#but there is always a consequence to that. power has a cost. but these gods didnt ascend

[chiangyorange]

This place is a message…and part of a system of messages…pay attention to it!

isles echoes so much of s1 that it felt like a show play. theres something harrowing as an unknown entity. nothing primordial like the light and dark, or maybe it is. isles wasnt a True universe in the way that mianite seasons 1 and 2 were. it was called mianitian isles. something close, something similar, but not quite the same as the others

it wants to be adored by silly little mortals who will devote themselves to its cause. it wants to be human, but only the shape of one. it wants to be greater than mere mortal beings. it wants to be indescribable.

sounds kind of like it wants to be a god

[unproduciblesmackdown]

another billions analysis thing is like so yeah while it's like "hmm let's think about power" but then doesn't really do that, what's there to offset that is "but let's think about what these people with billions(tm) are doing because of their like personal feelings & lives & whatever" and the personal feelings are the thrilling journey of s1 men following the compass of their ego & the way their personal lives matter at all beyond this is about their Relationships. except the relationships are also actually about the power billions isn't really thinking about because the ones billions focuses on involve this Fealty where one person does whatever and the other is just stuck with it. sure they might air some unhappiness sometimes, but if it's not punished or ignored from the start anyway, it'll still end up so inconsequential that it's as though it never happened. and what's left to offset the way that can't mean anything if you again take it for granted that of course people are just locked into such relationships & best they can do is fix it from the inside or embrace it as is? is "do you think this character is a winner among losers & you want to see them pwn everyone & do whatever they want forever" & if you like all the media the creators do like

[incorrectsmashbrosquotes]

Miquella vs Ranni: Loyalty and Love

SPOILERS FOR SHADOW OF THE ERDTREE UNDER THE CUT, BUT COME FOR MY THOUGHTS!

There are so many essays I could write, comparing Ranni and Miquella, but I'm going to contain myself and focus on the most important aspect of comparisons: how they treat the concepts of love and loyalty and the people who give that to them. Especially in light of Miquella's instant kill "Heart Steal" attack.

The thing about Miquella is, even though he's kind, even though he's compassionate, he DOES NOT VALUE love and loyalty. And why should he? It's always been given freely to him. He can just force someone to love him anyway, stealing their heart. So, the people who love him are disposable, treated like pawns. Malenia? Literally left to rot in the home they built together. Mohg? Turned into a glorified guard dog. Even Radahn, turned into his perfect consort.

And Miquella probably does love them, but his perception of love is completely skewed by the nature of the fact that EVERYONE loves him. It's something he just gets. Something he uses.

Compassion and love are Miquella's weapons. They're what he uses to protect himself. It's cheap, something he can get easily.

Now, compare that to Ranni.

For Ranni, love and loyalty are dangerous. She's seen how ruinous and terrible they can be. She's seen her mother's mind wither away, a consequence of Radagon breaking her heart. She's seen Radagon break Rennala's heart for his love of the Golden Order.

The only people who loved her unconditionally are Blaidd and Iji, and even Iji's more around out of loyalty to the House of Caria than love for Ranni.

That is to say, Ranni respects and understands the power of love more than Miquella ever could.

Think of how she tells you to leave her to her lonely path. Her engagement ring, engraved with a warning to stay away, that her destiny is cold and lonely. Ranni pushes people away for their own safety, and that makes her love all the more valuable.

Love, for Ranni, is something at once dangerous and precious. The despondent way she tells you, once you've defeated the Baleful Shadow, to tell Blaidd and Iji that she loves them. Ranni knows what their love has cost them. Knows what it has bought her. She respects love and is naturally wary of it.

And that's what makes it so valuable.

Miquella doesn't appreciate love, because he's always had it.

Ranni treasures it because she's always struggled with it.

God, I love this game.

[dol--blathanna]

Thinking a lot about Orym choosing a rabbit when asked what animal he would pick if cursed with lycanthropy.

Because, it makes sense. Orym is small, quick, agile, jumps well, and is highly perceptive. That definitely evokes rabbit imagery. But a lot of Orym’s identity is also tied up with being a protector – giving people AC bumps, the shield being as much a part of his fighting style as his sword, even his title: Saviour Blade of the Tempest. He wants to be a “Shield that protects Exandria”; his priorities about saving the gods are less about the gods themselves, and more about protecting the people of Exandria from the unintended consequences and bloodshed of releasing Predathos. And it would’ve been very easy to pick a large, strong predator to try and evoke the sense of a protector – a wolf, for example, an animal associated with loyalty and protecting its pack. Yet Orym chose a rabbit.

And I think that’s interesting, because rabbits are often seen as ‘cute’ animals – but they’re also a prey animal. In fact, they’re a common food source for many animals across several ecosystems: foxes, wolves, wild cats, dogs, birds of prey like eagles or owls, coyotes, stoats, and humans (and that’s just off the top of my head). Rabbits are skittish, easily frightened; to be rabbit-hearted is to be timid or cowardly. They are not generally associated with fierceness or prowess in fighting. Mice and rats are prey animals too, but typically seen as vermin (rabbits are sometimes seen as vermin too, but a farmer could eat a rabbit – they wouldn’t eat a rat). Deer are prey, but they have hooves and antlers that bring a danger to hunting them, for any animal – the difficulties of hunting rabbits are more related to their evasiveness, speed and good hearing than any life-threatening danger they might pose. Rabbits are, first and foremost, prey animals. They are killed and eaten, so that another animal might live.

Which made me think a lot about one of Orym’s other key traits: self-sacrifice. Bait and switch doesn’t just bump up his ally’s ACs, it specifically switches their place to put him directly in harm’s way. Goading attack is meant to encourage enemies to attack him instead of his friends. He literally made a deal with a hag, essentially exchanging his own life for power to protect his friends. How many times has he gone down in a fight? He’s not the only tank – but unlike Ashton (and Chetney, who also uses ‘self-sacrifice’ in his fighting style with his blood curses) he has no abilities to reduce the damage from the hits he takes (barbarian rage and the werewolf form).

(Side note: I think it’s pretty interesting that Chetney, the wolf, has attacked Orym, the rabbit, more than anyone else when losing control. That Orym’s facial scar was given to him by a friend, not a foe).

Of course, Orym isn’t the only character with self-sacrificial tendencies (FCG wins by a landslide), but I just can’t stop thinking about how weirdly perfect it is that he chose a rabbit for his animal. Rabbits are prey animals. They are eaten, so that other animals may live. Orym takes the hits, he goads and switches with his team mates to put himself in danger, he makes a deal with a hag at the cost of his own life. He’s a soldier, throwing his life away for a cause over and over again because Ludinus must be stopped, because Keyleth has put her trust in him, because it’s the only way to protect his friends, to protect everyone, because it’s the right thing to do. Orym is a rabbit. He’s always been a rabbit. That day in Zephrah, it could have easily been Orym who died instead of Will and Derrig – “unfortunate but necessary sacrifices”, as Ludinus viewed the attack. It’s unfortunate they had to die, but it was for the greater good, according to Ludinus. It’s unfortunate that a rabbit has to die, but it will feed a family of foxes, or stoats, or even a hungry human, so it’s acceptable, right?

Orym is a rabbit. He is giving himself to a greater cause that could very easily kill him – he already willingly signed his life away to Nana Morri. Because that’s what rabbits do. They die to feed others.

And the theme of being disposable is present across the entire group, not just in Orym – Bell’s Hells has been called a “party of NPCs” before. Aside from FCG’s death, I’d say Laudna perhaps fits this theme the best: she was literally murdered and hung from a tree simply because she looked similar to Vex, acting as a warning to adventurers she had never met before. But FCG’s death was – rightfully – viewed as a terrible tragedy by the group. Laudna’s decision to remove Delilah, finally freeing herself from her abuser and emphasising she is more, and deserves to be more, than just some disposable puppet – this was rightfully viewed as a very good thing! But Orym seems to be embracing this identity of self-sacrifice instead, rather than this mindset being properly challenged or acknowledged as a bad thing. After all, there’s no time. There’s too much at stake. Keyleth, Bell’s Hells, all the memories of those who have died in this fight, all the people who might die if Predathos is released and kickstarts a second Calamity – they’re all relying on him, right? A rabbit feeding so many animals with his sacrifice. And it’s not malicious compared to the way that, say, Delilah killing Laudna was an incredibly evil, fucked up and unnecessary thing to do. If Orym died to save everyone else, well, at least everyone else would be saved, right? Saving lives is good, isn't it? How could he complain?

Because rabbits are prey animals, and Orym is a rabbit too. Destined to die so that another animal may feed.

Except, that’s not true. Rabbits are more than just prey. They’re highly social, and thrive best living with others. They’re playful, they enjoy running around and kicking their legs just to show their enjoyment. They’re inquisitive and mischievous, even being associated with tricksters in some folklore and stories. They’re also associated with innocence, playfulness, spring, youth – all manner of things, depending on the story or culture. And they’re not helpless, either, even if they might be thought of as such. They can bite and scratch and draw blood quite easily if they want to! In fact, freezing up isn’t their only response when being attacked by a predator, they are known to fight back if cornered. They can sprint quickly, they have excellent hearing and senses of smell, they know how to evade predators.

Rabbits are prey, and they are also survivors. They have their own social dynamics, their own habits and dislikes and preferences. They are more than just a wolf’s meal. And Orym is more than a soldier, too. He’s more than a “necessary sacrifice”, he’s more than just a shield and sword. He deserves more than to die for a cause. He deserves a happy ending, just like everyone else. I hope he remembers that.

Orym is a rabbit. And the message isn’t that he shouldn’t be a rabbit. It’s that rabbits are worthy of surviving, too.

[ben-talks-art]

Lin Beifong has no wins in Legend Of Korra

Something that always bothered me in regards to the way this series treated the character of Lin was the fact that it never felt like any of Lin's victories actually gave the feeling of being victories.

Maybe it's because it's been years since I watched this show, and I'm being selective in what I choose to remember, and I'm just unintentioanlly choosing to remember the bad over the good... but it feels like this series just felt a lot more comfortable dunking on Lin than actually trying to raise her up... And that kinda annoys me a little.

Lin is part of this character achetype that I like to call "The Antisocials", people who, because of personal events in their past, prefer to avoid or have trouble dealing with others. She's basically meant to be the "Zuko" of the team.

I really like this trope, and I really like to see the earth element getting some love, so I was really excited to see Lin getting her moments to shine and kick some ass in the series... Which... for some reason doesn't feel all that prevalent.

Now, don't get me wrong, when Lin needs to fight, she WILL fight, and she looks cool while doing it... But when it comes to her more memorable moments, her getting defeated sadly feels more frequent than her getting some victories.

Like... Let's take a moment to count her Ls:

She got dumped by Tenzin after another woman seduced him

A terrorist started to attack her city and kept getting away from her

She was unable to stop her men from getting captured and losing their powers

Eventually she herelf got captured and lost her bending

She's constantly getting mocked and looked down upon by other characters

Her own sister left a scar on her face while committing a crime and faced basically no consequences, only to years later have a life filled with success while Lin is all alone

Her own mother acts like she couldn't care less about her struggles

Neither of the two ever gave Lin a proper apology and instead just tried to pull an Mirabel from "Encanto" and tell her to get over it

She basically played no role in all of season 2

And when she tired to face her family about her problems she was simply treated as the one in the wrong

Now let's count her "wins:"

She allowed Tenzin's family to get away from Amon in season 1... At the cost of her getting captured... Only for the family itself to get caught later anyway

She saved Korra from falling, which allowed Amon to get away with her men

In season 3 she gets clobbered by the combustion woman so her sister can land the finishing blow

and In season 4 she tries to rescue her family, only to nearly fail and needing to be saved by her mother, who proceeds to give her the most bare-bones of moments of reconciliation, because God forbid we let our fan-favorite character from the first series show a little humility for her own daughter in her moment of weakness

It just felt like the show was afraid of ever letting Lin be a badass and giving her a real win moment.

It doesn't even need to be a battle win. She could have had a moment with Korra where she teaches her some life lesson, or teach her how to metal bend and listen to the earth, or she could have had some scenes where her actions save the day, like, how come she never gets to save her sister and mother but both of them end up saving her? Or even some character moments like her bonding with Mako, or Tenzin's kids or something... I don't think she even really interacts with anyone in a meaningfull way.

If you were to ask me who her best friend in the series was, I would have no idea what to say.

Her biggest "win" in the series was getting to wake up all happy after "solving" her personal demons, an act she achieved by... fighting her sister and venting out all her anger, I guess.

I don't know if it's just me but Lin's victories on the show all feel so shallow, as if they were telling us she was achieving things instead of actually feeling like she was. At times, she felt like the show's punching bag. Insted of being the Zuko of the story, she came more as the Squidward.

Someone who's there just to lose to the villains and make them look strong and making other characters look cool while they save her with her big lesson being that she needs to learn to be less grumpy.

Lin should be so easy to make cool! Like, you see her design, her powers and abilities, her personality, her verstility for several different types of action scenes and versatility for also different interactions with the rest of the cast...

But instead it felt like they were throwing darts at a wall trying to pick a different way to dunk on her every time, as if they were afraid of makiing her too cool.

I don't know, maybe I'm just being salty and petty because I wish more had been done with her and that's causing me to only focus on the negatives, making them look and sound a lot worse than they actually were, while also ignoring all the big positives about her time on the screen...

But sometimes it felt to me like the show was more interested in hyping up everyone else and giving them a moment to shine over Lin.

Like, again, her own sister got to take down one of the big members of the Red Lotus, and she basically becomes one of the main characters in season 4, while Toph gets to train and help heal Korra.

These two got to look so much cooler in just two seasons than Lin got to look in all 4, and I can't even fully enjoy them being cool because all I keep thinking when I look at them is "You two did Lin dirty."

If they had had an actual honest earned moment of reconciliation, I feel like I would be in heaven watching both of them kicking ass, cause again, I love the earth element, but instead I would just be "God, I wish this was Lin doing all this cool stuff instead."

I'm not exactly sure what the mindset was behind the way they wanted to handle her, not sure if there was studio interference, or mismanagement, or if Nickelodeon's meddling affected things, or what...

I'm just trying to say, I feel like Lin deserved better. I still like her character a lot but I can't help but feel even more could have been done with her.

[xstarlightsupremex]

It always crossed my mind how differently SJM dealt with death and resurrection when it came to Feyre, Amren and Rhysand.

Both Amren and Feyre lose something when they die. Rhysand however, and very predictably, stays the same.

Feyre loses her humanity, Amren loses her god-like gifts. And Rhysand loses...nothing.

I think it was a strength to have characters who "died" also have a part of themselves stripped away in exchange for a second chance at life. It made sense. Death is meant to be final and uncompromising, so to cheat Death should come at a cost.

And we see how it affects Feyre and Amren. Feyre has to adjust to her new life and the trauma she has been through. It wasn't easy and it took time before she could accept the new version of her life, and the circumstances that led to it.

SJM does not go into depth about Amren's change, but there is still an adjustment period and an understanding from everyone that Amren will never again be what she once was (whatever that was since SJM never went into detail).

But Rhysand doesn't have to pay any price for dying like the other two. Despite having been resurrected, he is still the same old "most powerful high lord" as before. Beyond being so unsurprising on SJM's part, it's also boring?

I don't expect huge consequences, but we see nothing at all. No personality change (regrettably), no loss of power (also regrettably), no emotional scars/post-revival trauma, no memory loss etc.

I believe a resurrection shouldn't be so cheaply given. And its unfair how the female characters in the story have to face consequences whereas Rhysand bounces back more annoying than ever no problem.

It doesn't drastically change or hinder the story in any way, but these small details would have given the story more depth and made Rhysand a more compelling and believable character. It's so on brand that her obsessive need for Rhysand to always come out on top, unchanged and "perfect" is the one consistent thread in her books.

[mspaesthetic]

Tidbit: The “Posterization” Effect of Panels Due to the Consequences of GIF Color Quantization (and Increased Contrast (And Also The Tangential Matter of Dithering))

There’s this misconception that the color banding and patterned dithering found in panels is an entirely deliberate, calculated effect Hussie manipulated the image into looking with some specific filter, but this isn’t the case, exactly. It wasn’t so much a conscious decision he took but rather an unavoidable consequence of the medium he partook in: digital art in an age where bandwidth and storage was at a premium.

Not to delve too deeply into the history and technicalities of it, but the long and the short of it is back in the early nineties to late aughts (and even a bit further into the 10s), transferring and storing data over the web was not as fast, plentiful, and affordable as it is now. Filesize was a much more important consideration than the fidelity of an image when displaying it on the web. Especially so when you’re a hobbyist on a budget and paying for your own webhosting, or using a free service with a modest upload limit (even per file!). Besides, what good would it be to post your images online if it takes ages to load them over people's dial-up Internet? Don't even get me STARTED on the meager memory and power the average iGPU had to work with, too.

The original comic strip's resolution was a little more than halved and saved as a GIF rather than a large PNG. That's about an 82.13% reduction in filesize!

So in the early days it was very common for people to take their scans, photographs, and digital drawings and scale them down and publish them as smaller lossily compressed JPEGs or lossless GIFs, the latter of which came at the cost of color range. But it had a wider range of browser support and the feature to be used for animations compared to its successor format, PNG ("PNG's not GIF").

You'd've been hard-pressed to find Hussie use any PNGs himself then. In fact, I think literally the only times he's ever personally employed them and not delegate the artwork to a member of the art team were some of the tiny shrunken down text of a character talking far in the distance and a few select little icons.

PNGs support semi-transparency unlike GIFs, which is why Hussie used them to preserve the anti-aliasing on the text without having to add an opaque background color.

While PNGs can utilize over 16 million colors in a single image, GIFs have a hard limit of 256 colors per frame. For reference, this small image alone has 604 colors:

For those who can't do the math, 256 is a pretty damn small number.

Smaller still were the palettes in a great deal of MSPA's panels early on in its run. Amazingly, a GIF such as this only uses 7 colors (8 if you count the alpha (which it is)).

Not that they were always strictly so low; occasionally some in the later acts of Homestuck had pretty high counts. This panel uses all 256 spots available, in fact.

If he had lowered the number any smaller, the quality would have been god-awful.

To the untrained eye, these bands of color below may seem to be the result of a posterization filter (an effect that reduces smooth areas of color into fewer harsh solid regions), but it's really because the image was exported as a GIF with no dithering applied.

Dithering, to the uninitiated, is how these colors are arranged together to compensate for the paltry palette, producing illusory additional colors. There are three algorithms in Photoshop for this: Diffusion, Pattern, and Noise.

Above is the original image and below is the image reduced to a completely binary 1-bit black and white color palette, to make the effect of each dithering algorithm more obvious.

Diffusion seemingly displaces the pixels around randomly, but it uses error diffusion to calculate what color each pixel should be. In other words, math bullshit. The Floyd-Steinberg algorithm is one such implementation of it, and is usually what this type of error diffusion dithering is called in other software, or some misnomer-ed variation thereof.

The usage of Pattern may hearken back to retro video game graphics for you, as older consoles also suffered from color palette limitations. Sometimes called Ordered dithering because of the orderly patterns it produces. At least, I assumed so. Its etymological roots probably stem from more math bullshit again.

True to its name, Noise is noisy. It’s visually similar to Diffusion dithering, except much more random looking. At least, when binarized like this. Truth be told, I can’t tell the difference between the two at all when using a fuller color table on an image with a lot of detail. It was mainly intended to be used when exporting individual slices of an image that was to be “stitched” back together on a webpage, to mitigate visible seams in the dithering around the edges.

To sate your curiosity, here's how the image looks with no dithering at all:

People easily confuse an undithered gif as being the result of posterization, and you couldn't fault them for thinking so. They look almost entirely the same!

Although I was already aware of this fact when I was much younger, I'm guilty of posterizing myself while editing images back then. Figured I may as well reduce the color count beforehand to help keep the exported GIF looking as intended. I view this as a complete waste of time now, though, and amateurish. Takes away a bit of the authenticity of MSPA art, how the colors and details are so variable between panels. As for WHY they were so variable to begin with, choosing the settings to save the image as requires a judicious examination on a case-by-case basis. In other words, just playing around with the settings until it looks decent.

It's the process of striking a fine balance between an acceptable file size and a "meh, good enough" visual quality that I mentioned earlier. How many colors can you take away until it starts to look shit? Which dithering algorithm helps make it look not as shit while not totally ruining the compression efficacy?

Take, for example, this panel from Problem Sleuth. It has 16 colors, an average amount for the comic, and uses Diffusion dithering. Filesize: 34.5 KB.

Then there's this panel right afterwards. It has 8 colors (again, technically 7 + alpha channel since it's an animated gif), and uses Noise dithering this time. Filesize: 34.0 KB.

The more colors and animation frames there are, and the more complicated dithering there is, the bigger the file size is going to be. Despite the second panel having half the color count of the first, the heavily noisy dithering alone was enough to inflate the file size back up. On top of that, there's extra image information layered in for the animation, leaving only a mere 0.5 kilobyte difference between the two panels.

So why would Hussie pick the algorithm that compresses worse than the other? The answer: diffusion causes the dithering to jitter around between frames of animation. Recall its description from before, how it functions on nerd shit like math calculations. The way it calculates what each pixel's color will be is decided by the pixels' colors surrounding it, to put it simply. Any difference in the placement of pixels will cause these cascading changes in the dithering like the butterfly effect.

Diffusion dithering, 16 colors. Filesize: 25.2 KB

This isn't the case with Noise or Pattern dithering, since their algorithms use either a texture or a definite array of numbers (more boring nerd shit).

Noise dithering, 16 colors. Filesize: 31.9 KB

Pattern dithering, 16 colors. Filesize: 23.1 KB

There's a lot more I'd like to talk about, like the different color reduction algorithms, which dither algorithms generally compress better in what cases, and the upward and downward trends of each one’s use over the course of a comic, but since this isn’t a deep dive on GIF optimization, I might save that for another time. This post is already reaching further past the original scope it was meant to cover, and less than 10 images can be uploaded before hitting the limit, which is NOWHERE near enough for me. I should really reevaluate my definition of the word “tidbit”… Anyway, just know that this post suffers from sample selection bias, so while the panels above came from an early section of Problem Sleuth that generally had static panels with diffusion dithering and animated panels with noise dithering, there certainly were animated panels with diffusion later on despite the dither-jittering.

Alright, time to shotgun through the rest of this post, screw segueing. Increasing the contrast almost entirely with “Use Legacy” enabled spreads the tones of the image out evenly, causing the shadows and highlights to clip into pure black and white. The midtones become purely saturated colors. Using the Levels adjustment filter instead, moving both shadow and highlight input level sliders towards the middle also accomplishes the same thing, because, you know, linear readjustment. I'm really resisting the urge to go off on another tangent about color channels and the RGB additive color model.

Anyway, there aren't any examples in MSPA that are quite this extreme (at least in color, but I'll save that for a later post), but an image sufficiently high in contrast can be mistaken for being posterized at a glance. Hence the Guy Fieri banner. In preparation for this post, I was attempting to make a pixel-perfect recreation of that panel but hit a wall trying to figure out which and how many filters were used and what each one's settings were, so I sought the wisdom of those in the official Photoshop Discord server. The very first suggestion I got was a posterization filter, by someone who was a supposed senior professional and server moderator, no less. Fucking dipshit, there's too much detail preserved for it to be posterization. Dude totally dissed me and my efforts too, so fuck that moron. I spit on his name and curse his children, and his children's children. The philistines I have to put up with...

In the end, the bloody Guy Fieri recreation proved to be too much for me to get right. I got sort of close at times, but no cigar. These were some of the closest I could manage:

You might be left befuddled after all this, struggling to remember what the point of the blogpost even was. I had meant for it to be a clarification of GIFs and an argument against using the posterization filter, thinking it was never used in MSPA, but while gathering reference images, I found a panel from the Felt intermission that actually WAS posterized! So I’ll eat crow on this one... Whatever, it’s literally the ONE TIME ever.

I can tell it's posterization and not gif color quantization because of the pattern dithering and decently preserved details on the bomb and bull penis cane. There would have had to have been no dithering and way fewer colors than the 32, most of which were allotted to the bomb and cane. You can't really selectively choose what gets dithered or more colors like this otherwise.

Thank you for reading if you've gotten this far. That all might have been a lot to take in at once, so if you're still unclear about something, please don't hesitate to leave a question! And as always, here are the PSDs used in this post that are free to peruse.

[smallgodseries]

ThatDarnYeti won our little contest. When we asked what Small God they'd like a print of, they replied, "My partner (from who I stole this line; she threatens to use it on her incoming Freshman at her university) has chosen the Medusa, Small God of Social Distancing as her just reward for allowing my wholesale plagiarism." ___________________________________________________ [image description: A woman with green snakes for hair sits at a desk in front of a laptop. Next to her there is a mug with a pegasus on it and behind her there are several humans turned to stone. Text reads, “#1 Medusa, The Small God of Social Distancing.”]

___________________________________________________

It’s not like they weren’t warned.

She could feel bad for the first few, almost.  The ones who’d found her in the wreckage of her chiton, clutching the fabric to her breast and sobbing into her own fallen locks of hair, not yet fully aware of what had happened to her, what she had become—or what she was becoming.  She’d known the gods could be cruel.  She’d known that when Poseidon pressed himself upon her, there would be consequences.

She hadn’t expected those consequences to include rejection by her own goddess, or transformation into something terrible and new…or godhood.  But when the gods slung their powers around without thought of the cost to those they chose to target, sometimes there were unintended side effects.

She thought the snakes might have been Athena’s attempt at an apology, even though her pride and place in the pantheon had made it impossible for her to offer one aloud.  They were company, always, and they kept the spiders from walking across her face at night, swallowing them whole with little legs waving.  They had horrified her in the beginning.  Now she couldn’t imagine her eternity without them.

The invention of the internet had been a blessing no god could have predicted, but it wasn’t her salvation.  The snakes were her salvation.  The snakes and herself, for she had grown to be all the company she would ever need over the centuries of hiding herself away and staying as far as she could from the fragile mortals she posed such a danger to.

But they had forgotten the dangers of sickness.  They had forgotten the days of ten children born in the hopes that two might see adulthood.  They had grown soft in the paradise they’d crafted with their own hands, forming their own Olympus one day and one dream at a time.

If it had been up to her, she would have sheltered them.  But for all that she was a divinity in her own right, it had never been up to her.  Even as they began to call on her to preserve them through terrible times, all she could do was repeat the prayer that would protect them:

“Stay in your homes.  Wash your hands.  Be careful.  Stay safe.  Be careful.”

And then: “And STOP TOUCHING YOUR FACE.”

____________________________________________________________

Artist Lee Moyer (Trident of Aurelia, 13th Age) and author Seanan McGuire (Wayward Children, October Daye & InCryptid series) sincerely thank to each and every one of you who share Small Gods!

[doodlemancy]

uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuughhhhhhhhhh

so here's the deal re: this fucking horseshit. god i hate this.

i, personally, have mostly given up on trying to dodge inclusion in AI datasets. the stuff i make generally isn't what they're looking for anyway and there's no real way to 100% avoid being scraped short of becoming entirely invisible online, which would um, lead to me having no money and dying. that's part of the cruelty of all this, but also, in a way, it's the same risk artists online have always taken; if you want people to see your work, you have to post it knowing that some of those people are fucking lowlife piece of shit scumbags who will try to resell it on redbubble or something for a quick buck. AI is just a new and exhausting way for garbagey people to stink worse. i am not in any way excusing that behavior or trying to imply people should not be mad about it or that we shouldn't condemn this move and fight back. "if you don't want your work stolen, don't put it online" is the kind of shitty Internet Tough Guy talk i've always hated since my dA days. it's as useless and heartless as telling people that if they don't want their bikes stolen, they shouldn't leave them at the bike rack. i'm saying that i, personally, will not let a bunch of soulless thieving shitheads drive me offline. i belong here. they belong in a wifi-proof dumpster.

nightshade and glaze eat my artwork alive. they make it look terrible. when you have to sell things on the basis that they look nice, it's a big problem when protective measures make them look like dogshit. my work is not a good candidate for these processes. even if that weren't the case, i don't have the stamina, especially right now while my chronic pain is flaring for the third month in a row and my adhd meds are scarce, to go back and shade/glaze everything, and it wouldn't work on reblogs anyway. given the way midjourney and its equally stinky siblings have already scraped years and terabytes' worth of image data from popular websites, it doesn't seem worth my time. if you think it is worth yours i am not going to like, yell at you. i am just one person. but i want to be clear about the kind of situations some of us are being forced into.

i think some of the doomsaying about AI and what it will do to us has been overblown-- they need you, for marketing purposes, to believe that someday their shitty robot will be as good at "drawing" and as practical to work with as a human-- but the consequences of "AI" (which is not even actually AI) are already real and visible and obvious to anyone paying attention. i unfortunately am not infinitely wise and powerful and therefore do not have an ideal all-encompassing solution to this deeply stupid problem that the Most Unlikeable Manbabies On Earth have imposed on us after NFTs fizzled out.

what i do have is a very large repository of nice anime and game screenshots i've taken, knowledge of many archives of nice public domain images, a computer that can run nightshade overnight or while i'm off doing other things, and, most importantly, near-infinite capacity for pettiness. i do kinda feel like the jury is still out on how well nightshade/glaze will work in the long run, but in the meantime, i suppose it wouldn't cost me a lot to... perhaps... every time i get Mad About AI™, channel that anger into dumping some thoroughly-but-not-spammily-tagged, high-quality, inconspicuous poison onto this godforsaken hellsite via a secret side blog. i could make a batch of poison ahead of time, keep it on my phone, use my Toilet Scrolling Time or my Public Transit Time to post and tag up an image here and there. it could be a fun challenge to try to make some pretty robot poison that some humans will still enjoy.

the other thing we need to poison at this point, IMO, is the word "AI" itself, by being loudly and mercilessly critical of any company that dabbles in it, the same way we all clowned on any company that pushed their luck with NFT/crypto shit a couple of years ago. we need to have every corporation terrified that association with AI will tank their sales and hurt their brand. AI must = number go down and lots of people screaming at you. companies will fuck around. we must provide the finding-out. we shouldn't have to. but we can!

so make sure to let tumblr know you hate this. maybe you could include this interesting link (tw child abuse) about how Stable Diffusion was trained on some extremely serious crime. or these screenshots of Midjourney devs just sort of admitting what their whole thing is, which i got here but which have kinda been spread all over since January.

spite and anger can be forms of hope. that's all i have to say, or at least all i'm willing to type with my left hand tonight.

[zubneo]

Part 3 Admins:

1 | 2 | 3 | 4

Admins are players that have 'ascended', either by old powers (a command block) or by being appointed as one by another admin. As 'admins' they no longer at the mercy of the world they are in but dictate what happens within it.

An Admins' influence and power over the world and players can vary. They could have little to no contact, intervening only when necessary. Sometimes hiding as a fellow player. They could be an omniscient being akin to a God that players are vaguely aware of and can call to. Or they could have excessive and complete control over the world. Puppeteering their players in endless games, puzzles and narratives like a cruel DM in D&D game. There are two kinds of admin:

True Admins: 'True' admins are players who are ascended through the old powers. They have

Both Admin!Romeo from MCSM and my Admin!Narrator are true admins.

The price: Such immense power comes at a cost: your name.

As a player your soul is written into the universe but when you ascend, your name is erased and your being is rewritten as something else. The process erases the memory of you from yourself and other players but leaves you more powerful than ever. Your name too, is gone. forgotten even to yourself and cast out into the End for someone foolish or desperate enough to find it. But you, the admin, can never hear it again or face dire consequences.

Names: Since a true admin's name is forgotten, most take on new names and/or titles. A common one is "The Admin". This is because there's almost always only one Admin for a group/set of players, as Admins don't like interacting with other Admins, except for their assistants.

There is a way to rediscover an admin's name though. A journey through the End Cities might find the lost name. That is… if you know how to read it.

On my take of MCSM, the admin took the name Romeo to distinguish himself from his friends. For my world's admin, he prefers titles to names. Often letting the players decide because he feels that its more authentic~ They just end up calling him The Admin or The Narrator though.

Admin Assistants: Another way to become an admin is to be appointed as one by a 'true' Admin. This method doesn't come with the costs that a 'true' Admin faces but just as these powers are easily given, they're also easily taken away and often come with limited power and under certain conditions. An example in game would be the maker of the server giving you OP to maintain things in case of emergency or when they're away etc.

I imagine Xara and Fred to be this kind of Admin. It was Romeo who became the Admin and then gave his friends their powers, and when they fought, he took them away. Inadvertently 'killing' (banning/banishing) Fred and then locking Xara away when she became a player again.

Power Levels: Not all Admins are equal in power. Admin Assistants are relatively lesser to the power of their patron and are always aware of their semi-mortality.

A 'true' admin, however, grows in power and experience over time. But with power comes the heavy price. By becoming closer to godhood they lose their humanity. Often becoming discontent and bored, seeking more and more control over their players in order to make things more 'entertaining'.

This progress of power can be 'reset' (though not revert to a player). A way to knock down a true Admin is to speak their true name.

MCSM Romeo!Admin has/had an immense power level. The likes of such rendered him unable to comprehend things past his own wants/entertainment. This could be seen in his more erratic behavior, appearance and power. Able to possess and control massive amounts of the world at a time.

[thegreymoon]

The Story of Minglan

Two children??

When did the second child happen??

I hate how this drama just sidelined all the Sheng siblings and gives us NOTHING on them.

***

OH MY GOD.

SHE DID POISON GRANNY!! THE IDIOT! THE ABSOLUTE IMBECILE OF A WOMAN.

***

Oh, baby 😢

END THEM ALL!! I AM ROOTING FOR YOU!!

Also, Minglan as a character and this actress are both excellent.

***

LOL, she can't even pretend properly.

She looks like a toddler caught elbows deep in her mom's makeup.

***

Show that shiny spine, Minglan!

Once you try to kill the people she loves, she does not mess around.

***

OH MY GOD, HE SLAPPED HER 😮😮

MINGLAN, END THEM ALL AND SALT THE EARTH!!

***

I AM LIVING 🔥🔥

***

Oof, I love this new powerful her!!

This was amazing! 🔥🔥

***

That's right, Minglan! Don't let them sweep this under the rug!

Go on, Minglan, beat that drum! She really thought that she could poison people unimpeded and with no consequences like her evil sister whose entire useless family failed to hold her accountable!

Enough is enough!

***

THIS FACEOFF 🔥🔥

He wants to hit her again so bad but he doesn't dare!

Also, you have got to love how Minglan is a "good child" and "best daughter" when it is beneficial to him, and how he is so willing to kill or disown her when his shitty reputation is at stake.

***

That's what you get for following the lead of your shit sister.

Just because her spineless husband won't divorce her doesn't mean yours won't divorce you!

Also, this actress is amazing! Absolutely incredible performance!

***

LMAO, I feel like these old nannies are the most sensible people in any house, always saving their masters from their own idiocy 😅

***

Oh, Nanny Liu, she's an imbecile.

You're yelling in vain.

***

Oh my god. How stupid must you be?

Imagine letting your sister whose own marriage is a septic tank of toxicity and whose own house is a hellhole manipulate you into blowing your own marriage up like this.

And Sheng Hong was super willing to sweep it all under the rug.

***

And she's still in denial.

She seriously has rocks for brains and is then shocked and offended nobody will let her manage the household. The last time she managed the household, she set up an illegal money laundering operation for her shit sister which cost her all privileges and she still hasn't learned anything.

[ride-thedragon]

NETTLES AND THE IDEA OF INNOCENCE

Innocence, especially for women in asoiaf has a particular place in their perception.

Innocence in our world holds a very similar place.

When a character is innocent, you want better for them because any turmoil they go through is undeserved, and by the rules of both societies, it should allow them to be exalted from hardships.

So when it comes to such a small character like Nettles the idea of her innocence is perpetuated past the character we have because she is exalted from the concequence of what she is accused of in the narrative and is redeemed from all the hardship she faces towards the beginning when she claims a dragon.

But I don't think that's fair or correct so I want to go over some things we know and hear about her that people use to defend this idea of innocence and come to the conclusion that even though she is innocent it's not in the way typically attributed to her.

1. Nettles and Sheep:

Her relationship to this animal is a fun metaphor to understand her. Nettles trades sheep to gain her dragon Sheepstealer. Nettles trades innocence for power.

"Lambs have always been sacrificial animals. From the Ancient Greeks and Romans to Christians and even later civilizations, lambs were used for sacrifice to a higher purpose. In most cases, it was the sacrifice to Gods.These are the qualities that make lambs so symbolic. "

"They are a sign of innocence, purity, vulnerability, and sacrifice. Many of these symbols overlap with the symbolism of youth."

The idea of innocence is something that her taming Sheepstealer inherently corrupts. She slaughters sheep every day to get close enough to establish a bond to him. It's a continued effort to trade innocence for power, and because dragons make Targaryens closer to gods than men, the idea is that she's offering a sacrifice to a 'god' to gain power.

I'll link my post about this parallel she has to sheep further.

Another thing is that she's young, and that plays a part in what she is absolved from in the narrative because of the nativity and ability to grow with the potential of youth.

2. Nettles and The Cost of Power:

The regression of this trade for power comes after Driftmark is sacked and burned. In the war effort that Nettles largely contributed to, she loses her friend and her home. We are told her reaction to the loss is crying through the soot on her face so hard it leaves streaks. As with what happens consistently in mythology, the protagonist reaps benefits and consequences in the quest for power. The cost of gaining that power was fighting in the war, something she knew would happen. The fact that it came at the cost of her closest known relationship at the time as well as the place she grew up and had to leave behind to join the war effort is conceivable but not predictable for anyone to know. Especially not a 16 year old girl.

3. Nettles and King's Landing:

A while back, I drew attention to the fact that in the book, we have no real evidence that Nettles had any of the promises made to the Dragon Claimers kept to her. No marriages, lands, or knighthood equivalents are given to her in the wake of the fight. A lot of people use this as a way to say she's innocent because she believes in a cause and is sticking by it. That doesn't seem accurate towards the situation. King's Landing is the capital at that moment for punishing treason. She's a young, grieving girl, experiencing the price of power in a place where her refusal to fight or her running away will be met with a death warrant. Nettles has a nose scar for stealing allegedly. She's one of the characters we know understands the cost of disobedience in this world. She is a cost they'd be willing to pay. Even with her dragon adding to her necessity during the war, they're executing Noble men at that time. Nettles' entire life in juxtaposition to their's is incredibly small. Whether or not she cared about gaining anything (I like to think they gave her money), it's very clear that it's a weary time with major consequences for defiance or treason.

4. Nettles and Daemon:

This is the one people use this idea of innocence the most frequently for. "Nettles was innocent of the accusation made against her (sleeping with Daemon, not witchcraft), and Rhaenyra was influenced and turned against her."

Nettles doesn't need to be innocent for what Rhaenyra did to be wrong. The men who defend Nettles against the decree say that Nettles is wrong but young and shouldn't be killed for that. They conceded that the idea of treason is fair, but the idea surrounding it with the spell implications is simply incorrect and will make Daemon kill them if executed. Daemon is the sole person who puts her in danger and saves her in this narrative for his own character arc. Nettles isn't innocent, but she is young. She has her life ahead of her and has done everything that is expected of her. She isn't punished for love by the narrative. It saves her life and allows her to escape the trapping of power altogether, something she never returns to traditionally.

She does return to it with the burned men, but entirely away from the system, she originally gained that power from.

5. Nettles and Treason:

She did commit treason. That's not an innocent thing. It quite literally required her sleeping with a married prince. Whether or not she's a virgin (we'll get to it) in this world, giving into sex outside of marriage or prostitution as a woman is framed as wrong because of the value of virtue for women. With someone like Nettles, she'd know it's a bad thing and still proceeds with it. While as prince consort and a man Daemon will never dare a lick of concequence for adultery, Nettles would, and treason isn't a far stretch for the crime. Even with the understanding that Daemon would protect her, that they seemingly have, it's not okay. (It is to me. She's completely innocent.)

6. Nettles and Virginity:

Virtue is a currency in this world. Sleeping with a girl and deflowering is seen as a commodity and milestone. Virtue for women is posed as an added value. Without it, as we see in the books, women without maidenheads are seen as a lesser offer often beneath the standard of noble men.

Nettles is not ever positioned as a virgin. In this world, it's a logical conclusion to draw that she is not and would've traded sex for food or money. I'm not saying that happened, but if it did, there seems to be a stigma that it makes her lesser character in the story and / or denies her own autonomy by demeaning her. With the way it is presented in the narrative, it's a fair conclusion to draw. It's said to deter the idea that Daemon would sleep with her because she isn't even worth it, and that's my issue with the she should be virtuous reading.

It falls into the temptation of a character doing what she must to survive being a way to demean her. Nettles was surviving every day before the sowing. Her having sex, prostitution or just because she could, should not shroud her character in any world. Nettles can exist as both a critical view of how Westeros treats girls like her and as an autonomous character who chooses whether or not to have sex given her situation without it being demeaning or derogatory towards her as a character.

7. Nettles and Sex Work:

To add on, sex work is often demonized in this world, and because of the poor class of women often in these positions who are quite young and have no real alternative. Nettles as a character would exist in contradiction to the narrative of not only sex workers who die or are brutalized in that life, think book Shae, Show Roz. She'd also be the one who is actively saved by the class of people who often perpetuate this system of abuse they exist in.

Nettles isn't in it anymore or has once been preyed on by the entrapping cycle that brothels perpetuate but escapes and makes her own way. She's foul-mouthed and marred because of it, but she also becomes a dragonrider, and then when she has sex it's because she wants to.

When the narrative tries to condemn her for it, she's saved by the person who puts her in that position, unlike the other girls, like Tysha, Nettles' value isn't placed on her past sexual partners, and she is like the other girls who fall victim to the predatory sex work establishments in ASOIAF, but she escapes and isn't punished in the narrative for sleeping with someone or trying to survive in the first place. Something we don't really see in this world.

Overall,

The overarching angle of innocence pushed on her character is extremely strange and does not benefit her as a character. Innocence in this world is based on patriarchal feudalism that commodifies women into property and places value on them like stock that depreciates with superficial nonsense.

Question this world.

Nettles isn't innocent and shouldn’t have to be to deserve the ending she gets. She can just escape because she learns and grows and is young enough to do it without major consequences for her.

Nettles is innocent however, in the narrative of a poor, homeless girl with nothing, accomplishing a tremendous feat and gaining power from it, being used in wars and fights that have nothing to do with her and having the threat of death looming if she doesn't comply.

In being used as a means to an end in a conflict between the two most powerful people in the realm and escaping without any permanent concequence to her. She's not guilty.

Let girls have fun and be complex characters in their narratives. Innocence isn't a necessity, but even if it was for you to like her, she is, in a sense, innocent.

[sinbinfamiliar]

So… hear me out.

I’m horrible at timelines so bear with me on this, I know as much as I know, and I couldn’t find anything that was super solidly concrete for timeline placement of events per say, so I’m making a bit of wiggle room for myself here.

But when Enver dies by the hands of Tav and you use speak to dead on him, you see that basically his soul has been yoinked by Bane, and is going to internally be tortured for failing.

And while I know that Enver is considered a chosen, much like Orin and Ketheric were, both of them had transformations. Both of them had another form to take on thanks to their deities/gods they were chosen by. Enver never truly does, he stays as himself.

And while I know that it’s outdated information, but since Bane was known in the past to grab someone as a vessel, a avatar, and puppet then around while the original resident of the body couldn’t only watch, what if this is either fully or partially the case?

What amazing context that could add to the events of the story for Enver, and added angst and sadness as well. What if not all the actions of his were his own by choice? Perhaps selling Karlach off wasn’t 100% his choice at the time if he was chosen by then, and being push to do what Bane wanted, maybe even controlled in a sense. How painful would that be to know he was there, watching when he did things that even he wouldn’t do?

Imagine the utter anguish it would cause, and the tragedy it makes. The moments he does have control of himself he is still trying to maintain a semblance of control over his life as always, in the same situation he was in the past. Wanting power sure, but at these costs? Even he may not have stooped so low. What if Karlach was right? That she didn’t know what happened and he just up and sold her, and it was actually out of character for him. Because it wasn’t him. What if most of what we see in the game isn’t fully him? Or him at all? How utterly intriguing would it be then to bring him back somehow, to see how much of a different person he could be when not controlled, and able to try again to make better choices.

To have the option your companions did.

How utterly fascinating would it be to relearn a character again that you thought you knew, but didn’t perhaps know as well as you thought? To know not all of those horrible i choices weren’t all his.

I dunno, maybe I’m woobifying a villain again, but the idea that maybe not every action and choice was all Enver’s seems so much more in depth to delve into then someone as easy as “evil cause evil” in a basic sense. Not that there’s anything wrong with that of course. But I’m a sad sap who likes tragedy in heaping layers of pain lol

The redemption arc that could come from somehow saving Enver’s soul, using true resurrection, and giving the actual true second chance he needed, just hits different ya know? Living with all the memories of the things he didn’t have control over perhaps as he was second passenger in his body, and now needing to live with them and face those consequences and perhaps get better(much like your companions, who aren’t perfect either even during happy ending style routes)

Bah! Just food for thought though!

Perhaps my own personal theory/headcanon I may work with though. Cause I just truly love the tragedy of it all. BUT I’m just rambling at this point!

Also here ya go! @houseofhopeofficial ^w^ tagged ya like you wanted!

[ash-and-books]

Rating: 5/5

Book Blurb: A girl with dangerous magic makes a risky bargain with a demon to be free of her monstrous power in this young adult fantasy perfect for fans of An Enchantment of Ravens and House of Salt and Sorrows.

Liska knows that magic is monstrous, and its practitioners are monsters. She has done everything possible to suppress her own magic, to disastrous consequences. Desperate to be free of it, Liska flees her small village and delves into the dangerous, demon-inhabited spirit-wood to steal a mythical fern flower. If she plucks it, she can use its one wish to banish her powers. Everyone who has sought the fern flower has fallen prey to unknown horrors, so when Liska is caught by the demon warden of the wood—called The Leszy—a bargain seems better than death: one year of servitude in exchange for the fern flower and its wish.

Whisked away to The Leszy’s crumbling manor, Liska soon makes an unsettling discovery: she is not the first person to strike this bargain, and all her predecessors have mysteriously vanished. If Liska wants to survive the year and return home, she must unravel her taciturn host’s spool of secrets and face the ghosts—figurative and literal—of his past. Because something wakes in the woods, something deadly and without mercy. It frightens even The Leszy…and cannot be defeated unless Liska embraces the monster she’s always feared becoming.

Review:

Howl's Moving Castle mixed in with Polish mythology and so much more. This was a gorgeous story filled with magic, romance, dangerous monsters, and deals with demons and old gods. Liska is a girl cursed with uncontrollable magic, every time she lets it out someone ends up hurt... or dead. In an attempt to finally get rid of it she decides to wander into the woods to make a deal with a demon. But deals with demons always comes with a cost... so when she meets the Guardian of the Woods, Leszy, he asks for one year of her servitude in exchange for her magic. For one year she will live in his manor and work under him and to her surprise he even begins to train her as his apprentice. One year should go by right? For a village girl shunned by everyone in town for being a "witch" Liska strangely begins to feel like she has found a home for herself with this strange demon and his sentient house and talking cat. Liska and Leszy are polar opposites, she is sunshine while he is darkness, she is a curious and open while he has so many guarded secrets. Yet Liska finds herself drawn to his secrets and his past, trying to figure out why he wants her magic and what happened to the previous apprentice who lived her as well as why a mysterious ghost dog keeps haunting her at night. Liska discovers more than she could ever imagine about the demon boy she lives with and that beneath his gruff exterior lies a boy who is cursed. Liska discovers that Leszya got his power from a deal with a powerful demon himself and that he gave his heart up... yet if she wants to save the boy she has begun to fall for she'll have to break his curse and save his heart before it's too late. This was an absolutely fantastic and stunning read, I adored this book so much, It's such a perfect read for fans of Howl's Moving Castle and Uprooted, it's got a great world and the relationships between the characters was absolutely perfect. My only thing is I wish there was a bonus chapter or a bit of an extended epilogue so I could see more of Liska and Leszy together again after everything. I just wanted one more happy scene for them after everything they went through so badly because I love them so much. I seriously loved this book and can't wait to recommend it!

*Thanks Netgalley and Simon and Schuster Children's Publishing, Margaret K. McElderry Books for sending me an arc in exchange for an honest review*

[kitzatara]

We know the basics. The limitation of magic is that it will always come with a price. But I have this very interesting idea that with each unique magic user with a unique type of magic, it should have its own unique kind of price to pay. What would be an interesting kind of consequence that would fit well with her backward magic?

In canon it’s sorta hinted at that the price of her magic is the loss of her father/parents and then one other time jokingly implied that her bad luck in love is the price lol. Because in DC it seems to be more abstract prices, like i know with John it’s a big implication that everyone close to him gets hurt in some way.

imo this is fine, it’s not terribly creative but it’s a weird nebulous price that doesn’t really hinder her much. But i think there’s maybe different avenues we could explore?

My thought is that each magic user has a limit, a natural magical supply they can draw from to channel spells. And when you reach a spell that is more than what you possess naturally that’s when you have to start drawing power from different sources and “paying” for that magic. Kinda like a loan. That magic is the one with the weird costs, whereas depleting your normal supply just leaves you drained and needing rest. My HC is that Zatanna has a very unnaturally high limit, it’s one of the reasons she’s so “powerful” because the limit for her is far above everyone else, like John and why he’s labeled more an occultist.

you can draw power from beings like fae, gods and demons because they offer a convenient trade off as the cost. A little favor, worship, a sacrifice of some sort. Pretty straight forward bartering you give me this i lend you power. Magical objects are reserved for one type of spell/magic, the trade off being in needs to charge or it’s limited to the object, or you need to bond with the object, etc.

Then there’s magical dimensions you can draw energy from, and that cost can vary depending on the dimension, like maybe your sanity for a day, a week of nightmares, bit of bad luck, etc. Using John as an example again being who often does rituals or uses objects to sort’ve bypass the nastier costs/sources of magic so that he doesn’t deplete his natural reserve given by his demon blood, and so he doesn’t have to make any more deals than he already has.

Personally i don’t much care for the idea that the price of magic always had to be some depressing awful thing, i think that it should just be explicitly more transactional. And Zatanna is privileged because she inherited a lot of natural magic from her parents and being part homo magi and having a powerful medulla jewel in her brain. This also just plays into the notion that she’s a bit of a nepo baby and can inform how she interacts with the magical community since she has a “magic privilege”. I think that would be very fun to explore since she’s really well liked and trusted and seen as a great hero, but maybe there’s some resentment to how good she’s got it. Which has sorta been echoed in the past by John and Nimue Ravensong who had to work a lot harder to get good at magic and learn its secrets. Could definitely inform her more villainous rivals and how they might envy her like Allura or Tannarak. Even brother night who had to sacrifice all those kids for his power only for Zee to force him to recant it.

But if you have ideas for more specific costs id love to hear em. And thanks for the ask!

[normiematsu]

concept for angel killer yumemi ^_^ the au i have thought the most about storywise! she's an angel in training who gets corrupted by choro. i made a playlist for it here that serves as a moodboard/audio version of the whole story when you listen to it chronologically! i need to type up a proper retelling of it and create real ref sheets but have some unformatted thoughts/minificlet below...

yumemi is an angel in training tasked with learning more about how humans live. unfortunately for her she ends up at choro's cathedral and he's immediately able to clock her as an angel. even more unfortunate is the interest he takes in her...

shes super trusting and willing to put aside any suspicions she has about choro since she likes him. gets scolded a lot for not being that great at hiding her own identity - what would everyone think if they saw her wings!! her halo!! humans aren't ready to handle that - so choro keeps her close by. she's like a lost lamb that dutifully follows him around the cathedral, never openly questioning the odd things that happen when they're out of sight from the congregation. she thinks there's a lot to learn from him, a man so willing to teach her about humanity, while not questioning how little he shares about himself...

eventually she figures out he's belphegor and despite feeling betrayed she abandons her mission and decides she's going to save him, no matter the cost! love always wins!! she genuinely thinks she can fix choro and he's like... "do you know who i am? what i am?" for a while lots of fighting ensues. shes not that strong though so all her threats fall on deaf ears, and he knows she doesn't have it in her to put her lance through his heart. (he kind of wishes she would tho, since he's a demented freak)

choro could kill her so easily. he's never met someone with so little common sense... he can't imagine her ever completing her mission or being in charge of anything important... so he decides to start up his own little game. testing the limits of how much he can get away with. before he knows it, he's already claimed her soul, not thinking of the consequences...

and then one night he gets too riled up and accidentally kills her during one of their fights. he didn't even mean to do it, honest! suddenly he's hit with the realization he wasn't quite ready for their game to end... he's toyed with keeping undead humans around before, but they never lasted long after reviving them. he's never resurrected an angel but he figures it's worth a shot trying. the result is... not quite what he was expecting.

he manages to get her revived, but not as an angel - she's some strange and twisted thing fresh out of purgatory. violent. bloodthirsty. she wants nothing more than to get revenge for what he's done! even in this state though she's not powerful enough to finish him off, not like she could anyway since he'd just regenerate... begging god for forgiveness gets her nowhere either. she's committed an unforgivable sin by abandoning her mission and knowingly pursuing a relationship with a demon.

choro takes great pride in telling her she wasn't his first plaything, but he didn't think she'd be his last - and now she's bound to him for eternity...