#theoretically at least

[kannedia]

Rumour has it that, following her recent encounters with the Voidsent of the Thirteenth, Asel has been working on an alchemical breakthrough of great significance. Some say it is a tincture that will cure blindness and myopia; others that it is an oil that, when rubbed into the skin, will make one immune to the hottest of flames. But from what I have heard, she has concocted a liquid diffusion of primordial light that may be thrown over a Voidsent to melt it away like a candle in a furnace. Whatever she has discovered, it is certain to make her very wealthy once she markets it...

Hear any good rumors?

Asel's eyes widened, the book she had been reading slipping from her grasp.

"What." She blurted out before covering her mouth with her hand. She had heard that spending too much time in the library would lead to peculiar rumours, but that was a lot. I almost made her wonder what tales were going around about Matoya's work.

"No. Gods, no." Asel sighed as she gently picked up the dropped book and carefully looked it over for damage. "I've mostly been studying and er... basic maintenance of the library." She doesn't mention that the maintenance is necessary because she has moved into the building.

"I hope to better help my fellow Scions, not cause them more work."

Fun fact(?): This reminds me of an idea I was working on back when I misunderstood how Y'shtola's aether sight worked.

The idea was based on how red magic- the aetheric accelerator aspect, to be more precise. I, and in turn Asel, believed that such a premise could be harnessed to lighten the strain of the aether sight technique and lengthen Y'shtola's lifespan.

[akaluan]

This blanket is hers.

[owowhatsthis-itsblood]

Why am I romantically attracted to death and gore and all the beautiful things that happen when you die but not real alive people???? I’d gladly be romantic to a corpse but a living being? Ew. No instinct to do that…

[ace-fandom-dumbass]

disappointed to learn that my plan to cheat slightly on my christianity essay (cheat meaning start writing based on what i remember from confirmation class instead of working only off the assigned chapter) in world religious traditions has been foiled by christianity not being one of the ones i have to write an essay for

that was going to be the easy one, do you know how many years of sunday school and bible study mom raised us in. i was excited to just dump everything i remembered into a word doc and then just use the textbook chapter to pull quotes and make it look like i did it properly but no the one time i think an essay wont be absolute hell i dont actually have an essay for the assignment

[boytoydevil]

I. Need to restructure this place. Right now.

[adorkabledemon]

At least if they're doing a pre-sale, that should mean I have 2 chances to get Midnight Runway Cleo if it turns out she does sell out...

[aroaceleovaldez]

the dynamic of demigods thinking which other demigod is the most powerful is always amusing to me because. like, we know the big 3 kids are all the most powerful. That's just a fact of their universe. And then we know nearly every character views Percy as the strongest demigod, and most people are very rightfully intimidated by him.

and you look at the powers of the Big 3 kids and there's Percy, but then you realize Nico is just kind of objectively more powerful than him but simply chooses to hang out in Percy's shadow like he's Percy's scary dog privileges. Like, the two of them are pretty equally capable of causing multiple different apocalypses. Nico just also has like four different instakill powers and it's not like he doesn't use them. He very much uses them! Not infrequently, even! And they don't seem to take a significant amount of energy from him! And other demigods are pretty intimidated by both of them! But Nico makes a conscious point to keep his cards close to his chest and not let on exactly how dangerous and scary he can be if he wants to. People are already scared enough of him without knowing anything about him and he doesn't like that. Percy doesn't think about that nearly as much, and so usually just goes in guns blazing and that's part of why he's considered a wildcard. And then Nico himself puts Percy on a pedestal, so those who do know more about Nico's abilities then presume Nico knows something they don't about Percy that implies Percy is even stronger than him.

And even on a meta level Nico's narrative role requires him to be functionally more powerful than Percy, because he very often serves the purpose of getting Percy out of situations he can't handle on his own. That's just part of his function as a character! But also narratively he can't overshadow Percy so he just takes a backseat of his own accord and that's very amusing to me.

[dead-generations]

Popular understanding of military technologies and capabilities is weirdly frozen in like, WWII and the cold war, even with the incredibly televisied bombing of Baghdad, the constant reports from Gaza and the unprecedented level of public and open source documentation of Ukraine.

And I know people are aware of like drone strikes but they really do not understand what the current capabilities are. The Brimstone is twenty years old. There are weaponised military lasers deployed right now. The US removed the explosives from a missile and gave it radial blades just to avoid killing people more than a metre away from an individual target. Semi-autonomous hunter killer drones are being deployed right now. Have you seen current gen military thermal cameras? People are using publicly available civilian satellite imaging services to do open source battle damage assessment. There are weapons in space and all three major space powers are testing and drilling anti space capabilities in orbit right now. Hell, they are actively attacking each others space infrastructure right now as we speak.

I think if people were aware of the levels of precision, autonomy and interconnectedness in munitions they'd be terrified. None of this is science fiction

[daeyumi]

misc. design scribbles for cycle of the stars (plus one extra link design from a possible one shot au i may do later down the line)

i will clean these up later but wanted to shove what i have here for now

[riddlemearose]

Inherited Handwriting

(CW: background themes of adoption and loss of/implied non-forceful removal from family)

He’s got Wild tucked into one side and Twilight against the other. They’re both asleep, breathing even and deep, faces softly lit by the pale moonlight above.

Time watches them both, neck craned awkwardly in order to do so.

It’s strange sometimes, knowing these two are his descendants, that they are his future. He can’t really think of them as his sons, per se. There’s barely a decade between himself and Wild, if one considers their physical ages, and about half that time between him and Twilight.

But still it’s quietly baffling to think that his legacy has not only one but two tangible forms.

Wild doesn’t really resemble either Time or Twilight.

Eons have stretched out between Time's inevitable death and Wild's birth, their bloodline naturally changing as the centuries tick past. The only physical appearance that has survived that passage of time seems to be the colour of his eyes; that same sharp, bright blue as Time's own.

But there are other things that have made themselves known; small tics and habits that Time had once dismissed as irrelevant and miniscule in himself finding their way into another person who exists a millennia later.

Perhaps the worst and most recognisable trait of all is the way Wild carries his guilt close to his chest, cloaked by his cheerful demeanour to keep it away from prying eyes.

It certainly is painfully familiar. Twilight does the same thing, but hides his behind a wall of bone-deep protective instincts and care.

And Time has always hid his guilt beneath a mask of festering anger.

He isn’t sure if he can truly call it a family trait; the entire Chain has things they don’t want to talk about and things they continue to hide even now, after all.

However there are occasions where this behaviour certainly feels like something Twilight and Wild, who will be born centuries and millennia after Time's own life will come to an end, are destined to inherit from him.

But in a way, Time is grateful that Wild only shares habits and behaviours. It's much harder in Twilight's case because Twilight actually looks like Time.

Time can see himself in the shape of their faces, the line of their noses. Twilight's chin and physical build are all from Malon, and even the texture of his hair is closer to Malon's than to Time's.

In the back of Time's mind, he's quietly thankful for those few differences because he knows the very striking and blatant similarities had thrown Twilight off too for the first few weeks of this quest.

Much like Time, Twilight has never known his parents; he has no memories of them at all. Apparently all he'd had when Uli found him in the Ordon Spring was a small blanket with his name embroidered on one corner.

Twilight had grown up never knowing his blood, had never had anyone who looked like him at all through his childhood.

And Time knows exactly what that does to a person.

In a strange way, the Kokiri had softened the blow for him, because Time had been nine years old before he first heard statements like ‘you have your mother’s eyes’ being directed towards another person.

It was aged nine when he had been able to see how Malon looks like her father, and how Lullaby has an almost uncanny resemblance to her own ancestors, their faces well-preserved in portraits that decorate the walls of Hyrule Castle.

There is no need for biological resemblance among the Kokiri, so it had been an almost mystifying concept for his young mind to grasp. He hadn’t truly understood back then, too young at first, and then too busy and angry to truly pay attention, but eventually time will march on and with each step comes awareness.

So eventually Time too had found himself wondering just who he looked like? Who he got this trait or that habit from?

The Great Deku Tree had told him his mother fled a war, entrusting him to the Kokiri before she passed. Does Time have her eyes, like Twilight does Malon's? Does he have her nose, like Twilight has his?

The questions, even to this day, are endless and almost insanity-inducing, and he has tried his best to ignore them, to push them away for his own mental health.

It isn’t fair to say it as bluntly as he does, but seeing Twilight had brought all those questions Time had locked away back to the forefront of his mind. They’re not questions Time expects to ever get an answer to.

But somehow the knowledge that Twilight gets to know who he looks like, that he gets to know who he got his eyes and his nose and his face from is relieving and comforting and…

... And bittersweet.

[whetstonefires]

the simplest way to summarize the question of how old Wei Wuxian was at time of death is to say that there are multiple timeskips the length whereof is defined only as 'years' after the last time his age is stated in even approximate terms, so he probably died somewhere between 22 and 27.

you can expand it upward way more easily than downward, because there are a lot more minimum times things took available than maximum.

27 is the funniest option because it means when he gets back, all his old peers are 40.

[lizasweetling]

this is gonna be good

(also making a note that the town repairs are really going to be pricey... unnumbered streets and buildings and also the torchmen! very unfortunate)

[impossiblepluto]

hello darkness my old friend.

I'm ready for bed at 6pm.

[brown-little-robin]

what is up I'm back, I'm still doing bad due to the unemployment and the horror of having to feed myself into the American human-crushing machine and the fascism, but I'm hanging on!! !!

[the-way-astray]

you could theoretically read the series in the order 8.5, 9.5, 9 instead of 8.5, 9, 9.5 because books 9 and 9.5 take place parallel to each other but also sophie and keefe never interact between them so hypothetically there should be no difference (and no spoilers either way).

another thing you could theoretically do is alternate between reading books 9 and 9.5. a chapter here, a chapter there. it would be like reading a longer version of unlocked, with the povs alternating between sophie and keefe.

in fact, in theory, there could be a possibility of even less spoilers if you read it 8.5, 9.5, 9. for example, if vespera makes an appearance in unraveled, and you didn't know she would die yet, it could be a really cool way to see her last minute and have an extra layer about her before her death. whereas if vespera makes an appearance in unraveled and you already know she's going to die, it feels a little more empty. not completely meaningless, but like. kinda empty. like if vespera hints at a larger plan or something in unraveled and you didn't know she was going to die, you'd be super excited to see this plan shake out, but now that we know she's going to die something like that wouldn't hit as hard.

[hoofpeet]

Finally quit my full time job so now I can waste more time writing and drawing these sheep guys 👍 yippee