#mod rune

hi, thank you for this question!

2025 was extremely rough for us, and snarky especially has been going through the ringer health-wise which hasn't given us much time for collaborative creative pursuits!

we still plan on working for this, but making art can't come at the expense of our well-being.

we definitely want to keep working on this as we have the whole outline planned out, but life is life and money is a hellish nightmare

Of course! Let’s start by defining a Witch of Heart, then.

Witch: generally defined as ‘one who manipulates and controls their Aspect, and with their Aspect.’ Witches also tend to enact a great change within their Aspect, usually by rejecting some part of it–shown by Jade and Feferi, who enabled travel between sessions and helped create the dreambubbles respectively.

Heart: typically associated with self, identity, (general) emotions, desires, souls, personality. Heart players also tend to have Heart/personality splinters–like Dirk, AR, and Brain Ghost Dirk.

So in total, a Witch of Heart can be described as ‘one who manipulates and controls self, identity, (general) emotions(,etc.) and [manipulates and controls] with self, identity, (general) emotions(,etc.)’.

As said before, Witches generally enact some kind of great change within their Aspect–usually by rejecting some part of it. With a Witch of Heart, they would enact a massive change (possibly multi-session) with(in) the Heart Aspect.

Possible Abilities:

As a Witch of Heart  can control and manipulate everything that falls within the Heart Aspect, we have a very s c a r y Witch right here. Of course, Witches are always scary, but perhaps one of the scarier ones. :3

They can manipulate personalities, (general) emotions/emotional reactions, desires–they can even control souls and the very core self of others to their own benefit. The pros of this is that a Witch can bring everyone together, force them to confront their flaws, and be centered within themselves and confident in who they are.

The cons? Well.

If this Witch goes rogue, then it’s entirely possible no one of the other players will ever know–as the Witch may manipulate them into being exactly what the Witch needs them to be and doing what the Witch wants them to do. The Witch could also completely change their personality and core selves to better match what they think the other players should be. (Rune also goes into this below, so I’ll leave this part of the abilities here.)

However, the Witch can also manipulate souls. That means that they could very well force people to switch bodies–by switching their souls–turn inanimate things animate/sentient/possessed–by giving them souls–or even, on a more extreme scale, prevent someone from ‘dying’ by forcing their soul back into their body. I doubt it would be a full-on revival, however, like Jane–or any Life player, really–can do, but more forcing the soul to live on inside the body, keeping it ‘animated’, regardless of how alive the body is.

Basically? Zombies. (to a limited extent, as zombies are technically more a Doom-y or Life-y thing)

Strifekind:

Strifekind is really more about whatever the player has around when they first start playing the game that they can allocate to their Strife Deck. We’ve seen Witches who use Riflekind (Jade), and 2x3dentkind (Feferi), and Heart players who use Bladekind (Dirk), and Clawkind (Nepeta). Heck, as a Witch, I use Pistolkind.

So really, it’s up to the environment and whatever the Witch feels comfortable using. However, there is a strifekind list (of sorts) that can be found on the MSPA Wiki, –> here.

As a final note (from my end), a Witch of Heart’s inverse is the Seer of Mind. Mind players may end up creating a rift between actions and the self, or muting the emotional honesty that the Witch manipulates. 

Now, onto Rune’s part!! 

~Ridas

Word to the wise: Do not.

Since the Witch is responsible for huge changes, their ability to weaponize themselves is MASSIVE. 

Witch of Heart is especially creepy because the Heart aspect has everything to do with the Self. This can be both really good, and really really r e a l l y b a d.

On the positive, the Witch of Heart would almost double as a blood player, helping their teammates realize things about themselves in relation to others, and just on their own, too.

Overall, a lot of emotional growth going on. Unless your Witch goes bad.

In that case, the session is already screwed. Witches are about manipulation. Manipulating enemies is all well and good, but it’s a short hop from manipulating enemies to manipulating friends.

After that, all bets are off. It’s a battle mostly between the Witch and themselves. How well does the Witch know their friends? Who responds to certain emotions in the way you want them to respond?

You could also just rearrange your friends entirely to the point where they are literally not your friends anymore.

Long and short of it, theWitch of Heart is pretty much the ONLY player who could win the game by “themselves”.

are you guys going to do artfight?

lmfao fuck no we are fuck deep in survival city we update by the grace of how fucked life is currently for us

we like tried doing a schedule forever ago and then life happened so we are flying by the seats of we gotdang pants

lmao yeah... Back when the fic was getting written we had like... I think a plan for a monthly update to the fic bare minimum if not more? That immediately fell to pieces because that put way too much pressure on us. We were going to school, getting employed, mod snarky was going through the gender turbo divorce vortex... yeah.

As it stands now? We update when we can. Ultimately this is for fun for us, and if we're not having fun then we'll take a step back. All of everyone's reblogs on the askblog and comments on the fic fuel us, because that's how we gauge how many other people are enjoying this enough to share with others (considering likes while highly appreciated don't really help us reach other people outside our usual net) also! But such motivation only does so much, and the creative juices can only flow so long before things dry up. We don't want to burn ourselves out.

i cant speak for mod snarky but i myself am suuuuuper prone to burnout. do not look at my WIPs folder or my unfinished projects. im working on it but theres only so much you can do when life is Like That,

When we first revitalized things here we'd just hurl things onto the blog at like... 1am and it'd be three things and then silence. Now that things are a little more regular (at least for now), we're limiting those posts to one a day in the estimated prime time for our area. That way when we get inspiration writing up answers to those asks and drawing the art, more of you loyal folks are inclined to see it and they won't get buried as easy with dead space in between. Don't... Don't expect a post every day though.

this also helps my hands and arms not hurt lmao i have a lot of compression wear for a reason and it is: bone hurty juice

As for the mainline fic? Hhaaahhaa. Hhhg.ggk. That's fast and loose. That has absolutely NO schedule or deadline because mod snarky over here would start crying hysterically. I want writing to be fun! I got an English degree, I don't need to put that pressure on myself again. Mod maroonian's supplementals follow a similar ruling.

We're sorry we can't be more regular about it, but we do our best to post things now at a time where people will see them. We love y'all! <3

heres another "canon got shot out back" moment haha—

this is a tidbit briefly mentioned in CH6 of TDWU!

so the reasoning is, eridan's a bit of a historian! of course, his biggest fascination as a kid was with military history (as is in canon)! this also means he's a very good strategist too (again. fascination with military history. he puts on the airs but i feel like he should have This Aspect To Him.)

but with how the, you know, genocidal delusions of grandeur cant really pan out with the Everything going on

ultimately hes vain, hes self-centered, as a kid he 100% had his head in his ass, and then everything he ever wanted out of his own life's come crashing down around his fins when reality knocks and says hello, You Can't Actually Do Whatever You Want, so he has to put stock in the other parts of what he centers his personality on. ergo, redoubling his focus on military history and his focus on his pedigree (cringe highblood politics and the like)

he has to go around searching for lusii to feed to the imperial lusus, so hed get into a lot of weird places. just so happens sometimes you chase a lusus into a cave and then find only one of the most delicate and valuable historical documents to alternian history just hidden away and threatening to be destroyed by any rogue beastie that would senselessly trample it

and wouldnt a primary source about a well-known failed insurgency be a fascinating thing to find and keep preserved for the historical value when you get older?

its not that he subscribes to or practices the beliefs held therein, but... its literal history! and theres incredible value in that

eridan had to do a lot of translation work between alternian dialects so he has a very, very, very rough understanding of old low alternian that made it so he could, after extreme amounts of repetition, piece together what psii was singing! an understanding which has been getting better gradually who said that thats treasonous.

(410): Help everyone’s hot