All The Shit

“Each of the sisters renounced their vocation and left the church. In the intervening time, they have been outspoken about the church’s hardline stance against homosexuality. “God wants people happy, to live the love in the light of the sun,” Isabel reportedly told Italy’s La Stampa newspaper.”

Gotham City Forensic Files (x)

Further random thoughts:

The trains are capable of incredible top speeds and punch right through nearly any obstacle placed on the tracks, so efforts to block or redirect them generally fail,

They also take their role as public transit seriously, and seem to actively resist attempts to control access to them; if a station is secured against public access, the trains will simply pick a new stretch of track nearby and begin to stop there instead.

The trains will forcibly eject anyone who attempts violence against another passenger, so the interior of the cars is an enforced neutral zone. Creatures that would ordinarily be utterly inimical to humanity can be encountered safely while riding the rails – though the trains won’t stop them from following you off when you disembark!

The attendant difficulty of forcibly removing passengers from the trains renders them something of a sanctuary. Fugitives sometimes end up living on the trains full-time as a result, bartering with regular passengers for their daily needs; it’s whispered that even those who’ve offended the gods may find safety on the trains.

Owing to the trains’ apparently prescient ability to anticipate public demand, efforts have been made to predict the future – or at least the flow of commerce – from the patterns of the trains’ schedules; this typically meets with limited success.

A true renaissance painting y’all-

You know, I always feel a little sorry for Master Dennet. The Inquisitor is like, hey, I need a horse expert! Here is a horse expert! And he comes along to be your horse expert.

And for a while all is well. He brings his own fine horses, and the Inquisitor adds to the stable as she finds new breeding stock—often excellent. Where she got the charger from, he doesn’t know, and he feels too honored by having it in his care to ask.

And then the Inquisitor starts coming back with like… deer. And Dennet scratches his head, because he knows horses, and just because it has four hooves and you can put a saddle on it doesn’t make it a horse. Hell, the food and space and exercise requirements for a cob and a draft horse aren’t the same—a goddamn deer is presumably completely different. But he goes around Skyhold rounding up Dalish elves until he finds one who knew something about halla, on the principle that that’s probably the closest thing, and they work it out. (He’s always respected the way Dalish treat their halla, so it’s not that big of a leap. And even though Dalish—the Charger—doesn’t know anything much about how to raise halla, he looks the other way when she wants to spend half a day in the deer’s box stall being all affectionate at it. Can’t hurt.)

But deer of various kinds are at least still… well… grass-eating hoofed animals. Things don’t begin to really go sideways until they bring back the first dracolisk.

It’s a lizard. It’s a giant meat-eating lizard. Dennet is a master of horse, and he will stretch that to deer in a pinch, but asking him to figure out the care and feeding of big spiky lizard things is a bit much. It is—he tries to explain, first to Cullen and then to Josephine and finally to the Inquisitor herself—as if someone had decided that because you knew how to knead bread, you were obviously a master pugilist, because both things involved punching things. For his trouble he got a friendly clap on the shoulder and a “Just do your best! We can free up some funds to hire you more help!” (help from where? was he to hang up fliers somewhere for dracolisk handlers? where exactly was one supposed to go for that?).

(We will not even discuss the zombie horse with a sword through its head. We will not. The zombie horse got a stall to itself and was studiously ignored, on the principle that it was dead, and not much Dennet did could either help or hurt it.)

Dennet knew that he was in over his head and then some when the Inquisitor showed up with a charming grin and a giant fucking nug, and all he thought was, “Better see if any dwarves know what to feed it.” (Dagna does, but he’s a little afraid because she keeps having these ideas for ‘experimental feed,’ and….)

Demons are masters of manipulation and temptation and I don’t think the Sloth demon would have just given the Warden a dream about Duncan and hoped that would work.

Cousland, waking to a beautiful morning in Highever, the troubles of the waking world nothing but a bad dream they can’t really recall. Their father and brother have returned from Ostagar, the darkspawn were easily dealt with. It’s a joyous day of festivity and celebration in Castle Cousland and everything is as it should be. But they can’t shake the feeling of grief in the pit of their stomach…

Mahariel hears the creaking of the aravels as they move through the forest. They’ve fallen asleep on their halla again, Tamlen complains about having to keep them from falling off and laughs about how they could even have fallen asleep like that. Mahariel starts to respond with their usual affectionate annoyance but stops when they look at Tamlen and can only think thank the creators he’s safe….but of course he’s safe why wouldn’t he be? They banter with their friend as their clan continues to trek through the forest but their instincts tell them that something isn’t right.

Amell and Surana have been to the fade before, they’re more guarded when it comes to demons. When the Sloth demon shows them a dream in which they’ve been freed from the circle it doesn’t take them long to realize that they’re being tricked. After all when they tried to visit their family after leaving the circle the demon kept having to keep them from doing so….Amell and Surana don’t even remember what their family looks like so the demon can’t know either.

Brosca is getting dressed up in the fanciest of armour only suitable for a noble house such as theirs, when Rica appears and wishes them the best of luck at the Provings. She warns Brosca that the Carta has bets going against them, and needs to be careful no one’s tried to rig the competition. A sense of familiarity washes over them, because yes, that is exactly the kind of thing the Carta would do. But how would Brosca know that? The Carta, that’s Casteless business. 

THIS SHOW IS SO PURE!

Of course I had to show the best part:

& then years later Yennefer comments on how improbably youthful Jaskier is and Geralt’s like ‘yeah he’s part elf’ (cause like, we’re all ambiguously-human friends here, nbd)

Jaskier: no, what are you talking about? what made you think that??

Geralt: I thought you knew.

Jaskier: what do you mean, you thought I knew??

Jaskier: listen, I know the names of all my family going back to my great-great-great-great grandparents, and none of them were elves? 

Geralt: ….well. one of them’s lying.

Jaskier: I don’t like what you’re implying

Geralt: I’m not implying anything

Jaskier: yes, you are? you’re implying that one of my ancestors committed adultery with an elf? which is patently absurd?

Geralt: are you on speaking terms with your parents at the moment

Jaskier: what does that have to do with anything

Geralt: it’s just I don’t know if you should hear this from me

Jaskier: well, I AM hearing it from you, aren’t I????

Geralt: I shouldn’t have brought it up. I thought you knew.

Jaskier: where are you even getting this from? oh, what can you just, sense that somebody’s part elf with your magic witcher powers?

Geralt: …………….

Yennefer: oh?

Jaskier: it turns out my grandmother fucked so many people that the paternity of all of her children is up for debate

Jaskier: so they just sort of had to guess which of them were the half elves and in my mother’s case, they were wrong.

Yennefer: that’s hilarious

Geralt: I’m starting to see where you get it from

Jaskier: quite

Jaskier: anyway my mother says please will you come and smell everyone else on her side of the family just in case