#i think a lot about how terrible she can be when it comes to noxians......

[deathdxnces]

i wrote about it before extensively tbh, but i do think irelia's views on noxians are extremely dehumanizing and ruthless and not likely to change (not unless she's forced to interact with them and see them as people, i think, and even then it's difficult to say if she wouldn't just deem someone an Exception rather than question how correct her views had been). she doesn't feel any guilt or any sort of remorse for all the noxians she killed. her in game lines suggest to some extent she enjoys killing them (killing you won't bring them back… but it still felt good). i mentioned it a bunch of times before and even wrote a post connected to that, but the i've never killed a person… just a lot of noxians line makes it obvious they're not even human beings to her. as i wrote in another post, you could put their grieving families in front of her and they could scream someone was only a soldier out of need, and still she'd be utterly unmoved.

there's definitely the point also discussed in one of those posts that this isn't about someone being born in noxus necessarily, but rather what the empire shapes them to be. in her eyes, she isn't the one stripping them of humanity; noxus already did that. and i don't think anything anyone can say would move her or make her look at it differently at all. and as i also discussed here, i don't think she'll eventually feel guilty for killing noxians. it just won't happen.

this is definitely when her worst side comes to light, because it isn't just self-defense, it hasn't been for a long time. it's pure hatred, and treating people as less than people, guilty or not. even if she's not downright cruel and doesn't try to make them suffer, she takes their lives easily and enjoys it to some extent. and i don't even think irelia is often openly as bloodthirsty as she feels, because i do think she fully expects other people to not see it the same way and to condemn her stance, but that's never enough for her to change or consider changing. at most, it holds her back from acting on it at times.

the only way all of it elicits guilt on her isn't for the deeds themselves but due to the very fact she enjoys it. i've also said that a thousand times before, but she was raised under a spiritual dogmatic belief violence is never justified, not even as a way of answering to violence suffered. to not only strike back, but to enjoy it? i think that's the greatest reason irelia tries to repress those feelings. if anything, it's more religious guilt than guilt for what she does. and as a result there's a lot of self-inflicted suffering she continues to agonize over, but that doesn't come from guilt over the lives she took at all. even though she is certain it disappoints her family and stains their name, a fact she also punishes herself with (though i don't think she'd ever follow the same ritual of asking for her father's forgiveness as she does when she kills other ionians), it's the disappointment that troubles her. it's the not fitting in the ideal of good she was taught. the noxians themselves? she really doesn't care, they had it coming.

which is also to say, even with the guilt holding her back somewhat, it's obvious how much she hates noxians and how easily she'll cut them down and how remorseless she is about it. without that. well. maybe then she would indeed consider striking back at noxus and making sure the empire would never be a threat again.

[moonsdancer]

14, 15, 16?

Thanks, dearest!

14. Line you wrote that you think is exceptionally brilliant/funny?

There are a couple that I enjoy, I think.

From the wolf has golden teeth, a Mel story, this one line which comes after Mel is thinking about how she got her armour, and the fraught nature and tragedy of her relationship with her mother. I just liked how simple it was, sometimes I can be too wordy. But it probably makes better sense in context, I just really love the line.

She’ll perhaps understand, just a little, that this is what it means to be loved by Ambessa Medarda.

I also love the Noxian fable that I made up as a kind of play on Aesop's. The last couple of lines:

... Despite her nature, the Wolf felt a twinge of sorrow in her heart, in the very depths of her predator’s soul. She wondered, just for a moment, whether she should set the deer free.

Instead, the Wolf chose to devour her own heart, and then ate the deer, and lastly, her own whelps. And lay belly-full amongst their bones. —a Noxian fable

From junk heap ghosts, this description of how Jinx makes Ekko feel because I felt like it really made it tangible but still with sharp simplicity:

He rubs his lips where they’re still tingling. The tingles go all the way down Ekko’s spine, to his toes and fingertips, like he’s a bottle of soda that someone shook hard and left out in the sun, and he might just burst open. He likes it.

From sancta trinitas, this passage of Viktor from Arcane running for the first time in his life without being in terrible agony because of the first augmentation. I liked how well the catharsis of it was depicted.

He takes the first step. Then the next. Then another. And one more. Picking up speed until he feels it in the rush of the salt-breeze coming at him, whipping his hair off his face, dragging at the material of his shirt, his arms pumping with abandon, strong with an energy from where he knows not, the clatter-clop of his feet eating up the ground, leaving the ships far behind until he’s only racing the ocean, faster. Faster, still—

He’s running. For the first time in his life. He’s running.

His cheeks are wet with tears, but the sheer pace of his sprinting dries them in their tracks. He feels it inside him, building and building, ripping its way up through his gullet, his heart, his throat, the awful heaviness of a lifetime of melancholy and pain sloughing off so thoroughly he feels he could take flight, free of the burden of his body, a cage that has imprisoned him for so long.

15. An idea that you didn’t get around to yet?

I really want to write an Arcane Star Trek AU. Honestly, really just want to get started on all sorts of fun batshit AUs for this 'verse.

16. A WIP you haven’t finished yet?

There's a couple on the burner. A lot of them about Mel, her family, anything and everything to do with her, because who am I? But also one about Jayce, because I love him and I really want to write about him. Also Sevika, Silco, Tobias and Cassandra Kiramman, and a bunch of others. Arcane brainrot, indeed. Here's one small excerpt from a story about Mel's parents:

Papa only told the story of how he met Mother when he was deep in his cups, the sour wine-stink on his breath, his fingers slack around the large flagon that he drank with a fixed intent as he gazed into the gold-red flames of the fire and saw the long road of his life. It was never a particularly happy story.

[keishid]

17. the one where your soulmate’s name is on one wrist and your enemy’s name is on the other and you have no clue which is which. (Yasukat, because I am a BASTARD and I wanna see Kat have a minor crisis about there being even the vaguest possibility that her soulmate is Jericho fucking Swain)

(AO3 mirror)

extensive headcanons used sry

feel free to interrogate about them XD

Katarina can’t read the markings on her left wrist. They’re sharp and angular, squared off in places, so much more complicated than the simple Common script on her off-hand; she used to think, when she was still figuring letters out in the first place, that it was just particularly complex or maybe a specialized alphabet and she’d get it later but—

But it’s just not in Common in the first place.

It’s easy to assume which is which, then. There’s a name in Common—not noticeably Noxian or Demacian or anything in particular, but there’s no reason it shouldn’t be Noxian. It seems a little short for a Noxian name—an actual family name, not the Nox indicative of a guttersnipe, but only one middle name attached. There’s no reason for her not to have her share of enemies in her homeland as well as outside it, but when she knows for a fact that one of the souls linked to hers is from somewhere else… the odds feel pretty decent that the foreigner is probably her enemy.

死蓮.

Apart from that single section, Hiroto can’t read either one of his linked names. They aren’t any alphabet that he learns, isn’t from any one of the isles; he’s never personally met a mainlander before, so he can’t exactly ask them what his wrists say. (They probably wouldn’t even bother learning Ionian, even if it is the island closest to the mainland.)

Yone says he’s heard that most of the mainland speaks one language most of the time, which frankly feels like bullshit considering the size of the place, but it’s not like Yone can read it either. He can speak some Common—they both can, just in case, especially since it looks like the isles can’t just avoid contact with the mainland for much longer—but reading it isn’t a priority. And just running around showing everybody the names in the hope that someday, someone will be able to tell him what they say—

It would be pretty weird. It’s private, anyway.

He’d at least like to know why this person, whoever they are, has a single Ionian name in amongst this… frankly ridiculous mix of other ones. Or why it’s so godsdamned… pretentiously grim. It sounds like one of the Kindred’s priests, but they only have the one name in the first place. Not six , assuming he’s understanding the spacing right. And it can’t be that all mainlanders have names that unwieldy; his other wrist only has four sets of characters, and all of them are much shorter.

(What the hell kind of mainlander names their child death lotus? Or, worse still, what the hell kind of mainlander gets weirdly obsessed enough with Ionia to name themselves like that?)

Half the reason Katarina leaps into her Ionian studies as hard as she does, when her father finally tells her about the overseas part of her curriculum, is in the hopes that she’ll finally at least have a name to put to the lines on her skin. She has a person to put to the other name now, at least: a soldier who shouldn’t reasonably be alive, put in a minor command just by dint of outliving everyone else who could have qualified. A cripple (although Katarina knows better than to assume that means much of anything, or he would have died before making it into the army at all), a strategist, with a six-eyed raven as a familiar. Some sort of witch, and almost as old as her father.

(No one ever said that a soulmate had to be romantic. Many of them aren’t. It’s childish of Katarina to be disappointed, but she is.)

Reading the language is far more difficult than speaking it, and even if keeping one’s full name a secret is a habit that only Noxians needed to cultivate, it feels wrong to unwrap her wrist and show her teacher the marks. Or even to copy them down somewhere else and ask that way. (Her handwriting is terrible, anyway, even with the simplest characters.) She learns it in bits and pieces, months apart; and she doesn’t get the full context until she’s already on Ionian soil, living with the Kinkou.

Yasuo. No middle name, she’s expecting at this point (Ionia, as it turns out, does have its own problems with local spirits and elementals; they just don’t seem overly bothered with using a name for power—not so much less malicious as just following a different set of rules). No surname… is odd, but enough of the Kinkou forego them that it’s not out of place here. It gets under her skin, rubs her the wrong way. It can’t be safe, your entire identity stripped down to three syllables that anyone can know. Katarina— Shiren, she still has to remind herself; she’s Shiren as long as she’s here—still doesn’t like the idea that her full name is seared into a birthmark on someone else’s body. (Possibly even more than one, depending on how many enemies she makes in her life, how much reason she gives them to hate her.) She can’t imagine…

She can’t imagine having no such protection at all.

He goes to the sword school at ten; he gets renamed at twelve, the moment that his skills start to surpass where the masters think his ego ought to be. (He can deal with their censure; the fact that Yone agrees, the fact that his very identity gets rewritten, that he has to relearn how to respond to something that isn’t even his real name—)

It’s fine. It will be fine, eventually.

He meets her at seventeen.

If Shiren comes with a warning, it’s not one that he hears. The masters don’t seem surprised to see her, but Yasuo isn’t convinced they’d even show it if they were, so for all he knows she just… shows up to be taught. More, because can’t be that much younger than him, and he’s never seen a brand new student show up that old.

They don’t actually meet for the first couple of days; the masters are keeping them both busy, and if she shares the same curiosity about him that he has about her (she’s a mainlander and she’s here, so maybe—), she doesn’t seem interested in going out of her way to pursue it. She does show up for dinner, but getting near her without being obvious about it is… a challenge.

She doesn’t look like much when he finally manages to get close enough to look. She’s smaller than him both in height and in build—a swimmer’s build, or a dancer’s (or a ninja’s, but he hopes not). Her accent is off, but she’s still understandable, and she’s at least doing a hell of a lot better than he was expecting from a mainlander. She has an angular face, like a fox given human form. Her eyes are shockingly green; her hair is black, but her eyebrows are a deep red, her eyelashes amber. It’s not a color that feels like it should exist on a human being, but…

“If you dyed your hair to trick people into thinking you’re Ionian,” Yasuo says, food halfway to his mouth, “I have some bad news for you.”

Shiren looks up at him, startled. For a (tense) second, she doesn’t react; but whatever she was waiting on or looking for, she must find it, because then she just looks back down and snickers. “I don’t want to stand out from a distance,” she says. “That’s all.” She pauses. It’s not clear whether she almost says more and then thinks better of it, or whether she’s just having difficulty figuring out what else to say in the first place. “I’m Shiren,” she offers finally.

He knows. He knows, but his heart still twitches in something that might be terror when she says it. His skin itches under the hem of his sleeve. “Yasuo,” he says.

She looks up again, sharper this time. Her eyes—her eyes are so green, but also narrowed just slightly, as if…

As if she’s asking herself the same questions he is. Gods, he wishes he could see the insides of her wrists, but they’re wrapped in interlaced fabric from the heels of her hands to somewhere inside her sleeves. (Maybe it’s a mainland thing. Yasuo’s never met anyone who particularly put the names on display, but maybe they’re stricter about it where she’s from.)

“Yeah?” she says, in a voice that’s trying just a little too hard to sound neutral. His heart strongly reconsiders having a predictable beat. “Just Yasuo?”

He swallows. “Just Yasuo,” he says.

Her eyes flicker to his hands. “I might have to ask you about that,” she says, so quietly he barely hears her over the general conversation. “Later.”

Later. Right.

Later is harder to figure out than she expects. The swordsmen push her… well, about as much as the Kinkou did when she first came to them. This school is smaller than the Temple, but she somehow still manages not to be alone with Yasuo for a couple of solid days, despite her best efforts.

She eventually at least gets the opportunity to spar with him—which is frankly terrifying, since she still doesn’t know what he is to her. The sun is high, the wind smells slightly of flowers (she’s still not used to those; the wild plants that can survive in Noxian soil don’t tend to produce flowers worth looking at, let alone safe to put to one’s face), and Yasuo—

He’s beautiful. That’s safe to admit, no matter how this ends up going, what he ends up being. There’s a tension that leaves his shoulders the moment he steps outside, as if there’s something inside him that unfurls and blooms only when he can see the sky. He turns to her, mouth pulling into a challenging smile even as he bows from the other side of the makeshift arena. If she’d spent any less time here than she had, she might have forgotten to return the gesture.

He draws his practice blade and strikes in a single movement, dashing forward faster than seems possible for a normal human—but there’s no magic in the air, only excitement, the leap in her chest as she just barely ducks out of the way. He deflects her return blow, twists back out of reach; faces her again, now that they’ve tested each other a little.

“You’re quick,” he says. His voice feels like a caress, settling between her lungs and warming her blood.

Focus. “I hope so,” she answers, circling, mirroring him. “I’ve been staying with the Kinkou for the last few years.”

Yasuo pulls a face. “Should have known,” he says, but he’s smiling before he finishes speaking. “I’m surprised you haven’t started throwing things yet.”

Throwing things, shunpo-ing behind him, is almost impossible to resist—it’s what she’s been doing, it’s what the ninjas taught her. But that’s also exactly why she’s ended up here.

“I have to learn how to fight fair eventually,” Shiren says. She grins, lashing out at his sword arm. “Besides, I’ll probably be disqualified if I try, right?”

She expects him to leap back or just block her strike, but he dashes forward instead, closing the distance before she can react. His hand closes around the wrist of her off-hand, pulls her in too close for their weapons to be of any use.

“I have a few things I’m not allowed to do either,” Yasuo says. He’s not so close that she can feel his breath on her neck, but her skin prickles anyway. “I might show you later so we can have a real fight.”

Shiren stays tensed, fully prepared for them to get right back to sparring, but she does lean ever so slightly into him. Her eyes flick down to his wrist, the curves of letters she can’t quite see at this angle. Yasuo’s fingers dip underneath her sleeve, catching on the cover over her wrist.

Oh. Right.

“If you’re looking for your name, you’re holding the wrong one,” Shiren says quietly.

She can just barely hear Yasuo take a breath. Behind them, a teacher clears his throat, and they jerk back apart as if burned.

Her footsteps on the tatami don’t make a sound. Yasuo doesn’t even realize someone else has come into the room until she wakes him up with a hand on his shoulder.

He blinks up at her, bleary and confused, but she puts a finger to his mouth before he can say anything. She points to the cracked-open door leading outside, gets up to her feet, and offers him a hand up.

He’s at least half certain he’s dreaming, or that she’s an apparition, but her hand feels solid when he takes it. She’s still silent as a cat as she makes her way to the door and through it, but she takes a slow and audible breath when they’re safely out in the open air. She looks real enough, stretching briefly in the pre-dawn light.

“So,” Yasuo says, biting back a yawn. Either Shiren’s been up for a while or she just wakes up more quickly than any reasonable human would. He’s trying not to resent her for it.

(Maybe she is his nemesis after all.)

Shiren shakes herself, glancing back at him. “So,” she agrees. For a moment, she looks like she’s going to actually say something, but then she closes her mouth and starts fidgeting with her sleeve.

Or not her sleeve. She undoes some sort of knot he can’t see and starts unwinding her not-quite-glove from her wrist.

Yasuo takes a step closer, remembering to breathe. “You keep those on when you sleep?” he asks.

Shiren glances up at him, twisting the strip of fabric around her fingers. “It's—” She scrunches her nose in thought. “It’s for safety,” she settles on, finally. “We have—I don’t know your word for it. They’re not human.”

“Vastaya?” Yasuo guesses.

“No,” Shiren says, shaking her head. “Some vastaya don’t want to kill you. These are just…” She shrugs helplessly. “And even outside of the fae—” and that’s definitely not an Ionian word but he’s not sure how to ask— “names have power where I’m from, more than they do here. We can’t risk people knowing the whole thing like this.”

Yasuo thinks, abruptly, of how much space her name takes up on his skin. “That why yours is so long?”

Shiren bites back a smile. “No one knows the whole thing but my father and I,” she says. “And you.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” he says, looking out towards the woods just to diffuse the inevitable awkwardness of the next few seconds. “I can’t read most of it.” Yasuo clears his throat. “But I can’t read any of the other one, so if you wouldn’t mind helping me with it…”

She snorts a laugh. “Maybe,” she says, balling up the last of the wrist-wrap in her hand. “Come here.”

It’s… maybe it’s akin to anxiety, the tension buzzing underneath her skin. Maybe Yasuo can understand some of it, because he’s meeting her in the same way she’s meeting him, but there’s no way he can grasp exactly how—how intimate this is for her. For any Noxian.

(He can’t read her name. She doesn’t have to tell it to him.

But she wants to.)

Yasuo takes a few steps closer, just brushing the edge of her personal space. She doesn’t know what to do with her hands at first, whether she should look at her name or show him his, but he finally just reaches out himself. She can feel every callus on his fingers catching on the skin of her forearm as he raises it.

They both know what he’ll see when she turns her uncovered wrist over. She can hear his breath catch anyway, just slightly. Shiren can tell just from the length of the script that her name isn’t on his left wrist, but when she pulls his right closer—

She’s never actually seen her name written down, not in its entirety. It feels wrong, inherently alien; she almost wants to hide it since he doesn’t seem to have any interest in it, but—

“Katarina,” she says, brushing her fingertip over the first segment; and then she continues, each name in turn, while he watches her trace the letters on his skin.

“I’m never going to remember all of that,” he says. She doesn’t have to look up to tell that he’s smiling.

Shiren—Katarina—laughs under her breath. “I’m not leaving for a while,” she says, meeting his eyes. “We have time.”

Yasuo’s mouth twitches up a little. “Katarina,” he says, like even her given name is a secret. His fingers trail down to hers. It’s impossible to tell if he tangles them or if she does. “I don’t… think we’re enemies.”

She doesn’t want to be. He’s—he’s too godsdamned nice to look at for him to be her nemesis. “I don’t think so either,” she says.

She can feel her heartbeat in her throat when he kisses her.

[juun-the-aira-mun]

600 Follower Giveaway and Follower Forever!

Listen up, everyone!

It has been three long, long years since I started my journey on tumblr and I have gone an incredible way from the beginning. When I started I didn’t expect to even get a doozen followers and now look at where the blog has come to (even though it is still as deserted as back then most of the time).

SO now I want to say “Thank you, everyone.” Some people have helped me outside of this blog, in a certain sense in reallife, others have given me a lot of fun with the roleplays I have. There are a lot of followers I really owe a lot to in one way or another. And while I can’t say thank you to everyone, I can still direct certain people further below.

To that I am going to make a Giveaway that is directed at OCs in the community moreover than the people who play canon characters. While this sounds harsh on said people, I want to give OCs a bit of love or try to at least. I know how hard the community can be on them and how little some of them get no matter what so I think this gievaway will be justified. More about this will be posted relatively soon, hopefully during this very week even.

So, now to the specific thanks that I will direct at people around. Some might be a bit surprising as the people might never have interacted with me, others will very well be no surprise at all. I just will tag everyone I think I should make a note on! And while I usually see these things swamped with tags at all followers, I think I will pass on that for now!

@thecatofdarkness Hey sis :3 I mean, really, my shipping partner, my sister in soul or mind or whatever you want to call it, the one I often have to say “Donchu dare” to in all sorts of variations. If I were to not put you here first, I think I should be leaving this blog right now. I am allways happy with whatever you do for our muses, for me and whatever you message me with to tell me. I adore Ren and our conversations and am more than happy that a thread of a cheeky teasing cat evolved in a more than complicated and incredible detailed relationship. You listen to me rambling and groaning and are there when I need someone to talk to. Really, I can’t thank you enough. So thank you. Just thank you for being there.

@shukuchiisms Tales of Ice, flametales, do you remember these names? And how luna was a Skyrim muse way back? Or a fluffball that you would cuddle before the blog reset that turned her into a bloodsoaked monster that now has to deal with a Shadowlady that annoys the heck out of her and at the same time makes her melt? Holy hell, we never really got to any roleplays. All of our msues history is entirely set up in IM alone and yet it all makes sense. I love your character, I love talking to you and I allways grumble that we barely talk with each other anymore. I really, REALLY hope you come back to your bloga s an active member of the community and as the goofey idiot you sometimes are that gets bitten by his muse who definitly did not try to kill you with that. Thank you for sticking around with me.

You two were the ones who kept me in the blog. If you hadn’t been there, I would probably have abandoned the blog for real 2 years ago. Thank you. A round of applaus.

@crystals-angel Hello owo Remember me .3.? Yes, we barely talk. Yes, we had both our differences and our nice conversations. And yes, we basically talk apart from each other a good 40% of the time. But you are still a person I am happy to not have missed back when I found your blog. It is already so clouded as to how that happened that I am almost sure that it was just a random blog recommondation that caught my eye but what came of it is still incredible valuable for me. I was sad when you ahd deleted your blog back then and I was happy when I found you on skype and you reopened your blog. Your muses are diverse, Fawniss is a total goof that can sometimes just be described as adorable and at other times is just badass. I am happy for our interactions. And I really hope that we can talk more and interact more in the future.

@thecelestialchibi1 Muhahaha, I bet you weren’t even expecting me to tag you here :3c Or maybe you were. Knowing you, you weren’t and since you don’t roleplay anymore or use tumblr it wouldn’t really surprise me xD But you are still here. You are one of these people who I could just take and shake for half a minute while giving you a lecture about why you are awesome and you shouldn’t hate yourself or dislike yourself or ... whatever there is else you could think about yourself that is negative. You are an awesome person and I hope to see you again around in the future. For now there will be more patting and pouting in Discord though!

@castdeath Well, this one is actually surprising. I feel like we parted in a more negative way than I would like, but I am convinced that we can work through that ... somehow. I hope we can set these differences aside. We only did one single play so far but that one was very much important to me. I don’t get to play Aira in her AU that much. And I only that oen time got the chance to actually play her out the way she is. I hope we can return to being friends. I really do. (I also hope you are fine by now. Fucking storm sucking out all joy of the stuff we had going just from the time it forced you away).

@properbalance Boop :3 While the origin between us will remain a mystery, I have come to like you and come to like talking to you a lot. You are very hard to get a hold of though, one day ypou will be there, the next you will be gone for half a year to never be seen again. Just to pop up out of nowhere. I hope we will find the ways to do things in the future. But for now I will gladly focus on the idioticiy that we are doing anyways and will look forward to whatever idioticy we can brew up from thing air from now on xD

@staardusts You are probably the one who just jumped onto this list the most recent. You are the only Soraka-mun who ever had taken the time to show interest in my muse, the only one who bothered enough to actually think would could go on. And to add to that you are so incredibly nice as a person that I simply love talking to you in private. I hope things brighten up for you and I hope that we can continue and build up something special!

@littledesertsparrow I mean ... you and your muse are both adorable in their own ways. So far I had nothing but fun talking with you. Well, disregarding the one thing with my clinginess. Sorry for that once more, I am trying my best to change it currently. Your Taliyah is very unique and I think you play her in a one time way that noone else would be able to achieve. Even though I still don’t know how you managed to start shipping Darius and Taliyah. Then again, I managed shipping Elise and Quinn >.> Don’t ask how. I really, really hope we can make some things happen in the future between our muses and maybe between each other as a person as so far I just had a blast talking to you and sending things in for you to answer. And yes, I know this wording is weird. I am not good at social interactions :3

@rinidinger We abrely ever talked BUT you are one of the reasons I even started this entire blog xD I still have the old things I tried to make for an Ingame Model for Rin somewhere on my PC. Even though we did indeed never interact and there were only a handful of conevrsation, it is very easy for me tos ay thank you for your character and what you did for the community. You and two other blogs alone inspired me to start roleplaying here. And I made lots of friends due to that!

@asknasus-thecuratorofthesands Youuuu are probably dead. I think. I am not sure. But your blog is dead for sure. Thank you for the memories and the time our muses shared. They have helped develop my muse a lot and I am more than grateful for you to accept me just jumping in your inbox as if our muses knew each other and just going with it unlike other people who I did it back then with long before IM were even a thing and plotting was new to me. You helped my character to develop and it pulled it through the earliest stages of the blogs development. Thank you, kind sir. You helped me a lot.

@lillium-the-scout I ... think I should put you in this list as well. I have no clue what happened back then. I don’t know what the entire drama was that you were involved witha nd I honestly care little for it. I am not even sure that the mun I am tagging here is the same mun who played with Aira back in the early months’ of the blog. But for the chance that it was, disregarding every rumour and every bad reputation: Thank you for back then. You were one of the first roleplay partners I had. Even though in hindsight the entire starting ship was a terrible idea. I stilll want to thank you for the experience.

@askspiderqueen  I have to thank you for the single interaction we had with our muses. It might not make a lot of sense but it showed me a lot of things about hwo I paly my character and what she does. I really, REALLY want to interact and talk to you more, but I fear our muses just won’t work out. Elise being pissed and Aira having no real reason to ever visit the Spiderqueen. maybe I will find a way in the future. For now I thank you.A nd silently hope you might eba ctive again. Because your character is a lot of fun to read.

@noxian-rose We literally never roleplayed and we barely talked because I am shy as hell and SCARED like hell to approach you. But your character is amazing in the way you play her. I have been watchng your rolepalys in the past with excitement and am allways happy to see you on my dash. It pulled me back into roleplaying a while back. Thank you for that. Maybe things will come by in the future.

@shorthammertime And at last the mun I literally allways feel like I upset them when they suddenly stop to reply. I think of all the people on this list, you made me laugh most. Your muses are incredible, your love for them is noticeable and you yourself are just a fun person to talk with. I still hope that we might roleplay someday with each other. When I can’t tell. But I can at least hope.

Honorable mentions: These are a few people that I wanted to mention because they give me life in their roleplays or because I roleplayed or roleplay with them. Because I enjoyed our conversations or anything otherwise similar. Thank all of you for what you have given me. I will cherish it. Promise.

@ladyem-s-grimoire @verum-exsolutus @lustful-heavens @sexydeceiver @the-demacian-pariah @grabthelantern @maiden-soraka @the-everchild @ask-xayah-therebel @seliniakocharitos @sacredtempest

Thank all of you so much. Let’s hope that the future stays bright.

[noxian-rose]

Ship Talk: Garen and Katarina

I’m surprised Kat and Garen managed to get an explanation of their ship before Swain and LeBlanc did. Because you know, I’m a LeBlanc blog? Hum, onwards to show.

See, Katarina and Garen aren’t much of a typical ship in terms of how it’s formed and how the reasonings behind it. Though it has been confirmed canon after many years, their story is murky and is essentially just a big needless puddle of misunderstanding. This is because most see it for how their relationship is set up, basically Romeo and Juliet of Valoran (though neither die at the end, kek) and a lot of people don’t tend to like it because of that. I personally don’t have a side to it if only because I tend to write for the lesser known ships ; though Garen and Katarina have sort of sparked an interest because of how terrible it’s often portrayed in League fanfiction -- thank god for the roleplaying blogs are usually the saving grace of this pairing. Most who haven’t studied the in-depth workings of characters are often misinterpreting this ship or atleast if they do understand they don’t quite see the bigger picture. 

Because of this most of the fanfics written for it are what I would classify as out of character and come off as cliche; essentially becoming “just another love story”. There’s a lot more beneath the surface, and not just with the characters themselves.

Most would say that a ship that revolves around the workings of a politics is dull and can’t work because it’s normally too intricate or stuffed with events that doesn’t involve the typical format of what we would consider a “love story”. But this doesn’t mean the ship isn’t plausible and uninteresting, because it most definitely is! What with Noxus and Demacia constantly at each other’s throats and what a relationship between two of it’s notable figureheads could do for the city states; the results often being either really shitty or really unrealistic.

But this often comes down to the portrayal.

One of the main issues with this couple is often how the two of them are written; more so than alot of other ships in League. Often because these two are written ooc when it comes to the pairing more so than you’d think. Katarina is often too loyal to Noxus or distant, too bitchy or too nice and open, etc. Same goes for Garen. There needs to be a balance and reason for actions not just because it’s cute. It can work if the reasoning behind Katarina and Garen stays true to their respective characters and makes sense for them as a character or people tend to get fairly salty (as one may expect.) They balance each other in terms of morals and views, and in all respects are a good ship if you build the backstory right.

And with the new lore (if you follow that) The reasons have to be more than representing  of their personalities mainly because there’s a bit more difficulty considering how Noxus and Demacia are months apart by travel now and Garen’s almost completely closed off to any reasoning by his enemies; unless you don’t care for said new lore-- go ham on whatever. 

But what about Jarvan and Swain?

I highly doubt that either Swain or Jarvan would excuse their ties to each other as “just another set of lovers” though Swain -- as I presume so anyway-- would be far more lenient and reasonable because of Noxian traditions and culture. Strength is the driving force of Noxians, and those who can prove they are worthy essentially control and gain power ( i.e Swain himself ) with little question from the people; Though with Katarina being a member of the Du Couteau house, one of the most renowned and notable families throughout the history of the city state; it becomes less about strength and more about scandal.  

With Swain, it would be far more beneficial for him to use Katarina’s relationship above her head as a way of getting her compliance rather than merely executing her/branding her as a traitor, seeing as it’s evident that she disapproves of his siege of control and view of Noxus in general. Secondly, losing House Du Couteau is crushing, not only would Swain be questioned, but his influence within High Command would slip; and I think the unity and co-operation of Noxus as a whole is far more important to him than some petty romance.

Jarvan on the other hand would most likely denounce Garen or keep it beneath the wraps, depending on which Jarvan is intervening roleplay wise. Seeing as how Demacia is driven by tradition; it’s not far to see the Crownguards be shunned, forgotten or atleast disapproved of if the news spread, as we’ve seen from both Fiora and Vayne’s backstories. It’s not likely Jarvan would ever execute Garen, seeing as how they were childhood friends and close comrades for many, many years. Likely outcome would be exile.

That’s my quick view on their relationship, I would go on further but this post is getting too long so ciao for now :>

[deathdxnces]

i know i joke about irelia being willing to look away from kayn's murder business, but i honestly think that's what she's been doing about the yanlei as a whole for a while now. because we know they are an Issue for a bunch of people, the vastaya but also the monks and honestly whoever stands in their way at all, but there's no indication they've clashed with ionia's ruling council and their representatives — and while we don't know who is part of the council other than irelia and karma, i think given irelia's interactions with zed and kayn in game being the one about finding redeeming qualities in them, and her interaction with zed in lor being the 'pledge yourself to the shadows' 'noxian tyranny has already forged our bond', i think it's made pretty clear irelia doesn't have as much of an issue with the order of shadows as other 'good' ionians do.

i think it makes a lot of sense because whatever terrible things they're up to, she knows ultimately they mean to protect ionia (and that the yanlei were some of the only ones to take a stand the first time, as well). zed is considered honorless and evil by most but i think that's not what she'd think of him, because irelia understands being willing to do terrible things for the sake of their homeland. she didn't have to (yet), but i do think she feels very certain she would if it came to that. i think she respects him more than most people who aren't part of the order, even if she doesn't agree with all of the yanlei's methods.

which extends to the order as a whole, regardless of and even before any relationship with kayn. and which leads me to the willfully looking away and letting them do their thing mostly unbothered — i think that's the result of several things, but it can be summed up as irelia thinking that's the more benefitial course of action in the long term. i think she'd believe what resources they have to face threats and keep ionia safe better employed against the leftover noxian forces, and that even when it comes to dealing with ionia's inner problems, she'd sooner turn her attention to the brotherhood, considering they're much more extreme than the yanlei. but i think it's also... not wanting to make enemies of the only other faction she's mostly certain would ally with her to defend ionia. because, as is always relevant to point out, irelia never truly completely left the war behind. even when others are at peace, she's preparing for war again. and i do think she sees the yanlei as likely allies more so than a threat to be dealt with.

of course the usual disclaimer applies, it's my take and my portrayal etc etc. but yeah i think whoever is part of the council, it's very likely the rest of them aren't as willing to use violence, even to deal with dangerous groups (karma is certainly reluctant, and she is still the greatest religious leader in ionia). irelia, of course, doesn't deal with things like that, but she's not interested in turning her blades against the yanlei. so they're mostly left alone when it comes to the council taking action against them in any way.

and i'm not saying she's right or anything, i think it's just one of the many things that highlights how flawed she is (and how ruthless she can be, as well, if it's to protect ionia; because ultimately she is willing to let them get away with harming other ionians to some extent :/ ). but yeah irelia expects absolutely nothing useful from the kinkou, and she knows not all of the monks would want to join the fight, and she knows the yanlei aren't afraid to get their hands dirty. so she definitely sees them as possible (and likely) future allies, regardless of how unsavory some of the things they do might be.

and when it comes to kayn specifically i think it's just worse lmao because on top of all that there's the personal bond and the loyalty and devotion and the fact there's. very little he could do she'd not stay by his side regardless, even if she doesn't like it/disagrees with it. she can criticize, but ultimately she'd stick with him. and it's not like she didn't know what she was getting into from the start. he was an assassin and he was part of the order already; it's part of why she sought him for an alliance. she wouldn't really turn around and expect him to change or condemn him for what he already was.

the tldr is while i don't think she's willing to do what they do or act like they do or get involved in kayn's murder business most of the time (there are exceptions), she's very much prone to not taking issue with it, both because of her views on the order as a whole, and because of how she feels about kayn specifically. it's not a good look, i know, but it is the way it is aksjnfkfn

[deathdxnces]

irelia having to kill at 11 to survive after her entire family was murdered irelia growing up not only during times of war but in the middle of the resistance irelia desperately fighting for her people and her land after she had just turned 14 because either they fought back noxus or they died there was no other option irelia having to lead the resistance after a miraculous victory despite being so young and having no experience with all that irelia and everything else she was forced to witness and deal with as a result because she was their leader and she had to be strong no matter how heavy that got or how terrible the things she had to see from the carnage caused by the noxians to their use of chemical weapons and child soldiers irelia and the fact that even if swain hadn't called back the noxian troops she had already driven them back and it was a matter of time until they were defeated but that was only after two more years of war irelia and the fact she was probably 15/barely 16 when it was over but it wasn't really over if there was still people to help and things to recover and leftover noxians to deal with irelia and the fact that after growing up like that there is no possibly going back because she was exposed to so much violence and had to take part on it too and came to enjoy it as much as she came to feel guilty for each perceived failure when she disappointed or had to harm any of the people she swore to protect

irelia and the fact she had a blissfully happy childhood with a loving family who adored her and each other irelia and the fact her passions and dreams were art-related and that she wanted to do something beautiful and meaningful like the teacher she so admired irelia and the fact as a child she learned to follow karma and harm no one under any circumstance irelia and the fact she was so hopeful and filled with joy and openly caring before the war changed her irrevocably. but also irelia and the fact her love for beauty and art never ceased to exist, and that while happiness might have been replaced by grief and rage abd melancholy she is still capable of caring so deeply and being so kind and gentle and tender despite the violence she's also capable of

from 11 to 17ish she was either trying to survive or actively fighting for ionia. there's no way that didn't shape who she is to a fundamental level. there's no way violence wouldn't long since have stopped making her recoil and been instead embraced, when it was the only way of surviving (when it was the only way she dealt with her grief and anger, too; how do you see people in the enemies who made you suffer like that, who destroyed your land like that, who you had to kill since you were a child or they'd kill you instead? how do you stop seeing them as monsters rather than people after that?).

she's capable of great love and compassion, her kindness extends to her people regardless of how they feel about her, she deeply cares and is undyingly loyal to anyone who comes close enough to claim a place in her heart. she can be soft and gentle and laugh and be silly, but that's so rare after everything she went through and everything she had to be for others. and i think a lot about how, during the war, what she became was fitting; acceptable, welcomed even - but years after it ended, with ionia so intent on going back to the old ways and people so intent on forgetting about the war, she feels so displaced. there's no room for what she was forced to become among the people who led her to become that by putting her front and center to fight a war when she was a child. many of them certainly see a hero (and isn't that tiresome, too, when she just wants to be seen and accepted and loved as a person?), but surely she's lost the shine to many others who don't want the reminders of war and believe going back to their peaceful way of life is the best. because she can't do it. there's no going back for her. war made her what she is, and to a point i think she struggles with existing without it.