#he already has all the things i wrote

[just-an-average-fan]

one of my favourite genres of fanart is when a fanartist takes a character whos already very "pretty boy" in nature and decides that:

NO!!!!!!! this character is NOT pretty boy enough!!!!!!! 😤😤😤😤😤

and then make this already pretty boy character an EVEN PRETTIER boy by like, making their hair longer and putting it up into fun hairdos or giving them earrings and shit and like, maybe makeup or smth

like this is super cute, but also go pretty-boyify a trash gremlin or smth idk

[molinaesque]

"You went against your word and defied our contract! In doing so, you brought the chaos of your world into mine! I will not abide it!" - Raphael (Baldur's Gate, 2023)

[mcybree]

“why do i miss gem and the scotts suddenly theyre barely even real”

LITERALLY!! like. that team was held together with scott tape and the sheer force of gem’s personality. i don’t think scott and impulse ever actually even talked the entire time. it only worked because for the first time scott was faced with someone who was bossier than he was. they were awesome i should rewatch secret life

they were actually so fucking funny. All three of them promising to remain loyal and stick together until the very end (bc together they can win this!!) only for gem to hunt scott for sport an episode later was literally so based… their dynamic will always be funnier in my head i think but god it was awesome

[evansbby]

.

[scarletiswailing347]

discliamer since i havent really done that for these kinds of posts and i feel like this one is worded in a more demanding way than i usually do: any post of mine regarding what the ccs "should" do is less me actually wanting them to do what i say and more me speculating on the kinds of actions that they could take, not cause i think im smart or tactical or anything but because this is my idea of what fun is

im watching the tower vod rn and i think the only real way to deal with minute and jumper at this point in the server is to. not

like it probs wont be satisfying to the PlayersTM considering the kind of ppl they are (proactive, confrontational, plays along with the spirit of the server, self-focused morals) but considering the kind of ppl minute and jumper are (reactive, avoidant, prioritizes survival even if it means not great content, normative morals) i think its the only real way to engage with them when it comes to this kind of recursive conflict

like everytime they confront one another it keeps circling back to this moral debate regarding the ethics of killing ppl on fucking Lifesteal of all things and i highly doubt its ever gonna stop (at least for this season) considering none of the new members have really been traumatized the lifesteal way, i dont mean regular smp trauma like war and betrayal and all that jazz cause theyve already got that, i mean Lifesteal trauma: the realization that everything is a cycle, that good and evil doesnt matter, that feeling of hope shattering over and over again, that realization that in the grand scheme of things your ideals dont matter and the only thing you can truly hope for in the server are teammates and allies that wont backstab you, and that even then thats a tall order

so back to Not dealing with jumpertech, i dont mean forgetting what they did, i mean actively avoiding them, acting irrationally scared of them even when theyre being civil, fully putting them in the role of big scary villains, basically still putting what they did at the very forefront but acting like its an insurmountable trauma, planting doubt in their status as heroes, continually being the aggressors just cements in their minds that yes they are the heroes and that yes they are doing the good things

like whether the PlayersTM like it or not this is an unstoppable force vs immovable object kind of situation except the unstoppable force has more to lose by virtue of having a goal that can easily be tided by the immovable object

and i do think they can pull it off, they can lose a fight and lose so much that it breaks their spirit, like jumpertech have both been in kings, they both know how determined at least zam and mapicc are, surely it would be really offputting to see someone youre so used to seeing never giving up to do just that

[narwhalandchill]

btw if u equate childe and aventurines backstory in any fucking way please leave this blog and unfollow me <3 preferably block me while ur at it too uwu

[waywardsalt]

Can you please tell more about your redeemed Bellum that hangs around with the main cast in post-canon? Or, like, your hum!Bellum ideas in general?

Ooooh, I have a lot I could say about Bellum. I'll go a bit off this ask and just talk about him in the context of post-ph and some other aus, since he's fun and because most of them share the common thread of him being in human form often. This will probably be messy, but I'll divide it into sections to force myself to stick to one topic at once to keep this from devolving into what might as well be a transcript of a discord dms infodump.

(there should be a keep reading just under here- there are a few thousand words under the cut- if it's lower than it should be then idk, even while drafting this i had issues with it moving further down than i put it)

Human Bellum Basics (mostly design stuff)

It's less of a human Bellum au sort of thing, and more like a design for what if Bellum had a human form that he could change into. Kind of like Oshus having his human form while actually being a whale, it's the idea that Bellum can switch between his human form and his demon form at will, and I have spent... way, way too long trying to figure out this design.

I can't quite remember why I decided to give Bellum a human form (could've been anything from doing it for the hell of it to for shipping purposes) and it took AGES to decide on his final design.

Describing it would take a few paragraphs, so there's art! Commission pieces by @roskii specifically, he's great, he did great, check him out. (i dont know how to make these smaller :)))))) enjoy)

Half of it is directly taken from his demon design, he keeps the tentacles (not always present, he manifests them at will and tend to have much less reach when he's human), his eye, his teeth, his hair color (kind of), and half of it is more... brought in by ideas related to Bellum in general, with some vague references to that demon design; specifically him being scarred all over is a mixture of the idea of him as a violent and almost warlike creature, while also vaguely referencing the markings on his demon body (in the earliest drawing I ever did of a human Bellum design, he did just straight-up have those markings. That picture no longer exists, I'm sure).

As a basic reference, I suppose, in the second image, the character to the right of Bellum (Damien Fletcher) is an oc of mine, and therefore a character I designed (totally worth mentioning tho that with both Damien and Bellum while I did technically design them and gave roskii my notes for how they look, he also took some small liberties with their designs and... ugh theyre great im keeping them), so those two could provide some insight to my character design sensibilities, even if they're just a small fraction of the (mental) character designs I have.

Bellum is made up of pieces of his canonical design, pieces that I think make sense considering what we know about him, and just pieces of other character designs. He has more or less the same haircut as Joker/the protagonist from Persona 5. His hair has been like that for a while, but seeing Joker's hair helped me figure out specifically what I wanted.

It's been... hard, trying to give him a humanoid design, I've seen a bunch of other human Bellum designs, looked at other Zelda characters with both human and inhuman forms, took inspiration for what I could do and how and what parts could be carried over. His hair is easy to explain, it literally is meant to look like he does as a demon. Easy. It is absolutely directly inspired by that bitch from Tokyo Ghoul. I'm not looking up the character name I don't care about Tokyo Ghoul.

I keep him having sharp teeth, I've transposed those markings on his bodies as being scars (which I'll elaborate a little more on later), kept his eye and that he only has one main eye (there is nothing under the eyepatch. It's just smooth. If you've seen The Goonies, it's like what's going on with One-Eyed Willy. That's probably where I got it from tbh), the yellow and black color scheme is further kept with a yellow tank top-esque shirt and black pants and boots, and while they're not constantly present he still has access to his tentacles.

He's not human, just pretending to be.

Leading me to some other little details, such as his lack of ears. And nails. And. Other things not visible that he didn't bother with. He pretends to be human, but doesn't care enough to look truly human- though he can pass as human. When he does bother to actually look human, he does have nails and ears, and changes his eye to a human one, with a color of choice. He goes by 'Warren' when actually pretending to be human. It doesn't mean anything in particular it's just a play on how 'bellum' is latin for 'war'. But, most of the time, he's not really trying. A sense of lack of real care is something I try to communicate with his humanoid design, hence him having generally baggy and plain clothes.

The 'war' thing about his character I think is decently expressed in game with him having an army of sorts with the phantoms and him just coming off as sort of violent but strategic. He also seems very scrappy, mostly attacks with direct contact including just straight up running into Link, and seems to put a lot of stock into sheer force and just fucking killing you at any cost after a certain point, but seems genuinely wary and cornered once someone is shown to be capable of actually posing an actual threat. I like the idea of human Bellum being a bit of a brawler in a sense, fighting with his bare hands and just being incredibly violent when he fights like a human, really only breaking out his more supernatural abilities when he just wants to get shit over with.

Part of the fun with Bellum is that there isn't much to him, so I'm taking a lot of liberties with him. His loose clothes are something that won't really get in the way of him fighting and do the bare minimum, and the boots he wears have metal toes for just a bit of extra ways to hurt people. He's built but still soft in places, not intended to be a muscular as Damien, he's intentionally designed his own human form to be a bit unassuming, so I've kept that he's made of a lot of circular shapes, his face is meant to be a bit of a round shape, his hair gives a round shape, and though he's fairly tall (he and Damien are 6 feet tall btw Linebeck throws off every post-ph cast height comparison) I think of him being a bit... small? If that makes sense? His clothes help with that, they're slightly oversized, and his posture isn't great; He's a bit like a delinquent, starting fights intentionally for the sake of violence and putting little effort into his appearance.

His scars are technically cosmetic. They aren't results of injuries; technically nothing but the Phantom Sword and things like it can hurt him. His scars are references to the markings on his demon body, and just further reflection of him being a creature all about violence and conflict. They aren't totally consistent between the times he uses his human form, but some of the bigger ones are, most notably the scar across his face.

I'll be honest. My earliest human Bellum designs were some Tumblr sexyman shit and I've been trying to ditch that SO BAD ever since. I think I've done well. The scar across his face is a big one. An added imperfection, a massive facial blemish that isn't really conventionally great to look at. His nose specifically has been though some development stages, at first I kept switching between different full nose shapes, then brought in the facial scar and decided that he'd be missing a chunk of that nose, then, decided, fuck it! I can't decide on a nose shape, so he gets no nose at all. I think it works pretty well and I like it.

I really tried to get in a lot of his personality to the design, and I don't want to go into all of it in this section, so just keep in mind that a lot of his design has been influenced by the way I've decided to write him, and some stuff I've already mentioned might be made a little clearer when I get into that. As a quick aside, he's pale partially because I've intentionally made him look halfway similar to Link, and partially because I figure he does not get a lot of sun; you literally meet him in what is effectively a basement, and from the way he operates, probably hasn't made himself seen in a while by the time the events of the game happen. He can't get sunburns, but, as he cannot change a lot of extremely major things about his human form, he can't manually change his skin tone in a major way, and it's likely that when he was considerably younger and newer and spent time in the sun, his skin tone would be closer to Oshus's, so a bit more tan.

In the Context of Phantom Hourglass and Post-PH

Moving swiftly on, as there is pretty much no real info about Bellum's background, I have taken matters into my own hands and decided a lot of it for myself in headcanon; Bellum is technically Oshus's son. Not in the traditional sense, but he was created by Oshus and can very much be considered his child, and to an extent, Ciela, Leaf, and Neri are all also Oshus's kids due to them being created by him (yea even considering Ciela calling him 'grandpa', in her and my defense she lost her memories and he is old as a human), therefore making (in some terms) Bellum to be Oshus's son and the brother of the three spirits. I think it's an interesting dynamic, to have Oshus be the one responsible for Bellum's existence, and for the three spirits you travel with and help you defeat Bellum to be closely related to him.

Oshus himself (when you get the hourglass in ph) says that the sand of hours is made of force gems of the ocean king (whatever... that wording means)- which then suggests that at the end of the day, all sands of hours are derived from the power of the ocean king, and Bellum dissolves into that sand at the end of the game, and I am standing in front of a wild-looking conspiracy cork board trying to piece this all together. I find it interesting if Oshus was the one who created Bellum before he created the three spirits.

(This is a topic for another post/fic but Leaf and Neri were neglected so bad in ph and it would be interesting to see more of how they feel abt Ciela before she gets her memories back and how they feel abt... anything else ig. I think they're neat, too, and I like tying the spirits together with Bellum in this way)

In Phantom Hourglass, it's strongly suggested (mostly through dialogue) that it's been a decent amount of time since Bellum defeated Oshus and took over the Temple of the Ocean King and created the Ghost Ship (though I suppose it could be possible that the Ghost Ship's existence precedes Bellum taking over that temple and defeating Oshus), but things across that sea are relatively calm, despite the new influx of monsters and the Ghost Ship making most people too afraid to sail. No one knows it's Bellum, though, and people do know about the Ocean King, so I wonder if Bellum is known about at all by the general public, or is a being that's more or less completely unknown? My personal theory is that he's vaguely known in some sense, as an obscure deity, and that he was behind the collapse of the Cobble Kingdom, since they were aligned with the Ocean King and Bellum appears to be his direct enemy and would likely then target the allies of his enemy.

Bellum seems to do a lot of behind the scenes stuff, never been seen until the end of the game and not even being mentioned until halfway through. As I think I've said before, he's practically won by the time he comes across Link and Tetra, the Ghost Ship going out and collecting people for him while he sits at the bottom of the temple and drains anyone who might be heading directly for him. He doesn't even seem to concerned about hunting Oshus down for good, and I suspect he likely doesn't even know about Ciela being split apart, so (asides from my idea that gods/spirits/stuff like that only being able to be sealed away, only properly killed under certain circumstances) I bet there's a level of confidence that he's got things under tight enough wraps that he's good to do whatever he wants.

Aaaand then he panics when he realizes how much of a wrench in his plans Link is, throwing two sea monsters at him and causing earthquakes, he's a procrastinator, I think. That, or he underestimated this kid. Both are very possible. Either way, it's interesting to look at what he's done and caused, hiding away the spirits and beating back the Ocean King, taking over his temple, creating the Ghost Ship to roam indefinitely, screwing with the Yook and wiping out pretty much all of the Isle of Ember, and likely being the reason behind the increased number of monsters. If you really look into it, while most characters don't really seem to realize, things are kind of fucked at the start of Phantom Hourglass, and it's interesting how Oshus himself seems powerless and even dissuades Link from giving it a shot, even if he secretly wants him to go and handle things.

With my idea of Bellum being a sort of technical relative to Oshus and the spirits, it opens up a handful of new avenues for motivation beyond just being after securing control and a steady stream of prey, I enjoy the idea of it being a matter of him becoming more and more ambitious, far beyond the station he was created for; going off of his name and ability to create phantoms, I imagine Oshus created him specifically to be warlike, perhaps initially with the intention of having him as a more violent protector of the realm, maybe to keep monsters in check or maybe just as a secondary deity for the world of the ocean king; I'll admit, I'm still a little foggy on what Bellum would've been initially created for, the spirits are easy to figure out, but I do figure it was something not as passive as just representing something, I imagine it as a deliberate opposite to Oshus himself to account for his weaknesses. Either way, I figure a part of Bellum's motivation involves him wanting more than he was given access to by Oshus, and deciding to fully wage war against him in a sense. The short and silly version is that Bellum is Oshus' shitty disowned son. Oshus isn't entirely innocent in whatever I decide caused Bellum to turn on him and the spirits, but Bellum does suck: that is important. The Cobble Kingdom looks like it's been destroyed for a while, I figure that was Bellum's first major target when he started outwardly going after Oshus and hunting the humans of the realm.

In Post-PH, he's the group's pet evil squid on a very very very short leash until he starts behaving himself and having a character arc.

Effectively, Bellum doesn't die at the end of Phantom Hourglass, instead being broken down into the sand of hours he's made of and being sealed inside the Phantom Sword- after all, after the final boss, the sand Bellum turns into goes into the Phantom Sword. I imagine that the Phantom Sword, after breaking and restoring Oshus, turns into the hourglass for Link to keep, while Oshus and the spirits keep the remaining sands, therefore keeping a hold of Bellum. (A bit like Oshus just being left alone after Bellum defeating him, they can't really kill Bellum so they just keep an eye on him while he's in a weakened state) They kind of just keep him prisoner at the bottom of the Temple for a bit, and Oshus finally decides to send him to Link's world as a punishment, since he's at his weakest and Oshus wants to get him to learn some lesson, it's a work in progress. Bellum is grounded in Post-PH.

It's basically that 'the villain when you unlock him as a playable character' bit, where he's quite a bit weaker than he is in Phantom Hourglass, though mostly for the sake of keeping things balanced, so Bellum can't break everything for everyone. He's still powerful, he still accesses his demon form, can't be conventionally killed or injured, and move through walls and turn people to stone, the whole deal, it's just that his demon form's size is impacted (i hc that the size of his demon form can be manipulated at will, but the largest size is dependent of how much power/stored life force he has. he's small at the start of post-ph, but his human form isnt impacted at all. i imagine that for beings like oshus and bellum, their human form is a like a 'low power mode' kinda thing) So Bellum is the Post-PH crew's fourth member, the swabbie on the ship and pet sea monster when they need it and when he has the energy for it.

Bellum is kept mostly in line by a vague fear of Link and his general fear, respect, and curiosity about Linebeck. Linebeck is usually the one holding onto Bellum's leash. Bellum is decently civil with the group from the start, since he's weak and unable to return home until Oshus permits it or he gathers enough power to make that trip, and works mostly as a fighter- when he wants to. The earliest limitation I came up for him, since he's the member with the highest chance of breaking things, is that he will just straight-up choose not to help. He decides he's busy, decides it's not his problem, or other limitations, such as his involvement likely to cause more problems that they solve, since he's rather destructive when fighting.

He's the least sociable most of the time, for obvious reasons, but can pretend, and has the least... casual skills to offer to the group, hence why he gets stuck as swabbie (also general disrespect/as a punishment for the ph thing) and it takes a while for him to properly warm up to the rest of the group. He and Linebeck start off on decent terms and get closer through them just initially trusting each other, he and Link take the longest to get used to each other for... obvious reasons, it takes a lot of fighting together and seeing that they can rely on each other and they learn to be decent with each other just by existing in the same space, and things with Damien start off half decent, Damien was not present during Phantom Hourglass (obviously) and doesn't have the full context of how much he sucks, but it starts decent, gets worse when he learns what happened, and then gets good again because Damien's kind of amiable in general and sees that Linebeck thinks he's fine.

SO! To actually address your question about him being 'redeemed'- he does have a bit of an arc that I'm still mentally workshopping. He isn't entirely redeemed, as the group's general morality is a big off-kilter when Link isn't looking or is willing to get a little gray with things, and there's not really a whooooole lot of atonement Bellum can do in terms of the volume of bullshit he pulled in the past. It's less him atoning or w/e for the bullshit he's done, that's not entirely feasible, it's more him just. being forced to Be Decent and learn some actual kindness and think about more than just his own survival, he's essentially forced to actually appreciate life and the world, it's more him actually... experiencing the world for a reason other than consumption and war and conflict and doing what he's been told, he's effectively just on this long voyage with Linebeck, Link, and Damien, going with them from island to island and seeing what's up. I'm going to try and keep empathy out of it, so he's not really relating on a visceral level, more just choosing to be kind and take gentler paths to solving problems and interacting with others. He's also the group gremlin.

The way I write Bellum is definitionally inspired by other characters, Power from Chainsaw Man comes to mind in how he has a kind of shitty brat attitude at times, he'd fling vegetables across the room because he's a piece of shit who likes live meat. He's got his shitty messy delinquent loser side, where he causes problems and acts like some asshole teenager, and he's got his more serious, calm, almost professional seeming side that reminds the group that he's a few centuries old at the least and practically a god in his own right; generally outside of Post-PH I would pick one of these two sides to focus on for aus, but in Post-PH I need to figure out how the two of them work with how Bellum generally operates.

He's interested in Linebeck and initially decides to go along because he wants to figure him out, but grows to enjoy the rest of the group and that curiosity expands to involve the world as a whole; he experiences things like art and music, where he can't just brute-force his way into a satisfactory outcome and has to learn and find his own style, he reads books and listens to stories and sees the different ways humans live on the seas and I want his arc to, in some part, be about him just finding meaning in the world beyond what he does to secure survival, and the other members of the group introduce him to those other facets of life that he has access to, has had access to. The other part is the group getting Bellum to see most living things as more than just prey for him to hunt and consume, but that generally goes hand in hand with the prior point, as he actually enjoys life and figures out what he likes beyond the basic things he was created for.

He can't fall back on just smashing through everything or creating phantoms, since he's far too weak to do either effectively at the start, and I intend to just force Bellum into basically just being a human character with some unusually powerful magic at his fingertips, first just wanting to build himself back up to what he was in Phantom Hourglass, then just getting to see things in a new light. I'm not sure how to explain it or even what I'll want to do when I get to it, but that's the general gist of his arc, I think.

Other than that, he's just the fourth members of the crew with a serious knowledge of... a lot of things as a centuries-old demon and the hardest hitter in the group who can't and won't cook for shit and kind of just learns to actually live without constantly gunning for those bare necessities long after he's gotten them. I don't want it to be 'he learns to be human' because he... isn't human, but just him appreciating life and seeing some value in it, especially as something with as much power as Bellum, it's a bit messy and I'm still figuring it out, but I've got the general direction figured out.

Bellum is effectively the ship's best defender, and ends up fitting into the group as a friend and with his own specific role with the other individual members of the group. Linebeck kind of kickstarts his arc for him and connects with him the most and Bellum generally stays the closest with him, but Damien and Link help him see other little corners of life, as well as other characters he has to interact with, and I think I want Bellum's side of the story to have the most outstanding mundane-ity to it- there's absolutely meant to be a slice-of-life aspect to Post-PH, but I want the biggest points of Bellum's arc to be comparably the most mundane. It's the little things with him. The others have little things, too, but... I'm not sure how to express the difference, but I promise there is a difference.

Outside of Post-PH, though, when Bellum is present in a big way, his arc either tackles a similar idea in a different way, is just about something entirely different, or he doesn't have an arc at all, either due to not being a big enough part of the story or just straight up not being present.

In the Context of AUs

Bellum is only present in a handful of aus, either fully present as a character, halfway present, or just being referenced. When he is present in an au, he's usually some kind of major character, and he's notable in the crimson king au, the space au, the murder mystery au, and the horror au and one of my 'ruined hyrule' aus. (the horror and ruined hyrule au will be put together for this bc bellum's role in both are very similar) (for reference, here's my au explanation post)

In the horror au and ruined hyrule au, Bellum serves juuuust about the same role, just with different capabilities, contexts, all of that, but it's more or less the same thing. He's frequently present, but usually not acknowledged, and is very close to Linebeck in both, and the two of them pretty much rely on each other to live due to circumstances out of their control; they didn't really go into this whole thing liking each other, but have been more or less forced to become each other's friends due to proximity and just. Needing the others' presence in order to survive. In both, Bellum usually is a character who knows more than the others, but doesn't bother sharing that information since it's either not totally relevant or he just doesn't want to, and he tends to be protective of Linebeck, half because he needs him in order to live, half just because he's ended up liking him. (there is. more to say. but since i may actually write one of these aus [likely ruined hyrule bc the horror one has to be visual and it is VERY plotless rn] i'm not gonna go into much more depth since it would require spoilers lol)

Can't say a whole lot about the space au, either, since the story of that one is still a work in progress, and Bellum isn't particularly a major character, though he is important to some B-plot stuff. Without digging up too much world building and background and general story stuff and important plot bits, he's got a fairly close relationship to Linebeck in this au, as a general beneficiary and friend, and he actually tends to mind his own business and just wants to hold his own position; he's not really antagonistic or anything, but definitionally morally dubious even if he doesn't really directly do a whole lot.

In the Crimson King au, though, Bellum is one of the main characters, and a bit different than in ph-related stuff. He spends a lot of time in his human form, only switching to his little demon form a handful of times, and usually just for fun. He plays the role of Linebeck's closest friend and beneficiary, practically being the reason why Linebeck is able to do any of the things he does in the story, helping him from behind the scenes at times and balancing that business with Linebeck with his more outward appearance as a mostly normal guy working for the person who runs his section of the city... who also happens to be him. The vague politics in this au would take a bit to explain in full, but Bellum in this au spends a lot of time keeping his actual identity under wraps, the basic premise being that he's decided to integrate himself into current mortal society like a normal person to see what trouble he can cause, how he could sustain himself while keeping things stable, and to see just how far he can go- essentially, the only danger he faces is if others figure out what he is, but even then, he knows he could very easily cut his losses and go back to what he's done best.

He's not very active in the main plot, mostly giving Linebeck assignments and pulling strings behind the scenes in order to help and keep him safe, but Bellum does occasionally meddle directly in Linebeck's situation whenever it relates to him, when he needs something extra done, or, later in the story, when he gets a bit worried about Linebeck. His general arc is essentially him owning up to the fact that he does, in fact, care about Linebeck's well-being. Crimson King Bellum is fun, because he can't really just be 'violent demon', and I just like the supporting role I've got him in. He's Linebeck's rich friend who hires him to kill people for him. It's fun.

How I Like to Write Him With Linebeck

Of course, Bellum is going to have stuff with Linebeck, both in aus and in post-ph. Bellum has interactions and relationships with other characters, but the dynamic(s) with Linebeck tend to be the most diverse and important.

With aus: There’s usually a general sense that Bellum is above Linebeck, both in the power sense and in the sense that he’s typically his boss or in charge of him, but in a handful they are on equal footing (specifically, the modern school one, where they’re just classmates.)- the most common dynamic is usually along the lines of Bellum hiring Linebeck to kill people for him. Bellum is typically someone that provides Linebeck with things like payment or equipment or safety- in the Crimson King au, he gives Linebeck a fair amount of money, and supplies his equipment and gives him a place to live when he does jobs for him.

I like to imagine there's a level of... recognition? Not empathy, trying to keep that to a minimum... He's almost gentle with Linebeck, and is uncharacteristically merciful towards him. In post-ph, Linebeck survives being possessed and this marks him as notable to Bellum, since most people he possess die very soon after being released, so he's initially motivated by curiosity and a desire to observe Linebeck when he acts less violently- that curiosity is the biggest reason why he's cordial with Linebeck across my aus as well.

With Phantom Hourglass-centric stuff (which is what I'll mostly just talk about here, since it's kind of the 'base' for all other Bellum and Linebeck stuff I do), Linebeck and Bellum start on halfway decent terms, I'm planning a Bellumbeck fic sometime in the future, which is a bit less focused on that actual fight and more on whatever's going on between Linebeck and Bellum. I'm still trying to pin down exactly what I want with Linebeck and Bellum's dynamic.

I’ve fallen back into shipping them, (Still iffy on ship name lmfao, Bellumbeck is taken by the game and ‘Linebellum’ is lame imo, so I’ve been sticking with just ‘bellum x linebeck’) but it’s not really typically romantic/sexual, though there are some aspects of both, it’s still kind of abstract and easier to define with example stuff rather than just trying to explain it in a concise paragraph.

They both go out of their way to effectively research each other before properly meeting, starting as just trying to find advantageous information, but eventually just doing research out of curiosity, especially on Linebeck’s end, hunting down any material that so much as alludes to Bellum while Oshus refuses to say anything extra on the topic. They have a mutual interest and curiosity about each other.

With Bellum, its a similar curiosity with how Linebeck survives being possessed, and a general interest in him as a person, as Bellum doesn't really care much about the world beyond how it can serve him, but felt the need to look into Linebeck. A lot of the time, Bellum starts with the intention of exploiting Linebeck in some way, then ends up actually caring about him, he usually goes through variations of the same arc regarding Linebeck. It works with Linebeck for me since I tend to read and write him as fairly morally gray, so he's more willing to reciprocate Bellum.

(There's also the whole bit with Linebeck being kind of a monsterfucker and having a thing for being tied up and just a handful of like. sexual stuff on Linebeck's end, but we're talking about Bellum's perspective here we can't be focusing on Linebeck)

Bellum primarily operates with survival on the mind, and at odds with anything that might get in his way, and secondarily treats mortal creatures as something to study. When his attempt to use Linebeck fails, he shifts to that studying, and therefore has some respect for him due to his survival. They both focus quite a lot on survival, and don't have the most interest in making connections, seeing most relationships as transactional. They understand each other; Bellum sees Linebeck's mind when possessing him, and therefore knows a great deal about him.

There are similarities between them; not-great relationships with their fathers, a strong desire for survival at any cost, generally low empathy and a habit of mostly viewing others for how they can be used, curiosity about anatomy, a higher tolerance for things like blood, gore, things that would likely make others squeamish, they both hate Ciela...

(As an aside to that last one, an idea I've decided to integrate into my ph stuff and may touch on in a future fic is that Linebeck calling Ciela 'sparkles' gives her a strong sense of deja-vu before she gets all of her memories back; it's something Bellum would call her, when he was more cordial with the other spirits)

Bellum hangs around on the ship, and he hangs around Linebeck the most, to the point of being annoying, but learns what boundaries are and ends up respecting them decently. I lean more into... things just working out, Bellum more or less being put in a situation where he chooses to change things up and be a bit kinder, starting with the guy he's decided was the catalyst for all of this.

He gets along well enough with Damien (damien ends up in that shipping, too, considering that he's already dating linebeck by the time bellum sorts his own feelings out, so in post-ph, bellum ends up being a sort of on-and-off polycule member), he is eventually friendly with Link, often because Linebeck likes him as well. It takes a very long time for he and Link to warm up to each other, so they'll likely end up in situations where they must rely on each other at the start of things.

Bellum is… very not used to social stuff or acting human, and isn’t even very used to his human form at the start, so he does spend that time with Linebeck while he figures things out, as well. Linebeck's not the best role model for decent social interaction, especially since he works on dismantling his own mask and figuring himself out for a bit at the start of post-ph, but he's the only person Bellum tolerates and respects at that start.

Bellum eventually gets roped into helping Linebeck cook, follows him around for ship maintenance, watches him patch up wounds, and just ends up as a crew member that can kind of fill any basic role, but he’s not making it much further than swabbie.

I haven’t actually written a ton of interaction between them yet, but what I have written always comes off as casual, almost humorous, they joke around with each other and Bellum is detached and unserious at times, but very capable of switching to dead seriousness. A lot of the time, Linebeck tends to take things more seriously at face value, but Bellum is more prone to joking around due to the fact that very few consequences mean anything to him.

He and Linebeck are typically close in one sense or another in most things where they're included, and I generally consider all dynamics between them to fall under the ship umbrella, because I don't consider it strictly romantic (though it usually ends up being vaguely like that), just more that there's some kind of intimacy between them at some point. It's a relationship whose dynamic I think is interesting given the... lack of actual interaction between them, but with just enough interesting conclusions that can be drawn.

I guess it's similar to the general stuff I have about Bellum, kind of just scraping ideas together from canon and then following whatever threads can be connected to them, while trying to make sure it still has roots in that canon. It's similar to my personal 'design philosophy' or whatever for my aus.

I've also considered making their relationship parasitic in someway, as a sort of homage/callback/reference to their canonical relationship, but it's not entirely a direction I really want to go in, and I feel like some aus get decently close.

Final Points

I think Bellum's really neat, so considering the general lack of information or depth to him, I've been playing with expanded ideas and building up my own ideas for him, specific within the context of Phantom Hourglass and a post-ph setting, while many of my other ideas with him tend to then derive from that.

His (human) design is one I've spent a very long time figuring out, trying to mix his demon design in with more human traits, trying to keep him distinctive without getting too complicated, and trying to have that design represent him decently with a fair bit of reasoning behind a lot of that design. It's something Bellum himself controls to a certain degree, so it's in a bit of a crossroads between portraying him based on his character, and being something he uses to come off as generally innocuous.

I've got a decent idea of what Bellum's whole deal is in Phantom Hourglass and afterwards, and I use him in a fair number of aus, often in tangent with Linebeck, whom I often give him some kind of intimate relationship, be it romantic or some other form of closeness, based off of ideas for ways they would interact and why.

Bellum's fun! He's fun as he is, and he's fun to build off of and develop further than what we see in the game. And giving him the ability to shift into a humanoid shape gives even more room to play around in. I don't know when I first came up with the idea, but I've had ideas for a human form Bellum for quite some time now, I've just only recently really started solidifying a lot of it. Even between the time when I got the ask and finished it, I came up with new ideas.

But for now, these are the broad strokes! Not just about post-ph humanoid Bellum, just about my ideas for him in general, though it all really relates back to that one in particular, honestly.

He's surprisingly fun to speculate about! I didn't really expect Bellum to end up as one of my favorite LoZ characters, but I guess any character can end up as your favorite if you spend enough time thinking about him. At the end of the day I think he's funky, and he's fun to use in a post-ph setting.

[eliza-makepeace]

it seems to me like eldest tries really hard to make it seem like arya has a lot of personality and complexity as a character and frankly it's not really working imho. like. there's a scene that really frustrates me. where we're told that she and eragon sit and talk about their families, their lives and whatnot, but that dialogue just. doesn't exist. how the hell am i supposed to see her as something other than a clear attempt from paolini to create "ideal woman who is so perfect and wonderful and yet will eventually fall for our protagonist"? give her some depth! make it make sense to me that eragon would be interested in her, aside from the fact that she's oh so beautiful. paolini makes him literally say to her that he cares about his friendship with her, but tbh i don't think any of us do either because their friendship has never been properly developed. most of the time it's eragon's inner monologue going "wow she's so pretty and wonderful and has such stealth and her figure and her hair and omg she'd never be with me :(" and her being mean to the dwarves or smth.

[ampersand-ghoul]

As someone who's survived PTSD and has DID, I really see a lot of very similar traits in Sunny that I see in myself and I actually hc Omori himself as protector/gatekeeper alter and Something as a persecutor.

[thedeadthree]

— TAG GAME.

TAGGED BY the dear @marivenah and @leviiackrman to answer a few questions! ty ty so much love!

TAGGING: @feystepped, @griffin-wood, @jendoe, @kingsroad, @chuckhansen, @risingsh0t, @queennymeria, @denerims, @phillipsgraves, @jillvlntine, @morvaris, @aartyom, @minaharkers, @unholymilf, @leviiackrman, @jacobseed, @arklay, @corvosattano, @jackiesarch, @malefiicarum, @pearlcscent, @shellibisshe, @weisshaupts, @shadowglens, @leondaltons, @adelaidedrubman, @florbelles, @belorage, @confidentandgood, @girlbosselrond, @thee-morrigan, @rosebarsoap, @fragilestorm, @lacunafiction, @noonfaerie and you!

THREE SHIPS: inspired by mari <3!

THREE CANON SHIPS: geralt x yennefer, corlys velaryon x rhaenys targaryen, and arianne martell x daemon sand!

THREE OC SHIPS: iovanna dayne x daemon targaryen, edelgard vanderweyden x reese verner, maekar targaryen x aeryal arvel (carolines dear!)

THREE MUTUALS SHIPS: mo @kingsroad's alyse x aegon (they mean the world to me!), ash @unholymilf's iconic varya x roman (forever the moment!), airika @chuckhansen's nina x adam (the loveliest! they're dear to me!)

FIRST SHIP: oo ok ok i want to say my first ship was I think? rajaion and ena from fire emblem path of radiance? that or? selina kyle/catwoman and bruce wayne!

CURRENTLY CONSUMING: an iced coffee ajanjnsk bc i am a responsible adult <3.

CURRENTLY WATCHING: my 3829838th rewatch of house of the dragon <3 am i surprised? nay nay! its not at all for oc lore! (leg says like a liar jnjanj <3)

LAST MOVIE: the batman! <3 and one i recently adored seeing was bullet train as well! (ty ty orion and ash for introducing me bc of ur ocs u dears u!)

LAST SONG: its been stuck in my head all week! the fruits by paris paloma <3

CURRENTLY READING: rereading fernweh saga by the dear aelsa! and fire and blood by george rr martin <3 (leg once again says its bc they want know more of what’s in store for the characters and not for oc lore at all like a liar <3)

CURRENTLY CRAVING: my mom is making sauce so i have pasta on the brain <3

[selfinflictedgunshotwound]

imo everyone on earth should be talking about Him (don't want this showing up in the tag even though it's not a diss) but everytime i go to the tag and there's only like 3 new posts i'm like. oh yeah almost no one cares except me and like 5 other ppl on here

i ran out of tags KFHSJENNXN i don't think that's literally ever happened to me before anyways don't read them because it's just me being insane as per usual

[skitskatdacat63]

Not be screaming Insanely to you about strollonso again but I have thots. Thinkings. And yeah.

So like I love how everyone expected them to not get well w each other yk like people THOUGHT they would be on each others throats, and nando would commit warcrimes against lance etc etc(Especially after last years Austin incident yeahh....)WHILE they were actually ALREADY on good terms in 2021(the recent gifs that showed lance being like a teenager w crush ykyky)(plus I do remember photos of them interacting just casually) and before that yk when nando congratulated lance on his first podium in baku(which I'll never get out of my head gladly)

And like NOW they are also so well w each other ESPECIALLY now that they are teammates. And its NICE and they are COMFY plus WHAT HAPPENED IM BAHRAIN OFC. And now wih nando casually making lance photos..they are so comfortable. Like aughh.

Thats all I guess please add anything you have in mind aswell 😭😭

Well I think it's funny because, as you mentioned, one of the only pre-2023 moments of strollonso I remember distinctly is when they had the collision during the US gp 😭 and I feel like everyone saw that and were like "oh god Nando is gonna kill him when they're teammates", and then a similar situation kinda happened again at the very first gp when Lance hit the back of Nando but when Nando found out, he's just like "okay :)"

I wonder though sometimes what they'd be like if the AMR23 was like the prev one. Because I do think Nando does actually like Lance, but also I don't think you can deny that Nando's podiums are indeed a buffer. Kinda like him being like "anything you can do to me is literally nothing because I have a great car and I'm doing better than I have in years", like bro is on top of the world after so long, and it feels like he's gotten a second wind where nothing can really touch him or bother him.

I hate how everyone uses that "Lance is the owner's son, so of course Fernando will treat him nicely" argument. Like yeah that's a factor, but I feel like I see it more as Nando appreciating Lance bcs he factors into why Nando has a good car and a good team in the first place. I think tho my fav strollonso plot line is Nando being like "ugh ill put up w him I guess", but then he ends up having such a good car and finds out in the process that Lance is more than he ever considered(like in this fic ) And also the narrative of Nando being a very different, supportive teammate as compared to most other Lance has had. I like that they probably came into being teammates with certain assumptions, but now look at how comfy they are with each other!! Enough to tease each other is such public ways, like Lance saying certain things in interviews and Nando with his socmed. It's very fun!

BUT YEAH OH MY GOD THAT CLIP OF THEM WITH LANCE BEING SO TOUCHY AND SHOVEY WITH HIM!!!! people need to look back at older clips like that and the others you mentioned before they make assumptions about why they are the way they are >:(

[longagoitwastuesday]

I keep thinking of that reply in my Odysseus/Agamemnon post about how I regard differently Odysseus' and Agamemnon's actions, while acknowledging that at times Agamemnon is written as a sweet man and Odysseus is always straight up shitty, and how it was taken as some sort of defense for Agamemnon and as a form of pointing out the double standard; and that wasn't at all what the post was about for me, even though I can see where they were coming from. To be honest, given I didn't imagine it would spread anywhere other than my own blog, I didn't explain myself very well (or at all).

The fact is that when I talked about Odysseus not caring about hurting someone else's child to start and end a war I was indeed comparing his actions to Agamemnon's, but my words about supporting Odysseus' wrongs and cheering him in his terrible actions, while in a joking tone, weren't entirely a joke. I do think that Odysseus does some very shitty acts, and some quite terrible ones depending on the sources. That's a fact, that he does is at the core of his characterisation and it's what makes him so much fun; but not even when he is at his most cruel does he harm his family, his own son. Agamemnon, while sweet and loving at times in some texts, at his worst is willing to sacrifice Iphigenia. When readers regard with more sympathy Odysseus over Agamemnon despite both being responsible for children dying, I don't think there's a double standard in this aspect at all considering it's never his own kid Odysseus harms. And that's the key, I think.

Odysseus and Agamemnon have very different priorities, a very different view on loyalty and duty. It could be said that Agamemnon acts out of selfishness, but it could also be read in a kinder light, saying that Agamemnon is ruled by the gods first, and by his role as head of the achaeans; Agamemnon is not entirely himself. In opposition we see Odysseus acting perhaps mainly for himself and his own family and men; yes, he is a king, but he has not the role Agamemnon has. As a consequence, Agamemnon submits his family's wellbeing to the war, to the gods, while Odysseus stops the plow before hurting Telemachus but is (depending on the source) the cause of Iphigenia's sacrifice and Astyanax's death.

Both Odysseus and Agamemnon have reasons to support their actions, and both can be sympathised with; it's fiction after all. When it comes to fiction, at the end of the day which character a reader is drawn to or sympathises with is mainly an issue of personal taste, but I suppose it also implies a certain level of one's own views or preferences on morals, what makes us find certain actions more justifiable, or tasteful (perhaps that's a more accurate word), than others. Agamemnon sacrificing his daughter, no matter how sympathetic or understandable the reason, generally sits worse on people than Odysseus doing the same with someone else's kids, because they're someone else's. This different emotional reaction they provoke has place not just metanarratively, but also inside the very story; it is narratively significant, given it determines how their arrival home plays out, how their wives react to them, and thus their futures. Ultimately it determines whether they live or die.

I think both terrible acts go in line wonderfully with each characterisation, showcasing the role they hold in their world, what they value, what they care for, what they're willing to sacrifice for themselves and the others, how much of their own they're willing to give and bend. While looking at the wider picture it could perhaps be drawn that Agamemnon is the better person out of the two, but Odysseus' selfish actions are perhaps easier to empathise with, especially from a modern viewpoint. Odysseus is treacherous and prone to betrayal, but not against his own; Agamemnon follows the rules of the gods. How fitting in that context that Odysseus doesn't die at the end of his story, that he cheats the death heroes so often are fated to, almost as if cheating the narrative itself, bending the rules of the world he is ascribed to; how fitting in the context of those texts that point towards Sisyphus being his father. But that's another topic, and I've already talked a lot.

[jamiebluewind]

Oh my god could I stop being sick please? It's been two freaking months and I got shit to do!

[rivilu]

I dont really believe in afterlife as a place, but if one exists im finding the Roman fucker that adapted the Medusa story and pummeling him to death a second time

[fortune-maiden]

Somehow I now halfway through Avataro Sentai Donbrothers

And I am loving every moment of it