#whiny weird elves

[fridka]

Sol (derogatory)

[itissarah]

A little addition to @legacyshenanigans original post!

Part 2

MC: *sits next to Sebastian in the Great Hall* You don’t happen to know why Ominis asking me what I was wearing this morning?

Sebastian: *eyes widen* Maybe… he just wanted to know… as he cannot see you… and stuff…

MC: *interrupts him while moving closer* You also don’t happen to know why he asked me if we had any classes together after I told him about my skirt?

Sebastian: *gulps* What… a weird thing to ask

MC: *interrupts him again, face now only inches apart from Sebastian‘s* He also handed me this handy little spray bottle when I told him we were practically spending all day together.

Sebastian: *starts shaking* Maybe… You know… it might be a weird joke?

MC: Listen here Sallow, if I catch your eyes anywhere near my skirt, we will have a sequel to our little duel and this time, I won’t limit my spells. *sprays him right in the face and leaves*

Sebastian: *breaths heavily* I have never been this scared and aroused at the same time…

***********

Part 3

MC: *walks into the Great Hall the next morning with the shortest possible skirt allowed at school*

Sebastian: Oh no, Ominis! No, no, no... I know exactly what she is doing!

MC: *smirking at them* Morning, Boys. See something you like, Sallow?

Sebastian: *turning bright red looking away immediately* I have no idea what you are talking about!

MC: I hope so because I intend to keep my promise!

Ominis: *in on the plan trying his hardest not to laugh* MC, why must you do this to me? Now I have to spend the day with a whiny Sebastian complaining about not being allowed to look at your skirt!

MC: Sorry, Ominis! You know I had to! Let's find out how much of a good boy Sebastian can be. He might even get a reward if he can follow the rules.

Sebastian: *determined* I will be the best boy ever!

**********

Part 4

*the next day*

Sebastian: Good morning, MC! You look lovely today... From the waist up! Want me to carry your books for you? Get you something special from the kitchens? I have my ways with the house elves.

MC: Good morning, Sebastian. What are you doing here? Your common room is literally at the other end of the castle.

Sebastian: I just thought I'll make sure my favourite Gryffindor starts her day right. You deserve it.

MC: I know what you are doing...

Sebastian: Good, because I'm only just getting started.

**********

Part 5

*a little later*

Leander: Really, Sallow? Carrying her books and wandering after her like a lost puppy all day isn't really what women want, is it?

Sebastian: Stay out of this, Prewett.

Leander: I am just saying it's pretty funny to see how pathetic you get when you are horny, Sallow.

Sebastian: Seeing that I am the one she spends 90% of her time with, I'd say you are just a jealous little fucker. And for the record, I am not always horny.

Ominis: I must admit, he is kind of right with this one. You are horny 24/7.

Sebastian: It's not that I am always horny, she is just always hot! That's not my fault.

**********

To be continued

[aftertheradar]

so i've been rereading Artemis Fowl (series) again and even tho it was one of my favorite kids series I'm noticing some kinda weird or icky stuff that flew over my head before. Like damn if these books ain't just cyberpunk espionage magitek copaganda. Book 2 is literally about an ethnically motivated class uprising being put down by the police(who are framed as the good guys) because said racial minority/underclass is too violent and stupid to deserve better treatment in the prison system. and also too stupid and violent to have masterminded the plan for revolution themselves and needed one of the smart races to do it for them.

and any time there's a civilian presence in the book, they are depicted as either an antagonistic obstructive bureaucrat or a whiny caricature played for laughs. not totally sure if this is because these books were written while uncritically carrying over this kind of depiction that was historically the norm in its genres (police procedural), or if this is the author's own (conscious or subconscious) idealogical biases seeping in. might be both tbh.

anyway anyway the thing i actually wanted to bring up is that a really bizarre detail that stuck out to me during my re-reads is the way the different fairy races/species are characterized. there's 7(really 8) races/species of fairies who are disntint, and they have different traits and powers. So like there are elves who are good with magic, sprites who can fly, goblins (the aforementioned race that is too stupid and violent to be capable of organized protest) who can shoot fire etc.

Butt (foreshadowing lol) the one that was so weird to me is the characterization of gnomes, the last and arguably least of the fairy races in the artemis fowl series. they seem to make up the majority of the fairy population and a significant portion of background characters. bdon't get much screen time in the books because of not having any main characters who are one. They're sole defining characteristic?

Having enormous asses.

That's it. that's their whole thing. basically every time there's a gnome character depicted, the text goes out if it's way mention how dummy thicc the gnomes are and how their dumptruck rear ends take up too much room and keep blocking things and knocking shit over when they walk.

like there's also already a whole race of fairies (the dwarfs)whose whole thing is to be a never ending font of burglary escape techniques and fart jokes whenever the plot or author demand them. you would think having enormous asses would come in that territory, but no. it goes to the last group that we the audience don't really know or care about as much.

and i just don't really know what to make of that. that in coming up with fantasy races for his books, one of the most present but least prominent in tbe books' single defining and noteworthy character trait is having such fat asses that they block public pedestrian walkways (no really). i wish i knew what exactly the thought process behind (lol) that one was.

anyway hope i explained why it's so weird to me well, goodnight

[gay-otlc]

Can we talk about how Sophie has trichotillomania?

Because I've been involved in KOTLC fandoms for over two years and I've heard it mentioned exactly once.

Trichotillomania is a disorder characterized by uncontrollable, repetitive pulling of hair. This can be scalp hair, eyebrows, arm hair, leg hair, eyelashes, really any type of hair. Even though the person knows they aren't supposed to enjoy pulling, they get a weird sense of pleasure or calm from it, and it's difficult to stop. Pulling is frequently done in stressful situations.

Does that sound familiar to anyone? Ring any bells?

Yeah, it sounds like Sophie Foster.

In the books, it's played off as sort of just another nervous habit, a weird quirk of Sophie's. It's mentioned a few times by other friends/adult figures as they ask whether it hurts, but when she says no, they don't tell her to stop. She's often described as "pulling on an itchy eyelash," but it seems to be more of a stress response than something causing her stress.

I thought it was just another weird quirk of hers until I started pulling out my hair. I would pull it most when I was stressed, and it always felt "itchy" just before I did.

It was horrible. Trichotillomania is fucking destructive. At my worst point, I had a huge, gaping bald spot. I didn't talk to people because I was ashamed of my hair. I missed class once because I couldn't tear myself away from the mirror and stop pulling. I spent hours in front of the mirror each day, checking and checking to make sure no one would know anything was weird if they looked at me.

It was so hard. And I felt so alone.

Now, as I said before, I read KOTLC nearly three years ago and have been making fan content for over two. Suffice it to say that series means a lot to me. How do you think it would have felt, if the protagonist of this huge part of my life, was just like me, struggled like me, and it turned out okay for her? I would have had so much hope that it could get better instead of climbing and clawing for every shred of progress.

Now, how do you think it felt to see that protagonist go through something similar, but it didn't matter much to her? It made me feel like some whiny bitch for being this upset about my hair. If Sophie Foster could have trich and go through life functioning fine (well, not really, but the trich doesn't make anything worse for her is my point), why couldn't I? Pathetic.

Like most days, today is a good day to get pissed at L*ura, so I'm going to use her art as an example. This is a close up screenshot of Sophie's eye (please ignore the cursor in the middle, my computer hates me).

[Image ID: A close up picture of an brown eye. It has long, dark eyelashes surrounding it and a cursor covering the pupil.]

(Please tell me if my image ID is shit idk how to write these.)

As we can clearly see, Sophie has long, dark eyelashes. The top eyelashes are most obvious, but there's a fair amount on the bottom as well. It's been a while since I've read the books, but Sophie doesn't wear makeup much, if I recall correctly. So she probably wouldn't be wearing mascara.

Then why the fuckity fuck do her eyelashes look so, for lack of a better word, normal, when she pulls them every three paragraphs?

People with trichotillomania look like they have trichotillomania. I have a bald spot. When I did all my research on trich in an OCD spiral, one writer said she had to wear wigs. Another said she had zero eyelashes for years. Someone on here (not saying who just in case they don't want me to) said their left eyebrow was nearly gone.

I hated how I looked in the worst of my trichotillomania days. It's less noticeable now, but I still hate it. I feel like a freak, to not have hair like a 'normal' person.

Now, Sophie Foster is described as beautiful. She has all the boys and the girls after her. She's an elf, all elves are beautiful. But she pulls out her eyelashes, and she pulls out her eyelashes so often, that unless elf hair grows at really different speeds (which I doubt it would, considering that would have been very noticeable when Sophie lived with humans), she would have no or very few eyelashes.

And yet, that was erased in her official art. Why? Because apparently, people can't look like they have trich and still be beautiful.

But that's bullshit. People with trich are beautiful. I am looking in mirrors and trying to tell myself I look beautiful instead of crying. Bald spots are beautiful. Eyes without eyelashes are beautiful. Brow ridges without eyebrows are beautiful.

People with trich are beautiful, dammit!

So give us that, Shannon. Give that to your readers who don't have trich, so they understand it, and your readers who do, so they see themselves for the first time and don't feel alone.

Give us Sophie Foster thinking she's ugly and a freak because she doesn't have eyelashes, and give us Keefe or Fitz or Biana or whoever telling her she still is.

Give us Sophie Foster trying to sit on her hands, telling herself not to pull, doing it anyway, and hating herself.

Give us Sophie Foster standing in front of the mirror and crying because she can't stop, she can't stop.

Give us Sophie Foster seeking help and trying to get better, trying to heal.

Give us Sophie Foster trying and relapsing and trying and relapsing and trying and relapsing and trying.

If you're going to give us Sophie Foster with trichotillomania, give us a character with trichotillomania.

[the-young-and-forgotten]

Gingerbread and Mistletoe

Ficmas Gingerbread House - @wonderful-writer 

Warning/s: tw food mention, tw swearing

prompts: 

4) “Will you make a gingerbread house with me?”

25) “You’re already under the mistletoe, so will the two of you stop stalling and kiss already?”

Prompts will be in bold

It was a couple of weeks into the Christmas break. Your friends had all gone home for the holidays. You had nothing to do but look out at the raging blizzard happening outside now that you were stuck like a schmuck at Hogwarts. You had absolutely no one to hangout with. Or so you thought. 

Of course, Sirius had to be annoying you every second of the day, not that you minded all that much. The two of you had known each other before you had moved to Hogwarts and he had taken it upon himself to annoy you with every step within this castle. 

You had met him a couple of years ago while he was on vacation in America. He and his family had been visiting your state and you might have run him over in the street with your bike. After rushing him to a doctor, you also might have developed a slight crush on him (I mean who wouldn’t crash their bike after seeing him?). You were only too happy to bump into him again the next day to hear that he wanted to “hang out with the girl brave enough to make his proud family introduce themselves to a muggle doctor.” He introduced himself as Prince Sirius Black, succumbed to a life of misery and riches. You had discovered that while you went to Ilvermorny, he went to the highly praised school of Hogwarts Witchcraft and Wizardry. 

Then, about 3 months ago due to some issues, you and your family were driven out of America to England. It took much persuasion, but your parents finally let you enrol in Hogwarts. Which brought you to the present. 

You were glad to see Sirius again… sort of… You had a fair idea of how annoying he could be but his constant presence and prying questions was driving you insane. You had wondered how his friends coped with it. But after a day of observing, you included they were all equally insane as him. Well, the exception being the scarred boy. He just looked like an exhausted mother on her last cup of coffee. 

Unfortunately, the school transfer did bring back that old crush you were sure you had got rid of. Obviously you hadn’t quite squashed those feelings enough. The only one in this school who knew about your crush on Sirius was James and you had sworn him to secrecy. He knew if he told anyone or did anything to push it along, he’d be instantly dead. 

But, no matter how insane Sirius seemed you could deal with it. After all, this wasn’t the first time. But one thing you couldn’t handle was the throngs of girls that nipped at his heels and hung onto his every word. You knew he was good-looking, but did he deserve his own cult? The girls aggravated you so much, making you wish violent thoughts on them and causing a pang of jealousy in your heart. 

A few days with those fangirls was okay, but when you found out this happened everyday, you could now understand Remus’ constant look of aggravation and the quiet sighs from Peter and James when this happened. 

But today was worse than usual, due to the quidditch game he’d won a couple of days ago, girls were swarming him. You snuck away to the library, before the jealousy caused you to act rashly. You hid amongst the Divination books, hoping he and his herd of girls wouldn’t find you.

But to no avail. “What a boring section to hide in, love.” A cocky voice called out. Sirius walked out between two stacks of books a wide smirk on his face. “But then again, you and I had never seen eye to eye on everything.” He picked up a book with an eye on it and tapped it, his smirk somehow stretching wider. 

You cross your arms in mock anger but you couldn’t help smirking at his pun and seeing that he didn’t have any desperate girls tagging along. “That pun was lame and you know it. Plus, no one likes Divination so I figured this would be the best place to hide.” He plonked himself down on the boxes beside you. His smile stretched even farther, irritating you slightly. 

“Pretty obvious spot though. People would expect you to hide here. If I were to hide, I would go to the Transfiguration section, it's a painfully obvious spot, but no one expects it. So you failed.” “It didn’t fail if it means there were no brain-dead bimbos following you here.” You snap at him.  “Ahhh, so you wanted to be alone with me.” He leant in close, making your face light up like a lava lamp. 

You turn away and stand up, trying to distract yourself. “C’mon, Y/n. Is it that hard to believe I just want to do something fun with my friend! We have a lot of options! Afterall, it's Christmas time!! We could go sledding, sneak out to Hogsmeade or we could-” His eyes light up. “Will you make a gingerbread house with me?” you turn to stare at him in disbelief and scoff. “A gingerbread house?!” He nods his head comically “Sirius, you haven’t even touched any baking ingredients, how will you know what to do?” 

He picks himself off the boxes and grabs your arm. He pulls you out of the library and towards the kitchens. “It’s called an adventure Y/n, search up the definition.” “I’ve done enough crazy shit with you to know what an adventure is.” You grumble under your breath. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The two of you stood at a counter in the kitchen, the decorations and gingerbread house pieces spread out around you. “Right… so what's next?” Sirius asks, the confusion prominent in his voice. You pull all the pieces towards you and start filling him in on what's happening “Luckily, the house elves were nice enough to get us the muggle pieces which are already pre-made, so we just have to decorate it.” 

Hearing no response, you turn towards him, question on your lips. You stop short and stare at him. He was leaning on the counter and staring off into space. Doing nothing but continuously eating the bowl of lollies in front of him. You slap his hand away, startling him. “Those are for the house! Not you!” He lowered his head looking awfully sheepish. You relented. “Okay, maybe a few.” You wink at him and pop a few into your mouth. 

“Right!” Clapping your hands together you turn back to the gingerbread house pieces. “Let's get into it!!” 

Long story short, It was messy work. The sides fell down about a dozen times,causing a lot of anger. The two of you alternating between eating the lollies and putting them on the house. Luckily for the two of you, the house elves had endless amounts of sweets so you never ran out. 

Adding the icing with Sirius was extremely aggravating for you. He couldn’t seem to get the hang of the piper and was putting it everywhere. But he kept on persisting that he could do it. After he had covered practically the entire bench with the icing you snatched it off him. “Oh, just give it here you incompetent pureblood.” It took a bit of time, but you finally finished decorating and icing the whole thing. 

When it was finished, you were positively bursting at how great the gingerbread house had turned out. Reaching over you, Sirius picked up the tray and started out of the kitchens. Turning back, he smiled at you. “Lets go share this with the boys, I know they’ll want a bite.” 

“Wait up!” You run after him, trying to grab the tray from him, but he just pushed ahead faster and faster. “Slow down!” you shout desperately trying to catch him, weaving between random students. “Why do you have to be so goddamn fast?” You said, with a slight whiny tone. But he just laughed and ran on. 

When you guys finally arrived at the Gryffindor Tower, you were panting for breath. Several people had been pushed over along your run. You had certainly made your presence known in the hallways. Taking a deep breath, you walk up to Sirius who was standing a little way away. “Can I hold the house now?” You whine. He rolls his eyes at your tone of voice but hands it over to you. 

He turns towards the Fat Lady and gives the password. As it swings open, he holds it open long enough for you to walk through. You stumble on the threshold but Sirius catches you before you or the house falls. You blush furiously as he helps you right yourself. The two of you look away from each other, the air now extremely awkward. 

You hear an ‘ahem’ from the corner of the common room and look up to see the rest of the arauders there. Peter had a sly grin on his face, Remus was giggling and James looked extremely aggravated. You knew straight away that knew where you had been. James stared you down before throwing his hands up in exasperation. “You’re already under the mistletoe, so will the two of you stop stalling and kiss already?” Gaping in shock, you look up and see he’s right. You hear Sirius groan and bury his face in his hands as you glare back at James. ‘You’re dead’ you mouth. He just smirks and points to the mistletoe. “Get on it” he shouts. 

You reluctantly look back at Sirius. Much like you, he was a blushing mess. You had never seen him look this hesitant about anything. He seemed to weigh something in his mind before leaning toward you. 

Due to the huge gingerbread house in your arms he had to awkwardly lean over it, which made the situation 100% more weird. Hesitantly, he placed his lips on yours. 

The kiss was sweet and short but it might as well have lasted a lifetime. He gasps in shock, and you knew he had felt the same thing as you had. The two of you pull away giggling, blushing more than before. 

You hear the shouts of joy from the boys and you remember James’ betrayal. “Wait here, Sirius. I need to kill your best friend.” You transport the gingerbread house to Sirius’ arms and run towards James, the boy's laughter echoing in your ears.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

taglist: @just-a-belgian-girl @loonyvee @kashishwrites @lilgoddesshines

[nezumasa]

I’m going in to talk to another professor about my writing instructor because his comments about gender feel weirdly targeted, he singles me out sometimes (“don’t you see patterns in the work?” and all he can pinpoint is that there’s alienation and isolation and not the reason for why it’s set up as it is and weird taboo themes) and he, at the very least, isn’t giving the same effort for my work as he is for everyone else.

I just hope she doesn’t think I’m whiny…she’s explicitly someone who identifies as an ally and she’s cool and does all that intersectional stuff…

And the weird comments about how it’s not foreign enough/he doesn’t know the setting despite everyone except the Korean characters having explicitly Korean names and explicitly stated Korean characteristics. And the one white person being described as blond, pale, and foreign.

“You gotta say it’s South Korea” Sir

Why don’t you get on the white people too about not knowing race in their modern setting stories? Or how you can’t remember their names or genders? When the only comments of those nature come on my POC and/or M/M stories? 6 out of 8 stories aren’t even about gender!!!

And it’s weird how he said I should give the elves a more fucked up gender when it wasn’t even a gender story when combined with the comments now—and how he also said he couldn’t tell gender either on it despite it being given.

Majority of the class is white, including him, and I’m feeling isolated…

There was an older white gentleman who wrote from the perspective of an 11 year old girl and he didnt get on him hard enough despite the 11 year old sounding like she was 11 going on 40 smtg.

He’s not engaging with the social, political, and racial commentary despite it repeatedly being stated in-text or implied over and over. Like unless he wants overt bigotry like a hate mob or some shit…

He sees “spooky creature/magical realism” and he loses his brain…it’s there for a reason!!! The setting is there for a reason! It’s repeatedly stated and implied over and over, and the settings and shit interlock to enforce themes!

If the problem is that its not overt enough—why does he say the content is really good? But then tells me to rewrite it anyway? Or he doesn’t even comment on race or some shit?

Like…it’s bare minimum to expect your instructor to read your content, right…and to remember the protagonist’s gender and name when they’re explicitly stated right?

Like apparently incest, age gap, etc. are more shocking than an implied coat hanger abortion.

I don’t want to be That Dude but he’s a old cishet white man, and I’m genuinely miserable in this class whenever he makes those weird comments.

Maybe he doesn’t mean it/is bad with words but I kinda expect bare minimum respect on reading my works at least.

I feel like he’s unconciously discriminating against me with how he talks to me and looks at my works.

[supercantaloupe]

in honor of both the Pirates of Leviathan finale and the new fh roll20con live show i have updated my chart sorting the elves of spyre by how much you should punch them, now featuring Even More Punchable Elves™!

like before, descriptions/reasoning under the cut

Adaine Abernant (high elf): she neither deserves to be punched nor will you live to regret punching her so this is a hard no

Sandra Lynn Faeth (wood elf): she’s a badass with the temper of a fed up single mom. this is not a fight you want to pick

Fabian Aramais Seacaster (half elf): when he’s being a whiny little bitch go ahead

Penelope Everpetal (half elf): this is revenge on all the mean popular bitches in high school who bullied you. punch away

Alamaria (elf, subspecies unknown): i think there’s a moral obligation in punching people who are actively trying to destroy a massive city with millions of inhabitiants

Clive Mardres/McDoon (wood elf): oh yeah, definitely punch him. ESPECIALLY if your name is Jack Brakkow

Arianwen Abernant (high elf): break her stupid little glasses while you’re at it too

Langley Sheffield-Harrington (half elf): beat him to a pulp. better yet, use his body to beat something else to a pulp at the same time

Angwyn Abernant (high elf): he’s like a shitty pinata his skull is just BEGGING to be cracked open by your fist

Aelwyn Abernant (high elf) (s1): talk shit get hit

Aelwyn (s2): please gd just let her rest for five (5) minutes

Danielle Barkstock (half elf): don’t fuck with the maidens alright? bad idea

Gilear Faeth (wood elf): why would you possibly want to make this man’s day worse it’s bad enough already

Hallariel Lomenelda Seacaster (high elf): listen she’s trying her best. also she’s a master fencer so not a good call

Galicaea (elven moon goddess): Tracker seems to be dealing with this one pretty well on her own but if you want to give her a good sock in the jaw you can still give it a go

Max Durden (aka Police State Kid) (drow): i mean he definitely could’ve been more helpful at like a hundred different points but he also isn’t actively harmful so it’s your call. he’s just a slightly shitty teenager

Zayn Darkshadow (drow, ghost): not much to gain here. i guess if he’s being annoying you can go ahead

Corey Durden (drow): knock some sense into this asshole’s head please

Telemaine Lomenelda (high elf): nothing to be gained here except the satisfaction of punching a weird ancient man in the face

Angela Worrel (half elf): narc. punch her

Kir (high elf): girls’ night! beat up the elven mage who kidnapped your friend!

Fathethriel (high elf): he is just begging to be punched

[gayregis]

in voice of reason do you think Geralt was justified in calling Yennefer “too possessive”? what did you think of nennekes response?

ok im splitting this into two parts for the two questions!!

PART ONE: do you think Geralt was justified in calling Yennefer “too possessive”?

well, i think that sapkowski didn’t really have the lore of every single detail down-pat yet. he changes much later on - for example, in a question of price, geralt is referred to as a child surprise, but in the sword of destiny in something more, geralt clarifies to calanthe that mousesack got his facts wrong... this is sapkowski is behind the scenes retconning it.

other things also are changed, like i think it’s weird how vereena is just referred to as vereena when mr emiel regis rohellec terzieff godefroy pops up later in baptism of fire and says his name is in accordance with vampire tradition, and also vereena can turn into a bat and fly even though it’s midday (iirc... the time isn’t specified, but it’s assumedly midday?) when regis states that he can only turn into a bat and fly during the full moon, and not before midnight at that. of course vampires are such an irrelevant little detail, a footnote in the actual story, but it’s something to keep in mind that sometimes sapkowski loses consistency in his own lore inbetween books. 

i think he also stated that geralt and yennefer spent 6 months together in vengerberg, but this was later changed to a year, and then to four years... so i’m not sure how much he had conceptualized of yennefer as a character and yennefer and geralt’s relationship by this time of writing and publishing the last wish. he might have just had geralt say that yennefer was too posessive because he needed a reason for them to be broken up at this moment.

but for the sake of simplicity, let’s say that this is fully what sapkowski intended to write and convey about yennefer - it’s on the page, after all. firstly, i think that geralt is a whiny pissbaby. he just is. especially at this point in the books. he complains about everything, nothing is ever right, the entire world is out to get him and mock him. so i am inclined to not exactly believe him 100% when he complains about things being too anything, of course he would find everything too anything, he’s so sensitive, he’s geralt of rivia.

i need to analyze what it means to be called “posessive” in a relationship. and i don’t know what the original word used was, perhaps it was something more specific, as is sometimes the case with the translation. does it mean that yennefer didn’t want geralt to be looking at other women, that she wanted him to remain monogamous, and he didn’t want to be monogamous? does it mean that she was controlling of his actions? i think these are kind of both in character, i wouldn’t agree with geralt in calling her “posessive” due to the actual look at yennefer’s character that we get later on, but canonically, yennefer did want monogamy from geralt. and canonically, she did influence his behavior a lot, at least in style of manner and dress, for example she taught him how to eat chicken with a knife and fork and also dresses him for the event on thanedd. i don’t think these are necessarily negative things, it depends on how the level of willingness of geralt to be treated like this, it just depends on if he likes it or not. 

but let’s actually look at instances in which yennefer could be called “posessive” - for me, specific scenes in blood of elves and lady of the lake pop up. the first thing that comes to my mind is that triss betrayed her and used magic on geralt to sleep with him... which, obviously, is dubious consent, which means possibly no consent at all... and so, yes, yennefer has the right to be upset at triss and, depending on the context (it’s vague if geralt consented or not) possible geralt. i don’t think this is her being possessive, saying “geralt belongs to ME,” but rather, why would my best friend and my boyfriend go behind my back to sleep together? it's just one of those things you don’t do, as a best friend. it’s disrespectful. and this tension between yennefer and triss continues throughout the series, the last hostility between them in the series is yennefer threatening to snatch her by her ginger locks if she goes after her man - which i find to be just sort of a catfight sapkowski wrote in, owing to his personal biases and view of how women interact with one another. but also, in context, yennefer has just been through hell to get ciri and geralt back and safe, and triss has already gone after ciri to steal her with the lodge, and since yennefer and geralt are actually sincerely in a commited relationship by this point, i think it’s justified for yennefer to be upset at the thought of triss trying to get geralt to cheat on her again. and also, it’s sort of humorous because of how insanely much yennefer has just been through, but sapkowski allows her to have this sort of petty drama throwaway line, it contrasts with her deep character development that she just received in these last two books, and due to that, it’s funny.

speaking of best friends... the next scene that pops into my head relating to yennefer being “posessive” is when she speaks with dandelion at the beginning of blood of elves. i think a “posessive” lover would be one to try and ruin the relationships that their lover has with other individuals: friendships, family, etc. but in this scene, she’s so nice to dandelion! she’s very respectful, even when she’s hurt. and she tells him she respects him and thanks him for being there for geralt. that’s not posessive, that’s entirely the opposite - accepting that even if you don’t really like your significant other’s friends, that they like their friends, and you have to respect that relationship. yennefer could literally just threaten or kill dandelion if she was posessive and wanted him out of geralt’s life, but instead she is grateful to him for being there for geralt when she couldn’t / in a way that she couldn’t. and, in this same scene, she says that she has gone to kaer morhen as a a guest many times, never uninvited, so that confirms that she also has a good relaitonship with the other witchers of kaer morhen, geralt’s family, and doesn’t try to limit geralt’s interactions with them. she’s quite supportive of geralt’s relationships beyond her.

and finally, let’s go to the end of blood of elves, in the scenes where she becomes a teacher and mother to ciri... in the beginning, she is actually upset because she is being possessive of geralt - she resents ciri because she feels that geralt’s attention has been divided between the two of them, that because geralt has this kid now, he’s forgotten about her... but nenneke rebukes her for this, and then she realizes that that’s an incredibly immature way to behave. and she becomes a better person, she changes from her initial petty behavior and becomes a wonderful, selfless mother to ciri. in the end, she wasn’t possessive at all.

so, i don’t think that yennefer is actually “possessive,” she kind of just wants to be respected as a human being and also as geralt’s lover. geralt, in a little sacrifice, realizes that he hasn’t exactly respected yennefer, because of his own insecurities, he believed that she didn’t really fall so deeply in love with him, and that he couldn’t love her back, but she did, and he did. so his perspective changes in this moment... but of course, the voice of reason occurs way before this, when he is still acting immaturely. yennefer and geralt as characters develop together and sometimes as a result from one another. in the beginning, they’re both incredibly insecure people and that insecurity has made them act immature. but over the course of the series, they learn and grow.

in this moment, i don’t think geralt was justified to call yennefer “posessive,” because over the course of the series we see that she isn’t, but it is in character for him to say so.

PART TWO: what did you think of nennekes response?

nenneke responds to geralt by saying she’s not his mom and he shouldn’t be voicing his relationship complaints to her, and that if he has something to say or give to yennefer, he needs to do it himself.

i like this response, primarily because she urges geralt to act responsibly and maturely. geralt is, as i said, immature at this point in the books, and also is not quite experienced in love and relationships... so he is acting indirectly, almost cowardly - like breaking up over text message, or asking someone else to ask the girl in class if she likes you. it’s just like, do it yourself! have some confidence! but this is the edge to how much geralt respects yennefer and values her... he doesn’t want to do the wrong thing and offend her, so that he does the cowardly thing instead, and ends up offending her after all - i mean, leaving a flower on the nightstand? come on, dude...

geralt NEEDS someone to be the voice of reason and tell him to snap out of it, yennefer is just another person like anyone else, and you need to be direct with her. if you’re sorry, then say sorry! don’t try to give her vague presents to make up for it. that’s not how relationships work.

what i find funny and ironic is that as nenneke urges geralt to act mature and respectably, she tells him she’s not his mother in the same breath - even though this is exactly what a mother does. i think this was intentional on sapkowski’s part, since nenneke is so obviously a mother figure to geralt, having her say “i’m not your mother” aloud is something that needed to be said, because even though he sees her as one and they have this kind of mother-child relationship, she’s not. or, on the other hand, she is, and by her denying it, it’s just meant to be ironic to the audience, who understands that she is geralt’s mother but can never admit that to him.

[3norachas]

pointy ears • seo changbin

— dwarf!changbin x elf!y/n (the hobbit au)

— translation: meleth - love, meleth nin & amralime - my love

masterlist

✧ ———— ❋ ⋇⋆✦⋆⋇ ❋ ———— ✧

the journey to rivendell wasn't really the most easiest thing you'll have to do, especially when you're accompanied by a whiny and stubborn dwarf.

it was a weird combination, really. anyone who would see the dwarf with the elleth would take a minute to believe that those two were together.

after all, dwarves and elves were supposed to hate each other, right?

"we should camp here for the night," you laid your bag on the ground.

"finally," changbin plop on the ground, later complaining about the pain on his bum, "I swear you and your elven stamina will be the death of me."

"meleth, I'm pretty sure you're stubbornness will ignore your weak ass," you laughed when you heard the gasp from the dwarf.

"you take that back!"

"i will if you help me get some branches for the fire, meleth nin."

after settling the fire and eating, you rest on your mattress near changbin's, placing your head on his chest while snuggling for warmth.

silence covered the two of you, letting the crackling of fire echo through the now dark woods. until it was pierced by a high pitched yelp.

"changbin!"

"what'd I do!?" changbin's eyes stare down at you in concern, "amralime?"

"s-stop playing with my ears please."

"huh?" you whined, hiding your face on his side with a pained whimper, "d-does it hurt?"

"no, but it's sensitive."

changbin softly chuckled at your curled form, tucking you in his arms before softly caressing your head, his fingers slightly scrapping the tip of your pointy ears, "is that better?"

"mhm," you sigh contentedly, allowing yourself to be lulled into sleep even with the slight tickle of your ears.

"go to sleep, amralime."

changbin whispered into your ears, kissing the tips softly and shortly following you into a peaceful sleep.

[toothpastecanyon]

We Walk Like Humans Do, Chapter 1

The Transcendence has been, on the whole, a good thing for magical creatures... for the ones that walked on two legs and fit in doorways, at least. Lacie has other problems to overcome before she can live in the big city.

Inspired by @marshmellowextract‘s ideas on the TAU Discord.

See most updated version on Archive of Our Own.

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               The Transcendence has been, on the whole, a good thing for magical creatures. True, there’s been no shortage of misunderstandings and pro-nat sentiments over the years, but all those centuries of hiding away from humans had been just as harmful.

               Humans are everywhere, after all. Avoiding them means avoiding most places on Earth, holing yourself away in dwindling forests and as-of-yet unexplored cave systems. Some could pass as human and live in their cities, but pre-Transcendence accounts of disguised elves or vampires often spoke of the burden of carrying such an immense secret, the disconnect they felt with any humans they befriended. They could never truly live as themselves.

               For some magical creatures, the Transcendence changed that. The Transcendence let them live freely amongst the humans, let them attend their schools and work alongside them to better the world.

               For some magical creatures, the Transcendence was the single best thing that had ever happened to them.

               For others?

               Well… for the less humanoid ones, they didn’t notice so much of a difference. For Lacie, she was still hanging out in the same old sewers she’d been hatched in.

               After all, when you’re a giant basilisk several bus-lengths long and capable of killing a man with a single glance, there are more obstacles to living in the city than ‘not feeling like you can be true to yourself.’

________________________________________________________________

               A snore rumbles through the depths of London’s sewers. Deep, deep underground, somewhere in a maze of rank-smelling tunnels sloshing with wastewater, there lies a hidden door, and behind that door slumbers a vicious, terrible monster guarding a tome of forbidden knowledge.

               That’s how the treasure hunters always describe Lacie’s home on the forums, and honestly, she finds it a little insulting. They’ll go on and on about how much the place stinks and how loudly she snores; it’s like they expect her to fix it or something, and… no? This is a sewer, it’s going to smell bad. And she needs to sleep, so it’s going to be noisy, too.

               If they’re gonna come down here to try and slay her and steal her shit, the least they can do is stop being so goddamn whiny about it.

               Like, look at these bozos coming in now. Lacie was having such a peaceful nap until they started messing around with the hidden door.

               She cracks a tired eye open, and glares at the sound of their voices.

               “No, it’s this one!” A rock shudders on the wall. “Didn’t you read the riddle? You touch the symbols clockwise!”

               “How did you get clockwise from the riddle? It’s way more complicated than that; the cipher clearly states-”

               “A-B-C-D. Clockwise.”

               “No, that’s- ABCD? Where on earth did you get ABCD?”

               Lacie lets out a rumbling sigh. Incompetent treasure hunters, oh joy. She shifts a little bit on her pile of gold, and waits for them to bumble their way into a solution so she can go back to  sleep.

               “Look, I don’t know how you’re getting ABCD, so why don’t we try my way first, and if mine doesn’t work-”

               “It’s absolutely not going to work.”

               “It will! I took a class in cryptography once, I know how this works.”

               “Ooo, aren’t you special.”

               “Look, just let me work, will you?”

               “Do it fast. Ugh, it smells like death down here.”

               At least it’s more bearable than your voice, Lacie thinks. She snorts at her own joke before hooking her tail around a wooden sign and dragging it in closer. She’ll need this later - quite a while later, most likely, but it’s good to be prepared.

               “That didn’t work?”

               “Of course it didn’t work, you idiot. I’ll open it-”

               “Hey, wait, maybe I did that wrong! Let me try that again!”

               “No, you had your chance!”

               “Just let- hey, get off me!”

               “No, you get off me!”

               “Come on dude, just let me try-”

               After listening to the treasure hunters scuffle and shout at each other for what felt like forever, Lacie hears a click in the door’s opening mechanism. The whole thing starts to rumble and dust loosens from the ceiling as it opens inwards, revealing… well, she doesn’t look at them directly in case they’re dumb enough not to bring basilisk protection, but she makes out two human figures with rifle-shaped sticks, which they immediately point at her face.

               “There it is!” The first man ushers the other back. “Stay behind me!”

               “Stay behind you? Dude, I’m a way better shot.”

               “What? No way, you are not!”

               “I totally am. Don’t you remember back at the range-”

               Lacie lets out a hiss before they can get into another stupid argument. She points the end of her tail at the sign, and it takes them a second to notice.

               “It’s doing something weird.”

               “Quick, let’s shoot it!”

               “No, look, that’s a sign it’s holding!” The second guy peers at the message. “Says ‘Fighting not needed, can’t let you take the physical book but am posting all chapters online at https- wait, you have a website?”

               She nods. A blog, actually.

               “Don’t be stupid.” The other guy gives him a shove. “There’s no way it has a website; this is some sort of trick!”

               “Yeah… yeah, you’re right! Wait, how is it a trick?”

               “Obviously it’s to confuse us and distract us from getting the treasure!” He cocks his rifle. “We have to stay focused! Stay behind me, I’ll get this thing right between the eyes-”

               Lacie finally looks down at the guy. Their gazes meet, the guy’s eyes widen; he yelps and staggers back, dropping his rifle and slapping a hand over his face… but he doesn’t drop dead. A second later, he peeks out behind his fingers.

               “I’m… still alive!” He cackles. “These contact lenses really do work!” Ha! Take that, you dumb lizard!”

               The other guy high fives him. “Yeah, take that! Now let’s kill this thing!”

               Huh, they’re slightly more prepared than she thought. Lacie stares at his smug smile a moment longer, then swings her tail around and dashes both of them against the right wall.

               There are no contact lenses that protect against blunt force trauma. They let out short-lived screams, cut off as soon as their bodies crash against stone; there’s a chorus of splintering cracks, then silence as they crumple to the ground amongst a pile of other shattered skeletons.

               Lacie looks at them now. Listens to all the familiar noises that could be heard in the absence of their voices - the dull roar of running water, the drips that fall from the ceiling and splash in puddles, the tinkling of gold coins as she shifts her weight.

               All the things she could hear, now that they were dead.

               Does she feel bad?

               Eh… sort of.

               She feels... more frustrated than anything else, these days. It’s not like she doesn’t give them a chance to escape, and they are trying to kill her… but still. It’s such a senseless loss of life - especially for such young, stupid humans - and over what? Some useless book?

               She turns and glares at it now, sitting on its little lecturn at the far end of the room. Stupid thing.

               One day, she will be free of it.

               But for now, she’s tired. She lays her head on glittering gold, closes her eyes, and falls asleep to all the quiet, comforting sounds of her home.

               She probably starts snoring, too… fuck, they’ve made her self conscious about it.

________________________________________________________________

               Chapter 7 of Wizard Animago’s Not-So-Secret Spellbook - His Shitty Death Spells and Why They’re Not to Die For, Seriously

               Hey everyone, this is 18Lacie5 back with another chapter overview. I know it’s been a year since I last posted, sorry about that. I’m usually way too tired to work on one of these - the joys of being cold blooded in England. Annnnnyyyyywwwwaaaayyyy, here is the much-anticipated chapter on ol’ Animago’s secret death spells!

               Spoiler alert: it’s gonna disappoint you.

               Now, for anybody new reading this, Sironus Animago was a 19th century English wizard that specialised in the study of animal transmogrification. If you don’t know who he is, that’s because he was a recluse who hated humanity so much he spent half his life trying to turn himself into literally anything else. The only time anybody hears about him is generally in treasure hunting circles, concerning a riddle he left behind for ‘any man worthy enough to learn his secrets.’ It is said that he wrote a spellbook containing all the knowledge he had accumulated over his lifetime, and considered it so dangerous he bound a basilisk into guarding it after his passing.

               Well, I am that basilisk, and I’m here to tell you why Animago’s spellbook is stupid and absolutely not worth dying for.

               This chapter’s an easy one: his death spells suck. Even by pre-Transcendence standards, they suck. He wasn’t the slightest bit interested in offensive magic, and I’m pretty sure he threw these ones in here because hey, every spellbook’s gotta have a spooky scary dark magic section, right?

               Let’s examine the first spell of Chapter 7: ‘Planis fugere a mortalis huius’ (a moment of silence for that Latin.) So ‘fly away from this mortal plane(s?)’ sounds pretty and all, but it’s way too poetic to be a reliable spell. Unlike the standard modern equivalent, which is, you know, just ‘Die’, your magic’s gonna have to figure out a whole lot about this sentence before it puts it into action. Fly away, how? Where are they flying to? What could count as our ‘planis’ here? The ground?

               You see how easily this could result in something like giving your enemy a pair of wings instead of killing them. Great. That’s totally what you’d want to happen in battle, right?

               This issue would have come up immediately in testing, which leads me to believe it was a purely theoretical spell of Animago’s, and not a particularly good one (but hey, at least it’s original this time, right?) As with all of them it does come with the minorly unique addition of alternate pronounciations in five different animal forms, but again, unless you’re turning yourself into a chicken, a dog, a hawk, a bear or a snake on a regular basis, when are you ever going to need this?

               All in all, probably the worst chapter in the entire spellbook, with sloppy, overly complex incantations I’d toss away in a heartbeat if not for the fact that I’ve been bound into protecting them. Next post, we tackle chapter 11: turning your furniture into animals!

               (Because that’s what your couch is missing. Teeth and claws and an ability to run away from you.)

               Do s both a favour, and don’t make me kill you over these shitty spells.

               Curled around her favourite pile of gold, Lacie scrolls down her blog, reading its contents with drooping eyes. She uses her tail to move a laptop’s trackpad, which makes it a little difficult to navigate - the frustration she feels whenever the clicker shoots off in random directions is the main reason she’s still awake - but not as much as one might be expecting, as the laptop is not an ordinary laptop.

               It’s gigantic. The screen is bigger than her, and the top almost scratches against the ceiling. Carefully balanced above the wet stone on four smaller gold piles, the charging port is wired up to a truly massive, glowing purple power strip. It hums with magical energy, charging her laptop as she gets to the end of the blog post.

               ‘Do s both a favour ’... ah, typo. Lacie shoves her mouse in the general direction of the edit button for a few seconds before landing on it; now she clicks, adds a u, and struggles her way back to the main page.

               Fixed. That was totally worth the effort.

               She lets out a snort, which turns into a great big yawn and leaves her head resting on top of the laptop. The metal’s got some warmth to it; she feels that against her cheek, and almost immediately starts struggling to keep her eyes open.

               This was a mistake, she thinks. Come on, she literally just got up! She can’t go right back to sleep!

               Just a little more time… to herself… without any… any humans… she was supposed to... to...

               The distant whoosh of water overhead and the steady hum of the power strip lulls her closer and closer to sleep, and she tries one last time to lift up her eyelids-

               And plop.

               A little water droplet lands right in her eye, and she jumps. Rises up, blinks rapidly - first to get the blurriness out of her vision, then to get rid of the sleepiness already creeping its way back in.

               She shakes her head to clear it. Once she’s mostly awake again, she lets out a triumphant little puff of air: not today, sleep! Not when she’s got shit to do!

               With that, Lacie turns back to her laptop and mouses over to another tab, titled ‘List of Craig’ and next to it, ‘(1)’ for one new message.  She’s been waiting for that (1) to show up - hopefully she hasn’t taken too long to respond back.

               The tab opens after she jabs left click a couple times, revealing a short chatbox:

L at 20:25: [is that double length chalk shipment still available?]

M at 20:35: [yes]

L at 20:36: [would be very interested in buying that, are you are ok with teleswitch methods of payment? you don’t have to wheel it anywhere, just let me know where it is in the house]

               Fifteen whole minutes later at 20:51, there’s the much-anticipated reply:

               [k]

               Lacie reads this, and has a sudden urge to smack her head against the keyboard. With a growl rumbling in her throat, she gets typing

L at 20:52: [okay, where is the shipment in your house? what room? the spell i use needs this.]

               She sends it off… and waits, scowling at the chatbox.

               And waits...

               And waits...

               And is still waiting. Stars, maybe she could’ve taken a nap.

               Speaking of that, her eyelids are starting to droop again. She huffs and shakes her head in a couple quick, flicking movements; that jolts her back awake, and she clicks back to her blog page.

               The latest post on chapter 7 stares back at her. In the dim-lit room, it’s glaring down on her, almost accusingly.

               Next post, it reads, we tackle chapter 11: turning your furniture into animals!

Post updated: less than two minutes ago

Post uploaded: more than two years ago

               Lacie sighs. This is what happens now when she takes a nap.

               Years, they’ve begun to pass her by like nothing . All she remembers of the past two are groggy hazes, half-recalled dreams; the only times she’d wake would be to fend off the occasional treasure hunter, then back to her slumber she’d go, like that was her only purpose in life.

               It didn’t used to be this way. She didn’t used to feel so tired all the time. Why?

               ...She’s getting too big for her home. The magic that sustains her, it isn’t enough anymore.

               That’s got to be the explanation.

               Which means she’s got to get out of here. She’s got to break that damn binding that tethers her to the spellbook…

               Lacie shoots a look at it now. Glares at the stony grey lectern it rests on, and everything piled around the base of that. The wax candles. The incense burners. The unholy artefacts. The tomes upon tomes of academic research, summoning circle references, nonstandard incantation guides…

               She has to break it.

               By any means necessary.

               …

               She’s got a new message from the human.

M at 21:13: [I put it outside for you. Its in the back yard. Your welcome.]

               With an eyeroll, Lacie wraps her tail around the lectern’s pole and brings it in closer. The spellbook slides precariously around the surface it’s resting on, but with a bit of care she places it down in front of her without anything falling off the edges.

               Now, the book - she peers at it now.

               As always, it looks like a mess; its leather binding had been handmade by Wizard Animago himself, but only because the guy was too paranoid to have anybody else do it. He did a sloppy job, and over the centuries it had fallen to pieces until the only thing holding it together anymore was a couple remaining strings and a headache-inducing cocktail of protection charms.

               For Lacie, it’s tiny, making it incredibly hard to flip through. She can’t help but wonder if it had seemed this tiny the last time she’d opened it… maybe she’d grown a little bigger since then.

               Stuffing that thought down, she keeps flipping; past Chapter 2 on transfiguration, past Chapter 3 on general transmutation, Chapter 4 on alchemy… Chapter 5, there it is.

               And bingo bongo, there’s the spell she wants: ‘Sironus Animago’s Telekinetic Switch’... and Lacie can’t help but snort at that name, because it isn’t actually a spell he invented.

               Like many less-than-reputable wizards of his time, he had a habit of stealing spells from contemporaries in other fields of magic, slapping his name in front of them and trying to pass them off as his own to pad out the number of chapters in his spellbook.

               (The internet was a terrible invention for guys like him. Lacie had a lot of fun ripping into this practice when she wrote about Chapter 5.)

               Anyway, while she could find the original spell anywhere on the internet, there is something Animago added to every entry he wrote down in his book - that something is off to the far right, almost obscured by the yellowing and curling of the page.

               Here, next to five simple illustrations of a chicken, a dog, a hawk, a bear, and a snake, are the alternate pronounciations of the spell.

               Lacie squints at the last line - her mouth moves as she refamiliarises herself with the incantation - then she nods to herself, and scoops up a generous portion of gold coins, and closes her eyes.

               Pictures a backyard, with a crate full of summoning chalk, just waiting for her to pick them up.

               And with that in mind, she speaks.

               Not in words. Not in a language. She speaks in hisses and spits, in a string of meaningless noises that fit better in her mouth than any human tongue. At the end of it, though, that specific arrangement of sounds triggers an enchantment, which triggers the telekinetic switch.

               The coins in her grasp blink out of existence. A second later, they’re replaced by a crate of summoning chalk. It rattles when she picks it up; the sound echoes around her room until she puts it down by the rest of her demon supplies.

               There’s a lot piled up there now, Lacie thinks. Enough to summon a demon, and at that, she grimaces. Suppresses a yawn.

               She’d better get on with it, then.

________________________________________________________________

               Lacie is starting to think that maybe demons don’t design their summoning rituals with basilisks in mind.

               She’s cleared a space in her room for the circle - has shrunk her laptop back down to normal size with one of Animago’s spells - and now that it’s time to draw the thing, she’s encountered a problem.

               Have you ever tried to draw a chalk circle on wet stone tiles? Have you ever tried to do it without hands?

               It is, in a word, difficult.

               Fortunately, she’d seen this issue coming from day one. She bought a shape template from some website selling school supplies, and blew it up with the same sizing spell she uses on her laptop. She put that over a stone slab she pulled off a drier part of the wall, traced the circle, and voila! A summoning circle.

               (She still needed to decorate it, but she’d rather intentionally chosen a demon with a simpler design. It didn’t take too long to replicate, all things considered.)

               Now onto the candles. To Lacie’s eternal disappointment, there’s no spell on the books for fire, or heat, or anything like that; she has to get creative. While rifling through the backpacks of some ex-treasure hunters, she comes across a portable gas cooker. The ignition is a simple switch she can flip - tick tick tick fwoom , it goes, then fire.

               She keeps that close to her, ready to use.

               After that… The incantation. She physically can’t pronounce the Latin chants needed to perform a sufficiently compelling summoning, which is a big problem. Most powerful demons - ones powerful enough to break bindings - tend to be rather picky about how they’re summoned. Unless it’s done exactly right, they won’t bother showing up for her.

               She needs a demon that’ll be a little more forgiving, and after pouring through textbooks, how-to guides, summoning lists, there’s only one name that seems to fit the bill.

               Lacie lights the candles, one by one, and watches as the circle of Alcor the Dreambender begins to glow.

               Strange things begin to happen. Shadows lengthen. The air gets colder - she feels that like a punch in the gut. In the centre of the chalk lines, a wispy black smoke forms, and golden eyes open from within the darkness.

              ��Those eyes… Lacie isn’t used to being scared of things, but she stares into those eyes and knows, suddenly, definitively, that she isn’t the monster in the room anymore.

               They turn to look at her now, and-

               “Ow!” The void-black being winces back, rubbing its forehead. “What the heck? It’s like a migraine… what is this?”

               She blinks. Huh, her stare works on demons. They didn’t mention that the summoning guides.

               The demon’s straightening again. “Is this a binding? Because guys, I’m gonna be real annoyed if you tried… to… to bind me with..? Guys?”

               It looks around the circle in confusion… then up, up, following the line of her body to meet her eyes again.

               “Oh.” It gives a hard blink. “Ow, okay. You know you’re supposed to give me a sacrifice before you sic me on the big scary snake monster, right?”

               Shit, it doesn’t see the sign. She holds it up higher.

               “Like, at least a little bit of candy for starters, y’know? Just to be like ‘Hey, I appreciate you for coming all this way’ and I’ll be like ‘Thanks! Now I actually feel motivated to save you from-’” It notices the sign, and pauses. “Um. Hang on a second, I’m missing something.”

               Lacie watches the demon read over the sign: BOUND TO SPELLBOOK, it reads, DEAL TO BREAK BINDING IN EXCHANGE FOR HUMAN SACRIFICES? Its glowing eyes steadily widen, and it glances back up at her.

               “Wait, you summoned- agh!” It blocks her stare with a hand. “You summoned me?”

               She nods.

               “Okay, that’s… new. What did you want again… spellbook... break binding to spellbook- human sacrifice?” Its eyes narrow. “Where are these humans you’re talking about?”

               Putting down the sign, she points at the pile next to the door. Most of them are bones by now, but hey, apparently some demons like that. She watches this one inspect them.

               “Oh, they’re… not fresh. Where did they all come fr- ow ! Okay, please stop with the staring, that’s not gonna work for me!” When she obligingly averts her gaze, he lets out a sigh. “Thank you. Now, uh, I kinda wanna know where you got all these bones from?”

               He sounds way more bothered about that than Lacie thought he would. A little panic fluttering in her chest, she flips the sign over and grabs her carving rock.

               “What are you…? Oh, you can’t talk, can you. Alright.” It shuffles its feet. “You wanted me to break a binding… I can see it now. Connected to that book over there?”

               Out of the corner of her eye, she watches Alcor float closer to it. Closer, closer, too close - it tiggers something in her, and she has to stop writing to block it with her tail. Has to let out a hiss at the literal demon; thank the stars its eyes widen in understanding instead of darkening in anger.

               “Oh, you’ve been bound to guard it,” it says, stepping back. “I see. Sorry. So, those bones - they’re from people who tried to take it, right?”

               Thank the stars again that it realises, because she isn’t even halfway done with the message. She nods.

               “That makes sense. Wow, that must be some important spellbook you’re guarding, huh?”

               An important spellbook - Lacie can’t muffle a snort as she shakes her head. Alcor laughs too, though he sounds a little bit uncomfortable.

               “Oh, that, that’s gotta suck. I’m sorry, uh… What’s your name? If you have one- oh stars what am I saying, ‘if you have one’ that sounds so rude -”

               With another snort, she points at a welcome mat she’s carved just in front of the hidden door.

               “‘Welcome to Lacie’s home. You found the way in, now’ - heh - ‘find the way out.’ I like that, it’s funny!” He grins up at her. “I guess these guys didn’t- ow . Agh, sorry, I was gonna say, I guess these guys didn’t see the sign when they came in, huh?”

               A head shake; they did not. They certainly didn’t laugh at it either.

               (To be fair, they were generally too busy gaping at the giant basilisk in the room to give an opinion on her decorations, but it was nice to finally get a little validation. She is funny sometimes, isn’t she?)

               “Didn’t think so.” Alcor straightens his cufflinks. “Well, Lacie, while I don’t think I can technically count this as a human sacrifice, it should still be more than enough to break any basic bond. So ,”

               She watches him extend a hand wreathed in blue fire, hears him speak with a voice that brings back a little of that initial fear, reminds her that as friendly as he may seem…

               “D̵̜͍͖̘o̱͖̙̰̪̥̹͜ w̹͖̝̩͢e ̵̲͓̖h͇̹͖̞̦̠̮͘a̤̰v̹͔͚̭̦͜e̻ ̻̘̭̫a̩ ͈̳̯̯̰̣̪d̕e͇̪͍̜̻̪͘a̙̻̬̦͔ͅl̲̝͓͔?”

               She’s still dealing with a demon.

               “Wait, uh… you don’t have to shake.” He retracts his hand, demonic reverb gone as suddenly as it showed up, but the memory of it is hard to shake. “You can just, you know, nod or something, that’s fine.”

               Lacie thinks hard on that for a moment. She glances back at the spellbook, the stupid, useless spellbook she’s been bound to, sitting on a lecturn in a room she’s been trapped in her whole life, a room that’s getting smaller and smaller as the years go by.

               She’s outgrown this, she thinks. It’s time to move on.

               “Hang on a second.”

               Alcor’s voice makes her turn. He’s closed his eyes, and there’s a frown on his face that Lacie doesn’t like the look of. She leans in closer, listening to him mutter to himself.

               “This isn’t- now how did he do this…? Oh. Oh , that’s not… dammit, that’s not good.” He opens his eyes. “Uh, Lacie? Got some bad news: I, uh, can’t break the binding.”

               ...What? Why not?

               She blinks, watches him struggle to explain.

               “I-I mean I can, technically! But not with this deal - not that I don’t want to help you, but… it’s complicated. Demon deals are complicated, there’s got to be a give and a take and it sucks, it’s...”

               She watches him sigh. Frowns, as he looks away.

               “Look, uh, I was going on the impression that this was a simple guardian bond, but it’s not. I didn’t think - you know, you were laughing when I said it was an important spellbook or something - I didn’t think it was gonna be some high-level magic… but it is.” He clenches his fists. “He’s managed to bind it to your soul , and that gets tricky for demons. There’s got to be a give and a take, right? And if I give a soul freedom…”

               … he has to take another’s , Lacie thinks, and narrows her eyes. Is this heading where she thinks this is heading?

               “I have to take freedom too, which… well, you don’t feel like selling your soul to me, do you?”

               No no no, that’s the one thing all the manuals said never ever to do! She shakes her head vigourously, and he gives a quiet chuckle.

               “Yeah, didn’t think so… I really did want to help you with the binding, but I can’t. Not without enough payment in return.” The most powerful demon in the world just shrugs helplessly. “I’m sorry. It’s a stupid rule and I’m always trying to bend it if I can, but I can’t outright break it.”

               Lacie looks back at the spellbook. She knows a thing or two about stupid rules she can’t break. She really can’t, apparently.

               Apparently, she’s going to be stuck with this thing for the rest of her life. Well. This… this sucks.

               What is she going to do now?

               “Um, listen,” Alcor clears his throat. “I can’t- uh, I may not be able to break the binding, but if there’s anything else I can do… well, you’ve got a lot of stuff you can sacrifice to me, I can probably do just about anything - anything that’s not soul-related, anyway.”

               Lacie blinks. Just about anything... she could still get out of this room before it starves her. Yes, if he was able to teleport both her and the book outside-

               But what would she do after that? The book’s tiny ; she’d need some way to lug it around, and she’d need to do that while finding food for herself, and oh stars all the guides on demon deals were screaming at her to be specific right now-

               “Do you need some time to decide?”

               She looks down at Alcor, and nods. He floats back towards the summoning circle.

               “Alright, well, call me up again when you’ve got a deal in mind...” Glancing around the circle, at the crispy candles and the shaky drawings of his symbols, he blinks, then he glances back at her. “Uh… how long did this take you to do?”

               A while, Lacie thinks, and snorts. He seems to get the message.

               “Right, well, I’ll leave my calling card with you, so you don’t have to do that all over again.” He fishes the card out of his pocket; somehow, it comes out almost as big as him. “When you’re ready to make a deal, just prick your fing… uh, just hold it, okay? I’ll keep an eye out for you.”

               She takes it, and nods. Tries for a smile, like the humans do to show gratitude.

               “What are you-? Ow.” He squints away from her stare. “Um, well, it was nice meeting you, Lacie! I’m sorry I couldn’t help more.”

               Alcor seems like he wants to say more, but after a moment of hesitation he gives a quick wave and disappears in a puff of smoke. The candles go out with him - remembering the sheer effort it took to light them in the first place, she cringes at that.

               Well, at least she doesn’t have to summon him again. She looks from the smoke wisping off the wicks, down to the business card in her grasp.

               It’s glossy and black; on one side, there’s a white circle around Alcor’s golden symbol; presumably that’s the place you’re supposed to prick your finger on. There’s a little note up top that says, ‘Need help? Summon Alcor the Dreambender today!’ and she snorts at that.

               What a strange little creature… strangely endearing. She can hear how crazy she sounds thinking about it, but that demon was actually kind of a decent guy? She isn’t about to go selling her soul to him any time soon, but it felt like he genuinely wanted to help and that’s… refreshing.

               It’s certainly a change of pace from the treasure hunters she usually encounters.

               With that in mind, Lacie grips the card. It feels sturdier than it looks, but she still takes care tucking it underneath her. Once she’s done that, she turns back to face the circle again.

               She sighs. Blinks, slowly. After something like that, all she wants to do is take a nice long nap, but...

               Well, she’d better get cracking with that deal.

________________________________________________________________

Showing comments for Chapter 7 of Wizard Animago’s Not-So-Secret Spellbook - His Shitty Death Spells and Why They’re Not to Die For, Seriously

EdgyTwedgy666: [fake lol]

               Sometimes, Lacie really doesn’t like humanity. She likes reading their writings, she likes looking at the photos they take of their world, she even likes the occasional specific human, but as a whole?

Rey_hunter: [can you tell me how to solve animagos riddle?? plz]

JarrSlayer8: [I dont get it. Author keeps calling himself a battlisk? Is this a joke account, because he needs to say its a joke so people don’t get confused.]

Foundit_56: [hehe nice try dude… im coming for that spellbook even if your to scared to…]

               If this is what humans are like, she can understand why Animago hated being one so much. I mean seriously, she’s telling people what’s in the spellbook so they’ll leave her alone, and these are the kind of comments she gets?

Pyrocandro: [ummm, you know planis fugere a mortalis huius doesn’t translate to fly away from this mortal plane right? It looks more like go away to me… jus sayin. Maybe you should take a latin class? ;)]

               Lacie narrows her eyes.

               Maybe the non-treasure hunting humans are nicer.

               Maybe up on the surface, humans are actually cool and not smugly correcting her Latin on every post.

               Maybe, but it’s a shame a human trapped her down here to guard his shitty book, so she might never find out.

               A sigh, long and tired. She’s been brainstorming deals ever since Alcor left, but with her still lugging around the spellbook they all seemed… unfeasible. The thing is falling apart already - how’s she supposed to keep it safe out there? Call it a lack of imagination, but she’s exhausted and the only thing she can think of is to keep holing up in her room, ask Alcor to boost the energy of Animago’s old sustaining spells so it can support her again.

               That would work. It would, but it feels…

               Lacie grimaces.

               It feels like there’s more than this. There’s a whole world out there beyond her room, beyond guarding some spellbook; she’s been looking at it ever since she took a laptop off a treasure hunter’s body. She’s been looking, she’s been reading, she’s been writing, and, just as she was about to make that deal with Alcor, she suddenly realised she’s been wanting .

               Wanting to go out there. Wanting to explore, wanting to leave this place. She’s outgrown it, in more ways than one, and now the thought of staying here, forever...

               It feels like she’ll regret not making a better deal when she had the chance.

               But what is a better deal? Maybe she’s just too tired to think, but her mind is blank and now she’s just scrolling through stupid human comments, thinking this is what I’ll have to deal with for the rest of my life...

woodzarcor4lyfe: [how does a bastlisk type lol theyve got no arms]

               Oh, god. Oh, no.

SheldonHunts: [Actually, basilisks are classified as supernatural BEASTS instead of supernatural BEINGS. They’re non-sentient, so I’m preeetty sure you’re not a basilisk dude... cool post tho, was fun to read :)]

               Fucking. Humans. Why are they like this?

Epicbl00dhound: [looooool i bet there’s so many dumbasses in the comments fallin for this………. your not a bastlicks buddy i bet you made this up to feel special………  i bet your just some guy in your moms basement pretending…… dont pretend cuz humans are THE BEST we beat all other spacies (watch pronatpat he has the TRUTH) so get out of there….. be a human!]

               Ugggghhhhhhhh, why is this her life? Why can’t she-

               Wait.

               Lacie reads that last comment again. Through all the weird grammar and the pro-nat grossness and everything else she doesn’t even want to unpack… it’s giving her an idea.

               Be a human...

               A strange, strange idea - but it might just actually work.

[tanadrin]

hey *whispers* hey. hey. i saw your post in the wow tag. i would read THE SHIT out of your interpretation of wow lore. i have homework right now but i think i might just read through your blog a bit. the characters have always been such a high point for me (listen. i know knaak did a lot of shit. but you can pry Krasus from my cold dead hands he was EVERYTHING to middle school me) and i feel so conflicted over what theyve done to the characters - sylvanas, anduin, everyone. would love ur take

You might be a little disappointed, most of my blog isn’t about WoW (it postdates my WotLK raiding/RP guild phase, and I’ve only just recently got back into it with Classic). Lots of opinions on WoW characters below the cut.

I actually don’t hate Krasus as a character. He’s fine, he’s not a Designated Idiot Ball Carrier like some of the others are. In re: the dragons generally, I don’t like the simplistic thing WoW lore does a lot where one faction leader going bonkers turns the whole faction into baddies for no apparent reason, because all political entities are monoliths except when they’re not. I’m also not a huge fan of how crowded the, erm, metahuman bureaucracy on Azeroth has become in the lore–like, the Keepers and the Dragon Aspects serve similar roles, and the lore could have done fine with one or the other, and the dragons were here first (and Ysera and Alexstrasza are BAMFs), and so should get to stay.

Sylvanas is bae, obviously, and Sylvanas as Warchief was a terrific move plotwise. I think it’s a pity they had to kill Vol’jin to do it (because I am also very here for Warchief Vol’jin), but she is obviously the more interesting choice. Speaking of Warchiefs:

Thrall doesn’t have the Green Jesus Marty Stu quite as bad as some people think, but he does kinda have it, and I don’t see them grappling quite with the fact that he done fucked up. Like, not only did he install a Warchief who should have had all smart members of the Horde tugging at their collars nervously when he started his rule, Garrosh turned into a Sha-summoning Old God-corrupted, casual-atrocity-perpetrating maniac, not to mention all the bullshit on Old Draenor I do my best to forget about lest my blood pressure spike. We don’t really get a satisfying mea culpa from Thrall for that, and then his response is to fuck off to fiddle around with the Earthen Ring for a bit, before retiring to a farm in Nagrand. Keep in mind, one of the whole reasons the Horde came together in its current shape in the first place is because of the charismatic, hopeful figure of Thrall. It ran the very real risk of splintering under Garrosh for good (ESPECIALLY after the murder of Cairne, RIP Cairne Bloodhoof, you were too good for this world), and even the most unifying successor (which I think Vol’jin was) didn’t have Thrall’s inclusive, unifying vision. Sylvanas doesn’t, either, and even more, is sort of low-key hated by everybody else, so while I don’t think she’s a maniac like Garrosh who would recklessly divide the Horde, she’s also not, I am forced to admit, necessarily the ideal Warchief from a political standpoint.

Even if he didn’t return to the post of Warchief, Thrall had a moral obligation after the Garrosh debacle to try to help hold the Horde together and heal the divisions his negligence caused. At least to throw his support behind Garrosh’s successors, and not to pretend that Deathwing’s death meant everything was OK forever, job done. And if he wasn’t going to do that (and he has excellent motivations for not wanting to do that!), I think the consequences of that have to be explored. I think some people would blame him, and be justified in doing so. I think somebody like Varok Saurfang, who has had decades of experience with the damage bad leaders could do, would rightly be a little pissed, even as he sought Thrall out for help, that Thrall had let the Horde he built languish under subpar leadership. Thrall has been selfish–and that’s great, because he desperately needed some character flaws more significant than “cares too much” and “believes in people a lot.”

Anduin: better than Varian, still a little bland? Varian was a Professional Idiot Ball Handler, who seemed to do stuff not out of a coherent conception of his character, but just because the plot required a Generic Human King to do it. Plus there was all that stuff with the cloning and the kidnapping that never really made any sense. I like Anduin’s optimism; I like that he feels like a thoughtful, reasonable guy, who’s doing his best in often-impossible circumstances. I feel like they could show him being a little more frustrated sometimes, though, and a little pissed at people like Jaina who obstinately refuse to do the strategically correct thing even if it means setting aside their resentments for a bit. Disclaimer: I play almost exclusively Horde toons, they may address this better in the Alliance quests in WoW.

But oh man, besides the Draenei, I hate most what they did to Jaina. Jaina was that rare jewel, an optimist in a world whose setting demands perpetual chaos. Yes, yes, Theramore and the mana bomb, I’m not suggesting she should be made of stone, but it breaks her character to have her suddenly go from someone trying to forge a lasting peace between the Horde and Alliance in WC3–to the point where she would see her own father dead–to someone who now blames the whole Horde as one no exceptions for what happened at Theramore. Should she struggle with grief and pain and anger? Absolutely. But she should deal with them in more complex ways than “now I am become the mirror image of Daelin.” Nevermind that even if she did that she should at least regret not listening to him back in WC3. (Do they address that in BFA with the introduction of Kul Tiras? Idk, I haven’t played BFA at all yet.) It seems like Jaina’s role now is to be the Person Who Hates The Horde, and honestly, that’s a tired trope. It’s just not interesting, it has no nuance, it has no interesting outcomes. You could maybe get away with it with the generation of leaders from the Second War like Daelin and Genn who knew the Orcs only as the fel-corrupted servants of the Burning Legion, but it’s obvious to anyone with two brain cells to rub together than the current Horde is a very different animal politically and strategically, so even if you hate the Orcs with a burning passion, that is not going to transfer to the Tauren, nevermind onetime allies like the Blood Elves.

Gul’dan: oh my god the time travel plot was so stupid. Did the whole universe get duplicated in the alternate timeline? Since travel between the universes is cheap and easy that means there’s a whole nother Burning Legion with a whole nother Sargeras out there that’s still a huge fricking threat! Not to mention a whole nother Azeroth! Did just Draenor get duplicated? That doesn’t seem to match up with the fact a lot of the Burning Legion characters in WoD seem to be parallel universe versions of Burning Legion villains we already know, but it’s not directly confirmed or disconfirmed. Is it some sort of weird Bronze Dragonflight timey-wimey thing that doesn’t have its own independent reality? Ok, fine, but obviously this alternate Draenor has enough of an independent existence for us to visit it again and see what it’s like decades later, not to mention bring some of the people there back. Gul’dan was a fine, if one-dimensional villain but bringing him back from the dead was dumb, dumb, dumb, in a setting where death often feels meaningless and seems to be reversible at random. And the general incoherence of magic in the setting combined with the perennial incoherence of time travel plots (Gollum voice: *we hates them!*) really just reduced WoD to a quivering mess of plot holes, like febrile fan speculation made manifest.

Tirion Fordring: good example of a purely heroic character done well, which WoW has few of. I think because he actually has challenges to overcome, and he doesn’t feel like an idiot.

Bolvar Fordragon: Literally did not know or care who this guy was until the Wrathgate cinematic, but what they did after that with his character was terrific, 10/10.

Malfurion, Tyrande, Illidan: These characters all bore me to tears. My WotLK main was a druid, and I’m a big fan of the druid lore, so I wanna like Malfurion, I really do, but he’s just so dull. Partly because it doesn’t feel like he has any real limitations on his power, just whatever the plot demands he be able to do or not do at any given moment, partly because he just feels like a stiff-necked scold. Tyrande is even more one-dimensional. Illidan is pure 3edgy5me, and the demon hunters in general feel like they get to be too cool to actually traffic in any of the pathos of what should be their emotional equivalents like the Death Knights and the Forsaken. It’s like, “oh man, my life is so tormented, I have these bitchin’ horns and tattoos, and I’m, like, totally immortal, here, hold my rad sword thingies for a second.” At least with the Death Knights you get the feeling that being a Death Knight is a genuinely miserable experience, so there’s some genuine conflict at the heart of the class: sure, you play as a hero, but not the kind of hero you’d necessarily want to be. Demon hunters are just pissed they don’t get to sit at the cool kids’ lunch table, and Illidan genuinely acts like a giant asshole and then gets self-righteous and whiny when his friends and family are like “Dude! Stop being such an asshole!” There’s room for a prickly character, who’s a dick, but who’s our dick, and maybe that’s what they were going for, but Illidan is just the worst.

Azshara, Lady Vashj: The Naga were a giant fucking mistake. A symptom of the inability to let backstory stay backstory, to have to resurrect and retread the same events over and over again that plagues serials when lesser writers without original ideas get let loose on them. Settings like WoW (like Star Wars, like Star Trek, like Dune) are whole universes. You should be expanding the borders, making them feel bigger, more fine-grained, more alive, not beating the same major characters to death over and over again. The ancient Kaldorei are way more interesting as a lost past and a lesson in hubris than fish-snake-people who live under the sea.

Also, water levels are dumb and I hate them. This applies to coral-and-shellfish themed zones regardless of whether swimming is involved.

Cho’gall: I loved the “insane nihilist death cult” reincarnation of the Twilight’s Hammer Clan in World of Warcraft, and Cho’gall as the many-eyed crazed ogre mage with two heads was great. Would much rather have more Cho’gall than Guldan 2.0.

While I’m on Cataclysm: one thing you don’t often feel in worlds like WoW is the possibility of real defeat, because for extradiegetic reasons, it’s impossible to truly lose in any long-lasting way (or, in quests like Battle for the Undercity in WotLK, they just… don’t let you, which feels dumb as heck). I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of a post-apocalyptic fantasy world, a world where the bad guys won, and all the worst things the good guys feared came to pass. I think this is one reason I loved the original interpretation of the Draenei so much, because we saw in Draenor what that really looked like. It was bleak, and it was poignant, and even though it was set within a silly melodrama, it actually moved me. Cataclysm did something similar with the postapocalyptic time-travel instance (time travel being used well for once in WoW!), where you saw that Deathwing’s victory wasn’t just an abstract possibility, but a thing that could actually happen. It made the possibility of defeat feel more real, and it gave you a taste of that same bleak, poignant feeling: this, it said (just for a moment!) is what failure looks like, an Azeroth without life, without hope, in which everything you ever struggled for was utterly in vain. And that motivated you to work even harder to prevent it.

Alleria, Turalyon: “You last saw us in WC2, and since then we’ve been fighting a thousand years (subjective) of endless war against the Burning Legion and been irrevocably changed by the experience” is actually pretty great! But if I were going to rewrite WoW lore, I would make that a thousand objective years and set the final victory over the Burning Legion in the future, at a time when the Alliance and Horde have made a durable peace, and Azeroth has moved on from decades of endless war. I think there’s a real problem with trying to make the player one of the heroes that brings down Sargeras for good because it’s *such* an epic battle, but it’s a massively multiplayer game. Making every player the grand master of their class order was bad enough, but when you are obviously playing out entirely different diegesis from everyone around you, even if you didn’t have problems like sharding and a glut of phasing and cross-server activities and instant teleportation to dungeons, it really feels like a single-player RPG with a chat function. I mean, conflicting diegeses is always going to be a problem with questing-based MMOs, but suspension of disbelief worked when you were plainly one person embedded in a larger effort, like in vanilla, BC, and WotLK. But “you are one of thousands of people who is the Best Warrior Ever and sole Leader of the Warriors, and who has the Only Artifact Weapon that somehow also has thousands of copies”… yeah, that just doesn’t work for me. I feel like I’m being pandered to, and not in a fun way, like with the Pandaren.

Sargeras: I like that they retconned Sargeras to have a better motivation than “demons made me nihilistic.” The idea of a void-corrupted titan being something so terrible a member of the Pantheon would shatter worlds to prevent it is interesting. But the Void gods still feel… kinda non-threatening? We don’t see them actively working to threaten anything we really care about, the Void is mostly a pretty passive abstract force like the Light, and in general I feel like the setting isn’t really dualistic, but er… trialistic? Is that a word? In that there’s a three-way opposition between the Void, the Light, and the Nether/Arcane, from the perspective of which each is the opponent of both of the others, but that’s never laid out explicitly anywhere.

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Michael After Midnight: Dragon Age II

Dragon Age is a series very near and dear to my heart; ever since playing Origins back when I was in college, I have been inspired by the stories, characters, and lore. Hell, Origins alone is a huge inspiration to my writing, and why wouldn’t it be? It has great locations, deep lore, a core main party without a single weak link with each and every party member you have being unique and entertaining in their own right, and an epic story with all sorts of twists and turns. And it only has two really shitty segments in the whole game! It’s truly a great first entry in a series.

But despite my love for it, I put off playing the sequel for most of the decade, only playing it for the first time this year. And why is that? Because… the critics said it was bad… yes, unfortunately in my younger years I took what critics said without any grains of salt. Dragon Age II was not very popular back around the time it came out, mostly because of its radical departure from the style of the first game, with more hack-and-slash-esque combat, a much more simple and self-contained story, and a cast of characters far more divisive than the first time around. It’s only over time that people have started to give it the respect it deserves, but much like fellow fantasy series The Legend of Zelda it comes at the cost of the current game being bashed.

So how is this red headed stepchild of a sequel, anyway? Did the critics have a point, or is this really an underrated gem? Well, I’m happy to report that this is indeed a fun and fantastic game, and I heavily regret being kept apart from the lovely Merril for so long due to poor critical reception, but there are a lot of problems too. For everything it does really well, it kind of shits the bed in other areas, and a lot of that can be contributed to a rushed development cycle that got this game churned out just over a year after the first one, leading to things like all items lacking the detailed descriptions they would get in the first game, which doesn’t sound like much, but then you get an item called something like “Uncle Horky’s Spanking Rod” as a magic staff and there’s no explanation as to why it’s called that and you have to imagine up some ludicrous backstory for it.

The lack of flavor text is a minor gripe, though, compared to the obnoxiously repetitive environments of dungeons. Reusing and flipping dungeons around and reusing assets would be one thing, but here they literally just take a map, flip it a bit with no changes to the details of the level, and just block off doors that lead to areas they don’t want you going. The worst part is on your mini map you can see the blocked pathways you likely saw ten minutes ago in another dungeon, which just makes a lot of the missions feel bland and samey. It also doesn’t help that enemy types are rather paltry, so you’ll be fighting a lot of the same mooks in the same maps over and over as you grind for items, gold, and EXP.

And then there are some of the characters. The worst of the bunch are sadly two characters who are returning from the first game and its expansion Awakening – Anders and Isabela. Isabela is arguably worse, because she honestly seems rather fun and nice at first, if overly and aggressively flirty, but as the story goes on, it’s revealed that she is actually the cause behind some of the biggest issues in the first few acts, which she neglects to tell you until it is far too late and unless you decided to maximize your friendship with her, she will run off and never return to your party. I can’t deny that this completely soured me to her, and at the end of the quanari invasion of Kirkwall I was only upset I couldn’t find her in act three and kick her ass for what she did.

Then there is Anders. Poor, poor Anders. In Awakening, he was one of the most funny and charming characters, a nice little substitute for Alistair that I actually ended up liking for than the Weenie King of Ferelden. Here though? Anders can not go one fucking conversation without bringing up how oppressed mages are and how much the templars suck and blah blah blah. The worst part is I do agree with him, but he’s just so whiny and obnoxious about it I left him behind all the time, dooming my party to having no healer even as I fought high dragons, blood mages, and Corypheus. It was worth it to not hear Anders bitching about templars and insulting Merril and Fenris. Oh, and Anders nukes the chantry and sets off a civil war. Isabela may be a nasty bitch, but Anders definitely comes out looking like a huge cunt by the game’s end.

The entire endgame is kind of an utter mess too, seeing as no matter whose side you join you end up fighting the same two bosses, with one of them just not making any sense whatsoever. And then the game just sort of ends on a very unsatisfying cliffhanger. And as much as I just complained, all of this stings because really, the rest of the game is quite good, and the story is fun if scaled back from the epic tale of Origins.

Let’s get the obvious best part out of the way: Varric. Varric is literally the best part of the entire Dragon Age franchise. He’s a snarky, wisecracking surface dwarf with no beard who writes best-selling novels, constantly has his shirt open to show off his magnificent chest hair, and has a crossbow named Bianca that he is uncomfortably attached to. He is one of the greatest characters ever created, and there was not one single moment I left him out of my party, because he is a blast to have around, and what’s more, if there’s ever a situation where the dialogue wheel pops up and you can let him talk… you’ve won. This guy can talk his way out of any situation. There’s nothing bad you can say about Varric, and he is in fact the only companion in the game I can wholeheartedly stand behind as a paragon of great writing.

I love the other characters, don’t get me wrong, but they have their issues. Aveline and Fenris in particular, with Aveline being a bit too by-the-books at times to the point where she exacerbates the quanari conflict by demanding that elves who killed a guard who raped one of their own be turned over to her after they converted to the Qun. This is all despite her knowing full well that the poor elf girl would have otherwise gotten no justice seeing as how city elves in this setting are second class citizens at best. Still, she has a rather adorkable romance questline where you hook her up with one of the guards, and she’s not a bad person, just a touch misguided at times.

That last sentence can also apply to Fenris, but on a grander scale. He’s a cool, edgy, brooding elf who absolutely fucking hates magic with every fiber of his being. He is the Anti-Anders, though he’s far less annoying about it, and it’s hard to really blame him for being bitter seeing as he was a sex slave for an evil wizard for most of his life and then just had misfortune after misfortune piled on him. I really hated how mean he was to Merril, but otherwise I warmed to him and befriended him.

And that brings us to a very special girl, Merril. Merril is an adorable, klutzy, scatterbrained blood mage elf who is hated by her people due to the lengths she is going to repair an ancient artifact to bring a piece of her people’s heritage back. While she can be a bit arrogant and stubborn about the whole thing, it’s mostly due to how no one around her seems to believe in and support her; naturally, I believed in and supported her, and while things still managed to go south, she seemed at least to learn a little bit. Overall I found her to be an absolute sweetheart, and she never left my party, much like Varric; frankly, I was going in expecting not to like her and was going to romance Fenris instead, but as it turns out Merril won my heart immediately and my Hawke went lesbian this playthrough.

On that note, as much as I like how Merril, Fenris, Isabela, and Anders can be wooed by either gender in principle, I do kind of feel making everyone bisexual with no rhyme or reason kind of cheapens things. It’s weird for me, a bisexual myself, to be saying that, but it just feels off to be able to get together with everyone, with everyone being Schrodinger’s Bisexual until a romance is initiated. It’s nowhere near as bad as Skyrim, but I just feel it kinda cheapens the romance options. I prefer Origins and Inquisition in that regard, where you don’t have all the options but you do have some unique choices. But, hey, at the end of the day I’m hardly complaining that my Lady Hawke got to polish Merril’s Eluvian, if you know what I mean.

Aside from the characters, I think the game’s real strength lies in its story, which is fitting since the entire game is framed as a story being told by no less a storyteller than our pal Varric. It has a three act structure, with each act detailing a different year in Hawke’s rise to become the Champion of the city of Kirkwall, which is a crime-ridden wretched hive of scum and villainy. The first act mainly has Hawke making a name for themselves, living in the slums with their uncle, doing dirty work to try and get back a little prestige, and recruiting all of their allies, with the act culminating with a trip to the Deep Roads, every DA fan’s favorite location. It’s a nice setup for a lot of twists and turns later in the story, and choices you make in certain dialogue options or quests actually can change what sort of quests you get later. Then again, this is Bioware, so this sort of “action have consequences” gameplay is expected.

Act two deals with just how Hawke becomes the Champion. Rich from the expedition into the Deep Roads, Hawke gets to do all sorts of fun things, such as track down a serial killer who ends up murdering their mom, being stabbed in the back by one of their friends, accidentally inciting a race war that nearly burns down the city, and having to duel the warrior leader of the qunari to the death in combat. Yeah, act two really piles it on to Hawke, but it does tie into the game’s themes of how no matter the level of success, great actions will also come with great consequences, even actions meant to better one’s lot in life, which also resonate in the personal quests of characters like Merril and Fenris, who despite ultimately achieving their goals in the third act feel hollow, lost, and even broken by the end, and that’s not even getting into what Anders does. However the conflict with the qunari is resolved, Hawke is declared the Champion, and things seem ok.

But then comes act three, and boy do things go wrong. Knight-Commander Meredith has gone cuckoo for Coco Puffs and conflict between templars and mages seems inevitable; this act is basically wrapping up hanging plot threads and companion quests until Anders finally nukes the chantry and all hell breaks loose, leading to the final battle. The ending here isn’t particularly happy, with Hawke ultimately ending up a fugitive in the epilogue, and things can get even worse if you make poor choices in Inquisition, but that’s just the way the cookie crumbles.

Here’s the thing: everything I just said? It could be entirely different from my playthrough depending on the choices you make. Sure, some things are inevitable, like Anders committing terrorist acts, Hawke’s mother dying, and Meredith going absolutely bonkers and making you fight statues, but depending on how you play, maybe you’ll like/romance Isabela, maybe you’ll resolve things with the Arishok differently, maybe you’ll side with the templars… the story ends the same but there are so many ways to make your story different. Throw in some great lore, some fun DLC that reveals some shocking truths about the lore, and the fun albeit simplified combat, and you’ve got a game here that has a lot of replay value if only to see where all the plot threads can lead.

I definitely think this is a good game, even a great one. It has its share of problems, but so did Origins, and frankly I’d sooner put up with the backstabbing pirate hooker and the pissy mage terrorist again then go through the fucking Fade and Deep Roads one more time. If you liked the first one, definitely give this a shot; you may end up liking or disliking some of the stuff I dislike and like. That’s the fun of these Bioware games, different aspects are going to appeal to different people. The question is, do I find it better than Origins?

In some respects, yes; I much prefer the simpler combat here, and I like the more down-to-earth story in this one, but at the same time Origins just had stronger characters overall and I’m a sucker for “save the world” fantasy tales. While Origins infamously had some real mind-numbing slogs in the form of the Fade sequence and the Deep Roads, while those environments were tedious at least they weren’t boring. But on the other hand… Origins didn’t have Varric.

 It’s really a tossup, frankly, and I love both games a lot. I think each of them has their place and each of them brings something interesting to the table for the series. It’s one you really need to play for yourself to get a good grasp on; don’t be like me and put it off for nearly ten years, give it a go right after your done with the first game and see how you feel. Your experience is going to be a lot different than mine, that’s for sure.

[bardqueenofgallifrey]

RANDOM THOUGHT TIME Twelve, Bill, Nardole and Missy playing DnD on their nights off. DM Twelve who initially got thrown off when everyone else went off on tangents but quickly started to roll with it. Missy who's slowly being taught not to kill literally every NPC and not to accept when the main threat pulls a 'join me and we could rule together.' Nardole who consistently gets disturbingly good dice rolls. And Bill who has far too much fun and comes up with amazingly detailed characters.

YES OMG OKAY SO (thanks to @resting-meme-face for consulting with me on this bc I always need her opinion on DND related rulings)

Missy would be a high elf warlock, since making a deal with a higher power to gain power is a classic Master move (probably the Great Old One patron bc weird cosmic energy), and because elves have a less offensively small life span and don’t have to sleep so much bc sleep is dumb and human

Bill is obviously a paladin, the force of good always, and she goes for halfling purely bc the idea of being a tiny warrior is adorable and epic and “cute as!” 

Nardole is a gnome rogue (arcane trickster archetype) with weirdly high charisma, for obvious reasons

also, they sort of need four people in the party ideally, right? so Twelve has them add an NPC to the party, and Missy, with almost suspicious speed, comes up with this short human bard character who is a massive control freak and class A bullshitter, and everyone else is like “oh ok, not what we expected from you, neat” (she becomes Twelve’s favourite character in the party, and Missy isn’t exactly SURPRISED but she’s kind of disgruntled all the same)

(Missy does a hilarious high pitched whiny voice for the Clara NPC, who is probably called Oswin, bc she’s a petty piece of shit)

the whole thing is a mess because Missy’s character is teetering on the edge of chaotic evil and chaotic neutral, Bill is neutral good, and Nardole is chaotic neutral, and the Clara NPC (probably called Oswin) is chaotic good and also a control freak

so half the time everyone is screaming at Missy to not kill someone and the other half the time Nardole has enticed Clara and Missy into some weird chaotic neutral bullshit venture and Bill is following along going “guys. guys no. plsssss”

it’s a glorious disaster. the Doctor has threatened Missy with randomly killing her character off no less than 13 times. Bill keeps trying to pick up the hot female NPCs but always rolls badly. Nardole’s character successfully seduces a queen and her husband and then steals half their treasury. 

[wowheadquarters]

Interview with Lor’themar Theron

Q: How do you maintain your amazing hair?

Lor’themar: Shampoo, hairbrush, hair tie. Lor’themar: Being an Elf does a lot of the work for you.

Q: Why don’t you participate in the war against the Legion?

Lor’themar: (Fakes a surprise) There is a war? Lor’themar: Look, if they needed me there, they’d let me know. So far it seems people are good on their own. Lor’themar: Also there is this precedent saying that when Blood Elves mess up with the Legion, their leader joins the Legion and... Well, you know. That is just not happening.

Q: What is your relationship with the Alliance?

Lor’themar: I think we could mark it as... It Is Complicated.

Q: Do you have any pets?

Lor’themar: (Looks around on the Blood Elves he usually describes as whiny, useless and stupid) Lor’themar: Yeah. pleanty.

Q: What's your favorite color?

Lor’themar: Blue. Lor’themar: No, wait. Yelllow!

Q: Would you ever cut you hair?

Lor’themar: Not unless it was absolutely necessary.

Q: Have you ever kissed Sylvanas?

Lor’themar: Em... Lor’themar: Yes. Once. Forty years ago. We both were very drunk. Lor’themar: She broke my nose afterwards.

Q: How do you feel about the Darkspear? Have your feelings changed after they helped out in Zul'aman?

Lor’themar: I thought of the Darkspear Trolls as of fanatic zealots with blades, just like any other Trolls. I admit Zul’aman changed that. Lor’themar: The Darkspear are efficient and deadly intelligent fanatic zealots with very sharp blades.

Q: What did you think about Vol'jin? How was your relationship?

Lor’themar: Upon the first meeting, I immediately labelled him as the far most dangerous person in the room and he proved me right by noticing it. Lor’themar: We... Respected each other and did our best not to get into the other’s way. I like to think he thought of me as of someone equally dangerous as he was. Lor’themar: Which is the greatest compliment a Troll can ever give you.

Q: What was your impression of the other Horde races and how did it change over the years that you've been in the Horde?

Lor’themar: Orcs... Orcs were complicated. I was used to demon-driven no-thinking blood-thirsty savages with axes and maces. Within the Horde I found proud and honorable warriors, philosophers, calm shamans. It was confusing and truly a lesson about stereotypes. A lesson I am still taking. Lor’themar: I already knew Trolls back from home. The Darkspear are however more... How to say it. Macabre, that is the word. I have already told you how much and in which way had my opinion changed. Lor’themar: Tauren are kind, close to the Earth and they have a plenty of simple yet so often missed wisdom. They deserve far better from this world and I still stand behind my words as I did the day I had met Cairne. Lor’themar: Forsaken. One one side you have the whole undead thing. On the other hand, Sylvanas. I still don’t know what to think about it and I don’t want to think about it. They are doing their best, that is for sure, but I doubt their efforts are... Anything close to Sylvanas’ ideals. The ideals back from the days when she was the Ranged General of Silvermoon anyway. Lor’themar: Goblin are lazy, snobbish, selfish, care little for others, their nature is destructive, their empathy is lacking, their knowledge is great but misused. However, unlike the Sin’dorei, they actually have their shit together, which is quite patriotically humiliating. Lor’themar: Pandarens are confusing. A nation so lacking war experience should be also lacking war efficiency. And here we come - they don’t. In fact, they are similar to Trolls because they are very easy to underestimate for slow, dumb, focused on their strange religion and cuisine... Yet they can snap your neck just by looking. Deadly fluff balls.

Q: How would you react to Blood Elf halflings? Do you consider them citizens? The Siame-Quashi and the Farstriders have been hanging around Zul'aman for quite a while now and there's rumors...

Lor’themar: Halflings happen. I assume it is in Human nature to breed it if it has two legs. Lor’themar: The law actually says that the halflings take the citizenship of their mother. Lor’themar: About the Siame-Quashi and Farstriders... Yes, there are children. I wasn’t asking questions and I am not going to. And you should follow this. Lor’themar: Or you can be nosy and have an upset Troll having you head as a ball for their weird child. Your decision.

Q: You were a ranger before becoming the Regent, but we always see you with a sword instead of the classic bow. Is there a reason?

Lor’themar: Yeah, there is a reason. Lor’themar: (Heavy sigh) Look, shooting 20 arrows into somebody isn’t as satisfying as chopping them to pieces. Also swords don’t run out of ammo. Lor’themar: I still use bow, tho. If needed.

Q: Had you tried the arcwine? Or do you want to try?

Lor’themar: I... I try to stand out of drugs, and yes, magic is a drug. My drinking is just as bad as it is now. Lor’themar: Personally I think that drinking magic is just... You know, wrong. The Sunwell is slowly getting better anyway, so there is no need to drink liquid arcane alcohol. Lor’themar: I am not saying that if you¨d brought me a bottle, I wouldn’t take a toast.

Q: Had you already considered leaving Silvermoon to someone else?

Lor’themar: (Looks left; sees Halduron and Rommath arguing with each other as thought they’re about to kill each other) Lor’themar: (Looks right; sees the elite Silvermoon guards focusing on doing their nails, shields and swords on the floor) Lor’themar: Yeah... I had considered it. Lor’themar: I would actually love to see the fireworks if I let someone else be in charge.

Q: And in the case you were free from the regency, what would you do? Is there a place you want to discover?

Lor’themar: I suppose I would either go back to being a Farstrider or retire somewhere far far away from all Elves and mages. Lor’themar: That sounds like I’d live in Torchkeep in that case. Far away from all demons too. No Torchkeep. Lor’themar: Plaguelands. Far away, not really frequented, a lot of things to fight with. Plaguelands would be ideal.

Q: Let's say that something happen to Sylvanas and she decide to make you the new Warchief, your reaction?

Lor’themar: First, nothing is going to happen to Gen- Warchief Windrunner. Second, even if something had happened to her, she wouldn’t name me in the position. She knows how I hate such positions. Lor’themar: But if she’d named me the Warchief... I think I would play a hot potato, threw that title at Baine and noped the fuck out of Azeroth and no one would see me ever again.

[garden-ghoul]

fellowship of the bloggening part 8

“I want to be watching youkai anime right now be grateful that I am instead delivering to you the good bloggenings”

FAREWELL TO LORIEN

Time to leave. Galadriel gives the choice once again of continuing the quest or staying here, but says that everyone has already chosen to go on. “I’m going on because Gondor is forward anyway,” says Boromir, just to make sure everyone knows that he’s not one of those sheeple who goes on incredibly dangerous world-saving quests because he actually cares about the fate of the world. Celeborn gifts our heroes boats (although they cannot give counsel whether to head for Minas Tirith or Mordor. um, duh.), and Aragorn “thanks him many times. The gift of the boats comforted him much.” Aww. “... not least because there would now be no need to decide his course for some days.” AWW.

Galadriel holds a farewell dinner for the company, gives a bit of advice, makes a nice speech, and offers gifts. Aragorn gets a magic sheath that will protect Anduril, and also Elessar. Galadriel says she gave it to Celebrian, and Celebrian gave it to Luthien... so why does Galadriel have it again? Boromir, Merry, and Pippin get belts (Celeborn doesn’t like the fashion kids have these days of wearing their pants low; it’s a hint) and Legolas gets a bow strung with elf hair. Augh that’s nasty as hell. Sam gets some magic dirt for planting (“it won’t defend you, but when your journey is over it will make the homecoming sweeter.” I like this). She asks what Gimli wants. He tries to say nothing, but ends up asking for a hair (ew). He says he’ll... set it in a necklace. So he can show his grandkids and remember the friendship of the elves. Aw! And for Frodo a bootleg Silmaril. And then they go out onto the river.

So it seemed to them: Lórien was slipping backward, like a bright ship masted with enchanted trees, sailing on to forgotten shores, while they sat helpless upon the margin of the grey and leafless world. 

Legolas and Gimli talk quietly of what they have left behind. Frodo falls asleep. They drift silently down

THE GREAT RIVER

Sam has seen something queer. A log with eyes! It is generally agreed that this is probably Gollum, and he is quite dangerous. The company starts moving only at night. Nevertheless, it seems Gollum has alerted some orcs to their presence, because the company is attacked just as they reach the dangerous rapids. It must be so weird to be an orc squad commander and have to listen to this weird creeping creature, no species anyone’s ever seen. Who handed that order down? Is it just... widely known? Or is there a special tracking unit that uses Gollum as a bloodhound?

We also argued for a while about why the moon is doing what it’s doing, and eventually Aragorn reveals that they spent a whole month in Caras Galadhon and didn’t notice. FAERIE TIME Y’ALL. Anyway Boromir and Aragorn are arguing over which course to take. It seems like humans make all the decisions in this party, which is curious; but Aragorn was appointed Gandalf’s successor, and Boromir has very strong opinions, so. Well, Boromir argues A LOT about Aragorn’s decision, but because Frodo is loyal to Aragorn (and Boromir isn’t yet willing to abandon the Ring) he eventually subsides and agrees. “To the tall isle I will go, but no further. There I shall turn to my home, alone if my help has not earned the reward of any companionship.” Dude nobody wants to go with you. You’re whiny and self-righteous as hell. IDEK the narrative point of killing this guy, nobody will care.

After this there’s a bunch of portaging logistics. And they reach Tol Brandir and will presently have to choose between east and west. Ah, and Aragorn gets a Kingly Look in his eyes when they come in sight of the statues of Isildur and Anarion, and Frodo is like Woah He’s Beautiful. And then Aragorn gets all uncertain and mumbles to himself “I wish Gandalf were here.” He really is my favorite exiled king ever, even better than Carrot Ironfoundersson.

That’s all for tonight, it hurts a lot to type for some reason so I am Resting my arm -_-

[kraken-spines]

Drowning Worlds edited by Jonathan Strahan(2016)

First Line: “In early January of 2014 I read J.G. Ballard’s landmark disaster novel, The Drowned World, for the first time.”

This is a collection of short stories with one all encompassing theme: futuristic waterlogged worlds and humans dealing with them. 

The Good: 

Elves of Antartica by Paul McAuley - Oddly optimistic. It’s a joining of the old and new worlds and a vision of how they mesh together. Despite the fact the protagonist had to be told by at least 3 people that nothing would ever be the same again and weird comments about his family that never amounted to anything. 

Destroyed by the Waters by Rachel Swirsky - A couple goes scubadiving to see their honeymoon spot and mourn someone they’ve lost. It’s a decent story but it’s not entirely remarkable. 

The Future is Blue by Catherynne M. Valente - A story about Tetley and why she is hated so much. And yeah, it’s a good reason she’s hated too. Unique and interesting worldbuilding but it’s not really science fiction it’s more like a futuristic fantasy. It reads like an allegory as Tetley and the others cannot run away from Garbagetown and have to live in the mess their ancestors - the ‘fuckwits’ made. 

The Bad and Okay:

Venice Drowned by Kim Stanley Robinson - Ugh. This was just bad. Yeah, it’s a neat concept that people go scuba-diving to see Venice but the rest is just bland and I really don’t like the protagonist at all. 

Brownsville Station by Christopher Rowe - This one wasn’t horrible. It just lacked information. It felt like a draft and there was a ton that needed to be expanded upon. 

Inselberg by Nalo Hopkinson  - It wasn’t for me. And it was only a weird monologue which might have answered more questions with context.

Who do you love? by Kathleen Ann Goonan - Not really certain what the benefit is to turn a human into a coral reef. Jupiter’s parents are horrible. 

Because Change Was the Ocean and We Lived by Her Mercy by Charlie Jane Anders - Pris, a whiny teenager holds grudges and is -edgy- while San Fransisco is underwater. It’s just not good. 

What Is by Jeffrey Ford - I don’t know when this one was written but I’m going to assume a while ago as the apocalyptic conditions are quite close to now. But besides that the characters are flat and the story is one I simply don’t care about. The green sickness, is an interesting facet though.

The New Venusians by Sean Williams - It reads like a YA story. It’s alright but predictable and unremarkable. Williams does however manage to have strong dialogue and characterization. 

Only Ten More Shopping Days Left Till Ragnarok by James Morrow - The concept is interesting enough but it’s also poorly written. There are too many dialogue tags.

Drowned by Lavie Tidhar -  Another one that I liked the concept of but didn’t like the execution. There was no way the reader could solve the ‘mystery’ and it was another story that seemed like it needed more length in order to get its message across. 

The Best: 

Dispatches from the Cradle: The Hermit - Forty-Eight Hours in the Sea of Massachusetts by Ken Liu - It’s not really a story. But it makes up for lack of action with lush prose and a question of who deserves Earth more. Those who wish to return their home to how it once was/its former glory or those who currently live in the home and see it as beautiful as is and have learned to adapt to it. 

The Common Tongue, the Present Tense, the Known by Nina Allan -  Well written and seemed like one of the most palpable stories in the bunch. Melodie looks into what happened to her family in the past, while dealing with the changed world in the present. 

Last Gods by Sam J. Miller - A really conflicting story. On one side there’s the protagonist’s foster brother who wishes to expose the gods for what they are -just animals. And on the other side the protagonist wants to live happily in the village as she wouldn’t be able to on her own, since she’s armless. In the end, the only person’s faith that’s shattered is the protagonist, and the foster brother regains his. It’s asking whether the truth matters and how powerful belief really is. 

Overall: I wouldn’t recommend reading these all in one sitting just because they all have a very similar theme at hand nor would I recommend all the stories. But it’s a big mix of stories and some are much better than others.