#guards....put him in my blorbo dungeon

[gifti3]

ill do whatever u want man 🧎🏾‍♀️

[mrs-luigi-vargas]

Um. Hi. So I was reading @theangelofangst's newest work and it gave me Blorbo Thoughts. Unfortunately my blorbo is Kamek, so uhh…yeah.

Anyway, I wrote a thing based on it! Sorry if the lore/timeline (or the cipher) is wrong; I started writing this after Chapter 3 came out and then Chapter 4 came out as I entered the editing phase, lmao.

Also if you haven't read Speechless Symphony yet, you really really should! It's a delight of a story and the ending is very good :D

~~~

Sivsocavoup & Sitvusevoup

[AO3 Link]

Sitting in a cage in a pitiful excuse for a dungeon really gives you a lot of time to think.

A lot of time for your mind to wander, bored with staring at golden bars, white walls, the glint of metal spears meant to poke you if you’re out of line, the closed door denying you freedom. Nothing to stop thoughts and memories from surfacing, and of course those thoughts and memories can't do you the decency of being any semblance of pleasant.

No, the memories that float beneath your eyelids and repeat ad nauseam are those having to do with how you had ended up here to begin with. That plan, that infiltration, that confrontation. That oh-so-satisfying spray of blood, those delectable cries of fear. That green human’s face flipping to pure rage at a speed that could have put even King Bowser to shame.

That lucky throw.

That throw that shouldn't have been of any note, as the object flung through the air had been just a small stone. But it hadn’t been until the flames King Bowser had been gathering abruptly died out and he'd begun clawing at his own throat that you’d realized something was wrong. But you had barely been able to raise your wand to do anything about the way his face had twisted in pain before the green one struck, with a blow to the head that cast your world dark.

And then you had woken up here.

You spend the first hours after reorienting yourself fuming about the indignity of it all. Swearing vengeance for being treated like this, cursing those blasted humans who had landed you here, vowing to break out with King Bowser and —

The panic that had been blooming in your King’s eyes flashes in your mind, then. If you were an optimist, then you would next hope that whatever had been wrong with him had somehow resolved itself, and that he was waiting somewhere in the wings with a grand plan to break you, his esteemed second-in-command, out of this dreadful place. But you know exactly what had been wrong with King Bowser, and you haven't gotten this far in life with anything as worthless as optimism.

So you flick your wrist when the guards aren't looking, pulling up that monitoring charm you’d attached to your King back when he’d been a trouble-making prince, one you’d never bothered to remove as he’d aged. It stares back at you, fuzzy and buzzing with static as if it had never been anchored to him at all. You allow yourself one tremulous breath, paired with a single overlong blink. You’re behind enemy lines, after all.

...

...He’d been a great king.

For the next few days, you comfort yourself with the fact that the Mushroom Kingdom’s hero, at least, had been injured enough that he likely hadn’t survived that encounter, either. But even that solace is denied to you, as you overhear the guards standing near your cage chatter about Mario. About Mario’s recovery —

You struggle to keep your magic under control. They'd taken your wand away when they’d locked you up, in the assumption you were powerless without it; there’s no need for them to have evidence to the contrary. Still, you seethe over the meager, tasteless prison food they’d given you. You should have known the lack of funeral bells was a sign something wasn't right. Not only does that green hero get to walk away a murderer, he gets to have his brother with him, safe and sound. A duo of goody-two-shoes, prancing about as if they hadn't destabilized an entire kingdom in one fell swoop. As if they hadn't —

Again, you wrestle your magic down. It still simmers beneath your skin, eager for an outlet. And you're eager to give it one, one that ended in those brothers suffering a thousand times the amount King Bowser had, as he’d burned from the inside out. Yes, they would rue the day they crawled out of whatever wretched hole they’d surfaced from, so long as you still lived.

---

For a while, you entertain more...outlandish forms of revenge. A curse to cause unending nightmares as it puts them to sleep for good; an “accident” that leaves them both blind and deaf and crippled for life; the red hero held down, helpless to watch as you break every one of his brother’s bones one by one by one.

But those ideas, while satisfying, still aren't enough. You haven’t gotten this far in life without a reliable and fine-tuned cruel streak, and in that fine-tuning you’ve learned cruelty is a dish best served cold. So you let those short-sighted scenarios pass you by, sorting through the chaff for the perfect one.

You also know cruelty is a dish best made to the servee’s tastes, and for that, you need intel. You haven't needed a wand to cast simple spells since you’d learned to walk, so it’s trivial to attach little eavesdropping charms to the food trays and cutlery those fungal peons bring to you at mealtimes. Emphasis on little, because while you have been doing magic longer than any of these imbeciles had been alive, you know the Princess, at least, isn't as much of an idiot as the rest of them regarding magical matters, and you haven't gotten this far in life without a healthy dose of caution.

So you do what you do best — you listen, and you learn. Those brothers visit the castle often, and thus you find the red one hadn't actually escaped King Bowser’s final attack unscathed; apparently, his voice box is forfeit. The world forever spared of that idiot’s worthless blathering...for the first time since waking up imprisoned, a ghost of a smile curls up on your face. Even in death, your King’s vicious nature still prevails. You’d taught him well.

And, in a lucky break, you manage to eavesdrop on your King’s murderer well enough to catch the guilt in his voice when talking about the state of his brother. You take a risk and upgrade the charm to give you visuals, and you see with your own eyes the self-condemnation lining his shoulders. The sight is enough for the second grin of your prison stay. But it isn’t enough to satisfy you completely; you need it to hurt more. Nonetheless, you could still use this; the only reason King Bowser’s blow had landed — besides his unrivaled combat prowess — was because his initial target had been too busy cowering in fear to see the strike coming.

Without access to your spellbooks, it takes a while for the perfect idea to manifest. But that’s fine; you haven’t gotten this far in life without a wealth of patience. You mentally flip through them, one by one, for the perfect spell to make those humans pay, as you bide your time for an opportunity to escape.

And the perfect inspiration comes months later; after months of awful prison food and taunting from the guards and absolutely no privacy, you sit next to the light of the moon, thinking about your late King. Not in a moment of weakness, as someone soft-hearted would assume, but of the power vacuum he’d left in his wake. To be filled by whatever schmuck made a big enough power play, by the circumstances. You frown imagining it, a headache half-budding in your temples. If you were a lesser man, this would be when you would wish to do anything to have King Bowser back to take his rightful place once again. But you are greater, so you merely cast that thought aside; when you return to the Darklands you’ll find some poor saps to use as fodder for whatever revival ritual you’ll perform to get King Bowser back to his glorious, living self.

But...you do know someone lesser. Many people, in fact. One person in particular, however, would be perfect to cast in a certain role. And there’s another who would be an excellent fit for the tragic hero of this upcoming tale. And you won't even have to hatch another escape plan to direct it!

Originally, the spell you’re thinking of was something to cast on oneself in a saccharine moment of self-sacrifice for a loved one, but you know better. So you spend the next week or so keeping to yourself, those pathetic excuses for guards long since bored of you, recalling the exact shape of the incantation you need, building your magic reserves as much as you can to cast the spell itself the way you want to, knowing your slight magical atrophy and the lack of magical focus would make things marginally difficult. Or rather, it would have made things marginally difficult, if you weren't the greatest wizard alive.

As such, soon enough, with the moon sitting high yet hidden in the night sky and almost a year to the day since King Bowser was killed, you deem yourself ready.

In the darkness, you kneel on the metal floor of your cage. With a deep breath, you close your eyes and focus your attention inward. You think of your King, that look on his face, the last look you had seen on him while he was still alive. The look he probably died wearing. Surprised. Agonized. Frightened.

The vowels and consonants of your native language fall from your lips easily; low, whispered, with the barest of shaking as you concentrate. You feel the spell reach out to you, wanting you to pay your price. You feel it reach out beyond you, toward the Darklands, wanting to restore what was lost in exchange.

But you aren't a lesser man, so you don't give it the chance. You gather your magic and push it away, away out of the room, towards the magical signature you want it to latch on to instead. While the act of doing so is simple, it still costs a fair bit of energy, and without your wand you’re left panting from the effort of avoiding becoming ensnared by the spell yourself. You’d chosen it for a reason, a reason that was rather deadly. It wouldn't do to fail now.

The moon sits high in the sky and the rest of the world is asleep, so you shift to a better sitting position and lean back against the bars of your cage. You feel the traces of magic stretch out toward where you sent the spell, winding down pathways and weaving between buildings, to a little house in a town, to a certain murderer’s sleeping form. They’ll figure out what you’ve done sooner rather than later, you know. And with the spell you’ve cast banned in every country and scrubbed from every text published in the last century, they will have to come to you to learn how to break it. Not that you’ll tell them, of course.

So now, all there’s left to do is wait. Wait for them to come with their distress and their anger and their paltry threats. Wait for their tears, their denial, their attempts to bargain with you. And as the only one with answers, you’ll be free to give the ones that would only send them further into despair.

As your magical exhaustion ushers you to sleep, a cold smile dances on your face. You haven't gotten this far in life without patience and cruelty, after all. And it looks like both are about to pay off.

You can hardly wait for it.

[phytoremediator]

Shadow of the Erdtree review

PC, 2024, DLC for Elden Ring, $40

Verdict: Not worth $40. 7.5/10

Elden Ring was my first soulslike. After a couple of false starts a few weeks after release I settled into a strength build and achieved the Age of Stars ending (Ranni's) and got all remembrances. A year later I even filled out my inventory with missing items like obscure talismans and tried a new dex build and didn't get very far. In between, I played Dark Souls (even streamed it), Bloodborne (loved it), DS2 (worse than 1), DS3 (best of the trilogy - haven't played the DLC), Demon's Souls remake (good, but faithful copying of esoteric and clunky mechanics detracted), Sekiro (not for me, i.e. "too hard"), and Lies of P (excellent soulslike. Got all achievements. Some quests a bit annoying).

In the lead-up to the DLC I was mostly debating whether or not it'd be worth the steep price tag despite really wanting to play it. I can talk about value but I don't want to sound like Marx in this review. I'd probably lean towards the value being $25. Far less to do than the base game, which is $60 (less if you get it on sale). It's sort of worth playing, but the content duration is only extended by virtue of needing to retry bosses like Radahn, Consort of Miquella over and over again.

DLC content that requires a significant portion of gameplay to get to and in turn requires choices or includes points of failure can be a headache for blind playthroughs. I ended up following a basic side quest guide after accidentally (?) slaying a member of the forager brood and angering Moore, locking myself out of some recipes. This helped somewhat but I still missed out on Ansbach's bow due to siding with the Hornsent who promptly invades me in Rauh. Whatever. I could copy the nonsense pathed absurdly named save file into a backup folder like I did to get the last two achievements I was missing (Elden Lord and Lord of Frenzied Flame) but that seemed like too much work.

There are a few side areas and overall the exploration was fun. Once you grab the first few easy upgrade materials it becomes easier to get the rest. The handful of dungeons were well put together but generally relied on lethal falls as a threat. Bayle the Dread was kind of gimmicky in that you needed a blessing and an ally to defeat him. The furnace golems were also the essence of gimmick and had insane damage. Midra was easy but I tackled him at 20/10 upgrade level. The uh, Putrescence Knight? was easy enough, though I really expected sleep to be more of a threat in Stone Coffin Fissure/Cerulean Coast, while it was actually absent. Shadow Sunflower wasn't too bad and thematically interesting, although I like my plants alive, not undead or shadowy. The boar rider guy caught me off guard but I defeated him second try despite his ridiculous hitboxes. Metyr and its side quest was probably the most enjoyable of the side quests, though it felt a bit empty. Mostly I was like "welcome back Bloodborne" because of the cosmic horror and motherhood.

The main quest was fairly enjoyable - I defeated Divine Beast Dancing Lion first because I watched SGDQ 2024 and that's what the runner did. Anyway, the NPCs each had their little goals that changed a bit after defeating Rellana and approaching the Shadow Keep, but none I agreed with. Leda has the archetype of golden zealot, whose gleaming armor belies a bloodthirst. Ansbach wears his bloodiness on the outside and allies with you if only to give Mohg a proper burial. Thiollier is pathetic yet probably the most agreeable character. After slaying Messmer, whose design is targeted towards people vulnerable to evil blorbos, you go through another area and fight another boss. After a bit you make your way to where Miquella is doing some very weird necromancy (hashtag toxic yaoi) and eventually slay him and Radahn. Well, I would have. I got him down to 10% but didn't feel like grinding the rest of the way. Also it seems that asking Ansbach and Thiollier to help actually makes the fight significantly harder, for some reason. So I'll just have to imagine Miquella being very sad about dying.

Many fans were blinded by some of the antagonists being pretty, going so far as to romanticize Miquella's divine power of coercion. Messmer was the subject of evil blorbo-ing from the moment of his reveal. His crimes are self-evident and yet he is upheld as a tragic figure who impaled and burned for love.

The DLC is very self-contained. You access it after defeating Mohg, which is usually the last remembrance boss players defeat in the main game. The Shadow Realm is an entirely different map. The story and lore in the main game barely makes reference to anything happening in the DLC, save for Marika, Miquella/St. Trina, Radahn, and Mohg. Much of the DLC builds off of the existing lore (+3 talismans, anyone?), though it emphasizes the motif of light and shadow. This is a familiar and ubiquitous concept but I would like to make special reference to the twin trees of Valinor in The Lord of the Rings lore, as the Erdtree and Scadutree may well be inspired by these two. I would have liked some stuff retconned into the main game and the DLC content be more integrated into the main game lore and world. I replayed from the start prior to the DLC and found nothing new to suggest the existence of pretty much anything in the Realm of Shadow. I always side with Ranni but there wasn't really a way to play the DLC in a manner befitting this, though you do end up slaying Messmer and Miquella and also some fingers (Metyr) anyway.

Overall, pretty enjoyable. If I had to give it a score I'd probably say 7.5/10. Point off for bad difficulty scaling especially after hitting a wall with the final boss. Point off for not tying in with the rest of the game enough and being a bit empty in places. The main quest feels especially pointless since Miquella's grand plan is only revealed fully at the end and you promptly put a stop to it. Half a point off for combat gimmicks that require abnormal gameplay (Bayle, furnace golems, aging untouchable, Radahn). The bulk of the Realm of Shadow was well executed and pretty (and gross), most of the bosses and enemies were engaging, and some of the new equipment was worthwhile. Pick it up if you're really into Elden Ring but if some of the negatives are glaring you can wait until it goes on sale.

[takethistoyourstardust]

3, 9, 11, and 23!!

I WILL DO THIS FOR RORA IN THIS ASK BUT IN A DIFF TEXT POST I'LL DO ONE FOR DAISY TOO SINCE YOU ANSWERED MINE W YOUR DOCTOR WHOMST OC HEHE. UNDER THE CUT BC THIS GOT LONGER THAN INTENDED < 3

--

3) What is your OC's fatal flaw? Are they aware of this flaw?

Hmm... I think her main flaw is that she's very ruled by her emotions. She's quick to, well, all her emotions and can't hide them well, but spite is the dangerous one. See: her telling Emet-Selch the memory of Aumorat will die with him, and only showing Elidibus the crystals because she assumed his mind was so gone he believed his own bullshit about the ancients being real. You can... imagine how she felt when her ass landed in Elpis during Endwalker. She is aware of it, and is trying to work on it with the pixies, but change is slow when you've been doing that shit for almost 6 years of your life because you were too busy saving the world.

9) Do you have a specific lyric or quote which you associate with your OC?

it will NOT surprise you that most of these are fall out boy lyrics.

"Put on your war paint!" - the phoenix - this one should be obvious as to why HGJFHGJFHGHJGH, i've always imagined this to be the endwalker op if her msq journey was an anime :)

"'Cause you're the last of a dying breed!/Write our names in the wet concrete!/I wonder if your therapist knows everything about me?/I'm here in search of your glory/There's been a million before me/That ultra kind of love you never walk away from/You're just the last of the real ones!" - the last of the real ones - lowkey she's kinda a manic pixie dream girl and this is THEEE manic pixie dream girl anthem <3 and her "ultra kind of love" is her Friend Chip <3

"Sometimes the only payoff for having any faith/Is when it's tested again and again, every day/I'm still comparing your past to my future/They might be your wounds but they're my sutures" - immortals - THEY PUT THIS SHIT IN A DISNEY MOVIE AND NOW I'M PUTTING THIS SHIT IN MY BLORBO. for the most part she doesn't care abt the fact that she was azem (and has actively turned down learning any information about her, only knowing her real name and that she was hyth's sister bc hades and hyth respectively told her when she was caught a little off guard), but if she had to give a general feeling abt azem, it'd be the second half of the lyrics; it might be azem's soul, but it's her life. she's NOT aphrodite, she's ahrora. as for the first half. well you've played msq!! you know how it be on this bitch of an earf!!!

"So take the field, with a triumphant roar!/I won’t be swayed anymore/Even if this new power I’ve gained/Tries to test what I’m made of/Just raise your flag up high/And shout at the top of your lungs/And when I reach the next level/Then untold power will be in my hands!" - rise up your flag - HER CHARACTER SONG!!! YES I AM IN FACT STEALING FROM KAMEN RIDER <3

"Don't avert your gaze! Keep it straight/Nothing will stop us at this point/Until the magic wears off - until then,/Hold on tight to my hand, my hand!" - teo - i've always imagined this to be like. her anime ed.

at least we got ONE vocaloid song to balance it all out.

11) What is your OC's weapon of choice? Have they ever actually used it?

to answer the second question first: No Shit <3

DNC - the level 90 artifact weapon you get in endwalker, Terpsichore!

SGE - Isnae Phis, aka the sage weapons that look like Feo Ul's wings!

DWN - in-game it's the Deepshadow Claymore, in lore it's the weapon Hades uses when he tanks for you in the Elpis dungeon, since the power is inherited from him.

23) What emotion is the hardest for your OC to process? How about express?

She uh. Doesn't have a hard time expressing her emotions (see above), but the hardest one for her to process is fear. She started being the WoL at 16, and only became an adventurer because of the fear of not being able to control her life/being shoved into a relationship she had no desire to be in. Any time she feels fear, she pretends she doesn't. She's only admitted to being scared to G'raha, right before he sacrificed himself in Ultima Thule, finally breaking down and saying she was scared she wasn't gonna be able to return home.

[azumasoroshi]

dude I just watched spiderman no way home and my brain has been rotting so hard from strange saying something along the lines of "all the people who love you, peter...we'll all forget you existed" and peter's like 👁👄👁

maybe I've read too much fanfiction where stark and strange coparent peter but GOD that hit me right in the feels

dude the second I saw andrew garfield I was like OH. oh THATS why all the tick tick boom posts I was reading were talking about him being in no way home

when he saved mj that also hit me in the feels :(( only able to save his loved ones in a different universe, might use that angst for a fic sometime

tobey maguire caught me way off guard though because see I do not remember celebrity names at all unless they've been memed to death so I thought he looked really familiar but I couldn't put my finger on where

and I was thinking about this from the second he showed up like. I know that guy. I swear I know him

but it only hit me AFTER HE GOT STABBED that he was nick in the great gatsby movie which I watched a few weeks ago after reading the book and I was like OHHHHHHHH

dunno why it took me that long but yknow

I didn't understand why everyone was obsessing over doc ock in the trailer because I had no idea who he was and my only context for anything spiderman related is from the avengers peter parker but the second Peter got control of his machinery I was like oh?? and by the end of the bridge scene I was in love I'm sorry guys I fell for doctor tentacles :(

and when he got imprisoned in the wizard dungeon I was like NOOOOO and then he was talking about how he died and I was like NOOOOOOOOO

but then when may was like "regular water or salt" I realized he was gonna get a redemption arc and I was like YESSSSS

and the he appeared next to mark (that's the name of the lightning guy right) and I was like NOOOOOO and then he helped the spidermans and I was like YESSSSS

is this what it's like to have a skrunkly. a blorbo, mayhaps

I think he would make a cool uncle for peter and he will absolutely be the one I watch the most YouTube clips about and I also have a newfound appreciation for the doc ock in into the spiderverse

(also the second I saw mark?'s face after he was first decommissioned I immediately thought of the meme of the lightning guy and barely held back from laughing because I actually thought he was the source of the meme for a second

which he's not. right? if he is I'm gonna feel so stupid)

mmmm what elseeee

wong and strange were great as always and I love their winter outfits, reminded me of how anime characters get summer/winter outfits pff

I deadass forgot that mysterio died...I think? they mentioned that somewhere in the film I think but yeah I thought he was gonna pop up at some point and screw everything over

I thought Ned and MJ were gonna be dating at the end and I was like OOOOOOOOOF but I dont think that was the case lmAO

in conclusion I am a newly recruited doc ock simp, my long-dormant ironstrange heart has been reawakened and I can FINALLY unmute the no way home tag on twitter and tumblr and browse to my heart's content :D