Call me Angel! Angel_in_Ink on Twitter, Angel Ascending on AO3. Adult. Non-binary writer, knitter, and horror fan. They/them. Ace. Header image by @brondoesart
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Critical Role: AramƔn (Web Series)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Gaya Seremai, Pincushion (Critical Role)
Additional Tags: spoilers for episode 30, Character Study, Making Up Headcanons For Fun And No Profit, Pincushion Getting Into Impossible Places As Usual
Summary:
Gaya Seremai waits alone in the darkness beyond death.
----
The image of Gaya Seremai and Pincushion waiting together in the dark for Occtis to summon them again got into my head while I was at work and wouldn't leave. If I could draw it I would, but I have to write it instead. Included are some headcanons about House Seremai and their snake tattoos, because how could I not?
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No, I don't have a migraine (surprisingly). And if you ask Julien, neither does he.
Julien Davinos prides himself on his ability to hide his pain or downplay an injury. If he was the introspective sort, heād realize that the behavior had started with his parents. Hide the pain so your mother doesnāt worry (so she doesnāt shout at you for getting hurt). Hide the pain so your father thinks youāre tougher than you are (so he claps you on the back and smiles at you with respect in his eyes). Pretending he is fine is second nature to him, something as ingrained in the blood and bones of him as his sword forms. So none of his companions on the road to what remains of the Golden Orchard should have any idea that Julienās head is throbbing like the worse hangover heās ever had and that heās using all of his will not to be sick on the back of his horse.
I am just tired, Julien had told himself days ago when his vision had started getting a little fuzzy around the edges. He had blamed the occasional sparks of bright light seen out of the corners of his eyes on Thimble, who spent more time flitting around him these days, ever since she had learned that her beloved Thjazi resided in Julienās shadow. It had to be because of her, and not because Julien was having a migraine, because Julien did not have time to be having a migraine. More to the point, his sister did not have time for Julien to be having a migraine.
Sorry Alba, I know that you have been suffering, that your body has been slowly fading away day by day, but I had to pause my journey back to you because my head was paining me.
No. Any sort of delay is unacceptable, but especially if the delay is Julienās fault. He will endure this pain, as he has endured many others, and it will pass. He just has to make sure that his companions donāt find out because they will surely insist that they stop for a time and fuss over him. Well, not Bolaire most likely, and the wild man with his wolf doesnāt seem the type to play nursemaid. Thimble would probably just laugh. But Vaelus would try to heal him. It wouldnāt work of course. This is not a sword wound to be mended, or a poison that can be flushed from the body. As for Occtisā what would the boy do? Mix up some foul concoction like an apothecary would? Julien has tried such remedies, and any relief had come slowly, making him feel much worse before any relief. The only things that had worked truly had beenā¦.
A warm smile, as warm as the cup in his hands, full of a liquid that somehow tastes like the Golden Orchard smells. Jahar looking at him, and there is no pity in his expression, seeing Julien in this vulnerable state, but only fondness and gentle concern.
āDrink that down,ā Jahar says softly. Behind him, Julien hears Ilondria and Mardonus settle on the bed. āAnd then weāll move on to the next step of your treatment.ā
Hands on him, easing him back onto the bedā
āJulien?ā
Julien is wrenched from the warm comfort of memory into a world that is too bright by a voice that, while not loud, feels like a fist to the temple. His stomach clenches as he whips his head around to address Occtis, turning his wince of pain into a sneer and a glare.
brennan has put a lot of care into building a setting where there is no immutable source of evil within the world. it makes the villains rich and diverse. placing the onus of the sundered houses' villainy upon sorcery as a concept is simply flattening the setting at every level. sorcerers aren't evil. at no point is the concept of innate magic considered bad.
sorcerers are just a fact of the setting. they're not evil because they're sorcerers and they're not sorcerers because they're evil. sorcerers exist because of ancient pacts or boons or a chance of biology or simply being born in proximity to magical places, and that's clear in all of the sundered house mythos. i think speculating that the ancient versions of the sundered houses got their magic nefariously is falling into the "some things are Just Evil." we can't assume that because the human sorcerers of modern aramƔn are engaging in class warfare, their ancestors were wicked.
there are sundered houses who took the heroic position of defying the shapers during the shapers war. the priestly houses are rotten not because sorcerers are rotten but because wealth and resource hoarding and the dismissive carelessness they treat mortal life with is evil. otto einfasen isn't evil because he's an einfasen, he's evil because he took a commoner girl's head off with a hammer. and there's endless nuance to be found here: the einfasens are nominally allied with the protagonists, but it doesn't render them heroic, they're still canonically authoritarians. the royces are complicit in every evil done by the sundered houses for the last 70 years, but they are inexorably tied to the heroes in a positive way and are making active efforts to break away from the evil system.
additionally: assuming that the primordials were bad because they wed the shapers is a big leap. the shapers murdered them. thaisha saw the desecration of tehana's shrine in favor of trozhna as wrong and insulting. if it were one evil covering another, it would not have been impactful to notice the desecration. the primordials might have been a neutral or evil force on the world, we don't actually know, but they are a part of the foundation of the world, so it's more likely that forces of nature are simply a neutral concept.
aramƔn is a setting where evil consistently is shown to be an active choice. even the shapers. there is no indication that they were just born bad. they chose to come to aramƔn, kill the primordials and repress the population, turning them into playthings in their sibling squabbles as they bent the world to their will. those are the reasons they are evil, not because they come from Evil Land.
brennan is using a lot of heightened fantasy genre conventions. it speaks to lord of the rings and a song of ice and fire and old fairytales and legends, but this campaign takes ideas about good and evil from classic D&D settings, and fixes them. good and evil are a choice, always. a demon can do good. an angel can do bad. the villainy is complex. there is no evil race or class (in the D&D sense of the word). complaining about the villains shows a lack of understanding of the setting.
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this is a dead horse at this point, but I do get a little annoyed when people say that Iām trying to emulate Terry Pratchett and failing, because Iāve never been a big discworld person. donāt misunderstand, I have a huge amount of respect for the guy! I think heās a genius! but the humour has just never clicked for me personally.
so, if everyone in the future could say that Iām trying to emulate WILLIAM GOLDMAN and failing, I would actually appreciate that enormously. thank you.
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That ācomment on your a03 workā email hits like a line of cocaine every time. unmatched dopamine increase. shoutout to everyone who leaves a comment on fics. you deserve the world
My handwriting is the same style as the teacherās who I had when I was nine. Iām now twenty one and heās been dead eight years but my iās still curve the same way as his.
I watched the last season of a TV show recently but I started it with my friend in high school. We havenāt spoken in four years.
I make lentil soup through the recipe my gran gave me.
I curl my hair the way my best friend showed me.
I learned to love books because my father loved them first.
How terrifying, how excruciatingly painful to acknowledge this. That I am a jigsaw puzzle of everyone I have briefly known and loved. I carry them on with me even if I donāt know it. How beautiful.
In case youāre wondering what the heck they were thinking of when they made it, I remember Bonnie once explaining on TV that itās about the dreams of a headmasterās daughter, hence all the boys in (and out of) uniform. In retrospect, the whole shebang is quite fascinatingly female gaze-y, and Iām pretty sure it was a major formative influence on my pubescent imagination.
And yes, there is also a very amusing literal version, but for my money, the original is definitely the most hilariousā¦
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So this is not a plea for money. This is something that surprised me, and chatting with people on discord, they were unaware of as well.
Discovered last year I couldnāt look at my 2015 MacBook Air without it triggering nausea and migraines, and figured the screen died. Have been getting by on my phone, but concluded I really need a laptop again.
Saved up, realised I could afford a brand new MacBook Neo, and got one.
-And I couldnāt spend more than five minutes looking at the screen without massive eye strain, nausea, vertigo, and if I pushed it, I-need-to-lie-down-in-a-dark-room-for-hours migraines.
Looking up MacBook and Eyestrain explained what is going on. The liquid retina displays that Apple currently has uses Pulse Width Modulation or PWM. In order to give the screens a deeper depth of colour and contrast, PWM flickers between several hundred to thousand times a second.
And there is currently no way to turn it off. There are settings and apps to reduce it, but there is no way to stop the screen from flickering. Checked Apple forums, called Apple Support, and the time I could look at the screen kept shrinking. Got the laptop Tuesday, returned it Friday, today is Sunday and Iām still dealing with a vertigo migraine.
For MacBooks, it seems to vary on the computer model and the software it uses. In retrospect, the issue with my MacBook Air started after a major software update.
And itās not just an Apple thing. Current Windows and Android screens do the same thing. Thereās even a Reddit for people who are sensitive to PWM flickers to help find computers and screens that wonāt trigger eyestrain and headaches.
So, yeah. This week has been a learning experience. But for those who are prone to headaches and migraines, this may be something to be aware of, cause I was not.
