#i might do more of these posts for like.. phase 2 + 3 in the future

[valiant-portabella-pirkko]

fun fact: I actually have not 1, not 2, but 3 dedicated playlists of OST-style music for my various Guild Wars 2 AUs, and... that, of all ways, is the closest I get to "outlining" my stories. every sequence has a dedicated track that I picked out according to what I'd imagine playing in-game if it was an actual playable story arc in Guild Wars 2.

Regrowth's playlist has 59 songs and Flourish has 28.

then the Tideturners have one too, with a grand total of 22.

......... I don't have a problem,

[narcjsistx]

𝐕𝐀𝐑𝐈𝐎𝐔𝐒 𝐇𝐂𝐒 𝐈𝐍 𝐀 𝐑𝐄𝐋𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐇𝐈𝐏 𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐇 𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐌 | reo, isagi, kaiser (part one)

𝐌𝐘 𝐌𝐀𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓 ; take a look, trust me!

— reo mikage

✶ don't even remotely expect to lift a finger in his presence. the princess treatment in his relationships is MANDATORY, he simply loves to do the things that the people he loves want. it would be something like "I know you can do it, but I'm your boyfriend, so let me do it for you"

✶ I think one of the things he loves most about his partners is when they are dressed in shades of purple or maaaybe white, in clothes given by him. do you want to bring him to his knees? do as I tell you, trust me!

✶ kind of guy who would post you everywhere, like: his ig profile feed is made up of 80% of posts with you or dedicated to you, the remaining 20% ​​are photos relating to soccer. he loves to show you off, and above all he does all those trends (even the cringe ones) like posting your girlfriend with a certain song on a certain day

what would he post on socials ↓

✶ his concept of family is quite normal, sooner or later he would like to have a family, actually, the idea of ​​getting married has never displeased him. as a child, being the only heir of the Mikage, he had to bear all the expectations alone... therefore, his idea would be to at least have two children, not that he wants to share the expectations between them! simply as a child he suffered a lot from being the only child

✶ jealosy level: 4/10 (he's not the jealous type! he might only be more so in cases where he sees someone trying with you EXTREMELY too hard)

✶ flirtiness level: 6/10

✶ pet names: "babe" / "precious"

—————————————

— isagi yoichi

✶ even though on the field he seems to have bipolar disorder, isagi is literally one of the most possibily boyfriend in the entire verse in my opinion. he's just a chill guy who takes soccer a little too seriously, but hey, you love him for that reason right? yeah, absolutely yes

✶ he's someone who would be embarrassed by a kiss even after years and years of being in a relationship. at the beginning of your story, he had to take a lot of his courage just to ask you if he could hold your hand, but over time he got used to it. with kisses, well... he still gets embarrassed, even though he's often the one who initiates them. he's just a sweet coward in this things

✶ he is someone who, in my mind, cares a lot about gifts related to the phases of the relationship, such as those for the first month together, the six months and so on. not huge gifts, he keeps those more for more important dates, but gifts like letters, stuffed animals or bracelets found at random moments of the day and which immediately reminded him of you for some reason that only he knows

what would he post on socials ↓

✶ his concept of family is actually based a lot on what he had. he doesn't exactly have a preference on the number of children, one or five would be fine, he just knows that he will love them no matter what. getting married has never been a thought he's actually spent 5 minutes thinking about every now and then, but now with you he's pretty sure that asking you to spend your life with him is a great excuse to see you in the white dress

✶ jealosy level: 2/10

✶ flirtiness level: 3/10 (more in private, but absolutely not in public, he just can't do it)

✶ pet names: "cutie" / "y/n chan"

—————————————

— micheal kaiser

✶ your relationship is certainly interesting, maybe not one of the healthiest, but you can't say you don't care for each other. Kaiser definitely has some problems related to trusting or in any case "letting himself be discovered" by other people, but surely you are the closest person to him at the moment, hell, you are literally the emperor's girlfriend!. micheal knows very well that he is not a simple person and just the fact that you continue to not let him go, and he wouldn't blame you, means a lot. will he ever admit it? no, obviously not, because he also has a problem, or perhaps more than one, with expressing himself

✶ Ness, one way or another, will have to worship you too. Ness probably just wants to strangle you because you stole the little attention Kaiser gave him, but if Kaiser says he has to worship you like he would him, Ness will do it without a word. Kaiser doesn't even minimally accept someone saying anything remotely comparable to an insult to you, let's say his love language is to protect your respect. he wouldn't mind throwing a punch at someone who even called you "stupid", it's something he can't stand

✶ even if you are not cheering for him at the stadium when he plays, which is quite strange because you are there all the time, you already know beforehand that if he scores a goal, it will obviously be dedicated to you. it's something he always found beautiful when he was little, when he saw videos on public screens in Berlin: seeing then-famous footballers dedicate goals to their girlfriends seemed so exciting. he's the emperor now, right? he must repay his empress somehow for always being so good to him

what would he post on socials ↓

✶ well, we all know that Micheal didn't grow up with any concept of family, or rather, he never actually had one. having children actually scares him, and the same thing happens even if he just thinks about getting married. he is simply afraid, and indeed he is sure, that sooner or later everything would turn into what he experienced in Germany with his father. it would take a LOT of reassurance, and maybe therapy, to eventually have children and get married. he actually wouldn't be a bad father, because he knows what it's like to live in a toxic house with someone who doesn't really love you, and he doesn't want his heir to go through the same thing he went through when was a kid. Kaiser is not like his father, and never will be, and just the thought of being like this with his kids makes him vomit

✶ jealosy level: 8/10

✶ flirtiness level: 9/10

✶ pet names: "schatz" / "mein liebling" / "doll"

[astrologylunadream]

Do They Have Romantic Feelings for You? 🫧🌸💋 (Pick a card/Tarot love reading)

Hey it's Lunadream!💕 Here is a lovely reading on the person on your mind and if they have romantic feelings towards you!🥰 hope you find your message🎀 It's been a while since I've posted a reading! I've been taking care of my personal life, and working on readings as I can. Thank you all for your patience and love~💗

Notice: Only take what resonates because the most important thing is your own judgement!♡ If anything doesn't resonate, don't worry! It's not your message right now <3 (Entertainment purpose only. All rights reserved)

Now, shall we begin~? ^w^ Think of the your person, and pick whichever pile that fits the energy you're feeling~💌🫧

Pile 1🩷

Pile 2🍒

Pile 3🌸

Pile 4🍓

Take your time and choose carefully with the heart~♡

On to the readings —> 💕

Pile 1🩷

Sign energy: Flame, Love at first sight, Late, First love, Teeth, 9th house, Earth, Sun, 12th house, Aquarius,💬🦀🤙💡

🫧Your person's energy: Okay so first this person could be in a no contact situation for some of you, no surprise this is someone that most of you have romantic feelings towards!🥰💗 They are very bright and it's like they can light up the entire world around them. Can we talk about this person's smile?🤭 It's just so attractive and beautiful. Twin flame/soulmate energy up in here!!!❤️‍🔥 There is a lot of curiousity about your person, you are fascinated in them and this could be because they are different than you in some way.👀 Your person could be from a different background/culture or have some unique strange quality that makes them stand out to you✨️ This is already so cute omg pile 1 you're so curious about this person~ So there is Sagittarius, Leo, Pisces and Aquarius energy for your person. Earth energy oh also there is some Cancer symbolism with the crab emoji so that may resonate for some of you.😘 For some of my pile 1's they could be born in a late phase of their sun sign, so like instead of being a leo in july they could be a late leo in august kind of thing so just apply that to their sun sign!☀️ Yeah so for A LOT of my pile 1's this is a twin flame or soulmate connection, it feels so fated omg😩🩷 This could be your first love for some of you, or a love at first sight kind of happened with this person. I just feel there is a lot of love for your person, it's really sweet you guys💗 Now some of your person's traits, they have special qualities about them. They're intelligent and have great ideas💭 They are also creative and communicate in a strange yet captivating way. It may be hard to understand them sometimes. Specific message for some in this pile you may have met them online, studying abroad or during travel and fell so hard😂😭 This person is so unique to you aha you see them as something special⭐️

💗Do they have romantic feelings for you: Roots, Winter, Chiron, Build, Head, Fire, Aries, 11th house, Leo, Neptune,🖤🤞🚷😮‍💨 Wow okay there is a surprisingly intense energy I'm getting. This is more of a deep physical attraction they have for you, also a lot of erotic desire. You could be in this persons mind, I mean deep in it😳 I feel like they may have a damaged ego or some sort of self doubt about their feelings for you guys, maybe they want to make wrong assumptions about you in their head for whatever reason? At the bottom of this is a lot of heavy passion for you, but I think they're trying to convince themselves otherwise.😕 Yeah they might be trying to turn themselves against you in their mind, or not letting themselves desire you because it brings out a more dark aggressive side to them.💢❤️‍🔥 Yeah you definitely set them on fire, their mind gets heated with you😭 I'm surprised by the physical tension on this one, I feel like your person is having a huge inner conflict about you. They may want you gone only because they can't handle themselves fantasizing about taking you over every night😭🔞 I won't go into detail but this person is fighting their demons about you LOL pile 1 your person is hooked🪝 Winter may be a significant time for their feelings. Yeah I think this person is loosing it about you, but they're just like telling themselves not to give in to their intense passion you bring out of them.🤯❤️‍🔥 Like they know you unleash a monster out of them and they're just like "god no please no" lol I'm hearing The Office.😂 They are unconsciously fantastizing a lot, some hot scenarios with you. They wanna believe you're bad for them, because you have such a magnetic pull on them my pile 1's!🤭 You are stuck in this person's mind, they're burning with passion yet trying to deny it. They get so fired up about you that it burns them out easily. They may feel you drain their energy, because you're so captivating to them. But they are like a moth to your flame I'm hearing🔥 Dangerous attraction vibes~✨️ Pile 1 you are deeply desired they can't even fight themselves!!😍

💌Messages from your person: This is consuming, Nothing is stopping you, I see us together, Don't tell me, You've been busy, You're the one that I want, Tell me, You're my addiction (Yess so much intense attraction for my pile 1's😭❤️‍🔥) Extra cards: Achievement, Together, Seen, Want, Art, 8th house, Gemini, Leo, Aries, Uranus (They want you, they want you guys to be seen together and not hide your connection you are like a work of art to them😭 hot energy)

Thank you my pile 1's! If you feel this resonated, you may tap the heart to claim this message!🎀

I hope you enjoyed your reading! ʚ(｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )ɞ If you did be sure to let me know pile 1 with the pink heart emoji~🩷 Thanks for scrolling through, Hugs hugs hugs!! See you in the next reading🤗💋💞

Pile 2🍒

Sign energy: Past life, Nice, Question, Unhealthy, Anonymous, Libra, Eros, Aquarius, Juno, North node,🩱🐦‍🔥😁🕵️‍♀️

🫧Your person's energy: Wow okay so this is someone physically appealing to you guys, some of you find them really hot I'm getting😂 This person has a nice figure, there is a feminine touch to their appearance especially something about their lower body. They have a nice smile, actually it's really hot😳❤️‍🔥 Signs coming through are Libra and Aquarius so mostly air energy, I am getting a venus vibe from your person also venus-uranus aspects are possible.🩷 Oh okay so some of you may be viewing this person's social media often, many of my pile 2's are spending way too much time on the internet📱💔 Please take breaks from too much time online my lovely pile 2's you will feel much better I promise!✨️ Some of you could be frequenting your person's profile or photos online to an extent that may not be healthy, this could be you or them take what resonates. This may be someone you're interacting with inderectly or behind a screen, it's also possible that you aren't revealing your idenity to this person.👤🔍 Now that could be the other way around for some of you in this pile, they could be the one stalking you from online or looking at your photos it may even be both if that resonates!🫢 This person speaks very well and charms others easily with their uniqueness. They make you very curious and you want to know more about them, some of you may view this person as marriage material💍💕 You may want to commit to them in the future, oh and it is very likely that this is someone you knew from a past life! Your person is intelligent and charming, and that alone ignites sudden passion from within you🔥❤️‍🔥 It may feel like the tempature rises when you see them.🌡 Like all they would have to do is sit still and look pretty and just that makes you want to grab them and kiss them!!!😩💋 They can really turn you on tbh😳 And you wonder if they feel that way about you! Their figure is really special and attractive to you 🍑😉😉😉 They probably dress really well, they're so appealing and attractive!💗

💗Do they have romantic feelings: Eternity, Uniqueness, Guardian, Song, High, Uranus, 4th house, Chiron, North node, Taurus,💣🎤⚓️🕹 So they see you as someone special!🥰 This is really looking like yes honestly, I mean you are just so unique and unlike any other to this person.😩💖 You make them feel safe and healed, they feel a very comforting type of love from my pile 2's. They may love to listen to songs you like or share similar interests in music!🎶 There may be a song that will feel special to only you two in the future, could be a song that plays at your wedding😂🙈💓 Whatever the case there will be a song that is special to you and them, maybe they will listen to your favorite song and it will become their favorite.🥺 Aw another thing, your voice is really attractive to them. You are like a guardian to your person, they feel safe and protected by you. You are like the anchor that keeps your person from drifting far into the ocean, I also think they love your playful side🩷 I'm hearing "You're the bomb!" Lol maybe they find you very entertaining and fun.🥰 There is a lot of venus energy in this reading so there is many romantic feelings from your person. You feel like home to them, and it would be hard for this person to ever let you go.😭💔 You give them comfort and a sense of belonging, they see you as a knight in shining armor (regardless of gender) and feel saved by you. It's really sweet you guys this person has such pure love for you. They feel like you guys have a future together, and by future they mean possibly eternity.💗🥺 Haha they really care about you a lot and are so fascinated by you. Just know this person thinks you are so special and unique!⭐️ You are such an individual to your person, they admire the way you stand out and love this about you😭 I'm hearing "let you steer the boat" maybe they feel safe and would entrust you to take control of any situation involving you both. I'm also hearing "high hopes" so they feel very hopeful and confident in your abilities that is so sweet omg they think highly of you😢💕

💌Messages from your person: I have dark thoughts about you, What is love? Forget it, You're my angel, I would reject anyone for you, Is it too late now? Only god knows, I would write you a love song. (So cute🥰 Pile 2 you are their angel!) Extra cards: Conflict, Spring, Cafe, Myth, Words, Fire, Aquarius, Moon, 6th house, 3rd house (There may be a blockage in communication or being able to contact this person for some of you, or it was a hurtful conversation between you for some of my pile 2's but whatever the case your person wishes to communicate with you and be able to understand and connect with you better💗🫂)

Thank you my pile 2's! If you feel this resonated, you may tap the heart to claim this message!🎀

I hope you enjoyed your reading! ʚ(｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )ɞ If you did be sure to let me know pile 2 with the cherry emoji~🍒 Thanks for scrolling through, Hugs hugs hugs!! See you in the next reading🤗💋💞

Pile 3🌸

Sign energy: Flower, Do or die, More, Note, Mine, Juno, Earth, Leo, South node, 5th house,🕳🙅‍♂️🤙🦀

🫧Your person's energy: Haha so the first thing I noticed is that Flower came out and this pile has flowers on it's imagery I think that's very interesting.☺️ There is Leo energy as well as earth energy for this pile's person! Picking up on 5th house placements from your person, also there is cancer symbolism aswell. Another thing is they could have earth over their 6th house for some of my pile 3's. they have a glowing presence about them🌟🤭 Their gaze just came to mind, maybe their eyes draw you in like a black hole lol🕳🖤 They are very attractive and noticable, people from their past keep coming back for more I'm hearing. To you guys, I'm getting you think of them as YOUR person like only yours.😳 Like they belong to you, because you wanna claim this person.💍😱 I am getting a vibe this is a look don't touch kind of person, like they know people staring at them and they're just like no touching.😎🖐🚫 They don't like people to get too close to them for some of you, but this is because they are actually very delicate🥺💞 That could be from something they've been through or going through. This could be someone you lost contact with for some of you and the connection may have ended but you persist!✊️ Your person is specifically very talented in their hobbies, and are usually open to the type of feedback that helps them grow😇 Okay for a few of you this person doesn't wanna talk to you take whatever resonates for my pile 3's! You may have tried to call them or contact them in some way, you could be someone from their past aswell. This person is very caring and protective over the people they love, also they're very cool😉✨️ Lol they have a nice vibe. This could be someone you had crush on for a while but you thought you were over it or things just blossomed very quickly between you two. Your person is creative and really good at whatever they do😂💗 They take care of their appearance, oh you know what I just realized the liking system on tumblr is notes so you could be noting certain posts revolving this person a lot whether it be actual posts of them or just many readings about them omg pile 3 that's so cute🥰!!!

💗Do they have romantic feelings: Dragon, Butterfly, June, My everything, Despair, Saturn, Fire, Libra, Virgo, Vertex,🍀🛗😌👊 Wow interesting so there is or was a big change in this persons feelings, like a transformation.🤯 June came out and the time I'm doing this reading it's going to be june soon so that is a significant sign of their feelings in the month of june!!!🙊💞 Maybe this person's feelings have changed or developed in some way that they're trying to resist or repress. They could be making a decision about you in june or the next month. Wow okay this is a huge message but A FEW of my pile 3's may end up in a relationship with this person in june, if not then romance will be in the air for the two of you!😩🙏 Your person thinks of you a lot and you are the world to them.🌏💗😭 Wait wait it's the year the dragon which is a sign of this year, guys something is going to happen this june for this person. They could be going through a change or transformation in their inner feelings and thinking🤯 This is a very lucky year and the energy proves it.🤭💞 Your person could be restricting their feelings towards you in some way, perhaps they're an overthinker when it comes to you💬🫣 They could have a lot of ups and downs about you, sometimes they feel hopeful and fateful and other times they feel hopeless and unmotivated.😞💔 But seriously guys, destiny is written all over this persons feelings for you!! Soon could be a time they rise up past their own doubts and insecurities about you, and there is definitely a sense of interest towards you.🩷 They need to fight their worries with confidence! This person can find you very cute, and you sit in the back of their mind a lot☺️🧠 If this person didn't feel anything towards you in the past it's becoming a shift in feelings for them. They could be making a descision about you, that could be opening up to you or accepting new feelings for you. Some of you this person may confess, or reveal their feelings and intentions.💭💕 Pile 3 this is so amazing there is so much hope from this person soon, I feel they will finally be able to rest their mind about you eventually and face whatever is effecting their connection with you.😇 They find you sweet and beautiful, also you could give them butterflies🤭💖

💌Messages from your person: For now, I wish I could stop thinking of you, I'm still the same person you loved, You don't need to take care of me, I think you're a great person, I would kill for you, You're so funny, Don't be sad (AH omg and them overthinking about you is right😫💓) Extra cards: Dominant, Surprise, Kabedon, Grey, Neptune, Scorpio, Uranus, Leo, Pisces, Virgo (Yeah they wanna take over your dreams and you're all up in their fantasies, especially dark ones😭😈)

Thank you my pile 3's! If you feel this resonated, you may tap the heart to claim this message!🎀

I hope you enjoyed your reading! ʚ(｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )ɞ If you did be sure to let me know pile 3 with the pink blossom emoji~🌸 Thanks for scrolling through, Hugs hugs hugs!! See you in the next reading🤗💋💞

Pile 4🍓

Sign energy: Play, Lavender, Conflict, Liar, Found, Mars, 7th house, Earth, 11th house, 8th house,🚨🐙🚺🍄

🫧Your person's energy: Ohh okay this is someone that feels like you have a romantic drama with, I mean like you don't know if you should stay or go.👀🙊 Some of you are in contact with this person, others maybe not. Possible signs are Aries, Scorpio, Libra, and Aquarius, there is a masculine energy here. Your person is very captivating and attractive, but they have a darker side you may not have been aware of at first.👿😳 For a select few of my pile 4's I'm seeing this is someone who played you, or sabotaged your relationship somehow.💔 You might think they're a liar or they lied to you, maybe they got exposed for something too. Your person is intense and romantic but they may be in a bit of a red flag energy for some (be careful😬) Lavender may be significant, whether it's the color or scent. This person is slightly mischievous and may be susceptible to getting in trouble. You could be obsessed or in love with this person ever since you saw them, but there is a lot of tension around this person.😟🔥 I was picking up on a very masculine energy but your person has a feminine side also, which is a more grounded and attentive side of them. They can surprisingly be very detail-oriented and sweet when they aren't in a harsher energy.🥺💞 Some of my pile 4's had or having conflict with this person, could be through online or fights around friends. This person could have caused you to turn to escapism which could be spiritual practices that you escape through too like this reading.🕯 I think your person is all over the place a little, to be honest with the octopus emoji and female sign I'm going to say ONLY for some in this pile this person may be involved with multiple feminines at the same time and it's catching up with them.✋️⚠️ It is possible that certain people are just obsessed with your person and want to throw themselves onto them, but with Liar, Play, Found, Conflict, Mars, 7th house AND 8th house... I'm sorry it just sounds like a huge message😭 I JUST REALIZED the mushroom can symbolize illusions or deception😳 I'm sorry but some of my lovely pile 4's might be the ones deceived or disillusioned about this person. It feels like a really bad boy/girl energy, magnetic but very dangerous. But they're hot as hell🥵

💗Do they have romantic feelings: Rebellion, Broken, Role, Lose, My love, 11th house, Moon, Lilith, 9th house, Eros,🪤💣🖤😚 WTF😫 They feel guilty for something OML. So this person has a lot of intense emotions about you, their heart is broken or they feel like they broke yours.💔 They feel like they played the bad guy, the villain, and they lost you or are losing you because of this. They are in a really dark place about you, they feel exposed for their true nature.🔦 Like you're seeing a bad side of them. I can't believe Lose and My Love came out right next to eachother wtf... It feels like they might lose the love of their life, which is pile 4. This is so crazy. They feel trapped, perhaps behind a screen or they can't reach you.📵 If this is an ex, this person wants you back BAD. They feel like they messed up their image and destroyed the one thing they were supposed to love and care for. What is this😥😭😖 Maybe they feel like they have no part in your life or they played a bad part in it, and that really hurts them deeply. They may be running away from contact with you, or ghosted you on social media. They might not be talking to their friends either because of their feelings. This person is in love with you but they feel terrible, like everything is ruined.🌪🔥 They also feel like they lost their freedom? This person is a hell of emotions over you, I'm hearing "lost all hope". They feel desperate, they almost wish they could trap you and keep you because they're afraid you're going to wanna get away from them. They wish they could make you theirs, I'm not going to go into detail about it but they're freaking out because they're madly attracted to you on an intimate level and they wish they could tie you up and dominate you, keeping you theirs.😰🔞 They might fantasize about doing those things because they feel like they can't have you. Part of them doesn't want to look bad to you, but at the same time they feel like there's no going back and you've already discovered the worst parts of them.👿 You do turn this person on, and they want to kiss you and make everything right.☹️💋🖤 Whatever it was that put a wedge between you two, they want to heal your emotional wounds and play the saint rather than sinner. I'm hearing some of you may have dropped them or are going to, and they have intense romantic feelings towards you and want to keep holding on to you because they're so scared of losing you.😳🤝

💌Messages from your person: Look at me, I wish we could have met, I can't comprehend, You can't comprehend, You always look so sad, Don't let them bring you down, What do you think of me? Why would you want me? (Pile 4 they don't feel like you want them at all😫 They still care about you a lot.🫂 Your person is very confused about the connection right now, but they just hope you're alright🖤) Extra cards: Devotion, Inactivity, Boy, Self-sabotage, Family, Lilith, Jupiter, Eros, Aquarius, 12th house, (They feel like they weren't or aren't being devoted to you enough and it's destroying them😭 There is a lot of passion and intense emotions from them about my pile 4's)

Thank you my pile 4's! If you feel this resonated, you may tap the heart to claim this message!🎀

I hope you enjoyed your reading! ʚ(｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )ɞ If you did be sure to let me know pile 4 with the strawberry emoji~🍓 Thanks for scrolling through, Hugs hugs hugs!! See you in the next reading🤗💋💞

Wanna see more readings like this? Check out my tumblr for accurate readings for you!💗🌊🌸

Thanks for reading! \(*^w^)/💌 -Lunadream <3

[the-clock-of-the-time-dragon]

[Wicked: For Good speculation/predictions]

[obviously spoilers + wild conjecture + musings]

Okay so I have many thoughts about what we might get in the second film, and decided to put them all in one place; so here we are.

1.) I've heard a lot of people mentioning that the movie might choose not to jump straight into Thank Goodness, and instead opt for some sort of buffer opening to establish the time-skip and whatnot. I think it would be amazing to actually see Elphaba flying around Oz saving Animals and being harbored as a fugitive and stuff; maybe we could even get reintroduced to Brrr briefly! He's obviously able to speak, so maybe that implies Fiyero took him to an Animal resistance group or something for safety? The map of Oz shown in Something Bad does imply that there might be such groups around, plus of course Doctor Dillamond mentioning protests. Maybe we'll get to see some of that on-screen; I think that would be fascinating. Maybe as kind of a soft adaptation of Elphaba's domestic terrorist phase in the book. This is possibly all supported as well by the shots we've seen of the Yellow Brick Road under construction; presumably this will be early in the film, since obviously it must predate Dorothy's arrival, so I suspect these might be the opening scenes before we get to see how Oz is reacting to Elphaba's activities at the start of Thank Goodness.

2.) I suspect we'll find out that Madame Morrible is not only the one who brought Dorothy to Oz, but also the Wizard — and maybe even more interestingly, caused the Great Drought (which I think is quite heavily implied to be the Dust Bowl, based on the time period and a scrawling on one of the chalkboards in the background; which I think is meant to be Dillamond's research). (My current headcanon is that Morrible accidentally caused the formation of the Impassable Desert (since it is also mentioned on the same chalkboard), which caused a ripple effect out into Kansas and started the Dust Bowl.) If we do get more background on Morrible and her earlier magic experimentation (and maybe even the Grimmerie), I suspect we'll learn that her heart's desire was always to be the prophesied magical savior of Oz, and the Grimmerie based on those vibes (since it seems to read the hearts of the ones using it and flip to pages that will give them what they want, like how it heard "birds" and went straight to relevant pages) brought the Wizard (and by extension, Elphaba) and Dorothy into Oz. In a way it feels like the Grimmerie is sort of the dark magical inverse of what the Wizard does: they hear the desires of people's hearts, and "grant" it in a deceptive way. The Wizard "grants" wishes through bullshitery and spectacle (and the people who come to him for help always end up having to get what they wanted themselves), while the Grimmerie "grants" wishes using real magic (and so can actually give things that the wisher didn't already possess) but always in a fucked up way that they'll end up regretting. I've already made a post about the theme of "the heart's desire" and how it's explored in the original Wizard of Oz and in Wicked — and maybe at some point I'll do a longer analysis of that (for instance, the fact the Wizard was in possession of the book and got his heart's desire to be a father in the most catastrophic way imaginable) — but it's really interesting if we consider that Morrible's desire seems to be to essentially be the Witch of Oz, and the answer given by the Grimmerie might basically have been the giant magical backfire that brought all three of the most plot-important characters into Oz in the first place. It's possible this won't actually be explained and will remain in headcanon territory, but with the way they've been focusing more on Madame Morrible I think we'll probably get at least a little something exploring her background and connections with the Wizard (and it would be really interesting if we got more stuff relating to the Grimmerie in the process).

3.) In the frames we've seen of Dorothy, the slippers are still silver! Not ruby! We know from interviews that the production team read the original Wonderful Wizard of Oz and took heavy inspiration from it, so I assume keeping the shoes silver was an executive decision on their part. But it has some really interesting implications about what sort of changes might've been made to Part 2. We already knew that we're getting major alterations to Nessa's narrative — groundwork for that was already laid in the ways they changed her in the first movie, particularly surrounding her relationship to Elphaba and her agency regarding movement, which I think is great — but regarding this I've heard some people asking if this means we might not get Nessarose standing. Marissa Bode who plays her is capable of limited standing and walking, so I doubt that part will have been cut entirely; but I'm really curious about the ways in which Nessa's story might have been rewritten. The point of her independence has been emphasized a lot thus far, so I think we might get some tweaking (or outright cutting) of the "hideous chair with wheels" bit; and with how we got the lines about Nessa wanting to make a new start and Elphaba getting in the way of that, I think it's likely we'll get less of a focus on "why haven't you used your powers to help me walk Elphaba?" and more on "wow, you ruined my life again Elphaba". I am curious about whether Nessa will still be able to read the Grimmerie (which always felt a little like a plot hole/contrivance in the original show, so it would need a proper explanation at the very least), or if perhaps — since I believe it's being set up that the Grimmerie can "read" people around it and give them a fucked up version of what they think they want — Nessarose's dark desire at that moment is to not have a heart (kinda like that line from the 1939 movie: "As for you, my galvanized friend: you want a heart. You don't know how lucky you are not to have one. Hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable") and gets Elphaba to read it: but neither knows what it will actually do until Boq's heart starts shrinking away into nothingness. (Also I'm fairly positive that the still we got of Elphaba below is from the Colwen Grounds scene with Nessa and Boq: I've heard some people presuming it's from No Good Deed, but the background, her expression (which seems to me to be obviously her trying to get Nessa/Boq to calm tf down), and the fact she seems to be in the same costume as in the Yellow Brick Road scene, tells me it's almost certainly from Wicked Witch of the East.)

4.) We're told to expect two new songs from Stephen Schwartz! I'm extremely curious what these might be (and naturally, Gelphie simp as I am, would like at least one one of them to have some more good ol' gay goodness from our girls), but we don't have a whole lot to go on for clues yet other than (as far as I can tell, unconfirmed?) reports that one is an Elphaba solo and the other is a Glinda solo. This is very exciting of course, but until we have more insight it's still too early to make deep predictions. Although as for hopes, I'd obviously like for a new Glinda number to involve her grappling with her feelings more — a much-needed addition — and for Elphaba to perhaps get some of that as well (it would help the lead-up to Wonderful make a bit more narrative sense, if nothing else). And if it turns out they aren't Glinda or Elphaba songs, then I think Fiyero or Boq deserve to get a little bit more to sing. All Schwartz has said thus far is that the new music was made to meet the needs of the story: so (since the two songs DON'T seem to just be reworkings of existing ones, and are actually all-new, film-only material) that further supports the fact we'll be getting fairly major changes to the plot.

5.) The Glinda-Fiyero wedding seems to either happen or very nearly happen??? Extremely interesting expansion on the original material, I can't wait to see what they do with it. I've heard some people saying it might just be a fantasy sequence or something — and I suppose it could be — but I don't think so; the style of filmmaking and writing is deliberately "grounded" to make Oz feel real, and the first film didn't have any imaginary scenes. I think the wedding scene will happen at the same time as (or directly before) Wonderful, and will probably be interrupted: maybe by the release of the flying monkeys, the Wizard rallying the guards after Elphaba, or — scandal! — even by Elphaba herself! (No, I don't think we'll be getting the "I object!" sequence out of Shrek, even though it would be hilariously apropos, lol.) We've seen an image of what looks like Elphaba back in the Emerald City (maybe right before Wonderful, perhaps sneaking into the Wizard's palace to free the Animals; or perhaps just after Wonderful, after finding Doctor Dillamond and deciding to remain the Wizard's enemy?), and judging by when these events would have to line up based on the story of the musical, I think these are almost certainly within the same section. It seems like the wedding sequence might be a decent spot for some of the new music: or maybe a beefed-up version of Glinda's I'm Not That Girl, if she got left at the altar or something.

6.) We've seen this image of Glinda running up a staircase (with the Grimmerie in hand, and in her Bubble Dress): this seems very likely to be immediately after For Good and the Melting — I suspect Glinda is heading up the stairs to see the aftermath, recover Elphie's hat, and receive the green bottle from Chistery. OR, it could also be related to the Wizard — the wood reminds me of the tower in the Emerald City palace where all of Oscar Diggs' old stuff from Omaha was stored at the end of the first film, so I'm wondering if this is Glinda going up to confront him after realizing that he's Elphaba's father, maybe.

EDIT: I realized after reviewing a better quality image with higher contrast and saturation that the latter possibility I suggested is more likely than the former — behind the wooden beams are the emerald blocks we see in the Wizard's palace, so this frame seems almost certainly to be from the scene where Glinda confronts the Wizard in his tower after returning from Kiamo Ko. And what a brilliant way to do that scene, if indeed that's what this is: the Wizard isn't just sitting despondent in his throne room, he went up to wallow in his old mediocrity — and Glinda doesn't just fly up to him, she ascends the same path she once went up with Elphie, processing her grief the whole way up. The painnnnnnn. It makes her ordering him to fly away in the same balloon that he arrived in — and that Glinda and Elphaba NEARLY escaped in before everything — all the more bitter and ironic. Can't wait to see Jeff Goldblum sell the Wizard's descent into the mother of all midlife crises, fiddling with his old sideshow props in the attic as he comes to know the true despair wrought by his hand.

7.) Will the ending be changed?? It seems all but confirmed that the cloaked figure riding away out of Kiamo Ko at the start of Part 1 was Elphaba: this costume concept for the second film looks identical to what we saw the rider wearing. Add to that (as I've talked about in a prior post) the fact the Scarecrow is shown alongside Dorothy on the Yellow Brick Road, implies that at the very least the events of the last few minutes of the musical have been revised. My earlier post listed four different possible alterations (from Elphaba leaving Oz alone, to her still meeting with Fiyero somewhere else after everything, to her somehow letting Glinda and/or Fiyero know she's alive before leaving, or (hope against hope) that she takes Glinda with her), but it's still far too early to tell what they might've gone with. I just hope that at least wrote it better than it was originally. The image of Elphaba riding out of Oz on horseback across the desert would certainly be striking, no matter which option they chose.

[ilovecatfr]

Getting Comfortable in the State of Preparation

Why Shifters Often Get Stuck Here

Have you ever caught yourself spending hours making scripts, mood boards, and playlists for your Desired Reality (DR) but rarely (or never) actually attempting to shift? You’re not alone—this is super common in the shifting community or so I noticed after one of my posts. Many shifters fall into a pattern of preparation, where the process of getting ready feels more comfortable than the act of shifting itself.

Why Shifters Get Stuck in Preparation

1. Preparation Feels Safe

Making scripts and mood boards gives you a sense of control and progress. It’s exciting and comforting because it connects you to your DR without the frustration or fear of a failed attempt.

2. Perfectionism

Feeling like you need the perfect script, playlist, or method before you shift. This turns into an endless cycle of preparation because you never feel “ready enough.”

3. Dopamine Rush

Planning triggers a dopamine release—the thrill of imagining your DR can be addictive! It gives you a taste of your DR without actually shifting, so it’s easy to keep doing it.

4. Community Validation

Sharing your playlists, scripts, or mood boards in the shifting community can feel nice. It’s a way to bond with others, but it can also make the focus shift (pun intended!) from actual shifting to just the idea of shifting.

5. Procrastination as a Defense Mechanics

Procrastination is often rooted in fear. For some shifters, it’s easier to stay in the “preparation” phase.

6. Overwhelm

With so much information out there about shifting methods and scripting, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. Instead of figuring out where to start, many shifters default to preparing because it feels more manageable.

How to Break Out of the Preparation Loop

If you find yourself stuck in this cycle, here are some tips that may help you refocus on actual shifting:

1. Shift the Focus to Actual Attempts

Remember that prep work is meant to support your shifting journey, not replace it. Set clear intentions for when you'll shift and stick to them.

2. Limit Prep Time

Give yourself a specific time frame for scripting or making mood boards (e.g., one day to make your script/ 1 hour a day for week). Then spend the rest of your time focusing on shifting.

(make sure to not be overwhelmed if you set a specific time that you are not comfortable with)

3. Visualize Instead of Overplanning

Focus on feeling like you’re in your DR. You don’t need every detail scripted; your subconscious can fill in the blanks.

(for people who feel like they can't trust their subconscious: your subconscious is YOU, it knows what you want. Your subconscious is never going against you; it always working with your desires you only need to allow to give it to you)

4. Try a “Prep Detox”

Take a break from all the prep work and focus solely on shifting for a few days. You might find it easier to connect with your DR this way. You'll see how easier shifting will become when you focus your energy on actually doing it rather then on finishing your script or making a new Pinterest board (no shade)

5. Reframe the Habit

See scripting and playlists as stepping stones, not the destination. Keep reminding yourself: the real reward is your DR, not the finished script.

6. Consistency Over Perfection

You don’t need to feel perfectly prepared to shift. Trust that you yourself is enough.

Getting stuck in the preparation stage doesn’t mean you’re not capable of shifting. It’s just a habit, and like any habit, it can be shifted (pun intended again)! Remember, your DR is waiting for you—it’s time to take that leap! :)

[roxirinart]

Aventurine... You've Gotta Hand It To Him

An in-depth analysis of Aventurine's hands and why they're critical to his character.

Was asked if I could post this (VERY LONG) analysis I made all about Aventurine's hands - niche, perhaps, but I love him very much and he has a LOT of focus placed on his hands in almost every aspect of his story/design! I think it makes for a really neat insight into his character. Let’s go! 2K words or so so we're under a 'read more', folks :P Hope someone finds it interesting :)

Content warning for (very brief mentions of) sexual theming and violence.

I MIGHT be reaching with some of this but I tried to make sure everything was in order, so if there are any inaccuracies lmk! I'm Always on the lookout for more valuable Avencheem lore 😋

The Avgin - Culture and Symbolism

Kakavasha was born 'blessed' with unnaturally good luck by the Avgin goddess, Gaiathra Triclops, who is often depicted as a left palm with three eyes upon it. If we assume that therefore, someone’s left hand is representative of Gaiathra, then we can draw some interesting conclusions! 

When reciting Gaiathra’s prayer, the typical accompanying gesture is for two participants to put their left palms together while saying it, which - by ‘covering’ Gaiathra’s eyes with each other’s palms, they are (as per the words of the prayer) ‘keeping their schemes forever concealed’.

In the version of Aventurine’s boss form that was removed from the Divergent Universe, he has an attack that changes name for each phase of the fight, as follows:

Phase 1: “Eyes Once Closed for Lies”, 

Phase 2: “Eyes Twice Closed for Trickery”

Phase 3: “Eyes Thrice Closed for Schemes”. 

This suggests that the symbolic act of Gaiathra closing her eyes is blessing the person in question not to have their lies, trickery, or schemes revealed - “I do not perceive it, nor shall anyone else.” This is important to the Avgin, as they seem to have a cultural focus on underhanded methods of achieving their goals, although this was blown greatly out of proportion by prejudice from other Sigonians, and (later) the wider cosmos. The game’s loading screen description of the Avgin is as follows:

“‘Avgin’ means ‘honey’ in the Sigonian language, yet those who irrationally fear Avgins unjustifiably distort the word's meaning to perpetuate Avgin stereotypes that portray them as crafty, smooth-talking, and capricious.”

Sparkle, when talking to Aventurine, also describes the Avgin as “...notorious throughout the entire universe! Liars, thieves, social manipulators, wolves in sheep's clothing... You're really living up to the reputation.”

The Avgin’s reputation as essentially ‘evil’ people, and the clear cultural and religious importance they place upon one’s left hand specifically, can reveal some interesting things about them (and therefore about Kakavasha):

In the real world, the left hand is very commonly considered to be the ‘wrong’ or ‘evil’ hand across many religions and cultures. The word ‘sinister’ (which may be a good descriptor for Aventurine’s behavior, or at least peoples' perception of him given how other characters react to him during the main questline) comes from a Latin word that means ‘on the left side’.

The French word for left, ‘gauche’ was borrowed back into english to mean ‘lacking social grace’ - and with Aventurine’s way of getting all up in peoples’ faces, grandstanding, being provocative, etc., it seems that ‘gauche’ isn’t a bad descriptor for him, either.

In the early 20th century, left-handedness was identified as ‘a biological anomaly, associated with deviancy but something that could be corrected away with behavioral reinforcement’.

Likewise, in the middle ages in England, left-handed people were more likely to be accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake. Sounds familiar when compared to the way Sigonia treated the Avgin - as evildoers, tricksters, backstabbers, etc.,

If the Avgin were so ‘left-handed’ in all senses of the phrase, then… perhaps the ‘behavioral correction’ they received could be justified...?

It is reinforced several times throughout both written lore and during gameplay that the Avgin’s beautiful appearances and high emotional intelligence were a source of jealousy to other clans and races, hence the perpetuation of the Avgin’s negative reputation - one that Aventurine ends up playing into, often intentionally.

Why bother trying to change the stereotype if he can use it to his advantage? Besides, it’s not like getting rid of the Avgins’ negative rep will help them now, anyway.

All this is to say that the concept of hiding your true intentions with your left hand - ‘keeping your cards close to your chest’, ‘bluffing’, ‘having an ace up your sleeve’, knowing when to ‘show your hand’ - is a huge overarching theme for the Avgin, and therefore for Aventurine.

Notice that a LOT of sayings to do with hiding things from others or manipulating people’s impressions of you and what they think you might do come from poker or other card games! I can’t think of any universe where the devs did that by accident. Nice work, devs!

The Left Hand

‘Sleight of hand’ is the name of Aventurine’s game, and he sure knows how to play it. ‘Sleight’ means “the use of dexterity or cunning, especially so as to deceive”, so naturally the suffix ‘- of hand’ brings Aventurine’s hands to the forefront as one of his main tools of the trade!

However, the devs once again outdid themselves - each of Aventurine’s hands is representative of parts of his character in very different ways.

Everything about Aventurine is designed to cleverly divert attention away from his real thoughts and feelings.

I’ll get the obvious out of the way: Aventurine’s left hand (as previously discussed) is critically important to his character. It represents so many things for him both visually and otherwise.

If you’re a regular Aventurine enjoyer it’s likely you know about his habit of hiding his left hand behind his back when he’s nervous or making a big (or life-threatening) gamble - but why?

He’s specifically hiding Gaiathra’s hand. I don’t think it’s a coincidence; Aventurine - by hiding away what is essentially a physical representation of his goddess - is ‘closing her eyes’, so he cannot be seen through (even if it’s purely subconscious).

He wants people locked onto his gaze and away from the hand he’s clutching Gaiathra’s ‘blessing’ of good luck so tightly with. (Note: the ironic nature of Aventurine’s relationship with his cursed blessing isn’t lost on me, but that’s another day’s essay. :))

This habit of hiding his left hand behind his back is (once you’re looking for it) very common in the majority of his animations, art, cinematics, and other various media, like in his character trailer when he’s about to reveal the result of his big dice roll; in a specific animation during his bossfight, where he’s actively banking on losing so he can carry out his ‘grand death’ (‘clutching his chips for dear life’, as his future self put it…); the idle animation where he’s fidgeting with one of his poker chips; or in the ‘Final Victor’ light cone, where he is playing russian roulette with his own life just to prove a point to Dr. Ratio (which was a little excessive, perhaps…).

Usually, having a hand behind your back is considered to be suspicious: you’re hiding something, perhaps a weapon.

And for Kakavasha, out of fear and knowing it’ll give him the upper hand, he hides his own weapon behind his back: the physical representation of all his schemes, strategies, lies, trickery, and tactics - and the last Avgin palm to touch another’s.

Perhaps in relation to his particularly strong connection with Gaiathra, Aventurine is also left-handed! Evidence? Sure!

As a general ‘fashion rule’ (and for practicality), wristwatches are worn on the non-dominant hand, and someone as fashion-conscious as Aventurine would very likely be aware of this. His watch is on his right wrist.

Additionally, he wears no rings on his left hand because writing or similar activities would be a pain to do with that much jewelry on. Further evidence can be found in this phone wallpaper of him released by Hoyoverse: he’s holding his phone with his left hand, and people usually operate their phones with their dominant hand. Similarly, in one of the many videos on the Hoyoverse YouTube channel (I’m sorry I don’t know which one it’s from), he goes to grab his tablet off the bedside table with his left hand, too.

The Right Hand

Aventurine’s character is, at its core, is all about defense. Protecting himself from harm, shielding his thoughts and feelings from others, creating an impenetrable barrier of flashy clothing and fake smiles to conceal his true self - this all presents in his moveset in battle, too.

He’s a preservation-class, shield-providing character. The critical thing to note is this: his defense all happens on the right hand. This includes his skill (throwing out chips with his right hand to shield his teammates), and his technique, which generates an additional shield for the team before the start of battle. 

His right hand ‘shields’ him both literally and metaphorically in this sense. He wears all his rings on his right hand, because that’s the hand he wants you to focus on, the pretty, sparkly one with all the flashy jewelry and expensive wristwatch, the one that’s extended for you to shake (he shakes with his right hand), the only part of him most people get to touch. A part of the body furthest away from his heart, dazzling and defensive.

The outermost, superficial layer.

It’s the hand that more often performs captivating little coin tricks out in the open to catch people’s attention, keeping them focused on something that’s within his control, because so much of his life isn't.

On The Attack

Here’s the kicker though - this makes his left hand the attacking hand. When push comes to shove (or when he feels he needs to strike first), Aventurine lashes out with Gaiathra’s hand.

As mentioned before, his weapons are his schemes, his secrets, his tricks, his lies - and the hand holding all those chips so tightly is his left, the lucky hand, the one that has brought him success and saved his life time and time again.

Ultimately, it all comes down to relying on his raw luck to push him through (whether he's happy about that or not) when all his other methods of attack have been stripped away - and his hand trembles, because having to make a blind bet that his goddess (who did nothing to stop his family being massacred, yet is both cruel and benevolent enough to keep him alive) will save him yet again must be really fucking terrifying.

When Your Hands Are Tied...

Looking at both hands together, a design choice which I believe to be deliberate is the way he has bracelets of some variety over both his wrists. It’s a subtle imitation of manacles; he may have escaped his iron ones, but Aventurine now lives in golden handcuffs instead, bound by social shackles instead of physical ones.

He’s still a slave - just not in the traditional sense.

To my understanding (someone please correct me if I'm wrong, his timeline has some annoying gaps in it even though I tried very hard to figure it out ;-;), technically Aventurine legally belongs to the IPC.

He killed his most recent owner and so escaped his that particular ownership, sure, but when he barters with Jade, he asks her to pay him the ‘remainder of his market value’, which insinuates that it would therefore give him ownership of himself.

However, Jade doesn’t simply hand over the money: she pulls him into a job contract - a new form of imprisonment - without ever giving him real legal autonomy, never officially declaring him a free man. His hands are invisibly tied - bound by corporate and social 'manacles' to his job.

"Out, Damned Spot!"

Speaking of manacles, let’s talk about the ‘Hunger Games’, shall we?

Kakavasha is, at some indeterminate point, entered into a spectator sport where he is forced to fight thirty-four other slaves to the death.

It is mentioned that he has no other weapon than the bindings on his wrists and the chain between them - and he emerges ‘victorious’ (physically the victor... perhaps not mentally or emotionally, though).

In the quest notes during Aventurine’s (literal) trip through the maze while he’s making his way to the stage for his grand finale, he describes himself with the word ‘murderer’, showing that he’s clearly distraught by what happened and resents himself for it. 

Following on from this, a possible interpretation of the design choice to have Aventurine wear gloves is for him to (figuratively) hide the blood on his hands.

Aventurine’s gloves simultaneously create a literal barrier between himself and the world, and work as another piece of fancy clothing to add to his impenetrable, sparking defense. The closest match I could find to the style of Aventurine’s gloves are short dress gloves or wrist gloves, which are specifically fashion items as opposed to practical ones.

(As a cheeky little aside, the absolute closest style match I could find for his gloves are latex or leather womens’ gloves most commonly used in BDSM, which is fun! Maybe I’m reaching, but I like to think it’s a subtle way of making him more effeminate - and in Aventurine’s case, therefore a subtle call to his sexuality imo - and also another little detail to help push his ‘provocative’ appearance and demeanor.)

Conclusion

Our hands are how we interact with the world. In Aventurine’s case, they’re how he keeps the world pushed as far away from himself as possible, all the while gripping onto his ‘good luck’ for dear life.

Aventurine’s hands are his weapons, his shield, his faith, his fear, and his guilt, decorated with jeweled rings and bound in golden handcuffs.

Ultimately, when Aventurine offers to lend a hand to the Trailblazer, when he shows Sunday his hand (and a bit more besides) during their meeting, and when he forces Acheron’s hand during his bossfight, it's so that his own hands are free to do whatever he needs to orchestrate his greatest scheme yet...

...for better or worse.

[tarotofhope]

PAC: 「What's your working style?」

(Please Read My Pinned post *IMPORTANT NOTE* before selecting a Pile)

Pick an Image by meditating and selecting the image you feel called to. You can be attracted towards more than 1 image. If you are not able to select maybe this reading isn't for you.

Pile 1

Cards: The Devil, The Star, Death, The Empress Reversed, Wheel of Fortune and The Magician.

Welcome to your reading, Pile 1. You are married to your work and you're a hard worker. You're very goal oriented and ambitious. Whatever you're working towards is not only work for you but much greater than that. Your work is your passion, your religion, your God. You even have good leadership qualities. You know how to give and earn respect. Even when you guys retire, you would still do some or the other thing as work. You just can't sit idle. You value money and you use your money wisely. I can also see one more thing here, you guys have this drive for becoming something in this world, doing something effective, having an impact, leaving a legacy. You guys are like a magnet for power and money just because you have a strong drive for work and you strive hard to achieve your goals. For a few of you, this could be the case that you had to take responsibilities at an early age because one of your parent passed away or you were stripped off of your financial support by your parents/guardian. You have good businessmanship and a lot of creative abilities. You want to become independent in your life and stand on your own two feet.

That's all I got for you, my dear Pile 1. Love, light, peace and hope to you..🌸🍁🌻🌼

Pile 2

Cards: Queen of Swords, The Hermit, The Tower, The Fool, Ace of Pentacles and 9 of Pentacles.

Welcome to your reading, Pile 2. You do your own thing and you don't like to follow any set rules or regulations. You might appear cold and tough and you somehow also know how to get other people to work for you if you want to. You have a lot of experience in life and you could be a street smart too. There could be a phase in your life(this could be your past, present or future because many people are reading this) where you had a huge financial loss and then you had to start from scratch and earn for your living and then become financially stable and satisfied. Yes, financial stability and satisfaction with material possessions is there but it will come after a lot of struggle. Whatever I said in the starting 2-3 sentences about your nature of work could be something which came after your struggle. You have learnt a lot from your struggles and that has shaped you the way you are. You are someone who would take the leap of faith, manifest a tower moment(sudden and drastic ups and downs) so that change can enter your life. You are not afraid of changes, you invite them..😉

That's all I got for you, my dear Pile 2. Love, light, peace and hope to you..🌸🍁🌻🌼

Pile 3

Cards: The Hierophant, Temperance, 5 of Swords, 7 of Wands, King of Cups and Knight of Wands.

Welcome to your reading, Pile 3. You have a great desire to follow your passion or maybe you wish you had more talents and choices in your life because you look stuck in a traditional work environment. You think you'd have your own working style if you had the opportunity to work on your own but somehow you're trapped in a normal office type job or traditional work style where there is less to no scope for creativity and personal growth and you have to follow certain rules and fulfil certain criterias. Maybe you feel stuck in a boring 9 to 5 job. This is also because of necessity, you need to pay bills and this and that, so what else you could have done? But there is this strong desire to do your dream job which is not like your normal office job. Either you are doing something as a side hustle but you earn very little from it and you want to make big in it but you also have a main job which gives you good enough money to pay your bills but you're not happy with it. There's this constant struggle to strike a balance. You don't get much time with your family due to this job and also very less holidays/vacations. There's a lot of judgement and competition at your workplace, ranks, scores and a hierarchical management which you're tired of. You don't want any of this. You want to reach at a level where you're emotionally satisfied in your work, where there is less stress and pressure.

That's all I got for you, my dear Pile 3. Love, light, peace and hope to you..🌸🍁🌻🌼

Pile 4

Cards: The High Priestess, The Sun, Page of Swords, The Magician, Empress and Knight of Cups.

Welcome to your reading, Pile 4. Looks like you're doing what your heart desires and something which pile 3 dreams of. You're very fortunate and blessed, pile 4. Your job has that proper balance of work and relaxation, work and creativity. I'm not saying that your job is easy or you don't work hard or work enough, it's just that your work is so full of creativity and enjoyment that you'd happily put more hard work in it. You'd happily and willingly struggle in it. You might feel very independent and free because of your work. You might also be very protective of your job, I mean to say that people get jealous of your job easily, whether or not you earn much from it, whether or not you're successful in it, I can see that people just couldn't digest your enjoyment and excitement which is associated with your work because they don't get to do the same. So, you could be wearing some evil eye protection talisman or bracelet/ring. The best part of your job is that you don't have to follow strict rules and regulations, you're mostly free to do your own thing. You could be into creative fields of work and you're doing this because people are known by the kind of job they're into and you want to attract like-minded people or you want to help other people who are less fortunate in regards to creative work.

That's all I got for you, my dear Pile 4. Love, light, peace and hope to you..🌸🍁🌻🌼

Pile 5

Cards: 9 of Swords, 9 of Pentacles, King of Wands, King of Pentacles, King of Cups and 6 of Pentacles.

Welcome to your reading, Pile 5. You could be into service related jobs mostly which involves doing a lot of charity and helping the needy. You don't want to see people struggling like you did in your past. Your job gets a lot of criticism by people because maybe you get to earn very little from it or because people don't understand your job, but you're happy and people don't see this. For some of you, this work could make you successful in future but it's a very slow and steady process so again people don't see any value in your work. You might be doing something unconventional and different, so you might not be supported at home too, so you're very protective of this job. Whatever you're doing is either within a community or a one man show, nothing in between. You serve a variety of people/customers involving foreigners too. You're very satisfied and content with this job and nobody can change your mind with their worldly philosophies. There is 9 of pentacles after the 9 of swords which can indicate that you got this job after a lot of struggle and bad experiences, this could be something very unattainable to you earlier, but you fought for it, worked hard for it and now you're not going to leave it. Maybe you're constantly trying to prove your worth and the value of your work, pile 5. You don't have to. The right people will admire you for your work and will also understand and respect your work choice.

That's all I got for you, my dear Pile 5. Love, light, peace and hope to you..🌸🍁🌻🌼

Thank you so much for being here. I post PAC readings every Tuesday and Friday. Do love and support by reblogging, liking or following.

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[lloydskywalkers]

moats and boats and waterfalls

Read on AO3

Post-Crystalized — after surviving apocalypse no. 2 (possibly 3, currently under debate) the ninja now face the unspeakable horrors of budgeting.

(Years late to the Crystalized party but here's part one of my seven billion fanfics about this season because there are Thoughts to be had about this one)

As it turns out, rebuilding a monastery is a whole lot more trouble than rebuilding the Bounty for the eightieth time. 

And by trouble, Cole means incredibly expensive.

“Re-installing central heating costs what?!” 

Kai’s horrified cry reverberates throughout the half-constructed monastery, the echo from the noticeably empty rooms only adding to insult. 

Oh, what Cole would give to have his bed back. 

“I guess we’ll have to use you during the winter,” Nya sighs, patting Kai on the back. “Lloyd, get ready to supercharge him.”

“Forget heating, do you know how much Wi-Fi costs?” Lloyd stares at the estimated summary like it’s personally kicked his pet. “Who even has that much money? God?”

“If god had money, he could’ve given Sensei Wu his inheritance and we’d all be loaded,” Jay mutters. “But noooo, ‘material possessions are the death of the soul’, blah blah blah, we’ll see whose soul is dead when the gas cuts out and he can’t make midnight tea anymore.” 

“It does seem a bit extreme, looking at it all like this,” Zane remarks. Somewhat ironically, as he’s taken one look at the bill then wisely retreated across the room. 

“Well, blowing up the entire monastery with us in it was extreme, so it figures repairs are just as bad,” Nya grumbles. 

They all shift, the mood dampening at the reminder. 

Lloyd opens his mouth. “I’m sor—”

“Do not,” Kai stabs a finger at him. “Even try.”

Lloyd slumps. “If I hadn’t gotten caught—”

“We all agreed to the plan, okay?” Cole says. “Also, no one knew we’d be sending you to Harumi, so the whole thing was doomed from the start.”

While he looks a bit miffed, Lloyd gives it up. Though perhaps that’s mostly in part because he desperately wants to avoid any more conversation about—

“So speaking of Harumi,” Jay starts. 

Lloyd springs for the window. 

Unfortunately for Lloyd, said window is currently boarded up by heavy-duty plywood, since quality window glass fell low on the list of priorities, which gives Kai plenty of time to tackle him before he can even raise his leg to kick it in. 

“No!” Zane cries. “We can’t afford anymore plywood!”

“Or like, Band-Aids at bare minimum, so don’t you dare!” Nya adds. 

“—overdramatic phase has gotta go, what are you, five — hey, no biting!”

Lloyd makes a muffled sound as he wrestles on the floor with Kai. Cole turns, very slowly, to glare at Jay.

“Oh come on, we were all thinking it,” Jay defends, reluctantly standing to help pry Lloyd from the floor. “Fine, hey, I promise we won’t talk about certain loser ex-princesses who are nice and cozy in their prison cells right now, okay? There, there, little gremlin, she can’t hurt you anymore—”

“I’ll bite you next,” Lloyd threatens, but he returns to his seat, wincing as Kai scuffs his hair. 

“Turn Oni again, and that might be an actual threat.”

Lloyd startles terribly, staring at Kai with wide eyes. “That’s — not — I wouldn’t—”

“Kai,” Nya hisses.

“Woah, hey, no, I didn’t mean it like that!” Kai says quickly. “It’s supposed to be positive reinforcement! Easing it into a normal thing, y’know?”

Lloyd growls. “Nothing about this is a normal thing—”

“Except none of us are normal, so therefore it is,” Kai interrupts him smoothly. “Also we already loved you when you were a tiny demon, turning into a literal one is nothing. Give us some credit.” 

Lloyd pulls his hood over his flaming face, thunking his head against the table. Kai pats him cheerfully on the shoulder. 

“Additionally, unless we can swindle someone by selling Lloyd in his Oni form on the black market for cold cash before stealing him back, I don’t see how this helps matters.”

Zane finds himself on the receiving end of five blank stares. Lloyd, successfully having been pulled from his hood, whistles. 

“I forget how evil you can be, sometimes.”

Kai gapes at him. “So that makes you feel better?”

“I mean, in terms of normalizing it—”

“Alright!” Cole slams his hands on the table, silencing them all. He glares them down. “Meeting room in five. We’re figuring out how to make this place livable if it kills us.”

There’s a brief silence, then Jay hesitantly raises his hand.

“Hey, so uh, we kinda don’t have a meeting room right now?”

Cole collapses on the table in despair. 

---

Twenty minutes and one session of shoving chairs into what could have been the living room later — it’s hard to tell, with all the construction markings and plywood still up — they’ve kicked off the official first meeting of the Finish-Making-the-Monastery-Livable plan. 

“Alright,” Lloyd announces, brushing his hands as he steps back from the chalkboard that may or may not have been stolen. “At the top of the list we have Wi-Fi, central air and heating, beds — huh, maybe those should go higher — running water, electricity — that one’s debatable, me and Jay can tag-team it if we get desperate — blankets-slash-pillows-slash-etcetera, stuff to cook with, actual food — y’know what, I’m putting that closer to the top—”

“So basically, we have nothing,” Cole says blankly. 

Lloyd glances at the list, then to the sliver of chalk left in his hands. “Uh. Yeah.” 

“Take the weaponry, sure, but all my albums?” Jay mourns. “I spent years collecting those.” 

“I lost the blanket we stole from that super fancy apartment we lived in for like five minutes when Lloyd was a kid,” Kai sighs. “That thing literally made it through the apocalypse, just to bite it now.” 

“Two apocalypses too many,” Nya says.

“Did the Preeminent count as an apocalypse? Like, a minor one?”

“Three apocalypses. It took three apocalypses to vaporize my closet,” Cole sinks lower in his seat. “Man, the hoodie you got me for my birthday was in there.” 

“All of our photographs are lost, too.” Zane stares at his hands. 

Lloyd murmurs something under his breath that sounds a lot like family pictures and figures. 

The mood plummets a bit more, after that. 

“Motherfu—”

“Alright, this isn’t helping,” Cole claps his hands. “We can all cry again later. Lloyd, overall mission status conclusion?”

“Well, like you said, we basically have nothing,” Lloyd sighs. “So unless Zane wants to stop chickening out and abandon his morals so we can just hack into everything and get it free, we need to find some way to pay for all this.”

“Again, I cannot hack in to rebuilding an entire cooling unit throughout the monastery, much less make the latest clothing line from Gucci materialize,” Zane says. Kai swears. “Also, that is called stealing.” 

“You call it stealing, I call it a charitable donation,” Nya says. “I turned into the ocean for this city, the least they can do is cut me a check.” 

“Besides, even if it is stealing, what are they gonna do, send us to jail again?” Jay scoffs.

Lloyd jabs the piece of chalk in his direction. “Don’t jinx us.” 

“Too bad we wasted our chance at crime and didn’t even get rich,” Kai mutters. “All we got was Nya.”

He yelps as she punches him in the arm. “What, too soon?”

“You should be so lucky to have me,” she sniffs. 

“Hey, but going on the donation thought train — do we know anyone who’s rich?” Jay asks. “Why don’t we have any rich friends?”

“Hey, you know what’s rich? That coming from the son of a billionaire.”

“Hey, you know what else got blown up? My inheritance!” 

“Please, let it go,” Zane says. “We do have rich friends, I’ll remind you, we’re friends with actual monarchy. But we can’t exactly go and ask anyone else for money, since they all already helped out so much in getting the monastery rebuilt.”

There’s a moment of pensive silence. Lloyd draws a little sad face on the chalkboard next to ASK FOR DONATIONS. 

“What if we just…sued Harumi,” Cole says. “Like, there’s gotta be some law that could work in our favor here.”

“I don’t think the court would go for that,” Lloyd mutters. “Since they’re all morally corrupt frauds who hate us.”

“Yeah! Down with the system!” Kai punches his fist in the air. 

“Also, Harumi likely has very little in the way of money, either,” Zane says. “Considering she blew up any and all assets she might have had claim to.”

“Haha, what a loser,” Nya crows.

“What if we sued Garmadon?” Cole tries. “The courts have to hate him more than they hate us.”

Lloyd scowls, scrawling a large NO on the chalkboard. “Not worth the effort. Plus, I’m pretty sure he’s still couch-surfing at Vinny’s, which means also penniless.”

“We could sue Kalmaar,” Nya cracks her knuckles.

“Isn’t he dead?” 

“Oh, yeah.” Nya looks disappointed. 

“Did anyone survive that we can sue successfully?” Jay muses. “And actually get money out of?”

“Vangelis,” Cole snaps his fingers. “Wait. No, we ousted him from the throne, so he’s probably broke too.”

“Vangelis survived?”

As they dissolve into bickering over the status of enemies potentially living-or-dead, Kai squints at the chalkboard, where Lloyd is still scratching out letters despite having completely lost the room. 

“We…are…fu—Lloyd!” 

“Well it’s true,” Lloyd huffs, finishing off his message with a flourish. “Tada. There’s my grand plan.”

“That’s not a plan, it’s a pessimistic estimation at how things are gonna go.”

“It’s extremely rude language, is what it is! I thought we taught you better.”

Lloyd simply looks pleased with himself at having recaptured the room’s attention. It is, of course, then that Sensei Wu walks into that room. He stops, looking from where they’re all frozen in place, then to the chalkboard. 

Lloyd pales. 

Sensei Wu pinches the bridge of his nose between his fingers and closes his eyes. 

“My dearest nephew, you have three seconds to make that disappear, or I’ll be forced to—”

Lloyd springs for the chalkboard in record time, wiping frantically at his writing with the sleeve of his gi. 

“People would kill for that thing, and here he’s using it as a chalkboard eraser,” Jay mutters. 

It isn’t until later, when they’ve all retreated to the collective mass of blow-up mattress and borrowed blankets they’re calling a bedroom, that anyone breaches the topic again. 

There’s a loud rustling as Cole turns over where he’s precariously shoved between Kai and Zane. 

“…can we sue the mayor?”

There’s a noted pause of silence, only broken by the whirring of the cheap oscillating fan. 

“You know,” Zane says slowly. “In terms of slander and defamation…” 

An evil, sharp-toothed smile spreads across Lloyd’s face. “I like the sound of that.”

“Hey, let’s sue the new ninja, too,” Jay grins. “Can Pixal retroactively trademark our vibe?”

“You cannot sue them based on vibe appropriation.”

“Yeah, but I can sue them for impersonation.”

---

They cannot, as it turns out, sue the mayor, because legal work like that costs even more money. 

They can, however, ruin his year by filing (and forging) every possible insurance claim under the sun, so they all walk out of the office a little more satisfied than before. 

“I hope all your socks go missing in the laundry!” Nya yells toward the building as they hit the streets. “I hope you have a rock stuck in your shoe for the rest of your life! I hope you’re plagued with a mildly inconvenient headache every waking moment and never fully enjoy anything ever again!”

“Alright, alright, we’re getting looks,” Cole grabs her arm. “Let it go.”

“As much as I appreciate it, I am not going back to jail,” Jay shudders. “Twice was enough.”

Kai frowns. “Twice? When else did you get arrested?”

“We all did, re—” Jay cuts off, suddenly aware of the absolute daggers Nya is staring at him. “Uhhh…aw, snap, another mental breakdown, haha!”

“Is this the whole ‘we all have missing memories you guys are definitely hiding from us’ thing again? ‘Cause I swear—”

“I said I’m getting to it, it’s a really boring story anyways—”

“Didn’t you say you lost an eye—”

“Oh look, a window!”

This time, Jay is thwarted by Lloyd, who’s simply jumped out enough windows to recognize when someone’s about to try it themselves. Except Jay is aiming to jump inside a window this time, so they both go crashing into Pixal just as she joins them. 

To her credit, she barely flinches. “I thought I heard clown noises nearby.” 

Lloyd stares at her in such utter betrayal, the mental breakdown thing might become valid.  

“Pixal,” Jay simply begs. “Please. Help your clowns scavenge our clown dinners.”

Pixel surveys them all, a fond smile tugging at her lips. “There is a nice pizza place down the block.”

The cheers she’s met with nearly succeeded at knocking her over where Jay failed.  

Dinner that night comprises of actual, warm, take-out pizza, which nearly moves Cole to tears.

“Definitely changing the priorities order,” Lloyd says blissfully through a mouthful of cheese. “Food goes at the top, no questions.”

“Seconded,” Kai mumbles. 

“Thirded.”

“Fourthed.”

“I cannot believe, that after everything we’ve been through, we did not qualify for the post-apocalypse discount,” Zane bites out. 

“Well,” Jay says brightly. “Pixal hacked the card reader, so technically we got a hundred percent discount.”

Zane stares at her, in equally utter betrayal. “Pixal?”

She shrugs. “They can try to send me to prison. They will fail.” 

---

Two days later, Skylor cements herself as everybody’s most favorite person in the entire world by not only saving them from starvation by demanding they sit their butts down in the restaurant and eat for free, but also donating six pillows and a year’s worth of shampoo. 

“I know it’s not a lot, but I’m on the lookout for more,” she tells them. “I’ve asked other people to help chip in, too, so hopefully that’ll make things a little easier.”

“Skylor,” Cole nearly sobs into his new, beautiful pillow. “If Kai doesn’t marry you, I will.”

“H-hey!”

“No marriage necessary,” she snorts. “Consider keeping you all fed my way of saying thanks.”

“But you already helped out with the monastery,” Nya says, around the same time the rest of them assure her there’s no need for thanks, despite the fact that no one has the slightest desire to relinquish their food. 

“Fine, then,” Skyler huffs, her cheeks turning pink. “Make me say it out loud, will you — consider it my way of showing that I care about you all. Very much.” 

“Aww,” Lloyd says. 

Kai makes a face somewhere between melting and heart eyes. 

“I hate all of you,” she mutters. 

“We love you too, Skylor,” Cole grins. 

“Hate you!”

Despite her words, they all leave with six boxes of leftovers and free dessert. 

This, of course, brings another slightly-pressing issue to mind.  

---

They end up getting a refrigerator for a steal of a bargain, which is probably again influenced by Pixal’s criminal extremely generous activity. 

Given how enthusiastic they all are about getting it installed, Kai is half-expecting there to be no work left for him at all by the time he returns from the food run. 

He’s…not entirely disappointed when he walks into the kitchen, though he is rather baffled. 

The room freezes as if on record-scratch. Jay is perched on top of the counters, Lloyd has a sledgehammer raised halfway in the air, and Cole is on the ground beside the refrigerator crying. 

“What?” Kai asks, blankly. 

“The fridge…doesn’t fit…” Cole moans into the floor. 

“We didn’t leave enough space between the cabinets,” Jay informs him through a mouthful of gummy worms. “So the door can’t open.”

Kai looks at Lloyd. “So the sledgehammer is for…?”

“DIY home improvement,” he shrugs.

“Huh.” Kai glances at the cabinets. “Put some safety goggles on first, okay?”

Lloyd only gets about two swings in before Zane descends with the all wrath of the Ice Emperor and adds to the tally of times-the- Green-Ninja-almost-met-his-doom, but it’s fun while it lasts. 

They were ugly cabinets, anyways. 

---

While his love for his family could potentially fuel a nuclear power plant, Kai does grow tired of being the living team space heater rather quickly. 

The effort of keeping his power going all night just gets annoying (and exhausting) — so by the time he’s tagged in Lloyd to use his power to keep him going, they’re up to two moody ninja short on sleep, and no one wants to deal with that. 

While they’ve scrounged up a few dollar-store quality blankets, Jay takes the opportunity to highlight his accomplishments in arts-and-crafts.

“You mean your mom’s accomplishments.”

“Hey, we made it together! It counts.”

The it in question quickly gains the name “god-awful-t-shirt-blanket” simply because the blinding combination of all their cast-off shirts sewn together is impressively terrible. 

“I still think this is a waste of good clothes,” Kai grumbles. “It’s not like we have outfits to spare these days, you know.”

“Do you wanna keep heating the room at night or no?” Nya threatens. 

Kai quickly shuts his mouth and returns to sewing Cole’s old plaid shirt to one of Jay’s neon blue shirts that features a dolphin printed in enough colors to kill a man. 

“So, what do we think?” Lloyd steps back, wiping at his forehead with his arm as he surveys their masterpiece. 

Staring at the multi-colored mess they’ve patched together into a quilt, Nya announces, “It’s the ugliest blanket I’ve ever seen.”

“Harsh.”

“Hey, we did our best!”

“See if I ever sew for you again,” Lloyd huffs. 

“I didn’t say that was a bad thing,” Nya quickly interjects. “It looks a little like us!”

“Are you saying we’re ugly?!”

“Nya, no, our family genes are enough to carry us through this, I promise—”

---

They’re in the middle of figuring out how to steal Wi-Fi from the government when Tox drops by, Karloff in tow. 

“You really…need…to get an elevator…or something,” she pants, red-faced and sweaty as she hauls several large bags behind her.

In contrast, Karloff looks unfazed, casually toting a hideously floral-patterned sofa over his shoulder. 

“Skylor mentioned you need furniture, no?” he says. “It’s not much, but you need somewhere to sit.”

“Karloff,” Jay tells him, very seriously. “This is the most beautiful sofa I’ve ever seen.” 

“Haha! Karloff is right once again,” he brags to Tox. 

Tox stares at Jay in flabbergasted despair. 

“You can’t put that in your home,” she mutters. “You can’t. It’s a crime against eyes everywhere.”

“Well, it’s better than no sofa, and we’re literally turning down nothing these days,” Nya says cheerfully. She leans over to peer at the bags Tox has managed to drag up. “Speaking of…?”

“Oh, yeah.” Tox heaves the bags in front of her. “Skylor said you guys needed help interior decorating? So I brought a couple rugs. She also mentioned something about the ugliest blanket she’s ever seen, so we called up some of the other Elemental Masters and got like, six or seven together. They’re not exactly works of art, but they’re okay?”

Kai tears open the first bag, his eyes lighting up. “They’re beautiful,” he whispers reverently. “Hey, guys, we got blankets! Dibs on the one with a wolf.”

“Oh, no, not that one, it’s from my awful middle school phase—”

“What do you mean, dibs, I want the wolf one!”

“Oh yeah? Down to fight for it?”

“You’re on. Training ground in five.”

“Absolutely not, we are not fighting over a blanket we’ve been so generously gifted,” Zane snaps, snagging Kai and Cole by their collars. 

“Yeah, we also don’t really have a training ground anymore,” Lloyd says, half-buried in a blanket embroidered with countless bug-eyed fish. “It went ka-boom.”

Nya rubs her temples. “Zane?”

“Already factored into the expenses,” he sighs. 

“Oh wow, you guys weren’t kidding,” Tox says. “Do you want, uh, like a keychain? I have some mints here too I can donate…man, Karloff, help me out!” 

“Does the monastery need a metal helmet?”

“We’re really not that broke,” Nya says hastily, pushing away the offered mints. “But thanks.”

“Speak for yourself.” Lloyd snags the mints, clasping his hands together in prayer at Tox before slipping back into the emerging blanket battle. 

Nya sighs. “Do you guys want tea? We’ve got three whole mugs, now.”

Tox glances from the other ninja, where Jay has been successfully rolled into a blanket burrito and is in potential danger of being rolled right down the mountain, to Karloff, who’s the reason said danger is potential. 

“We can spare a minute, I guess.”

The t-shirt blanket is later relegated to the living room, where it lives as a throw blanket over Karloff’s floral sofa. They unanimously decide it’s the perfect home for it, and the only real critic is Skylor, who’s almost reduced to tears the next time she visits. 

---

They celebrate their achievement of having a living room by all eating dinner on Karloff’s floral-patterned couch. This comes with a good deal of kicking and squirming and the tragic loss of Kai’s fortune cookie, but they make it work. 

“This is kind of depressing, though. Sitting in the dark,” Nya remarks. 

A muscle in Jay’s jaw twitches. “Well, maybe if someone hadn’t melted all our candles—”

“You were the one who had the brilliant idea of trying to barbecue with them, genius!” Kai snaps. 

“It was a pretty spectacular fire,” Lloyd admits. Then, hastily, “In a really cool way!” 

“Perhaps a lamp should go next on the list,” Zane says. “Rather than relying on Kai as our light.”

“Hey, I’m a great light,” Kai scowls. “I’m the light of your life. I could light this place up all day!” 

“Yes, and I’m sure it would end similarly to the time you nearly burned down a building under the belief that you were achieving your true potential, but were, in fact, just dehydrated.”

Kai gapes at Zane in betrayal. “You said you’d take that to the grave!” 

Zane carefully laces his fingers together. “Technically, I did.”

“No you didn’t!” Jay interjects. “We never buried you, so you never had a grave! Ha!”

Zane looks affronted. “I didn’t get a grave?”

“You got a statue!” Kai quickly consoles . 

“Yeah, what’d you want us to do, pick your exploded pieces out of the street for half a year then toss ‘em in the ground?”

“Oh, as if that’s any worse than being left to pour your corpse out in cups of water.”

 “It wasn’t my corpse, I was still alive!”

“You were the literal ocean. Fish swam in you.” 

“Ew, does that mean—”

“Finish that sentence and I will drown you where you stand—”

“You’re all in desperate need of counseling,” Pixal mutters. 

“Tell me about it,” Lloyd says, leaning back on the armrest of the sofa. 

Cole shakes his head. “Lost causes, all of them.”

Pixal stares at them both, expression pinched, before deciding to respect the hopelessness of lost causes. 

“Hold on, I think Kai’s crying,” Lloyd moves to sit up, only to wobble, slip sideways, and go crashing to the floor gracelessly.  

“Just like when I fell to my doom off the Bounty,” Cole reminisces.  

 Pixal’s eyes glaze over. 

---

Later that evening, Pixal adds “therapy” to the list of potential expenses on the fridge door. Regretfully, it loses miserably in the debate against hot shower expenses, so it too joins the pile of repressed memories that will undoubtedly haunt them in the future. 

“But hey, a hot shower can cure depression on a good day,” Cole says, and that settles that. 

---

Hot showers, as it turns out, are a hard-won priority. 

It’s less so after Jay, Nya, and Pixal camp out overnight near the pipeline and perform their own less-than-legal maintenance, but one of Zane’s carefully filed insurance claims actually went through the other day, so they’re taking their luck as they can. 

It’s not until they get working on the bathroom itself that the true difficulty makes itself clear. 

“Hey, uh,” Kai stares down at the patch of rotted floor he’s ripped up, wiping at the fog that’s spread across his safety goggles. “Is the base layer supposed to look like that?”

“Look like what?” Cole abandons the tiling he’s been placing to glance over. His face drops. “Uh-oh.” 

“Is that all black mold?” Nya gags, nearly dropping her bottle of cleaning bleach.  

“FSM, no wonder we’re all crazy,” Cole mutters. 

“Alright,” Kai strips off his rubber gloves. “Nothing for it. Back up, guys, I’m barbecuing this baby.”

“Wait wait wait don’t—”

Ten minutes and a good deal of hacking and wheezing through teary eyes later, Cole murders Kai while they all look on. 

Well, he attempts to.

“You filled the monastery with chlorine gas, you absolute moron—!”

“How was I supposed to know that would happen, I’m not a chemist—”

Nya glares ahead darkly as Lloyd gingerly treats the reddened blisters on her hands. 

“None of you,” Zane says, through gritted teeth. “Are touching cleaning chemicals for a year.” 

---

“Not sure I wanna know how you pulled off poisoning yourselves, but I’m kinda impressed you did a better job of it than most criminals would,” Ronin tells them, once the monastery has been successfully de-chlorinated and the bathroom tiles firmly put in place, sans black mold. 

“Maybe we can hire ourselves out to them when we’re strapped for cash,” Nya sighs.

“We’re literally always strapped for cash. We’re broke.”

Ronin laughs, clapping Jay on the back. “Welcome to adulthood, kid.”

“I don’t think normal adulthood gets their home blown up on a regular basis,” Lloyd hisses.

“Fair point,” Ronin nods. 

“Well, thanks for saving us all from a slow and painful death,” Cole scrubs his hands over his face. “We can pay you back sometime in the next century. Maybe.”

“Ah, don’t worry about it,” Ronin waves them off. “It’d be like kicking a dog when it’s down, askin’ you all to pay. Besides, I probably owe you one.”

“You sure do,” Jay glares. 

“Hey, hey, I said I was sorry for the whole human sacrifice thing,” Ronin placates. “Want some good news, at least?”

“Is it actually good news?” Lloyd eyes him shrewdly.

“Lighten up, captain trust issues.” Kai barely snags Lloyd before he lands himself back in jail. “I looked into some more of those insurance claims you filed, and you actually got somethin’ out of it. I, uh, helped the bank along a bit, with the refund.”

“Bank?” Cole whispers.

“Refund?” Jay’s eyes shine. 

“Yeah, got you all your checks right here,” Ronin says, tugging six neat envelopes from his jacket. “Just don’t blow ‘em all at once, okay? Haha.”

Zane looks as if he might propose to him on the spot. 

“Hey, this isn’t too bad!” Kai exclaims. “We got money!”

“Guys,” Lloyd says, staring at his check. “You know we should probably pool all this together and spend it on necessities, right?”

“Yeah,” Cole sighs. 

“It would be the smartest course of action,” Zane adds. 

There’s a noted silence.

“Or,” Lloyd says. 

---

In their defense, they spend exactly two-thirds of their checks on household items. 

Whether or not these are needed household items remains a debate. 

“If we’re all buying lamps for the living room, can we at least attempt to match?” Zane sighs. 

“Booo, where’s your joy and whimsy?” Jay sticks out his tongue. 

“That isn’t even a lamp, it’s a light-up axolotl.”

“The heck’s an axo-lot—”

“It lights up, doesn’t it? Ergo, it’s a lamp.”

“Ergo, what are you, Sensei Wu—”

“We’re never having guests over again,” Cole remarks, as Lloyd and Nya maneuver a five-foot-tall rendition of Godzilla into the shopping cart that may or may not light up. 

“The monastery’s gonna look rad as heck, we’re forcing everyone to come over and look at it,” Kai corrects as he tosses a set of flame-patterned curtains into the mess. 

“Absolutely not.” 

“I actually might like them,” Zane muses. “They would capture the energy of our kitchen perfectly.”

Kai beams. “Flame curtains are a go!” 

In the aftermath, they total around six individual blankets, five mismatching lamps and one light-up axolotl, a table that no one knows how to put together, one set of flame-patterned curtains, another hideous couch, and enough cutlery and kitchenware that no one has to eat out of Sensei Wu’s incense bowls anymore. 

“Alright,” Lloyd says. “We’ve got three hours until the stores start closing. Everyone take the rest of your checks, don’t think about how much of a disaster the monastery still is, and start thinking about how valid retail therapy is.” 

“Aye-aye,” Kai salutes, before immediately booking it for the clothing outlets. 

---

Three hours later, Kai’s happily blown his entire check on a new wardrobe and exactly one pair of name-brand brand shoes. He’s unreasonably proud of himself for his restraint, until he catches Cole with three pairs of his own name-brand shoes, and immediately regrets being responsible. 

He spots Jay going off in the N-Pop section of a music store, Nya investing in a sinfully-priced espresso machine, and Zane walking toward the clothing outlets himself with a high-quality pair of noise-cancelling headphones. 

He doesn’t find Lloyd until well after he’s picked up his own clothes, already sporting an oversized hoodie he could’ve just stolen from Kai. 

He’s more concerned when Lloyd proceeds to blow the last of his check at the sporting goods section of the local convenience store. Considering how long Lloyd spent looking wistfully at the candy aisle, Kai is baffled by the decision. 

He’s even more baffled when Lloyd proceeds to box up his purchase for delivery instead of keeping it himself.

He’s utterly horrified when he sees who it’s addressed to.

“Are you serious?!” he asks shrilly, torn between ripping the box from Lloyd’s hands or immediately calling the mental health hotline. “You’re sending her gifts?”

“It’s not a gift, it’s — look, it’s a long story, you wouldn’t get it,” Lloyd grumbles, plastering another layer of duct tape over the box. “Just help me deliver it to Kryptarium and I’ll show you, okay?”

Kai very much does not help, because he’s not an enabler and he cares about his brother’s mental health, but he does follow Lloyd to Kryptarium Prison and lurk behind him as he eagerly watches the surveillance screens. 

Harumi stares at the box before her, looking every bit as baffled as Kai is. 

“Who would send me a volleyball—”

She freezes, her face going utterly blank. A muscle in her jaw twitches. 

There’s a brief flash of what could be amusement, a brief expression as if she’s eaten something sour, then a fury like no other eclipses her face. 

“LLOYD! I’LL KILL YOU MYSELF, YOU THINK YOU’RE HILARIOUS—”

Lloyd’s still laughing by the time they’re escorted from the premises, hard enough that Kai has to catch him when he trips at the top of the steps. 

“What’d you even write on the note?” Kai finally asks, a bit in awe. 

Lloyd grins. “I told her good luck getting together her villainous volleyball team in jail.”

Kai blinks. “Do I…want to know?”

“Nope!” Lloyd says airily. “But I’ve made my point.”

---

Regardless of some behaviors, the mental health hotline remains a constant idea. It simply happens to come up at inconvenient times, such as when Cole drops a dresser on his foot halfway across the courtyard. 

He swears so loudly the whole monastery echoes with it. 

“Oh geez, Cole, are you okay? Why’d you lift the whole thing on your own?”

“We could have helped,” Zane rushes over. “You don’t have to do it all yourself—”

“Yes I do!” Cole yells. “I’m stronger than that, I’m supposed to be stronger, I have to be stronger or you’re all going to die next time—”

He cuts off abruptly. Zane looks heartbroken. Jay—

Is suddenly busy smacking Cole upside the head. 

“No, you don’t!” he snaps back, even louder. “You don’t have to do it by yourself! None of you do! Every time anyone tries to do something by themselves it all goes wrong and we lose someone, so we’re never — doing that — again!” 

He seizes Cole around the arms, his wild eyes meeting Cole’s wide ones. “No one blames you for the stupid tunnel. I don’t care how strong you are. We’re all here and that’s what matters, so don’t you dare put that at risk.”

“But I—”

“No.”

“Jay, I—”

“No.”

“I—”

“No!” A manic expression overtakes Jay’s face. “No, no, no! No one’s taking the blame. No one’s isolating themselves. No. One. Is. Going. Off. Alone. You hear me?!” 

The others are frozen, halfway outstretched hands caught as if suspended in ice. Kai’s expression is twisted painfully. Lloyd’s eyes are on the ground. Zane is as frozen as the metaphorical ice, and Nya looks devastated. 

“No more being alone,” Jay says, the fire in his voice giving way to something wetter and considerably more sniffly. “No more. Don’t — you can’t—”

“Okay,” Cole whispers. He carefully takes Jay’s hands from his shoulders, grasping them in his own instead. “Okay. No more going at it alone. I promise.”  

 The monastery courtyard seems a little colder, in the silence.  

“Anyone feel like circling back to the whole ‘suing Harumi’ idea?” Kai finally speaks up. 

Jay gives a wet snort. 

“Well, we’re probably gonna need to afford tissues,” Lloyd says. His own voice isn’t exactly dry, either. 

---

The downside to sticking therapy smack at the bottom of their priorities is that they all really are, in fact, not okay. 

Most of the time, they manage. 

There’s a solace in being together, a comfort in having the people you trust and care for most in the world right next to you when the nightmares get bad. When Jay awakens screaming for Nya or clutching at his throat for air, Nya is already holding his hand and Cole’s holding the rest of him.

When Zane lapses into silence too long, emotions a roiling mess that leave him paralyzed, Kai is there with one-two-three’s for breathing and Lloyd is there to draw little cats with him until the world subsides again. 

When Cole’s eyes shadow in training and his hits grow wild, Zane is there to pin him before he bloodies his hands and Jay is there to sing horrible off-key songs he loves until the panic ebbs.

When Nya stares at the water too-long, her eyes misty and her expression dreamy, Jay is there to hold her tight and Kai is there to talk until his voice goes hoarse and hers returns. 

There are other times, though, when it’s harder. 

It hits Kai this time about halfway through painting the walls of the kitchen a cheerful yellow, said paint splattered up to his elbows, courtesy of Lloyd. He glances down — to joke, to laugh, to not think—

And pauses. With the headband he’s stolen from Pixal in place, pushing back the mass of thick blond hair, Kai can just see the purple-red edges of the swollen, irritated wounds that scar Lloyd’s scalp. The twin marks are a better sight than when Kai first glimpsed them, bleeding circles that looked as if someone had drilled into Lloyd’s skull — but not by much. 

“S’fine,” Lloyd mutters, catching Kai’s devastated expression. “I can’t even feel ‘em. Not really.”

“Liar,” Kai rasps. “They look awful.”

Lloyd makes a face. “Gee, thanks a lot.”

“I mean it. What if they get infected, or worse, or — have you had Sensei look at them?”

Lloyd wraps his arms around himself, avoiding Kai’s eyes. “No. I didn’t really…I did what he asked. What they both did. And then screwed the whole thing up, so it was all useless anyways, so I—”

He bites his lip, hard enough to crack the already dry skin. 

“I don’t really wanna hear anyone telling me what else I’m doing wrong with myself, right now.” 

Kai is angry enough to feel sick. 

“That’s stupid. That’s so stupid, he should — it shouldn’t be like that, it’s — why didn’t anyone—” he shakes his head. “Why doesn’t anyone ever ask us if we wanna be — if we wanna—”

Lloyd’s hand closes around his wrist, gently tugging Kai’s own hand from where it’s clawed unconsciously at his arm, leaving ugly red stripes against his skin. 

“You asked,” he says, quietly. “That meant a lot.”

Kai looks away. “Lot of good it did.”

Lloyd’s grip tightens. “It meant the world to me,” he repeats, stronger this time. 

“But I couldn’t—!”

Lloyd abandons his hold on his wrist to wrap his arms around Kai entirely, holding tight. Bony and strong and familiar, Kai’s little brother to the core. 

“Thank you,” he says, fervently enough that Kai can feel the ache in his voice. “Thank you for looking out for me.”

Kai’s voice is a miserable mess of fought-back tears. “I couldn’t even do anything.” 

“You asked me what I wanted,” Lloyd says once again, and Kai can hear the edge of tears threatening his voice, now. “That was everything.” 

Giving in, Kai drops his head into the mess of blond curls and hugs Lloyd back. Lloyd’s hair smells like blood and paint and steel and the strawberry shampoo Skylor gave them, and now it’s gonna smell like Kai’s stupid snot and tears. 

“Hey, having another hug party without me is lame.” 

Kai gives a wet, broken response as Nya throws her arms around them both. 

“Idiots,” she murmurs, resting her head atop theirs. “I love you both, you know that?”

“Ew, gross,” Lloyd snorts wetly. “Hey Kai, Nya loves us.”

“Little jerk, who you callin’ gross? And here I thought you loved us too.” 

“Well obviously I love you guys back, who’s the idiot now—”

Kai simply clutches them both and cries harder, as if holding onto them will stop himself from falling apart.

It works, in the ways that matter, though it’s always because they’re holding back even tighter. 

Later that evening, Zane bathes Lloyd’s head in antiseptic and Jay forces them all to sit through the PowerPoint presentation he’s made with Nya titled “Every Super Cool Totally Good Character with Horns Ranked”. He loses them the minute he brings anime characters into it, as everyone suddenly develops incredibly passionate opinions about the rankees, but Lloyd’s laughing too hard to have his own opinion and Kai doesn’t feel like he’s drowning under inadequacy anymore — just choking to death under the weight of Jay’s elbow for daring to insult Re:Zero as an anime “since it actually has Oni in it, idiot, your opinion is trash—” 

They get things back to being okay, one way or another. 

---

Somewhere in the third month of renovations, they finally scrounge up six whole beds. It takes a good deal of dragging and cursing, but they finally manage to move into their own rooms, the once-empty spaces looking a little less lonely. 

“Now we don’t have to all sleep together in the same room anymore,” Jay announces. There’s no small amount of celebration at that.

The celebration lasts up until sometime around three in the morning, at which point the  consistent nightmares land them all right back in the pile of communal air mattresses. 

“Just for like, one more night,” Kai yawns, as Lloyd curls closer beneath his arm. 

“Totally, yeah,” Nya echoes, one leg spread across Jay, her arm sprawled over Kai. 

“Go to sleep already, FSM’ sake,” Cole begs, before slumping over Zane. 

For all Cole’s begging, he’s still the first to act when Zane suddenly lurches up from the bed, gasping for air like he’s drowning and giving them all joint heart attacks. 

“—hey, hey, it’s okay, it’s just us—”

Cole’s hands hover, non-threatening, as Zane buries his face in his palms, breathing ragged. The others have begun to get up now as well, the slow kind of approach that lets Zane know exactly where each of them are. 

“I despise this,” Zane spits, as his hand drags down to fist over his chest. “I hate feeling like this. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it—”

“I know,” Cole says. “I know.”

“This is why — it’s so much easier—“

“It’s okay, it’s—”

“It is not! I do not need to breathe, and yet I can’t!” Zane bursts out, frustrated and frightened. “I’m not supposed to break down like this, I do not, I do not—”

“You’re not a machine,” Cole says steadily. “You get to break down.” 

“But if I—”

“You don’t,” Lloyd murmurs. “You don’t have to turn ‘em off, Zane. You’re one of the strongest people I know.” 

Zane’s head lowers, his eyes shadowed. “It wouldn’t hurt,” he says, but it’s reluctant. 

“Yeah, you’d never hurt, but you’d never be happy, either,” Kai says. “And that’d suck.”

“It’d suck for us, too,” Cole speaks up. “We’d have to live without your laugh. Without your sassy remarks. Without your kindness.”

“We’d live without you,” Lloyd says, quietly. “And you wouldn’t really be living, would you?”

Zane crumples, his shoulders shaking as he allows Kai to pull him close. 

“If it gets too much, just come to us,” Jay says. “We’ll be more, okay? We’re pretty good at that.”

Zane gives a wet, stifled laugh. 

“Don’t go, even if it’s just your emotions leaving,” Nya murmurs, her head against his. “It isn’t worth it.”

With slowing shudders, Zane lets himself relax, the warmth of their little family pressing around him. Kai is an immovable barrier at his side, save for where Lloyd’s tucked beneath his arm. Jay’s legs tangle with Lloyd and Cole’s, his hand held tightly in Nya’s.  

“Leaving isn’t worth it,” Nya echoes. “Not in any lifetime.”

---

Bit by bit, the monastery comes together. 

The smell of new paint gives way to a familiar scent of mixing elements and laundry soap, one that’s followed them since the first Bounty. They comb through every online shop until they find the exact brand of sheets that feel like the first apartment they ever lived in together. Thrift shops and sales and birthdays stock closets once again, new hoodies that are quickly stolen and passed back and forth. The collection of CD’s and movies rebuilds into stacks once again through shared movie nights and pirated music.

And little by little, with the consistent passage of time, photographs line the walls of the monastery once again.

 A little older, a little worn, but a collection of family all the same. 

---

“Except we still don’t have damn central heating—” 

“Suck it up and light the fireplace, hothead.” 

“No respect in this city. None at all.” 

[daiourage]

That One Arc in Prime Where Optimus Lost His Memory But This AU Makes No Sense Because It's a Mix Between IDW and One

Happy New Years! My drawing app keeps crashing so I decided to draw my ideas on paper, and this took quite a while;;;

As always, press/click for both the full picture and for better quality!!!

["Brief" explanation of this comic:

1. In a previous post I mentioned wanting One to continue into something similar to the IDW continuum because I,,, love IDW, just in general, but the IDW MegOp crumbs are also tasty--//shot 1-2. Also the way the characters refer to each other is intentional please I think I know what I'm doing?? It's been a while since I consumed TF content (until recently) though. This entire comic is a what-if scenario that came to me when I was showering lol-- 2. MegOp is established 👍 (insert "old man yaoi joke" here (I agree with y'all btw, not mocking)) 3. In the last panel, I was debating whether or not to put Elita with Bee in helping Megs call Optimus "Pax", but decided to put Starscream because I feel like it makes more sense non-One wise. 3-2. I wanted to include more dialogue with other characters, but it ended up looking like it was shoehorned in because the concept was very MegOp centered I'm so sorry (me to every other character) Just know I love every one of y'all-- 4. I have crudely simplified the characters by complete accident. My bad;;;; in my defense, every character changes a lot when I'm not looking (I had so much trouble trying to figure out which Bee design to use),,, 5. It is very fast paced on accident as well;;; might sound like a badly translated manga, too;;; I don't know how it turned out but maybe my bilingual self is in that one phase where I'm good at neither language;;;]

It might look a little messy because it's been so long since I've touched colored pencils I'm,,, gonna try to get used to it since my app doesn't seem to be getting fixed anytime soon;;; (I don't know if it's an iPad problem or an app problem;;; Sketchbook get your shit together please,,,)

Also, I used a couple of sparkly colored pencils but I'm not sure it translated well in the scan so I'm a little disappointed but eh,,,

Also also, have this thing I drew of Megs being lovestruck in the last page when Optimus comes back lmao--

My bad for the long post; it's currently 4 AM because I stayed up watching music shows over here;;I hope we all have a wonderful year. I have a feeling my TF phase is gonna last a couple years longer than it usually does jlsdlakjsdlkfja

Let's all have a good time, yeah~?

[thewisecheerio]

Messmer's Insignia

This is Messmer's insignia, stamped all over his Keep, as well as his soldiers' shields and tents. This post is going to be a canon-compliant lore analysis, meaning that not all of this will be explicitly mentioned in canon but will attempt to be compliant with what we do know explicitly.

There are a few important elements coming together to make the insignia: 1. The left-hand flame 2. The right-hand woven ring 3. The outer ring 4. The overlaid, central spear

I'd like to pick these apart in the same way you might pick apart a heraldic coat of arms to look at what each piece might mean individually, as well as what the placement of some elements relative to others might symbolize.

The Left-Hand Flame

Along with the horizontal panel of flames, this is obviously symbolic of Messmer's flame. However, I do want to note that you can absolutely see a cute little winged serpent shape hidden in the flame's design with its head on the right, its tail on the left, and the central portion of the flame forming a wing. (Or maybe it's a dragon. Or maybe I need to seek help for my advanced brainrot, which is causing me to see things. You decide!) Given that Messmer's Phase 1 design—and his public persona—is a mixture of flame and specifically winged serpents, this seems an apt way to capture both ideas in one. A bit on the nose maybe, but hey, his day job is genocide, not graphic design (insert obligatory gRaPhIc dEsIgN iS mY pAsSiOn here).

The Right-Hand Ring

Many people have connected this to Marika's circlet, which I'm not sure I see. Her circlet is a lot more angularly braided, rather than the smooth coil shown here. Plus, I think that Marika's circlet is supposed to be similar to Miquella's Circlet of Light, in that it signifies a (fully) divine aspect of the wearer—something Messmer assuredly is not, since he is a demigod without grace (or, at least, with only the artificial grace bestowed by Marika's seal alone). But either way, none of what I'm about to say contradicts this interpretation, and you can have both be true at the same time.

Rather, I think a different interpretation might be that this is intertwined serpents, similar to the shape his own winged serpents make as they coil around his body. The winged serpent is typically a symbol of Caduceus in alchemical lore, of which Elden Ring is rife. The Caduceus is explicitly two intertwined snakes topped with wings. So that seems like the most straightforward interpretation for what this might be a nod to.

To learn more about Caduceus's role in alchemy, I highly recommend the two videos linked below by Max Derrat and Smoughtown. But the short of it is that the binding ritual that produces a rebis—a divine, single (merged) soul of masculine and feminine energies (e.g. Marika/Radagon)—requires some sort of binding material to happen properly. In alchemical lore, this binding material is the "prima materia", or the formless base of all matter in the universe associated with chaos and the void. The material is often referred to as Mercurius, named for the god Mercury who carries a Caduceus staff. Thus, we end up with binding/prima materia = Mercurius = Caduceus = 2 intertwined serpents.

(Side note: This is also an EXCELLENT reason to believe that Messmer is the son of Marika and Radagon. The White Queen and Red King of alchemy are often shown with the Caduceus between them, which would seem to fit well with the idea of Marika and Radagon having a child between them that is associated with dual serpents.)

I also think there is a connection to the (singular) base serpent by way of the alchemical Caduceus, however. Besides the prima materia/uniting matter, Caduceus is also often used as a symbol of duality. Namely, it is a symbol of the tension between "higher" and "base" desires, with the former being associated with wisdom and the latter being associated with chaos. We absolutely see this in Messmer's lore, as we learn from the Winged Serpent Helm that his winged serpents act as wise friends that keep his base serpent in check. As such, the duality of the Caduceus may also represent the duality of the winged and base serpents. So this coiled symbol involving two snakes might also represent the singular base serpent indirectly, making it function like an image-based palimpsest. When we peel back the layers of one, we find evidence of the other.

The Outer Ring

I mostly think this is just meant to be a uniting graphical element. However, it is cute that it kind of evokes the imagery of a Great Rune, all of which are rings. Messmer does not have a Great Rune, as he did not participate in the shattering. So instead of an actual Great Rune, he ends up with this imitation insignia instead. Adorable. Maybe this is why his otherwise heraldic-looking insignia was designed as a circle instead of the more classical forms that heraldic coats-of-arms tend to take.

The Central Spear

In the center of the insignia, we get a spear wrapped with a singular(?) serpent. The question mark is there because we do not actually see the serpent tail, so you would be reasonable to question whether this is truly a singular serpent, or something like an unending ouroboros. (Or, you know, both.) I'm going to go forward with the assumption that this is a singular serpent. Cutely, the head of the spear forms the serpent's head.

Obviously, the most straightforward part is that the spear is Messmer's spear, the Spear of the Impaler. I find it highly apt that the spear *overlays* the other elements of the insignia, almost dominating them. War is definitely the thing Messmer is most publicly known for, as a myriad of NPCs—both spirit and corporeal—curse him for the honorless war that he has wrought without mentioning much else about him. Meanwhile, his internal relationship with his flame and serpentine nature is something really only known privately. After all, the Fire Knight set tells us that it was only those few knights under his personal command that knew the truth of how he felt regarding his flame and his serpentine nature.

Armor of the Fire Knights under Messmer the Impaler's personal command. Distinguished by its red cape and twin golden snakes which adorn the neck, enhancing incantations of Messmer's flame. These were the only ones who truly knew Messmer. His flames, like serpents. The painful fate that accompanied his accursed form.

Building on this, the dominating nature of this graphical element is important in another way. The flame and other serpent imagery seems to be something intrinsic to Messmer: he was born with a serpentine nature, and was either born with or cursed with flame very early in his existence, too. Meanwhile, war is something that was *imposed upon him* as a request by his mother, as we learn from his armor set. He doesn't do genocide just because he enjoys fighting like Godfrey or Radahn; rather, he does it on behalf of Marika and ends up pretty sad, tired, and self-hating because of it. In this way, warfare ends up as an intrusive element in his life, similar to the way the spear almost seems to be a dominating, nearly intrusive element in the insignia's design.

The serpent coiled around the spear is also really interesting, because it appears to be a singular serpent in contrast to the dual coil on the right. The most straightforward interpretation is that this is a nod to his hidden inner nature as the (singular) base serpent.

Given what we learned above about the Caduceus itself symbolizing a tension between higher and base desires—and repeated in Messmer's story as tension between the wise winged serpents and base serpent—I find it apt that the snake more associated with base desires is the one wrapped around the tool of war. I enjoy the link between warfare and base desires, as it ties into Elden Ring's overall themes around cycles of violence, explicitly characterizing the desire for violence and war as base.

The Central Spear: An Alternative Interpretation

This next bit is unhinged brainrot territory and what I think is a weaker interpretation of the spear symbolism than the above, so be warned. But I also think something interesting can be said if you look at this as a nod to the Rod of Asclepius. Asclepius is the god of healing and medicine, and the Rod of Asclepius (containing a single serpent wrapped around it) is often used as a symbol of medicine both in real life hospitals as well as in alchemical lore. Messmer's most obvious connection to medicine is Marika, as the Blessing of Marika and Remembrance of the Impaler items tell us that she attempted to heal him before finally gouging out his eye to seal the base serpent away instead.

So if this is a nod to his mother's attempts to heal him, two things are true. First, this is an adorable nod to mom from Elden Ring's biggest momma's boy. Second, one might also read into it that these attempts to heal him of something he was naturally born with—and isn't intrinsically evil in and of itself, as far as I can tell—were actually intrusive.

Certainly from Marika's perspective, she worried that others would judge Messmer for his serpentine nature. In some sense, she was right, as Messmer's followers (like Black Knight Andreas) specifically rebelled against him after learning of it. But if your child is disabled or otherwise different in some way and people will judge them for it, is that actually a reason to seek a cure rather than an accommodation, especially if the cure comes with other costs? The answer is complex and varies by individual, of course. But in Messmer's case, we see signs of self-hatred and even neglect as a result of being taught that the base serpent is intrinsically evil. For evidence of this, see the linked post about how there are bits of shed skin on the base serpent, which is a symptom of neglect for snakes!

If Marika's cure resulted in self-hatred and neglect of a critical aspect of his being, can it really be said to be medicinal? Or is it just as intrusive an element in his life as warfare seems to be? I think if you believe the latter, this could be another reason to read this part of the design as intrusive and dominating over the other elements in the insignia that represent his natural self. That said, I think the base serpent interpretation is the more lore-accurate one, but it's fun to think about what it might mean as a symbol of Marika's attempted healing, anyway!

To Sum Up...

So overall while the design is maybe a slightly messy conglomeration of ideas and images, I think this insignia gives us so much. We get fire imagery, winged serpent imagery, base serpent symbolism, a graphic palimpsest of the winged and base serpents and the duality of man, warfare, warfare as a base desire, maybe a cute nod to Great Runes, and maybe even a cute nod to Momma and her attempts to heal. In this way, I think it functions in the same way as coats of arms do in heraldic design: they can also be pretty graphically messy, but it's on purpose to fit a lot of symbolism into a small space.

[agatharkn3ss]

Episodes and story predictions (spoilers!)

My restless brain has been on another quest.

Full theory explanation and lots of plot side-notes included below, but the short of it - I think the episodes order is going to be something like this (including previous ones for completion):

Ep. 1 - Westview: Agnes of Westview Ep. 2 - Westview: Setting up the journey Ep. 3 - The Road: Water trial - Jen (blue road) Ep. 4 - The Road: Fire trial - Alice (orange road) Ep. 5 - The Road: Spirit trial - Agatha (purple road) Ep. 6 - Westview: Teen backstory Ep. 7 - The Road: Air trial - Lilia (yellow road) Ep. 8 - The Road: Earth trial - Rio (green road) Ep. 9 - The Grand Finale (Agatha all Alone?)

BACKGROUND ON THE SYMBOLISM First of all, thank you to the production team for their incredible attention to detail. It is clear they have done a lot of research and put a lot of thought into symbolism and telling the story from the visual point of view. This is what makes theorising so much fun!

The whole show seems to revolve around the Wicca religion (also known as "The Craft" - I see you Teen!) that uses the pentacle (5-pointed star inside a circle) and typically worships Triple Moon aka Triple Goddess aka Hekate (Maiden, Mother, Crone) and Horned God (could be Marvel Mephisto). The magic circle uses 5 elements - Fire, Water, Earth, Air and Spirit. Together they are believed to be the root of all matter. Each element has a set of values associated with them, often also colours. While the colours are not always coded in the same way, I found that this (totally Agatha-unrelated) graphic below fits so well with the show's imagery.

The moon phases also play a big role in here. There are 8 lunar stages, but only 5 elements, so it will be interesting to see how the show continues to link these two strands (so far we've had Full moon for Water trial and Waxing for Fire). Moon phases are also linked with the stages of life - I won't go into full analysis but check out @shutupineedtothink post who beautifully explained possible connections with our witches.

I only wonder whether the full moon in the first trial was maybe mistaken and it was New moon instead? So that we are just moving through the first 5 phases of the moon? After all, it was Teen who identified it - although he was correct about it being the Water phase.

Episode 3: Water Trial - Jen - Blue - Full Moon Colour: we already saw that as the events unfolded, the light took on the blue tint, because of the water outside. Jen's own nightmare was all in blue. And the road (leaves, roots, mushrooms) leading to the trial was all blue. Story: Jen being associated with Water elements makes sense. Healing, Expression, Peace and Compassion fit really well with her role as a midwife and influencer (did you all realise that it was the midwife work that Agatha referred to when she explained why she spared Jen and her powers because it was "good work that matters" - a nod to Agatha appreciating maternal values). I don't think we will see much more of Jen's backstory - at least not as a dedicated episode, but only through bits of conversations like by the campfire. It feels like Jen's struggles were to do with a mental block and I think Agatha's pep talk was the one that made Jen realise her real power and, though she might not realise it yet, she might be regaining her magic as she starts believing in herself again. Plus I like the idea of not giving an evil man too much of a screen time because it's not his story. Trial exit: oven... so into the fire (as next trial)

Episode 4: Fire Trial - Alice - Orange- Waxing Moon Colour: red/orange tints were so much more obvious in this trial and the road to trial was orange. Even Alice's hair have some red/orange streaks. And her nightmare in ep.3 had some orange tint to it. Story: Alice also fits so well with the fire element values. Passion, Inspiration, Intuition, Creation, Protection - all of these align with her role as an ex-cop, but also her emotional journey as she thinks herself responsible for everything. Then there is the nod to creation when she overcomes the curse with the aid of a song. She is also (except for Teen) the youngest of them all (Maiden). When she was playing, there were flickers of orange magic between her fingers. So I think she's had magical powers all along but just didn't know about it, because she didn't believe in it. Her Road wish was to break the curse, not to get powers. Trial exit: piano... so into the soul (as next trial)?

Episode 5: Spirit Trial - Agatha - Purple - Half Moon? Colour: post-fire trial the road is purple - the leaves as well as fluorescent mushrooms etc. The scenes look dark and it's hard to see if they have purple tint. Agatha's nightmare in ep.3 was very dark too though. Story: This is the 80s sleep over episode (judging from the episode 5 font). Spirit values are the Soul, the Devine, the Mystery. While it's true these kind of also remind me of Rio, I think it's fair to say that Agatha is a total mystery, with all those many layers and masks that she wears. She is also the soul of the coven and the guide of the trials so far. She might have lied and not have walked the Road before (although I begin to change my mind on that), but she definitely leads the coven. It was her pep talk who guided Jen to the solution. And it was her who figured out Lorna's protection spell and guided Alice to play the song. As the ballad says "(...) we carry on, Spirit as our guide" (for a long time I thought it would be the spirit of the dead guiding them). So in this episode we see Agatha's spirit becoming possessed. So the Road is not just testing Agatha, but the whole coven - see how they manage when their Spirit is not available to guide them - and I don't think it ends well. I believe this is the episode where Alice realises she has magical powers. But because she doesn't know how to use them yet, we might lose her. Peppered across the promos, we see images of Alice wielding her orange power - once inside the sleepover room and once when she's on a broomstick. We also get to see Agatha absorbing someone's power while wearing her 80s jersey. We also see at some point Agatha has a whisper of red/orange magic in her palm. My theory is that although the trial is Agatha's, Rio will play a significant role. After all, they are going to have ouija board that will spell "Death" was in the room with them. And one of the posters for the episode was Rio. Agatha will become possessed and everyone acts scared, and it will be Rio who talks Agatha down. I hope we will get some soft moments between them and that we see some flashbacks of their story to give it more meaning. But then maybe Agatha needs magic to return her soul. Rio can't give it to her (I wonder if they explain to the witches why), so Alice blasts possessed Agatha instead. She absorbs the magic and returns to normal. They exit the trial on broomsticks. However, I think as they are flying away, they get attacked by Salem Seven. This is where Alice tries to use her magic again, but she might be exhausted or just inexperienced and she falls off the broomstick and we don't get to see what happens with her? This is why I think Lilia from the future tries to send her the message "Alice, don't try to save Agatha!" (but it gets split in two visions). I also think we finally get to see Teen using his blue power - maybe to help defend from the Salem Seven? Then leave us all on a cliff-hanger when the other witches realise this. (This would explain why he's poster is for that episode as well - and he's dressed as Billy Maximoff Halloween costume - the Wiccan). The red moon silhouette shows only 4 witches in clear view - I think they are, from right to left: Agatha, Rio, Jen and Alice. In the far left, in the dark, it looks like Lilia is there as well. So maybe Salem Seven kidnapped Teen because he protected Agatha with his magic, and now the witches are chasing them? I think Lilia somehow ends up left behind (I'll explain in later episode).

Exit: On broomsticks - into the Air (next trial)?

Episode 6: Westview - Teen story The episode list has this one circled in red, so I wonder if it's the "odd one out". Maybe we don't get to follow the Witches on the Road, but see flashback to Teen's backstory, following his blue magic cliff-hanger from the last episode? Maybe we see his family car crash mentioned in episode 1. We see that his parents (the two "perps") maybe don't die, thanks to the air bags, but are in a coma? That's why Teen says he's 100% certain his parents are asleep (or he talks about Wanda and Vision who tucked the boys in their beds right before the end of the Hex). I wonder if the body that Agnes investigates in the woods isn't Wanda or Darkhold, as everyone thinks, but Rebecca Kaplan - Billy's mom. Anyway, Billy Kaplan is at the back of the car and dies. But then two things happen - Death appears (Rio) to collect him, but Billy Maximoff reincarnates into the body and he lives. Hence the "Near death in Westview" hint for Joe Locke's end episode credits. Rio is intrigued and sticks around, maybe finally finds Agatha who is no longer able to hide from her because she has no Darkhold. I think Billy will try to summon the Witches Road by himself - maybe he wants to find his brother Tommy, maybe he wants to bring back Wanda and Vision, or maybe he wants to get back his Kaplan parents? I hope we get introduced to the final character that's missing from the end credits!

Episode 7 - Air trial - Lilia - Yellow - Waning Moon? Colour: Lilia's nightmare in ep.3 had distinct yellow tint. We also see lots of promo material of scenes with very heavy yellow filters. Even the road is yellow-ish at some point. Story: Air values are Intuition, Knowledge, Renewal, Change - this fits well with Lilia's divination abilities, as well with her age. We know she is the oldest witch in the coven and has lived for some 450 years, through many tragedies and the many ways the women were persecuted. Lilia is also always so vocal about the negative stereotypes that surround witches - she mentions green skin, broomsticks, talking to goats. Episode 5 might already give us the broomsticks and in this trial we will actually see Agatha as the green-skinned Wicked Witch of the West, so maybe we will also have a nod to the goat talking bit? That would be funny! Anyway, in this episode we see that Lilia will be Glinda (the Good witch), Agatha will be Elphaba (the Wicked witch) and Jen looks like the Evil Queen from the Snow White, but in her old hag form. And even the "yellow" road would be a callback to the Wizard of Oz. So I think the trial will be about those negative stereotypes and how witches have been perceived. We know Lilia doesn't like having to predict all those tragedies and feels deeply for all the victims. So what if her tarot trial will be about her trying to predict something good because it's something she was never able to do? Or maybe about her trying to use her powers to manipulate the cards to change the prediction into a good outcome? Or - trying to reverse a tragedy that happened in the past. It's interesting that the card she holds in the promo poster is The Tower. The card stands for "sudden, disruptive revelation" - kind of like Lilia's 'blips', and the trial seems in a tower-like room. There will be swords sticking out of the ceiling, threatening to fall down. We also know Salem Seven make their appearance again. So I think Lilia tarot reading will be about sending all those messages to the coven in the past (check my other post to explain the detail) and to send herself the list of the witches name so she writes them down for Agatha. When she succeeds, the timer (sand glass) gets turn upside down, and everyone in the room gets inverted as well - so they are flying in the air? That could mean that the Salem Seven gets impaled on the swords... but eek, I hope Lilia doesn't share the same fate... I didn't see any other characters in the air though. There is also a rumour that we will get another version of the Witches Road ballad - this time focusing on Lilia, so we will hopefully see them using Patti's full potential.

Back to the rest of the coven... I think after the broomstick flight they get separated. Lilia gets to the tower/castle first as she was left behind. That's why we see scenes with only Agatha, Teen and Jen on the Road (yellow filter) and they somehow circle back to the start, where Agatha falls over a pair of shoes they left at the beginning. Alice and Rio are not there - maybe because Alice died and Rio is taking her to the underworld. Or maybe they just separated, fingers crossed. We also see Agatha and Teen looking at a castle in the distance - that could be the castle that Lilia is in, so that's how they rejoin her.

Trial exit: the ground - so that next trial is earth?

Episode 8: Earth trial - Rio - Green - New Moon? Colour: green? There are a few scenes with dark green filter but not much else has been revealed Story: Earth values are Fertility, Wealth, Abundance, Strength and Wisdom. I hope we get to see how Rio is connected to that. The trial itself is the one where we see Agatha and Teen inside a morgue. This ties in well with both Earth and Death - lots of buried bodies! So sometimes I think maybe Rio isn't Lady Death after all, but her powers make her connected to the dead bodies, maybe to bring life? Agatha has her hands on Teen's head, so I wonder if she's trying to finally get rid of his sigil. They somehow pass the trial - which they believe to be the last one. Maybe the trial room gets flooded with soil at the end, and they climb their way through it - back up to the surface in Westview - maybe we will find out that everyone else who "died" on the Road has actually just climbed back to Westview. But maybe Agatha doesn't get out that way and still has to find the exit. At some point she gets angry because she still doesn't have her powers back even though she passed her Spirit trial (she screams "I want my prize!"). Maybe she realises it's the hair locket (or the symbol behind it) that stops her from regaining her powers and she needs to sacrifice it? Can't really deduce huge amount about this episode yet, other than we see Rio in her full chaotic self. She blows a kiss to someone as well (Agatha?). I think this is going to be a big episode, where Rio's true intentions are finally shown.

Episode 9 - The Grand Finale I draw blank on that one. I don't want to guess how they tie it all those strands together and how they show the impact of the Road on the witches lives. But there is that thought that keeps eating at me - in ep.1 Agnes says "If there is one thing we can agree on is that these cases are always about the place. The specific small town, the history of it, the secrets buried beneath it. That's where the answers lie." I think this is important and there is some big foreshadowing going on in there. Because yes exactly - why did Vision choose Westview of all places for their forever home? (Was it even Vision who chose it or was Wanda just made to believe that? The reason she knew about the plot was that someone dropped a file in her car) And after the events, the traumatised people still choose to live there. And Mrs Hart mentioned she would've expected to see "remnants of a failed public transit system" under Westview. I mean, would such a small town need it? I think there is something going on with Westview itself, maybe there will be a big reveal about this Mephisto at the end?

But that essay will be for another time. For now, I think I need to give my brain some rest. What does everyone think? Have I missed anything or are the elements that don't quite line up with the above theories? I would love to know! Thanks to getting this far!

[chaotic-minds-think-alike]

Guess what time it is…….

CENTIPEDE TIME !!! she’s finally real,,,,,,,, based off Scolopendra hardwickei or the Indian tiger centipede

Before I go about the process I just want to say you guys have been soooo incredible and I love reading your reblogs and I love the idea knowing I’ve inspired a lot of people,,, the project, although it was a lot of work and I’m feeling not so great as of posting this, still motivates me to want to make another.

(Art process below)

This was entirely freehanded! I have a lot of experience working in 3D art settings that this part came easy to me but I started with a flat base shaped in the pose I’d like the creature in. I used one whole piece cut from a shipping box and filled in the gaps with tape; you don’t need a single piece for the base but for structural integrity it helps a lot. As you can see here I also cut the legs separate and glued them on using hot glue. The vertical cross sections are to give an early support for the structure of the creature, think about the frames of aircraft or boats. During this part I used a pen to mark the width and height of the previous section to get a gradual flow of shapes.

This next part I wish I got more documentation on but after the vertical cross sections I used soda boxes for the thinner and flexible cardboard to add contour lines along the length of the creature, gluing them on the cross sections. I did about 2 strips of this on either side to fill in the space and then I continued to use soda boxes to fold and shape the top of the creature, gluing onto the strips rather than the cross sections (this part was a mistake but I quickly adapted, no issues happened but it did make it slightly less secure). I also gave the legs vertical cross sections as well to shape them for the masking tape.

The worst part, taping everything. I used tape to further shape it how I wanted but that meant going over parts several times. I used 2 different widths of tape for this for efficiency but it doesn’t matter. The legs were very loosely taped and if squeezed then they’d lose their shape; I didn’t bother filling them in because I don’t have materials for that and I let the paper mache help support them instead. Tape was also used to fill any holes and gaps left by the cardboard skeleton.

The next phase is paper mache of which I haven’t done since 5th grade… I was not confident in this step. I used mod podge and a brush to smooth down the paper. Because I lacked materials I used fast food napkins instead of newspaper which worked totally fine, it just tended to tear a bit easier. Some areas required me to get hands on and I don’t really like the texture during this stage so that was fun (lie). I didn’t do too many layers, one for the body and 3 for the back and legs but some projects might demand more. I used half of a 16oz bottle of mod podge btw so please get more than you think you need.

Finally, texture hell!!! I did a base coat of white spray paint and painted everything else with acrylic. Start with your lighter colors first before doing darker ones! I originally mixed some yellow and orange for the body and realized it was too bright and so covered it with orange instead. It also wasn’t until later I realized I could’ve been smarter with my paint so I skipped over the segments that were going to be fully black, saving the orange for the rest of the body. I wanted my centipede to stand out and not look 2D color-wise so I also used the red for the head and tail to give gradients and edges to the orange segments and legs, later going back with burgundy to further darken them but not too much. For the black segments I also used a very watered down layer of sky blue to give a fake shine and show the intended structure of the segments. Do not be afraid to use your hands! I used mine to smudge my detail paints like the black fade on the legs and the back shading. To top it all off I sprayed a clear coat and punched two holes in the underside to hang it up, using thumbtacks angled upwards.

[vxm1tcxre]

Pvrging harm reduction masterpost (from someone who’s had severe bul1m14 for 3 years, and who wishes they’d gotten this advice)

I get asked a lot and see posts asking for “tips” around pvrging.

I absolutely do not condone it. It’s a horrendously dangerous, unpleasant, and addictive behavior, and often a slippery slope to full-swing bul1m14 (and trust me, that is not something you want, for the sake of your wallet and sanity).

However, I do acknowledge that that doesn’t get in the way of the urge to do it. It certainly didn’t for me. That’s not how 3ds work. Being told how dangerous and horrible something is often is just more enticing. I know people are going to try it regardless. And frankly, I’d much rather focus on tips to stay safe over just telling you “don’t do it” like a Christian parent preaching abstinence. Harm reduction is king, especially on a platform like 3dblr.

So, here is a list of things to help you stay safe.

1. I feel like I should reiterate this again- if you at all can, don’t start. It’s not the c4ls-be-gone magic spell it might seem to be. Starting is what ended my r3str1ct1v3 phase. I thought it’d just be a last resort for when I ate too much. Fast forward to now, it’s been 3 years since my first time and I consume a good 6k+ c4ls every single day, have g4ined a ton of w3ight, feel like shit all the time, have no control around food, am constantly broke, have done things that would make people gag, and have all the risk with no reward. Ultimately, you will not l0se w3ight with pvrging. It gets harder and less effective the longer you do it. While the “you can only get rid of 50%” you often hear is a myth, being bul1m1c destroys your control, and eating maintenance in addition to whatever c4ls you didn’t manage to pvrge will inevitably lead to w3ight gain over time. It simply isn’t worth it.

2. DO NOT USE FOREIGN OBJECTS. It is legitimately so dangerous. Massive choking hazard and generally terrible for your throat. If you can’t get a response with your fingers, don’t do it. I promise, getting rid of some chicken nuggets is not worth getting a plastic fork lodged down your throat and almost dying. (Yes, I am speaking from experience)

3. Some people are simply incapable of inducing v0m1t1ng. It’s more common than is talked about and is completely normal. Frankly, if you have urges to pvrge and find that you can’t do it, consider it a sign.

4. Do not brush your teeth directly after. This is because the bristles of your toothbrush will rub the acid into your enamel, increasing the chances of decay.

5. Baking soda is magic. Swish about a teaspoon with some water in your mouth to neutralize the acid. Swallowing some (significantly less- about 1/4 to 1/2 tsp) is also an easy remedy for acid reflux. Get checked and have your teeth cleaned at the dentist’s regularly- if damage starts occurring, you can catch and mitigate it early.

6. Maintain good dental health as much as you can. Continue to brush and floss regularly. Keep in mind, however, that you can’t avoid tooth decay forever. It’s inevitable with long-term pvrging.

7. One of the biggest risks is electrolyte deficiencies. You often hear of people dying from cardiac arrest. This is because thr0wing up depletes your potassium, which helps with muscle contraction. Your heart is a muscle. If it’s unable to contract, it will fail. After pvrging, replenish your electrolytes. Coconut water, Gatorade, pedialyte, anything that contains the nutrients you just got rid of.

8. Also remember to stay normally hydrated. Even just drinking water is better than nothing. pvrging dehydrates you.

9. DO NOT FLUSH. It’s one of the most dangerous games you can play.

10. Try and eat something safe after the fact, especially if you’re having symptoms of low blood sugar (shaking, dizziness, sweating, a rapid heartbeat). This can be easier said than done but it’s crucial to getting back to normal. Something easy on your stomach with some c4rbs is ideal- toast, rice cakes, crackers, etc.

11. Avoid hot showers or baths or exercising directly after. You will lose more water through sweating. Wash your hands and face- especially around your chin and mouth, pvrge-induced acne is a real thing- and rest for a while.

12. Warm drinks or cold foods like popsicles or ice cream are very soothing on the throat. Throat coat tea and hot chocolate are quite nice. The former may be best if your stomach isn’t feeling well.

13. You will bloat like crazy whenever you eat if you pvrge long term. It’s hell on your digestive tract in general. It’s one of my biggest struggles and pet peeves. Honestly, you can only really wait for it to go away. Remember that it will with time, and do something to distract yourself from it. Some things that in my experience have made it less severe are to eat at a reasonable pace, chew your food thoroughly, and sip drinks rather than chugging them.

14. L4x4t1v3s absolutely aren’t worth it. You don’t really get rid of anything and it’s a fast track to dependency and being horrifically constipated whenever you don’t use them. Stay away. If you must, opt for natural remedies like teas, fiber-rich foods, chia seeds, etc.

15. If you take medication, wait several hours before pvrging. It obviously won’t work if you just get rid of it.

Feel free to reblog this with any advice of your own. I hope this helps some of you; stay safe out there.

[rainbowswirlything]

Neopets Lore (and Theory) - Faerie Aging and Faerie Populations

Here's another fun poking-at-the-Neopets-canon post about faerie aging and population numbers (this is a long'un, so to be nice I'll put a Keep Reading break in to make it easier to scroll past in the #neopets tag. ;))

1. Faeries are very long-lived, and don’t seem to grow old. In Fyora’s and Illusen’s Neopedia articles, their ages are listed as “Ageless.” (Jhudora’s age, for the record, is listed as “She’s certainly not telling.”)

"Go on. Ask. See what happens."

Neopets, in contrast to faeries, have been described as mortal (such as in the Altadorian Book of Ages—“Siyana, the First to Rise, blessed [the city's] mortal heroes with the gift of great longevity”—plus I’m pretty sure Jhudora calls you a pitiful mortal or something like that as one of her quest-completion messages), which implies that faeries are immortal—that they don’t die of old age. (They do seem to be able to die of other causes; there’s at least one faerie ghost out there—Valeane, from the “Aethia and the Battle Faerie” Neopedia article.)

2. Faeries appear to, at minimum, go through a “teenager” phase during which at least some of them attend a school called the Faerieland Academy, though what that actually involves, age-wise, seems to be ambiguous—in the Neopedia article for Kaia, whose backstory involves leaving her homeland of Shenkuu to attend the Faerieland Academy, her age is simply listed as “Younger than most of her kind.”

"I'm [ambiguous] years old!"

It’s not known whether Kaia is literally a teenager when she goes to the Academy, or if faeries age differently—it’s possible, as long-lived beings, that they age more slowly and reach the faerie equivalent of adolescence at a much older age than Neopets (or humans); likewise, it’s possible that faeries are “born”/created from magic and never go through a baby/young child stage, jumping straight from nonexistence to the equivalent of teen-hood. (I don't believe an infant or toddler-stage faerie has ever shown up in canon.)

3. The ongoing existence of the Faerieland Academy implies that faeries are being born/created at a fairly steady rate—there’d be no need for a school for young faeries if there weren’t an ongoing stream of faerie youths to be schooled.

(It’s not impossible that Neopets might attend the Faerieland Academy as well—there’s an old TCG card that references a “Faerieland Magic Academy” that Neopet would-be mages could attend. However, this may not be the same as the Faerieland Academy that Kaia and other faeries go to, and Kaia’s article doesn’t mention her interacting with other Neopets as students—only faeries.)

"And all of those faeries are jerks!"

4. It’s not clear how faeries are born/created.

At least one faerie mentions her mother—in the “Aethia and the Battle Faerie” Neopedia article, Aethia introduces herself as “student of Shyvara, daughter of Dreeana.” There is also an item called “Illusen’s Family Recipe Cake,” which means that Illusen presumably has a family that passed down the recipe for that cake.

However, it’s never clearly stated whether these familial relationships come about through birth or adoption. It’s possible that faeries reproduce through parthenogenesis, or--given that they're magical creatures--just use some sort of spell to conjure up children out of thin air. It’s also possible that faeries simply pop up spontaneously from Neopia’s natural magic (or something like that) and are then adopted by an adult faerie, though that option raises an obvious question—what happens if a young faerie pops into existence somewhere remote, without any faeries or Neopets nearby?

(The worst option, of course, is for faeries to be like ants or honeybees, in which the Queen is responsible for producing all the eggs necessary to keep the colony going. I would not wish that on Queen Fyora--it seems like an awful lot of work, and ruling a city-state seems hard enough on its own.) (Though there's a part of me that's strangely amused by the idea of faeries being insect-like enough to have a grub-like larval stage.)

"Why would you even suggest that."

5. However it is more faeries enter Neopia, here we run into a problem—that is, population.

If faeries don’t die of old age, and more faeries keep being born/created… eventually you’re going to start seeing overcrowding.

This presents a few possibilities:

a) Faeries do actually die of old age; it’s just that none of them have hit that age yet.

If Dr. Sloth's Neopedia article is to be believed, Neopia as we know it came into existence around 2,000 years ago—prior to that, Neopia was a wasteland without Neopets or faeries, until one day the world spontaneously became covered with greenery and Neopets popped into existence (much to Dr. Sloth’s dismay—he’d liked having a nice wasteland to fill with cool mutants!). It’s possible that faeries do have a maximum lifespan, but it’s simply higher than the number of years faeries have existed as a species. After a certain point, therefore, the faerie population could then stabilize.

b) Faeries do actually die of old age, and some have already done so, but faeries don’t like to talk about it—and might even deliberately hide their mortality from Neopets.

We know that Fyora has been Queen for at least 1,000 years (since she was the one to seal away the Darkest Faerie 1,000 years ago), so faerie lifespans would have to be at least 1,000-plus-however-old-Fyora-was-when-she-became-Queen, but (again, assuming the Dr. Sloth article is accurate) less than 2,000-and-change.

(As a side note, it’s implied that Fyora wasn’t the first Faerie Queen; according to the description of the (on-site item) book A New Day, Fyora was once an “up-and-coming faerie princess,” which raises the question of what might have happened to the previous Queen—untimely death, abdication, or something else?).

c) Faeries don’t die of old age, but after a certain point they leave Neopia in some manner.

Perhaps they abandon their physical forms and ascend to a higher plane of existence, or merge back with the natural magic of Neopia, or something… which seems a lot like death, actually, depending on one’s spiritual beliefs. Or maybe faeries have a retirement home on a planet next door (though that really just kicks the overpopulation can down the road).

d) Faeries don’t die of old age, don’t disappear from Neopia, and are, at some point, going to have to grapple with the whole overpopulation issue.

Digging too deeply into that train of thought could get a bit more dystopian than I’d necessarily like from a petsite, but hey, there it is.

"What a depressing topic..."

6. Leaving aside future concerns about faerie overpopulation—how many faeries are there, anyways?

There isn’t a solid answer for the whole of Neopia, but the Neopedia does give a few specific numbers that could be used.

The “A Dark Faerie” and “A Light Faerie” articles both have estimated populations for dark and light faeries—25,000 for dark faeries, and 33,000 for light faeries.

If we were to take those numbers and extrapolate them for the other elements—the mean of those two numbers is 29,000, so for this exercise we’ll assume that’s a reasonable average for each element—we’d get around 174,000 faeries in Neopia.

However, that is definitely not the total population, because there’s another source of faerie population data: the Neopedia article for Faerieland.

According to that Neopedia article, the total population of Faerieland is 1,620,000, 80% of which is composed of faeries. 80% of 1,620,000 is 1,296,000 total faeries—and that’s just in Faerieland; there are also faeries living outside of Faerieland (though the ratio of non-Faerieland faeries to Faerieland faeries is unknown).

Still, this leaves us with a few options:

a) Normal option: Whoever wrote the Faerieland Neopedia article simply didn’t use the numbers from the “A Dark Faerie” and “A Light Faerie” articles (which is fair enough; it’s not like those population numbers were a vital part of Neopets lore that would cause issues if retconned) Besides, other aspects of those articles are a bit outdated anyways--the dark faerie article straight-up says that dark faeries are evil (vs. the current canon that they can be good or evil, like any other faerie).

b) Hilarious option #1: The population numbers in the “A Dark Faerie” and “A Light Faerie” articles were accurate to the state of Neopia at the time the articles went live, but the faerie population has exploded exponentially in the years between those articles and the Faerieland article. How or why this could have happened is anyone’s guess, but now faeries have a massive Baby Boom generation.

c) Hilarious option #2: The population numbers in “A Dark Faerie” and “A Light Faerie” are accurate; dark and light faeries are extremely outnumbered by faeries of every other element.

If we were to assume that literally every dark and light faerie lives in Faerieland (demonstrably not the case, but let’s roll with it for now), then that’s a total of 1,238,000 faeries who are neither dark nor light vs. 58,000 total who are. Assuming a relatively-even population distribution between earth, air, fire, and water (though you could argue that there’d be a lower ratio of water faeries, as given that they have mermaid tails instead of legs they’d likely prefer to live in… well… the water), then that’s around 309,500 faeries of each of the non light/dark elements, which would mean there were a little over 9 faeries of any other of the “main” elements for every light faerie, a little over 12 faeries of any of the other “main” elements for every dark faerie, and, grouping the dark/light and earth/air/fire/water elements together, a little over 21 non-dark/light faeries for every dark/light faerie.

But again—that’s only using Faerieland numbers. The numbers from the “A Dark Faerie” and “A Light Faerie” articles appear to be for all Neopia, so the ratios would be even more lopsided as long as there are significant populations of faeries outside of Faerieland (which is surely the case; I don’t think Balthazar is walking right into to Faerieland and bottling faeries in the streets).

"Personally, I think we could use a few more of us around... but at least dark faeries are in the same boat."

But really, this one can probably be chalked up to those two older articles having relatively-arbitrary numbers slapped on them years before the Faerieland article was written and someone having to ask themselves "hey, Faerieland seems like a pretty big city... what's a reasonable population?"

[stardew-shitposterino]

Most to least likely Stardew Valley Bachelor to be lovey dovey in a relationship

Ok peeps, I’m in the mood for some random posting. Since some of you enjoy it, I’ll commit to it ! Why not 🤷🏼‍♀️so let’s goooo✈️

Oh and btw: a bit of NSFW again because I’m a degenerate lol. Soz to the minors 🫣

1. Elliott:

-Elliott is the obvious choice, isn’t he ?

-this man has no chill when it comes to showing you how much he loves you

-he isn’t huge on baby talk, but he’s huge on medieval Shakespearean reenactment to show his love to you

-you might not always understand where his play on words come from, but it sure as hell makes you blush like a mess

-whenever you and him have a sleepover, he leaves a note on your table that reminds you of how much he adores you! So cute 🥰

-flowers, romantic dates, evenings spent at the pub sitting on his lap while he caresses your hair, marvelling at it with a slightly drunken gaze and red cheeks 😫🫡😍😏

-…I just know that guy eats you out like no other…I said what I said 🥸

2. Sam

-ok hear me out! Before you come for my throat, I think he is more likely to be very love drunken than some of the other choices. It’s a close call for the second place, but I believe he deserves it

-overused but I don’t care: he has the golden retriever energy. Maybe it’s his ADHD, but regardless, he’s a pure boy

-he might be a little anxiously attached to you because he won’t leave your side during your honeymoon phase

-he wants to hold your hand or touch you in some way all the time. He just loves having you close 🥺

-expect him to kiss you senseless whenever he can. Preferably in private because he doesn’t want his mum to find out through bystanders, that would be embarrassing. Other than that, he wouldn’t care for the life of him. If he can pepper your neck with little kissies, he will

-speaking of kisses: he’s generally a huge fan of intense make out sessions. He prefers them over sex any time. Not that he doesn’t like the other stuff, but to him, it just hits different

-imagine that blushy, heated face when you pull away 😳 eyes hazy and hair even more disheveled than before, just adoringly gazing back into yours and smiling ever so slightly (😩😭🫨)

3. Alex

-“still no Harvey?! What’s wrong with you!?”

-I know I KNOW. I know that Harvey is a sweet boy in the game who tells you a lot of cute stuff, but idk. Something about Alex makes me believe he will be more likely the kind of partner to be sweet and a bit cringe yet adorable when it comes to the person he loves

-he might not be a poet, but he shows his adoration in other ways

-back 👏🏻 hugs 👏🏻

-generally hugging you? He will do it all the time. Any time. He will climb through your small living room window to hug you at least once a day if he has to

-for some reason, he likes kissing your arms. Don’t ask me to elaborate, he just does. Like kissing them up and down. Oh and your thighs 👀 it doesn’t even necessarily lead to anything explicit, he just loves them so much

-he will tell you how you’re the love of his life and how he cannot wait to see you two grow old together. He will lay in bed with you, maybe just watching tv and randomly blurt out something like this: “wow, who would have thought that we’d end up like this, meeting in this tired town. Having you by my side, I might be the luckiest guy to ever exist.”

-Alex frequents the beach to talk to his deceased mother. It’s kinda sweet in a way because he will talk to her about the things happening in his life. Pre-dating as well as in the midst of your relationship, he tells her so much about you, wishing she was still alive to have met you as you are the best thing that has ever happened to him 😭

-Alex is a hunky boy, but he loves bathing with you :3 something about it just makes him feel extremely euphoric 🥰 but he will cup your boobs the whole time lmfao (no matter what kind you have). That might also lead to him kissing your neck the whole time till both of you are in the mood 😶‍🌫️👀

4. Harvey

-Harvey at forth ?! HARVEY?! COME OOOON

-yes, I know. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t cute and affectionate with you ! This ranking is pretty close as all of the bachelors have their qualities that make them good partners 🥺 it’s just based on my own headcanons or assumptions about what they might be like

-ok so Harvey is a little anxious mess but LOVES to be a real gentleman when he’s in love

-I’m talking putting on his finest Jazz and dancing with you in your living room, slow dancing while just enjoying each other’s closeness 👀😍

-Harvey shows his affection mostly through everyday things. Like making you coffee in the morning or cleaning up for you. Not to mention peppering you when you’re sick as well as doing small gestures that show you that he cares and wants to make the effort for you

-Harvey LOVES to put your foreheads together while holding you close. Since he’s way taller than you, he has to crouch a little in order to make it work (it’s so cute omfg 😭😤🥰😍💀🫣🫨😫)

-forehead kisses too 😭👏🏻😫 he’s all about soft, sweet affection

-there are many headcanons about spicy Harvey and I get where this is coming from, but I do believe that his sweet, pure side is predominant. Like yes he will want to sleep with you, you’re a couple and he’s not asexual, so why wouldn’t he want to do that 🤷🏼‍♀️

-speaking of this, he loves to lay in bed with you in your post-coital state. Like of course he enjoys the deed, but what he enjoys even more is the after math that consists of laying together, skin to skin, just talking or laying there in silence and enjoying each other. It gives him the feeling of being one with you, of growing even closer than before 🥺

5. Sebastian

-Sebby can be a really cute guy once he lets his guard down, but I don’t think he is the most obvious in love even when he is very infatuated with you

-he just isn’t that kind of guy, you know?

-Sebastian loves to cuddle with you in bed, especially while playing video games. His room is his safe space and sharing that space with you while doing something he enjoys, it’s just perfect to him

-he will show you how much he likes you by taking you on small adventures despite being a homebody. He didn’t fix up that motorcycle for nothing. Just you and him outside, discovering new places. It’s something he doesn’t offer to just anyone

-in public, he’s very reserved and doesn’t feel comfortable showing his affection, but at home? He latches on you and won’t let go. Of course he needs his space every once in a while, but it’s not rare for him to try and crawl under your shirt with you just to feel your warmth (he’s very cold most of the time)

-he loves touching your tummy. Ok ok I know this one is controversial but he just loves it. When you’re a little soft and he can grab onto something soft and warm? Oh boy, he will….he will 👁️ he also loves kissing your abdomen. Again, don’t ask me, I have my reasons

-when it comes to intimacy, he surprisingly prefers giving over taking. I have a feeling he prefers non-penetrative sex more ? At least speaking of “traditional” straight sex. Again, don’t ask, I cannot explain. So I imagine when he’s in a relationship with an AFAB farmer, he will want to either eat them out or finger them senseless because it brings him pleasure. It’s very specific I know but it feels right🤷🏼‍♀️

6. Shane

-you all know by now that I have a mild obsession with this guy, but yeah…I gotta admit he isn’t cutting it in this ranking

-it’s not that he isn’t capable of giving a lot of love, but he has his barriers that keep him from showing his love freely

-he will get there eventually, but before that, he’s very…well…tense ? He has a hard time initiating romantic gestures or telling you nice things

-again it’s not because he doesn’t want to, it’s that he is in his own head too much that he cannot garner the courage to do so. You’re dating but he still suspects it’s all a tasteless joke on him

-in those moments when Shane beats his inner critics, he can be such a sweetheart omfg

-I’m speaking kissing you behind your ear, caressing your waist and whispering sweet nothings in your ear. He isn’t very eloquent most of the time, but when the moment is right, he just knows what to say to you to make you feel loved

-Shane is the type of person to show his affection through mild bullying and joking around. He might be calling you a dwarf or giant (depending on your height difference) make fun of little things you do that he notices, but it’s never in bad taste. He always makes sure you know it’s just silly banter that usually ends in you two fighting playfully and then tumbling on top of each other, laughing and kissing 🥺🥰

-this man, this man loves when you sleep on his chest. On a lazy Sunday watching tv or just when he wakes up in the morning, noticing your head’s weight on him. It makes him feel useful, like he can protect you (let’s ignore that the farmer slays monsters as a side hustle, k). He will kiss your head ever so softly and whisper how much he loves you while doing it 😌

-if you want him to be the kind to hold your hand in public or kiss you, you’ve set your money on the wrong horse (rehab was supposed to be a fresh start), because he is not that kind of man, sorry 🤷🏼‍♀️ he will start to do it once he gets comfortable enough with you, but it’s not that much. PDA just isn’t in it with this guy 😤

-his spicy side? He has plenty spice, but when he’s in the mood for some romance, he likes it slow and sensual. It’s a bit out of character for him, but sometimes he just wants to enjoy your presence and the slow build up of excitement and arousal. Expect him to enjoy guided self-pleasure. Picture it like this: he sits behind you, taking your hand and guiding it through the process of what you’d do to yourself 🫣 while, again, whispering hot stuff in your ear (yeah my version of him is into whispering lmfao). That’s the good stuff 😫

[redfluffz]

Heyy Guys! 👋

This pinned post is an overview of my comic.

Meet the archangels! 💖

Chapter 1 - "The beginning"

Chapter 2 - "Existence"

Chapter 3 - "Perfection"

Chapter 4? CONTINUE?

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What is it about?

"Creation" is a comic about Lucifers backstory. From his birth to his fall. It's about many phases of his life (i mean boy is already thousands? millions? of years old ... ???). It will have topics like growing up with his 6 siblings, starting a royal life with duties, finding and understanding love, fulfilling his greatest most important task – creation - and much more!

My motivation

This little comic has evolved from a wild idea to a real fun project. The idea arose when it was announced how long we still have to wait for the next Hazbin Hotel season. (No front. Seriously, no front.) And since we don't even know if Luc's story will be shown in the next season, my first thought was: "I don't want (can't) wait 4-6 years for his story". Sooo I make my own story to satisfy my brain.

I try to "hover" along the canon, to pick up theories, to consult the bible and other media in order to create a meaningful and comprehensible past for my favorite character.

Of course there will be errors or inconsistencies because I can only continue working on this fun project after work. So have mercy on me. I try to upload a part every two weeks on Friday, but I can't promise it. Sorry.

I also upload smaller comics, but please don't take them too seriously. For me these are mostly just exercises to practice the characters. And for you these might be little packs filled with good mood and a good laughter. Hopefully.

So much about the talk from my heart. I hope you have as much fun with the comic as I did/will do. See ya in hel-eh-heaven, guys!

PS: Thanks for reading to this point.

Funfact: I will change the header alongside the story.