something about angwyn saying "I will find what is wrong with your mind and I will change it" and adaine telling him "you've been trying to do that for a very long time and I'm sorry to tell you that it has not worked" and jawbone shaking her "having panic attacks is not a character flaw" and adaine saying "this medicine is great!" and summoning a familiar and learning how to help herself and how to channel and manage her anxiety and live with it, and learning how to love herself and love her brain even though it's fucking hard but doing it anyway because "I know that my friends do love me, so maybe there is hope for us yet" so if that's enough, oh god maybe thats enough, maybe she is enough, maybe her brain is enough, is making me. feel. things.,
The best thing Dimension 20 has done for me personally is that it proved that creating interesting, realistic and authentic queer and diverse characters *is* possible and not an impossibly difficult challenge so many different pieces of media make it out to be
Our ragged, bloodstained girl in red. Flesh stained teeth, earth crusted nails. An animal-girl.
Girlhood knows red. She knows of blood and the hollowing hunger that resides in the pit of stomachs. She knows her way around organs and the fresh scent of danger. Girlhood knows of red eyes, red hands, red tongue licking a full, satisfied smile.
Red waits with the Creature resting on her grandmother’s bed. It lies with one paw over the other. It yawns and sleeps and bares its neck. It waits for inevitability. Fear wears the clothes of love.
“If you cannot eat, you will die. This is the Law.”
Tears swell at the corners of the girl’s eyes. Who are these tears for, my child? Humanity lays at the corners of her eyes. She wipes them with the back of her hand.
Hunger and hunger and hunger grips the girls stomach. Starvation. Instincts. Animal.
She lays the iron weapon into the Creature’s skull.
Red Riding Hood devours her shadow. She rips apart fur, finds the critical spot where the meat comes apart the easiest, where the heart pounds and fades the quickest.
She splits the skull apart, pulling the strings that have tormented her Story many times told. She strays the path and follows her instincts. Animal.
She eats. She eats and drinks and swallows. Bright red. Raw meat. She picks the fur and guts out of her teeth. She wipes her mouth on the collar of her white dress and her hands at her thighs. “My teeth were made to eat you”.
Unrecognisable child. People fear you the way they feared the Big Bad Wolf. What have you done? Predator claws and ears grow from her body. Alien, familiar. Maturity, mortality, humanity, innocence— the blood at the end of girlhood.
“I met death, and Death wants me to live.”
Ame is a child when she first wonders through Grandmother Wren’s cottage. She wakes to the stomps of a fierce rooster, the smell of juk, the chorus of small sounds that builds the cottage.
Ame is a child when she falls in love with magic, the scent of it, the purity and the heart that lives at the core of it. Magic, the ability to connect with the earth, to provide for the animals and the trees, for the Spirits and honour their works. To help humans with sickness and mending.
The humanity in magic, the spinning of life to vow service to all that breathes on Umora.
Yet Ame is still a child as other children scowl at her, throw piercing gazes and words, “you’re a witch!” and see nothing but body, a little girl disconnected from the flesh of their own, a witch, nothing but a witch, an orphan, a stranger, a child. All but human.
But Ame had never thought herself anything other than human.
Ame, a child that never was, never could be, and forever will be.
She is a child when she is given to Grandmother Wren. Unwanted, strange child. She is a child when she is othered by the other children. Witch and apprentice, and still a child.
Ame never experiences childhood. She knows the wonders of magic and medicine, of healing and earth. But she never experiences the wonders of friendship, of connections in childhood. Ame never experiences the wonders of playing make belief, the warm hug after a heated argument, the small secrets shared in childhood.
But Ame is a child when finds more to her little family. A wizard, a witch and a wild one. Each child with a deep and profound sadness etched into the core of their beings and yet all too young to form the words to it.
Ame is still a child when she waves goodbye to her best and most True Friend. Tears wet her cheeks and the summer falls to her feet in a sweet breeze and a distant memory unforgotten. Ame is a child when she whispers her final goodnight to her brother, her True Friend, without and fully knowing so. She wakes up to the smell of moss and nothing but moss. She finds the cottage all too quiet.
Ame gains more than childhood during one summer and looses more than it when it is over. She finds fellowship and family in two True Friends. A secret and bond in childhood that cannot be simply broken. A thread that stretches across over water and mountains that no matter how far they are, they know they have a piece of themselves, of a simpler yet complicated summer in childhood somewhere across the lands. A small shard of childhood, of their true humanities stuck in memory of the scent of honey and magic and fur, a time long ago.
Is there any greater blasphemy than that of an angel who fell in love with a demon?
He came to the earth at the dawn of its creation, his directive to enact God's will. The Archangels stressed upon him that, in so doing, it was imperative that he oppose The Enemy. They told him what he would face: one of the Fallen, a demon.
He thought he understood the nature of this creature of darkness.
But he was wrong.
Where there ought to have been ugliness, he found only beauty.
Where he expected cruelty, he found kindness.
Heaven had prepared him to thwart the wiles of a heart of evil, yet he found one that harbored goodness, gentleness.
A demon who protected the weak, the innocent.
A demon who mourned, who grieved.
How could Heaven have been so utterly mistaken? For he was assured that the demon had the devil in him.
But in this creature's soul, he can see God.
Beautiful. Kind. Gentle. Good.
To say nothing of his cleverness, his wit, his charm, his appeal.
The demon intrigues him. He subverts his every expectation. He is a fascination.
More than all that.
The demon makes him laugh.
Makes him feel.
Listens to him. Challenges him.
Saves him.
And as the centuries pass, he finds that in the demon's presence, an emptiness he didn't know he had is filled; as though the broken edges of their spirits fit together; as though they were made for one another.
He knows the Host of Heaven whisper.
They call it blasphemy. Abomination.
They wonder in horror:
How could an angel fall in love with a demon?
The truth is...
How could he have done anything else.
worlds beyond number is sooo good!
ive been thinking about this today and just feel the need to sing praises to it
the last stand fight is literally one of my favourites if not the favourite from D20
and, you know, its probably not the hardest or the most story important one, but god its just so good
like the fact that non of them dropped??? that they didnt even get that injured and yeah on some part it obviously was the dice as it often tends to be in dnd but it was also them showing how well they work together
i feel like they all play into their strengths very well it this fight and they even talk about it in the adventuring party like if it werent for spell casters with area of effect spell the fighters would stand no chance, but also noone else could probably tank all that shit from the purple worm like gorgug
and like the decision from emily axford to disguise herself as the proctor was so good and yeah again luck also played into that but if she didnt do it, there would be no chance at even having that luck
and also her spirit guardians (love that spell) delt so much damage, and adaine coming in with the scatter to move the proctor away, which leads to kristin coming closer to there, which allows her to see kipper whats her face and stop whatever she was about to do
and then theres the exams part which they fully blow out of the park, like im pretty sure there was at least one question from like freshman year like prompts to you for remembering, also them actually attempting the math and essay and the essay actually kind of making sense and being about something that the characters genuinely care about
even if we go back to the dice, fig is struggling it that fight (and honestly the whole season) but because of so many good strategical decisions that emily makes, the impact of the dice is not as big as it could have been, if she had done things differently
also everyones vibe is so good the entire fight, like this fight was not made to be easy, they were probably met to at least drop maybe even multiple times, but they are having fun with it, joking around about the rats and the jellies and honestly its a very on brand fight for the bad kids
i also just remember the amount of nat 20 zac rolled in that fight, like that was insane
Ayda Aguefort 🐦🔥
Emily Axford <3
And the little flower in Brennan’s hair!!
(I started A Court of Frey and Flowers)
Crying real tears after the final episode of The Ravening War
What the fuck