#someone he has to EMULATE...

[stormbreaker101]

I still can't get over the Circe Saga.

Hermes gives Odysseus a tool to even the playing field. He anticipates and encourages Odysseus to overpower her on a physical, magical, and sexual level. He phrases this help as "us[ing] more than words." He wants Odysseus to give up speech and mercy as much as the other gods do.

But ultimately it's Odysseus's words that save him and his crew. It's him telling Circe about his faith to Penelope that convinces her to help him.

There are other ways of persuasion, indeed.

[wormboyfriendcentralstation]

i love the contrast between ishmael and heathcliff's revenge plots because ishmael was willing to steer a boat into a whale of skyscraper proportions to tear that old lady limb from limb with her bare hands, whereas heathcliff was trying really hard to increase his credit score. ishmael is here not speaking of hubris. striking the sun if it insulted her. she is madness maddened. she is that wild madness only calm to comprehend herself. in the meantime, heathcliff has trodden on the bathtub mixed timeline moonshine landmine that cathy made in her basement

[prism-forgone]

at least they still have that sick pink belt i guess

an assortment of doodles of strange someone frisk - they're @the-meme-monarch's! go! check them out if u don't know them!! - simply because they were on the mind to the point where i had to visualize my thoughts or risk falling into the shadow realm

bit of a less serious doodle under the cut as a surprise lmao i did it once as warmup

[uniiiquehecrt]

Voice actors are NOT the same as actors.

It takes a specific kind of skill-set and training to be able to warp and meld the voice. It takes a certain kind of talent and dedication to hone that talent into the ability to meld the voice and invoke emotion with one's voice alone. Actors are used to using their voice secondarily to their body language and their facial expressions. It's all mirrored back on camera. They do have nuance. But it's a different kind of nuance and a different kind of training to produce that nuance.

Voice actors might get their likeness transposed on their character's design, and maybe their mannerisms might seep into the character's animation. But when it's all said and done: their presence is in their voice. They are bringing a character to life, showing that emotion in their voice, trying to keep a specific accent, drawl, pitch, tone in that voice and keep it consistent for their recording sessions.

The voice actor is like a classically trained musician who can play first chair in a competitive, world-renown orchestra. The actor (who fills the voice actor's role) is like a moot who played violin in beginner and intermediate high school orchestra and thinks they can get into Juilliard with that 2-4 years of experience.

This doesn't mean that the HS orchestra moot can't play. They can even be really good at it. Maybe they won competitions and sat first chair. But they are not in the same league as the person who's been training their whole lives and lives and breathes to hone their craft using the instrument and all of the training they've ever acquired to perfect it. They are not meant for the same roles. They are not in the same caliber. You do not hire the HS equivalent when you want to play complex music in a competitive orchestra.

Actors are not the same as voice actors.

And furthermore, actors - especially big name actors - taking the roles of animated characters for big budget films or TV pilots makes no sense anyways when - at least in the case of TV pilots - there's not a point to hiring a big budget actors anyways. That money could be used elsewhere (like paying your animators), and the talent that is brought onto the screen for X character could then be hired on to voice said character no recasting required.

I wouldn't say voice acting as a profession is in danger exactly, but it's certainly being disrespected and overlooked for celebrity clout, and this has ALWAYS been an issue. Shoot, even Robin Williams knew that much - which is why he tried so hard not to be used as a marketing chess piece for Aladdin and got royally pissed off when it happened anyways. People shouldn't go to any movie (but especially not animated films) because "oh famous actor is in it". People should go because it's a good movie and the voice acting is good.

People who honest to god think that voice actors are replaceable because "oh well anyone can voice act" or "I like xyz celebrity so naturally it'll be good" ... Honestly I just wish you'd reassess your priorities because you're missing the point and are part of the problem.

Voice Actors ≠ Actors.

[normalbrothers]

TOMMY: The war is done! Shut the door on it like I did.

[biblicalhorror]

Aroace Riz real but also Fabian is SO clearly in love with him and Riz has no idea

[jujuflakes]

Ohhhh boy. I have come with (yet another) Eldritch!Lucifer concept design. It will happen again. Ksnsbef

Inspiration taken from omori/madoka/genshin.

I have so many biblically accurate designs in the drafts bc I just. cannot see Luci with one definite look. Hence the hc that the closer his appearance is to his 'true' form, the more unstable it becomes. my baby would drive quantum physicists mad.

[queenlucythevaliant]

Tell Your Dad You Love Him

A retelling of "Meat Loves Salt"/"Cap O'Rushes" for the @inklings-challenge Four Loves event

An old king had three daughters. When his health began to fail, he summoned them, and they came.

Gordonia and Rowan were already waiting in the hallway when Coriander arrived. They were leaned up against the wall opposite the king’s office with an air of affected casualness. “I wonder what the old war horse wants today?” Rowan was saying. “More about next year’s political appointments, I shouldn’t wonder.”

“The older he gets, the more he micromanages,” Gordonia groused fondly. “A thousand dollars says this meeting could’ve been an email.”

They filed in single-file like they’d so often done as children: Gordonia first, then Rowan, and Coriander last of all. The king had placed three chairs in front of his desk all in a row. His daughters murmured their greetings, and one by one they sat down. 

“I have divided everything I have in three,” the king said. “I am old now, and it’s time. Today, I will pass my kingdom on to you, my daughters.”

A short gasp came from Gordonia. None of them could have imagined that their father would give up running his kingdom while he still lived. 

The king went on. “I know you will deal wisely with that which I leave in your care. But before we begin, I have one request.”

“Yes father?” said Rowan.

“Tell me how much you love me.”

An awkward silence fell. Although there was no shortage of love between the king and his daughters, theirs was not a family which spoke of such things. They were rich and blue-blooded: a soldier and the daughters of a soldier, a king and his three court-reared princesses. The royal family had always shown their affection through double meanings and hot cups of coffee.

Gordonia recovered herself first. She leaned forward over the desk and clasped her father’s hands in her own. “Father,” she said, “I love you more than I can say.” A pause. “I don’t think there’s ever been a family so happy in love as we have been. You’re a good dad.”

The old king smiled and patted her hand. “Thank you, Gordonia. We have been very happy, haven’t we? Here is your inheritance. Cherish it, as I cherish you.”

Rowan spoke next; the words came tumbling out.  “Father! There’s not a thing in my life which you didn’t give me, and all the joy in the world beside. Come now, Gordonia, there’s no need to understate the matter. I love you more than—why, more than life itself!”

The king laughed, and rose to embrace his second daughter. “How you delight me, Rowan. All of this will be yours.”

Only Coriander remained. As her sisters had spoken, she’d wrung her hands in her lap, unsure of what to say. Did her father really mean for flattery to be the price of her inheritance? That just wasn’t like him. For all that he was a politician, he’d been a soldier first. He liked it when people told the truth.

When the king’s eyes came to rest on her, Coriander raised her own to meet them. “Do you really want to hear what you already know?” 

“I do.”

She searched for a metaphor that could carry the weight of her love without unnecessary adornment. At last she found one, and nodded, satisfied. “Dad, you’re like—like salt in my food.”

“Like salt?”

“Well—yes.”

The king’s broad shoulders seemed to droop. For a moment, Coriander almost took back her words. Her father was the strongest man in the world, even now, at eighty. She’d watched him argue with foreign rulers and wage wars all her life. Nothing could hurt him. Could he really be upset? 

But no. Coriander held her father’s gaze. She had spoken true. What harm could be in that?

“I don’t know why you’re even here, Cor,” her father said.

Now, Coriander shifted slightly in her seat, unnerved. “What? Father—”

“It would be best if—you should go,” said the old king.

“Father, you can’t really mean–”

“Leave us, Coriander.”

So she left the king’s court that very hour.

 .

It had been a long time since she’d gone anywhere without a chauffeur to drive her, but Coriander’s thoughts were flying apart too fast for her to be afraid. She didn’t know where she would go, but she would make do, and maybe someday her father would puzzle out her metaphor and call her home to him. Coriander had to hope for that, at least. The loss of her inheritance didn’t feel real yet, but her father—how could he not know that she loved him? She’d said it every day.

She’d played in the hall outside that same office as a child. She’d told him her secrets and her fears and sent him pictures on random Tuesdays when they were in different cities just because. She had watched him triumph in conference rooms and on the battlefield and she’d wanted so badly to be like him. 

If her father doubted her love, then maybe he’d never noticed any of it. Maybe the love had been an unnoticed phantasm, a shadow, a song sung to a deaf man. Maybe all that love had been nothing at all.  

A storm was on the horizon, and it reached her just as she made it onto the highway. Lightning flashed and thunder rolled. Rain poured down and flooded the road. Before long, Coriander was hydroplaning. Frantically, she tried to remember what you were supposed to do when that happened. Pump the brakes? She tried. No use. Wasn’t there something different you did if the car had antilock brakes? Or was that for snow? What else, what else–

With a sickening crunch, her car hit the guardrail. No matter. Coriander’s thoughts were all frenzied and distant. She climbed out of the car and just started walking.

Coriander wandered beneath an angry sky on the great white plains of her father’s kingdom. The rain beat down hard, and within seconds she was soaked to the skin. The storm buffeted her long hair around her head. It tangled together into long, matted cords that hung limp down her back. Mud soiled her fine dress and splattered onto her face and hands. There was water in her lungs and it hurt to breathe. Oh, let me die here, Coriander thought. There’s nothing left for me, nothing at all. She kept walking.

 .

When she opened her eyes, Coriander found herself in a dank gray loft. She was lying on a strange feather mattress.

She remained there a while, looking up at the rafters and wondering where she could be. She thought and felt, as it seemed, through a heavy and impenetrable mist; she was aware only of hunger and weakness and a dreadful chill (though she was all wrapped in blankets). She knew that a long time must have passed since she was fully aware, though she had a confused memory of wandering beside the highway in a thunderstorm, slowly going mad because—because— oh, there’d been something terrible in her dreams. Her father, shoulders drooping at his desk, and her sisters happily come into their inheritance, and she cast into exile—

She shuddered and sat up dizzily. “Oh, mercy,” she murmured. She hadn’t been dreaming.

She stumbled out of the loft down a narrow flight of stairs and came into a strange little room with a single window and a few shabby chairs. Still clinging to the rail, she heard a ruckus from nearby and then footsteps. A plump woman came running to her from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron and softly clucking at the state of her guest’s matted, tangled hair.

“Dear, dear,” said the woman. “Here’s my hand, if you’re still unsteady. That’s good, good. Don’t be afraid, child. I’m Katherine, and my husband is Folke. He found you collapsed by the goose-pond night before last. I’m she who dressed you—your fine gown was ruined, I’m afraid. Would you like some breakfast? There’s coffee on the counter, and we’ll have porridge in a minute if you’re patient.”

“Thank you,” Coriander rasped.

“Will you tell me your name, my dear?”

“I have no name. There’s nothing to tell.”

Katherine clicked her tongue. “That’s alright, no need to worry. Folke and I’ve been calling you Rush on account of your poor hair. I don’t know if you’ve seen yourself, but it looks a lot like river rushes. No, don’t get up. Here’s your breakfast, dear.”

There was indeed porridge, as Katherine had promised, served with cream and berries from the garden. Coriander ate hungrily and tasted very little. Then, when she was finished, the goodwife ushered her over to a sofa by the window and put a pillow beneath her head. Coriander thanked her, and promptly fell asleep.

 .

She woke again around noon, with the pounding in her head much subsided. She woke feeling herself again, to visions of her father inches away and the sound of his voice cracking across her name.

Katherine was outside in the garden; Coriander could see her through the clouded window above her. She rose and, upon finding herself still in a borrowed nightgown, wrapped herself in a blanket to venture outside.

“Feeling better?” Katherine was kneeling in a patch of lavender, but she half rose when she heard the cottage door open.

“Much. Thank you, ma’am.

“No thanks necessary. Folke and I are ministers, of a kind. We keep this cottage for lost and wandering souls. You’re free to remain here with us for as long as you need.”

“Oh,” was all Coriander could think to say. 

“You’ve been through a tempest, haven’t you? Are you well enough to tell me where you came from?”

Coriander shifted uncomfortably. “I’m from nowhere,” she said. “I have nothing.”

“You don’t owe me your story, child. I should like to hear it, but it will keep till you’re ready. Now, why don’t you put on some proper clothes and come help me with this weeding.”

 .

Coriander remained at the cottage with Katherine and her husband Folke for a week, then a fortnight. She slept in the loft and rose with the sun to help Folke herd the geese to the pond. After, Coriander would return and see what needed doing around the cottage. She liked helping Katherine in the garden.

The grass turned gold and the geese’s thick winter down began to come in. Coriander’s river-rush hair proved itself unsalvageable. She spent hours trying to untangle it, first with a hairbrush, then with a fine-tooth comb and a bottle of conditioner, and eventually even with honey and olive oil (a home remedy that Folke said his mother used to use). So, at last, Coriander surrendered to the inevitable and gave Katherine permission to cut it off. One night, by the yellow light of the bare bulb that hung over the kitchen table, Katherine draped a towel over Coriander’s shoulders and tufts of gold went falling to the floor all round her.

“I’m here because I failed at love,” she managed to tell the couple at last, when her sorrows began to feel more distant. “I loved my father, and he knew it not.”

Folke and Katherine still called her Rush. She didn’t correct them. Coriander was the name her parents gave her. It was the name her father had called her when she was six and racing down the stairs to meet him when he came home from Europe, and at ten when she showed him the new song she’d learned to play on the harp. She’d been Cor when she brought her first boyfriend home and Cori the first time she shadowed him at court. Coriander, Coriander, when she came home from college the first time and he’d hugged her with bruising strength. Her strong, powerful father.

As she seasoned a pot of soup for supper, she wondered if he understood yet what she’d meant when she called him salt in her food. 

 .

Coriander had been living with Katherine and Folke for two years, and it was a morning just like any other. She was in the kitchen brewing a pot of coffee when Folke tossed the newspaper on the table and started rummaging in the fridge for his orange juice. “Looks like the old king’s sick again,” he commented casually. Coriander froze.

She raced to the table and seized hold of the paper. There, above the fold, big black letters said, KING ADMITTED TO HOSPITAL FOR EMERGENCY TREATMENT. There was a picture of her father, looking older than she’d ever seen him. Her knees went wobbly and then suddenly the room was sideways.

Strong arms caught her and hauled her upright. “What’s wrong, Rush?”

“What if he dies,” she choked out. “What if he dies and I never got to tell him?”

She looked up into Folke’s puzzled face, and then the whole sorry story came tumbling out.

When she was through, Katherine (who had come downstairs sometime between salt and the storm) took hold of her hand and kissed it. “Bless you, dear,” she said. “I never would have guessed. Maybe it’s best that you’ve both had some time to think things over.”

Katherine shook her head. “But don’t you think…?”

“Yes?”

“Well, don’t you think he should have known that I loved him? I shouldn’t have needed to say it. He’s my father. He’s the king.”

Katherine replied briskly, as though the answer should have been obvious. “He’s only human, child, for all that he might wear a crown; he’s not omniscient. Why didn’t you tell your father what he wanted to hear?”

“I didn’t want to flatter him,” said Coriander. “That was all. I wanted to be right in what I said.”

The goodwife clucked softly. “Oh dear. Don’t you know that sometimes, it’s more important to be kind than to be right?”

.

In her leave-taking, Coriander tried to tell Katherine and Folke how grateful she was to them, but they wouldn’t let her. They bought her a bus ticket and sent her on her way towards King’s City with plenty of provisions. Two days later, Coriander stood on the back steps of one of the palace outbuildings with her little carpetbag clutched in her hands. 

Stuffing down the fear of being recognized, Coriander squared her shoulders and hoped they looked as strong as her father’s. She rapped on the door, and presently a maid came and opened it. The maid glanced Coriander up and down, but after a moment it was clear that her disguise held. With all her long hair shorn off, she must have looked like any other girl come in off the street.

“I’m here about a job,” said Coriander. “My name’s Rush.”

 .

The king's chambers were half-lit when Coriander brought him his supper, dressed in her servants’ apparel. He grunted when she knocked and gestured with a cane towards his bedside table. His hair was snow-white and he was sitting in bed with his work spread across a lap-desk. His motions were very slow.

Coriander wanted to cry, seeing her father like that. Yet somehow, she managed to school her face. Like he would, she kept telling herself. Stoically, she put down the supper tray, then stepped back out into the hallway. 

It was several minutes more before the king was ready to eat. Coriander heard papers being shuffled, probably filed in those same manilla folders her father had always used. In the hall, Coriander felt the seconds lengthen. She steeled herself for the moment she knew was coming, when the king would call out in irritation, “Girl! What's the matter with my food? Why hasn’t it got any taste?”

When that moment came, all would be made right. Coriander would go into the room and taste his food. “Why,” she would say, with a look of complete innocence, “It seems the kitchen forgot to salt it!” She imagined how her father’s face would change when he finally understood. My daughter always loved me, he would say. 

Soon, soon. It would happen soon. Any second now. 

The moment never came. Instead, the floor creaked, followed by the rough sound of a cane striking the floor. The door opened, and then the king was there, his mighty shoulders shaking. “Coriander,” he whispered. 

“Dad. You know me?”

“Of course.”

“Then you understand now?”

The king’s wrinkled brow knit. “Understand about the salt? Of course, I do. It wasn't such a clever riddle. There was surely no need to ruin my supper with a demonstration.”

Coriander gaped at him. She'd expected questions, explanations, maybe apologies for sending her away. She'd never imagined this.

She wanted very badly to seize her father and demand answers, but then she looked, really looked, at the way he was leaning on his cane. The king was barely upright; his white head was bent low. Her questions would hold until she'd helped her father back into his room. 

“If you knew what I meant–by saying you were like salt in my food– then why did you tell me to go?” she asked once they were situated back in the royal quarters. 

Idly, the king picked at his unseasoned food. “I shouldn’t have done that. Forgive me, Coriander. My anger and hurt got the better of me, and it has brought me much grief. I never expected you to stay away for so long.”

Coriander nodded slowly. Her father's words had always carried such fierce authority. She'd never thought to question if he really meant what he’d said to her. 

“As for the salt,” continued the king, "Is it so wrong that an old man should want to hear his daughters say ‘I love you' before he dies?” 

Coriander rolled the words around in her head, trying to make sense of them. Then, with a sudden mewling sound from her throat, she managed to say, “That's really all you wanted?”  

“That's all. I am old, Cor, and we've spoken too little of love in our house.” He took another bite of his unsalted supper. His hand shook. “That was my failing, I suppose. Perhaps if I’d said it, you girls would have thought to say it back.”

“But father!” gasped Coriander, “That’s not right. We've always known we loved one another! We've shown it a thousand ways. Why, I've spent the last year cataloging them in my head, and I've still not even scratched the surface!”

The king sighed. “Perhaps you will understand when your time comes. I knew, and yet I didn't. What can you really call a thing you’ve never named? How do you know it exists? Perhaps all the love I thought I knew was only a figment.”

“But that’s what I’ve been afraid of all this time,” Coriander bit back. “How could you doubt? If it was real at all– how could you doubt?”

The king’s weathered face grew still. His eyes fell shut and he squeezed them. “Death is close to me, child. A small measure of reassurance is not so very much to ask.”

.

Coriander slept in her old rooms that night. None of it had changed. When she woke the next morning, for a moment she remembered nothing of the last two years. 

She breakfasted in the garden with her father, who came down the steps in a chair-lift. “Coriander,” he murmured. “I half-thought I dreamed you last night.”

“I’m here, Dad,” she replied. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Slowly, the king reached out with one withered hand and caressed Coriander's cheek. Then, his fingers drifted up to what remained of her hair. He ruffled it, then gently tugged on a tuft the way he'd used to playfully tug her long braid when she was a girl. 

“I love you,” he said.

“That was always an I love you, wasn’t it?” replied Coriander. “My hair.”

The king nodded. “Yes, I think it was.”

So Coriander reached out and gently tugged the white hairs of his beard. “You too,” she whispered.

.

“Why salt?” The king was sitting by the fire in his rooms wrapped in two blankets. Coriander was with him, enduring the sweltering heat of the room without complaint. 

She frowned. “You like honesty. We have that in common. I was trying to be honest–accurate–to avoid false flattery.”

The king tugged at the outer blanket, saying nothing. His lips thinned and his eyes dropped to his lap. Coriander wished they wouldn’t. She wished they would hold to hers, steely and ready for combat as they always used to be.

“Would it really have been false?” the king said at last. “Was there no other honest way to say it? Only salt?”

Coriander wanted to deny it, to give speech to the depth and breadth of her love, but once again words failed her. “It was my fault,” she said. “I didn’t know how to heave my heart into my throat.” She still didn’t, for all she wanted to. 

.

When the doctor left, the king was almost too tired to talk. His words came slowly, slurred at the edges and disconnected, like drops of water from a leaky faucet. 

Still, Coriander could tell that he had something to say. She waited patiently as his lips and tongue struggled to form the words. “Love you… so… much… You… and… your sisters… Don’t… worry… if you… can’t…say…how…much. I… know.” 

It was all effort. The king sat back when he was finished. Something was still spasming in his throat, and Coriander wanted to cry.

“I’m glad you know,” she said. “I’m glad. But I still want to tell you.”

Love was effort. If her father wanted words, she would give him words. True words. Kind words. She would try… 

“I love you like salt in my food. You're desperately important to me, and you've always been there, and I don't know what I'll do without you. I don’t want to lose you. And I love you like the soil in a garden. Like rain in the spring. Like a hero. You have the strongest shoulders of anyone I know, and all I ever wanted was to be like you…”

A warm smile spread across the old king’s face. His eyes drifted shut.

[genspiel]

me, with hair down to my waist: maybe i should cut my hair short...?

me, after seeing level 20 caduceus with hair down to his waist: maybe i should not cut my hair short

[blujayonthewing]

feeblemind should be an attack roll spell instead of a saving throw specifically so I can concoct little scenarios where it misses and hits someone else instead

[bookwyrminspiration]

it reminds me of this one

also, your haircut almost looks more like my mental image of Keefe than the actual official art? All the official art gives him messy but kind of straight-ish hair, but I always pictured him with more wavy/curly hair, like yours

!! not the virulent blond that doesn't even look like part of him--which is incredibly accurate, I must agree

also with you on the mental image thing--I tend to add some waves/curls to almost anyone I draw or picture, and keefe is no exception. I think shannon's even described him once as looking like he'd spent the morning swimming and the whole beachy waves thing was really working for him--and if Shannon didn't say that, then it was probably nattie, and that's close enough

when I draw keefe next I think I will unironically use those photos of me as a reference they were pretty spot on for what I usually wanna go for

[squishosaur]

hngh... okay

[confier-boyfriend]

Sometimes I get the feeling I have negative gender

[randomnameless]

Is there a list of story mistakes in Fire Emblem heroes? I mean mistakes within the characterization and histories of the games they're covering like "Medeus went mad in a peaceful world because the Binding Shield was stolen."

Pff

the list is too long anon!

More seriously, I don't think a list exists, but Sharena's Meet Your Heroes is often rife with, uh, nonsense - both because it cannot spoil too much the unit or the game said unit comes from, but also because Sharena is something who thinks Gharnef can be a "Hero", and of course we have the lolcalisation on top, especially regarding a certain universe!

But yeah, on the spot, I can only think of Medeus, Dimitri losing "all" of his family in Duscur (rip uncle rufus!)

Oh, there's also this :

This implies Galzus "lost his kingdom" and then set out on a journey with Mareeta, but Mareeta, by virtue of being as old as Leif, wasn't born yet when Galzus "lost his kingdom".

Canon wise, Galzus got Mareeta after the Granvalle-Isaach War, which happens AFTER Galzus loses his Kingdom of Rivough (Ribaut?) that happened in the Isaach-Rivough/Isaach war, when Galzus's Grandpa and Uncle slaughtered his parents (beheading his dad), demolished Ribaut/Rivough and kicked him out Isaach.

Timeline roughly goes like this :

Galzus's grandpa and uncle demolish his kingdom, behead his father and kill (i hope it was only that, Kaga has interesting notes about the fate of women in times of war, and apparently Marricle, Galzus's uncle didn't want that for Ayra, his younger sister) his mother (Marricle's older sister!), Galzus has to leave Isaach in exile

Isaach loses the war against Granvalle while Galzus is exiled

Still exiled, Galzus gets Mareeta with an unnamed mom

Mom dies, Galzus takes Mareeta in "his travels"

Mareeta is caught by slavers, Galzus comes too late and looks for her, to no avail. He becomes a mercenary and ends up in Reidric's service.

Meanwhile Mareeta is rescued by Eyvel, who murders the slavers and adopt her

FE5 happens and they are reunited at the end.

Oh, and there's also this :

Saias is a Velthomer!

There are no "mild-mannered" Velthomers, have you seen his parents ? They're both dastards.

[proheromidoriyashouto]

witcher modern au where witchers have to put those colorful claw caps over their toe nails so they don't tear their work boots, floors and carpets, and blankets up by walking or instinct based kneading and they all absolutely hate it.

its their version of humans not wanting to touch their eyes even for medical reasons. melitele forbid they need to trim a hangnail or treatment for archspore fungus under their nails.

they will Ignore The Problem. this infection is for the job. i have too many toes anyway. i will just buy news boots more often. i did not stub my toe on the coffee table and start to cry. i am a Powerful Mutant.

Jaskier is sneaking the caps on Geralt when he's in a post-hunt potions crashnap. Ciri gets Geralt to trim them during 'spa day' pretend play because he can't deny his precious daughter anything, but always escapes before she can even glance at the glue because its so smelly, so Jaskier takes his turn to strike in the wee morning hours. (these ofieri rugs were a gift from the prince, geralt! you animal!)

Aiden is a fastidious groomer and forces himself into a salon chair because the smell of neglect is especially foul for a witcher and getting ahead of problems makes for an easier existence, but he's also not a complete degenerate like some Cats--read: Gaetan.

Lambert "happily" goes along with Aiden because he wants to make a good impression, and he likes to think he is the smartest of his brothers which would make destroying things he pays money for in a gig economy monumentally stupid, but his inner wolf is howling with misery the songs of his people the entire time a stranger is putting their hands on his pawsfeet. Aiden knows how much of a brave face he's actually putting on for his sake so rewards Lambert accordingly at home. (they have so many in-tact kneading blankets the other Cats think Something Is Up when they poke around)

Eskel grits his teeth and does the work himself often enough he doesn't have to wear the nail caps. The glue stench is overwhelmingly bad even after its cured, he can't imagine how Geralt's twice-mutated nose handles it. (he doesn't know Geralt doesn't do it himself and has to be "dog medicine pill wrapped in cheese and ham"-ed about it until after Jaskier goes an a rant after a particular tiff they've had. Eskel never lets Pretty Boy live it down.) People already don't like his face, the last thing he needs is people assuming he's as much a beast as they think witchers are by neglecting basic hygiene and the state of one's home.

Vesemir is an old dog of a witcher living in his mountain keep. He doesn't bother with that city-slicker nonsense and walks around barefoot. He only wears boots for jobs which he doesn't do much anymore, and if they rip, well, he can blame a monster. The floors of the keep were built with hard stone they'd be pressed to scatch if they tried so whats it matter. Until an old flame, the dignified and ever as lovely Countess Mignole, buys a home at the base of the mountain and suddenly it matters so much to be presentable. It is difficult to be a charming old man when your feet smell of neglected archspore infection strongly enough a human can be offput by it and you don't have boots that might last a day walking through town with a woman on his arm. (the boys and Aiden have to hold him down as he fights like a dying bear while Jaskier and Eskel Do Something about his horrible old wolf paws.) in the end, Mignole finds the assorted colors of the nail caps very charming indeed. Vesemir complains about it for the rest of his days when she's visiting the grandchildren out of town.

[quietwingsinthesky]

Soooo badly want to combine twin!au with the “chuck has been mindcontrolling luci for years and it’s only just now stopped working so he’s back in s5 character” because can you imagine how distressing that would be for everyone involved?

Like Lucifer’s in full control of himself for the first time in years, after all the shit that went down post-s5, dealing with the repercussions of actions he performed but now honestly can’t tell which ones were things he would have actually done of his own volition and which were God yanking on his strings. And ALSO during that time he had sex in order to have a kid, but instead ended up with twins who no one wants him near! Because everyone hates him! And Heaven’s gone to shit, most of the angels are dead, the only archangel left alive is Michael and he’s still caged and Luci’s got no way of getting him out if he even wants to. (Which. Presumably he does. If only because at least he knows Michael and Michael hasn’t been on the receiving end of the shit he did the past few years and yeah, might still think of him as a monster but at least that was an image Lucifer was almost in control of.)

And then of course when he finally gets to see the twins, he gets to have a horrible moment of going “oh. Oh no. Oh no they’re me and Michael. God’s replaying the story again and with my kids.” Which is! Horrifying! For someone who has only just gotten free of having his entire character rewritten for the sake of being villainized easier by his own father!