#what kind of rules text would omnipresent man have i wonder

[shittycustommtglegendaries]

We need more cards that make specific tokens. The Tarmogoyf tokens from MH3 commander are nice, but also why not go off the deep end? Everything can be a token if you really want it to!

The Knifeketeer's artist's web comic can be found here:

[metalomagnetic]

hi metalo! i saw you recently liked a post (i am a creep) about dumbledore being a villain not being a good analysis. years ago i was firmly in the dumblevillain camp, and while I haven’t moved out entirely (I somewhat see him as morally grey? ish?), i am SO interested in your take on dumbledore

can you please just provide a blurble of your opinion? all the love <3

Dumbledore is a good-guy archetype. He is God, to Harry's Jesus and Voldemort's Satan. He is Gandalf to Frodo, Mufasa to Simba and so on.

Dumbledore isn't morally grey; he holds no convictions that are grey in nature. Snape is a wonderful example of a morally grey character, not Dumbledore.

He is, however, a complex character, nuanced, a human being with faults. He makes mistakes, like all other characters in the books, and like all human beings in the world. He is not perfect, but he is good. The Ultimate Good.

Dumbledore is a man that lives in service of the Wizarding World and sacrifices his love, his desires, his ambition and ultimately his life for the good of others.

Dumbledore never forgives himself for those brief 2 months of summer he had with Gellert, and literally spends his entire life doing better, always doing what is right, choosing, over and over and over again, to be kind.

He saves the world, twice, by making sure Grindelwald and Voldemort would never rule over innocents. He not only ensures Voldemort will lose the war, but he makes damn sure to arm Harry with everything he needs to survive that encounter.

Dumbledore always choses love, compassion, tolerance, forgiveness. He always does what is right.

Like he himself will tell you, he made some mistakes (and he is the first to recognise those mistakes, and hold himself accountable for them) but never out of malice or for self interest. Even if he is a genius, he is not omnipresent nor omnipotent, so sometimes he errs on account of that.

He is so aware of his power, and his own human fragility and potential for corruption, that he chooses to remove himself from power, from people, locked away in a school, keeping himself contained and in check.

We also have to account for JK's less than stellar plots, and how HP books are meant for children. But, narratively, Dumbledore represents goodness. He is the hero's mentor, teacher, paternal figure, protector.

When he dies, the UK magical world is lost to darkness. Without him, the Ministry falls, Hogwarts falls, and Voldemort gains power over UK. However, Albus leaves Harry behind, arms him with knowledge (about Horcruxes and how to destroy them) and with powerful magic (the deathly hallows), leaves Harry with people that will look after him (Snape).

Albus did not sacrifice Harry- on the contrary. He loved Harry, was impressed and humbled by the goodness and determination in Harry, and he fought his hardest to keep this kid alive. Without Dumbledore, Harry would have died- not just in the final battle, but many times over. Harry wouldn't have made it past toddlerhood without this man.

To quote Harry himself:

“He accused me of being ‘Dumbledore’s man through and through.’”

“How very rude of him.”

“I told him I was.”

Dumbledore opened his mouth to speak and then closed it again. Behind Harry, Fawkes the phoenix let out a low, soft, musical cry. To Harry’s intense embarrassment, he suddenly realized that Dumbledore’s bright blue eyes looked rather watery.

How the fandom turned this man into a villain, I will never understand.

Of course, you can have a fun AU where Albus is actually evil, or morally grey. I love those kind of stories. This is strictly speaking of canon Albus, and not of wonderfully creative fics that can depict all matter of divergences where Albus can end up however deliciously evil the authors desires him to be.

(I say all this as the Biggest Voldemort's simp in the universe; but I simp for a Voldemort that we create through head-canons and collective fandom, not a Voldemort that exists in the canonical text. I simp for Voldemort's potential that was never realised in the books. Dumbledore, however, is fully developed in the books, and he is a wonderful dude.)

[marginalgloss]

the big light

The Mirror and the Light has been in the works for a long time. I read Wolf Hall shortly after its release in 2009, and loved it. Same with Bring up the Bodies in 2012. Two years after that my wife and I went to see Hilary Mantel read from The Mirror and the Light at the South Bank Centre. Back then it must have seemed like the release wasn’t too far away; had someone told me then that we wouldn’t see it till 2020 I would have thought them unhinged.  

It’s long — well over 700 pages. At first glance the length might seem surprising because this is not (for want of a better term) the sexiest part of Henry VIII’s rule. The story is one of those notorious miscalculations of history: after the death of Jane Seymour, who is often thought Henry’s most beloved wife, a marriage is arranged between him and Anna of Cleves. She is a woman from a distant German state who Henry has never met; the union is essentially one of convenience, because England’s international situation has rarely been more complicated. 

Following the reformation, England has been excommunicated by the Catholic church. In theory, both the nation and its ruler are fair game for invasion or murder by any loyal Christian nation. In practice, the uneasy relationship between the rulers of France, Italy and the Holy Roman Empire makes that far from straightforward, but the risk seems real all the same. Cromwell faces further trouble at home — riots and uprisings are becoming more of a problem, motivated in part by deep local affections for the old religion. Thomas is the most powerful he has ever been but he’s still surrounded by enemies, especially amongst the old families of England, who have never allowed him to forget his humble origins. 

It may seem as though there’s a lot going on, but by the end of the novel I felt like there wasn’t enough to justify the sheer weight of paper in my lap. This is not to say the writing isn’t good. It is often great. But this is a novel light on surprises. I enjoyed reading it all the same – it’s enough for me to be carried along by Mantel’s authorial presence, which still feels absolute and omnipresent. Cromwell’s personality in these novels is one of the most compelling characters in fiction. Yet there’s very little in The Mirror and The Light which we haven’t encountered before in the two previous novels. The same scenes from his life come again and again — the death of his wife and children in Wolf Hall, and those endless scenes with Anne in Bring Up the Bodies. The same lines become like motifs: arrange your face, so now get up, and so on. Perhaps the problem with a novel where you see everything is that after a while you start to feel like you’ve seen everything.

We feel there isn’t much that is new to discover about Cromwell. There are a few exceptions; the rumours that grow up around Cromwell regarding prospective new marriages are not without interest. But I found little here which sticks in the mind like the scenes from the earlier books, and part of the problem is the whole concept of ‘scenes’ as they exist here. 

The preceding novels have now had at least two major adaptations — one for the West End stage, and one for TV. I saw both, and they were good, solid, conventional. A cynical reader might declare that too much of The Mirror and the Light feels like it’s been written with dramatic adaptation in mind. At times it seems less like a novel and more like notes towards a screenplay. There are endless conversations which seem intended to be tense, dramatic confrontations, but which never seem to advance or demonstrate anything. 

And yet as soon as the novel switches back into the interior mode, you almost want to forgive it everything. Being in Cromwell’s room is like working your way through a series of rooms in a museum — full of detail and diversion — and it’s wonderful, except the novel keeps pulling you out of it like an excitable tour guide who can’t help but subject you to another conversation, another insignificant moment from history, another scene. 

I feel like the previous novels weren’t like this. But I still feel like I’m too close to them to go back now. The best I can say of The Mirror and the Light is that it consolidates the vision of Cromwell as perhaps England’s greatest ever reformer and renaissance man. He wins the long game in the ways that matter: not only the break from Rome, but in the idea of the monarch and state as deserving respect entirely separate from any religious obligations. In these books Cromwell also seems to stand for something profound in the idea of the British idea of the self-made man. He plays to our love of the self-starter, the man who started out with empty pockets and a seemingly infinite set of talents, and who took on the establishment. He won, but in the sense that he lived long to see himself become the establishment, and to be swallowed by a machine he had built to catch others. (And there’s something additionally satisfying in this kind of downfall. We love to see a man build himself up, but we also love to see him torn down to size.)

In the end, there is something drab and faintly disappointing about Cromwell as he emerges here. All his work was not in service to anything greater than himself. The pursuit of humanistic knowledge, the service of his prince, and the consolidation of his own power — what was his legacy outside of this? Part of Mantel’s genius is to work that thread of disappointment through the text here; Thomas is constantly looking to his own legacy, worrying that he hasn’t done enough; he is preoccupied with his mistakes and things he could have done better, like the death of William Tyndale. In this way he emerges as a bit more human: he is someone who, like any of us, is worried about what he will leave behind. 

And yet it’s hard to feel too sorry for him by the final pages. Our sympathy is limited in part because his success has been so outlandish, and in part because of his lack of anything resembling sympathy for the world around him. He is devoid of intimate, empathetic connections. Alms for the poor and the foundation of a few schools don’t quite cut it — philanthropy is only the rich man’s way of paying his debt to society on his own vastly skewed terms. His servant Christophe is his most intimate friend, perhaps because he reminds him most of himself as a young man. In the end it seems there is nobody else who will miss him.

[chiliscale]

Plastic Guns

For @wincestwritingchallenge

Prompt: Someone’s pulling a gun, and you’re jumping into the middle of it

My partner: @justholdingstill​

Pairings: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester, Sam Winchester/Jessica Moore

Rating: Teen

Notes: I´m so, so sorry guys! It took them nearly three weeks to fix my internet and I was too busy with the chaos that my life has become to sit my ass down in a coffee shop or somewhere. Hope you can forgive my tardiness! Enjoy!

Summary: Sam is only trying to have a fun afternoon with friends. But his past is never completely gone and sometimes memories resurface whether he wants them to or not.

Link: AO3

‘Sully´s Amusement Arcade’

The letters are huge and brightly illuminated, a siren song trying to lure people in.

Sam laughs at Jess´ squeal of excitement when she spots the colorful lights and neon signs surrounding the place and he doesn’t even try to resist when she pulls him along to the entrance. Their other friends seem less thrilled at the prospect, but none of them protests in earnest, their initial reluctance disappearing entirely when they come face to face with the sheer endless rows of arcade cabinets and their inner ten-year-olds take over.

Jess is having the time of her life as she makes them play one ridiculous game after the other and insists on trying some of the overly sweet and brightly colored drinks they serve at the bar. They goof around, try their best to earn new high scores or defeat each other in Mario Kart and Pac-Man, Tetris and Donkey Kong.

Sam´s an absolute mess.

He can´t keep up with anyone, drives his tiny digital car down every abyss and into every fucking wall he can find, and is absolutely unable to get the damn monkey thing to jump high enough to escape the barrels.

It´s still glorious. Fun. Relaxing. Normal.

One of those casual-afternoons-with-friends that other people indulge in regularly, where their only objective is to enjoy themselves and laugh at and with each other, where school work and other worries are far from their minds and unimportant, irrelevant.

Sometimes Sam still can´t believe that this is his life now, that he´s allowed to have fun without purpose, doesn’t have to watch his back for potential threats or check the time to make sure that he´s back before Dad notices his absence.

Amusement Arcades might be a dying form of entertainment now, but in his childhood, they were omnipresent – colorful, happy places full of children, laughter and forbidden things, a window to a world where parents didn’t leave or die, where money wasn’t short and fathers didn’t care if you´d finished translating that Ancient Greek text on blood magic or not.

Sam had always loathed and loved these places with equal fervor. Loathed them because they were just another point on a long list of reasons why he didn’t fit in with the other children, loved them because sometimes Dean would just tell the world to fuck off and pull Sam into an arcade anyway.

They never had much money to spend on games or arcade food, usually just a few meager dollars that would allow them to play a game or two, and so they mostly watched as other people enjoyed themselves. It was wonderful nonetheless, a few short moments of escape and innocent fun.

Well, Sam´s still pretty low on money and will probably have to eat ramen for two weeks straight after this indulgence, but having a shot at ‘normal’ is more than worth a bit of discomfort.

It would be great not to suck at everything, though, and so he´s more than thankful when Brady suddenly wraps an arm around his shoulders and pulls him along with the promise of a game that´s supposed to be more in his area of expertise.

Sam´s not sure what he expected or how Brady knew, but it certainly wasn´t this.

Zombie Wars III – one of those ego shooter games where your only goal is to shoot as many of your adversaries as possible without getting yourself killed first.

It´s perfect. Frighteningly so, probably the one game in the whole arcade that Sam could win easily if he wanted to.

It´s also way too close to his real life, to his old life, for comfort. There´s too many memories.

Sam´s seven the first time he shoots a gun.

He´s seen them before, of course, touched them, disassembled them, helped Dean fill rock salt into empty shotgun shells - it´s normal, pretty much inevitable in a world where your Dad spends more time and money on his weapon arsenal than on his own kids and where gun cleaning and maintenance is as much part of their daily routine as brushing one´s teeth and washing one´s face before bed time.

But up until todays he´s never been allowed to use them, to click the safety off and take aim, to pull the trigger and finally see if he´s talented enough to make Dad happy for once, to have Dean smile at him in that one special way that makes it obvious how proud he is.

So yeah, the night before, Sam´s excited - almost queasy with anxiety and a weird mixture of fear and anticipation that makes sleep impossible. It´s so bad that even crawling into Dean´s bed and curling into his brother´s side is not enough to calm him down and he lies awake for most of the night, mentally going through the gun safety rules and shooting stances Dean has taught him.

Morning comes both too fast and not fast enough and he´s barely able to stomach his meager serving of soggy lucky charms. His fidgeting gets only worse when Dad stumbles in a few moments later and blindly grabs the oversized coffee mug Dean is holding out to him, gulping it down in long, greedy swallows before impatiently gesturing for them to get into the car

Thirty-three minutes later finds them all at the edge of the forest, Dad pacing up and down in front of them as he gives another of his gun-safety-speeches. Sam isn’t listening, has heard them all a million times and more, but he still doesn’t dare sneak a glance at Dean for fear of earning himself an even longer lecture due to his inattention.

Finally, finally John stops and presses a small pistol into his shaking hands. They go through the correct stance together, Sam trying to mimic what he´s seen Dean do, John adjusting and correcting until Sam´s deemed to be in the perfect position, safety already clicked off, gun aimed straight at one of the empty beer cans a few feet away.

The recoil is more powerful than he´d expected, the force of it rattling his whole body and causing him to stumble backwards - it´s loud and unconformable and it makes his ears ring.

Sam doesn’t like it.

He´s watched Dean handle a gun for years now, has memorized every movement and posture and trick his brother knows and Sam has always been a quick study and really good at picking up new skills, but this is different. This is so very unlike any of his books – he can study guns, read everything about shooting, but for the first time in his life theoretical knowledge alone just isn’t enough.

He´s not improving. Fifteen tries and he still hasn’t shot anything, has missed each and every single time and he´s closer to tears than he´s been in years, shoulders shaking with the effort of holding back his frustration. It doesn’t help that John´s impatience is almost palpable and his instructions are getting increasingly rough and snappy.

But then Dean´s there, warm hands carefully adjusting his stance, low voice whispering instructions and encouragements.

“Breath, Sammy. I know you can do it! Forget about Dad, it´s just us out here… Just you and me, Sam. C´mon, breath.”

And Sam does. Aims and breaths and wills the stupid bullet to finally hit home.

It´s still surprising when it does, when the can falls off its perch with a clatter and then Dean runs off and picks it up, holds it high enough that both Sam and John can see the wide bullet whole right in the middle of it, pride and joy shining brightly in his face.

John just nods, only somewhat appeased and grumpily declares that Dean is going to be teaching Sam from now on.

And that´s everything Sam´s ever hoped for.

Dean is patient. He´s the perfect teacher, gentle and kind where Dad is harsh and demanding, quietly talking him through every step, praising him when he deserves it, silently correcting him when he doesn´t. They practice for hours and days and weeks. Aim and shoot and aim again, cans and bottles and moving targets until Sam is every bit as good and fast and confident as Dean himself is.

Until he´s so close to perfection that even John has to acknowledge it.

Until he´s good enough to be able to protect himself.

To protect Dean.

“Come on, Winchester! Show us how your geeky ass can handle a gun!”

Sam blinks and suddenly he´s back at the arcade, his friends surrounding him, cheering him on, telling him to take the gun and give it a try.

Jess is jumping up and down in front of him, all excited joy and green-eyed encouragement. She´s beautiful in that moment, gorgeous, perfect and he knows she´s absolutely gone for him already.

He also knows he should love her just as much, that he could be happy with her, that she deserves his full attention, his undivided devotion.

Instead, all he can think of is strong hands gliding over cold metal, calloused fingers disassembling guns and rifles with practiced, sure movements, confidence in every grip and pull and push. And then those same hands gliding over his skin, handling him with the same power and firmness, knowing exactly where and how to touch, warm lips on his ear, a deep voice whispering filth and praise and promises.

But Sam left. Sam ran. Left his old life. Left everything. All of it. Forever.

Fuck.

Unthinkingly, he steps forward, steals the gun from Brady´s grasp and takes his place in front of the screen.

The gun feels strange in his hands. The weight and balance is off – it´s too light, too artificial. Lifeless plastic instead of cool metal, there´ll be no recoil to compensate for, no deafening noise will accompany each shot, and for a moment Sam almost misses the familiar weight of his old gun. There´s no time to ponder, though, because loud music swells up all around him and then ridiculous, zombie-esque creatures are closing in on him on wobbly legs.

Sam stops to think and suddenly he´s calmer than he has been in months. Instincts kick in and he simply allows himself to react, to adjust his body, to aim and shoot and kill one zombie after the other, cold precision and familiar reflexes taking over. He shoots, shoots like Dean taught him to all those years ago, fast and sure and unfailing and he knows he´s fucking nailed it even before the cheering starts and some high-pitched computer voice proudly proclaims him the new record holder.

The world comes rushing back and then Jess is hugging him, kissing him, screaming into his ear while Brady is staring at him slack jawed and Connor loudly demands to know where he´s learned to shoot like that.

His friends cheer and laugh and shout as they pull him over to the bar to celebrate his victory and they´ve only just reached it when the high score music goes off a second time.

There´s a new record.

Sam has been beaten.

Jess´ shout of indignation is flattering and amusing all at once, and Sam´s lips are curling into a tiny smile even as he turns around to face his rival, his whole body freezing as soon as his eyes fall on the tall figure of a man leaning against the gaming console.

He´s still wearing the same old leather jacket and combat boots, ratty jeans that desperately need to be washed, a thin leather cord disappearing under his black shirt.

Green eyes stare back at him, mischievous and cocky and all kinds of smug and then Dean slowly raises the fake gun, aims it straight at Sam und pulls the trigger with a wink.