#unseen meta.

[gravesung-moving]

quick and dirty bios for the unseen's inner circle (the sanctum)!

bc i just remembered sage and fletch are the only unseen creatures i actually have bios for.

*note — by default, these descriptions apply to the unseen as they are in shelter island. some details are subject to change based on verse. *note 2 — each member of the sanctum has a self-chosen tarot card that's left behind as a "calling card" at a particular job they claim responsibility for. in place of a stolen bounty, on top of a body, etc.

acheron ??? (he/him) — the poisoner

the emperor

dilf

calm, collected, honest but in a kind way. pretty emotionally intelligent.

as a rule, never pries into other people's business. lane = stayed in.

has a son who's in college rn! on good terms with his ex-wife.

ex-safecracker/bank robber

he makes poisons! has a little lab and everything

occasionally fletch will pull him out of retirement and make him go crack a safe. he complains about his knees

norah suman (she/her) — the engineer

the sun

lesbiab

has had a secret crush on seph for a couple years. designed her arms from the ground up, and the first point of contact when something goes wrong or seph needs a redesign/upgrade

dry humor, very blunt and often sarcastic

eyebrow piercing

habit of chopping off her hair when she's sad

makes the gadgets. makes explosives, modifies weapons, invents new shit, always thinking about new ways to do stuff. engineering as an art and a science at the same time.

also an up-and-coming tattoo artist!

orion aisa (he/they) — the forger

the moon

seph's twin brother

not a great fighter, hates using guns

eyepatch over his right eye. fletch took it when he and seph tried to escape as teenagers, along with ripping seph's arms off, which is a very normal and cool and chill reaction to have

trans lad. top surgery, took testosterone for a few years but then stopped. pretty satisfied with where he's at right now

excellent painter

suffers from hand tremors, though they fade when he paints

hector dionísio (he/him) — the muscle

the wheel of fortune

unpredictable and violent. unhinged.

will be having a drink with you and then at a hair-trigger provocation, he'll just turn around and start kicking the shit out of someone

scarily good fighter, way too fast for his muscular build

no one knows why fletch trusts him to be in the inner circle and not rat on them

unexpectedly very reliable as a teammate. he does his job very well

fixated on seph in a "constantly riling her so that she'll fight him whenever he wants" way

fixated on edith in a "why can't i land a hit on you. come here" way

pit fighter. so far undefeated

cody shimura (he/him) — the accountant

justice

the most guy ever

he's so tired.

retired hedge fund manager, went into crime because he did some digging, realized the finance industry was already in fletch's pocket anyway, and his ability to stealthily uncover those secrets impressed fletch enough to hire him on.

tries to be a plant dad but he keeps killing them

surprisingly well-trained with a gun

occasionally pulls out the most scathing one-liners in the quietest and calmest voice imaginable

sage / VECTOR (she/her) — the driver

the world

technomancer (arcane hacker)

pokemon superfan

harvard dropout

a pretty normal person, generally, probably the least traumatized out of the crew

can summon cars / motorcycles made of, essentially, compressed/hardened demon souls sourced straight from hell

also has normal, non-summonable cars / motorcycles that she likes to augment and fix up with norah's help

has a giant fluffy dog named Baby

fucking Maniac behind the wheel. the dog's name is a reference to baby driver for a reason.

if she knew about @tewwor's vector alias, she would make them matching shirts

edith winter (she/they) — the thief

the hermit

sneaky. quiet. wow shocker

fey changeling who's lived on earth their whole life, but is in contact with the human child they replaced

raised by wolves a gang, sort of collectively alongside her parents. it takes a village yaknow. they all had a hand in training her to be the insanely skilled thief she is — edith was probably the most valuable piece on their board, even at a young age

said gang was absorbed by the unseen and scattered across the world for resisting said absorption. one of edith's parents was killed in the conflict, the other was sent across the world but she doesn't know where

no one knows if they're bitter about it or not. they don't talk about it

acheron taught her how to crack safes

caro vitale / deadfall (he/him) — the fence

the hanged man

owner of the black stag, a bar and antique shop just at the northern edge of the city where metropolis meets highway meets forest.

can sell anything to anyone

no one knows a single thing about this man except for the fact that he's fluent in italian. he WILL lie if you ask him anything else. caro vitale is also not his real name

he got that thang on him (a club)

tattoos everywhere

ishal king (they/them) — the doctor

death

fae nephilim (an angel fucked an archfey and produced a very strange kid), exiled from the autumn court for death crimes before going into the human medical field as a surgeon.

nearly got arrested for experimenting with nephilim blood (their own, but whatever guys), faked their death, joined the unseen. now works happily and privately for fletch in their silly little lab.

mushroom garden

medicinal plant expert alongside their knowledge of modern medicine

ominous positivity

anah tannar (she/her) — the spy

the lovers, reversed

you know her! you love her! she's probably broken your heart!

local celebrity influencer

resident honeypot for any woman-attracted target

prefers to be flashy and stand out, but also insanely good at blending in and being invisible when need be

serial dater. never lets anyone too close, but loves to have a web of one-way connections to people who think they're her best friend or favorite ex, and/or owe her a favor (she has a book of debts)

a genuinely compassionate person underneath it all, she just leaned hard into her manipulative side after being used one too many times

persephone aisa (they/she) — the assassin

judgement

first lieutenant/right hand to amari fletch, and thus second-in-command to the unseen itself

sharpshooter, beat-upper, gunfighter, knife-swinger. if john wick can do it, so can they

cold, aggressive, hostile. deadly as fuck. if you follow this blog you probably came from hers so i won't go into too much detail SJDKHJKSD

amari fletch (they/he) — the leader

the tower (also the name they're publicly known by)

i swear they're not secretly thousands of years old i swearrrrr (yes they are) (they cheated death in a game of dice and bear the mark of cain for it)

think gus fring, netflix wilson fisk, silco — that type of person

spidery motherfucker, aka has connections eeeeverywhere. so many judges, cops, government officials in their pocket.

for the most part, fletch is satisfied with the world the way that it is. the unseen profits nicely, they have as much power as they need, and no one fucks with them (if they even know it exists)

if someone does fuck with him and his, however, he will not hesitate to make a violent and chaotic example of them for the rest of the world to see.

calm and levelheaded 99% of the time. 1% of the time, off-the-wall destructive

will take risks if they can see a benefit and the consequence of failure won't fuck up their plans.

extremely powerful in a fight (is not human) with enough raw strength to fully charge straight through a building wall by wall if they wanted to. but they don't. lmao

seph is their protegé (????) (i genuinely don't have a term for their relationship it's so fucked up and hard to describe), & they are very very possessive about it

[sauronism]

one of my favorite scene from this show is louis' photographic collection.

it's just so. heartbreaking and messy.

armand wants to make louis happy as much as he can, that he slip in photographs that were not taken by louis so other people can praise him. daniel wants louis to be appreciated for his hardwork that he ended up complimenting a picture that was not taken by louis. there's just something so lonely and poetic about that scene. it's like. louis is sorrounded by people who is willing to hear his voice, but after all these time? they still can't see him. they still dance around and dodge his vulnerability. still trying to keep him "safe". but like- it's not really a bad thing!!! they want to make him happy. but it just feel so alone in the sense that they tiptoe around him.

[blood-starved-beast]

Something I haven't thought about much since the Technical Test but occurs to me now a month later is how I initially assumed Eris was working like vigilante style with the Chronos fight. It seems strange but it was based only on the dialogue between Hecate and Nemesis where she tells Nem that if she doesn't like her job she can do whatever Eris is doing. Which makes me think.

That's such an interesting line from Hecate. Cause when we meet Eris for real in the game, she is doing everything in her power to stop Melinoe. It's the complete opposite of that erroneous impression. Unless, it's not completely wrong.

Eris's whole deal, as is in the mythology, is that she wants to keep conflict ongoing as much as possible. She thrives on strife, and never picks a side but instead baits all involved to fan the flames. She's on everyone's side and at the same time, no one's. That likely carries over to Hades 2.

So what was Eris doing when she was gone from the Crossroads? It's entirely possible she was fighting Chronos forces, if only to cause more strife and prevent him from re-establishing his Golden Age. Cause then the Strife would actually end and a new order is established (which she hates). She only stops cause Melinoe becomes a larger threat to that Strife and decides that she needs to tip the scales in the opposite direction.

Alternatively, she was baiting whatever was attacking Olympus. There's a convo where she mentions that things were finally getting interesting, after all. Which coincides with Melinoe going to the surface to stop the attack there. Granted, this doesn't necessarily negate the earlier theory. The attack could've easily happened as Eris was "helping" the Unseen with Chronos's forces.

Either way, if Eris was "helping" the Unseen at that moment, it sort of makes sense why she's regarded the way she is in the Crossroads. Treated as an annoyance despite actively preventing Melinoe from achieving her goal. Cause much like her keepsake, Eris is a "tool" that can be beneficial with a high risk. If the conflict is tipped against you to the point that your opponent might win, Eris would likely aid you. But if the reverse is true, then she'd be againist. Very risky, not an ally in the true sense, but can be useful in certain circumstances, which a tactician such as Odysseus might consider.

[twoflowersdeadwife]

...or maybe the Lady is actually Rincewind's Mother/Creator

Clues:

Rincewind's self-proclaimed middle name is Luck (first name Bad)

He is described as a "luck sink" in Unseen Academicals (and what do you do in a sink? rinse! not a clue, just a pun)

He gets into dangerous situations (bad luck) but then always survives them (good luck)

Rincewind's mother ran away before he was born-- if taken literally, then this could only occur with magic, so his mother was either a time travelling witch or a goddess

He kept encountering the Number 8, which is considered unlucky to wizards due to the Octavo; 8 looks like an infinity symbol and also sort of like a woman's body -- who is an immortal 'woman'? The Lady (this one is kind of a stretch, I admit)

The Lady has green eyes, some of the official art portrays Rincewind with green eyes

But then who is Rincewind's father if the Lady is his mother? (if a father is even required in this situation) Possible candidates include:

Fate - an enemies-to-rivals-who-fuck romance that produced a child, Rincewind, whose fate is adventure and danger but who also has the good luck to survive it all. (yeah, Fate tried to get Rincewind and Twoflower killed, but maybe he didn't know or even didn't care Rincewind was his son)

Lavaeolus, the Rinser of Winds - who had to go on an oddessey (misspelling intentional) to get home. Maybe the Lady played the role of Circe in his journey, and Rincewind was born as a result (many years in the future, because the Lady decided she needed him at that time for her games with the other gods)

Bill Rincewind - who then, upon finding out he--who as a wizard is meant to be celibate--got a woman pregnant, went out for milk/cigarettes/beer and took the 'wrong' boat, ending up in Fourecks (this is a crack theory)

[bitchofdarkness]

Thoughts on Kim Yeong-hu and Tak In-hwan

Something that I noticed pretty early on was that Kim Yeong-hu was not a fan of Tak In-hwan. He probably couldn't stand him on a personal level long before the monsterization started, but since the guy was his superior he didn't make it as obvious as he would've probably liked to. He did speak his mind though, so that tells us enough about how much respect he has for Tak. *cough* none *cough*

In episode one we see how betrayed he looked at Master Sergeant Tak's actions, aka letting one of the monsters go.

Now we also know from later episodes that Yeong-hu is one of those guys that aces tests (he beat Sergeant Min in every competition) and most likely climbed the ranks due to being a dutiful, obedient little soldier that listened and acted on the orders given.

That's why he was so pissed off when MS Tak suddenly changed tune, because Yeong-hu recited the order they'd been given from the start and had been acting on the whole fucking time and Tak had the audacity to act like that was never the case.

Imagine you're Yeong-hu, doing what you're told, because clearly those higher ups had to have some sort of clue in this batshit crazy apocalypse that was going on. (And they did, they just kept it all to themselves) And since enough monsters had been hostile and killed civillians or fellow soldiers, killing them didn't seem like the wrong thing to do.

What pissed me off was how MS Tak kind of painted Yeong-hu as a bad person for following orders (in that first episode you can see how he silently judged him). He himself shot the mother-monster and instructed to burn her. And yet he acted like Yeong-hu was super cruel for doing what he was told.

And then he changed directions by telling Yeong-hu their order had always been to only kill the monsters that were attacking them, not all monsters.

Then, pray tell, why the fuck did he shoot the mother of that baby monster he let go? She did NOT attack him at all. She didn't even hurt any of the soldiers when she frantically tried to get to her baby (and technically she could've done that). And still, he wanted her dead, but then does a 180° and spares the baby monster.

Make it make sense. If you want your soldiers to all act the same and follow your orders, you fucking give them the right order instead of judging them for doing what they were instructed to do. Idk if some people don't get this (when I recall some posts about the second season), but when you go through as much training as these Navy Seals did, you're one cohesive group and you do what you are told and not start getting creative yourself, because that would mean death for your unit or yourself in a dangerous situation/combat. You have to be able to predict what your comrades would do and quickly, i.e. in case you're not able to communicate via comms.

I doubt Yeong-hu or any of the other soldiers actually want to kill the monsters that are docile. In the later episodes they clearly figured out a system to mark the harmless monsters with paint and refrain from killing them.

That could've been a possible way to react to this situation from the start, but Tak seriously decided on a whim what they were supposed to do. And I hate him for that. I can't stand him. Sure he let the baby go, but he still helped kill; ordered to have her killed and watched the mother die. He is the worst, since his word would've stopped it all right away, but he decides not to say anything until his actions were questioned by Yeong-hu.

And we know Yeong-hu took it to heart, because I doubt Tak was the one coming up with the idea to mark the harmless monsters so none of the soldiers would kill them and only focus on the dangerous ones.

Anyways, I think that moment with the mother and baby monster in episode one was the start of Yeong-hu questioning everything Tak told them to do. And even though he tells him later on that he trusted him to take care of the troops, I doubt that he did. And Yeong-hu had every right to doubt that guy, since they lost half of their people within a fricking year.

And you know what's sad? Yeong-hu's personal decision was to go and find Yong-seok on his own, because he didn't want to risk the life of any of his soldiers. But then Tak decided the crazy doctor should go with them and obviously he would need more protection, aka more men. Who obviously died.

I know it must've been Seok-chan who told the Master Sergeant about Yeong-hu's plan to go on his own, but Seok-chan's intention was to keep Yeong-hu safe, while Tak's intention was for the crazy doc to get to his lab- not to save Yong-seok.

Idk where I'm going with that, but I think a lot of people assume he's a bad person because he's military, but Yeong-hu actually just suffers from resting bitchface and has a big heart (granted, most of the space in his heart is taken up by Seok-chan, but still) ...he cares so much for his fellow humans and you can basically watch him grow throughout the whole season.

[raayllum]

So I wondered for a little while pre-S4 if Ezran’s consistent “hide and seek” game playing / possible truth telling or childhood motif would come back in a significant way going forward. This is because outside of this, basically every reference to a game goes back to the Key of Aaravos (S1 / S2) with one mention to Aaravos (2x08) prior to S4, which then makes it overt. So, I thought, why not re-examine Ezran’s possible place in the game?

There’s the obvious more overt layer of the hide and seek Ezran being the Truth Teller, as mentioned, in terms of him discovering lost or unknown pieces of information, or revealing them, consistently. He’s the one who finds the egg and explores the tunnels under the castle, solving the puzzle (which ended up being an intentional piece of foreshadowing for Kpp’Ar like five years down the line). He reveals that he has the ability to talk to animals, sees through the spider-y moon illusions, etc. It’s one of his most prominent plot beats in S1 and we see inklings of it return in S4 as he is primarily responsible (presumably) for Callum’s secret birthday party, and indeed the puzzle / seeking / finding mentioned primarily by him to Zubeia. He’s the one who wants to tell Amaya the truth in 1x04. He’s the one who finds the way to opening up Rex Igneous’ heart, and the one who reveals Avizandum’s death. He’s the one who finds and reveals the Truth, just like his ancestor before him. 

[ Side note: if you are interested in this as a concept / want a bigger & broader elaboration, I’d recommend my meta detailing Ezran as the series’ Witness / Thematic Embodiment of Justice here. ] 

It’s for this reason I think he’ll play a very key role in helping to locate the prison itself, with Callum possibly bringing other information into the fold (like how the prison was constructed, perhaps). It also makes sense to split the role of the Orphan Queen, so to speak, between the brothers. Ezran carries the blood line, but Callum is of her royal line as well, story wise. Ezran has the truth; Callum has the cube and whatever it holds.

That said: I am definitely giggling and kicking my feet that S4 was and presumably S5 is going to be to be the world’s biggest game of hide and seek with the highest stakes possible. 

[corpserites]

be tee dubs, going to start working on a sideblog dedicated to in-depth lore/backstories, character studies and meta over at @deathratt1es for the bitches who give a fuck. updated my pinned with a link there, too.

[mairen-marionette]

test to see if the pictures are side-by-side, and also to like, have two unused tftsmp characters wo I talk about sometimes back on the dash again lol.

[gravesung-moving]

quick and dirty (because i'm unable to do anything else apparently) unseen info!

because multiple ppl have asked me for a rundown and i need to make a realass lore post eventually, but for NOW here's a summary :> thank u zag for being the final nail in the coffin to motivate me to do this LOL

SO the unseen is like. let's say we're talking Magic Earth. they're a global crime syndicate that works in the shadows, there are lots of rumors about them existing but obvi nothing really confirmed — they're not like the yakuza where you kinda know a member when you see one. they're famously indistinguishable from regular people, and they've infiltrated pretty much every area of the societies they have a strong hold in (most nations that have global political sway except japan, where the yakuza are blocking them out.) and their membership, in western countries with major political influence, gets up into the like double digit percents of the population — there are a ton of unseen. they're fuckin everywhere. half the people on the street or in a restaurant could be unseen. but most of that large number is what i call 'listeners' or 'foot soldiers' — just regularass people who are paid to eavesdrop on conversations around them and report back to data handlers that sift through it for relevant info. 

when you go up a tier in the ladder, the membership number shrinks dramatically. like maybe a third of the size of the listeners, scattered in groups across the globe. that's the mid-tier, like, Gang Member Gang Members — drug runners, organizers, forgers, hitmen, extortionists, scammers, all that stuff. 

this is also the tier that collects street kids and trains them to be unseen soldiers — they're divided into cohorts and trained from like 8-10 yrs old to 17-18 yrs old. school is optional and limited to schools whose faculty are in the know/paid to look the other way. (seph's brother orion went and thrived all the way thru high school, seph chose to be tutored with her cohort instead) there are multiple cohorts, but i usually divide them in my head btwn 'killer cohort' (seph) and 'utility cohort' (orion) so they're trained to be good little worker bees and completely loyal to the unseen with no other attachments. trained to blend into society easily :> 

THEN THERE'S LIKE. THE ELITE. the lieutenants, handlers, small crews that the unseen will send on sensitive missions requiring a lot of skill. there are maybe like 700-800 across the globe i'd say.

lastly, there's the leader — amari fletch / the tower — and their inner circle of twelve people, which i call the sanctum. each of these people has a specialty that they are The Best in the unseen at, but they can double in for someone else if need be. they're essentially like an oceans eleven crime crew KSJDHIUHDK seph is the killer (+ the leader's right hand man), orion is the forger, @harerazor's muse altair is the doctor, etc etc! each of them is given a tarot card to use as their alias so that the rest of the unseen doesn't know who they are. more details about the sanctum's members (all available on this blog except seph, obvi) HERE!

[mediumsofmayfair]

CHARACTER QUESTIONNAIRE !!

BORROWED FROM: @radicalrascals.

TAGGING: @opheliaximmortal, @eclipsecrowned, @behindviolenteyes, @sangcreole, @withinycu and @godpyre.

 ✧･ﾟ   𝐃𝐀𝐒𝐇 𝐆𝐀𝐌𝐄.

► ROWAN, MONA & MERRICK MAYFAIR. 

★  ⸻   GENERAL

Name: Rowan Mayfair | Mona Mayfair | Merrick Mayfair

Alias(es): The thirteenth (13th) witch | Ophelia | practitioner of Vodou

Gender: genderqueer (she/they) | female (she/her) | demi-girl (she/they)

Age: 26+ | 20+ | 24+

Date of Birth: November 7, 1959 | October 24, 1983 | September 20, you do the math

Place of Birth:  NOLA, Garden district | New Orleans, garden district | New Orleans, French quarter

Spoken Language(s): French, English, Telekinesis, ghost/demon conjuring, French Roman Catholic, foresight and spells | French, English, intersectional feminism, telekinesis, ghost/demon conjuring, spells, and ghost hunting | Haitian creole, French, English, aave, ghost/demon conjuring, spells & ghost hunting

Orientation: bi (male lean) | bi (non-discriminating!) | bi (female lean)

Occupation(s):  that’s Miss Doctor Rowan Mayfair, PHD to you! | running the coven of the articulate when Lestat becomes histrionic 🤷‍♀️ | practitioner of Haitian Vodou & Talamasca member

★  ⸻   APPEARANCE

Eye colour: green | blue | brown

Hair colour: blonde (canonically) (black in the TV show) | auburn/red | dark black

Height: 5’8” | 5’0” | 5’4”

Other: the emerald necklace connecting her through a deal her great ancestor, Suzanne Mayfair made to the preternatural ghost/demon Lasher akin to a whip and the sound of the wind. | dresses exceedingly feminine, performing her femininity like a Shakespeare thespian or drag Queen/King. | At minimum Merrick always has a book on hand and a hair accessory in her creole curls.

★  ⸻   FAVORITE

Colour:  purple the queenly kind | baby blue | Mayfair (emerald) green. Song: Rowan | Mona | Merrick

Food: beignets | gumbo | shrimp po’boy

Drink: champagne | wine | bourbon

★  ⸻   HAVE THEY...

Passed university: with above average marks! | no - but more than capable of doing so! | no but only because time never let her

Had sex: yes | yes - perhaps… a lot | yes

Had Sex in Public: no | don’t tempt her sounds thrilling | no

Gotten pregnant/someone else pregnant: yes | no | no

Kissed a boy: yes | yes | yes

Kissed a girl: yes | yes | yes

Gotten tattoos: no | no | no

Gotten piercings: yes | yes | yes (ears for all of the above) Merrick, also pierced her nose

Been in love: yes | yes | yes

Stayed up 24+ hours: yes | yes | no

★  ⸻   ARE THEY...

A virgin: no | no | that’s a colonizer social construct.

A cuddler: yes | yes | no

A kisser: kinda? | yes | depends who you ask

Scared easily: no | no | no

Jealous easily: no | no | yes

Trustworthy: they’re Mayfair women, the answer is collectively no.

Submissive: yes | switch | yes

Dominant: in the mental sense | switch | no

In love: as a whole, not yet, they’d know.

Relationship status: collectively? It’s messy and complicated, of course Quinn Blackwood, Louis de Pointe du Lac and Lestat de Lioncourt count! In that case… taken but complicated. Let us not begin on the family ghost.

★  ⸻   RANDOM QUESTIONS

TW for self-harm/suicide mention.

Have they harmed themselves: yes | not deliberately | (yes in canon) no (in my portrayal)

Thought of suicide/ideated: yes | yes | yes

Attempted suicide: yes | no | yes

Wanted to kill someone: yes but shush | he deserved it! | with good reason

Have/had a job: yes | of a kind | yes

Fears: a family legacy she can’t outrun, Lasher, violent men, the church, the state, and the future and being “enough.” | existential stuff, none of your concern | misogyny, racism, violence, injustice, the burden and blessing of family, and upholding her mothers legacy.

★  ⸻   FAMILY

A mess, that puts the Ptolemaic dynasty to shame.

See here.

On the Mayfairs and Lasher.

Lives of the Mayfair Witches.

Bonus, these threes collective playlist.

[oveliagirlhaditright]

Buffy and Angel Either Getting a Happy Ending/or Dreaming About Getting Their Happy Ending in the Books

First, we have the Choose Your Own Adventure Book "Night Terrors" (that takes place in season two), where one of the endings you can get is where Buffy ends up in an alternate dimension where the Angel there has become mortal.

Next up is book three of the "Unseen Trilogy" (that is a Buffy and Angel crossover), entitled "Long Way Home" (it takes place during Buffy season 4/Angel season 1). And here we have Buffy seeing an alternate reality where things worked out for her and Angel.

With the Angel book, "The Longest Night," there are multiple stories in here about the first Winter solstice Angel Investigations experiences with Fred (during Angel season 3), and you can choose for yourself which one of them you want to be "canon," if you will. This is the story from the book "Icicle Memories." Oh! And in the context of "Icicle Memories," it's hinted that things actually were meant to be that way--with Buffy being with Angel, surely, not all the other craziness he saw in this fantasy (as well that everyone else's visions the snowman made them see should have been their lives)--but for whatever reason, things didn't pan out that way, so it's the lives they have now that matter.

And then in the Buffy/Angel book "Heat" (that is during Buffy season 7 and Angel season 4), there's a moment where one of the villains knock both Buffy and Angel out. And while they're unconscious, they both dream about lives together. The one villain is partly responsible for this, in wanting to keep them down, but note that these dreams aren't real at all--like in being alternate realities or anything like that, like some previous things were.

Bonus:

While the Boom comics aren't canon and I'm not really a fan of them. Oops, this version of Buffy and Angel (and Spike, I guess?), definitely look like they've figured it out, when they show up to help the Boom!version of the characters in battle, when multiple versions of Buffy, Angel, Spike, and some other Buffyverse characters show up in some of the last issues of the first reboot comic, to aid in the final confrontation.

[playedbetter]

what did the air smell like during their childhood? (Billy)

Meme / Accepting!

Fresh breeze scented fabric softener his mom used on every single load, from the towels in the bathroom to his pajamas. The scent permeated the whole house till about a month and a half after she had left and the scent finally wore off.

[tunedtostatic]

This was a train of thought thing because I was thinking about paladins and the Oath of Devotion, and Gilmore is not a paladin, but...thinking about how Gilmore's biggest heroic plot moments (that I've gotten to so far - I know he does stuff at the end of the campaign) are the duel with Thordak and rescuing the royal family, and then the shield over the city of Whitestone. Gilmore is not an adventurer by trade. He's not a knight or a guard, nor is he the leader of a place in the way that Percy and Keyleth become leaders. But he is a guardian. The way he uses his trades, sorcerer, merchant, shopkeeper, ends up tying so deeply to a sense of place.

When the worst happens to Emon he fights a fucking DRAGON. While the worst keeps happening, all over the continent, he's working with Allura to create the shield over Whitestone and holding that shield together.

He's a hero who is able to draw on the skills and the knowledge base that he has BECAUSE he's not an adventurer/"professional hero" type. He has a different vocation and it's the tools of those trades - magic, courage, resourcefulness, broad knowledge - that he draws on when the chips are down. In particular I think it has a lovely meta-resonance with the archetype of the NPC Shopkeeper. As a game mechanic, the NPC Shopkeeper is entwined with a geographic location. They're there when you go there, and he Knows Things, and she has the capacity to help you. The NPC Shopkeeper is not invulnerable, and Gilmore isn't. But she's always a little more powerful than you, the adventurer, in the ways that someone who has chosen a different path than you will always be a little more powerful. He's there, when you need him. And Gilmore is.

Campaign 1 takes a step back and shows the world where Gilmore doesn't only exist when Our Heroes need him. He's there for Vox Machina in the ways that he's there for Vox Machina because those are the ways that he is there for the other people around him. Gilmore is a sorcerer and a merchant and a researcher, and an NPC Shopkeeper. When the chips are down that's not only why but also HOW he's there for Emon and Whitestone, and Tal'dorei and Exandria.

[blackw1ng]

tags; mind your business

[yther]

Sometimes people have an anxious sort of FOMO after going no contact or cutting ties on various media platforms...

if you are haunted by the curiosity,

if you can't turn from the void until it answers, yearning a sort of ultimate catharsis in our own personal narrative

✨ LOOK NO FURTHER ✨

There it is, the Tar Pit.

And it is freedom from it that grants the silence you don't know you're seeking.

I hereby release you of your moral duty to fight in the pit. This is not Gladiator. But... it can be Elysium, the mythical Elysian Fields, not the movie.

(non sequitur: JODIE FOSTER in space gotta be one of my fav genres)

[tsarnvoinyn]

tag dump part 2 !