flowersoftheknight

[flowersoftheknight]

"I would kill for you. I would die for you" would you take a break for me? Would you sit down and rest? For a day, a week, a year? Would you let others take care of your needs for me? Would you let yourself be held for me? By me?

[flowersoftheknight]

Alice Te Punga Somerville, Always Italicise: How to Write While Colonised - Kupu rere kē

[flowersoftheknight]

The more I watch stuff the more I realise my most hated trope is writers not committing to the bit.

If you make a tragic death scene for a beloved character. Have them be fucking dead. I don't care about it otherwise.

If you make superpowers. Make superpowers.

If you wanna discuss heavy subject dunk your body into the goo because by god it will be gnarly and you better commit. Nobody will be fully happy but it will be truthful.

Commit to the bit or don't write it at all.

Also the "it was all in the characters head" stuff sucks and should be either properly set up or not done at all.

Stories don't leave impact if you don't commit and follow through.

[flowersoftheknight]

Do you ever wanna bond with someone so bad you’re like “damn i wish we were knights on a dangerous quest”

[flowersoftheknight]

cant stop thinking about how love is stored in the kitchen. when somebody cooks for you or you make food for somebody that’s the purest corner of the heart that gets on the plate

[flowersoftheknight]

There is *some* justification for this in the RPG books - namely, he also builds ties with the Northern Water tribe to strengthen the Navy with some of their tech, building sexism in the military.

And struggles with Air Nomad influences, including on his openly queer sister, so you *can* read it as "outlawing air nomads indirectly", playing off of rising sexism in especially the military/Navy due to cultural influences.

...I personally still like the "He was gay for Roku, and did the laws as a sort of public overcompensating so the accusation wouldn't stick" headcanon...

It's actually so weird when Avatar fans that didn't read the comics see that one panel of Kya II talking about Sozin outlawing same-sex relationships and they're like "they really made him homophobic this is bullshit"

Man they live in a semi realistic world where we see war, colonialism, literal genocide, sexism, child abuse and characters with PTSD treated in an extremely realistic way but you draw the line at the one of the biggest pieces of shit in the franchise who wanted to colonize the other nations and wanted everyone to be like him being also homophobic? Lmao

[flowersoftheknight]

the ten commandments

thog don't caare

if it sucks hit da bricks

play the cards i'm given

pobody's nerfect

this mess is a place

fuck it we ball

it's so over

we're so back

what if the world was made of pudding

there is good in every day

[flowersoftheknight]

[flowersoftheknight]

[flowersoftheknight]

Fantasy stories should have more "what do you mean you don't do X" things in compare and contrast of cultures. Like the differences between peoples aren't the stuff they show off as "These Are Our Culture :)" things, fucking everyone has food and music and folk tales, but the things they've always assumed that everyone has, and are baffled to discover that they don't.

The people who are always barefoot are baffled that humans don't have a wash basin at their front door where people can wash their feet before stepping inside?? Do they just walk in with their dirty feet? The fuck do you mean you take your shoes off?

Humans don't have small baby-sized spellbooks for toddlers who just learned to read, so they can safely learn to practice tiny cute and harmless, age-appropriate magic spells before progressing to more mature and demanding spells? What, do they just throw teenagers completely unprepared into the arcane - hold the fuck up, is that why human sorceror mortality is so fucking high?

Dwarves who have always wondered why the entrance to human residences is so fucking big, why do you need to take up such a large area for a door that's just there to lead downstairs to the underground halls? Are the timber walls really as thick as a human is tall? What for? And once one of them gets invited to a human house to stay and rest, nobody ever fucking believes her: That's not the entrance, that's the whole fucking house. 100% of the human house is aboveground, there is no tunnel to the underground levels. They might have a single storage room down there, but the aboveground section is so fucking big because that's the whole house.

This post was brought to you by: People who butter their bread and who had no idea that there are people who put mayonnaise on their bread, and people who put mayo on their bread and had no idea about people who put butter on their bread discovering that the other kind of people exist.

[flowersoftheknight]

You've heard of Earth is space australia now get ready for: Earth is the space Amazon Rainforest. Aliens land on Earth and they are losing their goddamn minds because every square inch of the ground is absolutely PACKED with life like there are hundreds of species just in this one site, there are winged animals flying through the sky and multiple colonies of sophisticated social insects just in the shadow of their ship, this ONE ROCK is covered in MULTIPLE SPECIES OF ORGANISMS that are themselves MULTIPLE ORGANISMS LIVING SYMBIOTICALLY, the tall, woody autotrophs look so different from each other because they're...holy shit that's like 5, 6, 7???? different species on this one site???

they start talking to a human and the human is like "haha yeah that's a crow!" and the alien researcher is like "you called it a 'bird' earlier, is that a different name?" and the human is like "oh a crow is just one species of bird, there's like, 10 others out there"

"On this planet?"

"No, in the back yard right now."

[flowersoftheknight]

"Disaster Taxon," poem assembled using text from Wikipedia articles

[flowersoftheknight]

The goblin looked at the orc. The orc looked at the goblin. They both looked down at the crumpled shape of the Overlord, His Unholy Majesty, in his obsidian armor.

His final spasms had been mesmerizingly acrobatic. The fall down the steps leading up to his iron throne had pretzelled his body quite impressively, both arms folded behind his back and one leg bent at a jaunty angle.

The goblin looked at the orc. The orc looked at the goblin.

"Shit," said the goblin.

"Shit," said the orc.

"We're likely to get blamed for this," the goblin said. She walked over to the head of the glittering mangled heap and started pulling the helmet off.

"It's not our fault," the orc said. "It's hard to help someone choking when they wear two-hundred pounds of spiked armor at all times."

"Yeah, well," the goblin grunted. The helmet came free, and the bald head of the Overlord bounced on the stone with a hollow, coconut noise. "You know how it is in this bloody country - thieves get their heads cut off so they can't think about thieving, and all that." She fished in the Overlord's mouth with a finger and pulled out the obstructing olive on the end of her claw.

She popped it into her mouth and chewed. "What do you reckon they do for a regicide?" she said.

"We should run," the orc said. She had started bouncing her leg. "I hear that there's some places in the Alliance where they just kill you and let you stay dead. That's got to be nicer than what'll happen if we stay here."

The goblin started to nod - and then her gaze fell on the helmet.

It looked like a pineapple designed by a deranged blacksmith. It was all thorns and spikes and hard edges, as though the maker had been very determined to not let pigeons roost on it. The only bits that weren't solid iron were eyeholes. Nobody had ever seen the Overlord's face.

She held up the helmet and squinted from it to the orc. One of the thorns had been bent badly in the fall.

Nobody had ever seen the Overlord's face...

"Right," she muttered. "Right. Could work - or."

The orc had a sudden vision of the immediate future. "No," she said.

"I mean you're about his height-"

"No."

"It would just be for a-"

"Absolutely not."

"Just hear me out," the goblin said. "Outside of this room are two-thousand men and orcs and goblins who are absolutely gonzo about this man, and there's a whole country of them outside of the castle, and at any moment someone's going to walk in that door and see one dead tit in black armor and two unbelievably dead idiots next to him.

"Or." She tossed the helmet up like a basketball to the orc, who fumbled and tried to find somewhere to hold it that wasn't a knife's edge. "We chuck him out the window now, walk out the door in the armor, and ditch the armor as soon as nobody sees us."

The orc had started bouncing her leg again. "They'll know something's up the second I walk out of the room."

"No worries," said the goblin. "Leave that to me."

---

It had been a very strange year for the Empire.

Change had rolled across the land as slow and inevitable as a glacier. Roads and bridges carved the gray, blasted wildlands, and a number of social reforms had made the country a place where you could be miserable, yes, but miserable in comfort and safety, and that was an improvement.

Barely anyone got boiled alive in molten metal, and even if the disgusted sun never rose to light the Empire, at least you had a roof over your head to protect yourself from the acid rain.

"Your empire flourishes, Your Unholy Majesty," the magician said over her wine glass. She looked down from the tower's balcony over the gleaming stone battlements. Some work had been done to line the castle and surrounding city with sizzling, crackling alchemical lights at night. The whole thing glowed like something dangerously radioactive.

The suit of armor waved a languid, glittering gauntlet over to the goblin, who bowed.

"His Abominable Gloriousness Thanks You," the goblin recited. "The Prosperity Of His Empire Can Only Be Achieved Through The Prosperity Of His People."

"If I may be so bold, I am quite pleased that you had chosen to take my counsel under consideration," said the magician. "We have accomplished many things together."

Another wave. Another bow. "The Overlord, May His Presence Swallow The Sun And Stars, Thanks You As Well."

"It was quite gratifying to see you change your mind, after so many centuries of denial." The wine was swirled. "Tell me, what was it that finally gave you cause to listen to me?"

There was the slightest hesitation. The goblin's eyes flicked to the armor, then to the magician. She puffed out her chest. "Do you question the wisdom of His Austere Lugubriousness?" she asked.

The magician looked at the goblin. She looked at the armor. She tipped her head back and drank the wine too quickly.

She looked back at the armor. "I know you're the orc, you moron," she said.

The room went deathly still. An alchemical light fizzled.

The orc pulled off the helmet, sending long, untied hair down tangling, and said: "How could you possibly-"

"Because you're both idiots!" the magician said. The goblin jumped. The orc jumped with a noise like a dropped stove. "What kind of a plan was this?! If it wasn't for me, you would have been turned into fertilizer months ago."

She closed her eyes. She took a long, dramatic breath. She set the wine glass down on the balcony rail.

"How did the Overlord die?" she asked when she seemed like she had gotten a hold over herself.

"Choked on an olive," said the goblin.

"Threw his body out the window," said the orc.

"You don't have to mention the window," said the goblin.

"Right," said the orc. "Sorry."

The magician looked out over the city, hand curled thoughtfully under her nose. "Who knows about this?"

"Just us. And, uh. You. Apparently."

"And why did you accept my counsel?"

The orc blinked. "Sorry?"

"Why did you accept my counsel?" the magician repeated.

"Well," the orc said. "Well - you seemed like you had good ideas-"

"Great ideas!" the goblin said with an edge of desperation. "Don't know why the old bastard didn't listen to you!"

"Right - right," said the orc. "And when we figured we were stuck doing this - well, it just made sense, really."

The magician seemed to absorb this. She nodded. "All right," she said, striding between the two and grabbing the crystal decanter.

"Um," said the orc. "Sorry. What happens now?"

"What happens is that you two will continue to serve as Overlord," said the magician. "You will continue to take my counsel. We will continue to reform this bloody country, and gods willing, we will turn it into the crown jewel of the world by next Midwinter."

The orc looked at the goblin. The goblin looked at the orc.

"Really?" the goblin asked.

"Oh yes," said the magician. "I've worked hard to be counsel to the Overlord, and I have no reason to stop now. And besides-"

She looked the orc up and down with a deliberate slowness, poring over every microscopic detail, eyes tracing over every jagged line, and grinned like a panther.

"You look much better in the armor than he ever did," she said. Dark robes swirled like a becleavaged thundercloud, and she strode out through the high iron doors, decanter in hand.

The goblin looked at the orc. The orc looked at the goblin.

"Shit," said the goblin.

"Shit," said the orc.

[flowersoftheknight]

butch fatale

[flowersoftheknight]

mutuals i am. placing a very small very friendly baby dragon . in your hand :]

[flowersoftheknight]

[flowersoftheknight]

[at a meeting of the Clan Champions]

Crane Champion: So does anyone have any pressing issues facing them or their clan

Crab Champion: Are any of you motherfuckers going to help us fight the Shadowlands. Please there is so much shit in there

Crane Champion: No