#And they wear the armor he made Religiously- even if their gems are covered by clothes or theyre chilling at home

[zenixromeave]

zane skins/designs review!

first MCD appearance/wedding/white +gold

This is ugly as sin to be completely honest.

Okay, looking a little harder it isn’t THAT bad. The white and gold are clearly reminiscent of royalty and status, but the chosen yellow is far too on the lime green side of the spectrum to be recognizable as gold or have the same beauty as gold does. The belt looks bad, it doesn’t fit the rest of the outfit well and it would probably have given more of a priest/nun look if it weren’t present and his clothes were implied to be more drapey. This far back in his character design, his hair was also very light, giving it more of an impression of being gray than black, which thankfully she fixes eventually. The shading on the clothing- both white and gold- is very harsh and uses some really bad yellow tones (when shading with yellow, it is almost never good to take the color just closer to black, instead, making it more orange and a little darker usually makes a more aesthetically appealing color.)

There are admittedly some good, iconic features present in this design which just weren’t fully polished yet. Personally, I really like the idea of the hood, as it’s a common motif in a lot of religious clothing I feel like. Also, it looks cool, and goes well with him having a mask and covering himself.

-

main outfit (MCD)

The monochrome of this outfit works really well. All of the blacks and greys are slightly blue, lending themselves to suit his eyes nicely. The shading is nice as well. While the outfit looks good, I don’t feel the same about his face. His eyes could provide a nice pop of color, and since his clothes are tinted blue it should work, but the blue of his eyes is far too dull and light to provide any contrast or pop. Since his eyes and skin have nearly the same gray undertones, his eyes don’t pop as much as they should in a monochromatic design like this. “Also, they look like pajamas” - my boyfriend

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other main outfit (??? this one’s white)

“This one is super ugly” - my bf

The blue crosses are too similar in color to his eyes, it draws your attention to his knees instead of his face and eyes. I think his eyes work better in this outfit though with all the white, and I like the gloves. The strap around his chest is not really recognizable as a strap and the colors in the sword are obviously awful. The brown is really bright, as is the greenish-blue color of the sword (dagger?) Also, the amount of armor and weaponry in this outfit doesn’t really make sense for him considering he rarely fights. The boots/pants situation confuses me, I don’t know what’s going on there. Are they really short shoes and black pants of almost the same color? Visually confusing and ugly. His hair is still a little bit too gray.

His mask looks like it’s really long and with a cross on it. I think that looks really good. Shoulder pads are weirdly small as well, looks goofy.

-

rebirth

Why did she make him sexy. Whats her issue

I like the belt/strap details, they add some well needed texture to the previous design. The pants/shoes situation is still confusing and hard to tell what’s what. Finally, she’s utilizing his eyes as a proper pop of color. Personally, I would make them more on the purplish side of blue, but the green tint does match his sword, so that’s a nice touch. 

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Jury of nine transformation (I think?)

He’s big. You can’t see his face. He’s evil. Very sexy of him.

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season 3 (shadow knight armor)

I really like the purples in this one, and I think the shading is nice. I think the red should have probably been toned down a little because it’s very harsh and yet again draws attention away from his face. I’ll say it once and I’ll say it again, the full gem swords are ugly as shit. No escaping it. They’re all bad and look tacky.

The reasoning for why his mask is shaped that way still eludes me. He’s wearing all armor in this outfit, so the same hoodie-scarf-mask made of fabric he usually wears makes even less sense. There’s definitely cooler ways to cover his face, use some creativity. At this point, she was only giving him a mask because it was an established part of his character, not because it served any narrative or aesthetic purposes.

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beach episode (side stories)

trans ? why is he wearing that.

The shorts and top have no shading. Other than that, there isn’t much clothing to critique so... overall I think it’s kinda cute. The colors are pretty balanced, and I appreciate giving him some kind of shirt even at the beach, considering he’s usually covered head-to-toe. Not the kind of guy who should have abs though. Not everyone is Grey Fullbuster, Jess.

#zane ro'meave #minecraft diaries #mcd #aphblr #aph tag #outfit review #mine

[readingaway]

Mid Year Book Freakout Tag

Stolen from @ninja-muse, this was a good distraction for a few minutes

How many books have you read so far?

126; fewer than I wanted to have read but there’s a lot of extenuating circumstances and reading must take a back seat to everything else. A few have been re-reads like Dance of Thieves, Red White & Royal Blue, the first three books of An Ember in the Ashes, and I will get to re-reading We Hunt the Flame in the next few weeks. 

What genres have you read?

A decent mix, I think. It’s still somehow dominated by fantasy and YA (or YA fantasy), but I’ve gotten in quite a few other genres like contemporary/ adult literary fiction, historical fiction, romance, sci-fi, classics, and some nonfiction, poetry, short stories, and graphic novels. 

Best books you’ve read so far in 2021:

Not counting re-reads -

Saga by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples (book 3 hurt so much)

Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson

A Memory of Light by Brandon Sanderson & Robert Jordan 

Men at Arms by Terry Pratchett (my favorite Discworld novel so far)

The ABC Murders by Agatha Christie

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

New Spring by Robert Jordan

The Emigrants by W.G. Sebald (was a bit hard to read but the flow and the emotional pull)

The Lives of Christopher Chant and Witch Week by Diana Wynne Jones (I’ve discovered that when I’m in a slump - usually because my reading has been too depressing or dry I just have to pick up a Jones or a Pratchett to fix things)

A Sky Beyond the Storm by Sabaa Tahir (I mean, I thought I was upset by certain things but then I checked the tagged posts on here and realized I’m normal, actually)

Spindle’s End by Robin McKinley

Curses are for Cads by Tamara Berry

The Goddess Chronicle by Natsuo Kirino

The Box in the Woods by Maureen Johnson

The Valley and the Flood by Rebecca Mahoney

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

Cures for Heartbreak by Margo Rabb

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

Best sequel you’ve read so far in 2021:

Uh, I’m gonna go with The Box in the Woods even though it’s not quite a sequel, it is connected to the main series

New release you haven’t read yet, but want to:

Lucky Girl by Jamie Pacton, Delicates by Brenna Thummler, Lucy Clark Will Not Apologize by Margo Rabb, and Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. There’s a few more but these are the ones I’m most anxious to get to.

Most anticipated release for the second half of the year:

I’m very excited for A Snake Falls to Earth by Darcie Little Badger, Vespertine by Margaret Rogerson, Hypnosis is for Hacks by Tamara Berry, and The Winners by Fredrik Backman - the intended release date is unclear but it looks like it should be out in English in November/ December but might be pushed to next year. (On that note, I am still waiting for The Winds of Winter and The Thorn of Emberlain.)

Biggest disappointment:

Ace by Angela Chen was well put together but nothing earth-shattering or even that affirming for me. I keep myself sheltered from discrimination so I don’t face the stuff that people in the stories related faced, nor is it like I’ve never heard of asexuality before. 

In terms of books I think were just bad, Coyote America by Dan Flores was a flop; it looked like it might be pretty informative and some parts of it were, but there were so many assumptions and presumptions, as well as poor argumentation, that it threw everything else the author was claiming into question. Brideshead Revisited and A Handful of Dust, both by Evelyn Waugh were also big disappointments, out of all the classics I’ve read so far this year they were both boring, stale duds in which nothing interesting happened at all and the narrative voice was even more boring and grating. 

Biggest surprise:

Um, The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. I thought it would be iffy but it was... it flowed well and highlighted the differences between the women and had such emotional depth and also drew so much attention to patriarchal religious structures and patriarchy in general. 

Favorite new author (debut or new to you):

Ooh, I’ve read quite a few debut novels - mostly middle grade since I’ve been reading a lot of middle grade since my own novel project falls somewhere between middle grade and YA and I want to study the story types and narrative styles and I like how they’re written much more clearly than YA and adult books and yet typically have great emotional depth. So for most notable debut authors I liked Rebecca Mahoney and Nora Shalaway Carpenter. In new to me authors, Rachel Maddow, Tillie Walden, and Natuso Kirino all have other books that I’m now interested in checking out. Actually I have one of Tillie Walden’s other books next to me right now.

Underrated gems:

I’m going to say Spindle’s End, The Goddess Chronicle, The Valley and the Flood, Cures for Heartbreak, the Chrestomanci series by Diana Wynne Jones, Sia Martinez and the Moonlit Beginning of Everything by Raquel Vasquez Gilliland, Black Flamingo by Dean Atta, The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham (a classic horror/ sci-fi novel), and The Thirty Names of Night by Zeyn Joukhadar

Newest fictional crush:

Was gonna say “don’t have any” but one could say that I love Marko in Saga (they draw him with such a strong jawline and he wears armor and has beautiful ram horns; bearded Marko was peak Marko) and Eleanor Wilde in Tamara Berry’s Eleanor Wilde mystery series might count.

Newest favorite characters:

the crew in Saga and Ashby in The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet stick out but really, I loved a lot of characters this year.

Book that made you cry:

Jumping Off Swings by Jo Knowles, Love & Olives by Jenna Evans Welch, and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid leap to mind

Book that made you happy:

Aside from the ones I already listed, The Transatlantic Book Club by Felicity-Hayes McCoy

Most beautiful book cover of a book you’ve read so far this year:

Oh but there’s quite a few! Like The Pull of the Stars, the vintage classics copy of Orlando, The Go-Between, The Valley and the Flood 

How are you doing with your year’s goals?

Well I didn’t make any official goals aside from my overall reading goal of 200 books, which I’m doing well on. I might up it to 250 but I’m not sure how demanding fall semester is going to be yet. Aside from that I just have vague goals to push my boundaries and read as diversely as possible - not just with things like #ownvoices books but in genre, all the different categories, as well. That’s going pretty well.

What books do you need to read by the end of the year?

SO MANY. I can’t give a list because there is no way to keep it concise.

Tagging: @softironman, @she-wolf-of-highgarden, @motherofkittens94 and anyone who wants to do it.

#tag games

[magicjesuscup]

I really like your headcannons, may I please ask for some about Jeanne x Siegfried (saber of Black)?

I’m glad you’ve liked what you’ve seen so far. :) So...I can probably only do this because I feel like I know the characters well enough. I kinda ship Jeanne with Arthur, but this would be cute too. I mean, who doesn't love that precious dragon slayer? So now I'm in rare pair hell x2. Lol.

I've seen other people do relationship hcs, and I'm not sure I can write them like that. I don't think Siegfried or Jeanne would be different in other relationships. So if someone asked about Jeanne in a relationship with Arthur or something, I feel like I'd be repeating myself. I can write a separate hc post for what Siegfried would be like in a relationship and what Jeanne would be like in a relationship, but  approached this ask by answering things like, How did they get to know each other?" "What do they like about each other?" and "What happened when they kissed or confessed their love for the first time?" ...I hope that's ok. >_>; It also got pretty long because I got carried away.

I stuck it under the cut because there are spoilers to Siegfried's first interlude and the Orleans singularity.

((This is going to assume that this Jeanne is different than the one in Fate/Apocrypha so I can avoid the love plot she was apart of.))

Both Jeanne and Siegfried tried to take responsibility for Fafnir still being in France. Jeanne believed since her alter brought the dragon to France, it was her duty to make sure it was vanquished; besides, France was her home, and she would protect it always. Siegfried insisted Fafnir's presence in France was his fault. The dragon was only summon-able because it gained fame through his legend. As their master, you suggested both of them accompany you and Mash. After all, the number of servants you could take with you well exceeded three.

While on the mission, Siegfried opened up about himself. Unfortunately, his stories were often cut short leaving Jeanne wanting to know more.

When they returned to Chaldea, Jeanne went after Siegfried and asked him, "You said you had no regrets, but what was there to regret? What happened?" Siegfried didn't seem to want to answer, so Jeanne clarified why she was asking. She too didn't have regrets about her life or how she died; she thought the two were similar and wanted to know more. Siegfried was 100% sure he had nothing in common with a saint, but his curiosity got the best of him.

Jeanne told her story first. She focused on growing up on her family's farm and the friendships she formed while on campaign with the French army while glossing over her trial and burning at the stake.

In turn, Siegfried shared his life. He skimmed over his fight with Fafnir as she had witnessed him fight the same dragon not too long ago. He focused most of his story on the things requested of him. As he agreed to any and all requests, it lead to him doing some not-so-heroic things. "I did those things because the person asking me couldn't, and I was able. I'm afraid back then I did things because I could rather than give any thought to if the things should be done. I would have turned down a lot of requests if I had." He also explained the circumstances surrounding his death.

Jeanne is incredibly inspired by Siegfried. Even though he had done things he wasn't proud of, he turned them into lessons to make him a better person. And what a person he had become! She understood everything he did while at Chaldea were things he wanted to do and determined were things he'd be willing to do. She watched him carry child servants on his shoulders. She saw him indulge Astolfo that one time Rider was curious if their riding skills would transfer to office chairs on wheels if they used them in a race, and who would win (The short answers to those questions, by the way, are "yes" and "Astolfo"). She observed him train with the knights of the round table and listen intently when any of them spoke of their code of chivalry. She spied on Siegfried as he interacted with their master; the way Siegfried slowly came to trust their master and form a friendship was heart warming.

Siegfried was equally impressed with Jeanne. She somehow saw something good in everything. In the few instances where she couldn't, she saw the possibility of redemption. No one and nothing was beyond hope; the only requirement for God's forgiveness was to seek it, and God loved all regardless. Her positivity was a sight unlike any he had ever seen. She made everything seem possible and bad situations less awful. Siegfried was never terribly religious, and was surprised when Jeanne didn't push Christianity on him. She certainly never bothered with any fear mongering. When asked about it, she would say, "Every person's path to God is unique; the only person that can walk your path is you. When the time is right, you'll find Him, and you'll understand how much God has always loved you." Siegfried wasn't sure who or what was to thank for him having met Jeanne. Was it fate? Good fortune? If it was her god, then maybe his book was worth a read.

Her smile was infectious and he often had to turn away from her or walk away least he be left grinning like an idiot. Of course, there was that one time Jeanne followed him, asked what was wrong, and immediately apologized if she had offended him or hurt his feelings. Siegfried quickly explained that she hadn't done anything wrong; it was just that his smile was weird...like serial-killer-weird. Jeanne put her hands on her hips, smiling and told him that wasn't true. She had seen him smile many times while speaking with her, and he didn't look like a serial killer at all. In fact, his smile was actually rather wonderful. Siegfried blushed a bit at that and found himself smiling along with Jeanne. Her face lit up even more and the two walked back to the others.

They were oblivious about their feelings for one another until Astolfo asked if they had made out yet. Both of their faces were bright red and both denied knowing what Astolfo was talking about. He came back with, "Oh, come on. You two have been flirting for months and a bunch of us are kinda invested." When Siegfried asked Astolfo to clarify, he explained that a bunch of servants (the Apocrypha group, a few knights of the round table, Merlin, both Gilles de Rais, and several others) started a betting pool for how long it would take for them to kiss.

Siegfried and Jeanne became super aware of each other after that. There were many moments where one would be staring at the other and turn away when the other looked in their general direction. To be honest, neither were opposed to a relationship, but neither were the type to initiate one. In life, Siegfried was married. He loved his wife, but their vows were only valid till "death do us part," and death parted them centuries ago. He had mourned his loss and since moved on. Jeanne, on the other hand, was a ruler class servant. Her role was meant to be that of a referee, and she wasn't supposed to get overly involved with any one servant in the grail war. However, her role seemed different in the Grand Order as every servant was fighting for humanity's salvation rather than the Grail.

They got a lot of advice from other servants. Siegfried got his from the Apocrypha crew. Karna was largely unhelpful. Astolfo and Shakespeare often gave bad advice. Most of the useful advice came from Vlad and Chiron, although Achilles added this gem, "Don't listen to Shakespeare...That dude wrote tragedies." Jeanne's advice came from Roman, Da Vinci, her master, and the other saints (most notably Georgios). For as many ideas as they had to kick start their relationship, both were too shy to actually do anything. It all kinda happened on its own.

One day Siegfried told Jeanne that he would likely turn into an evil dragon one day. He was sitting under a tree when he said it. Jeanne planted her left knee by his right thigh and swung her other leg to the other side so she was effectively straddling him. Jeanne replied with, "That's not possible." She put her hand on his chest. "I've seen your heart; it is pure, and it wouldn't permit you to do such things." Siegfried moved his left hand up, covered the hand Jeanne placed on his chest, and curled his fingers under it. Jeanne lowered herself a bit and pressed her forehead to Siegfried's. It wasn't terribly comfortable because of the armor she was wearing, but he would sooner die than complain. He tilted his head and pressed his lips against hers. He wasn't sure if she was ok with that until he felt her free hand rest on his side of his neck. Siegfried ran his free hand up the outside of her thigh before finally finding her lower back. As Jeanne broke the kiss to catch her breath, Siegfried murmured, "Sorry. I had trouble finding you back with my eyes clo-" He was cut off when Jeanne leaned in for a second kiss.

#Siegfried #Jeanne d'Arc #SiegfriedxJeanne #Fate/Grand Order #innersuperhero

[theinvulnerabletide]

OC Ask Meme: wardrobe, poison, contact (Whisper); microscope, mixtape, hobby (Oriana); photo album, ufo, interiors (Celandine); fragrance, parachute, psyche (Lyra); conspiracy theory, shooting star (Maggie); lighting, love note, chess board, wild card (any)

Alright, this got super long so the answers are under the cut!

Whisper:

Wardrobe:What is your OC’s style like?

It’s kind of hard to describe; Whisper tries not to beas loud and clashy as, say, Ignatius, but after living with a carnival foralmost seven years, it is hard for her not to be a little bold. Far from themore simple, elegant style she started with. Bright, jewel-tone colors that compliment and play off the color of her skin,complicated embroidery, statement jewelry pieces on her ears, around her neck,and wrists and horns and tail. But while it is bold and eye catching, it is allpainstakingly coordinated, so it’s visually interesting but not exhausting tolook at. She loves cute dresses with diaphanous layers, or travelling breaches andblouses so tight they might as well be a leotard, stuff she can move in, or runin, as needed. Even when she tries to dress simply, there’s plenty of embroideryor an innovative cut to her clothes.  Her brand-new armor, the one with the mithril weave, is a play off of one ofher old performance outfits. It’s a sort of bold teal, the blue and the greensmixing and changing along the fabric, which plays interestingly with the darkerindigo of her skin, and it’s embroidered along the tight bodice with gold. Thesleeves come down to a midshoulder and there’s a bit of flutter to them, andthere’s a bit of a half-skirt, more of a sash really, in a bold blue-green,also chased through with gold. That ends mid-thigh, revealing a pair ofleggings in a darker blue, which disappear into a set of boots she can walk in.It clashes a bit with the gem on her focus, but it works.  Poison: Vices/Bad Habits? What are they?How do they affect your OC?

Whisper has quite a few vices, yes. Drinking, quiteoften, the occasional drug, or spot of gambling, and sex. You know, all themajor ones.

I don’t think they’re too out of hand. While shedefinitely self-medicates with whiskey, and sex when there’s a willing partner,she isn’t necessarily dependent on them. Like, she hasn’t had a single drinksince boarding the Star Song, because drinking and the subsequent hangoverswould impede her ability to work on this spell. But they are the first thingshe turns to when she doesn’t want to deal with her emotions or with whatevertraumatizing thing just happened.

Contact:how does your OC feel about touch/physical contact? Are they affectionate? Ifso, ow do they display affection to others?

Whisper is very touchy; the circus she spent the lastfew years in was very, very close, and there was basically no such thing aspersonal space. While she knows other people aren’t usually as touchy as sheis, she definitely still gets in other people’s personal space quite often. Shehugs people, cuddles up next to them, jabs their arms and high fives and allsorts of things. No forehead kisses though, she thinks that might bemisconstrued. Or construed correctly, as the case may be.

Oriana:

Microscope:Zoom In: describe the little, insignificant details about your OC.

Oriana’s nose is small and slender, upturned at theend. Between that and the freckles that constellate across the bridge of hernose and along her cheekbones, she can almost be called cute, though she won’tthank you for saying it. Her eyes are gold, molten and dark towards the centerand lightening outwards. Her ears are ever so slightly pointed, barelynoticeable under the sable of her hair, even when her hair is pinned up and outof the way.She is shorter than most of the rest of the party, 5’ 4’’ or 5’ 5’’ on a goodday, but broad shouldered and well-muscled, with a little bit of a belly, whichno one ever sees because Oriana is rarely out of her armor, even if her newarmor clings a little more than she’s used to.

Mixtape:5 songs that describe your OCs, or songs they themselves would like.

Take Up Your Spade – Sara WatkinsWaking Up the Giants – GrizfolkNever One Thing – May ErlewineSpark – Backstage CastWhite Flag – Bishop Briggs

Hobby:What do they love? What captivates them? What are their passions?

Oriana has surprisingly few hobbies. She reads, a lot,about everything: copper dreadfuls to ent philosophy, to religious doctrines tohistorical texts. She loves the simple act of reading, of being transported, ofassimilating knowledge and understandingthings.

Stories are what really captivate her though: strongand vibrant heroines and the men who support them, toppling evil empires andmaking their worlds safe forever after.

She also likes to knit, though she hasn’t had a chanceto do that in a very long time. Yarn has been hard to come by recently.

Celandine:

PhotoAlbum: Describe one of your OC’s favorite memories:

Probably the first time she felt like the Lunch Bunchwere really her friends, and not just humoring her or setting her up to be meanto her later, all of them laughing together at their lunch table.

UFO:Identity! What are some of key identifying traits of your OCs? How do theyidentify in regards to gender/sexuality?

Celandine is a 13-year-old super genius, so her intelligenceand creativity, her inventions, are what she puts the most emphasis on. Sexualitywise, she’s 13, so she’s still exploring, but she’s definitely had crushes onboys and girls and enbies before, so she thinks she might be pan.

Interiors:Describe your OC’s bedroom/home/place they consider theirs? What’s in it? Docertain items have special significance to your OC?

Celandine’s room is a little small, even by gnomishstandards, made smaller by her insistence of having an entire workbench in herroom, stocked with tools and materials. Her bookshelf is full to bursting, withmore books stacked on top—fantasy novels intermingled with instruction manualsand text books—and on every other available surface, her projects are laid outin various stages of readiness. Half-finished music boxes balanced on herbooks, her armor on the bed, the heelies she’s working on the actual workbench,and whatever is currently taking her fancy balanced on her lap as she sits inalmost the perfect center of her room.

The only part of her room that’s clean is her dresserand her closet—she keeps that meticulous. Clothes are the last thing she wantsto worry about, so she makes it so she can just grab an acceptable outfit andgo in the morning.

The walls are covered in band posters and schematics,with the one from Kaylie’s last word tour pasted right above her bed. She doeslove music, so she, of course, has a radio that she “fixed” on her bedsidetable, and it is always on while she works.

Lyra:

Fragrance: What does your OC smell like?

Lyra doesn’t wear fragrance—perfumeheralds your arrival as much as an errant step can—and all her soaps arelikewise unscented. So she smells of the leather she wears (leather gloves,jerkin, boots), and the polish she uses on every one of her weapons after takingthem to the whetstone, and possibly, after spending so much time in the crow’snest and at the bow of the Star Song as it races through the skies, a littlebit like a strong headwind.

Parachute: who does your OC trust the most? Who makes themfeel safe? Who would they do absolutely anything for?

There are exactly 8 people in theworld Lyra trusts at all, 8 people she will drop everything to help if theyneed it. Her old party: Arannis, Cora, Atrauk and Haskell, Esssstefan, the Yuan-Tiwho taught her how to fly, Elissssabeth, Lucien, and the milliner who makes herhats in Kamery.

But it’s none of them individually thatmake her feel safe, though having her party at her back helped, as does Lucienwhen he brings her back from a panic attack. The first time she ever felt safeafter the catastrophe in Kamery was when she and her party took the airship upfor the first time. It’s probably the only time she feels safe at all, really,when they’re a thousand feet off the ground and the world below looks small andinsignificant, and she knows nothing down there can touch her.

Psyche: what’s their headspace like? Do they have any mentalillnesses? How do they process difficult or emotional situations? What aretheir coping mechanisms. Lyra’s headspace is… dark, for lack of a better word. Functional, but not muchelse. She spent quite a lot of her time scraping by on the streets of Kamery,in all kinds of deprivation before she was swept up by one of the more highprofile gangs as a sort of catchall, though her expertise was infiltration andtheft, and the occasional murder. She can manage to charm a pigeon into herhand for a small amount of time, but she is just as like to stab them as liftthe thing she needs from them.

Blackthorne tried to hone her into anunquestioning weapon in his arsenal, using pain and necessities as punishmentand reward, and mostly succeeded. The rest of the Magpies—Cyrene in particulartried remind her she was a person, but Lyra pretty much snapped when they alldied around her, killed at Blackthorne’s orders.

So basically, Lyra has some prettymajor PTSD and an inability to handle more complex emotions. So mostly shejust… doesn’t process them. She shoves them back into the recesses of her mindand tries to remain more or less emotionless. It doesn’t work, obviously, butshe has managed to make it so she doesn’t have emotional responses like onemight think. And they always come out in her nightmares and occasional panicattacks.  

She’s gotten better since Lucien hascome into her life; forcing her to talk about them, just being at her back; halfof Lucien’s job is to play therapist after Lyra has a particularly bad episode.He keeps her from breaking apart into a million pieces.

Otherwise, Lyra meditates onoccasion, and keeps her skills sharp. She makes sure she’s never anywherewithout a weapon—which has become easier since she gained some magic of herown—and keeps daggers hidden all throughout her room. She counts them beforeshe goes to sleep, making sure that they’re able to be slid out of theirsheaths and be in her hand at a moment’s notice. And woe to the crewman whotries to slip into her room while she’s asleep without announcing themselves;their like to get a dagger in the eye for their trouble.

Maggie:

Conspiracy theory: what are your OC’sbeliefs? Are they skeptics or do they believe easily? Who acts on blind faith,who needs to see to believe?

Maggie’s relationship with religionis… complicated. It’s not that she doesn’t believe in Avacyn—she sees the magicpriests have, and she assume it has to come from somewhere—but she does distrustthe church, perhaps even the Goddess herself, and has a hard time believing thatthey have the people’s best interests at heart. After all, they’re in power now,and people in power very often will do anything to keep it.

Maggie does also tend to be a bit ofa skeptic, at least when it comes to people, but she knows magic can make quitea few things possible, and that the world is a complex place. Even seeingsomething doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s real. Shooting star: If your OC could have onewish, what would it be?

To see her father again.

Any:

Lighting: Who is the most impulsivecharacter? Who is their impulse control?

Honestly, I love impulsive characters?So more often than not my character is going to just say “fuck it” and do whatthey want. Basically because I have no impulse control myself. I think Az’ar andOriana might be the only charactersof mine who doesn’t give into their impulses more often than the do.

But of my other characters, I thinkWhisper, Lyra and Celandine might be the most impulsive. Whisper is held backby Thia and Oriana and her mother’s voice in her head, Celandine is pretty muchheld back exclusively by Caela (the poor girl), and right now Lyra doesn’t haveanyone to hold her back—maybe Lucien, but crew seems to be just as bad as sheis—she’s had to learn how to hold herself back, now that Arannis and Atrauk andCora aren’t around to council her to be careful.  

Love note: who likes who? Crushes? Relationships? Are theymutual or unrequited?

I think of all my D&D characters,Wren is the only one who is actually in a relationship, and whose love is requited.In fact, finding Narissa, who was taken back to the Feywild, is her wholereason for going on this adventure.

Whisper expects her attraction to mostof the party is mutual—why wouldn’t they be attracted to her, she’s gorgeousand clever and an absolute delight—but the feelings she may or may not have forsome of them she expects are completely unrequited.

Celandine is 13 and has basically hadbrief crush on half the school, though her most enduring one is on KaylieShorthalt, who is also her favorite singer. Since Kaylie and Celandine areyears and years apart and have never actually met, it’s safe to say that’sunrequited.

Lyra has something for Arannis. She refusesto think about it and stubbornly tells herself that it’s just admiration andrespect and friendship, but even if it were mutual, Lyra would never let ithappen. Chess Board: who is the most logical? Orthe schemer/planner?

Az’ar, Lyra and Celandine are all schemers.They’ve all got plans for days, though Lyra less so than she used to. EvenWhisper has schemes of her own, though they’re mostly borrowed from Ignatius’play book. Az’ar is probably the most logical of them all though.

Wild card:

I stole this question from another askmeme, and, well, as someone who loves angst, I couldn’t resist:  Is your character afraid of death? Ifthey got to choose how to die, how would they want to go?

I think, of all my characters, onlyOriana is not scared of death to some extent or another. Az’ar is so terrifiedof it that she’d kill the god of death to secure immortality, and Whisper woulddo almost anything to avoid it herself, at least until her appointed time.

But Oriana would like to die inbattle, Whisper would prefer to die completing her mission, Maggie merely wantsto die ‘doing the right thing’, and I think Lyra has no preference. She’shonestly surprised she continues to breathe. But she expects to go down in ablaze of glory with the Star Song when the years finally catch up with her.

#long post for ts #oc ask meme #ask me anything! #whisper the tiefling sorceress #oriana the aasimar paladin #celandine the gnomish wizard #lyra the half-elven rogue #maggie the human warlock #whatever the hell this #sprin'torel campaign #innistrad campaign #islanderscaper