#are we wizards or aren't we

[skulkie]

releasing all of the mini wizards i drew in youtube videos on this post! more to appear later :)

video 1 [link]:

video 2 [link]:

#this willl be a long post in the future but we aren't quite there yet #transparent pngs also available :) #also not all of these are wizards but. everyone is magic in my heart

[queerlyvictorian]

Okay but somebody has to talk about the way Brennan including an in-world storyteller at the top of the first scene in the first episode of main campaign, vaguely name-dropping world geography and some of the lore on the different casters, is MASTERFUL exposition.

I also can't get what seem to be Umora's version of sorcerers and warlocks out of my brain. Warlocks, okay, making a deal with a spirit makes sense makes sense.

BUT.

SORCERERS BEING THE CHILD/DESCENDANT OF HUMANS AND SPIRITS??

I want. Give me. Give me nowwww. I want a character (NPC or Guest PC) who is the child of a human and a Wild One like Eursulon who lost their spirit nature. I want the product of star-crossed lovers and MORE TRAPPED SPIRITS. The mechanics of that whole process [as explained in the Children's Adventure, Episode 5, not specified here so I don't have to tag spoilers] is so fascinating.

The mark of excellent fantasy/speculative fiction worldbuilding for me? When I can start speculating at the possibilities. When there are so many possibilities that your brain starts to populate the world with unfathomable diversity without that ever being spelled out to you.

#worlds beyond number #no but seriously using the diegetic fascination of children (and Eursulon) to give your worldbuilding a sense of wonder #like it's cool even to the people of Umora #And then the peddler being A BAD GUY??? #And the way I should have known he was bad because of how much he glorified the origin of wizards #People aren't talking about this opener nearly enough #Especially since it's the only Wild One content we got in the whole episode #AND I'M SORRY THE FIVE YEAR TIME JUMP? #Those who listened to WO preview knew that this was in the past #The moment I knew he still had Wave Breaker #But FIVE YEARSSS??? #Not cool Brennan Lee Mulligan #the wizard the witch and the wild one #eursulon #the wild one #queerlyvictorian posts

[adhd-merlin]

ending all my posts with "and I think merlin should get to be weird", in a carthago delenda est kind of way

#it is very important to me actually #I haven’t got to that point yet but #in “the hands of a 100s winters” at some point #arthur tells merlin “you’re just a strange little man aren't you?” (or something) #and merlin goes “is that what you think of me? :)))” #yes. yes this exactly. #author and i agree on quite a few things #we share a vision #not for everything but. quite a few things. #merlin #ramblings #weird wizards rights

[apollo-cackling]

I cannot emphasise enough, if your fantasy world has literal magical creatures and beings and cool monsters and people who can shoot magic out of their hands, and the protagonist's just "guy who's rlly good with [weapon we literally have in real life]", how little interest I have in your book

#berserk is different #my rambles #books #also write in the POVs of the monsters for once. ashton and helen's POVs in twig? I live for that stuff it's fascinating #I wonder if it's bc of this fantasy of like 'even in this world where we have xyz，you，too can still conquer it with sheer grit and practice #no fuck that gimme the wizards with the fuck off cool powers gimme the monster/inhuman POVs #if I wanted bland oatmeal why would I read fantasy #if you wanna go for realism go deadhouse gates/baru cormorant or go home #I kid I kid but also not really #also I'm kinda bored with magic systems/powers that boils down to 'make guy fight gooder' #just in the sense that they fight better and not materially do something whose effects is guy fights better #so like 'magic speed enhancer' vs idk 'summon bright flashes that aren't visible to the user' distracting opponents etc #also kinda bored fights with literal magic in them that come down to ending it with a swordfight #in general I just want magic to be *magic* yk #10n

[darkiecat]

Someone's probably thought of it already but I have a costume idea- I call it the OSHA Wizard

Robes from neon light-reflective material

Steel-toed boots

Wizard belt (consisting of hand tools and other useful stuff, like wands probes)

Hazard sign staff

Traffic cone hat

#wizard #osha #I don't think it would be osha compliant though... #then again wizards aren't meant to conform to human norms and so we have the osha wizard not conforming to standard osha #or IS IT osha compliant? o.O #idk I have a vision but it ain't strong #halloween

[wachi-delectrico]

we shouldn't have let the internet have the phrase "there is no ethical consumption under capitalism"

#rambling #it means that an exploitative system cannot produce goods that aren't in some way funded by the exploitation of the people #and that we shouldn't let corpos and big companies wash their hands off selling ''ethically sourced'' products or green-washing their shit #and that we cannot truly have change happen unless we do something to stop capitalists and their influence #there may not be ethical consumption NOW but if we fight capitalism and its unethical production conditions WE CAN HAVE IT #but NOT by reflexively feeding the capitalist machine #IT DOESN'T MEAN you can just keep buying and supporting whatever you want regardless of its direct or indirect material damage on you #just because you now have this magical sentence to retort all criticisms with #''well there is no ethical consumption under capitalism so i will keep consuming things unethically'' #why can't you instead go ''there is no ethical consumption under capitalism so i will do something about it even if small'' #it's just mindless complacency with a glossy coat!! that's exactly what capitalists want!! AAAA!!!! #if i had a penny for every fucking person i've seen saying that shit about that stupid wizard game i myself would be a multimillionaire #like GROW A FUCKING SPINE #dear goddddddddddd #i'm UPSET!!!! >:c

[boysdontcryboycry]

this post is pretty metaphorical and almost entirely nonsensical. sorry

thinking again about dustin's s2 mindflayer analogy falling apart when hopper asked how to kill it. thinking about how will the wise is a wizard but mike (who is pretty much never wrong about anything) (except for calling el a mage when mages are npcs and she doesn't even really have mage powers she's much closer to a wizard leaping between schools of magic but also manifestationgate 👁👁? cuz this sure descibes her before she broke out of the lab

) called will their cleric. how vecna's curse is literally necromancy in the form of draining a person's life force and how henry should have died from the radiation burns he got traveling between dimensions or disintegrated like jason was by the gate opening in the creel house but didn't because he just necromanced like thirty people. and how the mindflayer isn't actually a mind flayer but a tool and the physical representation of the hivemind that henry is the brain of as the actual dnd mind flayer and so henry is a paradox in that he is both the mind flayer and the undead (lich? zombie? both? who knows!) that can resist the mind flayer's thrall oops i started reading about thralls and having revelations

billy was DEFINITELY a thrall, and will was well on his way before being blasted out of it by the power of love and seventy space heaters. i think the shadow is like a physical representation of the thrall and plugs you into the telepathic network and is also possible to expell Like A Demon so they could do a quasi-thrall that was reversible?

the rest of the flayed in season 3 i think were somewhere between ceremorphs and (reverse?) oblexes? possibly because ceremorphs henry wasn't really looking to make more mind flayers and ceremorphs ? he was just looking to kill? the hive mind. let me be coherent in a different paragraph (although i will say oblexes were introduced just over a year before season 3 came out as the creation of a make-a-wish kid and thus the similarities might've been a happy coincidence)

ceremorphs. illithid tadpoles injected into beings to eat their brains and take over their bodies and either become mind flayers themselves or become some other ceremorphized being that either was a subset of the hivemind to boost psionic ability or to find new victims to become food/members or other stuff idk etc, or in special cases becoming a being powerful enough to split from the control of the elder brain and start their own colony. the flayed in s3 get their faces sucked by tentacles a lot like will in s1, when the tadpoles were first deposited. they certainly look like corpses whose brains are currently being devoured from the inside.

anyway i don't think henry was particularly looking to make more mind flayers at this time partially from his fixation on el and will and also thinking pretty much the entire planet isn't worth it and they don't deserve the power and are better off as food and then as a biomass in his meatflayer that we still don't really know the end goal for? and so their orders were to munch the brains and then destroy the host body! yummy chemicals! the meatflayer ALSO could've been his attempt at literally physically creating his own elder brain. tadpoles plus nutrients plus hivemind shadow particles plus biomass? all the makings of a big ole brain ready to stew in some brine in a deep dark cave with lots of tunnels oh yeah that's why they were digging the tunnels

also btw besides ceremorphs a super rare tadpole will birth a super powerful mind flayer whose job it is to split the colony and move somewhere else and to become a new elder brain :)

and so im gonna black out cuz i can make absolutely anything about rosegate and the mind flayer "deities" ilsensine and maanzecorian just SCREAM rosemary and dick wheeler respectively, bro just trust me (go read their wikis), even dick's glaring abscence from the narrative as maanzecorian "died" and yet survived and his principles still being followed also .

mike wheeler knowing things he absolutely shouldn't check.

so like im convinced there is a (metaphorical?) elder brain underneath the creel house that tadpoled henry on move-in day (running from the bathroom?) and he became a ulitharid and is now splitting off to form his own colony with an elder brain under the library that may or may not be a brainstealer dragon. this bitch tadpoled tiamat

also if time travel is your thing Illithids Are Your Bitches

i completely lost the plot of this post

#virginia was a beholder and thats why henry takes the eyeballs sndnsksjs #this post is absolute dogshit nonsense please enjoy my stream of conciousness #st theories #this was originally gonna be about henry being undead and cleric will with the turn/destroy undead #but then i wasn’t sure if thrall was the right word for what mind flayers did and now here we are #also why would i do anything worthwhile with my time like watch my unending movie list or urnwatch or anything else. four hour rabbit hole. #but yeah i don't think he's Literally a ulitharid and Literally making an elder brain although who knows Gaping Mouth #and rosemary and dick aren't actually illithid deities but It's About The Metaphors. could very well actually be ghosts hashtag shininggate #like el doesn't have many wizard spells but like. her abilities while voidwalking and appearance in the real world screams dnd ghost #i need 2 sleep

[emilyaxford]

i referenced how violet from the incredibles turned invisible when she's shy in my team meeting today and my coworker said (in a complimentary way) that the way i make references is unique because they're really wide-ranging. which a) i don't think the incredibles is that deep a cut, but b) i agree and i think it comes from having older parents (and in my dad's case, him being raised by older parents in turn). bedtime for bonzo (1951) and roll over beethoven (1956) get referenced all the time in my house, usually in relation to my dog, but also my dad keeps quoting the kendall roy "FAMILY THERAPY" line to me recently

#i was trying to figure out what the oldest thing my family references is #i think the looney tunes ones aren't older than bedtime for bonzo #arsenic and old lace was playing a lot in my childhood but i don't think we really reference it? #the wizard of oz comes up a lot but i feel like everyone references that so it doesn't count (same w gone with the wind/casablanca/etc) #i'm also knocking out shakespeare for similar reasons even though i reference two households both a like in dignity all the time #oklahoma premiered in 1943 so it might be that?

[blujayonthewing]

accidentally getting into mixology is dangerous for the kind of person who uses different specific drinkware for coffee vs tea vs GREEN tea and who has a glass she informally but insistently thinks of as The Milk Glass

#I actually also have a ceramic mug that I literally bought because it instantly made me go 'oh that's for drinking milk out of' #and that is pretty much exclusively what I use it for #it's the one intentional exception to my 'glasses for cold drinks/ ceramics for hot drinks' rules #on the one hand I'm not the kind of person to get EXTREMELY granular about this based on other people's made up rules #like... a wine glass is a wine glass I don't need separate ones for different kinds of wine #but did I buy a set of coupes for the wizard's nightcap after thinking about it for literal weeks? yes I did #we're overdue to put our holiday stuff away which includes pretty glassware we got as wedding gifts #and 90% of the time the non-seasonal glasses we have are normal and fine for the things we need drinking glasses for #but I just caught myself going 'oh no we don't own any rocks glasses that aren't wintry 😰' #because that's what the dragonclaw sunset was accidentally designed into and like... that's where it BELONGS #I've also had trouble every time I've ever made a gin and tonic at home tbh... #I've usually just done them in the hurricane glasses but that's not Correct and it FEELS incorrect #you see them a lot of times in rocks glasses; personally I think they'd be prettier in a highball-- but we don't own either :') #the aesthetic is a part of it! tastes better when it Looks Right 😔 #about me #potions

[alextturner]

i still can't believe yesterday night i'm so,,, king gizzard were incredible they were absolutely everything, their performance was unlike any other i've seen, i had yet to see a band keep a mosh going consecutively no matter the song. and not only that but they let me enjoy their entire show from backstage !!! the perspective was fucking insane (also dripping tap as the last track... sheesh). n the best was yet to come cause after the gig we just started talking, got pictures, cavs gifted me his drumsticks i </3 they are everything i'm so so happy they're playing like 5 more times in town this week. what a bunch of fantastic guys :) <3 anyways here's some footage from the night !

#king gizzard and the lizard wizard #elio.txt #despite my awkwardness because for some reason Everybody around in backstage were artists and i was just like. Eee... they were so so kind #joey and stu formally presenting themselves like they aren't the entire reason why i came to this festival i!! and then joey -> #inviting us to beers like oh grab anything you'd like. girl this is your backstage but thank you so much #talked with stu about hashtag gender and he was so so fantastic we hugged :) i don't know ahhh fuck so cool #if any of you ever have the chance to see them definitely do it. what a bunch of incredible people #also ambrose. heart emoji mein gott thank you for the harmonica tips #the pics i took with them are gonna be on my ig story.. secrecy. unless you can find me heh #echoy voice... they know my name.... they know my name

[heartofspells]

Since we're judging food. Here's the tacos we had today.

Is that corn in your taco meat? Actually, you know what? I don't care.

10/10. I approve. No notes given. Tacos are life. I could live off them. and they're far better than hummus

#this is now a food ranking blog #just for your info #along with the music competitions that aren't really competitions because i win #sorry thems the rules lovelies #food and music #along with small hints of gay wizards or not-wizards depending on the universe #we don't judge #except for the food #we judge that hard #britt tag #tw: food

[collectorcookie]

I'm getting so incoherently emotional about the northern twins and white being a ghost.

I wonder if white ever holds snow's hand to feel warmth that no longer exists in his own body. If that's something that would inevitably make snow feel guilty. I think regardless, snow would hold white's hands tighter, maybe apologetically, maybe reassuring.

There is only one chair at the table in their room. Snow says that white doesn't need one, white can just float anyways. But him and white sit on the same chair, together, next to eachother. Is he scared of white disappearing again? Is he holding onto white as much as he still can?

White's corporeal form exists only thanks to snow. White is always haunted by the fact that he can simply fade out of existence again if snow simply doesn't feel like constantly draining his own magic to keep his dead brother tied to the living world and giving him a physical form. But snow never let go. Will he ever be able to? Will he ever process and accept the death of white? Would he have been able to if it wasn't him who killed white in the first place?

White's greatest wish and desire was not being separated from snow, and his biggest fear was, i assume, dying alone. Which leads up in him dying alone exactly in classic self-fulfilling prophecy fashion. At the hands of the one person he never wanted to be separated from, nonetheless. Now they're separated, forever, a whole dimension between them even if snow holds white right next to himself.

Was it the calamity? Was it the spirits? Is it the fate that they keep talking about? It feels too perfectly planned. I feel like they got too powerful for the narrative at that point and had to get knocked down in a way. Of course, they are each other's only weakness. Of course, they match levels of strengths. So if anyone would be their doom, it would have to be themselves, for eachother.

I cannot imagine the narrative going any other way without white dying but god it doesn't make it hurt any less. If white didn't die, oz wouldn't have stopped his world rampage, the rest of the north family who have been immortal and unkillable up until this point would have never been confronted with death, and i think that's pretty significant. Like, yeah, they saw generations of humans die out, they're probably very familiar with death, but never the death of their someone of their own, someone they hold dear.

Similarly, if it was snow who died and not white, i don't think white would have had the mental strength to go against the laws of the universe to try and bring snow back. I know he says that, if murr had approached him instead of snow, then the outcome would have been the same only with their roles reversed, but i don't think that would have happened. I feel like white would have just killed himself after killing snow.

And their crests, oh my god. After white died, snow's magic crest was halved, only one half remaining, the other disappearing. When snow gave a physical form to white, the other half of the crest appeared on white. This really makes it feel like it has been deliberately planned by some entity, in a way.

At last, they became two in one and will never be separated again, while also being always separated by death itself. They're two halves of a whole with one half constantly missing. Nothing will ever be the same again but my god, like that will stop them from reaching out to each other.

In summary, shoutout to snow and white for being in the world's weirdest death limbo, what the hell is wrong with them. Snow looked at "'Til death do us part" and went "this sign can't stop me because i can't read"

#clock if you're reading this i blame you for giving me wizard brainworms /j #And sibling tragedy brainworms. But that's more on the authors cause i feel like there aren't any happy siblings in this game #snow mahoyaku #white mahoyaku #Coly can we get ONE pair of siblings that isn't doomed by the narrative (this is also about rutile and mitile) #I do NOT want to go through another fratricide thankyouverymuch #Every single time it's always the characters with the adorable design that i get attached to #And every single time they always end up having to endure unimaginable horrors #when will i learn

[tossawary]

One of my personal nitpicks for historical fantasy is a lack of servants, staff, subordinates, and... idk... subjects? Like, their absence is not... a total dealbreaker for me, depending on the situations the characters are in and whether or not I can just assume that other people are there in the background... but so many of the protagonists in historical fantasy stuff are higher-ranking (very often royalty), and/or have busy jobs, and/or have enormous houses that would necessitate having at least part-time staff.

Like, girl, you should have a maid! WHERE is your chaperone?! WHO is driving this carriage?! Where are your footmen? Are you trying to imply that a WEALTHY DUCHESS is taking a CAB?! You know that you probably have tenants, right? Where is your steward?! Where is your lawyer? Your accountant?! (Like, yeah, you're not going to have your lawyer living in your house, but you HAVE one, right???)

Or, man, you're supposed to be a military commander and you don't even have a single secretary?! Where is your SQUIRE?! (In the spirit of historical fiction, I am jumping wildly across time periods with every sentence here.) Man, I know you aren't looking after your own boots. Where are your GUARDS?! Who set up this tent for you?! Who is looking after your horse?! Who is making and carrying the incredibly valuable maps people are recklessly stabbing daggers into?!

SOMEONE has to be scrubbing these floors and delivering the mail and cooking the meals and doing laundry, and they're probably all DIFFERENT people! My dentist has at least three different receptionists and we can't even get ONE for our court wizard here? A sorcerer's apprentice to take notes? Someone like Sherlock Holmes could get away with just having a housekeeper and taking taxis, sure, but your character is supposed to be a KING?! Why is he answering his own front door? He's going to get assassinated. His SERVANTS should have SERVANTS.

Like, yes, I understand that a lot of servants in certain places at certain times were supposed to make their labor invisible, but there have always been servants who still had to interact directly with the masters of the house?! Yeah, there are potentially really messy ethics here, class divisions are bullshit, but I don't think that completely ignoring the reality that humans have ALWAYS been doing work for other humans is better than just including some well-paid and well-treated servants and employees? Because a complete absence of them, especially where logically for the worldbuilding there MUST be servants (and probably exploited servants, or worse, for some particular worldbuilds to work), often makes me think that your main characters just don't care enough to notice the "lower class" people or know their names.

Also, even Frodo Baggins had a gardener and Samwise Gamgee might be the best damn character in the story?! Sam saved the world?! Servants are PEOPLE. Servants are often the funniest and most interesting characters, tbh, with the most to say about a society and its workings (yes, Discworld is a very good book series, highly recommend), and also the joke of some romantic scene being carefully orchestrated by a stage crew of servants frantically diving into bushes to stay out of sight never gets old to me. Teamwork makes the dream work!

I don't want to gatekeep historical fiction, especially not historical fantasy, because the worlds don't necessarily have to conform to our own and may have magic and characters are often in very unique circumstances, but... sometimes I pick up a story and it's like... "Author, please tell me that you know there is a difference between a butler and a valet?!"

#tossawary reading #tossawary watching #I don't know what to tag this as #tossawary fandom #long post #where are your servants

[limoneads]

li can't believe the harry potter fandom made ocs. like. collectively. and there are just some super hot guys walking around hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry who jeefkeef rowling didn't make up. objectively hilarious tbh

#checking into tik tok and finding out this was a thing was a trip. wdym there's fuckin voldemorts son here #still don't know who the fucking lorenzo guy is or why he's there #aren't they wizard racists #why are we making the wizard racists sympathetic bad boys with daddy issues. the dracofication of it all

[imnothingbutpoetry]

Saw a jellyfish the size of my head at the beach this morning

Never swam faster in my life before

#i was with mom and just entering the water we saw a small one and we were like okay but carefully into the water #later then we went a bit far away from the shore and let me tell you #let me tell you when i see the biggest jellyfish i have ever seen (the only ones but well) and i just tell my mum and shee sees it #and i just tell my mum and she sees it and we just start swimming towards the sand and to out towels #we swear we touched kt by mistake #like it just appeared next to us like a fucking wizard #but after some time we just returned the water #when we were leaving lots lf tourists were seeing them now some even caught one with a net and we were like #aren't you afraid of the sting or something??? #so... yeah #fun beach day #my rants #rant #little rant #beach #jellyfish #mediterranean

[stormsthatrage]

It bugs me that so many people's default example of published fanfic is 50 Shades of Grey.

What about West Side Story, a famous modern AU of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet?

What about Dante's Inferno, a self-insert RPF if I've ever seen one?

What about Wicked, a pre-canon AU of The Wizard of Oz?

Hell, what about Percy Jackson? There's definitely an argument to be made that that's a modern AU of various Greek myths.

Humans have been writing fanfic as long as they have been telling stories. In about the year 20 BC, our dear Roman poet Ovid wrote the Heroides, a series of aggrieved "letters" from the female characters of famous myths to their respective male heroes. Are you telling me that Ovid, writing a letter from the perspective of Queen Dido to Aeneas -- Aeneas, whose fantastical adventures were put into poem by Virgil -- wasn't writing an outsider-POV fic? A fic that is, in fact, translated in Latin classes world-wide today!

There is so much famous fanfic out there, but people tend to forget that it is fanfic once it becomes mainstream enough. And as a consequence of that, people who aren't into fandom don't see how beautiful fanfic is, and some members of fandom feel shame associated with writing and reading fic. But fanfic is beautiful, and it is something humans have always done, and it is nothing to be ashamed about.

So if you ever find yourself in a situation to give an example of published fic, think outside the box. Remember that published fanfics hide in plain sight; once they're famous enough, we no longer think of them as fanfic. And never forget that fanfic is a very, very old human tradition, and your ancestors who partook in it would not have wanted you to feel ashamed of it.

#my soapbox