#i love a late night exploration of

[panaceatthedisco]

and historians will call them former enemies...

[starsspiral]

Oh the tenderness of Gale being under Astarion with tension rising on both sides only for him to notice that hollow gaze in Astarions eyes. For him to softly tell him its okay to pull away only to cuddle with him under starlight...

[faustodisco]

Actually if we want to talk about the lilienne/joyce ship I would like to bring up that it plays into the bourgeois woman’s fantasy of class dynamics in a relationship (à la lady chatterley), as well as the upper/middle class idea that their identity as women supersedes said class dynamics (and therefore they believe themselves to be in no position to oppress women of the working class) in a way that lends itself to reactionary movements like TERF ideology. As someone who lives in the uk and has been heavily affected by said ideology, joyce actually put me on high alert just by her voice and appearance.

I think it’s a mistake not to acknowledge that joyce is heavily thatcherite coded (the hair, the posh accent etc) especially when compared to lilienne who plays into the working class british woman archetype: she sounds welsh (considered a ‘lower’ accent), has young children, is a widower etc. It is fairly common to see the ‘confident mum who has to single-handedly support her young family’ in soap operas and other media, and she definitely plays into that stereotype.

Anyway, the ship is on the surface level a fun one, but let’s not overlook the framing as a one-sided and rather sinister set-up.

[slashthrashandcrash]

I think the only horror movie/series I can confidentially say I would survive in is Friday the 13th due to the fact that I hate camping and simply would not be there

[queenlucythevaliant]

Northern Lights

.

I heard a voice that cried, “Balder the Beautiful is dead, is dead!” 

.

Who knows what to call the lonely exhilaration of gazing out into a bright Northern sky? Who can name it? 

Jill could.

It was the same feeling that came to her at the teetering edge of a cliff at the end of the world. The same feeling as when she said her goodbyes to Puddleglum and Scrubb before they freed the prince. It was the same feeling that engulfed her now, sitting in the professor’s library with a volume of poetry before her. 

.

The wild northern wastes were well named: utterly wild, perfectly desolate, and terribly Northern. 

It was lonely there and often cold, but the sky was an endless whorl of gales and gray clouds. The stones were indigo under the pale winter sunlight, and at sunset they glowed a soft gold, as though lit from within. The gorges and moors lay before her, and Jill loved them for their vastness and their distance. Little grew in that country, but that which did was full of vigor. The grass was short and coarse. Every tree was victorious. 

On a still, deep breathing winter night, Jill lay on her back beneath a covering sky. It seemed beautiful to her, rich and strong and glorious. Her eyes drank in the breadth of it until her tears began to blind her. Yet even then, she still couldn’t look away.

She felt bigger here in the wastes, like the landscape. Stronger, wider. The further she walked, the more she felt herself stretch out. One of these days, maybe, she would catch hold of herself at the edge and tug, and Jill Pole would open up clear as the Northern sky. 

.

And through the misty air passed the mournful cry of sunward sailing cranes.

.

The thing that surprised Jill most about the battle with the serpent was this: there wasn’t any yelling. Always, it seemed, whenever she read stories about people fighting with swords, the combatants would let loose some guttural yell before their blows fell. They would scream and writhe in pain as they died. They would shout instructions to their fellows, “Look out!” or “Hit him there!” But the whole affair with the serpent passed with very little noise. 

The poison-green coil constricted around the prince; he raised his arms and got clear, struck the serpent hard, and then Scrubb and Puddleglum dispatched the creature with heavy, hacking blows. The monster died writhing, but not screaming. And then it was over. 

The thing that surprised Jill most about the moments before battle was, of course, the noise. She could hear her own heartbeat in her ears. She couldn’t stop listening to her own breathing. Every footstep rang out like a gong, and any words exchanged rang with a kind of finality that made them sound louder than anything. 

“You are of high courage,” Rilian told her when it was over. 

Yet the thing in Jill’s chest just then didn’t feel like courage. It was a deep breath, a plunge, and a release. It was loud and quiet all at once, till she was standing, blinking in the night air as snowballs whizzed round her, and maybe that was something like courage after all. 

.

And now, there was a stirring in her chest as she reread the words on the page. Sing no more / O ye bards of the North / Of Vikings and of Jarls! / Of the days of the Eld / preserve the freedom only / nor the deeds of blood! 

She thought of grief. Of freedom. 

The lonely ache in her belly grew stronger. She felt herself uplifted into the huge regions of sky that were just beyond those cliffs, weightless as the breath beneath her buoyed her up, further, further…

.

When she saw Caspian up close, Jill thought that he looked like the sort of person who was meant to live in a castle. A silly thought, perhaps, since she knew he was a king– only she wasn’t thinking of Cair Paravel. No, Jill was picturing the ruins of an old British castle she’d visited once on holiday. She still remembered how the stonework had loomed over her, all towering arches and crumbling walls. That was where Caspian seemed to belong. He had an air of ancient tragedy about him. 

When Rilian disappeared, all things had wept but one. The serpent coiled beneath the earth and flicked its forked tongue, spewing poison. 

Now, the king half rose to bless his son. He whispered a few words as he caressed Rilian’s cheek, words meant only for those beloved ears. Jill saw Caspian’s lips move and wondered what a man like that could possibly say, when time ran so short. 

.

They laid him in his ship, with horse and harness, as on a funeral pyre. Odin placed a ring upon his finger, and whispered in his ear.

.

Jill furtively took Myths of the Northmen and held it up to the professor with a question in her eyes. She was still shy around him and Miss Plummer, though she wished she wasn’t. 

“Would you like to take that with you?”

“...Please.”

.

It takes a certain kind of person to be exhilarated by the heights. You’ve got to love vastness more than you fear falling. 

.

They walked to the train station with an autumn wind blowing hard, and though Jill couldn’t fathom why, she turned and saw Lucy grinning, fierce and joyful– grinning and reaching a hand out towards her friend.

Jill reached back and grabbed it. “What will you do, once we’re back in Narnia?” she asked. 

The wind blew harder. The feeling of anticipation grew and grew, until it felt so big that she couldn’t dream of containing it. And there was Lucy, holding Jill’s hand and laughing like it was easy.

.

Preserve the freedom only, not the deeds of blood!

.

The second time Jill went to Narnia, she found herself not at its edge, but at its end. 

The thing about the Norse apocalypse is: it feels believable. It doesn’t reach beyond earth’s horizon to pull down hope beyond hope. It’s only the kind of courage that hopeless humans have: you are going to die, so you might as well die bravely. 

They found the last king of Narnia bound to a tree. His eyes were faintly red from crying, and his wrists and ankles red from the coarseness of his fetters. 

In the Norse myths, Loki broke free of his fetters at the end of the world. He escaped to the helm of a ship made from the fingernails of the dead.

The last king of Narnia fell forward onto the ground when Eustace cut his bonds. Jill crouched down beside him and watched as he rubbed feeling back into his legs. He wasn’t so much older than her, she thought. Jill was sixteen years old; the last king of Narnia could not be older than twenty-two. 

In the myths, the gods were ancient, hewn from the bodies of giants old as the earth. 

Jill put out a hand and helped the last king of Narnia to his feet. Not for the last time, she shivered. Something deep inside her (deeper than her chest, than her heart, than the marrow of her bones, deep as her soul, deeper) was singing an elegy and she didn’t know why, or how, or where it had come from. The king clutching her hand, who could have been her older brother, would have no heir.

Yet when he asked, “Will you come with me?” Jill could only smile. 

“Of course,” she said. “It’s you we’ve come to help.”

.

And the voice forever cried, "Balder the Beautiful is dead, is dead!"

.

“This really is Narnia at last,” murmured Jill. The springtime wood had little in common with the wintry lands she had traveled the last time she was here– but it awakened the same feelings of Northernness in her chest. 

Their party may as well have been the only people in the world, for how isolated their little wooden path seemed. Yet it wasn’t lonely, really, cocooned in all that green with the wind in the leaves and the primroses nodding and blue of the sky peeking through above. 

Jewel told stories about what ordinary life was like when there was peace here. As he spoke, Jill could almost hear the trees' voices speaking out of the living past, whispering, stay, stay. She was caught up to a great height, looking down across a rich, lovely plain full of woods and waters and cornfields, which spread away and away till it got thin and misty from distance. 

“Oh Jewel–” Jill said with a dreamy sigh, “wouldn’t it be lovely if Narnia just went on and on– like what you say it has been?”

She needn’t be a queen, as Susan and Lucy had been, but Jill would’ve liked to stay. She would've liked it all to stay, if it could. She might have been a woodmaid in a place like this: with the turn of the seasons, the swaying trees, swords into plowshares. Oh, if only she could stay!

Ahead, the last king of Narnia was softly singing a marching song. Jill tilted her head back and let warm shafts of sun caress her face. 

.

I saw the pallid corpse of the dead sun borne through the Northern sky.

.

“So,” said the last king of Narnia, “Narnia is no more.”

He tried to send them back. Jill shook her head. It was very loud and very quiet. “No, no, no, we won’t. I don’t care what you say. We’re going to stick by you whatever happens, aren’t we Eustace?”

They couldn’t go back anyway. Neither would they flee, not south across the mountains nor North into the great wide wastes. No, they would stay. They slept in a holly grove on the edge of ruin, waiting for the bonfires to light.

Jill slept fitfully, but in between she dreamed. She was high up in the air, buffeted by clouds and pierced by shafts of silver sunlight. 

.

They all died, in the myths. Jill knew that. It seemed beautiful and brave when she read it in her book, tucked away safe in the Professor’s library. It was terrifying now– and yet it was beautiful and brave still.

The dogs came bounding up, every one of them, running up to the king and his men with their tails wagging. One of them leapt at Jill and licked her face, tongue roughly lapping up the sweat and tears that had dried on her cheeks. 

“Show us how to help, show us how, how, how!” the dogs were barking, almost ebullient in their enthusiasm. Jill bit back a sob. How lovely, she thought. How terribly beautiful. How dreadfully brave. 

.

So perish the old Gods!

.

The white rock gleamed like a moon in the darkness when Jill finally reached it. She ran back to it alone, her hands shaking, while her friends stayed forward with their gleaming swords and Jewel’s indigo horn.

The while rock gleamed like the moon. Jill’s first shot flew wide and landed in the soft grass. But she had another arrow on her string the next instant. It was speed that mattered, not aim. Speed, and turning aside when she cried, so as not to drip tears on her bowstring.

The white rock gleamed. In the myths, a wolf devoured the moon. Peter’s wolf, slain many thousand years ago in this world, opened his jaw wide and darkness fell over everything.

Her next arrow found its mark. After that, she lost track. She pulled, and she prayed that her hands kept still another minute. 

The unique thing–maybe the appealing thing–about the Norse myths, was that they told men to serve gods who were admittedly fighting with their backs to the wall and would certainly be defeated in the end. Jill let loose another arrow, felt the white rock at her back, and she knew that the clawing fear–beauty–bravery deep in her gut was the same feeling that she felt on the heights. The same feeling, but a different face. You’ve got to love vastness more than you fear falling. 

.

“I feel in my bones,” said Poggin, “that we shall all, one by one, pass through that dark door before morning. I can think of a hundred deaths that I would rather have died.”

“It is indeed a grim door,” said Tirian. “It is more like a mouth.” 

“Oh, can’t we do anything to stop it,” said Jill. Better to be dashed to the ground than it was to be devoured. 

“Nay, fair friend,” said Jewel. “It may be for us the door to Aslan’s country and we sup at his table tonight.”

A hand tangled itself in her hair and started to pull. Jill braced herself hard, for a moment, until her strength gave out. She was standing on the edge of a high, Northern cliff. She took another step, and fell.

.

Perhaps when the moment comes, our bite will prove better than our howls. If not, we shall have to confess that two millennia of Christianity have not yet brought us to the level of the Stoics and Vikings. For the worst (according to the flesh) that a Christian need face is to die in Christ and rise in Christ; some were content to die, and not to rise, with Father Odin.

.

The world inside the stable was beautiful. It made Jill’s chest ache in all the loveliest ways. 

.

Build it again, O ye bards, fairer than before!

[which-qsmp-egg-would]

Today's investigation ended in rain. Looks like they'll have to come back another day.

[wordsaladsenpai]

The clock struck 12 and here I am.

[pinkyjulien]

.

[april-diariees]

Hate.

Oh I hate you soo much You don't even know, It's building up inside me I feel like throwing up.

I hate you so much It's taking over every single vien of mine, I don't even wanna see you face And your voice make my hair stand.

I hate you so much You can't even imagine, Every single bone in me wants to scream that back at you But my tongue freezes whenever I look at you.

Huh?

My eyes start to water and theres a lump in my throat, The tiniest cells in my body Are calling me a stupid fuck.

Don't lie to yourself honey You can say that word all you want, It won't ever change the fact How you crave to hear your name from her mouth .

[wetwareparasite]

Other than peoples Vs are there people with more c77-universe ocs... curious

[hydrangeyes]

*has been playing stardew valley again and now has intense thoughts and ideas on sebastian and if he wasn't judged or brushed off as lazy making him retreat and stick to himself for the most part*

[pinkeoni]

tati westbrook breaking my silence meme I do think that it would be very sweet if Will’s first kiss was with Mike but I also dont think the moment would be ruined or lose any impact if Will happened to be with other people before Mike. In fact, I don’t think it would be ooc to happen either especially during/after the time skip

[ejunkiet]

goober! you have your anon asks turned off!!! (jk I don't blame you)

lol oh well I'm just gonna come in here with my name emblazoned across my ask and tell you that every piece of communication from you makes me happy

from the littlest :3

to the biggest all caps, meme-laden, voice-memo accompanied brain dump in my DMs

you are a treasure and i'm hugging you fiercely

FRENCHIE, LET ME LOVE YOU. Your work brings me ABSOLUTE joy, and I am hooked on your audio drama series Corollary, holy sheet. ;u; thank you for brightening my evening!! <3

[loregoddess]

Frederica Aesfrost or Cordelia Glenbrook for the ask game?

Oh, I'll do both, they're both great!

First impression: For Frederica, it was something along the lines of "Oh, she seems cool, I bet I'll like her" when I was watching the early trailers. For Cordelia, after meeting her for the first time in the game I didn't...actually have much of an impression of her, she seemed very bland "youngest sister, most gentle-hearted princess" and nothing more (I was very wrong).

Impression now: Love them both lots! Frederica went well beyond whatever I was expecting of her characterization, she's really interesting and I love how she comes into her own and really starts standing up for herself and her ideals as the story progresses. And I was SO wrong about Cordelia, she's literally one of the most interesting and complex characters in a "royalty" role I've ever come across in fiction, and I love her so much for it. She's got an incredibly strong will, she's very intelligent, and she was actually shaping up to be a really extraordinary leader. I'm sad she gets sidelined in the story as soon as Roland's able to reclaim Glenbrook Castle, because she had all this budding potential to be one hell of a powerhouse of a character.

Favorite moment: Hmm, it's been a hot minute since I played TriStrat, so my memory of the story isn't as sharp, but I really enjoyed the scenes where Frederica fights against Thalas and Erika (in her route of Ch13, "Born of Strife and Sadness" specifically, although her battle dialogue with them in Roland's version "Time to Say Goodbye" is good as well). It marks an interesting turning point in her character growth, and it was really nice to see her finally oppose them without fear.

For Cordelia, I'd...have a harder time combing the wiki for the specific chapter, but all of her cutscenes from her father's death to Ch13, where we get to see how she starts to come up with a plan to retake Glenbrook, and how she's able to inspire Avlora to her side, those were really interesting scenes, and I had a new appreciation for her character after watching them because I simply wasn't expecting her to deal with the grief of loosing her entire family (as she didn't know Roland was still alive at this time) to be "well, I'm the only one left and I am Not going to take this lying down, I will be queen of my people in my own right". Just, mm, really interesting character growth, I would have loved to see the type of leader she would have become if things had gone differently.

Idea for a story: Well, I'm always interesting in post-game type narratives that explore how the characters and world begin to heal after all is said and done, and I think that type of story would be really interesting to explore for both Frederica and Cordelia, but in different ways. For Frederica, exploring how her life as the official Lady Wolffort is, and what work she does to help the Rosellen people after the war while also balancing her new married life would be really interesting.

For Cordelia, I think there's a lot of potential to explore the intricacies and power dynamics behind the scenes of Glenbrook's restoration, as I'm sure she ends up doing a lot of work to help Roland even if she isn't the official ruler (again, all that potential she showed as a leader, you can't tell me she doesn't take up some sort of important position in helping to lead the country)--all this while she also settles in to learning that Serenoa is her half-brother (I like to think she learns that at some point), and her life with Avlora as her knight, and just, stuff in general for her since she has a lot to recover from and grieving she can finally go through.

Unpopular opinion: I don't think I have any wildly unpopular opinions about Frederica. For Cordelia, I guess I'm not keen on the Cordelia x Avlora ship, I just...can't see it as romantic (and the age gap doesn't work for me, I'm fairly certain Avlora is in her thirties at the youngest due to in-game dialogue about when Svarog took her in), although I am partial the idea of the platonic knight-liege friendship between the two, but platonic stuff isn't as popular in most fandom spaces.

Favorite relationship: I'm really fond of Frederica's canon romance with Serenoa, like, normally I'm kinda neutral on canon romances, but the way this one was written was so, so good, and I loved seeing her interactions with the other House Wolffort members. I also like her friendship with Geela a lot.

For Cordelia, her familial relationship with Roland is very interesting (somewhat bittersweet at times), and I would have loved to see and know more about her relationship with Frani and their dad. As I mentioned above, I really like her friendship with Avlora, because it was so unexpected but it makes a sort of weird sense. Would have loved to see more of her interactions with the House Wolffort members, and also would have loved to see how she reacts to learning Serenoa is her half-brother and how that shapes her relationship with him and Frederica after the game's events.

Favorite headcanon: Hmmm, I don't have as many headcanons for TriStrat in general but, I guess for Frederica that in Benedict's ending she eventually ends up breaking away from and opposing Serenoa so she can take up defending the Roselle (probably sometime shortly after Benedict's death), and that in the Golden Ending she grows into an excellent leader for both the Wolffort Demense and Roselle people alongside Serenoa, and the two are fondly remembered by their people in histories later on.

For Cordelia, it would be that her capability and tact for government makes her vital to ensuring Roland's rule is successful in the Golden Ending, and also that she eventually becomes very close with Frederica and Serenoa after learning she's related to Serenoa (catching up on family time), enough that if the two ever had kids she'd be the favorite aunt (she'd be their only aunt technically, but she probably spoils them more than Roland would).

[silhouettecrow]

365 Days of Writing Prompts: Day 331

Adjective: Old-Fashioned

Noun: Posy

Definitions for those who need/want them:

Old-Fashioned: in or according to styles or types no longer current or common, or not modern; (of a person or their views) favoring traditional and usually restrictive styles, ideas, or customs

Posy: a small bunch of flowers; (archaic) a short motto or line of verse inscribed inside a ring

[chirpsythismorning]

I am not sure how to respond to your answer because a lot of the things you have said were kinda... irrelevant?

My main point was that I think there's more stuff to be addressed with Will's character. That is why I think he's going to be targeted first. I never said he'd be the sole main character of S5. I just think there's more stuff that is to be addressed with his character. Especially because we do not know a lot of mysteries about him. We still do not know why he got targeted in S1, his S1 and S2 supernatural stuff have yet to be addressed. We do not know if he has powers or not and if that's the reason why he got targeted. We do not know why he is connected to Vecna and that has to be addressed. We do not know why the Upside Down is stuck on the time he went missing. His parallels to Vecna are not addressed and if that plays a role in him being targeted back in S1 are not yet addressed. We do not know why Will is connected to UD and how to break off his connection to Vecna and UD, etc.

I've never even said that Noah would receive more cash or would have his name appear as the first name on the show. I do not even have any idea where that came from. I am just pointing out that there are more stuff to be addressed with Will's character, thus why it makes sense for him to get targeted first to address those questions and plot points. That's my main point... I have no idea what to answer to your other points because a lot of things you said were irrelevant. Thanks for the answer anyway!

I'm sorry if I rambled! I got the impression that you thought because Will was said to be central in s5 by the Duffer's, then that means he automatically is at the center related to the overall story, and I sort of attributed that to Vecna as well. And so I felt the need to get logistical and let you down easy bc I notice there are a lot of bylers taking that Duffer snippet and are using it to like blast milkvans and say Will is the main now and El isn't anymore, which... just isn't the case. And this is coming from a will has powers and byler endgame truther. If that's not you at all then I apologize for making that assumption and will drop that whole side of the argument entirely!

As I replied to another ask just previous, I do think that if Mike is targeted, the endgame goal would be for it to somehow be a step in the right direction for Vecna to get to Will.

I think s5 is going to involve Will at the forefront when it comes to a lot of these questions being answered related to him going missing. And I do think, assuming that the whole Mike being late thing was intentional, it's very likely the opening for s5 could again somehow involve Mike being late yet again. Seeing that trend come full circle in a way that is shocking and satisfying. It just so happens that Vecna is the big bad this time around, and Mike is long overdue for some self-reflection, and so I was speculating with a few others about that possibility, because it's there.

S5 has like 10 hours of running time to account for. And Will confronting Vecna is probably going to take up a good chunk of it. And even still, as Vecna has done in past seasons, he's going to continue to be calculated.

S5 is likely not going to start with Will and Vecna simply facing off with all their cards on the table, because that would be too easy? And a little boring?

It could very likely happen where we see Vecna target Will right from the jump at the start of s5, but it's also more likely something would go wrong, leading to a delay of sorts. And I think it's going to lead to another confrontation later on, followed by several others until the final battle. But there is definitely more to it than just Vecna targeting Will, because after all that is presumably the end goal. And so it's a matter of what it takes to get to that point.

And I think just like in previous seasons, Vecna is going to use all of his moves possible if it means getting what he wants, and as far as we know, he likes tormenting people over their guilt and shame, often what he himself played a role in causing them in the first place. And he's done it with the most random of characters, even if it seemed insignificant at the time, it played it's part in his plan.

Tormenting the love of Will's life, who also happens to be the kid who has been thwarting his plans for a while now, seems like enough to at least not rule out Vecna targeting Mike, for calculated reasons.

I'm honestly not even as obsessed with the prospects of Vecna vs. Mike as I used to be post-s4. Like it was just such a concept back then bc there was so much unknown about Mike. I do think it's going to happen in s5, though I'm not as excited about it as I probably was back then, I think I'm more so just defensive at the argument that it's super unlikely and people are reaching for speculating, bc all any of us are doing is speculating based on what's been shown to us. For all we know we're all wrong.

But now with the whole twelvegate theory and Will has powers in general being a commonplace fan theory on here, I've come across so many unknowns about Will after rewatching over the last month doing my own research, and that has honestly been interesting me more than anything else as of late. It's even gotten to the point now where a lot of byler evidence appears to also be either/or willel wonder twin evidence... and so I am very excited to see how that could pan out!

Though this has also made me realize that 4 seasons of building up Will's sexuality out in the open, and with him being swamped with powers obligations next season, even more so confirms this concept of Mike being vecna'd bc... what else does he have going on? His best friend and ex gf are busy dealing with family drama, he's gonna need to get his own head together bc that doesn't really have anything to do with him. His arc is more so connected to his guilt and shame and him resolving that is going to be necessary for both Will and El to feel secure in their relationship with him in the end. I do think they all deserve that closure. Will and El will definitely get closure with one another, but I know that Will is going to be the hardest nut to crack. He is NOT going to believe Mike, unless it's clear to him what Mike has went through and is currently going through, and vice versa.

All of their arcs overlap, though I know everyone has favorites and yes some actors are billed more than others like i rambled about, but all the pieces matter in the grand scheme of things, even if it doesn't directly impact the endgame goal in the moment, otherwise there would be no story to sit here and obsess over until we get to the end.

I hope that cleared up some of my nonsense and hopefully I made a little more sense this time! Thanks for coming back to clarify!