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#and I'm still so upset about the ending
trashboatdax · 1 year
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Do you ever read anything that makes you have to put the book down for a minute
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poorly-drawn-mdzs · 7 months
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Wardrobe Woes
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rauzagel · 6 months
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I love how both Hope and Haarlep immediately identify us as Raphaels "little mouse". That's just what Raphael calls us. They know exactly who we are, which isn't really surprising since we're the final piece in his plan to get the crown, something he has planned for centuries. He probably can't shut up about it. I like to imagine Raphael pacing through the hallways telling all his debtors and anyone who can't run away fast enough about our adventures and what we're up to, basically bragging about his favourite racehorse that he put all his money on in this game he created. (bets with Korilla are canon, and he puts his money on us). Or maybe it's like a daily movie night thing. Raphael forces the entire House of Hope to gather in the portal chamber to watch our adventures through one of those portal mirrors, which he uses to stalk his prey according to Hope. Can you imagine how insufferable he must be if he gets the player to sign the contract?
Haarlep might know all about us anyway since his entire purpose in the House of Hope consists of spying for Mephistopheles, and preventing Raph from scheming to get the crown of Karsus by distracting him. It's all job relevant information and since so much depends on us, and the crown used to belong to Mephistopheles, it's likely not just Raph who has taken an interested in us. Haarlep probably passes all of Raphaels intel on right away. Meeting us must be quite exciting for him. Raphael has been watching and following this one person for such a long time and then one day they just walk into Raphs bedchamber. So many possibilites, but he also knows you're an actual threat, so he proposes the game to take you out. By killing Tav, he can stick it to Raphael by messing up his plans AND steal your soul from right under his nose, which is probably the ultimate insult in devil culture. Maybe he makes good on his threats and offers Raphael your soulless body as a plaything to put more salt into the wound, gifting him the shell of the asset he was cultivating for so long. If you're strong enough to resist, Haarlep won't risk attacking you and helps you instead. If nothing else, you're at least a chance of putting an end to this tedious spy mission by taking out Raphael and you might even save the world on top of it, which would also be in his interest. If he even believes that you can take on Raphael.
So he basically has the chance to kill two birds with one stone. He harbors contempt for Raphael so spiting him would be gratifying enough, but on top of it he's also just carrying out the orders of Mephistopheles, his real master.
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canisalbus · 6 months
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AU where there is some sort of zombie-like (maybe something like a rabid vampirism?)
Where one of the boys is bit/infected and desperately wants the other to join them, while also wanting to resist?
.
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r0semultiverse · 9 months
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Kawaki Homophobia Moments
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bleaksqueak · 2 months
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While i work I've been listening to an LP of the Telltale Walking Dead Games (the ones with clementine, I do not care about the others lmao). Ages ago when I played these I was well aware/amused that part of season 2 takes place in Parker's Crossroads/Parker's Run because I grew up right next to it and the detail stood out to me. But I never caught the line of "We'll head to parker's run. It's just up the road from here" until just right now. So I had a sort of "wait, where the fuck are they supposed to be right now?" (search)
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ARE YOU SHITTING ME LMAO So by process of elimination, since it's the only city with anything even remotely resembling a large home supply store, that would mean they're in my literal hometown. My tiny hometown in the middle of nowhere that's never in anything that barely anyone knows of. How in the fuck lmao
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garbomode · 6 months
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izzy's not the only character that's suicidal but he's the one whose entire arc was focused on him getting better. that's why it feels bad.
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moe-broey · 3 months
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Forever thinking about this panel
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He will NOT be accepting hugs for any mundane reason and if you try he will react like he's being hunted for sport
But I am ALSO thinking about
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He will give a little sympathetic pat on the back........ if you're feeling down ......
Alfonse physical affection seems to vary and is situational 👍
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frostbytemyrik · 5 months
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The fact that the next Danny Phantom comic's plot is (probably) gonna basically be "Valerie remembers Phantom Planet and that makes her kinda pissed"
Because same
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mastersoftheair · 2 months
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Sorry but am I the only one that thought that episode…sucked? Like it was straight up bad. Horrible pacing, no wrap up of all the random characters and plot lines they’ve thrown around all season (the tuskegee airmen, Westgates spying, literally all the guys beside like the main 4). (Seriously it makes me so mad that the three redtails got all of 5 seconds of screen time, almost no lines. Literally what was the point of introducing them other than to pretend the show was iNcLuSiVe) Even at the end of BoB and the Pacific you get a much better idea of what happened to all the remaining guys. In this they’re like what happened to DeMarco or Hambone or Brady or (insert character here) we don’t know! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ The concentration camp scene felt shoehorned in compared to how it was done in BoB. Unless that actually happened to Rosie (which i haven’t heard anything about) but it was just like.. ok? It all felt so rushed and emotionless to me. Maybe I’ve just fallen out of love with MoTA but it’s been downhill for me since episode 6 or so.
i already made a little (read: long) post-finale write-up here, where i talk about the use of the tuskegee airmen, l'sandra, and overall editing/pacing issues i felt the show had. but i don't agree with the notion that adding the redtails was in any way insincere or trying to halfass being "iNcLuSiVe", i just think they suffer from this show's obvious time constraints. and to summarize what i wrote in my linked post, there's a limit to what white writers/directors/producers can do when creating a story about black people. there are some stories i'd feel uncomfortable with them telling on their own, truth be told. dee rees wasn't the sole nonwhite director, but she Was the only black one. i think she did her job well given the limitations and i appreciate that they let her direct those episodes, rather than leaving it up to a team of white people trying their best to tell a black story.
the worst i can say about the finale is that it didn't feel like That strong of finale, tho i wouldn't go as far to say it "sucked" or call it "straight up bad". i liked it plenty, it's just the weakest of the hbo war finales imo.
as for the concentration camp scene, artistic license was taken with both shows. unlike what's seen in the BoB, easy company wasn't the first to arrive at kaufering, and there's 0 mention of the all-japanese american 552nd who helped them liberate it). similarly, rosie rosenthal did assist in liberating those camps, though it would've been after the events shown this episode. idk if he saw one in that up-close way seen in this episode, but he could've (i should research this when i have time). plus, it would've felt weird Not having him acknowledge them at all. "shoe-horned" is an odd term to use here imo, as both scenes more-or-less center a jewish character (BoB's liebgott and MotA's rosie). the former show has survivors the characters can help, the latter shows no one left to help. the former has all of easy company there, the latter has rosie there all alone. rosie's scene felt deeply personal in that way. at the end of the day, both scenes are communicating different things. that doesn't make one better than the other when they aren't trying to be identical. (disclaimer, i'm not jewish, so i'd be interesting hearing from the perspective of someone who wrt whether or not they felt it was "shoe-horned")
i can understand if you've disliked the show post-episode 6 (and episode 6 was a very strong episode i'm ngl). eps 7 and 8 were weaker in many ways, even to me, so i get it. everyone's entitled to their own opinion (i'd be a hypocrite saying otherwise). just understand that this blog is run by someone who overall enjoys this show despite its flaws! basically, i encourage you to take this energy and make your own posts.
#masters of the air#hbo war#e9#asks#long post#masters of the air spoilers#mota spoilers#all the hbo war finales are different. i don't think MotA's is as strong but like#my fav hbo war show is still BoB and even Then i don't think it has a better finale than TP. and i dislike a lot of TP! like A Lot!#and Even Then we don't get a good idea about what happens to a lot of the minor-er characters in TP once they leave#anyone who isn't sledge or leckie (rip basilone) is hand-waved-'they went home'-away#not every show needs a sandlot ending w/ a voiceover going:#'[NAME] got really into the [INSERT DECADE] and no one ever saw him again' like they did to webster (rip webster)#and again! i'm mixed about the redtails. but i can Very Clearly See this show getting released without including them#which wouldve left many people (justifiably!) upset that they weren't shown when they were Literally there in the same pow camp#i'll give the hbo war team a lot of shit about a lot of things (despite the enduringly positive energy i try to keep up here)#but i Have to give MotA props for Trying. i don't see faux inclusion i just see it as not quite hitting the mark but an attempt was made#and i think that's worth Something given neither BoB or TP bothered trying#(like i think there was a missed opportunity in TP not mentioning what's happening to japanese americans on the home front)#this got away from me (i'm also opinionated) but while i can agree with you about how the show feels rushed#i do take issue with the idea that they were pretending to be inclusive. i'll blame money time and covid19 before i blame bad intention#maybe that's controversial here but it Is my blog. so.
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trashboatdax · 1 year
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Do you ever read anything that makes you have to put the book down for a minute
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angorwhosebabyisthis · 3 months
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i think one of the things that upsets me the most about velma and shaggy's relationship in sdmi--and boy there is a lot--is that not only is her constantly ''correcting'' him for minor, harmless, and usually completely reasonable things with physical and emotional abuse, well. abusive by itself. but so many of the things he does that she treats him that way over are very autistic things, and what she subjects him to is textbook abuse aimed at autistics in particular. (including the part where she gets more and more pissed whenever attempts at said emotional abuse fly over his head, because he's too bad at picking up cues for them to land fully.)
[cws: anti-autistic ableism, ABA, self-harm, physical and emotional IPV, victim-blaming, and abuse apologism. it's a lot and it's really fucking bad lmao]
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like. there's a lot of examples there; shaggy's behavior coming across as autistic is worth a whole post of its own, and a lot of media depicts abuse targeted at autistic traits because ✨️hooray ableism.✨️but she straight up tries to Fix Him (read: force him to perform a Presentable Personality) by forcing him to wear clothes that are sensory hell, and trying to condition him to self-harm every time he does some small harmless, reflexive thing she thinks is Poor Socialization until he stops. and to catch himself doing it, and punish himself, without being prompted. i cannot fucking overstate how fucked up that is.
they even got down the fun little aspect of ABA where the methods of conditioning-through-pain are presented as toys and kiddish things: she gives him a rubber band to wear on his wrist, and tells him to snap it as hard as he can every time he says 'like.' 🙃🙃🙃🙃
like. this does not begin to scratch the surface of the abuse she puts him through in general. and again, characters being abused for autistic traits with the approval of the narrative is a common thing in media, which sucks. but holy fucking shit! they really took the 'violent ableism that is done to autistics irl' to the next fucking level here!
.......and it's portrayed as kind of cringey, immature teen drama on both sides. the self-harm, his dread over how much he knows it'll hurt, and the extreme pain it causes him to the point of screaming are all supposed to be funny. and her arc is all about learning to accept that she deserves better, because she was repressed and had low self-esteem and therefore putting him through fucking DIY ABA didn't make her happy.
🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃
anyway if you couldn't tell i can't fucking stand sdmi velma and i have a lot of words in me about it. when one of your main heroes would have made a way more compelling villain as they are, on a more mundane level compared to all the wild fantastical shit they go up against, holy shit go back to the drawing board you have fucked up. she could have been genuinely good representation of a marginalized person dealing with the trauma of her experiences in some shitty ways she has to grow past, and an interesting flawed character, without being absolutely despicable--hell, she'd have made a great foil to pericles if they'd handled him decently too. they have a lot of parallels, which only gain more depth when you add their respective parallels with cassidy into the mix. and it really fucking sucks that we got this instead.
#sdmi#scooby doo mystery incorporated#velma dinkley#shaggy rogers#SDMItag#cws in post#sdmi velma lies at the intersection of A Lot of Hard Feelings for me; in ways both inherent and personal#so she is viscerally upsetting to me in a lot of ways mostly re: framing; and that makes it difficult to analyze her in a sympathetic light#even though i recognize she is very much a depiction of a hurting; traumatized person lashing out in nasty and interesting ways#but the older i get and the more perspective i gain; and the more i unpack and understand about my own experiences#the more important it feels to me to talk about this stuff#i still want to try writing fic sometime about newniverse velma and how she ends up being a non-abusive; less shitty person#without just *being* a completely different person who's All Nice Sweet Sunshine with No Hard Feelings About What She's Been Through#and about the confusion and grief newniverse marcie goes through when one day her loving girlfriend is gone#and in her place is someone who is so much like her and has clearly been through a lot; but is Different in ways that hurt more and more#that marcie keeps trying to justify and make excuses for; and sits in the pot and slowly boils#until she finally has to face that this isn't the girl she fell in love with; that that girl will never come back; that this is velma now#i'm totally not working through anything here lmao#and a nasty; pretentious; controlling; insecure young adult who's up their own ass about Being Super Intellectual and Telling It Like Is#abusing a teenager to make them stop saying 'like' because it's Annoying and What Stupid People Say and Not Gramatically Correct(tm)(tm)(tm#definitely does not hit dead on some very specific 'hi that scarred me for life and i don't think it's particularly fucking funny' buttons!#anyway. protect shaggy and marcie and daphne while we're at it#SDMIcrit tag#the crit files
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front-facing-pokemon · 11 months
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#makuhita#so fun fact about makuhita. this was my favorite pokémon when i was a kid#i don't know *why* it was‚ i just know that me as a kid really liked this pokémon. i think it was something about their eyes and their round#shape that just made me think it was cute. they're certainly not my favorite pokémon anymore as my favorite has shifted over and over#recently as i've been figuring everything out but this one i distinctly remember being my favorite when i was a kid#and that was before i even played rt to know abt the makuhita dojo. it was totally in isolation of that. i really just liked the way it look#ed. i'm pretty sure it's 'cause one of the fuckers in pyrite had a shadow makuhita? and that's how i like. came to figure out they existed#i remember not wanting to purify them bc i thought shadow rush was too good and they kept getting boring moves like focus energy#that i thought were useless bc they didn't do damage and so i thought it was gonna get *another* bad move to replace shadow rush#i dunno it was a whole thing. even after i purified them i remember being so upset when they evolved into hariyama#bc i did not like the way hariyama looked at all and thought it was an abomination compared to makuhita#i think i ended up making a new save file and just mashing B every time they tried to evolve. which i figured out you could do#and that's. that's my makuhita story. every time i see this pokémon i think about that story. because it's so rare#no one ever talks about makuhita so i feel like it's rare that i actually get to remember this. so i still do every time
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tea-cat-arts · 1 month
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LETS GO- Kevin reference!!!
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ehlnofay · 9 months
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Summerfest Day 6 - IN BLOOM
The door to the tower room is much too heavy – that’s the next thing Efri needs to try to get them to change. She has to shove her whole weight against it with her shoulder to budge it, which is a dangerous game with her hands full of books and paper and an inkbottle and pen with a chewed nib. She doesn’t drop anything, luckily; but she does bash her ankle on the hefty slab of wood, which is almost as bad.
She doesn’t bother to knock, because why should she – she entered very audibly. Instead she just marches, vaguely irritated, past the entryway – almost slipping on the silky blue rug (honestly, she’ll need to make them remodel the whole place at this rate) – and into the room proper. One of the chests has been moved, she notices at a cursory glance; the Archmage is watching her from the desk, twisted around in his seat, brows knitted. He doesn’t have his hood on, which startles Efri far more than the change in furniture. (She can see his whole face. It’s weird.)
His lips press tightly together inside the little window left by his facial hair. It’s an expression she normally would not be able to see so clearly and does not make it any less weird. But Efri’s not one to be rude – when she remembers to try not to be, at least – so, very politely and with no small effort, she says, “Hi,” and doesn’t mention it.
The Archmage’s lips go even thinner.
“Hello,” he replies slowly. “You didn’t bring your friend.”
Efri shakes her head. Hair tumbles in her face – she cut it just a mite too short when she gave it a trim last week, and now it’s doing all sorts of silly things – and she purses her lips funny-like to blow it away. “Sissel’s talking to one of the teachers,” she informs him. She frowns. “And Kazari’s resting, but you didn’t ask, because you still haven’t met them, because you still haven’t fixed the stairwells.”
(The stairs are too narrow, the turns too tight, and Kazari – taller than Efri standing on four legs and at least twice as long – doesn’t even want to try to climb them for fear of getting stuck.)
(She didn’t want to come up today, anyway; something about being bothersome. But she has wanted to come up before – like two weeks ago, when they had to explain the Saarthal thing, and a week and a half ago, when they had to ask why no-one was telling them why the College doesn’t have books about Saarthal anymore – and besides, it’s the principle of the thing.)
One of the magic lights fizzes and bobs. The Archmage’s eyes flicker away. “We’re not widening the stairwells,” he says, voice dry, hands beginning to fuss with something on the desk.
“Yes,” Efri tells him, “you are. It’s not fair otherwise.”
He tips his head so she can’t see his face. (It might actually be a more comfortable arrangement for both of them.) “These are my rooms. I’m the only one who needs to be able to access them.” A page slips from his hands onto the floor and he mutters something. As he’s bending over in his chair to pick it up he adds, “If you didn’t need anything…”
Efri shifts on her feet, balancing her books as carefully as she can. She says, “I wanted to look at the garden.”
Silently, the Archmage picks up his paper and smooths it with careful attention over the surface of his desk. He doesn’t sigh exasperatedly, but he certainly has the posture of someone who would like to.
“I’ll be quiet,” Efri says. (Because she’s polite. And because she really wants to look at the garden.)
The Archmage, who doesn’t seem to be much concerned with politeness, flaps a hand. Efri takes it as approval, and goes to set herself on the low stone steps by the bed of soil.
(To be fair, he doesn’t have to be polite. He’s the boss. If Efri was in charge she probably wouldn’t be as polite. She still would be when she liked the people, or when she wanted to – but she’d be much less polite to him, because he’s ridiculous.)
The garden is as bright and wonderful as it always is, a strange little pocket of life bowered by cold stone. It looks a bit like a moon set into the slate-grey sky of the flagstones. (A rainbow moon. Incandescent moon. Are there plants on the moons? Almost certainly not, but it would be very cool if so.) Efri sits carefully at the edge, her books and things arrayed around her, pen set over the paper of her word-book and inkbottle uncorked and ready. (She’ll have to make sure not to spill it.)
She takes a good minute, first, just to stare; the Archmage lapses into quiet scribbling, with only the faint scrape of the nib or rustle of the page to remind her that he’s there, while she eyes the odd pointy-tipped flowers, the sprawl of spiky roots, the tasselled mushrooms. She wants to touch it all really badly but the Archmage told her that some of it is poisonous and she doesn’t yet know well enough to know which ones.
But that’s what she’s here to learn, isn’t it? She picks up the heavy book she’d wheedled out of the Arcaeneum. It’s nice, bound in smooth leather, the pages thick and old-smelling. And it’s illustrated. She flips through, the dense words interspersed with printed pictures of plants she doesn’t recognise any better than the ones in the garden. Lumpy fungus, prickly fruits, tangled vines. Finally, there it is – one of the garden plants, the straggly little bush with its toothy yellow flowers, printed in plain ink on the page. Efri checks the picture against the real thing several times, just to make sure they match.
Satisfied on that front, she sets the book down, holding it open to the right page with the heel of one hand, and begins the lengthy process of sounding out the name. “D – R – A –”
It’s not one of the quicker words she’s worked out.
It’s also a bit frustrating. Normally Sissel helps her with these things – she didn’t anticipate it being so much more difficult on her own. Much harder to focus. But she sticks with it, manages the first word (it’s dragons – what dragons have to do with anything, she has no idea) and begins to tackle the second with a determination that disregards the increased sighing and rustling of paper from the desk a ways behind her.
Somewhere in the middle of her heroic effort to parse vowel forms and plosive consonants, the Archmage says, “I can tell you what it is.”
“Shh.” Efri flings up a hand, twisting around in her stone-step seat to glare at him. “I’m learning.”
He is not appropriately impressed by her academic commitment, but at least he shuts up. She turns back around and squints at the word.
After a moment, she adds, “Besides, I already know what it says.” She stabs at it with her finger for emphasis, reaching for a slip of the spare paper she brought to mark the page. “It’s ton-g-you.”
(It might not be, actually. She hasn’t accounted for the E at the end. But those aren’t always there to make sound, Sissel told her – although now that she thinks it might make more sense. It could be said like gooey, which she knows is a word.)
“It’s dragon’s tongue,” the Archmage says, and she hears the legs of his chair scrape against the stone floor.
Efri peers at the printed letters. “Oh.” It’s a stupid way to spell the word, but a lot of words are spelled stupid. She tucks her slip of paper in anyway; as she reaches for her word-book, a hand taps her on the shoulder.
She looks up. The Archmage looks down, eyes red as the snowberries in the garden (she knows those ones), a hand held out, palm up, waiting. When she doesn’t move he gestures, impatient, to the book in her hand. She passes it up.
It’s a good book. Nice paper. She likes the sound it makes as he flicks through. “Urag gro-Shub let you borrow this?” he asks doubtfully.
Efri leans over the paper of her word-book, dipping her splodgy pen in the inkpot. “I wheedled it out of him,” she says, voice bright, and marks down a careful D. “I have to bring it right back, though. And I can’t take it outside.”
“Hm,” the Archmage says. He turns another page.
Ink drips from the pen nib to spot the page. Efri swears under her breath and blots it with her thumb. (It doesn’t help. Now her finger is just black.) Not looking up from her work, she asks, “What’s it say about the dragon flower?” She hopes it’s interesting – its name was far too difficult to decipher for a boring plant.
“Hm,” the Archmage says again, and flips back. Efri manages an impressively neat G. “It’s native to Black Marsh –”
“Ooh. I’ve never been there.” She’s barely even heard of it – knows it’s down south, and warm, and wet, and that’s about it.
The Archmage pauses, continues, “– but it also grows in, among other places, the volcanic tundra of Eastmarch’s Aalto.” Another pause. “It looks like that’s the only place it grows in Skyrim at all. Interesting.”
“Maybe it’s because they’re both wet,” Efri suggests. Swamps and springs are close enough, probably. Her pen goes a bit awry on the T, and she frowns at it. “I mean, so I hear. I’ve never been to Eastmarch either.”
The Archmage hums. “Neither have I,” he says passively. When Efri looks up, she sees him fixed on the page, engrossed, his eyes leaping over the text like jumping fish.
Brow wrinkled, she asks, “Really?” Eastmarch is only a hold over, and he’s a wizard. He’s nominally in charge of the whole College. “I would have thought you would’ve been all over.”
The Archmage glances down at her, head tilting. “Why?” he asks.
Good point. Efri shrugs. “I don’t know. I just feel like wizards go places. Make expeditions. They’ve at least been to the next hold.” All her wizard friends have gone far and wide. It’s what she’d do. It’s what she has done, and plans to continue to do.
Though she supposes it makes sense that the Archmage wouldn’t have gone many places. He barely leaves his tower, let alone Winterhold.
He’s still looking at her. (He does that sometimes – normally he doesn’t even meet her eye, staring at his desk or his book or the walls or his hands, and then every now and again he just looks for ages at a time. It’s weird. She can never tell what he’s thinking.) “I’m not overfond of travel,” he tells her. The skin under his eyes, in the weird look of the lighting from underneath, looks like it’s smudged hollow with ink.
Efri shrugs. She looks back at her page, marks down the best O she can. (The circle turns all wobbly by accident – but oh well, she did her best.) “How do you think they had to change the flowers so they could grow here?” she asks.
(He told her all about it, last time – in so many too-long words she’s mostly forgotten it. But she remembers the gist; the plants that grow in the Archmage’s garden are the descendants of plants collected by Archmages long before, precious few of which naturally grow in weather like Winterhold’s. So the wizards of yore, with some esoteric botanical magic, had altered each plant’s characteristics so it could survive in the relatively controlled – but still chilly – environment of the Archmage’s tower.)
(He’d talked about it more, something about microclimates and innovation and it’s fascinating, really, but by that point she’d just been looking at the shrubs. He stopped talking in the middle of a sentence and didn’t speak for another ten minutes.)
The shadow the Archmage casts over the garden is long and spindly as a wintertime tree. He replies, “I don’t know.”
Efri draws an N, a G, a U.
“I know what had to be done to that one,” he says. Efri looks up and follows his pointing finger.
She squints, asks, “The spiky one?”
“No, underneath. The little mushrooms.”
Efri outlines an E and sets her word-book aside. The mushrooms he points to are flat and pale, tucked under the leaves of a bigger shrub. “What had to be done to them?”
The Archmage wears silver in his beard, she’s just noticing. It flashes when he moves. “Ordinarily, they grow in caves –”
“I met my friend in a cave,” Efri tells him brightly.
He blinks. “Not this sort, I’m assuming,” he says. “They only grow deep underground, and often out of decaying matter.” There’s a pause; then, “Dead things,” he adds, for clarification.
Efri peers at them. “So they had to make them able to grow in the light, out of dirt.” It’s interesting. She’s interested. But the closer she looks –
It just looks familiar, is all. (Old dust and corroded metal and blue, blue, blue.)
The mushrooms grow very low to the ground, broad and wrinkled and papery. She thinks of touching one, to check the texture, but the idea makes her fingers flex, hands gripping hard at her scrunched-up skirt.
“Precisely,” the Archmage says.
Efri clasps her fingers together and jams her hands between her chin and her chest. With some difficulty – it’s hard to talk when she’s using her jaw to pin something – she says, “I think I’ve seen them.”
The Archmage’s feet shift beside her. “They grow very deep underground. I can’t imagine –”
“On the dead man.” Efri’s face is getting all scrunched up. “In Saarthal.”
She doesn’t think she likes the dead-man-mushrooms. She’ll look at something else, next.
The Archmage says, “Ah.”
She scrunches up her face harder, looking over all the bright colours of all the other things in the garden. There is a moment’s silence.
When the Archmage speaks again, his voice is careful. “I doubt it,” he says. “The fungus derives some of its names from its resemblance to withered flesh.”
“Oh.” That actually is very interesting. Efri wriggles her fingers. Maybe it’s like a sort of camouflage – though why a mushroom would need camouflage she has no idea.
And when she thinks about it, her dead man would have been embalmed, so there wouldn’t have been much decay for mushrooms to grow from anyway. She squints at them, the little cluster of shrivelled-looking things. Still doesn’t really want to touch them, but her stomach isn’t lurching like it did when first she made the connection, so it’s fine.
She hears the Archmage’s coat rustling. He says, “Efri?”
Efri glances up at him out of the corners of her eyes. “Have you ever seen a dead man?”
The Archmage’s face creases; he sighs, a quiet exhale. He tilts his head away again so his face is in shadow and holds out her leather-bound book, his body already angling back towards his desk.
Efri looks at it. She says, “You can tell me the other ones, if you want.” He clearly knows his garden well.
She thinks he frowns, though he’s still at that odd angle so it’s hard to see. “I’m rather busy at the moment.”
The magelights flash. Efri knows she frowns, then. “No, you’re not,” she points out, because he isn’t. Mirabelle does everything. The Archmage sits around being important.
He twists his head to look at her again, his face all lordly and severe. He does that sometimes, looks down his nose all haughty. Efri’s not sure if he does it on purpose or not, but just to be safe, she tips her head way back so she can look down her own nose back at him. Beside them, the garden shimmers, a rainbow bouquet of plants and textures and smells, a round motley moon set into the cold flagstones of the floor.
The Archmage sighs again (at some point Efri should start counting, make a game of beating the record) and folds his hands, with their heavy book, behind his back. Efri’s eyes crinkle, victorious. “If you look there,” he says, “at the base of the tree trunk, you can see the grapevines…”
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tswwwit · 2 years
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Any more headcanons for that oneshot you made where Bill is Ford's familiar? How does Ford react to Bill getting close to his nephew? How does Bill use this to his advantage? If Dipper can't get a slice of Bill's power, how does his magic shape up in the end?
Sure, why not!
This got longer than I wanted, so it's under a read more. Also, here's the link to the snippet in question.
I think that Dipper and Bill end up hanging out a lot, honestly. Dipper's a lonely guy, and Bill's bored out of his angles, so he's going to be on at least sorta decent behavior, since Dipper's providing more entertainment than he's had in decades. (Ford is unaware of this)
Still very much Bill, though; he absolutely tries multiple tricks in the book to try and get Dipper to break him out, or subtly trick him into getting Ford into a fatal accident. Dipper's been warned, though - I don't think any of them work!
Eventually Dipper gives in and offers a deal: He'll banish Bill back to his realm (He's been trapped in a basement for thirty years, no surprise he wants Ford dead, that sort of thing just straight-up sucks-) as long as Bill doesn't harm him or his family. Bill, once again in a terrible position to bargain, is happy to get the hell out of reality rather than be stuck in a circle for another decade or so.
This.... probably ends up in a pretty big fight between Ford and Dipper. Once he notices Bill is missing. If the Stans weren't already at odds, that'd be the kicker to set it off.
Little does Dipper know, but now that Bill's 'free' - he's gotten his stuff in order, hummed a little tune to himself - and decided it's the perfect opportunity to start courting that cute little mortal in earnest.
#answers#Ford's still bonded to Bill and that'll be true until he dies#But since it likely wasn't an accident in his case he doesn't have Mindscape access#His prisoner has escaped and he's absolutely furious. Does Dipper have *any idea* how much havoc Cipher could cause#Dipper meanwhile has gotten Emotionally Attached at some point and goes off about maybe keeping PRISONERS for thirty years is fucked up#Dipper has a restless night of upset sleep#And wouldn't you know it Bill pops in with some creepy gift (flowers?? A screaming head? In a bouquet of flowers)#What can he say? The kid's real cute. He's been pretty decent company. He betrayed his uncle for Bill!! VERY Sexy of him#And MAN that MIND#He's straightening his tie and spritzing cologne on as he comes up with Date Ideas#Cue: Dipper Not Getting that Bill's 100% after him romantically now#Bill might be stuck with a familiar bond to Ford but since he's not powering THAT guy#Nothing stops him from going 'aw you're cute. Have a little magic why don'tcha' to Dipper#Like a rich man slapping a huge wad of cash in their partner's hand and pinching their butt while they tell 'em to go shopping#Demons *can* give power to mortals - they just don't usually do it without taking something in return during a deal#I enjoy the mental image of Bill taking a page from Hua Cheng's book and going 'oh you need some energy?? Sure!!'#'We gotta lock lips to make the transfer though so pucker up'#Dipper has no reason to question this statement even if he is skeptical#Anyway it probably all works out well in the end! With presumably Bill causing chaos more directly this time#Dipper all not realizing he has a crush until Bill shapeshifts human one time and he goes 'oh no I'm in danger'#I should stop before I get tempted to write this#I have other stuff to do damn it
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