#jadeandquartzes

[hauntedwizardmoment]

GOOD EVENING. STARBREAKER!! this is so silly because I can't stop thinking about jace influencer au, but I did just get hit with a Vision of, like, a world where that AU is true but also the Plan is still happening. so as he gets pulled more into it (knowingly or unknowingly) jace's online presence/instagram/youtube channels or w/e slowwwwwly starts to devolve from poppy pretty sponsored idealized glamorized aestheticized content into a straight-up found-footage horror story.

CHRISTTTTTT.

like okay bear with me. a shift away from regular influencer au. jace is one of those teacher influencers. his normal content is like, stuff like this. it's fairly harmless, kind of corny, mildly funny. and as he gets a bigger following he starts doing more intimate/personal content. outfit of the day/day in the life, weekend vlogs (shopping spree in bastion city! massive spell component haul!), and crucially. talking about his relationship! his partner is his coworker, they met at work! they teach a party cohesion elective together and they co-advise the wild magic barbarians! it's sooooo cute, right?

and then porter starts appearing on camera and at first it seems super sweet, he's very gruff and not very camera-trained but he seems to really care for jace. but something like... changes. sometime in between jace's annual traditions of "halloween crafts week/decorate my classroom with me" videos and his "moonar yulenear break daily vlogs" people notice that like. jace seems a little more tired. more brittle. like he's always been performing but now it seems like every single smile is forced and fake.

sometime in the summer jace does a video addressing the comments and passes it off as burnout, he's had a difficult year because of the whole kalvaxus situation on top of some... personal issues. and his audience is like oh okay that explains it. but the tone keeps getting darker. jace posts fewer and fewer videos, his schedule goes from 3-4x weekly uploads to maybe one video every couple of weeks. slowly goes silent on all his other accounts. when he does make a video it's almost always with porter, and the way porter always has his arm around jace seems less "proud boyfriend" and more "possessive creep that's trying to keep jace from saying the wrong thing and exposing... something"

there's a conspiracy that it's all an ARG because of a bunch of "clues" in the background of jace's videos - including a jar of devil's honey on a kitchen counter that when pointed out leads to jace deleting the video entirely. this only adds fuel to the fire because what could he be hiding??

jace starts slipping up sometimes, letting on that porter's maybe. making him do something that he doesnt want to be doing. this is interspersed with strange, quasi-religious, creepy shit from porter during their vlogs. these are quickly deleted/edited out. but his audience is Concerned.

at some point. jace posts one last video called "Goodbye!" and it's a farewell to content creation as a whole for him. it's recorded in his classroom, porter's absent, jace seems almost like his old self again, he's smiling, and the sky behind him is bright red. if you look closely there are wisps of smoke visible. the tone and words are so fucking off, he's talking about seeing everyone in the "next life, a better life" if "everything goes as expected"

cue ragenarok, and cue reports that "aguefort sorcery teacher and influencer jace stardiamond was linked to a plot to create a new god of war"

[hmooncreates]

Tabletop trick or treat!! 🦇💖

thank you jade :D sorry for the late response but i've been busy with bday and travel :D i'm choosing trick!

a ttrpg creator i'd like to highlight is @psychhound!!! ppl are probably familiar with luka because he's, like, a big deal!

[i do not know why this image is like this but its probs the fact that my computer hates screenshotting things clearly]

his games are soooo much fun and have so much voice to them!!! if you like games that make you Think and challenge what you think about mechanics you should check out his games!!!

also, so many of his games are so fun to play because he's directly made them for his loved ones!!!! isnt that the most fun kind of game to play??? one made with love????

anyway everyone check out his itch.io or else 🥰🥰

[natjennie]

hello, simply wanted to say that your starbreaker playlist is absolutely excellent and has introduced me to several new songs that I'm now in love with (back to life, back against the wall, I bet you look good on the dance floor). 11/10 correctly nailed vibes for that duo 🫡

omggggg your fic like exploded my brain and put it back together again so coming from you this is such a huge compliment thank you sooooo much <3 <3

[beguilingcorpse]

I was INDELIBLY shaped by the Redwall books as an elementary and middle schooler, and absolutely recommend them to people to this day.

THIS SEEMS SO CUTE!!! I WANT TO READ ABOUT WOODLAND CREATURES IN AN ABBEY!!!! thank you for this recommendation i am going to have a BLAST with this

(send me the books that shaped you when you were a teen!)

[bloodkeep-escape]

bloodkeep my Beloved <3 any hcs you have about markus?

yes of COURSE <3

markus has always been a Dreamer. as a child he got in trouble for spacing out during lectures and meetings and dinners and parties and.. pretty much anywhere and everywhere. his brother was very good at staying focused, or at least looking like he was focused, so this was something their parents used against markus.

post-canon, it takes a while for markus to figure out what he wants!! he spent so long saying that he wanted to take the throne of Cael Stoop, but now that he has it, he's... not sure he wants it. it's a lot of diplomacy, and he's good at that, he is, but he misses traveling and fighting!!

eventually, i think he figures out the whole "royal advisors" thing and splits his time between Cael Stoop and traveling and staying at the bloodkeep!

i think markus calls himself a ladies' man (gender neutral) but he really... isn't? he's had partners and one night stands, sure, but i do think this man is a romantic at heart <3 he absolutely grew up hearing stories about true love and dreaming of finding it someday

[vethbrenatto]

😍🤯🤩 for the ask meme!

😍 Favourite character

Right now, I'm really vibing Loquatius and Laerryn. I really can't pick between the two, I love them both individually and their dynamic together. Loquatius tends to be more up the alley of the character I'd be drawn to (comedic flair), but I just fucking love flawed characters in general, which all of EXU: Calamity cast is, but Laerryn's and Loquatius's flaws in particular fascinate me. Yummy wizard hubris and fame-hungry vanity.

🤯 Favourite scene

Oh, GOD. I already have so many. I think my top 2 so far are: 1) Loquatius and Laerryn from Episode 1 - "You don't have to, just reply to my messages." "The ones from Aria?" that WHOLE chunk of a scene. 2) Zerxus monologue in Episode 2 - "When the time comes and you step from this void into our world, don't you forget me. Don't you forget the kindness we're capable of, because we're your children, too."

🤩 Favourite example of hubris

I very much enjoyed everyone's dismissal and gloating over Purvan in Episode 1 for being tied to a deity. But I'd have to say probably the most interesting one to me has been Laerryn's one-track mind pertaining to her plane-shift experiment. The way when she took it to the others, she was so shocked that anyone could even fathom not wanting shift planes and explore further. "It's a mediocre mind that tries to replicate what's already been. We're going to go somewhere new now."

[gideonthefirst]

4, 6, 18, 25!

4. Movie of the year?

John Carpenter’s The Thing, for the fortieth year in a row,

6. Episode of tv or webisode that defined the year for you?

You have GOT to understand that I do not watch audiovisual media. BUT I think this falls into this year, so gonna go with Black Sails Season 4 Episode 3. Nothing in the whole world is doing it like that.

18. A memorable meal this year?

Made latkes by myself for the first time yesterday and they were awesome. Latkes be upon you

25. Did you create any characters (in games, art, or writing) this year? Describe one

You know, I’m not sure I DID. OH! NIV! Niv Iliuzija is a level 13 devotion paladin who is a thousand years old and has spent the vast majority of those years in a tower made of pure illusion magic serving as protector to the wizard guardian of that magic. Ze’s got a lot going on. And don’t even worry there IS torture in the backstory

[lichfucker]

hi and hello! I would love to hear anything you wish to share about "to cross running water"; seeing you tag things for it/talk about it on my dash is always so cool <3

ty for indulging me lskdfsdf g-d where do I even start

'to cross running water' is my black sails vampire fic because I only write vampire fics anymore. some vampire lore says that they can't cross running water, so if you wanna get away from a vampire you basically just need to lead them to a river and then leave them stranded on the other side, which I thought was very cheeky considering. flint is a pirate. literally all he does is cross running water.

I'm hewing pretty closely to canon with it; it's not a full genre/plot swap, it's literally just "black sails but what if flint were a vampire."

I've been alternating back and forth between flint's pov and miranda's pov. and then of course once she dies it'll be all flint all the time lmao. flint is a vampire and thomas had also been a vampire but miranda is human. she is flint's shelter, she is his haven, her blood is what fuels and sustains him. it has the very fun effect of taking her already incredible isolation in canon and cranking it all the way up. miranda is horrifically alone, the bearer of more awful secrets than anyone can fathom, and there's only so much longer she can hang onto this powerlessness before something breaks.

and flint is... a beast. flint is a monster. he's the thing good men fear, what they tell their children to fear. he's been deemed an abomination for so many reasons, in so many ways. he has a primal rage, an insatiable bloodlust, a conviction that he is meant to lead and to rule. he is the man who cannot die, who can only be unmade in sunlight. all the interplay of dark and light, the thematic resonance of night and day. all of that is canon. I'm just adding fangs.

tcrw is also slowburn silverflint because of course it is lmao. I'm writing it in order because I Need To but uhh I have some plans for later scenes that are. the closest I will ever come in my life to writing smut. so. there's that. I just think that the eroticism of the vampire figure is important, and every vampire fic I've written approaches it differently. this one meets it head-on.

mmm I posted the whole first miranda section a little while ago... since you so patiently sat through this infodump I'll give you a bit from the first flint section :3

It's far from the most depraved thing Flint has done today but wringing Singleton’s blood out of his shirt only to lick it back up is certainly undignified. He takes no pride in wiping his cheeks with the back of his hand before all but shoving his entire fist into his mouth, but in the privacy of his cabin, hunger so putrid and bellowing it rots in him, he finds he cannot truly feel ashamed of it, either.

He does what he must. Hunger alone won’t kill him, his infernal constitution made of sterner stuff, but he needs the strength. It’s a horrid combination, endurance and enfeeblement, the knowledge that he could be utterly hollowed out and still he must crawl his way through every rotation of the Earth, dragging his pathetic body ever closer to the end of time, his only true hope at final oblivion save for the business end of a wooden stake. But until such a fate becomes inevitable he will do what he can to avoid it, even if it means slurping Singleton’s blood off of each finger with indulgent obscenity. He feels invigorated with it, however slight the nutrition from feeding like this, and the adrenaline still thrums through him, all abuzz with the satisfaction of a good fight. Flint enjoys fighting in the sun. That enfeeblement he so dreads, the sun is its ultimate benefactor, its rays draping weakness across his shoulders like a heavy cloak, weighing him down. He’s known of others, throughout the years, who are flayed alive by the daylight, or whose skin breaks out in unbearable burns and blisters (Thomas, in particular, glittered in the sun as though his skin were made of crushed diamonds while ghastly red welts that stung and hissed were bubbling beneath the surface, threatening to burst), but Flint is merely dampened by it, his preternatural strength and speed made natural. It humanizes him. A daylit skirmish presents a challenge, his muscles heavy and his reflexes sluggish; he has no biological advantage, only his skill and his drive. Such a fight is as close to fair as one could ever be—and still Flint has yet to be bested. Still his might reigns supreme. At his weakest he is still the pinnacle of them. When will it be enough? When will they learn? Thomas’ voice, in that almost paternalistic way, slinks out of the depths of Flint’s mind, beseeching, What have you got to prove? Well, everything, it would seem. It was Singleton today. It’ll be someone else tomorrow. The ever-constant threat of mutiny breathes hot on his neck like a slobbering dog. If they’re going to be dogs, my sweet, I will show them the wolf. Miranda hates to be cooped up in that little house, stranded on the island for weeks at a time, but she hates even more to see him like this, the lengths he must go to secure any sort of existence for her. At least locked away in the interior she does not have to see the animal in him. The new cook saw it today. Everyone saw it, to be sure, Flint’s captive and captivated audience, but Mr. Silver saw it for the first time today. Mr. Silver recognized it today. Flint stood there, quaking, snarling, drenched in his soon-to-be lunch, and he caught Mr. Silver in his teeth, held him in place as those ice-blue eyes reckoned with the beast before him.