#elf scar: the most important guy ever

[parrotgrian]

THE mattress store

#elf scar: the most important guy ever #gtwscar #goodtimeswithscar #hermitcraft #hcs9

[skelletors]

MCYT as D&D Characters 6 - Scar

Well. The ending of Secret Life sure was something, huh?

Hello one and all and welcome to this very strange series where I turn various MCYTs into playable D&D characters! This was originally going to be someone else, but in light of recent events I decided, hey, I should dedicate this to the S-Tier player himself, GoodTimesWithScar.

A few ground rules for this thing:

This will not be balanced and the builds may not be very good. This isn’t for the minmaxers (not that there's anything wrong with that), this is purely based on either stories these people have participated in or their overall persona on the internet

These characters will go up to level 20, but in no way do you have to play them to the max level to get all the mechanics that make up the character

There will be little to no homebrew in these builds, just for my own ease of use.

I will be using standard array for all of these characters (15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8) when determining the stats for these characters, also for my own ease of use.

Character Traits to Emulate

Conman extraordinaire

Jellie

Somehow always a wizard???

No thoughts head empty

Race, Class, Background and Stats

Race: Half-Elf (There were a couple options for Scar, but I decided on half-elf as a sort of compromise between his depictions as an elf and the fact that Scar has the most “just a guy” energy.

Ability Score Increase: +2 to Charisma, +1 to two other stats (We’ll go Dexterity and Constitution)

Darkvision: You can see in the dark! Not super important for the character, but pretty useful

Fey Ancestry: Advantage against being charmed and you can’t be put magically to sleep

Skill Versatility: You can have proficiency in any two skills. (It doesn’t matter what you pick, but I’ll chose Persuasion and Intimidation)

Background: Charlatan (In nearly every server Scar has appeared on, he has been a liar or a con man or a salesman. This is perfect for him!)

Proficiencies: Deception, Sleight of Hand, Disguise kit, Forgery kit

Class: Bard 20 (I debated on Ranger or Bard, but I decided on Bard because Scar is not wise. I’m sorry, he is the least perceptive, least insightful man I’ve ever seen. Obviously said with love.)

Stats:

Strength: 13

Dexterity: 12 + 1 = 13

Constitution: 14 + 1 = 15

Intelligence: 10

Wisdom: 8

Charisma: 15 + 2 = 17

An important note: Considering that Scar is a disabled content creator and has shown positivity towards his disability being incorporated into fanart, I find it very important to add that this build works in tandem with the Combat Wheelchair by Sara Thomson. While I don’t normally go into homebrew, mostly for my own sanity, this is a well-made piece of homebrew and as such, I feel it’s important to link here while making a D&D character based off of a wheelchair user. I won’t be touching on this further, as any upgrades that can be made to the wheelchair are based on how much money a party has, rather than level.

Level 1: Bard

Bardic Inspiration! You can inspire your allies and give them an extra die a number of times equal to your Charisma Modifier

Spellcasting! I’m not really going to focus on this, but at the end I’ll list some key spells for Scar. If I remember lmao

Level 2:

Bardic Inspiration! You can inspire your allies and give them an extra die a number of times equal to your Charisma Modifier

Spellcasting! I’m not really going to focus on this, but at the end I’ll list some key spells for Wilbur

Level 3:

Subclass time! Potentially the best time. Or at least a good time. Regardless of the quality of the time, one thing that is undeniable is that it’s time for Scar’s subclass. The subclass, of course, being…

College of Glamour! Coming straight at you from Xanathar’s Guide to Everything, College of Glamour bards focus on deceiving and trickery and are as flamboyant as the Feywild, where they often originate. Sounds very much like Scar, and in previous characters, Grian did also originate from the Feywild…

Mantle of Inspiration - As a bonus action, you can use one of your Bardic Inspiration die to give a number of creatures equal to your Charisma modifier within 60ft who can see you 5 temporary hit points. They can also use their reaction to move without taking opportunity attacks.

Enthralling Performance - If you are able to perform for at least one minute (singing, performing a poem, dancing, etc) you can select a number of creatures equal to your Charisma Modifier within 60ft of you who paid attention to your performance. They make a Wisdom saving throw, and on a failed throw they are charmed by you after an hour. The creature is not aware of being charmed or you attempting to charm them.

Expertise! You get double proficiency with skills you are already proficient in. We’ll go with Deception and Persuasion

Level 4: Bard

Ability Score Improvement. Let’s add a +2 to Charisma, for hopefully obvious reasons, bringing Scar’s Charisma score up to 19

Level 5: Bard

Bardic Inspiration Improvement. The die you use is now a d8

Font of Inspiration: You regain all expended Bardic Inspiration after a short rest

Level 6: Bard

Countercharm: You can play a tune to give any allies within 30ft advantage against charm effects

Mantle of Majesty - As a bonus action, you can cast Command without expelling a spell slot and take on the appearance of someone beautiful for one minute or until concentration on your spell ends. A creature charmed by you automatically fails it’s saving throw against the spell and once you use this feature, you can’t use it until you finish a long rest.

Level 7: Bard

Nothing happens here, just more spell slots

Level 8: Bard

Ability Score Increase! We’re taking a Feat now, we’re gonna go with Fey Touched. This gives you a +1 to your Charisma, Wisdom or Intelligence, we’re going with Charisma bringing you to 20. You also learn Misty Step and another 1st level enchantment or divination spell.

Level 9: Bard

Song of Rest buff! It’s now a d8

Level 10: Bard

Bardic Inspiration buff! It’s now a d10

Expertise: You can get expertise in two more skills! I’m not sure what would be fitting, maybe Arcana and Sleight of Hand

Magical Secrets: Hey. Hey you. Sad that Bard doesn’t have Counterspell naturally? Now you can have it! You can choose two spells from any spellcaster. These spells count towards your known spell and have to be within your spell level, but aside from that, the world is your oyster! You could also get Find Familiar and get your very own Jellie familiar!

Level 11: Bard

Again, nothing happens here other than more spell slots. But who’s complaining about more spell slots?

Level 12: Bard

ASI Time babyyyyyyyy. We’re gonna grab another feat, this time the Actor feat. This gives you a +1 to Charisma as well as giving you advantage whenever you’re pretending to be someone you’re not. Like maybe a certain pirate on a certain pirate server. Also, your Charisma is now 21. Amazing.

Level 13: Bard

Song of Rest is now a d10!

Level 14: Bard

Remember what I said about Magical Secrets above? Yeah, do that again.

Unbreakable Majesty - Your appearance permanently gains an otherworldly appearance, like that of the fey. Along with this, as a bonus action, whenever a creature tries to attack you for the first time on a turn, they must make a Charisma saving throw vs your spell save DC. On a failed save, they cannot attack you and must attack someone else. On a successful save, it can attack you but has disadvantage on any saving throw against your spell next turn. This lasts for a minute and you can only use it once per long or short rest.

Level 15: Bard

Bardic Inspiration buff! It’s now the big, beefy d12. Oooooo. Ahhhhhh.

Level 16: Bard

ASI Time baby! We’re taking yet another feat, and this time it’s the Lucky feat! It’s undeniable that Scar is a very lucky person, and this feat gives you three free rerolls every long rest, either a roll you make or an attack made against you. I’m pretty sure since death saving throws are saving throws, this effectively gives you free rerolls to not perma-die. Pretty useful, considering how prone to death Scar tends to be.

Level 17: Bard

Song of Rest is now a d12

Level 18: Bard

Magical Secrets. See above Magical Secrets.

Level 19: Bard

Here we are, the final ability score improvement. We’re taking one last feat, and that’s the Shadow Touched feat. You can add a +1 to Charisma, Intelligence or Wisdom, obviously we’re going for Charisma. You also learn invisibility and another 1st level illusion or necromancy spell, and there are some fun ones out there. Even at higher levels, upcasting 1st level spells can be powerful. This also bring’s Scar’s Charisma to a monstrous 22. That’s a base +5 to every Charisma check you make, not factoring in proficiencies and expertise.

Level 20: Bard

Superior Inspiration: Whenever you roll initiative and you have no more Bardic Inspiration die, you regain one use. I still think this is a lame capstone ability, but whatever. The rest of this has been insane, we can be a bit lame.

Key Spells:

Cantrips

Vicious Mockery

Friends

1st Level

Disguise Self

Silvery Barbs

Speak With Animals

Find Familiar

Charm Person

2nd Level

Crown of Madness

Gift of Gab

3rd Level

Counterspell

Hypnotic Pattern

4th Level

Charm Monster

5th Level

Seeming

Modify Memory

Dominate Person

6th Level

Mass Suggestion

7th Level

Project Image

Mordenkainen’s Magnificent Mansion

8th Level

Mind Blank

Dominate Monster

9th Level

Wish

And with that, we conclude yet another one of these! Feel free to request more CCs to D&D-ify, and I truly hope that you enjoyed this. I put quite a bit of thought into this, and I got to look into both a subclass and a gamestyle that I don’t normally go for.

#mcyt dnd #myct #dnd #hermitblr #gtwscar #goodtimeswithscar #honestly the feywild desertduo parallels make me go insane #but i really cant get into it right now #d&d character

[entishramblings]

It’s Not That Bad [Legolas X Reader]

A.N: I’m so sorry I have not been writing as often. I’ve had zero time. But anyWaYS...here is a fic that has been requested by someone who has always been into my writing so thank you for supporting me and here is a fic for you! Additionally, I did some research on herbs and stuff so I could make this at least a little accurate!

Request: @quilledinkpen — Hellooo i hope you're having a good day ^-^ I was wondering if I could request a Legolas x reader? Something like she's travelling with the fellowship and is kinda the unspoken "mom" of the group, like she's always doing her best to make sure everyone's safe, and reminding Pippin and Merry to be careful and stuff like that. Just an all-around motherly person lol (mainly to the Hobbits bc they're her babies but she looks after the other guys too) I think it'd be cute ^^ Thank you!

Pairing: Legolas X Reader

Summary: (Y/N), a healer, travels with the fellowship. She takes care of everyone and is basically “the mom friend.”

Word Count: 2, 510

Warnings: battle wounds that are kinda graphicish?

(gif not mine)

MASTERLIST

(Y/N) was a well known healer throughout all of Arda. Many traveled to her for treatment for life threatening ailments. But now, now it was her time to travel throughout the lands of Middle Earth in search of a salvation for all. A gruesome quest to destroy the evil ring of power had begun and someone well versed in natural apothecary was needed. (Y/N), of course, volunteered for this role for there was no one better suited than her. Besides, it was her duty to contribute to the survival of this world as she was one in it and relied heavily on what the earth produced. And if Sauron was to rule.....well, we all know where that would lead: no earth, no life, just darkness.

(Y/N) ruffled through her dark-brown leather satchel as she sifted through her healing herbs. Little pouches filled with athelas leaves, echinacea stalks, alder bark, valerian roots, and more piled inside the confinements of the fabric.

“Sam,” She called out. “Would you mind making hot tea for Frodo while I take care of Strider’s cut?”

The little hobbit ran over instantly and she passed him a couple pouches naming each one out loud, “Valerian root, dried chamomile pedals, and sycamore bark.” She then lowered her voice and leaned it, for it wasn’t anyone else’s business to hear. “It will help him sleep and deter the anxieties the ring bestows upon him.”

Sam nodded quickly and set to work as (Y/N) moved towards Aragorn who sat upon a large rock.

“Let me have a look.”

The dunedain rolled his eyes, “(Y/N), it is not that bad. Just a scratch.”

The young women sighed in annoyance and pulled up his sleeve to reveal a slash across his bicep. He was right—to an extent—it wasn’t terrible. He would not need stitches. However, it did need to be cleaned and wrapped for infections were nasty things.

(Y/N) started by pouring some alcohol over the wound; receiving a harsh hiss from the dunedain in response. She muttered a quick apology before continuing. The young woman ground athelas leaves into a fine paste and expertly smeared it onto the cut. She then unrolled gauze and placed it upon the wound. Lastly, she pulled white dressings from her satchel. She gingerly wrapped it around his arm, yet she was careful to still pull it taught as the goal was to keep the athelas paste in and bacteria out.

She stood up and brushed her hands off before placing them firmly on her hips. “See Strider, it takes only a couple minute.”

He grumbled at her comment but thanked her for the medical attention.

(Y/N) nodded quickly and went to check on the rest of the fellowship. She made her way to Boromir who was also sitting in rest. She put a gentle hand on his shoulder.

“Boromir, how are you doing? Any wounds?”

He seemed slightly startled at first for his mind had been elsewhere, but he looked up at her with a soft smile.

“I’m quite alright, My Lady.”

A light chuckled escaped her lips. “My friend, how many times must I tell you? It’s (Y/N), no lady of any sorts!”

He shook his head and grinned at her, “Well, my lady, I am doing quite fine.”

She let her eyes circle into the back of her head as the corner of her lip pulled into a smirk.

The healer turned and made her way to Gimli who was sharpening his axe.

“Gimli, I trust you are alright as I see you are already preparing for the next battle even though we just endured one.”

His gruff voice answered immediately, “Aye lassie! Those orcs can’t ensnare a dwarf that easily!!”

She laughed at his comment as Merry and Pippin came rushing up to her. As soon as she saw their faces she knew that the two mischievous hobbits wanted to claim her attention. She lowered herself down to their height as they flung themselves into her arms.

“Ahh my two hobbits! How did you fare in the battle?”

They pulled from her hug and began speaking at the same time.

“It was intensely scary but we were fierce!”

“Merry had hit one with a tree branch! It was quite magnificent!”

“Yes it was, I would have to admit! And Pip tripped another and he fell flat on his face!”

(Y/N) beamed at the two and giggled at their attempt to tell the story. As much as she was focused on caring for everyone, the hobbits cared for her—in another way that is. The four of them brought joy to her heart and glee to her spirit. Their innocence and appreciation of the simplest things brought happiness to her soul. They had offered her a welcomed visit to the shire at any time; telling her of the grand tour they would take her on. She had grown to look upon them as children for their smallness and way of perceiving life was similar so.

The two scampered off quickly, most likely to share their adrenaline filled story with Boromir, while (Y/N) did a final scan of the fellowship.

Her eyes soon rested on the elf. Legolas was off to a distance standing upon the rocky tundra. Something about his posture made her frown. His back was to her and his head seemed bowed, as if he was looking down at something. Furthermore, his one arm was pulled up at an awkward angle—strange, even for the elf. As the healer that she was, she was compelled to check on him.

(Y/N) weaved through the rocks until she was only a short distance from him.

“Legolas?” She questioned softly.

He immediately whipped around. His shirt fell to cover his form, but not before (Y/N) caught a glimpse of bright purple, red, and black. The young woman’s lips instantly parted in shock. She had seen many wounds in her life, on many people of many different races. However, it was not often that she had an elven patient with a wound like that. To state it simply, (Y/N) was worried—that looked bad, very bad. Legolas on the other hand was only flustered for he, an elf, had gotten snuck up on. He did not have great concern for the injury given that there were far more important things to worry about.

“Legolas,” (Y/N) stated firmly. “Lift your shirt.”

He sighed, “(Y/N), it’s not—“

She interrupted him, “Let me guess, ‘It’s not that bad?’” She shook her head, “You and Strider.”

She stepped forward and took the hem of his shirt in her hand. She cautiously lifted the fabric, not caring about the socially deemed scandalousness of the action—she was a healer after all.

(Y/N) sucked in a breath. A relatively large bruise stretched across his torso with a sizable cut in the center of it.

“By the Valar, Legolas!” She exclaimed with exasperation. “You should have come to me straight away!”

“(YN)—“

She cut him off again, “No. don’t ‘(Y/N)’ me. This is serious. It could be internal bleeding. I don’t care that you are an immortal elf, you can still die from this.”

The healer gently let her fingertips brush against his skin, tracing and examining the injury. He winced in pain at the contact and that did not escape (Y/N)’s attention.

“How did this happen exactly? I need every detail.”

Legolas groaned again when she grazed over the cut; and when he spoke it was with heavy breaths, “A harsh kick to the side into another orc....” (Y/N) hand pressed on the bleeding laceration and he hissed in pain before continuing to speak. “...who—who slashed downward.....with a jagged-edged blade that had a—a curved tip.

(Y/N) looked up at him with concern, his breathing was getting labored and that was not a good sign. Not a good sign at all.

“Alright, come on.” She ordered. The young woman practically dragged the reluctant elf back towards the group and pushed him down on a rock.

She knelt in front of him and, once again, ruffled through her satchel.

“Take your tunic off,” she commanded while pulling out various pouches and gauze dressings.

(Y/N) could feel all of the fellowships’ gazes on the two, which only intensified when Legolas removed his tunic. She could hear the hobbit’s hushed whispers and concerned tones for the wound was gruesome and ugly—probably the worst they have ever seen considering their simple lives.

Once she had all her supplies ready, she set to work.

(Y/N) was kneeling in-between Legolas’s legs while she studied the torn up, bloody, and bruised fresh for yet another time; it was imperative that she made a plan before starting.

During this examination, the young woman could not help but let her eyes wander across his chest and rippling muscles. The bends and curves of his form looked perfect against his pale complexion. He was incredibly toned and well built, even more so than humans. She would be lying if she said she wasn’t attracted to him.

Additionally, battle scars of various shapes and sizes littered his body—which was expected given he was over 2,000 years old. Here, she took a moment to study them for if one really looked at a warriors scars their fighting style would be revealed. Many stretched across his being—specifically on his ribcage, sides, pecs, and abs—it was clear that he was way more reckless than he would like people to think. He was fast with his moves, going for the quickest way to an oppenent’s death, but that often left him exposed. No wonder he ended up with this terrible bruising gash. He lived up to the Mirkwood elf expectation—less wise and more fierce.

As (Y/N) realized that her mind had wandered too far off task, she cleared her throat and reached for the flask of liquor.

“This will sting,” she stated before pouring it over the broken flesh. As expected, a loud groan escaped his lips and his fists clenched around nothingness.

Carefully she dabbed the area with a cloth. (Y/N) then threaded a needle and began to sew his skin back together. The elf was stiff as he clenched his jaw and flexed his muscles—a natural reflex in this kind of situation. She continued to pull his skin taught so their was no more breakthrough bleeding. It seemed that he had gotten used to the sensation as she went given he began to relax. Next, she made a paste for the wound, much like Strider’s. However, she decided to use more than athelas leaves because this cut was more severe than the Ranger’s. (Y/N) ground up echinacea stalks and mixed in alder bark to soothe inflammation and fight infection. Gently she applied the blended mixture into his torso. Lastly, she wound gauze and dressings around his midsection in order to keep everything in place.

Much time had past given stitches took long; luckily, the fellowships’ concerned glances faded.

(Y/N) stood up from her position and it was then when she released just how close the two were. She stood between his legs, their faces inches apart. If it was anyone else, she wouldn’t have cared for she often had to be in such proximities with others as she was a healer. But this wasn’t anyone else, it was him.

“You—you should be fine now,” (Y/N) whispered. She cleared her throat and stepped backwards. “I will have to check on it every day and redo the bandages. And I advise you: no sudden movements, and no lifting heavy objects—like the hobbits.”

Legolas cracked a smile at that last comment. “Thank you, (Y/N). I truly appreciate your skill.”

“That is what I’m here for, is it not?” She adverted her eyes and kept her hands busy by gathering her supplies for she feared her expression would betray her.

Legolas put his tunic back on as he spoke, “I suppose it is, but nethertheless I thank you.”

......

As the days went on she continued to check Legolas’s wound. (Y/N) tried to make it more private by dragging him off to the side or away from the group, given that she suspected it was uncomfortable for him to undress everyday in front of inquiring eyes (aka the hobbits).

It was dusk when she crouched down to examine it once again.

“It is healing nicely,” She said. “A lot faster than I suspected, but I suppose that is because you are elven.” Her nervousness caused her to continue speaking when she did not wish to do so. “I mainly treat men....and dwarves. It is not often that I have a wounded elf at my door. Do you know an elf named Feren? I recall he said he was of Mirkwood Kin. I treated him once years ago for a busted leg when he strayed into northern territories.”

A small smirk crossed Legolas’s face, “Ahh so you are the beautiful healer who patched him up so well?”

(Y/N) felt heat creep up her face, “I—I would not say that—“

“Nonsense! He spoke of your beauty and skill many times, and he was not mistaken. I am just surprised that I have been lucky enough to gaze upon you and have you heal me.”

These words made (Y/N)’s gauze wrapping motions falter. “It—it is my job, Legolas.”

“Yet you go beyond your assignment and duty everyday. I see how you take care of us all, especially the hobbits. You truly have a noble heart.”

(Y/N) smiled softly and spoke in a teasing tone, “Well I suppose you are right—all you boys would be lost without me.”

A deep chuckled hummed in Legolas’s chest and the healer joined in with a bright laugh.

The giggles settled soon enough and Legolas spoke, his sentence quite abrupt. “How would you feel about coming to Mirkwood and living there as a healer once the ring is destroyed?”

Shocked, (Y/N) stuttered. “I—I am unsure. I don’t know if—“

“(Y/N)...” He interrupted. “I do not wish for the end of this journey to be the end of our acquaintance.”

The young woman looked down, “As I agree, but—“

“(Y/N),” he whispered.

Something about his tone made her freeze.

Ever so gently, he lifted her chin to force her to look at him. His voice was quiet as he spoke, “I—I don’t think you understand what I am trying to convey.”

Oh....

Now she understood.

The healer glanced at his lips which hovered near her own before biting her bottom one and locking gazes with him. Legolas of course noticed this and waisted no time. He pressed his mouth against hers and she instantly responded. Her hands slid up his bare chest, careful to avoid the wound on his torso, and then tangled themselves in his blonde locks. His muscular arms wrapped around her waist tightly as he focused on the taste of mint tea and fresh honey. The two moved their lips in sync and the world around them melted away. Suddenly, there was no quest, no fellowship, no responsibilities—only the two of them and the thudding of their hearts.

.......

Everything Tag: @sokkasdarling @scxundress @quilledinkpen @hufflepuffinblr @lea----b @aredhel-of-gondolin @princecami @the-fandoms-georgie @jazziwritestolkienprimary @wellfuckmyexistence

Legolas tag: @dark-angel-is-back

If you want to be tagged lmk!

#lord of the rings #lotr #the hobbit #legolas #Legolas x reader #Legolas x you #Legolas x (y/n) #Mirkwood #LOTR fanfic #Legolas fanfic #Legolas fic #Aragorn #merry and pippin #samwise gamgee #frodo baggins #hobbits #lotr fanfic #boromir #the fellowship #legolas drabble #legolas imagine #legolas imagines

[weasleydream]

The day the world stopped breathing

Hi guys, how are you all? I’m so sorry it took so long, but this is my participation to @masterofthedarkness​​ writing challenge! Sorry for being so late hun, but once again congrats!!!!

The prompts were “I will protect you with my life.” and “The world stopped breathing that night, he’s/she’s dead because of me.”

As usual, feel free to like, comment, reblog, and enjoy!

Masterlist 

(gif not mine) 

Y/F/C = your fav colour 

“Harry James Potter, I swear to Merlin you’re not going to leave me in the dark!”

Since the end of the school year a month ago, Harry had been acting strange with me. Always avoiding my gaze, avoiding questions, avoiding being alone with me… As much as I was hurt - because who wouldn’t feel so bad when the boy you love ignores you? - I knew something was wrong and it was terrifying me. When asking Ron and Hermione,the only answers I had were stupid excuses preceded by embarrassed glances.

But now, with the preparation of the wedding and just all that happened around us, I felt Harry drifting off more than he had ever done before and that was truly scaring me. 

“Y/N, listen, I just can’t tell you, okay?” His tone was almost pleading, as if he wanted me to stop arguing because it was paining him or something like this. 

“But why?” No matter how hated was this tone for me when it came from his mouth, this time I wouldn’t let go of him before knowing what he was preparing. “Harry, I would do anything for you, you know that, right? When the time comes - and Merlin knows it’s closer than ever - I will protect you with my life. Might as well know why, don’t you think?” 

And as usual at this point of the conversation, the anger came. 

“I don’t need you to protect me!” screamed Harry. “All I want is you to be safe, and you certainly won’t be if you come with us!”

“I don’t need you to protect me either.” I hissed, kinda pissed off to see that after all I had gone through with him, Ron and Hermione, he still didn’t believe I was strong enough to help him. “And Ron, and Hermione, don’t you want them safe too? Harry, whether you like it or not, I’m coming with you. You tell me where you’re going to go, what you’re going to do, or I discover it by myself. Just keep in mind it might be too late.”

And I felt my heart shattering a bit more when Harry gave me his back without a word and left the living-room. 

From this point, I knew there was no way him, Hermione or Ron would tell me anything. I decided I would always keep at least one of them in my sight and that I would stay ready to follow them at any moment. My worries were slowly consuming me, and I found it harder and harder to sleep at night. Instead, when I was lying in my bed during the darkest hours of the night, the worst images invaded my mind, all of them awful guessings of what Harry would do during the second he would leave. The only way I had found to ease my mind was to think that he wouldn’t leave before the wedding, and that it let me a few days to find a way to convince him. 

°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°

Third POV

“I hate having to keep her far from me.” muttered Harry, his hands playing with his old Gryffindor scarf, the one Y/N had given him back a week ago after having borrowed it for almost a year. 

It was late at night, but he was unable to sleep. If he had known Y/N wasn’t sleeping either, he would have probably gone to her by now. However, he was still in Ron’s room, the latter sitting next to him and lost in his own thoughts.

“I know mate, trust me I don’t like it either. But you don’t want anything happening to her, and her going back to Hogwarts with Ginny is certainly the safest thing she can do right now.” replied Ron, patting absent-mindedly his friend’s shoulder. 

In fact, he didn’t fully understand why Harry refused to let Y/N come with them. He wasn’t oblivious enough not to realize he was in love with her, but in Ron’s opinion, the best way to make sure someone was safe was to stay with them. 

“I just hope she’ll understand.” Harry’s voice didn’t contain this lassitude he had felt during the last months anymore, but it was replaced with sadness and it wasn’t better. “She’s furious, she doesn’t understand she’s too important for me. I mean, if Hermione and you had let me the choice-”

“Which we didn’t do.” 

“-I would have left on my own. This is too dangerous.” said Harry, glancing at Ron who was looking at him with a quite unusually extremely serious expression. 

“You’re the boss, mate. Just know that if I were you, I would do anything for Y/N to stay next to me.”

“Yeah, you know what it feels like, don’t you?”

Ron’s ears became red, along with his cheeks that seemed to be burning. Harry smirked, thinking for a second that when all would be over, his friends and him could make the best double dates ever. 

Harry didn’t want to do this this way. Leaving Y/N without warning her, not saying her goodbye whereas he was leaving for his most dangerous adventure, not telling her how he felt about her. He had planned to talk to her, to persuade her to stay behind, he wanted to tell her how he loved her and how he needed her safe, but the Death Eaters that suddenly intruded the wedding decided otherwise. 

As the guests were running in all directions, most of them screaming and even forgetting how to use their wands, as the members of the Order were trying to protect them, Harry found Ron and Hermione and grabbed their hands. He threw one last glance at Y/N, who was fighting with all her capacities against a Death Eater. He fought the urge to join her, almost screaming in his own head that it was better like this and that she would eventually forgive him. 

“Harry?”

Hermione’s voice came in his ears through the screams and the noises of destruction. It was the most painful thing to do, way more terrible than any Cruciatus spell, but Harry nodded and the world around him disappeared. During the following months, an image would stay engraved in his mind, and a question would haunt his mind. Never would he forget the sight of Y/N bathed in a green light, her eyes meeting his through the distance at the very moment he was disappearing. Never would he stop wondering if this green flash of light he had seen had hit her or if by the biggest miracle she was still alive. 

“Family safe, do nor reply, we are being watched.”

The weasel disappeared in the darkness that surrounded Harry, Ron and Hermione who were now in Grimmauld Place. The last echoes of Arthur’s voice were still resonating in their ears as Ron dropped onto the sofa, Hermione immediately at his side and whispering words of comfort. However, none of them seemed to have caught the ounce of pain Harry had heard, and none of them never imagined Arthur could have lied. But Harry couldn’t make the image of Y/N disappear, nor could he stop fearing maybe she wasn’t as safe as Arthur had said. 

“Harry, you don’t have to worry about her, she is okay.” said Hermione who left Ron’s side to gain his. She put her hand on his shoulder. “Y/N is okay, and she’s with Ron’s family. She’ll be safe with them.” 

“They’ll protect her.” added Ron. “She’s as much a part of the family as you and Hermione are.”

The reassuring words of his friends were nothing for Harry, nothing except poor attempts to persuade him of something that seemed unreal for him, and he would have been grateful if only he wasn’t that worried, and if his scar wasn’t that painful. 

“Bathroom.” he muttered suddenly, before leaving and succumbing to the terrible rage of Lord Voldemort. 

Back at the Burrow, where the Weasleys were trying to process what had just happened, almost all eyes were turned toward the window through which the silver weasel had left to find Harry, Ron and Hermione. No one said anything, the heavy silence being only disturbed by light sobs coming from Fleur’s mouth. Ginny was next to her, slowly stroking her back, and next to Ginny were Fred and George with their eyes lost in the emptiness. Arthur was still standing in the middle of the living-room, his arm firmly wrapped around Molly’s shoulders. 

“She was just a child.” whispered Bill before getting up from his kneeled position next to the couch. “Dad, don’t you think Harry deserves to know?”

“It would put them in danger.” muttered Arthur. “The time will come, but for now they need to accomplish their mission.”

His eyes followed Molly’s and fell on Y/N’s body, pale and lifeless on the couch. 

°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°

From inside, Bill was watching Harry digging furiously, slowly sinking in the sand to make by himself a last house for the elf that had saved him. 

“How can we tell him?” he muttered and Fleur, who was fussing over Hermione, stopped for a second. She clenched her hands in fists before looking away from Hermione’s gaze. 

“Tell him what?” asked Ron, taking a step toward his brother and following his eyes. 

Only silence answered him, and he exchanged a glance with Hermione. Both were fearing the same thing, this very same obsession Harry had had since the second they had left the wedding. 

“Bill… Where is Y/N?” Ron finally asked. 

Bill’s shoulders tensed, Fleur sniffled, and no word was needed. Hermione opened her mouth in shock, barely containing a scream by putting her hands on it, and Ron froze. 

“How the hell did that happen?” he whispered, not trusting enough his voice to dare speak louder.

He had to stay strong for Hermione, who was already so weak and broken, and soon he would have to be strong for Harry too, because he would be the one telling his best friend the girl he loved was dead. 

“At the wedding. She was surrounded by too many Death Eaters and…” 

Bill never finished his sentence, and Ron shut his eyes, fighting the image of Y/N, a girl he had been friend with since his first year at Hogwarts, dead on the floor. A soft hand brushed against his arm and without even opening his eyes, he engulfed Hermione in his arms. She was crying, her tears were soaking Ron’s shirt and her shoulders were shaking. 

“I don’t understand…” he breathed. “Dad said our family was safe. Why? Bill, why did he lie to us?”

“He didn’t want you to put yourself in danger. You couldn’t take any risk, Ron.”

“And Christmas? When I came here, you told me everything was fine!”

Ron ignored Hermione’s whispers begging him to calm down. He was infuriated, not because his family had lied to him but because Harry still had hope for Y/N. He had been scared for her, of course he had been, so many times he had imagined the worst, but he still thought he would have another chance to see the girl he loved. And now, after having lost Dobby, after having lost Sirius and Dumbledore, he would have to face the loss of Y/N. 

“I know, Ron, I’m sorry. Trust me, I am!” exclaimed Bill. “I didn’t want to lie to you, but I had to. I had to.” he repeated with a small voice before looking back at Harry. 

After having helped Hermione to sit back on the couch, Ron left the cottage without a word and, followed by Dean who had patted his shoulder, he joined Harry. As they were digging, Ron was thinking about the best way to tell Harry she was dead. 

“Is there even a good way to announce something like that?” he muttered underneath his breath. 

Dean glanced at him but said nothing, and Harry didn’t even hear him. He was focused on his task, and after having asked how Hermione was, he had stayed perfectly silent. He didn’t even look up when the others arrived, in fact only Luna’s voice made him react. They prepared Dobby, offering him last presents before burying him. 

Bill and Fleur left first, the latter helping Hermione who was still weak. Dean and Luna left a few seconds later, holding hands and looking one last time at the grave. Only Ron stayed, trying to gather enough courage to speak up. Harry was sitting on the floor just in front of the mound. Ron sat next to him and surrounded his knees with his arms. He sighed once, twice, shifted and sighed again. Harry was completely oblivious to his presence, his gaze was lost in the emptiness, fixing a point just above the grave. Ron sighed once more and dropped a few words with a low voice. 

“Y/N has been killed. At the wedding. I’m sorry, Harry.”

If there was a part of his heart that was still complete, Harry felt it break as soon as Ron spoke up. This little part of himself which had always seemed warmer than the others, this tiny part that seemed to grow up so much whenever Y/N was next to him, this part of his heart was now in a million of pieces as small as the grains of soil underneath his body. He didn’t say anything, his throat was too tied to let any word out. But he was now blinded by his tears, tears that were rolling down his cheeks like they had never done before. Ron put his hand on his shoulder but Harry didn’t react, silently addressing Y/N useless apologies, useless because nothing would ever bring her back. She was dead, dead because he had left her, because he had been too selfish to take his responsibility, dead because Death Eaters had barged in during the wedding. All of this was because of him. He had lost his parents, he had lost Sirius, Dumbledore, Hedwig, Dobby and now Y/N. 

“Harry, I know what you’re thinking. This is-”

“It’s my fault. I know it. I should have protected her.” whispered Harry, his heart hurting a bit more at the thought that he had given up on her. 

“No, Harry, no! You couldn’t know what would happen, none of us could! Listen, I know-” Ron didn’t know if he would be able to control his voice longer, his own grief and the pain of seeing his best friend in such a state of sorrow threatening to make him break down too.

“You don’t know, Ron!” Harry exploded, looking up to his friend with the most broken expression that had ever been seen on his face. “You are wrong, I could have killed her and it would have been the same! The world stopped breathing that night, she’s dead because of me! Because of me Ron! She said she would protect me with her life, and I said she couldn’t do that- why did she protect me? Ron, why did she protect me? Y/N shouldn’t be dead, she had so much more to live! Why?”

And Harry’s voice broke under the weight of his guilt, and he sobbed loudly without caring a second about what Ron would think. Because he knew that his friend would have felt the same if he had been in his shoes, because the pain was so strong he just couldn’t ignore it. Because Y/N had been so important to him, she would always be so important, he would always love her so much, that the least he could do for her was to cry and scream under the stars that maybe, just maybe, would tell her how much Harry was sorry. 

#vals300challenge #Harry Potter #harry potter imagine #harry potter imagines #harry potter x reader #harry potter x you #harry potter x yn

[moved-to-void-kissed]

Secrets in the Springs

Document link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WDYCocrod_P7bcyH9DIaacjpIXv9I8r-UEkdmWANdxw/edit?usp=sharing

Sapphire, Pyra, Mythra, Nia and Poppi spend an evening relaxing together in Mor Ardain’s famous hot springs, where a couple of secrets begin to reveal themselves. In the process, Pyra makes an important decision. (1650 words) Replaces the XC2 cutscene “Secret in the Springs” from the start of Chapter 4. Content warning for some description of an old significant physical injury.

Tag list (use this to be added to it!): @softskiesahead | @dragonsmooch | @thatslikesometaldude | @lilacslovers | @insomniaships | @goldenworldsabound | @setzale | @candyforthebrain | @elf-and-a-heart

This is a piece I originally posted to my old blog, but I’ve updated it slightly to reflect some changes to the storyline and figured it would be good to post again! Don’t worry, it’s mostly much happier than the previous writing I posted here - especially once you get to the end, hehe~

Reblogs are appreciated, but by no means required! Comments should be on, and there’s also a transcript of the document under the readmore!

The sandstorms from earlier in the day had thankfully settled down - the evening was still very warm, but a soft wind drifting through Alba Cavanich made the heat much more pleasant. Behind the inn that rested on Smùide Mountain, the group had taken the opportunity to relax in the local hot springs - Rex and Tora had gone earlier in the evening and appeared much more refreshed for the experience, but now it was the ladies’ bathing slot, and all of them were eager to spend the evening enjoying a relaxing bath together.

Sapphire in particular was not used to the arid conditions on Mor Ardain’s Titan, given that her homeland within Uraya was a much more subdued and watery kingdom, so she also relished the opportunity to try out the hot springs. By the time she had gotten ready, Poppi was already happily playing about in the springs, while Nia had her back to the entrance and only her head was above the water. Finally, Sapphire tentatively poked her head around the corner of the changing room, so that it was all that could be seen from within the baths themselves.

“It’s just us here, right?”

“Yeah, don’t worry!” Nia turned her head to smile, though Sapphire did think she looked somewhat nervous. “The inn seemed pretty much empty when we first got here, so I don’t reckon anyone else’ll be coming in.”

Poppi nodded in agreement. “Probability of interruption from other people very small. Therefore, is perfect time for all to enjoy springs together. The water very nice temperature, even for Poppi!”

“Hang on.. Should you even be in the bath?” Nia had turned back to face the mechanical girl, and was now looking at her with a tilted head to show confusion. “Won’t you rust or something?”

In response, Poppi shook her head and kept smiling, eyes bright as ever. “There no problem. Poppi made from special alloy. No rust or need for oil!” The faint orange glow of her leg joints was visible even through the water, showing that she was kicking them back and forth in her usual manner.

Sapphire smiled at this, only to then jump when she realised Pyra was standing right behind her. Except it wasn’t Pyra - where she expected to see kind red eyes instead lay cold golden ones, and the familiar short bob of red hair was replaced by flowing blonde strands.

“Wh- Mythra?!”

“Yeah?” She looked unamused.

“Sorry, mate, you really startled me there!”

Wanting to give Mythra some space, Sapphire stepped out from behind the entrance to the changing room into the proper springs area, prompting Poppi to look surprised and Nia to turn around because of that. Although she still had a towel around her body, the other girls could now all see several swathes of what looked like very old grazes on Sapphire’s arms and the backs of her legs. They seemed to have healed, yet still appeared somewhat serious.

“Wait, what happened to you?!” Mythra was first to speak up, sounding more worried than she ever really had. Her usual short temper still shone through, however - she seemed almost annoyed for not noticing the injuries beforehand.

“Oh, these?” Sapphire raised her arms halfheartedly, looking somewhat embarrassed. “Don’t worry. These are just left over from.. how I got to Uraya. Don’t worry, most of it’s all healed up by now. So nothing’s going to mess up the water or anything, I promise.”

There was a silence.

“..I guess I never told you guys about that, huh.”

“No, you didn’t. Not that I was awake for, anyway.” said Mythra.

“You don’t ‘ave to tell us if you don’t want to, though.” Nia added. “Only share what you’re comfortable with.”

Sapphire nodded. “Thanks, Nia. Um.. this isn’t exactly the place to go all in-depth about that kind of thing, so, ah.. I’ll just say that, from what I know, my parents and I were on a ship crossing the Cloud Sea when it capsized and got washed into Uraya’s Titan. A bit like you guys did, I guess, though there was.. a lot more of an impact. Honestly, I don’t even know how I managed to stick around long enough for Dad and his mercs to find me on one of their checkups.”

“Oh.. Are you sure you’re okay? That must have been hard..” continued Mythra, still looking worried. There was a flash of glowing energy, and suddenly Pyra was stood in her place, looking even more concerned.

“I’m so sorry for what happened to you, Sapphire! Nobody should have to go through such a horrible thing..”

“Pyra, please, I’m fine! It’s okay!” Sapphire said, a little too suddenly - quickly realising her mistake, she hastily tried to recover: “I- I really appreciate that you care so much, but, I promise I’m fine. Come on, let’s just enjoy the springs together.”

As she turned around to put her towel on the rocks behind her before lowering herself into the blissfully warm water, the true extent of Sapphire’s injuries became clearer - the old grazes were nothing in comparison to the massive streak of half-healed scar tissue covering most of her back and shoulders. Parts of it seemed to somehow reflect the low light from the torches and the glow of Poppi and Pyra’s Core Crystals, as if there were tiny specks of something shiny in there.

Nia’s worried expression had returned. “Saph, that really doesn’t look good.. You sure you’re alright?”

“Yes!” She still seemed slightly on-edge, but being in the water was clearly very relaxing for her. “I already said, it doesn’t really hurt. I’ve had all this for as long as I can remember; it’s just how I am. Trust me, it was a lot worse when I was little.”

“Poppi worried about Sapphire..” said Poppi, sounding sad. The stillness of the water and the glowing lights visible under its surface showed that she wasn’t playing about anymore.

“Aww, it’s okay, Poppi!” Sapphire turned and smiled at her again. “I’m fine, honestly!”

Pyra still wasn’t convinced. “You’d tell us if you weren’t, though, right..?” She crouched down at the side of the water and reached over to take Sapphire’s hand in her own.

“Of course I would, silly. Come on in, the water is amazing..”

This made Pyra feel more at ease, and she happily took the chance to sit next to Sapphire, who in turn was all the more grateful to be able to enjoy Pyra’s natural warmth in close proximity. Another silence then settled, though this one was much more natural, and the girls were able to take the time to properly enjoy the heat of the water and relax in the hot springs.

Eventually, never the quiet one, Poppi had something to say.

“Poppi has question for Nia.”

“Huh?”

“Why does Nia have-?” The artificial Blade’s inquisitive tone was quickly interrupted by none other than Nia herself, who at this point was almost entirely submerged in the water.

“Oh, I know what you’re gonna say, I think. Don’t- don’t worry about it.”

At this point, Mythra returned, automatically shifting away from Sapphire as she turned to face Nia herself. “I had noticed, too. It’s true, then, that you’re..?” She trailed off, not knowing how to properly word her own question.

“Mmm.. yeah.”

Mythra nodded. “Do you want us to keep it a secret?”

“I was.. a little bit embarrassed about all this, but.. Yeah, if you could, that’d be grand. Not like I could hide it here when it’s this dark, anyway. As long as you guys are all okay with me being here, then-”

“Of course, mate!” “Poppi is fine!” “Why wouldn’t we?”

The chorus of reassuring voices brought her an incredible comfort.

“Thanks, guys.”

==========

Later that evening, once everyone had retired to their rooms for the night, Mythra noticed within herself that Pyra seemed nervous.

“Something wrong?”

“What? No! I mean.. We share memories, so you’d know if something was wrong, surely?”

“I guess that’s true. But, you seemed like you were coming to a decision of some kind. And I mean, I don’t really wanna pry if I don’t have to.”

“Haha, thank you for that.. And, you’re right about the decision. So, um, Mythra - what do you think about Sapphire?”

“Uh.. she seems pretty nice? But she isn’t someone you want to make angry, given how mad she was at Malos and Akhos. I wasn’t awake yet for all that time you two spent journeying through Uraya, so this was kind of the first time I’ve gotten to interact with her properly. I can’t say I was expecting you to get into a relationship, but.. You two make a good fit for each other, even if she is a little more energetic than you tend to be.”

“You really think so?”

“Wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t.”

“Ah, I suppose you’re right.. Sorry!”

“Why’d you ask that, anyway?”

“Well, it’s just, um.. It was so great for me to know that she’d be able to come with us after we left Uraya. I know she’s probably still worried about Vandham, but.. if his injuries have really been patched up as well as they seemed to, then he should recover without too much of a problem, right?”

“Yeah, Nia said Dromarch was able to get him stable once I took Obrona out and the ether came back.”

“Right, that was it. And, um.. Since we’ve been here in Mor Ardain, I’ve been thinking about something, and.. after that time we all spent together tonight, and being around her like that, I think I’ve figured it out. Sapphire is the person I really want to be with, for the rest of my life. ..However much longer that even ends up being.

I have no idea how I’m going to go about it, but..

I think I’m going to ask her to marry me.”

#a call from the void #creations from the void #selfship #selfshipping #love: fire of the aegis (pyra) #selfship: to our own elysium (pyra/sapphire) #self‑inserts #self‑insert: gem of garfont (sapphire) #and also featuring #daughter: poppi power! (poppi) #familial F/Os #friend: light of the aegis (mythra) #friend: catgirl solidarity (nia) #friends from alrest #platonic F/Os #ask to tag #this post is okay to reblog! #all my original posts are but sometimes I know people look for tags specifically so there it is #most of my stuff prior to now has been posted at about midnight and that seems to work well so I might schedule a reblog for about then #I just wanted to make sure I got this on this blog ^-^ #xenoblade selfshipping

[letmetellyouaboutmyfeels]

#if you ask I will write a whole goddamn essay on Boromir #and why his death means more to us as we get older *whispers* babe I want the essay

Why must you always enable me I love it never stop. So. Wow. Where to even start. I rant through my tears about how much I love Boromir every time I watch Lord of the Rings, which I do about once a year with @captainofthefallen. Every time I watch it, his death means more to me, hits me harder, and I think that’s because the older we get, the more we identify with Boromir.

Here’s the thing. In all honesty, as a kid (I first read LotR when I was eleven, first watched the films at that age as well), I wasn’t too fond of Boromir. Oh I liked him all right, he was fine I suppose, but I didn’t connect with him. I was angry when he tried to take the One Ring from Frodo, and I cried a little at his death because death is sad and I was a kid, but it didn’t devastate me.

Because as a kid? I wanted to be Aragorn. The reluctant king who rises up and does the right thing, always. The guy who gets the amazing (be still my bi heart) Arwen, the Evenstar, fairest of the elves. The guy who literally kicks ass. The man who is noble, honorable, thoughtful, good with his words, humble, knows the burdens of leadership, who stands up and says there will be a day when the courage of men fails, but this is not that day.

I wanted to be the hero.

I noticed this trend among my peers growing up. We all loved Aragorn and wanted to be him. Boromir was sort of dismissed.

But then a funny thing happened, called getting older.

I got older, and I fucked up.

I got older, and depression hit.

I got older, and the weight of societal expectations, of being an older sibling, of adult responsibilities, of legacy, of family secrets, of family history, all settled on my shoulders.

I got older, and I learned that men are not always honorable, or kind, or humble, or the leaders they should be. And I learned how hard and desperate it is to continue to believe in the strength of men.

I got older, and I learned how temptation comes for us all, in different forms, and how we hurt people without meaning to, and how sometimes for all our regret and tears and apologies, we cannot mend what we broke.

I got older, and I leaned what it is to be forced into a role I didn’t want, to feel I’d hit a dead end, to struggle against those who had different views, to feel like people could look into my heart and see the anger and fear that I tried so hard to hide.

I got older, and I realized: I’m Boromir.

We’re all Boromir.

Tolkien was very deliberate with his characters. They aren’t just characters, flawed and wonderful though they might be. They also each represent something very specific. Aragorn represents the Ideal. The hero that we all can be, the hero that we should strive to be, the vision of mankind as we are supposed to be, if only we can let ourselves shed our hubris and our doubts. Aragorn represents who we should be.

Boromir represents who we are.

Flawed, frustrated, burdened, tempted, struggling, setback, good intentioned, afraid, angry, kindhearted, noble, loyal, and painfully, beautifully human.

Boromir went to the Council of Elrond reluctantly. He shouldn’t have gone. Boromir is a war leader, as we learn after his death. He successfully fought for and defended Gondor from Mordor for years. That’s where he belongs. Faramir is the quiet one, the diplomat, the “wizard’s pupil,” the soft-spoken and patient one. Note that even in the film version, which shows a differently characterized Faramir than in the books (Tolkien heavily based Faramir on himself), Faramir only wants the One Ring in order to give it to his father and win his father’s pride and affection–he doesn’t want it for himself.

If Faramir had been at the Council and Boromir had stayed in Gondor, everything would have gone differently, and possibly for the better.

But the Steward of Fuckwits aka Boromir and Faramir’s father decides he wants Boromir to go, to represent their family, because Boromir is the son he values and is the “face” of Gondor. So Boromir sets aside what he wants, and he goes. And the whole time he feels out of place, feels like a fish out of water, feels second to Aragorn, feels lost, feels terrified his city will fall while he is gone, feels like the race of Men is being mocked and looked down on as weak.

How many of us as we grow up are stuck like that? We can’t fix our family (although we try), we can’t fix our broken country (although we try), we can’t get rid of the doubts and fears that whisper to us (although we try), and we can’t stop feeling like we’re constantly second best, constantly failing, looked down on, especially the millennial generation.

(Given what’s happening in the world right now, I wouldn’t be surprised if Tolkien found himself surprisingly similar in outlook and feeling to our generation. But that’s another topic.)

And of course that’s the key. Boromir–darling, frustrated, stuck, fatally flawed Boromir–is so very relatable because he tries. He tries to teach Merry and Pippin to protect themselves and then tries to save them and dies for it. He tries to convince Aragorn (who at that point is more elf than man in his outlook) that there is no reason to give up on his people, their people–and he succeeds in that, although he dies before he gets to see it. He tries to make his father proud. He tries to apologize when he fucks up. He tries and he fails, and he tries and he succeeds. And the most important things he does, the biggest seeds he plants, he never sees them flower.

Like my God, the man’s last words are I failed. I failed you, I failed Frodo, I tried to take the Ring. I’m sorry, I failed. That hits me so goddamn hard in my mid20s and it’ll hit me even harder when I’m older, I’m sure. How many times have we said that to people? “I tried to help him.” “I tried to reach out.” “I tried to apologize.” “I tried to stop them.” “I tried so hard.” I tried, I tried, I tried. For the job, for the friend, for everything, I tried.

And I failed.

I have a laundry list of things I tried and failed at, and God, do they hurt. Sometimes it was something out of my control, sometimes it was my own behavior. And that scene with Boromir, the flawed man, staring up at Aragorn, the ideal hero, and begging him, begging him, “save them, they took the little ones, find Frodo,” begging him for forgiveness, apologizing for his failures?

Talk about a fucking metaphor.

We make our ideals in literature so that we have something to look up to and strive for, for others to strive for. Boromir falls prey to the ring, but Aragorn does not. You did what I could not. Of course Aragorn did. He’s the ideal. And we beg our ideals to be better so they can show us the way and hopefully, maybe, someday, we can be like them.

I had so many heroes growing up, real and literary. Sara from A Little Princess. Aragorn. Lucy from Narnia. Nancy Drew. Harry Potter. And so many times I would look at myself in the mirror and cry because I knew, I knew if I stood in front of them they would be disappointed in me. I knew I wasn’t being the person I could be. I tried, I failed, I tried, I failed, but my God I swear, I tried.

As a kid or even a teenager, we still see mainly who we want to be. Our ideal. And I hope that we never lose sight of that. I love Aragorn and my God am I going to keep trying to be like him, and like all of my other literary heroes. We need those heroes, we need them so badly, and the darker the world gets the brighter we have to make them shine.

As an adult, though–as an adult, we start to see not only who we want to be, but who we are, and who we could’ve been, and how we failed to be, and the paths not taken and the paths that were lost. And that’s important too. Because Boromir died convinced he was a failure. Convinced he was, truly, the weakness we find in men.

And he was… but he wasn’t.

Without Boromir, Aragorn wouldn’t know what happened to Merry and Pippin or where they went. Without Boromir, Aragorn would’ve had no hope in the race of men. Without Boromir, who would have carried the hobbits up the cold mountain, or taught them how to fight, or said give them a moment, for pity’s sake! Who would have defended Gondor for so long, or loved his brother with a ferocity that Denethor’s abuse couldn’t knock loose, and inspired that brother to keep fighting even as the light faded and the night grew cold and long?

Aragorn carries Boromir’s bracers throughout the rest of the trilogy, right up to his coronation, where he is still wearing them as he is made King. Because Boromir might not have seen it–we might not see it–but we tried and we failed but we didn’t fail at everything. Lives are made brighter for our presence. The world is better for our gifts and our convictions. And no fight, even a fight lost, is done in vain.

The remains of the Fellowship ride to Gondor not just because it’s the Right Thing to Do, but because it is the city of their fallen brother, it’s Boromir’s home, the home that above all he gave everything to defend. Boromir doesn’t want the Ring for power, he wants it so his home will be safe, his family will be safe, and God who can’t relate to that, as we grow older and we see our families and friends attacked and scarred, as we have children and want them out of harm’s way. Who wouldn’t be tempted to seize the chance to keep them safe?

I see so much of myself in Boromir. And I take hope. I take inspiration. I cheer through my tears as he is hit again and again with arrows and each time he gets back up on his feet and grits his teeth and you can see him thinking not today. As a child I thought Boromir was selfish but as an adult I hear him use his last breath to apologize to Aragorn and call him his brother and his king and I see he’s more selfless than he ever gave himself credit for being. Boromir sees only his faults, but we can see what he doesn’t, we see his positive impact and we see his virtues, too.

Because as an adult I’ve failed, and I want to believe that like Boromir, I’ve also succeeded, I’ve also been more than just my faults–even if I can’t see that yet.

Aragorn is who we should be. But Boromir is who we are.

And my God, we should be proud of that. Because Boromir is a damn good person to be.

#mads answers things #Lord of the Rings #LotR Meta #Boromir #Boromir meta #I cried just thinking about Boromir while writing this #Boromir is a goddamn hero #a tragic one but a hero all the same #and I will hear no different #extasiswings #I'M A FUCKING IDIOT WHO SAID MORIA INSTEAD OF MORDER #FUCKING FUCK #I FUCKED UP I FUCKED UP

[all-hail-the-witcher]

yeah i followed you back when you posted newsies stuff and i don't know anything about the witcher but ur still a cool person even if i don't understand most of your content lol

okay okay here's a crash course in the witcher:

geralt

needs a nap

the so called witcher the show is named after

hasn't felt an emotion in at least 100 years

horse girl at heart

tired of getting mixed up in peoples bullshit after he killed a bunch of people and got a bad rap for it

kills monsters for a living 

vocabulary consists entirely of “fuck” “shit” and “hmm”

yennefer

a sorceress 

wants to be a mom but cannot

shoots fire at some assholes 

has sexy times with geralt

does not like the ridiculous bard

was born a hunchback with severe scoliosis that got fixed when she became a sorceress 

ciri

a princess of a kingdom that no longer exists

does a lot of running from evil dudes trying to kill her

is geralts like sort of adopted kid kind of 

magical screams

pretty much every one shes ever loved is dead

a literal child

renfri

another princess

has like some knives and stuff

shames geralt for talking to his horse

has like a fun little gang 

gets killed with her fun little gang by geralt

literally only in one ep

roach

geralts horse and best friend

the secret star of the show

best good girl

has all the brain cells 

gives geralt boops with her long snoot

puts up with a lot of bullshit 

triss

another sorceress 

geralts friend 

also zaps some bad guys with yennefer 

specializes in healing magic 

heals geralt once or twice or maybe a bunch of times

generally is slept on and deserves better

dara

an elf

one of the few surviving ones from the elf genocides 

has a funky little hat to hide his ears

meets ciri in the woods and they wander around together 

saves ciris life a few times 

ends up abandoning her to protect himself 

calanthe

a queen (like a literal one)

ciris grandma 

is also dead

generally kind of a badass

is feared by everyone 

invites geralt to sit at her table of honor once 

the ridiculous bard jaskier

a bard with a lute and too much to say

follows geralt around like a lost puppy and sings embellished songs about him to fix his reputation 

dresses geralt up like a sad silk trader once

gets zapped by a djinn and is therefore disliked by yennefer

wears very bright clothes that are not conducive for travel

is not allowed to touch roach

okay there are like a billion other side characters in the show but im too lazy to list all of them and most of them are villains. but. theres some other fun important people from the games/books that are coming in s2 that are important and they are:

eskel

another witcher

got his training with geralt and they are Bros (or more depending on how you look at it)

has a big ol face scar from a kid he sort of adopted 

has a goat (or several) 

banged a succubi once for clout

thicc

lambert

yet another witcher

younger than eskel and gerald but still bros 

an asshole 

friends with another witcher from a different school named aiden who was mentioned once in the games and aparently died but no one can prove that so as far as were all concerned he's alive and theyre dating

generally just a prick 

has brain cells but doesnt use them

vesemir

the dad witcher

eskel, geralt and lamberts father figure 

kinda like well known and sort of a legend 

old as shit

makes sure none of his kids succumb to stupidity

has the braincells 

coen

another witcher but from a different school than vesemir, geralt, lambert and eskel

spends winters with all the witcher gang tho

had the chicken pox as a kid

helped to train ciri

died in the books

aparently looks unusual for a witchier

there is also: valdo marx (jaskiers rival), lil bleater (eskels goat), and aiden (lamberts boyfriend even though thats not canon)

#the witcher #the witcher crash course

[thelastspeecher]

D&D AU - Elf Kid Adventures, Pt. 2

Electric Boogaloo

I actually have two more scenes planned to tie up this little story arc in my D&D AU where Stan is half-orc and half-elf.  I originally was going to include those scenes in this post, but then these two scenes on their own were much longer than I expected.  So, uh, here’s some awkward stuff, some angst, some “aww” moments, and most importantly, a whole mess of Stan being head over heels for Angie.

Enjoy.

——————————————————————————————

              Stan couldn’t decide whether the expectation he did chores was the worst part or the best part of staying at the McGucket farmstead. On the one hand, he had to get up when Ole Tinbeak – the earliest rising rooster – crowed.  On the other hand, the praise from Mr. McGucket never seemed to end.

              “Excellent!” Mr. McGucket said cheerfully, watching Stan lug a bale of hay twice his size.  “I must say, Stanaximus, yer the strongest elf I’ve ever seen, and yer only a child right now!”  Stan grinned despite the straws of hay poking his face.  “Would ya consider employment as a farmhand?”

              “Thanks,” Stan said, slipping into the manners that Mrs. McGucket had insisted on drilling into him.  “But I like being a ranger with Angie and Lute.”

              “Fair enough,” Mr. McGucket said.  Stan set down the bale of hay.  His vision now unobscured, he spotted Lute standing a few feet away.  Lute had never seemed that intimidating to Stan before, and his new age (and matching immature wardrobe with many pairs of shorts) only served to hinder his continued attempts.  He was in his thirties, according to Mrs. McGucket, which made him like a human five-year-old.

              “He’s only bein’ nice to you ‘cause yer a guest,” Lute hissed.  Stan snorted.

              “If you could see through all that hair, you’d know that’s not true,” he replied.  Lute lifted the dark bangs that covered his eyes to glare at Stan.

              “I can see just fine,” Lute snapped.  Stan grinned.

              “Aw, is someone grumpy ‘cause he’s overdue for a nap?” Stan teased.  Lute blushed fiercely.  The McGucket parents had insisted Lute have at least one nap a day at this age.  Something about the extra rest being particularly important for growing elves.  “Maybe you should go sleep.”

              “You-” Lute started.  Mr. McGucket came over.  He took his youngest son’s hand.

              “He’s right, Lute.  Stan, think ya can finish the chores if Angie helps?”

              “Uh, sure.  But I don’t know where she is,” Stan said slowly.  Someone jumped down from the barn’s loft, landing lightly in front of Stan.  Angie beamed at him.  “…How long were you up there?”  Angie shrugged.

              “It’s startin’ to get a bit dark, so ya best check the fence fer breaks first, ‘fore night falls,” Mr. McGucket said, leading Lute out of the barn.  Stan and Angie nodded.  Once Mr. McGucket was gone, Stan turned to Angie.

              “We’re supposed to check the fence?” he asked.

              “Yep!  Follow me.” Angie walked out of the barn. Stan followed.  They went to the enclosed cattle pasture and began to follow the fencing.  “Luckily, breaks ‘re pretty easy to spot,” Angie said cheerfully.  “And easy to fix, too.  Just a quick Mending.”  Stan nodded silently, trying to ignore how the setting sun made her golden hair turn a fiery orange.  They continued to walk in silence for a few moments.  “Don’t let Lute get ya down,” Angie said in a low tone.

              “Huh?  Oh, I’m not.” Stan shrugged.  “I actually kinda like being a kid again.”

              “Really?”

              “Yeah.  I’m-” Stan rubbed the back of his neck and laughed awkwardly.  “I’m not in that big of a rush to get this curse removed, to be honest.”  Angie came to a stop, leaning against the fencing. Stan did the same.  His hands gripped the wooden slats.  Angie turned her head to face him.  A few long golden strands of hair loose from her braid bounced with the movement.  The sun cast her form in a brilliant halo.

              “Why’s that?” she asked.  Distracted by how she looked in the fading light, Stan didn’t hear her question.

              “Huh?” he mumbled.  Angie rolled her silver eyes.  As dusk encroached, they began to glow with a faint foxfire.

              “Why are ya not in a hurry to be back to normal?” she asked.  “I thought ya missed yer tusks.”  Stan sighed.

              “I mean, I do.”

              “Then what’s goin’ on?”

              “I…”  Stan trailed off.  Angie scooted closer to him.  Her hand rested next to his, their skin touching.  Stan’s heartrate picked up.  Unable to stop himself, he blurted out the truth.  “I forgot how much better people used to treat me.”  Angie’s eyes widened.

              “…Pardon?” she asked.

              Shit.  Way to go, Stan.  This is what you get for being so easily distracted by pretty girls.

              “I grew up in a mostly human settlement,” Stan said quietly.  “The only elf who lived in town was my mom.  Looking like her, I got attention.  But it was good attention, ‘cause a lotta humans are obsessed with elves. Even travelers passing through would sometimes stop and talk to me and my twin brother.  I think…”  Stan furrowed his brow.  “I think my mom said that, if we had grown up in a proper elf environment, we wouldn’t be allowed to interact with visitors.  I guess elf kids are considered really important, so they get kept away from outsiders.  At least, that’s how it was where my mom grew up.”

              “Ma says things were the same way where she came from,” Angie said.  “She ‘n Pa had some disagreements ‘bout it when we were little.  So it’s probably a high elf thing, not a specific place thing.”

              “Yeah.”  Stan took a breath.  “I liked getting all that positive attention.  But then my tusks started growing in, and my hair got darker, and I got bigger in a way that elves just aren’t.”  Stan looked down at the dirt.  He nudged a clump with the toe of his borrowed boot.  “I stopped looking like my mom and started looking like my pops. And I don’t have a lick of human in me, so I don’t look like a proper half-orc.  By the time I was sixteen, I looked full orc.”  Angie made a strangled sound.  Stan looked at her.

              “Sixteen?” she choked out, shocked.

              “Orcs don’t live that long.  Until I became an adult, I aged close to the same rate humans do. I think I was about twenty when my elf side kicked in to slow it down.”

              “Oh.  Right.” Angie nodded.  “You told me ‘fore that you were in yer sixties.”

              “Yep.  Haven’t aged a day in the last forty years, thanks to Mom.”

              “Yes.  Okay, continue yer story.”

              “Well, I dunno how much there is left to tell. I looked like an orc, and you know how people treat orcs.  Visitors stopped giving me treats and started putting their hands on their weapons when they saw me.  Since that’s how it’s been for the last few decades, I forgot that people didn’t always look at me like I was about to kill them.”

              “Even if you don’t get the curse reversed, you’ll start agin’ on yer own,” Angie pointed out.  Stan’s stomach twisted into a knot.  “Sooner rather than later, you’ll look like yer father again.”

              “Yeah.  I know.” Stan’s head drooped.  “It’s just-”

              “No need to explain.  I understand,” Angie said firmly.  She placed her hand over Stan’s.  Stan’s heart skipped a beat.  “It’s easier to be an elf than an orc.”  She quirked a half-grin.  “Though, just so’s ya know, I prefer yer orcish self to yer elvish self.”

              “R-really?” Stan stammered.  Angie nodded.

              “Tusks ‘n all.”

----- 

              Stan had just finished his breakfast when Mr. McGucket entered the kitchen.

              “Stanaximus?” he said.  Stan looked over.

              “Yeah?”              

              “Walk with me, son.”

              “Um.  Okay.” Stan deposited his plate in the sink and followed Mr. McGucket outside.  “Did you need me for something?”

              “I just need to have a lil chat with ya,” Mr. McGucket said airily.  “But I think you’d prefer the chat happen where there aren’t ears to listen.” Dread began to build in Stan’s gut. The two walked off the main, cleared area that constituted the farmstead, and into the surrounding woods.  Mr. McGucket moved through the trees like he was one with his surroundings, effortlessly silent and graceful.  It was actually almost difficult for Stan to keep track of the man, as he blended in so well.

              I mean, he is a wood elf.  Makes sense.

              “What did you wanna talk about?” Stan asked. Mr. McGucket smiled.

              “You courtin’ my youngest child,” he said simply. Stan stumbled over a root.  Mr. McGucket caught him.  “You all right?”

              “Yeah, I’m- I’m-”  Stan swallowed.  “What makes you think I wanna court Angie?”

              “I see the way ya look at her.  Like she’s the sun, moon, ‘n stars.  There’s no mistakin’ what that means.”  Mr. McGucket looked at Stan.  “You can deny all ya want after this conversation, but I want ya to be truthful durin’ it, okay?”

              “…Fine,” Stan mumbled.  He clenched his hands into fists and ground them into his eyes.  “I…I really like Angie, and being a kid again has made it a lot worse.”

              “Makes sense.  Children have lesser control over their emotions, after all.  Thank you fer bein’ willin’ to talk blunt with me.”

              “Yeah, whatever.”

              “Now, I encourage ya to court Angie, once you’ve all been returned to yer proper ages.  But I needed to warn ya that a courtship with her won’t go without difficulties.”

              “What- what do you mean?” Stan asked.  Mr. McGucket sighed.

              “Politics.  Yer a noble, and my wife, she…she was somethin’ sim’lar ‘fore she left her home to be with me.  I don’t know whether she still has her title or not, and our children certainly don’t have any titles, but they do technically belong to a very powerful sun elf house.  If you were a wood elf, or even just a reg’lar sun elf, I doubt it would be a problem. As it is, it might not be.  But it could be.  So I figured I’d warn ya.”

              “But I’m not noble,” Stan said.  Mr. McGucket frowned at him.  “You guys keep insisting I am, but I’m not!  Maybe my mom is, or was, but my pops, he was about as far from noble as you can get.”

              “Was?”

              “…Pops passed away a few decades ago,” Stan said quietly.

              “My condolences.”

              “I don’t need ‘em.  He was a kinda shit father.”

              “Hmm.”  At Mr. McGucket’s thoughtful, though noncommittal, sound, Stan looked up.  There was a troubled look on the man’s face.  “Would that be related to the scars on yer back and arms?”

              “How- how do you-”

              “Harper saw when he took ya to the lake to swim last week,” Mr. McGucket explained.  Stan stifled a curse.  The oldest McGucket son, Harper, had showed up unexpectedly with his adopted children, then insisted on them all doing activities during his visit.  Harper was an incredibly odd person, but Stan thought he was at least tolerable.

              At least, I used to think that.  Now that I know he’s a snitch?  Nah.

              “I want to revisit this at a later time,” Mr. McGucket said after a moment. “Right now, we need to talk about you courtin’ my daughter.”

              Do we?

              “There’s no doubt you have noble blood, Stan.  Just yer full name is one that’s indicative of high status.  Even if ya don’t have a noble title or upbringing, ya have it in yer heritage.”  Mr. McGucket cocked his head thoughtfully.  “Though not havin’ a title will prob’ly make it so Angie’s own royal blood ain’t a factor.”

              “Did you say ‘royal’?” Stan croaked.  A twinkle entered Mr. McGucket’s eye.

              “Yes.”  Stan’s jaw dropped.  “Now, I will say- wait.”

              “What?” Stan asked.  Mr. McGucket now looked at him with visible concern.

              “Open yer mouth, son.”  Before Stan could comply or refuse, Mr. McGucket carefully pried his jaws open, looking at his teeth like he was determining a horse’s age.  “Oh, no.  Are these…fangs?”  Instantly, Stan broke into a cold sweat.

              Fuck!  My tusks! They started coming in!  Mr. McGucket released his hold and took a step back, worry etched on his face.  Stan closed his mouth.

              “It’s okay,” Stan said quickly.

              “Son, you have two teeth what shouldn’t be there, and what look awful dif’rent from yer other teeth.”

              “It’s, um…”  Stan’s mind raced.  “My pops, he got cursed when he was younger, and it got passed down to me somehow.”

              “Really.”

              “Yeah.”  Stan rubbed the back of his neck.  “It’s not a problem.”

              “Maybe.  But when we get this main curse off ya, we’ll take a look at this one that made ya grow fangs.”

              “Maybe…”

              Gods, no, there’s no way in any of the planes that I’d let some elf take my tusks away.  Stan and Mr. McGucket entered a large clearing.  Stan blinked at the farmhouse before them.  Without him realizing, they’d walked back to the McGucket farmstead. Mr. McGucket put a hand on his shoulder.

              “Yer a very interestin’ young man,” he said.

              Damn, and he doesn’t even know I’m half-orc.

              “I’d like to have many more conversations with ya.  But since yer likely to woo my daughter, I have no doubt I’ll have plenty of opportunities to chat.”

              “I might not court her,” Stan said quietly.  The second he spoke, he knew it was a lie.  There was no chance he wouldn’t shoot his shot.

              “It’d be a shame if ya didn’t, since ya have not just my blessin’, but that of my wife, too.”  Mr. McGucket squeezed Stan’s shoulder.  “And not to mention, we wouldn’t push ya to court if we didn’t think it would go well.” Stan swallowed.  “All right, ya can go back to denyin’ now.  I have to go run a few errands, and you have some chores.”

              Recognizing the dismissal for what it was, Stan headed for the barn. As he approached, Angie emerged from it. She caught sight of him and waved. Stan’s heart did yet another backflip upon seeing her.  She came over to him.

              “Were ya in the woods with my pa?” she asked.

              “Yeah.  Don’t worry, he didn’t try to hunt me or anything.  He just wanted to talk.”

              “What were you talkin’ ‘bout?”

              “How you’re actually a long-lost elven princess,” Stan said casually. Angie gasped and punched his shoulder. “Nah, it was just weird stuff where he called me ‘son’ a lot and wanted to know about my family.”

              “He called ya ‘son’, huh?”

              “Yeah.”

              “Sounds to me like he was askin’ ‘bout yer fam’ly ‘cause he considers ya part of ours.”  Angie winked. “Good luck with that.”  Stan grinned confidently.

              “I think I can handle your family.  I mean, I handle you all right,” he said.  Angie threw her head back and laughed.

              “I’ll let ya continue to think that.”

#hhhhhh I love writing Stan simping for Angie and vice versa. just love me some Stangie #btw no clue when I'll write the finale for this story arc #hopefully during my days off for Thanksgiving next week #Stangie #Stanley Pines #Angie McGucket #Lute McGucket #Pa McGucket #McGucket Family #DnD AU #ficlet #my writing #my stuff #speecher speaks

[i-am-just-a-kiddo]

favourite male fictional characters

Thank you @vishcount​ for tagging me, this was a lot of fun! 💞 I originally planned to follow your example and put ten characters here but suddenly it became a lot more oops. also i hope you forgive me for following your format, it’s neat 

I am tagging @isabellaofparma​ , @the-cloud-whisperer​ and @sassyassassy​!

I chose the characters that impacted me deeply on a personal level throughout my life (often shown by how long my love lasts over the years and if i was inspired to write for them). 

In no specific order under the cut: 

Legolas

The Lord of The Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien. 

I think it’s only fitting I start off with this magnificent guy. Maybe I gotta admit, i’ve just had a crush on him ever since I was like, nine years old? He’s the character I will fight tooth and claw for (though I guess he doesn’t need me to do that). I love Orlando Bloom’s portrayal of him, eventhough he is vastly different from the books. Book Legolas is such a delight as well, he feels so whimsical and playful and his banter with Gimli is just gold. I was sad when The Hobbit trilogy came out and I was so disappointed by how they butchered his character, it just did not feel authentic anymore (maybe I am also just bitter about the forced hetero storyline for him. makes no cents, this elf is GayTM your honour. and he will meet his soulmate Gimli in a few decades).  Either way, Legolas is the love of my life, thanks for coming to my tedtalk,

Peter Pan 

Peter Pan, J. M. Barrie

Another childhood crush of mine. The gif I chose if from the 2005 movie because we always used to watch it and it is to this day one of my favourite movies. It’s so dreamy, so magical, yet also incredibly sad and sweet.  I have this very strange fascination with Peter Pan. There is something incredibly unsettling about him, especially in the book. He represents something every child wants - who doesn’t want to escape their bedroom and fly away to experience magical adventured far from the adult world? And yet he also represents the impossibility of it, the curse he carries around with himself because he will forever stay alone, no matter how many lost boys he gathers around himself. And Wendy - it’s a love that was never meant to grow and mature, it’s a fleeting dream for the both of them.  I have seen many different adaptations of Peter Pan and I have my favourites, though I want to give a special mention to the book Peter Darling by Austin Chant. It’s a retelling of the story how we know it, in which Peter returns to Neverland after having finally grown up BUT the main points I want to highlight is trans Peter? Heck yes. Gripping and compelling gay love story with our favourite original lost boy Captain Hook? YES. 

Snufkin

Moomins, Tove Jansson.

I have discovered Snufkin for myself only last year, and yet I know he will stay with me forever. In short - I vibe with him, he vibes with me. His anxieties about being with people and longing for solitude? His fear of being loved and being important to someone to a point he doesn’t know what to do with himself? This man just wants to roam freely with his own mind and yet he always returns for something that captures him. Mum, I love him because I have rarely felt this seen before. Also, Snufkin said ACAB. 

Prince Jing - Xiao Jingyan

Nirvana in Fire (2015)

This too is a darling I have only discovered recently. I watched Nirvana in Fire this year and let me tell you, it’s the best show I have seen in a long while. It’s absolutely amazing and it also ripped my heart out. All the characters are absolutely amazing and I am still not over it.

To be honest, I contemplated between Xiao JIngyan and Mei Changsu, because character-wise I think the latter is a lot more interesting and compelling. He makes for a fantastic heartbreaking and flawed protagonist.

However I have to admit - it was love at first sight with Prince Jing for me and I’m still lowkey mad abt it rip. Seems like I am not immune to Pretty Prince Propaganda. But apart from that, I adore him for his genuine

goodness,

his almost naive drive to be better and seek justice. He lost everything, and for the longest time did not have anything to fight for. So alone and lost and bitter, it makes me sad how much it hardened him. He is heartbreak and clumsy kindness hidden under a skin of scars that was inflicted by his father and many others. I see his sad cat-eyes and I cry, that’s just how it is.

Edmund Pevensie

The Chronicles of Narnia, C. S. Lewis

I grew up with these books and movies - they have always been part of my life and it will probably always stay that way (only last night I rewatched the first movie and sobbed).  Imagine my surprised when I finally watched the last movie about five years ago and was incredibly impressed by how they adapted the book; also imagine my brain suddenly going CASMUND in bold letters at Skandar Keynes’ and Ben Barnes’  performance in that movie.  From there, I rediscovered this story completely anew for myself. My favourite Pevensie sibling has always been Lucy (and still is, because I identify with her so much and she feels like home to me); however this new discovery of Edmund’s character was overwhelming. It’s interesting to see characters you’ve grown up with from a more grown up point of view. I don’t want to lay out all my thoughts here, just know I am so heartbroken for him, and so so proud as well. His character arc is amazing and maybe that’s how the last movie makes me even more emotional. Seeing Edmund and Lucy still holding on to Narnia but knowing that that door was closing for them? Not to mention what happens in the later books (we don’t talk about that).  Also did I mention Casmund. Here, have my incredibly emo and depressing take on Edmund’s character that I started writing four years ago and which will forever stay a WIP. 

Nie Huaisang

The Untamed (2019)

My son. My soul. My bane of existence. The tragic thing about him is, that he does not really exist in canon as I have created him for myself. He’s a secondary character in the show, always so relatable yet still brings the ultimate twist of the story, yet he still remains this incomplete shadow. The movie

Fatal Journey

gave him a lot more and I cried tears of joy and devastation. I don’t know why I latched on to him so much, but apparently he is the one that I project on, the one that feels like he sits somewhere inside my chest. I don’t know what else to say - this year he has been everything to me. I spend a lot of time in his head while writing, and maybe that’s how he’s there forever now. Nie Huaisang saw my brain and went it’s free real estate. All my love for you, you dramatic art hoe.

Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Ah, another lifelong companion. There are many adapations that I adore - starting from the origin of it all, the books and stories which I have all devoured; the 80s adaptation with Jeremy Brett which was incredibly wonderful; to BBC Sherlock which shaped and traumatised me (I still like the first three seaons but I am too hurt to think about it); to the numerous movies -  but by far my most favourite performance is Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes. Somehow he manages to capture the Holmes I see in my head when I read the books, the sharp yet polite eccentric detective, who loves his companion so much and who has desire to help others.  Sherlock Holmes will always stay special to me, in so many different ways. He shaped my youth and I know he will stay with me. (also what would you say when I told you he helped me discover that I can, in fact, be queer AND ace at the same time? thanks pal).  What else is there to say? Sherlock Holmes is a universe that you can dive into and find many amazing treasures. 

Isak Valtersen 

SKAM (2015)

There he is, the boy that changed my life. SKAM changed my life. All of the characters did. However, Isak is special for many, as I imagine. I remember winter 2016, when tumblr was flooded by these norwegian white boys kissing in a pool and cuddling and I was like ‘nah’, this doesn’t look convincing.  I don’t know what changed my mind but I remember sitting down at last and watching all that was released of season three and it was only downhill from there. I remember starting to follow the real life updates religiously while watching the other previous seasons in between. The one clip that completely wrecked me was when Isak went to the school nurse about his struggles with sleep - it felt like for the first time I saw someone on screen that could understand me on so many different levels. The entierty of seaons three is so personal, I would tell you to go watch it if you don’t know what I mean. The entire show in fact. It’s a masterpiece and it feels so real. This show impacted my life in a way that no show has managed to do before. I miss it so much. I miss Isak too sigh. 

Shang Xirui

Winter Begonia (2020)

Technically, for me personally, Shang Xirui is the nonbinary, gay and ace representation I need in my life (or at least that’s my own personal take on him), but since that is not official, he’s still here on this list. Of course he is because wow, it’s been a long while since I’ve seen such a compelling character on screen. I went from disliking him to being absolutely heartbroken over him. I don’t think any other character in this show captured me as much as he did. There are so many layers to him and discovering all of his sides is a wonderful, heartbreaking, painful and also beautiful journey. I’m not sure I understand all of him yet, but I am willing to try and dig and just ponder his existence. This too, is a perfect example for a flawed yet authentic protagonist. Also he is the most beautiful thing on this planet, or at least that’s how I have been feeling ever since I watched this. I wish to write more of him in the future. 

Aang

Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005)

I grew up watching ATLA and my favourite characters have always been Toph, Zuko and Uncle Iroh. In recent years however, I completely fell in love with Aang all anew. 

I think especially in the past, I had these prejudices against main characters and found them all the most boring personalities ever. In recent years this changed a lot and especially Aang is a prime example for that. Watching him from the perspective of older me, I find so much wisdom in this young boy. Somehow he represents all I wish to be in my life but at the same time he shows his flaws, he carries this sadness with him that will accompany him all his life. This inner battle and chaos that he has to face day to day and in the end - he is just a young boy. So much has been taken from him and yet he learns how to not let it overtake him, that anger and hurt. He tries his hardest to be better than the day before, even if sometimes the world crashes down on him and he gets overwhelmed. He is a child recruited by adults to manage their mistakes and play into the hands of predestined fate and in this essay I will -

Harry Potter 

Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling

I am surprised myself. I thought I would put Fred and George here, or Remus and Sirius, however I realised that none of them quite capture this feeling of lifelong change, of personal, deep impact that Harry had on me. 

As with Aang above, I used to think Harry was the most boring protagonist, yet my opinion took a 180° turn in the past years. Many of the things I wrote for Aang apply to him too - the fact that he was a child, that lost so much, and was always faced with challenges that a child should never have needed to face. Something I want to address is how my favourite book, The Order of the Phoenix, lays all of this out. Harry is just as flawed, just as vulnerable and angry as anyone else. I know some people did not like his ‘emo behaviour’ in the fifth book but for me it just showed how human he is, how he was just a teen like myself at that time. As for many, this boy shaped my entire life, shaped a generation, and I will forever be grateful. I’m sad and angry at how J*R behaves, and how she puts us in the position of doubting our love for these stories. I know I will always love them, but I will not turn a blind eye on all the problematic shit is carries with itself and what the author piles upon us. 

Lan Wangji & Wei Wuxian 

The Untamed (2019)

I will try and keep this short, because if you want to read my thoughts about Wangxian just go to my ao3 and find the  over 70k i wrote for them.  I decided to put them here together because I can’t seperate them and I can’t choose between them. Each of them carries something I recognise in myself, and each of them is the opposite of me. They each own my heart and soul and I know there will never be a fictional couple like this for me ever again. They’ve snuck their way into my heart and have never left. They deserve to be here, together, because my love for them is indescribable. Bless them.  + Bonus:

The Doctor

Doctor Who (1963/2005)

Technically, the Doctor doesn’t count as a “male” character, but since he has been presenting as male up until recently, I needed to include him. I chose the Tenth Doctor because he is the one that broke my heart the most. I adored Nine but he was there too short, and I do love Eleven and Twelve a lot, and Thirteen absolutely owns my heart, Ten has just always been the one that made me cry the most. I loved this era of Doctor Who, I loved how sad and hopeful he was, how heartbroken and yet determined to help wherever it was needed. Doctor Who is always that show, when I return to it, I am reminded that maybe, humanity and the universe isn’t all that bad. 

phew, this took ages damn. but i had so much fun! i decided to leave out honorable mentiones because we would be sitting here until tomorrow lol. 

#gosh this was nice #a lot of incoherent rambling here #thanks dear #tag game #personal

[arofili]

Worldbuilding Exchange Letter 2021

Hello lovely creator, thanks for creating for me in the Worldbuilding Exchange! I’m very excited and grateful for whatever you create for me <3

This letter will restate my DNWs, list my likes, give you a brief rundown of my canon preferences, and then dive into specific prompts for each of my requests.

I’ll warn you upfront that I tend to ramble, so feel free to skip prompts that don’t interest you and/or use ctrl+F to search for whatever it is you want to write for.

My requests are divided by fandom, and in the case of the Silm + Middle-earth Legendarium, by topic too, so hopefully that will be helpful for you! Also, my TAZ request is waaay down at the bottom, so if that’s what you’re here for, just go to the bottom of the page.

Housekeeping:

DNWs:

Non-con

Unrequested dub-con

Abusive/Neglectful parenting (especially wrt Fëanor)

Sibling incest, parent-child incest (cousin pairings are fine)

Unhappy/Unhopeful endings (unless otherwise specified)

Jealousy/Possessiveness

Cheating

Character or ship bashing

Hanahaki/any scenario where unrequited love is physically damaging

Soulmates, especially soulmate AUs (soul bonds are OK, if there is choice involved)

Porn without plot (Porn with plot is fine!)

Food involved in sex

Unrequested Modern AU

Non-trans mpreg

If you’re writing a slash ship where the characters are/were married to/involved with someone outside the ship, please don’t have the character(s) hate their spouse or not have been actually in love with them (the one exception is Finrod; I’m fine with him and Amarië not having been actually in love, but please don’t do this for anyone else, especially not Fëanor)

Hobbit/LOTR-specific DNWs:

The concept of a dwarven “One”

Any Fíli pairing

Alfrid

Legolas or Gimli paired with anyone other than each other

no smut for these fandoms, please

Silm-specific DNWs:

Evil/irredeemable/incel Maeglin

Elwing bashing

Fëanorian bashing

Over the top Fëanorian apologism (they did bad stuff; it was at least partially their fault. you don’t have to address that, necessarily, but don’t rewrite the story to claim they were blameless)

Fingon with a wife

Fingon or Maedhros ships that don’t take Russingon into account (polyamory, an open relationship, Mae with someone after Finno dies or vice versa for an AU, them with other people while they’re separated on the Ice/in Angband - all of these scenarios are fine, but in the end I need them to be with each other first and foremost)

Dark!Maedhros

Elvish re-embodiment after death being an actual, literal rebirth that requires the characters to have a second childhood; I much prefer them being granted a new hröa in their prime (feel free to explore what “in their prime” means, though, especially wrt scarred and disabled elves)

~~~

Likes:

(these might not all apply to worldbuilding, but they might give you a place to start from!)

Gen fic

Found family

Family dynamics

Loving families, even when things get complicated

Friendship, intense/important platonic relationships

Relationships that defy categorization

Queerplatonic relationships

Polyamory

Queer headcanons (especially aromantic-spectrum headcanons)

Trans/nonbinary headcanons (genderbending is also fine, but I prefer trans/nb hcs)

Angst with a happy ending

Gray morality

Explorations of magic

Most tropes

Fanon and fandom tropes

Deconstruction/Inversion of fanon and fandom tropes

Interspecies relationships

Peredhil

Secret relationships

Secret relationships coming to light

Secret kids (especially secret peredhil!)

Giving ships OC kids

OCs interacting with canon characters

Confessions of love

First times

Hurt/comfort

Redemption, forgiveness, mercy

Ironic foreshadowing

Canon divergence AUs/X Lives AUs

Politics and scheming

Resolving conflicting canonical details

Historical/Narrative bias affecting what is and isn’t “canon” (to an extent; changing motivations, consequences, etc is great, but please don’t ignore canon entirely)

Elrond & Elros having complicated relationships with both their bio and adoptive parents

Names fitting the time period (Quenya names in Valinor, please; if this is difficult for you, that’s okay, no pressure, but I do strongly prefer it)

Names having a lot of thought put behind them (does the character go back to their original Quenya name upon rebirth? or do they keep their Sindarin name? or come up with something else entirely? do they hate their new Sindarin name and resent having to use it, or do they embrace it? As long as you put some thought into it, I’m sure I’ll like whatever you decide!)

Author’s notes where you explain your thought process, if you want; I love hearing how the story took shape!

~~~

Preferences re: Canon:

LaCE compliance is always completely optional (except if you’re choosing a prompt that is specifically about LaCE, lol). If you do want to include it, that’s great, but if you just want the characters to fuck without having that be an issue, go for it. I love explorations of LaCE that take into account the exceptions, boundaries, definitions, etc; I also love takes that emphasize that they are Laws and Customs, not biological imperatives.

I’m not picky about my Amrod deaths. He can die at either Losgar or Sirion (or, hell, some other time/place if you make it interesting enough!), whatever works best for the story. I do like Lightly Toasted Amrod, aka he almost burns to death at Losgar but survives/gets rescued at the last minute.

Gil-galad theories are all very fun. Please don’t make him the son of Fingon and a wife; if he’s Fingon’s son, I want Maedhros to be involved at least a little bit (adoption or trans mpreg are both fine in this scenario). Otherwise, I don’t have a particular preference, though if it’s not really relevant I usually default to the son of Orodreth (who is in turn the son of Angrod). Also, I’ve requested “Origins of Gil-galad”; there’s more information on him in that section.

Honestly, when it comes to theories and headcanons, my rule of thumb is “convince me”! I’m down for whatever, for the most part, as long as you can justify it :)

~~~

For all of these, “suggested characters” pulls from the list of characters I requested with that signup, but if you’ve got an idea involving other characters then go for it! And in the end, all characters are just suggestions, this exchange is more about the worldbuilding :)

~~~

The Hobbit (Book)

Adventuring Hobbits Before Bilbo: Who were they? Did they ever come back, or was Bilbo assumed dead because of precedent? Were they all Tooks, or did some other hobbits tag along on adventures, too? Suggested Character(s): Belladonna Took

Dragon Magic & Dragon-hunting: Talk to me about dragons! I’m interested in dragons & dwarves, especially in relation to the first time dwarves were driven from Erebor and into the North and the War of the Dwarves and Dragons. What kinds of dragons set their sights on the mountain? How old was Smaug when all that was happening; did he learn anything from the failures of his kin? Who were the dragon-hunting dwarves who fought in that war? Suggested Character(s): Smaug, Original Dwarf Character

Dwarven Craft and Magic: Enchanted weapons, enchanted armor, runes and spells...all so interesting! Borrowing from the movies a bit, did Kíli’s runestone from Dís have any magic power? What’s the deal with the Arkenstone’s thrall? How do elf and dwarf magics intersect when it comes to objects like Bilbo’s mithril coat? Suggested Character(s): Dís, Frerin, Thorin, Original Dwarf Character (perhaps a craftsdwarf?)

Dwarves and Gender: We need more dwarf women! And I’d love any takes on nonbinary dwarves and/or dwarf-specific genders. Were there female dwarves in the Company that Bilbo mistook for male dwarves? Are dwarven women really only a third of the population? If dwarf men and women are very similar in appearance, how do they differentiate between them, or do they differentiate at all? If you included something about dwarvish braiding styles indicating gender, class, marital status, I would be delighted. Suggested Character(s): Dís, Frerin, Thorin, Original Dwarf Character; in this case I’d prefer a focus on canon characters, but OCs interacting with them would be marvelous, especially people like Dís’ spouse.

The Black Arrow: Bard’s little pep talk to his arrow has always intrigued me. I’d love to see your take on the origins of the Black Arrow. Does it really come from Erebor, and if so, who made it? How did Bard and his forefathers come to acquire it? (I like the movie version that ties it into Girion’s attempt to kill Smaug, so feel free to incorporate that if you feel like it.) Is the arrow enchanted? (Perhaps that could be tied to the Dwarven Craft and Magic tag!) Suggested Character(s): Bard, Original Character from Dale, Original Dwarf Character

The Stone Giants & Were-worms: I don’t have many thoughts on these guys except “neat! tell me more!” I’m fascinated by the creatures Tolkien only gives us a passing mention of; if you feel like it, maybe you could combine these tags with some of the creatures in the LOTR tagset (crebain, cold drakes, Watcher in the Water, Mearas, Kine of Araw, etc...I didn’t sign up with all those tags, but it would be neat to hear about them anyway!)

~~~

The Lord of the Rings (Books)

Cold-drakes and Fire-drakes & Crebain & The Watcher in the Water: Like with the Stone Giants and the Were-worms, I just think they’re neat and I’d love to hear your take on their origins and how they affect the history of Middle-earth. Feel free to combine this with other creature-related requests. Suggested Character(s): Scatha

Ghosts and Hauntings: Barrow-wights? Nazgûl victims? Just your crotchety old hobbit neighbor who still holds a grudge about losing the biggest pumpkin contest despite having been dead for 20 years? There’s a lot of potential for stories here; maybe you could combine a ghost story with some other prompt to add a murder mystery or haunting plot to a relationship you’re exploring!

Dwarf-Elf Relations: I don’t believe All Dwarves and All Elves hated each other! We have famous elf-dwarf friendships across the ages, and really it was just the Sindar vs. the Broadbeams/Firebeards that had the feud. Still, Legolas (a Sinda) and Gimli (raised among Broadbeams and Firebeards in the Blue Mountains) are caught up in that, so their friendship is quite remarkable! I’d love interrogations of how that feud continued across centuries and discussions of what really went down in Menegroth, perhaps with one of the Durins having an elf friend at some point in the past that sheds light on how Legolas and Gimli can get along. (I am here for any and all Gimli and Legolas combinations; I love them as friends, I love them as boyfriends or husbands, I love them as queerplatonic partners, I love them as anything in between! Do whatever you’d like with them!) Suggested Character(s): Gimli, Legolas, Original Elf Character, Any of Durins 1-7

Elvish and Mannish settlements in post-Ring War Ithilien: How do Legolas and Faramir get along, both living in Ithilien after the war? What do Legolas’ people think about being neighbors with a bunch of Men? Faramir and Imrahil were Aragorn’s chief commanders after the war, and Legolas expressed admiration for Imrahil; I imagine Imrahil visited his nephew in Ithilien, so what are the interactions of those three like? I’d love to see an exploration of Silvan elves and their culture here, with Legolas leaning into his Silvan heritage and maybe some Silvan OCs who have spent their whole lives in Mirkwood up until now and have never met Men before now! Suggested Character(s): Faramir, Legolas, Imrahil, Original Elf Character

Relations between the Dúnedain and Rivendell: Talk to me about the Grey Company, or Elladan and Elrohir fighting alongside their distant kin, or Rangers taking breaks in Imladris, how the Rangers think of Aragorn who was raised among elves, etc. I’d love an outsider POV here, such as an OC observing the oddities of a canon character. Suggested Character(s): Original Elf Character, Original Ranger of the North

The Glittering Caves of Aglarond: More Gimli and Legolas stuff - but with a focus on Gimli this time :) Gimli as a lord in his own right, Gimli who takes elves on tours of his dwarf-kingdom and weirds out his people (is it just Legolas, or does he take any Silvan elves with him, or like...his elvish in-laws??), Gimli as a craftsman... Or, alternatively, you could explore the caves before Gimli gets to work on them, what the Rohirrim thought of them and how they were created - by natural processes, or by magic, or a mixture of both? Did Aulë make them for the dwarves to find, perhaps? Suggested Character(s): Gimli, Legolas

~~~

The Hobbit (Movies)

Dragonsickness/Goldsickness: The parallel to mental illness in the movies was really interesting. I’d love to see lingering effects of the goldsickness on Thorin after the Battle (Everyone Lives AU, probably), or an AU where Fíli or Kíli inherit the throne of Erebor and are afflicted by it as well. Or, sticking to canon, how did Fíli and Kíli and the rest of the Company deal with Thorin falling into madness? Were the other dwarves affected by the thrall of the gold? Bard and Thranduil were observers of Thorin’s madness; what did they think of him? Did Thranduil remember Thrór under dragonsickness? Or, since movie!Thranduil is a far cry from book!Thranduil when it comes to going to war over jewels, was he affected by the dragonsickness even from a distance? Was Bard? Suggested Character(s): Thorin, Fíli, Kíli, Bard the Bowman, Thranduil

Dwarves who "choose craft"/Aromantic-Spectrum and Asexual-Spectrum Dwarves: This is pulling more from the books than the movies, but I didn’t have enough nomination slots to include any book nominations, so it went here, lol. Anyway: as I’m sure you can tell from my tumblr url, I headcanon Fíli as aromantic, and I love seeing that in fanworks! It’s really wonderful that Tolkien mentioned that many dwarves choose their craft over marriage, and I’d love to see an exploration of that aspect of dwarvish culture, and how Fíli fits into it. It seems to be fairly common/accepted, but are there different cultural pressures around marriage for the crown prince? How does Fíli figure out he’s aromantic? If aro and ace dwarves are expected to be choosing a craft over romance and sex, what’s Fíli’s craft? Or does he not have one, and people judge him for that? The “choose craft” language I use is very much inspired by this post and the Neo-Khuzdul word “bijebtorva” :) Suggested Character(s): Fíli, Original Character(s)

Governance and Politics in Mirkwood: How did Thranduil and Oropher come to power in the Greenwood? I hate the “lowly Silvan elf” line from the movie; can you somehow justify that with worldbuilding, or show how it’s not accurate? Is Legolas half-Silvan like is implied in the LOTR books? Who are Thranduil’s advisors? Is Tauriel really the only one who dislikes and defies Thranduil’s isolationist policies? Is Mirkwood very patriarchal, and is Tauriel’s appointment to Captain of the Guard something she faced opposition or competition for? Are the Sindar elite colonizers, or did they integrate into Silvan society? How does the average Silvan elf feel about their king, or do they not even think about him? Suggested Character(s): Thranduil, Tauriel, Original Character(s)

Poetry and prophecy: Bard uncovers that tapestry that turns a song from the book into a somewhat ominous prophecy; there’s a lot of discussion of fate and signs from the thrush at the door to the last light of Durin’s Day; Thranduil has seen enough in his thousands of years to have had time to brush up against a prophecy or two. What do these three believe about fate and prophecy? Are any of them prophets in their own right? How does poetry/music lend power to prophecy? (Bonus points if you tie it back into the Ainulindalë...) Suggested Character(s): Bard the Bowman, Thorin, Thranduil

Poisons and antidotes: I love Kíli/Tauriel and the scene where she heals his wound...but the worldbuilding around morgul poison and athelas is a little murky. It’s a decent parallel to Frodo’s condition in the LOTR movies, but it’s confusing lore-wise. Can you make sense of it? If Tauriel is a warrior, where did she learn healing? (In my own headcanons, her foster family are healers, which is how she learned those skills even though she’s primarily a warrior - but feel free to take it in whatever direction you’d like!) Suggested Character(s): Tauriel, Kíli, Original Character(s)

Rebuilding Erebor & Relations between Dwarves + Elves + Men: (I’d prefer an Everyone Lives AU for this situation.) How do Thorin and his Company put Erebor back together again? What are the renovation projects like? How long does it take Dís and the rest of the Longbeards to arrive in Erebor and help out? How long does Dáin stay to help his cousin? I would love to see some politics both internally within the Longbeard dwarves and externally as they relate to Mirkwood and Dale. Smaug’s corpse is just lying in the Long Lake...how do the dwarves feel about their old enemy’s body so close by? Do some Men want to re-establish Lake-town, and demand help from the dwarves who flushed the dragon out of the mountain? Do the dwarves want to harvest Smaug’s corpse for resources? (He’s probably got gold and jewels stuck in his scales, and dragon-skin/scales is probably a good raw material for crafting things.) What’s the process of Bard becoming King of Dale? Does he face any opposition? I love the idea of Hilda Bianca challenging him for leadership, or maybe insisting on some kind of democracy/representation in Dale! And if she doesn’t get her way, maybe it’s her leading some people back to Esgaroth and founding a democracy there that would make the old Master roll in his watery grave... How do Bard and Thranduil and Thorin reconcile after the battle? Does Thorin pay up like he said he would? Does Tauriel hang around, or does she go somewhere else? Are any elves inspired by her, or is she a total outcast? If you choose to explore the Kíli/Tauriel relationship, how does that affect politics between Erebor and Mirkwood? Suggested Character(s): Thorin, Fíli, Kíli, Bard the Bowman, Hilda Bianca, Thranduil, Tauriel, Original Character(s)

Tauriel's fate after the Battle of the Five Armies: This is for exploring what happened to Tauriel in canon. Does she wander the world and explore new places? How long does she mourn Kíli? What does she do with the runestone? Does she return to Mirkwood, and if so, how does she manage to get back into Thranduil’s good graces? There are a million different ways to take this, I’d love to see your take on her! Suggested Character(s): Tauriel, Thranduil, Original Character(s)

~~~

The Silmarillion: Magic & Spirits

Houseless Elves: Why did they refuse the call of Mandos? Do Avari even go to Mandos? Can Melkor and Sauron ensnare these spirits for their necromantic purposes? If the call of Mandos is refused once, does that bar them from listening in the future? What kinds of ghosts are haunting Middle-earth in the First Age? What kinds of ghosts haunt Aman? Suggested Character(s): Original Character(s), Melkor

Magic as a connection to the Music/the Song: Magic isn’t always the best-explained in Tolkien’s universe, but what we do know is the incredible power of the Music. How do the Maiar and Valar, who are not technically beings of Arda, interact with the world? How do elves and men (and dwarves! and orcs!) tap into the Song and manipulate it to their benefit (or detriment)? I have the headcanon that Elemmírë, the elf who sung the Aldudénië, is a priestess of Varda; what was the power of that mourning song, and how was it received by her patron Vala? Suggested Character(s): Elemmírë, Varda, Melian, Melkor, Original Character(s)

Nature Spirits: These holes in Tolkien’s worldbuilding are fascinating to me. What role do nature spirits play? How many are there? I’m thinking particularly of river spirits, like the River-woman and Goldberry, but there are probably also mountain spirits and water spirits and-and-and... Are they Maiar? Lesser beings? What do the Maiar we know of think about them? Gandalf seems the kind to listen to them and learn their stories, but perhaps Melian sees them more as servants in protecting her realm... Suggested Character(s): Melian, Original Character(s)

The Shadow-shapes in the hills above Cuiviénen: What were these shapes? Melkor’s prototypical monsters, Maiar who didn’t know how to interact with the Children, something else entirely? What did the original elves believe about them? Did they fear them, did they try to appease them, did they try to confront them? I headcanon that Elemmírë is an Unbegotten elf, so perhaps she lost friends to the Shadows, or thought she did. If the Shadows did take elves, was it out of malice or curiosity or a desire to protect them from whatever Melkor was planning? Suggested Character(s): Melkor, Elemmírë, Original Character(s)

The Void: Melkor spends a whole lot of time here. Does he have any company? Something or someone he makes to pass the time with? Do the Valar (like Manwë or Námo or Varda or Nienna) visit him there? What is the nature of the Void, is it pure emptiness or chaotic magic or a nightmare machine? Is Melkor being punished or is he being contained? And where are the boundaries of the Void? Varda rules the heavens; does her realm bleed into Melkor’s prison? Suggested Character(s): Melkor, Varda, Original Character(s)

~~~

The Silmarillion: Elven Relationships

Note: This request deals with relationships, and while I’m open to pretty much anything, please keep in mind my DNWs. Exploring these topics using canon relationships is a safe bet; I adore Maedhros/Fingon so having a look at them through this lens would be amazing; I have Aredhel as a character request here, and I see her as aromantic (“to none was her heart’s love given”) so while showing her in a relationship is fine, I’d love it if you could take her lack of romantic feelings into account; if you have a question about another ship, you can check to see what I’ve written and/or send me anon message! Additionally, a lot of these talk about soul bonds, which I’m very interested in, but one of my DNWs is soulmates. To me the concepts are very different things; it’s the destiny and inevitability and universal assumption of romance that really squick me out about soulmates. Soul bonds, on the other hand, have an aspect of choice to them that I really dig. So, please don’t make characters Fated For One Another, but please do explore what joining souls is like!

Laws & Customs of the Eldar: Boy do I have a lot of feelings about LaCE—and I’m always intrigued by other people’s feelings, too! I’d love to see an exploration of how these laws and customs came to be, which parts of the rules around marriage and children and re-embodiment are social constructs and which are innate to the fëa and hröa, and/or relationships that defy the norms. If your take on the laws is hetero/cisnormative, how does that affect queer elves? If your take is free of bigotry, what are the flexibilities around queerness, including asexuality and aromanticism? Laws and customs and rules always have loopholes and exceptions, so what do elves who don’t fit into the expected relationship mold do about these norms? Suggested Character(s): Aredhel, Maedhros, Fingon, Elrond, Any Unbegotten Elf Character(s)

Arranged Marriages among the Eldar: Russingon arranged marriage AU?? Orrrr....Maedhros or Fingon are politically engaged to someone else, and they have to deal with the ramifications of that? (Please don’t have them actually go through with the marriage if you go that route; I’m not interested in a story with Fingon having a wife, even if she’s a beard.) If elves (usually) only love once, and by declaration of the Valar can only marry once (Finwë being the somewhat disastrous exception), how is an arranged marriage justified within the cultural emphasis on these bonds? Are they more like arranged romances, people pushing their children together in hopes that they’ll fall in love? Or is it a stricter rule about “you do what’s best for this family”? (Note: Bad/cruel parenting is one of my major DNWs, so if you’re going that route, please don’t make the parent uncaring or malicious. Stubborn and narrow-minded is fine, as is the genuine belief that this is what’s best for the child, but ideally they’ll learn from their mistakes or perhaps everything will be interrupted and derailed by Canon Events. This is especially important wrt to Fëanor.) Suggested Character(s): Maedhros, Fingon

Creation/Discovery of soul bonds: How do soul bonds work on a metaphysical level? Can they be broken? Do they have to be nurtured and maintained? What’s long-distance communication like? Heck, what’s short-distance communication like, is it like talking in your mind or sharing your feelings or more abstract than that? Can elves form soul bonds with mortals? And most importantly—how did elves figure out they could soul bond with one another?? I can imagine that would be quite a shock when they’re discovering sex and then suddenly they’re inside each other’s minds! Suggested Character(s): Any Unbegotten Elf Character(s)

Non-romantic/sexual soul bonds: I’m good with practically any relationship here. Explore sibling bonds, twin bonds, parent-child bonds, queerplatonic bonds, found family bonds, adoption bonds, the bond between a Vala and their Maia...any kind of soul bond that is familial or platonic or chosen without regard to romance! (Feel free to take a canon romantic relationship and turn it queerplatonic, I live for that shit!) How are these bonds formed outside of sex? What are the rituals and ceremonies around forming them? Is it a public or private thing? Are non-romantic soul bonds taken seriously, or are they seen as less important than marriage bonds? Since elven parents literally give part of their soul in the creation of the child, is that parent-child bond innate? Suggested Character(s): Aredhel, Any Unbegotten Elf Character(s)

Elven adoption: I nominated this with Kidnap Dads in mind (if you go that route I love fluff for them as well as more nuanced/complicated takes on the situation, but whatever you do don’t make M&M cruel, and please include Maedhros as a parental figure alongside Maglor)...but hey, it could work for Fingon (and Maedhros) adopting Gil-galad! What are traditions around elven adoption? Are there soul bonds created between the adoptive parents and children? Was adoption even a thing in Aman, or is it only practiced in Middle-earth? Did elves adopt mortals and vice versa? Is adoption extended to found family other than a parent-child situation? How is adoption viewed by elvish society, especially if inheritance/succession is a concern? Suggested Character(s): Maedhros, Fingon, Elros Tar-Minyatur, Elrond

~~~

The Silmarillion: Noldorin Politics

Original Fëanorian follower(s) who turned on their lords at Sirion: Okay, this is a character tag, but I’m absolutely obsessed with this line: “For the sons of Fëanor that yet lived came down suddenly upon the exiles of Gondolin and the remnant of Doriath, and destroyed them. In that battle some of their people stood aside, and some few rebelled and were slain upon the other part aiding Elwing against their own lords (for such was the sorrow and confusion in the hearts of the Eldar in those days).” Who were these people who followed the Fëanorians into exile, into a Kinslaying, through the burning of the ships, through 30 years of Maglor as a king-regent incapable of treating with the Nolofinwëans, through the scattering of their lords and the harsh conditions of the North, through the Bragollach and the Nírnaeth and a “wild and woodland life” and the Second Kinslaying (where some of them went as far as to abandon children in the winter woods to die because they thought it was what their lord/s would want), through isolation and hatred from every other elven group, through the plan to attack a refugee camp—through ALL OF THAT, and THEN they turn on their lords at Sirion??? Why betray your lords NOW? And the people who DID keep following them after that (after kidnapping children!!!), what were they thinking?? — I firmly believe that Maedhros has many escapees from Angband in his service who are ride or die for him and whose morality was somewhat warped by Angband, but what about Maglor’s followers? Caranthir’s? Ambarussa’s? Even Celegorm and Curufin’s?? There’s just SO MUCH potential for story here, I’m dying to read about them!

Noldorin lines of succession: Was It Sexist Or Was It Not: The Eternal Question aka Why Didn’t Idril Become High Queen After Turgon? Also, what does “eldest of the house of Finwë, and not the least wise” even MEAN, Maedhros?? How did Gil-galad come to power? I find it hard to believe he became king immediately after Gondolin fell; was it a wartime power grab? A battlefield promotion? How did the kingship get established in the first place? Why was Finwë chosen to go with Oromë to Aman? Was Maglor ever really king, or did he only rule as a regent for the missing Maedhros? Suggested Character(s): Finwë, Gil-galad, Maglor

Origins of Gil-galad: I am always so interested in takes on Gil-galad’s parentage. My favorites are Russingon baby Gil (through trans mpreg or adoption, both are good) and secret peredhel Gil (probably an Aegnor/Andreth baby adopted by Orodreth), but I also love Finduilas Is Gil-galad and honestly, any situation is fascinating here—just convince me! A possible way to explore this is through Outsider POV; some noble or historian trying to figure out just what the heck is up with Gil-galad. His parentage being confusing in-canon is so fun!! Suggested Character(s): Gil-galad, Original Nobility of the Noldor

Maglor's Kingship between Maedhros' capture and rescue: Was Maglor ever really king? Did he give up on Maedhros early on, or did he cling to the hope that he still lived? Did his brothers turn to him for support, or did they connive to take responsibility from him? The rift between the Noldor wasn’t healed until Maedhros’ rescue; did Maglor try to cooperate with Fingolfin, or did he keep his people isolated? Was he relieved when Maedhros came back and took responsibility, or was he resentful to lose his power? How does this situation (and Maglor not going to rescue Maedhros) affect M&M’s relationship later on? Suggested Character(s): Maglor, Original Fëanorian follower(s)..., Curufin, Caranthir

Dwarf-Elf relations in the First Age & Dwarf-kingdoms: Dwarf-friends!!! Yes!!! I love elves and dwarves being buds (or partners if you’d like to go that route!) <3 IIRC, Curufin learned Khuzdul, and I’m sure Celebrimbor did too; Caranthir was supposedly rude to the dwarves, but what if that’s just his (and their!) love language? How did relations between the Sindar and the dwarves sour over time? Maedhros was friends with Azaghâl; how did that relationship begin? How did Finrod’s contract with the dwarves blossom into a real friendship? Eöl was also buddies with the dwarves; did he ever bump into Curufin or Caranthir while at a trade festival or something? And the dwarf kingdoms of the First Age are fascinating on their own, too; what was the political structure like? Did the dwarves bring items from the other side of the mountains into Beleriand? How did the petty-dwarves get exiled? What happened to Nogrod and Belegost in the War of Wrath, and were they ever re-established after the sinking of Beleriand? Suggested Character(s): Curufin, Caranthir

Guilds and Noble Houses of Tirion: Give me a Tirion political drama! Finwë trying to appease his lords and craftseldar? Indis integrating into Noldorin society and making connections with the noble houses? Arranged marriage situation between Nolofinwë and Anairë? The younger princes running amok and causing chaos in their elders’ carefully-laid plans and delicately balanced alliances? Suggested Character(s): Finwë, Indis, Original Nobility of the Noldor, Curufin, Caranthir, Maglor

Roles and Responsibilities in the Noldorin Royal Family: There were oodles of princes in Valinor. What did they all do? How did they get the followers who came with them to Middle-earth? Were they free to pursue their own crafts, or did they have responsibilities to the common people? How did this change in Middle-earth when suddenly everyone was in danger and had more pressing needs? What is it like being a re-embodied royal in a society that’s adapted to life without you? Suggested Character(s): Finwë, Indis, Maglor, Curufin, Caranthir, Gil-galad

Fashion as Political Statement: This is an excuse to request Color Coding Politics. Fëanorian red! Nolofinwëan blue! Findis wearing Aggressively Neutral White! Lalwen in orange? Arafinwë in yellow? Finwë in an amazing technicolor dream-coat...or more likely just red, showing his bias once more? Art of this would be absolutely fantastic. I have lots of headcanons about color politics; feel free to ask me about them if you choose this option. Suggested Character(s): Curufin, Caranthir, Gil-galad, Finwë

~~~

The Silmarillion: Trauma & Religion

War of Wrath: For a war that took so long and had such wide-reaching repercussions, we really don’t have very many details about this. It’s free real estate, basically! I have my favorite characters (Maedhros, Maglor, Elrond, Elros, Gil-galad...) that you could use to explore this time period, but literally anyone who’s alive at this point is fair game. And OCs! What do the Noldor and Vanyar (and Telerin sailors) feel about the War and interacting with the war-weary exiles and Sindar and Men of late-stage Beleriand? What kind of culture shock/culture clash is there? Were re-embodied exiles permitted to return to Middle-earth, or were they barred from going to war again? Suggested Character(s): Original Noldorin Character, Original Vanyarin Character

Trauma after the War of Wrath for elves and humans & Exiles adjusting to life in the Undying Lands post War of Wrath & Dealing with psychological trauma in Valinor: Trauma was commonplace in Beleriand, but not so much in Valinor. What’s it like for exiles who sail West to be in a society that doesn’t know how to support them? Are the Valar having to learn how to deal with the trauma of living elves super quickly, or are they reticent to change? How do the exiles interact with their re-embodied kin? What do the Vanyar and other Amanyar think of these elves who have been so deeply hurt? What kinds of treatises on psychology are penned by scholars with little to no previous experience? What is therapy like in Valinor? Do the exiles get together for support groups since no one else understands them? Or did the trauma of the Darkening and the First Kinslaying wake up the Amanyar and get their act together before then; are the exiles surprised by the structures already in place to support them? And what about Avari who have been dying steadily all this time from accidents and incidents in Middle-earth? If they’ve been re-embodied, how do they engage with the Eldar who have similar traumas? Suggested Character(s): Estë, Finrod, Maeglin, Original Noldorin Character, Original Vanyarin Character, Rúmil, Any Avarin Elf Character(s)

Worship of the Valar and Religion & Avarin religious culture: Do the Vanyar really worship the Valar, or do they seem them as hyper-powerful neighbors? What are priests and priestesses like in a world where the gods walk among you? How does each kindred of the elves interact with the Valar? Are Maiar viewed as equal worshippers/servants or as deities in their own right? Do the Avari even know about or acknowledge the Valar? Do they worship the stars, or simply Eru? Suggested Character(s): Pengolodh, Rúmil, Any Avarin Elf Character(s)

~~~

Middle-earth Legendarium: Magic & Spirits

Afterlives: This is pretty vague, but I think it’s referring to the various kinds of afterlife. What are the Halls of Mandos like? What happens to spirits who don’t go to Mandos? Do Men pass through Mandos on the way to Beyond? What happens to Men? Are they reincarnated in the more traditional understanding of the word, do they go to some other realm similar to Arda, are they just endlessly partying it up with Eru? Do dwarves really go to the Halls, or is that just a superstition? And of course, what about orcs? Suggested Character(s): Námo

Fate of orc souls after death: Yeah, really, what about orcs? If the orcs were originally elves twisted into Morgoth’s servants, are their spirits still elven? Are they reborn as they once were, elven despite their life as an orc? What about orcs who are many generations removed from their elvish ancestors? Do they have fëar? Can orcs be rehabilitated? I refuse to accept that all orcs are inherently evil; but what does everyone believe in-universe? Suggested Character(s): Námo, Original Orc Character(s)

Foresight and Prophecy and Doom: I’m honestly not sure if this fanon or canon, but Finarfin and his line having foresight through Indis is a wonderful concept and I’d love an exploration of that. How accurate is foresight? Can fate be circumvented? Are prophecies like the Doom of the Noldor self-fulfilling, or are they warnings about possible futures, or are they curses upon people? If you have a high Doom upon you, does that end with your death, or does it follow you to Mandos and beyond? Suggested Character(s): Námo, Finarfin

Songs and Words of Power: Rap battles with Sauron! ...joking aside, song as magic is just fascinating to me. How does this connect to the Ainulindalë and the Song of the World? The elves named themselves Quendi, the Speakers; how do they view the power of words and their ability to change the world around them? Can music be used as a force of destruction or a weapon (battle bard Maglor)? Can it be used to manipulate someone’s mind (Sauron)? Suggested Character(s): Maglor, Sauron

Stars and Starlight: “All light is sacred to the Eldar...but wood-elves love best the light of the stars.” Okay, sorry for being a Hobbit movie apologist on main, but I do love Tauriel! How do elves view starlight? Is it holy, or are the stars more like their friends and guides? Did the Avari choose to remain in Middle-earth partially because of their love for the stars, which were drowned out by the light of the Trees? How does Eärendil feel about being a star; does he feel blasphemous or holy? What legends and superstitions are there among Avari and Men and others who don’t know the origins of Gil-Estel about the new star in the sky? Suggested Character(s): Morwë, Eärendil

The Unseen Realm: This is the in-between world where Frodo goes when he wears the ring, the world that the Nazgûl in their half-life inhabit. Are Ainur able to slip into this realm at will? Did Gandalf walk invisible in Gondolin? How does Sauron manipulate this realm to his purposes? Is this where elves go if they fade? (I don’t usually like Maglor fading, but it could be an interesting way to explore this...) Suggested Character(s): Námo, Sauron, Nazgûl, Maglor

Magical Artefacts & Magical Communications: Palantíri! Galadriel’s mirror! Ósanwë! All sorts of cool ways to talk with magic. Do the Rings of Power enable long-distance ósanwë? Did the Silmarils contain pieces of Fëanor’s soul? What other marvelous magical creations were there that didn’t make it into the Legendarium we know? Suggested Character(s): Sauron, Maglor, Eärendil

~~~

Middle-earth Legendarium: Politics & Lore

Feudalism between Eldar and Edain: We have Edain entering into the service of Noldorin lords (Bëor and Finrod, Hador and Fingolfin, Amlach and Maedhros) and land being given to Men by elves (or not, in Haleth’s case)...how far did this feudal relationship extend? Were the Edain mostly autonomous or were they very much bound to their elven lords? Were there common elves who paid tribute to Edain lords? Can any relationship between elves and Men truly be equal if this is the way they originated? Fealty kink? Suggested Character(s): Curufin, Original Elf Character

Fourth Age Tirion: What’s Tirion like with a bunch of dead people walking around living again, and a bunch of weird legends now imposing in daily life? What’s the first meeting of Rúmil and Pengolodh like—who geeks out over whom? Are the Fëanorians back yet? Is the average elf even really aware of all the nonsense that happened in Middle-earth, or are they extremely unimpressed with King So-and-So of a square of land that’s now underwater trying to cut them in line at the coffee shop? Suggested Character(s): Original Elf Character, Pengolodh, Rúmil of Tirion, Celebrimbor, Elrond, Galadriel

Relationship between Noldor and Dwarves: See “Dwarf-Elf relations in the First Age & Dwarf-kingdoms” in my Silm request for a starting point...but also, was Elrond’s Last Homely House open to dwarves? How did Galadriel come to respect the dwarves, especially after her Sindar kin grew to hate them? Suggested Character(s): Curufin, Celebrimbor, Elrond, Galadriel

Timekeeping between the Death of the Two Trees and the Rise of the Sun and Moon: Tolkien’s math drives me ABSOLUTELY INSANE. His timelines are contradictory, I get headaches just thinking about the length of elf pregnancy, what does aging mean for an immortal species, WHY ARE TREE YEARS LIKE THAT and WHAT IS A YÉN? Please try and make sense of this for me, I beg of thee. I’m especially interested in the time period between the Death of the Trees and the Rise of the Sun and Moon. Did the Noldor wander the Helcaraxë for 3 years or 30? How long was Maitimo in Angband? Did the Sindar even realize something was different? How did people start calculating Sun years? When was the calendar of the First Age adopted? Who did all this math? Is there an in-universe explanation for these contradictions? Do people fight over math? Do the Ainur experience time the same way the Children do? Did some Noldo genius come up with a timekeeping system that worked with the Moon, only for the Sun to come along and muck it up? Suggested Character(s): Pengolodh, Rúmil of Tirion, Original Elf Character, Fëanor - really any scholarly character, tbh!

Treatment of Angband's Escaped Thralls: Which kinds of escapees choose to go to Himring with Maedhros the Tall, and which choose to go to Gondolin and the House of the Hammer of Wrath? Was Rôg an escapee too? Can Maedhros really tell who’s been turned by the Enemy? Does Thingol have the right of it in turning away thralls from Doriath? (If he even does that, I’m now researching this and I’m not sure it’s actually canon...) What was it like for Maedhros and Gwindor to readjust to elven society? Did Elrond grow up surrounded by Fëanorian followers who escaped Angband, and is that where he learned healing? Suggested Character(s): Original Elf Character, Elrond

In-universe authorial bias in historical texts: All of the Legendarium is a history, which means there’s bound to be unreliable narrators. Was Maeglin really as evil as the story says? What gets left out of the narrative? What gets lost in translation? Who lives, who dies, who tells your story? Suggested Character(s): Pengolodh, Rúmil of Tirion

Trade in Middle-earth: What was trade like in First Age Beleriand? What about Second Age trade between Númenor and the mainland? Was Ost-in-Edhil a trade hub? After Sauron returned and traveling became dangerous, what intrepid traders braved the wilds for the sake of goods and money? How was currency developed around the world? Suggested Character(s): Curufin, Celebrimbor, Elrond, Galadriel

Orcs Surviving the Wars: Again, I don’t believe that all orcs are irredeemably, inherently evil. Were they persecuted and stamped out after the Ring War, or did some escape and adapt to a life without a harsh overlord? What’s orc agriculture like? Would Elrond take a chance on rehabilitating an orc in Rivendell? What if orcs were more complicated all along, and it’s the histories that simplified them to cardboard-cutout villains? Suggested Character(s): Original Elf Character, Pengolodh, Celebrimbor, Elrond, Galadriel

~~~

The Adventure Zone: Balance

My only non-Tolkien request, oops. Don’t think I’m not as interested in this request, though; I’m the only one who nominated for it, so I picked my very favorite concepts and I’d love to see what you do with them!

Angus McDonald’s Grandfather: This guy’s name was lost to time, and he loves silverware, and he has a grandson, and that’s pretty much all we know about him. Was he involved in the Relic Wars somehow? Did his name get eaten by the Voidfish? I imagine he’s a rather eccentric fellow; how much of that did he pass on to Angus? Is he even real, or was Angus lying to Tres Horny Boys about his destination?

Any Wonderland Adventurer(s): I’d love to see what happens to the other people who go to Wonderland before our boys. Do they all die? How many get what they want and get out? Do any of them have weaker moral compasses than THB and agree to advertise for Edward and Lydia? What if Edward or Lydia fell in love with an adventurer and trapped them there? What kinds of things do people sacrifice to the Wheel? We know about the Escape Game and the Healing Game; what about the Recovery Game? How long has Wonderland been around? How has it evolved over time? What was it like before Edward and Lydia got ahold of the Animus Bell? How did they get ahold of it? (Personally I think Barry just gave it to them...but did he have to go through the trials first?)

Differences within species between the Two-Sunned World and Faerun: I love the fanon that Two-Sun elves are juuust a little different from Faerun elves...like Taako’s echolocation, for example. But what if this applies to the other species like gnomes and dwarves and even humans? How are the Seven Birds just a liiiitle off from everyone else around them? Also, Cat Elves. This is an excuse for Two-Sun Cat Elves. GIVE TAAKO A TAIL. (I mean, or not, do what you want, but I’d love to see that, lol.) Suggested Character(s): Any Member(s) of the IPRE, Original Character(s)

Reclaimers before Tres Horny Boys: Who were the other Reclaimers? Who did Lucretia trust to carry out this dangerous mission? How did they all each, inevitably fail? What if Magic Brian was a Reclaimer gone wrong? What was the last straw for Lucretia, the last failure that made her scheme to get her boys back? And the other Reclaimers weren’t officially disbanded right away; how did they feel about the new guys in town, and losing their jobs to these doofuses? Suggested Character(s): Lucretia, Original Character(s)

The Relic Wars: There were wars about the Relics!!! Wars!! That everyone forgot!! Wars where people that THB knew died!! And then we never get into this in canon! It drives me nuts! I would love to see an exploration of this chaotic time period, what the IPRE did to mitigate the damage, which relics were obvious and terrifying and which were secret and terrifying, etc... I’ve written a bit about Relic War-era Hurloane, but what were the other NPCs doing? (Or Hurley and Sloane too, I’d love to see your take on them too!) When Lucretia wiped everyone’s memories, what was lost? (I suspect Angus’ Grandfather got caught up in that...) How did those missing memories lead people to the Bureau of Balance? Suggested Character(s): Lucretia, Any Member(s) of the IPRE, Angus McDonald’s Grandfather

The Robot World's crystal post-Story and Song: The IPRE promised to return the Robot World’s crystal if they ever managed to defeat the Hunger...and we know they can plane hop from the casino liveshow...so, did they ever return the crystal? How did that go down? How does the Robot World rebuild itself? And if we’re going into it being the (K)nights Arc’s setting, are there other characters than Troth that we might recognize? Suggested Character(s): Magnus Burnsides, Lucretia, Any Member(s) of the IPRE

Worlds that survived the Hunger: In the worlds where the IPRE found the Light of Creation before the Hunger arrived, what was it like for the people there who had to endure the Hunger’s attack? What was the scope of the destruction? How did they rebuild afterward? Does uniting against a common enemy bring the people of the world together and create more Tesseralia-like societies? How many people knew about the IPRE, and what did they think about them? When they hear the Story and Song, what’s the reaction? If they didn’t know about the IPRE what myths do they create to explain the Hunger? Suggested Character(s): Lucretia, Original Character(s)

~~~

Alright, that’s the end of my prompts/requests! Thanks for reading this far, and whatever you end up writing for me I am super excited to read it!! And if you have questions or ideas or something, my askbox is open and I have anon messages on, I’d love to talk! Thank you again for creating for me, you are the best! <3

#tmi anna #worldbuilding exchange #exchange letter

[hey-op-just-kill-me]

OK get ready for some quotes, I have so many....

I’m just gonna list them off the top of my head. some will be funny and some will be quotes that I really love and I think are really powerful

“you’re a toaster“-Starship

"In case you were wondering *rolls out from behind pillar and stands up* The 'D' stands for my wiener."- a very potter sequel

“i’m sure it’s an honest mistake on account of Oscar can’t count to 20 with his shoes on”-Bway Newsies

“History isn't something you look back at and say it was inevitable, it happens because people make decisions that are sometimes very impulsive and of the moment, but those moments are cumulative realities."-Marsha P. Johnson

“sit down you inarticulate bumble”-a very potter musical

“Ron: Favorite Aimee Mann song on three. One, two, three... Harry and Ron: Red Vines. Harry: Favorite color of vines, other than green. Harry and Ron: Red Vines. Ron: Favorite way to say 'red wines' in a German accent. Harry and Ron: Red Vines. OH MY GOD! *bro hug*” - a very potter sequel

“More like supermegafoxyawesomehot”-a very potter musical

“All of us who are openly gay are living and writing the history of our movement. We are no more – and no less – heroic than the suffragists and abolitionists of the 19th century; and the labor organizers, Freedom Riders, Stonewall demonstrators, and environmentalists of the 20th century. We are ordinary people, living our lives, and trying as civil-rights activist Dorothy Cotton said, to ‘fix what ain’t right’ in our society.”–Senator Tammy Baldwin

“Oh my God, I have to fight a goat? I don't think I can do that morally... *later* Oh my god I have to fight a dragon! I can't do that I'm just a little kid!"- a very potter musical

"There's no way we're losing to Slytherin, or Ravenclaw, or...Jigglypuff."- a very potter sequel

"There's only one thing to do: I have to die. I love you all... except you Draco. I can't f**king stand you."-a very potter musical

"Your irrational fear of the potty... Why else would you have such a little D? IT'S 'CAUSE YOU'RE A FUCKING ELF!"- a very potter sequel

"Gay as the Fourth of July...oh you mean the hat."- a very potter sequel

“it‘s not that. it‘s Hermione. I can‘t get her out of my head. It’s just every time I look at her I get these pains in my chest, and I just know it’s her fault, that bitch!” - a very potter musical

"Actually I have heard those things, Harry, about a thousand times, but never have they been told to me with so much sass. Drop the attitude, Harry Potter. You are acting like Garfield on a Monday.” -a very potter musical

"For 11 years I was a Muggle douchebag living under some stairs. This year I found out I'm a wizard, and I'm famous. I can fly and turn invisible...and I just traveled the f*** back in time! So f*** you, Draco. How's that for a happy thought?” - a very potter sequel

“Ow, crap. I hate this. Running is terrible. Everything is the worst.”- Bojack horseman

“There has been another mass shooting. I am totally unqualified to cover a news story this important, but as a straight white male, I will plow forward with confidence and assume I’m doing fine!”- Bojack horseman

(honestly if you look up “Bojack horseman funny quotes” you’ll find an insane amount! That show is genuinely one of the most equally powerful and hilarious things I’ve ever seen in my life)

“Hahaha, hahaha. Now you're just being cute. I can't GO to Pigfarts, Potter. It's ON MARS. You need a rocketship. Do you have a rocketship, Potter? I bet you do. You know, not all of us inherited enough money to buy out NASA when our parents died. Look at this! Look at this! It's Rocketship Potter! Starkid Potter! Moonshoes Potter! Traversing the galaxy for intergalactic travels to Pigfarts!”- a very potter musical

"I was in the car with my parents when we crashed...into a crocodile. My parents got eaten but then the crocodile took out a knife and gave me this scar.”- a very potterr sequel

"Mrs. Granger, you have to have learned by now that when one of you has gots a problem, all three of you has gots a problem. What would Zac Efron say at a time like this? 'We're all in this together...'"- a very potter musical

“Diane, I am a famous — everyone gives me everything I want all the time. It is an existential curse, but a huge day-to-day convenience.”- Bojack Horseman

“Well, I believe everything has its place. Muggles have their place. Mudbloods have their place. And so do your clothes. Namely, A DRESSER!"- a very potter musical

“Slap my salami, the guy’s a commie.”- Bojack horseman

“"Do you know who I think is the ugliest girl in school? Hermione Granger. You know what I'd give her on a scale of one to ten, with one as the ugliest and ten as the prettiest? I'd give her an 8... 8.5... or a 9... but not... NOT over a 9.8. Because there is always room for improvement. Not everyone is perfect, like me. I'm holding out for a 10. Because I'm worth it."- a very potter musical

"You gotta roll over, I can't sleep on my tummy." - a very potter musical (spoken by Voldemort)

"So basically, I've being putting everyone who looks like a good guy into Gryffindor, a bad guy into Slytherin and the others can go wherever the hell they want." - a very potter musical

“Totally, the best class by far is satanic rituals.”- a very potter sequel

Okay so first @yahfancyclamwiththepurlinside thank you so much for sending me so many. 2nd and this is a quick disclaimer I’ve never actually seen AVPM or the spin off but I did find them all very funny so thank you I love you so much.

Please enjoy my very shitty handwriting

#woah not newsies for once #long post #i’m sorry

[kravkalackin]

Consider a taako who suffers from face blindness 

it’s not so much a problem when him and lup are kids, they never stuck around in one place long enough for it to matter. hell, hardly enough for him to even realize it’s a thing. usually you can identify the important people easy enough in other ways. hair color and style are big stand outs, body types are easy enough, and voices. when you can’t remember faces you learn to pick up voices really fast. 

the starblaster is another place where it doesn’t prove to be a problem much at all. There’s only six other people to keep track of, and most of them are distinct enough to tell at a glance in a large crowd. 

Magnus, big, muscular, auburn hair and large sideburns. A big scar over one eye. the one thing he could never remember was if he had a beard or not. taako swore he could be staring at the lug’s face for an hour straight and as soon as he looked away he just had no idea. 

Merle, short, thick, white hair usually worn up in a bun and a beard large enough that taako could definitely remember it. Usually had sticks in it. the frustrating thing about merle was that taako could never fucking remember his voice. he was easy enough to identify in other ways that he was pretty sure no one noticed 

Davenport, shortest, bright red hair and mustache. Taako basically didn’t need anything else, as long as he saw those ninety times out of ten it was their captain. 

Lucretia was easy enough as well. stark white hair against dark skin usually stood out, for as much as she tried to be a wall flower. If he still couldn’t be sure, just look for the person carrying a huge fucking book and he was usually set. 

Barry was easy to lose in a crowd. there was just, always seemed to be a lot of pale chubby middle aged dudes with short brown hair and glasses. Taako managed to hone in on the little details over the years, but he had to rely on voice for barry the most out of any of them. 

He never had any issue identifying Lup. The thing about resetting every year for everyone else was that it meant they always went back to base. Taako could be safe in knowing they would have the same hair style, the same general build. When all else failed, he could just look for their bright red robes like a beacon in a crowd of blurred faces he cared about less and less as the cycles went on. 

But lup could wear any clothes, change her hair however she wanted, do whatever she wanted with herself and taako never had trouble recognizing his sister. after all, they were unique, and looking at lup’s face was as easy as looking at his own. 

after the century taako stops trying to identify people much at all. he only starts up again joining up with merle and magnus, once they’re at the bureau. They’re easier to pick out than people usually are, the director too, and davenport. 

some other people fall into place here and there. some are too easy not to know. johann’s the only dude dressed like a bard, carey is bright blue and a lizard. angus is the only kid running around the place. he’s also the only kid wearing such fancy outfits all the time and just as likely to be carrying spellbooks as he is to be carrying blood soaked evidence from a crime scene. 

when he starts dating kravitz, he’s just gotta look for the handsomest dude around and he’s definitely got the right guy. that and his eyes glow the slightest bit red and he’s always got raven feathers in his hair or on his robe. 

they hear the red robe speak in refuge, and taako swears he knows that voice from somewhere. the thought is gone as soon as he stops thinking it though. 

when the red robe reveals himself to be barry, taako realizes faster than he ever expected. it’d been over a year and the guy had been so plain. for some reason though, he’d been paying attention to what he looked like, trying to make sure he would be able to pick him out from a crowd. 

the liches take his beauty in wonderland, and suddenly he can’t recognize himself in the mirror with the glamour down. it’s just another plain, regular elf face that vanishes from his mind the second he turns away. 

there’s a voice that speaks to him when he puts on the band of telepathy. he knows this voice, because he’s good at remembering voices. he can’t place it though, it’s a frustrating, fruitless thing, like trying to piece together his own reflection now. it stings in a way he doesn’t know how to handle, so he just doesn’t handle it. he pushes it back, ignores it and takes the message it gives him with a grain of salt. 

he knows one thing though. that’s the voice of a person he should never have had problems identifying, but he doesn’t know why.

#taz #the adventure zone #taako #this got long #whoops #in which i project onto taako #i have really bad face blindness #and identify people mostly through voice hair and clothes #and i thought it fit taako #listen his 'ren? little ren!' scene is exactly me when someone recognizes me #but i don't have any idea who they are #just fuckin play along

[astriiformes]

Fibbonaci numbers for Erwyn?

Answered 1 (and I suppose, answered 1 again)

2 - Who in the party would your character trust the most with their life?

Ooh hm. Different people for different reasons, and really all of the party in different ways. Kriv and Voski are the two with healing abilities though, which have been pretty critical in saving his life, and Voski of course was the one who cast the resurrection spell to bring him back to life. They might be the biggest two just for those practical reasons.

3 - What are your character’s core moral beliefs?

Much of his life philosophy centers around kindness. He wants to help individuals and figure out broader ways to help the world – though one of his firm beliefs is that small actions and helping even one person are important and have a massive impact. 

While he wants to get to the root of the planar problem that’s plaguing Ashona, he’s very much a “sparks of hope in the face of the darkness” kind of guy. Maybe because so much of his own life has fallen down around his twitchy ears, but even in the middle of what we’re learning may be an apocalyptic event, he’s still largely focused on the stories and needs of individuals, and were he faced with watching the world end, he’d be dedicated to fighting and helping the people around him to the bitter end, even if it became clear the situation as a whole wasn’t something that could be fixed.

5 - Does your character have any biases for or against certain races?

Not really. As a high elf from a more isolated community he definitely grew up with some messages of semi-superiority, but more in a “we have powerful gifts” way than one that was all that disparaging of other fantasy races. And he’s lived outside of those influences and among really diverse communities for so long now that any of that has faded away entirely (though really, I don’t think Erwyn is someone that viewpoint ever really resonated much with anyway)

8 - What location encountered in the campaign has your character felt the most “at home” in, or just generally liked the most?

Funnily enough despite our circumstances, he’s pretty intrigued by the Faewilds. He basically grew up hearing fairytales mixed with real history about the place as a kid, because it’s such a critical location in elven history – it’s where the elves lived after the Seldarín realized they couldn’t remain in Arborea, with its overwhelming divine presence and environment, as mortals, all the way until they migrated to the Material Plane and experienced the high/wood/drow schism due to disagreements about how to survive in the new environment. 

Seeing the Faewilds, for him, is both a piece of history and I think a moving experience in a lot of ways – I imagine since the elves still have some fae ancestry in them that reflects significantly in both their biology and their language, there’s something about the magic of the environment and the resonance of the plane (a concept that our DM and I have talked about as a significant part of Erwyn’s horizon walker abilities and thus something he’s even more in tune with than the average elf) that feels inviting and nostalgic, even for the elves of the Fifth Age, like Erwyn.

13 - Does your character ever want to “settle down” with a spouse, children, house, etc.?

Not really. He’s not exactly the marrying type and I think would struggle with the responsibility of raising kids for a number of reasons. He certainly might eventually become a little more sedentary than he’s been for the last few decades, particularly as he ages seeing as he still has potentially 600 years of life ahead of him, but that still probably wouldn’t be for hundreds of years unless a very particular opportunity presented itself. 

21 - Does your character have any noticeable scars? If so, what are their stories?

I mentioned a number of his scars in the appearance question earlier, but to specifically focus on them and give a little more detail. These are also just the prominent ones – he’s reasonably scarred up in smaller ways all over, just from living a dangerous and outdoor lifestyle for so long

His most significant scarring is a huge, knotted mess of heavily scarred skin that stretches from his right shoulder all the way down to about his shins on the same side. They stretch a good way across his torso and upper legs as well. The party has caught glimpses of them on occasion, mostly when Erwyn has been seriously injured and they’ve ended up exposed, but he hasn’t been willing to talk about their story

He has another scar that I’m not sure the party has seen, but it’s a strange little spot on his stomach area that looks almost as if it was corroded and weirdly healed. That one also has an undisclosed origin

There’s also, of course, the scar from when he died. Since he didn’t actually get directly hit by Rose’s dragon’s breath and it was instead channeled into him by fae magic, it doesn’t appear as ice damage across his skin – instead, it’s a spot over his heart that grew there as it stopped, that has the sheen of ice and appears as a sort of ragged snowflake pattern that branches out in cobwebbed lines that almost look like Lichtenberg figures across much of his torso

34 - What does your character admire and dislike the most about the player character sitting to your left?

Oh BOY, well given the logic I used for these more physical space-oriented questions, that would be Voski which is a really complicated one to answer. 

He thinks that she’s an incredibly powerful magic user for sure, almost definitely overestimating her abilities but certain in the assertion. He also admires her practicality and has told her on multiple occasions that he really values her opinion in group discussion and decisions because he thinks they need someone with her opinions and ideas to be successful. Her ways with people absolutely dazzle him because he’s not the best at that sort of thing himself.

However. She baffles him. He looks at her and sees someone who, at great risk to herself, performed the ritual to bring him back to life, and who he is positive is a better person than she presents herself as, and yet sometimes she makes decisions that, at the very least, he just can’t understand. Erwyn has a very black-and-white vie of morality wherein he tends to assume someone who he knows is a Good Person must think similarly to him in that they would make as many kind and generous decisions as possible. So being in a group where – and Voski isn’t the only one who confuses him this way – there are people he’s seen be the epitome of his definition of Good but who are affiliated with crime, or make seemingly selfish decisions, or other things he wouldn’t expect a Good Person to do, is really challenging some of his views on morality.

That said, on the whole the positives really do outweigh the “negatives” in his mind. Erwyn’s opinion of Voski is not only positive but genuinely admiring, and he’s frequently a little awed by her and her abilities. Which is interesting, given their wildly differing personalities, but do I have some suspicions that the two of them have a little more in common than appears on the surface.

Answered 55 and 89!

#last of the erwyn asks! #friendship campaign #ask meme #prometheusascendant

[karalizzy]

Safsee Breg

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What is your full name?

Safsee Breg

How did your parents decide on your name?

Safrees was Nana's name. She thought it would be a respectful thing to do. My Nan was a killer bitch. I loved her

How tall are you?

2'9"

What color is your hair?

An auburn-y brown color

What color are your eyes?

One is red and one is bright blue

How much do you weigh?

28 lbs, bebe

What is your birthday (month, date, and year)?

January 23rd

What is your father’s name?

Cel

What is your mother’s name?

Olteal

What are your grandparents’ names?

I don't know much about my Pap's side, but my Mam's parents were Safrees and Berk.

Do you have any siblings? What are their names, birthdates, and birth order?

Got a brother, Oz. He was born a couple years before me, November 13th

Do you have any medical problems, diseases, injuries?

I was a damn healthy bab. Had a spear go through my right lung once so I can't run for long but...

Do you have any distinguishing marks on your body (a mole, a birthmark, a missing finger, a tattoo, etc.)?

Got a couple scars. The lung one which is under a tit, one across my right shoulder, and one on my neck I don't wanna talk about.

What kind of house/apartment do you live in?

I currently live with my partner, she sweet as fuck. She did the decorating, so it's pretty cutesy and shit. I guess you could call it a loft?

Do you have any pets?

We have Hermes. He's my girl's falcon. He's kind of an asshole but I love him.

Are you married? If so, what is your spouse’s name?

We ain't married, but I'm with my girl Bresha. She's my flower.

HISTORY QUESTIONS:

Where did you go to school?

I learned all my mechanics with my Papa in garage

How many times have you moved in your life?

The fam crossed Arcaylia probably a dozen times

When did you move to where you live now?

Bresha and I moved in together 3 and a half years ago

Who is your best friend now?

An angel. Don’t ask.

Who are all of the people whom you have dated?

Gettin personal... uh, another goblin called Teets (I Know), a human called Aarin, and a half-elf girl called Antalia... some others.... and my sweet flower.

Why did your relationship with each person you dated not work out?

Well fuck, didn't realize this was my fuckin life story. Okay, I guess it didn't work out with Teets because I kept laughing at his name. The human was a one-off, he knew that. Antalia was... woo, that girl was just too much crazy for me.

What is the worst thing that ever happened to you?

Don't wanna talk about it. Let's just say that the cleric was the traitor, not me.

What is the best thing that ever happened to you?

I met my beautiful girl, Bresha.

How did you meet your current significant other?

I was at the pub, having some brews and this beautiful, long-haired, half-orc lady sat down next to me. We started talkin' about the area and smiling and laughing and just.... *sigh* then some jag-offs came in and threatened her. Before I could even say anything she cut one in half. I'd never had such a rock-hard lady chub before.

Who important to you has died in your life and how did you cope with their deaths?

Jesus. *snortles* No, uh, well.... I have-... had a good friend called Remliel. They were one of the most... selfless people I could hope to meet. I don't think I did... COPE really. I just didn't deal with it. Shut up, what's the next question?

PERSONALITY QUESTIONS:

What is your favorite color?

Brown.

What is your favorite book?

My flower and I read "The Tales of Murph Brittlebrass" to eachother. It's about a swashbuckler badass. If she was alive, my love and I would totally rock her world, you know?

What is your favorite food(s)?

I actually really like rations? Unpopular opinion, but fuck man, prunes with uncured beef sausage? AND homemade bread?? Makes me moist just thinking about it.

What most annoys you about (your mom, dad, brother, sister, wife, son, daughter, best friend, boss, co-worker)?

Mama is always in my business about pollunating the world with my seed, but jokes on her. Papa has never done anything wrong in his life. Oz is a cunt but I love him.

How often do you exercise? What are your exercise goals?

Ex-.... I'm sorry what is that word? Is it Elvish? It's not translating well, sorry.

Which of your buttons does your mother like to push that sets you off?

Just the wee babey one.

Do you believe it’s okay to tell a lie and under what circumstances?

It's okay to tell a lie if someone's safety is at risk and the lie will protect them.

Are you an introvert or an extrovert?

I'd say I'm like... 86.4% extroverted

What things might you be asked to do that you hate doing but do anyway (attend birthday parties, weddings, do chores for your elderly aunt, etc.)?

Oh, watchin my brothers brood. Those kids are little bastards but they're my nephews so I gotta put up with them a little I guess.

Have you ever been arrested and why?

Cleric tried to arrest me once for pissing in public three days after I saw him do it. Fuck that guy.

Who would you lay down your life for?

My flower.

Who would you really like to tell off?

Byron. He's a cunt that I know that needs to get his goddamn, motherfucking priorities straight for his own cunting sake. Or at least he's gotta get laid.

What are your spending habits?

I spend what I gotta. Food, supplies. Bresha buys a little more than she should *snickers.

Do you enjoy hot weather, or do you prefer colder temperatures?

Gimme that sun bby.

If you could describe yourself in one sentence, what would you say?

King Bitch of Fuck Mountain

If your (best friend, wife, daughter, boss, neighbor etc.) were to describe you in one sentence, what do you think he/she would say?

She better say the same thing. It's a running gag. We love eachother.

#oc #oc development #safsee #goblin

[taaroko]

Post-IW MCU Rewatch: Thor: The Dark World

Yay more Thor! (Yes I know this is widely considered to be the worst of the MCU movies and I DO NOT CARE. *hugs entire population of Asgard possessively*)

This prologue is ridiculous. I don’t know if it’s Anthony Hopkins’s inflection or if it’s just a step too far in the high fantasy direction, but it does make me cringe a bit. More showing, less telling! The prologues in the LotR movies were way more interesting than this.

The Dark Elf language also makes me cringe. I am very aware that it’s preposterous to assume that people from different planets speak English, but what’s most important to me is that actors cannot deliver nuanced performances when they are speaking gibberish. At least when it’s real languages, someone can coach them on inflection and stuff, but they really hamstrung Christopher Eccleston by making him say these silly-sounding lines.

Malekith has no imagination if the only thing he could think to do with the Reality Stone was turn stuff into dark matter.

“Benevolent god” indeed. Sending the Chitauri to slaughter people doesn’t really fit that description, sweetie.

Seriously Anthony Hopkins’s delivery is really weird in some places.

Odin is now three for three on children who showed scary genocidal tendencies, so I think there’s a lot of bitterness and feelings of failure behind what he says to Loki. Also Loki’s not showing any remorse at all, even though now would be a great time to explain that he was tortured and manipulated by Thanos. They’re both getting defensive and lashing out instead of engaging in meaningful communication.

Hi Sif! Hi Volstagg! HI THOR! He has such good entrances. Hi Fandral and Hogun! (Even if this is Zachary Levi Fandral with his stupid wig.)

The weapons the raiders are using are really interesting.

Hey I wonder if this Kronan knows Korg.

I love Thor’s smile when all the raiders laugh at his “I accept your surrender.”

*dreamy sigh* Asgard.

HUGIN AND MUNIN! And one actually lands on Odin’s arm! That’s awesome.

Odin ships Thor/Sif. (Me too, Odin.)

Obligatory shirtless Thor scene!

Volstagg and his family! *wibble*

Oh Sif. Rejected. (But Thor’s pretty nice about it.)

Jane is really quite socially awkward, isn’t she? Why did she go on this date?

It says something about how bad of a driver Jane is (hitting Thor, nearly driving off the road) that she would trust Darcy to drive her around (I guess Darcy’s record is slightly better, having only hit Thor once, while they were in the middle of a dust cloud).

“Why’re you calling me?” “I didn’t want to shout.”

Portals! Whee! (Honstly the portal shenanigans are one of the big reasons I love this movie. This crap is so much fun.)

I love the way Darcy wiggles her hand when she says “Gimme your shoe.”

Okay so the Dark Elves are set to wake up if the Aether gets activated? Headcanon time. Judging from all the creepy red lights in their ships, I think they used the Aether to make most of their tech, much like Schmidt did with the Tesseract. So yeah, if the Aether gets activated, their tech would react. That works.

Heimdall’s new armor has an orange stone in the breastplate. I thought he was gonna turn out to be the one who had the Soul Stone, and that it was the source of his infinite sight. ...I’m pretty sure I still like that better than what we ended up with in canon. Also, I only noticed this the other day, but Heimdall’s helmet is shaped the same as Hofund’s hilt, and that’s awesome.

Heee, I love Thor and Heimdall’s chat. I definitely believe that Thor would describe Heimdall as his best friend.

Whoops! Continuity error. Jane should not be in her Asgardian outfit yet. I guess they decided to move this bit to this part of the movie instead of later, but didn’t reshoot it.

Did Thor make this storm or is that just London being London? He does make it stop, I guess.

Sorry guys, Thor already has that dark strand of stuff in his hair; it’s not a Loki memorial braid.

Thor and Darcy’s interactions are always gold.

You sliced off part of that car!

Oh, question answered from before. You CAN see space rushing past from inside the Bifrost. Sweet.

Hi Eir! The Soul Forge is so cool.

Jane takes Odin’s rudeness pretty well. But dang, Odin. I know you ship Thor/Sif, but being mean to the competition is an elementary mistake.

That book is freaking awesome. It’s like the Book of Kells, except the images move and it’s in runes.

Dangit I don’t want the bad guys to be the ones who touch foreheads to show affection!

I really don’t like this look for Frigga. That one-boob breastplate is really weird.

The emotion in Loki’s scene with Frigga’s projection is so great. He wants to sever ties with Odin (or he thinks he does) but he can’t do that without severing ties with Frigga too, and you can see how much it hurts him to say anything that would hurt her. Which he plainly instantly regrets. And it’s the last thing he ever says to her.

Yessss more romantic exposition from Thor.

Hahaha, Jane is so much more shy around Frigga than Odin.

Man the way the Kursed dude kills people is really messed up.

Loki you would not be smiling at this dude if you knew he was going to do much more than cause a bit of mischief.

Thor jumping and grabbing Mjolnir is such a cool shot.

“It’s only because I’ve worried over you that you have survived.” Based on how Odin behaves as soon as she’s dead, that is extremely accurate.

Heimdall is so awesome. Oh, and I love the way the Dark Elves’ ships look almost like they’re made of dragon hide or something. Dragon hide or lava rock. Fantastic design. Fantastic movements.

This movie has so much more of Asgard in it than the first one, which is awesome. Even if it’s mostly getting pummeled by Dark Elves.

Those black hole grenades are freaking terrifying.

Yeah...if Loki hadn’t given that tip about the stairs to the left, the Kursed dude wouldn’t have arrived in time to help Malekith before Frigga finished him off, or before Thor and Odin arrived. :/

Frigga’s funeral is beautiful. The music, however, has been somewhat retroactively ruined by that play in Ragnarok. (Which I adore.)

Even if Loki doesn’t know how much his actions specifically contributed to Frigga’s death, I think he regrets helping the Kursed dude.

Hi Stan!

Dang, Asgardian law is crazy strict if Thor and the Warriors Three are casually talking about being killed by Einherjar if they screw up this plan.

This is so sad, because Loki actually doesn’t betray Thor at any point during this mission. He makes up for it by being incessantly irritating (which is the best stuff in the movie), but he sticks to the plan the whole time. The only one he betrays in this whole movie is Odin.

Okay the dagger/handcuffs trick by Thor is funny and all, but it really doesn’t hold up if you think about it. You’d definitely notice the difference between being handed a dagger and having thick cuffs put on.

Sif is very good at not letting her jealousy show too clearly. And her sword is awesome. Her and Volstagg’s threats to Loki are pretty great.

Peak annoying little brother stuff right here, when they’re in the Dark Elf blade ship. My favorite is “Oh dear. Is she dead?”

So Thor has the “face squashed against glass motif,” and I think Loki has a falling motif. Into the abyss in the first one, out of the ship in this one, and through whatever dimension Doctor Strange trapped him in in Ragnarok.

The flying longboats are so cool.

I love how much Loki likes it whenever Thor gets the better of him with sneakiness. He’s so used to Thor just smashing his way through stuff, so any subtlety he uses (especially when it’s successful against him) is fantastic in his book.

“Ta-dah.”

“What I could do with the power that flows through those veins.” I would love to see what Loki could do with the Aether. He’s already a master of illusions, and the Reality Stone would multiply that by about a thousand. It’d be awesome. And yet he sent it off to Knowhere instead of keeping it (or giving it to Thanos). Just like he kept the Tesseract safe in Asgard’s vault the entire time he was pretending to be Odin. If Loki had really done everything he did in Avengers of his own free will while in his right mind, he would not have gone to such lengths to keep multiple Infinity Stones away from Thanos. Heck, he might even have been the one to commission Stormbreaker from Eitri. I suppose he didn’t use the Stones himself because he knows as well as Thor does how deadly they can be to the wielder, or maybe he knew they’d draw Thanos to him like a beacon.

Thor thinks Loki wants to hurt him because he’s talking about Jane’s mortality, but Loki thinks Thor only cares about Jane and not the fact that their mother just died. They’re so bad at understanding each other.

The bittersweet smiles they exchange after “She wouldn’t want us to fight.”/“Well, she wouldn’t exactly be shocked.” are so painful to watch. They both desperately miss the days before any of this happened, when they were simply brothers, and I think they realize that about each other in this moment. But it’s not enough to fix everything, which is why Thor says “I wish I could trust you” and Loki says “Trust my rage.”

Ian is such a dope.

If a flock of starlings burst up through the ground at my feet like that, I would be scarred for life.

Thor’s plan is awesome. I totally fell for it in the theater. I thought Loki had double-crossed him and chopped his hand off, but they were working together the whole time. I kinda don’t think they let Jane in on it, though. Is the lack of blood on Thor’s arm stump a mistake or a hint that it’s a trick? *rewinds and squints* Ooh, no, it’s because the dagger has a glowy energy field on it! Insta-cauterization! Anyway, this would’ve been the perfect time for Loki to betray Thor for real if he’d wanted to, but he plays along. In part, I think, because he was so impressed with the plan.

Hey guys, even when Loki’s pretending to be a traitor, he doesn’t call himself Laufeyson. STOP CALLING HIM LAUFEYSON IN YOUR TAGS. Also his knife-fighting is awesome.

The Kursed dude’s eyeballs getting sucked out of their sockets was NOT a necessary detail to include.

“You fool, you didn’t listen!” What does Thor mean? What did Loki not listen to? Did Thor tell him that he was only supposed to protect Jane, not him?

Okay so I’m really not sure what the deal is with Loki’s fake death here. I have a couple different theories.

Theory 1: Loki really did get stabbed and really did believe he was dying. After Thor and Jane left to seek shelter from Thor’s uncontrollable grief storm, Loki reverted to his true form (because, dying) and that actually saved his life because Kursed blood isn’t as deadly to the Jotnar as it is to the Aesir, or his vital organs aren’t in the same place anymore, or something. So he was able to heal himself and take advantage of the situation.

Theory 2: Loki never intended to betray Thor, but he always intended to fake his death, both as a way of escaping prison and of avoiding Thanos’s retribution. So as soon as he finished off those four Dark Elves, he turned one of their corpses into a copy of himself and puppeteered it over to stab the Kursed dude and get theatrically killed. It would explain why the Loki who gets stabbed only has a Dark Elf sword and a black hole grenade on him.

I lean more towards theory 1 because I don’t really like the idea that Loki would trick Thor into thinking he was dead the day after their mother died, and also because when they filmed it, they actually meant for this to be Loki’s real death scene, and they only changed it later because test audiences didn’t believe Loki was dead. However, if I put aside my emotions, I have to admit that theory 2 makes more logical sense.

Would Malekith have found the Aether sooner if it hadn’t gotten into Jane? The movie implies pretty strongly that Malekith woke up because the Aether was out of its hiding place.

Mjolnir on the coat hook is such a great gag.

The elevator in Malekith’s ship looks like a spinal column, which is some fantastic design.

Thor’s battle trash talk is always delightful.

PORTAL SHENANIGANS. YESSSSSS.

Poor Mjolnir. It’s trying so hard to get back to Thor. I like to think that when it shatters the glass of that building on its way back up, it’s doing so in frustration.

Hi Jotunheim!

So apparently this isn’t remotely how you get to Greenwich from Charing Cross. Whoops. Maybe that girl was just really flustered at being addressed by Thor and gave him crap directions?

Jane really likes trying to throw herself between an unconscious Thor and a thing that she thinks might kill him.

POETRY. Malekith tried to destroy the Asgardian army by dropping his fleet on them. Now he gets killed by his own ship falling on him.

How’d Loki know about Thor’s line to Odin “There will never be a wiser king than you”?

“I can assure you, it will be absolutely safe here in my collection.” LIAR.

It’s so cool that Chris’s wife is the one who played Jane in the end credits scene. I’m not sure how they failed to do this kiss scene with Natalie in the first place, but whatever.

Every time Thor’s about to show up somewhere in this movie, there’s thunder. :D

Okay so the biggest problems with Thor: The Dark World are that Malekith is the dullest villain in the entire MCU and that Thor kinda doesn’t have a character arc. In a movie where half of his family dies (as far as he knows). How is that even possible? Despite the beautiful funeral, Frigga’s death was really kind of glossed over, and then Loki seemingly dies too, but even though those are very powerful scenes while we’re in them, they don’t leave much of an impact on the rest of the movie. You don’t really feel those losses in the way Thor fights Malekith. Thor should’ve been struggling to stick to the plan instead of just whaling on Malekith blindly with Mjolnir. He should’ve had some breakdown with Jane there to witness it and comfort him. Instead he’s the one comforting Jane when she blames herself for all the loss he’s suffered? No no no. He should’ve either been very emotional, very bent on revenge, or smiling and joking through the pain like he does in Ragnarok and Infinity War. This stoicism is not effective, and it probably contributes to so many people’s (mistaken) belief that, prior to Ragnarok, Thor was a boring character. And Malekith’s side of the battle would’ve been better if it had been personal for him too. He could’ve been more upset at the death of his buddy Algrim, or maybe he had family members who were killed by Bor, which is why he’s so keen on killing members of Asgard’s royal family now. It would’ve been so easy to make this an emotionally intense fight. Instead, it’s merely fun because portal shenanigans. *shrug*

Despite not having much of an arc, Thor is still wonderful. He’s funny, he’s more thoughtful and wise than he’s ever been, he’s gallant, he’s romantic, and he’s getting better and better at working as part of a team and finding solutions besides smashing stuff. Also he makes the best entrances, has awesome armor, and is mesmerizing to watch in battle. I adore him.

Other stuff this movie has going for it. So much more Asgard screentime, even if they cut a few scenes I wish they’d left in. The music is still great. Everything looks gorgeous, and the Dark Elves at least have interesting technology and costumes. No Dutch angles. Plenty of screentime for Heimdall. Every single second of Thor and Loki’s scenes together, being obnoxious bros to each other but still working as a very effective team (heralding all the excellent contentious Brodinson stuff to come in Ragnarok).

#thor the dark world #mcu marathon #thor #loki #infinity war spoilers #kinda

[brightandshinynewstories]

Oneshot: Water Under the Bridge

So I wrote this today, mostly at work on my phone, and decided to post it here.

I figure this would take place about a month before they leave the planar system.

It was exactly fuck o’clock in the morning when someone started pounding on the door. Taako grumbled and shoved his head under his pillow, intent on ignoring it. From the top bunk Lup muttered something that sounded like “whozuhmatter”. There were a few seconds of blessed silence, then the pounding resumed.

Taako stubbornly refused to move until someone in the next room over yelled “Answer your damn door!” through the wall. Lup didn't move- she could sleep through anything, up to and including Taako banging pots and pans together- so Taako edged his legs out of bed and levered himself more or less upright.

When he got the door open his initial thought was that someone was playing a bad joke. He didn't see anyone and was about to close the door when something at about shin height cleared its throat.

A small glowing figure, apparently built out of colored glass and utterly devoid of any kind of face gave a little wave. Taako glared at it. He wasn't sure which department had made the constructs but if he ever found out he was going to have some strong words for them, mostly “what”, “the”, and “fuck”. They weren't supposed to bother people after hours unless it was urgent- oh, and there were the little colored lights circling its head spelling out “URGENT”. How helpful.

“Ok, ok, what's so important?” Taako mumbled. The construct froze for a split second, then more text started crawling across its face.

URGENT

VISITOR FOR...

LUP

TAAKO

IN DOWNSTAIRS LOBBY

RESPOND IMMEDIATELY

The message scrolled a few times before returning to just URGENT. Taako slumped against the doorframe, his desire to go back to sleep nearly overriding his better sense. “Who's this from?” he asked.

URGENT said the construct.

“Yeah, right,” he muttered, and went back into the room to get Lup up.

Nearly half an hour later the twins sauntered into the lobby of their building, dressed, if not to the nines at least to the sevens or even the eights. Neither of them knew what to expect, so by silent agreement they'd decided to put whoever it was as off their stride as possible. Taako ran through the possibilities in his head. Had they been taken off the exploration team? No, that was crazy, they wouldn't do that at this time of morning. Something might have gone wrong with the ship or something, but wouldn't they have called the whole team if that was the case?

There was only one person sitting in the lobby and Taako almost missed them entirely until they stood up and walked over. The elf woman was dressed in dusty work clothes and an almost painfully old-fashioned leather doublet. Her hair was shorn very short, likely out of a sense of utility rather than style, although it did show off the pair of scars raked across the side of her head rather impressively. For a moment Taako didn't recognize her. Then Lup gasped.

“Tanzie?” she asked. Taako stared, astonished.

Their cousin gave a rather shaky smile. Taako thought it looked as if she was trying to hide a bad stomach ache. “Hi guys. It's good to see you again Lup, but it's Therenzie now.”

“Right. Of course,” Lup said, obviously still stunned.

Ta-Therenzie paused for a second, waiting for them to tell her their new names. Taako smiled blankly at her. As if they'd give up the only things that were really theirs. She seemed to realize no answer was forthcoming, so made a vague gesture towards the sitting area, mumbling “shall we?”.

“We certainly shall,” Taako said, sweeping by to drape himself over most of the sofa. Lup, recovered from the shock of seeing one of their blood relatives for the first time in well over a century, leaned carelessly on the sofa’s arm and across the back like a cat.

Therenzie sat stiffly across from them in one of the arm chairs, although she had to get back up and adjust the long daggers strapped to her hip so they didn't jab into the cushions. Once she was settled, the nauseous smile came back with a vengeance. “It's been too long. How have you been?”

“Oh, you know, not bad,” Lup said brightly. Taako remembered that she and Therenzie had gotten along fairly well for a while, although he suspected that had more to do with her being the only elf their age in the caravan. As for Taako, he hadn't liked Therenzie very much. She'd been a sneak and a thief, which would have been fine- Taako, after all, had also been a sneak and a thief. The problem was that her father ran the caravan, so if something went missing he was much more likely to blame the orphan twin than his own kid. And he knew, he knew that Therenzie had to deal with her father's erratic temper much more than him or Lup, and that she never got him in trouble on purpose, and that she'd been just a kid herself...but still. It wasn't fair.

Therenzie seemed to be relaxing as she and Lup exchanged pleasantly bland information about what they'd been doing since Therenzie’s dad kicked the twins out. If he didn't know his sister as well as he did, Taako might have thought she was wasting time. He did still think she was wasting time-it wasn't even 6 in the morning yet!- but he knew there was probably an underlying reason.

He was starting to doze off when Lup finally said, “so, what brought you all this way?” Taako’s ears pricked up.

“Ah. Yes,” Therenzie said, her expression freezing in place. She reached down to the battered old bag she'd tucked behind the leg of the chair and pulled out a book. “I was, well. I was asked to show this to the two of you. We knew each other before so they thought…” While she rambled, Taako surreptitiously craned his neck and barely managed to get a look at the cover of the book. It was very old, and the elvish script was almost unreadable, but he thought he recognized it from somewhere.

Lup suddenly let out an angry hiss. “Are you joking? Please tell me you're joking.”

“Joking about what?” Taako asked, baffled. He took another look at the book, then back at Therenzie's face, and finally his sleep deprived brain kicked into gear. “They want us- they want us back? Seriously?”

Therenzie at least had the decency to look ashamed. “The heads of the family heard about the IPRE expedition. They like the idea of having explorers in the family.” She said more but at that point Taako wasn't listening anymore. He'd gone right past outrage into incandescent fury, and it felt like if he tried to talk the top of his head might pop off. By the time he calmed down Therenzie had stopped talking. Her ears were downturned and pressed flat against her head, and Taako felt another brief wave of irritation that she'd been sent to talk to them. If their family really cared, would they have sent a caravan guard from one of the lowest hanging branches of their family tree? The only reason she ranked higher than the twins at all was because, well, twins. Twins with no parents, at that.

Taako gathered himself and said as archly as possible, “I bet they didn't even send a birthday present. We've had a lot of them. Not a single present.” Therenzie looked at him as if he’d grown two heads.

“Um...no, nothing like that,” she said. “They did ask me to assure you that when they took Dad's side it was just because of the geas about twins-”

“No one cares about geas anymore,” Lup snapped. “What about the geas over not fucking kicking kids out into the street?”

Therenzie shot her a cool look. “You had a hundred years at that point. You weren't kids anymore.”

Ooh, ok, there was that anger again. Taako didn't especially like getting angry, but Therenzie was hitting an awful lot of sore spots. “Yeah Lup, I bet her dad did us a favor. I, for one, think we did pretty damn well for ourselves without him, right?”

Therenzie looked from one to the other, her jaw clenched. She was obviously way out of her depth, but any sympathy Taako might have had was pretty weak now. He expected her to leave, but to his astonishment she leaned forward and placed the book reverentially on the coffee table in front of her.

It was definitely the real thing, probably bound in unicorn hide or something, and so magical Taako could feel it like the heat of a fire against his skin. It would contain the entire genealogy of their family, alliances and contracts with other families, marriages, deaths, everything, all in magical writing that would never fill up the entire book, no matter how much of it there was. And the best part was, once something was written down in there, it was there forever. Maybe the head honchos cared a little bit, if they'd sent the actual family record.

Taako made a dismissive noise. “Lup and I aren't in there, homie. You'd think you'd remember that.”

Therenzie didn't respond, instead opening the book and carefully paging through. Taako realized wearily that she was going to see this through no matter what he or Lup said. No wonder she'd shown up so early in the morning. As he'd thought, she was out of her depth, but she was still going to keep swimming.

The page she finally landed on was mostly taken up by paragraphs of dense looking writing. Near the bottom were two lines, presumably where Lup and Taako would sign their names.

Taako looked at the page with a dignified sneer. “Absolutely the hell not,” he said.

Lup added, “If they didn't want us before they definitely aren't getting us back now.”

Therenzie gave them a pleading look. “It's not like they're asking you to run a caravan or anything. It's mostly a formality, just to have your names in the book.”

“Uh-huh. Well, the thing is, we did all this work-” Lup started.

“So much work-”

“Yeah. And it's just not a great deal that we do the work and they get to say we're all one big happy family. You didn't want us. You don't get to have us back now.” It was a good speech, more than Taako thought anyone should be able to come up with at this time of morning.

Therenzie closed her eyes. “Please, just sign it. Nothing else has to change if you don't want it to.”

The book was just close enough for Taako to slide it closer to himself and Lup. It didn't say anything special. “So no apology either, huh,” he muttered. He hadn't expected one, so he wasn't sure why he was disappointed. There wasn't much else to say. He shared a glance with Lup and she made the slight gesture that meant she'd follow his lead.

Therenzie carefully pulled a tiny inkpot and quill out of her bag and pushed them across the table. Taako rolled his eyes. What was wrong with a ballpoint? He awkwardly dipped the quill in the ink and hovered for a second over the page. Then, in big, messy letters he scrawled across the entire document

FUCK

YOU

He sat back, flicking ink off the quill while Therenzie gaped in horror and Lup utterly lost her shit.

“So we're probably never going to hear from those idiots again,” Lup said, still giggling. She and Taako were climbing the stairs back to their room. There was sunlight starting to shine through the windows, which was completely unfair, but thinking about the look on Therenzie's face as she put the book away made him feel much better.

“Don't say things like that Lulu. You might jinx it.” Lup laughed again. They'd have to be up again in less than an hour, but he didn't care. “Worth it,” he mumbled, and grinning, opened the door to their room, staggered over to his bed, and collapsed in a relieved heap.

#taz #fanfic #my fic #quite a few headcanons of mine worked their way in there #hopefully it's not too much