#and where did she end up?

[kivaember]

I liked your rambling awhile back on Pater? Do you have any rambling thoughts about Maeterlinck?

I DO HAVE SOME RAMBLING THOUGHTS ABOUT MAETERLINCK.

So, I feel like she's someone who's comfortable succeeding in the middle of the pack, as it were. She doesn't want to stand out, especially in a group like the Vespers, because standing out there would mean getting targeted.

Freud. Snail. Rusty. These are the most well-known Vespers and they're continuously getting targeted by rival corporate mercs or even independent mercs looking to make a name for themselves or to settle grudges. True, it means they feature more in Arquebus's relentless merchendise campaign for the Vespers and even get a cut, but Maeterlinck is content with her current salary if it meant she didn't invite more attention and/or danger upon herself.

She's here to do a job. That job is managing the administrative day-to-day of the Vespers and handling problems that require more finesse than the fuck-off cannons that were the Big Three. Sending Freud in to handle a bunch of MT pilots under their command selling off fuel or ammunition for extra scratch would be like trying to kill a cockroach with a howitzer. Like, yeah, you'd kill the cockroach, but at what cost?

She's got the right temperament for it. She disliked active confrontation and she's not a risk-taker. She prefers taking things slow and careful, and as a result, Arquebus trusts her to handle things discreetly. They know Maeterlinck will never 'rock the boat' or cause a public scandal, and in a way she kind of does have the most corporate trust out of all the Vespers. Snail's too much of an ambitious ladder climber, Freud is Freud, and the rest of the Vespers are viewed as lackeys that would rob the corporation the moment they turned a blind eye to them. Maeterlinck, however, is loyal, discreet and, more importantly, sane and normal.

It does mean she works a little more closely with O'Keeffe than Snail, and their relationship could be summed up as: painfully professional. Maeterlinck has some gripes about how O'Keeffe runs his intelligence ship, but she respects his seniority and wealth of experience. However, she has noticed that there's something off between O'Keeffe and Rusty - but she's not stupid enough to go digging into that because she knows for a fact O'Keeffe could easily vanish her, and she's not risking her life just to learn that O'Keeffe and Rusty are fraternising or something dumb like that. She's just thankful they're more discreet than Hawkins and Pater...

In short, she's the type of coworker who blends into the background, and is neutral enough that she gets along reasonably well with everyone for the most part. She also knows all the gossip and has a keen sense of how to navigate office politics to avoid the worst of it. She adheres strongly to the hierarchy of the corporation and is loyal, but she's mostly just clocking in to earn her paycheck and work towards her promised retirement package.

She doesn't like Arquebus's foray onto Rubicon, in fact. She felt it was way too reckless and brash, and that the Vespers don't have a stable enough foothold to work effectively on the planet. But she kept her doubts to herself bc the corporation ordered them here and they have a job to do. Just shut up and do it, and hopefully she'll get out of this alive with a hefty bonus as consolation...

[ruporas]

dragon meat, you, and me

[thottybrucewayne]

I think what I want to get into with the "Anyone can do harm." thing that I keep beating yall over the head with is that literally anyone, anyone at all can do harm it's not "in your DNA" to be an abuser or written in the stars that you'll be a predator. Whatever image you have of an abuser in your head, drop it and replace it with your favorite person in the world and you'll probably be closer to the truth than you realize. It's easy to address harm when it's coming from someone you already hate. I see it happen all the time. Someone you couldn't stand for no real reason does something heinous then all of a sudden here comes the avalanche of "I always knew they were a fucked up individual." No, you didn't. There is no possible way you could have known, you just already didn't fuck with them before they started doing something you could use to justify your hatred of them. I'm guilty of it too! I'm petty, mean, vindictive, and yes! I'm way quicker to believe something bad about someone I hate versus someone I love because I'm human. Still, y all gotta learn to move past that initial "Well, they were always nice to me!" gut feeling and understand that nobody truly knows anyone and anyone can be capable of anything. Even victims. Even you.

[egophiliac]

I got a really tough question.

What’s your favorite Twst event of ALL TIME?

I like Harveston

this truly is the hardest question. :( but after much consideration, I think Endless Halloween Night wins out for me, because it's nonstop Characters Being Silly the whole way through. the whole thing is just lots of these little dorks having the most ridiculous interactions, which is always my favorite! and of course the big twist is SO delightfully stupid and doubles down SO hard that it becomes AMAZING and I 100% unironically adore it. AND it's Halloween! everyone is in their cute little costumes and having a spooky adventure! it's great!

however, I am ALSO a big fan of the Harveston event! how can I not be! everyone is wearing comfy winter outfits and getting along really weirdly well with Epel's grandma and he's getting a little worried about that! my terrible loud son sews a plush squirrel and then gives it a silly little nickname and refuses to leave it behind when it breaks! the ending shot with the sled! I LOVE IT.

obviously we need the best of both worlds now

[nonasbirthday]

i do love silas as a foil for harrow. weird off-putting zealous little freaks. this is what happens when you give a twelve year old religious authority over a planet. by the way, one wears all black and one wears all white. just to really hammer home how they mirror each other

[inkskinned]

i. about 2 weeks ago, i was told there's a good chance that in 5 or so years, i'll need a wheelchair.

ii. okay. i loved harry potter as a kid. i have a hypothesis about this to be honest - why people still kind of like it. it's that she got very lucky. she managed to make a cross-generational hit. it was something shared for both parents and kids. it was right at the start of a huge cultural shift from pre to post-internet. i genuinely think many people were just seeking community; not her writing. it was a nice shorthand to create connection. which is a long way of saying - she didn't build this legacy, we built it for her. she got lucky, just once. that's all.

iii. to be real with you, i still struggle with identifying as someone with a disability, which is wild, especially given the ways my life has changed. i always come up against internalized ableism and shame - convinced even right now that i'm faking it for attention. i passed out in a grocery store recently. i hit my head on the shelves while i went down.

iv. he raises his eyebrows while he sends me a look. her most recent new book has POTS featured in it. okay, i say. i already don't like where this is going. we both take another bite of ramen. it is a trait of the villain, he says. we both roll our eyes about it.

v. so one of the things about being nonbinary but previously super into harry potter is that i super hate jk rowling. but it is also not good for my mental health to regret any form of joy i engaged with as a kid. i can't punish my young self for being so into the books - it was a passion, and it was how i made most of my friends. everyone knew about it. i felt like everyone had my same joy, my same fixation. as a "weird kid", this sense of belonging resonated with me so loudly that i would have done anything to protect it.

vi. as a present, my parents once took me out of school to go see the second movie. it is an incredibly precious memory: my mom straight-up lying about a dentist appointment. us snickering and sneaking into the weekday matinee. within seven years of this experience, the internet would be a necessity to get my homework finished. the world had permanently changed. harry potter was a relic, a way any of us could hold onto something of the analog.

vii. by sheer luck, the year that i started figuring out the whole gender fluid thing was also the first year people started to point out that she might have some internalized biases. i remember tumblr before that; how often her name was treated as godhood. how harry potter was kind of a word synonymous for "nerdy but cool." i would walk out of that year tasting he/him and they/them; she would walk out snarling and snapping about it.

viii. when i teach older kids creative writing, i usually tell them - so, she did change the face of young adult fiction, there's no denying that. she had a lot more opportunities than many of us will - there were more publishing houses, less push for "virally" popular content creators. but beyond reading another book, we need to write more books. we need to uplift the voices of those who remain unrepresented. we need to push for an exposure to the bigotry baked into the publishing system. and i promise you: you can write better than she ever did. nothing she did was what was magical - it was the way that the community responded to it.

ix. i get home from ramen. three other people have screenshotted the POTS thing and sent it to me. can you fucking believe we're still hearing this shit from her when it's almost twenty-fucking-twenty-three. the villain is notably also popular on tumblr. i just think that's funny. this woman is a billionaire and she's mad that she can't control the opinions of some people on a dying blue site that makes no money. lady, and i mean this - get a fucking life.

x. i am sorry to the kid i was. maybe the kid you were too. none of us deserved to see something like this ruined. that thing used to be precious to me. and now - all those good times; measured into dust.

/// 9.6.2022 // FUCKING AGAIN, JK? Are you fucking kidding me?

[pokimoko]

Why fight people when your time can be better spent bantering?

[send-me-a-puffalope]

just watched the new ghostbusters movie with my friend and truly, awkward teenage lesbians will both end and save the world.

[lovesickeros]

☆ you sow; & thus you shall reap what you are owed

{☆} characters tsaritsa {☆} notes cult au, imposter au, drabble, gender neutral reader {☆} warnings blood, violence {☆} word count 0.8k

You are dying.

Gold melts into the dirt, bleeds into the very earth that you'd molded by your own hands – a familiarity you do not understand the source of – you know it to be true, yet you do not remember it as Teyvat does. It weeps, in turn, for the way you bleed upon it, the way your lungs strain for breath.

It is fury and sorrow and fear and hatred so raw that your mind buckles.

You will die.

"A dying godling and its judge, it's jury – it's executioners," The voice is hollow and cold, sweeps across your broken body like the first chill of winter, "Archons who saw themselves Gods, now brought to heel by their own hubris."

A cold hand upon your cheek, the brush of a thumb across your lip, the gentle caress of cold across your skin. You know her – you don't remember, you shouldn't recognize her but you do – and she knows you. The cold beckons and you follow, let her kindness settle in the hollow space of your chest. You want to speak, to cry and scream and rage, let the world burn around you in a fit of flames so hot even she cannot contain it – but she silences you, quiets the anger seeping into your blood, quiets Teyvat itself.

"Do not speak, little godling. Guide my hand," She is cold; her hands are not gentle, yet it is bliss compared to the callous, cruel hands that have shattered you. She is cruel and cold and brutal but she is love in the way she kisses the crown of your head. She is love in the way she is the bulwark between you and the world that has scorned you – she is fury in the way she brings them to their knees. "And I shall enact judgement most divine."

They will pray for forgiveness, and they shall find themselves wanting.

"It wasn't our fault!" They cry, but you cannot recognize the voice – it breaks and cracks like glass. "They were too human. How were we meant to know? We– we thought they were.."

Silence.

You watch your judge – the executioner, the blade that shall carve their sins into the very marrow of Teyvat, stand above you like death. As cold as winter and just as brutal. Your temple has been painted in the gold of your divine blood, and she shall complete the masterpiece with their own. The Archons shall become the grandest art in the world – this temple the canvas, their blood the paint and their bodies the palette. The cold that cuts sinew cradles you – it sings to you, whispers sweetly in your ear and carves bone from body in the same breath. The cold presses it's lips to your wrist and it cradles a heart within it's palm – judges them and finds them guilty.

It is her spear that rests between their ribs, her sword that dissects and her dagger that carves – the cold devours.

In the breadth of this divine sanctuary, the Archons dwindle. They become the pieces of a divine work of art, they bleed and bend and break upon her hands. She shakes the heavens and carves mortality into the bones of the divine – your word is Law, and you weave their deaths into the roots of Teyvat itself.

They shall know of their grand folly in every moment henceforth and longer still and they shall weep.

And as the curtain falls, as the world crumbles beneath fist and blade, she cradles your face between hands too cold – as gentle as a shard of ice between your ribs, as brutal as the kiss of gentle snowfall. The world buckles at the loss of six, but she alone does not allow it to break – you will have to mend the wounds of the world when you are well, but today you weep and Teyvat weeps with you.

And alone, the cold remains.

Stone has eroded, the wind has ceased, the flames have been extinguished, the storm has been silenced, the forests have gone quiet and the seas go still.

But the cold remains, bathed in gold.

It wraps you in thick furs, cradles you against the winter storm that brews beneath a veneer of composure. It brings you home – lets the world settle into a stillness and silence that inspires only dread and still she presses a kiss to your brow.

It is cold, but there has never been something so warm.

Where hands have broken you, she drapes you in furs, wipes away the thick gold that clings to your skin. She pieces you back together where you have been shattered, reshapes you where you have been bent – makes of you something new. Not a god and not a mortal but something wedged between them.

But you are yourself.

And you are where you belong.

They shall put you back together and you shall know only the worship worthy of the divine. They shall carve this world into your image, tear out and burn away the rot that festers.

All you need to do is say the word and they shall be your tools to make this world your own.

One word and those who wronged you shall burn, too.

Just one word. That's all it takes, and they shall take away your pain.

[wyrmswears]

gguys im so fucking serious id die for a flashback episode following at least one member of the team in the immediate aftermath of the merge

[bonefall]

Did Brambleclaw actually disown the Three when the secret is revealed? I don't remember this happening (then again, it's been a while) but it does bug me how all three go "Poor brambleclaw :(( He was such a good dad to us and he has to learn we're not even his biokits :(((( poor guy" while simultaneously shitting on Leafpool and Squirrelflight despite them showing them more care and affection before AND after the reveal. If he does disown them, then.... WOW is the double standard real here.

In-canon? It's something you have to approximate. They don't seem to have a concept of ""disowning"" because blood relation is taken as such an insurmountable, FUNDAMENTAL fact of life. He doesn't write them out of his little kitty will and testament, but his actions ARE disowning.

It's as if the fact he is not their biological father is an automatic disowning. From the reveal onwards, he is immediately cold, distant, and the "betrayal" is mentioned often. The Three also explicitly don't blame him for his behavior, like it's just to be expected that he's Not Their Dad anymore.

Lionblaze in particular stares longingly at him several times, really missing him. And like... that's kinda what gets my goat so much

I do believe Brambleclaw is entitled to his feelings of betrayal. I believe Squilf was ultimately in the right to lie, actually, but he's still allowed to be upset and angry that she didn't trust him enough to tell him something so important. THAT SAID, YOU ARE NEVER ENTITLED TO TREAT OTHERS POORLY.

And that's what GETS me. He isn't upset that it was all revealed in such a painful and embarassing way when this could have been avoided, or that his lover struggled with this lie for so long without him, or that he feels he's lost his children. Squilf points it out in The Last Hope-- He's so ANGRY at Squilf that he will THROW HIS FAMILY AWAY

Lionblaze seems desperate to be his son again. Hollyleaf is gone for months, and Brambleclaw is still huffing about the secret when she comes back from the dead. Squilf is fawning in the hopes it makes him talk to her again. Doesn't matter. Brambleclaw Is Upsetti Spaghetti so the narrative will never examine his role in hurting this family he apparently loved so much.

(Narrative seems to understand full well that when Squilf lies for a good reason, that doesn't invalidate the hurt Brambleclaw felt... but when Brambleclaw is upset for a good reason, it actually DOES validate what he put her and his kids through)

In BB it is explicitly a disowning. He cuts them off as his children, and they reciprocate. BB!Lionblaze does so in a ball of fury, vowing that he has ONLY a mother.

[anna-scribbles]

do you think émilie agreste knew, on the day she became too weak to leave that house, that she never would again

[justathingfromthebrainvoid]

Okay so Gem throughout Secret Life (and also the one episode in Limited Life) has been so fascinating for several reasons. (hello i'm back, yes this is the brain rotates the gem post, welcome.)

so first off everyone is fairly Aware of her pvp prowess, GeminiSlay is a name they know. So for the most part, no one tries to fight her. She's brought down by fighting blazes & an enderman, the red horde going after everyone (them fighting back) and eventually Scar's bow, and then by and large Grian's tnt minecarts before Pearl and Scar together kill her in a 2 v 1 fight (that for the 1st part mostly-ish bows, something she isn't quite as good at). People talk about how they don't want to fight Gem. Not unless they have to.

This affords her a level of safety. If they're scared of fighting you, they don't go after you.

And then she's the New person. She's the only New Person. She's cheery and happy even as she goes on her murdering sprees. Even Lizzie and Mumbo, not back since Last Life, have a different edge to them and then they're out so quickly they don't reach the line where the server goes into murder and betrayal. Cleo says it in the last session: Gem doesn't know what is about to happen.

And she doesn't. Not in the way everyone else does. It is a murder game, and Gem treats it as such, but she doesn't get the weight of what happens in those last sessions.

She loses her first life and is mildly bloodthirsty, she opens the end, sends in greens in hopes of getting more yellows, she gets a task that says kill every non red at least once and does so without hesitance, she turns red, succeeds 5 red tasks in her next episode and gets her two teammates to sacrifice themselves to her along with killing Pearl, and she smiles throughout the entire thing.

When the last session starts she's happy, ready to go out and murder some more people, and sure it's a bit "erie" and "quiet", but she's having a great time on the murder camel, looking for Skizz, figuring out how they can kill Etho/Cleo/Grian.

The other players Know what's about to happen, and she doesn't. Scott stays with her almost the entire episode. He knows what's going to happen. He already decided how he's going to die.

And then they come back from the Nether and Gem loses about 30 of her hearts, she panics slightly and a bit more when she finds Grian behind a wall (alone and down a bunch of hearts her first thought is run), but she goes back to the fight, kills Grian herself, and, oh, it's only them and the mounders left, time for the last battle apparently. She tries getting her murder buddy on their side again but Pearl refuses and it's not like she's leaving the Scotts, so they shoot arrows and run around the server a bit before retreating up the stairs back to their base. Pearl shoots her, Impulse dies, and Gem is starting to think they are going to as well (it's fine, that's what the game's about), but Bdubs and Joel are killed pretty easily and then she and Scott are running again (run, shoot, run again, why'd it have to be a bow fight?), there's a close call with Scar (it's fine, she gets away, where's Scott though?).

But I don't think she really gets it yet. Not until she joins back up with Scott and the first thing he says is "I need you to kill me. I've got 2.5 hearts, you need to kill me." And Scott throws items at her, food and an end crystal, and takes off his armour and Pearl and Scar aren't far behind...

Gem doesn't even get time to process. Pearl and Scar weren't far behind. She runs and fights and holds her own even in a 2v1, but it doesn't matter.

Gem is the new person. And she makes it all the way to 3rd, she's proud of that, should be proud of that. But she only thought of it as a fun murder game right up until Scott died. Sacrificed himself for her.

[totallynotzzombiecat]

Modern!AU ·· Heinrix van Calox x Elayne von Valancius

when your future spouse suddenly turned out to be a blown-dead illegal arms trade dealer from a reknown crime syndicate that got aquired a huge ass inheritance from literally a nowhere and protection above the law, and then appeared under a new name

OC: Elayne Andar van der Ghiessen von Valancius

[tvckerwash]

you know, an interpretation of ct that I don't see that I personally really love is that she's a fuck up. like yes she's cool and she has some good fight scenes, but a huge part of her character is that she makes mistakes. the mistakes that she makes are ones that on their own aren't the end of the world, but she keeps making these little mistakes, and they eventually add up until she's out of room to make any more.

a really good example of this phenomenon in action is the actions she took leading up to her final confrontation with carolina and tex.

strike one, she thought she saw something in the water, but when asked by the leader what it was, she brushed it off as nothing when even if it had been nothing, it would've been smart to tell him what she thought she saw.

strike two, she didn't sense or notice florida's presence when the leader did, and she looks at the leader twice, once as she pulled out her magnums, and again after she did a scan of the room, almost like she was looking at him for guidance before he finds florida and takes him out with one good axe throw.

strike three, she couldn't convince the leader to leave when they had the chance to get away, and her cheap tricks were not enough to hold off either tex or carolina in a fight. they were only good for incapacitating her opponents enough for her to get away, which doesn't work when she has no escape.

ct is not tex, or carolina, or south. she is not a one woman army who can get herself out of trouble when she's stuck in tough situations. she needs people who can watch her back, she need a team who can cover her when she does mess up, and the leader and his team were not those people. she couldn't bring herself to trust them, and they couldn't bring themselves to trust her, and that cost all of them their lives.

[ganondoodle]

kind of expected that the ability breakdown wouldnt get that much traction (especially on twitter bc if it doesnt do well in the first few hours it might as well be dead) but what i didnt need to wake up to was looking at my twitter notifications and thinking there was a long comment on it at first but then i read it and it turned out to be some guy having dug up one of my old totk tweets where i talked about how zelda was treated-

and if a quote retweet with a thread attached already starts with "this entitled brat didnt understand that zelda was being a history nerd by being in the past and getting to experience it herself" with two screenshots attached of the end of totk with zelda staring at the cam all uwu (which has ??? to do with their point??) i dont even want to know what else was in that thread

if thats how the majority of the fandom is then im even less surprised that nintendy doesnt even have to try to write anything good :I

ah yes, i am a game nerd, and by putting me in a game where i stand around doing puppy dog eyes while being shoved around by NPCs is me being a game nerd OBVIOSULY