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yukidragon · 2 years

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Can you do a theory of how S.D.J got stuck in a tape? (Ik there isn’t much clues but I just wanted to ask) :)) Btw LOVE YOUR THEORYS!!! :D

Awww, thanks! I’m really happy to hear that you like my theories. 💖

Unfortunately, there is very little evidence at this time to create a solid theory about why Jack was trapped in the tape to begin with. I can, however, talk about what we do know about the tape so far and what my headcanons are.

I will be using some screencaps of the demo as well as images that were posted publicly on Sauce/Jambeebot’s public twitter before it was closed down, as well as links to the official Sunny Day Jack twitter. Gentle reminder to everyone - please don’t repost any of the private images posted on the Snaccpop Studios Patreon. The crew relies on those kind donations in order to make the game at all. Consider joining it instead, donating to the Something’s Wrong with Sunny Day Jack kickstarter, or just spreading word about this engaging game.

With that said, let’s start off with the tape itself.

An ordinary but old and cracked VHS tape with a sticker on it bearing the words “84′ Incident” written in smudged red marker. It’s pretty well universally theorized that the video tape captured Jack’s death, which appeared to take place during filming of the SunnyTime Crew Show. We get a shot of the incident itself here on the twitter page. (Pun not intended.) There was also apparently children on set as well who witnessed the incident, according to the actor who played Cloudy-Belle Sue.

We get a glimpse of this incident as well in the style of a children’s drawing on the title screen of the demo, along with a closeup of the tape.

After that, Jack was trapped in the tape for (presumably) almost 40 years. To him it was a place where he couldn’t dream, where he felt cold, and where he buried his old self as Joseph to fully embrace the role of Jack.

Then MC gets a hold of the tape, pops it in a VCR, and is introduced to a rather confused but relieved Jack... only they don’t remember that. They just woke up the next day and Jack was just... there. Now the tape won’t play again, so there’s no telling exactly what is on it.

Seems pretty standard with ghosts possessing something involved with their murder and haunting whoever interacts with it right, right? What I find interesting is Jack is always called a ghost(?) The fact that this is in question at all suggests to me that there’s something more going on with him than the typical ghost can’t move on from their horrific murder story.

I think the fact that this is in question plays a part in how Jack was trapped in and is still connected to the tape. There’s too few clues to be sure of how that happened, so it’s just left to pure speculation on our parts. All we can be relatively sure of is that it’s related to Jack’s death and the incident itself.

You know, let’s take a moment to examine Jack and what he can do now. Maybe it’ll give more ideas about how he got into his situation.

Jack is quite an interesting sort of ghost(?). While it’s tempting to look at another game involving ghosts made by SnaccPop Studios, the Groom of Gallagher Mansion, as a point of reference for how other ghosts are depicted, I’m going to stick with strictly SDJ-related sources.

Jack is solid to MC (unless they don’t want him there), and can be perceived by all their senses, but no one else. He doesn’t show up in mirrors or recordings. According to a line from the Patreon-exclusive virtual body pillow, Sleepy Time Jack, he has a heartbeat. He has bodily fluids such as spit, sweat, and semen, as shown in the demo. He feels warm to the touch, not dead at all.

Well, maybe not all the time.

Jack has the power to influence other peoples’ thoughts and feelings. It’s most obvious with MC, where we have seen instances where he seems able to outright read their thoughts/narration, but he was able to influence Nick’s mind to the point of nightmares, insanity, and self-harm. For the most part he can’t interact with others, but it seems there’s a way he can force it?

Or maybe Jack could be perceived by others... but he has a reason to choose not to exert that much influence on reality.

Maybe it’s because he’s not strong enough yet at the start of the game?

MC’s love seems to make Jack stronger. There’s a “piece” of him in a place others could never reach, and that piece of him grows bigger and stronger. The stronger it gets, the closer he gets to being “one” with MC forever.

I think that “piece” of him is inside of MC and is vital to keep him solid and real. I suspect that Jack might have a “piece” of MC inside him as well... one he can make even bigger by taking more from them and giving more of himself in return, as suggested by a quote from the “no” route.

I want him to re-write me in this moment. I want him to do what he wants to help me forget anything that isn’t him.

He’s taking some part of me...

Infecting me with some kind of fever... Some need...

And I don’t want to admit it...

But I want to surrender and let him fill it.

Although MC is under supernatural influence that makes them addicted to the feelings Jack gives them, it seems as though their wants and desires towards Jack play a key part in everything.

In the game, if MC keeps their distance from Jack emotionally, he gets “colder” to them, and it could get to the point that they can’t touch him anymore. I imagine, if they turned their back on him completely, they could make him disappear altogether.

The influence Jack has on MC is subtle most of the time, just really good feelings mostly. I theorize this is a supernaturally-enhanced sort of empathy due to MC having a piece of him inside of them (and likely vice-versa). I believe that’s how Jack can detect MC’s emotions in return and catch some of their thoughts. It seems this works both ways, as suggested by the “yes” route, where MC can sense things about Jack but is too caught up in the pleasure they’re sharing to really think about it much.

He was close.

He didn’t even need to tell me.

I suspect if MC knew how to use this power, they might be able to have more of an influence on Jack.

After all, it seems as though if MC is going through something like, say, the pain of a period or being drunk, Jack experiences these things too. At least according to a couple posts from the Jambeebot twitter.

(Again, keep in mind posts and art from Sauce’s twitter need to be taken with a pinch of salt when it comes to canon, as things can (and have) changed before the final product of the game.)

Jack himself says that MC makes him feel love, and he’s so happy to be with them. What if that’s why whenever MC spends time with him alone, they feel so happy? What if MC is literally feeling Jack’s love and happiness, which is why being around him feels so addicting? After all, isn’t it addicting to feel loved by someone so unconditionally?

It can be resisted as well, though even when they do in the “no” route, it’s a very weak resistance. MC is addicted to the warm and fuzzy feelings Jack gives to them, which Jack can intensify and doesn’t want to give that up.

I was suffocating in his embrace.

Something about the air was thick and sticky.

Like I was breathing cotton candy…

Like I was under a spell.

Jack even keeps asking in the “no” route if they can feel how much he cares about them, how good he can make them feel.

MC themselves admits earlier that they feel for Jack. He likely can sense that, which could be why he said they make him feel love.

There’s a strong emphasis here on consent and feelings, as well as pieces of both MC and Jack.

Also, before we move on, I want to quickly add that Jack might have the ability to manifest items as well. We know how confused MC was about blueberries appearing out of nowhere, but Jack could’ve snatched them from a grocery store or even snuck them into MC’s cart/basket when they weren’t paying attention so they eat healthier. However, what is harder to explain away is a full change in wardrobe that is distinctly themed around Sunny Day Jack and fits him perfectly. Somehow I don’t think MC bought that for him at the store.

As I’ve mentioned before in past theories when it comes to my own personal telling of the story, Sunshine in Hell, I think Jack has a piece of MC’s soul and MC has a piece of his soul in exchange. I think that whatever happened when MC watched the tape, it created a sort of contract between them and Jack, one that requires consent on both their parts. It requires that continual consent and for their bond to be strengthened in order to give Jack more strength.

It sounds almost like a ritual was performed, wasn’t it? Maybe Jack’s costume as a demonic incubus isn’t too far off the mark from what he is now.

Who knows... it might even be why MC is so tired lately.

(Though they could just be exhausted from being overworked by an uncaring boss.)

Which leads me back to the 84′ Incident. What if Jack didn’t simply randomly possess the recording of what happened because he couldn’t move on? What if his soul was trapped in that tape all this time? After all, he seemed so confused at the start of the game about what’s going on and what happened to him, which suggests he didn’t willingly go to, as he put it, hell.

The entertainment industry is a truly frightening place. Money, power, connections... they can bury so many secrets, even people and memories. There are rumors of unsavory things like crime rings and cults. The studio behind the SunnyTime Crew Show seems to have a dark side as well considering it buried the memory of the show and the murder of Jack under the threat of NDAs.

So now, let’s talk about LambsWork Productions. As I previously touched upon before when analyzing the teaser picture of an undead Jack looking in a mirror, the name of the studio is very interesting. A lamb’s “work” is to be sheered for its fleece, or butchered for its meat... sometimes both.

I think that LambsWork Productions was connected to a cult, maybe even built by a cult outright. I believe what happened to Jack to trap him in the tape may have been part of a ritual.

Jack was a teenage runaway who changed his name from Joseph, hiding his real identity. We don’t know how he was discovered by the studio, but he would be someone with no connections, and no family, maybe even no friends.

Who would look for him if he went missing?

This seems counter-intuitive doesn’t it? Jack was a famous actor with many eyes on him. So many people, kids and adults, loved him.

What the people loved was a character he played. Even when being interviewed, Jack had to stay in character. He couldn’t be “Mr. Haberdae” even when talking with a reporter who wanted to learn more about him.

The studio made a creation that was loved... and what if that was part of the ritual? What if Jack’s murder was planned all along? It would explain how they could so quickly and thoroughly bury all evidence that the show ever even happened if they were prepared to do it ahead of time.

Being loved and being willing plays a part in Jack’s powers. What if that ties into the murder? What if Jack, this fictional entity the studio made up, needed to have the love of countless people, and the distress and pain they felt from seeing him die, along with his death?

For what purpose? It’s hard to say, but Jack’s powers are nothing to sneeze at. For all we know, whatever MC underwent to be bonded to Jack by watching the video wasn’t actually meant for them... it was just the first time it actually worked.

After all... consent plays a part. If Jack didn’t consent to, say, his murderer getting a piece of his soul and control over him...?

Now we’re really going deep into headcanon territory here, and it ties into the tragedy of [Redacted] and the lover who used him. I will stress that my headcanons will likely change as more evidence comes out or as I work on it more before writing it into Sunshine in Hell, but I figure it might be entertaining to tell it anyway.

It goes like this: someone with a lot of pull and connection to LambsWork Productions, maybe even the owner in charge of it all, wanted supernatural powers. They were connected to the occult and learned of a ritual that would require the absolute obedience and enslavement of a soul, as well as love and innocence of children to create a servant that would do whatever they wanted.

What it required was a person who is utterly devoted and willing to submit to the caster. The easiest way to do that? Why, love and desperation of course. Find a person who has nothing and offer them a life they always dreamed of... they just need to be obedient, sacrifice more and more.

This person is pushed slowly to do more, give more of himself. He is pushed to act a certain way all the time, painted up as this new persona to further signify that he is no longer [Redacted] but the always helpful Jack. He needed to want to be this character they created... who they were going to make real with the ritual using his willing soul.

When the target is primed to be obedient and utterly addicted to needing the caster and everything they have to offer in every way imaginable, and is loved by many innocent children... that innocence is destroyed as part of the ritual by having them witness his death.

The ritual results in this creation that will do anything for their master... provided it is consenting on both ends. The victim doesn’t even need to know it was all a setup. In fact, it’s better he doesn’t know in order to ensure he’ll remain desperate in his new inhuman state.

The recording is the medium to create the connection to the new supernatural entity. There was just one teeny, tiny hiccup.

Consent.

The person who performed the ritual and wanted those powers wanted to make that connection, but Jack? Ho... they might have twisted [Redacted]’s heart to be desperate for their love and everything they provided, but Jack is far from stupid. Whether he started to suspect before his death and hid it, or he realized what was going on when murdered, who’s to say? Either way, he did not consent to his former lover taking a piece of his soul when the tape was played, and thus the ritual failed, no matter how many times they replayed his tragic death.

The tape was kept as a reminder, a snuff film for entertainment purposes until it gets lost or discarded in some other way. The culprit would have to figure out what went wrong, how to perform the ritual correctly next time... Or another member of the cult who learned of the ritual decides to try again, believing they know what went wrong.

Maybe the problem was relying on romantic love. What if the “lamb” to be sacrificed was someone who would have a stronger bond to the caster, maybe even more desperate for love and approval than a lover. Say, perhaps... a blood relative?

Actors sometimes join cults. If, say, Jean joined and found out about the ritual and wanted it to work out for himself, well... he does have a child from one of his sugar babies who wants to be an actor, doesn’t he?

What stronger love is there than a parent and child, especially a child who might have spent a lifetime wishing for his absent father’s love?

Well, Jack might argue his love for his sunshine is stronger. After all, unlike those monsters who damned him to the hell of the VHS tape for selfish purposes, they didn’t need him like Alice(/MC) does. They didn’t long for love as desperately as he did... and he was certainly so very desperate for even a speck of warmth after 40 long sleepless years trapped in a cold empty hell...

Soooooo... yeah. That’s the headcanon I currently have for what Jack is and why he was trapped in the tape. With how few clues there are, I’m not banking on this headcanon on being anywhere close to accurate to what’s going to happen in the game. Chances are very good that this headcanon will change and evolve as I get more ideas and more hints are dropped. Still, I find the idea to be fairly entertaining, and I hope you did too.

What does this mean for Jack, Alice, and their connection of souls via the ritual? I’m going to have to think about that a bit more, but whatever it was, it was something worth a hell of a lot of trouble for the studio to go through...

After all, Jack has a pretty impressive array of powers already, and they’re only going to get more powerful, maybe even manifest other unexpected ways we haven’t seen yet, as his love for Alice and hers for him grows ever stronger...

Of course, with an MC resistant to that love? Well... that might explain the glitches we see here.

@channydraws @earthgirlaesthetic

#Sunny Day Jack #Something's Wrong With Sunny Day Jack #SunnyDayJack #swwsdj #sdj #Headcanon Ramblings #Ask #Sauce-y Art

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motionjames · 3 months

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Wake up girlies, it's time to return to the frontline!

Guess who has insomniaaaa! 🤗💕💕

A month of cramps, nausea, increasingly worse insomnia (but a strangely good mood) has lead me down the path once again. I caught wind of some strange "gfl2" thing and after being struck with nostalgia, I grabbed bluestacks and fell into hell once more. I'd deleted gfl off my phone simply because it took too much space but now that it's on my computer, it's become DANGEROUS...! Github and clip studio up front with logistics running forever in the background. Yes, the ideal working experience.

Anyhow, everyone say hello to Contender.

I've been making more progress in these past two days than I had in the entire two months I spent with my new account because I realized how to (partially) Not Be An Idiot. Turns out there's a thing called "anchored construction" and you can get some pretty nice units (eventually) if you realize it exists! Wow! I got the girly and now I'm working on grabbing Carcano because she is pretty but also insane skillz.

Also, there's a discounted gatcha running right now and that means I can finally get over my mental block and spend tokens... I was surprised at how easy it's been to acquire them, so I've just been shilling em out. My dorm was totally bare until now. I'm sorry, everynyan...

As for actual gameplay, I finally made it past 2-6. It might seem like a simple thing to most but I was yet again, being an idiot. I was under the impression that I HAD to have dupes of the girls to dummy link them when I actually was swimming in dummy cores 🤦🏽‍♂️ What's wrong with me... Well, I jumped over that hurdle, blasted through the emergency missions, and am finishing chapter 3. The first parts arent so bad when you learn how to read! 😃😃😃

First eschalon is good, it's the standard one that everyone seems to use to clear the early game. This second one is a WIP mess that I'm readying for night missions. You see, I'm really hurting for half-decent SMGs and rifles, the second one there is kinda lacking in defense/fire power... I wanna create a decent second eschalon and night mission groupie but I gotta figure out what units to invest in. I hope for Carcano soon. She is cute. Also, feel free to berate me for my bad decisions and suggest decent compositions. I am so lacking in SMGs that dont immediately explode (mpk you are so cute but so stupid). I'm currently looking at friend's compositions to figure out what formations work...

In completely different news and only further proving how dense I am, I only recently learned that Girl of the Bakehouse was related to GFL. I've had my eye on Reverse Collapse for a while now since it's a remake (of a remake?! I didnt play the previous one) of a visual novel I played in 2012 or so. The original vn was made in 2009 in like Kirikiri script and I was a young lad very fixated on all things with girls and guns (Gunslinger Girl was and still is a favorite of mine, I would've read it one summer at my Uncle's out on the front porch). There's an english patch now, but back then it was only in Chinese so I had to use text extracting and image translators, looking up the characters as I went. I got a cup of coco and opened up a patched version last night for old times sake. It's clearly a doujin work with those rough edges but it's so damn confident in its presentation you can't not get swept up in the presentation. The sound work make it very immersive. I highly reccomend reading it if you want a solid, emotional war story. Looking at the sepia soaked sketches, down-to-earth narrative, dense wordbuilding and general war otaku sentimentality... It really predicted a lot of my tastes, huh... 😅

Behold, teh wolfguy...

Back to work. Logistics still running. I can and WILL continue being stupid. The nostalgia is really strong, I'm tempted to draw fanart despite the sour memories of the past. Again, please berate me and tell me of your team compositions. I think my ID is 772030 but I promise you, I won't be any good on teh battlefield 😇 this machine runs off hopes and dreams, not realities!

#chipco on the frontline #gfl #girl's frontline #sorry im such an idiot #also what the hell gfl 2 #i will be seated #girl of the bakehouse #game diary

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buffintruder · 2 years

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for the wip ask meme Greed sub vs dub (*all chanting* fight! fight! fight!) and/or DNG au bc i tried googling that one to see if it was anything i knew and apparently it's a type of image file lol

Greed sub vs dub:

So basically at one point i noticed that Greed's dialogue in English vs Japanese is VERY different and I started writing an essay about it. I'm not going to post an excerpt because it's boring, but tldr is that Greed in Japanese is a) less sexual b) more admiring of others (or is more explicit about it) c) cares more openly about people and is cared about in turn.

The biggest example I can see is when Greed is trying to stop people from fighting during the Promised Day. For the same bit of dialogue here is what he says in each version.

Dub: Let’s go! We’ll need anyone who can still fight

Sub: At this point, we should leave behind anyone who can’t fight anymore

DNG au:

This stands for Devil's Nest Gang au haha, not a common acronym as far as i know

This is basically an au where the Xingese squad don't go to Amestris but things still turn out fine for both of them. Ling becomes heir anyway, except then he speaks up against the Emperor and is forced to flee the country (sort of Zuko style) and ends up working for the Devil's Nest Gang (who have not been killed by Bradley in this au)

Excerpt under the cut:

“How does a country even lose their prince?” Greed laughed from the next table over. Ling froze, his attention fully on his new boss. “They misplace him or what?”

“Newspaper doesn’t say,” Roa said with a shrug. “I’m guessing they’d know by now if it was a ransom situation, and makes no sense to capture a prince when you could kill him otherwise. So maybe he ran away?”

Ling had, though that was not the full story. Fled for his life would be a more apt description.

“Who’d run away from being emperor?” Greed asked.

“I thought you were over your whole ‘becoming ruler of the world’ thing,” Martel called from the hallway as she passed by.

“I’m Greed, I want everything!” Greed said.

Judging by how Martel rolled her eyes and Roa snorted, Ling had a feeling that this was something Greed insisted on often. Was Greed a name he had chosen for himself then, some point of pride? It seemed like an odd name to choose, but then again, Ling had only learned the more formal end of Amestrian culture. Xingese gangsters often took intimidating names or were given them by others, and Amestrians likely did the same, though Ling couldn’t say he was particularly frightened or awed by the concept of greed.

“And hey,” Greed continued. “You’re telling me that if your shitty dad was about to take over the world, you wouldn’t be at least a little tempted to take it all from him.”

That certainly sounded like there was a story behind that. It was also rather uncomfortably relatable. Perhaps Ling’s father hadn’t set his sights on the whole world, but he did rule a quite significant chunk of it, and Ling had done his best to take it all for himself. Look where that had gotten him.

“I wouldn’t,” Roa said, his tone flat but amused. “Ruling the world sounds like a big pain. Way too much work.”

Greed sighed loudly. “This is why I’m the leader. The rest of you have no ambition.” He turned around behind him. “Hey, Yao, tell me you have more drive than the rest of these here.”

Ling was too well trained to jump at the sound of his name, but he did look up a little faster than was perhaps entirely natural. The last thing he wanted was to get involved in this conversation, to draw any lines between himself and this missing prince. Still, at least the conversation had moved somewhat away from that.

“I’d steal my shitty dad’s power if I could,” Ling said with a grin. “Though that might be because I hate my dad more than because I want the power.”

“Hear, hear!” Greed said.

“You don’t want to rule the world any more?” Ling asked, curious. Power was the driving force of most gangs, he had assumed.

“I mean I wouldn’t pass it up if it was offered,” Greed said.

“Not exactly going out of your way to get it either?”

“Nah.” Greed waved a hand vaguely. “I’d spend all my time trying to get more, and what’s the point of wanting possessions if you don’t get to enjoy what you have? I’m living my life in hedonistic glory.”

“Makes sense,” Ling said, and he could sort of see what Greed was saying. He had studied history enough to know the fallings of those who overreached themselves, how the greatest of conquerers often had their empire fall apart a generation or two down the line. Ling had never wanted to expand the borders of Xing, only to control what already existed within it. He had never been one to let limits stop him, but even so, it seemed like protecting his clan and trying to improve the Xingese system of governance was already more than enough for one man.

But ruling had never been about enjoyment, only duty, perhaps even destiny. Putting it in terms of desire like this felt strange to him.

“Plus they’d have to want to be mine,” Greed said, which felt even more nonsensical than anything else he had said.

“You say all that about seizing the opportunity to rule if you got the chance,” Roa said. Ling had almost forgotten that he was part of this conversation. “But you ran away from home too.”

“Ruling the world means nothing if you’re doing it under someone else’s thumb,” Greed snapped.

Roa shrugged. “Well, maybe that prince’s reasoning isn’t as incomprehensible to you as you might think.”

#my writing

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absolutepokemontrash · 3 years

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MC is Half Demon and They Look Awfully Familiar

(Underground Tomb edition!)

Hello friends and degenerate sinners, this is basically a mini headcanon set for Luci’s kid!MC about how the incident with Luke and the Grimoire would go down in this AU to tide you all over until Part 3 comes out! Enjoy!

It was a normal night in the good ol’ HOL... Lucifer was doing paperwork at an ungodly hour of the night, Beel was in the kitchen, and Mammon was screaming and running for dear life. Ah... sweet normalcy.

The custard incident remained the same, MC got force-fed custard and Beel threw a truly fantastic hunger tantrum that culminated in the wall connecting to MC’s room collapsing.

Cue lecture from Luci-father.

“I am very disappointed in you three.” Lucifer rubbed his temples as MC, Beel, and Mammon awkwardly stood in his room. Mammon of course, was trying to avoid the death glares MC was giving him. Poor bastard.

“Especially you two, MC and Beel.”

“Whuh?!” Mammon sputtered. “What about me?!”

“I expect this from you. These two on the other hand,” Lucifer raised an eyebrow at MC who was awkwardly trying to suppress a laugh at Mammon’s aghast expression. “Should know not to act like this.”

“We’re *snrk* sorry, father,” MC paused to try and muscle through a giggle. “It won’t happen again.”

“He ate my custard...” Beel pouted.

“So, MC won’t be able to use their room anymore due to the wall... collapsing.” Lucifer gave Beel a pointed glare.

Mammon smirked, and if he were sitting on a couch, we would have leaned back and kicked his feet up. “Well, obviously since I’m a kind and generous soul I’ll open up my room for poor MC to stay in. My babysittin’ rates are quite high though-”

“BABYSITTING?!” MC snarled, giving Mammon a death glare that could probably kill lesser demons.

Lucifer felt a twinge of pride upon seeing his child give someone his signature bone-chilling glare, if he weren’t supposed to be disappointed he would have given MC a pat on the head and let them hang Mammon from the ceiling.

“Uh- heh- MC, I’m your favourite uncle! Me babysittin’ ya should be an honour!” Mammon was sweating bullets and desperately looking to Beel for help.

“Levi is rapidly approaching favourite uncle status.” MC crossed their arms and huffed.

“Levi?! Wait- does that mean I was your favourite-”

Lucifer was almost tempted to stick MC in Mammon’s room just to have MC punish Mammon so he could get some sleep, tragically, his common sense won out. “MC will be staying with Beel. He has an extra bed in his room after all.”

MC looked over at Beel and smiled. “Could be worse, right? I’ll replace the custard.”

Beel’s smile upon hearing the last part could have lit up the entire Devildom. What a sweetie.

MC still chilled in Beel’s room. They finally got to ask more questions about Belphie, and Beel is more inclined to share what’s up because MC is his big bro’s kid after all!

Because of MC’s half demon-ness, they hadn’t met Belphie at that point in the story unlike in canon. They were just curious about their missing uncle. They ALSO already knew what Belphie looks like because Lucifer gave them an in depth tour of everything and he pointed out all the portraits.

MC, being the sadistic sweetheart they are, went out and bought themselves and Beel replacement custard. MC made sure to eat it right in front of Mammon.

But my oh my, who was texting them? *gasp!* Luke!

MC obviously let their little angel buddy into the house (Luke did not know about MC’s parental situation at that point, keep that in mind). Luke was fun to tease a little after all! And it was nice to have another kid around, but MC would never admit it.

Since MC had literally no reason to be afraid of their dear old dad, they went right up to him and asked him if Luke could stay over. No fear.

“Father?” MC leaned on the doorway to the backyard, Lucifer was playing fetch with Cerberus. MC had never seen someone play fetch so robotically.

“Yes, MC?” Cerberus’ middle head dropped a slobber covered squeaky toy into Lucifer’s gloved hand, the other two heads snapped at the middle one.

“Can I have a friend over?” MC asked, trotting over to give Cerberus some pets. On the first day the dog had tried to eat them, but after giving him some much tastier bacon treats, Cerberus was sweet as pie. Murderous and dangerous pie, that is.

“Do I know this friend?”

“Yes, it’s Luke. Can he stay over?”

Lucifer wrinkled his nose and rolled his eyes. “Cerberus is right here, you have access to a dog. Why on earth would you bring the chihuahua over?”

MC snorted and gave Cerberus’ right head some scratches behind the ears. “He’s not a chihuahua all the time, come on, it’s for the good of the exchange program!”

The two had a stare down for a little while, and to his absolute horror, Lucifer felt his resolve cracking. This child of his was too adorable for their own good. “Fine, MC.”

“Yes!” MC fist pumped as Cerberus’ middle and left heads tried to join in on the ear scritches.

“But note,” Lucifer continued. “I expect a full report to give to Lord Diavolo on this whole experience.”

MC frowned and debated sticking their tongue out at their father, they decided against it. “A paper? On a sleepover? Really?”

“Yes. Really.” Lucifer gave MC a flick on the nose. “Like you said, it has to do with the exchange program. Now go make sure the chihuahua doesn’t die and leave you with a mess to clean up.”

The look of complete terror Luke gave MC when they told him that Lucifer said he could stay over was completely worth the paper they were going to have to write.

“What?! You weren’t supposed to tell him I’m here!”

“He said you could stay.”

“Why?! Oh no... did he demand your soul as payment or something?! MC! You shouldn’t have put yourself in that nasty demon’s debt! Don’t worry, I’ll get your soul back somehow.”

MC should have been offended... but they weren’t. I mean, could you stay mad at Luke when he just offered to fight arguably the second most powerful demon in the Devildom to get your soul back?

Now that Luke’s presence in the house was known to everyone, the challenge was no longer keeping Luke hidden, it was making sure Luke didn’t say anything that would get him killed and making sure none of the demon bros made Luke cry.

Mammon was the main culprit of the teasing because Lucifer actually had better things to do. And he had a (totally not a) date with Diavolo so he’d be back late and wouldn’t be home to tease the chihuahua.

Mammon’s status as favourite uncle was hanging by a thread by the end of the first day.

Asmo thought Luke was positively adorable and also very annoying. He offered to paint MC and Luke’s nails. Luke declined, but MC was all for it. (Their cuticles were a MESS by the way, they needed the manicure.)

Luke’s nails were painted gold to match the gold on his outfit! Asmo was quite proud of his work, and was very offended when he was not allowed to try and braid Luke’s hair.

“It looks so soft!”

“You’re not allowed to touch my hair, demon!”

Satan still disliked MC on the basis that they were just a mini-Lucifer and hung out in his room or the library to avoid them and Luke.

It was incredibly annoying when Luke and MC burst into the library to look for cookbooks and treat recipes after Luke told MC about his baking endeavours. Satan debated ordering a pair of ear plugs on Akuzon...

Or perhaps a laser gun...

Both would make him stop hearing the children’s grating voices.

“You two, be quiet.”

“We haven’t spoken since we got in here...”

“You’re breathing too loud.”

Beel remained the only brother who was actually decent to Luke, they all played Go Fish in Beel’s room.

Levi was in his room playing his new video game just like in canon, but he could hear Luke and MC running around outside his room.

He was fully prepared to do that introvert thing where you stay in your room until you hear someone say goodbye to the guest.

Levi’s eyes were glued to his computer screen, just eight more skeleton monsters to kill and he’d get the achievement! His attention crumbled the moment he heard the dreaded sound of...

Guests...

“Hey MC! Whose room is this?”

The sound of a door opening and closing down the hall caused Levi to jump in his seat. Oh no... his worst fears were realized! There was another person in the house!

“That’s Asmodeus’ room. Luke you shouldn’t go around opening everyone’s doors-”

The sound of another door opening and shutting made Levi pause his game and look at Henry 2.0 for help. Maybe if he jumped into the tank and wrapped himself in his tail he’d camouflage into his surroundings...

BAM!

AAAAA! Not enough time! The guest was drawing nearer... he was going to have to... *barf*... SOCIALIZE!

“How about this room?”

Levi braced himself for the incoming social contact... Fs in the chat everyone...

“We shouldn’t bother Levi, let’s do something else.”

HAJEKDJSJSJSJD- BEEL! BEEL JUST SAVED LEVI’S LIFE!

The poor third born slumped back in his seat, the awfulness of socialization avoided. He uh... hadn’t actually left his room in maybe three days... maybe he should actually go outside... enjoy the nonexistent sunlight, y’know?

...nah. Levi went back to his game.

Since the kitchen was broken, Beel, MC, and Luke went out and get AkuDonald’s. They were all out of the toy that Luke and MC wanted so that trip was a disaster! A disaster I say!

Just the image of Beel happily chomping on his eighth burger while Luke and MC angrily pick at their fries makes me want to laugh.

Now the question you’re all waiting for, did Lucifer try and kill Luke and Beel and then MC for trying to take the Grimoire?

N O

“Whose room is behind that door?” Luke pointed to the door to the attic staircase.

MC shrugged and hit their knuckles against the door a few times. “It’s just the door to the attic. My uh- Lucifer said not to go up there because it’s just full of old junk.”

Normally MC would scoff at the idea of being told what not to do and do it out of spite, but MC was a child, and like most children, they hated scary attics. They hadn’t even attempted to open the door in the month they had lived in the house.

“Hm, maybe he’s hiding something...” Luke puffed out his cheeks and knocked on the door. When met with no answer, Luke turned the doorknob. The door creaked open, and the two peeked inside.

A tall spiral staircase greeted them as they tentatively stepped inside. Not so-good Lord, the room was freezing, but it didn’t seem to bother Luke as he walked further into the room.

“What do you think’s up there?” Luke asked, craning his neck to try and get a look at what could be at the top of the stairs.

MC shuddered and crossed their arms. “Like Lucifer said, junk. Nothing important.”

There was a tingling feeling at the base of MC’s neck, their hand flew to the spot only to find nothing, but the uneasiness didn’t cease. Something was very... very off. A shudder creeped up their spine as Luke stepped closer to the staircase.

“Come on,” Luke tutted, placing a hand on the railing. “Demons are known liars!”

Luke was quite difficult to be friends with sometimes, MC had to admit.

With every step Luke took up the stairs, the sense of dread brewing in MC’s gut grew, but they remained rooted to the spot, it was almost like something was physically stopping them from getting closer to those stairs.

Luke stopped on the sixth step and craned his neck to look up again. “Hello?” He called out.

His little voice echoed up the staircase, he was met with no reply for a moment, until a massive shudder wracked both his and MC’s spines.

“Hello.” A voice replied.

Quick as lightning MC dove forward, taking three steps up the stairs despite what felt like electric shocks stabbing into their skin, and yanked Luke back down the stairs and out the door, closing it behind them. MC heard a lazy, carefree chuckle reverberate through their head, and a message that only MC could hear.

“Leaving so soon, Lucifer?”

...

Spooky right?

Anyway- back to Luke and MC being idiots together.

They headed back to Beel’s room to watch some Devildom kid shows, I assume Tom and Jerry just played on repeat.

Luke explained the reason he ran away from Purgatory Hall, and MC legitimately debated whether or not they should throw Luke out of the nearest window for all the jabs he was taking at demons.

“Simeon was going to go out for tea with Diavolo! He even said that I could ask Barbatos to instruct me on the finer points of baking!”

“What’s so bad about that?”

“They’re demons, MC! Simeon and I are angels from the Celestial Realm! We shouldn’t be consorting with demons.”

Once again, bless Beel and his lack of murderous rage when it came to anything other than food.

“MC, Lucifer would be upset if you broke a window.”

“What’s he talking about?”

“Nothing Luke, nothing you need to worry about.”

Don’t worry, no angels were harmed during the visit.

On day two of the extended sleepover, Luke and MC decided to go running around the house again.

“And this is the basement.” MC put their hands on their hips and kissed their teeth as they looked around the Underground tomb. “Perfectly creepy.”

Luke shuddered. “Is this house nothing but one creepy room after another..?”

MC smiled and stuck out their tongue. Their fear of the attic did not extend to the underground tomb. Not that they were actually afraid of the attic or anything...

“Why? You scared some big monster is gonna getcha?” MC teased.

“No!” Luke gasped. “I’m not scared!”

MC began to walk backwards into the darker depths of the tomb, their teasing tone echoing off of the walls. “Then come on! Don’t be chicken!”

Luke looked back and forth from the door out of there, to the rapidly disappearing figure of MC, he rushed after MC.

“I’m not scared of some dark basement.” Luke huffed.

“Why not~?” MC snickered. “There could be ghosts down here... tortured souls of those who were damned to Hell for all eternity~!”

MC swiped Luke’s hat and placed it on their head, Luke jumped at the sudden contact and began to try and get the hat back from MC.

“Stop trying to scare me!” Luke yapped, MC laughed and began to jog deeper into the tomb.

“Maybe there’s a monster that eats chihuahuas down here too! Who knows!” MC twirled the hat with their fingers and ran a little faster when Luke ran after them.

“I AM NOT A CHIHUAHUA!”

Sure, maybe it wasn’t the best course of action to tease and scare one’s friend instead of telling them what they said earlier was mean, but MC wasn’t the best at decision making.

When MC reached a dead end, they stopped and looked around, Luke crashed right into them. He managed to swipe his hat back from a now disinterested MC.

MC’s gaze landed on a book being held up by a statue, they padded over and looked up at it.

“Luke, do you know what that is?” MC asked, turning to look at their now very miffed friend.

“The... book? I don’t know.”

Truthfully, MC didn’t know either. During their first tour of the house, Mammon had interrupted the Underground tomb segment and Lucifer had to cut the tour short.

“It’s uh...” MC pursed their lips and tried to think of a convincing lie. “A spell book. Lucifer told me that it makes your magic really really strong, so he stuck it down here to hide it from Solomon.”

“Did I now?”

MC and Luke screamed and whirled around, there stood Lucifer himself, not looking terribly pleased with the two of them.

“MC, care to explain why you and the angel are so close to the Grimoire?” Lucifer’s words were icily calm, and MC knew that meant if they didn’t come up with a good explanation they’d be in big trouble.

“W-we were just playing down here...” MC trailed off, looking to Luke for some kind of backup before realizing what a stupid idea that was.

“Y-yeah! We were just-”

Lucifer stuck his thumb over his shoulder and glowered at the two. “Out.”

“Yes sir.” Luke and MC mumbled as they stepped away from the Grimoire, Lucifer relaxed slightly as the two walked past him and down the hall.

When the two got back up to Beel’s room, Luke suddenly gasped and turned to MC.

“You said it was a spell book!”

After that, MC got the feeling that Luke was no longer welcome in the house. What was the big deal about almost touching the Grimoire anyway? It could only override pacts and control demons-

Oh.

Balls.

Simeon got called to pick up Luke and before the two of them left MC assured Luke that he could come over and hang out anytime as long as he texted first.

Beel said Luke could come over and bake when the kitchen was fixed, poor Beel would have to do without Luke’s baked goods for a little while longer.

MC rested their chin on the coffee table they were kneeling in front of, stewing in annoyance. Their unfinished homework was practically mocking them, but the Demonology textbook was not what had them in their funk.

“MC, do your homework.” Lucifer said from the living room couch, he was comparing his phone to notes in a binder that was placed on his lap.

A grunt from MC caused him to raise an eyebrow. Their grasp on demonic language had improved, but Lucifer did not approve of them using their new skill to sass him.

“MC.” Lucifer chided, MC turned to look at him with a deadpan expression. “If there’s something wrong, either tell me, or do your work without complaining.”

MC turned back to their homework and tapped their pencil against the textbook, before puffing out their cheek and turning back to Lucifer.

“What’s in the attic?”

For the briefest of moments, Lucifer froze, he forcibly relaxed and went back to his work.

“Junk.” Lucifer replied. “Did you try and go up there?”

MC shook their head. “No, I went into the staircase room, but not up the stairs.”

Lucifer’s eyes flashed, he then took a deep breath and looked at MC. “Good, there’s nothing of interest up there anyway. If you did go up there you might break something or hurt yourself.”

“Okay.” MC sighed, trying to push the voice from the attic out of their mind. “What about the Grimoire? Why is it down in the tomb?”

Lucifer could feel his patience growing thinner and thinner with every question. “So it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.”

“Why not just destroy it?” MC asked, their question wasn’t meant to be taken as an insult or be malicious, it was just legitimate curiosity. “Wouldn’t that be safer?”

The first born hesitated before he answered. He looked over MC, before shaking his head. “...I’ll tell you when you’re older.”

MC’s eyes narrowed, but they went back to their work all the same. It would be about ten minutes of quiet before MC spoke up again.

“When Belphegor gets back from the human world, you’re going to have a lot of explaining to do, huh?”

Lucifer’s eyes snapped up to look at MC, who still had their back turned to him as they scribbled notes from the textbook. His grip on his DDD tightened as he replied.

“Why do you say that, MC?”

MC didn’t seem to register their father’s clipped tone, and shrugged. “Beel said that he isn’t answering his texts or calls, and when he sent up a letter Belphegor didn’t respond to that either.”

“The life of an exchange student is a busy one, as you can see.” Lucifer forcibly injected his last bit of remaining calmness into his words as he gestured at MC’s homework. MC laughed at that.

“Yeah well, I still make time to call my friends and ren back up in the human world.” MC giggled. “And I’m sure those text notifications about his older brother discovering that he has a child would make him pick up the phone.”

“Belphegor might have a much larger workload.” Lucifer retorted, trying to keep himself from snapping at MC.

“But still, you’d think he’d call his-”

“MC-” Lucifer snarled, MC whirled around, the fear and shock in their eyes caused anything Lucifer was going to say to die in his throat.

The two stared at each other for a few seconds, before Lucifer took another deep breath and turned back to his work.

“Not right now, MC,” Lucifer whispered. “I’m working.”

...

To be continued...

#Obey me #Obey me!#obey me shall we date #obey me! shall we date?#obey me headcanons #obey me! headcanons #Obey me MC #Obey me Lucifer #Obey me Asmodeus #Obey me Satan #Lucifer’s Kid #Obey me Beelzebub #Obey me Mammon #Obey me Belphegor #Obey me Leviathan #Obey me Luke #when I say to be continued- I mean more diverging from canon #I have a feeling the lovely London family trip went smoothly... totally

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smileyoongle · 3 years

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Falling for a lounge singer (Yandere!Mafia! BTS)// Kim Seokjin

Requested anonymously.

Summary: Working as a part time singer, you never thought you'd find yourself becoming the centre of attention of a man's life, especially one who you can't run from.

Word Count: 2K

You bowed before the audience at your workplace, an empty smile tugging at your lips as you finally walked down the stage and made your way to the bar. This was the third consecutive day in a week where your boss had made you work overtime without paying you for it. You knew that as a singer who performed in a small but reputable lounge bar, you weren’t worth that much. In fact, the reality was that you could be replaced at any given time, the city not having any less talented singers than you and that made you insecure about your job all the time. But either way, you were just stuck here, trying to push your way through every single day just to clear all your debts.

Life was unfair. It had always been.

Sitting down on a bar stool, you leaned across the counter and rested your elbows on it, the cold surface feeling good against the warmth of your skin. The speakers in the lounge were now playing the latest radio hits, the beats making your head hurt as you were handed a glass of water by the bartender who looked at you with a pitiful smile. Thanking him, you sipped on the water before your manager made his way to you and placed a champagne coloured envelope before you. Frowning in confusion, you gave him a questioning look which he returned with a nervous but angry expression.

“Someone left a tip for you,” he sneered, clearly not liking the fact that you had received money which wasn’t given by him. An asshole is what he was, his intentions of seeing you worried sick becoming more and more obvious with every passing night.

Pursing your lips, you unsealed the envelope only to find a lot of money, money that was probably worth your salary of six months. Your eyes widened in surprise, lips parting as you tried to make sense of why someone would tip you off with so much cash. You weren't even that good and you could never be that good.

“Who?” you asked, following your manager’s gaze to the exit where a bunch of men were making their way out. Almost immediately, you were on your feet with the envelope tightly clutched between your fingers. You needed to know who this man was that was so generous to you. Needed to know what about you was worth so much.

Holding your dress with one hand, you made your way towards the exit, eyes worriedly fixated on the doorway which was now empty. The bouncers nodded at you in acknowledgement while you forced a smile upon your lips and exited the bar, a part of you thinking that he must have left. But just as you came in contact with the cold night outside, your eyes took in the sight of an expensive car with a man dressed in an equally expensive suit surrounded by, you were guessing, his bodyguards. You couldn’t see his face yet, only his back being your line of sight but judging by everything, he certainly was someone in power. But if that was the case, what was he doing in a place so...average?

Deciding to end your curiosity, you called out to him, not knowing that this man was going to turn your life around completely. In a good way or bad? That was for you to choose.

“Excuse me, Si-”

Right then, your heel decided to give away, your ankle twisting painfully before you tripped...except you didn’t. Instead, you felt two hands taking a hold of your waist to steady you, your hands immediately latching onto their shoulder in return. And that’s when you finally saw him.

Kim Seokjin.

The man who was known to be running the biggest drug cartel around the country.

Your breath hitched as your eyes widened in recognition, a shiver running down your spine upon the realisation that he was here and he was holding you. Your fingers involuntarily tightened around his bicep, his eyes intently taking in your face as if you were his prey and he, your predator.

“Are you hurt, sweetheart?” he asked, snapping you out of your daze. Swallowing thickly, you shook your head, too afraid to even move because what could you even do? If you had known that Kim Seokjin was the one who had tipped you off, you would have probably just handed the money to your manager without confronting him. But here you were, stuck in a situation that you didn’t know how to get out of.

Your ears perked up at the sound of a car door opening, your eyes darting towards the black vehicle that now mocked at you with its open door. Jin swiftly picked you up without a word, a small yelp escaping your lips as you stared at him with fear and panic.

Were you being kidnapped?

Before you could think any further, you were placed onto a cool leather seat, your legs dangling to the side where the door proceeded to stay open. You watched Jin kneel down before you, his hands gently taking off your heel to inspect your ankle as a frown made its way to your forehead. The sudden act of kindness was making you very confused and you didn’t know what to do about it.

Maybe he just treated people nicely before he got rid of them?

A sudden pressure to your ankle had you whimpering and pulling your foot away, your teary eyes meeting Jin’s as he looked up at you with a soft gaze only to have his heart ache upon seeing you in so much distress.

In all honesty, this wasn’t the first time Jin was seeing you and the fact that he had tipped you a fortune was no coincidence either. He had walked into this bar for a deal about a month ago when he saw you, your voice being the first thing that captivated him. You looked absolutely stunning in a satin dress with your lips stained red, your smile taking his breath away even though it was just for show. Ever since that night, he just knew he had to see you and know you even if it meant coming to this place.

When you went to the rooftop to cry your heart out, he was right there in the shadows, wondering just what he could do to take your worries away. When you were being yelled at by your landlord, he was right there holding himself back from ruining that man's life. In short, every single time you thought you were alone, you weren't. Jin was always there, slowly figuring out where he was going to fit himself in your life. This tip that he had given you was guaranteed to solve your problems but along with that, it also made sure that you would want to see him. And that's all he really needed.

“You’re hurt, sweetheart. I don’t think you can walk-”

“Are you going to kill me?” Jin frowned upon hearing your question, feeling a little hurt that the girl he was so insane about, thought that he'd lay a hand on her, let alone kill her. But he had only himself to blame for having an image that was tainted with the blood of many, innocents and devils alike.

"Why would you think that, Y/N?" He asked, placing his hand on the empty space beside you. Your lips trembled as you struggled to answer, your eyes taking in the number of guards around you two. As if reading your mind, Jin quickly dismissed them, your shoulders slightly relaxing as you watched them walk away to where you couldn't see them. Feeling a little hopeful, you wiped away a tear that fell down your cheek and held your head up.

"I know who you are and what you do," you answered, biting your lip as you watched a wave of disappointment wash over him. Jin had been left speechless and he knew that, his jaw clenching and unclenching out of habit. Rubbing the bridge of his nose, he sighed, his hand gently taking yours into his as you tensed in your seat.

"I need you to listen to me carefully, sweetheart," he stated, drawing your attention to him and him only.

"I have been watching you for a while now," he confessed with apology filled eyes looking right into yours, "and hurting you, is the last thing I want."

Those words had you feeling breathless, too many emotions bubbling up your throat and making you wanna throw up. You had been the subject of a very dangerous man for quite some time and you had no idea. On top of it all, he said he didn't want to hurt you and you found yourself believing him. Maybe it was the way his eyes held so much adoration for you or the way he held onto you like you were a fragile little doll, you didn't know.

"Wh-what do you want then?"

"To love you," he answered without any hesitation, his hand coming up to brush away your hair from your cheek. His touch was warm, almost comforting, something you hadn't had in a very long time. Having been so lonely all this time, the idea of being cared for and loved seemed too tempting to let go. And knowing just how powerful Kim Seokjin was, it was very obvious that no one would ever dream of hurting you, be it mentally or physically.

But, were you really willing to choose comfort over the fact that he was a murderer?

"M-Mr. Kim, you don't even know me. I'm a normal girl who has a simple life and being roped into yours is the last thing I need."

You stated, noticing the way his eyes held a hint of sadness that seemed to be barely there. Swallowing thickly, you stood up with a pained expression, quickly taking your heels in your hand as you glanced at Jin one last time. This was the right decision, in your mind. Because there was nothing worse than having to live with a man, knowing he was cold and brutal. It was almost as if you'd be his partner in crime, something you just couldn't digest.

Limping towards the bar, you sighed in relief as a sudden silence surrounded you. Jin hadn't said a word to your rejection, making you think that he had understood what you were trying to say. The chilly air felt comforting now, your breath coming to you in waves of warmth. But before you could open the door to the bar, you heard a light click behind you.

Frowning, you turned around, your eyes growing wide upon coming face to face with the muzzle of a gun. Seokjin stood holding it firmly, his eyes red and angry. Your lips began to quiver immediately, your ears taking in the sound of his guards gathering around you.

"I'm sorry, sweetheart, did it sound like you had a choice?" He sneered, stepping forward and pressing the muzzle against your forehead. You slowly shook your head, a full stream of tears falling down your cheeks as you dropped your heels and joined your hands together.

"Please don't hurt me. I'm sorry I didn't-"

"Shh sweetheart, shh," he whispered, sliding the gun down your cheek and pressing it against your jaw. You could feel his arm holding your waist firmly, a scared whimper making its way out of your lips.

"You have no idea just how crazy you've been driving me, Y/N. Ever since I've seen you, I haven't stopped thinking about you," he mumbled, staring into your eyes so intensely that if not for the present situation, you would've deemed it romantic.

"Every second I've been thinking of things I'd like to do to you. And I can't have you take that away from me now, can I?" You closed your eyes, your body shaking as you sobbed at his words. The proximity was starting to suffocate you, your hands desperately trying to push Jin away from you but he was too strong.

"Let me go, Jin. Please let me go," you begged, your eyes drooping shut as you grew tired, your head falling against his chest. His hand came up to the back of your head, caressing your hair as he pulled you flush against him.

"Not any time soon, sweetheart," he replied, suddenly pulling back and gesturing the guards to the car. Large hands came to grip your arms, a scream sounding through the night as you were pushed inside the car you were seated in before. Your palms pressed against the leather, the door closing shut behind you as you sat up and banged your fists against the window. Spotting Jin outside, you cried louder, hoping he'd take pity on you. Instead he leaned down to where your palms rested on the window, placing his exactly against yours.

"I promise you'll be happy, sweetheart. I promise."

A/N: Guess who's back! That's right! Me! A dumb bitch! Anyway, I'm so sorry for not posting for like more than a year but for some reason, my brain went on a break and it just didn't wanna come back. So much has happened in the time I was away and I wanna give y'all so many deets like, boy trouble- check, best friend turning out to be a bitch trouble- check, getting two surgeries within a span of two months- check. In short, my life is a mess and I'm loving it.

Also, this turned out really long for like all the members, which is why I'm gonna post them separately. I hope I give you guys the same vibes from my writing as before. Or I'd die from shame. Okay I'm off now! Tell me if you liked it.

#bts imagines #bts jin #kim seokjin #bts yandere #yandere jin #yandere mafia bts #mafia leader Jin #bts reactions #smileyoongle #yandere!mafia!jin × reader #requested #i don't even remember the tags i used to use #kill me pls #mafia bts imagines #yandere bts imagines #yandere bts reaction #bts

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qm-vox · 3 years

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So You Want To Play A Fairest

(Portrait of Erin Peters by cantankerousAquarius. The character originally appeared in Night Horrors: Grim Fears, published by White Wolf; catch my take on her in New Avalon)

Previous Articles: So You Want To Play A Beast, So You Want To Play A Wizened, So You Want To Play An Elemental, So You Want To Play An Ogre, & So You Want To Play A Darkling

You ever wonder, flipping through a Monster Manual for D&D, or a Bestiary for Pathfinder, why nymphs and hags are both always, always, women? It’s older than you know. Dig into the sordid history of tabletops and you’ll find sylphs that Gary Gygax wrote, Chaotic charmers who use mind control to reproduce with non-sylph men; you’ll find the legacy of the matriarchal drow, who follow a mad goddess, and you’ll find the medusae, whose sexual dimorphism is so complete that their men are beautiful and can turn stone into people.

Dredge deeper and you’ll find the tales that Gygax and his wretched ilk based such creatures off of.

You ever wonder why we assign such powerful Gender to creatures of beauty and horror?

Fairest don’t. They know, every time they wake up from a nightmare that is also a wet dream. They know, every time they get hit on at the bar and have to decide how they’re playing this. They know, every time they look in a mirror and see not their own face, but the ten thousand horrors that made it beautiful.

If you are very patient, and lucky, and kind, they might tell you why.

If you aren’t, they may show you.

This article draws primarily on Changeling: the Lost and Winter Masques, as well as Swords at Dawn and Night Horrors: Grim Fears. Other sources, when used, will be cited. It requires Content Warnings for sexual violence, sexual slavery, abuse, gaslighting, addiction, substance abuse, self-harm, self-image problems, mentions of fascists & fascist ideology, and just, so very much incel bullshit.

Bonus Material Part Two: The Seeming Part

The end of this article, just past the customary Sample Fairest, will include some additional material intended to help you select a Seeming for your character and otherwise build them up as one of the Lost, much as So You Want To Run A Spring Court included material for Courts as a topic.

Take Me To Wonderland - Fairest Overview

Fairest is the fourth Seeming presented in Changeling: the Lost and possibly the most confused about its own identity. Its sections in Winter Masques present depths and nuance that are completely absent in core, essentially making Winter Masques required reading for Fairest players in a way that no other book is - especially since Fairest keep getting written in a particular way alluded to in the Ogre article, which I will expand on later in this article. Fairest is numerically well-represented in canon and popular in the fanbase, home to many memorable character concepts, but its bones with folklore and tradition are weaker than it fronts as.

Ogres and Darklings claim an innate relationship to physical violence; so too do the Fairest claim a relationship to violence. The violence of Perception and its dark twin, Judgement; of Rumor and its mad dog, Prejudice, the violence of Lies and their merciless master, Truth. Fairest, alone among the Lost, have casual access to the resources of a society that refuses to service or acknowledge Changelings, and with access to that society comes both opportunity and temptation. To be Fairest is to wield power that many other Lost cannot, but the opportunity that power offers is a lie; a Fairest can smile until her face breaks like a mirror, but she’ll never be “sane” enough for the masses to see her as anything but a useful pet.

Life’s Lush Lips - Homecoming As A Fairest

Fairest can make the dubious claim of having the least clear memories of Arcadia amongst all the Lost, with Darklings and Beasts jockeying for second place. This isn’t to say that the experiences Fairest have are necessarily more intense or more inherently traumatic than that of other Lost, but rather that the abuse Fairest suffer is so emotional, so targeted at their perception of their selves and their situations and their self-image, that the memories which do form are inevitably colored by those emotions, coloring the dreams they have of Arcadia with both the emotional resonances they had at the time and with their later attempts to grapple with their own trauma and transformation. For many Fairest, who cannot trust even their strongest memory dreams, attempts to understand their own Durance must rely either on the word of their Keepers (and Faeries lie, oh, how they lie), or on reverse-engineering their own behavior to try and conceive of a trauma that could cause it.

Inevitably, however, some things are seared into their minds. For almost all Fairest, their Keeper is high on the list of things they remember with absolute clarity. Other facts, shattered and scattered, vary more widely. Erin Peters remembers stretched years kept in a cold, dark room lit only by her own hatred; every detail of her cell is scorched onto the back of her eyes, but the otherworldly balls her Keeper took her to blur together like food coloring in syrup. The slaves of the Candle Countess have terrible nightmares of the choices they were confronted with, the decision, offered over and over again, to become complicit in the Countess’s cruelty or to be victimized by it. Metallic Flowering from the Shining City struggle not to use drugs to mimic the rush of pleasure they’ve grown used to receiving for performing their jobs well; they also scream in terror if people touch them. A Draconic and a Shadowsoul both remember being used for the sexual pleasure of alien horrors; the one dreams of coiled scales and terrible teeth, the other a lifetime of lurking in an alien maze, tasked to perform the duties of a living trap for the “wicked” and “unwary” who had not yet shed the last vestiges of kindness.

There are no “wild” Fairest. For worse and worse still, to be Fairest is to have been defined by the inescapable and all-consuming attentions of your abuser, and it is this more than anything that other Lost so often fail to understand about the Fairest. Their Keepers heap them with reward and punishment, manipulating the Fairest with honeyed praise, godly wrath, gaslighting, neglect, withholding food, wondrous rewards, drugs from beyond the realms of earthly pleasure, and other hooks and crooks designed to make the Fairest dependent upon their abuser. It is hideously effective, and the first obstacle, maybe even the mightiest, that a Fairest faces to their escape is the simple horror and joy of being alone again. Their masters will try other tricks to keep them in place - tempting them with pleasures, horrific punishments, oh-so-sincere apologies - but before a Fairest can escape into the Hedge she must face, in her mind’s eye, the lonely flight back to the Iron Lands.

The memories that draw Fairest home often have parallels to their experiences in Arcadia. A slave in the Shining City bites into an otherworldly pastry and recalls her grandmother’s pie in its place; the bride of the Demon Lover, curled up under the sheets, thinks about the broken smile of the boyfriend she left behind at home. A Dancer remembers the roller rink where he fell in love with skating, while across the endless tides of the Fairest of Lands, a Shadowsoul holds on like grim death to years of work at haunted houses, scaring kids for fun and for Halloween. Fairest, so famous for their skill at words, struggle to articulate to other Lost why this should be so. Darklings assume it’s because these memories are less intense than Arcadia, and that the Fairest are fleeing to safety. Beasts get it a bit more right by thinking that these memories taste like home. The truth of the matter is that those memories have an intrinsic and nameless meaning; the highs and lows of Arcadia are divine, flawless, absolute, and therefore worthless. They are the proclamations of merciless gods. What draws the Fairest home, more than pain and pleasure they can have on their own terms, is the understanding that those gestures - for weal or for woe or for anything else besides - were made because someone cared about them, personally. Once they fully internalize that their abuser views them as disposable, the Fairest comes home to someone who won’t.

Three Kiths And Flowering Is One And A Half Of Them - Fairest Kiths

Yeah we’re about to be like that about it.

All Fairest can excel in the social arena; their Blessing can be used to flare almost every social roll in the game, and Fairest can never be caught off-guard in a social context (they suffer no untrained penalties to social rolls). With the sole exception of Empathy (usually rolled with Wits) and sometimes Streetwise, there’s no time a Fairest can’t fall back on their words and expect to win through or at least buy time. This is, as you might imagine, a godsend when it comes to attempts to pass in mortal society; Fairest can usually front, charm, bluff, or Manners(tm) their way through things like renting an apartment, nailing a job interview, asking their roommate to do the FUCKING DISHES, or getting stopped by a cop, but both the books and the fanbase miss something here. While Fairest are superb at active social events, they’re no better at keeping a lid on themselves (Composure-based rolls) than mortals are - and given both the nature of their trauma and the fact that they are, you know, Lost, Fairest have a lot more to keep a lid on day-to-day than the human society they’re trying to blend into. Thankfully, Fairest are pretty good at being able to politely leave a situation and go somewhere else to scream, shout, cry, or have a psychotic break, as appropriate.

Of course, Fairest can’t make something from nothing. As discussed in So You Want To Play An Ogre, you can’t win a social game someone else refuses to sit down to, and social rolls shouldn’t be mind control. All the Glamour in the world can’t make your roommate do the FUCKING DISHES if they’re deep in the throes of executive dysfunction, nor can it make the cashier at Walgreens fail to card you for wine when their computer literally won’t advance without an ID. People who are keyed up about honeyed words or whose own trauma came at the hands of manipulators and abusers might refuse to play that game on the terms the Fairest is setting, which makes it hard to, as it were, turn this problem into a nail. Lurking down this path as well is the specter of becoming like the masters who made you this way; if you get used to saying what will get people to listen to you, eventually you start seeing people as enrichment puzzles that dispense the things you want. Madness waits down that road, and it waits for Fairest with a giant spiked bat, thanks to their Seeming Curse.

There’s no pretty way to say this so I won’t: Fairest are always on the verge of losing their minds. Their curse hits them with a flat penalty to all rolls against losing Clarity, which means that Fairest lose Clarity faster than other Lost and they do so more consistently. This necessitates a balancing act with avoiding becoming heartless manipulators; Fairest must engage in control-seeking behavior in order to stay mentally well, must be able to trust and rely on people close to them, structure their lives, and anticipate important changes or they end up on the fast way down. Other Lost often don’t understand this need or the Fairest curse to begin with, and so Fairest end up in unofficial support groups for one another, similar to those run by Darklings except no one will admit it’s a support group even at gunpoint. Woe fucking betide the friend or life partner who gets between a Fairest and her “book club”, “girls’ night”, “D&D campaign”, or other excuse for this vital community support.

Fairest Kiths are...bad. They’re bad. This is the part of the article where I’m supposed to talk about thematics and symbolism and metaphor, and I cannot do that here, because they are bad. Fairest has three viable Kiths that are actual Fairest Kiths, one that’s a Beast Kith who got lost and wound up here by fucking mistake, and a pile of garbage bigger than my self-esteem problems. I’m almost tempted to only talk about those four Kiths and save myself the time but I suppose I should show the work like I’ve done for all the other Seemings, so here we fuckin’ go I guess.

Flowering - This is it. This is the Fairest Kith. If you want to roll any other kind of Fairest you must first pass the trial of justifying why you’re not playing Flowering. In theory, Flowering draws its mythic heritage from nymphs and dryads, charming flower sprites, Knights of Flowers, and the like, but in practice Flowering’s only mechanical effect is 9-again on Persuasion, Socialize, and Subterfuge with no qualification or requirement, which doesn’t just make you better at everything Fairest is good at, it makes you better when you spend Glamour to flare it too. Want to represent a biobahn sith’s hypnotic dance? Flowering works. Want to create a vampiric Fairest with a sultry voice? Here comes Flowering. The siren at the bar who smells like sea air and gunpowder? Flowering. Everything is Flowering. Even the things that aren’t Flowering are Flowering because all Fairest Kiths have a social focus, which is Flowering’s undisputed arena of mastery.

Bright One - In theory, Bright Ones represent beings of light in the vein of Victorian fey (which...ugh...Victorians), but their Goblin Illumination is, how you say, useless, only becoming vaguely useful for a total of 2 Glamour as a passive defense that took you 2 turns to set up. Anything you want to represent here can be found in Flowering and with Elements or Communion (Light).

Dancer - You know how Flowering gives you bonuses on all social rolls? Would you like those same bonuses but on 1 less skill and only on rolls that “involve physical grace”? No? Run Flowering here and give your character a Dance specialty in one or more skills.

Draconic - One of the game’s premier melee options and a Beast Kith who took a wrong turn and ended up getting a free makeover intended for someone else. Draconic in theory represents Fairest as dragons, monster girls, demons, and in general at their most physical, but that idea sorta...falls down a bit? Draconic’s bonuses are all about Brawl and all the sample Draconics are swordsmen, which might suggest to the discerning reader that someone in the office wasn’t reading their own fucking game. Draconic Fairest don’t make bad melee boys if you invest in Lethal Mien, but honestly this is Dual Kith bait; slap it on your Hunterheart or your Razorhand and go apeshit.

Muse - Close but no cigar. In theory Muses are, well, muses; figures of inspiration, mentorship, teaching, creative fire. Their Kith Blessing is strong but requires access to mortals, which is complicated and roundabout on the best of days. If you have an idea that you think is Muse-shaped, use Playmate instead.

Flamesiren - Behold, we enter the realm of Okay(tm). Flamesirens are what Bright Ones wanted to be, and their hypnotic aura is actually a pretty neat tool; with cunning you can make it a one-sided penalty, and even if you don’t it’s an interesting method of de-escalating a social or combat situation by subjecting everyone to the tar pit that is your presence. If your concept involves light and color and you’re resistant to Flowering, Flamesiren will do more than nothing.

Polychromatic - Polychromatics don’t have a lot of roots in mythology; their modern inspirations are, well, Manic Pixie Dream Girls. But they get a shout-out here for being the only Fairest Kith who can muster up decent emotional defenses; not only can they magically boost their Composure rolls (and non-Composure rolls to resist magical and mundane emotional attacks for that matter), but others get a flat penalty to Empathy rolls against them, which makes them talented dissemblers. You’re still probably better off with Flowering - in a world of passive Kith Blessings, Polychromatic’s is extra passive - but I can see this Kith passing muster, and even being worth the two dots to Dual Kith in-house.

Shadowsoul - This one’s insane. Ostensibly Fairest Does Darkling, Shadowsouls get their Wyrd to Intimidate rolls which could be the whole Kith on its own and still be worth the slot, but in addition to that they get 9-again on Subterfuge (matching Flowering and Darklings there) and access to Contracts of Darkness, one of the most powerful in the game line, as an Affinity Contract. Is your Fairest spooky? Would you like them to be spooky? Here’s your one-stop shop.

Telluric - This is a Kith made of ribbon bonuses. In theory related to stars and celestial light, Telluric’s bonuses to rolls “with precise timing” isn’t...really worth considering. Run ‘em as Flamesiren and move on.

Treasured - In theory also able to muster emotional defenses, Treasured are Fairest who are literally made into works of art. They’re Okay(tm) but in their niche are beaten out by Polychromatic with a better effect for less resources.

Playmate - The last Real Fairest Kith(tm), Playmate appears in Night Horrors: Grim Fears where White Wolf tries to sell it as Peter Pan, but its powerful team-oriented bonuses mean that Playmates are useful anywhere Muse is wanted and more places besides. The front woman of an indie rock band could be a Playmate; so too could be an idealized baseball captain, the director at your local theater, the middle manager of a sinister conspiracy, or the night shift lead at a research lab. Do people do a thing in teams? Playmate does that thing.

And She Had Huge Titties, I Mean Massive Badondadonks, Absolutely Enormous Bazoggahoggas - Lost’s Canon Fairest

Remember when I said we had to get back to this after So You Want To Play An Ogre? Now we’re getting back to this. I’m not gonna re-state my caveats from that article and I’m not really gonna go back over the bit about So White Wolf Was Run By Fucking Nazis because, in all honesty, I do not have the fucking time to restate all of that in new words. Give thanks that OPP got out alive and let’s get right down to it.

Fairest have a very consistent characterization in canon that is only really challenged in Winter Masques; the narrative put forth in Lost is that Fairest, being attractive, have an uncomplicated power which privileges their lives. Which is a rather bloodless way to describe how White Wolf kept writing and publishing Fairest as heartless abusers and manipulators getting their jollies and emotional needs met by casually destroying their fellow survivors, manipulating them through sex appeal, outright lies, cattiness, cruelty, and betrayal. Much as simply queering Ogre does not help Ogre in and of itself, queering Fairest only takes you from incel and Nazi propaganda about women into...incel and Nazi propaganda about twinks, femmes, & in general anyone with the temerity to be found attractive by straight white people.

I’m not bitter, you’re bitter.

So what do you do at your table, with your Fairest concept? Lemme open up by saying that like, Fairest qua Fairest is perfectly solid, and if it wasn’t there wouldn’t be an article here; Fairest has a lot to say for itself about feminized violence, about your personhood being reduced to a product for the consumption of others, about emotional abuse & neglect, gaslighting, and sexual assault, but the conclusion White Wolf arrives at (”Fairest have unalloyed power over mortal and Lost society and they abuse that power”) is super fucking obtuse and betrays a serious lack of concern for what the Fairest undergo. It ignores the way a Fairest’s ordeals will force her to confront her relationship to her own gender and alter her willingness and ability to be consumed, disconnect her from her former society while also isolating her from her new one, and these questions are important for you if you’re looking to play a ‘classic’ Fairest.

But that leaves some hanging questions. Male Fairest face the almost inescapable fate of “failing” maleness on patriarchal terms; even the most strapping, broad-chested, athletic Adonis of a Fairest has become a man of layered words and reflexive empathy, whose Manly Stoicism(tm) is a cracking facade at best and entirely abandoned in a more typical circumstance. Men who become Fairest thus face a second journey after their escape from Arcadia; confronting what being men means to them and building their gender identity back up from the rubble it’s become. The temptation to accept success on society’s terms is always going to be present, and it’s always going to be offered like it’s possible, but it’s a losing game for these Fairest; they simply cannot be the men that other men demand they become.

Now, the discerning and loyal reader is surely about to ask, hey Vox, where’s the butch Fairest I was promised back in the Ogre article, to which I respond WE’RE GETTING THERE but I gotta use this as a bridge to talk about something that cuts across Fairest of all genders, be they cis or trans. Lost 1e makes a lot of hay out of the idea that Fairest “are rarely conventionally attractive”, and core even provides some interesting written concepts for that...which make it into exactly none of the art. Every published Fairest is conventionally attractive for various definitions of conventional, be it as a supermodel or a waif, but that leaves the question of Fairest who genuinely are not - and, tragically, Fairest who were not, and were then made into someone more easily consumed by their Durance. You know what I’m about to say, and I know you know I’m about to say it, but I’m gonna say it anyway: all bodies are beautiful, but Fairest know well that beauty and attraction aren’t the same, and neither are beauty and happiness. All Fairest, from the roundest bear to the most wide-eyed waif, are the products of Keepers who valued their bodies in that state, and that idea is going to haunt them day in and day out for the rest of their extended lives. There is no such thing as a Fairest with an uncomplicated relationship to their body, and that White Wolf seems to think that an uncomplicated relationship is their default state is...disgusting, frankly.

Which brings us, at long last, to butch Fairest (also bear Fairest but I’m gonna stick with the one set of terms or I’m going to go mad and this will never be published), who have a complicated journey ahead of them. On the one hand, the assertion of control and ownership over their own bodies, their own identities, cannot be overstated. On the other hand, elements of those bodies are going to be completely out of their control; a nascent butch Fairest may well hit the gym to get swole only to discover that she literally, physically cannot, that she has been Assigned Dex Build At Durance. Hauling your corpse out of Arcadia with an extremely feminine appearance shaped by your Keeper might complicate attempts to present in a more masculine manner or even just to appear androgynous, and those complications can be discouraging. For those that stick to it, this journey will take them two places; one is the bared-teeth, bloody-knuckled assertion that this life is theirs and you can have it if you can fucking take it, and the other is into the ranks of the Freehold’s retained warriors, usually in Summer or Autumn, though a vibrant representation of Spring knights will make it seem as if Spring has more butch Fairest than it actually does. These Fairest are aware, or will become aware, of how much of their job involves de-escalating or pre-empting violence; a focus on Physical stats or skills is not necessarily common, but hyper-specialization therein likely is. A butch Fairest is a lot more likely to have, say, Brawl 4 (Multiple Opponents) and no other Physical skills than she is to have Brawl, Weaponry, Athletics, and Stealth, in part or in whole because her first weapon of choice is going to be an Intimidate roll.

At every turn you’re able to, challenge White Wolf’s narrative about Fairest by asking yourself what your Fairest wants, why they’re this way, what they’re frightened of, and how the way they behave relates back to these. They’re not products; they’re people, just as hurt and Lost as the rest of their peers.

Princesses And Pastries - Fairest In The Courts

Fairest have a complex relationship to the society of their fellow Lost. On the one hand, they have the same need for community, support, companionship, understanding, honesty, and material aid as all Lost; a Fairest is not magically proof against being homeless, against starving, against the dangers of existing in the modern world without things like a photo ID or car insurance, and Freeholds provide all of these things. On the other hand, the thing most Fairest fear most, even if they can’t articulate that fear, is their own power - social influence, emotional trust and betrayal, status, political power, and authority. Fairest are all too aware that being good at this game does not make them immune to it - after all, that’s the lesson they learned at the hands of their Keepers.

What follows from this is a complex dance of interactions that each Fairest in some ways has to feel like she’s managing on her own, even if she’s not (and she rarely is; those support groups exist for a reason). If you give a Fairest a doughnut in a social setting, she will lick that doughnut even if she doesn’t intend to eat it right away, solely to hear someone else say something along the lines of “well it’s yours now”. As Fairest filter into Freehold society and take up social roles at all levels of power - officers, messengers, ‘ambassadors’ to mortal society, secretaries, pledge-smiths, teachers, monarchs - their responsibilities and rewards become their doughnut. That Fairest make a big deal out of both their job and the benefits that come with it is rarely, as other Lost sometimes think, about aggrandizement or reveling in power for its own sake; it’s about the sheer relief and assurance of hearing someone say, to the Fairest’s face, that this is her doughnut and no one is going to take it from her.

Younger Fairest tend to flit between two or three Courts; their initial selection may be based entirely on friendships, Vibes, or a gut-check decision based on an initial pitch by that Court, and Fairest can go quite far even in a Court that doesn’t quite actually fit their needs. Eventually, though, those Fairest who survive their youth will gravitate towards a Court whose ideals speak to them, even if its current social order isn’t living up to those ideals. If they’re going to be condemned to live as exiles in the world of their birth, the Fairest can at least be the person she wants to be, god damn it. Fairest aren’t any more or less vulnerable to a toxic Court environment than other Lost, but they’re good at detecting it beforehand. Unfortunately they’re also good at telling themselves they can change it.

Spring - Though early Spring joiners are of course rare in general, Fairest are among those Lost who more commonly choose Spring as a first Court. Spring’s highly social focus and chaotic internal organization is almost tailor-made for the skill set of your average Fairest, but therein too lies a sense of threat; for many Fairest, Spring can remind them of their Durance, and their joining of the Court is as much motivated by fear of a powerful cultural body as it is by any genuine Desire, maybe even more so. Many such Fairest end up caught in Spring’s middle-road trap, spinning their wheels without recovering or worsening more or less until they finally die, but when Autumn can sniff out the fearful ones it puts a lot of work into cooperating with Spring to get them out and where they can be helped.

Summer - More Fairest dabble with Summer for dreams of glory, or because they want to believe in Summer’s apolitical sales pitch, than ultimately stick with Summer. Those that do stay often serve as officers, as the Sun’s Tongue or the Arrayer of Distant Thunder, and as Court sorcerers. Fairest skilled in Contracts of Separation can make for surprising Jaegers, hounding their prey down more like a private investigator or a serial killer than a traditional hunter, but while striking this is fairly rare. Fairest who stick with Summer are those who are looking for its high ideals and are often among those rare Summer Courtiers who can competently articulate both those ideals and their pitfalls without falling prey to cynicism and bitterness.

Autumn - For those Fairest who hurt others to feel safe, Autumn is waiting. The Leaden Mirror can be attractive to young Fairest because it’s easy to perceive Autumn as atomized, defined by personal relationships rather than webs of political influence, but when the Fairest discovers those webs the existence of Option Two: Resort To Violence as an acceptable tool to the Ashen Court is perversely reassuring rather than threatening. The image of the Fairest as a witch, tempting and threatening, clings to them in Autumn but it’s honestly not their most common role; Autumn employs its Fairest as rumor-mongers, the Other Woman who seems a little too familiar with your husband, therapists & counselors, oneiromancers, and ambassadors to Hedge communities. The work Autumn does is harsh on Clarity, and Fairest are especially vulnerable to that harshness, but if the Court invests the time in helping its Fairest members, the self-awareness and self-confidence it offers can be a godsend that no other Court can give them.

Winter - As the Court which is actually selling what Fairest think Autumn has - to wit, the ability to simply say “no” to all social interactions with no justification required - Winter has a strong undercurrent of Fairest membership at all tiers of its power. Fairest often end up directly involved in Winter’s money-making enterprises, and flourish as Squires and Armigers with their fingers on the pulse of the Court’s morale. Winter’s hands-off approach displays a tremendous amount of trust in its Fairest from their perspective, and the demeanor of the Coldest Court - Winter’s indifferent equality - has a potent, merciless appeal. The trap of drowning in Sorrow sucks more than a few Fairest under, but if their peers can be there for them there’s always a way back out.

This Is Not A Pipe - Fairest And Lost’s Themes

My many thanks to Izzie M for her extensive help on this section. I’m not sure I’d have been able to grapple it down, emotionally or intellectually, otherwise.

Fairest go through some intense shit, and the shit they go through can never fully be addressed, never fully be recovered from. It’s no mistake that Fairest, like Wizened, are among those Lost likely to never fully gain resolution with or from their Keeper, and this is because they embody the dark truth that no matter how much progress you make, how much you heal, your trauma has changed who you are as a person and you will be dealing with it until you die. But, as alluded to extensively above in the discussion of Fairest and gender, Fairest also embody the way in which society will attempt to stamp you, mold you, turn you into a product to be consumed or an archetype to be placed into its churning machine, and its attempts to reshape who and what you are and can be are, in themselves, a form of trauma and abuse.

Fairest deal a lot in expectations. They’re expected to be perfect victims, they’re expected to be happy (because they’re beautiful and attractive, because they can front as Doing Okay, because they have a form of access to ‘normal’ society), they’re expected to want romance and sex (since everyone else wants those things out of them), to perform emotional labor, to be available, intimate, understanding, to keep up appearances. Fairest escape the chains of their Keeper only to be clapped in the chains that extend into the eyes and minds of their peers, and they cannot move without hearing the clink of them.

Fairest are primed to represent victims of ongoing emotional abuse and neglect; sex slaves and victims of child abuse might find themselves in Fairest, as might husbands or wives of abusive partners (and boy, re-living my bullshit there was a bonus prize I didn’t want to receive for writing this article), children pushed to over-achieve (here overlapping with Elemental) until they break, pastor’s daughters and cult kids (here overlapping with Beast), and others. However, Fairest also hit their thematic stride when talking about trauma from a society that will not give you an exit. A trans person is first punished by society for “failing” to perform their assigned gender, then made to perform their new one to expectations that they cannot set, do not control, and do not consent to; such a person might easily be Fairest, as might a man breaking under the expectations of Maleness, a college student losing their mind in finals week with no one to help, or even more ‘ordinary’ sex workers expected to perform emotional and physical labor for a society that rewards their work with violence and dehumanization.

Fairest are people with complex internal worlds and they damn well know it, but the temptations to let others define them are numerous; society promises all manner of rewards for being who and what it wants you to be, for wanting the things it tells you to want, for being the kind of person who wants and does those things. To be Fairest is to know at any time you can start faking it and receive those rewards insofar as they’re actually on the table, but it is also to know, every second of every day that you’re performing that role, that it is fake. If you can’t find a community with which you can be genuine...well. You can always get more hurt, and in this way Fairest also bring another theme of Lost into focus: that the Lost owe compassion and understanding to their fellow victims, because failure to care can only hurt both them and everyone in their blast zone.

Feet Pics For Legos - Coping As A Fairest

Fairest are among those Lost who are most concerned with their day-to-day social interactions and safety rather than their immediate, very physical environmental safety. They are perhaps the Seeming most likely to live in a group setting (in an apartment with roommates or romantic partners, in a house shared between multiple households, splitting the bills in a condo, with their parents), and are definitely the Seeming most comfortable with the idea of living with mortals who aren’t ensorcelled. Indeed, Fairest don’t tend to do well living alone; even a Fairest who wants or needs a private place to be, choosing to keep a home in which others cannot lay a claim, will likely crash at friends’ places, sleep over at the Freehold commons on some pretext or another, stay the night with a lover, or otherwise have a place to flop down while surrounded by other people. Having other people - their greatest reality check - around the place helps keep the Fairest centered in the real reality, better able to pick apart the mortal from the Wyrd from their own unrelated hallucinations, and a Fairest who is isolated - or who is permitted to isolate herself - quickly begins to dissociate and may soon be incapable of caring for herself until someone can get her back into the present.

Those invited over as guests to a Fairest’s home may note a lot of concern for those she lives with. She likely schedules the event well in advance, is clear about the boundaries of those she lives with (”That’s Brenda’s room, the door stays shut.”) and in general treats her communal home with a lot of respect and love. Respecting these boundaries and in turn having her own respected is very validating for the Fairest and is vital to be able to feel safe and at ease in her own home, and impressing their importance on guests further reinforces that this is, as it were, her doughnut. While not dismissive of their own literal physical safety per se, a Fairest’s anxieties rarely center around her body being violently attacked by strangers. For those that do have such anxieties, they may choose to solve that problem by simple expedient of rooming or living with someone large and scary.

Another detail of note which is touched on in Winter Masques is that Fairest tend to seek out life’s little pleasures. Though they are not necessarily wealthier than other Lost, how a Fairest chooses to spend her money tends to follow particular patterns. Rare is the Fairest who doesn’t have clothing they like, a phone that works, a wallet or purse that can actually hold all of their stuff, and in this regard most Fairest without a special interest in fashion as a hobby in and of itself will have an aesthetic that is self-expressive but serviceable and hard-wearing, but any place the Fairest haunts, frequents, or lives in will get little touches everywhere. Fairest spend the little bits of extra money for good toilet paper, soft soaps that won’t hurt the skin, good shower supplies, high-quality razors, boots that won’t wear through - and they spend their serious money on their hobbies and preferences. A Fairest with a passion for cooking scrimps and saves to get a fully-stocked kitchen; a Fairest who likes building and connecting invests in Legos or Hot Wheels and creates elaborate environments for them. A gamer Fairest has headphones that can vibrate your constipation away and a fiber optic connection to ensure that lag will not stand between her and your doom. The reasons for this are manifold, and Lost’s canon writing suggests that Fairest seek pleasure to alleviate a desire to return to Arcadia. This is, to put it mildly, a stupid assertion; rather, the Fairest provides her own pleasures in part because it is one of the most emotionally clear ways to lick the doughnut, and in part because it reminds her that she can be happy under her own power, can seek pleasure, stimulation, engagement, without placing herself at another’s mercy - ironically making it easier to go out every day and do exactly that as a member of her various societies.

As a Fairest settles in she tends to look for “her” people, and quite often they’re good at compartmentalizing this, wearing different hats and having different feelings about those hats without feeling fake or distressed about the bare fact of that. She’ll have her personal friends and family, like her housemates, her girlfriend, maybe her mortal family, her neighbors, and then folks like her Motley (which are like her personal friends and family, but In The Know), her fellow Fairest and the Freehold broadly, her work friends and fellow hobbyists. A Fairest who does, say, sex work, thinks of herself as a Sex Worker and understands herself in the context of that broader social group. It can be a lot! Many Lost barely have a handle on being a member of both the Freehold and a Court, and the way Fairest flit to and fro between many communities, slipping seamlessly from one role to another, can be exhausting to watch - but by doing so the Fairest also builds bonds between those communities, highlights their common needs and interests, draws them together over their similarities and strengths. Darklings and Wizened get a lot of the work on the ground done, but it’s often a Fairest in the role of whistleblower, figurehead, and champion all at once.

After all, this, too, is her doughnut.

Example Fairest - Clara Belltower, Spring Playmate

Clara Belltower is a mime.

Well, no, not exactly. Clara Belltower is a self-employed porn actress, erotic script writer, and director, whose primary thing is mimes, clowns, and more broadly circuses and performance venues. She came back from Arcadia eight years back fleeing life as her Keeper’s Stepford Wife, and ran face-first into the money issues that haunt the Lost in general. What started out as a practical choice in new career - and an attempt to find and express an identity not created for her by her abuser - became a creative passion that has stayed strong with Clara and propelled her to status in the Spring Court, which retains her keen eye for decoration, direction, and theatricality in service to its high rituals and revels. Clara’s livestreams and online presence are also a convenient avenue for the Freehold to launder its less legal revenue streams, which has endeared Spring’s “silent siren” to the Winter Court and cemented her as a mover and shaker.

Clara’s ambitions reach beyond erotic miming, as talented as she is at both creating and purveying such. She has her eyes on four different strip clubs in Freehold territory alone whose owners and operators need to fucking go, and she wants Winter’s help making it happen; further, she wants the Freehold to take over operation of those establishments for the benefit of the workers. Clara’s vision is popular in Spring and has its supporters in Summer too, but the Declining Seasons have been cool on the concept, citing a need to maintain subtlety and avoid entanglements with the mortal world that might invite the eye of, say, the IRS - or mire the Freehold in a protracted war with local police departments. Clara’s passion burns with a righteous simplicity, envisioning a Freehold that is active in improving the city around it - if the cops want to throw down, bring it on! Her influence over Winter means the Coldest Court cannot simply dismiss her desires, but neither is it willing to go to war. Something is going to have to give, soon.

This concludes the Fairest portion of the article. Some additional thoughts on Seeming follow.

Bombing Your Own Position - Choosing Your Seeming

So it’s been six articles and I’ve talked about the ways various Seemings can represent responses to the things which traumatize us; neurodivergences for which society abuses us, the machinery of capitalism, violence, prison, and more. But how do you go about choosing your character’s Seeming? The obvious choice is to make a character that puts a lot of yourself at the table; to seek out a Seeming that reflects your own traumas, your own issues, your own anxieties and struggles, and then grapple with them in this fictional context. But RPGs can be an emotionally challenging medium, and you may well not want to deal with your own bullshit during your magic trauma fairy game. That’s valid!

Now, the second obvious piece of advice is to think about your proposed character’s themes and traumas and then select a Seeming from there, but this can get complicated. Many Lost players feel as if they need two Seemings, and to those players I say: no the fuck you do not. But it is true that people are messy and do not fully resolve, that the broad spectrum of the world of sorrow and loss is not easy to fit into 6 discrete categories whose creation was often managed by, not to keep repeating this point, fucking Nazis. I have found in my experience that it can be helpful, when you’re torn between two Seemings or you have a character you’re sure is this Seeming even though they look like or could be that one, to ask yourself why the character is not the other option. Why is this alluring and sensual Darkling not a Fairest, what makes this brutal and violent Wizened not an Ogre? This question naturally leads to others about their abuse and their reaction to it, and can start your momentum for writing your concept out.

As an addition, while I’ve spoken of various Seemings as being well-equipped to represent specific traumas, they don’t own those traumas. Elementals are metaphorically autistic, but there’s nothing stopping you from running an autistic Fairest or an autistic Beast instead. Rather, those Seemings outlined as being “for” or “about” certain traumas are those whose selection will make those traumas thematically central, cause you to return to them as a topic over and over by virtue of being who and what they are. Real people have complicated problems which intersect with one another, spawning new problems that are more strange than the sum of their parts, and it’s both valid and interesting to write your Lost that way - just keep in mind that it’ll still be complicated at the table too.

Van Helsing Hate Crimes - Seeming Politics

White Wolf spent a lot of time waffling back and forth on whether or not Seemings represent distinct cultural and political identities in a given Freehold, drifting towards ‘yes’ when the writers thought about the way Blessings and Curses create consistent, measurable differences between Lost of various Seemings, and towards ‘no’ generally whenever they were asked to actually outline a Lost society such as a sample Freehold or Entitlement. Some Entitlements are locked to specific Seemings, often times with little thought as to why, while other times Seeming-based power blocs are alluded to as worldbuilding elements (such as in Lords of Summer) without much in the way of supporting detail. Why should these things happen, when, how, what does the buildup of this violent fracture in a Freehold society look like?

On the whole, I have taken the stance in these articles and in my own worldbuilding that some amount of fantastical prejudice exists amongst the Lost, but that the systems of oppression have not taken root. Maybe it’s idealistic of me to view the Lost as unwilling or unable to produce internally racist power structures that create an underclass for the benefit of an appointed elite, but in general I feel as if Freeholds are too small, each individual member too precious by simple dint of being a living being in a physical body, for this kind of evil to flourish. That said, you may have also noticed that I identified two Seemings - Darklings and Fairest - as explicitly self-uniting and in some senses self-governing on the basis of common traumas that they often cannot fully explain to outsiders, and indeed community with people that understand your bullshit without you having to say it aloud - that is, those who share a Seeming with you - can be invaluable to all Lost. Ultimately, however, I want to advise against looking at Seemings the way that, say, Vampire: the Requiem looks at Clans, and instead to treat them as reactions to trauma rather than a kind of alternate racial identity.

Next up: So You Need To Write A Fetch

#Changeling: The Lost #rpg #fairest #trauma #abuse #seemings #violence

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nanowrimo · 3 years

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5 Tips for Finishing Your Novel

April’s session of Camp NaNoWriMo is drawing to a close, and you might find yourself nearing the end of your novel. If you need some tips on writing and polishing the ending of your story, author Derek Murphy is here to share a few! Plus, you can check out the rest of our novel-finishing resources on our #NaNoFinMo page.

You won NaNoWriMo and have a 50k collection of scenes and sentences, but how do you clean it up and get it done? How do you make sure it’s finished, satisfying and enjoyable? Here are 5 powerful strategies for finishing your novel and some helpful writing tips that will push you past the finish line.

1. Give it a satisfying resolution.

In order to have a powerful story, your book should probably focus on a main character’s change or transformation. There’s an inner war, a.k.a. the character’s emotional healing, and an outer war: the conflict that forced the reckoning. If it’s a purely symbolic internal realization, you can mirror that with actual conflict in the real scene: the breaking of a dish, a fit of rage, a sudden ray of sunlight (or a storm… this should not be pleasant; It’s a breaking point and spiritual death/rebirth).

You can clarify the moment of change by setting up an illustrative contrast, a before and after, that shows how those internal changes have resulted in real-world consequences or benefits. Each character’s unique challenge will match their personal weakness or fear. The price for victory is the one thing they have so far refused to do, or something they cannot give up or bear to lose.

Make sure your protagonist has gone through a transformative struggle to arrive at deep insights, knowledge or awareness. Find a way to deepen the incidental scenes so that they become instrumental to a deeper purpose, leading towards an identity-shifting event.

The plot is what happens, and it’s important. But you can make it more dramatic and meaningful by making sure you demonstrate how hard it was and what it cost. It matters, it is remarkable, because it forced your protagonist to change.

Your conclusion might include:

Physical tension as allies perform a tug-of-war battle against resistance, that shows how difficult this struggle is, and how much force is required.

The consideration phase, as characters are tempted last minute or the price for victory is revealed: the sweet memories that give them awareness that this fight is worth the cost or risk (you need to show them making the choice, knowing what they will lose).

The final flashback, as the full backstory is revealed so we can see exactly why this conflict is so difficult or meaningful for the main character.

2. Add (unresolved) conflict.

Your story is made up of the events and scenes, where something happens. Each new event will push the characters further into the plot. Slow scenes where nothing is really happening can be red flags, so the first thing to focus on is increasing conflict, drama, suspense and intrigue. This is what creates urgency. The full reveal, demonstrating why THIS challenge is so difficult and powerful, should happen just before the final battle or resolution.

You want to make sure every scene, especially in your conclusion, has enough conflict. I recommend these three:

Outer Conflict (threats): Challenges or obstacles that prevent the character from achieving goals.

Inner Conflict (doubts): Moral struggles, decisions, guilt or shame, anger.

Friendly Fire (betrayal): Strong disagreements between allies or supporting characters.

You want to extend and deepen the potential conflict, without resolving it too easily. The biggest destroyer of conflict is conversation: when your characters just sit around and talk to each other. Most conflict involves a lack of information, and a desire for clarity. A lot of conflict is perceived or imagined.

The most important information needs to come last, and come at a great price. The information that has an emotional impact, and influences their actions and decisions, should be big reveals at dramatic peaks. A surprise or twist should be treated as an event: each scene is leading towards a change or new piece of information that provokes the protagonist to respond.

3. Fill plot holes with character motivation.

After you’ve made sure that “what actually happens” is intriguing (opening questions and raising tensions without resolving them) you can focus on making sure the plot holes are filled, and characters are properly motivated – these two things are usually adjacent.

You can find and fill plot holes by asking:

Why are the characters doing this?

Why does any of it matter?

Basically, readers need to respect the main characters enough to care what happens to them, so their choices and actions need to make sense within the given information. If there’s a simpler, easier solution, readers will get stuck up on “why didn’t they just…”? To fix plot holes and gaps in logic or continuity, or make the story go where you need it to, you can add urgency, fix the mood of the scene (bigger stakes require bigger justifications), show characters in a weakened mental state, or raise concerns but have them dismissed, with an excuse or justification.

You need rational characters to make plausible choices that lead to dire consequences. You need show why they don’t do something easier, or nothing at all, or why they face clear challenges, despite potential obstacles.

They’ll also require a deeper motivation, for why they’re willing to put themselves in identity-destroying conflict, rather than just giving up or running away. Why do they stay in THIS fight, when they’ve run from similar ones? If they weren’t ready at the beginning, why are the ready now – what changed in them, as a result of your story’s journey?

Your protagonist needs to have a strong, consistent internal compass, and it needs to be revealed through incidents that establish their character. This is who they are. Without this reliable core identity, we won’t be able to tell a story that forces them to change.

4. Let readers picture your story with detailed description.

In the final stages of revision, you can begin improving the description with specific details.

It’s smart to start – or end – a chapter with a vivid, immediate scene. You want to leave readers with an image they can see in their minds, hopefully connected to the feeling you aim to evoke. You can close a chapter with a reference back to a motif or image, with a deeper or more reflective context; applying meaning to the metaphor. This will help readers feel engaged, be moved, and leave a lasting impact.

Vivid scenes are mostly a matter of detailed description, so add the specifics about the story environment. Be precise, not vague. Instead of “she put a plate of tea and snacks on the table” you can write “she gently placed an antique porcelain teapot on the table. I could smell it was Earl Grey from the scent of bergamot. The half-sleeve of Oreos and can of onion-flavored Pringles seemed incongruous with the fancy dishes, but I knew she was making an effort to welcome me.”

Focus on the sensations and feelings; but also zero-in on any potential sources of conflict or internal emotions or states of mind. In my example above, the host might be nervous or ashamed of her spread; or perhaps she has a degenerative brain disease and doesn’t notice the incongruity. Tensions are unspoken, potential sources of negative feelings. They hover in the background of your description.

Readers will remember the pictures you put in their heads, not the words on the page.

Description should serve and be bound to the story, not distract from it.

It should be squeezed into and around the scene action, when the protagonist is using or exploring.

Show what’s different, not what’s the same.

Leave space for readers to fill in the gaps, but get them started in the right direction so they aren’t surprised later.

Sidenote: be careful about your metaphors, analogies and similes. Each one will put a picture into readers’ minds, and it can quickly get overcrowded with imagery. You’re asking them to ignore your real scene and think of something else. Use them to confirm and amplify the scene you have, and limit distractions.

5. Prepare to publish.

Typos are bad, but perfectionism will ruin you. This section is about editing and proofreading, but I don’t have time for all that, and you don’t either. The real problem with a story is rarely the number of typos. A very clean book isn’t better if people stop reading.

You can solve a lot of common writing problems, with my big list of 25 common writing mistakes, and self-edit your manuscript to make it as good as possible. After that, a copyeditor or proofreader isn’t always the best investment (and it can also be the biggest publishing cost).

Instead, use an editing software (I like Grammarly) to root out obvious mistakes, but don’t dwell on the small stuff like perfecting every word or rearranging the commas. Spending a very long time wrestling a poorly-written manuscript in shape is less effective than getting something (actually) done to the point where you’re comfortable sharing it.

This may be difficult at first, but you can’t learn and improve without genuine reader feedback (from people who aren’t your mom or best friend; nor the short-sighted opinions of a self-proclaimed literature enthusiast). You need to find readers who enjoy your particular genre, and the sooner you find them, the more valuable feedback you can get.

Shorten the feedback loop: Get over the fear and focus on learning by getting feedback early and often. However, this doesn’t just mean joining a writer’s club: writers are brutal and might focus on trivial things. The safest bet is to make it public, on Wattpad at least. Or get a cheap cover and throw it up on Kindle, Draft2Digital or even your own blog.

Making it public is scary and vulnerable, but it’s better than letting the fear of messing up keep you from the brutal, necessary experience of allowing readers to tell you what they liked and disliked about your writing. Will some people be critical? Yes! But guess what, you’ll get negative reviews even if you’re a brilliant, famous writer. Those are inevitable. And the first negative reviews may teach you more about writing than 10 years attempting to self-edit, afraid of putting your book out into the world.

PS. You can use resources, like my 24-chapter plot outline, as a way to spot story gaps in your manuscript and improve the structure (especially if your book suffers from a “soggy middle.)

Derek Murphy has a PhD in Literature, writes urban fantasy and is the founder of the alliance of young adult authors. More recently, he’s started sharing writing tips on http://www.writethemagic.com

Top photo by Adegbenro Emmanuel Dipo on Unsplash.

#nanowrimo #camp nanowrimo #nanofinmo #writing advice #writing tips #finishing a novel #by nano guest #derek murphy

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mxvladdy · 4 years

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Diavolo- True Form

Whoooooooo weeeee! ‘Pologies for the wait on these longer posts. I’ve been hit with a one two punch of house emergencies and sudden costly ass repairs, so my creative juices have been rightly squashed as of late.

Plus side I got my drawing tablet and drafting table back so I can neaten up my blog lay out now (yay!)

Anyway this one was a challenge in the best possible ways. I really like Diavolo because of how little we know about him so it gave me some wiggle room. Or at least what I know of him- im only on like chapter 23 of the stories. Idk if I did him justice as this is angsty af but I sure had a blast writing it!

Hope ya like! Next up: Beelzebub

Trigger warning: Mention of blood, and swearing.

Diavolo-

He'll never show you, so don't ask. His true form is god-like in its own right and such knowledge, such truly raw demonic power in its natural form is not for your mortal eyes.

No matter what your lineage, it would break you. And despite his roles and being the literal devil, he doesn’t want you suffering.

Sometimes when he thinks you wouldn't notice he relaxes his hold on reality, just a fraction. He wants to relieve some of the tension that is always building just below the surface. Like closing your eyes when you have a tension headache. The mental energy he has to exert to keep face is enormous. Regular glamour doesn’t work nearly as well as his own, or Barbato’s magic.

But you see hints during your downtime spent in his company. A ripple in his reflection on the window pane. Unexplainable shadows dancing across his exposed skin. Too many teeth in his mouth when he laughs. Sometimes when you stare into his eyes you see something indescribable staring back behind them. His usually warm and inviting gaze darkening. A barest flicker, a hulking bestial thing kept locked behind in his golden gaze. It's enough to freeze the blood in your veins.

On certain nights when you can slip away from the brothers you stay in his room. Lying awake, you watch his magic wane and shift as he slumbers. Sometimes you see runes, or at times letters. You are tempted to write them down and ask Solomon. But something stops you each time.

The worst images are the faces. Unknown souls trapped beneath his flesh clawing to be freed. Silent screams fading back into his body as he dreams. Your fragile fingers trace the patterns they leave as you wait for the next day wrapped in his embrace.

Only once have you seen more of his form then he would ever wish. The depths of his strength and mental fortitude were unknown to you so the slip up took you both by surprise. He masks the error well, but the sudden shift in energy in the room couldn’t be suppressed .

You are suddenly so aware of the oppressive weight of gravity on your frame. Your bones grinding together under the force of his aura. You panic, desperate by the need to breathe, but are unable to draw even the smallest bit of oxygen as it is robbed from the room. Time and reality wrapped too, distorting in ways only you thought only Barbatos could do. You knew in that moment the sudden dread of death, how mortally was but a rusty shackle tethering you down.

He collects himself, dispelling the energy and locking his glamour down tight to protect you. But that split second of fury felt like an eternity to you as you sink to the floor. You hiccup a shaky sob and shiver. Your fragile human mind bowing under the strain of what it cannot comprehend. Scolding hot tears fall from your cheeks, before splashing crimson the stone below you.

You didn't approach him again for over a month. No matter how strong you are, some things were better off unseen.

Mini Fic

He didn’t know. For once in his ancient pitiful existence, he had been unaware of his surroundings. It had been for just a moment, one tiny crack in his veneer. The foolishness of Mammon and Belphegor’s actions finally poked the right nerve. He wouldn’t hurt them, for Lucifer’s sake. That prideful demon would never forgive him if he did. But he could scare them. A quick look at his true self; a flash of the deepest bowels of hell. Enough to give them a reminder of their positions and standing in his court. He had expected their whimpers of fear, could taste the acidic tinge of it exuding from their pores. What he didn’t expect though was your blood curdling screams alongside.

Ironically, he would have to thank the second eldest later. His fast thinking is the only thing that saved you from complete damnation. His body shielded yours, taking the brunt of the stronger daemons hellish might for you. What little magic Mammon still had left used to protect you. Though, while your vision was blocked, you could still feel his oppressive presence. It racked your mortal flesh. Diavolo knew what affects his power had on humans. He spent years breaking and consuming damned souls with zeal after all.

The brothers had run from him after that, screaming for Simone. Barbatos following close behind, a look of consternation on his usually impassive face. You had been so limp in Mammon's arms. Diavolo could do nothing, shocked by his own weak will and realization that he might have ruined everything. You had been whisked away so quickly by his faithful servant and the brothers that he hadn’t had a chance to look you over himself. But the brief moment he saw will haunt him for years to come. Your eyes red from the sudden haemolacria, the blood staining your clothes and face. Your fingers digging away at your soft skin, black and purple blotches staining what he could see. Mouth opened wide on a silent scream. He knew what you must have seen. The souls of the damned trapped under his glamour breaking free to latch on to your unmarred soul trying to drag you back with them.

Against his butler's advice he stands at your door now days later trying to see you. He couldn’t sit around and just hear updates second hand. The brothers had been keeping guard most days in a valiant attempt to keep him away. But he could only be waylaid for so long before he used his rank against them.

He had arranged a full council meeting. Every one of the brothers knowing full well it was to get them out of his way. Yet, the order was absolute. This time none of the brothers could reject it. Barbatos would keep them in that room for eternity if he so wished for it. He hated using his age and power against them, but he saw no other way to get to you.

It was foolish now, standing as he was in front of your door. A part of him hoping you would turn the knob and let him in. Let him comfort you for once, instead of the asinine distractions the brothers offered. He could help too. Hells, he wanted to. He wanted to be closer to you. Power discrepancy be damned. The other part of him knowing it was for the best that you didn’t. Your guardian and tormentor all in one. He listens to your muffled sobs for a moment fighting with his feet to stay cemented to the floor instead of heading back in defeat.

"When my father was still around he took me down to the deepest depths of the kingdom. Where the worst of the traitors and sinners are imprisoned." His deep baritone rumbles through your door during a break in your crying. "It’s a place few seldom go; even now I have yet to return. Back then he told me ‘there will never be a human soul that is undeserving of punishment. Even the ones destined for the celestial realm are tethered to sin.’ At that time I believed him. The things I saw in your realm... " The prince chuckles wearily.

He remembers the ever present scowl on the old King's face. His dark eyes looking out at the sea of damned souls he controlled. Even as a young daemon, fresh into his wings and still sharpening his horns to impress others he could tell how much his father detested his position. How it had warped him, turning him bitter and cold, even to his mate and only child.

Diavolo never wanted to be like that. Not to the ones he supposedly cared for at the very least. "I think that is why he hated the other realms so much.” He continued. “Humans, for their ability to choose which realm they would eventually end up in after they pass. That even the worst sinners could find redemption enough at the last moment to get to the pearly gates. While daemons, no matter how well they served, or the duties they did for the good of their own would never be seen as equals to our celestial counterparts or yours. That this existence is all we'll ever be destined to have. Nightmares and monsters, stories to tell little human children to keep them in line.” He pauses, collecting himself. “I believed wholeheartedly that every human deserved the punishments only my kind could dowel out. But, in this past year I have spent with you, I find myself changing. You are so undeserving of such torment. Somehow you are understanding and forgiving beyond measure to us. You handle our ill tempers with such grace. For daemons such as us, it is staggering, and humbling. I regret that I have hurt you so deeply and have broken your trust. I swear it as the head of this realm I would never intentionally do so." He looks at the door handle willing it to open. " I am so sorry."

Your crying picks up again. Huge heaving sobs that rattle your chest. Great Father, he just keeps making it worse. Clearing his head Diavolo turns.

Rejection of this nature was new to him. No one had ever dared to ignore him, especially such as this. The royal in him- his father's blood- seethed that he would even stoop so low as to grovel to a short lived thing like yourself. Even deeper yet, it demanded another taste of your essences. You little soul kept safe behind your rib cage. He wanted it added to his collection, kept tucked away deep within his maws.

It was sick; it was wrong. He chokes on the idea. The intrusive thought burrowing deep. How deplorable was he? Perhaps the angels were right to keep him out of heaven.

You didn't show to class the following day, or the days after. Unsurprising to him and the seven of the inner council. He figured the other day wouldn’t change anything. But it was utter agony to him. These days trapped in his office only getting short and curt updates on your health from Lucifer. It had been a special kind of torment.

Today he sat once again at his desk staring at some godforsaken bitching of a royal cousin. He knew this whelp. Some backwater thrice removed eons ago. Yet he was demanding an audience? The gall. The ink of their eligible handwriting makes him cross eyed. Would this day ever cease? He looks to his hourglass, the sands within seemingly frozen in time.

"My Lord, perhaps you should take a moment to stretch your legs?" Barbatos moved from his corner. Gloved hand coming to rest on top of the same three lines he had been reading for the past two hours. "This work could wait another evening I’m certain ."

"Did I do the right thing my friend?" Diavolo doesn't even bother answering the question his servant posed. They both knew he wouldn't. "This program. Our human exchange students. Solomon is one thing, but-"

"Your will and path is absolute." Barbatos states. "There are no mistakes within you, merely stumblings onto different paths."

With a gentle push Barbatos moves the hulking demon out of his way to collect and organize the scrolls and letters scattered about the large desk. "You made the right choice bringing them here. Look at what they have done. They are entertainment to you are they not?"

The prince rose knocking his desk aside and descended on his butler. His true form out in all its unholy glory now. His highly condensed magic distorting the study as if he was a black hole. The axis of the room shifts. His priceless collection of books and toys disintegrating from the cold radiation he emits.

It was all for show really. There was nothing he could do to an ancient being such as Barbatos. So he lashed out, throwing a tantrum in the security of his office. The hopeless agitation he felt fueling the flames of his rage. His butler had only added holy water to his already festering wounds.

Barbatos had been by his side for time in memoriam. The crafty bastard had helped raise him. Had shaped him into the ruler he was today. If anyone could break and remold him it would be his oldest companion.

The dark haired daemon waited for the waves of agitation to dry up. Moving only when the prince was in his more presentable demonic form. Large barrel chest heaving as he reined himself in. “Are you back to your senses?” He asks coolly, already categorizing the items to replace and furniture to be mended.

"I had not meant for it to go like this." Diavolo croaks into his hands collapsing back on what remained of his desk. Building a bridge between realms, yes. That noble idea was the greater purpose of this program, but the rest of it. The classes, and dances. The parties where he threw his newest toys about to see how they would react to things other mortals worshiped? That had been for his own curiosity and amusement. Lesser beings navigating a foreign world blind to the dangers that were right under their very nose. Bring a mortal with no magic into his realm? Deep down he knew this was an inevitability. Especially with the freedoms he granted them. He just didn’t think he would get so attached.

“No one believes that you would hurt them on purpose.” His butler cuts off his downward spiral. “It would ruin the program. That is what you are so stressed about, right?” Barbatos eyes him skeptically. Diavolo, himself, and Lucifer had spent many sleepless weeks constructing and negotiating this program. If the Arch Angels heard a mortal was hurt down here it could very well end this little escapade. But the look in the prince’s eyes told a different story.

A warm glow emanated from his cheeks and he was unable to meet the old daemon’s gaze. Ah. "Or perhaps things have changed?" Barbatos smiles coyly up from beneath his bangs. "You are your mother's son after all. Neither of you were ever able to stem your bleeding hearts for long." Diavolo squawked indignantly but didn’t argue. Instead he merely turns a darker shade of red and curses under his breath.

He skipped out on court that evening. Not that he cared much. The other nobles would no doubt use the time to gossip about his whereabouts and uncouth behavior of late. Truth be told, he was avoiding the brothers more than anything else. They had made it expressly clear (some more then others) how they felt about him currently. He wouldn't doubt that Belphegor had a few more brothers on his side now.

Instead he stood at your door once more with a tea tray in hand. He had bumped into Simone on the way. The angel had come to bring you dinner and to check up on the last of your wounds. Celestial magic worked miracles on those who have been touched by the darker arts. Diavolo was grateful for his talents. And, by some miracle, Simone had made it abundantly clear he was not going to bring this to the higher ups on his end either.

Upon seeing the prince slinking up the house's stairwell the other man had simply smiled and offered him the tray. “I suddenly got a message from Luke. Could you perhaps drop this by our friend’s door?” Diavolo had accepted without preamble, large hands dwarfing the platter of little tea cakes and sandwiches. The young cherubs work no doubt. His cooking was a fine treat, and a great incentive to at least open the door.

“Hello again.” He knocks twice. “I just wanted to check in on you. I know I am the last person you wish to see but I was hoping to talk?” Silence greets him. Were you awake? He breathes deeply and focuses on picking up your vitals. You were up, your heart thumping steady somewhere in the room. That was good. “I also have dinner for you. Simone had an urgent matter to attend to so he- for better or worse- entrusted this to me.”

Diavolo searches hopelessly for something else to say. He couldn’t just leave the food and go. He needed to see you. “I don’t plan on staying long today. I understand when I am not wanted, but I cannot help myself but be worried for you. Perhaps this is just me contritioning, because I know I caused this. The amount of times I have been called a ‘ass’ by Solomon over this have been staggering.” He rambles. After another bout of silence from your end he coincides. “I see- I will leave the food by the door and let you rest.” Defeated he puts the food down and turns to leave.

The door clicks open slowly. One bloodshot eye peeking through the crack. “Oh mio piccolo mortale.” He loses his grip on your shared tongue at a loss. You looked- you must have been in the hall longer then he or the brothers had known. Such damage couldn’t be done in a few moments. Your skin was healing as nicely as Lucifer had said, but the deep purple scarring still remained on the surface. The burn pattern of it all was random. Twisting wounds that reflected an oily sheen from the light of the hallway. “I-.”

“I know-” You cut him off with a raised hand. “and I feel as though I owe you an apology too.” Your voice was so weak and shaky. A mockery of your normally strong and jovial tone. Hearing you laugh at school had brightened the dreary halls. He hadn’t realized it until you weren't there.

“You owe me nothing.” Diavolo says in earnest. He watches you contemplate your next words before throwing whatever you were going to say away.

“Would you like to come in?” Your eyes drop to the tray. “Luke always makes more than I can eat.”

“I don’t think that would be wise.” He backs out. All his plans crashing and burning around his feet. His actions had been irreparable.

“Perhaps not,” You open the door wider taking the tray and heading to your side table, leaving him no room to argue. “But then again, being a lamb among such wolves as yourself and the brothers isn’t smart either.” You meant it as a joke but he couldn’t even muster a chuckle. It was true. Gods. “Dia-” You approach him again but falter at the last second.

As much as you wanted to be close to him again the memories were still so fresh in your mind. The cold hell fire of his magic ensnaring you, searing your skin. The whispered words of sinners long since past still echoing in your head, all in languages you’ve never heard before. The worst though had to be the screaming. Lost souls begging for help. Some sounded so familiar…You shutter involuntarily.

You wanted to hate him for this. Curse him for putting you through this pain. But how much could you blame him? Or any of them? They were daemons. Whether he meant to hurt you or not, it truly had only been a matter of time before it happened. It would be hypocritical of you to fear or hate him forever over this. Six of the seven brothers have threatened your life before, and you have forgiven them. Hell, one of them actually killed you. What’s more was that Diavolo’s wrath hadn’t even been directed at you.

Wrong place at the right time; seemed to be your forte. “Please, come in.” You repeat again firmer than before mustering up either courage or sheer human stupidity to order him in. You couldn’t tell the difference anymore. “We need to talk.”

He enters, following at your heel like a lost puppy. All air of princedom gone as you clicked the door shut. Diavolo fiddles with his hands, old habits from childhood coming with his nerves. He didn’t know what to expect anymore. Yelling? Some kind of beratement? A plea to go home and never look back? He would let you.

You pass by him, giving him a large berth of space to get to your seat. “Tea?”

Diavolo jerks his head to you. He had forgotten momentarily the plate of food he had used to get access to you. You smile sheepishly pushing it and a plate of sweets towards him with your unbandaged knuckles. He doesn’t move till your hand retracts back to your lap. You jerk your head to the open seat waiting for him. You weren’t going to take no for an answer.

“I- thank you.” The daemon sits making himself as small as possible in the straight back chair. He takes the porcelain and drinks mindlessly. The scalding hot tea doing little to help the tightness of his throat, but it did thaw some of the ice in his mind.

“Are-how…” He fumbles so unsure of what to do next. “I see you’ve been keeping up with your school work.” Diavolo closes his eyes, wincing internally at his words. That’s what he comes up with? Idiotic.

You smile anyway, eyeing the massive pile of books and paperwork spewn about your bed. “Yeah. I’ve taken to doing my school work with Levi in his room. Mammon and Beel are nice enough to drop it off to the teachers when they are due.” He nods. He knew this of course. But it was nice to hear it from you. But yet, you don’t meet his eyes. Far too afraid to see what hid behind them.

The thought of being dragged back into those dark depths again makes your pulse quicken. You instead stare at your nail beds, finding them more interesting. They were purple now. The nails stained black by the contact with his magic. “Will- will that go away?” He asks. Demonic curses or taints were nigh impossible to remove fully. Disgustingly, he hoped they didn’t. Then your nails would match his. The darker depths of his soul coo at the idea, happy that in a small way every daemon would know your his. Not as good as a pact, but as close as he could get to being a part of your little mortal life.

“I’m not sure.” You reply honestly bringing your hands up to place them on the table. “Simone and Solomon have done what they could. But, it is as good as it’s going to get for now. They say it could fade with time.” You look up at him, eyes gazing to the left of his face. “Luke thinks I should see a stronger angel.” Diavolo winces, the thought stung, and terrified him. “I told him no.”

That surprised him. This was your chance. The celestial realm had been skeptical from the beginning. If they knew, it would be a perfect caveat for them to step in. “Why?” Finally you look at him. The fear was still there. Hesitation evident in your eyes. Yet you forced yourself to look at him, fighting through your trepidation.

“Did you mean what you said earlier? About your father and what you think of me?”

“Of course.” He replies without hesitation reaching for your cold hands. You flinch but don’t move away. It felt-nice. His warmth chasing away the perpetual chill that covered your fingertips. Idly you stroke his strong hands with your thumbs.

“Then, I think we can work on this privately.” Slowly but surely you felt like you could fix this. Not for the program, but for yourself.

#obey me #obey me diavolo #obey me headcanons #gods have mercy I wanna smooch him so bad

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sailorgreywolf-german · 3 years

Text

Sacrality and Legitimacy

Summary: The evening before Charles V is crowned Holy Roman Emperor Austria shares a private moment with his husband. For the second day of @aphrarepairweek2021 for the prompt “royalty.”

Characters: Spain and Austria

Ship: SpaAus

Word Count: 1.4K

Austria regarded the glittering crown of the Holy Roman Empire in the low candle light. It was a beautiful glittering thing, set with images of saints. It had been a gift from Byzantium long ago, and it had been handed down from emperor to emperor.

In the morning the pope would place the crown on the head of Charles V, and legitimize his title in a way that had been done since the middle ages. It would also grant the shared crown of Austria and Spain unquestioned legitimacy.

The regalia was laid out carefully the night before, and Austria was making sure that everything was in order. The necessary pieces of the imperial coronation were very familiar to him since Maximilian was elected.

He ran his hand over the embroidered lining of the thick mantle, and then lightly touched each the scepter and crown in turn. The objects were familiar, and he knew that they were in the safekeeping of his royal family, but the reverence that he felt for them had never lessened. They were ancient pieces, endowed with sacred power. Beyond his own political power, which was rooted in Charlemagne’s empire, the holy relics of the empire made his heart beat faster.

He heard the sound of footsteps, but it didn’t alarm him. He had sent a message to Spain to offer him the chance of seeing the sacred regalia before the day. He turned to see the Spaniard standing behind him, as he had expected. If he had learned anything about Spain in the years that they had been married, it was that he had the greatest respect for the sacred and would enjoy the opportunity to be this close.

Spain looked like he had been prepared to go to sleep when he received the message. He had clearly thrown a cloak on over his chemise and not bothered to put on a doublet underneath. There was something incredibly sexy about seeing him in little more than his under-layers, with his hair tousled.

Austria had to focus on not staring at the neckline of his shirt, and the tempting glimpse of tanned skin beneath it. The time in the New World had given Spain’s skin a beautiful amber glow.

Though he found nothing particularly wrong with feeling lust for his husband, he knew that the point was to show him something that would be meaningful to him. He was certain that being able to see and touch the regalia was something that Spain desperately wanted.

Austria spoke, “I see that you got my message.” Spain strode across the space with the air of a man who commanded the world. Once he was at Austria’s side he answered, “Of course I came as quickly as I could.”

He turned his gaze to the regalia, and his breath caught in his throat. He said, in a hushed voice, “The holy relics.”

For a moment, all of the bravado of a conquering empire vanished, and Austria was looking at a pious man overcome with emotions. He saw someone who had spent years of his life completely devoted to the church.

Silently, Austria watched as Spain’s eyes moved from the crown to the holy lance and the sword of Charlemagne, which had been transported from Aachen for the occasion. In the low light he could see the shimmer of water in Spain’s eyes.

He said, softly, “You can touch them if you want.”

Spain looked at him, and looked momentarily like a little boy who was terrified of doing something wrong in church. Austria was reminded for a moment that he really was still quite young, and had been a unified kingdom for less than a century. For all his confidence, he was still an emergent kingdom not entirely used to this position.

Spain said, “Can I really?” It was so odd to hear him ask for permission, since he rarely asked for it for anything else. But, on this subject he seemed hesitant, and in need of the reassurance. Austria put a hand on his shoulder and said, “You can, I promise.”

Only once Spain had nodded and reached out to touch the imperial cloak did he say, “You usually aren’t one to need permission for anything.”

Spain shook his head. His eyes were still full of wonder as he moved his hand from one item to the other. He was only touching them lightly with his fingertips, like he was worried that too much contact would be damaging.

He answered Austria, “For most things, I would not. But this-“ He put his hand on one of the most holy relics and drew in a breath through his nose, “This is the holy lance. The blade that pierced the side of our savior.”

He sounded like he was choked up, and Austria could see every bit of his piety. No one would ever accuse Spain of being fickle in his love of the church. Spain closed his eyes for a moment as he pressed his palm against the relic.

Austria allowed him the moment with silence. He had always known that he had married a man who prided himself on his faith, and he was not going to interrupt. But he did rub comforting circles on Spain’s shoulder, to remind him that he was not alone.

Spain moved his hand again and opened his eyes, drawing in a deep breath as he seemed to emerge from his revelry. Then, he blinked away the beginnings of tears.

Austria decided it was finally time to break the silence, and he asked, “What is wrong, my dear? Aren’t you happy?”

He had never seen Spain quite so emotional before, and it felt like he was seeing the man truly vulnerable moment. His voice was somewhat steady as he answered, “I never thought I would be able to have anything from my father. Everyone knows that bastards never inherit.”

Austria hoped that his touch was at least comforting, since he knew that the subject of legitimacy was a sensitive one. Spain put his hand very gently on the crown, and Austria could see the swell of emotions in his eyes.

He said, trying to remind Spain of how far he had come, “Tomorrow your king will be crowned Emperor of the Romans by the Pope. That is more legitimacy than blood could ever give you.” Spain turned to meet Austria’s eyes, and said, “Our king. I know that I have been granted this because of you.”

Austria felt his heart beat faster. He could see the gratitude in the other’s face and he was certain that he had never felt quite so in love. Their marriage had not been made for love, but as he looked at Spain he saw a young man overwhelmed with the feeling that he was finally coming into his own, and he could not love him more.

In the candle light, Spain looked soft and handsome, and very vulnerable. He replied, “It’s everything that you deserve, Antonio.”

Spain put his hand softly on Austria’s face, and seemed to struggle with his words for a moment. He finally managed to say, “You cannot imagine how much this means to me. This past decade God’s love has granted me so much. I have the empire that I always dreamed of.”

He drew in another breath to calm himself. Austria took the opportunity to say, “I do understand, Schatz. That’s why I invited you here.”

Spain nodded and the look in his green eyes was enough to melt Austria. He had not realized how desperately and deeply he loved the man he married. Spain replied, “Your love has given me just as much, and I am grateful to have you." He stroked Austria’s cheek with his thumb, and said quietly, “My Rodrigo. You are a blessing.”

He gently pulled Austria into a kiss. Austria leaned gratefully into it. He loved the touches, and he could feel the intensity behind the way their lips joined. The way that Spain was holding his face felt especially tender. His Spanish bull could be gentle when he tried.

The kiss felt like it lasted a pleasant eternity, until Spain finally broke it to take a breath. Austria didn’t want it to stop. This felt like one of the most intimate moments they had ever had, and he didn’t want it to end.

Spain slipped his arms around his husband’s waist and pulled him close. He whispered into his husband’s ear, “Come to bed with me, and I’ll make you feel like a king.” Austria nodded and kissed him one more time.

#aphrarepairweek2021 #hws austria #hws spain #SpaAus #spaus

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wreckofawriter · 4 years

Text

Attention

Pairing: Cedric Diggory x reader

Word Count: 3.5k

Warnings: Swearing, sexual jokes

Request: @souhmhey Hello! I really like your blaise au and was wondering if you could do a hogwarts ver of 97 with bill weasley/cedric diggory since your requests is open. The reader is a slytherin btw. Thank you and take care!

#97: You are famous and we keep bumping into eachother so the media thinks we're dating

A/n: sorry for inactivity, I have no concept of time. This is a tiny bit off the prompt but oh well. (There is so much dialogue in this fic, I'm sorry.)

You hated attention. You had hated it since the second you had been birthed into the world. The world which robbed you of your privacy. The world which had dug its grimy hands into your life and tugged and pulled until it looked pretty enough to be on display. A world which everyone claimed to wish for, to envy.

It made you sick.

You had no right to complain. You knew that you were privileged, your parents had more money than they could spend even if they tried, you had grown up in a mansion which simply could not be called a house. You had the tutors, the vacations, the clothes. You had it all, well all except privacy.

Your birth was on the front page of a dozen magazines, your face tacked onto newspapers before you could even read. You were so used to the flash of lights that you stopped registering them as strange.

When you left for some faraway school in the hills of Scottland you had assumed that all of that would go away. That you wouldn’t have to fake smiles anymore or refrain from making the smallest mistake for fear of ruining your parent’s reputation.

Your father’s status as a quidditch player kept you form that unattainable dream. Whenever he spoke of the sport he told it like some fantasy, something he had done so he could soar into the sky not bring it down onto his daughter.

You snapped your eyes shut the bright flash of light only worsening your headache. As the faint burn you were all too used to faded you gathered the image of the young boy in front of you. His mouth was dropped displaying two rows of crooked teeth, his brown eyes wide with amazement.

Your jaw tightened, “Do you need something?” the tone you used was clearly threatening, hoping to break him from the trance you had unintentionally put him under. The conformity of the boy’s features lead you to believe he was either deaf or stupid.

“Well?!” You snapped and it seemed to do the trick.

He blinked a few times, his open mouth giving way for a dopey grin, “You’re y/n y/l/n.”

You scoffed considering shoving the large camera he was holding down his throat, “I don’t know who you are talking about.”

“But-”

“Move before I move you myself.” You snarled and before the kid could answer you shoved him aside and continued for your class which you were now surly to be late for. Vector wouldn’t be happy.

You entered the room already spewing apologies you should have to give.

The teacher cut you off with a pointed look and you snapped your mouth shut. There were a couple snickers from the class and your head hammered on the front of your skull.

“You have been late almost every day this week Ms. y/l/n. Is this going to continue all year or should I cut you from my class now?” Her glare was stiff.

You tried to swallow your mouth suddenly feeling too dry, “I’m very sorry professor it’s just I have to come all the way from potions, and getting through the halls can be difficult.”

Her eyebrows raised, “I don’t see any of my other students struggling to get here on time.”

“Well, I-”

“Or do you simply believe the rules of this school don’t apply to you?” She sneered and giggles erupted around you.

Your cheeks burned and you hung your head, “That’s not what I was saying professor.” you mumbled know your words fell onto emptiness.

“Ten points from Slytherin. Go take a seat next to Diggory.”

You let your mouth fall shut nodding obediently as your blood boiled beneath your skin. Eyes followed you to your seat and didn’t leave until the lesson began. Your cheeks hurt, you pushed your hands upon them attempting to cool the burn of embarrassment. You didn’t even spare a glance to the boy seated next o you, his presence barely registering as you tried to convince the earth to swallow you whole.

You really hated attention.

Cedric Diggory didn’t quite understand why so many looked his way as he passed in the halls. He was good at making friends, his words always seemed to flow so seamlessly from his mouth, he never stumbled over syllables or tripped on his tongue. He was good with people, they liked him, he never gave them a reason to do otherwise.

Students envied him, he knew that. He wasn’t oblivious to the fact that girls and boys found him attractive, he wasn’t stupid. People often treated him like he was anyway, as if his popularity had drained his common sense. It was aggravating to try and prove that his worth went past his reputation again and again.

He always paid mind to you. He was aware of your fame, well your parent’s fame. His eyes like may others had frequently wandered towards you, he had a feeling you hated when they did. Your own were always narrowed into a glare as you did everything in your power to avoid the popularity you had been gifted.

As you sat beside him, your head buried in your hands, teacher continuing with a lesson he should be listening to he felt sorry for you. Sorry that you were so often painted as a self-entitled brat, sorry for the prying eyes and the whispers behind hands.

“I could walk you from potions if you wanted.” The words had spilled from his mouth like an overflowing sink.

Your head snapped towards him, eyes hard as steel as you bored into him. “What?”

Cedric suddenly felt like a fool, something that didn’t happen all that often. He stuttered for a sentence, “I, uhh..” What had he just said to you? It was like his thoughts had been replaced with cotton.”I have the same potions as you, and um you said that you were having a hard time getting through the halls. I could walk with you.”

“Whatever.” you ignored the part of you that thought it might be a half-decent idea and scoffed, “You would only draw more attention.”

The Hufflepuff chuckled, “I suppose you’re not wrong.”

You didn’t answer, eyes now zoned to the front of the room. He let the conversation drop.

If there was one thing that you hated more than attention it was exercise. You disliked exhausting yourself, the grime, and sweat making you feel incredibly dirty as you jogged the edge of the grounds. Your breaths were labored and you felt awkward as your thighs bummed together. Despite all of the discomfort, your head felt clear. Thoughts weren’t plagued but crisp as you listened to the chirp of birds and your own pants. Finally, you gave out, your legs groaning as you halted bending over. Lacing your hands on your knees, you tried to calm your racing heart.

“Oh, hey y/n!”

And your peace was ruined.

You stood up, stuffing your hands in your pockets and trying not to look as fatigued as you felt.

Cedric looked so good it hurt. The sweat on his brow giving him the polished look of a deity. His hair was untamed yet adorable, cheeks stained apple red from the exertion. The sun which was peeking above the horizon framed him, making the boys edge hazy and warm. He smiled down at you, his breaths steady as ever.

You cussed at him not even bothering to lower your voice. You watched his face falter with confusion. “Fuck you.” You repeated, “How do you look so good after running?”

His grin jumped back, “I just stared, I’m only two miles in.”

You were tempted to slap him, “Only.” you cursed him again for good measure.

“Are you heading back towards the school? I could go with you.”

You considered his offer for a brief moment, “Whatever you monster.”

Apparently he took that as a yes because the second you began to jog again he was beside you his pace obviously slowed to fit yours.

“I was actually happy to run into you.” He hummed.

You frowned, “Why?” it was more of a pant than a question.

He shrugged, “You seem nice.”

There were a lot of things you ‘seemed’ nice was not one of them. The side glance you gave him was question enough and you heard him chuckle a bit.

“I know you think you’re all scary and everything but you’re not that bad.”

You scowled, “You don’t. Know. Me.” heavy breaths broke what was supposed to be an intimidating sentence.

He nodded, “I think I’d like to.”

You didn’t respond and instead tried to focus back into your safe world of exhaustion and exhilaration. You managed to reach the front of the school and practically collapsed.

“Are you okay?” Cedric asked his hand landing lightly on your shoulder.

Shoving it off you nodded, “I’m going to get water before I pass out.” you heaved, “Feel free to continue your workout, Diggory.”

“Alright, I’ll see you-” the door shut in his face, “-later.”

Your exhaustion kept you from ripping off the heads a group of first-years who wanted your father’s autograph on your way to class. It faded as you made your way through transfiguration and potions. When dismissed you scrambled from the classroom at a quick pace, the last thing you wanted was to be late to Arithmancy again. Being publicly ridiculed once this week was plenty for you.

You didn’t stop as your name was called behind you, shouldering through a group of students who shot you glares. You heard it again the same voice, closer now and you picked up the pace.

Your shoulder was grabbed and you spun around with such force your bag fell from your shoulder. Quills and ink crashed to the ground and you swore loudly dropping to your knees to pick up the scattered supplies.

Cedric descended beside you helping gather your things. You snatched them from his hands before he offered and continuted down the hall without even a glance in his direction. His long strides brought him to your side.

“You don’t have to worry about being late you know.” He offered you stayed unresponsive. “You’ve still got 6 minutes till class.”

You let out a bothered sigh, “Well if I’m stopped then those minutes go fast.”

Cedric frowned, “Stopped?”

“Yep. It’s always like this at the beginning of the year. The first-years slowly find out who my parents are and want autographs or pictures as if it’s somehow my responsibility to serve them.” Your voice slowly filled with annoyance like a balloon expanding with air, “It’s irritating.”

The boy beside you furrowed his brows, “I can imagine.”

As if on queue a young girl trotted up to you stopping you in your tracks.

“You’re y/n y/l/n right?” Before you could answer she continued, “I was wondering if I could have an autograph from your mother, I saw her in a movie when I was six and I-”

“I’m really sorry but we have to get to class,” Cedric spoke, cutting off the bob child.

Her eyes widened a bit, “Oh sorry, um bye then.”

You gave a half-hearted wave before glancing at the boy beside you, “Thanks.”

He grinned, “It’s no problem.”

Neither of you noticed the eyes which followed you down the hall.

The Weasley twins had a special talent when it came to being bothersome. And they were sure to use it to their full potential, making a point to leave no one out of their troubles. You included. You didn’t know them all too well but after their offer to buy autographs from you and them sell them for a profit they had always stuck in your head.

“Ah, but if it isn’t my favorite celebrity.” Fred grinned his arm draping around your shoulder before being quickly shoved off.

“Well if it isn’t my least favorite red-head.” You respond attempting to return to the open textbook in front of you.

“It’s only natural that you like me more than him.” George grinned sitting beside you.

“Nah, you’re tied for last.” You mumbled scribbling down notes on a messy roll of parchment.

The younger twin frowned, “Are you sure I’m not beating him?”

You looked up at him amusement etched into your features, “Positive.”

Fred popped some of the jelly slugs sitting beside you into his mouth, chewing obnoxiously loud. “So you and Diggory huh?”

You stiffened, glancing up at him.

“I didn’t think he was your type.” George grinned catching one of the candies in his mouth as his twin tossed it over your head.

You scrunched your nose, “What?”

“Oh come on y/l/n, don’t be coy.”

“No reason to be shy, we all know you and the Hufflepuff prince are boning.” the younger giggled.

Your mouth went dry, “What did you just say?”

Fred hummed, “Wow you’re better at acting than I thought, I guess you take after your mother.”

“I haven’t the slightest clue what you’re talking about.” You sputtered.

“Wait really?”

You nodded.

“So you and Cedric aren’t dating?”

You scoffed, “God no, where in hell did you get that idea?”

The reflections shot glances at each other.

“The whole school thinks you are,” George stated plainly.

You slammed your textbook shut in a vicious snap, eyes from around the library drawing towards you. “That fucker.” You hissed and in a second you were on your feet.

You didn’t have to look very long to find the brunette. He was only a few corridors form the library a small group of people huddled with him.

“Diggory!” Your voice cut the pleasant atmosphere in two.

“Oh hey y/n, I was just looking fo-” Before his sentence could be finished you had snatched him by the tie and began dragging him behind you.

A series of whistles and calls followed you around the corner where you slammed open a door and shoved him into a small closet.

“Y/n whats are you doing?” He asked loosening his tie which you had unintentionally sinched around his neck.

Your hands met his shoulders pushing him back as hard as you could manage. Cedric stumbled, his back hitting the door with a thunk.

“You asshole!” You spat leaning over him, “How dare you?”

Cedric was bewildered, the anger clear on your face in the dull lighting. Your breaths were heavy, the sharp scent of mint hitting him, “I’m sorry what?”

You sneered, “Don’t you dare lie to me Diggory. I know what you did.” You had grabbed his tie again, forcing him to lower his head to meet your eyes.

“What did I do?” He asked, his cheeks feeling unbearably hot from the close proximity.

You scoffed, “I don’t know, how about telling the entire school we’re fucking dating?”

Cedric frowned, “I didn’t tell anyone we were dating.”

Now it was your turn to look baffled, “Then who did?”

Before your question could be answered you were falling forward, the door opening the two of you tumbling out into the sudden overwhelming brightness. You screwed your eyes shut in response, your ears catching the sound of laughter and whistles. You were brought your senses abruptly, the crowd gathered around you giggling behind their hands.

“Damn Cedric, I thought you were classier than a quickie in a closet.” Someone snickered.

You lept off the boy you had been straddling moments before your cheeks burning from embarrassment. Cedric sat up, his own face tinged red as he glared at the Hufflepuff which had spoken.

You shoved your way through the crowd wishing the earth would open up and let you fall into its core. Or at least those gathered around you.

“Wait y/n!”

You didn’t turn instead holding your middle finger in the air, making sure the entirety of the group could see it before you disappeared from sight. By the time Cedric was able to push his way through the crowd to where you had turned you were gone. He cussed letting his head fall into his hands.

Cedric didn’t see you the entirety of the weekend. You weren’t in the hall for meals or out in the cooling September air where many students were finding refuge. Your absence was annoying, the thoughts of your breath fanning over the bridge of his nose, chest pressed into his only worsening the harbored feelings he had buried. Rumors of your relationship continuted to circulate, the scene caused a few days before morphing into lewd stories which made his cheeks bloom with roses. He felt partially responsible for the trouble caused for you, his friends were some of the most active in the gossip.

Cedric knew it was only a matter of time before you would be forced to converse with him. You would never skip a class.

You appeared in potions Monday and managed to convince Snape to let you leave five minutes earlier than the rest of the class. There was no escaping assigned seats in Arithmancy. Or so Cedric thought. You had used your extra time to swap seats with another student now all he could do was bore holes into the back of your styled hair from four seats back. You didn’t even give him a chance during meals, eating quickly or simply never appearing, a girl you were with frequently taking a plate with her as she left instead.

It was aggravating. He knew that both of you barley qualified as acquaintances but having the small amount of progress he had made in your relationship ripped from him less than a week in was cruel.

Cedric was more persistent than you intended him to be. You didn’t quite understand why, you hardly knew each other. Yet he tried to corner you in hallways and stop you in classes. You supposed he probably felt guilty. You almost felt bad for avoiding him.

When he wasn’t present in potions you assumed him sick or skipping. So you didn’t find the need to leave early or rush from the room. You should have known it was a trick. The second you left the room you were trapped, Cedric stood directly in front of you his gaze almost daring you to run.

You sighed rolling your eyes, “Ok fine. You got me.”

“Can we talk?” He asked his hands stuffed into his robe pockets.

“Aren’t we all ready?” You challenged.

He shook his head softly, “Please?”

“There’s nothing to talk about.” You huffed.

“It will take thirty seconds.”

Your eyes narrowed, you knew it would take longer but your curiosity was killing you, what could he possibly have to say? Your money was on some useless apology.

“Fine.”

You were lead deeper into the dungeons beginning to suspect he was going to murder you where your screams couldn’t be heard until he came to a stop in some far away corridor.

You crossed your arms tapping your foot impatiently, “Well?”

Cedric felt that unfamiliar twist in his stomach as he looked down at you, his hand scratching at the back of his neck, “Well I wanted to say sorry.”

You sneered at this, “Are you serious? If this what you dragged me here for then you can just tell your friends that they are dumbasses with no life of their own so they have to stick their nose in other peoples to stay entertained and leave.”

The Hufflepuff was taken aback, “Oh no that’s not it, umm, you, I mean I have-”

“Spit it out Diggory,” you demanded.

He nodded, “Right, uh I like you y/n.”

Your eyes shot wide.

“And I was just wondering if you would let me take you out.” He finished feeling better now that the words had been spoken. The moment was ruined quickly.

“No.” Your answer was plain.

“Oh.” Cedric wasn’t sure what he expected, but it certainly wasn’t that.

You sighed, the boy’s face now deflated like a sad puppy. The odd feeling of guilt settled in your stomach, “It’s not because of you.” You assured him, “I mean your talented and hot and nice and everything, it’s just I don’t want to deal with all the shit.”

His cheeks flushed at the complaint but his lips twitched into a frown, “What shit?”

“Ya know.” You spoke gesturing around you, “Your friends and the rumors and everything. I’ve already got enough on my plate, I don’t need anymore.”

Cedric nodded, understanding, “Then give me a chance.”

You hummed a question.

“The astronomy tower tomorrow night, meet me there after curfew and let me prove I’m worth it,” he explained.

You blinked owlishly at him, head tilted slightly to the side, “Seriously?”

“Yeah. One date, no commitment, if you don’t like it can go back to ignoring me and no one will know.”

His offer was tempting. The way his eyes glimmered with hope only making it more enticing. So you gave in, “Alright.”

A smile stretched his lips, “Really?”

You shrugged, “Why not?”

“You won’t regret it.”

Part of you already knew that.

Taglist:

@accio-rogers

@roslea

@k3nz-doodl3

@theseuscmander

@sleepingalaska

@chloe-geoghegan1

Masterlist

#harry potter #harry potter imagines #harry potter au #harry potter imagine #harry potter x reader #harry potter fanfiction #harry potter ships #cedric diggory x reader #cedric diggory #cedric diggory imagines #cedric diggory imagine #cedric diggory headcanons #cedric x reader #fanfiction #fanfic #fandom #cedric fanfiction

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the-knight-of-the-stars · 3 years

Text

Spider-Man: No Way Home leaked trailer transcription

Note: The trailer is in terrible, terrible quality, in both image and audio, is a phone recording a phone, recording a phone, some scenes seem strangely cut, and most of the action scenes are unfinished, whithout CGI and with the green screen. So, bare with me, is likely I´m wrong in various things, but is the very best I could do. Also, it obviously was spoilers from the trailer.

----------------

*Peter and Mj laying down on a roof. MJ is reading a newspaper to Peter*

MJ: Oh, this is a good one. “Some suggest that Parker´s powers include the male's spiders ability to hypnotize females”

Peter: Stop, come on…

MJ (making a voice): Yes, my spider-lord

Peter: Can we just like stay here all day, it is so crazy down there

*Footage of what looks like the post-credit scene from Spider-Man: Far from Home or a new scene taking place right after, where we see Peter holding MJ while they swing through the city using Spider-Man´s webs*

J Jonah Jameson: … that Spider-Man is in fact Peter Parker

*Scene of Peter in some sort of interrogation room, police station, or office of some kind, being questioned by a man*

Peter: Lisen to me, I did not kill Mysterio, the drones did

Man interrogating him: The drones that are yours?

(This part is very difficult to understand, I did my best, but is likely that MJ´s dialogue is wrong in this part)

MJ: … a part of you that isn't totally into battle lose?

Peter: What do you mean?

*Footage of Peter MJ and possibly Ned, walking into a place (maybe school) surrounded by people staring (and perhaps shouting to them, is unclear) and what seems to be MJ taking Peter´s hand out of fear*

MJ: Now that everybody knows, you don't really have to hide or lie to people

Peter: For the record, I never wanted to lie to you. How do you tell someone that you are Spider-Man?

*Scene of Peter in his room, I believe in a video call with MJ, and that's where the previous dialogue comes from. Next, very bad image, but it seems to be Spider-Man with someone in a black suit, on top of a building*

Peter: Now everybody knows…

*Peter walking in what now looks more clearly to be the school hallway and people staring, he seems to be alone this time*

Peter: And this isn't about me, this is hurting a lot of people

*Separated scenes of Ned and Aunt May inside of what looks like an interrogation room. Next, we see Peter alone in what is allegedly a classroom, he looks at the ceiling, where there are what seems to be Halloween decorations*

Peter: I´ve just been thinking about how to fix all of this…

*Marvel Logo on the screen. Next, we have images of the Sanctum Santorum and Peter entering it. The inside of the Sanctum is apparently covered in snow. Doctor Strange appears on screen, he is wearing his cape and what looks like winter clothing *

Doctor Strange: So Peter, what do I owe the pleasure?

Peter: I'm sorry to bother you, sir…

Doctor Strange: Please, we saved half the universe together, I think it would be odd if you call me sir

Peter: Ok, Steven…

*Awkward silence*

Doctor Strange: That feels weird but I´ll allow it

*Very bad image again, but it looks like Peter running from something or someone, in what could be his school´s cafeteria*

Peter: … Mysterio revealed my identity, an entire flight of guys suited up (terrible audio again, I did my best but is likely this dialogue is also wrong)

*Images of Peter in the Spider-Man suit, again being surrounded by people shouting, this time they look angrier, in one part it looks like he is with MJ*

Peter (to Doctor Strange): I don't know, maybe you could make sure that he never did?

*Doctor Strange sitting, apparently doing some magic, and Wong shows up*

Wong: Strange, don't cast that spell, it's too dangerous

Doctor Strange: Fine, I won't…

*Wong leaves and Doctor Strange looks at Peter, or smiles, or winks at him, is unclear. Next, we see him taking Peter to a darker place, maybe at the basement of the sanctum, and to start casting a spell*

Doctor Strange: Our world is about to forget that Peter Parker is Spider-Man…

Peter: Wait, everyone?

*Doctor Strange continues to do the spell, he seems to be drawing several rings in the air around them with magic*

Peter: Can some people still know?

Doctor Strange: That´s not how the spell works…

Peter: What if I start to forget everything I've ever went through?

Doctor Strange: Stop staggering with the spell…

Peter: Oh my god, Ned. He is my best friend… No, my Aunt May should really know…

Doctor Strange: Stop talking!

*Doctor Strange starts to scream, looks like he can't hold the spell, and the rings of magic around them get out of control and seem to transport them somewhere. The scene reminds the Doctor Strange's movie, when The Ancient One shows Strange the infinite dimensions, with colors flashing. The magic suddenly stops, as if they had been transported somewhere or the magic just stopped*

Peter: What just happened?

*Some purple letters appear on screen, is very hard to see what they say, even less in what language it is*

Doctor Strange: We tempt only on this space-time, multiverse is a concept of which we know everything we will… (This is a difficult one too, the first part of the dialogue is confusing, and the part after concept seems to be cut, like part of the footage between “concept” and “of which” is missing)

*We see Peter jumping from a building, in a scene, it looks like he is on the mirror dimension of Doctor Strange, or it could be just the camera angle. Peter starts falling from the sky and goes through a cloud, landing in a place where there is yellow and orange smoke or clouds or some sort of explosion. It is also possible that when he goes through the cloud he actually crosses a portal because we hear a little blop when he does goes through it*

*Next we see someone, very likely Doctor Strange, trapping Spider-Man with some kind of metal bars*

Doctor Strange: The problem is you, turning into two different lives…

*A scene of Doctor Strange hitting Peter in the chest and sending him to an astral projection like we have seen The Ancient One do to Strange and Hulk in previous movies. Next, we see a scene of Spider-Man in the Iron-Spider suit, in front of a bay*

Doctor Strange: The longer you do it the more dangerous it becomes…

*Footage of what looks like a window maybe (?, the room illuminated by an orange light. Next, we see a man in the front seat of a car, behind him we can see the same orange light. A scene of what looks like a flash of lightning striking somewhere. Next, what I think is a bridge with cars, or just a driveway, and what looks like a portal opening from above the cars. The same location is shown from other angles, and we see an explosion happens on the place*

Someone: Be careful what you wish for, Parker… (some people think it sounds like Doctor Strange, and some say it sounds like Willem Dafoe/Green Goblin. I really can't tell, it could be Doctor Strange, but it does sound raspier than his usual voice)

*Scene of Peter next to a car, with his suit on, looking at something, MJ seems to be inside the car. A metal tentacle comes out of what I think is water. Finally, Doctor Octopus, played by Alfred Molina, appears on screen*

Doctor Octopus: Hello, Peter…

*We close with a take of Peter, in the Spider-Man suit, reacting while he is on top of a car. Spider-Man: No Way Home logo appears, and the video cuts*

#spiderman #spider man #spiderman no way home #spider man no way home #spider-man #spider-man no way home #no way home #spiderman no way home trailer #spiderman no way home spoilers #marvel #UCM #mcu #mcu spiderman

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thewheezingwyvern · 3 years

Note

For Arcane April, maybe Shinso w/let’s say number 12? I’ve really been loving any Siren!Shinso stuff I can find. Thank you for your writing! It’s a pleasure to read 💕

This took longer than I thought but then again this ended up longer than I thought. I wanted to try and take like an urban fantasy spin on this but go a bit...grittier? idk. This was just where my brain took me so I hope you like it! <3

Gossamer Web

Siren!Shinsou x Thief!Reader (a bit of sexual tension)

Warnings: Brainwashing, Dubcon (kissing) and blackmail

It was just another party, a gathering for some fundraiser or another that he honestly couldn’t even remember anymore. When you held a position like Hitoshi, seated among the rich and influential, a certain degree of public relations was necessary. And doing events for charity in the eyes of the public was just another part of maintaining his image. While Shinsou couldn’t remember what party he was even throwing anymore, his assistant would inform him later, he did like to think he knew the face of every important figure in the city. And plenty abroad too.

So his surprise was quite palpable when he saw you.

His lifestyle constantly had him around pretty people, coiffed and waxed to perfection, top of the line brands to smooth over any flaws that could possibly be present. Pretty faces to hide pretty fangs and pretty paint to coat their pretty claws before sinking them into someone. However, yours was a very different sort of attractive. Naturally at an event like this your makeup was applied and done so artfully, but it was in such a way that it enhanced what you had rather than attempted to bury whatever perceived flaw could be seen.

Most women attended these events hoping to look like the most beautiful one in the room, while the men sought to look the most powerful. But you moved and spoke and looked with a different purpose. You were searching for something. Indigo eyes slipped down to eye the gossamer threads of your dress, a stunning thing of spun shadow that fit your body like a glove. But it was only more exquisite whenever you moved, showcasing the elaborate enchantment that was woven into the very threads. Stars would wink and burst from your body, along with tufts of purple black clouds. But strung on a simple silver chain was the bespelled glow of a crescent moon.

HItoshi found himself breaking away from whatever boring conversation he was caught in to approach you, eyes glinting with interest. You were even more stunning up close, showing that you held a natural glow all on your own. With every step closer, the wink of starlight woven into your hair like constellations would catch his eye, beckoning him further to you. Whatever witch had magicked your clothes and hair was very talented and knew what they were doing.

“You look a bit lost.” he said to you after drawing very close to your back, close enough that it pulled a startled squeak past your lips, “Can I help you find something?”

Hitoshi deliberately laid the smooth demeanor on thick, a crooked smirk quirking on his lips. If he wasn’t so good at reading expressions, he might have missed the string of emotions that flitted across your face and in your eyes but he caught them. First surprise followed closely by recognition which melted to a look of worry or fear. And then it was gone beneath the smouldering curve of a coy smile.

“Hmmm and what if I just found it?”

A line he’d heard before but there was something lacking behind the delivery. Shinsou couldn’t quite put his finger on it but there wasn’t enough spice between the lines that gave the tell tale sign of someone looking for a quick fuck. Curious. A charming smirk wormed its way onto his lips, hiding the way his mouth had already began watering at the prospect of finding out more of what you were looking for. Anyone who came here with a purpose usually intended to use something against him.

“Well I guess that depends,” Hitoshi purred lowly to you, “what was it you were planning to do after you found me?”

This would have been the perfect opportunity for you to make another pass at him. To hint at how you wanted to be pressed against him in the throes of passion or whatever other way that it could be worded. But you completely skipped over that chance. One of your hands drifted up to toy with the luminous crescent moon that hung around your neck, deep and thoughtful eyes assessing him carefully.

“I guess I just wanted to see the man behind the name in person.”

A predatory glint sparked in his eyes, indigos boring into you as he drew impossibly close. Even through the well made fabric of his Armani suit, Hitoshi could feel the warmth of your body. He tilted his dark lavender head, drinking in the sight of you and how you seemed to fidget with him drawing nearer. The CEO decided he was going to make use of a power that he had at his disposal that very few people knew about.

He tipped your head up to look into his face before purring out, “Tell me your name.”

The magic woven into his very vocal cords twisted around you, bewitching you, until a glaze had fallen over your eyes, pupils swelling beneath the grip of his enthrallment. It was almost unfair how easily he could twist people to his whim with the power of his voice, have them spill their deepest secrets and desires to him. So to hear your mouth and tongue curl delightfully around your real name, it sent a surge of satisfaction.

“A beautiful name, Kitten.” a thumb traced along the curve of your jaw, “What were you really looking for tonight?”

“You keep the Wayfarer’s Orb here, third floor behind a wall of several enchantments and and a summon from the Infernal district,” you recited to him almost dreamily, “I’m going to steal it.”

Hitoshi tilted his head, dark smirk on his lips, “And what else? I know you didn’t risk pissing me off just for that.” he pressed a taunting kiss to your temple before leaning back, “Tell me the story while you walk with me, I want to hear all about it.”

He pulled your body close to his, your side pressed up against his as he led you away with an arm wrapped around your waist possessively. To anyone else, it would just appear as if he had found a new play thing that he was taking off to have some fun with. And in a way that was true. Indigo eyes swept over your delightful body and he couldn’t help but think how satisfying and how it would be to see you a broken little mess under him. A wet tongue snaked out to lick at his lips, arousal spiking in him. You’d look so pretty arching your back, column of your tender throat bared for him to bite as he speared inside of you.

“The orb was just a bonus and a way to cover my true intentions. I’ve already begun uploading valuable intel from your security databases and placed trackers so I can find more information about you and sell it.”

“What a clever little thing…” Hitoshi hummed down at you, fingertip tracing small circles on your hip, “And I’ve no shortage of enemies so you could charge whatever you wanted and they would pay it.” He led you deeper into his mansion, guiding the way up to the wing where he kept the stone you had planned to take, “You looked scared when you saw me...did you know that I’m a Siren?”

“Suspected but wasn’t sure.”

The dry drone of your voice was so satisfying. It was a song in and of itself, tongue curling around your forced submission to him anything he wanted you to. Hitoshi only stopped guiding you when the both of you reached the room which held the Wayfarer Orb on a pedestal. It was a smooth, polished stone of milky white with flashes of crimson red flecked throughout its surface. He had acquired it at least a year ago, an ancient stone said to help bring protection to the owner. It seemed necessary given how rapidly he had grown his empire.

“Look at me Kitten.” he yanked you to him, the sweet swell of your breasts pressed against his front, “Would you like it if I kissed you?”

He would be lying if he said that he asked this question with completely innocent intent. The thought of claiming your mouth was tempting but he wanted to know if you had at all been tempted by him in the brief time he spoke with you. Or while you did your research. Hitoshi swept a thumb along your lower lip, parting your mouth for him as you stared blankly at him.

“Yes.”

Shinsou dipped his head and brushed his mouth faintly against yours, murmuring, “When did you start feeling attracted to me?”

“We’ve met before. Enji’s holiday gala. We danced together.”

Now that was interesting. He pulled back, brows shooting up as he looked down at you. Despite how closely he studied your face, the sweep of your cheek bones, the hue of your eyes, he couldn’t remember you at all. Indigo eyes lidded lazily, a stray fingertip dragging along the arch of a brow.

“Why don’t I remember you then?”

“I spiked your drink with a memory potion.”

Shock zinged through him then. It had been proper years since the last time anyone had gotten the jump on him and yet there you were, speaking only honesty for his ears as his voice compels you. Had this encounter never happened, he never would have known. If you could pull a stunt like that then the skills you have were unspeakably valuable and he had every plan to use them. Shinsou chuckled softly before dropping the enthrallment of his voice around you.

The world came spinning back then, awareness creeping into the edges of your thought as you tried to grasp just where you were. By the time your pupils had refocused, he was crushing his mouth down onto yours. A muffled squeal was his answer along with you pushing at his chest. But the sensuous way his mouth moved against yours had you melting in his arms, soft moans humming in your throat as he kissed you.

When he finally broke the kiss, both of you were panting while you glared daggers up at him.

“What the fuck?!” you ripped yourself free of his grasp, staggering backwards with a hand clutched to your mouth, “What’re you doing?!”

The look of frustration blended heavenly with your flustered expression. Mirth spilled over in his open mouthed smirk. Casually he slipped his hands into his coat pockets, cocking a brow and half lidding his eyes at you. Tilting his head to the side, a soft laugh rumbled in his chest, drinking in your more outraged expression.

“Nothing you don’t want me to do, Kitten.”

“And how do you work that out?”

“You told me yourself.” Hitoshi gestured out towards the vault, hand showing you the glint of the Orb you came to steal, “Along with your goals. Your suspicions proved right.”

“Shit…”

“Now here’s how things are going to go,” he slowly advanced on you, “you’re going to put those skills of yours to work for me.”

You glared at him, “And if I refuse?”

“Well, I use my abilities and have you out yourself to every powerful figure here tonight.” that smirk widened, “You’re that one thief that’s been targeting all the high rollers, aren’t you? I imagine that they would all love to meet you.”

Fear flooded your eyes then, “You...you wou-”

“Wouldn’t I? If you’ve done your homework about me then you know how much of a dangerous man I can be.”

You had done your homework and that was truer than you would like to admit. Hitoshi’s public image was great but if you dug a little deeper, strange disappearances that surrounded him. Brainwashing you and having you out your secret to some of the most influential people of the city who would love to see you punished for your work. It would be the end of you and he knew you would have no choice but to work for him.

And that was how you, The Firefly, thief of rich assholes extraordinaire, came to work for Shinsou Hitoshi. Through blackmail and the threat of one of the most powerful men in the city ruining you.

#Shinsou x reader #Shinsou x y/n #Shinsou x you #Siren Shinsou #BNHA #BNHA fantasy #my writing #ArcaneApril #Anonymous

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s-fellows-art · 3 years

Text

Simplified tips on how to improve your art.

.putting under cut because its long but thats cause i explain these and not just list stuff.

1) Flip/mirror your canvas when working. - it allows you see anatomy and other errors you may overlook.

2) before uploading look at the image on a different screen or the next day. - this give you time away from it, and as tempting as it is to upload as soon as your done, if you wait you will see stuff you can improve on and be able to look at it with “ fresh” eyes.

3) Stop shading with black or grey scale colors- shading with inly these colors make the imAge look muddy, if you shade with a color that is a darker hue of the same color your adding shading to it one in the same tempters ( warm= R Y O cool = B G I V on the Rainbow ) you get more vibrant art and you don’t muddy what your working on.

4) Learn to grey scale BEFORE coloring as a draft p2- learning how to shade in black and white can help you identify lighting points and details. When digital painting simplifying something out to a grey scale can help you keep track of what your doing.

5) Use the tools you have access too- References to learn anatomy , taking time to learn amniotomy will help you a lot in the long term, but doing everything off the top of your head your bond to get something wrong early on, or even later on in art. Use the sharpen tool around highlights if your program offers it. It saves time. Also play with your filters and line art colors. These will ad detail to your work and takes less time. If you mess around with the brushes in your program and stuff before starting it will help you later on. Its not cheating professionals use it all the time.

6) practice drawing random stuff- it teaches you the shapes and trains your hand ti make the strokes/motions needed for basically everything. Art studies can be very helpful. Even if it feels stupid drawing 500 eyes on a note pad, it helps.

7) Simple is good, complex is chaos- over complex art is hard to look at because your not sure what to focus on so the areas you want the eye to go to is where you should focus your details rather then make every single little thing detailed. Another way to do this is to brighten the colors where you want the eye to go at first glance in an image, but make the other areas muted in color, or blurred slightly.

8) Don’t be afraid to look up tutorials and take breaks if you get stuck - I personally only learned how to shade faces from watching makeup tutorials. And there is nothing shameful in not knowing how to do something and needing to look it up or ask, its how you learn you can just power you way through it all the time, and somethings your wasting your time if you do for something not worth it in the end run. Also the act if stepping back and away to go do something else is sometimes all you need, sometimes looking at the same file over and over again can be mentally exhausting. Take a break. Drink some water. Stretch your wrists. Look away from it for a while then come back.

9) Stretch your wrists before working- save your self years if pain trust me. I regret not doing this. Also draw from your shoulder not your wrist unless detailing, less stress on your arm and more precision.

10) Use different line thicknesses - i find using thicker lines for areas that touch the outer parts of your drawing or more important areas, and using thinner for detailing adds a bit of detail and quality to your work even if the line art isn’t clean. Inner face parts (other then the top bracket of the eyes), lines between fingers, lines marking clothing folds, and things like that should be done in thinner lines then eyebrows and what not.

Next two some will role your eyes at but honestly makes a huge difference, even if you got to force it at first. Its hard to break a bad habit.

11) don’t look for flaws in your work, look for what you like about it,- if your constantly pointing out what is wring with what you are doing your not gonna go any where, bare minimum go “ okay im not too happy about this, lets see how we can improve it” instead if “ this looks like garbage I hate it”. If you stay in the mentality of I don’t like this , your never gonna be happy with what your making or improve because subconsciously your telling you self you can’t. This slight change in mind set of trying to find at least one thing you like will make a big difference in the long run because slowly you will be moving towards finding a style your comfortable with and going from there, you will be finding things you

12) don’t compare you self to other artist- its one thing to want to take influence in your fave artist, its another to constantly out yourself down because your not like them. Everyone art started as shit. Everyone. We all were that crappy 1 year old can barely hold a pen person at one point. like learning how to read and write or ride a bike.... No one starts as a perfect artists, its something you learn, so comparing your self to people around you is not gonna help you improve and putting yourself down just because your not perfect yet. Even if its something as little as “im happy I finally finished this” is better then “I wish i was like _”. You are slowly moving towards a goal, some people just move quicker then others because they learn different techniques, instead if putting energy into hating everything you do why not try to learn how the people you like the art of got there by learning some techniques your self?

13) Ignore the notes enjoy the journey- Regardless , you making art is amazing in itself . Its something only you have made. There may be other things like it but its not like how you did. Your unique and honestly ignore the notes, if your constantly pushing yourself based off of numbers, your gonna burn your self out and give your self impossible expectations to try to complete. Everyone has different tasted and are not always gonna like what you do the same way, if at all, there is nothing wrong with what you made you simply just can’ please everyone and its not your job to. The notes are a bonus, not a goal, you don’t have to try to compete for them the only person you have to create for for is you. Do what ever the hell you want and if people like it, great, if they don’, then they like a different cup of tea then yours, don’s make it bad tea. Edit 1 as i thought of more : also the reason your sketch looks better then your line art is because your line art is too neet. If you use difrent thicknesses in lines (thicker for outter areas and important areas) and thinner for areas with more movment (bottom crese of eyes or outline of area around puple inner part of mouth clothing inner parts or what ever u feelis needed) it will look better because it will show your brush strokes which is what makes your sketch look good. -You can also add a 3d effect woth the red and blue outlines on areas that are not the central focus of the peice. Blurring has the same sort of effect to where it forces the eye onto the clearer area if the photo and makes it more visually intresting. Having this effect everywhere however can make stuff hard to focus on and diffcult to look at so only keep it on non focus points (most common focus point is the face so wouldnt put it there) .

Idk how helpful these will be but they made a big diff in my progress over the past year. The last bunch made a significant difference for me, though it was really hard to force myself into that mentality. And i still skip doing some of these in occasion ill admit but i hope this helps none the less.

#art tutorials #4 am sorry if theres typos #S.fellowsart #long post

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numberonephantompizza1 · 3 years

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Poppy Fanfic: “Ask Her”

For context: This is a fanfic I wrote in order to join the Poppy Milk dev team and show off my writing skills. Since the callout at the time said we’d need to write a lot of sidequests, I wanted to ask the question of what a Poppy-centered side-quest would be like. I got the idea that it would be from an Asker’s perspective, and everything sort of came naturally after that. Even though I’m on the dev team right now, it’s not canon to Omega Timeline: Poppy’s Story and even has some inaccuracies that contradict canon. With that said, please feel free to read the story below the cut.

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You noticed something very different inside your room when you woke up. The lights were off and the sun hadn’t yet risen, but there was a certain… aura, coming from your door. You were filled with a certain trepidation, but… you approached it. It was hard to see in the light, but it looked… grey.

Swallowing the lump in your throat, you stepped through...

...and found about the last person you would’ve expected. The spitting image of Frisk - CORE!Frisk, that was, looking up at you, in the middle of a white void.

“Wh- You’re real?!” you asked, dumbfounded.

“Of course I’m real. Have you been taking all this multiverse stuff for granted? Everything is real somewhere,” Core answered, simply.

“I… I don’t… and you, me…” you panted, starting to feel a small panic attack coming on.

“Focus,” Core snapped their fingers, grounding you back in reality. Okay, this was happening now.

“Let’s get down to business. Simply: you don’t like me. And I don’t like you. But we BOTH like Poppy. Poppy, my dear, sweet angel… has unfortunately recently come to the realization that Askers ALSO exist in the multiverse. And now she wants to do a ‘meet n’ greet’ with one of her fans. Trust me, I TRIED to talk her out of it, but she can be darn persuasive when she wants to be. And as you’re now realizing, that’s where you come in.

“I wanna make you a deal. You play along with whatever Poppy wants until she gets bored of this. If you’re on your best behavior - and that means, don’t give her anything bad, don’t tell her anything you KNOW she shouldn’t know, don’t use any magic, and be a general good influence - if you play nice, in exchange, I will allow you to hang out with ANY resident of the Omega Timeline.

“Want to spend a day full of wacky hijinks with a Papyrus, or even an Underswap Sans? Consider it done. Want to know how Deltarune Chapter 2 plays out ahead of time? I know a Susie with your name on it. Whatever you want, so long as you play by the rules, and don’t ask for anyone obviously ridiculous. So… do we have ourselves a deal?”

You contemplated that offer, and everything that was happening, trying to suppress your inner urge to geek out for just a few moments. The Omega Timeline, Poppy, and all the AU’s you could think of and more were real. And you just got an invitation to visit them.

“Yeah, of course!” you nodded excitedly, though your enthusiasm only seemed to make Core more anxious.

“Don’t make me regret this…” Core sighed, as the whiteness seemed to melt away into a cozy-looking house with wooden floors and lime walls, where you were standing directly outside of a white door. Core seemed to have disappeared.

Technically, there was nothing stopping you from exploring. So you did just that. You walked up to a shelf with some family photos. One was a photo of Poppy, Core, Dusted and Rust all together, in some meadow, looking happy. At least, you assumed Dusted and Rust were happy, they didn’t show up well on camera. There was another photo of Poppy alone, looking somewhat younger than she did on the blog, seated on a chair in a photo that looked far more staged. She held an actual poppy flower in her hand and smiled brightly.

You opened the cabinet doors, curious of what knick-knacks you might find in there. Some crayons, a few random glass cups, some art by 3-year-old Poppy that was so poorly done its meaning was hard to decipher, and a locked box. You reached for the box--

“Getting a bit sidetracked, aren’t we?”

You jolted up, and faced Core behind you. Even though they were child-sized, they crossed their arms with the poise and authority of a stern parent. You laughed anxiously. “Ahahaha… ahaha… ha……..”

“...Strike one.” Core said, and vanished. The meaning of that was all-too clear. Deciding not to dilly dally any longer, you went to the room you suspected to be Poppy’s, and knocked.

“Just a sec!” Poppy said, and opened the door. She looked up at you, and gasped. “Wow, Granpa really did come through…!” She twirled excitedly. “You must be my adoring fan, aren’t you?” she asked.

You stared down at the girl in stunned silence.

“To be honest, I kinda figured you’d be some gray guy with sunglasses, but that’s kinda silly in hindsight. How you doin’?” She asked that last line in a mock accent as you continued to stare.

“Baby,” you said.

“What?”

“Nothing,” you quickly tried to change the subject. “Yeah, it’s… y’know, it’s great to be here…” You clasped your hands together, biting your lip. You were in an Undertale AU, faced with the AU granddaughter of another AU character. You still weren’t entirely over that. Was this fever dream? Fandom heaven, or fandom hell?

“I know! Once I heard you guys weren’t from the Omega Timeline, I realized I hadn’t met even ONE of my fans… even if you guys are super annoying some of the time.”

“Uhhh, yeah…” you wondered if you should apologize on behalf of the askers who put Poppy in the hospital that one time. Then again, it seemed kind of awkward, and it might have been best not to bring that up while Core was watching, which was always. Looking down at the cutesy girl, it was almost tempting to pull her into a hug, but you managed to keep your composure.

“I wanted to do something a little more special than just some sorta interview, though, because you ask me questions all the time anyways,” Poppy said. “Granpa said you’ve never been to the Omega Timeline before, so I wanna give you the big tour!” Poppy went to the door. “I’m gonna be outside when you’re ready!” She left the room.

Seeing the empty room in front of you, you were tempted to snoop again, but you’d learned your lesson after last time. You headed straight out after Poppy.

You couldn’t help but gasp in awe of the serenity of the great outdoors as you were beckoned to it. You’d been outside before, obviously, but everything just looked so… nice. The blue sky, the grassy grounds, the ornate buildings… you’ve seen this place in pixel art and a couple drawings before, but seeing it with your own eyes was another story. And the next thing for you to nearly faint at was seeing the Undertale characters running around, Sanses, Undynes, Frisks, even goat moms.

Poppy smiled. “...It’s nice, isn’t it? I KNEW taking you on a tour was a good idea.” She smirked. “Now remember, just because this is a meet-up doesn’t mean it’s free, and there WILL be a fee at the end of our ride.”

“...Uh… I left my wallet at home,” you said, patting your pockets, “And I don’t have any, uh... ‘G,’ I think. Unless the G stands for ‘Gratitude,’ amiright?” you did finger guns.

“G stands for Gold,” Poppy corrected you bluntly, unamused. She returned to her chipper attitude just as quickly, though. “Now, let me show you around!” She led you down the street.

Walking with her, seeing so many versions of your favorite characters in the flesh, walking around… well, the temptation to talk to SOME of them was irresistible, Core be damned. You did resolve not to go too far off-track, but you shared some words with the folks you passed by, Poppy thankfully stopping each time you did. You met two Frisks - one boy, one ambiguous - an Underswap Undyne, a human version of Toriel, and surprisingly, a version of Princess Peach.

You and Poppy approached an elegant fountain, stood upon proudly by a statue of a mustachio’d CORE!Frisk. “This is the Timeline Plaza! It’s sort of the local park, where people meet up to do... stuff. Just hang out. Make a picnic. Play ball. All that good park-y stuff, y’know? And there’s stores in all directions, so it’s pretty good.” She proudly showed off her home to you, with a smile.

You talked to more on the way to the next place. An Inverted Fate Papyrus. A weird Ralsei who said his name was “Noyno.” An Asgore wearing a hoodie, who you assumed was swapped with Sans. (Poppy did scold you a little bit for this, telling you that just because someone has a hoodie you shouldn’t assume they’re swapped. You apologized.)

“This is Grillby’s! One of them, anyways. The nearest one to my house. It’s pretty good if you want an OK burger. Sanses love the place, though. It’s… kind of unhealthy. And a little gross.” Poppy said. “Especially when they just drink… raw… ketchup.”

“Can’t handle a little ketchup?” you smiled mischievously. “We drink it by the gallon back in my universe,” you lied.

“...I really hope you’re joking,” Poppy said, alarmed.

“Am I?” you smiled brighter.

“...W-well, we’re not going in there, so you can FORGET about drinking that much ketchup!” Poppy said, afraid of the sheer power of your ketchup-drinking.

You and Poppy moved onto the next spot. You met an Underswap Alphys who seemed to be trapped in a red-and-gold palette. You met a robot dressed as a circus ringmaster, who claimed to be a Chara. You met a Dummy dressed in a Frisk shirt. (You didn’t assume it was swapped with Frisk this time, which turned out to be a mistake, because it was.) Poppy stared at you awkwardly now, wondering why you were talking to all these random strangers. Finally, you and Poppy reached your next destination.

“The theater! Where we show off all the greatest hits! Including MY movie, which, not to brag, but it’s--”

Except, you’d been distracted by a hyperdeath Asriel, and were ignoring Poppy for the moment.

“...” Poppy spoke up. “That’s what I don’t get about you.”

“Huh?” that seemed to wake you up, and you looked at her.

“Everytime it’s always, ‘have you met Underswap Sans,’ or ‘have you met JangoTale Frisk,’ or some other weird thing. You always ask that. But… they’re just people. Why do you always assume I know some random Sans or Frisk or someone?”

“I…” you were a bit taken aback. “...I don’t… we don’t assume you know them, they’re just… they’re just important.”

“Important?” She asked. “...I-I mean, yeah, EVERYONE’s important, but, I don’t really get what you mean…”

“They’re all--” You paused, trying to collect your thoughts, think of everything you knew from the blog, and tried to actually talk to her. “...They’re like friends to me. Kinda.”

“...You guys are friends with them? I thought you were stuck in your world…” she frowned.

“No, it’s like-- I’m not ‘friends’ with Underswap Frisk, or-- or Storyshift Frisk, or Shifty or whatever, I’m just friends with… Frisk.”

...Poppy stared at you like you just said the ground was turning to jelly, or something equally bafflingly inane. “...I… think you’re confused. Look, sometimes newcomers struggle with this. Your Frisk isn’t the only Frisk--”

“I know! It’s… You don’t get it. This world, these worlds are so special and creative, and they mean a lot to me. I know we can be really edgy, and I know we ask weird questions about Dusted and Rust, but that’s all because… because...” you paused.

Poppy looked, seeming upset about hearing her siblings mentioned in the context of ‘edgy’ questions, not seeing what you were seeing. Core, standing behind her, holding up a hand signal.

The number two.

You were getting carried away. You overstepped.

“...Um… I’m sorry.” You pulled her into a hug as Core vanished. “There’s really no reason for us to ask those questions. We can just be dumb sometimes.”

“...” She hugged back. “Yeah, it’s okay. I knew you guys were super weird and dumb before I convinced Granpa to let you in here, so I guess I should’ve seen this coming,” Poppy smiled, regaining her confidence as you did your best to not be offended at being called weird and dumb.

“Okay! I think I have just one last stop in mind to cap this tour off on a high note! Literally, hehehe…” She giggled mischievously. This time, you didn’t stop to talk to others, following her directly as you approached a peak overlooking the town. For yet another time, and probably the last, you couldn’t help but ogle at the town’s beauty. “Pretty good, right?” She sat down.

“Ha… with all the climbing, I was worried we’d fall down a mountain,” you joked. Poppy seemed to roll her eyes, as you sat beside her. “...I guess I get how you can call this place home. I mean, once I stop nerding out, anyways. You don’t see stuff like this in my… reality.”

“Just gallons and gallons of ketchup, huh?” she commented. You couldn’t help but laugh.

“Yeah.”

And you two just stared into the distance for a while. ...She wasn’t just a character. She was a human being.

...Or, technically just a ‘being,’ scratch the human part. Still, you felt a bit desensitized to all this. And so did she. You related in that way.

“I can’t say you exactly passed with flying colors, but you fulfilled your end of the agreement well enough.”

Without any warning, you were back in a white void with CORE!Frisk, just like before. You almost forgot about the deal you made, what with all the time you spent with Poppy. You stood.

“Uh… yeah. So, my reward…” you drifted off, remembering the offer Core gave you. The chance to meet just about any AU character of your imagining… or at least, any that would be peaceful enough to be in the Omega Timeline. Which still left a WIDE variety of options…

Who did you want to see? What mattered most to you?

...

Thinking deeply… you told Core their name.

“...Oh. Really? Well, I guess it makes sense for you that you’d want to see them,” Core remarked. “I can’t guarantee they’ll give you what you’re looking for, but a deal’s a deal. Let’s head off.”

You and Core went somewhere else.

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And that’s all she wrote! If you read this far, thank you. Working on the game since then has been fun, and I think you’ll like what we have in store. Until then, ciao.

#undertale #omega timeline #poppy's story

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