#fig canonically would eat that baby

[gizmoganache]

healthy yuri. DOMESTICATED yuri

[dullgecko]

Whether true or not Fabian is utterly convinced that the pelican that tried to eat baby Riz was chungledown bims (he also actually does have a pelican as a familiar in canon, it’s even in some of his artwork)

Also idea that during one of those late nights of travel during the night yorb incident, when for mostly boredom related reasons they’re talking about childhood fears Riz decides to open up a bit and tell them about this extremely vivid nightmare he had once as a child about being chased through a strange twisted city by a group of ‘giant’ such as a huge green monster and Red Devil (gorgug and fig) that ends with him being trapped in a cage.

It’s not until everything settled down and the other bad kids have gotten some sleep when he puts two and two together. Shooting up suddenly as he realises that his best friends where also his worst childhood fear.

Xx

Haha you caught it. That was intentional.

It WAS Chungledown Bims pelican. He didn't actually get eaten by the thing so someone would have had to have pried him out of the horrible birds mouth. The pelican saw Fabian trying to very carefully coax this tiny creature towards him, and it was working, and just went 'haha must be his pet this will fuck with him' and just SCOOPED Riz up and flew away.

Chungledown fishes Riz out of his familiars mouth later and debates offing the weird little creature because fuck Fabian (goblin kits are rare barely anyone knows what they look like) before deciding to just sell it for some cash to the pet trader.

The party finds Riz on the pet traders ship in the end, Fabian buys him and refuses to let anyone else hold the cage. He spends the walk back to Aydas library ripping up bits of beef jerky (from his 'Riz snack' stash in his backpack) and giving it to the goblin through the bars. He's worried that no one fed Riz in the four days he was missing (they didnt) and the kit is just *heart eyes* the whole time because big elf has food and he's starving.

Fabian accidentally creates a minor paradox because these are Riz's favorite snack (the super expensive jerky from the specialty store) so he's feeding them to the kit, but they're Riz's favorite because of this one incident.

[number1rizgukgakstan]

FANTASY HIGH JUNIOR YEAR EPISODE 18 LIVEBLOG

It's that time again! Spoilers below the cut!

The only CW being underage drinking + drug use is fascinating- I assume that means no one dies? At least, not like Buddy did.

I'm SO excited looking at that set it's so fucking cool. The crackling in the fake clouds? HOLY SHIT the modeling team went OFF I love their work.

I FORGOT JAWBONE'S THERE. AND SO IS EUGENIA. This is so insane I'm so excited.

"Airitime law" God I love you so much Zach you are SO FUNNY

The WHOLE school is here that's so funny. Does this mean the clubs Riz joined are going to come into play?? GERTIE??? GERTIE???? HEY GERTIE???

The divine domain idea is so fascinating but I would like to say- imagine worshiping a god named Porter. I'm crying laughing.

CURSED GOLD PIECE??? FUCK YEAH GO FOR IT FABIAN

RAGH IS HERE??? FUCK YEAH!

Okay we're getting the NPCS set up? Fuck yeah

FIG NO WHY ARE YOU WANDA CHILDA???? THATS SO FUNNY. Gerard Neigh I'm CRYING. I love Armor of Ayda and the Spirit Guardians.

VULTURE KING LIVER + TALON FOR FABIAN In BAD! BABY! MILK!

WHY IS GORGUG SWALLOWING THE HEART LIKE A PILL??? INSANE

EAT THE FEATHER??? FIG YOU DON"T HAVE TO EAT IT ITS JUST WHEN BROKEN [sobs]

"You're wearing an Orangutang mask and the skull of the Vulture King?"

"And I'm speaking Vulture.

"And you're speaking Vulture."

Adaine is so brilliant I love her.

K2 giving Kristen basically a whole extra turn is so funny. We love K2.

They have so many spells prepared I love it. Fabian's party sounds sick as hell. Even the Bad Baby milk sounds fun. Disgusting but fun.

I feel like using the NMK against Kristen is a bad idea but will have terrible consequences for Kristen, who's silly goofyness has been coming back to bite them. IDK we'll see

Fabian faking it till he makes it is SO FUNNY.

Baby and Baby Baby being here's so fucking funny. Let's go Baby and Baby Baby!

Fabian's HOUSE burning down would be devastating but maybe it'd make his mother come home

CANNONS!!! PUT BABY BABY ON THE CANNONS

They have to DO ELECTIONS and RUN THE PARTY WHILE FIGHTING??? BRENNAN LEE MULLIGAN THIS IS INSANE I LOVE IT SO MUCH.

Kristen and K2 helping Riz load the canon is so wholesome. They're such a great team

NOOOO FABIAN HAS THE PACMAN TATTOO [laughing crying] RIP

1/4th of the party voting in one turn is absurd. Fabian's charisma is INSANE i love this man and his conga line

Jawbone once again completely out of the loop and just going with it is great.

I now see why Sprak has his own art.

The music video idea was genuis. Emily Axford is such a quick thinker and her performance as Fig is top-knotch.

Oisin summoning dragons breaks my heart. NOOO you were so cool :( now Adaine has to Furious Fist Mega Punch you to death

This fight is honestly so fucking metal. The music video, Fabian killing a dragon singlehandidly, Riz murdering two with the canons, all the Dex saves, Gorgug's excellent driving, JAWBONE, the voting drive... honestly I'm so proud of the Bad Kids and how far they've come.

ANOTHER GORGUG NAT 20 HOLY SHIT! Zac's really fucking it up right now. 7d12 is absurd

Wanda Childa running the party is so insane and I love it. It's Emily Axford's world and we're just living in it.

Eugenia Shadow is amazing. Best NPC by far.

"Can I bring a vulture to give me the help action?" absurd request. brennan's face was brilliant. Again: ITS EMILY AXFORD'S WORLD AND WE'RE JUST LIVING IN IT.

The fight. Every moment was incredible. They really did slay those god damn dragons. No one had to make a single death save. The party was popping. Fig was constantly being the fucking COOLEST. Fabian telling Gorgug not to crash his parent's boat. Eugenia Shadow telling Riz he's the best student she's ever had. It was brilliant. Excellent.

"Sorry Oisin, shouldn't have been such a douchebag, we're gonna kill your grandma now" BRILLIANT. 10/10. I love it.

AS SOON AS SHE SAID DIVINE INTERVENTION I FUCKING CHEERED. K2 DIES TO SAVE THE WORLD BY SAYING "BLIMEY" NOT FUCKING CLICKBAIT.

Zac doing the dm bit is so funny.

K2 not knowing shit and pulling off a miracle is such pure Kristen its so fucking brilliant. THE UNCERTAINTY OF MAYBE BEING PREGNANT IS INSANE. I love Ally Beardsley.

Brennan's reaction to the pregnancy bit is so fucking funny. They broke this man's spirit in the funniest way possible.

"Haunted Wizard Clone Mini Golf Lightning Extravaganza" is the single funniest string of words imaginable. Brennan Lee Mulligan you are my favorite comedian ever.

"How much of this can we cut out, do you think?" Ally this is your bed, you have to lie in it, I'm so sorry. Funniest roll of all time.

WE ALMOST GOT THE GOLD TORNADO?? NOOOOOO.

Circling back, the flavor of Armor of Ayda is so cute. Ayda's protection is always over Fig no matter where she is.

THEY FUCKING DID IT GANG! Now for the penultimate battle! :]

The previews are making me go insane. RATGRINDERS FIGHT RATGRINDERS FIGHT RATGRINDERS FIGHT!

"I think I have to try" is making me so fucking excited. WHAT ARE YOU TRYING FIG????

LETS FUCKING GO! NEXT WEEK BABYYYYYY

[doorrobloxstuff]

Stares at you with my autistic eyes /silly

Please feed me any/all ramblings you have >:3

Entities have different social norms then humans do.

Rush and Ambush frequently watch each other while they sleep.

Sometimes Ambush will wake up to big, black voids staring into its own. Staring off into eternity right into its face.

Sometimes Ambush will slowly fall back asleep with a partner staring at it, sometimes it’ll lean in and kiss it.

Sometimes two entities will combine their families via nuptials (this may or may not be romantic btw, they will do this for business reasons)

Have offspring to seal nuptials too.

^ this one’s rarer though since entities are very protective of their babies. Only with someone they trust.

Doesn’t stop them from eating them occasionally if things get..BAD.

Rueben and Shadow are less “madly in love” and more so chill about their relationship.

I’m wondering if I should make the whole lizard thing canon to my main au, but I feel like that would go waaaaay to canon-divergent.

I’ve considered giving Figure skulk censor like whiskers

Figure sleeps upright or deep inside Seek’s ocean of mass. The mass is preferable since there’s no bed that can fit the fig.

If El-Goblino is seen in the main hotel, it’s on sight. (Except if it’s Rueben, who he has a very, very reluctant alliance with).

This is due to the fact he stabbed Rush and had Jeff not grabbed Rush he probably would’ve been violently killed him.

Rush is a surprisingly good kisser

A-60 and Sally (and eventually Dupe) snuggle a lot.

When it has that ‘genetically dominant, piss stained smile’ it’s a Rushlet, if it has the :0 it’s an Ambushling.

Out of both their litters, only A-90 is an Ambushling and maybe A-120 if it was born with a mouth. But it’s technically a Rushlet by nature since Rush drew a mouth on it when it was an infant and it stayed.

Revive’s nickname is vivi :)

Its true form is unfathomable btw.

It sounds like a mourning dove and coos.

Revive has a very..special relationship. That’s all I’ll say for now.

[tseneipgam]

"The other day at school, between classes, I forget who, but someone was saying, "I was born a girl, so yeah I definitely want to have a baby of my own eventually." Where does that come from, though? Does blood coming out of your body make you a woman? A potential mother? What makes that so great anyway? Does anyone really believe that? .... It feels like I'm trapped inside my body. It decides when I get hungry, and when I'll get my period. From birth to death, you have to keep eating and making money just to stay alive. I see what working every night does to my mum. It takes it out of her. But what's it all for? Life is hard enough with just one body. Why would anyone ever want to make another one? I can't even imagine why anyone would bother, but people act like it's the best thing ever. Do they believe that, though? I mean, have they ever really thought about it? When I'm alone and thinking about this stuff, it always makes me so sad. At least for me, I know it's not the right thing. Once you get your period, that means your body can fertil- ize sperm. And that means you can get pregnant. And then we get more people, thinking and eating and filling up the world. It's overwhelming. I get a little depressed just thinking about it. I'll never do it. I'll never have children. Ever."

"...even the idea that all is one and one is all vanishes from your mind, and you realize you're the universe, and that there is no you at all. She said that people can become Buddhas, too, but honestly I don't really get how that's differ- ent from enlightenment or whatever. Anyway, that's what Buddhism is all about. And that's why priests read sutras at funerals. So that the person who died can become a Buddha. But there was this other thing she said that really stuck with me. Even when a woman dies, she can't become a Buddha. Because women are supposedly dirty. A long time ago, all these important people wrote about how dirty women are, and why that's bad. So, basically, to become a Buddha, you have to be reborn as a man first. What the hell is that? I didn't get it, so I was like, Jun, how do you do that? She was like "I don't know." I asked her how she could believe any of that. It was crazy. Things got pretty awkward after that."

"The lower shelves were where I kept the paperbacks I fig- ured I'd never read again. The names on the spines, Herman Hesse, Raymond Radiguet, and Kyusaku Yumeno, had all faded in the sun. Lord of the Flies, Pride and Prejudice, and my Dostoyevsky, The Gambler, Notes from Underground, and The Brothers Karamazov. Chekhov, Camus, Steinbeck. The Odyssey and The Earthquake in Chile. These were the undisputed giants of literature; but from a different angle, this classic lineup was a shameful, even mortifying symbol of my willing- ness to truckle to the received wisdom of the canon, a stance that undeniably marked me as an amateur."

"Writing makes me happy. But it goes beyond that. Writing is my life's work. I am absolutely positive that this is what I'm here to do. Even if it turns out that I don't have the ability, and no one out there wants to read a single word of it, there's noth. ing I can do about this feeling. I can't make it go away. I recognize that luck, effort, and ability are often indistin- guishable. And I know that, in the end, I'm just another human being, who's born only to die. I know that in reality, it makes no difference whether I write novels, and it makes no differ- ence if anyone cares. With all the countless books already out there, the world won't notice if I fail to publish even one book with my name on it. That's no tragedy. I know that. I get that."

"From that point on, it's all a mystery. Say an egg is fertilized. It's going to be a girl, and she hasn't been born yet. In the baby girl's ovaries (scary to think, but she's already got them), she's got seven million eggs, more than she'll ever have after being born. From then on, the number only drops. When the girl's born, she's got maybe a million, and she'll never get any new ones After that, it dips way, way down. By the time a girl is my age, she's got around three hundred thousand left, and only a small number of those fully develop. Only those eggs can get you pregnant. It's scary to think about it, really scary. Before I was even born, I already had everything I needed to have a baby of my own. In some ways, I was even more prepared than I am now. Set up to give birth, before I was even born ...This isn't just in books, though. It's happening now, as we speak, inside of me. I wish I could rip out all those parts of me, the parts already rushing to give birth. Why does it have to be like this?"

"Your life would have been better if you never had me. Think about how great everything would be if none of us were ever born. No happiness, no sadness. Nothing could ever happen to us then. It's not our fault that we have eggs and sperm, but we can definitely try harder to keep them from meeting."

"Just think about it. They're on a pedestal from the second they're born, only they don't realize it. Whenever they need something, their mums come running. They're taught to believe that their penises make them superior, and that women are just there for them to use however they see fit. Then they go out into the world, where everything centers around them and their dicks. And it's women who have to make it work. At the end of the day, where's this pain that men feel coming from? In their opinion: us. It's all our fault--whether they're unpopular, broke, jobless. Whatever it is, they blame women for all of their failures, all their problems. Now think about women. No matter how you see it, who's actually responsible for the majority of the pain women feel? If you think about it that way, how could a man and a woman ever see eye to eye? It's structurally impossible."

"You've got what it takes to be a great novelist. Don't squander your gift. Everyone goes through times when they can't write. The important thing is that you keep on going. If you want to write, you have to make it your whole life. I mean, you knew that when you started, right?" I stared down at the round tips of her shoes. Nothing to say. "How is having a kid going to help you? Get a grip. Kids. Do you know how boring you sound? Great writers, men and women alike, never have kids. When you write, there's no room in your life for that. You have to go where your stories take you. You owe that to your writing. Don't listen to Rika. What she does isn't literature anyway. It's pop. It's trash. What she writes anyone could write. Sure it's readable and makes people feel cozy, but her prose is hackneyed and derivative. She churns stuff out like nothing for a reason. That isn't literature. You can do better than that. If your story is putting up a fight, that means it has a heart. That's all that matters. What's the point of writing some novel you could breeze through in a month or two? The struggle means something. It means every- thing. I'm here for you. I'm with you. I'm working on this with you. The story's going to be great. I believe in you. You can write something that nobody else can, I'm sure of it."

"It's never crossed their mind that bringing a child into the world could be at all violent. Hey, everyone loves surprise par- ties, right? One day you open the door, and everyone's there waiting for you, ready to surprise you. Here are all these people you've never met, never seen before, congratulating you, big smiles on their faces. Parties are different, though. You can go back through the door behind you, but when you're born, there's no leaving. There's no door. There's no way back to how things were before. I hate it to say it, but not everyone likes sut- prise parties. Most people go around believing life is good, one stant blessing, like the world we live in is so beautiful, and despite the pain, it's actually this amazing place."

"She could hear the other children playing, even see them, way off in the distance. How could they be living in the same world? If the grass covering the river's edge could talk, what would it say? Growing its whole life in the same spot. Stuck there. What about her? What did she have to say? Staring off into the distance, Yuriko remembered the time that she got separated from her mother in the meadow. The smell of grass was almost suffocating. Crouching so she could get a closer look at all the shiny flowering plants, she blew on their leaves and asked them: "What makes us so different? Does it hurt to be you? Does it hurt to be me? What's it mean to hurt, anyway?" Jostling on the fragrant breeze, her new friends wouldn't answer her."

"

"Amazing, right? If I was sulking on the ferris wheel, nor wanting to go home, or just bent out of shape, if I'd been felt. ins with a friend or Mum had yelled at me, my dad would say, When things get rough, just think about the Voyager: He rold me it was always out there, flying through the darkness. Not metaphorically. Literally. At any given moment, somewhere on earth, it was directly overhead." I nodded. "Kind of a lot to tell a kid. But I think I understood what he was saying. We're always getting caught up in our problems, but what's a hundred years? Human lives are so short. The whole of human history is nothing when you stop and think about outer space. I don't think he was trying to tell me I was going to die at some point or anything like that. It wasn't about me at all. More like there would come a time when the sun would burn out, when human beings and this planet would no longer exist, but the Voyager would still be out there, drifting ever deeper into space." I nodded. "You know about the golden record?" "What's that?" I asked. "The Voyager is carrying a record filled with the sounds of our planet. Waves, wind, lightning, birds. Greetings in over fifty languages. Music from across the globe. Information about human reproduction, our anatomy, the way our bodies change. The colors as we perceive them, the things we eat, the things we care about. Our daily lives. Deserts, oceans, mountains, animals, musical instruments Science, culture, everything. It's all on this record. There's a needle in there, too, so you can play it." I imagined a single gold-colored disc. "Someday, if someone in another galaxy finds the probe. and they can make sense of that record, they'll get a sense of who we were. By that time, we'll be long gone, all of us. But at least we left a record. In that sense, our memory can live on"

Vocab:

"yakiniku" commonly refers to a style of cooking bite-size meat and vegetables on gridirons or griddles

"motsu" literally translates to guts and "yaki" meaning grilled so: Grilled Guts.

"mugicha" =Japanese barley tea

"izakaya" =a type of informal Japanese bar that serves alcoholic drinks and snack

“motsuni” usually refers to a soup dish that has been simmered for a long time

a "happi" is a traditional tube-sleeved Japanese coat, usually worn only during festivals

"Oden" is a Japanese fish cake stew simmered in a soy sauce-based dashi broth and served family style in a donabe clay pot in the wintertime.

an "oshibori" or hot towel in English, is a wet hand towel offered to customers in places such as restaurants or bars, and used to clean one's hands before eating.

"Harusame" = glass noodle

"Dashimaki Tamago"= rolled omelet made with egg and dashi

"Samgyeopsal, samgyeopsal-gui, or grilled pork belly is a type of gui in Korean cuisine"

"Pachinko" parlors are widespread in Japan, and usually also feature a number of slot machines (called pachislo or pachislots

"Okonomiyaki" is a Japanese teppanyaki, savory pancake dish consisting of wheat flour batter and other ingredients cooked on a teppan.

"Takoyaki" is a ball-shaped Japanese snack made of a wheat flour-based batter and cooked in a special molded pan. It is typically filled with minced or diced octopus, tempura scraps, pickled ginger, and green onion

[qqueenofhades]

you could write (i love him) after every ivan line* in the last PEL update batch and it would be an accurate depiction of my feelings for your ivan. And like granted, i do love ivan a lot in general but PEL really took all of those feelings and magnified it 10x. Like when he winked at Matthias, i was like “omg why is he so attractive and why do i love him so much??”

and i realized that one of the reasons i love your Ivan so much is because you gave him a character trait i dont often see others give him or highlight — your Ivan is mischievous. Like he’s just a bit of a troublemaker and a little shit and he’s so charmingly mischievous underneath all that grumpiness and the stoic facade and when you see it, you’re just like “omg i never want to let him go.” so thank you for bringing something unique to his character that really fleshes him out.

omg am i fedyor?

*obviously we all always stan fedyor always and we also love him very very much so the fivan scenes are just (i love them so much)

Haha, thank you. I also love Phantomverse Ivan a whole damn lot and have many feelings about him (I mean, I created him in this universe, but that means I obviously Have Thoughts, all right.) And I see the mischievous side of him as something that he's more able to express because he's comfortable and happy in his life, and therefore he can be more playful not just with Fedyor, but in general. There was a time not so long ago when he would never be caught DEAD in drag, let alone performing at Matthias's bachelor party and directly trolling him about it afterward. That comes with being more confident and comfortable with himself, both as a result of his happy long-term relationship and just... finding himself more overall? Ivan at the end of PEL is LIGHT YEARS away from who he was growing up, and obviously I love me some sweet sweet Character Development, so that's what I did with him overall. Fedyor is a huge part of it, but not all.

Likewise, because Ivan remains a background character in both the novels (since it's Alina's first person POV) and then the show, there's just little tidbits we get of him that transformative works can flesh out into more of a character. We've all seized on Aleksander describing Ivan as quite funny once you get to know him, and that's why I think the mischievous part of him is something already present (if not super explored) in canon. Anyone who reads my stuff knows that I tend to write with a sense of humor, I love me some snark and sass and disaster banter and Shenanigans, and I like to find the way that applies to my various trash babies, whoever they might be at the moment. As for Ivan, Grumperor of Grump, that's the element of constant little shitness that is absolutely present beneath the tough facade, and which is fun to poke at and reveal in various ways.

Besides, I feel like reading Ivan as just a straightforward crabby-ass (which he is, don't get me wrong, and I love him for it) flattens him out and reduces him to JUST being grumpy and nothing else, and that's not how I see him? And really, not how he actually is. While I've obviously fleshed him out and gone into a lot more detail as a fan creator, the elements are still there in the source material to start with. We have Simon Sears saying that Ivan is the way he is because he's gone through/seen too much as a soldier, we have his showverse relationship with Fedyor as the one good thing he allows himself/one person he loves, we have Aleksander saying he's funny, we have the Winter Fete with Fedyor feeding him the cookie and his little soft smile, the David Is Talking again silent-side-eye, and the wHy aRe yOu HeRe eAtinG fIGs moment that I will never not love with my entire heart. He IS mischievous and has a very gruff sense of humor that he gets to flash now and again, and in PEL, because he's a lot happier overall than I think he is in canon, he gets to show that more often. And I have feelings about that.

(Shh. We're all Fedyor, basically.)

[inspector2ndclass]

The Mechanisms as Random Birds I Found on the Internet

Did anyone want this? No. Do I know anything about birds? Also no. Anyways, here’s a shitpost I spent way too long on.

Jonny d’Ville: Northern Mockingbird

First and foremost, here’s Jonny! An asshole! A bastard! An all around terrible person! He shall be a northern mockingbird. This fucking bird has no redeemable qualities other than that it is pretty and a GREAT singer. This is a very aggressive bird. Very territorial. If it had opposable thumbs, it would probably shoot you in like the foot or something. I don’t think these birds are very smart. Just like a certain “captain” that we know. The state bird of Texas, among all places. Never trust a texas. In true Texas fashion, the 1927 legislation declaring the Northern Mockingbird the state’s official bird stated that the species is “a fighter for the protection of his home, falling, if need be, in its defence, like any true texan.” Now Jonny burned down a Texas - maybe not this Texas but whatever. I read somewhere that a mockingbird could peck someone’s dick off, and honestly? Valid.

Gunpowder Tim: Southern Cassowary

Okay, hear me out. This bird is a little bitch - or rather a b i g bitch. In a good way. Look at this fucking bird. It’s majestic. Doesn’t it look just SO trustworthy. What a trustworthy man. And very pretty. Pretty, pretty bird. Who could squash you like a fucking ant. This is one Violent bird. Tim is one Violent person. The cassowary makes a low roaring sound like a fucking dinosaur. I love dinosaurs. DID I MENTION IT LAYS GREEN EGGS. Now you might say, well Tim is a human and humans don’t lay green eggs. Fuck you. It’s never explicitly stated that our very own Gunpowder Tim doesn’t lay green eggs. Also comes with a built-in helmet. As everyone except Tim and the southern cassowary says, safety first! Strikes me as a very egotistical bird. If the cassowary weren’t a bird, I don’t think it would wear a seatbelt.

Ashes O’Reilly: California Condor

Okay, so. This is a cool fucking bird. Just look at it. M a j e s t i c. Do you know who else is really fucking cool? Ashes. They have so much power. Also condors are beautiful birds. Oh my god. California condors are very graceful fliers. For Ashes, I almost went with the brown falcon - one of “Nature’s arsonists”, but other than arson, it’s a rather boring bird. Just brown. And a falcon. BUT THE CALIFORNIA CONDOR. Now that’s a cool bird. The god of the sky. Actually, in the “research” for this post I found a blog post in 2011 from someone who has genuinely worshipped condors as gods since they were a teenager and honestly? Valid. (disclaimer; I am aware that many native cultures worship animals and nature, however I don’t feel qualified to talk about that. I don’t mean any harm by this post.)

DrumBot Brian: Shoebill Stork

Well. I did have a rather difficult time finding a bird that has a complex set of moral values. Who would’ve thought?? I did almost use a praying mantis, just for a little variety. I’ve never met someone who wouldn’t rip off the head of their lover. BUT ANYWAYS. Here we have Brian the Shoebill Stork. He looks so nice. But he will not hesitate to decapitate your baby crocodile. Also very patient!! Like a dinosaur! This bird has the most complex set of moral values of any bird I could find in about thirty seconds. If Brian didn’t decapitate so many young crocodiles there would be much too many! Too many crocodiles! The horror! I’ve also seen a gif of Boring Brian delicately picking up a duckling and placing it back down. Dunno what happened after, though. Don’t ask. Apparently the shoebill stork makes “machine-gun noises” which I think Jonny would enjoy fucking around with. A place that I forgot to write down reportedly called the bird “Abu-Markhub” meaning “father of the slipper” which,,,, yeah.

Raphaella la Cognizi: Kea

Also known as the “clown of the alps”, the Kea resides in the mountains, as the only alpine parrot. Pretty cool. I want to be a clown. But like, a cool clown - not one that hides in a sewer and eats children… Anyways, I’m getting off topic. The kea is the smartest bird I could find. Raphaella is the science officer of the Aurora so it seemed fitting. Look at this photo. That’s science at work! Kea can use basic tools! And reportedly have the intelligence of a four-year-old child! That’s pretty smart! Also it has wings! Raph has wings! Apparently kea enjoy attacking sheep, dogs, horses, etc. and just generally fuck around with people. Imagine what this bird could do with opposable thumbs…

Marius von Raum: Victoria Crowned Pigeon

My criteria for Bird Marius was essentially a stupid looking bird with a ridiculously long name. I was originally going to go with the King of Saxony Bird of Paradise solely for the name (just look at it! It’s so dumb! Who the fuck is the king of saxony!) however it bored me. So! Here we have Doctor Baron Marius von Raum as the Victoria Crowned Pigeon (also sometimes referred to as the Blue Crowned Pigeon). Genuinely, this was my favourite bird as a child. I fucking love this funky little bastard. Apparently, it’s the largest pigeon species in the world and can grow to be the size of a turkey. A turkey! What the fuck! This bird thinks it’s all that. (I mean, it’s not wrong). It was named after Queen Victoria but like,,,,, Fuck The Monarchy. Also eats a lot of figs. The bird - not the queen. Or maybe the queen I dunno. Marius seems like the kind of person who hates figs but eats them anyways so he doesn’t feel inferior to the Fig Lord. How the fuck is this bird not extinct yet.

Ivy Alexandria: Common Raven

Ivy Alexandria, the Common Raven. Ravens are extremely smart! Like seriously - near where I live, there’s an animal shelter with a raven and you can hold a conversation with it. It’s amazing! They also have great memories and hold grudges - so don’t mess with them. Oh! They can also use hand gestures, which for birds is insanely cool! They are the literal “birdbrain”. Sometimes they collect little trinkets, which I think is really sweet. Now, I don’t believe ravens can read but like,,,,, I dunno. I read an article recently about ravens doing “weird things with ants”. Apparently they like to play with them. Ravens have been known to sit in an anthill and let ants crawl all over their feathers for no apparent reason. Now, while nothing has been canonically stated involving Ivy and ants, you can’t prove Ivy doesn’t go sit and hang out with a bunch of ants.

Nastya Rasputina: Andean Potoo

The Andean Potoo is the most mysterious breed of the seven or so potoo species; almost nothing is known other than their vague appearance and their stomach contents (large insects like beetles and grasshoppers, if you were interested). While we do know quite a bit about Nastya, I thought this bird fit her pretty well. In answer to the question “Are potoos friendly?” a website said: “The short answer is ‘no’. The slightly longer answer is ‘it depends’.” This sounds like Nastya and her lesbian spaceship girlfriend. Potoos are VERY good at camouflage; like Nastya in Aurora’s veins?? I dunno, might be a bit of a stretch. They are shy, secretive birds. Sounds fun. Potoos are also VERY good at catching insects and shit. This point might not be relevant, but whatever. Andean potoos might mate for life; scientists don’t know. Let’s say that they do. If Nastya were this bird, she could be eaten by a weasel. Weasels said fuck Nastya rights. Fuck weasels.

The Toy Soldier: Atlantic Puffin

OH MY GOD. I love the Toy Soldier. The Atlantic Puffin. I don’t have many reasons for this one other that IT’S ADORABLE. This is my favourite bird. Just look at it!!! Hnnnnnnn. Baby puffins are called pufflingssssss. Oh my god. Also look up the bird call of the atlantic puffin; it is the best thing ever. Puffins are very sociable birds and live in like giant flocks or something. They’re very neat birds and also waterproof! Like wood! They shed the outer layer of their beaks once a year! Like wood! They live in burrows! Like wood! They can hold a fuck ton of fish in their beaks! Like wood! They have a really fucking wierd tongue! Like wood!

BONUS: Dr. Carmilla: Lammergier (Bearded Vulture)

Do I know anything about Dr. Carmilla? Nope! I think she’s a vampire but like???? Anyways, just look at this bird. It’s pretty self-explanatory. The Lammergeier is one Badass Bird. It is one of the largest old-world vultures. I don’t know what that means. It can grow up to four feet tall, though! And has a wingspan between seven and nine feet. That’s a big fucking bird! They have no natural predators, much like a certain immortal vampire (maybe???). It eats primarily bone and bone marrow and has a nasty habit of carrying off lambs, calves, and dead children. Remind you of the Good Doctor and her Band? Probably not. I bet Jonny has eaten at least one dead child, though. The lammergeier can also live up to the ripe old age of 45 (old in bird years?). Supposedly a lammergeier killed the greek playwright Aeschelus by mistaking his large bald head for a rock and dropping a turtle on it. Sounds very Carmilla. BUT WAIT I HAVEN’T GOTTEN TO THE BEST PART. This bird dies it’s fur the colour of blood to look more intimidating! Supposedly this is a mark of status, as well. That’s one badass bird!!!

WELL THAT WAS AN ADVENTURE. A useless adventure, sure. Fuck you. I had fun.

[jq37]

The Report Card – Fantasy High Sophomore Year Ep 15

Love Wins!

Welcome to an insanely chaotic episode of Fantasy High--even by the very high standards of this show.  How chaotic you may ask? Well, the first thing that happens is that Bill Seacaster point blank shoots Gilear to death for being in a relationship with Hilariel. Full dead. He is full dead. Strangely, his plan to bring him back as a janky devil does not do much to comfort Fig. Imagine that.

Bill’s pirates are looting the Bottomless Pit (Gorthalax’s domain in Hell) and Vraz orders Fig to make them stop. When she instead orders Vraz to eat her ass, Vraz nullifies all warlock deals Gorthalax made and brings none other than Johnny Spells (and his greaser pals) to join the fight!

Really, this fight is insane and it’s better served by a highlight real than a play by play so I’m just gonna give you some bullets:

All the PCs rolled super low initiative this fight which really kinda screwed them. Like Fabian was down to 16 HP one point and it was like, “Lol, this is the end of round 1.” YIKES.

A big part of this fight was just surviving long enough to get to the second level of hell and rescue Riz’s dad which I think was probably good for morale because the thought of this fight dragging on for more than a couple of rounds exhausts me. 

Fabian rolls off against Johnny right off the bat for the Hangman’s loyalty and Fabian wins with a 25 (and by coming out the gate with the word ENSLAVED which isn’t the word *I* would have used but a 25 is a 25 I guess).

He also has to contend with fighting Allistair who has a massive hole in his head filled with fire from Wicklaw eating his brain. It seems like Chungledown Bim is in hell too based on how Allistair keeps saying he’s gonna get him so he can shit in Fabian’s mouth. Of course, Fabian gets the better of him, but not before he deals out a fair bit of damage. 

Adaine uses an Arcane Hand plus her portent roll to just whole-ass throw Johnny off the ship. Like, he gets back up but it’s so funny to instead of fighting an enemy to just throw him off a set piece (see eg: Bloodkeep ep2).

Kristen Revivifies Gilear and Bill, the mercurial sunuvabitch is like, “We love the same woman! I just want her happy!” and gives him a gun. Kristen immediately is like, “Bro, you need to hide,” and Gorgug protects him while he does so (in a sarcophagus that has a 50/50 shot of being launched as ammo). 

Penelope shows up to the fight, eyes all black, wearing a shredded prom dress, and with shards of silver embedded in her forehead like a crown. Dayne and Daybreak also join the fight as messed up Harvestmen! It’s a veritable Smash Bros lineup of people the Bad Kids have killed!

Adaine and Fabian are christened the “Posh Squad” which is important to me, not to the fight. 

Adaine gets to counterspell a counterspell from Penelope, one of the sexiest things you can do in D&D.

Fabian declares toxic masculinity dead. Shortly afterward, he makes Brennan eat a die when Daybreak tries to Frighten Fabian, a condition he is immune to due to his eyepatch I gather based on the table reaction. 

Daybreak’s punishment in hell is a complete lack of self-awareness of why he’s there. He still thinks he should be sipping Mai-Tai’s in corn heaven with Helio while Kristen and Ragh are attacking him with gay spit (their words, not mine). Gay spit and, also, a ton of radiant and thunder damage.

Ragh gets some emotional catharsis by getting to body Dayne before Gorgug decapitates him. Very important step in the stages of grief. Decapitating the source of said grief. 

Penelope gets Sparta-kicked off the edge of the boat by Fabian after Ayda dispels her protective globe and Riz shoots Daybreak again for old times sake. Unfortunately, Penelope Misty Steps back up and Daybreak is hurt but not killed. Ayda does a cool Dr. Strange teleportation thing and does a bunch of damage to both of them. Fabian finishes off Penelope with a sheet/sword combo and between Booming Blade and a Psionic Blast (does she have this ability as a Bard or as a Warlock? Relatedly, when she felt something leave her was that her Warlock deal being nullified or was she feeling the deals leave her since she is sort of the temporary Gorthalax?) Fig destroys Daybreak. Johnny just falls off the ship with no PC intervention because he sucks. 

Bill also falls off the ship but Fig (with an assist from Gorgug) saves him and steals a scroll from Vraz on the way back up. By the by, earlier in the fight, she also had Baby Invisbly steal a random item from her. 

Anyway, as they reach the end of the end of the fight, Bill loads Riz into a canon (!) and shoots him into the city, hopefully towards his dad (to the distress of his party). He crashes through the window in a familiar looking building and, when he finds a hallway that he’s pretty sure leads to his dad, he goes towards it. 

He sees a familiar light coming out of a doorway (the interrogation room light) and a doorway next to it that is slightly open with steel thrones in it. There’s a two-way mirror between the two rooms and if he goes into the open one, he can see who is in with his dad. After checking for illusions and finding none, he stealthily walks in and sees, in the other room, his dad with a hulking pit fiend (30 ft tall, winged, almost dragon-y devil).

The pit fiend is questioning Pok about any regrets he had in life and Pok answers very uncharacteristically from the man we saw in the video saying he had nothing but high hopes for baby Riz. He says he had no regrets, his job was just a job, and that he only had a kid because Sklonda wanted one before going into a snarling goblin rage. The pit fiend smiles at that and says that Pok has promise so they won’t create a lemure out of him (a lemure is a weak, blobby devil). Two devils in the room with them whip him unconscious and then leave the room to go send more people to deal with Bill.

Riz Misty Steps into the room and does a self-imposed Wisdom check to steady himself after what he just heard--Nat 20 baby. Then, he opens his Briefcase of Holding, ready to scoop his dad into it when, the two lesser devils open the door and catch him in the act. But Riz persists in the scooping. They try to grapple him and he rolls a Nat 1 to avoid it. He *still* tries to get him dad. But then he notices, his gun is missing.

BLAM. The devils heads are blown clean off. He turns and he sees his dad has taken the gun--his gun originally--and shot the devils. Pok, who is amazed that Riz is there and no longer feigning apathy for the situation asks for an extraction into an earpiece, causing a halo to appear over his head and a beam of holy light to come down like a tractor beam.

“Wait,” says Riz. “You’re an undercover angel?”

“You got it, kid.”

Murph goes feral. The table goes feral. I go feral. What a way to end an episode!  

And now for an all-Dad round of superlatives:

Detention

Bill Seacaster for KILLING GILEAR 

I feel like I shouldn’t have to explain myself here. 

Honor Roll

Pok Gukgak for Officially Joining the Fantasy Fathers of the Year Club

Here either. 

I will, however, add a Hell Yeah!

Random Thoughts

If you haven’t seen it yet, the trailer for S5 of Dimension 20 just dropped and I won’t spoil it but, from the looks of it, it is gonna be a doozy.  

“Do not metagame with my freaking Dad!” Oh to have the support of an NPC Emily Axford has decided to imprint upon.

Gorgug: It’s been one year. We’re sophomores. 

“We support you as a DM and as your friend but also you’re our enemy.”

I think it’s very interesting that with just a little space and time from his dad, Fabian is finally having the proper reactions to his dad doing what I will charitably call shenanigans.

The level of distress and outrage from Emily when Gilear got shot was just *chef’s kiss*. I aspire to create an NPC that provokes that level of reaction from one of my players. Similar energy in a different direction from Ally when Daybreak attacked Tracker.    

“Adaine, the jocks are being feisty! Get out of there!”

Vraz calls Fig “the Faithless” as her devil title and she insists on instead being called, “the InFaethable”. I wanna know how long Emily’s been sitting on that one or whether she came up with it on the spot. 

Fabian upon seeing Johnny: Fuck off dude. I have too much going on right now. 

Brennan being the eternal DM mood: How do I get out of this?

Very wild how little time has passed since Leviathan. Like, Fabian’s had this whole arc and grown so much but, like, OF COURSE Allistair still wants to murder him! It’s been like two days. 

“I want to crumple up Gilear like a wrapper.”

A seven is a Murph 10.

The very specific way Brennan does foley for sword fighting (“Clang! Cling! Clang!”) is so funny to me. 

Cannot overstate how much of a power move it was for Kristen to go, “I’ve been PRAYING FOR YOU,” at Daybreak and knock him on his ass. 

I feel like I bring this up all the time but I love when Brennan is counting dice for a ton of damage and all the PCs are BSing reasons that it’s not a big deal like, “He’s just getting D4s,” or “Well I should get advantage for the reason just made up,” with everyone else fully playing along. ”

Allistair Ash, man. He is fascinating to me. I am so curious about what Brennan had planned for him originally because I feel like we barely scratched the surface before things took a TURN. He had two little moments in this ep that made my heart break for him a little: (1) When he says to Fabian, “If I die, I just come back a little bit worse but, if you die, you’re stuck down here with me.” and (2) when Fabian kills him and Bill grabs his soul and is like, “You know it’s gonna cost you X gold to revive you,” and he sighs and says, “Put it on my tab I suppose.” Like, I know he spent all ep trying to kill Fabian but I can’t help but be like, poor guy. He just has this pathos in his haplessness. I’m surprised Fabian didn’t make more of an effort to connect with him instead of being like, kind of like, “I will throw hands if I must.” Talking is a free action my dude. Anyway, I would love to see Brennan’s DM notes for this guy.   

Lou was really doing some expert D&D with all the second winding and bonus actioning and burning spell slots for extra damage he was doing. He was like, “My initiative is trash so I have to do approximately a million damage per turn.”

Lol at Ayda asking if it’s weird to talk about sex stuff in front of friends in a group that involves both Kristen and Adaine. 

Fig wishing she could do something cool in front of Ayda as if Ayda didn’t try to flood Hell on her behalf last week. My girl. You’ve already locked that down.

Not really an issue that’s we’ll run across during the run of FH but tieflings live 20-40 years longer than humans according to the official D&D lore. So lets say Fig lives to be 120 years old. And let’s say she sticks with her high school girlfriend and marries her. It’s possible they die at around the same time and then Ayda has to Deal With That in her next life but that’s not what I’m interested in. What happens if you’re a full elderly woman and your partner phoenixes into a child? What are the ethics of that? How do you deal with that? Chronomancy?

The horrified, “Love wins!” from Daybreak.

 Is there a reason the viewing room Riz was in had thrones in it or is Hell just very about the ~aesthetic~

Every time a DM asks for a HP total, my entire being clenches in prep for a Power Word Kill. 

“I’m gonna need a Dexter--”/”Counterspell.”

“You guys murdered me too but we hashed it out.”

I totally forgot that the Bad Kids lied that Ragh had shat his pants until the moment Adaine was saying it this episode. Freshman Year was WILD.

Also, just wanna take a second to talk about the elevation of Ragh from this side-note bully to a fully fledged, likeable character with depth and and an arc and gay spit. D&D is crazy. 

Summoning Boggy via Bloody Mary is such a delightful image. 

So, Kalina is the one that led Riz down the path that led to him finding out Pok is an Undercover Angel (!!!), which means one of three things: (1) She knew but miscalculated hard, (2) she didn’t know and made a different but also big miscalculation, (3) she did know and she’s doing some kind of 4-D chess thing we don’t know about yet. 

Ayda hitting Fabian with a portent and then swooping in and saving Adaine. So clutch. What a good NPC to befriend.

Speaking of, I think we all kinda figured, but Brennan officially said on Twitter or the Discord (I don’t remember which) that Ayda is autistic. Like, I was pretty sure but I didn’t wanna assume.

Lol at the absolute lack of respect Kalvaxus got in this episode. 

Pok as an Undercover Angel is SO GOOD. Like, I didn’t think he was really bad for a second but I never could have guessed he was an UNDERCOVER ANGEL. That’s such a dope combination of words. Undercover Angel (which my computer keeps trying to correct to undercover agent which isn’t wrong to be fair). Man. I love this. I love this for me and I love this for Riz. Riz deserves this. After so much crap in his life and so many mind games from Kalina and all this turmoil, he deserves to know that not only is his dad a good person who loved/loves him, he’s SO good that he’s an ANGEL and he was such a good spy in life he still is a secret agent in death. God, what a reveal. I can’t believe Riz got Spy Kids-ed TWICE by the same parent. Can’t wait to hear what exactly is going on with him.

Wait, what’s goblin heaven like? Which god is sanctioning this? Who is he working for exactly?

This episode, Kristen and Gorgug rolled 1 Nat 20 each, while Riz, Fabian, and Brennan each got 2. On the flipside, Adaine got 2 Nat 1’s, Fig and Fabian each rolled 1 that was cancelled, and Riz rolled 1 (in addition, Murph rolled two more which were lair actions and one of which was cancelled by a luck point so they don’t really count but it was very funny so I wanted to note it).

[know-the-way]

Have there been concrete situations in canon that have made you think that he/she/them once loved the other? It would be cool if you name them!

The two times i actually saw some romance was when they looked and smiled at each other at the play (like have we ever, beside that moment seen Faustus smile genuinly?) and maybe when he was asking her to be his babies nightmother (it seemed like he was indirectly saying “i wish you were the mother”) eventhough he was being an ass to constance.

Well, I’m hesitant to say anything is concrete in the show, because what makes it fun (and frustrating 🙃) for fans is that there is so much ambiguity. Like interesting as it was to see how Sarah answered that question yesterday, there still has never been an explicit admission of love - show or novels - from either of them... in fact, there’s only been the contrary... so I can’t say there’s “concrete” evidence they do. BUT, if I were going to make an argument that they had affection towards each other, I’d probably use the following examples -

- In agreeance with you, I think the scene during the play says a fair bit about them. They both get swept up in the emotion of watching a couple on stage and then turn to look at each other once the scene is done as if to say 1. “you’re the one I thought of during this scene” and 2. “this could be us, but you keep playin’.”

- I always found the end of the proposal scene compelling because when Zelda saunters away without giving him an answer, he looks genuinely worried for a second. Like “I waited 100 years to ask for your hand and I just laid myself out there and you really might say no, wow okay that does not... feel awesome, wow I love my life omg okay yes wow 😅”

I just personally feel like, knowing what we knew of Faustus, that if he didn’t actually care about Zelda in SOME capacity, he would’ve had no reaction at all or just gotten angry. Instead, he gasps softly and gives her literal puppy dog eyes for a moment before finally smirking ‘cause he knows she’s doing it to fuck with him (and he kinda likes that ‘cause... ~*masochist*~).

- The night of The Courting in Lupercalia when there’s one too many annoinment baskets. :) I know a lot of people who think Zelda is the one who orchestrated that, but I disagree. I think the way Faustus raises his brow and feigns innocence indicates it was him. And now could you just dismiss this as an attempt to get back in her pants? Sure. HOWEVER, when we see them again - he’s watching her eat a fig like she’s an actual goddess (which, I mean... ) and then fluffs her hair adoringly while getting nostalgic. It’s just a little too tender of a moment for me to ignore.

- “Ah, yes. Sister Zelda is rather special.” - a line of Faustus’ from the second novel after Prudence basically gives her approval of him and Zelda’s relationship. (And don’t even talk to me about the excerpt Sarah read yesterday... my heart was not ready for that).

[jamiebluewind]

D20 Riz, Gorgug, and Ragh

Dear god you just asked for a bunch of um didn't you!? XD

Riz

Favorite thing about them: How much he's grown as a person. He's gone from someone who viewed friends as just something to make people comfortable to help him solve mysteries to willingly giving up all his secrets to the enemy to save his friend's life! 

Least favorite thing about them: For all his skills, he can be a little oblivious at times.  

Favorite line: oh god. There are so many good ones! (to Fabian) "Don't tell anyone about this! I'm doing this because of you! You figured it out. We need to go in his ass! Fabian and Riz... Don't worry Fabian. I'll do it for both of us!", (to Kalvaxus) "I don't know how long it's gonna take me, but I'm gonna eat YOU bitch", and (to Calina) "I dont think now is the time to get nostalgic. I wanna know that my friends are okay. My father's already gone. If you want information, you would have to... I would need to know that they were safe. "

brOTP: with Adaine. They are the braincells of the group. I also like with Fabian both romantic and platonic.

OTP: with Fabian. My favorite romantic ship in Fantasy High ^_^

nOTP: with Biz (also Kristen, but that's more because I always try to respect canon sexualities)

Random headcanon: goblins can eat anything, but their dietary needs are similar to grasshopper mice. Riz is actually tall for a goblin at 4 foot tall, but seems short due to his friend group. 

Unpopular opinion: I think Riz is neurodivergent and either has mild autism, OCD, and/or ADHD. It explains his love of coffee (it can help neurodivergent people focus and is often used to replace meds in younger people), his fixations, his issues in social situations and trouble making friends, and his difficulty keeping a sleep schedule. I have OCD, my best friend has mild autism, and I have friends and relatives with ADHD and I see a lot of what we deal with in him.

Song i associate with them: Hand In My Pocket by Alanis Morissette and Tiptoe by Imagine Dragons

Favorite picture of them. As there are very few canon pieces (and no animated gifs when I search for any of the characters), I'm just gonna link a couple of my favorite fanarts for each ^_^

Gorgug

Favorite thing about them: His kindness and empathy. He's a barbarian sure, but he uses all his agressive energy to protect the people he cares about and the rest of the time he strives to be this pure being of understanding and good.

Least favorite thing about them: His shoes and matching socks. Not even kidding. That color is terrible even among pink. I don't know if it's worse if he bought them that way or they somehow got stained that color!

Favorite line: "Are you my dad", (to Ragh) "It's okay to think that you're your own dad," and (to the Owlbear while flying and screaming) "Fight me in the skys!"

brOTP: with Fig

OTP: with Zelda and/or Ragh

nOTP: with Fig

Random headcanon: The fight with Biz aged him 2 years. His tusks only poke out of his mouth when he smiles.

Unpopular opinion: I think Zelda was a bit unfair to Gorgug. If he still sees himself as an awkward loser despite being on the bloodrush team and a rock star, then he probably has social anxiety and self esteem issues that need to be addressed. He rushed off and forgot to say goodbye to her, but he did message her the night before and never got a response, so it could have been misinterpreted as needing space. The stop at the mall wasn't just because there was time, but to try and find their missing friends. I don't think anyone should be mad at either of them though because they are just teenagers trying their best.

Song i associate with them: People by AWOLNATION, All Star by Smash Mouth, and Monster by Dev

Favorite picture of them

Ragh

Favorite thing about them: his level of baby gay. He has basically nuked his closet from space and I love it. Also, how much love he has for his mom.

Least favorite thing about them: his level of hoot growl

Favorite line: "Let's do it! I'M GAY NOW!!!" (while leaping up to attack Kalvaxus after he got kissed at prom). He has other great lines, but THAT is my favorite.

brOTP: with Tracker or Fabian

OTP: with Gorgug (or maybe Fabian)

nOTP: with Dayn

Random headcanon: His room was so overflowing with pride stuff and bloodrush stuff that some of it migrated to the rest of the house. He totally brought a few Owlbear and rainbow items with him on the mission.

Unpopular opinion: That it is possible to say Hoot Growl! too much.

Song i associate with them: ...I honestly can't think of any please help! I even listened to my music on shuffle for a while and nothing came up that worked O_O

Favorite picture of them:

[uneryx]

The Bridge Between - Ch 1

As promised - some fanfic Fandom: The Dragon Prince Summary: Callum, Rayla and Zym make their way through Xadia. As they continue their quest, they learn more about themselves and each other. Basically a fan season 3, picking up right where season 2 left off and probably diverging from canon.  Tags: No warnings, Gen-ish, Rayla, Callum, Azymondias, Sol Regem, Original Characters, Fan Season 3, 2 Nerds and a Baby, Worldbuilding based on speculation, very slow burn

Read on AO3 here

Dawn rose over the precipice of the canyon, illuminating a long, golden form ahead of them, and Rayla’s heart sank. They had made it, hadn’t they? After all the hardship and fighting and heartbreak, finally she had brought Callum and Zym into Xadia, only for their hopes to be dashed.

“Oh no,” she breathed, holding out an arm to stop Callum from plunging ahead without caution. The archdragon before them lifted his massive crowned head, and turned to face them. His eyes were scarred, singed closed by the blast of dark fire he’d endured at his downfall all those years ago. A fallen king, but not one easily forgotten. She named him, reverent and fearful all at once.

“Sol Regem.”

The former Dragon King was, in fact, blind, but Rayla didn’t doubt that his nose or hearing were as keen as ever, if not more. She had mere seconds to act. “Follow my lead!” she hissed to Callum, urgently ushering Zym back into the backpack (which he was quickly outgrowing). The wyrmling whimpered, but with a stern ‘don’t even think about questioning me right now’ glare from Rayla, he curled up and tucked his nose under the feathers of his tail with a sad expression in his eyes.

“I smell humans.” Sol Regem was standing now, his massive form blocking out the sunlight and casting him in silhouette. Callum swallowed hard behind Rayla, and clutched the backpack with Zym inside tighter. For her part, Rayla steeled herself, squared her shoulders, and stepped forward.

“Th-that would be us, your grace,” she replied. Her voice quavered more than she would have liked, so she cleared her throat. “We’ve returned from the human kingdoms and probably reek from our journey.”

Sol Regem’s lip curled as he snarled, a deep rumble that shook the canyon and stirred something animal within them all, urging them to run and hide. “I am aware of what an elf returning from human lands smells like,” the archdragon retorted, voice low and menacing. “And what you have with you is a human.”

“Oh y-yeah?” Callum cleared his throat as his attempt to sound brave came out as a squeak. “Could a human do this?” He drew a glowing blue rune in the air, three concave strokes within each other, and inhaled. “Aspiro.”

Sol Regem sniffed the air as it blew around him. “Interesting,” he rumbled. “That is indeed competent Sky magic, and yet I cannot smell the petrichor and ozone of a primal stone.” He paused, thinking, tail tapping the rock below him idly. And after a brief moment, he bade Callum “Come forward, boy.” The tone of his command left no room for dissent.

At Callum’s panicked glance, Rayla shooed him forward, taking the backpack from him. Don’t keep him waiting, she urged with her eyes. Zym peeked out from the backpack and quietly whimpered, until Rayla shushed him and pushed him back inside.

On shaking legs, Callum stepped forward, slowly closing the distance between him and Sol Regem, the infamous solar archdragon that had razed a human city before the division. He didn’t remember all of that particular history lesson, but Callum DID remember that it had been a human mage – the first dark mage - who had blinded him thus… and who had also drawn his ire. All in all, not someone he was terribly keen on meeting in person.

He swallowed hard as he stood before the fallen king now, praying to whoever might be listening that Sol Regem would believe the lie that, due to having a primal arcanum, Callum couldn’t possibly be human.

The dragon lowered his massive head to Callum, and sniffed. The heat of his breath, the heat of him, instantly put to mind being burnt to a crisp by dragon fire. It was like standing beside a blast furnace. Callum could feel the sweat dripping down his face and sides and he tried to remember to breathe. In, two three, four. Hold. Out, two, three, four, five, six.  Repeat.

One final snuff out, with an extra bit of heat to ensure the boy fully understood his place, and Sol Regem lifted his head to regard what stood before him.

“Interesting, indeed.” This close to the dragon, and it was as though the bass timbre of his voice shook Callum’s bones themselves. “You smellthoroughly human. I even catch a faint whiff of dark magic.” He spat out the words like they were rotten meat. “And yet I cannot ignore that you have forged a connection to the Sky Primal, nor can I ignore that you have been caring for a dragon whelp. His scent is all over you, and I smell only happiness and trust, not fear.” Sol Regem then laughed, a cold, mocking chuckle, as he laid back down on the stones and drummed his claws against them. “Your fear almost masked it, but no. How indeed could a human connect to Primal magic and earn the trust of a young dragon? What are you? And do not waste my time with this ‘elf in human clothing’ nonsense.”

Callum glanced back at Rayla for assistance, but she seemed at a loss. This hadn’t exactly gone as planned, after all. Sol Regem wasn’t in her plans, and in the little time she’d had to formulate around that spanner in the works, she hadn’t accounted for the archdragon’s nose being so good he could smell out all their secrets with just a few whiffs. She returned an incredibly unhelpful and panicked shrug.

Zym, for his part, wriggled out of the backpack and toddled his way over to Callum and Sol Regem. He’d been indicated, so there was no sense in hiding in the backpack, right? Especially since Callum and Rayla seemed scared. He nudged his friend in the hip with a reassuring chirp.

“Ah, the little one reveals himself,” Sol Regem said with a chuckle, a bit warmer this time. “What ever was a tiny fellow like you doing in—” He stopped abruptly, leaned closer, and inhaled, sharply, drawing all of Zym’s fluff upwards in the draft.  Zym darted behind Callum’s legs with a whine. Then, with an angry snort, the former king drew up to his full height and towered above them, blocking out the light of the rising sun.

“That is Avizandum’s child,” he accused, menace in his voice and the ember of dragon fire brewing in his throat. “There is no storm dragon of that age anywhere in the world, save for the egg that was destroyed. And yet, here is a recently-hatched storm dragon.” He whirled on Callum, his every word a promise of destruction. “You will explain.”

“We found him!” Callum blurted, too afraid to lie. “Rayla came with the other Moonshadow assassins to avenge the Dragon King and the egg, but we found the egg in the dungeons, and we’re bringing him home.”

Sol Regem’s expression narrowed, dubious and critical. “Why?”

“Why… are we bringing him back, or why was he in the dungeon?”

Backlit though he was, Sol Regem’s scowl could be heard and felt in his reply. “Answer both.”

“Uh, well… we think that our- the high mage, Viren, was keeping it for um, dark magic reasons.” Callum twisted the end of his scarf in his hands, thoughts racing as he tried to summarize their adventure without giving too much away. “And since that’s wrong, and the war is wrong, we uh. Want to do what we can to fix things.”

Sol Regem snorted derisively. “Now you decide that dark magic, war, and death are wrong? What makes you think that the Dragon Queen will listen to some petty human apprentice mage, holding her son and reeking of dark magic? Even if you have, for some unfathomable reason, stumbled onto the secret of primal magic,  what could you possibly do to persuade the Dragon Queen not to unleash her armies on humankind for their countless atrocities?”

Callum swallowed, and steeled himself, as Rayla quietly panicked behind him. It terrified him to the core, but in that moment Callum realized that if he was going to get past Sol Regem, he was going to have to do so as himself, without secrets. “Because I’m not some petty human apprentice mage.” He drew himself up, standing tall before the Great Solar King. “I’m Prince Callum of Katolis. Prince -- King Ezran is my brother. I destroyed the primal stone I was learning magic from in order to hatch the egg of the Dragon Prince.” Zym chirped in affirmation, standing tall as well in a mimicry of Callum's posture.

For a split second, Sol Regem was stunned by the honest admission. Then, he laughed, the kind of laugh that comes from being completely caught off guard by something absurd. Despite himself, Sol Regem believed the boy, too. Although the mustiness of clothes that had been worn for weeks masked it somewhat, the boy did smell like he came from privilege. And he knew something of the inner machinations of the human kingdoms, knowledge that the average commoner wouldn't know. Granted, in Sol Regem’s  cynical view, humans were selfish and deceitful, but there was no way anyone would be foolish enough to tell a lie that ludicrous, that outlandish, and expect to be believed.  

So that was it, then. A prince of the human kingdoms had hatched the dragon prince and decided to waltz right into Xadia, hand-in-hand with one who had been sent to murder his family, with the naïve hope that the Dragon Queen would give two figs about their bid for peace.

Pathetic. Adorable.

His laughter died down, and he looked down his nose at Callum. “Give me one good reason I shouldn’t just eat you now and take young Ayzmondias straight to his mother, without your meddling or the disgusting taint of dark magic you bear.”

“Look, the dark magic was a one-time thing and I almost died, so I’m never doing that again.” Callum took a step backwards, thinking. “I… I just want there to be peace. My brother wants peace. And I want to show other human mages that they don’t have to use dark magic as a crutch. Iconnected to a primal source, and I barely know any magic. I want to show them how, so no one ever even thinks about using dark magic again.”

“Not to mention, he only did it to save me and a dragon that human soldiers had captured anyway,”Rayla interjected. “I’ll kill him myself if he ever tries it again, but I don’t think he would. It was pretty bad.”

“Uh, yeah!” Callum replied, giving Rayla a dirty look at the suggestion that she would personally murder him. “Anyway, can’t work on diplomacy and eradicating dark magic if I’m dead so… Please don’t eat me.”

Sol Regem inhaled once more, considering their words and breathing in the three of them. They were so earnest, so eager, the scent of their sincerity rolling off of them like a cloying perfume. All three of them were only children, with the brash sort of hope only children who haven’t witnessed the world’s cruelty carry within them. They certainly believed in their mission, fruitless and futile as it sounded to Sol Regem’s ancient ears. And the human thinking he could teach other humans Primal Magic was pitiful. It would never work, of course, for Sol Regem knew of the centuries where humans had tried and failed, their inferior natures cutting them off from the sources of magic. But somehow, some way, this particular human had figured it out.

Unless….

The sun king brushed that disgusting notion aside. It was impossible, and if it were true, he’d smell it.

Sol Regem then decided he was more interested in seeing what the world would be like if these children tried to accomplish their goals and failed, rather than their adventure ending in his belly. Someone else would crush their hopes, inevitably. In the meantime, watching them try would be more fun than anything else he’d seen of the increasingly tiresome war between humans and Xadia. And should they succeed, well. It might actually give Sol Regem something to do.

“Very well,” he said, after a pause that was long enough to make the children squirm with discomfort. “I shall not eat you.” The human boy’s sigh of relief was audible, and carried a faint puff of wind with it. How very interesting. “And I shall not inform anyone else that a human trespasses in Xadia. Find some way to keep him more incognito, young Moonshadow. It would do to keep Prince Azymondias's return a secret as well.”

“Oh man, thank you, your, uh, grace,” exuded Callum. “I promise we’ll do our best.”

“Do not give me cause to regret this decision, boy.”

“I won’t.”

Rayla bowed to the archdragon. “We truly are grateful, honorable Sol Regem.”

“See that the prince remains safe,” he rumbled back, and turned away from them, laying back down on his rocky bed. Zym yipped his own thanks, and Rayla gathered the two princes up.

“Come along, you two. Time to find some shade and some sleep.”

The trio strode down the canyon, and around the bend out of sight.

Sol Regem waited until they were out of his range of hearing, and then let a piercing cry echo towards the south. He waited only a few moments before a figure emerged from the rocky precipice above him.

“You called, my lord?” asked the figure.

“Yes. Further along the canyon you will see three children – a Moonshadow girl, a human boy – though he will likely be disguised, and a baby dragon.”

“Uh, forgive me, but did you say 'human'?!”

“Do not question me. He is no ordinary human. Follow them, be my eyes, and send me regular reports on their movements.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Ah, and one more thing. The wyrmling is... important. Ensure nothing ill befalls him.”

The figure bowed. “I will ensure the his safety, and keep an eye on the others.”

The figure flapped its wings, and ascended to the sky.

Satisfied, Sol Regem gazed westward, the rays of the sun warming his old bones. What funny, irritating creatures. Inferior as they may be, humans were, after all this time, still capable of surprising him.

[thatsnotcanonpodcasts]

Why does achieving hurt? With Zane C Weber

Welcome back! It has been a while, and I do apologise for the delay. Life has been a bit rough and frantic on my end, and so it’s taken me a lot longer than I thought to get this baby going again. Thank you all for your patience.

This week we talk about the painful side of achieving things. We all know how glossy achievement looks on Instagram and how effortless it can appear. But what about when you’re in the midst of doing the thing and it just sucks? Why does the process not feel like achieving at all?

Zane is many things; designer, actor, podcaster, possibly Yoda’s alter ego, and a genuinely lovely human being. He is also highly accomplished, and has a way of steadily progressing which is pretty awesome. Talking to him always helps me, so if you’re feeling the pressure of the grind, I hope this helps you.

Keep well,

-Paula

P.S. There are a few background noises towards the end of this one. This was a spur-of-the moment thing, and TNC HQ is always busy.

Had a chuckle? Feeling less alone? Don’t forget to rate and review the podcast! It tells the algorithm to suggest us to other people.

If you’ve stumbled upon us, you can join the community on Instagram as stumblethroughpod here

And on Facebook as Stumble Through Podcast here

EPISODE NOTES:

Things We Mentioned

.... 

Zane talks about how the podcast takes up more time than a full-time job on a good day, and I wanted to chime in with a fun fact! I put about 5-6 hours into each episode before it is delivered to your ears. Hooray for useless trivia! ..... 

There IS a not to secret feud between dentists and the rest of the doctoring world! Apparently, it may have come down to the University of Maryland giving the middle finger to two dentists wanting to add dentistry to the medical courses at the uni in 1840. Here’s a fun article from The Atlantic about it.

..... 

The Fig Tree Quote: “I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.” ― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

(After this, the narrator eats something and feels better. Which kinda goes to show that in the midst of an existential crisis, perhaps the best thing to do is attend to our mundane basic needs.) ..... 

It doesn’t feel like we ever have enough time. And to a certain extent, how can we? When the whole wide world and all of the treausres of existence are laid before us, how can we possibly fit all of them into one human life? We can’t. Here’s an article by Psychology Today about prioritising so we can ease that feeling and make the most of the time we have. ..... 

Imposter syndrome! What is it? Well here’s a cool TED-ED video all about it!

..... 

Here’s a cool video on paying your privilege forward

You can find Zane here:

On his own Twitter Facebook and Instagram

Or on That’s Not Canon’s Instagram Twitter and Patreon!  

Had a chuckle? Feeling less alone? Don’t forget to rate and review the podcast! It tells the algorithm to suggest us to other people.

If you’ve stumbled upon us, you can join the community on Instagram as stumblethroughpod here

And on Facebook as Stumble Through Podcast here

Produced by That’s Not Canon Productions. Graphics by Claudia Piggott. Music by Jessica Fletcher.

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