Latest Posts by cottoncaps - Page 6

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Sir!!!

Things the Baldur's Gate Fandom Needs To Know About Mystra

The current Mystra is the third Mother of Magic and she was originally a mortal human woman named Ariel Manx.

Ariel was the second daughter of a wealthy merchant and she liked to sneak out at night to go partying in the clubs.

While out clubbing one night, Ariel - known as Midnight among her friends - met a conjurer named Tad who introduced her to magic and brought her to Mystra's temples.

When Ariel was 21, she attracted Mystra's attention and began to feel as though she were being watched. Whenever this happened, she found that her ability to cast spells increased and that spells that she once found difficult were much easier.

In 1358, when Ariel was 26, the ALL gods were cast out onto the Material Plane by Ao because Bane and Myrkul were being little shits and making yet another power grab, like they do.

The Original Mystra was extremely Unhappy about being thrown out of the heavens and tried to march back up the Celestial Stairway to reclaim her place of power.

Ao did not take kindly to this, and promptly had Helm kick her ass.

Unfortunately, Mystra dying is Bad For The Weave, and Ao had to replace her.

He picked Ariel.

When she was 26.

Immediately after she kicked Myrkul's bony ass in a duel that took place in the sky over Waterdeep.

In order to make the transition easier, Ariel took up the name of Mystra so that

27 years later, Cyric and Shar conspired to kill her so that Shar could take over as the Mother of Magic and spread her Shadow Weave over the land.

Instead of granting Shar control of the Weave the way she hoped, the new Mystra's death/disappearance caused the Weave to collapse, taking the Shadow Weave with it and kicking off what is known as the Spellplague.

Unlike the last two times Mystra was killed, everything went kind of nuts. Magic faded, blue fire raged across the land, killing everything it touched and then raising them into ghouls, the landscape became warped, it was Bad.

The only good thing to come out of the Spellplague was the Dragonborn, who were released from thousands of years of enslavement as a result of the blue fire blowing everything to shit. Hooray for the dragonborn!

Anyway.

Over the next hundred years, things calmed down and the magic… sort of returned, but there were a lot of changes to how magic worked. The Mother of Magic was a non-entity, her presence unfelt even by the famed Elminster of Shadowdale.

At least, not until 1479, when he found her possessing a bear and guarding a hoard of magic items she'd stashed while mortal.

She sent him out to go find new candidates to become her Chosen, and he came back a few weeks later after gorging on the magic of a few of Mystra's other Chosen and gave her enough juice to "return."

Three years later, the Second Sundering started when Bhaal's last two descendants fight to the death and resurrect him as a result.

At this point, ALL the gods are out there recruiting people to become their Chosen right, left, and center. It's a race to become the strongest god in the pantheon, with the winners being decided based on who has the most followers.

This goes on for five years, with the Second Sundering coming to a close in 1487. This was when Mystra became fully restored as a Goddess, with the Weave returning to its original strength.

Over the next two years, MOST of the gods drop their Chosen like they're hot and go quiet, resulting in the rise of clerics as mortals struggled to understand why the gods' behaviors changed so drastically from before.

Mystra was actually one of the few who kept in contact with her Chosen while a few others (such as Ellistraee and the Dead Three) chose to remain on Toril in Avatar form.

In the year 1491, Gale Dekarios of Waterdeep finds the Netherese Orb and has his silver flame (the mark of Mystra's chosen) consumed by it.

12 years after Mystra - once the mortal woman known as Ariel Manx - recovered from her near-death experience.

Please, I am begging you. Stop portraying Mystra the Ultimate Evil and Gale as her Innocent Victim. Their whole relationship is so much more complex than that. Mystra put so much trust in Gale and simply asked that he not cross her boundaries in return, and Gale, in his own words, "sought to cross [those] boundaries." He's a man who heard no and decided that he wasn't going to stop trying until that no became a yes.

I'm not saying Gale is the villain in this, but I am saying that both Gale and Mystra are complex individuals who are both flawed in different ways, and reducing them down to Good and Bad is doing them a disservice.

Kon: Let’s play 21 questions, you start

Tim: Sure, what’s your favorite color?

Kon: Triangle. Are you into boys

So I was taught a lesson in how to get rid of a migraine in 30 seconds and omfg listen my migraines don’t go away ever but I was shown what part of my body to touch and like???????????????

It’s witchcraft????????? Like I would be burned at the stake if I lived in ye olde days knowing that information?????

What the fuck??????

Roy's titties. pls.

Okay, here you go.

One thing that’s hilarious to me regarding DP fic crossovers with other superhero media is, while we joke that Danny is sorta OP in canon, he’s extremely OP in comparison to other heroes. His power set is just perfectly matched by his antagonists (ghosts) and thus is any situation outside of ghosts he’s ridiculously powerful. 

Imagine a hero that can attack enemies and then phase through any return hits. Who has superhuman healing even when he’s hit. Who can be invisible and completely undetectable to people, technology etc for recon purposes. Who can overshadow anyone and make them do as he pleases. Ghost powers, especially stable and strong powers like Danny’s, would be an immense boon to whatever hero or villain got ahold of him. He could change the outcome of any battle.

And yet the fact that he’s a) 14 and stupid b) stuck for the most part in Amity and c) his rogues consists of other ghosts who can counter his insane power set means that Danny doesn’t really get how scary his powers would be to the outside hero community.

Doc. How much would it cost for you to do a drawing of Jason with his white streak? You absolute god

“Sick puppies.. cold shower, cold shower... Bruce’s face....”

The amount of trust it takes for a snake to take gentle sips of the water cupped in your hands

I made a Halloween animatic for the Batfam if anyone is interested lmao

The first hug Tim’s gotten in a long time

Red Robin #6

look me in the eyes dc and tell me a seventeen year old would make a good ceo

ttk babey

of course he’s the kid you wanted, dick thinks, he says, he yells because he is eighteen and so full of hope for life that he forgot about the chains he put on himself that drag him back to bruce’s stupid fucking cave no matter how hard he tries to break free of them. and he’s tried to run away, he’s tried and tried and tried, from the very first fight he had with bruce when he was a burnt-out cluster of stars in the shape of a nine year old boy to two weeks ago, when he realized that there are papers that turn jason peter todd into jason peter todd-wayne. jason peter todd-wayne likes going to school and helps alfred cook and actually enjoys doing weapons inventory and reads books curled up in the big armchair next to the mahogeny desk in bruce’s chamber of an office. dick did backflips on the chair for all of ten minutes before bruce’s quiet scribbling and the walls full of books felt like they were closing in on him, and he had to tumble down the steps of the batcave and throw his body around the parallel bars just to keep his soul from ballooning out of his body with the need to move. jason made bruce smile the day his parents died in the alley his parents died in. jason is quiet enough to put bruce at ease but loud enough to fill the space and bruce loves him like a son. maybe bruce loved dick, but dick made him rub his forehead in exasperation and look over dick’s prescriptions every couple of months and slump with exhaustion after they spent a day together. dick made bruce tired, but jason made him smile, so dick bent his neck in submission and let the kid wear robin on his chest with pride. 

of course he’s the kid you wanted, jason spits out bitterly, the winds whipping past him and bruce on a rooftop like riptides carrying people to their deaths. he can pinpoint the minute his rage turned to hopelessness, because this new robin ran to the edge of a cliff and jumped off without a hint of fear, flying higher and higher until he reached the moon, until he reached the stars, until he reached the outstretched hands dick motherfucking grayson held out for him. dick held his hands out for jason too, but jason’s wings melted with the heat of dick’s stupid stupid stupid perfectness, and no matter what he did, icarus always fell. jason wasn’t an idealistic little annie with stars in his eyes; he braced himself for the burn the minute bruce took him into wayne manor, because rich white men always want things and jason spent months waiting to find out what bruce wayne wanted. the answer was companionship, the answer was someone to protect and care for, the answer was a child to love as his own, which was so hopelessly pure that jason’s skin felt bleached by it. tim’s skin didn’t have to be bleached by it. tim had skin as white as porcelain and eyes like shattered diamonds and an aristocratic little accent that jason could practically see jewels and precious metals dripping off of, his wealth and privilege locking jason in place like the midas touch. jason was a kid bruce picked up off the streets, and even though he’d spent his life knowing that he was smart and strong and clever enough to earn robin, to survive the league, to be red hood, there would always be someone better, someone worth more, someone who fit the robin mold like they were melted and poured into it. so jason snarled and screamed and broke down as loud as he could, because he thought he meant the world to bruce, thought he was his son, but tim was a much better son than jason could ever be, and jason didn’t just outgrow those pixie boots, his feet grew so big they tore them to pieces, and he’d never be able to wear them again.

of course he’s the kid you wanted, tim says to himself, on the precipice of turning his entire body into an ice-cold sculpture near unbreakable with the fire of emotion and letting the tears that had bubbled up into his throat burst out with all the fury of a supernova. tim had chip, chip, chipped away at himself until he’d become the perfect partner, the perfect robin, because that’s all he ever wanted to do. he wanted to be useful, he wanted to work for something with his own two hands and have earned his victory, he wanted someone to tell him they were proud of the work he had done. but tim had fucked it up, he’d fucked it all up, because he hadn’t been able to accept nearly everyone he loved being ripped from his greedy fingers, and all of the satisfaction he got from crowing about how he was right and how bruce was alive and they brought him back because of him turned to acid in his mouth because of the things he’d done to get there. damian was broken too, damian was shattered into so many little pieces that the shards pricked dick all over and made him bleed until damian was seeped into his skin so deep that dick didn’t have any other choice but to love him. tim was just fractured. he had bold lines running across his skin, a map of his strengths and things he overcame and survived turning into a map of his failure, and splinters running across his soul. a streak for trying to clone conner, a streak for mutilating the robin costume with his own grief, a streak for letting ra’s come as close as he did to compromising tim, a streak for not being able to convince cass to stay, a streak for getting kicked out the window and letting himself fall, letting dick believe he’d known he was there and quietly wishing that dick hadn’t gotten to him in time. damian, for all his faults, had only ever tried to claw his way up with bloodstained hands to morality and kindness and good, somehow ignoring the siren call that was the league at his back. so, with a silent and motionless tantrum as violent as someone locked inside arkham, tim screamed at the unfairness of it all, at the audacity of it all, but let himself become accustomed to the r sitting on damian’s chest.

Keep reading

So, India is dying.

Look, I know a good number of you are from the US and things aren't amazing there either, but my country is literally on the brink of collapse. So I'd love it if we could talk about that for a minute.

If you can't do anything else, please just read and reblog.

A second COVID wave has taken out the healthcare system. There are no more hospital beds. There's an oxygen shortage. There's a critical vaccine shortage. The Central Government has thrown its hands up and is passing the baton to the State Governments to do what they can.

There are over 16 million covid cases. A record 330,000 new cases reported yesterday - comparable to the US at its peak. 187,000 dead as of today.

There is no plan.

Mass cremations are taking place. The cremation grounds are running day and night and they are short on wood. People are watching their loved ones die while waiting for a hospital bed, and then they're unable to give them the proper burial rights.

Hospitals are overwhelmed. Patients are being confined, two to a bed. They're the lucky ones.

We are on the verge of people dying in the streets.

This is the second-most populous country in the world. The largest democracy. A country that encapsulates over 15,000 years of recorded human history and has endured everything from famine to invasion to colonisation.

We might be at the end. This might be the thing that does us in.

People are dying.

People are dying.

People are dying and there is no plan.

More good news? Variants are popping up. A double mutation strain has shown up. It is resistant to current vaccines. This will not go away. This is the devastation they warned of when the anti-maskers were out protesting the minor inconvenience of covering their face in public.

My country is on the verge of an emergency state. Our government has failed us. This is as dire a situation as it ever could be.

Look. I don't do much with my life. I write fics, some of you have read them and that's pretty much it. I spend my days with my head in the clouds because that's where I like to be.

But two days ago, my grandmother tested positive, had to be taken to hospital and the ambulance caught fire.

She barely made it to the urgent care she needs.

So, here I am, using whatever meager platform I have to cobble this request together. Because I have to do something.

If you can, donate.

Or spread the word.

Help. Please.

this is a genuine question and not me being snarky or anything, but what's with the aversion to dick grayson's ass? when i was new to the fandom, i just sort of assumed it was a joke that he's got a great ass, but i've seen a few things lately that make it seem like it wasn't alright to say those things? i'm out of the loop and you seem to know what's up lol

So it’s like.... it’s complicated. 

Dick having a nice ass isn’t necessarily a bad thing to joke about as fans in moderation, but the problem is that in the actual comics there are multiple instances of other characters commenting on his ass and body in general with him very clearly expressing discomfort over it, and it usually gets treated like a joke.

(Trinity (2008) #10)

(New Teen Titans #56)

There’s so many more instances throughout his history but those are a few I had on hand. Not only that, but this paired with the fact that he has been raped twice in canon, just makes it very uncomfortable when DC oversexualizes him as some kind of marketing thing to try to appeal to a female audience, and usually when they do it’s by putting more ass focus/jokes/commentary into stuff. So it can just get kinda... tiring.

If they’re not going to treat the sexual harassment he’s faced in the comics they publish seriously, then they have no right to joke about him like that, ya know? But again, when fans comment/joke about it it’s... very different than when DC does it.

Like, there is nothing wrong with considering Dick Grayson to be a sexy character, or to have a nice ass or something like that, and it’s not even like it’s bad to talk about it! He is sexy! But we as fans should be critical of how this subject gets portrayed in the comics because it’s very often that he is being sexualized by others in ways he expresses discomfort over. Usually it feels like when people are saying to stop making jokes about Dick’s ass it comes more from a place of being frustrated by DC doing this rather than like... some other fan making a shitpost about it being the root of the problem 

This is a pretty good post talking about the Grayson comic specifically that kinda goes into some talk about the difference between a character being Sex-positive vs being Sexualized. 

designing and animating a diverse cast of women is hard

DEREK CHAUVIN WAS FOUND GUILTY ON ALL COUNTS.

Flamebrain

starfire

blue bird

Delighted to know that the medium of Ancient Greek plays offering the audience cartharsis has survived in the form of fanfiction

Thoughts about dick Grayson:

1: canonically (in the shit storm that is canon) he’s in his late 20’s early 30’s.

2: he was Damian’s caregiver/guardian/parental figure when Bruce was dead, so he can loosely fall into category of Dad.

Conclusion: dick grayson is a DILF

Jason: You may call it "being terrible at darts" but I call it freestyle acupuncture

Tim [standing in front of the bulls eye]: Hurry up Jay I wanna relax

Bruce: Oh my god I can't leave you two alone AND I'M SO TIRED

Oh? You like the batfam? So, are you queer, neurodivergent, mentally ill, or all three?

Ok but fr, the amount of batfam fans I know that are at least one of the above, and often all, just goes to show how much this messed up family resonates with people like us.

Queer people adore the concept of found family because we are so often rejected by our blood family. The concept of superheroes is inherently queer, and especially trans. Having a secret name only a few trusted people know? Having an entire community of people just like you that you can't tell the people in your every day life about? Leading two entirely separate lives with only a handful of people who know both sides of you? Queer.

The batfam especially is found family, because only a few members are related by blood (Bruce and Damian). The far majority of them is either adopted (the Wayne kids) or very very close to the rest of them to the point they're considered family (Alfred, Steph, Barbara, etc). Most DC families are blood families, so it makes sense that queer people gravitate towards the batfam. (Queer people love adopting each other. Looking at all my friend-sibs.)

Multiple batfam members are neurodivergent coded (Bruce especially), although unintentionally so, and they're all severely mentally ill/traumatized. We look at these characters and think, yes, you are like me, I understand you.

A lot of traumatized people project on the batkids, because, well, it's kind of a wish fulfilment to have an adult come save you when you're at your lowest, huh?

(Also why I suspect so many people project onto Tim specifically, because his trauma is the easiest to relate to. Most people don't grow up as assasins, or have their parents murdered.)

(And also why I think there is so much batfam fan content. We saw these characters who are so much like us being mistreated in their source material and decided to take them in as our own and give them better lives, the same way we long to do with ourselves.)

Besides, a big part of fandom in general is made up of nd ppl. We tend to hyperfixate on stuff and produce a fuckton of content cause this is the only thing we can think about. It's only logical that there are so many of us in the batfam fandom/larger DC fandom.

There wasn't really any point to this, just... we looked at this broken, messed up family, saw ourselves, and called it our own. I don't know, I just think that's pretty meaningful.

Dick: I’ve created a map of all the possible places where the league could have taken Damian

Jason: this is.. this a map of the world

Dick, crying: I have no idea where the fuck he is

the batfamily + the wall of shame

It’s a relatively unassuming wall toward the northwest corner of the bat cave, one that’s subtly shadowed by the giant penny but nevertheless a blank canvas. 

So it’s not that surprising that even in a family full of detectives, the single post-it note stuck onto the rough concrete went unnoticed until a week after its placement. 

It read: RED ROBIN SLIPPING ON ICE AND FALLING FIVE (5) SEPARATE TIMES DURING ONE FIGHT

Tim was slightly perturbed but not surprised; his lack of balance in his suit’s newly designed boots was particularly egregious that night. He retaliates the only way he knows how.

The second post-it is what grabs the attention of the rest of the bats. 

It reads: JASON STARTING THE KEURIG BUT FORGETTING TO PUT HIS MUG UNDER SO COFFEE FLOODED ONTO THE FLOOR

Was Jason the culprit who stuck the first note onto that wall? Unclear. But that didn’t matter. The deed was done.

Soon the wall was deluged with every color and shape of post-it note, detailing every mishap, small or large, committed by any member of the family. The following is an itemized collection of a selection of entries.

STEPHANIE TRYING TO BLEACH HER EYEBROWS AND ENDING UP WITH CHEMICAL BURNS ON HER FACE FOR TWO WEEKS

DUKE FALLING ASLEEP ON PATROL EVEN THOUGH IT WAS THE MIDDLE OF THE DAY

CASS LETTING STEPHANIE CUT HER HAIR

DICK FORGETTING THE MIRANDA RIGHTS BUT KNOWING EVERY LYRIC TO THE ENTIRE MAMA MIA SOUNDTRACK

BRUCE.

BARBARA FORGETTING SHE REGISTERED FOR A CLASS UNTIL THE DAY OF THE FINAL

DAMIAN FAILING A HISTORY TEST BECAUSE HE NEVER WENT TO CLASS AND ALSO FORGOT WHO GEORGE WASHINGTON WAS

feel free to add on more entires I forgot to mention

a very self indulgent sketch of nightwing

ANYWAYS it’s 2021 so for anyone who still wants to pretend that they don’t Know Anything About Duke: Have I Got News For You!

Here’s a Reading List with titles that are Bolded for Character Development/Plot Relevancy

Here’s an FAQ page that y’all are more than welcome to help me expand by sending me Questions/Asks!

Also in case it wasn’t obvious from my blog url: yes! This is a Duke Thomas sideblog! Check out my About to get the lowdown and see what I do here!

And maybe consider giving this blog a follow for a Daily Duke Post idk, it’d be Neat to have the Sunshine Boy on your dash, dontcha think?