#rattles them

[bestworstcase]

So you think the Crown is correlated to the Golden Cap. Are you leaning to that making everyone the Winged Monkeys or that Qrow and Raven are pulling double duty parallel wise? Because what's biting at me is that Raven never actually says what Ozpin did to her and Qrow. She shows the bird form - which would be a classic loophole around "Don't tell anyone" orders. There's an incongruity with the narrative siding with Raven thematically in Oz keeping secrets and especially missing details

Before asking for agreement See Pyrrha and being targeted to become the Fall Maiden - and how the Bird Transformation by itself is swept under the rug quickly by Qrow and Oz. And Raven has no reason to not say more if there is more to say if she can that I can think of. Especially with her trying to convince Yang to stay with her/not sign on with Oz

so, the golden cap. cliff notes backstory:

there’s this princess-sorceress named gayelette whom everybody loves, regarded as a good sorceress who uses her magic to help people and never “to hurt anyone who was good,” but she’s sad and lonely because all the men are too stupid and ugly to be worthy of her

she finds a boy named quelala who is handsome and “wise beyond his years”

like literally a child

she decides she’s going to marry him when he grows up and takes him… to her palace… to raise him… (😬)

once he is old enough she “hastens to make everything ready for the wedding” (😬)

the day before the wedding, quelala goes for a walk along the river, dressed in finery. the king of the winged monkeys thinks it will be funny to drop him in the water

they do that

quelala is fine, he laughs and swims to the riverbank

as he’s climbing out of the water, gayelette comes running out and sees that his fine clothes are sopping wet

she FLIES INTO A RAGE AND ORDERS THE WINGED MONKEYS TO BE BOUND AND THROWN INTO THE RIVER TO DROWN

the king and quelala plead with her to be merciful, so at last she agrees to spare the winged monkeys if they allow her to bind them to the golden cap, which is quelala’s wedding present, as slaves

they accept this bargain because… what else can they do?

she continues to fly off the handle whenever she sees or thinks about the winged monkeys, so quelala uses the golden cap to order them to keep away (instead of hanging around to serve him) which they’re happy to do because they’re all terrified of her

quelala never uses the cap for anything else. after him it falls into the wicked witch’s hands, and she uses them to conquer winkie country. then dorothy brings it to glinda, who breaks the curse by giving it to the king of the winged monkeys.

the oz books are, you know, written for children and very lighthearted so it’s Not That Deep. (😬)

but rwby brought a shovel. (see also, glinda laying siege to the emerald city) so.

gayelette was “known” to be a good sorceress who didn’t use her magic to hurt “anyone who was good.” but (unlike most good witches in oz, and also unlike glinda who is regarded as neither good nor bad but right), her actions DO NOT match her reputation. she adopts a literal child and raises him to be her perfect husband. she is fully going to murder all the winged monkeys over a harmless bit of fun and only relents when they agree to be slaves and then continues to be so mad about it that the Literal Child she groomed to be her husband feels obliged to exile them for their own safety. the lady was a wicked witch who knew how to perform benevolence in public.

and then the golden cap itself grants the wearer three chances to command the winged monkeys to do anything, which the winged monkey are bound to obey. so just in terms of mechanics, the way it might be translated into rwby’s crown of choice is obvious. like the lamp’s question, you get three wishes. or three times you can compel people to do as you say, or make another person’s choices for them. whatever.

contextually, if the crown of choice is the golden cap, then the god of light slots into the role of gayelette and ozma is (loosely) quelala, the manipulated pawn to whom the enslaved winged monkeys are given. and the literal winged monkeys would be the spirits in the relics, although symbolically the winged monkeys here are all of humanity—gayelette’s ultimatum is “become slaves or die,” the god of light’s ultimatum is “obey me or die,” and like quelala, ozma is desperately interceding on mankind’s behalf via guiding them toward redemption, whereas salem like glinda thinks remnant ought to be freed.

it all tracks very neatly.

the wicked witch first uses the golden cap to conquer winkie country, and second to drive the wizard out of the west.

ozma wore the crown during the final battle of the great war, whereupon even his allies bent the knee in surrender. and when he and qrow explain the bird thing: qrow says “we made a choice, we wanted this,” and ozpin, “everyone has a choice. the branwens chose to accept their powers and the responsibilities that came with them, and later, one of them chose to abandon her duties in favor of her own self-interest. now, all of you have a choice.”

the wicked witch used her second wish to drive the wizard out of the west. ozpin gave the branwens the ability to turn into birds so they could act as scouts, spies, in service of his war against salem.

(for the sake of completeness i will note, also, that in the musical adaptation of wicked, the wizard tricks the witch into giving the monkeys wings so that he can use them as scouts and spies. this is the one [1] thing in rwby i think might be a nod to wicked.)

on the plain strength of the allusion argument and how many times ozpin reiterates “choice” once confronted on the bird thing i am convinced that the branwen shapeshifting actually derived from the crown, not ozpin, and that he used the second of his three wishes to grant it to them and just straight up lied about how. (if there is a hard “three wishes per person” limit on the crown and it doesn’t reset like the lamp, would explain why the claim of finite and dwindling magical power, which i Don’t Believe. he’s not running out of magic, but he only has one wish left.)

of course, if he pulled off secret use of a relic to do this that puts a practical limit on what he could do to compel them to silence (because if he did he’d have to come up with an explanation or else not tell them and hope they never noticed the magical binding on what they were allowed to say, because THAT would not go well for him). the danger inherent to becoming known as shapeshifters and that getting back to salem was probably enough on its own to keep them quiet. i think raven’s show-don’t-tell approach was motivated by knowing they weren’t going to believe her unless they saw it with their own eyes, sprinkled with a bit of hoping to get them interested enough to stay and hear her explanation rather than go to qrow.

what i think is most likely—given how ozpin frames it as the twins “chose to accept their powers and the responsibilities that came with them”—is that the birds were a “we can fill you in on the details once we know you’re with us” deal in the same vein as pyrrha. ozpin laid out that he could make them shapeshifters and needed a pair of scouts to gather information in preparation for a vague looming threat and only after they agreed and received this power did he explain the actual situation.

once they could turn into birds it would have been much harder to back out and his “finite, dwindling magic” is one hell of a manipulative trump card: he entrusted them with some of what precious little magic he has left because they promised him they could handle it, how can they even think about backing out now? the time to leave was before he gave them magic. never mind that they didn’t know what they were getting into because he didn’t tell them. they still made their choice.

[jareicanon]

finally updated this!!

more teruvid lmao

[memurfevur]

First Date // closed RP w/ @ase-trollplays

Persef smoothed out her dress as she stood near the location that had been agreed upon by her and Cacoph. Her heart fluttered in her chest at the thought of seeing him, though she couldn't quite put her finger on why. This was just them casually hanging out, right? Well, casually might not be true-- she got prettied up in her dress, after all.

It was a pretty place to be, a little harbor lined with restaurants and shops. Small boats were docked, and others explored the waters rocking back and forth. A small tent was being set up nearby and people were bustling around it and moving equipment. From where she stood she couldn't quite make out what it was for.

And with the weather this nice, all-in-all it should be a perfect setting for a data between friends. She couldn't wait to see him.

[xzho-writes]

it’s the way how i went from being impartial/disliking kavetham when kaveh was first introduced cause i thought they were another random ship stemming from the rOoMmAteS trope to them now being my fav pairing cause of their (now revealed) relationship/lore

like it went from me going “yeah they could have potential” to “yeah they dO HAVE POTENTIAL”

[linkerbell]

A whole server of lambsonas 🤲✨

(From left to right on the lineup)

@aveloka-draws @beautysnake @coffincrows @xmajordumps @z00lea ME @monosprout @acoraxia @the-one-who-lambs @bamsara @squish--squash @strawdool @ane-doodles @lambment @arsonistmoth @surfdudeboy @cultoftheswag @p4r4n0rmal-exe @i-eat-deodorant @oneofthosenightbees @delirisse @catatombi @the-pentaparty @iamuxie @unwri-ten @ballad-of-the-lamb @vurelly

[axiliern]

some various timkons 🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️

ft me playing with them like toys

[mysterycitrus]

if i was given like thirty seconds to have a psychic convo with the next writer for nightwing i would hold them by the ears and force them to stare at this single page

it isn’t really the context for this page but it’s still so important. nightwing as a character — for as much as he’s a lynchpin and the vital supportive backbone of every hero under forty — should never ever forget the people he lives down the hall from, the civilians he works with, the regulars he sees on the subway. please reconnect him with his roots. please don’t forget his civilian supporting cast. stop making him a disengaged billionaire and give him some real gd problems to give a shit about

[venator-signum]

kamala khan would have the most horrendous ao3 author's notes known to man

"hey guys sorry the update is late i switched places with an avenger (ajdgrhsh literally crying) and a really cool space scientist lady and then got into a fight and some alien dudes wrecked my house and then I met Nick fury and I was literal space it was crazy and I had to help save the universe and saw said scientist lady give up her life to save all of us... anyways hope you like the new fic, branching out with an arranged marriage au for this one!!!"

[ohheyitsgray]

back at it again with the smilers

[ynnu-64]

Boyfriends

[vaimetanyx]

@themolluscasometimes said she wanted a Skinhe plush and now this skin creature lives in her home because I asked 'how much do you want one?' and everything spiraled from there. The most interesting part of all this has been explaining who and what he is to people not in the know - stay insane svsss fandom

[thiccermccer]

all of ryan gosling's comments about "telling ken's story" are really interesting and even funnier now that i've seen the movie. yeah ken is ridiculous but his feelings and sentiments are really similar to ones of seen from boys who are starting to enter that alt-right/incel pipeline. feeling abandoned and useless without a woman and turning that hurt into anger at women!! ken's story did get told and it's a story that i don't think we acknowledge enough

[solacebean]

The Goat

[blabberoo]

What we could've gotten 😩😩😩

[hagelwolke]

uuuaahhhuhaaahualian

[paper-mario-wiki]

i cant understand people who wouldnt want to keep their own extracted teeth. do you realize how few opportunities you will have in your entire lifetime to hold a bone that your body generated in your own two hands? and you'd abandon them without a second thought?