#ariadne-mouse

[danikatze]

M9 sketch request: Essek and Frumpkin! :)

I was teaching a workshop today and my students were so focused and quiet that I grabbed a scrap piece of lino and made a tiny Essek and Frumpkin print :)) Thanks for the request 🥰

[catalists]

I simply MUST know about "the narrative can't stop me because I can't read"

Ahahaha. I'm so pleased with this concept. The idea is that the boys Get In The Way (details tbd), and in response Dream, as prince-of-stories, drops them into a succession of intended-to-be-doomed narratives. Enter: Charles Rowland, who cannot be doomed by the narrative because he didn't read it.

A bit of defeating narrative tragedy through the power of idiocy, ft. only vaguely remembering how Romeo & Juliet is supposed to go:

"Charles?" Edwin said, blinking up at him. Charles held out a hand. Edwin took it automatically, and Charles pulled him up into a sitting position in the coffin. "What...what?" "Sorry, took me a minute," Charles said. "I couldn't remember who was supposed to kill me so I just took the long way round, yeah?" "...who was supposed to kill you?" "Yeah. Was it Tybalt? Anyway," Charles said. "Do you need help getting out?" "...that's alright," Edwin said, carefully stepping out of the casket. "Tybalt?" "Not Tybalt? I did fight him. But I remember that you--Juliet--she finds Romeo dead and like, stabs herself, yeah? So I figured, better not die then. That was good thinking, with the sleeping draught thing." "Sorry," Edwin said. "What?" "Well," Charles said, "You know like--tricks like that, and so I figured, so long as I didn't die, you wouldn't die, and we could run away together, like they were supposed to?" Edwin stared at him. Then he said, "You absolute idiot. I love you very much." "Love you too, mate," Charles said. Then, "Wait, was that a line from it?" "Charles." "Just checking!"

[revvethasmythh]

🌹

another flashback snippet from where did my baby go? and yes there is no fic i need to finish more than i need to finish this chapter of this specific fic (she says, while traitorously working on something else entirely)

The smallest twinge of frustration skittered across his face. A brief wrinkling of the nose, a deepening of the furrow between his brows. Veth was oddly elated to see it. “If you didn’t want him to do this, why teach him to use a crossbow? To sneak around and steal and pick locks? Why take him to see Caleb every week for years if you didn’t want him to do something like this?” “Those were bonding activities,” she said. “I had a lot of time to make up for. I never wanted him to make a career out of this.” “He just wants to be like you,” Yeza said. “He shouldn’t be! I didn’t start doing this to be a hero. It was survival. If anyone has the choice, why would they choose to do this?” “I don’t know,” Yeza’s eyes flashed, the first flare of real anger she could recall seeing in a long, long time. “Why do you keep doing it?”

[saturdaysky]

BOOP

boop

BOOP

BOOP

you'd really do it? you'd boop this cute face? four times??

[tarydarrington]

I must know about hanahakish!

🔥\o/🔥 hanahakish is my special little baby project, the most self-indulgent of blorbo blenders.

it is pretty much exactly what it sounds like! essek catches an engineered variant of frigid woe during the aeor arc, and the somatic components to Spell of Don't Die Horribly include a kiss from someone who loves you.

here's a little (unedited) bit of the middle:

-

"That—"

Caleb kisses him. It's short, closed-mouthed, and deliberate. He pulls away again, hands still on Essek’s arms as though to hold him at a distance, and Essek reminds himself to breathe.

"You are very important to our goals," Caleb says in a rush.

His gaze flicks down to Essek's mouth. As though unconsciously, he runs a thumb along his own bottom lip. For a moment, Essek is certain he's about to lean in again and do it properly. Then he straightens, clearing his throat, and looks away.

“This—I did not intend for—”

He curls his lip, muttering something unintelligible. Essek’s heart threatens to claw its way out his mouth.

It’s the finest knife to slip between his ribs. Caleb loves him—truly, provably loves him—but wishes he didn’t.

“I’m sorry,” catches in his throat.

He bites down hard on the inside of his lip. There is little he can do to make this easy for Caleb, but at the very least he can keep from crying.

“Don’t be.” Caleb’s hand twitches in his lap. “I will save you a hundred times over, if that is what needs doing.”

If it needs doing. If kissing Essek is necessary, Caleb will do the practical thing. The potion went down easier than this. Essek swallows it anyway, pushing back the hair stuck to his forehead.

“Your help is appreciated.”

[kmackatie]

I MUST know more about "verin’s vacation week"

This one is a oneshot sequel to sleep, with benefits of the two weeks Verin came to stay with Essek, from Verin’s pov. I have a good chunk written, and really do want to finish it off, and it basically followed Verin slowly working out something is up with Essek and getting the truth out of him.

[utilitycaster]

Aside from the obvious intrigue of the Dominox and whatever tech Ludinus has been harvesting, is there anything in/about Aeor you're particularly interested in & hope we get content for in the coming episodes?

We got some of it (bubble grim psychometry) and I suspect Ludinus's focus is the Malleus Factorum so more lore on that would be great. I also assume we will learn more about these divine runes; is it Gruumsh making champions the same way Lolth did or is this some entirely new fuckery? also, I think we should take the silver chain off the slowly moving corpse because it will be fun.

More generally, now that we know Ludinus is indeed from the Age of Arcanum himself, would love to know what his relationship with Aeor was since I think he was either not from Aeor or if he was, relatively young and very unimportant (or else he is much dumber than we thought), as well as obviously some more Care and Culling and Aeormaton lore in general. FCG may be gone but I think we should learn more about them in their honor.

[the-kaedageist]

📓 (tbh i thought this icon was a gas pump at first! lol)

We have already discussed the gas pump thing but it's still hilarious, my love to your dinosaur computer.

I really really want to someday write an EPIC Caleb-is-consecuted-and-no-one-realizes future fic. I don't have any idea what the plot would be other than that Essek doesn't have a clue and then gets whacked over the head with it like a frying pan.

There have already been a couple fics exploring this idea, but I really want to see what my own take on it could be! It probably needs to grow more of a concrete plot before I actually start working on it, though. If I did write this, I'm envisioning a switching-POVs story where neither of them realizes they're on a collision course, but the reader totally knows and is just chomping at the bit for them to figure it out already. It would be DELIGHTFUL and I really want to write it, but it would also take like...tens of thousands of words to do it justice and I already have three CR longfics already in progress...