"You lied." - Bafta Award Winning Actress Laura Fucking Bailey. Lena. She/her. Fan of all and nothing, but mainly all, especially if it's gay. My ask is a safe place, don't be afraid to talk to me. Critical Role, Carmilla, Supergirl and random stuff. Main account lena-conh
the evil amulet is a classic but have we considered The Good Amulet . villain who switches sides because they put on The Amulet That Makes You Good and fell too deeply under its spell to ever take it back off and the heroes are trying to figure out how they feel about that ethics-wise
You just found out that your roommate is a literal god(dess). One who is completely unknown and has not a single follower, because apparently they tried that before and quote: "they were so annoying."
"Right." Lena's eyes weren't on the other woman as she said it though. Instead, her attention was locked onto the innocent white flowers blooming against green leaves. Flowers which Lena had watched blossom before her very eyes—as if she had been watching a time-lapse. The apparent cause: Kara, leaning over the potted plant and blowing gently across its branches. "A goddess."
"Please don't tell anyone," Kara begged with a wince.
"I won't," Lena promised, mostly on reflex. To be honest, she didn't think she could find someone who would even believe her. Hell, Lena probably wouldn't have believed it herself if she hadn't just witnessed irrefutable proof of the divine first-hand.
Still, Kara seemed relieved by the assurance, as she let out a sigh and her shoulders lost their tension. "Thanks. It's, not really something I want getting out, you know? I mean, it's hard enough-"
"How?" Lena interrupted. She was yet to look away from the flowers. With a jerk of her arm, to wave in their direction, she clarified, "How did you..."
Kara blinked, seemingly caught off-guard by the question. "Oh." She glanced down at the potted plumeria, then back over to Lena and shrugged. "I dunno. I just, wanted it to happen and it did. Or asked it, or willed it, or something. I'm not sure, it's not really a science."
"You don't know," Lena echoed. "You don't... You don't know." She swallowed, mouth dry, still staring at the impossible flowers.
"Are you alright?" Without even looking, Lena knew from Kara's tone that a small crinkle had formed between her brow. Cautiously, Kara stepped closer.
"I'm fine," Lena told her, though her voice was too high even to her own ears. She could hear her own heartbeat pounding away as she stared at the plumeria flowers. The ones she'd seen blossom bloom right in front of her.
"...Would you like to sit down?"
"Yes please."
Several minutes later Lena sat at their small kitchen table, hands wrapped around a lightly steaming mug of herbal tea. It was Kara's own blend, the soothing effects of which she swore by. The thought occurred to Lena that Kara very possibly grew the leaves herself—just as she had the plumerias. Was the tea itself magical? Lena's grip on the mug tightened as she felt her thoughts beginning to spiral once more.
"You okay?" Kara asked, and Lena glanced up from her tea.
"Fine," she replied after a beat. "Just, processing."
"Take your time," Kara offered quietly. Lena nodded, and took a sip of her tea.
By the time her tea was half-gone, Lena felt steady enough to broach, "So. You're a goddess."
"Just a small one."
A small goddess. Right. Lena took a deep breath. "Okay. Where do you come from?"
"Uh... Greece? Thessaly, I think, but borders change. There was a small farming community near-"
"No," Lena interrupted, though she filed away the information. "I mean, where do you come from? Were you..." she gestured vaguely, "born?"
"Oh." Kara blinked, as though she'd never considered it before, and tilted her head thoughtfully. "I don't think I was born, exactly. It's kind of fuzzy. The earliest memories I have are of people praying at my shrine. Over time it gets more distinct, but... I don't know. Maybe that's how gods are born, people pray hard enough and we start to exist."
That... made no sense at all, but it was enough of an explanation for Lena to pretend it did. Enough to shelve and move on from before it drove her insane. Instead, Lena directed her focus towards safer topics. "What are you the god of, exactly?"
For some reason, that question caused Kara's face to flush bright red. "Oh, you know," she said vaguely, avoiding Lena's gaze. "This and that. More of a, miscellaneous deity, really. Warmth, sunlight, mild summers. Crops. Um. New life."
"Fertility," Lena clarified, and Kara's blush grew even fiercer. "You're a fertility goddess."
"Not like that," Kara said firmly. Then the blush spread to her ears and she reluctantly amended, "Well, okay, yes like that but mostly just plants and animals. The, human fertility thing was very much a later addition."
"So what happened to you?" Lena asked, changing the subject partly for Kara's sake and partly to sate her own curiosity.
Kara's brow crinkled and she met Lena's eyes with mild confusion. "What do you mean?"
"What happened to you?" Lena repeated, and waved her arm generically at Kara. "You're a goddess. An actual, living goddess. Why are you masquerading as a broke college student when you could be, I don't know, having your followers wait on you hand and foot?"
Kara blinked, then scowled. "I am not broke."
"I've been paying your share of the rent for the last six months," Lena deadpanned.
"I'm going to pay you back!"
"Kara. I don't care about the money." Lena had cash to burn, and the joy of Kara's presence far outweighed the price of rent. "I just don't understand why you're here instead of, I don't know, ruling from Olympus or something."
"Okay well first of all," Kara told her, "I'm a minor goddess at best; I'm not ruling from anywhere. Second of all, losing my shrine and my followers was the best thing that ever happened to me. I mean, sure, in the beginning it was nice. People would pray for good crops—or an easy pregnancy for their livestock—I do my thing, and come springtime they sacrifice a portion in my honor. It was nice."
"Then?" Lena pressed.
"Then I got popular," Kara said, spitting the word like it was a curse. "At first, it was just the one town. Then word spread, and people start traveling to see me. And they don't want me to bless their crops or their livestock, no. They want me to bless their pregnancies. Human pregnancies. Human conception. In my shrine."
Lena grimaced. "People were..."
"Yes." Kara's face was aghast as she stared into space, like she was reliving it first-hand. "While praying to me. Imagine strangers coming into your house and doing that in the middle of your living room. While calling your name." Kara shuddered. "Every time someone prays to me, I hear it. Doesn't matter where I am, or where they are, it's like a direct line into my brain."
"That sounds... horrifying," Lena agreed. "I can see why you're glad to be forgotten." She couldn't begin to imagine what that would be like—people constantly intruding on her life with their most intimate moments. Then, a memory struck her and Lena felt her own cheeks grow warmer as she recalled several... moments of indiscretion. Moments in which she may or may not have spoken the name of her extremely attractive roommate while otherwise... occupied. Clearing her throat, Lena found her mouth suddenly dry as she nervously asked, "Um. What... constitutes a prayer, exactly?"
The moment Kara's eyes met hers, Kara's blush returned in full force and Lena had her answer. "Um. Well it's sort of a- a broad definition," Kara stammered. "Hard to label, really. But, if you were to, um, address me—especially while... um, engaging in... certain activities—that would, uh, that would definitely count."
"Oh god." Lena buried her face in her hands, both to concral the burning heat she felt in her ears and to hide from Kara's gaze. "Just kill me now." Normally, Lena would consider death by mortification to be a bit of a stretch, but she'd just learned that gods were real so she was hoping for a miracle.
"I mean I'm flattered, obviously," Kara rushed to assure her. "You're absolutely gorgeous, anyone would be lucky to have you, um, think about them, like that. I just, figured you should know that I could actually... hear it."
"I'm going to jump off a bridge," Lena mumbled into her hands.
"Please don't," Kara begged, voice strained. "I mean if you don't want to be roommates anymore, that's fine. But I was actually hoping we could... maybe grab drinks, or something?"
Lena lifted her hands from her face—putting her imminent demise on hold so she could fix Kara with an incredulous stare. "Are you asking me out?"
"I mean you don't have to say yes," Kara added quickly. "It's fine if you don't-"
"Kara. You are a goddess-" "Minor goddess." "You must be thousands of years old-" "Three thousand." "Why the hell would you want to go out with me?"
"Because I like you," Kara answered, as though it were the simplest thing in the world. The sheer sincerity of it—the matter-of-fact tone in which it was delivered—stole whatever words Lena was going to say next. "I like making you smile, and laugh," Kara continued. "I like being there for you when your family is awful. I like watching you when you work, the way you get when you're focused on a problem. I like being the one who reminds you to take breaks, and helping you wind down after a long day. And I like making sure that your favorite flowers are always in bloom, so that you have something to look forward to when you come home."
A soft "Oh" was all Lena could think to say to that. Then, after a few moments she cleared her throat and glanced away. "Um, drinks, you said? There's uh‐ There's a new bar, down on Fifth. Sign said they do karaoke on Fridays."
Kara's face lit up and she beamed at Lena with the warmth of a thousand summers. "Sounds perfect."
Her name was Judy-Lynn del Rey. And she became the most powerful editor in science fiction history.
Born in 1943 with achondroplastic dwarfism, Judy-Lynn grew up devouring science fiction in New York City's public libraries. At a time when the genre was dismissed as pulp fiction for teenage boys, she saw something else entirely: the future of storytelling.
She started at the bottom—an office assistant at Galaxy, the most prestigious science fiction magazine of the 1960s. Within four years, she was managing editor.
Then Ballantine Books came calling.
When she arrived at Ballantine in 1973, science fiction and fantasy were afterthoughts in publishing. Fantasy in particular was considered unsellable—unless you were Tolkien. Judy-Lynn thought that was nonsense.
Her first major move was audacious: she cut ties with one of Ballantine's bestselling authors, John Norman, whose "Gor" novels were popular but notoriously misogynistic. It was a risk. She didn't care.
Then came the gamble that changed everything.
In 1976, someone brought her an opportunity: the novelization rights to an upcoming space movie by a young director named George Lucas. Hollywood thought the film would bomb. Studio executives were skeptical. Most publishers passed.
Judy-Lynn said yes.
The Star Wars novelization sold 4.5 million copies before the movie even premiered.
She would later call herself the "Mama of Star Wars."
In 1977, she launched Del Rey Books—her own imprint, with her husband Lester editing fantasy while she oversaw everything else. Their first original novel was Terry Brooks's The Sword of Shannara. It became a phenomenon.
She didn't stop there.
Remember The Princess Bride? The original 1973 novel had flopped. It was headed for obscurity. Judy-Lynn rescued it, reissuing it in 1977 with a striking gate-fold cover and an aggressive marketing campaign. Without her intervention, there might never have been a movie.
She published the Star Trek Log series. She championed Stephen R. Donaldson's Thomas Covenant trilogy—convincing Ballantine to release all three books on the same day from a completely unknown author. Unprecedented.
She published Anne McCaffrey's The White Dragon—the first science fiction novel ever to hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list.
And she did all of this while competitors called her imprint "Death-Rey Books"—because she was utterly dominant.
Between 1977 and 1990, Del Rey Books had 65 titles reach bestseller lists. That was more than every other science fiction and fantasy publisher combined.
Arthur C. Clarke called her "the most brilliant editor I ever encountered."
Philip K. Dick went further: "The greatest editor since Maxwell Perkins"—the legendary editor of Hemingway and Fitzgerald.
But here's what burns: the science fiction community never nominated her for a Hugo Award while she was alive. Not once. The men who ran the industry praised her in private and overlooked her in public.
In October 1985, Judy-Lynn suffered a brain hemorrhage. She died four months later, at 42.
Only then did the Hugo committee vote to give her the Best Professional Editor award.
Her husband Lester refused to accept it.
He said Judy-Lynn would have objected—that it was given only because she had just died. That it came too late.
He was right.
Judy-Lynn del Rey transformed science fiction from a niche hobby into a cultural force. She made fantasy into a mainstream publishing category. She bet on Star Wars when no one else would. She saved The Princess Bride from oblivion. She published the first #1 New York Times science fiction bestseller.
She did all of this standing 4'1" tall in an industry run by men who underestimated her at every turn.
The next time you pick up a fantasy novel, or watch a Star Wars movie, or quote The Princess Bride—
I really don’t know what crowd I expected to be in the theatre for carol at 1:20 in the afternoon on a friday but it was probably 85% old people, old het couples and halfway through the movie this old lady in front of me turned to the old dude next to her and just said “harold they’re lesbians”
brown works so hard and does so much and everyone is so mean to her. coffee chocolate hair leather tea wood eyes broth a warm coat autumn leaves caramelized onions the crust on a loaf of bread. all things good and warm and kind are brown. bitch!
extremely interesting to me how important thimble was in that first episode. laura had maybe 40? 50? minutes at the table and yet her connection to thjazi has woven her deep into all of the central questions driving the very beginning of the campaign. what did thjazi want hal to tell her? where is she why isn’t she at the funeral? why did her place get attacked who attacked her? where is the stone that she stole where is “thjazi’s pixie”? why did the box open at the mention of her name? her absence in scenes is felt just as acutely as her presence.
everyone always surprised when you can learn bits of information about them from the characters they make... dearly beloved. you took a lump of clay with no form and shaped it with your hands and thought you wouldn't leave fingerprints? what hubris! you leave scraps of yourself in everything you make. sometimes it's a lot more than scraps but just for you i'll pretend i didn't notice
"...and though that young man is not a sorcerer, he has wielded a strange gift to make a little dead creature that regarded you with kindness. Is it possible that dead things can still love us?" (c4e03)
ellievsbear
jbbartram-illu
blakekathryn
dededos
