#syl's ramblings

[onceuponanaromantic]

i am book howl pendragon dramatic and movie howl pendragon aesthetic and no I will not be elaborating

[sylsoddsandends]

I'm thinking abt that one scene from nitw where Mae and Bea are in Bea's room and they get in an argument and. oh it just hurts my soul

Bcs like. Bea's reaction is totally reasonable; Mae isn't being realistic and it probably feels patronizing to be told to just leave the situation

But you also understand what Mae is trying to express, she just doesn't really have the emotional intelligence or way with words; she cares about Bea and is angry on her behalf, because her dad doesn't acknowledge or thank Bea for her hard work.

And I think that's really sad. Scenes where one character means well but can't quite explain themselves always make me feel that way; I've been in that situation, it sucks

[the-worms-in-your-bones]

Me seeing someone with a cool name: oooooo, what if

Another part of my brain: no. we spent enough time getting to Jonah. we’re not doing it again

[soloavengers]

i said ng+ doesn’t mean anything to me, but …

i made three pairs of arisen and pawns, the plan was to switch every ng+ but i found i can’t enjoy two of the arisen i made as protagonists. it could very well be that i’m just attached to syl, yes and No. i made syl as my idea of an ideal pc for this game, an adventurous helpful little guy semi-detached from the world To Me fits right in and drives me to Play like i want. it’s silly but yeah if i make an arisen that characteristically wouldn’t be running around opening chests and killing random monsters, i will not want to run around opening chests and killing monsters bc it would bug me and make me stop which would make the game a Lot less fun to me and i get bored. it happened.

after deciding i’m not going to play with my two other arisen, it gave me the opportunity to branch out their stories in my head and i love that for them. sparrow’s journey should be different, he’s from outside the continent the game is set in and he uses magic i’d call anti-brine. his story could age badly should the map expand in the dlc, which would Suck and so he’s decidedly from a parallel world.

and so is aser, whose journey Should go differently because of his status and relationships. son of a former arisen who founded a town in the northern most of vermund would Not be treated like syl even with my initial idea of ‘his family just doesn’t know he’s alive’ and so on.

ough i could go on. but instead here’s why syl ends up with each of these guys’ pawns in ng+, because My reason of i just want to play with pawns of these inclinations isn’t enough for me. i give you, syl in a cycle limbo! not quite the cycle going forward, no ser it’s of his own, and winnie’s Will.

syl kills pathfinder, winnie died to help him, he died. not really! their souls linger, winnie had a wish. she witnessed two arisen fail before and she really really felt for their poor pawns. her will, her wish threw syl in the cycle limbo.

he’s physically in a coma post-ending (oooh corny ng+ was all a dream!), she sleeps in the rift, to wake up he must fulfill her wish. his soul mingles with the lost soul of the semi failed arisen sparrow, he wakes up in sparrow’s body and takes him down the path familiar, he meets thorne, sparrow’s reincarnation frees him from the rift. sparrow-syl doesn’t recall the dragon’s attack in melve, he recalls sparrow’s former life and failure. his success would save this world, give a pawn the missing half of their soul. or something. it’s not the same world sparrow failed to free from the cycle, mind, but it would free him and thorne from their own cycle of death and rebirth.

it repeats, aser’s body, get attached to a third pawn oh it seems like a happier ending the more he goes thro it. or something.

he walks the path a fourth time, waking up in his own body, he summons winnie, she remembers him and knows what he did. they do this together again, she promises him it would be the last time. they get their happy ending.

this is kinda shitty and hurriedly written but just enough to appease the silly part of me that Needs this elaborated upon. at the end of the day, ng+ is just me having extra fun and this isn’t canon in syl & winnie’s tale, hmm call it a branching. bye now

(ye a part of winnie was in the reincarnations of thorne and rani, which means a part of syl was too. their bestowal of spirit is from syl as much as their arisen, he’s just generous like that (winnie too). say he kind of… ascended and his will became beyond powerful. will is soul. yeah. they’re all v dear to him, very dear to me.

the two arisen don’t fail originally! they’re very capable on their own! but in a timeline i want This silliness to happen, they do and winnie & syl get their backs. thank you)

[mint-chocolate-rooibos]

loki spent centuries learning physics, went through possibilities time and time again, even learning how to stop time. all for giving everyone a chance. all for his friends to live and be able to do what they want in life. and he will still end up alone for maybe the rest of time. and there is still one person unhappy because he is gone. because he wasn't able to choose loki.

[par4disee]

@idlerin writes so good she makes me like characters i used to not like

[happi-tree]

📓

I don't go to dndads but if you pick a dndads au I will do my best to get it /hj

Lucky for you, Syl, I also have plenty of Amphibia things I have daydreamed about and never written!

The one that's immediately coming to mind is something from my old Cursed, Cast, Cat (CCC) au, in which Marcy's a witch, Anne is her shapeshifting cat familiar, and Sasha's just a regular human who got turned into a toad via curse. It was a 3+1 fic - three times where Anne wakes up Marcy by shifting in her sleep, and one time where it isn't Anne that wakes Marcy up.

The first time is when Marcy and Anne are much younger. Marcy's only just discovered her magic and has no idea that Anne can shapeshift yet. Marcy's staying with the Plantars for a sleepover and wakes up to find the Plantars' barn cat (Anne!) on her chest, and her friend, Anne the human, is nowhere to be found. She asks Anne about it in the morning.

The second time it happens, they're teenagers. Marcy is fully aware that Anne shapeshifts, but it still doesn't mentally prepare her for Anne shifting into human form in her sleep and promptly draping herself over Marcy lmao. She experiences several moments of gay panic before shaking Anne awake so that she can actually rest instead of nearly giving herself a heart attack.

The third time, Anne and Marcy are fully adults living independently together in Marcy's cute little witchy cottage on the edge of town. Anne stumbles in, exhausted from a long day helping out the Plantars and a longish night hunting (she's still somewhat of a cat yk), and flops down into their bed as she shifts, which ends up waking Marcy. The two of them chat for a bit about their days before turning in for some much-needed shut-eye.

And for the plus one,,, it's Sasha time! This scene occurs after Anne and Marcy help her to break her curse. Sasha ends up staying with them and becomes their queerplatonic partner, and part of that deal in their case means that all three of them get to cuddle in their massive bed every night. Sasha's tossing and turning ends up waking Marcy, and Marcy takes the opportunity to reflect on how much Sasha has changed in her time here and how fond Marcy and Anne have grown of her.

Annnnnd that was about all I had, I think! Sorry this took a bit to answer - had to jog my memory on some things hehe 😅

[cosmererambles]

character bingo: syl! I dont know if ive ever heard what you think of her haha

Ah Syl!

I like her. She’s enjoyable, but I don’t think about her much.

[ifyourereadingthisblinktwice]

getting one fucking package in the mail has reignited my stormlight archive brainrot. take notes kids this is what brandon sanderson books do to a man

[whump-in-the-closet]

Raising Chaos.

essentially an origin scene where chiar and syl meet and also how chiar becomes a cryptid

masterlist.

cw: wishing for death, general whump, chiar gets reanimated/resurrected and he isn’t thrilled about the fact, whump of a minor (OC is 16) and as always let me know if I missed any tags!

***

He should be dead.

That much he knew. He couldn’t feel his arms…was that normal? He couldn’t move and he didn’t know if that was normal either.

Darkness pressed down on him, comforting and heavy with the weight of the shadows. It invited him in…and he was so tired.

So, so tired.

The darkness crawled under his eyelids. It wasn’t painful. He let it crawl deeper. Shadows for bones.

A grave for a bed.

He shouldn’t be alive.

Darkness in his brain, making a nest. A nest? Of tissue and muscle and– he didn’t want to think about that. He didn’t want to think about anything.

He was so, so tired.

“Come on!” The frustrated voice took him by surprise. He became suddenly aware of the hands on his chest– buzzing.

Buzzing?

That wasn’t right.

Glowing?

That was even worse.

A soft curse.

And his existence was ripped apart, stemming from the hands on his chest. The buzzing grew, filling his head, wrapping around his bones and pulling the joints away.

He couldn’t even scream.

But he could feel every change the buzzing did to him. Everything wrapped into one moment, and that one moment changing him in a million ways, shredding him into pieces and putting him back together.

Let me out– Let me out–

The buzzing reached his eyes. What had he done to deserve this shattering pain? It didn’t burn, it didn’t ache, the buzzing swallowed him– worse than the darkness. At least death had been gentle. This was worse than living.

This was agony.

Let me die again–

Colors exploded behind his eyes.

Grey. Blue. Blue. Shades of blue spiraling lighter and lighter until it was all he could see. Faintly, he could hear a voice above him.

“Come on, kid, you’re almost there.”

The pain grew worse with the words. It seemed impossible for the pain to exceed this limit– but it did– god, it did.

It hurt– beyond words. Beyond anything he’d ever felt before.

His eyes throbbed. Worse still, he could feel his bones giving way inside him, hardening into the rhythm of the white noise.

The buzzing, the glowing, was somehow becoming a part of him.

He didn’t want it to–

He screamed then. He couldn’t stop.

The buzzing receded. But did not completely leave. Instead, it settled into his bones and just under his skin.

Through the blinding shades of blue, the boy made out the shape of someone standing over him.

He struggled to sit up. The buzzing grew louder. Underneath him, he could feel stone but the world seemed to slip and slide like it was melting snow on a window.

“You alright?” asked the voice. Its casual tone did little to comfort the boy.

I’m supposed to be dead, he wanted to scream. I’m not supposed to feel anything. But he didn’t say anything, and curled in on himself, head between his knees.

Leave me alone.

He inhaled sharply. The air burned the inside of his nose with its sharpness and he choked on it. The choking turned to sobs.

Leave me alone.

A new voice interrupted, harsh and impatient. “Did it work?”

“Yes.” The first voice sounded defeated. “Give him a second. He’ll be fine.”

“Count your lucky stars, Syl Westerling. If you had failed Fain again…”

“I didn’t.” The first voice– Syl– hesitantly placed a hand on the boy’s trembling shoulder. “Kid? Chiar, right?... It's what your memorial says your name is. Do you think you can stand?”

Chiar glanced up at him, catching sight of dark blue eyes without pupils. He shuddered. Something told him his eyes looked like that now.

Blue. Without pupils. Chiar turned away, covering his head with his arms.

“You don’t deserve this,” Syl whispered. “They didn’t give me a choice.” That was as close to an apology that Chiar got. Syl dragged Chiar off the table.

Chiar didn’t move.

The man in the entrance snapped at Syl to get moving.

Syl exhaled a soft curse, careful for the man not to hear him. He picked Chiar up and carried him.

As they passed out the entrance, he muttered. “Leave your humanity at the door. Forget it. Reject it. You’ll never be one of them again. They’ll fear you, and what they fear, they’ll try to control. Don’t let them, kid.”

“Stop talking to yourself, it’s unsettling.” The man’s voice was hard.

Syl’s eyes blazed but he fell silent.

Don’t let them control you.

tagging: @pigeonwhumps @kira-the-whump-enthusiast (let me know if you want to be added!)

[starsdies]

i think i may end up splitting baby teeth’s final chapter into two? which means i’ll post sooner than i intended, but will also leave another chapter. but i absolutely promise the next chapter will have something spicy. i’ve managed to just come up with a lot of different scenes i want to explore, and with the chapter already at 5k with not even a kiss, WELL.

BUT. tentative “i will post soon” warning while i wrap up the scenes. i cant wait to show you what has been giving me a headache (affectionately) for three months.

[onceuponanaromantic]

yknow what, in hindsight I’m really grateful that when I took a course on the history of colonialism in Southeast Asia, the teacher drilled the exact geography of Indonesia into our collective heads before he even got to like the impacts of Dutch existence in Indonesia and the stages of it.

Like, now that I’m looking at the global focus on colonialism right, and its depictions in art in post-colonial societies and the construction of race and other identity categories within said societies, it’s actually really useful to have that basic understanding that most colonial societies were kind of cobbled together for ease of governance and do not have a monolithic understanding of the impacts of colonialism? Like, esp now that it’s Back with Lizzie’s death right like, it’s really really useful to have that understanding of how exactly colonial administration and military ventures went about grouping wildly disparate communities under the same categories for ease of governance and the economic impacts of colonialism.

And I’m just thinking about it because yes, it makes so much sense when you think about the different islands and the problems with governance today right and the ways the colonial powers continued to exert influence over their ex-colonies (and the way their methods of knowledge production and control remained) but you have to understand, first of all, where all the islands are and that geological basis forms a very good understanding of how people understand language and community and society at all.

[sylsoddsandends]

I'm probably something sort of to the left of therian/otherkin it's just kinda weird to explain I think

I attempt to do so anyway in the tags

[luck-system-shenanigans]

current reasons why i hate my headmates:

1. harry keeps fucking BITING me

2. the whole gabilliam cult thing

3. NO ONE TOLD ME ABOUT Z

[soloavengers]

got the wildest potential post-ending idea for thorne.

dragonplague’d collides with a drake after the final scene, as if they were pulled together like magnets. it makes the drake grow in size and darken in color, it was a battle of wills that thorne won. most importantly it was closure as that drake might have possibly (definitely) been what his former arisen was doomed to become for his greed, doesn’t matter that it isn’t his world maybe this was a part of his punishment as well. the process merged strengthened thorne’s will insanely so he can will himself back to his human form (n vice versa ehehehe)

[emmetrain]

“Do you need me to kill someone for you?” 

Best Friend Starters!

"Oh. Sylvia. No worries. I... I am just reminiscing."

"We, Ingo and I... We had lots of fun. You know. I remember when we both found ourselves at this," --Emmet gestured by shaking his hands in the air sarcastically-- "mysterious island. Free trial for hell, it was. I hated every second of it."

"There weren't even any tracks there!! We could not figure our how we got off at that stop in the first place! Cursed, I tell you! I absolutely hated it. Things happening out of my control. I hate feeling like I am not the master of my fate."

"Yet... Now that I am all alone... Even those memories feel happy... Happier than this. Because I had my brother by my side."

Emmet chuckled bitterly. "I was looking angry because I was still imaging that stupid island's stupid prince. My murderous look must be about that. Yup."

"... He never did anything to deserve my resentment, mind you. I... I just needed an enemy to blame everything on. I thought Ingo would leave my side when he saw all the interesting people on that wretched island."

"It didn't take an island to make him disappear though..."