#evil old ladies

[honourablejester]

Thought for a Ancient Gnomish Divination Wizard

I wanted an incredibly ancient gnome granny. BUT. I wanted an incredibly ancient gnome granny who has only started learning magic in the last decade or so, because she was bored out of her tree in semi-enforced retirement and decided learning to be a wizard would be a great, non physically demanding hobby in her elder years. Because you see an ancient wizard, you expect an archmage, someone who’s been wizarding their whole long life, but you can start learning magic at any age. So I wanted a granny who’s level 1, because this was just her hobby she started this last little while.

I also specifically wanted her to be learning magic via correspondence course. By letter. Because she’s not going to get up and toddle off to some strange new city and sit in classes with all these kids a literal fraction of her age. She’s not able for that. So she found a (potentially dodgy) old wizard willing to teach magic by letter, and set up a correspondence with them.

And then. While these thoughts were percolating. I love the gnomish massive extended family thing, I love the idea of a four-hundred year old gnome matriarch. But I was thinking what her background would be. What she’d spent those four hundred years doing. What her massive extended family was likely still doing. And I thought.

What if they’re a massive crime family. What if her background is criminal?

Because. In Ireland there’s this thing called the mammy mafia, which is the cultural idea of the small-town coalition of grannies who know everybody’s goddamn move, on account of all the ‘little birds’ that told them. And. Make that a literal mafia, or at least a literal criminal clan. And this horrific old biddy at the root of it. She’s four hundred and something years old, thrice widowed (once by her own hand), with an absolutely ridiculous number of cousins and descendants and assorted relatives who stayed in the family business. Her criminal contact is that one grand nephew who knows how to get in touch with everyone in the family, and who’s friendly enough with gran to pass her ‘suggestions’ along.

Because. See. She’s ancient. She hasn’t been a direct part of the business in decades. Not all the family are willing to listen to the old biddy. But she still has enough of a spider’s reach to make life difficult for a lot of people. Especially since her specialty, back in the day, was blackmail. And that much she’s only gotten better at. A word in the right ear does wonders, even when you’re about as physically lively as a four day old corpse.

Which is why her school will be divination. Because she’s a nosy old biddy.

And. She’s also lonely. She wanted someone to talk to who wasn’t one of those innumerable relatives who are all, aside from her favourite grand nephew, varying states of fed up with her, the family’s moved on, gran, it’s not your day anymore, let me run my murder-and-blackmail ring my way, I’ve only been doing it for two centuries at this stage! So. So she decided to learn magic, and she found some perhaps financially struggling hedge wizard, and she’s spent the past decade or so exchanging incredibly vicious and snarky letters with someone who is a genuine wizard, and who does have opinions on the correct way to learn/do magic, but is stuck in a circumstance where he’s teaching some ancient harridan by correspondence course to make ends meet. And she’s become sort of genuinely fond of him. She’s never met the young man in her life (though naturally she’s had some great-great-grand-whatevers spy on him and steal all his information, just for safety’s sake), but their letters have become sort-of-friendly in between arguments and increasingly exasperated ‘lessons’, and she’s just become a bit fond of him.

Which makes it both a) inconvenient and b) worrying that he’s recently stopped responding to her letters. Or any letters. And her familial spy network can’t find any trace of him anymore. He’s up and vanished, and possibly in the wizard way, or possibly in the buried in a shallow grave way, and she’s deeply upset about it.

Upset enough to actually get up and go out and find out what the hell happened to him. Herself. In person. Because she may be only a starter wizard, and she may be an irrelevant old biddy so ancient that her bad shoulder and bad knees and bad lungs won’t let her murder people the good old fashioned away anymore, but she has four hundred years of evil experience of the world, and nobody gets to ‘disappear’ a friend of hers and get away with it.

And if it’s his own magical idiocy that’s done this, then she’s gonna find him, dig him out of it, and laugh in his face about it while saying ‘I told you so’. Because that’s what friendship means for wizards, right? And ancient old harridans.

(Some mechanical character notes:

Is it blasphemy to have a wizard who isn’t proficient in arcana? Because I feel like four hundred years of criminal and blackmail experience will incline her more towards insight and investigation. And, well. This is a hobby to her, that only got serious when her teacher slash pen pal slash best friend went missing. I think I want her to pick up the Observant feat as well at some point.

For her subrace, I’m going deep gnome, because they’re stealthier. So imagine this vast, occasionally genial clan of greyish gnomes who are involved in the criminal underworlds of like half the continent.

I did debate both illusion and scribes for her subclass, but, well. She’s a nosy old biddy, so divination. I think there’ll be a healthy amount of practical spells among her actual arsenal, though, good old Knock and Misty Step and Invisibility, because she’s not ideological about her school, she just likes having tools, and blackmailer instincts die hard.

She will also have Find Familiar. Purely so she can have a literal ‘little bird’ spy. The preferred form would actually be like a sparrow or a house martin or equivalent, a ubiquitous small urban bird, but maybe I could reskin a raven for it?)

I just wanted an evil old biddy who picked up magic as a hobby in her twilight years, and then had a reason to go out and about with it. You know?

[janmisali]

Super Mario Bracket: FINAL ROUND

"You're about to have a really terrible experience!"

Vivian

SEED: 1 (215 nominations)

PREVIOUS OPPONENT: Daisy

SPECIES: Shadow

DEBUT: The Thousand-Year Door

BIO: Vivian is one of the main characters of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door for the GameCube and its 2024 remake for the Switch. while she is introduced as an antagonist along with her sisters, she later joins Mario, at a time when all of Mario's friends have abandoned him.

Vivian's arc is one of the most memorable parts of one of the most critically acclaimed games in the greater Super Mario franchise. the 2024 remake of The Thousand-Year Door was specifically praised by critics and fans alike for making Vivian's transgender identity textually explicit in the English-language release, which had been censored in the original 2004 localization.

in the Super Mario Bracket, Vivian has consistently been one of the strongest competitors, from before the bracket even began. in the preliminaries, she received over twice as many nominations as the second most nominated character, Luigi. she has yet to finish a match with anything less than 70% of the vote, as can be seen in her previous matches against Dribble & Spitz, Goomba, Kamek, Count Bleck, Big Bertha, and Daisy.

[Super Mario Wiki article]

"I'm The Old Psychic Lady with the Evil Eye Who Reads Fortunes and Knows Everything Before It Happens."

The Old Psychic Lady with the Evil Eye Who Reads Fortunes and Knows Everything Before It Happens

SEED: 38 (17 nominations)

PREVIOUS OPPONENT: Luigi

SPECIES: Human

DEBUT: The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!

BIO: The Old Psychic Lady with the Evil Eye Who Reads Fortunes and Knows Everything Before It Happens is a character from the live-action segment "The Great Hereafter" from The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!. she is a spirit medium who brings Mario and Luigi into contact with the ghost of their deceased grandmother.

The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! is, among English-speaking Mario fans, one of the most well-known of the Super Mario franchise's non-video game works. its live action half-episodes were either paired with animated Super Show! episodes, or (as is the case for "The Great Hereafter") with episodes of the Legend of Zelda animated series.

The Old Psychic Lady with the Evil Eye Who Reads Fortunes and Knows Everything Before It Happens is introduced after Mario suggests to Luigi that they should talk to "the old lady with the evil eye that she could tell fortunes and she could tell things before they happen", just before the woman in question rings the doorbell and says her full title out loud.

in the Super Mario Bracket, The Old Psychic Lady with the Evil Eye Who Reads Fortunes and Knows Everything Before It Happens has gained a notable dedicated following, winning new fans over almost entirely from her name alone. her pure appeal has led her to win against Ms. Mowz, Funky Kong, Yoshi, Elvira, Rosalina, and Luigi: a remarkable achievement.

[Super Mario Wiki article]

[link to all polls]

[garrywantspasta]

Alcina feels so wronged... 😂

[northernolddragon]

[fangrurin]

Fashion of the Great Houses of Westeros: House Greyjoy of Pyke

[drawnfamiliarfaces]

is that disney-esque artstyle, peter parker look alike PILOT RANDY CUNNINGHAM???

also ngl i kinda dig Viceroy II and Deputy Mayor Kranski

+bonus Bible designs

[igelmanz]

They’re so important to me

[kinokoshoujoart]

Marrying Carter in Harvest Moon DS Cute! (North American version)

oh… sorry no not the archaeologist, i mean Pastor Carter from Mineral Town!

(or is it Pastor Curdy….?)

teeechnically his descendant, and it causes a game over… but this is the only time we’ve been able to marry him right?

so in the girl version of HMDS, there’s two “secret” Mineral Town bachelors that you can marry by talking to them enough times on the phone. one is Mason, the guy who runs May’s Tailoring… but the second, Pastor Carter, is a bit more obscure…

i couldn’t find them uploaded anywhere so here are his 2nd* thru 10th conversations+his proposal+proposal rejection in english! if you want to see it on youtube instead here you go

*i failed to record the first conversation when it happened, and there’s no way in hell i’m resetting my whole game again (…yet), so…just know the first one was like “oh you want to talk? what should we talk about…….. …… ….. …. i can’t think of anything. well see ya………” extremely riveting stuff

he’s so obscure that i didn’t even realize that he was a bachelor until i found out about the mechanic from this japanese wiki!! (here’s an archive link to the page on him in case the page doesn’t work) all i did was test whether it worked in english since i couldn’t find any english info at all mentioning it. i’m sure others have found him… right……..

in case the links above don’t work, a small guide to holy matrimony below the cut since i can’t find one in english

it works essentially the same as the Mason marriage (so it’s just a game over, sadly…), and the steps are pretty tedious and counterintuitive, so you’re unlikely to just stumble across it… but you too can get a priest to break his vow of celibacy for you or whatever!

you will need:

at least 2,050,000 G

20 cursed tools/accessories

if you really don’t want to dig up 20 cursed things you can substitute 100x “remove a cursed tool/accessory” for blessing a cursed tool…

but, including all the cursed tools and accessories, there’s only 16… which means you will need to go dig up 4 duplicate cursed accessories using this method! yay!!! extremely pointless since you can’t sell blessed accessories until after marriage in DS for girl (at which point you can’t trigger pastor carter’s proposal)

you unlock a conversation with cardi when you spend at least 205,000 G. which means the quickest thing to do is to order removal of a cursed item five times, then bless 2 cursed items.

**be careful when blessing accessories to only equip one at a time!!! if you equip a stack of duplicate accessories, blessing that stack destroys the duplicates!!!! :( so just take 1 out of the stack and equip it!!!**

you also can’t unlock more conversations until you’ve seen the one you unlocked, so like even if you spend a million G you’ll just unlock one conversation, and you’ll need to finish that conversation and then spend 205,000 G to unlock the next one…yeah….

on the tenth conversation he abruptly reveals that he’s fallen in love with you and asks you to marry him! it ends your game, but….! on the bright side, it ends your game!!! you’re finally free from Hell Simulator!!!!

[mushramoo]

I think they were attached at the hip tbh (also to help those destroyed by my last post, i would say I’m sorry but I will do it again >:)

[couldtheycatchkira]

[captainrufflebanger]

Assorted re8 art I drew between November-December 2021 when I final overcame my art block of 5 years! I should really give that re8 x Chicago art another try because I was cooking something good back then 🤔

[janmisali]

[even-more-than-before]

i should not be allowed near glitterfy

[northernolddragon]

[mylonelydreaming]

Zelda game where you play as Ganon or Ganondorf against a possessed Link and Zelda. And the reason he's the protagonist is it ruins the game for him if he has no opposition from a hero and princess anymore. But now he has to begrudgingly be a goody two shoes to the people of Hyrule until he gets their hero and princess back to normal.