u/Equivalent-Fun-6019

my birthday was very fun. I had cake. now where were we?

*prey* pray to the moons that there are no more grammatical errors

Not to worry, the next few chapters will be extra traumatizing to make up for it.

(reposting this because of a certain striped snot-ball)

Bully them off the objective. No OC, no primary, every unit in your opponents army is so fucking confused, where did these guys come from? why is nothing working? Why are my custodies on the the objective for the entire game and still get flipped by a bunch of guys on circus stilts? While your at it, no stratigums, welcome to the fun house motherfucker

The essential core of it is the 2 stilt men and 3 ten man groups of infiltrators, both of which give battleshock and leadership debuffs. Backed up by the three ranger squads with marshals and dune rider transports to further decrease OC

In addition, Hastarii for Anti-Tank, a distraction Carnifex Kastlens, and Grandma to buff the myriad of Skitarii

(question for the comments): what do you think happened to the Jade Winglet? which member do you bet will show up first *after umber cuz duh*

Do you, and tell me honestly, know anyone from the Dakotas, and just to preface now, I will not be differentiating between north and south Dakota, it is just the Dakotas to me and the only reason it was made as two states, and remains as two states because they wanted extra senate seats. Nothing about the Dakotas warrants being an officially recognized state, let alone TWO recognized states.

And while this isn't about Dakodians? Dakotites? Dekodes? PEOPLE WHO LIVE IN THE DEKOTAS - and I respect all people and their state pride and housing situation but...what are you like. Neither state seems to have an identity? like, Illinois has the bean and deep dish, Kansas has corn and Superman, Utah has the Mormons. But like what do you have Dekotals? what is is your cultural identity?

"wE HaVE MoUnt RuSHmORe" you mean the unfinished carving of four old dudes faces plastered on the side of a mountain, which is on stolen land by the way. Literally every other nation monument is ten times more historically relevant and cooler, no doubt helped by the fact that you don't have to drive through the Dakotas. And the only other thing you have there are missile silos and military air strips. Your top exports are Petroleum and Soy Beans.

north and south Dakota combined have a population ~1.6 million. 2 states, 4 Senators, 2 seats in the house, and they have half as big of the population than Puerto Rico (3.2) who has little to no representation in congress.

"well what about the other direction states like West Virginia and North/South Carolina". West Virginia has gained my respect for being the part of Virginia that didn't succede, and North and South Carolina have unique enough identities, both of which I do not want to mess with and massive populations.

you Dakotas? you have no right to hog two stars on an American flag for being the most Nowhere state.

this won't make sense for a while, still thought it was funny

this is an Idea that I've had in the back of my head for a while, and it's essentially "where would the DoD be without the prophecy" except the divergence point for this timeline is further back, and Clay from the normal story gets Isekaied into this worlds variant of him so he has to convince his friends to help save the world. (very much in the vain of Shrek four ever after)

I don't need you to be protagonists, I don’t even need you to be there for most of the book, JUST DO SOMETHING.

Fatespeaker, you are a teacher at JMA, you got some powers, whatever those are, and yet Flame has more relevance in arc 2, FLAME. You are only barely beating out your other fake DoD members because Squid is a nepobaby and doesn't want to try, and Ochre isn’t around to try. And even then, the extent of your presence in the story is getting called a dumb ninny with weak powers by Darkstalker and disappearing for the rest of the story. We joke, we laugh, we make fun of Starflight for being Tui’s punching bag. But what does it say about you when you are supposedly romantically connected to that DoD member (like Deathbringer or Riptide or Peril) AND DON’T DO SQUAT! I reread book 4, you were an interesting character with emotional insecurities and a longing for friendship in a hostile environment, and you reckoned with the fact that others might not see you the same way, and that you used your powers to feel special and escape that insecurity. Did any of that make it out of arc one? No? You just follow around Starflight? Great.

Speaking of bums at JMA. at least Fatespeaker was present in her arc. Let’s recap what Webs has done with his life.

• Ran away from the narrative in book one
• Got plot deviced in book two
• AND THEN SAT IN A LEAF BED KNOCKED OUT FOR THE REST OF THE ARCYou were a DoD guardian for the moon's sake! You should have extreme amounts of character importance, moon knows Kestrel did, even though she died on the rocks one book in and is still referenced 16 books later. And at least Dune knew his place, that dragon exited the narrative with a shock of terror and I can not fault him for not being relevant, because he is dead, YOU AREN'T THO. I hate to say it, but it might have been better if they did fridge you, because arc 2 and onward, you are a bum. You teach a history class that no one listens to, where your most interesting class period was a firebombing, and were you around or relevant for YOUR CLASS getting turned into ash? No.
• The timeline of your dialogue is
• Book 3: “everything hurts”
• Nothing for 3 hole books
• Book 6: “can we pay attention”
• Not even a mention for 5 whole books
• Book 10: straight up just Darkstalker propaganda

No one even thought of you when they planned to send SeaWings over to Pantala, no let's send a powerless Turtle to get a stomach ache. And when YOUR SON appeared in book 7, did he ask “How is my father doing? I know it has been hard since he found out that his wife was brutally killed and that his entire life's purpose was a lie for a bunch of colonialists”, NAH! He asked “How is Tsunami doing?”.

And Swordtail, oh Swordtail…tell me…are you even in the SilkWing Assembly, I know your sister is, but then again, your sister actually did things that warrant being in that Assembly.
You, on the other hand, have done literally nothing, and you were around for most of arc 3. And don’t you start counting that time that you got put on stimulants and threw a rock, that is honestly more of a Cricket achievement than a feat for you.
You were not the one who guided the Chrysalis into helping the LeafWings, that was Sundew.
What you did do was get caught in a dragon trap the second you entered the Poison Jungle. What you did do was get held hostage about six times in three books. What you did do was look for Luna which would have been impactful, if we didn’t already know exactly where Luna was. No wins, no character growth, just Luna. and it wouldn’t be so bad if you didn’t also spend your time regurgitating everything that Sundew says, including especially the discriminatory statements about HiveWings (right in front of Cricket btw)
When you were taken in by the PoisonWings they asked Sundew why you were useful. And she genuinely replied “useful may not be the right word, but the flamesilk would be sad if you killed him” and if that is not the entirety of your character, I don’t know what is.
The rest of your team had probably one of the best dynamics in the series, Blue has emotional intelligence while being prone to safety, Cricket has book smarts while being overly curious and brash, and Sundew has tactical and practical skill that is offset by her single track, aggressive mindset. Each of them bounce off of each other so that none of them get dragged too far in the wrong direction. Blue balances Cricket, Cricket teaches Sundew, Sundew challenges Blue, and the completion of this dynamic leads to Bumblebee, a representation of positive growth and teamwork. And then there is you, Swordtail, what do you bring to this dynamic? Matter of fact, what even is your chemistry with Luna?
I am just kinda disappointed, there were chances to be an interesting fool character that reflects on their inability and finds their place amongst the resistance, but that never happens, and you never really grow like anyone else. Even if I can't one hundred percent fault you for that

please, y'all are such interesting characters, just do me this one thing!

legit a long range Stealth, Lone Op, that can inflict this battleshock with these Heavy rules and take out characters for 50 points is seeming a little more worth it (Please give him towering, it would be so funny)

I remember when this portrait was made, I was young, but I do remember. Probably because it was the only time I had ever seen my sisters somewhat pleased with each other.
The painter was doing the processes egregiously slow, and the four of them had been standing there for a while. Apparently long enough that Blaze’s talons were getting sore, even with the myriad of pillows under her – at least that’s what she told the painter before getting snapped back to attention by her mother.
While Blaze was the most impertinent about the situation, you could tell that no one was having fun.
Burn had gotten engrossed in a rotting camel corpse she had found outside the palace on one of her flight training exercises and had been spending the good part of a week carefully stuffing and embalming it. This family activity was intervening on the time when the sun entered her tower at the perfect angle to work.
Blister on the other hand had a “big secret plan” that she was alluding to that she had to “take care of”. A plan that turned out to just be a prank where she would paint a ton of normal, non-venomous, desert snakes to look like a bunch of dragonbite vipers, and place them all over the palace to freak out the servants. (She had put a disproportionate amount of those snakes in Burns' living chambers). Nonetheless, she was committed to the scheme, as she always was.
But my mother, Queen Oasis, well…This was back when Oasis still had hopes that her hatchlings, while dense and eccentric, weren't completely insane. The sisters were dragonets, and while the three of them could never quit fighting over who would be queen, they were years away from a challenge, and the competition was still friendly, you must have siblings, you get it. It starts with wing wrestling and ends with a twenty year long forever war. No, but yea, my mother thought that standing around for hours while a crinkle nosed dragon painted Blaze’s face a little too big would inspire some comradery and dare I say love.
I guess she wasn’t entirely wrong, at least in this case, actually I think that this incident might have put five more years of air into her lungs.
Oh! Right, what happened.
Well, a part of the whole sitting still deal was that they couldn’t get up to get food or water, so they had to be delivered to them, and hand served so their portrait subjects could stay as still as possible, a task that I had auctioned for, though not a lot of other dragons were really offering to get close to Burn (there had been a few incidents that resulted in servants with dislocated – you know what, not important.)
Anyway, I had made the long walk from the kitchen, trying my best not to spill open coconuts full of water. If you haven't tried navigating this place with two coconuts and the pressure of a thrusting queen, you should try it, it does wonders for the nerves. But I did it, and with minimal spillage and began serving the princesses.
Since Blaze was complaining the most, she was the first one that I would waterfall the drink to, but somewhere in the process, I slipped on one of her pillows and tipped one of the two coconuts straight onto her head, spilling all that water on her pristine snout.

Blaze reacted not too dissimilar to a cat in a sudden rainstorm, yelling, “Oh you sandsnorting moron, why did you do that, now my peachy perfume will be diluted by coconut smell for like forever.”

Then in genuine shock to me and Blaze, Blister slithered over Blaze’s wing to console her little sister, “Oh come now sister, you know our brother didn’t mean it”
“Exactly,” I naively agreed

“He couldn’t possibly mean it” Blister said, flicking her tongue in and out.

“Exactly! you know, for a moment I thought there was a-”

“He would not challenge a scavenger, let alone do something like this intentionally" Blister had then taunted.

I choked up in offence, “Hay I-I would! I’m not scared of any of you, let alone Blaze. I just didn’t do it intentionally this time.”

Blister snorted and wrinkled her snout, “Really, prove-”

Then I took that other coconut water, the one I did save, and splashed it in Blister's face. And for a moment, the room was completely quiet, before Burn and Blaze started laughing hysterically. Blister didn’t exactly seem too hurt, maybe not physically, just frozen, like there was an IceWing’s frost breath in that coconut. Then she did the one thing that a begrudged, soggy, megalomaniac could do to restore respectability in that situation.

Blister violently shook off all the water from her face, splattering it onto Burn, Oasis, and doubly drenching Blaze, who had just dried herself off with one of her pillows.

Burn seemed not to take the move well, since she was giving death stares at Blister. At that moment, I thought that another fight was about to break out, but instead Burn started laughing, a move that seemed to cascade into the other two sisters realizing the absurdity and evenness of this situation, like…well, like they had been splashed in the face with cold coconut water to wake them up.

Even Mother was laughing, in a high pitched snort laugh that I had only heard one other time in my life (when one of my other brothers successfully fooled Blister into calling herself stupid in front of everyone).

And for a moment, they looked at each other, eyes wide and smiles even wider, and I think that for that single wingbeat, they stopped seeing each other as rivals or competition, they might have even paused some grudges or schemes they had in the back of their head. For once in all of the long and storied saga of the SandWing princesses, they saw each other as…siblings. 

And then Blister probably remembered how hard Burn beat her in training, and Burn could probably recall Blaze’s comments on the preening of her dirty scales, and Blaze definitely didn’t forget when Blister cut off the top of her mane the night before a big moon festival party, aaaaannnd everyone went back to normal. But I caught it, and apparently so did the painter – just one of the many corrections he made to the coconut water-covered subjects.”

And so this portrait got hung in the great dining hall for one or two years before Oasis decided to update it, with that portrait's creation being a lot less interesting and the portrait a bit less iconic. And then two years later, another portrait was made, and another, and another.

This one eventually got put in the treasury for a while before one of my brothers, with the help of Blisters' negotiation tactics, got brave enough to ask our mother to let us have it. Lucky break, right! A few more months, and it would have been stolen by Blister, and probably get used as a knife target – thanks again for that, by the way.

To be fair, it wasn’t exactly safe once out of the treasury. When Burn took over the Palace and turned it into a stronghold, she tore up all the other portraits to “Get that snake's smug face off my walls”.

In one of my braver moments, I too asked if I could keep it. Surprisingly, after being yelled out for being a sentimental idiot, she agreed to not reduce it to ashes, and even more surprisingly, she kept that promise, *hah* yes, even during her famous ‘stress relief exercises’ when the war was not going well for her.

That might have been one hundred percent accidental, but a small part of me likes to think that she remembered too, and Blister did help get it out of the treasury, even if that was a ruse to help her figure out what key was for the treasury. I asked Blaze if she remembered, which she didn’t, but that’s not exactly surprising.

I would say that this right here is one of the luckiest paintings in all Pyrrhia by a long shot. Though… it might not be that lucky. It kinda just sat on a wall and occasionally had an idiot vouch for its continued existence. I have known a lot of other treasures that have lasted a lot longer under much tougher conditions, and those treasures are actually worth something. This…has only stayed around because it was nice and it learned to not get in the way.

…

You know, the dining room has been awfully empty nowadays. I know Outclaws aren't exactly one for decorations, but…It might be nice to have a portrait up over the fireplace. I know that Thorn and I can stand still, but Onyx might need a little convincing and extra pillows for Blaze. Do you think Sunny could visit for a day or two, if I asked kindly *heh* yes, yes, you can be in it too.

The excessive use of capitalization, the constant violent phrases, the often very messy and confusing priorities in her mindset...oh my moons, Sky got traded one sibling for the exact same person.

It's not even that they happen a lot, it's the fact that the NightWing is always the one getting fallen for. (and clearsight, master of rebounds)

Clearsight by : Tobuzzu