Featuring our beloved trans boy Cyrus. Happy Pride! 🏳️⚧️ 🌱 🌻
Zora wants to dishonor the Magic Knights. Cyrus plans to be their healer.
At the Black Market, Mask and Ambrose have forged a friendship by chance. A moody vigilante training to fight at the Brawl, and a bright-eyed recovery mage who always has his back. Their identities are as secret as their hopes and dreams.
What happens when Cyrus uncovers Mask’s past, and Zora suspects Ambrose is connected to the people he seeks to disgrace?
At long last, here we are! Another installment in my chaotic Scarlet Cross AU.
This is the story of Cyrus and Zora's friendship at the Black Market. It takes place between chapters 4 and 8 of Scarlet Cross, five years before the Magic Knights Entrance Exam.
Chapter 1: Stenotalis ramosissima
Zora joins the Black Market Brawl.
For four years, Zora does everything the smart way.
He gets his grimoire and studies Dad’s old books until he can see every rune with his eyes closed. Ignores the street fights he can’t win and profits off the ones he can. That’s easy; there are plenty of shitheads who are all bark and no bite. A single thug robbing a woman at knifepoint. Two drunks throwing fisticuffs after too many beers. Purse snatchers who can run better than they can fight.
He lurks around busier streets in the Common Realm where shit happens every day. A few odd jobs here, a few errands there, all paid under the table. Sometimes he infiltrates the Noble Realm incognito and filches a few overpriced trinkets to pawn, just enough to cover a room at a shitty bed-and-breakfast in the town of Veritas. Harmless stuff.
Then, Steno fucking Taliss of the Purple Orcas tries to strangle a bartender over a tab dispute, and Zora steps in like a dumbass.
Chapter 2: Consolida ajacis (I)
Zora makes a friend.
“Is that all you got?” Zora taunts, raising another Counter-Trap before himself like a shield. “Come on, big guy! Show me a spell!”
Grey doesn’t rise to the bait. He fixes his beady eyes on Zora’s skinny frame and lets out a rumble from the pit of his stomach. The noise sounds like a battle cry from an otherworldly predator, echoing in the depths of Grey’s inconceivably large body.
What the hell is Grey’s deal, anyway? His grimoire has been sitting inside his satchel this whole time, untouched. Does he not have any spells?
Lame.
The audience, apparently, disagrees. They’re eating this shit up, laughing and cheering whenever Grey’s hand comes dangerously close to punting Zora straight out of the Armageddium, and jeering whenever one of Zora’s traps so much as snag the big guy for a second. Thanks to Zora’s shit reputation, everyone in the stands is itching to see “Super Mage” get his ass handed to him.
Everyone except for one boy, who’s standing on a terrace between two sections of bleachers, beaming and waving when Zora circles to that part of the stadium.
Ambrose is back.
Last week, Ambrose had cornered Zora after his match and dragged him all the way to the Apothecrafty, a shop across the street run by a witch named Edna, for an impromptu healing session. Then the boy had heard how often people got hurt at the Brawl and declared that he’d come back to help every week. Zora hadn't believed him.
Well, well.
Zora smirks. It’s not that he needs the validation. He’s fared just fine for nine months as The Bad Guy. But if the pipsqueak’s here, going against the grain to cheer him on, he’ll give him a show.
Soft tagging @blockcat-safari, @jackdraw-spwrite, @cityofangeisislying, @audioeidolon, @venusplantt, @bardicc-inspo and @voidindite in case they would like to play along :)
(Feel free to jump in if this looks fun and I forgot to tag you!)
@chaptersonetoinfinity @kalolasfantasyworld, @ichigo578i, @aquamage1000, @baelor-the-based, @lyranova, @f-oighear, @purpled-royalty and anyone who wants to join.
we have to thank our brave soldiers in fandom who write gen fics. we have to thank our brave soldiers in fandom who write character studies and stories with no focus on romance or sex. we have to get on our knees and thank the brave soldiers in fandom who write about minor characters and friendship and family with no focus on romance or sex. i know it’s hard to care about characters in a world that seems to only revolve around ships but i see you. and i love you
there will never be anything as funny as the mutual disbelief between long form and short form fic writers about each other's style.
short form writers look at people writing 100k+ fics as though this is some sort of talent given as part of a fae bargain, that the commitment required shows some sort of ungodly mental fortitude.
meanwhile long form writers look at people writing 1000 word one shots like god I would cut off my left nipple to be able to say anything concisely. i would love to play with multiple ideas. free me from the shackles of this child I have birthed. i love them but I now must take them to t-ball and doctor's appointments and they're going to destroy everything I own.
90% of the advantage of writing is that once the words are set on paper they don't have to live in my head any more and I can stop thinking about that particular story.
The problem is that stories expand to fit the size and shape of their mental container so this doesn't actually help. Other unwritten stories reproduce or grow to fill the space. I Will Never Be Free.
Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers. Let’s spread the self-love 💗
Aw, thanks, Izzy! This is a really wholesome ask chain game we have here. I’m glad I have more than five fics to pick from, haha! My favorites are all longfics because I'm a yapper. The shortest one of the five is around 90k words. Let's see:
Scarlet Cross: my Black Clover Canon Divergence + Genderbend AU. Yuno is a Black Bull, Talia (girl!Asta) is a Crimson Lion, and Noelle is a Blue Rose. Cyrus (boy!Mimosa) stays a Golden Dawn, but by the almighty forces of the butterfly effect, when he’s eleven, he ventures into the Black Market and befriends one grumpy, masked vigilante (guess who?).
Fraxinus fraternitas: this one technically isn’t out yet, but hopefully it will be posted within the next month! It’s part of the same AU as Scarlet Cross, but focuses specifically on Cyrus and Zora’s friendship. I have the rough drafts for all the chapters done, so I *have* technically written it already. But my drafting process is very chaotic so I need to rewrite it all for it to make sense :P
When the World’s Unkind: another longfic for The Magicians. It was also for a Big Bang (a second event run by the mods of the previous big bang that took place a year after!). This time my prompt was the movie “Stardust”, and I decided to add a sci-fi spin to the fantasy element of the plot, so this fic had both magic and high-tech! Gallop the Talking Horse from the last fic has become Gallop the Android Assistant that talks to the princess through the speakers of a flying motorcycle.
Come See About Me: the first longfic I wrote for The Magicians. It was a part of a Big Bang, where we picked a Hallmark Holiday Movie as a “prompt” and wrote an AU that involved at least three plot elements from the prompt movie. This one was based on the movie “Christmas Inheritance”. I had a lot of fun playing around with a non-linear narrative, where I had flashback chapters written in past tense, interwoven with present-day chapters written in present tense. One of my OCs here was a talking horse named Gallop.
Veracity: MY BABY. MY DEBUT ON AO3. My first ever fic. Also the longest single work I’ve written thus far, ending at over 330k words. (Not my first ever piece of writing though; I wrote original fiction for a few years before I dove into the fanfic side of things.) It’s a Sense8 Post-Season 2 AU. It was originally my version of the ending because the show got cancelled prematurely, but it was revived for a movie-length finale, so this fic became a canon divergence!
huge fan of the depth of a good purple but another area that draws me is definitely around aquamarine/turquoise/seafoam. you can not go wrong once the green starts getting just a tinge more blue. a gal could certainly do worse than to pull over there and stay a while
I'm back again with an event for Vanica/Grey this year! However, things are going to be a little different!
First of all, this is only a little thing - a day event - stretching over three days to account for timezones and give anyone participating a little wiggle room.
Secondly, there is NO prompts list this year. It's a free-for-all, essentially - write or draw whatever takes your fancy! Your only limit is your imagination.
I've made these changes because I'm busier than I used to be, so I've not got the time to run a larger week event. But I didn't want to skip entirely, so now it's small and cute!
There are only two guidelines for this: firstly, please don't use AI in your submissions. This is about what YOU can make! And secondly, make sure to tag me at @dapple-events as you submit a piece, so that I don't miss it.
You may be wondering why I'm officially announcing this so early considering it's quite a small event over two months away. That's because I'm actually about to take time away from Tumblr, which I'll discuss more on my main in a bit, so I needed to do this first and get the ball rolling before I go. In the meantime, if you have any questions about the event, I'll be checking in here every few weeks or so in the lead-up to the event, and I'll be returning to Tumblr to host this later.
Clover slayers Asta, Yuno and Liebe redrawn as the first Kny poster! Yapping undercut:
Idk if i've mentioned it before but Asta's haori pattern is Tatewaku which is like a river stream. I chose it because it can represent overcoming situations, but Asta wouldn't have been able to afford this. It was just a fabric him and liebe had around them as babies.
Yuno's pattern is yagasuri, basically like arrows/bird feathers on the end of arrows. Not only does the bird feathers fit with his wind/eagle theming, but the arrows are something he uses in his spells too. He has blue on him simply because he needs to look atleast somewhat related to Asta, since their looks arent doing that.
Liebe's pattern is shippo, which represents harmony and good relations (Harmony bc Liebe is the first demon who can resist his urges, one step closer to harmony with demons). I mostly chose it because it looks like a star pattern like his eyes and patterns in devil union. His hair used to look exactly like asta's hair, but when he became a demon it turned more white. The edges are it's original colour, though it's hard to tell.
Yuno using that rusty ass axe to attack yami, bro the shadow hashira needs to worry not about the demon brother but about getting tetanus.
Hiiii guys!! Here are all the ocs I drew from the day I got extremely bored!!
None of the ocs are mine!! They all have owners!!!! You'll probably know who I'm talking about!
Odette -> @hybridanafrost Talia -> @chaptersonetoinfinity
Sera -> @queenbutterfly276 !! I can't remeber everyone elses tags off the top of my head, so comment or shoot me a message if you want me to tag you here lol!!
Also if youd like an OC drawn the shook me a message or ask! It may take a bit though because these are all doodles I do when bored <3
They're squeans I'm pretty sure! If they pop like that anyway. But the term for this kind of "symbol to refer to the general vibe of something in art" is called "Emanata" because it emanates from a person or object.
I had thought these names were all made up by Mort Walker in his 1980 book Lexicon Of Comicana but apparently at least some of them had been in use since the 40s
Please keep interacting with this post because when I come to tumblr to procrastinate, this shows up again in my notifications and guilts me into writing again
tangentwithtanner
germansingergirl
amandla
areudirty
titsay
