#deface them it’s what the characters would want

[scarlettshazam]

You can use the books in the Train Track Princes universe as coloring books

I encourage it, in fact

#buy my books I’m gay #deface them it’s what the characters would want #books #queer author #queer books #lgbt books #lgbtqia #lgbt #lgbt author

[euryalex]

Baldur's Gate 3 Tav Ask List

May contain spoilers!! Please reblog!

• Origin & Class 1. What is their backstory and why did you choose it? 2. What is their class (+ subclass) and why did you choose it? 3. Do they multiclass? Why (not)? 4. Is there a reason why your Tav starts out as Level 1? 5. Does your Tav have family members? Are they close? 6. Does your Tav have any friends from their past? Are they still friends? 7. Does your Tav have connections to other characters (I.e.: NPCs)? 8. Where did your character live before the events of the game? 9. Does your Tav have a different class/race/origin than in the game? (I.e.: Your Tav is Aasimar, fisherman backstory ...) 10. What was your Tav like as a child?

• Prologue 11. What goes through your Tav's head when they wake up on the Nautiloid? Are they scared or do they push those feelings aside to focus on escaping? 12. How does your Tav feel about Us? Did they free them, maim them or leave them behind? 13. What was your Tav's first reaction to Lae'Zel? 14. What was your Tav's first reaction to Shadowheart? 15. Does your Tav use their Arcana knowledge to free Shadowheart or do they use the rune found in the next room? 16. Does your Tav help the mindflayer against Commander Zhalk or do they run straight to the helm? 17. Does your Tav's starting armor reflect them? If not, what would they wear instead? 18. If you could, would your Tav see any of the other companions? If so, how would they react? 19. What's your Tav's personality like at the start of the game? Does it change as the game goes on? 20. Finally, what does your Tav feel as the Nautiloid crashes? Are they scared? Are they thinking of a way to survive?

• Act 1 21. Which companion do you get first? If you get Shadowheart first no matter what, who's the second one? 22. What is your Tav's first impression of the other companions (Astarion, Gale, Karlach, Wyll ...) 23. What's their opinion of Emerald Grove? Do they help the tieflings or side with the druids? 24. How does your Tav feel about Mol and her friends? 25. What does your Tav think of Aradin? 26. What does your Tav think of the Raphael? 27. Does your Tav adopt Scratch and the Owlbear cub? Did you name him? 28. What does your Tav think of Auntie Ethel? What do they tell Mayrina? 29. What does your Tav do about the Goblin camp? Do they free Halsin or side with Minthara? What's their opinion of them? 30. Who does your Tav think of when they go to sleep at the goblin/tiefling party? Or are they lucky and do they get to spend the night with the person they want? 31. What does your Tav think of the Underdark and the Myconids? 32. Does your Tav help Glut or do they fight him? 33. Do you bring the potion ingredients to Omeluum and, if so, did you drink it? Did you barter for his ring? 34. Does your Tav react to the Sussur flower (Sorcerer) or how would they react if it affected them? 35. Do they deliver Nere's head to the Myconids and save the slaves? 36. Did your Tav fight the Forge Protector? How did the fight go for them? 37. Did your Tav go to Creche Y'llek? Did they know something was up with the healer? 38. Did your Tav deface the portrait of Vlaakith? 39. Did your Tav get the Blood of Lathandar? 40. Did your Tav agree to kill the Guardian or did they go talk to them instead?

• Act 2 41. Which way did they take? Did they run into Elminster? What was their opinion of his news for Gale? 42. How does your Tav react to the shadow curse? Are they scared of the dark? 43. What does your Tav think of Jaheira and the Harpers? 44. What does your Tav think of Isobel? 45. Does your Tav help Mol win against Raphael? 46. Does your Tav help Astarion make a deal with Raphael? 47. Does your Tav help Markus or do they warn Isobel? 48. Does your Tav steal the moonlantern from Kar'Niss or do they fight him? 49. How does your Tav react to Ketheric Thorm? What about his family (Gerringothe Thorm, Malus Thorm ...)? 50. Does your Tav save the tieflings & gnomes? 51. What does your Tav think of the Gauntlet of Shar? 52. What does your Tav think of Dame Aylin? 53. Did your Tav help Art Cullagh? 54. What did your Tav tell Arabella about her parents? 55. Did your Tav reunite with Us? 56. What did your Tav think of the Mindflayer colony? 57. Did your Tav free Zevlor? Did they free Mizora? 58. Did your Tav complete the Brain Node puzzle? 59. Did you use the Minds you find on the head near the brain node puzzle? 60. Did you clear Moonrise Towers of the shadow curse?

• Act 3 61. How does your Tav feel about Baldur's Gate? Is it their home? Is it their first time in the city? 62. What's their first impression when they enter Rivington? 63. If Shadowheart got a new haircut, how does your Tav react? 64. What does your Tav do with the trapped kids' toys? 65. Does your Tav go to the circus? Do they like the activities? 66. Does your Tav help with the murder investigation? 67. Does your Tav meet Tara? What's their opinion? 68. What does your Tav do with the Mindflayer in the windmill? 69. Does your Tav run into Orin? If so, what's their first opinion? 70. Does your Tav make a deal with Raphael? 71. Does your Tav 'spend time' at Sharess' Caress? 72. How does your Tav enter the city? 73. Do they free Florrick? 74. What do they do at Gortash' coronation? 75. What does your Tav do with the serial killer running rampant? 76. Does your Tav tell Dame Aylin about Lorroaken? Do they help her fight him? 77. Does your Tav go to the House of Hopes? If so, do they sleep with Haarlep? 78. Does your Tav help the Wavemother? 79. Does your Tav rescue the prisoners in the Iron Throne? 80. Does your Tav free the slaves from Steel Watch Foundry? Do they side with the Gondians or with Wulbren? 81. If you saved Oskar in Act 1, did you meet him again? If so, did you help him? Did you side with the Mystic Carrion or with Thrumbo? 82. What does your Tav do with the Counting House robbery? 83. Does your Tav reunite with Mayrina? Do they fight Auntie Ethel? Do they save Vanra? 84. Does your Tav find all of Dribbles' body parts? 85. Who did Orin abduct from your party? 86. Did your Tav complete the trial of Bhaal? 87. Did your Tav side with Gortash or did they agree to kill him for Orin? 88. Does your Tav successfully resist the Nether Brain? 89. Does your Tav side with the Emperor or do they free Orpheus? Do they become Illithid to use the Nether Stones or does one of their companions do it? Do they give the Nether Stones to the Emperor/Orpheus? 90. Do they betray the Emperor/Orpheus/their companions for the Absolute?

• Epilogue 91. Does your Tav get a happily ever after? 92. Where does your Tav end up after defeating/siding with the Nether Brain? 93. What do you think happens to the party, afterwards? Do they go for drinks? Do they go their separate ways? 94. Years after the game, what do you think your Tav is up to? 95. What do you think of your Tav's development throughout the game? If you compared them to who they were at the start, what would be different?

• Companions 96. Does Lae'Zel remain loyal to Vlaakith, or does she follow Orpheus? Or neither? 97. Does Astarion kill Cazador? Does he remain a vampire spawn or does he complete the ritual? 98. What does Gale want? The crown for himself? For Mystra? Or has he given up on chasing power? 99. Did Wyll get freed from Mizora? Did he save his father? 100. Did Karlach get upgraded? Did she turn Illithid? Did she return to Avernus? If so, did Tav join her, or Wyll, or both? 101. Did your Tav recruit Minsc? What's their opinion of him? 102. Did Shadowheart turn to Selûne or did she remain loyal to Shar? Did she free her parents or let them go? 103. Did Tav help Jaheira with the Harpers? 104. Who did your Tav romance? How did this romance develop throughout the game? What happened at the end?

105. Anything you want to say about your Tav! Give a random headcanon, answer a random question, say whatever you want!

#Baldur's Gate 3 #Baldur's Gate 3 Spoilers #BG3 Spoilers #Ask list #OC Ask list #long post sorry

[utilitycaster]

on Laura's characters

This has been rattling around for a bit, and I've notably been pretty critical of how Laura's characters have been treated by the fandom, and I think a lot of the discussion of Imogen, overlaid with the discussion of Vex during TLOVM, has put it into to focus for me:

Laura plays characters that allow her to explore a lot of very selfish or self-serving behaviors, as well as the dark side of selflessness. This is, in my opinion, one of the very last lines people are squeamish about female characters crossing - and it's across the board, too. People who are comfortable with supporting women's wrongs often balk at supporting women's uglier, smaller choices, particularly for women who are otherwise portrayed as heroic. Sacrifice is still seen in a lot of women-centric media as the greatest gesture, and works where women are unabashedly self-serving are harder to find. It's why Delilah's nonstop villainy in the name of love gets a pass, but few people look head on at Vex's petty cruelty to Keyleth.

Vex is an incredibly selfish person. She is also unique among Laura's characters in realizing this about herself, and not liking it very much. It's mostly sympathetic - what are D&D shopkeepers but opportunities to haggle and ask weird questions, and Vex's anxieties about money are very justified - but less so when it comes to her possessiveness of Vax. It's very understandable that she feels protective and possessive towards him, but that doesn't negate her unkindness. Vex pressures Keyleth to the point of tears at least once (granted, it was a difficult day for everyone) and pushes at Vax as well, to the point where it causes a small but definite rift between them. At worst, this selfishness - this desire to have Vax for herself - is turned into jealousy of Vax, rather than of Keyleth, so that it can be reframed as in the name of romantic love (which is considered a more acceptable form of selfishness than familial, but that's for someone far wiser than I to unpack). However, even when that doesn't happen, it's often glossed over. The same is true for Vex stealing the broom. It's fine if you disagree with the alignment change decision - I don't particularly care for it - and Laura certainly didn't deserve hate for taking the item of a character who would never show up again. But it is a purely self-centered choice. She wants to fly, she sees a way to do so, and she takes the broom of an ally and lies about it. There's no in-game justification for this being anything but selfish, and it says a lot about her character that she does it, but the things it says are messy and difficult. I don't think you can appreciate Vex's full arc without understanding that it is her pushing past this selfishness. Holding grudges is perhaps the most selfish act of all, of keeping all that hurt to yourself and never granting forgiveness. "Sineath" is about a lot of things, but that is one of them.

Jester is much less selfish when it comes to material things, but she is, especially early on, frequently inconsiderate or insensitive. It comes from a place that is devoid of malice, but definitely does not think through the ramifications for others. This shows up when she's dismissive of sums of money that are immense for Caleb but mean little to her, or her willingness to deface temples despite the risk. However, Jester is, far more, an exploration of the darker side of selflessness. What does someone feel, when they think they must constantly be a light to those around them? Where do their frustrations come out? We see that it weighs on Jester in how difficult she finds it to balance the responsibilities and demands of Artagan during Traveler Con, and again, when she becomes aware of the potential self-sacrifice needed in Eiselcross. Vex had to learn to let go of Vax and her grudges and her need for approval from people who would never give it; Jester has to learn to start taking and putting herself first.

And then there's Imogen. Vex and Jester's selfishness was tempered by their extroversion and empathy, which at times makes it easier to ignore. While they may have self-interests, and struggle to regulate what they do or do not give (in different directions), they do, in the end, like people on the whole. Imogen does not. It's understandable, given the stress they put on her, but her powers and her judgement mean that she is a lot less able to create boundaries between them and herself. As a result, when she lets herself become closer to people, she doesn't recognize when treating her friends as a sounding board might be hurtful or insulting to them. This comes out notably in her repeated consideration of the Vanguard's position. It's fascinating because it can be seen as her trying to understand other people, especially her mother and the members of the Vanguard we've seen. There is legitimate hurt behind Tuldus, Ludinus, Liliana, and Otohan's motivations; but the person to talk over this with is not Orym, whose husband and father-in-law were innocent collateral damage to these plans, nor Laudna, who was murdered by Otohan.

I think people really shy away from the dark sides of all of these characters. People tend to focus on Vex's competence, Jester's role as the heart and light in the party, and Imogen's trauma, without realizing these are all perpetuated by that exploration of selfishness and selflessness. But given how central this is to all three of these characters, I think this is also why the fandom is often so quick to turn on them - they do not want to face how much Vex cares about her father and Vax, or how what Jester needs is not unconditional support nor concrete instructions, but honesty and a willingness to listen, or that Imogen has the capacity to do great harm to those she loves and does so, but these are all major parts of those characters. Ignoring that is how people believe Vex's arc is underserved; it's not, but you can only see it if you are willing to admit who she is at the start. It's easier for them to consider a Jester frozen in the early part of the campaign than the far more emotionally mature woman she becomes because of what it says about selfishness.

Imogen is interesting, because I've actually seen far more arguments of her as a complete monster than those absolving her. If Imogen becomes more unsure at Orym's words and needs a complete lack of judgment to come around that makes her truly heartless and unfeeling, rather than someone who has an understandably if unintentionally cold and strange way of understanding thoughts vs. words. vs. actions. I suspect this is because both Imogen herself, and the fandom, have less of a grasp on Imogen as her own person. And, to be fair, this is true of the fandom's perception of Vex and Jester; they just had better in-universe senses of self. But I'm interested in seeing if the perception of Imogen shifts back to how it was prior to episode 48, which is a more consistent discomfort with the way she puts herself first.

#cr tag #imogen temult #vex'ahlia #jester lavorre

[mellowwillowy]

Detective I (fatui)

Yandere Fatui (?)x ?? Reader (their gender is confusing, see more on notes)

(feel free to insert whoever you want but I'll go with every Fatui in my tags bcs I'm nuts)

(OC version's link is ⬇️⬇️⬇️)

Notes : reader's gender is ambiguous until the end, sometimes perceived as a man, a woman, or just neither. Also it won't be a trivial matter if reader is understood and identified but hey, it's what they are feeling.

Warnings : major character death, yan got killed and defaced (details details, it's bloody), yan and reader are delusional in the end, reader is forced to eat their favorite animal, reader is drugged, fucked up term of love overall, intercourse, angst?? Yan will show up in the end of the story retelling (read summarizing) the whole past,

separate details for each harbingers (bundled)

For those who might complain :

Reader is AMAB, the mention of period is to ticks reader off. Also one word, Umineko.

___________________________________________

"ᵀʰᵉⁿ ᴵ ˢʰᵃˡˡ ˡᵒᵛᵉ ʸᵒᵘ ᵗᵒᵒ, ᵐʸ ᵈᵉᵃᵈ ᵈᵒᵛᵉ"

Hitting the keys of the typewriter at random, your fingernails are completely well-trimmed in a sense now. No, it would make even more sense to say that your nails have been scrapped from typing over and over. The scripts that would always be read by someone despite being filled with nothing but gibberish is now lying all over the floors. The current scripts contained the Truth of your heart. The person who'll always read it for you is in fact, dead and defaced. After all, you've been taught by them about love. This is love. They taught you so. Ahh, from where should we start? Let's start with our first board.

___________________________________________

i. Window

Snow. Everywhere. It covers the ground outside from the window into white. It'll leave footprints if you were to walk out. But it doesn't matter when you can't even leave this room, this cell. What starts with an exchange of conversations turned into the downfall of your whole existence. Had you known about this you would have avoided involving yourself with them. But God didn't let you. God only watched you fall into their grip, broken into pieces with your limbs toyed with and moved by them as though you were nothing but a marionette. God is cruel and yet he is also unforgiving, you thought. It's a shame that the subject of God's madness was you and not someone else.

"Longing for the outside world won't do you any good, dove"

They walk into your room with a tray of the bowl with steam coming out of it. They smile at you as they place the bowl on the table. You don't have to guess what the content inside the bowl is anymore. It's a dead animal for you to eat, this time it's all boiled into a soup. An animal you are familiar with because you are so fond of them, and now, they'll forcefully shove it down your throat as proof of love. You hold your stomach. It still makes you feel sick. The thought of them living inside your guts, it's unbearable.

At least they are not heartless enough to kill your pet.

To call it a pet wouldn't be the right term. It wanders into your room one day with a tag on them. You knew they were going to be killed for you to feast again but after they saw you played with it, they decided to let you keep it. It's only a pet because they acknowledge it to be so.

"I won't take what I've given you, and that pet of yours would be the proof"

Now, they slowly bring a spoonful of the soup into your lip after blowing the steam away. You know better than to stay persistent because hell, they are even much more persistent. Slowly, you open your mouth to swallow down the soup, it tastes like herbs you thought to yourself although another foreign taste is always there to invade your guts, scrunching it into disgust. This goes on and on until you finish everything up, having you clenching your stomach in confusion. Are you disgusted? Are you terrified? Are you mad? Are you... feeling normal about everything?

"Oh, my dove, my chimera... you truly are the only one I'll fancy for eternity..."

Chimera. Chimera they said. How ironic of them to call you a chimera when you are under their grasp already? Or perhaps you are not in their eyes? The all-seeing eyes that could unveil what's going on with your body, can't understand that they've had you under their grasp?

"I actually plan to use this today but let's not do it today hm? It's that time of the month again"

A bottle of aphrodisiac in their hand. For what? It's clear as the day already. But even so, you hate the fact that they have to press the 'that time of the month' to your face when you, as a matter of fact, will never be able to get that. They know that better than anyone. They are the ones who unveil the truth after all. This body is cursed in every way.

"But even so, a company wouldn't hurt. Let's head to bed now, dove"

Pantalone, Pierro, Capitano, Arlecchino

Doesn't mean to remind you of your old life as a woman. Only wishes for you to feel more like one by playing along with the period-time.

Childe, Dottore, Scaramouche

Only one word, a menace. Said that line just to tick you off. To remind you of your hopelessness with your own body and identity so that you break down even more.

Columbina, Sandrone, Rosalyne, Tsaritsa

Understands how you've been living as a woman until now and instead of playing along like the first one, they are actually very natural? about this. Will give you all the kinds of things that will soothe down your imaginary cramps instead of just, "oh you are on your period"

ii. Mystery Novel

In your hand is a novel, a mystery novel that was bought by them for you to kill time with. The riddles in it never fail to fascinate you. Truth after truth, piercing the lies into nothingness with the Culprit executed in the ending, whether figuratively or literally. Whenever you start reading it, your whole world shifts into one that is akin to the novel itself. You are the Detective and you are here to solve the riddles posed by the Writer.

But is the Writer truly just the Writer? One who only writes fictitious tales?

Looking back at yourself, you can also be the Detective in this world, reality. The riddle? Them. The detective? You. The Culprit? Them. Yes, with just a much more distorted view of reality, you'd be able to see them as a character from a novel, solving the riddles of 'what are their motives?'. Yes, by just wrapping an imaginary veil around your eyes, one that'll allow you to see everything as a riddle and plot, you'd be able to play as an actress, the Detective.

"I'm back, my dove"

Yes, the play begins now. This room is no longer a cell but instead, a stage of a theatre with lights following you and them. It's time for the Detective to reason and solve the riddle in front of them.

".... Welcome back, enigma"

iii. Typewriter

Today too, you type endlessly without anything in your mind. Gibberish. Almost none forms a word at all. Your eyes empty as your fingers play eagerly. Nevertheless, they'll always read it, drowning themself in your scripts. A plotless script, an unreadable curse, or a poem blocked by a language barrier?

"Today too, you write magnificently"

They say with an earnest smile plastered on their face. The face that says they understand everything despite the scripts only showing gibberish. How can they understand it when you yourself can't even understand it? How are you supposed to solve the riddle when you can't even understand yourself? Why does it feel so.. reversed now?

"Ah, I love this part the most"

They point at a word, a readable word. You examine the word, yes, examine. It takes you a while before you look back at them. This is not the first time they point at a word. How many times have they pointed it out? You are not sure, you don't want to remember it. But it's not the same for them. For them, it's a string of a curse. If they could combine it then it'll mark the end for them. A riddle for them.

"I'm looking forward to the next answer, dove"

It's ridiculous. Answer? You were only typing mindlessly and yet they consider it as a riddle? Your whole life has been a riddle itself. Perhaps you are just annoyed at how the Culprit in front of you is taking your role as the Detective. Yes, that's the only logical conclusion you can come up with, a reasoning. You too are looking forward to the next answer.

Pantalone, Pierro, Columbina, Capitano

The scripts are hidden by them whenever they finished reading them, placing them inside the bottle of wine. The bottles that are filled with your scripts are hidden somewhere inside the room that will be found by you in the end.

Childe, Sandrone, Rosalyne

The scripts that have a word in them are framed and nailed onto the wall, allowing them to read them freely whenever they wish to. Has a wall full of framed scripts.

Dottore, Capitano, Arlecchino

Will compile all the scripts into some sort of book for them to read when they are bored. It allows them to study the way you are typing even more in a way. Will slip in flower at the page where it shows certain words.

iv. Intercourse

The disgusting dinner has been laced with aphrodisiacs. You can feel your body heating up, twitching at every contact your skin made with. This is, of course, heading to bed and a make-out session will break out again.

"If I don't use this, you won't be able to feel any pleasure at all, dove"

Is it a woman's body, or a man's body instead? Either way, that doesn't shut the possibility of someone being able to feel pleasure by being touched right? They want you to feel how they feel, alas making you gulp down the aphrodisiac. With just a light touch from them, a whimper falls out of your mouth. The night is far from over, you thought to yourself. Unbuttoning what's covering your chest, only reveals a chest that a man would have, and yet what's down there is never one that an assigned male at birth would have. It would make sense if you are only 'flat' in a rare way but the fact that your period never came is enough to shut the possibility of you being a woman.

A body that can't even love someone completely and yet, they wrap their arms around your body in a way that shows their earnest love toward you. Maybe to simplify it, a body that can't even give love for them. A body that can't even be identified. And yet, they stare at it longingly, clouded with adoration and lust at the same time.

"Ah... this is the body, of the person I'll love for eternity..."

Unnecessary NSFW (pls skip minors or if you are not OK with it) but hey; I can team Pantalone, Scaramouche, Childe, Arlecchino, and Columbina going down there with your prostate while Capitano, Pierro, Rosalyne, Sandrone, and Tsaritsa being the sensual one

?. Devices and Plans

(Feel free to skip this part, it's mostly about the details of the plan)

Another script. Another investigation. Another plate of what you love for dinner. Another bottle of aphrodisiac. It's repeating to the point that it's sickening. Clues, you need clues. There's no narrator, no spectator, no observer, no system, no nothing to guide you. The Writer, the Master, the Game Master, is not here to guide you toward the answer to this accursed riddle.

The large line of everything would be first, they kidnapped you, second, they want you to love them, third, they say they haven't gotten what they want which is you.

In terms of you being in a mystery novel, this progress is ridiculously frustrating and boring. It's repetitive. You can't find any clues at all. What are their motives? There's nothing that stands out from you at all to attract them. What do they mean by chimera? It's irritating when they call you that, as though something inside you is howling whenever they call you that. It's suffocating. You need to find a way out, forget about all these riddles, it's time to play with violence. In this room are only a typewriter, an enigma, and furniture. Swinging furniture at them who can just overpower you and expect to win? A pie in the sky bullshit. The window? No luck in breaking them open. The door is always locked. No hidden or secret passage, a perfectly locked and closed room.

But, you know you have a chance against them. Inside the closet is a box of a flintlock. It's not like you are not familiar with it at all, in fact, you are well-versed in it. There is no problem with it at all, you can even guarantee it works perfectly without ever trying it. The only problem lies in how to shoot them. It would be hard to shoot them off guard with how you have to reach out to the flintlock first.

It's impossible for you to hide it in your clothing's pocket for they'll always wrap their whole body around you which allows them to notice it.

It's impossible for you to just place it on the table and let them see it. They'll confiscate it the moment they see it.

The only chance you have is to hide it somewhere reachable and time everything well. They can notice every movement you make which makes things even harder for you. Their head will turn to you for every movement you make. There's no way they'll just let you shoot their brains out. You may be fast but they are just as fast as you too. Their reflexes would be good, in fact, they'd be able to dodge any kind of tricks you show them. But, in the end, it's nothing but a gamble.

Although your pet (doesn't matter its size) can help you as a distraction for them. To buy you just a second is already a generous donation from them. You are fast, just as fast as them but in strength? There's no hope for you at all. Nevertheless, you are not going to sit here being an incompetent actress.

A man has to take risks sometimes. It's time to spin the roulette of your fate. You are incompetent as a detective but that doesn't mean you are incompetent as an actress.

You only switch your role from the Detective to a Murderer, that's all.

v. Miracles

Another show of them reading your script, another show of them shoving the remnants of what you love into your throat, another show of both of your bodies linking to each other. Today too, all of that will happen again with the exception of a bottle of ink on the table.

"I've been buying you lots of those brand new clothing for you, dove. Let me show it to you"

It's now or never. The moment they turn their back to get the bags, you already walk to the table and grab the ink and keep it inside your pocket. They've 'checked' you so their suspicion about you hiding something inside your pocket decreases. Just as you suspected, they immediately turn back to look at you, a shame you are just as fast as they would be when it's time to dirty their hand. You too are about to dirty your hand with their blood.

"What's wrong, dove?"

Your pet comes just right in time, distracting them for a split second until you splash the ink right onto their face. Is it a miracle that they didn't dodge it?

Something is off. You can sense it. Something is

The ink invades their eyesight immediately just like you expected. What you expected for them to fight back is completely crushed down when all they did is just wobble around. Their hand never leave their eyes, giving you lots of openings to attack them. And so you did, you take the flintlock that you hide under the bed and shoot them.

You shoot at their thigh instead of busting their brain immediately.

They stumble down onto the carpeted floor while trying their best to regain their vision back. The next moment they open their eyes, they are greeted by you straddling their limp body with the flintlock in your hand.

"You noticed that there's no fountain pen lying around the table, no?"

Their eyes widen at your statement. True they've noticed how odd it was for a bottle of ink in the middle of the table without its companion, a fountain pen and a paper. Now, seeing the glint coming from your left hand, they know where the pen is now. You punch down at them with the pen in between your fingers, grazing their cheek. They didn't dodge at all and in fact, it was you yourself who dodge for them.

"The flintlock too, there's no way you'd just forget about it and let it stays inside my room. You are someone who'll always check my closet and it's almost impossible for you to not notice that foreign box"

There's only one possible reason for this, they purposely left it wide open for you to see and use.

And yet why do they look so dazed at your statement?

Their eyes travel to the object in your right hand. A flintlock.

"... I don't remember seeing that flintlock anymore though? It's been ages since I've seen it, the last time I saw it was when you were still **?"

Now it's your turn to feel confused. Not because of the statement of them not being the ones who leave it inside your closet, but rather their words that indicate a past relationship you two once had. When you were still **? Despite being able to just shove you away, they stay still on the floor, never nudging you away as though they are immobile.

"Dove, what's wrong-"

They are silenced immediately when you press the flintlock against their forehead. Your face is pale with sweats dropping down, horror washes your whole features, disbelief evident in your widening eyes. Your mind is no longer clear, what's supposed to be your objective? To kill them for kidnapping and breaking you down mentally? To execute the Culprit for you are the Detective? Or...

"... the last script's line was 'Ending the Hell'"

Word?

"It's a string of curses just like I expected. Despite typing everything at random, your deepest thought manages to flow out and form a word from the string"

the infinite monkey theorem? No.. it's not, at least yet

"Sure it's not a tale but rather, a hatred in the middle of your cry of agony, begging for someone to save you"

How long has it been since the last time you cried out for someone to save you? It was terrifying, the first month they broke you down was hell. You are entirely unfamiliar with it, alas making you wail nonstop. And another way for you to express your emotions is by typing like a madman on the typewriter, mindless about what you are trying to tell.

"And would you believe it if I relish in the feelings of reading that all? The you who can't even understand anything but just focus on your feelings?"

You can't understand anything anymore.

"To simplify everything, first, I did not even know that the flintlock still exists until today. Second, it seems like your mind can't keep up with your insanity anymore again, ____"

No one will save you. You have to save yourself. You convince yourself over and over to kill them before they

"Had I not dragged you myself, you would have solved the epitaph and found out about the one Truth"

The first hit with the flintlock lands on their face. With each hit you give them, it still doesn't stop them from talking their way out.

"That day, I visited you and you were playing with your flintlock that was given by the Master of the manor, as usual, shooting at the cup lining up in front of you"

You can't remember anything at all.

"Then, I just so happen to stroll around your manor when I met the master of the house talking with Lea's mother"

Lea? Her name does sound familiar.

"Would you believe it when I overheard them saying how that lady has to take you in as their legitimate child?"

Your hand works even faster now and yet they never dodge your hits. Your eyes dilate in horror and fear.

"Long story short, the lady was horrified by this news. Oh how funny it was for you to be pushed down twice from the cliff"

Your head starts throbbing in pain.

"It truly is a shame, I couldn't do anything to prevent that hag from pushing you down, and yet, some sort of miracle happened. You survived"

Surely the Witch of Miracles might have truly despised you to save you that day. If this were to be some kind of theatre show then you can see 2 narrators commenting on their statement with eagerness. Who won't be when both the actors are currently ascending to the great truth?

"You fell into the river and your body was tended by the people around there"

Everything snaps back to you now. Ah, you remember who they are now.

vi. Execution

They won't stop smiling as their words flow out of their mouth despite all the pain of having their face beaten over and over. They've probably swallowed some of their teeth but who cares? Even they themself don't care, in fact, they are very happy with the fact that 'you've finally loved them'. Each word you hear from them means having the pain inside your head grows even more unbearable for you. Their hands never leave your hips, and one of their eyes stares into yours with adoration, of how beautifully broken you are inside. The truth must have pierced your heart in half.

The Detective showed the Culprit the truth.

With one last blow, you shoot their brain out to silence them for eternity. Eternity.

They stop talking. Their hands fall from your hips. Their eye still staring at you.

You stand up and walk away from their body, your eyes never leave the door. Finally, a way out. Your hand touches the door's handle and... it won't open. It's still locked. You are locked with your pet and a dead body. Desperate for an escape, you search for the key, and yet you couldn't find it. Every corner of the room is checked and all that's left is the dead body. As much as you hate it, your hand slips into their pocket and..

You found it! It's... destroyed...?

You slump down. They probably destroyed it the moment you begin your execution on them. There's no way in and there's no way out. The window? It's impossible to break it open. The same goes for the door, it's impossible. Laughing to yourself, you know this is your end already.

Everything returns to what it used to be. Typing mindlessly and endlessly, you type everything out. What they said to you, what they confessed to you, what you remembered, what you are feeling, and what you are hoping for. A miracle.

Hunger is inevitable. Your pet will be the only last thing you'll eat before you blow your heart with the flintlock.

vii. Truth

"Ahhh, Lucius, Love does not boast, it does not envy!"

"Ahhh, Lucy, Love is merciful! Love is generous!"

What once looks like a room filled with splattering blood and brains, a dead body that has been cut open with half of its guts eaten by someone, now turns into a wide stage with lights shining toward one subject. The said person was defaced and shot to death. The Culprit is also the Detective.

"This is weird, it certainly violates the seventh decalouges of Knox! The Detective is not the Culprit!"

"Oh no no, Lucy! This pitiful soul is the Culprit of our Guest's creation, or should we call them as...."

"Theeeee Readerrrr???"

The person stands up and looks straight toward the empty seats in front of them. Taking a deep breath, the person speaks up,

"I am the 'Culprit' of his abduction but if we are going to talk about the Truth of their heart then I am the 'Detective'"

The sound of someone clapping their hands echoes within the theatre, acknowledging their statements.

"Allow me to retell everyone this pitiful tale again"

It all starts with how close you two have always been.

Details :

Pantalone

Despite his pitiful situation, he's still allowed to roam into the manor by the Butler because he's considered the only friend you have back then (aside from the other children from the manor). Is really fond of you because of how kind you were to him when he was in trouble with almost everything. You often share your things with him whenever you go out from the manor for school.

Childe

Childe is allowed in the manor because he's the friend of Lucas, one of the Master's grandchildren. Occasionally flirted with you because you are the only servant who's a child around their age.

Columbina, Sandrone, Rosalyne

Is the friend of one of the children from the manor. Invites you to play with them because you are the only servant who's also a child.

Arlecchino, Capitano, Pierro

Is friends with you from the same school and is allowed to visit you by the Butler because you don't have any friends aside from them. They really appreciate how similar your personalities with theirs.

Dottore, Tsaritsa, Scaramouche

Is close with you because how you two share the same perspective of the world. Ofen talked with you about how the stars. Is allowed in the manor because they are the only friend you had with the Butler.

"Ahhh? What a lovely relationship you two used to have!"

"And yet, what tore you two? This is pitiful! A shame to the name of Love! Even anyone could realize how there were love blooming inside of you two!"

They resumed their tales.

You and they were once an inseparable lovebird. Even if you two couldn't meet each other that often, the feelings that you both shared were mutual. You are the illegitimate son of the Master of the manor and due to a few circumstances, you were handed to the master's daughter-in-law who has to take care of you with the reason of her being unable to conceive an heir. The Master of the manor couldn't just take you in as the legitimate heir of the family and so he decided to introduce you to her as an orphan that was handpicked by him.

"It truly is a shame, that baby was pushed off from the cliff along with the servant who was carrying them. And yet by some Miracle, the baby survived while the servant didn't. The fall damaged their genitals and this incident was only known by the lady, Butler, Master of the manor, the Doctor, and the old servant. The Master of the manor was only announced by the fact that the baby died in the fall"

How did they learn about this? Simple, they are the Detective and a Detective's job is to solve a case, the riddle. By using their influence, force, and bribery, it was really easy for them to learn about the truth. The diary of that lady explains everything in gruesome details while the Butler had no choice but to reveal the truth to them after using you to threaten him.

"Ahh, Lucius! Look at all these scripts! It's just like what they said! It's the Truth!"

The scripts. The last thing you were only able to do after killing them before you finally devour your pet and yourself. You who typed endlessly about everything. About how you and they used to be close friends. About how you two used to share mutual feelings toward each other. About how everything started to shatter down when the Master of the manor realized that the baby that was announced dead 12 years ago, survived.

"Ahh, Lucy! How tragic it is! It's written here that the tragedy happened again for the second time!"

The Master of the manor wish to repent and acknowledge you as his legitimate heir. How did he recognize you? On your left foot is a scar left from the operation to treat your polydactyly. The Master of the manor saw it when you were careless enough to spill a boiling soup all over your leg, resulting you to take off your sock and allowed him to see the scar. The Butler was not blamed for his action in hiding your survival and the old servant and Doctor were let off from the hook as well. Starting then, the Master of the manor gifted you a flintlock that your Grandmother used to play with.

"Oh! This certainly is a beautiful flintlock!"

"Careful Lucy! That flintlock has been used to kill people!"

"Just like I said back then, that woman didn't want to admit him as the legitimate heir and as her son. Her ego forces her to push him again."

You survived the fall by Miracle. You fell into the cold river and yet you did not freeze or drown to death because there were people who witness your fall and immediately came to rescue you. Truth be told, the Butler had not completely trusted that the Master of the manor truly saw you as his child.

The 2 demons look at each other. The Master of the manor couldn’t see you as his child? The person standing in the middle of the stage nodded at the demons.

Scaramouche, Pantalone, and Childe will sympathize with how similar your conditions are to theirs. A child that is not acknowledged, taken care of, or just portrayed as something/someone that is not you. Scaramouche who was not acknowledged was betrayed by his own mother, Pantalone who was supposed to be a child that is showered with parental love had to suffer in poverty and Tartaglia was no longer portrayed as the sweet and scared boy that he once was.

“In her… no, their body… flows the dirty blood of the Master and their mother…”

“Humuu? Isn’t it only natural for a child to possess the blood of their father and mother?”

“That should have been the case but… in their body, flows the Master’s daughter's blood”

Applause erupts from the gallery’s way. Due to the poor lighting, their face could not be identified. Their hand holding theater binoculars onto their eyes as their leg hangs around by the edge.

“Ahhh! A forbidden love! Unforgivable! We do not accept this!”

“We live for True Love! Be it forbidden or not, we are only here to shatter the illusions of Love! Those who believe in their own illusion of Love instead of a True Love shall be shattered down by us!”

It truly is pitiful. To summarize things, the Master of the manor had an affair with a woman that was hidden away from his family. His lover passed away after she gave birth to their daughter and

“That man couldn’t see his illegitimate daughter as his daughter, with how their mother starts to grow more and more alike to her mother, that man committed an atrocious sin”

And so your mother conceived you and passed away right after giving birth to you. This is the beginning of the Butler’s seed of distrust toward his master.

“The gears start spinning madly to the point I have to stop it from reaching its fateful day and yet the obsession inside my own heart is maddening. I want to save and break them at the same time.”

Had they not kidnapped you first, you would have solved the epitaph that will lead you to the ultimate truth, your own heart’s execution. The epitaph that will lead you to the gold ingot's location. What begins with how you are only visiting the manor because your ‘friend’ wanted to show you something to observing the riddle that was meant to be solved, it truly ignites the Detective heart and passion for mystery and riddles you have.

“In a world in which I’m not there and in a world in which I’m there, the ending will still be the same. If they solved it, the tragedy will happen. If they didn’t, they’ll forever be unaware of their heart”

“A heart is nothing but a hindrance for one person, so much to the point I have to shoot it to stop it from beating”

The stage light shot toward the source of the voice, you, sitting by the stage’s gallery with the theatre binocular in your hand. You look just like how you used to be and yet, something is different from you. One who looks at you will be reminded of the animal you have always been so fond of.

“Should I be thanking you or not for preventing me from dirtying my hands and the others to help me commit the mass murder, Detective?”

“The main star is here! Oh Lucy, look at them!”

“Dear star! It’s time for you to speak as well! Or perhapssssss you want us to speak as a behalf of you?”

“A behalf would not be the right answer. You two are them”

You snap your fingers and thousands of scripts fell from above. Right before your death, you only typed out your entire heart out before you stopped your heart from beating. Unfortunately enough, the hell that they forced you into soon turned into an oblivion in which there’s only a typewriter waiting for you to type. Hitting the keys of the typewriter at random, your fingernails are completely well-trimmed in a sense now. No, it would make even more sense to say that your nails have been scrapped from typing over and over. The scripts that would always be read by someone despite being filled with nothing but gibberish is now floating into the depths of oblivion.

“To be stuck there for thousand years, I have to type endlessly like a monkey”

The Infinite Monkey theorem.

You typed out a miracle and were freed from the oblivion in exchange for your amazing scripts filled with a tale that pleased the Game Master, allowing you to break free from the oblivion. Just right after your freedom, an invitation was sent out to you, guiding you to a huge theater by the forest in which the Twin Moons are lighting the night. Who would have known you'd be greeted by the sight of the person you've despised for millenniums?

"Who sent me this?"

The demon narrators shake their heads but the person in the middle of the stage raises their hand, making you lunge at them immediately. With your bare fists, you punch them over and over.

"Because of you! I couldn't break free from the oblivion because of you! Because! I! Believed! In! You!"

You spend your time typing out deductions and tales of someone else placing the flintlock into the closet, and yet your scripts were not approved by the GM. It took you long enough before you finally realized that you'd been tricked by them. The moment you realized it, you started typing out different deductions and tales until it satisfied the GM to free you. Under you is them panting in excitement and eyes filled with adoration,

"That's exactly what I wish for! You thinking a way out while trying to understand how everything works, you who had no choice but to understand me in order to break free from the depths of oblivion, you who had to think and understand everything about me! This is love! An ideal love that one yearns for!"

-Childe, Columbina, Dottore, Sandrone, Scaramouche

"In the end, you have to understand me in and out to break free no? In the end, your missing heart had to search for mine and understand everything about me"

-Pantalone, Pierro, Tsaritsa, Capitano, Rosalyne

The demon narrators chuckle at their words, levitating around you two. You who are showering them with love and them who are so blinded by their own term of love.

"Yeah right, love..."

You snap your fingers and one of the floating scripts flies toward their face, allowing them to read it. A string of gruesome things will be done to them in order to prove your love for them. Instead of shaking in fear, their eyes lit up into one that shows excitement. Leaning down to kiss their bloody face, you whisper to them,

"I shall love you in our way, you who love me despite my body condition, you who do not want me to dirty my hand, you who avenged me by slaughtering everyone,"

A single strand of tear falls out from your eye. They even killed one of your loved ones...

"That's why I will love you completely as well... my enigma"

No one knows aside from you yourself whether you truly love them with a veil of illusions wrapped around your eyes or not. Perhaps you despised them for letting their obsession runs free, breaking you into pieces, forcing you to do things you never consented to. Perhaps you don't because you've forgotten what's supposed to be normal and what's not. How many millenniums have you been staying in the depths of oblivion?

Long enough for you to lose your grip on reality and sanity.

The demon narrators look at the spectators' seats, eyes focused on you. Chuckling, they hug each other and speak directly to you,

"What do you think, everyone? Have they finally reached True Love? We live for True Love and we shall shatter the fools who believe in the illusions of Love!"

Whether it's illusions or not, you and them, are bound to each other, for eternity.

All in the name of Love.

𝓕𝓻𝓮𝓭𝓮𝓻𝓲𝓬𝓪 𝓐𝓭𝓸𝓻𝓪

𝓑𝓻𝓲𝓵𝓵𝓮

#genshin x reader #fatui x reader #yandere pantalone #pantalone x reader #childe x reader #yandere childe #yandere fatui #yandere dottore #il dottore x reader #dottore x reader #yandere pierro #pierro x reader #yandere capitano #capitano x reader #yandere sandrone #sandrone x reader #yandere scaramouche #scaramouche x reader #yandere arlecchino #arlecchino x reader #yandere columbina #columbina x reader #yandere x reader #yandere genshin #yandere tsaritsa #tsaritsa x reader

[1nervegas1]

Canon Book Patrick things!

Currently reading the book and decided to post my findings/things I've noted on this character!

Content warnings for animal death, child death and mentions of harrasment under the cut, Patrick Hockstetter is his own warning

-Patrick was the son of a devout catholic and a paints salesman, and had grown up in a religious household

-His IQ tested as low normal and he'd repeated 2 grades (1st and 3rd) and was taking summer classes so that didn't happen again

-He was very apethetic student and the teachers wrote hardly anything on him on his school reports.

- He'd leave test sheets blank or would just put a large question mark on them

- Was VERY quiet in class so he was pretty much allowed to fail because he was easier to ignore while teachers would focus more on students like Vic and Henry that would often disrupt class and deface school property

-He wasn't stupid at all. Infact, he was very smart, he just didn't bother with school.

-Didn't see any other creature, human or animal, as real. Believed himself to be an actual creature despite that

-Had no real sense of hurting, no real sense of being hurt

-Reality was meaningless to him

-despite life not meaning too much to him, he was very aware of rules. Life had rules and he knew to follow them.. Or atleast try to avoid being caught

-Had to be seated away from the female students in his class. Teachers tried to avoid any contact with him and female students.

-Patrick would draw a picture for his mother every time he'd go to school but he'd only use black and brown crayons

-Fan of arts and crafts, made his own duct tape wallet, it wasn't very well done, the stitching was coming undone and the note pocket flapped around

-Patrick hadn't liked it when his mother had brought Avery home, he tried to tell himself that he didn't care as long as it didn't disrupt his schedule

-Of course, Avery had done that and all the attention had been turned to him, meals turned up late, Patrick was woken up by the crying

-If Patrick was "real" He thought Avery also could be "real" too, he didn't like the thought of that.

-He was frightened that he was being replaced, and when Avery was big enough to do what Patrick would usually do (get his father the paper, hand his mother the bowls when she was baking bread,) his parents would get rid of Patrick all together.

- what he cared about the most was (1) the rules, they'd been broken or changed ever since Avery had come home, (2) Averys possible reality and (3) He could be thrown out and replaced

-Patrick killed Avery as soon as he'd gotten home from school, he felt more alive than ever once he'd got rid of him

-The doctor that pronounced Avery dead thought Patrick was under shock, so he gave him a pill to take

- He wasn't phased at all, wasn't bothered, felt no guilt and after that he'd done nothing like that again but he could if the chance presented itself. Though as he grew up he would become more aware of the rules and that nasty things happened to people that didn't follow them

- He knew the rules but he liked the excitement he felt when he'd killed his brother and he wanted to feel it again

-first he killed flies, with a swatter and then those sticky flytraps you can get for hardly anything at the shop, he'd watch them for hours in the garage dying. Then he figured how much more efficient a ruler was, so he'd kill them throughout the school day, putting their dead bodies in a pencil box

-He'd kill beetles with pins from his mother's pin cushion, he'd catch them impale them and watch them die slowly

-it moved on to animals when he'd stumbled across a hurt cat one day, it was dying in the gutter. He pushed it around with his foot and was soon shood off by an old woman that had seen what he'd been doing.

-He soon found an old rusty amana fridge, he'd heard about how kids could get stuck in there.

-soon animals started going missing around town and he was to blame.

-He almost had a ritual when dealing with the fridge, he'd sway a little, hum a tune.

-The fridge had a hold over him and he'd somewhat fixate on the thing, he'd draw it at school, he'd dream about it at night

-He got very worried when Henry had told him that he'd tell on him and his beloved fridge (decided he would tattle on Henry for breaking Eddie's arm if Henry did say anything) and decided to go clean it out of his latest victim, a pigeon. When he did however he was attacked by "leeches"

-Pennywise found it hard to find what form to take because Patrick was nutoriously hard to scare.

#Patrick Hockstetter #it stephen king #Bowers gang #henry bowers #stephen king's it #it 2017

[as-amemory]

I Could Drive You Crazy

Pairing: Éomer x OFC (unnamed)

Summary: She drove him crazy, with her little mannerism specifically crafted to irritate him, to get a rise out of him, for it was then, in that sweet spot before he starts to boil, before his true ire took over, that they find themselves in the heated throws of passion.

Warnings: NSFW, explicit, racism against Dunlendings (if thats a thing? I don't know, I'm new here), unhealthy relationships.

Word Count: less than 2k.

Setting: Aldburg, Rohan - some years before the War of the Ring.

Notes: This is the result of me ovulating and having no outlet as well as a song-bug stuck in my ear: I Could Drive You Crazy by Sierra Ferrell. Basically its a song about being crazy and I thought that might make for an interesting character to pair Éomer with, since apparently I enjoy watching him suffer. I'm not yet ready to name this OFC. I kind of hate her but I want to play with her a few more times and see what mischief she can get up to first before I decide if she needs a permanent residence.

I'm probably going to the small section of hell they specifically reserve for the sickos who deface Tolkien's works with such vulgarity. Enjoy!

Hay Fever threatened to take him fully yet she barged through the door as if he hadn’t complained to her that morning of an oncoming headache. She loved to do that. Ignore his every word and then act surprised when he was upset with her for having to repeat himself. Rare did he share his feelings with others, rarer still that he was forced to repeat himself. Not as Third Marshal of the Mark, Lord of Aldburg. People listened when he spoke. She did not. 

“Feed your dogs, Éomer,” she says, voice full of spite. He hated when she called him by his name so casually. He never particularly cared for the triviality of titles. It matters not to him how he is referred to, as long as he first gave leave to call him by his given name, yet she takes the privilege without even bothering to ask permission.

She eyes the hound dogs sprawled at his feet with contempt. She did not like that he allows the dogs to reside inside the confines of his home. They belong in a kennel, outside. “They look as though they will devour me.” 

This was his home. It would do her well to get used to seeing them laying on the floor. He sits back in his seat appraising her, the judgment seeped deep in her dark eyes. She is of mixed ancestry, there is no doubt of that by looking at her. Carrying enough blood of the Dunlendings to mark her differently. A mark of his resentment towards her. Resentment that blossomed into hate, the sweet fuel to their more rousing escapades. 

“I should let them.” The threat comes out harsher than he intends, the start of a cold restricting any tenderness from escaping his throat. 

Tossing two halves of an uneaten pheasant on the ground the dogs swallow it whole in one bite. He had taken his supper in his room that evening, not in the mood to dally with the residents of Aldburg. Typically the seasonal Hay Fever did not affect him but the heavy spring rains had caused an influx of new weeds to run wild in the fields causing him to feel less than ideal. Currently a pain bloomed behind his eyes and at the base of his throat, leaving him in no state to make friendly conversation. Yet here she is, when he had specifically ordered the Doorward not to let anyone into his rooms. 

She could drive him to insanity with her blatant disrespect of him. He did not know why he kept her around. They had nothing in common and his list of grievances against her was long in number, dating back almost a year prior, growing longer still.

Showing up late to a personal invitation to go riding, acting as though they had never agreed to a time and certainly not a place of meeting. She had once offered to cook him supper to which he almost choked on the bones swimming in the stew. Had ruined a hunting trip, scaring away all the animals with her incessant humming. A tune which was stuck in his head for almost a fortnight. There was no fishing to be had with her, requiring more patience than whatever little she possessed. Yet time, and time again, him found himself tangled in sheets of his bed with her, or roughly pressed against the edge of his desk in the solar, partial to the idea of being caught, or in the hayloft above the stables, straining so deliciously tight around him as she rode - 

He teeth grind at the sight of her, fluttering about his room, touching this and that, moving it slightly away from its original spot as she talks about her day. 

“I found a lovely bolt of cloth that would make a fine dress.” She has picked up the crystal paperweight from his desk, peering at it as if she is speaking to the paperweight and not him. 

So it was money she wanted? He should have known better than to think she was checking on his well being. He lifts his chin, waiting for her to meet his eye. She would have to ask him directly if she desired any coin from him but she continues to pick up random items just to set them down again, completely ignoring him. 

“Come here.” His patience has grown thin. He will not ask her twice yet she looks at him as if he should be the one crawling on his knees to be near her. As if he should hand over his purse just to be allowed the honor of being in the same room as her. 

When he does not concede to her silent petition she nods her head in appreciation to his stubbornness. A sly smile curls on her lips as she approaches him, already lifting her dress to better seat herself on his lap. 

“I don’t know what I ever liked about you,” he says gruffly as she straddles him. Pushing aside her skirts he unties the laces of his trousers. He would have his due of her before this Hay Fever set in fully. 

She laughs mockingly at that. “You love me.” 

“I don’t think I do.” He nips at her lips and she smiles ruefully. Skirt pulled around her waist he is able to easily palm the wet folds of her labia. “You seem to like me,” he draws out, pushing the heel of his palm into her sensitive nub, eliciting a delicate gasp from between pink parted lips. He takes the opening to kiss her fully when she otherwise does not particularly enjoy the intimacy of a long drawn out kiss. She surprises him by matching the energy, eagerly molding her lips against his. Rutting down on his hand and along his ever hardening cock causes a gasp of his own to escape his mouth and into hers. His eyes closed briefly at the contact. They had last laid together only that morning. Was he so fallible to her that he could not even keep from gasping out like an inexperienced adolescent? 

She bites down on his lower lip. Hard, drawing blood. He hisses his resentment through clenched teeth, digging his fingers into her side. He hated when she did that. This she knows. She remembers that particular detail about him, yet could not remember the name of his first horse or his favorite fishing spot. More than anything she loved to know what he hated.

She is trying to get a rise out of him. Make his boil, just a little. The sex was always better for it. 

“Minx,” he growls against her mouth. Taking hold of his cock he spreads the juices of her pleasure along the length, lining himself up with her entrance. Greedily he flicks his hips up into her without warning. She laments her pleasure, loud for all to hear. The Doorward, no doubt, will not be expecting reprimand from him, not when he can so clearly hear the results of his mistake. 

Wiggling against him she tries vainly to adjust to the size difference but he holds her in place, fingers digging into her sides. He wishes that he wasn’t so incorrigible. That he wasn’t so tempted by her teasing. That he could withhold himself from acting out so rashly. Maybe like that of his older cousin, whose poise and sense of propriety had always come with ease. Yet he falls for her time and time again, fucking her exactly as she enjoys. As he enjoys. 

Letting his eyes linger on her undulating body he sets his jaw to keep from baring his teeth at the pressure of her rolling hips. If only she rode horses as good as she did him then she might be worth her weight in the saddle. Yet for all her withering she is shit astride a horse. It was that cursed Dunlending blood, tainting her ability to be anything but subpar.

A whimper escapes her lips, and he smiles cruelly, at least she suffers, same as him. She rides him slow, a painful pace that leaves him groaning. His only respite from her torture is his thumb circling her clit. She might know everything he hated but he knew exactly what her body loved. Specifically how to milk an orgasm out of her that would leave her seeing stars. It starts slow. Small circles to bring her to attention, and then an increase of pressure as blood engorges to the area. Her breathing hitches in her throat. Like the cat that caught the canary, he smiles at the sight of her. A harsh thrust of his hips, he fills her fully causing her pace to falter. The careful placement of his thumb halts, watching the confused look cross her features as her incoming orgasm slips out from under her. 

His name is a growl on her lips, a slight warning. “Éomer.” 

That he could take his name from her lips. 

She knows the game he plays, the same one she taught him all those years ago. His thumb picks up pace with her rolling hips. He cradles her neck with his free hand. Skin hot, beneath his touch. A sheen of sweat is building along her hairline. He traces the curve of her collarbone and down her chest, across to her nipples, hard beneath her bodice. She is almost as sensitive here as she is between her legs, her hands clench around his shirt trying to hide her rising ecstasy. His nostrils flare, eyes trapped on the expanse of her face, carefully watching for each small indication of her pleasure. 

Turning her head she tries to hide from him but he quickly has her jaw clasped between his fingers. He would see her. Shaking her head she waves off his touch, attempting to cover her eyes behind her hand, like a child hiding in plain sight. He clicks his tongue, taking her hand in his and after some struggling binds them both in his clasp behind her back.  

“Go on then.” He flicks his chin in her direction. Her pace has all but stopped, hesitantly she finds it again, knowing full well that he now possesses all the power. The power to dish out pleasure as he saw fit.  

Yet her rolling hips are more powerful, more exaggerated than before, causing him to grimace, lest he call out her name. She would love that, revel in his undoing. He steels himself with a deep breath through his nose. A ragged breath from her lets him know she is close again. He slows his thumb, wondering if she’ll cry out, plead with him to give her what she wants. 

“Éomer.” His name, like a prayer on her lips, is soft and sweet, and he knows he no longer possesses the control he once touted. 

Letting free her hands, he pulls her in close until her head rests against his. He can feel the warmth of her breath as he takes his pace, thrusting into her. She has brushed away his teasing thumb, replacing it with her own skilled fingers. A shuddering breath and she tightens further around the length of him. She cries out loud enough that he is certain they hear her in the Great Hall. He is still thrusting into her as she convulses hot and heady around him but he soon follows suit, letting his release run him fully with a loud groan of his own. 

Panting, she rests her head against his chest, forehead sticky with sweat it clings to the thin fabric of his shirt. She does not cuddle. She never has lingered in his arms as they slowly drift down from their high. She slips off his lap and he shutters at the sudden loss of contact, hands gripping the armrests of the chair. 

By the time he has regained his senses enough to stand she has relieved herself and wiped clean his seed dripping down her thighs. Maybe a good romp was the cure to any oncoming ailment. He drowns the last of his ale, eyeing her as she smiles prettily for him under dark thick lashes. So demure and pliant, when only moments earlier he was ready to have her thrown from his room for her uncouth behavior.

“You spoil me, my lord,” she says coyly. He bites back a scoff. 

Her gaze is taken with the leather purse heavy on the corner of his desk. A slight nod of his head and she promptly reaches across the expanse, showing off the long lines of her body, and that of the soft curves she knows he loves to grab hold of during their coupling. Deftly, her fingers dip inside the pouch, taking out three coins. 

“This should cover the cost.” Her gaze darts to him, searching for any subtle hint of permission that she could take more but he is hard set against giving her indication. Already she pushes the bounds of his generosity. 

“And one more,” she purrs softly, plucking a fourth coin out. “As insurance to return to you.” 

He rolls his eyes, knowing well she will only return when she pleases not because she feels indebted to him. Offering a low curtsey, she mumbles her thanks, letting his gaze linger on her, on the low cut of her dress. Her bosom all but swells out of the strains of her bodice. When did such a salacious style come into fashion? Surely his sister did not expose herself so scantily in Edoras? He bites his lip, thoughts of his sister quickly pushed from his mind replaced instead by the women so humbly lowered before him. Already he feels a slight twitch of his groin. 

She rises, satisfied with her display of deference. A Haunting smile on her lips, she glances at the hound dogs splayed out on the rug. 

“Feed your dogs, Éomer,” she instructs as a final goodbye. Out the door he is certain she can hear his mocking laughter following her.  

#I probably got his voice entirely wrong #but I had fun writing this #eomer fanfiction #Eomer x OC #Eomer x OFC #Eomer smut #lotr fanfic #lotr smut

[countessklair]

i disagree with most of the fandom's takeaway from the episode. i want to preface this all by saying that i don't hate Nate and i think he's a very complex character with traumas and issues of his own that led to his whole new thing of 'evil' or whatever that Rupert's pushing him into further now, but still.

Nate knew what he was doing by destroying the sign. that's why he did it in the first place. he was angry and hurt and he wanted to cut the team and Ted, especially, very deep. so he destroyed the sign and left for 'the enemy' who'd offered him a job. he's been shit-talking them and their beloved coach Ted in the press all preseason and ostensibly all season so far.

and yes, the goldfish mentality and the 'let it flow' from episode one are very good for the team, and they've managed to ignore Nate shit talking post episode one, but they have every right to be furious with Nate. he essentially spat of the uniting element that makes them all better teammates, better players, better people. they used to be pretty not great people, bullying Nate being the biggest but only one of the examples therein, but the team's all changed their behavior and they learned and became better people. they respected Nate as a coach and as a fellow Greyhound and they supported and even loved him. and Nate betrayed them.

just the move to west ham i think they would have been supportive of. they wouldn't have held it against him for wanting a head coaching position. but the move, plus the shit talking, PLUS the ripping of the believe sign?? that's the betrayal. it's layered, and of course it cuts deep when the sign represents so much more than the word emblazoned on it. the sign has become a representation of Richmond itself. and they were already looking for answers, they would've figured out who ripped it eventually. i definitely think that they shouldn't have told the team at half-time, and i agree on the thing coach beard said about them overcorrecting and playing with hate, but still. i think the team has every right to be angry.

sometimes people forget that you have to FEEL your emotions in order to process them. and that more importantly it's ok and even GOOD to feel those emotions, and that feeling anger or hatred aren't necessarily 'evil' emotions. if someone hurts you and stamps and spits on your values and your beliefs, if someone you thought of as family betrayed you, that's not something you can just be a goldfish about or let it flow through you and pass you by. it's a deep cutting wound, and that's why Nate, in his fit of fury at the promotion, ripped the sign in the first place anyway. because he knew how deeply it would hurt them not only to have the sign defaced, but for it to be HIM doing it. the team is gonna have to process this and hopefully now that they have the initial fury all out they'll be able to deal with it in a healthy Ted Lasso show way we all love. also, ever since the introduction of Zava to the team, there's been a severe disconnect between the team and the Ted Lasso way: remember that scene in the locker room with Zava physically stepping in front of Ted every time he moved to try and look at the team?

i fully believe that Nate will get a redemption arc, and i fully believe he deserves one. but i don't think Nate fans remember sometimes that it's never a friend's job to always be stroking someone's ego and to be the personal caretaker of their mental health and social equilibrium, especially when that friend themselves have big, BIG issues going on in their personal life. Ted was never responsible for Nate's happiness and ego and he shouldn't be treated like he is. he recognized talent and he rewarded that talent accordingly and gave Nate a platform to grow on. Nate's paternal trauma didn't allow him to reach out and communicate with Ted about feeling left behind, and that sucks and it's not Nate's fault that he has those issues to contend with, but it's not the team or Roy's or Ted's fault either.

fact of the matter is, no one is the villain but Rupert. Nate made some hurtful choices that the people he hurt have every right to be upset over, and the biggest one - outing Ted's very private mental health issues (imo mental health issues being way way worse to out than physical health issues) isn't something anyone on the team but Ted and Beard and Trent are aware of. there will be a redemption arc, and i believe there will be forgiveness, but i don't know if Nate will ever come back to Richmond. I think maybe a fresh new start outside of both Richmond AND West Ham would be best for him, because he needs to get out from under Rupert, but i think there's just too much history at Richmond, even without factoring in Ted.

tl;dr: nate will get the redemption arc he needs and deserves but that doesn't free him of having to face the fact that he hurt people deliberately, that he needs to apologize. there has to be consequences for his actions. next episode i need there to be a 'come to jesus' moment for the whole team to process this hurt together and to get back on track with the Ted Lasso way.

also: the richmond team are all my angels and i love them dearly and i'm SO GLAD this episode had very little to do with Zava.

#ted lasso #ted lasso season 3 #ted lasso speculation #nate shelley #nathan shelley #character analysis #i love nate and i love his character #there's so much to sink your teeth into

[whumpshaped]

Epilogue – Dusk

there u go :) last chappy...

Dollhouse Masterlist

tw major character death, funeral, aftermath of trauma, paranoia, anxiety, police mention, hospital stay, murder mention, alcohol mention, implied past alcohol problems, implied past noncon, lady whump, implied eye gore, aftermath of surgery, past captivity, divorce, estranged family, again it's a lot i tried to get everything i'm sorry if i didn't

They weren’t supposed to be there that day. “It would be a small ceremony,” they’d told them, “it wouldn’t be appropriate. Or good for you.”

Dusk– no, he wasn’t Dusk anymore. He would never be called Dusk ever again. Diell wasted absolutely no time finding a way to be able to get out of the ward in time and take Ginger with him. They both agreed that just spoken accounts of the funeral wouldn’t be enough. They had to see the body be lowered into the goddamn hole and immediately deface the tombstone. 

He was fairly sure that Grace and Jonathan’s father played a role in them being able to sneak off as easily as they did. He would never thank the guy, not even in some weird, abstract way, but he was definitely pleased to know that he knew that any doll had more of a right to attend the ceremony than even family members.

They had to leave Pepper in the hospital, to all of their dismay. They were more hurt than the two of them, plus they wouldn’t have been able to see anything anyway. They asked for the most gruesomely detailed retelling of the funeral later, which both Diell and Ginger agreed to provide.

“I hope she’s cremated,” Ginger muttered on their way to the cemetery. “No, actually, I hope she’s not. I want to see that it’s her. If she was cremated, they could totally just put whatever in the urn, and no one would ever know.”

“Don’t even say that, holy shit.” The thought of Grace being alive in the world somewhere was a terrifying one. He had managed to kill her one time, and only because she was unconscious, but maybe that luck wouldn’t last a second round. “I’m sure they’ll bury the whole body. Like, intact. I bet it’ll be open-casket as well, with corpse make-up and all that shit.”

“Oh, she would never go six feet under without proper make-up. Never.”

Diell was the first to begin laughing, and Ginger followed soon after. The sounds of their joy felt wildly out of place at the enormous gates of the cemetery, but neither of them could find it in their soul to care. They saw people running around in pink instead of black, pink suits, pink dresses, pink ties to match. It was something out of an absurdist horror movie.

They ducked behind some gravestones when they caught a glimpse of the witch mother herself, their excitement suddenly giving way to fear. If Grace was that unhinged, that could only mean two things: either she had surpassed her mother in unhingedness, going on to become the supreme unhinged demon, or she’d learned everything from the even more unhinged woman who came before her. Diell held his breath, hoping with all his heart that it was the former. 

When he looked at Ginger’s face, he could tell that the same thoughts and fears were playing on her mind. Maybe this had been a bad idea, and maybe the hospital staff had been correct, and maybe it was embarrassing and weird to be hiding behind the markers of others’ final resting places. Diell glanced at the tombstone that was a couple inches away from his face, squinting to be able to read the name through all that moss. 

Sorry, Thomas and Esther Taylor. This is kind of an emergency.

“You think she even knows what we look like?” Ginger whispered.

“No idea. Maybe Grace showed her photos.”

“We should’ve planned further than two sweatshirts with hoods.”

“I’m happy that I even managed to snatch these up. Imagine if we had to come here in dresses or hospital gowns.”

Ginger shivered. “Yeah. Fuck that.”

They spent the entire ceremony huddled behind the headstones, listening to the priest go on about what a loving daughter and sister Grace was, occasionally peeking out to try and get a look at the body. Thankfully, not many people were attending, and Ginger turned to him with a triumphant smile soon enough.

“It’s her. It’s really her!”

“Fucking good. I hope the end to this whole shit isn’t some weird, Jesus-type resurrection.”

“Now you’re just being stupid,” she teased, but placed a dirty hand on top of his, her expression turning deathly serious. “If she moves a muscle, I’ll choke her right back to hell. Yeah?”

She meant it, Diell could tell. There was no condescension in her voice. She wasn’t telling him that he was too paranoid. She sounded exactly like someone who had thought about this before, in excruciating detail, and came to the conclusion that she was willing to risk her own life in exchange for the peace of mind that’d come with feeling Grace’s pulse disappear under her own hands. 

“Thank you,” he said quietly, giving her hand a squeeze.

They watched as the crowd started swarming towards the actual grave, and they followed them from a safe distance, pretending to be taking a leisurely walk or something. Diell didn’t even know what their cover story was, honestly. But no one ended up paying them any mind, instead focusing on the wailing mother. 

From what Diell could tell, there were no other people from Grace’s close family. Maybe her grandmother? It was hard to tell. It didn’t really matter. He was happy to know that her father decided to spend time with Jonathan in the hospital instead of coming to attend this pretentious display of wealth and ridiculousness. 

The casket was slowly lowered into the hole, and both Diell and Ginger were watching it like hawks. No tricks. No ghosts. No vampires, no zombies, no nothing. Grace’s body was dropped down and buried, so deep that there wasn’t a single chance that she could’ve crawled out. Her mother knelt on her grave, weeping like someone out of a tragedy, grabbing handfuls of dirt without a care in whether it’d ruin her expensive-looking, pink gloves.

Diell turned to his friend, briefly pretending he was gonna retch. Ginger had to hide a smile. 

They lingered until after everyone else had already left, only competing with Grace’s mother by that point. She had to eventually be escorted out by the police while she kicked and screamed, claiming that they were disrespecting a mother’s right to stay with her beloved, deceased daughter. Ginger rolled her eyes at the argument, finally sauntering over to the grave with Diell in tow. 

“So… that’s that,” he said. “She’s gone.”

“I really want to grab a hammer and fuck up the headstone.” Ginger looked up at him, tears shining in her eyes. “One of those big sledgehammers. I want to just… go at it. I want to fucking destroy it.”

“I know.” He carefully pulled her closer, slow enough to give her plenty of chances to push him away if she didn’t want to be touched. But instead of pushing him away, she wrapped her arms around him, sobbing into his chest.

“It’s so unfair. It’s so unfair. We were there for years, and she just gets to go out like this? And– and then she gets a fucking funeral? And some disgusting, liar priest kissing her ass? What did any of her victims get? The ones who didn’t make it? What did Belle get? Or Sunny? What did the ones I didn’t even know get? What– what the fuck is wrong with people?” 

He rubbed circles into her back as he listened, survivor’s guilt, sorrow, and the anguish of injustice eating away at him too. Ginger was right, and it was a horrible feeling to know that neither of them could do a thing to right Grace’s wrongs. They especially couldn’t force her to right them herself, now. She was out, just like that, enjoying her vacation in Barbie hell somewhere. 

Ginger took a while to calm down. When she did, Diell gently pushed her away by the shoulders, looking into her puffy, red eyes. “It’s over, Maya,” he whispered, a part of him still scared that he might’ve uttered the magic words too soon.

She couldn’t get a word out before she had to cover her mouth with both hands, attempting to muffle her whimpers. “You fucking asshole,” she choked out, and Diell was worried he might’ve genuinely messed up. “You waited ‘till I was somewhat okay, and then you spring that shit on me? Why are you even bringing up the weird shit I told you during– what’s wrong with you?” She half-heartedly punched his arm, then wiped at her face with the sleeve of her sweater. 

“I– I’m sorry, I–”

She hugged him again, with even more momentum this time, her frail body slamming into his with the power of a three-tonne truck. “I can’t believe you actually remembered something so stupid. You really– you safekept it for me… You really did…”

Diell hesitantly put his arms around her again, waiting for her to change her stance on this again. But she didn’t. The two of them just stood there, right on top of Grace’s grave, in an embrace so tight it probably cracked some ribs. 

They didn’t leave the cemetery until the next morning. They didn’t even sleep, – or at least never at the same time, – they just sat on a nearby bench, watching the pile of dirt for any anomalies or paranormal activity. Hell, they wouldn’t have been surprised if Grace’s mother showed up again with candles and chicken blood. When nothing like that happened, they crawled back to the hospital, allowing themselves to be yelled at and sent for an immediate shower and check-ups. 

-

Messed up. It was entirely messed up that it had already been a year. While Diell had been with Grace each day seemed too long, but they also just blurred together. On the day of his escape, he’d been informed that he’d spent fifteen months in that hellhole. He later counted; exactly 477 days. More than a year. He both thought it had been shorter and longer than that, and honestly, he had no idea what to feel about the actual number.

He knew he was the newest acquisition at the time. No other doll had been added to the collection after his kidnapping, which made him the… luckiest? His one year was absolutely nothing compared to what he’d heard the twins say. Eight years… More than eight, even.

Maya had a more difficult time counting, both mentally and from a memory standpoint. At first, she didn’t want to do anything with the data. Her first order of business was to make an appointment with a hairdresser and get rid of her naturally ginger hair, demanding a deep blue to forest green gradient. She’d come home that day to see Diell on the computer, obsessively counting and recounting his days spent in captivity, and she flipped her hair and told him to enjoy being out.

Later that day, Diell saw her checking the calendar app against old newspaper clippings. “I can’t remember when I was taken. Can’t remember the day. I… I even got the year wrong.” 

Diell couldn’t even imagine. She had counted and counted, eventually coming up with the final numbers: 5 years and seven months, or 67 months, or 2039 days. They had both stared at the numbers for a very long time.

“I’m so much older now,” she’d whispered. “I’m twenty-six now. I… I was celebrating my twentieth that year.”

That wasn’t the only thing she had to reconcile with. Her disappearance had turned out to be the last nail in the coffin of her parents’ crumbling marriage. After she’d been presumed dead, her mother filed for a divorce. Her childhood home had been sold, and her parents were both in another relationship now, ones she wanted nothing to do with. She didn’t even tell them she had come back, dismissing their calls and slamming the door in her mother's face when she tried to visit.

She was living with Diell instead, in an apartment the two of them had bought with the compensation money they’d been awarded. He was now sitting on the couch, bouncing his leg and trying not to think about tomorrow.

“I invited Tai,” Maya said as she entered the living room. “They said yes, like, immediately. They didn’t even give me the whole ‘Oh, I don’t know, do I wanna hang out with losers?’ talk. I think they're stressed out too.”

Pepper had thought long and hard about the name change situation. They wanted something absolutely deadly and dangerous, but also something that sounded cool. They had browsed a long list of venomous snakes for days, finally settling on Taipan. “If I’d had venom back then, aside from just… insults, then I would’ve been fine. Manifesting or whatever.”

“It's weird,” Diell muttered. “Like, the whole anniversary thing. Just weird. I don’t like it.”

Maya sat down next to him, sighing heavily. “You think the others are also this fucked up from it?”

Diell shrugged. “You think it’s fucked that I don’t even text them anymore?” he asked quietly, the ever-present guilt in his heart throbbing a little more as he said the words. This time, it was Maya who shrugged.

“I don’t either. So either we’re both fucked, or neither of us is.”

They sat there in silence, listening to the clock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Each second brought them closer to the dreaded day, increasing their anxiety tenfold. 

“Do you also have these… weird fears about it?” Maya whispered. “Like she’ll bust down the front door at midnight?”

“Yeah. Like, ‘haha, time’s up, you got to be free for a year, but now let’s get back to the–’ you know. Back to all that shit.”

Maya nodded without a word. She looked absolutely haunted, and if Diell had to guess, he probably looked similar. “It’s so stupid. I saw her be buried. It’s not like many people come back from the dead.”

“I know. I can’t logic it away either, though. So we’re just stuck with our weird paranoia.” He put his arm around her shoulders, gently pulling her closer. He’d learned early on that Maya would never ask to be comforted like that, but more often than not, she was very appreciative if someone made the decision for her. “But we have each other, right?”

“Yeah, Captain Cheesy.”

Taipan barged in with such force that both others jumped, flinching away from each other as if they’d been caught red-handed. “Stop doing that!” Diell snapped.

“Absolutely not!” They pointed in his vague direction with their cane. “How else would I prove that I’m still a menace?”

Their doll eyes were taken out almost immediately upon arriving at the hospital. Grace had done the sort of job on them that was expected of an amateur with no surgical knowledge or training, and the doctors worked tirelessly to reverse as much of the damage as possible. But before the operation even started, Taipan had been offered two routes they could go with their new prosthetics. Diell naively thought they’d jump on the opportunity to make it as natural as possible; he’d seen some absolutely amazing work on the wall of the private hospital’s ocularist.

Well… They were now rocking two pitch black orbs with realistic stars painted on them, looking like they held all the secrets of the universe behind them.

Maya laughed, jumping up to go and hug them. Diell watched the two of them with a smile, his fear-based irritation melting away. “I’m so glad you came, I need someone to back me up with the music choices.”

“I would never live with someone who refused to acknowledge that his taste is inferior and I should be the only one with party-music privileges.”

“I’m not gonna be bullied in my own home!” 

Maya stuck her tongue out at him; as did Tai, without even seeing that she was doing it too. Diell couldn’t stifle a grin. 

“Are we ordering pizza?” they asked as they walked over to the couch, plopping down right next to Diell. “There’s this new place that’s just opened, and I’m telling you, neither of you have ever seen cheese with a better pull quality. It’s glorious.”

“I mean, if they have Hawaiian–”

“You’re absolutely disgusting, Diell. I am stealing Maya away.”

Before more insults could’ve been thrown his way, Diell’s phone went off with a notification. Valerie’s name flashed on the screen, and he quickly checked the texts to see if it was something urgent. She probably wasn’t in the best headspace either.

By evening time, all four of them were sitting on the living room floor, eating pepperoni pizza off the coffee table. It was a weird little sleepover, with plenty of laughter and tears both. Sometimes they almost completely forgot about why they had even gathered together like this, and sometimes all they could talk about was Grace and their time spent in her pink little prison.

“When you can actually see, when you can actually get out and see the outside world, and know you’re not there– I imagine that’s different. I’m sure it was so different for Bora.” 

Maya was saying the words out loud, so Tai could also know what the conversation was about. Valerie had an easier time talking to them one on one; when a little group of them were together like this, it was easier to have someone translate as she signed. 

“But for me, all I had for the past years were sounds and scents. And touch. And Bora felt the same out here as he did back there. I just couldn’t stand it. He kept making me feel like I was still there.”

“Are you okay now, though? With us?” Diell asked, and Val nodded.

“Yeah.” She paused a little. “It’s different with everyone else. I don’t even understand how Bora could put aside his trauma to try and help me. It must’ve taken so much. Me leaving was the best decision for both of us, even if he was upset at the time.”

Diell glanced at Maya, wondering whether she felt the same way. Their ‘relationship’ at Grace’s place didn’t last more than maybe a couple months, and never went further than a kiss on the cheek or a peck on the lips. It wasn’t really comparable to what Val had talked about at the hospital. Still, he couldn’t help but hope he wasn’t going to lose his best friend.

“I fully get that. And you gotta put yourself first, right? That’s just how it is.” Tai felt around for another slice, and Diell quickly put one on their plate for them. “I’m sure he has plenty of people’s support from within Jonathan’s little group. And outside of that, too.”

“I’m sure as well.” Maya put a gentle hand on Val’s knee. “It’s not your responsibility to nurse others back to health when you’re still working on yourself. We’ve all been through a lot. You get out, you do the best you can– it’s all you can do.”

The conversations  fizzled out as they inched closer and closer to midnight. They were all either deathly still or fidgeting constantly, no inbetween. Diell and Maya were staring at the clock, giving quiet reminders of time’s passage. It was like the most fucked up New Year’s Eve party. 

“One minute.”

“Thirty seconds.”

“Twenty.”

“Ten.”

“Five.”

“Four.”

“Three.”

“Two.”

“One.”

Diell held his breath, and with how quiet the room had gotten, he assumed everyone else did too. He thought about that day from exactly a year ago; stabbing Grace, the feeling of blood sticking to his hands, the sun’s blinding light outside, the sirens of the ambulance and police cars, the bumpy road leading to the hospital. The funeral. Jonathan taking in some of his friends, giving them all a second chance at life, the first of which his sister had taken away beforehand.

“Happy anniversary?” Tai tried, half-jokingly, breaking the spell.

“Well, I’m fucking happy,” Maya said confidently, and Diell knew he was the only one who saw the tears shining in her eyes as she did so. He pretended not to. 

Through the open windows, they could hear all the street noise; cars coming and going, groups of intoxicated teenagers having a fun time, dogs barking at nothing. The world didn’t end at midnight. Grace didn’t show up to take them all back. 

“Maybe we should go to sleep,” Diell suggested. “I’m– Okay, I know it’s not very popular with you two to admit to having a shit time, but I’m honestly exhausted from all that stupid anxiety.”

“Maybe we’ll start admitting to it in this new year.” Maya playfully shoved him a little. “Go to sleep, grandpa. We’ll keep it down.”

Diell smiled, then went to take a long, very hot shower after saying his good nights. It was comforting to be able to do it alone, even if he sometimes still felt Grace’s hands on his naked body, scrubbing him down without a care, like he wasn’t even human. He avoided looking in the mirror when he got out, knowing that all he would see in it this late at night were blonde strands of hair and soulless blue eyes. 

He didn’t fall asleep for a long time, still just lying there by the time Maya came to crawl into bed with him. He turned towards her, noting the distinct scent of alcohol. “Maya?”

She hummed. “What?” 

“You didn’t drink too much, did you?”

“No such thing as too much. Not on the anniversary of your kidnapper’s death.” 

He scooted a little closer, pulling her into a hug. “Yeah, there is. And I’m so happy you didn’t overshoot this time.”

A whole year had passed. Instead of Ginger, Maya was now crying in his arms. They had different problems, even if none of them felt less serious than the ones from before. She wasn’t passed out on the floor, only slurring her words a little.

It would be okay. It would all be okay, in the end.

~

taglist: @whumpsday @lonesome--hunter @reblogging-whump @panic-and-chaos @kim-poce @uwu-scraptrappy @mikaelaix @whumpinggrounds @hidden-dreamland @the-scrapegoat @whumplr-reader @dismemberment-on-a-tuesday-night @whumpinthepot @devourerofcheesecake

#dollhouse #whump #whump writing #major character death #funeral #aftermath of trauma #paranoia #anxiety #police mention #hospital stay #murder mention #alcohol mention #implied past alcohol problems #implied past noncon #lady whump #implied eye gore #aftermath of surgery #past captivity #divorce #estranged family #recovery #comfort

[beevean]

2, 4, 12, 23, and 25 for a character you might not expect from m-just kidding, it's Eggman. :^)

Oh no, quelle surprise :P

2. Favorite canon thing about this character?

His sheer perserverance. He will not give up. He will not have a bad day. He will not give anything less than his 100%. He will try anything in his power to get his way. Doesn't work? Oh well, let's try again. It's inspirational lol.

Also, in a more meta-context, I like how most videogame baddies have a "well I'll send you my minions, if you're strong enough to reach me I will challenge you" policy, which is totally valid! But Eggman? No, he tries to deal with those menaces himself (IIRC the only exception is most 8-bit games where most bosses are just his robots, and even then in S2 he had that iconic "saving Sonic from lava to kill him with his creation" scene). He doesn't delegate: he will see things through!

4. If you could put this character in any other media, be it a book, a movie, anything, what would you put them in?

Metroid. He'd thrive in that sci-fi setting, he would immediately plan the best way to colonize certain planets, and ofc he'd attempt to tame the titular creatures for himself :P I wonder if he'd strike an alliance with Ridley or butt heads with him.

12. What's a headcanon you have for this character?

He was a spoiled only child, with the kind of parents who would hear that their son bullied another kid and be aghast at such lies, because their little angel can do nothing wrong!

Also, while his passion is ofc engineering, I think he had a genuine fascination with history. He wanted to learn from those schmucks' mistakes to do better :P it would also explain how easily he finds tablets of gods to tame and why he loves defacing ruins so much.

23. Favorite picture of this character?

Of course he'd have the coolest picture in Forces :P man, that logo.

25. What was your first impression of this character? How about now?

I remember not caring about Eggman until Colors lol. Perhaps a consequence of growing up with the Adventure-era games where he would always get usurped by another villain, so I was like, why should I be scared by this guy? :^)

I started to appreciate him better in Colors, because not only he was gut-bustingly funny with his PA announcements, but also look at him, actually getting very close to winning without any treacherous gods in the way! And then he kept the streak going! until recently Huh, will you look at that, he's actually pretty cool!

And then, thanks to you :P I learned to also see all the accomplishments I missed out on in previous games, even those where he otherwise was not treated very well, ex. building the Egg Fleet in Heroes.

So yeah, went from being all :\ to being all :D about him!

#sonic the hedgehog #dr. eggman

[quill-pen]

Personally, I hate Valentine's Day for a variety of reasons, but I know Bess likes it. So let's think about her today with...

💌Valentines Through the Eras; A Timeless Scroogeverse Reminiscing

💝George Era:

Bess loves Valentine's, but not when it comes to celebrating it in school. The kindergarten Valentine's Day party completely ruined that for her when all her classmates tore up and threw her Powerpuff Girl themed Valentine cards away while laughing in her face.

Then of course she opened her own to find them all defaced with graffiti insulting her. Barbie in scribbled on facial hair and stink-lines telling her she smelled. Bratz with huge freckles, declaring how ugly she was. My Little Pony characters saying they didn't want to be her friends. Power Rangers, Spider-Man, and TMNT all boasting altered messages about how dumb, gross, and weird she was, and wishing her a bad Valentine's.

Along with the Valentine's were crumbled cookies, broken and ruined toys, half-eaten, sticky candies. Her Valentine's box was defaced with scribbled artwork of a large, brown smudge, labelled as "pOOp", as if she couldn't guess what it was meant to be.

Bess went home in tears that day, ruined box and all its contents in hand to show her mother proof of how mean her class was to her. Bea never believed her when Bess reported bullying stories to her. She didn't believe Bess even with the evidence. Or if she did, she didn't care, just like always.

It wasn't until George came over that night to take Bea out for supper and saw Bess' puffy eyes, tear-stained face, and the box that Bess received any sort of comfort: a promise that they would get a Valentine's Day do-over tomorrow, just the two of them.

And he held true to that promise, picking her up early and taking the little girl out for a special breakfast of any-flavored, heart-shaped pancakes. He gave her a big Valentine in the shape of the stuffed horse she'd had her eye on for a long while. He took her to the zoo and to the children's museum where he played with her. He took her shopping to get whatever she wanted: a new Barbie and a couple Barbie playsets, one big and one small. He showered her with affection and words of affirmation, telling her how pretty, nice, smart, funny, sweet, etc. she was.

George let his little Mudpuppy know she was loved, special, and wanted. He let her know she mattered, and she deserved to be treated with kindness.

From that Valentine's on, George always made sure he was around to help Bess play hooky on the day of the class party and take her out on the town to treat her.

Bess never knew what happened to her Valentine's boxes or Valentine's afterward because they were always gone from the classroom the next day. But she didn't care. Valentine's Day dates with George were a million times better than anything she could have gotten from her classmates.

Eventually, unfortunately, due to many factors of life, those dates with George ground to a halt.

Of course, Bess was a bit sad, but she didn't mind all that much with little siblings to love on and receive love from in turn now as well as George.

And George always still managed to get her something and/or treat her to a meal.

But still, Bess wanted to have a tradition like those all-day Valentine's dates again with somebody. Maybe make them romantic this time around.

💝Oliver Era:

When Oliver came into the picture, Bess thought, for a very brief time, that this was something that could happen with him. After all, they were officially a couple. Even if it wasn't a full day of celebration, even just a nice evening dedicated solely to them and their relationship, would have been amazing.

Bess quickly learned better on that first Valentine's Day of their relationship.

Oliver took her to breakfast in the same greasy little cafe off campus that he always took her to when they decided to eat out for breakfast.

Bess had never been a particularly picky person when it came to food or where she ate, but this place never failed to turn her stomach sour with anything she ate there. Oliver knew that, but always insisted on them going there anyway: It was "his spot" where he knew everything, everyone, and had "never had a bad meal". Bess begged to differ.

Knowing making a fuss would only upset Oliver and put him in a terrible mood the rest of the day, Bess endured, thinking maybe she could just have some yogurt with fruit and a coffee (that she'd turn to syrup with sugar to try and choke it down).

Oliver immediately changed that plan by insisting her order for her. "It's Valentine's Day, after all," he pointed out. "Let me treat my little woman." His smile was probably meant to be sweet, but it felt belittling and mocking.

Bess knew she should have felt anything other than the dread she did.

Her stomach was already churning by the time the waiter walked away with their order, both at the thought of the food coming her way and the way Oliver had kept referring to her as his "little woman". But that was true, wasn't it? She was his girlfriend. Why did it make her skin crawl?

"You do have money with you, right?" Oliver asked expectantly.

"I thought you were treating me."

"I did. I drove you here and ordered for you. And I'll cover the tip if you want."

Bess sighed and rolled her eyes, but made no further comment. They'd hardly been together six months, and she was already exhausted and exasperated with this boy. But nothing was ever perfect, right? Every relationship had its ups and downs and flaws. This relationship just needed some work.

After a breakfast of burnt bacon, undercooked omelettes, and half-raw hashbrowns dripping with grease that smells like fish, Oliver took her to class, promising something extra special that night. For some reason, Bess didn't feel so enthusiastic. Her already lacking enthusiasm drops even lower when Oliver refused to kiss her goodbye: "People are watching, Specks."

Unsurprisingly, it was right for Bess to feel wary of the night's activities: Oliver's "extra special" night was just inviting her over to his dorm to have a movie night with his buddies.

The movies? A marathon of bad, Valentine's-themed b-movies. All of them horror--Bess' least favorite genre. She had to walk out about 15 minutes into the second film (a Valentine's rip-off of the Halloween franchise with more gratuitous debauchery and a Michael Meyers stand-in dressed like Cupid... who still wore the weird mask for some reason?). Oliver didn't even realize she left--none of the guys did.

Bess went home and ended Valentine's Day alone (Debbie was out with her boyfriend) with no flowers, treats, cards, or even so much as a Valentine's text from her boyfriend. She quietly cried herself to sleep from the disappointment.

The years went by with Oliver and Valentine's Days never got better. Even when Bess tried to make something out of the day, it ended up being a complete disaster as something was never right according to Oliver.

Eventually, Bess just gave up on her dream of ever having a romantic Valentine's Day. Or a romantic anything, honestly. Perhaps romance just wasn't in her cards; maybe she didn't get to be swept off her feet and treated like a queen. After all, no one gets everything they want. "But I hardly ever get anything I want."

Their last Valentine's Day together wasn't even acknowledged. Admittedly, Bess waited all day to see if Oliver would make any sort of comment about how she didn't get him something, as she always went out of her way to get him a little gift or treat for the holiday, even when he never did for her. He never did.

What he did do, however, was "complain" to her about how he'd kept getting handed Valentine's and secret notes from bridal party members and wedding guests from the wedding he'd been second shooter at all day. "I just couldn't believe it--all these total babes just handing over stuff like that to me! I mean, I was all like, 'Ladies, please! I'm a professional at work here. Not that I'm not flattered, but I gotta concentrate on my art here. I don't have time for hookups in the storage closet." "Also you're kinda, ya know, engaged." "Hmm? Oh, yeah, right, whatever."

Bess gave up any hopes of ever feeling happy or truly loved in this relationship.

💝Gal Pals Era:

The first Valentine's in London was rough. Not only was Bess far away from home and family (that she knew well), she was also working.

Being kept busy in the maternity ward did help take her mind off of things, however, and there were a few beautiful little babies born that night. So Bess couldn't claim the holiday as bad one. (Though she did have to talk a father down from naming his son 'Valentine' as the mother was too out of it after surgery to do it herself but had made it clear on previous visits that she did not want that to be the child's name.)

That second time around though, was a much different story.

By the second London's Valentine's Bess, Connie, Addie, and Gal had all found each other, and the 1843D girls had bonded together tighter than a Gordian knot. They were bound to make the most of that bond.

Undeterred by the lack of beaus in their lives, the girls took it upon themselves to turn their first Valentine's all together into a celebration to be remembered.

"A Galentine's!" Connie had exclaimed one morning out of the blue. She'd come running from the bathroom with toothbrush in hand and frothy, minty lips. "Let's have a Galentine's! We'll all dress up for each other and go out together!"

The idea was a perfect one, and plans were immediately put into play. Bookings were made, new outfits were purchased, and work shifts were made sure to be filled in.

The evening of, after spending the afternoon sequestered away in rooms at the Dowager Countess of Calloway's (better known as Granny FeFe's) townhouse, readying themselves, all four girls presented themselves to both FeFe and their beloved landlord and surrogate grandfather Michael Pippersnipe, making grand entrances down the grand staircase of the Dowager's front hall.

According to FeFe and Pippersnipe, they had never seen more beautiful young ladies in all of their long years.

It was clear to see, they were being anything but facetious.

London has never known such celebration of sisterhood until that night. All four girls ate and drank their fill, danced and sang to their heart's content, celebrated both themselves and each other.

"A toast!" Addie declared at some time in the night, dashing a champagne glass to the heavens as though it were a golden chalice claimed in victory. Perhaps it was far greater than that.

"A toast to the bonds of sisterhood and friendship! Such loves are often overlooked and underestimated to be lesser than most. But it's been made clear to me in this year of trials and tribulations, of ending the old and beginning the new, that sisterhood and friendship are some of the most powerful and wonderful bonds the world has to offer. After all, what is a friend? A single soul, dwelling in two bodies."

"Aristotle," Connie remarked with a soft smile.

Gal chortled: "'n' t'at's why she be t'e writer."

Smirking, Bess stood and raised her glass as she began reciting: "I'll be there for you when the rain starts to pour. I'll be there for you, like I've been there before. I'll be there for you, 'cuz you're there for me too."

She cast a goofy smile around the table. "The 'Friends' theme song."

The table broke into fits of giggles and good natured groans at that. And then everyone was raising their glasses in toast. "To sisterhood!" The sound of crystal glass clinking together tinkled out through the night.

A night made for lovers and romance taken over by the love and joy of found family.

It was truly a Valentine's never to be forgotten.

And I think we're going to stop it here because, I know me, and I know when I dive into the Wolf era it is likely to get long and graphic.😅. So we'll just wait on that, and keep this cute and wholesome for now!

@rom-e-o I will probably dive in at some point to actually turn Galentine's into a fleshed out ficlet at some point, so if you want to add ideas, go right ahead.☺️

#scrooge 2022 #netflix scrooge #scrooge a christmas carol #scrooge #fanfiction #christmas carol ocs #modern au #sims 4 au #timeless scroogeverse #sisterhood #bess sullivan (not scrooge yet) #constance dogoode

[nutzworth]

DAY 5: JANUARY 31, 2024 (i got to start reading more consistently.)

STATS: read for ~3 hrs pages read: 1052-1359. 307 pgs. act 4! slur count: 8 + 1 = 9 (john r slur on 1 of his defaced posters) silly count: 11 + 0 = 11 (i might have missed some. to be honest) piss count: 1/3

THOUGHTS: today started with john's alchemizing spree! i really like the alchemy even though i can NOT understand how the binary and codes quite work. john does though. johns really smart about alchemy in sburb specifically. this section also has a lot of funny john faces. i love this guy

FINALLY the end of dave and bros strife! jesus! been 2 sessions sicne it started! i said this last time but i think its SO INTERESTING how bro doesnt cut or stab dave in any way during the strife. they clash and lil cal gets torn up and daves sword gets 1/2ed and daves SYMBOL gets scratched but when hussie shows dave after the fight hes winded and bruised and battered but hes NOTABLY NOT BLOODY! obviously being bruised cus youre FIGHTING! WITH YOUR DAD! is bad and your dad (bro) is a criminal but. man. how much restraint was bro USING. to be SO PRECISE! did he have to choose between slashing dave and slashing cal in that split second? why else would he possibly have slashed cal? for paradox reasons? i really like dirk strider

the unofficial homestuck collection website is bugging out SO BAD for me. for so many flashes today the music just did not play. it SUCKS! but its fine i just play the music in another tab. i hope they fix that but i know its not priority

i really like the few dave logs i read today. dave is sooooo sad puppy on the other side of a cracked door that sees you and wants to get in the room but cant figure out how to push open the door so he just whines. "hello" "what are you doing" "man where are you" "are you there" he is so cute. in contrast the other dave log today was DAVE AND TAVROS!!!! HOORAY FOR TAVROS! and dave in this one is really funny hes so nonchalant and like "no man. if you want to have sex with a 13 yr old boy okay dude. im on board. time and place." and tavros is like UM! NO! IM GOOD! HAHA! }:) ! they are so funny. the striders are SO internet troll. dave does it flawlessly

KANAYA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I LOVE KANAYA! SHES MY FAVORITE TROLL! shes so awesome in the kanaya/rose log she is so funny. start talking to this girl like "humans cant understand time travel when its really so simple youre all kind of dumb" and ending with "hey we should be friends". i literally love her

EXILES! not much happened with the exiles. introduced to aimless renegade. what a cop. pa harley heart! thanks for your guns pa!

THE FLASH WHEN ROSE ENTERS THE GAME IS SO COOOOOL!!!!!!!!! i really really like it unfortunately the sound didnt work so all the beats didnt hit quite right but they hit ENOUGH. SO COOL! I LOVE ROSE!!!! theres so much going on all the time for that girl. i love you rose

INTERMISSION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i really like the intermission i think its so fun trying to parse what the hell is happening. i have GOT to read problem sleuth because so many of the things i find funny are straight up just problem sleuth bits

hussie averting the readers expectations with the like You have a deck of cards. ==> play solitaire With what cards? Dumbass? Fuck off. You only have your WAR CHEST. i think this is hussie like softdropping his rivalry with his audience. it starts with silly banter and then hes like im going to make a character representing the fandom and im going to kill her off (calliope)

the felt are SO COOL! if anyone knows all the pun names for them lmk. i only know a few obvious ones.

the intermission is SO gory. theres so much blood and death and guns and knives. like ok dude i get youre in mafia gangs or whatever but cool it on the blood and yucky faces! yeesh! there is also more crude jokes in it than normal i think. maybe cus these are real adults with pornography in their briefcases than like 13 yr olds. "jack king off" "you beat it(your heart) pretty often" "fist full of penis" etc

you kjnow what drives me crazy. the ACTUAL REAL TIMELINE of the intermission. or at least what it means for the rest of the comic. obviously the intermission is foreshadowing (esp when slick gets his eye and arm cut off; mentioning lord english; etc) but like. its MORE. when i first read homestuck i was under the impression that the intermission was just some other timeline in some universe. granted i dont remember slicks eye and arm getting nixed or karkat vantas reveal or lord english mention or anything that foreshadows anything. but NO! its NOT some other timeline! but it IS another universe. its ALTERNIA!!!!!!!!!!!

the story of jack noir (spades slick) as i know it is as follows: jack noir spawns in derse ==> commits a crime (probably shittalking the queen) ==> gets exiled to... um. somewhere. ==> i assume he meets karkat here? and stabs him. and karkats blood is revealed and then theyre friends ==> slick (now scurrilous straggler) is left on the green moon? exiled in rags ==> he builds a city ==> the felt's mansion is there also. they form gangs and become rivals ==> intermission starts; midnight crew infiltrates lord english's lair to get the vault prizes ==> slick goes in the vault and begins commanding karkat. if im wrong about any of this correct me im so curious

i really like clubs deuce and diamonds droog. i wish crowbar was in the intermission more. clover is just like nagito komaeda. trace and fin are insaaaane. i wish i knew more about the felt

ACT 4! GAME!!!!! game on lowas. its really cool i didnt get to play it my first readthrough. love the salamanders and love the captchalogue nonsense. it is so fun. thats all for today folks

#me #nutzworth hs reread #act 4 woo! #sorry this is the longest thoughts section ever. i thinking

[tarnishedinquirer]

Church of Dragon Communion

On Yura's advice, I returned to the Coastal Cave, where Boc once lived. In my haste to leave, I had completely ignored the back exit. There were only a few Demi-humans back here, but they were easily dealt with.

I emerged on a small island. I'd seen it before, but now I knew how to get there. There wasn't anything here except small animals, so I started up the hill to the church.

Like most buildings in these lands, it was in ruins. But unlike most, it was easy to tell how this came to pass. Much like the capital, a dragon had died here, crashing through the roof and destroying the walls. It then petrified, and here it has remained ever since. It was different from Agheel, in that it had four legs instead of just two. Perhaps dragons had lost two of their limbs over the eons.

Just as notable were the numerous dragon statues scattered throughout the ruins. They were in no particular order, and were not displaced by the dying dragon. They were just placed here haphazardly, presumably sometime after the dragon died. They each had systematically had their head and one of their hands severed, a sign of ritual defacement.

This was a dumping ground. Statues from elsewhere, perhaps other churches, had been brought here and then just left. Why not tossed into the sea? Perhaps some superstition, which could explain why their right hands remained.

I decided to look around first before I would mess with the altar. Atop a large ruin fragment, I found a note in runes. I've seen plenty of runes written by other Tarnished, but as we are not especially learned in them, our messages tend to be simple (and sometimes crude). This one was more eloquent, but I understood it all the same

"Far to the east you'll find the Cathedral of Dragon Communion, where draconic power gathers."

I pulled out my spyglass and... ah. Right. It's in Caelid. I'll be going there eventually. Probably inevitable, really, but I'm in no hurry.

It was time. I stood before the altar, the eternally burning flame. It was a lurid maroon, a color similar to but still wholly unlike that of blood. The heart seemed simultaneously too small to have ever pumped the blood of such a beast, yet also too large for me to ever possibly consume. Was a small piece of it enough? Surely they could not expect me to eat the gravel stone.

It was not faith that brought me here. I did not place my trust and devotion in the power of dragons. Perhaps that would protect me from whatever corruption the heart will bring. If the power corrupts, then I will simply gain no power from this act. I will not use it. I'm probably not even capable of using dragon incantations.

But if I wasn't seeking power, then why? It was merely curiosity. No... more than that. It was an intellectual lust. If I could know it, I needed to. If I could do it, I needed to. I realized the inherently draconic character of such a thought too late, as I had already sank my teeth into the heart.

I tore at it like an animal. Blood coated my mouth, my face, my clothes, my hands. I was insatiable. A hunger that went far deeper than a mere belly full of food or a brain full of knowledge. It was primal. The faster I devoured, the faster I wanted to devour. I felt my teeth break on the gravel stone and still I consumed. The blood in my mouth was not just from the heart, it was my own as I swallowed the shattered chunks of my own teeth. I tore open my cheeks cramming it in. Where was my mask? How was I eating like this? It was impossible. the heart was gone. What was I still eating? Oh god my hands...

And then, I snapped back to reality. There was only the faintest trickle of blood on my lips. My teeth and hands were intact. The heart was gone. I chose to believe I had only taken a small bite and the fire consumed the rest, and everything after that was my mind playing tricks on me. Any other possibility was too much to bear.

Information flooded my mind. I was compelled to write it down, commit it to vellum in case memory failed me. I wrote feverishly in a script I did not recognize but could read nonetheless. It felt like a revelation, but not a divine one. More like some ancestral secrets locked away in my bones.

One of the incantations of Dragon Communion. Incantation of those who have hunted dragons and feasted upon their hearts. Theirs is a pure and overwhelming power.

I knew now how to become a dragon, at least in part. I knew that if I only believed, if I only understood, I could take some of their power for myself and breathe out their flame.

As long as I lived, I swore to myself, I would never do it. The power was indeed overwhelming. I did not like feeling so out of control. I did not like feeling like the vessel for something else.

I am me, and my soul is my own.

I will not ask questions of this. Some doors are best left closed.

#elden ring #elden ring lore #in character #in character blog #in character post #let's play

[mikkokomori]

I have some more of the Decaying Garden AU for you Mikko! I didn't really like how the previous post turned out (Blame my sleep deprived brain) plus I decided to sweep out the cobwebs up top and actually started writing the fic so I'm gonna give you some of the info about the characters and the setting.

Sunny's a year younger in this AU then he is in canon, with him being 15, not 16.

He was born premature which is part of the reason why Mari became so protective over him.

Sunny knows a lot of swears and learnt these long before he could read or write. He rarely swears because Mari heard him once and said that he shouldn't say stuff like that because it's mean.

According to Mari, Sunny's quite the little chatterbox, people usually don't notice because it's almost always Mari he's talking to.

When Mari hurt her knee Sunny was almost always by her side, keeping her company and helping her.

When they were younger Sunny and Mari once went to a restaurant with their parents. She ordered Steak and chips while Sunny got a burger and chips. Turns out Mari is not a fan of steak and Sunny didn't like the texture of the toppings. Luckily they were sitting next to each other so they just swapped plates. Sunny learnt that he loves steak and Mari learnt that yes, you can overcook pineapple without even cooking it.

Sunny and Mari met Hero and Kel when they were 4 and 8 after their previous neighbors moved out.

Sunny's parents mistreatment of him didn't begin when Mari died.

The order of ages goes from Hero (The oldest), Mari, Kel, Aubrey, Basil, and Sunny (The youngest).

Sunny does eventually become friends with everyone in the group, but it takes a bit longer due to a few factors. Him sticking to Mari like a limpet. Him being incredibly quiet and shy. And him being in a lower grade (So no shared classes, unlike the others who shared classes).

The reason why Sunny's so close to Mari in this AU is because she's the only safe person he's known for the longest time. She always listened to him, always wanted to be around him, She was the one who took care of him, and she was never cruel or mean to him. His name might be Sunny, but Mari lit up the life of everyone. She was the sun in all but name.

When their parents were too busy to cook, Mari would take it upon herself to cook for her and Sunny. Once he turned 7 he started asking Mari if he could help. In the end, he might not have been as good as a cook as her, but he did know all her recipes by heart. It's something he could never forget.

Due to Basil's Grandma's advanced age, she actually had Polly with her as a helper a little bit before Basil was born and became a full time caretaker when Basil moved in with them.

Because Sunny hadn't been outside since Mari's body was found (Not even for the funeral) the photo album had never been defaced. So after a few months post incident Basil ended up admitting to Aubrey just how much the situation was tearing him up. Aubrey eventually asked if her staying over for a bit would make him feel better. This escalated to sleepovers, extended stays, and her eventually moving in with them. (They got bunk beds).

After Sunny's 'parents' revealed the 'truth' Aubrey became Angry, Basil fell into a depressive rut, Hero pushed all his feelings down and forced himself to put on a happy face, Kel ended up repressing it and eventually forgot all about his neighbors.

Hero being the oldest of the group never really bought what Sunny's parents 'claimed' to have happened, but a seed of doubt had been planted, and with everything happening with his friends & family plus him being constantly stonewalled he'd eventually given up and in turn that seed began to sprout.

Headspace doesn't exist and it's only White Space with Black Space horrors encroaching on it. Omori's job here isn't to protect Sunny from the truth, but instead to protect him from the lies his parents have made him believe. And because they've made him believe his friends hate him and don't want to see him (Sadly this eventually became true, but due to more lies) and that it was his fault his beloved sister died it hurt too much for him to be with them, even in his own head.

The other reason why is because Headspace was originally a bunch of ideas Sunny had imagined when he was younger and he always shared them with Mari. After the incident though those memories also became tainted and Sunny was filled with too much grief and guilt to recreate them.

Stranger also exists here, but in a new form, they try to help Sunny but his mind refuses to believe she's real so she ends up helping Omori help Sunny. She also might have a connection to a person long gone.

White Space isn't a place to just survive, but to act as a shield, and a place of healing and while Sunny has no real control over it, Omori has almost complete control and uses it for various purposes in his attempts to help Sunny. The encroaching Black Space is exempt from his powers sadly.

Kim and Vance might have a tough gal/guy exterior but inside they're big softies, and it doesn't help that they have a soft spot for people in bad situations. It's why they approached Aubrey initially, and why they brought Charlene, Angel and Mav into the group. So when Sunny bumped into Kim she went into Mama Bear mode because he looked like a walking corpse. It doesn't help that the more the siblings learn about Sunny the worse the situation looks.

Sunny almost dies and ends up in an induced medical coma to heal. This is the event that snaps the original group out of their fixed views and to take a new look at the situation. They finally agree to help Kim and Vance discover the truth about what happened to Sunny and Mari.

I'd write down how it ends but It's more fun to leave it on a cliffhanger and let you imagine what happens, that is until I eventually finish the fic and post it (If you want I can send the link when it's done?)

Don't know about you, but having Sunny's and Mari's backstory be mostly positive with the darker truth hiding in the background makes the tragedy of what eventually happens to them more impactful.

So now I leave with you this image and a fun fact. Imagine little Sunny hiding behind Mari's legs when meeting Hero and Kel for the first time. In this AU, Kim's 5'6, Vance is 5'8, and Sunny is 4'7 (143 cm to be exact).

I would love to read it if you ever write it...!! I want to read more fics... but I'm very picky over it...... so I think it'd be fun to get back into it by reading something you've made me interested in...!! Also... the mipies....... sniffles......... I love the new basic storyline of things in this AU, so hopefully you can one day show me!!!!!

#omori #omori au #omori sunny #omori spoilers #omori mari #omori hero #anon asks #Decaying Garden AU #miko talks #sunny talks

[the0ldmann]

Shaun and MC get into a small argument over his newest project.

"Something's Wrong with Sunny Day Jack" is adult only media, and the associated fandom is an adult only space. Minors and ageless blogs are reminded to stay away or they will be blocked on sight.

Writing below the cut.

"You're going to do WHAT?!"

"Hey, hey, calm down. I know you don't like horror, but this is a little out of character don't you think? What's got you so worked up?"

Shaun was standing there confused while Ian was in the background holding a blue wig and looking as equally perplexed. It was clear by the expression on your face you were angry as hell, fists clenched at your side.

"Calm down? CALM DOWN?! Why the hell should I calm down when you're defacing some poor man's legacy?!"

"It's not defacing a legacy it's- look. We were hired by the company to make a horror movie about a character they've had sitting in a vault. It's not like that character is modeled after anyone real!"

"Excuse me, but some guy trying to make sense of his life, takes on the role, gets killed in the role so it's all he was ever known for, and the company apparently erases any trace of him or the role if the fact internet searches turning up nothing means anything. You look at all of that and tell me that taking this story and turning it into some spooky mumbo-jumbo isn't defacing a legacy. Go on."

"When you put it like that, it certainly doesn't sound good. B-but it's just a character, and this is our breakout chance! It's not like you knew the man yourself or his family, so why the hell is this striking such a nerve?"

"You know what, I can't do this anymore right now." A proper response was not something you could think of without giving away Jack's precarious existence, so you turned around and stormed off with a huff. You slammed the door to your bedroom behind you. Leaning against it, you closed your eyes and slid down to the floor. Your breathing was ragged and you were shaking as you could feel gloved hands pick you up off the floor.

Gently Jack placed you on your bed and then swiftly went over to lock the door. You were already starting to curl up when he came over to lay down next to you.

"Hey, Sunshine, are you alright?" All you could do was shake your head as you wrapped your arms around him and pulled him close.

"No. I can't believe what they're doing. You're a person too, and I just-"

"Shhh," Jack was doing his best to calm you, "I know, and I appreciate you standing up for me. But you've got me more worried about you! I've never seen you this worked up before, and anyone being this worked up is liable to say things they regret or even hurt themselves on accident. You being hurt because of me is the last thing I want."

"I know, I know, I just..." You struggled to even your breathing. Jack held you close while you proceeded to silently cry into his chest. You were scared. People were assholes, and if this movie made it big like everyone- like the studio- wanted, then it was going to be impossible for Jack to avoid facing it. You knew he was set in the ways of this character, you knew and you've grown to accept it.

But had Jack come to fully accept it? How was this going to affect him? Was he going to break down at all in the barrage of what people were going to see him as? Especially if that something just wasn't him?

You didn't know how he'd handle it at all. If he broke down, if he disappeared and you lost him and were left all alone again...

"Hey," you could feel him rubbing circles into your back. "We're going to figure this out, okay? If they won't listen to reason, then there's got to be a way to stop the project."

meanwhile...

"Dude, what the fuck was that about?" Ian went back to trying to fluff and style the wig, though it was hard to focus after that outburst.

"You mean to tell me you don't have a clue what would have set them off, despite having known them the longest and having also dated them at one point? No wonder the two of you are ex's."

"Hey! That's uncalled for!"

"So was that outburst. Really don't have a clue what could have prompted that?"

"No, not a single one. You were right, that was extremely out of character for them."

Shaun sighed, throwing down some papers and leaning against the table. Ian only looked up briefly to see that he actually looked worried.

"What, you're not actually taking what they're saying to heart, are you?"

"They make a valid point but that's not what I'm concerned about."

"There's something else to be concerned about?"

"You might want to take a seat."

As confused by everything as Ian was, he was more curious as to what the hell Shaun was talking about. He put the wig up and walked over to the table, taking a seat. Shaun kept looking around, and it was about a solid minute before he was able to look at Ian.

"I've been doing digging- on the actors from the old show and I found... Well, there might be something that could throw a wrench into our plans. Rather unfortunately, it might have something to do with your dad..."

#minors dni #ageless blogs dni #sunny day jack #sdj #something's wrong with sunny day jack #swwsdj

[raesnovelsblog]

Synopsis from IMDB:

Shadyside, 1978. School's out for summer and the activities at Camp Nightwing are about to begin. But when another Shadysider is possessed with the urge to kill, the fun in the sun becomes a gruesome fight for survival.

My synopsis: 

No notes.

My review

Out of the trilogy, this one is my favorite. I’d give it a higher rating if it was dealing solely with the 78 story. But if you are a fan of 80’s slashers or Stranger Things, you’ll probably like this one. The characters are a lot more likable in this one and the plot is tighter.

Rating : 8/10

Spoilery thoughts I had while watching the movie below. You've been warned.

I unapologetically love Sadie Sink.

Where the 1st movie was Scream meets Halloween, this one is more like Friday the 13th in the best way.

They go from knocking to breaking and entering very quickly.

All those ticking clocks would drive me insane.

Sheila is a psycho.

Ziggy was strung up by a tree, but by all means, chastise her for talking out of turn.

That’s right Ziggy. You don’t fall at his feet just because he did his job.

She wore a white top and is now upset that it got dirty?

“Nurse Lane, I’m in trouble again.” I bet she has been to the infirmary a lot.

I like the neighbor they took the kids to from the 1st movie is the nurse in this movie. And also the mother to one of the serial killers. I like neat touches like that.

Cindy’s accusing Ziggy of being selfish, but Ziggy’s showing concern for nurse Lane.

Mother of a serial killer. Everyone would think she had gone insane. She was right though.

The bell rings and everyone snaps out of it and runs to get food. That rang true to me.

Now Cindy wants to know about nurse Lane.

Cindy is selfish. She covers it up with toxic positivity, but she only cares about how she’s seen and what she’s going to do.

The other campers are terrorizing Ziggy and the sister barely reacts.

“Carry On My Wayward Son” Will always think of Supernatural and I’m okay with that.

I’d want to check out the witch map over the color war too.

Nick sees Ziggy’s cabin defaced but his 1st instinct isn’t to punish anyone. They really do only punish the Shadyside kids.

“Ziggy sucks cocks in hell.” Exorcist reference - nice.

Would not go down the creepy stone steps. Sadly, I might have when I was a teenager. 

You would have doubts simply seeing Tommy’s name on the rock, but after he attacked that guy with an ax all doubt is gone.

Why would she think Will set up a romantic meeting with her in the bathroom?

Saddie Sink is so amazing. Is there anyone she can’t have chemistry with?

I shipped them so hard.

I don’t care if the thing was calling to me, I don’t think I would touch it.

That crunch sound was too real.

There’s a distinct lack of shit for that to be directly under the outhouse.

Nick’s regretting what he’s done. 

Did Ziggy not notice that even though Nick was in between them, Tommy left Nick to go after her?

She stabbed him and then tried to smother him. Ziggy doesn’t go down without a fight.

I doubt a hand that old would hold together.

She removed his head with a shovel. That was badass.

How do the killers know when to stop? They don’t have a quota. 

So it wasn’t that Ziggy died and was brought back, it was that Nick brought her back. It’s a wonder that more people Nick knows don’t get hurt. He doesn’t have control over who they go after.

They left their bodies out in the rain? That’s messed up.

So is Ziggy still in danger or is she being paranoid?

If that red stuff is evasive as Cindy said it was, that janitor must have to clean around that tree nightly.

I like when anthologies swap stories but keep the same cast.

#horror #horror movie #horror movie review #ghosts #witch #witches #witchcraft #netflix #netflix original #fear street #fear street 1978 #fear street trilogy #triology #slasher #80s vibes #based on a book #serial killer movie #camp movie

[hopetorun]

7, 10, 15, 18 please!

7. answered

10. Has a piece of writing ever “haunted” you? Has your own writing haunted you? What does that mean to you?

a lot of writing sticks with me tbh! obviously i have now forgotten all of it due to being asked* but a few things that tend to leave me thinking about something constantly for days: a wrenching bittersweet ending where the protagonist is stuck with only imperfect choices, a scene where it’s so so clear what the non-pov character is going through and the pov character is totally missing it, really good metaphors especially ones involving bodies, great closing lines.

i consider something to be haunting me when i can’t get it out of my head! but i don’t really feel that way about my own stories because that’s so different. i cannot articulate it but it is.

*see previous response to this meme with a note about how i should be better at keeping track of snippets that stick with me

15. Do you write in the margins of your books? Dog-ear your pages? Read in the bath? Why or why not? Do you judge people who do these things? Can we still be friends?

i wish i was a person who wrote in the margins but i very much am not, mostly because i get too distracted reading to take notes. i do sometimes scribble stuff in my notes app for book club books so i don’t forget my thoughts but not always. i don’t dog ear pages but i do read in the bath and i also read while eating and stain my books with food. i therefore cannot judge people who deface books in other ways, and would not want to. books are meant to be read and loved and used. my cheeto-fingerprinted copy of little women and my baby blanket that i slept with until it was literally just scraps of thread and the handmade quilt my uncle had on his bed until he died that was worn to bits are the same, actually. we are meant to use these things and love them and that’s its own way of treasuring a thing. if any one person wants to treasure their books by keeping them pristine that’s fine but i treasure mine by loving them to pieces and having to buy a whole new copy to love to pieces again. and covering them in cheese dust fingerprints

18. Choose a passage from your writing. Tell me about the backstory of this moment. How you came up with it, how it changed from start to end. Spicy addition: Questioner provides the passage.

from home by now:

It works for Matthew, and it’s the most comfortable he’s felt around Draisaitl in literally years. Maybe since they collapsed from the shower onto a hotel bed in Edmonton during the playoff bubble, wrung out and relaxed and extremely pleased with themselves.

“I thought that was going to be hot when you suggested but I didn’t realize how hot it would be,” Matthew said in that hotel room. Leon dropped a hand heavily on his ass, patting him twice and then letting it rest there.

“We’re going to be out soon,” he said. Matthew couldn’t argue with him; the Oilers had been thoroughly outclassed in their first three games, and he didn’t think they were going to pull off a reverse sweep. “We can maybe win one but I doubt more than that will happen.”

Matthew nodded. “Sorry,” he said.

“You’re not,” Leon said, but he laughed roughly.

“Not very.” Matthew shrugged. “I’ll miss this.” He regretted saying it as soon as the words left his mouth, but Leon seemed unfazed. If anything, he smiled faintly.

“Won’t miss having to sneak around whenever I want to do anything but watch TV in my room.”

There wasn’t a good answer to that; Matthew was willing to put up with it for hockey, but Leon was about to be on a plane back home. He shrugged, and a silence fell around them that felt heavy. Leon’s hand was still resting on his ass.

They were in Leon’s hotel. Matthew needed to leave soon, if he was going to be able to sneak back in and get enough sleep. It felt like breaking the moment would break something important.

Matthew did it anyway. He rolled himself out of the bed, patted Leon on the shoulder a couple of times and grabbed a towel from the bathroom to throw at him.

“I’ll see you around, yeah?” he said before he opened the door. Leon grunted, and the noise was almost like one he made on the ice sometimes. Made it easier for Matthew to slip him back into the Draisaitl box, smirking at him from across the ice, looking terrible in orange.

In the present, he’s still Draisaitl, but somehow more comfortable than a few weeks ago. His shoulders are relaxed, which is probably the alcohol, and he’s not walking like he wants to leave Matthew in the dust.

Matthew didn’t think—well, he isn’t sure what he thought, anymore. He thought Draisaitl hated him, and then he thought Draisaitl liked him, and then everything got muddled for a while, with the playoffs and then Matthew’s concussion making everything worse and hazier. At the end of it he thought Draisaitl hated him, but differently than the first time. It felt like—like something changed. Like there was a different thread underlying the way that Draisaitl shoved him and whispered insults and generally refused to look at Matthew at all off the ice after everything that happened.

Above them, the moon is still high in the sky. It’s almost full, a sliver missing off the perfect circle.

“Full moon soon,” Matthew says, because he doesn’t like the silence.

thank you for your submission and for not making me pick 😂😂 excited to get to talk a bit about the sex scene flashbacks, some of the first bits of this story i wrote! i had all these scraps of them tucked at the bottom of my google doc waiting for the right place to fit into the story. early on in the writing process i did a bunch of sketching out timelines of the bubble playoffs and how many days they were both in edmonton and how many times i realistically thought they might have hooked up. it was not many at all, btw. but i stuck to it.

the line about the concussion was a fairly late add, because my trusty alpha and beta readers did tell me i needed to seed it better. it still has that like, oh you weren’t here all along feeling to me! even though i know that’s not how it works for readers.

i didn’t look up whether there’ll be a full moon around the right time in the summer of 2026 for this scene. which is weird for me because i normally look that kind of thing up (huge shoutout to my best friend time and date dot com) but i wanted the moon to be almost full so it is. why do i always look this kind of thing up? well i like to be accurate or at least plausible in descriptions of weather and seasonal changes and when it’s dark outside but also i once read a book where the sun came up before 7 am in scotland in late december and i shrieked aloud.

#ask meme