder why yr there as someone who cannot manipulate nerves :( ig im just feeling kind of left out

#anon this is totally regular for necros esp 3rd housers #if they dont understand that you feel left out, maybe have one use their necromancy on you? #there are many ways to assemble a skeleton

(112 notes)

💉 se7en Follow

bc these have been going around :3

( 1,829 notes )

💀 6ske-le-un9 Follow

#SOOOO SICK OF SPIRIT MAGICIANS IN MY INBOX ACTING LIKE THEY KNOW BONES BETTER THAN ME #get boned bitch grrrrrr

(1,002 notes)

♱ midnighthagette Follow

this edible aint shit

♱ midnighthagette Follow

why is the seventh saint to serve the emperor undying under my bed.

💎 saintofawe ☑️

Again with the insaneposting? How unfortunate, Harry, I thought we were past this.

(21,871 notes)

🐱 cohortcatgirl Follow

V important thread!!!

Idc how much anon hate i get 4 this, we need 2 be able to appreciate the loving hand that guidez us💗

#sick 2 my stomach seeing all of these posts against the necrolord prime without knowing the context of the beautiful things he's done for us :((((((( #mr undying i am yr biggest fan u deserve better than this....

(2,023 notes)

👤 foundations-of-decay-deactivated-8172202

if one more person unprompted asks me for blood pics again i swear to the bones above i will stab myself or smth

🩸 ab-justmytype-o Follow

stabbing pics queen?

(9,308 notes)

[ruegarding]

hello! I hope your having a good day! If you don't mind me asking, what is your opinion on the Cupid Scene in Hoo? And if you could how would you change it?

my opinion on the cupid scene…well, i don't think a traumatic coming out scene is automatically bad. the problem i have w it is that rick capitalized on shock value instead of good writing. rick retconned a bunch of things to make nico alone and miserable so that he could have this scene, and it was completely unnecessary. ppl can have friends without coming out. and, as i’ve repeatedly said, the way hoo is written is literally a repeat of his arc in pjo but worse, because we’re acting like important events in pjo didn’t happen in a series that’s supposed to be a sequel to pjo and rick is inconsistent so the payoff is questionable.

the solution is…good writing. creating a cohesive and intriguing plotline where this scene is either necessary or scrapped if it isn’t.

thus begins an unnecessarily deep dive into all the retcons, inconsistencies, and general what-the-fuckery of nico’s arc in hoo bc i’m the verbose king and we've accidentally stumbled into something i have a lot to say abt.

first retcon. in son, frank explicitly says that nico does not make him nervous and describes nico as mysterious. not weird, creepy, off-putting, or anything similar. and nico is! he is clearly hiding things and shows up infrequently. this is a neutral description, and frank goes on to say that pluto’s powers, and specifically the underworld, isn’t enough to make him dislike pluto or nico.

also this, showing nico is comfortable enough around frank:

but then in hoh, frank thinks going somewhere with nico, alone, is terrifying.

at worst, frank would’ve felt awkward. they’ve never had to talk alone bc nico is at camp jupiter for hazel and doesn’t have any reason to talk to frank by himself. if frank didn’t want to be alone w nico bc of that, it’d make sense. but that’s not what’s said or implied! and nothing has happened! nico got kidnapped, they saved him, and since then he’s been chilling on the boat, exactly as weird as before, if a little more understandably distressed. like, nothing happened to change frank’s opinion this drastically. even the difference between pluto and hades (wealth vs death) doesn’t matter bc nico uses his powers in son. also frank literally summons a skeleton guy in son and hazel is a zombie, like…

(the source isn’t important but i've been quoting these five seconds for years)

oh! and that’s not all, it gets worse!

these scenes from hoh are incredibly infantilizing. why are we treating nico like a feral dog that needs to be domesticated??? yikes. and once again, it’s not true! nico was fine talking w ppl in pjo (if a bit over-enthusiastic). and then in son he was perfectly civil and was fine having the conversation abt the quest. his issue w ppl was that his powers/parentage put ppl off, and, even in son, that he had to keep a secret.

nico is perfectly capable of speaking like a normal person and working as part of a team (see: final botl battle, final tlo battle, the sword of hades). like, nico’s struggle in hoh should be 1) that ppl are calling him creepy behind his back (and therefore has nothing to do w his social skills) and/or 2) that he just survived an incredibly traumatic experience and is understandably withdrawn. neither of these are properly addressed and instead the implication is that nico is hiding himself bc he’s gay and everything will be solved if he accepts himself.

edit: i never actually explicitly stated this, but nico's queer coding and disability coding overlap, which is why this infantilization/ableism is important enough to highlight despite the conversation specifically being abt the queer aspect of it.

second retcon. percy…as i’ve said many times before, percy explicitly calls nico his friend in tlo.

this immediately makes hoo trying to act like they don’t know each other and were never close a retcon. they were friends, they saw each other frequently, nico made silly jokes w percy…and we’re ignoring all of this in hoo.

i've talked abt this previously (in response to tsats), but nico is the one putting distance between him and percy. percy reached out to nico repeatedly thru pjo.

when percy notices that nico excludes himself, percy finds a private place to talk to nico and assures him that percy wants him around and offers solutions to his discomfort (this is not percy’s responsibility. percy is a child). when nico insists that he won’t stay, percy sees it from nico’s perspective and, instead of forcing nico to do something against his will that may totally backfire, says “i hope we don’t have to be enemies,” leaving room for nico to decide whether he’s willing to be friends.

bc percy understands the root of nico’s issue (that no matter the accommodations made at camp, there’s always going to be the implicit message that he doesn’t belong there), he addresses it and uses his wish to make sure that nico has a home at camp.

and when nico tries to prove he’s useful, percy proves he would’ve invited him in whether nico was or not. bc he thinks nico deserves to be a kid.

“i wonder if [nico] had ever had a birthday party,” percy thinks at his own birthday party where he didn’t invite his friends bc he felt it was too much of an inconvenience, in a story where he never had friends prior to these ppl he didn’t invite, and the only person he had for twelve years of his life was his own mother. and percy uses his own loneliness to empathize w how lonely nico is.

percy is not some distant figure nico is idolizing. he's a kid trying his best to care for another kid at a time where no one else did, while experiencing his own trauma. all of their hang-ups exist bc of that.

going back to their relationship in hoo, even trying to make percy uncomfortable w nico’s powers (and therefore not wanting to associate w nico) doesn’t work bc percy has gone on record and said he thinks some of nico’s powers are cool and has neutral responses to others, not to mention percy is also a big three kid who makes other ppl wary (i could write a whole meta on how what percy finds disturbing w nico’s powers is directly tied to what percy finds disturbing w his own powers, but i’ll restrain myself. please clap).

and if that wasn’t enough, the entire reason percy stood up to hera in botl is bc she was willing to let nico die specifically bc he doesn't fit in bc of those powers.

this plotline was tired before it even began.

you could argue that all of this changed w nico’s betrayal in tlo. but then why didn’t percy tell anybody when it happened in tlo (annabeth would’ve reacted to it if he had)? why did percy trust nico to come when he called? why didn’t any of percy’s animosity come out afterwards at camp? and in the throne room, percy didn’t have to single nico out w his wish. he didn’t have to watch nico to make sure he was settling in. but he did. and because he did, any writing that suggests percy doesn't trust or care abt nico bc of that is bad writing. maybe rick forgot this, but u can be angry w and hurt by the ppl you love and still love them.

even the justification that nico lied in son isn’t good enough to completely change their relationship, bc it’s pretty clear why nico lied and percy says he can’t stay angry at nico when they rescue him, and let me remind u, anger is a core part of percy's character. while nico lying might be enough for characters like leo and jason, who have no rapport w him, to doubt him, it’s not enough for percy. and why are we so obsessed w dismantling percy and nico’s friendship anyway? why is that necessary to the story? like i said before, ppl can have friends without coming out. isolating the only queer character (at the time) isn’t necessary.

this conflict doesn’t even work in hoo bc their distance is still one-sided…

when did percy not give nico a second chance in hoo? the only times they’ve interacted prior to this was when percy remembered nico in son and tried to talk to him and then when they saved his life. and then nico brushes off percy's gratitude and tells him to back off. this is not nico idolizing percy who doesn't care abt him. this is percy reaching out and yet again nico putting distance between them.

and, obviously, this doesn’t work at all w pjo when the entirety of botl exists, you know, where percy chose to trust and protect nico and then went out of his way to make sure nico knew percy held none of nico’s anger against him. it’d be one thing if nico was supposed to be wrong, but considering how there’s an entire arc in hoo abt jason being the first person to trust nico, and tsats seriously acts like percy only ever talked to nico when he needed something, it’s safe to say this comes from a place of stupidity.

ok. this sections getting long, so i moved the it was stupid to have percy give jason a reason to doubt nico section to a new post. but know that i'm aware and i think it's stupid.

back to the point of all these retcons w percy. there's nothing in hoo that necessitates changing percy and nico's relationship from pjo. while percy in hoo is never cruel to nico, they act like strangers for some reason. so, it's changed for no reason and it's written poorly.

sigh. and then all of chb is retconned (or recycled if you’re feeling generous).

the ppl at camp accept him while his cabin gets built. pretty nice. then in boo nico reveals they got tired of him after a week–which is still summer–despite there being an influx of kids from all descents, some of whom would be weird or uncomfortable or whatever this justification is. that’s not even mentioning how percy’s own experiences (remember how he was ostracized…multiple times…) should have made them more accepting of nico.

why…was this necessary at all…? especially when u have an entirely different camp that treats nico as weird bc they didn’t have that good experience w him? this is really what gets me. if rick wanted to be lazy and repeat nico’s arc, he could’ve done so without retconning things.

for example, with the seven, leo, piper, jason, and maybe annabeth (she doesn’t have much to say abt nico in pjo), i could understand having animosity towards nico, as well as camp jupiter, but retconning established relationships to make ur only (at the time) queer character isolated and miserable only to then have his coming out be violent and traumatic is. well. bad! especially when the person who is w him for that experience is not someone he has built any sort of camaraderie w. nico isn’t choosing to trust jason, he’s being forced to.

and the whole nico-needs-to-learn-to-trust-ppl plot doesn’t work anyway bc of rick’s inconsistencies.

jason has a moment much like frank where he doesn’t want to go anywhere w nico bc nico is so weird and scary. nico has every right to pull himself away from ppl who treat him like he’s got something contagious. and there’s more:

“since when does jason defend nico,” as in they have shit on nico before and jason has not, in the past, defended nico. as in nico had every reason to not trust jason prior to this bc everyone, including jason, were talking shit behind his back. why are we acting like nico is being unreasonable? oh no, y’all are talking behind my back…clearly it’s my fault bc i push everyone away and that has nothing to do w ur behavior or anything…yes this is good writing.

and we’re supposed to believe that jason (and reyna and hedge and will) is the first person to be kind/reach out to nico, but we have this scene from botl where percy comforted nico and gave him a piece of his childhood back:

and this is after percy cleared the air to make sure nico knew he didn’t hate him and offered to make accommodations for nico at camp and then respected and understood why nico wouldn’t want to. like,

woah, you’re telling me that a character reaches out to nico after a traumatic experience in an act of kindness and this helps nico grow as a person? and it happens multiple times?! yeah, apparently rick and fandom have completely forgotten abt this (also hazel exists???). they’re even phrased similarly! “maybe it’s time to take a risk and embrace something you’ve pushed away.” furthermore, they both support their point by helping nico, percy by inviting nico into his home to enjoy cake and ice cream, jason by drinking from the chalice. once more w feeling: nico has been loved the entire goddamn time!

i get what rick was trying to accomplish w the whole cupid scene concept. which is that it’s okay to be gay and that it can feel very “othering” to be gay. nico has to accept himself in order to make friends. that’s what this

and this

are trying to say, right, but this doesn’t work when you’ve blatantly retconned established relationships to have characters push nico away for his powers/parentage/whatever. nico’s struggle is not an internal issue that can be solved by accepting himself, it’s an external issue caused by how other ppl treat him for his powers/parentage (which he has never been shown to reject btw).

the thing is, the powers-as-queerness metaphor only works when you don’t have, you know, characters who aren’t queer going through similar ostracization. not only was percy ostracized at chb in tlt for his powers/parentage (very similar to nico!), percy has a moment in this same book where his powers terrify annabeth, and then piper in the next book, in which he, you know, lets himself almost die to poison bc he feels like he “deserved it” for using those powers. again, this is not queer-coding for percy (unless…?). moreover, like i said, nico doesn’t reject his powers, so the whole queer-coding w powers and needing to accept himself is already iffy (...rejecting powers...hold the fuck up…percy isn’t…unless…). even the out-of-time metaphor doesn’t work bc it’s something he shares w hazel, who is not canonically queer (unless…?!). so, already, we’re on shaky metaphorical ground. all of this could work, theoretically, if combined w strong writing, but combined w the retconning and inconsistencies, this plotline makes no cohesive sense.

we’re supposed to believe that nico is the one pushing everyone away while they are secretly super supportive while simultaneously being shown that everyone talks and thinks shit that affirms nico’s thoughts abt them that makes him want to pull away. and then in boo we completely ignore that these ppl have been pushing nico away and suddenly everyone (reyna, hedge, will, etc) is supportive.

pick a struggle!

also nico’s coming out scene in boo sucked (yeah this is the segue).

this is the culmination of nico’s arc in hoo. he’s finally accepted himself enough to speak the truth without pressure. we ruined percy and nico’s established relationship for this. and they don’t even have a conversation. then nico walks over to will bc percy, “regular guy” percy, is “not [his] type.” don’t look too deep into that.

so, how would i fix the cupid scene? well.

there were a million different ways to write a better arc for nico and earn that cupid scene. for example, rick could’ve stuck to a plotline.

the trust plotline could’ve been good. bc this exact thing is what causes the accidental kidnapping situation in tlo. nico doesn’t trust percy enough to tell him the truth and chooses to manipulate and lie to percy instead. this choice is what sets up their conflict bc percy views this as betrayal (something that’s important to a guy who’s fatal flaw is loyalty).

it’s also interesting bc nico does choose to trust ppl in hoo; he eats the pomegranate seeds despite not knowing that someone is coming for him, he just trusts that someone will (we’re ignoring what boo says abt nico’s tartarus experience bc fun fact! that is also retconned). and it pays off, bc not only does he get saved, we see hazel and percy even willing to challenge the other members of the seven to make sure he gets saved. so, it’s not a lesson he’s already learned, it’s a lesson he’s learning. but, going back to the main question here, would the cupid scene still be necessary? was being dragged into tartarus and almost dying not enough spectacle?

regardless, my biggest problem w the cupid scene in all of this is that it gives the impression that u have to come out in order to have ppl love u and trust u. a much better message to send is that the ppl who love u will love u before and after u come out. no isolation necessary.

[xitsensunmoon]

Hello!! I am absolutely in LOVE with how you draw vampire Sun and Moon's hands/claws, and I was wondering if you have any tips for how to draw hands human and non human?

Love your art and your au!! Can't wait to see what you come up with next!

Hope you have a great day!! :D

Oogh drew this really fast in class and I'm no teacher so I just will show how I personally draw hands but disclaimer I'm drawing them for like 5+ years so obviously this method is not for everyone thank you let's go

First of all I will publicly admit that I love drawing monster/skeleton/robot hands much more than human ones explanation later

First of all I draw everything in direction lines starting from palm(1) because it's literally the base of the whole hand.

The fingers are formed from curves that go inside??(2,3) Idk how to word. And the last knuckle gets two curves in and out(4), the out one is basically a claw but through years I decided to just connect them together, looks nice

Repeat the process but in opposite direction(1,2). Don't curve them for too much tho, I'm just showing the directions. I mean you can, I can't stop you but that's how I do things here. The last knuckle has the same curves tho(3). Add the knuckle lines(4) they're usually ellipses, not circles and not straight lines. (I mean they can be but it has to be very specific angle). The claws' curve can also change bc of the angle or my laziness(5).

Now the most important part.

Practice.

Now human hands. Hate them. Don't look at them. Urgghh.

But the technic is the same, the only difference is that lines and angles are much softer and it has...

Flesh. Yeah. And folds of skin. And nails. You can see by all the sloppy lines that I struggle lmao. Also shorter fingers. And no claws. Sad. Pathetic./j

And btw to all people who loves to use the meme "draw a circle, add details" - yes, it's the point. That's how it works for artists with skill and experience. Because we had a lot of practice. No matter how good tutorial is it won't teach you how to draw, it won't train your hand. So. Draw. Practice. It will come sooner or later. I saw dozens of artists who were able to achieve the pro lever in 1-2 years because they drew things all the time, every day, few times a day. Practice.

Anyway, hope it helps tho. Even if not I still love drawing hands so it's okay lmao. And I'm glad you like my au!!! Have a nice day<33

[prinz-vassago]

Ok I'm so obsessed with "Dai Nippon Gothic" and Suehiro Maruo's artwork and manga, I ended up getting a lot of inspiration from that to continue Akumu's mistery lore. I'm doing characters for the secret occult club investigating her death. They're called "Mugen no Kagi" (夢幻の鍵) or just "Fantastic Dream Key". I'll post the other members during the week bc I think each one deserves a post only about them, so here's the first one: Gou Kurogane

His backstory may contain some extreme/disturbing topics, be warned:

Gou is a 17 y.o teenager who is part of the secret occult club that investigates the entity Akumu. He is fascinated by death in every way. Coming from a traditional family and a lineage of samurais who served the Shogun, he follows a strict code of honor since he was a child. His family has a strange tradition of preserving the corpses of men who brought honor to the family in a sacred room in the house. His dream is to bring honor and die heroically in the war to have his body mummified alongside his ancestors, keeping the illusion that "war is honorable" due to his family tradition and the nationalist education given by the schools during the Showa period. He constantly has the job of serving food to the corpses and taking care of them as if they were alive.

Gou's father divorced his mother when Gou was very young and lost himself in alcoholism and prostitutes. Because of that he rarely sees his father and was raised most of the time by his older brother, who has a toxic and abusive relationship with him. Gou's brother is an imperial soldier, and constantly puts pressure on him, saying that "he will never bring honor to the family". Even though he gets excellent grades and being very good at swordsmanship, his brother invalidates his success, and nothing ever seems to be enough to please him. Although, Gou greatly admires his brother's position in the army, and dreams of becoming a soldier just like him and is deeply ashamed of his father and has vowed not to end up like him.

Despite all the problems and oddities, he is a very respectful and modest person in public, which makes people see him as someone exemplary in society and they don't even imagine his creepy side.

All this fascination with death made him start looking for more answers in black magic, and so he joined the secret occult club. Out of all entities and Yokai, he has the most interest in vengeful ghosts (like the Yurei type of ghost) and the Gashadokuro (giant skeletons made of the skulls of people who died in the battlefield). He is constantly desecrating warriors' graves and taking their skulls in the hopes of one day summoning a Gashadokuro. He doesn't usually work with curses and tends to focus more on summoning disturbed spirits and finding definitive ways to invoke each one of them, recording everything in his summoning notebook. He believes he can free Akumu's spirit and find out what happened to her.

*I don't condone the japanese imperial army and their actions nor the act of desecrating graves/disturbing the dead. The character is just inserted in this specific moment in history. Take his attitudes and traumas as a critique of how nationalism and extreme traditions affect people's minds in the worst way and how war is romanticized by some people.

[aangarchy]

So while rewatching the live action trailer a 50th time i kind of started thinking about something.

There's a few moments in atla that always seemed untouchable to me. Not only because they were well executed when it comes to storytelling, but also bc we never actually see the moments in question. Examples are: the attack on the air temples, Ozai burning Zuko, Katara's mother's death. We hear about these from other characters who happened to be there, or in case of the air temples: we hear the moment being retold as history. It's the latter i want to expand on.

The original cartoon never shows us even a glimpse of the attack on the air temples. You could say "well it's a kid's show they can't show a brutal genocide" but honestly, we're talking about a cartoon that showed a skeleton on screen in the third episode, showed the main character getting electrocuted and plummeting to his death, and showed a man being drowned by a spirit. The reason they didn't show it imo, is because it makes sense for the narrative. This attack was a century ago. Everyone that witnessed the attacks and was old enough to remember them is dead. Bumi is the only person we know of that was alive at the time and old enough to somewhat remember, but he wasn't present. It's comparable to world war one for us. There's nobody alive currently that properly remembers WW1. We're being told about it in history class, we get shown those weird black and white videos of smiling soldiers on their way to their death, pushing carts through the mud, them shooting a few canons, the trenches etc. But there's no first hand recollections. The creators really drove home the point of the airbender genocide being ancient history to the current inhabitants of this world by never showing us the attacks itself, and only having it be a known historical fact. It's just something that happened, it was long ago, nobody remembers it. All they know is there's no more airbenders, they're extinct, and nobody remembers jack shit about airnomad culture and philosophy except those that study it (aka professor zei) and even then, it's based off of destroyed architecture and hard to find historical texts that i'm sure the Fire Nation tried their best to erase. The viewers of the show only get information about air nomads through Aang, and whatever flashbacks from his own memory he provides. It leaves us wanting to know more, and it feels extra tragic knowing we'll only have Aang to rely on to tell us the tales of his people (for atla specifically, i know we now have more info due to the avatar novels).

Netflix however, literally opens their trailer with three shots of the attack. The comet, then the fireballs being shot, then the firebenders and airbenders facing off. I don't like this decision to show the battle that took place, because then the point of it being ancient gets a bit lost. We as the audience get more information than the main characters have, and idk but to me that kind of ruins the experience?

Same with Zuko getting his scar. Not only are they gonna show us that, they put it in the trailer. Why? This is a very important character moment in the show that we don't even get to see bc it's told from Iroh's perspective and he looked away the moment it happened. Before this we were given crumbs as to how Zuko got his scar. And Netflix is just tossing it our way like Peeta tossed bread at Katniss Everdeen.

I might feel differently abt this when the show airs (although not likely lol) but currently i'm just kind of mad at these creative decisions being made man

[donaka-screaming]

tag game

tagged by @scarlettspectra ty darlin!! 🫶✨

last song you listened to: from the nebraska plant by the mountain goats

silver or gold jewelry?: i wear a mix of both every day but prefer gold

do you have any tattoos?: yep!! a bunch!!

‘run rabbit run’ + a coffin (house of 1000 corpses reference)

‘only see the past’ + a crystal ball (bright eyes reference)

‘disappear here’ (quote from less than zero by bret easton ellis) + the floating skeletons from the cover for every day and every night by bright eyes

lavender and sage bouquet

‘our love is god’ matching with my husband (it’s a heathers reference and we were wasted when we got them)

the blue swallow motel sign and the van i used to live in when i was homeless (the motel is in new mexico, it was where i spent the last night i was homeless)

‘what a woman’ + a pin up girl

‘where did my baby go?’ (lyric from coney island by taylor swift) + a rollercoaster sinking into the ocean (it’s based on the one that sank into the atlantic after hurricane sandy hit the jersey shore, where i grew up)

and i have 4 more planned for over the next year (typewriter with a lyric from ttpd, a daisy + some coins for john wick, the two frogs on a bench card from constantine and ofc that fuckin scream donaka mark does 😭)

piercings?: earlobes + nips (i used to have eyebrow, lip, and both nostrils but i took them out when i was 17 bc my asshole ex asked me to 💔)

currently reading or favorite book?: currently reading the terrifier 2 novelization, my fav is lunar park by bret easton ellis

a hobby you would like to try?: knitting!!

coffee or tea?: tea!!

favorite video game?: animal crossing + the sims + stardew valley + portal 1 and 2 + cyberpunk 2077 even though i can’t finish it bc it causes me too much mental anguish to play regularly

star sign?: capricorn/aquarius cusp

who is your hear me out?: crispin glover (specifically in willard 😮‍💨 he was lowkey the first old man i was Weird about)

i tag: @mentallyscreamingsincebirth @moonshapedbox @tcrturedreeves @treedaddymcpuffpuff @discoscoob @johnwickb1tsch @lilithlinen @gothreeves @gea-chan96 + anyone else who wants to ✨💕

[thepringlesofblood]

bonus content for those who read the taz: the 11th hour graphic novel and haven’t listened to the podcast arc

disclaimer: so. I lost my book about 1/4 of the way into this post. so the rest of it is just from memory (I did finish reading it several times, I just no longer have it to refer to). I wanted to post this before the next one comes out though, so here we are. If I find my book, I will attempt to finish up the details for the rest of the book. I cover some basic big things from memory, but nowhere near as detailed as the stuff I wrote down when I had the book to refer to. but in the meantime...let’s go!

by god they’ve done it again. 11th hr is a Lot and definitely the most plot-heavy book so far, PLUS they had to include the first lunar interlude where the boys had individual scenes. the result is frankly beautiful. we’re really hitting critical mass now.

as a result a lot more stuff got compressed, cut, changed, or skipped. i’m going to try to at least point out each difference, though there’s no way I could summarize EVERYTHING that got cut in one post. I’m going to be linking relevant episodes (& transcripts thank u tazscripts) instead, for things that are Just Too Much to include.

as always, this post is intended to be Fun and Cool Bonus Content for people who haven’t listened to the podcast, not a manifesto of stuff they “should have” included or a list of flaws. they had 11+ hours of content to squish into one graphic novel, that happened over a period of months. of course stuff got cut. and it’s stuff that was recorded in 2016. that’s eight years ago. of course some things are going to change.

tl;dr - I liked the dang book. you can be sad something wasn’t in the novel while still understanding why it isn’t. here is a list of the stuff that was changed, skipped, compressed, or cut, presented as cool facts & extra info for gn fans who haven’t listened to the podcast.

spoilers ahoy for the 11th hour, but I’ll try to keep spoilers for the rest of the series to a minimum or at least mark them clearly. At the very end I’m going to put a section of series-spoiler theories and observations, very clearly marked

Before getting into the nitty-gritty, there are a few MAJOR changes from the podcast I want to get out of the way first. This list also includes “stuff I remember but don’t have the book to refer back to on”

Several characters and a whole section of the map were cut.

I think this is the first time that any named, plot-relevant characters have been completely cut. The closest we’ve come so far was the bugbears, but they at least had a cameo in the photo in Lucas’ quarters. Luca, Redmond, and Stonefruit Farms fully don’t exist in the GN series.

the boys meet Redmond in ep 46, pt 6 of the 11th hr arc, having met his brother Luca at the end of the previous episode.

long story short, Redmond was the leader of the purple-kerchiefed ruffians and the brains behind the bank robbery, which The Boys had to go through with so that Redmond would help his lowkey-estranged brother Luca raise the temple of Istus from its decrepit state, as they were both devout priests of Istus. The whole key being in the vault thing is GN-only.

Also, Luca is a skeleton bc he was in the temple when it got rapidly old-ified, but dw he’s fine he’s just a skeleton. he gets better.

Redmond’s motivation for robbing the bank is that as a priest of Istus, lady of fate, he follows his gut feelings and intuition, and he had a strong feeling that whatever was in the vault would be the key to taking down the bubble.

they basically took all of the plot-necessary elements from Luca & Redmond and gave them to Ren. In the podcast, Ren actually blasts some of the purple-kerchiefed ruffians out of her bar after they get too rowdy. She isn’t involved with the robbery in the slightest.

Merle’s Temporal Chalice scene

in the podcast, it’s his arm being chopped off. or more specifically, grabbing a crystal that exploded and made him have to get his arm chopped off. 

Him running out on his kids is played kind of for laughs at first in the podcast. Merle is a heel for a lot longer there, bc the funniest improv is usually not the most ethical improv. They do talk about his life and the fact that he has a family, but the offer made by the chalice is for him to have his arm back

frankly, I think they made the right move in the GN. We get very little of Hecuba in the podcast, and I really liked seeing more of that conflict.

Roswell, my beloved

so, in 2016 when they did the podcast, the McElroys were at, let’s say a different place in their journey of learning about the queer community. which is to say that in the podcast Roswell’s pronouns were wildly inconsistent, in part due to them being a clay construct, in part due to them not being introduced with any pronoun in particular [though Griffin clarifies that he intends for Roswell to use they/them a little later on in the arc], and in part bc the boys just weren’t really familiar with the singular they. they tended vacillate between they/them, it/its, and he/him. we all learn and grow. 

in the book, thankfully, Roswell is 100% they/them. fuck yeah. related. The Boys are significantly worse people to Roswell in the podcast. like, significantly. we’ll get into it as it comes up more, I just want to signpost it here. 

e.g. Taako giving Roswell control of themselves and their command word is a GN original, in the podcast The Boys kind of “junebug” them around for large swaths of the last few episodes. also, a significant number of earlier loops involve them basically negging Roswell into believing that Isaak hired outside help (The Boys) with security bc they weren’t cutting it anymore (rude). I much prefer the geologists gambit they go with in the GN.

Diamonds

Paloma’s prophecies cost money in the podcast, so a lot of The Boys’ shenanigans (and a significant number of loops) are in pursuit of getting cash. which, in Refuge, is diamonds. Some examples: 

Before figuring out that you can’t take objects with you, the boys do straight up take some diamonds from the bank post-robbery. 

Taako gets Ren and a patron of her bar, Ash, to sign up and pay for a seminar/magic lesson he’ll be giving tomorrow (one of my all-time fav scenes). This leads to a touching scene at the end when the bubble finally comes down where Taako gives Ren a little certificate that says “first graduate of Taako’s Amazing School of Magic.”

Magnus tries to armwrestle a guy for cash (Merle’s idea), and though he rolls a 27 Strength check, the Goliath barbarian he’s rolling against gets a 28.

Paloma offers 1 diamond for a small prophecy, 10 for a big one. in the GN they aren’t differentiated, and one small prophecy just doesn’t show up as it’s not needed.

the taz fandom wiki has a handy list of all the prophecies she gives in the podcast

ok! let’s go!

Prologue (the bit before ch 1)

this isn’t in the 11th hour podcast.

the information we get about The Visitor in the 11th hour (from The Boys asking various Refuge residents) is that

Jack and June brought them to Refuge

or, they brought Jack and June to Refuge. We hear both things at different times.

they’re depicted in the statue as having a Red Robe and being kinda broad-shouldered.

Roswell never met them. At first they refer to The Visitor with he/him pronouns, but then mention “I say ‘he’, I didn’t know them”

they tended to keep their face hidden (maybe?)

that’s pretty much it

we learn about this interaction much much much much much later in the podcast, not as a scene that is played out, but abstractly as an event that happened, after we find out who The Visitor is. 

that said, I LOVE this scene’s inclusion and expansion. it makes total sense to me.

Jack is never described as having a sketchbook or being an artist. this will come back later. 

the final scene of the arc in the podcast is instead June giving Magnus some previous designs for the statue of Jack, June, & a Red Robe/The Visitor in the middle of town, with a version where the hood of the robe is down and the face of the Red Robe/The Visitor is visible.

Ch. 1

this is where the podcast starts at episode 1 of the 11th hr. 

boyland’s funeral is very accurate. his comically large family of 400 sons (mentioned in CK podcast) is why the Voidfish lights up like that.

the only real differences I could find were:

in the podcast what is erased is basically boyland’s personnel file. like, a report or write-up of who he is and his work for the BoB. johann writing songs about boyland’s life is new.

the only pronouns ever used for the voidfish in the podcast are they/them, it/its, and occasionally he/him. past taz graphic novels have used they/them. on pg 13 of 11th hr, both Johann and Merle use she/her for the voidfish.

I do not like this, but I have a suspicion as to why, and I don’t like that either. see spoiler-y observations at the end for more.

they merged this scene with a scene from the skipped lunar interlude before CK, where The Boys take cpt. cpt. bane’s “file” to the voidfish to be eaten.

 I described this in my other posts, but the two things relevant here are Magnus putting his hand up on the glass and vibing w the voidfish, and this exhange b/w Johann and The Boys:

Johann: When I, um, can I ask you guys a question?

Magnus: Sure.

Taako: Of course, Johann.

Johann: Are you guys really okay with, with this part of the deal?

Magnus: That we get forgot?

Taako: Which part?

Johann: Yeah, are you cool with like, if you beef it down there, the world just forgets about you?

Magnus: Well, I’m not planning on ever dying.

in the podcast, bc Avi isn’t there, Angus operates the cannons (Avi showed him how before he left). he is extremely nervous about it and about killing them on accident. once they’re in the orb taako casts stoneskin on himself “just in case”, but everything works out totally fine, though avi mentions when The Boys land that the stoneskin should’ve thrown off the trajectory.

the gn keeps the spirit of taako trusting no one without the angus psychological damage by having him just cast a better version of the spell angus cast, and I am a fan.

the leveling up stats aren’t right in the book, as I’m sure every dnd 5e nerd has already tweeted about.

they’re all level 10, so magnus should be a level 8 fighter and a level 2 rogue bc 2+8=10, while the other two boys are still just a level 10 cleric and a level 10 wizard bc they didn’t multiclass.

fantasy costco-wise: aside from the stuff they have in the book (all things they do own in the podcast, though hole-thrower and the feather-weight cuirass were from the fantasy gachapon), merle picks up matthias the living grimoire, magnus gets the magnetic charge and the tarantula bracelet, and taako gets the arcane trickster’s glove (no wiki page rip it just gives you some arcane trickster powers) and mockingbird gum.

they beat up the baby worms more before letting them go, it’s a full battle

Ch. 2

in the podcast, when they go through the barrier, they find themselves in an empty white space where they see an old woman holding the cup. she says “It’s you!” with recognition upon seeing them, and then says “find me” before they wake up.

important: every time the boys die in the podcast, they go back to this space briefly before waking up.

sometimes the woman gives a cryptic message, sometimes not, and in their later loops, the woman collapses, breathing heavily.

we find out in the end that this woman is June - she has a whole extended de-aging sequence later that they probably cut so poor Carey didn’t have to do a bajillion character models for June at different ages just for a few panels of dramatic effect.

pg 36 - to head off any dnd 5e nitpickers, Magnus does not have proficiency in rustic hospitality, since that’s not a skill. Magnus does have a character feat called “Rustic Hospitality” that he chose at level 1.

claiming to have proficiency in things you can’t possibly have proficiency in is a longstanding goof both in taz and among people who play dnd 5e in general, because it’s funny.

in the book, they intercut each loop with a scene from lunar interlude 3, and it works really really well. we’ll get to those scenes as they come up.

Is this the first time someone uses he/him for The Red Robe in the gn series? (Roswell says ‘his’)

in the podcast Roswell mentions having never met the visitor, and comments “I say “he”, but I don’t know.”

in the GN, when The Boys tell the director about The Red Robe in CK they use they/them pronouns and so does the director, but after this, even @ the end of the book after Taako guesses that The Red Robe they’ve been talking to isn’t the same Red Robe from Refuge, he and the other boys continue to use he/him for The Red Robe.

“Mystic Analysis”

he just did an arcana check in the podcast, I don’t think Taako had Identify as a spell, which is what the DND equivalent would be. 

they also don’t figure out that Roswell has a command word until much later, during the Diary Of Sheriff Isaak scene.

Griffin basically says “[they’re] an earth elemental, with a bird on [them], and earth elementals don’t generally have birds on them, so maybe it was just nearby when the spell was cast and got caught up in it”

Cassidy

in the podcast, she’s in jail for blowing up the temple of Istus, which she didn’t do.

GN Ren mentions later on that the temple got “un-built” which references how in the podcast the temple suddenly aged a matter of centuries in seconds, so from the outside it looked kind of explode-y. and cassidy is known for blowing shit up, so she was blamed. she also theorizes that it might be racism due to her half-orc heritage.

in the GN, cassidy’s arrested for trespassing on the closed mines, which she absolutely has done. it makes more sense, and eliminates a major plot point they cut from the book

she is otherwise pretty much the same, I love her very much

Paloma pretty much stays in her cottage in the podcast rather than sneaking around.

the fantastic exchange of “you guys have been here 45 minutes, what the fuck did you bring with you?!” “you should see what we can do in an hour!” is 100% verbatim from the podcast.

in the podcast, Ren is dead the first bank fire (and in most subsequent bank fires). she also wasn’t one of the bandits, or involved with the bank robbery at all

in fact, in the loop where The Boys were doing the bank robbery, she unexpectedly came in, recognized Taako, and almost blew their cover.

With so little time left on the clock, Taako cast Banishment on her to keep her safe and out of the way, but she made her saving throw - so it didn’t work, but she knew Taako tried to cast some spell on her, and there was a somber moment of her falling backwards trying to get away from him, tears in her eyes.

look it’s a good lil character moment

I can’t emphasize enough how brutal the first description of the bank fire and subsequent world-ending is. Griffin pulled 0 punches.

Magnus rushes in and he describes the scene like “you see a guy, who looks like this. they’re dead. you see two guards. they’re dead. you see a woman holding a tray of diamonds. she’s dead. you see this person, also dead. you see a dwarven bank teller. she might be alive, but it’s hard to tell, and if she was she is on the brink of death”

I think the boys, brogden, and maybe one of the purple-kerchief ruffians (which is how they are described in the podcast) survived the first one, and everyone else died in that bank. it felt so brutal listening to it the first time because you (and the boys) didn’t know about the loop yet, so it was just. horrifying.

I love how they pulled in off in the GN!!! the clock hands are just *chef kiss*

just before Griffin describes the destruction of Refuge, Travis interjects, “Ditto, did you base this on Majora’s Mask?”

while Griffin does not respond in the moment, he later confirms that Travis is correct.

Griffin’s description of the fiery deaths of The Boys: “And you’re being crushed by the shattered earth as it compresses down into the ground. And you hear an anguished scream come from something massive and furious, and all three of you have died…And there’s something about the dying that feels familiar.”

“and then you wake up.” hardcut to end of episode music. v epic.

Ch. 3 (i s2g they’re not all going to be this detailed the major plot differences are mostly out of the way now)

as mentioned, the scenes between each loop in the gn happen in Lunar Interlude III (transcript) (episode) - each of The Boys got to choose a scene to have in between arcs and Justin chose to have Taako give Angus magic lessons.

they’re all more abstract in the eps (Taako establishes a recurring time and place to give Angus lessons, and we get scenes from earlier vs later lessons, various shenanigans, etc.) but the major points are actually pretty much the same, just condensed into one scene in the book.

also taako giving magic lessons in his quarters makes 100% sense, but in the podcast they did it in the cafeteria, and that’s where the LUP is burned into the wall. significant? potentially.

in the podcast angus had made some macarons for taako but forgot to flavor them (he nailed the texture though which is hard to do in a macaron) so he asked taako to prestidigitate them better and then scorching ray happened and blasted em to shreds.

LUP. dude. I thought it was an acronym when I first heard it, bc in the podcast, Griffin says “So your staff, you lost control of it and you blasted the letters “L-U-P” into the wall.” Seeing it in cursive, all gorgeous and capitalized like a proper noun? knocked me the fuck out.

another dnd 5e tiny detail: in the gn, the description for Angus’ first wand says “wonderful stocking stuffer for the young sorcerer in your life”

i could have a whole conspiracy board about this.

skip this if you’re not super into dnd 5e mechanics

the difference (in dnd 5e) b/w a wizard, a warlock, and a sorcerer is:

wizard: gets magic from study and practice - taako is a wizard bc he studied spellcraft and learned how to do it.

warlock: gets magic from making a deal with something/someone far more magical than themselves - garfield is a warlock, so his magic stems from a deal he made with something (the devil??)

sorcerer: has innate magic within them.

this could come from a myriad of places, but usually from heritage or bloodline - maybe your great-grandfather was a god or a dragon or a demon or a djinn or something, or maybe your mom touched a weird rock as a kid and got magic powers that she passed onto you when she had you.

in the podcast, angus is only ever referred to as a wizard. makes sense - regular boy + magic training from taako = wizard boy.

but if he’s a sorcerer, the magic really was in him all along. is taako teaching him to channel it? does he know?

this also fits with a weirdly popular headcanon the taz community had for a while about angus secretly being a silver dragon (in dnd, color = different abilities, diff personality, etc, and silver ones like to shapeshift and pretend to be humans sometimes).

“draconic bloodline” is one of the most common sorcerer backgrounds - it basically just means ‘a dragon got involved at some point in this family tree, so now you can cast ray of frost’.

hmmmmmmm

end conspiracy theory

It is at this point that I lost my damn book. so. I’m just gonna post this bc the next graphic novel is coming out soon and I want to post it before then. If i find my book I’ll finish it up. If you have post-chapter 3 differences you noticed that aren’t already covered, feel free to reply/reblog with them!

Spoiler-y Observations Below!

CAUTION: contains spoilers for the rest of taz balance!

*voidfish speculation: my suspicion is that they’re using ‘she’ for the voidfish to foreshadow that they have a baby, so that makes them a “mother”? i call bullshit, but i’ve heard it used before as a justification for misgendering an enby who gives birth. obvs the voidfish is not a human being, people can have multiple pronouns, it’s not a 1:1 comparison, but i for one (as an enby myself) really liked the voidfish using they/them and feel oddly betrayed at them suddenly changing the pronouns. fingers crossed that there’s a different reason.

"what am statue” is low-key foreshadowing since magnus says it

merle knowing what relativistic time dilation is

LUP was burnt into the wall in the cafeteria in the podcast - lucretia would’ve seen it for sure. so they put it in taako’s room this time...

aw no ‘sorry about the cookies little man’

In 5 or however many years when gn series ends, someone should do a poll of people who only read the graphic novels and see if any of them pronounce “Lup” weird since they’ve only ever seen it written down.

hero wreathed in flames 0.0 I hope Joaquin is still there in the finale but I like the duality here

BATTLEAXEPROFICIENCYEASTEREGG

SNEAK PEEK AT THE HUNGER SNEAK PEEK AT THE STARBLASTER AAAAAAAA

257 - ‘I know him better than you could ever imagine’ because he created you? Oof ouch ow my bones. also....the magnus that made the cup was a very different person from magnus now. it’s not what Julia would want - the cup never met julia, obvs, and does not know the ways she changed him for the better.

Bottom of 327 - sweet Angus boy are you drawing something on that orb?

Istus is like you’ve been serving me your whole lives without knowing it in the podcast - maybe a bit too much foreshadowing for the GN

[yuri-is-online]

I’ve had this thought in my mind for awhile, but I think there’s even more lore(?)/more to Haku & Tohma’s relationship. That’s shown I mean! Hear me out: in the first episode MC is unable to find a ride. All of the cars seem to be ignoring her. The trains were stopped bc of an earthquake. MC uses catsmo. Totally not coincidentally, Haku joins the ride. I’m assuming Tohma was behind both the earthquake (stigma) and the cars ignoring her. A part of me is like, what if Tohma had contacted Haku to intervene? Tohma appearing out of nowhere to bring her back would definitely give away that he’s keeping watch. So Haku, the only other ghoul that she knows/that could show up (Taiga being restricted, Jin never leaving his room), is the go to dude.

All of this then leads me to thinking- what if Haku had gotten the skeleton key from Tohma? The other option would be the Chancellor or a Professor. Either or, there’s some level of trust for him to have it. Unless he stole it LOL.

Also… The campus run-in scene between them both is so interesting?? To me at least haha. I’m torn between: Tohma being unhappy to see Haku because he’s the spy/or the main suspect of it hence calling him a snake (dodge viper). Or the comment stemming from Haku transferring out of Frostheilm thus being a snake in that sense. Or both, it could be both fr.

Sorry for the long ask! I’m just really enticed by whatever’s going on

Long asks are welcome here, be not afraid to ramble if my ask box is open you are free to yap.

So first off, I highly doubt that Haku got the skeleton key from Tohma. Tohma specifically says that he got permission to use the key from the school, something he is able to do due to having a good relationship and reputation with Darkwick's staff. It is not his artifact, nor is it in the care of Frostheim; that makes me think it is an artifact similar to the Fox Robe, something that the school keeps on hand for missions that ghouls can either request use of as needed or they have multiple of, but only if it is deemed necessary by the staff. Professor Moby appears to be the one in charge of artifact permits from Taiga's bond story, and he is also the advisor for Hotarubi, so if he is the one you would get permission from Haku might have an even easier time than Tohma does. Haku is also someone that the Chancellor seems to trust, "Have I ever lied to you?" wouldn't be a convincing argument otherwise.

Their relationship seems tense based off of that campus event, but they seem to have been close at one point. Tohma refers to Haku by his surname Kusanagi, while Haku calls Tohma by his first name. Tohma offers him a smoke, but Haku says he's been trying to quit... they still haven't added the damn affection chats back so I can't see what's up but from what I understand Haku also seems to have transferred dormitories and people see this as him "switching sides." Remember! Tohma wasn't in Frostheim until half a year ago and we don't know when Haku transferred. I'd assume it was around the same time as you typically need special permission to transfer, but the fallout of the Clash seems to have resulted in multiple transfers to help smooth over the balance of power. We know why Tohma went to Frostheim, he wants to use Jin for some reason, so why did Haku go to Hotarubi? And what was his previous house? Was he also in Vagastrom with Tohma and Alan? Or was he somewhere else?

While Tohma could have been behind the earthquake due to his stigma, the cars ignoring her felt more like the result of her curse or the sage's ring than anything he could realistically pull off. I doubt he would ask Haku to go get the MC when he is someone he doesn't refer to by his first name and calls a snake to his face... it's possible of course depending on when he begin to suspect him but we don't know enough about their previous friendship, if one existed at all, to make that call. To me Haku finding the MC suggested one of three things: 1) Darkwick is watching MC due to her history of running away and tasked Haku with doing that, 2) Haku has been watching MC of his own accord for his own purposes or 3) Haku knew MC would try to run away because we are stuck in a timeloop and she did this before. I like option 3 best myself, but anything is possible at this point.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts with me, I worry I'm a bit too sus of Haku for my own good that I neglect to think about all the ways Tohma is too. I should do that a bit more, no one wears a monocle that isn't weird af

[aslamat]

Stonehenge Mysteries: Men, Mystery, and a Marvel of a Monument

Stonehenge is a megalith organized on the Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, England, and like all ancient monuments, it has been fascinating for centuries. The construction of the pillars that form the ceiling is thought to be so tall and symbolic that it creates curiosity. Though the available knowledge regarding Stonehenge remains unbiased, several issues are still mired in controversy. This typical blog post focuses on Stonehenge mainly in terms of the purpose of its construction, the methods used in construction, and the celestial purpose that was assigned to the stone circle.

The Purpose of Stonehenge

Arguably, one of the most frequently asked questions about Stonehenge is about the monument’s function. There are a number of theories that, when examined, are proffered with much rationale as to why they should be accepted.

A Ceremonial Site

Due to its construction complexity and its specific layout, Stonehenge was expected to be used ceremonially. This indicates that it was used in religious observances since it has an alignment with the sun solstices of the summers and winters. The main structure of the Heel Stone was placed to align itself with the sun rise on the summer solstice, which suggests solar cult or agricultural rituals.

A Burial Ground

A study carried out on human bones pulled from various digs in and around Stonehenge suggests that it served as the burial place of individuals. Cremated remains were observed at the site, indicating that it was one of the important burial grounds for the elites or people of higher rank in that period and was in use as early as 3000 BC. But this theory fits with the belief that Stonehenge was built as a shrine for ancestor spirits.

A Healing Center

There are theories that certain elements of the monument, as well as the placement of Stonehenge as a whole, were intended to allow for this. A couple of skeletons bearing marks of diseases and wounds that may have been fatal imply that those in ailing states could trek to the shrine with the hope of being healed. The bluestones used in the construction of the circle were believed to have healing virtues, and these originated in Wales.

An Astronomical Observatory

One of the dominant theories is that the grand monument was an ancient observatory, and the stones were aligned with specific stars. This is consistent with the idea since the precise laying down of stones correlates with the occurrence of solstices and equinoxes. It could have probably been utilized in the prediction of astronomy, which helped in agriculture and the scheduling of religious ceremonies.

The Construction of Stonehenge

Historians and archaeologists have marveled at the creation of Stonehenge, which is a circle of stones. No technology was available, and yet it was quite intriguing how the prehistoric people moved and set up those large stones.

Transporting the stones

Stonehenge consists of two types of stones: sarsen stones and bluestones of the neolithic period from western Asia and Europe, respectively. The giant sarsen stones, which each weigh up to 25 tons, may have come from the Marlborough Downs, located 32 kilometers away. These were the smaller bluestones that could weigh up to 4 tons and were transported from Preseli Hills in Wales, more than 240 km away.

Earlier, it was assumed that the construction was transported using sledges and rollers, and later through water bodies. Such an immense operation would have necessitated proper planning in terms of human labor and advanced engineering.

Erecting the Stones

Even when the stones were on site, another problem arose as to how best to put them up or raise them. Currently, ancient writers have posited that prehistoric builders employed a system of earth ramps and wooden beams to lift the construction pieces and maneuver them to their appropriate positions. The lintels, or horizontal stones, were fitted and locked in position through the use of mortise and tenon joints, a sign of the high technicality that had been attained.

Precision and planning

Because there are only megaliths arranged in a circular fashion within the walls of Stonehenge, constructing the monument was a highly precise undertaking that needed careful planning as well as knowledge of geometry and astronomy. They are arranged neatly in a cyclic fashion, and several of them are oriented in specific positions depending on the rightful rites associated with stars. The sophistication of the measurements and the accuracy of the alignments show the builders must have been skilled people with knowledge.

Celestial Alignments

Another interesting historical fact about Stonehenge is that the construction of the circle was to have some kind of correlation with some astronomical phenomena. The feature has had people believing that it was used for astronomical purposes since it was created.

Solstices and Equinoxes

Arising from the above, it can be well argued that Stonehenge was well-aligned to create a solar calendar with shadow markers that pointed directly to the summer and winter solstices. As such, during the summer solstice, the sun reverses its position over the Heel Stone, rises directly at the monument, and provides a shadow through the heart of the stones. This formation can be observed during the shortest day of the year, the winter solstice, when the sun sets in the direction of the Altar Stone. Such alignments indicate that Stonehenge wanted to signify the change of seasons, something that was indeed important in civilizations that dealt with farming.

Lunar Alignments

However, it is not only solar alignments that have been associated with Stonehenge; lunar relationships are evident as well. Some stones are oriented north-south, east-west, and large stones lie parallel to the moon; the builders may have monitored the lunar cycle. It could have been used to estimate eclipses of the moon or some other event, and this has been achieved when its current facet aligns with a past instance.

When can Stonehenge be crowned as having the enduring mystique of Stonehenge?

Nonetheless, the mystery enveloping Stonehenge remains intact since there are countless theories developed by researchers, but the monument still has many secrets. The intent behind its creation, the architectural techniques used in building it, and the connection with astronomy continue to be the objects of discussion and wonder. These monuments oppose the question of historical relevance by holding immense aesthetic and cognitive appeal for multi-generational scrutiny.

Stonehenge is not just a set of stones set together; it is a dynamically creative structure erected by our forefathers. This alignment with the stars, together with the effort that went into the construction of the monument, shows how the value system of paleolithic people pegged heavily on the physical environment.

It does make you think that as people carry on digging around Stonehenge and researching it, will more features and facts surrounding the monument be revealed? Nevertheless, the true purpose of Stonehenge can be explained only in riddles, and a shadow of it is still being whispered to inspire and amaze people around the world, all the while making them think about our ancestors’ genius in the field of architecture.

Thus, having analyzed the mysteries of Stonehenge, we opine that it is beneficial to get closer to understanding the achievements of the ancestors. If, indeed, Stonehenge functioned as a meeting place for the elite to conduct rituals, an emplacement for burying the dead, a sanctuary to solicit healing from gods, or a site to conduct an astronomical calendar, it remains today as a testament to mankind’s wisdom and efforts to learn about the world.

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 10/10/2023

by dry volume, this post is 80% talking about gallery walls. tl;dr : do not buy or hang up things you do not like in a vague attempt to make your house look more grownup ONLY put up things you love, mat your art to give it visual room to breathe.

listening

had a playlist of the james bond theme songs on while i was deep cleaning my kitchen and the line "YOU GOT TO GIVE THE OTHER FELLA HELL!!! " from SPECIFICALLY the guns 'n roses cover of live and let die (even though the playlist had the correct mccartney version) has been THOROUGHLY stuck in my brain for forty eight hours.

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reading

academic transphobia to follow:

an anti-reading section, for once. Retraction Watch (site that tracks academic paper retractions and major academic beef like when someone is stripped of tenure for fraud, formerly my beloved) published an op-ed by an anthropologist TERF who is Big Mad she got called out by her professional association for trying to submit a conference talk that amounted to hate speech against her trans colleagues in the name of the stupid fucking largely disproven sexing skeletons thing. the comments have devolved into the professor sock puppeting anyone who goes "hey RW why did you platform this?"

would be very interested to hear from RW about how a retracted conference talk has the same impact on the scientific community as a retracted paper, but we'll fucking see. i think RW provides an important service to the scientific community (they are the most indepth and thorough tracker of retractions, more so than the actual publishers) but this is a fucking weird move

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watching

rewatched Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988, dir. Zemeckis) for fic research. GOD this movie is fucking good. it performs a minor animation miracle every thirty seconds.

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playing

nothing to report

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making

by popular demand (four people), some thoughts about gallery walls. some discourse on the method, if you will. i went with a gallery wall bc i like the look and i had an extremely large blank wall to fill bc this apartment is slightly too big for me. the string lights remind me very much of my dorm rooms but cool lamps have been few and far between down here.

how to get art (and why/caveats)

i honestly don't have a ton of direct collecting advice here other than "have you tried going to a lot of thrift stores". i cheat bc both my parents were architects who collected art, everyone in my family dabbles in fine art, and my sister has her bachelors in art history. so i am awash in paper, constantly. i grew up with a set of flatfiles and a closet full of spare frames. i recognize most people do not grow up like this.

with that caveat out of the way, how do i actually get my art? usually one piece at a time over a very long period of time. there's a postcard on my gallery wall i got in 2009. this is a game you will be playing for the rest of your life as you discover things you like and your tastes evolve.

it is VITAL that you love every piece on your walls. no filler ikea canvases unless you actually like them. the instant you start thinking "oh i need a landscape to look Grownup" you have to strangle that thought in the cradle. there are no rules, especially in art. put whatever the fuck you want up on your walls with no regard for the public's taste.

i feel like "i should buy and put up more art" is something that often falls into a vague Grownup Improvement Goal (like budgeting) bc it is an Grownup Improvement Goal and not bc they actually want to buy and put up more art. fortunately for everyone, you do not have to buy or put up Morally or Socially Improving art that will impress some vague category of grownups, bc we don't fucking live in victorian times.

most importantly you do not need to spend much (or in some cases any) money to put things on your walls. getting the effect you want (fancy washi tape, matching frames) may take some money, but using the printer at work and stealing some scotch tape is free.

how to get art (actual advice this time)

i feel a little silly typing this all out but i really like reading other chewsdayposters' processes, and it is really helpful for me a lot of the time to have someone say: actually there is this complete other way of doing something you have never considered bc u did not grow up with it

i ask you: do you have a stack of sentimental papers somewhere in your home? congrats you have some frameable items. a thing does not need to be Fine Art to be in a frame to go on the wall and make you happy. tape up a birthday card. put a quilt up on your wall. pushpin a label from a jar of pickled herring bc it reminds you of your grandma. frame a beloved tshirt. this is a martha stewart ass statement but things that are not traditional paper art on your walls will add variety and whimsy to your home.

other places for art that are not thrift/estate/yard sales:

i do believe that making your own art, including a $3 paint-by-numbers kit, will fix something in your brain. it's very similar to how i personally have to go stand with my feet in a body of water twice a year or THE SLUDGE smothers my brain

your favorite weird indie bands are almost certainly selling posters on bandcamp even if they're not currently on tour

i like the artists' co-op justseeds for art that deals with "social, environmental, and political engagement" like my beloved "fuck space tourism" poster

start a "good lines" or equivalent "art i like" tag on here and buy prints when u have the money. even if artists here don't have a shop open or don't have the specific piece u want as a print, ask if u can throw them an appropriate amount of money on venmo or something and get it printed locally or online. ive had good luck with vistaprint and they have rolling sales

do you like a piece of art in the public domain, like something from a museum? print it out. put it in a frame. no it's not as nice as a professional print but it's free if you do it at work and now it's on your wall

fuck around on wikimedia commons and the internet archive. i particularly love pulp magazine covers and little illustrative insets for out of date astronomy books

non- and semi-consumable supplies

if u put $25 into supplies u can use for many many other projects (i assume you probably have some of the following list), you can make any frame nice and save approximately a gajillion dollars.

good utility knife and extra blades

hammer

tape measure

level (comes with most command hook packs, you can also use your phone)

stepstool, sturdy chair, or patient tall person

assorted nails (you can buy a little tackle box with assorted nails from most big box stores)

little squeezy tube of DryDex spackle ($5) and putty knife or honestly old credit card to fill in nail holes when you move out

OR command strips and hooks

matboard that is white on one side and black on the other (~$8 at big box craft stores). you can use this to cut your own mats and/or replace a kind of weird back on an otherwise good frame

most printer paper these days is acid free. steal some from your workplace.

assorted small brushes

little thing of acrylic paint in whatever color you want your frames to be (~$1.50 ea). you can also spray paint your frames for a different finish but i don't have the space or patience in this apartment

sandpaper or sacrificial emery board

i would further recommend a little set of letter size desktop drawers/mini flatfiles like this to keep all the small stuff you want to frame in one place. i have sentimental art i don't want to frame in one drawer and things i do want to frame in the other. this has been very good for my brain bc it's all safely and flatly contained out of sight, and it's easy to flick through a stack of things i already love when i need one more small thing or one warmer thing to fill a gap

frames

the good news for us is that frames and art are a fucking bitch to move and people frequently give them away. your local discount and thrift stores are going to be fucking awash in small frames 8.5"x11" and under for under $3 each. when you are thrifting or estate saling or yard saling or generally gallivanting about on a weekend, pay little attention to any art actually in a frame. is the frame in okay shape? can you repaint it without too much trouble? will it clean up all right? does it have the glass? can you insert the glass from a different frame into the one you actually want without any thrift store employees noticing?

for weird sizes above 8.5x11 and outside poster size that cannot be easily found at thrift stores, the big box craft stores here in america have roughly quarterly frame sales and frequent coupons. do NOT get your shit professionally framed at michaels bc they upcharge by about 3x compared to other local framers (both on the east coast and here in tx).

i went through two periods of seriously buying frames (last year of high school and the year i moved into the original lair, when/where i thought i was going to stay for a few years) and ive swapped in out and between those dozen or so total. once you have built up a little stock of frames that fit the general sizes of art you tend to collect, ur pretty good for a while. the only new "frame" i bought for my gallery wall was a little floating shelf.

mats

the absolute biggest fucking thing u can do to make your art look nicer is mat that bitch, which gives it room to breathe. if your art does not have a built in border or a lot of white space (see 9, 12, and 13 in the gallery wall below, as well as 8 which has a ton of negative space with the car door), you need a frame bigger than your art. you can google the suggested proportions yourself or decide with your heart.

i am a big fan of a very slapdash floating mat, which means cutting a piece of printer paper to size or flipping around the paper that tells you what size the frame is and slapping your art right on top of that, sometimes with a lick of gluestick to keep it in place. generally a floating mat means a sort of 3D matting technique but we don't have time for that. do not do this printer paper technique long-term with a particularly beloved or expensive piece of art.

u can also buy pre-cut mats at Michaels or Joann’s for not too too many dollars, or cut your own with the acid-free matboard ($10 for a poster board sized piece) and a new utility knife blade and a steady hand. or, if you're lucky, it comes with the frame.

gallery wall specific advice

there aren't any rules. actual galleries and museums tend to put the center of a piece or group of pieces at 57" from the floor. you may want to fuck around with that depending on your own height, the space you have, and the pieces you own.

a gallery wall does not need to be 24 pieces like this one. it can be any number.

this is the first one i have done mostly by myself and it is the most color-restricted one i have ever put up. it is also the one with the most successful repeating motif (circles). usually i grab the art i want most to go together and send pics to my art historian sister who will then arrange it for me and say shit like “do you have another small blue thing for the top left” or “do you have two pieces that are warmer and larger” or "different frame for the middle left"

look at a lot of other gallery walls. personally i like the ones that have non-framed and non-square things in them. ideally mine would have photographs and taxidermy in it for maximum weirdness. but u cannot go wrong with a grid, or all horizontal pieces, or all vertical pieces. for a full wall puzzle piece like this, u do not generally want an american southwest four corners meeting situation. stagger it. lay everything out on the floor and move it around eighteen times (this is the worst part). the gallery wall as a whole does not have to be perfectly aligned to the ceiling or the back of your couch or what have you. it can be sort of an organic blob shape along the top and bottom edges.

my wall

this soothing blue and green wall with wood tone pops has pieces from almost half my life. it skews later in college/recent acquisitions, as i sharpened my taste for limited-number prints and had a car to go to thrift stores with, but that’s just how this specific wall came together

the list below should tell you what each piece is, how much i paid for it (and the cost of the frame if applicable), and when i got it. this wall has most of the Nice Art in my collection that is signed/numbered/in some way slightly fancier bc it is the wall i stare at when on my couch.

embroidered Scorpio constellation hoop, birthday gift from my sister (free, came with hoop, i used some makerspace felt and batting to properly back and finish it much later so free with my tuition), nov 2016

numbered and signed print of an italianate cityscape, $5 and came with the frame and mat from an estate sale, i put a new back on it with scrap matboard so the back of the print wasn't just naked, fall 2021

signed print of a new england landscape, came with the frame and the mat but is stained right over the signature :( $2.50 from salvation army, one of the last things i bought in spring 2023 before i moved

signed original multimedia on board collage by my sister from her like second ever gallery show, $69 in winter 2022 for the art, the frame was from a free pile i gave a new acid free back with scrap matboard. that was such a good free pile i got a huge pile of frames from that

magazine page (idk which one either) i saved in high school (i graduated in 2013) or very early college, frame was from a free pile by the side of the road in summer 2021 and repainted with some white acrylic paint. it is float matted with printer paper. maybe a dollar for the paint? i definitely did not buy the magazine

this is an out of print poster by one of my favorite living artists (Josh McPhee) so i emailed him and asked if i could get it printed myself if i threw him $25 and he said yes. i think it cost $22 to get it printed professionally, the frame is basics by studio decor ($20 for a 2-pack) (i spent so much money and time on this one bc i wanted a very specific look for a very specific space in my kitchen in the old apartment), feb 22

signed numbered woodcut by Roger Peet ($20 in august 2020), another studiobasics frame that was i think $8 in summer 2022. float matted with acid free matboard and not printer paper.

gigantic fuckoff unsigned unlabeled poster i bought bc she reminds me of the Barnes & Noble murals, $10 at goodwill (came with the frame, half off) sep 2023

star chart from the US Naval Observatory that was on a free shelf at Amherst College when i was taking a class there in fall 2018, another studiobasics frame (idk when i bought this one) so under $10. float mount on acid free printer paper.

plaster frog mirror from an estate sale in spring 2021, i do not remember how much i paid for it but it was not more than $5

oh goddamnit this is a new block so of course it restarted the numbering. fatal off by a power of ten error, very typical for astronomy. poster from a show i went to in college spring 2015, do not remember when i bought this sub-$10 studiobasics frame either, float mount on acid free printer paper.

signed poster from my roommate-at-the-time’s cousin’s band in fall 2014 (i can’t actually find the receipt but i did find an email from her cousin letting me know he shipped me and my roommate’s orders together lol) let’s say $20, another sub-$10 studiobasics frame of mysterious provenance.

moon map out of an old science book in high school, let’s be generous and say $10 for both the book and the frame (another studiobasics)

numbered but unsigned new year’s print from a local-ish print shop in massachusetts, $12 at savers with the frame, fall 2022

cover of a very fragile vintage paperback copy of raymond c/handler’s The Long G/oodbye i acquired in high school (could not have been more than a dollar or two), with a frame and mat that came in an ikea multipack my dad bought me in high school bc i had a set of l/ackadaisy miniposters i wanted to hang, looks like the closest modern equivalent is the EDSBRUCK, a single will run you about $12 today

postcard inherited from my grandpa’s collection of loose paraphernalia in 2010 (free but at what cost etc), frame is a studiobasics that come in a pack of 6 for $20 (less if you have a coupon) so let’s round down a smidge and say $3. don’t remember when i bought this frame either, it is matted with real matboard bc the postcard and the back of the frame are so thin

“my heart is a fish” cross stitch (a reference to the imperial radch trilogy of books) i made this and did not date it but i know i blogged about it on here at some point between 2014-2018, i remember having to buy five colors of thread but owned the hoop already, again back and finished it properly much later with maskerspace batting and felt, let’s say $5 not counting my time

postcard from @believerindaydreams last winter in another studiobasics frame and float mounted with acid free matboard.

tiny moon mirror from salvation army in early spring 2015, under $5

CD mirror from Vapor95 ($125? preorder in fall 2021), came with velcro command strips which was very nice of them

a $300 original multimedia collage (the first one my sister ever made, when she was in middle school) i bought in spring 2021 from her first show, sitting on a $5 acrylic shelf from five below i bought last month

22-24 are national geographic maps, 50c each at an estate sale last month, had to buy $7 worth of binder clips and pushpins to put them up bc i don’t fucking know what box they’re in and didn’t have time to rip the whole closet of boxes im ignoring apart

a slightly longer tl;dr: do not buy or hang up things you do not like in a vague attempt to make your house look more grownup ONLY put up things you love, thrift and repaint your frames if possible but you can get very cheap studiobasics ones if you want them all to match, acid-free mat your art for preservation and to give it room to breathe, keep a little drawer or box of stuff you love and might want to frame

[sweetrevxnge]

Ghosts In The Snow

Chapter Five

Pairing: Vampire!Kylo Ren x Reader AU

Summary: Six long years had passed under the reign of the First Order. The bitter winters grew longer, and as they did, hope faded from the hearts of the citizens of Hosnian Prime. As a lieutenant in the Resistance cavalry, it was your duty to nurture that ember of hope. After a mission takes an unexpected turn, you are taken prisoner by a commander in the First Order, a mysterious man with an insatiable appetite—for violence, power, and you. In the coming days, you must keep the spark of your own hope alive from the dark confines of the Commander's castle.

Warnings: sexual content, violence, blood kink, gore, mentions/descriptions of injury and death

*concurrently being published on AO3 and Wattpad as well!

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Next Chapter

Spotify Playlist

Word count: 3k

Chapter-specific CW: compulsion, light emotional manipulation (but it's ok bc he's a hot vampire)

A/N: "how am I supposed to live laugh love under these conditions?" -y/n to kylo probably

───────── ❅ 🦇 ❅ ─────────

“After you, my dear.”

The threshold of the doorway was all that stood between you and the prospect of freedom. Or at least, so you thought.

Moonlight peaked through the dark clouds above, flooding the spacious courtyard Ren had brought you to with silver light. Disappointment sank through you like a stone—not that you were expecting him to loosen your invisible lead enough to allow you to roam an open area of the castle’s property. All things considered, this was generous.

Tentatively, you stepped out into the night, disregarding your lack of footwear as you followed the ivory tiles lining the path. Short, frostbitten hedges surrounded you, perfectly manicured despite their leaves being brittle and sparse. Snowflakes dusted the earth, falling like tiny, frozen kisses on your skin.

Woven throughout the foliage were dozens of rosebushes, their thorns now all that remained of their beauty. It wasn’t difficult to imagine the garden in bloom, with rays of sunlight bathing the roses until their petals unfurled, inviting bees to collect pollen from each colorful bundle. But spring had long since passed. The stems had morphed into skeletons, their wilted petals cracking under the blanket of frost. It was oddly beautiful; something that was once so vibrant, now faded and cold, preserved by winter’s embrace.

Around you stood the high walls of the castle, with elegant archways and stained windows. Everything felt venerable, even down to the footsteps immortalized in the tile from centuries of tread, aging the fortress well beyond the Empire’s rule. Judging by the weathered state of the walls encasing you, the castle was likely constructed during the Grand Republic’s reign, dating it beyond the past three hundred years. To think that there was a time when its halls had been occupied by diplomats—ones who placed the interests of the people above their own aspirations. Much like the garden, their memory had faded in the presence of the First Order.

You stopped in front of two black iron benches arranged in the center of the court. They accented the focal piece of the garden: a pond, sheathed by a layer of glistening ice. You pictured a family of ducks paddling through it in the summer, creating tiny ripples as they splashed the cool water onto their feathers. The irony of peace existing in a place of such violence.

“What do you think?” Ren asked behind you, joining you in observation of the frozen water.

Releasing a long breath, you answered bluntly, “It’s hard to say. Everything’s dead.”

He chuckled at your honesty. “Yes. But even now, there is a certain beauty to it, wouldn’t you agree?” He stepped closer, pressing his chest flush against your back, offering you no heat. There was nothing warm or soft about him. For all you knew, he was made of marble beneath the layer of black fabric—his body temperature suggesting as much.

You instinctively pulled away, turning to face him. Quick breaths passed through your lips, the wisps of vapor lingering in the air like ghosts. Ren was frightening and beautiful, making him the most dangerous kind of monster. Not the kind that mothers warned their children of through tales, hoping to deter them from venturing too far into the woods, but the kind that the ladies at court would gossip about. The handsome devil.

“From a certain point of view, I suppose,” you finally said, turning your back on him once again. You didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of agreeing—even if he had heard your inner dialogue earlier.

Ren walked alongside you as you continued to meander through the garden. Even the slightest brush of his arm made the hair on the back of your neck stand. Although, in fairness, the culprit could very well have been the winter air, too.

You considered making conversation with him, less because you were interested in what he had to say, but rather as a pleasantry in return for the change of scenery. When you opened your mouth to speak, you found that the words were lodged in your throat, impossible to push out. Perhaps it was the icy air burning your airway, or another force entirely. Regardless, you continued to walk in silence, sorting through your thoughts—as you suspected he was, too.

It seemed as if the tile path had transformed into shards of glass by the way your feet ached, each step sending a wave of pain through your nerves. Determined to stay outside as long as possible, you ignored it, slowing your pace to accommodate.

“You’re shivering,” Ren stated, as if you were somehow unaware of your chattering teeth.

“Yes, I know.”

“Would you like to go inside?”

You froze in place, but unlike in the forest, this was not his doing. He came to stand in front of you, tracing your face with eyes as black as obsidian.

“I doubt that decision is mine to make,” you countered. The illusion of free will—as if you weren’t trapped in this castle because of him.

“You would be dead if it weren’t for me.”

You let out an incredulous laugh. “Oh, yes, how could I forget? The man who slaughtered my entire squadron—my savior.”

His jaw tensed. “It’s not as if I was acting of my volition. I was merely protecting my men, keeping my oath. Surely that is something you can understand.”

Of course it was. But you had failed to do that, and now you would spend a lifetime being haunted by it.

“Enough,” you said, tearing your eyes away from him as you turned to face the withering garden. The frayed threads holding you together snapped, allowing the flood of emotions to pour in. As it did, you wondered if it would always be like this. Reminded of the carnage every time you laid eyes on him. Sentenced to a miserable existence with the man responsible for your nightmares.

A hand came to rest on your shoulder. You shuddered at the touch. “For what it’s worth, their deaths were wholly unnecessary.” There was a trace of remorse in his words, quickly replaced by his usual tone. “But such is the nature of war, my dear.”

You squeezed your eyes shut, biting your tongue before you could say anything else. When you opened them again, Ren was standing in front of you, close enough to hide the moonlight behind him. 

“Why did you do it?” Your voice cracked as you spoke, fighting desperately to hold back your frustration.

He furrowed his brows, confused by your question. “The Supreme Leader’s orders were clear–”

“No,” you snapped, a harsh edge replacing the weakness in your voice. “I mean, why did you capture me? How is it fair that I should be the only survivor, condemned to live out the rest of my days under your thumb?”

As soon as the words had left your mouth, you wished you could reach out and shove them back into the depths of your mind. He didn’t deserve to see you like this, brimming with raw emotion. It was a state you reserved only for those closest to you, those who you would likely never see again.

Ren was silent, stoic. In a moment like this, you wished you possessed his ability to probe minds. Instead of offering you an answer, he cupped your face, brushing his thumb over your cheekbone and jaw, tracing a line as light as a whisper over your skin.

Immediately, the tension in your shoulders dissolved, washed away along with every concern occupying your mind. Despite his cool touch, warmth rose to your cheeks.

“Have you ever considered the possibility that this arrangement could liberate you in ways you’ve never imagined?” His voice was silky, falling on your ears like a symphony of angels. A soft cloud settled over you, eliciting a strange feeling within your chest as you gazed up at him, searching his black eyes for an answer to his question.

“I have not, my lord,” you whispered, the words leaving your tongue like a prayer.

Ren’s lips parted, revealing brilliant white teeth as he grinned, amused by your response. “Of course not. And why should you have? Such thoughts have no place in a mind as troubled as yours.” He swept his fingers over your cheek again, soothing you.

You nodded into his hand. The cold that gnawed at your fingers and toes was nothing more than a distant sensation, an ache quelled by his touch. He glanced down at your figure, frowning at the sight of your dress. In the time that the two of you had been standing outside, a light layer of snow had melted into the thin fabric of your gown, clinging to your skin. With deft fingers, he tied the strings of your cloak into a small knot and smoothed the fabric over your shoulders.

“Now, let’s go inside. I can’t have my bride freezing to death,” he said in a low tone, leaning closer to your lips. “Next time, I advise you to wear more fitting attire.”

Next time. Intoxicated by his words, you nodded in agreement, your eyes still fixed on his.

As if you were a sack of feathers, he hoisted you off the ground, holding you as he did in the forest. Only this time, there was no fear in your heart, no panic closing off your throat. With your hands clasped behind his neck, he carried you back into the castle, moving swiftly through the courtyard. Although the taste of freedom was dwindling with every step he took, you were content—almost pleased—to be returning to the safety of your chambers.

Your head felt as light as the cushions of the chaise lounge as Ren set you down upon it. The memory of where his hands had gripped you remained after he released you, leaving your skin tingling at each spot. In the darkness, it was nearly impossible to see him moving through your chambers, an issue remedied by a fire roaring to life in the hearth.

Satisfied with his work, Ren stood behind the sofa, peering down at you laying across it. Golden flames flickered in his eyes, softening his strong features. Your cloak had shifted, exposing more of your nightwear than you would’ve preferred. But you didn’t mind. In fact, you liked it—how the sleeves had fallen past your shoulders and the hem of the dress had gathered above your knees. You felt ethereal, basking in the glow radiating from the hearth. You couldn’t recall the last time you’d been this relaxed.

You sighed, closing your eyes as you relished the warmth spreading through your toes. “Who should I thank for starting this fire—you or your magic?” You made a vague gesture with your hands, wiggling your fingers as if you were casting a spell.

He chuckled quietly, moving to sit in the chair across from yours. “Neither. Thank the tinderbox that was left on the mantle.”

Propping yourself up with your elbow, you turned to face him, letting your dress drape over your hips. The knot at your neck loosened with every movement you made until you finally grew tired and pulled it free, shedding your cloak onto the sofa. Under any other circumstance, you would be scrambling to cover yourself. This was completely unlike you—to allow anyone other than your handmaid to see you like this. Harlot, your mother would say in her scolding tone, coupled with a scowl. But she wasn’t here—only Commander Ren.

“I find it hard to believe that you’re incapable of starting a fire, given everything else you can do.”

“Unfortunately, I was never any good at it,” he said, his eyes wandering to the golden flames. “Pyromancy, however, has always been one of my strongest suits.”

The conversation stalled for a moment as you watched his fingers glide over the armrest, hypnotized by the patterns he traced in the black velvet. His veins mingled with tendons as he moved—an intricate dance beneath his ivory skin. Somewhere deep within you, an ember flickered to life, its warmth spreading throughout your being. It was unusual, but not unwelcome.

“How can you do these things?” you asked, your voice floating through the air like the wisps of a dandelion.

He sighed, rolling his tongue over his teeth in thought. Finally, he said, “I was raised by witches.”

Your eyes widened—not in shock at his answer, but because he had answered at all. Rey’s words echoed in your mind. Commander Ren is a very private man.

“Witches? As in, multiple?”

He snickered softly. “Just two.”

“I see,” you whispered, watching him intently. There was something inherently alluring about him, an appeal that had drawn you in the instant you laid eyes on his portrait. An indescribable—yet persisting—quality. A charm.

After the success of your first question, you found the courage to pose another. “What were they like?”

A beat passed before he spoke, unease filling your stomach as you waited. The look in his eyes told you that your valiant effort was in vain. “What else did the handmaid tell you?” he asked, crossing his arms over his chest as he leaned back in his seat.

His words hit your chest like a thousand stones, shattering your confidence. Rey had warned you—begged you—to not discuss the matter of the Commander, fearing the consequences awaiting her if she did. Guilt crashed into you.

“Nothing. She said nothing else,” you stammered, pushing yourself up to a sitting position. With pleading eyes, you turned to him. “I swear it by all the gods.”

Ren stood to his feet, shushing you as he strode toward you. “There’s no need to call upon the gods, dear. I believe you.” His long fingers caressed your jaw, tilting your head up to meet his intense gaze. “I also believe that the girl is sensible enough to want to keep her head attached to her body. You asked her about me, didn’t you?”

Your heart slammed into your ribs, as if it were attempting to leap out and crawl into Ren’s hands. There was no use in arguing—he already knew the truth. The outcome of your fate depended on any ounce of respect you could earn from him. Lying now would be a disservice to everyone involved.

“Yes, I admit, I asked her to tell me what she knew of you, but she refused. It was only after I continued pressing the matter that she finally answered. Please, have mercy on her, she is innocent–”

He silenced you by pressing a finger against your lips. “If I beheaded every servant who spoke ill of me, the castle would be swept by ghosts.”

You said nothing, an unspoken understanding passing between you. While you believed him, there was also validity in Rey’s fear. Even the servant boy cowered in his presence. If one thing were true in this life, it was that rumors carried weight, and at times, merit.

“Why do they fear you so much?” you asked as his thumb brushed over your chin.

Ren let out a long sigh as he ran his fingers down your neck, pausing at your pulse point. “People fear what they do not understand.”

The air grew thick in the silence. A familiar sensation embraced you, igniting every fiber of your being under his touch. Much like the fire in front of you, the ember in your belly became an inferno. Your gaze fell to his pillowy lips, imagining what they would feel like against yours—what they would feel like on every inch of your skin. As soft as sin, probably. His eyes were coals, twinkling in the amber light, a tell that your thoughts were not as quiet as you had hoped.

“What do you fear most, darling?” he asked, his voice low and inviting. “I imagine that a woman like yourself doesn’t fear much, but everyone has their weakness.” He tilted your head slightly to the side, eyes wandering down your neck. “What is yours?”

Blood rushed in your ears, making you dizzy. Through the haze in your mind, a tiny voice broke through, begging you to resist him—resist the urge to bend to his will. But it was becoming increasingly difficult to barricade your thoughts, and as his eyes bore into yours, irises now a deep shade of red, his devilry won.

“Purpose.” The word passed through your lips like a specter, carrying a cadence that was foreign to your ears. “I fear a life without purpose.”

Satisfaction radiated off of Ren. “I see. And that is exactly why you were the only survivor.” He stretched his hand over your throat, applying gentle pressure to either side of your neck. The rhythmic drumming of your heart pulsed through his fingertips. “Because your purpose is so much greater than serving the Resistance.”

“What do you believe my purpose is, Commander?”

The backlight of the hearth cast a halo around him, deifying him. Ignoring your inquiry, he said, “The night is almost over. I suggest you get some rest.”

With that, he left you, somehow more cold and alone than you had been before. As the latch clicked shut, the haze lifted, quickly replaced by dread. Your vision tunneled on the fire in front of you, the black edges snuffing out your surroundings, narrowing your view to only the flames dancing over the logs.

As you stood from the lounge, your knees buckled, forcing you to summon all your strength to reach the bed before collapsing. Chest heaving, you stared up at the canopy, hoping to find anything but flecks of light dancing across your eyes. The voice in your head was shouting now, building to a deafening pitch, its message clear.

In the wake of his presence, two things remained: your distrust of Commander Ren and the strange warmth that had settled in your stomach.

[exhaustedpirate]

ruff night

halloween is a state of mind so take this "trick or treat" prompt that came a little late bc logistics and fickle muse! and another entry for the CS spooky/autumnal bingo! a massive thanks to @jonesfandomfanatic for betaing!

rated T | 6190 words

also on AO3

summary: Henry loves trick or treating. He would just like a little less magic with his treats.

Halloween is coming to Storybrooke.

Henry sits Killian down a few weeks before for a ‘crash course’, as he called it, on everything related with the holiday. There were moving pictures on a small screen with bright images and even a laser pointer - a ‘powerpoint presentation’, the Swans call it. 

He is told that there are pumpkins cut into scary faces or detailed artworks; spiders, bats, skeletons and all sorts of spooky beings litter front yards, roofs, porches and windows. There’s a dangerous amount of pumpkin and cinnamon flavoured treats flowing throughout the town; and, the boy’s favourite, everyone dresses up in costumes for trick or treat.

Trick or treat, he is told, is the best part of the celebrations. Killian agrees. 

It’s a brilliant practice - adults must fill children’s buckets with candies or they get punished. Henry corrects him between giggles that the punishments are small acts of vandalism - and he wonders if vandalism is allowed only on that specific day, he had been told it was a crime. Emma tells him that it mostly involves eggs and toilet tissues thrown at someone’s house. 

Killian still thinks it’s a delightful tradition. Unfortunately, he is informed that he is too old to participate in trick or treating - he could just purchase the candy, as Emma informs him, but he and the lad both agree that earning the candy is the satisfying part.

Henry is clearly excited for the celebrations - it’s his favourite holiday, he says - especially since this year he’ll be able to go out with his friends without adult supervision. “New York was way too dangerous to go trick or treating without chaperones,” he explains. “But Storybrooke is different and both my Moms said I could go with my friends.”

He also tells him that he’s thinking of reusing his costume from last year since this is the town’s first time celebrating the holiday and he wants to show off his lonely man costume. Killian smiles and nods his way through Henry’s babbling, genuinely delighted by the boy’s excitement, before he asks Swan for clarification.

“I-It’s Han Solo,” Emma corrects him between wheezing laughter, that leaves him concerned for her wellbeing. Especially since he’s still confused. “He’s a-a- oh, god.” Emma stops trying to talk until she can get herself under control, tears welling at the corners of her eyes. “He’s like a pirate but in space.” She points to the ceiling as if to explain it but Killian thinks he remembers Henry mentioning the Stellar Battles moving pictures and how they took place among the stars.

“Oh,” Killian breathes out in understanding and there’s a fond look on Emma’s face even as she looks seconds away from bursting into laughter again. “I did think it was strange.”

“I’m kinda wishing you had asked Henry about it just to see his reaction.” She giggles and his smile widens at the sound, she really does have a beautiful laughter. “He was so excited last year, I even joined him. He tried to convince me to go as Chewey but I told him it was Princess Leia or nothing.”

Killian puts away the strange name as visions of her in red flood his mind. “Oh?”

She seems to read his mind and her cheeks turn red. “Not like that,” Emma waves him away and pulls her talking device from her jeans pocket, thumbs flying over the screen. “She’s a princess, yes, but she’s also the leader of the rebellion. Here!” 

Emma turns the screen towards him. Her hair is twisted on either side of her head, a long white flowing dress cinched at the waist with a metal belt and what looks like a pretend gun on one of her hands. Henry stands at her side also carrying the same type of weapon in his hand while wearing jeans with a loose criss cross belt, a shirt and a black vest. 

Both mother and son grin at the camera and there’s an ache in his chest that feels a lot like longing.

When he looks back at Emma, her eyes have that soft look again like she understands him and all he can do is pull her for a kiss. Her talking device ends up on the floor with a thunk, her hands grabbing onto his arms. “You like the costume, then?” She asks when they pull away to take a breath.

“Are you wearing it again this year?” He asks in lieu of a response.

She shrugs coyly and he follows the path of her tongue over her bottom lip. “Maybe.”

“Come on, guys.” The boy’s whine from the middle of the stairs causes them to jump apart. “We said no making out in public areas.”

“We were just talking about Halloween costumes, kid.” Emma innocently counters, despite Henry clearly not believing her but choosing to accept it.

“What are you wearing, Killian?”

“Um,” He moves his hand in a circular motion, still slightly overwhelmed at the idea of disguises. “Perhaps my Captain’s coat? Show everyone what the real Captain Hook is supposed to look like?”

They had watched the animated moving picture that depicted his tale and Pan’s a week ago when the subject of his change of style came up. The night had ended with Emma’s head buried in her hands and Henry muffling his laughter with a pillow as Killian ranted and complained about the plot of the story. And even though Emma's head still finds her hands now, Henry doesn’t look ready to laugh.

“No, you can’t!” Killian startles at the strength of Henry’s refusal and even Emma looks up at it. “You have to be someone different, you can go as yourself, that’s cheating.” 

“He doesn’t really know a lot about our culture, kid.” Emma reminds the boy, laying a comforting hand on Killian’s arm.

“Right, sorry,” Henry takes a deep breath, descending the stairs. “Halloween is important business,” Both adults smile at the statement and the way the boy puts his hands on his hips. There’s a sudden look of inspiration across the boys’ face. “I have an idea!”

Killian’s smile widens. “I’m all ears, my boy.” 

“If there’s one good thing that comes from you two being a couple,” Henry grins at the matching blushes on their cheeks before continuing, “is that you can complete my vision.”

“Your vision?” There’s trepidation in Emma’s voice and it reaches Killian when they both look at the way Henry’s grin turns almost wicked.

The boy had gathered his whole family in the loft’s living room and began speaking a whole different language that Emma had to translate later. Killian would take Henry’s Han Solo outfit since he and Leia are a couple - his nose had wrinkled adorably and Emma had blushed in a fetching way. 

Henry would wear a Chewbacca (and he still doesn’t understand who comes up with these names) outfit claiming it’s his favourite character and blushes when Emma points out how he and Han Solo are best friends, partners, waving away the way Killian beams at the realisation. 

The boy quickly moves on to explain that Lucas will be Luke Skywalker, Leia’s brother, making Emma smile and tickle the baby’s belly in a way that makes Killian’s heart stutter. The prince and Snow White will dress up as Anakin and Amidala. He is told Anakin is the bad guy in the movies and that confuses him. 

“Why is your grandfather a villain? Surely, there’s another character he can disguise himself as.”

Emma smirks knowingly next to him but presses her lips together, he turns to find Henry with the same expression. “Well, it’s because Anakin is L-” 

“No!”

“Don’t!”

Emma and Henry’s cries startle David into silence and the baby into spooked crying. Snow White soothes her child even as she’s trying not to laugh at everyone’s expressions.

“What?” Killian asks confusedly looking around.

“He was going to ruin the movies for you.” Henry whines and David seems to understand.

“Right, sorry, kid.”

Killian turns to Emma, still confused. She takes his hand and that is almost an incentive to be confused more often. “It’s a plot from the movies, it was a big revelation when it came out and Henry wants you to have the full experience.”

“Exactly,” Henry says, pointing at his mom. “And that’s why Grandad is going as Anakin and not Darth Vader.” He looks pointedly at David who looks chastised before turning to Snow. “And grandma is Queen Amidala.”

“This would have been the perfect time to have my long hair again.”

Killian’s frown is giving me a headache. “This is very confusing.”

“All you have to know,” Emma leans her shoulder against his, “is that you are a smuggler with an awesome spaceship, a self-centred pirate with a superiority complex that ends up joining the good guys.” He raises his eyebrow at her and she grins before a blush creeps up onto her cheeks as she continues. “And you are enamoured with a rebellious princess who pretends to not feel the same.”

“So, you don’t really have to pretend too much.” Henry grins at the two of them with his comment, making his grandparent’s laugh. Emma’s blush deepens and Killian’s smile widens as he leans closer to her. 

“Lad’s right, it should be easy.”

And that’s how Killian ends up walking down the streets of Storybrooke dressed in a more well-fitted version of Henry’s Han Solo costume. And he has to admit, it suits him extremely well.

Orange, purple and black decorations fill the street in the short walk from Granny’s to Snow and Charming’s loft. Children laugh and cheer at their buckets and many wave and smile at him. He sees familiar characters from Henry’s storybook and others from the moving pictures and books that Emma and the lad have been slowly introducing to him. It’s all strange and fantastic and he is in a good mood - and it doesn’t let up even when a snivelling teenager dressed up as the colourful version of Peter Pan tries to spook him.

The buzzing of the talking device hidden in one of the pockets in his belt has him shoving the plastic gun under his arm and pulling it up, laughing at the message from Emma - please hurry, my mom is already tipsy.

He’d gotten better at typing with one hand as he responded - 5 minutes love and henry? And maybe he got faster because he wrote smaller messages and was more lenient over grammar but who was going to blame him?

trick or treating, you might find him on the way

As if she had the gift of clairvoyance, a bright light flashes in his face signalling Henry’s friend Hansel dressed as another character from the Star Battles. The boy is dressed in a golden sparkly fabric and moves as if his body was made of metal, giggling every time he stumbles and glistening under the streetlights. Gretel shuffles around in a blue and white cardboard box with clothes to match the colour. Henry completes the group in his fursuit, head encased in a hood made of the same fur, a belt just like Killian’s from his shoulder to his hip. 

Maybe he can check in with the lad, perhaps relieve him of one of his candies. He looks to be arguing with Gretel now who takes the lead of the group, Hansel forgets his enjoyment of the character when his sister says something because he too looks like he’s trying to stop her. Frowning, he watches as they knock on a door - the sound reaching him as he approaches - of a house without decorations but naturally suited for the holiday. Henry pulls her by the hand and they all take a step back.

A shriek reaches him even before the door opens. He sees a mess of lavender hair surrounding a short older woman’s head and a menacing voice rises up. Henry manages to pull Gretel behind him and he only sees a green spark of magic from the witch’s hand before he starts running, his plastic gun lost on the ground. 

Next thing he knows, the children are screaming, his body hurts and the world turns dark.

---

Half an Hour Earlier

“Look at how much candy we have!” Nic- Hansel’s grin is wide as he lifts his arm in a robotic move making all the candy inside rattle.

“We’re going to rot our teeth with our haul tonight.” Gretel matches his grin, struggling to look inside her bucket over her disguise.

“I told you that our costumes were going to be a hit.” Henry gushes, fixing the strap over his chest.

“Yeah, yeah,” Hansel says as he stumbles over his steps letting out a giggle. “You’re just lucky you changed your mind in time. Dad was about to order my Darth Vader helmet.” 

Hansel, from the fable, was talking about Star Wars while his sister, Gretel, recites how much she loves R2D2 in front of his very eyes. He loves his life.

“-just cool. You never told us why you wanted to change the group costumes, Henry?” Gretel asks and Henry hopes that the hoodie in his fursuit covers his blushed cheeks.

“I wanted to match my families’ costumes.” Henry shrugs. The twins look at him with narrowed eyes and he wants to laugh at the way the gold spray is flaking off Hansel’s eyebrows but is too busy hiding his face.

“Right,” Hansel draws out. “It’s not like you were super excited to be Han Solo or anything,” he says sarcastically.

“I prefer Chewbacca,” Henry says defensively.

“And it has nothing to do with Captain Hook being Han Solo instead?” Gretel bumps him and manages not to stumble against the cardboard edges.

“You guys don’t know what you’re talking about.” He crosses his arms, huffing. “And it’s Killian.”

The twins laugh and he quickens his pace, annoyed. “You know Henry, it’s okay to like him.” Gretel edges, rushing to meet up with him. Hansel, true to his character, tries to catch up to them in his robotic walk. “I mean, your mom does and he’s not a villain anymore.”

“I know that,” he mutters, relaxing his arms. “I just don’t want to force it on him.”

“I really don’t think-”

“Oh, what’s that?” Hansel interrupts them, stopping in front of a house on the other side of the street.

They all turn to it and Henry holds back a shiver. It looks more like a cottage than a house, even if it is in the middle of the suburban street. The roof is missing tiles, the paint on the outside is peeling off, the front lawn is either dry or missing and the front gate creeks in the wind. For some reason, this doesn’t look like someone who’s just a big fan of Halloween.

“They went all out.” Gretel grins. “Look at those.” 

The trio follows her finger towards the signs written in dripping paint - “Stay away!” “Get out!” and “No children!” scattered across the lawn. He remembered Regina talking about how she made a deal with the other more unruly citizens to keep their shenanigans to themselves, or else. The open ended threat was something he chose to ignore. Adult stuff.

“Let’s go!” Gretel urges them, taking a step forward only to be stopped by Henry’s grip on her wrist.

“I really don’t think this is a good idea,” he warns, hearing Hansel whimper out an agreement. “It could be dangerous. It could be a witch.”

Unfortunately that looks to embolden the girl, puffing out her chest and pulling her wrist from Henry’s grip. “We aren’t afraid of witches.”

He chases after her when she strides up to the door, Hansel forgetting his portrayal of the character as he mutters. “Talk for yourself.”

“Gretel, don’t-” But she knocks and he finally manages to pull her back a few steps. 

A delighted shriek-like laughter sounds out, startling them into taking another step back. Light purple hair is the first they see when the door opens, before they raise their head so they can see an older woman with almost glowing green eyes. Despite the fear, Henry is almost amused that she looks almost exactly like the movie, if not for the menacing look in her face. 

Madam Mim.

“You’re supposed to keep away.” The witch glowers at them, fingernails gripping the doorframe. “How dare you invade my home!?”

Henry manages to pull Gretel behind him just as he sees Mim’s hand glow with green magic. He hears the twins’ stomps as they run away and inhales a sharp breath when she hurtles the ball of magic towards him, out of time to get away. 

They all scream until, suddenly, he’s being pushed to the ground as the green magic finds another target. Henry looks up, eyes wide.

“Killian!” He calls out as the man is enveloped in a green cloud of magic, Madam Mim laughing hysterically from her porch.

When the cloud dissipates, a large, skinny dog sits where Killian stood before. The animal shakes its head and stumbles as it stands, due to its missing paw. That causes Mim more amusement as her laughter grows louder. Henry looks between the dog, who is observing himself and whining, the witch cackling away and the twins outside of the front gate, shuffling in pace as if considering going back in to help but too scared to do so.

“Bring him back.” Henry finds himself recklessly standing between Dog-Killian and the witch, his tone demanding. “Now!”

“I believe you are aware of a fantastic concept from this land’s law.�� Mim speaks calmly as she approaches, her eyes wide with glee. “Private property.” She touches his forehead and he hears growling from behind him. “Which allows me to do anything I want with you.” She giggles and claps her hands before shrugging. “Under the guise of self-defence, of course. Now, what do you prefer? Cat or toad?”

“No, you-”

“Dealer’s choice it is!”

Her hand raises and there are the green sparks again but before it can fully form, the witch lets out a yelp. Killian’s canines are sinking into the witch’s arm and he manages to let go before she sends a blast of magic, throwing the two of them at Hansel and Gretel’s feet. 

“I’m done playing with the lot of you,” Madam Mim yells, a storm cloud generating above her property. “Get out!”

Lightning strikes far too close to them and they set off running, a loud barking sounds as the children scream. They only stop when the loft is in sight, catching their breath on the sidewalk. 

“That was crazy!”

“It’s your fault, Gretel!”

“What?!”

“Witches! You-”

Henry lets the twin’s bickering float around him as he pushes the fur hood from his head. He can only look at the large slim dog in front of him, who looks back at him with blue eyes. The animal’s black fur shines in the street lights and its height reaches close to Henry’s chest. Despite the missing front left paw, it’s holding itself up casually.

“K-Killian?” He mutters quietly and the dog takes a hopping step towards him before letting out a soft woof, like a reply, like the ‘aye’ he would have said if he could.

Because Killian was a dog now.

Killian was a dog.

Henry sinks his fingers into his hair. “My Mom is going to kill me!”

That effectively shuts the twins up, Gretel’s cardboard costume dented on the front from where he’s sure their argument started to turn into a brawl. They look at Henry confused before their eyes settle on the animal nudging his nose into Henry’s chest and huffing at the fur tickling its nose and they gasp.

“Captain Hook is a dog!” Gretel shrieks, bringing her hands to cover her mouth.

“An Irish wolfhound, to be exact,” Hansel mumbles, eyes wide as the dog huffs once more. “What do we do?”

“What can we do?! We don’t have magic and we are not going back to that lunatic!” Gretel keeps her tone, a much different attitude than before.

The d-Killian carefully latches his teeth to the belt across his body and pulls once before taking a few steps to the left and barking. Henry frowns in confusion and Killian barks twice more, the sound as deep as his voice usually is, and taking a few more hopping steps. Henry looks up and sees that they are standing in front of the loft.

“No,” Henry shakes his head and Killian approaches him again, tilting his head. “We need to figure this out before we go see Mom! She can’t see you like this.” Killian huffs and opens his mouth as if to speak whining when he remembers he can’t. 

“Your Mom has magic,” Hansel explains and Killian barks, his tail wagging before huffing at his reaction. “I think he is saying that your Mom can turn him back.” Killian barks once more and the boy grins patting the animal’s head. Henry wants to laugh at the way the pirate was clearly enjoying the pats before taking a step back in indignation at himself.

Henry looks between his companions. Gretel seems to have calmed down from her panic now that there’s a plan, Hansel is looking at the animal like he wants to cuddle up with him and Killian is looking at him with human-like eyes and with that trust he craves so much. He pulls on his hair once more before Killian’s quiet woof stops him.

“My Mom is going to kill me…”

---

The music that they could hear from the lobby is louder as they climb up the stairs. Hansel and Gretel bring up the rear as brother helps sister with her cardboard costume and Henry walks next to Killian worried about stairs and the dog’s lack of paw. 

But for all that it was a crazy situation, Killian had acclimated quite easily to the new body.

The loft door was open and he could see Archie, dressed as a peacock looking bird, colourful fabrics covering his tall body, running after a khaki wearing Pinocchio who was carrying a handful of candy. Pongo zooms by in a simple collar with a large red ball glued on it, strangely not even seeming to notice Killian’s new form. Marco walks briskly after them, carrying a cane with tennis balls glued to the end and wearing a suit. 

Right, Pinocchio had been really into “Up” recently. They looked cute.

Henry stops right at the door when he sees his mom right by the door, phone in hand, white dress flowing down to her feet and her hair in buns on either side of her head. Gretel is barely able not to crash against him, being stabilised by her brother. Killian whines next to him and that catches Emma’s attention.

“Henry,” she sighs relieved, sparing the dog a confused glance. “You weren’t answering my texts.” Her tone is admonishing but the relief is louder.

“Hmm, sorry,” he mumbles and she frowns, probably at the look on their faces. 

“Is everything okay?” She crosses her arms and looks at them searching. “Did you find Killian on the way? He’s also not answering his texts.”

Killian whines next to him again, clearly not able to control his animalistic reactions, and sits on the floor looking up at Emma. That catches her eye and her frown deepens.

“Who-” She starts, pointing towards the dog, glancing between all of them and their loud silence before her eyes widen as she locks eyes with the animal, inching his nose closer to her index finger. He can feel the tension the five of them create.

“Henry!” Mary Margaret greets, draping an arm around Emma’s shoulder. Her tone is loud and her cheeks are red. If he had to guess, his grandmother is drunk. “You guys look so good!” Her white outfit matches Emma’s but instead of a dress is a body suit, a belt on her waist and tall white boots. He doesn’t know how she did it but her wig looks almost natural. “But I don’t think there are dogs in space, Henry,” She wags a finger and it’s clear that she would have fallen if not for her daughter’s presence. “Even if it is very realistic,” She muses. “Who’s that?”

“Killian.”

His grandmother giggles and he thinks his mom has gone paler. “Killian?” She bends over the dog and pets his head. “That’s funny,” Her nails scratch under Killian’s muzzle and he begins to stretch his neck and his tail begins to wag. “Hi, Killian.” Snow coos and it’s that that makes Killian rear back and bark, causing his grandma to straighten up.

Emma shakes herself out of her stupor at the sound. “Killian is a dog?!”

Someone stops the music behind them and the party quiets, everyone looking at the group huddled by the door. His grandfather approaches them with stumbling steps and a lazy smile - are both his grandparents drunk? - and holds his wife’s hand, while securely holding baby Luke - dressed as Luke, ha - in his arms. The black outfit looks great on him, the layering perfectly arranged and even the little braid doesn’t look ridiculous on him. If Henry wasn’t so busy freaking out, he would have been proud of the group costumes they arranged. 

“Come on, Emma, it’s Halloween, don’t ju- oh, shit!” 

The revelation seems to sober the two of them up as his family looks with wide eyes at the large dog beside him. Killian whines quietly and shuffles closer to Henry. All he can think to do is put a hand on the animal’s head. 

“Right, okay,” Emma rubs her mouth as she looks around. “You two,” she points at the twins who squeak in surprise, “get in, sit down, have a hot cocoa. I’ll let your dad know that you got here safe.” Emma takes a step to the side.

Gretel pats his back and they both send him apologetic looks as they walk in, letting Granny - dressed as Mrs. Hudson - fuss over them. Emma sends a glancing look behind her shoulder and a Mario-looking Leroy resumes the music, gesturing for everyone to resume the party.

“You,” Emma points at Henry and Killian and both of them startle. “Upstairs, now.” Underneath the anger, he could hear the worry loud and clear.

Henry spares a quick glance towards Killian before they rush upstairs. He hears Emma tell his grandparents to stay downstairs and keep the party going. Henry sits on the bed, hands tucked between his knees while Killian sits next to him on the floor, body slightly shaking.

Emma’s head appears at the stairs as she joins them, and she sighs as if she had forgotten the situation. She then stands in front of them with crossed arms and a raised eyebrow.

“You really do look like Leia, Mom…” Henry mutters.

“Thanks, kid.” Her lips curve up into a small smile, aware of how worried her son is, before she takes a deep breath and forces herself to relax her shoulders. “But I really need you to tell me what happened.”

Killian bumps his body against his leg, his eyes looking so encouraging, and he can almost imagine the reassuring smile that he would send him if he could. Henry sighs.

“We were trick or treating, the three of us, and there was this house that looked like someone was really into Halloween, you know? But I know that Mom said there were still people around from the Enchanted Forest that didn’t want to integrate,” His mom’s shoulders tense again. “Anyway, we knocked on the door-” Killian huffs next to him but Henry shakes his head and Emma frowns. “We knocked on the door. Madam Mim lived in the house.”

Emma’s frown deepens. “The one from the ‘Sword in the Stone’? That Madam Mim?” 

“Yup.”

“Right, of course,” Emma sighs, rubbing her temples. “Carry on.”

“Well, she didn’t like the fact that we were on her property and tried to curse me.” Henry cleared his throat and rubbed his knees against his hands, looking at the railing of the loft. “Killian pushed me out of the way of the spell and…you know.” Henry gestures towards the animal next to him and then looks up to find his mom looking at the dog with a different look, a soft look.

“Killian-” She starts, her arms falling to her sides, her tone almost a whisper, but Killian barks to stop her. Barking a couple more times as if he’s explaining something but huffs and whines when he realises no words are coming out.

Emma sighs and kneels in front of Killian, his head reaching her from where he sits on the floor. Her hands frame his face and her thumbs rub under his eyes and Killian’s eyes flutter shut and a rumbling noise surrounds his frame. His mom kisses between his eyes before whispering a soft gratitude, causing Killian to huff as if to deny it. She sits back on her heels as they look at each other. It made for an intimate moment, one that he should feel weird witnessing but it just made his chest feel warm. 

“His eyes are the same,” Emma muses as if she hadn’t meant for the thought to come out. “I mean-”

“Yeah, it’s like you can see the expressions he makes,” Henry agrees, blushing when his mom looks up at him. 

“I know what you mean.” She pats his knee and Killian licks her cheek causing her to laugh. Emma looks at the dog pretending not to be amused before she sighs and stands up. “What are we going to do?”

The weight of guilt on his chest hits him suddenly and he sucks in a breath. “I-I’m sorry, Mom.” His voice wavers and he looks away to keep his eyes from watering. “I didn’t mean to-”

“Henry,” she sighs, tucking a finger under his chin to make him look up at her, her expression understanding and soft. He feels Killian’s weight against his leg. “We’re going to figure this out.”

“H-How?” he whispers.

Emma presses her lips together and glances between the two of them. “I’m gonna call Regina, I don’t know if just waving my hand is gonna be enough.” He nods and she rubs her thumb over his cheek. “Stay here, I’ll be right back.”

His mom pats Killian’s head who tries to lick her wrist, she sighs out a laugh before taking her phone from one of her belt pockets. With a last look back at the two of them, she steps out the window to sit on the fire escape. 

Henry sighs as soon as they’re alone, hiding his face in his hands. What did he do? How could such a fun night end so terribly? Why couldn’t he have been better at stopping Gretel? Henry groans in frustration and sorrow. What if Killian can never change back? What if he is stuck as a dog forever? 

A weight on his tight and a low whine brings him out of his panic. He looks down to see Killian’s big blue eyes looking up at him with concern and he can almost see the furrowed brow he would have if he was human - but that look just makes him feel worse. Killian should be mad, disappointed, not concerned over him.

“I’m so sorry, Killian,” Henry whispers, his eyes watering as he slips down the bed until he sits on the floor. “This is all my fault, I-”

As carefully as he can, Killian slips his head under Henry’s chin to lay on his shoulder. Henry doesn’t want to wait, to be careful - his arms wrap around the dog’s body and pull him into his hold, even if Killian is just as big as him like this. He doesn’t seem to mind much, there’s only a huff of surprise before he surrenders to the hug, that low rumbling noise from before louder now that they were so close.

Warmth spreads over his chest and he feels his tears slipping down his cheeks but he feels comforted, even if there aren’t arms wrapped around him or a hand caressing his head like Emma likes to do. Killian lets himself be hugged and the way his head digs into his shoulder tells him that he would hug him back if he could.

“Thank you,” Henry whispers and Killian whines as if trying to refuse the gratitude but he just holds the dog closer to him. “If it wasn’t for you, I would be the one barking around.” Killian huffs and Henry lets a soft smile stretch his lips and pulls away enough that Killian manages to sit between his legs. “You bit her too,” Henry giggles at Killian’s low growl and a soft bark and he can see the fierceness in the dog’s face, the protectiveness and his face softens into a look of wonder. “You protected me, you care about me.” Killian licks his cheek almost shyly and Henry grins before pulling him back into a hug.

“Regina, I’m really gonna need you to stop laughing,” Emma huffs as she climbs back into the room and both of them look at her sigh exasperatedly. “And I am not taking a picture, I’m n- goodbye.” She punches the phone screen before looking at Henry and Killian, her expression turning soft at the sight in front of her.

“Did she know how to break the curse?”

“Uhm, yeah, yeah,” Emma shakes her head, putting her phone back into her belt. “She says I should be able to just turn him back.”

Henry releases the tension he didn’t know he was carrying in his shoulders and his arms fall to his legs with a relieved sigh. Killian’s tail wags and he barks and twirls excitedly. “That’s great.”

“I know, kid.” Emma chuckles and waves her hand. 

A cloud of white smoke surrounds Killian and when it dissipates, Killian - human Killian - is sprawled back on the floor, elbows supporting his upper body, and dressed like Han Solo.

“Bloody hell.” Killian sighs and it’s such a relief to hear his voice that Henry can’t keep himself from jumping to hug him properly.

“I’m so glad you’re back,” Henry murmurs against his shoulder.

“It’s good to be back, my boy.”

“I agree,” Emma chuckles and when they look up, she has that soft look on her face again. 

“Swan,” she holds out her hands for the two of them to get up and Killian pulls her into a hug once they have their feet under them, “Thank you so much.”

“I’m just happy it’s over.” Their lips meet each other in a chaste kiss, aware of the child in the room. “Do you think you feel well enough to join the others?”

“Aye,” He chuckles, holding her hand. “I’m eager to use my two legs and show off my beautiful space princess.”

Emma blushes and pushes his shoulder even as she smiles. “You’re not so bad yourself.” She turns towards a grinning Henry holding out her arms. “Did we complete your vision, kid?”

He is ready to say yes, just happy to be with them without any more curses over them, before he frowns. “You’re missing your gun.” Henry almost accuses, pointing at Killian before his eyes widen. “Our candy!”

Emma frowns, confused. “What?”

“We must have dropped it by the witch’s house!” Henry covers his head with his hands in annoyance.

Killian’s hand covers the boy’s shoulder. “We can always retrieve it l-”

“You guys will never believe this!”

A familiar voice calls out from downstairs and the trio looks over the railing towards the door. Ruby, dressed in a dark suit, with a short skirt instead of pants, holds up three very familiar buckets of candy. “We just found these things full of candy outside!”

“Our candy!” Gretel calls out, rushing from her spot on the couch followed by her brother.

Belle giggles at Ruby’s pout as she is relieved of her treasure - she is also dressed in a short skirt dark suit but there is a familiar hat on top of her curls and he remembers her gushing about The Greatest Detective and how she and Ruby would be dressing up as Sherlock and Watson for Halloween. Everyone was being so good at this holiday.

“There was also this strange weapon,” Belle muses, holding up Henry’s old blaster pistol that he had lent Killian. “Is it yours too?”

“Actually, it’s mine,” Killian calls out and everyone downstairs cheers when they see him in his human form. Henry swears he sees the man’s cheeks blush at it when he looks down at him. “I was committed to your vision, my boy.”

Henry blushes now as he grins. “Then it’s perfect, you guys did amazing.” Emma leans against Killian with a happy smile before reaching to ruffle Henry’s hair.

“You know, I actually enjoyed this Halloween,” Killian comments with a smirk. “But I much prefer the treats rather than the tricks.” 

As they laugh together, Henry hopes that this warm feeling stays there forever.

[amethystfairy1]

hi again. i did end up posting some of my art but idk if there's a way to link it in the ask (kinda new to tumblr lol), so im just gonna trust that you know how to find it. Anyways, I have more questions for you :)

jumping into the deep end w/ traveling thieves:

is there any way to remove a collar without the owner's permission? Could a non-collared person do it? Are they physically destructible? What happens if the owner dies? Basically anything that could free Jimmy and Scott T-T

Can any nether-born wield fire, or just blaze-borns? bc hypothetically, we could get some team ZIT going if impulse is a nether-born (he's normally head cannoned as a demon, but I like the idea of wither skeleton instead for this au, if you don't already have plans for him). he could join Zed and Tango :)))

how does the siren song work? can you get anyone to do anything with it if you were good enough? considering song is in the name, is it more effective if it's more melodic?

how do the rune trigger thingies work? Does the staff need to be continuously touching the person to trigger the collar, or does it have a time limit, or is it a secret third option? (this is for a lil piece i've written that I may or may not post lol)

That's it for now, although I do want to say that it would be adorable if Katherine got Shelby a sun-lamp so she could grow over-city plants down there :3

actually that's not it. it'd be fun if you wrote a piece where Grian helps Mumbo and Scar pull a (not so ethical) job. just an idea :)

ok goodbye

Hello hello!

I found the art! I reblogged the art! I LOVE THE ART!

I said it in my reblog but again here they are SO PRETTY I love Cute Guy his wings are beautiful and his shoes are so KILLER and then the SWAGON from Traveling Thieves! It's even got Grian's lil bay window! It makes me so happy! I will treasure them, thank you so much for sharing!

Questions questions! 🏃‍♀️

Short answer: No. Long Answer: Not any way that Scott or Jimmy currently have access too. If their current owner dies the contract has a clause that will automatically transfer them to whoever said owner designated as the inheritor, this being a built in safety measure to ensure enslaved hybrids don't try to one-hit kill their masters before a punishment can kick in to go free. They are technically physically destructible but any attempt at cutting them or unlatching them will trigger the punishment runes. And they are very tough, reinforced by the magic in the runes, again to ensure this isn't attempted, so it would be far to painful to attempt to just endure the punishment long enough to cut them off. This doesn't mean it's completely impossible for them to get them off without their current masters permission...but we haven't gotten to that yet. 😉

Blaze-borns specifically can wield fire as physical parts of their body, but other nether hybrids are able to pull similar tricks such as heating up their hands to work metal, and obviously they're fireproof. Plus, considering our lovely dark fantasy AU, some of them have proficiency with fire magic! I do have plans for Impulse in Traveling Thieves! Please look forward to it!

It's basically voice-based charm magic. I may have messed this up, but I'm pretty sure I only ever refer to it as 'siren spells' and not 'siren songs'? Is there anywhere I screwed that up? Siren spells also give the user the ability to make their voice more pleasant and tend to have good singing voices anyway. If someone is extremely good with it (ex: Scott's Dad) they could 100% use it to strongly compel others, but it's not like brainwashing. Like when Scott used it, all it really did was make the ice mage suddenly care about his opinion, and that confused her enough that she hesitated on using magic. It still has to be something understandable. It wouldn't have been enough to, say, get her to fire a spell at her companion and kill him. It's more like it makes the users words much more influential in the mind of whoever is hearing it. It can also do other things, though! Like how I mention that Scott's Dad would sing for the Queen, Scott's Mom, to help her relax, that's not just because he's a beautiful singer (which of course he is) he's also using siren spells to lower her stress.

One hit triggers the punishment runes. A second hit makes them stop. Like an on-off switch! They also specifically have to get hit with the gem at the end of the rune trigger. If you do post anything anywhere please do send another ask/post it somewhere I can see, I'd absolutely love to see what you do with the AU! ☺️

Awwww...Katherine could totally get Shelby a sun-lamp, that'd be so cute! Also I totally plan on writing a piece at some point where the Swagon Trio steal something, it's a series called Traveling THIEVES and there has been a distinct lack of thievery so I need to fix that. 😤

Thanks so much for all your lovely questions, and thank you again for sharing your beautiful art! 💖

[gammagoop]

here’s a kind-of-masterpost of the notes for my Last Life Fantasy AU !! i will add more to this in the future, but here’s what i’ve got now:

(its long so just click the read more)

General world notes:

Not really kingdoms since theres less than 20 people total but the various alliances do have castles/towers/homes of similar grandeur

There are fantastical creatures, but theyre not as common as normal animals, and none that the players come across are too extremely dangerous.

^ Except for the Wither! In which the Wither is a horrible decaying demonbeast that’s summoned by Grian

^ I’m thinking the typical Minecraft hostile mobs are replaced with things like kobolds and big rodents and . skeletons which ig are still the same

The Boogeyman is genuinely believed to be a curse in this world. No one quite knows where it comes from, but speculation ranges from ghosts to old magic to divine punishment

^ Those cursed by the Boogeyman become snappier, more on edge. There are no physical changes other than being visibly more tense, but it’s very hard to spot if you don’t know how to look for it

^ It’s also popularly believed that the curse will subtly enhance one’s strength and magical power, but also make them more vulnerable to attack

I haven’t decided if the members still have multiple lives, or if its more of an injury thing. I’m leaning toward the latter, in which someone is grievously injured in the place of dying (at least until the final death) because that also leaves room for life-giving to become healing magic. Perhaps one can only heal so many times before they become aggressive and combative in place of a red life? And different people are more or less vulnerable to that insanity

When I describe a person or group as ‘magical’ I mean that they can use magic at will. Any person can use magic if reading a spell that was written by a magic-user, but only some members can use magic without that. <— italics bc its important

^ The most common spells used by non-magic people are healing-related

^ Those with magical ability manifest it through instinct and will, rather than word-for-word spellcasting

Non-magic users can also use magical items, which are items enchanted by a magic user to perform a specific spell (ex. Scar’s crystals)

Fairy Fort/Shadow Alliance:

General:

Fae people. Generally humanoid-looking, if not for their pointed ears and shimmery skin. They have whimsical and nonpowerful magics

Primarily within a magically protected circle of dense trees, which is later burned down by Cleo after she’s betrayed

visually they are kind of 4 seasons coded… Lizzie being Spring, Bigb being Winter, Ren being Fall, and Cleo being Summer

Lizzie:

The strongest magic user of the group. Even so, she doesn’t use it to hurt people directly, more just for evasion and negotiation

BigB:

The boogeyman curse puts him much more on-edge than he normally is. He would have never thought he would kill a teammate, but the jitters and the pressure really got to him

Ren:

Can communicate with animals at a low level (not full conversations, just notions of instincts) due to his magical ties to dogs

Fiercely protective of Lizzie

^ Drawing on myths of fae: maybe he was once a dog himself but was transformed into a person by Lizzie?

Cleo:

Not quite a zombie but has ties to the dead. Generally just a green-skinned fae creature, but her injuries leave more prominent marks

The river over which they were betrayed is said to be cursed with Cleo’s blood

Team BEST:

General:

A team of knights who serve no crown. They serve each other and themselves, a tight but troubled group

This group has no magic users, but are the strongest in non-magical combat

They live in a castle which was once painted white, but has since faced some decay

They ride horses

Bdubs:

Doesn’t like to keep his helmet visor down because it obscures his vision. The visor gets torn off when he gets to his red life

Etho:

Wears a different style of armor from the rest of the team, both due to his own independence and his different fighting style

He prefers ranged combat to melee, meaning his armor is lighter and easier to move in

Skizz:

In the leadership role of this team, but by his own admission he’s not really their leader. He more just organizes plans and makes sure that everyone is on the same page

Highest in ‘rank’ and thus gets fancier armor. It’s not really stronger than any of his teammates’ but he gets a big feather on his helmet and a cape and some cool designs engraved in his armor :D

Tango:

Wears goggles instead of a helmet since he dabbles more in traps than combat. Pretty bad at melee anyway

Nonhuman but humanoid. Likely some infernal species? Not necessarily demonic, but he’s tied to heat and fire

Is more adept at performing spells as a non-magic user and therefore is always called on to heal Bdubs when he goes crazy (thanklessly)

Scottage/GGG:

General:

Wealthy in resources. Not magic users, but have access to various spells and magical items

More reserved than the other teams

Very skilled at less chaotic combat

Small but extravagant (artsy) castle

Pearl:

More combative than Scott

I gotta work the axolotls in somehow but I’m not quite sure how yet…

Scott:

Enjoys wearing more fancy outfits (cloak, gold accessories) but still relatively protected

Cleo:

Happily taken in my Pearl and Scott after leaving the fairy fort, wears much more armor then

Wears less extravagant accessories than Pearl or Scott

Magic Mountain:

General:

The most powerful magic users on the server (due to being wizards)

Not necessarily a team since they don’t work together much, but they have a wizard solidarity with each other

Live separately on the same mountain. Scar lives in a small-ish cobbly tower with lots of trinkets and hidden compartments. Joel lives in a cabin-like house within a small alcove in the mountain

Joel:

Visually more warlockish, but has no patron and therefore is a wizard. Uses his magic more directly and more aggressively than Scar– just replace all his traps in canon with spells (that mostly went wrong)

Not a very accurate magic user, but when he hits he hits hard

Evidence toward the theory that the Boogeyman curse makes you both more powerful and more volatile

Scar:

Rarely uses his magic directly, instead imbues his crystals with (often weak) spells for fun and profit

Is more of an accurate spellcaster than Joel is, but almost always uses his magic for selling and trading rather than attacking. He’s not great at combative spells anyway

Jellie as his familiar…………………thinkin about it

Southlands:

General:

Artisans and philosophers. Not as wealthy in resources as GGG, but they have a good amount at their disposal

^ Haughty A-HA!!!!!

Mostly unmagical, but it’s possible that Grian and Jimmy have some weak or dormant powers

Live in towers, similar to canon but more structural

Mumbo:

Artificer, proficient in small machines and automated farms

Martyn:

Philosopher who speculates on the nature of their world

Impulse:

Similar skills to Mumbo, but plays more of a diplomatic/negotiation role within the team

Builds larger farms and machines than Mumbo does

Jimmy:

Has a more peasant-ish outfit than his teammates

Proficient at building small devices like clocks and spyglasses

Grian:

More combative than his teammates

Astronomer, not as focused on that study as his teammates are on theirs

[triphimi]

So with recent theories and implications that Cassies dad might be Bonnie bully I want to say if it turns out to be true it doesn't mean any retcons.

Giving new information, progress and role for a character without previous implications doesn't mean anything got retconned as long as it doesn't contradict and rewrite earlier established canon. Which it wouldn't bc fnaf 4 bullies were never explored beyond being kids who caused bite of 83 and then disappeared from the story.

"But why do you think you even need to say it? Isn't it obvious?" Apparently not because that's how people act about Henry. Or specifically "the previous owner" phone guy mentions in fnaf 2. Some people act as if giving him a name and a role means retcon and not just adding information for some reason?

"Scott added Henry and expected us to belive that he was a planned owner of Freddy's and Puppets father from the start" (actual statements i hear sometimes) No he didn't. And it's not a retcon because giving the puppet possible connections to someone William knew in fnaf 6 doesn't contradict anything previously established in fnaf 2.

Story is being build from the skeleton previous games gave us but it's not changed (at least not in that sort of cases)