#ask tithe

[ask-singularity-college]

Hihi!

I'm Tithe! Mr. Medusa and Morgan rescued Tithe from the bad people two years ago and Tithe has been Mr. Medusa's kid ever since!

[Medusa: Yes Tithe, but who are the bad men?]

The villains! Medusa rescued me from the villains!

[Medusa: Tell them your Singularity]

Tithe's Singularity is Infinite Knowledge! Tithe can know what Tithe needs to know when Tithe needs to know it!

[brackenferns]

Are you reading the old or new version of tithe? How you like it so far?

oh I actually was unaware there were different versions! if anyone sees this and knows the differences, I’d love a primer. but I assume mine is the new version—it’s the newer cover.

I’m about 70 pages in, and as a disclaimer, I’m mostly paying attention to holly’s craft (I like learning!) so most of my notes so far are related to that. but some random thoughts:

breakneck pacing. the first chapter is so cursory that it’s odd. if I had to guess, I’d assume Holly does not struggle to move plots along, but does have to go back & create space for moments & characters to breathe (it seems like a skill she’s grown in since tithe)

her talent for capturing the feel of a place can definitely be seen in this book, even through some other more odd writing choices. like there’s an old, dilapidated coastal town, and I fully felt like I was there based on the sensory details she decided to highlight. I’ve also made note of other turns of phrases that I’ve found lovely—like at one point, there’s a line about the stormbright sky painting the woods silver. simple but beautiful. she’s just great with visual treats like that

I have no strong feelings about the characters yet—obviously I’m interested in Roiben, and I’m inclined to like Kaye, but that’s more a symptom of having read tfota. I don’t know how differently I’d feel if I’d picked this book up first

I’m excited to learn more about other courts. also, just getting more of a feel for how the fey work is cool—like the iron-tipped arrow, kaye’s magic, etc.

The tone of this one is wildly different than tfota lmao. I think @thewinecoloredsea called it fairy Euphoria or something like that and I see it now

KISS MY ASS, RATH ROIBEN RYE

[cute-girls-from-vns-anime-manga]

Since we're piling on the compliments, you sir, have extremely good taste, and converted me to the church of the pony tail a long, long time ago.

I still have no idea why 80k people were like "yeah let's go follow this weird guy screaming about ponytails and made a half hearted religion out of it" but THANK YOU

[write-kin]

i - Runaway

(Previous Work)

thank you to @inscrutable-shadow for beta reading this for me!

Calamine makes preparations on the road. A rocky alliance begins.

--

The first step of running away is to have something to run away from. 

For Calamine, that was his entire life up to this point. Every single day of it. Every person he knew. Every ritual and rite and routine he’d so carefully been taught. He left it all behind. 

The only things he took with him were his name, the clothes on his back, whatever he could fit into the bag he slung over his shoulder, and a book that was currently cradled in his arm.

The second step was to have a path to follow. 

That could be one of many things. 

Running in a line until you couldn’t any more. A literal path. A map. All that mattered was that you had to go away, that there was a running part of running away. 

Calamine had a path. It was loose, and rough, and the map he’d looked over before he’d left had been centuries old. But he had a path nonetheless. 

The third, and most optional step, was to have somewhere to go. 

Tarocco. 

The land of the mad king. 

They said the fruit there was so sweet it would turn your tongue to dust. That the mornings were shrouded in fog, the days were clouded over, and the nights were long and molasses-thick. 

They also said it was impossible to find, unless the king himself allowed you in. 

But there, Calamine knew, they were wrong.

Four days and three nights due north, into the forest. Bring a guide. Or two. The mad king hungers, and the ground itself might swallow you whole. 

Speak not of your destination. The mad king has ears throughout the trees, and eyes in every star that beams down upon you. 

Do not eat nor drink unless at dawn and twilight. The mad king is jealous, and he will curse you if you feast while he can not. 

On the eve of the fourth night, on the seventh change between day and night, you will arrive. 

It will not be pleasant. 

You may not survive. But you will be there. 

He’d found the instructions in the book he carried under his arm. Centuries old, the only one of its kind in the world. Drawings of the mad king, likely the most accurate found outside of Tarocco. Drawings of the kingdom, and its lore, and suits of armors in the margins. 

Lovingly preserved in a library for longer than Calamine had been alive. Until he’d taken it. 

He wasn’t going directly to Tarocco. He had no one to travel with. He couldn’t go alone. 

The book said that the Mad King would take bodyguards first, and let those they guard pass through. So Calamine had to get himself a bodyguard. 

That’s why he was here. He’d asked several people, and posted a notice on an adventuring board- “Vulnerable traveler seeks bodyguard skilled in slaying bandits, brigands, beasts. Travel to dangerous land. No payment upfront, you keep everything we find. High Risk, High Reward.”

He’d been pointed to a stone keep in the mountains, a day’s walk from the town. Monster hunters lived there, they said. Good people, who had trained for years to be strong. Who gave their services to those who sought them out, doing good for those who could not stand up for themselves. 

The exact kind of person who wouldn’t realize that the real monster was right beside them, guiding them to their death. 

So there he was. A shivering little thing, in the early autumn evening, wrapped in a secondhand cloak. He’d long since discarded the robes from his monastery, having made his own clothing. Which was currently doing a terrible job of keeping him warm. The cloak was given to him by a stranger on his journey- one who’d seen him trying to stay warm, and had given him a spare. It was a strange gesture, but an appreciated one. 

He’d been robbed multiple times, roughed up, slept in the woods, had to deal with weather and exposure and exhaustion. The wind carried a cold that slipped under his cloak, his sleeves, his skin, and wrapped itself in the core of his bones. His long braid was carried out to the side by the wind, and much of his hair had come loose, giving him a disheveled look. The thin brass frames of his glasses had been bent in one of the times he’d been robbed, and he hadn’t had the time to fix them. 

Or, in short, he looked awful. 

Calamine rang the bell by the door, looking and feeling a few seconds away from collapsing, exhausted. 

Luckily, the loud tolling attracted someone’s attention, and the door opened quickly. 

An older man, with greying hair and a carefully-trimmed beard, looked down at Calamine. Which was not an exaggeration- the stranger was nearly a foot taller than him. 

Calamine stared up at him. It felt like an eternity as they looked at each other, before the stranger spoke. 

“You’re here for a reason, I suppose?” “Oh. Um. Yes. I am.” Calamine took the notice he’d posted, now clutched to his chest, and held it out to the man. 

“I need an escort. Someone to take me somewhere dangerous.” 

“Mm. Makes sense you’d come here, then. Come inside, you look like death.” The man snatched the paper from Calamine’s hands before he could protest, ushered him in, and almost slammed the door behind him. 

He seemed fairly down to business. Cal looked around the hall as the man read the paper, trying to familiarize himself with it. 

Although made of stone, the place seemed unfamiliar to him. It was intricately decorated, with strange pelts and weapons hung up on the walls where tapestries and altars would have normally gone. Open torches provided light, and rugs covered the floors. The first room visible was a large meal hall, where several people ate and talked and were, generally, too loud. 

The man must have seen how hungrily Calamine stared at the hall. He must have done a terrible job of hiding it. He clapped him on the shoulder, startling Calamine. 

“Come. Follow me. I am Vidar. We can discuss your contract over food.” 

Calamine walked with him- well, he didn’t have much choice, Vidar might as well have been dragging him- and sat down near the most intimidating of the men in the hall- a mountain of a man with an angry gaze, long white hair in a messy ponytail and a beard to match, and a cloak of what seemed to be animal fur. 

He looked down at Calamine. 

Calamine tried to shrink into himself. 

Vidar had gone off somewhere, and so Calamine was left at this table surrounded by people who were far larger and stronger than himself, feeling like a mouse surrounded by cats. 

Some of them talked to each other. None of them talked to him. The one right next to him simply looked down at him while eating, almost studying him. He wanted to disappear. 

That cycle of anxiety and self-loathing was broken very loudly when a wooden bowl of stew, a plate of various fruits and breads, and a spoon were placed very confidently in front of him. 

Vidar then proceeded to push him out of the way, into the side of the terrifying mountain of a man, and step on the bench and over the wooden table. 

This was met with some laughter, and some slaps to his shoulders when he sat back down. 

Calamine put his cloak’s hood up. 

Vidar sat across from him, and watched Calamine take a cautionary bite of what he could assume was stew. He’d only read about it, so this was a hypothesis that needed to be tested. 

Vidar then proceeded to watch him eat the entire bowl in less than a minute. That first bite had reminded Calamine of how hungry he was, how sparsely he’d eaten on his journey. And now there was what was potentially the best thing he’d eaten in his entire life. The man beside him didn’t take his eyes off of Calamine, but he was past the point of caring.

He was one thick slice of bread into the plate he’d been given when Vidar spoke again.

“Your contract.” Calamine swallowed. He’d almost forgotten about that, in the raw euphoria of having an entire meal. 

“Right. Sorry.” “Don’t worry. First, I’ll probably need your name.” 

“Oh. Calamine.” Vidar raised an eyebrow. “And your last name?” 

Calamine paused. Took another bite of bread to give himself some time to think. Decided the truth would be the best. 

“I don’t have one.” 

“Parents must not have liked you much.” He shrugged. “Not terribly, no.”

Vidar snorted out a laugh. 

“So, Calamine. No last name. Wants a guard for a journey to a dangerous place. You’d be wanting an experienced hunter- that’d be me- for what you’ve described.”

Calamine nodded along, eating at what he hoped was a normal pace that didn’t betray how hungry he was. 

“You don’t have any money for a pay-ahead? I’m going to need something for collateral.” 

The way Vidar looked at him made Calamine think he wasn’t expecting much. He could play into that. 

“I’m sure I can come up with something.” Best not to show all of his cards. He might not have liked his necklace, but he’d barely come out of being robbed so many times with it still around his neck. He wanted to hold onto it. 

“That works. We can talk it out.” Vidar nodded, folding the paper. “You shouldn’t face anything too bad. Where are you going, anyways? You don’t look like the adventuring type.”

Calamine ignored the slight. Finished his plate, and put his bowl on top of it, utensils within. Force of habit. Answered after that. 

“Have you ever heard of Tarocco?” 

The silence that befell the little area around them was so sudden and so thick that the rest of the room looked over to where the pair sat, rippling out until the very edges had gone quiet and looked at Vidar and their guest. 

“Tarocco.” Vidar’s voice was colder now. Calamine nodded. He had the sudden, palpable feeling that he’d just done something wrong. 

“You are aware of the legends surrounding it?” Calamine nodded again. 

“And you are aware that- if it even exists- the chances of anyone going there and surviving is slim to none?” 

Again, a nod. 

“I’m sorry,” Vidar said, shock and rage turning slowly to sympathy. “I can’t take you there. No one else here will, either. I don’t know what you’re seeking there, but it’s a death wish none of us have.” 

“Please.” 

Calamine was surprised by how desperate he sounded as he leaned over the table. 

“I need to get there. I don’t have money, but I can find something. I could make you something. I can make it worth it.”

The sympathy in Vidar’s expression turned to something like pity. Something that made Calamine’s stomach curdle and rage well up in him. 

“I’m sorry,” he repeated. “I’ll make sure you can stay here for the night, and bathe, and I’ll send you off with food in the morning. But you’re on your own.” 

He went back over the table, and the buzz of the room resumed. Hand back on Calamine’s shoulder, he guided him out of the hall, deeper into the keep. Down to the empty rooms for guests, where he brushed away spiders and showed him to a bathroom, where he could bathe, and even explained how to heat the water.

As Calamine left the room, though, he felt the distinctive feeling of eyes on him. It lingered, long past when he’d heated the water, washed himself, his clothes, taken his hair out of its long braid and cleaned it, basking in the feeling of being clean for the first time in weeks. 

He dried his clothes by the fire he’d used to heat the water, and put them on to head to the stone bed he’d been given. As he’d done night after night his entire life, he put his hair back in its braid, and took the time to fix his glasses before he laid down. He’d figure out the next step to Tarocco in the morning. For now, he needed to sleep. 

Calamine’s sleep was cold, and murky, like being drowned in an ocean far below where the light reached. Typically, he woke from dreams like the one he’d had that night in a cold sweat, having to lay back down and rest. 

Tonight, though, he awoke to heavy footsteps outside the door. The sound of a hand in the handle. And the door opening, flooding his room with light from the hallway. 

Although, not much light made its way through. Because, to Calamine’s dismay, the man he’d been sat next to in the hall was staring at him from the doorway. 

This was it. This was how he died. At the hands of a monster hunter who’d correctly deduced the kind of person he was. 

The man made his way into the room, eyes glowing in the darkness. Calamine must have done a terrible job at hiding his terror, because he raised his hands, revealing that one held two bags in it. 

“I’m not going to hurt you.”

His voice was deep, gravelly, and calm. He sounded so sure of himself that Calamine almost believed him. 

“My name is Brynjar Bjornson. You can call me Bryn.” A little weird to introduce yourself to someone you’re about to murder. Calamine was about to speak, before Brynjar spoke again.

“You wanted to go to Tarocco.” “Yes.” He was trying very hard to sound brave. “I can take your contract. I can take you there.” 

Calamine looked at him suspiciously. This ‘Bryn’ had been staring at him all night, like he wanted him dead, and now he was offering to take him somewhere dangerous? 

“How do I know you won’t just kill me?” 

Strangely, Bryn looked almost hurt at that. 

“I can’t promise you will know. But please, trust me. I don’t want you to go alone.” He stepped forwards again, holding the bags out.

“I packed us each some money. And food. We can go now. They won’t notice if we leave before it’s light out.” 

Calamine had to take a second to consider it. At the end, though, he decided that if Bryn had a death wish, who was he to stop him? So he took his cloak again. Reached out, and grabbed one of the bags. Bryn nodded affirmatively, gesturing to the hallway with his head. 

“I’ll make sure you’re protected. I promise.”

Calamine didn’t exactly believe that. But he still followed Bryn out of the keep, and into the night. 

[quoththemaiden]

If you could lead a cult what type of cult would it be

I'm a simple person. There's really only one thing I want from a cult:

I want everyone involved to look both ways when crossing the street when we're out playing Pokémon Go, so I don't have to do it for them.

It's a simple rule. I'm very fair.

[dayurno]

pacing around my room motioning widely towards my pinboard and when you look at it its just this chart of me trying to figure out the kerejean dynamics of the fic im planning

[daenystheedreamer]

so my partners high school gf was a Mormon and when she got engaged she went to extreme lengths to make sure he did not find out. when he did eventually find out he was like “lmfao why” bc at that point they were both only like 20 and in their 3rd year of college. this happened within the first month of us dating and I thought it was hilarious. we’re both gay men btw

love wins<3

[mars-ipan]

(copy/pasting this last paragraph bc i literally hit the mobile image limit tumblr when i get you:)

also. i think chiaki wants in one day after seeing them. nagito is Immensly upset about this but keeps his composure . because now hajime is his knees and that's fine too.. i hink chiaki's trying to be careful to not dirty but hajimes like "u cant garden right if ure too scared of getting kinda dirty! god made dirt and dirt dont hurt ^o^" (this is also how he justifies eating slightly dirted from dropping food. i mean he is a farmboy i dont doubt he wouldnt od that.) LOLL toodles ^w^

—————————

OKAY. so tumblr hates fun and glitched this ask out so i couldn’t answer it but i do not care i Will Answer It.

@spinecurlingmice (@ing you so u get the notif) i could kiss you on the mouth MWWWAH this is gorgeous and lines up so well with things i already have in mind for priest au. literally everything here fits into the canon i have in mind it’s perfect. i’ve been wanting to do more worldbuilding and such but i get really tired (lots of research…. lots and lots of googling) and you’ve done such an important thing for me by finding incredible plant symbolism. mwwah mwah mwah thank youuuu <333 obsessed with a lot of this but this post is long as hell already so it’s tags time

[carlos-in-glasses]

🥑🎲

Good evening Andie! Thank you for these very cute emojis!

🥑 ⇢ you accidentally killed somebody, which mutual(s) do you text for help?

@cold-blooded-jelly-doughnut because he said the same about me once so I feel like we virtually have a blood pact about it. We also occupy the same landmass, aliiet miles apart, but he can drive and I'll probably need to put the body in the car? Jamie would you mind using your car for this? I'll pay for petrol and buy you lunch.

🎲 ⇢ what stops you from writing more in your free time?

Errands, chores, cooking, and being totally wiped out by work (as I am this evening)! Also - being in a relationship with a very very chatty person. Which is great and lovely etc and has inspired a few fic scenes along the way lol. It just means a lot of my spare time isn't entirely just mine and there are compromises to be had. Plus, like all other writers here (I presume), free time also goes towards reading fic rather than writing it and there's a balance to be struck between the doing and the consuming. I try to manage it by reading fic on weekday evenings and carving out writing time at the weekends. Before my worklife blew up I used to get a bit of writing time before the day kicked off or during a lunchbreak, but now that's a thing of the past. It's tough!

Thank you for asking! ❤️

Writers Truth & Dare Ask Game

[heliinx]

It seems your beloved boyfriend fancies none other than a Skyre mechanic, and not a handsome one at that... Their clan has exclusive access to the troves of warp stone in his lands.

Maybe it's time you give up on him and move on. That would be wise. There's others that are eagerly waiting to offer you so much more.

" Is not bad thing, Grey One. Does not matter which Clan takes the stone, for if the Horne Rat has need-want of it, all holy-righteous clans would give him his due. And I am his herald, am I not? The Horned rat does not smile up frugality when it comes to gifting-titing him."

[brackenferns]

Hold on I’ll send a Reddit link explaining more in detail about the differences. You’ll find spoilers tho, let me know if that is okey before I’ll send it to you.

if you send it now, I’ll just save it to read once I’m done with the books!

[write-kin]

Prologue - Rebirth.

Eight hundred years ago, a king made a sacrifice.

CWs: Sacrifice, murder, painful transformation.

[Now on AO3]

--

Seventy-seven lives. 

Not that much, in the long term. Less than a village. Less than a regiment of men in an army. Two digits. 

Seventy-seven men. 

More than seventy-seven lives would be affected. These men had friends, wives, children, parents, siblings. Lives cut short too soon. 

Seventy-seven innocents, taken to a mountaintop. 

Seventy-seven lambs.

Seventy-seven slaughtered. 

Montresor stood among the bodies, breathing heavily. 

It had not been easy. 

The men had been his own soldiers. Many of them had served under him for a decade or more. 

On the battlefield, Montresor had sacrificed hundreds of his own men. Possibly more. It had been in the name of strategy. Of victory. And it had worked. Their deaths were not in vain, as they died under his command to secure victory for those who mattered. Eventually, the victories of those in charge became his own. 

Many of the men whose bodies laid before him tonight had been instrumental in the coup that made him king. Their bravery and valor and willingness to sacrifice the lives of others had brought him here. 

And yet, for all those whose deaths he had caused, to slit the throats of his own men was difficult. 

His arms were heavy. The dagger he had brought was dulled by the blood caked onto it. His heart was heavy, like the weight of every man he had slain laid upon it. 

There was one more. The seventy-seventh. Like the others, he stood before the ornate metal basin. 

Magic was a tricky thing. On his own, without the assistance he was receiving, Montresor would have collapsed under the strain of putting so many under his thrall. These efforts were already taking their toll on him.

The final sacrifice was the hardest. It had to be. It was necessary. 

The general stared ahead. His hair was tied back, and the sweat and blood couldn’t conceal the scent of lavender that always lingered around him. 

He was small, before Montresor. Everyone was. But the way the general carried himself, you would never know. 

He had always been a lucky man. Montresor had so often spoken of him as a good luck token, his own rabbit’s foot. Any battle with him leading the men was sure to end in victory. 

These sacrifices were necessary. He had committed to this. He had sworn. There was one more throat to slit. 

The man before Montresor had been Lusalle Luchesi, once. Lusalle. His own. 

And perhaps it was cowardice, or perhaps it was a lingering tenderness. He wouldn’t know. He wouldn’t ruminate. He would do what he could to cast the memories from his mind. But whatever the reason, Montresor dropped the thrall once his arm was around the general’s chest; holding him in place. He held Lusalle still, even as he yelled, as he panicked and began pleading to Montresor, asking him those horrible questions like why and for what purpose? 

Montresor was silent as the blade ran across the general’s throat. As his throat spilled into the bowl. Like all the others. As his body fell down at Montresor’s feet, making its final noises. 

Montresor did not weep. 

He would, later, alone. And he would weep, and be done. He would have better things to do than shed tears. 

But for now, he stood. Removed his gauntlets, exposing his hands to the cool night air. 

As he had been told to, Montresor laid his gauntlets aside. Took his hands, and dipped them into the basin. 

The blood was still warm. 

When he drew his hands up, the night air stung them. The blood dripped down to his wrists, under his clothes, drying onto his skin. 

He brought his hands up to his mouth. The blood was sickly and metallic as it entered his mouth, and he choked it down. 

Another. His hands dipped back into the basin. He drew them to his mouth. 

And again.

And again.

And again.

Over and over, until his knuckles scraped the bottom of the basalt, until the last of the blood had long since seeped into the porous stone. 

And when it was done, the pain began. Like a shot of white-hot agony tearing through his mind, burning all that it passed. Down the back of his throat, the pain snaked into his spine, and traced veins and muscles as Montresor collapsed to his knees. 

He bled. His canines fell into his bloodied hands, replaced with ones that were sharper, stronger. His body remolded itself, becoming something else. His eyes, once a brown so deep they were almost black, opened again as a deep crimson.

The blood he coughed up- his own, already the dulled black ichor of one long-dead- did not return to him. His skin paled, a near paper-white pallor left behind. 

When he closed his eyes again, the pain returned, and with it came visions. Shapes. Colours. Incomprehensible gifts. Some, he thought he could perhaps understand parts of. Others were esoteric and alien to him. Flashes of red. A sword. A pipe organ. A child. Movement. Power. Patience. But power, he understood. Patience, and power beyond his wildest dreams would come to him. The visions were barely comprehensible. But all of a sudden, they left, and with them went the pain. 

And there he was. 

King Montresor Valdemar, knelt before a basin of stone, taking unnecessary gasps of air. Surrounded by seventy-six bodies, and one laid over his knees, staring up at the night sky. 

Montresor took Lusalle’s body in his arms. The dagger laid there on the mountain’s stone, long forgotten. They looked up at the sky together. 

The stars were gone. 

The moon was blood-red. 

Just over his kingdom. Just for this night. Just as he’d agreed. 

He was near-immortal now. He had killed seventy-seven men. He was a being that defied death. His power was more than any man could dream of, and more would come to him. The only man who could have slain him was cradled, dead, in his arms. In mere moments, he would turn around, making his way back down to his castle. 

And yet, staring up at the moon that stared back, he felt something he would never have to feel ever again. 

Montresor felt small. 

[outlying-hyppocrate]

as you sit, burning off the serotonin, look quickly! there is someone at the door

[daenystheedreamer]

weird ask but whats the deal w brandon sanderson?

mormon 💀

[howlsmovinglibrary]

Readlist anon--I should've said that I've. . .read your bookmarks (when I read an author I like, I want to know more about what they read so I immediately went there) and I wanted to see if there was anything else! Np if there's nothing else!

Thank you for clarifying, and sorry for being silly at my end, anon! Unfortunately my fanfiction reading process is messy as fuck and there's no rhyme or reason to it :') I only tend to read fic once or twice a month, and it's whatever I can find on a given search on a given day, so no TBR for me!

(Hope you enjoyed the bookmarks, you now know more about me than my therapist x)

[glowingtithe]

96!!

Vampires Will Never Hurt You by My Chemical Romance ::3