#my memory is an actual sieve

[willowfoot]

bnha spoilers //

.

took a peek at the bnha leaks this week and I’m losing my mind… SPINNER?? DOES THIS MEAN MY BOY SHOUJI IS FINALLY GETTING HSI ARC??????

#personal #BOY I DIE #bnha spoilers #there is so much going on. the new mp100 season. the new bnha season. if we get Shouji in the manga next week I will become utterly unhinged #bnha leaks #now I’m seeing folks say that Mic is against Spinner too #I don’t remember that bc I have the memory of a sieve but holy shit… #if both of my faves are spotlighted next chapter I may actually Explode

[echthr0s]

What we gather from this is that wizards, even shitty statues of wizards, are inherently magical, and their inherent magical properties can be harvested through the process of alchemy. This is yet another reflection of the fact that in this particular fictional realm, and especially where alchemy is concerned, the fundamental ideas the objects represent are more important than the objects themselves. But magic is fake, you say? Wizards aren't real? And cheap fake wizards statues and figurines ESPECIALLY aren't real? It doesn't matter. They carry the IDEA that they are magical, and so, producing conceptual concoctions where the idea is in play will yield real magical results.

bro I fucking love the author annotations

#homestuck #i am kissing the person that put these into the unofficial collection client on the mouth #(aside from Objectively Sick Ass Commentary like this; the helpful reminders about What The Actual Fuck is Going On in this Webcomic #have also been invaluable considering my sieve-like memory for details and my shaky understanding of temporal dynamics & literary devices) #(on my fourth read i am finally understanding What the Hap Is Fuckening) #(i kind of got it on my third read but like. still not Well Enough ya dig)

[mlbigbang]

2023 Adrinette Fic Rec List

It’s the end of the year which means it’s finally time for the ML Big Bang’s yearly fic rec lists! We’re really excited to bring you our contributors’ favourite fics started this year to supply you with plenty of reading material while you’re waiting for the Big Bang fics’ publication in January.

Fate, Destiny... A Hamster by @mostmagical

After finally moving into his very first apartment per Ladybug’s suggestion, Adrien discovers something no movie or TV show could have ever prepared him for: someone else's hamster. Marinette was so excited to have her first pet. If only it would stop escaping! At least now there’s an excuse to talk to the new neighbor. (Adrinette Never Met AU)

This fic is peak adrinette identity shenanigans! Adrien and Marinette star as the next door neighbors losing and finding the titular hamster, falling in love, and avoiding an identity reveal like the plague.

If I Let Myself Love You by @uptoolateart

It’s hard to be a normal girl with a normal life when your mother has terminal cancer. And when fashion model Adrien Agreste moves back to Paris and wants to be Marinette’s friend – or maybe even more – her life is turned upside down again. How can she risk opening her heart to love when her whole world is falling apart? Especially when Adrien is hiding a dark secret of his own…. - COMPLETE FIC – updates on Sundays *** No kwamis AU - 100% Adrinette. About half of it is fluffy and half heavy. Please read tags for trigger warnings. ***

It is such an incredible balance of beautiful, heart-wrenching and funny! I adored the relationship between Adrien and Marinette, how it developed throughout, how natural it was, how they both helped each other through their grief. Just beautiful.

hearth by @asukiess

Because how do you describe a dream once you wake up, when it’s fleeting and slipping through the cracks in your mind like it’s a sieve? You can barely wrap your lips around the concepts and words before you realize it has slipped through like water, and what lay in your hands is just a pang in your chest? When every moment away from it clouds your mind just a little more, until the memories are threadbare? or: Adrien understands what it means to have a home.

call it even by @sha-nwa & @anna-scribbles

After a year of dating, there is one thing Marinette knows for certain: it's her and Adrien against the world. Through it all, Adrien is kind, patient, and endlessly understanding—even as she tries her best to keep her secret superhero identity hidden from him along with the rest of the world. Nothing could ruin it, not even the supervillains of Paris: Hawkmoth and Chat Noir. (adrinette dating // ladynoir enemies au)

A really well-written Adrienette fic featuring Ladynoir as enemies.

All the Missing Pieces by @uptoolateart

At 14, Adrien stepped into the time burrow and saw the truth no one could have guessed. When he came out, he was changed forever. And after defeating his father, he was finally free...or was he? At 37, Adrien has everything he ever dreamed of – married to Marinette, three kids, the hamster – but none of it has turned out as expected. Marinette’s career is such a success that she’s never home, Hugo is an angsty difficult teenager, and Adrien is still struggling with his secret identity as a sentimonster. And now, Lila Rossi is back after more than 20 years. But has time changed her? Or is she up to her old tricks?

It's my actual life (except I'm not good looking lol), and I vouch for how WILDLY accurate its treatment of the emotional issues of stay-at-home-dad stuff. I just cannot recommend highly enough how it handles jealousy, isolation, parenting struggles, etc. Not me in the comments every chapter telling the author how she got the feels so perfectly right.

If I Let Myself Love You by @uptoolateart

It’s hard to be a normal girl with a normal life when your mother has terminal cancer. And when fashion model Adrien Agreste moves back to Paris and wants to be Marinette’s friend – or maybe even more – her life is turned upside down again. How can she risk opening her heart to love when her whole world is falling apart? Especially when Adrien is hiding a dark secret of his own…

So absolutely sweet. So emotionally devastating. Gets meta by taking advantage of how AO3 works at one point. Next level in every way. I loved the developing Adrienette friendship. I loved Marinette and her father. I loved Marinette's feelings about her sick mother. Please everyone read this fic your face will melt with emotion, and you weren't really using your face, were you?

Our Tales are Endless (That's Why I Tell Them) by joonapeach

Marinette lives a simple life - one surrounded by pretty dresses, fresh macaroons, and the calming view of Paris. It's a life she thinks she has always fit in. And yet sometimes, when a certain boy comes by her shop with a flower and a new adventurous story, she can't help but wonder if there's something else she's missing.

you don't even know me at all (but i was made for loving you) by @ladyofthenoodle

They didn’t remember each other. The hospital told them there’d been an accident—brain damage—but Alya had told them the truth, later. Who’d they’d been to each other. What they’d given up, and why. But even with their memories of each other gone, Adrien and Marinette are still inextricably tied together—by law, by their social circles, and by their hearts. And in the apartment they share, there's only one bed.

If you like amnesia AUs, angst with a happy ending, married adrinette, and only one bed scenarios, you need to read this fic! It's beautifully bittersweet and will break your heart before putting it back together.

#ml #miraculous ladybug #miraculous #ml big bang #ml big bang 2023 #adrinette #adrienette #love square #fic recs #ml fic recs #adrien agreste #marinette dupain cheng

[aita-blorbos]

Am I the "asshole" for wanting to have a body again?

Context: I was once a powerful demon, but an attempt was made to seal that demon's soul inside a cursed object. The sealing didn't completely succeed, and the demon's soul was torn to pieces, with only the part currently known as "me" ending up inside. I don't remember much about this part of my life, but as far as I can recall, I almost certainly didn't do anything to deserve it.

I (immortal, pick one) have been trapped in this object as an incorporeal spirit for so long I've lost track of time. My prison has changed hands many times, but was most recently acquired by an extremely ambitious student at a nearby magic school (13M, we'll refer to him as "K"). K all but demanded I lend my power to him and teach him some of what I knew. As I quite literally have nothing better to do, I agreed, and the arrangement has been mostly tolerable.

Except a short time after we began working together, a new student "S" (also 13M) showed up at K's school. And what did he have with him but the other part of my soul?! I don't know how he came to have it, if he's some sort of reincarnation of my original self or a distant descendant, but all that mattered was that if I could get to him, I could have a body again. It was the best opportunity I'd ever had to get my life back. So I got K to perform a ritual that switched our places and put me in his body (and before I'm called the "asshole" for that, it was supposed to be a TEMPORARY arrangement, and besides, he's the one who wants to mess with dark magic. I taught him a very valuable lesson about dealing with demons! Not that he actually learned anything from it…)

S came straight to me, but someone must've realized what was going on and put a protection charm on him. Then he beat me in a duel, and after that he just…walked away. Like he didn't have a care in the world! He hadn't come to deal with me, or even to save his classmate, no, he just wanted to steal one of my ritual components because some stranger had asked him to, otherwise I don't know if he'd have bothered showing up. I don't think he even listened to a word I said.

Needless to say, that plan didn't work out. I'm still working with K, but now both his teacher and the most powerful warlock on this side of the planet are watching me like I'm some sort of criminal. And what's worse, no one involved took me seriously, and aren't willing to so much as mention the incident. It's like it didn't even matter! I'm pretty sure even S has forgotten the whole thing, he's got a memory like a sieve for anything that isn't the scientific name for a stag beetle.

It hasn't been all that long, but it feels as if it's been decades since I've gotten to do anything. Is it so wrong for me to try and escape this pitiful existence I've been unjustly forced into? Am I going to spend the rest of eternity in here being the butt of some kind of massive cosmic joke? I really don't think I deserve to be either treated like a reprobate or outright ignored.

EDIT: THIS IS FAKE NONE OF THIS HAPPENED my device must have been stolen moderators please delete!!

EDIT 2: To everyone saying K should get rid of the demon, if any of these events had hypothetically actually happened (WHICH THEY DIDN'T), I would definitely have the situation COMPLETELY under control by now!!

#aita #am i the asshole #unreality

[crystals-cave]

What do you need to hear right now?✨🪐🖤

Hi Everyone, I’m finally back from a long hiatus. Here is finally a new PAC reading from me 🖤

Note: Dear readers, kindly note that all readings are meant to be just a form of guidance and not actual advice from a medical professional.

Choose the pile that sparks a memory in you, be it a person/place/music/object etc. If more than 1 pile sparks a memory in you, pick the pile that makes you feel most strongly. If you feel strongly for both, you may go ahead and read more than 1 pile.

As this is a general reading, do take what resonates for you and take the remaining with a pinch of salt.

Note: photos are all taken by me

Tw: mentions of depression

Pile 1 | Pile 2

Pile 3 | Pile 4

Pile 1

4 of Swords

Knight of Swords (rx)

The Hanged Man

Death

10 of Pentacles (rx)

Hi Pile 1! Right off the bat, what you need most right now is to rest, especially your mind. You have all sorts of thoughts running through your head right now and it’s starting to wear you down. It’ll be great if you can take a break from everything for a few days and meditate and clear your mind off whatever that is troubling you.

Another thing I’m hearing is that you need to take it easier and go with the flow. Once you’re less tense, you’ll be able to see new things flow into your life. You’ll also be able to see from perspectives that you have not been able to before and it will be a self-awakening moment for you.

If you do not take this much needed rest, I see you feeling more miserable and stressed than before. So do take a bit of time off for yourself

Pile 2

Death

Ace of Cups (rx)

The Magician (rx)

10 of Pentacles (rx)

6 of Swords

Dear Pile 2, I’m sorry you’re feeling this way now. I feel that most of you in Pile 2 are feeling rather down right now. You may feel like your mental space is tilt off balance or feel like you’re drowning in a pool and unable to gasp for air. Some of you may be diagnosed with depression. Most of you feel like you’re unable to see the end of the tunnel and you’re just walking blindly in the dark. (Please seek help if you need to).

My advice for you Pile 2, is to start a new journey. I feel that being in the “now” and following your usual routine is just making you get stuck in a loop of helplessness.

I hear that going for a cruise would really help with your mental space a lot. I hope you can step out of room and let yourself explore the world a little to find yourself again.

Pile 3

Knight of Cups

The High Priestess

2 of Swords

Temperance (rx)

3 of Swords (rx)

Hello Pile 3, what I think you need to hear most right now is to make up your mind. You’ve recently heard a message about something that needs you to make a decision. Deep down, you already know the choice you’re going to make. However, I still see you sitting on the fence about it and giving yourself headaches over it.

Whatever the outcome is from that choice, there’s bound to be people happy or unhappy about it. You can’t please everyone. Gather some courage and make the choice anyway. I think some of you in Pile 3 are leaders as well. Bravely make the choice like a leader would. No matter who this affects, those that are truly on your side will stand by you. Those who don’t, you know you don’t need them anyway.

It may be tough and set you off balance initially, but you’ll can sieve away the ‘fake’ people in your life. And, isn’t it better this way?

Pile 4

6 of Wands

6 of Pentacles

King of Swords

Page of Pentacles (rx)

Page of Swords

Hey Pile 4, welcome to your reading. Half of you here may have just received good news and the other half are waiting to hear the good news.

However, what I hear is that you have to remain vigilant and cautious despite the good things rolling into your. There is plenty of peace and harmony coming in with the gifts that you have been waiting for.

Despite the good things, you need to be careful of some who are jealous of you. Be smart about how you reveal it as well! If it's not handled tactfully, it may cause rumours that make people view you negatively. When handled carefully and humbly, it will be clear for everyone that instead of bragging, you are simply spreading good news. That way, people who are envious will not be able to drag your reputation through the mud.

#tarot #pick a card #pick a card reading #rider waite tarot #tarot reading #pick a pile #pick a picture #sky #divination #sunset

[izpira-se-zlato]

Munich, 26.03.24

Gig report! Can’t believe this tour is almost over :o In true Joler Ot fashion I am writing this while our train is losing a broken carriage so we're picking up delays. Fun.

The queue was. Insane. I just. Boggle at how we went from the chill Berlin and Hamburg and Leipzig queues to this.

The actual queueing was pretty chill regardless, thankfully

There was a whole-ass. Like. Tumblr meetup? Not like, planned, but I met (at various points) @occhi-verdi-come-il-mare, @nyx-aira, @itskrejsaitsparty, @j-restlessgeek, @lovvecherrymotion, @thisismyobsessionnow, @zadig-fate, @mogoce-nocoj and probably more because my brain is a sieve. So wild to just meet these people irl, you know?

My place in the queue was right in front of the person who sold Kris and me our EA tickets, which I thought was super funny

Kris was technically way further ahead of me but traded her place with a teenager whose only gig on this tour was this one and who was super bummed by someone cutting in line in front of them, and instead joined me further back and jfc we had so, so much fun. So glad I didn't have to be all alone. Gigs are more fun with friends, as it turns out (who woulda thunk)

I got a lot of short messages for my gig memory book 😊

I'm actually out of I 💛 Hojan and medium Hojan stickers. And I think tall Hojan stickers? So there's an end in sight 😂

super late gig start (EA doors was at 19:00)

The Munich venue is tiny and so Kris and I were… 7th or 8th row Jance side. I saw pretty well for the soundcheck, but after general doors a tall girl with two friends pushed her way in front of us (cutting in from the side) and severely limited my view… until a queue friend asked if we wanted to swap places bc she's taller and also wanted to be next to her friend (who was another tall person in front of us). So Kris and I went on Jan-side kinda in front of the speakers and it was a really great view 😊(thank you again)

We got NGVOT (no Kris version) and Vem da greš for soundcheck

Jance played each others' instruments (again). Well. I think Jan played Nace's bass while Nace either touched the dials or the tremolo. I hate them

there was also another Jance moment that got such a homophobojan from Kris I had to laugh. I think Jance were playing their instruments at each other at that moment? Kris was just "jfc guys" from his expression

Sector 5 were so, so good from our spot. Finally heard the lyrics again (I heard only the drums and maybe a bit of the guitar in Cologne). Sound-wise, our spot was excellent ngl.

I'll definitely miss them. If they have a concert in Berlin I can swing (or come by where I live), I'll definitely go. But yeah, I really grew to like them! (also they're babies. like. 21. They all studied music in Berlin, which is where they met. And the guitarist used to do parcour for several years which is why he did a backflip on stage each show)

they were definitely adopted into the family with glasses given to them (they kept falling off Mika's face so the guitarist, Johann, put them on and looked slej) and people singing along and just. The vibes were great. You could also definitely tell they'd settled into the stage compared to Berlin (which was their first gig for JO)

JC Stewart 🥰

I really grew to like his set, if he ever comes near where I live, I'll go for sure

I still don't understand the timeline of the boys meeting JC tho. It doesn't make sense. According to JC, Conor introduced them at the end of last year, but I'm pretty sure they didn't have time to be in the UK. At least not all five of them

Kris and I attempted to speak JC's jokes at the same time as him. It worked worryingly well

Actual gig was Katrina opener

Jan in only a leather jacket, worn open?? Maybe Bojan was right and they did run out of shirts xD boys have you heard of the concept of a laundry machine?

Nace in a simple white shirt, tucked into his pants. Jfc. Truly starting to be Nace girlie (gn) period

Kris wore a half collar underneath a sweater vest which was a look. What kind of look? I'm still not sure, if I'm honest

Jure in the sleeveless jeans vest and otherwise topless. I caught glimpses of him and hnnng

Bojan was also there ig

well. There was a small girl in the audience (on her mom's shoulders) of around. 7 or 8 years? So we got a whole lot of heart-eyes-Bojan

the girl sang UM and Bojan pulled her onto the stage (no Bojan in the audience bc of the speakers)

no idea how long UM lasted bc I put stuff on Instagram in the meantime

we got Barve 😭 I screamed so much and was so happy and gaaaah. I love this song so so much. And of course Bojan did the Ju-re Ma-ček! (and so did the audience)

we got Schlager 😭 Bluza my beloved where are you

tho tbf they look so fucking happy playing that song

Nace almost went to his knees in front of Jan twice (at least)

they also did that "leaning against each other"-thing again

I didn't film a lot bc I was too busy vibing, though I did take a bunch of pictures

Fairy!Bojan. Or as @itskreisjaitsparty put it on tumblr: Prinzessing Lilifee at home

People threw stuff on stage like a crown with a veil attached and sparkly glasses and so Bojan went, "Kris, you have to put on everything they've thrown at you!" and Kris did

Nace got heart-shaped glasses with rainbow studding and tried to show Jan immediately but Jan was busy 😂

The atmosphere of the gig was really, really good

The girls next to us started bawling during Barve iirc and just. Didn't stop. The cute security guard near us (who I think recognised me from the December Strom gig) shared amused glances with me bc the girls were kinda adorable. At least that's how I chose to interpret their expression

someone fainted ahead of us. Though not badly enough to be removed, just sat down for a while while the security guard stood, well, guard and had the girl drink something

It was actually so freeing not to be not in the very front but off to the side. We had space to dance and make snarky/funny comments at each other and just laugh

I got a Vita wave! She was shooting from behind the merch table, which was up two stairs from where I was, and so I kept glancing back, and just before she made her way into the crowd to shoot from there, she waved at me :D

They got food (Trolli gummi bears 😂) and Nace fed Kris two of them. I didn't catch the moment on video but it was so cute

After the gig, we talked a bunch to the Sector 5 guys. They're kinda adorable

JO left immediately without even saying goodbye to the Sector 5 guys. Guess Bojan wasn't the only one out late last night (it was a bit disappointing because Munich didn't get them last time, either)

we still stayed and talked to each other a whole bunch well after it was clear JO had left -- chatted with Mika (Sector 5 singer) a bit more, and then just the tumblr girlies

as we turned to leave for Astrid's hotel room (just like last time) well after the band had left (just like last time), I said, "well, at least this time they won't have reason to tag me on IG" (unlike last time), only to open my phone to a tag from Jan bc he restoried my pic😂 collecting yet more twinning moments from Jance ig

#jan peteh #nace jordan #kris gustin #joker out #bojan cvjeticanin #jure macek #jure maček #kris guštin #bojan cvjetićanin #gig report #Somewhat delayed bc I didn't finish it yesterday on the train oops

[mylasteverlution]

Please go into detail about the feld computers

Okay so! We get quite a bit of information about the Feld Playback Experiment, a lot more than I realized before writing this post. The interface of the game (menus, dialogue engine) is actually designed to look like its on a Feld computer. Plenty of other people have talked about that, so I'm not going to go into it here, but I will drop this archived post from the developer's blog for those who are interested.

One thing I do want to highlight from that post:

This computer uses long strips of film for feedback (projection), memory (storing on magnetic tape) and interfacing (submit commands in handwriting) purposes

The strips of film for feedback and the magnetic tape storage are what I was expecting. But using handwritten commands for input was not on my radar! This would be what's called offline handwriting recognition, where text is converted by the computer after it's written (as opposed to online, where you use something like a stylus on a screen and the computer interprets it as you're writing). This is comparatively pretty difficult to achieve, and very error-prone, as everyone's handwriting looks slightly different. Most modern versions of this use machine learning techniques, but I'm assuming these computers used very basic character extraction and recognition engines.

Trant is the only in-game source we get for the Feld computers. And after doing some digging I found him saying something similar:

"As I was saying, the device itself was very elegant, fragile even. One could write directly on the tape using a special chemical solution. The machine would then analyze the handwriting, perform operations and project output onto a white screen. It was a beautiful, delicate thing."

I initially interpreted him saying they "perform operations and project output" to mean that they can process internally, unlike radiocomputers. But this post from the developers is making me think otherwise (thanks @sollandan for sharing this on my other post!):

"These machines have on-air processing. Large prime number stations criss-cross the air. Advanced tape computers use arrays of antennas to sieve through their calculations to perform advanced calculus on site: to run programmes and communicate between the remote corners of the world."

The advanced tape computers being referred to here have to be the Feld computers. I'm still not sure how this kind of processing would work. As far as computing goes, prime numbers are used primarily in cryptography. Maybe their version of 'processing' somehow involves decrypting? People have theorized that the world in Disco Elysium is made of information. If all the information already exists, maybe it's just a matter of decoding it? I'm honestly just spitballing here, but I'd love to hear other people's theories.

Regardless of how they work, it seems pretty clear to me that the Feld computers are meant to parallel the rise of digital personal computers in our world. Like how Trant described them here:

"An elegant folding mechanism of rollers and ferrotape ribbons, portable enough to be a take-it-home solution, revolutionizing business machines, possibly even bringing them to the average consumer."

This reads almost exactly like promotional material for early home computers made by IBM, Apple and such. (Side note: 'ferrotape' here refers to ferric-oxide coated tape, used for magnetic tape storage and popularized for use in computers by IBM in the 50s.)

But in Disco Elysium, this revolution never took place. Computers never made it to the average consumer, as is clearly demonstrated by even the RCM having only limited access to radiocomputers. The only characters I know of with access to computers are Soona (obviously) and Trant (plus his kid), who seems to be much wealthier than the average citizen of Revachol. The thematic significance of this form of communication never becoming available to the masses is not lost on me.

That said, I think ending this on one of the most interesting hints we get on what happened to the Feld Playback Experiment is appropriate:

YOU - "Why did the revolutionaries destroy it?" TRANT HEIDELSTAM - "Who knows? Maybe it was an accident, or maybe they didn't want the technology to end up in the wrong hands. Either way -- they're all gone now, all three versions of the prototype. Nothing but debris and ashes remains inside that building." He takes a step back; the boardwalk creaks mournfully in the wind. SHIVERS - Two seagulls circle in the sky. You look up and think: really? Or was there a fourth prototype that remains hidden in the mausoleums below Coal City?

#thanks for asking!! #this was a great excuse to spend way too much time researching fake computers #and again i'd love to hear other people's thoughts!! #cyan.txt #disco elysium

[captainofthetidesbreath]

After an UNFORTUNATE run-in with the sieve-ness of my memory, we're back this week with a bingo call list! This one has 37 items, many of which are exemplified above and all of which are listed below. You can grab your own little bingo card that you can shuffle to your liking at this BingoBaker link.

Some notes:

The rendezvous squares are referring to the group reuniting, presumably at the Volition hideout. "Without further incident" generally presumes without initiative or anything other huge issue, where "is harrowing" is initiative or some other super stressful event en route. This is up for interpretation.

"NPC killed" generally refers to any of the major players, like Liilana, Otohan, Ozo, Zathuda, Evoroa, Gona. Like, actual named NPCs of significance.

"Liliana appears remotely" is any appearance that is not in person, such as over Sending, via dreams, or similar.

tracker orb checked

rendezvous without further incident

rendezvous is harrowing

tracked to hideout

flee Kreviris

conflict with Volition

no initiative

initiative

multiple initiatives

short rest

long rest

PC KO'd

NPC killed

Zathuda in initiative

Otohan in initiative

Liliana in initiative

Gaz appearance

Ira appearance

Liliana appears in person

Liliana appears remotely

Ludinus appearance

Otohan appearance

Ozo appearance

Rashinna appearance

Zathuda appearance

Delilah appearance or mention

new spell cast

Grim Psychometry

Detect Thoughts

Misty Step

Sending

Arcana check

Charisma skill check

History check

Investigation check

Perception check

Stealth check

#Critical Role #CritRole bingo

[robininthelabyrinth]

The Greed Is The Unraveling - Chapter 3 - ao3

Jiang Cheng was having trouble breathing.

The best reason to explain this was that he was moving too fast, leaking qi like a sieve, as if he were a broken pot unable to hold water. Therefore, it stood to reason that if he only stopped marching forward inexorably, he would swiftly be able to recover and resume a normal status.

He kept going.

If anything, he moved faster –

“Jiujiu, wait! Fairy’s paw got hurt!”

Jiang Cheng came to an abrupt stop, turning quickly. “What?! How? Fairy’s a spiritual dog –”

Fairy – completely fine – panted happily at him, tail wagging, while Jin Ling jogged up behind him then put his hands on his knees, breathing deeply to recuperate.

“A-Ling, Fairy is fine,” Jiang Cheng said, glaring. “Did you just lie to my face?”

“No, jiujiu,” Jin Ling said. “I lied to your back, because that’s the only thing I’ve been able to see.”

Perhaps he’d been going a little too fast.

Yes, he’d been going too fast, but that was reasonable. That was why he was having trouble breathing. It had nothing to do with where they’d been, or the people there, or –

“Listen, jiujiu, I know it’s not fun for your grandfather to turn out to have been a complete ass…”

“An ass?!” Jiang Cheng exploded. “He’s not – that’s not – that’s an insult to donkeys!”

Jiang Cheng hadn’t known what to expect when he’d returned to the Lotus Pier in this past time. He had been full of trepidation, unsure of whether it would be his father or his mother, his sister, his own past self that he would encounter. He hadn’t been sure he could face up to them, even if they didn’t know who he was.

He hadn’t been expecting Jiang Zhike.

Jiang Cheng’s father hadn’t spoken much about his grandfather, other than to say that he had a strong personality – well, that much Jiang Cheng could certainly confirm. If his father had been likened to an agile deer, gracefully traversing the forest by going easily with the flow around the trees, then his grandfather was reminiscent of a rampaging elk, barreling straight through the woods without thought to anyone or anything in his path. From their minimal interaction this past half-day, Jiang Cheng could now say that his grandfather was loud and demanding and a bit self-involved, perfectly willing to cite the Jiang sect motto to justify everything he did with a jaunty smirk. He was a powerful cultivator, seemingly both talented and capable of hard work, but it seemed to have grown bitter in him: he perceived anyone who took any longer that he did to achieve what he had achieved as being merely lazy and judged them accordingly.

Perhaps when Jiang Cheng been younger, it would have entered his heart and hurt –

Ah, who was he lying to in his own head? He was still hurt.

Jiang Cheng had very few memories of his grandfather, who had died when he was still quite young. He had only very vaguely remembered that exuberant presence, excitable and intrusive, and now that he’d actually met him in person, he was thoroughly disappointed in him. Sure, it might have been nice to know that there was someone a bit more like Jiang Cheng in the Jiang ancestry line, but at the same time…well, it was really no wonder that his father had grown up so determinedly easy-going if his own father was like that – always demanding things from those around him, always raising his expectations, never, ever satisfied.

He’d only been there a few shichen, but Jiang Cheng had seen his own father be scolded for being, in his grandfather’s terms, ‘indecisive’, ‘wishy-washy’, and, at one point, ‘a wet blanket’. And yet, the moment Jiang Fengmian tried to decide anything, his opinion was promptly overridden in favor of whatever Jiang Zhike happened to feel like, completely unpredictable and random. Watching it was frustrating, even maddening, and Jiang Cheng had wanted nothing more than to try to step up to defend his father…only he couldn’t, of course. Not against his own grandfather.

He did get angry, though. How dare his grandfather make such mistakes in parenting? Jiang Cheng had made his own fair share of them with Jin Ling, but that was different. He was raising him all but alone, his only ally a man who later turned out to be a murderous dog, and it was his nephew to whom he had only tenuous claim – it was reasonable that things would be difficult for him, that he’d misstep. But even so, he still never would have done anything to put Jin Ling in a tough position like that, make him suffer, make him doubt himself, make him…

Jiang Cheng couldn’t breathe.

He couldn’t breathe.

He couldn’t –

It wasn’t his grandfather he was really angry at, of course.

He was angry at his own father, who he adored, who he’d always adored. After the fall of the Lotus Pier he’d put aside all his issues with his parents and turned them into idols, to be put on a pedestal and respected, never criticized, never condemned, never resented. He’d thought himself so mature back then, if painfully so, but in retrospect he had been little more than a child, only a few years older than Jin Ling was now, and he couldn’t even imagine Jin Ling going through half of what he’d endured. He’d thought to himself that his parents had prepared him as well as they could, that they’d done as best they could.

He wasn’t sure he thought that anymore.

It was just – Jiang Cheng had been sect leader for so many years. He’d had no choice but to get good at understanding people, at judging them, figuring out if they were trustworthy or if they were trouble. He knew how to identify their flaws so that he could compensate for them when he made use of them, because he didn’t have enough people that he could reasonable reject anyone – he just had to make do, and making do meant knowing what you were working with. He’d had no choice but to develop that skill, and he thought he’d gotten quite good at it by this point in time.

Unfortunately, if he really was good at evaluating people, then he’d have to admit to himself, that, well…

His father really was horribly wishy-washy.

He really was awfully indecisive and kind of pathetic, in his own way. He was stubborn and self-involved enough to make mistakes and keep making them because he believed he was right, but not strong enough to fight for what he believed – or even to tell people what it was what he believed!

It was Jiang Zhike’s own fault for that, of course, since he always wanted things his own way and used his strong personality to run roughshod over his son until his son’s entire personality became centered on making as few waves as possible, on making his own life as peaceful and pleasant as possible. Jiang Zhike’s fault, and maybe his wife’s, a fading nonentity who was a perfect wife only in the sense that she was so submissive that she never made trouble about anything, happy to be easily placated with gifts and then forgotten – it made a certain amount of sense that Jiang Fengmian had looked for someone lively and enterprising for his own wife, and just as much sense that he hadn’t known what to do with a genuine firecracker like Yu Ziyuan once he’d gotten her.

If he’d been Jiang Cheng’s subordinate, Jiang Cheng would have made him someone’s second-in-command – given him someone who would lead him, someone competent but hard who needed softening, someone who had a touch for appreciating people, because Jiang Fengmian would like nothing better than to run after someone and clean up their mistakes and get praised for doing so.

Definitely wouldn’t have made him a leader, though. He wasn’t fit for it.

Probably…

He probably wasn’t fit to be a good father. Everything in Jiang Fengmian’s life had conspired to render him unsuitable for the typical demands of such a role, which not least of which included loving people unreservedly even if they made his life harder, and his failure was therefore understandable.

The fact that Jiang Cheng understood didn’t eliminate the sour taste on his tongue in the slightest.

His father should have done better by him. He should have made an effort, especially given his own terrible father.

He should have –

He should have been someone Jiang Cheng would have been proud to defend against anyone, even his own grandfather. Jiang Cheng shouldn’t have had to trip over his own tongue as his grandfather skillfully poked holes in his pride with his pointed interrogatories as he tried to figure out who Jiang Cheng was. He shouldn’t have been left speechless when his grandfather, wholly unknowingly, made snide comments about how badly he’d been raised and identified with pinpoint accuracies all those little things that Jiang Cheng had been denying for years had been wrong with his childhood.

He should have –

He hadn’t.

Jiang Fengmian had been a bad father.

It wasn’t anything Jiang Cheng had done, as he’d always thought. It wasn’t his fault.

It was his father’s fault, for having done a bad job raising him.

Jiang Cheng couldn’t breathe.

“Jiujiu, jiujiu, listen, I’m not saying you’re wrong to think it,” Jin Ling said, pounding him on the back as if he thought there was something stuck in Jiang Cheng’s throat – which he supposed there was, if you thought about it a certain way. “I’m just saying, I understand. I feel the same way, too.”

Jiang Cheng turned a death glare on his nephew, unable to believe he’d just said that.

“What?!” Jin Ling said, crossing his arms defensively. “My grandfather was Jin Guangshan. You can’t possibly think I’m happy about that!”

Oh. Jin Ling was still talking about grandfathers.

“I mean, as much as I hate to endorse patricide, if little uncle hadn’t murdered him when he did, I might’ve been raised by him, at least in part,” Jin Ling said, and shuddered theatrically. “Think about all the bad habits I might’ve developed. Can you imagine?”

“No, I can’t,” Jiang Cheng growled. “Because if he’d even thought about it, I would’ve killed him.”

He wouldn’t have, of course. His sect wasn’t powerful enough to deal with the war that would’ve caused, and of course in the end he was only Jin Ling’s uncle, not his father. He didn’t have the right to override a grandfather who shared the same surname.

…he might have done it anyway.

Luckily that wasn’t something he needed to worry about, and just the saying so made Jin Ling beam.

Jin Ling smiling was worth – everything.

(His own smile hadn’t been enough for his father. That was…well, that was too bad for his father.)

“Anyway, I’m just saying, you don’t need to run so fast,” Jin Ling said. “We’re going to be early to the meeting point as it is, and I can’t imagine the others were so much better at collecting information in the marketplace than we were at the Lotus Pier that they’d get there any earlier than us.”

Jiang Cheng huffed, but he did feel a bit better somehow. He was still furiously upset at his father and grandfather, had given them both a piece of his mind before storming out – he knew that believing that he was from the future was a stretch, but their level of disbelief was positively offensive; he was obviously a Jiang, they’d acknowledged as much, and then they’d refused to believe him anyway! – but whatever his own ancestors might’ve done, at least he hadn’t screwed up Jin Ling too much. Jin Ling still had friends, loyal ones who trusted him and who he could trust in turn, ones that were his equals and not merely his subordinates.

No matter how annoying they could sometimes be…

“I don’t know how much information you really think those brats can get anyway,” Jiang Cheng grumbled, rubbing his face. At least he could breathe again. “Lan Sizhui isn’t half bad even if he was born a Wen and raised by Hanguang-jun, but Lan Jingyi…? I’m shocked he survived to adulthood in the Cloud Recesses with Teacher Lan.”

“His father is apparently good friends with Teacher Lan, so I assume he survived based on having connections,” Jin Ling said, rolling his eyes. “Which doesn’t surprise me at all. Though, actually, Ouyang Zizhen says that he’s heard that Lan Jingyi’s dad is some brilliant alchemist or something, and that he’s probably been breathing in fumes since he was small, which explains a lot about that rotten excuse he has for a personality –”

Jiang Cheng was fairly sure that his nephew was sleeping with, or at least making out with, one of his friends, which was quite normal for that age group – certainly the Cloud Recesses had been a very enlightening period of Jiang Cheng’s life, thanks to Nie Huaisang, and the war had been equally enlightening thanks to Nie Mingjue and several other very companiable fellow soldiers – but he genuinely couldn’t figure out which one it was. They all seemed to get mentioned about the same rate, and with about the same level of enthusiasm…

Well, he wasn’t going to ask if Jin Ling wasn’t going to tell. Jiang Cheng would have been mortified to have to talk about any of his own experimentation with his father, or any authority figure for that matter – the thought of having to discuss the matter with Teacher Lan had kept him awake some nights, although admittedly not always purely out of shame – listen, the man was attractive no matter what Wei Wuxian pretended – anyway.

His point was, he wasn’t going to traumatize his nephew like that.

Well, unless Jin Ling did something to deserve it.

Always good to keep something in reserve.

Jin Ling kept chattering all the way to the meet-up point, where to Jiang Cheng’s surprise the two Lans and the Ouyang boy were in fact already waiting.

“We quickly realized we weren’t getting anywhere, Sect Leader Jiang,” Lan Sizhui said, voice respectful as always even as Jin Ling rushed forward to start fighting with Lan Jingyi, seemingly on sight. Some ongoing grudge, presumably; they seemed to be having a good time. “And the only gossip we could pick up was – unhelpful.”

Well, that sure was a significant pause.

Jiang Cheng rubbed his face, guessing that it was negative and also probably about his family. “All right, spit it out,” he said tiredly. “Better that I hear it from you than someone else.”

Lan Sizhui glanced back at Jin Ling – now buried under a wiggling and somewhat homoerotic pile now consisting of both Lan Jingyi and Ouyang Zizhen – and said, in a low voice, “Sect Leader Jiang’s son just rejected a marriage offer from Meishan Yu.”

“I know that,” Jiang Cheng scoffed. “Everyone knows that.”

“It wasn’t the first request. Apparently…” Lan Sizhui hesitated. “Well, rumor has it that the third daughter of Meishan Yu was – ah – that is – it seems that there was some trouble –”

Jiang Cheng hadn’t been a sect leader for years for nothing. He suppressed a twitch in his eye, and hoped for his mother’s sake that his father hadn’t been that much of an ass as to dally with her, leave her pregnant and then refuse to marry her – but no, now that he thought about it that wasn’t his father’s character at all. Instead, what must have happened was obvious: based on what he now knew of his father, he knew that it must have been his grandfather that had objected to the match, however mildly, and then it wouldn’t have mattered what his father thought. Jiang Fengmian wouldn’t have gone against his father’s will in anything.

Not even for the sake of honor, it seemed.

“Don’t tell Jin Ling,” he instructed with a faint sigh, and Lan Sizhui nodded eagerly, looking relieved.

Jiang Cheng couldn’t blame him. At least he had the comfort of knowing that historically Meishan Yu eventually had managed to force the issue…oh, it was all so infuriating! Knowing his mother as well as he did, she would have taken Jiang Fengmian’s refusals to marry her to heart; no matter what he said or did later, once they were married, would ever convince her that he’d actually chosen her willingly – she was too strong-willed herself, it would never even occur to her that Jiang Fengmian might have wanted to marry her and still said no just because his father implied that he didn’t agree with it, and she’d never believe it if he told her that was what happened, which he wouldn’t have.

No, Jiang Cheng knew his mother. If his father wanted to make up for his failings in her heart, he’d have to make some sort of grand gesture, and Jiang Fengmian was not a man for grand gesture.

It was a pity that Jiang Fengmian didn’t have any siblings. If only he hadn’t been the sect heir and the next sect leader, he could have done something wild like go off and marry into Meishan Yu instead of inheriting – he would have enjoyed that much more, both in personality and company and even aesthetic, if the suspiciously non-standard non-Jiang sect ornaments at his waist were any suggestion.

But no, he was sect heir, and later sect leader.

It was just such a waste. A stupid, stupid waste.

If only he thought he could get away with it, Jiang Cheng would demand that Jiang Zhike name him as sect heir, skipping his father’s generation entirely. He certainly wouldn’t knuckle under his grandfather’s pressure, which ironically enough would probably make his grandfather approve of him far more than he’d ever approved of his actual son, and unlike Jiang Cheng, Jiang Fengmian would probably find his father paying more attention to someone else a relief rather than a torment.

Unfortunately, to pull off something like that, Jiang Chen would need both a way to strong-arm Jiang Zhike into listening to him and a plausible way to explain away the time travel. Neither of which was likely.

Whatever. The past was not his problem to solve.

“Tell the others not to mention it, too,” he added, rubbing his face in annoyance. “They’ve got big mouths, with no tact, they’ll make a complete mess of it –”

“Oh, it’s not a problem,” Lan Sizhui said. “They didn’t hear that one.”

“Good. Keep it that way.” Jiang Cheng frowned. “Why didn’t they hear it?”

“I sent them a different way – the rumor they brought back was even stranger.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. Apparently Sect Leader Wen was nearly assassinated during a party held at a night-hunt near the Cloud Recesses and then kidnapped a Lan sect disciple on his way out, or something like that. I hadn’t heard of anything even remotely similar in any of the histories…”

Jiang Cheng held up a hand. His head was starting to hurt in a very specific and very familiar sort of way. “Not in the histories, no,” he said grimly. “With Wen Ruohan as the target…? Did the rumors specify who did the assassination?”

“…no.” Lan Sizhui frowned. “You think it might be someone else from the future?”

“Why not? We never did settle that theoretical argument about whether it was better to be careful and try to avoid changing what we knew was going to happen or charge straight into changing it.”

“You think it was Senior Wei?”

Jiang Cheng thought it was exactly the stupid sort of thing that Wei Wuxian would think was a good idea.

“Does that mean we’re going to go that way, to meet him..?”

“Absolutely not,” Jiang Cheng said at once. There was no way he was going to let Wei Wuxian have one-upped him in the effort to get something useful going, and the Jiang sect was obviously not going to do anything productive. If Jiang Cheng wanted help in fixing the future, he needed to go elsewhere. Obviously the Jin sect was out, he’d never gotten on well with Jin Guangshan, but that didn’t mean they were entirely out of options. “We’re going to the Nie sect.”

“The Nie sect? Oh, that makes sense!” Ouyang Zizhen interjected, the three fighting idiots having finished up and come over. “Their last sect leader was killed by Wen Ruohan, right? He’ll definitely want to change the future.”

“That’s not what’s important,” Jiang Cheng said, shaking his head. What was Wei Wuxian teaching these kids? Clearly not what he needed to be. “What’s important is that Nie Huaisang will almost certainly be there. He’ll have an idea of what to do.”

All the juniors nodded at once – none of them were about to be taken in by Nie Huaisang’s Headshaker act, not after what happened at the Guanyin Temple.

“Will he help, though?” Jin Ling asked.

“Oh, he’ll help,” Jiang Cheng said darkly. “He’ll help all right.”

#mdzs #jiang cheng #jin ling #lan sizhui #my fic #my fics

[oldimgurpics]

The Future of oldimgurpics

Hello everyone. Activity has been kind of sporadic again—sorry about that, prior engagements and all. Posts will resume again in the near future, but there's something we need to talk about.

Over the last six months, this account has received a massive amount of new followers—well over triple what it had one year ago today. That's insane to me, especially when I consider the fact I've been running this blog for just north of six years now. I am grateful that you all share my niche interest in these nuggets of internet history I keep picking from the sieve, and would like to keep doing this for a good while longer; even if my inconsistent posting runs counter to that.

However, I may not be able to for much longer.

What's going on?

This was posted yesterday on imgur's blog. At first glance, this seems kind of dire, and while it is pretty bad, it's not as bad is may seem. Imgur has done this kind of thing before, and this has been evident to me for quite some time. When I generate new images, there are far more failed fetch requests than successful ones—often two failed requests for every one success—and when I started, this certainly was not the case. Not only that, but I'm sure some of you have spotted broken imgur links across the web before, especially on forums, especially on help forums. You know, the worst place for an image to be broken? Isn't that lovely? It's tinypic for a new generation.

The issue is not the fact that it's getting rid of pornography, nudity, and sexually explicit content—that would actually be a good thing if not solely for the amount of people's stray nudes that are floating around in the void that would no longer be waiting for someone to accidentally find. The problem is that there is no way to root through what is considered inappropriate content without collaterally annihilating huge swathes of unrelated, inoffensive content along with it unless you basically do what I've been doing, and I doubt imgur—or any company for that matter—would be willing to supply the manpower to do something like that.

Unfortunately, pretty much no matter what happens, we are probably going to lose a vast amount of internet history from this, and while the bulk of that is so far buried under imgur's content servers that most will never even see those images, I still think it's a bad move. Even beyond the fact that it may spell the end of this blog, I think it's garbage that companies can just piss away millions upon billions of images.

Regardless of how mundane and unimportant most of what's on those servers are, (barring the illegal and morally reprehensible stuff) I believe it all still deserves to exist. These images come together into a disgusting, muddy, misguided, tapestry made out of words, photographs, memories that were once woven together with times, places, and people. And while most of those threads have been long severed from each other, I still believe burning the whole thing is wrong. So much of it is a product of an online environment we will never see again.

What can you do about this?

Pretty much absolutely nothing. As much as I want to be like "flood their support! ask them to reverse their decision! find which dipshit exec made this decision and [REDACTED]!" I know for a fact that absolutely nobody at support has any power to do anything about this, and hardly any action can be taken to change the course they've already charted. That sounds incredibly pessimistic, but I'm not without reasons for being so.

Sure, we could raise concerns, and get it sent up the chain of command, but this is more than likely the same bullshit song and dance we see across every website: the parent company doesn't like all those icky images (the ones with the boobs and dicks, mind you. not the ones with bigotry, or gore, or other illicit subjects—to a corporation, these things have a possibility to generate revenue, so they're all fine), and wants them gone to appease the advertising overlords who want to scrub every blemish, imperfection, and deviation from every corner of online to make the internet as sterile and banal as inhumanly possible. Perhaps all of that is pure, bitter conjecture; but be honest: would you be surprised?

Many people (rightfully) make a big deal about sites like photobucket, tinypic, and imageshack all being huge image hosts of the late aughts who basically dumped all their servers without much notice at all, and how that broke so much of the old internet. And while that was devastating, I assure you that if imgur manages to mangle this (and I'm sure they will, like any big web company tends to) this will be much worse than all three of those sites shitting the bed combined.

Imgur has been the biggest image host for over a decade now, and considering the increase in net activity that correlates to their popularity growth, there's an enormous amount of content that's going to break/becoming missing as a result of this. There are countless reddit posts that depend on imgur hosting. There are countless forum posts that will be illegible as a result of this. Hopefully this will be nowhere near the catastrophic degree I'm prognosticating, but I've been online for two decades, seen this kind of thing happen time and time again, and it's always worse than it was the last time.

You are free to do what you will about it. I won't push one way or the other. It just sucks, folks! But that brings me to:

What am I going to do about this?

Well, since the future of the blog is so uncertain, I'm going to start planning around the possibility that I may not be able to generate images for much longer, so there will be a few changes.

I already try to save all the images on this blog to my hard drive locally. Every time you save an image on imgur, the default image name is the URL it comes from, so I'll still have tentative proof that what I post is an imgur pic even if the URL 404s. I'm going to start saving a lot more now, though.

Queued posting will slow down from 4 times a day to just one. I know that's quite a bit lower than my previous output (if you don't look at averages lol), but this will ensure the blog keeps going for a while, even if the worst comes to pass and I'm unable to generate anything else for this blog.

Hope I'm making a bigger deal over this than I need to be. There's a chance I've typed all this out, and in six months time it will have absolutely no effect on how this blog functions. A year from now, many posts may not actually break the way I expect them to. I would love it if all my concerns were over nothing—sometimes, being wrong kind of owns, and this would definitely be one of those cases, but I won't take chances. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

Either way, thank you for reading, and please don't be afraid to shoot an ask my way.

#long post #imgur

[fish-spaghetti]

Zevlor x female Dark urge

Word count: 1484

Some stuff that is worth knowing before reading:

This is my very first fanfiction in English and English is not my first language. I tried my best to avoid crazy typos and insane grammatical errors but there may still be some. (And I am very bad at writing)

I am very sorry for creating ooc

I have absolutely no clue how to use tumblr

I named my dark urge as Tav because why not(shrug). And then probably some bugs showed up and the name of my character became the dark urge again. Funny thing is, this actually happened after she realized she is a Bhaalspawn.

I didn’t mean to create her as an idiot, it was an accident and I messed up the stats so she turned to someone who has int 8… thought it will be fun to explain this as “she forgot everything”

Not a “happy ending”

I am so so so sorry

Right, there you go:

Zevlor remembers her, even after all these years.

He's grown old, to the point where he has to squint to see things clearly and needs to hear things repeated three or four times to understand. No longer agile and swift like before, he relies on a cane to move slowly. He forgets many things – a cascade of memories slipping through the sieve of time. Names of people he had once known became elusive, faces blurred into the fog of forgetfulness. Even when he was walking down the familiar streets, midway through, a sudden lapse of memory would cloak him, leaving him standing there, questioning why he started the journey in the first place.

But he still remembers her—the way she looked and her smile. He even remembers to help her clean the armor and gloves hanging in the room every morning. And that blade, her favorite, named "Phalar Aluve." He put it next to the armor, still remembering the translated version of the drow inscription on the blade.

"I pulled it out. Hard. Pulled it out," she said back then, her sentences disjointed, as if it was a new language she started learning recently.

Zevlor remembers how she used gestures to help him understand what she was talking about. A young man, perhaps named Gale, used to kindly help her complete her sentences and pat her shoulder to comfort her when she got frustrated by her inability to articulate clearly.

After all these years, he still remembers her—her eyes, her messy hair, and the day tears fell from her eyes as she looked at him.

"I love you," she whispered gently, and with that, she jumped out of the window and disappeared into the night.

All that has vanished, leaving only a set of armor she loved but couldn't wear, the gloves he gave her, and that damn blade.

Zevlor, with a rag in hand, gently wiped the armor. Would things be different now if he hadn't told her about the things related to the Paladin? He clenched the rag and shook his head.

He remembers their first encounter. She and her companions helped them when the goblins attacked. Afterwards, she threw a punch at the human boy whose name he had forgotten. An interesting young Tiefling, he thought, introducing himself and expressing gratitude to her and her companions.

She looked at him blankly, glanced at her companions, and shook her head, "No name. Don't remember. Gone." She pointed to her head, "Gone. Memory.Everything."

What happened next? If he remembers correctly, it seems that one of her companions suddenly suggested giving her a name. “We can’t keep calling you Tiefling all the time, right? ” But she couldn’t think of any name herself, she couldn’t even speak fluently. So they wrote down several names they came up with and let her choose. Zevlor helped with the name picking, he read those names for her, in case she forgot how to read, and added one to the list.

"Tav," she pointed to one of the options written on paper, then pointed to herself, "Tav."

She laughed happily, repeatedly saying her new name.

She used to have a lute, a gift from Alfira, she claimed. Her brain was like it had been pierced by countless holes, rendering her unable to articulate words and remember her name and her past. However, she still knows how to use a blade, cast spells, and even remember how to play the lute. She even performed a duet with Alfira and was shocked when she realized what she was doing.

Unfortunately, Halsin didn't bring the lute to him, saying Alfira wanted to keep it to commemorate the hero who saved her several times. Zevlor didn't say anything, just nodded in acceptance.

And her staff, she said it’s called the Spellsparkler and she loved it very much. She was an excellent sorceress, even Rolan agreed.

The staff went to Rolan. He said he was there with her before her final battle. He refused to give more details on what happened, just sighed and told Zevlor that she was no longer herself that day.

"She did it for us. She became a mindflayer." Rolan showed Zevlor the staff, "She gave me this staff before they left."

Zevlor felt jealous, jealous that he wasn't there as her ally. If he had been there, she wouldn't have disappeared like this. Even if the one sitting across from him now is a mindflayer, it is still better than the cold armor and other lifeless items.

He missed the time spent with her, the celebration at their camp where she sat next to him humming tunes, and her tail swayed to the music. He advised her to go chat with others and enjoy the rare moments of happiness.

"Tav.” She pointed to herself, “Wants to be with you."

He tried to continue persuading but was interrupted, "Zevlor, what is a Paladin?"

He explained it was about upholding justice and righteousness, to become a beacon of hope in dark times.

"What about Tav? Can Tav become a Paladin?"

"Perhaps?" he smiled.

After that, Alfira took her away to play a duet together. People gathered together and enjoyed the music. Rolan even joined, clapping and laughing on the side. He remembers how good it was to see their smiles.

Maybe it was that moment, or perhaps some other strange moment, Zevlor couldn't say, but he knew he developed some affection for her.

He had once thought he might not see her again. He got trapped in that nightmare, the sounds he heard were not just the screams and cries of people, and what he saw wasn’t just helpless civilians hiding behind him while watching everything burn. There was also her. She stood amidst the sea of flames, her eyes emotionless.

"You should have saved me," she screamed, and the fire ate her alive. Zevlor couldn't wake up from this nightmare. Desperation and agony enveloped him; he knew he was trapped in a dream but couldn't wake up. He saw his deceived self kneeling, begging everyone to surrender. And he saw the people he protected suffered. They looked at him with anger and hatred, calling him a traitor and a coward. But awakening came too late; he was already immobilized, helplessly watching all those tragic events they could have avoided. In despair, he immersed himself in the lies woven by the absolute. Beautiful illusions, where everyone survived and started new lives, and he once again became a Paladin. And there she stood by his side.

But he woke up again. It was her.

Once again, she saved him, after the Grove, she saved him again.

He thought she would blame him, or maybe she would slap him, or curse him as a damned traitor.

"But Zevlor, in my heart, you are a Paladin. Does oath matter that much?" She could now articulate complete sentences, walked up to him, placed her hand on his shoulder, and whispered, "It's not your fault, not your fault."

"It's not your fault," she gently touched his horn, "Go find them, I'll handle the rest. Trust me."

After that, Zevlor saw them a few times, but he didn't dare to approach them, only observing them in disguise.

"If only I wasn't a coward," he thought, cleaning the sword hilt with the rag.

There were many things left unsaid, but even if he dared to speak them now, she wouldn’t be able to hear. Every day, he repeats those words – words meant for her – to the belongings she left for him.

"Paladins uphold justice and righteousness, and have to become the beacons of hope in dark times." she repeated what he said that day, holding his hand against her face, "I can't be a Paladin. I am a Bhaalspawn, I did many unforgivable and cruel things before I lost my memory."

"No, you are Tav. The past you isn't the present you."

"But I can't erase what I've done." Her tone was calm, "But I have a chance to make amends, to end everything like a Paladin."

"I love you," tears rolled down her cheeks.

He wanted to follow her, but at the moment of leaving, he was hit by a sleep spell.

And then at that harbor, Halsin appeared with her belongings.

"Is this the place?"

"Yes."

"She killed herself."

"Yes."

"Why..."

"She turned into a mindflayer."

Halsin handed him the package, "Maybe you'd want this. Inside is her favorite sword, 'Phalar Aluve.'"

"I know this sword."

"Yes, and the armor she liked but couldn't wear. She said if she became a Paladin one day, she wanted to wear it. And... your gloves. She took them out every night before sleeping, saying it helped her sleep."

Zevlor remembered the sound of the waves and the mournful cries of seagulls.

He patted the armor gently and stood up with the help of a cane.

"I love you."

#bg3 zevlor #zevlor #bg3

[six-demon-bag]

20 Questions for Fic Writers

Thank you for the tag @zsparz!

1. How many works do you have on ao3? 186 (some anon)

2. What's your total ao3 word count? around 1.1 million

3. What fandoms do you write for? MCU, The Cloverfield Paradox aka Schmidty, and other Brühl films

4. Top five fics by kudos: uhghhhgh i hide stats for a reason!! top 2:

Efficiency (Teen Wolf, steter) know you got my blood running (MCU, winterwalker)

5. Do you respond to comments? yepperrss! do my responses always make sense? no

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? hmm. I have a couple that would be angsty but. well heres three, all winterbaron:

even in the silence i can hear your song and nothing is the only thing you ever seem to have when you can’t dream, well, what’s life mean?

wow song lyric titles. huhh look at that . eheheh

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? man, i don’t know. most of them have happy endings, but i suppose you could say the ones where i torment the characters make for the happier endings? here's two i saw while scrolling bc my memory for my own fics is a sieve (both winterbaron)

maybe it’s the moonlight (mixed with carnal insight) love me while your wrists are bound

oops gave up looking. whatever

8. Do you get hate on fics? only once! it was pathetic. i expected better with all the trash i write, and i only get that lame shit? smh. cmon put some effort in doens't anyone want to work anymore

9. Do you write smut? u kno it

10. Craziest crossover: Dirk Brûleé x Lutz Heck

if you must look: Mustache Miscalculation

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen? No.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? No, but I was podficced!

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? No, but sometimes I think I should start tagging ves as a cowriter for some of these lutz works lmao

14. All time favorite ship? i am disloyal and flighty. cloverbaron

15. What's a wip you want to finish but doubt you ever will? uhh. maybe that mafia thing i started writing a couple months ago. ah well

16. What are your writing strengths? smut. >:3

17. What are your writing weaknesses? plot.

18. Thoughts on dialogue in another language? it’s fun if used sparingly, otherwise it gets annoying as a reader tbh. i don’t write it at all. i think.

19. First fandom you wrote in? MCU

20. Favorite fic you've written? aosfbjdakncl

i do actually love how know you got my blood running turned out. and Cover Charge, .and HYDRA Tupperware Party that was more than one whatever

i adore all of my schmidty fics obv.

No pressure tagging, in case any of you felt like it, and of course anyone else!: @hiddenxplaces-blog @tales-from-a-maphia-don @winterbonesthings @the-ravening @thepiper0fhameln @ex0rin

#tried to remember tumblr handles am failing why did i do this at 11pm #fic time #tag game #sixdemon nonsense #sixdemon tag game #do i even use that tag i dont know

[via-the-cryptid]

snow queen would have a family reunion at some point, how chaotic would it be cuz I feel like some one would start a fight at some point

oh YES.

this sat in my drafts for a looong time because I had to try and figure out the logistics, as well as just how many people are being invited to this family reunion, so LET’S GO!

as a disclaimer — the family reunion would take place post-series, so Fionna and Cake canon is also fringe being considered.

firstly, we have the list of invitations. Magic Simon takes care of this, as he has a functioning memory (something that Snow Betty is mildly lacking in — she’s been worse, but it’s still a little bit closer to a sieve than a bowl). the invitees are:

- The Main Children: Marceline, Jake, Finn, Fionna, Cake, Gunther, Fern

- The Citizen Children: candy orphans, Little Dude, various penguinfolk, Snow Betty’s myriad of sentient ice constructs, The Grandpups

- The Family Adjacents Such As Spouses And Close Good Friends: Bonnibel, Lady Rainicorn, Phoebe, Prismo, BMO, Susan Strong, Marshall Lee, Gary Gumball

- Random People Who Are Somehow Also Invited: Huntress Wizard, various other princesses, Abracadaniel and Abracadebra, Peppermint Butler, Death, the Living Island, Minerva in the form of a bot, Lemongrab (for some godforsaken reason), King Man (formerly known as Magic Man), Glob Gob Grob Grod (who doesn’t show up but that’s probably for the best)

I’ve probably forgotten someone, but these are the people I remember so that’s who’s on the list. Patience St Pim is not invited and is actively uninvited, in the sense that they sent her a note saying ‘don’t you dare show up to this or we’re putting you in Magic Time Out again’. they have no idea if it reached her or not.

as for the reunion itself… well, it starts out okay? everyone seems to be getting along, Fern and Huntress Wizard hit it off, Little Dude is chilling on top of BMO while they both walk around and join in on people’s conversations, the penguins have started some sort of fish poker game and those delinquent candy orphans have joined them. all in all, everything seems to be going fine until someone (Peppermint Butler) makes a comment about someone else (Lemongrab) and it all goes to hell in a handbasket. Marceline is forced to restore order by flying up to hang from the chandelier and screech at everyone to sit down and behave themselves or there won’t be any dessert. Snow Betty does in fact freeze Lemongrab to his seat so he’ll behave himself. It’s not very effective. seating Death and King Man next to Peppermint Butler so he’ll be too distracted to be rude, however, is very effective.

Bonnibel gets to meet Gary and Marshall, who are just as weirded out by her as she is by them. their world is fantastical, sure, but it’s also based around a city, not a bunch of kingdoms. plus, it’s just kinda weird to meet your literal doppelgänger. Marceline took it a lot better, mostly because she was already used to Magic Simon and Snow Betty’s weirdness and was therefore prepared for the multiverse bullshittery.

Prismo, interestingly enough, does actually show up! he’s also the one who lets Fionna, Cake, Marshall, and Gary come over for the reunion. he brings Cosmic Owl as his plus-one, which is… interesting, but he also shows up as a 3D being, which is even weirded. he’s still completely pink though.

later in the evening, Huntress Wizard gets in a fistfight with a penguin and almost loses, but manages to win because Fern starts cheering her on. there’s probably more weird stuff that happens at the family reunion but this is already gettin way too long, so. ask me again maybe later

#adventure time #snow queen au #simon petrikov #betty grof #petrigrof role swap #petrigrof #answered asks #fionna and cake #I’m not tagging all these people y’all can figure it out

[lvsifer]

What is the first memory you have of me? 👀

Omg Feini how can you ask me that when you know my memory is a sieve that looks like a thong 😭 obviously I know we knew each other way before but the one I actually remember is from when you visited Berlin and we were somewhere around Alexanderplatz/the Dom on some big steps and I thought abt how cool you are 💗

#listen i literally need to get my brain checked bc my memory is Bad (no joke 💀). makin the doctor’s appointment for the holidays. #asks #fraeuleinfriedhof #idk if I just have Bad Memory or. u know. it’s sometging worse 🤠

[imreallyloveleee]

for @auroraworldtourftbughead who asked about my "road trip to ohio" fic: ok so this is a s5 au that i started writing back in Feb/Mar. it picks up a few weeks after they find Polly's body, ie at the point in the show where it became extremely clear that they were just dropping the arc they'd been building for Betty & Jughead and veering off in another nonsensical direction. i really want to finish this one and correct the sins of late s5, lol. (and i just miss jughead's family!) here is a snippet from the beginning of the story:

It’s just past eight in the evening. She’s dragging the trash bins from the garage out to the sidewalk for tomorrow morning’s pickup when she sees him standing in the driveway next door, struggling to wrestle an oversized duffle bag into the storage compartment of his motorcycle.

“Jug. Hey.” She’s already halfway across the yard between their houses by the time he notices her. His eyes soften from surprise to mild concern as she approaches.

“Hey. How are you holding up?”

Betty mulls for a moment over her response. It’s a fair question to ask someone three weeks after they found their sister’s body rotting in the trunk of a rusting, broken junkyard sedan. She doesn't especially want to answer; she's just tired of coming up with ways to change the subject.

Thankfully the scene she's stumbled upon makes it easy. She gestures to the bag. "Hanging in there. What’s this?”

Jughead sighs, giving the duffel bag another half-hearted shove, to no avail. “I’m heading to Ohio for JB’s graduation.”

Recognition flickers dimly in her memory. He’d mentioned this to her weeks ago, when they were deep in investigation mode, one of probably a thousand things he’d said that had filtered in and out of her brain like water through a sieve. She’d said something like oh, my god, she’s graduating already? we’re so old! in response, and then promptly returned to obsessing over their latest clue in the hunt for the highway killer.

“But I guess the gift I got her is too big for this stupid thing –” 

“You’re driving all the way to Ohio on a motorcycle?” she interrupts. “In the middle of the night? Isn’t that, like, a seven hour drive?”

He shifts his gaze away from her, towards the Andrews house, which she interprets as yes, I know this is a dumb fucking idea and no, I don’t want to talk about it. 

After the last few months she's had, she can relate.

“It’s tomorrow,” he says. “I was supposed to leave yesterday, but – I kind of got distracted, with everything that’s been going on.” 

Betty tries not to react to that. He must mean “everything” that’s been going on with Tabitha – her parents’ arrival in town, their burgeoning relationship. Kevin had seen them out at a restaurant together with the Tates, holding hands at the dinner table. Betty wishes they’d just make it public already, post a couple's photo on Instagram or something. It’s getting uncomfortable, pretending she doesn’t know.

He's muttering to himself, hoisting the duffel bag out of the storage compartment and onto his shoulder. "Maybe if I repack this into a backpack instead…"

“You can take my car, if you want,” she offers, and then, without allowing herself to actually consider what she’s proposing, adds, “Or…I could come with you.”

Jughead freezes, his eyes darting from her face to her car where it sits in the opposite driveway, and then back again. “Oh, no – I couldn’t ask –” 

“We could tag-team the driving. And I’d love to see JB and your dad, and…everyone.” She doesn’t actually know if Gladys is still in the picture or not. “To be honest, I – I really need to get out of this house for a few days.”

She knows how she sounds: desperate. But she also knows that if anyone in her life can come anywhere close to understanding what this is like – what it means to be the child of a parent who is a walking, weeping open wound, a gaping hole of need that cannot possibly be filled – it’s Jughead. 

(And she feels guilty for thinking of her grieving mother in those terms, she really does, but the truth is she’s suffocating. Put on your own oxygen mask first, Dr. Glass told her all those years ago. It was just about the only useful thing he'd imparted to her in a cumulative sixteen hours of therapy, other than a prescription for Adderall.) 

“At least take the car,” she insists. “You can’t even fit your stuff in here.”

Jughead’s lips press together. His eyes flit back towards the house again – only the garage light is on, which is where he’s been staying. “You’re sure you want to sit in a car with me for seven hours? I’ve got terrible taste in music.”

Her face breaks out into a tremulous smile. It feels weird, but good – the first uncontrolled display of emotion she’s had in weeks that wasn’t borne of despair. 

“I’m sure.” 

#bughead #bughead fic #fic #my fic #riverdale #riverdale fic #i have shared a few paragraphs from this before...a section that makes it clear jug is not actually dating tabitha lol

[welcometololaland]

🦋 💎 🌸 ??

hello beloved jen, I feel honoured that you took time away from your current state of slay to send me this ask 💜

🦋 I already did this one, but I'll do 3 other words that are maybe more self-compassionate (although i maintain that being sensitive isn't actually a bad thing): inquisitive, compassionate and reliable.

💎 well LEGALLY speaking, my cat is a possession so I would say that he is my most prized thing. but if we are talking inanimate objects I'd say the blue opal ring I inherited from my grandmother - not because it's valuable but because it's a part of her I take with me almost everywhere.

🌸 omg the best compliment I ever received? I actually have no idea this is really tricky! I don't do well with compliments because I'm inherently quite self deprecating and awkward. It is such an endorphin rush if someone tells me they'd read original fiction if I wrote it, because it is a dream of mine. In lieu of having a memory like a sieve, let's go with that.

#ask game #personal #fangs or no fangs