High-key Trash

| Li | Asexual Aromantic | pure trash | they / them |

[bayofalgecirascranes]

Okay but imagine ftakb from Jahnalistrin's perspective: You've given up The most important part of your culture in order to do your part in the fight against your colonizers, while your twin brother gets to have it. You have been preparing for what feels like your entire life to go into the belly of the beast. You have developed the perfect mask of a dumb, naive, and hopeful Enclave Boy so that you can get the papers to travel to your colonizers' capital city in order to go make food for their royal family. You know how Southerners feel about your people, and you take their jabs and jeers just like you always have. Then a completely random stranger greets you by name and talks to you as if you've been friends for years and gets you out of that situation and the simple ignorance that Mabel has about your people is familiar to you but the apparently selfless kindness from a Southerner that Aaron showed you is not and maybe it has something to do with his ragged clothes and bare feet and the way those other boys called him a Rat in the same way that Southerners call you a Bird. And then the militia comes out to sign in new recruits and everything goes about as expected until the Heir to the Throne spoke to his little brother in your language. A language that's illegal for you to speak but hearing it come out of the Prince's mouth makes you start muttering in it anyway. But your two companions either don't know or don't care, even if the soldiers would. And one of them was going to be a scribe. She would be perfect for sending letters home without arousing suspicion!

Anyway, you part ways and get the job as the Baker's Apprentice, and the next time you see Aaron he's escaping from the dungeons and you know he's sketchy and he gets sketchier every time you see him, considering the fact that he's about one movement away from outright threatening you with a knife he must have somehow acquired on his way to you, but he isn't bad, and anyway, if the redcoats saw fit to imprison him, that means he could be an ally. So you let him filch a loaf of bread and don't report him to anyone. And then a fox attacks the castle and it really isn't like anything you've ever seen before but they're letting you have a crossbow now so that's useful enough. And then the leader of their secret police flies in wearing the dead skin of one of your people, so you decide to use your crossbow for its intended purpose until Aaron shows up again to stop you by making an annoyingly good point against revenge.

Then it turns out that the Fox was right next to you the entire time and by now you're probably wishing it was more like the Lord Of Seasons' forest where he keeps to his side of the stones and you keep to yours and nobody gets hurt.

But things go back to a new normal, after that bit of excitement. Aaron and Mabel are definitely your friends now. Aaron somehow managed to get a job with the housekeeper even though he was a prisioner just yesterday, and you let him filch your bread even if the Baker tells you off about it later. Mabel's nice to talk to, and you send your letters home through her. The white cat in the castle is a Puss-in-Boots, even though nobody believes you about it. The oldest prince speaks your language, the youngest prince likes your pastries, and you haven't seen the princess yet but you know that she exists. Then the wake for the old year happens and you don't know much but apparently Aaron saved the Princess from Asassins and now he's almost dying of a poisoned blade and you're not allowed to see him. Of course, you see him anyway. He's stubborn as a mule and almost as hardy. Then people from even Further south come to the castle, Duke Sung and his entourage, and it turns out that there's more political intrigue going on than you expected because he wants to kill Prince Orin and you... don't really want that. Which is a strange way to think about a royal from the South but he could really change things for the better. Then the Duke's men kill the king and you stay out of allbthe fighting but of course Aaron gets caught in the thick of it, but it turns out that Aaron isn't Aaron at all.

He's one of Them.

A Skin Stealer.

You knew from the beginning that he was sketchy, and really the better you knew him the sketchier he got, but this...

You didn't expect this.

And the worst part is that he still tries to filch your food and talk to you like nothing changed. He wears a dead skin in your kitchen and jokes around in it like that's not a person he's wearing on his back. The only thing that keeps you from dumping poison in his bread and letting him choke on it is the fact that it's a wolf and not a griffin. It annoys you to no end and when you finally snap at him he thanks you like you were actually trying to be helpful.

And Mabel leaves for the Dragon Front, so now you don't have any friends in this Southern Castle.

Then Aaron offers to be your personal courier, sending letters straight between you and your family. Obviously, you don't trust that at first, but you send something anyway. A test, of sorts.

When you see him again, he asks you if you told them to kill him. You didn't, but the fact that he asked tells you everything you need to know.

Actually, it doesn't. What happened?

Aaron refuses to tell you, which... you're not friends, anymore. He doesn't need to tell you. He probably wouldn't have told you even when you were friends. But you still want to know.

So you give him your letters to your family, and he gives you their letters to you, and he either doesn't read them or is a very good actor. You wouldn't put either of those things beside him.

The Lord of Seasons is a Reindeer. You are hopeful.

The southerners are killing their king. They only just got him and already they're trying to fet rid of him. They can put it in whatever fancy words they like, but the fact is that nobody expects Orin O'Shea to survive this. That means Connor's going to be King next and you know him well enough, but you don't trust him, and you especially don't trust whoever would become his regent, so you write your letters, and you plan. You're going home soon.

And then Dragons attack your hometown and the Lord of Seasons helped defeat them and your people are free of the Southerners now and of course Aaron was involved, you should really start expecting it at this point. You're kicking yourself a little, because your first judgemebt of him was correct after all. He may be a bit sketchy, the sketchiest person in all of Last O'The Isles, in fact, but he isn't bad.

You're going home anyway. You bake a batch of pastries for the leader of the secret police as a final goodbye. Extra sugar, as usual, with extra of something else as well. You say goodbye to Aaron, and as a final peace offering you tell him a bit of the truth. Then you take the book he let you borrow and leave.

It only hits you on the way out that Aaron was in a room with your final tray of pastries, and you let yourself look away from both.

And then there are Dragons in the castle. Dragons all over the city, in fact.

You hope Aaron's okay. You hope he's not angry at you for the poison. You hope he's alive.

But at least you're finally home.

[prokopetz]

Soulslike boss fight with a really overwrought intro culminating with the health bar growing so rapidly that it shoots off the right edge of the screen, but then there's a loud clank from stage right, the bar jolts, shudders, and snaps in half, all the red dribbles out, and the boss just falls over.

[prokopetz]

You deplete the boss' health bar, they fall to their knees, then give a great roar as the "oh shit, it's phase two" fanfare begins to play – then halts awkwardly mid-note while the health bar stays empty. The boss glares at it, then reaches up and gives it a stout whack, whereupon the music restarts and their health begins to refill.

[enki2]

[liminalstrands]

Good news! It gets worse!

I think it's the galactic orbit thing that really did me in

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

WHAT DO YOU MEAN SHARKS HAVE BEEN AROUND THE GALAXY TWICE

[asteroidtroglodyte]

It’s a very good design

[sunderwight]

Do you think in pokemon ancient times when capturing and training pokemon was a rare and expert process, that young princes and princesses and the like would be presented with the finest, youngest pokemon that their vassals could catch as they came of age, to select one to be their personal companion? As like a reflection of their power & authority & ability to tame the nation, even things so unruly and frightening as pokemon? And if you were the vassal who presented the chosen pokemon it was a feather in your cap?

Do you think that's where the idea of the starter pokemon came from? Over time, as taming pokemon became more commonplace and accessible, more of the lower ranking nobility and merchant class wanted to show off their station by invoking similar rituals, until eventually it became a coming-of-age ritual that was standard for most families?

And whereas once the pokemon for royalty would be vetted by the scholars and wisemen and court wizards of the era, these were eventually replaced by actual pokemon experts, until every community had at least one such local expert whose job included preparing and/or approving starter pokemon for the kids?

Cause like. Now I can't stop thinking about it. Emperors trying to acquire exotic pokemon from foreign lands for their heirs. A queen scouring the land for pokemon experts after her ten-year-old chooses a particularly hard-to-tame companion. Murmurings about this or that ambitious lord who skirted the edges of propriety by awarding a rejected starer to his own son, instead of passing it along to the military as would be custom. Princesses showing favor to their chosen knights by sending their pokemon over with a token for the jousts. Rumblings over the succession because the new King never did manage to train his starter pokemon, but his younger, more charismatic brother rides his into battle. Assassins targeting pokemon companions to discredit and punish the political rivals of their employers, because kinslaying might be taboo but there are no divine laws against shooting your cousin's kangaskhan.

[sunderwight]

#dude holy shit. Im going to be thinking about this all night now#pokemon#i could also see this leading into the canon 'starter' pokemon because theyre easier to train but become incredibly powerful.#could also explain why those pokemon arn't so commonplace in the modern day - they were sort of obsessed over and so their numbers declined#like pokemon are in the churches they're on the battlefield of COURSE noblilty would get weird about them#dragon types are incredibly difficult to train but the status of having a Salamence to soar over your lands and your troups with? unmatched#The rich hiring the best pokeball craftsmen they can find to make the ball both aesthetically pleasing and have a better catch rate#also even having a more common pokemon thats TRAINED well than its still better to have a rare exotic pokemon that hates you#Young children would know that their parents are going select their options. Would they make requests?#Would it be considered gauche to only allow them to choose between three of the same type because it would be beneficial to their future?#POKEMON DRESSED UP FOR COURT?!#Would it be an honor or a disgrace for one's starter to be an egg from their parents pokemon?#A lord is deeply distraught that his daughter didn't show for her selection of a gothita#a nidoran#or a shinx because#she found a weird colored feebas the kitchens rejected for soup and now its her best friend#a decade later and she and her shiny milotic are the talk of upper society#BRO (@thesadisticsiren peer reviewed damn these are good thoughts)

[bayofalgecirascranes]

Subscribed to @muffinlance's patreon to read the first few chapters of the third Fox's Tongue book and holy cow i can't believe i forgot how much i love Aaron, i need to reread the entire series as soon as i've finished catching up

Anyway this is your yearly reminder to read Fox's Tongue and Kirin's bone: it's a dark fantasy story with Intrigue and Scheming that explores themes of identity and friendship and it is without a doubt one of the best book series that i have ever read

[torchwood-99]

"I love you but you're doing wrong in a way I cannot condone" and "I hate you but you're being wronged in a way I cannot stomach" are top tier and I need more of them.

[pixelartpeach]

E—m—d—a—s—h—N—e—c—k—l—a—c—e

[pixelartpeach]

Y—o—u—P—e—o—p—l—e—W—i—l—l—R—e—b—l—o—g—A—n—y—t—h—i—n—g

[seven-oh-four]

needs an em-dash at the beginning and/or end, otherwise the first or last letters will be right next to each other

[pixelartpeach]

϶—O—h—T—r—u—e—ϵ

(added clasps)

[pancake-blogging]

϶—F—r—i—e—n—d—s—h—i—p—B—r—a—c—e—l—e—t—ϵ

[too-many-blorbos]

϶—C—U—R—S—E—D—A—M—U—L—E—T—ϵ

[bees-official]

Cursed amulet necklace that doesnt have a cursed amulet its just the phrase cursed amulet

[sentientballofpeas]

϶—C—U—R—S—E—D—(¤)—A—M—U—L—E—T—ϵ

[pixelartpeach]

϶—T÷h÷a÷t÷s÷A÷G÷o÷o—d—P o

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⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀K

⠀⠀⠀⠀M⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Y

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀B⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀EA

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⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ϵ

[heimeldat]

sometimes i wish running away to sea was still a valid career path

[tsalala]

Cheetah cubs feasting on an impala Taken in Maasai Mara, Kenya Photographed by Madhur Nangia

[insomniamamma]

unrepentant and covered in blood with mama

[diamondringsandgutterbones]

"do it scared" "do it alone" "do it bored" what about MY strategy. do it later

[cjskribblez]

duck duck goose!

[justsomeguycore]

i have final destination premonitions all the time but instead of seeing death i see all the possible liquids i could knock onto my laptop

[hidefdoritos]

engaging in a high risk behavior (lying back down after my alarm already went off)

[sanctus-ingenium]

and there was no border between sky and sea | print

[valtsv]

real sadists understand that you can torture The Character simply by forcing them to live with themself

[kseniyagreen]

[conchobarbarian]

hate when I'm trying to just take a normal drink but it turns out I'm thirstier than I thought so I end up gulping it down like a goddamn cartoon characer. the indignity of water lust.

[tenisperfection]

Yes your blorbo is tortured and pathetic and slutty and pretty and suffers more than jesus and all that but never forget that your blorbo is, first and foremost, a loser.