#they are literally trade bargains for power

[megaclubdiolis]

It has to be your daughter Akiko. It's her fate.

[charmwasjess]

Still thinking about Galidraan, about the Legends vs Canon treatment of Dooku’s character, namely his exit from the Jedi. 

It’s funny how much it matters to me and improves Dooku’s story that he didn’t leave the Jedi out of growing disillusionment with the Order itself. In the current canon, it’s all framed around a very Padme-esque disenchantment with current political makeup of the Republic, the Jedi being used by the Senate and political machines inappropriately, and how planets with little wealth or influence are left out. In the penultimate moment of crisis, he leaves for Serenno, not because he can’t be a Jedi any longer. Because of a conviction that he could truly make something better. 

And I don’t mean to suggest that he never expresses any criticism of the Jedi or particularly, the Council. He seems to have founded that characteristic trait within the Disaster Lineage. (Ironically, the person in Dooku’s story who should have the most legitimate reason to have a personal problem with the Jedi Order is fucking Sifo-Dyas, who never seems to have considered leaving and literally dies telling the camera he did it all to save the Jedi, but that’s a different post.) But that isn't what compels Dooku to leave. In fact, he remains close with the Order for years afterward.

Why it matters to me is because that detail makes Dooku ultimately betraying the Order SO MUCH MORE FUCKED. 

Because they weren’t an old score he was settling. It wasn't seething resentment that boiled out into revenge years later. They were innocent collateral damage of his decisions. His family. His lineage. His legacy. It makes his treachery so much more personal. He had a wager, power for a horrible cost, and he took the power and paid the horrible cost. Sidious really gets him with:

If Dooku hated them and had always thought they deserved to be destroyed, it wouldn’t have been a true Sith bargain, the trade off wouldn’t have tallied. In the same way that Vader could not have existed if Anakin hadn’t loved Padme and yet still killed her.

If Dooku was just a horrible, conceited, power-hungry ass who expectedly traded the kinda shitty people in his life for a shot at more power, it wouldn’t be a very good story. If he really didn’t give a shit, why would Sidious make that his initiation? But if he does - does care deeply about Sifo-Dyas, does love Qui-Gon like a son, is touched by Yaddle’s kindness and sympathy, begins to see Asajj as a true apprentice, consistently tries to save Obi-Wan out of affection, still considers the Jedi his true family - and yet still dooms them all, how much more tragic and horrible and sickening and real and interesting is his story?

[powdermelonkeg]

You're big on Zelda, so I'm curious. How would you rewrite TOTK, if given the writer's room?

Fun question! *cracks knuckles* Let's answer it.

I've answered about the disconnect between BotW and TotK before, so I'm going to take some of those ideas and run with them here.

I'm taking the intended route, for the sake of keeping coherence rather than just making up an entirely new Hyrule from scratch. Link and Zelda are the same as they are in BotW.

To start off, I like the Zonai.

I like that they're an entirely new race of people in Hyrule. I love how weird-looking they are. I love that they're not human race #87.

I also love their bastard not-Zonai lovechild thing. If we saw more examples of Zonai, I would love for this funky lil dude to be part of them, kind of like how the Zora have a ton of variation between them.

So why don't we do that? Why don't we give them a kingdom?

And why don't we put some meat on the bones of what was already built?

There are Zonai-esque ruins all over the Depths, mostly in mines for Zonaite.

Their color palette matches. Rauru's braids and Sonia's earrings match brightblooms.

And the three dragons, who have Zonai features (segmented, color-edged hair, long ears, blunt muzzles, scale beard mouths), could have been a catalyst.

A catalyst for what, though?

It starts with the Depths themselves, and the dragons breaking free.

See, in TotK, the three elemental dragons all dive in and out of the Depths chasms. There's no explanation as to why, and the only explanation we have for the chasms forming is that it was like...geysers of Gloom.

However, the dragons in BotW are confirmed to have carved these canyons:

So let's go back in time a little.

The Zonai live in the Depths. They're underground, away from all the chaos that Hyrule has ever had to endure. They worship the bargainer statues as gods, they collect the souls of those above that drip down into the world below.

They have a rich mining industry, and coliseums for their greatest warriors to test their mettle against captured monsters.

They have their Secret Stones, and the one who's allowed to hang onto those is their leader.

That'd be young Prince Rauru.

The elemental dragons, Dinraal, Naydra, and Farosh, are testaments to why no one can be allowed to have the Secret Stones. They were consumed by their power, literally.

One day, they break free, as if summoned by an unknown force. They tunnel through the ground and into the sky, connecting the world below to the one above.

The Hylians cautiously venture below, or the Zonai above. Prince Rauru, keeper of the Secret Stones, and Sonia, High Priestess of Hylia, meet.

They fall in love.

They marry.

Their marriage marks a unity between the Surface and the Depths.

(Maybe throw in a lil Skyward Sword continuity, mention that while Hylia sent the humans to the sky, the Zonai fled underground to avoid Demise, to keep the Secret Stones out of his grasp. You don't even have to name drop him, just say they went down to avoid destruction.)

Suddenly, Hyrule (the center part of the map, based around the Great Plateau, not the whole sub-kingdom conglomerate it exists as in BotW) undergoes a technological boom. Ganondorf, neighboring leader of the Gerudo, is interested. He talks trade with now-king Rauru, but there's the sub-plot of trying to get his secrets, which he steadily grows obsessed with.

Meanwhile, the Gerudo make their own expedition into the Depths.

There. The stage is set.

Now Zelda falls into the past.

She's found by Rauru and Sonia. Adopted as their daughter, more or less.

Also, the two of them have a small child. Nintendo, you CAN'T set them up as "they're her ancestors" and then kill them childless, descendants don't work like that. Zelda's immediately endeared to the kid, who reminds her of Link. Lil half-Zonai girl with a wooden sword who swings it at anything that moves. There are memories, it's cute.

In the past, Zelda witnesses, real time, Ganondorf going mad with power. They get along well at first, he's cordial, polite, a model diplomat. But she finds his troops in places they shouldn't be, confronts him about it and gets brushed off.

She tells Rauru, he's unwilling to throw suspicion onto Ganondorf. They're semi-friends and diplomacy is important! He's got to run this kingdom right. He can't fail, this is the biggest thing he's ever done!

(Sprinkle in a parallel to BotW Zel's fear of failure)

Some of the memories fill in gaps about Rauru's power, also. He's got what Link can do, minus Recall. Ultrahand and Fuse mainly, but Rauru's been experimenting with Ascend, excited because it'll make passage between the Depths and the Surface so much easier, and we see where Zel gets her scientific excitement from. Regardless of how different they look, they ARE family.

Ganondorf and Rauru get into a fight one day. A BAD fight. Maybe because Zelda tipped Rauru off, and despite telling her no, Rauru looked into it anyways. Regardless, they march out in opposite directions, and Zelda overheard it in the hallway. As Ganondorf leaves, he gives her the most SCATHING glare.

He then declares war on Hyrule.

Rauru makes a bid for allies, trying to get enough manpower to fight Ganondorf's impressive military. It's a struggle at first, but Zelda steps in, being the leader she's skilled at being and telling the others how crucial it is that they help. Ganondorf, meanwhile, turns to forbidden arts in his rage against Rauru, gets infected by Gloom/Malice, becomes scarily powerful. First Blood Moon. The Gerudo are kind of unnerved by him.

We see Zelda and Sonia helping with the war. Sonia's got light powers, Zelda's are stronger, together they can destroy entire ARMIES of monsters, saving their warriors on the battlefield. A few instances of Little Princess trying to be involved like the grown-ups are, getting huffy when she's told no.

In the aftermath of each fight, Rauru runs around, sealing away the monsters' latent energy with green spirals. That's where the Shrines come from, though in the past, they're Luminous Stones—it's all faded by present day, the light bled out of them.

Sonia is on the battlefield against Ganondorf one fateful night, Little Princess wanders onto the field, both the girls panic about it, and Sonia tries to run away with her while Zelda affords them cover. THAT'S when Ganondorf strikes her—he's fast like a ninja, rushes past Zelda, strikes Sonia.

She falls. Little Princess tumbles.

Zelda races to Little Princess's side, picks her up to run away with her as Ganondorf gets Sonia's stone, and he transforms into the Demon King. He raises his army. Little Princess screams, and we see an uncontrolled blast of Hylia's power, like an erratic attempt at what Zelda did at the end of BotW.

It fritzes, Zelda hugs her tight and ducks down to shield her, and the power cascades across the battlefield, affecting monsters AND people alike. The war is in shambles. Ganondorf stares at the child and her guardian, and retreats in a hurry.

Cue Rauru running to their side.

He grieves his wife. Little Princess is kept safe by Zelda. The Gerudo shun Ganondorf and join Rauru's side, and everyone involved in the war dedicates everything to one final assault against Ganondorf, one trap to finally END him, to force him into the Depths and fight him on the Zonai's own turf. The Secret Stones are distributed. Rauru knows what he has to do, and at the climax of the final battle, he uses his Secret Stone to amplify his sealing magic, knowing it'll kill him in the process and locking Ganondorf away in the Depths.

Except, it's not that simple.

Gloom bursts out of the newly trapped Ganondorf's chest, flooding the Depths, eliminating everyone in its path. That includes the Sages, the assaulting army, and the VAST majority of the Zonai. Its sole purpose is to gather enough strength over time for Ganondorf to break his shackles, because the Gloom wants OUT.

(Subtly implied that the Gloom is the first iteration of Demise's curse of hatred, maybe.)

And Zelda is alone. Trapped in the past, stuck with Little Princess, her Secret Stone, and the last of Mineru's notes.

Gloom continues to fume out of the Depths, so they're sealed off. The Blood Moon keeps spawning new monsters, so Little Princess and the remainders of the construct caretakers are sent up to the sky, for her protection. Zelda's the one that orchestrates it. Her people once hailed from the sky, and it's always been known as a place of safety for them.

Is this self-referential to the history she's building, or a Skyward Sword reference? Who knows.

They go skyward.

Then the Master Sword appears, and Zelda knows what she has to do. It's compounded, of course, by crushing guilt over the fact that Sonia's death happened on her watch. She tells Little Princess to look out for the world ahead, tells her to be strong, and brave, and everything she wishes her dad had told her. Then ends it with a final message.

"I'm leaving you something very important. Take good care of it."

Then she goes off alone to become a dragon.

Present day.

Link's not guided by Rauru, he's guided by a strange, beautiful woman who looks kind of like Zelda (albeit with Zonai hair, eyes, and long claws), who has a deep regret for the world below and who knows the lonely world above like the back of her hand. She teaches him the basics of his powers as he visits the shrines.

The Great Sky Island is otherwise normal.

You go to Hyrule. The Light Dragon's the one that breaks the cloud barrier, and as she does so, she sheds a single tear. By the time you get to the tear's location, it's spread a mural of the memory it contains around it.

Whenever you Recall a tear, the Light Dragon sheds a new one somewhere else, and it's up to you to follow.

You're chasing Zelda, twice over.

Besides that, Hyrule's Surface is...largely unchanged. I'm still upset that the pirates assaulting Lurelin weren't ACTUAL pirates, so guess what, they are now. Splinter faction of Yiga. Also, River Zora take over Lake Hylia, there's a spat between them and the Sea Zora, and Yona is the princess of the Rivers.

Then you've got the Depths.

That's where you find the ruins of the Zonai civilization, and you start piecing together the world it contains on your own. You aren't told, you're SHOWN.

Rauru's ghost finds and guides you here. He has a moment of "hey, isn't that MY arm?", upgrades your abilities or shows you how to use them more efficiently (ups your build limit, shows you how to un-Fuse, teaches you DEscend, gives you Autobuild, things like that), then DIES-dies. You escort his poe soul to a Bargainer statue.

The biggest change to the Depths, though, is that under the Gerudo Desert, you find PEOPLE.

So remember how the Gerudo launched their own expedition into the Depths in the past? How the Gloom killed almost everyone and the world below was sealed off?

There were a sparse few survivors of the Zonai, and some unfortunate Gerudo researchers that also got trapped. The people down there now are descendants of both. They're not Zonai anymore, though.

They're Lomei. They evolved like how the Rito evolved from the Zora in Wind Waker. Their tribe name comes from the Zonai word for "loneliness."

Regardless, they're initially inhospitable to Surfacers, because Surfacers are how they ended up how they did. If you sneak into their city, you're captured, like a few unfortunate Zonai Survey Team members that have wandered in, only YOU can escape via Ascend. OoT Gerudo parallel.

You can earn the Lomei's trust by doing things for them (maybe beating all three labyrinths as a rite of passage?), and then they let you into their cities. They've got their own brand of tech based off of old Zonai designs. One of the Lomei scientists is working on a mechsuit—that'll be the sage that Mineru passes her stone down to. And it fits doubly, both because the Lomei ARE the descendants of the Zonai and because the Lomei technician and Mineru are both scientists.

The Lomei people give you more pieces to the complicated Zonai-Hylian puzzle, and they're the ones that first tell you the legend of the dragons-from-Secret-Stones. So you can either learn it from them OR get it revealed in Zel's later memories.

Besides that, the present plot is pretty much as normal. Still the same bosses. Still the same sages-help-with-everything, though each sage you rescue gives you another piece of what really happened at the final fight (rather than the same cutscene over and over), telling you about how Rauru sacrificed himself and the effect it had on the rest of the Depths.

I will change where the Ganondorf's Army fight takes place, though. It's ACTUALLY very hidden, like the game was trying to imply it to be when you chase around Kohga. You do still have to do that, but he accidentally directs you to a place that's hidden in the tiniest crevice near Hyrule Castle, one that's very easy to miss and sitting in a veritable sea of Gloom. Once you finish the Kohga quest, a poe hovers outside of the crevice, which leads into an even deeper chasm that leads to the Underdepths.

The poe's your help to get through the maze there, and wherever it goes, Sundelions bloom at the corners. If you go early, before getting everything done, you have to navigate that place yourself, and it's a nightmare.

But you do it. You get to where everything started, and you beat the army, then Ganondorf, then he shoves his fist down his throat and goes dragon.

As he breaks through the ground and curls around Hyrule Castle, he SHATTERS it. The building crumbles to smithereens, crashing into the Depths below.

You beat Demon Dragon, Zelda catches you on her nose, it's over. You're in the spirit realm over sleeping Zelda.

The poe appears over your shoulder, drifts away from you, then materializes into Sonia. She says nothing, just activates Recall, turns Zelda back to normal, then cradles her in her arms. She gives her a kiss on the forehead, looks at you, then says the same line Zelda said to Little Princess ages ago, with the single change of one word.

"I'm leaving you something very important. Take good care of her."

She fades, as does the Spirit World.

You're falling.

Zelda's falling.

You catch her.

She wakes up, sees you, then hugs you and sobs into your shoulder.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

Roll credits.

Bonus for the memory completionists, the True Ending has Zelda meeting the grown Little Princess up at the Great Sky Island, reconciling with her, both of them saying how proud they are of each other. Then Little Princess turns into a poe, and Zelda promises to take her to the Depths so she can be with her parents again. As they walk away, Sonia's poe tails after them.

And THAT is a way longer post than I expected to write. Whew.

[i-dreamed-i-had-a-son]

Another Les Mis musical connection that's making me feral: Jean Valjean uses the same melody with which he sings to Cosette, "Believe me, / Were it within my power, / I'd fill each passing hour-- / How quiet it must be, I can see, / With only me for company"...

When he sings "You are free, / And there are no conditions. / No bargains or petitions! / There's nothing that I blame you for. / You've done your duty--nothing more" to Javert.

In my journey to map out the various leitmotifs in the show, this one really flung me for a loop because what does it meannnn?? This is the only time we hear the melody in the show, and it's applied in two very different circumstances, where the relationship Valjean has to the characters involved could not be more opposite. What connects them?? But I think I have it.

It's a reluctant release. Not of the people, but of his own desires regarding them. Let me explain.

Valjean very distinctly wants things from both Cosette and Javert, which he sings about on the rising part of the melody. With Cosette, he wants to be the center of her life: "Were it within my power, I'd fill each passing hour;" on the other hand, he desperately wants Javert to leave him alone. When he has Javert at his mercy, he absolutely does want to trade lives, which is why he sings it on the rising part: "And there are no conditions, no bargains or petitions." He does want these things--but he's letting them go.

And that's where the falling part of the melody comes in. In both situations, Valjean knows he can't have what he wants. So he gives up that desire. He accepts that Cosette wants someone else, and doesn't blame her for it ("How quiet it must be, I can see, with only me for company,"), the same way he accepts the situation between him and Javert ("There's nothing that I blame you for. You've done your duty, nothing more."). That's why immediately afterwards, he tells Javert his address, and why shortly after that, he prays that Marius be brought home to Cosette.

Cosette is his biggest security, and Javert is the biggest threat to his security. But in this little melody, he sets them free (Cosette metaphorically, and Javert literally). He acknowledges what he wants, and accepts that he can't have it, even though it hurts.

And if that ain't the most Jean Valjean thing, I don't know what is.

[mayxo-hxh]

As autistic coded as Illumi is, he is also EXTREMELY Bpd coded. Here's a thread abt why that would be, from a person with bpd. 🧵

Everything about his character screams a person that feels so so much but forcefully tones his feelings down so hard to the point where they seem nonexistent.

On the exterior he seems like he couldn't care less about most things and is a very calm and controlled person. However, his emotions shine the brightest when the topic of interest is a person he cares about.

This is ESPECIALLY shown in the election arc where he reveals much of his emotions to the audience. He gets two whole bloodlust scenes this arc.

One with extreme anger

and one with extreme joy.

When Hisoka provoked him, it took absolutely zero transition for him to immediately spike his bloodlust and aura to GREAT amounts to the point of engulfing the entire MOUNTAIN and reaching Killua from SO far away.

And in the same exact second it happened, it ended just as quickly the moment he noticed Killua running away. That is a CLASSIC negative mood swing example if I've ever seen one. One extreme emotion in one second, gone in the other.

On the other hand, his second bloodlust had a small transition, one that still did not give you the expectation of what truly came after.

He is seen watching Killua on his phone and the moment Nanika healed gon, showing Killua can use her on command with no consequences and also showing her immense power, he was absolutely overjoyed. So much in fact that he exploded in maniac laughter and aura a second after merely giving it a small laugh.

We get a hint at his bloodlust incoming in that moment, but NEVER predict just how MUCH would actually come out. Classic euphoric mood swing number two.

When he encountera Killua with Hisoka in the background at the end, he is pretty much shown going through the five stages of grief in mere minutes the moment his own butlers turn on him and allow Nanika to come out.

denial, anger, depression...

bargaining.......

and finally, acceptance. acceptance that he was going to be traded by killua not only for a friend, but for the rest of the family's lives.

He was so very clearly unhappy about it at the beginning, yet came to acceptance in mere seconds the moment nanika came out. He bargained with himself, Killua shouldnt be able to wish twice, then accepted. even if he could, thats okay. go ahead, kill me!

and then theres also the way he just switches from a very :DDD to >:| mood in like one panel short hello he is so coded

Even more; Usually bpd is either caused through trauma or inherited. and you can definitely argue that illumi went through enough "training" for the former but. is his behavior not. familiar to yall. not at all???? im just saying......... I know someone else in the zoldyck family that has intense mood swings!

if there is one person in the family that shows their unfiltered emotions and switches from being calm to screaming in distress in a single second, its going to be this woman. she gave birth to a son thats a literal copy of her. she ctrl c'd and ctrl v'd.

and i dont exactly know what this next one has to do with the thread but why was bro normal for one second then turned into this i mean im not complaining hes still hot and ill claim him as my bpd son regardless

anyways yes this was the thread have fun with this interpretation slash analysis however u like 👍

[darkaviarymc]

Inspired by this post by @mumblesplash

5 Life Series Winners as the 5 Stages of Grief

Grian: Depression.

Scott: Denial

Pearl: Anger

Martyn: Acceptance

Scar: Bargaining

I can see Pearl and Martyn and maybe Scar and Grian being swapped, but hear me out first.

First, we have Grian as Depression. "I don't feel so good," anyone? He even killed himself at the end, the only winner to do so. It's his game, both in universe and out. He had the power to just leave, but he ended it the only way that felt appropriate to him.

Second, we have Scott as Denial. Literally denying the Boogyman curse was one of his defining moments in LL. In the end, he was sort of in a daze, unbelieving for a moment that he (and Binky) actually won. And in every season following, he is openly NOT trying to win again. There's an edge of reluctance in his voice every time he mentions having won.

Third, we have Pearl as Anger. It wasn't until after she was dead that she let go of the grudge she'd held against Scott all season. She repeatedly hurt herself to hurt him and killed with a kind of glee that can only come from enacting revenge.

Fourth, we have Martyn as Acceptance. His boogykill was last minute, but he did it in a very matter-of-fact way. The end fight was the ultimate acceptance of his fate. "You're all going down! This is a death match for a reason!" He knew what he was there to do, and he did it without remorse.

Fifth and last, we have Scar as Bargaining. He made his own persona one of making deals and trades. Nearly every session, he opened by pleading with the Secret Keeper, the Watchers, the Universe, whoever would listen, to let him have allies. Then, in the end, he asked a question. "How did the guy with no friends win?" If you follow the Eyes and Ears lore, He's still trapped in the game, pushing a button in exchange for freedom over and over again.

[eaudecrow]

Well, I promised context to anyone who begged sweetly, and that’s sweet though for me. (I say as if I haven’t been dying to rant about them for weeks.)

The short story: The Target, aka Din, is the assassination target of Father Kilter’s adopted revenant kid, Pigeon. If Din dies, both they and Pidge will rot in an existence worse than hell, as the unjust death and necromancy magic fuses their souls together in eternal agony. Kilter stays in contact with Din via Sending and Dream spells to keep the two apart (and manages to steal their heart by being wet and pathetic and teaching them how to care).

The full story (buckle the fuckle up):

So. The Target. They have what we’ll call a… justified god complex. As the self-appointed harbinger of truth, they run around exposing secrets and toppling corrupt governments for the betterment of the world. Unfortunately, this makes them public enemy number one. So what did they do to keep themself safe?

Trade away their face, of course.

The Target bargained with Truth itself. They would give it their long-lived service, in exchange for the power to mete out justice and a face that cannot be remembered. The moment you look away, you forget it.

Now their enemies have a new problem to contend with. How do you kill someone who can’t be found or even identified? The answer comes in the form of a revenant: a being so hellbent on killing one person, it always knows their target’s position, regardless of what magic is used to hide them. And this target is so important to eliminate that a necromancy cult artificially manufactures one to go after them.

Enter Pidge.

For a while, the only thing Father Kilter could do when the Target got too close was hold Pigeon as they scratched and stabbed and clawed, trying to bring about their own end as well as some random stranger’s. He had no idea who the target was, no way to contact them and keep them far, far away from his kid, no way to keep them safe—so he jumped at the chance to spy on them when they happened to pass within viewing distance.

One poorly-timed hunting snare later, and Kilter was left hanging upside down, before their horse, at their mercy.

Luckily they seemed inclined to have mercy. Despite Kilter’s terrible attempts at lying and generally suspicious nervous energy, their curiosity was piqued. They let him down. They joined him for some wine, even, introducing themself as “Din”. The two had a chat that started with each trying to subtly pick the other apart, and ended with Kilter completely losing that battle—so desperate for a semblance of help and genuine connection, that he spilled his backstory and his secrets to this literally faceless stranger. All they had to do was touch his knee and say “you aren’t alone” and he was FINISHED. In the end, he had no choice but to trust that they had good intentions and the means with which to act upon them.

That’s where things are at in the canon campaign. Outside of that, @couchtaro and I have been going FERAL over future things such as:

Kilter finally being able to touch someone bare-handed in their shared Dreamscape

Them providing Kilter a place to sleep without being haunted by Pestilence’s manipulative nightmares, and it somehow devolving into cuddles

To get around the face enchantment, Kilter reading the arch of their nose and brow and lips like braille, memorizing the shape of their scar so that he can recognize them by touch

The Target’s myriad 14-foot thick, adamantium emotional barriers getting blasted to itty bitty pieces by Kilter fixing their blood-loss-induced hypothermia with his own body heat

They’re so suspicious of each other right now. Little do they know they’re in for a rollercoaster of learning what it means to love, and by proxy what it means to live. Thanks for asking @booksandberries!

[oneknightstand-if]

As suggested by the Greater Circle and voted on by the Greater/Lesser Circle tiers, it's the January Question & Answer session coming in at 3487 words. Another very Camelot-themed gathering… because Merlin refuses to leave the stage.

Merlin: *tosses a tendril of hair behind their shoulder* (✿ꈍωꈍ ) The star must never leave the stage, of course.

Adrian: I- I would like to leave the stage sometime too. I've literally been here since the very beginning!

Arthur: . . . *side-eyeing Adrian as he gives the young man a commiserating pat on the shoulder*

Adrian:* sinks down into his seat muttering about the past questions*

Cassandra: Intriguing. *furiously scribbling in her notes*

*Sitting at the center of the stage is Merlin, flanked by Arthur & Adrian to the right and Cassandra & Broderick — who is currently trying to stealthily sneak off stage — to the right. The ever-present misty fountain known as Vivian lurks in the background as an empty rocking horse faintly swings to and fro to the side*

This is probably the most Harbingers — and Harbinger-adjacent characters — that we've ever had on stage. Because Merlin refuses to leave. And no prematurely leaving the stage for the others either… did you hear that, Adrian and Broderick?

Broderick: Goddammit. *returns to his seat* I can't believe you invited the crazy water woman back after she literally flooded the whole… wait, can you flood the stage right now and shut this whole shitty production down?!

Vivian: *thundering of the fountain grows louder* Oh my, oh dear, is that a request that I hear?

Merlin: Once the Veil fully falls, this group is veritably doomed since they seem completely incapable of not shoving their feet into their mouths.

Cassandra: *laughs softly* I think we need to still work on that. Odd that some people haven't grown wary of their own words with you around.

Merlin: What do you mean, I am the very picture of—

Percy: *off-stage* —of a modern major general.

Merlin: —of a modern major general… and also of responsibility and good will when it comes to my own deals!

All right then, responsibility, being willingly or unwillingly permanently stuck on the stage, and accidentally bargaining your soul away to a fae aside, it's time for the first question. To everyone, which Camelot "character" are you calling dibs on?

Arthur: *chuckles* A rather obvious choice for half the people currently on this stage, is it not?

Merlin: …or is it?

Arthur: Hmm… yes, I suppose there are those out there who might wish to exchange their fate with another's. But I fain excuse myself… twould be rather cruel to inflict my fate on someone else in trade.

Adrian: *very much not staring*

Arthur: And those who would still choose it for the power it brings instead would best not have it.

Merlin: *smugly* And Merlin is the obvious best choice here anyway!

Cassandra: *delicately coughs and starts flipping through her notes* Yes, about that… I believe it was previously mentioned that the most powerful incarnation still potentially possible is Galahad? *tilts her head in thought* Although, certainly, there must be some lurking hidden drawback there. Still… let's say I'll go with that.

Vivian: I also "call dibs" on Galahad.

Adrian: What, really?!

Arthur: …the wording.

Percy: *off-stage* Sus.

Vivian: Indeed. Yon announcer never gave further detail on what that "dibs" precisely meant.

Merlin: ༼ つ ಥ_ಥ ༽つ

Cassandra: You truly need to teach the group better when it comes to dealing with the fae, Merlin!

Merlin: ༼ つ ಥ_ಥ ༽つ

The January Question & Answer session guest stars Adrian, Arthur, Broderick, Merlin (who never leaves the stage), Vivian, and Cassandra this time (to some of their dismay). Now available on my Patreon.

[southernsolarpunk]

Hey what the fuck is this news story?

“ But the world’s largest economies are already there: The total fertility rate among the OECD’s 38 member countries dropped to just 1.5 children per woman in 2022 from 3.3 children in 1960. That’s well below the “replacement level” of 2.1 children per woman needed to keep populations constant.

That means the supply of workers in many countries is quickly diminishing.

In the 1960s, there were six people of working age for every retired person, according to the World Economic Forum. Today, the ratio is closer to three-to-one. By 2035, it’s expected to be two-to-one.

Top executives at publicly traded US companies mentioned labor shortages nearly 7,000 times in earnings calls over the last decade, according to an analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis last week.

“A reduction in the share of workers can lead to labor shortages, which may raise the bargaining power of employees and lift wages — all of which is ultimately inflationary,” Simona Paravani-Mellinghoff, managing director at BlackRock, wrote in an analysis last year. “

Is this seriously how normal people think? Improving the bargaining power of workers and increased wages are bad?

“ And while net immigration has helped offset demographic problems facing rich countries in the past, the shrinking population is now a global phenomenon. “This is critical because it implies advanced economies may start to struggle to ‘import’ labour from such places either via migration or sourcing goods,” wrote Paravani-Mellinghoff.

By 2100, only six countries are expected to be having enough children to keep their populations stable: Africa’s Chad, Niger and Somalia, the Pacific islands of Samoa and Tonga, and Tajikistan, according to research published by the Lancet, a medical journal.

BlackRock’s expert advises her clients to invest in inflation-linked bonds, as well as inflation-hedging commodities like energy, industrial metals and agriculture and livestock.

Import labor via migration or sourcing goods? My brother in Christ they are modern day slaves!! I feel like I’m in backwards town reading this what the fuck?!

“ Elon Musk, father of 12 children, has remarked that falling birthrates will lead to “a civilization that ends not with a bang but a whimper, in adult diapers.”

While his words are incendiary, they’re not entirely wrong

P&G and Kimberly-Clark, which together make up more than half of the US diaper market, have seen baby diaper sales decline over the past few years. But adult diapers sales, they say, are a bright spot in their portfolios. “

Oh now the guy with a breeding kink is going to lecture us. Great. /s

“ The AI solution: Some business leaders and technologists see the boom in productivity through artificial intelligence as a potential solution.

“Here are the facts. We are not having enough children, and we have not been having enough children for long enough that there is a demographic crisis, former Google CEO and executive chairman Eric Schmidt said at the Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council Summit in London last year.

“In aggregate, all the demographics say there’s going to be shortage of humans for jobs. Literally too many jobs and not enough people for at least the next 30 years,” Schmidt said.

Oh god not the AI tech bros coming into this shit too. Wasn’t the purpose of improving tech to give people more free time? So they can relax and spend time with family more and actually enjoy life? Isn’t our economy already bloated with useless pencil-pushing number-crunching desk jobs that ultimately don’t serve a purpose?

I’m not going to post the entire article but give it a read. It’s… certainly something. Anyway degrowth is the way of the future.

[thepastisalreadywritten]

The most powerful moment of the coronation of King Charles III was not the gold glittering off carriages or epaulettes — not the pomp and show and signifiers of power.

It was precisely their opposite: when Charles shed his gold robes and stood in a thin white shirt, his frail humanity implied.

Then a screen was erected around him and, shielded, he had a private consultation with the Archbishop of Canterbury, who dabbed anointing oil with his hands on Charles’s bare breast.

"This was the most solemn and personal of moments,” Buckingham Palace said.

Charles was bare before God, in privacy, God being one of the last beings with no need to sign a non-disclosure agreement.

The Princess of Wales looked on as the screen shielded her father-in-law.

By contrast, she was at that point the most magnificent she had ever been, swathed in layer upon layer of regality, the dress, the robes, the hanging chains, headpiece and ribbons all serving to move the viewing gaze — subjects in every sense — from our awareness of Catherine Middleton with her everyday human DNA and towards the shared fiction of her transcendent queenliness.

Less than a year later, this moment is remembered with new and terrible power.

It is spring again, but it’s a time of hard Lenten moral reflection for us as a nation, in relationship to our royals, as well as an ever more voraciously unprivate modern celebrity culture.

Both the King and the princess have cancer, the latter’s disclosed by Catherine in an unprecedented video address on Friday, March 22.

Catherine’s speech was something of a plea bargain in which she traded not only her customary silence but her most personal of health ordeals in order to put an end to toxic rumours swirling online that had become in tone like an unruly mob rattling at the palace gates.

Or rattling at the figurative locks on her medical notes, with three workers at the London Clinic, where she and the King were treated, suspended and under investigation for allegedly trying to access her records (hers, it is important to note, the King’s were unmolested).

📷: Getty Images

What was so powerful about the anointing of the King was the sacredness of that space in which he could be fully human away from observation and judgment.

There should be another one-on-one consultation that is sacred, where anyone, from King to princess to pauper, can expect to be shriven in total privacy, and that is the sanctity of the medical room.

It used to be that priests were our only bound confidants, we could trust them to be privy to all our spiritual ills.

Now doctors are our secular priests: bound by law and ethics to enshrine confidentiality at the heart of the patient relationship.

As a result, our medical privacy in an age of oversharing and online surveillance feels both stranger and more necessary.

If we knew our every GP-inspected rash was to be posted on TikTok for the nation, many of us would quite literally die of embarrassment.

The King’s appointment behind the three-sided screen can now be viewed through the lens of royal illness.

The lavishly embroidered panels and expensive white shirt now replaced by the flimsy three-sided ward screen on wheels and thin hospital gown that can humble us all.

But it also enacts a principle at the very heart of becoming the monarch.

The medical-like screen is erected in the coronation to tell us there are some places the public cannot go; to tell us that there are sacredly personal moments in which a person, any person, however swathed in our projections of power, needs to be nakedly human.

Otherwise, they will go mad. We need to make sure the screens are erected around Catherine now.

Much is said, quite a lot of it by Prince Harry himself, of the dangers of the wives of the princes repeating the tragic history of their mother, Princess Diana, hunted by photographers.

He remains phobic to any hint of tabloid persecution or paparazzi chase. But this is a sideshow, even an anachronism in 2024.

He and others have not recognised how the “chase” has changed. Who needs paparazzi when there are a billion citizen hacks ready to take pictures with their phones, in case a convalescing woman nips to a Windsor farm shop with her husband?

Instead, the appetite now is not to see but to know.

The royals used to have a contract with the public: we pay for them, and in return, they give us their presence.

Nearly all of their official job is to do with surface: to show up, to put in appearances at a set number of functions, whether at the opening of parliament or the opening of a leisure centre.

But now parts of the online mob seem to be staging a coup. We want more than the surface, we want to puncture the skin barrier of the royal family and occupy from the inside.

The “fans” have become an invasive virus. The royal analogy is often that they are trapped in a gilded zoo. This new model, instead, casts the royals more as lab rats.

When Catherine disappeared from view in January after announcing a “planned abdominal operation,” the response from internet truthers was one of irate entitlement.

They are now the 1980s tabloids: ravening for intimacies and making stuff up when thwarted.

This wasn’t the boomer generation, who are both more respectful of the royals and more private about their own health.

It was the fortysomething mothers frustrated when they can’t track the phone location of everyone in their life; or the twentysomethings on Snap Map.

Both desperate for their personalised new Netflix season of “The Royals” to drop.

Catherine presents with such stoicism and dignity, it is easy to forget where this new invasiveness started: when she was pregnant with Prince George in December 2012 and hospitalised for extreme morning sickness.

While she was sleeping on the ward, a radio station in Australia rang the hospital switchboard pretending to be the Queen.

They broadcast the nurse’s comments about Catherine’s “retching.”

One could only find this prank funny if Catherine had already — a young, wretchedly ill, pregnant woman — been dehumanised.

George is now ten and his mother hospitalised again, and in that decade, the physical security of ill royals may have tightened but their claim to bodily autonomy seems to have weakened.

Some say Kensington Palace “brought it on themselves” by their wish for discretion; this claim is duplicitous.

The late Queen Elizabeth II became increasingly debilitated in her final years with not much detail ever given; just as her father, King George VI, died without disclosing his lung cancer.

I’m glad that the British do not subject their heads of state to the same publicised medical reports as the president of the United States; one shouldn’t have to present a stool swab to sit on the throne.

No, instead the apparent justification of all those clicking and posting conspiracy theories “worried for Catherine’s welfare” was this sinful truth.

As a beautiful, 42-year-old mother of three, her drama was more box office than the ailments of those older, a pound of her flesh was worth more.

Pity, Susan Sontag said in her 1978 book Illness as Metaphor, is close to contempt.

Back then cancer was still taboo. Those around the patient, Sontag says, “express pity but also convey contempt.”

Ask any cancer patient and they will say they don’t want pity: it is too isolating, it sets them apart, an unwanted privilege.

This is why the video plea of Catherine was one of affinity, rather than pity or privilege.

Last year, she sat in robes in Westminster Abbey at the coronation of her father-in-law, next to her future king son and future king husband.

In her video address last week, she sat on a classically English garden bench, pale, alone and in jeans, as bare of pomp as any royal can be.

No mention of kings or titles, just Diana’s ring on her hand.

Rather she gave an appeal, parent to parent, human to human, about her “huge shock” and her care for her “young family.”

And, finally, her kinship with anyone who lives in a vulnerable human body susceptible to a democratic illness like cancer, “you are not alone.”

Or, to paraphrase Richard Curtis:

“I’m just a girl, standing in front of a public, asking for some time to endure gruelling chemotherapy."

NOTE: Additional photos have been included in this article.

[animentality]

Re Gortash’s parents: you ever think about the fact that in all the years since he’s been free of the hells- a couple of decades, likely- he hasn’t killed them? He hasn’t used his connections to ruin their business? Didn’t ask or let slip to Durge that no one would miss them, certainly not any children these poor cobblers might have had? I find it so interesting. For all we know, he’s had contact with them in the interim, maybe hoping against hope that they’d finally see him as worthy of love. And when they never did… well. That’s what the tadpoles were for.

I actually think that he didn't visit them until he had the tadpoles and the absolute plan.

They act as though he just showed up one day, after years of simply being gone, and tadpoled them, and that makes a lot of sense, actually.

Because consider this:

As a kid, your parents are your entire world. They shape literally everything about you, whether you become exactly like them or act out deliberately to be their total opposite.

They shape your world view and how you see men and women and relationships. They teach you how to react to pain, they teach you what pain is, and how to fix it, they teach you patience, they teach you understanding.

Or not.

So my theory is that Gortash never bothered his parents until he got the tadpoles for two reasons.

1) the pain he must've felt after being sold, and after years of being tortured by Raphael, was too great for him to bear revisiting. We know from how he talks to Karlach that he minimizes and condescends and pretends that being enslaved doesn't hurt, isn't a betrayal, isn't an awful thing.

Why do you call it awful? I was enslaved once. I didn't care.

His parents taught him early on, and it was reinforced by a devil who literally bargains with souls, that people are just bargaining chips.

They're tools, to be used and traded and discarded when they're no longer useful.

So why would he go back to his parents, even if it was to ruin their lives?

Because that would be admitting that they hurt him. That would be admitting he needed closure.

A strong man doesn't need to visit his parents and ask why they didn't want him.

And 2)

He is a fucking liar. We know he's a liar.

If he truly didn't care, he wouldn't have tadpoled his parents. He wouldn't be tormenting his mother, by forcing her to pretend that she'd never sell her son to a devil. He wouldn't have erased his father completely.

There is no reason at all to tadpole a couple of fucking cobblers.

But he's holding onto it, and like any megalomaniacal man child with parental issues, he's pushing it down and pretending he doesn't care, when it still hurts.

And that's why I don't think he visited them until he had tadpoles to use on them.

Part of him wouldn't want to re-live his past. Part of him would be terrified of being helpless again.

Of feeling powerless.

Abusive and neglectful parents often fill their children with terror.

Even as adults, abused children still remember that fear. It's settled deep within their guts, and they feel a flicker of it every time a partner raises their voice or a friend screams at them.

Gortash didn't visit his parents because he needed to feel powerful first.

He needed to know he could go back, and not become Enver, that sniveling little boy who used to cry every night in the hells for his mom and dad, who were the only reason he was ever there in the first place.

He needed to be Lord Gortash.

Chosen of Bane.

And...he needed the tadpoles.

He needed to make his parents helpless.

So that he wouldn't feel that way, ever again.

So they say empty platitudes. Truthfully, I don't know if he cares about impressing them anymore.

To me, it's more about...eliminating all traces of Enver Flymm from the world.

Letting that little boy die in the hells...

So in short, anon...no, I don't think he visited them ever.

Not until he had the means to keep them totally helpless.

I also doubt the dark urge ever knew about them, until they tadpoled them, maybe.

Because why would Enver want the dark urge to ever know that there was a time when he was not the Chosen of Bane, the mighty tyrant, the equal of the Child of Murder?

Enver wouldn't just be embarrassed. He'd despise the Dark Urge seeing him that way.

He refuses to look weak or tolerate weakness.

That includes his own.

[heliopauseentertainments]

Course of Treatment

For TFMegaRatch's "Unexpected" prompt Continuity: IDW1

Rating: General Relationships: Megatron/Ratchet

Characters: Ratchet, Megatron

Warnings: Alternate Universe, Not Beta Red

Summary: In which Ratchet is the only concession requested by the Decepticons in the peace treaty.

Crossposting: AO3 | Dreamwidth | TFMegaRatch

Fic under cut. See AO3 for complete notes.

Ratchet couldn’t believe what he had just heard. He leaned back in his seat, jaw slack and optics wide in shock.

That couldn’t have been correct.

Absolutely not.

He shook his head as though that would make the world make sense again.

It didn’t.

The meeting had started simply enough; his presence at the peace negotiations had only been a formality—a function of his high rank—since he had little de jure authority beyond medical decisions. Sure, he had some measure of personal influence but that generally didn’t translate to political sway.

Ratchet slowly turned his head sideways to look at this fellows. His side of the table all appeared to be in various stages of shock. Prowl looked like he’d been zapped by an electrified pylon. Ironhide looked like Megatron had insulted him personally. Kup looked like he thought this was all some kind of joke. And Jazz… for once had been rendered utterly speechless.

Optimus leaned forward in his seat, cautiously like the entire situation was a bomb. It might as well have been.

“Would you… run that by us one more time, Megatron?” he asked, surely making some kind of baffled expression with his mouth behind that battle mask. “I’m… not sure we heard you correctly.”

Megatron, for his part, sat there on the opposite side of the literal bargaining table, hands folded together as he frowned. Nothing unusual about how he was holding himself, except perhaps the usual signs of exhaustion and fatigue that Ratchet had noticed over the years. Optimus bore similar signs, making them easy to recognize.

It was as though he thought he hadn’t said anything remarkable at all.

None of the lieutenants at his side seemed surprised either. However, two of them had no visible face and Starscream did tense his own frown in what might have been a measure of disgust.

Ratchet wasn’t sure what to make of this.

“Is your hearing going, Prime?” Megatron scoffed. “But, very well, I suppose I could do you the courtesy of repeating myself.”

Ratchet braced himself, certain that he wouldn’t say it again. That they had heard incorrectly or that Megatron had misspoken the first time. There had to have been some kind of mistake.

“All I’m asking for… is Ratchet.” There was a pause. “In a conjunxual union.”

Then he hadn’t misheard after all.

--

The shuttle, rickety with age, shuddered as it passed through the outer layers of the atmosphere to enter a high orbit. It whisked Ratchet away from the ruins of Iacon, the one city remaining on Cybertron that had enough structures intact to call it a settlement… up to where the Nemesis waited, falling perpetually around the planet.

The reflected light of the sky dropped away as the shuttle left the firmament, and thus Cybertron, behind.

Everything since the meeting had been a blur. Optimus and the others had decided that peace and control of the planet had been worth the low, low cost of handing over Ratchet to Megatron.

Even Ratchet could understand the logic of the choice. At the time, he had even verbally agreed.

In a way, he had reasoned at the time, he would be sacrificing himself for the good of them all. It was, comparatively, a small cost.

Megatron could have demanded land for settling, resources, a skewed trade agreement, access to research and technologies, hostages, political power, anything that made sense to ask for when negotiating an equitable peace treaty… but he hadn’t.

He had only asked… for Ratchet’s hand in union.

It was baffling.

Something clearly wasn’t right here.

Ratchet didn’t even know Megatron particularly well, not personally. He knew of him; he had seen him many times in meetings and battles, had heard him bloviating in both person and media releases. He didn’t know him in the way that Optimus did, through close, direct opposition.

By that token, Megatron couldn’t have really known Ratchet either. It was highly unlikely that Megatron had been secretly nursing a flame of unrequited love—or lust—for a random Autobot medic for some indefinite amount of time. Why pick him? Why demand him and no one else?

The blackness of the void moved slowly outside the shuttle; the sliding points of light—distant stars—and the growing edge of a warship’s hull were the only visual signs of motion now that the sky had vanished.

An unkind thought in the back of his processor pushed its way forward: Ratchet likely deserved this. For something. For patients he had failed to save. For conflicts he had failed to intervene in. For something. There was always something he could have done better.

And Megatron, personally, was to be his punishment.

That and separation from his fellow Autobots until such a time as relations between the two armies could be normalized, if such a time ever came. Until then—even then—Megatron would loom large in his life, an all-encompassing shadow.

The worldburner-class ship that was to be his home loomed ahead, now filling the entirety of the shuttle’s forward viewscreen, blocking out even a hint of the field of stars beyond. The Decepticons were to live in exile and search for a new homeworld elsewhere among the stars; it would be a long journey to find a place both suitable, uninhabited, and far enough from any civilizations the Decepticons had angered. They were, quite understandably in Ratchet’s opinion, also barred from settling on any worlds that they had previously sterilized.

Ships like this, Ratchet knew, could easily destroy worlds, even if now it’s role was nominally that of a colony ship. This flagship had proved its power many times over throughout the war. It was only happenstance that Cybertron had the near-sacred status of “home” even if it was in ruins, destroyed in all other ways that mattered. Worldburners were saved, it seemed, for organic worlds.

Ratchet could only hope that once he boarded the Nemesis, that Megatron wouldn’t turn the ship’s armaments against their planet in one last vindictive blow before speeding off into deep space to… wherever it was they were going. Somewhere far, far away.

The Decepticon pilots aboard the shuttle, thankfully, ignored Ratchet and his silent musings as he sat in one of the passenger seats, his medical kit tucked underneath behind his legs.

At least, he thought, he had few belongings. His medical kit and nothing more, not counting the long-distance communicator Prowl had granted him. “Just in case” was what he had been told. Over the millions of years of war and constantly being on the move, he had learned to not keep more than the essentials.

His real dowry was the treaty. For all the good it did.

He leaned forward in his seat to watch the final approach.

A small square in the distance opened up in the worldburner’s hull, a little hatch of some kind, barely visible on the viewscreen.

At first, he thought, perhaps it was for a docking cable or some other equipment, but as the square grew in size as they neared… the sheer scale of the Nemesis became clear.

The “small square” was the mouth of their distant landing dock on this utterly titanic ship.

His spark stirred uncomfortably in his chest, chilled by a sense of his own frailty and insignificance.

It had been some time since Ratchet had felt so… minuscule.

--

The Nemesis’s corridors were vast, designed to allow huge warframes to pass through unencumbered. Ratchet, an average Cybertronian in size, felt like little more than a minibot as his and Megatron’s footsteps echoed off the walls. Even Megatron seemed comparatively small.

It would be easy to get lost for hours, maybe days, in a warship this size, simply by taking one wrong turn and ended up in an entirely different deck or sector.

Megatron’s voice joined the footsteps in the echoes, detailing to Ratchet general information about the ship, what deck they were currently on, what the current work shift was.

A strange first topic to discuss with a legal partner, Ratchet thought, letting the data wash over him as he tried to habituate to hearing Megatron’s voice without imagining Autobots shattered into pieces on a fuel-soaked battlefield at the same time.

Perhaps it was for the best that whatever Megatron was telling him was mundane, momentarily unimportant. The information could get lost and do no harm in disappearing.

Megatron and Soundwave had both met him in the shuttle’s docking bay.

Soundwave, of course, had remained inscrutable. As usual.

Yet, Megatron had scowled.

However, that had seemed to be his default expression over the last millions of years, so Ratchet had reasoned that it likely wasn’t a particular scowl meant for him personally. That was, unfortunately, just his face rather than a sign of displeasure or impending threat.

With no preamble other than a brief “welcome,” Soundwave had presented Ratchet with his identification documents, allowing him the rights and privileges of any Decepticon, though strictly, for now, he was one of the Decepticons’ few civilians. He hadn’t been given a job classification or salary schedule, but he would be offered those, apparently, after he had gotten settled in.

Soundwave, however, had then promptly left, leaving Ratchet alone with Megatron… for the first time… of what would likely be many such occasions in the coming endless years.

Ratchet had opened his mouth, like he had wanted to say something, to tell Megatron that this had only been for the good of their peoples, to not expect much despite the legal paperwork that was already in place.

But Megatron had suddenly smirked, a look oddly more threatening the scowl had been. Maybe it had been intended to be a smile, but at the time Ratchet couldn’t have been certain. Whatever it was supposed to have been, it had interrupted whatever sounds had been waiting in Ratchet’s vocalizer.

“Allow me to echo what Soundwave said before: welcome, Ratchet,” he had said, his smirk struggling slightly as though the word sans sarcasm had been foreign to him. There was a twitch to his mouth, not unlike when certain patients were hesitant in telling Ratchet how exactly they had come by their injuries. “Your stay here has been a long time coming.”

What had that meant?

Now, walking side by side easily twenty minutes later, Ratchet could only wonder just how far they had to go to reach their destination… and what Megatron intended upon their arrival.

Megatron had, of course, managed to talk the entire time. A great windbag.

He abruptly turned down another, smaller corridor, one with a lower ceiling and closer walls, clearly not meant for the largest of mechs. The likes of Overlord and his ilk would have had to stoop. Perhaps this was intentional in the design.

Though the floors could have used a shine, scuff marks on the surface and clumps of dust congregating in the corners.

Ratchet nearly walked right past the turn before scrambling to change direction.

“Hey!”

Megatron stopped, looking back over his shoulder.

“My apologies, Ratchet.” What apologies? Had Megatron ever once possessed apologies to offer anyone? “Old habits, you see; it’s easy to forget you don’t know your way around yet.”

An oddly reasonable excuse for just ducking around corners without warning.

Terrible.

It was a shame that Megatron was still smirking at him. Though, that might have been meant as a smile. Did he even know how to smile normally? Was he trying and failing?

“It’s fine,” Ratchet said, letting it slide.

His patience would probably be truly put to the test before long, but so far this was nothing. He had gotten more lip from Prowl and Ironhide while getting loaded up into the transport shuttle that morning when they warned him to keep his wits about him.

All the same, he narrowed his eyes as he caught up to Megatron’s position.

He didn’t really know Megatron as a person beyond his warmongering and murderous roles. It was hard to know what to expect, despite the fact that they had already been joined in the legal sense.

There hadn’t even been a ceremony; it had all been done through Ultra Magnus and Prowl mediating paperwork. For most people, no ceremony would have been unsurprising. The decision to become conjunx endurae was a private, personal matter. For a high-ranked individuals joining as part of a peace deal, though, a nominal ceremony would have been more expected.

It didn’t quite add up.

Ratchet let Megatron continue to lead the way to wherever it was they were going. Most likely some private residence. He hadn’t been sure if he would be expected to reside with Megatron or if he would be allotted his own private space.

Soon, however, after ducking through another few hallways, they stopped at a nondescript door.

“Here we are.”

“And where is ‘here’ exactly?” Ratchet asked, putting his free hand on his hip as he frowned up at Megatron. Some of his initial discomfort having worn off in the mundanity and boredom of wandering around the hallways.

“Our quarters.”

So they would be sharing after all—but in this out of the way place? Was it to deter intruders and traitors? It would be harder to locate the leader if the leader didn’t reside in obvious places, Ratchet supposed.

Being alone in private quarters with someone perfectly capable of extreme violence, while not unknown to Ratchet from caring for various high-risk patients, was not something he relished. Who knew what Megatron would do?

“Our?” he questioned, despite the obvious implication of Megatron’s original answer.

“Of course, it goes without saying.”

Megatron shrugged nonchalantly as the door slid open. He gestured inside for Ratchet to go in ahead of him.

“Does it though? Does it really?” Ratchet pressed, stubbornly keeping his place in the hall. He raised his hand, pointing up at Megatron’s nose. If Ratchet stretched up just a little, he could probably jab Megatron right in the face. “This is just a political—“

“Yes,” Megatron cut him off, still keeping his arm out towards the door. His posture was stiff, like he didn’t know what to do with himself.

Ratchet wasn’t one of his soldiers to command; there was no reason for Ratchet to defer to his authority. Retaliation could endanger the treaty: one little call to Prowl on the communicator and the Autobots would extract him.

Hopefully.

Maybe.

If they weren’t too far away to mount a rescue if—when—something went wrong.

If they didn’t deem the costs of retrieving Ratchet too high for the value of keeping the Decepticons out of sight and out of mind. Why bother demanding a refund when the deal was such a bargain?

Maybe Ratchet ought to be mindful of proverbial land mines—

“Yes, it is a political arrangement, but it needn’t be solely such.”

Ratchet’s jaw went slack, his hand still raised.

Megatron continued regardless, as though what he said didn’t have serious implications.

“Even with a political arrangement, it would look like we’re flouting the treaty to not cohabit by disregarding the spirit of the thing.”

He waved his arm up and down, nonverbally reiterating his request that Ratchet cross the threshold.

“A separate room has been set aside for you personally, which you would see if you went in.”

“Oh—” Ratchet finally dropped his hand, feeling a little foolish.

So he wasn’t expected to share a slab with the oaf, at least not for the time being. And, by extension, he probably wasn’t expected to share a slab in less literal terms.

“Alright, but no funny business. I may have taken oaths to heal, but don’t think that makes me helpless. You know better than that by now.”

During the war, field medics often had to become just as handy with guns and hand-to-hand combat as the soldiers they put back together. Ratchet just always preferred to head off violence with other means wherever possible, but he wouldn’t let Megatron forget that he wasn’t some pushover.

Megatron held up his palms in mock surrender, grinning like he thought this whole thing was funny.

“Ratchet, I wouldn’t dream of such a fallacy.”

Ratchet scoffed, ducking around Megatron to avoid contact as he went through the door.

--

Megatron slumped into his chair on the Nemesis’s bridge, rather than standing like he usually would during a launch.

He had left Ratchet to their quarters, so that he could explore and settle in. Maps of the ship and other informational materials about the vessel, its utilities, conveniences, and sundries had been left with him for perusal.

Their personal refinery in the quarters had been stocked with fuel and whatever sparse flavorings and additives the Decepticons had been able to source. Ratchet would not be able to accuse him of having abandoned him to starve.

Mechs scurried back and forth in Megatron’s field of vision, coming and going and shuffling about throughout the bridge. Even though they were already in orbit, rather than lifting off from the ground, it still took a lot of coordination to move a ship of this size.

Especially given the condition it was in.

At first glance, the vessel was impressive, powerful and in great shape.

But having spent untold eons dwelling on it after it had been discovered, Megatron and the other Decepticons stationed here knew its failings, saw where its condition had deteriorated.

There was metal fatigue in places where there oughtn’t be, corrosion without explanation, paint flaking akin to nutrient deficiencies. The hull and bulkheads would groan without obvious cause. Components would fail sometimes without warning. Each of the engines required “rituals” of percussive maintenance unique to each one, to kick on and stay on.

The ship was, for lack of a better word, ill… and becoming slowly sicker by the day.

A ridiculous statement, but one Megatron had had to confront on the daily for ages now. If something wasn’t done….

Megatron leaned his head against his elbow, propped up on the arm of the chair. He closed his optics against the headache building in his forehead.

“What did you tell him?” Starscream’s voice grated against his audio receptors.

He pinched the bridge of his nose, still not bothering to look at his second-in-command. He knew what Starscream looked like. He could easily imagine what skeptical expression was being made in his direction.

Keeping the identity of their flagship a secret from the Autobots had been a major logistical challenge during the war. If they knew that the Decepticons had been piloting around a comatose, chronically ill titan for ages—Their ship had been the model for the other worldburners, the remaining fleet waiting patiently near the heliopause to set off for their final destination.

“Nothing,” he said, “yet.”

He couldn’t afford to show their hand too early. With his own medics either too incompetent or too inexperienced to treat a titan, Ratchet was their only hope.

[augustnugs]

Been thinking about the political shitstorm facing Rook after the events of Veilguard. Like, their access to Solas' eluvians would be enough to draw anyone's attention (the crossroads where you can travel across thedas in minutes?? could revolutionize trade. or you know, send an army to your enemies doorstep in a day)

But on top of that? In the span of a a few months(?) They "start" and end the Blight to End All Blights, kill the last two archdemons and two literal gods, AND they stop the Veil from getting torn down.

They've assembled a team of highly skilled individuals with connections to some of the most powerful organizations in Northern Thedas including but not limited to:

The mourn watch who have been playing Weekend at Bernie's with the King of Nevarra for however long and have deep and secret knowledge of the Fade

The remnants of the Grey Wardens who are renowned across all of Thedas

The Archon of the Tevinter Imperium and The Black Divine???

Not to mention they've got an ally in the Inquisitor who -- regardless of whether or not the inquisition is disbanded -- is still a well known and influential figure.

The Veilguard itself may not be a large group like the Inquisition was, but you don't do what Rook did and not gain some notoriety. I'm imagining Rook gets like a week -- two weeks tops -- after sending Solas back to fade jail before the letters start rolling in from all over. Invitations to meet with nobles trying to curry their favor, bargains from merchants, none too few death threats.

Just, the guy is going to be BUSY

[sugar-coated-prat-dragon]

Title: Nimueh did feel some regret over Ygraine’s death 💔

Episode: "Excalibur" questions #4

Questions by @tansyuduri

Tagging: @miyriu

Books used for reference: Sword and Sorcery book and The Merlin Complete Guide 📚

Question: Why would Tristan attack Uther for what he thought was a normal childbirth death? That would be REALLY weird.

My answer: Is it really that hard to believe though?

Agravaine didn’t know about the life-for-a-life magical bargain and he still blamed Uther for his sisters death.

Hell, if anything Agravaine was worse, because not only did he want to kill Uther, but he despised Arthur for being born and wanted him dead too.

Grief is a tricky emotion.

In some ways, it’s almost more dangerous than displaced rage.

Question: Wraith clearly has a different meaning in this show?

Usually, it refers to a ghost, death omen or a soul who was on the verge of death/recently passed on?

My answer:

Actually, the definition for Wraith in the show (and in the tv shows glossary) is quite literally; apparition or a ghost.

The only difference between a normal run-of-the-mill ghost and a Wraith is that it’s the ‘spirit of a dead man’ conjured from the grave using magic and then that same tormented soul is made to live again as a physical manifestation of the living dead.

Basically, a ghost is a tormented soul with no physical body and a wraith is a tormented soul that has been brought back using dark magic (then given a physical body; which remains stuck in the space between life-and-death).

Book description:

WRAITH: apparition or a ghost (glossary)

- But Gaius had located the page he wanted. He pointed to the illustration of a skeletal knight. 'It's my guess we're dealing with a wraith. The spirit of a dead man conjured from the grave

Merlin was shocked. 'So this is the work of a sorcerer?*

The doctor nodded. 'Powerful magic can harness the grief and rage of a tormented soul and make it live again.'

Episode 12 - The Fires of Idirsholas; This band of seven wraiths, formerly noble knights whose souls where corrupted by an evil sorcerer, were lethal warriors.

- Because a wraith is not alive, no mortal weapon can kill it.

Question: Nimueh obviously has a bit of control of who dies?

Did something interfered here causing it to be Ygraine?

My answer: It does seem like Nimueh has at least some measure of control over whose life she trades during her life-for-a-life bargains.

Especially, since it states that she ‘ignored Merlin’s request’ to take his life in exchange.

However, I don’t think Nimueh purposely chose to exchange Ygraine’s life, because she genuinely seemed sad over the memory of the queen’s death (at least briefly in the book; during a moment of weakness when her mask slipped).

That scenario likely only happened because when no other life is pre-destined to die, it falls simply to the old religion itself to right the balance.

The book mentions that Nimueh had no idea that her choice to help Uther have an heir would ultimately result in helping to shape events that unite the kingdom and aid magic to be free again - perhaps stronger than ever.

Book description:

Even when directly serving the old religion, Nimuch showed no compassion.

She agreed to save Arthur's life but ignored Merlins request to take his own life in exchange. Instead, she took the life of his mother.

DESTINY:

Nimueh is aware of some aspects of Arthur's destiny - despite her wish for the prince's death, so that Uther is punished, she knows he is not fated to die at her hand.

Yet she doesn't realize that in bringing Arthur into the world, she has helped shape events that may aid magic.

Under Arthur, the kingdom may be united, and magic could be free again - perhaps stronger than before.

- 'She died giving birth to your son! It was not my choice. That is the law of magic. To create a life, there had to be a death. For a second she looked almost sad.

"The balance of the world had to be repaid:

Question: Uther does seem to truly view magic as evil incarnate, but seemingly only after the death of his wife?

My answer: Uther tolerated magic just fine, until he found out the hard way that he couldn’t control it and in the aftermath, he came to conclude that he had been deceived by magic.

It was only then that Uther decided to order that anyone who practiced sorcery was to be put to death.

Book description:

UTHER CONQUERS

Magic was tolerated - after all, it had always been part of the world; who could imagine a land without sorcery?

However, as many rulers had done before, Uther looked on magic as something that could work for him - and found out, as so many others had done, that this was not the case. Magic has its own laws, and cannot be ruled by a mere king.

PERSECUTION

Uther believed that he had been deceived by magic - while it appeared to grant his wish, it did so in a way that would cause him great suffering.

He concluded that all those who practised magic were evil - even if they seemed to use it for benevolent reasons. Anyone connected with sorcery or the old religion was put to death.

Question: I wonder what kinda person Ygraine was that Uther fell so deeply in love with her?

My answer: There’s not really any information about Ygraine and Uther’s married life.

However, the cute, little fatherly scene between Uther and Arthur after the Black Knight duel might have been a glimpse into what his wife had seen once upon a time.

The light hearted scene of a playful man who had a nice sense of humor and a affection for his son hinted at an aspect of Uther’s personality that only his wife had ever been privy too, because with other people, he had to be a strong and hardened warrior.

Book description:

“I'll show you footwork!'

Laughing, Uther rose and aimed a playful kick at his son, who dodged out of the way and headed for the door.

As Arthur left, he realized he hadn't heard his father laugh like that for a very long time.

[starryknight-dragonarts]

Morgan le Fey the Magician Sin of Lust

Morgan was born to a wealthy merchant family in Treasure Town. Her father was obsessive and overly controlling on every aspect of her life so he could control her and use her in the future as a bargaining chip. Her mother on the other hand was vain and hardly cared about Morgan unless she could help her look good, until eventually moved on to another pokemon. If he had it his way she would've never had a life of her own being used to serve his life and then some stranger's she was traded to in order to help make her father more powerful. One of the things she had a little control over and offered her moments of escapism from her regimented life was reading fiction; her father wanted her to be able to make conversation (of course...only if she was addressed first) and despite his need to control his daughter he underestimated the power and effect stories could have.

Morgan started identifying with the Sorceress character of Arthurian Legend "Morgan le Fey" a sort of trickster antihero who would mess with her brother King Arthur and his knights from time to time but also helped him when he was truly down. Like the young Morgan, Morgan le Fey originally had little control over her life and was arranged to marry a man she didn't like. Instead she spent her time with Merlin learning Magic and then running off to become a Queen among the Fey Folk. Morgan loved Magic because it made anything seem possible, absolute freedom to do anything she put her mind too. She expressed interest in being a magician but her father snapped at her for wanting to perform for a others and might have succeeded in snuffing out her dreams if she didn't have support from a friend.

Up until this point the only "Friends" that Morgan had were other aristocrat's daughter who's fathers arranged them to hang out. Morgan had little to no similar interests with these girls but was expected to be cordial. Then in the middle of a party somebody new showed up who she had heard about but never met before now, a scrappy Salandit named Kaida LaCroix. Her adopted mother Marie LaCroix had also been an Aristocrat but not one who her father often interacted with closely and passed away recently. Kaida was left hanging on to fragments of her mother's wealth but she was hardly the aristocratic type, more like a plucky rogue. Intrigued by this party crasher, the two of them spent hours together just talking, it was the first most genuine conversation Morgan had ever had. Kaida made her laugh and smile telling her tall tales of the many misadventures she had gotten herself into, it sounded like something out of one of her stories and that was another thing she and Kaida bonded over; Kaida loved Adventure novels about swashbucklers and pirates going on grand adventures across the world looking for treasure and living as free as they desired.

It wasn't long before her Father chased Kaida off his property, but even then Kaida had a confident smile on her face as she promised to come see Morgan again, and so she did. She came back the next day and so on becoming the highlight of Morgan's life. She would sneak into the garden in the middle of the night, they would meet up and then run off to go have fun in town as Kaida the Pirate and Morgan the Magician. Kaida completley and unconditionally supported Morgan's dreams of being a Magician and told her once she had her own boat they would go around the world together performing in every city and every region. The two girls loved each other and no matter who stood against them they would stand together.

In time they would become known together as the Deadly Sins of Greed and Lust, the Salandit who does the impossible to take what she desires and the Eevee who let her heart guide her way in defiance of her controlling father. During a difficult time in his business endeavors, her Father decided to invoke the power of the literal Demon of Greed to help him, and then refused to pay up his end of the bargain. In retaliation the Demon kidnapped Morgan! Her Father still refused to pay what he owed, so Kaida had to step in and pull a heist for on behalf of the Demon. While being Damseled Morgan was not the "Damsel of the Distressed " variety despite being in some type of scary Hellish dimension, she's gotten good at concealing her emotions having lived with her father and did not make things easy on her captor managing to pull several tricks on him and making herself a pain to deal with. Once she got back to the material realm she finally told her Father off for being a terrible excuse of a parent and left him screaming while she went to live with Kaida, and the two of them are very happy together.

With a new confidence that she had the capability to trick a literal demon, Morgan took to starting her stage career as a performing magician and studying true arcane magic wanting become the greatest magician of all time. She specializes primarily in Illusions, Enchantments, and Animating inanimate objects but she wants to round her skills across the board and dabble in most magical styles...except maybe Necromancy, she's not about that stuff. Her main weapon is a comically large magical mallet with versatile uses outside of simply being a comically large mallet to bonk pokemon with. It's able to stretch it's length and bend like it has rubber hose physics and she can cast wide area of effect spells through it.

[minquiec]

Jade Coin Au

Spirit Jia + Antique shop worker Hobie

This is also unchecked, unproofreaded and ALSO written at one am

RAHHH I MADE THIS AU W A FRIEND @gumitoes (gmito28 ON INSTA GO FOLLOW 🦅🦅🦅) we literally just screamed abt it in one go thru dms and I'm just regurgitating it here so enjoy

---

Hobie owns this antique store that sells all kinds of old stuff that even he doesn't know where it came from. He kinda took over it after working as a part timer there when the old owner passed.

One day he finds this jade coin that looks like SUPER out of place cause it's really clean looking and almost glowing if he squinted.

So he holds it up to inspect it but when he takes it away again, he finds himself in a completely different location.

Unbeknownst to him, the jade coin is a key to the spirit realm and acts as a gateway which accidentally brought him there.

The jade coin also belongs to the spirit (Jia) who manages a certain domain of the spirit world known for entertainment especially gambling.

So he kind of stumbles around the spirit world a little disoriented and confused cause one: spirit logic and magic and shid and two: the aesthetic of this spirit world is very different to where he lives (london..?)

But at one point he finds a seemingly 'abandoned' store and enters. Unknowingly, the building belonged to a spirit, Zee (GUMI'S CHARACTER RAHH 💥💥) who helps Jia run a casino (her main establishment) discovers that the jade coin is in his possession and takes him to meet her. Although the meeting was a bit startling since she had a gun pointed to his back AHSHAHSHSJ

--> The casino acts as second chances for souls to win certain wishes ie. visit human world as ghost, more idk ghost powers and shied, etc

And ofc he's not dumb and recognises that the jade coin has some form of importance and essentially bargains with Jia to let him go back or at least teach him how to go back.

(Maybe win/bet on a game but he's just crazy lucky and manages to beat her) she's just like 😧

He manages to return back to his little shop in london but ever since visiting the spirit world he has this nagging curiosity abt the world since it's so incredibly different.

And so he would go exploring in the spirit world, occasionally taking back antiques. However he realises he'd totally get super lost in this new place and somehow coerces Jia into acting as his spirit tour guide HAHSJA

Jia isn't super strict on rules and stuff unlike other leading spirits of other domains so she kinda just goes 🤷‍♀️ and follows him around.

Because he's human it sometimes causes conflicts with more aggressive spirits but because the jade coin has a form of connection to Jia, it acts as a summoning object to summon her if he ever needs to.

Like she'll literally appear in a cloud of smoke and then cast some spirit spells or smth HAHSHA

Over time, he spends more and more time in the spirit world but it has consequences on his soul as it starts to wander from his mortal body.

And at the point where his soul finally fades to fix itself into the spirit world, Jia essentially see his mortal body disintegrate in front of her,

However he doesn't seem alarmed at all in a way where it seems like he knew it was going to happen to him. He was willing to take the risk to continue exploring the spirit world as well as by her side.

Over the next few days or so, his soul needs to be readjusted to the spirit world so his presence disappears for a while (standard soul procedure and stuff) but Jia never stopped looking for him.

Until the day she finally sees him again but souls don't recall memories of when they were alive, he forgot about her since the time he spent with her was when he was still alive.

She feels so guilty for what had happened as she spends another couple of days before finally deciding that she was willing to trade her souls for a him to be resurrected in the human world again since he didn't even die fairly.

So he is resurrected like nothing ever happened (time passes differently in spirit world cause plot hole 😍)

His memories of everything that ever happened in the spirit world and all that he is left with is a weird jade coin he doesn't remember having and a empty feeling in his chest.

The end 😁😁😁