#or their life span?

[kitsunebattleboxer]

So we know from TW3 storyline with the Mad Witcher Kiyan that a lot of the cat school is made up of Witchers with Elven origins. But I’ve never seen anyone mention that this could be the reason they tend to be more unstable? Essentially they use mutations meant for humans (presumably) on descendants of elves and it’s probably a bit fucked. We know elven and human ancestry can physically mess up a person, like is shown with Yennefer, so were most of these trainees physically disabled in some capacity when they were brought to the Cat School? Is that why more schools didn’t adopt this method? Does it have to do with them being slightly closer to the Source and having a bit of chaos themselves which makes them more prone to mental illness? Thinking of Eskel being shown to have proficiency in signs due to his inclination to magic, it seems unlikely. So it must be something more physical/emotional. I don’t know, just pondering. Also, we under appreciate Kiyan as a fandom, please give this poor lad some love, I beg you.

[mangozic]

archivist be upon ye

[spiral-man]

someone was talking about Alice and Celia being anagrams and it’s times like this I really just hate Jonny Sims. Because you see, your first instinct is to theorize what that could mean because it’s got to mean something right? Wrong. This is the same writer who plagiarized his own birth certificate for a main character and then named three important re-occurring characters Michael….IN A AUDIO PODCAST.

Jonny sims is a genius writer, but he also wrote “there is no such thing as a name” about himself and his tendency to just pick names based on whatever first comes to mind. HE VOICED A CHARACTER NAMED DONNY SUMS. DONNY FUCKING SUMS ARE YOU KIDDING ME-

[0vergrowngraveyard]

i just want them to interact more

bonus:

[purpleangiie]

Jon, lying on his bed: "Dad?"

Clark, about to exist his room: "Yes Jon?"

Jon: "Can I ask you something?"

Clark: "Of course, bud. What is it?"

Jon: "How do you know if you like someone? I mean, like like someone? Not just as a friend but... as something more."

Clark: "You'll know it when you find that person."

Jon, blushing slightly: "I think I know it then."

Clark, smiling: "You wanna tell me who this person is?"

Jon: "Damian Wayne."

Clark:

Clark: "You don’t know it."

[idontcaboose]

Haunted car au?

I am writing this purely on mobile, so format might get weird, sorry in advance.

Danny didn't mean to get stuck, honest. But a dare is a dare, and damnit if he wasn't going to get that fifty dollars from Jason, "I stole the wheels at the age of 12" Peters. Danny would bet that same fifty that Jason was just waiting for him to come back and tell Jason he got zapped so he could laugh at him. Jerk.

But... accidentally possessing the Batmobile after the zap was completely unintentional. Wait, would this mean he gets double the money? He did get the sticker put on before he possessed the car.... He did also technically successfully hijack the car, which would totally constitute a bonus.... Would this be grand theft auto if he is the car... can a car steal itself? He was dumped out of his slightly hysterical panic by a weird feeling in his... engine? and felt himself? move in a way that he did not control. Where was he going? Why was he going? HOW FAST CAN THIS THING GO?

Needless to say, Danny's night was going poorly. Failed dare, grand theft kidnapping, unwilling participant of picking up an injured Batman, and now knowing the exact route to get to the super secret Bat Cave, that is, in fact an actual CAVE. If Jason doesn't pay him triple the amount AND cook him food for a week, he will riot.

Now.... how to....

HOOOOOONNNNNKKKK

...... oops

_____________

Next?

The prompt by @kizzer55555 is linked Here

@trappednyourheart

@candeartist422

@sebas-nights

@fandom-life-corrupted-me

[catsoverboyss]

Shen Qingqiu/Shen Jiu wearing a pretty dress because I said so („• ֊ •„)੭

[strawberri-draws]

"Innocence died screaming, Honey ask me, I should know. I slithered here from Eden; Just to sit outside your door"

-From Eden, Hozier

aka: au where they grow old in the dungeon together in their monster forms.

[j4zzyh4nds]

Me personally I think Lloyd should’ve just gone full Oni when he thought his entire fucking family died. Like wdym he went all out when his dad faked him out (bc post-resurrection Garmadon is a piece of shit) but not when he thought that his four older brothers (who basically raised him) were buried alive in a subway tunnel and his two sisters and uncle were killed when Harumi had his house blown up. Wdym he only got a little Oni? He should’ve had an extra pair of arms at that point

[sciderman]

perse got me a spider-man balloon for my surgery and it is my spiritual companion

[accidentallyycreated]

this moment from their date in rome is soo underrated

Percy is so in love with her😭💖

[qronost]

DEBUT ART POST GO!!!

MORE SCRIBBLES UNDER THE CUT

[thatshadowgastwhore]

You can make an argument that any big three kid is the oldest, except for Jason.

Like, biologically, Percy has aged the most, he’s physically 17, which is more than any of the rest of them has reached

Thalia has mentally aged/matured the most, even if she stopped biologically aging at 15 years and 364 days, and should chronologically be in her 20s but spent some time as a tree where she aged slower.

Chronologically, Hazel was born the longest time from the present day, but she also died, and was in the underworld for decades before being resurrected, so that time didn’t really count for her, and she’s physically like 14.

Nico has been alive for the most time, but for 70 years he was in a place where he couldn’t physically age. He’s like…15 now and is aging normally, but has been alive since world war 2.

And then there’s Jason. Who had no wacky time shenanigans and died and didn’t come back. (Yet) honestly, and outlier who should not have been counted

[julientel]

Neil's birthday message taken out of context:

my birthday was last week but I finally managed to get a message from Neil (as Astarion this time) and it made my year, as usual

he's the sweetest cinnamon roll 🤍

[saikis1truelove]

they have been scottpilgrimified

[essektheylyss]

One thing that I feel is really interesting and often forgotten about Essek is that fundamentally, his characterization has been from the start based upon his desperation for external perspectives and connection, which, along with much of his narrative and mechanical positioning, means that he actually has an extraordinary and almost (but not actually, as I'll show) counterintuitive capacity for both growth and trust.

(Buckle in. This is a long one.)

In particular, I would argue, knowing now that many places where the plot touches Ludinus have long been marked for connecting back into the current plot, that he was quite possibly built as a prime candidate for radicalization by the Ruby Vanguard. He felt isolated from his culture, he was desperate for other connection, and he was certainly of the type to believe he was too smart to be drawn into such a thing, given his initial belief that he could control the situation and the fallout. If things had gone any other way, he easily could've been on the other side by now.

As such, he has been hallmarked by being fairly open to suggestion, perhaps for this reason, but the thing about that kind of trait is that it is both how people are radicalized and deradicalized. This is certainly true of Essek, who experienced genuine kindness and quite frankly strangeness from the Nein and was able to move from the isolation the Assembly had engendered to meaningful and genuine connection, largely propelled by his own internal reflection. By the time Nein are aware of his crimes, he's already begun to express regret to an extent and, furthermore, doubt in the Assembly, including explicitly drawing a line against Ludinus, even in a position where he was on his own and probably quite vulnerable.

Similarly, when the Nein reach the Vurmas Outpost some weeks later, he has moved from regret for the position he's ended up carrying a heavy remorse. This makes sense! He's fairly introspective, seems used to spending a lot of time in his own head, and was left with plenty to mull over. It's not some kind of retcon for him to have progressed well past where the Nein left him; it just means he's an active participant in the world who has done his own work in the meantime.

This is another interesting aspect to him. I've talked about this a bit before but I cannot find the post so I'll recap here: antagonists in D&D have significantly more agency than allied NPCs. Antagonists are active forces, against which the party is meant to struggle; allies are meant to support the PCs, which means they tend to be more passive in both their actions and their character growth. Essek was both built as an antagonist, in a position that gives him significant agency, and also was then given significant opportunity to grow specifically to act as a narrative mirror for Caleb's arc. Even when he becomes a more traditional D&D ally, he still retains much of that, though he occupies a supporting role.

I believe that this is especially true because of the nature of Caleb's arc, which I've already written on; the tl;dr of this post is that Caleb is both convinced that he is permanently ruined and also desperate to prove that change is possible. Essek is that proof, because he is simply the character in a position to do so. But this also means that his propensity for introspection and openness is accentuated! He has to do the legwork on his own, for the most part, because that's where he is in the meantime.

But he still ends the campaign necessarily constricted; he is under significant scrutiny, he's at risk from the Assembly, and he goes on the run fairly soon after the story ends. He spends most of the final arc anxious and paranoid, which is valid given the crushing reality of his situation. It would be very easy to extrapolate that seven years into this reality, he would be insular, closed off, and suspicious of strangers, even in spite of the lessons he's learned from the Nein and their long term exposure.

So seeing his openness and lightness now is surprising, but at the same time, given this combination of factors in his position in the narrative over time and his defining traits, it's not by any means unreasonable.

But one thing that I found so delightful is how much trust he exhibits, which is obviously a wild thing to say about Essek in particular, given much of what he learns is both earning and offering trust, which was something he says explicitly in 2x124 that he's never really experienced: "I've never really been trusted and so I did not trust." It makes up much of the progression of his relationship with Caleb, and the trust that he is offered by the Nein in walking off the ship is the impetus he needs to grow.

But I think it's easy to talk about trust when it comes to people who have proven themselves to you or to whom you've ingratiated yourself, and that's really the most we can say about Essek by the time he leaves the Blooming Grove. There is this sense in a lot of discussion of trust (not solely in this fandom) that it is only related to either naivete or love, but there's far more to it. Trust at its best is deliberate—cultivating an openness to the world at large is a great way to combat cynicism and beget connection instead. It allows a person to maintain curiosity and be open to experience, but it can be incredibly difficult to hold onto.

It is clear that the Essek we meet now is a very pointedly and intentionally trusting individual. He trusts Caleb and by extension Caleb's trust in Keyleth, as he shows up and picks up a group of strangers from a foreign military encampment and walks in without issue. He trusts the Hells to follow his lead moving through Zadash and to exhibit enough discretion so as to avoid bringing suspicion upon all of them. He trusts that Astrid will respond well to his entrance, but he also trusts himself and the Hells enough to execute a back-up plan in the case that she doesn't. In the end, he even trusts them enough to give them his name and identity.

He doesn't scan as someone who has spent half a dozen years living like a prey animal, afraid of any shadow he runs across in an alley, withdrawn into himself and an insular family, which would've been an easy route for him to take. He scans as someone who has learned the kind of trust borne of learned confidence and a trained eye for good will and kindness, which are crucial weapons one would need for staving off cynicism in his circumstances—as if he has survived thanks more to connection and kindness than paranoia and isolation. (If we want to be saccharine about it, he scans quite poignantly as a member of the Mighty Nein.)

So it is easy to imagine this trust and openness as a natural progression of his initial search for perspectives external to his own cultural knowledge. Though he makes those first connections with the Assembly to try to vindicate his personal hypotheses, he finds in them exposure to the deepest corruption among Exandrian mortals, which could've—and did, for a time—turned him further down that same dark path.

But it's also this same openness to exposure from the wider world that allows the Nein to influence him for the better, and in spite of the challenges he's certainly faced simply surviving over the past seven years, he seems to have held onto this openness enough to move through the world with self-assurance and a willingness to extend the kinds of trust and good will that he has been shown.

(I would be remiss not to mention that I was reminded about my thoughts on this by this lovely post from sky-scribbles and their use in the tags of 'light' to describe Essek's demeanor this episode, which is really such an apt word for it.)