#About Marielle

[cadrenebula]

How did Marielle end up with Blue the raptor? 🥺

Marielle is not exactly an elezen. She was a dragonet that had learned some spells from an Imp that was supposedly from the Continental Circus. Being naturally curious, Mari left Anyx Trine and the safety of the woods around Tailfeather many years ago during the height of the war, not long after the Calamity had struck and turned Coerthas to a never ending winter. Knowing this magic helped her to escape slaughter by most of the Ishgardians that would have gladly slain them but it was still hard to use and even harder to travel Coerthas in a humanoid form.

It was still a few years after Coerthas till she reached the Shroud. Which was when she ended up cursed by a witch and stuck in her elezen form. So she was lost and alone in the Shroud with only the skills a retired knight named Roselle had taught her. It was then she had ended up coming across a raptor nest. The mother had been killed by poachers and most of her eggs smashed or stolen. One egg had managed to roll away into some brush and escaped but Mari had found it. Being that Marielle is a dragon, she took the egg because she considered the poor baby to be close enough to be kin. She named him Blue and they've been together since. Though he's definitely all grown up now.

Thanks for the ask @candycryptids

[saltwaterbells]

Hello tumblr do you like autistic people and living weapons and genderfuckery and also <3 codependency

[booasaur]

From (2022) - Kristi and Marielle

[writernopal]

Cheerleader AU but Mariel is a pro softball player and Axtapor is the cheerleader. tank tops are definitely part of the repertoire, for who?

...yes

[cericreatively]

Drew this back when that whole 'draw two comfort characters of yours like that one steven universe comic' meme thing was big on IG (and social media in general) but oh well… better late than never, I guess.

(sketch and non-shaded version under the ''keep reading')

[taleweaver-ramblings]

In the tags on the Mossflower post you reblogged you said that it wasn't your favorite (like it seemed to be op's). Which would you say Is your favorite 👀

This is a very hard question, and my Great Redwall Reread of a few years ago actually made it harder. It is, to be frank, easier to tell you my least favorite than my favorite. But if I must make some choice, it's a five-way tie between Lord Brocktree, High Rhulain, Rakkety Tam, Pearls of Lutra, and Mattimeo.

Lord Brocktree has the fabulous dynamic between the main characters (especially Brocktree and Dotti), Bucko's challenges, pretty much EVERYTHING with the hares, a stellar example of rivals-to-friends, and a pretty epic ending.

High Rhulain, Pearls of Lutra, and Mattimeo all have the riddles/treasure hunt thing going on, which I will never not love. As far as I was concerned, that was a plotline Jacques could repeat as many times as he wanted and I'd be happy.

High Rhulain is probably also a major source of my love of the "young person has nobility unexpectedly thrust upon them; must figure out How Does One Royal?" trope. And it has both hares and otters (my two favorite Redwall races) in major roles! This makes me happy.

Pearls of Lutra is actually my favorite of the treasure-hunt plots, and I think it's the best of the seafaring Redwall books. It's still in the era where we're seeing the overlap of different generations, and we see the young characters from past books grown up, and I really enjoyed that while it lasted. It also has one of the best sympathetic villain characters in the series . . . and I just like Grath Longfletch as a character, what can I say?

Rakkety Tam is Scottish squirrels. Enough said.

(Ok, but actually you have Scottish squirrels, plus the Long Patrol, plus Tergen (who is Excellent), plus a really cute romance? I also love the poems that bracket the different sections. And can we TALK about the final battle? It is arguably the MOST impressive fight, at least in terms of power imbalance, since Martin vs. Tsarmina in Mossflower. Rakkety Tam takes on the evil equivalent of a badger. And WINS. Literally the only reason this is not hands-down my favorite book is the existence of Yoofus, who annoys me so much.)

Finally, Mattimeo really just has almost everything I love about the Redwall series, both the A and B plots are excellent, and it's another one of the stories where you get to see some of the next generation. And it has the Sparra in it — I was so sad when Jacques dropped them from the narrative.

So, yes. Those are probably my favorites. I do love a lot of the series, though, so it's very hard to choose! And I recognize that not all of these have the Significance or Weight of Mossflower, and some of them may be technically weaker books . . . but they're the ones I've loved since the first time I read the series, and that I've only come to love more in the times I've reread them.

[mirimangarecs]

the engagement of marielle clarac - alaskapan, momo haruka

an unassuming wallflower and secret fangirl is shocked to suddenly receive a proposal from her ideal type, a strict royal knight commander. but more than love, she finds herself enlisted in solving international mysteries

the couple: what i love about them is that they’re completely earnest- as much as i enjoy enemies to lovers or contract marriages, this is not that! this is just two weird and awkward people trying to make something work. their contrasting personalities are so good together, and also they are so funny they make me feel insane

story & setting: marielle’s imagination and experience as an author gives her the insight to solve mysteries that her fiancé’s clinical thinking can’t crack, while his pragmatism often saves her from dangerous situations. it leans heavily into the classic victorian mystery setting, providing grounded drama, high stakes action, and subterfuge over a variety of unique cases

the art: so many classic shoujo hallmarks that make my heart sing. i’m in love. it’s full of indulgent double page spreads, beautiful tones and flowers, and expressive character shots. it looks so good and it’s packed with information. a feast for the eyes

the chapter art is soooooo charming <3

[rockpaperimpala]

Virginia and Wolf, The 10th Kingdom (2000)

[pitviperofdoom]

Mattimeo is just full of ineffectual main villains, it's great. I've already done my rant on how stupid Ironbeak is but honestly? Nadaz?? Spends the entire final battle yelling at mooks before hiding in a statue and dying. Malkariss?? The text literally describes him as "gross" and he's stoned to death by angry slaves about ten seconds after he appears. Slagar?? The actual main villain of the book?? Yeah remember his hyped-up deadly skill with the bolas? He uses them one time in the entire novel, and it's to kill the most pathetic and combat-useless member of the villain squad for basically no reason. He climbs out of a well, spots the angry protagonists gunning for him, then turns to run and falls down the same well he just climbed out of.

This isn't a complaint, I just think it's hilarious that this book builds up these menacing villains only for them to do nothing at the end and then die. It almost makes Ironbeak look cool just by comparison, but then I remember that several of his soldiers told him hey boss you know how basically our only advantage against these people is the fact that we can fly and they can't? well they just took in a big raptor, yeah a big fuckoff bird of prey with talons and everything, they have one of those now

To which he responds with "No they don't, shut up" and then the big raptor kills him.

Absolute morons. I love this book.

[mabelmidnight-takeover]

i hope ryan and marielle know their two seconds of screentime in antman made my year. ive never felt happier

[jawsthatbiteandclawsthatcatch]

LET ME KNOW WHEN YOU PUBLISH CARRIGAN STUFF. I WANT TO READ THE CARRIGAN STUFF.

OH GOD OK AUAUGHGHH

Actually. I think you asked me for a summary of her Deal several months ago. And, uh, I know it's taken forever, but here you go!

…This will get a bit complicated, but I'll start with the original incarnation.

Carrigan Grimm is, mechanically, a lv 14 pathfinder 2e forensic medicine investigator with the medic archetype + a smattering of rogue / thaumaturge. So, she's extremely good at healing, knowing things, investigating, sneaking, and finding weak points. Overall, she is "a prickly perfectionist with self-loathing issues up to her eyeballs. She's convinced that no one will like her, so she pushes them away to preempt the rejection. She loves the thrill of a medical challenge or the hunt for a monster, and has some distinct mad scientist tendencies, but they're more or less held in check by a deep sense of decency." (thanks, rp partner!)

Carrigan grew up in a city not-so-secretly ruled by aristocratic vampires, and was a normal human working in forensic science, specializing in autopsies. A body she was working on turned out to be not fully dead yet -- unbeknownst to her, he was in the process of becoming a vampire -- and his bite somehow turned her into a dhampir. After frantically trying to reverse it by self-amputating the fingers that were wounded in the attack, she had to face that she had become a dhampir permanently, and was closer than ever to the creatures that she loathed. She spent the next several years isolating herself, getting by as a back-alley doctor in the city's slums and drowning in self-hatred, until the day when an acquaintance asked her to look into the disappearance of a friend.

(begin campaign 1.)

Within a few months, she had honed her skills as a combat medic, killed a lot of bogeys, saved all the children of her city, and lost a close friend. She had also joined a secret order of vampire hunters called Lantern Hunters, who fight with magically summoned lantern-shaped flails that are specially suited to destroying vampires.

Carrigan didn't hate the work, and didn't hate the people she was working with, either. So, after the mission, she kept looking for new challenges and new mysteries to solve, new people to help -- anything to keep her moving.

(end campaign 1.)

Shortly after, the country was plunged into a civil war. She fought alongside the Lantern Hunters, against her homeland, at first, but got fed up with their reckless tactics and left to go monster hunting in the countryside with one of her companions for the next several years. It ended up being for the best, because the tide of the war eventually turned, and the Lantern Hunters themselves were hunted into near extinction.

(begin campaign 2.)

Fifteen years after her original mission, she was given a new one: find a dangerous artifact before it fell into the wrong hands. She spent months in enemy territory, found the artifact, had the artifact stolen by someone she thought of as a close friend, and ended up getting trapped in a city undergoing a diabolic invasion, where she and her companions spearheaded its liberation. For their deeds, they were given the opportunity to participate in the peace talks that ended the civil war, and offered roles on the Council that would replace the vampire aristocracy. Of the three, only Carrigan accepted, committing to spend two years in office.

(end campaign 2.)

At this point, she made the very difficult decision to leave the Lantern Hunters. Although they had given her purpose at a time in her life when she truly needed it, she knew that her new high-profile job could put the remaining members in significant danger, and, well… she no longer truly agreed with their ideology that all vampires deserved to be destroyed because they're vampires. Most of the vampires she'd met had been awful, wretched creatures that deserved to die, true -- but it was because of who they were as people. Vampirism had just given them the opportunity to become the monsters they had always wanted to be.

Close to the end of her council term, she was summoned by a mysterious figure for an unexpected mission -- investigate some small-town disappearances and deal with the malevolent force causing them. She was expecting familiar faces when she went to meet her companions, but there was an unexpected newcomer, sent by one of her fellow council members -- Victor, a young vampire who… shockingly, still seemed to have somewhat of a conscience, and a personality rather than a god complex.

She found him fascinating.

(In the meta, we decided to run a Halloween one-shot preview for the 3rd campaign featuring these characters, and invited another player to join us. They brought Victor, and what was planned to be a one-shot turned into a three-parter with a 12k word text rp thread.)

An explanation of Victor will come in another post.

After that mission, Carrigan and Victor were uncertain they would get to work together again, but they crossed paths and got to know each other enough that when the mysterious figure that had caused them to meet in the first place sent out a new summons for an important mission, he invited Victor directly, on the condition that Carrigan would share the blame for any potential problems arising from his involvement.

Meta story short, from there the game went on a ~ten-month hiatus where we switched campaigns to a prewritten adventure with different characters. Victor's player and I were desperate to keep RPing with these two dorks, but couldn't without making things unfair for the other players in the game.

So, we decided to switch to an alternate universe.

Victor started as the player character in my rp partner's playthrough of Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, which they had a lot of fic for. I converted Carrigan (Alexandria) Grimm into a character that would fit in that world.

Alex Carrigan is a forensic pathologist from London who had, a couple months prior to the start of the rp, been attacked by what she was pretty sure was a vampire -- but all the evidence of the attack had disappeared, leaving her to appear completely delusional as she desperately tried to convey that he was still out there and still a danger to people. She lost two fingers and spent a month being involuntarily hospitalized for her "delusions," eventually starting to wonder if the attack may not have happened as she remembered it. Possibly worst of all, throughout the experience, she received no support from any of her former colleagues or the people she thought were her friends. So, the moment she was free, she bought a plane ticket for Los Angeles, with the intent of not looking back for as long as she could manage.

A month later, walking to the bar, she found a broken, bleeding body lying in an alleyway, and begrudgingly decided to take him home and patch him up as best she could, rather than potentially bankrupting him by calling an ambulance. Within a few minutes, though, his heart stopped -- but he didn't lose consciousness or seem at all concerned when she brought it up.

And that was how she met Victor and begrudgingly joined the Masquerade.

In the months since, they've gotten to know each other, fought fleshwarp monsters in the sewers together, defeated a powerful fleshcrafting vampire, and become best friends.

Alex has gotten a (highly illegal) job at a shady clinic, unwillingly become a ghoul (a semi-thralled superhuman who drank a vampire's blood), adopted a cat, and lost her appendix.

It means everything to Victor that he finally has a friend, and he's terrified of losing her. He has also started working at a local theatre and is starting to get to know his new coworkers. Surely nothing weird or supernatural will happen with them.

[cadrenebula]

Happy Starlight 2022

(2/2)

[saltwaterbells]

What really gets me about Mariel is that after it gets removed from an evil apocalyptic cult the only place where it can hear it's mother tongue is in a church devoted to the goddess it was mostly sacrificed to <3

[booasaur]

From (2022) - 2x02

[writernopal]

But on this final night, they did not twirl noisily between those natural and manufactured stars. Instead, they fell into a dance in which there was no melodic tune of accompaniment nor movement of feet, but one of hushed whispers and careful hands, as they all placed their hopes and desires into these sacred cords.  Just here, amongst all the other masked faces, sat the swallow and the drowned sailor.  They, hands joined, began at the start, creating a single knot. 

As A Stranger Or A Friend?: The Swallow and The Drowned Sailor

Credits

Commissioned Art by: @dreadfutures

Writing: N. Opal

[still-waiting-for-cap3]

Quantumania really had to be carried on the backs of Jonathan Majors, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Ryan Bergara