#hes an upstart charging in

[biterflies]

this is my son percivil in his first session being played he killed a dragon personally fucked over lord soth with his mage slayer feat and went unconscious and almost died twice

[deathmetalunicorn1]

Omgggggg Hiiii

Can I request a One Piece Whitebeard x Wife!Reader.

Like since Whitebeard Is known as Pops by his Crew the Reader could be known as 'Mom' or 'Mama'. And let's do like the Timeline like when Ace was first brought on the Ship. And since Whitebeard is like 21 feet tall, make the Reader like 20 feet tall.

Like, who doesn't love a Giant Woman who can kill you and step on you???

-The Whitebeard Crew was full of strong warriors, gathered from all corners of the ocean, each one with special skills and talents, some with Devil Fruit abilities, and some with just natural talent.

-There was definitely a hierarchy in his crew, with the different commanders each watching over a different squadron in the crew, with Whitebeard on top, or that’s what everyone says, but the truth is there is one person higher than Pops- you!

-You were his darling wife, having married him many years ago, after the two of you both left the Rock Pirates. You were a vision to Pops, standing at eighteen feet, hot as lava, and you could kick his ass and anyone who opposed you- you were the perfect catch!

-So, as you traveled, building your own crews, building your family with all the sons Edward had adopted, you enjoyed your new position on the crew as Mama!

-Everyone called you Mama, and everyone respected you, and if you were disrespected by anyone- it was like a declaration of war.

-You thought it was rather cute, seeing all those young ones so protective of you, but it was even cuter to see Edward leading the charge, despite all of them knowing full well that you could easily handle yourself. You didn’t earn your obnoxiously high bounty just sitting around, looking cute, and baking cookies!

-Here recently, there had been a young man doing his best to attack your husband, wanting to join the crew, and normally your husband accepted most anyone onto the crew, but not Ace.

-You inquired about this, kissing your husband on his forehead, as he was sitting, drinking some ale and he just grinned, “I want to see his drive- I need to see if he can handle this.”

-Many grew used to Ace’s antics, showing up on the ship, demanding Whitebeard to fight him, only to get knocked down. A few, like Marco, were sympathetic, as he knew what Edward was doing.

-You approached Ace this time, after his defeat, bringing over a plate of seafood fried rice while he was pouting again, but grateful he hadn’t been thrown overboard again.

-Ace heard the footsteps before you spoke, “Ace?” he instantly froze, hearing that it was you, but he didn’t turn around, at least immediately as you set the plate down before taking a seat next to him, the two of you sitting on the whale figurehead together.

-You could see that Ace was a good person, a little headstrong, but he was a good person. You lifted a hand to his head and ruffled his hair gently. You felt the small flinch, which you could tell that it wasn’t out of fear- more of surprise, but he did nothing, letting you dote quietly on him.

-You saw him pick up the plate and started to eat, which made you smile before you spoke, giving him some words of encouragement, “Edward is a lot like you- stubborn and headstrong. He wants you to prove that you’re not just some upstart hothead. You’ve got this Ace.”

-You remained silent as he sniffled softly, crying into his food before he gave a small nod, you were so comforting, so warm- just like a mother.

-And when Ace finally did prove himself to your husband, you cheered with everyone else, happy to see that he finally earned Pops’ approval, which of course led to a huge party.

-You curled up on your husband’s lap, pressing your lips against his cheek which made him grin softly, “You encouraged him, didn’t you?”

-You just gave him a grin, “I just told him that he was like you- stubborn.” He laughed loudly which made you grin as you turned to look out, seeing everyone celebrating.

-You weren’t going to change anything for the world.

[morgana-ren]

I wanted the full analysis!!! 🙏 Also I can't become a goddess </3 sadness

You wouldn't want to, babe. Sounds like fun, but Godhood is-- well, it's not great in DnD. It attracts exactly who you think it would: The naive, or the power-hungry and unworthy.

Well, let's look at Gale and his ultimate motivations:

When you meet him, he's straight-forward although fully polite, charismatic, and very much a 'wizard' archetype, as in noticeably and actively intelligent but in a strangely awkward way. Charming, talkative, but earnest. As you get to know him, you learn more about his plight and his struggles, his prodigal upbringing, his dalliances with Mystra, his fall from grace, and his inevitable charge with 'ending' this little uprising by the upstart Dead Three-- and ending his own life in the process.

Most people, you would think, would have an ounce of self-preservation upon being told "Hey, you need to kill yourself to end this." Even the rest of the group, up against ridiculous odds, are holding on to the glimmer of hope that they can survive.

Not Gale. Gale just basically goes "Okay. So be it." While he does mourn in a way, he mourns more over his initial mistake than he does the loss of his own life. He thinks of all he did wrong, all the 'pain' he caused. the loss he caused himself, and his rejection at Mystra's hands for which he entirely blames himself.

Gale is a victim of grooming. It is framed in a strange way, since the one doing the grooming is a Goddess, but he is absolutely a victim. He tells you that Mystra has been with him since he was a boy, which yes, you can frame as he is a wizard and she is essentially magic incarnate, but it doesn't stop there. She doesn't encourage him as a pupil-- she takes him as a lover. As a conduit of her own power. Carnally.

She takes him into her bed, and as a lover.

Had Mystra been just an elderly powerful witch, this would have been way more fucking obvious to people. But because she is a God and her whims are unknowable, it's essentially shrugged off-- which I feel like is part of his arc.

Gale did what he did because he was on completely fucking uneven tier with his own lover. The power dynamic was abusive. He could not be on her level and she expected him to be fine with that. She demanded excellence but when he delivered, she spurned him. He was expected to be brilliant and perfect-- but not too much. And when he was perfect? He still could never be enough. She is a goddess and he is expected to bow and scrape. She groomed him to admire and revere and worship her, and then told him to sit down and be happy with what little he was given.

He needed to prove himself her equal. He needed her approval. He needed it because it was a relationship to him, and one he physically could not win at.

Gale is a human. He needs love and connection and fairness. Mystra, by her own nature, cannot give this-- and she doesn't want to.

Gale knows well the callousness of the Gods. Not just with Mystra, but from his tower, he can see injustice and pain and misery. He is extremely empathetic and cares so deeply. His eldest companion, the Tressym Tara, was an accidental summon that stayed with him for life and became intrinsically involved with his family. He knows love. He knows pain. He is a good man.

Gale seeks knowledge, though he does not seek it for power. He seeks it out of genuine and earnest desire to help. To make people's lives better. Yes, he seeks to be seen as intelligent and brilliant because he is, but he is not a selfish being.

For 'good' players, he is one of the easiest approvals to get, because he very much approves of just being a good person. Helping. Being kind and lending a hand. Saving lives. Using your strength and power for good.

But again, Gale is human. And the folly of the clever man is to believe everyone around him is a fool. He, in all his brilliance, found a way he thought he could help. A path that has been tread time and time again with naught but the misery and bewailings of those who came before to show for it as a warning. But he thought he was different. He thought he could pull it off.

He could become a God.

Secretly, he found a way to put himself on even tier with Mystra-- and do what she did not have the compassion, kindness, or even desire to do. To use Godhood for good. To use all that magnificent power to achieve goodness rather than greatness. To be an active God in the lives of mortal men. To make the world better.

He thought that he could maintain his connection with humanity through his apotheosis and ultimately exist with one foot in each world; To straddle mortality and immortality and put reins on them both.

You are warned repeatedly throughout the game that this is bad. That many have tried and all have failed. Humans are not meant to be gods, and you cannot exist as a hybrid. If you are a God, you are a god. If you are a man, you are mortal. The mortal mind cannot tether Godhood. It is not possible. Best case scenario, you lose yourself. Worst case? You are punished eternally for your hubris.

To be a God is to be unknowable. To see the threads of time and the futility of it all. You are ripped from your conscious mind as a man and you can no longer relate. Lives and suffering, they are all fleeting, miniscule things from your mountain on high. All men must die; why is tonight different from any other night? Why is your suffering so great that a god should take interest? What are you to me, little mortal? Your kingdoms shall fall and burn and crumble and be rebuilt and crumble again but my temple shall remain, and when you are but dust in the fickle wind, you too shall know my eternal glory.

The way Mystra looked at Gale.

An instrument. A tool. A temporary amusement and benefactor. He is a mere man and she is a Goddess and when his bones bleach in Selune's unforgiving sun, she shall choose a new apprentice to take unto her bed. And so the wheel of time spins endlessly on.

A large theme of the game is the malevolence of some Gods and the utter indifference of others.

Selune's perceived abandonment of Ketheric that led to his downfall and madness. He lost his wife and daughter after an entire life of servitude, and he did not even receive comfort in return. She is considered a good natured Goddess, and even she is cruel in her neglect and indifference when it does not suit her.

Shar and her utter disregard and even active disdain for her most devout-- and everything else. Viconia, who committed her life to Shar, cast aside for a Selunite orphan on a whim. Her hatred of living creatures and her manipulations. Her outright malevolence and reverence for their suffering. You see her cruelty both from an outside and inside perspective, and her circular doctrine that makes no sense, her faith that demands all and gives nothing in return.

The Gods that are active are only so malevolently. Bane devouring Gortash after his defeat despite how far he'd gotten in his name. Myrkul abandoning Ketheric as well in the end. Bhaal discarding his own children when the do not suit his whims.

"We are but bronze pieces in their pocket to be traded on a whim. You may have beaten me, but the truth is, the Gods beat me first."

It is literally a thematic constant.

Sure, they can do good. They have devout worshipers and can be seen doing some level of good-- Isabelle and her protection of the Last Light, for example. But it's never quite them, is it? It is the humans that utilize their power. The humans who care. Selune did not protect them of her own volition. Her magic was invoked.

Gale's goal was to become both. To have the power and will of a God but the consciousness and mind of a man.

Mark my words, you would go mad.

Gods see eons. The endless tide of eternity drifting endlessly on. Imagine the incessant screams. The pleading. The misery. The death. The horror at the hands of man and your fellow Gods. Even all of your power, all of your prestige could not save them all.

And even if you could-- even if you could-- Ao demands a level of indifference. It is one of the fundamental rules.

Gale must accept this, or he will become that which he sought to rectify. He must learn that to love and care so deeply is to be mortal. That to retain all that made him beautiful and wonderful, he must be humbled and rather do as he can rather than all he feels capable of. He must seek Mystra's forgiveness (disgusting) on a symbolic level and accept that he is a mortal and his hubris would be his downfall. Gods and mortals should not mix.

But if he does not? If he utilizes the Crown of Karsis?

He becomes a god. He gets his wish. And in true Faustian fashion, the price he pays makes the prize worthless.

He becomes an arrogant, disconnected, detached, miserable pile of sectorless divinity.

He becomes callous. Cruel. When asked about all those people he longed to save, he shrugs. He no longer speaks of the mortal realm, he speaks of the beauty and frivolity of Elysium. Of the wonders of Godhood and all he understands-- or has forgotten. He has completely detatched from mortality and only deigns to come down from his fucking halcyon world to bless you-- his former friends-- with his magnanimous presence. To let you know how lucky you are. How blessed.

All that power he has? Useless. Used to prop himself on a pedestal same as every other filthy fucking God.

His deepest, most treasured friend will tell him this, and how does he respond? By basically telling her 'You don't know shit.' He ignores her. Threatens you if you try. A man who was willing to give his life selflessly to save the world will now threaten divine wrath if you even so much as irritate him. He will swing that hammer of power down just to prove a fucking point.

If you loved him and refuse him? Utterly disconnected. No genuine feeling. Just looking down on you like the silly little human you are. When you refuse him, he is disconnected from who he was and what he ever felt for you. Gale, a man who was groomed and just wanted love on an equal playing field; a man desperately lonely in his brilliance; a man so distraught by what he felt that he sought to break the barrier and become a god, not for power, but for benevolence-- he becomes Mystra.

He is no longer Gale. He is the God of Ambition. Another useless god in a pantheon of useless ideas. What good is ambition if it does not serve a purpose? To make him the god of ambition is to spit in his face, because what was his ambition? Where is it now, Gale? What are you?

What is your ambition and where the fuck is it now?

Gale is a kind, caring, compassionate man who went through a horrible, traumatic event that changed who he was fundamentally. Dumped and abandoned by his Goddess, it burned him. It hurt him in such a way that he made it his goal to change this dynamic and to become what she could not.

He was still in love with her. Of course he was. How it must be to love something that you know can never love you back. That you are one of many, and your time is over. You have served your purpose. And if you die, you die. If the realm dies, so be it.

Gale's is a story of hubris born of love. A man gifted with intelligence and power that he only wanted to utilize for the best; to do what he thought was right. He wasn't clawing after the crown for raw power's sake. He wanted to help. That's all he ever wanted.

The bookworm that will talk your ear off about his cat and his studies and his love of books. A man so brilliant that it's painful at times. A man who loved his mother and his cat. A man who loved a goddess and, in a story that could have no happy ending, decided to give everything to make it so. If it meant dying, then so be it. He wasn't clawing for the crown to save his own life. He was doing it to save everyone else's.

He fundamentally misunderstood the nature of the Gods. He touched divinity and it looked at him with a human countenance and so he believed he could grasp it.

The Gods are powerful, and yes, they are unknowable and, in a way, infinite-- but they are callous and cruel and indifferent. They are power with no outlet. Useless. They gaze upon humanity like rats in a cage, uncaring and unfeeling. Separated entirely. Sometimes they deign to make their presence known. But mostly? They sit on their heavenly thrones and revel in their own brand of bullshit.

This is what Gale will become. It is an insult to an incredible man to take away all that made him incredible and make him another b-lister jumpstart God up his own ass. Caring and love are work. They are pain. It is suffering and agony. But that is what separates us from them. We do not, and in some cases, cannot separate. It is our world, and we live in it. We must breathe in the poisons. Smell the blood that soils the earth. It is our world and we cannot separate. We love and we help and we learn--

Gale wanted to help. So he became a God.

But what do Gods do?

They watch. Through the gray window of indifference, they watch. They watch us tear each other open. They watch other Gods tear us open. They watch the wounds. They watch the graves. They watch the fires rage.

They watch and they listen to the screams. And when they are bored of them? They shut them out.

Gale became a god.

And so too shall he watch, removed from it all.

Not an ounce of humanity left in a man that ached so for humanity itself that it damn near drove him mad.

[apomaro-mellow]

Family Planning 3

Part 2

Eddie was being led down the hallway by the scruff of his jacket like an unruly pup by Coach Williams while Steve was being led by the shoulder like he was somehow more delicate. They were sat down in a familiar scene in the principal’s office while their parents were being called and Woolsley cleaned up as best as he could.

Still, when he got to the office and took his seat, he had red staining his suit. Both boys gave valiant efforts, trying to hide their snickering behind wobbling smiles.

“Laugh all you want, boys. We’ll see how funny it is when your parents arrive.”

“What exactly are we being charged with?”, Eddie asked, crossing his legs.

“Let’s start with classroom disruptions. And let’s continue with disorderly conduct. And how about we include theft from the theatre department. Oh and let’s not forget inciting a riot.”

“We didn’t incite a riot!”, Steve argued. He was still wearing the fake stomach and thanks to Gareth’s prowess, only had a bit of sauce on his jeans.

“Watch your volume”, Woolsley pointed a warning finger at him. 

“Their families are here, sir”, the secretary announced.

They were waved in and now it was both Mr. and Mrs. Harrington and Eddie’s uncle Wayne Munson. Steve’s parents gawked at the sight of him and Wayne only shook his head.

“What’ve you gotten up to this time?”

“Just a being a showman”, Eddie shrugged.

“Steven Arthur Harrington! What are you wearing?”, his mother gasped.

Steve was at a loss of words. It had all seemed like a good idea in the beginning. Actually, it still did. He didn’t know why they were acting like he and Eddie really pulled a baby from his womb. It was just a joke.

“It was just a joke.”

“This”, Richard pointed to Steve’s stomach. “Doesn’t look like a joke. It looks like some upstart alpha has forgotten himself and is making your forget yourself.” Then he pointed to Eddie. “You better stop sniffing around my son-”

“And you better stop pointin’ your finger at my boy”, Wayne said.

“He needs to quit while he’s ahead before this becomes a real problem.”

Two alphas filling the room with tension and not even bothering to hide their scent about it made Steve’s shoulders hunch up a bit. How did a stupid joke turn into all of this? Then his mother spoke up.

“Our son has never done anything like this, which leads me to believe that your nephew-”

“Why does everyone assume it was all Eddie? That I had nothing to do with it?”, Steve accused, standing up. “I’m the one that put this thing on and I’m the one that got up on the desk and shot the sauce.”

“And that’s because of his bad influence”, Richard nodded his head at Eddie.

Wayne put his hands on his hips. “That’s funny because I see two young men here in the hot seat, not just one.”

“Alright, gentlemen”, the principal finally spoke up before looking to Eddie and Steve. “Boys, go and wait outside. As a matter of fact, you can take that back to the prop storage”, he jabbed a finger at Steve’s belly.

Thoroughly dismissed, they did just that, walking out together. Feeling a little humiliated, Steve took the fake stomach off. He could only imagine what they were discussing behind the door. His dad would probably fight tooth and nail, if not for Steve’s sake for his reputation at least. Unfortunately, it had to be said that he didn’t have such high hopes for Eddie.

“Well, that reception could’ve gone better”, Eddie said.

“Understatement of the century”, Steve grumbled.

They got to the theatre department and Steve put the stomach into a box after checking that it was all good. Eddie could smell the bitter undertone in his scent, even in the musty storage room.

“You know, worst case scenario, we need to do a little summer school to make this up.”

“Some of us like having a free summer, Munson.”

“Oh, Munson now is it? What happened to my sweet little mama-to-be?”

Not in the mood for jokes now, Steve just rolled his eyes and turned to walk out. Eddie didn’t need to get a whiff to know that his joke had landed flat. He followed Steve out, tripping over something feathery in his haste to catch up to the omega. He didn’t know what Steve was more turned off by, having to continue the project together, or having to call it quits here and do some other make up assignment.

“Hey, hey, I know I’m not like your idea of a perfect alpha or anything.”

Steve stopped in his tracks and turned to lean back against a locker, crossing his arms. “Come on, man. Give yourself a break. You’re not that bad.”

Eddie put a hand to his chest. “My word! That almost sounded like a compliment!”

“Keep it up and I’ll take it back”, Steve said, grinning a little now.

Feeling welcomed, Eddie came to stand next to him, their shoulders almost touching. Steve smelled a little sweeter now and his body wasn’t as tense.

“You really are hot and cold. Can’t you be a little warmer to your baby daddy?”, Eddie batted his lashes.

Steve leaned over and into his space. “A good alpha would put in some real effort to warm me up.”

Eddie hesitated for only a moment before he leaned in a little as well. Steve smoothed his cheek over Eddie’s and breathed in deep. No one had scented Eddie besides his uncle and he stood stock still as Steve did it.

“You smell really good, you know. I don’t think I’ve ever told you.” To be honest, Steve had never taken a moment to savor in Eddie’s scent. But now that he was taking his time to do so…

“Steven Arthur Harrington!”

Eddie jumped back like it was his own name being shouted down the hallways. So hard that the sound of the locker slamming echoed in the mostly empty hallway. Steve’s parents collected him and carted him out so quickly that Eddie got whiplash. Wayne came up to him much more calmly and patted his shoulder. 

“Do I gotta to the full name treatment for you?”

“If you say my middle name out loud I’ll run away from home”, Eddie threatened.

“Son at your age, it’s just called ‘moving out’.”

Both walked out, shoulders shaking with chuckles and that was when Wayne told him what was what.

“We managed to get you both a deal. You can do the project as intended, new sack of flour and all. Just no more funny business.”

“That’s it?”, Eddie asked as he was walked to his van.

“No funny business at all. No causing trouble for yourself or that other boy. Think you can keep your hands clean for an entire year?”

The Harringtons had already left, probably sped out of the parking lot to keep from running into the Munsons again. But even so, it was easy to remember Steve’s fleeting smile and the scent that wafted off of him when he was feeling content or even happy. 

“I think I can do that”, Eddie said, resolute.

Part 4

Taglist

@marklee-blackmore @aol19

[amandacanwrite]

The Violet Thread of Fate Part One:

The Reclusive Wizard and the Cheeky Upstart

Part One || Part Two || Part Three || Part Four || Part Five || Part Six || Part Seven || Part Eight || Join Taglist

POV || Third Person, dual POV Gale Dekarios and Elinna Inklynn (Tav)

Pairing || Elinna Inklynn (Half-drow tav) and Gale Dekarios

Length || 5,500 Words

Scenario || In an alternative timeline for the events of BG3 Elinna Inklynn, an orphan from the Moonshae Islands seeks out the tutelage of accomplished wizard Gale Dekarios of Waterdeep. She has a knack with the Weave, but no money or connections to actually learn how to harness it. She has heard the wizard is a gentleman and a schollar, and hopes she can appeal to him to take her on as his apprentice in exchange for her help around his tower, with his research, and in running errands in Waterdeep. Unfortunately for her, Gale Dekarios does not take on apprentices.

Warnings || Age gap (Perhaps about 10ish years), depiction of depression and heart ache, description of very, very mild body horror.

A/n || I hope you all enjoy this very indulgent little fic I'm starting. I am already having entirely too much fun with it. Please keep in mind that while this fic will have a good amount of characters and scenarios from the canon events of BG3 I am planning on taking a lot of creative liberties and may leave out certain situations/characters for the sake of flow!

If you like this, you may also like my original works! I have a writing taglist that you can sign up for simply by commenting or reblogging and letting me know you'd like to be added. OR you can fill out this form if you'd like to be specific about which works you'd like to be tagged in.

Tag list || @softvampirewhump @horizonstride @thoughts-of-bear @mymybirdie @tiedyedghoulette @drabblesandimagines @madwomansapologist @hijirikaww @tryingtowritestuff24 @laserlope @auroraesmeraldarose @puckprimrose @dont-try-pesticide

A Reclusive Wizard

“Mr. Dekarios, if you would just consider it–” Tara suggested as she fluttered alongside her charge. 

“Tara, no,” Gale said. “We are not dropping the wards and we’re not taking visitors. The orb is too volatile.”

“But, Mr. Dekarios–I’ve told you this isolation of yours–” 

“Tara–enough,” Gale shouted, exasperated. “You are my friend. You’re not my mother. I’m a grown man, who has done quite well for himself, might I add, and I don’t need your–your incessant fussing.”

“Mr. Dekarios!” Tara tutted, her whiskers perking forward with her disapproval. “My incessant fussing is what helped you figure out how to stabilize the orb in the first place, may I remind you. And if you so tire of my incessant fussing, allow me to divest of its burden! I may not be your mother, but your mother is a friend to me and will happily put me up.”

“Tara,” Gale said. “Wait–I didn’t mean you should leave–”

“I know that. But I am also quite aware that my willingness to fetch magical items and act as your little familiar has proven to only enable your reclusive habits,” she retorted. “Perhaps you will not listen to me, but when you run out of biscuits for your tea, perhaps you’ll see the reason in getting a little bit of fresh air…and perhaps a bath…and for the sake of the gods a shave.”

Tara flitted her way up to one of the high windows in the tower, pausing on the sill before leaving.

“Tara, don’t go,” Gale said, his eyes taking on a sort of sorry, piteous quality. “Please, just stay here.”

“Mr. Dekarios, those big glittering eyes won’t work on me any longer,” Tara said. “I’ve known you too long to be bewitched by your pouting. If you so wish me to return, you can come fetch me at your childhood home. The walk will do you well.”

And with that, she soared right out of the window, leaving Gale of Waterdeep entirely and utterly alone. 

Gale scowled up at the window she’d escaped from before sighing and smearing a hand down his face. He cupped his hand over his mouth and heaved out a low grumble, lost in thought as he often was these days. 

Perhaps Tara was right…maybe it was time to leave the tower. To engage in the ease of camaraderie at The Yawning Portal, reach out to the colleagues that had tried to pay him a visit in the year since his relationship with Mystra had come to an end–since this tangle of Netherese magic made a home of his chest cavity. 

But it wasn’t just the volatile nature of the orb that worried him. It wasn’t as if he thought a raucous night with his friends would trigger an explosion to level the city he called home. Even with the constant peril of the orb in his chest being destabilized by a too-strong emotion, there was a deeper fear inspiring the reluctance.

Gale Dekarios was used to being an outlier. Unfortunately, it was the otherside of the coin of being a particularly gifted wizard. As a child, it had been a source of ostracization. As an adolescent it made him the subject of many an ill-begotten rivalry. As a young man he had begun to learn how to minimize the isolation by compensating for the inevitable inferiority complex he inspired in others by learning to be charming and funny–to couch his corrections in complimentary language so that he could have some measure of friendship.

It wasn’t often that he could find people that could keep up with him or converse with him on his level–at least, not where the subject of magic came into play. But he’d learned to accept that and enjoy the company of other wizards–even non-wizards–in different ways. 

A game of lanceboard, the critical analysis of a book, a spirited debate on the merits of the shadow arts when applied to the correct endeavors. Now, as a man in his late 30’s with questionable knees, he felt nicely secure in his ability to play nice with others. 

But this new sense of separation–this insurmountable mountain between himself and the other–had been so very devastating to the life he had carefully cultivated. 

How could he listen to other people lament about their sordid love affairs, the politics at the academy–anything– with any measure of understanding or empathy? How could he confide in the people who he used to call his friends? 

He was alone in the tower, but he wasn’t certain he could face the profound isolation of trying to connect with someone about his condition, only to find them staring back at him in utter befuddlement. Or worse, with soulless platitudes and what he could only describe as foolish optimism.

Who could possibly make him feel better when there was no way he could ever feel better? How could he listen to the woes of friends and earnestly care about them when he had been forsaken by the goddess of the only thing he held sacred in his life?

He couldn’t. That was a the truth of it. And that was why he didn’t want visitors. He didn’t want to subject his friends to the poor quality of his care; didn’t want to expose them to this unique brand of selfishness and bitterness. 

He’d had enough of destroying things. 

But he also knew he needed Tara–not just because of the artifacts, but because she was his oldest and longest standing friendship. And because the tower, in her absence, had already become unbearably quiet.

And he supposed it had been a while since he last saw his mother…

He sighed and turned away from his mess of a study, climbing up the two flights of stairs to his bedchambers. Once there, he conjured himself a bath as he undressed, leaving his house robes in a pile on the floor before stepping into the steaming water. 

It smelled of bay laurel and lavender–an old combination that Mystra loved to use when they’d shared baths together. His mind drifted to the thought of his goddess cradled against his body, how small she felt even with her considerable power, the feeling of her silky hair catching on his skin as he kissed the hollow of her neck and…

“Don’t take that path in your mind, Gale. She’s the last person you should be thinking about right now,” he told himself as he gave his cheek a couple firm, bracing pats with his hand. He let his head drop back in the water and sighed. 

The water filled his ears, quieting the ambient sounds in the room around him and creating an echochamber of his head. He heard the airy sound of his breaths coming and going in and out of his lungs; heard the gentle trickling sounds of his fingers creating tiny currents under the water; heard the sound of his heart still beating in his over-crowded chest. 

He was still alive. 

There could be hope for him yet. 

Unlikely, sure, but there could be. 

After washing up with some simple soap, he got out of the bath and toweled off. 

He walked over to the small wardrobe where he kept his things and slapped a couple lazy splashes of a fragranced suspension he’d made onto his neck, favoring his pulse points as he used to when he’d go out for a night at The Yawning Portal. He trimmed his beard as a small concession to Tara (he would not be shaving it completely, thank you very much,) and got dressed. 

He decided he would wear one of his nicer sets of robes. It’d been a while since he’d properly dressed himself in something other than simple tunics and roughspun practice robes. He started with some leather trousers and his under shirt, layering the criss-crossed front with car and fastening it with the ties at his waist to create a slender, tapered silhouette. Then he slipped the robe on, and paused as he caught a glance of himself in the mirror. 

He’d not really been thinking when he selected the robe, but this was one of Mystra’s favorites on him. Various shades of violet with a wine-colored sash. 

Violet, of course, was the color of the weave. Mystra’s color. 

Would she want him to eliminate the color from his wardrobe altogether? Now that she’d left him to his devices? Surely a goddess couldn’t bar him from wearing a color. Hopefully not, considering more than half of his wardrobe was some shade of lilac, lavender or morning glory.

Whatever the case, he fastened the buckles and straightened the sash the wine colored sash, trying once again to put Mystra out of his mind. He did a flick of his hands to lace up the sleeves and then slid on some leather bracers for good measure. 

It wasn’t as if he had any intention of doing any fighting or shooting any arrows, but he liked how they looked. And it had been so long since he’d looked in the mirror and thought to himself my, look at that handsome devil.

Finally he looked at the mop of his hair. It’d also been too long since he’d gotten a cut…now his messy curls fell past his shoulders when he usually preferred to keep it short enough to comb back with a bit of emollient or pomade. He was certain his mother would gripe about it and then he would have to deal with incessant fussing two fold between his mother and Tara. Still, it was dark outside–long past the time any salons would be open, so he gathered half of it up, bundling it as neatly as he could manage around his two forefingers and secured it with a two-pronged hairpin. 

He looked at the earring on his wardrobe and hedged for a moment. 

He’d been given the earring as a gift from Mystra when he’d first encountered her as a boy. He’d only stopped wearing it in the last year. Something had felt off about keeping it on–like a widower still wearing his wedding band. But it also felt wrong to leave his tower without it. It felt like a part of his identity. 

“You’re ridiculous,” he said to himself in the mirror before turning from it and striding out of his bedroom. 

…He returned not two seconds later and slipped the earring into his left ear. Damn it all. He couldn’t help what he was. A sentimental, heartbroken fool.

On his way out the door, he grabbed a hooded cloak and draped it over his shoulders. He lifted the hood, obscuring his face in shadow, hoping it would be enough to keep him from having to interact with anyone who wasn’t Tara of his mother. He considered, for a moment, casting an invisibility charm on himself…alas the concentration such a thing would require left him feeling exhausted at the thought of it. The cloak had worked for rogues and criminals for centuries. Suely it could work for him as well. 

Finally, he left the safety and control his tower afforded him and walked out into the cold, Waterdhavian night. 

A Cheeky Upstart

“Okay Elinna. Just…ring the doorbell. You’ve traveled all the way here. So just ring it,” a young woman told herself as she stood outside the wrought iron gates. “You sailed all the way from the Moonshae Islands, left every book behind, dealt with some of the worst sea sickness in all of the realms just to be here.”

Despite telling herself this, she had to shake out some of the numbness in her fingers from clenching her fists too tight. Or maybe it was just the nip in the air from the coastal evening. She couldn’t truly be sure. 

As she stood there, her green eyes caught a streak of movement in the sky–some winged creature departing from a high window of the tower. She couldn’t quite make out what it was. Maybe a gargoyle? Or a mephit? An imp?

Something churned in her gut at the thought of Gale of Waterdeep cavorting with the infernal. Perhaps that was why no one had seen him in such a long time–maybe he’d made a pact with a devil and lost some of his humanity in the exchange. Maybe she ought to just turn on her shabby heels and book passage back home. 

“You can’t do that, Elinna,” she told herself. “You already spent everything you have just to get here. You’re all in, now.”

But that was precisely why she couldn’t bring herself to tug on the chain to ring the doorbell. Who was she to show up at the door of one of the best wizards–a proper prodigy of composing strings of the weave; the apprentice of the famous Elminster, no less?

Well she knew the answer to that. 

She was desperate. That’s what she was. 

She’d been left at the Scribe’s Nest by her mother with nothing but a note and an old locket she couldn’t get open; drow craftsmanship. The note detailed her lineage as a half-drow, but begged the clerics of the temple to take her in and raise her. According to the note left in her swaddle, Elinna would be shunned and excluded by because of her impure blood. 

A shame for both her mother and Elinna herself that the Scribe’s Nest had simply moved into an old Temple of Ilmater. The inhabitants inside were nothing but glorified librarians. They may have had access to all of the books in the world, but not a single one of her guardians actually knew how to use the information inside. 

No. Instead, they tried to raise her to love cataloging the written word, but deny herself the joy of actually using anything she learned from the old dusty tomes in the temple. Even when she’d shown a natural knack for small magics, she had been discouraged from using them, leaving her with no choice but to practice in the wee hours of the night. 

She knew she hadn’t much to use as a benchmark for her growth as a burgeoning young wizard, but she thought for all of the effort she’d put in she made a half-decent self-taught magician. All she needed was some proper tutelage to become something truly magnificent. Something worthy of the tales of great wizards that she’d read. 

Which brought her here–to the first and only plan she had to seek out that higher learning. And now her future hung in the balance of whether or not her knock at the door–or rather the ring of the doorbell–would be answered. 

Her heart pounded in her chest, at her temples. He leather fingerless gloves squeaked as she flexed and clenched her fists. 

“Gah!” she cried, turning away from the gate, pacing across the narrow cobbled street, then pacing right back. She gasped in a few preparatory breaths and hopped from one soft-soled foot to the other. “Just do it, just DO it, Elinna. Just–”

The door of the tower opened, it’s underutilized hinges creaking as the man opening the door grunted. 

“Damnable–old door–why did I make you out of iron,” grumbled the voice. 

Elinna went entirely still, eyes going wide. 

Perhaps it was habit from how many times she’d had to sneak tomes away from the restricted areas of the Scribe’s Nest, but she ducked behind the stone columns holding up the wrought iron gate and watched as the cloaked figure made his way to the gate and slipped outside of it with a wave of his hand. 

She remained hidden as he looked down the road in her direction, his eyes looking too distantly to catch her small frame tucked away in the dark. 

She’d seen sketches of the Gale Dekarios before, but she couldn’t help but feel they did him no justice. The etchings seemed to have emphasized the wizened qualities of his features; the lines around his eyes, the creases around his lips. They made him look sagely and–well–old. 

But the real man, the one now standing in the flesh just a few feet from her was something different entirely. 

He showed signs of age, of course. He was a middle-aged man, after all. But his lips were fuller, his beard a little more tidy, and his eyes…

His eyes were what made him look the most youthful. There was a sort of shimmer to them that she couldn’t quite describe, a sort of weight to his brow that made him look as if he was always curious, always observing.

She watched as he pulled his cloak a little tighter around him and turned the opposite direction, walking down the narrow street. 

Wait, she thought. What am I doing?!

She hesitated for only one more moment before quickly hurrying after him. She searched her mind for all of the speeches she’d practiced for this introduction, but she was left wanting. She should have written it down so that she wouldn’t forget–or would it have been even more strange for read her introduction off the pages of a notebook? 

It was all strange, of course; a girl crossing the ocean to show up on the doorstep of a stranger several years her senior. Asking for an apprenticeship when she hadn’t so much as sent him a letter of introduction or even had anything to offer in exchange except for chores, errands and meal preparations. Seeking tutelage from one of the most accomplished young wizards when she was still struggling with even the most basic of incantations…

But what else could she do? 

The life of a Scribe Nest Archiver was not a luxurious one. She’d had to sneak out of the old Nest to sing songs at the local tavern to scrape what little money she could together to book passage to even get here. 

Blackstaff wasn’t exactly inexpensive–and even if it was, she couldn’t hope to get in. Not with how poorly she handled the weave. 

But Gale–she had read transcripts of his lectures, heard tales of how magnanimous and warm he could be. She even once met one of his friends at the tavern who was visiting the islands for this or that purpose–she couldn’t remember. She only remembered the tales of his kindness and generosity. Of his gentleman’s nature. 

He seemed like her only real chance at ever mastering this art that sang to her like a harpy at roost in the bay.

God’s he was walking fast though. Perhaps it was just because she was so short in comparison to him, but she was almost having to run to catch up to him. 

“E-excuse me,” she finally said when she was within earshot.

She saw the briefest glance back at her, the quickest flash of a startled expression, before he focused forward and quickened his pace.  

“No, thank you,” Dekarios replied. “I’ve already a subscription to the Waterdhavian times.”

“Uhm, no–that’s not–” she stammered. “Wait, could you please stop walking so fast!”

“I’m in a dreadful hurry, good night to you,” he said dismissively, walking even faster as he pulled his cloak further to guard his face. 

“Mr. Dekarios! I’ve come here to talk to you!” She shouted, a little crack of desperation coming out with it. “Mr. Dekarios I–”

He whirled on her, suddenly encroaching into her space. He was so quick that she almost stumbled backward and fell. Before she could, though, he seized her arm with one strong hand, stablizing her quickly before clasping his other hand over her mouth.

She stared up at him with wide eyes, bright irises flicking around his face as if she were prey caught in his snare.

“Shhhh,” he hissed before looking around, as if to see if anyone heard her. “Mystra’s Elbow, you’d think my reputation as a newly initiated recluse would have gotten around by now.”

Elinna swallowed dryly, critically aware of the feeling of his calloused fingertips on the soft swells of her freckled cheeks. She blinked up at him, unsure what to do. His hand felt warm through the roughspun, puffed sleeves of her Scribe’s Nest garments.  Her feet were sort of turned in awkwardly after he’s caught her mid fall. 

She wondered if it would have looked like she was being accosted by a thief to a wandering bystander. She supposed it didn’t matter because no one else was here. She knew she should have been afraid. That she was a young woman alone with an older man; that he’d rendered her silent and could easily do much worse. But she also knew that was likely the experiences at the tavern thinking for her. 

Gale was supposed to be a gentleman. That’s what she’d always heard. And…

And his hands smelled like…like tea and old parchment and sage. There was a somewhat sharp quality to the fragrance–perhaps a suspension alchemized in alcohol of some sort. He must have made it himself. 

“Now. This behavior of mine, admittedly, is abhorrent for a gentleman with a young lady. I will have to ask you to forgive my bad manners and to give me the grace of your understanding because I simply did not want to be greeted by anyone aside from my mother and my cat. Now. I am going to take my hand away from your mouth; apologies again for the rough handling. But I’m going to then need you to let me walk away. And perhaps most importantly, I need you to leave me alone,” Gale said quietly. “Do we have an accord?”

Elinna’s pale ginger brow furrowed and he tutted quietly. 

“No, no. No crinkles of the brow, no narrowing of the eyes, miss,” he scolded. “It is by mere coincidence you’ve even caught me out of my tower. By all accounts this is an anomaly of the highest order and therefore…uhm…does not count. You should just forget this ever happened. In fact, I could help you do so if you like!”

Doesn’t count? What kind of logic–that was school-boy logic! And what did he mean help her forget?! She jerked her arm away from him and, perhaps in a moment of panic he tightened his grip.

“Alright, alright! I’m going to let you go–just– remember our deal, please,” he said, releasing her arm.

He winced slightly as he hesitated to remove his other hand from her mouth. She thought he had the same expression one might have if they were about to remove a cork from a vial of smelling salts.

He released his other hand, drawing it away from her mouth. 

“Mr. Dekarios, I’ve come to ask you to take me on as an apprentice,” Elinna blurted out. “I know you have never met me, and that you have no notion of my ability or skill. And that showing up outside of a strangers house and asking them for a place to live–”

“I’m sorry, a place to live?” He interjected with an incredulous tone

“--and a comprehensive education in the arcane arts–” she continued.

“I assure you I do not have the time, and it certainly wouldn’t be proper for an older man to bring a young woman into his home to–” he interjected again. 

“ But I have nowhere else to turn and…And I’m afraid I can’t take no for an answer.”

His brows shot up as she finally stopped speaking. She didn’t know what to make of that expression, nor the silence that followed. Elinna could feel her face beginning to warm and she knew from  that her face was already starting to color with her own nerves. It felt the same way it did when a tavern patron made a bawdy joke at her expense–or about her body. 

The silence was the most unbearable part, though. So she started to fill it, her face getting warmer by the moment.

“You’re silent,” she said. “Uh–right. Names. I’m Elinna Inklyn. I hail from the Moonshae Islands. I grew up under the care of the Scribe’s Nest Archivists and–”

“Elinna. Elinna,” he said, his tone almost pitying. “I’m going to stop you right there.”

She felt her heart sink as he pinched the bridge of his nose and tilted his head back, looking toward the sky. “Look, Miss Inklyn. I’m sorry that you came all this way, but. I am afraid you must take no as an answer. I cannot take on an apprentice, even if I wanted to.” He winced and almost half shrugged. “And frankly, I really do not want to. Even if I could do it, I wouldn’t want to do it.”

“But–if you’d let me explain–” she protested. 

“No–no buts. Again, I am dreadfully sorry for the trouble you went through to get here. But…considering that you sought me out and addressed me by name, you must know who I am.” he said. 

“Yes,” she answered. 

“So, then you know that I am particularly gifted with manipulating the weave,” he said. “That’s why you’ve sought me out.”

“Yes,” she said yet again. “Well part of the reason but also because–”

“So, then I’m sure you could understand why I find the inadequacies of unskilled wizards irksome, correct? That if I were to take on an apprentice, it would be someone with a certain level of innate talent?”

Her brow furrowed again and she inhaled to speak, but before another word could fall out of her mouth a huge boom of sound tore out from the sky above them. She clapped her gloved hands over her ears and yelped.

“What was that?” she shouted. 

The two looked up at the source of the sound only to see the sky split open like it’d been torn by a dull blade. Out of the opening flew a giant aircraft with writhing tentacles slicing through the air as if it were a squid traversing deep sea waters. The two wizards–one novice and one adept–balked at the appearance of the spelljammer, the size of it practically the size of Gale’s tower if you laid it on its side.

“A nautiloid?” They both said at the same time. 

They met eyes briefly before Gale gritted his teeth and grasped onto her arm, almost flinging her away from him

“Get out of here, Elinna. And whatever you do don’t let the tentacles touch you,” he shouted. 

She stumbled, almost falling on her face, looking back at him. 

“What about you?!” she cried. 

“I’m a wizard,” he said before turning and casting a bolts of ice at two of the tentacles that swatted out toward them. 

“It’s a spelljammer!”

“I’m a very, very good wizard!” he said. 

Elinna’s sense of self preservation won out over her worry for the man she’d come here to meet. If he thought he could take on a nautiloid, who was she to deny that? She turned and sprinted down the narrow street before dodging down an alleyway in hopes of getting cover from the massive tentacles that now swept down toward the ground like great, giant whips. 

She chanced a single look back to see Gale running just behind her, and the spelljammer that was traveling far too quickly and far too low to the ground for comfort. He followed her down the alleyway, calling ahead. “Not that way! To the east–”

“I don’t know which way east is!” she shouted back. 

“Are you kiddi–Eugh–LEFT,” he said. “LEFT, LEFT! Go LEFT!”

“Alright, I heard you!” she said. “No need to shout!”

“I will shout if I want to, now–Elinna, look out!”

She looked ahead just in time to see a brick wall and slipped on her worn soles as she tried to come to a screeching halt. 

She slammed into the wall, but thankfully not with enough force to knock her out.  She managed to clumsily tumble toward the left, dropping onto her fingertips just a moment before lurching back upright. Gale caught up to her and cast some spell–gust, she assumed– because a strong wind caught in the fabric of her clothes like a breeze in the sails of a galeon and made her feel like she was running on air. 

He fought off another tentacle and she screamed as one almost tagged her, but smashed an old fish barrel to bits instead.

“Keep going. We’ll lose it on the main road,” Gale yelled.  

They spilled out onto a wider street and she immediately regretted listening to the Waterdhavian native. It’d seemed a sound plan at first. But only if the goal of the ship was to find them specifically. When they made it to the street, Elinna realized that was not the drive of the nautiloid at all. 

The main road was chaos. There were carts toppled over and people lying trampled on the ground. People ran and screamed, some of them were swatted by the terrifying power of the tentacles only to vanish into dust before they could make impact with the wall of a building or the floor below them.

Elinna froze in terror, realizing finally that her plight had gone from one of trying to secure a teacher of her own to one of simply trying to survive her first night on the mainland. It suddenly dawned on her that she might actually die here. She might die within moments. 

She couldn’t think. Couldn’t move.

It was a mistake to stop, but she realized it too late. A horse cried out desperately and tore away from the frightening vessel. It tore straight toward her, its eyes wild, his nose gusting tufts of steam into the air like a machine. It pulled a market cart along with it, full of heavy barrels of meat and wine. She braced herself, squeezing her eyes shut and thinking about the magic she’d read about. Misty step–misty step, what was the incantation for misty step?

“I-Inveniam Viam!!” she shouted, the words sailing on waves of the weave and almost…echoing. There was the sweet taste of something on her tongue–the after effect of using the weave if her reading was any indication. She’d only tasted that once or twice before, but chasing that sweet, comforting experience was what brought her here. It’s what made her so desperately want to learn how to wield this magic.

When she opened her eyes, the horse was gone.

Unfortunately for her, so was the ground beneath her feet. 

She’d somehow teleported into midair and, as if the weave was just as shocked as she was, she’d wound up suspended there for just the briefest moment, cradled by the strands of the weave she’d managed to manipulate. Seconds felt like minutes as he copper hair floate away from her face as she experienced true weightlessness for just moments. Then she felt the sickening churn in her stomach as she started to fall. 

The floor just far enough to be lethal but not far enough to give her adequate time to figure out another spell. Her mind went blank with terror. In a moment of desperation, she found Gale in the crowd, a stationary man in a sea of fleeing people. 

He looked at her in abject horror as she dropped like a dagger out of the sky. He looked utterly, woefully helpless.

She screamed, wrapping her arms around her as if she could brace her own fall, as if holding herself would hold her together.

Then, just as she was about to splat on the cobblestones into a puddle of bone and blood, a searing heat bloomed from the center of her back. She screamed again as she felt herself dissolve from the inside out, her innards liquifying into a primordial soup. 

Her body went miserably hot, and then impossibly cold. No. Not cold–she realized–absent. She was vanishing from the center of her body. She watched in uncomprehending horror as her middle vanished, watched as her body evaporated like steam off a teacup. 

Her guttural scream sounded from her and died in the air. 

The last thing she saw before her vision went black was Gale still staring at her as he too succumbed to the nautiloid’s attack.

[blancamz]

One of the few recurring villains in the Oz series is the Nome King, also known as Roquat the Red (sometimes Ruggedo), the leader of a subterranean race of rock fairies that live beyond the Deadly Desert. Nomes pretty much fit the archetype of the folkloric dwarf figure, in that they're small craftsmen that live underground, who are also in charge of making the raw metal and gemstone ores that can be found in rock.

So the Nome King has special beef with Ozma and the kingdom of Oz, because he was just minding his business when that upstart burst into his kingdom. He was sitting around, enjoying ownership of the Royal Family of the Kingdom of Ev --which he acquired through a perfectly legitimate trade. He wasn't even forcing them to work; he'd been kind enough to use his magic belt to turn them into cute little knick-knacks. Kindness incarnate, he is.

So anyway, in struts the Ruler of Oz, her army of soldiers and wild cats, some human child, and, worst of all, some kind of annoying chatty beast (Billina the Hen) which is capable of producing dangerous biological weapons (eggs). Not that the Nome army wouldn't have been able to crush them, but the Ozians used trickery to free steal the Evians and also his magic belt, which is just adding insult to injury.

Sounds to me like the Nome King would be well within his rights to make an alliance with other surrounding peoples to try to take over Oz, recover his stolen belt, and use its magic to enslave all its citizens. Quid pro quo, Ozma.

[starcurtain]

Another Haikaveh Fanfic I Want to Read

The Deshret reincarnation one, but the twist is that Alhaitham has known he's Deshret from the time he was tiny. The story isn't about how he regains his tragic lost memories of being the desert king--it's about how he does everything he possibly can to avoid having to do that job again. Forming some grand ambition to achieve power? Nope, not doing that. Seeking the means to overthrow Celestia via forbidden knowledge? I'll pass. Becoming a main character? Absolutely not. Al-Ahmar Al-haitham is going to live a peaceful life this time, thank you. He's going to study a basic subject (his own language), get a basic desk job, find himself a basic little house, and somehow convince the perfect perfectly-mortal guy he went to school with to marry him--

Destiny, of course, finds him anyway. (Really, Rukkha, really?) The Akasha is turned on the people, the sages seize control, and does this upstart baby deity ("Shouki no kami," pffft, like who even are you, kid?) think he actually has a snowball's chance in the Mare Javari with the minds of two of Sumeru's real god-kings set against him?

At least at the end of all this, with the nation of wisdom saved and Kusanali in charge as she is very welcome to be, Alhaitham can still go home and be normal with his Very Normal™ roommate!

("Alhaitham, listen... I know this isn't the best of times, but there's something I've been meaning to tell you. I'm not exactly... who you think I am...")

[mollysunder]

On Silco and Molatovs

I still think about how the creators of Arcane wanted the opening scene to be a young Silco throwing a molotov cocktail during the Day of Ash on the bridge. It's supposed to be implied that Silco's actions were the trigger for why that day escalated to such violence and death. But honestly, all it does is vindicate the success of Silco's leadership in Zaun.

Most of the problems Silco faces in Act 2 & 3 are practically the same challenges Vander faced, but worse. His kid blew up a building and intentionally murdered people while doing it. The operation he had his kid go on got interrupted by a rival gang of young people with the objective literally up in flames. Piltover's putting (economic) pressure on Zaun to find the culprit on the Progress Day attack. Silco also has to put up with upstarts attempting to undermine his leadership position as tensions starts to mount. In spite of all the pressures Silco faced, he was able to manuever around them all a lot better than Vander did.

Let's take Jinx's hexgem heist for the first example. One building robbed and vandalized, another building set on fire and bombed, and six enforcers killed. Yet the only enforcer that was in Zaun for that escapade was Marcus, because Marcus couldn't treat Silco like Grayson treated Vander.

When the kids accidentally blew up the Kiramman building during their heist, no one died, but enforcers were flooded into Zaun, because Grayson saw it in her capacity to do that. Even when Grayson goes to calmly speak with Vander, she's still flanked by aggressive underlings who consistently escalate tensions. Grayson, as the Sheriff Vander trusts, either can't control the enforcers in her charge or is incredibly lax with how they operate, and that's because Grayson had no incentive to be genuinely effective.

Grayson and Vander operated on knowledge where both assumed Piltover's forces had the upperhand on Zaun and could demolish them. No matter how cordial Vander and Grayson were to eachother, Grayson held the cards in that dynamic. There was nothing Vander could do if Grayson just changed her mind about keeping enforcers out of Zaun. Grayson just believed it was for the good of both cities to avoid further bloodshed (that Zaun risked) by delegating responsibility of Zaun to Vander. They manage to work together essentially through Grayson's grace, rather than Vander's own legitimacy as a leader.

Marcus however, must actually attempt restraint because both he and Silco have actual stakes in their relationship. So Marcus enters Zaun ALONE to figure out a solution with it's defacto leader, Marcus is just upset about it the whole time. Frankly that's why I think Jinx intentionally caused as much loud and obvious damage because she KNEW she would get away with it, she still kind of has (she isn't in Stillwater). Jinx has been with Silco for at least seven years, she knows he's got Marcus in bind that's only getting tighter, and knows Silco won't hesitate to throw someone (the Firelights) under the bus for it, unlike Vander.

And even when passage through the bridge is shut down and Zaunites are out in anger protesting, no one dies. Some Zaunite there literally threw a molotov cocktail at the enforcer line and yet violence on the scale of the Day of Ash didn't transpire, because Silco put them, specifically Marcus, in a position where the had to be restraint. In every aspect of Vander's leadership that's about real material gain, Silco has managed to succeed where he failed. Practically every act of aggression at Piltover under Silco's regime never saw the same level of retribution that Vander's did. Sevika chose Silco over Vander because she believed he truly was a more effective leader, and she was right! In the end, she didn't betray Silco because he easily outpaced all the other contenders.

Tldr: Whenever the writers bring up Silco's faults, sometimes it just makes him look better than his counterparts in terms of skill and effectiveness. Silco managed to get Zaun treated like a separate nation faster than Vander could have dreamed.

[starlightshadowsworld]

I love Percy and Annabeth but they should not have been in Heroes of Olympus.

Because they overshadow everyone else.

People even say they skipped other characters povs just to read there's.

I love them but I think they shouldn't have been as prominently apart of the story.

Because yeah I love them but I've had 5 books of these guys, I'd really like to know the rest of the seven.

Hell Jason's birthday is the day they fall into Tartarus soo...tell me they aren't overshadowed..

Jason's our main character and he constantly gets pushed aside and is not written well and constantly compared to as being Percy's lesser version.

Which isn't fair.

And he's not given a chance to change that.

He's not allowed to exist outside of Percy because of course he isn't.

Percy's right there.

Also give them a break.

They just fought a war.

Personally would love if the lost hero started with a snap shot of the battle of Manhatten and zoomed out to the Roman part of the fight.

Jason leading the charge and just "Yeah.. That's me, your probably wondering how I got here."

And takes us all the way back to a mysterious woman giving Jason up and the wolves coming for him.

With us learning from kid Thalia demanding to know where Jason is that this Jason is her Jason.

Jason Grace.

We see the wolf house we watch Jason try to survive and absolutely break our hearts hearing someone so young think he's so alone and no one loves him.

Lupa becoming more motherly to him but that fear Jason has always remains that she will turn on him one day.

Jason wandering the streets to Camp Jupiter.

Jason's situation bring the reverse of Percy's.

Being out casted immediately and than put on a pedestal once he's claimed.

Jason immediately hating it.

Jason being pushed into this good soilder narrative but he doesn't fit it at all.

His upbringing has left him wild, less bothered with proper fighting techniques and more on survival.

He fights to kill.

He fights to live.

And no one else gets that.

Except one camper, Octavian, who's older than Jason abd the Augur.

Everyone after reading the Pjo series seeing Octavian...I got my eye on you Mr.

Who insults the elders and is the first to get Jason to laugh.

And encourages Jason to stand up for what he believes in.

Giving Jason the courage to deny his place in the 1st cohort and join the 5th.

This

Pisses everyone off.

Mostly the 1st.

Who are downright offended because you don't turn down the first cohort.

And Jason's like, but I just did.

The 5th have no idea what to make of Jason but in time they become friendly.

Dakota becoming a friend to him.

Jason knows this because he shares his kool aid with him sometimes.

He does get in trouble for squaring off with and scaring off some bullies of the upper cohorts.

Because Jason hates bullies and he recognises the kid, Frank being picked on.

Apparently they stole his stick and while Jason has no idea it's importance, it made Frank sad soo he goes after them.

Ends up on probatio and friends with Frank.

Who admires Jason's bravery and wishes he could be too.

So the rest of the leigion kinda miffed some 5th upstart is embarrassing them.

And so when the next quest is given its to him.

Quests are different here to Camp Half-blood.

Since they don't have a true oracle, specifics are never mentioned.

Leaving the leigion to give the prophecy to whoever they want.

And they want to knock Jason down a few pegs and so they send him.

Jason picking Frank and Dakota.

Neither of the two are hopeful because the day a 5th is sent on a quest is the day their funeral is held.

Not the case though and they do in fact succeed and do it well.

Frank even opening up about his stick and showing that he is as brave and courageous as he wants to be.

It's through that act of bravery Frank is claimed as a son of Mars.

And though he's not exactly sure he should be one, Jason and Dakota both tell him it suites him well.

They both even do the "all hail Frank Zhang, Son of Mars" speech.

Which makes him smile.

On the way back though they do find Reyna.

Jason gets the short straw and has to do the oh the Roman God's are real but she knows and that she's a daughter of Bellona.

And they all head back to camp together.

And while Reyna has her guard up she does genuinely seem to enjoy her company with the others.

She's also the only other person to truly understand how Jason fights and his instinct to survive.

Though she doesn't share why.

Octavian greets them, proud and Reyna is on probatio until they can see what cohort she fits into.

Though she remarks after seeing the egos of the 1st that the 5th might be better afterall.

Celebrations are held and Jason wonders if the quest is really over.

Also all or us wondering if Octavian was genuine about what he said to Jason to follow his dreams.

Or if he did it to take Jason's place in the 1st.

Can't tell me after Luke anyone of you guys wouldn't be mad suss of an older blonde boy befriending Jason.

Fool me once.

Shame on you.

Fool me twice...

Damn...

Also reading the series prior and than this means everyone agrees with Jason.

Like we saw Percy fight for his life over and over and are just like... Oh you bitches gonna have a rude awakening when you face real monsters 💅🏽.

I have no idea what the quest would be but I'd want them to all line up to the next big prophecy.

Instead of it coming out of nowhere.

Hazel does come around but later on because of the doors and with her so does Nico.

[alice-after-dark]

Gang Boss Vox (Pre-Canon)

Okay so I've been thinking about this for a while and then this art by @smthaboutuss happened and I have to babble about it now.

(Fun fact, I actually lost and had to rewrite this post from memory after it didn't save properly lol fml)

So while I absolutely love the RadioStatic trope of Vox being the pathetic newly fallen Sinner who Alastor finds in the trash and takes under his wing, I also love the idea of Vox being this young upstart who catches Alastor's interest.

By the time they meet, Vox already has his own little gang going. The current Entertainment Overlord is pretty much a lazy fuck who does nothing with his territory, so Vox's gang has carved out a nice little corner for themselves there where they are basically in charge and steadily expanding their reach as they take over more and more media sources. They definitely have eyes on overthrowing the current Entertainment Overlord. Fun self-indulgent side note is that Eeliot (Vox's assistant) is absolutely a member of this gang and has been with Vox from the start and stuck by him through everything and that is why he is unapologetically Vox's favorite.

Vox and Alastor's meeting is a complete accident. A Sinner in charge of one of Vox's acquired television networks kidnaps Niffty with the plan to ransom her back to Alastor in order to get the money he needs to pay back Vox what he owes him (he had been smuggling profits under the table and Vox found out and wants his missing money or else). Alastor is lurking in the shadows when a black van shows up and some goons pile out, a strange looking Sinner with a picture box for a head jumping off the back. He and the rabble make their way inside and Alastor learns very quickly from the trembling Sinner holding Niffty hostage that the picture box's name is Vox. The Sinner pleads for more time, explaining his plan and presenting Niffty like some kind of golden ticket.

Vox is...not impressed. The Overlord is clearly just going to kill the idiot. How could he possibly have thought this plan was going to work? On top of all that, Vox finds him picking on a woman distasteful. The Sinner got himself into this mess, he should be getting himself out. Vox snaps his fingers and orders his goons to raid the place for anything valuable. In the meantime, Vox berates the Sinner for taking such a weak way out.

Alastor chooses at this moment to make his presence known. He saunters out of the shadows, announcing his agreement and confirming Vox's statement that he just planned to torture and kill the Sinner for daring to touch what is his. The Sinner is appropriately terrified and Vox...

Vox is cackling. Utterly losing his shit. Like holding his stomach doubled over laughing his ass off.

"Holy fuck, are you serious?! Of all the fucking Overlords you could have snatched a thrall from, you picked the fucking Radio Demon?! Oh fuck, you are so dead! Like...captital D Dead!"

And Alastor is intrigued. Normally Sinners flee in fear at the very sight of him (like Vox's goons very much want to do, if their expressions are anything to go by. How unfortunate for them they'd have to walk past him to get to the door), but this strange picture box is delighted. He's thrilled by Alastor's appearance, like it's the best thing that's happened to him all day. And the Sinner caught in the middle here is looking more and more like he regrets his afterlife choices. He hasn't even noticed that Niffty has already chewed her way through the ropes that once tied her to the chair and is now skittering around the building assisting Vox's goons in locating valuables ("Look at all this junk! What a mess! Here, you take this!"). Vox is already watching her with an amused fondness.

Alastor decides he's keeping this one then and there.

"So what shall we do with him then? He appears to have wronged us both, so how best to settle this?"

"If I'm being honest, I'm a big fan of your show. I'd be satisfied just watching you work."

Yes, definitely keeping this one.

[apollosgiftofprophecy]

not sure if anyone's asked you this before/yet, but so you have any opinions or thoughts of the relationship between all of the pantheons? general relationship and possibly some more personal ones?

I've read many different headcanons and fanfiction where people have mentioned their thoughts on it, but nothing they've ever gone into detail about.

there's nothing really preventing them from interacting *👀 I keep remembering the smallest tiniest hint of freypollo we got* but that doesn't mean they go out of their way doing it, yk?

OKAY SO-

The pantheons I'll be mainly focusing on are the Greek, Roman, Norse, & Egyptian ones. I'll probably make little nods to other ones too tho :3

Don't be surprised if this mainly centers on Apollo XD He's my guy <3

GREEK & ROMAN

Let's kick it off with these two!

"But aren't they the same-?"

Nope! The Roman pantheon started off as their own sets of gods - the thing is, they had very little myths written down so we don't know much about how they were characterized :(

Howmever. We do know that when they were synchronized with Greece's gods, you can see the little differences between them - for instance, the Roman gods were more Forces Of Nature than gods who went out and Did Stuff, like Greece's.

Jupiter for example! He didn't have the "fucks around" rep Zeus does! Jupiter from the Roman's perspective didn't go out and do much. He rooted on Aeneus, yes, but the myths of his children weren't quite as popular in Rome as they were in Greece (probably because they were. ya know. Greek heroes, and not Roman)

And Apollo. Oh, Apollo...the only major god who didn't have a Latin equivalent.

Rome loved you so much they adopted you and went "no. no. he was always here. no we aren't lying. see? he's in the Dii Consentes!" XD

Fun Fact: Apollo is basically multiple gods in a trench coat. Paion (Mycenean), Smitheus (Mycenean), Aplu (Etruscan), Apaulinus (Hittie), Grannus (Celtic), ect were all Apollo-equivalents who historians have concluded to be past incarnations of Apollo!

which is INTERESTING because...do those gods still exist in the RRverse? Are they connected to Apollo in some way? Are they little voices in his head? DO THEY HAVE DRINKS TOGETHER?

I have questions and I need answers.

Greek & Egyptian

Saving the Norse for last because we all wanna save Freypollo for last <3 the best for last lmao

RIGHT OFF THE BAT I'M GONNA SAY THAT ZEUS DOESN'T LIKE THE OTHER PANTHEONS! I BET HE DOESN'T!

Which sucks for him because Apollo has friends in Egypt XD

I do think Apollo and Horus would be friends! Not only are they both associated with the sun in some way, but they were actually identified with each other when Greece met Egypt!

Greece: Oh so you have a super-powerful son of the king of the gods associated with light? So do we! :D

Egypt: Oh my gosh we do! :D

You know the myth of Typhon? Apollo transformed into a hawk to escape, and you know who has a hawk head?

Horus. :D

also Horus took over the thrown from Osiris - sure, not in an overthrow way but still. he overthrew Set and claimed the throne

sounds like something we all want hmm...

Also, I headcanon that Helios and Ra go WAAAAYYYY back and Apollo only met Ra like. once. before Isis did her blackmailing and Ra disappeared.

SO WHEN RA CAME BACK, WHICH WOULD HAVE BEEN DURING HOO BTW, APOLLO HAS NO IDEA! HE'S ON DELOS AT THAT POINT! THEN HIS TRIALS!

So when he rolls up to the next sun god meeting he sees Ra and is like "wait what who are you- OH WAIT!"

And Ra's like; "WHO LET THIS CHILD BE PUT IN CHARGE OF THE SUN???"

Apollo: I'm over 4,000 years old-

Ra, pointing: BABY

(Headcanon that Ra & Amaterasu are like. the defacto sun god 'leaders' who keep the meetings rolling. Amaterasu was very tired when Ra disappeared and she had to wrangle these fiery gods together XD)

(Also Helios thought Horus was a lil' upstart XD)

Finally, I also saw someone else mention that Apollo could have learned some Egyptian magic and used it to create the border of CHB!

Headcanon Hecate snuck along with him and it's their little secret :3

Greek & Norse

HERE. WE. ARE.

LEMME GET MY MAP OUT

SO.

Green highlight is where Greece is. Blue is where Hyperborea is (see this post for details)

In that post, I came to the conclusion that Apollo Totally Definitely Has Met Norse Gods BECAUSE OF HIS WINTER VACATIONS!

AND IF YOU LOOK ACROSS THE BALTIC SEA-

STOCKHOLM.

AND WHERE DID APOLLO MEET THAT HOT GOD WITH A TALKING SWORD???

A TAVERN. IN. STOCKHOLM!

FREYPOLLO LIVES (<-knows very well it's basically already canon XD)

Fun fact: the people of Hyperborea were most likely the mythological avatars of the Norse people! :D

SO I CONCLUDE-

Apollo takes a trip across the Baltic Sea and flirts in the Stockholm tavern and that's how Freypollo happens <3

Other Pantheon Thoughts

Hindu: This thought came while I was creating my @underrated-lovers-of-apollo-poll - Apollo & Indra!

They shared an elephant ride that one time! Wouldn't it be fun if they also kissed? :3

also Indra is a storm god with thunder and lightning think of the angst-

Shinto: Amaterasu taught Apollo Japanese when he discovered the haiku for the first time - sadly, only Athena ever bothered to learn it to experience the haiku in its fullest. pushing my sibling agenda again haha

Because haikus always sound better in their native language <3

Hittie: This connects to the 'Apollo trenchcoat' thing earlier - if Apollo is like. the current form of Apaulinus, would the Hittie pantheon like. drop in from time to time like 'heyyyy we miss you <3'

Apollo: *trojan war flashbacks*

Apaulinus was heavily associated with Wilusa, whom historians have confirmed was Troy, and Apollo's first temple doesn't show up under AFTER the bronze age collapse and the war happened BEFORE that happened meaning HE WAS APAULINUS WHEN THE WAR HAPPENED MY HEART-

i need to look into more pantheons. it's so much fun making these connections and coming up with headcanons for the RRverse :3

[panelshowsource]

https://www.thetimes.com/article/david-mitchell-interview-upstart-crow-marriage-to-victoria-coren-and-fatherhood-5g73ccfzn

please, if you can do this you are absolutely incredible

sure anon, you just go to archive.is and plug in the link 😉

full article below the cut

When the Peep Show actor and panel-show regular David Mitchell was a boy – clever, introspective and a doted-upon only child for eight years – he had his “special costume trunk”. There was a lime-green and brown jumper for Star Trek, a black mac for Doctor Who and an 18th-century king. One day, when he was strutting around in the mac with his trousers stuffed into his socks, a plastic sword by his side and a piece of string tied round his waist, some older boys knocked on the front door and said they’d kicked their ball into the Mitchells’ garden. As they trooped through to find it, Mitchell hid behind a tree in shame, “oppressed”, he remembers, “by the feeling of being a weirdo. I was just a small boy and not quite as normal as I’d have liked.”

Cut to today. Mitchell, 44, is in the street in Waterloo in London wearing brown linen trunk hose, a leather codpiece, knee-high brown leather boots, a white linen shirt with Shakespearean collar, a brown leather doublet and belt and pouch. His already very high and clever forehead (Oxford private schoolboy, Cambridge history student, Footlights actor and writer) has been lifted a few inches higher still with the help of a bald cap and prosthetic forehead – “Although David has a brainy forehead, it’s not as brainy as Shakespeare’s,” says the woman in charge of his costume – and then a wig over the top. Ahem. We all know it’s rude to stare, but passers-by are clearly thinking, “WTF? I’ve just seen a bloke dressed as Shakespeare astride a Santander bike.” In his 2012 memoir, Back Story, Mitchell writes, “Is it normal to feel you’re not normal but want to be normal? I think it probably is.”

I had been hoping to sit down and talk to Mitchell while he was dressed as Shakespeare, whom he resembles convincingly in the upcoming third series of Upstart Crow, a clever and funny BBC Two sitcom about the Bard’s family life, written by Ben Elton with precisely Mitchell in mind as Shakespeare, albeit a younger David Mitchell. “But they couldn’t find a younger me,” he says, “so they had to put up with me instead.”

But Mitchell is in mufti, a pair of crumpled chino-type trousers, brown shoes and a nondescript navy T-shirt with a collar. His hair is pretty much as it was when he was the young boy hiding behind the tree, a standard issue kid’s bowl cut combed into a parting. Although he still loves a bit of fancy dress, codpieces and doublets and the like (the bald cap can get a bit tight and uncomfortable after a long day filming, he concedes), clothes continue to cause him agony. For years, his mum bought them for him (through the Cambridge years and later still), but now it is a role that has befallen his poker-playing wife of six years, Victoria Coren Mitchell, herself a comedy panellist and writer. “I’m very happy to put them on,” he says of what she buys for him. “To be fair, she’s never tried anything …” he trails off, but I think he means “modern or cool”.

“It’s just a slightly tidier version of the sort of thing I was wearing before. She knows the one thing I want my clothing to be is unremarkable.” And then there is the unchanged haircut. Coren Mitchell must know which battles to pick. “Not because I like it, or hate it, but because to change it at any point would have provoked comment … That would have made me cringe,” he writes about keeping the cut. The beard has stayed, but he has admitted he would have razored it off if faced with protest.

For years, Mitchell’s identity, to the public at least, but also to himself during the dark days of ready meals and no girlfriends in his Kilburn flat (“contented squalor” is how he puts it ), has been inextricably linked with the fantastically well-drawn, tragic character of Mark Corrigan (written for him), whom he played in Peep Show. He starred alongside his comedy partner Robert Webb, who got the part of Jeremy, the much cooler and more sexually successful flatmate. They had been writers/performers since meeting at Cambridge, but Peep Show made them, bringing them to an audience beyond student comedy fans. The essence of Corrigan’s believability was the fact that the show’s main writers, Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong, based many bits of Corrigan on Mitchell himself: the nerdiness, the hopelessness in love, the pudding haircut, the clothes bought by his mother. But, Mitchell says, “The big difference between me and him – perhaps I am kidding myself – is that I’ve always been a fundamentally happier person, because he doesn’t know what he wants. For me, despite everything, for years not knowing if I was ever going to have a significant relationship, blah blah, the one thing I did know was that comedy was my crutch. Professionally at least, I’ve always had that source of hope and contentment.”

The deep irony of Mitchell’s life was that as his career, a dicey profession in any case, began to rocket, he was at his most emotionally desperate. After meeting Victoria Coren briefly at a drinks party (which she can’t remember) in 2007, he met her again at a film premiere. He writes in his autobiography Back Story, “I changed then. Everything that happened to me after that moment, even incidental things, are in a different context, a new world where different things matter.”

They dated briefly and he fell hopelessly in love with her. But timing was not on his side. Coren had lost her father and began seeing somebody else. She let Mitchell go honourably and kindly, what he calls “a reluctant brush-off”, but it broke his heart. He was sure there would never be anybody like her again. This inner melancholy fed into the character of Corrigan. In this respect, man and character were identical. He admits now that he told nobody about how dreadful he felt. “I didn’t talk about the state of my life to my friends,” he says. Journalists were always trying to fish around for comparisons with Corrigan. In 2009, when Mitchell was mourning the loss of Coren, on Desert Island Discs Kirsty Young talked about Robert Webb becoming a father. She asked Mitchell if he wanted that for himself. Mitchell said rather glumly, “I think I do.” There followed a white lie when he said, “I don’t think I have an ideal woman.” The fact was, he did.

Mitchell was not blind to the fact that he and Webb had had the most blessed career path, sprinkled with Baftas and endless opportunity: writing, acting and, for Mitchell, the panel shows The Unbelievable Truth and Would I Lie to You?. And so he felt his “wishes”, his luck, had been used up on his career. And then in 2010, Coren, like Princess Charming, came back into his life and suggested they try again. Reader, he married her two years later.

As Mitchell sits before me, he is beaming. “I’m trying not to look smug,” he says. “I feel very lucky. If I had thought that [asking her to marry me] would not have seemed mad earlier, I would definitely have done it. I am just incredibly proud that someone like Victoria wants to be with me. She has these amazing qualities, but fundamentally, we clicked. I fell in love with her. Being with her, it’s made me fundamentally more secure. A high percentage of the lurking terrors I felt for years, the things that I felt I’d failed to face up to as a proper human being, have gone.

“I do feel that there is someone in my life who I can say anything to. For years, I never talked about the things that worried me and now there is someone whom I trust, which creates a completely different context in which I can exist.”

Being loved, and loving, has taken away Mitchell’s profound sense of self-doubt. “I think I realise now that people judging me adversely, in superficial ways, doesn’t matter. Now I don’t mind looking a bit daft, like taking the bins out in my pyjamas. I don’t mind seeming like a bit of a twat any more. I don’t worry about projecting an image. There was a certain brittleness [before], and being worried about being laughed at in a way I was not in control of. I don’t really care much about that now.”

Do you take the bins out in your pyjamas?

“It has been known. I only wear my pyjamas all day if I have decided I’m ill. But I do think when I’m perfectly well I have always moved on to day clothes at some point.”

For diehard Peep Show fans reading this happy-ever-after fairy story and lamenting the replacement of their unhappy hero with a well-balanced, emotionally healthy middle-aged man who understands it’s good to get out of pyjamas before lunch, fear not. Mitchell confesses that having worried for years about not finding happiness, he now frets that somebody will take it away from him. Honestly! There’s no pleasing some.

“I’m a worrier,” he says. “I worry that something is going to go wrong. A horrific accident or an illness or, on a less serious level, a career mishap. I think that is probably how I avoid feeling guilty for being so lucky, that I worry that something is going to go wrong.

“I truly thought that because my career had worked out, maybe I didn’t get to have everything. And now I’m very happily married and I have a lovely daughter. I feel, ‘Hang on. Surely I’m luckier than I deserve?’ But that’s a definition of luck, isn’t it?”

Mitchell beams again. Their child is three and called Barbara. “She’s amazing. Extremely talkative and she likes imagining things, telling stories and being characters and explaining to me who she is in one of her stories.” Just think of the Coren Mitchell dressing-up box in their northwest London home. All those BBC codpieces and doublets knocking around for a second generation of bright dresser-uppers.

In the old days, Mitchell used daytime TV to procrastinate while writing. Now, it’s playing with Barbara and watching Peppa Peg and Hey Duggee. “A few minutes of feverish [work] activity followed by 45 minutes of time slipping through my fingers, some of that with Barbara.”

The announcement of Mitchell’s marriage brought astonishment beyond his close circle, for the fact that he and Coren seemed such an unlikely couple. But Mitchell says that he is similar to his wife (although he plays bridge, not poker). Both find the kind of socialising that comes with showbiz excruciating. They would by far prefer to stay at home with a DVD and supper on their knees. “I find places that are rife with acquaintances very stressful. I am not sure on what level to greet them. Do I hug them? Am I shaking hands? I sort of feel whatever I do will be wrong.

“Now, though, it’s nice going to a party [with Victoria] because you think, ‘We’re here; we’re in this room. It is a very high-stress moment, so let’s talk to each other for three minutes, catch our breath and then go, ‘OK, now we can go over there.’ Sometimes we separate or sometimes we just move together, depending on how confidence levels are going. At least eight times out of ten, I’d rather be watching a DVD and having some food in front of the telly. If you are happy at home, you’ve much less motivation to find the social confidence. You think. ‘Why are we even here? What’s the earliest point we can reasonably go?’ ”

In a year’s time, Mitchell will be thrust into the world of the school gate, a positive lion’s den of half acquaintances, small talk and necessary pleasantries with relative strangers, set against the backdrop of a bad day, or any anxiety going on about your child. “That genuinely hadn’t occurred to me,” he says, “but, yes, you are right. I remember that from being a child myself.” As he says, at least at parties there is alcohol to help everybody, other than “the minority of shark-like sociopaths who are very happy moving through the water while everyone else is sort of terrified”.

Mitchell’s relationship with Robert Webb is still strong, although their careers are more independent these days. “We’re closer friends now that we don’t work together so much. For several years it was incredibly intensive.”

Webb does not star in Upstart Crow, which, incidentally boasts Kenneth Branagh and Lily Cole in its final Christmas special. In the autumn, Mitchell is set to star in a film with Steve Coogan, yet to be officially confirmed, but he is back with Webb in the new year for the filming of another series of Back, the acclaimed TV series that reflects the old dynamic of their comedy partnership. Mitchell plays Stephen, a bitter son displaced by the return of his parents’ long-lost foster son, Andrew (Webb), and is eaten up by jealousy and inadequacy as Andrew seems to threaten his plans to take over the family business.

In his private life, Webb has been a good ten years ahead of Mitchell. Mitchell confesses that when Barbara was born, he took months off work. “Looking back, one of Rob’s children was born in the middle of a Peep Show shoot and he had an afternoon off and then a weekend, and then he was back filming on the Monday. I think I felt a sense of. ‘Oh, that must be quite difficult,’ but when I look back now, I go, ‘What? How did that work?’ I think I let him go through [becoming a father] without really reflecting on it. At the time, I was probably half-thinking, ‘What? He’s having a baby now, and we’ve got to get this shot.’ Only now have I allowed myself to realise, ‘Oh right. That was a massive moment [for him].’”

There are some jokes Mitchell has made in the past, particularly about children, that he would never write now. And he won’t read anything that makes him worry about the world Barbara will grow up in. “Victoria finds the dramatisation of a certain sort of horrific thing totally ceasing to be on any level of entertainment.” They did watch Broadchurch together, starring Mitchell’s close and long-term Cambridge friend Olivia Colman, but series one, about the murder of a child, was before Barbara’s birth.

Mitchell’s life has spun 180 degrees. Where once he was a relative loner – an only child for eight years – his private life is filled with people: nieces, nephews, brother and sister in-law, parents in-law. “I do enjoy it, but I also don’t know what your relationship with a cousin or an uncle or niece is supposed to be, so I’m learning that.

“I think in middle age, I am getting a sense of what a life is. I get the sense there is an arc, and if I see as many years again as I’ve seen already, I’m lucky. The life I had in Kilburn didn’t carry on for ever. I was ultimately unhappy and then something happened. I met Victoria. My life is totally different. I see that you can have periods of feeling completely unchanging and then a change will happen and can happen so many times, and then you die.”

Perhaps this is a maudlin element of Corrigan still lurking beneath? Loving Barbara as well as Victoria, Mitchell says, “I worry terribly that the world is terrifying in so many ways … There’s electricity and sharp corners and all of that, but also I want a world for Barbara to be secure and happy and prosperous in.”

If Mitchell once asked himself if it was normal to want to feel normal, well, aged 44, he might finally have got there.

[deathmetalunicorn1]

Can I have more nun fighter mothering Zero gently liked she dose with other children?

Liked she is all gentile around children and give them fruits to snack on, but around adults and gods is liked she ready to slit their throats open and she wasn't called black Betty for no reason

-The children only knew you as Mother Y/N, a super nice and gentle nun, one that was so pretty and elegant, but the adults of Valhalla saw her more like a mother bear, ready to throw hands and shoot anyone between the eyes to defend the children she watched over.

-While all the children, except for one, had a family, they all came to your little corner as you would watch them while their parents worked, and you taught them about history, poetry, gardening, and lots of other stuff.

-You handled conflict with the children carefully, sitting with them if they were to fight, asking what happened and listening without judging, as it wasn’t your place to judge, while offering solutions on how to handle these situations.

-Many admired you for it, but nobody more than your adopted son, Zerofuku. You met him from the children, as he loved to play with them, then as all the families came to pick up their children, he was the only one left.

-You asked him and he just smiled, telling you that he didn’t have a family, just good friends, like Buddha, who allowed the young god to sleep in his meadow, but he didn’t have a family.

-You very quickly changed that, giving him a soft smile, patting his head, “I can be your mother if you would like.” His elation was infectious as he leapt into your arms, making you twirl around as he laughed, thanking you.

-You doted on your son, treating him like how other parents treat their own kids, going out on walks, holding his hand, patting his head, getting him the occasional treat.

-Zerofuku loved it, being just like everyone else and even Buddha could tell he was happier, and others saw you with Zerofuku, seeing how you treated him, and they admired you for your gentle love and kindness.

-When some upstart gods tried to threaten both Zerofuku and the children, he shifted into his envy form, to protect them, as he knew he was more powerful in that sense.

-However, he didn’t have to fight, as you came in with a well-placed round-house kick as the other parents were rushing to protect their children, but they calmed, seeing you there.

-The kids were stunned, seeing you easily kick ass, the high slit in your robe making it easy to fight and knock back these gods as your friends, gods and human warriors you’ve met over the years, were rushing.

-When the last god tried to charge at Zerofuku, you placed yourself in front of your son, your gun pointed right between his eyes, your eyes cold, ready to pull the trigger.

-Brunnhilde kept you from killing him and you turned to Zerofuku, seeing him staring in awe before you hugged him close, “Are you all right?” it was just like the other parents and his envy form quickly melted away, leaving him in his normal form, hugging you back, “That was so cool mama!”

-The gods and warriors, especially those who fancied you, were stunned, hearing this, seeing that you adopted Zerofuku as your own, but at the same time, it looked perfect, a perfect little mismatched family, Zerofuku, you, and (Love), only you didn’t know that (Love) had feelings for you.

-For now he would just stay back, watching you be such a good mother.

[stardust-falling]

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Under the guidance of the five great clans, the cultivation world had known centuries of peace. Then, one of the five ancient demonic tools found its way into the hands of an upstart sect of evil cultivators known as the Nameless. To save the world from total annihilation, rising star of the cultivation world Song Mingzhen faced down the leader of the Nameless in a fatal battle that shook the heavens. Though the disaster was prevented and the world was saved, the battle left Song Mingzhen gravely wounded in both body and mind.

After spending five years recovering in seclusion, Song Mingzhen has finally reemerged into the cultivation world. Once famous as the greatest sword cultivator of his generation, he has now become a peacemaker and humanitarian, hoping to help cultivators and common people alike to recover from the devastation caused by the war.

But things bound by fate are not so easily disentangled.

Not long after Song Mingzhen’s emergence, tragedy strikes one of the great clans. The clan leader is found murdered, another ancient demonic tool goes missing, and one of the former generals of the Nameless escapes custody, vanishing into the mountains.

Fearing that the terrible events of the past will end up repeating themselves, Song Mingzhen joins forces with Ning Feiyun, a reclusive prodigy from one of the subsidiary clans who has been put in charge of the investigation. Together, they must work to track down the fugitive before it’s too late.

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My original novel, Ghosts of the Heart, will begin serialization early this year!

Read it when it comes out on my Patreon!

Tentative first chapter release during the first week of February, one chapter released per week, but may increase if I get enough support.

All chapters will be available to any paid tier, with the first few chapters available for free as a preview (chapter one available immediately, future chapters after an early access period. After the introductory story arc, chapters will be paid-only).

[bigfan-fanfic]

Why Don't You Take a Seat? (Batdad Fanfic)

a one shot where batdad meets ra's al ghul for the first time and they have tea together, talk while waiting for bruce to arrive

"Please, Mr. Wayne. Have a seat." the strange man says.

It's bad enough that all your camera feeds have gone dark, the last you heard over comms from your family being the sounds of combat with mysterious assassins.

"It's not generally customary for the guest to offer a seat to his host." you respond, causing the man to chuckle.

"That is certainly true. And in the same vein, not customary for the host to not know whom his guest may be. I am Ra's al Ghul."

You freeze, the name making your blood run cold.

He... looks far too young to be the same man that taught your husband back when he was training, but it wasn't like people would be scrambling to use the name of the Demon's Head.

"And you know my name, it seems."

"Of course. We have been watching you with great interest."

"That's news to me." you say, thanking your lucky stars that Alfred isn't here tonight - so that if you do end up dying, at least your boys will have a caretaker.

A few more assassins in dark clothing emerge from the shadows, setting up a tea service before vanishing. Seeing no other recourse, you sit across from him, watching as he pours your tea.

"You of course know I am well-acquainted with your husband?"

"Of course." you say, sipping at the delightful porcelain cup. "Though it would seem your daughter would prefer to better acquainted with him."

"I do apologize for Talia. She seems to think I would favor her more were she to produce a fitting heir."

"A fitting heir?

"Archaic terminology, to be sure. Successor would be the better word. For many a year now, I have entreated your husband to be my successor, though his unwillingness to kill makes him... ill-suited."

"And so Talia..."

"Believes that should she and Bruce form a union, they may together bear a child that inherits both of their-"

"That's... not how having kids works."

"Indeed. I personally prefer that my successor show their worth through deed rather than breeding."

"So...may I ask why you've been watching me?"

"Of course. You see, the League of Shadows often examines civilization - which parts of it are worth sparing, and which parts have become too corrupted, too fallen, and must be purged. Gotham is one such city."

You balk at the idea of the League having so much power - more than Bruce had estimated when he told you about them.

"It was Thomas and Martha Wayne who, nigh-singlehandedly, kept this city afloat among the iniquity and vice of its underbelly. When they were murdered, we assumed the hope of the city had been slaughtered with them."

"But who should arrive on the scene but a young upstart with no other connection to Gotham high society but his bosom friendship and young romance with its de facto prince? You, my dear Mr. Wayne, took charge of this city and became its champion. Even among the cesspool of calumny and disdain, you have lit a beacon of truth. The last bastion of such things."

"That can't be true. I'm not the only one doing things to help." you protest. Ra's smirks indulgently, like an uncle tutting at the presumptive modesty of a favorite nephew.

"You refer to your husband?"

"Not solely. There are others trying to make a difference. Like Dr. Thompkins or Commissioner Gordon."

"And yet you are the most notable, and not only does your wealth make you the most powerful, your intellect and tactical mind makes you the one most charged to affect change. I say your wealth, and not your husband's wealth, because as I know it, you have your own standing as CEO of Wayne Enterprises as well as the Wayne fortune."

"You have been doing your research."

"Indeed. The League is no simple assassins' guild, my dear. We guide the direction of the world, in what we hope to be a favorable direction. I have been remiss in the past century, allowing the world to languor this way, what with its global warming and its wars of convenience and profit. I have intended to change it through drastic action, but... you have intrigued me. Perhaps there are... other ways. No great man truly wishes to end the life of another, and should it be rendered unnecessary, our sword can be stayed."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean... your way. Gotham has seen a marked turn under your direction and manipulation. Perhaps not an instant one, but a noticeable one. To us, a favorable one."

"So you're saying that Gotham's survival is... totally dependent on me?"

"For now, yes. But that may change. The reason I sent Talia to distract your husband is because I wished to get the measure of you for myself. I admit, I once considered you nothing more than an emotional chain tethering Bruce to foolish sentimentality, but I came to appreciate your tactic. Far less brutal, and one I will also admit I dismissed. I have held a sword for so long, I forgot the utility of other tools."

"So... you want to work with me?" you frown, tilting your head.

"Indeed. We have much to learn from each other, and with the combination of our approaches, we may find a greater progress than we would in conflict."

"Combination of our approaches? You mean killing people?"

"You cannot deny it would be expedient."

"Even if I accepted that, it'd be the wrong approach, even practically! Just killing the people that stand in our way would create chaos, AND it wouldn't guarantee change the way systemic reform would!"

"See why you would be invaluable?" Ra's grins, unperturbed. "However, one could argue that your systemic reform could be hastened by removing those that would prove obstacles to it."

"Or it could jeopardize the movement by giving the opposition martyrs."

"Ha!" Ra's barks out a laugh of genuine delight. "You remind me of someone I once knew. She would never let my mind rest for a moment when she disagreed with me, nor would she let me hide behind pretty words or turns of phrase."

"Sounds like you need someone like that around you." You chuckle, and Ra's smirks in agreement.

"Indeed I do. Will you join the League of Shadows?"

"I hope this isn't the kind of offer that's only got one answer."

"For once, I will accept either answer. A 'no' now may become a 'yes' in the future."

"Then I shall take some time to consider."

"Indeed. I believe your husband is about to join us anyway..."

Ra's seemed a sensible, charming man when you first met him, but it was impossible to ignore how menacing he could be - how many atrocities he had already committed and planned to commit.

Indeed, though he allowed Talia to continue pursuing Bruce, it seemed he tried just as hard to woo you to his side.

In any case, it was never going to be the last time the al Ghul family became a part of your life...

[greenhappyseed]

I still find it interesting that All Might is the only person to ever give All For One actual trauma. Makes sense why he had nightmares of that fight, since the last thing he saw for 6 years was an enraged All Might, with his guts hanging out, charging him and punshing his face in.

What do you think of their dynamic ?

I really enjoy their dynamic! They both love a good brawl and have a wealth of experience that nobody else can match, so they’ve got that “evenly matched despite divergent belief systems” thing going on. Horikoshi even lampshades their ‘fated rival’ dynamic:

But what’s better is how Horikoshi switches their circumstances around as the story goes on — it was All Might who was the young upstart against ancient AFO, then All Might the consummate limelight pro hiding his injuries against AFO the leader from the shadows who needed equipment to live, and now retired quirkless All Might who wasn’t even on anyone’s radar as a “hero” using equipment to battle young upstart AFO.

I also think about how in Kamino, AFO was motivated by personal hatred for All Might.

Meanwhile, All Might raged for the sake of others — for how AFO used people and broke them — because back then, raging over Nana (and her legacy) was All Might’s weakness. Now All Might knows what to expect. In 396, All Might is all “My name is Toshinori Yagi. You killed my master. Prepare to die.”

I love how All Might takes everything AFO used against him, including his love for Nana, his limelight image, and his pathological need to save others, and turns it back around on AFO, like Impact Recoil. A mirror image reflection.

His quirklessness and his love for his master, friends, colleagues, students, and fellow citizens do not make All Might weak. They don’t distract him anymore or give him “too many things to protect”. Stripped down to the bare essentials, they now give All Might literal and figurative armor against AFO’s taunts…and there’s nothing AFO can do about it. AFO may have experience and he may be the king of quirks, but All Might has grown wise to his strategies, has created his own quirk-immune vestige, and most importantly, has no more fucks to give.

That’s what haunts AFO’s nightmares. The feral man who just keeps coming back to charge at him again and again in new ways, who isn’t limited by age, pride, dwindling quirk power, or having his guts spilled.