#i encourage her to commit atrocities but i would like it to be known that she committed them

[homielander]

i'm sorry but hotd positing that all women are innately cautious and peaceful and compassionate while men are rash warmongers is not a feminist win! i could see the value in everyone being hesitant to go to war at the onset of the story because it intensifies the tragedy of this house tearing itself apart, but at this stage, rhaenyra has as much reason for bloodlust (if not more) as the men on the show. it's pretty heavily implied that the shock of her usurpation killed her daughter, aemond killed lucerys, and one of aegon's kingsguard snuck into her quarters with the intent to assassinate her. most importantly, she has felt entitled to the throne since she was named heir as a child. she should be incensed! rhaenyra's inaction in the season 1 finale due to a sudden aversion to violence was already stretching believability -- this is the same woman who expressed nothing beyond mild shock at vaemond's beheading, who plotted with daemon to have an innocent man killed to facilitate laenor's escape while declaring that the realm should fear her. to have rhaenyra insist on peace at this point in the story, when war is already well underway, is incredibly irrational.

this problem is not limited to rhaenyra. alicent ordered larys to kill mysaria's network of spies and any suspected traitors in the red keep, presumably without any due process, and neither of these decisions was depicted with the gravity they deserved for a character who was once horrified by any bloodshed. meanwhile, aegon had a few extra ratcatchers executed, and not only was the direction sufficiently ominous, but we also got a lengthy monologue from otto about how it would spell his doom. it is probably pointless to bring up rhaenys because she is written less like a believable human being and more like a mouthpiece for the writers to assert whatever political opinion they believe is correct in a given episode -- but she did very much kill dozens if not hundreds of smallfolk last season. she did do that and very clearly did not care. why is she an advocate against war? for both alicent and rhaenys, there is a strange dissonance where their actions are at odds with their attitudes about opposing large-scale war for the good of the realm. i'm not saying this dissonance cannot exist, but it should at least be acknowledged.

helaena raising concerns about the losses suffered by the smallfolk might have worked in isolation, but for it to accompany everything above is exhausting. can none of these women be allowed to feel for themselves?

[idontexistforcontext]

None of us are free until all of us are free

So I’ve recently remembered that I have a linktree which I haven’t actually used since like 2020/2021, so perfect place to share some of my saved links to support Palestine right? I suppose you can imagine my surprise when I already find a “FREE PALESTINE” header, one I don’t remember adding as a teen in the throes of lockdown and high school, right at the bottom.

I won’t try and pretend like I do remember adding any such thing, or sharing calls for donations for drinking water for Gaza, or for a hospital in East Jerusalem. I won’t act as if I had done the right thing and educated myself, because if I had back then, maybe I might’ve gotten involved in the criticism of Zionism and Israel whole lot sooner into the influx of atrocities and war crimes they’ve committed in “retaliation”. And maybe I would’ve understood just how much control the Israeli have had over the Palestinians sooner, for why would they have needed funds for suitable drinking water in early 2021? And maybe I would’ve known why I was sharing a call for aid for Al Makassed Hospital, which was raided by IOF soldiers dressed as women who sound bombed the area, killing 150 and injuring 600 Palestinians mid-2021. And maybe I would’ve known of Al Quds Open University, of which the hospital was associated with, and was bombed in November last year.

And sure, I could go on, but I won’t. Because the babies burned and decapitated and dismembered in the bombings in UNICEF’s camps in Rafah, the “designated safe zone”, and in their homeland wouldn’t have been alive then, let alone grow to learn from their elders who would have lived through it. Little Hind Rajab, who would’ve been alive then but too young to truly recall, won’t care, because she was murdered alone with her already dead relatives and two brave men who were meant to be allowed to save her. The innocent bodies marred by this so called “war”, the bleak eyes cursed by death, the broken bodies and immovable spirits of displaced persons seeking safety from the greed of the world - they won’t be thinking of matters of the past.

I genuinely don’t know what to think anymore. My heart aches for the Palestinians, as it does for the Congolese and the Sudanese and the Uyghurs and all victims of the manifestations of the greed of humanity. All I can wish for is for humanity to open their eyes, their hearts, to properly watch our world burn and feel the same aches as I do, as so little yet so many do. To take those aches and build the world anew, not from rubble, but from the foundations of our collective morals and drive against injustice and for a sustainable future.

And maybe I’ve written too much and no one will truly read this all, especially since I haven’t entirely censored myself here. But I refuse to put the effort in to make a tldr because I want people to read this all, I want to see just how far my voice can and will go.

The Operation Olive Branch spreadsheet is at the top of my linktree, right under the ‘FREE PALESTINE’ header that started these thoughts. If you’d like to look at the links I mentioned, I’ve kept them as the bottom three, I overall encourage you to research into them if you have the mental capacity to, or to at least keep up to date with the world today. I most likely won’t be updating that linktree again, so please seek other accounts and people who have more resources and material to keep educated.

As always, none of us are free until all of us are free. Choose the right side of history, make a stand against injustice.

[fantasyinvader]

Okay, vent time again. I’m going to jump ahead a bit here for this, but I want to record this.

People always go on about how Jerry, the “bachelor’s degree in biology posing as a doctor” from The Last of Us, is a good person that Joel killed. This was a guy who saved zebras and meant a lot to his daughter Abby, a man who just wanted to make a vaccine to the zombie fungus even if it meant sacrificing Ellie. People use this to go to town, saying Joel had the Abbening coming to him and how much of a piece of shit Joel was.

I’d like to offer a rebuttal. Jerry was a terrible parent.

Case in point, Abby was 15 when he died and already a Firefly. She was a member of a terrorist group at an age when she wouldn’t even be able to drive. She was a child soldier for a group that commits all sorts of atrocities and justifies it by saying “it’ll all be worth it.” This has been described as sacrificing parts of themselves by an ex-member who was so disgusted by what he had done and become he committed suicide. Abby was brought up to believe she, as part of that group, was a hero to the point she encourages her father (who was caught off-guard when he was called out on his willingness to do it with a stranger and what he would do if it was Abby’s life instead) to go through with the operation by saying if it were her she’d gladly sacrifice herself.

Abby, once again, was a child soldier vulnerable to indoctrination.

Even if we don’t consider this the war crime it would be in the real world, due to the fall of civilization and all that, we also view the usage of child soldiers as exploitation. They can try to enlist all they want, like we saw with Riley, it’s still considered preying on the youth. Especially considering the Fireflies brand themselves as heroes (and those who don’t fight FEDRA as “dogs” according to graffiti), as the idea of being a hero is a push factor for child soldiers.

Jerry let the Fireflies exploit his daughter, the child he had raised for 15 years. Someone who didn’t know any other way of life, and ended up falling in with a fascist militia after his death,  and her story ends with her taking a child she rescued to Fireflies who didn’t disband after Joel was done at the hospital. And all this, because he wanted to be a hero and for it all to be worth it (never mind the idea they could be haunted by what they did afterwards, especially if the vaccine didn’t magically fix the world).

Think about that, then how Joel wouldn’t let the Fireflies sacrifice Ellie, a girl he has known for less than a year and ended up viewing as a surrogate daughter.

No amount of zebras saved will ever tell me Jerry is a good person.

[randomnameless]

I honestly don't understand why there is so much backlash agaisnt Rhea for lying and distorting history - like what was she supposed to do? And the game still has the nerve to grill her because she did this, even if it inderectly allowed Claude, Dimitri and all the crested students to exist?

I can only say Marianne's paralogue exists, and is present (by default?) in VW for a reason - even if the devs couldn't commit because Reasons (tm)

Marianne is hunted because her ancestor "became a monster" but also killed tons of people.

What was going to happen to Annette if Rhea'n'co revealed, in the beginning, that Dominic got his crest because he vivisected Seteth's younger brother and used his skull to craft a kickass weapon? If it was revealed Annette shares Dominic's original sin in her blood, and her Crest is not a revelation of the Goddess, but the indelible proof that her ancestor - part of her blood - committed those atrocities?

"Since Dominic slaughtered a guy making pies to make a hammer out of his spine, maybe Annette might also slaughter Ignatz too, because her family is known for killing people to gain more power?"

Rhea's lies protected Nabateans and the descendants of the Elites - and I find it telling that the "lore route" at least shows why through Marianne.

SS sucks because it is the Billy Route, and Rhea must acknowledge all "BaD" things she did 1/ to redeem somehow the red emperor 2/to make place for Billy and make sure everyone and their sockets understand Billy is the avatar meant to rule over Fodlan and that's a good thing, so Rhea was wrong.

Of course the "organised religion lies!!!" has real life parallels, but in this situation, it was a lose-lose situation, and imo she picked the one with the least casualties. What humans do afterwards are their own business.

This mindset is also one I know will be prevalent when discussing Deghinsea if Tellius Echoes is released soon, was Deghinsea right by deeming the branded a "crime against the goddess" and something that should not exist, or not?

But if he told everyone the truth, would Laguz have exterminated Beorcs in fear of disappearing if they ever were to mate, or would Beorcs have forcefully "befriended" Laguz to make them lose their powers and finally be "just like them"? At what point can you coexist with a different species when ultimate coexistence - interbreeding - leads to the extinction of one of the two original species?

Apparently in Hatari the Laguz, Beorcs and Branded are able to live together. But we don't know how, and the script, even the world, doesn't encourage us to learn how they manage to do it.

It is always much more complicated than "s/he lies so s/he is BaD".

[writingwithcolor]

Magical person in history, on not intervening on human rights issues

I am writing a dating sim/visual novel set in the present day. A major (non-romanceable) character is an ancient sorceress who moved from France to the Pacific Northwest in the 1850s. She is white. She is shown to have powerful magic. She also works closely with the main characters and develops personal relationships with them as she teaches them magic, giving each character comfort and advice during their respective stories.

Considering the events in America around her move-in date, there’s no way she could have missed the horrible human rights abuses going on, and there’s no way she was too powerless to help, even when most of the fighting and slavery was so far away. So I’m having trouble balancing “don’t make her a white savior by having her personally fireball Robert E. Lee” against “Hogwarts University is cancelled because Dumbledorette didn’t care about slavery.” I had the idea that the magical regulating body back home in France didn’t want her to intervene due to political reasons, so she helped out in small ways that could safely fly under the radar. She later realized that she prioritized her social standing over the suffering of countless others, so she began making a point of reducing human suffering as much as she could.

I can’t imagine this will show up in more than one small scene, but doing it wrong could really sour the whole thing. Is this backstory still icky? Should I just not mention it and let readers headcanon what they please?

I’m wondering what you think was happening in the PNW at the time for the fighting and slavery to be “far away.” Washington State had the Cayuse War at exactly this time period, Oregon didn’t ratify treaties and was calling for the extermination of “the I*dian race” in roughly this time period, and California’s Gold Rush created the California Genocide starting heavily in the 1840s, picking up steam in the 1850s, which included slavery of California Natives thanks to a law enacted in 1850 that lasted for 13 years. 

This is all from the top five results of googling “pacific northwest genocide 1850”, for the record. It’s not exactly hidden history.

So suddenly your character’s lack of movement in healing the poisoned populations as disease ravaged the area, in attempting to stop or at least buy and free the enslaved Natives being auctioned on their doorstep, or in attempting to get treaties ratified and honoured looks a lot more damning.

This is not counting any of the future events that happened at the turn of the century, including the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Hawai’i monarchy being overthrown, and Federal Order 9066, which is the WWII concentration camps (that included Japanese, German, and Italian individuals). This is just to name a handful of coastal issues in the next 100 years, completely ignoring Jim Crow, residential schools, the San Francisco Earthquake (which nearly had Chinese people relocated to the worst land imaginable for gentrification purposes, had the Empress of China not stepped in), and many others.

In short: she would have had hundreds of opportunities to end suffering, and focusing on a single event as a small scene feels disproportionate to how much she could have done.

And honestly? The French were no angels. 

The Second French Colonial Empire was one of the largest empires in history, and it began in 1830, covering roughly a third of Africa. The First French Colonial Empire began in the 1600s, and had both India and North America, primarily Canada.

She was white. French. You don’t specify her birth year other than “ancient”, but considering the sheer amount of territory-grabbing France has been doing since Normandy invaded England in the eleventh century AD, I’m going to assume her birth year is somewhere more recent than that. Therefore, I’m going to assume she has been around the Catholic Missionary Attitude that France had; one could call that attitude the bedrock of its existence for at least a millennia (and is still visible in modern day).

So tell me: when did she break out of it? What made her even care about human atrocities, when she has likely grown up watching France commit them her entire life? 

Because let me just say, she has had plenty of opportunities to realize she did nothing in the face of her neighbours’ hatred of people not like them, and she has never taken them before. 

Did she (or her parents, if she was born around this time) decry Napoleon re-introducing slavery in France in 1802? Side with Haiti when it declared independence in 1804, and hate that the government forced Haiti to pay for the “theft” of slaves and land (that was only paid off in 1947)? Is she presently championing for France to pay Haiti the money it wrongfully took from the country? Did she hate the delays in stopping the French slave trade, which took 11 years to actually stop after it was banned on paper? 

Unconditional emancipation was only reached in 1848, after all. I don’t care if she was born in 1830, there was some sort of major racial event happening in France all throughout the late 1700s to mid-1800s. Where did she side then?

Abolitionism was not an unknown concept in France, so it is possible she had already been working towards it quietly, but that would mean she would have felt guilt at inaction much earlier, depending on when she began decrying slavery—if she was even delayed in decrying it, which I will admit is possible. 

And if she was an abolitionist, would she have even listened to the French government in not at least easing the genocide around her? Because she would have watched nearly 100 years of the French dragging their feet on stopping slavery in their empire, and known how BS it all was… if she saw it that way.

That’s just abolitionism, and is not even counting the French relationship with the Native population in Quebec and the Great Lakes region, which is a giant tangle of proxy wars, colonialism, missionary work, and very, very, very complex relationships that started off good and ended terribly.

So I ask again: why did she only start caring then?

Speaking of proxy wars, the Napoleon Empire wanted a Confederate victory, because the Confederacy was its source of cotton and the American Civil War created a “cotton famine” in France that basically forced the textile industry into a massive downsizing. The Confederacy also tolerated Napoleon’s plans for expanding the empire in Mexico, which actually had begun in December of 1861.

So when it comes to how a magical board would rule—even though France was officially neutral in the war, the court of public opinion (among politicians and capitalists) was more on the Confederate side than the Union side. Many politicians secretly worked with the Confederacy, until they abandoned them when the Union showed signs of winning. The only reason France officially remained neutral is because a war with the British was inevitable if they acknowledged the Confederacy, and Napoleon didn’t want that.

I shall work under the assumption that because it was rather literally on her doorstep when she moved to America, she lost insulation to it (if she hadn’t thought about it before), but I will say how iffy that makes her look in the long term if she had so many opportunities beforehand (at the very least, seeing slaves in France).

My other option is the word “ancient” is liberally applied and she was only in her 20s or 30s when 1850 hit, and therefore had not had many opportunities to see otherwise (but she still would have seen slaves in France, likely).

Onto the white guilt and white saviour aspects

Strictly from a writing perspective, you have to determine if she changed the course of history, or not. This would not necessarily be within the realm of white saviour, seeing as white people were the only ones listened to at the time. You can see people who changed the course of history in this period by looking up the pastor who insisted Lincoln hold fair trials for the Dakota, which brought the execution count from over 200 down to 38. You can also look at Alice Fletcher, who made quite a few laws designed to protect Native people, but whether or not they were successful is up for debate (and she regretted some of the laws she helped enact).

If not, then you have the current tangle you’re dealing with.

Option 1

She was unestablished in America and relied on the magical regulations board to protect her, and she figured working small and under the radar would mean she could do more good long-term by not being killed, so long as you establish that such a threat is viable.

This option only works if she’s an active advocate for the slew of other racist acts that pass once she’s settled in America, of which I gave many examples above.

Option 2

She actually did change the course of history in perhaps a mixed way, or perhaps a positive way. She could have relied completely on being a white, well-to-do voice in the community, which would have granted her some privilege without using a drop of magic. 

This can apply to any point in history, seeing as there were a lot of others to pick from. It would be particularly useful once suffrage was achieved, and if she was part of suffrage, did she call out Susan B. Anthony’s racism? Did she encourage allowing non-whites to vote?

Option 3 

She was slow to care, and did not actually understand what a big deal it was that such atrocities were happening until it was too late. This leads to her dedication to atonement the strongest, but you have to be careful about white guilt. This option can go along with option 1.

This allows her to be a passive player in future racist events, but makes her an even more privileged white character who PoC will have a hard time seeing as kindly, and you should go out of your way to show white players how unkind and privileged she was, and perhaps still is.

Option 4 

she doesn’t actually care much, because she has a president of not caring about atrocities happening in France, and her bigotry shows up in other ways in modern day and she’s just a kindly-but-bigoted character. She’s your wonderful grandma who you have beautiful memories with… she just doesn’t care about anyone not white.

This can go along with option 3, as she was so slow to realize that she is still bigoted and hasn’t done any work, but her racism is going to be more covert and you’ll have to do research on microaggressions and how to frame them.

Based off the way her lack of action is framed in-story and how little a plot role it plays, I would say that option 4 with a dash of option 3 appears to be the most likely interpretation of her character by PoC. She’s lip-service to progress, at present, but seems to have made no strides in losing her social standing to be an ally.

Now here’s why I don’t think you should let readers headcanon her however they want:

White players in particular are going to minimize her culpability in what happened, and think that she did all that she could, and she is a Totally Redeemed Character now. In fact, they’ll probably wonder why she’s even an Atoner, because she did something, right? She helped, right? And now she’s helping and that’s plenty. She’s good to the players, so she is a Good Person.

Meanwhile PoC players are going to see yet another white author ignore the fact that colonialism was happening en masse at the time, and that white people deeply benefited from it, and are going to see the “it happened in the past why do you keep bringing up racism?” defence continued.

Let her be flawed. Let her be on stolen land and acknowledge it every time she teaches them something, and let her sit and exist in the guilt that happens when she realizes she could have stopped the theft but didn’t. Let her not wallow in self hate, but acknowledge her mistake with every lesson the main characters receive, and let her work on righting that wrong by championing “land back” causes that centre Indigenous voices.

Let her dialogue options show every trace of how the past is not over because the past’s actions are still being felt and reparations have not been made. The settler state is still controlling the land she has made home and she knows exactly what they did to get it, and she passes that knowledge on.

Let players be uncomfortable with the knowledge that, if they sit by and “only do small things when they can, to not lose anything”, they are complicit. Let white people see they must well and truly denounce what has been given to them by their racist, colonial ancestors in order for PoC to “stop talking about racism.”

Make her use whatever income she makes be paid in part to Native causes, as rent for the land she occupies unfairly. Make her refuse to teach bigoted students who want “mystic secrets” that aren’t hers to give, that were appropriated centuries ago. Make part of her life’s work be hiding away Black and Indigenous spiritual leaders to minimize the loss.

Let her past be imperfect. And do not force redemption on her, but instead let her own the fact she made catastrophic mistakes that will not be redeemed until land has been returned to the Native population. Until all forms of slavery are abolished. Until colonial powers give back all the resources and finances they stole from their colonized regions. Until the privilege that white people spilled so much blood to secure is no more.

Because if you want her to truly be a good character who does not support racism? That is the level you have to step towards.

Everything else is simply whiteness trying to make itself feel better.

~Mod Lesya

[canyouhearthelight]

The Miys, Ch. 102

Okay, trying to queue this again after it apparently got eaten along with chapter 101.

Y’all pray for me to whatever higher powers you believe in or can make up on the spot. Thanks.

Thanks for this chapter goes to the fabulous anon who sent me an ask about Jedis. I really, really hope you are seeing this chapter and I hope you like it. I also want to thank @baelpenrose​ as my resident Star Wars expert, who checked, double checked, and triple checked my writing to make sure everything was as entertaining/accurate as possible.

Before you all cringe at some comments Sophia makes, she is deliberately downplaying her knowledge of Star Wars in an attempt to see if she can give some of the other characters a twitchy eye.

After an extraordinarily bizarre situation regarding my former foe and who I assumed was his partner, I was profoundly relieved to find myself in a very boring, very normal situation a couple of weeks later. Even the regular family dinner was pretty normal: grilled cheese on a very good sourdough, with a tomato soup so garlicky that even I had no objections to it. I made a point to puree it, so Derek was very happy with the texture and I was happy with the flavor. Arthur shot me odd looks once in a while, but it was a happy, calm dinner.

And things were going… so well… I thought as Maverick dragged everyone into his quiet argument with Sam.

“Sam,” He stated emphatically as he dunked his sandwich and ripped a tomato-soaked piece from it. “We all want it to be real but… humans don’t exist outside of Earth and the Ark.”

“Yoda is not human,” Sam insisted loudly, grinning the entire time.

I choked on my soup. “Yoda? You two have been arguing Star Wars this whole time?”

“Maverick insists they are not real,” Sam enunciated carefully. When he got excited about a topic he loved, he had a tendency to rush everything and drop syllables, making his words nearly impossible to understand.

“They meaning Jedi?” Arthur asked, eyeballing the pile of sandwiches on the table. Finally he snagged his third half-sandwich and dunked it without ceremony. “As much as I wish they were real, I have my doubts.”

So did I. “Human beings who can use telepathy, telekinesis, and distance-empathy?” I scrunched my nose. “I think that’s a bit far-fetched.”

“But extraterrestrials exist,” Sam pointed out.

Conor nodded. “They do, obviously. Otherwise, Noah would be a bloody big figment of our imagination.” Shaking his head, he smiled. “If we didn’t make Santa real as children, I doubt we could make up someone like Noah, right?”

Sam only got more serious. “I was always taught that aliens don’t exist. My teachers told me that the only life off of Earth were bacteria. But, even if Else is bacteria, Noah isn’t. So, maybe other things we thought were pretend are real.”

The table was silent for a moment, shattered only by Derek dusting bread crumbs from his hands as ceremoniously and loudly as humanly possible. “Sam has a point,” he signed. “Fabricators exist, aliens exist.. Hell, telepathy exists - “

“Not telepathy,” Miys interjected from above.

“Neuro-pheremonal communication exists,” Derek finger-spelled, making a point of how cumbersome the term was in a way none of the rest of us really could. Seven minutes later, he took a slurp of soup and continued. “Unicorns exist, even if they are chubby. Why not Jedi?”

I opened my mouth to refute, then realized I couldn’t: we had the genetic code for both narwhals and rhinoceros in the gene bank. Good effing luck convincing anyone unicorns don’t exist, I guess. Instead, I grasped on my one last leg of logic. “But humans, like Luke Starkiller and Obi-whatsit Kenoshi don’t actually exist.”

Maverick looked absolutely revolted by something, which confused me. He liked tomato soup, and actually chose the cheese for the sandwiches himself. “Sophia. Have you even seen those movies?” He was absolutely aghast as he posed his question, and I suddenly understood what he was revolted by.

“Of course I did,” I sighed, rolling my eyes. “In college, in Intro to Adolescent Literature.”

Soup abruptly coated everything on the table as both Arthur and Conor spat violently at my clarification. Arthur scrubbed his chin the fastest, so had the honor of levelling his incredulity at me. “Sophia Reid. Do you mean to tell me that you have only seen Star Wars ONE TIME?”

I shook my head, confused. “No. I’ve seen all three.”

“ELEVEN,” Sam corrected me loudly. “There are eleven movies.”

“Please, please tell me you at least saw Rogue One,” Maverick begged. “You may not have known it was a Star Wars movie?”

“Is that the one where the robot hits the guy and says he has another fresh one?” I asked carefully.

Maverick nodded. Arthur, however, looked like he was about to start breathing fire. “I am going to force you to consume every bit of Star Wars media worth consuming if I have to get Charly and Derek to program the audio versions to play in every room you enter.”

“I can do that,” Derek signed, unhelpfully.

Arthur just nodded. “See? I can make this happen. Your quarters will feel like Hoth, all digital communications will sound like C-3PO, and many Bothans will die before your datapad functions.”

Alarmingly, Miys interjected. “Wisdom, Bothans are an endangered species. Please do not encourage Educator Farro to commit atrocities.”

I was still gasping in confusion when Arthur recovered from his choking. “Oh shit. Bothans are real? They were a very back-stabby race of dog-type people who fought against fascists in Terran media. I thought, at least. I wouldn’t actually kill a real one… I am far more high functioning of a sociopath than that, thank you.”

“Noah,” I choked out. “Are you serious? Are Bothans real?”

“Affirmative,” they responded, setting off an entirely new round of choking and sputtering. I would need to have something done about my floors if this kept up. “And while they do resemble Terran canines on a very superficial level, they are genetically more closely related to a Terran fern.”

Arthur looked like his heart had been ripped out of his chest. “That is the least back-stabbing and least threatening plant I can possibly think of.”

Conor, not to be outdone, was still curious. “Boston or Fiddlehead?”

“Asparagus fern, Human Conor,” was the reply that set off a thousand coughs.

Sam recovered first. “That does not mean Jedi don’t exist,” he insisted.

“Of course Jedi exist,” Miys answered in a tone that was as close to being confused as I had ever heard.

Almost immediately, Arthur, Maverick, and Sam started cheering and high-fiving. Conor looked confused, while I spat my soup out again.

“WHAT?” I choked out between attempts at keeping tomatoes and garlic out of my lungs.

“They are as real as any member of any other Terran religion.”

Silence ruled the room for a split second, broken first by Arthur throwing his fork in the air behind him.  Like a signal, it led to Sam and Maverick dropping their head to their forearms with a groan.

I managed to recover enough to slide my food away, lest I risk death over an absurd conversation. “Are there anything like Jedi in the known galaxy?” I asked, receiving a thumbs up from Arthur, who was still trying not to choke on his soup.

“Only in small measures.”

That seemed like the magic phrase to snap Arthur out of whatever coughing fit he was having. “Are there any species in the galaxy that have Jedi abilities?”

“You will need to be more specific.”

Conor, laughter out of his system, joined gamely. “Is there anything that can move physical objects without touching them directly?” he started.

“Several species can,” Miys conceded. “Those who only experience what you consider ‘sight’ as changes in air currents can, in fifty-four percent of cases so far, also change the air currents in a sufficient way as to move physical objects.”

“Wait,” I interrupted. “They can stare at something hard enough to move it?”

“Wisdom, if I experienced physical pain, I am certain that your oversimplification just now would have caused such a sensation.”

Without rebutting, I waved for Miys to continue and ignored the laughter caused by the comment.

“Similarly, there are species more limited than Hujylsogox, who can perceive the physical world strictly through sound,” they continued. “In such cases, it is not uncommon for these species to also alter their surroundings by vibrating physical objects at a frequency that causes them to move within physical space.” A brief pause before, “And no, Wisdom, that does not mean they scream at objects until such objects move. I would also like to point out, Educator Farro, that the same species can cause internal organs to vibrate as a sufficient frequency as to cut off air flow.”

“Force choke is real,” Arthur whisper-shouted, mildly horrified. Clearing his throat, he spoke more clearly for his next question. “What about ‘there is a disturbance in the Force, as if many voices cried out’ etc?”

Miys buzzed thoughtfully for a moment before replying more clearly. “There are number of species who are able to perceive and interpret with great accuracy any changes in interstellar radiation, no matter how small. Should, say, a star go nova or collapse into a black hole, they are very reliable in providing information to cartographers. Should such a species state with certainty that a planet ceased to exist, I would need to see the planet from orbit in order to disbelieve them.”

Maverick let loose a low whistle, but it was Sam who spoke next. “But what about living beings, on an individual level. I know you can do that, but can any other species?”

“It is, perhaps, the most common trait in the known galaxy,” Miys admitted. “Even humans can do this, to a degree, although you tend to ignore it against all logic.”

“Okay. What about force lightning, though?”

I actually started to respond to that, having an answer finally, but Miys beat me to the draw. “Species who communicate through electrical currents are more numerous in the galaxy than those who can see. In the same way, they need to be able to manipulate such currents. Their young are frequently sequestered on their home worlds in order to prevent electrocution of species whose neural organs can be disrupted by uncontrolled communication. The same species are capable of using those same currents to increase their own synaptic response and reflexes.”

I almost wanted to laugh at Maverick’s face. He looked frustrated and ashamed in a way that I could not figure out. Maybe because these abilities existed, but not in humans? Regardless, his tone was frustrated when he asked his next question. “What about force ghosts? Please tell me those are real?”

“Very much so,” Miys confirmed. “Though likely not in the way you think. What you consider ‘Force Ghosts’ are, in the galaxy as it is, the result of technological advancement combined with spiritual beliefs.” A few groans surrounded the table, but Maverick perked up slightly. “Many species believe, as a result of their evolution, that their predecessors’ life energy persists after death. In these cultures, it is so common as to be unremarkable for a person to have a synaptic recording chip installed shortly after birth, to record their entire lives. They, then, pass their chip on to their successor in  position.” Wait a minute… I thought, but Miys continued before I could put everything together. “In such circumstances, many species’s neural organs will manifest a… personality, separate from the original, in order to preserve mental stability. Such manifestations are very similar to what Terran media considers a ‘Force ghost’.”

“Hang on,” I ventured, holding my hand up emphatically to cut off any other questions from the table. “That. Stop there.” Taking a deep breath, I thought back through everything I had read in the past. “I thought the idea of deliberately having multiple, distinct identities was… a story, honestly.”

“Even in your own past, it was discovered that the human brain can host two distinct personalities with no difficulty, Wisdom,” Miys admonished. “These species, however, are uniquely adapted so that, along with the memory implant, they suffer no actual combination or confusion of experiences. What their ancestor experienced is their ancestor’s memory, and what the person experiences is the person's memory. A person cannot overwrite an ancestral core. Only speak to it.”

“Can humans do that?” Sam asked, dazed in wonder at this new revelation.

“Not yet,” Miys responded. “But I do insist on the word ‘yet’, as you were never meant to do many of the things you do now.”

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[lairofsentinel]

Mystra

I'm so new in the Forgotten Realms lore that everything I read needs always further research. So far, what got me between disbelief and mistrust was Mystra stuff meddling with humans to such deep level. Because, really... what the fuck these Gods? I always have problems with Gods in fantasy worlds. I don't like them when they are like Greek mythology entities. I prefer them when they are a mere illusion of mortals.

However, here, in the Forgotten Realms, we got them as entities like Zeus... so they can have mortal fun. UPDATE April 2021: What it’s said in this post about shadow weave and shadow weave magic and shadow magic are incorrect. In 5e, shadow weave is not mentioned, apparently a non used concept anymore. In 4e it was collapsed with the destruction of the Weave, and Shar attempted to recreated it, failing at it because she never “was” the Shadow Weave. Shar always rejected that level of commitment. However, according to bg3 [Ethel’s words] shadow magic currently is the same as netherese magic, described by Gale/Narator also as “Primal weave” or “blackest weave”. No book from 5e says a word about shadow weave anymore. 

According to what I've read, Mystra was, in fact, a young peasant girl with non-trained skills in magic, but somehow, she became the Goddess of Magic when Netheril fell. [I need to read a lot of Netheril because apparently everything bad comes from there. It's the Tevinter of the Forgotten Realms. I honestly don't understand how you just become a goddess out of the blue. One day a mediocre mage, the next one, Goddess of the Magic itself. What a gap there.]

As a Goddess, she has a system to determine who is her “Chosen One” (hence why Gale explicitly said that word, it was not by chance). The Chosen Ones have unique access to the Weave and therefore they cast powerful magic. Among their responsibilities, they need to research new magic, wander the Realms fighting the evil (and/or doing research), and to stop the abuses of magic and the imbalances of the Weave. This makes Shar followers an easy target for them to strike so far I understand, since Shar crafted an alternative Weave (Shadow Weave) from where she drags the power that infuse into her followers. However, it's a mirror Weave, extremely dependable of the normal Weave. Like Gale explained, when Mystryl died, the Weave stopped existing, and with it, the Shadow Weave fell apart too. It seems that Shadow Weave is an aberration, an imbalance of the Weave itself. [So, Shadowheart and Gale may have strong discussions on the matter.]

The man who was Mystra’s first Chosen One was a lesser god called Azuth (we found some books of this guy in BG3). The man was his devotee (despite being a low rank deity as well), his servant, his chosen one, and later, his lover (when Mystra was still Mystryl). It seems he shifted his role to a more fatherly one when Mystra was reborn [Oook]. He also was in love with another Mystra's chosen, so... divinity polyamory we have here.

Then she proceeded to accomplish a strange plan [details of this atrocity here]: to have seven immortal Chosen. So she possessed a sorceress who conceived seven immortal women with her husband [thanks god it was with her husband and not with a random man that Mystra fancied]. These women are known as the Seven Sisters, all of them are “chosen ones” of Mystra, and in a sense, they are also her daughters. [oh, boy. Greek Gods-like stuff.]

She also named Chosen One a necromancer called Sammaster who was doing research related to metamagic and dragons. The story says that Mystra appeared before him and they “spent 10 days together”, turning him into his Chosen One for a while. She apparently had a whim to choose him because soon a previous chosen one was going to die in battle, so she wanted to sort this out sooner than later. The story also says that this encounter made the necromancer feel as though they were in love. [I see the pattern now....] What it's worth highlighting: this man went into deep undead research all his life showing that Mystra has a weird moral sense of what is good from evil, which makes sense, since (magical) knowledge by itself has no alignment. Magical knowledge is never good or evil, it depends on the use you give to it (It’s also worth noting that the previous Mystra was True Neutral while the one reborn in Midnight was Neutral Good. There are two different Mystras in history.). But returning to the necromancer, the guy, in the end, manipulated by a priest of Bane, abused of his powers of Chosen and Mystra removed them. He concluded that most of his problems have been caused by accepting Mystra's role as Chosen One. Soon after that Sammaster became evil and succumbed to madness.

In short, Mystra is a goddess who loves to play favourites, and encourages research in a competitive way using a certain degree of seduction for that. So that, the Arts and the arcane knowledge will be always expanding via competition [she has such a neoliberal-magic ideas]. So, being her Chosen One seems to bring a lot of responsibility and troubles. However, it also grants you fancy benefits:

Casting more spells with less effort. 

Natural detection of magic (maybe some residual effect of this ability is what makes Gale able to sense shadow magic in Shadowheart or in the Main Character if they are a user of magic. Hence his “that gust of weave”. Gale also presents sensitivity to detect magic via smell (mirror) and taste)

Development of magical immunities, and sometimes even poison and disease immunities.

The chosen ones become harder to kill, kind of tank-wizards. [Which feels like an oxymoron, lol.]

And the most important blessing: silver-fire [this is the fire Gale speaks about when his spell failed] Which is an overpowered ability in the Forgotten Realms. It can destroy any barrier and does massive damage. It can be cast once each hour, which is... wow. It can destroy “dead magic zones”, which are zones disconnected from the Weave and therefore, places where no common magic can be cast. With Silver-fire, such zones are reconnected to the Weave and become part of Mystra's influence once more. And finally, it allows precise teleportation once a day.

What we can infer now from this info and Gale, is that... when he got Mystra’s attention, it was not just because he was a prodigy alone. It had to be whether he was doing some research that interested her (probably not) or his fate was going to lead him to unknown knowledge in a future. Considering what he did with the netheril orb, one would say that maybe Mystra saw that event in a future, and considered it interesting enough to choose Gale as the one dealing with that bit of hidden and dangerous knowledge. Because so far I read, it’s clear she can see future or potential in a certain degree, and determine who replace her chosen ones. We also saw she favours those who explore the unknown without moral issues, and she has no reserves to exploit that by seductive ways. 

Now, unlike Sammaster, why did Gale stop being his Chosen one if his fate was to retrieve that netheril orb? I believe she removed his title of chosen one when Gale got that orb stuck in his chest, not because his action was an aberration before her eyes (we remember she is quite flexible in her morals) but because the artefact was dangerous to herself. That orb looks to me like something that imbalances the Weave in great escale; it’s basically a necrotic black hole which feeds on Weave. Maybe she removed her favour on Gale because now the man had a power that could consume her. Remember the Chosen Ones are constantly in “touch with her body/weave” [lol, horny gods these gods], and considering that thing sucks all Weave... it seems obvious that could eat her up. So, maybe, all this stuff of Gale being Chosen One was just another of her plans to access to the knowledge of that tiny bit of primal Weave, completely hidden from her, and she is expecting for Gale to resolve it in order to recover his benefits as Chosen one. 

She certainly is a super smart goddess, basically a mastermind, who doesn’t care to whom she uses and discards in order to obtain knowledge. So, using Gale this way, without explanations.... it could be one of her plans. Turn into her lover a young man that would be desperate enough to risk reaching dangerous spaces to offer her precious unknown knowledge. The plan became too dangerous to Mystra, so she severed the deep link between them out of preservation, and now she is waiting for him to solve it, offering her the knowledge obtained from the process. Absolutely possible.  

But we’ll see. So far, I know a little bit more of Mystra.

Update of several days after writing this: The more I think about all this info, the more I wonder if Mystra’s Chosen One system splits her champions into two different groups: The “valuable” Chosen Ones, where Elminster and her seven daughter fall; they are the embodiment of the good use of magic in favour of neutral or good uses. And then, you have the “disposable” Chosen Ones, who seem to be more like victims of a certain degree of manipulation of the Goddess. In this category falls the necromancer Sammaster (and potentially Gale?). They can have more grey morals, but as long as they provide new knowledge and advance in the Arts, she favours them anyways. I mean… so far I read, Elminster was never “in love” with Mystra, and all that crappy dynamics between Goddess and mortal was never part of his relationship with her. His lover, though, was one of the Seven Sisters, so maybe that’s why Mystra controlled herself. I don’t know xD [These horny gods]. But when it comes to the necromancer’s story… it feels as though she encourages this seduction so the wizard will take all the necessary risks to go beyond the limits of knowledge to get her attention and favour. There is something manipulative there. 

More content of bg3 in general [here]

[paradizetobefound]

Trying to gauge some themes of AK by means of examining relation of Mephisto to other characters in terms of “who is awful no good” but not really

Now since I already mentioned Mephisto being a hate sink.

hating Mephisto is easy, even despite him being a child, what he does and what he had been doing even before Reunion, are all deeply disturbing things.

Hating Mephisto is so easy, he is designed to draw all the attention to himself in that way, like some messed up embodiment of all things that went wrong with Reunion. But the thing is, every thing for which Mephisto may be loathed, it is not just him. There is a person complicit and indirectly responsible for every atrocity he commits since coming to Reunion, there is a person who took his already present problems and pushed them further, condoned and encouraged all he did, even if not as openly as have wrong person question this. The same person who also led Reunion towards escalating things further and further. But “Talulah” (as we know she is likely a victim of possession whatever it may mean in her case as the situation actually seems pretty ambiguous) is not the one laughing at misery, she is not one present when effigies are burning.

Most of awful things she does are deliberately left just off-screen enough as not to be in focus. And she herself is always depicted in full dignity unlike almost maniacal and even somewhat histerical Mephisto (and him being pathetic just encourages audience to despise him more). But she is the leader who not only “made” Mephisto, in a way, but also took advantage of misery of all the Reunion in order to turn them into tools and cannon fodder for whatever goal “she” has. As much as actions of individuals are their own, Talulah is ultimately complicit in all that cruelty by virtue of being one to deliberately and knowingly call for it to happen.

But this is not the point. The point is, why is it framed this way? It seems like a theme. From standpoint of AK as a story, a scrapegoat (Mephisto) is used to encapsulate all sins and to act as a lightinrod for all hate while the one to order the misery ends up relatively “free” of sin, as in, while people can see what she does and why, just compare the trend of “art where mephisto is punished” and discussions on how fandom wants to torture him to anything similar regarding Tal. Furthermore, idea of her being sympathetic is given much more attention with several characters audience was inclined if not to like, at least to care about to a degree (or to their character development), talking about her situation as a tragedy. I do not think Tal should be hated, even if just the “Talulah” who we witness in action since chapter 0. Especially with how the situation goes further than just Tal.

Reunion is supplied by several factions, one of which is led by one of likely future big baddies and another known one having its member be same man who may be currently possessing Tal. And both have vested interest in manipulating Reunion into further escalation of violence, which will (if they succeed in their plans) ultimately amount to nothing but a war at the end of which infected will become scrapegoats to pin all the blame.

And this is likely fully intended, in fact it seems like a theme, that seems to be explored further and further. There is Mephisto, but there is also entire rabbit hole of how far the fault goes. But with Mephisto around, even when it is apparent that it is not just Mephisto, even when it is known it is not just Mephisto, the attention condences around a single “scrapegoat”, with little left to look further than that. It is understandable even, in fact, going to far down this road would result in completelly forgetting that Mephisto was still Mephisto and Talulah was still Talulah, and both were their own agents (even if in Tal’s case it’s... odd) and their own actors. It may result in blaming entire world and thus, nobody.

The question of complicitness and fault and responsibility and burden to bear seem omnipresent. Doctor is the one who gives orders on the battlefield and figuratively points the tip of arrow of Schwarz towards enemy. She follows order by her own volition. Her line is one asking Doctor not to kill, but didn’t Doctor kill plenty by now, if only by proxy?.

(following paragraph contains spoilers)

And if we take if further, and look at pre-amnesia Doctor. They may have treated every operator under their command as chess pieces, they may have been cold and calculating war machine and those were their own actions and decisions but. They had become like that while acting as tactical commander for Babel, and they were asked to take on this mantle, and they were not an island, so to speak. It was spelled out, that Theresa, kind and gentle exiled King, was “tolerating having a freak like that around for some reason” by two mercenaries observing the situation. Was she also partly bearing burden of responsibility for Doctor’s actions?

The list can be continued but the general idea is, a consistent question of not only “it is easy to lose sight of bigger picture in front of despiced scrapegoat, especially when other biases are present” but also “to what degree responsibilities and faults and burdens are shared between individuals, groups and their leaders”, and more specifically “can leader who allows cruelty be also blamed for that cruelty”

[theparanormalperiodical]

The Real Story Behind The Slender Man: EVERYTHING You Need To Know

It started in May 2014.

Three teenage girls were enjoying a Wisconsin summer evening when they decided to go for a walk in their local forest.

Only two of them would return.

The third would be stabbed 19 times by her friends.

She survived, pulling herself out of the forest and to safety. Her classmates were promptly arrested, and confessed their crime, later going on to plead insanity.

Yet despite the shocking nature of this crime, a stabbing doesn’t necessarily make worldwide news. But it wasn’t the circumstance of the attack that hit the headlines. It was the motive.

They claimed they did it to appease the Slender Man.

And they were not the only ones that committed such a crime in his name.

To a majority of the population, these claims can be written off as the ‘insanity’ stamped on the official court documents. But the thing is, these atrocities aren’t the only times Slender Man has been sighted outside of his pixelated world.

In fact, Slender Man made his name many years before we began our search for the 8 pages.  

Does he really only exist within the World Wide Web?

What Is The Slender Man?

Our story starts 5 years before Wisconsin hit the headlines.

In 2009, comedy website Something Awful launched a paranormal images competition. Users of the website were to mock up supernatural-inspired or horror-themed pictures, and leave them to be judged by the internet.

Eric Knudsen’s entry forged together the mystery of an urban legend and the dark reality of pedophilia.

Knudsen used pictures of children playing in playgrounds, or hanging out in friendship groups, or any other innocent gathering of youngsters, and photo-shopped a figure among them. This figure was an 8 foot tall, thin man, with a faceless, pale profile draped in a formal suit.

Emerging from his back was a set of dark, twisting tentacles.

He called him the Slender Man.

It was only when 4chan users picked up on these pictures that his urban legend infamy was set in stone.

Both the forum site and Creepypasta.com moulded his backstory, infusing the simple tales of kidnapped children with the concept of proxies - that is, children which were used to do his bidding. And it’s this premise that would alter the landscape of teenage crime - and suicides - in America.

From here the urban legend extended its tentacles, haunting the darker corners of the internet. But it was his debut in video games that drew him out into the mainstream.

In 2012, the first video game first entered our downloads folder.

The free game followed a simple principle: you wander through dark woods in the dead of the night armed with a torch and surrounded by pixelation only an early Buffy demon could muster up, and you look for 8 ‘pages’.

These pages are poorly pencilled drawings that have been left by children taken by the Slender Man - but the terror only starts here. Throughout your search you are followed by the entity titling the game.

Slender Man: The Arrival hit the shelves only two years later and followed the same concept as the original. But this time we are joined by some sense of a plot, and a few other characters, too.

Nevertheless, the undying premise remains: he follows kids, and then he takes ‘em for himself.

Why?

This remains unknown.

But it’s this premise which fuelled the urban legend haunting the teenagers, fitting the real life cases that have scarred America.

This was confirmed in his film debut in 2018: Slender Man preyed upon the wave of crime inspired by the creepy pasta, merging the reality of the recent stabbings with the video games that put him on the map.

But this premise has scored a stab wound on our society before, fitting historic folklore far too accurately.

Crime In The Name Of The Slender Man

Wisconsin was not the only American state to witness a shocking crime inspired by this indie horror icon. In fact, a variety of other attacks pinned on the Slender Man followed a similar pattern:

One 14 year old burnt their house down, a tragedy linked to their history of reading creepypastas exploring the legend, whilst another young teen stabbed her own mother in order to please the Slender Man.

But it doesn’t stop there.

Alongside the spike in violent crime was a sharp rise in teenage suicides at the Pine Ridge Native American Reservation.

The suicide rate among the Native American population in America is already far more prevalent than any other ethnic group, but the sudden spike of 9 suicides of those aged between 12 to 24 sparked concern. And when the motives were drawn back to the Slender Man, these concerns only grew further.

The authorities even made mention to this urban legend in their official investigation, determining that the Slender Man was considered by the teenagers in the community to be a suicide spirit, a dark entity within Native American folklore. But to them, the Slender Man went by a slightly different name.

They called him the Tall Man spirit.

“He’s appearing to these kids and telling them to kill themselves.” - a local minister who supported youths in the community

Suicide spirits follow a similar line of thought to Catholic views of demons or evil spirits: they are negative spirits that feed off our energy. This entity in particular, however, spends its free time targeting and possessing individuals that are undergoing a spiritual crisis.

Alcoholics, addicts, the depressed - they are all worthy contenders for being the personal buffets of suicide spirits.

With a cluster of Facebook videos alluding to local folklore combined with viscous cyber-bullying encouraging the victims take their own lives, the notion of the Tall Man gathered strength, tying together the folklore of the suicide spirit and the urban legend of the Slender Man.

But this wasn’t the only time the Tall Man has been sighted in Native American communities.

In 1890, the Wounded Knee Massacre occurred.

20,000 Latoka Native Americans were left for dead by US troops. To this day it is considered one of the most atrocious acts committed against the Native American population.

And it was here that the Big Man was first seen.

Many claimed an entity taking the form of a tall man sporting a top hat would wander the reservation after the massacre, and made the younger generation take their own lives.

Whilst negative spirits donning the top hat are common outside of Native American folklore, the similarities between the Big Man and the Tall Man create an uncomfortable link between the tragedies scarring the past and present Native American population.

But this community’s folklore isn’t the only place the Slender Man has been referenced outside of the video game.

Nearly every other culture has their very own Tall Man.

Could the Slender Man have existed before the original video game even entered beta testing?

The Slender Man In Historic Folklore

When I began researching the entity’s existence - aside from being overwhelmed by the array of tragic stories - I encountered many dead ends.

One of these dead ends sticks out.

Out of all of the rumours circulating following the Wisconsin stabbings was that Slender Man originated from Romanian folklore, and was based on some similar entity possibly bearing his size, demeanour, and pastime of abducting and/or traumatising children.

This was proven to be untrue.

But upon realising the Slender Man didn’t first make his name in Romania, I discovered he had made his name in a lot of other countries.

Like a lot.

Like way too many.

From motive to dress sense, the Slender Man’s first sighting starts a couple millennia before his internet debut.

Fear Dubh from Irish folklore is the most popular contender for being the OG Slender Man, his name literally translating to ‘Black Man’. It is claimed that this entity would scare children snooping round the woods, and his title confirms his attire matches his more modern formal suit.

Germany’s Eriking too bears a resemblance to the Slender Man’s irish counterpart - with a focus on both his height and dark clothing, this internet icon might have travelled further than we think. This mythical beast prides himself on dwelling in the woods and kidnapping children, confirming he has potential for the official historic Slender Man.

However: the plot thickens when we consider another German entity known only as the Tall Man.

With the same name as the Native American suicide spirit, and the guiding principle of kidnapping kids who wander the woods, the potential for an international entity once again emerges from the darkness.

Historic legends from the American South also contain a similarity that should have you sleeping with the light on: a treelike man who kidnaps children was often spotted throughout history.

Regardless, it’s easy to decode these vague mythical creatures as warnings to their children of the dangers of wandering near uncharted territory alone and at night.

But it’s the details of the Slender Man that click together when we trace the folklore back to the oldest recorded sighting of the urban legend.

And this takes us to 9000 BC.

Both Eypgtian hieroglyphics and Aztec paintings often portray the same distinct tall, thin, menacing figure, but it’s Brazilian cave paintings that house the oldest attributes.

In these paintings you can clearly see a tall man lead a child by the hand, his unnaturally large limbs dominating the scene.

Yet aside from the Slender Man’s basic features - that of his height and incessant stalking of children - his facelessness (#new-word) is a feature we have yet to discuss. Fortunately, many cultures have already discussed it. And the greatest conversation takes place in Japan.

Japanese faceless ghosts have haunted the small island for centuries. The Noppera-bo prides itself on frightening humans, often taking the face of someone the victim knows before their features dissipate into nothingness.

All you can see is a blank, smooth, flat layer of skin, a sight only witnessed when the Slender Man finally catches up with you in his video game debut.

Whether you believe in the Slender Man or not, there is no doubt that the concept harnessed by Eric Knudsen did not begin in 2009.

We might not know when the Slender Man began hunting children, and we might not know why he does, but there is one thing for certain:

He has not finished just yet.

If you liked this post, chances are you’ll like my other posts, too! You will have to come out from beyond your quilt, though.

Make sure you hit follow if you want to see more stuff like this - and, you know, less traumatising posts about the paranormal every week.

Don’t forget to join my ghost hunt, too, where I post a new real ghost story everyday!

[pleasefeedthebirds]

A Relatively Deep Dive Into My “Crème de la Crème” MCs - #1. Mavis Linnet

(From the astonishingly crisp interactive fiction by @hpowellsmith! ...It’s not weird to tag, right?)

Mavis “Miss Linnet” Mallee-Linnet

she/her/hers

Light brown complexion and loosely curled brown hair

Favors conventionally masculine fashion 

Accommodating

Manipulative

Traditional

Exceptional Poise

Noteworthy Wit and Intrigue

Commonplace Spirit

Unremarkable Flair

LOADS more info and spoiler content under the cut!

I envision Mavis as having grown up in a wealthy household, where she was still raised reasonably well about the importance of non-profligate spending. Her parents both taught at Olmstead’s Valley School, where she was in attendance for the bulk of her college-age years. Sailing was manageablely smooth. Mavis got along well in her studies, had time for both dressage and lacrosse, and—for her genuine interest in the subject matter—made it on the good side of many educators there (albeit not as often her fellow students, being for all the world their definition of a teacher’s pet!).

Her life took an abrupt shift in its trajectory when Mr. Mallee, her father, had a shameful affair come to light. Their rural community was small enough that such a thing made waves. Her other father, Mr. Linnet, sent Mavis off to Gallatin with the still-favorable Linnet name, and spent a pretty penny to do so. Primarily, he did this to save her from suffering by association, and was very vocal about these intentions. He’s definitely also relying on her to save their social standing, and despite the point being markedly unspoken, Mavis quietly understands.

So, Mavis feels an immense pressure to make the most of her time at Gallatin. She tries to conform unfalteringly to the school’s every long-winded social expectation, which exhausts her utterly. However, by her proficiency in book research, and her sincere knack for studying people, she has grown excellent at “playing the game” in high society. 

More than ever, Mavis is dedicated to her studies at Gallatin, even when the prescribed syllabus is less than stimulating. She keeps her head down so to never risk rocking the boat. This mode of being doesn’t make her happy per say, but the Gallatin atmosphere has her shoehorned into believing there’s no feasible alternative. She’s cognizant of surface level flaws in the system, but plays along because she thinks she has to. After all, it’s her way out of rural smallmindedness and into an academic world. That said, things certainly can change, particularly when one can’t help but notice atrocities being committed against literal children!

5’10”, with broad shoulders but slender hips. Her body makes an upside-down triangle shape.

Prone to acne, her skincare routines are extensive, and she’s usually up at the crack of dawn every day to get her proverbial ducks in a row.

Her hair is thinner than it looks, and she takes especial care when rationing it about her scalp. She feels vulnerable with it all the way down, so favors hair styles with low centers, such as looped pigtails, a nape bun, or double braids. Also labors to hide her considerable widow’s peak.

A heavy tea drinker. For all of her wits, she doesn’t realize that her mug o’ choice (earl grey) is highly caffeinated. She slugs the stuff down each day without ever realizing, because it “makes her feel better” about mornings.

Though it’s hardly polite, she LOVES gossip, and writes down every secret she hears as her guiltiest pleasure.

Miss Dalca and Mr. Griffith both make her uncomfortable—the former for her extreme progressiveness, and the latter for his gruff demeanor. Mr. Blanchard is her favorite teacher, and I bet she’s accidentally cried in his presence before. She’s scared of Lady Renaldt, and makes herself known to the headmaster only out of necessity.

Virtue: 91%

Popularity: 75%

Coursework Grade: A

Exam Mark: A+

Extracurricular(s): Birchmeier Society and the Gallatin Swans (goalkeeper)

*[Though not doable ingame, I like to think that she overloaded her schedule and dropped the Swans halfway through the semester. Mavis is never the type to drop anything, so having to take that step back was a double-edged blow to her confidence, in addition to being a sheer relief on her stress levels. Since the Birchmeier Society was where her heart truly lay, she managed to build herself back up there with Freddie’s support.]

Entanglements: Romantically engaged to Freddie.

Besties and then some with Freddie. They’re both hardworking scholars with each their own zest for learning, and by preparing for classes, exams, and Birchmeier Society biz in the same shared spaces, Mavis spent disproportionately more time with her than with anyone else. Freddie encouraged Mavis to be a bit less hard on herself, and was brave enough to stand up to her whenever Mavis’s fatigue was turning her curmudgeonly. Mavis helped get Freddie out of her own head on multiple occasions, taught her to break the most overwhelming situations down to deal with day-by-day, and bolstered her confidence anytime it faltered in the face of the Gallatin sphere. The engagement was Mavis’s idea, which she accidentally blurted out in a rare impulsive burst of feeling. After processing the implications, she was ashamed to have second thoughts upon remembering Freddie’s financial situation. It seemed for a while that the engagement was off, following a hard conversation that soured their relationship for awhile. I don’t think Freddie would easily bounce back after having her family standing scrutinized. However, the mine plot—when Mavis had to ultimately turn her back on everything she’d built at Gallatin—spurred character development enough that Freddie deemed her worthy of a second chance.

Friends with Gonzalez, who couldn’t help but respect that Mavis was competent in lacrosse, academically accomplished, and generally pretty nice to people. I don’t think she realizes that Mavis keeps a stiff mask. Mavis found Gonzalez refreshing, albeit off-puttingly honest, and couldn’t find a way to fault her spirited nature. I can’t imagine them engaging much off of the field (i.e. post Mavis quitting the team), but the two were mutually supportive in their interactions, even if Mavis was probably repressing some criticisms of Gonzalez’s fast and loose attitude all the while.

Friends with Max after he tutored her in flair, per Lady Renaldt’s instruction, via a sick dance sesh. I like to imagine him groaning about the task, assuming that Mavis would be a hopeless case, and then being pleasantly surprised at the fact that she can absolutely hit it (even just in the name of compliance with authority). He tried to make a move on her and was politely rejected. I think he supports the idea of her at a distance after recognizing that she’s not trying to breathe down anyone’s neck, and really is a kind, tired gal being squeezed dry by the system.

Friends with Hartmann, who was initially confused about which “side” Mavis was on in her prefectural feud with Max (Mavis shushed him at the opening commencement, which she liked, yet supported Max when he dipped out the common room window). They came to understand each other in the later game, bonding over how ill-affected they both are by the pressures of their respective positions. They don’t “hang out” much, but a couple of key deep conversations put each in the other’s good books.

Pleasant acquaintances with Karson. Mavis rarely went out of her way to talk to them, but whenever they crossed paths, she was good to Karson, and sympathized (albeit at a respectable distance) with their situation as a servant. When trouble in the mines was first coming to light, Mavis got sniffing, and sussed out enough clues that Karson eventually passed Blaise’s note on to her directly, trusting her moral compass enough to do so.

Unpleasant acquaintances with Delacroix. His unconventional take on life, passion for the intangible, and apathy towards collegiate procedure all make her uneasy. In his own right, Delacroix probably takes her for a stuffy, self-centered dud, which after all the times she’s reflexively shut his occult talk down, is pretty fair.

Acquaintances with Blaise. Mavis made nice in the early game because she had to, and was secretly relieved when she “resigned.” This was short lived, and turned into a misplaced sense of guilt after what actually happened to Blaise came to light. Mavis didn’t end up in the mines herself, but she did everything she could to help her, Miss Dalca, and eventually Gonzalez escape. When all was said and done, Blaise still made Mavis uncomfortable, and she let her be to get on with her life.

Approached Rosario at the punch table in an attempt to court the princess in the room… absolutely blew it. Ended up tripping over her own tongue when she realized that the heir is not so predictably wooed by traditional measures as originally anticipated. I like to think of that moment as a point of deeper connection for Mavis and Freddie, where both were totally overwhelmed by the noble sphere at Archambault and turned to each other for comfort. Otherwise, Rosario was a Rosari-no for Mavis.

Was weirded out by Auguste. Mavis fears any authority figures who don’t like her right away, and they’re too close to the ever-frigid Lady Renaldt for her comfort. She did totally trash them (benevolently) at dressage on sports day, though.

Gave Florin the widest possible berth. Mavis wanted nothing to do with that kind of scandal, but definitely found her shallowly cute. 

Some Choice Plot Pieces (cue spoilers):

Gathered evidence against Miss Dalca in compliance with Lady Renaldt.

Had an adequate working relationship with Miss Benton.

Gathered information for Annick against Lady Renaldt.

Endgame (cue SUPER spoilers):

Worked in secret against Lady Renaldt.

Sent Gonzalez to the mines, but most everyone got out (I believe Miss Dalca died?!).

Settled things quietly with Kathrili Burgin.

Went on to study at Gessner.

Joined Freddie for the summer.

[the-enamorando-deity]

Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love For You by George Benson, Natasha x Reader But in Natasha POV

this was definitely the most interesting submission I’ve gotten! I hope this is what you were looking for :) I used the first few lines of the song for the basis of the story

Natasha Romanoff x Reader

Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love For You

If I had to live my life without you near me

The days would all be empty

The nights would seem so long

With you I see forever, oh, so clearly

I might have been in love before

But it never felt this strong

You might be known as the fearsome Black Widow, renowned assassin/worldwide hero and one of the six founding Avengers, but you would do anything for your girlfriend. She had her own reputation, and yes she could hold her own, but you would commit atrocities in every country in the world if she so much as hinted at it.

You would catch yourself staring at her, usually when she was stuffing her face in the kitchen, or when she was doing her hair in the bathroom and you would peek around the corner. She always caught your reflection and grinned at you, more often than not pulling a face to make you laugh.

Steve often came to you, asking if you wanted to go on the next mission together again. It was something you had both agreed to, along with swearing you wouldn’t get in the other’s way by being overprotective or ridiculously overbearing, (your words, not hers). He usually went along with it, but sometimes you saw his hesitation.

The harder missions often made him question your ability to compartmentalise, but you promised to uphold his stupid values and morals, and in turn, you would overlook him doing the same thing for Bucky and Sam.

‘Fine,’ he sighed, as usual regarding you as his counsel. 

Your approval was the first he sought in every situation, getting to the point where he started doing it for the most meaningless tasks. You, of course encouraged by your mischief making girlfriend and best friend, tended to lead him to idiotic decisions like agreeing to do the dishes for Y/N whenever she was tired, or roping him into supermarket shopping when it was Clint’s turn.

Maybe you abused the power, but you knew he would trust your judgement when it was necessary. That was unfortunately quiet a lot recently, your missions becoming more frequent and strenuous. Being Captain America’s right hand was a hard job, but your reward was seeing everyone you cared about (mostly Y/N) fighting and doing their part.

Your decisions had never backfired. The one Steve ignored was when he asked you to put Y/N on your team for the next mission, but you knew it wasn’t in her field of expertise, and it wasn’t the right kind of mission. Something felt wrong, but he insisted the Fury and Hill recommended her for the job.

It was thirty minutes until evac, and the three of you were cornered in the Snowy Mountains, pinned down, a third of you unconscious, another third bleeding out, and you the only one left majorly unscathed. 

You held your own fair share of wounds, none of which you tried to tend to as Steve lay as unconscious as he was when he was frozen, and Y/N losing more blood than you knew was safe. Panicking, freezing to death, no reception, everything was bleak, and you cursed Steve for not listening to you.

You were sure he felt bad enough on his own, but you were bored out of your mind as Y/N slipped in and out of consciousness, all of you awaiting the evac to notice your lack of arrival and come searching.

It was a mystery how the strange black markings resembling curse words in every language you knew covered what showed of Steve’s skin, especially since the only person who was allowed sharpie out of the whole team was you.

Steve would later remove that privilege, but until then, you tried to keep the cave you’d dragged them both to as dry and shut off as you could. The mission had been a success until Steve got a little too cocky with his shield, throwing it and missing by a quarter inch, setting off your carefully placed bomb three minutes early. 

You were all captured in the blast, but you were the closest to a pillar, barely getting behind it in time to avoid a spear of split metal shooting past your head and severing some of your hair. 

The trail you’d left to the cave was decipherable by SHIELD equipment only, not that AIM could possess the actual brainpower to solve any puzzle created by a madman such as Clint Barton. The code was embarrassingly easy, almost childlike, and in it’s simplicity it was completely unreadable to anyone but you and Clint.

SHIELD had made an entire system to decode it, but the only person other than you that could even use the program was Clint. He was so worried when you vanished from the face of the earth, on purpose or not, but you always let him know somehow. He would spend hours poring over footage, anything to make sure you were safe.

At least Steve had the insight to attach him to the emergency rescue team, even though he would have been just as good at what he’d sent your girlfriend to do instead. You knew she and Clint had a war going on with their similar skills, each more proficient in specific areas, but with their own spunk.

Clint loved caveman weaponry, whereas Y/N just really loved blowing shit up. Tony had taken her on as a protege in blowing shit up, but everyone decided you and Steve were probably better equipped, that or Tony was still mad she tried to blow up DUM-E and eight of his suits, almost succeeding. 

You held her close as her blood spread across the stone and snow, shaking and clinging to life, if not for you, then for spite. You mumbled softly into her hair, knowing she could barely hold onto consciousness as it was, but praying to gods you’d never known to save her.

When the cold hit you, your trio was left to the ability of Clint to save your lives. While he loved you and Steve and Y/N, the panic started to set in as the snow fell, obscuring the clues that led to your hiding place, and your chances of survival in the long night dwindled. 

You didn’t want to close your eyes until you heard someone, anyone, you didn’t even care if it was AIM at this point. Clint would find you all eventually, whether it be dead or alive. Your eyes flickered shut, the cold taking over the last part of your body that held on to any hope. You were alone, no idea if help was ever coming, but you were with her, and that was all you ever needed.

@marvelfansince08love @mymarvelwomen @imnotasuperhero

[ohblessit]

So I could not, for the life of me, get this idea out of my head. There’s no explicit smut (sorry), I guess it’s more cute than anything. I think I was intrigued by the idea that changing sexes wouldn’t really change Jaskier’s personality or his general dynamic with Geralt at all, but I also couldn’t help but use it as an excuse to get them together. Summary: A mage accidentally turns Jaskier into a woman. Geralt finds that it offers him a new perspective on his longtime companion.

“Are you fondling yourself?” Geralt asked incredulously.

Jaskier flushed and guiltily brought her face out of the cloak she was covered in. It settled back over her newly feminine body, draping more normally over the breasts she’d clearly just been examining with her hands.

“Well you can hardly blame me,” she proclaimed. “I’ve never been a woman before! It’s a very… novel experience. And they’re very nice breasts!”

She seemed quite pleased by that, and Geralt could hardly disagree. He’d seen them. After the drunken mage had accidentally hit Jaskier with a rogue spell, Jaskier had ripped his shirt to pieces in agony during the transformation.

Geralt’s heart had been in his throat, watching Jaskier scream and writhe on the ground, clawing at himself as his body morphed and shifted. There had been nothing he could do. He’d threatened the mage at swordpoint, demanding he fix whatever he’d just done, willing to commit any atrocity to make Jaskier’s pain stop. But the mage had stammered horrified apologies, stutteringly explaining that Jaskier would come to no harm, that the transformation was painful but reversible. 

His words had proven true enough as Jaskier’s cries began to fade into breathless sobs, body wracked by residual spasms, but the bard had been whole and conscious.

He’d also become perfectly female.

Geralt had quickly gone to his-- her side, helping her sit up as she got ahold of herself and began to take stock of what had happened.

She was smaller, her hair long and her shirt in tatters, revealing breasts that were indeed pert and shapely. Her trousers were gaping at the waist but uncomfortably tight around her hips, and her boots nearly dragged right off her feet as she shifted her legs beneath her.

Geralt hadn’t hesitated to throw his cloak around her to protect her modesty, whether or not Jaskier would ever actually consider developing some.

The mage had offered to reverse the spell then and there, but Jaskier had shuddered, her fingers digging into Geralt’s arm, obviously unwilling to go through such an ordeal again so quickly. Geralt had snarled at the drunkard and shielded Jaskier bodily. Even if Jaskier had been willing to endure it, Geralt wasn’t willing to trust a mage so clearly off his senses with Jaskier’s wellbeing.

But the mage’s bumbling but sincere apologies won a strained smile from Jaskier, and the bard had forgiven the idiot for his mishap, reassuring him that being female for a while wasn’t such a terrible burden, and that the mage really ought to go home and sleep it off. Geralt had still rather wanted to geld the man, but had gritted his teeth and silently conceded to Jaskier’s good graces.

After that, he hadn’t wasted any time lifting Jaskier onto Roach and getting them out of there. She’d sputtered a little about the manhandling, but settled quickly. She was still shaking and couldn’t walk in her oversized boots, which Geralt had slipped off her feet and stowed in a saddle bag.

Now they were camped out in a clearing, watered and fed, and Jaskier was looking much better. She was feeling better too, if her curiosity about her new body had finally taken precedence.

“What do I look like, by the way?” she asked suddenly, fingers prodding at her cheeks. “I wish we had a mirror.”

Geralt took a moment to consider the question.

“You still look like yourself. I’d be able to recognize you even if I hadn’t seen you transform. Your features are the same, only… softer. Your jaw is smaller and rounder. Your lips are bigger, not as thin as they were. Your eyes are the same.”

It wasn’t poetry, but it was descriptive enough. Jaskier seemed to think so too, for she seemed encouraged and nodded.

“That’s good. I don’t think I’d like looking completely different. I’m shorter, aren’t I? I feel shorter. Felt a little off-balance getting off of Roach and I keep misjudging distances with my arms. That’ll take some getting used to.”

Jaskier was starting to chatter again, a good sign that left Geralt feeling relieved.

“Yes. Your center of gravity is in your hips now, not your shoulders.” Hopefully it wouldn’t take too long for Jaskier to fully adjust, but it would take them some time to reach Temeria in any case. Geralt trusted that Triss would be able to reverse the spell, hopefully with the aid of some herbs that would leave Jaskier unconscious for the whole experience. Jaskier had seemed buoyed by that idea.

She was wiggling now, testing the hips Geralt had just mentioned. Though she was covered by the shapeless cloak, the movement stirred a familiar heat in Geralt, much to his surprise.

Geralt had never thought of Jaskier as a potential bed partner, and yet now the thought blindsided him without so much as a by-your-leave. He wondered why it hadn’t occurred to him before. It was true that he went in for women more often than men, but Jaskier had been attractive as a man too, even well-suited to Geralt’s personal tastes. Then again, Jaskier had been young when they met, far too young for Geralt to have considered bedding in good conscience, and once Jaskier was of a more suitable age they’d already fallen into the settled rhythms of their friendship, unspoken terms and boundaries long since established. Certain things had changed over the years, but Geralt had never revisited the implications of Jaskier’s clumsy flirting during their early days. Perhaps seeing Jaskier as a woman was simply offering him a fresh perspective on the matter.

It was something to think about.

“Sing something,” he said.

Jaskier looked surprised at the request, but began to sing the chorus to Toss a Coin. She only got through a few words before she cut off with a startled, “Oh..!” her hand going to her throat.

Geralt nodded. “Your voice is higher, if still somewhat low for a woman. You’ll need to adjust for that too.”

Frowning, Jaskier cleared her throat and tried again, an octave higher. It worked better that time, and Jaskier continued, making adjustments here and there and repeating until it sounded clear and melodious as usual.

“Well,” she said eventually, “At least I can still sing for our supper. Although I’m going to need new clothes first.”

Geralt had considered that already.

“We’ve enough coin for new shoes and a dress in the next town if we share a bed.”

It was frankly an improper suggestion under the circumstances, but he didn’t give much of a damn and neither did Jaskier, if the way she brightened and agreed to his proposed solution was any indication. They’d known each other for too long to suddenly be self-conscious of such things, no matter if one of them had just changed sexes.

Jaskier brought out her lute and practiced for a time, adjusting to her smaller hands and fingers, while Geralt tended the fire and allowed the music to lull him into a relaxed state.

At length, Jaskier stopped and shifted uncomfortably, then cleared her throat.

“I, uh. I have to relieve myself,” she announced, frowning down at her cloak-covered body.

“Oh,” Geralt replied, somewhat awkward. “Do you need help?”

Jaskier looked embarrassed about it but nodded, getting unsteadily to her feet. Geralt quickly rose to assist her.

The lack of shoes was a problem, and it wasn’t helped by the fact that Jaskier was still uncoordinated in her movements. She walked well enough in the grassy clearing without much support, but once they got to the trees she had to step gingerly on leaves and over branches so as not to cut her bare feet, wobbling a little before Geralt reached out to support her. But they made it without incident, and Geralt turned his back to give Jaskier some privacy once she was squatted beside a tree, one hand on its trunk.

For a minute, everything proceeded as normal. But then the time began to stretch on and Jaskier was suspiciously quiet. Geralt couldn’t help but glance over his shoulder when Jaskier made a soft little noise, then had to double-take when he realized what she was doing, even with her back turned.

“Jaskier,” he said severely. Jaskier jumped guiltily. “Are you fingering yourself?!”

“Sorry!” Jaskier squeaked. “Only it’s right there and this is my first good look at it, and then I got curious how things are from the other side, so to speak…”

Curious, she said. With Geralt standing three feet from her. If there was ever a thought in Geralt’s mind that Jaskier might not be interested in having Geralt in her bed, it was expelled then and there. Not if she was both bold enough and comfortable enough to do these things in his presence.

Decided, he approached Jaskier as she began to rise, abashed, and threw her over his shoulder. She shrieked in surprise, wriggling in his grasp as he stalked back to camp. He ignored her shouted protests and smacked her firmly on the bottom, making her gasp and still. He could smell her sudden arousal. Though she couldn’t see it, he smirked in anticipation.

“If you’re so curious,” he purred, “allow me to help you out.”

“Oh,” she breathed, and made no further protest.

Some time later they lay together on Geralt’s bedroll, sweaty and sated in the warm night air.

“Gods above, Geralt,” Jaskier uttered huskily, catching her breath. Geralt’s lips twitched up contentedly, quite proud of himself. He’d made Jaskier come twice, after all.

“I should write an ode to your cock.”

“Don’t you dare,” Geralt growled.

Jaskier beamed at him mischievously and retorted, “I’ll only sing it to you. How about…

“Oh Geralt, he has such a cock, Built like a prize bully ox, He set me to howling, Gave me such a plowing, He launched away both of my socks!”

For all that he tried, Geralt couldn’t hold his disapproving glare and snorted with mirth. Jaskier giggled victoriously and the next thing Geralt knew, they were dissolved into helpless laughter.

“So help me, if you ever sing that in public…” But Geralt had a feeling his threat was not as effective as he would have liked, considering he was still smiling.

“No?” Jaskier giggled with false innocence. “Maybe something a bit more subtle?

“A quiet man, one might surmise, Possesses a tongue with few gifts, But that’s a conclusion so very unwise, For his talents can send me to fits--”

In a desperate attempt to save his dignity, Geralt dug his fingers into Jaskier’s sides and began to tickle her without mercy.

[fanfic-fangirl]

My Little Mortal prologue 1

Because Every Fairy Tail, has to Start with a Tragedy pt 1

A/N: This is the prologue to my “My Little Mortal” series. It’s something I’ve worked very hard on, and one of the story’s I’m most proud of. In this part of chapter, there are no pairings. It’s pretty much, just plot, and setting up the next part of the story. It’s a Little Mermaid AU, featuring our favorite Asgardian Gods! It’s more of a Dark Fairy Tale, & less traditional. So if you’re thinking Disney’s, The Little Mermaid, you will probably be pretty disappointed.

I hope you enjoy!

Words: 1866

Warnings: violence, cheating, magic, dark magic abuse, lying, sexual assault (mention), emotional hurt, multiple character deaths

Welcome to the beginning of our story. A story about a kingdom under the sea and it's youngest prince. A dark prince, consumed by jealousy and grief.  Though, he wasn't always a dark prince. When he was a boy, he was the happiest he had ever been. He had the love of both his mother and father and an older brother to take him on made up adventures throughout the kingdom. Where his brother was favored by their father, Odin, he was favored by their mother, Frigga. There was no one more beautiful than she in all the realms, and no one more loving. She was a very powerful sorceress, loved by all in her kingdom. Where his older brother, Thor, was trained as a warrior by their father, the younger prince, Loki, was trained in the ways of magic, by their mother. He excelled in his studies, taking to the art very quickly. He was always a mischievous child, but as he learned magic, he began to use spells to play tricks, mostly on his older brother. His mother always praised his skills, nurturing and encouraging his natural talent.

With each year, the prince grew more and more powerful in his magic, more powerful than the king, or the queen. The king began to get suspicious of where such power was inherited from, and though the king, himself had magic, it was nothing like what the prince was capable of. The king knew, a child with magic like that, could only be the offspring of two very powerful sorcerers. Needing to have his suspicions confirmed, he confronted the queen about it. He was heartbroken to learn that she had gone to the most powerful sorcerer in all of his kingdom.

The king had been seriously injured in battle, she was told by the healers that they had done everything they could, but it was doubtful he would ever wake up. Distraught, the queen went to a powerful sorcerer, begged him for his help, begged him to use his magic to save her husband. The sorcerer agreed, but for a price. She promised him anything, anything as long as her husband would survive. The sorcerer was not kind, nor generous, he had been banished from the kingdom for his trickery and deceit, but he loved the queen, coveted her beauty. She had always been kind to him when he lived in the palace, when he had been one of the many advisers of the king. Where the others laughed and mocked him for being leaner and not built like a true warrior, she had always shown him kindness and respect. As time went on, he began to fall in love with her, wanted her for himself. He planned to steal her away, fleeing the kingdom, he was going to enchant her, make her fall in love with him. Somehow, the king found out about his plan, so on the night he planned to steal the queen away, the guards were waiting. The sorcerer was banished, never allowed to return to the kingdom again.

The sorcerer vowed revenge. He was finally able to take it when the queen came to him, desperate for him to save her husband's life. He agreed, told her to come back the next day and he would have a potion ready for her. She asked what his price was, he told her he would tell her when she returned. The queen went back to the palace, returning to the king. Before the light of the next day, she left, returning to the sorcerer. He was waiting, a hungry, lust filled smile on his face, a glowing potion in his hand. Upon seeing the smile, the queen knew his price. She also knew, that if she wanted her husband to live, she had no choice. She agreed to the sorcerer's price, gave her body to him willingly, allowed him to touch her, to taste her, to experience what only the king knew. She loved her husband more than anything, was willing to give anything to save him. The younger prince was the result of that price. The king did not blame her, he knew he would be willing to give up anything to save her, therefore could not fault her for her actions.

They agreed to never tell anyone, to never tell the young prince of his true heritage. The king promised he would love him just as much as Thor, would treat him as if he were his own son.

As time went on, the sorcerer became more and more obsessed with the queen. After she willingly gave herself to him, he had convinced himself that she loved him, that she was under some spell cast upon her by Odin. He began to plot a way to free her from the spell, so she could return to him, with their son, the young prince. The sorcerer knew she would bear a child for him, cast an enchantment to make sure of it. When he found out she'd given birth to another son, fair skin and dark hair, he knew the boy was his.

The sorcerer drove himself mad with his obsession, every attempt to break Odin's spell over her, failing. As a last resort, he had her and the young prince kidnapped. The young prince was not in his room and had been in the library studying magic that night, completely unaware that this was the only thing that saved him.

The sorcerer was furious the boy had been left behind, but he had the queen and that mattered more than anything. The young prince had spent his entire life in the palace, growing up believing Odin was his father. The sorcerer had seen the prince a few times, saw how he looked up to Odin, tried to please the king by being a warrior. With the queen, now by his side, the sorcerer knew he would be able to have another child with her.

The sorcerer cast his magic, to break Odin's spell, convinced it had worked, he freed the queen from her bindings. Once free, the queen attacked him and tried to escape, the sorcerer did everything in his power to keep her with him, but she fought back with everything she had.

The sorcerer pleaded with her to break Odin's spell, to look in her heart and see that she was meant to be with him. He knew she loved him as much as he loved her, the young prince was proof of that. The queen lashed back, said she had never, nor could she ever, love such a vile creature. The young prince was not a result of her love for him, but for her love of the only man, her heart had ever yearned for.

The sorcerer became blinded by rage, losing control of his power, in turn, losing the life of the queen as well.  Realizing what he had done, the mistake he had made and knowing that once the king found out, he would loose his own life. Quickly coming up with a solution, he decided to make it look like she had been killed by the Kingdom Above the Sea.

He removed everything from her body and wrapped her in a net, he took her to a place he knew the surface dwellers frequented and he left her. Left her floating in the current, ungraceful and undignified. With one final look, he left. He swam where he knew the king would never find him and he hid. Bidding his time, until he could approach the young prince. His son.

It didn't take long for the king to notice his wife missing. He sent out search parties in all directions to find her. It didn't take long for her body to be found. She was brought back in secret, not wanting to alarm the princes. The young prince had always prided himself on being able see through lies and find out any secret. This was no different. He heard whispers that she had been found, floating in the current. So quietly, he waited and followed the guards who brought her back. They took her body to the king, and the young prince hid, and he listened.  He listened when they said she had been found near the human fishing grounds. Listened when they explained that she had been found tangled in a net, how she had been stripped of everything and left to drift with the current.  Listened when they said it had been the humans.

This infuriated the young prince more than anything ever before. In all the centuries he had been alive, there was nothing that had ever made him feel this blindingly angry. He didn't understand how the humans could commit such an atrocity. His mother had always told him they were understanding, kind, and very fascinating creatures. She had loved them dearly, had even been known to save them during fierce storms. The prince didn't understand how these creatures could kill so recklessly.

Not able to control his rage any longer, he burst into the room and upon seeing the lifeless body of his mother, demanded the king take his revenge on the humans. Demanded he flood their cities, sink all their ships and kill every last one of them. The king looked at his son with nothing but compassion and sorrow in his eyes, as he refused to raise a hand against the Kingdom Above the Sea.

This only enraged the prince even more. The prince vowed that if the king was going to do nothing, then he would take matters into his own hands. He would make the surface dwellers pay for what they had done.  Before the king could stop him and explain himself, the young prince left. He left the kingdom. He remembered hearing whispers of a dark and powerful sorcerer who had been banished from the kingdom. He knew he had to find this sorcerer, plead with the sorcerer to teach him stronger magic that would allow him to destroy all those who lived above the surface.

After many nights, searching for the sorcerer, the prince had finally found him. The creature was weak, broken and quite mad. The prince attributed it to all the centuries of being alone in the open ocean. Leaving the sorcerer to his madness, the prince began to explore the cave he now called home, finding a small library in the back, he began to flip through the books. These were like no books he had ever seen in the palace. Full of dark spells and enchantments. Dark Magic.

“I can teach you.” The sorcerer offered.

The prince spun around, surprised to see the sorcerer behind him, a dark smile gracing his lips, the madness seeming to have completely vanished.

“At what price?” the prince asked, knowing knowledge like this was not given freely.

“Consider it a favor to the queen. A payment for her kindness and a punishment for her murderers.”

The prince examined the sorcerer, looking for the lie, the trick, anything that would suggest he wanted something else. He sensed nothing.

“Then teach me.”

[choicesfansstuff]

On Kamilah and the MC’s Beach Conversation

I know that some fans and Kamilah stans felt disappointed or perhaps even angry when the vampire queen talked to the MC about Gaius in the diamond scene. And I understand. But personally, I think that this particular scene is important because it portrays a significant turning point in Kamilah and the MC's relationship. It also showcases development and growth on Kamilah's part as a character.

But before I delve into the analysis proper, I would just like to say that I think that it’s important for Kamilah and the MC to properly address the former's past relationship with Gaius. This is because I believe that if she and the MC are ever going to have a serious relationship, they both must be open and honest with each other. In addition, I think that they also need to accept hard-to-swallow facts about one another for them to have a stable, healthy, and trusting relationship.

So, with that being said, I will now proceed to my analysis of the scene:

Gaius's return has obviously shaken Kamilah. She expressed that his return also brought back memories of her violent past – memories of her past deeds, which she eventually came to regret.

Kamilah is haunted not just by her former lover's return, but also by feelings of regret and guilt over her past actions. She described her past self as a monster that thrived on bloodlust. On this, Kamilah stated that after several centuries of being such a monster, she eventually came to realize the error of her ways. As such, she decided to reinvent herself by changing for the better. 

And as a way of doing so, Kamilah chose to deny herself any form of meaningful pleasure or joy as a form of penance and atonement. Having committed so many atrocities in her long life, Kamilah had come to think that she does not deserve true happiness.

The above-mentioned established facts show that in the present storyline, Kamilah is internally struggling with her past and her feelings of guilt and self-resentment. Gaius's return painfully reminded her of what she used to be and how she actually enjoyed committing terrible things. She also seems troubled and horrified at the fact that she genuinely loved Gaius even though she's always known of his dark and monstrous nature. Such an internal struggle is exceedingly burdensome, and to keep it to oneself is damaging - both emotionally and mentally, in the long run.

This is why it is essential to express one's problems and struggles to others who they can trust. On this, Kamilah opening up to the MC was a significant defining point in their relationship. The act of sharing and unloading her inner turmoil to the latter must have taken great courage on Kamilah's part. This is because, for a very, very long time, Kamilah has shut herself away from most people. She admitted that her coldness and flippancy serve both as forms of atonement and as shields to protect her from getting hurt. But by sharing her internal struggles, Kamilah let her guard down and allowed herself to become exposed and vulnerable to the MC. This is an indicator that she feels comfortable with and that she trusts the other woman. After all, people, in general, do not share their deepest and most difficult troubles with just anyone.

This scene illustrates Kamilah's growth as a character. She no longer feels the constant need to shut everyone out. She also no longer feels that she must bear her burdens alone. She is slowly but surely starting to reach out to others and to form meaningful relationships again. And she is currently establishing such a relationship with the MC. Additionally, she has also started to allow herself to feel joy whenever she is with the latter.

On the MC's part, in the story, she has tried and continues to try her best to understand and support Kamilah. In this particular diamond scene, she helped the vampire process her feelings and struggles so that the latter can feel more at peace with herself. She also expressed that she understands that the vampire is now an entirely different and better person compared to who she was before. On this, it's worth noting that the MC has never shown fear or resentment towards Kamilah despite having already seen some of her darker memories. This indicates that the MC honestly does acknowledge that the vampire has genuinely changed.

All in all, their relationship is a slow and steady burn. In the storyline, Kamilah is slowly starting to become more open, and she is also gradually allowing the MC to see more of her vulnerable side. She has also already started to become more expressive about her concern and feelings for the mortal woman. And on her part, the MC has been and continues to be patient. While she occasionally tries to coax Kamilah into sharing her feelings, she doesn't push the vampire into doing so if the latter does not feel comfortable. This shows that she respects Kamilah's boundaries. And whenever Kamilah is willing to share, the MC has demonstrated that she is always ready to listen and to offer words of comfort and encouragement.

[alexanderlightweight]

Pretenders

(Part of the Michael Guerin Week 2019)

Prompt: Welcome To The Party

Warnings: Angst, Mentions of Canonical Character Death, Mentions of Child Abuse, Homophobia, Ableism, Torture (basically Jesse Manes warning)

“Welcome to the party,” Michael said and he let a grin curl his lips into something cruel and far less than the human facade he normally wore.

From the small glass box that he was contained in, Jesse Mane’s usually impassive face twisted into a cold snarl that had haunted Michael’s dreams for nearly a decade.  This was Michael’s turn to be the monster on the other side.  His turn to see Jesse suffer.

Decades of crimes, of pain and hate and the two things that had hurt Michael the worst had been the people Jesse had stolen from him.  His mother and Alex.

“Did you really think we were done with you?”  Michael asked, keeping his tone nonchalant and grinned, a feral and predatory smile that showed his teeth, “that we’d let your crimes stand without making you pay?”

“You’re monsters,” Jesse said, believing himself correct even as he was the one locked away.

“No, we’re survivors.  Sometimes, that means shedding a little blood.  Last time it was mine, this time it’s yours.”  

Jesse didn’t show any obvious, outward reaction.  The tiniest narrowing of his eyes was enough however.  Michael didn’t need denial, or pleas or even for Jesse to confess.  That wasn’t what this was about, this was to bide time and that’s all he needed.  

Time.

Breaking Jesse Manes wasn’t going to work.  Michael had known that going into this.  Alex had warned him, in the one conversation that they’d had, that Michael wouldn’t be able to do it.

It had stung, being told that he wasn’t capable, that this was one more thing he’d fail at in life.  One more thing that Alex didn’t have faith in him for.  It had taken a strong hand gripping his shoulder and meeting warm, dark brown eyes for him to realize it was a good thing.

“You don’t want to be able to break someone like my dad,” Alex had told him gently, “but you’re more than enough to distract him.”  Alex had given his arm a squeeze, like a one-handed embrace and Michael had longed for a hug but Alex had pulled away, stepped out of his space and then left the room.  In the end, Michael couldn’t be sure if Alex had left because of what he was about to do, or if it was because the thought of Maria lingered between them like an invisible wall.

It didn’t make sense for Alex to be jealous but then, nothing about Alex had ever made sense to Michael.  He was as intricate as the galaxy and so much harder to understand, Michael would always love that about him.  No matter where they stood, Michael would always love him.

That was what encouraged him, got him through staring into the eyes of the man who had been responsible for the horrors and atrocities committed against his people.  Who had stolen Michael’s family away and hammered at Michael until his bones and hope and love were crushed.

What he wouldn’t give to crush Jesse in return.

Instead, he grinned and took off the glove of his left hand and Jesse’s eyes widened at the sight of his healed hand.

“You didn’t want me to be able to touch him,” Michael said softly, “but I never needed two hands for that.”

That got a response, a disgusted curl of Jesse’s mouth and the gleam of hatred that magnified in his eyes.  He didn’t speak, but Michael didn’t need him to.  

“This, this just shows that nothing you could ever do to me is permanent.  Those people you had trapped, my people,” Michael said and he doesn’t actually believe anything of what he’s saying.  Even without the physical evidence, what Jesse broke will never be healed.  “I’m stronger than them and I’m stronger than you.”

“Alex isn’t,” Jesse said and Michael hated how he spoke Alex’s name like a curse.  “Alex isn’t even whole anymore.  Imagine how easy it would be to break him completely.”

“Alex isn’t here for you to hurt,” Michael told him.  Because while he’d known Alex would be brought up and was far away, safe.  The threat still struck him deeply.  As if to punctuate that feeling, the chair Jesse was strapped to rattled dangerously.  It made them both pause, Manes as he regrouped and Michael as he tried to gain control.

“Kick a dog enough while it’s a pup and even grown it always remembers,” was all Manes said, a cruel gleam to his smile, “Alex may be pretending he knows what he’s doing but soon enough he’ll remember why he shouldn’t go against me.”  

Michael bit his cheek, digging the nails of his left hand deep into the unscarred flesh in a desperate bid to remember the pain, remember what consequences felt like and keep his temper under control.

His powers were deliberate.  They’d had to be.  Unlike Max and Isobel he hadn’t grown up in a loving and caring home.  He’s grown up under harsh words and harder hits and exorcisms.  It had been hide or be hurt and his life had been filled with both.  

When his powers activated, it’s because he wanted them to.  Max caused a city wide blackout without trying but Michael had never once caused an earthquake.  Not because he couldn’t, but because he controlled it.

“Alex is stronger than you’ve ever given him credit,” Michael said and he grit his teeth when Jesse laughed.

“You’d like to believe that, but he always did go running when I told him to, didn’t he?”  

“Moments of weakness, of fear don’t get to determine the strength and integrity of someone,” Michael bit out and he felt tired now, less in control and he knew it probably showed.  He hated it, hated that even trapped in glass Jesse knew where to hit and he lashed out with his powers.  Took the chair and Jesse with it up against the wall, let the world rattle and shake and crack around him.  Knew that he looked otherworldly, knew that when Jesse started laughing, a gloating and ugly sound and Michael continued to let his power flood out.  

After all.  He was but a distraction gaining them time.

It felt like hours and seconds both when Isobel’s fingers brushed gently over his shoulder, “I’m done.”  She said softly, pressing her arm against his in silent solidarity and then looked at Jesse’s battered but confident form.

“You got it then?”

“Three locations that might contain more people like us,” she said softly, “you did good.  He was so focused on you that he didn’t even notice me.”

Michael nodded and didn’t even spare Jesse a glance, after all, this was nothing but a dream.  He closed his eyes as Iz slipped her hand in his, opened them again to the white and sterile walls of a hospital.  Jesse Manes lay in a hospital bed, Valenti observing his vitals as Liz watched the doors.  His body was jerking, face creased in pain but Valenti didn’t call for nurses or look worried, just marked something on his chart and then reached for a needle.

“Patient had an adverse reaction to one of medications,” Valenti said easily, “fortunately I was in the area and was able to monitor his condition.”  

Michael nodded and clenched his fist, a part of him wishing that it had been real and he’d done more.  For now, they had a target and a rescue to plan.

AN: I’m going to try really hard to catch up, so there is that but yeah. This is VERY late.  

[codicesandflora]

Ineffable Inktober-Day Fourteen-Miracle

This ficlet takes place during World War II. Consequently, there are references/mentions to the awful things that were going on during that era of history. 

Miracles (AO3 Link)

“Aziraphale, we need to talk about your job performance of late.”

Aziraphale nodded, making sure to keep at least a trace of a placating smile on his face. He knew that this conversation with Gabriel had been coming for a while. He just wished it could have been later rather than sooner.

“The unrest in Europe has created plenty of opportunities to spread throughout humankind,” Gabriel continued. “Humans who had already been corrupted by the Opposition are committing atrocities on a grand scale.”

“Yes, it’s terrible,” Aziraphale said. “Suffering is widespread.”

“Indeed,” Gabriel said. “It has certainly increased our responsibilities on Earth. And those responsibilities include guiding and aiding those humans who are committed to the cause of Heaven. They will be vital to our struggle to push back against this evil.”

“They will, and they have already started to work against Hell’s awful agenda,” Aziraphale said. “Multiple people with influence in human societies have already begun to rally the masses against Hitler’s regime. I think it won’t be long before there is….”

“So you know how important it is that we focus on helping the good humans carry out Her Edicts,” Gabriel said. “And yet I see from your reports that you’ve let yourself be distracted by ‘pet projects’.”

Aziraphale ground his jaw, an old anger stirring that he made sure to keep tightly clamped down. “I hardly think rescuing people who have been threatened by the Nazis could be seen as frivolous activity. The horrors that occur in those camps….”

“And it’s praiseworthy that you are assisting them, Aziraphale,” Gabriel said with a wave of his hand. “Heaven applauds your efforts in that venture. No, what concerns us is this other item you mentioned in your latest report.”

The archangel pointed to a line toward the bottom, and Aziraphale nodded. Yes, he figured that there would be questions about that.

“You’ve been spending time with a known war profiteer and a member of the Nazi party,” Gabriel continued.

“Ah yes, Oskar,” Aziraphale replied, his expression as neutral as possible. “Well, you see, I believe that he could be drawn toward the Light and could do some valuable things to help….”

“Valuable? Aziraphale, the man is a lost cause. He drinks, he commits adultery, and he engages in promiscuous behavior. And he is clearly using those people in his factories for his own ends. What possible use could Heaven have for a man like that?”

“Yes, I know that he has flaws and has done bad things,” Aziraphale said. “But I believe that there is good in him. Good that could overcome the evil he has surrounded himself with. He just needs the right encouragement to….”

“Aziraphale, we can’t have you wasting Heaven’s miracles and blessings on a Nazi,” Gabriel said in a voice that indicated that no argument would be allowed.

“I promise, no miracles or blessings,” Aziraphale said, shaking his head for emphasis.

“And just what do you expect to accomplish with this human if you can’t use miracles or blessings?” Gabriel asked, astonished.

“By doing what I have been doing,” Aziraphale said, his voice steady and calm despite the turmoil inside him.

“Which is?”

“I talk to him sometimes. Most of the time, I simply listen. I listen to the thoughts and feelings he is grappling with. I let him know that he isn’t alone, even if he may feel more alone than he has ever felt in his entire life.”

“And that’s it?” Gabriel asked, his incredulity written into every line of his expression. “You just talk and listen to him? And that’s supposed to get him to stop being the bad human he has shown himself to be?”

“I know he has made mistakes and will probably make more,” Aziraphale said. “But I don’t believe that that makes him unredeemable. After all, if a human’s past makes them unable to earn Heaven’s forgiveness, what is the point of our efforts on Earth?”

Gabriel let out a long sigh. “Yes, of course. But I still think that this is a waste of time and energy that could be spent elsewhere.”

“I won’t neglect my other duties,” Aziraphale said.

Gabriel nodded and waved a hand indicating that the meeting was over. Aziraphale was certain that this was the only warning he would get. If there were any more questions about his conduct in the near future, he would get another strongly worded memo. And Heaven’s memos didn’t involve ink and paper.

---------

“They are closing my factory, Mr. Fell. I’ve thought about trying to get it moved. To Brnĕnec, perhaps. But my workers. They tell me that it would be easy just to get new workers from the camps rather than transport the people working for me now.”

Aziraphale nodded. The war wasn’t going well for Germany even though the Nazi government refused to admit it. Any doubts about Oskar’s intentions for his munitions factories could be twisted into accusations of treason. And a man accused of treason would be an ideal choice for a desperate government looking for someone to make an example of.

“Oskar, there are many in the camps who would be better off in your factories,” he said. “But the workers you leave behind….”

“Yes, yes I know what their fate would be. And I do know people within the Gestapo who could get me what I need for a price. But I wonder…I wonder if I….”

Aziraphale placed a hand on Oskar’s arm. “I know you will do the right thing.”

---------

Thankfully, the war didn’t last much longer after that.

It was late evening when he watched Oskar and his wife pack a few belongings so they could flee. They were sure to be hunted, and Aziraphale ached to bless their journey so it would be a safe one.

“I hear that there are people who are looking for him,” Gabriel said, suddenly appearing beside him. “I imagine he will get a fair trial.”

“There are over a thousand people who are alive because of his actions,” Aziraphale said quietly. “He shouldn’t have to endure a trial at all.”

“Aziraphale, how did you know?” Gabriel asked. “How did you know that this human, Schindler, would do what he did? According to your reports, there were no blessings or miracles used. So how did you know that he would save those people?”

“That’s the interesting thing about humans,” Aziraphale said, his eyes still watching the preparations to leave. “Once in a while, they create miracles of their own. Even the ones who most believe are unredeemable.”