#sorry i always end up thinking in dnd terms eventually

[edwinisms]

It’s so strange to me that a whole lot of people misinterpret edwin as being “socially awkward” or “uncharismatic” when he’s really quite capable in both those departments? I mean he’s the face of the agency and talks to clients like a professional, he’s quickwitted and takes notice of cues and implications in conversation, he’s quintessentially eloquent and has no issue or hesitation presenting his arguments and opinions, he was raised in an environment where being keenly aware of social cues was essential both in basic society and moreover for a boy trying to avoid being hurt all the time, etc etc etc. the moments where he comes off as awkward tend to be ones that are easily explained by the situation– like when he’s flustered, dealing with a sensitive topic or feelings he’s not used to, or when something highlights him being a bit out of touch when it comes to modern phrases, etiquette, objects, etc (understandably and inevitably– not the fault of his personality or temperament).

yeah, he absolutely has trust issues and doesn’t get close to people easily on a genuine level, and he can be cold, spiteful, and brutally honest at times (pretty much always intentionally– compare to niko, who’s blunt and sometimes causes insult without realizing it), but by default, he’s quite a charismatic, well-spoken guy with a proclivity for performance. people just tend to ignore, forget, or disregard that because the flustered skittish person he becomes when he’s faced with something out of his comfort zone or realm of understanding is quirkier and easier to fit into a common pathetic gayboy archetype.

[weirdthinkingdragon]

Yandere Druid

I'm not very knowledgeable when it comes to druids (or anything really DnD yet), so if it's wrong or not possible I'm sorry.

yandere druid x gn reader

warnings: threats, party deaths, a bit darker than I usually go with yanderes

not proofread

Thinking about a yandere druid who uses their ability to shift into animals to stay on you so you can't ever leave them.

He just kinda clung onto your party when you and your party were resting at a tavern for a while. None of you really thought anything about it, and were fine with it from a druid possibly being useful.

Gradually however, you and your party start to notice how... unnerving he tends to be. Of course with him being a druid he could just be talking to bugs or something. You and your party know next to nothing about them so that's the best guess. But the whisperings and mumblings at night kept especially you up a lot. Mostly from always ending up stuck closest to him. You could never sneak up and try to hear what he was talking with the possible bugs or something about. He always seemed to know and stop mumbling by the time you got close enough.

Eventually it came that the party wanted him out of the group. They couldn't stand it any longer. He was creepy, but that seemed a bit far. But you really can't go against a group of people, and have a priority of them from being the leader.

Just to be decent though, you tell them one final night, and drop him off at the nearest tavern in the morning. They begrudgingly accepted your term.

---------------

In the morning it was quiet. Too quiet. Usually the rattling of armor could be heard as two of them always get up insanely early to do practice exercises.

You sit up and look around. They're all still sleeping. A stinging pain is on your right leg. Removing your blanket shows what seems to be a bite wound with two prominent holes. Shit, isn't that a venomous snake bite???

The sound of coming footsteps made you look to see the druid running back towards your camp. A pouch is in his hand. He pulls out one with a deep purple liquid and passes it to you.

"It's a vial to make you immune to the venom until it gets through your system! Now hurry, drink it!" He seems out of breath, but how did he get the potions so soon? With how manic he was there was a feeling you shouldn't drink it. You look doubtfully at the vial while he opens the mouth of one of the other party members and pours a different colored one into their mouth.

He looks back at you with a glare.

"drink it!!" His sound of urgency makes you comply without another second thought about it.

It takes only a few moments for the pain to reside. You also suddenly feel really... refreshed? What all else was in there? That wasn't just to help the venom, you're sure of it. A bad feeling sinks deep in your body.

The giant smile that quickly grew on his face made it all the worse.

"What was in that??"

He walks right up to you and keeps a hand on your right shoulder, as if fearing you'd run. "Well, it can't be undone now, so I'll tell you! I basically just gave you the lives of the other party members. They didn't deserve it anyways~"

He what!?

"Why!?"

"They were so annoying, trying to push me away from you. Have you noticed they've been trying to get me out of here from the start?"

A bit, but you genuinely thought they just needed to warm up to him.

He yanks your body close to his. "Your lifespan will be so much longer now too!"

You try to squirm away and run for it. His strength is surprisingly strong as he tightens his grip like a constrictor.

"Ah, ah, ah! don't try to get away now~ I finally have you all alone. And I'm not letting this sweet victory go so soon." He leans to be right by your ear. "And if you even dare trying to leave me, I've got many ways to make sure you'd never be able to even walk again."

That was a threat that you could tell he'd really act up on.

He claps his hands together. "Oh! also you can leave this stuff behind. I already got better stuff waiting at the inn I signed us up in for a couple days, and got us better equipment! That way you can be more comfortable as we get to finally have time to get to know each other more without pests in the way."

You're still thinking of ways to get out of this and run from him.

"oh, and one more thing. Just so you don't dare get any ideas of leaving me, I'm going to be on you and guide you the way there."

You don't like snakes anymore.

Before you can wrap your head around that, he shifts into a medium-sized venomous snake and coils up from your feet to be around your neck, wrapping loosely around it. It's the same venomous snake you said was gorgeous before and asked him to turn into before so you could safely feel the scales of it and see the colors very up close.

He tightens when you go to grab him. Not enough to strangle you, but the threat is there loud and clear.

[timothylawrence]

tell me more about rana and toxic yuri 👀

oh god this is probably gonna ruin actual lore because i genuinely get so confused looking things up so sorry to everyone who knows actual dnd lore and is about to read a mess i made up from playing this game..... ill put it all under a cut!!!

to make an incredibly long story short, Nine-Fingers Keene A.K.A Astele and Rana were childhood friends :) Rana didn't have a good home life under her father so she spent most of her time in the streets doing dumb kid things and eventually meets Astele and they become really good friends being petty thieves. They're both pretty young but they're inseparable and by the time Rana's around 13 she gets arrested and... well Keene kinda doesn't bail her out and Rana's father is like well im not gonna bother either.

Flashforward a month in jail, Rana escapes and leaves Baldur's Gate until the events of the game. Throughout her travels she kinda runs into Keene intermittently at various Thieve's Guild things. They've definitely got that One That Got Away energy and their reunion is filled with hate and lost chances so they definitely make not great decisions together but Keene's betrayal hurts more than Rana is capable of loving at the time and they always end up fighting and going their separate ways (usual with a knife to one another's necks) only to end up within reach again. Keene even offers her a place in the Thieve's Guild in Baldur's Gate once she's at the top but Rana denies with a big fight and they don't really talk until Act 3 a few years laer.

Of course, the Zhentarim are a threat to the Thieve's Guild so Miss Rana if you really don't care abt Keene or the Thieve's Guild why are you tracking them so closely... HMM!!!

all in all they're very much a toxic mess. I think they're on decent enough terms by the end of the game (keene is not happy abt Rana helping against the attack but she keeps her ego at bay). Rana's pretty much done with thieves guild stuff post game and so they're amicable and unlikely allies but nothing more.

Wyll is very much unaware until a very uncomfortable awkward conversation on Rana's part after that whole thing where she has to spell things out for him LMFAOOO

[hiscleric]

Blythe I have many questions istg because I love this fic, it’s one of my favourites and we’re only two chapters in 😭

1. Is El a Mage?

2. Do the rest of the party members (I mean Mike, Lucas, Dustin and Max) have the attributes of their DnD positions; for example, Lucas is a ranger which I believe has a skill for archery, and the house Sinclair are full of great archers!

3. Now this is one I don’t see often, but is there gonna be Will and Holly meetings because whenever I read a fic where Will looks after Holly with Mike or something, it’s always so funny and sweet!

4. What are the actual ages of the characters? I might have missed it but I don’t remember Mike having an age before he said “ten years later” when he went back within his memories

5. How do you PLAN your stories? Because they are all so good and I just wonder how it works behind the screens!

6. Will we see Max in the next few chapters?

7. Is being a scholar something Mike still wants to accomplish? Will that be apart of his internal conflict?

8. THIS IS THE LAST ONE (I think, I’m sorry I’m just so invested 😭) with the visions you describe in the story, how are they, like, done? Is it like, glazed eyes or is it a little seizure (hope that isn’t an offensive term to call it 😅) and do they only come across certain people such as Clerics, kings, heirs etc?

i had to pull out my laptop to answer this one, and believe me, i am SO excited to do so.

1.el is a mage!! getting a bit deep into lore bits here, el wound up on hopper's doorstep when she was around five, and was already showing signs of magic posession (in this world, magic is an inherited trait; some are born with it, some aren't, some families have higher potential of magic passing on while others almost never see it). hopper, interestingly enough, comes from a noble family sworn to house henderson. his family has a strong history of becoming learned healers and dabbling in that sort of magic, and growing up in this environment allowed him to pass on his knowledge to el, and, as we will see in will chapters to come, will as well. so yeah, the wonder twins have cool powers!!

2. yeah, they do! while lucas is a knight and can swing a sword pretty well, he always carries around a bow with him, too. the sinclairs are a house known for their wisdom in battle strategy and they often end up training the best soldiers in the kingdom, so lucas is a great example of these house sinclair traits. he can handle pretty much anything that comes his way with a clear head, unlike dustin, as we will see in chapter two when they encounter the cursecaster. dustin definitely has bard like traits; he would be the one to tell stories and sing songs on a long expedition like the one they are on now. max, on the other hand, may have some traits of her dnd character (i don't even know if zoomer is a real class but whatever). max is the commander of the king's guard, basically the big boss of all of the knights of hawks nest, and she is known as 'the sun's knight.' i guess she is pretty fast on horseback, so... i suppose she can be considered similar to her dnd counterpart!

3. will and holly will certainly have a meeting when he is still disguised. mike eventually grows smitten with the cleric, and introduces him formally to his family, so there will be a will and holly meeting at one point!

4. in the current timeline, the characters are all 20. when mike was in his flashback sequence, they were was 10; will has been missing for 10 years. nancy is 13 in the flashbacks, and 23 now, same with jonathan. mike became a knight when he was 15, and has been a knight for 5 years when the story picks up!

5. when it comes to planning, i'm not the best actually?? i kind of just think up the ideas in my head and ... remember them. like, this is my first time truly writing any of this down, because honestly it mostly just exists in my brain lol. that's all there is to it.

6. yes!! max makes an appearance at the very end of the upcoming chapter 2 when our cast finally returns to king's crest. she has a very important and vital role in the story.

7. YES!!! mike's dream since he was little was to be a scholar, and we saw that get tragically ripped away from him in chapter one, and in chapter two, we see an event happen that truly seals the deal. he had no desire to be a lord, and he certainly had no desire to be a knight; however, being from house wheeler, when he has become loyal to someone, it is difficult for him to turn away from those oaths/vows, a main issue for his character coming up in the future chapters.

8. visions are a tricky thing to describe when you are outside of the pov of the character experiencing them. in the prologue, with wilmot the wise, we see him get visited by ienta herself to provide him with the prophecy we see later on. i'd imagine that to the outside viewer, wilmot would simply be staring off into space with glazed eyes, and any sort of interruption or shaking would not be enough to wake him. will experiences visions the same way.

this was SOOOOO much fun. as you know, i love answering questions, so this really made my day. sorry if i wrote to much lol. thank you for taking the time to do this. :3

[afoxysunny]

Robbie as Bullock

This post will probably differ from the others in structure and be a lot longer for one big reason

When choosing Miraculous for the Lazytown characters i really wanted to only use ones that we've already seen in use in Miraculous Ladybug and know how they work from there.

For Robbie i broke that rule. I don't really remember what first made me consider it but it probably had to do with the fact that i think the Ox Miraculous, just aesthetically, would fit Robbie perfectly!

So for this one i had to start from scratch completely, no reference for a canon hero design, no idea what power or weapon he'd get, no clue what the phrase to transform could be.

Of cause i used the most references for him but here are the ten i found most important

Obviously i don't expect any of my speculations to become even remotely canon once we find out what Stompp, the Ox Miraculous, actually does but i hope it at least makes sense for now.

I like how I've drawn all the others standing head on to face the camera and Robbie just leans there. That's because you have to think he doesn't care, the little Tsundere

Concept Overview:

In the Miraculous Ladybug episode we meet all the Kwamis, including Stompp, he is the most actively concerned about Nooroo so now that the Butterfly Kwami is back I'm sure Stompp would want to stay around him. With Sportacus partnering with Nooroo, teaming up Robbie and Stompp made the most sense to them.

Design Notes Incoherent Thoughts I had to justify what I'm Drawing:

Purple and Blue - it amused me no end that with the choices i made blue Sportacus got a purple Kwami and purple Robbie got a blue kwami. I did kinda dislike at first how little blue the costume has in comparison to purple but i decided i don't have to make a decision because apparently the canon show can't make up its mind about Stompp's colour either. The blue and purple can always be swapped if i decide i don't like it

Harness - Ox' are hard working animals, mostly used to pull heavy objects. For that purpose they get strapped into a harness. Obviously i had to include that in this design, the chain hanging from the collar around his neck has a similar purpose (it only occured to me way too late how kinky it looks please ignore that)

Cape? No cape? - because of the imbalance in colours i briefly considered giving him a cape like a Matador would have but only for a second or so. I wanted to keep Robbie's iconic body shape untouched by a bunky cape, also the few times he wore a cape in the show he really struggled with it and also i think it would've clashed with the tail

Tail - speaking of which, an ox' tail has that frizzy end to it but i really liked the chain as his tail so to emulate the thicker part at the end i hung a padlock there. And that really worked. Not only bc that's just how bulls and ox are kept in check with their strength but also because the oblong shape of a combination lock makes for a fitting shape and can be used in universe. You see, Robbie is not that good with just saying what he wants or expressing how he feels. This four letter combination lock is magic and kinda betrays and helps him at the same time. It spells out any given four letter word that fits his mood best at any given moment

Miraculous Nosering - if a Lazytown character would unironically get a nosering, it'd be Robbie. I'm sorry, i don't take criticism on that

Horns - he needed horns. He just did. Look how good he looks with horns! But for real, in Miraculous Ladybug Chat Noir gets actual cat ears so he can get actual horns, also like Chat he the white parts of his eyes turn yellow like Stompp's while keeping his signature grey iris

Hair - ox' are mostly shown with like bangs covering their eyes so i couldn't resist ruffling his usually so perfectly done hair up to make it fall a little like that

Weapon - my first thought of "Miraculous takes cliché traits for animals to base their powers on so i guess bullfighting is the way to go here" made me really sad. This "Sport" is so disgusting i wanted to cry and puke while reading about it. I'll spare you the details but in addition to the Matador in the arena there's other guys too to weaken the bull before the Matador kills it, one of them throws knives. Miraculous Ladybug likes combining weapons with toys so I'm giving him darts. They are fastened to the front of his harness and i think how they can be used is along the lines of, once he zhrows them with his super strength and they pin into something they can only be removed when he allows that, also like the ladybug's jojo they can fly how long and whatever direction he wants, and probably also is able to just manifest them back to himself if ever one gets lost

Miraculous Power - again, just pure speculation here, but the powers we so far know of are all loosely based on an exaggerated cartoon trope of each animal so for the ox that is hard working and persistent and for the bull that'd be aggression and tunnel vision. While typing this i get the urge to add blinders to his mask but i digress. So i made up an exaggerated power that'd fit both but when i told my test group (two people) one said "oh, kinda like Bloodhound from Apex Legends" and the ozher said "so like hunter's mark from DnD" i play neither so i don't know but maybe you do do that's the short version of the explanation xD his power is based on the cartoonish depiction of a bull seeing something that bothers him and then charging at it for as long as he can until he gets it. Once Robbie focuses on an enemy or someone running away or someone he is following for whatever reason he can use his power to keep track of them. No matter how far away they go or where they try to hide. It sounds OP as shit but think of the Snake and Bunny who can both time travel and then say that again. The catch is he needs to use it while that person is still in clear sight for him so i think it balances a little better

Name:

Do you know the difference between a Bull and an Ox? Well, let me mansplain it to you anyway

The reason i kept switching between drawing inspiration from bulls and ox' is because it's the same animal. Those are both names for an adult male cow. The only difference being that an ox is castrated and a bull is not. Stompp is the Ox Miraculous so tough nuts Robbie, literally. But making babies isn't really on his to do list anyway with Sportacus as his partner so who cares.

Anyway, I had the design done and like always i struggled a lot with naming it

But then i learned a Bullock is not only a cool word that seems to be a mix of bull and lock like his design is but it also is the official name of a male cow too young to be castrated yet! Isn't that just perfect? I think it is

Also I'll include in this section the phrases one needs to speak to have Stompp transform them into this Ox themed Superhero and for the power to activate. If you think of something more fitting for either please let me know!

Transformation:

simple version - horns up / horns down

More detailed - time to charge / time to loaf

(charging is when a bull starts running blindly at something; loafing is the professional farmer term for a resting cow)

Power: Target Charge, Locked On, or my personal favorite option Head-On. Again going with the more in depth terminology, that's what the running style of a bull is called when he's chatging at a target

Story:

Robbie lived in Lazytown but when the kids grew louder and older and he got more annoyed wih not having his peace and quiet he just up and left. He spent a lot of time traveling around, living wherever it was comfortable and leaving when it wasn't anymore. Thanks to being an inventor and overall talanted crafty person he got by pretty easily as there was always a company running on "hire a lazy person for an important job, they'll find the easiest solution for the most complicated problems" so he never really had to worry.

Whether by coincidence or fate Robbie and Sportacus run into each other and despite Robbie being a little difficult they both immediately feel strangely drawn to one another. With time going by they meet more often, at first more or less by chance but eventually they plan to meet up regularly. They might have very different ways of doing it but they share a common lifestyle: helping out others to live a comfortable and fulfilling life.

Only after Sportacus was chosen to be the new Guardian of the Miracle Box he finally asks Robbie to join him, full time by his side traveling in his airship around the world wherever they may be needed. Of cause only for moral support and such, obviously. You see, they always enjoyed each others company and sort of over time eased into a relationship like coexistence but neither of them ever really acknowledged that. Only when Sportacus got Nooroo's power to sense other people's feelings that barrier of miscommunication fully fell. Robbie is incredibly bad with conveying his emotions but now Sportacus can sense that he has potentially the most powerful and purest emotions he ever encountered. Not only is each feeling of his powerful but when there is more than one at play they don't mix together and muddy each other but instead boost even more. He knew before that he wanted Robbie to join him but that discovery made it a necessity.

Despite not being able to actually say so Robbie is thrilled to come along. Only over time and with a lot of painfully slow conversations they manage to agree to make their relationship official.

Stompp, the sassy Ox Kwami, regularly bursts out of the Miracle Box to want to check on Nooroo and slowly he and Robbie bond over telling Sportacus and Nooroo to go easier on themselves and let a little responsibility get taken off their shoulders so eventually they team up and Bullock is created.

Thanks to Robbie's hard work to better himself with Sportacus' help, Stompp's magic transformation provides him with a tail that conveys his feelings for him.

When they hear that Lazytown has been wiped clean of grown-ups Sportacus immediately flies them over there so Robbie can check on his hometown. Finding only a few children, now teens, left there Robbie recognizes them and the two form the plan to give them Miraculous' too so they can help to find their lost family, friends and neighbors and fight together to bring them back.

Wow that was so much to read and you did it! I'm so impressed and thankful! You deserve a pat on the back (if you want one) and a cookie and/or sportscandy on your way out

[savrenim]

I feel like perhaps my problem is that all my stories eventually metamorph into tragedies. No idea what that says about me! Anyways thank you for the advice :)

I think there’s something super valid about that and I’ve noticed it happening a fair bit to me too so more rambles after the cut?

so this one is coming from a very personal place so I suspect it’s very very different for everyone, but as a kid, my absolute favorite story if I’d had to pick one was Lord of the Rings. especially the movies, I was obsessed with the costuming and production values and music and just the immersive nature of it all, it was gorgeous and I loved it and everything about it sorry legit lotr fandom I have not read the silmarillion but the thing that always stuck out the most to me was how real the ending felt, specifically Frodo not feeling like he was able to return to the Shire because he was too different, the world had changed too much for him

and my childhood felt like a constant battle against the forces of Evil that were trying to crush and destroy my world completely, and the degree to which I fought back, I won, I escaped -- suddenly out in the world I no longer had to be constantly fighting (at least against forces that were specifically trying to crush me instead of, like, general capitalism) and I was a bit at a loss. didn’t know what to do. it didn’t feel like it could be over, what was left in the world after years and years of fighting that consumed the entirety of my world, even if it didn’t destroy it completely. 

and I never really found an answer, until taz: balance? which I won’t spoil at all if you’re unfamiliar and it is long and a podcast and seems like it’s just a joke and everything is comedic bit after comedic bit (some somewhat more crass than others, although none crossed a line for me) and then it just hits you with 

and it genuinely broke my heart and pieced it back together again because suddenly it became a story about characters that had gone through a lifetime of constantly fighting against something that felt like the end of the world and then the ending wasn’t “oh. we’ve saved the world but we’ve changed and this is no longer home”, it was “oh, we’ve saved the world and we’ve changed, and we can make this home.”

and that was weirdly life-changing to me to see that in a story, where the main cast after going through hell could happily settle down into a civilian life which while it wasn’t necessarily a fairy-tale “happily ever after” they didn’t have to fight constantly anymore and didn’t need to and it didn’t destroy them so much that they couldn’t live. they rebuilt, and it was beautiful. there are probably parts of me that are never going to not be consciously or subconsciously preparing to be attacked, but that’s okay, I’m okay with that part of me, and I can live in a mostly chill world where I don’t need to fight without cutting that part out of me, because life exists beyond the end of the world.

a lot of the stories that I’ve written or am writing are either directly about or contain characters based on/ settings/ themes/ arcs/ etc of how I feel. sometimes intended to vent, sometimes intended to comfort. when I had a stupidly huge crush on a camp-counselor-turned-mentor at age 14, the plots of the novels that I wanted to write were “dramatic ya protagonist saved the world oh and also they totally do end up with their several-years-older-but-like-not-too-much-older super cool mentor figure. and it’s all okay because that person is there after Defeating The Evil so it’s totally a happily ever after.” when I’d escaped my abusive household but oops things still were falling apart bc mental health, the stories were “the world is ending biblical imagery this time and time exists as a cycle and consistently always ends and ends like this and the story follows the archangels at the end/beginning of the world as they slowly in horror learn that after killing the archdemons they’ve been fighting for all of existence and time turns and begins again and new archangels appear and cast them out of heaven, that they were the archdemons all along, and there is nothing they can do to change a history that is set in stone to repeat itself and they can just watch as they either slowly sink into insanity and lose sentience and become mindless beasts, or lose hope so much that they lose the will to fight back against their fate and decide to make their past/future selves pay and start the apocalypse all over again” or “alternate universe historical cold war with aliens at a science research base where like the first solid half of the story is the families of all the researchers get trapped in their bunker and the air filtration system isn’t working and they suffocate while the researchers outside watch, also everything has been nuked so even if we succeed in calling off the second wave civilization as we know it is over” or there’s not even any plot so I can only describe it as a psychological horror brainwashing dystopia larp where the fundamental horror besides the inherent horror of the octagon house stemmed from the fact that reality itself seemed to be unravelling at the seams, nothing about the world or knowledge about the world could be trusted, even a happy ending barely felt like a victory or an escape bc the characters didn’t know if everything was about to dissolve into nothingness or if their world even really existed 

anyways things got better and my writing is no longer that, although I’m strongly considering one day polishing up and making something of some of those pieces bc they were pretty cool. but also.....my stories are slightly less obvious about it now but still are just dumping grounds for what I’m feeling trash novel started because I went “you know what there’s too much sadness in my life and my DnD campaigns I want a story where the MC is super powerful and badass and nothing bad happens to her and I can rest assured in that fact and, like, build the rest up from there” and Saes ended up being the “hmmm had childhood trauma but chill and over it” character and Luka ended up being the “hmmm what if I was able to actually act on all of the rage that I felt about my situation instead of keeping it diplomatic to my family constantly” I personally find it impossible to write something that I do not personally feel in some way. mostly because writing is a hobby for me to vent emotions? so.... why am I writing it if I don’t personally feel it type deal, and then editing it and balancing it out and turning it into an actual readable story happens afterwards. if you find things are tending towards tragedy, and always tend towards tragedy when you write, my personal advice at least would be either:

(a) lean into it. write tragedy. write at any given time what vents your emotions the most and gives you the most catharsis, and let your story just be a punching bag for anything terrible that you want to unload. bc it’ll feel like that for the readers too, sometimes everything just needs to be horrible and smashed and get it out and let it be that, it’s okay.

(b) convince yourself in your heart of hearts that there is life after trauma. that some things can never be fixed but they can grow and change and work around the broken bits. write everything that makes your story as terrible and as much of a tragedy as you’d planned. and then make it okay to live afterwards. because if there’s one thing that humans are absolutely incredible for being able to do, it’s keep living and keep making life worth living.

you might write totally different than I do in which case this advice might be thoroughly trash in terms of finding inspiration to write something non tragic. and, like, if you do write from your feelings.... current global situation and general hopes for the future in terms of climate change and fascism and plague all feels hopeless kind of for the human race in general? but humans are pretty hard to destroy. as pessimistic as I feel about current trajectory of the world, civilization might collapse in the next hundred or so years, but I don’t think humanity will be gone. and even if it does go, life certainly won’t be gone. hell as a mathematician I know that there is life out there on other planets, that we live in a universe brimming with life; organic molecules form far too easily and there are far too many planets out there for statistically there not to be more. nothing that’s happening right now can touch a universe that is full of life, and I can live day by day making the world maybe a slightly better place for the people around me, and that’s a good a reason to hope as any. 

just.... write for yourself first and foremost, and what’ll come out will be something beautiful and worthwhile. tragedy or no.

[hermitcraftheadcanons]

To Do List:

What's up, my Herd of Nerds?

Anyway, as you can tell, tomorrow is AU Sunday. But, because it's one after a 'my input' one, it's a follower input AU day! Yay!

So, send me your AUs and I'll put all of em in a hat to pick one randomly. The winner is picked and posted and we'll all try and make headcanons about your AU.

Done:

Zombie Apocalypse AU :: (https://hermitcraftheadcanons.tumblr.com/post/618314308275863552/zombie-apocalypse-au-masterpost)

Pirate AU ::

Currently In The Raffle:

-Toy Story AU.

-Ever After High/Descendants/Vaguely 'nex gen priness' AU.

-Eldritch Horror AU :: Or if that's a bit too out there, a more normal Monster AU. I don't care, but in my heart, I know Cleo is some kind of eldritch horror. Zombie is far too easy.

-Eldritch Monster AU! Hermits are all Lovecraftian horrors who all individually decided that they wanted to pretend to be normal and are all trying to hide their otherworldliness. I also feel like Mumbo or X or someone as the one actually "normal" player on the server would work well. Most hermits don't know that everyone else isn't normal either, but some find out about friends maybe.

-Rabid Debate Club AU :: Random weird au idea where it's basic hs/uni au but like two of them try to start a debate club, then invite some friends just so there's enough people; cut to like two months later, it's all the hermits just fighting over whether or not pineapple should go on pizza or not lol it isn't very good i'm sorry but ya know rabid debate club AU.

-Animal/shapeshifting AU :: (Suggested Twice.) Every hermit can shapeshift into one token animal. (If it's something like "dog," they can only turn into one breed and color of dog, EXAMPLE: doc can shift into a black sable belgian malinois, but not anything else.)

-Wedding Planners AU :: Hermits work in various unrelated businesses such as a bakery, flower shop, etc., but see each other semi-often bc they're semi-often called upon to work together by another hermit's wedding planning business (obvs if you couldn't tell i know absolutely nothing abt wedding planning & businesses n shit lol but it's the /concept/ of it yannknow)

-Avatar: The Last Air Bender AU. (Suggested Thrice.)

-Fusion AU :: (Also suggested by Anon.) (Suggested Twice.) What if Hermits could fuse with each other? (Viva and Jumbo fused into MumboJumbo.)

-SCP AU :: The hermits have spooky powers and are kept locked up bc of it (or they have to keep the world safe from monsters and cursed objects!)

-RPG AU :: I feel like someone already thought of that but I am just wondering about it lately :p -🍋

-Adventure Time AU :: The hermits live in a post-apocalyptic world and the Lich (bad guy) is making everything decay. They need to gather all the gems (belt colours) to unlock the Enchiridion (a book) and have one wish each granted from Prismo (multiverse wish granting dude) before the Lich does. Only 4 elements can enter the multiverse: Slime (The Lich & Jevin), Redstone (Tango or Mumbo?), Ice (Stress), and Dirt (Grian, much to his dismay). Only the elementals can see the book. Grian's the protagonist with his sidekick Scar. He originally started collecting the belts because they were shiny but eventually decided to read the book and find out what they were for when Scar said he didn't see it. Doc, False, and Iskall are major obstacles because they don't believe the book exists.</p>

-Total Drama Island AU.

-Magical Girl AU :: Zedaph's the lead magical girl and rounds up a bunch of other magical girl hermits.

-Pokeman AU :: What are the Hermit's roles in this world? Who's the Champion, Elite Four. Are they scientists? Trainers? Do they compete in competitions, do they specialize in types? Who's everyone's starter? Has anyone encountered any legendaries?

-College AU

-High School AU

-Wizard101 AU :: I (🦊) recently got this AU idea and recently started going off somewhere with it in terms of writing, but, like, Hermitcraft meets Wizard101. Tons and tons of magical shenanigans, monster hunting, and idk what else.

-Magic AU

-My Hero Academia AU :: Headcanons can be about which hermits would have what quirks and occupations based on them.

-So I'm writing an AU where there's a second game of Demise but 5 years later. So far the first 2 hermits (Joe and Xisuma) have died, and their dead forms are cracked with an arrow in his chest (Xisuma) and cyborg (Joe). So since it's Saturday, I'm looking for what some skins would look for.

-City AU :: I mean this is really just a normal everyday AU.

-School AU.

-Terraria-Minecraft Fusion AU :: Who chooses what class? what events do each hermit prefer? how to they deal with the world infections? preferred biomes? Favourite NPCS? It has potentiallllll.

-70s/80s Teen Horror AU :: (like Stranger Things, Carreie, The Lost Boys, Halloween, etc.) -🦇

-Demi-God AU :: Sort of like percy jackson (everyone being the children of different gods from all different cultures.)

-Supernatural AU

-Marching Band AU :: Xisuma is the band major and all the show music is the remixes. I need to come up with some ideas for uniforms. Outfits and flags for the colorguard too.

-Different Eras AU :: (Suggested Twice.) All the hermits are from different time periods or eras. Like Wels is from the mediveal/dark era, Mumbo is from 1890-1920's, Iskall is from 2030, TFC is from 2020(?), Cleo is from 2130, etc!!! Like the mobs/animals became feused with humans, is when the mob players came from.

-Star Trek AU :: Like maybe they could be on one ship and each have different roles like engineers or doctors? I don’t know if this has been suggested but hope you enjoy! - 🐦

-House Mates AU :: ApartmentAU but scaled down?

-Atlantis AU :: (Could be merged with Mermaid AU???)

-Fighting Game AU :: Some influences would be Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, and Ultra Instinct, that kind of stuff.

-Time loop AU :: The hermits each have to deal with their own time loop.

(All those above in red are from our community's lovely Anons!)

-Superhero/superpower AU :: They each have a unique power/powerset that is in some way connected to their personality. (ie Mumbo *could* control electricity because of his love of redstone) Some Hermits may even choose to be "villains" and prank their other servermates. If you need power ideas, I've got a couple. (12u3ie)

-Daycare AU :: The recap peeps are the caretakers :P (-@tikauniverse.)

-Incredibly Long Cross Country Train Ride AU :: they all are in the same train car, telling stories of where they’re going, backstories.)

-Stuck In An Airport AU :: pretty similar to train au but they can be going diff places.

-Doctors AU :: they’re all doctors working at the same hospital.)

-Circus AU (Also suggested by an Anon.) (Suggested Twice.)

-Spy AU (Also suggested by @shadeswiftdraws.) (Suggested Twice.)

-Runaways AU :: The hermits are all teenagers who have run away from home, they all live on the streets until TFC takes them in. Head canons can be about backstories, living on the streets, or when they’re with TFC.

-Criminals and Police Officers AU

(-@lookitsspacekween)

-Dancer AU :: I mean, I already got a list kind of planned out, but headcanons for why specific styles are chosen would be appreciated! :) (usedtobelucythefallenangel)

-Broadway/Musicals Hermits AU :: The hermits are all casts of various musicals and when this newly-built theater opens up they all fight for which musical gets to play in it first (they have a riff-off maybe?) musicals mainly included are Hamilton, BMC, DEH, SiX, Beetlejuice, etc (feel free to add more!) (-@heyitsroby.)

-DnD AU (Also suggested by Anon.) (Suggested twice.)

-Mermaid AU :: In honor of the end of Mermay

-Space exploration AU :: There could be different ships, command centers, aliens.... Maybe someone could even get stranded/crash on a new planet? Who knows, could be fun.

-Paranormal/ghost hunter AU :: A couple Hermits could be the ghost hunters going to haunted locations to prove/disprove their hauntedness, others could be camera crew, owners of haunted buildings, or even the ghosts themselves.

-Camping/Vacation AU.

-Summer Cottage AU :: They all spend summers/weekends along the same shoreline and do different summer activities together. Outdoor fun and shenanigans!

-Space AU :: like star trek or similar.

-I would say evil clone au but I think that's pretty much the entire Hermitcraft tumblr right now lol. (Suggested twice.)

(-@shadeswiftdraws.)

-Magic AU :: Magic exists and all the hermits have powers. They can also summon a weapon but what that weapon is depends on the hermit. I'm thinking it'll take place in a sort-of Demise 2 in S7 with a big war. So far I've got: Grian - Cloning himself to his different personas (each has a different power). Xisuma - Making barriers, teleporting, and transforming into different mobs. Scar - Making mutant plants & boosting other hermits' attack & health. (-@datsaltyperson.)

-Demon AU :: Something enters the overworld and turns into a supernatural style-demon through Dimentional Distortion. Who gets posessed first, who goes crazy, and who actually kills it? Honestly I think that, if anything, Tango would know how to gank it, for obvious reasons. (-@fireflower-dusk.)

-High Street AU :: Everyone owns a different shop on the same street or some run a shop together (-@violets-arepurple.)

-Cat AU :: Either they're were always cats, or Hels turned everyone, including himself, into a cat, and they have to survive and overcome challenges in the Season 7 world. An example of a challenge would be Cub's a Sand Cat(the cats that always look like kittens no matter how old they are and live in deserts), and everyone's not sure if he can actually swim, so they have to find a way for him to get around without involving water. (-@scp10000.)

-How about a secret AU.. Every hermit has their big secrets and when Grian joined. He doesn't really know anything about those secrets even till season 7. Not many hermits talked to him in S6 anyway.. Mumbo was the closest to him so they would have regular chats For Iskall is mostly business related things Grian wants to know why so he set out on a quest to force the others to at least talk to him so he wouldn't be lonely. (-@babylightstudentbiscuit.)

-Hermit Family AU :: Xisuma is very busy dad but when he isnt busy the kids and younger hermits annoying the hell out of him. Grian once asked to use Xisuma's computer and crashed the whole thing trying to download illegal gamesites and get money off the internet. Mumbo and his trains run through the entire house and Xisuma trips on them daily. (-@gamerutx.)

-College AU!! But they are not students. THEY ARE THE TEACHERS (-@ivi-prism.)

Ones I planned to do anyway but Hermitblr Hivemind and all that:

Battle of The Bands AU: i believe u once mentioned a bands/ battle of the bands au... thats my jam... (Anon.)

[reviewpri]

Will GoT and ASOIAF have the same ending? No- and here is why:

We’ve passed George and that’s something that George always worried about — the show catching up and ultimately passing him — but the good thing about us diverging at this point is that George’s books will still be a surprise for readers who have seen the show. Certain things that we learned from George way back in that meeting in Santa Fe are going to happen on the show, but certain things won’t. 

The whole thing “ the show ending will be the same for the main characters “is, basically, not true and both David Benioff and Dan Weiss admit it in this pre-season 8 interview with Time

They spend an inordinate amount of time in pulling emphasis to the fact that they “meticulously planned this for years″ ( and they contradict themselves by word and action many times over, without noticing it.)

Look at this exchange:

“How long does the writing process usually take?

WEISS: It’s hard to say with this one especially, because so much of the endgame is stuff that we’ve been discussing for at least four or five years, if not longer. So a lot of the pieces have been put on the board years ago. You could go back to season 2 and some of these ideas started to come out. But the actual writing process, when did we start doing the outlines?”

Weiss does not know exactly when they started discussing the “ endgame”, but he is sure you can come back to season 2 and see some ideas there, which of course does not add up, except if they were retconning the whole thing because as the conversation they had with GRRM at Santa Fé about the endgame, by their own admission, happened between 2013 (before season 4 in 2014)  HOW THE FUCK CAN THEY SAY THE IDEAS HAD BEEN IN PLACE IN 2012 when season 2 was filmed and aired??

So, when Bryan Cogman want us to go back to season 2- specifically- to see the seeds for Daenerys insanity, you can tell it is a retcon because they are specifically pinpointing to a time where they started changing canon Daenerys to be more “ badass” and decided to use this to gaslight us into believing they indeed mapped everything out when, as I showed, they did not.

Moreover, look at the answer Benioff gives to Weiss about their outlines:

“ I don’t know, because we started going over it back when we were shooting season 7. “

See? The story departs from the books by season 5, season 6 is almost completely uncharted territory, but they only started checking the outlines for the endgame as THEY WERE SHOOTING SEASON 7!!!

Okay, now that I proved they are retconning Daenerys journey to hype this false perception they understood ASOIAF (” it’s about people, and power, and the pursuit of power, and how that affects those without power. “ - that is true for the first book - Game of Thrones- but GRRM had planned the series to be a coming of age story, a saga of three different families and how the legacy of their patriarchs affect the children) and are true to the ending (” pretty much the actual endgame )  because, as I imagine, they wanted to shield themselves from any backlash as much as possible, let´s turn one moment to talk about how the changes they made prove that they switched from a character-driven story to a plot-driven story in the last four seasons- and how this made GoT ending a mess!

First, they have been changing the characters since season 1 to fit their ideas and the actors who would be playing the parts. Case in point: Cersei Lannister :

 “ ...for instance, when Lena Headey came in and did her audition for Cersei. And we’d seen a number of actresses before, very good actresses, but they were all playing the ice queen.”

David Benioff, I am sorry to tell you this but CERSEI IS THE FUCKING ICE QUEEN! That was how GRRM wrote the character- not as a mother slightly drunk from afternoon mimosas ( “ Lena came in and she was funny and she was weird “), but as a force of nature, a volcano of ambitions and resentments.

Kit Harington is good with action scenes and not so good as a political player? Let´s write Jon Snow as the best warrior there is, as a man without any ambition whatsoever!

Emilia Clarke is good at giving speeches and being a badass? Let´s give her plot with Qaith to Ser Jorah and have Daenerys kill people every single season ( Book!Dany never killed Dorea and Xaro)

Peter Dinklage is getting Emmy after Emmy playing soul tortured, but mostly good guy Tyrion? Let´s have him be the moral compass of the story, no matter if in the books, he is among the darkest of characters in an already dark series!

Second, they do not see the story progressing in terms of character´s arcs, but in terms of points, of scenes they know it will happen:

“There were some details that were added later — but pretty much the actual endgame, the main climactic moments, we had in mind then. “

See how Weiss mentions “moments” and do not say anything about “character´s endings?”

Ladies and gentlemen, that is because they can still have certain key scenes in the story, but played by different characters!

Remember Sansa?

Remember by the end of season 4, she walked down the stairs of The Eyrie, with a new visual identity that was signaling to us that her journey, from there on, would be one of her making? That her alliance with Littlefinger would either be mutual beneficial, or she would get rid of him?

Then...season 5 came and DnD decided to scrap that. Book!Sansa stays at the Vale trying to protect SweetRobin and preparing a Tourney while increasingly resenting Littlefinger´s involvement with her life to the point she starts having doubts.

DnD must have found this boring....despite setting the pieces for this. So, they ignored a character´s progression to the point- they made Sansa take a pill of stupidity, eat Littlefinger´s shit and agree to marry North!Joffrey - so that they could give  Sansa one of those “ main climatic moments”- the rape of Jeyne Poole by the hands of Ramsay as watched by Theon.

There you have it guys : DnD ending is just a myriad of scenes from GRRM books they know it will happen but played out by different characters because DnD wanted to make the ending “ theirs” somehow and they think we will only care about those  main climactic moments if they happen to the already established characters.

This is why there is not fAegon and no Jon Connington in the story.

That is why they split fAegon plots between Cersei ( Golden Company + rule of Kl) and Jon ( the whole legitimacy and claim to the Throne)

Jon Connington is the only book! character foreshadowed to burn a city to the ground because that is his main regret in life- that he had been unable to do that during the rebellion, a hesitation that allowed Robert Baratheon to escape and, eventually, kill the love of his life, Rhaegar.

Had they adapted fAegon storyline, they could have burnt KL the way it has been foreshadowed in the books- between Jon Connigton´s hatred of bells, Cersei Lannister love for wildfire and the second dance of dragons between Daenerys and fAegon.

But they did not.

Season 7 we knew they had a scene filmed with Cersei, the motherly type Cersei of the show, would have lost the only thing that made her act rationally for the first time of her life: a baby.

BUT...

“ I don’t know, because we started going over it back when we were shooting season 7 “

They went over and probably realized what they could do with season 8 if they just ignored the foreshadowing they were setting about a war between two diametrical opposed queens:

Daenerys, the Bride of Fire, pregnant and happy with Jon, against Cersei, Ice Queen, miserable and barren.

This war would, of course only make thematic sense if this dynamic would play out, one player afraid of losing and the other, having nothing to lose.

They filmed the scene. The scene which would explain perfectly well why Cersei would become mad and try to burn the city so nobody would have it- and fulfill the Valonqar prophecy- but they scrapped.

The Throne scene between Daenerys and Jon makes sense...if it is between Cersei and Jaime.

and no, the vision of Daenerys at the second season- the one they now claim to have been “ all planned” despite the fact they had NO IDEA how it would play out before the end of season 3- had been ALREADY FULFILLED BY SEASON 7, with Daenerys choosing not to touch the Throne, which was covered in snow (Jon) but going North, beyond the Wall, with her dragons.

But, again, by their own admission, they looked back and realized...there was this amazing moment they could give to Emilia in the show and the only way they could explain this would be by retroactively stating the changes they made, by their own accord before they knew the endgame, had actually been, all this time, THEIR GENIUS MASTERPLAN.

Am I saying GRRM ending will be better? No...I am just explaining why you should not assume this mess came out from his butt because it came out of DnD´s butt.

(and yes, after all those cock jokes, I feel completely fine by ending this very serious meta with a butt joke.)

[skyystars]

oc info about all my ethermourne stuff below the cut, if anyones interested! it is. a lot. 

edit: after writing this what the fuck thats so much- if you have any questions about them please dont hesitate to ask but i would not blame you if you took one look at this post and ran HSJDFH there’s like 35 listed and thats still not all of them. zoinks

ethermourne is your typical dnd esque world. theres two kinds of people in the world, commonfolk and enchanted, and enchanted are people that can use various forms of magic. in the current story, a secret underground rebellion is going on against the kingdom, in order to free enchanted and bring justice to the world. theres a million and one characters here so bear w me. all characters belonging to my friends are marked with a *

on the black rock pirate ship,

captain shining - a fierce and protective leader. human. she’d do anything for her crew. commonfolk. damn near unstoppable with a sword. lifelong partner to orion ethermourne

johnathan bramwell - the first mate. human. quiet and reserved but goofy when he opens up. storm mage. lover of the sky- hates being in crowded areas on land. intelligent, loves to read and write letters. eventual boyfriend to nordwood thatch

aspen* (no lastname i dont think?) - boatswain. human. somber and stoic, a bit detached. big on family. half blind. ice mage. acts as a father figure to delphi

calvin - carpenter. old soul. human. does a lot of the heavy lifting for the ship. excellent storyteller. fire mage. usually brings some sort of wisdom or moral to someone on the ship.

nellie - cooper. human. misses her family, but has a heart of gold for the ship. scottish- often times hard to understand. ability to turn invisible. has a crush on tobi

galen* - doctor. timid and polite. wants to help people, will sacrifice his own health and safety to look after someone else. human(?). necromancer. arrived on the ship with enmea and quickly became like a brother to kaido

delphi - gunner. a young girl, easily excitable and a bit of a romantic. human. looks out for the people her age on the ship, acts sisterly to them. able to read a few moments into the future. 

kaido - navigator. young, free spirited, reckless. human. flight and telekinesis. eager to fight or find adventure. causes trouble. protects enmea like a younger sister, and is looked after by galen, who he eventually accepts as an older brother.

enmea* - powder monkey. goblin, steals and bargains with the crew for fun but never means any real harm. witty and sarcastic. illusion and misdirection magic. especially loves to bother bramwell and nordwood with her antics. 

faine* - cook. satyr. loves to be the life of a party. has lived many years and mostly achieved peace but like, loves to dick around. plantaemancer. has a big crush on aspen. 

nordwood percival thatch* - bard. half sun elf. cocky, expensive tastes, confidence, and flirty. magic can summon figures of light/magic to do his bidding/can impact emotions of people in vicinity. hopelessly in love with bramwell.

-

on land,

artemis ethermourne - the king of the empire. sun elf. main antagonist. commonfolk. younger brother of orion and husband to rietta

orion ethermourne - original leader of the rebellion. sun elf. warlock (jack of all trades), considered one of the most powerful of his time. was publicly executed by his brother when caught. left apprentice muriel in charge. partner of shining.

muriel becker* (murr) - aasimar enchanted. missing his halo due to an incident he doesnt mention. wants to become skilled in magic and art. raven symbolism- along with having his own companion raven, keeha. very tired and stressed. secretly dating amaris.

amaris hayles* (mars) - hunter/scout, commonfolk. drow/moon elf. dry humor, but a lot goes over his head. responsible and caring, looks out for much of the rebellion. doesnt talk much. dating muriel.

chevel troubleice - inventor, commonfolk. human. low self esteem but he’s Trying. interested in alchemy and learns more about magic through his teacher, murr.

evercon archer - enchanted rebel scout. wood elf. air magic. considers himself a loner. nomadic, feigns a know-it-all attitude. doesnt like cities. under technical responsibility of amaris. eventually falls for woodrow.

tuka archer - enchanted rebel worker. wood elf. fire mage. responsible for helping safe travel for other through the woods. fur trader. big social personality, loves people and doesnt care too much what anyone thinks of him. brother to evercon and eventual lover to phinehas.

phinehas* - aasimar. i assume hes enchanted but now im actually not... sure....???? omg. anyway he’s soft, kindhearted and a poet. loves to write and is into theater. level headed for the most part. in love with tuka, ex of murr but on good terms!! theyre still friends

woodrow jace andes* - enchanted tiefling bard. extremely sad but makes jokes to cope. sad jokes. the kind that make everyone else uncomfortable. necromancer. lives in a fucking dragon skeleton which is kind of badass. is embarrassingly soft for evercon.

vaughn hayles* - moon elf. idk if he’s enchanted or nah. protector, guardian, soft spoken. looks after a village, family means a lot to him (despite being unmarried). amaris’ dad.

elena bramwell - human, commonfolk, deceased. was small and determined. bram remembers her fondly, and recalls that she enjoyed music and dance, as well as having a talent for making flowercrowns and storytelling. bramwell’s mother. 

tobi* - tavernkeep. commonfolk. he is liddol and irish and knows how to play the banjo. has a massive crush on nellie. i love him dearly

-

on the sundancer pirate ship,

captain sylvan skybridge - enchanted human. light magic. is very tired but patient with his crew. false confidence has kept him going for almost a decade and hes not stopping now. only slightly concerned about... everyone on his ship

paige* - first mate. commonfolk witch, able to just barely cast spells and enchant objects. jack-of-all-trades, cunning, and incredibly clever at problem solving. mothers the crew if anyones in need. has a crush on michael.

michael grey* - doctor. commonfolk? enchanted? we just don’t know. a little disillusioned with reality. can see ghosts and has a small gang that follows him everywhere. sylvan and paige are the only crew members hes vaguely familiar with. has a crush on paige. **note: michael has 4 ghosts that follow him but im not listing them here just yet hh

ashton everett* - gunner. commonfolk human. fearless, exhausted of the shenanigans, genuinely just looking for a hot siren girlfriend and dismantling the monarchy. 

oscar* - boatswain. chaotic, will start a fight- but hes pretty terrible at getting himself out of trouble. needs tucked in at night. inseparable from lew.

lew* - boatswain. calm, collected, used to oscar’s antics. helps take care of the ship, has a turtle. 

rhubarb* - cook. human enchanted. plant powers. just trying to get along with everybody. don’t insult his cooking he’s trying his hardest. probably the oldest on the ship.

waverly* - enchanted human. like a bird selkie, can turn into a raven. spends a lot of her time this way. escaped from a traveling circus and joined the crew to help free others like her. 

cloud* - siren. tried to bring down the sundancers crew to prove herself, failed miserably and ended up liking them all. flirts relentlessly but is god awful at it. 

-

additional notes:

-some of them exist in a modern au, mainly involving bram/nord/mars/murr as a ghost hunting gang who always finds themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. bram and mars form a brotherly bond over time. in modern au elena is discovered to be alive. vaughn winds up falling in love with her (it is very cute).

-i often draw sylvan and captain ryan of the silent requiem. this pirate ship belongs to my friend sept and is placed in her own world, so none of that crew is mine ;w; most of their shenanigans are in a crossover state where a very sylvan begs ryan to teach him what to do as a captain, and ryan looks after him like a son (though he’d fucken deny it). young syl is far too curious for his own good and gets into trouble a lot. sorry dad

creds: galen, aspen, enmea, faine, nord, murr, mars, tobi, phinehas, woodrow, vaughn, and paige are all characters that belong to my friend bee. michael grey belongs to my friend jake. ashton belongs to my friend rueben.  oscar and lew belong to my friend kenzie. rhubarb belongs to my friend pasta. waverly belongs to my friend cal. cloud belongs to my friend sara. 

[uneryx]

Endurance

Dear Renee, alone in her room on January 1, 2010, As you’re reading this, you’re at your parents’ house in California, hoping with all your heart that you’ll escape soon. A few months ago, you experienced one of the most emotionally devastating things you ever will, and I hate to tell you that it isn’t over yet. More heartache is coming. But the good news is, you’ll endure. In a few months, you’ll start grad school at AAU, and it’s going to be some of the best times you’ll ever have. You’ll make awesome friends and reconnect to others you thought were lost forever. You’ll finally learn how to animate, and the ideas you have right now that you keep gnawing on finally turn into something real. You’ll also learn that some people really are tough critics, but it won’t break you. You’ll endure.

You’ll graduate, and although it’s not what you want to hear right now, you’re gonna move back in with Mom and Dad for a little while. BUt don’t worry - the time you spend there in 2013 will be time that you start your webcomic, learn some important skills you’ll use later, get the amazing kitty cat you always dreamed of, and get your first job. Your parents can be tough to live with, but you’ll endure. You’ll move to Atlanta, and experience your first crisis of faith (strap in, the next 5 years are going to have a lot of those). You’ll learn what having a studio job is like, start playing DND, make the friends you have now, and meet someone particularly special. And at the end of the year, you’re going to do one of the craziest things you’ll ever do - move to another country to pursue your career. It’s going to be a whirlwind and very expensive, but you’ll endure. You’ll find yourself starting 2015 in Vancouver. Canada is going to be awesome for you, but also very challenging. You’re going to start dating the guy of your dreams. You’re going to work hard for not a lot of money or thanks, and you’re going to find out that Disney really sucks as a client. You’re going to experience a lot of disillusionment and sorrow, but you’re also going to start finding your footing and figuring your shit out. As always, you’ll endure. You’re going to move a lot, and Vancouver’s rental market isn’t easy. Sorry. But don’t worry, you’ve got friends, and you’ve got (mostly) supportive parents. You’re going to get into a better job at a better company, and you’re gonna eventually get a place that isn’t super far away or filled with mice. You’ll endure. You’re going to learn a lot about depression and anxiety in the latter half of the decade, specifically that you’re prone to both things. The process of getting your medical issues taken care of is going to lead to some deep depressive episodes, but you’ll get through. You’ll endure. Throughout 2014-2016, you’re going to keep an weather eye on some political stuff that bothers you. It’ll start out as dickwads online harassing female video game reviewers and creators, and evolve slowly into the election of Donald Trump as president. The support and praise of someone so disgusting and anti-Christian by your co-religionists will shatter your faith. But you will endure.

Your anxiety is going to get a lot worse in 2017, mostly because of politics. Your crisis of faith is going to get a lot worse in 2017, mostly because of politics. In a lot of ways 2017 isn’t going to be a fun year. The good news is you’ll find a place you can live in longer term, and you’ll shore up some job security. At the end of the year, you’ll make one of the biggest, hardest choices you’ll ever make - to change religions. It’ll feel like your soul is being ripped in half. But you’ll endure. 2018 is going to hurt. You’ll tell your parents about your religious choices, and they’re not going to take it well at all. Your mother will have her first heart attack, and your brother will have his first heart attack and almost die. You’ll go to another job at another company and come to appreciate how good you had it at your last job. You’re going to experience the lowest low of your mental health, and finally get that push to get it fixed. It’s going to feel like you can’t go on anymore, like you can’t do it anymore. But with the support of those who love you, you will endure. And finally, in 2019 things are going to start feeling like you have a handle on it. You’re going to start going to therapy, and it’s going to change your life. You’re going to face some disappointments in your career, but they’re disappointments you can learn from, and will serve, finally, as some guidance. (Or, perhaps, you’ll finally be in a place where you can hear them). Your relationship with your parents is going to improve significantly - not perfectly, and politics/religion are still a sore spot - but it’s going to be a lot better than the last year. You’re going to learn more about yourself and accept more about yourself than you ever have before. You’re going to finally, at long last, start getting your shit together.  Because if there’s nothing else you learned this decade, it’s that you can endure it all. You can stand in the fires (both those you created for yourself and those brought about by circumstance) and you can stand tall and keep moving forward.  You are stronger than you think you are, and far more loved than you think you are. Walk on, 2010 Renee. You can do it.  With Love, Renee, 2020. 

[aegenroth]

Welcome to my Blog! / How I met Hailey.

Hi there, dear reader, and welcome to my blog, you awesome person, you! It has taken me forever to get to this point, but I feel I have many stories to tell. True stories, from my life. My name is Gerhard, but I will henceforth refer to myself as Aegenroth. Hey Aegenroth! I am sorry if I took the words from you, it is just that it seems to be the norm these days, especially with those telling your stories and putting their own, backward spin on them. That is how you end up being called a drug dealer or addict, stupid, good for nothing, and god forbid gay. I trust that you, dear reader, read that last term as sarcastically as I intended, as I harbour no ill feelings toward the LGBTQIA community. Anyway, these were all terms used to describe me, in my hometown of Deathvale. This is also not its real name. Methvale would have been more appropriate, due to an upsurge of crystal meth users in the past decade. A surefire way to get those with no lives of their own to spread rumours about you, is to be unique. You know, special, like they teach you you are at school? I let my uniqueness define me, and the rest of the flock had no idea how to deal with it, so they made a pariah of me and the main character in their own life stories. Pretty sad, don't you agree? To set the record straight, to truly separate the fact from the fiction, I would need to omit the pseudonyms in these stories, but that, I am sure, would land me in a whole lot of hot soup. So though the events are real, the names of those involved have been changed, as have the places where they occurred. In some cases I gave them names better suited to their demeanor. At this point, I am more eager to tell the stories than to get justice. Some of these tales might not even have an antagonist in them, but are worth telling all the same.

I think it is worth dedicating my first post to the person who has inspired me the most: my wife Hailey. Our meeting was tenuous at best. Just one tiny beat of a butterfly wing, and we would have passed one another, like strangers passing one another on the street.

The events go back a ways… I was prepping for my first year physics exam and went to the stationery shop, where I ran into an old friend. She was putting together a Dungeons and Dragons group, and asked me if I wanted to join. I agreed, though I was a bit reluctant, because of the exam looming. I had always wanted to play the game, but my life was a little chaotic at that point. Apart from studying every free moment I had, I was also depressed, and borderline suicidal, but I will elaborate on that some other time. It really was not a good time for me, but I figured it could be fun, and above all, a distraction from reality. Our first DnD session ended up occurring after my exams. The pressure was off and I allowed myself to relax a bit. I had a lot of fun with a few new people and some other old acquaintances. I played a dwarf paladin. Badly, I might add, except for the time I rolled a nat twenty and killed three goblins with one crossbow bolt. Sigh, those were some lucky dice. Our third session took place in a two door garage, where we would have more space and could be as loud as we wanted. For playing a game of the imagination, we did not need much of anything else, aside from our character sheets and the props we took a liking to using. I was wearing a wizard’s hat and grabbed a nearby sledgehammer to complete the outfit. I must have looked like such a nerd, which I am, and there is no shame in it either, but admittedly I felt a bit like a fool when the new players, Hailey and Lily arrived. Especially since they were girls. Pretty girls. They were from Rosetown and were visiting Deathvale during their break from university. Lily was friends with our elf and happened to hear of our DnD session. Having nothing better to do, and being nerds themselves, they were eager to join.

So in walked Hailey, a radiant beauty in a summer dress. I was stunned, and said little more than hello. She pulled up the chair next to me, and I was suitably anxious. She was reserved and said little, but smiled a lot.

Lily, on the other hand, spoke nearly nonstop. I think she played a gnome rogue. Hailey played a half-elf bard, and received a tuned out mandolin as a prop. As we played, Hailey would occasionally play a single note and sing or hum along, just loud enough for me to hear, as if spinning a spell on me. It worked, and I became entranced. Her voice was clear, well practiced and melodious. I kept stealing sideways glances at this most wonderful of creatures, who might as well have been a half-elf. Her sweet, innocent demeanour captivated me. I was relieved when our host and Dungeon master broke out the alcohol to get us all loosened up for the game. By the time we finished playing I was properly buzzing, and came out of my shell. I had gathered a bit more courage to talk to her. We properly introduced ourselves and discussed some of the events that occurred in the game, as well as shared some personal facts. I was reluctant to go home, having just had a real conversation with a genuinely nice girl in what felt like forever. She took my number, in case we wanted to do something as a group again. It was around 2 in the morning when I got a text from Hailey. She could not sleep and was drawing her DnD character. We started talking about everything. Life, DnD, music etc. I eventually passed out at around 4, after staring at the unchanging screen for at least fifteen minutes. We hung out as a group for the rest of that week, and I got to know Hailey a lot better. She had just finished her first year at university studying education. Her parents were divorced and she lived with a close friend of her stepfather. She was going to move in with Lily the following year. A few days into our friendship, I invited her to come with me to a charity fundraiser for an animal welfare organisation. It was not a date, as our other friends would be there too, yet I felt fluttering inside. By the time everyone else arrived, I had already gotten into the drink. Those days I still used alcohol as a bit of a crutch for my depression. Admittedly, not the smartest choice in life. Later that night I worked up the courage to make a move and took her hand in mine, and she graciously accepted mine. We went to a club afterwards and much later that night, Hailey and I took a detour before I took her home. Being an avid lover of space and the stars, I figured it would be my power move to show her an unobscured view of the stars, just a few kilometers outside of Deathvale, and boy, did it work. There was no moon out that night, and the horizon glowed red with light pollution, but we were far away enough from the blinding street lights to have a magnificent view of the milky way overhead. A cool breeze whipped around our feet as we stood there, holding one another in the dark, in the middle of a lonely dirt road. When we looked down from the splendour of the stars, our eyes met, and we kissed. It felt as though it was the first time that I ever that I had my lips on a girl. We kissed for a long time, unable to break our newly forged bond. It was then that I knew I had found my soulmate, someone as moved to passion by the natural wonder and beauty of the cosmos as I. Maybe it was just me she was moved by. She revealed herself to be sapiosexual, someone attracted to intelligence, and I was suitably flattered. Never before had my intelligence been acknowledged in such a way. Deathvale is not exactly the kind of place to revere intelligence, being of the short khaki wearing, sport and alcohol loving, far-right conservative persuasion. At least, those who are not on harder drugs. Over the course of the next few days Hailey and I got to know one another so well, that I had no idea how I ever lived without her.

Had I not decided to play DnD with my friends, I would have missed her. Had Lily not asked Hailey to come with her to Deathvale, I would have missed her. Had Thomas not mentioned to Lily that he was playing DnD, they would have never brought Lily and Hailey along, and I would have missed her… It was only when certain forces threatened to keep us apart that we took drastic steps to stay together for longer than the summer holiday allowed us. Being unemployed had its benefits. When Hailey and I started discussing our future, I said I would move with her. I would have gone to hell and back for her. Fortunately, I had been there all my life. I had no future in Deathvale with my tarnished reputation anyway. Things could only get better, right? Lily had no problem sharing the apartment they had just rented with me, provided, of course, I paid my own share of the rent. No huge feat, I assumed. There must be a job for me out there in the city. Little did I know that would be the least of my problems, for there stood a dragon in our way. This “dragon” was our landlady, a woman I will henceforth refer to as Wormtongue, for just like her namesake, she whispers falsehoods in the ears of others. When the time came to add my name to the rent agreement, she stubbornly refused, on the basis that Hailey and I were an unmarried couple and, as a conservative Christian, she would have no one living in sin under a roof she owned.

Hailey’s and my first trial had begun. When no amount of pleading with Wormtongue would suffice, I dropped to one knee:

“Hailey, will you join me in marriage? So, together, we can overthrow the evil forces trying to keep us apart?”

After knowing her for only two weeks, I knew it was the right way to go. I had never met anyone who even remotely made me feel as happy, secure and loved as she did. We matched one another perfectly, in every aspect of our lives. My only regret is that I could not have met her sooner. We went out to a local restaurant for some asian cuisine to celebrate, and after the meal we got some fortune cookies, as is traditional, only mine was eerily accurate: 

  I apologise for what it looks like, I have been carrying that around in my wallet for two years. Now, I am not superstitious, nor do I believe that it somehow told me the future, but I have to admit, it hit the nail on the head that time!

Needless to say, we were all freaked out when it happened. I even contemplated that, somehow, the waiter was in on it, but it had arrived sealed and untampered with at the table. The very next day we were off to the Department of Home Affairs to make our nuptials official, though we limited the ones we kept in the loop. Neither mine, nor Hailey’s family was to know about us. Only once we have settled and had money to spare, would we announce it officially and hold a ceremony for our friends and family. I learnt a lesson that day: do not believe what the internet says. Yeah, I know, it is pretty obvious, but the official Website of the South African Department of Home Affairs stated that you need only have two witnesses, wait in the queue, say your vows to an official and tada, you are married! Turns out we had to wait a while. Two months, in fact. Never did it dawn on them to mention that you needed to make an appointment. Having made up our minds, we were well and truly disappointed, but we did not lose heart. I moved into Lily’s old bedroom at her mother’s house for the time being, but rarely stayed there, and two months later I finally got to marry the love of my life. I moved in with her, and our second trial together began.