queenbeecomplex

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thinking about caleb and his components and his transmutation. it's easier to collect sticks and rocks and shit and bits of fabric off the ground than it is to buy a focus when you barely even have enough coin to afford bread. don't you ever wish you were something, anything else than what you are. don't you wish you could turn yourself into someone else - or, wouldn't it be incredible to able to grant that wish for your best friend. what if you could change the very fabric of reality. you can't go back and fix what you did (you could, you could, but it turned you into what you are and that's a damn tragedy for you but a miracle to all the people you've saved since) but you can control what happens here and now. sticks and stones and polymorph

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Okay but, Essek never knew Mollymauk. He had never met him. He had never known his smile or exuberance or his “fuck it, I got this” approach to throwing himself in front of his friends during dangerous situations. 

But he knew the Nein. 

He knew their stories. He learnt how they started, how they progressed. He had heard vague reports here and there– witnesses to the dramatics in Zadash, rangers trying to track the Beacon, those few scrying attempts before the Nein got wise and shoved it in a bag– before he met them. And when he met them, he had thought they were foolish for asking for favours so easily and readily, so willing to put themselves in debt as a means to just get by. So willing to barter for his friendship with smiles and teasing and their irreverent curiosity. 

Essek met Mollymauk through the Nein and their easy smiles and fierce protection. He met Mollymauk through Jester trying to get him to draw cards from a deck and Beau deciding that drinking together was the best way to know each other. And in the face of all that was unforgivable that he had done, he met Mollymauk in Caleb’s insistence that he was still worth saving. 

So when he sees the tiefling torn apart, mourned by the Nein in the hellish landscape of a dying district of a ruined city in the Astral Sea, and Caleb rushing from death to trying to plead for that tiefling’s life, Essek’s heart broke for them. He had watched Caleb die moments ago– this unspoken, new affection he was no longer denying wrenched from him as he lashed out in retaliation– and now the man was a step away from pleading to the gods themselves with a transmuter stone he had worked and willed into shape for months as a testament to his own power against the torn chest of the creature that had just murdered him. 

He watched, and waited, and held his breath with them until it was clear that it had failed. And his heart broke for the Nein and he mourned for Mollymauk with them. 

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Battle vest update: Grog is complete. Kinda gives me Aang in the Avatar State vibes and I am Not mad about it lol

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Imogen's lightning. The red is supposed to be Ruidis magic. Anyway seems fitting this should go directly under Laudna's hands.

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Laudna's spooky hands not including her string. That will be added once I get her on the vest. The plan is for her hands to go at the back of the neck between the shoulders area and her string will go all over to the other patches.

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Denim vest acquired! Now to make some patches....

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Got my RAGE shirt and unfortunately had an allergic reaction to it soooooo I've decided to make it into a vest patch. RAGE battle vest initiated.

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oh also this was iconic

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ashton/fearne is a very funny ship to imagine just this 6’0 satyr goddess with the moral compass of a fucking shrimp with the world’s angriest he/they rock fella with a literal “fuck off” hammer and they also keep trying to steal from each other all the fucking time

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Chetney Pock O’Pea is peak character design actually.  Everything about his aesthetic is so incongruous, it’s beautiful.  He is 3 foot 2 inches at the very tallest.  Upon first glance he looks 200 years old.  He has scars everywhere.  He wears pointy toed shoes.  He has a cloak that when pulled aside only reveals hidden woodworking tools.  He has a fading tattoo on his shoulder.  He wears a winter hat that looks lovingly knitted and seems sentimental since he’s still wearing it in a rainforest environment.  He is absolutely shredded.

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i'm here to inform the Dorian Storm fans about some music theory if you didn't already know

the Dorian mode is the second mode of the major scale MEANING if you take a classic C Major scale (c d e f g a b c) and go from the SECOND note instead of the first (d e f g a b c d) you get D Dorian

what makes Dorian unique is the fact that it is, at its core, a sad scale. the only thing is it's not as sad as a traditional minor scale, one of its notes is raised so as you go up the scale, you get a strange lightness

and it matches Dorian Storm because he started as the happy second son of a privileged family (major, the "perfect" scale)

but as he grew he realized he didn't fit there, didn't work there, what he wanted to be could never work in his family (minor)

so when he left to discover himself, he found beauty in his differences and a lightness in his step and settled into a less mournful, less perfect, appreciative, ethereal and introspective person (dorian)

and yknow maybe robbie didn't decide on any of that and he chose a name for fun but my little music theory loving heart misses my bluebard and i'm going to post about him until they bring him back

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*screams in flustered agony*

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There is something so compelling and dread inducing about Bell’s Hells being a group of people convinced that their lives can only get better. That the shit that happened in their past will always be the worst thing that ever happened to them.

Because it’s an amazing dynamic to see.

But holy shit will it hurt when one of them is proven wrong.

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Literally no one asked but

The way I consider the question of Molly and Kingsley's dichotomy vs singularity is that both conditions are true at once.

Kingsley IS Molly. He has Molly's memories (how accessible they are at all times notwithstanding). Kingsley has memories from the circus and from when Molly was within Lucien. He remembers the moment Lucien was overcome, and "the warm catharsis of letting go." Kingsley recognized Molly's friends when he woke up like they were some kind of Jungian archetypes baked into his psyche. Caduceus' request that brought Kingsley to life was to "put it back."

Kingsley IS NOT Molly, and could never be. Molly was a being without a soul, described as a fragment and an "aberration." Probably the most interesting and comprehensive description comes from what Taliesin's intentions behind Molly were: "a body that the soul left and the body just kept moving. Just whatever was in there got pulled out, went to the Raven Queen, and the body just continued walking." (Tal, C2 wrap-up @ 11:40). At the Raise Dead ritual, we have Matt's brief questioning of whether whole souls can "grow from but a piece." Whatever Kingsley's case, he doesn't seem like a body without a soul. He came from a spell that resurrects a soul, that "put[s] it back." Molly resulted from a cosmic aberration, "a total blank slate." They are fundamentally different.

A loong time ago I remember Taliesin saying that he wasn't sure if a resurrection performed on Molly would work, for reasons he didn't want to explain at the time. I think those reasons are captured in the question: what happens when you try to resurrect the soul of a person who doesn't have one? The solution, if the resurrection works at all, has to be a paradox. I think that paradox is Kingsley. Kingsley is Molly, was Molly. Is not, was not Molly. Could never be Molly. Is entirely and wholly, always Molly. A soul that never should have existed at all, a literal miracle grown from emptiness that has nothing to do with Raise Dead.

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I think Laudna would write a children’s book that she didn’t know was creepy.

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Soft times with a robot and a rock.

Leave it to Taliesin to make Galaxy Brain an actual character aesthetic.

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Bells Hells + Text Posts (II)