#insofar as you can with fire and blood
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the marketing has worked: I am slightly excited about hotd
#not really a targ/f&b enthusiast but fuck it why not#that Hollywood reporter article was encouraging#Im not usually a stickler for super faithful adaptations but given what happened with GOT I’m glad hbo are now keen to stick to the source#insofar as you can with fire and blood#anyway hbo social marketing assistants if u use tumblr u can use this post in ur report
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Fangs and Fractured Hearts
Chapter 14: Devil's Ploy
Summary: After embracing eternity as a vampire spawn under Astarion's wing, the Crimson Palace becomes a haunting symbol of the man he once was. As his personality unravels into a dark abyss, you flee. A year of hardship unveils the harsh reality of existence as a vampire spawn.
Just as all hope seems lost, a twist of fate reunites you with Astarion, revealing a glimmer of hope amidst the shadows. As you navigate the complexities of your relationship, you must confront the unsettling truth behind the Rite of Profane Ascension and the devilish secrets it holds.
In a race against time, you embark on a daring quest to save Astarion from his descent into darkness. With each choice you make, the stakes grow higher, testing the limits of your courage and determination.
Will Astarion find redemption, or is he destined to succumb to his own inner turmoil?
Word Count: 6k
Pairing: Ascended Astarion x female!Tav Spawn
Warnings: [Will try to continue to add more, but in general expect explicit content for mature audiences]
Possible spoilers. Eventual Explicit Content. Slow Burn. Thoughts of Suicide. Violence. Blood. Injury. Mature Content. Self-Harm. Mentions of in-game content. Completely fabricated camp events. Mentions of Astarion's Trauma.
If you notice a very critical tag missing, please don't hesitate to let me know
Rating: Explicit 18+ - [Meant For Mature Audience]
You snort and blink rapidly to clear your nose of the fetid sulphuric odour burning the membranes of your nostrils, throat and eyes. In the cramped, dimly lit sewers, where the air doesn’t stir, the stench of it lingers and never seems to dissipate.
When your vision finally becomes unimpaired by burning tears, the cambion and her fire-red hair, horns bedazzled with chains of gold, is leering at you with a conniving expression that makes your stomach sink. You’ve seen this expression on her plenty of times when she was scheming and plotting.
“Gods above,” you hiss with a rasp to your voice. “What do you want, Mizora? I thought I was good and done with your kind.”
“And here I thought we had all become such good friends,” she titters, feigning cordiality terribly. “You always did have so much… spunk. I’m happy death still hasn’t taken your lovely little spark.”
“You can ask Raphael all about my spark,” you smirk. Vivid blue lightning crackles and buzzes over your fingertips. “Oh, wait. You can’t because I killed him for seeing me as no more than a little mouse, a pawn, and I will do the same with you if you think you can play games with me.”
“Oh-yes,” Mizora giggles, not one iota ruffled by your threats. “All nine Hells were positively astir with the news of his demise. He always was such a pompous and over-confident twat, not unlike your master, I suppose."
Master. Ugh.
“I would be lying if I said it was nice to see you again, Mizora. If you will excuse me, I have my prey to hunt, and you’ve made me lose its trail.”
You can’t hear or smell Elowyn anymore. She will be deep into the ruin by now, or worse yet, in the Crimson Palace itself, but you still don’t understand what use she would have of that place. There is nothing left there but closed cells full of rotting gore that can never be opened again since you made Astarion break Cazador’s quarterstaff - Woe. Insofar as you’re aware, that was the only key to controlling everything.
“A great pity you’re in such a rush, pet,” Mizora snickers. Gods, you hate being called “pet.” You almost growl, but you’re too preoccupied with the rising feeling of foreboding swishing around in your stomach. You know that laugh and dread what’s about to come out of her mouth next. “I was going to offer to assist your Vampire Ascendant with his little… problem, but I suppose if you don’t want help… well, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. Ta-ta!”
“Wait!” You snap, whirling around. You’re going to regret this. “Wait… What do you know of Astarion’s ailment?”
“I thought that might get your attention,” she smirks smugly. “Let’s make ourselves more comfortable, shall we? You may be accustomed to living in such filth, but I am decidedly not.”
Mizora snaps her fingers, fire bursts to life all around you, and then you’re in a grand sitting room with glitzy settees, lounges and chairs. Rugs made of creatures you’ve never seen before litter the floor. Some appear reptile-like with scaly hides, others plush furs, others with feathers and more with something you can only begin to describe as some form of cartilaginous exoskeleton. They look at you with glassy, dead eyes ashine in their long-dead sockets.
It’s stiflingly hot, and you peer out of double doors leading to the terrace and take in the landscape. In the distance, black, jagged mountains pierce the horizon with peaks wreathed in an eerie crimson mist. Brimstone and fire dance in a perpetual inferno bordering a river made entirely of lava or possibly blood. It’s hard to tell from this height. The air is acrid and clouded with volcanic ash, and the sky flickers reds and oranges as fireballs race through clouds of darkest black.
“Avernus,” Mizora gushes. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
“I think I preferred the sewers,” you croak, wiping the sweat from your brow and going back inside. It does little to provide any comfort or liberation from the sweltering climate.
“Of course, sewer spawn,” she scoffs indignantly and drops unceremoniously onto a lounge. “It was your home for a little while. Wasn’t it? Until the Cleric and Wizard found you down there.”
“Have you been watching me this entire time?” You cross your arms and quirk a brow at her. “Do you have nothing better to do than derive pleasure from pain and suffering?”
“Oh, darling.” Her head falls back, and she laughs, “Of course! Who wouldn’t want to watch this little tragedy play out? It has been quite amusing thus far.”
“I’m glad you’re enjoying the show,” you bow sarcastically with a frown. “If you’re getting such a kick out of it, why are you meddling in my nightmare?”
“Sit. Won’t you?” She gestures toward the chaise. Mizora won’t tell you anything until you do as she asks. This is all part of her little game, after all. So, you sit with a roll of your eyes. “I would have been happy to watch until the vampire killed you, but alas, all good things must come to an end. Zariel and the other archdevils have other plans.”
Fuck. If another archdevil, or several, from the sounds of it, are getting involved, this is unlikely to be good. What got you here was another deal with an archdevil, but if there’s even a chance that something Mizora might tell you can give you somewhere to start, well, you can humour her.
“Which are?”
“Oh,” Mizora shrugs. “I don’t know, little lamb. I am merely a messenger.”
“Okay,” you comb your fingers through your sweat-dampened hair. She’s lying. You can see the hinting glint in her eyes. She knows more than she’s letting on. “Well, what is it you can tell me?”
The toothy, menacing smile that sidles across Mizora’s face should send you running. She sneers, “Tell me. What do you know of Mephistopheles?”
You shrug, “I know he is an archdevil, a rather powerful one. His domain is Cania. The Rite of Profane Ascension was a contract with him. Beyond that, I do not spend much time researching devils.”
“So, nothing then,” she pouts. “Well, allow me to enlighten you.”
Fire leaps to life in a circle, and Mizora’s eyes gleam with the keenness of a wild cat as you jump and get ready to defend yourself. Everything goes black except for the inferno burning around you.
As you watch the writhing blaze, depictions form in the leaping flames, moving against them. A towering devil with bright red skin, curling ram horns and massive bat-like wings jutting out from his back. He has an unnervingly charming smile, but it’s offset by cold, milk-white eyes that stare through you, making you shudder.
The figure paces around, muttering to himself and the empty grand halls around him. His eyes bounce around with feral neuroticism. He twitches, growls, hisses and waves his hand as if shooing away an annoying insect while snarling.
Abruptly, the fiery figure lets out a blood-curdling shriek and starts clawing at his skin, tearing gashes into himself until his skin is hanging in gruesome, dripping flaps from his arms and chest. Fire explodes in his palms, and he flings around bolts of Hellfire, instantly turning everything around him to ash. He pivots quickly and appears to be looking straight at you. He roars so loud you’re sure your eardrums have burst. He charges toward you with the ferocity of a rabid animal and a fireball barrels toward you.
Everything goes black, and you fall onto the floor by Mizora, who is snickering.
“What in the Hells was that?” You snap, getting up and getting in her face. You grab that fur collar in your hands and shake her, “What the fuck did I just witness?”
“Mephistopheles, for all his cunning and brilliance, is a deeply troubled individual. As you saw, he is neurotic and suspicious and often flies into fits of explosive and violent rage. Does that remind you of anyone?”
“… Astarion,” you breathe and stumble back. “Oh Gods…”
“Yes, pet.” Mizora nods with a fiendish cackle. “I can see you putting it all together. The Vampire Ascendant was an experiment of sorts. As you can imagine, these tendencies are not becoming of an archdevil. In an effort to rid himself of his neurotic temper, he needed a willing vessel to imbue with a portion of his nature. What better way to lure a willing participant than to offer unfathomable power?”
You collapse onto the chaise, wracking your fingers through your hair, “The Vampire Ascendant was nothing more than a way for Mephistopheles to offload his psychosis?”
Gods above. It makes so much sense. Astarion’s blind fits of rage. The voices in his head. The alternate version of him that sometimes takes control. You never got to see the whole contract. Did Raphael know about this and neglect to say it?
“But.” You add, looking at Mizora, “Astarion is himself some of the time.”
“Ah-yes,” Mizora snickers, glancing at her nails. “The vessel was never supposed to have an intact soul. It’s much easier to work with an empty cask than one that is already full, so to speak. A spawn was never supposed to usurp the ritual. I would say an oversight on Mephistopheles’ part, but truly, who could have imagined a spawn would get infected with a mind flayer tadpole that broke his master’s chains? Then, he just so happened to come upon a fine hero to help him. It’s all rather ludicrous sounding. Astarion’s soul is fractured but not completely eradicated. Well, not yet at least.”
“What do you mean not yet?”
“Think of it like this,” Mizora speaks to you slowly, as if you might not be smart enough to understand the metaphor slipping past her lips. “The entity is like an infection. It contaminates him, tainting everything from his thoughts, the platelets in his blood, to the marrow in his very bones, faster than his body can heal itself.”
“Why are you telling me all of this?” You’re starting to get suspicious. Where is the catch? The line she will hook you with?
“Can’t I just want to help out an old friend?” She pouts.
You glower at her and cross your arms, “No.”
“You were always so clever.” Mizora suddenly becomes serious, “Mephistopheles is a threat. Now that he is no longer burdened by his demons, he’s set his aspirations quite high. Too high for the liking of many of the archdevils. We would like to see him reunited with himself. It’s a very fine little deal. You get what you want to rid Astarion of the entity that’s eating him from the inside out, and we get to cage Mephistopheles back in the prison of his mind. A warning, pet. It will not be an easy road.”
“My life has never been easy. Why would it start now?” You sigh, “Tell me what needs to be done, and I will do it.”
“Such a good little spawn. Aren’t you? He’s killed you, tortured you, starved you, beat you, emotionally ruined you, and stolen your name, and you’re still willing to risk yourself to save him?” Mizora giggles, “I would say it was a true love story in the making were it not so fucking tragic.”
“What do you mean stolen my name?” You growl, cocking your head at her, “I have a name!”
“Oh,” she snickers, “Then tell me, pet. What’s your name?”
“My name…” You trail off, wracking your brain for the word. It’s right there, sitting precariously on the tip of your tongue. “My name… It’s… It’s…”
Mizora’s laughter is a haunting melody, a sinister cackle in a chilling symphony. That sound could freeze the blood of the bravest soul and make the earth tremble, “You can’t remember it. Can you?”
You replay old conversations in your head. You can see Shadowheart’s lips moving, but then there’s a sudden silence where all you hear is white noise even though she’s still talking. It’s the same with conversations with Gale, just white noise in the place where your name should have been.
Astarion stole your name from you… When did that happen, and why can’t you remember? What else has he stolen from you?
“What’s my name,” you swallow the thick odium that’s erected itself into your throat. You shriek, rage sweeping through you in a gust of hatred, “What my name, Mizora! Say it!”
Mizora smiles haughtily and speaks. You focus with every iota of your capacity, watching her lips move, but it is as you feared. Your ears hear nothing but the breathy whisper of silence, and your eyes seem unable to read the phonetics on her lips.
You’re his darling. His sweet girl. His precious treasure. His consort. His nameless spawn.
And yet, you’re still prepared to sacrifice your life.
Yes, a very good little spawn, indeed.
“It doesn’t matter,” you mutter, clenching your chest as a tendril of sadness wraps around your heart and chokes it. “What do I have to do?”
“Before we can do anything about Astarion. We must first unbind him from his contract.” Mizora says, eyes narrowing, fixed on you. “I don’t care how you do it, but you must get Astarion’s contract from Mephistopheles. Steal it. Bargain for it. The choice is yours, but you must do it fast. There’s no way to know how much time before Astarion is lost forever.”
Mizora deposits you back into the sewers, and her voice bounces off the stony passageways, “Tick-tock, tick-tock, pet.”
You consider continuing to try to track Elowyn, but you’re reeling with information and cannot fathom how you would even begin to concentrate on her. She must be dealt with. That is certain, but it must wait until your mind isn’t fraught and unsettled.
How are you supposed to get Astarion’s contract from Mephistopheles? Bargaining for it should be your last resort, but how do you get to Cania, the eighth layer of the Nine Hells, survive it long enough to sneak into Mephistar and somehow sneak through an archdevil citadel? It seems like an impossible task.
Should you tell Astarion? He would usually be the first person you ran to for help with a heist, but he’s unlikely to let you go, even if it is the only means to save him from inevitably losing himself entirely. You can’t risk Astarion forcing you to stay, but you might not be able to risk going to the Hells without him. The Vampire Ascendant will likely be an invaluable asset if you meet resistance. But if he loses himself, you might not survive Astarion’s wrath long enough to get where you’re going. Whether that thing inside him is a separate entity or a version of himself that’s been infected and corrupted, you doubt it will take kindly to you trying to remove it.
Do you approach Shadowheart? You would be putting her in great peril, but she might be able to help with research. This is your mistake to fix, and you don’t relish putting your friend’s lives on the line. Karlach and Wyll are in the Hells. They may be able to help ascertain a way to get to Cania, but you’ll need to figure out how to contact them.
And Good Gods, your name…
The silent corridors echo with the foreboding sound of your heavy footsteps like the ominous rumble of an approaching storm as you work through the maze of gangways and channels. Tears stroll in rivulets down your snowy cheeks, liquid poetry to express all the emotions you can’t.
Dejection. Grief. Fear. Defeat. Loss.
Lost in the spiralling thoughts, you forget to look to the sky as you drag your weary body home. The only thing you want right now is to curl up in the strong arms of Astarion and let him hold your broken pieces and fears together because you’re not sure if you can do it by yourself.
The sun cracks the skyline, the first rays of the soft light of an autumn day embracing the streets, but the sun no longer embraces you. It blinds and broils you. Your skin glows, flakes, and melts. Deep, molten silver-blue channels crack in your arms, legs and face. The pain is so intense you can’t even remember to scream as you stand, waiting for your skin to slough off your bones and cover the street with ash.
You don’t remember reaching out to the bond with Astarion, but his voice fills your head, “Gods above. What in the nine Hells are you doing!? ” Astarion bellows. Panic infects his usual halcyon timbre, “Find shelter! I’m coming!”
The pain is all-consuming. You can’t move, can’t think, can’t speak as your nerves are melted away. Your skin dissolves like water evaporating under the sun’s heat. Every inch of your skin is being flayed in a single moment that lasts forever.
You will die nameless and alone.
“Fuck! Find shelter. Now!”
Astarion’s compulsion overrides everything else, and your body moves stiffly to obey the command even as it smokes and your skin is loosened from your frame, liquifying and dripping off your arms and legs, turning to ash in midair and being carried away by the morning breeze.
Find shelter. Find shelter. Find shelter.
Your instructions resound in your head even louder than the pain that falls to a buzz in the background. You can’t even blink as your fingers curl around the boards of a long-abandoned shack. Gods. Are those your fingers? Is that bone you see? You wrench the board off the window. The pads of your fingers squelch and ooze. When you throw the boards down, your skin sticks to them, peeling away in rangy, fibril bands like gum. Thank the Gods, you lack the capacity to mull it over much as your body throws itself inside without your consent.
With the order completed, there is a brief moment of pure, blissful euphoria - a reward for being so very obedient. The compulsion pales, the vines recede, and you’re pitched back into the residual agony that has yet to abate.
Now that the sun is no longer skinning you alive, the pain has lessened, and you remember how to scream. An inhumane noise rends your throat somewhere between a shriek and a wail. Your head lolls to the side, and your eyes fall to your arms.
You immediately wish they hadn’t.
Your skin is not the smooth pearlescent you’re used to seeing now that the colour it once held has faded to death’s grip. It’s powdery and matte. You’re sure you’re looking at the bones of your forearms in the chasmal rifts.
You hear white noise in your head, murmuring over the bond. It feels like Astarion is trying to contact you, but you hear no words. To get your thoughts off the pain still being recited by your nerves, you shift your focus to the emotions in your head, trying to sift through them. Astarion’s heartbeat in your chest is excruciating. It hammers with the intensity of a blacksmith striking an anvil. He’s petrified, bordering on hysterical.
You reach out in your head, “Astarion?”
“Little love!” He howls. You must remember to request he not attempt to dissolve your brain matter. “Why haven’t you been answering me?”
“Where are you?”
“Close, my treasure.”
You don’t know how much time elapses as you bounce between consciousness and dissociation while focusing on not moving. The less you move, the better for you, but your limbs and muscles seem to jerk and twitch without your consent, and every time, it sends another agonizing swell of suffering to break over you. Teardrops flutter on your lashes, but you can’t move to wipe them away.
Your ears pick up the thudding tempo of Astarion’s beating heart before he bursts through the door, scattering the planks and showering splinters in his haste. Astarion drops to his knees beside you. He visibly shudders as his eyes land on you, slumped against a wall.
“Hells,” he breathes, chest heaving from exertion. You can feel his horror in your head, but you need not. It’s evident in his shaky and rapid speech, “It’s okay. I’m here. I’m here. You’re safe. Look at me, darling.”
Why, after everything he has done to you, is his proximity so remarkably comforting? You let your eyes roam over him and truly appreciate the beauty before you. His scarlet eyes, dazzling like vivid, perfectly polished jewels ashine behind… tears? No. That doesn’t seem right. Your vision is blurred from your eyes being boiled in their sockets. You must be imagining the tears, but his eyes are beautiful nonetheless. His sculpted, full lips, which once held the promise of an eternity of silk kisses, are downturned at the corners. You would give anything to run your fingers along them right now, feel them on your skin, taste them on your tongue. He is breathtaking, quite literally.
“Sweetheart.” Astarion reaches to you. His fingers tremble as they hover below your jaw. He knows it will hurt if he touches you, “Can you hear me?”
You answer in his head because moving the muscles in your face to make you capable of speech will hurt, “Yes. I hear you.”
“I can compel you to not feel the pain, to sleep, but I need your permission.” His eyes bore into you. His voice is a favourite dream you long to slip into, “Please.”
It’s dangerous permission to give. You’ve told him you will leave if he compels you again, but he just did, didn’t he? He compelled you to find shelter when you could not do it yourself. He compelled you from afar. He does not need to be near you to force commands upon you. He can wrap your brain and body around his finger like twine from anywhere, anytime, on a whim. But Gods, you will do anything to make this pain end, to drift away from this fucking nightmare.
“Do it.”
Immediately, you feel your control funnelling away, like sand through an hourglass.
“You feel no pain,” he purrs, and the pain vanishes as your nerve endings deactivate. It’s a blissful respite, and you sigh. “Thank you for trusting me. Sleep now.”
Your brain shuts off. Darkness claims you, and Hells below, you welcome it.
“Wake.”
The directive floats through your comatose mind like a beam of light cuts through the pitch-blackness of nullity. Your faculties burst to life, waking one by one, unfurling like a blooming flower. The first thing you feel is hunger so painful that your body jerks to collapse in on itself as your limbs jolt and tremor insuppressibly. Excruciating cramps make your toes curl and your hands ball into fists. Your mind is raving, mad with hunger. You consider biting your tongue if only for the sweet succour of that crimson elixir.
You cannot think of anything other than the sensation of your insides gnawing on themselves, the paralyzing contracting of every ligament and tendon in your body, the desiccation that’s withered your tongue, and the grave need to feed - on anything and anyone.
Another spasm causes you to lurch and claw at your skin like you could dig yourself out of this ailing body. Warm hands clasp your wrists, and all your mind can think is warm means alive, and alive means blood. Your eyes snap open, but your addled brain simply cannot process the visual input, and you don’t think twice before fire erupts from your palms.
“Shit!”
You hear it, but you do not process it. As soon as the grip on you rescinds, you lunge at this figure before you whose beating heart is thrumming the provocative siren song of life and food. Colliding with it is like being throttled into a brick wall, but you waste no time fumbling and climbing with bared fangs. You’re so close to that beautifully pulsing vein, and it’s the only thing your eyes can focus on.
Stomach bubbling with hunger, you go to bite, jaws snapping and slobbering like a feral beast. As soon as your fangs hover within striking distance, your body arrests, and you’re instantaneously immobilized.
Strong arms wrap around you, lift, and sink you to the floor. A hand cradles your cheek, and the branching blue-purple veins make you swoon. You think about biting them only to have your body freeze up on you further. It guides your eyes to vivid crimson irises that spark recognition and reason back into your dazed lucidity.
“Astarion…”
“Stop thinking about biting me,” he chuckles and shifts you to the side. “You’ll be able to move again.”
“What?” You would quirk a brow at him, but you’re too focused on trying to push your intentions of biting him away. They do not concede to your urges, and you find your eyes wander without your permission to any vein that might be in striking distance. Astarion always gently walks your errant gaze back to his. “You haven’t compelled me?”
“Ah. Apologies. I do forget how new you are to this.” Astarion reaches for something on the dresser to his right, “No. This is not a compulsion. As my…” he trails off.
“Spawn.” You state with a palpable despondency threaded between the fog of hunger that looms over you.
“I do hate that word,” he shakes his head with discontentment as if he does not want to face the reality of what he has turned you into. “You are physically unable to bite me without my permission. Your body simply will not allow you to do it. Which is why you currently cannot move.”
Astarion holds a goblet out to you, and your stomach is set on fire by the iron sharpness that wafts from the syrupy, bright red nectar. It breaks you away from your absorption of sinking your fangs into Astarion’s flesh, and you snatch it out of his hands and drink with mindless gluttony.
The blood is fresh, hot and rich as the liquid rushes into your mouth. It waterfalls through your body, unknotting the snarls in your muscles, dissolving away the relentless twist of your stomach, and replacing the bloodlust hysteria in your mind with a sultry buzzing.
Astarion’s already holding another goblet, and you throw the empty one to the side and close your eyes as you guzzle. The blood is buttery and decadent. It’s hundreds, nay, thousands of exquisite dishes in a single swallow. It’s like a summertime dawn on your tongue. The wet warmth of it sinks between your thighs, settling with a molten throbbing in your core, and you moan at the pure bliss.
Astarion slips the goblet from your fingers once you’ve finished, and you look at him with half-lidded eyes. You rack your brain for memories of the few times you’ve tasted the blood of thinking creatures. You bit a few in the battles between when he turned you and the Netherbrain, but you cannot remember any of them ever tasting that deliciously arousing.
“That wasn’t animal blood,” you state, almost slurring. You feel drunk, or maybe Astarion is just intoxicating to look at while he mesmerizes you with those red eyes and perfect lips that foretoken pleasure. “Who did you just feed me?”
“No, it was decidedly not animal blood,” he grins as you adjust on his lap and straddle him. You’re not entirely sure what you’re doing in your desirous daze, and you trace the perfect bow of his lips as he speaks. “It was my blood.”
“You are delectable,” you giggle as your fingers help themselves and start fiddling with the buttons on his chemise. As your muddled mind starts to make sense of what he just said, you’re tripped up. You stare at him with a slack jaw and round eyes.
“The look on your face is priceless, darling,” he giggles and glances down at your roving hands as they push open his shirt and trace the defined muscles. Astarion’s fingers trace down your neck, sending shivers down your spine and making you squirm on his lap in wanton desperation for even the most minuscule friction to sate the ache, “I told you that you would taste me, and I you. It will not make you a True Vampire, though, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
Right now, you could not care less about being a True Vampire. There is very little on your mind except how his skin feels on your fingers and how extraordinary he would feel stretching you.
You bury your face in the crook of his neck, inhaling his scent deeply, placing slow kisses up the column. His fingers curl into the silk nightdress he must have changed you into at some point as he groans.
“Whatever are you doing?” He mutters near your ear, pressing his cheek to yours.
“I want you,” you sigh as you curl your fingers into his hair.
“You just attacked me,” he swallows.
“Then, let me apologize,” you grind against his hardening length in a way that makes you both gasp.
“You’ve been asleep for a week,” he mumbles, even as his arms wrap around you, tugging you close. “You have no idea how close you were to dying. Truly dying.”
You should probably be concerned with how long he kept you asleep since your time is limited, but you don’t care. You can’t care. You’ve never been quite so high on blood, on him. He is the light, darkness and blood that runs through your veins, and good Gods, you will give him everything.
“So, wake me up,” you purr as you push his shirt over his shoulders and run the flat of your tongue up his neck, relishing the salt of his skin. “Touch me like only you can. Love me like only you do. Help me feel alive, Astarion.”
Astarion pulls you back, cradling your face with this thumb pressed gently under your chin, drawing your eyes to his, and you stare at him through narrow, seductively hooded eyes like a love-sick pup. He traces your lips with his thumb, and you catch it in your mouth and suck.
“Hells,” he rasps darkly with a sharp inhalation.
You feel the offering call of the bond, and you don’t hesitate to throw it open. That beautifully overwhelming frisson shatters through you as Astarion’s lips catch yours in an eager, bordering on frantic kiss. He snakes his hand into your hair, holding you firmly against his vehement embrace. His tongue darts into your mouth, and a guttural groan thunders in his chest. His kiss is unusually clumsy, lacking the artistry and mastery he typically possesses, and your teeth click together with your greed for each other. You roll your hips, sinking your clit against his length, and your head falls back as white-hot sparks of want rupture behind your eyelids.
As far as you’re concerned, he is the definition of desire. His lips, his hands, and his taste are the only things that can bring you back to life from this deathless death, and you’re sure that you could never get close enough to him. Even with every curve of your body pressed into every contour of his, it still wouldn’t be enough. Nothing is sweeter than the serene sin of the kisses his lips press against your throat.
You peel off your nightdress, and your fingers tug at the opening of his breeches, graceless in your wild hunger to be filled, to be taken, to be his. Astarion quirks his hips up and pulls them down his hips, freeing his cock. The head glistens with evidence of his arousal. With no warning or hesitation, you sink his full length into you. The heavenly stretch makes you cry out and dig your fingers into his chest.
“Fuck,” he breathes, heavy, ragged and uneven. The pads of his fingers find your swollen flesh, sweeping and circling, and you get lost in the divine stimulation.
You set a slow, teasing pace, rising and sinking back down onto him as you delight in feeling the ridges of his head with every languid pump. Astarion pants as he lets out breathy moans. He brings a hand to your hip, trying to urge you to move quicker.
“Good Gods,” he whimpers, his gaze glossed with desire. “Have mercy.”
You are starving for pleasure, famished, and you will take it how you want it. With a warning growl, you grasp his wrist and pin it above his head to the wall. Astarion grins at your dominance and doesn’t fight it. He murmurs something unintelligible as you plunge onto his cock, and stares reverentially through thick lashes, drinking you in as you forfeit all rational thought.
Time runs away with you. You could have been riding him for hours or seconds, but eventually, your savouring pace turns reckless and erratic. Astarion bucks his hips in time to meet yours as the sound of smacking flesh, wanton cries and panting is all that fills your ears and head.
Astarion’s fingers tremble and quake against your sensitive bud, his skin sheens with sweat and his breath hitches. When you finally unpin his wrist, he clutches your hips and guides you to continue the tempo that is driving you perilously close to the edge.
His breath starts to come faster, panting hot and crude, fanning across your sweat-veiled skin. Scarlet eyes devour you as you chase your release in his lap. He penetrates you - Harder. Deeper. Animalistic.
“Oh shit—” His eyes snap open wide, almost in a look of blissful confusion. In your rapture, you barely notice the way his lips move, but you hear nothing but white noise. “I’m going to— Gods. I think I’m going to—“
A shuddering gasp escapes his lips, his body suddenly tensing beneath you. The look of ecstasy that washes over his face is enough to hurl you over the precipice, and you cry out with him. Between your walls clutching and spasming, you feel his cock twitching and pulsing, flooding you with his seed. His arms wrap around you, and you cling to him with a grip that would surely bruise. He crushes you against him as you’re both overwhelmed with pleasure so pure you think maybe it would have killed you were you not already dead.
As the intoxication of your climax fades, you sag into him, pressing your forehead against his neck. You close your eyes, breathing in the fragrance of his sweat, and focus on the rise and fall of his chest. It would be nice to stay in this darkness, snug and safe and home in his embrace, with the bond open so you can remain one pale star against the dusk of reality.
And then you remember the white noise from the moving lips of Shadowheart, Gale, Mizora, and him … You pull back abruptly, breaking out of Astarion’s arms and staring at him, tears teeming in your eyes. Astarion’s confusion is evident on his face and through the connection.
“What’s wrong?” He asks. You can feel him trying to figure it out in his head. It’s such an odd sensation, almost like your emotions are being poked and prodded. “What did I do?”
“Say my name,” you whimper, focusing on his lips.
“What?” His eyes bounce around as his brows pull down.
“My name,” you repeat with a quivering lip. “Say it.”
Astarion’s lips move, and… nothing. All you can hear is the buzzing, fizzing hiss of white noise coming from his mouth.
“Again.”
“I don’t understand —“ He yet again opens and closes his mouth with only a droning hum. Your fingers clamber against his lips, pushing his mouth open as if you might be able to grasp the word as it leaves his tongue. “Whatever is the matter?”
He doesn’t even know, you realize. He has no idea that he’s stolen your name just as he stole your life. You find some comfort in knowing that it wasn’t this version of him that did it, at least. You stare off dejected as everything rushes back to you like a slap across the cheek.
Mizora. The Hells. Mephistopheles. The Contract. The ticking clock. Your name.
“My love,” Astarion’s fingers curl into your hair, and he ushers your eyes to his. “Did I harm you? Please. Tell me what’s troubling you."
“I don’t remember my name,” the tears spill out of your eyes. “You stole it from me.”
Big thank you for everyone who takes the time to read/reblog/comment, and all the other magnificent things. As always, I hope you enjoy this, darlings!
AO3 [Crossposted]
Master List of Chapters: Fangs and Fractured Hearts
If you're interested I write another fic with Spawn Astarion x Tav called - Shadows of the Past
Small Notes:
So... does she tell him what Mizora revealed?
#ascended astarion#bg3#astarion fanfic#astarion x you#astarion#bg3 fanfiction#bg3 astarion#astarion x reader#astarion x tav#astarion smut#fangs and fractured hearts
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Amidst the blasphemy I think Dave using yellow droplets to alchemize that monster puppet encased in amber might be a reference to Piss Christ, but the puppets aren't exactly holy figures afaik... there was that bit in Rose's erotic puppet poem that seems to associate them with camels, which provides a hint of orientalist flavoring, but I never found more to corroborate that reading vis-a-vis puppets. I suppose insofar as the Chuck Norris / Mr. T puppets are used to signal anxieties around race mixing (they produce Lil Cal), transposing that dynamic onto the racialized conflict of West and East would turn Mr. T into a symbol of Muhammad...? Hence the Piss Christ reference is shortly followed by a foam fetal Mr. T in jar.
Mind you, the artist behind Piss Christ, Andres Serrano, has stated that his intent was to reinstate the image of the cross (which he saw as cheapened by its widespread, commercial usage) with a visceral sense of the suffering it entailed, the blood and piss Jesus would have passed over the many excruciating hours of crucifixion. This offers a certain counter-weight to the sense of desecration ascribed to it -- you might say the point is that crucifixion was already a desecration, piling gruesome indignities upon the holy. I'm reminded of Dave pouring out a bottle of apple juice over the eviscerated body of Lil Cal -- a gesture of respect in its imitation of alcohol, and a gesture of disrespect insofar as the apple juice can represent piss. You can't always cleanly extricate the two...
Incidentally, did you know that Muhammad passed away amid an illness characterized by intense headaches and fever? In the wake of the 9/11 references in Sollux's introduction, I do wonder if Sollux succumbing to the Glub upon entering the Land of Brains and Fire (and perhaps his general propensity for headaches) act as allusions to the prophet.
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Why does dany have to sacrifice her dragons to stop the others?
I think insofar as "have to" is concerned, a lot of fans misinterpret this as people saying it's a moral imperative. I can only speak for myself, but I don't think it is. I don't want Dany to suffer. I think it's just likely, given how the story has unfolded and how its consequences tend to go for its characters, that she will sacrifice her dragons and probably her life.
There are a few reasons based on the story text, its allusions, and its genre. My thinking it will happen isn't an endorsement or a comment on story quality.
Insofar as dragons are concerned, let's start with the fact that ASOIAF is very clearly based on alchemy. In alchemy, dragons and other animals are an image that routinely crop up as symbols of the beginning of the work. As the material continues through the process, as those "bestial" creatures become more "refined," the material is represented by humans. Hence, a symbolic way to show that would logically be through the death of dragons. In fact, that specifically shows up in alchemical images:
Insofar as Dany herself is concerned, we again turn to alchemy. The main tenet of alchemy is solve et coagula: dissolve and coagulate. Something is refined through fire, and then the impurities are rinsed away, repeat, rinse, repeat. This is often shown through death and rebirth. Through a series of struggles the character undergoes, they become a symbolic Philosopher's Stone: giving the elixir of life to all around them. Now, you can absolutely survive this in stories. Often characters do.
What makes me dubious is ASOIAF's specific structure, motifs, and genre (Romanticism), all of which emphasizes death and new life coming from that death. Only death can pay for life. Yes, I know that was said by Mirri Maz Duur who isn't the most reliable person, but. There's also no doubt that Mirri Mas Duur understood magic better than most, and wasn't talking out of her ass, so to speak. But I'm not basing this on MMD but instead on others.
Ned Stark's death sets off the war. Ned Stark's death is seen as unfair, as unjust, even if he wasn't exactly wise according to the political cunning of the day. Still, his character lives on in his six kids (Jon isn't his biological child, but he absolutely is Ned's son), kids who are certain to help save the world (yes, I think the Starks will be allies of Dany, not enemies Show That Must Not Be Named) and help repair Westeros after the Others. Ned's desire to save children cost him his life, and this, despite honest explorations of its consequences, is not framed as condemned by the narrative. Nuanced, yes. But sacrifice is absolutely not condemned in the narrative, no matter how people don't like it.
Sacrifice is also kind of... a main thing in romantic literature. Sacrifice gets to the heart of what someone wants to be, who they are, what motivates them, what they love, what they believe in. Dany sacrificing her dragons I'm absolutely certain of. Dany sacrificing her life, I hope not, but I do see it as likely.
Anyways. One more thing regarding dragons that I think those who haven't read The World of Ice and Fire might miss: dragons are not natural creations of the world. They are heavily implied to have been "bred" by Valyrians who crossbred fire wyrms and wyverns, and also used monstrous blood magic that relied on the daily sacrifice of thousands of slaves (this part is in the books proper). The whole "blood of the dragon" thing is also probably not just a metaphor.
The point is, while dragons are not themselves to blame for what the blood mages of Old Valyria did, they are symbolic of it. As Dany's whole thing is that she wants to free people, and yet she has her identity rooted in being the last Targaryen, well--it sets up a very interesting internal conflict indeed. The Targaryen legacy is one of slaves, of sacrificing other people--slaves--to keep your power.
It only makes sense to me that Dany will be asked to choose whether she commits to her legacy or being a true savior of humanity. I have no doubt she would choose the latter. Thematically, it makes sense that she would be asked to sacrifice someone else, someone she loves, a la Azor Ahai and Nissa Nissa and Stannis with Shireen. However, given that Romanticism focuses on the individual, and given Dany's distaste for slavery, I would bet she'd choose to sacrifice herself and her dragons with her rather than sacrifice Jon (because it will be him).
Again, this is not me saying that this is a moral necessity. It is not me endorsing the message. It is not me saying there is 0 valid critique of such a narrative. If Martin lets Dany live a quiet life with Jon, I'll be thrilled. If the dragons live, I'd be happy with that too so long as Martin can make that work thematically, and that much I doubt (Dany's life has more potential to work thematically, but... again, I have my doubts). I am just saying that as things stand now, with the texts we have, this is the most logical endgame I see for Dany's arc in the books.
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❛ i know you probably hate me right now, and i get it.❜ + Jacob & Sybil. If you’re taking prompts, of course 🖤
i rb-ed that more as a "writing promts to save for later/when i need the insp" but i am more than happy to fill a specific one pitched my way! Thank you!
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“I know you probably hate me right now,” Jacob says, settling his weight on the rocks and resigning himself to dying on the side of a mountain. “And I get it.”
I hate me too, goes loudly unsaid. It hangs heavily in the air between them despite the howling wind.
“Well, fuck. Christ, Jacob,” Sybille sighs. “I sure as Hell can’t say I ain’t angry.”
After all this time, that damn song -- the one that made her heart flutter and hold him tight as he whispered those titular words into her ear -- finally served its ultimate purpose. She lost control, Jacob took the reins, and he steered her along, all according to his master plan.
Because of him, Eli’s blood is on her hands and she has to live with that. But she’ll be damned if anyone else has to die today.
Jacob stares up at her, his hand twitching like he wants to grab at her jacket and draw her in, but he stops himself. Shamefully, he averts his eyes and presses his hands against the wound in his thigh. A number of her covering-fire bullets had managed to hit him, but the one that gashed his thigh got him good. It missed the femoral -- Thank God -- but it did cut deep. Blood oozes from his leg. “You deserve better,” is all he says.
She rolls her eyes. Damn, right I do. You fuckin’ winged me on my way up here.
“And who are you to tell me what I do and don’t deserve, hm?” she snaps, because fuck, she’s spent so long doing things for the sake of others, she deserves to make her own goddamn selfish choices. And she wants him. With a single step forward she closes what little distance there was between them and cradles his jaw between her hands. “Jacob, look at me. If you think that I’m gonna kill you just because you think that I ‘deserve better’ you are sorely mistaken. That ain’t how the law works. Insofar as there is a law to uphold here anyways.”
Jacob’s brows knit together, obvious puzzlement swimming in his eyes. That expression crosses into bewilderment as Sybille releases him, swings her bag around, and sinks to her knees between his legs. “What are you --” but he trails off as she pulls a first aid kit from the main pouch. The little metal box pops open and she quickly sets to work, cleaning and tending to his wounds. After a long moment of tense silence, he asks, “Why?”
She lifts her head and looks him dead in the eyes. “Wolves mate for life, cher.”
He blinks, almost dumbly, and then the realization hits him. She watches it happen and before she can do or say anything more, his large hands take her face and drag her towards him. He leans down and their lips crash together. It’s messy and wet -- tastes of blood and dirt and gunpowder -- and when they eventually part, he’s significantly more breathless than she is. Giving her cheek one last parting caress, he releases her and allows her to finish treating his injuries. Once she’s done, she packs her kit and turns to face him. “You got any Bliss oil?”
“No.”
She sighs. “Well, I guess you’re just gonna have to muscle through the pain ‘til I get you someplace safe.”
He barks a laugh. “I’ll manage.”
“If you’re sure,” she says, rising to her feet. She leans forward, bracing herself and extending her hand to him. “C’mon. Alley-oop.”
“Excuse me?”
“Well, Jesus, Jacob, I can’t just summon a vehicle out of thin air. How else am I supposed to get you down?” Her fingers bend in a beckoning motion. “Get up.”
“You sure I ain’t, uh…” he gestures to his whole body.
Sybille laughs, something loud and true. “Sugar, I carried heavier in basic.” She drags him forward and, as gingerly as she can, heaves his massive body onto her shoulders. Steadying herself, she takes a deep breath. “Buckle up,” she says, and she begins trekking down the mountain.
The hike is slow, careful, and silent. Not a word passes between them for miles, not until Jacob’s body relaxes ever so slightly. She’s not sure if he’s unconscious or caught in a semi-lucid state. Regardless of which it is, she says, “Cher, you’ve got Hell to pay. And we have a whole lot of things we need to talk about.”
But knowing Jacob, Sybille reckons that those two things might be one and the same.
#jacob x deputy#jacob x female deputy#this kinda ran away from me#the prompt fits well enough with a version of how that mountain fight goes down#that once i started imagining it i just couldn't stop#also the more i look at this the more ooc for jacob it gets but whatever i've had this interaction in my head for a while#it was nice to put some actual words to it!#oc: deputy sybille la roux#thank you again for the prompt ahhh#anyway rip to sybille who thinks that she can fix him 😔 he does eventually succeed in making her worse#natesofrellis#wombat writes#r: define your meaning of war
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failing to resist the urge to write a little info blurb on zalman while i lay in bed. ( you can find some more information i've written on him here. )
insofar as biting and drinking blood, there's canon that I ignore and there's canon I don't. like much vampire fiction, zalman can sire someone by giving them his blood. another factoid I like to include because of the fun implications, is when zalman drinks someone's blood they gain a temporary mental connection wherein they can hear zalman's thoughts ( and have a rough sense of his location. ) what's fun with that is his mother tongue is polish, and while someone may not know polish normally, the mental connection would translate — but I headcanon it more in a dreamlike way, in that the meaning is conveyed; they wouldn't know what he's thinking but they'd understand what he's thinking.
and as for what drinking his blood is like, canonically he's referred to as the “descendant of the fire god,” and naturally his bloodline has pyrokinesis. I like to imagine his blood tastes molten — overwhelming in a way that burns at the senses.
#headcanons ;#| everything that i lose gets found again. and dusts itself off clean ; zalman |#less formal headcanons post. go#what's the canon I ignore you ask ?#oh just the uncomfortable orgasmic effect vampire bites are supposed to have#it's bad and i don't like it
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Sermon for Twenty-Fifth Sunday after Pentecost (11/19/23)
Primary Text | Zephaniah 1:7, 12-18
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Dear People of God,
The word of God storms up not against trifling, little, and insignificant things. It assails kingdoms, great kings, nations and peoples (Luther paraphrase). It attacks the very mechanisms of the world—how it operates, how it flows, how it goes. Money makes the world go ‘round, they say. This world kills. Murders. This world, and I mean the old world—not the world to come. This present world, if it can make a buck off of you, it doesn’t care what happens to you after that. Even if in the process piles of people starve, freeze, get cancer, or become deathly poor—the world thinks: “No matter. The most important thing took place—money was made, someone is drinking a fine wine tonight.” This present world is a world that will eat you up and spit you out, a world that will let you fall through the cracks—unless there’s a dime in it. (pause) Terrible and tragic things happen every day without number. And after a tragedy occurs the world is quick to move on because now there is new wealth to be acquired, new possessions to be had—but at the cost of human blood, human suffering; blood and suffering from which we all benefit. Turns out the almighty God has a bone to pick with this world. This should not come as a surprise. So the Lord sent his prophet Zephaniah to speak God’s judgment into the world. He warns the nations, saying, “The great day of the LORD is near, near and hastening fast; the sound of the day of the LORD is bitter…That day will be a day of wrath, a day of distress and anguish, a day of ruin and devastation, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness…Neither their silver nor their gold will be able to save them on the day of the LORD’s wrath” (Zeph. 1:14-16, 18). Dear people, a reading like Zephaniah is uncomfortable. As it should be. It serves as a warning to all people, including you and me, insofar as we are still attached to the old world and the old ways---things that do not come from the kingdom of heaven. God will make his wrath, his displeasure, the fire of his passion known.
This blows out our sensitivity meter though. The day of the LORD has wrath? God has wrath? But isn’t God a God of love? It is impossible for God to be angry. And if he is, he wouldn’t do anything about it. We say these things because we do not like to think the Most High God, whom we can’t control, not only gets angry but exercises his anger. So we seek to shut God up in a little box. Tame him. Make him safe, and palatable. We put God in a box, stow him away nice and neatly—and we’ll take him off the shelf if we feel like it. I say this now, you do not want this wet noodle god, this weak apple sauce god. This sort of wrathless god is like drinking soda that’s been in your car a few days—flat and disposable. This prepackaged God, if he’s even there, is just there for the warm fuzzies but never actually gets around to doing anything. That’s what Zephaniah is getting at when he prophesies, “At that time I will search Jerusalem with lamps, and I will punish the people who rest complacently in their dregs, those who say in their hearts, “The LORD will not do good, nor will he do harm” (1:12). Dear people of God, it is precisely that God is a God of love that he also has wrath. Which truly he can be compared to a momma bear protecting her cubs. A God who does not have wrath is also one who does not care what happens to you. And who are we anyway to tell God how to think or what to do. For in fact, God does not like the status quo of the world—where the great are lifted up and the lowly are slammed to the ground on the daily. That kind of a world is going to meet its full, terrible end. This will be ruin and devastation for those who have trusted in this world rather than in the LORD God. No gold, silver, or money will save such a one on that day—even if for now gold, silver, and money make people feel secure in themselves apart from God. But what a relief the great Day of the LORD will be for those who shed their blood and suffered and died under the mechanisms of this present world.
So we learn that God is not going to tweak around the edges. Make some minor changes to the world here and there. No. He will sweep away everything from the face of the earth, and make a new earth, along with a new heaven. And at this time earth and heaven will be one and the same. The LORD has already begun making all things new the day Jesus rose from the dead. His children, you and I, are therefore not children of the darkness. We are children of the light and of the day. For when the great day of the Lord with its wrath arrives and judges the world for the evil that it is, you will learn firsthand that God has destined you not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for you. In this world to come people will not slip through the cracks. No one will seek their own advantage over and against another. For God will hold you in his strong hand forever. The future new world God brings to you now is brought you in the words of the gospel—God’s enormous, enduring promise: I forgive your sins on account of Christ. His suffering, his death and resurrection is what makes you new and make you children of the light through faith. It is not your own doing. (pause) In the Small Catechism we encounter a divine promise. This promise is for you, for you, for you: “On the Last Day the Holy Spirit will raise you and all the dead and will give to you and all believers in Christ eternal life. This is most certainly true” (SC 2:6).
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There will always be someone who will try you.
Try to put you down, where they believe your place ”should” be.
Try to sour the taste of your name flowing off other people’s tongue.
Try to undercut your abilities, your triumphs and your accomplishments through out your life by squashing it with some false truths.
Try to sell you up river for 30 pieces of silver and pretend they are high in cotton for a soul they never owned or had rights to in the first place.
Try to show your faults but forget how they made you human & actually fortified you to receive the call in the first place.
It is bc they legit cannot perceive favor.
Favor comes to the worthy.
The worthy have proven literally through blood, sweat and tears that they are worthy of God’s favor.
They’ve gone through the brimstone fighting from hell and back against all the enemies thrown at them due to jealousy from small minds, envy from blocked Vision and straight up trifling folks who are pissed bc they failed at their directives.
They’ve gone through the 7th level of hell, fought the essence of the Devil & came back on fire to light the world as prophesied.
They’ve known death very well as they are constantly bowing to death before shedding the people, places & things that no longer serve them throughout their lives in order to break cycles.
That, beloveds, is called divinely chosen.
These who are the worthy wear what is called “the breastplate of God”. It signifies they have been ordained and sanctified by God himself to walk the path they walk. No matter what is, has or will be done to them, they will always fight another day bc God has favored them.
That’s why they are favored.
You can identify these people by the crosses they carry such as:
•lone wolf
•burden barrier
•kind despite the opposition
•compassionate despite the lack of support
•virtuous bc their eyes remain on God.
•generous bc they know what it is to be without
•truth giving bc they have been lied about, lied on and manipulated by every soul they come across, yet they still remain loving bc they are filled with God’s anointing love.
•survived the worst of the world as it has rose up in the road to greet them with.
•they have sinned with the best of them, learned the lessons, broke the cycles and came forward to answer the Call God has given over their life.
That is why they remain with God’s favor.
It’s not because they just lucky or they were just given divine favor bc it’s them. It is bc they have proven they are worthy by the trials and tribulations they bear.
People get surprised about this but yet, if they would have read the book given to them at indoctrination, The Bible is clear that everyone, saved or lost, will go through trials and tribulations.
“All who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Tim 3:12) so “do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you” (1 Pet 4:12-14).
Yesterday, I posted the word on people doing shit to others then get upset when God favors the fallen who have been struck down bc of their favor.
That joker is in there too.
“Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you” (Matt 5:0-12).
See? I ain’t playing picture pages over here. It’s in the word.
As I said: God is in the details coming in clutch with divine favor.
These people can try to knock you to whatever peg they believe you should thrive at, reveal your nudes, claim your sultry, naughty past, or even post pics of the nights you decided to get dirty and shoot the moon.
Name a divine prophet or an apostle who ain’t sinned heavy and see if God himself don’t slap them to sleep.
This is exactly why Jesus does not hang with those who have already found, knew & break bread with God. He partied with the fallen who need that mustard seed replanted. Right?
God does not call the qualified.
He knows they can do it.
He qualifies the call by showing the power of his people in their rise from the dust and the dirt into a mighty warrior who is worthy of being favored.
He said sin but sin no more- meaning once you have done it and been enlightened that this situation ain’t popping or proper, don’t do the shit again. So they won’t. They have mastered themselves and understand while minding God’s directives.
They listen.
And that is why those are the people who are worthy of God’s favor.
Enjoy your day & be glad in it, beloved.
Remain a blessing & watch how God shows favor in your life. Cause Hell & the worst Hell has to offer will rise up in the road to greet you.
The choice has always been yours.
Dios de Bendiga. 🫶🏻
#LetsGetSpiritual#SpiritualThick#ShamanGray#god's presence#Perception Changes#Perspective Rising#Outlook Altered
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Hello! I love your blog. You're very articulate and good at explaining stuff so I was wondering, do you think the narrative pits Brienne and Cersei against each other because Brienne is a virgin and Cersei is not?
I get why there are critics and suspicions. GRRM's track record here isn't perfect, as anyone who's read Fire and Blood can tell you. But no, I don't. I'm not sure I'd go so far as I say the narrative pits Brienne and Cersei against each other at all - they haven't met, aren't likely to in my thinking, and barely think about each other.
They are contrasting influences on Jaime, however. But again I don't think that's pitting Brienne and Cersei against each other. Jaime's understandable anger that his long-term sexual partner repeatedly cheated on him comes out in some nasty, misogynistic thoughts. That, I think, is a Jaime issue, him boiling down Cersei's decisions to "she could have been faithful but wasn't", when Cersei's own PoV reveals that it's a good deal more internally complex on her part than he's assuming. Not that it makes some of Cersei's decisions better - she copes with abuse, fear, and trauma by abusing others - but more complex and nuanced nevertheless.
On the flip side of this, what I think Jaime puts on an internal pedestal isn't "purity" but fidelity (themes and all, Jaime learning to value commitments made and honoured) as we see when he's so impressed by Jeyne Westerling's commitment to Robb, and disgusted by Sybell's treachery.
In the meantime, what I see from Brienne's storyline isn't glorification of her virginity in and of itself. She's depicted as strong and brave with her setting and enforcement of her personal boundaries, including boundaries about who she's willing to sleep with. (And good on her for not lowering her standards to Hyle Hunt.) She's fortunate that nobody has taken her choices away from her. Insofar as I think Brienne's virginity is important, it's because it's representative of the agency over intimate personal decisions that she's claimed and kept. Not purity bullshit.
#asoiaf#valyrianscrolls#cw: rape mention#cw: abuse#cersei lannister#brienne of tarth#jaime lannister
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1 I forgot to tell you that your fish symbolism explanation is spot-on. Martin is a very sneaky bastard. Ichthys in Greek characters had king symbolism in early christianity (there's also the fisher king myth of northern Europe). It is analyzed as "Jesus Christ God's Son Savior" and was used as symbol of the early christians. It is said that Jesus was crucified under an inscription announcing him as king. So, if Jon gave Bran his fish, which kingship would he give him? of the North or the South?
2 If the fish symbolizes kingship, and Robb had his by inheritance as a Stark, then Jon also had his as a Targ. But things get more complicated, since Jon is also designated heir of Robb. Then there's the sword thing. Ice broke in two, one for the South, one for the North. Jon has his own sword, which he earned, for the far North? Another problem is the "king of the ashes". He's supposed to be the one who reigns after the catastrophe. But Bran is the one to bring the summer. Although it fits
3 I cannot find any association of Bran with the South, while on the other hand the foreshadowing in the books suggests that he'll be in equal danger from Ice and Fire and that Snow will protect him (and it makes sense bc Jon is made of both). On the other hand, Jon is the one dealing with high politics: kings and queens, the IB, the FF, knights of the South and so on, and he is the one to bring the corn and the one foreshadowed to protect the people of KL. No way I see Jon in the far North.
Hi anon, and sorry for the delay!
I agree with you insofar as I also don't see Jon in the Far North. Neither in exile nor as (and I cannot emphasize how absurd the notion would be) King beyond the Wall. Because, ffs, why would they choose Jon to be their king. He spent a few weeks trekking with some raiders in the wilderness (as an undercover agent!), and afterwards was a negotiation partner representing a formerly entirely hostile institution. He can lead them in the regular North, where his home is, but in the far North he's nothing but an expat unfamiliar with the landscape and practical realities of day to day life. Jon can't rule a scattered society based on "My abusive ex once told me the Thenns mine tin and copper." It's preposterous. They have their own people to choose from.
While Jon meets and deals with Southerners and Big Politics, Jon's heart beats for one place:
Yet he could not let the wildlings breach the Wall, to threaten Winterfell and the north, the barrowlands and the Rills, White Harbor and the Stony Shore, even the Neck. For eight thousand years the men of House Stark had lived and died to protect their people against such ravagers and reavers . . . and bastard-born or no, the same blood ran in his veins. (ASOS, Jon II)
That's where he belongs. That's where he'll be. He would be an indredibly unmotivated king in the South because he has no personal relationship to the place, not any more than to the Far North. Jon is called the "blood of Winterfell", same as Sansa.
That said, I don't think Jon will "give" Bran his kingship directly. Rather, giving up any resemblance of a claim to the Southern throne will open up the path that will eventually lead to Bran being chosen.
Bran's kingship is likely based on a fish, alright: his Tully heritage. That is Bran's association with the South. He had desired to see the world beyond the North, no less than Sansa and Arya.
Father had promised that they would meet Ser Barristan when they reached King's Landing, and Bran had been marking the days on his wall, eager to depart, to see a world he had only dreamed of and begin a life he could scarcely imagine. (AGOT, Bran II)
Robb caught a trout and is crowned in Riverrun, the seat of House Tully with the strident support of his mother's lands.
Maege Mormont stood. "The King of Winter!" she declared, and laid her spiked mace beside the swords. And the river lords were rising too, Blackwood and Bracken and Mallister, houses who had never been ruled from Winterfell, yet Catelyn watched them rise and draw their blades, bending their knees and shouting the old words that had not been heard in the realm for more than three hundred years, since Aegon the Dragon had come to make the Seven Kingdoms one … yet now were heard again, ringing from the timbers of her father's hall:
"The King in the North!" (AGOT, Catelyn XI)
I think this energy will feeds into Bran being chosen, as well. Because like Robb hs reign will be a new beginning. A time after the Iron Throne, after King's Landing. A King of Summer.
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Okay, insofar as D&D terms are by no means any sort of comprehensive objective categories (and I’m not an expert ON them), I think it’s funny that if we take the implications of Skyward Sword, Zelda’s entire lineage would be considered divine-blooded sorcerers (magic inherited from bloodline stemming back to the first Zelda of Skyward Sword, who would’ve been, in D&D terms, an Aasimar, although one seemingly parthenogenetically created by Hylia rather than her taking any particular human consort that we know of)
Ganondorf, by contrast, does not operate like a warlock even if you take the assumption that he has some sort of particular relationship with Demise’s curse, because if we ascribe all Zelda antagonists to Demise’s curse, this makes it clear it has no favoritism for Ganondorf whatsoever, and similarities Ganondorf ostensibly has to Demise are traits also shared with many of the Gerudo that seem to have nothing to do with him, so this similarity isn’t evidence in and of itself. Also, Ganondorf at least in Twilight Princess behaves as a patron to Zant’s warlock, and unless we really want to get into warlock pyramid schemes, I don’t think that’s a thing warlocks can do.
Conversely, Ganondorf is often depicted as a master of magic and someone who has enormous scorn for the gods to the point that in Ocarina of Time he actually accuses you of cheating and loses respect for Link to find out that you have the Triforce of Courage, so it’s fair to say he’s not heavily dependent on the Triforce of Power either. This would seem to suggest that Ganondorf as a spellcaster most resembles a wizard, given his contempt for power taken from other sources outside of stealing fire from the gods by your own elbow grease (the triforce) and possession of numerous complex spells.
Likewise, in the arguably not-main-canon game Cadence of Hyrule, we can see a young Ganondorf furiously practicing music (the game’s direct avenue to magic) and muttering to himself about his need to improve, making it clear that his later-game prowess was the product of dedicated study and personal training.
This is not to say Zelda is not a nerd, but, rather, that Zelda being a nerd is in fact irrelevant to her power, as demonstrated perhaps clearly in BotW where her divine magic kicks in by Really Feelin’ It, and not by prayer (Zelda is not a cleric, but expected to behave as one) while for Ganondorf, being a nerd is in fact vital to his power, and again, only as far as D&D terminology is concerned, Ganondorf is just an extremely beefy wizard.
#Legend of Zelda#Link for the curious is primarily a non-spellcaster class that picks up a handful of arcane feats as-needed#he virtually never magics on his own without use of enchanted equipment or external boons#You could argue in the older games he was at least a bard but that mechanic's been taking a beating lately
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In tune with my Ivan the Terrible riff with Ozai his relationship with his family and children evolves in stages
As a child he's Henry Bowers from IT with literal magic fire powers (and if people haven't seen IT or read the novel (and I'm so sorry for you if you did make it all the way through to THAT scene) Bowers is pretty horrifying and a deliberate choice for a variety of reasons). He's a vicious bully encouraged to be so by a mother who raised him and out of spite saw that he was mentally ill, stoked his mental illness, and created a vortex even she couldn't control by the time she died. She did the entire thing because Fire Lord Azulon cut her out of actual power and influence and she wanted to weaponize Ozai against him.
As a young adult this same fellow with this same background gets signed up for a Fire Nation version of a Lebensborn program.
A key element to my interpretation here is that he's every bit as much a victim of this as Ursa. Both of them know that, both of them see it that way. It's why he wasn't a complete ogre to her and most of his physical abuse is a combination of his impulsive violence control slipping and going for anyone in the vicinity (Azulon calls him a mad dog for a lot of reasons and this is one of them) and a more calculated emotional abuse pattern to keep Ursa from using steel-cutting firebending against him with very likely lethal effects. Or bothering to realize that she could.
Same thing with his kids. Ozai has a horrific reputation among the Palace prior to his ascension and like the young Tsar Ivan IV literally beat people up for sport. As a prince of the blood he is technically above the law so when he does this for fun people know exactly who he is, what he is, and tremble when he takes the throne. His violence to his kids is mostly emotional and based on his (rather self-servingly delusional) self perception that driving perfectionism brought him to the throne, so he's not asking his kids anything he didn't ask of himself.
Azula does a better job of fitting into this than Zuko does, so he gives her his 'love' insofar as he can do it and plays the kids off against each other for a laugh, as he'd see it. The abuse reaches its height only when he takes the throne and is completely above the law and yesterday's perfectionist is today's tyrant who personally oversees and carries out executions because at the biggest chance of his own creed he utterly and totally failed and let Ursa do it and all the work because in his view he was a coward.
Ozai, unlike Azula, really is a legitimate sufferer of Antisocial Personality Disorder and it's portrayed as a mental illness he's fully aware he has, which he struggles against with inconsistent success until taking power becomes a serious prospect and then he gives up and goes fully off the deep end when he has unconstrained power and nobody can stop him or slow him down. His humanizing and sympathetic elements stem from my use of the eugenics program and his reaction to it (Ozai knows entirely well about Ikem and indulges Ursa's reactions to it because he no more wants to be a part of this than she does) and from the idea that his mental illness makes him a human being, not a dime store Batman villain. It's not a superpower, it's an illness that repeatedly bites him in the ass in spite of his best efforts to go against it.
Ozai tries at multiple points to make Azula like him and it doesn't work because mental illness isn't contagious and Azula's not being like him at fundamental levels but being seen up to a point in the canon-style stories as his favorite and the only child he fully loves is......a very deliberate element of how she's seen versus how she actually is as a person.
In all of this and his deliberate violence against his children he is a direct mirror of Ivan IV of Muscovy, who among his other crimes beat his son to death with a sharp-edged cane. The same cane was used for one of his favorite sports, stabbing courtiers with it and making them give long-winded reports as their feet bled around it.
Ozai was not always consistently horrible or abusive to his kids, and in the earliest stages of Zuko's and Azula's lives both he did his best to control his illness, hence Zuko's happy memories are somewhat accurate, even if he had no idea what either of his parents were thinking.
#atla aus#atla fics#ozai#ozai has apd#ozai does not get a superpower he gets a mental illness portrayed accurately#down to the inability to stay still and the impulsive violence without full grasp of consequences and the like#Ozai really does his best to resist this but it never works#and in every AU but the Omashu AU he never really gets any kind of support network so he's a tragic monster in some ways#and only becomes a fully-fledged monster when he gets absolute monarchy and the world's most powerful army as toys
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For anyone still under the impression that June Egbert is just a product of the Toblerone wishes with no particular relevance to Homestuck proper, here's an argument to the contrary: that June (or whatever you like to call her) was already here, woven into John's relationship with the idea of Dad.
Act 1 has a certain preoccupation with the ideal forms of things, John having multiple instances of saying X isn't a REAL X unless it has this or that characteristic. "A fire BELONGS in a fireplace, categorically." One of those outbursts touches upon masculinity, with John saying a gentleman without a monocle is a piss-poor excuse for such. Along such a paradigm, you might gather that something like John saying the beaglepuss sucks as a disguise or trying (and failing) to integrate Dad's pipe into the façade communicates that John is kind of grasping at this ideal of masculinity exemplified by Dad and getting frustrated that he can't seem to measure up to it (or that masculinity feels "fake" on him).
This sort of dynamic is more blatant with Dave, who talks openly about how he isn't a "hero", not really, measuring himself against the impossible standards set by his Bro. But as much was already implicit in Act 1.
Later it gets established that John has some kind of fear of heights: the first ogres appear after John experiences vertigo from almost falling off the stairs, and again after getting launched by the pogo hammer. (Just as Karkat suspected he was given a planet covered in his own blood as a form of harassment, Sburb placed John's house on that needle plateau because of this fear of heights; the game generally manifests adversaries in response to fear). The phobia becomes relevant to Dad stuff after the ogre fight is over, when John is hesitating to jump down into Dad's room: it isn't just that John's nervous about entering the room for the first time, the descent itself makes John anxious. Furthermore, this juxtaposition serves to establish that the fear of heights and anxieties around Dad are related somehow, if not outright synonymous. The two are associated again at the beginning of Act 5 Act 2, when dream!John tries to jump over a canyon to reach Dad, but awakens mid-leap. The formal reason John awakens is Vriska of course, but if we ignore her we're left with John approaching Dad and immediately experiencing vertigo. (The name "June" comes from Vriska contacting John shortly after this dream, incidentally)
This comes up again when John finds Dad's wallet and gets overwhelmed by the prospect of Manhood and the responsibilities it entails -- next thing you know John is flying around in Dad's car, having fun... and after the scene is interrupted by Seek the Highblood, we return to find John crashing the car (another fall from the sky!) and talking with Vriska about dread surrounding societal expectations, and the possibility of rejecting them to pursue something different for yourself. John came into the scene worried (if quietly) about the expectations surrounding manhood, so the Vriska conversation serves to makes those kind of concerns more vivid.
The car crash is itself kind of a metaphor for that conversation's trajectory... in Act 6 we see something analogous play out among the Dersites who have gotten into dapper-wear: one Dersite sits on a hat, panics about ruining it, and then begins to wonder if perhaps a crumpled hat could have a value of its own, aesthetically. (Dirk expresses this sort of counter-assessment more bombastically: "...the next best thing. By which you mean, the vastly superior thing.") Dad Crocker swoops in to condemn the crumpled hat, but the Dersite's tentative revaluation of an apparent failure mode is something the scene shares with Vriska, who initially regards her ambivalence towards murder as a symptom of personal failure, unbefitting her caste. John enters that conversation with a crumpled car, and from context we can guess John's revaluation concerns "failing" to be a man in the way Dad is, and how maybe that doesn't need to be considered a failure.
As laid out so far, I guess none of this quite necessitates trans-Egbert, since people can come at "anxiety and reservations at the prospect of embodying masculine ideals" from a number of angles... but there are other considerations which make me think wrestling with self-deprecating thoughts like "I'm a failed man" are maybe comorbid with a budding sense of being a girl, in Egbert's case.
Foremost, I think it helps to recognize that Dad's car can function as a symbol of John's body. To sketch a case for that:
1a. Death often means transformation: the trolls die in questcocoons to reach the godtiers, suggesting that death stands between the caterpillar and the butterfly, their too solid flesh dissolved into a goo.
1b. A command in Act 1 implores John to "retrieve arms from MAGIC CHEST". John complies twofold: we see some fake arms retrieved from the toy chest, held up by John's real arms which have been "retrieved" from John's ostensibly armless torso.
2. This dual usage of chest is deployed in part 3 of Openbound, in service of building a dysphoria metaphor (among other things). The segment reintroduces us to Fiduspawn, a game in which one creature hatches from another, a host creature, killing the host in the process (fans of the Alien films may recognize this as derivative of the "chestburster", fans of Homestuck may recognize this as analogous to godtiering). Damara (who Rufioh refers to as "doll") becomes the host plush, who is accused of locking away Rufioh's "happy thought" (Tinkerbull) in her "chest". Rufioh's beef with Damara serves to illustrate an adversarial relationship with one's own body, the ways in which the body itself seems to function as a barrier to some happiness. The carnal imprisonment of euphoria (the "happy thought") represents dysphoria. The conversation between Kanaya and Porrim which follows has analogous content and offers a potential resolution to such a conflict, with Kanaya coming to distinguish her body from the reproductive duties assigned to her body by her caste's place in society, and knowing that she is not "bound" to the Matriorb by any will but her own...
3. But the paradigm of Fiduspawn reminds us that the act of actually ripping the happy thought out of your chest has suicidal overtones, when taken literally. And Aradiabot notwithstanding, the inner ghosts the kids give up are often green: Dirkbot tears out his uranium heart and explodes, Rose peels pink bricks off the green core of an island and wonders aloud if her existence is a mistake, and (returning to our main topic!) John tries to retrieve the green package from Dad's car. The retrieval of the box comes to represents the birth of the self from its shell, the now broken body, a gesture which overlaps with the pursuit of death.
So we can infer that Dad is akin to Damara here, having locked the desired object (the box, the "happy thought") within a container that we can identify with John's own body. Thus Vriska's talk of perhaps rejecting her assigned role in society proceeds naturally from the wreckage of Dad's car: insofar as the car functions as an emblem of the masculine expectations imposed upon John, the car's wreckage suggests the possibility of liberation from those expectations, liberation from your own body. John is "sick to death of cake" -- cake is a Life symbol imposed by Dad, in visceral excess, accumulating as every birthday marches John towards Manhood. The possibility of living as a girl does not seem to have occurred to John yet, life and masculinity seem inextricable and absolute. The first time John sees Dad's car totaled (after Rose drops it), the symbol of self-as-corpse is surrounded by yellow bands of caution tape. The Authority Regulator who placed the tape will later declare himself to be THE LAW, and we should take his word for it: the scene's function is to declare that the crumpled car, the "dead" and therefore feminized body, is forbidden to John. No surprise then that as John marches to her death, in defiance of the Law's prohibition, she-whose-name-does-not-yet-suit-her is met with impressions of several maps that actually align with their territories: troll movies whose titles are their contents in full, a rocket encoded by the sound PCHOOOOO. John wants that for herself, I think. And as @lscholar once pointed out, it’s worth noting that John's pursuit of this unity (this pursuit of "death") is interrupted by Dave, who in saving John's life repeatedly emphasizes their status as "bros" -- masculinity being, again, inextricable from life within John’s symbol system.
...and that's the short of it. A more detailed account might get into the association of Vriska and other blue girls with the feminized corpse, or read into Equius self-consciously roleplaying as a cat girl between John’s joyride and crash, or perhaps try to apply this car-body framework to the appearances of Dad's car in the Epilogues. And I haven’t even touched upon clowns...but I'll call it here for now.
#homestuck commentary#john#i might do a follow up going into life metaphysics and how jade ties into things
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Which part specifically? I mean, yeah, the whole game is a disaster, but I'd love to hear specific points. There was so much I didn't like about Fates that it just collectively merges as 'bad' in my mind.
it's not really anything specific tbh!! because the way Fates is misogynistic is not different from the way the other Fire Emblems (that i’ve. played. it’s possible all the ones pre-Sacred Stones were actually Forbidden Feminist Utopias) also carry that unmistakable whiff of misogyny. it's not done out of malice, it's just...a franchise that loves to play high fantasy tropes straight, particularly the bit about Restoring the Good Monarch. i never got the sense that they thought hard about the fact that the dude protags (Ephraim, Ike, Chrom) get intricate coming of age stories about tempering their talents for murder with wisdom, while all the lady "protags" (Eirika, Elincia, Micaiah) mostly don't change at all and just kinda swan around doing the "we are ethereal maidens too good for this sinful earth" thing, and when they do wibble it's always about how they wish they could be as "strong" as their dude counterparts except they inevitably can't and don't want to be, because war is bad!!! there's too much war in this war game franchise, buy our next DLC for how to solve war with war
(Lucina's a weird case, but that's why i love her, and...i suspect the only reason Lucina got to be the way she is was because she was doing DRAG, which is a rabbit hole that we don't have time for.)
Fates (sidebar: i played Revelations but i know what happens in Birthright and Conquest. i ended up doing all the Paralogues, because i was morbidly curious about how many different ways you could tell a "no dad!!! it's your dream" story, and the answer was "around four, so spreading them across TWENTY ONE versions basically creates the story equivalent of ultra skim milk.") doesn't do anything functionally different from its predecessors, it's just...more egregious this time, because so much of the story feels exclusively catered to drawing attention to it. i get the sense that the devs were trying to aim for bigger, more sophisticated storytelling than what they did with Awakening, which is why we got Fire Emblem: More Royals Than Ever and the requisite chin-stroking about families of blood vs. families of choice, but that they were trying to be Deep (tm) just made the parts that have always been shallow in the franchise look uglier.
i'm just gonna talk about the Royals, because the story privileges the Royals to a truly mind-bending degree (see above: high fantasy, monarchism). with the Royals we have:
the Hoshido/Nohr sibling matchy-matchy that is eerie from the outset (did Sumeragi and Garon set TIMERS so they'd impregnate women at roughly the same time and murder the babies who didn't come out the right gender?), even before you get to the part where they are "foils" for each other in p much aesthetic only, since their personalities are not actually that different when you get down to it. you have the Dutiful Big Bro (Xander and Ryoma), the Closeted Lesbian Big Sis (Camilla and Hinoka, representing opposite ends of the gender presentation spectrum), the Insecure Lil Bro (Takumi and Leo), and the Incorruptibly Pure Lil Sis (Sakura and Elise, the latter of whom for her crime of being outgoing was punished with death in Birthright, which...yikes)
so like. extremely paint by numbers right from conception (heh). why couldn't Xander have been the one who was Naive and Not Ready for This World? because he is Boy, which means he can only be flawed in the Boy Ways, so he must be Too Worldly instead. why couldn't Camilla be the oldest? she's already jaded and weird, so why not make her the heir just to shake things up? because she is Girl and Too Weird and Wearing BLACK, and weird girls in black can't be queen--even if Xander dies, she can't be queen.
Azura is clearly supposed to The Chrom Surrogate of this game insofar as she's your blue haired pal with whom you share a destiny, but she is The Chrom Surrogate but MAXIMUM GIRL, so she's the quintessential non-combatant class, she has a special song that soothes the hearts of warriors, she LITERALLY DIES FOR THE PEACE (TM) IN BIRTHRIGHT AND CONQUEST. (and obviously her hair can't be the Fire Emblem Classic shade of blue--that's too masculine.)
wrt the second gen, lineage is passed through the dad in the eugenics factory this time, which is on paper a fine shakeup from in Awakening, but...ALL the definitely-royal second gens are boys? don't get me wrong: i actually adore what they did with Forrest--like, fucking superb u gender-nonconforming fashion-loving Prince of Peace--but Forrest being an actually interesting inversion of what we expect (that isn't played for laughs!!!) makes all the other boys come off as much blander than they could be. why can't Kiragi be a dirt and hunting loving GIRL? i love Shiro's supports with Kana, but his whole "boisterous laid back but also inferiority complex" deal would be much less tired if he were the Crown Princess instead of Prince. i suppose if Siegbert were Girl with Anxiety and Kingship he'd just...be Lucina, but that's not necessarily a bad thing!!! bitches love Lucina!! (i'm bitches)
the thing is all of this would be...well. not FINE, but more acceptable if they did some things to flesh out those cookie-cutter personalities. Fates didn't deliver for any of the Royals to the extent i wanted it to, but even for what we had the girls got markedly less than the boys did. the moment that made me go "hoo boy maybe i will make poast about this" was in the climax when all the Five Whatevers lit up to form the Fire Emblem and we got some nice concept art of Takumi Leo Ryoma and Xander making :O faces, while the girls...were also there! in Revelation i'm pretty sure you can cut out Camilla Hinoka Elise and Sakura and leave the plot basically unchanged. you could say they fare better in Birthright and Conquest, but you could just as easily say they fare WORSE, because what they get to do if they're NPCs in those routes are: be sad and die, be sad and be spared from dying, be sad and get even weirder before being spared from dying, or be sad.
Camilla and Hinoka feel like the most wasted potential, because we haven't had as many "female royal who is actually pretty down with murder" characters before. but the devs clearly had no idea with what to DO with that, so (outside of her daddy and mommy issues, the details of which we learn about via supports with Niles the resident sex pest and hoo boy the "queer rep" in this game is whole other can of worms) Camilla became your momsistergirlfriend with built-in innovative airbag technology, whose creepiness is played for laughs, and Hinoka was...wait which one was Hinoka again
i am partly just being glib for comic effect, but like--the underlying problems are there, no matter how seriously or generously you want to read it. Fates doesn't go out of its way to mistreat its women; it just doesn't expend any effort thinking about them, so the misogyny breaks loose and stands out anyway.
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Two-Faced Jewel: Session 5
A half-elf conwoman (and the moth tasked with keeping her out of trouble) travel the Jewel in search of, uh, whatever a fashionable accessory is pointing them at.
[Campaign log]
Caught up in a blood feud between the villages of Wheat and Barley, Saelhen and Looseleaf are tasked with investigating a recent death. Their investigation takes them to a spooky tower owned by the local crazy torture wizard, which- hey, why was this guy not considered a suspect, huh? He's a crazy torture wizard!
Last time, the group was introduced to Malath Kanthalga, matron cleric of the village of Barley. She has no trust for outsiders- but she was willing to let Looseleaf lend a hand in proving once and for all that the scoundrels of Wheat were responsible for the recent murders.
To that end, the party is led a ways down the road to the farmstead of Roos and Gera Nicksickle, an elderly halfling couple which was recently slain.
En route, Looseleaf sizes up the farmers Malath has been arming, to see if any of them seem to have combat experience. There's one lizardfolk farmer who seems more comfortable with the armor, and holds his pitchfork like a spear. She makes a note of that.
They arrive, and are met by Lester Jawhold, a doughy-looking human man who's standing guard over the body out in the field, accompanied by a number of vicious-looking hounds. With permission to search the crime scene, some investigationing occurs.
Saelhen gets some basic details- the body was pierced through the chest with a four-pronged weapon, as described. Plus, there are the remains of hastily-erased footprints in the dusty soil- bootprints, it seems.
Looseleaf uses her animism magic to get a more direct picture of the incident. The corpse, recently dead, has a dead-corpse spirit that retains some information thanks to the emotionally volatile nature of recent events. The cause of death... being suddenly pierced through the heart, from the front, by a strange four-pointed weapon that induced extreme pain. It appeared to strike from out of thin air. Nothing about the corpse indicates a memory of seeing an assailant.
Indoors, the other victim, Gera, is found dead on the floor of the kitchen. It seems like the cause of death is the same, but... Looseleaf's animism reveals that her vital organs are intact, and she appears to have died of shock from the extreme pain.
All Saelhen finds from searching the house is... an empty cupboard with a recently-unlocked lock, and a mattress removed from its bed. Plus some of the same bootprints from outside.
Looseleaf has the idea to search the house for the victims' boots, to compare with the prints found outside. And what the search reveals is... there are no boots. They didn't own any. They were halflings. So their house being covered in dusty bootprints... well, it implies someone else was here and murdered them, which rules out the "a weird knife sort of inexplicably teleported into their chests" theory, at least.
The only real clue they have to go on is the extreme pain experienced by the victims. This suggests...
Malath gives a little exposition on the torture wizard- apparently he considers himself a savior, who through his experiments intends to vanquish pain itself- and surely torturing a few unwilling test subjects will be worth it, if he succeeds. Malath doesn't seem to consider it likely that Lumiere is the culprit, for the same reasons as Thalath- but jokingly suggests that perhaps Lumiere might have some information on who stole his torture tools to commit murder with.
Looseleaf: "So," Looseleaf asks, "if we're going to the tower wherein dwells a torture wizard, what can you tell us about what we might expect to face there? Ravenous horrific alchemical experiments ready to eat our faces? Traps? Magical servitors? A portal to another realm full of horrors?"
Benedict I. (GM): She looks briefly surprised. "No, I... though I haven't been victim to him myself, I would warn strongly against confronting Lumiere, unless you're all much more seasoned than you look. None from our village have been able to resist him when he decided our consent was no longer worth trying to wrest from us."
"Those who have been inside the tower might have more information for you, if you're fool enough to try."
Looseleaf: "Well, team, you've heard the mission dossier, I guess. Do we think we're fool enough to try?"
Saelhen du Fishercrown: Saelhen Fishercrown is not fool enough to try.
Unfortunately, Saelhen isn't getting to be Saelhen right now.
"...I imagine that we have no other recourse."
Benedict I. (GM): Vayen looks... almost gleeful, insofar as his face betrays any expression.
Looseleaf: Thanks for the vote of creepiness, edgelord.
Saelhen opts to kill annoying helicopters with one stone, and suggests that the team split up to gather information on the tower from the townspeople. She also suggests that Malath personally keep an eye on Vayen, as the least-trustworthy-seeming member of the group. Good persuasion means it works, and Vayen goes off to interrogate Lester Jawhold while the rest of the team heads into town to ask around about Lumiere's past victims.
First, on the way back to town, they speak with Chitch Ssarzar, the lizardfolk with the apparent military background. He's got one hell of a sob story for them!
Saelhen du Fishercrown: 24
PERSUASION (8)
all i do is win
Benedict I. (GM): That'll do it- Chitch is pretty horrified at the implication that you're actually trying this, but with sufficient reassurance, he'll spill his guts.
He came to Grain back when it was just Grain, twenty-odd years ago, hoping to raise his infant daughter somewhere less dangerous than the Cutthroat Islands. Then, during the fire, his daughter was kidnapped by the wizard, and he tried storming the tower to get her back. He got captured, strapped to a rack, and had his flesh flensed and healed and flensed and healed repeatedly. At one point he thought he'd get a reprieve, when the wizard's teakettle went off and he went downstairs to get some tea- but the flensing knives just kept going, by themselves, without stopping.
He never saw his daughter again.
He was eventually released, and thanked for his service, and by that point he was too traumatized to ask Lumiere what happened to his daughter, in case it provoked him to torture him more.
He's pretty wracked with guilt over the situation.
They get a rough description of the first few floors of the tower, up to the torture room. Plus, some exposition on the town's history:
Looseleaf: Okay. More questions: this time, asking about the town.
It was called Grain, once?
It split into two towns and now Barley hates Wheat?
There was a fire?
How did this all come to happen such that a single town turned in on itself?
Benedict I. (GM): Yes- either 28 or 29 years ago, he forgets exactly, there was some feuding between farmers growing different crops. The ones with less fertile soil, sandier towards the southeast and closer to the mountains, had some kind of grudge against the landowners with more fertile soil, and it was this whole political infighting nightmare he didn't understand, as he was new in town.
Then the dragon attacked, and... he's not entirely sure what happened, because accusations were flying left and right, but apparently some people tried to use the dragon attack as cover to commit arson against their enemies?
Saelhen du Fishercrown: DRAGON
Looseleaf: A FUCKING DRAGON
Benedict I. (GM): And most of the town burned down, and when it came time to rebuild, nobody wanted to build near each other- and there was some sort of weird religious split between Family and Harmony so that most of the Harmony people decided to go grow wheat on the worse land, and the Family people went to go grow barley on the better land.
He'd never been super involved with the split, as a newcomer, and spent the early rebuilding period being tortured- Barley was just the closest civilization after he was set free.
Looseleaf: Mmmmm.
A tragedy, all around, gods-damn.
Saelhen du Fishercrown: caused by a dragon. a dragedy, if you will.
Then it's off to visit the innkeeper, Cassie Zeishus.
Benedict I. (GM): When you reach the inn, you meet Cassie Zeishus, the innkeeper. She tells you about the time she visited the torture wizard to see if her husband was there.
Looseleaf: Oh, yeah, you know. Just, a conjugal visit.
To the torture tower.
Benedict I. (GM): Apparently her husband, kind of a good-for-nothing out-of-towner she married largely as a charity case, kept on gambling and trying to sleep around and doing general sleazy vice stuff, and was miserable in a town that didn't want to indulge him- and she's pretty sure he faked getting kidnapped by the torture wizard to escape it.
Saelhen du Fishercrown: as one does
definitely not victim-blaming
Benedict I. (GM): This was corroborated by Lumiere quite pleasantly answering the door and telling her no, he hadn't seen hide nor hair of this Arnie fellow, and would she like to come in for tea? And her saying no, no thank you, and walking away.
Looseleaf: Huh.
Benedict I. (GM): She doesn't know why the guy let her leave, despite a propensity for forcing people inside and torturing them in the past.
She chalks it up to having been very intimidating towards him.
Saelhen also tries to inquire about Kensa, Thalath's sister, who's apparently in some sort of dire straits here. She doesn't want to give away that she's asking about Kensa deliberately, so she takes something of a garden path of conversation, about Malath and why the townsfolk call her "Mother". Eventually she gets to Kensa, who apparently weaves cloth and sells it to the general store, where she can be found around this time of day. (She's apparently got something going on with the shopkeep's son.)
Looseleaf: these affairs might not be something we can intervene constructively in.
Saelhen du Fishercrown: I mean, Saelhen's definitely abducting this child
Looseleaf: gosh, well, when you put it that way, how could we not.
Saelhen du Fishercrown: let's visit the general store! saelhen enjoys cloth.
At the general store, they find... not really any evidence that anything bad is going on with Kensa. She seems... fine? Also six feet tall and jacked as hell, because she's a goliath and their twelve-year-olds are just like that?
Kensa notices Lady Noeru de la Surplus' fancy silk dress, and fangirls over it immediately.
Benedict I. (GM): "Whoa, is that silk?"
"I don't know if we have any silk in the back, but-"
"Silk?" the girl by the window asks.
"Ohmigosh, you have a silk dress? Ohmigosh, how much did it cost?"
Saelhen du Fishercrown: "Ah." Saelhen expected a little more resistance than this! "15 gold, when I bought it."
Benedict I. (GM): "Whooooaaaa..."
She's looking the dress up and down with obvious envy.
"Nnnnngh, but I don't have... fifteen gold..."
Looseleaf: oh my gosh she wants to buy it
Benedict I. (GM): "It's- hang on, if I get ten, will you sell it?"
"I can probably get ten! And I'll throw in a replacement!"
"Not silk, but-"
"Uh, Mr. Teller, do you still have last week's stuff in the back?"
Looseleaf: this kid's great
Benedict I. (GM):"It's good, I promise!"
Saelhen, being a con artist and kind of a jerk, turns down the offer, but skillfully reframes the issue by exploiting Kensa's love of textiles to get it repaired on the cheap in exchange for a swatch or two of the fabric. Great... job...?
After interrogating the townsfolk, Looseleaf has a bright idea- she wants to buy a climbing pack to scale the tower from the outside. It costs her extra, since new stuff has to be custom-forged overnight (a remote farming village like this doesn't have much call for climbing packs), but she gets it.
Vayen comes back, with testimony from Lester. It's not much they didn't get from Chitch- just a note that apparently vegetables were chopping themselves in Lumiere's kitchen.
Looseleaf: i should get some food too maybe!
anyways all this is really pointing hard to 'the four-pronged stabby painblades move on their OWN'.
it's not clear who's BEHIND it, but it's pretty obvious now that all the clues point towards the stabbies being the culprit.
-
The next morning, they head out to the tower. They notice a couple things: one is a sign that reads:
" KEEP
SHOUTING",
and the other is a bunch of broken glass and rubble strewn across the ground. Looking up, they notice the sixth floor seems to have had a large window smashed open. Weirdly, less glass on the ground than you'd expect if it'd been smashed open from the inside.
Looseleaf's Animist class can Detect Magic, sorta, and it's pretty clear to her that the front door is magic- so rather than fall for an obvious trap, she puts her plan into action. She can jump 30 feet up with the aid of her wings, so she's able to jump straight to the third floor and try to drive a piton into the stone to drop a rope for the rest of the party.
Here is a list of problems with that plan:
Looseleaf has tiny little sticklike moth arms, which exert insufficient force to drive pitons into stone with no leverage.
Breaking a window to attach the rope to instead results in a broken window.
Inside the broken window is a spindly suit of armor covered in nasty spikes, which immediately springs to life and turns to face whoever just broke a window next to it.
Also an alarm goes off.
Looseleaf is able to get the rope secured before the living armor attacks her, and jumps back out the window- as a moth, she essentially has Feather Fall on at all times. Still, going in through that window presents a problem.
They've noticed something, though- the automaton doesn't seem to be chasing them out the window. It's just standing there, staring down at them. This... gives Looseleaf a bright idea.
Orluthe has to make his grapple check with disadvantage, given that he's trying to snag this thing with his halberd with one hand while clinging to the side of a building by a rope, but luckily this thing botches its own roll thanks to its patented "stand perfectly still because there are no intruders in the building" maneuver.
It takes a bunch of fall damage from hitting the ground, is knocked prone, and the remainder of the party immediately unloads on it on a surprise round with crits for a bazillion damage, killing it before it can move.
This was a really good idea!
Too bad there was another one just inside, which Orluthe is now alone with!
...Wait, no, he's a giant wolfman in football armor and he suplexes the other one out the window, where the exact same thing proceeds to happen to it. Okay. Cool.
With that, the party makes their way inside. Whatever the alarm was, it seems to have died down, physically- whatever was powering it petered out. Plus, Looseleaf's magic detection means there's no way they could get caught in any traps!
Any magic traps!
Saelhen fails her perception check while walking across the room to a treasure chest and hits a tripwire and a net falls from the ceiling, trapping her and Oyobi! I bet this would be a really dangerous trap if there were, say, two menacing spiky robots bearing down on them trying to kill them while they were defenseless. As is, though... it's a minor inconvenience.
After this snafu, Saelhen tries to pick open the chest, only to find that the lock is a) quite well-made, and b) itself trapped, with a poison needle in the locking mechanism designed to go off if a lockpicking attempt fails. She just barely gets her fingers away in time, and opts to leave this treasure chest to loot later, after they're done here.
The stairs up from floor 3 seem to be blocked off by a translucent red magic barrier, so Looseleaf resumes the original plan. She stands on the windowsill of the third floor, and just flaps up to the fourth floor, looking inside and this time unlocking the window telekinetically from the inside, rather than breaking it and setting off an alarm.
When she opens the window (to the torture laboratory), some more very scary torture robots immediately go after her, as do a variety of flying knives that have quite a bit of movement speed and stab her repeatedly.
Maybe this idea had some flaws.
Next time: Looseleaf hopefully doesn't get turned into moth sashimi by animated torture implements! More dungeon is crawled! Some jerk falls down the stairs and it's hilarious!
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Make-up day, Prompt 5: Matter-of-Fact
tfw you find out your girlfriend died, but like. She got better. ft. @holyja‘s impeccable lizard gorl. Mild spoilers for 5.2-5.3, though only for like. a sentence.
Word count: 1,177
~*~
It had been a relatively mundane day in the South Shroud, insofar as adventurers such as Hyana and Serella were concerned. Leves abound for them to occupy their afternoon with, and they were making their way back north along the well traveled paths in the early evening sunset, pockets heavier with gold and spirits lighter for the satisfying work. They had been chatting amicably, sides playfully and affectionately bumping into one another on occasion, hands brushing as they went.
Then something caught Serella’s eye from beyond the trees. She stopped moving.
“I died half a malm from here.”
It took three paces before Hyana registered what was said, but she then froze, mid-step, lips still wrapped around a word she caught between her teeth in the shock from Serella’s comment. The words, so matter-of-fact, spoken as casually as someone noticing a stormcloud in the distance, settled poorly in her gut. Her mind struggled to grasp it.
“What?” Was all she could manage.
“Give or take, I mean. Not necessarily exact.” The Paladin said, still in a strange, uncanny calm. She squinted. “You can actually see the circle of grass I woke up in. Huh.” She canted her head toward that spot in the trees that Hyana, for a blessing, could not see. “Did you want to see—”
“No, I don’t want to see it!” Hyana cried, voice shrill around the tightness that constricted her throat. “What the fuck, Serella!”
“Is…? Oh.” Serella blinked owlishly at her. “It’s...upsetting? My apologies, I didn’t—”
“Didn’t think it would be? How could you n— you know what, no.” Hyana held out her hands as if to create a barrier between them. “No, no, we are not discussing this further. I’m ending this conversation. Now.”
“As you like. I’m sorry, Violet.” Serella said softly, in genuine remorse.
Their walk back to the city was tense and quiet. Even the forest seemed to hush in the wake of the exchange.
For a blessing, Serella didn’t bring it up again. Hyana, for her part, took several days to process the information. To reconcile the fact that she had died at all, with the most decidedly alive, warm woman that she wrapped herself around every night. It took until they were back home, in Ishgard, before she could even broach the subject again, though she had the good grace to wait until it was just the two of them in the house.
“So you died.” Hyana broke the silence that morning, seated at the bay window.
Even saying the words still made her blood run cold. She curled her fingers tighter around her mug of tea on reflex, in search of warmth.
“I did.” Serella replied, tone more appropriately soft this time.
When she joined Hyana on the window seat, she brought with her a tray laden with a kettle, her own mug, and all the appropriate accoutrements for making tea. She busied herself with making a cup of tea.
“You want to ask me about it.” Serella spoke up after a moment.
“I want to know what happened.” Hyana frowned deeply. “I can’t...I can’t picture it.”
“Flattering as that is, I assure you I was a completely different person back then.” With a sigh, Serella leaned against the section of the bay window that was not glass, her cup in hand. “Though I suppose we all were, before the Calamity.”
That got Hyana’s attention.
“You died in the Calamity?”
“Aye. But not in Carteneau, lest you wonder.” Serelle pursed her lips. “If you can believe it, I hadn’t yet served in any military. I barely knew how to hold a sword.”
Somehow the image of Serella Arcbane, Free Paladin of Eorzea, Shield to All, struggling to know what to do with a sword, of all things, was harder to reconcile than her being dead.
Still, she tried. She listened. As Serella told the tale of how she had fought— and yes, died— for Gridanian civilians that the Adders had more or less turned their backs on. How she had run in and out of the fires on her chocobo (ahh, Vesh— Hyana made a mental note to bring her more gysahl greens when next they visited her retirement pen) to get survivors out. At first, she could feel nothing but pride for how Serella had moved in the face of something so awful. For all her insistence that she was a completely different person, Hyana still saw them as the same, if different in terms of skillset.
Then Serella spoke of the end. Of dying to voidsent, of living just long enough to watch Dalamud fall. How, in the end, she had died alone, terrified, and bleeding out into the forest that had taken everything from her.
“But you aren’t dead.” Hyana said, half to be contrarian, half to remind herself that Serella was alright.
“Well, no. I did get back up again.” Serella shrugged. “I woke up as though it had all been a dream. It had to have been a few days later, at least. The fires were out, but everything still smoldered. Everything was covered in ash. But there was this perfect circle of grass around me. Like I’d been in a shield, waiting to be woken up.”
“Hydaelyn?” Hyana asked, almost to herself.
“Seems likely.” Another shrug. “I woke up with my crystal in hand, and suddenly I could hear Her voice in my head.” She took a drink of her tea and mumbled, “And, well. You know the rest.”
She did. How Serella had reunited with her Duskwight tribe, how they had gifted her her dress signifying her as grown, and had, in time, sent her tearfully off on that fateful chocobo cart ride to Ul’Dah, where fate had begun its wild, rapid spiral into the new “normal,” they had embraced.
And it had all started with Serella dying.
If she hadn’t seen a starshower...if she hadn’t been an Amaurotine beforehand...if the groundwork for her coming back hadn’t been laid out millennia ago—
Hyana set her teacup down, moved the tray away from the both of them, and clamored onto Serella’s lap. With less gentle hands than she had intended, she took Serella’s teacup from her loose grip, set it aside, and simply lay herself down against the Paladin. As if the weight of her, slight as it was comparatively speaking, could further anchor her lover here. As if she could protect her from all that had happened before.
“Violet…?” Serella called gently into her horn. A hand came up, rubbing gentle, soothing circles into her back. “I’m here. I’m alright—”
“Shut up.” Hyana growled, and when the backs of her eyes faintly burned, she bit down into Serella’s shoulder. “You fucking died. Don’t tell me you’re alright.”
“...Yeah.” Her hand didn’t stop moving. “Neither of us are really ‘alright,’ though, are we?”
“Shut up.”
Hyana bit into her shoulder again, harder this time, in the vain hope it would get either of them to feel something other than numb. She was only marginally successful.
#ffxivwrite2020#ffxiv#Hyana Geriel#Serella Arcbane#Two Woman Wolf Pack#yes hello I am in my emotions and on my bullshit so please look forward to more
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