#managed to get a little hunting in

[theamazingian]

Happy Rumble Weekend one and all

[loquaciousquark]

when will eppie hawke and fenris meet tavish and astarion? (:

"And anyway, it won't be that bad. One last little Fade rift. We'll barricade it up as best we can, send a message to Skyhold, go home, and—"

One of the craggy footholds crumbles away beneath Hawke's foot, and it's only Fenris's quick hand that saves her from a plummet back down the side of the barren mountain. "Hawke, please."

"Please yourself. I said you didn't have to come."

Fenris throws her a longsuffering look, the flickering green lightning of the rift casting weird shadows over his eyes, but he doesn't let go of her arm until she's got both feet on solid ground again. "Just seal it and let this be done."

"My heart's only desire, lover," Hawke says, smiling, just as another pair of voices rises from the other side of the rift.

"Careful—careful! It shocks like the entire Hells are in there. Where's Gale?"

"Wherever Karlach dropped him, I suppose, with that little sprained ankle of his. No, I see them, they're almost here. Come away, darling. No need to get so dramatically close."

"This, from you?" says the woman, just as she and her fellow voice round the far edge of the rift. "Oh!"

"Well!" Hawke says almost at the same moment. Two of them after all: a short, slim woman with auburn hair pulled back in a low tail, and a tall, lithe man with hair as white as Fenris's and eyes that gleam like rubies. The man has a dagger drawn already, a thin smile playing over his face; the woman's fingers rest on her sheathed rapier, but her gaze is open, friendly. Hawke plants her staff on the rocky ground in as welcoming a gesture as she can manage. "Fancy running into someone like you up here of all places."

"I could say the same," the woman says. The green rift, still hanging between them and stretching a good twenty feet into the sky, gives an ominous rumble. "Our wizard's been fretting about magical disturbances along the city's borders for weeks. He finally traces the source to this location, and here you are at the heart of it. I'd like to believe it's coincidence."

"Alas," Hawke says, "one of my greatest faults is a terrible habit of being around when things begin. Fenris can attest to that better than most." She lays a hand on Fenris's shoulder, but he's stiff as iron, eyes glued to the man's dagger, and he's reached back for the hilt of his greatsword. "I'm Hawke, by the way."

"Call me Tav."

"And I'm Astarion," the man says grandly, accompanied by a wholly unnecessary flourish of his dagger. "We're here to steal the world."

"Save it," Tav says sharply.

"Of course, my dear. Save the world. What did I say?"

Fenris makes a short, disgusted noise, but Hawke's pleased to see he's let go of his own sword. She doesn't think this Astarion is going to kill them—not easily, anyway—and she likes the look of Tav despite herself. Both of them quick on their feet, she thinks, both moving gracefully with an innate, self-assured balance. As Tav steps around the rift Astarion moves with her like water, without even needing to see where she's gone. It reminds her a great deal of Fenris and herself, actually, though Hawke would give an arm to trust her own feet that much.

Fenris, it seems, has come to similar conclusions, and he rolls his shoulders as he releases their tension. Even his voice has lost its nascent fury, which for Fenris is practically friendly in situations like this. "The rift is dangerous. We will guard it until the Inquisitor can seal it permanently. Be on your way."

"Inquisitor?" drawls Astarion with that same, thin-lipped smile. "Sounds like someone from dear Shadowheart's former enclave, don't you think?"

"I don't think they're Sharran," Tav says. "Are you?"

"What a speculative look you've put on," Hawke says, delighted. "I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about. Unless you'd like me to be Sharran, in which case, I most certainly am and in fact have always been."

Both Fenris and Astarion roll their eyes—hilarious in its own right, but heightened by the clear antipathy still remaining between them. Fenris sighs. "Hawke—"

The rift explodes.

Green lightning shatters over the rocky cliff. The rumble bursts into a deafening roar; the faint breeze that had been dancing around them sweeps up into a hurricane. The air cracks and snaps with a sudden smell of ozone.

Hawke throws her hand over her eyes. She can't see—the wind tears her hair from its bindings and she can't see past the brilliant flashes of blazing green and she can't hear— "Fenris!"

Someone's fingers wrap around hers. She wrenches up her staff, calls for fire—for ice—for anything—but the rift has become a maelstrom and every scrap of magic sucks into the raging whirl before she can shape it. Her boots skid on the stone as she tries to brace against the inexorable pull, pebbles and rocks rattling along every step. She can't—the hand wrapped around hers has seized tight as a vise, but she's slipping anyway, and Maker, she can't—

A man's echoing voice, stripped bare of all artifice, wild with fear: "Tav!"

The wind dies. Not slowly, not gradually; it falls off like someone's upturned a glass over the rocky cliff, and Hawke's ears roar in the sudden silence. The wind is gone, and the rift is gone with it as if it had never been, the thunderous clouds that had been swirling above it already dissipating to glimpses of blue morning sky.

"Andraste preserve me," Hawke says, loud in the quiet, and she looks over to see Tav still crouched against the face of the mountain. One of Tav's hands clutches a dagger she'd wedged deep into a stony crevice; the other is still wrapped tight around Hawke's wrist where she'd pulled her away from the tempest.

No sign of Fenris. No sign of the other one—Astarion. A long white scrape in the stone marks where Fenris's sword had sought and failed to find purchase, disappearing at the precise place where the rift had torn itself open.

Gone. Gone, gone. Her heart hammers in her throat, and she indulges in thirty seconds of agonizing grief before she sets it aside, turns, and pulls Tav to her feet.

"Well," Hawke says at last. "Looks like it's just you and me, then. Ready for an adventure?"

"Yes," Tav says, her grip on Hawke's hand like steel, and her eyes blaze. "You and me. Let's get them back."

—

Everything hurts. Everything godsdamned hurts, and Astarion lets out a pained groan as he rolls to his back and drops his arm over his face. His ears ring like bells, and something twinges painfully in his left hip, and the inconvenient sun has decided to blaze right in his face and gods damn it, he'd known they ought to wait for Gale. Wretched wizard and his weak ankles. Wretched Tav and her complete inability—

"Tav," Astarion says, and sits bolt upright.

No Tav. Not even the dark-haired sorcerer with the wide smile. Just that taciturn warrior in leather and half-plate seated on a rock a few feet away, watching Astarion get his bearings, his greatsword slung across his knees and a deeply sour look on his tattooed face. The skies above them are clear and blue as a song.

No Tav. No Hawke. No rift. No plan, and no company besides an irascible stranger with the same sudden look of dawning horror.

"Venhedis."

"Shit."

[onaperduamedee]

Heartbroken reminder that Egwene is 17 when she gets taken by the Seanchan, spends two months in captivity being tortured, used as a weapon and dehumanized. When she gets back to the Tower, she immediately passes a test that's not at all traumatic, nearly gets killed by a Grey Man and is sent on a secret mission to hunt murderers completely unsupervised. During this period of wandering, lacking direction, she naturally gets angrier and erratic, but Nyn and Elayne mostly treat it as childish rebellion against Nyn's authority, with Elayne slapping Egwene because she was mean to Nyn. When the girls eventually get captured because they are not equipped at all to hunt the Black Ajah, Egwene becomes so terrified of being taken again that she keeps on resisting the sisters long past it is sensible, earning a brutal beating from the sisters who throw her back into a cell, beaten to a pulp, with no hope for help this time.

Clearly, Egwene has no PTSD whatsoever.

[in-fair-verona-we-set-our-scene]

I think Slay the Princess is so popular partially because the *gets stabbed* "I'm in love" reaction is both intentional on the part of the developers and then they completely follow through on it.

[dvchvnde]

You let the thoughts pass by as you reach for his old bible amongst the stack of books he left for you. You pick it up gingerly, the cover tattered and worn. The spine is broken, snapped beyond repair. You're not much of a believer in pristine book collecting, but the state of it leaves you feeling an odd assortment of pity and intrigue. 

The scent of him is thicker on the cover. Robust. You hold it to your nose and inhale. It smells ashy, of old cigarettes and charcoal. Pine. It makes you feel a little dizzy. The potency of it is strong, gluing to the fibrils of your lungs where it soaks, stains them with the sticky tar of his masculine smell. 

The cover is made of old leather. You peel it back, and run your fingers along the inscription inside. To our boy, it reads, the scratch of ink pressing hard into the soft give of the hide. May he always find the answers he seeks. 

This seems to be a hope he'd taken to heart. Blue lines bleed through the thin pages. Underlines, highlights. Sections smeared with oil and ink, blurring the words together as he thumbed across them over and over again. The margins are filled with his own notes. Doodles. Insights. He fills space with ink. Musing over his own questions, and underlining the answer he finds.  

It almost feels intrusive. Voyeuristic. Had he not left it amongst the pile, you might have closed the book and put it away for the sake of his own privacy. But it draws you in. Ensnares you. His questions grow broader, the subject evolving. The answers he finds in the pages become less and less frequent. 

It feels—

Lonely. 

His despondency shows vividly when he covers the words in art. An entire page bears the face of a woman. The likeness is shaded around the eyes, in the arch of their nose. It must be his mother, perhaps. Maybe a sister. You turn the page, marveling at the artistry line in dark charcoal. A rifle. A bird. A skull. Cigars, scotch. Dog tags. A cross. Bible passages with toiling lines circled around them. Notes. Little insights stenciled into the margins. 

Another page speaks about head trauma. Brain injury. Bullet fragments. Low caliber. tbi is circled in blue with lines branching out from the side of the curve. impaired thinking. memory issues. personality changes, depression. 

remarkable the cognitive recovery is stenciled in between the passages over and over again, as if he was reinforcing this notion to himself. 

It's jarring. Uncomfortable. 

The next several pages are even moreso. It screams its loneliness into the thin paper and you read each divot until you can't anymore. Until the words run together, and stop making sense. It's all nonsensical. Scribbles, doodles, and numbers that mean nothing to you at all. Unnerved, you go to put it away—

Something catches your eye. 

It's a photograph. 

A younger version of Johnny, maybe. Shaded in black and white. He's barefaced, too. Beard shaved down to a thin dusting of stubble, an odd sight compared to the thick tangle of hair you're so used to seeing on him. His hair, too.

A mohawk. The shorn sides cropped as close to the skin as he could get. The top coiffed and styled for the photo. His asymmetrical hairstyle makes sense now. You trail your finger down the slope of his jaw.

You deep an indent underneath. Ink pressed tight to the thin page, bubbling up from below. You tuck the photo of him, all cocksure and rough around the edges, back into the seam before turning the page.

And it doesn't make sense. Not at first. A series of small sketches cover the page, littered across it like small pondstones leading to the bottom. Nahanni, you know. Recognise the magesty of this gorgeous park. You follow the trail, thinking distantly of your old art teacher in school and the magnetism of the gaze, and—

The bottom is a black circle. Needlepoints cutting through the curves. Sitting in the centre is woman. She sits in the valley watching a moose graze at the bottom of knoll, and in her hand sits an apple—

"What'd ye got there?"

[teehee-vibes]

Do you think Drey’s amnesia extends only to the lore or history based memories and events/people that factor into his trauma? Or do you think he’s also forgotten some mundane things?

Do you think Drey remembers that he’s allergic to bees?

[ratatatastic]

"lots of patience by boqvist... the other two were two feet from the paint"

this is how paul talks about the 4th line and honestly?

[insert jesper either seeing aj get into shit and just watching him or having to bail him out and gadjo just encouraging all of ajs aj-isms] yeah it tracks

boston bruins @ florida panthers postgame interview | 10.8.24 (x)

"so something there" YEAH YOU THINK PAUL??? IF THE WAY JESP JUST LEAPS INTO GADJOS ARMS AFTWR A GOAL AND GREER JOINS SOON THEREAFTER AND THEY HAVE THE MOST TENDER LINEY HUG HAS ANYTHING TO SAY ABOUT THAT

[abirddogmoment]

would you do bird hunting with Aurora given the opportunity? (I dont follow anyone who does hunting with their dogs and it would be interesting to see!)

I'm back and forth on it honestly. Ideally yeah, I'd love to give her the opportunity to hunt and be fulfilled that way. But there are a couple of things I'm struggling with:

I don't have access to training birds myself, nor the knowledge (or desire) to go at training her seriously alone.

Most gundog trainers (incl. my local brittany person who's been helping me out) expect you to go all in, birds should be your priority over all else (including general good dog manners).

Currently, pointing dog training in North America tends towards "make dogs bird obsessed -> introduce gunfire -> reign in the dogs so they're steady". The problems with this (for me) is that I don't want a bird obsessed dog at all and I don't want to use the pressure expected/required for "reigning it back in".

I had a really demoralizing experience trying to learn more about shotgun sizing and I'm not keen to try again.

So in conclusion, maybe but probably not to a serious extent.

[mishy-mashy]

Given the way BNHA genetics work, where the kids look the most similar to their mothers, Shinomori might have been Bruce's nephew

Y'know, I didn't think about that, but yeah- a lot of characters look like their moms (Midoriya, Bakugo, Uraraka, Jiro, Koda, etc)

I actually think they might've been cousins. Subscribing to the idea of [most kids take after their mothers], maybe they're cousins through their mothers?

Having OFA for 18 years and dying at 40 means Shinomori received it when he was 22. Shinomori being 22 years old seems close to how old Bruce actually could've been when he was alive himself.

Shinomori being Bruce's nephew is a cute idea though. I still think they'd be close in age, but Hikage can call Bruce "Uncle" to mess with him

Hikage: Uncle-

Bruce: Please don't make me feel old.

An adult that's a few years younger than you, calling you uncle. So like. Bruce could've been the babysitter / older cousin / uncle to weirdo Shinomori and he's just so used to babysitting that it automatically translates over to patiently dealing with Kudo and being protective over him (+ anyone in his care)

(Bruce gave OFA away before he went to go fight, so he really was protecting what was put in his care [Yoichi + Kudo] so they didn't disappear with him. Even if it was just a responsibility and basically their last organ that happened to manifest consciousnesses)

Bruce has Kudo. Shinomori has Banjo. Both are shorter, more risk-taking people that lead the way, but need someone level-headed by their side because they might charge in otherwise.

If they're related, that means Bruce probably also ages well too. And it means Bruce also might have a baby face like Shinomori-

(They look alike. They're also very so cute)

[fragmentedblade]

"Though I don't know exactly what you are or what you're up to... My bullets will find you — until then, you best find a casket store in Penacony, and ask the owner to reserve a good quality casket for you, imposter!"

Hardly could get more Western film than this

[depresseddepot]

*covered in blood* i applied for the job

[rosesradio]

i think my university fucking bit me wtf

[donttouchtheneednoggle]

shout out to thomas from ghosts for yoinking me out of a panic attack before it could really get going

[meatriarch]

i wake up and first thing i think of is: during marias search esp in that first week or two, i wonder how many of the search parties were volunteers considering that civilians can help cover more ground etc rather than the travis or newt sheriffs ( esp since canonically in the remakes, travis countys dept is severely understaffed )

and i wonder, too, just how many of said volunteers were extended sawyers & hewitts ensuring all potential evidence or suspicions that could point to their family ( not just in marias case but all of them in general ) is covered / fucked with / etc.

.

[hootpoop12]

I hate that every job hiring lists its requirements so intimidatingly. I always read through them and am like there is no way a dummy like me could do this stuff.

Also my resume always feels way too childish to even send in! It's obvious I've just worked basic retail and food jobs and am trying to make it sound fancy! I even have a section of projects where I list that I ran the Homestuck redraw and I'm just like is this dumb?? Should I not list that??

[jalapenobee]

Hahaha just thinking about how if Oda was alive he could've been the one person who could beat Fukuchi