#[also going work on my queue]

[remxedmoon]

attack on @startagainaprologue!!!! go follow them neow.

(also greyscale version below the cut. ik this design is in greyscale but i will die without my colors (silly))

[leverage-ot3]

okay I’ve seen a lot of posts about sterling just being crowley and. guys. the implications just hear me out 😭😭😭

bending lore slightly here BUT let’s say crowley’s body was once inhabited by a human and crowley is possessing the body (maybe he kills the initial inhabitant bc he doesn’t care)

but he still has the guy’s memories. he doesn’t bother keeping up appearances with his ‘ex wife’ because he is too busy building up his hell empire. BUT for some reason he can’t quite identify, he still feels something towards his ‘daughter’. he lets the divorce happen and doesn’t feel the need (or desire) to fight for custody, but he can never quite forget her, to cast her out of his mind for good

some hijinks ensue with the leverage team. it’s mostly because even a grind culture demon wants some off time every once in a while, and for him the insurance investigator stuff is more of a hobby. interacting with the leverage crew is very low stakes for him, and honestly, quite amusing. they aren’t on his level power-wise, but that ford character gives him the mental exercise he hasn’t experienced in, well, he can’t even remember

he can feel their frustration and anger when they learn he has become employed by interpol and feeds off it. it’s great, and relaxing in a way he is never able to achieve while conducting hell-related business

one year he gets wind that olivia is in a really bad situation associated with his ‘ex wife’s’ new husband. he’s selling vital hardware to terrorists, and while that might actually be the kind of chaos he would normally support or be entertained by as the king of hell, something feels wrong about letting olivia stay anywhere near that man

he calls upon the body’s adversaries. he wouldn’t admit it, even under duress, BUT he feels slightly fond of them. nate for the three dimensional chess they play, sophie for her ability to charm and disguise, parker for her chaos and slightly unsettling nature (it’s the autism swag and being bad with human interaction but he doesn’t know that lol), hardison for his unapologetic intelligence and eliot for his hardened violent past and take-no-shit persona (he’s fun to tease)

they perform exactly as he expected, right into his carefully crafted plan. and then olivia is under his care and things get more complicated. he keeps her FAR, FAR away from anything related to the supernatural (heh). no one can find out about her, ESPECIALLY not those imbecile hunter brothers (if for nothing else than the embarrassment in revealing he has a weak spot)

not sure how to work it into this post but I also want to add that somewhere along the way he develops feelings for nate and sophie. the frame up job is near and dear to my heart and you can’t convince me that isn’t fighting as flirting behavior. his interpol persona is more of a side hustle so to speak, but he finds it fun (relaxing, even) to fill that role. there aren’t any obligations of other demons, bothersome hunters, or anything like that. nate and sophie are low stakes, except, they aren’t, really. they make him feel things he can’t ever really remember feeling. his heart beats fast when sophie sat in his lap and cradled his face, his hands sweat when nate gives him that certain smug look. he’s exasperated by the way they can run circles around him like no one else has ever before. they annoy him and get under his skin in a way no one else can and it’s infuriating. but also not, at the same time. maybe he likes it

and then the long goodbye job happens

hear me out and suspend your belief here for a second, because I can’t remember if crowley supernaturally knows when ppl die/are dead or not.

so nate is in interpol custody and the interviewer is obviously out of her depth. (most people are, when it comes to nathan ford.) he walks in and pours the man a drink, but he’s fuming. somewhere along the way he came to care about the team. hell and suffering is literally in his (official) job description, but he can admit (only to himself) that he admires what they do. it’s not for him, not anything close to where his passions and interests lie, but he respects their drive and purpose. he is also aware enough to acknowledge that they are a family, a group of misfits that never belonged quite anywhere except to each other.

and nate fucking blew it up, ruined it, because his vice is being so obsessed with the end game that he is apparently willing to let his team, his family, the people that anchor him to reality, die because the ends supposedly justify the means.

not this time. not to sterling crowley

he is enraged. he can admit within the confines of his mind that he cares for nate, for sophie, even for the other three (though nate and sophie have somehow made it a hierarchy where they are more important to him. which he will dissect later in private. maybe.)

nate let them die, he let sophie die, and for what? the black book? hell below, crowley would have made things easier somehow, if he knew that this was where nate’s sights had lied. he would have prevented this somehow. he wants to have prevented this. he doesn’t want any of them dead and is too afraid to check and verify because that would make it real. the idea of sophie (or any of them) somehow making it to hell instead of heaven would probably break something in him he might not be able to reapir fully.

he yells at nate- he’s angry. hellfire burning in his heart because everything is ruined. the deaths aside (however hard it is to set them aside in his mind), nate will not recover from this, not ever. this will be the start of the end, he is sure. a miserable, guilt-ridden existence where he drinks himself to death and nothing will save him. it plays out in crowley’s mind in a thousand different ways that are beyond painful to conceptualize, even in theory.

the story starts to unravel and there is a game afoot. a solemn, miserable, infuriating game because the con is still in session because parker is alive and in the building- which sets another fire alight in his chest. ‘parker even know you got hardison killed?’ he rages for her grief when she finds out. he knows it will double when she finds out eliot has perished, too, because he isn’t fucking blind.

but nate is a brilliant man, lest he forget too quickly. they are all alive, and somehow still the entire crew slips through his fingers. he’s not even angry (he never would have been- he doesn’t actually try too hard to catch them. it’s about the game, not the consequences). he lets them keep the black book because he’s fucking exhausted and honestly, they more than earned it.

‘now we’re even. tell sophie to drive carefully’. they will never be even, not really. crowley would never admit or agree that being human is the superior state of being, but that have made him feel human in a way he doesn’t actually mind. they keep him on his toes and match him in a way unique to them, they remind him that there are other things than the realm of hell. not necessarily bigger than hell, but maybe just as important in a different sense.

watching the van drive away, something inside him settles. when he walked into the interrogation room that day he thought this was the beginning of the end. it’s not the end at all, not an end to anything. it’s a continuation of their story. maybe, he thinks, a beginning to a new era in it

[icantalk710]

Quick compilation to show that I'm, for all intents and purposes, still alive in one way or another, hi 😳

[rebelcharmings]

in another universe raven queen and dexter charming are waiting with 25 different mirror screens for tailor quick’s EveRAfterS (ERAS) tour tickets

[necrotic-nephilim]

i recently remembered DickTim Week 2024 is happening very soon and i looked at the prompts again to see if i could get anything out for it and. the Hades & Persephone AU prompt for day 1 has got me really thinking so here's a vague concept i plan to write.

i've been pretty burnt out on modern Hades & Persephone retellings because of how they always seem to fall into the same generic "innocent wide-eyed girl runs from her evil mean mother into the arms of a dark mysterious man because actually she went willingly and chose to marry him" which has gotten repetitive for my tastes. (for clarity i don't care if this retelling is your cup of tea personally, so long as you're not actively trying to rewrite the original myth and claim untrue things about it, if this is your favorite flavor i sincerely hope you enjoy the buffet i just have little interest in it since it feels overdone for me and exhausted of it's supposed commentary atp)

but? but. biblically accurate Hades & Persephone AU has me all kinds of interested. because wait listen so hear me out right. Hades!Dick and Persephone!Tim, obviously. i feel it'd be more loosely inspired by with themes and imagery (though playing with death and nature powers could be interesting, i haven't decided) rather than explicitly making them gods and all. but. something dark and fucked up where Dick and Bruce are especially estranged. maybe to do with Jason's return, maybe to do with them just clashing and having their usual explosive arguments. and Bruce knows the peace needs to be kept, if he and Dick are at odds then everyone starts to pick sides and things just fracture so he needs a peace offering.

and the peace offering is Tim.

Bruce (the stand-in for Zeus) offers up Tim. agrees to have Tim move to Bludhaven and be Dick's... whatever Dick wants him to be. knowing that with the implication comes the likelihood of Dick grooming Tim. and Tim has no real say and is hesitant to put up a real fight. he doesn't want this, he knows what this is going to imply Dick will do to him, but he also knows if he says no things have the possibility to just... fall apart. so he's the unwilling bride, dragged off to the metaphorical underworld (Bludhaven) with Dick, away from his family, his friends, the life he built.

and on the flip side, i think weirdly enough, your best pick for the Demeter stand-in is *Jason*. just, hear me out on that. not necessarily on the side of it being motherly, but on Jason being just estranged enough from the Batfamily to be the one willing to call it out for being bad and wrong and raising bloody hell to get Tim back. maybe it's because Jason wants Tim for himself, maybe it's truly out of a concern for Tim to have autonomy, i'm toying with the idea of it primarily being Tim's POV and him genuinely not knowing which of these is true. (and the truth possibly ends up being a complicated middle ground) and because i like Helena, i think you can use her as the Hekate stand in, the one who strikes a tentative alliance with Jason and tries to go find Tim and bring him back. Tim stuck with Dick, getting groomed and hyperaware of it, possibly even getting fucked the whole time as well, knowing he can't go back without causing massive issues for Dick and Bruce because well, Bruce did promise him to Dick. so he has to adjust his whole life, try to figure out being a vigilante in this new city with Dick breathing down his neck the whole time.

and then much like the ending of the myth, a sort of compromise is struck that's a shaky deal for everyone involved. Tim is put on an essential timeshare, going back and forth between Gotham, where he has friends and family and a support system, then getting dragged right back to Bludhaven with Dick in this brutal cycle that he slowly gets used to and stockholm'd into even liking it. Dick isn't so bad, once he gets used to the quirks of their unbalanced 'relationship'. the sex is even something he can adjust to as well. not quite a happy ending but one that sits in this realistic grey area that becomes Tim's life.

i will write this, eventually, but i don't know if i'll get to it before DickTim Week ends so by posting the idea i'm essentially putting it out into the world so the peer pressure holds me accountable. i just. really like the potential of making Hades/Persephone AUs as fucked up as they can be simply by adhering to the source material and making it a raw story of being stolen away and forced to like this new home you didn't ask for.

also a less fleshed-out aspect of this idea i have ties into Persephone becoming the Queen of the Underworld when she's taken and how the transition from Kore to Persephone could be reflected in Tim. how he makes the best of the worst situation and becomes something far more dangerous and dark when he's in Bludhaven, possibly takes on a new vigilante name/identity and leans into the worst quirks of his personality he tries to tamper because there's no point in not going full tilt Obsessively Weird if he has no choice anyway and it being one small way he takes back his autonomy, and that inevitably making Dick *more* into him, because he gets to see Tim finally just. let loose.

[asleepinawell]

basically do you prefer to play solo or do you prefer to get the story run with the scions and then play with others or do you hate support/trust etc etc

this occurred to me when I was making the least favorite dungeons polls and people were mentioning other players as reasons they didn't like certain dungeons which is something I didn't consider for my own choices in later dungeons since I always run them as trusts unless I'm with a friend

[ahollowgrave]

I've been trying to queue things more so as not to spam people, idk if it's working or if it's just double spam (':

[ofbreathandflame-archive]

Personally, I dnt see Nesta abusing Feyre because of how vague their history in their past home was like. They seemed on v equal ground wit the way they argued and fought. Feyre calls Nesta a burden then Nesta retaliates. Nesta warns Feyre about the old hag and Feyre brings up their past fight from the other night. Nesta tries to save Feyre and Feyre realizes there is more to her sister than she thought.

They always were at odds with each other but their never seemed to be any serious power dynamic between them. Neither was afraid of the other and both saw themselves in the other. I honestly think they both have stuff to answer for from their days in the cottage.

In SF, the book even says that Feyre wasn’t perfect and that she made mistakes but their past doesn’t have to define their future. Again, we dnt know what those mistakes could have been since there is such vague exploration of their dynamic back then. But passages in the books like these make me see that it wasn’t abuse between them. It certainly wasn’t healthy but definetly not so one-sided as many antis make it out to be.

hi anon!!

my response is loooooong 😭

i do really want to talk about this. i think the set up in the cabin is very important to the foundation of the sisters' relationship, and because its left as this gaping hole that lacks nuance and logic, it muddles the characterization going forward. a court of silver flames runs into trouble for this reasons, hence why is said it employs the use of 'placeholder' plotlines. to start, as many have stated before me, the set-up in the cabin makes no sense. none. not even a little. that matters for a lot of reasons but specifically because we can't really argue the validity of any of the sister's actions when the worldbuilding around them has none to begin.

its very hard to apply a real system of continual power, abuse, and neglect, when the circumstances around such dynamic is vague and uncommitted. the story doesn't want to commit to the consequences, but it also doesn't want to establish a relationship between the sisters without placing feyre as the permanent victim. so - it created an absurd scenario that doesn't make any sense. what i am saying is - the story has to go wayyyy out of its way to make elain and nesta 'villains' - to the point that the plot can't even support it. like for example, the girls live together in the cabin without feyre hunting for about a good 3-4 years. that means: someone clothed them, someone fed them, someone cleaned, someone took care of them. someone picked up the slack and its wasn't feyre. we know that mama archeron dies when the girls are 8, 10, and 11 - and the shortly after that, they lose their wealth. so - the girls are maybe 11, 13, and 14. literal children. and again - someone had to be taking care of them, a dynamic existed before feyre went hunting, but somehow never gets brought up. if the story is committed to this story, why doesn't it highlight nesta/feyre/elain's relationship in the moments where feyre isn't hunting? what was their relationship like? what was feyre like? these are perfect moments to establish the relationship. even if the sisters were lazy - what would they be doing all day? how would they even sustain themselves on meat all year long? even if the sisters were evil sisters there's little motivation for them to even be like this. the sisters are only three years apart. literally. when feyre was 8, elain was 10, and nesta was 11. thats not a big enough age-gap to even sustain partially of what the story argues about why the sisters have a disconnect. nesta would have been a BABY when feyre and elain were born - where is the motivation? how do elain and nesta develop a faction when they would have been mere toddlers when feyre came into the picture???

either papa archeron isn't a deadbeat or some mysterious force clothed, bathed, fed, and took care of them. like even the circumstances behind papa archeron being a deadbeat make no sense??/

and then there's the added layer of the suppose abuse the grandmother and mother were doling out to nesta, elain, and feyre. nesta was physically abused, and feyre was neglected to hell and high water - there's a plot pont to exploit right there. if the story wants to commit to nesta being abusive, but also wants her to be sympathetic, validating where her anger comes from, while acknowledging how it negatively affected her relationships with her sisters would be the perfect way to go. playing into the mirror sacrifices these sisters (youngest and oldest) made towards one another would have been *chefs kiss*. but again - the story leaned way too moral to even attempt a conversation like this. its willing to forgive the tamlins, rhys's and cassians, but not the women in the story. the thing is - the story doesn't commit to real faults with feyre - and it doesn't do that with nesta or elain either. they are only a standard to compare feyre against. and that's why the story cannot commit to a basic conversation between the sisters - there's nothing that exists between the except the drama. nesta has to atone for mystery reasons bc the story has rewrote their dynamic too many times. sjm acknowledges that the sisters are caricatures at this point of the story, but she doesn't rewrite the first book to accommodate her switch is plot direction.

nesta can't really tell feyre 'why she treated her x way ' bc the story doesn't know why either. a reason doesn't exist. elains book will probably have the same issue, on an even broader scale bc it doesn't actually have a reason these sisters chose to stare at a wall for 24 hours out of the day. the reason elain 'chooses not to help' is even more flimsy than the reason it gave nesta. esp bc the story later establishes that elain isn't even supposed to be a bad person, she can actually be caring. shes also a gardener so it also makes no sense that she would...cringe away from feyre bc of dirt???? that part makes no sense. she literally refused gloves at some point bc she liked to use her hands. she does so in the same book. and i don't even like this character but its the truth, and its why i cannot adequately take what the story argues about the sister seriously. nothing about what it argues makes any logical sense. it for this story...yeah that matters.

so....its valid that people don't take those chapters seriously. they are actually written with unserious intent. like how can i be angry at the sisters when the story argues they were essentially staring into space for eight years??? argues that papa archeron with 10000000 connections couldn't just....use those connections like he literally did near the end of tar and war? that the sisters could live off wild meat for years and still be alive? that toddler nesta and baby elain annexed toddler feyre??? its an unserious situation here. like feyre would rather -- @ 11, 14 or whatever age the story chooses to argue -- would immediately turn to the deadly woods and not yknow...an actual job??? mmkay.

[sylvies-kablooie]

i sigh deeply and for a really extended period of time, to the point where you're like wow, where are they getting all of that air to exhale in such a dramatic fashion from? i mean, lungs can't really hold that much... can they? you try to subtly google the capacity of human lungs but i'm still sighing so extensively i don't even notice. and i wouldn't be offended if i caught you either way, because i am just as surprised about the whole thing.

[14dayswithyou]

are you a compsci major :0

✦゜ANSWERED: I wish I had the brains and dedication for that ^^; If anything, Ren would be the compsci major (if he chose to go to university with you)!! As for me though?? I'm currently double majoring in digital media and social working ;v;

[martyrbat]

youre allowed to have at least one (1) mental breakdown in the summer without it counting btw. its a freebie for enduring august.

[tunichtgxt-archive]

I'm so proud of my new blog. I've switched up the queue, so please don't feel free to answer quickly. I'll be gone all weekend and probably won't take my laptop with me or won't have the time to answer. will be going to the ffvii orchestra, so 👀❤️

[motherforthefamicom]

redownloaded an old art program

[wonder-worker]

During [the spring and summer of 1141], a number of contemporary narrative sources agreed that Matilda’s sudden and unexpected success went straight to her head. Matilda’s most renowned modern biographer has suggested that “conduct acceptable in a powerful king . . . was not acceptable in a ‘Lady of the English’. This line of reasoning can be taken quite a bit further. It is clear that contemporaries expected Matilda to emulate the behavior of those women who had previously held the rank of regina, and act like a queen consort while performing the office of king. Most queens consort, however, did not have to consolidate recognition of their position as Matilda was constrained to do. Nearly all the chroniclers who had marveled at her assumption of power turned on her immediately. Not surprisingly, the Gesta Stephani took the greatest exception:

She at once put on an extremely arrogant demeanor instead of the modest gait and bearing proper to the gentle sex, began to walk and speak and do all things more stiffly and more haughtily than she had been wont.

But other more sympathetic chroniclers also joined this chorus of disapproval: Henry of Huntington described her as “elated with insufferable pride” while the Worcester chronicler noted her “hard heart” as she strove to consolidate her position. Had she been a man, Matilda’s decidedly authoritarian style might have passed for a regal show of strength. Indeed, Matilda probably felt that if she was to hold on to her newly acquired status, she needed to behave like a king. Thus, Matilda’s forward movement from recognition of her status to the execution of her office was fraught with gendered difficulties concerning how a woman ought to conduct herself.

...As she anticipated her crowning, Matilda strove to consolidate her dynastic claims and establish her authority. It seems reasonable to suppose that Matilda looked to her father and her first husband for examples of successful kingship as she did for representational purposes. Both Emperor Henry V and King Henry I were suspicious, uncompromising, relentless, and ruthless in the pursuit of their aims. Probably both would have advised Matilda to follow their example. This was exactly what St. Bernard told Queen Melisende of Jerusalem following the death of her husband: “show the man in the woman; order all things . . . so that those who see you will judge your works to be those of a king rather than a queen.” Much of Matilda’s behavior during the spring and summer of 1141 can be explained as the emulation of male gendered kingship. But kings had the built-in advantage of female consorts to soften the more hardboiled aspects of their rule; Matilda had played that very role herself for her first husband. Nevertheless, in 1141, Matilda eschewed the feminine aspects of queenship completely, in effect negating what could have been useful symbolism to bolster the construction of her authority. But for Matilda to be perceived as a soft, forgiving, and gentle woman at the one moment she needed to consolidate her position at the top of a male dominant political society would not have been practical.

But by constructing herself as a female feudal lord, and emulating male gendered kingship, Matilda annoyed contemporary observers. The chroniclers’ hostility may have been due to the fact that Matilda was claiming kingly sovereignty for herself alone, and not in association with either her husband or her eldest son. The Gesta Stephani described Matilda as not only arrogant, but also spurning the advice of her chief advisors, the earl of Gloucester, her uncle King David of Scotland, and the “kingmaker” himself, the Bishop of Winchester. The Gesta implied that if Matilda had behaved as a deferential woman, and heeded the counsel of her male advisors, she could have devised a means to permanently depose Stephen, and be crowned and anointed in his place. The Gesta placed Matilda’s ultimate failure at her own door, blaming it on her arrogant reliance on her inferior, womanly intellect and emotions.

Matilda’s hard-line stance, acceptable in a male king, bothered the authors of the Worcester chronicle and the Gesta, suggesting that contemporaries were confused by what they wanted the “Lady of the English” to do, indicating that, as a woman and a domina, she should behave gently like a queen rather than forcefully like a king. Combined, all the chroniclers, with the exception of Malmesbury, suggested that Matilda should have used the intercessory powers of queenship to set Stephen free, moderated the harsher aspects of her father’s rule, and excused the Londoners from financial support. Although a more diplomatic approach might have helped, freeing Stephen at that moment in time would have realistically served no practical purpose in establishing Matilda’s authority. And, in denying Eustace his inheritance, Matilda was only imitating the efforts of her father, Henry I, who also dealt harshly with challengers to his throne. Henry I kept his elder brother Robert Curthose in prison until he died, and prevented his nephew, William Clito, Curthose’s heir, from gaining any aspect of the Anglo-Norman inheritance. Matilda wished to convince her contemporaries that she was quite capable of being a king, but their reactions betrayed hostility toward her as a woman presuming to establish kingly authority.

-Charles Beem, "Empress Matilda and Female Lordship", The Lioness Roared: The Problems of Female Rule in English History"

[knghtlock]

hi guys! i wanted to like... do stuff here this weekend, but short story: i can't. and i can't do anything this weekend. longer story is that i'm MOVING THIS WEEKEND ( yippee! ) & i'm not going to be fully back until february 20th at the earliest, but realistically, i should be here around february 21st. mutuals can ask me for my disc.ord if you guys wanna talk or plot in the meantime! love you guys, stay safe, stretch & hydrate! <3

[runefactorynonsense]

Cozytober - Day 3 - Home