#a cryptid would age roughly one year

[whump-in-the-closet]

Raising Chaos.

cw: flogging, sadistic whumper, bad caretaker, inhuman whumpee, whump of a minor (chiar is 17), for context Chiar refuses to obey the orders of his. uh. employer and gets punished

masterlist.

***

The door unlocked. Finally. It felt like it had been hours since they had taken Chiar.

Syl brushed past the man who held it open. Blue shadows warped around his skin, buzzing with an irritation he could not hide.

Syl ran before Fain could stop him.

The entrance to the Yard was left open, allowing Syl to take in two things at once.

Two things that hit him with all the weight of a physical blow. The electricity inside him coiled tight in his chest, winding around his ribs, coating the bones in burning anger.

He desperately wanted to set something on fire.

The first: a discarded whip, blood-flecked and hanging from the wall. As terrible as any curse and far more painful.

And then Chiar chained by his wrists to the wooden post set in the middle of the Yard. He didn’t look conscious, his limbs hanging at odd angles and his back–

God.

He really was going to set something on fire. Syl was by Chiar in an instant. Close enough to hear the cryptid’s ragged breathing. Close enough to see there were far more than the ordered five lashes on his back.

Syl stepped in blood and gagged, bile rising up in his throat. The tiles were coated in blood.

Fain snorted derisively.

Syl ignored him. Forcing his hands to hold steady, he pried the leather gag out of the boy’s mouth. Gently, he brushed aside Chiar’s hair, whispering to him to hold on for me, okay? Just hold on.

He turned his attention to the chains around Chiar’s wrists.

“Let’s get you down from there,” he muttered. “You idiot.”

Chiar groaned, pressing his forehead into the wood.

Syl yanked at the chains, careful not to prod at Chiar’s damaged wrists. The bands were locked. Of course they were. He yanked at them again. It was pointless.

He could practically hear Fain’s smile, cold and bitter.

Syl whirled around, hands balling into fists at his side. “Get him down!”

Fain didn’t move. The key hung from one finger, swinging back and forth as Fain pretended to consider what Syl had demanded. Then he smiled. “That’s not how you address your betters, now, is it?”

The corners of Syl’s mouth twitched into a snarl. He glanced at Chiar, his back covered in those god-awful lacerations and snapped at Fain.

“That’s far more than five lashes you gave him! Now so help me, get him down, or I’ll fucking–” He bit the word off.

Fain was no longer smiling. He cocked his head, daring the boy to go on. To finish the threat.

Syl trailed off, inspecting the blood on his boots. Then, slowly, he spoke again. Carefully this time: “Can– can you get him down?”

Fain sighed in mock disappointment. “One more try, Westerling, I know you can manage this. It's such a simple thing and yet you manage to mess it up so well.”

Besides Syl, Chiar’s breathing picked up. Fast. Consciousness brought cramped muscles and the taste of leather and the smell of sweat– Chiar choked on it. And then the pain brushed everything else out of his mind. He cried out without really meaning to.

Syl stiffened. He worked his jaw in a tight circle, glancing at Chiar. And then he exhaled softly. “Lord Fain, please, let him down.” He infused as much venom into the words as possible.

Fain backhanded him. The blow took Syl by surprise and he stumbled, falling to one knee.

A handprint, violet-red, began to form on one side of his face.

“Almost there, Westerling. None of your sarcasm.”

Syl wiped his mouth and stood, eyes blazing. But he swallowed blood and dignity. “Please, Lord Fain, let him down.”

Fain smiled. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

One day, Syl would make that man burn. One day. But not today.

Fain unlocked the chains and Chiar slumped to the ground, Syl barely managing to catch him in time.

He was far lighter than Syl expected. There was blood on Syl’s neck and clothes as Chiar’s head thudded against his chest. Syl could hear the boy’s heartbeat, beating fast and hard against his chest.

Syl pulled the boy’s arm over his shoulder, doing his best not to touch his back. “Can you walk?”

Chiar struggled to his feet, leaning heavily on Syl. He nodded, refusing to make eye contact.

Carefully, Syl led him out of the Yard. With each step, Syl was sure Chiar would collapse, the floor spinning beneath him. The very air seemed to become blood-stained around them.

Bloody arm around Syl’s neck.

Bloodier breathing.

They managed to reach Syl’s room with Chiar still conscious. Syl breathed a small prayer of thanks to whatever gods were watching over him.

He lowered Chiar onto the cot.

“Lie down.”

Chiar didn’t move. He stared straight ahead, hands shaking.

“Lie down.” Syl repeated, snatching up his bag of medical supplies and slamming the cabinet door shut.

Chiar flinched at the noise. “Sorry.” Wincing, he did as Syl said, burying his face into the blankets.

Syl knelt down and grabbed a pair of small scissors, cutting away the remains of Chiar’s shirt. This completely revealed how deep the lash marks were. And how Fain had not held back in the slightest.

As Syl worked, he seethed, air coming in sharp hisses from between clenched teeth. “You’re an idiot, you know that? An absolute idiot.”

Chiar muffled a curse as Syl began cleaning the wounds, pain flaring up his back. Everything was on fire.

His voice cracked.“But– but you talk back to Fain all the time.

“Hold still! You are not me, Chiar. Stop acting like it. Besides, see where your tough act got you?” Syl’s ranting did not end there. “I can’t believe you! Do you have no self-preservation at all? When Fain tells you to do something, you fucking do it.”

Chiar whimpered. “Syl–”

“Don’t Syl me. It’s like you have a death wish.” He paused, “Alright, four of these needs stitches, the rest are fine if we bandage them tight enough. Hold still, okay?”

“Is it–” Chiar could hardly get his voice to work. “Is it going to hurt?” He hated how weak he sounded. How pathetically his voice carried up to a high note.

Syl rested a hand on Chiar’s head, messing up his hair. That was as gentle as he knew how to be. “Deep breaths for me.”

Breathing deeply hurt. It made his ribs ache. And it did not make the sharp pain on his back any better. The needle bit deeply and set trails of fire underneath his skin.

But the comforting weight of Syl’s hand in his hair in between tugs of the needle– that did not hurt.

Even if it was just to hold him down, Chiar found a measure of comfort in the small touch. It was a kindness Chiar rarely felt.

tagging: @kira-the-whump-enthusiast, @pigeonwhumps (lmk if you want to be added or removed!)

#cws above the cut #raising chaos #my guy chiar #syl westerling #whump writing #tw minor whump #inhuman whumpee #syl is such a jerk sometimes #good intentions but cannot act on them #also crytpids age slower than humans #so in 5 human years #a cryptid would age roughly one year #so by the time chiar runs from fain he'd been working for him for about six years #i think #my timeline isnt the most clean cut #anyway here you go #chiar in his natural state #aka suffering

[bunni3thebard]

Through the Walls

A/N: I always lean towards Eddie’s POV, I dunno why. I’m trying this out, so hopefully it’s not too bad. Enjoy my take at second-person POV. This story started out as just being a oneshot, but then it kinda became my baby, so I hope you like it!

Vampire!Eddie Munson x Female!Reader

Summary: You’ve been in Hawkins for almost a year now. It was nice, an escape from painful memories and a way to start fresh. After so long isolating yourself, you decide that it’s time to make friends, get to know someone so you’re not so alone. One of those friends happened to be your Cryptid Neighbor.

Warning: swearing (I'm a sailor), weed usage (smoking) (I think that's it?? lol)

Chapters:

[ 1 ] [ Next]

Chapter 1: Silent Scream

Your neighbor was a cryptid. 

At least, you were convinced they were. 

You knew someone lived there because of the lights that would come on and off, and the shadow figures moving behind the curtains. Not to mention that the walls were thin as fuck, so you heard them watch TV and play guitar and listen to metal music obscenely loud during the midnight hours.

But even though they kept the same crazy hours you did, you've never seen hide nor hair of them.

You started to make theories about what kind of person they were. Like that they were a burn out whose parents paid for everything for them so they didn't work, just farted around all day–hence the 4am jam sessions. 

Another theory that had struck you one night while working a double at the Hawkins ER was that they were a drug lord and had to keep odd hours to evade the police. 

But you wrote off that theory since you'd thought it up while sleep deprived after an 18 hour shift.

You entertained the idea of a squatter, but then why would they have electricity?

You had finally come to the conclusion that you were lonely as fuck and you obsessed over the identity of your mysterious neighbor because you were long deprived of human companionship and thus you hyperfixated on a superficial meaningless thing to distract yourself from being alone.

Or maybe they were Mothman…

Thankfully the grocery store kept late hours on the weekend, and that's where you found yourself on your free Saturday night. You'd woken up naturally around seven pm, even though your alarm was set for nine, and decided to putter around your house until your alarm went off so you could feel like you were properly lazy. 

You sat contemplating cereals for a few meandering seconds, sure your eyes were blinking at an astronomically slow pace. You'd smoked a bowl to help you sleep and felt like it hadn't completely left you. You just hoped your eyes weren't red.

Grunting, you shoved both boxes into your cart and turned to move on to the next aisle when you crashed into someone else's cart. "Shit." You hissed below your breath, rubbing your stomach where the handle of the cart had roughly jabbed into you. 

"Damn, sorry about that!" 

Looking up you met the soft face of a brunette woman who looked about your age with her hair pulled back into a messy bun and long-sleeve black shirt falling off one of her thin shoulders exposing her bra strap. She gave you a sheepish smile and you shrugged.

"No harm no foul, although if you do it again I'll take it personally and make no bones about it: I will cry." She snorted, making you grin in triumph.

"Don't worry. I don't make it a habit of accosting people in the grocery store." She pulled her cart back from yours.

You hummed, "Good to know I'll be a one-and-done hit-and-run."

Her smile was cute. She had a strong jaw with a petite nose that scrunched up adorably as she grinned. 

"I'm Nancy." She'd offered her hand. 

You hesitated.

It had been a while since you'd earnestly interacted with someone outside of transactional exchanges, like for work or buying things or paying bills. People were messy. Maybe it was the paranoia from your past–trauma you couldn't shake that clung to you like a second skin–but you'd been wary of making friends on the off chance your name gets around and spreads to corners of places you didn't want it to go.

It was ridiculous. Narcissistic in a way.

So you ground your teeth and mustered a smile hoping it looked genuine and shook her hand.

You stood outside staring at the moon for a while dressed in nothing but a size 8XL shirt you snagged from Wal-Mart cause it was soft. You knew you should smoke inside, no telling when someone might rat you out to the cops, but the moon was full and the stars were bright. You weren't used to how clear the sky was in comparison to the city, even after a year.

Your eyelids fluttered, vision hazy as the weed worked its magic. 

Nancy had invited you to some neighborhood get-together next week that was popular in Hawkins. Said she hadn't seen you around before and was surprised you'd survived a year without becoming the talk of the town. You blew out a heavy stream of smoke, humming to yourself thoughtfully. 

But that had been the point, right?

Keep a low profile, stay hidden.

Sighing, you took another deep drag of your joint, holding the burning breath as tight as you could. You watched the stars dance in your vision before you finally exhaled.

God you were fucking lonely, though.

You scrubbed at your head, mussing up your hair. Curiosity was easy to take hold in your high state, so you peered towards your neighbors apartment and saw a shadow in front of the curtains. You squinted, eyeing the light blue fabric for a while since your vision was blurry. You could've sworn you saw a sliver of it be pulled aside with tentative fingers. You blinked slowly, sighing heavy through your nose and mumbled to yourself, "Fucking bigfoot in there for sure." 

Turning back around to your apartment door you sucked in the last bit of the joint and dropped the roach to the ground, bending over to squish it with a rock to make sure it was out. Standing with a groan, you walked barefoot back to your front door. You were like, 90% sure the complex was just repurposed from an old Motel 6, but it was cheap and they sprayed for bugs every Tuesday, so you didn't complain.

It was small, enough space for your bed with a loveseat to watch your shitty TV that sat on top of your dresser and a micro kitchen they built in the corner next to the door for the bathroom. There was no kitchen sink and the fridge was half-size, but you were one person so you didn't quite care enough to complain. You did wish the fridge drawers were a bit bigger so they didn't catch on all the food packages you shoved in there.

Maybe it was because you were high, or lonely–or maybe a combination of the two–but you slid your hand across the wall that connected your apartment to your cryptid neighbor's. Then you tapped the starting notes for "Shave and a Haircut". You waited a breath, not sure if they had even heard it.

But then there it was: "Two Bits".

You grinned, giggling like Scooby Doo as you danced over to your bed, throwing yourself down with a bounce on the cheap twin.

Since you had smoked, sleep came easy. You were lulled into dream after weird dream courtesy of Miss Mary Jane. There was one where you went grocery shopping with Bigfoot and another where you went on Jerry Springer because you were pregnant with Mothman's baby.

You were curious what kind of cryptid your neighbor was.

The neighborhood block party was, for all intents and purposes, a Hawkins bash. 

Apparently it was a pretty regular affair every few months: a potluck with a few dad's who wheeled their grills to the end of a large cul-de-sac to cook up some burgers and dogs, some artsy fartsy mom's who made crafts for the younger kids to do, and sparklers and poppers for the older kids to get into mischief with.

There were maybe fifteen to twenty adults and a smattering of an equal number of kids. 

You had brought a shitty box of cookies from a bakery a few blocks away from the hospital since you couldn't cook anything on your extra small stove. You also had switched shifts with Beverly–fucking ray of sunshine she was, grunting and groaning about working on a Saturday night, but you had taken her Sunday so she could get bent–so that you could be here, at this lovely affair. 

You were starting to have regrets.

You watched a few pre-teens wave sparklers around in glee, making to poke and prod one another with the burning end. You wondered if you should step in, knowing that there were some second degree burns waiting to happen, but a random mom came over and grabbed each kid's wrists in warning. You slunk away to the food table.

You set your meager contribution down and turned to eye all the adult women, trying to find your potential petite new friend.

They all had their hair done up in that style where their bangs spiraled out in delicate feathering with the ends curled towards their shoulders. Some had simple ponytails decorated with hair bands and colorful scrunchies. You ran your fingers through your hair self-consciously; you hadn't done anything, merely brushed it and hoped for the best as you donned your nicest pair of jeans and a thrifted Van Halen '79 tour shirt. You figured since it would be outside the party would be a casual thing, but the dresses and blouses these housewives wore made you think you were a little unprepared for the mandatory 'Sunday Best' dress code. 

You fiddled with the ends of your shirt. 

You contributed to the sacrificial neighborhood potluck, maybe the Gods will be pleased enough to let you leave without seeing Nancy.

You turned to make a break for it and nearly bowled over the brunette in question.

Cookies were not a good enough sacrifice.

Her smile was bright and her blue eyes lit up at seeing you. "Hey, you made it!" She went in to hug you and you tensed, locking your arms to your side in the world's most awkward exchange of physical affection.

She gave a nervous smile and pulled away, "Sorry, too soon for hugs?" Her chuckle was used to try and break the tension and you were grateful as you laughed along.

"No, it's just–I uh… haven't really hung out with anyone for a while, so I guess I'm just getting back into the swing of how friendship works." You shrugged, rubbing the back of your neck.

Her eyes sparkled at your admission of seeing her as a potential friend. She grabbed your hand and pulled you over to a small group that hung around the edges of the block party.

The first one you noticed was a taller Hispanic man with the most beautiful hair you had ever seen in your life. It was lustrous and hung past his hips, swaying gently with his movements. He smiled, eyes half-lidded but sweet, giving you a gentle nod as Nancy motioned to the group, giving your name.

"This is Argyle," she pointed at the man with the incredible hair.

"Robin," next was a thin, lanky woman with messy dirty blonde hair that hung a little past her chin. She had a dusting of freckles across her nose and a charming crooked smile. She wiggled her fingers in a sweet hello.

"Steve," the man next to Robin was broad-shouldered with a just as square jaw line. His eyes were slightly turned down at the ends, giving him this sweet puppy-dog stare matched with a megawatt smile. He had some random freckles and moles that decorated across his face and the visible areas of his arms that made him look a lot younger. He nodded to you, giving a weird wink that you were sure was supposed to come off as charming, but was mildly unsettling.

"And my husband, Jonathan!" The last guy had a small upturned nose with a low brow that was covered by messy strands of mousy brown hair. He gave a shy smile, nodding to you while bouncing lightly. Over his shoulders he had a baby vest strapped to him and a very crabby looking baby facing outwards. Their face was scrunched up, looking more like a potato than a child, and they had wispy brown hair that was stuck up wildly like their head had been rubbed with a balloon. 

Nancy smiled proudly, tickling the cheek of the child that gave a low, annoyed hum for an impressively long amount of time. "And this is Eliza, my daughter."

You gave a pinched smile, waving awkwardly. "Hey." 

"'Sup Brosephina," Argyle smiled, offering you his fist. You chuckled, tapping yours against it lightly. "A pleasure to aquaint with you." He stuck his hand back in his pocket, the other holding the neck of a Pabst. 

"An enjoyable aquaint with you as well." You rocked awkwardly onto your heels.

Argyle's smile grew and he nodded, "Right on." He laughed.

"Hi," you looked over to Steve who held out his large hand in greeting. You shook it, noting that he was gentle when shaking yours, but gave a squeeze before he released you. His smile was adorable, but he was definitely trying to flirt. You were curious if it was just an unconscious thing, or if he was actually putting in effort. "Nice to meet you." 

You gave a soft nod in reply, but before you could fully pull your hand away, Robin shot forward and grabbed it giving you a few firm shakes, "It's really good to meet you, I think I actually saw you a while ago–my girlfriend's daughter broke her arm and I remember you gave us all strawberry Jell-O before we left."

Your eyes widened and you pointed at her with your other hand, "Oh yeah! Dotty! She was freaking adorable. How's her arm?" 

Robin's smile was glowing and she squeezed your hand tightly, "She's good, her whole class signed her cast and when she got it off she begged to keep it even though it smelled like old shoes."

You barked out a laugh, unknowingly squeezing Robin's hand back, "Hell yes, that's awesome. A trophy of her triumphs! I recommend a pantyhose sock full of cat litter, it helps a ton with the shoe stink."

Robin's eyes widened and she gave a dramatic gasp, "That's freaking brilliant, oh my god, thank you!"

Jonathan snickered, "You got chronic stinky feet?" He teased, eyes glimmering as he bounced his daughter.

You smirked, dropping Robin's hand and leaning into your hip, "Maybe, or maybe I've learned a thing or two from working with older nurses. But I could also have insanely stinky feet, and now you know my shame." 

Everyone laughed and you felt your smile grow, your shoulders relax, and you let yourself feel like you belonged. 

You didn't feel so alone anymore.

The block party ended up not being bad. Although, a guy named Andy Barker had tried to hit on you when you went to grab a hot dog ("You like 'em long and juicy, huh"–barf) even though his wife was within eyesight. Nancy had warned you that they often did that: flirt with other people in front of each other to get their partner jealous.

It was absolutely insane, small towners were bonkers.

You had snagged a bag full of cookies for the road, not including those from the bakery you had gone to as they were a little rubbery and sad. Argyle gave you a high five.

"Choice snack Brochacha, need a muchie master to inspire your partaking in said chocolate chunks?" You blinked a few times, unsure of what in the hell he was trying to say. 

Jonathan snickered, leaning over to translate, "Do you want some weed with that?"

Needless to say: Argyle was your favorite.

Pocket a little heavier with two freshly rolled "Blunts of Friendship", as Argyle called them, and a couple of sandwich bags full of pilfered cookies, you walked up to your door with a smile. 

You had made friends. 

It was nice, this feeling. You hadn't been able to know companionship, even platonic ones, in such a long time it was like a weight had been lifted from your shoulders. Maybe not all the weight, but it was lighter and it felt good to breathe with a little less paranoia pushing you down.

You jiggled the keys into your lock but stopped, turning ever so slightly to look at your neighbor's door. It was a gawdy yellow with a plaquard of gold painted numbers reading "2D" decorating it. The paint on the numbers and the door was chipped in places and faded from natural weathering. You didn't see any shadows in the window and the light wasn't on. It wasn't surprising since the sun was still, technically, out. 

It was sunset, the sky lit up by a golden-amber glow that slowly sunk into the royal purple of the evening as it met the horizon. Night would fall soon.

You weren't sure what compelled you, maybe the giddy feeling that came from making new friends, or from having a really good day, but you strolled over to the door and stared at it, feet placed only a few inches away. Looking down at the bags in your hand, you placed one of them against the wall next to the door and sighed.

Nerves were starting to eat at you and you looked at your apartment door that was about ten feet away, then back to 2D's. Sucking in a deep breath for strength, you gathered your bravery and knocked on the door three times before booking it to your door: 2C. 

Slamming your door behind you, you kept the lights off and took deep gulping breaths. That was the fastest you'd ever run in your life, you're sure of it.

You slunk to the floor, splaying your legs out in front of you as you caught your breath, thumping your head back against the wood of your own gawdy yellow door. You shut your eyes.

You don't know why in the fuck you decided to dong-dong-ditch some cookies for your cryptid neighbor. 

Maybe it was because you had developed a weird relationship with them in your head: mysterious being that occupies the shitty motel-esque apartment next to you that may know your struggles because they keep the same weird hours you do. You had put too much thought into them and they became a being you considered a friend in the fantasy of your mind. 

You wanted to include them in the block party.

You had sat there for a good ten minutes, breath caught, and you didn't quite know what to do with yourself now. You didn't want to go to sleep–no matter how fucking tired you were from staying awake during the day–but you were at an impasse of not knowing where to go or what to do. 

And that's when you heard it.

"Shave And A Hair Cut".

The smile that spread across your face pushed the apples of your cheeks up so high you could see the tops of them in your vision. You laughed softly, bringing your hand up to the wall and replying.

"Two Bits".

#eddie munson #stranger things #eddie munson x reader #fanfic #fanfiction #stranger things eddie #stranger things eddie munson #x reader fanfiction #original character fanfiction #eddie munson x original character #Bunni Bums Post #Nancy x Jonathan #jancy #kas!eddie #kas!eddie munson #vampire eddie munson #vampire eddie x reader #vampire eddie munson x reader

[twisted-in-underland]

Encanto x TWST idea

I’m sure someone out there has already done this before, but I was listening to the Encanto soundtrack earlier and couldn’t help but come up with the TWST idea for the movie!

So the general concept in world wise is that it sticks fairly close to the movie; the Madrigals (I’m sticking to the og names for now. My name ideas are gonna be at the end) live in a small village and are the only family with magic. Because the villiage is so small and closed off, they don’t have any kind of magical institution of their own leading the Madrigals to attend outside mage school to learn to control their powers.

Note: Their unique magic is the same thing as their “miracles” in the movie

All of the ages of the Madrigals are the same as the movie. So Pepa, Bruno, and Julieta have long since graduated from school and take various jobs around the village. By the time Yuu comes to Twisted Wonderland, Isabela and Dolores would have been recent graduates of RSA; Isa would have been out of school for roughly 3 years and Dolores would have been out of school for roughly 2 years. Luisa is a senior at an all girls mage school (a school that would be similar to RSA) by this point and, assuming the seniors of this school leave campus similar to NRC seniors, she’s likely involved in some sort of internship off campus.

Camilo and Mirabel aren’t in school yet. By the next year it’s expected that Camilo will also start at RSA as a freshmen. Mirabel, who doesn’t show many magical abilities, is not expected to attend any sort of magical school. And of course Antonio is not expected to attend magic school any time soon as he’s still too young.

Currently Bruno is the only one who’s attended NRC. I imagine he was chosen by NRC likely due to his unique magic. I believe there would have already been tension in the family/with the village regarding Bruno’s unique magic, and so learning he wasn’t even attending a “respectable” school (the villages view on NRC) like his siblings made it worse.

I think Bruno would be sorted into Diasomnia mainly because I can see his unique magic being seen as quite powerful and his colours are green. It’s only fitting.

I also think it’d be a little funny if Bruno was considered the dorms resident cryptid. Like he’d almost have Malleus vibes where everyone is put off or scared of him for one reason or another, but in reality Bruno is just shy and kinda socially awkward at times. There are definitely still rumours about the “mysterious fortune teller” running around NRC even after all the years.

With Mirabel currently showing little signs of having magic, she’s also becoming a black sheep like Bruno. It very much follows the movie plot where Alma is a lot harder on Mirabel because she’s seen as “too different” from the rest of the family. But have no fear! I feel like Mirabel and Yuu would end up being besties by the end of the event AND Mirabel would make her place known in the family even if she’s “different”!

Speaking of event; my general idea game wise is that this would probably be a special event for the game. Like I said, Bruno is currently the only Madrigal that’s attended NRC, the rest (excluding the younger ones) have attended/are attending RSA. I don’t have an idea currently on why Yuu and co would be visiting the village, but I think it would be a fun concept!

Perhaps the miracle fading is tied with an overblot like situation and NRC got an anonymous letter (perhaps from Bruno 🤔) and Crowley, being a kind man he is, sent Yuu to check it out. I’m open to suggestions if anyone has any ideas!

I think maybe Epel would be one of the event exclusive characters; he also comes from a small village and there’s a generational gap between mages within his own family. Maybe he could relate to Mirabel in some way. Idk why, I also think Silver could fit as well. He is the only non-fae of the main Diasomnia bunch so perhaps he can also relate to Mirabel or even Bruno in the sense of not “fitting in” with the rest.

As for the names of the characters: I have no clue what do change the last name to, BUT I’ll leave some of my ideas for the first names, as well as clarifying which ones have changed genders.

Characters using their movie concept name:

Alma = Andrea

Julieta = Juana

Bruno = Oscar

Luisa = Lydia

Mirabel = Mariana

Camilo = Carlos

These 6 also stay the same gender as their original counterparts.

Genderswaped characters and names (these are subject to change):

Isabela = Ines

Ines was Isabela’s concept name and I can’t seem to find a masculine form of Ines. To me sounds neutral, though I also image TWST Isa to be similar to Vil; he has a more feminine and/or androgynous appearance which he embraces so I imagine a more feminine name wouldn’t bother him.

Some other names I’m entertaining are Isaac, Lucero and Ismael. I kinda like lucero as an alternative, I think “bright star” is a fitting of a golden child.

Dolores = Diego

I’ve seen a couple people use Diego as a gender swap name for Dolores and I kinda like it. There isn’t a deeper reason for the choice.

I’m open to other name suggestions if anyone has a better one!

Antonio = Antonia

Antonio was a little easier since his name has a feminine form. I also wanted to keep the one girl-two boys set up that Pepa’s kids have, so I swapped Antonio and Dolores’ genders

Pepa = Pepe or Pedro

I’m a little tempted to give both names to Male!Pepa. Perhaps he was named after his father, but Alma/Andrea started calling him “Pepe” as a nickname.

I think this would really fit if Abuelo Pedro died like in the movie and so hearing her husband’s name after he passed was really hard on her.

Félix = Felicia

similar to Antonio, Felicia is the feminine equivalent of Félix so the meaning is the same.

I don’t really have a distinct reason for swapping this groups genders other than not wanting the entire family to be the same genders as their og counterparts.

I’m not sure what I would want to change Agustín’s name to. Perhaps he’s the one who keeps his original name, or if anyone has suggestions let me know!

And finally for abuelo Pedro, I’m thinking perhaps he’s just not named in game. Like perhaps he’s passed away and when asked about him, everyone either calls him “Papí” (the triplets) or “abuelo” (the grandkids). Maybe Alma doesn’t like talking about him/saying his name because it’s too painful or something.

I think this is all I have so far for this idea! Like I said I’m open to any ideas or suggestions that y’all might have, especially with names!

Idk how far I’ll take this, I just needed to get the idea typed out while I had it in my head lol. I might also post something about Hans from Frozen once the poll I posted on him ends.

Thank you to everyone who read my ramblings! Have a cookie 🍪💕

#twisted wonderland #twst yuu #twst oc #twisted wonderland oc #twst #twst ideas #encanto #family madrigal #Encanto x twst #Encanto x twisted wonderland #bruno madrigal #pepa madrigal #julieta madrigal #felix madrigal #agustin madrigal #mirabel madrigal #isabela madrigal #luisa madrigal #dolores madrigal #antonio madrigal #camilo madrigal #alma madrigal #pedro madrigal #village of miracles au

[ricketysticks]

Asking you about your werewolf headcanons *chin propped on hands, listening sparkly-eyed*

you got it, chiefs 🫡

So if you've heard me talk about werewolves before, you probably know that I'm a huge fan of the concept of it acting closer to a disease rather a curse, thereby it having a bit more of a realistic and grounding influence on the afflicted.

So, first off, the werewolf bite traditionally is what infects others with the curse. I like to interpret that a bit more literally. The saliva is obviously what carries the disease, therefore if you keep a bite wound from a werewolf clean and patched up then you should be peachy keen, just like any other injury that's potentially susceptible to infection. Except people in Ye Olden days were obviously far more vulnerable to that.

It's why, in the modern age, werewolves devolved into myth and story, something closer to a cryptid or bigfoot sighting than anything else. Werewolves just aren't nearly as common as they were a century ago. Except when they are.

The disease isn't hereditary, but if there happens to be a town with a higher population of people who do have the disease, naturally, there's going to be a lot more potential for accidents to happen. A domino effect over the course of decades. A small town settled hundreds of years ago with, perhaps, two werewolves in the mix, now has a hefty population of five, then ten, then thirty.

It becomes just... a little bit more acceptable when your second cousin is a werewolf. You're pretty sure that one banker is a werewolf. In your family Bible there's a very old and worn written prayer asking for an unspoken illness to be lifted.

It's taboo to talk about it too openly - newcomers tend to open their ears a bit more to the gossip of what they don't understand. But in hushed voices in a coffee shop with a friend or at the dinner table with your extended family at Thanksgiving. "It's alright - there's nothing to be done for it. Just keep your mouth shut, and don't go out at night when the moon's a bit too bright. You'll be fine."

To sum it up, there are basically entire communities that are in on it. Werewolf towns.

Anyway. People with the disease usually have a shortened lifespan. Sixty years is generally the average. The transformation is so intense and painful that roughly 75% of deaths from the afflicted is legitimately from a massive heart attack as a response to the sheer stress their body undergoes. Extreme anesthetic can help, but that's... not usually accessible to the average person, unless the afflicted happens to be from one of the aforementioned "werewolf towns". This is provided that the afflicted isn't simply killed by a hunter or what have you.

Now, the wolven form itself isn't just a wolf. It's not just a hairy man. I like the idea of it being a sweet middle of the two, a nice mesh. Some sort of 7-8 foot beast with a half-sized snout jutting out of its face and claws and fangs unnaturally long. I like werewolves that look like monsters. An appearance to give other people a reason to hunt them purely out of fear.

It's not just one night they're stuck like that, either. If it's a disease, then why would it be an exact science? The moon appears full for more than one night. Three days, maybe a bit more, maybe a bit less, the afflicted will be trapped in wolven form - slumbering in the day and hunting at night. Obviously, a werewolf hunter would want to catch one in the day purely because of how vulnerable it is at that point.

That's the brunt of what would be my favorable interpretation of a werewolf, or at least ideas I would love to see depicted in media. I detest when movies or books portray werewolves closer to the actual animal than anything else, with some sort of general pack behavior, or that typical - but honestly very weird imo - "alpha" hierarchy. I detest when the werewolf curse is depicted as a superpower, something cool, something edgy, that can be used at will or controlled.

I prefer it when it's treated like a disease, like a tragedy. Like how you'd hear about a loved one suffering from some kind of illness or addiction. Something that can't necessarily be fixed, only accommodated. I like werewolves that are monsters, and I like werewolves that are traumatic. I don't even know anything about werewolf folklore. I just like it when my monsters are actually monsters and how them being monsters affects their lives and the lives of other people that aren't monsters.

I realize this is all more or less worldbuilding, but it's all been stewing in my mind for a while. So thanks for letting me rant about werewolves.

#inbox #bleat it #sisterdragonwithfeathers #dragonsbloodsnowcone #werewolves #im normal i do and say normal people things like worldbuilding around a mythical creature because movies are bad at it

[blorb-el]

thinking about that steampunk/victorian/edwardian AU superbat vibes post again. tbqh i have read very little steampunk, so if i were to actually write anything in this setting it’d immediately turn into thinly-veiled modern labor critique

anyway. some Thoughts, please chime in if any of this seems interesting.

- the reason for so many scientific advancements: lex luthor. on his surface the brilliant inventor responsible for everything from airships (you’ll believe a man can fly!) to the complete infrastructure overhaul of metro-gotham, The City of Tomorrow. the public persona of the ultimate renaissance man; more money than ford, more inventions than edison, and twice as subtle about his bigotry and thieving nature than either of those two.

- (metro-gotham, the sprawling megapolis of three states, roughly encompassing northeast NJ [gotham], NYC, long island, and southwest connecticut [metropolis]. travel times are a lot easier to manage with privatized Lex-Transit elevated magtrains.)

- and at what cost does the future come? the people in his factories? well. if you catch him in a good mood in his gentleman’s club he’ll be happy to expound on  social darwinism and the gospel of wealth. would a side of phrenology be too on the nose?

- basically 60% pre-crisis the world’s maddest and most brilliant scientist, 30% post-crisis ruthless exploitative businessman, 10% [redacted for the Villain Scheme plot point of the fic that i’m trying to convince myself not to write]

- it’d be more interesting to have him work his way up from being a nobody born in suicide slum, however it would be far more on the nose for him to inherit ‘a small sum’ from the sale of his father’s plantation estate. probably split the difference; the propaganda/public persona is the first. carnegie eat your heart out, lex did it better

- bruce: lots of uncomfortable implications with being an industrialist especially if bruce needs to be one too. probably he is. the question of if ethical industrialism is possible in this world, what does it look like. this could turn out SO badly if I don’t do so much research lol. like batman 2022, inheriting his position and wealth but failing to understand at first what his responsibility is. did thomas wayne himself build the conditions under which so much of gotham labors, or was he attempting to triage the situation left by his father/bruce’s grandfather/ancestors? how old is the wayne money? from where did it come from, considering the history of wealth in this country? are there actual canon answers to any of these questions and/or stories in which they are addressed? sure he gets to punch people and glide from his bat-gyrocoptor onto the top of aforementioned elevated magtrains, but also give him problems he can’t solve with his fists, because the idea of dragging battinson-adjacent bruce into corporate maneuvering is very funny to me (especially since lex has probably succeeded in repealing or blocking the sherman antitrust act! monopolies ahoy!)

- clark: obvious play to fully take him to golden age Champion of the Oppressed/grant morrison t-shirt and jeans superman, just explicitly including the people left out of the original golden age stories (aka, there are Black people in metro-gotham now). starts out as a cryptid a la the radio show’s first series (radio clark my beloved), evolves into unifying solidarity, direct action, compassion as more than a platitude; figure out some way to not directly steal the emotional arc from superman smashes the klan. which is so goddamn good. explicitly raised in the great plains socialist tradition, his first job delivering copies of Appeal to Reason, maybe interning under Eugene Debs? what actual year is this set. who knows. this fic would be as fine an excuse as any to finally read The Jungle since i already hc that’s an influence on modern!clark. muckraking journalism is already immensely cool and sexy therefore the daily planet gang and lois are mostly unchanged.

- the irons family ought to play a significant part but right now i only have: john henry high up in the experimental R&D division of lexcorp, deciding how best to stop [redacted evil lex plan], even though it will cost him a social standing that is probably going to be nigh impossible to regain, considering the amount of companies that would hire a Black man in R&D in this time period. again. lots of research to do here

- literally 0 changes needed to dick’s backstory lol

- literally 0 changes needed to jay’s either lol

- the drakes... probably well meaning also-ran second tier industrialists pretending they aren’t lex hangers-on. maybe they can get socially ruined by something along the lines of the teapot dome scandal. as a treat. 95+% of the metro-gotham gilded industrialist robber baron social circle is full of hollow hearted complicit scumbags, and the only thing preventing tim from this fate is 1. his parents’ fall from grace 2. that he has enough braincells to look around.

- there would be SO much pollution in metro-gotham YIKES. easy fodder for any number of villain backstories. cool and understandable motive, ivy, still ecoterrorism

#no points for guessing which evil billionaires luthor is a thinly veiled metaphor for here #clark kent #bruce wayne #lex luthor #steampunk au #hm. this is barely superbat but i guess it can go into the tag. #superbat #basically i think battinson and tshirt clark would be such a fun dynamic #they would NOT get on at first sight lmao #golden age clark my beloved

[apricuscity]

The Five Great Seas.

“Greetings everyone! My name is Doctor Percival Drake! I’m a world renowned explorer, archeologist, educator, paranormal investigator, cryptid hunter, and aspiring sushi chef. I’ll be filling in for Mr. Kusunoki as he assumes the role of temporary Dean!”

“Our world is mostly water. I know this is a common fact but we need to start somewhere correct? Most of the water of our world happens to be what’s considered the five great seas. Did you know most of these seas remain unexplored? Oh my yes it’s quite thrilling!”

“The one most of you are likely familiar with is the Ortus Sea. Ortus translates to “rise” or “birth”. It’s directly East of Apricus. The Ortus Sea is likely the most heavily traveled of the five great seas. Those of you who went on the recent trip to Kwailai can attest to that. Ortus is home to a great many “leviathans” as Captain Larsen would call them. This is due to it’s favorable temperatures year round.”

“Far to the North of Apricus, past the mountains, past the vast expanse of the Kingdom of Nivis lies the Ледник Sea. If you’re curious, that roughly translates to Glacier. As you can expect, this is the coldest of the five great seas. Many a ship has been lost to the treacherous waters, and the gigantic icebergs the sea is famous for. Several expeditions have gone missing trying to recover a treasure map supposedly located on a ship that’s been stuck half frozen in the ice for ages now. That’s a story for another time.”

“To the West of Apricus you’ll find the مقدس Sea. If you’re not familiar it roughly means “Sacred” or “Holy” depending on who you ask. The people of Calere consider it to be such. Honestly if you lived in a desert kingdom you’d probably consider any large body of water to be that as well. This sea is home to some of the deepest known parts of any of the five seas. There’s also a small section of it that is considered one of the saltiest bodies of water we know of. Very fun to float in. Anyway moving on.”

“Let’s head South of Apricus shall we? This is where things get more interesting. Here you’ll find the Faititili Sea. The name means “Thunder” or “Thundercloud” things of that nature. As you can imagine it’s home to some wicked storms. It’s also the largest and most unexplored of the five seas. If the storms weren’t bad enough, parts of the sea are said to be perpetually shrouded in an otherworldly fog from which no vessels ever return.”

“Finally we come to the fifth and final of the five great seas. The mysterious Perditus Sea. The sea where all seas meet. So they say anyway. Oh right, Perditus means “lost” or “ruined”. It’s called this because it’s said to be the place where countless lost treasures can be found. Artifacts lost to time. Even an ancient civilization said to have been sunk beneath the waves. It’s nearly impossible to reach, even air travel over the area where it’s said to be has been forbidden due to the amount of crashes.”

“All of these seas hold many secrets. Some are said to just be tales passed around by old sailors through the ages. You know what they say though, every story tends to have a bit of truth to it. Who knows what’s truly waiting out there. Does the siren’s song lead to riches..or simply a watery demise?”

#Percival Drake

[davids-cartoon-corkboard]

I have said a Lot about the “Raph is a system” theory over the past several months, so this is something of a compilation post. It’s got some new stuff, it’s got some old stuff. (You’re reading Part 1) (Part 2 is here) (Part 3 is here)

---

Firstly, “system” is the term for someone with Dissociative Identity Disorder, or DID. (The term can also apply to some folks with OSDD.) Someone might develop DID after experiencing long-term trauma at an early age- roughly five or six years old. To paraphrase the DSM-V:

1. We’ve seen three (possibly four) distinct personality states who speak, act, and perceive others differently.

2. The personality states, or “alters”, don’t necessarily share memory, and Donnie insinuated in “The Clothes Don’t Make the Turtle” that Raph has a bad memory in general.

3. Problems arise when alters don’t get along or aren’t on the same page. That none of them seem to be quite aware they’re a system doesn’t help either; it’s hard to work on communication and cooperation when you don’t know they need to be worked on!

4. This whole situation isn’t a normal part of a broadly accepted cultural or religious practice, or just Raph playing make-believe. (Though I wonder if he had “imaginary friends” when he was younger...)

5. It’s also not because Raph’s been smoking the devil’s lettuce or whatever. “Pizza Puffs” was one long weed joke and he was the only one “sober” (not poisoned) throughout! We don’t see this happen to other mutants, so it’s not a bizarre side effect of mutagen either.

(I’ve seen a few people joke that Mikey has “multiple personalities”, but that’s a tad yikesy and also just plain incorrect. His “doctor” personas are something he does deliberately, and youngest siblings are just Like That.)

So yeah, Raph is pretty heavily DID-coded. We’ve seen four alters so far:

“Host” Raph (HR): He’s our everyday Raph. A “host” is an alter who fronts most of the time and takes care of “business as usual” situations. They are often unaware of past traumatic events, such that they can appear “normal”. (Ex: the host of a child who lives with an abusive parent could be unaware of the abuse. Otherwise, they might cry or be uncooperative whenever the parent is near, further invoking their wrath. This unawareness allows them to be a “good child”, and stay under the parent’s radar sometimes.) Some systems have more than one host, but that the others have shown up so rarely in this story suggests HR is the only host (for now?).

Savage Raph (SR): Debuting in “Man vs. Sewer”, he’s a survival-oriented alter. HR probably could have defeated the Sando Brothers on his own under normal circumstances, but being in the middle of a breakdown doesn’t do much for your fighting skills. SR got pulled to the front to deal with them instead.

“Red” Raph (RR): “Red” is just a placeholder since we don’t actually know his name yet (or even if he has one, not all alters do), though I’ve also heard folks call him “Angel”. He’s got a “tough love” approach to problem-solving, which was probably a helpful thing in the past. LDM were no doubt rowdy children! We were (officially) introduced to him in “Pizza Puffs”.

Mind Raph (MR): MR could just be a manifestation of HR's thought process via Cartoon Goofery, but that possibility doesn’t give me anything to work with so I’m ignoring it. He’s pretty similar to HR, maybe a tad more upbeat. We (officially) met him in “Raph’s Ride-Along”.

When “Pizza Puffs” first aired, I was like “ah yes, this is the alter who has the cranky edgelord tendencies we’ve seen in previous iterations of Raph. He probably broods on rooftops in the rain when he’s in a bad mood.” Combining that with the whole “Red Angel” thing gives off some Batman vibes. And, of course, SR is similar to the Hulk. Those two heroes are pretty different, but they do have one major thing in common...

A sudden, violent loss. Given how prevalent rushing water is throughout “Man vs. Sewer”, I’m thinking a flood came through and separated Raph from his family. (You could probably argue that turbulent water symbolizes a turbulent subconscious? 🤷) Again, DID stems from long-term trauma, so Raph must have been gone for... a while. A couple of months, maybe more? It’s hard to say exactly; we have a little wiggle room when applying human developmental psychology to a human/turtle mutant. Since Splinter still needed to care for the other three, he wouldn’t have been able to devote much time to searching for Raph, and the New York City sewers go on for miles and miles. The longer Raph was alone, the more convinced he would have been that the others had drowned and he was the only survivor.

How old would he have been? I know the turtles are “different ages”, but they were all mutated at the same time so I’m pretty sure Splinter was just like “the littlest one is the youngest, the biggest one is the oldest, and the medium-sized ones are the middle children.” They’re all probably fourteenish by “Finale”. Back in “MvS”, Leo said, “You know how savage Raph gets when he’s alone”. He didn’t say anything like, “You know how savage Raph gets when he’s alone ever since such-and-such an incident happened”. This suggests that LDM straight-up don’t know something traumatic happened to Raph; they were too little to retain concrete memories of that time. In their minds, Raph has always been like this. Draxum isn’t known for his patience, so even though he wasn’t able to immerse the hatchlings in mutagen for long, they probably mature a bit faster than humans. And since humans usually can’t remember anything from before four years of age, three sounds about right for the turtles, though they would have been stronger and steadier on their feet than any human toddler. I doubt Raph would have survived otherwise.

I think he’s sort of... “stuck” back in that trauma. Catching food, building a fire, making a weapon, and getting camouflage aren’t the behaviors of someone who’s only been gone for a few minutes.

When SR called for help, I don’t think he was expecting anyone to answer.

But Raph did manage to hang onto something as he was swept away! It wasn’t much, but that little ragdoll gave him comfort while he was scared and alone.

(The rabbit design on Bruce’s pajamas is probably a coincidence, but...)

Raph seems the type to have sympathy for odd-looking toys. His knockoff Mrs. Cuddles plushie was the emotional crutch he needed back then.

And then he was separated from that as well. Lowkey associating Mrs. Cuddles with this traumatic event would explain why HR was so scared of her. That he doesn’t remember the trauma means he has no context for this fear, making it seem silly and baseless to him (and to the rest of his family), which is why he denied being scared at all in the first part of the “Mrs. Cuddles” episode. It would also explain why he collects teddy bears instead these days, they are a “safe” toy. (The moral of the story is to not make fun of triggers that seem silly.)

(I wonder what would happen if Mrs. Cuddles encountered Savage Raph? Perhaps he’d be quite sympathetic towards such a lonely little raggedy thing! Timestuck as he is, he probably wouldn’t question why a stuffed animal can talk... and it wouldn't be hard for her to persuade her “new bestest fwiend” to get rid of some “mean ol’ nasty sewew monstews” for her.)

That whole “sewer monsters” thing suggests Raph ran into... something while he was wandering alone. Y’all have heard those rumors about alligators living in the New York City sewers, right? Encountering Leatherhead could trigger a flashback.

It would be pretty easy to introduce Leatherhead into the narrative. One of the episodes the Rise crew had planned was titled “The Island of Dr. Noe”, and alligators have very impressive teeth. The Mirage comics had a story where Leatherhead and several cryptids were brought to an island to be hunted for sport.

Noe seems to have quite a few cronies/friends/rivals he could entertain this way. Since he’s got that obsession with Raph, Noe captures him as well, knocking him out with those darts so he can’t waste his energy trying to escape too soon. (Let’s just assume everyone’s powers are glitchy because they all hit another wave of puberty, meaning they can’t just curbstomp the lower-level villains lol.)

HR wakes up on the island and, of course, starts to panic because he’s lost and alone. While wandering, he runs into Leatherhead, which would trigger a flashback to getting attacked by that alligator all those years ago. But Leatherhead doesn’t want to fight! He’s just as scared and confused as HR is, and could really use a partner to help him survive this island.

HR and SR come into conflict because Leatherhead is/isn’t/is/isn’t/is/isn’t a threat. HR eventually wins out, reasoning that even if Leatherhead is that alligator, it wouldn’t be fair to judge him for what he did back when he was an animal.

But time and dissociation can make memories unclear. That our first look at Leatherhead was in Draxum’s “bluh bluh I’m gonna mutate all the humans” bit in “Bug Busters” means he’s a human-base mutant. He wasn’t the alligator back then, but the hunter tracking it. Leatherhead isn’t one of Noe’s targets, he is one of Noe’s guests! And he wants no one to interfere with his quarry, so he’ll play nice long enough for him and the snapper to take out the rest of the hunters and the freaks. Then the two of them will have the island all to themselves...

Years and years ago, Jack Marlin was a big game hunter prowling the New York City sewers in search of an alligator. He did manage to find and kill one, only to realize it had also been hunting! He had inadvertently saved the strangest little turtle creature.

Marlin had become too skilled at this point, the hunt held no challenge for him. This turtle sounded very young, and he was quite big and strong already. An adult could be tough and intelligent enough to entertain him. Marlin tried to get Raph to lead him back to “the others”. But Raph had been lost for some time, and as far as he knew, his family was dead. Hearing that put Marlin in quite the sour mood. A little mutant snapper is a better catch than none at all, so Marlin tried to haul Raph off. Raph fought back and bit off Marlin’s hand. He escaped, but lost his rabbit in the scuffle. Marlin retreated as well, taking some time to recover, scheme, and hunt other game. (And to pocket that rabbit. The blood loss had made him woozy, and he wanted to have some kind of proof he hadn’t just hallucinated the snapper.) Perhaps he turned that alligator’s hide into a vest, which provided the genetic material for his mutation when he eventually got bit by an oozesquito. Like his Mirage counterpart, Marlin didn’t take losing a limb as a sign he should retire, and instead got a tricked-out prosthetic. Who knows what he could do with it in such a mystic setting as Rise.

Raph eventually reunited with his family, but those distrustful, high-strung survivalist traits he had picked up weren’t helpful anymore. He once again had to be the good and patient big brother who didn’t bite when someone play-tackled him or shook him awake at three in the morning because they’d had a nightmare. Those two states gradually got partitioned off more and more, and now they know little, if anything, about each other.

So Leatherhead and HR are chasing away some mothmen or whatever, and things are going pretty well... until one of them knocks Leatherhead over and a familiar ragdoll rabbit falls out of his pocket. SR realizes that Leatherhead is Marlin and switches in to fight him off again. They’re evenly matched, or perhaps SR is even in danger of losing, when LDM arrive to provide support. Leatherhead is enough of a tactician to know that he should retreat. Donnie and Mikey pursue him while Leo stays behind, placing the rabbit in his stunned brother’s hands. “Remember when Pops made this for you? You were always really gentle with it, ‘cause he wasn’t good at sewing back then...”

(This thing really needs patching up, he’s got sewing stuff for whenever he needs to fix his bears/Blue isn’t a threat on his own/Wasn’t he just back at the lair?/Blue gave back the rabbit/Why does he feel like he got hit by a train?/Blue doesn’t want to fight?/ ...Leo?) And that’s enough for HR to switch back in. He’s probably missing memory from his whole time on the island, so while Leo does his best to tell him what happened, they don’t have enough puzzle pieces between them to truly figure out what's going on.

They defeat the bad guys, release the cryptids, save the day, etc. (Leatherhead managed to lose Donnie and Mikey in the woods. A battle for another day.) Once they return to the lair, HR gets help from Draxum to modify the memory spell from “E-Turtle Sunshine” so he can try to fill in the gaps. Surely he wouldn’t get rejected by his own subconscious... right?

Cue part three in the saga of Raph Punches Himself In The Face. SR isn’t happy that HR is essentially trying to poke at an improperly-healed wound, and attempts to chase him off. HR assumes that SR is just a psychic white blood cell like the Lou Jitsu constructs in Splinter’s mind, and retaliates.

But, of course, fighting is not the answer here. All that accomplishes is giving the body bruises. Eventually HR realizes “stay away” and “back off” are a little different than “get out”, and that SR is just scared. So HR tries another tactic. Over the following days and weeks, he tunes in to calmer memories and just sort of... talks. About what happened yesterday, about his teddy bear collection, about how he finally managed to get a good picture of that pizza pigeon. It takes a while to establish a connection, and even then, it’s spotty at best. Using the spell too much can cause headaches and nightmares. There are days when SR is nearby, and days when he’s not there at all. But he shows up when he can.

And then there’s awkward, stilted conversation and questions neither of them know how to answer and questions neither of them want to answer and more scrapes and bruises and strained silences and apologies, but they finally, finally reach a compromise. SR still doesn’t let HR near those memories, but he tells HR what happened as best he can. (The audience would see those memories, with SR as a voiceover.) Afterwards, HR still visits the mindscape that’s starting to become more solid. They talk some more, they watch light and shadow flow around them, they listen to half-forgotten lullabies on scratchy old cassette tapes. Eventually, HR doesn’t even need to use the memory spell, meditation is enough.

They’ll never get along all the time. But it’s a start.

(SR is going to be so clingy when it finally clicks for him when he finally lets himself believe that his family is alive.)

---

This took eight million years lmao. Parts 2 and 3 will come out eventually, they’ll focus more on MR and RR. Let me know if I need to tag this stuff as anything.

The usual disclaimer applies, I am not a system or a mental health professional so if you’re one or both of those things then feel free to give me some of that good good constructive criticism.

#you called for help... but nobody came. #rottmnt #rottmnt theory #the 'raph is a system' theory #rottmnt raph #savage raph #mrs. cuddles #leatherhead #jack marlin #plot bunnies free to a good home lmao #long post

[robbyrobinson]

Elsewhere and Elsewhen (Review)

Holy crap. This episode. So we have Lilith finally returning this time being the assistant at the Supernatural Museum of History. Hooty throws a party for his best friend, and everyone is there from her parents and even Steve. We all should have a friend like Steve who still respects Lilith even when she no longer works under the Emperor. Anyway, Luz wonders if there is a way she could go back in time in hopes of somehow contacting Philip when Eda shows her a book of Top 10 plot holes in history (HA!). We get a few interesting cryptids like Lender Man who, instead of kidnapping children to feed on their fear like the monster it's inspired by, lends people things; and opossums even though those are real. But then again, Eda claimed that they banished all the giraffes from the Boiling Isles so...also found it hypocritically funny how Eda riffs the Collector using "the" in their title while she herself is known as the Owl Lady. Time pools turn out to be mythical puddles of water that act as windows into time but are never in the same place twice. Just gotta mention how happy I am to hear that Luz not only viewed Eda as a mentor but as a second mother which made Lilith her honorary "cool aunt." That's just sweet. In the B-plot, Eda realizes that her father was wanting to speak with her after it had been roughly a few decades since she last spoke with him due to her clawing his eye out as the Owl Beast. Needless to say, Eda tries to avoid interacting with him up to and including making a crude costume to disguise herself as Lilith which would obviously not fool anyone. While some focus more on the A-plot, I will say that the supporting plot was nothing short of beautiful. Even when she felt that she deserved no forgiveness for what she had done, Eda's father nevertheless forgives her and blesses her with the last of the palismen seeds explaining that after he was forced to retire from carving palismen, he assisted the Bat Queen with replenishing her forest and wants Eda to take up the trade. We also learn that he helped her carve Owlbert. But back to the main plot. After going through a few different time periods and seeing things like stonesleepers, Luz and Lilith land roughly around the time that the Savage Ages happened. And they learn that Belos is a fucking liar. Well, more than he already is. The witches and demons were pleasant with each other often assisting one another and were charitable in comparison to their current descendants. It is here that we meet the man, the myth, the legend: Philip Whitebane. After two demons rough him up they leave him be but ask the girls to inquire from him the whereabouts of their brother and his palisman. Hmm...how odd. Philip is not like what Luz envisioned: he comes off as rude and secretive. While Luz looks at a picture of what appeared to be him and a certain man who looks remarkably similar to our Golden Guard, Luz convinces him that they could help him find the Collector. Philip lavishes the two girls with compliments something that is uncomfortably familiar to Lilith. HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.....I wonder why. They see that the entrance to the skull of the Titan had been guarded not to mention that the Isles appeared to be keeping glyphs away from Philip unlike Luz who saw the glyphs as gifts from the Isles. While there, Lilith notices that the puzzle had already been mostly solved already. Luz goes over to speak to Philip about what the heck was going on...all while he is just writing down in his journal about the unfortunate passing of his companions. This motherfucker has been luring who knows how many people into being his "companions" only because he needed them as sacrifices. And then he'd collect their palismen after they met their untimely demise. He had been doing this for such an ungodly amount of time it doesn't even phase him. Which is kind of why I subscribe to the theory that Philip sacrificed his own brother when he was first brought to the Isles 400 years ago. Judging by how accustomed he is to throwing people's lives away, I see no other reason

than he'd feel different if it involved family which gives even darker implications for Hunter's way. Thankfully Luz is able to subdue the beast after realizing it was one of those stonesleepers that Lilith was lecturing her about. So no new clues to the Collector because Philip is unwilling to grant them his secrets if not for a price, but Lilith socks him in the face breaking his nose. Ah yeah. In the credits after the two have returned home, we have Philip angrily ranting about his treatment at the hands of those barbarians, nay, those witches. Even though it was his own fault but I digress. We see what appears to be an incomplete staff; blueprints of what appears to be a grimwalker the creature that Hunter is theorized to be and...a cloak? And not just any cloak: a white one with streaks of gold. Don't you think that cloak belongs to someone in particular? Perhaps a tyrannical, cultish overlord we all know? Philip's arms bulge and twist in wincing spasms as we see that this crazy man had tattooed glyphs all over his arms to help him teleport. And Philip is suddenly breathing sharply? What's that he's reaching for? A palisman? And..."drinking" it? I FUCKING KNEW IT THE MOMENT THIS SCENE HAPPENED. PHILIP WHITEBANE IS EMPEROR BELOS WHO HAD BEEN FEEDING ON PALISMEN TO KEEP HIMSELF ALIVE FOR HUNDREDS, MAYBE THOUSANDS OF YEARS!! I FUCKING KNEW IT!!!!!!!! Of course, the idea that he and Philip were one and the same was not a new idea: it was a theory that was tossed around on the internet and in discussions during the second season. Some latched onto the idea for different reasons such as Belos and Philips sharing the same voice actor to artwork for the second season depicting Belos with white-gray hair from the back. But of course, despite it seeming the most reasonable outcome, it is understandable that maybe instead of Philip himself, Belos could be descended from a long line of human-witch hybrids which was the reason why Belos had to have that staff of his; without a bile sac or an imperfect one, he could not perform magic like how the other demons and witches did. It was an idea I was readily willing to accept, but this episode. Really, I defy you to try to come up with an explanation for how Belos cannot be Philip even though this episode more or less confirms it? It would also confirm that Belos was a human because come on, he even states that he had seen the Earth before and who's likely to have seen it if it wasn't Philip? But because of him artificially prolonging his life by consuming palismen, it is a safe bet that whatever Belos is, he is no longer a human. But what is it that he is planning to use the Collector for? The Collector is looking more and more to be the true mind behind the Titan pulling the strings. With the solar eclipse coming, the Collector may be the main instigator of the Day of Unity. Given how much Philip hated the witches back then, what makes you think that the whole "Day of Unity" won't be a code name for absolute witch annihilation?

#elsewhere and elsewhen #owl house #the owl house #philip whittebane #whittebane #theowlhouse

[ultranos]

do you have designs for the ash and fire crew?

I don’t have sketches of the salt & ashes crew. I haven’t really done character drawings since sophomore year of college (when I was doing a student newspaper comic), which is over a decade ago so I’m very rusty on that front.

I do have character descriptions of the crew of the Pariah in my notes, though:

Lt. Jee: same as canon

Chief Tsui - engineer. Non-binary and fully embraces gender what-the-hell. Average height, no facial hair, dark hair tied back. Is possibly a cryptid. Is absolutely insane (they’re an engineer, of course they are)

Sub-Lt. Shika - navigation/XO (female), veteran, Firebender. A general voice of sanity. Has very much survived because of her passive appearance. (If she’s so passive, wtf is she doing on this ship?) Classic Fire Nation looks with amber eyes, dark hair is short, just past ears (she was in prison...), has scar on her face (bisected eyebrow, goes down the cheekbone). Has one white streak at her temple (same side as scar)

Koji - crewmember (male), young. Earthbender. Colony-born. Classic EK darker skin and brown eyes. Tall. Shaggy brown hair that looks like it fears combs. Teenager who has absolutely at one point failed to keep a goldfish alive. Is very enthusiastic about koi. 

Corporal Rùfen - scout (female), veteran. Firebender. She’s survived this long, she’s both competent and insane. But pleasantly so? Is very bad at dying. (she’s been on multiple suicide missions and keeps coming back.) Was at Ba Sing Se. Lost father on Day 27. Lost elder brother on Day 599. roughly same age as Lu Ten (would be). On the lanky side. Usually wears long dark hair tied back. 

Jian - doctor (male). Didn’t really want to be a doctor, but ended up the competent one in his squad and things kinda happened. Has a lot of experience with burns. Has a lot of experience with really terrible burns. Would like to get very drunk now. Wears glasses (nervous tic of adjusting them). early-mid 30s. wears dark hair tied back (little past shoulders). 

Yuka - crewmember (female). young. Waterbender. Fire Nation military bastard. (darker skin, gold eyes, shorter and stockier than average Fire Nation). Is understandably terrified of her abilities and is about 95% certain her FN military father got her this assignment to get rid of her.

Fai - crewmember (male). young. Firebender. Classic Fire Nation looks with brown eyes. Has no idea what he did to get on this boat but is very sorry. Is in charge of the komodo-rhinos. The big scaly dogs love their weird squishy uncle.

#nos answers things #salt & ashes #salt and ashes au #yinglong crew #Anonymous

[bers1990]

Before i go any further, make no mistake, i own nothing. I don't own the clip art pictures i used, i don't own the show and i certainly don't own the characters. The only thing i own are the younger characters and that's about it. I guess you could argue that i also own the adult designs for Zak and his wife, but that's debatable.   Like the title says, this is a future portrait of the Saturday family, and it's a full family portrait, which means it includes more than just Zak, his wife and his 3 children. It also includes his parents, his Uncle Doyle and his 3 cryptid "siblings". I'm aware that Doc, Drew and Doyle don't look any older, even though Zak is roughly in his 40's or so, and i admit, that was my faux pas. I suppose one could argue that it makes no difference how Fiskeron, Komodo and Zon all look at this point, since very few animals show signs of aging any way. But i was going to at least give Doc, Drew and Doyle gray streaks in their hair, maybe a small wrinkle or two, anything that would reflect them aging 27 years (they would still be in tip top shape though, of course). Anyway, let's go around and get some more information about the Saturday family of the future: Left to Right: Dr. Solomon "Doc" Saturday - Even though he's going on late 60's to early 70's, Doc Saturday is still the adventurous yet science and reason minded man he's always been. Though, in recent years, he's allowed his love for his work and inventions to gain more influence over him, and needless to say, that's begun to put some strain on his marriage. Drew Blackwell-Saturday - Still as feisty as ever, even when between the ages of late 50's to early 60's, Drew Saturday has begun to devote more of her time to the archaeologist aspect of her career, which she had long set aside for many years. This has allowed her more time to get in touch with her emotions and, needless to say, it helped bring about a storm to her marriage with Doc. Komodo Saturday - Thanks to the genetic engineering that he went through early on, Komodo Saturday is still alive and kicking, with old age only creeping up on him in minor ways (e.g. being out of breath when he moves so little). At one point, Komodo and his fellow cryptids; Zon and the Fiskerton Phantom (Fisk), all had a strong and inseparable bond with their adopted human "brother", Zak Saturday, who returned their loving feelings in full. However, as time went on, the strength of this camaraderie began to weaken, as Zak started to spend more of his time with the woman who would one day be his wife and, eventually, started a family with her. The strong bond is still present though, just in different ways. In Komodo's case, it's in him acting as the nanny and nursemaid to Zak's daughter, Carol, whom he protects fiercely.   Carol Drew Saturday - As i've said numerous times in the past; this is my fan-made daughter for Zak Saturday. She is very good at planning things out before acting and is a true prodigy when comes to dealing with Cryptids. However, like her father, she is often prone to allow her impetuous nature get the better of her, causing her to do things that, under more cool-headed circumstances, she would never think right. Carol has always been close to her father, to the point where she inherited his original "Claw" as her own signature weapon. But if there was one person was a close second in terms of bond, that would be Komodo, her nanny and ever vigilant protector. By the way, as i'm sure you can already tell, Carol owes her middle name to her paternal grandmother, something that she is proud to know. Zakery Thomas Saturday - At one point, he was the scrappy and adventurous little boy of Doc and Drew Saturday gifted (or cursed) with telapathic powers over cryptids. Now, he's the stern, no-nonsense and physically imposing Beta of the Saturday pack (set to take Doc's place as patriarch of the family). Having lost none of the skills he had as a child, as well as gained a few new ones, Zak is still just as formidible an opponent as ever. Though, just like his own father before him, Zak's paternal instincts are his strongest trait, right alongside his loyalty to his wife.   Ulraj Elija Saturday - Named after both his ancestor, Elija Saturday and his godfather, the King of Kumari Kandam, Ulraj is the first born child of Zak Saturday. Being the eldest, Ulraj constantly feels the need to be the responsible and level-headed one of the litter, to the point where he acts as the leader of his siblings. For the most part, he is leadership material, and is rather mature, responsible and level-headed. But, unfortunately, those very qualities have also led him to be a tad self-righteous; he almost always thinks that his way is right. Still though, his inner sense of humilty does keep that aspect of his character in check (more or less). He inherited the Saturday genius gene and is quite the aspiring inventor because of it. Whenever he has the time, he is usually seen using a blowtorch on something or wrenching something tighly. He even designed his own modest suit of armor which is both protective yet light to move in, proudly sporting the Saturday family logo on the chestplate. I'm well aware that his hair makes him look like Zak Monday, that's why i gave him the suit of armor in the first place. Fiskerton Saturday - Still the same lovable giant furball he's always been, this 8-foot tall Gorilla-Cat remains the most unique and mysterious member of Saturday family, as well as its main muscle. At one point, Fiskerton and Zak were as thick as thieves, along with Komodo and Zon. Though, out of all of them, Fiskerton had the strongest bond with Zak. This cameraderie began to weaken, however, as Zak began to start a family of his very own. But Fisk remained as loyal as ever, and even took an active interest in the development of Zak's eldest son, Ulraj, often trying to keep him humble. Wadi Saturday - Ever since they first met as 11-12 year old children, Wadi's chemistry, and general relationship, with Zak Saturday has always been erratic at best. On the one hand they had a few qualities that made them similar, but on the other hand, they tended to bicker and clash quite a bit. It wasn't until Zak's 13th Birthday that the two of them realized that all of this was the result of a growing romance, one that officially began when Wadi kissed Zak on the cheek. The two of them began a long distance relationship after that and it lasted for a good long time, many years in fact. But Zak and Wadi were not hopeless romantics, they were well aware that their relationship was no different than anyone else's. Which means, like anyone else's, it could come to an end for any reason at all. How long the two of them thought about this, they would never tell the other, but think it they both did. Still though, both ultimately decided to burn that bridge when they came to it, and did their best to keep their minds in the present when it came to their relationship. Surprisingly enough, Zak and Wadi's love for each other never once wavered and ultimately led to Zak proposing to Wadi when they were both between the ages of 23-24. She gladly accepted this proposal and they were married as soon as possible, much to the delight of their respective families. As far as Wadi's personality goes, it's relatively the same as it was years ago; she's still pretty assertive yet relatively soft-spoken at the same time. She has also become more open about her feelings towards Zak, now that she knows how he feels about her. But the biggest change to Wadi is that she's gained more control over her kleptomania; now she will only steal something if the situation calls for it (like getting a dangerous object away from a villain). Like her mother-in-law, she is a fiercely protective mother (though she's not as over-bearing), she will do anything to protect her three children, even pummel someone into submission.     Maboul Farhan Saturday - The youngest of Zak and Wadi's littler, as well as the most timid, is little Maboul Farhan Saturday. Needless to say, he was named after his maternal grandfather, a fact that he is very proud of. In fact, out of all of his siblings, Maboul is the most in touch with his Hassi and, subsequently, Arabian heritage. He has done all he could to learn the ways of his people and, because of this, has developed a strong bond with his mother. She even passed on to him her treasured Thieves Yo-Yo, much like how Zak passed down his "Claw" to Maboul's sister, Carol. Now, personality-wise, Maboul is a rather meek and timid child, which makes it pretty easy for his siblings to sway him. However, when the situation calls for it, he will at least try to be assertive. Fortunately, he will always have the protection of his "aunt", Zon, on his side. BTW, Maboul's middle name. Farhan, is actually Arabic for "happy", because that's how his parents felt when he was born. Zon Saturday - With exception of being the de facto nanny of Maboul, Zon is relatively the same, though, i'd imagine her skin and wings would be more rusty looking by this point. Much like her two adopted "brothers", she used to be very close to Zak Saturday in his youth. But when Zak started to spend more and more time with his growing new family and spent less and less time with her, Fiskerton and Komodo, Zon eventually tried to cope with this by forming a bond with one of Zak's kids, Maboul grew closest her and they've been inseparable ever since. Doyle Blackwell - Doyle's pretty much the same guy he's always been, nuff said. Though, he is somewhat more concerned about the frequent issues his older sister and brother-in-law are having. He is also just as close to his great nephews and great niece as he was with Zak.

#the secret saturdays #Fanart

[rutabagaemp]

The Mothman - 2020

Dusk comes with its own calms. The din of civilization gave way to the nocturnal awakening; car horns replaced by chittering insects, the sounds of people talking replaced by the mournful cries of wolves and occasionally a bird or two. It was extremely hard to see anything. The moon was new, and so the only lights on this old road were cast by the fireflies as they swooped and swayed through the darkness.

There was a sign over the gate that led into the graveyard, but it was impossible to tell what it said. Beyond the darkness, a thick fog lingered, sticking to the tombstones like bits of meat between a dog’s teeth. An old, rusted-out truck had been unceremoniously parked in the ditch, just another foreboding silhouette in the oppressive fog.

The graveyard was empty, save for a singular figure standing in row three, to the right of the entrance. I’ll describe him to you as he would appear in the newspaper photographs released the following morning. He was tall and of average build, with salt and pepper hair and beard. He had a kind face; his eyes were blue, surrounded by laugh lines, though his expression this night was sombre and morose. He wore a rumpled navy blue suit, and a stained tie. This, combined with an expensive yet non-functional watch on his right wrist, gave an impression of a man fallen from grace. His left hand grasped a bouquet of white lilies so hard that his knuckles had come to match the flowers’ colour. He hadn’t moved for several minutes, continuing to stare at the grave without a word or motion.

In the darkness, it was impossible to read the headstone that he loomed over top of. It did not stand out from its neighbours, it was simple, undecorated. The remnants of an unidentifiable flower laid across the top of the stone, the age of the offering suggesting a scarce-visited gravesite. As the tall man stood motionless, a snow white moth landed on the desiccated flower and began to rest, wings fluttering gently in the evening mist. The man ignored and continued to contemplate the stone.

He stood in the dark for quite a bit longer. No cars drove past, nothing moved out in the woods. In fact, save for the sparse noises of insects in the forest, it was a very quiet night. The ambient forest noises had helped the man’s thoughts wander for the past several minutes, but as the noises began to die out, the man came back to reality. He shuddered, and, quickly rubbing his eyes with the back of his sleeve, leaned over to place the lilies on the ground by the tombstone. Though the stems had been crushed, the heads were still fine, standing as a small beacon against the persistent mist. Another moth landed on the lilies as the man drew his hand away and began to walk back towards the gate, his footsteps crunching the gravel as he did so.

He soon became aware of a distinct noise behind him. He stopped walking and listened closely. Dozens of fluttering wingbeats came from behind him, in the direction of the grave he had just departed. He turned around, bewildered, only to see dozens of tiny pinpricks gazing back at him from the darkness. The moths seemed to flow endlessly from every direction at once, coming from the forest, the road, and even from the sky. In the darkness, it seemed as though a vague yet sizeable mass was forming on the tombstone the man had just departed, like watching an ink blot spread and coagulate into a physical form.

The man stood in place, transfixed by this display. He watched as the pinpricks began to blink out, one by one, until only two pinpricks remained. By now, the mass had grown to a roughly humanoid size, still concentrated on the tombstone. The sound of hundreds of beating wings began to fade out, until only one sound remained. The man mistook it for a heartbeat at first, but as he focussed more on the mass, he realized it was actually the sound of two rather large wings attached to the thing’s back, beating in tandem with his heartbeat. As his breathing increased, so too the beats of the thing’s wings.

Now the pinpricks vanished, and in their place two large, red eyes gazed at him ominously from the darkness. The thing’s form had finalized, it was now vaguely humanoid, the details impossible to discern in the dark and fog. Its wings continued to beat as it leaned back against the tombstone, the same way a cocky teen might lean against his booth at a diner. The man couldn’t see any features on the thing’s face, just the two, unblinking eyes that seemed to burn themselves into his vision. It began to make a slight buzzing noise.

The man’s eyes, which just minutes ago had seemed bereft of life or emotion, were now filled with a mixture of terror and fascination. He swayed on the balls of his feet, torn between returning to his truck and approaching the creature. He took two steps towards the gate, then turned back to the apparition.

“Excuse me. I don’t know who you are, but…” he glanced over his shoulder, then continued at a whisper. “That grave belongs to the love of my life. I’m the only one who ever visits, ever brings flowers…I seem to be the only one who cares.” The creature kept staring at him. He continued. “Just…if you don’t mind, just…please stop leaning on the stone. I can’t afford a replacement.”

The monster looked at him and wordlessly took a step back from the stone. Though it was still impossible to determine any features, the man could see that the thing had now crossed its arms and was standing straight up. Its wingbeats continued to match pace with his heartbeat.

The man bowed his head. “Thank you. I’ll be going now.” The man began to walk back to his truck, keeping an eye on the creature, who continued to stare at him, unblinking, from its position in the graveyard. The man didn’t take his eyes of it until he reached the door. As he reached to pull the handle, he was overcome by such a powerful sense of foreboding that all of the hair on his body stood on end, and he released the handle with a start. He could hear the blood pounding in his ears; combined with the beating of the creature’s wings, it was quite disorienting. He looked back at the creature, who continued to stare.

“Was that you?” The fear was apparent in the man’s voice as he yelled to the creature, though whether he was more scared of it or the strong sensation couldn’t be determined. The thing didn’t move for a second, then nodded at him, its arms still crossed.

“Why? Why did you do that?”

The creature took its eyes off of him for the first time, turning to nod at the gravestone at its feet. A chill went down the man’s back.

“I gotta get outta here.” He muttered to himself as he grabbed the door again. The fear returned, forceful and unyielding, but he yanked the door open anyway, scrambling to put the key in the ignition. As the engine fired up with a cough and the lights came on, the man looked back out at the creature. Its arms were still crossed, and it was still staring at him. He almost swore he could see sadness in the way the thing’s eyes were creased at the edges, but he threw the car into drive and pulled out of the ditch as fast as he possibly could, careening down the road at a breakneck pace.

The creature stepped out into the road behind the truck, watching as it vanished into the distance. Its wings were beating rapidly, but they began to slow down as the truck vanished over the horizon. It continued standing there, its wings continuing to slow, until about five minutes had passed, when its wings beat rapidly three times, then stopped altogether. It stood in the road for another ten minutes, until the sound of police sirens could be heard down the road. Then, its wings beat again, soundlessly, this time, and it took to the sky.

They buried him in that rumpled suit, with his expensive watch. They put three carnations in the casket with him, then closed it to mask the damage that the other car had done to his kind face. They buried him in the rightmost corner of the cemetery, in row three, right next to one Leon Grey, whose grave looked scarcely visited save for the scattered lilies on the ground in front of it. The funeral was small, and when they left the graveyard, the two graves were just as unassuming as any of the other ones in row three.

To this day, white lilies still appear on Mr. Grey’s tombstone. One per year, laid carefully across the top. Neither of his neighbours receive the same treatment, and in fact, their names and dates have faded horribly, while Mr. Grey’s remains quite pristine. What could be the cause of this, fifty years after his death? Maybe only the moths, who gather every foggy new moon, can answer that question for you, but their lips are sealed. Maybe it’s the imposing humanoid, with red eyes and wings, who sometimes appears to stand and contemplate the two graves at the end of row three. We may never know.

Created for @MarisasHorror’s (https://twitter.com/MarisasHorror) Cryptid in July challenge

#writing #creativewriting #mothman #cryptid #fiction #challenge #cryptid writing #cryptid story #creative writing

[myaekingheart]

You’ve Got Kudos

Written for Day 1 of the Kakashi Lounge Discord Server's September Event. Prompts: Fanfic Writer!Kakashi | Social Disaster | Modern AU | Roommates/Neighbors 

[Read on AO3] Pairing: Kakashi x Rei (OC)  Rating: Teen and Up @the-kakashi-lounge-blog

Kakashi has a dirty little secret and it's in the form of an AO3 account. No one is allowed to know that he writes Icha Icha fanfiction--especially not his library tech neighbor Rei. (Standalone companion piece to The Scarecrow and the Bell, Modern/College AU)

               Kakashi kicked off his shoes at the front door and slumped into his favorite chair. Tutoring wasn’t necessarily his favorite thing in the world but it looked good on resumes and put a little extra cash in his pockets, so he supposed he could tolerate it for a little while longer. If only his students hadn’t been quite so insufferable, that is.

               If anything, tutoring reminded Kakashi how much he hated underclassmen. His three protegees were all naïve freshman whose energy stores had yet to drain. Naruto was enthusiastic but slow on the uptake and it was hard to get him to properly focus. Sakura had potential but she was far too engrossed in her Instagram rivalry with fellow student Ino Yamanaka to make any real progress. And Sasuke was constantly brooding, there not by choice but rather because his professor threatened to flunk him if he didn’t seek outside help.

               Perhaps it would’ve been smarter to book them each separate appointments but with the way everyone’s schedules worked out, it was easier to just create one big study group. It was more efficient that way, anyway. Kakashi much preferred to kill three birds with one stone than chip away at his sanity little by little. And so every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, Kakashi trudged to the library to pore over used textbooks and incomprehensible scribbles in an attempt to explain simple concepts to brains that could not understand. This was fine. He didn’t need a social life anyway.

               Kakashi rubbed his tired eyes and checked the time. It was 5:30pm. He had no idea what he was going to do for dinner, nor did he really care. Sighing, he reached for his laptop and went straight to his email. At the very top of his inbox was a notification from Archive of Our Own: Comment on Icha Icha Bloodline. Kakashi’s heart jolted. In the solace of his apartment, this was his one saving grace: fanfiction.

               He admittedly felt a little ridiculous about the whole thing. What college guy not only wrote fanfiction, but for romance novels at that? He knew exactly how his taste in literature appeared. So few people truly understood the nuance and artistry of the Icha Icha books, writing it off as just cheap porn. Those books, however, gave Kakashi exactly the reprieve he needed. Within their pages, he could disappear from the stress of everyday life to instead revel in the throes of a dramatic fictional romance. His love for this series knew no bounds. His heart ached to share it with someone but if college had taught Kakahsi anything, it was that people never really change and are more than willing to judge you the minute you express any personal interests. High School: The Sequel, if you will. And so Kakashi had come to learn that there were only ever two places where he was safe to unapologetically indulge in his favorite series: within the comfort of his own home and on the internet.

               Fanfiction was never his original intention. Rather, it was the end result of a long string of unfortunate circumstances. The latest book had ended with the heroine caught between two very tempting suitors, a cliffhanger of epic proportions which left Kakashi itching for a resolution. A few months after publication, the author, Jiraiya, passed away, taking his secrets for the series’ finale with him.

               Kakashi had tried so hard not to think about it but the lack of closure ate away at him. He needed a valuable outlet through which to ramble, a way to confide in someone as invested in the series as he was. For a moment, he had considered joining a book club but all of his attempts failed. The only clubs that ever focused on books like these were run by sexually frustrated middle-aged women who sneered at the mere thought of letting a man into their circle. On recommendation from a friend, he turned to the campus library community for help but was met with nothing short of disaster, which thus introduced the second point of contention: Rei.

               The library check-in desk was notoriously run by volunteers, most of which were majoring in library science themselves. One such volunteer was Rei Natsuki, a junior with fiery hair and a chronic resting bitch face. It wasn’t that Kakashi didn’t like her, necessarily. Actually, every time he saw her he got this horrifying fuzzy feeling in the pit of his stomach that insisted he was about to throw up. He felt as if her eyes were on him constantly, studying his every move. This fact only furthered his gratitude for lumping together all of his tutoring appointments. The less time he spent in the library, the less often he would have to see her.

               Not that she was necessarily easy to avoid. Just his luck, she lived three doors down from him in the same off-campus apartment complex. At least if he timed things just right, he could avoid running into her in the hallway. Their mutual existence was like a very carefully choreographed dance on perilous terrain. They were constantly at risk of colliding with one another, a harrowing and horrifying fate.

               Their first encounter was in the fall of his freshman year when he snuck into the erotic fiction section searching for the Icha Icha books. As he skimmed the titles, he felt a pair of mossy eyes burning holes into his back like a cryptid whose domain has been intruded upon. When Kakashi turned around, he caught her peering around the edge of the bookshelf. Her expression was one of harsh focus and concern. “Looking for something?” she asked. For someone so small—she was roughly a foot shorter than he was—she was certainly terrifying.

               Kakashi’s face turned beet red, rubbing the back of his neck nervously. “No, not particularly!” he exclaimed. “Just looking around!”

               “Hrmph” Rei huffed, unconvinced. “Well, if you need anything, I’ll be right over there” she pointed to the help desk at the front of the library. An older woman, one of the librarians, winked at her across the room and Rei’s face turned bright red. Without another word, she scurried off back to her station, grumbling under her breath. Once gone, Kakashi sighed and leaned back against the shelf. All of the books directly behind him tumbled to the ground with a loud thud. Rei immediately whipped around to glare at him but by then, he had already dove into the nearest study room. Frustrated, Rei stomped over to assess the damage and begin reorganizing the shelves. Kakashi apologized to the group he interrupted before booking it out of the building. It was in that moment that he officially decided: from that point onward, Icha Icha would remain his dirty little secret. Literally.  

               And thus came along the internet. At least there, hiding behind his computer screen, he could retain some sense of anonymity. He could disguise himself with a pen name much like wearing a mask. No one needed to know who he was. He pored over various forums, reading but never interacting. As refreshing as it was to find a sense of community amid other Icha Icha fans, his joy quickly faded when he realized one fatal flaw: no one knew what they were talking about. They all misinterpreted the characters, the relationships, the actions the heroine took to get to this point. Perhaps Jiraiya’s novels were too nuanced. Perhaps there was no hope for him after all. It was then, deep into a Reddit thread, that it dawned on him: the horrifying promise of writing fanfiction.

               At first, Kakashi refused. He would not stoop so low. The harder he resisted, however, the more appealing the idea slowly became. At least in this way, he could help people to better understand these stories in a way that he was familiar with. Not that he was an avid writer himself but he hoped he was familiar enough with the conventions of fiction to understand how it was done. As if running on autopilot, he ventured to Archive of Our Own and created an account under the pseud “CopyNin.”

               His fanfiction, Icha Icha Bloodline, introduced dramatic new themes and conflicts to the story he loved, expanding on the love triangle with a depth and sincerity that he hoped would make Jiraiya proud. It hadn’t gotten many hits yet, but that just made every kudos and comment feel that much heavier. As his cursor hovered over his inbox now, he almost questioned whether he even wanted to know. Every shared thought had the capacity to make or break his motivation. But if he didn’t look, he wouldn’t be able to contain himself. He needed to know. He pulled up the latest comment and his heart leapt into his throat. It was from LittleBell.

               LittleBell was, for lack of a better word, iconic amid the Icha Icha fandom. They were one of the first writers Kakashi had encountered when he first considered fanfiction as a possibility. Their name appeared in dozens of forum posts, attached to both praise and criticism alike. By the time Kakashi looked into them himself, they had already written 100,000 words worth of fic with the longest piece nearing 100 chapters. It was clear why they were so popular. The cadence of their sentences, their detailed characterization, and their dynamic plot points all made Kakashi’s heart sing. He could only hope to one day be as great a writer as they were.

               Kakashi had lurked through fifteen chapters before, in a fit of sleep-drunken gumption, he had decided to leave LittleBell a comment. It was short and sweet and afterward, Kakashi groaned into his pillow second-guessing every sentence, but he awoke to an encouraging response that firmly cemented the allure of writing a fic himself. And now here he was, faced with a comment from them on his own work. How could he ever prepare himself for something so huge? He instinctually expected scathing criticism. Your characterization sucks. You’re writing them all too flat. Her suitors would never say XYZ or do ABC. Have you even read the books? This is trash. Kakashi’s hands shook as he tried to shove those negative thoughts out of his mind. LittleBell had been so kind before so, realistically, why would their response be any different? Kakashi scratched the back of his head, knowing that the longer he waited, the more maddening this was going to become. Without another moment’s hesitation, he forced himself to view the comment.

               This was so great! I love the way you write these characters—I can tell you have a really deep understanding of the heroine, especially. It’s so refreshing to read a fic that not only retains the romance of the originals but also emphasizes it in a way that’s super meaningful rather than cheesy. My favorite part was the scene where she’s fixing his watch. “It’s really an exquisite watch. Such a shame that it’s stopped working.” “I guess that just means that we’ll have to stay in this moment forever” “What will everyone else say? They’ll get tired of waiting.” “Let them wait. I’m always late to everything anyway. What’s another eternity?” My heart! You can really tell just how much he loves her, and it makes that love triangle all the more tense and heartbreaking! You’re really just doing an incredible job with this and I can’t wait to read more!”

               Kakashi’s cheeks burned as he buried his face in his hands. It was all he could do to hide the grin on his face. Not that anyone was there to tease him for it. Pakkun was fast asleep on the couch and likely wouldn’t have cared anyway. Alone in his apartment, Kakashi was exploding. To think that someone so talented and renowned within the fandom not only noticed his work but enjoyed it was mind-blowing. This was a high he would surely be riding for the rest of the week, if not the rest of the semester. Nothing could be better than this.

               Once the debilitating excitement wore down a bit, Kakashi was then stuck with the battle of writing a response. He knew there were some in the community who considered responding a controversial topic—something about trying to increase your comment count—but Kakashi enjoyed replying to every single person who took the time to say something nice. And this was certainly something very nice. How could he possibly put into words his overwhelming gratitude? He had no clue. Kakashi stewed over the prospect for a solid ten minutes before his growling stomach urged him to hurry up. He had completely forgotten he was hungry but now his body was not going to let him forget. He considered stepping away and replying later, after he had time to chew it over, but then quickly shoved away the thought. He couldn’t afford to put this on the backburner at the risk of forgetting about it entirely. No, he needed to do this now.

               Kakashi typed, paused, considered, then backspaced and typed again. When he was finally at least mildly pleased with his response, he sucked in a deep breath and pressed Comment.

               Huffing in relief, Kakashi stretched out and leaned his head back against his chair. All that was left to do now was wait. Would they even respond back? He didn’t know. Sometimes a comment began a whole conversation, other times it was a singular instance like a comet in the night sky.

               But for now, he was going to try not to dwell on it. He received LittleBell’s praise, and if they were to respond back then so be it. It was all up to fate now. Kakashi slipped on his shoes, shoved his phone, wallet, and keys into his pocket, and headed out. As he locked his apartment, he heard without listening as a door down the hall creaked open. The sound reached his ears but his brain did not register what it was until it was too late. Turning around, he abruptly bumped into her.

               A gasp fell from Rei’s lips as she collided with Kakashi’s chest. Her half-open backpack swung on her shoulder, spilling its contents onto the floor. “S-sorry about that!” he croaked, clearing his throat. Kakashi’s hands shook as he leaned down to help gather her belongings, all the while fearing her wrath. Among the used textbooks and stuffed notebooks was a green paperback with a big prohibition sign on the cover. The little bell charm attached to Rei’s keychain jingled and automatically Kakashi was punched in the gut with a realization of Pavlovian proportions. Little Bell.

               “I-I’m sorry…what was that…?” Rei stammered and suddenly Kakashi realized he had, in fact, spoken aloud. Her voice, in response, was so much quieter than he had ever thought she was capable of—filled with the striking fear of being vulnerably and intrinsically known. Unmasked.

               Kakashi’s eyes widened as he shuffled to gather as many of her books as he could manage. “I-I didn’t know you liked the Icha Icha books” he murmured. He could hardly make eye contact as he handed her back her things.

               “Yeah…” she said, slowly accepting them, “They’re, uh…they’re my favorite.”

               Rubbing the back of his neck, Kakashi chuckled nervously and replied, “Mine, too.”

               She wasn’t sure what it was about him but in that moment, a sickening feeling filled her chest, a nauseating suspicion that she couldn’t shake. There was really only way to confirm whether or not those suspicions were correct. At the risk of looking like an idiot, she cleared her throat then and said, “You know, that’s a really exquisite watch.” Kakashi froze, his eyes gently skating down to his wrist. He wasn’t wearing a watch. His heart pounded in his chest. Rei bit her lip, dropped her eyes to the floor. “It’s, uh, it’s a shame it’s stopped working.”

               Kakashi’s mind was reeling. None of this felt real. Suddenly Rei was a completely different person to him now. He saw her not as the terrifying, impatient, and indirect girl from the library but the extremely talented, encouraging, yet perhaps unfortunately shy writer that he had spent so much time idolizing. If only he had known of the bond they secretly shared over the past few months. He could hardly fight the grin on his face as he murmured back, “Then I guess we’ll just have to stay in this moment forever.”

               Rei’s cheeks burned as she hugged her books to her chest. She could feel the laughter rising up in the back of her throat—this was so ridiculous, and yet at the same time this was everything she had ever wanted. If only Kakashi had truly known how much she had suppressed over the years, since they first met in the library. The way the old librarian encouraged her to speak to him when she caught him perusing her favorite books. The way she’d hide out in her apartment whenever he left for class, watching from the window too scared to approach. The way she channeled all of her unrequited love and inner turmoil into the very story she now knew he idolized. She felt so strange and vulnerable but also for the first time truly seen. It was the most bizarre and lovely sensation.

               She had no idea how long they actually stood there in the hallway like that, reveling in this newfound connection, but all too soon reality suddenly hit her. “D-do you have somewhere you’re supposed to be? I don’t want you to be late!” she exclaimed.

               Kakashi, however, still entranced, shook his head and replied, “Let them wait. I’m always late to everything anyway.” Rei brushed the long bangs back out of her face, completely incapable of stifling her laughter. Kakashi joined her—the breadth of his smile, the bravado of his voice, the way his eyes squinted when he laughed, all were enough to make her weak in the knees. “Are you hungry?” he then asked. “I was just about to get something to eat. You should come with me.”

               Sliding her books back into her backpack, Rei smiled and replied, “I would love that.” Swinging her bag back over her shoulder, she walked alongside him down the hallway. Their fingers itched to interlock, their hearts pounding out of their chests. He opened the door for her and together they stepped out into the autumn air. Nothing else mattered. In that moment, all that existed was them: CopyNin and LittleBell.

#kakashi hatake #rei natsuki #the scarecrow and the bell #naruto #naruto oc #fanfiction #one shot #modern au #kakashi lounge blog #server event

[wardog-of-the-endless]

you said that youve done something similar to a post about haunted stuff you rebloged so like,, give us the story you cant just leave us hanging

Ok so I waffled so fucking long about telling this story and there are like, 3 ways I could answer it, if I’m honest. BUT I’m gonna tell the main one, aka Everybody Dies Famous In A Small Town… wherein I actually… am… the local cryptid?

*clears throat* Yeah, so, that’s a thing. >.>;;;; Let’s start at the sort of beginning? Okay: So our story takes place many moons ago when I was in HS (most of my squad were the best Honor Student Geeks ever and I think of them fondly). Sleepovers for us were sort of the norm, but like, with movie marathons or book reading sessions and none of the hip stuff that “teens” do, on “tv”. Sorry we boring AF. On this particular evening, we watched all of the LOTR trilogy, extended edition. (Which is like, hella lot of movie? So much of movie.) 

During this marathon, it was decided my hair should be braided. Which, if you don’t know, I have SO MUCH of the hair. So friend’s mom, and friend, work on my massive mane and tame it into roughly A MILLION braids, each one like a half-inch wide. There are a ton of them. It takes most of the night. It looks amazing, I wear it to school for a week because they’re BOMB. (Also I’m a rebellious bisexual pagan Latina in the Bible Belt, those prissy bastards could kiss my ass.) 

It’s worth mentioning this is my Senior Year, I have like ONE class and then I leave for work-study every day, which is at the local newspaper. My one class is a computer class I have with like 2 of my younger squadmates, all my senior people are elsewhere, so I only get to see them in the morning before the first bell. We have our own area of the courtyard staked out, but I’ve got friends in every group and I visit with them every morning. Hugging is against the rules, every morning I get (by this point, half-assed) yelled at for my flagrant disregard for the rules. IF YOU ARE MY FRIEND I’M TOTALLY GONNA FUCKIN HUG YOU (if you’re cool with it, of course). So for years now these teachers stand on the second floor and monitor the courtyard and every morning it’s like: 

“RODRIGUEZ, STOP HUGGING PEOPLE!” (And I fuckin don’t. Did I mention rebellious bisexual pagan Latina?)

But this week, my hair is braided into all my tiny braids and I’m rockin it. (And something weird happens.)  Suddenly every teacher thinks we have a brand new fucking transfer student, it’s like they can’t recognize me. I am not getting called out by name. Adults are asking me if I know where my classes are. In the morning I get, “Excuse me, Sweety, don’t do that!” and “HEY, NEW GIRL, NO HUGGING.”(This bitch is no new girl, the hugging continues.)

So my week, more or less normal except they’re not yelling at me in the morning, I take my one class, I vanish to work, blah blah. The last day of the week I unbraid the hair, and it’s SUPER CUTE ITTY BITTY WAVES, and I wear it like that to school. 

And people start asking what happened to “Dreadlock Girl”.

??? (spoiler alert: it’s me. they weren’t dreads, but it’s me) 

So someone in my class is like “yeah some girl with dreads sat in your seat all this week”. (No.) “You didn’t see her?” (I mean yeah but in a mirror?) 

AND THEN THE STORIES START.

Did you know she’s actually in a famous band? (She isn’t.) She’s well known for [insert whatever, local news, local drama, whatever]. (She’s not.) Dreadlock Girl made the Head Cheerleader Cry. (No.) Dreadlock Girl is friends with Stoners and Jocks. (I mean yeah but they aren’t dreads?) Dreadlock Girl yelled at such and such a teacher when he said the Holocaust didn’t happen. (Ok, I did, but when I was in like 9th Grade and I didn’t have my Dreads in and WHY ARE PEOPLE STILL TELLING THAT STORY? IT WAS AGES AGO.) Dreadlock Girl made out with so and so hot girl. (I didn’t but I probably would have?) She slapped what’s-his-face in front of the school. (Whoa now? I mean he’d have deserved it but I definitely didn’t.) 

Anyway, it’s the trippiest fucking thing. Not long after I graduate (but continuing at least 3 years after) showing up to pick up my brother or friends after school, I’m hearing stories.  An ex of mine meets me out front one day and spends fifteen minutes blowing my mind by telling me all the stuff this Legendary Bitch has done as of late. NONE OF IT IS TRUE. “Oh Dreadlock Girl is back, she did this, she did that.” She’s a goddamn urban legend at this point, but it’s been over a decade I hope they still tell stories about her fine ass. 

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ~Toni 

#Wardog Answers Stuff #Wardog Answers Things #Wardog Speaks #Toni Arrives 20Min Late With Starbucks #bisexual-joe-russo #bisexual joe russo #I HOPE THIS IS OK #LONG ANSWER IS LONG #My Life Sometimes #LRLSTI

[northwest-cryptid]

Sometimes I think about the fact that this site legitimately convinced me that follower numbers and post popularity determine your worth as a person all because I had been ignored by people more popular than myself. Which I can only assume stems from the “fan/follow and content creator/blogger” mentality which we can simply summarize by saying, if you are a content creator and I follow you, I am a fan of your work. I am one of the hundreds if not thousands of people who follow you. Suddenly you have a dilemma, if I try to talk to you and if you reply to me; suddenly every single one of your fans wants a reply. It falls back to the classic “if you don’t have enough to share with the class you shouldn’t bring anything at all.” The issue is that simply put you are giving me attention which costs you a bit of social energy and your time; which you might not have for everyone. So you have a couple options if you want to be my friend, you can either talk with me openly and deal with a ton of people becoming upset and believing it’s unfair that you do so because you won’t also give the thousands of others the same time of day simply because you can’t. Or you can talk to me in secret and just HOPE that I don’t go spilling the beans because “hey look at me I hang out with big popular person” would bring in a lot of personal “clout” and popularity for me. There is however a loophole to this whole situation... if I am ALSO a content creator or popular blogger, suddenly it just “makes sense” why you’d give ME the time of day, “after all, who wouldn’t” is likely going through the heads of people who follow both of us. 

(This got really long so here’s a Read More to save your dash.)

This... is the exact kind of toxic mentality that almost broke me mentally about a year ago. I say I left this site about a year ago, but in reality it was even before that; you could see me slowly “losing interest” I had begun to stray so far from who I was that I no longer felt like me but rather something that wanted to be “more” something that wanted to be popular not for the fame or the popularity itself but for the freedom that came with it. Because if I was as popular as all the others who I had tried to speak with maybe they’d actually reply, maybe then I could have the friends I so desperately wanted, friends who I’m not just following around all the time pretending I’m worthy of their time, but rather people who value me and WANT to spend time with me; people who like me and actually think I’m a cool guy to spend time with. Therein lies the problem, even if people did want to spend time with me, I wasn’t even sure of what or who I was anymore. I was a blogger, I was a bunch of tropes; I was someone trying to appease everyone, and I didn’t realize that I had friends who genuinely just wanted to know me. The actual, real; honest me. Only thing was, I was so far gone at this point I didn’t know who that person was anymore. For the last roughly 2.5 - 3 years I’ve been slowly recovering from all that, I found who I was; I went through the cultural ceremonies sure, but what I honestly believe was my “coming of age moment” was when I had the realization that the people who mattered to me most didn’t care if I was anyone popular, they were willing to risk the odds of people seeking their attention and despite the risk that people would feel that it was unfair for them to give ME of all people, their oh-so-important attention, they did so; openly and proudly. This is why I have so much genuine respect and love for my friends, because they wake up every day and CHOOSE to spend their days with me. 

This is going to sound really cheesy but as much as I owe a LOT to all my friends in general; I really owe so much to 2 people in particular. Those being my good friend Shelby and my amazing girlfriend Ryu.

I apologize for this post already being really long and kinda weirdly worded but, it’s very late; or early or whatever and I have a lot of things to say. As for Shelby she was someone I was VERY intimidated by, she is an amazing artist and someone who I genuinely looked up to (still do). I really wanted to be her friend but I felt like we had too many barriers, she’s really into gore and I’m really squeamish, she’s and artist and I can’t hardly draw for shit, she’s a big time horror fan I’m an absolute coward. So you can see where I thought “we’re not going to be great friends” and BOY was I wrong. I didn’t think she’d give me the time of day, she was someone people knew of, I was someone... well I was someone lol. But she did, she did give me the time of day, and she seemed to appreciate the time we spent together; despite the fact that I was just some random asshole. She even introduced me to Laura who would go on to become a very good friend of mine and like a sister to me and honestly I don’t think I’d be where I am today if Shelby hadn’t decided to be my friend. She helped me gain a sort of self confidence I didn’t have and it was that sort of self confidence that lead me to later meet my girlfriend.

For the sake of keeping to her online handle I’ll refer to her as Ryu, we actually met on tumblr and had been following each other for a long time talking on and off and I always felt way too shy and awkward to talk to her properly because I am very intimidated by new people and it’s very difficult for me to make friends as I believe I’m being a bother. However she never seemed to mind my shyness, she was there to give me a hand up when I was depressed and was often understanding of my really awkward attempts at becoming friends lol. She and I spent a lot of time together most of the time just talking about legitimately random stuff didn’t even matter what, I just enjoyed spending time with her. I don’t want to get too into my personal life on a public tumblr post of all things but it was so refreshing to meet someone who was just human, and understood that people aren’t perfect. She accepted me knowing of my flaws and being okay with the fact that there was a lot I still had to work on, I’ve fucked up a lot before and I appreciate that she’s willing to forgive those mistakes and let me show that I’m growing and making positive changes. We mesh really well together and I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who I can just so unapologetically be myself around. She has helped me to learn to accept and love myself and I do my best every day to see myself the way she sees me. I’m used to wanting to be better for the sake of someone else, but she has taught me that I should also want to be better for my own sake. She is genuinely the kindest person I have met, and to be living with her now feels like some kind of dream. She once told me that all she wanted me to be was myself, and I don’t think I’ve ever had that level of genuine acceptance and love. To hear someone say that I, myself; was good enough for them was something I never thought I would hear. 

I love all my friends, and they mean the world to me. However I say I owe these 2 the most because my life would literally not be the same without them. Shelby picked me up when I was at my lowest, she offered me her friendship and a chance to start again and forge a self where I didn’t have to be anything more than me. That eventually lead to me meeting Ryu who not only accepted me as a friend, but fell in love with a fluffy haired cryptid like me. I don’t know where I’d be without her in my life, but I really don’t care to find out because I’m more than happy to have her in my life. 

If there’s any wisdom I can pass onto anyone using this hellsite, it is this:

Numbers are meaningless, your worth is not determined by the time or attention that some popular blogger or artist or musician gives you. You don’t NEED to be anything more than you. You should never stop striving to improve yourself, and growing is always a great thing; but you don’t need to be “more” you are enough.

#If I said something really stupid forgive me and my tired ass

[taltos-seidmadr]

I was tagged in a “Answer questions, tag people” thing by @apocalypticglitter so now I must oblige my civic duty! Thank you for tagging me!

Answer 17 questions (+1 because 18 is my favourite number) and tag 17 people (if you can)

Nickname: Sithi Sun sign: Sagittarius Height: I’m like... Three stacked cans of whoop ass. In a trench coat huge sweater. Hogwarts House: the valid one aka. Hufflepuff (Don’t @ me) Last thing I googled: BULL FROGS?! This is @mkingamess ‘s fault. I was curious how big they really are Favourite musicians: UHHHMM this is a super hard question for me to answer tbh cause my taste in music fluctuates daily. I will give a shoutout to some musicians/albums that I can think off the top of my head and imo don’t get enough recognition:

If you are into industrial metal/EDM type of shit, Hatari is really fucking lit. Some may know them from the Eurovision already. I just accidentally stumbled into them via the Discover Weekly on Spotify like half a year before the competition

The Magic Got Killed by Too Tangled - literally the two most attractive voices in the world, listening to this always makes me feel painfully bisexual

The self titled and only album of Fear and the Nervous System is is a curious experience. I have literally never heard anyone in my life sing with as much harrowing intensity and passion as this singer, to the point that I don’t even know if I would call it singing anymore... but it does work and fold into the instrumentals very well, creating a rather unique mood. Genuine “Let me wallow in my depression for an hour before I move on” kind of music. It might click with you, might not. But I do think it’s very underrated. 

Pagans in this corner of tumblr I think would enjoy the shit out of Faun, they got many good songs but my absolute fave is Egil’s Saga

Song stuck in my head: 

Probably best young scrolls track to date. Spits more fire than the Red Mountain, yo. 

Following: around 300 Followers: just passed 1k(?! That’s a lot?! Should I do like, a giveaway or something) 🤔 Amount of sleep: What a weird question... I slept about 7 hours last night. Lucky number(s): 3, 7, 8, 18 Dream job(s): illegal back-alley cyberpunk prosthetics designer/repairman (dont have the qualifications or the technology but one can dream) bog body that starry-eyed semi-feral singers write songs about (possibly attainable?) village cryptid (probably already achieved the status but unfortunately not getting paid for it) artist (I’m doing this one, so hooray!)  Wearing: I’m in my sleepwear already lol. It’s a pair of wide comfy black pants, and a big moss green shirt with a geometric pattern (there used to be gold and silver paint on it but that unfortunately faded out, now it’s just black).  Favourite songs: My answer is same as above really... Idk harrass me in my askbox maybe I will recommend you some songs.  Instruments played: I could play a little guitar at a time, but I’ve forgotten most of it.

Hey, this is only 15! I will add 3 more:

Something that I’m not good at but thoroughly enjoy: Videogames, hands down. My motoric skills and reaction times are less than desirable, lol. Nevertheless I’m a huge gamer and I just love to immerse myself in imaginary worlds. My favourite Halloween costume ever: I once recreated this dress from scratch with a fairly acceptable degree of accuracy My favourite myth of the god(s) I worship (if doesn’t apply, your favourite folk tale): I fear this is going to be an unoriginal answer, but seriously... could anything top Thrymskvidha?

Fun facts:

When I was born, I almost died.

In spite of my entire family being devout Christians, I remember believing in some form of reincarnation at such an early age that I had no business knowing what the word reincarnation even means. I was in fact very convinced at a time that I’m either one of my great-grandparents on my mother’s side, or from the generation before that. (Now that my religion is what it is, honestly I don’t really know if this is true or not. But I thought this back then for some reason.)

I’m left handed.

Before moving to Germany, I sang in choirs my entire life, some of which were fairly professional level, I guess? We would go to international competitions and stuff. 

I don’t know if this was a weird coincidence or the spirit world itself shifted reality around me to protect me, but I somehow never heard the Frozen theme song in its entirety. In my life. Not one time. Not even when it was on the radio non-stop. If I managed to catch it somewhere, it was always when it was just about to end. 

I used to want to be a professional animator, but when I grew up and researched about the profession more, it didn’t seem like it was worth the hassle. Regardless I’m still obsessed with animation, I watch cartoons all the time and I would like to teach myself how to animate even if just on an amateur level. 

I have no idea how to tie a shoe with only one bunny ear. I was taught the two bunny ears method and that’s all I’ve ever known.

Some things that I associate with Loki that have absolutely nothing to do with the lore or anything include snow, a very specific shade of blue, roses, cherry (but only the scent or flavor, not the fruit) and various forms of iridescence.

Like probably all kids who are into metal, I also dreamed of becoming a rockstar a little bit, but more interestingly, in my fantasy I was going to be blindfolded on stage and I thought that would be my schtick as a performer, for some reason. Of course the cloth would have to be sheer in order for me to be able to see just enough to orient myself on stage. It’s somehow both hilarious and bone-chilling to look back on now, that another and actually kind of obvious solution to the orientation issue never occurred to me on my own

The green shirt mentioned above is the only green piece of clothing I own.

I don’t believe in astrology. :/ (Sorry...?) 

When I was a kid, I entered a nationwide contest to write a faux folk tale and my tale made it to the semifinals. 

The only “what is your favourite” type of question I can give a straightforward answer to is what my favourite book is. It’s The Neverending Story by Michael Ende (who would have thought!)

I knew I was nonbinary my entire life, but I only learned that there is a word for it when I was 25.

Besides my native Hungarian, English, and a little German that I speak, I also learned Japanese and Norwegian (in highschool and during university, respectively) both for 3 years each, and I was on roughly B1 (low intermediate) level in them at my best. I don’t remember much of Japanese, and I only understand a little Norwegian when it’s in front of me to read, but once German is no longer the priority, I would like to relearn them at least a little bit. 

One of my completely useless talents is that if we talk to each other and I have a drink in my hand, I will somehow supernaturally detect it from your brainwaves when you are about to tell a funny joke and will attempt to drink just beforehand. This has happened so often that I can now suppress the instinctive urge to try to swallow the drink halfway wrong and choke on it. If you were planning to assassinate me this way, it would not work.

The reason why 18 is my favourite number is because my life seems to be entwined with it in a weird, almost supernatural way. For example an unnaturally large number of things that are important to me (including my birth) happened on the 18th of a month. 

Since there is no Halloween party I’m going to this year, I don’t have a specific costume but I will definitely take my make up kit regardless and go absolutely feral with it just to be in the Halloween spirit a little bit. 

Whew man... it was really tough to come up with 18. I’m more boring than i thought.

I tag:

@mkingamess @ragnarokfox @forest--walker @quietdedication @spellbookofthelostandfound @ast-heljar @cloudy-skyes @d-em-t @suilebhride @edderkopper

Anyone who wants to fill this out can consider themselves tagged as well. Tag my name in it too so I can read it. 

#sithi's posts

[majingojira]

Monsters of the 20th Century

I had this odd notion.  A (brief) analysis of the origin of various supernatural creatures, as I wondered what ‘new’ monsters/supernatural beings had been created in the 20th century (roughly).   I’ve completed some of the research, and I’d like to share it with you all.  I’m also gonna tag @tyrantisterror because he is one of the more knowledgable people about monsters I know about on tumblr and I’m sure he can correct me a bunch in this!

1. Frankenstein - 1817 - The oldest literary monster and outgrowth of the concept of the Homunculus and Golem as an artificial being.  So pervasive is its reach, western ideas of Tulpa are tainted by it (every time you read about a tulpa ‘going out of control’, that is the influence of Frankenstein). 

2. Dinosaurs - The Dragons of the age of science entered pop culture in 1854 at the latest with the opening of the Crystal Palace Park.  Other prehistoric animals had captured people’s imagination before, and they didn’t start to enter fiction until 1864 (”Journey to the Center of the Earth”) and a short story by C. J. Cutliffe Hyne had an ancient crocodilian in his story “The Lizard” (1898).  Ann early Lost World style adventure, “A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder” by James De Mille in 1888 has the first true dinosaurs in them.  There, Antarctica has a warm spot where prehistoric monsters and a death cult lurk.  In 1901, Frank Mackenzie Savile’s “Beyond the Great South Wall” had a Carnivorous Brontosaurs worshiped by Mayan remnants.  “Panic in Paris” by Jules Lermina had dinosaurs attack a city, but it was published first in France so few saw it.  Finally, we have Conan Doyle in 1912 with “The Lost World” which solidified dinosaurs as a thing in fiction. 

3. The Evolved Man/Mutants - After “The Origin of Species” is published, it wasn’t long until Evolved Men or Mutants started showing up in fiction. “The Coming Race” and (1871), “The Great Romance” (1881).   They are generally big-headed and often have ESP of some sort.  In “Media: A Tale of the Future” (1891), they can control electricity too. It wasn’t until 1928 (”The Metal Man” by Jack Williamson) that Radiation was thrown in as a cause for Mutation.  Cosmic Rays would follow in “The Man Who Evolved” by Edmond Hamilton (1931).  After that, we have “Gladiator” by Philip Gordon Wylie (1930) where we have an engineered “Evolved Man”, and “Odd John” by Olaf Stapeldon which grants us the term “Homo superior” followed by “Slan” by A.E. van Vogt which has Evolved Humans as a persecuted minority.   And with that, everything that makes the X-Men what they are is collected.

3. Man-Eating Tree - First reported in 1874, the idea of man-eating plants grew since then to encompase many monsters, but started as Folklore about ‘Darkest Africa” (Madagascar) in the New York World.  They’d print anything back then.

4. Hyde - While it is tempting to link him to Freudian Psychology, Freud did not publish his work regarding things like the Id until much later (he didn’t even coin “Psychoanalysis” until 1896).  What is springs from, I currently cannot say without more research. 

4. Robot - Though there were automata since the days of the Greeks (Talos), the first Robot in modern fiction is from “The Future Eve” by Auguste Villiers de I’lsle Adam (1886).  THough the term Robot is not invented until 1920 with “Rossum’s Universal Robots.”  They definitely offshoot from Frankenstein, but with a more mechanical bent.  

5. The Grey Alien - The modern idea of an Alien has it’s first antecedents in the 1800s.  Specifically with the essay “Man of the Year 1,000,000″ by H. G. Wells (1892-1893). He speculates what humans will evolve into, and basically invites the Gray by accident.  It wouldn’t achieve it’s alien attachments until much later.

6. Morlocks - With the Evolved Man, there is also the ‘Devolved Man’.  That is what the Morlocks are. They are, as the name implies, tied to Well’s “The Time Machine” (1895), and the word has become a catch-all for subterranean monster-men, be they Mole People, CHUDs, or straight up Demons (’GvsE’). 

7. The Martians & Their War Machines - The First Alien Invader, and the first Mecha can be traced to “War of the Worlds” by H.G. Wells, 1897.  Not much more to say as far as I’m aware.

8. The Mummy - The 1800s saw an Egyptian craze in England, leading to some really nasty habits (google “Mummy Powder” if you need ipecac).  1827 saw “The Mummy!: Or, a Tale of the Twenty-Second Century” which is more a bit of futurism with an ancient protagonist.  Though “Lost in the Pyramid” (1868) by Louisa May Alcott predates it, it is overshadowed by Conan Doyle’s horror story “Lot No. 249″ (1892) which has the classically animated mummy going out and killing people under control of another.  The former is a “Curse” story rather than a monster.

9. Cordyceps - Everyone these days knows the Cordyceps fungus as a great source for making zombies, and I’m lumping that fungus in with these other monsters because, well, fungus’ that take over humans is a monster of the 20th century.  Best known for Toho’s film adaptation “Matango” (1963), it is inspired by a short story from 1907 by William Hope Hodgson called “The Voice in the Night”.  There, the poor victim doesn’t realize they’ve completely become a fungus monster, acting as a warning for those near the island.    

10. Aerofauna - Conan Doyle strikes again with “The Horror of the Heights” (1912).  A pretty tight little horror story of a whole ecosystem high above our heads in the clouds.  Many a sky tentacle owes its existence to this one.

11. Lich - Possibly derived from Kosechi the Deathless of Russian folklore, the idea of undead sorcerers became a staple of the works of Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, and Clark Ashton Smyth, dating back to 1929.  Though Gary Gigax coined the idea together for D&D and based it on Gardner Fox’s “The Sword of the Sorcerer (1969)

12. Bigfoot and The Loch Ness Monster - I lump these cryptids together, because (thanks to a ton of research by Daren Naish, Daniel Loxton,  Donald R. Prothero, and others) we can trace them back to the same source: King Kong (1933).  The idea of prehistoric animals being out in the world in hidden places goes back to Conan Doyle’s “Lost World” (1912), but Kong made it widely popular.  And between the giant ape and the Brontosaurus attack (and the timing of sightings picking up), we can blame Kong for this.

13. The Great Old Ones - Lovecraft’s primary contribution to fiction first appear in “The Call of Cthulhu” (1926) and expand upon from here.  As near as I can tell, he made a LOT of monsters.  These include “Ancient Aliens” & Shoggoths (1936 - “At the Mountains of Madness”), Gillmen (1931 - ”The Shadow over Innsmouth”), & The Colour Out of Space (1927).  14. The Thing - The Ultimate Shapeshifter.  It first appears in 1938′s “Who Goes There” by John W. Campbell, Jr.  Though Campbell's square-jawed heroes literally tear the Thing to bits, it reached its zenith of horror in adaptation.  I can think of no earlier shapeshifting humanoids of such variety at an earlier time, or of such fecundity. 

15. The Amazons - The Amazons do indeed come from Ancient Greece, but it was a way for the Greeks to rag on Women.  It wasn’t until later that women co-opted the image of the Amazons as a source of empowerment, and that was codified in 1942 with one character: Wonder Woman. She helped spark the Amazons further into the culture, or at least, Amazon women who have superpowers (as they did in those early stories).  From there, we get a more recent direct descendant that was part of the reason I started this list: Slayers from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”

16. The Hobbit - Though ideas of ‘Wee Folk” are part of worldwide Folklore, Tolkien took them out of the realm of Faerie, and made them... idyllic middle-class Englishmen with his 1937 book of the same name.  With the Lord of the Rings following in 1954-1955.  His works also gave us other monsters and supernatural beings: Orcs, Ents, & Balrogs. 

17. Gremlins - An Evolution of the wee folk once again, this time adapted for the mechanical era and of a more malicious bent. It became slang in the 1920s, with the earliest print source being from 1929.   They were popularized by Roald Dahl in”The Gremlins” (1942).  Later they were used to vex Bugs Bunny (1943′s “Falling Hare”), and then they got their own movies in the 1980s.  The rest is history.  

18. Triffids - There are a LOT of fictional plants out there, and a lot of carnivorous ones, but the Triffids were the first to be extremely active in their pursuit of prey.  From 1952′s “Day of the Triffids” by John Wyndham, the story is a keen example of the ‘Cozy Apocalypse’ common in British Fiction, sort of like the whole ‘schoolboys on a desert island make well of it’ thing that “Lord of the Flies” railed against. This paved the way for everything from Audrey II to Biollante.

19. Kaiju - 1954.  You know what this is.  Between Primordial Gods and Modern Technology, the Kaiju are born.  The difference between a Kaiju and a Giant Monster is a complex nuanced one, sort of like what makes film noir. But, in general, if the story has Anti-War, Anti-Nationalist, and/or Anti-Corporate Greed leanings, it’s probably a Kaiju movie.  If not, then it probably isn’t.

20. The Body Snatchers - Another horror of 1954 from the novel “The Body Snatchers” (1955), which includes aspects that the movie “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” did not.  Like that the Duplicates only last 5 years and basically exist to wipe out sentient beings with each planet they infest.  Clearly drawing from the idea of the Doppelganger, these Pod People have evolved into a new form.

21. The Blob - That 1958 movie has one catchy theme song.  The whole thing was inspired by an instance of “Star Jelly” in Pennsylvania, circa 1950.  It was tempting to shift this under the Shoggoth, but I think they are distinct enough.

22. Gargoyles - Longtime architectural embellishments, they did not become their own “Being” until 1971 with “The Living Gargoyle” published in Nightmare #6.  The TV Movie “Gargoyles” came soon after in 1972, firmly establishing the monster.  Though it was likely perfected in the TV Series “Gargoyles” (1994). 

23. D&D - From 1973 Through 1977, D&D was formulated and many of its key monsters were invented.  Partly as mechanics ways to screw with players and keep things lively.  This brought us Rust Monsters (1973), Mindflayer (1974), Beholder (1975), and the Gelatinous Cube (1977). 

24. The Xenomorph - Parasitoid breeding is applied to humans to wonderfully horrible effect in the 1979 film “Alien”.  It became iconic as soon as it appeared. 

25. Slasher - The first slasher film is often considered to be ‘Psycho’ (though the Universal Mummy films beyond the first prototype the formula).  The idea of an undead revenant coming back to kill rather randomly started in the film “The Fog” (1980), but was codified by Jason Voorhees in either 1984 or 1986.   I am no expert on this one, though, so I am not fully certain.

26. The Dream Killer - Freddy Krueger first appeared as a killer in dreams in 1981, but there were other dream killers before him.  They could only kill with extreme fear, though.  Freddy got physical!  I think.  Again, more research is needed.

27. Chupacabras - This is another cryptid inspired by a movie.  In this case, “Species” (1995). No, really.  This is what it comes from.   I know a lot of these are really short down the line, but the research for this one is thorough and concise! 

28. Slender Man - The Boogieman for the Internet Age.  An icon of Creepypastas and emblem of them.

Needs More Research: The Crow/Heroic Longer-Term Revenants, Immortals as a “Group” (might go to Gulliver's Travels, but I’m trying to track Highlander here) are also on the list, but they are proving extremely difficult to research, so I thought I’d post what I have at the moment.  Shinigami might also be on the list since they are syncretic adoption of the Grim Reaper into something more.

#Monsters #Folklore #Fiction #Frankenstein #Mr. Hyde #Mummy #Aliens #Morlock #Alien #Martian #War of the Worlds #matangeshwara temple #Dinosaurs #Aerofauna #Robot #Gremlin #Old Ones #Cthulhu #Tolkein #Lovecraft #Lich #Gargoyles #Loch Ness #Bigfoot #king kong #Kaiju #Amazon #Buffy the Vampire Slayer #D&D #Slasher