#wow two things from me in one day

[i-have-dots-in-my-brain]

Astarion: *shaking Gale awake at 3am*

Astarion: Time is ever marching forward and your mortal days are running out. Every second that goes by is a second lost.

Gale: …should I be worried?

Astarion: time is an fucking illusion, Darling, the only thing truly real is death.

Gale: go back to bed.

Astarion: what truly comes after death?

Gale: …I’m not emotionally or mentally stable enough for this, go ask Withers.

[seaofreverie]

I knew about the post concert depression but no one told me about the post concert constant feeling of AAAAAAAAAHHH that lasts days and makes everything much more bearable and beautiful and some sort of ethereal type of hope is restored into the world, or maybe it's just the "seeing your favourite band after first thinking that it would never happen and later spending many months waiting for it all the while fearing that it wouldn't happen after all because of circumstances outside my control or feeling like it was too beautiful and wonderful to be true so ofc it wouldn't come true" part of it all

[needlesandnilbogs]

for the ask game about fic backstory. i've only read one of your mirrorverse fics so you might have covered this somewhere, but i'm curious: how did mirror!mensah come to power?

okay so I have in fact written two fics in which some aspect of this is revealed but other than those two fics a lot of this is either in my head or scattered across discord (the timeline I was kinda keeping for a while has disappeared lol) so here goes trying to form it into a shortened-and-broad-strokes narrative:

(I can and will go into more depth about any of these parts. Just try me. also this feels very in-world-document-y but that wasn't totally on purpose) (it's long so it gets a read more)

The Alliance Period (Salvation Pre-Empire)

The Salvation Alliance was founded nearly 200 years ago, by a group of colonists escaping the Corporate Empires and the constant war. They settled on a lush planet near two already-inhabited planets in the same system, and their ship, the Salvation, became the first station.

Within a year, they had so cowed their neighbors that the rest of the system fell easily under the banner of the Salvation Alliance and the promise of peace and an end to the corporates.

One of the small group of leaders, Consuela Makeba, protested this decision, but her speech went largely ignored. It certainly did not appeal to the newly formed Salvation Council, who had her imprisoned and executed as the Alliance's first traitor.

The Salvation Council was an oligarchy, though they liked to pretend they weren't. A few seats were won, here and there, by young progressive candidates who had grand dreams of changing everything, but for hundreds of years, the status quo remained set. A place to live and food for all, just as in another universe, but contingent on the understanding that if you were not working for Salvation's benefit, you didn't deserve more than the very barest of minimums.

One of these young upstart progressives was Dr. Ayda Mensah, a charismatic and well-known exoecologist who was quickly elected to her local governing council, and a few years later to the Salvation Council.

The Coup

Dr. Mensah, it must be understood, had been planning since the instant she'd been elected to her local council, if not earlier. She wanted power, and she didn't care who stood in her way.

She was methodical about it; quiet convincing where possible, the sort of thing nobody would dare call her out on. Bribery, blackmail, siccing her good friend the up and coming prosecutor Pin-Lee on them, all those little ways of influencing votes in her favor.

Within three years after her appointment to the council, she'd amassed enough of a power base to be appointed Planetary Administrator, head of the council for the term. At this point, she and her partners had a two-year-old child and another on the way, which certainly had an impact on her re-election campaign strategies.

A few months into her second year as Planetary Administrator and fourth year on the council, she was on a survey with a handful of other members of the SalvationAux survey team, mostly flunkies and interns (and, of course, the Chief Prosecutor of the Salvation Alliance, there because of course Pin-Lee wasn't letting Mensah go alone), when things went to heck.

The only reason they survived at all was the actions of rogue EnforcerUnit Saviorbot, who saved the whole survey team. In gratitude (and because it was such a useful thing, to have a friend with guns in its arms), Mensah and Pin-Lee arranged to purchase it and free it. It followed them back to Salvation, and became Mensah's constant bodyguard and close confidant.

Within a year, several people took offense to the centralization of power and the existence of an EnforcerUnit on Salvation, and began a pitiful rebellion which announced itself with rioting at the Oakepark Factory Complex, an event which is still marked as a solemn tragedy by many. (A certain Makeba Rebellion, it and its leader named for Consuela Makeba's protest speech, celebrates this day as a sign of victory, and notes that there were zero deaths and less than a dozen casualties, which the Empire tends to brush over in favor of the tragic reduction in production capacities.)

Things continued on with a sort of stalemate for a while, Administrator Mensah continuing to ensure the council complied and the rebellion continuing to try to depose her, until Saviorbot discovered transmissions from a rebel cell linked to both the rebellion's spymaster Hope and one Councilmember Sonje.

Mensah and Pin-Lee and Saviorbot, in an attempt to centralize power even further, decided enough was enough. After a devastating rebel attack on the council, which just so happened to kill the biggest opponents to a unilateral power grab, Mensah ordered the council dissolved and all administration to run through her office.

Within a week, she was crowned as Salvation's first Empress, with her partners crowned as Queen- and Monarch-Consort and her seven-year-old eldest daughter given the title of Crown Princess Amena. In deference to the age of her children (seven and five, at the time), Mensah named Solicitor Pin-Lee, who was already the Chief Prosecutor, the next in the line of succession, and bestowed upon her the title of the Hand of the Law; in turn, Saviorbot was granted the title of Chief Enforcer and given responsibility for the security of the newly-renamed Salvation Empire.

(Side note, part of how Mensah kept control over the ex-councilmembers was by offering each of them and many other politicians a guaranteed position for them in the new administration. Some of these positions, for those with children, are now considered inherited positions, meaning it's guaranteed to be passed down to their children, and others aren't, so when people eventually retire from non inherited positions, those posts will be filled by other children of government officials who Mensah thinks will do well there. She's basically going back to nepotism and hereditary nobility as a way to keep those people from joining the rebellion. Meanwhile her strategy for dealing with the broader populace is pretty much ensuring they have everything they need, propagandizing the heck out of everything, and creating opportunities for advancement into administrative positions that can be used as rewards for the most loyal. Textbook bread and circuses plus carrots and sticks.)

The first main mirrorverse story, Preservation, picks up about eight years since that coup, which is also four years since the martyr Tradition died, and the second and third main stories take place over the next two years. At the point the fourth story starts, it's been about ten and a half years since the coup, in which time court politics have become exponentially more complicated as people vie for Mensah's favor. (She encourages this. Plotting against each other means that they aren't plotting against her.) Also, Amena's almost a legal adult by the third and fourth stories, which means she's almost old enough to actually take over if Mensah can't rule somehow.

[bookwyrminspiration]

when homeboy G was making me he just hit copy and paste on my dad and slapped some tits on

[im2tired4usernames]

Ugh I was excited for today until I found out I'd have to spend it with people that actively make me hate being alive hate the future and drain me off all energy physically mentally spiritually like a vampire I can't stand to be around her she is the definition of stupidity and even then that's generous as fuck this bitch has filled her brain with so much garbage I watch her brain cells die at alarming rates every single time she uses her vocal cords her giggles make me want to jam a sewing needle into my ear repeatedly so I can never have to hear it again its a friendly reminder that my parents decisions this time my dad's constantly makes me want to die

[7roaches]

chat is this real 🙁

[ashored]

○・ﾟi've made all my icons... sharing my faves under the cut...

ill add this to my rules later but i also want to put down somewhere that i will only be using official art or my own art! i think i will be using these in my answers, any drabbles i may write, and in threads where the other person also has icons.

[schizononagesimus]

so clearly i arrived fine and the start to my "trip" is going great! now it's 2am and im feeling the gravity of my situation 😄😄😄😄😄😄😄😄

[seaofreverie]

We should normalize bringing these sort of "small talk ideas" cards to meetings with other people so that it's possible to avoid the awkwardness of not knowing what to talk about to kick things off or if it's considered normal to talk about this specific thing and AUGHGHFCG all this stuff.

[todayisafridaynight]

One of my fave jackets is this green jacket with a fur hood im wearin rn because 1.) its green 2.) my dad gave it to me 3.) it reminds me of saejima. Who also reminds me of my dad

[seventh-district]

several days and 15 thousand words later, i am relieved to report that the suffocating urge to Write Something has been sated and no longer has me in a chokehold

[mqonlighting]

real talk in the tags for a second because i have a crush on a girl and i. a hehe. ahehehe.

will be burying this in reblogs and never touching on it again

[lesbiansanemi]

I have started to accept I am a bit more (re a lot more) psychologically unstable than I thought for a long time and man…. I’m tired of it

[kimtaegis]

hate to say it but july kinda sucked

[what-the-fuck-khr]

I’ve been hearing about the TikTok ban in America and man. wow. like genuinely wow

[stabbylambchop]

Hey uh

anyone here on Art Fight this year or-

Cuz I'm on there, same name and everything. I'm on Team Vampires.

You can like, add me or whatever...I mean, if you want...

I haven't interacted with anyone on here or even really drawn in a couple months, sweet pulsating spider-christ ...