#this post is largely me reminiscing to myself

[trichyfeelings]

it’s been just over 4 years since i made this account. it’s sad that it’s been this long. i still haven’t really opened up about my pulling in my real life. here and there i mention it, but i’ve never worked up the courage to get help, or to talk about it in much detail.

this blog is mostly inactive- i really don’t post much at all, but it’s presence (alongside the constant ache in my scalp, the soreness of certain areas of my mouth and the uneven hair growth along my hairline) is a constant reminder of where it all slowly started to go wrong for me in my teenage years.

some of you guys have been here for most of these 4 years. i know i don’t respond to post replies because this is a sideblog, but to the people that have interacted with this account for a long time; i hope you’re all doing well. i’ll overcome this bullshit eventually, and you will too.

[charmedreincarnation]

Hey, guys! I've been receiving a ton of messages in response to my last post. It's reminding me of how I first discovered shifting. I feel like doing a little story time since Ive just passed the three-year mark of my discovery, and I've been reminiscing with friends about it.

I remember being in a very dark place when I stumbled upon shifting. I was depressed, and very suicidal. Yet, there was this unshakeable optimism inside me that I was meant for an extraordinary life. Despite my mental state, I had a lot of knowledge of subliminals and the law of attraction (-_-). These gave me hope, but they weren't enough tbh. I didn't want to attract my dream life through practicing gratitude or becoming a magnet for my desires or whatever. Nor did I want to have to listen to subliminals for years on end to achieve my goals. My list of desires was so long, and I needed everything to change that going step by step and waiting years for each one to manifest just wasn't feasible.

But I refused to give up. One day, after a particularly hard day of being sad per usual, I searched on Quora for something like "fastest most powerful subliminals on YouTube ever" (Y’all 😭😭). Among the recommended sub creators, I found a video called "Desired Life: Reality Shifting". The description promised everything I had ever wanted: waking up with all your desires fulfilled permanently in short. It piqued my curiosity so much. Could I really just wake up with my dream life, family, house, wealth, all based on my scripts and imagination?

Growing up, I was a heavy maladaptive daydreamer. From ages 10-17, I created alternate lives in my head, telling myself I would go there someday. I was always doing SATs (State Akin to Sleep), and I think that's what kept me from ending it all. I was constantly in the wish fulfilled state, even though I didn't know what that was at the time.

Back to my story, I went into the comments of that video and came across a guy who claimed that after a week of using this subliminal, he woke up with a new life as a multi-millionaire living in his dream penthouse. I messaged him, and he gave me his Instagram which showcased his luxurious life. He had what seemed like a perfect relationship, he was very attractive, had so many cars, and travelled 24/7 while having a six figures amount of followers. He was living proof that this wasn't just scripting. Also the law of attraction community is known for their mad expensive coaching.. like hundreds of dollars per hour for questions and he was answering it all for free something I didn’t see the law of attraction community. And I talked to him for hours! He never got mad, he had proof, and he was kind, proof and the behavior of someone who really had mastered the art of life.

After our conversation, I spent the next couple of months doing research. I found numerous stories about glitches in the matrix, accidental shifting, people entering parallel realities, and eventually, shifting communities on platforms like Amino and Reddit. It was stuff I already believed in and did in my imagination; I just didn’t know there was a term for it.

Then I got reminded of a memory that I had seriously repressed bc it was so fucking weird. When I was 6 and my brother was 3, we were absolutely obsessed with dodo birds. One day, we were outside playing, and on god time seemed to stop. Out of nowhere, a dodo bird appeared. I know you’re probably like “maya be so fr rn you were a kid” but no, This wasn't just our young imaginations running wild - there was a bird that was huge, dinosaur-like, exactly how dodos are described in books and pictures we had.

Then things got weirder. Suddenly it started raining eggs. Big, large eggs everywhere it was so gross and my brother and I were a mess. We were young, sure, but not stupid. We knew this wasn't normal. My brother and I rushed inside to tell our dad. When I managed to drag him outside, he was furious, accusing me of throwing eggs everywhere. To this day, he tells the story of the time I "trashed the backyard with eggs." And every time, I'm like, "Dad, where would I get that many eggs?" We didn’t have eggs but so he assumed I stole them and we went inside for hours and it was magically cleaned. So he also tells the story of how responsible I am and how I took accountability for my actions even as a child. I didn’t clean that shit bro and I tell him that too and he just laughs it makes me so mad.

My brother, who knows I'm into reality shifting (though he doesn’t really believe in it), can't explain that day either. He often shrugs it off as a "glitch in the matrix," which honestly, well no duh it is a shift dummie. He does believe in manifesting but only bc he has seen me use it and he experiences the good things I manifest as well. They’re the same thing anyways but that isn’t the point

The reason I'm bringing up this bizarre childhood memory is because during my months of research into shifting, I found countless stories of accidental shifts, people entering the void, entering parallel universes, time glitches, examples of the Mandela effect first hand, glitches in the matrix and etc. It was like uncovering a myriad of experiences that confirmed what I already believed: we can change and choose our reality. I just didn’t know the phenomena had a name. Obviously in the future I came across other things like the law of assumption, the void state, etc etc but this was where it started.

I wish I had saved all those fascinating stories, posts, and blogs. I might go back and compile everything I found because they were so real and enlightening. It will probably take forever tho if I do choose to do that, but I think it's worth sharing.

In the meantime, check out this accounts of accidental shifts that my friend shared with me this account https://instagram.com/tessicavision?igshid=OGQ5ZDc2ODk2ZA== based off the Glitch in the Matrix subreddit which is also a goldmine of people experiencing similar phenomena. It helped me make sense of my own experiences and might do the same for you.

I don’t want this to be too long and I already got to the point I think! but regardless stay curious and realize you’re really not that special. I mean ofc you are, i mean this is not some tumblr thing teens girls discovered or created and isn’t even limited to “spiritually/manifesting inclined people” I think at the beginning of my journey people talking about accidental shifts and such, inspired me more than purposeful success stories because they really have no reason to lie and they were looking for answers just like I was.

[genericpuff]

I'm not sure if anyone else has made this connection, but I've never seen it mentioned before. I think, similar to Lolita, RS was also inspired by the art of Trevor Brown. His work has a lot of young girls and medical fetish themes (to put it lightly) in a style reminiscent of RS's earlier stuff.

sigh

CW: medical fetish art often depicting children / child-like characters and medical equipment such as needles, gas masks, etc. seriously don't hit the jump if medical equipment or young girls in nurse's outfits or with open wounds makes you squeamish, I will not blame you for turning around now LOL

OP I was about to just... dismiss this. Wave it away as a funny coincidence that is indeed funny, but doesn't have any real evidence to back it up. I had a post typed up in response already declaring this, after which posting I was gonna move on with my day, work on Rekindled, play some XIV.

Because sure, there are a lot of resemblances between Trevor Brown's work and Rachel's old art, but nothing that can't be dismissed in good faith as a simple coincidence of being within the same genre of fetish art (first three are Trevor's, last three are Rachel's).

But then that little voice in the back of my head whispered in my ear, "Puff. You should double check. Just to be sure. Do your due diligence." And I once again found myself on the precipice of the rabbithole that somehow becomes deeper every time I jump. This time though, I knew it couldn't be that bad, I mean, I had enough confidence in knowing that there's no fucking way she listed Trevor Brown as one of her favorite artists-

God fucking dammit. How in the world did I miss this? I mean, I suppose I missed it simply because I'm not familiar with the works of Trevor Brown, but you can bet your ass I became familiar with it in my digging. Yeah, this guy is a supreme creep.

Again, I am not going to accuse Rachel of being a pedophile because that's just not an accusation that should be thrown around without undeniable evidence. What I will say, which has largely remained the same - though even more confidently now than ever before - is that she's clearly someone who took a lot of inspiration and influence from very problematic artists when she was young (I'm talking in her late teens which has me wondering if she started making medical fetish art when she was still a minor-) and then, BEST guess, she started to drop the medical fetish stuff around the time she went to college (which was also the same time she dropped The Doctor Pepper Show, which later got reworked into The Doctor Foxglove Show which was a lot less reminiscent of her medical fetish style from the early 2000's, but still had some of her usual preferences at play) and that's led up to today where she's drawing comics that look like they're for kids but tackle heavy adult subject matter in the worst way possible that straight up perpetuates grooming.

No matter how much experience I have with this already, no matter how much I think I've already seen, I always find more, and this time was no different. In fact - though unrelated to the original topic - thanks to this one fucking ask, I even found the full Mads Mikkelson comic with the completed caption. You know, that one.

And apparently Mads Mikkelson did very much replace her crush on Jeremy Irons.

Who's Jeremy Irons?

Oh yeah.

I just... y'all I can't. This is un-fucking-real. I'm gonna go take a shower, I need to scrub myself off of this 😭

[logical-grave]

✧ Pretty Little Thing Ch.1 ✧

♡ Pairing ♡ - Rafe Cameron x Plus Size!Reader

♡ Warnings ♡ - Smut, Oral (f receiving), dirty talk, derogatory names, free use kink, Unprotected sex, breeding kink, multiple orgasms, mean!Rafe, some praise kink, mentions of blood, and unedited mistakes.

♡ A/N ♡ - This is so self-indulgent, it's not even funny. I swear I blacked out writing this. Anyway, Pls enjoy

♡ Word count ♡ - 2.5k

I tapped the top of his forehead, heavy breaths constricting my words as I attempted to form them. My brain felt comparable to mush, but I simply couldn’t take it anymore. He lifted his head up, his pupils blown wide, the familiar green now a simple ring around a black abyss. His nose, mouth, and essentially the entire lower half of his face glistened with a mixture of my slick and his spit in the soft glow of the lamp on my side table. He looked depraved and the only thing satiating him was between my legs, since his incessant need to see how many times I could come needed to be answered. It was three to be exact and each one more drawn out than the one before as I have now reached the limit one could handle the blissful feeling. 

“I- can’t, Rafe. I can’t-” I breathed out with each word, the overstimulation thwarting my ability to form a proper sentence. I looked down at my thighs that he gripped with such fervor in his time between them and sure enough bruises littered my skin. I couldn’t complain, purely due to the fact that they were developed from a place of pleasurable pain. Rafe blew out a sharp breath from his nose, a look of frustration taking over his cold features. I wanted to reach and caress his face, my hand even itching to do so, yet I refrained from the intimate action.

It wasn’t much earlier he was furiously banging on my window, and out of fear of him shattering the glass and waking up the other members of my family at three in the morning, I had allowed him in. He didn’t even waste a breath of explaining the blood on his shirt, or the raw skin of his knuckles. He simply used his stance and intimidation to coerce me into stepping back until the back of my legs had hit the end of my bed, the cool comforter contrasting the heat that began to inflame my skin. He simply pushed on my shoulder, enough to make me understand he wanted me on the bed, presumably to open my mouth and satisfy him. Yet, he surprised me by pushing my shoulder further until my back was reclined against the comfort of my bed. I had propped myself up on my elbows in time to see his large frame kneel before me and hook the thigh of my leg over his shoulder. I blush even now as I reminisce the sound of my panties tearing, since they seemed to pose an impediment to his intention between my legs. The ripped fabric now disregarded behind him, and he began before I could wonder why he was so reluctant to speak a word.

Rafe now pushed my leg off his shoulder, the weight of it hitting the floor sounding a thump against the wood floor under us. He stood to his full height, beginning to unbutton his shirt, the blood splattered across it registering in my mind again. He stepped towards my bathroom, turning on the light and looking over himself. He washed his hands after scanning his own frame, making sure there were no open wounds and such. I sighed and stood up, gripping the post of my bed frame as the sudden feeling of my legs shaking and not being able to hold all of my weight yet. I fell back onto the bed, my legs still shaking, and I looked over at Rafe. “Can you bring me a hand towel please?” I requested, bold in doing so since he seemed as if the last thing he wanted was to be fetching me things. He tossed me the hand towel on the counter of the bathroom sink and I used it to wipe down between my legs and inner thighs. I conjured enough strength to stand up, the shake of my legs down to a minimum now as I made my way towards my bathroom.

I watched as he squeezed a hand towel that he had used to wipe himself down, the water he wrung from it tinted red. He winced lightly as he wiped his knuckles down, looking at his hands with a face of disappointment. “Do you want to talk about what happened?” My voice was soft and low when I asked the question. I leaned on the door frame, looking up at him as he continued, shaking his head before looking at me. “No, I don’t want to talk. I just want to sleep. Can I do that without you asking me fifty fucking questions?” His jaw ticked, his eyes cutting into me deeper than his words. I let out a low breath as I nodded, pushing off the door frame and positioning myself into bed. I turned off the light coming from the lamp beside me, tucking myself into my comforter. He wasn’t far behind me, turning the light off in the bathroom as well before discarding his khakis with his shirt, dressed only in his boxers. He was an Adonis, I could admit, but never to his face.

Rafe climbed into the other side of the bed, under the comforter, and I was immediately greeted with his body heat. He reached his arms out, wrapping an arm around my waist, pulling me into him as he met me halfway. He folded his other arm under my head, acting it as a pillow and inhaling my scent from behind me. I adjusted myself, reluctant to relax against him. He seemed to notice, deciding to pull me in more, his hand moving to cup my breast and placing a small chaste kiss on the back of my neck. “Don’t do that.” I muttered, squirming slightly to drive my point. Rafe didn’t seem to like the bite back I gave, but he let it go.

I’m not sure what exactly prompted me to agree to our relationship. It was formed organically, I’ll admit. It was conjured one night about six months ago, the two of us finding solace in each other after sharing a bottle of whiskey and ended up entangled in his sheets. After that, we started using each other more than we anticipated and decided to clarify the boundaries of our relationship. It was simple, I was to present myself to him whenever he wanted, establishing a free use aspect and in exchange, I received weekly deposits into my account for a thousand dollars. After the first couple of times, Rafes respect for me slowly diminished, and I didn’t blame him. But I needed the money, and I wasn’t going to bite back and lose out of the only thing that’s aiding me in getting out of this hellhole one day. 

-

The next day, when the sun graced my eyes, I felt the secure arms of Rafe still surrounding me, alarm instantly shooting through me. “Rafe.” I called, patting his arms and attempting to pull on his wrists to release me, yet his grip seemed to tighten. “Rafe, wake up.” I nudged my elbow into his side and that seemed to wake him. Immediately, he released his hold on me, blinking rapidly as he looked around my room as if it was unfamiliar. “What time is it?” He asked in a groggy voice and I took in his state of disheveled hair, a flushed face due to warmth and the sun catching the gorgeous green of his eyes. I looked at my phone screen. “It’s 8:45. My shift at the country club starts at 9:15.” I urged, moving out of my bed, rushing to discard my sleepwear. I pulled open my dresser, pulling out my assigned polo and a white pleated skirt. Apparently, the uniform is appealing to golfers according to my managers when I requested to wear something with more coverage.

I looked over my shoulder at Rafe, seeing that he hasn’t made any haste to dress himself. I walked to him as I put on my polo and stood at his bedside with my hands on my hips. “Rafe, I really need to leave, and you can’t stay here. I’m kicking you out.” The angry expression on my face and my point to my window he had entered through not even six hours earlier seemed rude, but I wasn’t going to take any of his shit this early. I was only met with a smirk on his face as he removed one of his hands from behind his head and flipped back my comforter, uncovering his morning wood. “No, I’ll be late.” I rolled my eyes at his suggestion, stalking to the other side of my room to put on panties and my skirt. “It wasn’t a request.” He said as he rose from my bed, striding over to me. His hand was on his cock over his boxers, smoothing over it to entice himself. 

He was right, I technically couldn’t say no, that was our agreement. Rafe turned me around, his large hands holding my hips as he brought them back so he could grind on my ass. He made a sharp intake, leaning forward and placing a small kiss on my shoulder, my hands holding onto his wrists on either side of me. “Please be quick.” I pouted as he walked us over to my bed, his large hand splayed out on my back and pushed me down into the mattress to bend over for him. I blushed at the small feeling of a wetness growing between my thighs, and I planted my face in the mattress as I let him have his way with me. I could feel him drawing out this sudden need for me as he slowly pulled down my panties. “These are starting to get in my way. You’re not wearing them anymore after today, understood?” He asked and I nodded. Rafe caught me off guard, spanking my ass cheek and gripping the flesh harshly as I yelped out. “Understood?” He repeated. “Yes, I understand.”

He flipped up my skirt, kneading the flesh of my ass in his hands, his favorite part of my body. He’s never confessed this to me, but he always played with me before inserting himself, so I deduced. I looked over my shoulder at him and watched as he licked his fingers to abruptly insert in me, yet a devilish grin overcame his face. “You’re already so fucking wet for me.” He teased as he lined himself up with my entrance before sinking into me until he couldn’t further. We both moan at the familiar and exciting feeling, one that I wouldn’t care to admit. “Rafe, just fuck me already.” I was beginning to get impatient and not due to my lack of punctuality when it came to my job but because each time he entered me, I found myself wanting it more and more. He let out a low chuckle, taking himself out and resting himself between my ass cheeks, pushing them together to create friction as he dragged himself back and forth. 

“I’ll take my sweet fucking time with you.” He spoke, and I let out a gasp as he reached and gripped my hair, pulling on it, and I let out a wince. Rafe entered me again, before pulling himself out slowly and rutting back into me. I moaned at each thrust, the slap of his hips hitting my ass sounding along with my whimpers. I gripped the sheets of my bed, moaning as he pulled on my hair, my neck craning back. His pace picked up, his hand letting go of my hair and placing both hands on my hips, pushing me forward just to pull me back harder. “Rafe, I can’t.” I whimpered, a mix of pleasure and pain conjuring with each of his thrusts, Rafe reached and hooked his hand under my knee, resting it on the bed. It seemed to open me up, allowing him to glide in and out of me with ease and giving me a sense of relief. 

“Shut up, you fucking slut.” Rafe spit out, spanking my ass. He liked degrading me, sure to remind me of my lack of self-respect since I let him fuck me whenever he likes. Worst part, It kills me that I wasn't repulsed by it, almost welcoming it. Rafe moaned, his thrusts becoming more powerful, signifying he was close to cumming. I reach behind me and grip Rafe’s wrist, silently telling him to calm down, but it doesn’t leave my lips, the pleasure blurring any words that I attempt to speak. “You take my cock so well.” He groaned, digging his fingers into my hips as he fucked me with slow, languid strokes, adding to my torment. I looked at the wall opposite of my bed where my dresser sits, and a large mirror hung above it. I can see Rafe taking his time, watching his cock disappear inside me before pulling out and inserting himself back in. “Rafe, please.” I mewl, watching him in the mirror, almost entranced by the view in front of him. Something clicked, and he continued his pounding, his hips moving faster as they smacked against my own. 

Then, I felt the familiar throb of Rafes cock, followed by a string of moans as he releases inside me, filling me up with his cum. I sag against the bed, dropping the leg he had hiked up for better access. Rafe pants behind me, a small chuckle leaving his lips as he smacks my ass once more. “Fuck, that doesn’t get old. It’s like you get tighter every time.” Rafe pulled out, my walls clenching around nothing as his cum dripped out of me and I immediately crossed my ankles, hopefully holding it in long enough for me to saunter to the bathroom to clean up. 

I push off the bed, but I’m stopped before I make any progress, Rafes hand pressing me down on the bed. “What’re yo-” I’m interrupted by a gasp I let out as I feel the fabric of a towel being wiped over my thighs. I look over at the mirror once more and to my surprise, Rafe is cleaning me up. He never has in all of our times together, usually worrying about himself and not even considering me. There were times he’d finish in me, tuck himself away and leave before I could even blink. “Thank you.” I muttered, standing upright when he finished cleaning me up. I pulled up my panties as Rafe got dressed, lacing up my shoes as well. “I’ll take you to work.” He said, putting on his shirt, and I shook my head. “No, it’s fine, I’ll grab a ride from my br-” 

“I’m taking you to work.” He repeats himself, his look stern, and I simply nod in response. Before I could put up any more protest, he made his way out of my window, likely to start his truck up before I made it downstairs. 

Whoever this new Rafe was, he was starting to grow on me.

-

Hope you guys liked it!! and lmk what you think of the new format with the small lettering :)

[craftlands]

oop sorry! i did come across one of your mor pankh posts regarding the designs and such about the characters and i do have some points to lay out on their accuracies and inaccuracies, as an indian myself, though i cannot say my word for it will be wholly accurate since again, india as a subcontinent is VERY chaotic and the cultures within different states and a lot of times, certain villages and territories vary drastically. a lot of my points could be disagreed with by another indian and if some of my points ARE incorrect, i'm open to being corrected.

i know it's also pretty late, considering this was one of your older posts but i did give it some chew time. sorry if i'm bothering you.

1) first up is kaalaa baunaa. she IS wearing a saree but the draping and style is pretty reminiscent of modernized styles of saree draping. we do have the traditional drape but the generations right now have gotten to mixing and matching western clothing and experimenting with saree drapes. her outfit, while not culturally inaccurate ( because we HAVE the short/pant combo with the saree ) is grossly inaccurate to the time and setting.

there's also the fact that her outfit screams 'bollywood' in a sense. the blouse in particular is something you'd see on actresses during burner movie shoots ( and even those were a little less provocative...but again the blouse does hold a lot of callbacks to colonial oppression and wearing sleeveless blouses back then was considered 'rebellious' ). in my opinion, if i were to change up her design, i would just omit the saree and put her in a salwaar, since that is the usual go to in northern indian states ( unless in formal events ).

but for the stuff i loved about the design? is the design itself XD. it's just grossly inaccurate to the timeline, but in a modern context, it does have a very stylish flair to it. i just wish she reserved those for festivals rather than everyday living ( because from experience, sarees are HARD to walk in depending on how you drape it which is why my college uniform is a salwaar ). unless they were trying to hammer home how alien she is perceived to be, as an arcanist, which in this case? it works thematically. just tone down the sexualization.

her second outfit is a little more accurate though and i have a preference to that. mostly because of the jewellery she uses. mh. the bollywood style outfit? the embroided saree? the baithale bottu? MH. y e s.

tldr ; the design is pretty good but contextually, for the timeline and for her occupation? it's not the most accurate. but i wouldn't call it a travesty and completely inaccurate either. in a modern setting, her outfit would have passed well in a get together or a friend's party.

2) shamane. okay so the imagery and his outfit WAS something i needed to do my research on. but the 'connection to nature' thing is pretty common here too in tribal societies. my own community, while centuries far removed from it's initial tribal roots, still worships familial sprits and natural objects alonsgside the usual practice of hinduism. i kind of liked that aspect about him tbh because it did reflect of the few vestiges that were left over in my community XD. hell a good chunk of his design was very steeped in tribal influence, though differentiating it is a little difficult ( which again is my critique, but that could also be me not being as well versed in indian tribal culture. it's probably in part because of ignorance. ).

the closes i can get to the influence of his outfit would be naga tribes in nagaland with a mix in of a few others. i'll try to do more research and get back to you on that. i'm just wondering how he got all the way to nagaland???? that's like in the far east...though if were to narrow down the locations, it would be in the few locations where it snows...HMMMM. but yeah the feather motif? tribes here seem to tout it too, depending on what tribe it is.

he does wear your typical sherwani with a large coat on top, something that is, in fact accurate to men's fashion at the time. most middle class or well to do families ( the ones who were not a part of the 60% - 70% below the poverty line ) did hold that similar style of traditional wear with western influence, or straight up turn to western clothing as a whole. its a very small nod to the fact that he was from a well to do family at least. then the eye imagery on the prosthetic arm could be a reference to the nazar, though it's not blue.

tldr; his outfit holds heavy tribal influence but i really need to do my research on which ones in particular.

3) kanjira.

okay. i'm a little upset with her. the fortune teller aspect is rooted in how astrology played a huge part in indian culture. the coffee readings could have been an aspect carried over by cultural mixing through islamic trade and invasions as well. kanjira is another aspect that is a little more of unsure territory. there are parts of her outfit that i can recognize. but together it does feel a little disjointed. and confusing. her jewelry is recognizable. her kamarbandh for one and her skirt.

the blouse though? that confuses me. for one it's more in line with 1910s fashion. the blouse was initially not a part of a lot of traditional indian dresses and were introduced by the british due to extreme discomfort ( aka they didn't like that indian women didn't cover up their chest ). the earlier blouses strongly resembles victorian blouses, with puffed sleeves and ruffles. but then there is that older the shoulder thingie and i'm like ??? HOW DOES THAT WORK-

the snake motif could be a reference to the irula tribe from south india. even her name is a reference to an instrument in south india ( which resembles a tambourine ). i don't think her base outfit is based on accuracy due to the mismatched nature of it. it seems like she just took what clothes she could and made do with that, which given her economic status, makes sense. her alt outfit does glean into what influences she took after, perhaps the banjara tribe. i will need to look into it some more. but it is admittedly, facing a similar problem to kaalaa in how it's so heavy stylized. it's not accurate save for the motifs and yes, it could do with some better work in both versions.

now for the stereotype. i'm very on the fence in this sense with how i could understand that the 'thief' stereotype is referenced. but kanjira is however, a product of some very real stuff that happened ( and still goes on even now ). the unfortunate reality is that people who are considered beneath the lower caste and obc umbrella face their share of discrimination as hooligans and thieves amongst the indian majority as well, even today. it's harmful, but she's the reflection of the struggles of a lot of communities who lived in poverty post colonial india. the british left a lot of scars and the governments after did very little to help and kanjira, as a child with no parents did what a lot of kids back then turned to. it's circumstances deeply rooted in systemic oppression, casteism and so many other issues. i've had family members in similar situations ( my mother's side in particular ).

so i do wince at the fact that she's labelled as a 'stereotype' even though i do see WHY she's a stereotype when the context is removed. her spoken english is also another wince. i know you didn't mean to be offensive and i'm sure to a lot of indians you might not be but kanjira's english is the way it is simply because she was never formally educated in it. she does refer to asking for help to read english words and it's fairly obvious she picked up on the language by listening to others speak it. matilda however, did have to learn it from a pretty young age in the foundation. she was educated in it, whether she likes it or not ( a lot like my case ).

a bit of a breakdown here. english is mostly learned in india for the sake of convenience. it's used in our parliament because it's culturally neutral and doesn't show favor to certain state languages ( and native language in itself is a very culturally sensitive topic in india ). you learn it in case you need to study in foreign firms or if you travel abroad. it also means that if you and a good chunk of other indians speak in english, it allows some leeway to communicate in other states. because again, different languages and dialects are spoken in different parts of india. i myself have a better chance of communicating with a different people from different states in english, no matter how broken it is than having to learn a separate language every time.

i know a lot of people in my college who didn't start learning english till grade 11 and speak pretty similarly to kanjira. so alluding to her imperfect english as a 'not great thing' kind of rubs me the wrong way due to personal gripes of mine, mostly in part due to how eletist it tends to be at times. the mindset of janjira not being good at english being considered 'really not great' kind of fuels into a still ongoing problem of insecurity and a lot of other issues i'd rather not clog the post with.

she's fluent in hindi and it's obviously her preferred language and she can certainly write and read hindi as well. it's kind of similar to making fun of an american for not knowing fluent french they picked up from a few classes, while they're still in america. again, i doubt you meant any harm saying that but my gripe with how learning english is so desperately seeded in some families just to appease how the west views us ( that stereotype you mentioned? yeah ) and the constant perpetuation of the stereotype, has a lot of ramifications.

i don't know how to explain it but it's kind of like this : you call broken english a stereotype, we're afraid of being stereotyped, we try to avoid being stereotyped. but there are people here who can't. maybe their medium of education wasn't english for a good few years, even if their family is well off. that leads to further discrimination from us to them and from you to them.

yes english is a neutral language, but it's also horrifically overrated due to the imbued belief that it also alludes to being educated. i lost chunks of my own mother tongue trying to learn english, simply because it was given more priorities at my home and at my school because of us moving and the imbued fear of seeming uneducated.

i know you meant no harm to that.

but on a cooler note, punji literally means 'money'. kanjira named her snake 'money' and with the drip it has? it's strangely cute XD. it's like that one meme.

also kanjira's accent, kind of reminds me of a few annoying girls in my school ( it's a very common accent in north india and my hindi speakers tbh ). she's literally the valley girl's take in india. the drawl, the lilting tones every time i listen to her, i hear that one girl from fourthe grade and i'm like "n o." because it has that condescending edge to it. i love it XD.

tldr ; kanjira is both 'it kind of makes sense' and 'fuck it we ball'. she could do with reworking. i like the thought that her outdated blouse and her clothing was a mix and match, possibly picked up from charities as well but...yeah XD.

these are mostly my takes. overall, i thing r1999 actually has some of the better depictions of indian culture compared to a lot of other stuff out there ( and there is a LOT of bad stuff ). the fact that there was variation in their accents, the casual switch between english and hindi, the story of mor pankh itself and shamane's incessant need to feed us ( which is a thing in our families btw )...i'm pretty happy with it. and yes, even we fuck up aspects of our own culture. aka, adipurush exists and i will shit on that way more.

sorry for bothering you and thanks for reading through it all ( and i hope i didn't come across as rude in that segment about language )!

hiya! sorry for taking so long to get to this ask -- i was out of town for like a week and had absolutely Zero energy on coming back for like another week afterwards. i want to head this off by saying you're not bothering me in the slightest, i'm genuinely delighted to get to be able to talk about things like this in more depth and i really appreciate you taking the time to write this out! (peek behind the curtain: i have gotten up several times and paced around excitedly in the course of writing this. i REALLY love discussion and critique and Learning Context in general.)

i think time's been pretty kind to the Mor Pankh update, all things considered -- having several months to sit on it (and also no longer playing CROB -- good god Centipede and Black Pepper are an absolute mess of racist/Orientalist tropes, and that was pretty recent at the time of Mor Pankh), it's definitely better than i initially gave it credit for. a lot of things you've mentioned here -- especially a good deal of the further context on Kaalaa Baunaa and Shamane's clothing, as well as further context on Kanjira -- is something i truly don't have much to add to other than "i didn't know that, and this makes me a lot more favorable towards them than before".

definitely Kanjira is still someone i find myself heavily split on. i think a lot of what you mentioned about the way i treated her speaking broken English very callously is probably right on the money and thank you for the correction on that end -- given the context of the story that seems to be one of the more thoughtful aspects of her overall characterization and design. the thief/fortuneteller stereotype is something i'm a little more hesitant to dismiss at face value, though; while it may be a coincidence, there's definitely a history of stereotyping Rromani people in particular as like... scantily clad fortunetellers who steal from people, and it's something that feels really prevalent in Kanjira's design for me. from an in-story perspective i think rev19 does a great job of contextualizing and fleshing her out as a character, but from an overview of the character it rings eerily similar to Orientalist tropes about both Indian and Rromani people in a way that i will probably never be fully comfortable with.

i do think it's hilarious that her snake is named Money though. that's beautiful and i can't complain in the slightest.

Kaalaa Baunaa is a delight to read about in terms of where her outfit might be drawn from. i genuinely don't know a good 90% of the fashion/clothing context when it comes to basically anything in rev19, so for a lot of it i'm definitely deferring to you in terms of whether or not her outfit is accurate. i do definitely like her second outfit better as well (it also looks a lot more comfortable. we're under a heat advisory where i am right now and i WISH i had something like that to wear when i eventually have to go out and walk the dog). i don't really have much else to say here, though

finally for Shamane i will fully admit to being woefully out of my depth and being very attuned to looking for First Nations stereotypes owing to that be a particular trope i'm very used to seeing (gods the feather thing happens SO MUCH). that said, i am absolutely kicking myself for not researching things first, i think learning more about the context of his specific design and beliefs makes me come around a lot more positively to some of the aspects of his design -- especially what you mentioned about it being historically accurate, as that's something i did not consider initially and is really cool to hear about wrt what the design process may have been! (also i love his arm design, like, a lot. no idea if connecting it to nazar designs makes sense or not, it does appear that those are almost exclusively blue though maybe in the context of rev19's worldbuilding red eyes would have developed as the "evil eye" instead? idk, but i can probably count on one hand the amount of prosthetic users in gacha games whose missing limbs are actually given thought and treated as aspects of the story rather than just visual flavor.)

in conclusion: yeah, i think after learning more about the context behind these character designs i was definitely a bit harder on Mor Pankh than i needed to be -- relative to other games that take a swing at depicting SWANA and/or Indian cultures i think rev19 is doing way better in that category than most of them. i will say part of why i am so frequently critical of rev19 is that i also love the game a lot -- i don't put much time or effort into critiquing things that are just straight up bad, and if i'm hard on something that's usually because i really want to sink my teeth into it and talk about what works and doesn't work within its story and broader cultural contexts.

(and also -- thank you again for taking the time and thought to send me this! i can't express enough how much i appreciate being able to learn more about the context of a lot of these characters and the story and just, like, talk about it openly. it rocks! thank you!!)

[xalygatorx]

Unbound | Chapter 1, "Too-Interesting Times"

Áine Ts'sambra—a wayward half-drow bard with a painful past—has her world upended when she's snatched up by a Nautiloid ship and furnished with a tadpole to the brain. In her journey to remove the infestation before it can turn her and her newfound companions illithid, she not only finds that their solution has more layers to parse through than she can count, but that a particular vampire in her party does as well.

Unbound is an ongoing generally SFW medium-burn romance based in the world of Baldur's Gate 3 between Astarion and a female OC. Any NSFW content will be marked in the Warnings section. Contains angst, fluff, explorations of trauma, spice, graphic fantasy violence, and a guaranteed happy ending.

For anything additional on what to expect (and not expect), check the preface post.

Summary: Áine has pulled herself from the wreckage of the Nautiloid with little more than a worm in her head and some miscellany in her pack. She picks up some equally infested companions along the way—a cleric with an odd artefact, a portal-stuck wizard, and a haughty pale elf. They get acquainted and seek to stock up on supplies while figuring out what their next steps should be.

Pairing: Astarion x Fem!OC

Warnings: Graphic descriptions of fantasy violence; lightly proofread; will not operate on a posting schedule (this is a for-fun project for me)

Word Count: 6.8k

Listening to: It Will Come Back - Hozier, Harpy Song from the BG3 soundtrack

For perhaps the fourth time already that day, Áine Ts’sambra was recanting every time she had ever wished for her life to be different. It seemed that the accumulation of all the time she’d wished for better or hoped for more or even prayed in rare instances for less had all balled up into the atrocity that had befallen her and countless others in being scooped into a Nautiloid ship and having an illithid tadpole implanted in her eye socket.

Even now, she could feel the little thing twitch and occasionally give a wriggle, and it was all she could do to not to be sick on the dirt she trod, which would make for a nasty bit of path for the few companions she’d already scavenged around the wreckage. She wasn't sure why they were following her—she knew as little as, if not even less, they did about what they were in for with these horrible little crawlers. But she did remember what that githyanki woman on the ship had said just before they’d sawed through some imps—that if these parasites were left to bake, they’d become the very things that had abducted them in the first place.

She shuddered. She couldn’t help it. But the half-elf cleric at her side was immediately wary at even the faintest twitch of Áine’s lavender flesh.

“You’re not turning, are you?” Shadowheart asked. Áine noticed one of her hands had wrapped around the hilt of her mace, but rested there. A precaution.

“No, I’m fine,” Áine reassured her, scoffing at her own choice of words immediately after. “Well, that’s a stretch, but I’m just as ‘fine’ as I was a few moments ago. Don’t worry, if I start to go, I’ll try to say something. I’d rather die than turn.”

“No one is going to turn,” the wizard tailing along behind them hastened to reassure either her, himself, or the universe at large. “We will find a more than capable healer, get the wrigglers gone, and then, I don’t know, find a tavern or something to celebrate.”

“If you’re seeing anywhere around these parts reminiscent of somewhere that would have a tavern, I’m beginning to worry about your brain too, wizard,” Shadowheart remarked.

“Again, just Gale is fine,” Gale insisted. “And fair… I’m not having ale-based hallucinations. If that were a symptom, maybe ceremorphosis would be a more pleasant sendoff, but I hasten to reaffirm, that it is not.”

“I prefer a dry red, myself,” their most recent party member remarked. Even hearing Astarion’s distinguished voice at the present moment made Áine’s head smart. She’d not headbutted anyone in, well, quite a while, and there was an art to it. An art she’d needed to abandon as soon as he had her pinned in the dirt with a dagger to her throat and she didn’t have a good angle. 

“You know, I heartily agree with you there,” Gale said with feeling, sounding devastated now that there was no drink to be had. “Especially after the day we’ve all had, I’d wager we could all use a stiff beverage.”

“You can say that again,” Shadowheart sighed in step with Áine, who was now more focused than ever on finding them a safe spot to camp. “Do you have a drink of choice, Áine?”

“You’re going to call me unoriginal, but I also enjoy a wine,” Áine admitted. “Or a bit of brandy in some tea. That’s special for colder nights though.”

“Mm, that sounds divine,” Gale commented. “Although I’d guess it doesn’t get too cold around here, even at night. I’m sweating through my robes back here, a sight you ladies certainly do not need to behold.”

“Seconded,” Astarion said. “That there’s an unpleasantly moist Gale back here, not that I’m breaking a sweat, mind.”

“Oi, thanks,” Gale snapped.

“Only a little further, you lot,” Áine raised her voice to hush the whiners in the back. “We can set up on that bit of plateau if everyone agrees to that.”

“It’s an ‘aye’ from me,” Gale commented. “Anything to get off my feet for a few moments. Had I known we were to be abducted, I may have picked to wear some walking shoes.”

“Indeed,” Astarion murmured, wincing as the dress shoes he was wearing continued to wear a sore on the back of his heel. Of all the ironic things to take him down, why did it have to be aesthetic? Not that he had much else to choose from in regards to what to wear, but these strange folk didn’t need to know that.

Áine and Shadowheart shared a private, humored glance at their adopted companions’ comments. Given Shadowheart was mid-journey when she was captured and Áine had been mid-journey for who knew how long now, they both had appropriate footwear to be wandering these sparse foothills. “Okay, okay, let’s get a fire going,” Áine said as they reached the spot she’d indicated, setting down the supply pack that she and Shadowheart had procured from a corpse before finding themselves in a spat with some intellect devourers within the ship’s shattered hull.

“I’ve got it, go sit,” Áine reassured Gale as he started to try and make himself useful by gathering some nearby branches from the ground. 

“Are you quite sure?” Gale asked.

“No need to tell me twice,” Astarion commented, finding a flat rock to lounge across and gaze at the sky as it turned to a milky, purplish dusk. His brow creased as he glanced between the sky and then at their newly appointed “leader”—the sky mirrored the hues of her half-drow complexion, the bare beginnings of sundown. It was just in her skin and pearlescent hair that her elven traits made themselves known, however. 

Save her pointy ears, she was a notable mix of her human heritage as well, down to the very human eyes that caught his and gave him a withering look at his indolence. He snorted softly and rolled his eyes back up to the sky, slowly darkening to reveal the stars. Poor dear had eyes the color of dirt. Ruination to an otherwise perfectly good elven face, drow as it may be.

Between Shadowheart and Áine, a stable campfire had formed between their makeshift tents, happily crackling wayward embers surfing the night air. Astarion remained on his perch while Gale, Shadowheart, and Áine circled the fire, splitting the small rations of stale bread and cheese they’d looted earlier and finding that the coast did get surprisingly chilly come sundown. “So what was that about tea and brandy, Áine?” Gale remarked, earning a tiny laugh from both Áine and Shadowheart. 

“I’ll keep an eye out for a bottle while we’re supply-hunting tomorrow,” Áine promised, chaffing her hands together and holding her palms toward the flames. “The tea might be a little tougher, but who knows? This isn’t an area I’m familiar with, so whatever old shipments we find might have some surprises.” The idea seemed to mollify her some about their situation as a whole. 

The truth was, she was doing everything she could to put the parasite at the back of her mind. Figuratively, of course. Doing so literally might hinder her chances of finding someone to yank the awful thing out. And back to existential dread, she thought with a barely stifled groan.

“You’re sure you don’t want something to eat, Astarion?” Áine offered.

“As, uh, appetizing as near-molding bread and cheese sound,” Astarion mused, sitting up from where he’d languidly laid against the sun-warmed rock until its heat had faded with its source, and making his way toward one of the tents Shadowheart and Áine had pitched nearby. “I’m more inclined to rest than eat at the moment. I just have this awful headache…”

Áine smirked a little to herself and rolled her eyes. “I do, too. He’s milling around my camp at the moment, and not to mention my head hurts to boot.”

Gale snorted and Shadowheart’s lips pursed into a line to withhold a laugh of her own. Astarion smirked, dropping his head forward to conceal it as he replied, “Touché, my dear.” At least he wasn’t short some banter for whatever road lay ahead of them with the company he currently kept. He retreated to the tent, setting up on one of the bedrolls inside for his nightly reverie. “Is there a reason I’m expected to share lodgings?”

“Because we only found two tents in all the bags we looted on the beach,” Áine said patiently, even as Shadowheart rolled her eyes and Gale sighed toward the fire. “If we’re lucky, it’ll just be for tonight.”

She was met with a hmph from the direction of the tents and decided to find humor in the decidedly stuck-up behavior of the high elf they’d adopted roadside despite his attempt on her life. Áine supposed it showed her for trying to be indiscriminately helpful in these newly trying times. Not that it hadn’t always been, in her experience, a risk to stick one’s neck out for a stranger, but the stakes were higher now. She could take it as a reminder, seeing as nothing had really happened but some head trauma, and move on. 

Her forgiveness had surprised Shadowheart and endeared her to Gale, but it seemed like an expectation from the subject of her excusal, Astarion. Even so, it was difficult to parse between what was a genuine reaction from him and something edging toward rehearsed. It would either get easier with time, she imagined, or the mask would drop as he got to know them all and felt a little more at ease. Áine was grateful at least that Gale and Shadowheart, despite her secrets, were more open books in that regard. All she wanted from every aspect of her current situation was more transparency and some answers.

“So you’re a bard then, Áine?” Gale asked, bringing her attention back to the present.

Áine followed his gaze toward her bag set near the other of their two pitched tents, out of which poked a very basic wooden flute. “I am, indeed,” she said with a little puff of pride in her chest. “You mentioned you’re a wizard? How did you come into that?”

That was enough to consume conversation for the evening and Áine was glad. She wasn’t quite in a headspace to talk about herself or ruminate on their predicament, but she could most certainly listen and Gale was more than happy to talk and regale (no pun intended) his life in Waterdeep and discuss his favorite tomes on countless subjects of his studies. The three still at the fireside eventually felt the day’s events sink its claws into their bodies and minds and retired to the remaining bedrolls until morning broke anew.

Astarion was up with the sun and, very much like a sleepy cat, tailed its rays to where they spread across the edge of their little plateau, settling himself in and feeling the pleasant heat begin to permeate his clothes. The concept was still so novel, that he could just exist in the sun again without disintegrating into ash finer than even that settled around the base of their extinguished campfire. He still had the barest instinct against traipsing into the light, but the pull was even stronger to enjoy whatever this was while it lasted. It simply had to be the parasite, he’d decided, and despite its constant threat of ceremorphosis initiation, it made him loath to get rid of the little bugger. Maybe there was a way to control it instead… After all, it perhaps was also the only thing keeping him from being swept back under Cazador’s thumb.

No, the parasite was indispensable for the moment. There were more pros than cons for him and it might be his only avenue at breaking free of the Szarr estate for good.

Voices from below were enough excuse to shelve his thoughts for the moment, thoughts dangerously bordering on reflection that would dredge up the most painful, humiliating memories he’d accrued over the past 200 years, and there was stiff competition for what could be considered most painful or most humiliating. Swallowing against the acrid taste of bile that rose in the back of his throat, he focused on the voices, which seemed to be coming down from the crypt entrance they’d passed on their way up the hill.

He scented her before he heard her, and even more so before he saw her. Áine had to appear in his peripheral on her own, as he actively didn’t turn his head to regard her, even as she asked, “Spot anything of interest down there?” 

The fresh scent he’d caught upon her arrival originated from a sprig of mint she absentmindedly crushed between her back molars, the herb’s strong sting of flavor doing well to both help wake her and focus her mind. It was strong, but a pleasant way to force one’s self awake.

“To be determined,” Astarion sighed, stretching back to rest his weight on his hands. “They don’t seem to be from the ship from what I could tell. Probably just run-of-the-mill graverobbers.”

Áine frowned and observed the stonework below, her eyes catching on movement whenever one of the persons in question came into view. “Bit of an odd hit, isn’t it?” she asked. “That place looks old as the dust that’s settled on it. Can’t be anything of use still in there.”

“You’d be surprised, darling,” Astarion mused. “Things often get missed by quicker digs. Takes someone who knows where to look.”

Áine looked at him, her eyes finding his as he continued to gaze down toward the crypt. He had the most vivid crimson eyes she’d ever seen, even on her fully Lolth-sworn drow cousins. She’d initially wondered if he had a little drow blood in him too to cause such a shocking pigmentation for his eyes, but nothing else about him looked remotely drow.

“You’re staring at me,” he accused her lazily, his gaze finally parting from the crypt to level with hers. “Why?”

Áine shook her head, giving him an embarrassed smile. “I honestly just got lost in my thoughts. I meant to ask if you were someone who knows where to look. If that’s how you know that.”

Astarion smirked but believed that she truly had just been staring through him rather than at him. He’d mostly just wanted to see how she’d recover from his blunt question. With grace, it seems, he thought, a mental note taken. “My prime skillset is knowing where to look, my dear,” he informed her in low, silken tones. “Second only to knowing what to do with what I see.”

Áine’s eyes narrowed at the turn the conversation had taken. She sighed. “Right, lot of help that was,” she murmured as she stood up and brushed herself off. The chuckle she heard issue from the pale elf at her feet just amplified her growing exasperation. Normally she would think that this was the result of someone’s mask falling off, but she had a strong feeling this was just his mask more firmly fastened. 

This particular mask wouldn’t work on her, however—she didn’t fall for this sort of thing, to a point that the minimal love interests she’d run through over the years had called her things like “heartless” or “broken” or a “tease.” Her body didn’t bend to a touch alone, her knees didn’t shake for a whispered word. She needed all of it or none. She needed to care for someone to want them. Whether that was a product of her innate identity or a byproduct of past trauma, she was yet to understand. Her hunch was that it was both, a deeply unique-to-her set of preferences and desires exacerbated by a learned need to shield herself and keep advancing parties at arm’s length. 

She’d dealt with feeling inconvenient, incorrect, and “needlessly picky” for the entirety of the romantic portion of her life, from the time she’d had her first crushes as a girl, usually undone before they could begin. She’d felt siloed, like everyone else was either mad or in on information that had passed her by in its entirety. But as she’d grown, she’d made peace with the fact that this was simply how she was, and there was no changing that. Her heart and all the strings it attached to existed in a gray area she was still coming to understand, herself—she couldn’t blame others for not understanding it when she still didn’t fully herself, but she could also readily protect and validate it while she learned.     

And a high elf with a pretty face and a purr of a voice when he wasn’t outright whining wasn’t quite enough to break her. Were he not so haughty, cynical, and short-tempered, she may be a little more concerned for herself.

Áine made her way back to the campfire, setting to work at reigniting the bit of tinder so she could put together something for their breakfast. Shadowheart and Gale were rousing nearby and she figured Astarion would have to be half-starved after skipping over eating anything the night before. Gale joined her fireside as she poured some water from her canteen into a metal pan over some oats that she began to heat over the fire into some porridge. “Good morning! Can I help with anything?”

She reflexively began to politely refuse any help, but paused, glancing down the hillside toward a crate she and Shadowheart had passed over the day before when it had only contained some cutlery and dishes. “Actually, that would be grand. Do you see that crate down there, by the…well, by the dead intellect devourer?”

“Unfortunately, yes,” Gale said with a chipperness that made her laugh. “Need something from it?”

“It’ll have some bowls and silverware for us to portion this out. Shadowheart and I passed it by at the time not realizing we’d have quite a group by daybreak.”

“Say no more, I’ll return momentarily.” Gale set off in the direction of the crate and Áine kept her eye on the path he trod, more or less to make sure the brain creature she’d pointed out to him as a landmark was, in fact, as dead as it looked.

“Eying up Gale already, are we?” Shadowheart teased Áine as she settled in next to her. The cleric pulled her long ebony locks over her shoulder and began replaiting them with practiced nimble fingers. “I can’t blame you, I suppose, he does have a certain light about him when he’s chatting books.”

“I’m mostly making sure that awful creature doesn’t spring up and attack him since it’s my fault he’s out there in the first place,” Áine explained, not biting down on the offered bait. Satisfied that the intellect devourer was certainly dead if it hadn’t attacked him yet, she looked at Shadowheart. “I told him about the dishes we found yesterday and he’s collecting them so we’re not all hunched over one pot eating hot porridge with our hands.”

Shadowheart smirked at the mental image Áine painted as she tied off her braid. While Áine stirred the porridge in the boiling pot, Shadowheart nodded toward her starlight tresses. “Would you like me to do yours as well?”

Áine usually made do with winding her hair into a bun at her nape, but she recognized a gesture of friendship when she saw it, so she said, “That would be nice, thank you,” and let Shadowheart plait her hair while she cooked.

“Well isn’t this cute,” Astarion commented when he returned to their immediate campsite and took in the sight of the two half-elves by the fire. “One would think we’re on a holiday rather than counting down the seconds until the worms in our brains decide to turn us into tentacled monstrosities. Maybe you two could braid those as well.”

“Are you always so personable in the morning or are we just having a lucky one today?” Shadowheart quipped with an annoyed look his way, still working diligently even as her gaze averted. Nonplussed, Áine passed Shadowheart her leather hairband over her shoulder so she could fasten her work. Gale arrived back with the bowls then and traded spots with Shadowheart to help Áine portion out their breakfast. 

“Darling, any morning that starts with my presence is damn lucky,” Astarion retorted, his dulcet tones saccharine and dripping with sarcasm.

When Shadowheart rose to her feet, Áine passed her up a bowl of porridge and a spoon. “Well let’s hope it’s not our only streak of luck today,” Áine commented before warning Shadowheart, “It’s quite hot, be careful. It’s also likely quite bad, but we need something if we’re to keep ourselves moving today.”

“You’re right. And I’ve had far worse regardless, I promise,” Shadowheart reassured her. “I thank you for it.”

“It looks atrocious,” Astarion commented as he peeked into Shadowheart’s bowl.

“Oh don’t worry, there’s plenty for you too,” Áine said, ignoring his ungrateful griping.

“I’ll pass,” he said. “But I appreciate the thought, my dear. I think.”

“You need to eat something, you spoilt brat,” Shadowheart groused after she swallowed a bite of her breakfast. “It may not be you were used to back in the city or on a silver spoon to boot, but you’ll collapse mid-battle if you don’t eat at all.”

He scoffed at her words. “Silver spoon? Do I strike you as a spoiled little rich boy?”

“Yes, actually,” Shadowheart said. “Perhaps not rich per se, but certainly spoiled.”

Something dark passed through his eyes, noticed only by Áine, who thought that just might be the first genuine bit of feeling she’d yet seen on his pointed, handsome features.

“What did you do back in the city, Astarion?” Gale asked conversationally as he put down his own bowl of porridge. Relaxing some now that the tension had been broken, or at least shelved, Áine began to eat as well. It wasn’t bad, but it was unbelievably bland. She wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do about that though, she didn’t even have salt. If Shadowheart and Gale were choking on her creation at least, they were being very polite to contain it.

“Oh, I was a magistrate,” Astarion said, startled out of his souring mood. “It’s all rather tedious.”

“I dread to think of the rulings you may have passed down,” Shadowheart commented as she scraped her bowl clean with the edge of her spoon. The grating noise clearly bothered Astarion and Áine had to wonder if Shadowheart was doing it because of that. “Bad hair day? 10 years in the barracks.”

“I’ll have you know I endeavored to keep the peace as well as I could in that despicable city,” Astarion snapped. “That alone was a full-time job.”

“Well, I certainly know who to come to for any future legal advice,” Gale commented before turning his attention to Áine. “So, fearless leader, where to today? It may behoove us to get a move on, at the very least to find someone else to fight before our little camp turns on itself.”

Shadowheart at least had the decency to flush with some measure of chagrin at the way she was acting being highlighted by Gale’s words. “Apologies, you’re right, Gale. There’s no need for that.” Astarion huffed but didn’t press the issue.

Áine pursed her lips against a laugh and instead said, “Astarion spotted some activity this morning down in that crypt we passed last night. Might be a good bid for some more supplies. More tents, even.”

“Finally someone speaking sense,” Astarion sighed theatrically.

“What if they’re survivors of the crash? Like us?” Gale asked as he collected empty bowls from Shadowheart and Áine and wrapped them up in a cloth to wash out at their next opportunity. “What if they’re more potential allies?”

“Then we’ll still need more tents,” Áine said, drawing a chuckle from all parties, Gale included. “We can just see what they have to say when we go down there, of course. But just…be equally ready for the possibility that they’ll be territorial looters.”

“Fair enough,” Gale said, straightening and looking toward their tents. “Should we leave these up then? Will we camp up here another night?”

Áine looked at their little spot with some consideration. “I suppose so. I don’t see why not anyway,” she said. “Especially if this doesn’t turn out to be a quick trip, it’ll be nice knowing we can come straight back here. Just take anything you don’t want potentially pilfered with you.”

“Ah, right. Of course,” Gale said and set to work organizing his pack.

“Thank you for breakfast, by the way,” Shadowheart said, meeting Áine’s eyes as the half-drow stood up, leaving the cooking pot in the fire to burn the bit of remnant porridge from its basin while they explored. “I know you were anxious about how it turned out, but it’ll stick to our ribs effectively and it was kind of you to make it.”

Áine smiled at her. “Very kind. And thank you for this,” she said, smoothing the glistening white braid Shadowheart had made of her hair over her shoulder. “I can’t remember the last time I had a plait in my hair.” She could actually, she realized. She was just relieved to have a different connotation for the style now.

Shadowheart beamed at her. “Well, it suits you very nicely.” The group parsed out what they decided to take along with them on their run down to the crypt, obscuring anything else of importance however they could. When they all appeared ready, Shadowheart suggested, “Right, shall we go see what new horrors await us?”  

As it turned out, the folks down by the crypt were, in fact, graverobbers and looters interested in both the crypt and the crash site wreckage and not anyone infected and interested in partying up. Upon insulting their “fearless leader” by calling her a cur, Áine had heaved a tired sigh and angled her crossbow up at a precariously hanging slab of rock, and then loosed the bolt that would bring it crashing into the offending two members of the looting party. 

And that, it would seem, was just the beginning of a ludicrous dive into an ancient forgotten crypt. Shadowheart and Áine were already somewhat acquainted with the other’s fighting style and fell into a rhythm with ease, Shadowheart primarily delivering heals to the party as they fought their way through the looters on the exterior of the crypt and then a new group they met further in. 

Astarion picked off their enemies, in full or at least staggering them, with arrows loosed from his shortbow, hanging back with Shadowheart to let the heavy hitters take the frontlines. Or at least that had been the plan until it was in this fight that Gale realized just how many of his magical abilities the parasite had rendered useless. While Shadowheart had focused her healing magic on Gale after he’d hit the floor within an inch of his life, Áine and Astarion had been left to clear the room.

Truly she fought like no bard he’d ever seen. The moment Gale went down and it became a game of defending two members of her party while one healed the other, something had changed in the way she handled herself. She maintained a certain grace while she fought, but she hit harder and struck with a certainty that may normally belong to someone twice her size and perhaps in more of a melee-focused formation. It was impressive and Astarion knew he was kidding himself in full if he didn’t admit he found it as such. It was an admittance he’d be keeping to himself, however.

The little hellion was somehow winning, despite four armed grown men coming at her from all sides. He shot one through the throat as he went for her left flank and the gurgle caused her to look back, first at the fallen barbarian and then following the trajectory of the arrow back to Astarion. His lip curled slightly in a smile when their eyes met and she gave him something akin to a quick nod of gratitude. 

She whirled back in time to dodge the one remaining looter as he swung a shortsword at her, cutting the air next to her forearm. She reached back for what she expected to be a dagger in her pack, gripped it, and plunged the weapon into the man’s eye socket, through to his brain. When he crumpled to the ground, she realized she’d stabbed him with her flute instead.

Shocked, Áine regarded the instrument sticking out of the fresh corpse’s face, her shoulder slackening with defeat as she mourned the loss of her only instrument. 

Astarion, behind her, had found the killing blow very amusing and sidled up to stand next to her and get a better look. “Poetic, considering your calling,” he remarked. He could’ve laughed aloud at how exasperated her expression had become.  

“I can’t believe I did that,” she groaned. “I used to keep a dagger in that sheathe and I just… Habit. Godsdammit.”

“For what it’s worth, it does paint you as a bard to be reckoned with,” Astarion pointed out, his nose wrinkling a little at the macabre state of the corpse’s eye socket. “But I highly doubt even if you could get it out that it would still be usable. Just in case you’re considering it.”

“It’s a lost cause, I know,” she said, sighing. He found it amusing that she was more bothered by the loss of her instrument than at the act of stabbing a man in the brain with the equivalent of a fancy wooden stick. Much less amusing was the other sort of wooden stabbing weapon that could kill him with a quick thrust into his ribs.

Astarion glanced back toward Shadowheart and Gale, who was looking more stable now and just in a state of deep self-deprecation. He looked back down at Áine and dropped a hand on her shoulder to steer her back toward the others. “Come now, darling girl, there’s far more in this world for instruments than that little flute,” he said. 

Áine smiled, knowing she was being silly. The flute had little to no sentimental value for her, and this was unfortunately not the first time she’d lost a flute to a fight, all because she was notorious for reorganizing her bag and then forgetting where she’d put things in the heat of the moment. “Thank you, by the way,” she said as they walked.

“Hm? What for?”

“For saving my neck from that barbarian when you did,” she said. “Shadowheart would likely have more work had you not.”

Astarion smirked. “It’s simply too pretty a neck to waste, dearest.”

“You two were magnificent!” Gale exclaimed as Áine and Astarion approached. Only when Astarion dropped his hand from her shoulder did Áine realize two things—that he’d kept his hand on her shoulder that whole time and also how cold his hand was. “I only wish I could say the same of myself. I swear everything I told you about being an Archmage is true, it must be the parasite interfering with my connection to the Weave…”

“It’s a team effort,” Áine said kindly before he could start beating himself up too much about discovering his new magical hindrances in the thick of battle. “We all made it through, I see that as a win from all angles.”

Gale sighed but smiled all the same. “You are too forgiving, my friend. And you, too generous,” he said to Shadowheart, who helped him to his feet. “I feel better than I have in years under your care.”

Shadowheart preened just a little. “Happy to. Helped that the both of you did well to buy me time,” she said earnestly to Áine and Astarion both. In Áine’s peripheral vision, she saw Astarion wordlessly incline his head to the cleric, which she took as an official truce from their earlier scrap in the camp.

“Right, let’s see what these charlatans have in their pockets,” Áine said. “And, um, if anyone happens to find a flute that’s preferably not stuffed with ocular viscera… Well, I’m interested.”

In all the barrels, crates, pockets, and bags that the group pawed through, they managed to scavenge quite a haul, including three more tents, a larger variety of foodstuffs, a healthy sum of gold, and a few bottles of ithbank. And while another flute wasn’t found, even further along in the crypt, Gale did find a lyre that he brought to Áine for inspection. 

“It looks a bit damaged, but it might prove a nice project,” he suggested.

Áine was fascinated by the new instrument and, while she wasn’t yet sure how to play it, the opportunity to try something new was even more enrapturing than finding a new flute. “No, this is lovely. Thank you, Gale!”

Astarion had never seen anyone so lovestruck by the sight of a dusty old slab of wood and some strings. The lyre was nothing special at all, but she held it like it was made of glass. A quiet hmph passed his lips as he went back to scouting the area, finding a promising-looking chest in one of the adjacent chambers. He gave it an experimental press of his fingers, but it was not unexpectedly locked tight. He crouched down and retrieved his picks from his bag, beginning to work them within the keyhole and comfortably losing himself in the little focus project. 

Distantly, he heard Gale remark upon some of the books on the dusty old shelves within the room and heard Shadowheart say that she’d found a strange button on the far wall, inquiring if she should push it or not. Astarion only realized he was being watched after the lock gave a familiar, particularly satisfying click of surrender and slid open like a slacked jaw. “Enjoying the show?” he asked, watching Áine from the corner of his eye.

She stood leaned against the stonework of the doorway, just watching his hands work and then succeed in freeing the lock. “I am,” she admitted. “You made that look very easy.”

Astarion sneered and straightened to flip the chest lid open. “It is easy.”

Áine rolled her eyes, but the smile remained on her lips even so. “Right.” She heard her name pealed from further in and she responded, “Coming,” as she moved off the wall and walked deeper into the room. Astarion, mildly disgruntled at the interruption, glanced over to watch her go before returning to his looting.

Shadowheart’s discovery of the button on the far wall led them to a previously sealed door that swung open with a heavy thud the moment they agitated the mechanism. They found themselves in a somehow even more ancient temple room riddled with indecipherable plaques and dead, armed scribes amidst a sunlit statue at its center.

“What could have possibly been so subversive about their teachings that these scribes would be armed in their daily work?” Shadowheart wondered as they made their way inside, cocking a bewildered brow at the giant statue. “And whom was it for?”

“Call me crazy,” Áine said, also looking at the statue. “But I think that might be Jergal.”

“You’re crazy,” Gale took her up on her offer. “I’ve not heard tell of or seen his name worshipped for…centuries at best.”

“Does this look like a new crypt to you?” Áine asked.

“No, but it doesn’t look old enough for that to make sense,” he suggested, adding, “I don’t think you’re crazy, by the way, that was a joke.”

Áine had to stifle a laugh, but at his concern rather than his joke. “I know, I set you up for it.”

“I’ve found another button,” Shadowheart announced from across the crypt. “Shall I?”

“Do it, you won’t,” Áine threw out and she heard the click as the button was depressed into the wall. She turned around to see what it did and saw the wall slide open beside Shadowheart. 

When the cleric looked back to the group, however, she paled and pulled her shield off her back. “Look alive,” she warned them and Áine turned to see one of the skeletal scribes shudder to life under Astarion’s loot-hungry hands, all the bones they’d bypassed on their way in rising to meet their uninvited guests.

“Now that’s quite unfair,” Astarion commented in response to Shadowheart’s words, which Áine could only take as a sly joke to the undead they now faced.

The scribes were dispatched fairly quickly, and their persistent silencing gave Gale some practice in shelving his magic during a fight, which could only benefit him, Áine figured. He still had his power, but it seemed he was unfamiliar with its bounds again, and more than anything she wanted to ensure each member of their party could defend themselves should the need arise. And, given their situation, arise it may.

When all necromanced parties were but a pile of bones once more, Áine led the way into the opened chamber, wary of any obscured traps that could activate on entry. It seemed they were in the clear though, at least for now. As Gale parsed through an old book, Shadowheart and Astarion checked through the different vases and chests in the room, and Áine regarded the sarcophagus snugly set against the far wall. 

“All that to protect some dusty old baubles,” Shadowheart commented when she saw Áine hesitate before the casket. “Hardly seems an astute use of their power.” 

Áine whispered an apology to whoever’s grave she was about to disturb and placed her hands against the heavy lid, giving it a proper push. What she didn’t anticipate was having help.

Not from her companions, oh no. No, from the bony hand that emerged from the gap between the lid and the casket, skin stretched thin across pointed knuckles. Áine stumbled back from the lid straight into Astarion and Shadowheart mid-pilfering. Shadowheart dropped the small jug she was inspecting to reach for her mace and Astarion simply froze with his arm halfway inside a vase, caught with his hand in the proverbial cookie jar.

The lid pulled back in full and up rose a veritable mummy of a figure cloaked in ancient cloth robes and a layer of dust. The being’s eyes opened and accusatorily fastened upon Áine as he settled back to the ground, stepping forward as he regarded them. 

“What a curious way to awaken,” the mummified figure said, his voice deep and gravelly with echoes of the ages.

“I said I was sorry,” Áine said, half-delivered as a joke. She really needed to find coping mechanisms that didn’t hinge on humor.

“Indeed,” the figure said dismissively. “Tell me. What is the worth of a single mortal life?”

Áine glanced toward the others, but it seemed he was most interested in asking her. “Um… If I answer incorrectly, are you going to attack us?”

“I would see little point in that. ‘Tis not a riddle, ‘tis but a question,” the figure said, a thread of impatience just beneath the surface. “Wilt thou answer my question?”

Áine let out the breath she’d been holding and said, “Erm, sure… The worth of a single mortal life…”

“Pennies, at best, no?” Astarion suggested unhelpfully behind her. She put an elbow in his ribs.

“He doesn’t speak for me,” she quickly asserted to the mummy as Astarion made an unbecoming oof noise behind her. She gave the question genuine thought before answering with a small helpless lift of her hands, “I suppose I can’t truly say. How do you put a cost on something like a life?”

Something about her statement seemed to amuse the undead man, but he returned to a neutral expression. “Very well. I am satisfied.” He took another step closer and Áine felt Astarion and Shadowheart both tense behind her. “We have met and I know thy face. We will see each other again at the proper time and place. Farewell.”

Without another word or glance, the mummy turned and left the room and the gaggle of bewildered adventurers behind him. No one moved for a solid minute, waiting for the inevitable heel turn or unsprung trap to take them out. When nothing happened, Áine relaxed her stance and stepped away from the two behind her, warily peeking around the corner of the chamber door. As far as she could tell he was gone, but she could hear distant footsteps that may imply he was just in a different part of the crypt. In any case, he didn’t seem to mean them harm.

“What a nice mummy,” she commented offhand, although her voice was still a little hitched by nerves. “Let’s finish up and get out of here.” Áine peeked into the sarcophagus and scooped out a bit of gold and an amulet while the rest of her crew tidied up their own searches behind her. 

Under her breath, she said with palpable exasperation, “Shouldn’t have wished to live in more interesting times…”

Next chapter: Chapter 2, "A Strange Sort of Bard"

[schemelin]

hello your majesty of the skeletons that live in the melon land, i was wondering.. how did you come up w the design for ur little mosnter guy oc Altairus, hes so pretty and ive been trying to make a little mosnter man myself and id love some tips of your creative process!!

(also i hope unis going well! gl on your finals!!)

oh!! In a previous post I mentioned that Altairus' design was inspired by a monster character from a fanfic I read on AO3. lmaoz

I thought of characteristics that were appealing to me and tried to balance them together to come up with their looks, though it's not the finished product.

I was going for a demonic appearance, but Altairus is closer to being a eldritch entity belonging in the same universe as Graveleaper's. Their body is supposed to remind one of the ridges of the trunk of a tree - something about it being organic and alive, but not supposed to be moving around. I also enjoy grim characters, reminiscent of death or that defy it in some way (hence the skull face). Winged creatures are very majestic to me soooooo...

Anyway, Big Scary Monster With Pointy Teeth, Sharp Claws, Twice As Large As The Average Man, am I right.

[aquagirl1978]

Ahoy Aqua! I'm still thinking about that Gilbert and Son fic you wrote the other day and I was wondering if I could request wholesome family headcanons about having a water gun fight with Gilbert and your child as well as Chevalier and your child?

Oh, you mean the fic I posted like over a month ago - oh wait, you mean like a year ago? Sorry I'm so slow with requests 😂 You'll have to forgive me for tweeking your prompt. When I saw those cute lil cyberpunk chibis, and saw Gil with his giant bazooka I was reminded of this request that remained unanswered. A/N: You, as the reader, are alive and well but not present in this paint gun battle. It will become obvious why you are not there as you read along - think of this as a "choose your suitor" story. Disclaimer: I took some liberties in writing this - most notably with their choice of clothing and gameplay. Please do not play paintball without the proper gear and always follow the rules.

IKEMEN PRINCE HEADCANONS - WHOLESOME FAMILY PAINT GUN BATTLES (GILBERT, CHEVALIER)

Arrival at the Arena

The members of the von Obsidian family were frequent visitors at the paintball arena.

Today's outing was led by Gilbert, the proud papa, who was joined by his four children.

They arrived dressed for the occasion - head-to-toe black and red. The two eldest children dragged in what appeared to be a small armory - enough guns for each of them to have at least three and enough ammo to last all afternoon.

Gilbert was busy checking each gun before handing it off to a child as another family entered the space.

Chevalier Michel had never stepped foot into such a place before in his life. It was dark and dingy, and had his teenage son not begged him to come to this place, Chevalier would have been home, reading in his library.

He scowled as his son led him to the long counter - apparently this was where one obtained the equipment necessary to participate.

"Do you want to rent or purchase?" the clerk asked.

"Rent," Chevalier grumbled. There was no need to purchase something he would have no use for after today.

"Hey, Dad, do you know that man over there? He's waving at you."

His ice blue eyes glanced up, a loud sigh escaping his lips before closing his eyes momentarily.

Gilbert wasted no time approaching Chevalier when he ignored his wave. "Fancy seeing you here," Gilbert said with a smile. "Didn't anyone tell you not to wear white here?" he asked, poking Chevalier in the chest with his long finger.

Chevalier roughly brushed Gilbert's hand away. "Didn't anyone tell you to fix your jacket?" he asked, his eyes flickering to the jacket falling from Gilbert's frame, exposing his pale shoulders.

"My wife likes it this way," Gilbert replied, still smiling. "Since you're here, we should play against each other."

Let the Games Begin!

"You're a bit short there..." Gilbert apprised as his single eye flicked between Chevalier and son and his army of four.

"Oh, I know...you can borrow a few of mine." He tapped two of his sons and motioned for them to join Chevalier.

"That wasn't necessary," Chevalier said, frowning at the two mini-Gilberts now standing by his side. "And I out-number you now," he added with a raised brow.

"I know," Gilbert replied with a smile as sharp as a knife.

What did I get myself into? Chevalier felt a sharp sting in his stomach, reminiscent of the pains one might experience when Clavis was nearby. This will not end well.

Chevalier led his team to their designated hideout. He watched in awe as Gilbert's two sons unpacked enough paintball guns to equip a small army.

"Here, take this. It's better than any of the stuff they rent here."

Chevalier tossed his rental gun to the side; the one the mini-Gilbert handed him was a far superior model. Large, yet light in his hands, he nodded approvingly as they handed a similar styled gun to his son.

"You've never played before, have you?" one of the mini-Gilberts asked Chevalier, eyeing his white jacket.

"Just show me how to load this thing," Chevalier replied gruffly, grabbing a handful of paintballs.

After a brief rundown of how to operate the equipment and how to play, the team was ready to split up and start the battle.

"Papa likes to hide," one of the mini-Gilberts warned before the team split up.

Chevalier nodded as he directed the others which way to head.

He crept along his path, his gun at the ready, expecting the worst from Gilbert.

But it was quiet. Too quiet. So quiet, Chevalier found himself growing bored with this game.

He was about ready to drop his gun to his side when out of nowhere came a small figure screaming loudly.

"What the -" Chevalier shouted, shooting the child straight in the chest.

"You got me...." Gilbert's daughter clutched her heart as he body crumped to the ground.

"Dramatic. Just like your father," he said as he stood over her prone body.

One down, two to go.

"What happened to you?" Chevalier asked when he ran into one of the mini-Gilberts from his team.

"My brother....he's down that way. You might be able to sneak up on him."

Chevalier nodded silently and followed down the path until he found his target.

He hid behind cover as he watched and waited for the perfect moment.

When the moment was right, in the darkness of shadows, Chevalier stalked his prey, his gun at the ready.

When the mini-Gilbert's back was turned, Chevalier slipped from the shadows and aimed his gun.

Splat! Bright yellow mixed with black and red, a bright sun in the center of darkness.

"Ah, crap," the mini-Gilbert muttered as his hand reached around his back, his dark glove touching the yellow splatters of paint.

Two down, one to go.

It didn't take long for Chevalier to find the Final Boss; he simply went to where he would have hid.

When he heard Gilbert's familiar laughter, he knew he was in the right spot.

When he turned the final corner, Chevalier couldn't believe his eyes.

"What the bloody hell?!"

Gilbert was perched on a pile of wooden crates, his usual grin plastered on his face.

And a rather large bazooka in his hands.

"What are you doing with that thing?" Chevalier asked, telling himself that he was in no way, shape or form jealous of the weapon in Gilbert's hand.

"No one's ever actually found me during one of these paintball battles, so I've never actually used it. So sad, isn't it?"

Chevalier watched the strange, little man with curiosity as Gilbert stroked the weapon as if it were his pet.

"Do you know what you're doing with that thing?" Chevalier asked.

"Of course I do!" Gilbert exclaimed, offended to be asked such a question. "I built this myself, I -"

BOOM!

All of a sudden, the ground began to shake as the air filled with a giant cloud of acrid smoke. Chevalier covered his mouth with his forearm, his head still ringing, confused as to what exactly happened.

"Oops," Gilbert choked out in between coughs.

The Aftermath

"This was fun, we have to do it again. How's tomorrow?" Gilbert said with a smile as everyone was packing up their gear.

One of the mini-Gilberts pushed his bangs from his forehead as he let out a low sigh. "No, Papa. We have to wait a week. That's how long it will take the place to repair the damage you caused with your bazooka."

"Oh. How's next week then?" Gilbert asked, his smile sad, but not yet quite a frown.

"Yeah, sure," Chevalier mumbled as he and his son left.

"Dad?" Chevalier's son asked once they were outside. "I thought you and mom were going to that book fair next week?"

"Indeed."

"Then why'd you agree to come play then?"

"I won't be coming; your Uncle Clavis will. He and his army of Lelouchians would enjoy this barbaric game immensely."

[blysse-and-blunder]

in lieu of a reading week

11pm, tuesday, feb 20, 2024

hello beloveds. just wrote two increasingly passionate paragraphs about what social media and my use of it over the years has done to benefit my life, and got so genuinely moved that i had to come talk to you about it.

reading really wild mix of reading material of late. surprisingly high amount of YA, because people keep recommending me things and i keep going 'sure, let's try it!' so i'll use that as an organizing principle and save discussing some of the others for a future post. in order of completion:

firekeeper's daughter, angeline boulley, read by isabella lablanc. finished in a rush, very engaged in the last three-four hours. i was never prepared for the next thing this plot threw at me, though in retrospect saw how it all made sense. i didn't know a thing about it going in, which i think actually enriched the experience a lot, but for a novel set in michigan's UP and sugar island, it resonated with a lot of things i associate with ontario after living here for five+ years. the hockey, the ojibwe /anishinaabe names and cultural connections, the murdered and missing indigenous women. but it also mixes in elements reminiscent of, like, braiding sweetgrass (and tangentially mexican gothic) and various fan fiction tropes i recognized in their shape if not their execution. highly recommend the audiobook-- they cast the audiobook's narrator very carefully, and she does a superb job juggling the mix of scientific jargon, teen narrator unreliable/dramatic narrator (loving), and Anishinaabemowin.

castle in the clouds, kerstin gier, translated by romy fursland. maybe 33% through. it's giving grand budapest hotel and somehow also the princess diaries? it's also reminding me somehow of, like, the kind of novel i wanted to write as a second or third grader, which means eva ibbotson, and a particular flavor of plucky, intelligent heroine. i was hooked by the first page+ but have yet to see a ton more of the same high action and suspense, and have let this one slip a little further onto the back burner. it's cute escapism at the moment, though that may change.

fourth wing, by rebecca yarros, read by rebecca soler (and apparently also teddy hamilton, although i haven't gotten to him yet?) about 25% through. trying desperately to give us a gritty, hardcore, new and dangerous and fun take on dragons and their human riders, while also trying to be idk divergent? the hunger games? there's a love triangle, the protagonist has naturally ombre hair, the premise of the novel is brutal training where young adults are all dying in improbable droves due to how cutthroat and brutal it is. a testament to the narrator that i am, despite myself, having a great time. there are a few too many supporting characters who want our main girl straight up dead for me to really find the threats believable, but i'm intrigued by the prospect of alternate versions of this world's history than what she has learned and a potential for discovering how their kingdom has? manipulated them? could be asking too much.

fairest, gail carson levine. finished in a long saturday morning spent reading in bed. i was such an intense and dedicated fan of the original ella enchanted novel that i couldn't read most of levine's other books (exceptions for her short stories made grudgingly) because they weren't sequels and weren't the same and wouldn't be as good. in fairness, reading this now as a much-older-than-the-intended audience, perhaps i was too harsh-- but i think little-me was right to be a little suspicious. it's a snow white retelling, and again i think largely successful in building a more detailed plot in which the elements of the retold fairy tale are embedded, but where the focus in ella was on language and obedience and free will, here we're trying to articulate things about beauty and body image, and it's harder to say that it really succeeds? i like that we gave the Wicked Queen more nuance, positive and negative qualities, moments of sympathy, a name and a precarious political position. i was not nearly as charmed by the romance (fine, fine, it's not ella and char but it couldn't be, it's fine). i still love the use of unfamiliar / fairy-tale languages and how levine puts them on the page in such fun spellings. probably aimed at the youngest audience, of the four titles here, but treats its reader as almost more intelligent than fourth wing, possibly? YA from ~twenty years ago was a different world.

listening graded like twenty quizzes today with just a mess of random panic at the disco bumping in my headphones. it's a hell of a feeling, etc. i'm halfway through this particular round of grading, and they're doing so well, so it's mainly a quick check to make sure they got the basics right and i can jam while doing so.

watching spent a very pleasant ~2 hours yesterday watching as much as we could of the film amadeus with @hematiterings, @pep-squad-lizzie, and @dimir-charmer. love a film that isn't afraid to lean into all its sensory indulgences, and to be a little heavy-handed with its symbolism (the chocolate is about repression!) and to, just generally, spend money on costumes, locations, hiring lots of extras, and so many wigs. there's a live event performance of this film with orchestra + choir being advertised all over our subway right now, so it does very much feel like we're being followed by this guy:

...but what's sticking in my head right now is the costumes.

playing 41+ hours into hollow knight. i have opened half of my stag stations! i have the dream nail, surprisingly early i think! i have saved bretta! i have somehow missed the mantis lords, i think, but have made it to the city, the resting grounds, and have now been throwing myself fruitlessly against the crystal guardian and a soul warrior in alternation. i am...not good at combat. current plan is to grind to get quick focus, and i'm close! also, @spoonierbard stepped in and gave me a much needed morale boost by winning me the final mask shard necessary to get increased lives, which has helped tremendously, and the grubs rewarded me with the grub song charm which has helped tremendously.

making many potential projects, none executed (or even really attempted). soon, hopefully. fallow section for now. does music count? music counts, right? i joined a second choir! enticed by the chance to perform mozart's requiem in full with an orchestra, and finally fulfill the broken promise of 2020. that's my hobby right now. oh i also just cleaned out a ton of storage in my phone + icloud, which felt generative in its own way. besides backing things up better than i have in a while.

working on submitted the travel money application i've been thinking and dithering about since...this time last year? no real expectation of getting it, but it did actually help me consider some next steps in the diss, so that's nice. now prepping to take my class on two fun on-campus field trips next week, one to the manuscript library and one to the medieval collection in our little hidden art museum! i need to write some notes up for the TAs and docents to use, and finish organizing my list of desired manuscripts, like, yesterday. midterm grades posted today, a little late but hopefully not too bad, still well before the drop date. the aforementioned quizzes (i have like 28 more to grade, but they're reasonably painless). plus i was going to work on my fucking dissertation this week, and prep to teach the next few lectures in advance so i'm not scrambling monday nights, plus send a bunch of emails, design a CFP poster, put in some RAship hours so i can speak intelligently in my meeting tomorrow, and....prep for the guest lecture i'm giving on the 28th! it's a reskin of the conference paper i gave this summer, freshly edited, but i need to expand the intro bits to include a useful overview, since these students aren't a conference of celticists.

weirdly at peace with how my work-life balance is balancing right now, though. it's the extra sleep and the increased sunshine, and the little cat who is being so so whiny right now. i must conclude these lines and feed Herself.

[strwyofthesun]

reminiscing...

pairing: leon kennedy x fem!reader

synopsis: you and leon return from a mission in europe. while settling back down in your shared apartment with him, the both of you take a trip down memory lane.

word count: 1.4k

content: just fluff lmao

a/n: this is my first post on here so i'm not really expecting alot. but i love writing (though i'm not the best at it) and so i'll probably be posting just for myself but if this is well received then why not post for the general public too i guess so let me know if u want me to write anything hehe... i hope u guys like it !

after returning from a long and exhausting mission with leon from europe, you headed back to your shared apartment with him to finally rest without the thought of zombies chasing the two of you like there’s no tomorrow. the keys to the apartment jangle in your hands as you open the door and let yourself and leon in with all your luggage.

“nothing better than home sweet home.” leon panted as he dropped the luggage onto the floor, clearly fatigued and body aching from the recent mission. he shuffles slowly behind you and wraps him arms around you while burying his face into your neck.

you chuckle, “i can’t agree with you more.” you kiss his head and just stay there, completely relaxing in leon’s arms. it felt like ages since the two of you have spent time like this. sure, you’ve been sent on missions together, but the feeling and the atmosphere feels different from then and now. serenity, calmness, feeling like you can actually let your guard down at last. it feels even better sharing these idle moments of peace with the love of your life, leon.

“hey c’mon, let’s unpack our luggage hm?” you said as your patted his head. leon removes himself from the side of your neck and looks up at you, “okay, okay…”

once the both of you finished unpacking, you both enjoy a warm shower together before snuggling close to each other in bed. the both of you were conversing when leon’s focus suddenly shifted to the large stuffed teddy bear that occupied the corner of the bedroom along with the other many stuffed toys.

“hey, what’s up? why are you looking at that?” you asked curiously.

“just reminiscing… it’s been awhile since i’ve won you another stuffed toy…” he replied, smiling at the memories that came flooding back to him.

—

during your trainee days at the RPD, one way to enjoy your time together with leon was going on dates at the carnival. the fun colors, the lights, the atmosphere, the screams of enjoyment rang in the air, what was there not to love? the carnival was like a breath of relief compared to the tense and competitive energy when training at the RPD. you’ve went on multiple dates at carnivals as trainees and as agents yet neither of you ever got tired of it. nothing felt old, everything always felt like a new and exhilarating experience with leon by your side. but the first time was particularly memorable to the both of you.

“come on! just put your hands up when we start going down, i swear it’ll be fun!”

“no, no, no, leon i can’t what if i fall from my seat?!”

“you won’t, i’ve got you!

“you promise?”

the rollercoaster was almost at its peak when you already started screaming as the gut wrenching feeling of anxiety starts kicking in.

“i promise.” leon said while giving you a reassuring smile as he intertwined his hand with yours. “here it comes!” he shouts as the rollercoaster began to descend at a rapid speed. you screamed your head off with leon as you both put your free hands in the air. the adrenaline was pumping in and for a moment you did enjoy it to some extent. but whatever enjoyment you had was short-lived once the ride was finished.

“oh god, i don’t think i’ll ever get used to that.” you murmur whilst getting off the ride. leon still held your hand as he assisted you all the while laughing at the state you’re in.

“need to throw up?” he joked. “fuck, i might thr-“ you cut yourself off and covered your mouth as you ran to the closest trash bin in sight. leon’s eyes widened and immediately ran after you. he held your hair back as you threw up what seemed like your breakfast and lunch into the trash bin.

“…are you okay?” leon asked quietly with a hint of remorse in his voice.

“do i look okay to you?!” you responded in a pissed tone.

“i’m so sorry… let me get you some water from one of the stalls while you freshen up in the comfort room ‘kay?”

you didn’t respond and headed straight to the comfort room. while you were fixing yourself up, leon was buying water from a nearby stall and even got you your favorite snacks. afterwards, he waited outside the comfort room to check up on you. a few seconds passed by until you exited the comfort room, still pissed at leon.

“i got you water and your favorite snacks... it’s important to rehydrate yourself when you thro-“

leon’s words were going in your ear and out the other, all you did was grab the water bottle out of his hand and drank it. he soon noticed that you weren’t paying any mind to him and abruptly stopped you.

“are you really mad at me?” his voice sounding more concerned this time. you answered back, “i don’t know leon, you tell me.”

“look i’ll make it up to you!” he quickly responded and swiftly scanned the carnival, thinking of ways to make it up to you. then, he spotted a mini-game that would later become a favorite of his in the future. “over there! a shooting game let’s go!” you scoffed as he dragged you to the stall like a little kid.

“hello there young man! interested in playing our game? all you have to do is shoot down all these five bottles to win the major prize for your little girlfriend over here!” the man handling game said to leon while smiling at you.

leon gave his money to the man and was given a toy gun loaded with only 6 pellets. “you have one pellet per bottle and an extra just incase you miss, goodluck!” the man enthusiastically greeted leon. “watch me make light work of this.” he said before giving you a wink.

he then cocked the gun and aimed it at the bottle. skillfully, one by one, leon took all the bottles down without even needing to use the extra pellet. you had to admit, seeing leon try really hard to make it up to you made your heart flutter, and the sight of him handling the gun so well just made you fall for him even harder.

“congratulations! you won! you may now pick your major prize.”

“i’ll have that one, the largest one!” he said excitedly. it pulled on your heart strings seeing leon in that state, feeling childish and so happy. knowing what he’s been through, he deserves all the best.

the man grabbed the large stuffed teddy bear and handed it to leon and his eyes sparkled with glee. he turned to face you as he gave you the teddy bear that was almost your size. you held the teddy bear and couldn’t help but break into a smile.

“thank you leon, i love it…” you say silently but loud enough for leon to hear. he felt a wave of relief seeing you finally smiling. he walked closer to you and gave you a sweet kiss on the lips, “you’re always welcome and i’m sorry, please forgive me…” he whispered. you glance over at leon and whispered back to him, “i forgive you…”

—

“i remember you throwing up a lot, you were so loud too that the kids were looking at you concerned and telling their mommies they didn’t want to ride what you rode.” leon said as he broke into a fit of laughter.

“and who’s fault was that?! weren’t you the one that dragged me into the ride?!” you shouted as you punched leon.

“ow! atleast i made up for it!”

“yeah, you did… you’re lucky those training sessions actually helped you.”

“what can i say? you’re looking at the man who topped his classes.”

“okay, okay, no need to get cocky, maybe you’re forgetting i ranked second to you”

“say that again. you ranked what? second!” leon burst into laughter once more and you retaliated by play fighting with him in bed. eventually, the two of you wore each other out and the both of you have calmed down from laughing so much that your stomachs hurt. you turn to face leon but he was already looking at you.

“i love you leon…” you said lovingly, placing your hand on his cheek and caressing it gently.

he held your hand that caressed his cheek and kissed it then leaned closer to you placing a kiss on your lips. “i love you too, more than you’d ever know…”

[puckpocketed]

21/12/2023 Seattle Kraken vs LA Kings

The Summer I Fell For Hockey - Strategy, Expectations, and Earning Your Ice: On 1-3-1 and Joey Daccord

My regulars filter in on my last day of work for the year and ask me how my games went, and I take a moment to think: people who are this nice to their baristas are probably going to heaven. They’ve been so patient and kind and interested, and commiserate with me over the losses (except for Simon, large latte, who is cheerfully smug as a Red Wings guy that hasn’t let go of the 6-5 comeback game the Sharks forced through). Yesterday, I caught the tail end of a near-shutout from the Kings against the Sharks, and this past Sunday they beat the Kraken 3-2. The LA Kings have won against both of my beloved teams in succession this week. Not even two days ago, I published an essay on the importance of staying silly and taking losses well with the help of my fellow fans. I remind myself of all this throughout the day as I serve — and yet there’s restless energy under my skin as I head home. I keep thinking about an errant comment made on the Sharks’ broadcast: that the Kings play a 1-3-1, and it’s what held my Sharks’ attack hostage for so long.

I talk about my profound attachment to hockey as though I just switched it on one day. While this makes for a convenient explanation, the truth is that I’m still falling. Hockey’s been great to watch, as a new fan. The learning curve isn’t as steep as it feels trying to get into other sports, and I do myself the favour of starting simple — the puck goes in the goal, and sometimes there are fights. But I can’t just sit here and be satisfied with a casual, passing interest, and when I get home the 1-3-1 won’t let me go. I have to chase it. Playstyle and team identity can be so hard to quantify and analyse in a game that moves so fast, but even my novice eyes see how playing against the LA Kings is absolutely suffocating.

Before I had the language for it, I described it as “the 1-3-1 bullshit”, and in my head I thought about it as whatever the hell they did to choke off the Sharks’ approach through centre ice as I watched them strip puck after puck, watched even the most promising looking rushes become lost. The backbone of a 1-3-1 is an impenetrable wall in the neutral zone, which sounds pretty cool until you look up videos and find that 11 years ago crowds were booing teams that used it. It consists of one wing forward posted deep in the offensive zone, the centre and the other forward and a defenceman in the neutral, and the last defenceman hanging back to capture stray pucks. It’s the ice hockey equivalent of turtling; a completely defence-oriented system that’s used to maintain leads. The trouble, of course, is that the Kings are just using it regardless.

Applying the ramping methodology to learning about hockey players, I see a pattern emerging in me — I start with what’s most familiar. Goaltenders are pretty straightforward, conceptually applicable across athletic disciplines; I like that I can see someone stop a play, throw their body in the way and dive on the puck and it’s as simple as that. Amongst dizzying line changes and d-men pairings and hockey formations, my ears and eyes land over and over again on Seattle Kraken goalie Joey Daccord. It takes me a minute to figure out why.

Today, a national broadcast day, the puck is dropped 20 minutes late — I know this because I overslept my nap alarm by about that much and still managed to catch it. First period is reminiscent of their game against the Kings earlier in the week: the Kraken struggle to maintain puck possession, and the Kings have a staggering 19-6 lead in shots on goal. Even with the lopsided shot ratio, Daccord remains unbreakable. He dives for pucks, he’s quick on the glove and just as effective with his stick. I am brought back to his last few games played, where a shootout and an overtime hung on his performance. There are all-round agreements on the Kraken defensive line letting Daccord down in the past couple games, forcing him into making some impossible saves. The 9-round shootout with the Kings was an anomaly; and it could be said that this deep into a shootout, it’s less about the players (whose shot quality becomes increasingly questionable as the coaches scrape through their star forwards and down the line hierarchy for shooters) and more about a battle between goalies. I wonder, idly, if he’s thinking about that shootout loss, or the overtime loss against the Stars. He seems like the kind of person who would take that responsibility on his back, no matter the extenuating circumstances.

The Kings give me anxiety, this first period. Their defence looks airtight. Whenever the opponent gains possession, executing an effective 1-3-1 means bombarding the attacking forwards with bodies as they try to cross the blue line to mount a rush, to force a dump in or a puck turnover. The Kraken can’t break through — the one time they do, they lose control of the puck to speed. This chokehold; it exposes the gaps in any given team’s communication, baits them into stupid mistakes. The disdain people have for this system isn’t because it’s dirty or dishonourable or unfair, but rather because it makes for some very uninteresting hockey. It’s got a lot of names; the neutral zone trap, the trap, the 1-3-1. At the height of its popularity, it's said to have contributed to the infamous Dead Puck Era.

In modern day hockey, players are faster, more agile, and can blast through the 1-3-1 with prejudice; and the NHL have adjusted their rules about passing and handing out penalties for obstruction in the years since the 2004-05 lockout — all of this has resulted in a much lower rate of play for the trap. What fascinates me is that the Kings play it anyway, and if they weren’t up against my teams I’d probably be enraptured with the total buy-in from the players (I’m half captivated by them as it is).

What I learn about Daccord, in a slow trickle of Kraken media skimmed on my lunch breaks and between game periods, is that expectations are high. The Kraken’s main goalie, Philipp Grubauer, was the one in the net when they went to the Stanley Cup playoffs last season. What I read is: Daccord is Grubi’s replacement, the kid they drafted from the Ottawa Senators during expansion who’s made waves as the starting goalie for the Coachella Valley Firebirds. Grubi faced a comparably high amount of shots on goal in the postseason and still managed to maintain an incredible save percentage according to reports in May — and there’s that damned playoffs run again, insinuating itself into the expectations of a very different Kraken roster. The shoes Daccord must fill are big. Brighter stars have burned out against that sort of pressure.

Going into the second period I brace myself for the Kraken to get scored on. This is how it’s gone before — it’s a numbers game in the end, I reason to myself — get enough shots on goal and one is bound to slip through by way of unforced error or lucky bounce. And yet, Joey’s as sharp as ever. He slaps down shots in succession. Glove, stick, body. What could beat an airtight defensive trap in the neutral zone? A wall at the crease. Perhaps he is thinking about those lost games, perhaps that’s what has him so lit up tonight.

Then, the impossible happens in the wake of a faceoff: Tanev decides it’s turbo time, and suddenly the puck is in the net and the Kraken are on the board. They work hard on the forecheck, they ice the puck rather than give over possession, and their penalty kill is tight; and beyond that, Daccord is on fire. Early on in third period, Jordan Eberle, or Ebs, scores off of an absolutely magical pass between the skates of a Kings player, courtesy of Matty. Again and again, the Kings’ momentum is halted by Daccord’s glove, and as I sit and admire his tenacity I notice something else: what the fuck is he doing playing the puck?

Let’s talk about goaltending on a broader scale. Of the dozens of games I’ve been able to watch and in all the highlights I’ve seen, the goalies have looked — and I say this with the utmost respect — pretty good, but not all that unique or special. They do what they can, but there’s a reason why the NHL’s most recognizable names tend to be forwards and centres; saving goals is like ruining the fun, even if you make an impossible catch, everyone loves a star who can dominate the game by scoring and skating and defending in their own way. Goaltending ‘style’ was a mystery to me. I had a healthy respect for goalies when I first started watching hockey, but I never thought of any particular players as eye-catching — until now. Now I realise exactly what has me so excited about this player: Joey Daccord doesn't play quite like any goalie I’ve seen so far.

 I could give you a history of goalies who play pucks, a Greatest Hits list of players who broke new ground and invented the style that Daccord is emulating, but it’s not actually that long. One specific incident that always comes up in these conversations about goalies and pucks is Patrick Roy’s infamous deke on Gretzky — a move that had him crossing the red line and earning a penalty. Martin Brodeur was so good at leaving his crease to play the puck that he changed the rules of the game; with the introduction of the trapezoid behind the crease and the new rules around goalie puck handling, Brodeur’s newly minted playstyle was seemingly killed in the cradle. Still, even with the new rules, there’ve been goalies who pushed that envelope, acting as an additional man on the ice and allowing for breakaway passes to a waiting forward on the blue line. And as I sift through Kraken games and other Kraken media, I find out that Joey Daccord is one of them. 

‘At times he acts like a seventh defenseman, or a 13th forward,’ writes Kate Shefte, in her absolute banger of an article on Daccord meshing with the team as he takes on more net duties. I dig a little deeper and find out that, as per the only Kings goal of the match, that this puck handling isn’t without its risks. Some time in third period, not long after the Kraken secure their second goal, the puck comes down the ice. Daccord leaves the net to play the puck. The bounce off the boards is awkward, and catches the receiving player off-guard and sends it right onto the tape of a Kings player, and though Daccord dives for the ensuing puck shot right into his net, his stick misses it by what feels like half-inches. In a twist of unimaginable irony, one of Daccord’s strongest advocates is the person who whiffed the recovery of the bounce.

Justin Schultz — Schultzy for those keeping score — is quoted in that very same Shefte article saying, “He’s so talented back there with the puck. I don’t think I’ve ever had a goalie that plays the puck that well.” All that trust, and in the end to fail at following through with the player you so believed in? It must sting. (Privately, I hope Schultzy is okay. I want all our players to have short term memory for these mistakes and misplays, I want the shining vision I have for a team family to remain.)

It probably won’t be the last time it happens, but this doesn’t phase me one bit; risk for reward is what makes a player exciting to me. Joey’s got to be fearless, and probably a bit cocky, if he’s putting himself out there and breaking conventions. There must be some unshakeable bedrock of self-assurance that has him skating out of the net and playing puck after puck — because even after such an unforced error, he keeps fucking doing it.

What you’ll find if you go looking is a startling consistency in Joey Daccord’s media appearances. Joey Daccord, the relative unknown, has the same sentiments and the same stories as Joey Daccord, the NHL game-winning goalie. You can track his development and his vision year on year as he grows as a player if you look deep enough.

What people have to say about his puck handling is three things: he’s unbelievably patient on the draw, he’s one of the best they’ve ever seen, and he won’t stop if you keep giving him chances. What I find watching and reading his interviews is a sincere and hard working young man who couldn’t give you a canned, media-trained response if you paid him for it. In contrast to some of the absolute cardboard-bland, deadpan responses you might see from even the most talented of players, Daccord finds his way towards something resembling charm. It’s an awkward kind of charm, for sure, one that comes from a kind of self-seriousness that has him reaching for genuine answers while staring off into the distance in contemplation, or dragging out a funny anecdote.

For anyone who’s been around in the Kraken tag, you’ll have seen in real time my stumbling upon a 2020 web interview Daccord agreed to do with two kids who run a YouTube channel called Max and Ben Talk Hockey. It’s got your typical webcam video and audio quality, and it really could use an edit or two — but it captures me from the moment I press play. It was conducted after Daccord recorded ice time with the Ottawa Senators in 2019, and to date it’s one of the longest uncut pieces of Daccord media you’ll find. Joey maintains his absolute determination to be sincere. Where he could’ve just humoured them, he answers all of their questions as seriously as if he was speaking to reporters from the Seattle Times.

In 2021, a year after his talk with Max and Ben, Joey recounts how one of his assistant coaches imparted a vital lesson on mentality and pressure while he played for the Sun Devils. “You’re good enough where you just have to be the average version of yourself,” he says, quoting Mike Field. In that 2020 interview, speaking into his webcam, he echoed the wisdom to Max and Ben: “For me, I try to be Average Joey, because I think Average Joey is a really good goalie. So if I play like Average Joey, it’s going to be above average compared to most people.”

Towards the end of the interview, something he says catches me. The question Max asks is about his experiences being a backup goalie, and how he deals with that.

“You gotta earn your ice,” says Joey, with the certainty of it being a personal mantra. What a soundbite! What an absolutely electric quote — and it was given in the closing minutes of some obscure interview for a channel with less than 300 subscribers, probably half that at the time of recording.

Knowing all of what I know about his personal philosophy, I must recant my statement on his lingering doubts and self-flagellation about previous losses. He might never make excuses, but he carries with him a lesson that no doubt forms the foundations of his seemingly endless confidence and resilience — that he can’t be too hard on himself, because that way lies madness, and that Joey Daccord on an average night is more than good enough. 

True to his word, he played like himself, like Average Joey. The Kraken end the game 2-1, with Daccord posting 42 blocked shots — equalling his own franchise record.

And if that’s what Average Joey is like? He’s more than earned his ice.

[mysteryman-17]

* B1RD-BR4IN 3000 - ATK 10 DEF 5 * One of the Conductor's greatest props ever. * Or so he says.

Time’s End is an AHIT/Undertale crossover AU of sorts, taking place in the aftermath of a timeline where you lose the final boss fight against Mustache Girl. You can find the write-up here! In addition, you can find the write-ups for the Neutral Endings and TimeWarp Route Requirements on Google Drive! The logo for Time's End was designed by @bittybattybunny. She's an incredible artist, be sure to check out their work here on Tumblr and over on Twitter!! This track was commissioned from my boi Wisteria Bird Studios. Be sure to check out his work too!

Motifs:

Battle of Award 42

Train Rush

original

You can listen to this track in high quality on the AU’s SoundCloud here, and in their separate "in-game" loops on Google Drive! The rest of the description is underneath the Read More.

The Conductor fills Mettaton's shoes in this world. He may be the sole greatest influencer in the bird entertainment now (thanks to him ousting Grooves during the initial "Time's End" fiasco) but… he's incredibly bored and agitated. There are no obstacles in his path to success, and only now does he realize how much he despises it -- though he'll be damned if he EVER admits to missing DJ Peck Neck for now at least. His kinder side -- although still faintly there -- has become a LOT harder for his crew to see over time, especially Thomas the Inventor, who receives the brunt of Conductor's unchecked cockiness and fury nowadays. Bow Kid's arrival in the Mafia Flows makes Conductor immediately pounce on the opportunity for something CLOSE to a rival in his life again. For the "dungeon" scene in this AU: the Conductor had a mech built from and disguised within the remnants of his first ever train (which derailed and was damaged beyond repair,) and after some reminiscing, he ambushes Bow Kid and SMASHES the old passenger car. The battle starts from here. …Unbeknownst to Conductor, Tom has his own ideas, so the mech has a lot of faults that Bow Kid is able to exploit.

Ye ik it's still not funni musriel his theme real but I was low-key getting a bit tired of putting so many "heavy" tracks one after another on the account. So here's the song that plays when you fight a scottish bird's mecha built from a goddamn steam train. This is yet another one of the ideas in this AU where I had no ideas initially, then wound up shitposting my way into coming up with something needlessly-but-also-majorly awesome. Except this one actually winds up tying a bit into the "arc" I settled on for this part of the story! (A large string of these sorts of ideas also happen to be in the "Hotland" portion of this AU, come to think of it. Sexy robot rectangles and weeaboo lizards overcomplicate things ig lmaooooooo) The track is very much inspired from Digga-Leg's Theme from Super Mario Galaxy 2; the Super Mario RPG flavor was all Kristian's idea, and he did a fantastic job on this piece. Was fantastic working with him, as always. Hope you guys enjoy! :) (P.S. uhhhh don't worry i have an idea for the "Oh! One True Love" replacement too, i just honestly don't give enough of a fuck to wait to finish that one before i post this one. out-of-order posting for the win baybeeeeeeeeee!) (P.P.S. ik i didn't post the updated track 71 here on tumblr after the soundcloud post last month, part of me honestly doesn't rly feel like it but i'll maybe see about doing it when i can force myself lmaooooooo)

[school-sanctioned-movie-bullying]

Since the new live action Avatar is apparently out on netflix, I figured now is an excellent time to remember the last attempt at a live action this series got.

Avatar: The Last Airbender is one of the most beloved TV shows of all time, with amazing writing, world-building, and characters. Conversely, The Last Airbender (no avatar in this title) is one of the most detested and worst movies of all time. I doubt that I have anything new to say about it because it has been getting dragged since it was released 14 years ago, but that won't stop me from dragging it some more.

As is the trend with many live action reboots, this movie hates fun. The original show was colorful, funny, and charming; the movie is none of those things. The color palette seems to have been taken directly from a Saw movie, with not a warm tone to be found. For comparisons sake, here's a side by side of the gaang from the movie and from the original:

Isn't it incredible how they managed to sap all the color out of the original character designs?

One of my favorite things about the original cartoon was the expressive animation. I don't expect a live action movie to have expressive animation, but I do expect expressive acting, or even just regular acting. Unfortunately for myself and the world at large, the main actors did not get the memo that they were supposed to do that, so instead they delivered their dialogue stone faced with weird pacing. I don't want to hate on the actors too much, as many of them were children when this movie was released, and who knows what sort of direction M. Night Shyamalan gave them. However, I will say that with maybe the exception of Dev Patel, who played an okay Zuko, the cast did an awful job of capturing the magic of the original characters. I am willing to give a pass to Seychelle Gabriel, because she voiced Asami in The Legend of Korra, and I am nothing if not an Asami supporter. But the rest of the cast is on very thin ice. 

Another fun thing about this god-forsaken movie is the way it manages to make the viewer feel incredibly uncomfortable. It has an aura about it that I can only describe as constipated. The feeling I got watching is reminiscent of the time I was roped into listening a coworker at McDonalds talk about his crypto scheme, except that only lasted about 15 minutes, and the movie is 103 minutes long.

Truly the only good quality of the movie is its ability to bring together so many people in hatred. There aren’t too many things we can all form a near-universal opinion on, but we can all agree that this movie is a dumpster fire. 

Unlike some of the other movies I have hated on this blog, I don’t think it is controversial for me to hate this one. It has already been so thoroughly hated on that all the points I make here are hardly likely to be original. Regardless, I felt it necessary to kick this dead horse, both for the opportunity to complain (one of my favorite activities), and because I need to choose one movie to hate per week for the class this blog is for, and this one is so so hateable. I didn't even list everything wrong with it and this post is already so long.

I haven't watched the new live action show yet, and I don't really have high hopes, but given how low the bar is, it would have to limbo into hell to disappoint me.

[bowlzone]

Unfortunately I don’t have a fresh box of cereal to crack into this week, but instead my friend and I tried battery acid spaghetti. I think it’s cereal adjacent, as a solid soaking in a liquid, though that does provoke more of a philosophical conversation about what cereal is conceptually.

Initial impressions: we have decided to mix cheap sour candy strips with Monster Ultra Gold, which is pineapple flavoured. The pale yellow colour is not helping with the visual appeal of this dish. After chopping the sour candy into thinner strips and then mixing in a second, even cheaper, type of sour candy to cover all of our bases, we poured the Monster overtop ceremonially. The carbonated energy drink bubbling up through the strips of candy is reminiscent of a witches brew, but not in a fun cottagecore way. This witch is working in an industrial estate off the side of a highway. As advised by the pioneers of this recipe, we let it steep for half an hour and have returned to it, suffused with anticipation and excitement. It looks like stomach acid with chunks.

Post-bowl thoughts: when I reached my friend’s inexplicably tiny fork into the bowl to twirl this candy like its pasta namesake, the flaccid structure immediately indicated it was going to be bad. As I slurped the pliant mass into my mouth and felt it immediately disintegrate over every single one of my precious teeth, it became clear that I wasn’t prepared for just how bad. I would honestly call this one of the worst things I’ve ever eaten.

The crust sitting atop the juice, formed of the sour candy dust, was on the whole unremarkable and the Monster itself remained largely unchanged, which is to say, bad in a whole other way. I think if we had let it fester in there for half an hour more it would have congealed into one big ball of soft mush. Maybe that would have improved the eating experience but this remains speculation, we did not find out and we did not finish the bowl.

On the whole I would say eating this made me question myself, my choices, and my life in a way I wasn’t quite ready for. How did I get here? Where does that highway go to? Am I right, or am I wrong? My god, what have I done.

To summarise my concluding thoughts, they would simply be: do not do this.

[the-epic-hiram-lows]

i would LOVE director's commentary on your favorite moodboard(s)

OMG, you just gave me license to be so pretentious, anon. Thank you. I will try to make this DVD commentary as entertaining and insightful as possible.

These will be very long, so I will do one per post. Let's go in chronological order.

Penelope Blossom

For clarity, I will go L-R from each row, starting at the top.

I had about 5-6 glove options, but they all came off too garish. I mostly settled on this one because of the unsettling normalcy of the backdrop. While Penelope is a gothic heroine, her type of evil lurks in the most mundane of places.

I swear I have a clear image of Penelope playing a piano. If not canon, it feels right. That was the cherry on top of this sundae. I searched far and wide for the right traumacore image with this theme. Lots of options were too specific. I am so happy I found this one, which is nearly the exact quote I searched for, and had a red theme.

I hate that I chose this, and keep kicking myself for doing two wardrobe-based pictures in the same row, though a good 45% of me thinks that their existing on the same row evokes a story, and makes it look intentional. Also, this is Dolce.

This one came up while searching for an entirely different Penelope-related picture. I think it is the first one I found. It felt like such a happy coincidence I didn't bother searching for anything similar. The shoe was already red, which really makes it seem fated that it showed up in a completely unrelated search. I love that it feels distinctly 80s. Not only is that the era of Penelope's origin story, but it shows Penelope's range. Who else can effortlessly flow from 80s pulp to gothic Victorian?

I spent at least a full hour trying to find the perfect photo of old Hollywood hair to crop. It didn't even have to be red. Nothing worked. I must have searched 10 terms. I even resorted to Google. Finally, I just searched 'hair extension' in hopes of an extreme close up. I ended up falling in love with the simplicity of this image. It really enhanced the 'fox in the snow' color palette I wanted- more on that later. I'm not thrilled with the color job (it was a warm blonde originally. I just enhanced the reds to the nth degree) but it'll do. I had to put red hair in the center because it defined her entire path. Had her genes been slightly different, the Blossoms would not have adopted her with nefarious intent.

This is as literal as it is metaphorical. On a metaphorical level, the keys reflect that she is a captor (and, within that, another metaphor- most of the captivity she causes is psychological.) The keys also serve as a literal encapsulation of the aesthetic she curated. Of course, that aesthetic also largely informs the genres of her story lines. The aesthetic also shows a deep attachment to the past. She chooses nostalgia over convenience (keys over doors that lock themselves,) but not because she enjoys reminiscing. Speaking of the past, though she is a captor now, she was a captive in the past she clings to.

Probably too on-the-nose. I debated this, then told myself any other representation of her poison plants would either be too ambiguous or not aesthetically cohesive.

I love this next to the previous picture. A two frame story. What really made me go 'JACKPOT' was the layers upon layers of Penelope's story it applies to. Firstly, it's a goblet. This is an obvious nod to G&G- the blue juice, the aesthetics of her campaign and the game as a whole, and the scene with Alice in the bathroom. It also echoes of the poison challenge she made Veronica and Betty complete. That brings me to the next element- the fact the photo is a representation of being poisoned. Due to cropping, I'm not 100% sure it comes through, but the photo is someone collapsed on the floor with a spilling goblet. It's a trope we've seen a million times. We know that poison is one of Penelope's signature weapons of choice. Through which medium? Gardening. And what is spilling out of that goblet? Rose petals. Specifically, red roses. It is as if Penelope left a kiss of death for someone as a calling card (fitting, given her former profession.) The flowers are as delicate as they are unassuming, like any good femme fatale. It also serves as a stealthy nod to The Flowers in the Attic.

This is what she wants most, is it not? In some ways, she reminds me of one scene in The Killing of a Sacred Deer (if you haven't seen it, please do,) where the antagonist tells his ambiguously deserving victim "I don't know if what is happening is fair, but it's the only thing I can think of that's close to justice." Penelope, pathologically stuck on the past, can only focus on vengeance. It is not fair that she suffered, so she must make others suffer. There is no changing the past, so the people who caused her suffering must pay for it. However, Penelope is lawful evil. She does not act out of apathy or a pure love for depravity. She has a code. See: the challenges she forced the core four to do. If Penelope wanted to, she had ample opportunity to simply murder them. She didn't need to provide an antidote for the poison at the end of the game, either, but Penelope has a love for the game. While you could (and maybe should) argue this is also plot armor in action, I think it shows that Penelope has some sort of internal moral code that informs her villainous logic. Sure, Hal died, but that's because someone had to pay... and Hal committed the worse sin of all: failing to deliver what Penelope needed of him. So, yes, there is some 'honor' in her evil... but, more importantly, honor is what she hopes to achieve through the vengeance. Who will give a little orphan girl the honor she deserved? Nobody did, so she must retroactively honor that girl's suffering with revenge.

Miscellaneous/broad notes now! The second I was tasked with doing a Penelope mood board, I had an immediate color scheme in mind. I wanted a pale, fiery, striking palette that still had a dark gothic feel. Looking back, I wish I toyed with it more, but I stayed true to the image of greys, whites and reds cloaked in darkness.

I also immediately knew at least 4 of the 9 image concepts I wanted. All of the mood boards were difficult for their own reasons- for Penelope, it was narrowing down options, which is a good problem, all things considered.

I decided very early on that I wanted my mood boards to be a psychological study. They must treat every delusion as reality, because they are firmly grounded in the subjects' mind set and self image. For instance, I would not put something like 'shut up you smarmy bastard' on a Bret board. That is exterior perception. I would love to do more broad mood boards later on, where I tackle the character design, including fan reception and/or in-universe reception to the character, but I nixed that for my first round of mood boards. Instead, I told myself I need to tap into every ounce of empathy in my body and tell the story Penelope tells herself. Some things, like the set of keys, do double as an Easter egg of sorts. They apply to Penelope as both a victim and a perpetrator, but I don't think that is something Penelope is exceptionally ignorant to (see: Alice Cooper.)

I originally wanted an extreme close-up of baroque applique detailing as homage to her fashion sense (baroque, Victorian, the occasional military and circus reference.) I have no real reason for nixing this, but it was one of the first images I knew I wanted.

The reason I went with Penelope for my first mood board was: I got an ask requesting a mood board, but didn't want to decide who its subject would be. I went into the Riverdale chat and said "name a character." The first response was @serialkillerbettycooper saying Penelope. One of the intriguing early replies was Caramel the Cat, which I am high key considering.

The end! I will come back with Jughead commentary next time. If you've made it this far, I am seriously impressed and love you very much. Also, I didn't proofread this, so if you see errors/repetition... no you don't, actually!

[cocksuki2]

breasts and eggs by mieko kawakami is so uniquely woman. not in a feminine sense, or a gender-identity sense, but in the sense that i can feel the soul of womanhood in it, which i have rarely ever felt in other books. 

it captures the experience of being labelled “woman” so precisely that it’s startling and there were several times in the novel i had to put it down and take really deep breaths. 

natsuko, a 30 year old and unmarried woman living in tokyo, experiences the challenges of female bodily autonomy and questions what it means to be a woman and what it means to have children. the novel raises questions about family, sexuality, child-rearing, and womanhood through the eyes of its protagonist who, 10 years later and at the age of 40, grapples with wanting to have a child of her own without a partner. 

in the novel, natsuko, while working on her book, begins to question what it means to raise children, as well as the possibility that she would like to have a child of her own. however, she faces roadblocks on account of strict social norms in japan and the lack of bodily autonomy of women.

the novel, deftly and beautifully, traverses across women’s reproductive rights while posing questions about not only the ethics of anonymous artificial insemination, but of having children in the first place. posing it as both delight and misery, natsuko navigates her way through conflicting ideas about life, death, and birth as a single woman. 

the story deals a lot with natsuko’s own ideas of romance, sex, and loneliness, as well as her own image of herself. she questions her own family and history, reminiscing often on the time she spent with her mother, grandmother, and sister in her childhood, as well as what it meant for her to grow up poor. she considers cycles of poverty, as well as the cycles of mother and daughter, through the lens of a woman with no desire for a longterm partner or sex. 

natsuko, is asexual and sex repulsed. it’s a large part of the story, though it’s not a defining trait in who natsuko is as a person. still, she experiences the desire to have a child. she calls her own womanhood into perspective, doubting it on account of her lack of sexual attraction, detailing it as it “being as if the sexual part of her never grew up”. she states often that she has breasts, that she gets her period, that she is as woman as any other woman, yet still feels that some part of her womahood is missing because of her lack of sexual attraction. 

the novel raises challenging questions of self discovery, as well as details the frustration in being labelled “woman” in society. it beautifully captures the thoughts and burdens that come with womanhood, as well as gender identity and bodily autonomy. 

there are so many aspects of this book i could go into. i truly could not get enough of it while reading. not just because i found the protagonist to be both relatable and interesting, but because kawakami’s voice as an author is so gripping and emotionally real. reading the book, it felt as if natsuko’s thoughts mirrored my own and often, after finishing reading, i questioned whether i had actually read lines in the book or if i had thought of them myself as part of my own inner dialogue. 

it’s so beautifully layered, to the point that i think it would take me multiple posts just to cover what i’ve picked up on the first read-through, and reads like you’re looking back on a life i could have lived at some point. it’s delightfully human but also, uniquely woman. it touches on many of the unspoken (and often unaddressed) trials of being a woman that otherwise would go unheard about. 

i don’t think i’ve ever read anything like it. it touched me in a way no other novel has and detailed an account of womanhood that i felt in a very deep part of my being. this may sound cheesy, but in a way, i felt a large kinship with a lot of the women in the story. whether it was their experiences with men, their experiences with children, or their experiences simply moving through the world, i found connection in all of them.