#the deadly stake

[thegothicalice]

Mixing different black lace patterns 🖤 Bat earrings by The Deadly Stake, skirt from VXM Clothing, everything else vintage.

[bonefall]

Bones, I can only ever support you when you decide to kill off a character. Kill Leafstar! Make it dramatic!!! Poison her!!!!

Wasp says: you want Skyclan to be like the forest4? Alright bet!!

my ggoddddd I had an IDEA

Waspstar receives xeir nine lives the way the Forest Four show xem to, in their new pool, by their new rules. While there, Heartstar assures xem that Juniperclaw has been removed as deputy, will never serve in a position of power again, has gone into exile.

...and Waspstar doesn't respond to that very quickly. Xe has a polite, pungent pause. "Is that the punishment for taking a life? By your code?"

"Our code," Heartstar corrects boldly, in a tone that suggests she sees this as reason and fairness. Our Code-- it protects you too, a gesture of sharing. It makes Waspstar's belly twist. "I've made his punishment VERY severe."

Severe. What a word to describe a vacation.

"He regrets what he's done?"

"Yes, very much."

Waspstar's ear flicks. No. Juniperclaw hasn't even begun to regret what he's done to SkyClan.

"SkyClan will be having a ceremony for Leafstar, to say our goodbyes and welcome in a new era," Xey offer in an even tone, "Spread the word that is is a time of forgiveness. All honored guests may come-- if they want to pay."

Heartstar waits for a beat. Then chuckles incredulously, "Your Clanmew skills could use a brush up. You mean pay their respects, yes? To honor the dead?"

"Oh my, how embarassing," Waspstar smiles back, "I'm so very sorry if I was unclear."

Clear as the sky on a cloudless day. Juniperclaw didn't make it out of that funeral alive. If a true warrior does not need to kill to win their battles, then he was no warrior under the Code at all.

[randomfingthings]

⚠ Don't mess with them, they have ✨table spoon✨ ⚠

[laurasbailey]

CR SPOILERS!!

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Do you think Matt was really gonna do a TPK??? I am so stressed about the possibility?? Like what even is this campaign without Imogen?? Was he going so hard on them because he wants to bring in VM and the Nein? As like Final Campaign: battle for Exandria. I could see it. But I would be so sad. I’m too attached to these idiots (and by that I mostly mean the witches)

i haven't seen the episode yet so i have no context beyond the spoilers i've seen but short answer: yes and no. matt would never plan an encounter with the end goal being a tpk (no good dm would unless the players cosigned), but i also know he doesn't take the cheap way out. the dice will roll as they roll!

this campaign has been especially deadly and bells hells are vastly underpowered in scenarios where they're facing 'boss fights' but they're also constantly racing the clock so it's not like they can pull a vox machina and go find some vestiges or go detour to someone's backstory (as much as we all want that).

i can't see vm or m9 swooping in to pick up the pieces because it takes away from bells hells' story, but i do hope they're more involved for sure.

a tpk now would be really rough because it'd be hard to insert a new party that has the motivation to finish what bells hells started. it'd be like the m9 tpking right before the lucien/eiselcross arc lmao. and i definitely agree about imogen, she's the glue holding this whole thing together. she definitely doesn't have plot armour though, which terrifies me!

[unproduciblesmackdown]

speaking of the horrors brian goosebumpsphantomoftheauditorium is still So funny for being like yeah i'm a ghost i know i'm a ghost. & he's befriended the horror fan menace duo who are giggling clutching each other like omg omg okay. we're fine. we're breaking into the school at night to investigate the horrors aaaa what if there's a ghost eek ok ok!!! & brian ghost who knows he's a ghost is like omg guys aaaa stopppp ;;m;; suffering thee Most but he's not putting on an act to conceal his phantomly destiny. he's just like that

[llycaons]

I do think it's really difficult to write wx short fics where they meet in the fic and then have a full romance bc in canon they had YEARS to build up to what they had and you just can't replicate that in a few chapters. like lwj you met this guy a few months ago and you're mostly just horny, and now you're saying you're in love? I mean, he IS, obviously, but it's not rly easy to pull off and have your audience fully buy in

[blujayonthewing]

so in juniper's campaign we've just found ourselves in a high-stakes situation that I as a player do frankly find stressful and am anxious about, but hey hi also the DM was like 'okay here are the exact mechanics of how this is going to work because I don't want to surprise you with serious repercussions, also here are all the options you will have to try to do something about the situation-- [affected player] what do you think? honest feedback, I don't want it to feel unfair, I want to be clear that I am not just trying to kill your character, and if it ends up being badly balanced we can revisit it down the road' and oh my god I could COLLAPSE and WEEP with gratitude

[arospecsyourblockdudes]

I don’t like when a book is trying to do an enemies to friends and/or lovers storyline and then rushes it. Like, I’m reading one rn where the two characters start making up and making friends by chapter 6. Draw it out some more yknow! Make us wonder what could possibly make these two characters ever like each other! Have one try to kill the other! Really sell the enemies part and make it realistic not just done and over with the second you wanna move on from it that’s not how it works

[chamerionwrites]

I am but an old man (proverbial) relaxing on my porch in the spring sunshine (literal) and I think you should put 🧂 in my askbox for low-stakes cranky opinions

[ariadne-mouse]

Augh goddamn Episode 9 and the twins got real tears out of me

[merge-conflict]

I really want to do a rashoman style “tell the same scene from multiple perspectives” fic but the problem is that it requires it to be a busy scene with a lot of characters that would be interesting and/or funny to recount.

[thegothicalice]

When the dress code for the event is “funeral attire” and you make it accidentally a bit “goth Bo Peep” ⚰️Dress Vixen by Micheline Pitt, batwing dickie collar Dracula Clothing, bonnet and gloves La Femme en Noir, boots Strangecvlt, scythe earrings The Deadly Stake, overskirt and bolero can’t remember.

[the-starlight-papers]

Completely normal (just watched the universe be destroyed and be put back together through the lense of an old webcomic)

[chutzpahhooplah]

Mao Mao x Suirei engaging in Killing Eve cat and mouse games with each other > Tepid one-sided cookie cutter romance with Jinshi

[danielleurbansblog]

Review: One Wrong Move

Synopsis: Taunting riddles.A deadly string of heists.Two broken hearts trapped in a killer’s game. Christian Macleod was pulled into a life of crime at a young age by his con artist parents. Now, making amends for his corrupt past, he has become one of the country’s foremost security experts. When a string of Southwestern art heists captures the FBI’s attention, Christian is paired up with a…

[styrofauxm]

If I may add, if Home Depot had ads everywhere about how there's a chance a clown may throw a milkshake at you in the store, you probably wouldn't be shocked or upset. But that didn't happen. Instead Home Depot put up ads talking about how there are no milkshake clowns in their stores.

Not only did OFMD never kill a major character before, they pretty much proved it was impossible.

Plenty of major characters have gotten injured to the point where they could not have possibly lived. And yet they did.

If you want your stakes to be that major characters can die, maybe don't have 17/18 episodes where the opposite proves to be true over and over again.

Just stumbled across this one in a Buzzfeed listicle*:

And it struck me as a great framing of what went wrong with the OFMD finale. We walked into that Home Depot and got a milkshake thrown at our face. The point isn't so much the quality of the milkshake, as that we were in a fucking Home Depot.

And yeah, many of us saw the big clown standing there with the milkshake in its hand, but we kinda assumed it was an inflatable Halloween decoration, because it was in a fucking Home Depot. We reasonably expected some light milkshake-related prankery, but nobody goes into a Home Depot expecting to take an entire milkshake straight to the face.

Now we gotta go home and change before we can finish our errands! It's not the end of the world, but you can see why we're not sure we want to shop at Home Depot anymore. Even if the CEO of Home Depot vaguetweets something that might mean he now understands that the Milkshake Clown Event was not something customers wanted.

(*The theme of the listicle is "17 People Who Wrote Most Hilariously, Beautifully Depraved Sentences I've Read This Month"; as you might expect, there's a lot of Tumblr on it.)