#And also to bitch a little about the fandom!

[my-apollo-gies]

“The sun is fun, the land is dandy I only talk to dogs because they don't understand me My teeth are yellow, hello world Would you like me a little better if they were white like yours? I need to purge my urges, shame, shame, shame I need an alibi to justify, somebody to blame It's a halibut, party bitch, give it a name and say, "Hey, hey"

- alien blues by vundabar

“‘So even if we win, we lose?’ What Kai had said couldn’t be more true. ‘How can everything turn out so right but so wrong at the same time?’”

- when you think you’re all alone

“Was this really over? Had they really defeated the djinn? He wanted to think so, to reassure his mind, but he couldn’t- not now, because thinking of it, meant thinking of absolutely everything that had happened, and too many emotions at the same time, and-”

- bending but never breaking

this was a really interesting drawing tbh, went through the 5 stges of greif when it came to jays face and head (wytyaa)

i love these 2 fics and yall should expect more art about them both very often, im doing rereads of both fics

thanks to @mondothebombo for writing wytyaa (when you think you’re all alone) and thanks to @writing-hat for writing bbnb (bending, but never breaking)

huge recommendation to read these awesome fics, but please be careful, they are very dark fics. theyre my favourite ninjago dead doves (possibly my favourite dead doves out of any fandom tbh) but they are dead dove for a reason!!!

also please let me know if any of you are liking my new posting style when it comes to my art (the song lyrics, fic quotes, etc!)

you can reply or reblog this to ask to join the taglist (on a separate reblog)

i yap too much istg

[saintsenara]

i think your take on percy is a lot more canonical than the uwu percy takes (which are fine everybody should play with the text however they want) but with your view, any thoughts on percy/hermione?

thank you very much for the ask, anon!

i think harry low-key shipped it, because the narrative perspective - which is, of course, his - is quite gagged in goblet of fire when hermione calls percy a little bitch for defending barty crouch sr.'s treatment of winky:

"Well, Mr. Crouch is quite right to get rid of an elf like that!" he said. "Running away when he’d expressly told her not to... embarrassing him in front of the whole Ministry... how would that have looked, if she’d been brought up in front of the Department for the Regulation and Control - "   "She didn’t do anything - she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time!" Hermione snapped at Percy, who looked very taken aback. Hermione had always got on fairly well with Percy - better, indeed, than any of the others.

and i think we have here the purest encapsulation of why this would be an absolute flop that makes everyone in a ten-mile radius want to hurl themselves down a well.

percy is someone who finds it very difficult to be wrong. so is hermione [even though, in this case, she's completely right - percy should grow the fuck up and stop defending slaveowners... as, to be honest, should a sizeable chunk of this fandom when it comes to sirius...].

but while hermione's need to be right is one part of a broader communication style focused on debate - she's someone who works through feelings and worries and so on by voicing them and testing them through debating [and, in many cases, bickering about] them with another person - percy's isn't accompanied by this fundamental enjoyment of argument. if he's pressed on something he's said, especially if the response is critical, he tends to shut down the conversation, to refuse to listen and/or to talk over the other person until they're forced into submission, and to disengage from the conversation by physically leaving it.

and so, while it's clear that hermione doesn't always love being pushed back against [hence her tendency to do her condescending "lofty" voice, resort to personal attacks, and/or to give the silent treatment when she's been backed into a corner in an argument], she is someone who fundamentally likes yapping, and who is happy to mutually bicker with those she values and who she feels value her in turn.

she's more comfortable with being told she's wrong by ron than anyone else in canon [although this does also turn up a little bit in her relationship with fred and george] because she feels that he respects her, and his willingness to accept her preferred way of communicating as it comes is one reason why. percy's way of handling any conversation in which he's not universally agreed to be correct is going to annoy and upset her, because it displays - as she sees it - a contempt for her, her views, and her intellect.

they would fight constantly, neither would enjoy it, and everyone they knew would be praying for the day it ended.

[hunterarden]

I guess I’ll just block perhaps most people in The Witcher fandom (or hatedom), even many I like or find interesting. Because:

1) you probably will or already do not like me!

2) I may love some of your takes but adamantly disagree with many others.

3) I… am clearly not at all on the same page as most in this fandom. To me, this seems like a very non interactive fandom, where we each generate our own work, and then agree with one another, no matter what. So I should try to refrain from answering questions that are posted only to be insults or jokes, responding to people who are very good at coming up with their own theories but have no interest in imbibing others, or projecting my own issues with the entire fandom onto some random fan.

[a-star-that-burns-brightly]

I'm going to sound like such a smartass but I'm glad I'm seeing more people express that "Huh, maybe this girl who has an entire song repeating to herself over and over again that her murder was not her fault meanwhile she-

portrays herself as a giant grotesque bug in her headspace with her victim, who she clearly still holds a high opinion of, being the only human in said headspace looking at her with visible disgust and fear,

Making this expression upon realizing what she just did

These being the lyrics that follow right after, having a moment of reconsideration

Before jumping back to trying to convince herself that she was in the right, because she put her trust in us to tell her if what she did was right or not, and the answer that came out was yes... That maybe, just maybe. She thinks that what she did...

Might have been her fault."

[welcometogrouchland]

I also think it's nice that they made Camilla a sci-fi nerd and Luz a fantasy nerd. They're genres that are often seen as completely opposing one another by many people, which is what we're led to believe about Luz and Camilla in season 1. Luz is silly, nerdy, frequently in over her head and irresponsible and loves the boiling isles. We're led to believe that Camilla is the normal, conventional TV mother who'd be disgusted and terrified by the demon realm if she saw it.

Then yesterday's lie gives us a lot of nuance to this, and we realize that while they're still very different and now on opposite sides of a conflict, both mother and daughter are incredibly kind people (seen in their treatment of Vee) who love each other but struggle to make the right choices without hurting one another.

Then thanks to them drops all this Camilla characterization and we realize! She was a nerd too this whole time! The wedge between Camilla and Luz is motivated by past traumas and grief! and for the future has them switching sides on the central conflict of where Luz should stay (Camilla now wanting Luz in the demon realm because it's what's best for her, and Luz believing that staying in the human realm is what's best for the people she loves). They finally talk and realize that, like Willow pointed out earlier in the ep, the two are so alike. Camilla reveals that she's a secret nerd too! That she had a hard time growing up and accidentally hurt Luz trying to save her from the same fait! It's so important to me that Camilla keeps calling Luz a good witch. It's affirming her interests and goals, reminding her that she's just as good as the hero of her favorite story. And Luz finally only realizes that she wants to be understood...when she's finally able to understand her mom. When she realizes that the woman she loves and admires is just as much of a nerdy screw-up as her and that there's hope for her. Her palismen ends being multiple animals at once, showing both how Luz making unconventional choices (like carving an egg) keeps paying off for her and how her potential is limitless now that she finally knows and accepts her own goals, but to me it also reminds of the fact that Camilla is a vet and passed a love of all the weird and unliked animals (like wolves, possums, snakes, etc) to her.

It's just so so sweet and it really shows how much love and thought the crew put into this mother daughter storyline (FTF haters are not welcome on this page, respectfully). I can't wait to see how both of these misunderstood but healing women (who radiate "little/big sister" and "mom" energy respectively) are gonna interact with a) the lonely, easily manipulated and well intentioned but ignorant collector (a mix of both their interests as a magic being with a space motif! I just realized that lol) and b) the nasty puritan white man who's really obsessed with conforming to society's norms even when it literally doesn't benefit him at all.

Anyway, I believe in noceda( AND clawthorne 👀) family supremacy 💙

[danmeichael]

"ewww this character is so possessive and creepy" have you never known love? have you not spent years of your life afraid of your own hunger? does the safe catharsis of watching someone else eat their fill not appeal to you?

[spicyicymeloncat]

Idk if this is a hot take but why is it always “Kai slaved away and worked his ass off to raise his sister” and never the other way round or them working hard together?

Like, I know he’s older but in the show, does he really… act older? Like if you think about Kai and Nya’s dynamic yknow? Because from my understanding:

When Kai and Nya are introduced we see Kai fail at making a sword and Nya being the one to chide him for it. Kai makes an overconfident statement about wanting to be a better blacksmith than his father. This suggests that one, Kai is rather rash as well as inexperienced (something that lines up with the rest of his character arc in the pots and also generally), with Nya being the more mature figure in contrast

Also just a note but in the shorts: “I can handle it!” “No you can’t, stupid”

Kai frequently being very good at neglecting people or things: leaving Lloyd at an arcade whilst being focused on finding samurai x, not even knowing samurai x was Nya or that she only did it because she felt left out by him, completely abandoning both Nya and Lloyd in s3 (and Ik he was going through it at the time, but in line with the fandom’s characterisation of him)

Kai in season 5: “After I lost my dad, I lost my way. But I was lucky to have my sister watch over me”

Generally, their dynamic isn’t one where Kai really provides for Nya at all. In fact, judging by the fact that Nya can make entire mechs and Kai struggled to make a sword, Nya was probably busting her ass to provide for Kai. And judging by the s5 quote, that’s probably true. I’m not saying Nya raised Kai, it just rubs me the wrong way when she’s treated like a decorative flourish to a narrative that paints Kai as a burnt out child who was forced to grow up too soon especially since that is such a mischaracterisation of him in the first place.

[marinsawakening]

HEY so in case you were WONDERING I crunched the numbers and 44.37% of the Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening tag on AO3 is Linked Universe fic.

And hey. Hey. In case you were wondering. Guess what the percentage of Linked Universe fic in the Marin tag is. Guess.

65.64%

Roughly two thirds of the Marin (Legend of Zelda) tag on AO3 is Linked Universe.

So anyway. I'm gonna need Linked Universe fans to either start treating Marin as an actual character in her own right rather than Legend's dead girlfriend who he's sad about or I'm gonna need them to stop tagging her in their fic.

Number crunching method under the cut

Alright, so. The thing that actually makes it difficult to figure out how many Linked Universe fics there are on AO3 is that AO3, as of writing (ninth of march 2024) does not have a Linked Universe fandom tag. (Even though at this point it really should because this is ridiculous.) There is an additional tag, "Linked Universe (Legend of Zelda)", but usage of this within the Linked Universe fandom is unreliable. There's a lot of fics that are Linked Universe, and are tagged with the characters, but are not tagged with the additional tag.

So what I did was this: try to figure out how many fics are tagged with the characters, but not with 'Linked Universe (Legend of Zelda)'. For this, I couldn't just filter on all the characters, because not all Linked Universe fics are going to have every single Linked Universe character. So I systemically eliminated the characters one by one, and tallied up all the fics they had as I did.

That looked like this:

Step 1: Find out how many fics there are in the 'Linked Universe (Legend of Zelda)' additional tag.

Step 2: Find out how many fics there are in the 'Legend (Linked Universe)' character tag if you exclude 'Linked Universe (Legend of Zelda)' from the search.

Step 3: Find out how many fics there are in the next most numerous character tag, if you exclude Legend and the Linked Universe additional tag from the search.

Etc. until all the characters had been eliminated, then tally up all the fics.

The numbers looked like this:

For Link's Awakening:

Total fics in the tag: 311

Total fics in the 'Linked Universe (Legend of Zelda)' tag: 86

Fics including the tag 'Legend (Linked Universe)', excluding those tagged 'Linked Universe (Legend of Zelda)': 48

Fics including 'Warriors (Legend of Zelda)', excluding Legend, Linked Universe: 2

Fics including Time, excluding Warriors, Legend, and Linked Universe: none

Fics including Twilight, excluding Time, Warriors, Legend, and Linked Universe: none

Fics including Hyrule, excluding Time, Warriors, Legend, and Linked Universe: 1

Fics including Wild, excluding Hyrule, Time, Warriors, Legend, and Linked Universe: 1

There were no fics for any of the other characters with the remaining filters applied.

Total number of Linked Universe fics: 86 + 48 + 2 + 1 + 1 = 138

44.37% of the fics in the Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening tag on AO3 are Linked Universe.

For Marin (Legend of Zelda):

Total fics in the tag: 358

Total fics in the 'Linked Universe' additional tag: 152

Fics including the 'Legend (Linked Universe)' tag, excluding Linked Universe: 76

Fics including Warriors, excluding Legend and Linked Universe: 4

Fics including Twilight, excluding Warriors, Legend, and Linked Universe: none

Fics including Hyrule, excluding Twilight, Warriors, Legend, and Linked Universe: 1

Fics including Time, excluding Hyrule, Warriors, Legend, and Linked Universe: none

Fics including Wind, excluding Time, Hyrule, Warriors, Legend, and Linked Universe: 2

There were no fics for any of the other characters with the remaining filters applied.

Total number of Linked Universe fics: 152 + 76 + 4 + 1 + 2 = 235

65.64% of fics in the Marin (Legend of Zelda) AO3 tag are Linked Universe.

[prentissluvr]

just saw someone saying that jared's acting in spn was bad... gonna commit heinous crimes

[kanohivolitakk]

Controversial take but I geniunely feel fandom would be better with female characters if we stopped being so fixated on canon misogyny and just, treat female characters as characters than checks of good progressive writing™.

Because so often do we focus on whether or not these female characters are valid geniune representation of womenhood or just misogynistic characters. Female characters cannot just be poorly written, if they're poorly written that means their writing is misogynistic because to write a woman poorly means you're a misogynist.

And so, we focus so much on whether or not female characters are good portrayals of womenhood we stop treating them as characters. We don't think about their personality, backstory, role in the story, relationship with other characters (regadless of gender), thematic importance or ways these elements can be expanded on without taking into account how progressive and feminist these characters are. And this just takes away the fun from fandom. If you're looking at a character just as a progressive statement™ you don't think about them in any other way, and at worst are outright discouraged from using them in other ways.

Don't get me wrong, canon can be misogynistic in a way that turns people off. Many tropes are baked in misogyny or have misogynistic implications, which can be a huge turnoff for women, people raised as women and others. It is understandable if someone doesn't want to work with female characters because of canon.

But if we spend so much of our mental time and energy thinking about whether female characters have misogynistic writing, it really ruins our enjoyment of female characters. It turns female characters into labor rather than fun. And again, no one wants fandom to be like work. It is meant to be fun. So in order to have fun with female characters I think we all could benefit from not always thinking about feminist criteria and instead just, having fun and playing with these characters, expanding on their canon portrayal and thinking of fun possibilities with other characters. Just like people do with male characters.

But idk that's just my two cents.

[the5n00k]

I know that I will be ugly when I feel like myself again

This was inspired by TLT's Drunk and you cannot tell but it's Hawkeye's song just hear me out

(different versions because I'm indecisive)

The color palette is called summertime drunk because I'm not subtle or clever

^ this was gonna be the background but I decided it sucks and worked better as an overlay filter and I was so right

I cannot replicate what I did to make this drawing if $40,000 were on the line I'm not getting that money I just bullshitted until it looked cool

[death-rebirth-senshi]

Now that I've finished dungeon meshi I have to say, while I understand the disappointment with fandom's constant obsession with shipping two dudes in fandom typical ways and ignoring the women/men that don't fit a certain mold and basically ignoring the entire rest of the story...

People acting so indignant that people would do gay or even straight shipping, because this manga is such a super women-led yuri show that's all about the power of Marcille's all-consuming love for Falin, are absolutely fucking bonkers and have lost the plot.

That is not to say that these shippers are not insane or can't be annoying in the typical ways that they are, or that Marcille/Falin aren't the most shippable pairing and just about the closest you're gonna get to something romantic in Dungeon Meshi (it's a platonic ass story and I love that), or that it wouldn't be nice for the fandom around something to stay mostly devoted to the closest to a canon pairing most shippable F/F ship. It would. But like. I don't know I'm kind of upset by that attitude now

And my intention is not to be super negative about Marcille/Falin fans, because they are certainly not all like this, it's just. WHOO! That is just so not remotely what Dungeon Meshi is about to a degree I still wasn't prepared for despite being aptly warned.

[bird-likes-to-fandom]

hey reminder that a post about women being one of your most popular posts, when you dont do shit to actually care about women characters and instead only demonize them while lifting up male characters who act the exact same (or worse), does not excuse you from being a fucking misogynist. im sorry it's so hard to associate a word with a bad connotation with yourself, but you can either accept it and work to better yourself and your actions or you can be a hypocrite nobody with substance wants to hang around.

[graciousdragon]

me: hey brain can we maybe do some schoolwork we need to do schoolwork

my brain: no. fuck you. curse of caring about fictional character that hasn't been relevant since 2018

yeah fuck it. here's some doodles of Darko that i made a few days ago on some scrap computer paper left over from me helping my brother with his halloween costume. first pic is the full page, second and third pics are just zoomed-in versions of the two major doodles in the first pic

maybe one day i'll actually upload art that isn't just pencil doodles on whatever random sheets of paper i have access to in the moment. but that day is not today :3

[aroaessidhe]

2023 reads

The Princess and the Fangirl

YA contemporary prince & the pauper set at a convention

follows a fan who wants to save her fave character from being killed off, and the actress playing her who’s desperate to be free of the intense franchise

when they’re mistaken for each other they instantly hate each other - but after a script is leaked, they swap places to try solve each of their problems - and start to see the fandom from the each other’s perspective

light (since they know each other for like 2 days) f/f & m/f

this is so deeply mid-2010s fandom tumblr. lmao.

[illmoraineakoi]

So I had a funny idea the other day, and I thought you'd all enjoy it

(Read More bc this this is long)

The Abyss is canonically not as air-tight as PK thought it was, and I personally headcanon the Vessels as having a craving/obsession/hunger for light (specifically the Radiance's; they recognize pale light as “their own”.)

What if PK was minding his business one day, and just stumbles across a Vessel that's infiltrated his Palace? And he's like “Where the HELL did you come from?!” Like he legit double-checks that the door is still sealed. It is. And he’s just so Confused.

And now he's just got this second Vessel that's randomly shown up. That he has no idea what to do with. He only needed one, they're meant to be tools, but at the same time, he can't quite forget the fact that these were supposed to be his children. He can't quite bring himself to just get rid of it, even if it doesn't have a purpose.

He ends up just sitting on the issue, trying to think of a 'solution'. It's fine, it's not even really that big of a deal. It's just one extra Vessel. He’ll figure out a use for it eventually.

A few days later, he walks past both Vessels in the hall – only to stumble a step because "Wait a moment – those aren't the right horns!" And sure enough, he double-takes, and they're not. They're completely unfamiliar. These are two new Vessels.

He's so flabbergasted he actually tries to ask where they came from. And of course they just stare at him. He's so confused.

He's even more at a loss for what to do with them. It's getting hard to even remember to double check if the Vessel he's interacting with is the Pure one. He's stressing out about already accidentally fucking up their ‘hollowness’.

It just keeps happening. The White Lady corners him with a very disapproving look on her face, going "Did you forget to tell me something, my beloved?" while pulling out a Vessel from her robes. Herrah arrives unannounced and plops one on his desk, “I think you’ve lost something, Wyrm. Keep your cursed spawn out of my tunnels.” Ogrim and Isma attempt to stealthily deposit two of them in the ‘Vessel Room’ without him noticing, but the seal work on the door was designed to alert him every time a Vessel left or entered. He doesn’t even ask where they found them, he just looks at them with resigned acceptance and shuffles them into the room.

When Lurrien arrives for his bimonthly meeting to discuss the growing infection rates with a cracked mask and heavily bandaged hands, a tall tri-horned Vessel absolutely seething in a tight bundle of rope, the King honestly just wants to lay down in a ditch at this point. He can't figure out where they're coming from. He doesn't know WHY they're coming to the Palace.

He didn't even think this many had survived.

And he still doesn't know what to do with them all, aside from shoving them into the “Vessel Room”. It takes so much of his concentration just to try to keep them occupied or distracted with something, because if they aren't, they turn to the rest of the Palace, and they are somehow even more of a chaotic nuisance than Hornet was. Nothing was safe; if it existed, a Vessel was going to find it and get into it. And potentially steal it, he discovers after an eventful game of "What are you putting in your mouth--nO COME BACK HERE-"

And then Ghost shows up.

And if he thought the other Vessels were menaces, the King had no idea what he was in for. Ghost is easily the worst of them all, combined. Nothing is sacred to Ghost. Ghost is basically a honey badger: they do not give a fuck.

Ghost is the first Vessel the King accidentally gives a nickname to when he calls them a 'Little Nightmare', a title that Ghost only seems to take on with pride. The King regrets.

The King is beyond exhausted. Trying to juggle the Vessels, training the Pure Vessel, dealing with the increasing number and severity of Infected, rising tensions with Deepnest, the Hive and the Mantis Tribe, and the futile search for some other way to deal withe Radiance that he knows he won't find, because he's already out of options. He's sleep deprived, barely eating, constantly stressed, and more times than not forgets to bathe. He's in a downward spiral, he knows it, and knows he can't continue as he is. But he has no choice. He just has to keep going, while hoping, praying, that he doesn't mess up and doom his kingdom, his people.

And just when the King thought he couldn't handle any further stress...

The Vessels go missing. All of them. They just vanish.

It takes a while for anyone to even notice, but it’s the White Lady who does first.

And at first, the King doesn't pick up on his wife's worry when she tells him she can't find them. It's only when she repeats herself, insisting that they're nowhere within the Palace walls, the guards and Great Knights have looked everywhere, twice, and she hasn't personally seen them since last night, that the implication finally sets in.

The Vessels are missing.

The Vessels are missing.

He's never put together such a massive amount of city guards so quickly before in his entire Kinghood. The order is simple: find the Vessels, bring them back to the Palace. He doesn't understand why his body was shaking so much as he watched nearly every guard in the city leave to search. It must be the stress. Or he just forgot to eat again.

He expected the Vessels to be found quickly. As small and indistinct as they are, they tended to stick together as a flock or in groups. They were also not very sneaky or subtle about their presence, most of them being little terrors on stubby legs, so some bugs must've seen them. They also couldn't have gotten very far. At most, a couple of hours, he tells himself as he paces the entrance hall of the Palace, waiting for news or a team to return.

He wonders how they got out of the Palace, and resolves to find the weak spot and patch it. Without another exit, the Vessels wouldn't make it past the Guards if they tried to leave again. Perhaps he should place detection seals around the perimeter of the Palace...Just in case.

News does not come. Nor do any of the guards return for over half a day.

And when they do start trickling back, they're all empty-handed.

They give reports, of bugs seeing the Vessels, of their possible movements throughout the Kingdom, but the Vessels themselves were elusive. None of them had even caught sight of a single one.

The King is angry, enraged actually. He's also terrified. He feels like he's in pain, even though he's not wounded. He wants to burn things. Break things. Claw his workshop to pieces. He wants to scream, to seethe. To sob. He's so overwhelmed with so many conflicting emotions, he doesn't know what to do. The shaking has returned. He feels like he can barely breathe past the rock in his throat. His body feels oddly numb. He’s only ever felt so helpless when confronted with the Infection itself.

The order still stands: Find them. Just find them.

He's restless. he feels anxious for reasons he doesn't understand. He searches himself, even though he knows it’s a risk to his own life; the Radiance would take any shot she had at him. He scours the Kingdom, looking for even the slightest traces of Void. He finds signs of it all over the place, small amounts, but not a single whiff of the Vessels themselves. He cannot even tell what they were doing, if anything, because they seemed to have gone quite literally everywhere.

Days pass.

With each hour that goes by without any word of them being found or them returning (by the Stars and Fates, does he hope they just walk back through the front door. He wouldn’t even be upset, he just wants them to come back.) the King becomes more and more distressed. More despondent. More hopeless.

The Kingdom, outside of the City and the villages, is not safe. So many viscous, infected creatures that would willingly try to feast upon a tiny Vessel. Food was becoming scarcer; the icy black of their bodies wouldn't be a deterrent, even if their toxic Void would most assuredly kill whatever consumed them eventually. The acids were so caustic they'd easily eat through the thin, small maskshells, leaving not a single trace. So many perilous places to fall from. So many unstable caverns to be crushed or trapped in.

The King wondered if he should alter his order to include looking for any signs of their corpses as well. He cannot bring himself to do so; to voice such terrors aloud would make them unbearably real.

Every day is the same: There is no news. There is no news. There is no news. We have not seen them. We have not found them.

Until suddenly, there is news, but it’s not the news he expected or even needed.

The Infection was dying. Rapidly. Just...shriveling up, into gnarled vines and sunken pustules. The bright glaring neon orange was dimming to a lifeless murky brown. Those ensnared in the waking dreamsleep woke up, came back to themselves.

Everyone was dumbfounded. What did this mean? What could have possibly happened? Did the Radiance...give up? Or did something happen to her? What could possibly affect the Radiance enough to disrupt her power so quickly, so thoroughly?

The entire Kingdom looked to their King for answers, and he had none to give. He didn’t know.

He could only work to prevent panic and hysteria, and hope that someone comes back with answers soon.

Through the efforts to assuage the public’s concerns, the King continues to wait, desperately, for word on his Vessels. In the evening, he waits by the front gate. Watching the bridge, for hours. Hoping, even as he’s growing hopeless. There, yet not.

The King is just about to give up for the night, to return inside, to curl up in his chambers and fall into a restless sleep that fails to rejuvenate or ease his stresses, where the images of dead and mutilated Vessels terrorize his nightmares, when voices call out, alarmed, catching his attention. He turns.

He freezes. Stares.

The Vessels were right there, huddled in a group as they slowly walked across the bridge. All of them. Together. They were there.

They were safe.

They were all scuffed up, splattered in the orangeish brown muk and smelling of ash, nicks and dents on their tiny dirty shells. Some of them looked worse for the wear, being supported or carried by others, leaking void from various injuries. The taller tri-horned one with an overgrown cloak had a nasty crack on it's head, their shortest horn just outright gone. It was messily bandaged, and they seemed to be in pain, but they were alive. Another, with two short pairs of horns on the side of their head, was clutching their chest, limping along with another who was missing half their curled horn.

Ghost supported the Pure Vessel, who looked utterly ravaged. cloak torn and stained orange, a deep crack through their right eye socket, empty space where their tiny left arm used to be. Ghost, Little Nightmare, supported a nasty crack down the middle of their mask, deep grooves in their horns like blade wounds and scorch marks searing their tattered cloak, nail shattered completely in half.

The Vessels stop when they see him, staring back. The King doesn't even realize he'd approached them until he was almost on top of them, staring down.

And then he realizes they were carrying something between them, but they're moving, shifting, spreading apart--

And presenting him with a large blade still wet with neon orange ichor.

A familiar blade, he knew was once attached to the Radiance.

He can only stare, as the Pure Vessel steps forward, dipping a tiny claw into the slowly congealing orange and writing slowly, "We ate the Light. No more sick dreams."

And it hits the King right in the gut that the Vessels had been listening to him talk about the Infection, heard him complain and worry over it. Had listened, and taken it upon themselves to try to get rid of it.

And they'd somehow succeeded. Somehow managed to find, to trap, to fight, to defeat her. Not unscathed, not without a cost, but without loosing any of their own. They’d all challenged a God, and killed her.

Had ripped out her gleaming blade, the symbol and embodiment of her power to cleave through dreams and minds, to take it with them.

To give it to him.

The Vessels push the bloodstained blade into his hands, and he stares at it for only a single second, before dumping it to the ground beside him without a care.

A twitch of surprise goes through the Vessels, and air of confusion and outrage, but he doesn't care; he lunges forwards and wraps his arms around as many of them as he can reach, pulling them tight to him and grabbing for yet more until he’s somehow got them all in his arms. Clinging to them. Burying his face among their stained shells and nicked horns, and sobbing.

Of course he cares about the death of the Radiance. The severity of that will hit him later, after he's had time to absorb it properly.

For now, the only thing he gives a damn about is the fact that his children are all safe, back home. Dirty, busted up, and in a world of trouble once he's done weeping with relief, but alive.

Nothing else mattered.