stygiusfic - Tumblr blog

stygiusfic · 1 day

Text

IG : @emperorofmischief

#it sparks joy #animals

37K notes · View notes

stygiusfic · 2 days

Text

Gorgeous! 15 hours overnight in one of New Zealand's darkest towns.

(Cr: Connor Paton)

#it sparks wonder

12K notes · View notes

stygiusfic · 2 days

Text

now on the flip side of this, though—

I would love it if my future ideas were all like. 3K, tops. very easy. not a whole sprawling plot that took TWO FULL HOURS to outline in my silly little notes app. jesus

did you know that if you work on something, and if you keep working on it, little by little, eventually, it will be finished

because I knew this, but maybe I kept forgetting, maybe I didn't know know, and it's beautiful to learn. how things that are big and scary can also be small enough to handle

anyway adhd medication is a gift

#stygius textpost

18 notes · View notes

stygiusfic · 3 days

Text

Yes, I'm totally normal about her

#hades 2 #hecate hadesgame

2K notes · View notes

stygiusfic · 3 days

Text

Another Lord of the Rings Hot Take: the reason Frodo starts starving himself isn’t *just* because of the horrific emotional toll of the journey. It’s also because the only food Frodo and Sam have is Lembas bread, which the Ring takes away your ability to eat.

When Frodo tries to share the Lembas bread with Gollum, Gollum is physically unable to eat it. He wants to eat it, but Can’t. Because it’s elvish bread, it burns Gollum’s throat and “chokes” him.

I mentioned in a previous post that Frodo isn’t just afraid of becoming like Gollum– he’s afraid of becoming like Gollum because he knows that Sam despises Gollum, and he’s paranoid that he’s becoming someone who Sam can no longer love.

When Gollum says that he can’t eat Lembas bread, Sam coldly responds that he’ll have to “starve then, and good riddance.”

And then Sam repeatedly worries that Frodo isn’t eating enough, that he worries Frodo is starving himself. (”You haven’t eating anything all day, and you’re not sleeping neither– don’t think I haven’t noticed!” “I’ve seen you– you’re not eating, you barely sleep.”)

I feel like the reason Frodo is eating less isn’t the horrible emotional strain of the journey– it’s also because he’s physically losing the ability to eat. As the Ring takes over his mind eating elvish food is starting to become painful for him, the way it’s painful for Gollum. Frodo saying ”I can’t recall the taste of food, nor the sound of water, nor the touch of grass” on Mount Doom is a direct callback to Gollum saying that “we forgot the taste of bread, the sound of trees, the softness of the wind” in the beginning of the film.

One thing I think is really compelling about the Ring is that….there is no clear line between “the emotional toll the journey takes on the characters” and “the actual physical damage the Ring does to their minds.” There’s no clear separation between the times when Frodo is not eating because he’s traumatized and afraid, and the times when Frodo is not eating because the Ring is warping his mind and making it harder for him to eat. It’s like the Ring is parasitic, feeding off the guilt and trauma it creates in people.

Frodo tries to hide how little he’s eating because he doesn’t want Sam to worry about his emotional state…… but also because he doesn’t want Sam to realize that he’s gradually becoming corrupted like Gollum, that he’s gradually becoming the kind of person he’s afraid that Sam can no longer empathize with.

#lotr

14K notes · View notes

stygiusfic · 4 days

Text

I'm sick of internet negativity, so let's combat it: reblog this and saying something nice/pay a compliment to the prev in the tags.

#always so fun to talk to!!#also you leave the best comments #and I love your writing and the ways you get weird with it #natalie you're a delight!!!

23K notes · View notes

stygiusfic · 4 days

Text

sunny garden print 🌹

#baldur’s gate 3 #wyllstarion

420 notes · View notes

stygiusfic · 4 days

Text

Think about Harrow's AU Bubbles

Thinking about Harrow's AU bubbles, not as fanfic references, but as expressions of her subconscious fears and desires, is so fascinating.

The Harrow Nova one is pretty obvious. Harrow's parents were obsessed with her being a necromancer, were willing to kill for it. It's only natural she'd wonder, "What if I hadn't been?"

And the answer Harrow gives herself is: Your parents and everyone would reject you (except, wildly, for Crux). Also they'd be alive cuz you'd never opened the tomb, and you'd be an unpopular orphan they'd abuse (Just Like Gideon). And you'd still be just as devoted to serving the Ninth with a blade. There's a lot there. But the other really telling bit is her relationship with Gideon. Harrow Nova professes to hate the reverend daughter even as she seeks to (re) create the necro-cav bond with her. But that hatred doesn't seem to be mutual. And the bit about the daughter intervening when Harrow was whipped…

That's Harrow's subconscious saying if their roles had been reversed, "Gideon would have treated me better than I treated her. Gideon would have protected me."

The Ball AU also seems like a reasonable extension of Gideon's childhood query: "What if my other parent is the most important guy in the universe?" Answer: Emperor Dad would throw a big party.

But also… it's a bride-finding ball! That's so very telling. It could have been anything, but Harrow invents another scenario where she's fighting, competing to get to Gideon, to be awarded the role of her sworn partner (first cav, now bride), while outwardly claiming not to want it.

Now The BARI Star AU often gets described as a "coffee shop" one, but it's actually set in a cohort cafeteria. And normally I wouldn't split hairs over that, but I think the cohort setting is actually really significant. The Cohort was Gideon's dream, and also Harrow's rival for Gideon's attention. It's what she kept trying to leave Harrow for.

So now Harrow dreams that she's left Drearburh to join the cohort and will meet Gideon there. Not fight or compete for a role where they're bound to each other, but just meet her there. That feels like yielding. Like compromise. It makes me think Harrow's subconscious has matured past trying to keep Gideon with her always and is instead looking for ways that SHE can be with Gideon. Meet Gideon where she is.

(Also this may be a stretch, but I always find it low-key funny that Harrow imagines Gideon in the cafeteria… I like to think her brain is skimming lists of hypothetical military jobs like... what sees the least action... ah, coffee-adept, she'll be perfectly safe there...)

#the locked tomb #tlt meta #eating this post #<- taking prev tag because that's exactly how I feel

2K notes · View notes

stygiusfic · 4 days

Text

prey

#baldur's gate 3 #orin the red #minthara #that look on minthara.... inspired

4K notes · View notes

stygiusfic · 5 days

Text

sigh.... everybody do the wenis 🫳🤜 the wenis is a dance ✊🔄 everybody is a genius 🫵 🫵 who knows it in advance 🦵👟

#game changer #I have now heard this song and it may never leave my head

2K notes · View notes

stygiusfic · 5 days

Text

Because the farm is really Shadowheart's ending I was thinking, what would be Connie's post-game thing (he loves the farm life to pieces, but I was thinking, you know, if he was a companion what he'd be talking about during the epilogue party). And I came up with this idea - he writes and illustrates the very first Guide to the Birds of Faerûn. I don't want to torment you with my words, so if you're interested, the rest is under the cut. It's long but there are some additional doodles there.

About the book:

The book is basically like Collins Bird Guide. Including very detailed descriptions of what sounds the birds make.

Connie's already in touch with a publisher (recommended by Volo)

While Shadowheart does proofreading to see if it's digestible for non-bird-obsessed people, Connie's stepfather and Arnell help him with fact checking.

Connie was consulting Halsin while writing about waterfowl.

The books dedication reads: "To my dearest wife and our four dogs, eight cars, nine chickens, six pigeons, four sheep, Daphne the milk cow, the odd little squirrel, Buttons and last but not least, our crow."

He thought that dedication was hilarious.

After publishing the book, he's been getting at least one letter every week regarding it.

Thanks to these letters the book gets improved with further editions.

He gets invited to various schools across the country to hold lectures but he almost always declines. (Public speeches aren't his thing and he also doesn't want to leave the farm that often.)(He made one exception for Gale because he asked very nicely and didn't take no for an answer).

Far in the future nobody remembers him as one of the heroes who saved Baldur's Gate. He's being remembered as one of Faerûn's best ornithologists.

Other companions reactions:

Lae'zel genuinely liked the book. So much in fact, she read it more than once.

Tara hates Mondays.

I projected on Karlach how hard it is to read books sometimes.

The scary part of the book was the birds of prey section.

Jaheira didn't even read the book, but she does a bang up job pretending she did. She's still very proud.

Shadowheart read it so many times during proofreading she could recite some parts with her eyes closed. For a week she had nightmares about geese.

Details:

Because whenever I make a drawing with a proper background I like talking about the details I put there. So:

The picture of magpies on the wall is the same one Connie gave Shadowheart in this comic. She kept it in the same book she kept the first night orchid he gave her.

That brigs us to the night orchid next to magpies. It's the same one.

There's a doodle of Shadowheart and Daphne near the window.

For references for all the feathers in this drawing I used feathers from my own collection.

Wooden duck is obviously the one Halsin gives you in the epilogue.

The bird drawings are from this drawing I made almost 3 years ago.

Oof, thank you for reading all that, here's one last doodle:

#baldur’s gate 3 #shadowheart #connecticut tav #I've adopted him op. I love him

216 notes · View notes

stygiusfic · 5 days

Text

did you know that if you work on something, and if you keep working on it, little by little, eventually, it will be finished

because I knew this, but maybe I kept forgetting, maybe I didn't know know, and it's beautiful to learn. how things that are big and scary can also be small enough to handle

anyway adhd medication is a gift

#stygius textpost #i'm not about to say all the wips in the gdocs cemetery died to my adhd #but gosh it sure feels nice to take the overwhelm out of the process #it sure feels nice to not feel like the progress left to make is a yawning maw #it's actually safe to walk into. one step at a time.

18 notes · View notes

stygiusfic · 5 days

Text

THE GARDEN

#poetry #never not thinking about this poem

57K notes · View notes

stygiusfic · 5 days

Text

and I wrote post-canon fic for him and Shadowheart!

They live on a farm and if you think they have too many animals now, check back in in a few months. Silence is a dog person (in more than one sense) but he loves their chickens the best. He feeds them out of his palm because he loves their little hungry pecks.

Fic is titled after this poem, which is lovely and perfectly captures how I see their relationship, and this fic.