All series featured on this blog have their masterlists posted here! This is a master post of master posts! A master-masterpost. A masterpostception, if you will.
Side note it is Baelpenrose policy regarding shipping conundrums that all characters within stories on this blog are canonically either bisexual or asexual unless cannon decrees otherwise.
Edit YET AGAIN: I am always available on the Archive of Our Own, linked below. Tumblr’s increasing attempts to retire itself from relevance to bend over for Apple make it increasingly relevant to support Ao3. I will continue updating here, naturally, however, should I ever up and vanish, come find me there under the same username.
Final Forward: While I have written all of these, and am not ASHAMED of any of them, I have grown significantly enough as a writer and as a person since time of writing that I do not believe that Tiger Squadron is terribly reflective of the writer (or human being) that I am now, and encourage people to read my other stuff first, then go back to it if they want to get an idea of how I started.
LEGAL DISCLAIMER: No character in the following works is based off a real, living person with the exception of fan submissions, some of which are based off the fans submitting them. All other resemblances to living people is purely coincidental. Resemblance or reference to deceased historical figures, however, is usually on purpose.
Afterverse Studios Staff Announcement:
Afterverse Studios Staff, Writing Team, Beta Readers, etc
Beta-reading Policy
Tiger Squadron Universe:
Campy military sci-fi written for "humans are space orcs" - my first ever written works.
Original Series. (Complete!)
Next Generation (Complete!)
The Healing Earth:
Solarpunk fiction reflecting on humanity, government, religion, anti-capitalism, and possibilities for post-colonial life.
Arcadian Inquisition: Adept (Complete)
Nihilus Rex: Ongoing (Prequel series) (On Hiatus)
The Miys (Partner Series by CanyouheartheLight) (Complete!)
From the Ashes (Forthcoming) - Founder Era story
Under Avandra’s Eyes Series!
Sword and Sorcery fiction dealing with themes of trauma, healing, justice, found family, and coming-of-age.
Under Avandra’s Eyes Book 1: Companions of Torin pt I (Complete)
Under Avandra’s Eyes Book 1: Companions of Torin Pt II (Complete, very much meant to be read as one book with the previous link, split because Tumblr only allows up to 100 links on a given post)
Under Avandra’s Eyes Book 2: Exile’s Path (In Progress!)
Under Avandra’s Eyes Book 3: Netherworld's Reckoning (Forthcoming)
Project Praetorian Series:
Science fiction dealing with themes of trauma, colonialism, and the challenge of complicity vs. agency.
Phase 1: The Project (Complete)
Phase 2: The Invasion (Forthcoming)
Phase 3: The Last Gambit (Forthcoming)
Phase 4: the Aftermath (forthcoming)
Masterpost-ception by CanyouheartheLight (included here as both partner author and frequently cross-promoted. Also because her Miys series is part of the Afterverse)
And if you’re the type who would rather binge via Ao3....
Enjoy!
And support the ongoing madness on Ko-fi if you wish!
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what companies who sell you anti aging stuff don't want you to know is that if you're chill about aging, your perception of attractiveness changes as you get older. there is no "wall" where you suddenly become ugly and unfuckable because in my experience what actually happens is you get into your thirties and suddenly realize that people in their thirties are hot as fuck and the "flaws" that the beauty industry wants you to panic about are a feature not a bug, and based on the std statistics in nursing homes I don't really expect that trajectory to change.
^yep. i would also like to add that people who are young become unattractive as you age. I was in a lingerie store the other day and I swear the bra models must have been 16–18. It was a very weird feeling, like I had brought my daughters with me and they were awkwardly popping out of fitting rooms to be like, "Mom! Can I get this?" College-aged boys, once upon a time a truly exciting demographic for me, now look like lost puppies badly in need of life advice.
With all due respect, I wouldn't want to look like a lost pup at 30.
Material harm is the reason to oppose something.
The reason to not read/engage with Harry Potter is that it gives money to JK Rowling, who will take that money and use it to kill trans people.
The reason to not write HP fanfic is that it creates marketing for Harry Potter, which gets more people into it, which gives Rowling money to kill trans people.
The reason to not engage with Neil Gaiman's works is that it gives him money and cultural influence he can use to abuse more women.
The reason to not write fanfic of Neil Gaiman's works is that it gives him cultural influence in fannish spaces that he can use to abuse more women, and gets more people into his work, which gives him money he can use to abuse more women.
The reason not to engage with Lovecraft's work when he was alive was because he was a notorious racist with ties to hate groups. When he died, this ceased to be relevant, because his money ceased to go towards hate groups.
If Neil Gaiman died tomorrow, the damage that engaging with his work does is no longer being done. He'll be dead. He can no longer do damage, ergo, engaging with his work will no longer cause harm, because dead men cannot abuse women. But he is alive today, and engaging with his work gives him the things he needs to abuse more women, so I'm going to continue avoiding his work. When he dies...that calculation will change.
It is acceptable to engage with Lovecraft's work as you will because dead men whose works are in public domain fund no hate groups.
How acceptable it will be to engage with Harry Potter after JK rowling dies depended entirely on whether or not the IP would continue to fund the annihilation of trans people.
Had Rowling not set up her foundation that exists solely to funnel Harry Potter IP money into the eradication of trans people, then I would have said, "once she dies, feel free to engage with Harry Potter again, dead TERFs fund no evil policies."
But she did. That foundation will continue to fund that money towards the eradication of trans people long after rowling herself has died. Therefore, Harry Potter is not something to pick back up, even after Rowling dies.
To be very clear about this: CPUs aren't magical devices that can operate forever. They generate heat. They wear out over time. This happens faster when they're operating near capacity. This is not just an attempt to inconvenience you; this is an attempt to damage your property.
For the "crime" of not wanting to be tracked/have ads pissed into your eyeballs 24/7.
Even if you've paid for the "privilege" of the latter.
Fuck Google, and I hope they get sued into oblivion over this.
i see everyone in the notes talking about newpipe but nobody's talking about youtube alternatives for desktop
IF YOU USE A DESKTOP PC OR LAPTOP, TRY INVIDIOUS
https://invidious.io/
it is a free, open-source alternative YouTube front-end. in addition to not having ads, it has other great QoL features like a download button. try one of the several instances on that link up there ^^^^
so i was super pissed and concerned about this but i have just discovered that while this is true, it is apparently only true for google chrome users. i just tested this by having ten tabs open in firefox playing ten different youtube videos at the same time and my cpu usage spiked to 25% as the videos were loading and then dropped back down to 10% as they played.
if you ever needed another reason to switch to a different browser, this is it.
#i appreciate how genuine and non-judgemental this comic feels
#like left one is not upset at right one for caring while being powerless
#and right one seems genuinely distraught and not performative
I'm glad the facial expressions are coming across accurately!
It can feel so absurd to say gosh I hope the torment maze removes some fire and rusty nails soon, but alas, sometimes that's all one can do.
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this made me realize that if we applied certain corrosponding sound changes between English and German it would be Nashi or Nati (pronounced the same) in English (you can do some fun things with Sound Corrospondences across the Indo European Languages, this is really fun to do with names)
also you notice this in how Ignatius is pronounced in English (with a Sh sound)
a world where fantastical sexuality in art is not seen as a gutter to emerge from
i think the fact that i can say over and over again 'i am not being ironic, this is not a bit, my books are not a joke' and have people on the right AND left just say 'NO YOU ARE' to my face (or my mask) over and over again is very telling. culture just cannot deal with neurodivergent people yet
i am very thankful i have the confidence to weather decades of people calling my work ‘shit posts’ or ‘intentionally bad’. i think it has personally made me very strong and confident in my art, but it is fascinating how hard it is for some folks to even CONCEIVE of someone this different than them
most creators have these BIG DREAMS and goals, like winning an oscar or traditionally publishing a book: my dream is to live in a world where the average person has a relationship with joy and sincerity and sexuality and fantasy that makes my books seem not outrageous at all. which is how i see them
i know buds mean well when they post stuff like ‘i cant believe chuck tingle went from erotica to traditional bestseller lists’ and thats FINE. i take it in the kind way it is intended. at same time, i want to live in a world where fantastical sexuality in art is not seen as a gutter to emerge from
when i finally trot off and ride that lonesome train, my biggest hope is that someone like me will have JUST SLIGHTLY fewer folks insisting that they must be a character or a joke or an ironic creation because no REAL person would do that. i am real. they will be real too. HERES TO THEM
Ok but like. What the fuck is there to do on the internet anymore?
Idk when I was younger, you could just go and go and find exciting new websites full of whatever cool things you wanted to explore. An overabundance of ways to occupy your time online.
Now, it's just... Social media. That's it. Social media and news sites. And I'm tired of social media and I'm tired of the news.
Am I just like completely inept at finding new things or has the internet just fallen apart that much with the problems of SEO and web 3.0 turning everything into a same-site prison?
You're right that the internet is smaller than it used to be, but there's still some cool stuff left in the corners. I'd recommend checking checking out Neocities if you haven't--it's an independent web hosting platform like Geocities of the old web, and there are hundreds of interesting and active pages discoverable both through their search function and through web buttons (links attached to small pictures with the title of a website) within the websites themselves. Here are three examples of web buttons you may find in link pages:
Most Neocities websites have link pages or button collections with anywhere from tens to hundreds of these. Don't be afraid to explore!
If you're looking for something more like a search engine, I can point you towards Marginalia. It's not a particularly smart engine, but it's perfectly usable if you've ever been taught to use search engines back when they were mostly run through keywords instead of full sentence comprehension. There's also an "about" and "tips" section on the front page with more information. The algorithm of Marginalia can be filtered by the user to allow, disallow, or require JavaScript depending on your needs, plus there are filters designed specifically to prioritize web 1.0 sites or mostly text-based ones. It is possible to search for modern websites with it, but it can return websites from just about any decade (since the invention of the web, obviously) so long as they contain the information you're looking for. For example, here are some random interesting sites I've found using Marginalia:
Native Languages of the Americas: Native American Cultures
BASIC HTML COMPETENCY IS THE NEW PUNK FOLK EXPLOSION!
Earthbound Text Labs by Bill Eager
The possibilities for discovery are truly endless.
Now you might want to know about directories. These make browsing for websites easier, but require you to read through and judge which ones to visit, as there aren't algorithms ranking the sites besides the whim of whoever coded the directory. Some of them have themes, others don't. Here are two that I've used:
Yesterlinks Directory
Ichigo Directory
Directories can be harder to come by just by surfing the net, but they aren't impossible to find. Many personal websites have their own directories of interesting sites hidden within them.
Webrings are similar to directories, but are actually more community-based. You have to register your website to be a part of a webring, usually by sending an email to whoever runs it and meeting some kind of entry criteria. For example, my personal website used to be a part of a webring called Sweet Dreams, which was for websites that heavily utilize color palettes and images of cute things, particularly sweets. Webrings will give you access to a widget upon entry that allow visitors and other members to browse between the registered websites in a massive ring, ergo, where the term gets its name. Webrings can have any theme or criteria for entry. If you can make a website about it, you can find a webring for it.
Now, you might be wondering about social media alternatives. I can't offer much, but I can nudge you towards the idea of forums. Here's one I found that could really use some traffic. I also browse a bit on MelonLand forum, which is actually closed right now--it's currently closed on Mondays--but on any other day of the week, you can find a fun community there dedicated to web revival. You can find it through MelonLand's main page. I'd also recommend checking out SpaceHey, which is a MySpace clone that's customizable and easy to use.
I hope this is of some help to you. The internet may feel less magical than it used to be, but that doesn't mean that the spark has completely died out. These types of indie websites need more attention if we ever hope to reverse the damage done to the internet by centralization and corporate interest. People are trying to make the web a cooler place to be, but we're going to have to do the work of finding and interacting with these projects in order to get them off the ground someday.
ALSO you should consider browsing Virtual Pet List and seeing if there are any pet sites you might be interested in playing. There is a whole genre of browser games right under your nose
Here’s a bunch of silly, small websites, some games & some useful things.
The Useless Web takes you to a random useless website.
Wolvden & Lioden are fantastic “virtual pet” games that are actually rpg sims, very in-depth & time-consuming.
Here’s a shitton of websites that you can play free games on: Addictinggames, Silvergames, Newgrounds, Armorgames, Gamaverse, & if you go to itch.io you can narrow your search to “free” & “online” for more. The powder game still exists as well!
There’s also both Picrew & Meiker for dress-up games, and a personal favorite of mine Charat, and old classic websites like Azaleasdolls are still around!
There’s all sorts of weird little sites all around like this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, and this one that I use to play mad libs w/my friends. Or make custom jigsaw puzzles here.
There’s websites that emulate old DOS games like this and this and this. (sorry these are links to specific games, i’m pulling all the links out of my personal archives)
And of course, there’s a metric shitton of webcomics - not just on popular hosting sites, but old comics w/their own hosting like this one or these ones. I’m not sure how to come by them unless someone who already knows about them sends you one, though.
If you want specific game recs feel free to DM me!
I've been thinking about the Real Internet a lot lately and how deliberately hard it is to find, based largely on the financial incentives of large corporations. If people are willing to pay and love data, I'd also like to point people towards the newsletter Garbage Day and its sister newsletter Garbage Intelligence (there's an interview with the guy who manages it on Numlock News, another great newsletter you should subscribe to if you like data and humor, and that one has a free tier too). Garbage Day is basically about the weird shit that's *actually* popular on different corners of the internet globally, like the Skibidi Toilet apparently, and what those numbers they report mean (like: is the Reddit blackout working? How much did Elon Musk actually fuck up Twitter's engagement?)
Also also, I want to point you towards an English cover of a Japanese meme song because it made me feel more Old Internet than anything I've found in a while. Also then I want you to understand its context because for once that makes it even funnier
Speaking of Machiavelli, I feel obligated to add that almost all perspectives of him form a similar pattern to Beowulf (the manuscript) before Tolkien redeemed it.
What I mean by this is that Machiavelli is largely consumed 3rd hand by most people. Everyone has HEARD of Machiavelli and his book "The Prince", everyone (thinks) they can quote it about better to be feared than loved. In reality, few people will read Machiavelli, or realise that quote itself is incomplete, and Machiavelli bluntly tells you that if you cannot be loved, it is better to be feared, but NOT SO MUCH that people will hate you, because then they will devote themselves to opposing you. He caps off that ideally, you should be feared AND loved, as having only love means that your subjects won't take you seriously, and only having fear means they won't aid you if they think they stand to benefit over you. Having both fear and love (like a parent to a child) means that your subjects will not fear you so much as to not aid you for lack of love and be forthcoming about their own positions, while having their fear means they hold you in a degree of awe which means they won't move against you as they respect you enough to know crossing you is unwise and carries real threat of repercussion. That repercussion doesn't have to be "extermination of your bloodline", but can still carry a noticeable negative (loss of property or certain rights, for example).
What this largely means is that the ideal ruler must be respectable and make themselves seem so to the people that serve them, while being also known to cultivate a sense of justice which carries a real sense of aversion to opposing the will of the Prince/Princess.
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"The gaming industry is bizarre. It is not an industry of success. It is an industry of your competitor, your direct head to head competitor, tripping over their dick and faceplanting into a bunch of shit. The only reason Sony got ground with the PS1 is because Nintendo fucked them with a deal and then went with carts for N64 and spent so many years pissing off third parties that everyone was willing to jump ship. The Saturn fucking killed itself by dropping into stores that were only Kmarts. The PS3 fucked up its entire early launch cycle by going a year late $200 more. And if you can just keep your company not shitty, if you can make a not terrible product, and your competitor makes an awful one, you’re the one who gets all the money"
-Pat from Two Best Friends Play on a interview from over 10 years ago.
I genuinely do not know how Invincible knocks it out of the park with improving Debbie as a character with agency and then completely flops when it comes to Eve.
This strong, independent thinker who wanted to help people on the ground turned into her boyfriend's coattails and always being written to be KNOWN as powerful but never really getting to be powerful once she becomes The Love Interest™/The Girlfriend™ who also doesn't wanna help ppl anymore but help prisons instead??? You can argue that these cracks were there in earlier seasons but I gave it a pass since she was still young and figuring shit out.
But then when ppl point it out, someone tries hitting you with the big brain take of "actually, women losing their personality and personal life in a relationship is normal. You guys just hate healthy relationships" meanwhile when was the last time you heard someone talk about their bf centered friend fondly? Not to mention everyone loves Debbie and Paul and Rex and Rae. To which I have to wonder do they think Samantha's parents have a healthy marriage because that's what Samantha is turned into...her mom.
I'm supposed to believe that the current Samantha is the same Samantha that decided to go to school so that she can use her powers better to help people???? Where's the pipeline of "helping folks at a soup kitchen" and "helping farmers grow their crops" to "assisting in the prison industrial complex"???
This is also because Mark's friends are just deleted from his life for the crime of not having powers cause William could've been Mark's receptionist. Give him something to do in the background so that when he pops up, I don't go "oh look, they remembered Mark has a BEST FRIEND SINCE HIGH SCHOOL".
there's unfortunately an actual answer, and I do not offer it to spare Robert Kirkman.
Kirkman realized he had no idea how to write someone with Eve's powers. he's openly admitted as much.
Eve is functionally a goddess. Literally, that's not a joke. People talk about her like she's the Potential Woman meme, and rightly, because with her powers she could literally create a star inside someone's body and end every fight in seconds. She could rearrange subatomic particles around an opponent and contain even a viltrumite with minimal effort. Ending world hunger would be fairly easy. Ditto solving climate change. Reversing ocean acidification.
Everything Dinosaurus bitches about and panics over later in the comics, driving himself into existential despair and becoming a villain as a result? Yeah, Eve could fix it. Low diff, even.
Re: prison industrial complex? Yeah, forget caging common bad guys, as described, her powers should let her cage *thragg* without a problem.
And Kirkman admitted he realized all of that between the comic run and the start of the show.
Which gave him the problem: how do you give eve a more active role...without cutting out a bunch of the stakes and a lot of the other arcs in the series?
Now, another writer would have simply revised early on to make eve still powerful but not...literally a fucking god with effectively no limits...but Kirkman didn't think of that. So he wound up putting himself in a corner: he has no idea how to actually use Eve.
So he's stuck to early arcs "Pink Lantern" and not revising later arcs in hopes that this won't be a deal breaker.
You know. As someone who volunteers with a lot of foster care work and as someone planning on being a foster parent?
It is remarkable the degree to which “fuck foster kids, they and their guardians aren’t a voting bloc” is a bipartisan attitude.
Under republicans? Any and all protections get stripped out. Parents rights. Especially Christian fundamentalist who are going to beat the devil out of adoptees and don’t believe in liberal bullshit like trauma informed parenting
Dems? Lowest possible priority. There’s always something higher. Not to be terrible, but Dems have a billion social causes they claim to care about, some of which cost money and others don’t. Fixing foster care? Ooof. Expensive. And the results? Not politically a great RoI. And they tend to see fostering as more a conservative thing, ironically, since most of them don’t know there’s a difference between foster care and adoption.
Not that un-elected progressives are usually a lot better!
Listen, I support a woman’s right to choose but it is genuinely haunting how often I hear the sentiment that kids are better off aborted than fostered. Like, fuck, man, wtf do you think that says to currently extant foster kids?
There is an entire blog on here called “exclusively mentioned” that documents how often people bring up foster kids exclusively in the context of abortion debate, whether as “just put them up for adoption” or “would you rather they go into the foster system.” You know how many posts that blog has? Because it’s in the thousands. (Granted not all from this site)
And we might as well also deal with the really unpleasant fact that the left also has a really nasty side effect in idealism too. Yeah, it would be great if no kid ever needed social services, if we could fix society enough that abuse didn't happen, that the stressors that cause abuse-based neglect didn't happen, etc. But they do. And we're not fixing that anytime soon. So the systems that exist to cover that gap need to fucking function.
And then there's all the (BOTH!) conservative and progressive types who will just say that CPS and foster care as a system is evil. They'll dress it up in the appropriate buzzwords for their side - Conservatives will claim that CPS is a challenge to parents' rights, and that it 'damages religious freedom' in some of the requirements for foster care, progressives will say that fostering is a tool of oppressive/colonizer capitalism that separates kids from their birth cultures. The former of which is true but I disagree with parents' rights as a construct, and the latter of which is true to a point, but counterpoint: if you're beating or molesting your kids, you're not connecting them with their culture anyway, and they're still better off separated from you.
And none of that addresses the core problem to begin with, which is that foster care is and remains a disastrously underfunded, undermanned system where kids are shuffled around a faceless, uncaring bureaucracy that isn't uncaring by design but literally does not have the capacity to take care of the people within it. Foster parents regularly report burnout of being handed new kids late at night, with incomplete files about what kinds of support that kid needs, only to find out days or weeks later that they've accidentally neglected the kid because of needs they didn't know existed. Or having a kid for a few months, only to see that kid sent back to parents that then hurt them again, or being outright lied to in being assigned kids whose needs well exceeded what the foster parents could provide.
And none of that is the kids' fault! They're suffering far more. Imagine how horrible it would be to be handed to adults who treated you badly, but you didn't know if they were doing it on purpose or just because they didn't know what you needed, but you'd already learned the hard way not to ask or correct. Imagine being told that this family could handle you, only to find out that not only could they not, they actually had no idea what they were even supposed to be supporting you with, and then it was back to the bureaucracy and away from any kind of stability.
But the fact that these experiences and the psychological toll they take on foster parents keeps happening means more and more of them leave the system every year. Meaning there's fewer and fewer options for where to send kids who need it.
And there's no real effort to fix it. There's no real effort to actually make it better from either side of the aisle.
Sometimes foster kids will be used as a political football - Nancy Mace put up a lot of laws that made life even worse for the queer foster youth in this country, for example. On a more positive note, someone in DHS with a kid adopted out of foster care decided to abolish the 'orphan tax' which is probably among the most grotesquely, beyond-parody evil things this country does.
But actually fixing the system? Yeah, that's expensive and no one on either side of the aisle seems interested because there's just not a lot of RoI in it for politicians.
On the upside, what activism there is to make it better is remarkably bi partisan, because it is a cause that should unite almost everyone.
So if I reblog anything about foster care causes that looks like its' from a questionable source, that's why. It's because that person was the only one talking about it. You'll sometimes see TERFs or christian fundies who care about this reblogging from queers or commies too, because the number of people who circulate info about this cause is so painfully small that it is one of the few causes that doesn't allow the usual political divides.
Under Avandra's Eyes II: Exile's Path
Chapter LVII: Discord in Planning
Baldor raises objections to plans made by Itene and Liza, and reacts to what just happened. Thank you to everyone who has liked, commented, and reblogged!
Baldor
He didn't like this. He didn't like any of this. The implications of what Itene had discovered were horrifying. A lesser god, a nameless horror wandering the world.
Even worse, as Itene kept speaking, he felt a dawning horror.
"I think what Vixen intended was that…that thing, that creature. I think on some level, I was supposed to…not throw it at the Regent, exactly, more…light him up like a beacon for it. That thing would go at him. But…I saw things I couldn't explain while I was in the runebound cage she had, the one Baldor broke. I saw the thing you were all almost eaten by, in dreams. Shortly after my eyes were struck blind by a curse."
Baldor froze. "You…saw it. The thing in the tower? That was the Judgement?"
Itene nodded. "What was left of it, I'm pretty sure. And it just…projected, far enough to talk to me, and just that projection almost killed me. But…if I'm not crazy, the thing that…"
Iris spoke, cut her off. "I saw it too. When the Veil ripped open during the fight. The shadow behind the Harbinger, or the torch behind him - I don't know how to describe it. Lighting him up and covering him in darkness at the same time. Much, much bigger and darker than the thing in the tower. Much older, and much stronger."
Slow horror crawled over Baldor. Even he, sheilded by faith as he was, had been able to understand some fraction of the unspeakable malevolence of that thing in the tower, and the knowledge that that all-enveloping horror in the Blasted Lands had killed a nation as powerful as ancient Sargomia, and something was even stronger.
Then Itene spoke again, and it was even worse. "I think that was probably…what the point of him delving that deep was, right? Hell, why the priests were afraid? If the priests knew what had happened to their forebears, they wouldn't dare play around with that kind of power. But the Regent - if he actually realized he could plumb those depths, and maybe avenge the ancient loss of his ancestors, he wouldn't blink. And if he's drawn power from a place that could bring down that ancient horror…"
Marcus spoke first. "You weren't there in the Blasted Lands. I will be forever grateful that you went to Vixen and shielded us from the curses, but…the thing, there, the Nameless thing…"
Liza cut him off. "The Judgement."
Marcus waved a hand. "Sure, the Judgement, let's call it that. It was huge. I'm fairly sure it was the same size as the entire blasted lands, fused with the Blasted Lands."
Iris shrugged. "That place was alive, that thing was its spirit, I'm almost certain."
It wasn't something anyone was suprised to know, but it was something that none of them had expected to hear so bluntly.
"Then how was it here?"
Liza snapped. "Quit expecting daemons to behave like things with bodies that make sense. Especially greater daemons like that. They never do in stories." She took a breath as everyone looked at her, startled by the tone. "I'm…sorry. I'm…frightened. I shouldn't be getting short with you. But also, there's plenty of tales that say horrors like that don't…they don't play by the rules we do. Anyway. Where were you going, Marcus?"
Marcus nodded. "Itene doesn't know how massive that thing was. If the Regent is backed by something stronger…"
Iris nodded. "He is, I'm certain of it."
"Maybe…maybe we don't have to take him head on. Magically or physically." Thomas said. "Why are we trying to fight him fairly? Let him be stupid enough to go after the judgement whenever he decides to settle accounts for the end of his ancestors, and then sucker punch him while his patron and the Judgement are ripping into each other. Maybe he'll be exposed then. Maybe we'll have the upper hand then, when he won't be able to just overwhelm us with magic."
"Doesn't that imply we'd have to go back to the Blasted Lands? While there's a ton of magic flying around and making it worse?"
Baldor shook his head. "Whatever we're discussing. Stop. That thing in the desert - the Judgement. When it spoke to us. It tried to tell you all to fall to it. Think about what it was saying. It wanted you to become Harbingers. Marcus, when you raged during the sack of Sargonny, are you telling me you didn't feel anything tearing at you? I heard your voice then. It wasn't like the way you usually talk, and that thing…when i was in the Tower, it told me…" he didn't dare say it for a long moment, then found his courage. "Told me you'd be the first to fall, really fall. That all of you have been overusing your khyms and dancing with your own darkness. But it said you'd be the first to really cross the line."
Marcus sat in silence for a long time. "I don't know. I still don't understand everything that happened that night. Sometimes I think back on it and remember it like…like I was watching myself, through someone else's eyes. But…sometimes I was just doing everything myself. But…During our duel, the Regent said something about that. Said I'd have made a better Harbinger than the last Abbadon, but not good enough. Then he seemed to lose his mind at the thought of me or Iris taking the role, later."
Baldor turned that over in his mind. Then Itene added in. "He was. That was something he was thinking about, whn I got a look at his thoughts. That he was realizing that whatever the dark powers had in mind for him, he thought they wanted him to be a given sacrifice. That you and Iris and Thomas were meant to kill him."
Baldor froze. "So…they are meant to fall. Slaying him isn't necessarily a good thing."
Neith wobbled. "Or it is, but not on their terms."
Liza paused. "Sounds to me as though the dark powers are fighting with their own followers - or their own offspring. Or both. Or each other. That's comforting."
Baldor gaped at her. "We are stuck between powers beyond our wildest comprehension that could unmake us with a thought. Powers old as life itself and sprung from the distilled malevolence of everything with a soul. How is that comforting?"
"Because, old man. Gods? Daemons? I don't know those things except as stories. But…them fighting each other? Conflicting agendas? Forcing my enemies to choose their least valuable asset and making their plans conflict? That is a hat I've worn forever."
Neith cursed and spoke before Baldor could respond. "Courtesan. You know not whereof you speak. These are gods and daemons. Their plans and agendas are not as predictable and petty as that of mortal lords. The idea that you could plan or predict against anything they do is insane."
Baldor nodded. "It's also…hubristic. Dangerously so. The gods toy with those who overreach in such a fashion. And you have your own obligations - you tell Itene to have a care for how she chooses to use her magic. Have a care then, how you use your cunning, and don't meddle with forces you don't understand if you'd rather see her avoid them herself."
Liza looked shamefaced for a moment, then whispered. "You're right. I'm just…afraid. I'm scared. I have no idea how to handle any of this. There's only tales of what we're up against, and if these things cannot be understood, I have no idea how we'll manage them."
"Do we have to understand them? Or just to use them against each other? The Judgement is fearsome, sure, but…if it wants to kill the regent, why not feed him to it and run?" Itene asked, almost pensive.
"Because of what Iris said. If he's made pact with something stronger, we have no real way of ensuring that he'll actually be the one devoured - and the last thing we need is him getting stronger for having actually slain any kind of Power." Neith said.
Baldor abruptly slammed his hand down. Everyone looked. "Enough. The reason we should refuse to use such a weapon is not because it would be stupid - though that should guide our thoughts as well - but because it is wrong. Because there are things mortals are not meant to weild, and ruinous powers that destory empires on a whim are among them. We should not be casting about for ways to weild that like a common blade. We have no idea how it may fall back upon us or other people."
The conversation stopped. "It may be that the Regent is msd or wicked enough to challenge the Judgement on his own. But we should not, must not, risk the lives of untold thousands to force him to engage with a horror that has already killed millions and ruined a stretch of land that supposedly once sustained hundreds of thousands into a cursed wasteland."
Itene spoke. "But if I can't use it, can't use what I was bound to, then what Vixen did to me - everything I went through leading up to the day you found me that allowed Vixen to make use of me - all of it was for nothing. I've seen what Thomas does with the skill he learned from his worst days, I've seen what Marcus, Iris, Liza, hell, I barely know them but I've seen what Malzan and Neith do with what they've learned from what's happened to them. Am I supposed to turn aside from what I could do and make it mean nothing because it's dangerous?"
Baldor took a long moment. "Do you truly believe that your mother is a hero because she was once a Palatine's kept harlot? That Thomas is a hero because he was a gutter rat? That Marcus's feats of heroism are to do with his blood parents, or that Iris owes her skill to her dicing with starvation as a girl? Malzan, do you believe you owe your skill and strength to whatever Vixen did to you?"
Malzan shrugged a massive shoulder. The others looked away, and Baldor swore. "Blood of gods. No. It was in you. Neith and I learned from proper teachers. Many, many people who went through what you did would simply be dead. Of those who survived, most would not have become what you have - they would have cut their losses and kept their heads down, or stuck to what adventure could profit them for the sake of survival. going through horror did not make you better - it did not mkae you stronger. You made yourselves stronger to survive it. You chose to find your strength, and then to use it."
Itene paused. "Even if so. My suffering did, literally, make me stronger. That's what Vixen's ritual was."
That drew Baldor up short, until Neith came to his aid. "Not really. To my understanding, you volunteered for it. And while I do not pretend to be a master of the arcane, I understand what VIxen did well enough to state that it would have killed you if you did not have incredible will. You chose to survive that, and you chose to subject yourself to it. You made yourself strong, and the power you have gained is more than just a binding with some ancient horror. You do have magic, real magic, in your own right - not just through the Judgement. You shouldn't seek to dice with some ancient horror for a fast solution to the Regent. Baldor is correct. If your determination comes from a desire to make sense of what's already happened, abandon it. There is no sense to what Vixen did - you chose the path, she manipulated, and you can move forward without binding yourself to her whims any further."
"That still leaves us with the challenge of how we'll kill him." Thomas muttered. "But no, Itene. I don't want to play with that thing in the sand ever again. Stay well away from it."
Itene nodded, and Baldor sighed in relief. They had enough trouble with just the Mad Alchemist. "When we face the regent again, we'll find a way. I think it's easy to forget: last time we faced him, half of us were wounded, and he had help in spades. Next time, we need to make sure we're fresh and he's alone."
That perked everyone back up. Arranging the worst fights to play to their advantages was an old hat, and Baldor…
Well, the old knight had no intention of letting a diabolist tear these people apart. Much less keep him from getting home.
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some people think this is a shitpost so i want to clarify that i am dead fucking serious. make mage the official gender neutral honorific NOW. i want it on my passport. i want it on my bank account. i want doctors and judges to use it for me. i don't care if it sounds a little silly. people thought "missus" sounded crass at first. call me mg.
I had to find this from somewhere and reblog it again because I work at a high school summer camp and told the kids to call me Mg. Day during our first day programming today.
They went NUTS for it! Not only did they love it, but there was an immediate click in understanding about they/them pronouns *from the entire cohort* that I haven’t experienced in 3 years of programming.
And linking it back to the root words Mister and Missus as OP so wonderfully provided helped establish that using they/them or neopronouns isn’t just playing around or “Miss but different” the way it can be with Mx. I used to try to go by Teacher Day because I was still getting she/her’d all the time but that also came with the problems of the students only being able to see me in the role of Teacher and being intimidated by the educational institution and their grades (I don’t even work for the school I’m external staff I don’t even have WiFi access). And I’d still get she/her’d all the time.
As soon as I introduced Magister they saw that a nonbinary person could be an Adult with a *societal* role outside the binary. It was immediately visible in their ecstatic faces. And I didn’t get misgendered today.
The only downside is I’m gonna have to practice my card tricks because I did promise I could do magic!
ok but legitimately i think the reason why kids aren’t taking internet safety seriously is because the people who are telling us not to put our personal information out seem so out of touch. no one acknowledges the possibility of meeting very real teenaged friends online, they always say that everyone you meet is a 40 year old white man in disguise. because they aren’t acknowledging things we know are true, it becomes a lot easier to dismiss the rest of what they’re saying as well. internet safety lessons absolutely must keep up with the times and acknowledge the internet’s capacity for good if you want kids to take to heart warnings about its capacity for bad.
1. Have proof they're a teenager first. More than just a picture, have a video call with them.
2. If you want to meet up with them, have your parents or a trusted adult come with you. Even if they are a proven teenager, its still good to have supervision in case any issues happen.
3. If you are talking to an adult, and they start being sexual in any way, you run the fuck away. It doesn't matter if they're 40 or 20. An adult inherently has a power dynamic that teenagers do not. And its up to the adult to act responsible about it. There's exceptions of course, if you're 16 and dating an 18 year old, that's not a problem, we're not talking about that.
4. Being in a server with adults or ran by adults is not inherently bad. Talking to adults is not inherently a problem, and will likely happen in any number of Discord servers. It is only an issue when they are acting sexual and show predatory behavior.
5. Look out for grooming behavior. It can be difficult, because at first it seems like innocuous behavior, like complimenting or giving gifts. Especially if you feel lonely and have low self esteem. And groomers actively target people like that.
If they start trying to isolate you, talk sexual with you, state they depend on you for emotional needs, blame you for their own actions, try to be secretive about the relationship- Then you need to talk to people you trust, block the perpetrator, and call the police on them.
6. If this does happen to you, remember this: It is not your fault. Even if you didn't listen to a single thing listed here, it is not your fault. It is the fault of the adults who knew better, and didn't care. It's not your fault.
To my followers: if any of you guys are underaged, please be very VERY careful on here, and don’t fall for any of the tricks the groomer would use on you, just block them and report them.
