i kind of vanished off the face of the earth again after JUST getting back from another hiatus and i apologize for that, there’s really no other way to put it than these past few months have been really shitty for me.
Currently I’m in the midst of dealing with major financial struggles, we’ve been literally having to choose between keeping the lights on and eating. I’m trying to get back on government assistance but there is no telling how long that’ll take. I’m working on resolving issues with my landlord as well who failed my apartment during inspection due to issues that we’ve been telling them about for months. They’ve agreed to at least work with us and start repairs.
The reason this all started was because my A/C broke and they’re arguing with us that before they can fix it we needed to clean out the clutter in my living room which has been done but they still are being difficult with fixing it and now I’ve been without A/C for probably a month and the temperature is in the triple digits here. I’m not under any threat of eviction currently, but they are threatening to fine me and I do not have the money to pay for that obviously. They’re coming back on the 5th to assess the apartment again and make sure it’s been cleaned as they asked ( it has ).
There was another factor in this in the fact that I currently have more pets than I’ve listed on the lease ( they were all acquired after I moved in ) and for some reason they’re claiming that there’s a ‘two pet minimum’ ( I have never seen that section in the lease so I’m thinking they’re lying about this but not much I can do about it ). I’m not willing to get rid of my pets because they’ve been with me since they were born and it’d be very traumatic to have to suddenly rehome all of them for me and them. Hence the alternative will be hiding them which isn’t very difficult in of itself since these apartments rarely if ever actually come over but the major hurtle is going to be ensuring that they’re hidden during the 5th until the apartments complete their inspection.
So, essentially, I’ve been very, very stressed and have little energy for doing basically anything let alone writing. I’m really sorry, cause I know I just got back, all of this very much came out of the blue. Again, I’m thinking after we pass inspection everything will slow down and kind of start to return to normal until maintenance comes around to start fixing everything. As always, you can find me on discord if you just wanna chat and for people who might not have discord, I’m going to be at least checking my IMs on here. Thank you everyone whose been so patient with me these past months <3
this is difficult because jaskier is pretty self aware of his flaws. he’s loud and annoying and has a really low sense of self preservation and is far too trusting of people right away, but he knows all of this. he’ll tell that too a stranger after two drinks it’s definitely not a secret by any means. i think surprisingly it would be that he’s completely unaware that he can have a certain level of sway and influence on people. he doesn’t take himself very seriously most of the time and her certainly doesn’t expect other people to do. still, he wrote a whole song about witchers that caught on like crazy despite their reputation. he always wants to make an impact while also being sure that he probably won’t. and it sounds like a nice sad thing, and sure, sometimes it is, but otherwise it just means he’s willing to act out far too easily because he sort of figures the worst thing that happens is he takes some shit for it without too much worry about it having a larger impact on other people.(i realize this is the wrong one but i’m blind and can’t tell the monkey emojis apart without my contacts in asdfaljdksf so i’ll just add the right one in a bit)
🙉what are two things that make my muse uncomfortable in conversation (here’s the actual correct one lmao)
jaskier is very talkative but there are a few topics that will quiet him up. he doesn’t like talking about his family. it’s something he’s done a lot of work to separate himself from and he really prefers to keep it that way. anyone addressing him as julian is a pretty good way to make things weird quick unless he’s outright said it’s fine. he’s also fine to be gossipy and judgy until it reaches a certain limit. jaskier can be plenty petty but he’s really not much good at being outright cruel, and looking to him for agreement on something like that will never end well.
🛌my muse’s biggest nightmare
probably being mute for a few reasons. at the most basic of it music is his career and he really does love it. he’s always known it was his calling from a very young age, and if his voice goes half his plan for his life goes. beyond that jaskier has always lived a life where he’d rather be heard than liked. the idea of being silenced just really lingers with him. like i said earlier, he really does want to make an impact, and he feels like he would have no way of doing that if he didn’t have his voice. and that’s admittedly short sighted of him but he is how he is. also, despite what people may say he does know some of his music is genuinely good, and if he lost that suddenly jaskier’s going to wonder what positives or talents he still has (the answer is plenty okay i will defend him forever)
small note: for those that don’t know, in one of my plot lines with Gaia ( @archontem ) Radonis discovers that Maxima is elf-blooded and a bastard, blackmailing her. All of this because Marcus spilled the beans ( this will be a thread eventually, I’m just jumping the gun because I’ve wanted to write about Maxima’s suppressed anger since forever )
As Maxima entered her house, listening to the door close behind her back, it almost felt like stepping through those doors for the first time without all the wonder that she had felt and all the dread. Perhaps dread was not the word that she should use, but she also could not put her finger on what she felt specifically. She could feel her fingers tingling and from the corner of her eye she had seen the purple lightning travelling from the tip of her fingers and up her arm before disappearing. Her fists closing and opening in close intervals, breathing exercises, all of what she had learnt from a very young age, anything to keep her temper at bay before she was surrounded by the beautiful walls of her family room. She had always found Marcus to be a fool but not stupid or dumb, she guessed that she should already be used to disappointments coming from him, like her father. She guessed that there were a few things that she had clearly gotten from her father, the ability to be constantly disappointed by her siblings being one of those unfortunate things.
She moved slowly to her room, there were plenty of pretty flasks there with multiple transparent liquids in them. Maxima’s hands grab a cloth and opens one of the tallest flask, making the material wet. O. had always told her to keep her poisons at hand but hidden into the background. Livius stood at the door silently watching her, Maxima was actually not sure if he had known about her flasks, she was not even sure if Cato knew. He probably did. The cloth is put into her robes’ pockets as she turns on her heels, passing Livius to the corridor. It did not take long to find Marcus, one only needed to follow the loud voice and see him wandering one of the corridors while complaining that their servants were nowhere to be seen. They would not, not after being so kindly asked to care for the garden and deliver things in Maxima’s name to other families. Only a handful remained, the ones that were to care for her father.
When he hears steps behind him, it’s already too late and the cloth is already pressed onto his nose and mouth. Livius stepped in, holding him in place and holding him to prevent any noise.
“What the fuck..?”
When Marcus eyes open they are in their House’s dungeons. They were not used often, not anymore. Maxima was not the type of consider torture an effective way of getting things done, but it was the best place to have a conversation where no one would interrupt them. Maxima watches him struggle against the binds that keep him tightly held against the chair, she imagined that it was cold considering how cold iron tended to be. Yet, instead of feeling that that was wrong she felt an odd sense of satisfaction. Not so amazing when stranding down on a chair are you? His hands were wrapped around a technology that had been developed to keep mages from using their mana while keeping their hands quite far away from any other part of their body. It was rather fascinating how he seemed to stare in confusion to his hands.
When she approached him, however, the fascination diminished and the anger rose rather quickly. His eyes rolling when understanding that Maxima was in the room with him.
“Do you understand what you did, you idiot?” the words are hissed at him, and if looks could kill, he would have been sliced into tiny little pieces. She hovers over him, her hands on the side of his chair. His eyes were having a hard time focusing, she could see that and it was normal. She hoped that the headache was killing him, she hoped that the aches in his bones and the tingling on his limbs would drive him mad.
“I don’t know what you are talking about.” his voice is dragged, still coming off the drugs. Had he been paying attention he would notice that the darkness in Maxima’s green eyes had turned into something deeper, far colder than what they had ever seen. She lifts the hands from the iron handles when she feels the lightning cracking from her skin and wrapping around her fingers. She wanted him dead, how dare he put their father’s life work into question by blundering in such a way.
How could anyone be so petty that in order to destroy her, he would destroy everyone from their family. She could very easily do it without much fuss even if she did know the heartbreak that would come to her father and Marcella. On that moment, however, it was much less about their feelings and the pulsing twisting, bitter taste that seemed to quickly make its way from her fingers tips up her throat.
“You might have single handily ruined everything. You put our family in danger, Father’s image in question, was it not enough to be an all around shame to this family already?” he laughed, he dared to laugh while letting his head roll to the back of the chair. Her hands close into fist but her legs stand their ground, she keeps them next to her body regardless how much she feels like tearing many new marks on that perfectly sun touched skin and perfect face.
His eyes finally open to meet hers, smile disappearing from his lips as the words seem to be used as arrows thrown her way. She could barely believe that the two of them shared blood, that this fucking excuse for a living being was her sibling. She should have killed him when she first met him, she had seen this a mile away and ignored to protect her father’s feelings.
“Father did that himself by allowing you into our house and family by being anything other than what you are: a liberati, a fucking half breed born from a slave.” lightning sprouts from the tip of her fingers, if one looked closely they could almost be confused for thorns. She guessed that Teller had been right, there were no roses without its thorns “What are you going to do? You don’t have the courage to use your magic against anyone, never had.” he leans forward as much as his bindings allow him, a half smile on his lips “Come on, prove to me that you can use a human face but you are still an animal like them.”
She moves up to where he was, steps hard against the stone of the dungeon, upon reaching him he stared at her in surprise as her right hand rose to his face, holding it. An animal because of your elf blood, a traitor and untrustworthy for your human blood, a slave because of your elf blood, a master because of the human blood. Nothing and everything, always stuck between two strong currents, always the one that held the whip and the whipped.
“You are absolutely right.” her words come out as a snarl, Marcus’ screams echoed through the room as the purple lightning brands his skin, spreading from the left side of his face down to his neck and holding him against the iron chair, body shaking. Maxima stops and she does not feel pity, she doesn’t feel guilt, she only feels blind rage as she leans to grab his hair pulling it back to force him to look at her “Father or Marcella hear about what happened here, and I’ll make your life a living hell. Our siblings hear about this, and I’ll make your life a living hell.” the words are hissed, she was a woman of her word, if there was any trace of intelligence in that head of his he would know that playtime was over “Anyone hears about this and I will make sure that you are neck deep in qunari until the end of your days.”
With that, she moves away, her left hand grabbing the cloth from her pocket to clean her hand. Her back is turned and she lets silence hang in the room for a few moments, blessed silence.
“What are you going to do, Maxima? Kill me?” her attention moves back to him, dark green eyes studying him over her shoulder. He seemed to finally be paying attention, she had wondered if he was even able to say her name, apparently he was. Her attention returns to her hands as she walks to the doors letting Alba, her own personal healer, enter. She was incredibly talented in healing magic, he should consider himself lucky. He still grunted and heaved on the chair, when the elf slowly entered the room, looking up at Maxima with doubt in her eyes.
“Stop crying Marcus, Alba will remove all the scarring.” her voice is tainted with impatience as she turns to Alba with a smile, tone changing from the angry one to something sweeter even if her breathing was still altered “Please tell Livius when you are done, he will accompany you back and release Marcus.” her eyes move again back to her brother as both hands move to her pockets “I would never kill you, little brother, but I will destroy everything that you hold dear.” her tone grows darker as she moves towards the door “Don’t fuck up again, Marcus, next time I won’t be so lenient.”
