#and also the less lore and trauma charged one

[mysticiiisms]

Which of your characters do you think would make the best protagonist for a Myst game?

None. The protagonist is always a conveniently featureless one, I think it'd be weird if it was intended to be a specific person... I think it is in one of the games that I haven't checked yet, but I'm not sure. Either way I prefer them to be featureless.

I know I have a Strangers AU/Timeline with my trio, but I imagine it working as some kind of suplementary material rather than a game. Like a novel or series or whatever detailing a what if situation, since canonically there aren't three simultaneous Strangers in the original game(s).

Mainly they're meant to work like NPCs, so it'd be more accurate to visualize the situations they could be encountered in and how they would be interacted with. Emmit would be an ally from the get-go, but Limai and Ruqaya I think would make fun misled antagonists at first.

[another-lost-mc]

On the subject of your latest world building post: fallen angels…

Can we talk about what happened when Azra fell? (If we wanna chat AU - Meta as well POOR SWEET BABY META) And how when the brothers fell it impacted Azra’s relationship with Lucifer (especially where it concerns Meta if we’re talking AU)? We got so much to unpack here with the fallen angel OCs. 😭😭

Firstly, I love exploring fallen angel lore because it's like the perfect way to view all sides and history of the Celestial Realm and Devildom. They're perfect if you want to explore the perspective of someone that has lived in both realms and who loves and hates them for different reasons.

We got a peek at old timey Devildom history when we got to see how the realm reacted after Lucifer and his siblings fell. The problem is that the game doesn't really go into a lot of detail exploring the history before that happened, and some of those new additions to the story weren't explored in much detail. That means I have a lot of gaps to fill with my own world building while I cherry pick the stuff from Nightbringer that makes sense and disregard the stuff that doesn't fit.

The fact that angels and demons have insanely long life spans also means that social norms and attitudes probably shifted over time. "Older" fallen angels and "newer" ones (like the demon brothers) would have completely different experiences that shape their perspective. We got to see the Devildom through the eyes of Lucifer and the others as they adjusted to life as demons - we have no idea how other fallen angels managed to cope with their own personal hardships or trauma from the fall. In general, I think most fallen angels (that survived the fall) think the demon brothers had it easy.

Anyway, to explain why that's the case, I should probably explain some of the fundamentals. I don't think the demon brothers were the first angels to be cast out to the Devildom, and I don't think they were the last. I do think that Diavolo being in charge shifted the realm's attitudes and treatment of fallen angels to some extent, but angels who fell before that time were at a clear disadvantage.

(Some of the discussion below contains vague references to violence/blood and other demon-typical behaviours.)

The Devildom was far from welcoming. Why would it be? It felt less like a mutual agreement that the Devildom would give fallen angels a home and more like Father ruthlessly discarding his disgraced angels to a place that didn't want them either. not me comparing it to Dumbledore abandoning baby Harry on the Dursleys' doorstep and ignoring the years of abuse and neglect that followed as the boy was clearly unwanted For world building purposes, Purgatory isn't the realm that separates the human world from the Devildom, but the realm that separates the Devildom from the Celestial Realm. Falling isn't stepping through a portal and being greeted safely at the Demon Lord's Castle, it's plunging through a no-man's-land plane of existence, the metaphysical barrier that's supposed to keep the two realms apart, and crash-landing at some random location with no promise of survival (or safety should they live that long).

Before I get to that, I should probably clarify how the various OC stories overlap and connect to each other. Even though I originally wrote most of them so they could be independent characters in their own version of the OM narrative, they all have the potential to coexist in the same world. While some of them know each other personally because of their shared history, some of them don't - but the potential for them to live in the same universe is there, because I've tried to write the missing lore for the Devildom in a consistent way for all of them. They all do things that directly or indirectly affect each other and don't even realize it.

I probably need to do a timeline/order of events in another post but to give you an idea of how their stories intersect:

Azra, as my first OC, has the most connections to other characters. A lot of the world building relates in some way to his experiences living as an angel in the Celestial Realm and his life as a demon in the Devildom. The angel OCs (Metatron, Seraphiel, Gabriel, Uriel, Habuhiah) and the demons Belial and Zekhan are all important to his backstory, and in a small way, he also interacts with the Demon King.

Belial, who would become one of the most powerful demon lords, has directly and indirectly shaped a lot of the past Devildom history and continues to influence the realm's social structure and economic sectors. At one point during the Demon King's rule, Belial is responsible for creating conflict with the Celestial Realm and shortly after, Azra falls. However, the outcome of his interference has direct consequences that affect Tenebris' own story as well.

Tenebris and Bathin's history share the most overlap and influence. It's mostly told from Tenebris' perspective because Bathin is...well, he's dead for most of it. But his death is an important part of that history (and Mephisto's own character/story, especially once Bathin is reborn later on).

A lot of the events leading up to the demon brothers' fall is overseen by the Demon King, Diavolo's father. Tenebris and Belial have the most direct, personal interaction with him above all the other OCs, but it's actually through the Demon King's eyes that the shared history across nearly all the OCs is consistent. The last part of the story I had to flesh out was how Diavolo came into power and why the Demon King appointed the Avatars of Sin, an act of such significance that practically all of the Devildom (including the different OCs) were affected by it.

I've talked about Azra's backstory in detail now (a very brief TL;DR version of it is on his biography page) but I should probably explain Belial's history a bit too. Even though he and Azra have some similar opinions about Diavolo and the demon brothers, their experiences as newly-fallen angels were wildly different and that affects their opinions later on.

BELIAL

Belial wasn't the first angel to fall, but he's one of the oldest. He's also one of the first ones to make waves in the Devildom considering how ruthless he would later become. He wasn't too badly injured after the fall, all things considered - if you ignore the missing wings - but he was furious when he realized what happened.

I've mentioned how previous demon rulers had their own eccentricities and way of governing things. Some of them were fueled by the chaotic nature of their sins and the realm had periods of unrest and instability because of it. Unhinged rulers encouraged or even participated in things like "hunting" fallen angels for sport, for no other reason than their existence and misery were fun to exploit.

Anyway, Belial fell during a time when that sort of thing was accepted. Angels falling to the Devildom were visible to the naked eye, like a comet plummeting from the sky. Observant demons simply had to travel in that direction. Part of the fun was catching disoriented or wounded angels off-guard. Belial was found by one of those hunting parties but he still had his wits about him, and thankfully he was armed when he was cast out. Most angels aren't given a chance to pack their things when they're forced to leave and whatever they have with them - their clothes, maybe some weapons if they're lucky - is all they're left with. Belial's worst crime, aside from his last explosive argument with Michael, was being a powerful warrior that was too arrogant and prideful for his own good. The demons that found him never stood a chance. Belial made a mockery of them all by pledging his loyalty to the Devildom's ruler at the time. He offered the heads of his slain would-be murderers and grinned manically as their blood stained the throne room floor. He was able to walk away despite the insult because keeping him alive proved to be more entertaining than killing him outright.

That's how Belial got his start. After earning his initial windfall - inherited from the first demons he defeated - he set on a reckless path of overthrowing weaker demon lords than himself and creating an unbreakable foothold in the realm. Stories of his deeds were still exaggerated beyond imagination and he had a reputation for being bloodthirsty, power-hungry, and insane. He was considered aggressive and wildly unpredictable, but that's only partly true: he hides his intelligence and manipulations behind the guise of being chaos incarnate. He became a demon lord that was respected and feared almost in equal measure, and that's why it was important for the Demon King (and Diavolo to a lesser extent) to manage his temperamental behaviour while ensuring he remained loyal and kept his legions in line.

AZRA (and META's AU)

Azra falls partly because Belial is a manipulative bastard. Unlike most fallen angels that are alone and left to survive on their own in the Devildom, Azra has the unique advantage of having Belial's assistance. Even though their relationship is tense at first (since Belial wanted Azra to fall and worked hard to make that happen) it's still beneficial for both of them in the long run. It's ironic that Azra and Lucifer share that parallel that they're both protected by a powerful demon benefactor where most other fallen angels struggle without one.

Still, Azra faces a lot of hardships that the demon brothers can't relate to. Even though Belial helps Azra, that help isn't free - he wants something in return, and with nothing else to do but to try and make a name for himself, Azra feels obligated to obey him. Meeting Zekhan makes it easier for Azra to forge an independent life so he doesn't have to work for Belial long-term. Azra works hard to quickly stake a claim in the Devildom for himself. It's no surprise that the fallen angels like him, who were literally stripped of their former identities and forced to start new lives in such a hostile place, would want to gain enough power and security so that their lives can never be broken like that again. Azra's goal isn't fame or wealth, it's the power to ensure his own survival and live the life he wants.

In the AU where Metatron falls with Azra, their beginnings in the Devildom are very similar to Azra's story where he falls alone. However, Azra's motivations shift slightly because he has Metatron to care for, and despite his best intentions, things aren't easy for them even if they're in the Devildom together.

Meta's experience as a demon is also significantly different from Azra's. Where Azra is a rising socialite and quickly gaining popularity after opening The Fall, Meta's presence is much smaller, almost to the point where most demons don't know (or forget) that he even exists. It's almost a complete role reversal from their lives as angels where Metatron was popular and one of the most powerful Seraphs and Azra was just an ordinary angel in comparison.

Azra's reputation and social standing in the Devildom does protect him from some criticism and anti-angel sentiment that still exists, but unfortunately, Meta faces a lot more ridicule and criticism. He's treated almost like a leper because he struggles to blend in and play the part of a "real" demon - there's still something Celestial about him that rubs a lot of demons the wrong way at first. The fact that he was a Seraph doesn't help much. Azra fails to notice this and it's actually Solomon's appearance in both their lives that causes things to change, for better and for worse. The next shake-up for the status quo doesn't happen until they learn about the demon brothers coming to the Devildom, and that causes a lot of new problems for both of them.

WHEN LUCIFER FALLS

Nightbringer gave us an idea of what it was like in the Devildom in the aftermath of Lucifer and his siblings being cast out. A lot of uneasiness, a lot of prejudice, and they were protected by Diavolo who took them into his personal care and helped them acclimate to their new lives as demons.

Angels that fell before them have a lot of complicated feelings on the matter, some of which aren't positive. Some of them are downright hostile because of it. From their perspectives:

Lucifer is a hypocrite. He probably helped condemn a lot of them personally. None of them were worth the fight to save, until it came to one of his siblings, and he was willing to start civil war to defend Lilith from persecution.

Related to that, a harsh but unspoken feeling amongst fallen angels: Lilith knew the rules and broke them and should've accepted the consequences like they all had to. Nothing made her more special or deserving of another chance, except that one of her brothers just happened to be Lucifer who seemed willing to bend the rules when it affected someone close to him.

The demon brothers had an easier time after the fall because of the Demon King's actions and Diavolo's interest in them. They all suffered injury and trauma from the fall. They all lost their home, they all lost someone or something they loved. That shared pain is universal, but the demon brothers were coddled through it.

Some of the demon brothers didn't deserve the power the Demon King bestowed upon them. While Lucifer, Mammon and Beel were uniquely powerful in their own right, the fact that the other less powerful siblings were elevated to such an extreme rubs some of the fallen angels the wrong way. Part of it is petty jealousy, but they see it as another form of nepotism - their relation to Lucifer gives them an unfair advantage in the Devildom as much as it did in the Celestial Realm.

Belial's mostly baffled by the hypocrisy of it all and pretends (badly) that he's not bitter about it. He was one of the Cherubim before he fell, he wanted to be a Seraph - he was well aware of the formal rules and intricacies and hidden politics involved with governing the Celestial Realm. He also doesn't share a lot of sympathy regarding Lilith's fate either. A lot of his earlier interactions with Lucifer and his brothers are met with condescension and and contempt.

Azra's anger is mostly directed at Lucifer for very personal reasons. As an angel, Azra asked Michael and Lucifer for help (with a situation regarding Metatron) and neither of them did. Michael acted like there was no problem, and Lucifer reinforced that by refusing to get more involved. As far as Azra's concerned, their disregard forced his hand and ultimately led to him falling; seeing Lucifer willing to rally against Michael for his own personal problems feels like a slap in the face.

When Azra and Lucifer meet, a lot of that bitterness comes out. Lucifer sees the sort of demon Azra has become (in order to survive a situation he never wanted), and Azra sees Lucifer as a hypocrite who was willing to risk everything to protect his siblings and couldn't even do that right. So yeah, they're not on great terms.

In the AU where Meta and Azra fall together, some of Azra's bitterness is gone because at least in that story, he and Meta are still together in the Devildom even if their circumstances are...not great. Because Meta's made it more obvious that the Devildom's treatment of fallen angels was sorely lacking in the past, it's implied that Diavolo makes more of an effort to help the demon brothers adapt so they can avoid the same difficulties Azra and Meta experienced themselves.

Another consequence of Lucifer and his brothers coming to the Devildom is the almost instantaneous outrage among some of the demon lords and the legions they command. Many of them had to fight Lucifer or his siblings in previous wars with the Celestial Realm, and some undoubtedly lost friends or loved ones during those conflicts. Having your former enemy and his family being treated like royalty by the newly crowned prince, who is controversial in his own right, created a huge social upheaval. Anti-angel sentiments grew among the demon lords that were upset that the Demon King established the Avatars of Sin and gave them so much power. The lesser demons who were part of the realm's armies were furious that they suddenly had to obey the whims of the naïve prince and his pet angels.

(Diavolo was right to shield the demon brothers within the Demon King's Castle until he could ensure that public tensions had died down and they could live safely on their own. Fallen angels such as Belial and Azra were popular and strong enough that most demons wouldn't dare attack them, even if they insulted them privately. In the AU where he falls too, Meta doesn't walk away from that ordeal unharmed.)

[drunkenlionwrites]

Having now finished DAV, the biggest outlier for me is the endless potential for the companions characterisation! We never get passed the surface level aspects of their character - I feel this mostly for Lucanis - they never delve into his trauma of being imprisoned for an entire year and having a demon possess him against his will! They'd rather him talk about his love of coffee in every interaction! So frustrating :( Don't get me started on the lack luster romance scenes

I think I'm somewhere in like 2/3s of the game, but I accidentally spoiled myself the endings and the Varric thing (Which was kinda what I suspected from the beginning, but anyway), so I'll try to form my final opinions when I'm completely finished it. But so far to me it looks like a mash of Hogwarts Legacy (UI and combat) + DA2 in terms of maps and what they tried to do with narration made by Varric + mission based game progression + ME2 in terms of the ending battle + requirements to level up the fractions by completing their quests. All of this I don't mind on paper, but mashed together in a way that they did just...didn't leave any impact on me at all? I also was not a Solas/Lavellan player so the Inquisitor + Solas emotional and nostalgic impact is not working on me. My biggest pet peeve I guess is the retconned lore which has so many plot holes now? The "it was all Evanuris all along" is ughh...cheapening the whole lore for me. As for character writing and dialogue writing, it surely is the second one. I just see sooooo much wasted potential in characters like Lucanis and Davren, for example. But in this game they look and feel more like 2 walking Miro boards with notes about their quirks and history, rather than believable good-written characters. I really miss the prolonged conversations you could have with companions in camp back in DAO or DAI, or their banter with each other, where some topics were discussed during multiple conversations during the game. It made them feel alive, I could feel the conenction between the player character and the party. Now all the conversations are so surface-level, it's not even funny. We also don't have any real conflicts between characters in the party and companion characters with player character as well. At times, their personalities blend into something homogenous, lacking individuality. We just all agree on all the stuff and the conflicts writers added to the game were "who doesn't like dragons?" level of deep, which Rook resolved like a kindergarten teacher are were ridiculous. Characters from DAI which I previously found more shallow - like Vivenne and Blackwall - if put in this game would now seem like real people, which says a lot about this one. I feel like it all boils down to what David Gaider wrote on twitter some time ago:

"[It] slowly turned from a company that vocally valued its writers to one where we were... quietly resented, with a reliance on expensive narrative seen as the 'albatross' holding the company back,"

"Maybe that sounds like a heavy charge, but it's what I distinctly felt up until I left in 2016, suddenly all anyone in charge was asking was 'how do we have LESS writing?' A good story would simply happen, via magic wand, rather than be something that needed support and priority."

So basically, this is what we got in this installation. Laid off writers that were the pillar of this franchise, or writers who got burnt out and resigned years ago were no longer driving the importance of good written characters and plot and we got a game done by people, who were okay doing what management wanted from them.

[c6jpg]

skirk story quest

i really enjoyed it, however i think it was really skirk's personal lore hard-carrying the vibes and what actually happened in the quest (e.g. present story driving it) was kind of weak in comparison

i think the story quest did a good job of explaining skirk's background and motivations without being another case of us just standing around and someone giving a self-lore monologue

walking through her own memories is a very easy way to show things but i'm glad you really could get a sense of her trauma and survivor's guilt BEFORE they tell you she has trauma and survivor's guilt

i also appreciate that through learning about skirk we also learned, or at least got a much better sense, of surtalogi and HIS motivations as well, and i kind of love being able to see the connection threading from surtalogi to skirk to childe

that being said he IS framed as a very stereotypical "i want you to be strong enough to kill me" guy. it definitely works in this setting but i feel like people blow out of proportion how "unhinged" he is. imo he isn't, just very one-track minded

honestly kind of reminds of me of arlecchino how everyone hyped them up to be insaaaaaaaaaaaane and in reality they're just like. normal on a different moral scale lol

god they're gonna do the same to columbina and rhinedottir i can smell it

anyways. i do like skirk. my issue with the quest specifically though is that all her interesting characterization happened in the past. what happened in the actual present and her little "character development" moment was a huge nothingburger.

seeing how she changed from her child self to who she is now because of surtalogi was WAY more compelling

like it's not bad for characters to have their character development be before you meet them - a lot of these characters are supposed to be fully realized people we learn about through these story quests anyways

my issue is that for the CURRENT quest there was no real conflict to make the CURRENT quest interesting, especially regarding skirk consolidating her rational and emotional sides. we got to see her beautiful inner space, rational skirk and emotional skirk talked for like 2 minutes and then she was like "yeah you're right okay we're good."

like at least with ei/raiden shogun we had to do a whole fight sequence with everyone's voices and yae miko chiming in. skirk LITERALLY just talked with herself for 2 minutes and called it a day

you'd think someone who has again and again severed herself from her emotions and has very real trauma and fear and guilt for HUNDREDS OF YEARS would be a bit harder to convince than that

like if anything skirk was just having a slightly bad day lol

aligned with that, skofnungr was just like. so irrelevant lmao and he did get the tell not show treatment

i think the story quest would have been much stronger if skirk's reconciliation with her emotions happened during the confrontation with skofnungr, it would have helped both of their stories

i also wish we did a little less training and a little more seeing skirk's investigation POV? might have helped the skofnungr reveal if they dropped subtle hints in something like that.

the fact that we didn't get to see any of her investigation and skirk was just like "okay yeah now we go here" also just made the present storyline feel very brushed to the side in favor of exploring skirk's past

also a little peeved they talked about the false sky as an established thing and just had paimon give us an "i don't understand any of that but anyways" ajklfjdsadjsl i feel like we haven't actually addressed the false sky in any major quest at all (maybe that's in the archon quest which I haven't done or saved for nod-krai).

in short i wish learning about skirk's past was more intertwined with the actual plot of the story quest

other random thoughts

training sequence was kind of tedious largely because playing as the traveler is not fun (especially when only using normal/charged attacks) but i am glad it was incorporated into the final fight

i also kind of lmao'd at them addressing skirk's outfit changes being tied to abyssal energy or whatever. at first i thought it might have been a dev bug of them using her old model but okay sure. yeah. i guess

the scenery inside skirk's inner space with the broken waterfalls and everything was gorrrrrrrrrrrgeous

abyss music during the training arc was kinda whatever but i'm glad they brought back some og tracks that i haven't appreciated in a while (stormterror's lair music used for skirk background/inner moments + the chasm above ground music)

LOVE skirk's song as well. i do still find her playing the guitar randomly a little jarring (especially because wasn't she supposed to be in full on rational no emotion mode then?) but love that melody so much i can't wait for her osts to be released

hoping we see skirk finally meet childe in a second story quest?

[lilythecaattt]

(A pile of not-so-random Shelly’s World AU Lore bc yes :3)

When you want to ramble about something, but don’t have something to ramble about, but suddenly have an idea as you’re typing:

(Click below if you wanna be psychically whiplashed by my wall of text over my silly AU’s version of Dandy :3)

HELLO UNFORTUNATE SOUL, I will now give you just as you signed up for:

So.. Dandy, the goober I love and hate equally for his shop, and for the fandoms pressure to hate him…

…But let’s ignore all that for a second:

(!POSSIBLE TW!: Wall of text, Aka an Essay, Misspellings, AU nonsense, Cring, Very slightly-hinted Moonflower, Trauma, *Maybe* body horror?… Yeye 😎)

(^Take the tags with salt, and concern. You will be just as surprised as me which of these is a joke and which isn’t. Hahah…)

This mostly talks about the other Mains, and less of Sprout or Cosmo… They’re still mentioned. BUT THIS IS DANDY-CENTRIC. With some Astro & Shelly too.

Also this might be like, a 15-20-ish minute read? Not sure…

But if you need writing ideas? Maybe this can inspire you?

Now, let’s get straight into some (hopefully brief) detail on this specific Shelly’s World AU: Shelly has her own Show, because Gardenview was renovated before Dandy was even reintroduced—BUT that does not mean he wasn’t.. around, in some shape or form.

The totally-very-secret SW!Dandicus Dancifer Lore… Or at least what I’ve taped together:

What does that mean?: He kind of just watched from a distance, for a while, at least. He never showed himself to the other Toons, and mostly stayed in the lower, more abandoned parts of the Centre. *At first, anyways… This is the past of the AU, but not the far past.*

Blah blah blah… Dandy is caught sneaking around with Astro one day, Vee notices Dandy’s not-very-good “disguise”, and the Toons find out because Vee is a nosey *bot* with a love for yapping with (some specific) other Toons. Also Vee HATED him at that time—as all the Toons knew were rumors on what happened with Dandy. (Most of them were bad)

Shelly, Sprout and Cosmo stayed neutral, kind of ignoring it… But Vee kept pressing them to not ignore it, so they started getting annoyed by her. (Them ignoring her, lead her to become a bit desperate for attention, so she started bothering Shelly and Astro all the more) (Suddenly that “LOOK AT ME” popup has another meaning… ;-;)

Once Astro and Dandy had realized the secret was out, one of the people in charge of the Toons offered to reintroduce Dandy, since it wasn’t very safe to ignore that he’d been wandering unmaintained parts of the Centre… After Astro pushed Dandy a bit, Dandy agreed, and he was reintroduced. The other Toons were told what was found out during investigations and questioning. So basically they (“they” as in, the people working there or whatever) interrogated Dandy, and anyone else they could, to figure out what had happened with ✨Delilah✨ behind the scenes. (In secret, Astro and Shelly were also questioned…)

So yeah they heard Dandy was manipulated (mostly via threats) by Delilah, but most Toons didn’t care for the extra information… Either because they still believed Dandy was the bad guy, or because they believed the opposite to begin with.

For a long time, Dandy stayed closed-off to the other Mains—Aside from Astro, because Astro was actually the one keeping him sane despite the loneliness in the basement lower-parts of the Centre—but a few Toons still went to talk with him. (Those being more the ones neutral about the “controversy”—such as Boxten, Connie, and also Finn.)

So.. with almost everyone hating Dandy, what could have possibly happened to make that change?:

✨CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT!✨ Yippee hurray everything is fine now because Dandy apologized for being horrible—

…Dang, knowing I’m gonna post this makes me nervous… Even though people prob would have stopped reading if they weren’t interested.

Put on Dandy’s theoretically-existent shoes: Everybody hate you, or is scared of you. They go silent when you walk in a room.

You only have one close friend, and this crazy robot girl is getting far too clingy with them. What do you do?

You start pushing back, of course! And who would be the priority target, for being one of the biggest haters? Well yes, Vee, but also; Shrimpo. Now, why Shrimpo? Because the minute he genuinely cares to try and destroy someone, even a Toon as seemingly-‘dumb’ as him can (try) and do a lot of damage. (*COUGH COUGH* Looey and the thumbtacks *COUGH*)

Now, if you’ve read my Sprout RP Blog’s Bio, you may know about the Cloned Toons—or, “Cousins” as the Toons are told to call them. Well, some of those Cloned-Toons also have a fierce hatred for Dandy. One of them, being a Glisten Clone.

Long story short: Dandy gets into a gossip-wars with a Glisten clone trying to ruin each others already nonexistent reputations, while simultaneously trying to avoid being dunked or drowned in weed-killed by Shrimpo.

Humorous comedy for Cartoon characters, nothing that serious, right?.. Wrong. Because Astro catches Dandy trying to flippin’ kidnap both of them on a whim to get “revenge” and gets mad at all of them because the whole thing only stressed Astro out.

Astro turns out to be the one snitching on them, all three of them get in trouble, and Astro locks himself in a room because Toons were gossiping about him and asking him things that they thought were true. (They assumed Astro was a traitor, who helped Dandy in secret, and that’s why he was so quiet… Or that he was helping Dandy by giving him ideas to “take revenge” on the Toons that hated him… Idk smth like that.)

It had gone on for a little over a month before Astro got them in trouble for it.

Afterwards, Astro locked himself in his room. So Dandy ended up becoming roomates with Shelly. (…because he used to be roommate’s with Astro, since the other Mains didn’t want him around them… but with the drama, having him there only stressed Astro out more.)

Also Dandy was grounded for like, a month in the corner of Shelly’s Room, because of the fighting with other Toons.

As for how Shelly felt about this?:

Well surprisingly, while nervous at first, she saw how Pebble (who was staying in her room, even after Dandy had been reintroduced) wasn’t bothered by Dandy, even after what happened. Trusting Pebble’s instincts, she started talking with Dandy sometimes, and convinced him to try and make it up to other Toons once he was ungrounded. (Shelly is also the reason Dandy started journaling more :>)

While it took a while, he started to slowly build trust again with other Toons. He and the Glisten Clone made a silent-agreement to not bother each other, and Shrimpo… Is Shrimpo and didn’t really change that much.

As for Vee?

Dandy used her connection with Brightney to slowly start getting her to at least tolerate his presence. Later, while being maintained, her Handler noticed some programming that was messing up Vee making her overreact a bit to things, and fixed it. THOUGH her extreme reactions weren’t only because of that…

Eventually she started talking with Dandy a bit, rather than having him approach her. After one evening having a long talk in the Greenhouse, she started to be less harsh towards Dandy… From there, even other Toons were surprised by how her view of Dandy changed.

But then… WHAT ABOUT SPROUT SEEDLY?

Well Cosmo was always pretty chill with Dandy, even having given Dandy some ideas to get the other Toons to trust him. Sprout wouldn’t talk much with Dandy for a while, but would encourage him to continue trying to make things right with the other Toons.

It wasn’t until later that he heard from Vee a bit about what really happened with Dandy… He later had his own talk with the flower after hearing about it.

Pretty much, with all the Toons (especially the Mains), one at a time they slowly grew to not be that bothered by him. None of what they saw or heard during that time in the past, was who he really was…

(*Edit: Or was it?)

What about Deli-

HECK NAWH I AINT GETTING INTO HER IVE BEEN WRITING FOR AN HOUR

What about Astroke?

Dandy eventually started slipping letters under his door, talking about things.. how Shelly suggested him to make things right… And Astro one day slipped a letter back under the door when Dandy went to give him one. From there they slowly started having whole conversations through notes, and… Well, the rest is history. Astro eventually started leaving his room again, and surprisingly the other Toons were really happy about that.

HEHEHE YOU’VE READ THIS FAR BETTER FOLLOW MY ACCOUNT LOL… Person that hopefully exists. AHEM ANYWAY-

Friendship! Everything is good and chill now!… They’re friends again, what other problem could possibly exist?…

…Dear reader—this is the tip of the Iceberg. (Please help me I’ve been taken PRISONER BY THIS-

Thank you for reading!

I could write whole stories on these ideas! So many points in Time I could write about!… AHH BUT I DOUBT IF ANYONE WOULD EVEN READ IT!

But hey, the point in writing something you’re passionate about—is for you. Isn’t it? You can share with your friends, share it online, no one has to look at it—heck, maybe that’s for the better—but there’s no point writing if it’s only for someone else.

Again, if anyone sees my ✨echoing into the void,✨ thank you for reading. I hope this gives you ideas for your own works, at the very least! :D

[ava-core]

me, a bethesda shill: so what if my courier six was an elder scrolls character

May Bell, Deathbells: Daughter of Coldharbour

headcanons under the cut!

so i also used to play so much skyrim back in the day! it was also my first ever game that i played (around 2016?) and it was a hilarious initial experience because it took me five playthroughs to realize succubi weren’t actual members of a real race in elder scrolls lore…rip my older cousin’s copy i borrowed that used to run with 200+ mods

ANYWAY! lore-wise, there were so many opportunities i could take here, but something called to me seeing may as…undead. this is mainly centered around skyrim, btw!

but of course, may is a vampire in tamriel. not just any vampire, however: she’s a vampire lord, ghosting about lord harkon’s court in castle volkihar as one of the senior keepers of the library.

i considered making her a daughter of coldharbour, but i remembered in the middle of my thought process train going choo-choo did i remember what it takes for women to be daughters of couldharbour…poor may already has so much trauma as the courier in fnv. i will spare her a similar fate in terms of her origin here in tamriel :’)

still, even for vampire standards—already within these folks who outright drink blood and cannibalize as rituals and habits—may is an odd egg. she keeps to herself, eats in the dungeons instead of with the others, and idles either in the dusty tomes of the library or silently beside feran sadri’s side doing alchemy. in short, may retains her reclusive nature even as an all-powerful vampire lord.

she’s also most proficient in alteration and illusion magic, as well as alchemy. she’s also better than most in destructive magic, but she’s the most adept in the two aforementioned schools of magic. she also practices restoration magic on some of the wounded vampires who go out into the mainland.

she’s also good with one-handed weapons, but prefers to use staves or daggers.

no one really knows where she came from; just that harkon put her into court out of nowhere, and that she was a necessary part of their strategy-making with a big mind like hers. she was, after all, a former priestess of Julianos—the divine in charge of wisdom and logic. that’s all they knew about her. they don’t even know what region she’s from. short: breton? but her features are peculiar, not like any breton girl’s…

in this vein…boone, i see becoming a dawnguard soldier, a valued one, in fact: his skill with a crossbow makes isran weep for joy. almost.

for him, i can imagine him being a former imperial guard who moved to skyrim because both his wife carla and child died during labor. he’s a full-blooded nord, of course

he has this one-track mind against vampires: as creatures of the night, they’re not really deserving of compassion and kindness as the suck the life out of their victims and constantly terrify the populace with their cruelty; it’s why he signed up with the dawnguard. they looked promising eradicating the scourge of vampires (basically the way he sees legion, but a smidge less personal since vampires had nothing to do with his wife and child’s death)

DO YOU GUYS SEE WHERE I AM GOING WITH THIS…

so can you imagine when boone tries to play hero and rescue a captured dawnguard brother in volkihar castle, only to be kept as well

he spits in the eyes of the vampires, cursing and muttering profanity at his captors…

until he meets the most captivating young woman dressed in a sleek dark gown of velvet…and when she speaks, her fangs protrude.

imagine falling in love at first sight while also knowing this is the enemy. how could he: this is a vampire, just like one of them, with her big, sharp teeth and irises of dark red; how could he not, with her unique, beautiful face and the fact that even if she seemed like she was doing grunt work feeding the humans in the dungeon she wasn’t disgusted by them or looked down on them

when after a few days, may sees boone’s uniform, she asks about the sun emblem. awkwardly. boone spits in her direction, and may sighs.

it’s only a day after when may comes back to feed the humans when he says he’s dawnguard. weirdly enough, may had never heard of them before. he tells her they’re here to rid the world of the plague of vampires

may only sighs. she doesn’t get mad, get angry, or be disgusted at the thought of being wiped out. instead, she nods her head. “yeah, i get that.”

it intrigues boone. of course he can’t sweet-talk her into getting information about her out of her, but the least he does is stop growling at him.

after a while, boone also notices may’s face. as beautiful as it is, she didn’t look like anyone he’d ever seen in tamriel.

all she murmurs as she feeds him is, “i’m akaviri.”

a foreigner in strange lands. a vampire, too. but why volkihar? why here? why couldn’t she have just been a priestess he could carry in his arms to mara’s temple?

boone, after months of trying to decide whether to kill or kidnap this strange, beautiful vampire who’s been helping him infiltrate the volkihar castle: i didn’t say you could feed off anyone else

JUST A LOT OF THOUGHTS RINGING IN MY HEAD

[tsunflowers]

I hope you thought my idea for a new isekai about the villainess's henchwoman and the childhood friend was interesting bc I kept thinking about it

the villainess’s less girly henchwoman. the main character of the story gets isekai’d into her. the game character was from a minor noble family who sucked up to the villainess for status. the main character doesn’t give a shit about that but becomes attached to the villainess and her other henchwoman so she sticks with them and tries to subtly influence their behavior to be less classist. I think when she played the game she was really curious about a lot of the lore that only ever gets touched on and tried to look up further info but couldn’t find it. so initially she’s excited to learn all the stuff that wasn’t explored in the game but she’s like “wait this sucks!” and she has to invent unions and therapy and gay marriage with the help of her friends

the second prince’s childhood friend. his family is like minor nobility who publicly fell from grace around the time of his birth. one of his parents died and the other sank into a deep depression so he was sent to live with wealthier relatives who treated him as a servant and abused him pretty severely. he always grins and bears it and tries to see the positives in everything but he has a lot of trauma that he’s not really processing. the main character can’t give him therapy bc she dates him but she needs to invent therapy so he can go to it. a bit of a magical savant bc it was his only comfort during his childhood. also he loves gardening and has a deadpan sense of humor that people can't always interpret joking

the second prince. middle of the road in literally everything but flies through life due to being the second prince. golden retriever boy. charming enough when you play the game but quickly gets tiring in real life bc he doesn’t have a lot of original thoughts

the heroine. a commoner with such overwhelming magical power that she gets to go to the magic academy on scholarship. as a reference to the idea of a silent protagonist she is deaf and communicates through a mixture of sign language and using her magic to write in the air. the second prince learns sign language for her. she and him are a good match bc she’s not really that interesting either. a real sweetheart! but boring

the villainess. a noblewoman trying to conceal the fact that her family is in dire straits financially. she’s desperate to marry into royalty to maintain the extravagant lifestyle she’s used to and to keep her family stable. a classist and rude woman but ultimately somewhat sympathetic. the fact that her family is one of her biggest motivations gets like one line in the game but becomes very apparent to the main character once she's isekai'd

the villainess’s girly henchwoman. a lesbian who has a thing for the villainess. this is mostly jokes in the game but is sincere. she knows about the villainess’s family situation and is always like “ah if only we could legalize gay marriage…! I would take care of you as my wife"

the duke. another love interest. the secret revealed on his route is that he can’t actually do magic and he fakes it using a crystal that his older sister charges up for him every week. he starts dating the new money rich boy bc that guy doesn’t care at all about his family’s lineage as magicians. he was the main character’s oshi when she played the game but she can’t break him up from the new money boy

the new money rich boy. another love interest. kind of a sarcastic jokester who always brings up his lack of noble manners to fluster the nobility. the main character didn’t like him much when she played the game bc he was all one-liners but in person he’s quite charismatic and has more to him than just jokes. they actually become besties so when she realizes he has a crush on the duke she’s like “I can’t steal his man… the bro code…”

you notice that I have paired everyone off. this is bc I have shoujo romance brain and I believe that when you introduce a character you must also introduce an equal and opposing character as a love interest. I just think they don't always have to be different genders

[clevermird]

Hi, can you tell me more about Valthiel? I think they look very cool 👉👈

Thank you! I rather like him myself. Brace yourself, he's got a lot of lore, lol

He claims to be the distant descendant of one of the Dark Muses of Commorragh. While this is a genetically provable fact, whether it actually grants him any of the things he claims it does is another matter

Both of his parents were drukhari who were killed in a battle with a combined human/craftworld force when he was small (40k is never really specific about how long it takes eldar to mature, but I imagine him about the equivalent of human 3 or 4). The human rogue trader who was responsible "adopted" him and kept him around as sort of pet/trophy/"look at the exotic things I find on my travels". Initially he worked as her cabin boy and then, when he got older, on other jobs in the ship.

She died when he was in the equivalent of his early teens and he struck out to find the rest of his people where he was discovered by Jhovar, a former naval captain from Biel-tan who was now working independently as a corsair prince with the combined fleet known as the Four Winds. He took him in, taught him about the eldar, and tried to both help him overcome some of his trauma and learn some basic morality.

Things were going relatively well until the Winds assisted the small craftworld of Kel'tereth in retrieving artifacts from a crone world. Valthiel and the farseer in charge of the operation, Illyria, started hooking up to kill time and for stress relief initially, but grew closer and by the time the operation concluded, were madly in love. He continued to visit Kel'tereth regularly and eventually convinced her to join him on his ship full-time (something the rest of the leadership of the craftworld were none too happy about)

Sadly, however, there was quickly trouble in paradise. Jhovar took an indefinite vacation from the corsair life to deal with some trouble back home and, feeling at least subconsciously abandoned by the man he had come to consider a father, Val started looking further into his past. This led him to the Kabal of the Ashen Rose.

The Ashen Rose was less a traditional raiding kabal and more of a cult dedicated to the veneration of the Dark Muse Lhilitu, the drukhari patron of seduction and poison and consort of Shaimesh. She was also considered the patron of the Lhamean orders of courtesan/assassins and the Ashen Rose hosted one of Commorragh's training schools for the sisterhood.

Traditionally, only one of Lhilitu's descendants was allowed to claim the seat of Archon, and thus it had remained vacant for more than a century when Valthiel arrived. After his bloodline was prove and several tests and feats passed, he was accepted as the new leader for the kabal (at least until a distant relative arrived to challenge him or he made too many mistakes and someone had him killed off).

He had initially planned to split his time between the corsair fleet and the kabal but this (admittedly rather unrealistic) plan derailed when he told Illyria what he'd learned.

See, Illyria's father had been a naval commander for their craftworld when she was young but lost his wife/her mother in a conflict that he blamed on the farseer counsel (and not without reason - they hadn't intended her to die, but they had manipulated him into joining a battle that he had thought was a bad idea and she died in said battle). As a result, he became disillusioned with the craftworld way of life and began a rapid walk down the Path of the Damned. By this point, he's the archon of a powerful kabal and a strong ally of Vect's.

Illyria refused to go with him and he has since been obsessed with bringing her back into the fold. The desire to prevent this and the fear of what her father might do was ironically what led Illyria down the path to becoming a farseer herself. Anyway, she was understandably horrified and violently outraged when Val broke the news to her. She stormed off to return to her craftworld.

Here's where the timelines diverge.

In the original RP that he was a part of, Illyria returned to Kel'tereth and was killed in a battle against Chaos several decades later. Valthiel returned to Commorragh to solidify his rule but, after some time, reestablished contact with Jhovar, who had come back to the pirate's life, and began spending a great deal more time with the Four Winds again.

Many years later, he helped a ship from Yme-Loc fend off ork freebooters and as a result was an honored guest on that craftworld. There, he met a young warlock named Jian who had a striking resemblance to Illyria and a vision that he could help her find her mother (who had been captured by the drukhari decades ago) and joined his crew. What began as a casual hookup turned into love and their relationship even managed to survive the revelation of his other loyalties (helped along by the fact that this revelation came at the same time as he used his archon connections to help track down and free her mom). They married and he has recently woken up from a chaos-weapon-induced coma in time to join Jian in battle against the Sky Serpents - Duke Sliscus views Valthiel as aping his style and thus would have liked nothing better than to swoop in while he was incapacitated and add his wife to his harem.

In the fanfic version that I now consider the semi-official timeline (even though it started as a "what if" AU discussion for the RP), Illyria was instead captured by her father as she attempted to return to Kel'tereth. This sent Val into a deep depression - he felt responsible because she was only going there because he drove her away, plus he had no chance of standing up to Ordai's kabal to rescue her. He all but abandoned the corsair stuff to his subordinates and remained in Commorragh, immersing himself in the running of the Ashen Rose but rarely leaving his own dwelling/office/laboratory complex.

One day, however, a meeting with another archon forced him out into the wider city and he impulse-bought himself a freshly captured slave, a Howling Banshee from Yme-loc who happened to look enough like Illyria that they could have been sisters. After some initial missteps that he later greatly regretted, he came to care for her deeply and found new purpose (as well as a great deal of pain) in trying to make up for the traumas inflicted on her by him and other people.

Their budding romance was interrupted by the revelation that Ordai planned to forcibly marry Illyria off to one of his lieutenants. Although he had committed to his new love, he still felt guilt for letting Illyria be captured and wanted to give her the chance to return home. He also realized that if he truly loved Jian like he said he did, that he needed to give her the chance to be free and not keep her in Commorragh with him.

Unfortunately, Aurelia Malys put a monkey wrench in both plans. She had realized that Val was much easier to manipulate when Jian was around and coerced her into returning to Commorragh. By the time Val had gathered his courage to let her go again, Jian had decided she would rather stay. Likewise, Malys agreed to assist them in rescuing Illyria but, while she did follow through, she siezed the first opportunity to renegotiate the deal and force the Ashen Rose to be subordinate to her - although Valthiel was still the leader publicly, he privately answered to her. She also seemed to take an odd amount of interest in Jian, for reasons that are not entirely clear yet.

The fic ends with him, Jian, and Illyria taking to the stars as corsairs again (under Malys' orders), happy at least to leave Commorragh behind even if they're apprehensive about what lies ahead.

I have some stuff written for a sequel, but I need to do more planning before I start proper.

Sorry, that was super long, lol. And I know there's a ton of plot holes, some of them are probably actual plot holes, others I just had to cut the explanations because this was too long already, if there's something you're curious about, feel free to ask.

[feeling-grubby]

Curious to know: What inspired the whole spider mutation for Hollie? Was she always supposed to be a spider? Had you had any different ideas for her before landing on the spider idea?

are you doing this on purpose at this point sir? are you trying to get me to info dump?

She is a character I have had for about nine years, and her concepts and ideas have changed a lot. However, there is one thing I don't like talking about: Hollie's original concept, or more specifically, how I handled the ideas. I was only a dumb middle schooler, and I guess you have to start somewhere.

Hollie's original concept was that she was a sociable and outgoing character. She was weird and wacky, and she liked to mess with people, especially when she could get her friends on board. One of her main partners in crime was Oliver (now Angora). Despite being good at making friends, she struggled to form more intimate bonds due to some trauma. I don't want to get into her full concept, as I handled it poorly and have since tried to remove all these concepts from Hollie.

Over time, I came to dislike the way I had written Hollie, and I wanted to change her. I also wanted to try something new, so I started thinking about how to write her in an Alternia setting. Eventually, I came up with the idea of Hollie and Zynier, being survivors of an extremist attack. They lived in a mid-blood and lower high blood village in a forest, and the rebels attacked them, setting the hives ablaze. Hollie and Zynier survived, but Zynier lost his voice in the attack, and Hollie's back was severely burned. Despite her scars, Hollie still had her goofy and sweet personality, but she was self-conscious of them. She didn't struggle too much with intimacy problems, but she did have low self-esteem.

I eventually scrapped this version of Hollie, and I revamped her into a protector of a forest village of low bloods. She often fought off lusus and kept other high bloods out. This version of Hollie was less goofy and not a prankster. There are also possibly many ideas I am forgetting about, but this is what comes to mind.

Then came the wanted criminal Hollie. She was a wanted criminal because she killed a violet blood. This was illegal in Hiveswap, as even highbloods could be charged with a crime if they killed someone of a higher caste.

There was also another idea around this time that Hollie was being hunted by drones because her lusus was killed. These two ideas were different, but they both led to Hollie being hunted by the government. I thought it was an interesting concept. This is also the one to bring back her intimacy problems, but this time it was more out of a desire to protect people from being culled by the drones than from trauma. She didn't want to get close to anyone because she was afraid that they would be killed if they were associated with her.

Another variation of Holly occurred when I left the Homestuck fandom for two years and created a fantasy world where I placed my troll OCs. I won't go into too much detail, but I took some ideas from the wanted criminal Holly concept and altered them a bit. However, since I dropped the concept of her being on the run, it doesn't fully affect her character now. However, other characters I had placed in this setting and then once again started to revamp them into trolls received massive overhauls. I decided to take the concepts of these characters I made for this fantasy world and use them for the troll versions, making them much more appealing characters to me. So, I thought I would bring this up even if it didn't affect Holly like it did other trolls.

With each variation, I was always trying out a new concept that I thought would expand upon the original lore of Homestuck and Hiveswap. Her personality remained roughly the same throughout, with only minor tweaks. However, she has become more muted over time, less rambunctious and calmer. So, of course, when I got back into the fandom after stepping away for two years, I was going to try and find a new way to explore the world.

Originally, I didn't know what I wanted to do with Holly, so I ended up looking back at her old concepts and carrying them over. I decided that she would live in a low blood village that she protects and does errands for. She struggles to form close connections (both intimate and non-intimate), but she is kind and sweet. She also has self-esteem issues and is an outcast of society in some way. Finally, she has a reason to be killed by the drones.

So, with these ideas in mind, I tried to think of why she would have low self-esteem in this version, what would make her an outcast, and what reason could I give her that would have her haunted by drones. I eventually landed on a mutant. But I didn't want to change her blood color. Then I thought about how cobalt's have an arachnid theme and Hollie never had that before. Then the idea of making her spider mutant came about.

Some of the ideas of her spider mutation is that she looked like a normal grub, and it wasn't until she pupated that her mutations came about. She didn't pupate right and ended up having a lot of insectoid features she was supposed to lose in the pupating process. I would assume after pupating a jade blood would help her get out of the caverns before being discovered. So now we got a high blood mutant Hollie.

This would also be the first version she had really strong mind control abilities. Many of the previous iterations her abilities were either too weak to be effective, or she didn't have them at all.

So yeah, she has changed a lot. Here are two images for comparison. I sadly could not find old art with her, so this is what you get. now vs then.

[anicyz]

I crawled back to this website for one thing and one thing only. The linked universe AU. This is a very old account I used for exactly three months I don’t know how tumblr works.

That being said I’m gonna speak my mind on the new update. I think that’s 100% Wild and not Dink. Panic-dumb is a thing and this boy has it along with 100 years of trauma. He’s gonna act differently than what we are used to seeing, he’s never been put in this situation before. Wild’s friends and family all died before he woke up and because of that and his memory loss a lot of his grief and dealing with it could be said to be kinda second hand and unfinished with no real coping skills yet developed fully. At the same time THEY DIED BEFORE HE WOKE UP this boy has abandonment issues out the wazzoo and on top of that the person in danger of dying is the one he’s known the longest.

In other news Four splitting is fantastic and I can’t wait to see how that conversation is gonna go with how emotionally charged the situation already is.

Predictions for the future: Big group dynamic shifts ahead I think! The chain as a whole will probs kinda be forced to recognize that they’re not really all that good at fighting in a group, exceptions being Four and maybe Warriors(I think? I will admit some games I haven’t played and don’t know the lore as well) and even then they’ve never had to coordinate this big of a group. Also, ngl Time is clearly trying his best but I think on the inside the man is barely holding it together and a lack of clear group dynamics mean he has less power in the group than he needs to fulfill the roll he’s been placed in.

[eddiebodywantssome]

ravi week day 2 - the 118

these are the ties that bind us

wc: 894 | ravi and 118 A-shift: a love story

It’s a beautiful day, and Ravi is wine drunk. And when he gets wine drunk, he gets introspective.

Right now, he’s introspecting as to how the hell he got here – here being his captain’s backyard in the middle of summer, where his co-workers are arguing about why they’re gathered and getting drunk together in the first place.

It started when Bobby, the inspirational man that he is with a penchant for impromptu speeches, stood up with a glass of lemon iced tea.

He had clinked it happily. “Thank you all for being here,” he said. “I won’t talk for long – as you all know, we need to celebrate life every chance we get, and I’m so glad to be here with you all as we make good on that promise. Now, let’s hear from the man of the hour!”

Everyone cheered and looked around the table expectantly. Ravi smiled and clapped politely. This went on for a good two minutes.

“Chimney, get up,” Hen had finally said, playfully bumping his shoulder.

“What do you mean?” he had asked, mirroring her grin. “It’s Buck’s birthday, silly.”

The table quietened.

“That was two weeks ago,” Buck replied. “Do you not know my birthday?”

“Um, I thought we were here to celebrate Chimney’s fifteen years on the job,” Hen said.

“I thought we were here for Athena’s retirement party.”

“Who the hell said I was retiring?”

Maddie said, “Mm, Karen, this is for your new job, right?”

“No? I thought we were celebrating Eddie’s coming out.”

“We most definitely are not.” Eddie’s face flushed.

“Isn’t this for May going back to college?”

“I hope not. I’m only leaving next month.”

“Anniversary?” Chimney suggested.

“Whose?” Bobby asked.

“Yours and Athena’s?”

“Nope.”

“Well, what does the cake say?”

Eddie opened the cake box. “It just has a smiley face on it.”

“Okay, who was in charge of the cake?”

“Bobby’s the one who told me to keep it generic!” Hen snapped.

Ravi felt himself slipping away about halfway through this. He sips his drink and sighs. He had tried so hard to avoid getting sucked into this… this weird, enmeshed family dynamic the A shifters had. But it was hard. There was something magnetic about them, they kept pulling him into their shit.

He didn’t mind working with them – they’re for sure some of the most competent people he’s ever been on shift with. It’s just everything else that makes them… bizarre.

Like this exact situation, for example. How does this group of people hang out so frequently that they have no idea why they’re there?

(Buck’s suggested Fourth of July. Athena’s shot it down because she insists she would’ve had the red-white-blue food otherwise. Also, it’s the middle of the month.)

Don’t get him wrong, he likes them, he does. It’s just that he prefers the Venn diagram of his friends, family, and co-workers to not be one big circle, thank you very much.

It started way before he became an A shift regular, he thinks. That fateful Q-word day. Maybe he did jinx himself for life.

Ravi had gone back and recounted the story to his B-shift colleagues, and they had basically said, “Yeah, that tracks,” – and that’s how Ravi began his spiral into the infamous lore of A-shift.

He should’ve known they were all disaster magnets. He listens in abject horror and fascination as they tell him about the rebar, the tracheotomy, the hand-in-man’s-chest, and of course, the LSD brownies.

He stops them after a bit and decides the less he knows about these people the better. Then the treasure hunt happened, and he literally found a dead body with the group, and he guessed that counts as some kind of trauma bonding, but it still kept him wary.

And then the sniper situation unfolded, and Ravi got to temporarily be on A shift for a bit. It was an experience for sure (and getting shot is one of the less goofy things to happen to the group) but they pulled through, and Ravi was ready to go back to B shift.

But then Chimney left to chase the love of his life, and Ravi gets it, he’d do the same, so he was still stuck on the opposite shift.

It was then that Ravi started realising how little personal space these six people actually had. He somehow kept getting invited to events – Chimney’s brother’s firefighter test being the most random of them all – but he was too polite to decline them.

Somewhere between the dead author and prison riots, he'd been adopted as the token normal guy of the team; somehow, he didn't mind.

“Alright now, enough!” Athena’s voice cuts through the commotion and snaps Ravi out of his wine-induced introspection.

“It doesn’t matter what we’re here for. This was bound to happen at some point. Let’s just enjoy this party and plan better for the next one.”

The garden murmurs in agreement as they raise their glasses again.

“To family,” Bobby announces.

“To family!” Ravi choruses with everyone, clinking his glass with Hen and Maddie’s.

The air is thick with barbeque and joy. The patio lights twinkle in time with Bobby’s 60s mix playing in the background, and the idle chatter of his friends make the wine settle gently in his belly.

Family, Ravi thinks, despite himself. I don’t hate the sound of that.

[ciaran]

Yoo ask writing meme? Hope you don't mind taking more, 13... 17? 18 if you're okay with that, 33, 35, 36? And 38, sorry if that's a lot. Btw seeing you update your layouts is fun, where do you find all the ethereal looking images you use for your icons? I too am a sun hater.

13. What is a subject matter that is incredibly difficult for you write about? What is easy?

i find writing kink really easy, but also really hard. it's always in my head, but there's so much of it that pulling it into a manageable size is really tough. i think most of the things i love writing are at least a little hard, but the stuff that should count as "hardest" is also the most satisfying. i love writing characters having breakdowns. i find it easy to write dialogue and atmosphere and emotion; i find it difficult to write action. i feel like i'm walking around the answer without hitting it.

the rest are under the cut for length!

17. Talk to me about the minutiae of your current WIP. Tell me about the lore, the history, the detail, the things that won’t make it in the text.

i don't know if i'm good at doing this but let me try. i generally keep all the details in my head so i feel excited about putting them down? but this WIP is set in a world where the land and king are intrinsically connected, and nick was adopted because he was recognized. the mechanism of recognition is irrelevant. there's a scene where vash says he was drowned by a rusalka; what happened was that the rusalka was hurt by a human man, and in retaliation kidnapped and drowned a couple of children. vash jumped in to save the kids, and the river froze over, so he was in there for a time that would have killed a human but he's not human, so... he managed to talk the rusalka down, then climbed out and dispersed a crowd of villagers with pitchforks and torches, made them all really mad at him, and ended up freezing to death between the water and the snow. there's another scene where vash says his cloak is made of phoenix feathers. his brother deals primarily with the supernatural creatures of the land, and does not truck with humans. vash himself brought this phoenix to knives, because she was dying and he was hoping his brother could save her, but his brother couldn't do anything by then. she died in knives's arms after vash left. when he came back, knives had made her feathers into a cloak for his brother. though phoenixes never fully die, they do fade out - their heat does not dissipate, but the consciousness leaves. since vash is a dragon with (story spoilers) no fire, he needs the warmth when he travels... and stuff like the thing with the rusalka happens anyway.

33. Do you practice any other art besides writing? Does that art ever tie into your writing, or is it entirely separate?

i paint and draw, but it's all very abstract and way less emotionally charged for me than writing. i also want to get back into singing. i don't think it ties into my writing, unless i want to talk about the process of Creation, one of my pet themes :)

35. What’s your favorite writing rule to smash into smithereens?

all of them. show me a rule and i'll show you a way to break it. but mostly i think i hate the idea that every scene needs to be relevant in an immediate way. pacing, you guys. let the emotions breathe!!!

36. They say to Write What You Know. Setting aside for a moment the fact that this is terrible advice...what do you Know?

i know almost nothing... well, i know gender, and trauma, and mental illness. i know loneliness. everything else - well, who can say? i'm curious what people think i know, after reading my stuff.

as for the icons - pinterest >_< my guilty pleasure i never grew out of. i am sort of obsessed w maintaining a very specific aesthetic across my accounts. sun haters UNITE

[eviltwin76]

I don't think you've posted the family recipe drama lore and now I'm intrigued

oh man. so sly's ENTIRE tragic backstory huh.

so, sly was born into a family that was WEIRDLY religiously strict for people who made their living doing evil magic witchcraft. (they named him sebastian.) it was a pretty abusive situation, so regardless of how much each one of them really believed in jesus, they often used religious guilt and threats of hell and sin to control him (and each other). they also attended church as a way to keep up their reputation as normal, morally upright people in their community.

they sold mellified man under the guise of medicine, and it needed to be a family business because they believed it needed to rest in honey for 100 years before it would work, so grandparents would lay honeyed bodies in the ground for their grandchildren to dig up and sell, and so on.

as i mentioned, sly had a great uncle who was something of a reclusive black sheep for whatever reason. sly barely knew him, but when he passed away when sly was just reaching adulthood, he ended up with his journals; i'm not sure if it's because he explicitly left them in sly's name, or because they just slipped through the cracks as his family was dealing with all his possessions. regardless, the journals showed sly that his uncle had been secretly experimenting with the age-old mellified man recipe, trying to improve it in various ways, one of them being a recipe to stall aging. his uncle couldn't live long enough to see the results of his experiments, but sly could; he soon dug them up and discovered that they were successful.

he tried to keep this a secret, but eventually someone found out and spread it to everyone in the family. his mother in particular was repulsed and horrified by the idea of living forever, and instructed him to burn the pages. not everyone in the family totally agreed with this take however. it led to kind of a schism – some people obviously wanted the recipe for immortality, but others felt that it was either too dangerous or too blasphemous to have around. the naysayers more or less outnumbered the people who wanted it, but those people were often more conniving or frenzied.

miraculously, sly was able to keep the journal out of everyone’s hands throughout this, but he was an enemy of all sides. even the people who “agreed” with him – as in, thought the recipe ought to be used – he couldn’t trust, and many of them he didn’t even like, much less wanted to spend eternity alongside. however, there were two people that he genuinely loved; twin cousins who were one or two years older than him, who were his playmates as children, and who were more like brothers to him than his distant older siblings ever were. after one or two months of this conflict, one of them pulled a knife on him, the other tried to stop him, all three got in a fistfight which ended when sly shoved one of them down a flight of stairs, at the bottom of which he cracked his skull open and perished.

after that horrific night, the next events are a bit blurry to sly. the entire family was in uproar, and the remaining twin wanted him dead. he moved out as fast as he possibly could, marrying a childhood friend of his named Melissa (who he had previously been being pressured to marry by both families) in order to better support themselves and live more inconspicuously than living on his own. (he might have also been charged with murder and narrowly avoided conviction, or the family might have erred to keep their business away from the legal system as much as possible, i’m not currently sure.)

once safely away, he spent a while recovering from not only this last trauma, but also the lifetime of abuse he had suffered, while making ends meet. after a period of rest and healing, he began taking the youth solution and stalled his age at 25. he ultimately decided to open his own business - the same health-restoring mellified man recipe, but this time instead of goopy medicine, the product would be delicious and attractive - a candy. he saw that his family’s business was still in shambles - fights had broken out, bridges had been burned, and the product supply suffered immensely - and those who depended on their medicine rapidly flocked to sly’s business instead. it wasn’t long before he had driven the last of that family into the ground. it was his righteous capitalistic revenge. he never spoke to them again and as far as he knows, they all died out, or at least after a certain generation the mellified man knowledge was no longer passed down. he was officially “the last of his kind.”

he stayed in that town with melissa for around 15 years. their marriage was cold and unsatisfying for obvious reasons; they were both gay, but hid it from each other. sly was too afraid to come out to her, and felt intense guilt at letting her down as a husband, as he still cared for her very much as a friend. she never knew the secret of his healing candy. eventually, too crushed under the weight of too many things he had already been dishonest about to be honest about one last thing, he picked up his things and disappeared from her life in the middle of the night, taking on a new name and a new life in a new town (Lemonville), where no one knew his face hadn’t changed in 15 years, and tried not to think about anything that had ever happened to him in his hometown.

[padawanlost]

So I was on Quora the other day, and someone speculated that insecurity was at the root of Anakin's arrogance and apparent cockiness. I thought this through and it makes so much sense. He felt insecure in his place as a Jedi and had this constant need to prove himself. What's your take?

Personally, I’ve never seen Anakin as arrogant. I think he was *perceived* as arrogant by the people around him but, internally, Anakin was also driven by insecurity (not egotism).

Because he was so insecure in a place where he knew he wasn’t accepted as he was, he overcompensated. It’s a very common behavior: I’ll try harder to prove myself. And because he was so powerful, his attempt to prove himself worthy was viewed as an attempt to show off.

The Jedi Council didn’t want me, either. Being the Chosen One didn’t count for anything. Master Yoda wouldn’t train me, or Windu. Every member of the Jedi Council had had something more pressing to do than help him work out what this terrible, galaxy-changing power of his meant, and how he should live in its shadow. He still wasn’t sure. Anakin recalled standing there in that grand, polished Jedi Council Chamber, surrounded by what felt like fear, and disdain, and bewilderment—who were those Masters to feel bewildered, that the only person there who cared if he lived or died was Master Qui-Gon Jinn. And they stopped him training the Chosen One. Qui-Gon hadn’t cared what the Jedi Council said. He’d trained him anyway, a Padawan in all but name. Why am I thinking of all this now? Haven’t I put it behind me? Haven’t I had enough bad memories since then to take their place? Haven’t I vindicated Master Qui-Gon? [Karen Traviss. The Clone Wars]

Anakin enjoyed praise from Obi-Wan, but often became sullen when he was reprimanded. Obi-Wan assured him that he himself had been frequently reminded by Qui-Gon to be more mindful of the Force, but somehow even the slightest criticism managed to leave Anakin feeling stung. First they tell me to do my best, then they tell me I’ve gone too far! ANAKIN SKYWALKER IN THE RISE AND FALL OF DARTH VADER BY RYDER WINDHAM

Because Anakin had not been trained since infancy at the Temple like nearly all other Padawans, various Jedi Masters accepted the fact that he lacked the discipline of his fellow students. They were less accepting, however, of his arrogant behavior when he demonstrated his abilities. I’m more powerful with the Force than some of my instructors, Anakin thought, and they know it! ANAKIN SKYWALKER IN THE RISE AND FALL OF DARTH VADER BY RYDER WINDHAM

Despite Anakin’s desire to distance himself from the slave he had once been, he was unable, or unwilling, to shed the other aspects that had defined him on Tatooine. He still dreamed of glory, still craved adventure, and never lost his appetite for high-speed thrills and the desire to prove himself in competition. THE RISE AND FALL OF DARTH VADER BY RYDER WINDHAM

What evidence to we truly have that Anakin was arrogance beyond people calling him that? And considering most of his peers and superiors didn’t take much time to get to truly know him, I’d say their option can be considered biased:

Anakin was liked by the other students, but he had no close friends. He was not loved. Obi-Wan told himself that Anakin’s gifts naturally set him apart. But in his heart, he grieved for Anakin’s loneliness. JUDE WATSON [JEDI QUEST: THE WAY OF THE APPRENTICE]

Just when Anakin thought he’d passed that elusive finishing line that said adult, experienced, seen it all, he realized he was still twenty, Jedi or not, and the wounded boy in him still rose to the surface—provoked into angry violence, scared of abandonment, and still in need of approval. KAREN TRAVISS [STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS NOVELIZATION]

[Obi-Wan] knew, glancing at his Padawan’s eager face, that Anakin meant well from the bottom of his heart. If Obi-Wan saw a shadow on that heart, he knew it would pain his Padawan to know it. In many ways, Anakin was still a boy. A wounded, loving, anxious boy with great gifts he did not fully understand. Yet he was also a young man, close to maturity, who could do great harm. To others, yes. To himself, most of all JUDE WATSON [JEDI QUEST: THE SCHOOL OF FEAR]

“I just…” Anakin stopped. He took a ragged breath. “I thought you would be proud of me.” I am proud of you. Obi-Wan wanted to say the words. They were true. He was proud of so much in Anakin. But now was not the time to tell him that. Or was it? JUDE WATSON [JEDI QUEST: THE SCHOOL OF FEAR]

Fixing broken machines was like a meditation. Fixing broken machines was an antidote to every pain, every loss, every fear, every defeat. Fixing broken machines kept him from going mad. CLONE WARS GAMBIT: STEALTH

This doesn’t sound like some who thinks that highly of himself.

 “Master…,” he said hesitantly, “I know I’ve… disappointed you in these past few days. I have been arrogant. I have… not been very appreciative of your training, and what’s worse, of your friendship. I offer no excuse, Master. My frustration with the Council… I know that none of it is your fault, and I apologize. For all of it. Your friendship means everything to me.”

Interestingly enough, Obi-wan says it best:

You are very observant, Ferus, but you must accept that I know him better than you,” Obi-Wan said carefully. “Anakin can be arrogant. I know that. But he is also learning and growing. He is respectful of his great power. He does not abuse it. He is younger than you, but he has seen much injustice, many terrible things. I do not think it so wrong that he wants to change things. You must understand that it isn’t ambition that drives him. It is compassion. OBI-WAN KENOBI IN STAR WARS – JEDI QUEST: THE CHANGING OF THE GUARD BY JUDE WATSON

Yes. Anakin can act arrogantly. We all can. It’s part of being human and flawed. but that doesn’t mean that was ALL Anakin was. More often than not, Anakin was motivated by fear, love, kindess and, yes, even hate.

Taking them, she looked up at him and shook her head, even though it still ached. “It’s odd. You’re nothing like I expected.” “Why?” he said, perching on the edge of the nearby chair. “What did you expect?” “I don’t know,” she said, floundering. “I can’t say I’ve ever given the Jedi much thought. I mean, not as individuals. I never expected to meet one—let alone two. I don’t tend to go places where your skills are needed. But—well—you’re gentle.” That made him smile. “As opposed to what?” She swallowed the pain-tabs, washing them down with a mouthful of water. “Oh. You know. The HoloNet news—it portrays as you as this—this—heroic warrior. Larger than life. Charging into battle, lightsaber flashing. Scourge of the Separatists. That kind of thing.” She shrugged. [Karen Miller. Star Wars: Clone Wars Gambit: Stealth]

Because of Hayden’s Anakin being do disliked and, of course, because of the TCW wonky characterization everyday we are seeing more and more people embracing the idea of arrogant idiot Anakin. even if such characterization is not supported by the movies, the lore and basic common sense.

People use Obi-wan’s words in AOTC against Anakin but the truth is, as shown above, Obi-wan himself later recognizes that Anakin is not arrogant (even if he sometimes act that away). Besides, using AOTC to show Anakin’s arrogance doesn’t make much sense because of Hayden’s acting. Anakin doesn’t act like some arrogant prick for most of the movie. if anything, AOTC is a great of example of Anakin’s submissive and insecure behavior.

At last, let’s not forget that the same people calling Anakin arrogant were also facing the same criticism:

“But he still has much to learn, Master,” Obi-Wan explained. “His skills have made him … well, arrogant.” “Yes, yes,” Yoda agreed. “It’s a flaw more and more common among Jedi. Too sure of themselves, they are. Even the older, more experienced Jedi.” [R.A. Salvatore. Attack of the Clones]

People seem to forget that Anakin was in his early 20s when he ‘died’. Show me a teenager or a young adult who’ve never acted arrogantly and i’ll show you a liar. So why is Anakin the only one getting shit for that?

So, yeah, i agree. Anakin wasn’t motivated by arrogance. He was motivated by fear and insecurity, byproducts of his childhood trauma and years of grooming and emotional neglect.

[jupiter-on-the-compupiter]

omigosh omigosh!! tysm tysm!!! :D (spoiler alert, this post is a whole ass ramble, I'm so sorry dearest mutual sajhgbsjdfhb)

I've posted about them before, well, some art :3

The oldest art I can find of them is this doodle from february 2022, with my newest being a drawing I made in august that I'm admittedly not very proud of jhsdfbgsjhdfb

Personal favorites of mine are this one and this one :3

Even if none of those older drawings (except maybe the newest) have the final design (bc my story's lore and species physiology wasn't as developed), I still like those drawings :3 (there's more that I haven't linked cause I Don't Really Like Them jashbgsjhdb)

but omg omg omg!! I can talk about them a bit!!

Remiel's a kanhakko, meaning, those creatures with golden hair + eyes + wings! A lot of their trauma comes from the fact that, well, they were basically coerced into being the lead researcher in a very important yet dangerous project for the sake of the Emperor's (Oneiric! Who is the figure with the hand over Remiel's mouth in the last drawing in the og post! and also the hand colored in red in the other drawing! :3) plan, who was manipulating them and moving them like a pawn across the board "for the sake of the greater good".

They're severely thanatophobic (phobia of death) after the research they were forced to do, and my poor guy only really gets a break when Día, Zephyr (who I also posted drawings of today lmao! :3) and company realize that Remiel's definitely not to be treated as an enemy, and that they're as much of a victim as they are.

They're an avid book reader, very emotional very easily, which becomes messy but lets them see the beauty in the mundane a lot. They have an adoptive daughter called Katya, and they're kinda Rasui's adoptive child (well, it's a found family situation, Rasui was jaded from being a general in the guard while Remiel was in there by force and Remiel's over-emotional attitude made Rasui start seeing life with more hope! I have this drawing of Rasui I'm quite proud of too :3, but don't pay mind to the lore I've written in there, it's old and some things have changed, I wanted Rasui to stay more morally gray but tbh he's good, he's good but very tired and traumatized too), and well!!!

I love them very much! Some (especially older) drawings have them with shorter hair because growing out their hair is something they do as their character progresses! Also, the black roots are because of a condition they have. Kanhakko's hair is black but gets charged with magic, which makes it golden. Remiel kinda has a condition, kinda disabling really, that makes it hard for their hair to keep the magic in, leading to more fatigue and black roots; when they start healing mentally, their roots become less visible, not that their disability is cured, but there's some progress once they're not under constant stress asjdhfgbsdfhj

Sorry for the ramble, this guy has been my baby blorbo for almost two years now and a silly roleplay I did with them with my partner is what got us together as a couple, so I owe them a lot!! On my first date with my partner I gifted them a tiny Remiel figurine :3

hjdfbgsjdhgbf omg The Silly :3

I love drawing Remiel so much (oc of mine), like what if this silly guy was absolutely angelical and majestic. What if they were severely traumatized too.

I also love how literally I only either draw Remiel like that (angelic, idyllic) or. Like this:

They're such a silly guy JDNNSNNFNDN

[waywardsunlight]

Eileen had the potential to be the new Bobby. I know people say it would’ve been Sam only and there are definitely signs he could’ve been but I really think Eileen would step into that mantle if she could. Eileen really liked being part of a team, and she cares a ton about hunters. She was raised by a hunter, and also had been an established member of the american community long before she met Sam and Dean. But most of all, her personality and style is very Bobby-esque and the way she cares about others and carries herself lets you know that she’s the one in charge when she’s hunting. Also, with her season 15 arc, the stress and trauma of hunting kind of got to her so putting herself in a position where she could help others, and still go in the field but do it less feels really smart to me. Eileen is a lore expert. She’s been to Hell. She and Sam would both be good options to kind of fill the shoes of Bobby and the Roadhouse in the modern era.