When Tav discovers the location of the Gondian hostages, it’s hardly a question whether or not they will stage a righteous, possibly suicidal jailbreak. Astarion doesn’t even bother to try and talk her out of this one; he is intimately familiar with the way Tav clenches her jaw when she’s decided to save someone or die trying, and once she’s made up her mind about it, there’s not much use in trying to sway her. So, Astarion is a little more than surprised to see Tav actually hesitating on the catwalk above the submersible. It’s such an unexpected discovery that he nearly forgets to be concerned about it.

In which Tav has reservations about going down to the Iron Throne and Astarion finds his courage. Oneshot, complete.

Rating: T Word Count: 8,312

I wrote an English cover of Given’s “Fuyu no Hanashi” and sang it with an alcohol marker accompaniment 

the sound quality is not good but I’ve been putting this off saying “someday” for a long long time and finally decided I may as well just do what I can. someday when I have my own music room and aren’t recording off of my phone I’ll redo this properly <3 

interest check for a sci-fi horror themed group thread on discord!! Open to non-mutuals & also to ppl I already have threads with. It could be fun to come up with a role for our character in this situation & throw it all together and see what happens, as like a big indie thread with multiple writers. Let's write something scary!

The setting :

In a generic sci-fi setting that can incorporate elements and aliens from lots of established science fiction (or even fantasy!) franchises (Dune, Star Wars, Star Trek, etc.), there is a planet nicknamed 'Wolfhound.' Unruly snarls of gray vines, grasses, and vegetation cover many of its habitable regions, like a dog's thick fur. Most of the light that reaches Wolfhound from its star is in the infrared region, below the visible spectrum a human can see. Because of this, the planet's lifeforms look dull and dark, though they would surely look much more vivid and colorful when viewed by a being who can comprehend their proper color spectrum. Whenever there is a patch of color that humans can see, that color is usually red.

There have been several attempts to build settlements on Wolfhound. These attempts have generally ended badly, sometimes in mysterious ways. This has led to an abundance of chilling rumors. Perhaps the planet is home to unknown dangerous predatory animals. Perhaps the planet is home to a mysterious disease or fungus that humans have no defense against. Behind the blurred fact and fiction of a hundred murky stories lies a somber truth: some of the alien life on Wolfhound is definitely threatening to humans. There are few remaining active settlements on Wolfhound. There are sites of failed settlements here and there, which could be looted or used as shelter.

Wolfhound would have been a valuable planet to settle because it sits at a convenient location along trade routes. When dealing with the planet's environment proved dangerous and scary, enterprising agencies looked to Wolfhound's single dusty brown moon, nicknamed Whippet. Over the years, Whippet has become the interstellar resting and refueling hub (and occasional mining site) that Wolfhound refused to be. About half of the moon's entire surface is covered in human activity: safety, friendliness, and twinkling lights.

The story so far:

A large conflict between starships has just ended, with massive casualties on both sides. The conflict happened close to Wolfhound and Whippet. Anyone who survived the conflict now desperately needs to land on the planet or its moon before their escape pod or damaged starcraft runs out of power and can't provide life support anymore.

If you're writing a muse who was present in the space battle, where do they land, the cursed planet or the relatively safe moon? Do they expect anyone to come looking for them? Is there anyone they need to go looking for?

How willing is your muse to cooperate with former enemies to work towards the survival of the ones who were stranded on the dangerous planet?

If you're writing a muse who wasn't present in the space battle, what is their role? Are you writing a rich explorer who has set out to discover the secrets of Wolfhound? A kind first responder from Whippet? Some kind of zombie or Creature on Wolfhound?

Interest check!! 'Like' this post & I'll get back to you. If this looks fun but your muse isn't quite a sci fi muse, imagine them into a sci fi AU & you're all set. Please take a look at my rules and about page if we haven't written together yet. If multiple people join the thread, read their rules/about before writing any IC interactions. I think I'll write my guy from Dune as a survivor of the conflict who landed on Wolfhound and wants to be rescued by the inevitable search parties from Whippet.

Concept:

Post-tadpole, Tav offers to help Astarion find a way to walk in the sun again, and she starts by going to different libraries and repositories and archives around the city to look for books that might be relevant. Astarion, obviously, has to stay in the rental room with the shutters closed during the daytime, so he can't come with her.

At some point, this takes her up to the posh part of the city, where the fancy ✨ scholarly ✨ archive is. She remembers most of the walk - it's not too far from the graveyard Astarion took her to, in the neighbourhood where he once used to live.

And like, it's never actually occurred to her that he could still have Actual Blood Relatives still living? It's not a topic she's ever thought to raise with him. But she has to sign in and out of the archive, and she just happens to notice the name three or four lines above hers: an initial and a surname she recognises.

Ancunín.

The same name from Astarion's gravestone.

A parent? A sibling?

A niece or nephew Astarion has never even met?

Thus begins a secondary quest of trying to reunite a broken family. Astarion is willing enough to talk about the few memories he still has of the thirty-nine years he had with his family before turning - a drop in the ocean compared to the 200 years spent suffering under Cazador - but he shuts down when she nudges him towards the likelihood that Mr & Mrs Ancunín are still alive. He retreats back behind the selfish, catty survivalist he was when she first met him and claims he has no interest in ever reconnecting. The pain in every clipped syllable says drop it, so she does.

But then he asks her, very quietly, several days later, what the initial was. He doesn't really react when she tells him - there's no obvious recognition, and he doesn't ask any follow-up questions or try to discuss it further. He just goes back to his book. She watches him out of the corner of her eye though, as she skim-reads her own giant tome of magical artifacts. A very long time goes by before she sees him turn a page.

For a good long while, the family issue gets put firmly on the back burner. They have other shit going on. Sometimes, it's following promising leads on a possible workaround for Astarion's sunlight allergy. Other times, it's the kind of ugly, ragged-edged breakdown that so often follows a period of relative safety and stability after a major trauma. He's been running in survival mode for two centuries, and now he's finally starting to feel secure enough for the rest of his mind to come back online, and all the trauma he couldn't handle at the time, all the pain and fear and tangled emotions survival mode was protecting him from, is catching up to him. During those sporadic episodes, trying to keep him from falling apart is her top priority and, well, time gets away from them and by the time he brings up his parents again, months or more have gone by, and they have a fairly good idea of what artifact of daywalking they need to find.

By the time it comes to actually meeting with them, still more months have passed, and they have already found it.

It's horrible, and heartwarming, and heartbreaking, and healing, and hurting, and so many other conflicting things that for a while - a long while - Tav doesn't know whether she actually did the right thing encouraging him to reach out to long-lost loved ones. It's a mess of moments that makes her heart ache for a dozen reasons. She finds out that Astarion looks most like his mother, but has his father's nose. She holds him for hours while he shakes and sobs into her shoulder because they never even left the city, they were here the whole time, and they never found him - and he's so angry and full of grief he doesn't know what to do with himself. She accompanies him to the home he was raised in, and the once-familiar surroundings jog memories he thought lost for good - he's glassy-eyed, recounting them to her, but she's fairly sure it's the good kind of glassy-eyed, so she doesn't mention it. She tries to make conversation at family dinner while he stares at his hands in his lap, dissociated, looking even more uncomfortable than she feels, utterly lost in a world that once fit him like a glove. There are a lot of feelings to try and mediate. They are all hurt, all damaged, all afraid, all looking for the ghost of a loved one in the face of a stranger.

But, eventually, there is a day where she overhears Astarion having a conversation with his father, and he sounds like himself - not the persona he puts on in public - and his father laughs at something he says in a way that's entertained rather than awkward. There is a day where his mother reaches out and he doesn't shake his head or step away - he lets her hug him goodbye. They have not slipped back into the graves they crawled out of in each other's lives - they are all very different people now - but they are learning new ways to fit together, and he seems to be pleased about it.

So she thinks, yeah, it was worth it.

today's game changer is a circle of hell

vox vox for tumblr sexyman or something i dont go here

OBEY YOUR MASTER

Another batch of miscellaneous doodles from Glow Worms with little to no context ☆

cause of death: alley rose bridge

"Realistically if I were to scream right now how many people do you think would just assume I was being murdered?" Musing out loud, Dylan tapped her pen to her chin, glancing at the pair of eyes that had shifted in her direction at her mutterings, "Sorry, I find it better to voice my inner thoughts out loud so I can think about stuff that really matters, like your order, what was that again?"

10000 posts!

I would like to thank past!me for keeping a document with the text of all the thank-you cards I've written to people, firstly because now I won't send the exact same message two years in a row, but also because it helps me remember how to sound like a human person

Here’s looking at you...

I feel like my horoscope is telling me something today 😂

thinking about alternative ramudas after revisiting the drama tracks~

🔥with DarkStripe

🔥 CEO of darkstripe im happy to report that he is one of my fav bg characters (specifically during the TPB era because that's when he's weaseling about the most i think).

by extension...that entire willowpelt line fucks me up so bad. i have a personal hc that dark's father was stumpytail from shadowclan. aka the son of clawface, who ends up killing spottedleaf.

shoving my hcs aside though, hes just funny to me. go girl give me nothing!!!