klarionthewizard

[klarionthewizard]

the amount of cunt they served was astronomical

[klarionthewizard]

name ONE episode\movie of star trek, entire star trek, old, new, animated, etc, all of them, that first comes to your mind when somebody says ✨star trek✨

#trouble with tribbles #also the Man Trap scared the hell out of me the first time I saw it

[klarionthewizard]

[klarionthewizard]

CRIMINAL MINDS 2.21 — "Open Season"

[klarionthewizard]

Not a good sign.

[klarionthewizard]

“You’re so quiet, what’s wrong?” I’m creating my own fantasy world to escape from reality so shut up.

[klarionthewizard]

[klarionthewizard]

Sometimes the adhd stress is getting to me and I’m like oh yeah I haven’t flapped my hands around like a maniac for a while hold on a second and then I get all that excess energy out and I feel much better

[klarionthewizard]

My conversations with children

[klarionthewizard]

Time for our spotlight post on the May the Fourth 2024 entries, hosted by the Seswennan Social Club! All the fics and art linked in this post are rated T and under (with the adult fic entries recapped here). Thanks to everyone who submitted work to the event, and special thanks to @whenfireanddarknesscollide for writing the gorgeous calligraphy for this graphic.

Please be sure to leave a kudos and a comment if you liked the fics, and please reblog the visual art as well to help boost our artists ✨

📝 Fic Entries 📝

Please Pass the Tea by @pianopadawan

Veers/Piett, Luke/Zevulon, 1k+ words, Teen

Piett looked different now, of course. The scar from Endor was too extensive to fade away, the long tendrils coiling around Piett’s jaw and cheeks. That was no surprise. From what Luke had heard, Piett had been standing by the viewport when Crynyd had crashed into the bridge. It was a miracle the Admiral had survived, one that Zev had been very grateful for.

And Them Good Ol' Boys Were Drinking Whiskey and Spying by @klarionthewizard

Veers/Piett, Motti/Jerjerrod, 2k+ words, Teen

Lorth Needa is not predisposed to smugness, in Jerjerrod’s opinion. He is perhaps the only one of their motley crew of old academy roommates, given the general natures of Motti and Veers and on rare occasions, Jerjerrod himself. So it is a noteworthy thing, when Needa approaches Jerjerrod and Motti during the Empire Day celebration with a smug, if small, smile. Motti turns, attention fixing on the anomaly as well. “I won,” Needa says, a rare self satisfied note in his voice.

Empty Celebration by @shards-of-silver

Thrawn/Karyn Faro, 4k+ words, Teen

Fleet Admiral Karyn Faro understood why the Empire still hosted massive Ascension Week festivities. It would be a sign of weakness to pull back on partying after Lothal. To show any restraint amounted to an admission the rebels had dealt them a damaging blow.  For the sake of the regime’s image, the show had to go on.

🎨 Visual Art Entries 🎨

@zeldurz-art 's piece here (click for full image)

@tsukuyomi42 's piece here (click for full image)

⚡Further Links ⚡

The collection on ao3

Roundup post for the adult fic entries

[klarionthewizard]

Time to recap the May the Fourth 2024 event entries, starting with the adult fics. The writing in these are adult in rating and topic, and out of respect for everyone's need to curate their own reading experience (and mindful that certain ratings and tags are not everyone's cup of tea), we wanted to spotlight these separately. The rest of the entries are located here in this post. Special thanks to @whenfireanddarknesscollide for the lovely calligraphy on this graphic.

Please be sure to leave a kudos and a comment if you liked the fics. And thanks for reading!

📝 Adult Fic Entries 📝

Let me help by @alex-dax

Thrawn/Pellaeon, 3k+ words, Mature

He starts to notice that Thrawn seems more tense close to Empire Day. He’s not at a point where he can be sure, not yet, but he begins to suspect this is more than a dislike of the political games. There is something underneath the glacial calm of that alien face. He’s also absolutely not a point where he could even begin to consider discussing it with the Grand Admiral. And so, they spend another Empire Day with drinks in Thrawn’s command room. Pellaeon can even convince himself Thrawn’s shoulders seem less tense at the end of the night. Almost.

Bridleway by @madelgard

Motti/Jerjerrod, 6k+ words, Explicit

On any other occasion, Tiaan would have hidden himself away in his office at Corellian Engineering Corporation—and by now, his commanding officers were quite accustomed to the sight of Captain Jerjerrod hunched over his drafting table from dawn to dusk. They would have let him be. But Empire Day held a unique appeal. The fleet was in, along with one officer in particular. “There,” Conan murmured, right up against his ear. His hand pointed skywards, to the Strike-class cruiser in low orbit. The hangars were overfull, and Imperial vessels had been given special dispensation to clutter the skies. Hundreds of ships were visible; a durasteel flex of towering Imperial might. “That’s my Ion Storm. If you ask sweetly, I might be persuaded to take you on a little tour.”

[klarionthewizard]

Swedish Chef was on Masterchef Junior this week and he has human hands and it makes me really uncomfortable. 

[klarionthewizard]

Is this anything

[klarionthewizard]

[klarionthewizard]

why are people so against negative character development? characters don’t need to improve and become better people they can get worse and make mistakes and end up in a worse state than when they began and it’s just as interesting and entertaining as characters developing positively

[klarionthewizard]

if you’re ever about to comment on a writer’s work and think, oh, they probably know how good they are, you’re definitely wrong. every time a writer posts or publishes anything, no matter how many years they’ve been doing it and no matter how many readers they have, they are struck with the idea that perhaps they aren’t very good at all.

if you think you’re annoying for commenting, or that we won’t see your comments anyway, you’re wrong. we see your comments. we actively look for them. we are starved for them no matter how many we get. we remember them and they fuel us. leave comments, even if it’s just saying “oh i like this”. i see an “oh i like this” and my heart grows three times its size and i am seized with an urge to provide you more writing just to hear you say “oh i like this” again.

[klarionthewizard]

The following is not my idea; it was the original brainchild of a friend of mine named Omicron, with help from various others including EarthScorpion, TenfoldShields, @havocfett and ShintheNinja:

So, you know what I want to do one day? Run (or play in) a D&D campaign in which the Big Bad Super Dragon that is fuckoff ancient and unfathomably powerful and whose actions have shaped history and bent the course of nations and had repercussions on the whole culture and society in the region where it's set; the Bonus Special Boss for some endgame optional quest after you defeat the direct BBEG and win the campaign...

... is a white dragon.

To explain this for people not deep into 5e monster lore; D&D dragons are sapient beings, and known for their instincts and tendencies, and whenever you meet an big evil dragon that's really old it's usually this ancient creature of terrible intellect Smaug-ing it up all over the place.

Except white dragons are fucking stupid. Like, they're still capable of speech and thought! They're just… feral, hungry morons. And you almost never see them portrayed as ancient wyrms for that reason; they lack majesty. Critical Role did it, yes, but even then, Vorugal is explicitly the most bestial member of the Chroma Conclave, and the others are the more intelligent planners and long-term threats. An ancient white as a nation-defining endboss, though; not a thug for a smarter master but as the strongest and biggest threat around is just not the sort of thing you tend to see.

Adventurers: "Oh wise Therunax the Munificent, gold dragon of Law and Good, what can you tell us adventurers of the evil dragons which rule this land?" Therunax the Munificent, 500-year old Gold Dragon: "Good adventurers, know this: this land is torn apart by the evil of Tiamat's spawn. The eastern marches are the dwelling of Furinar the Plague-Bringer, black dragoness whose hoard is a thousand sicknesses contained in the body of her tributes. The southern volcanic mountains are the roosting of Angrar the Wrathful, the fiery red dragon, who brings magmatic fury on all who do not worship him. And the northern peaks are home to Face-Biter Mike, the oldest and most powerful of all, of whom I dread to speak." Adventurers: "F-Face-Biter Mike???" Therunax: "Oh yes, verily indeed; two thousand years has Mike lived, and his eyes have seen the rise and fall of five empires, and a hundred and score champions have sought to slay him; and each and every one he bit their fucking face off."

Like... I want to see a campaign where Face-Biter Mike is genuinely the most powerful dragon in the region, if not the entire world. Where sometimes he descends on a city to grab himself some meatsicles and causes a localised ice age by the beat of his vast wings and the frigid wastes of his mighty breath and by the chill his mere presence brings to everything for miles around him, and everyone just has to deal with that for the next decade. An entire era of civilization comes to an end, an empire falls, tens of thousands starve in the winter, all because Mike wanted a snack. Where his hoard is an unfathomably vast mass of jewels and artefacts and precious stones frozen in an unmelting glacier, except he is a nouveau riche idiot with fuckall appraising skill, so half of his hoard is coloured glass or worthless knicknacks, and he doesn't give a shit.

"Your Draconic Majesty, this crown is… It's pyrite." "Yeah, well, it's brighter than this dusty old thing made out of real gold, it's my new best treasure. Throw the other one away." "…throw the Burnished Tiara of Bahamut, forged in the First Age of Man, your majesty???" "See? I can't even remember its fucking name." "But my lord-" "DO YOU WANT TO BE A MEATSICLE" "…I will fetch a trash bag, your majesty."

But at the same time, he's not stupid, he's just simple, and in some ways that makes him more dangerous than the usual kinds of scheming Big Bad you see in these things, while simultaneously justifying why Orcus remains on his throne (because he's lazy). Face-Biter Mike doesn't make convoluted plans or run labyrinthine schemes; he just has a talent for violence and a pragmatic, straightforward approach to turning any kind of problem he struggles with into a problem that can be resolved with violence. Face-Biter Mike has one talent and it's horrifying physical power, so his approach to any complicated problem is "how do I turn this into a situation where I can fly down and bite this dude's face off?" with absolutely no regard for the collateral damage or consequences of doing so, because those are also things he can turn into face-bitable problems.

"My lord, the dread necromancer Nikodemion is using his undead dragons to attempt a conquest of the eastern kingdom; his agents are everywhere, his plans are centuries in the making, what can we do against such a mastermind?" "I'm gonna fly over the capital and eat the eastern king." "M-my lord???" "The kingdom will collapse without leadership, Nikodemion will win his war, he'll take the capital and crown himself king." "And that helps us… how?" "Once he does I'll fly over to the capital and eat him." "…" "This is why you advisors all suck. You're all about convoluted plans when the only thing I need to win is know where my enemy is so I can fly down there and eat him. Stop overthinking things."

And, like, yeah, it's a simplistic plan, but when you're several hundred tons of nigh invincible magical death, you don't need brilliant strategy; the smartest way to win a war is, in this case, the simplest. He's not even all that clever at figuring out the consequences of face-biting, he's just memorised the common consequences of doing so.

(If you want to go all in on Mike being the major mover and shaker in the region; Nikodemion only even has a pet zombie dragon because Mike killed the last dragon to show up and contest his turf but wasn't going to eat a whole dragon by himself. Nikodemion got to stick around and amass that much power because Mike ate the Hero of the Realm while he was adventuring because he figured the Hero would come and try to slay him at some point. Nikodemion got started because Mike ate half the leadership of the Academy of High Magic who typically keep evil wizards and necromancers in check. And then eventually this product of Mike's casual, careless actions becomes a big enough problem to bother Mike personally, at which point Mike eats him too.)

He doesn't even really fail upwards, either! He is regularly reduced to nothing but the glacier he stores his hoard in, but he's Face-Biter Mike so nobody wants to commit to actually ending him forever lest they get their faces bitten the fuck off. And his hoard's in a huge-ass magical glacier so nobody can get to it without running into the Invading Russia problem; it's hard to wage war when everything is frozen over and you're both starving and freezing to death. Once he's been beaten back to his central lair and has lost all his holdings… I mean, he's still a problem, but he's a far away problem. So he loses his assets and spends a decade in a cave brooding it up while no one dares risk trying to actually kill him, and then a generation or two later he flies down to a kobold colony and gets himself some minions, or a dragon-worshipping mage comes to offer his service against a pittance from his hoard, or a particularly stupid cult starts thinking they can get in good with him and leech off his power, and then he's (hah) snowballing again.

He's also got a very… well, the kind of weird Charisma that Grineer bosses do. Like Sargas Ruk, who's a malformed idiot, but oddly charismatic. As he's a dragon, that makes him a natural sorcerer and thus Charisma is all he needs. He's pretty relaxed when he isn't in a face-biting mood, and he's kind of infectiously optimistic, because his life has taught him that he will succeed as long as he perseveres. So he just believes it.

And sometimes that's really refreshing to work for, as an evil minion of darkness! It's like, you're coming to your Evil Dragon Lord with terrible news; you've worked for evil overlords before, you know how it goes. You fall to your knees weeping and tell him that you've failed to seize the incredibly powerful magical artifact, you think your life is forfeit. And he's just like "Eh, it's okay, these things are all over the place. Better luck next time. You remember the guy who took it, right?" and you go "Y-yes, oh great lord!" and he's like "Sweet tell me his name later and I'll grab it" and then eats a frozen adventurer he kept around as a snack.

His followers tend to quickly realise that if they fail him, bringing some temple's silver or a sack of brightly coloured beads or a couple of dead cows means he's super forgiving because at least he's got something out of the day. "Oh boy, cows? It's been forever since I had those, ever since the Orc Steppe Nomads took over it's all about goats and onions. Today is a good day." He's a master of delegation by dragon standards, in that he just tells you "Just go get it done, I don't care how" rather than micromanaging you and constantly appearing as an image in smoke or taking over your campfire.

The key part of Face-Biter Mike as a threat to players (because he exists in the context of a D&D campaign) works well in that you can rely on several known quantities:

He will not pull sneaky shit that you don't see coming

He will not make convoluted plans that you must work to unravel

He will consistently attempt to come down and wreck you personally if he finds the opportunity and you are a threat to him

You cannot fight him head-on (at least not until the last leg of the campaign, and ideally as an optional boss rather than mandatory)

So as long as you are good at staying under the radar, thwarting his minions (whom he gives broad orders to with almost zero oversight) and not putting yourself in face-biting range, you can deal with him. If you succeed, it won't be the first time Mike has lost his assets and had to go brood in his glacier for a decade or two before rebuilding. It happens; he can deal with it. And that's a win for you within the context of a single campaign, so take the win.

And if you're not going to use him as an enemy, he works pretty well as a quest-giver, too! The costs for failure are obvious and straightforward, and "do whatever, just get me mine" means that players have a lot of freedom in accomplishing their goals. As far as evil overlords go he is actually one of the least dangerous to work for; his pride is relatively subdued by draconic standards, his goals are simple and typically achievable, and he is easily pleased.

(There's also a good chance he is the forefather of any draconic sorcerer in your party, because Face Biter Mike is a deadbeat dad.)