#even with time travel its a slog

[ruairy]

.

[oncewhenalongtimeago]

I want to shut Hiccup up with a kiss when he's upset about something.

End of the statement

Thistle, Scout and Scottish Bluebells pt 3

Pairing: Grumpy!Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III x Modern!Fem!Reader

Words: 1,942

You need some cheering up.

Tags:  httyd 1, aged up, au, time travel, bitter reader, bitter hiccup, cheery reader

<Previous -

You stared down into a shallow bucket, eyeing the slimy, slightly smelly body of a small fish as it bobbed with each one of your steps. It looked almost sick, nearly scraps, made slightly warm by the rising sun’s heat. It also smelt; its scales were flaking and somewhat muddy-looking, though you knew it was mostly clean- cosmetically, of course. For you, parasites were a constant worry.

  Your hands, now much more calloused than they ever had been, clutched at the thin, metal bucket’s handle. One of your sleeves had gotten stuck there as you trudged your way back from the docks and the one measly fish stand there. Getting it untangled was proving to be quite the task.

It was an old world that you’d been sent to, with untamed mountains and riled seas. It was unpredictable and dangerous, just as emotionless as every facet of it raged and roared. Each toil was made herculean, long and arduous not just by the times but by the sheer might and mystery of everything.

There was safety even in the dangers of the modern world, because at least the dangers were known, if not expected. More explored, less left up to the imagination- the untamed world was cruel, the might and anger of the ancient man even moreso.

As interesting as the loðinn-something-or-others were -or the Hairy Hooligans, as it was- they were a cagey, brutish people, even starved, or perhaps especially because they had been starved. 

The inhabitants of Berk were sparse and few in between, plagued by famine. What Vikings hadn’t been picked off by the dragons had been killed by the outcasts and thrown into the very literal fires by their very own brothers-in-arms.

Now, most of the huts were empty, some with the wood obviously burnt and rotting everything from the inside out.

You leaned over your knees, sitting on an old, unbalanced stool.

Their names were all stupid, anal- fitting, for a guy like Hiccup, but perhaps you were biased.

You heard the sound of shuffling leaves and dirt from outside right before the front door of the shack was pushed open, creaking and scraping against the dirt floor.

You knew who it was, marching inwards with semi-soft steps, muttering darkly to himself. You weren’t sure you’d ever heard him so stormy. It made you apprehensive, a tight grimace pulling at the corners of your mouth. 

You listened as the sound of footfall migrated from soft ground to harder ground. You were even able to make out a stray ”-eta-leg-” something, which might have had something to do with fish. You almost thought to ask, but he was quite typically very apathetic towards most of your colloquialisms. 

There was a pause. “...What are you doing?”

“Making, ah, dinner.” You said, glaring up at him defiantly, your hands falling downwards.

“...Right.” he said, eyeing the sloshing water-bucket.

You grimaced. He could probably smell it- so deep in the woods, the hollowness of salt against the bark, mulch and scattered leaves was probably strong. Bringing water along was also perhaps not so good for the dead fish. Damp things rotted faster and made already smelly things that much worse.

How else were you going to boil out salt, if not with seawater? You weren’t sure if it was going to work but now was more of a time than any to try.

He grunted as he slung the heavy pack of whose-whatsit off his shoulder and dropped it heavily onto the ground, lanky shoulders flagging as he then dropped himself onto the wooden one-blanket-ed frame of his own bed.

He would sleep, maybe, until the next day. You weren’t very versed on his schedule. To you, it seemed to be odd and erratic. He didn’t do much besides slog his way to the forge and back and be an ass.

It wasn’t as if there really was a reason to go into town.

“The arena.” You announced, after a moment of hesitation, into the dark silence.

You’d been into the forge maybe once, leafing through haphazard papers like office files, parchment mostly blank and slightly scribbled over, hard to read in the darkness. Desperate. Hurried.

It wasn’t too different from the one in the woods but there were a few more stall doors and also it was surrounded by huts, which, in a way, made it all the more eerie.

 Out the forge window, briefly, you’d spotted a man, handlebar mustache, not unlike the kind you’d expect on the face of a biker with prickly cactus-looking scruff littering the round dip of his chin. 

You shifted, minding slightly dry, already wilted plants. They had been hastily shoved into your pockets. Modern seams had torn quickly, forcing you into shambled hand-me-downs. 

Hiccup grunted.

You huffed, looking up at him from downturned eyelids. You spoke, “You’re bringing me there.”

He walked past you and stopped just before his bed on the far side of the shack behind, much too long at the legs and the wooden supports at its base much too far apart. He also lacked anything to cover the holes between them, meaning that if you laid at the wrong angle, your bent elbows would dip between the boards. He grunted again, slinging one arm over his face irritatedly, “Do it yourself.”

You smothered a brief spike of irritation, forcing down a scowl. Do it yourself.

Soft highlights made up of the waning sun-glow bounced off nearly imperceptible hairs on the back of his hand. You kept quiet for a moment longer, deep in rumination. It was quite odd to notice something like that- most particularly because you wanted to pick all of them off and then punch him over the head.

Since the beginning, you’d been forced to learn how to cobble up your own dinner, your own bedding and everything else. He hadn’t helped, not really. Everything you had was your own doing, besides maybe the odd repair shack repair or so.

You really only existed under the same roof. If he tried to kick you out, well…

The only thing that had held you together was the idea that maybe, if he hadn’t been born and raised there, or if he hadn’t become so jaded and heavily disillusioned, he might have been good company, or maybe that was just pity talking. You didn’t know much about him, nor had you seen anything clever or brave and bright come from him yet. 

Optimism was a hard thing to carry, and in times like thesis, where you had nothing more than frustration to buzz at the tips of your fingers and an empty belly, you found that all your faux goodwill was crumbling. You felt it deep in your chest, nestled right where all your spine’s nerves speared into your heart.

Saying ‘it felt like a dream,’ had never carried the right connotations- it couldn’t fully encompass all of the things you felt or the way you needed what you were sure wasn’t even real; a place where hard ground was limited to the outside, where you had a soft mattress to cater to the line of your back, the way bumpy asphalt felt beneath your sneakers or the way an old, hot car bounced over ancient potholes in abandoned roads- something deep in you reached for it, and yet all of those solid things passed through your fingers like hot smoke.

Your real life now was much colder. You hadn’t known who he was at first, or even for weeks after. If you had been told about any of this beforehand, you might have expected him to look like a cartoon, but with the uneven stubble at his chin and the not nearly as aesthetic a shape to his face, he really was just a man.

You opened your mouth to speak as he turned away, showing his back to you as he faced the wall, but then you caught yourself. You were going to call a name, any name, but he didn’t like those, not really- he was quite snappish when it came to those, in fact.

Names were tricky things, of course.

You felt that you were walking a thin line, at times; balancing over a tightrope a million miles up from the ground like you’d been thrust into some stupid, old, gaudy cartoon. Which, you had been, and it was just as inane as you imagined.

Instead you listened to the sound of white noise and fabric-on-fabric as the slow rumbling of the forest faded into something that was almost silence. You heard yourself as you breathed and the bucket and the legs of your chair rattled under you. You heard your feet digging and making low noise against dirt.

You ignored a very pointed rock of the bed frame as he shifted. 

 You made a lot of noise, to say the least. You didn’t care, though you could practically feel the air grow stiffer as you struggled.

Finally, with a hard jerk, you were able to tug your sleeve out from the handle and the bucket. You could hear the sound of fabric tearing as you sat back just above the sound of shifting over the threadbare sheet behind you.

Feeling wholly satisfied with yourself, you grabbed the tail end of the fish, pulling it off the bucket with a splash. You pulled it into the air, listening to the sound of water sloshing as it settled, water sliding off bumpy skin in rivulets.

It was nasty- it felt nasty, as most fish did, and as if you could drop it at almost any moment. 

There was a small spit set up in the middle of the room like a rig, a shoddy smoke hole framed above it in the roof. As you shifted towards it, by accident, you kicked over your bucket, cursing under your breath

Your hands shot back down to the corners of your stool, calloused palms scraping against wood and scale, fish still clutched unpleasantly in one hand, wetting the edge of your sleeve as it rolled itself back down.

There was a heavy thump behind you, the sound of boot meeting ground and the loud, frustrated creaking of wood. It startled you as you stood and whipped around, your grip loosening- the fish flew out of your hand with  what was probably a lot more force than you expected, meeting Hiccup nearly lip-to-lip. 

Stubborn coughed and spat, fish slime glistening against the lower half of his face, “Can you- stop?”

You weren’t sure of any of the things that made up his voice and those rolling tones. Was it Scottish or Gaelic something, Norwegian, Danish or having something to do with the Swedes? Or was it a mix of all of the above?

All of their vowels were deep and hitting a sort of hard to reach tenor, Hiccup’s voice especially grated with all the nasal and grumpy worn-ness of all the burden of having to live in such an old time. 

Compared to the voices of everyone else, his was sort of high. It was not what you expected, watching an animated face through a gaudy screen. 

The berth of everything you lived through now made everything you’d known seem so much bigger. It made you sad… And angry. To say it lightly, you didn’t feel pity for… A lot of people. 

Seeing him choke on salt water and slime -If he’d ever made out with Astrid, whoever she was, here-  there was a joke to be made there, something about ‘macking on’ and mackerel. It made you happy.

“No.” You said, voice sounding not-very-dead or particularly serious.

[heartofbusan]

While we're theorizing about AYS, may I leave this one with you?

THEORY: Before the shoot began, JM and JK had a chat about how they were going to approach it as entertainers. One of the items they agreed upon was that JM would film 'house tours' of wherever they stay the night and JK would film the food insert shots. We see JM film a trour of their camping tiny house, the air b&b in CT and the house in Jeju. The only time he films the food is at the omakase but honestly, what else was he supposed to do there? Lol. JK was very diligent in getting 'dynamic' food coverage everywhere.

They each had their own little responsibility and I'm just so endeared. Who knows if we'll ever find out the answer but I think it's cute.

If anyone isn't following along with @curio-queries AYS production breakdowns, please do so. They are so insightful!

Thank you for this ask 😙 I feel like it's part of a longer conversation about how AYS came to exist, which I'd love to have. We might get some more insight into the 'why and how' of it after all the episodes and behinds have aired. But because theorizing is part and parcel of being ARMY, I say: why wait, let's go!

Early in episode 3, there's this one off-hand comment JK makes to Tae about getting out the 'company card' to pay for their meal in Jeju. It was relatable as most of us have at some point gone to lunch or dinner on 'the boss's dime'. It also served as a reminder that the expenses of this trip are literally billed as 'work' for them. And as they took it upon themselves to embark on this show, task assignment comes with the territory. So yes, it makes sense for them to have agreed as to their part of 'the coverage' during pre-production. The coverage being the type of shots they were willing and able to film themselves. And mind you, them filming parts of it is not only another checkmark on the overall shotlist; a way for production to get close up's of their faces and inserts of their meals, but also a way to emotionally seat the audience inside their experiences. Seeing it all through their eyes. So it was a great production choice as well as a narrative one to have them film with the go-pro's.

I think that's part of why it's so funny to them. They literally arranged a paid vacation for themselves, lmao. That omakase, they needed those shots as receipts to justify that (surely extremely expensive) meal. Do we think Taehyung would have had his meal paid for by Jimin, or could they have written it off as a 'guest star' expense? 🤔

Another thing that filming with the go-pro's does is, literally, hand jikook the reigns of what they're willing to film/show.

A much discussed example is the morning scene inside the CT house. JK wakes up, turns on the camera in the hallway outside Jimin’s door, entering, the scene cutting to the camera inside, etc. There are scores of decisions that took place prior to that scene. The editing of it is doing nothing to make the timeline of events any clearer. But all those cameras would have had to be turned on prior to them 'waking up' in the reality of the show. Parsing all of those choices, including when crew is back inside the house once morning comes, will have to wait for another day (that is , if anyone even cares to know, lol).

The point I'm getting at is that while traveling, JK and JM have more control over what we're being shown than we even realize. As you stated in your blog, ITS did this a lot.

ITS would end right up until the tannies would have had to leave a place. Never showing the travel back, probably because emotionally, you want the audience to stay with the characters inside the happy bubble of the experience, not the slog of traveling home. Especially because there is no longer a story to work towards.

My question to you, do you think they 'woke up' together prior to turning on the cameras and putting on the microphones? Who turns off the cams and mics at night before they actually sleep?

I think you know as well as I do that we shouldn't forget that AYS is a story we're being shown. There is a production that has to takes place in order to make it, and there are two professionals who are working to show us these moments. But more importantly, there are two human beings who are also having 'off-camera' moments who decide what they're willing to include in this show.

Sometimes, the lines get blurred, but the intentionality of this show and the kind of relationship they're inviting us to observe is monumental, in my opinion.

[autistichalsin]

Gameplay changes I'd make to BG3 if I was in charge:

(Under a read more bc this is an insanely long list)

Ability to make party changes without going back to camp; I.E. "hey Lae'zel, go back to camp and tell Karlach to come here."

Able to see companion approval at all times even if they're not in the party

Able to make checks with any character, not just Tav. You used to be able to do this to an extent by having other characters do conversations, but when they made it so Tav was prioritized back in patch 6, they changed it so that even if you click with another companion, it switches to Tav. Ideally they would fix it so that if the conversation triggers automatically, it prioritizes Tav, and if you deliberately start a conversation with another companion, it recognizes that you wanted that.

Better item sorting. "Most recent" actually sorts by when you acquired the item.

Ability to text search for an item if you know its name.

Ability to mark an item as a favorite so you don't accidentally sell it/drop it/send it back to camp.

Quest items don't count against your weight total.

Quest items that are no longer relevant are no longer marked as quest items.

Either allow for character leveling past 12 (Even if class leveling is limited to 12) or adjust the difficulty across the board so you scale more evenly. Act 1 becomes a bit easier, act 2 remains about the same, act 3 becomes a lot harder. I should not hit the level cap early in act 3.

Alternatively, at least give a reward in lieu of XP when you hit the level cap. Items, gold, a points system that lets you use excess XP to buy additional spell slots/wilshape charges/rage charges/bardic inspiration, something.

Story mode; battles are disabled, allowing you to solely explore and focus on the story elements.

Dark Urge as a companion.

Ability to change who your unfortunate murder victim is, outside of Alfira and Quill. Maybe it's Zevlor, or Rolan, or Kagha.

More recruitable evil companions. Kagha, Wulbren, and Ethel are a good start.

Halsin recruitable in act 1 or at least no later than the start of act 2.

More reactivity for story developments after act 1, particularly in act 3 when it drops to little comments here or there.

More reactivity for Dark Urge story elements in particular, especially everything related to the Orin fight.

Ability to fast travel to quest-related markers.

Ability to hook up your companions. Let me smooch Halsin but hook up Karlach and Wyll, or let me romance Wyll while hooking up Halsin and Astarion!

Change point and click lines for characters to reflect story developments (resist Durge should sound less unhinged, Lae'zel shouldn't reference Vlaakith after turning away from her, etc)

Let your love interest answer questions about you during the love dryad test. You can select the right answers beforehand, and then they'll answer right or wrong depending on a bit of approval and a bit of luck/dice rolling. Halsin, of course, will automatically know you fear krakens.

Fighting Gortash at the coronation is actually an option that doesn't break the bridges and doesn't disable fast travel into Wyrm's Rock once he's defeated.

Give the gnomes the ability to fix Karlach's engine, or at least work on a prototype.

Option to speed up or entirely skip enemy turns, coming back to you and giving you a brief recap of who was hit and for how much damage/what status effects. This would make the courtyard, in particular, less of a slog. I should not be able to finish my turn, take a pee break, and come back to the enemies still attacking.

Ability to make it more clear what your relationship with Halsin is in a polymance- keep it as a one night stand/physical relationship, make it a poly romance with your other partner as your nesting partner, or even make it a throuple. Similarly, if the latter, add scenes of your partners getting to know each other better, kissing, etc.

Don't tie so many plot events to long rests while stressing that the player needs to hurry to avoid ceremorphosis. Either drop the facade that there is a rush, or make these plot developments happen outside of camp.

Consequences for using tadpoles beyond one (possibly two as of patch 7) dice rolls. Make it so using too many will cause you to squid, no matter what.

Ideally, bring back the plot that was teased in act 1, where instead of being the Emperor, you Dream Guardian was your tadpole, trying to seduce you to let it take over.

Better balancing for Rangers at higher levels, as as it is now, you basically have to multiclass them to get any decent use out of them. After level 5 any additional levels spent on Ranger are wasted.

Improve Eldritch Knight and Arcane Trickster to use the class's standard stat instead of int or wis for their spells.

All wildshape attacks minus three of the four myrmidons should count as unarmed for the purposes of tavern brawler and other similar things that buff unarmed attacks working.

Make the Emperor/Orpheus a fully autonomous party member, allowing you to give them equipment (and allowing them to use potions/spells they didn't already have on hand) during the final battle.

Fix pathfinding for characters you don't control, and especially fix them automatically jumping back to the other side of a gap just because you had to switch to a character who wouldn't make the jump before.

Improve Fly so that it is better than Jump outside of like 2-3 levels.

Some kind of enemy-rush mode where you see how long you can last against all the bosses in the game would be amazing.

Ability to either return to the city and finish up some quests before the epilogue.

New game plus.

Origin Halsin and Minthara.

The game does a better job of remembering that Halsin isn't tadpoled, and also does a better job of not always assuming that if you're in a poly relationship with him, you want the other partner prioritized for literally every scene.

Resist scene for Minthara and Halsin.

Recruitable Aylin and Isobel. Ideally, you can also romance them and become their third.

Dye preview, as well as clothing and armor previews.

Armor scales in weight with your size, so the same armor put on a small character will weigh less than the same armor on a large character, allowing little characters more options.

Druids automatically revert to human form for cutscenes, then return to wildshape after without losing a charge.

Orin can kidnap any character, including your romanced companion, but to compensate, there are less steps needed to access the Temple of Bhaal.

The kidnapped companion is not guaranteed to be unharmed even if you save them; depending on how long you took, they might have been badly tortured and receive a status debuff that lasts several days.

Faith-leap trial is fixed so that you can actually solve it without either a guide or cheesing it.

Let Wyll dump Mizora as a patron, then become an Archfey warlock with Thaniel and Oliver as his patrons. Wyll then becomes a nature defender.

More autonomy for Wyll in his quest. You can't make the pivotal choices of his story arc for him, and instead, your ability to convince him is tied to dice rolls that have a DC scaled to your approval, like for SH.

Able to take Scratch and Owlbear home in the epilogue, instead of only being able to send Owlbear with SH, Halsin, or you if romanced to either.

Let Karlach stay in the House of Hope if Hope lived, allowing her to live in Avernus without having to constantly fight and fear Zariel.

More interesting Speak With Animals conversations. They drop dramatically after act 1, and by act 3 there are very few times I use the spell anymore, just to talk to the kitties.

Able to cast certain spells (I.E. Hero's Feast) on all recruited characters, not just those in the active party.

54. Fix the morality system for Paladin oaths so that it's more clear what actions will break your oath ahead of time.

55. Give players more chances to fix things if a character turns temporarily hostile. I shouldn't lose a vendor, quest, etc for good because of a failed persuasion roll. There should be one more chance to fix it.

56. More deities for players to choose from; if not for Clerics, at least add more at the Stormshore Tabernacle. Ideally, allow even other classes to talk about having a favored deity, as most in the Realms do, and it would be interesting to, for example, be a Ranger, worship Mielikki, and have dialogue with Halsin, Jaheira, and Minsc.

57. Act 3 gets more unique music instead of largely reusing tunes from acts 1 and 2.

58. More companions so that every race and every class has representation.

59. Elves act more elven. Halsin and Astarion can have conversations in Elvish. Arnell is not confused by Shadowheart choosing her own name.

60. Free healing by Halsin. He is a world-renowned healer and would be great to see him use it more. Also, more shown of him researching medical conditions, helping sick/injured civilians in Baldur's Gate, etc.

61. The Shadow Curse breaks as soon as Ketheric dies or Thaniel and Oiver are reunited, whichever comes later, so the player can see the lands not influenced by the curse. Move the cutscene that plays on leaving the lands to this point, just without the bit of the party leaving the land.

62. Ability to save Art Cullagh so he won't die shortly after the game ends.

63. After you defend Halsin's portal, you get to play a side-quest where Halsin fights through the Shadowfell, finds Thaniel, and fights his way back. OR, you can delegate the portal defense to your other party members, and join Halsin in the Shadowfell to help him find Thaniel.

64. Introduce a weather system and a day/night system.

65. When you knock out a character using non-lethal attacks, the character is actually treated as alive, letting it be used outside of Minthara, Minsc, and Alfira.

66. Scene of Withers telling the players who he really is. Dark Urge players can become Withers' Chosen after they reject Bhaal, while Tav and non-Shadowheart Origins can be it from earlier on, maybe a scene early in act 2, and Shadowheart can be it after turning from Shar.

67. The Dark Urge's Urge manifests in battle, causing them to sometimes waste an action torturing a victim who's already been downed, or to turn hostile on allied characters.

68. More references to the Dark Urge being chronically ill as a result of their brain injury- this is brought up periodically in act 1 and then dropped for the most part. This could even lead to scenes of romanced characters comforting them when they have a headache or fainting spells.

69. More intra-party conflicts besides SH and Lae'zel, and the possible Halsin-Minthara ultimatum. Let the evil characters get angry at Gale for wasting magical items and try to kick him out.

70. Implement the Halsin-Minthara ultimatum, but don't make it an ultimatum; instead Halsin simply signals his intention to leave, and if you want him instead of Minthara, you bring up sending her away. Also make it clear that the Absolute still hunts Halsin for what happened in the Grove and for fighting Ketheric 100 years ago, showing that even without a tadpole, he has stakes in this too. Also make it clearer that Minthara is severely triggering his past trauma with all her pro-slavery talk, possibly causing him to gain a status debuff if he's near her. That way people will stop demonizing Halsin there will be more of a feeling of balance in the ultimatum.

71. Ability to rescue children (particularly the orphaned ones in act 3) and bring them back to camp for Halsin and/or Jaheira to mother.

72. When you're in the final battle, the companions who aren't fighting at your side are instead on a sidequest evacuating the city and fighting the midnflayers who are terrorizing the citizens. Alternatively, just for this one battle, you can bring all your recruited companions with you (it would certainly help make that courtyard fight more balanced if you aren't using invisibility potions).

73. Platonic paths get just as much weight as romantic ones. You can become Karlach's best friend forever and go on friendly outings with her. You can train with Lae'zel. Etc.

74. Setting for romance/sexual encoutners/offers to be turned off entirely.

75. Explorer difficulty allows you to multiclass still.

76. More quests for evil players.

77. Every romanceable character has at least one action that will cause them to break up with you, and every companion has one that will cause them to leave the party (outside of sinking approval to -40).

78. Option to turn on a "confirm action" button, so that accidentally clicking on an item in red that's right next to a communal use item doesn't get you aggro'd.

79. Optional choice to add in random encounters.

80. Reintroduce class-specific tadpole powers from Early Access.

81. Ability to help people in the city more; you can offer refugees shelter at your camp, feed or pay all beggars, etc. Telling the rich they suck for not helping is great but I want to be able to do more.

82. Sidequest for that Druid who's trying to save the dying tree in Baldur's Gate, ideally with special Halsin and Jaheira interactions.

83. More conversations like the one with Halsin and Jaheira in act 2, where controlling a character lets you talk to another and unlock special dialogues you don't otherwise get.

84. The circus is now a proper carnival, including magic-fueled rides, treatos, and a tunnel of love. Also, the Bhaalists are trying to interfere with the rides and get people killed, which you have to stop.

85. You have the option to tell owlbear cub that you don't want to give him the potion to make him grow faster because he deserves to stay a cub and grow naturally.

86. You can give companions little gifts, like SH with the night orchid. You can give Halsin his pipe back.

87. You can choose to join a companion in the endgame even if you haven't romanced them. You can move to Halsin's commune or keep Astarion company in the Underdark.

88. Ability to evict companions from your camp at any time, with a corresponding chewing out from the companions who stayed unless you have a really good reason for it.

89. Bring back the datamined bits where companions who left your party would later show up in the courtyard battle, tadpoled (if not already) and under the Absolute's control. (Maybe with a scene showing how it happened, including the tadpoling for Halsin and Jaheira who wouldn't have been infected before).

90. Bring back the datamined scenes from the morphic pool where the netherbrain would make the party have hallucinations corresponding to their insecurities. Including the option to comfort them after, especially your romanced partner.

91. Optional ability to cook meals yourself, maybe with a little cooking minigame like Pokemon has. Different foods can give you different status benefits the next day.

92. Ability to travel back to any act at any time before the final point of no return.

93. Act 1's point of no return is either entering the Underdark or the Mountain Pass, or entering the Shadow-Cursed Lands, but not either entering the Shadow-Cursed Lands from the Underdark or entering the Mountain Pass.

94. A gardening mechanic for edible plants and such would be fun, so you could have a steady supply of camp supplies and certain alchemy ingredients. Especially mushrooms since Minthara literally has her own mushroom farm.

95. Camp library so you can keep all your books, notes, and letters in one space to read without cluttering up your traveller's chest.

96. Alternatively, there are multiple traveller's chests for different items. Armors and weapons in one, scrolls, potions and other magical items in another, food and alchemy supplies in another, etc.

97. Ability to take care of and comfort characters who've been poisoned, infected with contagion, etc.

98. Let Halsin, SH, and the player cuddle more animals.

99. Every class gets a unique camp follower a la the Oathbreaker Knight.

100. Vendor of common things (animal speaking potions, some alchemy ingredients, camp supplies) in camp for the whole game.

[thedroneranger]

Giddy Up

Jake "Hangman" Seresin

Synopsis: Mrs. Seresin always picks up Jake when he returns from deployment. He likes to make sure she can easily find him.

Notes: A To-Do List imagine inspired by this.

Warnings: Suggestive, but mostly fluff

Word count: 0.5k

Airport pick-ups were the worst. The traffic alone was enough for her to consider paying a car service to pick up Jake. The drive was always longer than she wanted, and she always held her breath that his Ram 1500 would fit into the garage. 

However, that first hug made the slog worth it.

Her sneakers squeaked as she traversed the corridors between the parking garage and luggage claim. The butterflies in her chest fluttered. The excitement of Jake coming home never ceased. Although the most worrisome part was over—he was coming home to her—her nerves were still electric.

When they were apart for months, or even weeks, things sometimes changed. A haircut, a new piercing or maybe a new fashion trend. Sometimes Jake came home with shorter hair or bulked up from a protein-rich diet and unfettered gym access.

As she neared the luggage carousels, the crowd thickened. She scanned the sea of people, but no sign of Jake. People streamed around her—most careful to mind their limbs. Vigiliant, she kept searching.

There!

Instead of Jake’s blond coif, she spied his fawn-colored, slightly askew, Stetson. He always made a point to wear it so she could easily spot him. It served its purpose both in the airport and at the docks. 

The masses seemed to part and give her a perfect view of Jake in a black v-neck, broken-in Levi’s and aviators hooked on his shirt collar. 

They made eye contact as they floated toward each other. “Hey, cowboy.” She wrapped her arms around his middle as they met. He wrapped his arms around her shoulders and pushed his lips to hers. His hat perched perfectly for her to fit underneath. 

“Hey, pretty woman.” He responded after their kiss. Neither of them could stop smiling. Jake pulled her in for another kiss. This time, his tongue dipped into her mouth. 

Her hands dropped lower until they were tucked in the back pockets of his jeans. 

“I can’t wait to get you home.” His lips remained against hers as he spoke. Then his hands traveled south until they were almost on her ass. She fully pressed herself against his front. 

She bit her lip as she looked up at him. Jake definitely didn’t understand how much power he wielded. His deep dimples and eye crinkles made her weak. And, somehow, his dazzling smile hadn’t killed her yet. 

As she studied his features, he freed an arm to pluck his hat off his head and place it on hers. It slipped over her eyes, but Jake quickly adjusted it. 

“Seems like we have plans when we get home, cowboy.” She glanced up at the brim.

He hummed in agreement. As they separated, she ran her hand down his arm until their fingers laced. Hand-in-hand, they strolled toward the parking garage. 

Suddenly, Jake looked at her. She returned the gaze, waiting for him to say something. “Do you still have your saloon girl outfit?”

A smile broke across her face. “It’s in the closet next to your chaps.” 

He bit his lip. The thoughts flooding his mind were best left unsaid in public. “Dress up for the evening?”

She couldn’t help but laugh. “I don’t mind dressing up to go for a ride.”

Visit my masterlist for more | Sign up for my taglist!

The Bradshaw Baddie™ Bunch: @cherrycola27, @roosterforme, @galaxy-of-stories, @taytaylala12, @malindacath, @violyn20, @awildewitit, @potato-girl99981, @shanimallina87, @i-simp-much, @blue-aconite, @djs8891, @linkpk888, @furiousladyking, @daggerspare-standingby, @princess76179, @jstarr86, @hecate-steps-on-me, @darkheartcherry, @soulmates8, @roosters-girl, @dempy, @roostette, @mayhemmanaged, @blueoorchid, @desert-fern, @munsonswhore86, @hangmanscoming, @s-u-t, @mavrellover91, @chicomonks

[alexanderwales]

I keep thinking about this mobile game, Sandship: Crafting Factory, which was fun for half an hour and then turned into a complete slog that they wanted me to pay money to get through, or just play by checking in every two hours or so, but in both cases, fuck that.

But the pitch is so good. You have a sandship with a factory on its back, and you have to use the factory to service orders and upgrade the sandship. It's a combination of two things I really like: Factorio and walking cities.

I keep thinking about what a version of this game that wasn't crippled by mobile game monetization would look like. I almost think that you could mod in Factorio itself to get something like that, if you had a Spidertron combined with Factorissimo (which allows for buildings that are bigger on the inside than the outside and can be nested and moved) or Warptorio (where you have an extradimensional base that moves from world to world).

So you move from place to place, feeding enormous quantities of ore and oil into different internal buffers, which then feed into the factory floor at whatever trickle your smelters, assemblers, etc. can actually handle. Intermediates and finished materials get sent to yet more buffers, then used to improve the factory processes, build weapons for the outside of the mobile base, or improve the mobile base itself, offering more space to work with, better transfers, etc.

So far as I can tell in the brief time I played it, Sandship just has matter makers that can create ores from nothing, and the sandship itself requires nothing to run, which ... what the fuck? Why? Obviously some game design directives that are orthogonal to my ideas of fun, but you're going to make a game about a walking factory and then not actually require me to do anything about securing inputs? I would readily accept getting a trickle of resources from somewhere, enough that you can't softlock. But needing to go to specific places (even if it's just node traversal like Slay the Spire) makes the game so much richer, not only because there are questions of target priorities (do I need copper or iron, will I be able to cross close to that lake to top up on water) but because it can change build priorities (okay, I will need to use the travel time to build up a bunch of pumps to extract all that oil).

I also like the idea that the sandship cannot last forever, and part of what it needs is regular replacement parts and maintenance to keep going. Obviously I don't want to get softlocked, but getting crippled because I stopped making struts introduces an element of risk that I think I would enjoy: a conservative factory-ship would have some portion of the floorspace devoted simply to ensuring that the factory keeps going, but at critical points or in order to speed ahead, you might rely on buffers and/or luck to push the factory to its limits and research the next technology or get all the parts for the next upgrade.

Factorio Space Age is going to have spaceships. You set a route for them and they harvest things from the asteroids you pass by, which get turned into fuel, power, and materials. I think this will be cool, but it doesn't hook me like the idea of a giant rolling factory roaming the world does.

I guess I'm going to have to look into how hard is to make a mod for Factorio, but my guess is that the biggest hurdle for me will be game design that's actually compelling and making something that will inevitably not match the picture I have of it in my head.

(Note: Book 3 of Thresholder contains walking factory cities, and yeah, I would also play that game.)

(Note 2: There's also the game Wandering Village, which is up my alley, but which in practice I was kind of meh on. I'm going to give it a fair shake once it's out of early access, but my initial impression was kind of "this is it"?)

[bonebabbles]

re: the tags on the post you just reblogged; would genuinely Love to hear your take on the themes of homestuck. because so many of its themes are at odds with each other and the reader that it truly does become an ouroboros by the end. and that’s fascinating and heartbreaking at the same time

I really can't phrase it better than "eats itself alive by the end," honestly. Once the Beta Kids scratch their session, you can feel how tired and frustrated the author is. It's like he starts hating his own work and how massively it blew up, when he never planned for it to be a project that lasted so long.

And thus it feels like he starts turning on his work's own themes.

Sburb (the game) was abusive and traumatic, but seemed to be trying to make the kids ""grow"" by some unknown philosophy. Figuring out what Sburb (or its creators) were trying to accomplish was a theme.

Only for the author to get frustrated at the idea of there BEING such a motive, seeming to suddenly pivot to Sburb just being a universe-generating mechanism

The theme about motives, being "pawns" in a greater game and uncovering the mystery, thinking critically about authority figures including the GAME ITSELF is unceremoniously discarded for a "Nothing matters actually" conclusion

Another theme was change and growing up, dealing with your mistakes as you make them. How even in a world with time travel, trying to use metaphysical shennanigans to avoid your fuckups just backfires. Eventually you have to face the music, and you'll be better off for it.

But then the author becomes brutishly cynical. The main casts' worst traits eat them alive on the trip to the new session, we learn the Beta trolls ruined their own playthrough and now painfully slog through their afterlives, the Alpha kids are aimless and trapped in a doomed session.

The theme about growth and facing your own mistakes becomes about stagnation and inevitability.

But honestly I think the most telling change in the author's mindset comes from looking at the Alpha Trolls vs the Beta Trolls.

Like, the way that the Alpha Trolls ALL got a full personality, several interactions with the main cast, and through fan input started evolving into characters that had little traits of the fandom at the time

Homestuck was always a story with a crass tone (and it's kind of incredible how quickly the lingo changed, making early HS look a lot edgier in hindsight than it was at the time) but it felt like there was a lot of love for how these characters had kinda been forged together.

Then you get to the Beta Trolls in a dream bubble, basically all tossed into a high-production walkaround minigame. Several of them just direct, joyless jabs at the audience, less of them relevant.

For me it's really the turning point on the themes, the later acts have always felt super dissonant from the early acts because of that

So in my mind I see it as two big "parts" and examine them together as what I feel was a weak synthesis.

[rabbitr]

dawntrail thoughts (you know the ones)

finished msq so here are thoughts. spoilers under the cut

did i like dawntrail? eh.

dawntrail is perfectly fine as an expac. i didn't go into it expecting dawntrail to be able to top the shadowbringers/endwalker combo. but i also didn't expect them to fumble like that.

overall, dawntrail isn't bad! i like a lot about it. getting to explore tural, the competition during the rite of succession, new cast of characters, uh...... solution nine. i think you can tell which half i like more. solution nine and alexandria were perfectly serviceable, i just liked the slow and lighthearted pace of the first half better.

my major issue with dawntrail is that the first half (rite of succession) and second half (alexandria) don't feel very well integrated.

if you like the rite of succession, then all the interesting bits about tural's history and culture are thrown out the window once you get to alexandria. none of the characters you meet and see grow during the rites will travel with you and offer their insights in alexandria's state of affairs. except for a few, which well. i'll get to them.

if you like alexandria, then the rite of succession feel like a slow and meandering beginning. characters in alexandria don't show up until you slog through the rites, and then aren't given all that much space to grow. i don't particularly like the second half so i'm sorry that i can't say more on it.

in short, dawntrail's theme is "legacy". both halves deal with how people pass down their legacies - who will remember them and what will they be remembered for? the ideological differences between different parties about how they should be remembered drives the conflict.

while alexandria fits the story thematically and is foreshadowed fairly well, the transition falls flat. there's no good bridge between the two sections. i've seen some people arguing that its about wuk lamat's arc, that she needs to learn what happens when she can't make peace. but... not really.

wuk lamat definitely undergoes development during the rite of succession. it's somewhat subtle while also being fucking beat into your head with a sledgehammer, but afterwards she doesn't really... change as a result of going to alexandria. she doesn't really struggle with what she needs to do to keep peace. wuk lamat kind of resolves herself that some people need killing if her people want peace and her gripes are mostly that the people who need killing are her brother and a new friend.

the focus of all of dawntrail is on wuk lamat alone, with erenville and krile getting incredibly minor spotlights during alexandria. so when her development grinds to a crawl, it's noticeable. because erenville and krile don't change at all throughout alexandria.

we get to know erenville a little better. and that's it.

krile, despite being part of the impetus for us to even want to explore alexandria, is regulated to a bit part with a grand total of about one quest and a handful of cutscenes wherein she asks people about her grandfather and earring. i like wuk lamat, don't get me wrong. but why couldn't krile have shared the spotlight? in the endwalker patches, she talks about how she wants to go on this journey and that she can defend herself now. where was any of that?

speaking of scions. oh boy, the scions.

in dawntrail's need to focus on wuk lamat, the scions entirely fall on the wayside. not even in that the WoL's relationships with them don't come to fore, i mean, not even wuk lamat seems to get to know them. while i understand this is a time constraint (only so much expac), i would have rather... not had the scions there?

they don't really contribute much to the story except to play the brains to your and wuk lamat's brawn. towards the second half, it felt just like they needed an excuse to justify alexandria and explain it to wuk lamat, as well as making sure the whole cast is back together. like, did we really need a y'shtola cameo?

my major issue with how the scions were handled are that none of them got any sliver of the spotlight. i don't even mean in a character development way - they've all had their time already - i just mean. why not have wuk lamat expand on her relationship with them? most of the gentler moments are between the WoL and wuk lamat while the scions mostly follow the two of you around, occasionally solving academic problems.

but dawntrail focused so intensely on wuk lamat. which is fine! shadowbringers/endwalker and even the expacs before were pretty much about us, after all. that story's concluded. i don't mind that it's wuk lamat's story.

except the sheer amount of wuk lamat starts to get aggravating after a while. because i kept waiting for krile's story to start. or erenville's. and i kept waiting and waiting and ultimately in the second half was served a story mostly about wuk lamat still and... sphene?

let's talk about sphene.

i hate her. she appears to be a sympathetic villain, yet she is suspicious from the get-go, and her entire purpose is to serve as wuk lamat's antagonist. does she serve the plot well? yeah, no arguments there. do i feel sympathy for her? absolutely not!

furthermore, the confrontation with sphene appears to be mostly a bootleg version of shadowbringers' ending, a decision with utterly baffles me. like the writing team wanted to parallel sphene with emet-selch, except one of those characters was a through-line since before the expac dropped and remained relevant until the end of the story and the other one is sphene.

crucially, emet-selch is a villain that has roots in prior plot. the narrative is constantly pitting us against the ascians between the political intrigue, so when emet-selch shows up and gives us his motivations, it recontextualizes an entire group of antagonists who were previously just a generic evil shadowy organization. it feels powerful to realize that all the prior struggles are because of a sympathetic motivation.

sphene recontextualizes nothing and appears hollow throughout her screentime. she loves her people and wants to protect her people, and that gets driven into our heads over and over. it is possible that sphene is purposefully written that way - to show that as an endless, she's only memories and a vague motive, not a living person. but if so, then the emotional impact of her would have to lay in wuk lamat's relationship to her.

who as i stated, has a character arc that slows way down and does not really struggle with the fact that sometimes you have to kill some people to keep peace.

lastly, the writing itself started to grate. it felt like more than ever, the writers were reaching through the screen attempting to beat the themes of the story into my head. so many times, characters will just... say the meaning of the plot at that point in time aloud. or sphene being the worst offender, repeating that she wants to protect her people over and over like a broken record. (again, which could be the point. but wuk lamat does this too with her understanding others line.)

one of the best parts of the writing for me was during the trial with zoraal ja. he sees mirages of different aspects of legacy - what came before in gulool ja ja, what is now in wuk lamat and koana, and what comes next in gulool ja. and his next action rejects them all. it's a good scene! i just wish more of the writing was like that and didn't give me a feeling of being directly told what i should know about the story.

while i've mostly been critical of dawntrail, it's not awful. it's a fun romp even if i vastly prefer shadowbringers/endwalker (but who doesn't). wuk lamat and koana were fun to get to know, alexandria was interesting, and running around gathering aether currents lets me to look at some very pretty videogame landscapes.

would i play dawntrail again? no. am i going to continue thinking about whatever gulool ja ja and ketenramm's deal was? yes. why were they like that- //shot

anyways this has been a long rabbithole of something i will likely never think about again but wanted to exorcise. if you've made it this far down, feel free to send me an ask or something with your thoughts.

[legacieswcrp]

LORE DROP: THE PATRON OF TRAVEL AND DEATH

StormClan is a Clan descended from all five lake Clans, as well as some of their many non-Clan neighbors. While the names of those first warriors who chose to leave their homes by the lake are lost to the whims of history and the strain of travel, StormClan still teaches and remembers the tale of a band of brave and righteous cats who, amidst a dire crisis, banded together across borders and put their principles and their legacies before the fraught politics of their time. The travelers saw many places together, loved, lost, and in time founded a Clan of their own over the course of their long journey. They named it for the way a rolling storm evokes the names of all five of their old Clans - the rumble of thunder; the shadow of heavy clouds; the howling winds; the rains which draw rivers past their banks; their domination of the very sky.

And like its namesake, StormClan traveled, even after establishing itself as a Clan, until the day a prophecy called them north - to Tallrock. Petalstar was the cat who led them there, and now he is worshiped as the patron of travel and sometimes death, a spirit whose blessings guide one safely to their journey's end.

In Petalpelt's time, an ending to StormClan's travels was desperately needed, despite the unrest this idea stirred among the ranks. The Clan had grown tremendously since its founding, both in number and in its capabilities - advancements in medicine and technology meant StormClan cats were living longer, growing older, having and raising more kits. To force these cats and their kin to choose between risking their lives for their Clan and leaving their families and friends for good was no choice at all, fundamentally opposed to StormClan's central ideal that no cat should suffer alone.

A dying elder imparted a prophecy to the Clan in this uncertain time: In mountain and meadow, the storm will fall.

Fear surged through the Clan like lightning; the consensus was that settling would destroy the Clan. So their journey continued, and StormClan began to fracture along the way. Petalpelt's appointment as a deputy was with this strain in mind, a gentle deputy to guide and comfort a troubled Clan. He was an excellent mediator, albeit a bit passive. His work continued into his leadership, his life a relentless slog through departing after departing as StormClan's travails seemed to only intensify the longer they continued to wander.

By the time that Tallrock was visible in the distance, StormClan was desperate for a reprieve. Petalstar, acting on a sliver of hope and curiosity, guided his Clan to the mountain where, sure enough, they found meadows and moors coloring the landscape all around it. And, more importantly, they found the Fallen. The last part of the prophecy clicked into place in Petalstar's mind; this was where StormClan was meant to be, peacefully collaborating with the Fallen in the Tallrock territories, learning to live as they did. So StormClan fell, in a way, and recovered with the help of the Fallen.

Under Petalstar, life was good for StormClan. It was a time of learning and innovation, with cats from both groups moving freely together throughout the Tallrock territories; StormClan cats who needed it could always find a home with the Fallen, the Fallen with StormClan. The peace, however, was not to last. As StormClan became comfortable with its new lifestyle and more confident as inhabitants of Tallrock, some cats' anxieties about the Fallen and their unfamiliar traditions hardened into distrust and hate. When the first half-Clan litter was born and their Fallen Ba insisted that they be raised by their kindred across the border, these whispered tensions exploded into the forefront of Clan politics. After the kits and their parents moved to kindred territory, there were schemes and secret meetings, and a plot was enacted. A warrior orchestrated a false abduction, stealing full-blooded StormClan kittens from their nest and framing the Fallen for the act.

It didn't work. Petalstar dishonored the culprit with the name Adder once they were caught and the kittens safely returned, and he gave them an impossible choice of their own as punishment: stay in StormClan and live the rest of their days as a prisoner or live in exile - suffer alone. Adder chose the latter.

In some ways, however, Adder's actions - the actions of their co-conspirators, the interests of their ideology, for Adder was only a symptom of StormClan's festering hate - worked exactly as they were meant to. Distrust took StormClan like a plague, as warriors found themselves doubting everyone, their neighbors, their Clanmates. The Clan was a powder keg ready to blow, and it was only a matter of time until another extreme act - the disappearance of the half-Clan kittens - ignited it. StormClan warriors escalated with the Fallen, and the Tallrock territories descended into war.

This is what tarnished Petalstar's legacy and imparted to him the domain of death. He was a leader who had spent his entire life working for peace; he was not prepared to protect his Clan through conflict at this scale. While he agonized and deliberated over the least costly choices for both sides, cats suffered and died. More combat patrols meant fewer hunting and gathering patrols, and as StormClan's numbers dropped, the survivors began to starve, including Petalstar himself. By the end of his life, most of the Clan - Rimestar most of all - believed that he had fulfilled the prophecy of his youth by leading his Clan into the grave.

Posthumously, Petalstar is a more sympathetic character in StormClan's stories. He was an excellent navigator, and for as gruesome as the war with the Fallen became, he did guide them to their current home. Plenty of cats in more recent generations agree that the cost of the Tallrock war was not entirely Petalstar's fault, though his association with death as a patron persists all the same. Today most cats will pray for his gentle deliverance in times of hardship, for his guidance on long journeys, and for a kinder end when death looms. Many believe that he personally guides the sick and hungry to StarClan when it's their time, either as an atonement for his mistake or as a comrade to those facing the same departure that he did. He, too, is why StormClan cats will place flower blooms or scatter petals over their dead before burial, to guide the departed into his embrace.

[limerental]

ficletvember 2024 - day 17

ciri/letho post-tw3

Ciri is pleased to find that Letho has stayed to manage Kaer Morhen after Vesemir's loss. And she's pleased with a great deal more than that.

Those remaining expected the old keep to fall into worse disrepair after Vesemir’s bones were laid to rest. Kaer Morhen was never meant to be grand, built from the rough stone of the mountains it clung to, and time had stolen it piece by piece until the walls themselves seemed close to crumbling to ash.

Before parting as the pyre cooled, the witchers had debated whether returning next winter would be worth it. What sense was there in lugging themselves into the mountains to huddle in the cold and squalor?

To Ciri, it all felt achingly sad. In her childhood memories, Kaer Morhen gleamed as bright as Cintra’s marble halls. She hardly remembered living as a princess, trauma tearing great holes through even the good things, but she remembered in stark detail the Witcher keep and its eclectic occupants. 

If Kaer Morhen fell vacant and the lot of them scattered to winter elsewhere, she feared even those memories would be lost.

But to everyone's surprise, Letho had offered to stay to mind the place. It seemed a strange choice. A viper in a wolf den. Even Geralt could hardly call him a friend, and the others avoided him. He had an unsavory history, an ugly mug, and not much to say to anyone.

Even so, Ciri popped herself to Kaer Morhen the next fall as soon as the leaves began to turn. 

She'd considered mundane travel, traversing the winding path through rugged mountains by foot. There'd been something spiritual, almost romantic in the way the witchers spoke of that journey home, the soaring relief of emerging into the valley to see the keep floating there waiting for them. 

She'd gone as far as arriving in northern Kaedwen during a chilly downpour before changing her mind. There was nothing romantic, Ciri decided, about blistered heels and slogging up muddy trails in the cold. She'd suffered enough and had the power of time-space travel at her fingertips. 

She closed her eyes in the foothills and stepped into Kaer Morhen's courtyard.

Letho had been hard at work, it seemed. The damages from the battle had been repaired, fresh stonework laid along the walls and rubble cleared and scorchmarks scrubbed clean. The keep itself had less boarded windows, new patches in the roof, rich stain on the main door. 

The door cracked, and Letho appeared, clutching the hum of his amulet. He was wearing an apron streaked in flour.

“Hullo!” called Ciri. “Love what you've done with the place. Have you been baking something?”

“Pie,” Letho said, eyeing her warily. “Apple.”

“Need a hand? Well, you don't need one clearly. Looks like you've got everything well under control here. But would you like one? A hand.”

The large witcher stood in unnatural stillness, scarcely breathing, no movement but the slow track of his slitted eyes as he considered her. 

The moment dragged so long that Ciri doubted her welcome here. Maybe he'd laid a claim on a keep he thought abandoned and aimed to defend It.

Then, he nodded and gestured toward the open door. 

“Welcome home,” said Letho in a voice rough with disuse, and Ciri laughed in delight.

In the fire-warmed kitchen, Letho rolled flat the crust as Ciri sampled the prepared filling, and before long, the pie sat baking in a brick-lined oven as the unlikely pair cracked into a bottle of vodka. 

Ciri yammered on about her year's travels and Letho hummed and offered little comments here and there. She asked him endless questions, and he humored her with thoughtful answers.

He told her how he had found his way here, the sad tale aching with loss and regret. He was the last Viper alive, the others lost on one doomed venture after the next. His ruthless devotion to finding a safe place for them had earned him nothing but a worse reputation, distrust, and endless loneliness.

“I got all my comrades killed once too,” said Ciri, trying to keep herself here by the fire with a kind stranger, her thoughts attempting to wander back to the headless bodies, the gore, the glassy eyes peering down from their sharpened stakes.

Letho's scarred hand covered hers, his massive palm surprisingly soft as it squeezed her fingers in a show of comfort.

Uninterested in stopping to consider the consequences, Ciri leaned close to kiss him.

He obliged her, proving to be gentler by far than he looked or than she preferred. Letho kissed as though she might shatter, and she gripped the hands that swallowed her waist until they tightened. 

She winked over her shoulder as she lay belly down across the weathered kitchen table, shimmying her trousers down her backside, and he surprised her by dropping to his knees.

Though not thin and forked like a serpent's, the Viper's tongue proved to be something remarkable.

Muscles loose and warm, Ciri rolled to her back and coaxed him up to kiss her own taste from his mouth. She reached between his legs, and he stopped her by the wrists as she sought to loosen the ties of his trousers.

“We'll burn the pie,” he said, and then, “You won't find anything that interests you there.”

“Nonsense,” Ciri insisted. “What? Is it poisonous? Does it bite?”

“That's venomous,” said Letho. 

When Ciri pressed, he sighed and dropped his trousers low enough that she could see.

“My trials,” he said. “Your Wolves lucked out. With Vipers, they took the lot.”

Her fingers brushed a mess of scar tissue between his legs, disfigured beyond all recognition. His breath hitched, and she pulled back.

“Does it hurt?”

“No.”

“Feel good?”

“Yeah.”

Ciri touched him more deliberately, fingers parted like she would touch a girl, and Letho cried out like a wounded animal and gripped her too tightly by the shoulders.

He swore and apologized, and she laughed and kissed his thick, furrowed brow and flexed her searching fingers.

The forgotten pie burned to charred ash, but when the others arrived some weeks later, coaxed there by Ciri's invitation, the whole keep smelled of fresh-baked pastry, the scent alone enough to warm.

[saintsenara]

I always love hearing about people’s fandom and reading/writer journeys especially since they usually involve some very cursed content and fun navigating ‘90’s and ‘00’s tech. Where did you start, what got you hooked, how have your tastes changed over the years, what made you decide to go from reader to writer? 💖

thank you for the ask, anon - and you’re correct that my experience was one of cursed 2000s technology, given that i started reading harry potter fanfiction via the twin madhouses of livejournal and fictionalley - nothing ever tagged beyond "lemon!!!1!" - on the family computer using dial-up internet.

[god bless the fact that the parents of my generation had no inclination to care about what we were consuming online - one of my brothers was a huge fan of rotten.com, and he's perfectly well-adjusted...]

my reading tastes were, initially, lord of the rings focused - i still think* about a particular elrohir/námo mandos fic which had me in chokehold when i was about fourteen - but i was as big a harry potter fan as anyone of my generation [shoutout in particular to one of my pals, who spent the entirety of a geography trip in 2006 speculating what the unknown horcruxes could be with me while we froze our bollocks off in some godforsaken bog in county antrim]. so it wasn’t a surprise, i suppose, that i was clicking on any fanfiction links i could find for that series too…

[the fic which has stayed with me most profoundly from those days was called something along the lines of murder at malfoy manor. it was on fictionalley and was this exceptional combination of the rules of cluedo and the ron-is-time-travelling dumbledore theory. it was incredible.]

but i wasn’t a writer. i was one of those science-y, not-like-other-girls teenagers who was performatively really cunty about other girls who liked to write little stories or draw little pictures, which i thought was fundamentally unserious. the fact that i was an avid consumer of these stories didn’t make me question what the fuck i was being such an arsehole about…

because i loved a bit of fanfic, and not only did i love fanfic but i demonstrably had a fandom presence and was clued up on fandom lore - i could quote my immortal, i knew what a snape-wife was, i was on a forum or two - although i went to great lengths to avoid anyone in my real life discovering that. and i do feel extremely proud of myself that i have a reputation among people i know for not having been particularly cringe as a teen [how little they know… i’ve just got a good poker face.]

i lost interest in harry potter when i went to university - i started uni in 2010, when it was still socially acceptable to be really into it, and i definitely went to my fair share of themed parties in the first couple of years, but by the time i graduated in 2016 [i did medicine, so it’s a six-year slog] i’d not opened the books, watched the films, or thought about the fandom in years. i remember rolling my eyes at the number of people i know who went to see cursed child when it first opened. bit cringe to be in your twenties and into harry potter, isn’t it?

[lol. lmao.]

but a global crisis changes things, i suppose.

like so many people, i got back into fandom during the coronavirus pandemic - although, regrettably, not because i was stuck in the house. i don’t think i’ll ever be able to accurately describe what it was like to work in a hospital in 2020, except to say that by the time i got home each day the only thing i could do other than stare blankly at a wall was lose myself in the comfort of media i knew well and its memories of a simpler time. and once i’d re-read the books a few times… well, it was only a matter of time before i was scrolling ao3 at 3am.

and, because my ego hasn’t changed even if my relationship with my own gender has, it did not take a lot to convince me that i could write stories which were just as good as the ones i was reading.

you can be the judge of whether i succeeded.

[*i’m being coy. i have it bookmarked on ao3]

[stagkingswife]

Do you know of any good ways to communicate with spirits beside tarot reading? I feel like I need to change the way I communicate for whatever reason but I'm having a hard time finding alternatives (maybe I'm not googling correctly?) so I was wondering if you had any tips? since in your pinned post it said your interested in spirit work.

There’s lots of options besides tarot!  I can’t remember the last time I used tarot for spirit work, I mostly use it for readings for IRL friends these days because it’s my most “accessible to normies” divination method, so let’s brainstorm some alternatives!

Direct Input:  I call this the Sight, other people use the “clairsense” terms.  This is probably one of the harder methods to discern, because it all has to filter through our minds.  It can be hard to distinguish what is actual input from an outside source and what we are generating ourselves.  Let’s say you want to receive a message from one of the spirits you work with, and then you start having thoughts that are kind of like how this spirit “talks.”  Is the spirit really communicating with you or is your mind manufacturing what you want? Same thing with dreams - was that dream with mysterious imagery a message from a spirit or a natural psychological reaction to your day time activities?  Environmental Signs: Signs and omens are a classic communication tool, but another one that are easy to misuse/misinterpret.  A natural environmental occurrence, like seeing an animal in its natural habitat is just a natural environment occurrence, but if you ask spirits for specific signs, and are careful to ask for signs that would truly be unique or unusual, you can set up a pretty good call and response communication system.  A bad example - Deer are very common where I live.  Seeing a deer is not a reliable sign for me, even though they are strongly associated with my divine spouse.

A good example - Birds are very common around my home, but not birds of prey, which are also associated with my divine spouse, so if I wanted to know if he approved of something I could ask him to send a bird of prey to my home as a sign. Usually I would also request a time frame (within a week, for example) so you know whether or not you got your sign and you aren’t just waiting indefinitely.  

Otherworldly Travel:  This is another one that’s a slog to master, and it’s not at all necessary, I just find it adds a nice depth to some spirit relationships if you can go visit them “at home” in addition to them coming to you. For the spirits that don’t have something that represents them in this world I feel like I get to know them better when I see them in their “natural habitat” like a spirit David Attenborough. That being said, spirits have an advantage in the Otherworlds, I find that it’s much easier for them to manipulate their appearance, presentation, and our perceptions of them in the Otherworlds.  If planning to use Otherworldly Travel in spirit work I highly recommend taking your time and really verifying all of your experiences with other methods. Other Divination Methods:  And most importantly - Tarot isn’t the only divination method!  I know it’s very popular and very easy to find materials and resources on, but it’s not the end all be all of divination. I firmly believe that you need some sort of external verification system to be confident in your spirit work, otherwise you’re just relying on those methods above which can all be subject to well meaning imaginations.  Experiment with other divination systems and find something that works for you that you can be consistent with that is hard for you to manipulate, consciously or unconsciously, to give yourself the results you want.    Instead of Tarot I like oracle decks, I have built my own osteomancy method, and my keyboard divination method - when I do it for myself - are all great for double checking my other experiences. 

[kafus]

gen 3 has really transformed for me in general in recent times. i started playing pokemon with gen 3 (specifically FRLG, but i did also play RSE and even colosseum as a kid eventually) and i was completely autistically in love with it, but was bullied for it pretty severely at school ("girls shouldn't like pokemon" or whatever, it was the early 2000s) and i didn't know anyone else in real life who was into pokemon, so i never got to do any of the link cable features, which were pretty essential for getting the full gen 3 experience - i couldn't even complete my kanto pokedex on FRLG no matter how many times i played it, i didn't have the hardware to trade with myself or anything

then gen 4 came out and revolutionized the series with wi-fi stuff, i remember literally getting emotional and crying when i tried the wi-fi plaza in PtHGSS for the first time because seeing so many people into pokemon from all over the world in that little lobby meant the world to me even though i couldn't actually speak to anyone. despite pokemon being such a massive franchise you could have convinced child me that i was practically the only person playing it because of how lonely i had been prior to gen 4

i reiterate this Sad Backstory(tm) that i've talked about numerous times to contrast it with what gen 3 is to me now. as an adult i've finally made friends who are also into pokemon and it's really made me come out of my shell, both online... and in person, when i get the chance. gen 3 now represents tangible experiences with real people like it was supposed to be when i was a kid. despite not getting to do so often due to all my friends being online and having to travel and stuff, as an adult i've finally done a few trades and stuff with people in real life over link cable, and those pokemon represent physical, real life memories. it is meaningful to me that i've finally reached that childhood dream of simply connecting with someone enough to play with them in this game that means so much to me that is only possible through a real life interaction

i've also learned a lot about gen 3's postgame, glitches, and a lot of other really technical stuff which has expanded my ability to play the games and the things i can do in them other than resetting ruby or leafgreen for the millionth time as a child and as a result i have a lot of playtime in gen 3 and various accomplishments that i'm still very proud of and happy with. and of course i have a pokemon that was name after my late friend who passed away recently, that was named that while he was still alive...

idk it's just ironic that something that once represented my lack of connection with people and my loneliness now fills me with feelings about real people who i love and memories of meeting them in person, literally the opposite of before.

hoenn specifically obviously represents that generation and while i still have some complaints about the main campaign (the latter half of hoenn is a genuine slog, i rarely enjoy playing through it) my experience in emerald's postgame and the general online nerd culture surrounding people still playing gen 3 very actively in current times far outweighs any critical complaint i could have about them as games. my love for gen 3 and hoenn is very people oriented (though really, that gen 3 postgame is amazing if you're insane about pokemon gameplay)

idk i love gen 3 a lot and the tactile nature of it. i love its aesthetic and its pokemon but most of all the people it represents for me. i'm glad i've reached a point in my life where it no longer represents loneliness

[luxe-pauvre]

Admittedly, it’s not entirely our own fault that we approach our finite time in such a perversely instrumental and future-focused way. Powerful external pressures push us in this direction, too, because we exist inside an economic system that is instrumentalist to its core. One way of understanding capitalism, in fact, is as a giant machine for instrumentalsing everything it encounters — the earth’s resources, your time and abilities (or “human resources”) — in the service of future profit. Seeing things this way helps explain the otherwise mysterious truth that rich people in capitalist economies are often surprisingly miserable. They’re very good at instrumentalising their time, for the purpose of generating wealth for themselves; that’s the definition of being successful in a capitalist world. But in focusing so hard on instrumentalising their time, they end up treating their lives in the present moment as nothing but a vehicle in which to travel toward a future state of happiness. And so their days are sapped of meaning, even as their bank balances increase. [...] And yet we’d be fooling ourselves to put all the blame on capitalism for the way in which modern life so often feels like a slog, to be “gotten through” en route to some better time in the future. The truth is that we collaborate with this state of affairs. We choose to treat time in this self-defeatingly instrumental way, and we do so because it helps us maintain the feeling of being in omnipotent control of our lives. As long as you believe that the real meaning of life lies somewhere off in the future — that one day all your efforts will pay off in a golden era of happiness, free of all problems — you get to avoid facing the unpalatable reality that your life isn’t leading toward some moment of truth that hasn’t yet arrived. Our obsession with extracting the greatest future value out of our time blinds us to the reality that, in fact, the moment of truth is always now — that life is nothing but a succession of present moments, culminating in death, and that you’ll probably never get to a point where you feel you have things in perfect working order. And that therefore you had better stop postponing the “real meaning” of your existence into the future, and throw yourself into life now.

Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks

[twh-news]

Loki season two review – by far the best Marvel TV show in years ★★★☆☆ | The Guardian

Tom Hiddleston’s lovably narcissistic Norse god is back with Owen Wilson for a spectacular time-hopping caper that may just save the MCU from certain death

If ever there was a time for a second season of Loki, it’s now. The first outing was a witty romp through time and space, in which Tom Hiddleston’s lovably narcissistic Norse god charmed the pants off viewers. There were wild cameos (Richard E Grant as a weird alternate Loki!). There was sizzling chemistry (the bromance with Owen Wilson’s Agent Mobius!). There was even the tender blossoming of love (with Loki’s metaverse alter ego Sylvie – almost certainly the most poignant romance a TV character has ever conducted with themselves). So, naturally, the Marvel Cinematic Universe chose to follow up this televisual triumph with a disastrous series of flops, culminating in June’s Secret Invasion: a slog of a show that felt like the death knell for the franchise’s entire TV future.

[Possible spoilers ahead]

Luckily, Loki’s action-packed return suggests it is more than prepared to rise to the challenge of shaking off Marvel’s track record of TV tedium. We’re taken to the exact moment the previous season left off: the aftermath of Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) killing He Who Remains – the shadowy figure behind temporal police the Time Variance Authority (TVA). There are slow-mo chases, car crashes in flying vehicles and Loki constantly running into effigies of He Who Remains. One thing is instantly clear: you really can’t avoid season one if you expect any of the following to make sense.

A good chunk of the opener consists of Hiddleston vanishing into another timeline. His body briefly turns into something that looks like it belongs in Stranger Things’ Upside Down, while he makes the sound of a man who has eaten some seriously out-of-date scampi. “It’s horrible,” quips Wilson’s Agent Mobius. “It looks like you’re being born, or dying – or both at the same time.” There are temporal loops, baffling causality chains and the establishment of what will be a series-long plot about stabilising a “temporal loom” – whose explanation is so convoluted the characters may as well be repeatedly chanting the word “MacGuffin”. Compared to the first season’s simple thrills, it’s all a bit overcomplicated – a disappointing choice of direction, if predictable.

Less explicable is the decision to do away with the beating heart of season one – the surprisingly lovely romance between Loki and Sylvie. This time, they’re on very separate paths, with Di Martino’s character reinvented as a time-hopping assassin, while Hiddleston moves ever further from his character’s mischievous past to buddy up with Agent Mobius in a bid to fix the McTimeWotsit. This makes for more zingtastic back-and-forth between Hiddleston and Wilson, but it robs the show of emotional heft. And with Loki proving ever less of a bad cop to Mobius’s good cop, there’s less edge to that sparkling comic chemistry too.

Nonetheless, the performances are as excellent as ever. Hiddleston is fantastic in every mode, from debonair to monstrous or ashen after a brutal insult from Sylvie. Di Martino is a bubbling pot of empathy, eyes constantly dewy with sadness, when she’s not spilling over into murderous rage. Wunmi Mosaku’s reprisal of her role as a TVA agent is ineffably intense – from taking down fugitives while wearing a tangerine ballgown to subjecting goofy colleagues to a Paddington-esque hard stare. And Owen Wilson is … Owen Wilson: a twinkle in the eye in human form.

When it spreads its wings, Loki’s second season manages to have plenty of fun. By episode two it feels like a time-travel thriller, with Loki and Mobius being shot into period-specific missions. There’s a retro spy caper in 70s London, our heroes suiting up like extras in Gangs of New York for a hot pursuit through 19th-century Chicago and an attempt to track down Sylvie in a 1980s McDonald’s in which romantic tension simmers over retro cash registers. The design is spectacular throughout, particularly the gloriously stylised TVA building in which every computer monitor looks like a microwave’s great grandparent, corridors are lined with tarnished aquamarine filing cabinets and even their IT guy (played by Everything Everywhere All at Once’s Ke Huy Quan) is dressed in a Ghostbusters-esque boiler suit that drips with vintage cool.

A few episodes in, things are settling into an enjoyable enough – if not tremendously exciting – groove. Then there is a gigantic cliffhanger that upends the narrative, wrongfoots the viewer and blows the show wide open. The final two instalments aren’t available for preview, so it is hard to say whether this will kickstart the show into scaling the heights of its first season. But either way, one thing is certain: this is easily the best Marvel TV series in years – for all that’s worth.

[contreparry]

Happy friday! The Pyramids of Par Vollen prompt from the dragon age lore list

Absolutely! Here's some Adoribull for @dadrunkwriting!

"Good book?" The Iron Bull's rumbling baritone filled the alcove Dorian had shoved himself into to hide away from the rest of the world. He wanted a day of peaceful solitude, but his chosen volume of entertainment was... Dorian placed a bookmark between the pages and shut the slim book closed with a snap.

"Adequate. Reading a travelogue written by a man who despises traveling is somewhat amusing. Frustrating, though. The author's so busy complaining about how the local cuisine isn't to his liking that he fails to describe anything else about his location," Dorian replied. He carefully maneuvered himself out of the alcove, swinging one leg out and then the other until his feet dangled over the wood floor. Bull crossed his arms and leaned against a bookshelf.

"If it's only adequate I wonder why you bothered," Bull remarked, his singular eye critically examining Dorian's face. "You're not the sort who wastes his time." He was smiling at him, as if he knew something Dorian did not, and Dorian glanced down at the title of the book he carried: Travels Through the Isles of Northern Thedas. Dorian sighed and shoved the book back on the shelf. He'd reorganize later.

"So I was curious about Par Vollen. The literature on your homeland is inadequate," Dorian said, keeping his voice light and airy like whipped egg whites. Don't put any emphasis on this. It means nothing.

"We do our best to keep it that way," Bull replied. "Though some information does get out. And some people do get in. Sorry he wasn't a better writer, though." He leaned in over Dorian and reached out to pluck the book off of the shelf.

"Perhaps you can write something. You have a way with words," Dorian suggested as Bull flipped through the travelogue.

"Nah. Better at speaking than writing," Bull said, and he stopped flipping through the book and held the page up for Dorian's inspection.

"Good sketch of the pyramids, though," he added. "They're something else. How they've survived for so long is a mystery, even to us Qunari."

"You've seen them in person? Really?" Dorian really shouldn't have been surprised. Par Vollen was his home, after all. He just supposed that Bull wouldn't much care for ancient ruins. A foolish supposition. Bull was interested in everything, after all. He was a curious person by nature, and his work as a spy honed that curiosity until it was as sharp as a knife.

"When this is all over, I'll take you to see 'em," Bull remarked. "Sneak you onto the island in a crate."

"Like cargo," Dorian snorted.

"It'll be a nice crate," Bull insisted, and he flopped down onto a nearby chair before holding the book up with a mischievous grin on his face.

"C'mon, Dorian. Read some more about-" Bull cleared his throat and put on an affected voice. "'The green wilderness of Par Vollen, with its miserable climate and detestable cuisine."

"Ugh, I told you he was dreadful!" Dorian complained, and he perched up on the arm of the chair Bull sat in. "He doesn't even offer interesting complaints! It wouldn't be such a slog if he had a little more wit!"

"Between the two of us we can take care of that," Bull said, and he wrapped his arm around Dorian's waist and tugged him a little closer. Dorian sighed and leaned over to press his lips on Bull's cheek, just below the leather of his eyepatch. It hurt his neck to twist into such a position, so he quickly returned to sitting upright.

"Very well," Dorian sighed. "The things I do for your amusement."