When things started looking dire in Heavensward, right before the field trip idea was brought up by Alphinaud, Theodore actually asked Mordred to take the kid and Tataru and leave.

Theodore himself couldn't leave. Ishgard was his home. For all it had taken from him, for all the bad memories he'd had here, it was his home. He already fled it once, and could not do it again now that the Horde's attack was imminent.

"But it is not your home," he told Mordred, "and you need not stay. Your future lies elsewhere, Mordred. You must carry on, and preserve that which Minfilia and our friends gambled their lives to preserve."

It was a low blow and Theodore knew it. He wasn't there in the tunnel with Mordred. He was in Coerthas -- had been for months, fearful of another attack after they pushed Vishap back. He just knew whatever happened there hurt Mordred immensely, almost as much as being blamed for the sultana's assassination hurt him.

But Mordred hadn't gotten mad. Actually he did kind of swell up with rage for a second...but as Theodore braced himself for what he was sure was the end of their friendship, Mordred deflated again.

"I'd rather stay and face the Horde with you than try my luck alone out there," he told him. "There's not very many I can trust, Theodore. You're the last one."

"Don't say that. You make friends wherever you go. You will be fine," Theodore replied sharply, but doubt was already growing.

Mordred looked at him with enormous eyes. The kind of 'fuck you're so stupid but I'm gonna act cute about it' look. "Aye, everyone will love to reconnect with the bastard with two million gils bounty on his head. And then they'll get me and who will bail me out, huh? Alphi? Alone? Yugiri's tricks won't work twice now that we already sprung Raubahn."

"You cannot stay here and face the Horde. The risk is greater than you can imagine!" Theodore snapped.

"Can you?" Mordred retorted.

"I cannot leave--"

"Then the only choice we have is to win. It is the only choice." Mordred shoved the heels of his palms into his eye sockets. There was a moment of tremulous silence before he removed them, took a deep breath, and grabbed Theodore's wrist.

He said, "Don't ask me to leave you behind. The future Minfilia and the others entrust me with has you in it, too."

He said, "I need you to stay -- stay with me. Please."

It was impossible to refuse him.

So Theodore did not.

not to post even more Villains Discourse on main but it really bugs me how people read giving villains tragic backstories as inherently excusing their actions and/or demonizing trauma survivors.

the actual message of Tragic Villains is (almost) always “people who are never taught or given any healthy, constructive outlets for their emotions will often find unhealthy, destructive outlets.” it’s that people who are traumatized and never learn how to cope with that trauma can become a danger to themselves and others. the message isn’t “trauma makes you evil!!!!” or “genocide is okay if you’ve been sad before!!!!” it’s “people need compassion and help to recover from trauma instead of becoming increasingly angry and harming themselves and others in the process.”

this site takes an alarmingly behaviorist and punitive approach to everything and it’s literally the most annoying thing. y’all have this concept that “if we just punish people hard enough, if we just scare them enough, if we just make them feel guilty enough.” that people just Do Bad Things Because They Do Bad Things, I Guess, and Because We Didn’t Threaten Them And Shame Them Enough. but humans are an innately social species. at our very core, we need compassion and kindness. we need healthy relationships with other humans.

you can keep looking at traumatized villains and being like “haha this dumb pathetic sadboi thinks murder is okay because his parents died” but as a survivor myself, unaddressed/untreated trauma absolutely can make you ragey and destructive. i was lucky enough to have support and eventually get the treatment i needed. but it’s not hard at all for me to imagine how, if that hadn’t been the case, that could’ve been me. obviously not on a movie-villain scale like murder or war crimes, but it’s so irritating as someone whose trauma has always manifested as anger to watch people on this site be like “this is just bad writing!!! real survivors/good survivors don’t end up like that the writers just hate survivors and want the audience to condone murder!”

Kid Pix just became pubic domain, so the remade (but pretty much exactly the same) version is now available here. It's uh, wild, highly recommend checking it out not only for the wonderful nostalgia but you can legit make some incredible looking stuff!

FIND IT HERE

Dorian Storm Never actually played dnd myself but I’ve officially fallen down the @CriticalRole rabbit hole over the past few months, and that means… fanart. So here’s my version of Dorian!

[ID: Realistic art of Dorian Storm. He is an air genasi man, and is drawn strumming his lute against a dark black background which glows slightly red around his head and shoulders. He is wearing a blue coat with silver wings on the chest and bronze-and-silver arm bracers; his hair is half-up in a bun, and the ends cascade down over his shoulders, the shade moving from black to white at the tips. He is in the midst of strumming a note on a light blue lute with thin bronze strings and fine flowery detail work around the sound-hole of the instrument. The edges of his body are slightly in shadow, and his eyes are closed; he has a peaceful expression on his face. End ID.]

OKAY so I got my mum into playing Skyrim a while back. She’s been really liking it, but it’s basically the only game she has played in her life other than Stardew Valley where, like a true Italian, she spent half of her starting gold on a plate of spaghetti. So, as you can imagine, it has been a bit of a learning curve!

Anyway, most of the time she’s adorable! Exploring dungeons with her big Nord Dragonborn, doing quests, uncovering the map, taking carriage rides so he ‘won’t have to walk all that way’. Utter perfection - 10/10.

But then there was today. She approached me, meekly, because she had somehow managed to wrack up a 13,000 gold bounty in Markarth. After overcoming my initial shock (and let’s be real, a healthy bit of awe) I was like, “It’s okay - don’t worry!” and headed over to her computer to help her deal with it. After stashing her stolen goods (a single silver necklace), we fast-traveled took the carriage to Markarth. However, after wandering all over the city, we couldn’t seem to find any guards.

Eventually, after about five minutes of searching, I finally asked her, “What happened? Where is everyone???”

“Oh,” she replied, “the guards tried to arrest me. So I killed them all.”

My sweet mother. The Scourge of Markarth. May the Divines have mercy on anyone who tries to bring her to justice, for she, evidently, will not.

They do respawn, but typically only after a set amount of in-game days (I can’t remember how many). Mother dearest retrieved me pretty quickly after seeing her blood-curdling bounty, and we went back before it had reset

#so did they miss the part where gatsby ends up floating dead in a pool and all the miserable deaths in wuthering heights#or did they miss that because there weren’t any chapters titled In Which The Sinners Are Punished For Their Errors#like. even if you require explicit moral instruction from literature it’s pretty hard to miss the comeuppance in those.

“What I assume my teachers were trying to teach me”

Huck Finn is about a white Southern boy who was raised to believe that freeing slaves is a sin that would send you directly to hell who forges a familial bond with a runaway slave and chooses to free him and thereby in his mind lose his salvation because he refuses to believe that his best friend and surrogate father is less of a man just because he’s black. Yes it features what we now consider racial slurs but this is a book written only 20 years after people were literally fighting to be allowed to keep other human beings as property, we cannot expect people from the 1880s to exactly conform with the social mores of 2020, and more to the point if we ourselves had been raised during that time period there’s very little doubt that we would also hold most if not all of the prevalent views of the time because actual history isn’t like period novels written now where the heroes are perfect 21st century social justice crusaders and the villains are all as racist and sexist as humanly possible. Change happens slowly and ignoring the radical statement that we’re all human beings that Twain wrote at a time when segregation and racial tensions were still hugely prevalent just because he wrote using the language of his time period is short-sighted and foolhardy to the highest degree.

I’m really kind of alarmed at the rise in the past few years of the “and we do condemn! wholeheartedly!” discourse around historical figures. it seems like people have somehow boomeranged between “morals were different in the past, therefore nobody in the past can ever be held accountable for ANY wrongs” to “morals are universal and timeless, and anything done wrong by today’s standards in the past is ABSOLUTELY unforgiveable” so completely, because social media 2.0 is profoundly allergic to nuance

please try this on for size:

there have always been, in past times as today, a range of people in every society, some of whom were even then fighting for a more just and compassionate accord with their fellow man and some of whom let their greeds and hatreds rule them to the worst allowable excesses. the goal of classics and history education is to teach you enough context to discern between the two, not only in the past but in the present

My mind just boggles at the “There’s Racism In That Book” argument.  Yes, there is racism in that book, because that book is ABOUT RACISM.  The message is that it is BAD. 

My high school English teacher, who was a viciously brilliant woman, used to say that when people banned Huck Finn they said it was about the language, but it was really the message they were trying to ban, the subversive deconstruction of (religious) authority and white supremacy.

Gravitation 2 & 3

I wanted to try out a few things, sooo this scene got two more illustrations. I posted the second one twice, because I find it so interesting how different it feels depending on the perspective. It was also fun to imagine chasm wall vegetation and to wrestle with that light situation. :)

Super excited to finally show the world my salt’n’pepper half Orc slab of hunkmeat character! More character notes and stuff will come later after GenCon madness!

My brain be like: “i want that pirate Fen sketch cleaned, and i won’t go to sleep before i see it!”

Never forget that, as a writer, you reserve the right to ignore every single piece of advice people give you about your writing. It is, after all, yours, and you can do whatever you want with it.

A snakey boi for your snakey needs.

Modeled after a piebald ball python! Art © me No stealies.

Because I don’t need no reasons, Silver:

Finished this after 84 years but ye. They have their happy ending C:

Yara in dandy-ish clothes is my new aesthetic. 

Thanks to @elvenbeard and anon for the prompt! 

~ It’s HIGH… TIDE! 🌊

#SAMF ! Overwatch fans, do you hear me? 😏 You better hide because Summer Games #BAE McCree is here now!!!

The shooting has been done in Santo Domingo just after the hurricane Maria went away, so don’t worry! The wind was extremely strong (look at the bent palms on the background) but I took as a personal motivation challenge as you can see now this first preview 😎

#McCree #Overwatch #Cosplay #LeonChiro #Cosplayer #Art #Summer #OlympicGames #Skin #HighTide #Blizzard #Videogame #Games #Photo #PhotoOfTheDay #Photoshooting #SantoDomingo #Tropical #BAMF (presso Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic)