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angel-with-paper-wings · 3 months

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The Magician’s Prelude

This is a gift for @erik-carierre posted with permission! Many thanks for your feedback and support!!

Summary: Erik’s morning routine while working as a magician in Russia prior to his recruitment by Nadir. Based on Kay!Erik.

Cover art and title by @erik-carierre

Content warnings: PTSD-like trauma flashbacks, bloody/gory imagery, slightly graphic descriptions of violence, body negativity (Erik is an angsty teenager)

Blood. There is always blood.

It oozes around the shards of mirror buried in the skin of my hands…it drips in thick crimson blobs onto the bundle of golden fur…it spatters in hot torrents against my chest and sticks to the open buttons of my shirt…

And it is there again that night. In the rooftop garden, I stand paralyzed staring at the gap in the crumbled balustrade. My chest feels hollow—I cannot breathe, I cannot scream—all I can do is watch as the gap yawns before me, pulling me closer. Against my will, I peer over the edge to view the sight I know is there.

I wish I could blink. I long for even the tiniest respite from what lay before me, but all I can do is look. Her body is small amidst the shattered rubble, her thin delicate limbs laying at odd angles, her soft barley hair matted with flecks of blood and gore. And her eyes…her pale eyes snuffed of all fire that had once bubbled inside of her like smoldering lava. They stare blankly up at my unmasked face, looking but not seeing.

All she ever wanted was to look at me…and now all I can do is look. Look at what I have done.

I awakened with a jolt, my eyes flying open and clenching the thin woolen blanket to my chest. One skeletal hand flew up to my face, and only once I felt the smooth hardness of the mask did I relax. After a moment of composure, I opened my aching jaw and heaved out a sigh of annoyance. The nightmares were as persistent as they had always been.

I sat up in bed and fumbled to light the oil lamp on the nightstand. I had no difficulty getting prepared in complete darkness, but I simply preferred not to after a night of haunting visions. A small clock beside the lamp told me it was early in the morning—earlier than I typically rose, but I was already resigned to the fact that I wouldn’t be sleeping any more if I tried.

I flung the woolen blanket to the side and felt the floor creak beneath my bare feet. The inn’s modest wooden room was comfortable enough for my needs: a bed with sheets, a chamber pot, a pitcher and washbasin, and most valuable of all, privacy. There had been a mirror, but I removed it soon after arriving.

I yanked off my nightshirt, letting the room’s warm air graze the scars slashed across my back. Russia had intriguingly hot summers; the books I had read as a boy only bothered to describe the harshness of the winter months, so I confess to being slightly bemused upon my arrival three years ago to a city with a climate only moderately cooler than the one I had left behind in Italy.

Her twisted body flashed before me again, the broken masonry wet and crimson from the split in her skull… I closed my eyes and angrily shoved the image back into the shadows of my mind. No. No more thoughts of that place. I poured water from the pitcher into the washbasin and dunked in a bar of perfumed soap. Once it had worked up a lather, I soaked a clean cloth and derisively began to wash myself.

The dawn of my body’s maturity had proven to be a dismal affair. It took my bones the full extent of my nineteen years to finally cease their growing, leaving me wretchedly gaunt and pitifully covered in pasty yellow skin. I had the strength of a man twice my age and triple my weight, but my frame still refused to resemble anything but a corpse. In my frustration, I scrubbed harder at my own flesh, attempting to cleanse it of its rotten color. But it remained as it always had, pulled tight over my arms to display veins and tendons, with the only thickness found in the old silvery scars adorning my wrists and hands.

Once I had scoured myself raw, I slung the cloth over the rack of the washstand to dry and stared down into the bottom of the basin. Silence screamed in my ears and my stomach twisted with dread. I turned my head to glance at the door behind me; the lock was securely in place, but the familiar prickle of eyes stung my skin all the same.

With trembling fingers, I removed the mask. Warm air rolled across my bare skin like a caress, or what I imagined a caress to feel like. I set the white sculpted shard aside on the stand, and after a heavy sigh, I bent over the basin and scooped handfuls of water over my head, scrubbing the soap’s lather deep into my thick black waves of hair. Droplets ran down the edges of my face, as if even they were afraid to touch the horror that was there. But I forced them to touch it, rubbing the water into the cracks and distorted furrows of my skin, smearing it around the protruding bones and into my eyes’ sunken pits. I braced myself with a grimace before carefully wiping the dried mucus away from the edge of the hole that was my nose.

The torture ended when I finally buried my repulsiveness in a towel. I held the soft cloth against my face as my other hand reached for the mask, slipping it back into place with a relieved sigh. I squeezed my dark hair free of water, then picked up a comb and worked it through the curls until they attained sufficient softness. I laid the towel and comb to the side and stepped over to the tiny wardrobe, withdrawing one of many black satin shirts and slipping it on. After dressing myself, I left my room and slinked down the stairs as a soundless shadow.

The empty tavern on the first floor simmered with the savory scent of shchi. This early in the morning, the only other soul awake was the ancient innkeeper preparing the first meal of the day. I scattered a handful of kopecks onto the bar, letting the clattering sound echo into the kitchen. A minute later, the shawled woman doddered forward and set a steaming bowl of cabbage soup and a chunk of crusty bread before me. No words or glances were exchanged, no questions were asked, as was our routine.

I suspected she found me strange—indeed, I have yet to encounter a soul who didn’t—but she seemed to tolerate me well enough. After her defective coal stove found itself repaired the day following my arrival, I was able to convince her to let me use her inn’s far room as a flat for several months. Unlike my fellow tenants, I paid precisely on time, never returned drunk or belligerent, and there was no risk of women being snuck into my bed. After all, what woman would be desperate enough to lay with a corpse, regardless of the payment offered to her?

With this bitterness lingering in my head, I ate my meal quickly and slipped out into the morning’s haze. It was a rare day; the air was pleasantly cool and the clouds had chosen to don a color besides their usual dismal grey. I assured myself that no one was watching before I lifted my head to admire the way the branches of trees cast their dark silhouettes against the paling sky.

The western quarter of Nizhny Novgorod was largely deserted, making it easy to dart through the city’s shadows unseen in my black attire. Once the day hit its sweltering peak, the cobbled streets would resemble the Volga river with rushing currents of wealthy merchants and colorful travelers from Europe and India and Persia. By that time, I would be waiting for them in my magician’s tent, where they would be shown more wonders than their feeble minds could possibly comprehend.

I rounded a corner and walked along the silent boulevard, until the trees bordering the street gave way to a wrought-iron fence. Beyond the fence, majestically imposing against the northwest horizon, stood the blinding white structure of the Spassky Cathedral. Pink wisps of sunrise stretched across the sky and barely kissed the golden spire atop its great dark cupola.

As I so often did on clear mornings like this one, I felt compelled to stop and gaze up at the splendid piece of architecture. My eyes danced over its fine pillars and elegant façade, admiring the expert carving and delighting in the exquisite use of symmetry and proportion. I had snuck inside once in the dead of night to glimpse its interior—what beauty! It lacked the scale of greater cathedrals, but in golden grandeur it did not disappoint.

There was a time when I had imagined building such great works myself. Beneath the creaky bed back at the inn lay several journals filled with sketches of the spectacular monuments I saw when I closed my eyes. The pages overflowed with details of magnificent marble façades and great towering pavilions, gilded figures in copper and bronze, ornate mosaics with details that dazzled the imagination. My architectural creations would be shrines of worship, not to any one god but to all forces that stirred the spirit and awakened man’s deepest emotions—art, geometry, magic, and most of all music. Oh, how I missed music.

Often this fantasy crossed my mind, and with every day and every kopeck in my purse, it seemed less and less like a child’s dream. After all, I was still very much in my youth…perhaps that day was still to come.

Once I had admired all I could bear, I tucked my masked face back down between my narrow shoulders and trudged off through the neighborhood of shops and teahouses. A smattering of humans were beginning to converge on the street that I walked: small groups of traders bickering in foreign tongues and leading wooden carts filled with wares to sell. Like me, they trampled up the soggy road to the shadow of the large red and yellow stone building, beyond which lay a great courtyard overlooking the bank of the Oka. It was here in the summer months that the great Markaryev Fair was held, where tradesmen and entertainers alike earned their gold.

I proceeded underneath the building’s archway and entered the city’s courtyard. Vendors were already busy erecting tents and unloading their goods in designated sections around the square. Past cotton bales and crates of tea and spices, I spotted the oval shape of the familiar black yurt tucked in its corner, untouched as always. I never worried about the tent’s safety during my absence, for a rumor of a deadly curse had found its way amongst the traders that effectively warded off potential burglars.

As I walked, a warm breeze wafted through the market’s open air, carrying a strain of musical notes to my ears. My heart jumped and I whipped my head towards the sound. On the other side of the courtyard sauntered a muzhik fiddler, beard scraggly and legs stumbling as if drunk, the bow screeching as it was dragged across the rusty strings. A couple passing by threw a few coins into the hat that lay at his feet.

Under the mask, my lips pulled back in a snarl. How dare these fools reward such a tuneless, insolent mockery of music! That drunken bastard did not deserve the right to place his filthy hands on an instrument and spoil its sacred beauty for the whole city to hear. My bony form seethed beneath its black clothing, but I successfully fought back my fervid rage and stomped off towards the yurt. I clenched my shaking hands at my sides, imagining the feeling of the man’s throat beneath my fingers; a sharp snap from his neck and those dreadful notes would finally fall silent.

A crunch against the stones. The heavy tumble of rubble against the ground dampens the sound of her skull cracking open…

I entered the dark tent and pulled the fabric flaps closed behind me, blessedly muffling the horrid noises. A deep breath steadied my hands, and with practiced precision I navigated the small space and lit candles tucked in little red lanterns, banishing the darkness and revealing the blood-red of the yurt’s interior. Swooping red curtains hung from the concave ceiling; samples of shyrdak hangings formed the walls, weaving in swirls of black and gold into the otherwise scarlet room. I kicked off my shoes and felt the luxurious softness of the thick Persian rugs buried beneath velvet cushions.

I ignited the small charcoal stove to boil water in the samovar for tea. While it brewed, I reclined back against the cushions and turned my attention to the long wooden box tucked near the back of the tent: the trick casket. My fingers deftly pranced over the mechanism to open the box, and I withdrew the materials for my magician’s performance: decks of cards, stacks of silver coins, hand-carved trick dice. I arranged them all in neat rows upon the central rug with a small grin.

I struck another match and lit a few sticks of incense to flood the space with their heady, sweet fragrance. I had learned over time that it was beneficial for the minds of my audience to be stripped of their defenses—that way, they found my tricks more dazzling and dropped more rubles into my bony hand. Sometimes this state of enchantment would make them too bold, and bring out their insatiable nature that they otherwise hid from their gods during prayer in the temples and cathedrals. They became ravenous, foolishly curious; they would grope for my mask and demand to see what lay beneath…

All she wanted was to see me.

My hands curled upon themselves, extinguishing the match’s flame between my fingertips. The wretched visions played through my mind again and numbed the burn on my skin.

A mirror shard clenched between the tips of tweezers…bloody hands furiously digging at the grassy dirt…the heavy clunk of a knife’s hilt as the belt dropped to the floor… It was difficult to understand why I remembered certain details so clearly, while others merely faded into murky shadows.

Over the course of three years, the girl’s living face had become fuzzy in my memory. Indeed, I had only dared to look at her a handful of times while living with the master stonemason. Every time I did, my chest would fill with an uncomfortable constricting sensation, and I would be forced to look away or else stop breathing altogether. Her eyes had a heat that scorched all the way to my soul. She was fire—bold, passionate, all-consuming—and I knew better than to risk being burned. Or perhaps I was afraid.

But it was the moment I finally gave her what she pleaded for, the moment I ripped off the mask—her expression of pure horror, anguish and primal fear, grief for love she had never truly felt. That image would always remain in my memory perfectly in focus.

I slowly opened my hand, and I stared down at the two spots of black soot left upon the pale skin of my thumb and forefinger. Temporary scars, easily washed away. That’s all these dreams were to me…but still the pain they carried hurt more than the deep wounds left on my body.

With a harsh huff, I flicked the remnants of the match away and reached over to the samovar to pour myself a cup of tea. The earthy liquid seared down my throat and revived my senses, kicking the brooding memories away in favor of my present enterprise. Outside my tent, I heard the growing clamour of the fair coming to life—my audience awaited me.

A familiar pang prodded at my heart. Was this all? Would this pitiful life, shrouded away in a performer’s tent, forever be my purpose? In my heart, I longed to use my skills to create the majesty that filled my mind: grand palaces, ingenious machines, symphonies without equal. If I had to be confined to mindless magic tricks for greedy imbeciles, then they would be the best magic tricks ever conceived. In a way, I thought to myself scornfully, I had not left that traveling fair…perhaps I never would. But at least things were different now. I was my own master, and no one would ever cage me again.

As the incense swirled its sickly-sweet aroma through the air, I slipped further back into my tent and drew a sheer red curtain across my masked form. I laid back in my trick coffin and heard several soft clicks as the mechanism closed the lid and cloaked me in darkness—the one place I have ever truly belonged.

Long ago, I had accepted my place as prince of darkness, and I would reign over my realm with proud finesse. So let them in now, the merchants and peasants from all corners of the world. Let them think they are the kings and I am their fool. Let them believe they know what it is like to be afraid.

Let them in, and let them look.

#poto #phantom of the opera #susan kay phantom #my writing #fanfiction #poto fanfiction #erik poto #erik phantom

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mostlysignssomeportents · 10 months

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Open Circuits

I'm kickstarting the audiobook for "The Internet Con: How To Seize the Means of Computation," a Big Tech disassembly manual to disenshittify the web and make a new, good internet that picks up where the old, good internet left off. It's a DRM-free book, which means Audible won't carry it, so this crowdfunder is essential. Back now to get the audio, Verso hardcover and ebook:

http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org

Every trip to Defcon – the massive annual hacker-con in Las Vegas – is a delight. Partly it's the familiar – seeing old friends, getting updates on hacks of years gone by. But mostly, it's the surprises, the things you never anticipated. Defcon never fails to surprise.

I got back from Vegas yesterday and I've just unpacking my suitcase, and with it, the tangible evidence of Defcon's cave of wonders. My gear bag has a new essential: Hak5's malicious cable detector, a little USB gizmo that lights up if it detects surreptitious malicious activity, even as it interdicts those nasty payloads:

https://shop.hak5.org/collections/omg-row2/products/malicious-cable-detector-by-o-mg

(In case you're wondering if it's really possible to craft a malicious USB cable that injects badware into your computer and is visually indistinguishable from a regular cable, the answer is a resounding yes, and of course, Hak5 sells those cables, with a variety of USB tips:)

https://shop.hak5.org/collections/omg-row2/products/omg-cable

But merch is only a sideshow. The real action is in the conference rooms, where hackers update you on the pursuit of their obsessions. These are such beautiful weirdos who pursue knowledge to ridiculous extremes, untangling gnarly hairballs just to follow a thread to its origin point.

For the second year in a row, I caught a presentation from Joseph Gabay about his work on warshopping: slicing up shopping cart wheels and haunting shopping mall parking lots during resurfacing to figure out how the anti-theft mechanism that stops your cart from leaving the parking lot works:

https://www.begaydocrime.com/

And of course, I got to give one of those presentations, "An Audacious Plan to Halt the Internet's Enshittification," to a packed house. What a thrill! It was livestreamed, and if you missed it, you'll be able to catch it on Defcon's Youtube page as soon as they upload it (they've got a lot of uploading to do!):

https://www.youtube.com/@DEFCONConference/videos

After my talk, I went back to the No Starch Press booth for a book signing – which was amazing, so many beautiful hackers, plus I got to share a signing table with Micah Lee. As I was leaving, Bill Pollock slipped me a giant hardcover art-book, and said, "You're gonna love this."

I did. The book is Open Circuits: The Inner Beauty of Electronic Components, by Windell Oskay and Eric Schlaepfer, and it is a drop-dead gorgeous collection of photos of electronic components, painstakingly cross-sectioned and polished:

The photos illustrate layperson-friendly explanations of what each component does, how it is constructed, and why. Perhaps you've pondered a circuit board and wondered about the colorful, candy-shaped components soldered to it. It's natural to assume that these are indivisible, abstract functional units, a thing that is best understood as a reliable and deterministic brick that can be used to construct a specific kind of wall.

But peering inside these sealed packages reveals another world, a miniature land where things get simpler – and more complex. Inside these blobs of resin are snips of wire, plugs of wax, simple screws, fine sheets of metal in stacks, wafers of plain ceramic, springs and screws.

Truly, quantity has a quality all its own. Miniaturize these assemblies and produce them at unimaginable scale and the simple, legible components turn into mystical black boxes that only the most dedicated study can reveal. Like every magician's trick, the unfathomable effect is built up through the precise repetition of something very simple.

A prolonged study of Open Circuits reveals something important about the hacker aesthetic, a collection of graphic design, fashion and industrial design conventions that begins with this realization: that the crisp lines of digital logic can be decomposed into blobby, probabilistic lumps of metal, plastic, and even wax.

It reminds me of George Dyson's brilliant memoir/history of computing, Turing's Cathedral, where he describes how he and the other children of the scientists building the first digital computers at the Princeton Institute spent their summers in the basement, hand-winding cores for the early colossi their parents were building on the floors above them:

https://memex.craphound.com/2012/03/12/george-dysons-history-of-the-computer-turings-cathedral/

You can see my hacker aesthetic photos in my Defcon 31 photo set:

https://www.flickr.com/search/?sort=date-taken-desc&safe_search=1&tags=defcon31&user_id=37996580417%40N01&view_all=1

In this video, Eric Schlaepfer illustrates the painstaking work that went into decomposing these tiny, precise components into their messy, analog subcomponents. It's pure hacker aesthetic, and it's mesmerizing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byKyJ0b04Lo

But Open Circuits isn't just an aesthetic journey, it's a technical one. After all, Oskay is co-founder of Evil Mad Scientist Labs, one of the defining places where hardware hackers gather to tear down, pick apart, mod, improve and destroy electronics. The accompanying text is a masterclass in the simple machines that combine together to make complex assemblies:

https://www.evilmadscientist.com/

Defcon is a reminder that the world only seems hermetically sealed and legible to authorized parties with clearance to crack open the box. From shopping cart wheels to thermal fuses, that illegibility is only a few millimeters thick. Sand away the glossy outer layer and you will find yourself in a weird land of wax-blobs, rough approximations, expedient choices and endless opportunities for delight and terror, mischief and care.

Back my anti-enshittification Kickstarter here!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/14/hidden-worlds/#making-the-invisible-visible-and-beautiful

#pluralistic #books #reviews #evil mad scientist laboratories #no starch press #Windell Oskay #Eric Schlaepfer #electronics #hacker aesthetic #makers #diy #secret knowledge #gift guide #photography

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room-surprise · 4 months

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Dungeon Meshi Season 1, Ep 4 Review

Spoilers below the cut! I have a lot of thoughts on this one so it's a bit long.

This is a slower episode, but I expected it to be. I worry that people will find this episode boring because there's not as much action or comedy as some of the other episodes, and what is here tends to be a lot more subtle, but this is honestly one of THE most important episodes of early Dungeon Meshi.

The pacing of this episode was great, Trigger allowed themselves to slow down and take the material more seriously when it was needed, and I really appreciate that.

Senshi and his connection to the dungeon, as always, makes me want to cry. Kui's focus on respect for the people who do the thankless, denigrated jobs in society like picking vegetables, cooking, and cleaning toilets always gets to me.

Senshi expressing the importance of being part of the ecosystem of the dungeon, and the balance of the world, protecting people not by killing monsters but by keeping the environment in check is so important to the core of Dungeon Meshi.

That, plus the sequence where Senshi refuses using magic to light a fire, instead wanting to do it by hand is also important. Later we'll get to see how magic can excel at some things that can't be done any other way, but for now it's time to focus on Senshi.

The way the party interacts with Senshi in this episode always makes me think of elderly people in Japan who are carrying on doing things the way it's always been done, even if the young people don't appreciate it or even know that they're doing it. The generational gap is a big issue in Japan, since there's so few young people and so many seniors…

It especially makes me think of the senior citizens that volunteered to go clean up the Fukushima nuclear disaster because they didn't want young people with their whole lives ahead of them to have to do it. I remember there was also an old man that took it upon himself to take care of the animals that had been left behind in the exclusion zone, Senshi's story reminds me a lot of him.

THE ANIMATION

The animation wasn't particularly exciting, but for the most part did what it needed to do. The only quibbles I have are minor ones:

There's a black-haired elf in the background of the tavern scene that had darker skin in the manga, and they made her lighter here. She's a recurring background character so I'm not super happy that they changed her skintone, since Dungeon Meshi goes out of it's way to include people of varied skin tones in crowd scenes, but I get that it was probably just to make the composition work. It still sucks though.

Most of the orcs look fine, but there were a pair of lady orcs that had purple-ish and green-ish fur that I thought looked a bit unnatural, compared to the earth tones of all the other orcs. I know Kui leans away from the unnatural skin tones thing (no blue elves, no green orcs) so I wasn't a fan of this, but it was subtle enough that I can forgive it.

I could tell the animators didn't really understand how the nose/snout/jaw situation of the orcs works, and as a result they were animating the orcs like normal human anime faces with a weird blob in the middle for a nose, instead of upturned noses that are part of a snout/mandible that effects the way the face works.

Obviously the animators are more familiar with how to draw standard human faces, and they had to cut costs on this episode by keeping the animation simple, but I didn't like how flat it all looked. Kui's solid construction (from later in the manga) is really missed here.

DUB vs SUB

The subtitles were passable, though at one point they called the dungeon lord the "lunatic magician" which gave me Yen Press war flashbacks. Thankfully the dub didn't do the same thing. Honestly I wouldn't even mind if they switch up what people call the dungeon lord anyway, since it's not like "mad magician" or "mad sorcerer" is a name or title. One of the things I've always hated about "Lunatic Magician" is the way it was used constantly, even in situations where it felt unnaturally stilted, like they had a brand trademark to maintain. The Lunatic Magician™! Now with 50% more lunacy!

As for the dub… The performances were all fine, and there weren't any glaring out of place modernisms, however I'm on the fence about what they decided to do with the orc leader, Zon.

Race and the clash between different groups is a major part of Dungeon Meshi, and this is the chapter that introduces the idea that the orcs are people and not subhuman monsters. It also introduces the idea that the orcs are a displaced ethnic group that lives in the dungeon because other races have chased them from the surface.

Imari Williams does a great job with his performance as Zon, and I appreciate that BangZoom got a person of color to play a character that's meant to be a minority. I hope that they'll continue this trend and that his sister Leed will also be voiced by a person of color, and that she'll speak in a dialect that matches Zon's.

HOWEVER… while Williams' performance is great, I'm not sure how I feel about the script.

Zon and the other orcs' dialog in the dub sounds like it's either borrowing from African American Vernacular English (AAVE), or it is broken English "caveman-speak" that orcs often use in other media.

I'm not familiar enough with AAVE to know if they're using it correctly, only familiar enough to identify that they are using some of the grammatical structures of it. The fact that they hired a black voice actor to deliver those lines makes me think it was an intentional choice.

I'd love to hear opinions from people who are more familiar with the subject. Are the orcs speaking broken English or are they following the grammatical rules of AAVE? How consistent is BangZoom's script in following those grammar rules?

In the original Japanese and in the manga, as far as I can tell the orcs just speak Japanese the same way as all the other characters, so there is no verbal signal of their cultural difference. This is important because this part of the story is all about telling us that the orcs are equal to the other characters.

So choosing to alter the way they speak for the dub is a creative choice that is attempting to communicate something to the English audience, though I am not sure if BangZoom is doing it effectively, or if they are communicating what they intend to communicate.

I do think that it's an interesting choice that they made, I wasn't expecting them to do it, and so I hope they're doing it deliberately, carefully and with sensitivity.

I wonder what kind of accents, if any, the orcs may have been given in other language dubs? If you listened to a different dub let me know! (Also, next week we get to see regular-sized Kabru instead of just Giant Kabru, I'm so excited.)

#dungeon meshi #delicious in dungeon #dunmeshi #my stuff #review #spoilers #orcs #senshi of izganda

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scrion7 · 4 months

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fanfic writer!Columbina

Eldritch horror Columbina is all well and good, but consider the following:

Columbina isn't an eldritch horror. She's actually just a normal weirdo that gets really into adventuring because the whole seele thing, except she doesn't want to get her hands dirty so she just lives vicariously through stories. Of course, like any devoted fan of any story, she has her own little headcannons about things so she can better rotate them around in her head.

...except that when she says "I reject canon and substitute my own" that's actually what happens, thanks to a little meddling with Irminsul.

Columbina sees that poor little Arle is sulking and asks why, and she finds that one of Arle's new ducklings lost his twin sister before Arle could save her, and now he's sworn off using magic tricks and devoted himself entirely to avenging her at the cost of his happiness. Yeah, sure, he's extraordinarily skilled and that Anemo vision is great, but now her Knave is working herself into a knot because the father and the spy in her are arguing how to care for/use Lyney. Hmm...

"You know, emo Anemo boys are so 5 centuries ago. That backstory's boring, anyway, and the House of the Hearth totally needs a low energy voice of reason. Don't worry, Arle, you won't remember a thing!"

"...why do I have a feeling that you've said that to me before?"

"Heh, you know me so well~."

The next day, the Damsellette visits Fontaine, and meets two little magicians, devoted to their House and their Father. They are rather weirded out that this odd stranger pats herself on the back for Arlecchino's accomplishments, but they listen when their Father tells them that there is nothing to worry about when the Dove is around.

("Hey, random fatui number 56. Did you hear what random fatui member 33 said about the Dove?"

"Was it something lewd again?"

"Nah, you're thinking about random fatui number 34. 33's the one with the goatee. Anyway, he was gossiping about lady Columbina!"

"What? Did no one tell him that there's a reason why there aren't any rumors about what she does to people?

"Guess not. He was telling his squad she was a weirdo for using scissors as chopsticks... which she isn't. That's totally normal."

"Wha- right. Completely normal thing to do."

"Yup. And then... oh. She's here. Salute her like nothings wrong.

"Yes sir. Uh... why's she raising her hand like she's gonna snap-

[REDACTED]

"her fingers?"

"Dunno. Anyway... wait, what were we talking about?"

"Dottore's new artificial slime? Ugh, I don't wanna think about it. Who knows how many living things went into that flesh blob."

"Also, is it just me, or does that goatee on its right head look like it came from a human?"

"Oh, why did you have to mention it, dude. Can't unsee it now.")

#(yes I may have been watching a few clips of Shiori Novella what of it)#columbina #arlebina #genshin #also personal headcannon with absolutely no ammunition:#columbina can absolutely pun #my writing #archivist!columbina

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the-hilda-librarians-wife · 6 months

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Sketchbook Week Day 7 - Cellularity

Summary: Trolberg General Hospital is a lovely place to work in. Unless you piss the pathologist off, of course, in which case it's hell. But she is hardly ever even seen in those white corridors, anyway, and apparently her mood has gotten better in the past few months since the new paediatrician had been hired.

That day was an unfortunate exception to Dr. Underhill's new wave of goodwill, though.

Notes: Written for @sketchbookweek Day 7 - Alternate Universe

‘Oh if we give people a free/AU day, they’ll surely make good use of it!’. WRONG. HOSPITAL AU 🧠🫀🫁🦴🧑‍🔬🔬🏥🏥🏥 🏥🏥🏥🚑🚑🚑🚑🚑🚑🌡️🌡️🌡️🌡️🌡️🥼🥼🥼🥼🥼🥼📋📋📋🧪🧪🧪🧫🧫🧫🧬🧬🔬🔬🔬🔬🔬🔬💊💊💊💊💊🩹🩹🩹🩼🩼🩺🩺🩺🩻🩻🩻🩻🧠🫀🫁🦴

That being said, content warning for discussion of health conditions, cancer, hospitalisation… all that stuff. Nobody actually suffers, this is silly fanfic, but keep that in mind if those are sensitive topics for you <3

-> The reference numbers scattered throughout the chapter are all things that I thought might be nice to explain. You can find the notes at the bottom of the fic, though they will be easier to read if you do so in ao3 (I put return to text options there)

Read it on ao3

When anyone asked Kaisa the reason why she’d picked this job, there were many different answers she was used to giving. She wanted to help people. It was all terribly interesting. It was the area that felt the least overwhelming. She just had a natural affinity for it. None of them were lies, and she’d gotten good at choosing which sides of the truth to reveal to each person who asked her, depending on how close they were. But the embarrassing truth that she was never going to admit anyone, was that she’d chosen pathology, simply put, because cells were pretty. She’d chosen it way before she could rationalise any of those other explanations. Way before she’d even realised her path had been traced, back when she was still so certain she’d follow in her tutor’s footsteps during histology class.

It couldn’t be helped. One look into a microscope and she’d been a goner. Those blasted hepatocytes would always be remembered as the thing she fell in love with the most quickly in her entire life. Though not by much.

So here she was, at this crossroads. Because she’d chosen this specialty - before she’d seen its other merits - for its beauty. Because for all that this might sound silly, the fact that she was in on this hidden, miniscule world and therefore was the only one who could find answers to truly essential questions sent her reeling every time.

But how the fuck was she expected to explain what was going on with the cells if there were none of them?

Kaisa huffed, giving up on the endeavour of finding a single useful cluster after she’d already run through the entire slide with no luck. Only useless blobs of stringy colloid [1] - which, okay, did look pretty but was not at all helpful - and the odd cell here and there. It was not, in any way, shape, or form (and it’s worth mentioning that a pathologist knows a lot about shapes and forms) enough for a diagnosis. And that’s because she knew what she was looking for, because truly, a child with a single thyroid nodule, irregular outlines and microcalcifications? She knew what that reeked of. And so did the paediatrician, who had immediately ringed Kaisa about it. She’d picked up the very second it had rang, of course. Kaisa didn’t much like using her cellphone to actually talk, but for her she always did.

And it had been a good thing, too. Always helped to know what to expect of the new slides that came in. Most doctors in the hospital liked to think of pathology as a magic lab you could send your problem to and just have it miraculously disappear, but contrary to popular belief Kaisa was not some sort of magician. She was not going to guess which card you picked. Nor was she going to throw around diagnosis without knowing the first thing about a patient’s case.

She shouldn’t have to, at least. But anyone would be hard pressed to remember a single time she’d gotten her verdict wrong, even when the information she’d been provided with was nowhere near sufficient.

Perks of having chosen the superior area of medicine.

That, and talking to nobody.

Which was clearly not working for her at the moment since she had to hastily turn off her microscope’s light to strut down Trolberg General Hospital’s not-so-busy corridors (admissions were on the lowermost floor), people in scrubs and white coats moving out of the way at the inpatient look on her face. She wouldn’t ever knock over anyone, of course. But they didn’t all necessarily know that, and would probably rather not try their luck.

The silent halls began gradually filling with sound as she moved out of the labs area. One floor down, to the surgical wards; now there were companions, friends and family of those admitted spread across some of the chairs lining up the walls, hushed conversation over the phone as someone delivered whatever news they had to the family members that weren't able to be present. Another flight of stairs and she was at the clinical wards, this one with corridors much more busy not because of companions, since patients there usually didn’t stay for long - for good reasons, get your mind out of the graveyard, Christ’s sake - but rather because of the rustle of nurses and technicians going from ward to ward. Kaisa rather thought that one blond woman she saw walking around was a nutritionist. Must be lunch time for them.

She really wouldn’t know. She’d been so caught up in going through every millimetre in all the slides from that damned fine needle aspiration (fancy way of saying you reverse-injected someone’s throat, that was) that she’d completely lost track of time and internal cues of hunger.

Come think of it, that may just play a part in why she was so damn pissed. Maybe she should take a break. The case wasn’t filed as urgent. She could easily go to the cafeteria, get her blood sugar levels back to normal, and deal with that issue later like a cool, controlled person.

She didn’t do that, of course. Kaisa knew very well what her hurry was about, and it wasn’t lunch time. Instead, she went down the last flight of stairs, where the clinics were, and marched straight up to radiology, uncaring if the patients all waiting to be called for their consultations, sitting or standing calmly near the walls, thought she was mad as she walked around with her white coat flowing behind her like a cape.

Oh, hell, she’d forgotten to close it all the way through again, hadn’t she?

The point was, when she’d arrived at the imaging centre, she’d worked herself up to such an unpleasant-looking state that no one so much as tried to stop her from strutting right in. ‘White coat effect’ means more than just blood pressure rising when you’re around. It was why she still wore it to work even though there was nothing to get dirty with at the lab.

Well, to avoid contamination too, she supposed. But it was mostly to Look Cool and to Open Doors, and everybody knew that.

The secretary let her know right away where the doctor was. All the aspiration’s slides had come with Lloyd’s stamp under the analysis request, so there was luckily no doubt about who she had to go to for this.

He had locked himself away in one of the report rooms, and was understandably startled once Kaisa opened the door up without as much as a knock to warn him. Light from the corridor immediately flooded the dark room, making him shield his eyes since he’d looked back at the sound of someone entering. He didn’t even have the time to ask her what was going on before Kaisa reached beside the door frame and turned on the ceiling lights.

“Come on, man!” It was the most emotion she’d ever heard him put in a sentence. Perhaps she should attempt to blind him more often.

Unwilling to remain there any longer than strictly necessary, Kaisa picked the folded request from her pocket and extended it towards him. “Did you do this FNA [2]?” The question was redundant given his stamp and signature were both present, but an accusation being the first thing out of her mouth sounded like it was a step over ‘rude’ and already inside ‘might get you kicked out of the imaging clinic’ territory. The younger man reached out to grab it and attempted to read even though he was still blinking from having to adjust his eyes so suddenly to the brightness. Even so, it took a couple moments longer than Kaisa would have deemed reasonable for him to give an answer.

“Hmmm, yeah?”

“Yeah?” She repeated a bit mockingly. “There isn’t a period at the end of your sentence. I’m only asking to be polite, what is yeah? supposed to mean?”

He rubbed the back of his head, with its ridiculous monk-like haircut. The man didn’t look shameful, only tired and more than a little annoyed at Kaisa’s presence.

“I mean, I asked for the cytology. But I didn’t do it.”

There was an answer already ready at Kaisa’s tongue. It went something among the lines of ‘what the fuck do you even think cyto means [3] if you don’t give me any damn cells to bloody look at?’ The plan was, however, foiled by the last part of his sentence. Her mind screeched to a halt

“What?”

Aware of what that must have sounded like, Lloyd raised his hands before Kaisa could start screaming at him. The sooner he got rid of her, the better. It was way too bright in there for his tastes.

“I let one of the students do it.” He said it as if it were a good thing, but Kaisa actually thought she was about to faint. “There’s this quiet little guy that shadows me often. I thought he was ready to give it a try. He’s already in his third year, you know. Was scared shitless, but it worked out in the end.”

Many thoughts swarmed Kaisa’s mind all at once, all fighting for a chance to reach her mouth and to maybe influence her to hit the radiologist’s extremely punchable face. Third year is far from old enough and are you fucking talking about David?!, but the one that came out instead was:

“You thought it’d be a good idea to let him practise it for the first time on a ten year old?”

Lloyd blinked, but it was the only show of emotion in his face. His brows, eyes and mouth remained as inexpressive as ever.

“Oh, the kid was ten? I didn’t really read the examination request all the way through.”

TIldy was going to be so very upset if she got expelled from the hospital for attacking a fellow doctor. Her left eye twitched. She bit her own tongue to try to keep it from spilling something that she’d come to regret. Her hands balled into fists. Yes. Tildy would be very upset indeed.

“Yes.” Kaisa said through clenched teeth. “The patient is ten.”

Lloyd seemed to take a moment to consider the information, though Kaisa doubted he was using more than two neurons to do so. It took him no longer than five seconds to lose whatever train of thought he'd been running after (if there had ever been one at all) and raise both eyebrows at her. Only slightly, of course. No one would ever be able to accuse him of emoting any more than was strictly necessary.

"So?"

"I mean, it went well. He told me he'd gotten the patient to cooperate and had done what had been requested. By the looks of it, you got the material, didn't you?"

She had gotten the material, which was something he should give more thought to. It meant she had several useless pieces of glass to spare, and she really wouldn't mind using them to play target practice with him.

"Did you-" Kaisa spoke slowly in hopes that a little bit of breathing would ground her. "Instruct him on how to do it properly, and on what to ask the patient for? Because the cellularity in the slides you sent me is shit. I can't see anything. At all."

The man shrugged. "Well, I didn't just send him to test his luck. I let him watch me do it several times."

"But was he present when you talked to the patient? Does he know you need to ask the patient to, I don't know, stay silent? Or to not swallow? Or to not breathe too deeply when the exam is being done?"

"Well, no. I tell them that before they go to the ultrassonography, and the boy usually stays there. But, you know."

The sentence was left there. Right there. Kaisa began popping her fingers joints. Raven would be beyond annoyed.

"I do not know." She growled, and Lloyd just sent her a level look.

"It's very instinctive to ask for these things." He completed, to which she took what she hoped looked like an intimidating step closer. It was hard to feel in charge near most of her coworkers, but Lloyd's energy was so perfectly described by 'wet and pathetic' that it helped matters along for her.

"Well, clearly it's not instinctive!" She poked pointedly at the exam request with his stamp, his signature, and what she now understood to be David's calligraphy. "You know what's instinctive, though?" He shook his head, letting the tiniest bit of apprehension show by the bob of his cricoid cartilage. "To speak, breathe deeply and swallow when you are ten and someone's sticking a needle in your throat!"

The message finally seemed to have come through his thick skull, and he moved to his monitors to close the thorax radiographies he'd been looking at (someone had a pretty nasty pneumonia, apparently) to look for images and notes on that exam in the system. Kaisa wondered if he'd ever done a tomography on himself. She doubted the rays would have managed to have made it inside his head.

Maybe that was exactly the problem, though. Maybe he had been smart once and all that radiation had just melted his brain into something gooey and bright green. Heavens knew it was entirely likely.

"See the nodule?" He asked once he had found the young boy's file, and all the exams that had been performed on him in it. "It's not markedly hypoechoic, which is good. But the contours aren't precise and there are some calcification foci. What do you think?"

She thought it looked black and white and blurry. People who understood ultrasonography were either able to see stuff that other people weren't, like they were medicine's shrimps, or were just straight up making that shit up to make everybody else feel dumb. Kaisa saw a black ball in the middle of a light grey streak, thank you very much.

"I think the nodule's image matters very little to me right now. I need the material."

"Well..." Lloyd rubbed at his chin, looking entirely disinterested. "That's gonna be a problem. I already told him to send you all the slides that could be used."

"I only got four!"

"Yeah, the other ones were hemorrhagic [4]. You wouldn't have seen anything either."

Kaisa took a deep breath, and was proud of herself when the exhale didn't come out a scream. She also put a fingertip to Lloyd's chest and told him in no uncertain terms what he had to do, and what she'd do to him if he didn't go through it.

She was also proud of herself for that.

.........

It was a common misconception that hospital food only sucked for patients. Kaisa had no idea where it had come from, since it seemed very cruel from the people who had actually promised to only ever help them to have good food and only give them access to the soggy, saltless one. No. Hospital food was just all around trash. They all blamed the nutrition department for it; they were right to do so, too.

It wasn't like they didn't have other places to eat (the hospital staff, that was; the patients truly had no choice). They were in the middle of a bustling city, there was no lack of dining options in the blocks surrounding the hospital.

Did they ever go to any if it wasn't a special occasion? No. Because the laziness to even leave the building during their working hours united them all and made them hostage to hospital food.

"Hemorrhagic." Kaisa mumbled under her breath as she toyed with a roasted baby potato on her plate. "Fucking erythrocytes. They shouldn't even be real cells."

"What are ye whining about this time?”

There was a clatter as Edmund not so gently placed his tray on the table, sitting down on the spot right in front of her. He looked tired, and Kaisa would have worried that his morning had been too harsh except that tired was just how he usually looked. She threw her hands up in the air, not really caring that she probably sounded like a toddler.

“Red blood cells! They’re a pain, they don’t-”

“They don’t even have nuclei, yeah, I know, we’ve had this conversation a couple of times before. It’s never about them, though. Which slide is kicking your ass this time?”

Kaisa crossed her arms and slid a few inches down the back of her chair. The cafeteria was mostly empty, way past its rush hour. That meant the food was no longer as fresh, but Kaisa preferred that over the insufferable noise of every physician in the place talking all at once. It was mostly the technicians who ate at that hour of the day; they were eons more bearable. Especially because they didn’t try to engage her in small talk.

Edmund being there didn’t bother her, though. She hadn’t gotten truly close to many people regardless of how long she’d been working at that same hospital, but the infectologist was someone she was reasonably sure she could call her friend. Him, and the psychiatrist as well, she had to admit, even if she’d known her for a long time before; madwoman had grown on her like an MRSA colony [5]. Which unfortunately didn’t mean she wasn’t stressed enough to prefer not to speak to anyone.

“None.” She lied. “It’s nothing. You’re looking far worse for wear than me, though. What is it?”

Though she was under no illusion that he was convinced, Edmund took the bait. That meant, of course, that he must be bursting to talk about it. Which he did, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands, his food remaining untouched while Kaisa took the opportunity to continue eating hers.

“I think I’ve got a case of spotted fever.”

She raised an eyebrow, barely finishing her chewing before speaking. “Why the suffering over it? You like these weird diagnostics. If you already narrowed it down to spotted fever you can begin treating it, right?”

“Yes!” He laid both hands flat on the table surface. “That’s not the problem! The problem is that he could have been diagnosed and treated long ago if his GP had been moderately inquisitive. Wanna know how I found out?”

Kaisa nodded, though she knew she’d end up hearing it no matter her answer.

“I asked about any recent travels and the patient, unprompted, showed me a picture. Of himself in a forest.” Edmund leaned forward towards her, lowering his tone of voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Holding an Amblyomma sculptum.”

Nodding slowly, Kaisa leaned towards him across the table as well, keeping his gaze and a deadpan face. When she was close enough that she could feel the man’s breath across her chin, she whispered with the same solemnity as he had.

“Your little bug names mean nothing to me. [6]”

“Wow!” He leaned back in a swift motion and crossed his arms. “See if I ever let you show me a ‘pretty eosinophile’ again!”

Kaisa also returned to her previous position, except this time her right elbow was on the table and she was pinching the space between her brows. “Ugh, sorry, Ed. I didn’t mean it in a rude way, I’m just not in a good mood today. And I really do have no idea what that name means.”

For all his talk, Edmund was a patient man. Not that he’d ever admit it, but he was. He opened (though ‘open’ might be too strong of a term for the subtle expression on his face) a compassionate smile for her

“It’s one of the tick species that transmits the Rickettsia rickettsii.” He answered, and Kaisa patted herself in the back for not calling him a nerd for throwing another scientific name at her. “Now will you tell me why you’re grumpier than normal?”

“I- yes, well, I suppose I should.” She sighed, not even bothering to protest the accusation. It was hard even for her to bear herself at the moment. “I’m just frustrated because the cytology samples for a patient I wanted to diagnose as soon as possible came with very low cellularity. Couldn’t see shit. And when I went to Lloyd to talk about it, it became clear that it was his fault. He let a student do the aspiration for the first time without any supervision whatsoever. So now we’ll have to wait two more weeks [7] to redo it and see if I can get some decent slides.”

“Hm.” Edmund played with his food more than he ate it. Kaisa had a good inkling that he was probably wishing it was a sandwich instead of an actual meal, but didn’t want to eat one in front of his coworkers. Had to set an example, and all that. “Well, not Lloyd’s smartest idea - not that Lloyd ever has many of them - but I guess the student had to begin somewhere.”

“Somewhere didn’t have to be a ten year old.”

The infectologist lifted his gaze to her, suddenly looking a lot more excited. Which never bore well, of course.

“Oh, so this isn’t about the slide, is it?” He asked with a mischievous twinkle to his eyes. Kaisa squirmed in her seat in front of him.

“What else would it be about?”

Humming in fake contemplation, he rubbed his chin before answering. “Maybe, just possibly, it could be about the new paediatrician who someone has oh so kindly been trying to befriend?”

Kaisa almost choked on her food. Almost, because her mouth hadn’t actually been full, so it would have actually been an achievement if she’d done so. She was certain her cheeks were getting red, no doubt giving her away.

Fuck, this was the major downside of having friends. She’d thought she was being subtle.

“Edmund, I’m a professional!”

“Of course you are.” He said, a little more seriously. “And honestly, you need to get rid of this idea that being a professional means not talking to anyone. It’s healthy to have people you rely on. Nothing more natural than getting close to the people you work with, too.”

Kaisa tried to look away, but he petulantly flinged a crouton at her to get her to pay attention to him.

“Listen, it’s been cute seeing you try to hide this crush-” At that point she opened her mouth to argue against the accusation that she had something as embarrassing as a crush, but he lifted his hand to ask for her silence. For some reason, she acquiesced. Probably because she knew she had no good arguments against him. “But I just want you to know you can be straightforward about it to me. I can be your wingman!”

Impaling a potato with her fork, Kaisa grumbled. “I don’t need a wingman. I need sufficiently cellular slides.”

“Which brings me to my next point.” He continued as if he had never been interrupted, completely unfazed. “You should be there for the kid’s next FNA.”

“What?” It was bold of him to suggest she leave the comfort of her lab. Very bold. “Why would I do that? I don’t know shit about ultrasonography.”

“‘Course not. But I bet it would be easier for the patient.”

“How the fuck does having another nitwit in a white coat in the room help the patient?”

Edmund rolled his eyes. He was a good decade older than her, and even though most days it didn’t feel like it, every now and then he’d act just condescending enough that she’d remember it. It made her want to deck him each time.

“Do you have kids, Kaisa? Nephews?” He asked even though he knew damn well the answer. She shook her head anyway, glaring at him. “Well, I do. And let me tell you, a ten year old patient will not be happy about going through all that again. It’s a wonder they even managed to do it the first time.”

“And you want me to do what, distract him?”

“Comfort him. You can’t do a lot but you can make sure the kid and his parents know that there is at least one doctor who truly cares about the case.”

Bastard. He had a point. And he probably knew she’d recognize it too, judging by his smug smile.

“Besides, that’s the way to know the procedure will be done correctly, isn’t it? Get your slides as soon as possible and run to your lab. Wouldn’t want to leave the patient’s doctor waiting.”

She didn’t even acknowledge the jab, but Edmund’s smirk made Kaisa hyper aware that this wouldn’t be the last time they talked about the subject.

…......

A lot of time had been lost with her whole mad dash for proper cytology samples, so after she came back to the lab Kaisa found out she was behind schedule. That sure did put a damper on her plans to sneak down to the paediatrics clinic, but unfortunately she had to admit it wasn’t actually necessary to go there.

“Hey, Johanna. Kaisa here.” She said and immediately cringed, turning her face away from the microscope’s lens and to her phone, deleting the audio she’d begun recording right away. It was an audio message in a chat they’d already begun. She didn’t need to introduce herself, for heaven’s sake.

Pressing the recording button again, she went back to the prostate biopsy on her microscope, even if only to pretend - to herself, seeing as there was nobody else nearby - that she wasn’t completely focused on Johanna.

“Hey, Johanna. Sorry for the audio message, I didn’t want to call you so I wouldn’t bother your consultations. I looked at the slides from that patient you were worried about. The ten year old with a papillary carcinoma suspicion. I’ll have to get back to you about it, though. The cellularity was awful, Lloyd will have to call him back to repeat the FNA. I’m so sorry about that. You, uh, you might want to contact the family to tell them that yourself. Both because they know you better and because Lloyd has the sensibilities of a rock. Um. Yeah. That’s all. Good afternoon.”

Kaisa sighed and dropped her head to her hands as soon as she’d pressed send. Her brain hadn’t actually registered a single thing she’d seen on that slide.

Her answer came around half an hour later - meaning she’d been right not to call - when Kaisa had actually already managed to diagnose a benign hyperplasia, write her report on it (easily the worst part of her job), and move onto the next slide. It was a couple of short messages in a row, which initially disappointed her, silly as that was. She’d sort of been hoping she’d also get an audio message back so she could at least hear Johanna’s voice. However, when she read it, she immediately decided it was better than a few seconds long recording.

Johanna (ped)

Hi, Kaisa!

Ugh, that’s frustrating to hear, but I’m sure they will understand. Thank you for letting me know, I do prefer to tell them that myself

Also thank you sooo much for checking that out and getting back to me so quickly. I truly appreciate it <3

Are you free this evening? Heard there was an italian place two blocks away and I thought we might try

Well, I might try with you, at least. I’m sure you’ve been around long enough to already have eaten there 😅

Kaisa bit back an embarrassing giggle - even if her microscope would have been her only witness - and down on her bottom lip. She’d finish looking at this slide and then she’d answer, she promised herself. It would be her first time visiting whatever place that was, and she couldn’t be more excited even if she didn’t care about the food. Though she’d never admit to Johanna that the promise of her company was the only thing strong enough to ever get her to leave her hospital-home routine.

…......

The procedure was uneventful the second time around. Not that it didn’t involve a fair bit of whining from the patient’s part, but Kaisa rather thought he was more than justified in it. Like hell she’d have allowed someone who looked like Lloyd to pierce her throat. He was a lot more cooperative than he could have been, and all in all, Edmund had been right (not that she’d ever tell him that). It seemed like Kaisa’s presence really did mean a lot to both him and his father.

Not to blow her own horn, but she kind of could see why. She definitely thought - hoped - she inspired more confidence than bloody Lloyd.

As soon as it was done, Kaisa took the slides to her lab technicians right away. They seemed to take her pleas for speed seriously, given that in almost no time at all she had the samples on top of her microscope’s stage.

No unusual architecture; the cells weren’t arranged in papillae or swirls. No enlarged nuclei, nor were they irregular, pale, or had grooves or pseudoinclusions. She searched every inch of the six slides she’d gotten and there wasn’t a single atypia, psammoma body, giant cell, hobnail cell, or anything else that might give away a papillary carcinoma. There wasn’t anything that might indicate any malignancy, truth be told. All Kaisa saw were clusters - six in her least cellular slide and fifteen in her most cellular one, thank the heavens - of perfectly normal looking cells. That, and a lot of colloid.

She breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn’t usual for her to get attached to cases. But she’d actually seen this patient and it was a child. She’d have been lying if she said she wasn’t hoping to find nothing. That, and she bet Johanna would also be pleased.

Foregoing her usual etiquette of not leaving her lab unless something urgent was going on, Kaisa turned off her microscope and began the path down to the paediatrics clinic. The fact that it was a cyst didn’t erase that it had been big enough to bother the patient, and that there had been small calcifications on the ultrasound. She supposed that could be a remnant of past inflammation on that area; she definitely wouldn’t know, since nobody had given her the patient’s history as per usual (though this time she wouldn’t admit it was Johanna’s fault as preferred to blame the universe for it).

Johanna would probably have to sit down with an endocrinologist to decide which would be the best course of action. Kaisa had heard that ethanol ablation [8] worked well for some of these cases, it would likely be a better option than having the kid undergo surgery. Even if that would mean having to work with Lloyd again for the procedures. Either way, whatever it was, and whatever would need to be done, it wasn’t cancer. And that was reason enough to brave the packed full corridors of the lowermost floor of the hospital to deliver the news herself.

The paediatrics clinic was by far the loudest one in the hospital. Not because of the poor children (though there was a fair bit of crying and screaming going around), but because of parents. Kaisa still remembered with terror her paediatrics rotations from her time in med school. One of them had almost made her cry.

At least the structure was uplifting, seeing as the walls were covered in drawings and all the nurses in that area had white coats embroidered with fun patterns and the doctors had decorations on their stethoscopes. They all looked genuinely alive, which was more than could be said about the workers in any other area of the hospital, really. They had the kindness of palliative care workers and the energy of emergency room physicians; Kaisa couldn’t feel more out of place if she tried.

Luckily, it didn’t take her long until she found the room in which Johanna was consulting. The door was open, so Kaisa could see her give the young girl sitting on stretcher a lollipop, meaning she was probably done there. After five minutes and a couple of words exchanged with the parent (keeping the aspirin bottle where the kid couldn’t reach was of the highest importance, apparently. Kaisa really wanted to know what the story there was), the patient and the adult walked out hand in hand, and Kaisa nodded in acknowledgement to them before walking in.

“Hey, are you free right now?” She asked with just her head stuck inside the office, immediately startling Johanna, who had been rubbing a wet wipe on her stethoscope. Kaisa laughed while the other glared at her half heartedly, and she let herself in.

“Sorry for interrupting you in the middle of your work day, I just thought I should come talk to you personally.”

Johanna hummed, putting away a box filled with flavoured tongue depressors of every colour there was. “You do that a lot.” She remarked.

By then, Kaisa had been leaning her hip against the stretcher, but her balance hadn’t ever been all that so she nearly lost it (along with all her rational thought) when she heard that.

“I- what? I thought I didn’t interrupt all that much. I’m sorry, I’ll avoid-”

Halted by a whip of Johanna’s head in her direction, she blinked when she saw Johanna frowning at her with worry.

“No, dear, you never interrupt me.” She said softly. The endearment did something weird to Kaisa’s insides which she couldn’t really explain. What was an itch in the hypogastric region [9] a symptom of? “I mean you say sorry a lot. And it’s never warranted.”

Kaisa opened her mouth, to say sorry, obviously, but caught herself before she could. Which resulted in the likely pathetic image of her standing there with wide eyes and a hanging mouth. Noticing exactly what had happened, Johanna laughed, stepping closer to her.

“It’s always good to hear from you, Kaisa. Now, what did you want to tell me about?”

Shaking her head (maybe a good waggle of her synovial fluid would do her well. Yes. That made sense), Kaisa tried to remember why she’d come down to the clinics in the first place. Oh yeah. Thyroid cyst.

“You will be pleased to hear that you guys were wrong in your papillary suspicion.” She said and watched a grin spread on Johanna’s face. “No malignant cells in sight, lots of liquid. No clue what you’ll do about the symptoms, but lo and behold-” Kaisa made her silliest dramatic voice. The atmosphere of paediatrics was contagious, apparently. “It’s not cancer.”

“Oh, Kaisa!” Taking her completely by surprise, Johanna threw herself in her arms. She was pretty sure she actually yelped, but at least her reflexes didn’t let her down and she hugged her back instead of just standing there uselessly. Her heart took to beating embarrassingly quickly, and she really hoped Johanna wouldn’t feel it.

“That is such good news! I’ll phone the parents immediately, thank you so much!”

The noise Kaisa made was hopefully a hum of ascent. Heavens knew she couldn’t manage to actually say something as complex as ‘no problem’ at the moment, busy as her brain was just trying to process the scent of apple pie and the warm softness that came with having Johanna so close. So very close. Touching her.

When the woman drew back, it was so that she could look at Kaisa’s face (blushing, no doubt) and she still held her by the elbows. To say that Kaisa felt out of her element was un understatement. She let herself wonder, briefly, if the woman reacted like this to anyone who brought her good news about her patients. She quickly decided she didn’t want to know.

“I really have no words for how grateful I am for your commitment to this case, dear. You did a lot more than you had to.”

Kaisa emitted a sound she wasn’t aware she was capable of, like her airways were constricting around something that wasn’t there. Maybe she was asthmatic and just didn’t know.

“It’s nothing.” And the way Johanna’s face was so close she could see herself in her eyes was making her forget everything else so effectively that it might as well really be nothing. She had to make a herculean effort to focus on what they were talking about. “I’ll write you the report in a couple of minutes. Just thought I should let you know already.”

Humming in delight, Johanna proved her intentions of murdering Kaisa by leaning forward and placing a kiss on her cheek. “It was much appreciated. How can I repay you?”

It was a wonder that Johanna didn’t immediately admit her, because Kaisa was certain she must look like she was going into cardiac arrest. The place where her lips had met her skin tingled, to the point where she was immensely glad that Johanna was still close enough for them to be holding each other’s arms so that Kaisa couldn’t immediately take a hand to her face in disbelief.

There was no chance she was going to be able to answer that question like a normal human being. Her brain had just given her a minus two seconds notice and fucked right off. But Johanna was nothing if not merciful, apparently, and didn’t even let the silence stretch into awkwardness before suggesting something herself.

“I’ll tell you what, Hilda has exams next week so she’ll probably be studying the whole weekend. Since that means I’ll be free, why don’t we go to that park you mentioned the other day? We could both use some fresh air, I bet.”

Kaisa nodded dumbly; that was the extent of her reaction capabilities in that moment. The other doctor just smiled, and they managed to decide they’d settle the details later over the phone. It was all Kaisa could do to put some distance between herself and the paediatrics clinic before allowing herself to fully process what had happened and grin like a lunatic.

Well. It sure would be hard to focus on cells for the rest of the day. As unlikely as that was, she’d found something even more beautiful to fall in love with.

NUMBERED NOTES:

1- Colloid is the stuff that’s inside your thyroid follicles! It’s where the hormones are produced & stored 2- FNA = Fine Needle Aspiration. Basically what Kaisa said earlier, you use a needle to collect some material from the nodule 3- It means ‘cell’, btw! Not sure how common this knowledge is, but someone who went through med school would know it, I promise. 4- When an aspiration slide is hemorrhagic, that means that there is waaay too much blood and not enough of the stuff you actually want the pathologist to see. Means it’s useless, basically :/ 5- MRSA stands for multiresistant Staphylococcus aureus! It is a. Very big problem. Hard to kill yk. 6- Meiri isn’t in this fic but if she were she’d remind Kaisa that ticks are NOT bugs. They’re arachnids :) 7- You can’t redo an FNA right away because the thyroid needs time to heal before you poke a needle through it again! 8- ok ok this is actually super interesting so hear me out. You can inject ethanol on benign thyroid cysts and that basically makes it dry out. You have to repeat the procedure maybe once or twice depending on its size, but the thing actually just. Shrinks. Just because you put alcohol in there. How cool is that?? 9- This is the best way I found to convey butterflies in your belly when you’re a nerd and avoiding your feelings

#you might think Kaisa’s characterization is leaning too heavily on her pre s2 fanfic self #but consider this:#med school is a literal villain origin story. Thank you for your attention.#sketchbookweek #fic: cellularity #my fic #verse: tgh #sketchbook ship #sketchbook ship hilda #sketchbook ship fanfic #kaisa hilda fanfic #johanna hilda fanfic

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cantheykillmacbeth · 9 months

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I think Blodeuwedd – from The Mabinogi – could kill Macbeth. She was made out of flowers by the magicians Math and Gwydion to be Lleu Llaw Gyffes’ wife. Since she was made out of oak, broom and meadowsweet, I think technically, she could also be counted as the woods moving.

It’s possible that Lleu Llaw Gyffes could also kill Macbeth. His mother was asked to take a virginity test so she stepped over a magic rod. Lleu Llaw Gyffes instantly fell out of her as a blob-like entity that only turned human shaped after being locked in a wooden chest for a while.

Yes, Blodeuwedd from Welsh Mythology could kill Macbeth!

As stated above, she is the goddess of flowers who was crafted out of three kinds of plants by two male magicians, Math and Gwydion, meaning she applies for all three Clauses!

Thank you for your submission!

#asks #unconventional birth clause #gender clause #birth parent clause #blodeuwedd #welsh mythology #celtic mythology #mythology #artistic nudity

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helenvader · 3 months

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Another "no rush" situation. And how hilarious is Havelock deciphering the letters? I. Just. Can't.

And he is smiling... He's unusually cheerful in this book.

‘And Lord Vetinari Is Downstairs,’ Gladys went on. ‘He Says There Is No Rush.’

The sandwich stopped an inch from Moist’s lips. ‘He’s in the building?’

‘Yes, Mr Lipwig.’

‘Wandering about by himself ?’ said Moist, horror mounting.

‘Currently He Is In The Blind Letter Office, Mr Lipwig.’

‘What’s he doing there?’

‘Reading The Letters, Mr Lipwig.’

No rush, thought Moist grimly. Oh, yes. Well, I’m going to finish my sandwiches that the nice lady golem has made for me.

‘Thank you, Gladys,’ he said. When she had gone Moist took a pair of tweezers out of his desk drawer, opened the sandwich and began to disembowel it of the bone fragments caused by Gladys’s drop-hammer technique. It was a little over three minutes later when the golem reappeared and stood patiently in front of the desk.

‘Yes, Gladys?’ said Moist.

‘His Lordship Desired Me To Inform You That There Is Still No Rush.’

Moist ran downstairs and Lord Vetinari was indeed sitting in the Blind Letter Office with his boots on a desk, a sheaf of letters in his hand and a smile on his face.

‘Ah, Lipwig,’ he said, waving the grubby envelopes. ‘Wonderful stuff ! Better than the crossword! I like this one: “Duzbuns Hopsit pfarmerrsc”. I’ve put the correct address underneath.’

He passed the letter over to Moist. He had written: K. Whistler, Baker, 3 Pigsty Hill.

‘There are three bakeries in the city that could be said to be opposite a pharmacy,’ said Vetinari, ‘but Whistler does those rather good curly buns that regrettably look as though a dog has just done his business on your plate and somehow managed to add a blob of icing.’

‘Well done, sir,’ said Moist weakly. At the other end of the room Frank and Dave, who spent their time deciphering the illegible, misspelled, misdirected or simply insane mail that sleeted through the Blind Letter Office every day, were watching Vetinari in shock and awe. In the corner, Drumknott appeared to be brewing tea.

‘I think it is just a matter of getting into the mind of the writer,’ Vetinari went on, looking at a letter covered with grubby fingerprints and what looked like the remains of someone’s breakfast. He added: ‘In some cases, I imagine, there is a lot of room.’

‘Frank and Dave manage to sort out five out of every six,’ said Moist.

‘They are veritable magicians,’ said Vetinari. He turned to the men, who smiled nervously and backed away, leaving the smiles hanging awkwardly in the air, as protection. He added: ‘But I think it is time for their tea break?’ The two looked at Drumknott, who was pouring tea into two cups.

‘Somewhere else?’ Vetinari suggested.

No express delivery had ever moved faster than Frank and Dave.

#pratchett quotes #making money #moist von lipwig #havelock vetinari #no rush #i'm cackling #gnu terry pratchett

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mrspinkloveheart · 4 months

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Here are 3 Ask Goldie Anything AUs, (The ones I think people will like the most). This is gonna be long :’)

Deadly Sins (Story): One day, a virus, you could call it, spread. It was a weird one. It didn't have symptoms you would see or feel immediately. It was more internal. Bonnie, was the first, feeling a sudden greed over small things. Wanted the best guitar, the best spot, becoming greedy over things, and one day, found dead suddenly, his magenta eyes now a bright yellow color. This pattern happened to almost everyone. Bonnie, then Chica, then Foxy, then Goldie, Toy Chica next, and so on and so on. Freddy was the last, seemingly able to fight the virus better than everyone else. When woken up, they found themselves (alone since they didn't all die at once), in front of a shadow blob that looked like Shadow Freddy but wasn't. He was satan but not? And there they were given their rules, either as deadly sins, or just sins.

Deadly Sins (Characters): Freddy = Pride, Chica = Gluttony, Bonnie = Greed, Foxy = Wrath, Goldie = Envy, Toy Freddy = Sloth, Toy Chica = Lust, Shadow Freddy = Satan/Lucifer? Everyone else (Except Pete and Dottie since they never got infected) are sins.

X87 (Story): The bite of 87 never happened. That's it, which makes everything/everyone in the pizzeria calmer/nicer. This is an AU I recommend if you like a lot of comfort.

Circus (Story): The pizzeria in 1995 was turned into a circus, everyone had their role. Goldie was able to be a clown since he didn't get close to anyone, but something felt off, everyone felt it. Everyone acknowledged it, except. Freddy. He refuses to talk about it, no matter how hard you push. As if - he knew something. Something he doesn't want to talk about… (Have fun guessing this part lol)

Circus (Characters): Freddy and Toy Freddy = Musicians (of course), Chica and Toy Chica = Food stands/Jugglers, Bonnie and Mangle = Acrobats/Magicians, Foxy = Lion tamer, Goldie and Toy Bonnie = clowns, Mary/Marionette = Acrobat/Toy counter, Balloon Boy = Gives people balloons, Finn = Tightrope walker.

#ask goldie anything #fnaf #ask goldie anything au #circus #deadly sins #What if the bite didn't happen?

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lover-of-skellies · 3 months

Note

Rank scariest fnaf animatronics or weirdest fanfic you've read

Hmmmmm. I've had fnaf brain worms for a while now, so I'm gonna do that, and I'll try to cover as many of the animatronics as possible, minus the different skin versions that pop up for different events/DLCs/whatever

1 = fuck THAT, nuh uh, that's the stuff of nightmares

2 = mildly creepy, unsettling, don't leave me alone with it I'll be super uncomfortable

3 = I would happily dropkick it into the ocean

4 = y u so ugly bruh

5 = keep it behind a heavy duty glass wall and chained down first and THEN I can tolerate being around it

6 = aight it can roam around in the same room as me as long as it stays over on the other side from me

7 = friend shaped, looks cute or is a goober, I trust this one to not hurt me

8 = just a guy, they are simply there, I'm indifferent to them

9 = not at all scary, I may even smooch them

**There's so many names here and it's a bit of an eyesore. Read at your own discretion**

Nightmare Freddy, Nightmare Bonnie, Nightmare Chica, Nightmare Foxy, Nightmare Fredbear, Nightmare, Nightmare Mangle, Jack-O-Bonnie, Jack-O-Chica, Grimm Foxy, Nightmarionne, Nightmare Endo, Nightmare Cupcake, Nightmare Balloon Boy, Nightmarionne Bots, Twisted Freddy, Twisted Bonnie, Twisted Chica, Twisted Foxy, Twisted Wolf, Stanley, Ella, Plushtrap Chaser, Phantom Freddy, Phantom Chica, Phantom Foxy, Phantom Mangle, Phantom Balloon Boy, Phantom Puppet, Fetch, Scrap Baby, Burntrap, Stitchwraith, Eleanor, Julius' Exoskeleton

Withered Freddy, Withered Bonnie, Withered Chica, Withered Foxy, Toy Freddy, Toy Bonnie, Toy Chica, Mangle, Balloon Boy, JJ, Shadow Freddy, Shadow Bonnie, Shadow Puppet, Shadow Balloon Boy, Circus Baby, Ballora, Funtime Freddy, Funtime Foxy, Minireena, Music Man, Funtime Chica, Rockstar Chica, Rockstar Foxy, Lefty, Carnie, Dark Freddy, Neon Bonnie, Neon Chica, Burnt Foxy, Dark Foxy, Shadow Mangle, Party Freddy, Prototype Glamrock Freddy, Yenndo, The Mimic, Ennard, Molten Freddy, The Blob, Dreadbear, Lucky Boy, Springtrap, Dark Springtrap, Golden Freddy, DJMM

Cupcake, Funtime Cupcake, Golden Cupcake, Shadow Cupcake, Neon Cupcake, Freddles, Bidybabs, Bon-Bon, Electrobab, Bonnet, Little Joe, Magician, Human Heads, Fortune Teller, Lemonade Clown, Fruit Punch Clown, Mini Music Men, Dee Dee, Helpi, Tag Along Freddy, Lonely Freddy, Plushtrap, Theodore, Baby Crawlers

Scraptrap

OG Freddy, OG Bonnie, OG Chica, OG Foxy, OG Puppet, Fredbear, Spring Bonnie, Rockstar Freddy, Rockstar Bonnie, Happy Frog, Mr. Hippo, Pigpatch, Nedd Bear, Orville Elephant, Endo - 01, Endo - 02, Glamrock Endo

Glamrock Chica, Montgomery Gator, Roxanne Wolf, Glamrock Mr. Hippo, Jack-O-Moon, Moon*, Security Bots, Map Bots, Mop Bots, Party Bots, Worker Bots, Mask Bot, Head Chef Bot, Server Bot, Attendant Bots, Nanny Bots, El Chip, Captain Foxy, The Entity, Security Puppet

Alien Bots, Comedy Bot, Magician Bot, Driver Assist Bots, Instructor Bot, Pizza Bot, Wet Floor Bots, Helpy, Glamrock Freddy, Rockstar Foxy's Parrot, Yarg Foxy

Candy Cadet, Giant Cupcake, Mystic Hippo

Glamrock Bonnie*, Sun, Eclipse

Moon* - I'd smooch him, but I know he'd probably strangle me for not sleeping as much as I should, hence why he needs to stay on his half of the room

Glamrock Bonnie* - He gets pity smooches because LOOK at him. The poor guy is in literal shambles. He needs so much maintenance, therapy, warm blankets, and hugs

#anon #asks #fnaf #there are others i could've included #but lets face it #i didn��t want to #there'd be WAY too many for me #not skeleton stuff

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mysterycharacterflowers · 7 months

Text

Round 1; A bouquet of arborvitae, gladiolus and begonia Vs Spiderwort

If you know who they are, or are pretty sure of it, please don't tell until this poll has ended!

First, let's talk about the bouquet of arborvitae, gladiolus and begonia

Meaning and why these flowers were chosen: Arborvitae for his best friend, who he risked his own life to save multiple times. Gladiolus for strength and the ability to go on against all odds. Begonia for the danger he's constantly in. Description: Accidentally witnessed a murder at like 7 years old, and then years later ended up running into the murderer (Who had been more or less obsessively stalking him for 30 something years), and then his entire life is completely ruined by it. He ends up finding more bodies, attacked by a bunch of mascot characters, sees an entire factory of people get slaughtered, him and his best friend get kidnapped by previously mentioned murderer, his friend dies and becomes a giant shadow ghost, he gets drugged (and has a bad allergic reaction to it), and just barely manages to escape. The murderer who was after him dies, but the murderers daughter starts hunting him down instead. This all ends with a building exploding and him finally escaping all the chaos. Except also no, because now someone else has managed to kidnap him and is attempting to resurrect the original murderer via a mind controlling video game. Guys been traumatized dozens of times over, has constant nightmares, and sees ghosts. Also he's worn a skirt multiple times in the series (to the point where the skirt is genuinely a very important item) and looks great doing it

Check their post here

Now, let's talk about the Spiderwort

Meaning and why this flower was chosen: Its meanings in flower language are "Respect", "Wisdom" and "I respect you, but I'm not in love with you". Because each flower only last a day, it's also associated with temporary/transient happiness. It doesn't need to be watered frequently, meaning it doesn't need lots of attention to thrive. Also, because its petals turn into a blob of jelly instead of drying up, it's commonly called "Widow's tears" (which is very fitting for the character LOL) Description: He's a widower, and (supposedly) a retired cop/detective, that holds a lot of secrets close to his chest. His lies are directly responsible for his wife's death, leading to him going to prison and being investigated about his crimes. He has the greatest divorced energy I've ever seen. He made it very clear he was unhappy in his marriage, and even stopped wearing his wedding ring. He also smokes, and wears torn jeans at FORTY YEARS-OLD. He's very strong: has beaten every single other character in an arm-wrestling competition, has prevented 2(?) people from getting beaten up to death, and has canonically cut melons in half with his BARE FISTS. He is very associated with theater and magician motifs, mainly because he lies a LOT, and ends up misleading the investigation on what happened in his case. It's even implied that he lies about his sexuality, being closely associated with the "Green Apple of Sin" motif. So yeah, he's totally a closeted-gay king and the entire fandom knows this. Good for him!

Check their post here

#round 1 #mysterious character 2: bouquet of arborvitae - gladiolus - begonia #mysterious character 2: spiderwort

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pan-magi · 4 months

Text

*posts random rukh thoughts over a month late b/c I forgot about it*

Are the rukh an actual light source? The things my mind gets stuck on repeatedly while working on shit.

The answer would appear to be yes. This is shown when there is enough gathered at one place, usually in a relation with one of the magi using enough magic and producing magoi at a rate to be visible to everyone who can't usually see them. With the exception of Judar, but I'll get to black rukh in a minute. This is usually conveyed through light even if the surroundings are dim. The first time Aladdin is seen really going off is one such occurrence.

I keep thinking to myself. How does rukh produce light when magi using magic isn't involved? Do magicians constantly see hundreds, thousands, of light sources no one else can see? Or is the light so minimal it doesn't make a difference? I like to know what light sources I'm dealing with.

The closest we get for this is with Baba. She sees the world directly through rukh; it is her source of sight. Though tbf, the anime doesn't really touch on her being blind outside of her interaction with rukh. The manga is only a little clearer. Point being, light source or not, it is a way to see and experience the world.

Does that mean that it acts as a sort of passive night vision outside of Baba? Who knows. The one time I can think of an example is that while exploring the fifth district there isn't much light shown outside of some lanterns and dim lights, but Aladdin, Titus and Sphintus don't seem to have much trouble. Meanwhile, Marga and the rest of the citizens there are used to the level of light and don't work really as a control group. So I dunno.

The other conclusion is that it's not the rukh that produce the light. It comes from the magoi that they produce. When Judar explains the magic system to Aladdin (imo, a condescending smartass doing an exposition dump is a surprisingly effective way to deliver information to the audience in a quick manner), he produces magoi to deliver his point. It acts as a bright beacon that everyone reacts to and sees, especially when Judar starts attacking people with it.

I don't really have concluding thoughts on this. It's more of a ramble dump. Good place as any to switch to talk about black rukh.

I kinda dislike in the anime that black rukh is also shown to produce light. A dim purple light typically, but a light nonetheless. One of the reasons I think of to why is so that each is distinguishable in a way. That a mass of black rukh isn't shown to be a massive black blob and nothing else.

(left about normal, right darkened slightly to show point of black blob)

It isn't how I ever imagined them to be though.

I'll end this on a headcanon of mine. I always thought it made more sense for the black rukh to absorb light or at the very least cast a massive shadow. The first impression Aladdin gets from seeing Judar is describing him like a black sun. What would be the cause for someone to come to that conclusion? Mine was that the overwhelming amount of black rukh from Judar would be a blot of darkness until Aladdin can focus on him properly. If it is only dozens of black birds surrounding the guy the description will be less extreme.

An eclipse (what I can attribute to being like a black sun, outside of blackhole) doesn't just cast ordinary shadows. It is putting out the main light source of the planet. It isn't a cloudy day, a storm, or night time during a new moon: the closest other comparison. The darkness of an eclipse hits different. Plus, when Aladdin gets memories about the fall of Alma Tran the sun there looks like it is permanently eclipsed. That's the quickest shorthand to show that it is nothing but darkness all the time.

Anyway, that is how I see Judar and the black rukh in general. They are opposites and out of spite literally and metaphorically counteracts the light from the white rukh.

Yup, no closing thoughts. Thanks for reading this word vomit if you did!

#magi #i wrote did photo edits and then completely forgot about this #uh so have a random post over a month and a half late i guess #magi: the labyrinth of magic #magi labyrinth of magic #includes photo edit #long post #i wanted to get edit of alma tran in there to show final point but just now thought about it #this has been sitting in my drafts for way too long anyway

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allyleetheo · 2 months

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Here is a list of Manwha's recommendations. They are sorted into genres, and do not contain any BL/GL, I have a separate list for BL/GL manwha's.

I have not read any of these yet. (I'll be giving them ratings as I read them.)

Compiled by Lis (Blob / s.class.villainess on Tiktok)

You can search https://tinyurl.com/mwreclist for their complete list and ratings.

Note: This list is mostly not up to date with the episode counts, so most of the titles might have more chapters than listed.

🪻total amount of titles: 439

Key:

🔁 - Complete works

ACTION

Medical Return (100 chapters)

Mercenary Enrollment (76 chapters)

ACTION / FANTASY

A Gate Opened on my First Day as a Politician (24 chapters)

Arcane Sniper (73 chapter of ons)

Crimson Karma (118 chapters)🔁

Damn Reincarnation (29 chapters)

Doctor's Rebirth (82 chapters)

Eleceed (210 chapters)

Ending Maker (31 chapters)

Estio (33 chapters)

F-class Destiny Hunter (59 chapters)

Heavenly Demon Instructor (42 chapters)

Heavenly Sword’s Grand Saga (28 chapters)

Hoarding in Hell (39 chapters)

I Stole The First Ranker’s Soul (41 chapters)

Kill the Hero (103 chapters)

Legendary Youngest Son of the Marquis House (43 chapters)

Leveling With The Gods (60 chapters)

Maxed Out Leveling (21 chapters)

Murim Login (52 chapters)

My Daughter is the Final Boss (83 chapters)

Nano Machine (101 chapters)

Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint (171 chapters)

Overbearing Tyrant (33 chapters)

Player Who Can't Level Up (95 chapters)

Ranker's Return (remake) (56 chapters)

Reaper of the Drifting Moon (25 chapters)

Reincarnation of the Suicidal Battle God (44 chapters)

Return of the 8th class Magician (29 chapters)

Return of the Mount Hua Sect (72 chapters)

Return Of The Shattered Constellation (42 chapters)

Second Life Ranker (116 chapters)

Seoul Station's Necromancer (41 chapters)

Solo Leveling (179 chapters)🔁

Solo Max-Level Newbie (42 chapters)

SSS-Class Gacha Hunter (45 chapters

SSS-Class Revival Hunter (94 chapters)

Standard of Reincarnation (22 chapters)

Star-Fostered Swordmaster (32 chapters)

Talent-Swallowing Magician (30 chapters)

The Advanced Player of The Tutorial Tower (107 chapters)

The Daughter of The Elemental King (105 chapters)

The Frozen Player Returns (50 chapters)

The Great Mage Returns After 4000 Years (119 chapters)

The Heavenly Demon Can’t Live a Normal Life (35 chapters)

The Hero Returns (38 chapters)

The Martial God who Regressed Back to Level 2 (50 chapters)

The Newbie is Too Strong (31 chapters)

The Novel's Extra (28 chapters)

The Returner's Magic Should Be Special (192 chapters)

The Return of The Disaster-Class Hero (48 chapters)

The S-classes That I Raised (105 chapters)

The Scholar’s Reincarnation (140 chapters)

The World After the Fall (12 chapters)

Tomb Raider King (308 chapters)

Trapped in a Webnovel as a Good for Nothing (140 chapters)

Trash of the Count's Family (85 chapters)

Tyrant of the Tower Defence Game (82 chapters)

Villain to Kill (61 chapters)

Worthless Regression (25 chapters)

FANTASY / ROMANCE

A Capable Maid (59 chapters)

A Good Day To Be A Dog (93 chapters)🔁

A Happy Ending for the Villains (16 chapters)

A Marriage Alliance for Revenge (43 chapters)

A Most Virtuous Villain (83 chapters)🔁

A Princess's Guide to Saving Dragons (18 chapters)

A Red Knight Does Not Blindly Follow Money (66 chapters)

A Single Round at Romance is Enough! (48 chapters)

A Stepmother’s Märchen (83 chapters)

A Symbiotic Relationship Between A Rabbit And A Black Panther (68 chapters)

A Tender Heart: The Story of How I Became a Duke’s Maid (110 chapters)🔁

A Transmigrator's Privilege (65 chapters)🔁

A Villain Demands to Be Loved (70 chapters)🔁

A Villainess Is a Good Match for a Tyrant (104 chapters)🔁

A Wicked Tale of Cinderella's Stepmom (109 chapters)

Abandoned Wife Has a New Husband (44 chapters)

Adelaide (85 chapters)🔁

Aileen's on Fire! (20 chapters)

An Unseemly Lady (35 chapters)

Aria of the Withered Branch (87 chapters)

Ashtarte (80 chapters)

As You Wish, Prince! (93 chapters)🔁

Baby Squirrel Is Good At Everything (21 chapters)

Becoming The Villain’s Family (43 chapters)

Becoming You (124 chapters)🔁

Beloved by the Male Lead's Nephew (32 chapters)

Beware of The Villainess! (93 chapters)🔁

Birth of a Goddess (199 chapters)

Bloody Sweet (86 chapters)🔁

Carefully Choosing a Husband (31 chapters)

Carrier Falcon Princess (79 chapters)

Cat in the Chrysalis (42 chapters)

Catherine's Key to a Happy Life (25 chapters)

Caught by the Villain (The Villain Discovered my Identity) (110 chapters)

Charlotte Has Five Disciples (124 chapters)

Cheerful Countess Sisters (68 chapters)

Chitra (141 chapters)

Cierra (23 chapters)

Cinderella Disappeared (20 chapters)

Cradle of Heaven (18 chapters)

Crows Like Shiny Things (49 chapters)

Daisy: How to Become the Duke’s Fiancée (98 chapters)

Dear Nemesis (65 chapters)

Death Is The Only Ending For The Villainess (91 chapters)

Disobey the Duke if You Dare (26 chapters)

Divorce me, Husband! (39 chapters)

Doctor Elise: The Royal Lady with the Lamp (143 chapters)🔁

Don't Hire My Brother Your Highness! (35 chapters)

Dream Lover Strategy Guide (57 chapters)🔁

Empress? Empress! (130 chapters)🔁

Evangeline's Sword (23 chapters)

Everything's Coming Up Roses (23 chapters)

Extras Don’t Want to be Overly Obsessed (56 chapters)

Falling For The Enemy (49 chapters)🔁

Falling into the Deep End (34 chapters)

Father, I Don’t Want This Marriage! (123 chapters)🔁

Flirting with The Villain's Dad (94 chapters)

Follow The Bread Crumbs (70 chapters)🔁

Forget My Husband, I'll Go Make Money (24 chapters)

For My Derelict Beloved (54 chapters)

For Stella (32 chapters)

Fortune-telling Lady (27 chapters)

From a Knight to a Lady (92 chapters)

Go Away Romeo (36 chapters)

Golden Time (47 chapters)

Happily Ever Afterwards (61 chapters)

Heroine's Shares for Sale (39 chapters)

How Did I Become the Princess? (44 chapters)

Honey, I’m Going On a Strike (54 chapters)

How to Be a Dark Hero’s Daughter (40 chapters)

How to Get My Husband on My Side (57 chapters)

How to Hide the Emperor's Child (78 chapters)

How to Prey on Your Master (72 chapters)

I Abdicate My Title of Empress (23 chapters)

I Adopted the Male Lead (90 chapters)🔁

I am the Precious Daughter of the Greatest Villain in the Fantasy World (45 chapters)

I Became the Tyrant’s Secretary (54 chapters)

I Became the Villainess in a Disastrous Novel (44 chapters)

I Became the Villain’s Mother (63 chapters)

I Became the Wife of the Male Lead (47 chapters)

I Bid You Adieu (101 chapters)

I Can't Keep Up With My Stallion Duke (38 chapters)

I Choose the Emperor Ending (115 chapters)🔁

I Didn’t Mean to Seduce the Male Lead (40 chapters)

I Don’t Love You Anymore (58 chapters)

I Don't Want to Play the Matchmaker! (37 chapters)

I Dream of Health, Wealth and a Long Life (84 chapters)

I Failed to Abandon the Villain (44 chapters)

I Found a Husband When I Picked Up the Male Lead (50 chapters)

I Have No Health (51 chapters)

I Listened to my Husband and Brought in a Lover (21 chapters)

I Raised a Black Dragon (74 chapters)

I Raised My Childhood Friend as a Tyrant (57 chapters)

I Shall Kill that Sweet Devil (79 chapters)

Isnelda (26 chapters)

I Stan The Prince (66 chapters)

I Tamed My Ex-husband's Mad Dog (37 chapters)

I Thought My Time Was Up! (30 chapters)

I Tried To Be Her Loyal Sword (34 chapters)

I Was Seduced by the Sick Male Lead (26 chapters)

I Was Tricked Into This Fake Marriage! (107 chapters)🔁

I Will Take Responsibility for the Welfare of the Male Lead (35 chapters)

I'm Not The Final Boss' Lover! (36 chapters)

I'm the One Who Died, but the Hero Went Crazy (32 chapters)

I've Been Proposed to by a Villain (62 chapters)

If You Touch My Little Brother, You’re All Dead (46 chapters)

Inso's Law (147 chapters)

Into the Light Once Again (48 chapters)

Is It a Fortune or Is It a Woe? (83 chapters)

It Looks Like I’ve Fallen into the World of a Reverse Harem Game (74 chapters)

It Seems I've Transmigrated Somewhere (29 chapters)

It Was All A Mistake (61 chapters)

It’s My Destiny To Be The Hero’s Saviour (33 chapters)

I’ll Be The Matriarch In This Life (64 chapters)

I’ll Just Live on as a Villainess (73 chapters)

I'll save this Damned Family! (110 chapters)

I’m a Martial Art Villainess but I’m the Strongest! (72 chapters)

I'm a Villainess, Can I Die? (28 chapters)

I'm Engaged to an Obsessive Male Lead (81 chapters)

I’m Only a Stepmother, But My Daughter is Just So Cute! (65 chapters)

I’m the Male Lead’s Girl Friend (63 chapters)🔁

I'm the One Who Died, but the Hero Went Crazy (23 chapters)

I'm the Queen in This Life (50 chapters)

Justice for the Villainess (43 chapters)

Just Leave Me Be (80 chapters)

Kill the Villainess (100 chapters)

Lady Beast (113 chapters)

Lady Crystal is a Man (30 chapters)

Let Me Die in Peace! (32 chapters)

Let’s Hide My Younger Brother First (40 chapters)

Leveling Up My Husband to the Max (97 chapters)

Lies Become You (18 chapters)

Like Wind on a Dry Branch (85 chapters)

Lillien of Turin (33 chapters)

Long After The Ending (60 chapters)🔁

Lydia's Great Escape (57 chapters)

Marriage and Sword (39 chapters)

May I kill You, Your Highness? (30 chapters)

Miss Not-So Sidekick (177 chapters)🔁

Miss Time (60 chapters)🔁

More Than You Know (28 chapters)

My Dear Aster (45 chapters)

My Farm by the Palace (65 chapters)

My Husband Hides His Beauty (80 chapters)

My Husband, My Sister, and I (26 chapters)

My Mysterious Nighttime Visitor (10 chapters)

My Red String of Fate (90 chapters)🔁

My Sister Picked Up the Male Lead (59 chapters)

My Warmonger Husband (46 chapters)

Necrobride (37 chapters)

No More Nice Sis (64 chapters)

No Outtakes (38 chapters)

Not Just Anyone Can Become a Villainess (68 chapters)

Nullitas: The Counterfeit Bride (55 chapters)

One Pair Lady (40 chapters)

Only Realised After Losing You (26 chapters)

Ophelia the Oracle Queen (12 chapters)

Please Don't Come To The Villainess’ Stationery Store! (36 chapters)

Please Give Me The Pacifier (41 chapters)

Please Marry Me Again, Husband! (36 chapters)

Preventing the Making of a Tyrant (46 chapters)

Princess of the Animals (16 chapters)

Protecting the Witch's Son (38 chapters)

Protect the Knight (53 chapters)

Queen Cecia’s Shorts (80 chapters)

Regina Rena: To the Unforgiven (24 chapters)

Reporting for Duty, Duchess! (48 chapters)

Revenge Wedding (84 chapters)🔁

Rewriting My Tragic Ending (34 chapters)

Rewriting the Villainess (62 chapters)🔁

Roxana (39 chapters)

Royal Marriage (49 chapters)

Run, Meil (50 chapters)🔁

Sacrificed (52 chapters)

Say Ah, the Golden Spoon Is Entering (40 chapters)

Saving My Sweetheart (A Way to Protect the Lovable You) (89 chapters)

Second Life of a Trash Princess (23 chapters)

Secret Lady (43 chapters)

Seven Years Later (36 chapters)

Savor the Taste (59 chapters)🔁

Side Characters Deserve Love too (127 chapters)

So I Married the Abandoned Prince (29 chapters)

Straight to the Red Carpet (40 chapters)

Swimming Lessons for a Mermaid (101 chapters)🔁

Taming the Emperor's Hound (31 chapters)

Taming the Corrupted (45 chapters)

Terrarium Adventure (19 chapters)

The 101st Heroine (71 chapters)🔁

The Accidental Heiress (45 chapters)

The Baby Isn't Yours (29 chapters)

The Beast Emperor and I (26 chapters)

The Beloved Little Princess (96 chapters)

The Black Haired Princess (107 chapters)🔁

The Boutique at 97th Sheldon Street (26 chapters)

The Crown Princess Audition (80 chapters)

The Demonic Contract (64 chapters)

The Destroyer Fell in Love With Me (71 chapters)

The Duchess with an Empty Soul (100 chapters)

The Duchess's 50 Tea Recipes (143 chapters)🔁

The Duke's 99th Bride (24 chapters)

The Duke's Bored Daughter is My Master (57 chapters)

The Duke's Teddy Bear (54 chapters)

The Dungeon’s Dying S-class Lady (24 chapters)

The Empire's Hidden Hope (21 chapters)

The First Night With the Duke (102 chapters)🔁

The Goddess of Healing (159 chapters)🔁

The Golden Forest (55 chapters)

The Golden-Haired Summoner (100 chapters)

The Grand Duchess of the North Was Secretly a Villainess (21 chapters)

The Handsome Male Lead Won't Let Me Log Out! (35 chapters)

The Heroine Is a Man (36 chapters)

The Lady and the Beast (72 chapters)

The Lady I Served Became a Master (79 chapters)

The Lady Tames the Swordmaster (70 chapters)

The Lady Wants to Rest (43 chapters)

The Lady’s Butler (90 chapters)

The Lady’s Law of Survival (61 chapters)

The Little Lady Tames the Leads (22 chapters)

The Little Landlady (22 chapters)

The Maid and the Vampire (76 chapters)🔁

The Matchmaking Baby Princess (51 chapters)

The Millionaire Divorcee (21 chapters)

The Night Without Shadows (60 chapters)

The Noble Pirate (22 chapters)

The Perks of Being a Villainess (45 chapters)

The Precious Sister of The Villainous Grand Duke (69 chapters)

The Princess is Evil (34 chapters)

The Princess's Doll Shop (33 chapters)

The Princess’s Double Life (42 chapters)

The Princess’s Spaceship (85 chapters)🔁

The Protection of Lariensa Gelinus (90 chapters)🔁

The Real Daughter Is Back (21 chapters)

The Reason Why Raeliana Ended up at the Duke’s Mansion (158 chapters)🔁

The Rebirth of A Tyrannical Empress (103 chapters)

The Remarried Empress (117 chapters)

The Runaway Lead Lives Next Door (41 chapters)

The Second Male Lead is Actually a Girl (16 chapters)

The Stairway of Time (110 chapters)🔁

The Strongest Characters in the World are Obsessed With Me (56 chapters)

The Tyrant Wants To Be Good (32 chapters)

The Tyrant's Sister (121 chapters)

The Tyrant’s Only Perfumer (44 chapters)

The Tyrant's Tranquilizer (37 chapters)

The Villainess Empress’s Attendant (20 chapters)

The Villainess Enters the Game! (18 chapters)

The Villainess Flips The Script! (91 chapters)

The Villainess is a Marionette (54 chapters)

The Villainess Lives Again (95 chapters)

The Villainess Reverses the Hourglass (105 chapters)

The Villainess’s Blind Date is too Perfect (29 chapters)

The Villainess's Road to Revenge (20 chapters)

The Villainous Princess Wants to Live in a Gingerbread House (54 chapters)

The Villain’s Daughter-in-Law has limited time (35 chapters)

The Villain’s Savior (87 chapters)🔁

The Viridescent Tiara (69 chapters)

The Wicked Woman's Daughter (38 chapters)

This Girl is a Little Wild (50 chapters)

This Villainess Wants A Divorce! (118 chapters)🔁

This Witch of Mine (58 chapters)🔁

To a Happy Ending for The Tragic Novel (20 chapters)

To Those Who Long for My Destruction (38 chapters)

Tricked into Becoming the Heroine's Stepmother (50 chapters)

Trophy Husband (55 chapters)🔁

Truthfully, They Only Remembered Her (76 chapters)

Under the Oak Tree (50 chapters)

Untouchable Lady (51 chapters)

Valia, Tribute to Shuden (20 chapters)

Villainess For Hire (32 chapters)

Villainess in Love (95 chapters)🔁

Villainess Maker (72 chapters)🔁

Virtues of the Villainess (82 chapters)🔁

Wake Up, Warrior (53 chapters)

Welcome to Sylvia's Garden (20 chapters)

What it Takes To Be A Villainess (163 chapters)🔁

What's Wrong with You, Duke? (133 chapters)🔁

When I Quit Being A Wicked Mother-in-law, Everyone Became Obsessed With Me (23 chapters)

When The Count's Illegitimate Daughter Gets Married (34 chapters)

When the Villainess Loves (70 chapters)

Why Are You Obsessed with Your Fake Wife? (34 chapters)

Wished You Were Dead (37 chapters)

Your Majesty, I will raise you well in this life (41 chapters)

Your Majesty, Please Spare Me This Time (73 chapters)

Your Throne (126 chapters)

SUPERNATURAL / ROMANCE

A Chance At Last (69 chapters)🔁

Act Like You Love Me! (126 chapters)

Bitten Contract (95 chapters)

Eaternal Nocturnal (60 chapters)

Goodbye, In-Law! (75 chapters)🔁

Marry My Husband (66 chapters)🔁

Operation: True Love (70 chapters)

Perfect Marriage Revenge (95 chapters)

Rewriting Our Love Story (62 chapters)🔁

The Time We Were Young (39 chapters)

Villain with a Crush (Pure Villain) (62 chapters)

ROMANCE

200% in Love (62 chapters)🔁

A Morning Kiss at Tiffany's (52 chapters)

A Business Proposal (106 chapters)🔁

A Step Closer to Your Heart (94 chapters)🔁

Before It's Too Late (41 chapters)

Charming You (72 chapters)🔁

Date First, Love Later (46 chapters)

Day by Day (74 chapters)🔁

Daytime Star (77 chapters)🔁

Faking It In Style (75 chapters)

His Devilish New Hire (73 chapters)

Idol House (71 chapters)🔁

Interview with the Crazy Rich (53 chapters)

Love Lies (83 chapters)🔁

Maid for Hire (43 chapters)

Match Made in Hell (45 chapters)

Maybe Meant to Be (79 chapters)

My Boss's Special Request (38 chapters)

My Ex, Client (47 chapters)🔁

My Far Too Tumultuous Marriage (35 chapters)

My Irresistible Ex (100 chapters)🔁

My Sweet Girl (98 chapters)🔁

Nice To Meet You (67 chapters)

One Step Away From Happiness (30 chapters)

Our Secret Alliance (71 chapters)

Painful, but Desirable (73 chapters)🔁

Positively Yours (80 chapters)🔁

Revelation of Youth (51 chapters)

Secretary Out-of-Order (20 chapters)

See You in My 19th Life (85 chapters)

Sixth Sense Kiss (51 chapters)

Substitute Boyfriend (55 chapters)

The Lady with a Mask (55 chapters)🔁

The Losing Streak (40 chapters)🔁

The Omniscient Point Of View Of An Unrequited Love (83 chapters)

The Pharmacy Where the Wolf Howls (77 chapters)🔁

The Second Lead Syndrome (38 chapters)

Two Steps Away (50 chapters)🔁

Unlovable Replacement (84 chapters)

Wedding Impossible (72 chapters)🔁

What's Wrong With Your Online Life? (31 chapters)

When the Day Comes (52 chapters)🔁

Wished You Were Dead (96 chapters)

Writer's Block of Romance (27 chapters)

OTHER

From Today On, I’m a Boy (68 chapters)🔁

Ice Lamp - The Chronicles of Kira (74 chapters)🔁

I Work at a Witch's Mansion (36 chapters)🔁

I Became a Doting Father (48 chapters)

Level-Up Doctor (29 chapters)

This Is The Law (44 chapters)

#manwha #webcomic #webtoon

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