#only to... in centuries later...

[chiptrillino-art]

In the Spirit World, roughly 400 years ago.

When you are just a little blue guy. But the greater gods found a liking in you. And then you ended up as chewtoy for Koh.

Spirit shenanegans at their finest.

[justaz]

merlin falling to his knees after sending arthur out onto the lake and then just. staying there. he was planning on staying until his body gave out from dehydration but he just...never died. he kept waking up to the same sight of the lake, the day around him a bit different. yet he never moved. he remained on the shore of that lake as nature began to claim him, growing over his body as if he were just a stone on the ground. merlin never moves. he is arthur's servant. he'd follow arthur everywhere. if he couldn't...well then, he'll wait right outside. he'll wait right here. he'll wait for arthur.

[canisalbus]

So, are Machete and Vasco both from Naples? As Italian, I can now imagine them talking with some kind of accent :)

Machete is originally from Sicily! But he hasn't been there since he was little. Vasco's family is from Florence.

Vasco's Tuscan accent is deeply rooted and clearly noticeable, but Machete is a lot harder to pin down. He strives to sound as impersonal and formal as possible, which renders his form of speech kind of stiff and flavorless. He's always been reasonably good at absorbing languages though, so I'd like to say that he can communicate in several of the major Italian dialects/languages if necessary. In work matters he readily switches to ecclesiastical Latin.

Maybe his southern origins show up more clearly whenever he's off-duty and his mask of soulless professionalism is a little looser or something.

[rin-sith]

This came to me earlier, and now I am utterly obsessed: While it was clear to me that Odysseus stabbing Poseidon wasn't any kind of Vengeance, there was one act of Vengeance after all, even if inadvertent—it was Odysseus disproving Poseidon's "Ruthlessness is mercy upon ourselves" belief right in front of his very eyes. With him as the subject, even.

Think about it—the fact that Poseidon remained ruthless and insisted on punishing Odysseus was the only reason he got stabbed repeatedly. If Poseidon had been merciful, if he had accepted Odysseus' offer of forgiveness, he would've been fine. His own ruthlessness backfired so hard on him this time that I am sincerely hoping it haunts him forever.

I am actually utterly obsessed with Poseidon thinking back to Odysseus "Maybe you could learn to forgive?" on a daily, no an hourly basis. I cannot and will not lie to you that is unironically my favorite moment in the whole Vengeance saga just because of what it says about both the characters—about Odysseus for offering and Poseidon for declining (and also because Odysseus sings it in Poseidon's own motif which is just absolutely brilliant.) And this makes me love it even more.

Poseidon was going to decline, we all know that. I don't think anyone watching—even Odysseus, probably—expected him to accept. But then I'm picturing him lying there, bleeding into the stone, and, against his will, wondering whether maybe he should have. Maybe if he had, he wouldn't be in pain. Maybe if he had not killed Odysseus' fleet ten years ago, he wouldn't be in pain either. Maybe this one time ruthlessness wasn't mercy upon himself—maybe this time, his one grand belief was wrong. Maybe ... it was always wrong.

Obviously, he would never admit to these thoughts, he would slap himself for having them one second later. But I simply need this self-proclaimed god of ruthlessness to be utterly haunted by that and question whether he made the right choice or no—whether he's even lived by the correct philosophy all his immortal life—and no matter what, be too stubborn to admit he was wrong.

He's trying to pretend like nothing changed, but the thoughts still remain. They pester him. They won't leave him alone. Especially every time someone—anyone—is kind to him for whatever reason, they come crashing back into him and they won't leave.

"What if my own ruthlessness hurt me that time?"

"What if ruthlessness isn't mercy upon ourselves after all?"

"What if I'm wrong?"

"What if I have always been wrong?"

The most dreadful thoughts imaginable to a god as proud and stubborn and old as Poseidon, but they're there now and he can't do anything about them. You all don't understand how much I NEED this god to jolt up in his bed at 3 am after having a dream or nightmare about something related to one of his many ruthless deeds (maybe even sinking Odysseus' fleet) and go "BUT WHAT IF I HAD LEARNED TO FORGIVE?? WHAT IF I STILL COULD??" only to immediately slap himself for it because that's absolutely ridiculous.

He is left to watch this belief shatter before his very eyes as he's clinging to the remains of it desperately, trying to keep it all from crumbling. Not because he genuinely believes he's right anymore, but because he simply cannot imagine ... does not know how to live by any other philosophy.

No matter whether it's objectively correct or not, it's the very thing that defines him. The thing he's known for. He has built his entire image around this, he cannot give it up no matter what ... at least not quickly or without help.

But as much he would seek to deny it, his core belief has now been proven wrong; he has actually lived through an instance where it was wrong, and he can do nothing to erase those memories or conclusions from his mind no matter how much he yearns to go back to simpler times.

And that was the real Vengeance, guys—possibly the biggest, most painful existential crisis of Poseidon's immortal life. I rest my case.

Although before I disappear back into the void I simply must give a shout out to @o3o-lapd-o3o (this came to me during a conversation in one of their comment sections for the glorious Friends In Higher Places AU, which is quite possibly my favorite piece of EPIC fan content that exists ...)

[project-sekai-facts]

Today is November 5th, which means it’s MEIKO’s anniversary and Absolutely Nothing Else.

Happy DestielPutinElection.

[wonder-worker]

I'm listing down some aspects of Elizabeth Woodville’s political career I find interesting/singular because there's A Lot going on but the longer drafts I have for some of them are driving me nuts.

She was a woman "whose origins broke all established conventions of English queenship" (Laynesmith). She was the first post-Conquest Englishwoman to be crowned queen, which meant that her family formed "a unique and largely unprecedented factor of the English political structure" (ibid); we could even argue that she inevitably introduced a new construct of queenship in the process. The Woodvilles and Nevilles do seem to have had a genuine factional conflict/divide in the 1460s and I think it's pretty clear that Elizabeth was involved in it. In her second queenship, her "interest in East Anglia was regarded as the main instrument of royal authority there" (Horrox), accompanied by significant grants and territorial reorderings for her benefit by 1475; this line is often quoted by recent historians but has pretty much never been properly explored. Most strikingly of all, Elizabeth was formally appointed to royal councils in her own right for both her sons during her husband's reign, giving her highly unique and unconventional authority for a late medieval queen of England. Arguably, her very brief tenure as king's mother marked an informal but notable shift in the direct/visible participation of dowager queens in ruling and policy-making, one that probably provided an example for Margaret Beaufort to (briefly) follow after Henry VII's death. After 1485, Elizabeth's position as queen consort who was mother to another queen consort was entirely novel and should be kept in mind when discussing her activities and residences during that time. The propaganda and slanders against her should not be downplayed or dismissed as "mere rhetoric" or "standard" as historians tend to do, as they were in fact highly unusual and unprecedented for English queens, setting dangerous new precedents for the future.

There's just so much about Elizabeth that's deeply compelling, that has been briefly or offhandedly touched upon by a few historians, yet remains completely unexplored and in many cases unacknowledged in scholarship. (Her role in 1483-85 has also somehow not been reassessed till date despite it being such a wildly contested period in medieval English history). It's both bizarre and deeply frustrating, because these sorts of discussions could open up fascinating new perspectives on not just the Wars of the Roses but studies of English queenship as a whole. But it seems as though, regardless of whether they're sticking to her traditional vilification or attempting a (usually generic or uninformed) revisionism, most historians are only interested in discussing the barest bones of her life and leaving it at that :/

[numberonetribble]

Stuck at my mom's house until the 27th, can't finish the comic I was working on until then :( here's a rough Cowboy!pinup sketch of Bumblebee and some Breakbee + Piston angst:

[mc-critical]

1.06 / 2.09 (33)

[blipblepbloop]

the way im seeing so much hate for agatha all along's finale like....you guys just didn't get it like i did omg. i have a couple things i wouldve done differently (i really expected agatha to be dead dead at the end and get to go see nicky, but upon actually thinking about it i like this better because her story most definitely isn't finished yet and i don't think it was ever supposed to be within this show (plus we're not burying our gays!!! yay!!)) but overall i liked it. i also feel like apparently i was the only one who never thought we would get a happy agatha and rio ending? it always felt like their story was leaning more towards them having to learn to let go of each other. idk i just don't think it was bad enough to warrant the amount of hate im seeing

[trainwreckgenerator]

the earth wont keep me long

[fictionadventurer]

I'm only about a quarter of the way through A Bachelor's Comedy, but it's already proving worthwhile just for the running joke where a misunderstanding has caused the village to think their new young vicar has a cartoonishly humongous appetite, but no one tells him about it, so he has no clue why everyone is giving him enormous servings of food.

[sforzesco]

going from the late Roman Republic to 4th century CE Roman Empire but skipping several centuries in-between the two is really creating a lot of 'guy who's only heard of x: wow this sure is giving x!' situations. what do you mean this guy kept gratian's body and didn't even use his head as a prop. you're telling me gratian had a window of opportunity for sole power and didn't go full caligula. TRAGIC. theodosius there's a gap in your life that’s kind of giving cassius. I refuse to read anything covering the 2nd and 3rd centuries, so this will continue

[camellcat]

thinking about angel!Liam just absolutely fucking decking demon!Theo

Liam is, at first, completely horrified, right? like, oh, dear heavens, he just punched someone! that's not very holy of him! ...but also, Theo is a demon... surely he's just... acting within his angelic duties... to thwart demon wiles... yeah...?

and Theo cannot decide whether to laugh his ass off because he just got an angel to punch someone or start panicking that maybe he's pushed Liam too far and he'll be discoperated or smth. which ofc he won't be bc Liam (as much as he loath to admit it) does not hate Theo, but they are not at the stage in which Theo is certain of that!!

but once Theo gets him back it (dreadfully, in Liam's opinion, and cruelly giddily in Theo's) becomes a Thing.

[phoenixcatch7]

Every so often I dip into transformers fanfic (specifically bayverse) just because the concept of giant shape-shifting mechanical immortal robots just slaps so hard. All of the fics get so close but never quite scratch the itch I want, so here.

Cybertronian Sam Witwicky, vessel of the Allspark

A seeker, naturally, but I haven't decided on alts yet. Or a name (I like Rubicon, because of the doorway/point of no return/on a knifes edge between two worlds meaning and.. Also because the Allspark kinda looks like a rubics cube lmao)(but it doesn't sound quite right and I'd like to lean more into the idea of sacrifice maybe?)(or maybe something celestial or mythical for the space/alien/spark=stars metaphor... Apollo?).

I haven't seen it done, but I really like the idea of the Allspark using its own material to create the cybertronian body, given the total lack of actual resources it has (and needs). This would give Sam a very unique bronze/gold protoform instead of the usual grey/black metal, and eyes/optics the colour of sparks. The feather horn things were meant to be a lot smaller, but that was the smallest they got! And idk, I've grown to like them. A little nod to his organic origins. And the circles are supposed to be extra eyes. The boots I was delighted to find, they blend so well with the body and make it look like he's not bare lol. Because hero forge isn't quite that free with design (yet), please imagine a couple wheels by his ankles he can drop down to rollerblade on.

I had a ton of fun with the colours, I think it's my best one from scratch yet! It was so hard to keep from adding too much detail or clothing, and I did struggle with the sheer bulk of a typical cybertronian build. The pauldrons and scarf help with that, but he's intended to be pretty slight compared to the average anyway. In every continuity they're so, so bulky ToT. I might tinker with the proportions now I've finished the model! The spear... Well I'm a sucker for staffs, but it's not a cybertronian weapon unless it can slice or shoot something, preferably while transforming into something else. This one is also a laser gun, very energy intensive if you're not hooked into an infinite power source lmao. He's got a few emergency cannons in his arms, because... Why not?

Man, now I've made him, I want to write something for him so much... Must resist, must resist...

[rubythecrimsonwriter]

As someone who has lived in the south where the water trough is anywhere from mildly annoying to actively terrifying, who has lived on a fairly decently sized island where it is indeed absolutely terrifying to be cut off from the mainland suddenly with little to no help from the government for an extended period of time--

After No Man's Land and all the issues that arose then, I'd like to propose the new way of interring their dead would be mausoleums. Possibly especially with Gotham canonically existing on a system of caves. An island made of caves on the East Coast that gets battered by hurricanes almost every year is just asking to get sunk a la Atlantis but its fucking Gotham and i think the Gothamites would raise it from the sea floor again out of sheer spite.

But with mausoleums you:

Dont have your son crawling six feet through packed dirt after inexplicably coming back to life

Dont have long buried coffins and corpses getting flooded/shaken/otherwise disturbed and shunted into the water system/streets/underground reservoirs (or Lazarus Pits, since there's one of those down there too, as if Gotham didn't have enough things wrong with it)

Continues the Gotham aesthetic

Have more places for various characters to have a private mental breakdown in

Have more places for various characters to find ominous warnings etched or graffiti'd on the walls

Have more places for things much older than the mausoleums have been En Vogue™ for to inexplicably appear and send shivers down the spine

The Gothamites are very firm about not really being part of the US. The US kind of looks at the South like we're really fucking strange, and the South looks at New Orleans like they've taken the South and concentrated it, carbonated it, and shook it really hard.

I want the same vibes for Gotham. This is their home. They are weird and stubborn to a fault and everything is on fire and the government is corrupt and the people aren't always good but nobody else understands. No one else ever could. Who else has seen the lights for rescue appear on the horizon only to see the light of death on the waters, ensuring no help would ever come? They are resourceful and violent and resentful but the gods won't help you if you cross one of their own.

[pizzleyanked]

dinner with miram and steph