#my brain cannot ever put this quest down

[bonnefeta]

I recently saw a tiktok talking about which of the Fallout protagonists people most prefer, in light of the fact the Fallout show is coming out soon ish.

Perhaps unsurprisingly the most popular answer was the courier, which makes sense because New Vegas is a masterpiece, but also a lot of people talked about liking their backstory being less scripted.

Like compared to the lone wanderer or the sole survivor there isn’t like a cut scened backstory about your family or anything, the courier just pops up with a blank slate you can imagine however you want.

I totally get that, don’t get me wrong I love New Vegas, but having thought about it I do find the journey of the sole survivor and the lone wanderer effected me a lot more.

Especially the lone wanderer who I reckon is probably my favourite.

The characters I remember from New Vegas often have very little to do with my character. Like I remember the NPCs I met but the courier is basically just my eyes and ears, a much more blank slate.

With Fallout 3 I remember feeling gut punched by a lot of those moments, leaving the vault for the first time, finding your father and then loosing him, they really hit emotionally because I’m invested in the story of my player character.

But the main one I want to focus on is one of the moments I’ve found most impactful across all the games I’ve played,

Leaving the vault for the 2nd time.

Now not everyone might have done this quest, I’m pretty sure I missed it on my first playthrough, but if you haven’t ever done it you absolutely need too.

After your father dies if you return to Megaton you can pick up a distress frequency from the Vault where you hear Amata (your old bff and one of my favourite minor characters) asking for your help specifically. Something has gone wrong back home and you need to came back to fix it.

So you toddle off back home, and either help (or hinder) the vault get through a mini civil war. For the purposes of this post we’ll go with help.

So you save the vault, Amata is now in charge and everyone is safe and sound again, thanks to you. You’ve managed to save your home.

But you can’t stay.

Amata breaks the news to you that even after everything you’ve done there’s too much bad blood for you to stay. People blame you for the chaos, the change it’s brought. Amata can lead them into a better future but you can’t be at her side while it happens.

So you leave.

You walk out the vault door again, and as it closes behind you and you head back out into the wasteland you’re alone again.

The first time I played it (and honestly every time since) I was hit with such a strange grief. Like a hollow sad feeling I wasn’t expecting. Loosing your father is sad but this felt more impactful to me for some reason.

Maybe it’s the one-two punch of it, like lose your father and lose your home. But I for me it’s always reminds of the quote “you can never go home again” by Thomas Wolfe.

I don’t know exactly why this concept has always stuck with me, like it’s just stuck in my brain and it never really leaves. Maybe it’s from moving inter-state when I was a kid, and a few times since. But that idea of wishing to go back to a place where things were better, where you were happier, only to go there and realise it’s not how you remembered, and that you don’t belong any more, I guess it hits home.

You’ve been cast out into the wasteland, gone from your relatively comfortable and happy home into a world of violence and chaos and horror, only to lose your father. You fail, your defeated by the enclave, you’re starting again after a devastating setback, and when you’re at your lowest you get just a crumb of hope.

You get to go home, back to that place, but it’s not the same. Even when you ‘fix it’, you end the violence, there’s still no place for you there.

You just don’t fit any more.

And so you leave, you’re alone again. There’s no going back to when things were better, and the road ahead is more than hard, it’s probably impossible and even if you do succeed life will still probably never be easy.

But the vault door is sealed behind you, there’s no where to go but forward.

I know this is reading so deeply into a very minor side quest from a game from 15 years ago, but I honestly think it’s some of Bethesda’s best storytelling and kind of criminally overlooked in all the new Fallout talk.

[aphroditeinthesea]

“ the best thing that’s ever been mine ”

jason grace x greek!fem!reader ⚡

a quest turned unforgettable

a/n happy 30th birthday loml (bc he's very alive xo)

⋆ ˚｡ ⚡︎♡⚡︎ ˚｡ ⋆

Y/N was already exhausted. She joined Jason on their last quest before they would be off to New Rome University.

“There’s too many choices,” she complained, laying upside down on the motel bed in a random small town in Vermont, “I cannot decide between journalism and creative writing.”

The tall blond walked out of the bathroom and leaned against the doorframe. He held his toothbrush that was still covered in the blue paste, “why don't you do both?”

She thought for a second, “I’ll decide when we get there, I guess.”

He leaned back inside the bathroom to spit in the sink before joining her on the bed. She leaned over, laying her head in his lap so her so he could play with her hair, “two weeks.”

“Ugh,” she scrunched her face, “that’s so weird.”

“It’s not that weird,” he laughed, “it’s nice. We’re gonna be moving in together, every night can be like this.”

She smiled, sitting up, “seems too good to be true.”

He trailed his arm around her, letting her rest her head on his shoulder, “I know, every morning I actually have to pinch myself to make sure I’m not still dreaming,” he melancholically smiled, “I have to make sure I have this life, that this is actually happening to me,” he looked down at her, “and that you're real.”

She bit her lip, smiling, “cheesy.”

“Hey!” He defended, “I open up to you and get called cheesy?”

She giggled, “sorry, sorry,” she pressed a kiss to his cheek, causing his expression to soften, “I just think it’s cute you think I might not be real.”

“How is that cute?” he laughed. She kneeled on the bed to now be taller than him, “because it means you love me.”

He laid back, pulling her down with him, “love isn't a strong enough word, sweetheart.”

“Hm,” she positioned herself on her elbows, “then what is?”

“I don't think there’s a word for it.”

“Enamored, adoration, agape?”

“Did you just open a thesaurus?”

She cackled, throwing her head back, “it’s called a brain, blondie.”

“Sorry, I’ve never heard of that,” he joked.

She leaned up, kissing the corner of his mouth, “most people’s are in their head, but yours might be here,” she held onto his bicep.

“Wow, Y/N,” he sighed, “where’s yours then?”

She shrugged, sitting up to lean on the headboard, “considering I came on this quest, because I didn't want to leave you, I say here,” she answered, pointing to her chest.

“Your heart?” he grinned.

“No, my boobs.”

He let out a bray laugh, throwing himself onto a pillow. She grabbed another pillow to hit him with.

“Ow!”

“That did not hurt.”

“It could’ve,” he responded.

“You’ve been stabbed countless times, I think you can handle a feather pillow.”

“Wow, hit me where it hurts,” he sarcastically replied.

“Okay,” she smiled, hitting him again.

“Y/N!” He yelped, shielding his face with his arms.

She hit him again, and again, and again. When she finally stopped, he stared up at her in a way that his blue eyes might as well be shaped like hearts, “Jason?”

“Will you marry me?”

Her eyes widened, she trailed his face, trying to figure out whether or not he was being serious. The way his eyebrows nervously creased and a soft smile curved on his lips, told her all she needed to know.

“When?”

He sat up with her, “really?”

She bit her bottom lip before a smile found its way to her cheeks, “I love you more than anything, Jase. We might as well.”

He kissed her, tightly holding her face in his hands. She was first to pull away, although still tracing his bottom lip with her thumb, “there’s a convenience store, across the street.”

“Yeah?”

“I bet they sell ring pops.”

“Oh?” he looked at her for a second, “let’s go.” He quickly got up, pulling on a hoodie. She followed, putting on a pair of leggings to pair with the oversized t-shirt that belonged to her boyfriend. Scratch that. Fiancé. “Ready?” He smiled with an outstretched hand.

She took his hand in hers, “ready.”

They rushed out of their room in a fit of giggles. The thought they probably woke up a few of the other people staying there crossed both their minds for a quick second before the true situation was the only thing they could think about. They were gonna get married.

They stepped out to see the empty streets and sidewalks. She briefly looked up at Jason, “Jay?”

“Yeah?” He looked down to her with an unfaltering smile on his lips.

“Are we dumb?”

He thought for a second, looking at the stars that were so clear in the Vermont sky where there was maybe one streetlight in sight. “No.”

She laughed, leaning her head against his arm as they crossed the street, where Jason insisted on looking both ways even though there wasn't a car in a hundred mile radius. “I think we’re idiots.”

“You're the only one,” he paused, “I mean the only one who thinks that,” he defended, “not the only idiot.” He stopped again before continuing, “not that either of us are idiots, we’re very smart actually. This is a smart thing to do.” He kissed her head as she stifled laughs at the boy’s nervousness. He opened the door of the convenience store, letting her walk in first.

She crossed her arms, “when we get back to camp, Annabeth gonna be on our asses about this.”

“Hey,” he turned around to grab both her hands, “you wanna do this, right?”

She leaned up to kiss his lips, “more than anything.”

“Good,” he grabbed something off a shelf to look at to divert his gaze from her shining eyes, “because I don't think I’ve ever been happier than right now.”

She tilted her head. She placed her hand under his chin to get him to look at her once more, “seriously?”

He looked around awkwardly. He then placed his lips to hers as he whispered, “you’re the greatest thing in my life. I love you more than anything.”

Her smile beamed at him, “I love you, too, blondie.”

He laughed, “then let’s get some rings.”

They aimlessly wandered the small store to look for the candy aisle. They giddily pranced into the section.

“Okay, what’s your favorite flavor?” He asked her as they stood before the ring pops.

“Cherry,” She leaned forward to grab the package, she turned to look back at the son of Jupiter, “what about you?”

“I don't know,” he shrugged, “I’ve actually never had one.”

“No way,” she grinned. “Here,” she picked through the flavors, “I think you’d like this one,” she handed him the blue raspberry candy, “it matches your eyes.”

“Thanks, love,” he took it from her grasp before grabbing her free hand, “you wanna go get married now?”

Her heart fluttered at the reminder of what they were truly doing. They were getting married. They were going to be husband and wife. Bounded by holy matrimony.

“You okay?”

She quickly nodded, “never been better.”

They hurriedly checked out and rushed out of the store. They both stopped in their tracks just outside of the store.

“Where are we getting married?” He mentioned, looking down at the girl.

“Yeah, I don't know.”

“Wait, one second,” he let go of her hand to grab his phone out of his pocket.

“If you get any single out here, I think it’s a sign we have to get married.”

He chuckled, typing into Google. “Hey, wait, there’s a chapel ten minutes away.”

“You're kidding,” she responded, leaning against him to see his phone, “but it closes in five minutes?” she frowned.

“Hold on,” he dialed in the phone number he found on the website. He held his phone to his ear, a few seconds passed before he spoke, “hello? Sorry, I know it’s late but- yeah, we were hoping we could get married tonight,” he locked eyes with her as he continued, “uhm, Y/N L/N and Jason Grace,” he went silent for a minute, “really? That’d be amazing, thank you so much. We’ll be right there.” He placed his phone back in his pocket, “we’re getting married tonight,” he couldn't have smiled any wider when he spoke.

She laughed in amazement. She jumped up, wrapping her arms around his neck, “we’re getting married!” she nearly shouted. 

He kissed her hair, tightly holding her, “we’re getting married,” he slowly let go of her, “but we have to hurry.”

“Right,” she nodded. I want to say that they flew there as in they just drove really fast, but they did in fact fly there. Above the wooded forest that lined the streets. When they finally arrived at the chapel, there was a singular light on by the front door and a sign with missing letters that read Elysium Wedding Chapel.

“Elysium,” she spoke, “are you serious?”

“A little threatening,” Jason joked as they walked closer to the white building. He squeezed her hand as he knocked on the door.

An older woman, about 70 or so, answered the door. A smile donned her face as her eyes met the two, “you must be Y/N and Jason! Come in!” She led the two of them into what looked to be a living room with pink and floral furniture that looked to be from the fifties or so.

“Thank you for taking us so late,” Jason mentioned as the woman opened a large book. She stood under an arch adorned with fake pink flowers and green vines.

“Nonsense,” she replied, “we hardly ever get visitors,” another woman, who seemed a bit younger walked in, “oh! Here’s my daughter, Alexandria, she’ll be your witness.”

“Nice to meet you,” Alexandria said, “you two look young, how old are you?”

“We’re eighteen,” Y/N answered, her arm now locked with Jason and her hand holding his.

“Oh my!” Both women exclaimed, causing giggles from the couple. The older woman seemed as though she was about to speak again but suddenly began looking around the stand where the book was on.

“Geez Louise, I lost my glasses again,” she shook her head, “I’ll be right back.” With that, she scurried out of the room.

There was a moment of silence before Alexandria began to speak, “you know why we call it the Elysium Wedding Chapel?”

They both shook their heads, momentarily sharing a look before turning back to the woman.

“Elysium was the Greek equivalent of Heaven. So, when my mother and father opened this place, they thought about how romantic the Greeks were and decided to name it after their Heaven.”

“That’s amazing,” Y/N responded. She then looked up at the blond, “right, sweetheart?”

He smirked, “yeah, the Greeks really were romantic.” There were those heart eyes again. He soon looked at the woman, “she’s Greek actually,” his head motioned towards his soon-to-be wife.

“I should've known,” the elder added, “Greek girls are always the prettiest.” (i’m totally not just saying that because i’m greek.)

Y/N grinned, “thank you.”

The older woman once again came into the room, “found them! Now, let’s get this show on the road.” She guided the couple to the arch, “you two hold hands.” The two mirrored each other, both distracted by the adrenaline in their veins to think straight. It was finally becoming real, that they were to be married in the next few minutes.

“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to join together this man and this woman in Holy Matrimony,” she turned to Jason, “do you have vows you wish to read.”

They shared a look. Jason’s hands sweated in Y/N’s grasp. Sky blue eyes met e/c ones as his mouth opened, “Y/N, I know you already know this, but I love you, so much,” he blinked in an attempt to stop himself crying, “I never thought that I could be loved in the capacity that you do. I always was taught to believe that I was nothing but a soldier,” he hesitated, realizing how strange that must've sounded to the strangers, “but I think you freed me and I’ll forever thank you for that, Y/N.” “Damn it,” she mumbled as tears began to spill, “Jason, if anyone asked, you are the most incredible person to walk this planet. You are the most selfless, caring, loving person I have ever met. Since the day I met you, I knew I never wanted to be away from you for a second, and there would be no greater gift than spending my life with you.” He let his tears rain down when she finished. He looked down as he tried to gather himself.

The woman turned to Jason, “do you Jason, take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife, to live together in matrimony, to love her, comfort her, honor and keep her, in sickness and in health, in sorrow and in joy, to have and to hold, from this day forward, as long as you both shall live?”

He sniffled, “I do.”

“Do you Y/N, take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband, to live together in matrimony, to love him, comfort him, honor and keep him, in sickness and in health, in sorrow and in joy, to have and to hold, from this day forward, as long as you both shall live?”

Y/N widely smiled, her cheeks hurting from how much she had done so that evening, “I do. I really do.”

“Rings?” The woman questioned.

“Right, sorry,” he grabbed the bag he had left on a nearby table.

“Oh!” The woman raised her eyebrows, “ring pops?”

“The only thing we could get on short notice,” Y/N mentioned, smiling through the tears on her face.

“Okay, then,” the woman laughed, “repeat after me,” Jason tightly held onto the cherry candy, “with this ring, I thee wed.”

“With this ring, I thee wed,” he slipped the ring onto the girl.

Y/N’s hands began to shake, “with this ring, I thee wed,” she repeated.

The woman clasped her hands together, “by the power invested in me, I pronounce you, Jason Grace and Y/N L/N, man and wife. You may kiss the bride.”

Jason took her face in his hands, bringing their lips together. She could taste the salt on his lips from the tears, but that didn't matter. All that mattered was that she was kissing her husband.

They left the chapel, hand in hand. No words were said on their way back to the motel. They had said everything they had needed to say for centuries. But just before they entered the room, Jason stopped her.

“What?” She questioned, looking around.

He opened the door before turning back and picking her up bridal style, “I had to,” he smiled. She threw her head back, laughing. She wrapped her arms around his neck as they walked into the room. He placed her softly on the bed, hovering over her.

“I love you, Mrs. Grace,” he whispered just as he pressed a kiss to her lips.

She brushed her thumbs against his cheeks, “I love you, Mr. Grace.” He kissed her once more, “hm, you take good, too.”

He chuckled, “so do you.”

“I think we should always eat ring pops before we kiss.”

He kissed her neck before looking back up at her, “anything you want.”

-----

bonus! 

Y/N and her secret husband sat side by side on the grass of Camp Half Blood alongside the rest of the Seven as well as Nico and Will.

“Why are you wearing an old ring pop?” Annabeth queried.

“Oh, uhm,” Y/N panicked as she scrambled to find an answer.

Leo interrupted before she could say anything, “I was asking Jason the same thing earlier!”

That’s when the daughter of Athena noticed the matching ring on the boy’s left ring finger. She looked back up at Y/N, “you didn't.”

“Annabeth-”

“You got married!” the blonde girl exclaimed.

Everyone crowded around the two asking questions about what happened.

“I can’t believe you didn't tell us,” Percy commented, crossing arms.

“We didn't tell anyone,” Jason defended, “we barely knew what was happening!”

“I can't believe you didn't choose me as your best man,” Leo offensively added.

The blond rubbed his forehead, “I didn't have a best man at all, Leo.”

“How did it happen?” Piper questioned, leaning closer to the two.

“If you guys would shut up for five seconds, we’ll tell you,” Y/N responded.

They both went on to tell the group everything. From the pillow fight, to the vows. The way they laughed and talked over each other made them realize that husband and wife was the simplest way you could describe them.

[theminecraftbee]

On the subject of modpack recommendations, I made a custom one for myself a little while ago and i've been playing it nonstop since.

It's very chill, and lighter on the mods so my silly little laptop can run it without crashing. I put it together cause most modpacks are so complex and overwelming to my lil brain. I've found it a good mix of still feeling like minecraft, but having the benefits of the 'more' from the mods.

The lineup is: Create, Farmer's Delight, Sophisticated Backpacks, Waystones, Comforts (the sleeping bag mod), an animals mod called Naturalist, Xaero's Minimap/Worldmap, Decorative Blocks, Macaw's Doors/Trapdoors/Lights & Lamps/Bridges/Paintings for some more decor options, and Simple Hats (I wanted to wear a fox hat on my head. sue me). There's a few basic quality of life mods too, like AppleSkin and JEI, and some compatability add on mods for Create and the waystones to the maps, but that's it.

It's worked really well so far, and i haven't crashed at all-- though i have fallen victim to the massive sinkhole in the neighboring savannah I've been using as my strip mine and tree farm. I put keep inventory on, it's fiiiinnnneeeee-- I never like having stakes for death anyway, makes it too stressful. Let me throw myself from build height to bedrock without having to do the walk of shame for my stuff--

My game chugs a touch with Create, but all I had to do was turn down my graphics and be VERY careful to not dump out thousands of entities at once But that's just Create, really

oh, this can be a really great approach to playing modded too, especially if you personally know what mods you like and don't care about stuff like recipe compatibility! the main advantage of a 'true' modpack is normally that the good ones balance the recipes of the different mods to each other, and also i really prefer modpacks personally that have quest systems. but if your goal is to "play with mods" mostly, or, say, like you, you have a computer that can't handle heavier modpacks, or you just wanat a few things you like, this is a path that is DEFINITELY an option for a chill modpack!

i will say for those new to modded, here are some mods i recommend everyone include of the QOL variety, even if they're otherwise not doing many mods:

some variety of mimimap; xaero's is the one i'm most familiar with but choose your favorite.

if that minimap doesn't come with waypoints for some reason, get yourself a mod that adds waypoints.

quark. i never play modded minecraft without quark, if only for the rotation lock feature alone (never worry about which direction you're facing while placing a block again). you can go through quark's website to decide which features you'll enable and disable, and this is possible to do through an in-game gui, so even people who don't want to touch .json files can easily configure what quark features they do and don't use! it just adds... so many little qol things.

appleskin. this just makes the food bar more useful and shows you saturation. i don't know why vanilla doesn't do this.

jei (just enough items). you will ALWAYS WANT JEI WHILE PLAYING MODDED I CANNOT EXPRESS ENOUGH HOW HANDY THIS IS. a searchable list of every item in the game, which you can click on in order to see their recipes, and even automatically transfer items from your inventory to a crafting grid for that recipe! it's in every modpack ever for a reason! the larger the modpack, the more you're gonna want this!

a performance mod. personally i'd recommend not using optifine, as optifine is a mod a lot of other mods note break them, but if your particular pack is optifine compatible, go for it! most packs i've seen go with either sodium on fabric or rubidium on forge, but there are also other options! i'd just include at least one.

any other convenience you've ever had in another modpack that you want! personally, i need something like tom's simple storage network, drawers, or both to want to play a given modpack, because i get sad without storage, but maybe you only want to play packs with a variety of crops! maybe you think sophisticated backpacks or sophisticated storage are a requirement in your mind! maybe supplementaries or other decorative mods are a requirement to you! the world is your oyster! add whatever of those!

[onmyyan]

Been playing so so much baldurs gate and wanted to submit DND considerations for your OCS, please share your thoughts on the vibes:

Caspian: cleric all the way baby. can hit things real hard AND won't let shit hurt a loved one, but if it does get past him, he'll patch you up <3 healing touch on darling so he can cradle their face all lovey dovey. Could also see a paladin, but maybe one with a very unique understanding of his oath to protect others. Maybe even secretly broke the oath but doesn't care; if he's sworn to protect life, surely the oath should understand that he WAS protecting darlings life by violently ending another one?

Gabe: barbarian, obvs. himbo energy, big and tall, flies into a rage when need be, likes and enjoys violence with as little armor as possible. Tries to drink everyone under the table in every town and usually wins, but also usually ends up in a bar fight when his drunk competition ends up a little too mouthy abt darling for his liking. Will throw darling over his shoulder when they need to run

Ricky: wizard pondering his orb but in the snarkiest way possible towards everyone but his darling. "Are you that fucking stupid??? Are you illiterate?? Why get in the direct and literal line of fire when I'm casting. You deserve that scar" vs "if I ever accidentally singe even a hair on your head, I'm going to throw myself off a cliff". Likes to read to you in your tent bc it's "easier to focus", but just thinks you're so cute when you're falling asleep listening to him <3

Marcos: rogue, baby!!! He's stealing shit off anyone that annoys him, pulling darling out of the way of traps and into cozy little nooks with him while the others scramble out of the way. The party gets stopped at a toll house and he pickpockets the guard, then undoes their trousers and ties their boot laces together for good measure.

Manny: warlock but some real freaky shit, eldritch horror type beat. He's flickering at the periphery of your vision and you SWEAR he's got tentacles coming out of his face but when you look directly at him he's all :3c . his patron doesn't come around too much, Manny picked one that specifically wouldn't be too intrusive, bc he's been planning this shit out since the moment Ricky first cast a spell. He's always wanted magic but didn't feel inclined towards the scholarly pursuit of it so much as the "deal with a devil" thing. Is trying to figure out ways to bend the deal to benefit him and darling through powers beyond mortal comprehension

Diego: druid, no question. Affinity for wolves over everything else but makes a very cuddly lap dog too when the need strikes. Probably hangs out with darling as a literal stray first and then accidentally shifts one day, ending up directly in the lap of a now very freaked out darling

Ash: long-suffering ranger in a party of city dwellers. "Put that down" "don't eat that" "for the love of- no, you cannot pet the owlbear". Secretly enjoys being the only one in the know when he gets to show off for his sweet pea and may let the others do stupid stuff knowingly if it means he looks better by comparison.

Darling could be some adventurer or innkeeper who crosses paths with one and then all of the party, who just has to go with them to finish their quest or stay safe from the town that's suddenly overwhelmed with monsters. Or maybe HER party was wiped out by some shadowy threat, and she never figures out that her new pals know more about that tragedy than they let on.

This is absolute perfection??? How did you know I been playing baulders gate huh?? How'd you know this would scratch my brain in a perfect way??

[professorhayforbreath]

so episode 5. all my thoughts

we picked up where the last one left off, good start

annabeth saying she knows percy isn't dead... how. to annabeth and grover there should have been no way percy was alive and finding out he was should've been so emotional but instead she was like dw i know he's not dead lol. it's kind of... lazy writing? like how are you gonna write a scene as gut wrenching as percy trapping himself with a monster and telling his friends to complete the quest without him because he's actively dying and has no reason to believe he'll survive, and then make the fallout of that so... nonchalant? idk if it's a time limit thing but that was so underwhelming to me

annabeth being the one to see the fates... no

fugitive percy enjoyers at least we won!!!!

the trio peeking over the road barrier at ares was cute goofy silly i liked that :)

gabe on the news shit talking percy i'm hooting and hollering!! "i really-- WE really loved that car" and "i'm gonna kill him". excellent. now put percy on the news fake crying about his "loving" stepfather i believe in you

i did want them to acknowledge annabeth's lack of experience with the world outside camp but having her say "i've never seen any kind of movie" has gotta be one of the weirdest ways they could've done that

the turnstile scene was cool i guess but as we go on i'm more and more conscious of how many episodes are left and how much plot there is to get through and idk i feel like this scene could've hit the cutting room floor and we wouldn't have lost anything

i do love the ambience of the park though. maybe i'm easy to impress because the aesthetic of an abandoned amusement park is just fantastic on its own but the set was very cool. wish it wasn't so dark so i could've actually seen it ❤️

percy and annabeth having a serious conversation with 'what is love' blaring in the background is sending me

first ever seaweed brain dropped! i liked the way they did it, it felt natural

actually back to the "i've never seen a movie" thing. you're telling me that in this version of the story, in which frederick chase was apparently a great dad who treated annabeth like a gift, he never took her to the movies? or she never watched one on tv? she had a whole seven years of life in the real world before going to camp and she's never seen a movie

annabeth isn't allowed to have fears she's too smart for that apparently

i think the scene with the chair was overall well executed with some great lines and fantastic acting but... idk. they really scrapped the original scene just to do what they already did last episode. i miss the spiders i miss hephaestus tv. it felt redundant to have percy sacrifice himself again. percy this is the second time today you've been like "no dw i'll just die" do you need to talk to someone

annabeth disillusionment arc complete already? calm down guys this is season one

ZOO TRUCK ZOO TRUCK ZOO TR

so it's confirmed the reason they go into the lotus casino is BECAUSE hermes is there :/ they said these literal children cannot fall for tricks and traps it's too unrealistic

not much to say about the grover and ares scenes bc i don't know what to make of them. i didn't mind them. ares had some funny lines. i guess my only complaint is that the grover i know would not have been so calm talking to the god of war. i'm curious to see where that cliffhanger leads

is it just me or did the pacing improve a little bit this episode?

despite how negative i sound i enjoyed episode 5 a lot more than episode 4. there are still so many weird changes, additions, and omissions though. honestly i think a big part of the reason i enjoyed this one is because i'm not expecting anything anymore. i'm not getting my hopes up about them adapting the book normally i'm just intrigued by this thing like a scientist observing an experiment. like hmm what are they doing now? fascinating *takes notes*

[sixpossumsinatrenchcoat]

Natural Satellite [ch 7]

An In Stars and Time AU. In part seven, Isabeau talks to Loop. (SPOILER WARNING for the entire epilogue / "secret ending" / "two hats" / just really all conceivable spoilers! Read at your own risk!!!!!!)

You’re not going to talk to him, obviously. You’re under no obligation to chat up every idiot who comes your way. You’ll just stay in your tree and wish you were dead, like you always do when your stardust is off having manic episodes and/or interviewing genocidal maniacs. But when he shuffles up to your tree, the Fighter has the gall to say, “Um… Loop? Are you home?” (NO.) Against your better judgment, you allow him to see you. "You don’t really believe that this little tree is my home, do you?” “Nnnot... anymore?” “Aw, Fighter,” you giggle. “Did you think that stars grew on trees? I’m devastated to deprive you of such a charming misconception.”

Again, and I cannot emphasize this enough: a6se spoilers below!!!!

(And a followup PSA: with all the unsettling updates viz a viz "whoops maybe AI-training / content-scraping is coming to Tumblr too," for now I think I'm gonna stop posting entire chapters on here! I'll still post a sizeable preview, but the work in full will continue to hide out on ao3.)

In hindsight, your first mistake was letting yourself believe that things couldn’t get any worse. You should have known the Universe would take it as a challenge.

* * *

In a field a quarter-mile further south and a few hundred feet to the east, a Traveler jolts awake. They sit up on their elbows just in time to see their Fighter hurtling into view.

The Fighter beams at him. “It worked!!!!!”

“—Buh?”

(Ve~ry articulate, stardust. Why, I can’t think of a single reason why the big guy might take that the worst way he can think of!!!)

Sure enough, the Fighter sags a little. “U-Um. I meant… looping back without dying?”

“...Oh.” They’re not looking at him, just down at their own hand. Running their fingers over their palm with a vague, faraway look in their eye. For a second, you can feel phantom fingers ghost over your wrist. “Um. Sorry.”

The Fighter looks baffled. “What? No. I mean, I’m sorry. Why are you sorry?”

The Traveler just keeps staring at their palm. When the Fighter’s eyes follow theirs, he flushes all the way down his neck.

You roll your eyes. He was always sooo~ easy. Not that your silly little stardust could ever rub two brain cells together for long enough to notice.

You can’t feel them all the way on the rooftop. Maybe it’s because you never made it that far. Or maybe it’s the King’s wish, dampening yours. But you can feel them now. The pins-and-needles prickle of your palm. Warm static fizzing up your arm. You can feel the way you— the way they’re looking at their Fighter, and trying not to look, and looking anyway. You have many faults, but you’re not stupid. You can put one and one together.

“UHHH,” the Fighter blurts out, overloud. “I’m… really sorry? I just… You said I had to do something you w-wouldn’t expect and I—I guess I really really didn’t want you to stab yourself, so…”

Your eyebrows twitch. (No they don’t. You don’t have eyebrows, probably. Unless you do? How would you ever know?)

“No,” your stardust mumbles. “It’s. Um. It’s… sorry, it’s… Sorry. Um. Don’t… worry about it?”

(…Are they stupid? He’s definitely going to worry about it.)

“Okay!!!!” the Fighter shouts. “Cool!!! Then I definitely won’t!!!”

(Uh huh.)

The Traveler shakes his head muzzily. “I—uh. I should go… do something? Else?”

“Huh?”

They gather just enough of their shattered composure to muster a glare. “If you’re going to make us fight the King every time, then I need everyone’s special skills. Or else it’s going to take forever.”

“Everyone’s what-now?”

“Their— When I help them with their problems, they—” He huffs impatiently. “It doesn’t matter. I just mean, I have things to do. Now. With the others.”

Their Fighter blinks at them. “Wait. You get friendship quests?”

“...Yes?”

“Secret quests!!!” the Fighter gasps, brightening. “What do you do with everyone??”

“That’s private.”

“Okay, fair. Well, then, what did you do with me?”

The Traveler looks away. “…Not telling.”

Well, of course they won’t. Wouldn’t want their precious Fighter just… saying his lines. Parroting the same stupid sentiments over and over till the words all lose their meaning, like a certain blinding moron who you are, of course, far too decorous to name.

“U-Um,” the Fighter mumbles. “Okay, well. If you’re gonna be busy with the others, then… I think I wanna talk to Loop.”

You nearly fall out of your tree. Fortunately, the only witness is a nearby nest of swallows, which you’ve already sworn to silence.

In the field, your stardust looks almost as surprised. “You’re—what? Just you?”

The Fighter nods.

“You and Loop?”

“...Is that okay?”

“...Yes?” You can feel their bafflement all the way from here. Or is that yours? Sometimes it’s hard to tell.

* * *

You’re not going to talk to him, obviously. He’s not the one trapping you here. That would be his precious little Traveler. You’re under no obligation to chat up every idiot who comes your way. You’ll just stay in your tree and wish you were dead, like you always do when your stardust is off having manic episodes and/or interviewing genocidal maniacs.

But when he shuffles up to your tree, the Fighter has the gall to say, “Um… Loop? Are you home?”

(NO.)

Against your better judgment, you allow him to see you. "You don’t really believe that this little tree is my home, do you?”

“Nnnot anymore?”

“Aw, Fighter~,” you giggle. “Did you think that stars grew on trees? I’m devastated to deprive you of such a charming misconception.”

“That’s not what I—!! Aw, it doesn’t matter. Sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“Teehee! I wouldn’t worry about that!” Only people are capable of offense, and you haven’t been a person in a long time. “What is it that you want, Fighter? Or are you just here to enjoy the pleasure of my company.”

“Um… Well, I’m also here to say hi?”

Your patience thins. “You don’t have to lie to me.”

Isa— The Fighter flinches. “Haha… I guess I just wanted to ask about, um…” He pulls a notebook out of his pocket. “You and Sif have been trying to figure this out for, like, ages, right? Ages and ages of loops.”

“Mhmmm~~”

“And you’ve been talking with them this whole time.”

“That’s right! I’ve come to know my sweet little stardust quite intimately, teehee.”

The Fighter chokes. “I. Uh. Right. So, then, do you… Have you guys figured anything out about why this is happening?”

“‘Why,’ hm? Aren’t we getting a little ahead of ourselves? I would’ve thought you’d start with ‘how.’”

“Well, it’s all one big ouroboros, isn’t it?”

You quirk an eyebrow at him. “That’s an awfully big word for a guy who can’t even confess a crush.”

His face flushes violently. Bullseye.

“Oooh, did I guess right?” you giggle, like it wasn’t abundantly obvious. “How embarrassing! You have such bad taste!”

“Hey.”

“Am I wrong, though?” You wink. “You’ve seen how they’ve been acting. Now that the show is over, they’re finally ready to show their true shades.”

The Fighter’s fists clench. Good. Time to finish him off. If you play your cards right, he’ll never want to come back.

“Say, here’s a fun game!” you say brightly. “Do you want to guess how many times he let you all die just to save a little time?”

Want to finish out this chapter? You can read the rest on AO3!

[sheikahwarriork]

Yuzu, if you're ever bored, I have a challenge for you.

Here is the biggest ship tier list to date: https://tiermaker.com/create/all-fe3h-student-ships-16315058 , it contains nearly EVERY combinaison between the playable cast. Your mission would be to make this tierlist, but:

- you have to rank EVERY ship and you're not allowed to say "you don't see it".

Or, if it's too long

- you have to rank EVERY Dimitri ship and you're not allowed to say "you don't see it".

You're allowed to make as many tier as you want, but you have to consider each ship as seriously as you can. Yes, you will have to consider a scenario where Dimitri and Lorenz have feeling for each other. You cannot back down.

( Okay, you do actually have an exception for underage or uncomfortable age gap ship. And if Dimileth is really too OTP to rank Dimitri on ship without his beloved, feel free to pick another character ( I personally recommend Hubert, Rhea or Lorenz ) )

you become friend with someone AND THEN THEY give you the most difficult quest ever..... truly evil u_u

anyway, i actually had fun :'3 since the ships were SO MANY, i made different list for each house, plus a dimitri focused and a byleth focused. no repetions, i just followed the ships as they come in that site.

notes: no, for some characters i dont have a fav OTP; yes, for some character the OTP is not the same OTP for the other character. i also put a "dont care enough to have an opinion" bc really i couldnt find an opinion for some T_T

anyway, enjoy! :3 (for anyone who's reading: mind that there could be some ships negativity, so remember it's just me and my personal opinions!)

black eagles:

note: i now have a new fav rarepair. edelgard/dedue. you did irreparable damage to my brain

blue lions:

dimitri bonus:

golden deers + ashen wolves (simply because i still had space):

church of seiros:

note: many of the church staff ships that are in the "dont care enough" are more actually "kinda cursed bc minor with grown up adult", but i realized my mistake too late, when the tier list was almost done. and I PERSONALLY WAS already done with that hellsite T__T

note 2: cyril is baby and i love him with baby lysithea only

note 3: my fav flayn ship is actually with f!shez; in general i think they should have allowed her to be a lesbian. i love flayn<3

note 4: i hate every romantic seteth ships but i love his supports with bernadetta and IF ONLY their ending was platonic it would ended up in the OTP section for both of them.

and finally, byleth!! i used f!byleth portraits but i have the same ship-related thoughts for both gender, so using the m!byleth portraits too would have been useless repetitions :']

note: i S supported edelgard, dorothea and mercedes with f!byleth

note 2: the sothis romantic S support is the worst thing in the entire game oh my god (IS make platonic endings challenge failed)

[antisociallilbrat]

Been a while since I invaded your inbox with the intention to feed your brain worms lol- ANYWAYS-

I'm not exactly sure if this will be entertainig enough to answer but I've been thinking of this concept for a while now and since I consume your takes on a daily basis, here I am presenting it to you. This involves both The Party and The Losers Club.

So I've been in love with MrHalloween's AU where Mike Wheeler has Pennywise's power and another artist or writer ( I cannot remember who they are and I am ashamed )'s AU where The Losers Club are all adopted by Pennywise for a very long time now and I really REALLY like those kinds of AUs. Now that got me thinking...

What power of Pennywise do you think suit each Party members? And why?

Like we- as in, the IT fandom- knows that Pennywise can do a lot of things. Expected since he's basically an eldritch horror. He can shapeshift, know your fear, control a whole ass town, can probably go toe to toe with Maturin, and he has the deadlights. So similar to Vecna's curse without the bones breaking and immediate death if not countered ASAP. Pennywise has a wide range of abilities that suits him and I am really curious of what you think each of the Party members would have if Pennywise gives them a portion of his abilities.

This ask is mildly inspired by the Mike fanart that I am currently sketching where he is surrounded by the deadlights and by the AU thay I shared to you back then where the Losers are Numbers and their abilities are their Neibolt selves.

Allen I am so sorry it took me so long to respond to this 😭 I fell down the sims rabbit hole and didn't know how to crawl my way out of it

I want to answer your question simply but we all know me and we know I am not capable of that. Also plz someone send me the link to the post where it talks about Mike having Pennywise's power- I wish to dissect ⛏️

So to answer this question it depends on how you're coming at It- literally. Like we know It is an alien but what's the classification of It beyond that? Humans tend to point at creatures that are below our 'intelligence' and call the creature an 'animal' but what do we call something that is obviously beyond our intelligence and even our understanding but it's not humanoid? This was not part of your question at all I'm sorry but this in itself is worth a conversation, I just love talking about the Dead Lights.

Because I believe It acts with animal characteristics, It only fights to ensure It's survival and It hunts 'weaker' prey- children. Yes I know it's bc their fear tastes better blah blah you know what I mean.

Back to your question at hand- for real this time:

To put it simply I don't think It could just give one specific power to each Party member if It turned them all into little Its, little deadlights so I'm going to have to give you a nonanswer.

Unless It was making Neilbolt versions of them but even then I don't think the Neilbolt versions get It's 'power' per say because technically they are still part of It as a whole.

I'll raise you this though Allen: the Party members having a handful It's power, becoming little deadlights. The reason why It did that is up to you, I'm speaking of all of this in a hypothetical.

So the Party members become little deadlights, maybe they favor certain aspects of the powers that come with that. Like I can see Mike really enjoying augmenting reality and manifesting anything at his whim. Lucas would enjoy the physical transformation aspect and Dustin would enjoy being able to get into people's heads in his quest for knowledge. Will would love having the ability to protect himself now (especially if this in an au where the UD is still a thing) and Max would love the ability to subtly control people. She could make sure no one like Billy could ever hurt someone again.

And El? This goes back to the 'is this au set in one where the UD is still a thing'. If Henry is a thing, El would make a deal with It to get It's power, albeit only a little of it, to take him down. She would make a deal with the devil. In fact- I think all of the Party would in a quest to protect the ones they love and there's you're motivation right there for the Party. Just need to decide what It gets out of this deal.

But here's the thing, if the Party essentially became little deadlights...would they need to feed on fear now? Feed on humans? Do they know about that before they make the deal?

I'll let you decide that ;)

[rainysflowers]

OC Fic - Mountain Deathcamas

Day 5 - "Beauty equals goodness."

Summary: Beauty equals goodness. This shrine maiden proves that in spades. Until she doesn't.

Beauty equals goodness, this much was true. It’s all that anyone can think as they stand there, watching tears roll down their red shrine-maiden’s cheeks, shivering in terror as she begs the princess and her bodyguard and their wandering friend and her companion not to kill her.

Archive Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Category: Gen Chapters: 1/1 Word Count: 832

Note: Hi I'm hijacking the Slayers Artober 2023 tag for point two seconds to show off my sweet bby Slayers Puruse OCs oh yeah oh yeah. Hope that that's okay, sorry if its not I can untag it, I just saw the prompt and my brain went, "That is SOOOO Anticlea." and i got carried away :P Might use the whole list, I have ideas and writing more about my Pursue group and my Overthrown party would be sooo fun ^^

Ao3 Link/Full Story under the cut :) It would help me out if u checked out the Ao3 link but dw either way ^^

Beauty equals goodness.

It was a statement that each and every member that traveled in Alidor’s party knew perfectly well, because they had the literal embodiment of the saying right there with them.

Anticlea had always been beautiful, no matter where in life she was. 

She had been beautiful from the moment she was born up until the moment that she’d joined the group on their quest to find the prince of the green kingdom a sweetheart to be his co-ruler. Whilst she looked up at the black-haired man with squinted crimson eyes just barely holding back tears and shining in the light of the setting sun, hands clasped together as if she was in one of the prayers that she must have known well, lips moving rapidly as she spilled out all sorts of desires to come along, she stayed beautiful.

She stayed beautiful through all of it, all of the hardships and pitfalls and breakups and get-togethers that the posse had eventually come to surpass. How she did it, no one could tell.

But what they did know, anyone and everyone out there in the world knew, was that the shrine maiden had that special something that made one simply have to stop and stare.

Perhaps it was her long, black hair that poured over her shoulders and down her back in tight coils, cherry colored eyes filled with a zest for life that matched her loose and airy outfit to a tee. Or maybe it was her small eyebrows and her ever-so-slightly rounded face that did the trick, fixing her with an adorably worried expression whenever her lips weren’t folded softly into excitement. The way she shot innocent glances over her shoulder and spoke loudly like no one had ever told her that she had to quiet down. How she seemed amazed by every little thing in the world around her, loving it all with no end.

It all had a way of making her stand out from the rest, even in a party mostly composed of non-men.

Against the knight Psyche, with her two-toned eyes, her messy hair, and brash attitude, Anticlea seemed put together, albeit naive.

Against the priest Uriel, with their fair skin, empty lavender eyes, and floaty smile, Anticlea seemed inviting and vivacious.

And so, beauty really did equal goodness.

Even when it was late at night and the pair of white magic users stayed up far longer than anyone else, sitting on a log in front of the fire, discussing holy topics and new dance routines that they could duet with one another. Behind them, their long shadows cast outwards into the forest, the light from the fire licking at their skin. Uriel mentioned something or other about a magical performance that they’d managed to bear witness to once, and it sent Anticlea into a giggling fit, her long eyelashes fluttering over her cheek. In the back of their mind, the priest cannot help but feel a twinge of guilt, though it’s through no fault of their own. Things happen, they supposed, even to humans that might not traditionally deserve it.

Even when the group’s quest had led them to the heart of the sprawling desert and in front of the door to a dragon woman’s house. She froze the moment that she opened the door, a palpable sense of complete and utter horror rushing through her deep blue eyes as they widened, a long shiver rolling slowly up her spine and down her arms. The kind of thing that she hadn’t felt in years. It hadn’t fully occurred to her what that truly meant, not until the festival that night, where she sat sipping on tea at a table alone, watching the pair of white magic users dancing on stage, rounding one another with wide smiles and blushing from exhaustion. That feeling was back, far worse than before, and finally something in the antique jar collector’s mind clicked into place.

Even when the sun sat high in the sky and the party was stuck in an ambush, staring forwards helplessly at the heroes of years ago surrounding Anticlea, weapons and magical appendages pointing directly at her. She’s biting her lip, face contorted into a silent sob, hands held up in the air as a weak sign of surrender.

Beauty equals goodness, this much was true.

It’s all that anyone can think as they stand there, watching tears roll down their red shrine-maiden’s cheeks, shivering in terror as she begs the princess and her bodyguard and their wandering friend and her companion not to kill her.

Because beauty equals goodness, and she was beautiful, inside and out, and there was no way in Hell or on Earth that she was not good.

Being good was all she had.

It was her life, it always had been.

She couldn’t hold one of the seven pieces of the demon lord inside of her because she was patient and kind and innocent and beautiful and good.

Right?

[bmaxwell]

Baldur's Gate 3

Baldur's Gate was my first-ever PC game. I came home with a shiny new PC a coworker built for me, and stopped at Best Buy to pick up the MicroProse Magic the Gathering game and Baldur's Gate. The game was positively mind blowing. It used AD&D rules (my first tabletop system) it had gorgeous isometric graphics, and FIVE (5) discs. Console gaming had nothing like it.

5 years later I was burned out on the genre* and maybe the rest of the world was too, because that style of game stopped being made. Years later when Pillars of Eternity, Tyranny, and Divinity Original Sin came along, I spent time with each but was never truly enamored with them. I figured that, like RTS games, Metallica, and kart racers, CRPG's were something I used to like.

So when Baldur's Gate 3 released in early access, I largely ignored it. I'm not going to spend time playing an unfinished story-centric game, and even if I did? I haven't finished One of These in some 20 years. It's a bad bet.

However.

I'm like an alcoholic that drives past every bar in town every day. I listen to video game podcasts, and I talk games with friends. A couple of friends' enthusiasm for the game was infectious and, near release, Larian Studios announced that they were upgrading standard preorders to the Deluxe Edition for free. Well, if I ever do want the game I'll want the deluxe edition, and I can get that upgrade for FREE now? I'm basically losing money if I don't buy it. Right?

Buy it I did, and I was immediately hooked. I even spent an eternity in the character creator,** mostly debating my race and class. I get major FOMO with games like this. I want to see everything there is, and that's just not possible. I can't pick every lock AND smooth talk every conversation AND be a follower of every god, and so on. I finally settled on a Tiefling Warlock, a patron of The Great Old Ones.

Oh Aremon. I have so much I need to warn you about. But alas, I cannot.

It turns out there's a lot more than your character and class keeping you from seeing everything Baldur's Gate 3 has to offer. The game gives you an incredible amount of freedom. The studio touted the game's "17,000 endings" which seems nonsensical. After putting a hundred hours into the game I can believe it now. There are choices and events - big and small - whose outcomes ripple out into what feels like an ocean of possibilities.

The game reacts to everything you do. I've played a few saves and have friends playing their own campaigns, and the way we swap Baldur's Gate 3 stories feels like the old days on the playground. "Oh, you saved the druid grove? Well I heard you can assassinate the leader and there's a war and the whole GROVE is basically destroyed! Billy says he went and saved their missing leader and Susie says she helped an evil Drow elf raid the grove and burn it down!"

Susie that bitch.

And that's all true. Every action you take, every quest you follow through on or ignore, every area you miss altogether - these all have tendrils that spread out and touch every other thing in the game. It feels like there's a DM with a folders full of wrinkled papers of hastily scrawled notes alongside their binder of carefully written world lore that the players may never see.

The story revolves around mindflayers, opening with your character being restrained and infected with a gruesome parasite. It's a pretty good impetus to set you off on a quest to get that teethy little tadpole out of your head. No one needs to tell you that the kingdom is in danger, you have your own personal stakes in the form of unwelcome parasite in your brain. You can just watch that opening cutscene again if you need reminding of the situation's urgency. *shudder*

Or, perhaps not. Maybe this tadpole gives you cool powers. If one tadpole is good, more must be better!

Right?

As of now I am into chapter 3, exploring the titular city of Baldur's Gate, and I have no idea how this is all going to play out.*** The shades of grey and the way the game subverts expectations speaks to the quality of its writing. Dungeons and Dragons is some 50 years old now. Creative works carry the world view of their makers - hopes, fears, sense of justice, and prejudices are all along for the ride. They HAVE to be.

It's a black and white world where the monsters are evil and the heroes are heroic. The black skinned Drow are born evil and cruel, orcs are wild, savage, dumb, and violent. Mind flayers are cruel, thriving on enslaving others for their own ends. Thankfully the writers have gone outside the tired stereotypes pretty often with Baldur's Gate 3.

It makes me happy that I have a female Tielfing demonic barbarian who is somehow big hearted and vulnerable while also being powerful and kickass. My cleric is worships Shar, goddess of darkness. She's not necessarily evil per se, but she's definitely not about holy water and rays of holy light shining down from above.

And those mind flayers? Maybe they're not so bad. Not all of them. Some of my best friends are mind flayers! Or maybe that's my tadpole parasite thing speaking. I've met monsters who were not monsters at all. It's a lot of shades of grey and I DIG that.

The game gives you some weighty choices. I've had a handful of moments where I had to sit back and ponder for a few minutes, and these usually involve my party members. Each party member I've recruited (I have missed a few that I know of also) has been wonderfully written and voice acted. They each carry their own baggage and their own backstory that they will eventually share with you. We're all in the same parasitic boat together, but we each have our own demons.****

I have a vampiric theater kid, a spunky demon lady, a melancholy mage, a heroic warlock, an emo cleric, and a fearsome warrior traveling with me. Well, had. I ended up killing one of them when their morals went too far off the rails for me. It's not a choice I made lightly and I do not regret it. My friends have had their stories play out differently. The world reacts to your decisions and so do your party members. They're not just blank ciphers to blindly follow in whatever you do. They'll make their opinions known up to the point of leaving or even attacking you. I've seen their stories play out in very different ways based on who was in my active party at the time of a key story event.

Video game stories are very hit or miss for me. With RPG's I'm usually there for the combat and systems as much as the story. Baldur's Gate 3's main story is engaging and kept me invested from start to finish. Every party companion felt like a fully fleshed out character who I wanted to learn more about and hear more from. Even some of the game's side plots were engaging - one involving a hag comes to front of mind. There's just so damn much DETAIL here, and none of it feels extraneous. The developers have clearly played a lot of Dungeons & Dragons, they know the sorts of things players want to do, and they made a game that says "Yes, actually you CAN do that" surprisingly often.

That freedom extends to the game's combat as well. You can throw objects, ignite pools of oil or alcohol, electrify water, push people off ledges, and on and on. My concern was that I'd get overwhelmed like I did with Larian's previous game Divinity Original Sin 2, but the combat threads the needle of being challenging without typically being overly long (spending an hour plus in combat only to lose and have to start over feels bad).

I can't close this review without mentioning that Larian did a great job replicating the act of rolling a die, a key component of tabletop games. The die clatters about and settles on its number in a satisfying way, and the excitement of a natural 20 on a long shot or the deflation of a crummy roll are intact here in this digital translation. The game handles luck streaks too - there's an option called Karmic Dice that you can toggle in the system menu, which prevents long runs of bad die rolls. After all, the dice add some welcome randomness but they should never play a huge role in determining how things play out.

The inspiration system is also wonderful - the game grants characters an "inspiration point" that can be spent on a reroll either in combat or in a skill check. These points are earned by essentially roleplaying your characters; smooth-talking Astarion will get inspiration points whenever you lie, persuade, or otherwise bullshit your way through a situation while no-nonsense bruiser Lae'zel is inspired whenever you mop the floor with foes in battle. The game is full of these thoughtful little touches.

The game writes a LOT of checks in the opening act, and somehow manages to cash them all. Choices you've made, people you've helped or hurt or ignored will come back around to you in the final act. Major events will play out wildly differently based on who is in your adventuring party. When it came down to the end, I made choices that felt right for the people in my party. It felt more like an ensemble cast rather than my character being the star of the show and everyone else supporting him. I'm writing this the morning after finishing the game, and I'm debating whether to reload my final save to see how other options play out. On one hand, I'm curious; on the other, it feels like the ending I got was my canonical ending, and playing tourist with it would feel dishonest.

As someone who hasn't seriously played D&D since 3rd edition (and not at all with the 5th edition ruleset used in Baldur's Gate 3) I'm not sure which elements are from the tabletop and which are unique to the video game. All I know is that, while no videogame can wholly replicate the experience of spending a Saturday afternoon at a table rolling dice, talking in bad accents, and poring over rulebooks and character sheets with friends, Baldur's Gate 3 does a better job than any game before it. *After Icewind Dale, Icewind Dale II, Planescape: Torment, and Baldur's Gate 2 **At least 15 minutes! ***I've since finished the game ****Figurative and otherwise

[lamuradex]

Eight Deaths

Part 7 - Prev - All Parts - Next

Seventh Death - Mercy

Flames danced in the campfire as Artemis roasted a few spiced apples on a spit. As had become his habit, the lantern was in his hand. It’s green light was utterly unfazed, not even slightly altered by the orange of the flames, the green holding his attention as he tried to understand the nature of it.

He didn’t even look up as a voice echoed over the plains, singing a serene tune.

“I’ve been expecting you,” he said calmly, taking down the apples and serving them onto a cloth. He looked up to greet his visitor. “Mercy, right?”

“You are correct,” she answered calmly, politely taking a seat. She was dressed in drab, almost religious garb, made from a beige, plain dress, a similar frock top, but all of it was covered with a crimson apron with crimson strips hanging down the shoulders.

“Yeah, I would have guessed even if I hadn’t met all the others. You really go for a theme, don’t you?” Artemis assessed.

“What do you mean?” she wondered.

“You’re dressed as a battlefield nurse. Specifically one from before I was even born. That garb’s from the time of the Sarindhi King Calebos, who was ancient history when I was a child. Medicine wasn’t the best in his kingdom, and he reviled sorcerers. So, on the battlefield, he sent out nurses to ensure the wounded had quicker deaths, which is certainly a choice for a form to greet me.”

“Less painful deaths,” she corrected.

“Oh, don’t pretend it was a kindness. Calebos was legendarily cruel.”

“Not kindness from Calebos, no. But from the nurses. They wished to end the suffering of those soldiers.”

“And is that why you’re here? To end my suffering?”

Mercy smiled with clear, unadorned features, pale skin, and deep sparkling eyes. She took a bite of a proffered apple. “You are already aware I cannot harm you, yes? I am Mercy, the consenting end of pain. I can only kill you if you asked me to.”

“And that’s not likely to happen.”

“Indeed. As such, I have come to offer a different kind of mercy.”

“Oh, and what mercy is that?”

“Give up this ignoble quest, Artemis. Let the soul in the lantern rest. Let their soul pass on, as should be natural. Be merciful to them, and perhaps we may be merciful to you.”

Artemis didn’t even attempt to hide the lantern. He toyed with it as he thought. He considered the offer.

“Artemis Sahir,” Mercy continued, “Why put yourself through this? Why put that soul through this? Why have you even done this, wrenched a soul from the afterlife, forced some innocent life to be involved in this madness? You must let them fade away.”

Artemis met Mercy’s eye, but it was with a quiet sorrow. He stared into the lantern again. Then, almost without thinking, he began to speak.

“It’s funny you should mention that, letting her fade. I was always told, or at least my people were, that a soul will not fade away as long as it remembered. As long as their name is spoken, their life recalled, their deeds celebrated, then a soul will remain in the afterlife. And I always found that comforting. As long as you remember someone, they’ll be waiting for you when you die. Loved ones, family, friends. You’d never be alone. I thought… I used to think it was such a kind idea.”

“Used to? You no longer think this?” Mercy asked.

“About four hundred years ago, it suddenly occurred to me; What if that legend is true? What if? Sure, it’s fine for ordinary people, with ordinary fleeting lives, but what about me? I’ve lived for centuries. Cities I once lived are dust and everyone I ever knew is dead. And one day, it suddenly dawned on me what that means. How many souls I am keeping trapped in the afterlife merely by remembering them? People I knew, people I loved, people who I barely met but they’ve lingered in my brain. What about them? Have they just been stuck there, in the afterlife, watching their own loved ones experience the final death, all the while utterly confused about why they can’t move on? And if that’s the case, if it’s ever vaguely true, then it would all be because of me, anchoring them to this existence, because I had the fortune or misfortune to achieve a form of immortality.”

“This truly worries you?” Mercy checked, not fully understanding.

“Yes, it worries me! All those people, trapped. The people I’ve loved, the people I’ve wronged, the people who wronged me! All those people who haunt my guilt and fears and regrets. They’d all be waiting for me. Forever. So, one dark night, I made a drastic decision. A horrid decision. I decided to forget.”

Mercy stared at him. “Forget?” she queried.

“I used my magic and I erased those memories. I made sure to write down everything, every deed and every name, before I did it. Just in case. I wrote down all my loves and all my sins, but even if I read those pages now, then it would merely be facts to me. I don’t remember those people. Not anymore. They’re just characters in a book to me now. I don’t remember their faces, their voices, in some cases I don’t even remember their names. And it’s better this way, because now they can move on, and so can I.”

“Then who is she?” Mercy pointed at the lantern.

Artemis looked irately at her, but then returned his eyes to the green glow.

“There are some people in your life, anyone’s life, that you meet and they change you forever. They change you in massive or in tiny ways. And I don’t mean love, or romance, or… anything else. There are just people who affect you so profoundly, who change who you are, teachers or friends or random acts of kindness, that you could never forget them, even if your tried. People who’s words you think about every day, people who are fundamental to who you are as a person, even if you don’t realise it. People so deeply engrained in you that you don’t even realise your remember them. But you do.”

“And… Is that who they are? Someone that important to you?”

“Perhaps.”

“So why did you bring them back?”

Artemis smirked, almost laughing. “Finally, the answers you lot have been after this whole time. The knowledge that you’ve been begging for. That you’ve all essentially been torturing me for. And all you needed to do was ask nicely. Well, fair enough. Here’s the big reveal. The truth is; I didn’t mean to do it.”

“You… you what?” Mercy stammered.

“I didn’t mean to,” Artemis grinned, almost manic. “I didn’t intend to bring her back. But, one day, I was sitting around my home when suddenly morbid curiosity got the better of me. I was thinking about that same old subject; how a soul could persist if remembered, when I decided to test my theory. I’d forgotten these people, erased them from my head, but I’d also managed to gather the last works of House Cambra, the great scrolls of the inventor of necromancy. Best way to keep them out of evil hands was to keep them in mine, if you ask me. But I just wanted to check. Test my theory. I opened my own infernal diary, as well as those evil scrolls, and one by one tried to recall the names from my past back from the land of the dead. I came up empty each and every time. Now, I don’t know if that’s because they were faded away, or if it was because I didn’t actually remember them to summon them, but I found the exercise reassuring. That was… That was until…”

“Until her,” Mercy understood.

Artemis smirked again. “She wasn’t even in the diary. I’d never wronged her, so I keep telling myself, and she’d certainly never wronged me. But I hadn’t even thought to erase her from my mind. It was so long ago, I thought I’d already forgotten about her already. Until I remembered her while reading that list of names. I was just a child when she died, still calling myself a girl back then. So… I tried to summon her, just to check. And… I got this.”

He held up the lantern, staring at the still light within.

“And you intend to resurrect her?” Mercy asked.

“The ruins of House Cambra are still drenched in dark magic from the eons of sin that took place in those walls. And I should know, I led the army which tore it down. But if I can pull that dark magic from those stones, I can use it perform the ritual to bring her back, body and soul. She died too early, and now she’s been trapped in the afterlife for over a thousand years, with likely no clue why, all because of me.”

He levelled his eye at Mercy.

“She deserves another chance.”

Mercy watched him, then stood, ready to leave.

“I cannot sway you from your course?”

“Not in the slightest.”

“Even knowing that only one Death awaits after me?”

“I doubt Peace can do much.”

“And after Peace…”

“Bring on Naraja too! I’ve fought gods before! I fought the God of Life, Jarana, Naraja’s very own brother. I’ll go down swinging, so run back to your master and tell him that,” Artemis snarled.

Mercy nodded sombrely, turned, and vanished.

Artemis looked across the plains to the ruins, less than a day’s walk away.

“She deserves another chance,” he muttered to himself, a thumb stroking the lantern.

[themollyzone]

before december gets too long

I love love love December for the end of year feeling. Not in the "top 10 albums of the year" feeling but more of a general reflective wrapping up and looking ahead. I take the New Year very seriously and believe it can offer up the elusive New Me.

One thing I always do in December is clean out my emails and all the files on my computer. It's a compulsive-ish habit but it makes me feel great. Likewise I deep-clean the apartment. If I'm really on top of it, I'll do a tarot reading, but I just got a real doozy of a reading at my birthday party that I'm still chewing on — specifically an 8 of Cups I'm trying to masticate until it gels with the vision I have for my future. Don't cry over spilled milk, they say, but what about a missing cup? Where the fuuuck did I put that cup??

I feel like I'm exiting 2022 in a state of pleasant disillusionment. The vibe is very strawberry fields / nothing is real / nothing to get hung about. When I was in high school I needed to mark my territory to feel like I existed. I had light blue high top Converse sneakers—I was trying to be punk, but light blue was apparently my favorite colorway....girl why....—and my friend and I wrote song lyrics on them in black Sharpie. You know how it is. One of the lyrics I wrote was "living is easy with eyes closed" because I thought it was deep as hell. Now the verse I'm stuck on is this one:

I had a couple of lucid dreams this year for the first time ever, which was nuts. Each time I realized I was dreaming, the first thought that ran through my brain was: ok now I can do anything I want, and it won't matter, because it's not real. I won't tell you what I did, of course. Nunya bizness! Taking acid in the 1960s must have been pretty nuts too. One minute you're eating some kind of green bean casserole prescribed to you by the Campbell's soup company, the next, the entire world has turned into an Impressionist painting before your eyes. It is much harder to take the concept of "reality" seriously when you're on psychedelics. All you can do is hope you know when it's a dream.

At the end of February, I was taking a train from Virginia back home to New York and feeling sad and not very useful. I should get a job, I thought, a real one, one job with one boss. I was feeling burnt out on freelancing and insecure about my technical skills. So I found a job, and that job has turned out to be one of the silliest patches of employment I've ever experienced. I can't even get into it but it's just more proof that nothing is real—certainly not employment, certainly not my type of employment.

"I hear you're buying a synthesizer and an arpeggiator and are throwing your computer out the window because you want to make something real." What prize do Chris and I win for being the most enthusiastic receivers of the message of "Losing My Edge" at the AmEx LCD Soundsystem gig? A pretty nice tote bag and a horse kick hangover. I could never throw my computer out the window. You can make real stuff on the computer! I swear I do it all the time.

When I was in Prospect Park on a gray and wet day, hunting down Peter Steele's special dedicated tree, I had the stoned thought that my personal artist statement might be something like "bringing the internet to real life and vice versa." It was tickling me that I was on a quest I was posting about on the internet, but I was also literally touching grass while on the quest. I cannot be totally on the computer all the time or I'll freak out, but there is no arguing that the computer is pretty important to what (I think) I do. It all interconnects: I'll email someone to interview them, and then I'll meet them in real life, and they'll recommend something for me to read, and the reading inspires me to look something up, and then I talk about it with other people, either online or in person, on and on, online and not.

I'm currently blogging on a mechanical keyboard I recently bought because I followed someone on TikTok who was into mechanical keyboard modding and I'm always looking for uh...new ways to type. It lights up in beautiful unicorn colors, but more importantly, it's loud as hell. I thought it might help to engage the ego when I'm making stuff for the internet. I clack therefore I am. I have some big plans for next year and I'm simply going to need a super loud keyboard for them.

[scenarihoes]

Yo!~ I couldn't find your rules so I hope this is ok ;×; can you write some Kurapika NSFW hcs? Like what does the chain boi does to you or how does it starts maybe? ✨

here u go <3

kurapika nsfw headcanons!

as expected, kurapika is incredibly reserved in the bedroom. in his eyes, sex is something almost holy- and should be treated as such. he isn't keen on one night stands or friends with benefits. he wants the real deal and all the emotions that come with it. if he's not entirely comfortable and trusting of his partner, forget about it.

that being said, the first time you have sexual relations together, kurapika is very awkward. he doesn't know where to put his hands, he doesn't know what feels good for you, or really even himself. in regards to any kinks or bedroom fantasies, he's super vanilla. honestly he'd never really given his sexual interests much attention- what with his revenge quest and all taking up most, if not all, of his time.

but it's weird because after he gets close with you, and sex becomes apart of the equation, he's strangely always in the mood to some degree. he doesn't act on it, never brings it up, but it's always just... there. he thinks about it at night, in the shower, eating breakfast... and even after you've had sex, he's still hesitant to initiate and much rather prefers when you come onto him.

this dude likes the lights off- but with a twist. it can't be entirely dark. he wants some sort of ambiance lighting, like a dimly lit lamp or if the moon is coming in through the windows. although he isn't much of a morning sex kind of guy, he can't help but find himself allured when the sun peeks through the shades onto your skin.

although he's naturally very mild, and vanilla, sometimes kurapika will unintentionally get a little intense. he's incredibly touchy, and has a tendency to pull at your arms, or hold your hands down ever so gently, and kisses the insides of your wrist and thighs. he's also super into eye contact so while he's touching you up, while he's fucking you, he wants your eye contact. he cannot get enough of it, especially when you're cumming.

he's a missionary guy at heart, but also finds some excitement in the 'lotus' and 'bamboo' positions. huge fan of being ridden, too. any position that he can clearly see your face.

kurapika isn't vanilla because he dislikes anything rougher around the edges. he just has no idea how to go about it. he doesn't know whats too far, too hard, or what's scary for you. even if you discuss with him, he's still offput. he considers spanking the epitome of naughty.

now, if you're topping, thats another scenario. sometimes he even prefers it- that way you can do whatever you like while he can watch and learn. but keep in mind that even if you're topping, he's still got some of the control behind the scenes. he's still all hands on your hips, guiding you, watching you. every movement is etched into his brain.

thanks for reading! wanna leave a tip? heres my kofi!

[chockfullofsecrets]

"If I'm not careful I'm gonna end up writing content for a character who literally never appears in 141 episodes"

I mean, you are more than welcome to. In fact, we will gratefully encourage this.

you encourage chock? you encourage chock like the author? oh! oh! tk fic for anon! tk fic for anon for Two Thousand Words!

(also, heads up that i am moving next week! have been working on Importance of Timing when i can, but the first chapter probably won't be here for another two weeks at least.)

---

Verin Thelyss, Essek knows, is a seasoned battle commander and strategist.

He’s also in possession of the instinct to tackle people when he’s excited, so Essek is well aware that it’s only those decades of training and experience that have his little brother pausing for the briefest instant as Caleb and Jester teleport him into the hold of the Nein Heroez before he launches himself at Essek in a dead run.

Veth and Caduceus are at their respective homes, Kingsley watching over the ship, but he is far from alone - Yasha and Fjord each have a supportive hand on his shoulder, a silent assurance from the tense minutes waiting for their friends to return from Bazzoxan. They swear in unison and scramble for their weapons as Verin screeches to a halt just shy of shunting Essek straight though the hull and yanks him into a rib-crushing hug.

He burrows into the junction of Essek’s neck and shoulder, made possible only by virtue of the activated floating spell that puts the coiffed swoop of his hair a full inch above Verin’s. “Thank the fucking Light, you’re not actually dead.”

“What the fuck, he’s like a swearing puppy,” Beau hisses. There’s a soft thwap as Fjord gently smacks her across the back of the head.

Essek is feeling out the edges of friendly intimacy, still, stumbling through every brush of fingers and shared look of exasperation, but even he does not need Jester’s frantic gesturing to prompt him to lift his arms and awkwardly wrap them around Verin’s shoulders.

It’s like wrapping a single thread of silk around one of Yasha’s biceps. Clearly he is not built for comforting.

Verin stiffens with a single sharp twitch of his ear against Essek’s collarbone . Essek’s thoughts flail wildly between an expectation of tears or a dagger to his ribs, but his brother just laughs, loud and hearty, and snuggles even further into his personal space. “I see someone’s finally taught you how to hug back - you should have written and told me, this is better news than any number of pages on den politics.”

Essek bristles. “Careful, or I will stop,” he huffs, somewhat more waspishly than he intends to.

Luckily, Verin has proven immune to his moods. “Oh, please don’t,” he insists, voice still crackling with glee. He grins, warm and wide enough that Essek can feel it against the side of his neck. “It just makes doing this that much easier.”

“Doing what,” Essek says reflexively, even as the tiny portion of his brain that he allows to remember his childhood starts to blare an alarm. “Verin-”

It’s far too late to realize that Verin’s hands have somehow been maliciously positioned just along the backs of his ribs.

Jester, standing with Caleb behind Verin, perks up in clear interest as the corners of his mouth start to twitch up. On second thought, Essek thinks he’d have preferred the dagger.

“Verin,” he hisses again, fighting back the anticipatory shiver crawling up his back. “Don’t - don’t you dare-”

It’s about then that Verin’s evil, evil fingers find the edges of his mantle’s arm slits and squeeze him even closer as they stretch to wriggle under his arms.

He snatches his arms back, but it’s too late - a dismayed giggle sneaks from his throat, then another, and then he’s beating helplessly at Verin’s shoulders as he dissolves into high, squeaking laughter.

Every single nerve between his armpits and his ribs squirms in unison - a bubbly, slippery sensation even more potent for how long it’s been since he last felt it. “No,” he shrieks. “I - ahaha! eeheee! - no tickling, no tickling, Verin-”

Jester looks thrilled - she’s bouncing on her toes, babbling something to Caleb that’s inaudible over the rush of his own laughter. Light, the Nein are going to tear him apart for this-

“Yes, tickling,” Verin protests, laughing right along with him. “All the tickling! You let me think you were dead! For months! I thought I was never going to get to watch my poor brother giggle himself to pieces ever again!”

He’s not, because Essek is going to kill him. “That - nahaha, hff, ahaaa! - that was - ha - it’s been decades - stop, stop, there’s people!”

“Yeah, people,” Beau says, loud and smug and far too close behind him. “Hey - Verin, was it? - does hotboi here have a worst spot?”

Oh no. Oh no. Essek squeezes his eyes shut in a desperate attempt to focus and does the only thing he can while laughing like an idiot.

With a shaky flick of his wrist, his floating dispels. Verin yelps in surprise as gravity takes Essek straight out of his grip.

The instant his boots hit the deck, Essek twists the rest of the way out of his grip and bolts.

There’s nowhere to go, really - the Nein have a room full of Counterspells, and Verin can run faster than he can, and he’s already tumbling halfway back into laughter in giddy anticipation of being caught. Still, it’s a surprise when he stumbles into a brick wall of leather and biceps that resolves itself into Yasha as she hoists him back into the air.

“Oh, where do you think you’re going?” She sounds admirably innocent given the soft, teasing smile she gives him.

“Noooo,” Essek giggles. Heat gathers in his cheeks as he tries to make himself stop - it doesn’t make sense, he’s not even being tickled anymore, but even the potential for it flutters light and fizzy at the bottom of his lungs. “I - I’m not ticklish anymore, I’m not-”

The Nein and Verin cluster around the two of them, bubbling with various levels of amusement. “Really?” Beau drawls. “It’s cute that you think denying it has a single fucking chance of working.”

The sarcasm helps him center himself, if only a little - he buries his face in Yasha’s arm and sucks in a deep breath that doesn’t do nearly enough to get rid of his blush.

He straightens as best he can while being bear hugged by a barbarian. “I am denying nothing,” he says carefully. Jester is still bouncing next to Beau, fingertips already twitching where they’re curled sweetly on her cheeks around a mischievous beaming smile, and Essek has to look away before the nervous snickers still wobbling on the back of his tongue can worm their way free. “I am well aware that Verin is - incorrigible-”

He hisses the last word in his brother’s direction - again, harsher than he intends, but he is so unused to being soft around him - and fails to contain a shy smile as Verin sticks his tongue out in retaliation.

Jester’s tail waves its way into the edge of his peripheral vision. He jumps and looks over at Fjord instead. “-but I, ah, I would ask for more respect from the rest of you-”

“You really shouldn’t,” Fjord says, grinning boyishly back at him. “I mean, you know us.”

And then, to Fjord’s right - “Essek?”

He’s been avoiding looking at Caleb. It is foolish, perhaps, to think that after all of the incredibly stupid things he knows Essek has done he will decide to judge him for this, but he cannot help the way his shoulders stiffen as he twists a little further to meet the gaze of the last link in their semicircle. “Yes?”

Caleb looks - focused, in an offhanded way, like he’s intent on something happening just slightly out of their current reality. Stunned might be a better word for it. He blinks for a moment before focusing those keen blue eyes somewhere near Essek’s eyebrows. “Ah - did you know that when you laugh, your ears -” He puts his hands up to his own ears and flaps them a little.

Drow do not run particularly warm, but that only makes it easier for Essek to feel the heat absolutely flood back into his face. “I-” he stammers. Nearly a century of politics is nowhere near enough to help him keep a straight face. “I - ah - eeh!-”

Caleb is close enough to reach out and run a questing fingertip over Essek’s left ear - it flicks wildly, trying to dislodge the unexpected tickle, but a surprised squeak still slips out.

There’s a moment of silence before Verin starts to snicker. “Oh, I like your friends,” he says merrily, beaming. “Go on, Light knows he doesn’t let himself laugh enough otherwise.”

“Don’t,” Essek gets out hastily, but Caleb is already reaching out for another go and Yasha’s grip is firm enough that all he can do is squeak again. “Wait - hm, hnn!”

Beau sidles up to Yasha’s side and gives him a self satisfied leer as she reaches out across their little group to pluck the feather from Fjord’s tricorn. “You got him, babe?”

“I do,” Yasha confirms and lets out a little squeak of her own as Beau reaches around her, no doubt squeezing something entirely inappropriate with company present.

“Hot,” Beau smirks, and reaches to flutter the feather over Essek’s right ear. “Aw, does that tickle? Thought you said you weren’t ticklish, man.”

Essek maintains some facsimile of composure for all of two seconds before his face crumples “Nnn - hehehe - eheehe - oh!”

His lungs are surely going to burst, with the way they’re shivering out desperate giggles as he shakes his head frantically between Caleb’s fingers and the teasing feather. He can’t move his arms, so he kicks his legs instead. “Please,” he begs, nearly incomprehensible even to his own ears. “Ah - aha, heeheehee! - tickles-”

Verin leans down and scoops his ankles up with one ridiculously sculpted arm. “Essek, you’re going to put a hole in someone with those boots.”

He looks up, raising his eyebrows teasingly, and Essek’s stomach drops like he’s cast something on it. “Here, I’ll fix that.”

Essek’s eyes, narrowed with laughter, shoot wide open. He doesn’t remember Verin being this evil - but then again, his brother’s never been egged on by five other people determined to render reports of his death more realistic.

“Verin, Verin, no-” he tries, but he’s giggling so hard that he can’t even get the words out. He twists as far away from Caleb and Beau as he can, flailing frantically, but Verin’s grip holds firm.

He pouts dramatically. “What? Is it my fault that my tiny, ticklish wizard brother insists on wearing metal-tipped boots that endanger everyone?”

Essek opens his mouth to reply and promptly dissolves into another frantic peal of laughter as Beau gets bored of his ears and shoves her feather in Caleb’s direction before jabbing a finger between his trapped arm and his chest to get at his armpit. “Your - shihihit, shit, ahahaaa, not there! - your arcanist brother is going to kill you just as soon as I can- hahaha!”

Verin just laughs, unlacing one of his boots and starting to slide it off. “Is that your attempt to convince me not to tickle your feet?”

Jester, practically vibrating, emits a sound that perhaps only weasels can hear. “Oh, that’s so cute! Can I have one of them?”

“One of his feet? Sure.” Verin hands over an ankle, grinning down at Jester. “You, I think you’re my favorite.”

As Essek gasps and struggles and falls further and further into a formless mirth that makes him feel so light he can hardly bear it, there’s a different sensation at his ear. A hazy portion of his brain identifies it as the rough bristle of chin scruff and an amused huff of breath.

“You don’t really want them to stop, do you,” Caleb murmurs. “I will help you, if you do.”

It’s quite unfair, Essek feels, to try and make him explain himself while he’s strung out and dizzy with laughter. He tries anyway, for a syllable or two, but Verin digs in between two of his toes and he ends up just tipping his cheek against Caleb’s and shaking, laughing too hard to make a single sound.

“Alright, then,” Caleb says. “In that case-”

He brandishes the feather with a flourish more suited to somatic casting, swooping it down the length of Essek’s nose before directing it back to his ear.

“Tickle, tickle...”

[firecoloredwater]

Me: I'm gonna! I'm gonna do it! I'm gonna put some words in an order and say what I liked about the first chapter of BSAU!

My brain: -already off in a corner playing with a shiny- so what if Meguru or Taka was still alive and Izuna was startled by Tobirama's eyes just enough to get killed so still-grieving atheist Madara becomes the hell hag when their mom dies and meanwhile Tobirama can see Izuna's spirit bc reasons (maybe can't tell he's Uchiha?) and Izuna's both trying to help Madara and, y'know, sticking around the only person who can see him. Tho if Taka lived and Meguru didn't it's probably all murder all the time in the background. Also something something divine favor something something soul connection Izuna comes back to life bc I don't have it in me to kill him for realsies

Hahahahaha CANNOT WAIT TO HEAR!!!!! but also we COMPLETELY understand when your brain just has to chase after a shiny, everybody lives AU is made of it

Oh if Taka was alive and Meguru wasn't Taka would be FUCKED UP.

Like, how they died in (our head) canon is basically: Taka and Meguru were on missions, they got herded together because one or both missions were actually traps, they got attacked, Meguru was killed, Taka got the mangekyou, and then Taka consciously chose to die while taking down as many of the people that killed Hako as he could rather than, say, using his new bullshit OP eyes to escape so he could survive. If he kills everyone at that battle he'll find the clan responsible and suicide attack their compound. Fuck responsibilities to the clan, fuck (now) being the only trained heir the Uchiha have, Taka isn't going to live without Hako.

So for Taka to survive... he could have just not been on that mission, or some other Uchiha could have arrived at exactly the right time to rescue him while being too late for Meguru. And then have to live with Taka hating them for it for the rest of his life. Taka proooobably wouldn't kill himself outright, but he'd be very reckless, and also the sort of depression that's all anger and lashing out. More so at other clans but the Uchiha aren't immune.

(Probably the someone who arrives has to be Tajima, because no one else has the authority to make Taka go home; anyone else he'd just take with him on his new avenge Meguru + suicide combo quest.)

Also Taka and Hako really are a team, so even without destroying Taka's mental health Taka is just way less effective and more militant as a leader on his own. Though he also would just be the heir at this point, not clan head yet.

Conversely if Taka died (definitely protecting Meguru) and Meguru survived Meguru would cope a little better initially, but then he'd be under even more pressure because he'd be expected to pick up all Taka's responsibilities as heir and become a better fighter so he can lead the clan in battle and keep up all his prior diplomacy and perfection. And without Taka he has literally no one that he's willing to confide anything in ever. So he'd take longer to break but he would eventually.

You can actually leave Izuna alive the whole time though! If Taka or Meguru was alive Madara would be the first pick for YS anyway, since he's both older and stronger than Izuna. The only reason he isn't YS in BSAU is because he's already the heir and thus unavailable.

Izuna, meanwhile, gets drafted into being the inferior replacement for whichever died of Taka and Meguru. He... might be able to convince the clan to stop thinking of him as a lesser Taka if Meguru lived because Izuna (once he grows up) is a stronger fighter, he's not in the exact same role, and nobody liked Taka. If Meguru died though Madara's the only Uchiha in their generation who's ever going to look at Izuna and not go "well he tries but he's not as pretty/graceful/diplomatic as Hako was :/" Sooooo that's going to Suck for him.

Of course once Madara is YS we have to figure out why he doesn't succeed in kidnapping (or killing) Tobirama because otherwise that's how we get gilded cage bad end AU. Probably a combination of Madara holding back (he's not a heretic until Izuna becomes YS, so if Madara does instead he still cares about the traditions at least a little) and Hashirama interfering.

(At least, gilded cage until Hashirama breaks in to rescue him. Several years of the Uchiha repeatedly kidnapping Tobirama and Tobirama breaking out or being rescued within a month every time is unreasonably funny to me. Still a bad end full of trauma for the characters because that probably means no end to the war, but hilarious.)

[gunterfan1992]

Episode Review: ‘Wizard City’ (Distant Lands, Ep. 4)

Airdate: September 2, 2021

Story by: Adam Muto, Jack Pendarvis, Kate Tsang, Hanna K. Nyström, & Charley Feldman

Storyboarded by: Maya Petersen, Hanna K. Nyström, Anna Syvertsson, & Aleks Sennwald, & Haewon Lee

Directed by: Miki Brewster & Jeff Liu (supervising), Sandra Lee (art)

An episode focusing on Peppermint Butler’s dark side is something that the fandom has craved ever since the little guy demanded Finn and Jake’s flesh in season two’s “Death in Bloom.” While installments like season five’s “The Suitor” and season six’s “Nemesis” did much to scratch that itch, the story of the Dark One remained mostly unknown…

And after “Wizard City,” it still remains largely unknown. But that’s OK, because instead of focusing on the character’s history, this special focuses on Peps’ quest to relearn magic at a magic school. Put most simply, this special is largely a fun excuse for the show to riff on Harry Potter and The Owl House-style “magic school hijinks,” and it mostly all works.

The special follows Peps quest to go to WizArts (a definite play on CalArts, the school that Pen Ward and Adam Muto, among many others, went to) so that he can relearn magic and once again become one of the greatest dark wizards of his time. Initially, Peps tries to make friends with cool kid Spader and his posse, but once they learn that Peps is not as talented at magic as they had initially thought, they kick him to the curb. It is at this point that Cadebra, Abracadaniel’s adorkable niece who is fascinated with stage magic, enters the picture. Cadebra tries everything in her power to befriend Peps, but Peps pushes back, since she’s not “cool.” It does not matter, though, because both Peps and Cadebra are sorted into the same “house”—the “Skink House—and are forced to work together.

While Peps and his cohort begin learning more and more complex magic, a secret cult of school professors, led by the otherwise caring Dr. Caledonius, are scheming to resurrect Coconteppi, a powerful dark wizard whose putrid heart has been discovered underneath the school excreting a very powerful ichor. The school cult kidnaps Spader and gives him some of the ichor to drink; they hope that because of his talent, he will be able to house the spirit of Coconteppi. This does not go as planned, and Spader is graphically killed (albeit off screen). (In a more humorous moment, Bufo, the scam wizard from season one’s “Wizard,” also ingests some of the ichor, believing himself powerful enough to handle it, but it kills him.)

Eventually Peps and Cadebra learn what is going on. Dr. Caledonius welcomes Peps, believing that he is strong enough to handle the ichor. When Cadebra’s life is put in danger, Peps reluctantly gives the putrid fluid a swig, which infuses him with the power of Coconteppi. Coconteppi-Peps then kills all the cult members before Cadebra manages to remove the ichor from Peps body. For uncovering a heinous plot, Peps is promoted to the highest house, “Salamander,” but he decides to remain a Skink and learn magic “the hard way” with Cadebra as his friend.

As I mentioned near the start of this review, “Wizard City” spends most of its time riffing on the “magic boarding school” trope, with much of the episode feeling like a light-hearted parody of Harry Potter: The characters, after all, are “sorted” into “houses,” they learn various types of magic from skilled “professors,” and they bunk in different parts of a large castle-like campus. Of course, Harry Potter didn’t invent the idea of a boarding school, but when setting your story in a school for magic, it is very hard not to lean at least somewhat into the Hogwarts relation. And this really is a double-edged sword, for while Harry Potter references can be fun here and there, they can also make the overall story feel like a fanfic parody. This special does a good job focusing more so on the characters rather than the setting, but I won’t lie, at times it did feel as if they show was really trying to make you realize it was making a Harry Potter joke.

Of all the characters introduced in the special, the breakout star is easily Cadebra, voiced by Chloe Coleman. Radiating a sort of Mabel Pines energy, Cadebra is the beam of optimism who shines brightly in an otherwise macabre special. There is something about her plucky personality and sense of wacky individualism that charms the viewer. I appreciate how the show compared and contrasted her with her uncle, the one and only Abracadaniel: like her uncle, Cadebra is a good person who wants to help others, but unlike Abracadaniel, she has a sense of courage and fortitude that results in her taking on a Coconteppi-possessed Peps at the episode’s climax. (Say what you will, Abracadaniel stans, but our favorite custodian would never have done that!) Thanks to her bravery and dedication to Peps, Cadebra is easily the heart of the special.

The episode throws an interesting little curveball into the mix by having the ‘ghost’ of Past Peppermint Butler constantly haunt Peps in the here-and-now. Past Peppermint, it seems, was so determined to become a great wizard, he cursed himself, so that if anything were to go awry, his Past self could materialize and set him straight. It’s confusing, but I do think that mixing the “overbearing parent” trope with a curse is a clever idea; it gives the whole special some dramatic heft. The whole setup is made even funnier by the special’s conclusion: After Future Peppermint Butler is ‘defeated’ and the day is saved, Peps reveals to Cadebra that he still wants to be a great and powerful dark wizard… but he wants to earn that power through hard work and determination. (Peppermint Butler might commune with demons, but he would never sell his soul to one for power; Glob helps those who help themselves, ya know?)

One of the special’s strongest points is its background art. Adventure Time always had some beautiful set pieces, and this special goes above and beyond to give WizArts an ancient sense of grandeur and mystery. Ghostshrimp, a freelance artist who was the show’s lead background designer during seasons 1-4, return for this special as a “visual developer”—basically, he mocked up a bunch of rough designs for the locales, and then the episode’s background artists worked up the final pieces in his style. On his podcast, Ghostshrimp mentioned how hectic he found Adventure Time to be, because he was used to taking his time on pieces. As such, the decision to bring him on for just development was smart, as it allowed him to still come up with iconic background designs while also playing fast and loose with everything. Hopefully the show will continue this approach with the Fionna and Cake miniseries that is coming up. After all, Ghosthsrimp’s style is the look of Adventure Time.

Another strong point for the episode is its voice acting. For one thing, you have your regulars like Tom Kenny and Dana Snyder, and Duncan Trussell, who all give a solid performance. But to voice many of the special’s new characters, the show brought on a bevy of fun actors: Saturday Night Live’s Bill Hader, for instance, is now voicing Bufo, and he does a solid job hamming up his role as the old fogey. And then there’s Toks Olagundoye, whose British accent gives Dr. Caledonius a sense of knowledge and expertise. To my delight and surprise, SungWon Cho, an internet personality and voice actor perhaps better known as ProZD, was tapped to voice Brain Wizard, and he does an excellent job. And finally, Anthony Stewart Head, a very talented actor who I know best as Giles from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, voices Con Wizard, and is even given a fun little ditty to sing. I can safely say that the voice acting in this special is likely the best of the bunch, and it’s obvious that the actors were all having a great time playing their parts.

What drags the whole thing down, in my opinion is the excessive murder. (I joked on Twitter that during the climax of “Wizard City,” it felt like I was watching an Adventure Time-ified version of Invincible!) Infused with the power of Coconteppi, Peps goes on a brutal killing spree, boiling Potable Wizard into steam, zapping Dimension Wizard into another plane of existence, smashing Berdzerd, and—perhaps most graphically—excerebrates (had to look that word up!) Brain Wiz. On Twitter, @sometipsygnostalgic​ argued that while, yes, the scene is startling, it does wonders to transmute “a poor Summer Camp Island knockoff [into] Adventure Time chaos.” The more I think about it, the more I think that’s a fair point; after all, this is hardly the first dark thing that has happened in Adventure Time. But the part that I cannot really stomach is the fact that Spader was murdered for no real reason, and the special ends without anyone really expressing their horror at the situation. Sure, Spader was a schoolyard bully, but he was also a child. And killing a child—either for the drama or the lulz—feels decidedly out of place in an Adventure Time episode. It’s hard to express, but it just felt unnecessarily nihilistic and mean-spirited.

All things considered, I think this was a fun episode, but it was somewhat underwhelming for a ‘finale.’ Much of this is because it had to air after the perfection that was the back-to-back “Obsidian”/”Together Again” wombo combo. But I can’t help but feel like this special just felt a little... off. A little too meanspirited, and it leaned a bit too much on standard tropes. Still, it was a fun spin, and I know that I’ll rewatch it.

Mushroom War Evidence: As Peps rides the bus to school, he passes a bunch of abandoned houses, some of which are buried in the ground. There is an unexploded bomb above the fossilized elephant in the school. Cadebra has a dream that takes place in the ruins of a city.

Final Grade: B+