#it's probably pretty obvious by now

[hinamie]

corvidae

[egophiliac]

Please elaborate on your twst Pokémon headcannons I’m very interested

I had planned on drawing everyone for this (I made a LIST!) but it. hasn't been going well. 💀 soooo here's what I have so far!

Riddle - Roserade (I was going with 'no legendaries', otherwise I would've given him a Shaymin) (and I don't think Togedemaru is actually a hedgehog or I would've given him one of those too) (...they kind of do fit though. hmm.)

Trey - Alcremie (clover/mint cream + strawberry/ruby cream)

Cater - DITTO SQUAD! DITTO SQUAD! DITTO SQUAD!

Ace - Impidimp (I feel like there's probably a better one for him, but I can't think of it)

Deuce - Scraggy (meanwhile I KNOW deep in my heart that this is true)

Leona - Pyroar (but like. a nasty Pyroar. just a grizzly old Pyroar with the shittiest attitude imaginable. they pretend to hate each other but secretly they are a bonded pair, do not separate)

[cconfusedkat]

This took like three days because I struggled a bit on Shrimpo, but,, Gardenview boys 🎉🎉

I had the most fun with cosmo and looey's tbh!! I plan on drawing the gardenview girls next, and then the mains getting their own post... 🌟🌟

[rozeliyawashereyall]

Lynette Vega redesign!

Was originally gonna save this till I finished some other drawings—but decided eh, might as well post these first

Her old design annoyed me—she's so whimsical now I love it

[skrunksthatwunk]

other half

redraw screenshots taken from this post i made a while back ignore that i forgot to actually link it for like an entire day

[rogue205]

Season 3 Finale Rant…

(Kinda sounds like my other post… 🤷‍♀️ Oh well)

I feel that Soldier Boy is an anti-hero and not a villain. He’s labeled as such because his morals do not align with those of “the good guys”.

Honestly, the show runners kept insisting that SB was bad and had to be stopped by any means necessary but they never showed us why he was apparently so bad. And no, I don’t believe that he “faked his PTSD induced blackouts so he could kill tons of people on purpose”. He’s damaged but he sure as hell ain’t gonna acknowledge or admit it.

Putting it lightly, he’s an ass in every sense but he was also the only one who didn’t go back on his word and betray those whom he had allied with while they shanked him. How does this make him bad? Even after Hughie tried to go back on the deal by teleporting away with Mindstorm, SB still kept to it. Frankly, Hughie is very lucky all he got was a punch in the face/chest. He deserved it too.

And from what we see, SB is not the one constantly on the edge of a massive breakdown and constantly threatening to destroy humanity because he can. That’s Homelander. SB got what he wanted, justified revenge on his former teammates for selling him to Russia. He only stuck around because he had made a deal with Butcher to destroy HL. And he was gonna do it too only for everyone to flip against him at the worst possible time.

The Boys better watch out. They literally delivered their only chance of defeating HL to him on a silver platter. Unfortunately we’re likely gonna have to wait until season 5 to find out what his plans for SB are. I’m betting “Winter Soldier” because SB is going to have massive trust issues, especially getting betrayed again, and he already showed that ‘family’ is not a motivation for him especially since there was no paternal type emotional connections made whatsoever between him and HL or him and Ryan. Despite the fact that he’s since admitted he wanted kids but Vought f-ed that up good.

It’s just too bad that I have very little faith in Eric Kripke to actually stick the landing on his ideas. At least Supernatural made it past season 5 before this problem occurred, The Boys didn’t even make it to season 3. The finale conflict was forced AF and I still don’t believe The Boys would spontaneously team up with HL over a damn kid. Not sorry Ryan, but you should be dead.

My opinion.

[gh0stz404]

"our grandpa made a respectful gay joke? i didn't know he knew how to do that!" -me when my grandpa makes a respectful gay joke

and the joke, for those of you who might be curious: "Someone told me my jacket looked gay, and so i told them "it just came out of the closet!""

[shadedsecrets]

Why Pavel is Important:

AKA Why Cheth and Phaedra need therapy and Phantomarine won’t leave my head--

The sheer importance of Pavel as a character and what he does hit me very hard today and I needed to share.

Cheth the Red Tide King is an ageless being who has been betrayed, mutilated, and discredited for a comparatively short 500 years out of his thousands. Everything he was, everything he had, taken away by someone who was supposed to be his equal and someone who his feelings about seem to be very... complicated. Even then, he didn’t even get to die, just watch as more as more was stripped away so not even the people’s memory of him remained unwrapped. His only company was himself... and a few fleeting moments with people who feared and hated him. If that didn’t fuck him up a bit, nothing could.

If he was to be made the villain until some nebulous future that might not even come, why not lean into it and have at least a shred of vengeance and amusement? The perfect target is right there, after all, a royal line dedicated to the church that sullies his memory with lies is right there. Why *not* torment them when they pass, why not make those ruthless bloodthirsty puppets feel despair? After all, he knows who is calling the shots. He knows she doesn’t care one bit once she can no longer use them...

The Red Tide surrounded and transported at least three sea bite victims to shore that we know of, however. Doubtless there are many more lives he has tried to save from a painful and premature death. But he can only be so many places at once... And it is rather telling that every seabite victim we have seen so far has been a child.

He thought Phaedra no better than a tyrant early in her reign when she came down to his domain. That she could not possibly know the loss that had occurred because of her people’s actions. That none of her line could, because ***she*** was pulling the strings... And of course, she would never trust him, so to get her to do anything, of course he had to lie. She had been manipulated all her life and was clearly none the wiser, even now when contradictions begin arising. And really, he has no patience for it anymore, for stubborn fools who refuse to hear him.... and Cheth is far too out of practice to do anything about this himself.

Phaedra is lugging around centuries of religious propaganda and pressure, as well as being young, inexperienced, and grieving the loss of her father. Her whole life has been surrounded by the church and it’s teachings, of her future responsibilities in relation to them, who her immortal enemy was and who her biggest inspiration should be. She was very literally tailor-raised to hate Cheth. 

His actions don’t help alleviate this either. I doubt he was lying about being able to bring back only one soul, but not being clear about it broke what trust Phaedra was ever willing to put in the god. She was not nearly as hostile towards him until that little snag, and has seemed only to double down on this stance ever since, her color scheme changing from yellows to blues. She will find the most bad-faith read of his words and believe that to be the only correct answer. His penchant to not being completely clear and honest with his intentions also clearly vexes her.

Clearly though, she cares deeply about people. She took up her father’s tradition to ease the grieving. She was willing to do whatever it took to save her friends, and feels incredible guilt for ‘dooming’ them to a these last months of not-quite-life. She wants to help people, really help them... but she can only see ‘help’ in such a narrow worldview and has been taught there are some people you just shouldn’t help.

And then... there’s Pavel. And the very first thing we learn about him is that the boy has more heart than sense. Vanna raised him well, but the kind of deep empathy to care for the very beings that killed his father and basically gave him a terminal disease with heavy stigmas that forced him to leave the life he loved for ***seven years*** takes a little more than teaching.

Pavel has defended almost every single being that has harmed him.

He understood that sea ghosts just couldn’t stop themselves and that they were people once because he trusted his mother and her research. He understood that his friend Eddy was scared and alone and lashing out because of that. He questioned and pushed back against Sofia’s manipulations and the bad faith readings of the Mantaluna crew, but tried to understand that they must be having a pretty hard time. He told the Manta Princess to her face that *Cheth was hurting too* and asked a literal deity to be nicer to the biggest pain in his neck.

This little boy is a critical bridge. He can just *feel* when people are coming from a place of genuine care or hurt and tries to explain that to others who are being overly harsh in his opinion. There is a reason he is neither Cheth’s nor Phaedra’s color scheme. *This tiny boy is the one neutral party that both of these stubborn powerful people will listen to, now.*

Phaedra only turned sour when the talk got a little too close to questioning the very foundation of her beliefs, and she just went cold and tried to make Pavel change the subject. She was so relieved to know she hadn’t hurt him, wanted to do everything she could to make him comfortable and did not even question if they should help him get somewhere safe. And Cheth... Cheth loves children and hates having to welcome a single one into his collection, I think. He tried to mock Phaedra with how many *orphans* her father’s last battle created. He became *angry* and cold at even the implication that he would have lied to Pavel. And Cheth does everything he can to make sure a child survives a sea ghost attack.

Without Pavel... neither of these two have any hope of working through their shit, because neither of them are able to view the other and their reactions clearly. Cheth IS AN ASSHOLE AND VINDICTIVE. Phae IS NAIVE AND OVERZEALOUS. And Pavel is the once person who can read them both as say it like it is. And that is going to make for one hell of a boat ride.

[michaeljoncarter]

ALSO, like with just about everything about wyll in the full release version i m o, the way his interactions with mizora throughout the game were just sorta ported over without much tweaking to make them fit in with the new version of his character is so weird and clunky and just.... uncomfortable

the fact that mizora was mortal in the original version of the story was kind of an extremely important detail that not only wyll's entire character quest but also their entire relationship and history hinged on. the ea version of mizora was half-human, not a full devil, and according to dnd rules as i understand them, that means she would've had a regular human lifespan. (eta: yes, she's still called a cambion in the full version, but my issue is at some point between ea and full release, all the differences between cambions and devils apparently just up & vanished) so if ea mizora and ea wyll, who were around the same age, met when wyll was 17, that means they met when mizora was also somewhere in the range of her mid/late teens

there's obviously still an unhealthy power imbalance there with her being his patron and all, but there's a pretty big difference between a teenage boy being manipulated by an equally as young teenage girl into signing a pact vs a teenage boy being manipulated by a fully immortal & presumably-already-grown-at-the-time woman into signing himself into her service

and the flirty/sexual dialogue being left in makes this 100x worse. originally, mizora and wyll were explicitly in a romantic relationship that had just ended right before the game started (like literally right before. as in he told you that the nautiloid snatched them up WHILE he was in the middle of giving her his breakup speech (lmao)), but there is literally ZERO reason for the full release version of their relationship to have such a weirdly charged undertone to it??

you can't just take the dynamic of "toxic high school sweethearts who just had an insanely messy breakup 3 days ago after dating for 5+ years" and slap it onto "grownass woman who manipulated a teenage boy into signing his life away to her 5 years ago" with zero acknowledgement of the fact that that changes literally everything??

like sorry, this isn't just petty exes bickering anymore. this is now reading as nonstop sexual harassment, and to someone without the context of this happening due to a messyass rewrite (or even with it tbh), it's weird as fuck that some characters get entire arcs dedicated to unpacking the trauma that comes from being trapped in this exact dynamic, but with wyll, neither he nor the player ever get a chance to try to stop it or even really acknowledge the fact that it's happening in any significant way

the sloppiness of this whole rewrite is actually insane to me

[nostalgia-tblr]

speaking of doylist explanations, i do tend to default to one on the question of why missy has a(n interrupted) redemption arc when the other versions of her don't, which is definitely down to the fact that all the new who showrunners seem to go with the view that master as a character exists to be a dark mirror of the doctor, and moffat's the one who doesn't view the doctor as fundamentally good but as someone who has to continually choose to not be terrible. so if the doctor can choose to be bad then by extension it must be true that the master could choose to be good. it's like poetry, it rhymes!

[ask-aftermath-jevin]

OOC: My Jevin after horror is scared of the dark. A nightlight was probably one of the first things he got his hands on after they managed to mostly heal the injured of the group (since he didn't have one before now. Why would he? He used to love the darkness). The group might be fairly far from like,, everything outside the town and needed money but god damnit he needed his fuckin nightlight and impulse purchased. Probably liked the bird ones :)

Also probably has a window nearby too for extra light (which is why there's also a light source on the right)

[sentientcave]

I'm working on a rag rug and let me tell you: There is a lot of braiding involved

[jes12321]

Obsessed with the idea of Fushiguro Toji and Gojo Satoru getting into a custody battle for Tsumiki and Megumi aind ending up with the classic MWF with one parent, TRS with the other parent and every other Sunday. Just think it’d be silly.

[avirael]

The Frozen Lake

It was the third day since he had stopped feeling like dying.

About a week ago he had woken up from his far too lifelike fever dream and a few days later the last spikes of the fever itself had been gone too just like the hallucinations it had brought in his sleep.

He still had been sick though and welcomed Rael telling him to stay in bed until he was perfectly healthy again all too eagerly.

While he still sneezed every now and then, it was at least tolerable now, still annoying but he didn’t feel incredibly uncomfortable anymore.

That day, just like the last and also the ones before that, he had awoken late. Against Rael’s order to stay in bed he had found the courage to get up and take a look out of the window. It was a sunny day, which in Coerthas still meant that it was bitterly cold though. But the sun was shining brightly and already high in the sky too which meant it had to be almost midday. He had slept way too long again, way to many hours for a surprisingly dreamless sleep. Or maybe it was exactly the lack of dreams that allowed him to finally rest, after all in the past there rarely had been good ones…

For a moment he considered to go downstairs and ask for a late breakfast if that wasn’t too insolent given the late hour but then a knock sounded from the door.

Quickly he hurried back to bed, just in case it was Rael, but the person who carefully peeked into the room a few seconds later wasn’t a viera.

“Ah, you are awake! That’s good!”, Haurchefant exclaimed happily and brought a small tray with hot soup and also something warm to drink. “It is so late already, you must be horribly hungry. Alphinaud checked in on you earlier but you were still fast asleep and he didn’t have the heart to wake you.”

A little uncertain on how to answer to that, A’viloh just nodded. Haurchefant grinned, put down a mug on the bedside table and handed A‘viloh a comfortingly warm bowl filled with some rather delicious smelling stew.

Instead of fetching the chair from the small desk by the window, Haurchefant sat down at the lower end of the bed balancing the tray with his own lunch on his knees. Rael once told him that ishgardian society had an absurd amount of strict and antiquated rules and so A’viloh couldn’t help but wonder, that although it seemed like a very appropriate distance to him, in Haurchefant’s hometown the fact alone that he dared to sit on someone else’s bed was probably scandalous.

“I hope you don’t mind me having lunch with you.”, the Elezen asked as he noticed A‘viloh staring.

Quickly the Miqo’te lowered his gaze to his bowl of soup. “Not at all.”, he muttered and tried a spoonful of the food just to change the topic. “Mhh, this is very good!”, he mumbled, still chewing, surprised by how good this really was compared to the bland food and bitter teas Rael had usually brought him these last few days. It must have been the Viera’s way of punishing him for running away.

Haurchefant laughed and then for a while they ate in silence.

“You look a lot healthier already.”, the Elezen stated after a while with an amiable smile on his face before taking a sip from his mug.

A‘viloh shrugged a little embarrassed, since it had been his own fault that he hadn’t been well in the first place. “Only because all of you took so good care of me.”

Haurchefant nodded. “You know, you had us all horribly worried right?”

“Sorry about that.”, he said and guitily looked into his mug.

Curiously Haurchefant eyed him for a moment. “Why did you do that anyway? Run out into the storm.”

A bit surprised A’viloh looked up. Had they all thought he had done this on purpose? “There wasn’t a storm when I left! What do I know about weather? I didn’t expect it to start snowing, let alone that much!”

That made the Elezen chuckle again but he still looked at him expecting an answer.

“Still… why did you leave?”

“I assumed Rael told you…”, A’viloh replied not sure what Haurchefant wanted to hear exactly. He nodded. “Rael did. But maybe I want to hear it from you…”

A’viloh sighed. His plan hadn’t been very smart and he felt a little uncomfortable having to explain his reasons to someone else, when in retrospect it didn’t make much sense even to his own ears.

“You know the… circumstances under which we fled Ul’dah… I couldn’t… um… the fact that we didn’t even know what happened to our friends… I wanted to find out, because it doesn’t seem fair to me that we escaped while all of them didn’t…”

“Mhh…”, Haurchefant nodded thoughtfully but let go off the topic for now. Instead he asked, „And how are you feeling today?”

Somehow that question confused A’viloh even more.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s a simple question, isn’t it?”, he said still smiling politely.

Of course it was a simple question. Just the answer felt unreasonable complicated to him. To make things even more difficult people who asked such a question usually wanted to hear “I‘m fine, and you?” or “Very good, thank you.” for an answer and rarely the truth. They certainly didn’t want to hear “A few days ago I was convinced I was going to die and honestly it wasn’t that bad, so now I‘m still not sure wether I am happy to still be alive or not”.

“Alright… I guess.”, he mumbled instead. He had never been a good liar and could only hope that this fact wasn’t too obvious for the Elezen.

“You know what?”, Haurchefant proclaimed after watching him thoughtfully for a second. “Today is a wonderful day. We should go for a walk.”

“A walk?!”, A’viloh exclaimed wide-eyed, as if he had just asked something unreasonable of him.

“Why not?”

A’viloh couldn’t think of a good reason why not, other than that he was supposed to stay in bed, so he shrugged.

“Where’s Rael?”, he asked instead.

Haurchefant smirked. “Do you need Rael’s permission to go outside?”

“Of course not.”, the Miqo’te protested. “But Rael will be mad if I run off again, especially against their orders to stay in bed.”

“Rael and Alphinaud went to the observatory earlier.”, Haurchefant explained. “We’ll be back before they are, I promise.”

What was A’viloh supposed to say against that and also against the expectant look on the Elezen’s face. He took another glimpse towards the window and decided that it looked nice enough to go outside.

“Fine.”

“Good!”, Haurchefant exclaimed happily and collected their empty bowls and mugs. “There should be warm clothes for you in the wardrobe. If you need anything else just ask someone. I’ll wait for you by the northern gate.”

After Haurchefant had left, A’viloh remained sitting in his bed for a moment longer contemplating on the Elezen’s question. Yes, he felt better again. But better in what comparison? Better than a few days ago when he had felt and also been half-dead? Though he didn’t feel sick anymore now, there still was a weigh on his heart. From his plan that had failed so spectacularly and even more so from the dreams he wouldn’t have minded to keep on dreaming forever.

Vehemently he shook his head and decided not to think about that now or he would just crawl back under the blanket of his comfortably warm bed again. Instead he got up and took a look into the wardrobe. Almost none of these were his own clothes of course since all he possessed were the ones he had worn on his body that day they fled Ul’dah. Very unsuitable for this climate. But neither did he see the borrowed clothes he had worn that night when he had tried to run away. Everything in here looked even softer and warmer like someone had wanted to make sure he was feeling comfortable. To his surprise the things didn’t look that much too big for him either, unlike his last set of clothes. Besides a few Hyur most people here at Camp Dragonhead were grown up Elezen but these clothes looked like they belonged to neither. Maybe it were clothes for Elezen children, he wondered and also thought that in that case someone must have brought them here just for him.

Grateful for so much effort he picked a few pieces and got dressed. Lazily he ran his fingers through his hair to get rid of the worst knots but the look into the small mirror at the washbasin, where his tired face stared back at him reproachfully, just made him sigh. Once he was ready he took the warm coat out of the wardrobe too and went out to look for Haurchefant. Just as he had said, the Elezen was standing by the gate that led to the north-east, towards the ruins of the Steel Vigil.

From afar Haurchefant already recognised the Miqo’te, his bright red hair a singularity among all the people living here. Pleasantly smiling as always he waved at him and A’viloh couldn’t help but smile a little too and wave back as he hurriedly walked towards him.

“There you are! I see the clothes fit you nicely.”

A’viloh nodded.

“They do. Thank you very much for these.”

Haurchefant dismissively waved with one hand. “It’s the least I could do…”

But he had done a lot more than that, A’viloh thought. “I think there’s more I need to thank you for. Rael told me it was you who saved my life.”

“Mhhh…”, Haurchefant tilted his head as if he wasn’t sure if this statement was entirely the truth. “Rael is too humble. They played a bit of a role in that too. After all it was Rael who noticed you were gone. And it was also Rael who didn’t leave your bedside and tried their best to heal you.”

A’viloh remembered waking up and finding the usually quite touch-averse viera cuddled up to him with a look on their face so horribly sad like he had never seen on them before. Rael had pretended it was nothing but it had been a very unconvincing performance. Asked about it Alphinaud had only offered a few sentences about how worried Rael had looked and how they had used all kinds of spells he himself had never seen or heard of before, all of it to try and save him. It had made him feel even more guilty for his stupidity.

So maybe Haurchefant was right. But still it had been him who had risked going out into the storm to find him.

“Anyway. I still want to thank you! Honestly.”, he insisted. But how honestly was it really?

Sure, he was glad to still be alive. After all his plan hadn’t been to run out into a blizzard and freeze to death, although some of them seemed to think that was the case. But once he found himself in this situation he had to admit that he had welcomed his fate rather willingly. A fact that shocked even himself a little looking back at it now.

“You’re welcome. After all you wouldn’t be any help to your friends frozen to death out there.”, Haurchefant joked with a wry smile on his lips.

“I guess not...”, A’viloh muttered, the topic of his friends making his mood visibly sink again.

Of course the Elezen noticed and his smile turned into a playful grin. “But I acted a little selfish too, you know? I think Camp Dragonhead is a lot friendlier with your company and I would like to have you and your pretty smile around a little longer.”

For a moment A’viloh’s eyes shot up to look at the others face before he quickly pretended that something somewhere a little bit to his left was a lot more interesting. Sometimes Haurchefant randomly said things, A’viloh hadn’t had the slightest idea how to react to. Not because he was that oblivious but simply because it puzzled him. Nonetheless the air suddenly didn’t feel that cold anymore on his face.

Haurchefant was always very kind to him. Well, he mostly was kind to everybody but sometimes he seemed to admire him especially. Him of all people, although there was nothing special about him. Haurchefant sometimes spoke of him like he was one of the greatest heroes of all time and it felt so ridiculous to him. He was just silly, cowardly A‘viloh! What had he ever achieved in his miserable life to justify such admiration? The people called him a Warrior of Light but wasn’t that some grand overstatement? Some days he thought all of this had been a horrible mistake. A great misunderstanding! Then he wondered how he had ever gotten entangled in this madness in the first place and also if he ever would get out of it again. But what else should he do with his life anyway...

While A’viloh’s brain still screeched in desperate search for a proper response, Haurchefant seemed to realise he had flustered him and glossed it over by gesturing to the gate.

“How about we walk a few yalms? There’s something you need to see!”

Still too dumbstruck to speak or to even wonder what the Elezen was talking about, A’viloh nodded and then proceeded to follow him out into the snowy landscape.

After a few minutes Haurchefant paused and took a deep breath. “Isn’t the air wonderful today?”

A’viloh followed his example, breathed deeply and let his gaze wander over the snow covered landscape with a few pines here and there and the mountains and ruins of the Steel Vigil in the distance. The air was cool and fresh, still cold enough that the warm sun couldn’t melt the snow. Instead the rays of sunshine made the scenery shine and sparkle as if everything was covered not in ice but in millions over millions of tiny diamonds.

“It is.”, he answered and smiled, surprised how beautiful this inhospitable landscape could be, before with a sudden spark of curiosity he finally asked. “Where are we going?”

“It’s not far anymore.”, Haurchefant said with a grin on his face and pointed into another direction. Shortly after and only a bit further ahead they reached a small lake.

As they got closer A‘viloh noticed that it not only was covered in a layer of snow and ice but also that quite a few off-duty soldiers, given the proximity to the camp he assumed they had to be, were standing right on top of the frozen lake. No, they were not quite standing. It looked more like they were dancing or flying maybe. More or less gracefully they moved over the lake‘s surface in fluid swift strides, some just moving in wide circles and other swirling around this way or that. A’viloh had never seen something like this and it looked strange and impossible but at the same time very beautiful to him.

The two of them had almost reached the lake by then, A’viloh a few steps ahead to get a better look at the wondrous people on the ice and he already wanted to ask how they did that, when his attention was drawn elsewhere by a curious squawking sound.

“Oh! Look at them!”, the Miqo’te exclaimed, his fascinated smile still turning a little brighter, as he gestured to a small flock of wild geese resting at the shore of the lake. With ruffled feathers they sat closely huddled together at the edge of the ice and suddenly A‘viloh couldn’t help but worry about them. They looked so unbothered by his presence, sleeping through the day and all the hubbub around them, looking all exhausted and frozen with their puffed up feathers. Like anything could happen to them and they wouldn’t even mind.

Strangely he wondered what he himself had looked like when Haurchefant had found him unconscious in the snow. He must have been a pitiful sight. Had the Elezen thought him beyond saving too, just like he himself had. What if he had found him a little later or not at all? Maybe that would have been better, a voice murmured to him just like it had so many times before and for a moment, tempted by the grief heavy on his heart once again, he almost believed it.

But no, he would be dead then and while he would have liked to imagine that this would mean he could be with his loved ones again, it was not exactly what either of the tribes he had lived with believed.

Vaguely he remembered his father working for hours, digging a grave at what used to be Wellwick Wood. An elderly woman too exhausted by their long journey, his grandmother if he remembered correctly, had died shortly after they had arrived there. With a sad smile on his face his father had explained to his children, who had stared down into the hole in the ground with confusion in their eyes, how by returning her body to the earth there could still grow new life from this death.

Or the drake tribe of the Sagolii Desert, who always burned their dead and left the ashes to be carried away by the desert wind, believing that it would make it easier for the deceased‘s aether to return to the Aetheric Sea and create something new elsewhere.

With a sudden sharp pain in his heart A’viloh realised that neither of the people he loved had gotten the burial they would have wanted for themselves. And neither had A‘viloh himself wanted to die in the coldness of Coerthas and be forever forgotten under a thick layer of snow and ice. He had thought about dying before but never had he been this close to it. For a second he wondered if this was something worth speaking to Rael about, but he wasn’t sure they wouldn’t misunderstand and get mad at him again.

“Why do you make such a sad face now?”, Haurchefant asked having noticed the smile slip from the Miqo’te’s face. But A’viloh just vehemently shook his head and focused on the geese again.

“They must be horribly cold.”, he wondered in a voice that suggested he already planned to take all of them to the safety of his comfortably warm room.

Haurchefant chuckled. “Don’t worry, they survived the storm out here after all. They keep each other warm, that’s why you‘ll rarely see one of them alone. A bit like you and your friends.”

“Maybe…”, A’viloh answered thinking about this comparison for a moment. “I just wish it wouldn’t always be me who needs to be taken care of. But as proven in Ul’dah and now once again I am simply too weak and useless to keep myself alive, not to mention anyone else.”

The Elezen’s face got a little stern as he folded his arms in front of his chest. “Don’t say that, I am sure it’s not true! This was just bad luck! You are neither weak nor useless!”

A’viloh shrugged. “But that’s how I feel right now...”

Slowly Haurchefant nodded before speaking again with a silent but determined voice. “Listen. I‘ll never forget how bravely you fought for Francel although you barely knew him. You could have gotten yourself in trouble with that and you helped him anyway.”

“It’s not like I did that on my own -”, A’viloh tried to protest but was immediately interrupted. “But you still helped! And I’m sure even without Rael you would have done so!”

Another shrug was all Haurchefant got in response, so the Elezen thought for a second before making an offer. “You want to make yourself useful, right? Get stronger? I could teach you how to fight like a real ishgardian knight, with sword and shield. Or we have some dragoons at Camp Dragonhead too! I’m sure there’s a lot you could learn from them.”

A‘viloh‘s face turned to disbelief. “I really don’t think I could fight with armor and weapons this heavy…”

“You can’t say so if you don’t try! And I have you know that dragoon armors are surprisingly light. How do you think they could still be this agile otherwise? Promise me to at least try training with them a little!”

He didn’t really want to agree to that. He knew he would make a fool of himself. But how could he say no with Haurchefant trying everything in his power to cheer him up. Weakly he shook his head and muttered: “Fine…”

“Perfect!”, Haurchefant exclaimed with a bright smile on his face. “I think an early reward for your efforts is appropriate then!”

Confused A’viloh watched him take a small bag off of his shoulders, which he hadn’t even noticed until now. For a moment the Elezen was busy undoing a knot before he opened the bag and presented to A‘viloh a set of two weirdly shaped blades attached to pieces of wood with leather straps. He had no idea what these constructs were meant to do and that was plainly visible on his face. “What’s that?”

“Ice skates of course!”, Haurchefant said as if that would explain it all but the Miqo’te‘s face remained clueless, so Haurchefant gestured to the lake behind them. “You attach them to your boots so you can walk on the ice like this!”

“Oh!”, A’viloh exclaimed as he understood what Haurchefant was planning. “I don’t think-… I mean I‘ve never-… You don’t really want me to step on that lake do you?” The idea somehow scared him.

“Why not?”, Haurchefant asked for the second time today with this smile that made the question sound like a challenge.

“It’s just a bit of ice!”, A‘vi objected. “What if it breaks?”

The Elezen shook his head and proceeded to fasten the metal blades beneath his boots. “Ah, don’t worry. The ice is thick enough, it will take at least a few more days to melt.”

“I don’t know…”, was all A’viloh replied as Haurchefant pressed another pair of skates into his hands. But the Elezen remained determined and took a few wobbly steps through the snow and onto the ice. “See! I can stand on it and it doesn’t break! You are a lot lighter than me, so why wouldn’t you be able to?”

Oh, you don’t know my bad luck!, A‘viloh thought but Haurchefant didn’t look like he would take that for an excuse. Instead he stretched out a hand towards the Miqo’te. “Come one! Believe me, this is going to be funny!”

For a second A‘viloh pondered his options. The idea of nothing but a little bit of ice between him and the water still terrified him but Haurchefant seemed so excited about this and the other people actually seemed to have fun too. Maybe he should at least pretend to try... Reluctantly he sat down on a rock and tried to put on the skates just like Haurchefant had done a moment ago.

“The clasp on the back too. Make sure none of them are loose… Yes, that looks fine!”, Haurchefant helpfully explained. As A’viloh got up, he almost flopped right back down into the snow. It was a weird feeling to balance his whole weight on only two thin pieces of metal. As he carefully took the first few steps towards the lake Haurchefant reached out for him once more. “Here! Take my hand! I don’t want you to fall…”

Hesitantly A‘vi stepped onto the ice and immediately felt like the ground was being pulled away beneath his feet. He struggled for balance, feeling himself falling backwards, so Haurchefants arm was a very welcome thing to hold on to.

With a chuckle the Elezen tried to loosen A‘vi‘s desperate grip on his arm and instead took each of his hand in one of his own before carefully making slow steps backwards pulling A‘viloh over the ice, which A’vi could swear was making suspicious crackling sounds below them. There was no way to tell the blades beneath his feet not to move, so all A’viloh could do was try not to fall and plead to Haurchefant with ears flat on his head and panic in his eyes, as he slowly was pulled further onto the lake. “No, no, no. Take me back, that’s a horrible idea!”

“Calm down. There’s nothing to be afraid of. I promise.”, Haurchefant said soothingly and continued to explain to him how to move on the ice skates. And in fact the Elezen’s calm voice slowly made A’viloh feel less anxious. His hands, frantically clasping at Haurchefant’s, relaxed along with his legs. It was still a weird feeling to be standing on the ice but now it felt a lot easier to remain balanced. He glanced at the people around them while remaining as still as possible, studied their movements for a moment and then tentatively tried to mimic the way they slowly pushed their feet above the slippery surface. To his surprise he really moved forward without much effort and also without feeling the sensation of falling again, closer to Haurchefant who had steadied him with his outstretched arms so far.

“See! It’s not that difficult.”, he said while making another step backwards so A’viloh had to follow with another step forward. The Miqo’te, strangely excited about the fact that he was actually moving on these weird ice-blades, laughed happily. “You are even going backwards!”

Haurchefants laughed. “One step after the other. Let’s teach you how to go forward first, hm? I‘ll let go off one of your hands but don’t worry, I still got you. One feet after the other just like you did before…”

In fact it almost felt easier now that he could use one of his arms to balance himself. Very slowly at first they floated above the icy surface of the lake but soon A‘viloh got braver. Once he almost lost his balance but for a comparably tall and strong person like Haurchefant it seemed like a very easy task to keep a small Miqo’te on his feet. Almost falling had felt like a shock for a second but only moments later they were laughing about it and in the end A’viloh was surprised and also a little proud how quickly he had learned and how much fun this was.

He wasn’t sure how much time they spent there on the frozen lake but at some point a bell sounded from the nearby Camp. Startled A’viloh looked up (and almost lost his balance again). “How late is it? I’m sure you have more important things to do than this! I’m sorry if I’m keeping you from doing your work.”

But Haurchefant just laughed and teased, “What could be more important than prove to you that not all of Coerthas is a deadly wasteland trying to kill you? But I think we really should return soon. I don’t want you to get cold again and after all we also don’t want Rael to find out about this little excursion, do we?”

For a second A’viloh wished the viera could see him now and wondered what their reaction would be like. The thought made him chuckle.

And as they floated, one last circle around the lake, A’viloh couldn’t help but wonder that maybe it was happy moments like this. The reason he was still here. Moments that made his life worth living.

---

inspired by the poem The Reversal by Leila Chatti

[disco-cola]

the antideutsche german „left“ is an absolute disgrace and judging from all the unfollows i got when starting to post about Gaza (i made some posts about Palestine before in 2020-22 but sadly and admittedly not as intensely yet and I’m guessing they didn’t see that yet) by people i knew from real life „antifascist“ circles i am wondering if i might have unknowingly spent 3 years being surrounded by this awful kind who in my opinion are lowkey even more dangerous than full fledged right wingers bc those you can at least recognize immediately and they are pretty open about their racist views whereas antideutsche make you believe they are antiracist and antifascist and then they turn around calling everyone and everything criticizing israel „antisemitic“ and show their true islamphobic and imperialist faces, even going as far as calling anti-zionist jews antisemitic… they refuse to divide judaism from israel and when confronted with this flawed logic they can turn pretty vile too.

anyway sadly there is „antifascist“ poser centers who have thrown people out for wearing keffiyehs (in Leipzig, namely Conne Island who have previously cancelled a black US rappers gig who said israel is an apartheid state and posting about BDS like they then called him antisemitic and they also hosted a self-proclaimed „islam hater“‘s book presentation) and holding „against antisemitism“ events while denying anti-zionist jewish people entry at the doors (in Berlin, namely ://about blank). also the rote zora in hamburg is a zionist center posing as leftist. the rote zora got occupied today by a group of pro-palestinian protestors, calling out their racism and white supremacy (because ironically these places almost exclusively are run by white German activists) and alignment with the state force used against palestine protestors including jewish people, Palestinians and other BIPOC. If you call yourself anti-fascist and your center gets called out and even occupied by immigrants, BIPOC, jewish people and communists, then you are anything but that. They so WHOLEHEARTEDLY deserve this. Free antifa from antideutsche for good!!! (Also just dropping this here but those places have instagram accounts we could collectively swarm and call them out in their comments just saying)

[swordtit]

i have daemon aus on the brain and i think it would be really fun if sidestep thought they didn't have a daemon at all (to really drive home not feeling human) but in reality the farm separated them from the moment they were pulled out of the tube and unbeknownst to them their daemon is still in the farm's clutches.

(i also think their daemon has yet to settle, so imagine if you will sidestep going through events in the game and the daemon, miles and miles away, locked in a cage or submerged in a tube of its own to keep it docile, transforming into different animal forms that would best suit it to help it's other half.)