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catcas22 · 1 year

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CAT!!!!!

I want to ask you about THE ALBINAURIC WOMAN! She hides in a cave to the west of the Laskyar Ruins which jut from the mist-shrouded lake of Liurnia. She knows the location of the medallion's counterpart, I am sure.

(sorry)

In all seriousness, I want your thoughts on something. A post crossed my dash today that was speculating about if Albinaurics, being originally artificial entities, are at all capable of reproducing independently. The OP concluded (and I agree) that they probably can. Despite the fact that Albinaurics are hunted for their blood and frequently tortured/imprisoned/killed for being "impure", and the fact that both generations were deemed failures in the eyes of the Academy (g1 had the bad legs, g2 came out all froggy and was too stupid to use magic) and therefore probably aren't being produced there anymore, they exist in large numbers and many appear outwardly young.

I was doing some more looking when I came across Latenna's dialogue when you take her to the Apostate Derelict.

Oh young yet towering sister of ours. Let the birthing droplet in. And create life. For us. For all the Albinaurics.

Thank you. I've finally fulfilled my purpose. Our young yet towering sister will give us hope. Now that nothing is left unfinished, I will join you in battle to the bitter end. And when the fighting is done, then you may lay me to rest.

As well as if you kill her in the Liurnia cave instead of talking to her there:

Ohh... Phillia. Take...the birthing...droplet...

So the obvious question that I've been pondering is, what in God's name is a birthing droplet??? Why does it need to be "let in?" Why does it need to be Phillia specifically? Why won't Latenna or Albus or any of the dozens of other g1 Albinaurics milling about in the Consecrated Snowfield suffice?

I'm trying to muddle through my own thoughts on the matter, but while I do that I'm curious to see if you have any ideas.

Hi Bri! Sorry this took so long, it had me stumped for awhile. The more I dug into it, the more questions I raised. Long rambling theory below the cut.

So I'll start by saying I agree with OP. Albinaurics have to be able to reproduce somehow, otherwise they would have long since died out.

Going into this, I had the vague idea that Latenna was from Liurnia, probably from Albus's village. Makes sense, right? She's looking for a path to the Haligtree, chasing tales of a safe haven in the hopes of saving her people.

A quick look at her dialogue disproves that. So there's my first assumption dead in the water.

We have reached the land of Miquella's Haligtree, where Lobo and I began our travels. It's entirely thanks to you that I'm so close to home. These great snow-laden lands stretch far to the north. And beyond the ancient bowers, and the liturgical town of Ordina, lies the place to which I must return.

So Latenna is from the Haligtree, specifically the Ordina subdivision. The Apostate's Derelict is located just a bit north of Ordina.

I originally thought the "birthing droplet" might be something similar to a sacred tear produced by the Haligtree. But if the Droplet had its origin with the Haligtree, Latenna never would have had to leave the snowfields. I think we can safely assume that whatever the Droplet is, Latenna journeyed to Liurnia to find it.

It could have had its origin in Raya Lucaria, or in Nokstella. Both would fit, geographically speaking.

Then I realized that Albus's village is located directly beneath the Moonlight Altar.

I'm not sure exactly what to make of this, but it feels important. It feels intentional.

The Altar, specifically the Cathedral of Manus Celes, was at some point bombarded with a shower of these bad boys.

An ephemeral sliver that gives off a pale blue glow. What remains of a passing flash of starlight.

A prized item that was once used in the Eternal City as an ingredient in intoxicating draughts.

Put aside, for a moment, my theory that the g1 albinaurics originate from the Eternal Cities, with the g2's being modern glintstone scholars' clumsy attempt at replication.

Instead, direct your attention to the Amber Starlight Shard.

An ephemeral sliver that gives off a pale amber glow. What remains of a passing flash of starlight.

If the stars command our fates, then amber-hued stars must command the fates of the gods.

This item is found in the alcove just outside the walls of Leyndell, at the foot of a statue of Malenia and Miquella, surrounded by land octopi (who consume human blood) and sacremental buds (believed to originate long ago from a strain of buds cultivated with youthful, sacramental blood).

I believe that this hidden alcove was the spot in which Miquella initially nurtured his stolen Erdtree sapling, hiding away from prying eyes and watering it with his own blood. I also believe that this is the spot where he and Malenia formally severed their fates from the Golden Order, with the Amber Starlight Shard being a byproduct of this act.

Via Albus's dialogue, we know that albinaurics fade away, starting with their legs, due to some imposed fate.

My legs will soon fade, and with them, my life. Alas, this is the immovable fate of all Albinaurics...

If killed by the player, he adds:

You merciless brutes. Let the curse take everything.

Assuming he's talking about the same thing, does that mean that the albinaurics' affliction is the result of a curse? He also refers to Gideon's men as "cursemongers." Not entirely sure what to do with that.

Back to the Birthing Droplet. The name itself immediately brought two things to mind: dew, and tears. We know that the Erdtree used to produce dew, and that said drops could impart blessings and good health. There's also the Celestial Dew -- another connection to the Eternal Cities.

A hidden Tear found in the Eternal City. Also known as a Night Tear.

Allows one to carry out an Absolution at the Church of Vows, reversing all antagonizations.

Once upon a time, the stars of the night sky guided fate, and this is a recollection of those times.

"Tear?" That jogged my memory. Down a fresh rabbit trail.

The Erdtree used to produce sacred tears and crystal tears, but I'm more concerned with chasing the Eternal Cities connection. Thus, we have larval tears and silver tears.

Silver Tear Husk

A hardened husk shed by a formless life form known as the Silver Tear, found in and around the Eternal City. The Silver Tear makes mockery of life, reborn again and again into imitation. Perhaps, one day, it will be reborn a lord...

Larval Tear

Core of a creature of mimicry known as a silver tear. As much as a substance as it is a living organism.

Material required by the amber egg cradled by Rennala, Queen of the Full Moon, to birth people anew.

This is where inspiration (madness?) hit me. Doesn't "Birthing Droplet" basically function as a synonym for "Larval Tear?" Sort of like how Fia refers to what everyone else calls a "Cursemark" as a "Hallowbrand," because she's seeing it in a different context?

I will now attempt to draw a definitive link between g1 albinaurics and the Eternal Cities.

Albinauric Staff

The albinaurics harbor a secret; they cast sorcery with their innate arcaneness.

Silver Tear Mask

Mask fashioned from the corpse of a formless Silver Tear, supported by its hardened, shed husk. Greatly increases arcane to the detriment of physical attack power.

Albinaurics and silver/mimic tears both run off of arcane energy, both bleed silver, both are considered a mockery of life, both are made by hands. If albinaurics were not developed in the Eternal Cities, surely they were developed by someone building off of the technology of the Eternal Cities. Albinaurics fit the EC brand in basically every way.

We also have a few oblique references to the origin story of the g1 albinaurics.

Silver Mirrorshield

Shield of radiant silver, festooned with amber and carried by Loretta, Knight of the Haligtree.

The shape is said to imitate that of a sacred drop of dew, which inspired the absurd rumor that Loretta herself was an Albinauric.

So albinaurics are associated with sacred dew in some way? But aren't they supposed to be anathema to the Erdtree?

Albinauric Shield

Tall oval shield made of metal carried by young Albinaurics.

The ornamentation represents the primordial drop of dew from which they are said to have been created.

Blue Silver Mail Hood

Worn by the wolf-riding Albinauric archers.

Blue silver is a metal born from the same mother as the archers themselves, and provides protection from magic and frost.

Put a pin in the "mother" thing. Here we have multiple sources saying that albinaurics originated from a sacred, primordial drop of dew. But that's the Erdtree. That's the Golden Order. The albinaurics shouldn't even be compatible.

I now have to thank two people. One, shoutout to @caelaan75 for suggesting to me that albinaurics might not be subject to the Erdtree's cycle of reincarnation -- their souls may be subject to an entirely different cycle.

Second, thank you @thistoowillpasss for asking...

Prompting me to realize...

Now, let me just get into character...

Okay I'm ready.

I think I was accidentally right about Helphen and the Lampwood Tree.

At first I thought we were looking at an "as above so below" situation, with Helphen being a sort of afterlife mirror to the Erdtree. But then I recalled that albinaurics originate from a drop of "primordial" dew. Primordial. The same adjective used to refer to the Crucible, the previous form of the World Tree.

From the Crucible Tree Set:

Holds the power of the crucible of life, the primordial form of the Erdtree.

And I may be cloudspotting here, but does the primordial Erdtree carving we see in Farum Azula resemble the etching on the Albinauric shield? The shield whose description references primordial dew?

Guys... guys I think I was accidentally right. There may have been an actual Helphen Tree, predating the Crucible just as the Crucible predated the Erdtree. And I think the Nox used the sacred dew of that tree in their development of their various brands of homunculi.

The albinauric curse may have been a deliberate handicap imposed by their creators, or it could simply be a result of the fact that the tree that gave them life no longer exists. Or it does exist, but in a form that fundamentally rejects them.

Whether it originates from the Moonlight Altar, Nokstella, or the stars themselves, I believe that the Birthing Droplet is similar in function to a mending rune, a patch inserted into the albinauric cycle of reincarnation in order to cleanse their curse.

I'm not precisely sure how Young Yet Towering Sister Phillia accomplishes this. Her name is two letters off from filia -- Latin for "daughter."

Wait, didn't the Silver Blue Mail description say something about a mother?

There's only one divine force in Elden Ring that can claim such a title.

Bloodboon

Sacred incantation of Mohg, Lord of Blood.

Thrust arm into the body of the Formless Mother, then scatter the bloodflame to set the area ablaze.

The mother of truth craves wounds.

Briars of Punishment

The guilty, their eyes gouged by thorns, lived in eternal darkness. There, they discovered the blood star.

The Formless Mother's incantations all scale with the arcane stat. Just like albinaurics with their innate arcane energy...

Both the Nox and their Raya Lucarian successors were a highly astrologically oriented society. Could they have venerated the Formless Mother in the form of the Blood Star? Could they have petitioned her aid in the creation of the albinaurics?

Mohg seems to recruit heavily from amongst the ranks of g2 albinaurics. Could he be luring them in with a bastardized version of their own creation myth, with Miquella as their promised savior?

Which brings me back to Phillia. Given her unusual size and rather significant-seeming name, I think it's likely that she was created with the express purpose of using the Birthing Droplet to repair the albinauric "code." Obviously Miquella would be the obvious candidate for her creator. He sought to aid all those cast out by the Golden Order, and he's in the business of thwarting curses and rebuking the meddling of outer gods.

Now, I'm not a fan of the theory that Miquella was in on his own kidnapping. But I think that he and Mohg may have collaborated for a time before his half-brother's true nature became apparent -- likely in the interval between Godwyn's death and the later wars of the Shattering. Like Miquella, Mohg styles himself as the champion of those abandoned by the Order. And if Miquella had traced the albinaurics' creation back to the Blood Star, it would have seemed highly beneficial to work with someone who had a direct line to the Formless Mother.

I think that Phillia was a joint project, a clone of sorts created by Mohg and Miquella. Either Miquella overlooked a whole forest of red flags in order to keep Mohg cooperating, or he decided that the risk was worth it. Maybe he took terrible chances with his own safety in favor of just a little more research -- he was so close to breaking the albinauric curse, after all. Maybe he even made a deal, only to find himself in over his head when, by sheer dumb luck, Mohg imprisoned him directly beneath the territory of the one person who could fight Malenia to a stalemate. But I'm just speculating now. I've already far overstepped my evidence.

Thanks for the ask! This was an experience.

#elden ring #answered asks #elden ring theory #lore theory #albinaurics

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alwayslosingtheplot-blog · 4 months

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Make a world with me (Part 3)

Part one

Part two

@saqvobase suggested having the islands be on megafauna! Which opens up a whole load of possibilities. You have the classic giant turtle situation, which is cool but I think I want to go a different route.

Maybe a different kind of shell, like a sea snails mollusks. Barnacle-like entities which stay still and don't move but can create very turbulent seas during mating season. (This might be too gross)

Or maybe it is unknown that a creature was even involves. Part of a mystery. An island which vanished in the middle of the night and no one knows why or where it went - only for it to turn out that the creature it was on woke up and ventured out to the sea. Maybe it didn't go out to sea but down into it, or left broken buildings and pieces in its wake so that the other nations think that it sank and allows for an myth like Atlantis. Maybe another island lies on the skeletal remains of a long-dead Levithan, it's body bringing a bounty of fish and nutrients like a whale fall. If they dig deep enough under the thin layer of top soil they will hit the layer of bone. Maybe the body is finally only now finished providing for the area, with even the marrow stripped clean and many of the species that the locals rely on are starting to leave the area.

Or maybe an island is an dormant or abandoned hive structure, and these human-sized eggs are about to hatch. Maybe the islands are a series of giant eggs, and the entire populace lives unaware that when they hatch, these creatures are going to be very, very hungry.

Maybe all of the above along with natural geographical features like as @thecrazyworldbuilder suggested like volcanic activity or river deltas which make the maps weird and funky and a little unexplainable. I'm thinking that their might be a mountain range as well, which has valleys dipping under sea level or rock slides with huge chucks falling off and being washed down to form rocky isles.

I said in the last post about the idea of some of the Greek myths being brought along by a classical student, so for a naming system I'm thinking of naming the inhabited and known islands after Greek nymphs and rivers after Potamoi.

Thinking about the geography of each island isn't a bad idea either to help better inform how I build up the cultures living there. I want to keep the islands small and the resources tight to encourage tension and a strange combination of conflict and co-dependance between the islands. I'll probably do a bit of research into the myths and try and tie the islands loosely into them, but I'm not going to be too stringent about that.

The Islands

Alseid - Lots of groves, small lakes and one large river. Several towns, a city and one of the largest populations in the Islands.

Anthousai - Isle of flowers. Fields of flowers used all across the islands for perfume, food (think rosemary), and medicine. These flowers look like hyacinths.

Auloniad - The mountainous island. Lots of snakes. (Eurydice was an auloniad, so maybe do something to do with the 'underworld' here.)

Aurea - Also mountainous, but less so than Auloniad, this island is known for high cliffs and beautiful vistas.

Crinaeae - Lots of small springs or hidden sources of water instead of one large river results in many, many small settlements rather than a large city.

Daphnaie - The seat of the Laurel Crown and home of the largest city, and largest navy of all of the islands. Tries to exert its power and rules on the other islands.

Dryad -'The Crown's shame'. Covered in an oak forest. Many have tried to settle there but none have succeeded for unknown reasons, which is galling to the government on Daphnaie as it is quite close to them. Currently there is a small settlement in a harbour.

Eleionomae - Very wet, mostly fresh-water bog. People here mostly live on floating homes even inland because of the constant risk of flooding.

Epimeliad - Home of apple orchard and shepards. Epimeliad has a small city and something akin to a royal family of their own, although they have much less influence that Daphnaie. Epimeliad has many allies through trade and patron many groups looking for new islands and 'safe places to land' on the mainland. This is why Daphnaie has never invaded.

Hamadryad - Thousands of butterflies migrate here once a year from the mainland to mate. The island also has several monkey colonies who steal from and torment the villages that have been set up here in the last ten years. There was an older settlement here, but a sickness swept through and killed almost all of them forty years ago. The small few survivors moved to other islands, and their children made up the main contingent of new settlers.

Hesperides - The most easterly of all the islands, the sunset isle; When the sun sets on Hesperides, it sets on all people. The mainland, and the monstrous megafauna that roam it, can be seen from its beaches. There is a pilgrimage many people take to do just this. The main religion of the islands started here and the main monastery is located here. The singing priestesses often mentor for singers from all over the islands who wish to master their craft.

Hyades - The rainy island. Amazing farmland, surrounding by thriving sea life. This could be on the skeletal remains discussed above (fish and nutrients from the bones making the farming so good).

Lampas - Known as 'the funeral isle', and sometimes more optimistically as 'the exploring isle'. This small island is where most travelers go before heading off towards the open seas or towards the mainland to try and find new places for people to settle. Home of witches, which can give protective charms and read the future of those venturing out for a cost.

Leimakid - The island of meadows and pleasure. Legend says that the three warring nations came to fight on the shores of Leimakid and the island was the so beautiful that all the warriors dropped their weapons and refused to stain it with blood. It now houses the 'seat of peace', where nation leaders meet for negotiation under the watchful eye of a the 'peace-keepers' sent by the religion.

Leuce - The 15th island. It is an island with many white/silver popular trees. The duel nature of the leaves of this tree (dark on one side, light on the other) make it the source of many myths and rituals. The trees are planted along beaches to strengthen sand dunes and prevent erosion. This is a contest nation, where individual strength is more highly valued than anything else. It is where the Games take place once every three years to determine the fastest, the strongest, the best that the islands have to offer. It is also where the Funeral Games take place for recently deceased royalty.

Limnad- The lake isle. One of the largest islands has three large lakes for which is is famous. Farmers here are trying to develop new farming methods and trying to cross breed and encourage crops to grow more calorie-rich versions. Think of it as doing to the turnip-like crops what people have done to potatoes.

Meliae - Known for its honey and development of medicine. No nation dare attack this small nation, for every other nation would turn on them and destroy them.

Melinoe - The nightmare isle. This tiny island was once the home of a small monastery. There was a raid from unknown raiders. No one knows exactly what happened but everyone of the raiders and all the priestesses were killed. Any crew who lands there feels ill and are plagued by night terrors until they leave. Rumor says that one priestess survived and that it was her that killed all of the men in fury, and that she still roams the island, killing any man who dares step foot off the beach.

Minthe - A mostly barren isle, rocky and mostly soilless, living here is extremely difficult. The island is good for growing some herbs (such as mint) but it hard to live in, which is why Minthe only has a small population despite it's size. The people here mostly take their living from the sea. A place nobles of high rank are often banished to.

Naiad - Known for its waterfalls and the migration of fish that swim up them once a year to mate. There is a large number of deer, wolves and bears on this island.

Nephele - the peninsula. This is the only place where it snows. This stretch of land has mountains to the North which block it off from the rest of the mainland. Living here is difficult, because the dangers that invest the skies, but not impossible - at least that is the mantra of the three new settlements trying to take root on the coast.

That's it for now. I'll continue this next post and then jump onto something else once I have a bit more to play with.

I'll probably have to do a post on each individual island and the culture that lives there but I am quite happy with what I have so far. I may run out of nymphs before I do islands but that is a problem for another day.

#fantasy #fiction #brainstorm #worldbuilding #writing #MakeaWorldinPublic

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jeannereames · 1 year

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Hi Dr Reames!

Would you say that Macedon shared the same "political culture" with its Thracian and Illyrian neighbours, like how most Greeks shared the polis structure and the concept of citizenship?

I don't really know anything about Macedonian history before Philip II's time, but you've often brought up how the Macedonians shared some elements of elite culture (e.g. mound burials) with their Thracian neighbours, as well religious beliefs and practices.

I've only ever heard these people generically described as "a collection of tribes (that confederated into a kingdom)", which also seems to be the common description for nearby "Greek" polities like Thessaly and Epiros. So did these societies have a lot in common, structurally speaking, with Macedon? Or were they just completely different types of polities altogether?

First, in the interest of some good bibliography on the Thracians:

Z. H. Archibald, The Odrysian Kingdom of Thrace. Orpheus Unmasked. Oxford UP, 1998. (Too expensive outside libraries, but highly recommended if you can get it by interlibrary loan. Part of the exorbitant cost [almost $400, but used for less] owes to images, as it’s archaeology heavy. Archibald is also an expert on trade and economy in north Greece and the Black Sea region, and has edited several collections on the topic.

Alexander Fol, Valeria Fol. Thracians. Coronet Books, 2005. Also expensive, if not as bad, and meant for the general public. Fol’s 1977 Thrace and the Thracians, with Ivan Marazov, was a classic. Fol and Marazov are fathers of modern Thracian studies.

R. F. Hodinott, The Thracians. Thames and Hudson, 1981. Somewhat dated now but has pictures and can be found used for a decent price if you search around. But, yeah…dated.

For Illyria, John Wilkes’ The Illyrians, Wiley-Blackwell, 1996, is a good place to start, but there’s even less about them in book form (or articles).

—————

Now, to the question.

BOTH the Thracians and Illyrians were made up of politically independent tribes bound by language and religion who, sometimes, also united behind a strong ruler (the Odrysians in Thrace for several generations, and Bardylis briefly in Illyria). One can probably make parallels to Germanic tribes, but it’s easier for me to point to American indigenous nations. The Odrysians might be compared to the Iroquois federation. The Illyrians to the Great Lakes people, united for a while behind Tecumseh, but not entirely, and disunified again after. These aren’t perfect, but you get the idea. For that matter, the Greeks themselves weren’t a nation, but a group of poleis bonded by language, culture, and religion. They fought as often as they cooperated. The Persian invasion forced cooperation, which then dissolved into the Peloponnesian War.

Beyond linguistic and religious parallels, sometimes we also have GEOGRAPHIC ones. So, let me divide the north into lowlands and highlands. It’s much more visible on the ground than from a map, but Epiros, Upper Macedonia, and Illyria are all more alike, landscape-wise, than Lower Macedonia and the Thracian valleys. South of all that, and different yet again, lay Thessaly, like a bridge between Southern Greece and these northern regions.

If language (and religion) are markers of shared culture, culture can also be shaped by ethnically distinct neighbors. Thracians and Macedonians weren’t ethnically related, yet certainly shared cultural features. Without falling into colonialist geographical/environmental determinism, geography does affect how early cultures develop because of what resources are available, difficulties of travel, weather, lay of the land itself, etc.

For instance, the Pindus Range, while not especially high, is rocky and made a formidable barrier to easy east-west travel. Until recently, sailing was always more efficient in Greece than travel by land (especially over mountain ranges).* Ergo, city-states/towns on the western coast tended to be western-facing for trade, and city-states/towns on the eastern side were, predictably, eastern-facing. This is why both Epiros and Ainai (Elimeia) did more trade with Corinth than Athens, and one reason Alexandros of Epiros went west to Italy while Alexander of Macedon looked east to Persia. It’s also why Corinth, Sparta, etc., in the Peloponnese colonized Sicily and S. Italy, while Athens, Euboia, etc., colonized the Asia Minor and Black Sea coasts. (It’s not an absolute, but one certainly sees trends.)

So, looking at their land, we can see why Macedonians and Thracians were both horse people with their wide valleys. They also practiced agriculture, had rich forests for logging, and significant metal (and mineral) deposits—including silver and gold—that made mining a source of wealth. They shared some burial customs but maintained acute differences. Both had lower status for women compared to Illyria/Epiros/Paionia. Yet that’s true only of some Thracian tribes, such as the Odrysians. Others had stronger roles for women. Thracians and Macedonians shared a few deities (The Rider/Zis, Dionysos/Zagreus, Bendis/Artemis/Earth Mother), although Macedonian religion maintained a Greek cast. We also shouldn’t underestimate the impact of Greek colonies along the Black Sea coast on inland Thrace, especially the Odrysians. Many an Athenian or Milesian (et al.) explorer/merchant/colonist married into the local Thracian elite.

Let’s look at burial customs, how they’re alike and different, for a concrete example of this shared regional culture.

First, while both Thracians and Macedonians had shrines, neither had temples on the Greek model until late, and then largely in Macedonia. Their money went into the ground with burials.

Temples represent a shit-ton of city/community money plowed into a building for public use/display. In southern Greece, they rise (pun intended) at the end of the Archaic Age as city-state sumptuary laws sought to eliminate personal display at funerals, weddings, etc. That never happened in Macedonia/much of the northern areas. So, temples were slow to creep up there until the Hellenistic period. Even then, gargantuan funerals and the Macedonian Tomb remained de rigueur for Macedonian elite. (The date of the arrival of the true Macedonian Tomb is debated, but I side with those who count it as a post-Alexander development.)

A “Macedonian Tomb” (above: Tomb of Judgement, photo mine) is a faux-shrine embedded in the ground. Elite families committed wealth to it in a huge potlatch to honor the dead. Earlier cyst tombs show the same proclivities, but without the accompanying shrine-like architecture. As early as 650 BCE at Archontiko (= ancient Pella), we find absurd amounts of wealth in burials (below: Archontiko burial goods, Pella Museum, photos mine). Same thing at Sindos, and Aigai, in roughly the same period. Also in a few places in Upper Macedonia, in the Archaic Age: Aiani, Achlada, Trebenište, etc.. This is just the tip of the iceberg. If Greece had more money for digs, I think we’d find additional sites.

Vivi Saripanidi has some great articles (conveniently in English) about these finds: “Constructing Necropoleis in the Archaic Period,” “Vases, Funerary Practices, and Political Power in the Macedonian Kingdom During the Classical Period Before the Rise of Philip II,” and “Constructing Continuities with a Heroic Past.” They’re long, but thorough. I recommend them.

What we observe here are “Princely Burials” across lingo-ethnic boundaries that reflect a larger, shared regional culture. But one big difference between elite tombs in Macedonia and Thrace is the presence of a BODY, and whether the tomb was new or repurposed.

In Thrace, at least royal tombs are repurposed shrines (above: diagram and model of repurposed shrine-tombs). Macedonian Tombs were new construction meant to look like a shrine (faux-fronts, etc.). Also, Thracian kings’ bodies weren’t buried in their "tombs." Following the Dionysic/ Orphaic cult, the bodies were cut up into seven pieces and buried in unmarked spots. Ergo, their tombs are cenotaphs (below: Kosmatka Tomb/Tomb of Seuthes III, photos mine).

What they shared was putting absurd amounts of wealth into the ground in the way of grave goods, including some common/shared items such as armor, golden crowns, jewelry for women, etc. All this in place of community-reflective temples, as seen in the South. (Below: grave goods from Seuthes’ Tomb; grave goods from Royal Tomb II at Vergina, for comparison).

So, if some things are shared, others (connected to beliefs about the afterlife) are distinct, such as the repurposed shrine vs. new construction built like a shine, and the presence or absence of a body (below: tomb ceiling décor depicting Thracian deity Zalmoxis).

Aside from graves, we also find differences between highlands and lowlands in the roles of at least elite women. The highlands were tough areas to live, where herding (and raiding) dominated, and what agriculture there was required “all hands on deck” for survival. While that isn’t necessary for women to enjoy higher status (just look at Minoan Crete, Etruria, and even Egypt), it may have contributed to it in these circumstances.

Illyrian women fought. And not just with bows on horseback as Scythian women did. If we can believe Polyaenus, Philip’s daughter Kyanne (daughter of his Illyrian wife Audata) opposed an Illyrian queen on foot with spears—and won. Philip’s mother Eurydike involved herself in politics to keep her sons alive, but perhaps also as a result of cultural assumption: her mother was royal Lynkestian but her father was (perhaps) Illyrian. Epirote Olympias came to Pella expecting a certain amount of political influence that she, apparently, wasn’t given until Philip died. Alexander later observed that his mother had wisely traded places with Kleopatra, his sister, to rule in Epiros, because the Macedonians would never accept rule by a woman (implying the Epirotes would).

I’ve noted before that the political structure in northern Greece was more of a continuum: Thessaly had an oligarchic tetrarchy of four main clans, expunged by Jason in favor of tyranny, then restored by Philip. Epiros was ruled by a council who chose the “king” from the Aiakid clan until Alexandros I, Olympias’s brother, established a real monarchy. Last, we have Macedon, a true monarchy (apparently) from the beginning, but also centered on a clan (Argeads), with agreement/support from the elite Hetairoi class of kingmakers. Upper Macedonian cantons (formerly kingdoms) had similar clan rule, especially Lynkestis, Elimeia, and Orestis. Alas, we don’t know enough to say how absolute their monarchies were before Philip II absorbed them as new Macedonian districts, demoting their basileis (kings/princes) to mere governors.

I think continued highland resistance to that absorption is too often overlooked/minimized in modern histories of Philip’s reign, excepting a few like Ed Anson’s. In Dancing with the Lion: Rise, I touch on the possibility of highland rebellion bubbling up late in Philip’s reign but can’t say more without spoilers for the novel.

In antiquity, Thessaly was always considered Greek, as was (mostly) Epiros. But Macedonia’s Greek bona-fides were not universally accepted, resulting in the tale of Alexandros I’s entry into the Olympics—almost surely a fiction with no historical basis, fed to Herodotos after the Persian Wars. The tale’s goal, however, was to establish the Greekness of the ruling family, not of the Macedonian people, who were still considered barbaroi into the late Classical period. Recent linguistic studies suggest they did, indeed, speak a form of northern Greek, but the fact they were regarded as barbaroi in the ancient world is, I think instructive, even if not necessarily accurate.

It tells us they were different enough to be counted “not Greek” by some southern Greek poleis and politicians such as Demosthenes. Much of that was certainly opportunistic. But not all. The bias suggests Macedonian culture had enough overflow from their northern neighbors to appear sufficiently alien. Few Greek writers suggested the Thessalians or Epirotes weren’t Greek, but nobody argued the Thracians, Paiones, or Illyrians were. Macedonia occupied a liminal status.

We need to stop seeing these areas with hard borders and, instead, recognize permeable boundaries with the expected cultural overflow: out and in. Contra a lot of messaging in the late 1800s and early/mid-1900s, lifted from ancient narratives (and still visible today in ultra-national Greek narratives), the ancient Greeks did not go out to “civilize” their Eastern “Oriental” (and northern barbaroi) neighbors, exporting True Culture and Philosophy. (For more on these views, see my earlier post on “Alexander suffering from Conqueror’s Disease.”)

In fact, Greeks of the Late Iron Age (LIA)/Archaic Age absorbed a great deal of culture and ideas from those very “Oriental barbarians,” such as Lydia and Assyria. In art history, the LIA/Early Archaic Era is referred to as the “Orientalizing Period,” but it’s not just art. Take Greek medicine. It’s essentially Mesopotamian medicine with their religion buffed off. Greek philosophy developed on the islands along the Asia Minor coast, where Greeks regularly interacted with Lydians, Phoenicians, and eventually Persians; and also in Sicily and Southern Italy, where they were talking to Carthaginians and native Italic peoples, including Etruscans. Egypt also had an influence.

Philosophy and other cultural advances didn’t develop in the Greek heartland. The Greek COLONIES were the happenin’ places in the LIA/Archaic Era. Here we find the all-important ebb and flow of ideas with non-Greek peoples.

Artistic styles, foodstuffs, technology, even ideas and myths…all were shared (intentionally or not) via TRADE—especially at important emporia. Among the most significant of these LIA emporia was Methone, a Greek foundation on the Macedonian coast off the Thermaic Gulf (see map below). It provided contact between Phoenician/Euboian-Greek traders and the inland peoples, including what would have been the early Macedonian kingdom. Perhaps it was those very trade contacts that helped the Argeads expand their rule in the lowlands at the expense of Bottiaians, Almopes, Paionians, et al., who they ran out in order to subsume their lands.

My main point is that the northern Greek mainland/southern Balkans were neither isolated nor culturally stunted. Not when you look at all that gold and other fine craftwork coming out of the ground in Archaic burials in the region. We’ve simply got to rethink prior notions of “primitive” peoples and cultures up there—notions based on southern Greek narratives that were both political and culturally hidebound, but that have, for too long, been taken as gospel truth.

Ancient Macedon did not “rise” with Philip II and Alexander the Great. If anything, the 40 years between the murder of Archelaos (399) and the start of Philip’s reign (359/8) represents a 2-3 generation eclipse. Alexandros I, Perdikkas II, and Archelaos were extremely capable kings. Philip represented a return to that savvy rule.

(If you can read German, let me highly recommend Sabine Müller’s, Perdikkas II and Die Argeaden; she also has one on Alexander, but those two talk about earlier periods, and especially her take on Perdikkas shows how clever he was. For those who can’t read German, the Lexicon of Argead Macedonia’s entry on Perdikkas is a boiled-down summary, by Sabine, of the main points in her book.)

Anyway…I got away a bit from Thracian-Macedonian cultural parallels, but I needed to mount my soapbox about the cultural vitality of pre-Philip Macedonia, some of which came from Greek cultural imports, but also from Thrace, Illyria, etc.

Ancient Macedonia was a crossroads. It would continue to be so into Roman imperial, Byzantine, and later periods with the arrival of subsequent populations (Gauls, Romans, Slavs, etc.) into the region.

That fruit salad with Cool Whip, or Jello and marshmallows, or chopped up veggies and mayo, that populate many a family reunion or church potluck spread? One name for it is a “Macedonian Salad”—but not because it’s from Macedonia. It’s called that because it’s made up of many [very different] things. Also, because French macedoine means cut-up vegetables, but the reference to Macedonia as a cultural mishmash is embedded in that.

---------------

* I’ve seen this personally between my first trip to Greece in 1997, and the new modern highway. Instead of winding around mountains, the A2 just blasts through them with tunnels. The A1 (from Thessaloniki to Athens) was there in ’97, and parts of the A2 east, but the new highway west through the Pindus makes a huge difference. It takes less than half the time now to drive from the area around Thessaloniki/Pella out to Ioannina (near ancient Dodona) in Epiros. Having seen the landscape, I can imagine the difficulties of such a trip in antiquity with unpaved roads (albeit perhaps at least graded). Taking carts over those hills would be daunting. See images below.

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mask131 · 2 years

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Cold winter: Wendigo

WENDIGO

Category: Algonquian folklore

Ah… the wendigo. A creature the whole Internet seems to have fallen in love with. Don’t know why but now you’ll sees wendigos everywhere, from movies to video games to strange drawings on DeviantArt, and it seems to the point that people forgot what a wendigo really is? Let’s take a look, shall we?

The wendigo is a creature from the folklore of the First Nations, whose legends and tales spread over a wide geographical area going from the Great Plains in the United-States to the forests of the eastern coast of Canada, passing by the Great Lakes. The Ojibwe, the Innu, the Cree, the Naskapi, they all have their tales and versions of the wendigo, and we can sum up this creature in five main traits. 1) Supernatural. 2) Evil. 3) Eat people. 4) A spirit of hunger, starvation, famine. 5) Associated with winter, cold, ice.

The wendigo is a murderous, ravenous entity that will kill everyone and everything in sight because it is hungry: the wendigo is a devourer that is forever famished and whose favorite meal is the flesh of humans. It can never be satisfied and is constantly on the hunt for his next “dish” – and this perpetual hunger shows on their body. You will never see a fat wendigo: wendigos are slender, skinny, gaunt, emaciated. Eyes deep in the sockets, ash-color skin, bones pushing through, they are basically a walking skeleton. But don’t be fooled! They might be just skin and bones, but they are abnormally fast and strong (some can even fly apparently!) Other main traits include how their lips are “tattered and bloody” from their gruesome feeding habits, and how they are dirty. Like really dirty. They never bathe, never clean, and in some versions their flesh is actually rotting, which means that a wendigo smells really bad – and in fact this is how you can sense a wendigo is coming, you’ll start sniffing out the stench of death and decay (some even claim that their mere breath carries diseases).

Another clue to know if a wendigo is coming is to check the temperature: wendigos typically bring with them cold air and wintery chills, they are sometimes described as missing lips, toes or entire feet (evoking victims of serious frostbites) and their howls are associated with the winter winds. For some it is because their heart is made of ice ; for others it is because they are themselves made of ice instead of flesh – but all in all, fire is one of the best ways to destroy this wintery monster. A final element important to the wendigo legend (and something that tends to be forgotten nowadays) is that wendigos are usually tall. Very tall. Giants sometimes. This fits with the whole idea of the “perpetually hungry”, because according to some tales a wendigo starts out a regular human size, but every time it eats someone it grows a little bit taller, a little bit bigger, to make sure that no matter how much he eats the wendigo will never be truly full.

Unlike the ravenous, rabid beast that people tend to make out of the wendigo nowadays, apparently in folktales wendigo could be sentient, intelligent entities able to speak human languages (even though it was usually to threaten or taunt their victim). We even find tales similar to European fairy tales where the wendigo will act like an ogre – for example there are stories of a wendigo kidnapping a child, but upon noticing the child was too thin decided to wait for him to grow fat, and regularly checked if he was fat by cutting his hand with a knife (but as with fairy tale ogres, the wendigo isn’t too bright as he travels around the country and forces the boy to follow him, not realizing that making the boy travel everywhere is precisely what prevents him from being fat).

Now, all of that being said, one of the big parts of the wendigo myth (that people took back gleefully to compare the wendigos to European werewolves and vampires) is that the wendigo usually starts out as a regular human being. In many stories the wendigo is either an evil spirit that possesses a human being, either a human that got turned into a supernatural being for one reason or another. Some claim that a human becomes a wendigo when they perform cannibalism – eating the flesh of one of your own kind is sure to turn you into the icy ghoul. Others rather claim that wendigos are humans who became consumed by their own greed or gluttony – living a life in excess dominated by your own appetites would curse you with the never-ending hunger. And some even claim that you can become “infected” by the wendigos simply by spending too much time alongside them, the wendigo’s mere presence corrupting everything around it. This part of the legend notably lead to the First Nations themselves considering the wendigo as more of a concept than an actual entity – as a metaphor for destructive greed and excessive consumption, as a symbol for the person suffering from a dangerous internal disharmony or breaking the order of a community, as a name to be given to sociopaths and evil people.

What else to say… Some people claim that saying the name “wendigo” or speaking about it will attract it. For others the wendigo is a nocturnal entity, hunting its victims at night and stopping its activities with dawn (and notably the wendigo has been associated with the owl). The wendigo is so hungry that it can actually commit self-cannibalism (it is one of the reasons wendigo’s lips are “tattered and bloody”, they chew on it ; and if you cut a wendigo’s limb it is will just suck the marrow from its own protruding bone). Killing a wendigo can be a hard feat, and is usually done either through fire, or cutting the wendigo’s body into little pieces – when the werewolf myth arrived in North America, the idea that silver could kill a wendigo also manifested itself. And other spellings of “wendigo” include “wiindigoo”, “windgo”, wendego”, “widjigo”, “wijigo”, “wentigo”, “wintsigo”, “wetiko” and many other… While I used “wendigos” as a plural for the article, know also that it is wrong as the proper plural is actually “windigoag” (or variations such as “windegoag” or “windikouk”). Oh, and according to Cree folklore a person turning into a wendigo can be cured if they are forced to ingest specific fatty animal meats and drink animal grease – during this “curing process”, which is basically a fattening cure, the victim might vomit pieces of ice, a sign they’re rejecting the wendigo spirit.

- - - - - - - - -

Now I need to bring up the elephant in the room.

The habit people have nowadays to depict the wendigo with antlers. He’ll be a half-beast half-human entity, usually depicted with a deer skull or a rotting stag head instead of a human face. You see that everywhere nowadays. And yet this element is NOT present in ANY of the original folkloric tales or legends of the First Nations. So where does it come from?

Well, it comes from a little movie called “Wendigo” and released in 2001. This movie was the first one who depicted a wendigo with the head of a deer – but it wasn’t actually an “artistic freedom”. In this particular movie the wendigo isn’t a “real” entity as rather a creature whose presence is ambiguous – the main characters seemingly becomes unhinged and loses his sanity throughout the movie, and the wendigo appears in his hallucinations as a malevolent entity torturing him. The reason the wendigo has a deer head? Because the movie’s plot begins when the main character gets into a fight with local hunters after killing a deer. The wendigo having a deer head was just another sign of how the entity embodied the very events and troubles the main character was in.

However somehow this depiction became massively popular – and after this movie, all next movies treating the wendigo had a deer head or stag head for the creature, and from the movies it spread to the fan-arts on the Internet, and then… well you know the rest. But what is even more ironic is that the 2001’s “Wendigo” was actually made by Larry Fessenden. The man behind the game “Until Dawn”. The game that has been hailed as the one who “finally got right” wendigos and who restored the wendigos “true appearance”. Fessenden accidentally created the very fake image that people praised the video game for combatting. Quite an irony X)

And even more interestingly, Fessenden actually did a third and even different depiction of the wendigo between his 2001 movie and his video game – because Fessenden LOVES the wendigo myth. It was his 2006 movie “The Last Winter”.

#cold winter #wendigo #first nations folklore #algonquian folklore

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teamxdark · 1 year

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Hi! I know that the map you posted of the world of Avalon is a few years old at this point but I kinda wanted to say a few things about it, if that's okay, because historically speaking there are a few weird little things that bugged me about it, like for example, using the Avalon close-up

Traditionally territory borders would coincide with geographical landmarks, like rivers, or mountains, both because they made for good defense and naturally separated cultures and because it was easy to mark on peace treaties when maps where hard to make accurately and differed wildly from each other. ("This side of the river is mine, this one is yours":Easy, no complaining and universal). You can see the river border for example in the United States, the king of Straight Lines on the border with Canada, or just in little areas on everywhere on europe. And mountain ranges are natural separators too. They arent shown in this map, but for example Italy and Spain are separated from the rest of Europe thanks to really tall mountains that both difficulted trade and cultural exchange and protected both territories.

In the Avalon map there are rivers, but they are just... Ignored? in the territory border? And I don't really think that trying to follow them even if just a little bit instead of making little zones in between river and neighbouring kingdom would break any lore and would make the map be more realistic and have a little bit of storytelling too, like what "Avalon is divided in 2 by natural lakes" tells. (The whole 'national pride and equality' comes from the french revolution era, the border civilians wouldn't really care about who governs them, since they probably kept their laws as kingdoms had multiple laws and cultures on the medieval ages, the Holy Roman Empire a great example of this)

There's a lot of little things that would define a kingdom's territory, like if they are a predominantly naval kingdom, or they have really good land travel, or if they are naturally hostile or naturally merchant-oriented and things like that can be used to define a set of differing kingdoms (For example, all of the kingdoms close to water seem to have some territory across sea, which unless you have a really strong merchant economy (like Carthage) or are just the global superpower of the era (Spain/Portugal, Britain/France, United States, etc) they probably would end up being conquered by the neighbours, getting separated from the territory from neglect of cultural differences, or just getting sold for being a black hole of funds)(Are all those kingdoms merchants? Lots of competition in the market then)

Maybe I talked too much. My bad. I just really like history and stuff. Please don't take this as negative, if I didn't like your stories I wouldn't have written so much.

Hope you have a nice day!

No worries at all!

Yeah I know they don't make much sense, but in all honesty I didn't work very hard on the maps. Kinda just generated them and then didn't save them so all I had were the screenshots.

But the point of them (for me at least) was to get more of an idea of how the world looked and where the kingdoms were and what places were bigger, etc. There's a lot of world building that can be made from maps, just like you said! And unfortunately I didn't have the time to dig into that before I lost the maps (and I'm not sure how well I would have done, either). The Avalon close up was mostly to show where Camelot was located in conjunction with Green Hill and Corbenic and Angel Village, again for my own personal understanding.

I may not be a great cartographer but it sounds like you certainly are! I'd love to hear more ideas you might have about the geography of Avalon (if you would like, of course!) And feel free to reimagine the mountains and rivers, I'm not married to their placements at all.

#Smash speaks.#Avalon Series.

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oflgtfol · 4 years

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those big green hills... the little creeks and rivers going around the hills that the highway had little bridges over..... when the road cut real close to the side of the hill and there was that weird rock cliff face thing with the netting over it..... the way the hills fade into the distance........ ohh DX

#for real i miss upstate so muchhhhhh #we started going up more frequently when i was older bc my grandparents moved up there #but even as a kid we went every few years #and i just remember as a kid being so fascinated by those rock things and the creeks #so its like yeah i have stronger memories of upstate from when i was older but also like #its always been something we've done . for like my entire life. and its just.. can we go back!!! please!!!#like the road my grandparents live on . at the end of it is a fairly big pond / small lake #its not public property though but i always stared at it so longingly like i wanted to hang out there #but it was private so i couldnt lol </3 #but there was also always this dilapidated farm stand looking thing but like. it was always empty #but it was so cool looking and always something i tried to take a pic of whenever we drove past #and its like. stuff like that. like that weird farm stand thing. the private lake. the sunsets over the hills viewed from my #grandparents' giant ass backyard #their back porch that had netting all around it bc the bugs were so bad and how we'd always hang out there at night playing board games #LIKE I MISS IT.. ITS MY CHILDHOOD MAN AND I MISS IT #as much as im fond of long island like. geographically. its also like. certainly Something to be surroundd by like #concrete and cars and metal and shit like that with only the barest glimpses of nature #having to drive 10-20+ minutes away to find the nearest nature preserve to see any amount f nature #and even then . literally EVERYONE has tht idea so you're constantly surrounded by other people walking the same trails as you #so even though its Nature you still feel like. painfully aware that this is long island and theres people everywhere #but upstate? it actually feels like actual nature. literally nothing like that on long island #and i feel like im goin stir crazy the longer i go without it LOL #honestly it probably says something that the longer ive gone without having visited upstate. the more im getting into like #finding nature preserves and hiking trails and stuff. like i wonder if there is a correlation LOL #anyway the one thing long island has over upstate though is the marshes. there are no marshes up there #but my god there's forests and hills and rocky cliff faces and stuff so DX #brot posts

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jj-babebank · 3 years

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Camp Willowdale / JJ Maybank AU / PART 8

Synopsis: Camp Willowdale is buzzing with new campers. It’s Caroline Windsor’s first year as a camp counsellor after attending the camp as a camper for ten years. Little does she know that this year Willowdale Lake is going to be a little different from what she is used to it being…

Warnings: future chapters may include curse words, mentions of drugs, mentions of alcohol, mentions of sexual activities, mentions of death.

Pairings: JJ Maybank x fem OC Part 1 ; Part 2 ; Part 3 ; Part 4; Part 5 ; Part 6 ; Part 7

Masterlist

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Part 8 –

49 days of summer camp left

Caroline sat in her bed, hugging her knees against her chest. Her and JJ had the afternoon off and despite his attempts to lure her into hanging out, and her infatuation with the boy, she’d turned him down, wanting to spend a few hours alone with herself to compose her thoughts. It had been exactly two weeks since the night Madison disappeared. No one had bothered to mess with the campers since then, the bonfire area hadn’t been touched and no dead animals were found in anyone’s suitcase. To the rest of the camp, this seemed like victory; to Caroline – it seemed like the calm before the storm.

During their first day at Camp Willowdale, all of the counselors had been given a Willowdale-branded set of items they’d have to use during their stay. It came with the obvious STAFF t-shirts, sweaters and hats, but it also consisted of other things – such as the thermoses Caroline and JJ were still using to sneak whiskey into their daily routines, and notebooks in which they were advised to plan out their group’s daily schedules. Caroline however had been using her notebook for other purposes. She’d become so obsessed with Madison’s case, that every little thing that happened on camp grounds and seemed even a little out of the ordinary, immediately became a clue to her, which she’d hastily scribble down in her notebook. It had only been two weeks since the disappearance of Madison Hague and Caroline had already filled about a quarter of the pages of her hefty notebook with potential clues and leads. She kept rereading her notes, trying to think of something – anything – that they could do to help them solve the mystery, however nothing was coming to her. Ever since the dress incident, Caroline and her friends hadn’t found anything else that could relate to Madison, though Caroline was glad that none of them had given up on their mission.

Caroline was so deep in her own thoughts, she nearly jumped at the sound of a sudden knock on the door. She quickly closed her notebook and tucked it under her mattress and went to open the door, revealing a panting JJ leaning on the doorframe.

“Hey, C,” he breathed.

“JJ, what’re you doing here? I told you I -”

JJ cut her off by pushing past her and walking into her cabin, “Yeah, yeah, you wanna be alone, I know,” he sat on her bed, taking his snapback off, “but I was thinking… you’ve been so busy with the kids and with the whole Madison thing, and believe me – I really appreciate you for being like that, but -”

Caroline crossed her arms, “Where are you going with this?”

JJ sighed, “You’ve just totally forgotten how to have fun, C,” he said, “The primary reason that we all came here was to have fun and look at you – you barely eat, or sleep, or do anything other than your counselor duties and this whole Madison investigation thing…” JJ sighed again, looking at the hat in his lap and playing with its adjustable strap, “All I’m saying, C, is what if Madison really did go home and you’ve just wasted all this energy on nothing…Thing is,” JJ looked up into her eyes, “I miss you, the old you, and I know that that you’s still somewhere in there, it’s just this whole Madison thing blocking it.” he placed the hat back on his head and stood up, walking towards Caroline, “Hang out with me now,” he said, stopping directly in front of her and lifting her chin up so that she was facing him, “And I promise we’ll think about Madison later,”

Caroline couldn’t really process what was going on. JJ was touching her and standing in such an intimate distance from her, that she could basically feel his breath on her face. For a second she forgot all about Madison, and the dead owl, and the bonfire area. All she could think about was JJ Maybank, who had just told her that he misses her and wants to “hang out with her”. Caroline stood there, lost in thought. What if he was right? What if Madison really did go home and that dress never even belonged to her? What if it was Jenna Kinley’s all along and Sarah had just gotten the perfume wrong? What if JJ really did miss her because he liked her as more than a friend? No, no, that couldn’t be it. But what if –

“Um, Carrie?” JJ’s voice suddenly broke her out of her trans, “So d’you wanna do something together or -”

“Yes!” she said, a little too excitedly for her own taste, of course I’d like to hang out with you, JJ, she thought, “What do you want to do?”

JJ’s face immediately lit up at her words, “Well I was thinking perhaps a picnic?”

Caroline raised an eyebrow, “Don’t picnics require food? We don’t have access to anything unless it’s mealtime,”

“Yeah, but we do have whiskey,” JJ winked with a mischievous look on his face, walking towards the storage room of the girls’ cabin where they still had a few bottles of alcohol left.

Caroline rolled her eyes but smiled nonetheless – this was going to finally be her first date with JJ Maybank. Well, sort of.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The afternoon sun was low in the sky, casting a beautiful orange reflection onto the peaceful water of lake Willowdale. Caroline and JJ had taken a seat on the lakefront, drinking their whiskeys and admiring the sunset, reminiscing the days when they were kids again.

“D’you remember that one summer when Rafe Cameron got food poisoning and ended up barfing on stage at the Will-all-hail banquet?” JJ laughed at the memory.

Caroline frowned, thinking about it, “Beats having Rafe Cameron as your counselor by a mile,”

JJ turned to look at her, eyebrows raised, “Rafe was a counselor here?” his tone almost sounding amused.

Caroline nodded, “Oh yeah,” she smirked, “For the same reason as Sarah – too stuck up for his own good so their dad shipped him over here as a punishment,”

JJ snorted, “I mean that family is pretty far up their own ass,”

“They have a sister too,” said Caroline, “I haven’t seen her around here though, so we at least know that one of them must be doing something right,”

The pair laughed at the thought of their spoiled friend and her older brother.

“Man, I missed this place,” said JJ suddenly, leaning back on his elbows.

His tone sounded different as he looked at the horizon and Caroline could sense that something wasn’t right, “Yeah, I’ve been meaning to ask -”

“Parents got divorced,” JJ quickly explained, “And unfortunately for me, my dad got custody,” he sighed, “Somehow my mom was deemed ‘incapable’ of taking care of me because she couldn’t financially afford to. Load of bullshit, if you ask me,”

“But my mom -”

“Yeah, they still talk,” said JJ, knowing what Caroline was about to say, “I still see my mom every other weekend, you know, it’s not the end of the world,” he smiled at Caroline reassuringly, “It’s just living with my old man meant working for my cut at home, which also meant summer jobs back in Kildare,”

“So that’s where you’ve been all this time…” whispered Caroline, mostly to herself, however JJ heard her.

“Yeah,” he responded, “Now that I’m old enough to be a counselor here and actually get paid for coming to summer camp I thought why not? Besides, your mom did tip mine off that you’d be here too,” he winked at Caroline, making her blush.

“Yeah, about that,” she said apologetically, “My mom likes to yap a lot, I wouldn’t take most of what she says seriously,”

“Well you are here, aren’t you?” said JJ, his face slightly leaning in towards Caroline’s.

Holy shit, this was it. Caroline was about to kiss JJ Maybank after a decade of fawning over him. Shit, shit, shit, she hadn’t really kissed anyone since that idiot from her class planted one on her at prom. What if she was a bad kisser? What if she’d forgotten how to kiss? As JJ closed his eyes and leaned even closer, Caroline decided to push the doubtful thoughts to the side as she closed her eyes too, leaning in towards him too. Their faces were inches apart, hearts pounding in their chests and, just as their lips were finally about to meet –

“There you are!” Sarah’s loud voice came from the hill behind them, startling them and making them both jump and immediately pull apart and straighten up. John B stumbled after her.

Caroline coughed awkwardly, trying to cover up the shame and embarrassment she was currently feeling, “Sarah… what are you doing here?”

With a knowing smirk on her face, Sarah put both hands on her hips, “Nothing,” she sing-sang, obviously finding the whole situation hilarious, “I’m sure it can wait,” she winked down at Caroline, while John B was waving around frantically behind Sarah at JJ, mouthing the words “DID YOU BONE?!” quite obviously.

JJ groaned as he stood up, helping Caroline up as well, “We’re all yours now, Sarah, what’s up?”

“Well me and John B had the afternoon free as well, so we went out front to his van and you’ll never believe what was taped to the door,”

“Wait, why’d you go to his van in the first place?”

Sarah rolled her eyes, “That’s beside the point now, Carrie, look” she shoved a piece of paper in the girl’s hands.

As Caroline unfolded the paper, the group gathered around her to look at what was written on it - 41° 56’ 54.3732” N, 87° 39’ 19.2024” W.

“I have no idea what that means though,” confessed Sarah.

“Looks like coordinates to me,” said JJ.

“Hey, that’s what I said!” gasped John B, “But Sarah didn’t want to believe me,”

“Does anyone know how to read geographical coordinates?” JJ looked at his friends.

“Do I look like Google Maps to you?” asked Sarah.

“You’re right,” Caroline said as an idea sparked in her mind, “We can’t read coordinates, but I know someone who can,”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`

“I’m just saying, Miss P,” JJ spoke confidently once the group was inside Pricilla’s office, “Now’s about the best time to host the traditional yearly treasure hunt,”

Pricilla squinted up at JJ through her pink glasses from where she was sat at her desk, “Keep talking, Maybank,”

“Don’t you think it’s a bit odd that it’s already been two weeks and none of these kids can read a compass yet?” continued JJ, earning a slow nod from the camp director, “Think about it, Miss P – Willowdale ain’t Willowdale without its treasure hunt,”

As JJ spoke, the rest of the group were silently praying behind him that his charismatic way with manipulating will work on Pricilla, giving them an excuse to ask her to decipher the mysterious coordinates they had gotten their hands onto. The old lady leaned back in her old leather chair and looked at JJ skeptically for a while, adding to the already built up tension.

“Give me a few days to map out the course and set up the coordinates,” she finally spoke, causing everyone in the group to silently cheer behind JJ. As they thanked her and turned to leave, she spoke up again, “Oh, and Maybank,” she called, everyone turning to look at her, “No funny business,”

~~~~~~~~~~~~

A/N: Finally some normal camp activities. Thank you for reading so far, I would greatly appreciate you letting me know what you think about the story and the characters xxx

tags: @k-k0129 ; @hayleyy-l ; @marvellover04 ; @dumbasscorn ; @thrown-off-her-rhythm

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nugnthopkns · 3 years

Text

dance me to the end of love (iii)

word count: 4.3k

warnings: fem!oc, cursing, potential percy jackson & the olympians spoilers, alcohol consumption, motion sickness and vomiting

series masterpost: here

a/n: this took me a hot sec to finish but here it is! there's a dumb little latin joke in here but that's just because i'm a nerd lmao

Ryan is certainly giving Bette a run for her money in the best friend department.

Magdalene has no intentions of usurping her best friend, but Ryan is quickly becoming the person she talks to most frequently. It started on social media but quickly moved to regular texting, both of them being twenty-five and capable of communicating through more normal channels. The text thread between them isn’t indicative of their newfound friendship – it looks like they’ve been friends since high school. At any given moment at least three conversations are going on, and Magdalene regularly sends him random updates throughout the day. Ryan likes hearing about any interesting artefacts she encounters at work so she keeps mental notes to tell him during their frequent phone calls.

Despite talking to him almost constantly, Magdalene hasn’t seen Ryan since they grabbed lunch at Barn Owl nearly two weeks ago. The lake house trip is a couple days out, and she’s been busy trying to get all her ducks in a row. At work, the current project is coming to an end and Magdalene will be sad to see it go – it’s the first thing she’s been on from start to finish. She’s got a neighbour coming to spend time with Caligula while she’s away so he doesn’t get too upset. Though the days are passing by in a haze as she tries to get ready, Magdalene is excited to get away for a little bit. It’s been a few years since she’s left Denver for more than a night, electing to skip on Bette’s previous vacation invites, and it will be nice to slow down. Life is moving at a comfortable pace, but having some time to pause and breathe will keep Magdalene from feeling too overwhelmed.

Halfway through her last day of work, Magdalene gets a text from Ryan that makes her nearly double over in laughter.

Julius Caesar walks into a bar and says to the bartender “I’ll have a Martinus please!” The bartender replies “Don’t you mean a Martini?” Caesar shakes his head and says “If I wanted double I would have said so.”

It takes her a minute to catch her breath, which piques June’s curiosity. Magdalene recites the joke and her boss rolls her eyes and shakes her head, but does let out a chuckle.

June didn’t think it was funny, but I did. Thank you for making today infinitely better. You riding with us tomorrow?

Magdalene tucks her phone back into her purse, determined to remain focused for the last few hours, and misses the reply telling her that Ryan won’t be riding with Bette, Tyson, and herself, but rather with Cale and his girlfriend to leave enough space for all the gear getting brought. She doesn’t see it until she’s walking across the parking lot to her car and it fills her with a sadness that doesn’t make much sense. He’ll be there for the entire week, so does it matter that he’ll be in a different car for the four hour drive? Magdalene has a sinking suspicion about why she’s upset, but she pushes it down. There’s no space in your life for a relationship right now, she reminds herself as she unlocks the door to her apartment. Caligula is waiting patiently at the door and distracts her thoughts from the handsome man with the kind smile that’s been all she can think about recently.

The cat is incredibly perceptive and knows the regular routine is going to change, making him particularly clingy. He follows Magdalene as she finishes packing, meowing and begging for pets, and she considers bailing on her friends. Caligula has mild separation anxiety and Magdalene doesn’t go away often partly because of it – though another reason is her homebody nature. Only the thought of seeing Ryan keeps her from hanging all her clothes back up.

“Don’t worry little boots,” she coos, “I won’t be gone long. Maria is going to check on you while I’m away, and I’ll be home before you know it.”

It seems ridiculous to speak to her pet as though it’s a child, but Magdalene knows Caligula comprehends what she’s saying. He’s always been smart, and the two of them share a bond that’s hard to explain. She picks him up, puts him in the pocket of her hoodie, and they spend the rest of the night packing and dancing along to the radio.

☼☼☼☼

Bette forgot to mention that the road to the lake house is winding, and Magdalene spends the entire ride with her head between her knees. Motion sickness is something that unfortunately plagues her during journeys longer than a couple of hours and she wishes she would have thought to take anti-nausea medication before leaving the house. Tyson tries to crack a joke about her being a bad passenger, but his girlfriend swats his arm and passes her friend a water bottle with a concerned smile. The two of them speak in hushed tones, almost certainly for Magdalene's benefit, and she does her best not to throw up on the floor of Tyson’s car. After what feels like two decades the vehicle rolls to a stop at the end of a gravel path.

“Mags, we’re here,” Bette says softly, praying that her friend will begin to feel better after stretching her legs and feeling firm ground underneath her.

There’s an unintelligible groan from Magdalene, but she rises out of the car and stumbles into the house. Tyson and Bette insist that she rest and they’ll handle the unloading of the car, so she crawls into one of the empty beds and falls asleep as soon as her head touches the pillow. It’s a dreamless slumber, one fuelled by the pure exhaustion of battling illness while travelling, and when she awakes hours later Magdalene feels oddly refreshed. Her energy level is still relatively low, but she knows that intaking food won’t be an issue.

Padding down the stairs as quiet as possible in an effort to not break the peaceful atmosphere, Magdalene is met with a quiet house. She’s utterly confused – she didn’t sleep long enough to miss dinner and judging by the way the sun is low in the final car full of people should be arriving any minute. For a moment she thinks the group left her in the mountains alone, but then the sound of a trunk closing breaks the silence.

“I fucking told you bro, you should have let me drive!”

Ryan’s voice echoes in Magdalene's ears and her heart skips a beat. She didn’t realize how much she had missed him or how excited she is to see him. Despite everything inside of her saying she should run into his arms Magdalene stays put in the kitchen, running the tap to get a glass of water. She focuses on the mountain on the other end of the lake, framing the setting sun and creating a postcard ready photo. The camera app on her phone is open and angles for the best shot are found. Ryan tumbles through the door a second later, arms filled to the brim with luggage and bags of food.

He drops them the second he sees her, running up behind her and lifting her off the ground. “Mags! Cale almost hit a deer!”

The shock of Ryan’s onslaught of affection catches her off guard, and Magdalene shakes her hand, forcing the picture to turn out as nothing but a blur.

“No hello?” She laughs as Ryan lets her feet touch down on the wooden floor. “It’s the least you could give me after destroying my chance of getting a National Geographic worthy picture.”

He smiles but doesn’t let his hands drop from their perch on her waist. “There’s six more days for you to nail it. I’ll even help if you ask.”

Other bodies enter the house then, causing Magdalene to slink away from Ryan’s touch even though it was the last thing she wanted to do. They’re simply friends, and she doesn’t want Bette to get any ideas. The last thing Magdalene needs on her plate right now is her best friend forcing her to paint a custom denim jacket with Ryan’s number across the back. “I can’t believe you almost hit a deer,” Tyson sighs in disbelief.

“It wasn’t even close,” Cale grumbles, picking up his bags and stomping off to find a place to claim as his own the next couple of days. A petite redhead follows after him, giving a small wave to those in the kitchen before scurrying away. When she asks, Ryan tells Magdalene the girl’s name is Livy, and that she’s Cale’s girlfriend from back home.

Everyone shrugs at his moodiness and disperses. Bette and Tyson stay in the kitchen to make dinner, Ryan goes to claim the final room, and Magdalene slips outside to sit on the patio furniture. The sun has dropped drastically in the past five minutes, causing the air to chill. She wraps her arms tighter around her legs and watches a pair of birds fly over the lake below. It’s so peaceful, a complete one-eighty from the insanity of her life in Denver, and Magdalene thinks about never leaving. She knows it’s impossible, but as she closes her eyes and listens to the quiet laughter of her friends inside the idea seems like a pretty good one.

The sliding door creaks open and Ryan goes through as quietly as possible. He tosses a sweater in Magdalene’s direction as he walks over, plopping down beside her on the small couch.

“Thanks,” she mumbles, slipping the fabric over her head. “I didn’t realize how cold it had actually gotten.”

He smiles in response and shuffles his body a little closer to create extra warmth. Magdalene leans into him, trying to appear casual even though her heart is beating rapidly, and pulls on the strings of the sweater Ryan gave her.

“So, are you excited for this week?”

It’s more awkward than she thought it would be – seeing him in person again, especially since they’ve been texting almost constantly, and the words kind of stick in her throat.

“Honestly? Now that I’m here I am, but I was a little leery about taking time off,” Ryan explains, detailing how he’s trying to improve some aspects of his two-way play and is worried his progress will plateau. Magdalene understands and shares her own worries about taking time off work even if her boss encouraged it.

After catching up quickly and running out of things to say, the pair of them sit in silence watching the sun set until they’re called inside for dinner. It’s nice to just exist, especially with Ryan beside her, and Magdalene feels her heart sink as they separate and he goes to make sure Cale isn’t actually mad at him.

☼☼☼☼

It storms the first two days at the lake house, forcing everyone to stay inside. Tyson complains about how he has less time to drive the boat that came with the property but the others take it in stride. Magdalene spends most of the time reading for pleasure, something she hasn’t been able to do much of the past few years, and Ryan joins her for large chunks of the time. It turns out that he too is an avid reader, and the two of them discuss their favourite novels and series while the other four play board games.

“So you’re telling me you wish Annabeth would have joined the Hunters of Artemis?” Magdalene shrieks in shock, almost knocking the wine out of her glass as her arms flail in disbelief.

“I think it made sense for her to,” Ryan defends.

“But she’s perfect for Percy!”

He sticks to his guns. “I’m not saying she isn’t. I just think that at the time the offer was presented it was the most logical choice. You can’t tell me you haven’t thought about what would have happened if she did.”

She ducks her head in defeat because she had imagined it, on many occasions in fact. When reading the series for the first time in middle school Magdalene had desperately hoped Annabeth would choose the Hunters over Camp Half-Blood, gaining the family she herself never was privy to. They return to reading quietly beside each other, occasionally knocking elbows when trying to turn a page.

Tuesday brings sunshine and clear skies, which means Tyson is trying to corral everyone into the boat as soon as they’re up. Magdalene tries her hardest to get out of it but her pleas fall on deaf ears.

“You’ll be fine, stop being such a wimp,” Cale jests. She knows that he’s just anxious to soak up some sun, but the words hurt more than Magdalene would have liked them to.

Livy swats her boyfriend across the chest. “Enough! If she doesn’t want to come she doesn’t have to.” The smaller girl sends her a kind smile before speaking low enough that only Magdalene can hear her. “I know your book is just getting good and you look like the kind of person who needs alone time to function properly. Enjoy yourself.”

Seemingly excused from the day’s festivities, Magdalene gives a sheepish wave before climbing the small hill to the house. Ryan meets her halfway and is appalled when he hears of her plans.

“Nope, I don’t think so. You’re not leaving me alone to be the ultimate third wheel!”

He has her off the ground and over his shoulder in a millisecond, jogging lightly to catch up with the rest of the group. Magdalene’s laugh bounces off the tree lined shore, and she’s too busy having fun shrieking at Ryan to complain about being forced to spend all day on a boat away from her book. Tyson peels away from the dock before she can regret tagging along, and Bette tugs Magdalene to the bow.

The two girls chat quietly, giggling and sipping on the mimosas they made earlier. Magdalene isn’t a huge day drinker, but Bette makes sure there’s more orange juice than champagne to make her feel less guilty. Livy joins them a while later after becoming sick of the boys and their shenanigans. It’s nice to hang out with a group of girls that aren’t competing for the top spot in a class, Magdalene decides, and she revels in the stories they tell of going to hockey games and babysitting the children of players so they can catch a break. Twinges of jealousy creep up at the wonderful family dynamic the Avalanche seem to have, but she stomachs them. She reminds herself that other people deserve to have support systems and excuses herself from the conversation.

Magdalene slides into the free space beside Ryan, and without thinking he wraps an arm around her shoulder. It feels so natural that she wonders if it’s how he greets all his friends, but the looks of shock and Tyson and Cale’s faces say otherwise. After a bit more cruising they find a small bay to anchor in for a while. The sun had climbed to the middle of the sky and is unbearably warm, leaving everyone no choice but to jump into the water to cool off. Magdalene does her best to float peacefully a short distance away from the group but is somehow brought into a splashing war because the teams aren’t equal.

Eventually the constant barrage of water chills her to the bone, and Magdalene swims back to the boat. She watches from the sidelines and cheers for her old teammates with a towel wrapped snugly around her. Ryan breaks from the group too, insisting it isn’t fair to have teams on unequal strength. Once dry, he picks up the baseball cap he brought and places it delicately on Magdalene’s head.

“Your cheeks are starting to go pink and I don’t want you to burn,” he explains, passing her a bottle of sunscreen as well.

“Thanks Ry.”

They muse about the idyllic beauty of the scene in front of them until everyone rejoins them. For reasons unbeknownst to Magdalene Tyson is in a rush to get back to the house, which leads to him driving very fast and a little erratically. The contents of her stomach threaten to come up but she holds them down, tightening her grip on the leather seat. A wave crests and Tyson hits it head on, causing the boat to lurch and rock. Magdalene knows it’s going to happen before it does and leans over the side to save a mess from being created. All the alcohol and food she’d consumed throughout the day is no longer in her body, and heat creeps up the back of her neck. She’s embarrassed – what twenty-five year old gets sea sick?

“Are you okay?” Ryan asked, not bothering to hide the concern in his voice.

She tries to smile but it comes out more like a grimace. “I just, uh, get motion sick really easily.” Bette passes her a water bottle and she drinks it quickly, eager to get the taste out of her mouth.

Ryan lets Magdalene curl into his side the rest of the way home, and rubs comforting circles on her back to ease her discomfort, doing his best to ignore the stares from his friends.

☼☼☼☼

The trip comes to an end much more quickly than Magdalene would have liked. Tomorrow morning they’ll pack up and drive back to Denver, returning to their normal hectic schedules. Cale and Livy are heading back to Alberta for the rest of the summer, and Bette and Tyson will be going for a visit as well. She’s heard Ryan mention going home in passing, which most likely means he doesn’t have plans to stay. Magdalene will be all alone in Colorado, but she’s used to it. The only issue being friends with professional athletes is that they leave. She’s been dealing with the loss since Bette and Tyson got together years ago – having them around as her support system most of the year and then them disappearing for a couple of months.

Not wanting to think about how soon she’ll be alone, Magdalene heads outside and starts a campfire. It’s a skill she picked up as a kid and it has come in handy over the years. The newspaper crinkles under the flame from the lighter, and soon the kindling is burning well. Everyone else is still inside, cleaning up from dinner and preparing for one last night in paradise. She places a few blocks of wood in the fire pit once there’s a good enough flame and curls up in a chair, lost in thought about what comes next. There’s rustling from somewhere behind her but she pays it no mind, assuming it’s a small animal wandering through the forest.

“Can I offer you some company?” a voice says softly, waiting for a response. The movement wasn’t a raccoon but in fact Ryan, and Magdalene gestures at the chair beside her with a smile.

He passes her a glass of white wine, which she takes with an appreciative hum. They sit in silence for a moment, admiring the beauty of the setting sun. “I’m going to miss it,” Ryan sighs, leaning back in his chair and extending his legs.

She nods. “Me too. It’s so quiet up here. Denver gets too loud sometimes.”

“Tell me about it. I’m not just going to miss the lake though, it’s also lounging around and not having to worry about hockey. And you.”

The ending comes out rushed, and Magdalene isn’t sure she heard him correctly. “Me?”

Ryan looks at her like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “Yes you. Why wouldn’t I? You’re funny, smart, and catch all of my West Wing references. There’s no one who gets me quite like you, even back home.”

It takes her by surprise. They’ve only known each other for a few months, and only really started associating after the party at Bette and Tyson’s. There has to be somebody who knows him better than she does. When she voices her opinion Ryan just scoffs, saying that people treat him as one-dimensional because he plays hockey. Somehow the conversation shifts to Magdalene, and when she lets it slip she gets lonely in Denver without her friends, Ryan asks the question she’s been dreading.

“So why don’t you get a boyfriend?”

“I can’t just get a boyfriend because my friends are gone,” she laughs, but there’s an edge to it, like she’s unsure of where this will go and how to question the follow ups.

He rolls his eyes. “I know that, but like, I don’t know, wouldn’t it be nice to not be alone all the time?”

It would be, Magdalene thinks, but she just shrugs. “I guess I’m not looking for a relationship right now. I just finished school and for the first time in a long time I can focus on myself.” She leaves out the part where Ryan gives her butterflies and that if he asked she’d probably jump headfirst into a relationship with him.

The topic is dropped then because Tyson comes out of the house screaming about the night is going to be wild because it’s their last together for a while. Magdalene and Ryan share a look of mild panic, but both of them are itching to have fun with friends so they raise their glasses in salute before finishing them in one gulp.

Magdalene drinks more than she should and wakes in the morning with a killer hangover. It seems that no one else is better off though, all stumbling around looking for Advil and coffee like it’s going to be their last meal. Packing up takes a bit longer than expected, but they’re still out before the official checkout time. There’s a bit of discourse on who Magdalene will travel home with. Bette wants her in Tyson’s car, no doubt to talk about how close her and Ryan seem to be, but Cale offers to bring her with them. His reasoning is that Ryan is driving him and Livy directly to the airport, and having the front seat could be good for her motion sickness. It’s ultimately Magdalene’s choice and the idea of having more time with Ryan before he leaves is too enticing to pass up. She bids her other friends goodbye, promising to come over for dinner before they fly out, and climbs into the cab of Cale’s truck.

Once again she’s a less than ideal passenger, but this time it’s because she sleeps the entire way back to Denver. The drinking took it out of her and coupled with the queasiness in her stomach from the winding roads sleep is the only thing that makes sense. So much for extra time with Ryan she thinks as she wakes up in the airport parking lot.

“Sleeping beauty has risen!” Ryan chuckles, “Why don’t you get out and stretch your legs for a sec? We have the parking spot for another fifteen minutes.”

Magdalene does as suggested because truthfully her joints are a little stiff, and finds Cale and Livy grabbing their bags from the back. She hugs them goodbye and wishes them safe travels, which Cale returns with a warning not to get into too much trouble before heading for the entrance. Once both of them are safely inside the confines of the airport, Ryan and Magdalene get back in the vehicle and finish the last leg of the trip.

She directs Ryan to her apartment complex, and he mentions that he’s never been in this area of the city. “That’s because you have no need to be around a bunch of university kids,” she laughs. Once they pull into the parking lot, he offers to help her take up her bag. It’s only a small suitcase Magdalene could definitely handle herself, but she wants him to come up, to prolong her time with him.

Magdalene’s keys jingle in the lock as the door opens. Ryan follows her in and shuts the door carefully, not wanting to disrupt the aura of peace that permeates the space. From what he can tell, the average size apartment is the perfect reflection of Magdalene – packed full of books and plants and feels very put together despite the owner being only twenty-five. After their shoes find a home on the boot rack and the coats they brought for the drive home are hung in the closet she leads Ryan into the living room. There’s a soft purring by his feet, and Ryan looks down to see an animal. He never pegged Magdalene as someone to keep pets.

“Who’s this?” he asks, bending down to pet the small white cat.

“That’s Caligula.”

A puzzled look graces Ryan’s features. “Who?”

“Caligula,” Madalene giggles. “You can call him little boots if you’d like. He’ll respond.” She picks up the animal when it comes to her and scratches gently behind its ear.

“Why would you name your cat something dumb like Caligula, and why does it respond to little boots?”

It’s then the woman realizes that not everyone understands the reference. “Caligula was the third emperor of Rome,” she explains, “But his real name was Gaius. He gained the nickname Caligula as a child and it just stuck. It translates to little boots in Latin.”

Ryan is in awe of Magdalene for what feels like the millionth time. Of course someone as smart as her would have a crazy name for a pet and have the knowledge to back it up. He feels his chest tighten with affection but he wills it away. She isn’t looking for anything right now, he reminds himself. Magdalene’s self-professed inability to reciprocate his feelings is frustrating, but Ryan knows he’d wait forever for her.

☼☼☼☼

additional notes: catch some extra content here!

taglist: @scrunchmakar @marcoscandellas @toplinetommy @ricohenrique @lovethepreds @cutiesara23 @hockeyallthetime @stlbluesbrat21 (add yourself to the taglist!)

#ryan graves imagine #ryan graves x oc #ryan graves fic #colorado avalanche imagine #nhl imagine #nhl fic #hockey imagine #hockey fic #cwrites #dmtteol

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candycorncarl · 4 years

Text

Right Here, Right Now

Heyyyy guysss :) Not only is this my first post to this blog this is the first time I’ve written in a long time. I was listening to Kiss U Right Now by DUCKWRTH and a small idea I got from the song turned into this! I recommend playing the song when you get to that part of the story ;)))

Description: You've always been able to feel his eyes on you, his presence when you're in the same room is unmistakable. Yet he never gets too close to touch. Until right here, right now. Warnings: angst, case discussions, alcohol Word Count: 4.6k

Part 1

You could not wait for today to be over. It's been filled with paperwork that always seems to be never ending, which turns into never ending coffee, which turns into you fidgeting for most of the day. Unwinding at Garcia's place tonight was all you could look forward to. Starting to zone out you stare blankly at your computer while twirling your pen in between your fingers. You are finally pulled away from the screen by Emily approaching your desk. She sits on the edge of your desk and you watch her roll her eyes.

"So how many bottles of wine do I bring to girls night tonight?" She sounded just as fed up with today as you were.

You chuckle and hold up all ten fingers raising your eyebrows as you both begin laughing. As you turn to face Emily you notice Spencer looking at you. It was subtle with his head down and eyes up not wanting anyone to notice, especially you. He quickly glances away, eyes darting back to his work while biting his cheek. The two of you seemed to share these small unspoken conversations more than you actually talked. You try to focus back on Emily telling you about her bad nights sleep. Luckily JJ serves as your distraction from Spencer as she walks up to your desk.

"Garcia wants to know everyones snack choices for tonight. I'm bringing a variety pack of chips. Henry's soccer team will just have to settle on fruit snacks tomorrow." JJ says as she raises her eyebrows and tilts her head. You all giggle but you can feel Spencer peeking up at you again. You've always been able to feel when his eyes are on you.

"Well you can tell Garcia mine will be that amazing ice cream she can only seem to find." You smirk.

"You know I can't pass up the chance to indulge in some oreos." Emily says as she sticks her tongue out from the corner of her mouth.

"Ohh you kill me every time with the oreos. My guilty pleasure!" JJ groans before heading off to relay the snack list to Garcia.

Emily pats her hand against your desk a couple times before heading back to her own. Suddenly you hear Hotch announce "We've got a case" from above. He marches over to the conference room. Emily looks at you while groaning, and you drop your head in defeat.

"Well that was fun while it lasted." You mumble as you all begin making your way across the bullpen.

As you all file into the room you see Spencer right behind you. Taking a second you notice how nice he smells you say a quick prayer in hopes he sits next to you. Suddenly Rossi plops down in the seat instead replacing Spencers cologne with the smell of cigars. You glance up at Spencer for a split second and he returns the quick exchange taking the seat across the table. Suddenly he feels so far away.

"How is that every time I get a fresh set of cigars we get a case?" Rossi sighs. Normally you would joke with him but you can't help but be a little annoyed.

"Maybe it's a sign to stop." You say dryly the annoyance more apparent in your voice than you meant it to be. He frowns at you along with a few others, obviously surprised by the reply from you. Feeling guilty you go to say sorry before Spencer cuts you off.

"Studies show cigar smoking causes 9,000 premature deaths annually." He says turning to stare at the screen.

"Well I think with this job I'm willing to risk the odds." Rossi says as he leans back in his chair. The team is quiet for a second. Still feeling a little embarrassed you glare at Spencer before Garcia walks in. As the files are being passed around the table she starts explaining the case.

"3 bodies have been found around the Myakka River in Florida and they think the cause of death was poison. All random, all within the past 4 months. If the unsub sticks to his timeline we have a week to find him before he strikes again."

"Why are we just now hearing about this?" Derek asks.

"2 of the victims were found by alligators in the area. So running tests on them took longer than normal." Penelope replies sadly.

"He's betting on the alligators finding them, not people. The alligators clearly didn't want much to do with them though." Emily looks over they pictures in her file.

"So whatever they're being poisoned with is strong enough to stop hungry alligators?" JJ says doubtfully.

"It's more likely that the alligators were able to detect they were sick in some way before fully... continuing further." Spencer says as the team groans in sympathy.

You wait for Hotch to give the go. "Alright, wheels up in 30."

________________________

Stepping onto the jet you notice the back of Spencer's head in his seat. You make you way over and sit in the seat next to him.

"Um so why did you defend me earlier? I was kind of a bitch to Rossi back there." You peer at him still feeling slightly embarrassed from the team seeing what happened. Your thumbs twiddling in your lap. He just stares at his book and scrunches his nose. You wait for a response before letting out a sigh and standing up.

"Just making sure he knew the facts." He stays focused on the book and doesn't elaborate any further.

You move to the back of the jet waiting for the rest of the team. It's so hard to read Spencer. He doesn't talk to you as much, but you can always feel his presence when you're in the room together. Frustrated in him not wanting to talk more you rest your head on the back of the seat and twist your hair around your finger, he glances at you one more time as the team files in.

After going over the case on the jet Hotch starts pairing you off into groups. "Prentiss and Morgan head over to the M.E to see what else you can find. Rossi, JJ, and I will head to the dumpsites. Reid and Y/n set up at the station and start working on a geographical profile."

You felt your breath hitch for a moment as you glance over at Spencer to acknowledge the pairing. He keeps his eyes on Hotch. As the flight lands everyone begins pairing off into their groups. Getting to the SUV's Spencer climbs into the passenger seat and you quickly start driving. You were feeling a little nervous with Spencer now. It had been awhile since you've been teamed up even though you two tend to work well together. Despite the lack of personal conversations the two of you had, working with him was easy. The silence was finally broken when you worked up the courage to speak.

"I noticed you were writing down some notes earlier. Do you want to share?" You asked, biting the inside of your cheek.

"Why were you watching me?" He looked over at you finally.

"I- I wasn't watching you. I just happened to notice." Furrowing your brows you glance over at Spencer.

"The bodies all seem to be within a 15 mile radius of one another. There's something within that area of the lake he's attached to." He says with a frown staring out the window.

"Well we've ruined whatever plans he's made finding his dumpsites." You start to call Garcia.

"Sugar, spice, and everything nice. Hello Blossom to my Buttercup!" She says with such excitement you can hear her smile.

"Um I'm pretty sure you're Blossom, Garcia." You reply letting out a little laugh. Moving your phone to its car mount, your arm gently brushes against Spencers for a second. He quickly moves his arm to rest by his side and tugs on his seatbelt. You notice a heat rushing over his cheeks.

"Garcia you need to do a search for anything of significance that has happened in or around the lake in the past year." Spencer speaks up.

"Okay, but lets try asking a little more politely?" Garcia replies in an annoyed tone.

"Uh- please." Spencer clears his throat.

"There we go. Your wish is my command!" She says before hanging up. You can't help but let out a quiet laugh. He frowns at you before looking back out the window.

Making your way into the station you greet the local PD. They go over the latest victim and you are led to their conference room. You start putting notes together and pictures on the board. Spencer is staring intensely at the map, his finger held up to his mouth.

"Can I borrow that marker?" He sticks his arm out waiting for you to hand it to him.

"Wow for an eidetic memory you sure do forget to say please a lot." You turn your head to him as he looks at you slightly annoyed. Instead of just handing the marker to him you take a step over and look at the map. Keeping hold of the marker you begin pointing.

"So he's dumping the bodies here, here, and here?" You turn your head with the marker purposely pointing at the wrong spot. As you turn to look at him he's still staring at you. Locking eyes you notice his jaw clenching.

"No, here." He says still staring at you, leaving barely any space between your hand and his. It starts feeling hot in the room. You normally don't act like this with one another, but you feel something stirring inside you. Feeling your nerves take over, you can feel your cheeks blushing deeply. You stand there for a second longer before you finally hand him the marker.

"Thank you." His eyes look you up and down before marking the map.

Becoming flustered you turn and tuck your hair behind your ear searching the table for something to break the tension. A breath of relief washes over you as Emily and Derek enter the room. Sharing their new found information you start putting more pieces together. Eventually it's time to head to the hotel.

Grabbing your keycard from JJ you plan on taking a nice long shower to clear your mind. Stepping off the elevator onto your floor you say goodnight to JJ. You notice Spencer down the hallway, your nerves rising back up. As you approach him he slows down and stops at the door which happens to be across from yours. You can see him peek at you from the side of his eye as he unlocks his door. You begin to open your door and turn back to look at him. He stares back at you before closing his door.

Dumping your bag in your room you try relaxing your muscles and take in a deep breath. Quickly undressing you head to the bathroom bringing your toiletries with you. Turning the shower on you bite your lip thinking of the feelings between you and Spencer today. He always seems to be slightly frustrated around you, which made you feel confused. It's hard to ignore the way you feel when you catch him looking at you, but you try to calm the butterflies down convincing yourself he doesn't feel the same way. Stopping yourself you step into the shower and feel the warm water wash over you, taking your mind off of how confusing today was. Finishing your night time routine you make your way to the plush bed, scrolling through your phone before trying to fall asleep without thinking of Spencer.

____________________________________

As Spencer closed his door he let out a loud huff and put his bags on the bench in the room. He stuck his arm out to lean on the wall. Dropping his head down the need to feel her touch is firing off of him. His pent up frustration caused his pants to grow tighter. Thoughts of her keep racing in his mind, all the times he catches her before she catches him, when she softly brushes past him in hallways, the way she plays with her hair while she's deep in thought. He starts taking deep breaths to try and stop thinking about her. Still too afraid to admit his own emotions to himself he steps into the bathroom. Feeling hot while trying to ignore his growing bulge he undoes his tie and pulls his sweater off. Rolling up his sleeves he starts splashing cold water on his face. Leaning over the sink he lets the water drip off his lips and nose. Something about the way she catches his attention scares him because he feels like he could lose control at any second. He closes his eyes and continues breathing slowly. After cooling down he dries his face and goes to change. Grabbing his book from the plane along with 2 others he makes his way to his bed, forcing himself to read.

____________________________________

Waking up to your 5:15 am alarm clock you groggily turn it off. You get a text as you pick your phone up.

Hotchner: Good morning everyone. Be up and ready in 30. We will meet down in the lobby.

You begin to scroll over the rest of your notifications until you jump out of bed and stretch your arms up. After getting your thoughts together you go through your morning routine with a slight jitter in your hands as you begin to think about Spencer. Luckily it wasn't enough to keep you from messing up your eyeliner or mascara. You slip on a pair of black jeans, your favorite black boots, and a white tee shirt. Completing the look you holster your gun, and pop your blazer on. Giving yourself one final scan in the mirror you finish with a quick spritz of perfume and head out the door. Stepping out in the hallway you notice Spencer waiting down by the elevator. Dressed in his usual sweater, button down, tie combo you take him in. He's fiddling with his bag and doesn't seem to notice you nearing.

"Good morning..." You say softly hoping not to startle him. He continues searching his bag without returning a hello. Biting your lip you can't help but ask what he's looking for.

"Did you lose something?" You keep your voice quiet not wanting to annoy him or the people still getting to enjoy sleep so early in the morning.

"No." He finally replies, giving up on his search. You nod and the elevator finally dings, its doors open. He looks a little more tired and stressed than usual so you choose to stay quiet.

"It's just a small bottle of some cologne. It was a gift from my mom, otherwise I wouldn't really care if it went missing." He presses the L button and the elevator starts moving. You were a little surprised he elaborated on his answer.

"Oh, well I'll make sure to look out for it. She has good taste, it smelled nice." Your face immediately goes red, you look down in hopes your hair will hide your blushing cheeks. You could smack yourself for letting that slip out. As the doors to the elevator open you feel Spencer's finger brush against yours so softly you hardly felt it. You shoot your head up as you watch him exit, almost forgetting to get off as well.

Spencer's finger is burning as he takes off down the lobby. Clenching his hands around his strap he tries to keep his focus on the team ahead but he can't shake the feeling away. His mind is yelling at him for his actions, but his chest is about to burst. The burning from his finger getting a touch of your skin is overwhelming him. The butterflies he's kept caged forever are starting to stir. Reaching the team he hears her footsteps approaching making his heart beat faster. Tucking his hand in his pocket he takes a gulp. Hotch starts breaking down the day but as hard as he tries to listen he can't. All he can pay attention to is the smell of her perfume; sweet and warm. It matches her personality perfectly. Staring at Hotch he sees his lips moving but doesn't hear a word he's saying until he hears his name. "Reid and Y/n head to the latest victims house." He bites the inside of his cheek as he fights his feelings in his head. Preparing himself for another day of controlling his urges, he makes his way for the door. Hopping in the car he stays silent, as does she. The air feels like its on fire and he begins to wonder if he's made the wrong move.

You can still feel his touch as you grasp the steering wheel. All it took was his pinky gliding over yours to put you in a tizzy. You peek over at him but this time you're too nervous to speak. Resting your arm on the center console, he places his arm next to yours. Leaving the smallest bit of space between the two of you again. Your hand clutches the steering wheel tighter too afraid to move. You both stay silent the entire ride over.

Walking up to the house you flash your credentials to be let in. Your mind is finally able to shift gears. Entering the house you follow him into the main room carefully taking a look around. The home was filled with plants of every shape and size.

"It's a shame most of these plants are probably going to die after being so cared for." You say in a bittersweet tone while appreciating them. Pausing for a moment you feel a thought brewing. "Wait, what if our unsub is creating his own poisons? I'm seeing some dangerous plants here, I think that could be our connection." You say walking further around the house.

Spencer scans over the bookshelf in the room and calls you over. You walk over and stand closer to him than normal. He pauses for a moment before pointing to a picture setting on top of the shelf.

"Do you know what that is?" He asks quietly, still scanning the picture.

"The plant? Umm not specifically, no." You return matching his quiet volume.

"It's nerium oleander, an extremely toxic plant that is poisonous to both livestock and humans. The toxic principles are two glycosides, oleandrin, and nerioside. Symptoms if ingested can be severe, cardiac irregularities can begin, often characterized by an increased heart rate. However, a slower heart rate is often detected in the later stages. Each dumpsite had this species of flower growing around it." He says quickly scanning over the rest of the shelf.

"I think we just found our secret ingredient." You stare at him for a second admiring just how smart he is before calling Garcia.

____________________________________

Spencer's discovery of the flowers lead to the break in the case saving the life of one more victim. The unsub was an alchemist abducting customers from the greenhouse he owned. Finding him didn't take long once you knew where to look. The team gleefully boarded the jet since the case was a fast one. You all were able to leave before the day was even over.

"I think a quick case calls for some celebration!" Derek says.

After excitedly agreeing you sat with JJ and Emily. You couldn't help but notice Spencer deep in thought while reading.

"What about you pretty boy?" Derek shoves Spencer's shoulder. Spencer glares at Derek and replies to get him to back off.

"I'll think about it." He says before quickly glancing over at you before looking back at his book. You turn your attention away from him and back to the girls.

Spencer feels the cage rattling in his stomach again. He tries making it stop but he doesn't want to miss the chance of seeing her celebrate tonight. He starts replaying the first time she went out with them in his head. Her laugh filling his ears over the loud music, her smile beaming from across the room. His biggest regret was leaving early when she finally sat down to take a break from dancing. She was tipsy and breathing a little heavy from dancing. When she sat next to him she let out a soft moan of relief when taking a sip of her drink. He clutched his glass harder hearing her.

"You don't look like you're having much fun Doctor!" She rested her hand on her chin looking at him and then his glass of water. He was clenching his jaw and began to remove himself from the table.

"I'm not so that's why I'm leaving." He noticed her frown before turning to walk away. He forced himself to do the exact opposite of everything he wanted to do. His fist clenched in his pocket and he stepped outside waiting for a taxi to appear. After realizing how worked up he was becoming he told himself to stop. This time there would be no seeking advice from Derek, no getting too close, no butterflies. That was the plan he set in stone and that was the plan she was now quickly unraveling after all this time.

Pulling himself back to reality he peeked at her every now and then the rest of the way home, catching her eye from time to time.

____________________________________

Having a little spare time you decided to get ready with the girls at Garcia's place before heading to the bar. You always kept a backup outfit in your car for times like these. She was the best person to get ready with, always hyping her girls up.

"Y/n that dress is capital H.O.T." She beams at you while slipping her shoes on. You wink at her and pull out your makeup bag. You had to admit the dress hugged you perfectly and made you feel confident. Popping your lipstick on you turned to the girls and shook your head.

"I think we all look capital H.O.T" You smirk before turning to leave. You could feel your nerves rising as you all gathered into the car, you tried to calm down since you weren't even sure if Spencer was coming tonight.

Spencer was unsure of what to wear for tonight. After trying a few things on he opted in on a simple light blue button down and rolled his sleeves up. He was fumbling with his hair as his phone buzzed knowing it was Derek. Before heading out he made sure to spray on a little of his no longer missing cologne. Hopping in the car Derek noticed a little shift in his demeanor.

"What's got you all nervous?" Derek asks with a smirk after driving for a bit.

"Nothing, I just haven't gone out in awhile. This isn't really my thing you know." He kept his eyes on the road.

"Well maybe if you drank with us you wouldn't feel so awkward every time." Derek let out a little chuckle.

He felt his palms getting sweaty as they pulled up to the bar. Seeing Penelope's car he knew she was already here. He wiped his palms on his knees quickly before getting out of the car. Making their way in the bar Derek yelled out "Now the real fun can begin!"

Everyone cheered in return as Spencer searched the room for her. Once he found her at the bar his eyes took her in before she could find him. He's seen her dressed up before but this time he was truly appreciating just how beautiful she is. Once her eyes met him he felt his heart thumping. Spencer tried to distract himself by taking a seat hoping no one noticed his staring.

The team talked for a bit while enjoying some drinks. They finally got up and started heading to the dance floor. You felt yourself a little confused as it seemed like Spencer was avoiding you. He was quiet and didn't seem to be engaged in any of the conversations. Instead of heading to the dance floor you made your way over to the bar asking for a water.

"You know I don't think anyone has said good job to you yet on breaking the case." You held out the water offering it to Spencer. Surprised by your presence he cleared his throat.

"What? Oh... thanks. You deserve credit too." He gave you a small nervous smirk and took the water. You sat down across from him shrugging.

"Once I saw that photo it was so obvious. I can't believe I didn't notice it sooner." He frowned.

"Spencer, you don't give yourself enough credit. You can't put that pressure on yourself to connect every dot right away. Don't be so hard on yourself, please. Maybe consider celebrating with us tonight?" You smiled and raised up one of your eyebrows.

"I think I'm good for now." He pushes his water between his fingers slightly. You sigh and get up from the table.

"Well as long as you don't leave early again..." You say and down the rest of your drink before walking over to JJ, Emily, and Penelope dancing. You can feel his eyes focused on you.

Dancing for so long you start to lose track of time, letting the warmth of the alcohol take over you. Enjoying dancing with your girls after while you decided you needed a slower song to take a break. You walked over to the DJ and requested a song you knew would grab Spencer's attention. The DJ said ok and started playing "Kiss U Right Now" by DUCKWRTH. You walked back over and smiled slightly. Penelope let out a loud "OOOO! I like this!" As she began dancing slower. You found Emily and started dancing closely with her. You both giggled a little bit as you swayed your hips against each other. Feeling your dress inching up your thigh you peek over at Spencer. You knew he was already watching you, you could feel it. As your eyes met his, he got up from the table and took off towards the bathroom.

"I need to pee!" You said in Emily's ear before heading towards Spencer. She nods and joins Penelope and JJ.

As you finally made your way through the crowd you saw Spencer stepping out of the restroom. He didn't even bother to look at you but as he passed you, you felt his pinky brush against you again. You hooked your pinky around his and he stopped dead in his tracks. You turned to look at him as he stayed frozen for a second. Your heart was pounding waiting for him to make a move.

Spencer felt his entire body tense up. The small heat in his chest turned into a wildfire. He turned and pushed you up against the wall. His hand moving to the hem of your dress, his hot hand touching your thigh. He kept his other hand intertwined with your pinky. His heart was thumping as he moved his lips close to yours. He could feel your heavy breathing as his eyes were locked on yours. You gripped his pinky a little tighter to pull the rest of his body closer.

You can feel the heat pooling in your stomach as you stare Spencer down. His gaze told you everything you needed to know. The song booming as it narrated both your thoughts. He wanted this just as much as you did. You wanted him to prove it, he was killing you as he hovered over you.

"You need to get back to the girls before they wonder where you are." He whispered before letting go of your hand while backing away from you. He passes the table pushing towards the door. You glance over at the team to see if they notice, if they do they're not acting like it. You take a breath and decide to follow him.

Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

#spencer reid #spencer x you #spencer x reader #one shot #criminal minds #spencer reid fanfic #angst #spencer reid fanfiction #spencerxreader #spencer reid angst

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nokas-meme-den · 4 years

Text

Shit heard in Ghost Stories meme

"When this bitch kicks, I'm moving to Vegas."

"Have you accepted Jesus as your personal savior?"

"I don't care about your cat, he's probably dead."

"Principals always look like lesbians."

"When a stronger spirit appears, the weaker spirit cowers. But all evil spirits cower before Jesus!"

"Oh my, what a gifted seamstress. I hope you're not a homosexual."

"If you want something to happen, you just need to pray! And not be a Muslim. Or Jewish."

"What the fizzityuck was that?"

"Where's the damn cat?"

"These pajamas are gay."

"Hey, I've got an idea. Why don't you come to the scary, isolated pay phone on the bad side of town, alone?"

"Maybe you have a hidden talent you don't know about! Like Paris Hilton being an actress! Oh, scratch that."

"THINK OF A BIG BLACK MAN CHASING YOU!"

"A car accident... must have been hit by an old Chinamen. I don't mean to be racist, but those people CANNOT drive."

"You'd be surprised just how many transgressions a filthy little sinner like you can rack up in just a day."

"Look, a little Jew boy."

"Come rub my nipples."

"Drop the Krispy Kreme, Serpiko! We need your help here!"

"My BS detector is going DING!"

"I can read. Not well, but I can read. And those letters... are BACKWARDS!"

"The weird part is, I'm not even high. Not a bit. Totally sober!"

"The internet was a blessing from the Lord Jesus to spread the word of God throughout the world, but then Muslims and pedophiles stole it and used it to lure out and seduce children like you."

"Hey, want some candy little boy?"

"You can use it if you promise not to be on the phone too long. I know how you Pagans take advantage of others."

"A bunch of somber, quiet people against a red nuclear sky near a river of blood. Wow, that doesn't look threatening at all."

"Why? Because Jewish people rock!"

"That's so sweet... in a 'you scare the crap out of me in an Emily Rose' kind of way!"

"Here, you can take pooky-poo. He used to be my man, but we broke up."

"The V on my sweater stands for 'Very Big Deal', but that's beside the point."

"Come on, jump... I SAID JUMP!"

"Yes, the animal cemetery. Hear the plot point bells going off?"

"I hope Stephen King never sees this."

"She's looking straight at us, I don't think we hid very well."

"Those 3 to 4 cardboard boxes aren't going to hold them for long!"

"Lord reveal your salvation, for I am your favorite among these heathens."

"Yo sensei Dave, what's haps on the snaps with the craps?"

"You two-timing son of a bitch! Who's gonna take care of these little bastards!?"

"Oh splinter ohhhhh!"

"Shut up. You're here, and you're an idiot."

"Years ago, people went in there but they didn't come out. Not unlike your sister."

"2.2 Celsius... Metric system. Who thought this was a good idea again? I'm just gonna put 100. No one's gonna know."

"Oh perfect, it's in Japanese. Ching chong nong ding tow! Wait, that's Chinese."

"God, can you go bomb an abortion clinic or something?"

"Creepy Japanese men can be cabbies too y'know. But women should never be allowed to drive."

"Obeying horror movie rules, I'm going to go out alone. You stay here while I go look for help."

"I'm not giving you a reach around."

"You're such a bitch."

"First we do a geographic montage to show we traveled a long way from your house. There, that should be enough."

"I'm gonna beat you retarded."

"Jesus saved my ass."

"And what a lovely little ass it is, too."

"¡NO CORRAN EN EL HOSPITAL, CABRONES!"

"Now that is some really nice animation."

"Nice rack. Mind if I make 'em a little bigger? Ahahaehehahhha boobies. Loooove boobies. Nice lips too. I USED TO HAVE LIPS!"

"Lunchtime BJ?"

"Let's see... purple, for your hair. Can't tell this was a goddamn anime."

"Okay. Stop trying to look up my skirt. IT'S A CARTOON!"

"Holy time machine, Batman, it's 1973!"

"Holy pre-Parkinson's Michael J Fox Christopher Lloyd Back To The Future plot ripoff device! Where's my DeLorean?"

"I'll grab her ass!"

"Oh damn anime, look what's happened to my eyes."

"Leo! Leo! Leo! Leo! Goddamnit! Goddamnit! Goddamnit! Goddamnit!"

"It's the chick from The Ring! I mean, The Grudge! What movie are we ripping off again?"

"Oh my god, did that spell work? You know, like the one where you write your name in an eraser? I hear the head cheerleader's having an abortion."

"Such a bitch! Stop being such a friggin' skank and give it back!"

"Sometimes yes means no!"

"Moshi moshi! I mean, hello."

"Tomomi? Ain't no Tomomi girl living here, so what?"

"Get your cracker ass into some rehab, I ain't got time for this bullshit."

"MOTHAFUCKA."

"Run! She's a ghost and a bitch!"

"I'm goin' fuckin' crazy."

"HEY! Maybe if they paid their fuckin' phone bill, you could call again!"

"Nobody's talking to you. Just drive the bus, bus driver. Fuckin' nosy."

"Oh, sorry. All you little yellow people look alike to me. And African Americans, but not the Mexicans. Why do you think that is? I mean, don't you find that just the weirdest thing?"

"Romans 1:26, God gave them over to shameful lusts!"

"A view of the blood-stained lake. AHHHHHHH"

"Oh it may be blue now, but soon it will be redder than Republican Texas."

"No, I'm serious, bitch. I swear to god. Blue."

"Maybe this vase isn't nailed down."

"We go with the snow but not the snow that is yellow!"

"Alright everybody, it's 4:30. School is finally over. Time to go home, load up that bong, and watch Pokemon!"

"Leave me alone, I'm doing my standard anime 'elbows up' pose."

"Oh wow. I can't even comprehend how inappropriate this is."

"GOD YOU'RE MAKING ME SICK."

"God you are four of the ugliest fucking kids I've ever had the misfortune of laying my eyes on. I can't wait for this bitch to kill you."

"NANIIIIIII?"

"Oh my, definitely a 10."

"If you do, I'll suck you all for a Scooby Snack."

"Any closer and there'd be insertion."

"I may be a successful doctor, but first and foremost I'm a Jew."

"You know what I hear? I hear the sound of you shuttin' the fuck up."

"Let's see... 7?"

"What the FUCK are you talking about!?"

#roleplay meme #sentence starters #crack meme

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deithe · 3 years

Note

dude my dude bro okay so how are we feeling rn. any pronoun updates? name changes? how we feeling, r we feeling more fulfilled with ourselves. did you wake up with a smile? maybe take a moment to look out the window at like ur, idk fields and mountains man, how are u, what is going on, sending love, hoping ur the best u today cause ur the only u today

when I say I stared at this ask, and the proceed to smile so hard that my cheeks started to hurt and I got that bubbly, thick feeling you get in your chest when you're. knocked on your ass by someone else's kindness, I mean it. I had to close the app!!!!! I couldn't look at this ask cause I was like. 🥺. but there's more to that but 🥺 works best cause I'm bad with emotion in words. I was overwhelmed my emotion I guess.

(more under the cut this got long hahwhhehhe)

anyways. pronouns are sexy as hell I'm still the best he/they ur ever gonna meet. I came out to my friends (more of them that is). slowly in the process of coming out socially. it's kind of terrifying but what comes comes and I'm happy that I'm doing this. also also. setanta. as a middle name isntead of my birth one. it's the original name of cú chulainn, a mythological irish warrior. which is cool as fuck.

and yeah I did. bank holiday money today so I got to sleep in which was so nice. how about you? I feel like I never ask you this enough. I hope things are going well enough for you. I hope you're waking up and finding happiness and having fun. I'm sending love and everything else you might need across the atlantic to you. currently making it's way across the ocean as we speak. I think I am waking up smiling.

The mountains were boring today, sadly our nice weather dissapeared and it's windy as fuck now. wet too :(. how is the weather over there? good? bad? I suppose there wouldn't be many mountains where ur living but what's your favorite kind of geographical... thingie? lakes? mountains? valleys? flat fields? or are u more of a city gal? nyc is the most city-city I can imagine tho so you might like the city more. I love cities they fuck so hard.

any-nee-ways. I use that word so much I don't even know why. I watched the conjuring (both 1 and 2) cause you were talking about it and jesus they were excellent!!!! especially 2! it was so well done and I loved the characters. annabelle is next!

also also. speaking of tattoos I've always wanted a lost trio one which. if I made it inconspicuous enough it would never be too embarrassing. and ur idea for that curse tattoo is sosososo cool.

but. ok. I've rambled enough. I hope you're having fun and I hope life is gifting you with good things and I hope the bad times never last long bc I know u deserve only the best.

#gil 😤❤️#ask #faves #love tag 💞#save

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uncuentofriki · 5 years

Text

Coco or “How to pretend to be woke because of a fandom” and other ghosts.

After hearing the posibility that Parasite could get a remake, I heard that it wasn’t necessary -and ultimately, useless- because the director wanted to show how, despite the localization and the theme of the story everyone could resonate with the story and its themes. I saw it and yes, despite that the working-class family eats ramedon while I do wonders with tortillas to survive, the struggles of making ends met whatever it takes are mostly the same. And I don’t want a Parasite mexican remake either, as they did a years ago with indian movie 3 idiots. The movie is perfect on their location and you just need some empathy to understand what the other is feeling or living, even if your language or uprising wasn’t the same.

A while ago I did a post explaining the feeling of exclusion in the fandom of Coco. Despite that it’s a movie that occurs in some part of Mexico, the mexican creators were displaced by people that just had the movie and some cartoons like Mucha Lucha or El Tigre as a reference for our culture. We tried to reach to “the other side of the bridge” by translating songs, fanfiction, comics and whatever we made, out lof love and excitement for sharing our culture for the first time masively on this media. I even translated historical documents and cursing words. And it was fun and interesting to see people engaged on our culture... only to soon be displaced or unheard of. Come to think about it some time later, it was cultural appropiation. It was “woke” at the moment to say you liked Coco, it was a way to say “oh, yes I like diversity” but the actual people represented on that story were massively ignored (I wonder if in less divisive time for inmigration it would be as beloved as it was). I like the story... but whatever the people that live that culture explain about it, I don’t care. I’ll take for example Rossanna Pansino (Nerdy Numies) with her Pan de Muerto. She said that the decoration of the bread is a marigold flower, which isn’t true (It’s boooooone! -read this in Captain Holt’s voice, please-). The recipe was mostly correct (Orange blossom water isn’t that easy to find, I know, plus it’s expensive), but that part made me lost any interest on her channel forever (haven’t seen her channel since). Rossanna could had done a research, see photos of the bread, watch other channels on Youtube (there’s a recipe on english on youtube), whatever. Yet she disrespected a beloved tradition and dish. No, we don’t do different versions of it. It has bones on top. End of the story. You don’t move ANYTHING from it, period, because it’s symbolic of the legend of the creation of the men, the four cardinal points and our own mortality as human beings, and it’s one of the most important elements on the Altar. (Also I’m a baker’s daughter and if you recall how strict the Rivera’s are about their traditions, that’s how strict we are with recipes -the only ones allowed to move something from them are other mexicans and it’s only to make it tastier, like the shrimp pozole, not whatever Barefoot Contessa did to it).

The fandom felt... colonialist. The questions, which I answered with all the love and patience first, got more and more tiredsome to answer because people wanted reasons and ways to adapt the story to occur on their country or on a situation that doesn’t happen here... despite that seeing another culture was what supposedly made them fall in love with the story. One of those was wanting the lake on Santa Cecilia to freeze. While certainly it snows on the north states of Mexico, if we take in account some hints of the location, Santa Cecilia is nowhere near the north. And even when it has snowed on Guadalajara -where I live-, it’s not cold enough to freeze the Santiago River or the Chapala lake. But for some reason fuck geography (and if the lake freezes then we’ll be damned because that’s how bad global warming is to give a such a cold winter to a valleythat’sabove 25 grades Celsius almost all the year). We explained over and over how some social situations aren’t the same, how incomes on certain profesions doesn’t translate. It’s more frustrating as an EFL teacher to see that I can perfectly explain social situations to my students and they get it, yet I explained over and over and over and my time investigating, translating and answering those same questions about my culture was basically, ignored or glossed over like “yes yes, you live it, you were born into it, buuuuut my idea of how your society and culture works is better”. IT’S NOT. It’s just different. I won’t try to mexicanize something from an american -or in my time as a hardcore otaku, japanese- culture. I won’t make, IDK, Chihiro from Spirited Away to serve Pozole to Kaonashi just because it’s easier for me to do so. (And also that’s why I hate lots Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, it shits over martial arts... and I tried hard to see the story as a parody but no). That’s also why I left the Rock AU incomplete and most of my fics are untranslated (and why a lot of mexicans ran away from the social media created around the movie). Why translate it, why continue it if the apparent love for my country and its music and traditions didn’t translated when I took time to craft a story that shows more about the modern musical scene here (along with other social issues). Why keep helping people that asked and yet ignored what I said or tried to make me justify stuff that DOES NOT (AT ALL) happen or happened here. Why even bother if someone who isn’t even from my country is the one that they prefer to get the information, as wrong as it can be.

It’s amazing also that I got silenced and dismissed over my last rant about this feeling. It’s not jealousy, it’s a wake up call to fandoms in general. You can’t call yourself woke or culturally aware or whatever if you consume media from or based on foreing cultures and silence the people who live it or try to adapt it into your culture just because it’s easier or if you like characters that are people of color. Fandom it’s not absent of colonialism or racism, even on this kind of works. And we should be aware and learn of the mistakes we made along the way, because it’s disheartening for future media creators from other cultures (me included) to see that while we’re trying to adapt our culture and what we love -and hate- the most of it (even if it’s a fantasy counterpart, like it’s the case of the novel I’m working on), it’s going to be ignored over or tried to got converted over to whatever they want (creative fan freedom has a limit and that’s the societal and geographic rules of the setting). Because that’s the actual point of diversity in narrative, not trying to make everything more uniform like most american/european series that have a two-three whites and two-three people of color (if feeling lucky) but they’re barely different from each other in culture (except if there’s an asian on the cast, most of the time). The point of stories like Coco or parasite to show how despite the differences, we all can live similar situations, we all love and laugh and lose and keep going, in our own unique way, even if we’re miles away.

So please, if you’re aproximation to any work set in another culture is just that you thought it’s pretty and forget about the people that live it everyday... stay away from it. Or decolonize yourself first and don’t use the work to make yourself seem more socially aware. You will just contribute to systematic exclution of other creators.

#Coco #Coco Pixar #colonialism #discourse #cultural appropiation #fandom

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gayregis · 4 years

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you might've already answered this but i adore all your takes on the show SO what did you think abt twn having the timeline all out of order? i didn't mind (even tho i read the books after) but i know it bothered a lot of people. thanks !

honestly, this is something that bothers me the most. it is on-par with the sincerely bad mischaracterizations of all of the characters and removal of the significant messages and themes of the short stories.

i feel that it’s insanely confusing for the majority of people when watching to have timeskips that are many many years apart without as much as a text card to say (20 years later). it’s good that you didn’t mind, but yeah i have heard from basically everyone, even people who loved the show, who say that the timeskips were the one thing that super confused them.

now, i watched the show having had read the books and legitimately dissecting any little thing as i watched. i went at this show with fucking tweezers and a scapel. i don’t get to say that i was confused by the timeskips, because during every single shot and scene, i was literally taking notes in a text document as to where the narrative was going and which scene was which from the books, where they were on the continent, what short story they were doing... although i was confused when things diverged so wholly from canon during the brokilon arc, i don’t get to say i was confused by the timeskip between the events of the lesser evil and the massacre of cintra, because i knew these stories already.

but as a viewer, i was confused as to why they felt that was necessary. there was no reason to add in timeskips. there was no great parallel being made. they didn’t connect the two stories at all besides renfri making a side comment about how she was jealous of calanthe, then-princess. there was no thematic parallel. it felt like a gimmick to keep people from being bored with the first story (which it was, because there was a lack of interesting dialogue and i got very bored with it).

and it gets worse when i try to think of what it would have been like if i had NO prior knowledge of the witcher, or even just knowledge from the witcher 3. i... would have had no idea where cintra geographically is. i wouldn’t know who vesemir is when geralt mentions him. i wouldn’t have the faintest fucking clue as to why the story is switching between this man and this girl, and i’d be trying to establish their connection with no luck. because there’s literally nothing by this point which tells you that ciri is his daughter.

i think it’s a fucking stupid gimmick that lauren hissrich did because she wanted to gain more viewers by being “progressive” and including female characters yennefer and ciri earlier in the story even when it makes everything all the more confusing to have them there. i think it was a really stupid move that isn’t justifiable in any way because it’s sincerely disorienting to the viewer and makes everything make no sense. in the books, the stories are laid out in a certain order with a certain framing story for a reason. ciri appears as a character when she does for a reason.

geralt finding ciri in brokilon was... such an incredibly significant moment and the fact that they didn’t introduce ciri in this way was really heartbreaking and sore to me. when geralt realizes that ciri is not just some random girl, but his daughter, that she is his child and she is not his destiny but something more... as ciri says to yennefer in blood of elves, you should have seen the look on his face. i wanted to see the look on new fans’ faces, on even my own face because it’s worth it to see a story retold. it was meant to be a surprise... she is the surprise child, as geralt says, she’s the biggest surprise he’s ever met. and the fact that geralt has to part with her, that he HAS to because otherwise he would bring danger to her, is incredibly painful. that was ciri’s introduction for a reason. the saga begins to follow her from that point on, that distinguishable point in brokilon. after this, the next story is something more, which revolves around many significant people in geralt’s life, but is focused on his desire to become ciri’s father for real. this point is very important because it’s a turning point for the series. it stops being about geralt, and begins to be about ciri.

similarly, yennefer is introduced as she is for a reason. in the last wish, she is not meant to be immediately likable. she antagonizes geralt and is actually kind of the antagonist of the story for a good part of it. the netflix series introduces her with her sad backstory, making the first emotion you feel towards her be pity and outrage at her treatment. yennefer in the book series was slowly developed, yennefer in the book series is carmelized onions. at first she is like raw onions, when you chop a raw onion your eyes might water, and raw onion is very strong and overwhelming taste that a majority of people find unpleasant (think of biting into a whole onion). but over time, when you put these chopped onions into the pan with olive oil and salt, they begin to get softer, sweeter. even when they’re not entirely browned yet, they’re palatable and delicious. yennefer in the bounds of reason shows sincere depth as she defies her trope and is sincerely emotionally hurt by geralt for leaving her without a word. she gets even more developed in a shard of ice, and her relationship with geralt is developed even when she is not present in a little sacrifice, and by the end of the sword of destiny, it makes sense as to why they are together as a couple. then in blood of elves as she becomes a mother to ciri and in time of contempt, baptism of fire, tower of the swallow, and lady of the lake, she is such an incredibly selfless and caring mother and you learn her backstory that she develops this incredible depth that you would never have thought she had the potential for in the last wish.

the timeskips are really detrimental to not only yennefer and ciri’s characters, but also geralt and dandelion’s. geralt is introduced in the specific order of stories for a reason. in the witcher, we learn what a witcher is. we learn what he was created to do, but also how he as an individual is incredibly different from many of the rest of his guild and how he has this inner depth and humanity that he has to keep hidden. i’ll admit that a grain of truth is skippable, but i appreciate how it also shows that geralt will go out of his way to help others even when there is no contract and no reward involved. in the lesser evil, we learn why he has committed himself to neutrality and how society views him as a witcher. this is very significant for how he interacts with others, especially ciri, as he does not want to pass this legacy down to her. in a question of price, we see him choosing the route of pacifism yet again and also are introduced to the concept of destiny linking him with ciri. then in the voice of reason 5 / the edge of the world, we learn more about his humanity as his relationship with dandelion is explored and we get to see geralt in a closer, more intimiate friendship light, not on the job or embroiled in a conflict. we also see him acting pacifist again and learn of his opinions on otherness, the otherness that he himself is classified as. in the last wish, we learn how human he really is, we see his real devotion to dandelion and then his choice to assist yennefer and his vulnerability with yennefer. of course it’s not meant to end there because it has yet to take down the trope of a happy ending that it ended with, but you can see geralt’s linear character progression in just this first collection of short stories. you understand him as a character and what his motivations and relationships to others are.

tl;dr: the timeskips in twn do more damage than everyone thinks; they’re not just annoying and super confusing for new fans, but they are a major enabler of poor character development and bastardization of the books they were meant to be an “adaptation” of

#the witcher netflix #thank u for this ask bc i never talked abt this before i think #geralt #ciri #yennefer #dandeliyn

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merigreenleaf · 4 years

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Unexpected Inspiration Location: The Place of Shadow

Etri reached out to grab them as they ran past, catching Adair’s shoulder and Blythe’s wrist. Between the span of one breath and another, they were in the place outside of time that Etri considered a secondary, if lonely, home.

His friends were justifiably disoriented. Adair stumbled as he stepped closer to Blythe, whose eyes narrowed as she sought out the potential threat that had brought them here. In a voice barely above a whisper, but which reached Etri's ears in a place so empty, Adair asked, “Where are we?"

Etri had been equally fearful on his first trip here. It had been an accident, a touch to one of the elemental traps in his home temple that he noticed all too late. It had banished him as though he himself were a shadow and he might still be caught here if not for an unusually curious and friendly elemental leading him back. Over the years he had learned that he could cross back and forth at will, with no danger so long as he took care to leave precisely at the time he had arrived. That had taken some calculations and experimentation. His friends would be safe if they remained with him, and since the shadows hadn't noticed them yet, Etri took a moment to pull a timer from his bag. With luck, they'd be able to return before they had left and miss the guards entirely.

As the grains of sand began to fall, Etri walked over to join them. “I apologize for not first gaining your permission. I took the opportunity before anyone could see you vanish from the street.”

Adair spun around with a grin on his face. “Etch! You brought us here! I'm so glad you're here. Where is here?”

Etri glanced down at the small hourglass to hide the smile that came so easily around Adair. He used this opportunity to better calculate how much time remained before they could again cross. “To my knowledge, there is no name for it. I have only thought of it as the 'place of shadow.' Please, we must get through the city soon. We cannot stay here long.”

“Why not?” Blythe asked as they hurried through the eerily silent streets. "Not that I want to stay. What's with this place, anyway? I know there were more buildings here before. Addy dragged me into a bakery I know was on that corner."

Adair waved his arms vaguely to the left. "And over there was the greenhouse we were in for like an hour."

If the two were back to teasing each other, it meant that they felt safe. Their trust in him made Etri's head swim just as surely as his friends must have felt moments ago. “This place is but a reflection of the real world and time does not flow as we perceive it. If we are not careful, we could be caught here for a century or return into the past. As for your second question, it is because temporary objects do not exist here.”

“What, like ice sculptures?”

Adair's comment made Etri chuckle, but Blythe was less amused. “Sheesh. You've been hanging around Sol too long. Think, art-boy. He probably means like people. Plants. The traffic we're not getting run over by."

Adair recovered before Etri could further explain. "I had noticed the lack of squash, which makes this better than the hour I spent hanging out with the vegetables."

Blythe groaned. "Etch, do us a favor and get us out of here. I don't think I can deal with a century of his bad jokes."

-An excerpt from Colorweaver (book 1) switched to Etri’s POV

[Facts about the Place of Shadow below!]

-As far as Etri knows, he's the only living human who has visited, besides the friends he brings later. He's never heard anyone else talk about it or found any records of anyone else visiting. The creatures from this place that are capable of communicating with humans have never revealed that this is where they come from. For instance, the priest/esses in Montglace who summon shadow elementals know that they're coming from somewhere, but have no idea what this somewhere is. -The place of shadow isn't as creepy as you might expect, despite it being the home of ghosts and shadows. It's simply an empty and grey monochrome. Since it's only borderline real and there is no weather, the sky will always be dull, vacant grey, with no stars or planets to be seen. The air is breathable, but it's stuffy and you probably wouldn't be comfortable breathing it for long. -This is because it isn't so much a world of its own as a reflection of the main world. The only things you'll find in this place are things that have existed in the main world for an extended period of time. This means geographical features, such as hills, mountains, and caves, but nothing like trees or plant life because nothing living exists there. In Etri's experience, rivers and lakes have been empty or missing. There may be oceans, but if so, he hasn't explored far enough to know. -Towns and cities are ghost towns, but not in a dilapidated, creepy way. Only the oldest buildings and architecture echo over; these are all empty inside but otherwise solid and in new condition. The buildings are never furnished because anything that can be moved around counts as temporary. -On the flip side of this, if a building has been recently torn down in the real world, its mirror will still be standing until it eventually begins to fade away. You're also unlikely to find ruins here-- old buildings will begin to vanish rather than fall apart. -Nothing lives here because nothing native to that place is technically alive. This doesn't mean the place is unpopulated, though! One type of elemental that exists here are shades, which are echos of strong memories and emotions from the main world, vague blurs without much sentience. -Once in awhile Etri will run into a ghost, which are usually the spirits of those who possessed magic and were killed in a way that didn't fully dissipate this power. Usually, these don’t remember who they once were, and they vary in intelligence and communication skills based on how long they’ve been ghosts, how strong their magic was to start, and how they were killed/ended up as ghosts. Some can move around and cross to the human world if they choose to, but many are echoes not much stronger than the shades. -The creatures I often refer to as shadows are the most common type of elemental here. These are the ones capable of communication (via telepathy/feelings) and their intelligence level is somewhere around that of a smart dog. These can go wherever they wish but are easily controlled or summoned by certain humans. Shadows are mostly intangible when in the human world and are generally mistaken for a normal shadow if they're noticed at all. On their home world, and to any human with the magic to see them properly, they look like a plume of smoke. -Through trial and error, Etri has worked out how to calculate time passing in the main world while he's here in the place of shadow. Time doesn't flow linearly; instead it ebbs back and forth, almost like waves. Sometimes the waves are strong and will make "time" rush, meaning that you could step back outside into the far past or the far future. Sometimes it's weaker and almost no time has passed at all in the main world. Hourglasses are the only timekeeper he's found that work because gravity functions here even if time-- and watches-- do not. Between the hourglasses and carefully observing the waves, he can predict when he'll step back out again. The shadows and ghosts have less restriction than he does because Etri is human and has a chronological mindset at navigating this. The elementals can just pop out anywhen, but to be fair, they don't really understand what "now" is. Time has no meaning for them.

-------------------------

@homesteadchronicles stumped me good this week for a theme of "magic" since I used the recent "craftsmanship" theme to talk about the art magic in my series (you can find that here) and I've talked a bunch recently about the shadow and light magics that my Montglacian characters have. (Etri, Sol, Rosalie, and Camille.) Then I saw he had mentioned elemental planes and bingo! There are multiple worlds and planets in my series besides the main world, but the only one that comes up in my current trilogy is this one.

Tagging my series list! Let me know if you want on or off the list, it’s all good. And as always, please add me to any writing tag lists you have, whether you’re on my list or not. I love reading about writeblr projects. :)

@homesteadchronicles @ageekyreader @lynnafred @the-gay-hufflepuff @oceanwriter @desperatlytryingtowriteabook @muffindragon227 @theguildedtypewriter @toboldlywrite @wchwriter @dreameronthewind @shadow-maker @pen-for-sword @loopyhoopywrites @emptymanuscript @madmoonink @perringwrites @megan-cutler @elliot-orion @thatwriternamedvolk @indecentpause @writer-on-time @ravenpuffwriter @siarven @musicismymoirail @lady-redshield-writes @bluemartlet @reeseweston @worldbuildingwren @hiddswritingrefs @cay--scribbles @focusdumbass @enasroterfaden @missrobinswritings @joshuaorrizonte @zofiehelen @kainablue @kalis-scribbles @inspirited-goddess @nightmares-and-fireflies

#writing #writeblr #world building #about my world #worldbuilding #fantasy series #moodboard #moodboard monday #unexpected inspiration series #unexpected inspiration aesthetic

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