#my heart just breaks for her

[seawitchkaraoke]

I still have so many emotions about Azula, specifically 11 year old Azula, who gets left behind by her brother and her uncle and is then, for the next three years, entirely alone in the palace with her father.

Like sure, the servants are there and she has Ty Lee and mai (though both of them must have left at some point in those three years, we don't know when), but that's not what I'm talking about. She is entirely, entirely without any protection from her father - not that she ever had all that much.

Here's the thing: Imagine you are Azula. You grow up and you know your mother loves your brother more than you (''my own mother thought I was a monster''). You know she cares about Zuko, she will comfort Zuko, she might even protect Zuko. You are certain she will not protect you (is Azula right about this assessment? It doesn't matter. Ursa's actual intentions aren't relevant in the face of what Azula perceives as true).

Your uncle isn't there and in his letters and gifts he shows that he too, does not care about or understand you. He sends Zuko a knife and a thoughtful message. He sends you a doll, that you burn.

Your father is ambitious and cruel and will not accept less than perfection. Luckily, you are a prodigy. Luckily, your brother is not. In contrast to him you can shine, you can burn so bright, you are safe as long as Zuko falls behind you. You are two years younger but you have to be better, you can never allow yourself to make a mistake where your father can see. It's okay though. Zuko is really bad at bending and even worse at lying. He should hide his mistakes if he can't stop making them. He's an idiot,, so he doesn't. You convince yourself you are happy about this.

Your father miscalculates and your grandfather orders your brother killed. You could let this happen. But if you do, you'll lose your shield against your father plus you like seeing him mess up. You pretend that's the only reason you warn him. It's not like you actually care about him.

Your mother does Something and the next day she is gone, your grandfather is dead and your father is on the throne. It's fine. She was useless anyway. She killed Azulon to protect your brother. You try not to wonder if she would have done the same thing for you. You are 9 years old.

Iroh comes back and does nothing. You continue to be perfect and Zuko continues not to be. It's going great. You are a prodigy and your father loves you. As long as you don't mess up.

Zuko is an idiot. Iroh is a worse idiot. Your uncle let's your brother into a war meeting and of course Zuko can't keep his mouth shut.

When your father burns your brother's face, your uncle looks away. Your brother, who is kind and thoughtful and liked by the servants and loved by his uncle gets half his face burned off and no one steps in.

Your uncle looks away, but you can't afford that kind of weakness. You look and you smile. This is good. You want the throne. With your brother disgraced, no one will stand in your way.

Your brother gets banished and with him goes your only protection against your father. Your uncle leaves too, but it hardly matters. He didn't care enough to protect Zuko, he wouldn't have protected you anyway. You'll just have to be even more perfect to make your father proud of you.

You are 11 years old and you are alone.

[anna-scribbles]

emma dupain cheng on the brain😽🎀

more:

[clouvu]

Nothing in the world belongs to me But my love, mine, all mine

[valtsv]

this part is so, so important to me, because as fatalistic as it sounds, it's refreshing to hear it, and from the mouth of a character as complex and nuanced in their portrayal as both victim and perpetrator of violence as VAL no less. because the fact is, no matter how much you put in the effort, and work on yourself, and change for the better, none of that will make any difference if the world doesn't change with you. if the wheel keeps on turning. if the cycle keeps on being repeated. you'll only remain a cog in the machine, or fall out and be discarded among all the other useless, broken disappointments before you. what does it matter, if you grow around the hurt, tear down the walls you've built in a futile bid to keep yourself safe, only to find more fences bristling with spikes awaiting you on the other side? what use is it trying to better yourself when there's nowhere to go? in voicing this, VAL highlights the abject cruelty of telling people that they're what needs fixing, that it's their responsibility to change, and that the world will surely follow if they're only willing to take the first steps, when there was never any intention to dismantle the corruption and violence upholding the systems that led them to that point in the first place.

[haunted-xander]

Do you ever think about how Alisaie's biggest fear is losing the people she cares about? How the very first conversation you have with her alone, a deeply personal one, is about her confiding in you about those fears? Telling you that she hated the state of the world Louisoix died for because, to her, it wasn't worth the sacrifice? She tells you about all the allies she made and lost, who she watched die and could do nothing to save them.

Do you ever think about how Alisaie was consistently one of the first to act, to recklessly throw herself at danger throughout stb? She didn't care (as much) about herself getting hurt, but she'd be damned if she let her friends suffer without doing anything. She has to be fast and proactive, because if she can't protect them even when striking first, how would she be able to when acting after the fact?

Do you ever think about how every time her loved ones are in peril/are in risk of being in peril her heart just breaks? How whenever someone's safety is unsure she panics and immediately tries to contact them/rush to their aid? When Castrum Abania's cannon shot the tower that, for all she knew, Alphinaud was still in, she immediately stops what she's doing and runs to it in panic because her brother was in there and he might be dead.

Do you ever think about how when the Scions start getting their souls yanked to the First, Alisaie reacts the strongest? How, when Urianger and Y'shtola got taken, she fell to her knees shaking Uriangers body, screaming for him to wake up? And when Gaius appears with Alphinaud in the Burn, she immediately goes to fight him (before being stopped by Hien) because this man, who has been her enemy, is holding her brother's lifeless body. She doesn't care that she can't possibily beat him, he has her brother and she's already lost so much in such a short amount of time. She's lost Thancred, Y'shtola and Urianger already, she can't lose Alphinaud too.

Do you ever think about how you are the only one she can fully rely on at that time, but who is also at risk of being taken away? Of how she's so desperate for you to stay, to not be taken away, that Alisaie, who, for all her bluntness, prefers to rely on herself first and foremost, begs you not to leave her? She begs you. Alisaie does not beg. She yells at you to not do something, and she'll scold you to hell and back if you do it anyway, but she does not beg. But this time she did.

And then she ends up being taken away right in front of you. She cries out for help and uses her very last energy to reach out for you. And then she falls limp.

Do you ever think about how, when Alphinaud turns to tell her his plans at the end of Ultima Thule, she immediately rejects it without even letting him say it? She's lost so much and experienced so much grief, not only overall but also just in Ultima Thule. And she loathes to bring that grief onto another. Especially to one who has already lost so much, like you. She hates it. She ends up doing it, yes, but she hates it still.

DO YOU EVER THINK ABOUT-

[lasshoe]

I respect that you need to go home to your son, Ted. But I just want you to consider the possibility that this is your home.

[titfairy]

"I got sick of having the same old thing."

[mitski]

RWBY (09x04)

Just answer the question. What are you? Are you sure you know? You have to be sure of what you are, and what you are going to be.

[sysig]

“It could be that the loss of her children drove the Queen deeper into her darker desires...but, I don’t believe she was fighting against them that hard before that particular tragedy. No monster does.” (Patreon)

Bonus:

Hmm, wonder what he could cover those holes with :3c

[hingabee]

i made some doodles for @aireyverkhovenskys femswap au. the first three are all seperate but i put them together bc it feels wrong to not let them engage

[stormxpadme]

When even the cartoon gives us better throuple representation than the comics.

[chiquilines]

Ochako my relatable academically exhausted queen

[feroluce]

SO LIKE. As much as I roll with the Emanator of Elation Sampo theory, I do have. Some doubts about this specific instance of it. Not that I think Boothill is lying, or that I think Sampo isn't an Emanator, but I wonder if the person Boothill actually met was Sampo.

Just! Sampo is so careful. The only reason we even knew he wasn't of Belobog was due to a dialogue-dependent fourth wall-breaking dream sequence that no other character could have seen. It took a missable dream bubble in an out-of-the-way spot that was seemingly left only for the trailblazer at the very end of a side mission just to confirm him as a Masked Fool. Like it's not just the fact that Boothill mentions this person being an Emanator. It's that he knows they're also a Masked Fool, which is also something Sampo is incredibly dodgy about. Sparkle even seems to call him out on this in her party join line fjkdjaskldj

((But also, Boothill, baby. WHY were you trying to get them drunk????))

And regardless of if you believe him when he calls himself an old timer, he obviously has a lot of experience in doing what he does. He knows what he's doing, he's good at it, and he is viciously capable and competent, unfortunately for his victims smhznskdn

So it just. Feels very unlike him, for him to let his guard down enough to not only let himself get drunk in front of Boothill-

a total stranger btw whom Sampo has absolutely no reason to trust, and a dangerous Galaxy Ranger to boot who has plenty of blood on his hands and a significant bounty on his head

-but to get SO drunk that he lets loose the secret that he's an Emanator.

When Boothill brings this up, he mentions that if Emanators were obvious and known at a glance, it would lead to atrocities. And for as much as Sampo is disliked by his victims (there's an entire anti-Sampo organization in Belobog JFDKLASJFDL), it's all for fraud. He's wanted by the IPC as an intergalactic thief. He scams people out of their money, and only rich people at that. That's mostly all that he's known for. Nothing he does is violent, even though Sampo surely has the capacity to inflict a lot of harm.

And I don't mean that he's exactly a pacifist or anything; Firefly comments that Sampo seems like a highly skilled covert fighter. His voicelines make it sound like he enjoys combat- hell, his ult line makes him sound like a hitman. I like to hc him as being a pretty high ranker in the fighting rings at the World's End Tavern, like we see in the Simulated Universe occurrences.

But I don't think he would enjoy being the cause of uncontrollable violence and bloodshed.

Like yeah he's a dick who scams people on the regs for funsies, but he has lines he refuses to cross, which we see a lot of in how he interacts with Sparkle. More than just not enjoying it, I think he would hate it if he were found out and it caused an incident, especially since he seems so endeared to Belobog and her people now and it looks like he plans to return there. He wouldn't want to bring any of that back to them.

So I just can't imagine him carelessly fucking up bad enough to out himself to a random stranger that could easily put a bullet right through his head.

Sparkle maybe could, though.

Because as we find out later the dreamscape had expanded FAR beyond what it seemed, far enough that the trailblazer had been dreaming since the warp jump in. Most people enter it unknowingly, and don't realize they're already dreaming when they think they're still awake. Boothill and Dan Heng should have already been dreaming during their exchange on the Express that started all this.

And as long as someone knows they're dreaming, completely changing their appearance is easy, even for the common layman. We see this with a couple of NPCs and also Sparkle herself, with her (in)famous impression of Sampo.

Thank youuuuu Sparkle

And yeah, the trailblazer and almost all of the other characters wouldn't know about the expansion until near the very end. None of them realized they were dreaming even outside of their dream pools, and surely none of them would think to be suspicious of another person's appearance outside of the dreamscape like that.

But Sparkle has a script from Silver Wolf.

She knew all the secrets of the dreamscape, and she knew them from the very beginning. There would have been nothing stopping her from appearing as Sampo in front of Boothill and spilling all his secrets.

And she apparently has a long-standing history with Sampo, including trying to get him in on her own much more fiery and aggressive version of Elation.

Maybe all Sampo needs is to be outed as an Emanator, and then when all the violence and bloodshed catches up to him, then he'll finally understand! ദ്ദി(｡•̀ ,<)~✩

[ineedtherapydesperately]

need more chaggie wing fics where charlie is just absolutely obsessed w vaggie's wings like look at her face

she's obsessed and with good reason too

[maranull]

Marika's village, oh my god...

so beautiful and sad. it's this field of flowers, bright and colorful and shining with gold. peaceful and quiet and as you move the birds are leaving, not loud and scared, but gentle and at peace

entering it you find the healing tree spell Melina uses, and then the description kills you.

"Only the kindness of Gold, without the Order." "Marika bathed the village of her home in gold, knowing full well that there was no one to heal."

then the slow walk on the hill, ever covered in flowers, so many flowers. you reach the top, and inside the hollow trunk of a burned old tree, the Grandmother's statue lies, with a strand of Marika's hair left at its feet.

I'm gonna cry

[elderberries-and-honey]

Autumn, 1900

Winifred had sat at her desk all evening after dismissing herself early from dinner. Perhaps, for anyone else, this would have been queer behavior, but for a writer such as herself, it was nothing out of the ordinary. Her family was used to her abruptly dashing away from them to jot down an idea, typically followed by locking herself in her study for hours on end. But on this evening, each stroke of her quill had proven to be utterly useless, and somewhere deep down inside she knew it was because she wished she didn’t have to be writing these words. But did she have any other option? Her co-workers were accepting of her frequent tardiness and forgetfulness, and even her more outlandish ideas for the next headline, but they certainly wouldn’t want some pregnant spinster working for them; least of all JJ.  For months, she had prayed she would miraculously get her monthlies, that she had been wrong about the little one growing inside her. But, as each day passed, and she was yet bleed, it became clear she was with child again. As she sat there with her head in her hands, tears spilled over onto the page she had written explaining her 𝙞𝙢𝙢𝙚𝙙𝙞𝙖𝙩𝙚 𝙧𝙚𝙨𝙞𝙜𝙣𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 from The Daily. If only there were another way...

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transcript below the cut

<quill scraping>

Lawrence: There you are. I thought I might find you here <tik-tok, tik-tok> Winifred: Oh my, I hadn't notice the time

Lawrence: Should I not expect you to come to bed soon, then? Winifred: <sighing> I don't think so Lawrence: They work you to hard there, Winifred Don't they know I miss my wife?

Winifred: Wait...Lawrence Stop, stop I can't do this right now

Winifred: I'm sorry, I'm still not feeling well is all Lawrence: <nods> I understand Should we send for a doctor? It's been awhile now... Winifred: <shakes head> No, no. I'll be fine. Just a bit of nausea, that's all. And I truly do have work to do Lawrence: Do let me know if it gets worse. And if you're not feeling better in a few weeks, I think you should reconsider

NARRATION Lawrence places a gentle kiss on top of Winifred's head before departing. She waits to break down until she hears their bedroom door shut.

Winifred: Oh, god... What am I going to do?