#Elemental powers are weird

[user-without-a-cool-acronym]

seeing the post about how passing on elemental powers worked in zeatrix's case and the time twins one respectively reminded me of something: what happens when two elemental masters have only one child. For example if Ray and Maya had only had Kai, would he have inherited both their elements? Some kind of mixture? None? Only one and the other goes back into the lottery as if the user died without offspring? Or could it have been like a generational thing? So Kai would have fire and there would be no EM of water for a while,but then he has two children and one gets fire and the other gets water? I NEED ANSWERS

[wardensantoineandevka]

this is relevant to a lot of fanspaces, but I'm feeling it most with CritRole C3 right now, though it applies to a lot of other works too: I feel like a lot of fans mistake "the work had the potential to expound on XYZ themes and tell a narrative about such-and-such with these particular building blocks" for the work actually telling that narrative and working with those themes

the building blocks merely existing in a text does not necessarily mean that the text has that particular narrative at all, let alone is telling that narrative well. a lot of the time, a text has the potential for it but is not using those elements to actually tell that story and is just plain ol' missed opportunity

[chebyshevptera]

something about the way that jay was subtly trembling while channeling his element seems very off to me

[roomba-mangga]

thoughts on thistle and yaad's dynamic that i vomited in the tags of another post but will now try to articulate here: they're not actually family, or at least they shouldn't be. not in a conventional sense anyway. framing them as uncle and nephew (even in a non-literal, silly fantasy world way) rides more on technicality than anything concrete.

what i mean by this is yaad calls thistle by name and says he and delgal were raised "like" brothers. he talks about thistle like he's an outsider imposing himself into the melinis' space, and it's clear that thistle was never legitimized as a member of the family. for thistle's part, though we don't know how he would treat yaad pre-demon brainrot, it's safe to assume based on the way he punishes him—turning him into a doll—and how little is shown in the way of any sort of relationship between them that thistle only cares* about yaad as an extension of delgal (otherwise i'd expect something like kabru and milsiril, because it's not like another complicated interspecies family dynamic would be out of place, yet there's next to nothing on them even in bonus content, just their scant interactions in the main story).

in essence, they're strangers to one another. thistle's desperation to preserve the illusion of a family, a model where he doesn't even fit, was the snare they were caught in for the past thousand years of stasis. yaad-as-nephew is a prop to uphold that illusion, and thistle is playing a role he's unfit to play. in the context of post-canon interactions, attempting to reconstruct that facade would only be a reenactment of trauma for them both (in a deeply compelling way i'd love to watch unfold, tbh), as that "uncle and nephew" framing places thistle in an implicit position of power over someone he's already traumatized through misuse of authority in the past, a role which also perpetuates his adultification and yaad's infantilization in turn. it'd mostly be an obstacle to any real connection.

best to burn the melini family bridge, i think, and if there's still anything salvageable left in the rubble, let something different supplant it.

[homoqueerjewhobbit]

On the one hand, if the only element of the omegaverse that you're including in your fic is mpreg, why not just make the character a trans man instead of an omega? On the other hand, if you only want to make a character trans to get him pregnant, you should probably not be writing trans characters.

[boxofthings]

bet if you put all the ghostroach fans in a single gc we'd all recognize each other

[trans-soapberry]

Catching up to CSM is terrible because all it does is make me wish JJK was more like it

[victorluvsalice]

Valicer Multiamory Month, Day Twenty-Eight: Magic (Valicer In The Dark AU)

The end of Multiamory March (as made by @polyamships) creeps ever closer, and today's prompt is a simple but fun one: "magic!" I have a number of AUs where magical things happen, so filling this one? Not a problem. :p Now, one might have expected that I'd do something for the All The Fairy Tales AU for this one, or perhaps the Medieval Fantasy AU, or maybe even the Valicer Forgotten Vows AU --

But when it came time to figure out something for this prompt, the first thing that actually came to mind was my beloved Valicer In The Dark AU. Which does indeed have magic in it -- just, uh, magic you don't want to mess with too much. Which led to me thinking about what the trio would have learned about magic, growing up in Duskwall -- and what Alice and Smiler might think about Victor getting into it once he embraces being a Whisper. And so the story below was born! I hope you enjoy. :)

--

Magic was dangerous.

That was a fact of life one learned early on, living in Duskwall. Magic, and anything related to it, was dangerous. The old tongue of sorcery was the domain of demons now, who used it to torment all who opposed them – from freezing them in storms of ice, to drowning them in massive waves, to burning them with whips of fire. And rituals? Well, you never knew what mysterious, otherworldly force would consent to lend you a bit of its power – or for what purpose. The city was full of stories featuring those who had dabbled in what they didn’t understand, and ended up paying a terrible price. Who had discovered that the power they so eagerly sought was also their inevitable downfall. Magic was dangerous, and thus best avoided.

Alice and Smiler had known that too – they’d grown up hearing all the stories, all the warnings, after all. And for the most part, they’d followed said warnings – Alice had confined her interest in the fantastical to her imagination, where magic could run wild without hurting anyone, while Smiler had channeled their desire to accomplish incredible things into alchemy, which often ran up against the side of magic, but never quite crossed over. Even after Alice suffered the death of her family and ten years in Rutledge Asylum, and Smiler finally ran away from home and was cheerfully swallowed up by the Advocates, neither of them were tempted much by the mystical.

And then they met Victor. Who – after some initial reluctance – wholeheartedly embraced life as a Whisper. Who poured through ancient volumes of spellcraft and sorcery, studying distressingly complex diagrams and practicing words no human tongue should be able to form. Who asked his ghostly mentor what rituals he knew, and how best to perform them. Who eventually came up with his own spells, designed to translate any language or ward them against spectral attacks or even drag them all temporarily into the ghost field. All the sort of terrifying, dangerous activities that any sensible person would want to avoid.

But – well. One could accuse Alice and Smiler of being a lot of things, but “sensible” was not usually one of them. And things Victor did – first, they were genuinely incredible feats of arcane power. Second, he always tried to be as safe as possible, and only use them for the whole crew’s benefit. And third – whenever he spoke a word that brought lightning arcing down from the sky, or drew a symbol that lit up a ghostly map of the city, Alice and Smiler would see the joy on his face –

And think, how could they deny the man they loved such pleasure?

[copepods]

i love suns and pebbles canon dynamic in my head its kind of weird and fucked up and i wish more people depicted it as that (tag ramble incoming)

[oozeandgoo-art]

[kirkwallguy]

and the taash pronoun avoidance continues......which could mean nothing

[fucksutawneyphil]

i need outlaws three with these four please please PLEASE THE CLARA TERRA PARALLELS GO CRAZY

[displayheartcode]

I think I’ve come to the conclusion that adult romantansy isn’t for me

[impossible-rat-babies]

I remade eyrie’s brother but I’m like. I need him to be weirder

[keeps-ache]

bedtime story time!! [opens up local driver's manual]