While immigration officers support the Trump administration’s goal of deporting undocumented migrants, many of them have grown ‘disillusione
By Priscilla Alvarez, Kristen Holmes, Kaitlan Collins, Michael Williams, CNN (CNN) — Top Border Patrol official Gregory Bovino and some of h
HEY MINNEAPOLIS: THIS IS YOUR PROBABLY UNNECESSARY BUT GRATEFUL REMINDER THAT A) WAY TO FUCKING GO AND B) BULLYING THESE FASCIST FUCKS WORKS.
(Note that this does NOT mean the operation is over, they're still hearing legal arguments about that, but they're pulling Obergruppenführer Bovino and his particular death squad out because y'all have raised hell on earth without pause for them, and way to fucking go.)
Bruce truly hates magic with every pump and beat of his heart.
What kinda curse is Slang, anyway?
“This is the best day of my life.”
“Bro really thought he ate with that.” Bruce physically feels a full body shiver, charged with nausea and cringe. “This is level 10 cringe. Can’t have shit in Gotham.”
Dick is his earth bound angel, but he laughs like a demon at him, holding onto Jason for support, pledging his eternal loyalty to Zatana and her pettiness.
—
“Hey, old bat, hook me up with an adrenaline shot.”
What he wants to say is Jay, do not try and fight with 6 bullets in your stomach.
What comes out instead, through Bruce’s grit teeth and intense, fierce glaring, “Not you trying to go back to your corpse era. See how I only took 2 shots? Very demure. Very mindful.”
Jason passes out from blood loss, but mostly laughter.
—
“Chat, is this real?”
Stephanie barely bites back a full belly cackle. “I think he just asked us if we copied.”
“I wish I was Jason, 15.”
—
“This is not a slay environment. Killing is flop behavior.” He keeps his eyes shut and buries his face in his hands. Trying to convince Damian not to stab someone doesn’t seem to work.
Damian gives him a pat like he’s a pitiful cat. “I’ll only stab the non lethal areas.”
Are you interested in diamond dot keychains and/or small art pieces like coasters?
Yes
No
Don't care, just here for the vibes
Voting ended onSep 2, 2024
Gauging an interest check because I really love doing diamond art but if I'm just doing it for me, I don't really need a thousand keychains no matter how cute they are. (Please let me make the cute things.) An example is below:
I know intellectually that Orym's heartfelt, "Ash, you saved me," was probably Liam stirring the simmering Dorym pot, since Dorian teleported Orym out of danger while uncomscious, especially with Dorian mouthing something like "But I was the one who..." and Liam giving Robbie that cute smirk afterwards...
But since Orym doesn't know that, in my heart Orym was referring not just to the potion that Ashton gave him, but to how Ashton reacted to the last incident with Delilah, and the perspective he provided on Laudna needing to be able to trust them and how it feels to be the villain, because I feel like Orym was edging towards a different path (I think Liam alluded to it on a 4sd or something) that would have been evident in this battle, but seeing Ashton's reaction last time helped pull him back to the kind person he wants to be, who put down his sword and tried to help his friend...
none of which Orym would ever say in full because he's pretty reserved about himself, but it would bleed out when he responded to being given a healing potion by saying, in that tone of voice, "Ash, you saved me."
Essek’s head breaks the surface. He coughs, water trickling from his nose, three mouthfuls worth of it spilling down his chin.
“Breathe,” someone says, and he remembers to do so. His lungs sting as they confusedly fill with air. “No gills, you see,” the voice continues in a kind explanation, and Essek blinks dampness from his eyes and finds that the brown-beige blur in his vision is indeed his partner, looking handsome with his sleeves rolled up, sitting by the edge of the—water? Pool?
He wears an expression of patient amusement, and Essek instinctively raises his chin in defiant indignation, which is usually the correct response. It is made less effective by the water still up his nose.
“What are you doing?” Essek croaks, as calm as one can be when coming to consciousness in a hot tub—because he recognizes the interior of the Tower, now. Caleb raises a brow.
“Oh, you know. Just waiting for you.” He wiggles the book he’s holding open in his lap, one Fauna of Wildemount. “Feeling all right?”
“Yes, I am—“ Essek catches movement in his periphery, and pauses. Small, silvery fish dart through the water around him.
“Uehh,” he says, eloquently, struggling feebly to stand up. His robes are very wet.
“Oh, sorry, sorry.”
Hands reach out, finding Essek’s arms and gently pulling, helping him over the edge. Essek flops onto the floor much like a beached jellyfish.
“They were for you,” Caleb explains, draping a towel over Essek’s head and shoulders. A nonsensical gesture, since Essek’s robes are still very wet. “You stayed Polymorphed longer than I expected. I suspect the depth of our location fueled the wild magic of your misfire.”
Memory returns, distorted through foreign senses. Gasping, wriggling—so much wriggling, it felt nice to wriggle, important—and arms around him, holding on through it all.
Essek hides his face in the towel, angrily patting himself dry. “A Lightsdamned fish.”
“A Wildemount pink salmon, to be precise,” Caleb nods, “though you did not seem keen on the sand eels.”
“Who’s keen on sand eels,” grumbles Essek into the towel.
“Well,” Caleb begins, but seems to think better of it.
Peering out from his towel cocoon, Essek glares through damp lashes. “Please do not feed me eels nor plankton unless the circumstances are dire. But thank you for holding on to me.”
“Mmm. You are one slippery fucker,” Caleb says and kisses him square on the mouth.
“Well, you caught me,” Essek sighs and kisses him back.
essek saying "bren" out loud, claiming a position on caleb's side as the mouthpiece of his regards to astrid, did something to me. i can't tell if it opened a wound or punched me or gave me a hug. all i know is that i am feeling so many emotions right now
more under the cut because i'm about to get rambly:
"bren aldric ermendrud" is a separate character from caleb widogast. he's a young boy learning how to make magic. he's a deeply traumatized and indoctrinated teenager. he's the boy who curled up with astrid and eadwulf in a freezing tower for warmth all night.
essek never met bren. he met caleb and he's never known him as anyone else. if i'm remembering correctly, caleb never even said the name "bren" to him during the campaign, and neither did any of the nein.
essek knows caleb widogast. he knows the man who held up the object of his worst crime and then kissed him in the bowels of a ship and made a floor of infinite stars for them to walk through together. he knows the person who healed over bren's wounds—thinly, but enough. he knows the man that the boy has become.
astrid knows bren. she barely knows who caleb is. she still calls him bren after hearing him referred to as caleb repeatedly. she can't know him as the man he is, she only knows the boy. there's some of bren in caleb, but there is no caleb in bren.
essek saying "bren sends his regards" is him gauging astrid's reaction, on one level—if she freaks out, which she did, she's in opposition to caleb's cause and thus a threat. on another level, it's essek delivering a very different subtextual message from caleb: "the boy who loved you is giving you one final warning."
because essek is a threat to astrid. their last meaningful interaction was slinging spells at each other in the blooming grove. and that's funny in a "current boyfriend vs ex girlfriend exclusively fight each other" kind of way, but it's also deeply tied to caleb's recurring theme of transformation. "bren sends his regards" also means "i have healed enough to love enough for someone else to know this name and use it with my consent. and this someone else is your enemy. what does that make you think i've become?"
it also does a fantastic job of communicating subtle offscreen discussions that have happened over the years since the end of c2. we don't have the details of when or how caleb told essek his birth name, but we know that he did, and we know from all of c2 that the name bren occupies a place of immense emotional weight for caleb. it functions similarly to a deadname in terms of who uses it and for what purpose. trent exclusively calls caleb bren to wound him and place himself in a position of power. astrid calls him bren to remind both him and herself of who they used to be—same with eadwulf, though obviously he's not here.
the first time we hear essek say "bren" is on caleb's behalf and confronting one of the narrative representations of caleb's trauma. it's four words that manage to communicate "i, your enemy on a hundred levels, can speak for both the man i love and the boy who loved you, because i know him in his entirety."
astrid knows bren and essek knows caleb, but only essek can speak for both. because at some point, caleb gave bren to essek. and we know this from four words. four IMPROVISED words.
can someone check on taliesin jaffe please. this is two campaigns now that he’s built a pc specifically designed to seduce liam o’brien and both times he’s gotten cucked by a cool-toned trust fund baby that wasn’t even in the main party
