#a sprinkle of lore

[maiko-coy]

Is it ok if we see more DogDay and Doey spending time together (preferably PRESENT DogDay? I kinda see DogDay and Doey as father & son…)

Look, look, they're bonding :DDDD

[budgetslow]

“You see, I wasn’t able to freely express myself back in my home…”

“But now, I finally can, and I’m very proud of it.”

[dumbassdep]

WIP Whenever and Picrew

I was tagged to do this picrew by @inafieldofdaisies and in WIP Wednesday by @cassietrn and I've squished them together by throwing in little unreleased lore snippets instead of a real WIP cause I can't concentrate for more than 100 words of actual writing 😂

I'm tagging @deputyash @strangefable @chazz-anova and you if you'd like it. I feel like I'm forgetting someone off the usual tag list I'm having a very faded brain day I'm sorry 😭

Melody pre and post joining Eden's gate. Miserable Junior Deputy version to denied of her hair dye but happier version!

Melody's little lore dump is that the bandage I include in her Eden's Gate versions is from an assassination attempt at her "hey look the Deputy is ours now!" cult reveal. A whitetail milita member who'd been undercover took it upon themselves to try to cut her throat as revenge for Eli but fortunately murder isn't an easy thing to do for most people and hesitation kept them from cutting deep enough.

Once Melody recovers she's outraged over it, she feels like the whole time she was with the resistance she tried her hardest to be honourable and give her adversaries the chance to walk away so assassination??? That's dirty and rude and it makes her more sure she's made the right choice defecting.

Delusional girlie moment. 🥰

Birdie, my darling! Usual face and also in disguise cause it's funny to me.

Her lore is sometimes a bit nebulous because I'm just daydreaming but the one thing she does have is that she's a conman. Trelawney takes her under his wing after finding her badly pulling her own little scams. He introduces her to the Van Der Linde gang and they're mostly on friendly terms but she doesn't permanently run with them.

Also! Second Birdie fact cause I don't get to talk about her much. The scar on her face happened during a bar brawl just before she turned 17. She'd been at the bar with a ranch-hand/cowboy she was teenage girl obsessed with, and he was an actual adult who just thought of her as a little sister. 😂 He tried to pull her out when the fight started but she got slashed with a broken bottle. Scarred her up quite badly but it does help with making stinky old men take her a little more seriously, makes her look mean. Sort of.

[cupofdirtandworms]

A protector

Yet, this seems

Familiar...

Here's the character design for her lol I don't have a name for her yet tho

[blondeaxolotl-twstocs]

He's the reason you're with me now, even if I didn't want either of you in the first place.

[skimmeh]

GO CHECK OUT THE ZINE WITH EVERYONE ELSES WONDERFUL ART AND WRITING!

but here is my piece for the grainzine by @hermitszine !!!

I was in the au section so of course I had to draw star grain!!! I'm still very proud of this drawing!

Please go check out the full zine! Alot of hard work went into it, and it was an honour to be a part of the project!

↓full image and some close ups- because I suspect Tumblr is going ruin the quality

[stars-obsession-pit]

John Constantine, floating through the astral realms (like he did when Swamp Thing was borrowing his body), slips through the edges of that dreamlike world and into the Ghost Zone.

Usually, such a mistake could be fatal. Having one’s soul untethered is already dangerous enough, but at least the Astral Realm follows dream-like rules that can be bent to your advantage. The Ghost Zone, though still fluid in its own way, offers far less control to outsiders.

But luckily for Constantine, he happened to emerge right near one of the rare Zone denizens that isn’t immediately hostile. A young man with snow-white hair and glowing green eyes.

All he has to do now is try to convince the ghost kid to help without risking pissing him off and getting himself killed.

…Yeah, he still might be fucked. Though he is a skilled con man, being pleasant was never one of his strong suits.

[k0mmari]

Endless Abyss Travel Guide — Chapter 5

Sleep Walking Orchestra

[purrestel]

(Martial Art AU) Agin bc of graduation I didn’t do any new art—but I have some concepts I haven’t shown.

Me and Rina was yapping about how Ao Bing should’ve had a dragon tail in movie…so I’ve decided to manifest that design canon in this AU.

Usually the dragons have their tails displayed, but for Ao Bing during training and combat, he keeps his tail hidden as to avoid the opponent from possibly grabbing them.

He reveals it to Nezha when the two are sort of hanging out outside of the fighting stuff; simply being comfortable to show a bit more of his dragon look to Nezha (it swishes around when relaxed, but finds itself wiggling towards Nezha whenever Ao Bing is next to him hah—).

I’m gonna tweak the robe Nezha and Ao Bing wears before getting in the ring…it’s a wip but I’m grabbing inspo from Bing’s cloak in the first movie.

[the-badger-mole]

Clouds, Fog and Mists

The scholars and archeologists that Aang had been working with had come out of their museum basements and dimly lit studies with a wealth of Air Nomad histories and artifacts that had been lost during the war. Aang now had access to recipes he hadn't tasted in years, scrolls that gave historical context to the things he had just begun learning at age 12, and objects he had never seen, but was excited to learn the use of. At 22, he was just now learning that the Air Nomads had a variety of subcultures and customs he'd never encountered, even though he had visited every Air Temple that existed back then.

"Did you know..." became as common to his vocabulary as "hello" and "custard tart". Every day, he approached his wife with some new bit of lore he'd learned.

"Did you know that the Southern Air Nomads had a Festival of Remembrance?" he'd excitedly asked as Katara was hanging the laundry out to try. She was only half listening while she tried to keep Bumi, their nearly three year old son out of the basket of wet sheets, but she gave a polite hum of encouragement.

"For a whole week," Aang continued needing no further prompting, "no one was allowed to play music or speak. They even wore velvet over their feet so their footsteps wouldn't be too loud. Then, at the end of it, there was a huge party! Loud as anything with music and plays and games. I think I remember going one of those ending parties, but I didn't know about the vow of silence before it."

"That's fascinating, sweetie," Katara said, rubbing her heavy belly with a look of discomfort. She was seven months along with their second child, and this one was very active. "Bumi, last warning. Do not touch the clean clothes!"

"Okay, Mommy!" Bumi said before swatting at one of the sheets Katara had hung on the line. She sighed and turned to her husband.

"Can you take him?" she asked. "I'm tired, and I'd like to take a nap after I finish this."

"Oh," Aang said reluctantly. "I was going to have an afternoon session with the Acolytes. I'm dying to tell them what I've been learning."

"Aang, please?" Katara sagged tiredly, taking Bumi's hand and pulling him away from all her hard work.

"Alright," Aang sighed. "I'll watch him for a bit. Come on, Bumi! Let's go practice some air katas! I want you to be ready when your airbending kicks in!"

-:-:-:-:-:-

All Air Nomads were airbenders. That's what Aang had always been taught. He had to account for late bloomers, of course, but at age four, going on five, if Bumi was going to be an airbender, there would've been signs by now. Kya was a lost cause. She had started waterbending just before her second birthday, and despite the fact that her father was the Avatar, there was no chance that she would inherit the ability to control more than one element.

"Well, maybe it's not true that all Air Nomads were benders," Katara said with a shrug. "After all, not every Water Tribesman is a waterbender, and not everyone in the Earth Kingdom is an earthbender."

"It's different," Aang insisted. "The monks told me that all Air Nomads were benders because we have a unique connection with our spirituality." Katara didn't quite manage to hide her annoyance from him.

"Then explain our kids," she said. "Unless you're the first Air Nomad in history to have children with a non-Air Nomad, someone somewhere got something wrong." Aang went quiet after that. He had no response.

"Just because the Air Nomads may have had children with people from other nations doesn't mean that their children were Air Nomads," an acolyte named Qiao said. She was one of the most apt and studious of Aang's Air Acolytes, and they had spent many hours together pouring over the newly discovered texts. Sometimes, Aang thought that she had a better grasp of Air Nomad culture than even he did.

"I suppose....I suppose that's true," Aang said thoughtfully, taking a sip of his tea.

"The Air Nomads were mostly not monogamous," Qiao pointed out. "I'm sure there were a lot of Nomads who had understandings with their lovers from other nations. Especially among the Air Acolytes of the day."

Aang pondered that for the rest of the day. Then the next. Then the rest of the week before he finally approached Katara. He found her by the fountain with Kya and Bumi. Kya was busy making imperfect little shapes with the water while Katara was teaching Bumi how to put his hair into a warrior's wolf tail.

"You look just like your uncle Sokka," she laughed, pressing a kiss on her son's cheek. "I bet you'll be a great warrior just like him, too." That twisted Aang's gut uncomfortably. He cleared his throat to get Katara's attention.

"Hey, sweetie," he said.

"Hey," Katara smiled at him. "We're just about to have story time. Do you want to stick around for How Umiak Rowed Her Boat to the Stars?"

"Oh, um..."Aang shifted uncomfortably on his feet. "Sure. I was just...thinking of something."

"Yeah?" Katara raised her brow at him. "What?"

"I was just thinking of how all the Air Nomads were benders." Katara didn't bother trying to hide her disgusted snort or the rolling of her eyes.

"Okay, and?" she huffed. "Did you draw any new conclusions?"

"I can't have been the only Air Nomad to have children with someone from a different culture," he said. Katara stared at him blankly for a long moment.

"I told you that," she responded finally. "It's just now sinking in?'

"No, I understood you," Aang told her. He kicked at the ground. There was a loose pebble under his toe and he focused on rolling it back and forth. "It's just...well, the Air Nomads, they weren't strictly monogamous."

"Monogamous," Katara scoffed. "That's a big word for you." Aang bristled a bit at that, but he took a breath and let it go.

"I was just reading," Aang said with a shrug. "It occurred to me that maybe because the Air Nomads weren't monogamous, they just didn't bring their non-bending kids into the Air Nomad society." Katara looked up at Aang with her eyes wide.

"That's awful!" she said. "So because their kids didn't bend the right elements, they had to be cut off from one of their parents?"

"No, I'm sure it wasn't as bad as all that-" Aang started to protest.

"What exactly are you saying, Aang?" There was a dangerous edge to Katara's voice. A warning.

"Nothing, nothing!" he scrambled back, tripping over his tongue, trying to call back his words, and cursing himself for trying to bring up the subject without a plan. Katara eyed him coldly. She was angry and trying not to show it.

"It's time for lunch," she told her children. "Let's go inside and fix something to eat."

"But Mommy," Bumi protested. "I want to hear about Umiak!" Katara turned to him with a tight smile.

"That's okay, sweetie," she said. "I'll tell you while you help me fix lunch." With one last scowl at Aang, she took Bumi's hand and swung Kya up onto her hip and went inside.

-:-:-:-:-:-

Aang felt vindicated when it was discovered that he and Qiao were right. The Air Nomads would often leave non-airbending children with their non-Nomad parents. Sometimes the Air Nomad parent would stay with their non-Nomad partners and build a life with them and their children (something he made a note to tell Katara about). Then it was discovered that they were only partially right.

Some of the Air Nomads stayed and raised mixed heritage families. Some left their non-airbending children behind with their non-Nomad partners. That was expected. Reasonable, even. What Aang was not expecting, however, were the accounts of non-airbending children being given away. Some were adopted, and those adoptions were traceable through documents and letters. Others were sold. Those transactions were traceable, too. By most accounts, those children went into indentured servitude and many of them learned trades and were able to start businesses once their indenture was up. Aang tried to focus on the positives. Katara, however, was horrified.

"What right did they have to sell those children into...into slavery?" she demanded hotly while they were getting ready for bed.

"I'm sure it wasn't that bad," Aang insisted. "After all, the Air Nomads wouldn't have put children into situations where they could've been hurt."

"Yes," Katara sneered. "I'm sure their new owners were very gentle with their exploitation."

"That isn't fair!" Aang protested. "Do you know how difficult it would've been for those kids to live among the Nomads?"

"Probably about as easy as it's been for our kids." Katara glared at Aang meaningly. He felt his cheeks heat as he looked away, pretending not to understand.

Bumi was going on eight now, and Kya was five. They were both old enough to ask questions about why it was so difficult for them to move around their own home. Katara and the Acolytes had an easier time being adults and able to maneuver obstacles that short legs and small hands couldn't without help, but it was still a regular challenge to get around the Air Temple for them. Aang was in the process of building a complex near Republic City where non-airbending Acolytes could live and learn with more ease, but it wouldn't be ready for anyone to move into for another year or so. It would be safer for children with no airbending ability, too. Aang glanced over at Katara from the corner of his eye, at the soft swell of her stomach, already showing signs of pregnancy at her second month.

-:-:-:-:-:-

Tenzin was the last of Aang's children with Katara, and the only airbender. When he was almost one, he airbent for the first time, and Aang couldn't stop celebrating for an entire week. When Tenzin was two, the first of the burial mounds were discovered.

Archaeologists working at the mostly restored Northern Air Temple found it at the base of the mountain. There were several layers to the grave, suggesting generations' worth of use. Most of the bones were small. Infant and toddler sized. The largest bones were about the size of an average eight year old. The bones were all jumbled together, as if they had been tossed in a heap. Some of them wore the clothes they were buried in, but most of the bones were too broken to hang on to any frabric. There were also no signs of any shrouds or anything indicating that they had been given any of the customary funeral rites of the Air Nomads. The fact that they were found at the base of the mountain in itself was unusual. All the different groups of Air Nomads had their own unique funeral customs, but one thing that remained the same was that they were laid to rest as close to the sky as possible.

When the first reports of how the children came to be at the base of the mountain came out, Aang was certain it was the rankest propaganda. None of the Air Nomads, no matter how stringent they were about non-airbenders living among them, would ever harm a child. For a while, he seemed to be right, as all the proof was from secondary and tertiary sources.

"Lies the Fire Nation used to justify genocide," Aang said confidently.

"But how did the children get there?" Katara asked. Aang had no answer for her. Yet. There must have been a good one, though. Maybe a plague had run through the Air Temple, forcing them to bury the bodies at the bottom of the mountain to prevent contamination, or something equally tragic. Aang began talking to the archaeologists about giving the bones a proper burial as soon as they could be sorted. The count at that time was 700 bodies in the pile and there were still so many more to go.

A few months after that, the oldest of the Air Nomad accounts were uncovered. It went back a good 300 years, and it spoke about a surplus of infants born without the gift of airbending. There were too many to be disposed of the normal ways, and many of the non-bending parents were unwilling or unable to raise the children themselves. The anonymous monk wrote of a meeting to discuss the crisis. They wouldn't be able to care for so many that couldn't get around the temple, or travel with the Nomads. There was a food shortage. A water shortage. An everything shortage. So the head monk suggested giving the children to the air. That had been the first time the practice had been recorded, near as anyone could tell. But some of the bones were older than that.

That's what they called it. It sounded lovely. Poetic even. In practice, though, the babies were carried to the edge of the temple grounds and held in the air. A short prayer was said for the souls of the children, and then they just...let go. They were so high up, they probably couldn't hear the children hit the ground.

The public began to call them the Fog Children. They were babies born to Air Nomad parents, but without airbending abilities themselves. People clung to the term and it soon spread all over the world in hushed whispers. Aang hated it. Katara hated it. It was the only thing they could agree on by that time.

"It isn't fair!" Aang bemoaned. "It's like people are using it to justify the Fire Nation killing all the Air Nomads."

"If it bothers you so much," Katara said after she'd put the kids to bed, "then speak up! Condemn what they did."

"I do!" Aang insisted. He had protested, loudly that all of the Air Nomads shouldn't be judged by what one fringe sect did.

"Not just them," Katara said. "All of it. It's just like with the Fire Nation. Remember what Zuko said? You can't expect to move forward without acknowledging the past. All of it was wrong. The Air Nomads treated their non-bending children as if they had no value. Condemn the adoptions and abandonings and the selling of the children!"

"How is it my responsibility to make up for all of that?" Aang demanded.

"You're the only one left," Katara reminded him, trying to be gentle. "I'm not saying you have to call the Air Nomads monsters. They did something wrong. They were human. You can acknowledge that and commit to being better than that."

"How?"

"Start with your children."

It had been a frequent argument between Katara and Aang how Aang treated their children. Bumi was 13 now, well on his way to becoming a man. Kya was 11 and Tenzin was five. Often, Katara would quiz Aang on his children- what Kya's favorite color was, or the name of Bumi's best friend. Aang could admit that he was correct about Tenzin more often than the others, but it was only because Aang had so much he had to teach his youngest. Katara should've understood that. After all, there were things she did with Kya that she couldn't do with Bumi or Tenzin.

"It's not the same," Katara told him. Aang could never remember why, though.

For the next year or so, Aang spent much of his time doing damage control. He did his best to separate the practices at the Northern Air Temple and the particular sect of Air Nomad culture that grew around it from the rest of the Air Nomads. Every criticism of the culture was met sharply by Aang's rebuttals and justifications. Penning article after article espousing the virtues of the Air Nomads at large became his full time job, and obsession. It took him two weeks to notice that Katara had left with all three of his children, and another month for him to find the letter Katara had left in his bedside table telling him she was seeking a divorce.

He got Tenzin three months of the year. It was all he could manage, being completely unused to parenting alone. Aang taught his son what he could of airbending and the Nomad philosophy he could in that time, and did his best to ignore the people whispering fog children in the same breath as his oldest children.

[papathe5th]

Papa Emeritus I wanted you to know he had a third leg. He woke up from his afternoon nap to let you know.

SOURCE

[macking-cheese]

Crawling out of my art block grave to present to theee a lil something something (aka when two hyperfixations decide to become one)

Long story short I blasted 3 of my favorite little blorbos with the buginator and will do it again >:]

[cruel-hiraeth]

꒰ TOO SWEET ꒱ OKKOTSU YUUTA X READER

cw: mdni. yandere yuuta. yutamaki poly hinted at. vague discussion of death. implied suicidal ideation (yuuta). canonverse. reader is a civilian and probably (most definitely) has stockholm syndrome. a/n: this was supposed to be a normal hurt/comfort drabble, but then i remembered how strange and off-putting yuuta is…it spiraled from there.

“Do you ever think about dying?”

The evening air lulls, hushed in anticipation. Tucked in the safety of your bedroom, you both lounge atop wrinkled cotton sheets, silhouettes washed a dusky blue. His voice is soft when he speaks, chin resting in the hollow of your rib cage—an uncomfortable pressure.

(It feels claustrophobic: like each inhale will yield less and less oxygen, like the world will close in on you, like you will be trapped inside your skeleton, beneath him forever.

But you would do anything for Yuuta, you think. And you’re certain he would withstand any pain to comfort you—quicker than the beat of a hummingbird’s wings.)

His hair messily frames his face, partially obscuring his vision; you comb your fingers through the silken strands and push them back. His irises—midnight, wide and unflinching as the velvet sky—drink you in.

You’ve long grown used to his disquieting stare.

Knifelike, it slits and peels back your skin, lancing muscle and cracking bone to expose your inner self: all your emotions, secrets, and fears. Through trial and error, you’ve discovered that it’s safest to answer his questions truthfully; whether you like it or not, he always gets at the marrow of your being.

“Sometimes,” you finally reply.

Blinking slowly, he hums. “That makes sense.”

Before you can untangle the threads of his thoughts, he adds, “I used to think about death all the time, especially before I understood what happened to Rika.” He draws invisible shapes on the ridges of your ribs, lithe fingers leaving rippling gooseflesh in their wake. “Even after—when I realized I had unwittingly turned her into a curse—I wondered if I would be better off dead.”

(It’s easy to forget that Yuuta is a special-grade sorcerer—though you have no conception of what his position entails. “Jujutsu,” “sorcery,” and “curses” are just a few of the words that are strictly prohibited in the sanctuary of your one-bedroom apartment. You only know of Rika because she saved your life alongside Yuuta and Maki.

While you can’t parse why he’s confiding in you, you stay quiet. You shudder as you imagine how Maki would react to such talk at home.)

“I’m sorry,” you finally murmur, unsure of what else you can say.

He chuckles, lips curling into a smile, eyes crinkling in amusement. “You’re too sweet for your own good—you know that?”

Shaking your head, you admit, “No one has ever called me sweet.”

Lifting himself to his hands, the crushing weight on your sternum instantly melts away; he crawls up your body and drops to his elbows, forehead pressed to yours. His hair curtains your face: all that you can see, hear, smell, feel, and taste is Yuuta.

“Well I have,” he pouts before dotting openmouthed kisses across your neck, breath molten—cloying—as he reaches the familiar curve of your jaw. “That’s why you’re here with us. Your soul is too precious for the ugly world outside.”

Yuuta pulls back to contentedly admire your expression, now flustered from his praise and caresses. “For many years, I didn’t value my life. But after meeting Maki-san, then you…I found my purpose.”

A cool palm cups your cheek, skilled digits splaying out, sensing the life thrumming beneath your flesh. He resumes: “I don’t fear death, and I don’t long for it—not anymore. However,” his thumb smooths across the plush vermilion of your lips, teasing tenderness as his gaze darkens, “if anyone tries to hurt you, they shouldn’t fear death. They should fear me.”

[ozzgin]

Show me your favourite parts of Romania, please! -🦊

I most certainly can, kiddo!

I'll start with some places I visited and enjoyed. The first one is Histria, the ruins of a Greek colony and the oldest urban settlement in Romania - founded in 630 BC. It's close to my hometown and a neat place to visit if you're into ancient history.

Then you have the Peleș Castle and that part of Transylvania in general, which is also neat for mountains and old castles. You probably already know Bran castle for its Dracula reputation.

The third one is the Danube Delta, which is supposedly a stunning natural reservation. I myself only saw some parts of it because my relatives have a house in the area run a small fishing business. Visited them a couple of times as a kid, but it was a little harsh back in the day. No bathroom and only a dug toilet out in the of the yard and past the cabbage fields. At the time my younger cousin also got his fingernail ripped off after fiddling between the boats, and the next day his grandma dragged him to a pot of boiling, salted water to disinfect the wound. We woke up from the screams. My parents used it as an example for years, "see, you could've been raised in the countryside like that, eh? None of this city luxury!"

There's also places I'd like to visit someday soon, like the Merry Cemetery and Salina Turda. It's a salt mine and comes with an amusement park in the middle of an underground lake. Overall, I'd say I haven't visited much of Romania, so I hope to do it little by little.

Lastly, I can show you my birthplace! It used to be a communist hub, which then slowly rusted away after the revolution. Here's a view of my neighborhood back in the day, and the steel mill (largest in the country) where my dad worked as an engineer. This is Galați, for those curious.

Is it my favorite place? Not necessarily, but it's part of my childhood and it makes me very nostalgic.

[herebecritters]

Can you draw flippy x flaky please

You’re lucky I love them ❤️

[sun0verth3wall]

GLADE RULES

01. Do your part

02. Do not harm the other Gladers

03. Never go outside the Glade unless you’re a runner

UnHelpful Additions:

Never EVER ask Gally why he quit took a break from being a runner

Don’t ask Newt how he got his limp

Don’t ask Frypan to give you extra if he doesn’t- we only get new food once a week

If you get pulled into a fight circle, don’t try and get out of it

Be sure to tell Alby or Newt when you remember your name

Try not to get on Newts bad side

Don’t ask what Gally puts in his drink- even Newt doesn’t know.

Just don’t ask stupid questions (Thomas)

Can’t believe this has to be said- but do NOT ask to ‘have a turn’ with Teresa, you might as well be thrown out to the maze

If Alby or Newt tells you to shut up, you should probably shut up

If you are a keeper, you still have to do your job- don’t let the power get to your head, you don’t have a lot of it

Don’t be a dick

Just because Frypan is the only cook, that doesn’t mean you can’t help- it’s very appreciated

Don’t tell the medjacks how to do their job

Stick to the job you’re given unless explicitly told otherwise

Don’t try and stick out an arm or leg when the walls are closing.  Why is this being said, George?

If an animal somehow gets loose, don’t slaughter it.  It is a pain to clean

If you don’t eat all your food, put it back in the kitchen

Don’t start food fights if you don’t wanna clean it up

Your punishment is your punishment, don’t try to bargain