My Proposal For Tropes We As A Fandom Should Adopt In All Fanworks Going Forward: Duke Thomas Edition

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.

getting blinded by the white rectangle

Flamebrain

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.

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.

HAPPY INTERNATIONAL ASEXUALITY DAY!!

-April 6th

these are the miserable remains of a chestnut weevil (Curculio elephas) who will never again feel the joy of a freshly drilled acorn after unspeakable atrocities were perpetrated upon her by me

this is her thirty seconds later. the atrocities that she miraculously recovered from included "being gently scooped up from a branch"

(September 1st, 2024)

Happy fat fuck Friday to Themberchaud, Wyrmsmith of Gracklstugh

absolutely disgusting that i have to create the the things i want to create