Kinda Chewing On Omen And Crepusculars Relationship Right Nowman Theyre Complicated And I Wanna Talk

Kinda chewing on Omen and Crepuscular’s relationship right now…man they’re complicated and I wanna talk about them 😭

Even independent from Crepuscular, Omen is a pretty fascinating character to me. At first I didn’t like him because he felt like a bad stereotype, but character development saved him for me so much. He’s a really good representation of positive masculinity, even while he’s doing things that many of the more violent or problematically masculine characters do. He manages to do these things without having to be toxically masculine about any of it, and I’m proud of him for that. And a lot of his ability to do that came from Crepuscular.

Because while I definitely think that their relationship is toxic, Crepuscular was still hugely important for Omen being able to develop his own opinions and do what he wanted instead of being a shy kid who trips over his own two feet. Being with Valkyrie and Skulduggery and helping in their missions definitely started him out by giving him a taste of what the adventuring was like, but every single time he sort of…went back to his normal, boring life afterwards. He always felt like Skulduggery and Valkyrie needed to call on him before he could do anything useful.

Enter Crepuscular, who has so many emotional issues that he successfully manages to hide from Omen by actually being interested in what Omen has to say and encouraging him to do more risky and adventurous things. By this point, Omen has spent his entire life being an idiot who nobody takes seriously and who’s inferior to his brother, so he eats up what Crepuscular is feeding him and starts doing little rulebreaking things, like helping his brother get a knife he needs to kill the King of the Darklands. Small things, and stuff that Omen doesn’t have to get too involved in to help.

And then his brother kills the King of the Darklands a year early, freaks out about it, and suddenly stops helping out people around the school, even when that’s been what people depended on him for for years. There’s suddenly nobody to do it. There’s an empty niche in the school’s metaphorical ecosystem that Auger used to dominate but is now too traumatized to.

And then Omen is there with Crepuscular encouraging him and helping him grow and be more adventurous and be more independent. Since Omen understands what his brother must be going through right now and also understands that the people around them need help, he takes it upon himself to help them (while also pretending that it’s Auger who’s doing it). And Omen circa Resurrection would never have been brave or strong enough to do that, but by this point he’s been following around Crepuscular long enough that he’s actually brave enough and organized enough to figure out what needs to get done, sneak out and talk to Crepuscular, and then actually get up and do it.

And then Damocles Creed becomes Supreme Mage and suddenly they’re living in an incredibly fascist and restrictive state. Does this stop Omen? Hell no. The boy becomes a little punk who investigates suspicious activity around the school and talks to his friends (and sometimes other students) about how they’ll escape this situation.

And then he picks a fight with Valkyrie, who’s an evil god at this point, and tells both her and Skulduggery that they’re awful people (and rightly so). Again, Resurrection Omen would have passed out at the idea of disrespecting these two in their normal forms, but two years later he’s perfectly willing to yell at a god with a streak of breaking people’s wrists.

Crepuscular was a bad person who was produced by circumstances so bad even he knew they were fucked up and he was helping Omen for his own emotional gain, but that doesn’t prevent the fact that he gave Omen the same thing that Skulduggery gave Valkyrie all those years ago: a safe space to test himself out and spread his wings in a way that felt comfortable. And even if Crepuscular was simply doing it to compare himself to Skulduggery, it legitimately helped Omen so much and allowed him to become a more emotionally put-together person than Auger, who had always been considered the better one.

And even after Omen decides to break off his friendship with Crepuscular, that bravery still lingers. He leads a goddamn rebellion in his school and the other kids accept him as their leader and begin taking orders from him.

And after it’s all over? Omen decides to go to art school with a girl he met while on a mission with Crepuscular. Crepuscular was such a bad person but he helped Omen so much and I honestly wouldn’t change much about how their relationship went.

And I honestly think that Crepuscular didn’t hate him either. Aside from Omen giving him what he wanted, Crepuscular chose to go back and ask for Omen’s forgiveness even after he claims to have proved himself better than Skulduggery, and Omen chose to go on one last mission with him because Omen is a sweet person who is easily peer pressured and Crepuscular knew that.

In short, their relationship is toxic but developmentally important for Omen and this post mostly turned into me ranting about Omen’s character development, which I’m not mad about.

Random thoughts for a new SP au that I’ll probably never end up writing 😀

Premise is set in something that hasn’t happened in canon yet actually, so it’s technically also part of the AU. There are still some spoilers for AMFoM though if anyone is hoping to avoid those.

Basically Winter wants to take over the world, right? She has a few years to plan that out and try an execute it, but she makes the mistake of trusting some of the wrong people and Valkyrie ends up knowing about the plan and trying to stop her.

At the end of fight between the general Sanctuary and Winter’s folks, a lot of people from a lot of different sides (including the two mentioned before) are trying to achieve some very different things, and the rib-bone wand they’re using goes haywire and ascends numerous people to varying degrees of godhood.

Bunch of these people are also now crazy, which leads to mortals finding out about magic, and within a few years Earth becomes a blasted wasteland with groups of sorcerers and mortals forming societies around superpowered sorcerers in order to form safety nets.

Some of the groups include:

- Mevolent, who got out because the Eternity Gate was destroyed and has put much of his effort into resurrecting Serafina. He was successful, and now the two of them intend on trying to take over this world and then getting back to Dimension X and taking that back as well.

- Valkyrie basically became a Seraph and is both incredibly powerful and insane. On top of being similar to harpy Val but with way more wings, she can also absorb the personhood of people she cares about when they’re dying (only if she’s able to touch them) and then they basically become an extension of her that she can summon or talk to. However, these people slowly start to lose more and more of their personality as the years go by as their souls are utterly meshed with hers. Also on her team is Anton Shudder, who came back with his soul half-fused with his gist. So instead of summoning his gist, he basically turns into his gist for a few seconds at a time (and also has problems with morality). Also in Val’s gang are Nefarian and (on occasion) Dusk.

- Skulduggery had to put most of the shadow armour back on (for numerous reasons), so while he isn’t Lord Vile, he’s also become a lot more violent and now lives as the king of the necromancers. Solomon and Melancholia are both on his team. While most people consider him and Valkyrie to be on different sides, they still love each other to an obsessive degree and their teams are basically fused. Consider them one team for plot purposes.

- Winter is still alive and has taken her sister’s place as a morally upstanding person, leading a rebellion against the more violent regimes currently running around. Alter is with her, but Mia is dead because of Anton Shudder murdering her on accident. As a result, Winter is dead set on killing Anton, which Valkyrie will not allow because she and Anton view each other as siblings.. Valkyrie considers Winter’s attempts cute but pathetic and usually defeats Winter with ease, but hasn’t killed her because she doesn’t want to kill her sister.

- The Irish Sanctuary, or at least the ones that didn’t go absolutely insane. It includes Ghastly, who is determined to actually make his area as safe as possible for those who want to stay there, Tanith, Fletcher, Militsa (who has broken up with Valkyrie again and probably for good this time), China (who’s been aged down to about her forties because of the magic burst), Dexter, Saracen, Temper (who’s normal but has no magic and relies on magic tattoos instead), Kierre, the zombiecule, and various other characters. Valkyrie doesn’t kill them because she still loves a large percentage of the people who run it, but Mevolent and Serafina have no issue with wiping them out and so they have to be careful. Auger is also there, and he works for Doctor Synecdoche. They all worry about Valkyrie’s state of mind and wonder if they could be able to fix her, but as of now have got nothing to work with. Frightening, Aurora, and the Monster Hunters are there as well, and they actually had to find a way in from the ruins of other countries.

- The Faceless Ones have broken out of their prison because of Malice, but they are significantly less powerful than before because of them sacrificing their power. Valkyrie’s team is determined to murder every last one of them, and they only have a small cult worshiping them left.

- Another cult, this time worshiping Darquesse and believing that they can reach out to her again and get her to come fix the absolute mess that is the planet. Consists of Bennet Troth, other religious figures of the Darquesse Society, and anyone who wishes for this nightmarish hell to be over.

- Omen is also still alive and is a signum linguist, although he also sometimes goes out of his home and draws art on walls and such encouraging people to keep going with life. He shares an underground laboratory with Abyssinia and Professor Nye, who’ve managed to keep a pretty healthy dynamic going given the circumstances. Most people don’t know they’re still alive and they prefer to keep it that way. Funniest trio of roommates ever and I will slap them with the found family dynamic if I find it amusing.

- Cadaver and a version of harpy Valkyrie who’s mind was partially fixed (and who I hope to give a name to). They’re both kind of insane and have gone off to do their own thing, but still sometimes show up to throw everybody off balance a little, although they often team up with Valkyrie and Skulduggery.

- Confelicity, Destrier, and other major scientists have congregated to basically create what passes for a magic university nowadays/scientists for hire. All other sides of the war have decided to not antagonize them, and they exist in relative peace. If a family has an especially clever young sorcerer and isn’t cultishly dedicated to whichever godlike sorcerer they work for, it’s normal for them to try to send their kid off to said university. They technically are still in danger from the Faceless Ones, but some of the more violent groups are willing to protect them in exchange for some service. The Engineer works at the university also, and students enjoy having conversations with it.

- The witches. All the different groups have formed an approximate alliance in order to get other people to leave them alone. They will also take in mortals in exchange for servitude, and many mortals consider it better than going to work for a sorcerer.

Other notes include:

- The god-killers are around and spread throughout multiple different teams of people. Valkyrie is still a walking god-killer (there was a botched attempt at removing the crystals from her system in order to preserve her power) and Skulduggery has the sword. Aside from that, Saracen has the bow, Winter has the spear, and Mevolent has the dagger. There is also some effort being put into sending shunters into other dimensions to try and find more god-killers to use, but it’s such an inefficient use of resources that it’s not a huge pressing issue.

- There are other singular figures, such as Crepuscular, who roam the landscape, but they usually aren’t powerful enough to do anything

- The rib-bone wand is now obliterated and nobody can use it anymore. Valkyrie also destroyed Project Veritas shortly before she went insane (due to an argument she was having with Ghastly about Lord Vile), so now Ghastly’s energy is completely focused on keeping others safe.

- Anton Shudder found a hidden room in one of Roarhaven’s buildings that contains echo stones of Erskine Ravel from various stages of his life, right up until a few weeks before he betrayed them. Anton keeps them around and talks to them sometimes, especially the older echo stones, because he has complicated feelings about Erskine and what he did. If Valkyrie or Skulduggery ever found the stones they would probably destroy them on instinct.

- Gog Magog is very much a thing, but people are struggling to figure out where he is. As a result, him and his followers are currently considered a threat on the horizon but not an issue that needs too much work being put into it right now.

- China is vaguely annoyed that magic keeps messing with her age.

- Abyssinia’s powers have been extended by the magic burst and she is now able to not only suck up other’s life force, but also move said life force into other people if they are injured or dying.

- Malice let the Faceless Ones out but instead of creating a cult around them, she basically acts as a shadow for Winter, giving her advice and making sure nobody is sneaking up to kill her, etc.

- Valkyrie has developed something similar to an obsession with finding and collecting the souls of people she knew and possibly even cared about. She’s definitely collected Billy-Ray Sanguine, and is currently fixating on trying to find Stephanie’s soul and apologizing to it for everything that has happened.

There is more I was thinking about, but that’s all I can remember for now. If anyone has questions feel free to put them in my askbox, because I really feel like writing right now.

I need to get work done but my iPad is speaking to me…

Miscellaneous Maezeore sketches

Featuring Cross

Hey guess who I saw in Wasteland today

Headcanon that the Cellist and Pianist are like the fun aunts/uncles for the Hopeful Steward. They get into so much trouble together 💀