valerianavow

27 / she/her / lesbian sword wife, call me Vale! amphibia spoilers. my weaknesses are 1. women and 2. murdering royalty, preferably both

[valerianavow]

Here's the guide to my original Amphibia posts! Clicking on the individual tag will bring you to all the posts in my blog in that category, including drabbles, sketches and the 3am theories that didn't make it to big fancy post land. I love to see notes pop up on older work, so don't feel weird about liking or reblogging from the archive. Thanks for stopping by, and sorry for missing you... lunch, you know, is the most important meal of the day...

Fanfic: #avowrites

[CW trauma] The World Outside Calling Marcy's dreams before, during, and after the episode Olivia and Yunan. 5.5k words, complete. Sashannarcy & hope.

Just Come Home The Boonchuys talk about their missing girls. 4.3k words, oneshot. Spranne against the world!

Art: #avowart

[CW blood] Defeater of Ragnar the Wretched three page comic! Feat. Yulivia & Andrias being a tool.

City of Angels illustration

Theories: #avowonder

Formal Royal Armor Analysis

Sasha's Armor Analysis

Valeriana Gave Anne Her Powers

Valeriana Resisted Andrias

Temple Siren Theory (not to be confused with @thesugarcookieday's excellent Temple [Axolotl] Theory, which we wrote independent of each other!)

Buwning Bright & the Mistranslated Prophecy

Let's Talk About War (History of Conflict in Amphibia)

Amphibia's Critique of Portal Fantasy

If you're interested in more Amphibia theory and analysis, please also read @thesugarcookieday's Recurring Background Elements post and @clacing's Cycle Breaker theory while you're here!

[valerianavow]

SCREAMING.

[valerianavow]

[fistraid]

talking back

[prentiits]

mission accomplished: reblog has been liked by specific mutual that it was rbed for

[bardicspiration]

the parking meter’s flashing, and there’s one car in the lot (i kind of wish you’d lean across)

[bardicspiration]

✨tomorrow✨

[valerianavow]

"Val."

The frog stood in the entryway to the tent. Valeriana set her quill and the cipher key down, sighing as she pinched the brow of her nose. Val, Val, Val. Nobody called her 'Mother' anymore. So much for the grand tradition. "What is it." She felt like she got a year older every day, the way things had been lately.

Her visitor stepped into the torchlight, her deep pink skin tinted even redder in the fire. "I'm going."

"Tonight? We've not yet finished the preparations."

"He suspects something. Barrel had to kill two of the Thronesguard that were getting close to our embedded contacts." She pulled her hand out of her cloak, dropping two medallions of the secret Leviathan-loyal police on Valerian's desk.

Valeriana blinked down at the symbols, picking one up and flipping it over in her hand.

She looked at up at the other woman. "You realize this is deeply incriminating, yes? It's a very dramatic reveal to be sure, but even taking the badges is dangerous. It  tells those who find the bodies that somebody targeted them for their role, not just money or violence." She watched the frog's back stiffen under her cloak and smirked to herself. "Well, it's no matter. Damage done, and I half-assume we'll all be dead by this time tomorrow, if you're going off as half-cocked as I think you are."

"I am not," growled the woman through gritted teeth, "going off 'half' of anything. I can tell he's getting suspicious. I have his deepest trust. I'm the only one who can get close enough. If we don't move now, he'll likely activate one of the Battalions ahead of schedule, and then there won't be guards that can be tricked or bribed in between us and the box. It'll just be cold, unfeeling-"

"Still unconfirmed, on that," Val interrupted dryly. "They do draw their power from our temple's gem, as it were. It stands to reason that they'd have feelings. If you wanted purely logical drones, you'd tie them to Mind, and I think the old bastard's scared of keeping anything smarter than him around." She chuckled to herself. "Not that that's hard to do. His horrid master does all the thinking for him."

The frog's arms were crossed. "Right." Her voice was out of patience. "Well, I'm going, before we lose our chance. So."

Valeriana waited, stretched back in her chair, staring at the other woman. Her visitor shifted awkwardly under her gaze. "I suppose I was looking for... advice? I don't know. I'm quite scared, Mother," she finally admitted, and there was fear in her voice.

Valeriana sighed. There it was, finally. "Your grand plan is to place hands on the device, warp to some distant, likely deeply hostile world and seal the Calamity's Harbinger away. I understand why you are scared. It amounts to stealing a beetle's saddle from her jockey and then letting the bug trample you underfoot."

She stood, turning to face a map of Amphibia that was spread out behind her chair. She didn't want to admit to herself that she didn't want to look the other woman in the eye.

"You are dooming yourself. You are surrendering this chance to halt the path of the empire forever on the assumption that removing the key will bring it grinding to a halt. This is a one way trip, and if there are sentient creatures where you travel, they are bound to discover it. Soon enough, be it a hundred or a thousand years, the unbound energy of the plane will recharge it. And someone, some poor creature, will open it, and we'll be right back where we started, less one brilliant young disciple who I trust more than any other amphibian on this vast green plane."

Valeriana heard the woman draw in a breath. That may be the only compliment you have ever paid her, she observed to herself. You really should get better at that.

She looked over her shoulder. "It will not stop him. He will rave and slam against the walls thrown up by you, and he will mutter and plot and connive as he retreats to his little shell of a city and waits for his precious box to fall back into his lap. You know that the former wielders of the Gem's powers cannot die by natural causes. Just as I have lived and seen the world since the day of Leviathan's grandfather, so too will Andrias Leviathan persist long after your death on some distant, lonely world."

Her hand came to the empty sleeve on her bad shoulder, and she rolled it experimentally, grimacing. Heart's powers had a heavy cost. The woman behind her gathered herself and ventured, carefully- "But you'll be here, Mother? You'll still be ready to fight..."

"To fight? In a thousand years?" Valeriana threw back her head and cackled, enjoying the long moment. "My dear Daughter, in a thousand years I had hoped to be dead and dust. I'd say this immortality is not a fate I'd wish on my worst enemy, but his majesty has done a level job of filling in for that role! No, no, my hope was that we'd be done with this nasty business in a decade or so, and the throne and the temples would lay empty and toppled, and that great bloody hive mind of a ship could serve as a grave for the damn souls it stole. And I'd be able to die in peace, since none of the scattered worlds would ever need to know what a damnable gem was ever again. But, alas! All plans are made to be broken, and suchlike."

Her visitor was studying the ground at her feet. She drew in a breath and Valeriana stopped, watching her. The woman sighed.

"I'm sorry, Mother. I wish it had worked out. I just, if we don't act now..."

"Oh, Plantar." Valeriana smiled. "I expect nothing less of you. I may be annoyed that you are happily flying off to your death to taunt the mad emperor for a fleeting handful of years, but I agree with you. What other plans we had are falling apart at the seams as the throne unravels our threads. It is only a matter of time before the inevitable comes." She paused, sitting back at her desk and steepling her fingers against her gloved tail. "So, yes. Olm Daughter Plantar, Sister of Heart, be it a hundred or a thousand years, the Mother of Olms will persist. We will find the bearers of the gems who come long after you, and we will hope that time has been long enough for Amphibia to rise against the cruelty of the Leviathan throne."

The frog sighed. "Thank you."

Valeriana inclined her head in response, smiling slightly. "Never let it be said that I did not take every single dramatic opportunity to be completely insufferable." This caught her visitor off guard, and she laughed, her breath hitching in her throat. Val leaned forward on her desk.

"Go, Plantar, with the Olms' blessing. The fate of all the worlds merely hangs in your hands."

The frog shook her head. "You are insufferable."

"It came with the job," Valeriana drawled. "Now, get out of here. I have evidence to destroy." She scooped up the Throneguards' badges and stood, pointing at the much shorter woman. "If that overstuffed armchair of an emperor catches you, you have no idea who I am, understand?"

The frog turned with a bright smile and a lilting tone, saying, "Of course, Val. Wouldn't dream of selling out the cause!"

Valeriana shook her head with a matching smirk. "You children and your causes. I am an idiot for continuing to get involved in this worldly nonsense. You'll be the quite final death of me, one day."

...

A thousand years later, Valeriana sat at the edge of a vast pillar, looking out over the sea of clouds at her feet. Somewhere beyond, there was Newtopia. Somewhere below staggered out the machinations of a mad emperor and his petty old master, mucking around in the mud for a silly little act of prophecy.

She looked up at the moon on the horizon, musing as she picked at the fraying edge of her black cloak. It'd be time to repair the hem again soon. She sighed. If this girl didn't pull it off, there'd be another inevitable wait, and she might squeal about her involvement and what she saw of the Olms, and Valeriana would have to go to ground again for probably another hundred years to dodge the stuck-up old man, and it was all just so inconvenient...

"Bwaaawk! Time to go!"

She lifted her eyes to her companion, the little parrotfly that followed her everywhere. He had been repeating Anne's words for weeks now in her absence.

"I suppose it is, Leander." She pushed herself to her feet. "I suppose it is."

Valeriana stood at the edge, and looked out over the world.

One way or the other, this will be over soon. Either the Heart breaks and the Empire picks up their conquest where they left off, or the Heart prevails.

And then what?

Her hand curled around her staff. Valeriana thought of the frog child with her poor long lost Daughter's face and color. His smile, looking so familiar. His human sister's fierce and stubborn determination, how much she sounded like her. Their family name, how she thought she would never hear it again... how much she had lost in a thousand years. How strange it was, to see it all come around again.

Leander landed on her shoulder and puffed out his chest. "Bwaawk! Gotta go!" Valeriana chuckled, and fed him a scrap of meat from her cloak.

I don't know. But I'd like to find out.

The lonely Mother of Olms stood at the top of the world and waited for the sun to rise again.

----- Based on this art by the talented @dashintrash! Thank you for reading.

[valerianavow]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

crossposted to ao3!

[bardicspiration]

I need you to know i now cry everytime i listen to Lean Across

oh my god i am so sorry for what i'm gonna do to you and everyone else tomorrow

[valerianavow]

"Val."

The frog stood in the entryway to the tent. Valeriana set her quill and the cipher key down, sighing as she pinched the brow of her nose. Val, Val, Val. Nobody called her 'Mother' anymore. So much for the grand tradition. "What is it." She felt like she got a year older every day, the way things had been lately.

Her visitor stepped into the torchlight, her deep pink skin tinted even redder in the fire. "I'm going."

"Tonight? We've not yet finished the preparations."

"He suspects something. Barrel had to kill two of the Thronesguard that were getting close to our embedded contacts." She pulled her hand out of her cloak, dropping two medallions of the secret Leviathan-loyal police on Valerian's desk.

Valeriana blinked down at the symbols, picking one up and flipping it over in her hand.

She looked at up at the other woman. "You realize this is deeply incriminating, yes? It's a very dramatic reveal to be sure, but even taking the badges is dangerous. It  tells those who find the bodies that somebody targeted them for their role, not just money or violence." She watched the frog's back stiffen under her cloak and smirked to herself. "Well, it's no matter. Damage done, and I half-assume we'll all be dead by this time tomorrow, if you're going off as half-cocked as I think you are."

"I am not," growled the woman through gritted teeth, "going off 'half' of anything. I can tell he's getting suspicious. I have his deepest trust. I'm the only one who can get close enough. If we don't move now, he'll likely activate one of the Battalions ahead of schedule, and then there won't be guards that can be tricked or bribed in between us and the box. It'll just be cold, unfeeling-"

"Still unconfirmed, on that," Val interrupted dryly. "They do draw their power from our temple's gem, as it were. It stands to reason that they'd have feelings. If you wanted purely logical drones, you'd tie them to Mind, and I think the old bastard's scared of keeping anything smarter than him around." She chuckled to herself. "Not that that's hard to do. His horrid master does all the thinking for him."

The frog's arms were crossed. "Right." Her voice was out of patience. "Well, I'm going, before we lose our chance. So."

Valeriana waited, stretched back in her chair, staring at the other woman. Her visitor shifted awkwardly under her gaze. "I suppose I was looking for... advice? I don't know. I'm quite scared, Mother," she finally admitted, and there was fear in her voice.

Valeriana sighed. There it was, finally. "Your grand plan is to place hands on the device, warp to some distant, likely deeply hostile world and seal the Calamity's Harbinger away. I understand why you are scared. It amounts to stealing a beetle's saddle from her jockey and then letting the bug trample you underfoot."

She stood, turning to face a map of Amphibia that was spread out behind her chair. She didn't want to admit to herself that she didn't want to look the other woman in the eye.

"You are dooming yourself. You are surrendering this chance to halt the path of the empire forever on the assumption that removing the key will bring it grinding to a halt. This is a one way trip, and if there are sentient creatures where you travel, they are bound to discover it. Soon enough, be it a hundred or a thousand years, the unbound energy of the plane will recharge it. And someone, some poor creature, will open it, and we'll be right back where we started, less one brilliant young disciple who I trust more than any other amphibian on this vast green plane."

Valeriana heard the woman draw in a breath. That may be the only compliment you have ever paid her, she observed to herself. You really should get better at that.

She looked over her shoulder. "It will not stop him. He will rave and slam against the walls thrown up by you, and he will mutter and plot and connive as he retreats to his little shell of a city and waits for his precious box to fall back into his lap. You know that the former wielders of the Gem's powers cannot die by natural causes. Just as I have lived and seen the world since the day of Leviathan's grandfather, so too will Andrias Leviathan persist long after your death on some distant, lonely world."

Her hand came to the empty sleeve on her bad shoulder, and she rolled it experimentally, grimacing. Heart's powers had a heavy cost. The woman behind her gathered herself and ventured, carefully- "But you'll be here, Mother? You'll still be ready to fight..."

"To fight? In a thousand years?" Valeriana threw back her head and cackled, enjoying the long moment. "My dear Daughter, in a thousand years I had hoped to be dead and dust. I'd say this immortality is not a fate I'd wish on my worst enemy, but his majesty has done a level job of filling in for that role! No, no, my hope was that we'd be done with this nasty business in a decade or so, and the throne and the temples would lay empty and toppled, and that great bloody hive mind of a ship could serve as a grave for the damn souls it stole. And I'd be able to die in peace, since none of the scattered worlds would ever need to know what a damnable gem was ever again. But, alas! All plans are made to be broken, and suchlike."

Her visitor was studying the ground at her feet. She drew in a breath and Valeriana stopped, watching her. The woman sighed.

"I'm sorry, Mother. I wish it had worked out. I just, if we don't act now..."

"Oh, Plantar." Valeriana smiled. "I expect nothing less of you. I may be annoyed that you are happily flying off to your death to taunt the mad emperor for a fleeting handful of years, but I agree with you. What other plans we had are falling apart at the seams as the throne unravels our threads. It is only a matter of time before the inevitable comes." She paused, sitting back at her desk and steepling her fingers against her gloved tail. "So, yes. Olm Daughter Plantar, Sister of Heart, be it a hundred or a thousand years, the Mother of Olms will persist. We will find the bearers of the gems who come long after you, and we will hope that time has been long enough for Amphibia to rise against the cruelty of the Leviathan throne."

The frog sighed. "Thank you."

Valeriana inclined her head in response, smiling slightly. "Never let it be said that I did not take every single dramatic opportunity to be completely insufferable." This caught her visitor off guard, and she laughed, her breath hitching in her throat. Val leaned forward on her desk.

"Go, Plantar, with the Olms' blessing. The fate of all the worlds merely hangs in your hands."

The frog shook her head. "You are insufferable."

"It came with the job," Valeriana drawled. "Now, get out of here. I have evidence to destroy." She scooped up the Throneguards' badges and stood, pointing at the much shorter woman. "If that overstuffed armchair of an emperor catches you, you have no idea who I am, understand?"

The frog turned with a bright smile and a lilting tone, saying, "Of course, Val. Wouldn't dream of selling out the cause!"

Valeriana shook her head with a matching smirk. "You children and your causes. I am an idiot for continuing to get involved in this worldly nonsense. You'll be the quite final death of me, one day."

...

A thousand years later, Valeriana sat at the edge of a vast pillar, looking out over the sea of clouds at her feet. Somewhere beyond, there was Newtopia. Somewhere below staggered out the machinations of a mad emperor and his petty old master, mucking around in the mud for a silly little act of prophecy.

She looked up at the moon on the horizon, musing as she picked at the fraying edge of her black cloak. It'd be time to repair the hem again soon. She sighed. If this girl didn't pull it off, there'd be another inevitable wait, and she might squeal about her involvement and what she saw of the Olms, and Valeriana would have to go to ground again for probably another hundred years to dodge the stuck-up old man, and it was all just so inconvenient...

"Bwaaawk! Time to go!"

She lifted her eyes to her companion, the little parrotfly that followed her everywhere. He had been repeating Anne's words for weeks now in her absence.

"I suppose it is, Leander." She pushed herself to her feet. "I suppose it is."

Valeriana stood at the edge, and looked out over the world.

One way or the other, this will be over soon. Either the Heart breaks and the Empire picks up their conquest where they left off, or the Heart prevails.

And then what?

Her hand curled around her staff. Valeriana thought of the frog child with her poor long lost Daughter's face and color. His smile, looking so familiar. His human sister's fierce and stubborn determination, how much she sounded like her. Their family name, how she thought she would never hear it again... how much she had lost in a thousand years. How strange it was, to see it all come around again.

Leander landed on her shoulder and puffed out his chest. "Bwaawk! Gotta go!" Valeriana chuckled, and fed him a scrap of meat from her cloak.

I don't know. But I'd like to find out.

The lonely Mother of Olms stood at the top of the world and waited for the sun to rise again.

----- Based on this art by the talented @dashintrash! Thank you for reading.

[kaseyskat]

happy wip wed to royal au marcy! she's gotten herself into quite the pickle now, hasn't she?

[boobchuy]

im so. the plantars are so. anne meeting them is so. they are just. so. theyre everything. just just just just. just the plantars the plantars having this hole in their hearts, anne filling the hole up when she crashes into their lives, and the plantars filling the hole she didnt know she had herself. they all went through so much together. the plantars called her a monster when they first met her, anne thought their slimy skin and use of tongue was gross. then she grew used to it. she’s become so touchy and they too with her. they grew into a FAMILY. they grew to love each other so muc h,

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[dashintrash]

imagine froog reveal and she’s just the moodiest person ever

[valerianavow]

girl's been dealing with andriass's shit for one thousand years id be moody too

[skindoodles]

[valerianavow]

Joanie,

[spector]

rereading a story you wrote yourself to satisfy ur own SPECIFIC thematic explorations and such

[spageddy]

opposite of dni. welcome to interact: oldest siblings, deranged fire signs, dishes girls, bottle blondes, brunettes who wear jeans, male pinterest users, dangly earrings wearers, tight black turtleneck wearers, nonbinary bisexuals, people who don’t pay for a single streaming service, people who wear socks to bed, girls who are just like their dad, cat lovers, bird lovers, raccoon lovers, soda haters, people who played water polo and soccer in high school, linguistics majors, if you can make that water droplet noise with your mouth, know how to do cool skateboard tricks, have 3 or more siblings, weird little girls who aren’t girls anymore, light yagami haters, virgo moons, people who are 6′5, hyperpop listeners, jimmy macelroy kinnies, amv makers, lonely women in their 20s, and people who weren’t allowed to watch spongebob as a kid

[fistraid]

in the in between, a voice whispers to you

the heaviest burden is a heart 

[dashintrash]

Seek the mother of Olms, She will guide you to your destiny

Keep reading