#weapons of magic

[its-wabby-stuff]

Lula Waterheart.

She’s got magical water hair! 😍

I designed my brothers book character from middle school lol. At my indiscretion, submit your cringy book characters- their personality and description and some of their backstory- and maybe I’ll draw up some sketches, like below vvv

[time-woods]

part 2 to the Chasing Stars au !

guess the name is quite literal rn

[hurtmyfavsthanks]

We all know about magical fatigue as a whump trope for magical overuse. Now I raise you: Magical euphoria.

Magic that feels good to use. It leaves the user dizzy and lightheaded, a giddy energy rushing through their entire body. It's enough to leave the most stoic whumpee giggling madly, to make the most obedient soldier go rogue. It's a power that ultimately, inevitably, controls its user.

Mages aren’t trusted to act on their own. They can’t be, not when each spell costs them their sanity. Not when, in a daze of manic joy, they’re just as liable to destroy the enemy as their allies.

And so they need a handler.

Imagine Caretaker in this situation. Forced to watch Whumpee throw themselves into madness, to turn themselves into an unthinking weapon under the demand of some uncaring general. Having to put aside their affection for Whumpee as a person, and analyze them as a tool.

It’s Caretaker who decides when Whumpee is still fit for battle. It’s caretaker who has to look into their dazed and distant eyes, blood dripping into a too wide smile, and decide if Whumpee has anything else to give.

It’s Caretaker who decides when they’re too far gone, when Whumpee needs to stop. And if Whumpee can’t, it’s Caretaker’s job to make them stop. Even if that means using force, even if it means hurting them, because letting them run wild isn’t an option.

And when the battle’s over, when Whumpee is either led or dragged away to the medical wing, Caretaker’s the only one brave enough to tend to their injuries. They wrap bleeding, scorched fingers without a word, the only sound being Whumpee babbling, mad ramblings. Caretaker knows they won’t remember any of this. They still talk to Whumpee anyway, soft, comforting words they hope will bring Whumpee back faster.

And when whumpee’s eyes finally clear, when their body sags with exhaustion they’re just now able to feel, Caretaker feels nothing but grief, because it’ll start all over again tomorrow.

[tritoch]

the warrior of light as a game-breaking force of violence

there's a moment, relatively early in dawntrail, that establishes succinctly how out of place the warrior of light (as the savior of eorzea and main character of four successive final fantasy game plots) is in what is essentially the story of fresh new final fantasy protagonist wuk lamat. and it sets up quite nicely how the framework of fantasy video game conflict pulls the warrior of light forever towards violence as the expansion goes on.

spoilers through 7.0 follow

consider wuk lamat's kidnapping and rescue. bakool ja ja holds his blade to wuk lamat's throat, taunting you. his lackeys line up against your party in neat little ranks suspiciously reminiscent of a classic final fantasy encounter screen.

and it simply does not matter to the warrior of light. you stride right through their combat setup because you are beyond that by now. the warrior of light has absolutely no respect for the "we are about to do ATB combat" lineup. the camera even jumps the line for you in one continuous rotating shot, crossing the axis of action as though to emphasize through the disruption of visual convention how far outside the game's boundaries you are.

this is how far you are above the problems of dawntrail's first half. you cannot even be bound by the normal rules of cinematography and video game combat. everyone else here lined up for a good old-fashioned scrap and the warrior of light said haha nope actually. i'm going to stroll through here like a god of war astride this tiny battlefield. your henchmen cannot even raise a hand to me. i don't even have to engage in violence directly anymore. my mere presence is enough.

in fact, not only can bakool ja ja's henchmen not raise a hand to you, he's not even worthy of your direct intervention. he kidnaps wuk lamat and steals her keystones and frees valigarmanda and kidnaps hunmu rruk and none of it warrants the warrior of light so much as raising a finger. he's wuk lamat's recurring villain, that's not your problem. you're just here to take in the scenery.

zoraal ja spends his whole life aspiring to be thought of as his father's equal and a worthy successor to the dawnservant as the "resilient son." all it takes for gulool ja ja to acknowledge you as a warrior on his level is like a five minute sparring match. the acknowledgement from gulool ja ja that zoraal ja hungered for his whole life and would eventually go full cyborg supervillain to get via regicide is something the warrior of light receives casually in a throwaway line after their level 93 solo duty on the way to more important plot conversations.

it really seems for a second, in the first half of dawntrail, like you are strong enough and the problems simple enough for this to be a clean and easy adventure. bakool ja ja? power of friendship'd. mamook? successfully reintegrated, no worries about the crimes against humanity. rite of succession? handily won. nothing can stop you. even duty finder queue times have been conquered: you can do all your duties with trusts now.

all of which only makes it better when the second half has sphene ask you and wuk lamat directly: could your strength have been enough to save alexandria? could you have found a different way?

i know some people get very annoyed we don't intervene in the gulool ja ja fight. now personally i think if you see arthur and mordred squaring up it's rude to intervene, but beyond that, it simply wouldn't have mattered. by the time zoraal ja's forces arrived in tuliyollal, alexandria and tural were already on a collision course and doomed to conflict. your hands alone could never have averted this conflict. sphene was always bound to do what she did—and certainly a gulool ja ja without his reason would not be any more inclined to peace than wuk lamat and koana were.

there's a great little moment just before living memory where estinien, champion at reading the room, is like "okay so if thancred and i stay here that frees up you up, aibou, to do what you do best and save the world and have epic fights. woo!!!" and immediately afterwards you basically have to apologize to alisaie because part of the sort of unspoken premise of this whole trip in the first place was that you were, finally, not going to plunge into mortal peril to save the world. you were finally going to take it easy. you were finally done with that. and she has to sort of ruefully be like nah it's fine bro. i was trying to get you to take it easy and not do insane risky world-saving violence. but y'know these things (interdimensional invasions) happen.

by the time you reach the very last trial, all pretense that the warrior of light could have ever been beyond these problems has vanished. you were, very emphatically, not strong enough to hold onto all that was dear without sacrifice. gulool ja ja and otis and cahciua died. yyasulani was irreversibly changed, physically colonized and culturally decimated by another dimension. you systematically shut down each part of living memory, and all its friendly, charming, loving ghosts, with your own hands. with your own clicks.

not even the vaunted strength of the warrior of light is enough to overcome sphene's inexorable logic of conflict. and so, in the end, she plucks you out of the crowd and says, explicitly for reasons of your strength, that you are going to have to do a boss fight now. you are going to have to kill her and you are going to have to do it in a proper 8-on-1 trial, and she forces you to affirmatively state that you understand you're going to kill her.

did you think you were above it all? did you think you could get away from here with your weapon undrawn, with your hands clean? that for you and you alone the logic of conflict comes undone? wrong. wrong. wrong.

your strength cannot redeem you, says sphene. your friends cannot make these sacrifices for you. if you would play the hero then you must play the hero. no half-measures.

back to the duty finder with ye.

[mintflavouredwhump]

A whumpee that everyone tries to possess or control the second they realise what Whumpee is capable of

[defire]

Regenerating vampire/monster trained as a living weapon!

I've been working HARD ON THIS to make it give whumperflies, thanks to those who have helped!

(defiant whumpee and war vibes)

Content: dehumanization, magical whump, painful regeneration, beatings, suicide attempt

Being kept in a cage because they're "dangerous". Whumpee banging on the bars and shouting to be released only makes them get treated more like an animal

Being able to beat them to death because they'll just come back. Whumper is just prone to raging and uses whumpee to take it out on. They don't have to hold back at all.

Bonus, whumper encourages whumpee's defiance because it makes them feel more satisfied when they finally give them the beating--"they deserved it anyway"

Whumpee slowly acting less defiant and more stoic because they're being treated like a dumb animal anyway

Using their magical weaknesses against them. A vampire that burns in sunlight would scream under a UV flashlight.

Binding them with silver-plated wire--far longer than necessary. Long enough for it to burn through their skin, leaving them begging, bleeding, promising never to run ever again

Until "are you going to kneel, or am I going to have to tie you down there" has them thumping hard to their knees instantly, eyes glued to the wire on the shelf behind whumper.

Blinding or maiming them so that they're still powerful but whumper has a way to control them.

"testing" their powers by seeing how many stabs they can take, can they regenerate a whole limb, etc.

Hurting their best friend instead of punishing whumpee (whumpee is too difficult to hurt)

Or, punishing whumpee excessively, because their wounds heal so quickly it looks like no damage was done, maybe they think whumpee didn't really feel it for long enough

Whumpee coming back horribly injured but they forgot a "sir" and now they're not allowed the blood they need to regenerate, for a set amount of time. So they're just writhing in pain and begging for blood.

Whumpee trying, and failing, to kill themselves. When they get caught cleaning up the blood to hide the evidence, they're dragged away to be punished for trying to destroy their master's property.

"I'm not about to let you die on me" taking a whole new controlling, frightening meaning

Whumpee never wanted to hurt anyone... One day it's too much and they let their enemies beat the shit out of them rather than hurt anyone else.

And then whumper comes back to the base with their head down and arms clamped to their sides, trying to prepare themselves for the rage of their masters when they find out the low casualty count.

Whumper sent whumpee into an unwinnable fight to teach them a lesson. They did not expect their enemies to take whumpee back with them.

[fuckyeahisawthat]

Ok wait actually it’s wild tho that Piltover appears to have no standing army at all, or even a group of trained reservists. (Police are different because while they can certainly act like an occupying army their training is fundamentally about interacting with civilians, not an organized military power of comparable or superior strength.) Like they’re getting their briefing about defense strategy from fucking JAYCE??

Guys you have just built the magical equivalent of the Suez Canal. Even if you’re not interested in imperial expansion I promise imperialism will continue to be interested in you.

[tk-sketches]

animated commission for ephraim!

[zoe-oneesama]

Hi Zoe, I was just wondering since you brought up the tattoo post, would you ever want your own art on you? It sounds pretty cool to me to have your own artwork or design on you like that, but I don't have any tattoos so I dunno, heh

HECK no, I hate the stuff I did only a few months ago. I like that about me since it's proof of my growth, but every time I see a new artist or style that I want to incorporate into my style, I inevitably go through a long ass ugly phase and I cringe hard looking back.

There are so many talented tattoo artists who can draw circles around me and I believe the tattoo itself benefits from the artist being the tattooer (unless you're asking them to tattoo an exact copy, like a manga panel or silhouette, then it really doesn't matter much to me).

At most, I would come in with rough sketches of the concept I'd want just to help me illustrate what I'm picturing in my head, but there's a massive difference between what I do in my sketchbook and for a flat screen digitally and what will work for the human body and what translates into needles and ink.

[hurtwithallthecomfort]

Ok but consider. Living weapon whumpee, but instead of a soldier they’re a healer.

A whumpee who was born with immense healing powers, and now every dangerous threat in the world wants them, because if they can’t get hurt, they’re invincible.

Maybe that makes it hard to trust anyone. Whose to say that Caretaker won’t just use them to heal up their wounds like a tool.

Or, do they meet Whumper first. Whumper, who uses them to torture other whumpees, having them healed so they can withstand much more torture from Whumper. Perhaps they’re under threat, or perhaps they’ve lost control of their own body.

The healing process probably hurts the other Whumpees. Having their bones moved around and their cuts closed at a fast rate might not feel so good. Or, it could take ages, and be agonisingly slow. That’s always an option.

Such a strong power surely takes it out of Whumpee too. Do they feel the pain of the person they’re healing? Does it exhaust them to the brink of death? A lot of possibilities there.

Maybe Whumper decides to bring them along on missions. Whumpee is subject to all the horrors of the battlefield, untrained for this and Whumper knows it. But they have to keep it together, or else Whumper will have to stop their tool from malfunctioning, since it’s far too expensive to just replace.

Also consider: Whumpee can only be in one place at a time. That’s not convenient. An easy fix though, if Whumper can just find out what gives Whumpee their powers, soon they can have more and more healing tools in no time. A shame that the experiments will sting just a smidgeon.

[lotus-pear]

rewatched madoka magica again today bc i fucking hate myself and to absolutely no one’s surprise i went through all five stages of grief in a single evening

[eloquentsisyphianturmoil]

Gandalf said ‘do not offer me that’, Galadriel said ‘I would be a queen, great and terrible,’ but Elrond said ‘get that the fuck away from me’ and this is nonsensical.

The other keepers of the elven rings were most challenged by the One, why not Elrond? Is his struggle merely hidden? Is it his Maia blood? Is it simply his mixed blood? Is that why Aragorn withstood, too?

Canonically the race of men are most easily corrupted, yet Elrond half-elven, who is almost 40% man, doesn’t notably bat an eyelash. Why?

[leidensygdom]

Hello Swordtember! I um, actually will have some new art for tomorrow hopefully, but I thought I could use the very fitting topic of Wings to show this design, which is Laestis' crystal sword! It contains her many winged patron and it can change shape according to her needs, although the actual form it tends to take is the first one. I'm still quite proud of it and I think it's fun to show the few iterations it has gone through~

[lsdoiphin]

Perhaps you should just let this one slide. If you try to fight him, he'll probably just keep talking.

[oldschoolfrp]

From around the corner a massive reptilian creature appears (Jeff Easley, Dragon 145, May 1989)

[fisheito]

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