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anotherfansthings · 1 year

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The Happy Couple

Neteyam x f!OmaticayaReader

Synopsis: Y/N’s father was once a fellow warrior to the Ole’eyktan Jake Sully, who died in battle against the sky people. As a dying wish, Sully promised he would take care of and protect his daughter, but what she wasn’t aware of was that they had dealt something of much greater significance. Becoming a future Tsahik to the Ole’eyktan’s eldest son: Neteyam.

Enemies to lovers | Minor violence | Big strong man crying 😍

PART FOUR :

'Y/N' Jake began 'we understand you're distraught from his forceful behaviour, but the boy is right. Much more commitment will be required from you to complete the partnership between you and Neteyam'

'Wow' Y/N scoffed 'I cannot believe you are defending such disgusting actions. I am sacrificing so much for you-'

'My Y/N' Neytiri interrupted with a tired groan

'No my Y/N. There is no Y/N anymore. My future has been stripped away and given to the people. I have absolutely nothing to achieve, everything I do from now on is planned or forced. All of my ambitions banished into the abyss, worthless and forgotten. Please,' Y/N begs 'if I am to give up on all my dreams the least I can have is some control between me and Neteyam, and the support of my family to correct this horrid mate of mine'

The burning tears streaming down your face had only now become evident; puffing your eyes and leaving your throat to be caught in the cold air. You knew by the gruelling looks upon Jake and Neytiris face that their hands were tide. You were stuck. Life now nothing but a force of reproduction and encouragement of the clan.

Jake cleared his tight throat, relieving the heavy tense air 'The Ole'eyktan training should level his stupidity, make him worthy of a leader and capable of acting like a family man, not this forceful nature you say he is acting out' he finished, but without adding an obvious sense of disbelief by widening his eyes at your previous accusation, thinking you were just being overdramatic

'My Eywa!' Y/N challenged 'you don't believe me do you. Can't believe that your perfect little soldier boy would be misbehaving. Wow. You know I had thought for a mere second that I would have the best in-law family, I couldn't have been further from the truth.'

Your words infuriated Neytiri 'Hey! You do not say that about my family. We didn't want this either, but it is sacred that a dying mans wish is fulfilled. You should know of this by now.' she cautioned

'My family huh? You can't hide the fact you both wanted me out of your responsibility. Two orphans too much for you to handle now is it?!' Y/N shouted

Jake was quick to grab your arm and stand tall before you 'Y/N you get that word out of your mouth right now. You and Kiri are just as much as family as we consider our own blood. Don't you dare pull that card right now'

His harsh gaze pained you, building upon the overflow of emotions that were building up inside of you. Instead of scolding you for being disrespectful, he let down his walls, slowly letting his affectionate manor appear before you. Jake's eyes become glazed, preparing to keep your eyes interlocked until he could no longer bear the sight of someone he cared for being this distraught. As soon as the first tear fell, he embraced you fully within his arms, nearly winding you. Neytiri stood with sheer disbelief from her husband actions; never seeing his emotions overtake his soldier mindset outside of their private conversations.

The beautiful moment was interrupted by your one and only, Neteyam.

'Oh my, what has she done to you?' Neteyam snickered 'what lies has she fed to make the dry man cry?'

Without a second thought Neytiri was by his side sending a flick to the side of his ear 'No my son, do not be insolent to your father with such low respect.'

'So, what nonsense has she really brought here'

Y/N turned to meet his eye line, with a face of pure wrath 'How are you even-'

You had subconsciously began to stalk your way over to the stupid boys position, being stopped by Jake.

'Y/N this is my job now' Jake declared, before turning his full attention to his eldest son 'boy we have heard of your behaviours, it should go without saying that we do not condone of these. Y/N now knows her expectations will be greater, but at her control. It's the least we can do. You read me, Neteyam?'

'No.' was all he replied

Y/N scoffed before allowing herself to come face to face with her mate 'No? Sorry poor soldier boy but this is not your decision to make.'

'No! I will not be humiliated like that. Every other worthy man here has the great chance to lead their family, there is no way I will have that taken from me!'

'Ohhhhhh, so it's okay for me to have my whole life stolen away from me, but as soon as Neteyam is asked to spare a small role it is not allowed?' Y/N remarked before spitting at Neteyams stance

The painful silence was quickly broke by Neteyams overly loud clapping in your face 'Well done my Y/N, you finally understand me. I will be in charge of our family as is every other man in the forest, and you shall be devoted in supporting that.' he finished with an endless smirk plastered on his proud face

You couldn't fathom any words to argue against his stupidity, rather choosing to launch yourself at him and just throw your arms at him in any hittable direction. He chose to extend tall and easily defend all of your attempts, but...

Neytiri and Jake were too slow to intervene with the fighting teens, that choice was now something of remourse, as you were laying blacked out unconscious on the floor.

TAGLIST:

@ellielovesrobinarellano

@arminsgfloll

@lu002

@hey-itsriin

@imthefunniestpersonalive

@flower-lise

@mashiromochi

@talbae

@hallows3ve

@pwallettes

@morks-watermelon

@alexiskook21

@neteyems-wifu-frfr

@dakotali

@liyahsocorro

@simp-for-fictional-people

[Sorry this seems a bit rushed and all over the place, for some reason growing up means having stupid responsibilities 🙄. Would much rather write and read Avatar all day 😍]

#neteyam #neytiri sully #jake sully #sully family #neteyam x y/n #neteyam x you #neteyam x reader #neteyam imagine #y/n

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dandelion-wings · 9 months

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Trying to shake a little rust off after a writing hiatus, which means some random scenes as warmups! This is, in theory, from the latter half of the "Jean marries the prince of Khaenri'ah" AU, if I go with a particular thread I'm still debating--whether or not to go with multiple false identities and have Diluc be, at first, in disguise himself. I like identity porn, okay. >> I'm just not sure if it has a plot function. But since I haven't written the main story yet, I can play about freely!

---

When Maram steps out of her private chambers, her son is in her receiving-room, pacing back and forth across the floor. His head jerks up at her entry; there's a brief flash of light in his eyes, the cold pale-blue gleam of Cryo, clear in the left, fractured and flickering in the right. Her heart seizes, as it always does, at that sight.

But he masters himself, reins in the shadow of the Abyss creeping up through him, drawing himself straight in a gesture so reminiscent of his father that Maram almost smiles. Almost, because the stiffness that has become natural in her husband is a warning-sign in her son. His shoulders are held with a rigidity that comes from more than the armor, a tension that's all defensiveness, little as he'd like to know she sees it there.

"What troubles you?" she asks him, beckoning him to join her as she steps up onto the low dais at the center of the room. The benches at the sides are more intimate, but when he's this tense, she doubts that she could make him sit down.

"Diluc," he says, following her up. He takes a formal pose, standing at attention before her like any other knight, but she can still see the tension humming through him in his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides, the samll shifts of his weight. "Jean's bodyguard, her Dark Knight- he was there when I went to visit the horses this morning. He didn't tell me, but I remember how he was with horses. Mother, I would swear that it's him."

Maram's hands tighten on the arms of her chair, and she leans forward, nearly as tense as he is. "Is that so?"

"I'm almost certain. It would explain quite a bit. But if he is Diluc…." Below the hollow crackling that the armor gives his voice, Maram can hear the raw edge of distress. "How could I have missed it for so long?"

She can hear the other questions beneath that. Has Diluc changed so much, or has he? Is his memory failing him, or worse yet, his love for the boy he knew? The last shivers through his tone in unspoken terror.

"I have long suspected that mask he wears of holding some enchantment," Maram says firmly, to banish those fears. Her son's mind may go, someday, but never his heart. She trusts in that. "It must be one of concealment. He said he took it from the Fatui, and their spying would benefit from that sort of tool."

He breathes out a sigh that isn't quite relief, but his voice shakes less when he answers, and his chuckle is almost real. "That would explain why he insists on wearing something so hideous. Even Diluc wouldn't sport such an unfashionable trophy without a good reason."

Maram relaxes a bit herself. But not entirely. "Now that you know, love, would you like me to kill him for you? If I do it myself, you don't have to lie to your wife. Formidable as he seems to be, my Wind Glede and I are his equal, and I know how to take a man by surprise."

"No!" He rocks back on his heels in shock and horror, armor grating on itself. "Why would you do that? That's the last thing- that's hardly necessary."

Because she wants to kill him, Maram doesn't say, and had hoped he might allow it, though she'd already known that would be his answer. Her son's heart is his greatest strength, but also his greatest weakness.

"Your father would have ordered it. He's hurt you once, and we'll take no more chances with you if we can avoid it."

"No," he says again, more firmly, regaining his composure. "He's here to guard Jean. Our court is enough of a threat to her without taking away one of her protectors. He has no idea who I am, and I intend to keep it that way."

"And how will you do that when your curse comes to an end?"

"I'll handle that when it happens." He chuckles, and Maram feels her heart ache anew at the false blitheness of it.

As his Queen, she could overrule him; as his mother, she dares not to. Her heart has always been her greatest weakness, as well. If she does lose him to his people's curse, as he's so certain that she will, she doesn't want him to go still angry at her for her actions.

If she does lose him to that curse, to the darkness that first gathered in that wounded eye, she can always wait until he's gone to kill Diluc Ragnvindr for his betrayal.

#fleshing out kaeya's mom for this au has been great fun #if hoyo isn't going to give him one then it's free rein to play and i'm taking it #in a windless land #fic bits

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nelithic · 3 months

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He hadn't been convinced that he would be able to cross paths with her today. Their meeting had felt a bit otherworldly in nature to him at the time, owing a bit to his frayed nerves.

He is better today, but in seeing her, he feels like he has stepped into a dream-like state once more.

No matter, he imagines this opportunity will not come up again so easily, knowing so little of where she roams or dwells in these lands. When they had met, she hadn't worn the students' uniform, and he has had yet to encounter her again since. It is fear that drives him to haste, and he cuts off her path, standing before her now with a wrapped present in hand, grabbed from his collection of them that he's been handing out.

“ Hello there! Wow, I can't believe I actually ran into you today... I guess sometimes I'm luckier than I thought. Anyway, this is for you for the Winter Festival if you'll accept it, please. ” He holds it out to her: a thin box that weighs little. Yet still, despite its unassuming size, he has wrapped it with care all the same... even if he wasn't sure if he'd meet her today at all. Inside of the gift box there lies a pair of leather gloves with fur on the ends where it'd meet the wearer's wrists— simple but stylish, durable and effective. “ I don't know what kind of work you do, but if you had been handling those corpses that day, I can guess you're sent to do that kind of thing a lot. Or maybe it's your own desire. I don't know. But either way, I wanted to give you something that could help keep you warm in those times without getting in your way. ”

He's not sure if she actually needs these kinds of things. There's so little he knows about her still, he feels. If he tried to peek, would the fount of her life be infinite? Would her tale be as vast as the greatest abyss? The deepest darkness?

He imagines if he were to try, he would not come out unscathed, and yet...

“ I grew up somewhere cold, so I like to think I know a bit on this subject. Oh, but I suppose it might not be to your tastes... Sorry if that's the case. But I really do hope they're alright... ”

daylight's way of banishing shadows and sharpening fine edges does not suit either of them. at first, she does not recognize him, such that when he hurries toward her with hastened greeting as though afraid he may lose her entirely, she wonders him to be a rare resident of abyss aboveground who may know her face and position but whose acquaintance she has not yet made. under the afternoon sun, he appears younger, closer to his age and those of his student peers and the restless agitation he had displayed, which first returns to her upon remembrance amid a triptych of pained eyes, snow-flecked curls, and a deep scarlet sigil at the center of his forehead.

today there is little to none of that agitation. the lines of his face are smooth, if anxious, his voice and movements at equilibrium. without speaking, she looks down to the box he extends and accepts it with both hands, allowing him to go on talking while she carefully unravels it.

perhaps under other circumstances, she would have said her thanks and left the reveal of the contents for later in private. but this one comes unexpectedly enough that she feels it better to open it before him; in truth, she is somewhat perplexed, and had not thought their brief acquaintance warranted such a gesture.

a pair of leather gloves greets her, neatly packaged one atop the other, nested in white wrapping paper. she takes in the sight as he goes on, expectation rising into his voice — and it is this that prompts her eventually to lift her eyes from the unexpected gift to meet his again. "they look warm and durable, and are in fine condition," she gently interrupts his halting uncertainties. "the thought is appreciated. thank you."

though a common custom among the little ones, it still feels strange to be on the receiving end. from time to time, she had accepted gifts, and some tokens, and tributes even — but they had numbered few, and the vast majority of them from her twin; their gifts to one another had remained the largest portion of any such exchange in memory, recycled from hand to hand at intervals. by comparison, the box in hand now dangling at her side feels weighted, though not undesirable, with unfamiliarity.

she may not be as susceptible to cold as the little ones. but she will find some use for these regardless.

"i regret that i had not prepared anything for you in return. my apologies. if you need assistance in the future, i will gladly lend it."

#——— ⟢　𝐇𝐀𝐃𝐄𝐀𝐍𝒎𝒐𝒓𝒏𝒊𝒏𝒈 】₊　pelleas.#pirrhyc #FINALLY replied to this ty for sending this !! it was sweet #holds ur pelleas in my hands

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fleshworldmagazine · 2 years

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Don’t call her Karen anymore.. Enter into the netherworld Forbidden tombs of horrors Unhallowed darkened abyss Full of grotesque mutations Obscure shadows project From out of the Stygian black Chronic screams of terror Diabolical banishment awaits... Transcend deeper into dark Astral gates unfold Crimson spirits awake Apparitional figures appears Pneumatic dead surpass Supernatural beings exceed Trapped within this nightmare Exiled into the cryptic realms I'm gonna take you down into the abyss... Vanish beyond the grave Mystical perpetual sleep Cultivate visions and illusions Horrorfying universe of bizarre Vaults of demonic doom Holding the hideous blackness Vortex of chaotic evil Monstrosities of death.. FLSHWRLD #flshwrld #fleshworldmag #fleshworldmagazine #fleshrips #ezine #magazine #bookhouseboys #nineties #90s #90smeltback #90snostalgia #90smetalandhardcore #merch #indiemerch #indiemerchstore #repostees #retro #vintage #bootleg #privateering #cartoons #videogames #horror #spooky #macabre #grindhouse #sleeze #blackmusicmatters https://www.instagram.com/p/CeZnop8ltEI/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

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dailyadventureprompts · 3 years

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Faction: The Ravening Tithe

“Here’s a prayer for you to remember, acolyte, one to keep stowed away for when hope ‘n all the other gods fail your heeds:

“Oh Jarginaw, devourer of all, see the bounties of the world laid before thee as a feast, and in thy magnanimity save me for last.”

No idea if that’d actually save you, given the chance, but it’s worth tryin I suppose”

Setup: All consuming gods of hunger tend to get a bad rap, as there are many other terrible things in the multiverse that deserve to be eaten, and in plenty of cases can’t be contained or otherwise averted without first being torn apart and thoroughly chewed.

This was the conclusion reached by a band of adventurers after their defeat of a group of cultists attempting to summon Jarginaw: a deific leviathan said to have been banished to the void during the age of titans for fear of its endless hunger and ability to sever the strings of fate with its innumerable teeth. Why not diffuse the cult’s doomsday ritual and use it for some good? Figure out an ethical way around the blood sacrifices and the autophagic madness and keep a kaiju in their back pocket to sick on whatever mad god or cosmic horror decided to try their luck at remaking the world next?

And so the Ravening Tithe was born, an organization that a amounts to a secularized, utilitarian death-cult, operated in the name of the public good. While few can approve of their methods, their results are without question as three times in the last half century their pet godkiller has held the line against civilization breaking threats, and proved a deterrent against many more.

Adventure Hooks:

While the Tithe has agents scattered across the ocean and a few outposts scattered about, they primarily operate out of a reclaimed naval fortress called the Ruminorium, Part temple, part dockyard, part prison complex, this structure sits at the center of a large network of prisoner transports that go to feed the grisly rituals of execution by exposure that keep the great maw-god sated. Tithe agents may step in on the player’s bounty-hunting expeditions to ensure their catches are brought in alive and channeled towards the Ruminorium, while characters with a criminal past may have spent time there in the past. While it’s a rare occurrence, it’s not unheard of for the Tithe’s administration to cull through their captives for recruits, giving those with potential a second chance before they’re fed to the waves and scavengers.

Indestructable cursed artifact? Immortal villain captive but not yet defeated? Why not chuck ‘em into the maw of an all devouring demiurge and have them pulled apart in the abyss for all time? The Ravening tithe have unlocked some of the rituals practiced by the old Jarginaw cultists to open a toothy portal directly into the god-beast’s gullet, and use it to dispose of the most heinous things the realm can offer up.

Though their primary congregation was defeated, the cult of Jarginaw is an ancient sect, and maintains safeholds of knowledge across the known world. The Tithe offers high bounties for any leviathan lore retreived from these holdhouts, effectively declaring open season on them for witchfinders and other occult bountyhunters.

Faction Benefits:

Joining the Tithe is not a step taken likely, as it involves supplementing one’s loyalties to deity, country, and kin with occult oaths that bind one inexorably to the leviathan. Tithe agents swear to contain the beast at all costs, including feeding others or themselves to it if necessary to forestall its gluttonous rampage. It also requires the recruit to submit to the Ravening Tithe’s internal hierarchy, which draws strongly from that of the privateers who made up the organization’s founding members. Personal restrictions are light, but in a crisis, or under direct order, the naval chain of command MUST be followed without question.

Eclectic knowledge: In addition to subsuming the esoteric lore of the original Jarginaw cult, the Tithe possesses the combined archives of the adventurers who founded it, expanded over their lifetimes and with their subordinate’s findings: Seacharts, arcane learning, intelligence reports from across the known world. Finding anything in the Tithe’s archives is a challenge, but can provide quite the knowledge base for a party looking for awnsers.

Naval Service: The Tithe maintains a small fleet of ships, and has a respected position among their host nation’s navy. Members can expect a role within a ship’s compliment equivalent to their skill and rank within the organization. Privlaged members may be given a commission, or may even be selected to captain one of the Tithe’s own ships should they prove worthy of the honor.

Fear opens Doors: No one wants to mess with someone who’s boss’s boss is the world-serpent. So long as they present themselves as agents of the maw, players can expect their fearsome reputation to precede them.

Renown Benfits:

Those who earn a significant rank with the Tithe can expect greater benefits not accessible to the rank and file, and secret to the wider world.

Serpent’s Teeth: A mark of officer’s rank among the Tithe is a weapon made of one of Jarginaw’s own teeth, ground down through arcane processes into an enameled blade coating or integrated like ivory into a handle. These weapons have the miraculous effect of preventing those struck by them from using teleportation or plane-shifting magic, and possess an undeniably beautiful opalescence.

Treasures of the beast’s belly: The great levithan has eaten entire worlds,

and though the bidding of a special ritual ( and great sacrifice) the cosmic kaiju can be coaxed to regurgitate some of its devoured treasures, still awaiting their turn at digestion. These relics are usually the most dangerous and enduring forms of cosmic jetsam, and so the Ravening Tithe never uses this ability lightly.

Maw Travel: It takes complete devotion to allow yourself to step into an all-devouring being’s mouth and trust it will not swallow you. Still, the Jarginaw priests discovered this technique, alloing themselves to be momentarily consumed and then spat out somewhere else across the planes. They used this omnivorous miracle to avoid capture for centuries, transporting their most loyal acolytes with them from place to place, and the leaders of the Ravening tide have inherited the trick. Able to transport themselves and their vessels across the seas, the Tithe’s leadership is willing to use this ability in a pinch, but hesitant to show it off given its unsettling connotations.

Future Adventures:

#D&D #D&D adventure #Homebrew Adventure #Adventure #DnD #seaside #Faction #in progress #pirates #low level

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reorganizationxiii · 2 years

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I realize from a game design POV why the Organization XIII members would have identical, featureless white shoebox bedrooms. (Especially since they first show us in 358/2 days — a Nintendo DS Game.) But you will never convince me these Extra bitches don't have a whole wing of their absurdly huge Castle all to themselves. E A C H.

Vexen for sure has an enormous lab deep in the bowels of the Castle That Never Was. A largely out of the way area near their power source, where he can do his work in peace without people bitching about the weird smells or sounds coming from inside at all hours.

Demyx was banished to his own tower because he kept flooding the place. Now (thanks to some clever engineering by Vexen) his excess water just flows down into the crater/abyss under the Castle. Plus he plays his music loud AF & it carries pretty damn far in those big, empty hallways.

Saïx lives toward the heart of the Castle, a practical decision for the micromanager given that it means he's closest to the public facilities. Also the reason Quiet Hours exist, because he's perpetually done with everyone's shit, and can only tolerate so much before he snaps.

Xemnas lives in the tallest part of the Castle. Ostensibly so he can be closest to Kingdom Hearts, but everyone knows he enjoys ruling over them from his ivory tower. He's a posh MFer and only a select few have ever been in his private quarters. He's the literal "Man Upstairs".

Larxene and Marluxia's quarters are right next to each other and even overlap a bit, as you'd expect from besties. Given they joined later than everyone else (except Roxas and Xion), they had to threaten and bribe their way into their perfect spot, but they're content now.

Luxord used to live where Marluxia is, but he lost a bet and had to switch. He's cool with it, as he's not too picky about where he is so long as he has room and enough privacy. Demyx is still salty about Larxene elbowing him out of his old place, but it was bound to happen with all the complaints he was getting.

No-one knows where Xigbar sleeps. In the Castle, sure, but good luck finding out the exact location. Dude can't stand being in one place too long, and his casual defiance of gravity means he can get comfortable just about anywhere. He's like a really obnoxious ghost.

One time Zexion found Xigbar deadass passed out in a sleeping bag on his bedroom ceiling. His shriek was so loud Xigbar panic-portaled away and landed on Luxord's billiard table in the rec room. He had to pay damages AND watch his back for a Schemer with a grudge.

Lexaeus has his own kitchen he shares solely with Xaldin because some of the Org are serious slobs/junk food junkies and can't keep a tidy pantry to save their lives. Aeleus was a phenomenal cook and single-handedly made sure Even and Ienzo didn't die of malnutrition when they were Apprentices. As a Nobody, he and Xaldin definitely eat the healthiest to maintain their gains.

Zexion lives by the Castle's enormous library. Like Saïx, it was a practical choice, given how much time he spends there. His own room is overflowing with books anyway. He enjoys the quiet and solitude.

Like Luxord, Axel wasn't terribly picky about where he ended up location-wise. Once Roxas and Xion joined up, he pulled some strings to have them all in the same wing/tower. Their space ends up a more like a dorm, where they each have separate bedrooms but choose to share a living room/hangout area. Sea-Salt Trio morale went up CONSIDERABLY once they had a private place to relax (and cuddle puddle).

#kingdom hearts #organization xiii #headcanons #bedroom headcanons #castle headcanons

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moonsdancer · 2 years

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Last Line Tag Game

The lovely @laufire @laufire-writes tagged me.

I've been really struggling with writing the last month or so because of real life, so I have so many unfinished things just waiting for my energy to return. But here's a line from one of the ones I was playing with this week, a Mel & Silco AU that is now growing beyond my original scope because Jinx cannot be ignored, precious bb. Well, perhaps more than a line.

Mel sauntered into her private rooms, tossed her purse on the couch and headed toward the crystal cabinet that sat in the corner near her reading nook to pour herself a glass of honeyed brandy. The breeze from the wide-open windows whispered through the room, and she revelled in the coolness trailing across her arms before she said, plainly, “Would you like a drink of your own, Jinx?”

The sound of an aggravated huff was all she heard before the lash-like disturbance of air. Mel jerked to the side and caught the blade with her free hand. “You’ll have to try better than that, darling. Blades have always been a particular favourite of mine.”

“What are you?” Jinx hissed as she jumped from the rafter, one gun drawn in her right hand and another knife in her left. “Who the hell are you?”

“I’m Councillor Mel Medarda, your… father has probably spoken a little bit of me.”

It struck her once more that this… Jinx… was barely more than a child. Frail, skinny arms pale as spider’s legs and etched with bruises, unevenly cut blue hair falling halfway down her back in a haphazard braid, and wide indigo eyes that spoke of horrors Mel recognised far too well.

“You can’t hurt, Silco—I won’t let you!” Her head whipped to the side as she focused on a distant point on the wall, on someone or something else that neither of them could properly see. “Shut up! I won’t let her. He’s all I have left—the-the only one who still wants me, s-still sees me as special.”

The momentary break in her voice was quickly covered as she turned to glare at Mel with deadly intent.

Back in Noxus, before her Banishment, Mel had seen prisoners of war. All ages traumatised by watching their very worlds slashed apart at the tip of the Medardas’ blades, cracked into the abyss in their eyes. They’d spoken at invisible shadows in the walls, too.

She didn’t feel even a kernel of fear as she watched the child. Perhaps that was the way of it with familiar things.

“You know my family didn’t value me either. They saw me as weak. A liability. Useless. Something to be cut off and thrown away.”

Jinx froze. Her narrow shoulders twitched.

“You know what I told them—what I vowed?” Mel sipped on her drink, welcoming the burn of it down her throat. “That I would show them all. Every last one of them. That they’d regret leaving me to the wolves and the dark and the cold.”

I'm tagging @synergetic-prose @dannidorina @crimsonbullet @melmedarda and anyone else who is interested to share!

#tag games #mel medarda #silco #jinx #my fic #well drafts #melco

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scrrface · 3 years

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starter for @unlovc .

absolute and desolate , a silent blanket hovering outside as temperatures had long dropped below zero –– seoul’s winters were unforgivingly harsh and despite the pretty sparkle of eternal quietude , cancelling out all noise beneath it –– did he despise the cold ! always had he found the stark contrast terrible , perhaps mere the only type of beauty he will watch out of a distance , leave it where it is be –– no matter how badly he wanted to stretch holy luminosity over own skin alike dazzling diamonds glow , stand the pain ; if it meant to capture its beauty for just the shutter of the moment . he does nothing of the sort , fantasises , yes ! movement he catches out of the corner of his eye as prior hues must have lost themselves with no particular focus at all ––– what could ever be more satisfying than catching , indulging in beauty ; in anything that he deemed immaculate enough in all of the ways possible . much more than a keeper of gates to an introduction into hedonistic world was he –– a lover of preserving anything that would withstand to crumble within his grip . gaze will drift , watch them move –– he’s still mesmerised by the glimmer that laid there , right in front of them ! temporary illusion , something slipping his imagination , “ anything in pureness that collides with its counterpart – looks so , so wrong . destroys the harmony of the picture , does it not ? wakes demons you would never want to wake . “ , who is the devil to fool –– how often has he quietly , joyfully watched lines of red soaking white masses into their vividly colour , painted a blank canvas with an image of one of its kind ! any of said horrendous creatures to wake long present , a dance of anything macabre ; who said beauty in sin was not the utmost holy to lay gaze on ? who said it was not the trigger to explosive lust of attending such crime ? he does not play with the possible imagination , no , he yearns to experience it again . absolutely in the right is anyone , keeping themselves as farther in distance as physically possible from the red devil and rightfully so , does behind sickly charming , dripping veil hide –– something monstrous , of grand lack of sanity and affinity to anything that may could have been proclaimed hubris ; if male criminal would not actually live up to the cruel , infamous name , an ace of spades in the underworld of crime and even above its surface , well known under the circles of gamblers who played for much more than merely pretty stacks of won bills , to be cautious absolutely mandatory .

hues will yank themselves off the mesmerising landscape and he will yearn to catch the other’s -- seemingly a stranger having joined the ranks in front of the framed depiction with him in quietude and gaze will deviate for a second until returning to the canvas , “ i’m talking about the painting . brügel is famous for his renaissance depictions . ‘ the fall of the rebel angels ‘ -- is it not , indeed rather tragic than triumphant to witness ? i prefer the italian art style much more ! more gracious , grand even ! “ , truly does it pain the saint clad in holiest sin to confess to -- was he not in possession of similar agonising remembrances clouding a rushing mind ? naught to hide nor regret except for the gradual bitterness to be swallowed before poisoning one’s tongue -- sunken had he , in their proclaimed halls of prayer and worship , in deepest resentment between their golden crested pillars in his memory . their grand light of holy rays to spill upon concrete to tremble beneath the feet of a deity . yearned had he -- to become part of such ! to ascend onto a throne worthy of his -- no more ! and within the absence of god -- fearless and in the might of his limitations -- painfully aware and yet , had no place felt and called more for his presence , no energy to match within the spirit of an entity , knowing neither limits nor wordly values of little worth . no ; whom who calls for him , desperate in their mortal wishes and pleas ; there lies no other opposing being as his -- n the halls of past glimmering splendour and submission . he wanders within another realm ; by the constellation of empyrean , neither to echo nor to hold his presence within -- banished , punished with his curse ! much smaller is the frame stood next to him -- a stranger and yet perhaps a companion of empathy , in the hour of sentimental nostalgia to wash over the redhead gradually , tug at his silhouette alike the abyss to follow in the corner of simmering hues to burn and blister . the irony in witnessed symbolism -- and within the male’s very own descriptions remain merely his to stretch simper across features -- veiled within the deceit of all painful , so awfully within the parallels just drawn ! “ in fact -- do i possess a rather famous artwork of said time period ! salvador mundi -- remains in my casino . private , that is ! much more mesmerising -- if you ask me ! “ , simper long stretched into a flashing smile of ivory to gleam within the soft light above both their heads , as the clad sinner swallows a quiet laughter -- curved hand shielding heart - shaped lips as if a confidential , humorous confession shared between him and the stranger of a lady next to him .

#. 「 ♠️ 」 𝖒𝖆𝖓𝖌𝖏𝖊𝖔𝖑 𝖒𝖎𝖓𝖏𝖚𝖓 » 𝐫𝐞𝐩𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐬 . )#. 「 ♠️ 」 𝖒𝖆𝖓𝖌𝖏𝖊𝖔𝖑 𝖒𝖎𝖓𝖏𝖚𝖓 » 𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐞 𝐢 . )#unlovc #minjun: stranger in a museum ? lemme spam you with my own symbolism of my tragic faith i see depicted

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woodardwrites · 3 years

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WIPs

Title TBD But essentially, The Minotaur A retelling of the Minotaur mythos. A Man with the head of a bull, a monstrosity of a broken oath’s creation. Or was he? Is his violence a part of his hideous nature? Or was it brought on by a King’s vanity and paranoia?

Queen of the Dragon Cult A long, long time ago 2 Dragons ruled the world. Wyrith, the benevolent and her twin sister Nyx, the Malevolent. They once brought balance to Vallonde, but soon Nyx became greedy for more and more power, wanting to rule this world that she and her sister came to together. Eventually Nyx became too much, and Wyrith had to cast her sister down into the deepest and furthest depths of the Abyss. Now, Eons later, Nyx is crawling her way back to the surface with the help of the Dragon Cults.

The Bonnie Williams Murder Mysteries A 1920s murder mystery series solved by "Private Investigator" Bonnie Williams, an English librarian with a love and fascination for the Sherlock Holmes stories.

The Council Returns There was once a holy war, around 400 years ago, that brought on the new Varden Era. The evil that was once banished out is making its way back to the mortal realm of Vallonde, with a vengeance running hotter than the depths of despicable realms the come from.

The Forest Being lost in a forest is both beautiful and terrifying. The Forest follows a young group of friends who traveled too deep, and are now facing the horrible realities that they once thought were only stories.

Wings of Wax - A modified retelling of Icarus and Apollo, where the young sun god falls in love with a young man who died of devotion while on a journey to bring him back (will have some more adult references but nothing explicit)

#writerblr #writing wip #wip #wip list #Theo's wips

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justforbooks · 4 years

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The Mystery of Charles Dickens by AN Wilson review – a great writer's dark side

Was Dickens’s fiction shaped by the nastiness he never consciously acknowledged? A sprightly retelling of a well-known narrative

Near the end of The Mystery of Charles Dickens, AN Wilson quotes at length from a letter written by Philip Larkin to his lover Monica Jones. The poet has just reread Great Expectations, and is reflecting on the novelist’s attention-seeking tricks: “Say what you like about Dickens as an entertainer, he cannot be considered a real writer at all; not a real novelist.” It is a version of a complaint that has been made many times about Dickens the mere “entertainer”. “His is the garish, gaslit, melodramatic barn … where the yokels gape.” Yet, at the end of all his sentences of critical deprecation, Larkin’s final reflex is equally familiar: “However, I much enjoyed G.E. & may try another soon.”

Those with high literary standards have often enjoyed Dickens against their better judgment. In The Mystery of Charles Dickens, Wilson sides with the gaping yokels. He confesses the he has read Dickens with “obsessive rapture” since his childhood, but had to overcome the presumption, later educated into him, that his writing was insufficiently deep or sophisticated. “The death of Paul Dombey is so schmaltzy that we simply refuse to be moved, but then, damn it, we read and the tears well down our cheeks.” For Wilson, Dickens is an irresistible performer. One chapter of his book is devoted to “The Mystery of the Public Readings”, in which Dickens drove himself to near collapse (and made huge amounts of money) by touring America as well as Britain to perform readings from his work. In 1869, he had a stroke on stage in Chester, but still refused to stop the readings, partly because of the money but mostly because he was addicted to the instant responsiveness of his audience.

The highlight of his show was Bill Sikes’s murder of Nancy from Oliver Twist, in which, Wilson thinks, the novelist released some demonic aspect of himself – some yen for sexual violence – on stage. Murderous villains such as the gleefully sadistic Quilp in The Old Curiosity Shop, or the psychopathic John Jasper in The Mystery of Edwin Drood, were projections of his own cruelty. Wilson’s book is, you might say, bio-critical: “Dickens’s novels tell the story over and over again of his divided self,” he writes. The secrets of his life lie on the surface of his fiction. The dust jacket proclaims that the book goes “beyond standard narrative biography”. Which is to say that The Mystery of Charles Dickens does not reveal anything the previous biographers have not told us (indeed, it is conscientiously reliant on a small number of secondary sources). Instead, it shows, by a mixture of rational inference and I-feel-it-in-my-bones intuition, how the most powerful aspects of Dickens’s fiction drew on the most painful and secret aspects of his life.

The biggest secret of Dickens’s life, of course, was his clandestine relationship with Ellen (“Nelly”) Ternan, the young actor whom he first met when she performed at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester in The Frozen Deep, a play that he had written with his friend Wilkie Collins, and in which he himself was acting. She was 18; he was 45. For the next 13 years, Dickens paid for her to live in a series of discreetly located residences, where he would secretly visit her. The last of these was Windsor Lodge in Peckham, then a pleasant village outside London, with a railway station on the line from Dickens’s Kent home.

Each chapter of Wilson’s book is a different “Mystery”, the first being what happened to most of the £22 for which Dickens cashed a cheque on the day before his death. Dickens must have given it to Nelly for housekeeping. Which means that he must have made a quick trip to Peckham and that the “seizure” that killed him must have been induced by some hyper-energetic sex with her. Which means that hasty measures must have been taken to heave the dying novelist into a carriage to be driven back to his Kent home. “Exit Nelly, stage left.” (This enjoyable fiction, which has been hazarded by others before Wilson, is partly withdrawn near the end of the book.)

Next is “The Mystery of his Childhood”. Wilson is hardly the first to suggest that Dickens’s fiction was shaped by what he calls “the grotesquely sad galanty show of his childhood”. He briskly takes us through the story of the penury, the period in the debtors’ prison, the aborted education, the banishment, aged 10, to menial labour in Warren’s Blacking warehouse. There is less stress than usual on the improvidence of Dickens’s father, John Dickens (whose self-relishing orotundity at least inspired the matchless idiolect of Mr Micawber). Instead, Dickens blamed his mother. The ludicrous (Mrs Nickleby) or monstrous (Mrs Clennam) mothers in his novels bear the imprint of “the deepest needs of mother-hate”. Wilson asserts that “his flawed relationship with his mother is the defining feature, of the man and of his art”. Yet his privations made him a great novelist. The Blacking warehouse “saved Dickens the novelist, just as grammar school and Cambridge would have destroyed him”.

Then there is “The Mystery of the Cruel Marriage”. Nothing has more tainted Dickens’s reputation than his public repudiation (via an advertisement in the Times) of his wife, Kate, who had borne him 10 children and suffered all his demands for 22 years. Wilson’s house, he tells us, overlooks the back garden of 70 Gloucester Crescent, Camden Town, whence Catherine Dickens was exiled, with the company of only one of her children, Charley, their eldest son. The others were forbidden to see her. We have found out recently that Dickens tried to have her certified insane, so that she would be put in an asylum. Not only did he want to be free to pursue an affair with Nelly Ternan, he wanted somehow to declare that it was all his blameless wife’s fault. He was the wounded party.

But all the fury and resentment that he felt towards first his mother, and then his wife, inspired his greatest fiction, Wilson thinks. We should be grateful that he was so screwed up. Great Expectations, he believes, was a masterpiece of self-torment, formed from his own ruthlessness, his hunger for money and status, his family hatreds – all handed down to the novel’s narrator, Pip. “A helpful course of cognitive therapy, such as our contemporaries would have urged on a middle-aged man who had just visited such absolute mayhem on his wife and children” would have destroyed his creativity. Just as Pip owed his fortune to a violent criminal, Magwitch, its author owed his lucrative brilliance to “a secret, violent criminal”: himself. Or rather, the dark and nasty secret self that he never consciously acknowledged.

Wilson concedes all the contradictions and hypocrisies anatomised by John Carey in his brilliant, often openly exasperated study of Dickens, The Violent Effigy – but forgives him. Dickens had to contend with the “vast, smoky, cruel, boundlessly energetic, steel-hearted nineteenth century”, which made him variously cruel and sentimental. He was, after all, a nobody, who had grown up “with nuffink”. Alone among all great writers of the 19th century, he had “not merely looked over into the abyss. He had lived in it.” His lifelong insecurity was another creative asset.

If you are a Dickens aficionado, you will think that much of the book’s biographical narrative is well-known material, though here revisited in a sprightly manner. Yet its last, highly personal section suddenly shifts your sense of Wilson’s commitment to his subject. In his final chapter, he remembers first encountering episodes from Dickens at the age of eight or nine at his private school, which was “in effect a concentration camp run by sexual perverts”. The teacher who introduced him to Dickens was himself utterly sinister and Dickensian, the skill with which he impersonated Fagin and Squeers “all too convincing”. The shards of Dickens sustained his spirits among the privations and abuse visited on him by the paedophile headmaster and his monstrous wife, uninhibited sadists in Wilson’s vivid, detailed account. After this, nothing would convince him that Dickens should be condescended to as insufficiently “realistic”. And in returning him to the “abject terror and hopelessness” of childhood, but with that strange Dickensian stir of laughter (Fagin and Squeers, those comic turns), the novelist, hypocritical and self-deceiving as he might have been, has done him some matchless kindness.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

#JUST FOR BOOKS #Charles Dickens

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egotisticle · 4 years

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@defectiveanarchy: “He was about to cut it. The rosebud from its stem appeared all that tempting to lay upon the floor but instead, it's to release from Anti's grasp. It fell through the abyss, perhaps endlessly before it's to hit the unseen ground. Right at Dark's feet. The stem held some thorns, but they are dulled to the touch. Nothing more but a poke at the skin. The petals were stained, but not with blood -- who knew that those without a heart could shed a few tears?”

june 19th [ x ]

TOO MUCH TIME as a tourist to reality left the entity in the cold embrace of the Void, a domain of desolation and sterility that forced its occupant to confront their repressed memories and stagnant sentiments. To dwell too long on one’s thoughts led to bouts of disconcertment –---- the likes of which the suited entity himself wasn’t entirely immune to. As far as mental stimulation went, options were lamentably limited in the unhospitable abyss.

Past encounters could be played back for the sake of a timely audit, dissecting micro-expressions and mannerisms alike to adapt and learn from a single lapse in judgement. Errors could be extracted and multiple scenarios could be entertained to better prepare himself for the future but in the end, no amount of self-reflection could cure for solitude’s malady. Whether they came of their own volition or otherwise, visitors were cherished more than the suited being was willing to admit.

Aural perversions of fluctuating volumes almost succeeded in masking the gift’s arrival, gracefully falling from an unseen point to land at the entity’s feet. Distortive memories paused and visuals banished from sight at the prospect of an effective distraction, the being’s attention turned instead to the rosebud. Cautiously was the stem lifted to his sight line, weight shifting backwards to sit on the edge of a newly manifested office desk as the present was subjected to the being’s newfound scrutiny. As innocuous as the foreign offering was, certain details were far more telling than what a casual eye would be led to believe.

Fingers TWISTED the stem around to eye the blunt thorns and the rosebud, brows furrowing with pensive consideration for the unusual markings that painted the pedals. Associations with the flower were limited to a select few individuals and the thought alone made the entity sit up straighter, privately wondering whether there was a present was a trick in disguise; the possibility, however, was soon put to bed with the realization that the sender was nowhere to be seen and unable to witness the result of the supposed practical joke.

As his jaw worked idly in thought, the examination cane to a close and conclusions were appositely drawn. The thorns had been tamed and there were no signs of tampering. There was no apparent risk, no promise of injury, and no pernicious influence to be seen. The flower was wholly vulnerable , and the underlying message were staggering. No message had been attached but as it turned out, no further clarification was needed. Everything he needed to know about the gift’s intention was already laid bare before his eyes.

The temptation to squeeze the stem suddenly washed over him like a thunderous wave, exerting enough pressure to feel the STING of the dulled thorn and challenge their ineffectuality. A fingertip tenderly brushed against the pedals, careful not to accidentally pull them apart as eyes finally lifted away from the flower and the endless kingdom the Void was mulled over once more. Incredulity still embodied him but there was no other interpretation left to contemplate.

( YOU'VE ALREADY CONQUERED MY HEART & MIND. --------- PERHAPS IT’S TIME TO FINALLY FACE THE FACTS. )

#defectiveanarchy #┊♚┊ − ❛ ᵃᶰˢʷᵉʳᵉᵈ ❜#┊♚┊ V; i. MAIN #┊♚┊ − dyn. ❛ ᵈᵉᶠᵉᶜᵗᶦᵛᵉᵃⁿᵃʳᶜʰʸ ❜ / ᴛʜᴇʀᴇ's ʙᴇᴀᴜᴛʏ ᴀɴᴅ ʙᴀʟᴀɴᴄᴇ ɪɴ ᴛʜᴇ ᴡᴀʀ ᴡɪᴛʜɪɴ ᴜs #((i can't believe this got so long but obviously he had a moment (tm) ))#birthday;

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thekitchensnk · 5 years

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and the spider lilies bloomed in the fall (chapter 12)

Rating: T Warnings: Violent imagery, murder Pairing: Gin/Ran Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapter 12

“They say that lovers doomed never to see each other again still see the higanbana growing along their path, even to this day.”

A girl collapses on a dusty road one day. A boy takes her home.

The girl lives.

—

(The boy doesn’t.)

In the mountains, the smallest of noises could sometimes trigger avalanches- gargantuan rivers of snow which could crush and drown a man, disorienting him and trapping him so that he could never find his way back to the surface.

In the darkness, he would claw at the ice with his bare, bleeding hands, only to find that he had been digging away from the surface and towards his death the entire time. Once the first movements of compacted snow started down the mountain, it would accelerate, tumbling at first and then rolling faster and faster until disaster was all but inexorable.

Golden hair caked with dirt.

A hand offering a dried persimmon to a starving girl.

A fox’s wedding, a needle drawing blood and a ring made out of tin.

A bride’s bouquet made up of scarlet spider lilies,

A crying woman; a dying man.

---

(A grave in a garden.)

---

There were fewer people in town these days, she noticed. People spoke of runaways and -in far quieter voices- the disappeared. The pawnshop keeper’s daughter. The grocery shop owner. When people looked at each other, it was with suspicion in their eyes. No one lingered in the streets long anymore, especially after dark, not even the shivering whores and the swaggering gangsters. Deep down in their guts, everyone had reached the same conclusion.

There was something out there in the darkness, and it was preying on them, on the poor and the lonely and the downtrodden.

Town was quiet, these days.

Sometimes the only way you could tell that a single soul lived here was the footprints left in the snow.

She kept her eyes down, and she shivered.

---

There were days when she barely saw him from dawn till dusk, days when he barely said a word to her.

The cold wind whistled through the gaps in their small wooden shack. When they went to bed, he would turn his back to her. Despite the cold, he would not touch her, no matter how much his teeth chattered and his bones ached.

There were scant centimeters between them, but they gaped like an abyss as they lay beside each other, dwelling uneasily on their own, private troubles. But he said nothing, and as such, nor did she, suffocating with her old unease that to say anything at all would only be to drive him further away.

For the first time in a long time, she felt lonely.

The nightmares and crying fits she had once suffered, and which they had once banished together, returned with a vengeance. It was a rare night that she did not wake struggling to breath.

Only then would he cross the chasm that lay between them, snaking an arm around her to pull her close, breathing in the scent of her hair. He would tremble as much as she did, and more often than not, his tenderness, so absent in the frosty light of day, would only make her cry harder.

He was always awake already when the night terrors hit. He lay awake, staring at the ceiling, because sleep would not come.

---

It was not a spur of the moment decision to leave.

He had been steeling himself to do it for weeks before he actually did, had been making small preparations in a thousand different ways to ease the process. He had been distancing himself in the hope that it would numb the pain enough to act and give him the mental clarity to do what was necessary, and slowly, slowly, it seemed to work.

He stoked the fury in his heart, the injustices committed against her, the sordid rummaging of her soul and the yukata pushed up above her waist. He recalled the ring of the slap to her face and the airy weight of her body as he carried her back home, the mottled bruises, the golden hair.

He stoked these images until they burnt like blue flame, until they hardened and condensed like black steel.

He would hold her through tears, and the anger would shield him from the distraction of caring too much, of caring too hard.

In the cold steel of his rage, he could bear her sadness, he could cast aside his own pain, he could focus.

Aizen.

That was all that mattered.

Kill Aizen; take back what was stolen.

Her nightmares would end, and there would be no more tears. They would be together again, he knew, and everything would be alright.

He would suffer, but if it was in her name, then it couldn’t be so bad.

To see her smile again... Was there anything more worthwhile in the world?

---

The world presented him with a golden opportunity to leave when the winter was reaching its pale zenith. He left that very same day.

He had been out wandering miles from home, out in the pine forests which skirted the mountains on the far side of town. Snow had lain thick on the ground, and his feet were numb and near frozen with the effort of walking through it. He had been there in order to collect his thoughts and to practice using his powers far from Rangiku’s prying, hurt-filled eyes. She had been quiet that morning, and he had felt her eyes on his back for long minutes after he’d left. His heart had been heavy, but his feet had carried him down the road quickly regardless. She had not asked him not to go.

There was something eerie about the sight of him, silver hair, white yukata and pale, skinny limbs in the snow, devoid of colour and stark against the black pines. Bursts of scarlet light would flicker from between his hands, and his shadow would play about devilishly against the frozen trees.

The snow, crisp and porous, muffled the sound of his footfall. It tumbled and swirled above him, and the sky, iron gray, towered chasmally above him.

It was as he was gently shaping the reiatsu in his hands that he heard footsteps behind him. His heart stopped for a moment. The very snow which hushed his own movements did the same for others, and so he had noticed that he wasn’t alone until his new companion was only a few feet away. Fortunately for him, the pines were large and overgrown, and so he had not been noticed.

He peered through the branches, and what he saw then made his heart flutter.

He knew that face, and a kind of desperate, bubbling delight rose in him when he saw it.

It was the face of a man soon to be dead. A shinigami.

It was not the man who had sunk his sleezy hands into Rangiku’s chest and stolen her light, but it was one who had watched on idly and done nothing. And for that crime, Gin decided, he was going to die.

He allowed his features to go blank. He had not been noticed, and now he had the pleasure of deciding how that man would pay. And he would pay, because Ichimaru Gin had never before had the delight of killing with righteous fury.

He arranged his features into a familiar grin, and stepped out between the trees.

“Mister, ya’ shouldn’t be out in the forest alone. Don’t ya’ know that people have been goin’ missin’?

The shinigami swore loudly to have the silence broken so unexpectedly.

“Shit! Kid, you almost scared me to death!” he cursed. “Didn’t see you over there for a moment.” He paused and looked at him with open, trusting eyes. The fool. “Is your family close by? We’re a long way aways from the nearest town.”

“Ain’t got no family,” Gin said honestly, “’cept one, but she’s a long way off.” He wasn’t sure that Rangiku fit neatly into the category of “family”, but she was the most important thing he had, and the man would be dead soon, so he figured a small lie wouldn’t hurt.

The shinigami let him approach, curious that he should be in the forest. “What are you doing here then?” he asked.

Gin paused, and mulled the question over.

“Hunting,” he said with a large white smile.

That was not a lie.

“Are ya’ a shinigami?”

The man’s chest puffed out with pride. “I am. I’m part of Captain Hirako’s Fifth Division, and my team is overseen by Vice-Captain Aizen himself.”

Gin filed the information away for later reference. He hadn’t the slightest clue what any of it meant, but he was sure that it would be important later.

“Wo-o-o-w,” he said and he drew out the syllables, his grin widening. “Ya’ must be super important then. Who knew that we had someone so important sitting in our little ol’ forest?”

If anything, the shinigami preened further. Gin took it as further confirmation that the man was soft in the head. “The Vice-Captain trusts me with essential work,” the man confessed. Gin was disgusted to hear his voice catch slightly with emotion. “I’m a great help to his research efforts.”

Gin’s eyes narrowed. “I bet ya’ are. What are those, I wonder?”

The man gave him a pitying look. “You seem like a smart kid, but be real kiddo- the Vice-Captain’s research is a bit complicated for a child to understand. Maybe one day, kiddo, eh? Eh?” The man smiled at him.

“Oh, sure, stupid kid. That’s right. Yep, yep,” Gin said with a dismissive wave of his hand. He paused a beat. “I’m just curious as to why he has thugs kidnappin’ innocent townsfolk throughout the district and disintegratin’ them into thin air, s’all. What’s the gem? What is he makin’?”

The man froze, and turned on him. “What?” he hissed through his teeth.

Gin gave him a smile and made a sympathetic noise. “Ya’ really are dumb as a bag o’ bricks, aren’t ya’? Ya’ heard me.”

“How-“ the man began to ask, but he had barely gotten the word out when Gin interrupted him.

“Matsumoto Rangiku,” he said. His eyes flashed dangerously. “What did you take from her?”

“Who-?” the man started helplessly.

Fury boiled within him, and the air became thick and heavy with the killing intent which hammered down around him.

“Matsumoto Rangiku,” he gritted out venomously. “Ya’ cretins stuck ya’ hands inside her chest, ya’ stole somethin’ from her, and ya’ left her in the dirt to die and ya’ spat on her body, and ya’ don’t even know her name.” He paused, and a kind of heartbreaking confusion came over him. “Ya’ don’t even know her name...”

The man quailed before the strange, pale child who thrummed with anger.

“I- I- I-“ he babbled. “I was just following the Vice-Captain’s orders. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m sorry kiddo, but I don’t know who that is.”

A sudden sweet calmness came across Gin’s features then, and his smile was beatific.

“Huh,” he said. “Well that’s a-okay then. I’m sure ya’ precious Vice-Captain will love to hear about this,” he said sweetly. “Off ya’ pop now. I’ll let ya’ go,” he made a shoo-ing motion with his hands. “Go on. Go.”

The man stared and staggered to his feet. He proceeded through the trees with a lumbering gait, casting a wild-eyed glance behind him every few seconds.

He was half a mile through the woods, still looking over his shoulder, when Gin whispered in his ear.

“Of course,” his saccharine voice bled through the falling snow, “ya’ never did give Ran-chan this chance, did ya’?” He paused, and an exaggerated, considered look crossed his bloodless features. “Thinkin’ about it, that don’t seem fair.”

And he lunged forward and plunged his knife straight through the man’s stomach.

The shinigami cried out as he fell to the ground.

“Not fair at all.”

He had to give the knife a hard lug to extract it, and as he did so, blood sprayed across the snow in an arc of scarlet.

“Ya’ didn’t even know her name...” He dropped to his haunches so that he could look the man in the eyes as he died.

“Nearly got that on my yukata there, Shinigami-san! It would dreadfully be hard to wash out of white. Ya’ should be more careful where ya’ bleed! Not all of us have people ta’ do the washin’ up for us, ya’ know? Not like ya’s over in Seireitei.” Gin paused for a moment, and smiled a sick smile. “Though actually… Thinkin’ about it…” he mused, looking down at the man, “Maybe black is more my colour.”

His grin was empty and cold as he whispered in the dying man’s ear again. “Ya’ should be glad that Rangiku is a kind, sweet soul,” he informed the man in a cold whisper. “When a baby bird fell out of its nest, she insisted that we look after it. She gave a whore with no spiritual power food that she could have eaten herself, despite the fact that she’s almost starved before. If I didn’t have the thought of her to stop my hand, ya’d have suffered far longer. Ya’ should be thankin’ that girl ya’ assaulted and spat on. Don’t think ya’ll be forgettin’ her now.”

He grabbed the man’s neck and slit right across; his hot blood steamed where it hit the snow. He managed to avoid the worst of it. Only a single drop hit him, right on the cheek, and it trickled down to his neck. Blood on the snow; blood on his skin.

With a grim face, he stood up to his full height, and began to strip the corpse. He eyed the knife tears with disgust. The clothes were still warm.

It was time.

---

“Gin! Where have you been?”

The sky had darkened considerably in the time he had been away, and fat, full snowflakes filled the air. To have seen him so soon, she must have sat with the door open and the freezing air blowing, as she had so long ago, on the day that he’d been cornered in town and forced to use his powers. Her expression fell and she hesitated when she saw his new black shihakusho. “Those’re shinigami clothes… Where’d you get something like that…?”

He could not look at her and he walked on unflinchingly. The snow dimmed all noise and muffled her words. The cold was biting. If he looked back, he was lost.

“I’ve made up my mind,” he said, eyes trained towards the horizon. The words were distant; they rose out of him as if from another person, as if they echoed from a place a million miles way. They were as smooth and blank as bone. “I’m goin’ ta’ become a shinigami.”

Behind him, out of sight but so painfully, painfully close, her eyes widened in fear. But he did not see. One look at her tearful eyes and he would be lost. He would be back at her side and weeping like a child.

“I’m goin’ ta’ become a shinigami and change things for ya’.”

He swallowed, a lump forming in his throat, but he did not falter. He did not pause. He kept walking, walking, leaving her behind.

Softly, so softly that she always doubted afterwards that he had ever said it at all, he murmured: “I’m goin’ ta’ make it so you don’t have to cry anymore, Rangiku.”

Her eyes shone with unshed tears. They stung her eyes in the freezing cold and lashing winter snows. But though her eyes stung, she barely felt it. She barely felt the bite of the cold at her feet, the sting of her fingers turning blue.

Those small pains, those menial, everyday pains were tiny; they had no space to grow and flourish, not when the pain of heartbreak was crashing down upon her like an avalanche.

“Gin!” she cried. "Gin! Why?”

He did not listen.

He did not reply.

He moved onward, his black robes billowing out eerily amidst the swirling white.

Her mouth moved, but there was no sound. She gripped at her yukata childishly. The tears were on her cheeks now. Don’t leave me.

She stood alone, lost and forlorn in the middle of the road as his back faded into the distance. Don’t leave.

He did not look back.

---

And just like that, he was gone.

#bleach #gin ichimaru #rangiku matsumoto #ginran #ichimaru gin #spider lilies #sigh...#end of part one #ginran fans: dancing the masochism tango with thekitchensnk #just gonna go... depression eat some chocolate #not to be an egotist and assume that this is profoundly affecting or whatever #but if you are sad #take care <3

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paopuofhearts · 4 years

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I’m dealing with a lot of emotional junk and this is just an absolute projection of all of that. It’s a wild fucking mess, my pals. But cathartic for me, so.

Still Star Trek, still Chekov, still very much on my Scotty/Chekov/Jaylah pairing - but this time with a bit of Spock thrown in.

JewishJanuary [ @jewishjanuary ], Day 3: Shabbat.

Where has this week vanished? Is it lost forever? Will I ever recover anything from it? The joy of life, the unexpected victory, the realized hope, the task accomplished? Will I ever be able to banish the memory of pain, the sting of defeat, the heaviness of boredom? On this day, let me keep for a while what must drift away. On this day, let me be free of the burdens that must return. On this day, Shabbat, abide. Let me learn to pause, if only for this day. Let me find peace on this day. Let me enter into a quiet world this day. On this day, Shabbat, abide.

Out of all 432 personnel on board, 34 cycled in and out of the designated Friday after-shift celebrations. It was the responsibility of the Alpha shift was to set up in Lieutenant Cohen’s small private room - one of the few to have their own room, for the sole reason of also being a designated rabbi for the ship - and they would light their own set of candles, sing their own set of songs, and feast until Beta shift. Beta shift would support the transition, resetting the room for their own after-shift celebration. Partway through the transition, Cohen would be tapped to take rest and bunk down in another’s room, a volunteered rotation schedule of its own. It was the responsibility of the Gamma shift to clean his room after their own designated celebration, ensuring whatever challah crumbs and wine stains were left spotless for the next day.

It was a challenge, given that very few of them shared the same backgrounds - not only differences among the Terran branches of Judaism, but the cultural changes that evolved in other species that encountered the religion, whether through marriage with Terran family members of their own or conversion after being introduced to it. It was a challenge, given that some kept kosher and some did not, and some had had to develop their own versions of kosher based on their own planetary and biological systems that were so very different from Earth. It was a challenge, but together, they somehow made it work.

He was supposed to be heading toward Cohen’s quarters, but instead found his feet wandering of their own accord down the other hallway, only a handful of steps behind his superior officer.

He had been working on and off with Spock for several weeks, picking up the ropes of science officer duties out of curiosity more than anything else. Working under Scotty two years prior had been quite an experience - and taking over for him had been a hell he wasn’t willing to go through again. And while Jaylah had gladly taken up the position of Scotty’s understudy, he wasn’t about to entice the possibility of being placed in such a role again. So instead, he shadowed Spock, watching and learning how to apply his knowledge in the sciences to the unknown - though usually, this just meant he was squared away with cataloguing and notetaking new findings, simple and tedious archival duties.

Yet it had been soothing, doing something so relatively mindless, after the larger fallout he had stepped into earlier in the week.

It was hard, feeling like a third wheel in his triumvirate. Jaylah, being Scotty’s understudy, spent almost all of her time at his side. Yet as navigator, he was holed up on the bridge, only seeing them on the off hours of their shifts. It had caused a streak of jealousy to grow, insidious and twisting as it rooted deeply into his heart. It squeezed around his ribcage, thudding relentlessly in his chest, and burst into the world as it poisoned his lungs and wormed its way through his tongue.

It had been the first time in a long time that he had had to retire to his own quarters and laid alone in a bed with nothing but his thoughts plaguing his mind.

“Is there a reason you are following me, Mr. Chekov?” Spock’s voice broke through his thoughts, nearly causing him to stumble into the man. They had stopped at the door of his room, and the Vulcan raised an eyebrow in wait for him to answer.

“Ah - yes, sir. If you - if it’s - I have a question.” It was a deeply personal question, and one he wondered if he should even ask. He looked at the wall across from them, hoping the shame he felt wasn’t visibly burning across his cheeks.

“And what is your question?”

A beat, a moment of silence, as he fidgeted and rocked on his heels.

“Could you - ah - would you - “ He paused again, frustration welling up at his nervousness. “I need help meditating.”

If Spock were more human, more emotional, Pavel was sure the stone faced expression would resemble something akin to shock. It was quickly overshadowed by a tilt of his chin, perhaps the most he would show of inquisitiveness.

“Come.” Spock opened the door to his quarters - dimmed and warm - and Pavel followed close behind.

Everyone’s quarters were relatively minimalistic, but he was admittedly a bit surprised by some of the more intimate touches in the room. A copy of Alice In Wonderland upon the nightstand, a picture of his family, most likely, perfectly aligned next to the computer terminal, with a 3 Dimensional chess set on the other side. A Vulcan lyre and bell set hung on the wall on either side of the bed, and something akin to a lirpa was set above it. A strange collection, to be sure.

“Sit.” Spock gestured to the two flat pillows he had pulled out from a drawer, placed on the empty floor space. Pavel did as told, picking the one furthest from Spock. He watched, entranced, as the Vulcan pulled out two candles from the same drawer, placing them on the small table at the foot of the bed.

“I believe you are more used to partaking in this with the others,” Spock stated, joining Pavel on the floor. “I prefer to do this before meditation, alone. But I will make an exception for tonight.”

He handed Pavel a match, nodding toward one of the candles. Together, they lit them, and once more Pavel was surprised, this time by Spock’s perfunctory use of Hebrew.

“I do not drink wine, or eat before meditation.” Pavel shrugged, still remaining quiet. Spock was not one to ignore such a thing, especially from one usually so energetic and animated. “I presume there is a reason you have asked for help in meditating, even going so far as to seek me during shabbat instead of joining the others.”

“Have you ever been jealous?” Pavel asked.

“Yes.” While Pavel knew Spock carried emotions, he did not expect him to be so upfront with them. “Perhaps not in the same way you understand it, but yes.”

“It is interfering with - everything,” he admitted, frustration seeping through his voice.

“It is easy to let emotions control you. It is harder to let them go.” Spock shifted. “Straighten your spine.”

Pavel did as told, and closed his eyes.

“Breathe deeply.” He did so, feeling his shoulders rise and relax.

“Think of an object.” He imagined the candles before him. They were plain white candles, nothing too particularly special. But he could see their flames in his mind: the thing bound wick, braided and twisted upwards, caught with the brilliant blue surplus of oxygen blending up into the dark crackling of yellow-orange carbon, reaching to the stars in a thin line of bright white molded by the convection of the flame.

“Begin to clear your mind of the details of the object. Shape the object into another object.” He tried to shift the flame, but only pictured it wavering. He squeezed his eyes, trying but unable.

“Now, think of your mind as a dilithium crystal. Concentration must be an intensive focus. Gather your energy, and direct it there. Gather your intelligence, and direct it there. Gather your emotions, and direct them there.” He wiped the candle from his mind, instead picturing dilithium. He could picture the pulsating light, surrounding the clear shard - transparent, like glass, glowing brightly. He imagined wrapping his energy into a tight ball of light, beaming it into the crystal as a transporter. He imagined compressing the books he had read into a line of data, beam it into the crystal as a transporter. And he imagined his hands, unwinding and unraveling that weed of jealousy entwined in his heart. He tried to trace his steps backwards, noting every moment of mistreatment, of coldhearted action, of glacial bitterness, sharp knives that cut a rift between himself and his partners, widening the divide into a gaping abyss as the roots creeped deeper, crushing as it became more rigid -

“Do not hold your thoughts - do not suppress them, or try to control them. Do not center yourself on these thoughts. Do not indulge in these thoughts. Do not suppress them. Observe them, watch them. Walk past them, and let them flow through you.” He imagined his hands dropping the vines, and the vines began to snake around him, choking him.

He opened his eyes, anger pulsing through his body.

“I cannot - “

“You can. Close your eyes and try again.” Spock sat silently beside him, simply waiting. Though his eyes were closed, it was as if he could sense what Pavel was doing. He was unmoving, like a statue - firm, solid, unwavering. Yet it was softer than his rigid jealousy - grounding, patient, safe. And so he tried again, imagining himself in the midst of the vines, lost and untied to anything but for the crystal in his hand.

“Label your thoughts gently.” He imagined thin strings dangling from the vines, small tags attached to their ends. It was reminiscent of the old antique stores of his hometown, small and dusty, with treasures stuffed away on the unreachable shelves of tucked away corners.

“Cut them off and return to yourself. Breathe.” He stood among the vines, holding a crystal as a knife, and slowly began razing the vines to the ground. Yet no matter how many he cut away, there were always more ready to take their place. It was never ending.

“Breathe.” He took in a deep breath, feeling his hands shake. “Listen. Heed what is in your heart. Accept what lies there.”

He stayed in that place, watching as the vines swayed. He breathed - in and out, listening to his heartbeat. He began to count each vine as a heartbeat - one, breathe in, two, breathe out - slowly walking among them.

“Listen. Heed what is in your heart. Accept what lies there.” He imagined himself holding the crystal - his focus, his center, all that he was gathered into a tiny shard - and imagined a spark of light, reconnecting to where it was meant to be. Down in the depths of the Enterprise, settled into the heart of the ship; the core of their world. It was not meant to be entrapped in this jungle of jealousy, but placed reverently into its holding, where it could use its energy instead of lying listlessly in the middle of nowhere. The thin spark of light pulsated through the vines, guiding him away.

“Walk past your thoughts, and let them flow through you.” He felt the vines fall away as he walked, the ground becoming solid steel as rafters and ladders and walkways sprung up: the engineering room rising before him. Jaylah and Scotty, waiting for him.

“Breathe, and open your eyes.”

His cheeks were damp, and he sniffed, not realizing that he had started to cry. Spock nodded in acknowledgement, the gazed back at the candles.

“Maintaining balance is difficult. In our line of work, we walk upon a narrow tightrope. But that is why we have shabbat: this is our moment of rest, to recenter ourselves on what matters most.” He stood up, and Pavel followed, unsure of what to do. “I would advise you to talk about your emotions with those who you feel such ways toward. As I have learned, open communication is key to maintaining relationships.”

“Thank you.” Pavel wavered, his body thrumming, wired to run back to Scotty’s quarters, to throw himself at Jaylah’s feet, to beg for forgiveness and understanding. But he did not wish to seem ungrateful. “I am - thank you.”

“What is, is. And in accepting that which is inevitable, one may find peace.” Spock placed his hands behind his back, stepping aside to leave room for Pavel to leave. “If you need future assistance in meditating, you know where to find me.”

Pavel nodded and took his leave.

As soon as the door zipped behind him, he sighed, rubbing his eyes with his sleeve. He did not feel very changed, and yet - and yet he did not feel as burdened as before.

He did not run, as he had imagined, the buzzing feeling beneath his skin fading into a deep seated exhaustion. But he walked, determined, humbled, breathing deeply as he found his way to Scotty’s room, down towards the depths of the Enterprise herself. He carefully coded the entry panel, his hand steadier than his nerves. His mind felt detached; he knew his mistakes, and knew his atonement, and knew that he must press forward and try.

The door slid open, and he saw them, lounging as they compared notes on their pad systems. A tumultuous wave pressed deep within him, but it was no longer the icy spike stabbing through his very being. A promising sign.

They glanced up, Jaylah jumping to her feet to welcome him as Scotty scooted off the bed, hovering in uncertainty. It felt wrong and broken, as if he were stuck in an eternal maze of shattered mirrors and could only see distortions of himself, unable to reach back out to them. Tears began to well in his eyes, dripping despite his attempts to rein them in. His vision blurred, but he could feel their arms around him, and heard their soft murmurs as they led him to the bed.

It was okay to be wrong, for perfection was not an inevitability. It was okay to be broke, for broken things could be fixed and repurposed. He could pick up those shattered pieces of his life and find a way to put them back together - not as it had once been, perhaps, but still made whole once more. He was here, and he was still loved. And in that love, that quiet space between them -

In that love, he found peace.

#i wanted somewhere for spock to talk about himself and kirk being jewish #but that did not happen because i focused a lot on chekov #because this is my own way of dealing with shit and fuck everything else i guess #quote taken yet again from the reform siddur #i skipped day two because it's just being awkward and i guess this is what my mind wanted to work with instead #jewishjanuary20 #star trek #spock #pavel chekov

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llamascanbepurple · 5 years

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Tag Game

Rules: Answer the questions and tag 21 people you want to get to know better.

Tagged by: @haze256 (eyo what’s up my dude)

Nickname: Bro, Nadnadnad

Height: 5″3

Last movie I saw: Captain Marvel

Favourite Artists: Of Monsters and Men, Ye Banished Privateers, Parsonsfield, Allison Weiss, Jonsi, Panic!atthedisco.

Song stuck in my head: Deja vu from initial D

Do I get asks: rarely

Other blogs: ALRIGHTY BUCKLE UP KIDDOS BECAUSE I HAVE A LOT. Ok so there’s my art blog @irrelevantello , my watership down blog @fiver-is-my-son , my made in abyss blog @want-to-try-touching-my-hat , my adsom blog @pirate-knife-wife , my elder scrolls blog @nerevrevarine, and my tangled the series blog @emo-tea-alchemist

Following: 422 (dammit if I had done this yesterday it would have been 420)

Amount of sleep: 8 hours minimum. 8 - 12 on a good day.

Lucky number: 8

What I’m wearing: high waisted jeans, a grey tanktop, a black croptop with the zodiac symbols on it, and a blue and white striped button up.

Dream job: Musical theatre actress

Favorite food: schnitzel and mashed potatoes.

Dream trip: I C E L A N D

Play any instruments: I play ukulele and some piano (though I’m not very good it piano), and I used to play trumpet.

Languages: English, some French, a tad of German

Favorite song: This question is always here and I never have a specific answer. Imma just name a few. Float from the tinkerbell movie, cheshire kitten by SJ Tucker, right now by Parsonsfield.

Random fact: My bangs go over one of my eyes a lot when they get too long so now I’ve mastered seeing with only one eye.

Describe yourself as aesthetic things: A cookie that looks really nice but when you turn it over it’s burnt. That moment when you’re drinking really nice tea but spill some and just look at it and go “eh”. When you wake up and nothing feels real. The smell when snow is melting in early spring. Really old trees with lots of knots.

Alright alright alright. Time to tag some peeps. @the-gayest-dovah @tedsahtheterrible @blackrabbitofdeath @wanderer-of-open-skies @cosmic-quark @skydog64. Im not tagging 21 people. Aint got time for that. If you see this though, feel free to do it.

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jean-and-ali-liveblogs · 5 years

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Ali: Then I honestly don’t know what I am supposed to do now. The facts are that Made in Abyss and RWBY are the only ones I managed to prove. And it took me few hours of sitting and looking at that poll and experimenting on it. While also having three other people look at it almost constantly and see how votes are being distributed.

So then what, should I just say “fuck it” and disqualify all the shows? Pick something that wasn’t on the poll at all? Or should I give in and liveblog Made in Abyss anyway? Or should I go back on the choice I already made and force people to pick something new again?

All the choices feel wrong. Even the one I already made, that’s one not perfect either. I don’t feel like there is any perfect way out of this situation.

Listen, and maybe it’s my fault in a way too. Because I believe in people and I trust people - and I suppose over this week I learned the lesson that I maybe do that too much. When I was creating that poll the possibility that somebody could cheat on it didn’t even cross my mind. So when it happened I was completely lost. I had no idea what to do. How to handle situation like that. I never had to do something like that before. So every evening I was just laying in my bed and thinking and thinking and thinking, desperately trying to come up with a good solution, while all the time feeling like a garbage out of some irrational sense that it’s all my fault. Well... I guess I am not the best suited to be a “public” person. But I am doing my best.

We kept discussing what to do with people over on Discord - since I knew I could trust them, that none of them is cheating on that poll. And with their help I finally managed to come to a decision.

And I understand it’s not perfect. And I know some people are going to be upset, because of it. But if I cancel whole poll other people are going to be upset. If I pick other show then some other people are going to be upset. If I pick the shows that I know for a fact were cheating, that will also upset another group of people. There is no perfect solution here.

I cannot please everybody. It’s impossible. I am sorry, I am really sorry.

All I can promise is that next time I won’t make this mistake. I learned my lesson. Next time I will be better prepared.

@thecheeseeagle , thank you for sharing your opinion under your name. I appreciate that. It’s probably stupid and rude of me, but some of those anon’s asks came in in so quick succession, that I keep thinking that some of them may be just from one person, so I can’t even tell how much people is upset over this.

And again, I am not saying that I am banning Made in Abyss and RWBY forever. I am sure those are great shows. They don’t deserve to be sentenced to infinite banishment because of what happened. I am hoping to be here for years. We will get around to liveblogging everything and anything.

And if you are not interested in either School-Live or Re:Zero, there is still Jean’s Steven Universe liveblog going on. I will be liveblogging new Steven Universe episodes too.

Ultimately I want to follow people wishes. Because we would not get this far without people reading the blog. So far I have more people supporting my decision under their names than people who are telling me to change my decision. Again, I recognize that valuing signed asks and private massages over anons may not be very nice, but in the light of recent events with a anonymous poll, I can’t help being a bit untrusting.

I talked this out with Jean, he is a co-owner of this blog after all. And here is his idea that I think it’s a good one. If I will end up getting a lot of non-anonymous asks saying they are unhappy with my decision, then this is what will happen:

I will draw lots. I will cancel the whole poll, I will write the names of all ten shows on a pieces of paper, put them into a bowl and randomly take out two. And those two will be liveblogged. No possibility of cheating and perfectly random decision.

So let me know if that’s what I should do. I am really okay with that idea. If you are unhappy with the current results, let me know and we will randomize the decision. If not, we will prooced with School-Live and Re:Zero.

I hope this whole situation won’t sour people opinions of the blog. This whole situation sucks, but we can get through it together.

#suggestions #the poll #general #asks

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