I love the thought of a pre-tadpole Durge X Gortash relationship dynamic where, instead of JUST being incredibly toxic, Gortash actually made them a (marginally) better person.
I am just obsessed with the idea of Faerun’s antichrist being swayed not to begin a fucking APOCALYPSE out of sheer admiration for a certain tyrant.
And I love that tyrant becoming worse when he realizes that the Scion of Bhaal himself will kill for him. Anyone he wants. He has but to say the word.
That would go to Gortash’s head SO fast, I can feel it.
Especially when he realized that, more than killing, he could convince Durge NOT to kill.
TELL ME that man would not get a big ego when he told the SCION OF BHAAL “Don’t kill this person, the plan works best with them alive” AND THE DARK URGE STAYS THEIR HAND.
He would KNOW that their oath not to harm him is in direct opposition to Bhaal’s plan.
At the end of the day, Gortash is worse for having known Durge because of the INTENSE ego boost of having Bhaal’s Scion love him.
And at the end of that same day, The Dark Urge, Bhaal’s Chosen World Ender, chose Gortash over the apocalypse.
Which makes it INCREDIBLY juice if, after the Death of Gortash, Durge decides to take the world for Bhaal after all.
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It is telling that when Katniss is supposedly trying to be distant from Peeta in the first half of CF, there are two specific instances where she notes she’s in a state where her inhibitions are lowered and she worries about things she might say or do around Peeta. First, is under the influence of sleep syrup when she hurts herself and the second is after she gets drunk with Haymitch when the QQ is announced.
“A side effect of sleep syrup is that it makes people less inhibited, like white liquor, and I know I have to control my tongue. But I don’t want him to go.”
“My head’s spinning from the drink, and I’m so wiped out, who knows what he could get me to agree to?”
These aren’t instances that tell us that Peeta is a danger to her in some way while she’s in these states - because there’s absolutely no world in which Peeta takes advantage of her like that. But it reveals to us a lot about where she herself is in regards to Peeta. For all her talk of choosing Gale and the rebellion, she knows she’s harbouring feelings for Peeta, feelings she can’t even fully say to us the readers. She knows that with her inhibitions lowered around him, she’s emotionally vulnerable to him. She knows she has to restrict herself from saying/doing certain things, or even seeing him altogether because seeing him in that state? She’s a goner.
It’s that whole notion of “drunken words are sober thoughts.” In the first encounter, she’s the most physically affectionate and essentially needy (!) with him that she’s been since the victory tour and since her conflict over the rebellion/Gale’s whipping. All the restraint she’s been trying to have, the flimsy wall she’s tried to build comes crumbling down. She asks him to stay repeatedly, she holds his hand to her face and takes in his scent. And that’s her while she’s trying to be in control. So it’s a good thing she doesn’t at all go to see him the second time because she’s fully drunk then. And considering that when they meet the next morning, she’s disappointed that he’s not comforting her with hugs and kisses, I can imagine how a meet up between those two that fateful night would’ve been.
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The Wolf and The Witch
Part 1/?
Steve knows better than to enter the Witchwood. He’d been warned from the time he was a child, back before the wolf, that it was home to its namesake. And not just any witch, a dangerous one. One that had killed an entire hunting party, unprompted, with the flick of a finger. None who have entered those woods since have ever returned.
Steve knows better than to enter the Witchwood, but he doesn’t have a choice. Robin is slumped over his back, hands clenched tightly in his fur, clinging desperately to consciousness. He can feel her blood, warm and sticky, matting the fur of his back. His own gait is slowed, every step jolting the silver teeth digging into his right hind leg and sending sharp pain shooting through him. He’s not sure how much longer he can run, and he can hear them - the bloodthirsty cries of the townsfolk dead set on his murder.
They had been found out. So many cycles of living in this town, living among its residents as a friend and neighbour, and still they’ve all turned on him. Of all the times for it to happen, too. It was the moon he had agreed to make Robin a wolf. She had already been weakened from the wolf taking hold when they had been attacked, the silver already a weakness but her body not yet given over to the strength of the wolf.
Steve wishes he could take her to Nancy, knows Nancy would help despite everything, but the townspeople have blocked them off, funneled him in his blind panic. His only hope is to lose them is the wood, but even then he might lose Robin to his own fumbling medical knowledge.
But first, he has to get away from their pursuers. Steeling himself with a deep breath, Steve enters the Witchwood.
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Eddie is no stranger to people trying to do him harm. It’s been a constant in his life from the time he was a child, long before his gifts had awakened. And one that had- well. It’s been a constant of his life, sure as the cycle of the moon and sun. So he notices the prickle of someone entering the woods, but he gives it no regard. It happens a few times a year, that someone gets it into their heads that they will be the one to kill “The Witch of the Woods”. None ever even make it to him, losing themselves in the enchanted trees.
These trees are older than him, and their magic is their own. They like him and welcome him among them, but otherwise are hostile to outsiders. In the beginning, he had tried to help those who became lost in the woods, but those days have long since passed. Despite what his uncle says about his soft heart, Eddie’s become bitter and jaded and he no longer pays any mind to those who venture into the woods.
But this time, something is different. Eddie feels the disturbance of someone crossing into the forest, feels the shift of magic as the forest warps around them, and it’s… different. The ways and paths of the trees are second nature to him, he can tell by the shimmer of magic against his skin which paths have been revealed and which hidden away and this…
The forest is being lenient, gentle. The interlopers are shown the ways to peaceful places, soft and danger-free. Eddie can recall only a few times that the forest has been kind to intruders, and it has almost exclusively been to children.
So he’s more than curious already when he feels the buzz of more people crossing the boundary into the woods. A lot more. And Eddie realizes that this hunt is not for him.
The trees are not so kind this time, opening its twists and turns like a maze, a trap for anyone foolish enough not to turn back immediately. They don’t, of course. They never do. Eddie pays them no mind, drawn instead by curiosity to the two that are being pursued.
He steps between the trees, slipping into a space that’s folded away between reality, picking his way with ease through paths that are there and paths that are not until he emerges at the edge of a small clearing, moonlit and mossy. Theres a tiny spring-fed pond and there, limping toward it, is a wolf. It’s huge, the size of a small bear, with a strong frame and thick russet fur.
It notices him at the same time as he notices it, and it’s massive head swings to face him, teeth already bared in a snarl. It’s hackles raise, and it turns fully, squaring up, a threatening growl rumbling across the little clearing to him.
Eddie steps back, already gathering his power until it glows around him with dark energy, because this is no normal wolf. Even without the size and the silver trap clamped around its leg giving it away, he can see it in its eyes, feel in its presence that this is something more.
He recalls his childhood, the warning tales at his mother’s knee. He remebers later, freshly chased out of town and taken in by his uncle, watching as the old man leafed through his ancient book and warned Eddie that he wasn’t the only dangerous thing in the wilds. Eddie has no doubt that he’s come across one of those dangerous things now. He looks at the wolf and knows exactly what he’s seeing.
A werewolf.
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Can we hear some of your Brain farts about green screen please?
OF COURSE
This AU is in a squishy stage (read: I am open to suggestions) and not everything is set in stone, but I do know one thing for sure: lil April is a conspiracy theorist.
She spends a lot of her free time doing baby detective work because it was fun, "cracking cases" like who stole the pizza boys delivery bike!
She starts reading up on conspiracy theories / checking the paper for any ongoing investigations and most of what she comes across doesn't need investigating, theres always one theory ppl agree is right.
Until she finds out about the Lou Jitsu conspiracy. The celebrity who vanished for over ten years without a trace and returned with strange children.
Not. One. Person can agree on this. There's like a million different explanations and none of them fit! April. just. it sucks her in so fast and this girl is NOTHING if not stubborn.
She digs and digs and digs and the crazy thing is: she solves it. April correctly figures out what happened via paying attention to small things, and also being a child that can accept things like "theres a magic city under NYC" girly GOT IT! But of course no one believes her.
If only she could prove it...
Rest of AU: First, Second, Fourth
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