L-lady Era Knight! S-such an honour t-to be in y-your presence! I-if one may ask, c-could you share a-any tales of your heroic deeds? I have heard y-you to be a fearless warrior... P-pardon my nerves, I- I tend to be a-a tad bashful around n-new people...
- Princess Chiffon
"I've fought lots of beasts ever since becoming a knight, both with my sister and without her! From gigantic snakes to sentient plants! In fact, those big wolves are pretty common on my home planet."
"But admittedly... I haven't had enough time recently to hunt down dangerous beasts threatening innocents. I've been dealing with someone else."
"Someone who's been very... very mysterious. This knight had been saving innocents one day, and then threatening them the next. And they look a lot like someone from my past."
"..."
"I have yet to defeat that person, but I won't ever give up your highness! Because knights never give up, yeah?!"
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This ask took SO LONG to draw I am so sorry. Had a lot of fun developing the story and such! It's even helped with a bit of worldbuilding for Era's planet. And yes that wolf creature is a Wolfwrath from the anime! One of the anime designs I actually liked.
Princess Chiffon belongs to @maybeher0 ! Go vote for her in the tournament too!
Summary: Valeria gets ready the morning after the ball, nursing an injury.
Master Post
Valeria touched her face gently as she looked in the small hand mirror. A large, mottled bruise over her eye marred her fair features on one side where her stepmother had struck her when she returned home the previous evening. It throbbed with a dull pain as she pressed at the edges, a quiet hiss escaping her.
“I told you, you were to stay home!” the woman had snarled at her as Valeria clutched her face, expression twisted into a grimace as she desperately held in the tears building from the pain of the blow. “Now not only have you disobeyed me, but now you’ve broken into the royal palace and may very well bring the wrath of the Emperor himself down on our heads!”
Valeria rubbed a salve into the bruising carefully. Honestly, she couldn’t care less if her stepmother took the brunt of her recklessness. If anything, it would be her just deserts. No, she was far more concerned that her family wouldn’t face repercussions. That Valeria would be the only one bearing the brunt of her night out.
She began to brush her flaxen hair, staring into space as she tried to tune out the sounds of movement from below as the house awoke. Wasn’t it worth it, though? The ball had been beautiful, the music and food and watching couples twirl about on the dance floor and…
In another world, another life, maybe she would have attended as actual nobility. Maybe she would have been able to tell the Emperor her true name when she accepted his help up when she stumbled. Maybe they would have danced and talked late into the night and maybe she would have received a request for her hand—
No. She stopped her imaginings there. It was more than she had any right to even think about. She would be lucky to get even a lowborn husband with the way her stepmother treated her. Or, more likely, she would be basically sold off to some rich and distasteful man who couldn’t attract a partner on his own. She’d be trapped in an unhappy marriage with no resources to escape it.
But she couldn’t stop thinking about the kind face or golden eyes of Emperor Solus leading her confidently in a dance unfamiliar to her, the way her heart felt like this was right, the way she’d gotten so lost in it all that she’d forgotten she’d needed to beat her family home. Yes, it had been worth a black eye for an evening of pretending she could have better than she was destined for.
She heard a knock at the door below, and wondered who that could possibly be so early in the day.
the place adventure time has in just culture in general is so so funny to be because it's so prevalent whether through just merch with characters on it or designs directly referencing the style/aesthetics and yet most people have not actually seen the show past season 1-5 (including me until like a year ago!) so if you try to explain any post s5 adventure time plot where it basically became a complete different show you sound fucking insane. they don't even know about princess bubblegum's gay cousin chicle. they don't even know about my dear friend fern.
I think, perhaps one of the funniest things to come from EPIC popularising the Odyssey is that now a ton of people think Poseidon wanted to kill Odysseus.
In the Odyssey, Poseidon has no intention of killing Odysseus. In fact, part of the whole reason Zeus lets Poseidon do whatever he wants even though he thinks Odysseus is rad and should get to kiss his wife is explicitly because Poseidon had no intentions of killing Odysseus. Poseidon wanted to pay back the suffering/inconvenience blinding Polyphemus would have caused. It's a really abstract thing tbh. How do you pay back someone permanently disabling your son? Poseidon's solution was just to amputate Odysseus from his other half; i.e. Penelope. The end game was never murder, it was always an endurance race.
(Od. Book 1: Zeus reassuring Athena that he is not, in fact, a part of Odysseus Hater-Nation. Trans. Robert Fagles)
Also, for those wondering if there's any sort of in text reason for why Poseidon wasn't around in God Games - at the time in the Odyssey when Athena petitions Zeus to let Odysseus leave Calypso's island, Poseidon was -checks notes- on vacation in Ethiopia. Yep. He left to Ethiopia for a festival and thusly was very much absent for Athena's whole "please let Ody go? Please? 🥺" request.
(Od. Book 1: While Odysseus was suffering, Poseidon went to party in the east)
I am begging y'all to read the Odyssey. It's a comedy for everyone except Odysseus and Penelope who are, in fact, suffering 24/7 365.
i keep seeing people say the doctor shouldn’t have feelings for rogue because he’s married to river…? river song… who has also married multiple people… one of the most polyamorous characters in the show…?