#oh shit that's kinda a lot

[muwitch]

The Sun and The Lovers for Mr. Lucius V. Mercar >:3

ah, yesss, thank you for enabling me into my yapper era <3 answering the tarot asks with my stupido guy! It got lengthy actually, I am sorry

The Sun: What is Rook passionate about? How do they fuel that passion?

Oh boy, oh lord. I want to say THE CAUSE™ so bad, but that would be both true and false depending on the timestamp (it’s a trick question). But let’s start from something else instead and I’ll say: magic. Plain and simple.

It’s not a given you’d be passionate about magic when you live in Tevinter, because magic is to serve man, not to rule over it and engraved in everything on a domestic level. And while Luc had complicated relationships with his mentors pre-Circle and in the Circle, magic fascinates him from an early age. Its pure, raw forms, the Fade, unorthodox explorations of energy flows, magical constructs, riddles hidden in scriptures, and the list could go on and on. Is it a form of coping because his mother loved it so much? Maybe. Is he passionate about it like a nerd? Of course.

He has his itty-witty collection of rare finds and artifacts at home. He constructs artifacts and defuses relics for the Shadows, he makes his knowledge and his passion useful and by engaging with new forms of magic he keeps his passion and curiosity going for that long. And yes he likes to be an extra little shit while utilizing his own magic on the battlefield bc why not?

Also Lucius V. “Mercar” is very passionate about learning new stuff, be it knowledge or skill or person, he’s just built like that I guess. That quality doesn’t really need fuel, he finds trouble on his own without any problems. Brain remains moderately stimulated, all is well. And there there’s THE CAUSE™ and I think it’s an acquired passion or better yet one that was nurtured. It’s on and off pre-events of the game especially after Nessum, and before Minrathous falls the first time it isn’t really rekindled, but. It’s there always, despite not stemming from a noble place (or like Ashur’s case some sort of atonement through service more on that some other time), but it’s something he was dedicating a significant portion of his adult life to. He bribed and lied and did other despicable stuff for it. Led a full fledged double life for years. Was more or less set on a revolution happening (and it was not going to be pretty or bloodless or whatever). 

It took him an awful lot of time to arrive to where other in-game presented Shadow Dragons are in game aka servants of “the people”, and only the immediate effects or results of his actions as sort of gratification are the real fuel that keeps him going, as he is, despite what he says, a very result oriented guy, who has enough long going political games at home to be satisfied with hopes and ideas alone. (Which is a foil to something I shall not discuss in this question, lol, my guy).

The Lovers: Who is your Rook's most significant relationship within the Veilguard? How do they help Rook feel seen and understood?

(laughs in Tevinter) This poor boy can’t form anything significant, I mean all of his relationships - okay not all but most - are of equal importance but serve absolutely different purposes if I dare say so.

One thing to understand about Luc is that since he’s not your average Mercar guy (not derogatory or anything, his bg is just a mess and far from what game offers, it just happened to be so), he has the tendency to have difficulties forming lasting relationships that make him seen and understood. As a matter of fact.

In Veilguard he serves a purpose from the moment it is formed, and the nature of his relationships despite forming is to be the leader and everything he is already used to by being 8 years into Shadow Dragon cause. It’s that he must mostly give, not things being given to him as sort of deep emotional comfort, especially formed that quickly during such horrid events. And early members of Veilguard turn to him for his ability to hold shit together, and they have this awkward back and forth of honesty, trauma dumping and trying to bond with each other at the early stages of Veilguard. Harding grieves, Neve hits closer to home, but has her hands full with both Veilguard and Dock Town, Bellara is on her own wave.

It changes drastically after changing Treviso, and not to drag this thing over too much I’ll say the closest thing to a good relationship Luc has is Davrin?

He is also struggling, but his struggles feel familiar and since he’s out of the whole “what was right choice to save” debacle, he’s impassive to it. He’s a reprieve, he’s actually a friend that copes with struggles of his own too, but is ready to have a man-to-man stupid talks with Luc. He takes him to touch grass. He’s the bro.

In a weird way he reminds Luc of Ashur - a calmer presence to Luc’s - yet there’s no tiptoeing around him. He takes news of Luc’s background with a grain of salt but mostly okay. He offers drinks and chopping wood as pastime activities. He never overburdens. Luc has tremendous faith in his competence and spirit, the way he is loyal to his cause to the point of ultimate sacrifice. He’s the good sort and the good example. He’s another reminder for the poor vint bastard to do better and stop moping around (as if he has time to). And they bond a lot over the course of Davrin’s quest, because Luc would know a thing or two of uncovering your own faction/nation’s dirty secrets and living with that sort of legacy on a day-to-day basis. See? Enrichment.

But there’s also Emmrich I think as second pick, who is there to remind Luc of every daddy issue he has in a way that he’s the mentor figure the latter never had? 

I mean he had mentors, a plenty, but we’re speaking Tevinter. To have someone with a gentler, almost nurturing kind of soul around is sort of soothing. With Varric gone to fill those shoes, Luc’s father presumed dead until further notice after the venatori coup, Emmrich takes over that position naturally and with sort of senior grace. He’s trying to help with different sorts of grief our stupid vint boy is going through which are plenty not even counting Varric problem, and in the cozy silence of the library, between books, fire cracking and talking about magic - it all gives Luc the semblance of normalcy to gain at least some sort of footing during the unfolding of events.

[buqbite]

part 1 (on VA and being better than humans)

part 2 (on welt and being just a human)

[mildarka]

TEEHEHEHEEHEHE

from one rarepair lover to another

Can I request Coffeecrops (Ccino x Farm)??? :333

Since it was Ccino's birthday yesterday two days ago, why not :]

((Ccino gets some of the cafe's ingredients from a local farm but the delivery service isn't super professional~))

[tubbytarchia]

Sorry I seriously can't stop thinking about "Jimmy please hidef". This is bad and incomprehensible but. What is hiding gonna do for him Joel. Are you frantically throwing just whatever out there. Is it upsetting that you couldn't do anything last time and you can't do anything this time and really have no room to tell him what to do regardless because he's not an ally? But you want him to survive, you want him in the top 10, you want him in the top 5; at the very least, anything but for him to be the first one to die, and he plummets to red this early. Are you worried? All you can do or think of is to tell him to hide? In some impossible space in which he can't be hurt? Are you scared?

[viveela]

If you draw dip i woul be sooooooo happy

So I like to imagine Damien likes to fill in Pip about what happens back on Earth

[epicfirestormer]

What I love about Hellboy and Abe Sapien's dynamic in the comics is that, if you came into this blind, you'd expect Abe to be the voice of reason or the straight man to Hellboy's impulsive and hotheaded personality. But no, Abe is more often than not the crazy one. Hellboy would deal with fighting evil monsters and bad guys by just sighing and getting it over with, while Abe is going rabid over tearing the creature apart when he does get into a fight. Hellboy acts like it's a 9-to-5 job and will reasonably talk things out with a guy that had nearly killed him before, Abe acts like a madman in a slaughter house and his first instinct is to shoot first kill second and ask third. They're both insane, but on completely different levels.

[somegrumpynerd]

Do you guys wanna see a thing I tried writing? It's pretty unfinished and I don't think I will finish it but it was fun to play with and it might be okay as a lil snippet! I also have like no energy for drawing right now but I wanna post something lol

(The context is Cross and Killer are alone on a mission in some unspecified au when Killer goes stage 3)

“Killer?”

Cross looked over when he got no response, half expecting Killer to have wandered off in some direction as he did on these longer jobs. His loyalty to Nightmare was often at war with his attention span in the field, and you could expect a job to take longer if it was anywhere a cat was liable to appear.

What he didn’t expect was to catch sight of Killer’s wildly fluctuating soul glinting in the reflection of the knife that was coming right for him.

Cross managed to lunge back just in time for the knife to arc downwards into the snow in his place. Its wielder slowly turned his head, tracking the path to where Cross was now. His empty eye sockets gushed with more ooze than usual, stare somehow colder than the ice he was now shaking from his blade.

“Killer…” Cross began, trying to keep his tone steady and authoritative like a warning. He was ever hopeful that this was some stupid game Killer was playing out of boredom, but that hope died as he watched some of the black goop begin to drip out of the corner of the other’s mouth.

That only happened when he went stage 3.

Shit.

Cross felt his soul drop. He’d never dealt with Killer like this alone, usually they handled him as a team if Nightmare wasn’t there to take over. In the time it would take him to look down at his phone to call for help there would probably be a knife in his head.

This was fine. He could handle it. He always had more training and stamina than Killer anyway, he just had to play keepaway with his life long enough to go home with it.

Killer teleported in front of him, something that caught Cross off guard. In his right mind, Killer almost never seemed to use his magic in fights unless he wanted to fuck around with the other. 

[Put the fight part here idk pretend there was a really cool fight, it was so cool, you loved it]

Cross felt his soul drop again, but this time the rest of his body followed. Killer was using his gravity magic to hold him to the ground, and was shambling towards him ready to finish things. Cross struggled for a moment to see if he could fight his way out of the magic’s hold, but to no avail. He was pinned as his assailant now stood threateningly over him, knife raised. In a flash of desperation, he reached out both hands and grabbed Killer’s ankles, quickly moving his head to one side as a bone attack pierced up out of the snow and struck the other in the jaw.

It wasn’t his strongest attack, but it was enough to knock Killer backwards and stun him. As Cross felt his soul being released from the other’s magic, he quickly scrambled forward and sat on Killer’s chest as he lay sprawled out in the snow, pinning his arms down on either side of his head as he began to come back around. His face was leaking so much determination from every crevice that at that point it was hard to make out an expression under it all, but Cross could tell he was frustrated as he felt the rumble of bone attacks beginning to rise up out of the snow around them.

He followed suit, carefully forming a line of his own bone attacks closely around them to act as a barrier. He could feel Killer’s attacks bouncing off of his, each hit more desperate and frantic than the last like an animal clawing at the sides of its cage. He felt some magic encircling his soul again, but this time trying to raise him up rather than push him down. It was weaker than before, whether because Killer’s attention was split with still launching bone attacks or because he was beginning to tire out, but Cross managed to fight against it and stay put.

“Killer!” he barked, leaning over the other’s face. “That’s enough. You’re not going anywhere until you pull yourself together!”

The gravity magic seemed to cease at his shout, so Cross continued in the fervent hope that he was getting through to him.

“We’ll stay here all night if that’s what it takes, but I’m reporting back to Nightmare when this is over and I’m not leaving without you! Do you hear me?! I don’t care if I have to bring you back hogtied over my shoulder, I’m not gonna hurt you and I’m not gonna let you kill me!”

He didn’t realise he’d been shouting until the clinking and scraping of bone attacks had slowed and stopped altogether, and it was just the sound of his promise echoing off the bones and snow surrounding them.

And the strange gurgling sound coming from below him.

He opened his eyes again in confusion and stared down at the skeleton weakly fighting against his grasp, determination pooling and soaking into the snow from every gap in his skull. It took a second longer than he’d like to admit for Cross to realise that sound was Killer choking on it.

His bone attacks shrunk back into the ground and he shot backwards, landing ungracefully on his backside with a little curse. He hurried to pull Killer up and help him lean forward, swatting his back as he retched and spat the toxic goop up onto the ground where they’d just fought.

It was never an elegant dismount from these things, they’d found there was just no dignified way to get out a ribcage worth of black ooze. After a minute of heaving and gasping, Killer finally got a hold of himself and started glancing frantically around.

“Where’s Dust??” he managed to choke out with the urgency of a parent who’d lost their child. It always seemed to be the first thing on his mind when he came to from one of these episodes, Cross was never really sure why since any other time it seemed like they hated each other.

“He’s at home,” Cross assured, pressing one hand to Killer’s spine for support. “It’s just us, we were on a mission.”

He could see now that Killer’s soul had calmed down from the pulsating mass of spikes it was a few minutes ago and become somewhat soul shaped, still twitching nervously but a far calmer sight than before. That was a good sign that the attack was over. He wondered how much control Killer had over it, since he’d definitely seen it turn that way without having to go through a fight to the death first, but it was rare.

Cross flinched as he felt Killer grab him again, though this time instead of kicking him in the ribs he simply held on for dear life. That was another clear sign, after he was done puking up whatever goop had built up he usually cried for a while.

It was odd, especially the first few times, to see someone who always seemed so disconnected and unphased have a sobbing breakdown after trying to kill you.

“Hey,” Cross said, voice hushed as he wrapped his arms around the skeleton trembling in his lap. “It’s okay… you’re okay…”

Cross had never been the best at comforting words, but he knew Killer just needed someone to cling to while he got a hold of himself, and he was content to be that for a little while. Especially after being thrown around so much, his aching bones were more than happy for an excuse to sit in the snow for a bit. He could feel Killer’s soul being pressed against his chest as he wept silently into Cross’s shoulder, the fear and regret seemed to be radiating from it like smoke from a smothered flame.

He wondered idly if this was what Nightmare could feel all the time.

...

He also wondered just how hard it was going to be to get these black stains out of his jacket again once he pried Killer's face off of it.

[fallinglikemagic]

Okay, now that everybody's had some time to process and gotten some of the doomposting out, here's my thoughts on the whole situation.

First of all, I'm not really worried about whether or not RWBY will continue in some capacity. It's uncertain, sure, but no more than it was already. In February we got the update that they were talking to potential partners about getting volume 10 made, so clearly they weren't just relying on Rooster Teeth and Warner Brothers for it - maybe one of those companies will pick it up, maybe a different company will, either way I'm sure it *will* be picked up by somebody and unless they get real unlucky, the show won't be much worse off than it was before - if anything it might be better off, considering that WB have been shitty about animation for quite a while now (if you're not already familiar and you're up for some extra research, I recommend looking into the Coyote vs ACME situation that's been going on recently for a great example of WB's bullshit). And while it's unclear exactly how much involvement the original crew will have in the show's future, I'm pretty optimistic about it. I doubt the writers are going to let go of creative control without a fight, if for nothing else then for Monty - I don't like focusing too much on the whole Monty's Legacy stuff in general, but I do think that the crew are going to want to keep their friend's work alive and authentic and as accurate to what he wanted it to be as possible. None of this is a certainty of course, but I think RWBY is gonna be fine, things will just be kinda rocky for a bit.

With all that being said, while this may end up ultimately being a blessing in disguise for RWBY as a franchise, it sure ain't one for everybody who worked at Rooster Teeth. This entire situation is still horrible - so many people being fired on the spot, effective immediately, with no warning and with several of them only finding out by seeing articles about it being posted on Twitter, it's fucked. I know Rooster Teeth wasn't exactly lacking in controversy and problematic behaviour, to put it lightly, but there were still plenty of amazing people there who are now in a really shitty situation. On top of that, while again this isn't exactly anything new, especially for WB, it is the latest instance of a huge problem in the animation and entertainment industries. So no matter how things pan out for RWBY, we should still be really fucking mad about this.

And we definitely shouldn't be celebrating. I've seen some posts saying "good riddance" and celebrating RT's downfall, not just from people who hate RWBY (I mean don't get me wrong I'm sure the hatedom is out in full force but that's not the kind of thing I'm referring to right now), but people who like/used to like the show and just hated the company. And don't get me wrong, I didn't like a lot of things about the company either, I've actually been wanting RWBY to separate itself from RT for a pretty long time (be careful what you wish for I guess 💀), but there's a time and a place and this certainly ain't it. Plenty of people who have worked there have said that they loved their jobs, plenty of others said it was horrible and toxic and nightmarish, but either way a job is a job and in this industry work isn't always easy to find, especially in recent years. Celebrate in private if you want, but now is not the damn time to be bringing out the cake and confetti.

TLDR; I'm cautiously optimistic about RWBY's future, I'm pretty sure it'll be fine and they'll be able to keep the core crew to at least some extent, but this is still a really bad situation for everybody who just lost their jobs, don't be a dick.

[bacchuschucklefuck]

actually one more thing kristen was so clutch this ep with that mass cure wound while not a single one of the rat grinders has gotten a heal from their own team that's so dire . like you know essays can be written abt that right

[siyuri]

Ef's moment of respite at the bottom of the Mariana Trench from amazing story Falling Falling Stars by @not-poignant

[gristlegrinder]

doing the skywatch meta for the first time in a hot minute for the weekly like i love lyhr i love lyhr i love lyhr i love lyhr i love l

[bbb-bbbbbbb]

touched up some daisy, daisy fanart i made at least a year ago but never got to post

[fraternum-momentum]

so so so glad ur art has been taking off lately... i've loved ur dol art for ages now, so it's fun to see things with a wider appeal blow up! nwn

ty for sticking with me for so long !!!! it's honestly so surreal tbh,, im just kinda doing whatever comes to mind / whatever i want to do, im glad people seem to like it :33

[cluescorner]

I gave myself a writing challenge and I am fascinated by it

So basically I put the robins in a randomizer to give them a new order/role (because I just...kinda wanted to see what would happen + I like role-reversal AUs) and got results that are giving me a fucking brain blast.

Stephanie, the first sidekick who defines the role

Tim, the sidekick who dies and comes back wrong

Dick, the sidekick who saves Batman from himself

Damian, the sidekick who was never supposed to be a sidekick but would go on to prove everyone wrong

Jason, the youngest sidekick who is still the Kid Wonder

...So this is fucking wild. I've got some ideas and several of these fit perfectly (Dick's role is pretty similar to his one in canon), but some of these are fucking INCREDIBLE to explore (Steph being the first Robin is something I never even considered but tbh I kinda love it).

I probably won't write a fic or anything because tbh I don't like publishing my writing that much, but I might expand this into a full AU and post about it. I might randomize other stuff too (ie, stuff that I cannot change vs stuff that I cannot keep the same) but this fucking rules as a starting point.

[sugiarttime]

Touko study of someone's artstyle

[ntj2pj]