#entales

he enjoys teaching at veth’s young adventurers’ summer school, but he loves the greater time and deeper curriculum that comes with being a professor. it allows him to delve down rabbit holes to his heart’s content, and with his style of teaching that’s almost like folklore, first-time are always surprised when everything turns out to be relevant

he likes to save his adventure tales as rewards for after difficult classes and exams. it encourages students not to skip

the cats stay in the room during class

he doesn’t have a favorite age to teach <3 just kidding it’s 10-to-12-year-olds

he has an incredible radar for which students are struggling and how to explain the concepts to them in a way they’ll understand. the cats help with this

on the other hand, it’s very hard for him to teach students who are being bullied, mistreated, or abused, because there’s only so far he can step in. the cats help with this, too

he does love his students, but when no one shows up to office hours it’s an instant relief. teaching takes so much social energy 

teaching allows him to work closely with astrid and other members of the cerberus assembly, which is even more exhausting, but he chooses to believe that this is the world where advocacy can lead to justice

he always has a ta or other messenger on hand to tell the class what’s up if he gets in trouble for his anti-imperial sentiment. usually the academy only reprimands him, but one time the crownsguard hold him under arrest his students protest every day that week

        Not many people ever get to see Lip Hennessy looking this serious.  Without her usual affectations, she is almost unfamiliar.  Her perfect brows are furrowed, her glossy lips pressed into a tight line as she concentrates on the task in front of her.  Carefully, she cleans Casey’s wounds, then dresses each with sterile gauze from her bike bag.  She knows a thing or two about first aid, at least.

        “You didn’t need to do that.”  She doesn’t realize how quiet she’s been until she hears herself speaking up.  “I mean, you shouldn’t have done that.  Whatever they were saying about me, it’s nothing I haven’t heard before.  It isn’t worth getting hurt over.  Hold still, this is going to sting.”

        “Maggie!”  The call rings out, friendly and gleeful over the ambient noises of a near-empty street. The distant wash of traffic, the muffled thumping of some club somewhere.  “Maggie, oh my gawd, I haven’t seen you in forever!”

        Lip isn’t sure why they picked Maggie.  Maybe she looks like a Maggie somehow, this stranger, or maybe Lip met someone named Maggie earlier today and it just stuck in their head, and maybe they’re focusing in on a completely irrelevant detail to distract themself from the terror of the scenario.

        It could be paranoia.  It could be nothing.  But Lip knows the outlines of the scene, glimpsed from afar as they bike home: the woman, walking alone at night; the man, walking a little too slowly some distance behind her.  The distance closing.  Lip’s stomach is turning, but now they’re slowing down, now they’re gliding to a crawl next to the woman on the sidewalk.  The woman who is not named Maggie, who isn’t their long-lost friend, who has nothing to do with them.

        “It’s so good to see you again,”  they babble with the same cheerful loudness, swinging one leg over the bike’s rear tire to dismount and walk beside not-Maggie.  Their face doesn’t match the pep in their voice.  From behind, the man won’t be able to see what gives the lie away.  The fear in their eyes, their knuckles white on the handlebars.  They don’t like being on foot at night, but it’s not like not-Maggie knows them well enough to accept an offer to ride on the back of the bike.

talk about... (spins a big wheel) lip's feelings on vampires and their decision to purposely embody the role of victim to cope

        Oh BOY.  So I already talked on this a bit here, but let’s go deeper.  (Okay, there’s gonna be multiple other posts linked throughout this post, because that’s just how I roll, but if you only have time to read one of ‘em, make it that one.)

        As described in that earlier post, Lip’s fascination with replaying the attack¹ came from a desire to take control of the narrative— a way to retell the story while casting themself in a way that put them in control of it.

        The nature of their work is also, in a way, a reaction to years of enforced hiding.  By bringing the action to an audience, they bring it out into the open, to a point where it cannot possibly be denied.  ...Well, kind of.  Their performances are showy, but the truth of the first attack isn’t something Lip ever shares.  In a way, their current routine is actually just a different way of hiding.  In the same way that they’ve camouflaged the first scar by simply covering themself in more scarring, they hide the reality of their victimization by covering it in the glitter of stage victimhood.  They grew up with their family’s rules, pretending the thing that hurt them never happened.  Now they’re out on their own, living by their own rules, and they pretend the thing that hurt them doesn’t hurt at all.

        Under the cut I’m gonna talk more about the history of their behavior, as well as addressing the other part of this question.  Warning for discussion of grooming, abuse, addiction, self-endangerment, mentions of suicide.

so veth is tam lin, right? the more you hold onto her, the more she changes shape until she becomes herself

as an audience, we meet her when she’s already died and come back as something else, something she doesn’t consider her. but the only way we can make sense of her is through how she is now. so veth has this neat trick of transforming before our eyes, long before caleb’s spell restores her halfling form – it happens when she tells her whole story. knowing nott used to be a halfling (and has always been, since we met her, a wife and a mother and a revenant) changes how we perceive nott. and as soon as we know, we have to wonder, how much of nott is true to who veth was? and to who she will be in the future?

i think the answer is just, everything. everything that is and was nott belongs to veth, too. despite what sam said on talks, i personally don’t think becoming a goblin, in terms of the physical change itself, had as much impact on her personality and actions as the trauma of dying and transforming did – drinking, for instance, is a way of coping with self-loathing and fear, which were always parts of her. so even while she’s changing shape, in the audience’s eyes, in the other characters’, nott reflects everything about veth.

We obsess. It’s in our nature. / from caleb!

deathless.

his use of we doesn’t go unnoticed. it’s quite clever, really: an appeal to some shared nature between them, as fellow magicians. to an extent, it even works. aster can count on one hand the number of magicians she’s met on this side of the veil, and she does feel a certain kinship with caleb as a result.

with anguis, it was always we. us, ours. you and i, together alone. he said they were the only ones of their kind, but now aster thinks they were very different kinds after all. she doesn’t yet know what “kind” caleb is.

      ❛ magic— magic is a gift, ❜  she tells him.  ❛ once you’re given it, it’s yours to do with as you please. and in this country, i’ve seen it do terrible things. ❜  many people wish they could bring reality to its knees, and many people would not use that power kindly, or wisely. she is loath to create another anguis who will bleed the world dry.  ❛ i would not hand you a knife without first knowing how you’ll use it. ❜

     caleb found eye contact difficult to balance even at the best of times, when he was young. before a queen, it is an impossible thing. even if she weren’t a queen, maybe, for he is --- what he is. what he is and isn’t and always cannot be, now. so he stares too long or blinks too hard and fast or, as now, looks down at the meager, hoarded collection of magic words in his spellbook and away from her.

     “magic is – a loan. to me, it would be.”

     he wonders what would happen if he said, so have i. magic is his great joy, perhaps the only thing in his life that truly gets his heart working. ( except... except for nott, but she is not a thing, and he can neither bear the thought of losing her or of keeping her. ) he also knows that he has done great harm with his so-called gift. he cannot promise not to do terrible things again.

     “it can be earned, paid off. or taken away.”

     frumpkin puts out his paw to trap caleb’s finger as it travels up and down the book’s binding. his green eyes flash. caleb does not try to interpret the look.

also @entales who sent the exact same symbols too jshfjsbfjsjd

✼ When it comes to worldbuilding, what are some ideas you’d like to explore in rp?

hmmmm. the first thing that comes to mind is my dimension traveler verse. i don't think i ever explored it enough. not the repetitiveness and the scale of it, but the length of time he spends in one single dimension. the immortality of his existence. he could spend a decade or a hundred years in one world --- decide on a mission and see it through to the end --- before leaving for the next one. some people could know him their whole lives and view him as a constant while to him they're a fraction of his long life. Also just the mechanics of fitting a dimension traveling time hopping little demon into every new world + adjusting his connection to time and space in every universe is *rubs hands together* IDK! COULD BE FUN??????

also i would love to explore my AUs more,,,, just like. all of them LOL esp my tm.a crossovers

◑ What is a side to your muse you want to show off, but haven’t had the chance to yet?

when it comes to elliot i haven’t explored his teen / adult life nearly enough tbh. when i first created that AU i intended to write mostly about his career as a freelance hitman / thief but it’s been 2 years since i started writing in that AU and he’s a near perpetually 13 year old menace still KSHBVKDHFBV i mean ... im not complaining too much bc i have a lot of fun writing him as the bratty antagonistic troubled kid that he is and he’s accumulated a veritable army of pseudo-adoptive parent / sibling figures over the years. but ahhhhhh. writing a kid is kind of limiting and he has a lot of unexplored potential as an adult that i would love to sink my teeth into.