#they're magic children

[dryemiddi]

Every time I think about the Tree of Feelings I can't help but be a little underwhelmed at how the most popular depictions of it is just. the tree. on a hill. surrounded by miles of nothing but grass and maybe a few houses in the distance.

Yeah, no thanks. I'll just go with my own interpretation on this one

[bayetea]

jason and hazel's beef in hoo was always way more interesting than whatever percy and jason had going on sorry. the differences in gravity and intrigue in the jason/hazel relationship vs jason/percy are only further compounded by the ways they're connected and the ways that their stories are similar

because 1. they have a HISTORY they knew each other before he went missing!!!!! they were in the fifth cohort together!!!! hazel is the ONLY person on that ship that was in jason's life before he disappeared and had his memories stolen. yes they didn't know each other well but I really think that was a bad writing choice rick made. can you imagine if they used to be friends/if jason had been a big brother figure to hazel only to go missing for months and then they have a very awkward reunion on the argo because he barely remembers her and then she's even more betrayed because he doesn't wanna save nico initially. the drama. we could have had it all man

2. beef between a son of poseidon and a child of zeus/jupiter from the grace family? yeah been there done that why are we doing this again. god I wish we had gotten a big fight between a child of jupiter and a child of pluto instead

3. their beef regarding nico was way more high stakes than the silly alpha male posturing rick was trying to force between jason and percy especially considering how mega nerfed jason is written in hoo because no one's allowed to be on equal footing with percy

4. the tacit layer of betrayal in jason being hazel's ex-centurion/praetor only to end up choosing chb (to be clear this particular conflict belongs to jason and reyna and is more impactful between them - but since hazel is actually on the argo and reyna isn't she can still be an opportunity for this camp jupiter/camp half-blood conflict to be explored with jason)

5. I'm just gonna say it - I think hazel ought to have complicated feelings about white authority figures in a military camp as a black girl from the freaking jim crow era (not that this would have ever been explored satisfactorily in the books because as far as rick is concerned hazel is colorblind and hardly ever thinks about race despite growing up segregated. which is crazy unrealistic but whatever)

6. something something about the parallels that jason and hazel have about making hard choices about their pasts in order to have a more fulfilling future

7. this isn't necessarily interesting in and of itself but I just think it's neat that they're both big three roman kids with greek siblings that they didn't grow up with. what could have been interesting is jason seeing how close hazel and nico are and feeling some type of way about everything he never got to have with thalia and some exploration into how that impacts his feelings about the rescue mission

8. they both have really awkward romantic conflicts in their pasts that intrude upon the present (whether he and reyna were ever even slightly romantically involved or not) because the jason/reyna thing is written as a initial source of conflict/uncertainty for jiper in the same way that hazel/leo (sammy) was a conflict for frazel to grapple with. this is interesting to me because hazel is connected to reyna and jason is connected to leo. like there could have been a moment of connection over letting go of pasts loves to wholeheartedly pursue new ones in the way that both of them are (were) with piper and frank

(unrelated but having no frank or hazel pov in mark of athena sucks So Bad and I hate it. it was the first time they ever have relationship problems and we only see it through someone else's pov. I am going to bring this up forever because I'm still mad about it)

9. they both died. this bullet is a joke but I just thought I should put it here

10. percy is a well-established character and hazel and jason are new in hoo. percy has 50 povs in hoo and hazel has 28. economically speaking it would just be a more effective use of your limited pages to spend more time developing important interactions and conflicts between two new characters (esp new big three kids) who already have a more interesting foundation than the one involving our previous protagonist of 5 entire books

11. beryl grace and marie levesque. that's all

imo hazel and jason are the most weirdly written new additions to the main cast but I strongly feel that rick severely underutilized the way that characters like those two could play off of each other. hazel isn't just a sweet little cinnamon roll she is passionate and contemplative and morose and guilt-ridden and jason isn't just a bland rule-follower he is kind and committed and loyal and conflicted and they're both painfully self-sacrificing and I just think it's such a shame that these two characters with great concepts on paper and so many obvious threads to connect them didn't get as much as attention as.... whatever happened in kansas did

and I mean if you like the jason/percy conflict that's fine, but I think it's worthwhile to compare the merit of them because rick chose to centralize and build up to one more than the other when he had such perfect material to expand on the other instead and I think that says something about his biases. and I think part of the issue is that rick struggles with strengthening tension and applying complexity to conflicts between male/female characters that aren't romantic or onesidedly antagonistic like clarisse/percy. we have several noteworthy conflicts between male characters but when women are involved it's like rick doesn't know how to put them on equal footing and apply platonic depth. imo this is just another reason why big three girls (hazel/thalia/bianca) don't get to be as powerful and transformative in the overall narrative as big three guys (percy/jason/nico). all this world-changing narrative weight is afforded to big three kids but hazel in particular is weirdly excluded from all of that and doesn't get to have much impactful interconnectedness with the prophecy or with other big three kids. what happened to big three kids being super dangerous when put together or when they're on opposing sides of conflicts!!!!!!!! we had impactful percy/thalia and percy/nico and jason/percy and jason/nico conflict where is the fleshed out jason/hazel beef!!!!!!

anyways tldr all I'm saying is that jason and hazel complement each other well and rick was too hung up on the Colliding Of Alpha Male Strong Dudes (that he didn't even write well) to see everything that hazel and jason could have had instead

[queenlucythevaliant]

See, I don't think that the Pevensie kids were uncanny and dangerous upon returning to England so much as just like. Cool weirdos.

Lucy talks to animals sometimes. She doesn't expect responses or anything; it has the same energy as a person talking to their dog, except it's the squirrel she spotted on the quad or the racoon in the garbage. But she's super friendly in general so after the initial "what the heck" everyone shrugs it off because like, yeah, of course she does. She also went with me to a scary doctor's appointment having known me for like five minutes and gave me an incredible pep talk. She's cool like that.

Peter joins the fencing club and day one it's like he's never held a foil in his life and day two he loses to a kid half his size but then after like a month he just absolutely annihilates the instructor. But he's super humble about it and afterwards he helps everyone else out without being condescending at all. And while it's a little weird that he's just Suddenly an expert, people are like, "he's a fast learner, that's cool." He's really industrious in class too, just Peter being Peter. He probably practiced a whole bunch after hours.

Edmund gets extremely weird food cravings sometimes, like "wow, I could really go for chicken liver with raisins right about now" or "you guys know what's great? Gooseberry trifles." And his friends say, "I've never heard of that before but it sounds weird." So Edmund learns to cook and starts making all these vaguely antiquated fancy dishes with weird berries and organ meats and things and shares them around during study breaks and everyone's like "Yo! Pevensie brought food. Cool, thanks Pevensie." And he shares it with everyone, even the kids nobody likes, and it kinda brings people together.

Susan, who was always the Mom Friend, seems to have gotten a power-up because now she Everyone's mom and weirdly people actually listen to her? But she only uses those powers for good. Girl in her dorm not eating enough? Susan's here with snacks and look at that now she's eating. Those guys arguing look like they're about to throw down? Susan says "knock it off" and glares and they do. And her friends are like, "how do you do it???" and she says "You just have to act like you expect to be obeyed." It's very cool, though it can be a bit Much sometimes.

And they're all into mythology now? Like ancient Rome and King Arthur and stuff? That's kinda weird, but not off-putting; lots of kids have mythology phases. And Peter named the tree outside his dorm, but everyone kinda laughs and says "yeah okay." Edmund is adamantly anti-bullying now, it's nice. Susan and Lucy wear a lot of lion-themed jewelry and people definitely Notice, but that just means that they start getting more of it for Christmas/birthdays.

And of course whenever two or more of them are together it's like they've got a conspiracy going on. They're always fervently whispering back and forth, giggling an the million inside jokes they've got, giving each other Looks. And onlookers are mostly just like, "Man, it's cool that those Pevensie kids are all so tight; I wish I was that close with my siblings."

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 84

Amity Park absolutely adores her little ghostling, her little Gatekeeper who was of her own ectoplasm, reborn from her own blood in the center of her new heart. She absolutely adores her baby, practically a newborn, being only a year dead! 

So of course she had to gush and boast about her little phantom to the other city spirits! They all got together to gossip sometimes after all. And both Smallville and Fawcett started to gush about their own little ones back! 

Gosh they should set up a playdate at some point, her little phantom could use some friends in the mortal realm. Well some more friends, three is obviously not enough. Oh, Gotham and Bludhaven have come over as well! It’s a playdate then! 

Now if only each of their world’s timelines were synced up, but at least everyone is around the same age! 

[warning-heckboop]

Oh to be able to make the complex lore comic that lives in my head about the concept of fairies, anti-fairies, and pixies once being a civilization of one single species of fae that splintered both metaphorically and literally due to internal conflict

[natjennie]

once you die the only choice being coming back full of rage or not coming back at all..... like.... maybe jace WAS a genuinely good dude, he chaperoned the rat grinders to the mountains of chaos because they weren't strong enough. and then when faced with the choice between dying himself, leaving them there all half-dead where no one might find them vs coming back wrong but being able to get them back to safety. like maybe he just knew it was his only way to protect them. maybe maybe maybe.

[venacoeurva]

The twin cousins to "he would not say that", "He would not be a good parent" and "He would not be a parent at all"

[voiider]

I think mayhaps that Batman should exclusively be a member of the Justice League Dark. He doesn't really like working with people but also sometimes John Constantine is like "You know Batsy, If you help me save the world by proxy it saves Gotham" So he does begrudgingly. But only sometimes when they need help with some things because he's like a very good detective and sometimes you need that! But also mostly I just want the rest of the Justice League to not believe that The Batman is real??

There's an issue that they need dealt with and they think it's a demon so they call Constantine and he's like "nah mate, this is just weird ritualistic sacrifices, I got a call to B-man on this one"

And Superman is like "haha The Batman isn't real... Right?" And then they meet him and he is very much real.

And Diana is all like "Oh Clark you silly, obviously The Batman is real" But internally she's like "holy shit The Batman is real???"

Green Arrow still doesn't believe it because he keeps missing any mission that The Batman happens to go on and he's like "If The Batman was real my best friend Brucie Wayne would have told me so. Brucey said that the Batman is just a scare tactic created by the Gotham Police department" So he's pretty sure that the rest of the Justice League is just playing a long practical joke against him specifically

[pushing500]

Against all odds, asexual Buckeye and reduced-fertility-gene Magic Man have managed to make a baby! However, because Buckeye is Animakin, she needs to plant the baby in soil... And there is no soil in the ocular forest where Monster's Basin is. Only red sand and red dirt and other nasty red stuff, which apparently doesn't count.

So, we have unexpectedly had to up and move in order to give this new baby the best possible chance of survival! We were hoping to be able to prepare a bit more first, but desperate times call for desperate measures. We'll leave everything behind for the sake of one of our own if we must.

However, moving means it's time for another (rather rushed, I'm afraid) colony tour! Presenting: Monster's Basin!!

Here's the whole thing from above. If I had to describe it in one word, I would say "red".

Here is the central room, the kitchen/dining/ritual room. Next to it, we have two bathrooms and our freezer. Magic Man is already packing some of our human leather kneel sheets, as you can see.

Some bedrooms: Top left is Vasso and Laursen's room, top right is Euclid and Socks' room, bottom left is Dire Wolf and Pro (and formerly Bella's) room, and bottom left is Magic Man, Buckeye, and Dopey the razorjack's bedroom.

We also have a small, utilitarian hospital.

Up above the bedrooms and the main room are our dinosaur museum (we can't go without a dinosaur museum) and our research laboratory. Also a better view of the freezer.

Our farms and a huge stack of red bricks that we'll never get to use.

Here's a nutrient-paste barn that we got from a prefab some traders sold us. Mostly so we could see what it was, but our animals seemed to appreciate it.

Bella's room that she was given when she grew up into an adult, the sauna, and Blackdragon, Duchess, and Night Stalker's room.

The wardrobe, the chemfuel room, the miscellaneous devices room, the hot spring, and the small place where we attempted to plant Buckeye's sapling child before we realised it didn't work in this biome.

Finally, our animal pen/archery range. We were very fond of the moose named All-Powerful (she fell out of the sky), but we'll probably release her into the wild (along with a self-tamed hare and three baby wolfchickens some traders gave us) to help us conserve food on our abrupt journey.

And that concludes the tour of Monster's Basin! I wonder where our caravan will take us. Hopefully, somewhere with plenty of fertile soil for a growing sapling child...

First | Next | Previous

[witchofthesouls]

Different anon but now I just imagine a Beastformer adopting a werewolf or other type of werecreature. Sheer homesick mech missing their pack discovers a human youngling similar to them and its instant adoption.

I would LOVE to see more takes on this.

Imagine the first contact between humanity and Cybertron is between a runaway beastformer that escaped a slave ship who gets attached to those that are either cursed, taken, or binded in ill-intentions as well as the lost and unmoored.

So, not just a victim of a werewolf, but that beastformer rescues a stolen Selkie and her hybrid children, reunites a changling with their human family, takes in a struggling newborn vampire, and meets with merfolk descendants trapped on land and those with shapeshifters in their bloodline.

To top it off, they make their main base at an abandoned mine that's haunted by the Coal Miner's Daughter. A distorted and massive figure that's shrouded in a tarp that carries a pick axe, a lantern, and a small cage. She forgot her real name and wanders in the caverns with her canary.

Beastformer is grumpy that they made a pack without meaning to, but not too mad because their slap dash of a sad trash heap ship is dead and humans haven't figured out real space travel and the kids (never mind some are well in their adulthood. all are kids compared to them) still need them...

And then the Autobots and Decepticons land on Earth.

[cobra-creampuff]

we went over the 14yr long torture session in my last therapy visit actually, and i told her that toward the end i was fantasizing about and then actively considering walking into traffic because if i got catastrophically injured then they would have to treat my pain. and she told me that's not an uncommon thing for people to do. that she has heard that many times before.

like think about that. we are so moralistic about drug use and have politicized a particular type of medicine so much, and doctors are so uncompassionate toward and even suspicious of patients who are in pain because of it, that it's NOT UNCOMMON for people who are otherwise not suicidal to start completely genuinely longing to get hit by a fucking car just for the chance to be oh so graciously provided the absolute bare fucking minimum of care.

think about how many different things have pain as a symptom. how many things have pain as the only symptom the patient is aware of. how many of them are life or death crises. heart attacks. blood clots. strokes. bleeding ulcers. those are just what i can think of off the top of my fucking head, AND I'M NOT A FUCKING DOCTOR.

what i had, for example, feels exactly like appendicitis. and they left it for fourteen years because my only symptom was excruciating pain and i didn't fit their stupid little (completely unsupported by evidence, btw) diagnostic mnemonic. if it had been appendicitis, or anything else as immediately deadly that "just" hurts, i would have fucking died the same night i got sent home from the emergency room with "medical" "advice" to take some tylenol and rest - for the first time, that is. out of dozens. how many people do die that way?

because addicts are Bad. and because doctors are too arrogant and biased to practice medicine on the basis of evidence and informed consent when the profit model and conservative propaganda make it soooo easy to stay in the good old days of paternalism instead.

[kismetconstellations]

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart) x.

[kathbunny]

Royal Fake Marriage AU: Children

VR-LA and Maxim happy in the later days of their marriage, discuss the idea of having a child while being very domestic and cuddling.

cw: mentions of dysphoria, discussion of pregnancy and adoption

VR-LA washed his face at his and Maxim's bathroom sink, humming slightly to himself as he dried his face with the nearest towel. Maxim had already climbed into bed in their room, reading by the lamp's light. VR-LA ventured back into the bedroom, shutting the bathroom door. He made his way to the bed, happily curling into the bed and putting his arms around Maxim.

Maxim didn't look up fully from his book, so VR-LA adjusted just enough to be within range for a kiss on the top of the head, which Maxim obediently gave without even needing to think. Maxim finished the page he was on in his book, grabbing a bookmark from the nightstand, placing it within before setting aside the book. He wrapped his arms around VR-LA in return, content to put his chin atop VR-LA's head.

"My dear," Maxim mumbled, sounding already half asleep, hand gently rubbing VR-LA's back, "I had a thought recently."

"Oh? Planning to share?" VR-LA asked, idly playing with a bit of Maxim's hair, which he leaned into.

"How would you feel about another child?" Maxim asked, eyes on VR-LA's hand by his head.

"Having or adopting?" VR-LA asked. "Because I doubt we'll come across another recently orphaned relative of yours like with Docent. And adopting from an orphanage would be a far more complicated matter."

"Yes, I've thought about the adoption side of things somewhat. Be it picking at random or picking after meeting the children, neither option is exactly good for any involved." Maxim sighed. "A randomly picked child would leave others feeling unlucky and them unloved. Picking after meeting means making children feel as though they have to prove themselves and would only worsen the negative feelings of those left. Our positions make this worse compared to normal parents, especially given the situation they'd be brought into." Picking a child like that would also be a lot like shopping, which made VR-LA feel disgusting.

"Is thinking about this why there's been so many orders coming from you about improving conditions?" VR-LA asked, a slightly teasing lilt to his voice. It wasn't something to be ashamed of, but he did personally find it cute.

Maxim awkwardly cleared his throat, moving on. "But, it could still be the better of the options depending on you and what you'd want." Maxim said. "I can't exactly..."

VR-LA snorted. "Ah, yes, so if I wanted another child I decide which challenge we face. The horrors of children's emotions or the horrors of the body." He joked. "Another child would be nice, getting a younger sibling for Emi and Docent." He mused, almost dreamily. "They'd get so protective."

Maxim nodded. "That's not the only reason I'm bringing it up like that. You know that already."

VR-LA did. He knew how horrid his dysphoria had been with Emi, but he also feels it might be mildly easier with the better support system within the palace. There wouldn't be a day without a reminder of who he was, without being called dad, without being called the prince consort. He hummed in thought, turning it over in his mind. It'd still very, very difficult, his body causing him dysphoria is it's whole own issue, but still not as difficult as when he had Emi. Or maybe they could find a surrogate, which does step out of those issues into new ones.

"I'll think about it, my love." VR-LA said, adjusting to give Maxim a kiss on the cheek. "That's a lot to consider so late at night. I do think I'd like another child though. I'd just like to plan quite a bit."

"Of course, VR-LA." Maxim held VR-LA slightly tighter. "I love you."

"I love you too."

[n0anix]

More magical girl stuff ✨

for interested

pink - Clio, yellow - Akira, green - Kai, blue - Thalia

if you squint really hard you can almost see the inspirations behind their designs

[bookwyrminspiration]

do you think everybody likes Sophie’s eyes because they’re like big and sparkly or something

elves love shiny things so it would be funny if Sophie had like shiny Alicorn orb eyes

She kinda does!! Mr. Forkle wonders if the reason her eyes are brown is because of the alicorn DNA thing! (Exile, p. 505). Both characters eyes are described as brown with gold flecks, too.

I think the idea they love her eyes is because they're sparkly and elves can't resist sparkles is hilarious, though. Crow behavior.

Novelty likely also plays a part. She's built different <3 literally <3

[thegreatyin]

i feel like i need to share this part of the scoundrel's response to the FL OC census with the rest of the class. it's just. what can i even say, really.