#its been floating in my head

[florelia12]

Naturally, I was thinking about florelia and their backstories (what else am I supposed to do with my life?)

I was also reading dramione fanfics (again) and it got me thinking abt 6th year Draco being asked to assassinate Dumbledore…

Did I find a way to turn that into a Helia backstory? Yes. Yes i did.

So, I started thinking about first-year, fifteen year old baby Helia being sent to kill Saladin. Going undercover as a Specialist in Red Fountain.

And it’s got a bit of Necromancer!Helia in it. So CW for child abuse, DV and death.

I’ve had this headcanon that Saladin wasn’t always a cheerful/understanding old man. He used to be rather fierce and unforgiving, emotionally detached and tied to duty. I think it’s also canon that he left his ex-girlfriend because she went into the dark arts.

Something consistent in all my hcs about Helia is his parents straight up being on the dark side and working with Valtor (maybe inspired by that one scene with Valtor and Helia). So, Saladin’s son kind of turns on him and the light side and joins Valtor.

This would result in Saladin disowning his son in an effort to remind the rest of the Company of Light where his loyalties lie. Saladin has shown that his reputation matters highly to him so i think this would be fairly in character.

Even go as far as to killing his own son during a battle.

At this point does Saladin know he has a grandchildren? Nope.

So out of fear of Saladin and a new hatred for Valtor for letting her husband die, Helia’s mother takes her kids and goes into hiding. She turns to her family who are Necromancers, begging them to bring back her husband. She’s too weak to do it herself.

Her family was once on the dark side but turned neutral after realising that the Company of Light might actually stand a chance at defeating Valtor.

So they refuse at first but they know that after the battle is over, the light side will shun them out or even prosecute them so having power over Saladin’s grandkids might come in useful one day.

They bring Helia’s father back to life but he’s not the same since bringing back the dead will always have consequences. He’s more evil than before and swears to take revenge on his father. Kind of loses his mind a little from spending time on the other side. Since it took some time, his body also kind of stays in a half decayed state. for the creepy effects..

After watching Vox Machina I can’t help but think of Helia with a twin sister. However, in the case of twins in my hcs is that one of them (the healthier one in the womb) will end up absorbing magic from the other one. So only one twin can use magic while the other can’t, basically making them a human.

Helia is the one with the magic potential, twice as powerful since he absorbed his sister’s magic as well. Also he ends up inheriting the necromancy magic.

Helia is raised and trained by his father to kill Saladin while maintaining the cover that his father is dead.

They both grow up with his mother’s family but they don’t know about Helia’s father’s plans.

Helia of course doesn’t want to kill anyone, but since his father is crazy atp he uses his sister and mother to threaten Helia. Goes as far as to torture his mother to keep Helia in line. But, mostly ignores his sister because she’s useless to him.

He also leeches off of Helia’s powers to keep himself alive that makes Helia rather weak and sick at times, resulting in him having to visit Linphea to get help from the healers. Kind of makes sense for necromancers to work with Healers so they’ve got big connections, aka the royal palace where he meets Krystal. (Trying to tie it all in is tiring but fun)

Helia has a close relationship with his sister. She knows he does his best to protect her but she’s also treated badly for not having any powers. There isn’t any animosity between them but she does envy him. A lot. She won’t be able to fulfil the ‘task’ since she doesn’t have powers and can’t be a Specialist either which she finds extremely unfair.

She kind of has to become a caretaker for their mother who refuses to leave their father because she knows the man he once was but her health gets worse from the torture. Especially since their guardians, their mother’s family, doesn’t know what their father does to them.

So once he turns fifteen, he ends up in Red Fountain, just like any other Specialist. Saladin of course takes note of the resemblance and his magic signature but once he looks into Helia’s background he doesn’t find anything suspicious.

Maybe his records show that he was an orphan. Taken in as a ward. Still ironing out that part.

Helia is of course canonically one of the best students. Catching Codatorta’s and Saladin’s attention. This gets him closer to the professor and they end up sending him on more espionage missions that makes him a better spy. He then uses his advanced spying skills to plot out the best way to unalive saladin.

At some point, Helia starts to remind Saladin of his son before he turned dark. This kind of brings out the guilt he always felt for killing his son without giving him a chance to redeem himself.

The normally strict, fierce and commanding headmaster starts going soft on Helia.

This of course confuses Helia because isn’t this the man ruthless enough to kill his own son? How is he supposed to kill him now?

Codatorta on the other hand is extremely suspicious of Helia and he is the one who figures out who he truly is. But, when he tells Saladin, Saladin decides to not let Helia know that he knows.

When the time is right, Helia is supposed to carry out his plan. But when he does, Saladin is just there waiting for him. He offers to take Helia in, even pardon his mother and do his best to protect him they way he couldn’t protect his son.

Helia is torn and doesn’t know what to do. He wants to keep his family safe and he is terrified of what his father will do. He breaks down and tells all of this to Saladin.

Codatorta thinks it’s all an act but Saladin chooses to believe him. To end the cycle.

Helia realising he actually wants to stay at Red Fountain and that he can be something other than a murderer. That he can actually protect people, be a hero and all that.

Both Helia and Saladin take a leap of faith. Helia accepts.

Helia’s mother is first rescued and sent to Lightrock where she can safely serve her time since she too has started to deteriorate from the torture.

His father is arrested and sent to the Omega Dimension since they can’t actually kill him again.

His sister is missing at first but she finds Helia and is angry at him for betraying their family. She’s mad at him because they took their mother away and no matter how much Helia tries to reason with her, she refuses to listen. She says she would have gone through with the assassination but he couldn’t.

Then she abandons him and disappears.

The news breaks out that Helia’s Saladin’s grandson causing uproar and rumours that he purposely hid Helia’s identity to prevent nepotism accusations.

Having learned his lesson and in an effort to be a better grandfather, he publicly claims Helia as his grandson.

This backfires on Helia who was once respected by his fellow specialists but now they hate him for lying. It caused a lot of issues for Saladin as well.

Helia who is exhausted from everything that has happened and doesn’t know what to do with his newfound freedom, decides to leave and explore the world.

Saladin respects his decision but Codatorta wants him to stay because he’s grown fond of Helia.

Of course, Helia leaves for art school in the end, renounces his magic because he is so done with that shit and then the rest is history.

Phew…

Now ive always wanted to write a fanfic about Helia’s first time at Red Fountain but it always turns into this complicated mess of angst that I decided to just ramble.

If there was ever a sequel it would be about Helia’s sister coming back after years and she’s evil now (maybe even breaks their mother out of prison) but Helia tries to save her and all that. Or his father got out of omega dimension when Valtor broke out. So much familial angst.

Anyways that’s all for tonight. Thanks for tuning in.

[ivytea]

may-bells cuisine

[anemonet]

[Outtake from iterator Prosperity of Populace final speach to her citizen before its disassembly.]

[xanfeursel]

I'm going to be honest I think what frustrates me the most about there being so much content about notorious child hater astarion being a parent in a nuclear family unit as opposed to literally any other character is because like. wyll literally becomes a canon father in one of the epilogues. besides laezel he's the only one to do so. how much dad content have you seen for wyll compared to astarion or even laezel. I had some people I've talked to not even KNOW wyll becomes a parent like. come on. come on

[peppiemezzie]

Valentino fans really simping over this

[cleromancy]

"tim needs to get a new mantle he didnt steal from his siblings" wrong. Say hello to the new huntress

[spearxwind]

Hi this is where I talk a bunch about ocs :D

I dont have a lot of time lately to talk abt lore but i still think abt my guys whenever i have some chill time to myself, so here's some patch notes. This is also just me thinking out loud haha

CD:

ive been playing w some changes for CD and seeing if they stick :] gonna make the story slightly more complex and the sides of the conflict also different (for example I am going to make hades and talas full on enemies at first along with connon, caval and silas >:3 (and I am also making silas and his monster form two separate characters so the lion (hal) is now a mount instead))

Specifically what I've been thinking about is making Hades either a ship captain or a first mate for a rogue ship. The deal with Hades is that he comes from a renowned family from Redbridge and is a disgrace to them. In previous versions of CD they were artisans but that never rly clicked for me, and recently I have been reworking Redbridge into a naval empire to add some 🤏spice 🤏to the world, which would mean Hades' family is actually a naval captain family putting him next in line to be one of them but since his thing is being a disgrace he takes off and becomes a rogue. And instead of hating leviathans he fucking hates hunters instead. Conversely, I think with these changes Talas would also NOT be inclined to kill hunters (or at least not as often as he currently does). He'd pick fights with the naval fleet and other similar factions instead which is more like his character.

I also wanna try and bring back an older concept I had where connon's ship was able to both become fully submerged (like the subs in sunless sea where her character originated from) and this other idea I had where a ship could split in half into two smaller ships. Like if a catamaran could split into two and flank a vessel on both sides. But we'll see if I can make this work x)

Dragons (broken horizon + extinction):

I vaguely mentioned this a while ago as well but I've also been thinking abt my dragons and how I kinda want them to all be in one world/setting, which includes both my broken horizon guys (cer, jarek, octane, etc) and my extinction guys (alex, c, orion, etc) but I dont know how to deal with all of the conflicting lore and themes.

Because for extinction the big theme is there are people who can turn into dragons, and technically all of the dragons' powers are based on energy (for lore reasons). Meanwhile for my other dragons I have a few different elements or other ways of using fire (eg instead of using straight up fire/energy, my oc Jarek can breathe out gas only and ignites it with his mandibles).

I miss all my dragons a lot so I kinda wanted to make a world for them where I could have them Vibe and do different stories in so I thought about having a dragon-only universe but unfortunately Extinction has a pretty huge human element that I cant just eliminate.

It feels counterintuitive, i know the first logical choice is 'just let them be different things' but I genuinely feel like the right choice is to put them both together so the characters can interact and the whole story can be deeper because as it is both are really shallow and I would really like for them to work together so that's what I've been picking at for some months now (it's um. been real slow)

For these two stories I do have two different vibes though that I've been wondering how to weave together nicely bc they overlap for some characters. For broken horizon I had flying and aerial racing as a big theme (and some of the chars in extinction would be rly into that) and for extinction I had dragon arena fights as a big theme (and some of the characters in bh would be rly into that) both of these is another of the reasons why I wanted to put them both together bc it feels like they can fit very well I just have to find the right idea for them to click and then itll be smooth sailing -w-

I also wanted to talk abt this in hopes that talking abt all the dragons gets me to think more about them as well

I wanted to make this post bc I've been really busy lately and rly absent from here in general and I don't have as much time to draw (or even think abt ocs) anymore but I still wanted to keep posted about what's been going on in my head and hopefully get some eyes on it and maybe even some feedback if anyone is so inclined

If u read this whole thing thank u i owe you my life fr I hope u enjoyed reading abt my patch notes :D and hopefully sometime in the future I can get back to drawing concepts and stuff or maybe even writing stuff

[drakon-star]

i'm only a beginner at photoshop but i thought it'd be fun to make a movie poster for a movie that definitely doesn't exist

instagram | my website

[macdenlover]

i Will write a several page long detailed analysis about the role of order and democracy within in the gang’s dynamic and the strings of distorted logic and reasoning that glue them together i WILL write it i WILL WRITE IT (i’ve been saying this for years and i still haven’t done it)

[jacksprostate]

f Narrator wanting to murder maim mutilate m marla.. or marla/ male marla and narrator/f narrator worsties/besties. or marla/male marla and tyler… or anything with marla/ male marla..

Marlon called me, interrupted me at work, and he said he had a bruise. He said I needed to come and look at it right away, because he needed to know.

This was him, asking me, pounded flank steak, to look and tell him the nature of his bruise.

Marlon hasn't had health insurance in years, so he tries not to think about it, usually. It's easy, since there's no difference when you have health insurance. It's old hat.

But today, he thought about it.

And he noticed a bruise.

So I'm walking up to the Regent hotel after work, and he's in the lobby in his limp little tank top. He'd call it a wifebeater and imagine himself in place of the wife, I'm sure. I wonder if he isn't cold all the time. Mr. Marlon Singer, such a masochist just so he can show off his skeletal body with all the cigarette burns I have to hear him and Tyler laughing over.

I am Jane's abnormal hemorrhoid development.

He doesn't mention what Tyler and I stole from him, even though I think it was all the cash he had. Even though just three days ago he tried to chase me around the house and beat me with a broom. He made me and Tyler go sleep in the junkyard. Buried under our furs, howling at the moon. Maybe I can't fault him for that.

He couldn't keep it here where the guys he brings back could get at it, he said, and sure. But he should've known better than to tell Tyler about it, because now it's bags upon bags of lye being kept in the driest room in the house.

I work on grinding cracks into my remaining teeth as he grabs his neighbors Agatha and Dianne's Meals on Wheels kits. The delivery lady remarks on what a good young man Marlon must be, helping out these old ladies. Oh, yeah. A real, upstanding, mummified rat of a man. Maybe he helped them into the ditch. He yaps at me the entire walk up to his room, and I don't hear a word as I methodically rip up the skin around Tyler's kiss on my hand with a broken nail. It's been infected since Tuesday, and the ring of puffy red flesh makes the ghost of her lips white like the center of a neon tube. Always buzzing.

We get to his room, he says to me, "One of these boxes is for you, you know."

I think about all the women who bother to use what little time they have to operate charities that keep the poor and destitute alive enough to want to kill themselves. All that time spent cooking mac and cheese en masse and putting little packets of powdered milk next to little cartons of the liquid, like they get at schools and prisons, packets that can only be opened by the nimble fingers of caring relatives these elderly recipients do not have.

Sure.

Tyler told me I need to be eating at least two meals a day, or she'd steal a blender and make me drink raw chicken. So I eat the Meals on Wheels box. Sorry Agatha. I rip open the powdered milk packet, dump it into the carton, hold it closed, and shake it. Twice the calories. A recipe for palliative care.

Marlon's sitting there, quiet, eating Dianne's latest last meal. All the urgency is gone. Sucked dry. He's got pallor like a hospice heart failure. When dogs get treated for heartworms, the worms die, and sometimes, not all of them break apart. Sometimes, there will be thin, dead cords of necrotized nematode strung through their heart waiting for the right beat to fall apart and clot a vital artery. This can take years to happen. Your pet recovers perfectly from treatment until seven years down the line, you give it a doggy cupcake and a pulmonary embolism for its tenth birthday.

Marlon looks like he's had his first melarsomine injection and his owner is thinking about taking him to a dog park instead of bothering with the second. If you let a dog get its heart rate up too high when getting treated for all the parasites you let grow in it, its heart will explode. Or all the worms will clog its lungs. Whichever one it is, it's happening to Marlon here in this room. On this bed.

He says he'd found a bruise, a while back. A nasty little thing, like the crush of a plum under your thumb. Near one of his ankles. And Marlon Singer knew he couldn't afford any novel treatments, and he'd seen too many people rot from the inside out from them already. He did not go to the clinic down the street that gets its windows broken in often enough that there's just big black billowing sails of trashbags over their storefront more often than not. Marlon says he once saw a rat nailed to the door, which is something you'd think would be too neat and poetic for real life. He didn't go to the clinic because he didn't have to. And maybe if he was fucking guys he wanted to he would be a bit more cautious, but the men Marlon Singer gets to fuck are the type to have given him those bruises in the first place. They're the reason there's single mothers visiting that clinic, like half melted wax getting scraped out of the picture. He says he shouldn't feel guilty.

I tell Marlon about where I got the idea for poisoning all the food at the Pressman hotel.

He asks me what I mean by that, and I tell him about my first boss at the company I work for now.

When I first started there, I was selling our cars to companies. Bulk orders for work vehicles. My job was to not fuck up any contracts we already had. Marlon is probably aware, but the type of man involved in that sort of thing, he knows he's got you on a collar and chain. You and him both know he'll be renewing the contract, but you have to do the song and dance for him. Pretend you like how close he gets to you. Pretend you don't want to rip his testicles from his ballsack when he leans in sweaty and tells you how he likes your hair, did you go and do all that just for me?

Because he knows. And you know. But enduring this is what you were hired to do. If you were a man, you would've been hired to create a sense of the old boys club with this guy. But you're not.

There is so much pretense in the world.

Anyway, my first boss, call him Joe — whenever I'd return from those trips and dinners, Joe wouldn't pretend that it wasn't a shit job. He'd commiserate and wish me luck with the next one. He didn't overstep, he wasn't creepy, he kept his distance. The best you could hope for. Thirty days on the job, they asked me how I was doing, and I told them I was doing great. The job was amazing, I felt embraced by the company, my boss was great. One of those things was true to me.

And when Joe got his promotion, for being such a great regional manager, he cornered me in my cubicle and informed me he'd been jerking off into my nicely labeled thin salad lunches each time they showed up in the office fridge. He told me this with the same smile he'd always worn.

Marlon, he's next to me, and he leans closer like we're having a nice little confession. My skin itches.

It was before the 90 day clause kicked in my health coverage, so I had to wait at one of those free clinics like Marlon's, and I was surrounded by a lot of young men, wispy mangled pears. What little flesh was left was soft. When I told the nurse what happened, I watched myself die in her eyes. Dappling up with rashes and bruises until I was all painted and sunken like a bog body.

For the longest time, I wondered if I'd become the oral Mary. How many times I vomited in that office toilet, I don't know. I stopped bringing lunch.

The thing is, I couldn't see it in his face. Joe's, I mean. Not even when he told me. I couldn't see it in anyone. So I stopped eating out. Stopped eating altogether, really.

Marlon, his response was to go to the support groups. His tragedy was that it was a slow death, coming for him. Best to wriggle into the pile of dying bodies, see what it's like. Maybe that could muster enough suicidal impulse.

I tell Marlon, of course, I couldn't go to HR. I was a new hire with no evidence and previous record of liking my boss. I didn't want to tell my mom. I didn't want her to know. Those uncomfortable dinners became absolutely, wretchedly unbearable as I thought about the food I was being forced to share.

When the option came up for a dead end job in the least loved department in the building, I put on the best performance of my life to get the part. Best aspiring Compliance and Liability head and sole department employee, that's me. My new job was to keep secrets. It was, already, old hat.

For months I thought about waking up from a narcoleptic fit at my desk, with Joe leaning over the cubicle wall and asking if I was alright. I watched my stomach like it was nuclear. Every extra second it took until I bled like usual slid me closer to buying myself a shotgun and pumping a slug or two into my brain.

It's an unavoidable fear, I tell Marlon. You can't do anything about it. Once you know, you know. At some point, you have to find the peace in it. Imagine yourself, a balloon popping with meaty chunks flying apart, splattering onlookers and raining viscera.

For a month, six months, I had cancer. Worse than cancer. Every time I eat out, I get it again.

Marlon is looking at me, melting stained glass, drowning in that sort of shared pity you build together with someone who's dying.

I don't want Marlon to feel guilty.

I tell Marlon, that's why I poison the food at the Pressman hotel. Someone's got to do it. Blood in the tomato sauce, spit on the steak. Imagine what you could do to a soup. The men who go to the Pressman hotel, they're the kind that leave Marlon bloody and walking around Paper Street calling for Tyler to come out and burn more holes into him. They're the kind that get promoted from regional manager. They're the kind that lean in close, pull your wrist towards them, and say there's one way they know you could secure the contract renewal. The kind that almost ruin it in a temper tantrum when you don't, resulting in an upper management intervention on the 24th day of your new job. They're the kind that hear that shit and say you should've been more appeasing. More polite.

Don't feel guilty, Marlon.

I hope all of them rot so everyone can see the maggots eating their insides.

Marlon isn't smiling. I am unavoidably bad at distracting him. There's something final in it, when he sighs, and takes off his tank top. He says it's on his back, and I should just tell him.

I look. I see it. Black hole, botfly, necrosis. There's so many things these broken blood vessels could be. Withering, snapping apart like mummified heartworms. I imagine driving the two inch melarsomine needle deep into the muscles bunched upon his spine.

I look.

I press my hands into him, and I grip like I'm trying to rend my fingers through his skin, deep into his body cavity to rip out his guts. Like I'm trying to grab the rope of his small intestine and strangle him with it. Marlon's yelling at me and trying to hit me, arms flapping like a chicken, and I am bruising ten deep circles into the soft pearskin of his abdomen. It's the only place left on him that's mealy, that isn't frayed rope under worn out leather.

I tell him, you've got bruises. They look mostly normal, to me.

Don't worry too much about it.

And Marlon, he leans into me, and I let him.

[samarecharm]

Thinkin about doing a persona redesign for Pandora; i really. really. really dont like it 😭

[estavionpira]

occult tinker call them the charms master

beyblades tinker call them the kid spin

ship tinker call them the keeler

sex tinker call them the moan saw

[basilpaste]

tell about your lab rat (mouse stuck in time loop). what is the time loop.. why r they there.. any hobbies..

SICK OKAY.

'timeloop' is a bit of a misnomer? more accurately: mouse is stuck in the timeloops. plural.

they started at some point after she turned fifteen. not on her birthday, not really on a significant day at all. they got caught up in something, they died, and then they go back. eventually, after solving the 'big problem' the timeloop ends. and everything goes back to normal! happy ending! no ones hurt, no ones suffering!

the next day goes on as normal. she gets up, she goes to bed.

and she wakes up the same day. again.

the time the loops last and the time between them vary wildly. sometimes theres days between a new loop. sometimes its hours.

so they solve the problems. and the loops break! its like nothing ever happened! but things DID happen! and mouse is stuck there! suffering alone!!! and no one can see but them! their body changes, just subtle things. just enough that she looks at herself and doesnt see a human looking back. but no one else seems to notice. or if they do, no one says anything.

isnt it enough that shes helping people? why wont it end? why does she have to suffer this way? shes helping, isnt she? isnt that good? isnt what theyre doing good? doesnt it make people like them?

mouse murdock has been fifteen for ten years. she is tired.

...

anyhow mouse likes science fiction and journaling!!! they do fancy notes!! or at least they try to. also!!! meteorology!!!! she really likes the weather. maybe shell go into it. if they ever get physically old enough for it at least.

also mouse gained nouns in the timeloop. hits them with the they beam.

[mossydoodles]

I think the idea of Danny's house cat half or at least house cat origin being revealed to Sam n tuck in a completely silly way fits well

[doueverwonder]

Norway: I just wanted to say I have a massive crush on you

Ireland: oh

Ireland: and why is Harald here for this?

Norway: I asked him to be here for moral support

Ireland: are you serious??

Denmark: I'm here for you man

Denmark: Do your thing

[grailknightmonty]

you're not looking for a mentor, i'm not looking for a friend-

consider this as my goodbye.

admiral flash has been the puppet of the Keeper of Balance for too long. in befriending the other champions he comes to see the awful truth in what keeping a strict grasp on the world can do. and enough is enough.