#his glorious name

[tojiscrack]

lock IN, everyone 🫨 my husband’s coming home TONIGHT 🤭

‘disney kai—’

I DON’T CAREEEE ☹️ give me my disney kaisen!!! the emotional distress, wet pillows, and ruined skincare would finally be compensated for 🤨

on every single doubter’s soul, SATORU IS COMING BACKKK

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 311

Alien biology is weird. Liminal biology? Even weirder. 

Ecto? Very much a wellspring for creation despite its association with death. Or rather undeath, but that’s a debate that many a realms denizen has tried to find the answer of. Usually there weren’t many liminals- ecto contaminated, yes, but enough to form Cores? No, only a few throughout history. Until the age of Heroes and Villains came about. But that’s a story for another time. 

See ectoplasm builds up over time in the human body, and even more so for those that have formed cores who create their own. And it’s not like it’s well studied, what with most not even being aware of the changes or the fact they aren’t fully human anymore. 

Why is this important? Well, what happens if two liminals (accidentally or not) mix their ecto together? Well, that depends on intentions, even if it’s just an impulsive thought at the time. Which in turns means that accidents? Yeah, accidents might’ve happened. Oops….

[teaboot]

I have to remind myself that my characters don't have to be tortured or dramatic to be interesting.

My first DND character was a balding, paunchy, post-middle-aged human man whose wife had just left him and whose kids had grown up and moved away.

He quit his menial job and decided to take up music, something he'd never been very good at that didn't pay the bills, and become a bard.

He was bad at it. Really, really bad. His instrument was shit and he'd never had any formal lessons. On top of that, he was pretty tone-deaf.

BUT. He could play very, very bad noises very, very loud.

On our first campaign, he was cornered by a sea dragon and had no weapons, but by making a loud, horrible noise, he was able to startle it badly enough to lose grasp of the boat.

After that, he used it to herd a small crowd of goblins into a trap by sounding far bigger and more numerous a foe.

He never got much better, but he did grow his confidence, and won the affection and respect of his companions, who grew to support him in ways nobody else had before.

I had to stop playing him for a while after that, but last I had him, he was developing an interest in color and flare and fashion that he'd never paid much attention to before.

He didn't lose weight, or grow his hair back, or magically become younger, but he felt brighter, lighter, like he had a new lease on life, like he had something to offer and maybe he deserved to have a bit of fun, now and then, with good company.

He began to wonder if that was what he was missing, before. If perhaps that was why his marriage had wasted away. A lack of drive, of hope, of pride and passion.

I don't know where he would have gone on from there. I don't know if I wanted him to reconnect with his kids, or his ex wife, or his home town. Part of me likes the idea of finding his own way- settling and becoming good friends with his ex, something platonic but warm and fond, and reaching out to his kids and being there for his grandkids and someday passing away bright and loud and loved of old age, asleep in his bed, to be celebrated after by the loudest funeral with the worst music played by the most awful musicians his community had to offer, loud and proud and full of good humor.

Maybe they'd throw a festival, after that. An annual one, with firecrackers and trumpets and clanging pots and pans to scare away the monsters like he did, the roaring hero who came into his own a little later than usual, but wondrously all the same.

A symbol to show that you don't have to bend and squish and contort yourself to fit the space you're in- you can find another space, one that's just your size, and exist there exactly as you are

[gunsatthaphan]

GMMTV Outing 2024 out of context (not that it would make more sense with context) - part 1

[evebestthinker]

[...] And so, the woman dies. The woman dies so the man can be sad about it. The woman dies so the man can suffer. She dies to give him a destiny. Dies so he can fall to the dark side. Dies so he can lament her death. As he stands there, brimming with grief, brimming with life, the woman lies there in silence. The woman dies for him. We watch it happen. We read about it happening. We come to know it well. - Aoko Matsuda

[lancregirl]

May is a very busy month in the library I work in but the best part of it is always when I get to create a window display for The Glorious 25th of May. Sir Terry is my absolute favourite author of all time and I love been able to showcase his work to the people of Galway (and maybe get a few converts to the Discworld along the way 😉).

This year we have The Great A'Tuin on display again. Huge thanks are always due to the amazing Paul Kidby, who so kindly gave us permission to reproduce this spectacular art for library display 🥰

We also have a fabulous Lego mosaic of Sir Terry created by the one and only Brick Morpork (@BrickMorpork on Instagram). This mosaic was 1st prize in last years Irish Discworld Convention raffle and one of my best friends (and a fellow librarian) was the lucky winner. Big hugs and kisses M for letting me have it 😘😘

So if you're around Galway, come and have a look. It's on display till next Friday, there might even be a couple of new additions to it 🤫 And finally, thank you to Sir Terry for the amazing world he created and the joy it keeps on giving to us all 🐢🐘🦧🧙‍♂️🧙‍♀️

[consumeroflemoans]

Blame glorious masquerade for this one

I can't believe I haven't noticed their similarities before now

[wiirocku]

Psalm 72:18-19 (NKJV) - Blessed be the LORD God, the God of Israel, Who only does wondrous things! And blessed be His glorious name forever! And let the whole earth be filled with His glory. Amen and Amen.

[afterthelambs]

Me finding out there's a Death Note character named "Beyond Birthday" like no, no, surely that's an alias, there's no way that's his REAL name because literally neither of those words are even names, forgetting this is a series where the main antagonist's real name is the single letter L

[yuwuta]

can i ask why do you dislike satosugu?👀 not hate! i'm not particularily fond of them either outside of a platonic relationship tbh, i have a long mental essay as to why lol (feel free to not answer if you feel like this is controversial, i don't wanna make anyone uncomfortable)

not a problem, i love openly bashing this man. it’s mostly because i don’t like geto to begin with LOL the short version is: i think he’s kind of a bitch, really wack villain arc, and his ct it overrated 🙄 also he was a terrible friend omg… i feel no sympathy for him all around, and pairing him with satoru doesn’t gain him any points in my book.

even as a pair, i don’t see the appeal. sure, they were the strongest at the time (but even in that statement i roll my eyes) but the second satoru started to take himself seriously, geto started to crash out like an insecure dcom second lead, there’s no way i could overlook that in their relationship. he was not the only one who got his ass kicked by toji and he was acting like he was and the whole universe was plotting against him 🙄 one little mission goes awry and he’s ready to be a villain? LOSER! that is so not the ninja way!! and even if toji caused him that much pyschological damage: (1) toji died, so he’s not your problem anymore, (2) he was in hs like sorry you thought you were the shit and got your world rocked like oh nooo there are people more seasoned and more powerful out there than a second-year highschooler 😱 knuck up, buttercup!! do you see anybody else losing their marbles? NO! 

i could be serious and give an elaborate answer but unserious shorthand version is really don’t think he needed to do all that nor do i think he had the status to be doing all of that 🙄 

[spotinthespiral]

So apparently I never posted him, but here's my Pitty npc because I think my pirate would be far more attached to her Bear Family in Grizzleheim than her birth parents :) (His name is Dain Ironside)

[avengerscompound]

Clint Barton

Old Man Hawkeye (2018)

[dedeuteros]

Lover of the lady Moon, sun in his eyes.

[tomfrogisblue]

watching Mike expand his ranch and he's so fucking good at interior design

if him and foolish teamed up to build something, I swear it'd be fucking god tier

[quordleona03]

"“Mostly, I’m incredibly angry. Anger is wonderful. It keeps you going. I’m angry about bankers. About the government. They’re fecking useless. I know what Granny Weatherwax would say to David Cameron. She’d push him to one side and say, ‘I can’t be having with you.’ His sort don’t do anything but suck up to the lawyers. Why isn’t someone hanged?”"

[lumi-klovstad-games]

Ailani, The Lost Primarch of the Second Legion and Mother of the Imperial Hospitallers

In the annals of Imperial History, there stand heroes greater than any other. These are the Primarchs, the Sons of the Emperor of Mankind, the patriarchs of the Twenty Legions of the Adeptus Astartes who united a frayed and divided galaxy in a long ago age when people still looked to the stars with hope... and the events of the Horus Heresy had not yet doomed the galaxy to darkness, suffering, and despair. But of these, only Eighteen are remembered: The Nine who Turned Traitor, and The Nine Who Remained, steadfast and loyal. Here then is a tale, a tale of the Second Primarch, lost to history and imperial records. It is the tale of Ailani, the Beloved Second, and the Emperor’s Daughter.

Ailani was not like her brothers from the beginning. Beyond the fact that she’d never felt right in her own skin as a child, she had always been a gentle soul.

Cast by warp storms far across the galaxy shortly after her creation, the child then known as “Amanaki” was deposited upon Takiko, an oceanic world dotted with long chains of verdant and mountainous tropical islands, whose vast sea teemed with life on a scale unimaginable. There, the boy was discovered by a young couple, newly married but unable to bear children of their own. Seeing the child from the heavens as a miracle, they adopted the strong lad, who immediately demonstrated a way with resolving disputes and mending broken things, but never seemed quite comfortable with himself. In time, the boy came to understand that “Amanaki” was not their real name, merely one they had been given by a barely remembered man, the memories lost in shadow and fog, and there was a deeper reason to his unease with his own reflection. Amanaki was encouraged by his parents to cast off the trappings of outward appearances, and embrace his true self — fixing what was broken and settling conflict out in the world was all well and good, but until the inner conflict was resolved and the sense of identity rectified, “Amanaki” would never rise to their full potential. After much soul-searching, reflection, and meditation, Amanaki vanished beneath the expert and caring hands of one of Takiko’s finest healers. Flesh was reshaped, bones restructured, and the boy who’d landed on that world years ago ceased to be, and it was the young woman named Ailani who rose like a phoenix from the metaphorical ashes.

There was awkwardness, at first, but Ailani’s metabolic and psychological gifts as a Primarch made the transition surprisingly natural, if not exactly “easy”, though she did not understand the reasons at the time. Finally herself, Ailani was inspired by the memory of the Healer who helped complete her, and became a healing woman of great repute — indeed, there was none finer on Takiko. Her reputation spread as the woman whose physical labor could heal the body, and her spiritual labor could mend the soul. In addition, her proficiency at conflict mediation only grew with her confidence, and she never lost her love of building and repairing things; it brought her nearly unrivaled joy to see her work bring life and happiness to those around her. In time, she came to be known as “The Saint of Takiko”, the legendary figure who brought peace to the world and united it without ever firing a shot. Unfortunately for Ailani and Takiko, this reputation helped attract the attention of the Emperor of Mankind.

When the Emperor came to Takiko looking for his Warp-Scattered Son, he had not found the man born to lead the Second Legion, but rather he found Ailani, a being worthy only of the Emperor's Scorn, born from Amanaki’s sullied and ruined flesh as the Primarch had embraced her true identity. Ailani did not answer to the name the Emperor called her by. She had not answered to that name since she was a child. When the Emperor cast blame for the "abomination of a Primarch" upon the kindly old man and woman who had been Ailani's parents and lashed out, Ailani met her "father" in battle. He was not prepared for her fury, and while he ultimately emerged victorious, his "daughter", though not a trained warrior like her kin who had been discovered thus far, still managed to have him on the back foot more frequently than he would ever admit. Indeed, the Emperor considered, the wayward Primarch of the Second Legion might actually be worth salvaging. Ailani begrudgingly agreed to return to Terra with the Emperor, but only if he left her family and people alone, a condition the Emperor demurringly agreed to.

Ailani was not a Primarch of a particularly military mind, especially at first, though she brought with her the warrior traditions of her people. First and foremost, she was a healer. With her hands, she mended wounds and repaired cities. With her voice, she mended whole peoples and ended conflicts. When she assumed command of the Second Legion, until then known as the Skybreakers, she was disappointed. There had been no effort to inculcate in them values of construction or nation building.  They were a purely destructive force, one who prided themselves on being able to shatter the fighting force of entire worlds with utmost speed and efficiency. Ailani had known war in her time. She understood well enough the value of combat. But, saddled as she was with a Legion who shared the exact opposite of her values, she resolved to teach her errant sons how to be the Builders of Worlds, a marching crusade that strove to create an Empire worth ruling. In time, the Second Legion took a new name, as the Skybreakers became the Imperial Hospitallers, and Ailani became their living standard: her billowing black and braided hair, ornate white and marigold armor with a golden Iwalani, a bird native to Takiko, in place of the Imperial Aquila, and piercing green eyes — stained completely through like emeralds from the omnipresent Ki'ihopna Algae that grew throughout the food on Takiko — causing her to stand out, even among her fellow Primarchs.

Ailani had inherited the Emperor's Optimism, his belief in a better tomorrow and a better mankind worthy of living in it. As her legion spread across the stars, the Hospitallers brought aid to the needy, healing to the sick and injured, and did their best to claim worlds with a mind to preserving or improving the standard of living before they left, but where her brother Lorgar Aurelian dallied as he attempted to spread his doctrine of the Imperial Divinity, Ailani moved quickly. In order to keep a consistent pace and accomplish all her objectives, Ailani divided her Legion into "Cohorts'' who would move in a staggered deployment. These cohorts were named in accordance with the seafaring and island-dwelling culture Ailani had come from: the Maka Ihe, the Vanguard Cohort, would take a world, and begin restructuring and rebuilding according to the rules of Imperial Compliance as well as Ailani’s own personal values. As the Vanguard Cohort transitioned to Worldbuilding, the troops would be able to rest, and were reclassified as "Pa’a", or "Stabilizers", and in turn, "Kūkulu ʻāina" — "Constructors" — as rehabilitation of the world entered its final stages. By the time a Vanguard Cohort had transitioned to Constructors, the Constructors of a previous world had emerged rested and ready for a new bout of combat, and would transition back to Vanguard status as they moved to a new world to continue the Great Crusade.

Ailani may not have been initially well received by her legion owing to her non-military bearing and her clashing values with the Skybreakers, but upon seeing her patience and care for every soul under her command, her Legion gradually became quite taken with her beauty, iron will, silken compassion, and her steadfast and unwavering loyalty to her legion and the worlds they had taken and rebuilt. It was said that she possessed the beauty of Fulgrim, Vulkan's compassion, the high-minded ideals of Sanguinius, Rogal Dorn’s command at construction, and Roboute Guilliman’s administrative prowess, even if she did not excel quite as much as her brothers in any of these individual qualities. Regardless of the degree of truth to this reputation, she made easy friends with several of her kin, most notably Horus, Sanguinius, Fulgrim, and Vulkan, and less easy but still strong friendships with Lorgar Aurelian, with whom Ailani deeply enjoyed discussing matters of philosophy, even if she found his religious zealotry more than a little grating, and Konrad Kurze and Angron, with the two tormented Primarchs able to take much comfort in her soothing presence and healing words. Perhaps then, Ailani was simply too good, too pure, for a growing and changing Imperium, as those qualities which made her among the best of the Primarchs increasingly brought her into ideological conflict with the Emperor.

Ailani had never held the best of opinions of her “father”, as for all his psychic charm and honeyed words that he carefully and deliberately loaded with the ideals she valued, she’d seen a glimpse of his true character when he’d first come to Takiko: an arrogant and egotistical megalomaniac, a man who was obsessed with being God but demanded his followers not call him that out of an enforced and self-serving modesty, and a man who made little effort to hide how much he despised her for “ruining his hard work” by embracing her true self and taking her own name. It was obvious to her that he only tolerated her “aberration” because she had too many useful talents and, as a Primarch, she would be too difficult to replace. While he had been true to his word and had not harmed her family or her people, he had left a garrison of the War Hounds, now known as the World Eaters, nearby to "protect” Takiko ever since he took her with him back to Terra. The implied threat had never been lost on the Primarch of the Second Legion, and deep down, her gentle heart boiled at the Emperor’s audacity, and this set the stage for her Legion’s disappearance.

While neither the fastest Legion nor the slowest, the Imperial Hospitallers had conquered hundreds of worlds, and built glittering gems of civilization as they passed. The Emperor should have been proud. Instead, he saw in Ailani’s planetary reconstructions and rehabilitations an act of defiance. Whether he saw rightly or not is both unremembered and unimportant, but it was certainly true that Ailani never truly believed in him or his cause, and resented him for holding her world hostage to ensure her continued compliance. Her protests, however, had fallen among deaf ears among the Primarchs, with the sole exception of the Eleventh — ironic as the two had seldom seen particularly eye to eye on much of anything. For all her Brothers’ best qualities, too few of them shared in her grievances, and those who did were either unable or unwilling to help her do anything about it. As her quiet resentment of the Emperor simmered, her growing unwillingness to see Takiko continued to be held hostage any longer sparked a notion in her that she knew could split the fledgling Imperium in two: Takiko would secede from the Imperium, and with the might and expertise of the Imperial Hospitallers, it just might manage it.

Outwardly, the Hospitallers continued with their role in the Great Crusade, but their pace began to slow as Ailani started recalling veteran soldiers off the lines and put much greater emphasis on letting younger, less experienced Marines carry the Legion’s role. This roughly coincided with the Eleventh Legion doing the same, with the two Legions gradually building up an elite fighting force of their most capable soldiers, ready for the order to be given. For Ailani, these veterans were chosen with preferential favor given to survivors from the Legion’s days as the Skybreakers — these old soldiers carried skills and experience she would need if her plan to save her homeworld from the Emperor’s callousness and ego was to succeed.

Some unknown period of time before the Horus Heresy, the moment came, and the order was given. The Saint of Takiko returned to her homeworld, and made a decision she could never undo: she ordered the Imperial Hospitallers to fire upon the World Eaters garrison. Veteran blitzkrieg warriors from the old Skybreakers legion formed a spearhead that cut through the World Eaters ranks with ease, using their skills and capitalizing on the confusion to force the World Eaters to retreat through the Warp. The time Ailani had won would only be a few weeks before the Imperium heard what she’d done. Perhaps it would be another few weeks before the inevitable retaliation arrived. Her time was short, and so was Takiko’s. She, and her people, needed to be elsewhere when the hammer dropped, not an easy task with the ships available. As she bade her people to take only what was necessary as she evacuated the planet, word arrived from the Eleventh Legion: they had failed in their course to affect the same strategem. A small delay had snowballed into a far greater failure, and the Eleventh had lost all that he’d cherished at the hands of the Space Wolves Legion. While Ailani’s heart wept for her Brother’s incredible loss, she was gladdened by his arrival with what remained of his Legion at Takiko.

With the newly arrived ships, she had all that she needed to save her people, and for his part, the Eleventh Primarch was glad to assist as it gave a silver lining to his own failure. Millions of civilians boarded Second Legion ships that were too on edge, and Eleventh Legion ships that were too empty. By the time the Imperial response came, with a furious Emperor sending the Night Lords and the World Eaters to make an example of the two rebellious Legions, Takiko was empty, and the Legions were long gone. In a petty rage, the Emperor had the World Eaters and Night Lords glass the world, before the Emperor himself used his psychic powers to cast Takiko’s twin moons at the planet’s surface, pulverizing it into mere rubble. The Emperor's rage was perhaps not entirely misunderstandable; after all, never before had a Primarch disobeyed him. Never before had a Primarch rebelled against his authority. Little did he know, though this was the first time, it would not be the last, and the worst was soon to come for him and his fledgling Imperium.

The Imperial Records would be wiped immediately after. The statues of the Two Rebellious Primarchs were removed from their plinths on Terra. The Emperor, in his rage, psychically wiped all knowledge of the Second and Eleventh Legions and their Primarchs. Even the other Primarchs were forced to forget, but there was no covering up the hole made by Ailani’s absence; without her to discourage Lorgar Aurelian’s zealotry, he became more vulnerable to Erebus’ manipulations and the psychological predations of the Ruinous Powers. Without her soothing presence and calming words, Angron and Kurze began to grow less stable. Without the Saint of Takiko, the Imperium may have lost its last, best chance at avoiding the Horus Heresy only a few centuries later.

As for Ailani and her legion, their status is completely unknown. Few can even infer that a Second Legion once existed, and fewer still know anything of it beyond that, so complete was the Emperor’s purge of the records and the Imperium’s post-heresy suppression of reason and critical thought. But, even in the grim and the dark of the 42nd millennium, from worlds where all hope seemed lost in the face of certain doom, reports occasionally arrive at the Inquisition... reports detailing the arrival of unidentified Space Marines clad in archaic white and marigold armor, and bearing an unusual standard and livery not documented anywhere. These marines vanish as quickly as they arrive, saving the people and then departing on courses unknown.

Perhaps, just perhaps, Lady Ailani is not quite finished with her Crusade just yet.