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galesdevoteewife · 1 year ago

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Let’s talk about Mystra

Hello everyone, I wanted to talk about Mystra👋🔮

As much of a crazy lover as I am for my fictional wizard, the more lore research I do, the more I feel like Mystra deserves some love too. This goddess lives a cursed life. I know I know she asked Gale to kill himself, but bear with me; here are my arguments:

A bit history of Mystra

There’re 3 Mystra: Mystryl -> Mystra (Elminster’s Mystra) -> Mystra (Midnight)

In short, Mystryl is the fourth deity in the universe, composed of Shar & Selûne’s essence. She is one of the primal existences while the universe is still new and trying to settle down, a significant component of the universe itself. While Mystryl’s spirit was born naturally, Mystra and Midnight were both once mortal and raised by AO to inherit Mystryl’s power.

Is Mystra bad?

Midnight, “Mystra 3rd ” is who we met in BG3. She was a human magic user born in 1332 DR. Midnight was aiding Mystra 2nd at the time of troubles. She’s a kind-hearted and humble woman who ascended in 1358 DR. She didn’t want godhood at all; she only did it to counter Cyric, the bad guy.

From comic book Avatar (1991)

For decades, she even tried to allow only the good use of magic, later learning her duty and place as the guardian of balance and impartial arbiter of the Weave; no matter how Midnight feels or hopes things could have been. She was only 26 when she had to wave goodbye to everyone she knew, shouldering the 24/7 goddess duty. It’s true that she will inherit other Mystra’s memory, but personality-wise she is only 160 years old; even Halsin is older than her. (Not to mention she spent 94 years in dormant)

Note[1]: Later on all the Mystra mentioned I will be talking about Midnight

Note[2]: Dec17/2023 I will come back and edit this section; it's misleading according to Ed Greenwood's tweet. The current Mystra is likely a blend of all three Mystras with an unspecified proportion. I will provide details on the stories and deeds of the other Mystras.

Being Mystra sucks. Truly.

Imagine your body is just a thing lying on the street; anyone can command you to dance for them so long as they know the right spell. While you CAN reject it, you are NOT ALLOWED to.

What’s worse is that too many mortals and too many gods want the Weave, but it’s not something that she can “give”. Like no one can give away their body to someone else. She IS the Weave; I think of it as the Weave being the cells that compose her. Whoever wants to take it away will have to separate her mind and “body” by:

killing her and inherit the Weave, where all the attempters failed step 2, then only resulted in a broken/Weaveless crisis

or completely manipulating her mind, which is the option no one ever considers; they all go straight to killing her

Whenever DnD wants to change the rules, they kill Mystra.

Shar wants the Weave, Bane wants it, countless mortals want it too. According to the conversation between Gale and Lorroakan, it’s almost a common conversation trying to dethrone the goddess and take the power for themselves.

And no one is there to protect Mystra; she fights alone. Although she has a good relationship with gods like Selûne or Azuth, nobody lent a hand when she was murdered. She relies on her chosens and her own power.

On top of defending herself, aka protecting the Weave, another important duty is to maintain the Weave. Whenever a spell is cast, it damages the Weave, and she is the one to patch the holes. The more powerful the spell is, the bigger damage it will cause. That’s why her dogma includes “Use the Art deftly and efficiently, not carelessly and recklessly.” She also needs to keep an eye out for possible upcoming threats. A tough and tedious job, and no holidays for the goddess.

It might sound a bit twisted, but she is taking care of the world by taking care of herself. Anything happening to her means catastrophe for the world. (e.g., Spellplague, where magic caused mutations to the users, see wiki here)

But she asked Gale to explode himself!

Yes, and she also promised Elysium once he’s dead. There is actually a thorough afterlife setting in the Forgotten Realms DnD setting. In short, a spirit doesn’t perish when a mortal dies; it would be drawn to the Fugue Plane and wait for the god they prayed to in life to send a servant to take them to their heaven.

It’s a terrible fate for the faithless or false spirits, those who either defy their gods or never choose one. They are forever punished in this grim plane and even become part of the Wall of the Faithless.

Fugue Plane and Wall of the Faithless: those are spirits piling up into a wall

In Mystra’s case, her heaven is Elysium, judging by the name, you can already tell it’s likely a heavenly place. Significantly better than the Fugue Plane, that’s for sure.

It’s a fixed truth that all will die someday, and Gale’s afterlife options are:

Defy Mystra: When he dies, he will be forever punished as a false in the Fugue Plane. Not to mention Kelemvor, Lord of the Dead, is also Midnight Mystra’s former(?) lover, and he detests cowardice.

Defy Mystra and try to gain favor from another god: I think this will mean changing class and profession for him, as a wizard he is tied to Mystra after all.

Serve Mystra and be taken to Elysium: And who knows, since he is chosen of Mystra, she might even revive him someday. Mystra 2nd did that for her other chosen before. Note: Interesting reading about how her chosen become weaveghost after death, see wiki here.

Obtain godhood: When the god Gale dies, he will go through a completely different process.

An interesting thought here is whether Gale knows about all these. It will largely define what his true colors are. It wouldn’t make sense if he is completely ignorant of afterlife logic, though. His background is an experienced wizard (probably studied some necromancy), goddess ex, and apparently visited heavens before.

Is Mystra power-thirsty?

I wouldn’t say so. She is already OP, and AO asked her to nerf herself by sharing and storing power in her chosens. Even if she were to gain more power, she is not allowed to keep it.

She wants the Shadow Weave

She sees Shar’s secret creation, the Shadow Weave, as a threat and aims to eventually subsume it into her portfolio, even if that means sacrificing her last remaining goodness and humanity.

From the DnD book “Faith & Pantheons”

We see how Shar is using her Shadow Weave in the cursed land, and it's safe to say it's not an ideal living environment for most beings. Shar has been very keen to kill Mystra and take over her power; I don’t think the world would be a better place in her hands than in Mystra’s.

She wants the Karsite Weave

The same logic could apply to the Karsite Weave. While we can argue whether Gale has a good heart and can be trusted with godlike power, he did show some concerning traits, did he not? Maybe in the future, when he is wiser and calmer, that's how I read Mystra’s line when she tells him to be patient.

Why doesn’t she just cure him since she can?

This is 100% headcanon. I think Mystra as a goddess is able to foresee some future. In Elminster’s story series, Mystra 2nd often asked him to do things that seemed irrelevant but were actually needed in the future. In Gale’s case, could it be that’s what Midnight meant to do? To mentor and humble him? Even prepare him to go through this journey? (Hardly imagine the prime archmage Gale joining our little merry band, and Elminster did say, “Mystra was anything but idle- she chose you as her champion.” What could that means?)

Gale has a curve where he goes from being “irked by untalented apprentices” to “enjoying teaching a lot” if not using the crown. He could have been relying on magic too much, and his ego or pursuit of power had led him astray from his good nature. If you look from this perspective, offering to use the orb before the final battle could be him still having doubts about the team's ability and having more faith in magic aka his own power (mixed with his deep love for everyone that he'd rather die than see their lives wasted, of course).

She is a terrible lover, and she doesn't care about Gale at all

According to patch 5, how time feels in the outer plane is very different from the material plane. God Gale came back in 6 months, and he seems not aware that it has been months. With this logic and putting myself in Mystra's shoes, she got mad because Gale recklessly activated a magical nuclear bomb and ignored him for a couple of weeks.(~1 year in the mortal world) When they meet again, this grumpy jumpy bean is thinking of the possibility of killing her for her powers already. Excuse me???

I will say there could be more considerate ways to handle this subject other than asking him to bomb himself. This long-distance cross-race romance was very problematic, but I will reserve my opinion on how much love she holds for Gale. Probably not seeing him as an equal partner, of course, but drawing the conclusion that she doesn't care a tad about his well-being might be too hasty, in my opinion.

A screenshot of Mystra telling Gale that she wasn't the one who took his gifts away from him. That's not an expression of 0 sympathy to me. I've never seen her make this face except for this line.

*UPDATE on Dec 11/2023* Add a tweet from Ed Greenwood, the creator of the Forgotten Realms. Ref: X

*UPDATE on Jan 11/2024* • Add a screenshots during Gale's meeting with her • Add a note on DnD weaveghost setting *UPDATE on Apr 15/2024* • An great analysis of Gale & Mystra's relationship and Mystra's behavior logic

-DISCLAIMER- I am very new to the DnD world, but these are what I dug up and puzzled together. I could be very, very wrong, but please be kind; I did all this out of love for my wizard 💜💜💜

#baldur's gate 3 #gale of waterdeep #gale dekarios #bg3 #bg3 spoilers #dnd #bg3 mystra #dnd note

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hyperpotamianarch · 3 months ago

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Well, I can hardly believe I chose this to be my fourth original post, but meh, who cares. Anyway, random note about Howell Jenkins!

Firstly, I'm talking about book Howl, which is why I spelled it Howell - this is his original name, he changed it in Ingary to sound more impressive. He's actually from Wales, which honestly means little to me as someone who never set foot in Britain, but I think I get the general gist of it.

Many things can be said of Howl. He's not really a noble and gentle, if slightly narcissistic, person as you might think after watching the movie. He's mostly a selfish coward, likes to woo ladies but seemingly afraid of commitment, is very bad with money, and... Umm... Yeah, there are other posts that do a better job than I am in characterizing Howl. That's not what I'm here to talk about. Suffice it to say that he's somehow likable in spite of all these flaws.

What I am here to talk about, however, is two common misconceptions about Howl that are somewhat related to the flaws listed above: one is that Howl is running away from student debt and didn't finish his doctorate, and the other is that he invented the titular Moving Castle to evade taxes. While those actions are indeed in character for Howl, they are both contradicted by the book itself (to a degree).

To start with the first one: Howell only talks about his thesis once in the book - when explaining to miss Angorian, an English teacher, why he has a magic spell. Book readers likely know who I'm talking about, and for non book readers, I'm afraid I'll leave the rest of the context to your imagination. Either way, Howell tells miss Angorian that she may have heard that he wrote his doctoral thesis on charms and spells. Notice, "wrote". As in past tense.

To be fair, that doesn't necessarily mean he finished his doctorate. As a matter of fact, it could be a rumor he started in order to explain away why he had spell books. It certainly won't be the first rumor Howl started for his own convenience. But if it tells us anything about him having a doctorate, it tells us he finished it. I don't know much about student loans in UK during the 80's, so that isn't a point I can say anything about, but I am given to understand it was less of a problem.

So, did Howl run away from his doctorate to the magical land if Ingary? No, he didn't. He actually kind of fulfilled every nerd's dream of both doing what he likes most and using it to write his doctoral thesis, killing two birds with one stone. To be honest, what I still don't get is why he kept contact with his old world. I mean, Suliman seems to have cut ties - we never hear of him going back. But Howl, even if we didn't see him use the black door as much at first, seems to keep some contact with his sister and her family, keep a car etc. He might only visit rarely, but he still does.

Anyway, for the second misconception I decided to bring in the big guns: a direct book quote about why the moving castle. Not all quotes on the topic, though, because I'm lazy. Anyway, look here:

This is in chapter four of HMC. It's revealed later in the book that the "someone very powerful" is actually the Witch of the Waste. So, the Moving Castle is there to show everyone what a Horrible and Powerful Wizard Howl is. Also, to avoid attention from the Witch of the Waste.

Sophie herself, in the next paragraph, questions the usefulness of such a tactic. I think it might actually be an explanation of why Howl decided the Castle had to be moving - maybe it's harder to magically detect that way, I don't know. Either way, it's not to avoid taxes - especially considering the fact Howl has an address in Kingsbury, the capital of Ingary, and that this address is known to the local authorities.

I would also like to prematurely dispell an almost plausible headcanon: Sophie's hat-sewing causes so much of the plot, after all. So you might be tempted, when reading that she told a hat that someone should set Howl and the Witch up together, to think that she's responsible for that as well. However, considering the quote presented above, it appears that Howl and the Witch dated before Howl created the Moving Castle, which was the inciting incident for Sophie hearing about him. Thus, Sophie is not guilty whatsoever of getting Howl and the Witch together - just of being oddly on point.

Thank you for reading, and have a good day!

#howl's moving castle #hmc book #diana wynne jones #howell jenkins #howl pendragon #Horrible Howl #The moving castle #dwj #hmc

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vodika-vibes · 1 year ago

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The Prince's Wizard

Summary: You're a wizard apprentice who's been best friends with Prince Wolffe since childhood. While on doing chores outside the Palace walls, your day goes bad.

Pairing: Prince!Wolffe x Wizard!Reader

Word Count: 4371

Warnings: Violence, angst, but has a happy ending

A/N: So I had an idea and it got away from me.

Mando'a Used: riye - Favor, Benefit, good turn (used in this scenario as a Nickname implying the reader is responsible for any good luck).

An'ee - shortened form of An'edee - a Nickname for someone rough and fight-y. Like calling someone a nerd as a joke.

Divider by saradika

There are two types of people who end up in towers: Wizards and Princesses. Wizards get shoved up into towers to protect everyone else from their magic, and Princesses get shoved into towers to protect them from the world around them.

You are a wizard apprentice. It’s a great job, good pay, great benefits, plus you get all of the fancy robes that you want. The downside is that, as an apprentice, you don’t really get to do anything fun.

In fact, the majority of your duties involve dragging yourself down the million and a half staircases to the throne room, so the Queen can sniff at you and tell you that her magic mirror stopped working.

And you’re getting tired of it.

“Master,” you’re pouting and you know you’re pouting but you can’t bring yourself to care, “Master, when can I start doing important things?” You ask, as you sit on your Master’s footstool and look up at him pleadingly.

Your Master flips a page in the massive tome that he’s hiding behind. “When you get more experience, my very young apprentice.”

“Okay, but like, how am I supposed to get experience if you don’t let me have the option to get more experience?” You ask as you place your hands on top of the book and push it down so you’re looking in his eyes.

He smiles at you, “Patience, apprentice. Do not be in such a rush to grow up.”

Your jaw drops, “I’m 20!”

“Still a baby.” His smile broadens, “Now, go practice your protective sigils, perhaps out in the garden, it is a beautiful day.”

You pout at him even more, but your Master is long immune to your sad Tooka eyes. Instead he just flicks his fingers at you, and lifts you away from his book, and over to the door. Another flick of his fingers, and your cloak is draped over your shoulders, and your massive hat is placed on your head.

“You said it was a nice day!” You cry, indignant, as he dresses you as though it’s snowing outside. “And I hate this hat! No one wears pointed hats anymore!”

“Now you’re just complaining to complain, apprentice.” Your Master says with a sigh as he flicks his hand one more time, and your leather satchel drapes itself over your shoulder, and the bag itself gets filled with empty pouches and bottles, “Please gather some more herbs while you’re out, apprentice. We can always use more.”

A look of offense crosses your face, “Maste-” He waves his hand one more time, and the door opens, and you find yourself gently, and lovingly, set on the landing with the door to the study shut firmly behind you.

You spin on your heel, and reach for the handle of the door, only for the handle to vanish. A note appears on the door, ‘Do Not Return Until The Moon Is In The Sky. Hugs And Kisses. Master.’

You glare at the note, “Capitalizing every letter is just excessive, Master! And saying ‘hugs and kisses’ doesn’t make you exiling me for the day any better!”

The only response you get is the sound of loud classical music from behind the door.

You scowl even harder at the door, and then reach up and tug your hat off of your head. A touch of magic, and a twist of will, and your hat changes into something a little more your style. And then you tug your cloak off, and lazily drape it over your satchel.

And then you start the long trek down the tower that you call home.

By the time you reach the bottom of the tower, you’re in a slightly better mood. Going and gathering herbs is not your favorite chore, but it’s better than playing magic tech support for her Majesty.

You turn to the gardens as soon as you’re on solid ground, mentally mapping out the path you need to take to gather the most herbs in as quickly as possible. Which means going through the royal garden to get to the forest, and then leaving the well traveled path, to veer to the west, and then heading north to get to the lake-

You’re so distracted with mentally mapping out your route, that you don’t notice that you’ve been joined by someone until he lightly taps your shoulder, “Lost in thought, riye?”

You jump, protective magic forming on your fingers, until you recognize the nickname. There’s only one person who calls you riye. You allow the spell to fade, and you round on the taller man, your hands immediately going to your hips.

“You can’t do that! I could have blasted you!” You say sharply, glaring up into the mismatched eyes of Prince Wolffe, your best friend of over ten years now.

He smirks at you, “You would never, riye. You have better trigger discipline than that.”

He’s not wrong, and you kind of hate him for it, “Aren’t you supposed to be in training?” You ask instead, as you take in the armor and the blade hanging at his hip.

“I’m done for the day,” Wolffe’s smile becomes slightly smug, “General Koon got tired of me beating all of my brothers.”

“Hm…all of them?” You ask with an arched brow.

He scowls at you, “Cody got in one lucky hit, an’ee,” He grumbles, “I beat everyone else.”

“Which implies that Prince Cody beat you,” You tease lightly, as you step around him, not at all surprised when he falls into step with you.

Wolffe mutters something under his breath that you don’t know enough Mando’a to catch, and then he switches back to basic and shoots you a glare, “You do realize that my brother doesn’t know you exist right? So your crush on him is useless.” He snips.

“Okay, so first of all, I don’t have a crush on your brother.” You reply as you push open the gate to the garden, “And second of all, even if I did have a crush on him, that’s none of your business. And third of all, what are you, jealous?”

Wolffe follows you into the garden, “You’re my best friend,” He says, his voice filled with offense, “I have a right to know who you have your eye on!” He very pointedly doesn’t answer the question you shot at him.

“You really don’t.” You counter, “And it’s not like you ever talk about who you have a thing for.”

You glance at him long enough to see his ears start to turn slightly red, “Yeah, well…where are you going?” He asks, changing the subject abruptly. And you smile, your friend is about as subtle as a brick to the head.

“My master wants me to gather some herbs in the forest. So that’s where I’m going.”

He pauses, “Alone?”

“Well, yeah. I generally go into the forest alone.” You counter snarkily.

“No. You can’t.” Wolffe says with a frown, “Not now.”

You stop and turn to focus your gaze on him, he looks serious, “I have to. We need the herbs.”

“It’s not safe.”

“You know, I actually am able to protect myself, Wolffe. And I don’t apprec-”

“Seven bodies have been found in the forest in the last month,” Wolffe interrupts, “All young, all female. You cannot go into the forest alone. I won’t allow it.”

You didn’t know that. You, and your Master, do not often focus your attention towards mortal threats to the realm, trusting the Guards, and the royal family, to deal with them. “Well. That’s unfortunate, but I still need to go into the forest.” You answer calmly.

Wolffe releases a string of curses, “I’m trying to keep you safe, riye!”

“I’m aware of that.” You answer, calm in the face of Wolffe’s ire, aware that he’s not actually mad at you, “But I can’t not take care of my responsibilities.” You tilt your head slightly, “The way I see it, I can either go on my own, or you can come with me to keep me safe.”

He pauses and meets your gaze steadily, “You’re willing to accept a bodyguard?”

“Of course. I don’t have a death wish, Wolffe.” You say dryly.

Tension drains out of his shoulders, “That works. You get what you need, and I don’t have to worry about you getting murdered.”

You smile at him agreeably, and lead him through the garden, until you reach the very back corner. There’s a massive iron door, with no lock or handles. This door can only be opened with the touch of the Court Wizard, or his apprentice.

So, with a touch of magic, you activate the runes that confirm your identity, and then the runes that unlock the door, and it slides open with the ease of a much lighter door.

“I never get tired of seeing that,” Wolffe says quietly as he follows you out the door, and watches you seal it shut again.

“What? The door opening?” You ask teasingly.

“Watching you use magic,” Wolffe clarifies, “It’s just…” He trails off for a moment, his gaze locked on your face, “beautiful.”

You can feel your face grow warm, and you laugh nervously, “Well…thank you.”

He flashes a small smile at you, and then he breaks his gaze and looks around. The forest is dim, even though it’s the middle of the day, but it’s still bright enough to see. “You normally collect herbs near the lake, right?”

“Yeah, that’s the end goal, but I’m not heading directly there,” You explain, “It’s the right time of year for snakes to shed skin, so I need to gather some of that too.”

Wolffe glances at you, “You don’t use snake skin in any potions, do you?”

You just shoot him an amused look, “That’s for me to know, my Prince.”

He makes a disgusted face, “That’s a yes, then.” He shakes his head, trying to shake off the disgust, “Lead the way, riye.”

It takes almost two hours to slowly make your way to the lake, and Wolffe is an excellent partner. Willing to hold the bags, and bottles, and you gather the ingredients you need.

He’s alert, but the longer you’re in the forest, the longer you spend without seeing anyone, or anything that might harm you, the more relaxed he becomes.

On the contrary, the closer to the lake you get, the more anxious you become. It feels wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

And as the pair of you come to stand on the edge of the lake, it takes everything in you to not grab Wolffe, teleport the both of you back to your Master’s Tower, and then cling to him sobbing.

“Wolffe,” Your voice sounds tight, even to your own ears, and his gaze snaps to you, and he’s immediately on high alert.

“What’s wrong, riye?” He moves closer to you, and alarm crosses his face when you reach out and wrap both of your shaking hands around his arm. He turns and presses his free hand against your shoulder blades, drawing you closer and trying to make you feel some comfort, “Come on, what’s wrong?”

“The bodies were found here, weren’t they?” You ask, your voice small.

“Yes, how-”

“They died here, and they died in pain, and it took them days to die.” You whisper, your grip on his arm tightening.

“Riye, how do you know that?”

“I can feel it. It feels…” You shudder and press yourself closer to him, as though you’re trying to press yourself into his armor, so it can protect both of you, “It’s wrong, Wolffe. It’s-”

“Okay. Okay, then we need to go.”

And then you stop. Stop shaking, stop moving, and even stop breathing. “Wolffe,” Your voice is quiet, barely a whisper, “We’re not alone.”

He swears and shoves you behind him, hard, his hands moving to his blade, “Where?”

You’re quiet for a moment. It’s too much, there’s too much malice. You can’t-

You curl your hands against your chest, and the last thing you remember is flinging out two spells. One, a protective barrier to wrap around yourself and Wolffe, and the second, a distress beacon to your Master.

You hear the sound of metal against metal, and Wolffe calling your name, and then the world goes dark.

**********

It’s much later when you wake.

Your satchel, cloak and hat are missing, as are your boots and stockings. You’re clad in the thin robes that mark you as an apprentice, and nothing else. Your legs are chained to the wall, and you have heavy, tight, manacles around your wrists.

A simple examination tells you that the manacles around your wrists are designed less to keep you prisoner, and more to prevent you from reaching out to your magic.

You look around the bare cell that you’ve been thrown in. There’s a stack of straw in the corner, and you can hear rats squeaking high above you. There are no windows, save for the small window in the wooden door.

You’re completely alone, and you can’t help but hope that your spell gave Wolffe enough time to escape.

You hear heavy footfalls from the hallway, and the cell door opens silently. You look up at the man standing in the doorway, he’s tall and thin, and has the terrifying golden eyes of a person who’s fallen into the Dark.

“You’re awake.” He speaks in a low growl, as though your very presence enrages him to the point of being inarticulate. He crosses the small cell in two long strides, and he grabs your arm, roughly dragging you to your feet, pulling a pained noise from your lips.

He then kneels at your feet, unhooking the chain from the wall, and chaining your two bare feet together. And then he stands to his full height, towering over you, and he grabs your arm again, roughly dragging you out of the cell and down identical stone halls.

He brings you towards a magic lift, and you’re finally able to see more of his face than just his eyes. And you realize that you recognize him.

Several years ago, the Prince Consort of Naboo vanished. A massive search party, spanning several nations, searched for him for months, but with no evidence of foul play, and no evidence as to where he was, the only assumption people could make was that he ran away from his wife and his people.

Anakin Skywalker-Amidala is one of the most powerful wizards of his lineage. The knowledge that he left his life just to fall-

Well, it’s heartbreaking.

The lift finally comes to a stop and you’re dragged down a much more opulent hallway, and then into a massive room. At the side of the room, stripped of all his clothing save the thin trousers he wears under his armor, and covered in his own blood, is Wolffe.

He lifts his head and his gaze meets yours, and for a moment a look of helpless fury crosses his face.

The man who had once been Anakin Skywalker releases you, and you immediately stumble over to Wolffe, falling to your knees next to him. You gently cup his face, uncaring of the blood covering him, “Oh. Oh, Wolffe,” You whisper.

He moves and presses his face against your neck. His breath is warm and slightly shaky, “Are you okay, riye?”

“Me? You’re so badly hurt-” There are tears in your eyes as you card your fingers gently through his hair, “If I wasn’t wearing these manacles I could heal you…”

“I’ve had worse injuries, believe it or not,” He tries to joke as he pulls back and looks you in the eye, but it falls flat as the tears in your eyes start to fall. “Please don’t cry, cyar’ika. I’ll be okay.” He whispers as he reaches up and brushes the tear off your cheek.

“I’m sorry, I should have listened to you-”

“It’s not your fault.” His gaze drifts to your bare feet and your chained legs, “Cyare, you need to run. As soon as you can.”

You stare at him in horror, “No. No, Wolffe, I can’t leave you-”

“He’s going to kill you. I can’t…don’t make me watch him kill you. Please, cyare.”

A broken sob escapes your lips, and you press your forehead against his, “But he’ll kill you.”

“That’s okay. That’s okay so long as you survive. Promise me, riye. Promise me you’ll run as soon as you’re able.” Wolffe hisses, his eyes sharp.

“I…I promise,” You sob out, and then you let out a cry as you’re ripped from Wolffe’s tight grip.

“The Master wants to see you,” Anakin says, his golden eyes flickering from the irate Wolffe and then over to you, and then back again. He jerks you further away from Wolffe, and drags you through a small door that you didn’t notice.

The door slams behind you, and you’re thrown to the ground before a man that you recognize, the former Court Wizard of Naboo, Sheev Palpatine. He smiles at you, and you get chills. “Never, in my wildest dreams, did I think that I would be able to get my hands on a young apprentice for my plans.” He says in a smooth voice that reminds you of oil or grease.

“My Master-”

“Doesn’t know where you are.” Palpatine interrupts with a cruel smile, “And by the time he realizes that you’re missing, it’ll be too late. You’ll be dead, and the Prince will be my personal bodyguard. Or perhaps I’ll give him to Vader as his personal punching bag.”

Anakin’s, or Vader’s, face twitches. And unless you’re mistaken, it’s a look of disgust on his face, but it quickly clears, “As you say, Master.” He says with a perfect bow.

“Hm. Leave the girl with me, Lord Vader. You’re dismissed.” Palpatine says as he turns to look out the massive window.

Vader bows deeply, and you start when you see vicious looking magic swirl around his fingers, and the manacles around your legs shatter, and then the manacles around your wrists fall to the floor.

You flicker wide, terrified, eyes up to the older man who you once called friend. He places a hand on your shoulder, his voice pitched low enough so that only you can hear him, “Fight well, little sister.”

And then he’s gone.

And you…you remain still for as long as it takes for you to take a breath, and then you move, offensive magic curling around your hands, and protective magic sliding across your skin like it’s always been there.

Your mind whirls with spells and incantations. With runes and sigils, and while you don’t have a ghost of a chance against Palpatine, you are able to push him into shattering the sealed door behind you.

As soon as you see a way out, you take it. You fling one last spell at the potions table, and while Palpatine is distracted with keeping his potions from exploding, you turn on your heel and run. You hop over the shattered door, deftly skipping over the everburning black flames that Palpatine used to destroy the door, and run down the hall to the large lounge that Wolffe was in.

You slide across the floor on your knees, and you immediately press your hands against his cheeks and press your forehead against his.

Your magic slides across your body, and across to him as you offer him the same protection that you wrapped yourself in. And then you squeeze your eyes shut and you coil your magic tightly around the both of you, and you push.

You push, and push, and push, until the dark magic holding you and Wolffe here cracks, and then shatters, and you take the chance. The teleportation spell requires ten words, Palpatine is coming closer and closer, you have time enough for four.

You do the fastest math you’ve ever done in your life, and then speak the four words that, hopefully, will bring you and Wolffe to safety. The magic twists and burns around you, and you instinctively curl your magic tighter around Wolffe. He will suffer no ill effects from your spell, you won’t allow it.

Magic rips around you, and through you, and it hurts. It hurts more than anything you’ve ever felt before, but you keep going. You keep pushing. And you keep shielding.

And then you drop out of the teleportation spell. You land hard on the ground, and you hear Wolffe groan painfully from your side. You roll, painfully to your side, and wrap both your hands around one of Wolffe’s and you shove as much healing magic into him as you can.

And then you collapse.

*******

This time, when you wake up, it’s in a soft bed, and you’re covered in a shroud of golden healing magic.

��Ah, awake at last,” You turn your head and it takes you a moment to recognize the man sitting next to your bed; Obi-Wan Kenobi, the official court wizard of Naboo. “You worried us, dear one. You overused your magic to a worrying degree.”

“Didn’t have a choice,” You reply, your voice hoarse, “Prince Wolffe-?”

“Alive, well, and unharmed.” Obi-Wan reassured, “You used the very last of your magic to heal all of his wounds. Which was very, very dangerous based on your wounds.”

You shake your head slowly, “What was my price, Master?” You ask, “I cut six words out of the teleportation spell, which price did I pay?”

Obi-Wan is quiet for a moment, and then he leans in and takes your hand, “You lost your left arm, dear one. I’m so sorry.”

You close your eyes, and release a shaky breath, “It’s…it’s okay. I knew that I was going to have to pay a price.”

“Queen Amidala has already ordered you fit for a prosthetic. You’re not going to be able to use magic for at least a month while you recover. That means taking a carriage back to Mandalore.”

You nod your understanding, and slowly sit up, “Does the Queen need to hear what happened?”

“Prince Wolffe gave her his report,” Obi-Wan pauses and ducks his head, “Though he couldn’t tell us what happened when you were alone with Palpatine. How did your manacles come off?”

“Palpatine’s apprentice removed them. He…” You hesitate, “Master Kenobi, the apprentice was Anakin, though he goes by Vader now.”

Obi-Wan bows his head, and is quiet for a long time, and when he looks up he has tears in his eyes, “Thank you, little one. That…that brings me great relief, that perhaps some part of Anakin remains inside Vader.”

“...he called me Little Sister.” You murmur.

Obi-Wan smiles and lightly places his hand on your shoulder, “He was always fond of you.” He takes a deep breath, “Now, you are well enough to leave the infirmary. My apprentice, Ahsoka, is out in the hall, she’ll help you get dressed.”

“Thank you Master.” He smiles at you and leaves the room. Just as you swing your legs over the side of the bed, Ahsoka walks over to help you.

She’s a cheerful girl, bright and bubbly, and she’s more than happy to chatter aimlessly about her studies and how much she loves Naboo. And she’s even more happy to escort you to the training grounds, where Wolffe has been spending his time, before she leaves you to your own devices.

You sit on one of the benches and just watch Wolffe for a moment. His armor and sword have been replaced with Nubian variants, both of which seem more sleek than the bulky armor that Mandalore prefers.

He finishes his set, and turns to restart, only to falter when he sees you. He hesitates for a moment, his gaze lingering on your missing arm, and then he sheaths his sword and hopes over the fence that marks the edge of the training ground.

“You’re awake,” Wolffe says as you stand when he approaches.

“Yeah, a little bit ago. Master Kenobi said I was free to leave the infirmary, as I’m no longer in any danger.” Now that he’s standing closer to you, you can tell that his gaze is locked on the place where your arm used to lay.

“Are you okay, riye?” He asks his fists clenching and unclenching at his side.

“I will be. I expended a lot of energy to get us safe.” You take a step closer and reach up to lightly touch his cheek, “Are you?”

He sighs low in his throat and leans his head into your touch, “You even managed to heal the bruises I had from training.” Wolffe replies lightly, and then his hands come up and cup your face and he bumps his forehead against your own. “Don’t you ever do anything like that again.”

You shake your head, “I had to get you out, Wolffe. I had to. Even if it meant losing an arm.”

“I’m not worth that.”

“You are to me,” You reply, “I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”

He lets out a short laugh, “Please don’t. You don’t have that many more limbs to lose.”

You smile at him, and gently stroke his cheek with your thumb, “When we were…there,” You say quietly, “You called me cyare, Wolffe.”

For a moment, you worry that he’s going to deny it, but instead he just closes his eyes, and nods, “I did.”

“I wouldn’t mind if you stuck to calling me that,” You whisper to him.

His eyes snap open, and he scans your face, as though he’s looking for any sign that you might be joking. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Alright, cyare.” He lightly strokes your cheeks, “Does this mean that I can finally kiss you rather than just fantasizing about it?”

You blush, but you’re grinning at him, “I won’t complain if you want to kiss me.”

He hums thoughtfully, and then slowly tilts your head back to ghost his lips against yours. It was a soft, tender, and sweet kiss. The kiss of someone who thought he would never get the chance. And, well, if you moaned into the kiss, causing him to deepen it, it’s not like either of you had an audience anyway.

#star wars #tcw #star wars au #Commander Wolffe x Reader #wolffe x reader #x reader fanfiction #star wars fanfiction

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allyallyorange · 5 months ago

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- besides the show, what other media has inspired you in the au?

- who has the angstiest backstory?

- who’s design was the easiest?

- what are your thoughts on rice based on your AU?

- can we have some random fun facts about the teezers pls 🙏

- was woosan mad about Mingi burning their treehouse down?

-other than AT itself, which I think really did inspire almost everything, plus the Fionna and Cake miniseries was also a huge inspiration for a bunch of ideas. Howl’s Moving Castle was an inspiration a little bit for Seonghwa (catching a falling star), for Mingi losing an arm Fullmetal Alchemist: brotherhood is sort of inspiring me for the robotic arm I’m planning for him..

-I think angstiest backstory is probably Mingi cus he had to deal with the trauma of accidentally wiping out not only huge amounts of the environment but also unintentionally causing a ton of death. Jongho’s backstory is also angsty cus he dealt with so much loss as a child and no one believes him when his cousin disappears through a portal cus in their world that’s not really possible. Everyone thinks he’s crazy and he was only a kid so definitely a hard time for him.

-yeosang and seonghwa were the first ones I drew for the AU and I think I had a clear vision for both of them (thank you Halazia MV) so they were probably the easiest!

-not sure what this means but Uhm I love rice? Like the food rice?

-fun facts!

SH: has an extensive record collection. Despite having a Demon Prince poster in his house for hundreds of years he hadn’t listened to any of Joong’s songs until they meet again.

HJ: aside from Mingi who is like his younger brother, Joong’s favourite is Wooyoung. Wooyoung spends a ton of time in Hongjoong’s shack because he keeps breaking house rules so they hang out a lot and Joong tolerates it

YH: had a super cool motorcycle back in Universe Z that he customized himself. He wanted to be an engineer before Mingi died but he ended up not doing that and instead worked as a mechanic. He liked the job though!

YS: despite being a vampire he’s never drank human blood before. His favourite snack is strawberry red because he likes sharing with Seonghwa (he drinks the red and Seonghwa eats the berry)

SN: The Demon King is Sam’s “creator” so sometimes he jokes that Hongjoong is his uncle (is he wrong tho??)

MG: Mingi likes wearing dark clothes and cool accessories cus Hongjoong used to dress like that all the time when they were younger and Mingi always thought Joong was the coolest person ever

WY: he’s extremely talented as an inventor but he sees it as just a hobby. Despite how useful the skill is, he only does what he wants, you could ask him to try making something you think would be useful, but he won’t do it unless he decides he wants to. He claims being team wizard is good enough (he loves laying unnecessarily harsh curses on enemies he’s dealt with)

JH: keeps a journal of all the new things he sees in Universe A. He’s basically studying the other guys cus they’re so strange and magical. When he’d first found Mingi his plan became to cure Mingi’s curse and bring him and Yunho back home with him

-yes. Woosan were very annoyed when Mingi burns down their treehouse. Yunho gets them to calm down and talks up the idea that living in an actual house will probably be a good change (he doesn’t really know how to talk to Mingi but he still doesn’t like others yelling at him if he can help it)

Thank you for your ask!! 🫶

#ask #ateez at au

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seventh7crow · 1 year ago

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now that everyone over on TikTok is finally bashing J. K. Rowling for her atrocious world building, finally realizing that Harry Potter was never that good™ (coming from an ex-Harry Potter fan), I wanna address one of the dumbest storytelling decisions ever.

so in Harry Potter we've got this thing where, towards the second half, we discover that the Ministry of Magic is a broken, obsolete system that has been corrupt for years, right? not only they are generally terrible (given that they have literal death-eaters hired), but they've specifically targeted Harry personally thorough the whole story. right? we agree? we agree.

so In Harry Potter there's also this going bit where the teachers of Defence Against the Dark Arts never get through one year of teaching, right? they end up dead, or fired due to loosing their memory/being a werewolf/being A WHOLE OTHER WEIRDO IMPERSONATING THE ACTUAL TEACHER (you know, things that usually happen) but we know they never last. we agree, right? we agree.

so, and I am talking about this as someone who merely enjoys reading: are you telling me, SERIOUSLY, that the MAIN CHARACTER who's perpetually linked to the profession of DATDA teacher, who's beaten the apparently most dangerous, dark and evil wizard TWICE, who can quite easily cast one of the most powerful spells to repel dark magic and COULD TEACH other people to do it… CHOSE TO BE A MAGIC COP??????

it wrote itself, J.K., IT WROTE ITSELF! in terms of storytelling, it was literally spelled out loud: NO ONE CAN DO THE JOB, WHO'S GOING TO DO, IT IF NOT THE MAIN CHARACTER WHO HAS REPEATEDLY SHOWED BEING THE MOST CAPACITATED PERSON TO DO IT?

i get that there's this whole thing about subverting expectations and yadadada, but seriously it's like writers were not taking their job seriously, imagine if in Game of Thrones it was Arya who killed the Night King… oh.

#harry potter #ron weasley #hermione granger #game of thrones #ao3 #ao3 author #jk rowling #fuck jk #atyd #fanon rules tho #ao3 writters doing the heavy lifting

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like-sands-of-time · 6 months ago

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Arthur was drawn to Merlin right away through seemingly no real reason- ready to respect him, listen to him, even when he wouldn't grant the same to just anyone. Same as Gwen, Morgana, Lancelot, and even Uther all do.

Is it Merlin's magic? The way he was chosen by magic itself to be the incarnation of it on earth? The way he was created to be the other half, the balance, to Arthur, who was also created by magic to be the once and future king?

Its his greatest weapon throughout the entire show, his ability to affect what people think of him, what they think of themselves, and what decisions they make. Everyone, from a fellow servant(who's held the job far longer than him), to the knights sworn to be loyal to the crown only, to the future king himself listen to Merlin.

I don't understand why this fanfic of a myth decided to go the path they did, meaning that Merlin and Arthur never actually take steps to unite the kingdom and work together in the knowledge of magic, because instead Merlin is "just" a servant to the prince/king for ten years and it's like they wanted the best of both worlds. Merlin who has the power and influence of Arthur's one trusted advisor and right hand, while still flying under the radar somehow.

In doing so we also were never allowed to see what I think could have been a greater extent of Merlin's capabilities as the most powerful wizard in the world. That of him doing things in front of Arthur, in Arthur's name, at Arthur's bidding, or directly to protect Arthur from harm. Because every action is about the secrecy and "how can he not notice!!!" They tell us frequently that Merlin is powerful and don't really show us that often. And when they show us insane powers he has they don't show them again when they could be helpful like slowing/stopping time, or being mentally linked with every living thing in the land regardless of distance, or having a link to the dragons, or literally creating life, or- you get the point.

You can't really prove that Arthur is the worthy king if we can't see how he reacts to the very real knowledge that he controls the most powerful wizard in the land. That if he so much as winces in pain that wizard will kill who dared to inflict that upon him. That if he told Merlin to do something in his name, Merlin would do it. Because Merlin loves Arthur. And he is loyal to Arthur. And he trusts Arthur. You can't prove that Arthur is worthy unless you show us that Arthur wouldn't abuse that trust and love ever, and would use that direct connection to magic, the smoking gun I suppose, for the good of everyone. That would have been the real task of the show. Arthur actually being given the screen time to make improvements in his kingdom before dying at Mordreds hand instead of just wasting time for three blurry vague years and doing nothing but strengthen his views against magic somehow? Despite the fact that he's known and helped and trusted several open magic users at this point in time including Gaius himself????

#the way this shows tragic writing skills STILL have a grip on me #bbc merlin #arthur pendragon

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firinniee · 2 years ago

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Nah, I'm on Percy's side on this

Okay, so I'm listening to an HP OoP audiobook at work today, right? And I realized that Arthur's argument with Percy was based on what Percy had said, namely:

1. While working at the Ministry, he tried to improve Arthur's image.

2. Arthur has no ambition and his family is poor.

3. Arthur is crazy & he's on Dumbledore's side and going to be in big trouble for it.

4. Percy wants to be loyal to the Ministry because the only thing that confirms Voldemort's return is Harry's words.

And Harry summed it up by saying that out of all W. siblings, he always liked Percy the least, but he couldn't imagine that he could say such words to his father ... but what words? Percy say something that is completely untrue? As if aside from the fact that he got a promotion after his career was on the bad line, Arthur said it was just to be "a spy for the Ministry" (which was probably true) but Percy countered this argument with the truth as well.

1. We don't have any information about it other than that, but we know that Arthur didn't have the greatest respect, so Percy could actually do something here, so let's just leave it at that.

2. It's probably the most delicate of sentences and something that must have been going on in Percy for a long time for him to say it out loud. So the Weasleys are portrayed as a poor family that has one working parent (who has been holding the same low-paying job for years) and despite this, and then ongoing war, decides to have seven children. Percy was the 3rd child and in my opinion the first one to have the vast majority of second hand and “after brother’s” stuff because Bill was the eldest but Charlie was a completely different build and height so I suspect a lot of Bill's stuff just didn't suit him. In turn, Percy, 6 years younger than Bill, was tall and thin, so he probably inherited everything from him (and personally, I think that it was like an extra kick for Percy, probably because of similar achievements in Hogwarts and appearance, he was still comparable to Bill. And we know that Molly especially likes to compare her children so). I can see this as a reason why he wanted to achieve more for himself and felt that since his father still wants to be in this position, he has no ambitions for anything better. In fact, Weasley's poverty is one great absurdity of the series, but maybe another post about it someday.

3. Percy had a point here, being on Dumbledore's side could lead to real trouble. Everything to do with it was a kept secret for some reason, right? Additionally, Percy knew what trouble was, his first memories being a childhood in times of war.

4. If someone suddenly appears and says that H*tler has risen from the dead, will anyone believe it? Well, it was something just as abstract to the wizarding world. I understand that the Ministry didn't want to let the Dark Lord return, but the thought itself was very abstract, to the point that even people who liked Harry could not believe it.

I'm sure what Percy said hurt Arthur but what Arthur said and his attitude hurt Percy, I don't want to say anything but he was just entering adulthood and his father shouldn't have yelled at him knowing that his son just made his biggest dream come true. After all, he was the parent. Aside from the fact that everyone, without exception, takes Arthur's side and condemns Percy's words, he was only half the side in this argument, but he was the only one who apologized in the end.

Years after that feud, Percy even named his daughter Molly, and I'm sure if he had a son he'd name him Arthur, to me it just shows how much he blames himself even though he was only half to blame.

#harry potter #arthur weasley #Molly Weasley #bill weasley #charlie weasley #percy weasley #fred weasley #george weasley #ron weasley #Ginny Weasley #weasley family #firinnie #firinniee #my thoughts #hp

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thecarnivorousmuffinmeta · 30 days ago

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IVE FINALLY LISTENED TO SOME RANK HERESY EPISODES! i love them! fantastic. uve really sold me on the "Tom didnt kill his dads family" theory. i still think its possible (i dont think the Trace is placed on a location but on the person so technically theyd have an alert abt magic being used in the village but they have no records of Tom being there or connected to it and Morfin easily confessed so i can see them rolling with it. the Ministry are never portrayed as particularly good at their job tbh so... wouldnt be surprised if whatever Aurors were like ye whatever, less work. maybe it was a fluke) but wow youre so right i never thought of Morfin snapping once he realises Merope "tainted" the bloodline with Muggle scum lol. that + waking up without the ring? and Tom is nowhere to be found? well then obviously the only person he can exact revenge on is his senior version!!

podcast anon from just now!! one more thing, i always felt that Tom being a romantic grandiose kinda guy makes sense and thus at least Dumbledore may have been right on the "he uses significant deaths for Horcrux creation" (which was why i never jived with the "Albanian peasant" for the Diadem or whatever. like what. but if he didnt kill his dad thats unfortunate on the significant deaths front. ofc that could be entirely false but i like both ideas 😭

First, thank you, anon! Look, @therealvinelle, praise!

As for your point...

First, blatant disclaimer, anyone can think whatever they like and we are not the fandom police nor here to tell people what they should do. You want Tom to have killed his paternal family, hey, that's what canon intended and everyone else agrees with you!

As for your argument, we touched on that in the episode itself. This is not common knowledge, Harry himself asks "how could Tom have done it if he used underage magic" and Dumbledore has to explain to him "well, actually" and reveal that Harry kept getting in trouble because they were specifically looking at the Dursleys house each time. Ergo, Tom could have gotten away with it because Little Hangleton wasn't being watched/had a wizard living there the magic can be attributed to.

However, Tom is very unlikely to know this as a) Harry doesn't know it after six years of living in the wizarding world b) characters like Ron don't seem to know it despite being Pureblood c) Tom would risk a lot to verify if this is true/check whether it's true.

But again, fandom's all about having fun and glad you enjoyed the episode.

#rank heresy #vinelle #therealvinelle #harry potter #harry potter meta #tom riddle #praise

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pweaselbee · 4 months ago

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MY unpopular HP opinions

(part 1?)

As someone who’s been a “fan” since 2008

Draco Malfoy is not an innocent

Regulus Black is not an innocent (and jegulus… just doesn’t do it for me)

Lily Evans is sidelined far too fucking much

Snape is an interesting character, but not a good person. Literally that male friend you’ve had forever who you bear your heart to and then he says “i have something to tell you” and if you reject him he calls you a slur. holds onto childhood grudges at his big age. BULLIES CHILDREN?? to the point where he is the WORST FEAR of a 13 yr old boy??

(more under cut)

ATYD, while a great AU fic, has damaged the personalities of characters. ex. in this fic it’s understandable that Lupin has a backbone but in canon it is SO IMPORTANT to his character that he never really had enough backbone to stand up to his friends when they took it too far?? and he grew INTO gaining that backbone

Percy Weasley is overhated, sure he was a bit of a pompous prick at times but that was 1. when he was a literal teenager (aka when everyone’s an arse) and 2. when the job he’d been working towards his entire life spoonfed him propaganda… yeah he’s not perfect but he was trying to do the right thing

All the Weasley’s being in the same house is lazy writing (percy should have been a slytherin and he’s not the only one)

JKR, on top of all the racism, transphobia, etc etc is also… not as good of a worldbuilder as everyone says. Look deep enough into it and everything just falls to bits. Her ‘wizarding world’ (specifically BWW) is just European folklore thrown at a dartboard, with aesthetic English Boarding School dumped on it. and don’t get me started on the rest of the wizarding world. (wym there’s only one school for all of south america. joanne i’m coming for you) at best it doesn’t make sense or is ignorant but at worst it’s actively harmful.

It is not enough to separate the art from the artist when the artist is actively profiting off the art. Especially when the art itself is steeped in Racism, Transphobia, Anti-Semitism, Fatphobia, and more. JKR has her platform and money from these works and is using this platform to spew rhetoric that is directly harmful to Transgender people, ESPECIALLY trans women. As much as you are consuming HP content you better also be actively doing whatever you can to help the people directly affected by her hatred. Instead of merch, maybe donate to a goddamn gfm. Next time you reread the series, put some time aside to analyze the text you’re reading. I guarantee it’s not as good as you thought.

The books could have survived as beloved children’s literature is Joanne had never gotten a twitter. Am I saying there’s nothing harmful in the books? No. But the harmful content would have been overlooked if JKR had kept her mouth shut.

“slytherin skittles” is a stupid ass name and i view anyone who mains baby death eaters with utmost distaste. babygirl those are fascists. literally wizard nazis, joanne was not subtle but perhaps you’d prefer the subtlety of a brick to the face

yeah so this was long and i’m probs not making any friends lol. but hey. new blog! maybe i’ll get hate mail

#harry potter #anti jkr #fuck jkr #unpopular opinion #mine

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goldenboywrites · 5 months ago

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sinking

Scorpius senses a trace of magic as he enters his apartment. It is his first sign that something is wrong.

Because no one knows where he is, he made sure of that when he graduated from Hogwarts and left everything and everyone behind. For a while, they had tried to seek him out. Anytime they got close, he would move. Finally, it seemed they had given up, and he had been in Cashel, Ireland ever since.

It’s been too long for him to remember who the magical signature belongs to, but his magic recognizes it, and he knows it’s not a threat. When he gets to his apartment door, he finds it locked. Slotting the key into place, he steps into his one-bedroom apartment and looks around. It takes a second until he faces a familiar red-head from his past.

“Lily,” Scorpius greets in a warning. “I don’t recall inviting you over for tea.”

She smiles sweetly at him from his couch and crosses her legs, raising a finger to point at his hair. “Been a while. What, like five years? Also, I hate the brown hair thing you’re doing. It doesn’t suit you.” Scorpius reaches up involuntarily to tug at the strands, hating the wave of self-consciousness that overcomes him at her comment. “You always felt like you needed to hide and change, but no one ever asked you to.”

And it’s just like her to assume that his life has been easy when in fact, the entire fucking wizarding world had wanted him to change and to atone for things he hadn’t done. “Why are you here?”

At this, she straightens up, pulling a binder out of her bag and placing it on the coffee table. “Before we dive into this. Let me tell you what I do know. I know you’re in between jobs. Honestly, you’ve been in between jobs for a very long time. I know that you have been attempting for a while now to open up a hybrid herbology shop and potions shop but all of your efforts have been for naught. So I tracked you down because I believe in your dream and want to make it happen. I already bought the location; as we speak, it’s being constructed. We split ownership 33% and some change between the two of us, but mostly, it’ll be yours to run as you see fit.”

Scorpius steps forward and slides the binder off of the coffee table. He thumbs through the pages slowly. “33% and some change,” He says mockingly, “between us does not equal 100%. What are you not telling me?” His gaze flickers to hers, and he sees the truth on her face. She’s mostly telling the truth. But the business plan itself is legit. She’s not even renting the building; she bought it. It’s in a cozy little area where Teddy owns his bar, and Rose has her business. She’s trying to get him to come back into the fold. To come home.

“There is a third investor, but he is not fully committed yet. He’s my next st-”

“I will no-” He starts, but she shakes her head, glaring up at him.

“Can you relax for a second? It’s not Albus. As if he would ever want to invest in a business like this. You may have been gone without a word for five years, but he hasn’t gotten any better at potions in that time.”

“I was going to say I won’t work with James.” He wasn’t, but that’s no one’s business, only his own.

She doesn’t buy it; she just rolls his eyes and lets him escape with it. “It’s a good deal, Scor. It’s everything you’ve ever wanted, and I’ve wrapped it all up in a pretty little bow for you.”

“It’s just like a Potter to expect me to drop my entire life to come running home to run your business. I know what you do. You do whatever easy work you want, and I’ll be doing all the heavy lifting.”

“There is one Potter who you should drop your entire life and come running home to, but he’s not here asking you to do that. He has never asked you to do that, even when he should have. If you want my honest opinion-”

“I don’t.” Scorpius cuts her off because he doesn’t want to hear it. And then, “I’ll do it.”

So, in the short few weeks following Lily Potter’s visit, Scorpius moves back home. Not home, home, but in the area. He unpacks, repacks, and then unpacks again. He is committed to this; a part of him wants this. He won’t back down now.

Two weeks after moving back home, Scorpius dyes his hair back to his original white blonde and gathers the courage to see the progress in the shop. He studied Lily’s binder front to back and sent her his edits and demands. That kept him busy for a bit, but he’s been itching to see the shop.

So he goes. He avoids Rose’s shop because that is not a confrontation he is eager to face. Depending on how the day goes, he will stop by Teddy’s bar because he was the only one Scorpius kept in constant contact with when he moved away, and there will be no confrontation with him. The rest…will have to be baby steps taken very, very slowly.

The sign for the shop is up when he arrives. ‘LAS BOTANICALS & POTIONS’ it reads. The name stops Scorpius in his tracks. Three letters, three owners. Lily, Scorpius, and then it clicks. And he knows, he fucking knows what the ‘a’ in the name stands for, and he knows he’s been played, probably by all of them. But it doesn’t matter. He committed; he made the move already. He was contracted into this because Lily Luna Potter crosses her t’s and dots all of her i’s. His hands curl into fists as he reads the sign repeatedly, looking for any other meaning in the name, but he knows her far too well. He knows all of them far too well.

He knows Albus will be there when he steps into that store.

So he walks in.

And there he is, standing behind the register in all of his glory. Every moment between the two of them hits Scorpius like a bullet. It had always been them, side by side. Two people but one soul. It had gotten more intimate, deeper when they were teenagers. First kisses and shared touches. Until Albus wanted more, and Scorpius said no. He remembers that day as if it were yesterday. They had been sleeping together for a few months at that point. Albus was making their plan for after graduation. He asked, already expecting the answer, if they were together and Scorpius had been so struck by it, scared of its commitment, the realness, his last name tarnishing Albus’ reputation, that he had said we are not together.

He moved the day after graduation and hasn’t looked back since.

Until now.

“Did you know?” He asked, his gaze scanning over the man’s features. He was five years older, but he would always be Albus Potter. Scorpius would always know him in a crowd. “LAS,” He said, pointing at the signage inside of the store. “I assume it stands for Lily, Albus, and Scorpius?” He couldn’t tell by looking at him if he was in on it. The Albus he had known always wore his emotions on his face, but the man in front of him annoyedly remained neutral. “What did she do to get you to agree to this? From what I remember, these were subjects you had no interest or talent in school.” This wasn’t what I signed up for. He wanted to scream because he was scared and felt backed into a corner, all while Albus was eerily calm and collected. “Forget it,” Scorpius said with an air of defeat. “Tell your sister I don’t appreciate being deceived, and I’m backing out.”

@magiclwritings

#sinking

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sparrow-in-boots · 2 years ago

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okay so, I'm going to get to Lucy Stillman and the franchise's treatment of her, but i think I need to explain my own feelings about the portrayal of the modern brotherhood first. I do not buy the "brotherhood = conspiracy theory cult" angle. It's flawed and leads to terrible takes overall, by the lore and by the fandom.

It's a holdover from the fact that the game decides to run with conspiracy theories that we have in the real world, and assign them all to the Isu. they even poke fun of it in the earlier games with the whole lizard people and space wizards in tinfoil hats comments. now that's a whole can of worms in itself given how deeply racist and antisemitic the overwhelming majority of conspriacy theories are, but it's not a good way to portray the assassin brotherhood because that's not what they are. they are far leftists. they are anarchist cells, they are commune organizers, they are revolutionaries. that's not me saying it either, that's just canon, plain and simple.

but that would make the story too close to real-life politics and they can't do that cus it's not in their interests.

therefore, the brotherhood is coded as isolationist cultists, or at least as far as The Farm goes. in current year, i think we can all agree there's an inherent fallacy (if not outright disengenuous portrayal) of painting your leftist organization fighting against the capitalist neocolonial hegemony with the same strokes as the whacky people starting communes in the middle of nowhere to escape 5G towers, fluoride water and the [insert villanized minority group here].

i don't buy it, i don't appreciate it, and i think we could have had a stronger story without it, even regarding Desmond's backstory.

THAT SAID, let's take a look at Lucy. her's is the story of a girl who was forced into adulthood too early after being left to her own devices by a very sheltered and isolating community that failed her, and then inducted into a cult which ultimately killed her and then was promptly swept under the narrative. that cult is the templar order by the by.

Lucy was born and raised within the Brotherhood, and pretty much set lose on the world with no connectiosn to speak of. surely they must have given her a paper trail, fake parents and school enrollments, medical records, the works. she was told to infiltrate Abstergo and probably given a general path towards that, namely research that could be useful to them, but otherwise? she was on her own.

first thing that comes to mind is when Amish folks get their time away from their hometown to experience the world and choose to come back or not. i can't comment on their experience and general view on this so i won't attempt to draw a parallel here, but just that initial mental connection speaks for itself imo.

She speaks of having to wait tables to make ends meet, and while that's the socially expected experience of solo living for a young adult leaving home (work minimun wage jobs, go to college, climb the chain, start small, etc), she has no home to return to. In fact there's this looming tension that even opening up to missing her home or going into detail about it could blow her cover. Even in the privacy of being around friends and colleagues, there's this necessity of keeping up a front. She has to buy it so deeply it becomes her, inside and out, and doing that at such a formative age is bound to take it's toll.

You're removed from everything and everyone you've ever known. You don't know when or if you'll ever see them again. In fact they can die at any moment and you might never hear about it. Contact with them is a fraught and dangerous thing, and even the slightest slip could spell your doom and theirs. Connection is a constant swinging sword of Damocles over her, and who can take comfort and solace from community like that? No one, is who. So of course she'd seek that away from where she could endanger everyone.

So in comes Vidic. She knows he's a templar, of course she does, but he's kind and understanding, a bit frustrating and headstrong, but she can usually talk him into chilling out here and there. And of course, one can draw a parallel between him and Bill. Both are strict and charismatic (in their own way) father and mentor figures, but while Bill is cold and hard, Vidic feigns affection (as Haytham so eloquently put) and the worst part is, it works. Any affection and attention is good attention for the starved, and Lucy's been on the end of her ropes since she's been outside of the Brotherhood.

She knows and can see it's all manipulation, she's not that blind of course, but it chips away at her. That's what emotional manipulation does after all. And then, in come the agents to kill her, and Vidic stops them.

All her life she's heard how brutal and merciless the templars are, and surely she's seen it too while working under them, but right when her facade slips and she should be dead, she's not. Because Vidic spares her. Of course that leaves a deep impression on her, and further erodes her resolve. Slowly but surely, she opens up, and Vidic is an expert at what he does. She may hold quite a bit of guilt and shame at turning, but the templars were there when the brotherhood wasn't.

Bill says that of those they send to infiltrate the templars, they are either "too strong" and can't keep up the charade, or are "too weak" and turn. How is being a human being who needs connection and community "too weak"? How is being slowly lovebombed and manipulated into choosing the wire mother and then being foresaken the plush one when in need weakness?

Desmond says that she "seemed so sincere, like she really wanted to make a difference", and I truly believe she did. Her morals and belief were twisted through years of emotional torture and isolation, and she knew she couldn't return to the brotherhood after how far she caved under the pressure. There's no space for the nuances and endless gray areas of such an unbalanced war in the current brotherhood, and she knows it, so throwing in with the templars for her was the lesser evil. She's not fool enough to buy their propaganda wholesale, but it's a necessary concession in her mind so she can excuse her taking advantage of their attention and community. Again, as long as she's useful to them, she has a place among them.

However, the way she's treated by the narrative is... w o w. We never get the chance to hear it from her side, expect by a pathetically short email on the ACR dlc. While having the protagonists agonize over someone's beliefs after their passing and finding no solid answers, they really don't spend nearly enough time for that to carry much weight narratively. In fact, there's hardly much of a critique on the conditions that led her to that kind of fall from grace, and even less is done to fix it.

She, much like Clay, are the epitomes of how the brotherhood is mirroring too much the templar's and Juno's disregard for human life, and how that needs to change in order for them to turn the tides. But nothing comes of it, because our anchor to the modern timeline gets doomed by the narrative and now all those loose plot holes go nowhere. Her funeral, her burial, her memory, it all gets waved about like an annoying gnat on the dinner table, and nobody does anything but try their best to ignore it until it goes away. Her actress couldn't keep with their schedule, so they got rid of her in the most pathetic horrifyingly dismissive way possible.

Personally I'm not a fan of the templar turncoat plotline they gave her, but if that's what they wanted to go with, then it needed much MUCH more careful writing and it needed to fucking GO SOMEWHERE. But it doesn't. And it sucks.

#assassin's creed #lucy stillman #pardal rambles #ac meta

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tenebrius-excellium · 2 years ago

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I’m reminded of just how good Trollhunters was but also of how it kinda peaked in the middle of Season 3 and went rapidly downward from then on. Those pure None Shall Live Scenes, just...every time the amulet powered up...Claire’s mystery arc of discovering magic and developing her skill without getting any instruction, unlike Jim who was tutored by both his friends and his enemies and who was able to profit from centuries of knowledge and tradition...like, the way she had to go in completely blind and find out...and the way she did so well considering the circumstances... just the top tier humor, the NotEnrique and Chompsky and Goblin bits, Angor Rot and Strickler as glorious, complex and entertainingly dangerous villains... Draal... Draal... Toby and Barbara both knowing they were not the main characters yet still doing such a great job with their respective roles... and Jim being consistently conflicted about doing what was right and wondering what it meant to be a human warrior serving non-human creatures...

...and then the parents found out.

Idk that’s when it immediately turned sour for me.

Like, Barbara never really took a stance on what the discovery of the reality of trolls meant to her - it sort of remained her son’s “thing”. But what about herself? Was it cool to her? Did it spark her curiosity, her desire to explore and research - regarding new ways of medical treatment, for example? Why’d she never comment about Strickler’s ability to shapeshift...and did she like his horns in the end? Was she ever anything else than afraid and worried for the normalcy she used to know, instead of rejecting or embracing the possibilities and the wonder of the magical world?

Then Merlin appears, and it’s fine in itself that he is the character he is. He’s quirky and iconic and doesn’t have to change. But what happened to “Master Jim was correct! We are stronger together!” (quote Blinky, from when Claire opened the giant portal at the end of Season 2)? Why did Jim continue to walk alone after so many experiences that supposedly taught him the strength of community? Heck, he taught that exact principle to a desperate Nomura who had given up on someone coming for her in the Darklands!!! Yet it’s like he fails to learn the same lesson over and over...he makes the mistake of going into a life-threatening situation by himself, is then helped by his friends, everyone including himself assumes that he will natually choose better next time and then... he keeps repeating the exact same pattern endlessly as if he has amnesia. I understand that it might take a fictional hero a couple times for a certain lesson to sink in, just like it would for a real life person. But Jim never learns (not even in Wizards, not even in Rott). It gets frustrating and boring. Don’t get me wrong, I quite like Troll!Jim now, he grew on me. But it shouldn’t have been Merlin’s influence that drove Jim to become a troll “because there was no other way”, but because Jim decided for himself that this was the best way. He should have rejected Merlin’s initial suggestion, then realized he wanted it himself. Because frankly half his life and over half of his friendships were in the troll world by then, he loved their species and there were obvious advantages to fighting Gunmar as a troll - if only to truly understand their ways. But Jim’s character development kept being dictated by outside parties and therefore, got ground to a stagnating halt. He never learned to think beyond the authority of the people who made the amulet or wore it before him. He stayed dependent on all of the destiny stuff they told him instead of considering that the amulet might have been a tool of its own mind, bound to him, helping him into the freedom of making his own choices. Of course there is the aspect of only one person being able of carrying Daylight. But Jim did not have to follow the preset course that Merlin intended it for. I wish he didn’t. And that’s why, even though I’m happy that he became Troll!Jim, the ending of Season 3 just wasn’t as good as it could have been.

Jim, sweet gullible Jim who was just a little bit too receptive for random people’s guidance because he lacked a father figure, did not learn what I was led to believe was his arc over 3 whole seasons of plot, (to discern which voices to listen to and to gather confidence in his own strength while following a destiny) and since that issue was never finished nor fixed, the creators never gave him a new arc beyond the original problem, and so... that’s why Jim grew ultimately redundant. Slowly in Wizards, at lightning speed in Rott. And that’s how we ended up with a repetitive, nonsensical cycle of plot.

While Jim’s physical action potential grew consistently without his character truly evolving, Douxie on the other hand made it a point to learn how to grow personally fast.

Love him for it. Still wish he had been the main guy in Rott. Perhaps all would have been well. :) My point is, I really miss the earlier days of Trollhunters, because they really were that enjoyable and good!!!!

#trollhunters #trollhunters analysis #analysis #wherethekiteflies #jim lake jr #claire #claire nunez

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