Chilchuck analysis speedrun: As a hardworking half-foot who grew up poor and discriminated against and had his gullibility taken advantage of multiple times in his early adventuring days, Chilchuck thinks optimism is a dangerous flaw. He’s stressed and strict all the time because his job is noticing details like traps that could get everyone killed before anyone knows it, he takes the lives of everyone to be on his shoulders, and with the way he speaks about it that probably partly reflects how he felt about taking it upon himself to provide for his family too. His life’s always been pretty centered around work and has become even moreso now that his wife left and everyone is independent, and due to past events he’s very iffy with bonding with coworkers. He thinks feelings and job are a disaster mix. Like with his wife or with parties hiring him as sacrifice, being open or having good faith is vulnerability which can get you hurt, so he processes and shows all his stress as anger instead of worry. Doing strict dieting probably isn’t helping the irritability what with hunger, and on top of being a hunger suppressant alcohol might be the main stress reliever he has.
His grey hairs are so earned
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nothing but teeth
pairing: nb!Tav/Astarion
rating: G
word count: 4,030
description: Astarion is lying about being a magistrate - that much is obvious. Xarrai intends to find out what it is he's trying to hide.
more context: Xarrai is a tiefling bard and courtesan with the charlatan background, and an escaped Banite cultist. Any pronouns are fine (though I stick with they/them here for clarity.)
ao3 link: here
It's high summer on the banks of the Chionthar and the woods are alive with it, birdsong and sunlight on every breeze. The air is warm and bright and smells of fresh grass and clean water; the sun sends rays of light like long fingers between the branches of the trees and spills them across the worn dust of the road. It’s the kind of thing Xarrai could write a shallow ballad about, a song to be debuted in a room of drunkards at the Helm & Cloak to raucous applause. Or perhaps a poem, one they could whisper into the ear of a patriar in the facsimile of affection he paid for, wrapped in his silken sheets. It’s beautiful.
They hate it.
keep reading on ao3
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puny god
i could work on this more but frankly i’m just sick of looking at it. sheriff girlboss moment. anyways hi taglist
@veryfoolishgamers @t4tcecilos @axe-of-ender @empiressmp @the3rddenialist @moonlight22oa @rockydrago @funkily @grimdogs @popcornsalty @suurrii @thatonesheep @cabbagegunk @treeofwhimsy @weaselmcdiesel @peskybirb @flyingfish1234 @viridian-artist @cobrawaifu @griancraft @c0nstantparanoia @yanyawnyan @f4rlands @hallowwolf @aquello-main @saiiboat @itsafangirlthing416 @booisghost @angiemelon @mxmallory @spooky-dyke-shit @aphotic-society @oakskull @galatoma @frootyloopy @sweetsweetemo
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When she first Fell, the sky had been all embers, all vicious touch. They’d felt nothing but the bite of flames and gore and the sulphuric acid of a mother’s love turned corrosive. Crowley had burned—heavenly bone, muscle, flesh, the chemical antiseptic of the ether stripping away to bare nerve tissue.
In the eternities since, they’d held their breath, kept herself small. They’d learned to amputate the desire that settled in the tips of her fingertips and in the scarlet ends of their hair. She—alone, ever alone—had dragged herself from the brimstone and out of the bonfire. She’d taught herself to exist in the jaws of an unmuzzled universe, under stars that no longer called their name.
Now the sky is blue, and the bookshop burns. The bookshop burns and Crowley’s heart is in her throat, eating its way out of their body. The bookshop burns and yet their angel must be fine. (He has to be fine because the world still spins on its axis and the sea hasn’t swallowed her whole. And if breath still lives in her body, and the universe has yet to collapse in on itself, then their angel has to be fine). But something coils deep in her belly: an oil-slick, a poisonous berry. They bite their lip a brackish silver, the taste of ichor rotten in her mouth.
As though in a trance, she presses forward, and the frantic thrash of panic in her chest forces the double doors wide without so much as a thought. The interior of the shop is all orange-red teeth and flaming claws, tearing into bookshelves and loveseats and oh. Oh, the two of them had just been sitting there not three days ago. (Crowley had tried so hard to stay on her side of the room, to keep her fingertips from brushing the edge of Aziraphale’s as they passed silver-stemmed goblets between them. Skin to skin, breath to body—the indirect touch of their mouths. The passive desperation of six thousand years of want left fermenting under their skin).
They call for him, heat searing her lungs. It comes out ragged and desperate and too late (always too late).
Heat knifes clean through her now—a gutting sensation, a disembowelment in the middle of an already-burning funeral pyre. For as long as they had been on Earth together, she’d always been able to sense their angel from anywhere in the world—a steady, beating heart of a presence. An inevitable gravity that wrapped itself around her arms and tugged her forward. It had been axiomatic, a fundamental truth of how the universe functioned: a hand extended always finds purchase. A heart in motion remains in motion.
So, in a room choked with smoke and two hundred years of memories, she reaches out, expanding the edges of her consciousness, pressing her mind into the outer reaches of the bookshop and Soho and the whole, cluttered universe. She searches for a pulse.
And then something within her is breaking. Something is shaking apart in the depths of Crowley’s being—a star turned supernova turned withering, all-consuming black hole. No heartbeat, no flickering warmth, no pull in the periphery of her awareness. The corpse of gravity turns to dust in the corner of the room.
And she knows—knows with the unflinching inevitability of too many questions, of an ink-winged angel falling from grace—that Aziraphale is gone.
Outside, the sky remains blue. The world stays upright. And the bookshop still burns.
(thank u to the incredibly talented @actual-changeling for helping me fix the first part of the fourth paragraph)
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got a doctors appointment next week and have to track my blood pressure before that because one of the meds im on can cause high blood pressure and also ive got some bp issues running in the family. currently stressing myself tf out bc im already scared that this doctor who ive never met before is gonna take one look at me and be like this is all your fault because youre fat and as a punishment youre never gonna get any meds for your depression and adhd ever again fuck you. to no ones surprise my bp appears to be slightly elevated
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