Text: An assassin for hire, I often make deals with the devil, who is so impressed by my lack of morals he’s been bragging about me to god. This is not good.

Regarding the initial confrontation between Essek and Astrid, the tone of the situation, and what exactly Astrid's stance is right now, I have a couple of thoughts:

Astrid has presumably not joined Ludinus because she is currently hiding in a smut shop. She also presumably hasn't joined the Exandrian Accord because, again, she is currently hiding in a smut shop & the Accord is sending missions after her. Maybe she disagrees with Ludinus but feels she can't safely outright oppose him. We don't know yet! Provided she isn't rooting for Ludinus, it's very possible she could be enlisted to help (I hope this happens btw), but Astrid is first and foremost a survivor and ambitious achiever who has gotten to where she is now by working within the greater system, not against it, even when she disagrees with it. She remained a Volstrucker until Caleb and the M9 turned the tide against Ikithon, and she later took on the role of Archmage that Caleb refused, continuing her original trajectory ("race you to the top!"). She has a great deal of power now and we don't have much information about what she does with it. I am very curious, though, Astrid please tell us your secrets.

"Bren sends his regards" - we don't know if Caleb told Essek to say this, but whether or not he did, I do think it was meant to convey "this is all with Caleb's knowledge and direction", for whatever measure that means to Astrid, most likely "you are safe for the moment". The purpose of this encounter is to have a conversation instead of a fight. And Essek's intent in saying it does seem to be to disarm Astrid, but his presentation puts some layers and edges on it that are likely independent of whatever Caleb might be feeling on his end (other posts have summarized the juicy possible layers well so I won't cover all of that here).

More high level on Essek's angle: even if "Bren sends his regards" was meant to signal to Astrid that she is safe in this encounter, one of the very first things Essek does is declare Astrid as Trent Ikithon's "successor", which Astrid of course disagrees with ("I'm his usurper!") but nevertheless this is an insult and condemnation coming from Essek. The subtext reads to me like "I don't like you or agree with you and you're on thin fucking ice how I see it". Is she safe from physical harm? It seems so, for now. Is she safe from bitchy comments and thinly veiled judgement? Certainly not.

Notably, Astrid tried to bamf out after hearing "Bren sends his regards", so the mention of him or what that message would mean coming from Caleb is not enough to get her to play ball by itself. This is perfectly reasonable to be honest; shit's all fucked up now and Essek basically cornered her with a squad of unfamiliar adventurers. But her skittishness despite the "friendly" signal implies a great deal of tension in her position, and Essek's behavior shows tension on his part as well, separate from whatever Caleb might be feeling offscreen and the purpose of this little mission for the Accord. I am very eager to hear the conversation that comes next!

meet me in a dream

i dont know how many people who follow me played shovel knight but i still think the body swap feature they added was very neat... basically it started as a standard gender-swap where all the male knights were just going to have female versions

But then they decided to let you pick and choose who you wanted swapped. And they added in the choice for whichever pronouns you wanted the knight to have, which were not bound to whichever sprite you were having them use. (ie. you could use the "female" version of the sprite but give the character "male" pronouns.) They added gender neutral pronouns eventually too.

It was a nice way to modernize the gender-bend type concept I think.

happy pride month

The Favor

When Youngblood became a ghost he actually didn't think he would be so lonely. It was stressful and annoying, being so young, watching the years go by but never being able to move on or change. He was a child who died, and the only way for him to feel like a child again was to play.

But even then he felt invisible. That made his powers listen to his wishes and cause no adult to see him. And maybe that was for the better, adults were scary, adults could hurt you. They wouldn't understand.

Meeting the other ghosts was both a blessing and a curse. Everyone saw him as a kid, some thought he was annoying and others played with him. He was grateful to Ember for spending so much of her time being a pirate, but he didn't want to take up so much of her time. It made him feel guilty.

When Danny became King and the ghost kid heard that he was destined to help the other ghosts, Youngblood plucked up his courage and asked him for a favor: Find him a friend. One alive that wanted to play and never get bored of it.

Danny took the task very seriously, looking for all possible candidates, avoiding ghosts. Until he found a more or less suitable friend: Klarion. He was older than Youngblood but seemed to be just as bored. Clockwork looked at him in dismay at his solution to the problem but didn't stop him.

This led to the Justice League being defeated by Klarion, who had taken over the Watchtower and seemed to be happily talking to air. He was seconds away from destroying the earth or something similar with death ray, but there was nothing they could do about it.

Everyone froze when a portal opened next to the boy and someone came out asking "How are the new friends?" Before realizing the situation, the creature sighed in disappointment and destroyed the death ray with a snap of his fingers. A girl just like him came out of the portal excited ignoring everyone and began to talk to the air. Klarion seemed to be following the conversation.

Danny watched Youngblood talking to Dani and Klarion, he knew that his cousin could be good company, but he hadn't contacted her before due to her travels and status as a halfa (the probability of destroying the world was there too); well, now Youngblood had two friends (that solved the problem) but- how did he prevent them from ending the world? Or worse, from terrorize innocent cosplayers?

I'm reading bk6 and have just met ghostfire!Hua Cheng. i am enamoured...

feng xin and mu qing are trying to be supportive of xie lian's bizarre new castle but they're drawing the line at the evil little fire demon that seems to hate absolutely everyone except xie lian

okay most employed people in westeros pre agot

tyland: went from westerlands bureaucrat to master of ships to lord treasurer to getting tortured to hand of a boy king #goals

elaena: first ever pensioner in the history of the iron throne. ran the master of coin office like the navy AND got a boytoy out of it.

aegor: single-handedly created the most successful mercenary company in essos and was probably the architect of the blackfyre rebellions after daemon died (flop).

larys: only person to ever enjoy being a little office guy. loves his job as head torturer so much he doesn't even care they are probably not paying him.

⚠️fandom stalker alert! ⚠️

tw; death threats, stalking, harassment

I am making this post warning fandom artists, writers, and individuals in the animation industry to be wary of an individual known to plagiarize, stalk, harass, and run individuals off of their platforms: user taurealis, otherwise known as: Grace, deoxyriibos, Summer’s Crush, astroloqueen, sweetnsasssy, availheuristic#1707 (among many other aliases, additionally listed in the original call-out post)

Grace is a serial cyber stalker, who frequently “befriends” others she admires, only to abuse anonymous features to send hate, creates account after account to send toxicity after being blocked, and frequently lies about having “powerful friends” to evade consequences of her actions.

This user has gone as far as to call areas of employment to spread lies in an attempt to have multiple innocent animators fired, try to manipulate minors to move close to her, send death threats via anon (all anons lead back to the same IP address, which I will not share out of concerns for privacy), and frequently pressures others to meet up in real life. 

(screenshot provided by one of her victims, who was kind enough to allow me to share one of the hateful messages they received)

Multiple industry professionals have been made aware of her actions because she is so notorious for harassing others; many are still too afraid to come forward unless via anon, where you can see multiple testimonies of her behavior.

**If this post shows up on your fandom tag, please be careful, let others know, and stay cautious of her presence in online spaces.**

I want a boss like him

What if as well as being terrible liars, the fae absolutely suck at disguising themselves.

Like I can imagine diasomnia being protective of Silver but not being all over him and instead just follows him around in 'disguise' At one point when Silver is just hanging out with a friend at a cafe and the others thought he was on a date so of course they follow him and all is well until Silver's friend points to another table and there are Lilia, Sebek and Malleus all wearing the typical cap and sunglasses as well as fake moustaches while looking through a newspaper with holes cut into it. Silver's not impressed and calls them out and when they don't respond he walks over to them then all of a sudden Lilia shrieks 'we've been caught Malleus, cheese it!' then Malleus just grabs the other two and poofs away before Silver could lecture them.

I don't know what was going through my head when I thought of this (probably from watching brooklyn 99)

"Eddie, what did you do to this thing? It's traumatised."

"I'm traumatised! It's got no business havin' that many legs!"

The visual mirroring between these two moments is just so good.

The differnce between Crowley's genuine attempt to disuade Aziraphle thinking that he is doing good (soon he'll take off his glasses and show his eyes, the mark of his demonic nature, to Aziraphale as a threat - a reminder of what he is) and his warning reminder to Aziraphale that hell can't think this was a decision he made in his right mind (moving in close and tilting his head to look at Aziraphale over the top of his glasses, not as a threat but to remove a layer between them and show his seriousness unobstructed)

The differnce between the resolve in the set of Aziraphales jaw as he stares into the face of his supposed enemy (his belief in Crowley's goodness is so defiant, something we know Aziraphale needs to muster a lot of courage to bring about in himself) and his fond smile as his friend gives him the same admonishment he has hundreds - thousands? - of times before (he can count on Crowley's goodness as a given, the ease and softness he feels with Crowley is so natural to his character)

Just. So. Good.

Ren x saltburn bath scene when?

✦゜ANSWERED: Boy bye I don't even know what a saltburn bath is tbh T_T

i swear, every week p’au appears on twitter to inform us that gemini and fourth were on that set improvising every single cute ass tinngun moment themselves… like sir, what do you MEAN that first kiss in the park was all gem and fourth’s doing?

the devil works hard but gemini and fourth on the my school president set truly worked harder 😭