#wizard posting soon

[foursaints]

hi id die to hear what your favorite fics of all time are from any fandom…

oh i feel EXTREMELY passionately about this.. thank u for asking ♡♡

the red country, jibrailis: this one is just original fiction but it's genuinely life-changing... easy #1. it's a backstory for the white & red queens from alice in wonderland, as two girls at a boarding school in regency england. wonderland is their imaginary-world ("the red country") they invent to pass the time, which slowly consumes them.

creed of the seamstress, isozyme: roserezi for my homestuckers. pretty sure tamsyn muir bookmarked this one on her old ao3

punch drunk, provocative_envy: harry/pansy which is kind of a hear-me-out but i reread this thing about once a month

harry potter and the really round-about way of finding a horcrux, floweringjudas: really niche rarepair. i won't even tell you what it is. beautifully rendered & everything feels like it Makes Sense despite the premise itself making no fucking sense.... literally genius

[jitterbugbear]

Lesson no. 274859: NEVER EVER STEAL FROM A WITCH. YOU ABSOLUTE BUFFOON 💥

[kagooleo]

here's a finished belated bday comm for @wyvernity of their soulsilvershipping :D!!! I was honestly really happy with the turnout for the piece so I did go a lil ham on their faves (～￣▽￣)～

i've still got 2 commission slots open on my kofi for both chibi and sketch pieces if anyone is interested :V

[vanhelsingapologist]

You could be something great, but something great is nothing new.

—

I had to redraw Vallaki’s angriest boy again! His hair is longer and he still uses mage hand for everything to prove that he can do magic.

[nuadha-airgeadlamh]

elden ring quiz update!

now with some tweaks and support for Messmer and Melina. come meet your bestie today!

[mispelled]

I've been meaning to draw this for over a year

[birdhand-art]

My first submission to Xerox Candy Bar has officially been published!! I'm so excited to share the Monsters & Cryptids edition with everyone on distribution day :]

Thank you so much to everyone at XCB! Y'all are amazing and i'm so interested to see what comes next 👀

[thedeadhead]

tefmet: “the citadel- the citadel, more like the, the citadel, more like the shit-a-del, am I right?”

coven of elders: dead silent except for a cough from Hekae

[silver-horse]

guys I felt genuine fear in my stomach while reading this tweet...

[blenselche]

broke the page in half cuz it was taking a bit to get out (my hands dont work in the cold) but hey~ more ferntress <3

full unbroken page in case tumblr ate the quality

[jag-rat]

Let's analyse the drow!

Quick history on the drow: The drow have been historically characterised as ‘evil’, especially in earlier editions their alignment was always on the evil spectrum. Even Drizzt Do’urden for example was a story that essentially circles around one ‘good’ drow who managed to rise above the rest of his kin and become ‘one of the good ones’. I think we also need to acknowledge that in the earlier editions drow definitely had racist implications around them intentionally or not. With the drow initially being described as ‘completely opal black aside from their white hair’ and essentially just existed as the ‘evil’ elf counterparts to their perfect blonde cousins. Now in recent years wizards of the coast have started to rectify this. As of right now Drow have been described as being more purplish grey in colour and are steering towards being implied not to be 'completely evil'. There's no doubt about it that the drow have had a rocky history and being overtly over-sexualisalised by the early writers definitely didn't help much either. But I still think there's something very interesting wedged into this unique race of elves. 

Lolth's role: Their main goddess is of course Lolth who even in modern renditions is always depicted as a chaotic evil spider demon. You could argue she’s currently the main reason why the surface folk still don’t like these dark elves. Even in Baldur's gate three which came out last year the writers make a point of emphasising that the ‘good drow’ are the ones choosing to rebel against this goddess. Now obviously this ‘good’ and ‘evil’ thing has always been a core part of DND, which makes sense given it was inspired by Tolkien who consistently made a point about there being two sides, good and evil. And it's still a very common theme in modern fantasy but I think when we look at Lolth and her connection to the drow from a more contextual standpoint this insistence of ‘evil’ isn’t nearly as interesting as exploring the greyer implications of how this Goddess came to be. Being viewed as ‘evil’ in the dnd universe is natural as Lolth is written as a chaotic evil being, encouraging violence, the sacrifice of first born sons, and general betrayal among your fellow drow isn’t very appealing. It's enough for anyone to wonder why the drow worship her in the first place if they aren’t evil. However I think it's also important to remember in real life when we create gods they almost always reflect our world, the good and the bad. Let's take Zeus for example, he was a pretty shitty guy, cheating on his wife, kidnapping women and punishing people for petty reasons. But he was still worshipped, he just reflected power and kinghood. And kings aren't perfect or benevolent, they can abuse their power and take what they want. People are complex and imperfect and so are their Gods. So a similar sort of argument could be made for Lolth. 

How the environment shapes a culture: The underdark is almost always described as a harsh environment, with creatures like hook horrors casually wandering around, mushrooms that explode when touched and let's be honest probably not a lot of food in a place with little sunlight or stability. Earthquakes happen often here killing many and flattening villages. The underdark is without a doubt an unpredictable chaotic and cruel hellscape where death is a guarantee and often occurs for little to no reason. It's not hard to imagine how competition could become everything here. That means that every creature living in the underdark, even every other drow clan is just another competitor for those sparse food and resources in an already barren and harsh climate. In an environment so unforgiving and competitive you can imagine how a Goddess such as Lolth would be worshipped. Because Lolth, like most Gods, reflects the environment her worshippers live in, she is characterised as being as cruel, violent and chaotic as the underdark is. And the teachings of violence, sacrifice and betrayal that she encourages of her followers might not actually be such a bad thing but rather the key to the drows continued long term survival in such an impossible climate. Traditions and culture almost always stem from a purpose, in this case how you survive. The cutthroat nature of drow culture mirrors the underdark in such a way that it ensures that the strongest survive (although it's important to note when I say ‘strongest’ I don't mean it in a literal sense but rather those who possess the qualities best suited for survival in that environment.) The strict hierarchical structure also ensures this, with female drow being favoured as they are naturally larger, stronger and more robust than their male counterparts. Which in itself is most likely because larger stronger women generally lead to a higher rate of survival in offspring especially in harsher conditions where a single misstep can be certain death. This physical and social difference lends itself to the spider metaphor of their goddess both literally and figuratively where spiders eat their males. But as unfair as this rigid hierarchy based on sex seems, it can be argued like many cultural phenomena to be a curated survival method in itself. After all you need fewer males than females to maintain a stable population which is an important detail when living somewhere with a natural lack of food. Even sacrificing your first newborn son as gruesome of a tradition as it is, in a way makes sense. It selectively ensures that the male population is lower meaning less overall resource demand in an already scarce environment will be lower while still being able to maintain some semblance of genetic diversity.

Solutions to these dilemmas?: Now of course it goes without saying all these things are horrible, sex selection, strict hierarchies and encouraged violence to decrease competition are all bad. However in an extreme dystopian sounding scenario such as this one it does at the very least make sense. And I think what we can gather from this is that despite all the terrible things, at least terrible to us living in the world we are, drow aren’t really evil. Not even their society despite its depiction is ‘evil’. Calling them evil is kind of like if lions from a zoo who get fed everyday started calling wild lions evil for eating zebras. We may not like it of course but it's not fair to call it evil, it’s survival. In the same way Lolth isn’t even an ‘evil’ Goddess, she's just a cruel and unfair one, made to reflect the natural violence of the underdark and the lived experiences of those worshipping her. When debating the drows morality it's just about context. It brings some questions to mind. Like if the ‘good drow’ drow who are against Lolth did manage to rebel and forcefully shift the culture of the drow to be more like the surface elves for example what would really happen? Would the drow stop all their violent habits and competitiveness to live happily ever after in a more equal world? Or when all of this ‘evil’ behaviour was ‘corrected’ would it lead to a ripple effect causing famine and death anyway? Who are the surface dwellers to determine what’s wrong and right when they’ve never had to survive in such an environment? Perhaps instead the culture of the drow would just naturally change over time anyways if the need for those more violent and extreme traditions subsided because there were more ways of accessing resources and building a stabler environment. Either way I don’t know the future of drow society, but what I do know is that it’s far more complex and grey than we give it credit for.

[petrodragonicapocalypse]

GizzMay 2024 !

(a retrospective tour diary by me)

🦎✈️🎵

king gizzard & the lizard wizard announced their 2024 world tour last november with a promise to "get woke, freak out the right wingers and love each other", so i, a like any normal person working a minimum wage job, immediately bought tickets to six shows.

read about the best 2 weeks of my life here (if you wish)

part 1: hamburg & amsterdam

after half a year of planning, studying google maps, scouring airbnb for cheap rooms and wincing at the cost of transport, me and my lovely girlfriend bennie (the person who first showed me polygondwanaland back in 2019) set off on our long-awaited trip on tuesday 21st may 2024. we were going to follow the band for six shows over two weeks across four countries. neither of us had ever done something like this before.

to kick off the trip, we flew from bristol airport to amsterdam, where we were due to transfer to a flight to hamburg. typically, a thunderstorm meant our hamburg flight was cancelled, so they sent us on a detour to vienna. we ate a slice of airport pizza in austria, tried not to panic and finally rolled into hamburg at around 10pm.

hamburg

the next day (22nd may) was our first gig. with around 4000 people and a 3 hour marathon set, this was gonna be the biggest and longest show of our section of the tour, and the only outdoor one. we queued from 1.30pm (early for europeans!) outside the venue, stadtpark arena. soon, the eerie sound of synths began emanating from inside the gates, then morphing into a soundcheck for the never-played-live-before silver cord, vocoder and all, and excitement amongst the fans was stoked. the weather forecast looked ominous, but spirits were high.

at around 3pm, it started raining. it poured relentlessly on the growing line of gizzheads in ponchos clutching poster tubes and beers for 3 hours until the venue gates finally opened. we ran to the front. we were hyped. we stood for another hour while rain and mist blew around the arena and thousands of fans filed in.

finally, just as the rain died down a bit, king gizz ran out onto the stage. the slightly delirious state induced by 2 oreos for dinner and freezing my tits off for 4 hours was almost as good as drugs. all thought of the water running down my back and legs disappeared. fuck yeah!!! king gizzard!!!

the rain soon came back in full force but we didn't care. float along fill your lungs was a fantastic opener, followed by banger after banger: a nonagon suite, work this time and iron lung (with ambrose braving the weather and emerging out onto the exposed walkway in the chorus to splash around in the puddles), to name a few. then, out rolled the highly anticipated new synth table and the boys launched into the 27 minute long live debut of the silver cord.

personally i was full of joy, whimsy and love for techno so naturally i thought this was fucking awesome, but reactions from the crowd (and from the "online community" a.k.a. redditors... haha) seem to have been mixed. it was 27 minutes long, we were cold and wet, the sound was a bit dodgy, etc etc. whatever. i was vibing extremely hard.

however, any dampened spirits were very quickly raised again by the epic 7 song metal run that ended the show. the crowd went wild - turns out moshing does wonders for the cold. i heard what ended up being 2 of my all time favourite live gizz songs for the first time: organ farmer and motor spirit. it kicked ass.

we made it back to the hotel soaking wet and probably bordering on hypothermic after over 7 hours in the rain. had a hot shower and then spent the rest of the evening attempting to dry our clothes and shoes with a hairdryer before our flight the next day. did not smell good.

🦎✈️🎵

amsterdam

we flew from hamburg to amsterdam schiphol on 23rd may, with at least 5 other gizzheads (easily recognisable by their poster tubes and t shirts) dotted around the plane. we arrived to a beautiful city on a beautiful sunny day and (obviously) headed directly to the weed shops. edibles legally purchased, we dumped our stuff at the airbnb and took the train to the venue: AFAS live.

waiting in the line, it was easy to spot who'd been at stadtpark the night before from the mud on their shoes. but the weather that afternoon was sunny and warm and the line was happily buzzing. we met some cool people including a person in a long yellow coat who was drawing huge oil pastel posters for the show - rad as hell and an iconic figure of the tour (i believe they gave the band a poster that night!).

once in the venue, we settled down by the barrier (it's always worth the wait!) and chatted with some swedish guys and a friendly australian, far from home. the support band was dr sure's unusual practice, a lively melbourne based punk act with a wild-haired wild-eyed frontman, filling in last minute for grace cummings who had to cancel several shows due to illness. they put on a great show, during which stu and lucas surreptitiously appeared to watch the band from the wings a few feet away from us. we gave them a wave, and stu shot us a wink.

the setlist that night was fucking incredible. gizzard opened with the mighty crumbling castle, a song that i'd been dreaming of seeing live ever since i first heard it 5 years ago. it was better than i ever could have hoped, with the weed brownie kicking in and the stage lights becoming kaleidoscopic. the band was energetic and the vibes were electric. stu overshot a high kick, fell on his ass and managed to hop back up without missing a lyric. self immolate - dragon - flamethrower - gila monster was unreal. joey used a quiet moment in pleura to stage-whisper "free palestine!", eliciting cheers.

somewhat hilariously in retrospect, during the hypnotic drone of rattlesnake me and my girlfriend both suddenly realised we were way too high. i have vague memories of the second half of the gig, including the han tyumi suite (REALLY REALLY MAD I MOSTLY MISSED THAT) and an honest-to-god terrifying moment in which joey and ambrose walked to the front of the stage, crouched down and stared directly at us for what felt like an undefinable amount of time. ultimately though - despite our tenuous grip on reality and the fact that we somehow got lost in a train station for an hour on the way home and spent the next full day in a semi-stoned stupor - it was a fantastic show. lesson learned: the dutch do not play about their space cakes.

after a day of recovery (let's just skip over that) and a lovely morning spent wandering around amsterdam taking in the sights, bennie and i made our way back to the airport to say our goodbyes. she was going home and i was travelling on to hit up the northern UK shows. despite knowing we'd see each other again in a week for the acoustic UK finale show in brighton, it was weirdly emotional. i was a little nervous about travelling alone, but excited.

🦎✈️🎵

(end of part 1, part 2 coming soon!)

[stardusted-bookworm]

Home

Warnings: None

Drawing familiar runes on the ground, Caleb bids adieu to the Nein before activating the teleportation circle. And goes home.

Home.

A hard-fought, hard-won place. Once foreign on his tongue, Caleb Widogast is slowly becoming accustomed to home. A place, and a person. A person he has not seen in a number of days, and after the fight he’d had… Let’s just say Caleb is more than eager to return home.

As the whoosh of arcana dies down, the Zemnian wizard is met with the comforting sight of his study in their Rexxentrum home. Paintings of various memories and dicks line the walls. Caleb clocks a new dick drawn on the corner of his desk. He makes a mental note to discuss appropriate dick drawing places with Jester later.

Then, his eyes catch on the painting hanging behind his desk. A portrait gifted to them for their third anniversary. The artist had captured a moment when he and his partner had been lounging on their couch, both looking off-paper. He is arching an eyebrow at something that was said, but his partner…

His partner is resplendent in the warm-toned light, resting on Caleb’s shoulder, head thrown back in laughter. The very epitome of joy. He looks softer, unwearied by an ever-hunting past.

It is Caleb’s favorite portrait of the two and had promptly hung it in his office when Jester had gifted it to them.

He studies the lines of his partner’s face, drinking in the details, memorizing his smile, as he had done so many times before.

Just then, he hears the shattering of ceramic and a loud “Scheiße!” from downstairs.

Caleb smiles and finally descends, joining his partner in their kitchen. 

Entering, he finds Essek Thelyss in all his glory, magicking the broken shards of a plate into the trash and furiously muttering under his breath. Caleb believes he hears something like “That’s what I get for wanting to do things by hand” mixed with Undercommon curses.

The sight is truly endearing. Domestic, one might even say.

Happy as he is to just stand and watch for hours, not a moment later, Essek absentmindedly glances in Caleb’s direction before locking eyes with him. A wide grin transforms the drow’s face into almost blinding beauty.

Widogast, you are smitten.

“Caleb!” Essek greets, folding him into an embrace. “You have returned! How was your trip? Were you able to reshackle Trent like you’d hoped?”

Too soon, his partner pulls out of his grasp and levitates the rest of the dishes to their corresponding places. Caleb is left bereft as the warmth quickly recedes.

“Ja, but—”

“Oh! That band of adventurers you sent me to, they reminded me much of the Nein. Well, in the sense that they are a motley bunch with… colorful personalities, shall we say?” Essek grins wryly at him before finishing his task.

“I see, that—”

“It was certainly an adventure with that group. We found Ludinus—Caleb, he used ancient Aeorian tech to show us the fall of Aeor. It was fascinating. I wonder how the enchantments were woven together to achieve that. I may want to work on that with you later.”

“Schatzi—”

“Then, we fought with one of the members’ patrons—she is a warlock, you see. Long story short, we were able to fight the patron off. After which, we teleported here where I led a long ritual to lock the patron into an Aeorian seal placed within the woman’s rib cage.” 

Here, Essek gets a haunted look on his face. “That… was mildly traumatic I won’t lie. Not the arcana of course, but there was much more blood and bones cracking than I would have preferred. But altogether, fascinating.”

“Essek—”

“Oh, I almost forgot!” Essek whirls around and clutches Caleb’s arms. “Caleb, you will not believe—one of the members of that group had a facet of dunamancy within their skull. It was truly unlike anything I’d ever seen before. Wait, let me collect the notes from my lab. It has much more detail that I do not want to leave—”

His partner begins to walk past him, excitedly chattering about this new discovery, and Caleb is frustrated.

He grabs one of Essek’s outstretched arms and pulls him into his body, Caleb’s other arm circling his waist as he draws his partner into a kiss.

It is longing and it is passion and it is desperation. It is a kiss of lovers parted for far too long.

 Caleb releases Essek’s hand only to sink his fingers into his partner’s silvery waves, the hand around his waist pulling him closer into the Zemnian’s warmth.

It lasts for only a moment, but seems to end far too soon as Caleb pulls back. Not far. Noses still touching, but far enough for him to whisper.

“I will gladly hear every detail of what your brilliant mind has uncovered of this band of adventurers, Herr Thelyss.” Caleb brushes his lips over Essek’s temple before continuing, “However, it has been a long week, month, year, and I would like nothing more than to lock my devastatingly handsome boyfriend and myself in our bedroom for a number of hours. If that is amenable to you.”

Here, Caleb draws back to get a full view of his partner’s face. Watches as the tips of his ears darken, lilac eyes glaze over, and lips part. All good signs, but still he waits for verbal consent.

Caleb kisses the corner of Essek’s mouth, mildly smirking at his partner’s state.

“Essek,” he prompts, stroking his thumb over the other’s cheek.

The haze from those gorgeous lilac eyes clears and Essek breathes just one word, one syllable that has Caleb sweeping him into his arms and teleporting to their bedroom: “Yes.”

[shopwitchvamp]

btw I haven't even gotten around to teasing them yet but I've got more designs on minis for the first time, ready to go up with the next two restocks this month 👀

[mrstellmeafuckingsecret]

thoughts on marylene?

so !!!!!!!!!! many thoughts !!!!!!! on marylene !!!!!!!!!!! i love marylene. i love mary and i think marlene is adorbs. they are the cottagecore by day shameless whore by night couple. marlene was mary's bi awakening, mary was marlene's first love. they dated from end of fifth year to start of seventh and stayed friends,, mary loves dorcas & dorcas introduces mary to pandora.

mary and marlene getting over catholic guilt together marlene guiding mary through lgbt culture mary teaching marlene how to touch and what to touch marlene teaching mary it's alright to let her guard down mary teaching marlene to take care of herself

mary and marlene <3

[fullbrave]

employment jelly really is that bitch