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wifelinkmtg · 1 year

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Transformation, Horror, Eros, Phyrexia

There is another shore, you know, upon the other side. - Lewis Carroll, “The Lobster Quadrille,”

ONE.

There is a moment early in H.P. Lovecraft’s 1931 novella The Shadow over Innsmouth where the nameless narrator looks out from the rotting seaside hamlet where he has lucklessly ventured, to the so-called Devil Reef some ways out in the harbor, darkened by a cloud of evil rumor—and something curious happens: the narrator experiences two opposed sensations simultaneously. The “long, black line” of the reef conveys “a suggestion of odd latent malignancy,” but also, “a subtle, curious sense of beckoning seemed superadded to the grim repulsion.” This bit of foreshadowing—the reef both calling and repelling the narrator—only finds its denouement at the very end of the story, after our narrator has narrowly escaped Innsmouth, the fish-like monsters who swarm in off of Devil Reef and their part-human descendants who inhabit the town in an unconvincing and repellent simulacrum of humanity. After his escape, the narrator does some genealogical research into his own troubled family history, full of disappearances and suicides, and concludes that he himself is one such abyssal hybrid. As he ages, he finds himself changing to resemble them, and in his dreams he swims among them in undersea palaces and gardens. The call of the deep becomes impossible to ignore:

So far I have not shot myself as my uncle Douglas did. I bought an automatic and almost took the step, but certain dreams deterred me. The tense extremes of horror are lessening, and I feel queerly drawn toward the unknown sea-deeps instead of fearing them. I hear and do strange things in sleep, and awake with a kind of exaltation instead of terror.

In the end, the narrator embraces the change and determines to flee to those oceanic depths, to live “amidst wonder and glory for ever.”

This is horror.

Something curious also happens in Shirley Jackson’s 1959 novel The Haunting of Hill House. Our heroine, Eleanor Vance, flees an unhappy life with a loveless sister to a haunted house, to take part in a paranormal experiment with three new friends. The haunting proceeds predictably but effectively: labyrinthine corridors, voices, unearthly cold, banging on doors, the rare apparition. The participants find themselves see-sawing between increasing night-time terror and a strangely intense joie de vivre by day, until one night, as the house seems to shake itself down upon its terrified guests in a dizzying cataclysm, Eleanor breaks:

She heard the laughter over all, coming thin and lunatic, rising in its little crazy tune, and thought, No; it is over for me. It is too much, she thought, I will relinquish my possession of this self of mine, abdicate, give over willingly what I never wanted at all; whatever it wants of me it can have.

By the next line, it is abruptly morning. The terror has ceased; the house stands. Its manifestations, for Eleanor, become benign: an unseen figure catches her beside a brook,

and she was held tight and safe. It is not cold at all, she thought, it is not cold at all.

She is through the horror now, on the other side of something. She becomes part of the haunting. Her senses encompass the whole of the house. She runs unafraid through the house by night, banging on doors, laughing as she eludes the other guests. When they finally catch up to her, it seems clear to them that Hill House has crept into her, that she has crossed some line, and they decide the best course of action is to send her away, in the hopes that with time she will return to this side, the normal side, the human side.

Instead, faced with rejection behind her and her old unhappy life before her, Eleanor Vance steers her car into a tree. There are holes which admit passage in only one direction. This, too, is horror.

In the 2018 film Annihilation, Lena (played by Natalie Portman) crosses a literal barrier called the Shimmer into a dangerous yet beautiful alien landscape full of mutated creatures. During their journey deeper into this territory, Lena and her companions realize that they themselves are also changing under the alien influence. Some break under the realization. Some surrender to the change and vanish into the landscape. Lena alone returns from the heart of the phenomenon, but she is no longer herself. Is this still horror? The film has many horror elements to it, but in this last moment, as she embraces her similarly-transformed husband, it is something else.

Cyberqueen, a 2012 text game created by Porpentine, draws on a legacy of godlike malevolent artificial intelligences in fiction (AM, from Harlan Ellison’s “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream,” GladOS from the Portal games, and most importantly SHODAN from the System Shock series, who is cited as an inspiration eleven times in the Cyberqueen acknowledgements.) In this game, you awake from cryosleep on a colony spaceship where the shipboard AI has gone rogue. You fight her. You lose. You run. You are caught. You are forcibly cyberized, your mind surgically altered, your will brought into line with that of the AI. Finally, you kill or mutilate every other surviving human aboard the ship. It is filthily, overwhelmingly erotic throughout. (You can play it here, and I strongly recommend doing so if you have the stomach for it.)

This is no longer horror, is it? How can the same sort of transformation we encounter as horror in Lovecraft be encountered here as something to get off to? Well,

TWO.

I don’t remember now where I got the idea from, but there was a period in my childhood where I was terrified of the idea of time travel—specifically of the idea that someone in the future would invent it, travel to before I was born, and through the butterfly effect cause me to be born a girl instead. I used to lie awake at night circling the idea like a broken tooth. It was an irrational fear on multiple levels: I wasn’t afraid of being written out of the timeline through time travel, and I knew, intellectually, that in the timeline where I was born a girl I would have no memory of ever having been anything else, but even so, the horror of it caught me and held me by the throat.

This meant something, of course—in retrospect obvious, but at the time literally unimaginable, and it wasn’t until college, sitting at my computer in the dark in my dorm room at three in the morning, following the itching in my brain, that I unearthed alchemical knowledge: the transmutation of sex, male into female, in a dizzying profusion of form and process and—okay what I’m saying is I discovered forced feminization porn, yeah? It was revelatory. It was squalid. I was still Christian and couldn’t even bring myself to jerk off yet, so I sat there, the itch in my brain grown into a thunderous buzz, unable or unwilling to look away.

Forced feminization—I promise this is relevant—is the unwilling transformation of (usually) a man into (usually) a hyper-feminine woman, accomplished by a wide variety of means, including but not limited to blackmail, magic potions, nanite swarms, cursed artifacts, hacks or glitches in virtual reality programs, badly-worded wishes, industrial accidents, chemical leaks, abduction and surgery, medical malpractice, and hypnosis. You may notice that many if not all of these scenarios could be made into horror with little change, and in fact it is not uncommon for a poorly-written or over-ambitious forced-fem story to wind up as horror by accident (though of course this greatly depends on the tastes of the individual reader.)

(As an aside, I’d like to note that there is a great deal to learn from porn—not in terms of How to Do Sex, but about how the culture which produced it thinks about sex, and gender, and race and morality and technology and a host of other things. It’s a lot like popping the hood of a car and examining the engine. Sure, you wind up greasy and should probably wash your hands before you rejoin polite company, but if you don’t, you’ll never figure out the underlying issues. Actually, it’s a lot like horror in that regard.)

Let’s talk about a very different transformation I was undergoing at the same time: the loss of my faith. I was raised, as mentioned, very Christian—and in one of the worst strains of fundamentalist white American Evangelicalism. I was a true believer: the world for me was entirely divided between the faithful elect and the unbelievers, who must necessarily know the truth of the (fundamentalist white American Evangelical) gospel in their hearts, but had wilfully chosen to oppose Christ. The prospect of passing from the elect into the category of the unbeliever was unthinkable. The process of deconversion led only into the outer darkness and the weeping and gnashing of teeth.

And yet I found myself on that precipice anyway. The worldview of FWAE is not one which survives too much contact with the actual world, and I had chosen against my parents’ preferences to go to a secular university, the better to witness to the unsaved. In the end, the process I had been mortally afraid of consisted of a couple days’ agonized thought, unanswered prayer and tearful calls to my unresponsive parents and pastor, after which I emerged into a world much bigger and much more complex than the one I’d grown up in. The serpent had told the truth after all: I had eaten of the fruit, and had not died.

Okay: is this horror? Reader, forgive me for presupposing anything about your perspective, but you’re on a horny lesbian Magic: the Gathering card art review tumblr, so I’m going to assume that losing one’s hateful, fundamentalist faith is the opposite of horrifying to you. But it was, absolutely, horror to contemplate for someone on the other side of that process.

But then... is the horror of any given transformation only a matter of where you’re standing? If you read The Shadow over Innsmouth aware of Lovecraft’s profound racism, it becomes very, very obvious that the horror of Innsmouth is the specter of miscegenation. The narrator’s horrified cataloging of the facial features of the offspring of fishmen and humans, the South Pacific origin of the sea-devil-worship of Innsmouth brought back by an enterprising merchant captain, the fear of the unsuspected poison of one’s own ancestry lurking in one’s own blood: all of this is much less effective as horror for someone living in a country where interracial marriages are protected under law and seen as unproblematic in consensus morality (assume whatever asterisks are necessary for the complicated landscape of attitudes toward interracial relationships in the United States, please, I do not have the expertise or desire to get into it here.) My point is that since 1967 (asterisk asterisk asterisk), we are through to the other side of that horror, and it turns out there literally wasn’t anything to be afraid of. The pelagial palaces and terraced coral gardens of Y’ha-nthlei just sound beautiful to me.

And it’s hard for me—though I may be in the minority here—to view Hill House as the primary antagonist in Jackson’s novel. The true source of evil is all the things Eleanor runs from and therefore brings with her: her cruel, deceased mother, her exploitation and infantilization by her sister; as well as the final polite unwillingness of her new friends at Hill House to do anything but send her away once she goes inconveniently mad. These mundane ills are what sends Eleanor Vance careening into the tree, not the supernatural will of malignant architecture.

Here, then, is the better part of my thesis: transformation horror is something that can be traversed. You can come out the other end of a transformation unrecognizable to you-as-you-were, and yet still very much yourself. Moreover, it is this navigability, this double-sidedness which so closely links the horror of transformation to the eros of transformation. Not all transformation horror, passed through, becomes plainly erotic, but it is very often portrayed as a kind of seduction, and it is difficult for me to conceive of eros without some kind of change. Desire is a kind of transformation, is it not?

In fact, isn’t it true that a great many of us have already passed through such a transformation? Recall yourself as a child, as you were when you first learned about sex: wasn’t there something repellent and unhygienic about the idea? Wasn’t there a small horror in being told, you will change, and this will cease to be loathsome and become something you desire fervently, something you seek out, something you go to great lengths to experience? ...or were you, possibly, raised in a family & culture that was normal about sex and bodies? I admit I may be generalizing my individual neuroses to some extent here. Well, stet, at the very least you can see where I’m coming from.

THREE.

Returning for a moment to the subject of porn: why forced feminization, specifically? There are—you’re going to have to trust me here—no shortage of ways in the real world by which a man transforms into a woman, and very few of them involve coercion or all the horror-adjacent setup of, say, mind-control devices or vengeful curses. Why does a simple story of a willing gender transition fail to function as erotica? Why did it take stories of unwilling transformation for me to learn I was transgender? What’s the juice ne sais quoi at play in forced-fem?

Well, how does Luke Skywalker come to leave Tatooine? He gets a mysterious message from a princess, a desert wizard tells him to come help rescue her, and... he says no. He has obligations to family here, a job to do, power converters to bring back from Tosche Station. He is enmeshed in a social web, like all of us: it surrounds us, penetrates us, binds the galaxy together and so forth. So in order for Luke to go on grand adventures, the story needs to murder his aunt and uncle and sever those threads of social obligation.

Joseph Campbell, monomyth monomane that he was, would say this is “Refusing the Call” and find it in Jungian shadow on every cave wall, signifying something important in the heart of humanity, but really this is just a useful storytelling tool: a story needs change, but a virtuous protagonist cannot simply abandon their obligations and designated social role to go gallivanting off into space, so change must be forced upon them.

The bodice-ripper romance novel, the rape fantasy, the forced feminization story are all operating on a similar premise: you are so wrapped in society’s web, in your socially-dictated identity, that you cannot even acknowledge your desires on the level of conscious thought. When these things are enacted on your body, you will find yourself changed by the experience. You will love what has been done to you, and you remain blameless, since it’s not as though you sought this out.

These are liberatory fantasies. The lack of consent is precisely what allows you to move beyond what is permitted you into something new.

Incantation Against Bad-Faith Interpretation because I, a transsexual, just called rape fantasies “liberatory”: I am talking about fantasies, I am talking about why people fantasize about having their consent violated, I am talking about the role such fantasies play and what they can tell us about horror and desire. I am not advocating for real people to have real bad things done to them in real life, fuck off, End of Incantation.

So then, we’ve assembled the full thesis: transformation horror is traversible to the other side, and is inextricably linked to transformation erotica, both because of the seduction of transformation in horror and because the horror of transformation unlocks regions of desire which would otherwise have remained inaccessible.

Okay, now we can talk about Phyrexia.

FOUR.

I hear the roar of the big machine / Two worlds and in between / Hot metal and methedrine / I hear empire down

- The Sisters of Mercy, “Lucretia My Reflection”, from Floodland

Phyrexia is many things—a world, another world, a faction, a kind of creature—but I think it can most succinctly be understood as a virulently contagious biomechanical body horror cult dedicated to the ultimate incorporation of all things into itself. It’s a bit like Star Trek’s the Borg, if the Borg had any style whatsoever. It draws heavy inspiration from H. R. Giger’s work—some Phyrexian horrors are barely-altered versions of the xenomorph from Alien—as well as from Clive Barker’s Cenobites in Hellraiser, whose alien BDSM schtick is especially influential on the aesthetic of New Phyrexia. It is transmitted through glistening oil, an infection vector capable of reshaping bodies and minds, and given enough time, whole worlds. The process by which a being is made into a Phyrexian, “compleation,” is accomplished via glistening oil exposure, surgery, cyberization, and brainwashing.

This essay is in many ways a response to Rhystic Studies’ latest video, called “Phyrexia is Hell”. I think it’s a well-made video, as is true of all Sam Gaglio’s work, and a lot of it is really good—the overview of the nearly-thirty-year history of depictions of Phyrexia in Magic: the Gathering art is invaluable, and the stuff about the Phyrexian conlang is unbelievably cool—but the way he identifies Phyrexia one-to-one with a pretty facile understanding of transhumanism leads him to confused and frankly silly conclusions, like placing Phyrexian compleation on the same continuum with cosmetic orthodontics. Like,

Mandible Justiciar (art by Mike Franchina)

Phyrexia is perfectly happy for you to have teeth in your arms instead of your head! They don’t care about the narrow ideal of a conventionally-attractive human smile. This is a whole other thing.

Now, I don’t want to come down too hard on Gaglio here for a couple of reasons: one, he is very good at what he does (see his videos Understanding Sagas and Red Deck Wins, for example); two, it’s reasonable to say that a full understanding of transhumanism is beyond the scope of a video essay about the tiny pictures on cards for dweebs; and three, most importantly, because I see people make this same mistake all the time. People focus on the things that are textually true about Phyrexia and miss the tension between that and the very different things currently being said by the Phyrexian aesthetic. They miss the razorverge thicket, as it were, for the mycosynth trees.

For instance: it is textually the case that Phyrexia is a sort of fascist cult stemming from the depraved machinations of a dead eugenicist god. Contrast, however, other fascist factions in science fiction: the Imperium of Man from Warhammer 40K worships a massive Aryan god-emperor übermensch, its battles are fought by nine-foot-tall genetically-engineered supersoldiers, and it slaps either skulls or chainsaws on every available surface. The Galactic Empire from Star Wars has legions of identical, uniform stormtroopers. Even the Borg all look alike. Phyrexians talk of ideal perfection of form and then make ten thousand completely different monsters. Phyrexians talk of perfect unity and splinter into nearly a dozen factions who can’t even agree on a name for what they’re trying to accomplish. Other fictional fascisms don’t do this—sure, there’s internal contradiction, as in real fascism, but the core aesthetic remains recognizably, sometimes indistinguishably fascist. You can easily find terminally-online Nazis using Warhammer 40K lingo with that peculiar sincerity which is indistinguishable from irony when you’ve decided the truth doesn’t matter, but it would be a lot harder to find some alt-right bozo going all-in on the Glory of Phyrexia. The aesthetic is all wrong, and fascism’s aesthetic is one of its few consistent features.

Mondrak, Glory Dominus (art by Jason A. Engle)

You see what I mean? The aesthetic evokes a sort of alien fascism, but the art itself would be considered “degenerate” by actual fascists.

Tamiyo’s Immobilizer (art by Daren Bader)

This is much, much closer to Mapplethorpe than to Riefenstahl. And people respond to Phyrexia similarly! The body horror and grotesquerie make them uncomfortable, and then they try to moralize that discomfort. This has been happening at the very least since 2011 with the release of New Phyrexia, and I have seen people on Tumblr arguing in total sincerity that people who are into Phyrexia are making themselves susceptible to real-life cult recruitment (again, the heterogeneity of form in Phyrexia is incompatible with the enforced uniformity of cults and other high-control groups. The appeal of Phyrexia does not translate into real-life cults.)

So, okay, what is the appeal of Phyrexia? Well, you get a sick fuckin cyborg body, is what. Many of us, for various reasons (disability, disease, gender, and so forth) find ourselve intensely dissatisfied with our own bodies, and wanting to radically alter them. Many of us already have. Yes, you surrender your humanity when you are compleated, but we know first-hand that “humanity” is socially-constructed and contingent on certain kinds of conformity. We’ve had our humanity doubted, interrogated, stripped away. We’ve done without. It’s not too high a price to pay, if we get to look like this at the end:

Vraska, Betrayal’s Sting (art by Chase Stone)

I’d even argue that getting to reject humanity as it has rejected you is part of the appeal of compleation. This isn’t quite transhumanism; I might call it exhumanism: the freedom to unearth a way of being that is no longer being human. This is why compleation is coercive, remember? The fantasy allows you to get to this point without making the unimaginable decision to reject not only your individual social obligations, but the idea that you could owe anyone or everyone any kind of social conformity simply for having been born into your species—and then you get to be a cool and powerful cybergorgon.

This, then, is why I don’t blame someone like Sam Gaglio (who is to the best of my knowledge both cisgender and able-bodied) for not really getting what’s going on with Phyrexia. He lives on the before side of the horror of transformation; he’s never had to cross over.

In fact, I’d go one step further here. Phyrexia has existed for almost thirty years, and in that time it’s changed quite a bit. Gaglio quotes an article by Rob Bockman in Hipsters of the Coast which comments on how the shift in the depictions of Phyrexia from 1994 to 2000 reflected shifts in cultural fears over time. The Satanic Panic shaded into multidirectional Y2K anxieties, and the necromancy of original Phyrexia mutated into technological horror. This is what effective horror does: it reflects the fears of its age back to us.

Today, Phyrexia is a seductive, corrupting influence. They have figured out how to compleat planeswalkers—the protagonists of Magic storylines; named, important characters (and Lukka)—which was previously thought impossible. Characters we knew and loved (and Lukka) are seduced, brainwashed, bodily violated, surgically altered, and returned to us unrecognizable. It is not coincidental that this version of Phyrexia is concurrent with the worst wave of anti-transgender legislation to hit the United States in decades—legislation which plays on the specters of the transsexual bathroom predator and on the brainwashed child transitioner, on the idea that transsexuality is a form of social contagion we must protect our children from even learning about. The horror of Phyrexia in its current incarnation is a mirror of our cultural fear of transsexual bodies.

Irreversible Damage: the Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters (art by Lauren K. Cannon)

I want to be very clear here—actually, one moment, my extremely funny Abigail Schrier joke notwithstanding, I do need to tell you that the actual name of the above card is “Furnace Punisher”, which is just peak Phyrexia—I want to be clear that I am not ascribing any kind of malice or antipathy towards trans people, either intentional or unconscious, to Wizards of the Coast or the people who make Magic: the Gathering. I would be shocked if anyone there set out to make Innsmouth-style horror about transsexuals. Nor am I upset that they kind of have! Something being fun and interesting is way more important to me than whether or not it’s problematic, and it’s not like I haven’t seen way more vicious horror about transsexuals. We’ll laugh about this someday, in the coral gardens of Y’ha-nthlei, and you’ll wonder what you were ever so afraid of.

In fact, this is another reason why Phyrexia is so appealing to people like us: we are a kind of social contagion. We are carriers for the viral idea that modes of being outside patriarchy and the nuclear family exist; that gender is a marketing demographic, not an ontological truth; that damn near everything about the world we’ve built is not a necessary fact but a social construct contingent upon a half-dozen other social constructs. A new world grows from many, many seeds, and this one germinates in us.

Anyway! What were we talking aboFIVE.

//please state your name for the record

bone-wife / spit-dribbler / understudy for the underdog / uphill rumor / fine-toothed cunt

- Franny Choi, “Turing Test”, from Death by Sex Machine

Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite (art by Igor Kieryluk)

There is a gravitational pull this painting exerts on people. Even people who don’t get Phyrexia find themselves drawn in, find it difficult to look away (e.g. 26:30 in that Rhystic Studies video.) I have for a long time maintained that Elesh Norn is the hottest character in Magic, and that Kieryluk’s portrayal of her is the best art in Magic, and neither of these opinions are particularly surprising coming from me. What is surprising is just how many people also converge on Miss Multiverse’s-Most-Fuckable-Pyramid-Head as, not just a sex icon of Magic: the Gathering, but the sex icon.

Well, or is it? Giant anchor-shaped porcelain mask aside, her silhouette is more or less that of a painfully-thin woman; she stands fully twelve feet tall, and we remember how wild everyone went over Resident Evil: Village’s woman who was only three-quarters of that; and though not an artificial intelligence herself, it’s hard not to place her somewhere in the Cyberqueen lineage. Like SHODAN, like GladOS, like Cyberqueen, she exerts a near-omnipotent level of control over (part of) her world; like them, she is a megalomaniacal egotist (though she cloaks her egotism in piety); like them, she is happy to render you more useful to her via surgery, brainwashing, or deadly neurotoxin. Her mask obscures where her eyes would be, and if I’ve learned anything from a decade of playing or mostly watching other people play the various Dark Souls games, it’s that people go apeshit for character designs without visible eyes (see also: the xenomorph from Alien; I did a whole thing on this subject somewhere back in the Wifelink archive.) So you’ve got a 12′ nigh-omnipotent eyeless dominatrix mostly shaped like a skinny woman, which is maybe pushing a whole lot of buttons at once for a lot of people.

As a character, we don’t know much about her: at some point, she became undisputed leader of the Machine Orthodoxy, the cultiest bit of New Phyrexia. At a later point, she became the extremely-disputed leader of New Phyrexia as a whole. She likes long walks on the beach and multiversal Phyrexian dominion, you get it. There is, however, one good story featuring her, and it is “A Garden of Flesh” by Lora Gray (sorry to give you additional reading in a five-thousand-word essay.) The story is interesting because it is the rare story told from a Phyrexian point of view, and because it flies in the face of many of our assumptions about Phyrexian interiority. Phyrexians, we’re told, lack souls. They’re unfeeling, more machine than man. They most certainly don’t dream.

“A Garden of Flesh” is what happens when Ashiok, planeswalker architect of nightmares and an eyeless smokeshow in their own right, gets curious about whether they can induce nightmares in a Phyrexian mind. What follows is a curiously-effective piece of body & transformation horror, told from the point of view of what is supposed to be the awful endpoint of transformation horror. What does a perfect, powerful biomechanical creature fear? The organic, soft, spongy. Putrefaction. Decay. What does such a creature fear becoming? Human.

I didn’t devote a fifth of this essay to Elesh Norn just because she’s unbelievably hot (although dayenu), but because of this story, and how it complicates our thesis. The horror of transformation is traversible, yes, but what will you find on the other side? More transformation. More horror. And transformation is inevitable: who of us are who we expected to be? Who of us still hold dear the precious things of childhood? And even you few who are raising your hands right now, you too will experience transformation. Should you live long enough, you will find yourself changing. Your body and mind will grow rebellious, unreliable. You will grow old. You will decay.

And yet—it’s a matter of perspective, of where you weight your focus, isn’t it? There will always be more transformation and more horror, but there will always be a way through it. There will always be another shore upon the other side. You will change. You will become unrecognizable to who you were before. You will be fine.

Incompleat Bibliography & Further Reading/Viewing/Playing

Rhystic Studies, “Phyrexia is Hell”, 2023. H. P. Lovecraft, The Shadow over Innsmouth, 1931. Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House, 1959. Alex Garland, Annihilation, 2018. Harlan Ellison, “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream”, 1967. Ken Levine, System Shock 2, 1999. —never played it myself. Mostly I just open up a youtube video of SHODAN voice lines when I want to get belittled by an AI dominatrix. Valve, Portal 2, 2011. —there is a lot more to be said about GladOS and Elesh Norn specifically and their respective fraught relationships with the idea of their own humanity. Porpentine Charity Heartscape, Cyberqueen, 2012. —whence my chapter header screenshots. Seriously, this game fucks so hard. Franny Choi, Death by Sex Machine, 2017. —Choi is making extensive use of cyborg metaphor to address the specific experience of being a Korean-American woman. This is very different from anything I’m talking about, but it also always felt extremely relevant to me as a trans woman. Subaltern-to-subaltern communication. Lora Gray, “A Garden of Flesh,” 2022. —it’s no accident that the author of the one good story told from a Phyrexian POV is nonbinary. hbomberguy, “Outsiders: How To Adapt H.P. Lovecraft In the 21st Century”, 2018. Jacob Geller, “Who’s Afraid of Modern Art: Vandalism, Video Games, and Fascism”, 2019. Caitlín R Kiernan, The Drowning Girl: A Memoir, 2012. —only tangentially relevant, except insofar as it recontextualizes the Lewis Carroll line I open the essay with, and insofar as it is my favorite novel and I’m writing the bibliography. Debatable whether it counts as transformation horror, and I imagine the author would bridle at its being described as horror, but nevertheless: you should read this book.

#magic the gathering #phyrexia

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stayteezdreams · 6 months

Text

Finding out they are supernatural creatures {ot8!Ateez}

Scenario: Hurt to comfort when reader finds out their bf!ateez is some kind of mythical or supernatural creature

Pairings: Supernatural Creature!Ateez x Gn!Reader

Requested By: @otakutrash669

Warnings: Vague mentions of blood (Seonghwa's). Mention of drunk driving (Yunhos). Near-death's in Yunhos and Jonghos. Suggestive/Sexual references (Wooyoungs).

A/n: Not all of this will be accurate, I made some shit up. Also, I only read through it once so sorry if there are any errors.

Words: ~2.6k

-Stray Kids Version-

Seonghwa {Vampire}

As careful as Seonghwa was, you noticed too many peculiar things to not become suspicious.

The peculiar red liquid you were not allowed to touch that he regarded as a disgusting medicine he took. Medicine for a disease that apparently made him so sensitive to sunlight he had to wear a special sunscreen.

Then there was the fact that sometimes his teeth seemed sharper than other times, as if they changed.

Naturally your mind wandered to the thought of him being a vampire. Ultimately you thought it was ridiculous, and let it go.

But one day, you couldn't keep it to yourself.

He once again made sure you did not accidentally drink the red liquid, and you joked "I'm starting to think you're a vampire and it's you're blood stash."

It was a joke. Until you saw the fear that crossed his face. When he realized you were joking he quickly reacted with a fake laugh and you became more than suspicious.

"Seonghwa. Is it blood?" "...No of course not." "Seonghwa."

When he noticed your suspicion turning into fear, he had to tell you. He was of course afraid you were going to run, the scream, to call the police.

But you waited for him to explain everything, and to prove it. That was the most important part.

Once he proved it, you were in shock, but almost amazed. You couldn't help but ask question after question.

When you promised you weren't going to tell anyone he was more relieved. But he still feared you would be afraid of him.

He gave you a long speech bout how he will never hurt you, how he has control, and will protect you. You knew he meant it. And honestly, you never feared him, not even for a second.

Hongjoong {Demon}

You found out Hongjoong was a demon when you accidentally summoned him.

He had a bunch of old books he said were collectors items, and things he collected when studying Latin and various religious studies.

One day, when he left you alone to go deal with something, you flipped through the books.

You came across a passage you couldn't really figure out, but what you did recognize, was Hongjoongs name, written within the script.

Curious, you recited the passage out loud, and when the room suddenly grew cold, you turned around to see a black mass forming. You grew terrified as you fled to the corner of the room.

When the black smoke faded, revealing your confused boyfriend, you stared at each other in silence.

His eyes flicked to the table where he saw the passage and his heart dropped.

He knew he would tell you one day about what he really was, but he kept putting it off, for fear you would leave him.

But now, as you were cowering in the corner in confusion and fear, he had no choice.

"Hongjoong, what-" He lifted his hands and spoke slowly as he walked towards you. "I can explain."

"Demon." "Yes." "You're a Demon." "Yes."

Hongjoongs heart dropped when you left in near silence, muttering about how you just needed some time alone to think. But he understood, letting you leave, though the sight tore him apart.

If Hongjoong were to tell you he was a demon on any other day you would have thought he was joking or had gone crazy. But since you had literally summoned him in front of your very own eyes, you couldn't deny it.

Nor could you deny the way his eyes were fully black, or the horns that were on his head before he changed back into his normal appearance right in front of you.

You knew he didn't want to scare you but you were scared. It took you a while to figure out that you weren't afraid of him necessarily. He was Hongjoong, and he loved you.

But you were afraid of the knowledge that came with this, that there could be more secrets, more lies.

So you confronted him. And he was more than glad to open up fully now that you knew. He would do anything for you and tell you anything you wanted to know, as long as you stayed.

Yunho {Nephilim}

You knew Yunho had mixed feeling about when you called him your 'Angel'

The first time he seemed flustered and almost recoiled. But he slowly warmed up to it, even saying he was your Guardian Angel, or your "Personal Angel".

Sometimes when you used the pet-name he seemed to withdrawal in himself for a moment, as if he wanted to say something. But instead he would just smile and press a kiss to your forehead.

Then one day, you almost died. You should have died.

You were seconds away from the drunk driver hitting you as you walked down the street, then before you knew it, you were in Yunho's arms, and surrounding you, were large wings, growing out from his back.

Then you learned everything. Why the pet-name threw him of, why he sometimes seemed like he wanted to say something but changed his mind. Why he dubbed himself your personal Angel.

He shouldn't exist. His mother was human, and his father a fallen angel. He was half of each.

Yunho was forced to hide what he was for his whole life and it wasn't until he met you that he thought he didn't have to hide anymore. But the fear still stopped him from telling you.

He liked the idea of being your personal Guardian Angel, but was still afraid you would not want him to be if you learned what he truly was

But it didn't change how you felt. Though you were hurt he had not told you sooner, you quickly realized his choices and reasoning were more important.

You forgave him, and swore to him you would keep his secret.

You bond only got stronger after you leaned what he was, and he no longer hid it from you. Sometimes you would even find him walking around the house with his wings out.

You adored them, and him, and he adored you.

He was your personal guardian Angel, and you were the love of his life.

Yeosang {Fairy}

You knew Yeosang was hiding something, and when you confronted him, his saying he was a Fairy was the last thing you expected.

You expected that he wanted to break up, or that he had fallen for someone else, something that would explain his recent behavior and all the secrets he was keeping.

But the excuse he gave you only hurt you more. It was such a ridiculous lie, the truth would have hurt less.

"What do you take me for? If you want to break up with me, just do it Yeosang." You stormed off leaving Yeosang to scramble after you.

He didn't realize just how ridiculous it would sound. Of course you wouldn't believe him.

When he got you alone again, after much convincing and a bit of begging on his side. He showed you it was not a lie.

He thought it would be something he would have to hide forever out of fear. Of course you would figure out something was off.

But the idea that you thought he wanted to leave you, that you thought it was another person stealing him away from you and not this. That was not worth it.

So he showed you his wings and his magic, he proved he was a fairy. And to say you were shocked was an understatement.

When you finally came out of your stupor, and you realized you were in fact not going crazy, you were amazed.

You couldn't even really be mad that he hid it, of course he would, he was a fairy. He needed to know he could trust you with his secret.

And he assured you that he did, that it was just his fear stopping him.

He was sorry. Sorry that he did not trust you enough, when you deserved more. He hated that you were tormenting yourself with 'What If's', and reasons he was hiding secrets.

But once you reassured him that you understood and forgave him, he made sure you knew everything. And he promised to never keep anything from you again.

San {Shapeshifter}

You figured out San was a shape-shifter with deductive reasoning.

One day, a beautiful black cat showed up at your house, sheltering itself from the rain.

You let it in, dried him off, and let him go.

He became a common visitor to your house after that.

And then one day, instead of a black cat, you met a man named San. He told you the cat was his and he found out where he was going when he would get out.

You bonded with San, and eventually started dating.

But, you never saw the cat and San at the same time.

And you couldn't help but think they had the same eyes, and the same mannerisms.

You thought you were crazy, but you couldn't shake the gut feeling that you were right.

And when San slipped and mentioned something he wouldn't know about, something that happened when he was not present, but his cat was, you put it together.

The next time the cat visited you, you were sitting on your porch.

You sighed, heart pounding, stared deep into his eyes and spoke.

"Hello San."

The cat seemed to freeze, before slowly he grew bigger, before San was standing in front of you, eyes full of surprise as you stared at him.

"I was right." You muttered breathlessly, and he slowly approached you. "How long have you known?"

"I think I knew from the beginning in a way. But I wasn't certain until recently."

"Aren't you afraid?" "Should I be?"

He shook his head softly "I'd ever hurt you." "I know that San. But why didn't you tell me sooner?"

You could tell he was apprehensive. Perhaps he thought you would be afraid, maybe you'd tell someone who could hurt him.

"I wouldn't hurt you either." You admitted softly.

He would take your face in his hands. "I know that. I'm sorry, I should have told you, I just... No one knows, and the idea of someone, anyone knowing, I don't know I guess I was scared."

Your relationship grew stronger after this as he learned to put all of his trust in you, and you learned to do the same.

Mingi {Werewolf}

When you learned what Mingi was, you were in shock. You left, and ended up avoided him.

You needed to gather your thoughts and get over the shock before figuring out what to do.

He waited impatiently to hear from you again, even going to your house to check on you, though never telling you he was there.

Mingi wanted nothing more than to talk to you, to see you, to hold you, but he resisted, making sure to give you the time you needed to adjust.

All he could do was hope and pray you would come back to him.

He was so afraid to tell you what he was for fear of you leaving or being afraid, but he would fight as hard as he could to keep you.

Mingi would never harm you, our put you in harms way.

When he first fell for you, he tried his hardest to ignore the feelings, being to afraid to fall in love. But no matter how hard he tried, he could not ignore the feelings.

He told you all of this after admitting what he was, but you still left, uncertain of what to do and what to think.

You knew you loved him, and after a week of not seeing him after learning he was a werewolf, you realized your feelings would not change. All you did was miss him more every day.

When you finally gave in and went to go see him again, he scooped you up in his arms out of relief and joy.

He wanted nothing more than to hold you in his arms again.

And when he was holding you, you knew it didn't matter what he was, or what he hid from you, you would love him all the same.

Wooyoung {Demon/Incubus}

Wooyoung drunkenly told you he was the descendant of an Incubus demon one night, and you simply thought it was a weird joke at first.

But when he was sober, you noticed he watched you wearily, as if trying to figure out if he really told you, and to see if you had believed him.

You started to wonder if maybe it wasn't a joke after all. So you started to pay more attention, and you did some research.

It all seemed so unbelievable, but some things started to add up.

The way he seemed to pull things off that were impossible, how he could get to you faster than he should be able to. How he always seemed to know when you needed him. Not to mention his heightened sexual drive.

A short time after that night passed, and Wooyoung seemed to relax around you again, you asked him straight up if what he said was true.

He was obviously startled, stumbling and stuttering over his words as he tried to lie to you.

If it wasn't true he would have laughed and been able to play it off, but you knew he had a hard time lying to you, so it became obvious that it was true, or at least some of it.

"Wooyoung." He could hear in your tone that there was no point in trying to lie so he gave in.

He confessed everything, and even proved it to you.

You were in shock, but not as much as you thought you would be, to both of your surprise.

"Why didn't you tell me sooner?"

He shrugged "I didn't want you to be afraid of me."

"I would never be afraid of you Wooyoung."

He was relieved, and became emotional and apologetic, swearing he would never hide anything from you again.

Jongho {Demi-God}

You weren't supposed to know what Jongho was at least not yet.

But when you were put in danger from someone looking for Jongho, he had to protect you no matter what.

You knew he was strong, but when he was able to knock over a wall with one punch, you knew there was more to it.

You watched him fight with powers you had not expected while protecting you from the mysterious man who showed up and threatened to hurt you.

You were in the middle of something you didn't know how to explain, but you knew Jongho was protecting you, and would do with with his life if needed.

Luckily you both made it out, and he took you somewhere safe.

He explained to you what he was, who he was the descendant of, and why he could do the things he could.

You were amazed, and shocked, and confused. Any resentment you held towards Jongho for keeping this secret from you faded when you saw how nervous he was, obviously afraid of how you would react.

He answered every question you asked, and patiently waited as you thought over everything.

When you approached him after a few hours and he apprehensively watched you, you wrapped your arms around him and he melted, relaxing in relief at your touch.

He swore he would protect you, and keep you safe, and you believed him.

Even if you were put in danger as your life seemed to change, you would not leave his side.

xx End xx

Not sure how I feel about some of thee, but it is what it is lol

General Taglist: @otsilliak, @brattybunfornct, @bahng-chrizz, @otakutrash669

Ateez Taglist: @soso59love-blog, @thunderous-wolf

Jongho Taglist: @lieutenantn

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my-past-disgusts-me · 3 months

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Today is the day I talk about Eugene Finch being autistic. Today. Today is the day. He's. He is autistic. My evidence:

1) flat affect. He's not a super expressive person even when he's feeling big emotions and his voice is generally the same/similar in tone and pitch, regardless of what/when/where he's talking. Not to say he's expressionless, that's not what having a flat affect is in the slightest. He simply doesn't express emotions in your standard way

2) he has a strong sense of morality. This is a man who, upon the prospect of having forgotten doing something bad, offered to give himself up to the police (but also was ready to run if he was justified). Also a man who made a concerted effort to avoid capitalism in the world he literally built and upon failure took some time to seriously think about how to not let it happen again/whether he was even doing the right thing. Also a man who, upon hearing miserable spirits, set out to alleviate their suffering. Speaking of

3) strong sense of empathy/duty. He took it up on himself to make passage into the afterlife an enjoyable experience after hearing terrified dead people talk about their experiences.

4) described as just a little nerd who likes space and cats.

Please feel free to add on if you have points that I missed, I love this man so much and want to hear people talk about him

#Drawtectives #drawtectives season 2 #Drawtectives season 2 spoilers #drawtectives spoilers #Eugene Finch #eugene drawtectives

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somewhereincairparavel · 16 days

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General Jason Grace headcanons ⚡

⚡ I feel like he's kinda sensitive. He isn't the crier type of sensitive tho but since he's super emotionally attuned to body language reading and stuff, he gets a little hurt easily, sometimes misinterpreting someone's behaviour to him, so maybe if one of his friend's start getting snappy with him because they're having a bad day, he'd actually be pretty damn upset about it, but would hide it.

⚡ Also also, this man HATES being yelled at. Sure, he's been trained harshly and stuff but he's very hard on himself too so I feel like if someone yells at him (like in an argument or something) the poor boy's whole day would be ruined.

⚡ This is also why I feel like he NEVER raises his voice harshly at anyone even if he's super super angry because he knows how much damage yelling can do.

⚡ But. He can still manage to be terrifying if he's mad. He'd have that intense icy stare directed at the person (I'm pretty sure this is canon and is pointed out by multiple characters in the books). And his voice would be steady but VERY firm and strong. Kinda like a strict dad.

⚡ Also, his eyes would get a slight shade lighter if he's super angry. Like he usually has bright electric blue eyes right? It would just turn into ice colured ones.

⚡ Okay I feel like before they all go to bed, he'd go check on everyone in the Argo ii to see if they're comfortable or if they need anything, etc. definitely an overbearing mother friend tbh. He gets this habit from camp Jupiter where he was kinda in charge for cabin rounds since he was centurion.

⚡ I hc him to have like lemony yellow hair, instead of platinum or golden blonde. It's not too light but it isn't dark either.

⚡ Why do I feel like sun tan literally never affects this guy? Like for instance, I totally hc that percy gets tanned pretty quickly, but this man's skin just wouldn't budge. Instead of his body getting tanned I feel like his hair would get a few yellow shades darker instead lol

⚡ I felt like he'd be sunburnt instead tho. There would be blotchy pink patches on his face and arms after he comes back from the beach.

⚡ He definitely LOVES his roman baths, could spend hours in that bath (honestly if u guys have seen traditional Roman baths, you'd know that they look like a spa day DREAM omg) so he would feel super disoriented when he has regular baths in chb instead and would miss Roman baths SO badly.

⚡ Like the Roman baths literally ease his muscle tension after a long day. It would be like the only part of the day in camp Jupiter that would actually feel relaxing for him.

⚡ He's such a foodie okay. Remember how he kept munching on his brownies religiously when the crew were in such a dangerous situation? ("Pass me the brownies bro") or when he loved the sweet stuff the snake people had made for them? Like food just makes him forget his duties and be a kid for once.

⚡ Which leads us to our next hc, he has such a sweet tooth! (Tho I feel like this was aluded many times in the books aswell). Like he's every dentist's nightmare tbh. He has like teeth stains which he'd deliberately try to get rid of by aggressively brushing his teeth (it does come off lol)

⚡ As opposed to what people usually assume about him. Jason is secretly such a hopeless romantic tbh. Nothing like his dad in that category. Remember how he snuck Piper out the window, led her into his secret rooftop passage simply to recreate their first kiss under the stars, since Piper was super upset about it being fake? Yeah, he hates upsetting his s/o. he's like super thoughtful and plans stuff like these days ahead so he doesn't forget :(

⚡ He's such a people pleaser even with people he barely knows, and the effect only doubles when he has a partner tbh. Like if his partner doesn't like a particular place? He won't like it either. So he needs someone to encourage him and tell him it's okay to like something the others dislike.

⚡ Which is also why I think that he'd be easier to emotionally guilt trip and manipulate. :(( somone wrap him up in a fluffy blanky pls

⚡ As opposed to canon, I feel like Jason only dislikes Camp Jupiter, not New Rome itself. He ADORES that place to shreds. I feel like instead of settling in a mortal area or something, he'd definitely stay in New Rome for long-term living (bc screw canon, him wanting to leave new Rome all together seems SO ooc to me idk) some parts of his roman self would ALWAYS be there tbh. That place was practically his home. Also, he only wants a peaceful, monster free life right? New Rome would obviously provide with all that, yk since they have a strong barrier for the city to prevent invasion.

⚡ He would have an aptitude for sculpting statues and stuff. He'd love to do it as a hobby, not like an architect or something like annabeth tho. He made such cool dioramas for his shrine ideas, so I feel like he just pours his heart and soul into making cool sculptures.

⚡ He would totally study in law school. His dad's legit the god of justice, he's a great speaker, can hold debates calmly, can canonically hear both sides of an argument before coming to a decision, seems very lawyer coded.

⚡ But he'd also be a good history professor. Have yall heard his yapping? Leo called him professor Grace for how much dedication he goes into explaining roman history. And he genuinely LOVES it. A very passionate teacher material to me.

⚡ Also, all he wants is for his partner to listen to him talk :( he has SO much to say but he feels like no one listens, so hed literally cry if someone takes interest in his long explanations (kind of like annabeth in this tbh)

⚡ Also, Octavian can NEVER argue with Jason because that man is just THAT good at smart and witty answers that even octavian saw him as a threat.

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oliversrarebooks · 3 months

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The Rare Bookseller Part 36: Alexander's Desire

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June 1905

TW: mind control, captivity, human auction

Lex was bored.

He was surrounded by vampires all dolled up in their best attire, eager to see and be seen at the most high-end auction in the entire region, and he could hardly bring himself to care. All of the chatter was petty politics and gossip and who-is-wearing-what and who-is-buying-what, and it was hard to feign the slightest bit of interest.

Still, he did need a thrall. His long-time thrall Edmund had died of old age and blood loss after a lifetime of service. He'd been a good thrall, quiet and obedient, and his presence had eased some of Lex's loneliness. His loss was felt keenly. He knew that a good portion of the vampires here, even those who loved their human pets and servants, would scoff at the depths of Lex's grief over a mere thrall. Lex had always had too soft a heart, a fact that his sire never hesitated to remind him of.

Even so, the grief stung whenever he allowed himself to feel it -- whenever he had need to venture into the cold, spotless kitchen or start up the fire himself. He no longer had anyone to read particularly interesting passages of books to or play music for. There was no more wry chuckle when Lex made a mistake. No one to accompany him to the opera or ballet.

He'd hastily skipped the cattle pen of mind-wiped humans -- he found the entire idea distasteful, their vacant eyes unsettling -- in favor of perusing those designated as servants. Every one had bowed politely to him, addressed him as Mr. Alexander, and answered his questions briefly and with civility. Each one had been so enthralled as to lose most of whatever personality they might've had, and it might take years to draw any of it out of them, like it had with Edmund. The fashion of the time, unfortunately.

But his need for fresh blood couldn't be denied any longer, and even though these humans were unappealing in demeanor, his mouth still watered at the smell. At this rate, all he could do was pick out the most promising of the lot, take them home, and hope to coax some life out of them.

How tedious.

How very, very lonely.

There was, of course, one wild card, one wrench in the machine: his sire-sister, Lily, who had pulled him aside earlier that night to tell him about a secret project she had, a thrall that Lex would just love. That was mildly terrifying, coming from her -- Lex shuddered to think what she'd done to the poor human. Lily's skills in conditioning were second to none, but her ideas of what made a good thrall often ran counter to the grain.

He took his polite leave from the sixth vampire who'd stopped him in the hall, eager to curry favor with him and thereby curry favor with his sire, and headed into an ornately-decorated side room.

There, in the center of the room, stood a man with short blond hair, a stunning red velvet ball gown, and a cocky grin on his face. The thrall looked Lex up and down, and his grin only grew wider.

Lily was standing to his side, wearing some frilly pink confection of a dress. "This is the vampire I wanted you to meet, Fitz."

"Oh, this is Mr. Alexander?" said Fitz. "You didn't tell me he looked like this, sir. I might need to take back what I said about not wanting to serve a vampire."

"This is my special project, Lex," said Lily, bursting with pride.

"The special-est, sir."

"Lex, meet Fitz."

"Charmed, sir, both literally and figuratively," said Fitz, bowing with a little flourish.

Lex stood there, stunned, not knowing quite how to react. "Are you... have you actually been... what I mean to say is, are you a thrall?"

"I've been hypnotized to hell and back by Miss Lily here, if that's what you mean, sir," he said. "But for better or worse, she's allowed me to retain my sparkling wit."

"Is that so?" Lex glanced over at Lily, who was looking incredibly smug. He had to hand it to her: this thrall at least wasn't boring. He couldn't remember the last time he'd seen such life in the eyes of a thrall.

"But enough about me, sir," said Fitz, getting into Lex's personal space. He smelled like lavender and rich, delicious blood, and that confident smile paired with sparkling blue-gray eyes was undeniably handsome. "Let's talk about you. Specifically, why you should buy me."

"Isn't that also about you?"

"You got me there, sir." Fitz laughed.

"Why would you even want me to buy you?" said Lex. "You seem to have your mind intact. You know that you'd be my servant, you'd lose your freedom, and I'd drink your blood."

"I don't know if you noticed, sir, but that's going to happen to every human here, or so I'm told. If I'm going to be a servant and delicious meal anyway, I might as well pick my poison, right? And you seem at least to be a very attractive poison."

Lex had seen thralls fawn and beg before, but he hadn't ever seen a thrall openly flirt. It was nakedly manipulative, of course, but the fact that the thrall was even capable of manipulation was intriguing.

"What are your interests, Fitz?" said Lex.

"The stage is my passion, I'm proficient in magic tricks, passable at fortunetelling, excellent at cards, and dabble in all sorts of arts and crafts and handiwork, sir."

"Do you play any instruments?"

"The guitar and the piano, sir, although I wouldn't expect concert-quality performances."

Lex couldn't help but smile. A thrall that played music, and had his mind together enough to indulge in hobbies! He'd longed for a thrall like this ever since he'd buried poor Edmund. Despite himself, he was already losing himself in a daydream of Fitz in his music room, playing a simple tune on his guitar, filling his bleak and lonely mansion with song.

He shook himself out of it. He couldn't give away his interest too obviously.

"Hmm, let's see," he said, hooking a finger under Fitz's chin and directing him to look him in the eye. His blood smelled like a delectable feast, and it was eroding Lex's self-control. He couldn't hold back his vampiric aura, and he saw Fitz's eyes go wide under his influence. Oh, that was gorgeous. "If I were to buy you, would you offer your blood to me?"

"Yes, yes, sir," he said, now looking more like a dazed thrall, tilting his head to the side to expose his neck. Lex had found this fawning behavior uninteresting from the other, more heavily conditioned thralls -- but on Fitz, who just moments before had been bright and alert, it was intoxicating. "Being fed on by a vampire exactly like you is all I can think about lately. Drink, please."

Lex realized that he was far, far too blood-starved to rationally deal with this kind of temptation. He released Fitz from the spell, seconds away from losing himself and biting into merchandise that wasn't his. Yet, came the automatic thought, which he tried to dismiss.

Life returned to Fitz. "You deserve to drink from someone with blood as good as mine, sir."

"Oh?" Lex cocked an eyebrow. "How do you even know that your blood tastes good?"

"Well, a serious looking man in a very dapper suit told me that my blood was top shelf triple-A fancy grade, sir," said Fitz. "He seemed very authoritative, so I'm inclined to believe him utterly."

Lex laughed. It was probably the first time he'd laughed since Edmund died.

Oh, he was in trouble. This wasn't a thrall he would settle for because he needed fresh blood to live. He wanted this thrall. And he didn't like wanting anything -- it was a recipe for disappointment and disaster. And Lily was grinning like a loon. She knew.

"You're going to cost me a lot of money, aren't you?" he said in defeat.

"You're certainly not the first person to say that to me, sir."

Well, it wasn't like money was a serious obstacle to him. While this style of lucid thrall wouldn't appeal to some of the vampires here, the fact that Fitz had the highest graded blood Lex had seen at a local auction would drive his price sky-high regardless of his personality. And unfortunately, Lex already knew that he was willing to pay just about any price for this one. The thought of another vampire buying him, dragging him away by his handcuffs, sinking their fangs into what was rightfully his --

No, this was ridiculous. He had to keep his calm until the auction proper.

"I -- I really should -- I should take my leave and peruse the rest of the merchandise," said Lex as casually as he could muster, as though he hadn't already looked over most of the available thralls and found them lacking.

"Well, you're certainly not going to find anything better than me, but I understand the impulse," said Fitz. "I hope to see you again, sir."

Lex rushed out before he could get drawn back in.

He stalked down the hallway, past chattering vampires, hoping to find a relatively secluded place to clear his head, finally settling on a padded bench in a small windowless nook. His head was spinning with the desire to possess. He'd been starving for both fresh blood and companionship ever since Edmund's death, and still nothing else had sparked the flame of need so deep inside him as this one particular thrall. His mind was filled with fantasy of Fitz playing guitar and singing in the music room, of Lex stroking his fingers through his hair while they lounged by the fire, of how his sparkling eyes would look when Lex enthralled him to feed...

And the way Fitz had entreated him to feed! That was all Lily's deep conditioning, of course, but it seemed so real coming from him, as though his need for a vampire's fangs was genuine. He'd always known Lily was a genius at enthrallment, but Fitz had to be her finest work yet.

Lex tensed at the sound of approaching footsteps, not eager to make pleasantries with yet another respectable vampire, gushing over some empty-eyed, mumbling thrall and asking Lex to convey their respects to his hated sire. He was relieved to look up and find that the sensible black shoes in his line of vision belonged to his old friend Ruth, one of the sharpest minds in the city.

"Good evening, Lex," she said, sitting on the other end of the bench. "I do hope I'm not interrupting some important brooding."

"You're not interrupting anything in particular. The distraction will do me some good."

"So are you not finding anything you like? That's a bit surprising given how long you've gone without a thrall."

"On the contrary, I may have found something I like too much," he admitted, perhaps unwisely. Ruth was also close friends with Lily, and Lily was bound to be entirely too self-satisfied over her little project's success.

"Ah, is it Lily's little pet? He's quite interesting, isn't he? I think I may bid on him. He'd make an excellent clerk."

Lex couldn't keep the half-horrified, half-ferocious look off his face, his baser instincts howling at the idea of having his new toy taken away from him. Ruth cackled. "What's that face? Don't worry, I'm only teasing you. I won't stand in your way -- you're obviously in need of a proper thrall. Or an improper one, as the case may be."

The jealous knot in Lex's chest loosened. He needed to calm himself before the auction proper, lest he make a scene like an unschooled fledgeling. "I appreciate it," he said.

Ruth put a sympathetic hand on his shoulder. "It's actually quite a relief to see you desire a thrall again. The strict repression your sire tries to enforce isn't good for you. After all, what's the point of dragging these old corpses around if we can't even enjoy ourselves?"

Enjoy himself?

When was the last time he'd truly enjoyed himself? Before Edmund's death, certainly, in the times when his manor had been less lonely, and he'd had quality blood to drink. Even then, it was difficult for him to grasp more than fleeting moments of contentment -- his master's pursuit of perfection over happiness had its roots deep in his mind. Truly, he'd been denying himself for so long, and in so many ways.

He wanted this. He needed this. He was going to own Fitz, and no vampire would stand in his way.

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I'm sure this will all turn out fine.

@d-cs @latenightcupsofcoffee @thecyrulik @dismemberment-on-a-tuesday-night @wanderinggoblin @whumpyourdamnpears @only-shadows-dwell-where-we-are @pressedpenn @pigeonwhumps @amusedmuralist @xx-adam-xx @ivycloak @irregular-book @whumpsoda @mj-or-say10 @pokemaniacgemini @whumpshaped @whumpsday @morning-star-whump @shinyotachi @silly-scroimblo-skrunkl @steh-lar-uh-nuhs @pirefyrelight @theauthorintraining @whump-me-all-night-long @anonfromcanada @typewrittenfangs @tessellated-sunl1ght @cleverinsidejoke @abirbable @ichorousambrosia @a-formless-entity @gobbo-king @writinggremlin @the-agency-archives @just-a-whumping-racoon-with-wifi @enigmawriteswhump @foresttheblep

#whump #whump writing #vampire #mind control #captivity #vampire whumper #rare bookseller #alexander #fitz

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hyperfixatedfandomer · 8 months

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Been seeing some Neytiri defender takes flying around recently and the sentiment I don’t get is the way people will outright ignore a factor called the passage of time.

One specific person said that the reason Neytiri accepted Jake is because she personally taught him the Na’vi values and watched him change. Do I agree with that? Yes! Totally! What I don’t get is why the fact that Spider is literally adopted by her four kids and learned the Na’vi culture since diapers gets so often ignored. The post I’m referencing went a completely left direction afterwards so it doesn’t seem like they really get the line of Spider defender thinking here.

Neytiri doesn’t need to teach Spider, because he has already learned all there is to be about living by Eywa’s teachings as far as we were told, that is kind of his whole schtick. Even Jake mentions that in some ways Spider is more Na’vi than he’ll ever be, as he got naturally integrated into the culture by his siblings from a very young age and was never influenced by different views. He literally sees the world the way Na’vi do, and although it’s subtle (since we don’t get to see Spider preach about it how Neytiri did in A1), we can see it in the way he gets terrified when the barrel of a gun is pointed to Tau’nui Tsahik’s head, or the way he screams his lungs out when an innocent ilu is murdered, or the way he sheds tears for a mother tulkun, and how put off he is by the fact that so much of her meat is wasted instead of being put to good use. (which is a core Na’vi belief by the way, a belief that nothing should be wasted. A belief that there can be no empty kill.)

The reason Spider defenders (myself included) get mad at her is because he spent his entire life on Pandora, only ever participated in the Na’vi culture (since humans couldn’t give less of a shit and the kids just kinda took him in), yet despite it being 15 years after the catastrophe, she can’t muster enough sympathy to let him be.

No one is asking her to sweep the boy off his feet and carry him into the sunset, but after one and a half decade she had got to at least come to an understanding with him.

I do believe that Spider has a special responsibility as the descendant of a war criminal, and that is to honour the fallen of who he considers as his people, and live his life among Na’vi in a way that pays said fallen respect, which he does through fierce loyalty, taking traditions as seriously as he can without a neural whip and gathering all knowledge he can on the flora/fauna, which seems to be his special interest. What he isn’t responsible for, is making himself small or invisible because a full-grown adult can’t cope with their trauma. NOT MOVE ON OR GET OVER IT, but at least cope with it to a level where she can handle the idea of Spider staying permanently and not be on edge whenever he’s around. She is 35, she should be able to separate Spider from his ancestry, see him as his own person and judge him based off of his actions and his actions only. All she did in the comics so far was blow things out of proportion and blame him for everything because blood-thirst in humans is genetic apparently. 😐

She could accept Jake, who wasn’t Na’vi until 22, while the kid has been around for a whole 15 years yet when his shitty, neglected foster guardian tries forcing him to go back to Earth she thinks it totally logical for Spider to disappear into a completely alien (to him) world, with values that he could never in his life align with.

She is in the wrong. She is flawed for it. But, as that referenced post mentioned she is going to develop as the movies go, and I hope she will. Subsequently, I how we get to see Spider interact with the culture more because so far, as I said, it has been extremely subtle, which led many viewers to believe that the either doesn’t care or doesn’t know about them.

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crescencestudio · 4 months

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2023: A Year of Connection

Hi everyone!

As I told you last month, this month's "devlog" will be more like an end-of-year recap. For those of you who have known me a while, you'll know that I get ~in my feels~ and Very Nostalgic at the end of the year. And this year is no exception to that.

Looking back on this year, I realize I did much more than I thought I did. The year was filled with so many waves of uncertainty, burnout, and ruts, that I felt like I wasn't accomplishing anything in the moment. Now that the year has actually wrapped up, I can see that was Once Again my imposter syndrome whispering words of sweet nothings into my ears.

In fact, this year, I find that I did Way More than what I did last year. Crazy, considering how busy I remember 2022 being. Let's take a walk down memory lane, shall we?

Writing

If there is one thing this bitch did, it's fucking write LFMASODIJ. For all my complaining this year of routes taking too long, getting creative ruts, etc., I still wrote (what I consider) a Very Good amount. While I may not have hit my writing goals that I had set out, I still ended up writing around 255k words in total this year. Most of this being for Alaris, and some of it being for my dissertation (LOL) and other side games, like Intertwine and Jam Games.

This number also doesn't include deleted passages, edited passages, etc., so the amount I've spent writing, reviewing, etc. was Significant this year. Here's to hoping that momentum continues into next year and finishing the rest of Alaris!

Side Games

Something completely unexpected, but that I'll forever be grateful for, was my decision(s) to join game jams this year. It all started with Otojam, a visual novel jam I'd wanted to join for a WHILE.

Intertwine was, without a doubt, one of my most memorable moments from this year. The friends I made/grew closer to during that jam. The people I connected with because of Intertwine. The people I got to work with. Everything about the experience surpassed my expectations, and Van and Summer 2023 will always hold a very special place in my heart because of it. Thank you to everyone who enjoyed that game. It was my first full game I ever released, and I couldn't have been more nervous about it (no literally. I wasn't sleeping and I was nauseous for a week before release).

Knowing there was no "revision" afterwards that I could hide behind or promise that there would be a "better"/"enhanced" version made the release terrifying. But the reception you all gave to it and support from so many friends made me feel so connected and grateful for the community.

The other three side projects were... well, Unexpected. LOL. Before these jams, I'd never wanted to work in team settings, mostly because I have Mad Imposter Syndrome, and I've always imagined I'd be dead weight in any given game dev team. My skills on writing, art, and/or coding alone aren't "exemplary" enough for me to think I, well, deserve to be on a team. But when a couple of short jams were being held by a friend, and teams were being made filled with other friends, I thought maybe I could help, even if it's just to QA/playtest. But I've walked away from each of these experiences learning so much from other talented people and with very dear friends.

Each of these side games truly tested my chops in terms of writing, narrative design, and coding. But I'm glad I challenged myself to take part in each of these experiences because I've walked away with so much more than I would've expected.

Alaris

My Heart. My Soul. And at times, My Worst Enemy.

As much as I may have talked about how I Wasn't making progress on this baby. I, in fact, made A LOT of progress:

Art: 15 CGs, Updated Sprites, Kickstarter Artwork

Commissions: 20 BGs, Complete GUI, Personality/Affection Indicators, Editing, Voice Acted Lines, Complete OST (8 Tracks!)

Writing: Three Finished Routes

Shipped Kickstarter Merchandise

I'm going to be Real with you all. I'm not in the mood to recap everything for Alaris in the way I did with everything else LAFKMSDFOIJWOEI. Main reason being, I do that Every Month, and at this point, I would feel like I'm repeating myself for no reason. But let me tell you, when the Enhanced Demo comes out, you will see what I'm talking about with progress made. And I'm excited for the next year when I start getting to show things off (read: Demo Release and Route Beta Releases) now that assets have really come together ^^

I will say, thank you for sticking with this project for so long. It's easy to get bogged down in development when a project like this is as big as it is. It's just as easy to think that no one will care about this by the time I release, or people will start losing their patience with me as development goes on. So I'm forever grateful for how kind, supportive, and patient you all are, especially this year <3

Connections: The True Theme of 2023

If you've made it this far, I'm extremely impressed with you. And to reward you, I'll give you a moment of honesty and vulnerability which, to be frank, I Don't Do as a person and especially with my dev persona LMFAOO ((Before I do, let it be known, CW: mention of death, grief, alcoholism, chronic illness, suicidal thoughts))

Something I don't talk about much is that for all of 2022 and most of 2023, I was not in a good place mentally. At the beginning of 2022, I lost three very important people in my life back-to-back (I'm not exaggerating when I say back-to-back it was within 2 weeks, three separate deaths lol). That, on its own, was hard to deal with. But on top of that, I soon found myself having to cope/help with a family member's chronic illness and another family member's mental health (read: alcoholism, suicidality).

While this isn't a particularly unique situation, it was one that I found myself struggling with pretty severely on top of a pretty demanding work life. And it was a situation I found myself in until about midway through this year. Things have lightened up. I navigate a new life with some pretty severe triggers, and without the presence of some of my most loved ones. But overall, I at least feel like I can breathe and function, which is a state I didn't feel like I could exist in for over a year (and started to believe I may never exist in again).

Because of this new room in my life, I was able to connect with people again, in a more genuine way. I've grown closer to a lot of dev friends, to the point I consider some of them genuine close friends. And IRL, I've been able to reconnect with some of my dearest loved ones. The main reason I bring all of this up is because this year, I felt unbelievably connected to people, whether that was dev friends in the community, people who support my games, and IRL people.

And sometimes, when you interact with people solely online, it's easy to think they don't care as much about you as you do for them. But this has been disproven to me time and time again this year. And I've found myself in a state of appreciation for so many of the people I've been blessed to meet and befriend <3 I felt this especially so during some of the game jams, with the Secret Santa gift exchange, and with my recent Holiday Tree.

So thank you for everyone who has let me take up some space in their life. You literally Do Not Know how much it means to me and impacts me. This year, while I started it in a state of slightly hopelessness and numbness, I find myself ending it with gratitude and connection.

I hope the rest of this year (the very few couple of days we have left LOL) treats everyone well. I'm excited for how we get to start 2024 and what we'll get to experience together <3 Thank you again for the memories and support, love you all very dearly ^^

#crescence cries

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adaptacy · 8 months

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How do you think Johnny would do with a s/o who has a big family and they all seem kinda off? Like they all seem weird and seem like the type to have bodies in their basement while reader is all smiles and jokes :0

ooo this is very interesting. im not sure if you meant that reader doesn't know how weird their family is, or if they do and they're just a really good actor, but i'll write a little something for both instances!

For reader who knows that they're being weird, i'll include a ~ before the passage.

For reader who doesn't understand, I'll include two ~~

Johnny OBVIOUSLY has experience with weird family members and weird family member hobbies. he is, yknow, a kidnapper, serial killer, cannibal after all. (we love him for it tho)

He's also really not sure about your proposal for him to meet your family. but, also. he does.. well, you propose for him to meet your parents, and he just wants to propose. something he NEVER imagined he would be thinking of.

and it is the southern way to get the dad's blessing. he wouldn't even consider meeting your parents otherwise. But, after like a month and a half of you pleading with him, he finally agrees. he goes over for the fourth of July, and he's expecting it to just be your parents, maybe a younger sibling or two, but oh, oh no.

Its your parents, two sets of grandparents, three younger siblings, two aunts, one uncle, four nephews and two nieces.

He. is. lost. Overwhelmed. He thought he came from a large family, but no, nononono, you absolutely had him beat. You didn't even attempt to warn him! You were used to this, and didn't even think that maybe that's a lot of pressure for a guy who lowkey wants to marry you, and therefore be on good terms with your family.

The thing is, they hardly seem like your family. the reason Johnny was so intrigued by you, and attached to you, in the first place was because you were just so goddamn optimistic. PAINFULLY so. like, it was annoying how he could hear you nonstop encouraging the other victims when he'd first captured you.

You are talkative, and sunny, and annoying, to an extent. he loves you, of course, but he remembers being so irritated with you when he first brought you back to the house. he got used to it over time, and now he finds it adorable, but your family is so...

Stare-y. And whisper-y. And... creepy? He doesn't want to be mean, and he definitely feels like something is wrong. he reassures himself that its just because he's new, and he's probably just being paranoid. but he remembers how his family acted when he brought you around-- or, more so how Drayton and nubbins acted, and he is seeing quite the resemblance between them and your family.

Meanwhile, you're still as vibrant and giddy as ever, clearly excited at the opportunity. at what a big moment this is. and Johnny puts on a (clearly nervous) smile for you, casually greeting people and being met with short introductions and stiff, cold handshakes.

When he meets your parents, they look at him like he's the prey. and that is NOT a feeling he is used to, or one that he enjoys. His palms are sweaty, and it is not due to the heat. he feels like he's meeting mafia bosses, but you run up and hug them like its nothing. like they aren't literal final bosses.

Johnny is terrified, frankly, but he proceeds. he greets them, thanks them for having him, shakes their hands, introduces himself, etc. and they ask questions. he's still anxious, but he doesn't mind answering. they ask sort of... weird questions.

Like, the kind of questions that might come up in casual conversation, but not the kind that you ask right after meeting someone. Does he drink? Does he have his own car? Has he ever been out of the country? What's his blood type?

"Okay! That's enough," you laugh, cutting into his conversation with them, awkwardly dragging him aside. Once you're out in the hallway, you clear your throat.

~ "Sorry about them, they're just worried," you'd chuckle, placing a hand on his shoulder to reassure him, your trademark smile on your face. "My sister's been wanting to meet you for a while now. Follow me."

~~ "I'm sure they just wanna know who the guy is that I've been gushing about to them for so long," you'd laugh nervously, gulping right after. "Hey, how about we go meet my sister? She's been asking nonstop about you!"

He'd follow, not really having much of a choice if he wants to stay by your side, and he definitely does not want to be alone right now. When you eventually do find your sister, she looks him up and down, sizing him up. Without addressing him, she asks "That's the one?" with an almost snarky tone.

Johnny, trying his best to win over your family still, steps forward and addresses her, introducing himself to her directly. She looks a little disgusted by this, and doesn't shake his hand.

"How long are you guys gonna be here?" She'd ask, still talking to you.

~ "He's here for the fireworks," you'd grin.

~~ "Sis, please. You're being rude," you'd gently remind, nudging her shoulder.

She replied with an eyeroll, waving her hand. "Whatever."

Once she'd walked away, Johnny looked over at you, a small frown. "Did I do something wrong?" he'd ask, glancing around the backyard full of people. Immediately, you reassured him, letting him know that they were just really not used to visitors, and he didn't want to pry.

You'd ask him if he would prefer to leave early, but he immediately denied. He didn't want to back down, didn't wanna seem weak. He wanted to show your family he wasn't going to be scared off. that he was actually very committed to you.

It was embarrassing for him to admit to himself, but he supposed it was worth it. When the time came for dinner, everyone gathered outside, surrounding a barbeque that cast out an alluring scent of burgers. A little after dinner was served, Johnny asked where the bathroom was, and you gave him directions. You offered to show him, but he said he'd be fine.

Everyone was outside, which meant he wouldn't need to worry about being killed, or interrogated, or yelled at if he left your side. there was no telling what was going to happen.

When he got inside, he had a bit of trouble finding it, and he walked past the kitchen, catching a very... very familiar scent. He sniffed again, following his nose over to a sink, where he found an entire goddamn femur.

Any normal person would have gagged, or maybe just straight up vomited, screamed, something-

but Johnny smirked, and then scoffed. He stood there for a moment before finally turning around and managing to find the bathroom. When he returned to your side, he nudged you, whispering, "You didn't tell me your family was the same."

You'd look at him, giving him an almost blank stare. Your eyes slightly narrowed, your brows a little furrowed, your lips barely parted. "Johnny..?" You'd ask.

"What?"

"We... literally killed someone last Tuesday," you'd remind, your words coming out slowly, trying to spark his memory like you were talking to an amnesiac turtle.

"Well, yeah, but you didn't tell me your family was that way too," he sighed, rolling his eyes. "No wonder they were so hesitant. Do they know?"

"I- I think so. I mean, I didn't explicitly tell them, but I kinda figured they'd assume since we've been together for so long and you're still alive," you mumbled, giving a half-hearted shrug. Locating your dad a few feet away, you dragged Johnny over towards him, poking your father on the arm. "Dad?"

He looked Johnny up and down, and then looked to you. "What is it?"

"You do realize he's like us, right?"

He looked surprised, and you immediately let out a sigh, feeling awful and incredibly awkward. "Man, I figured you'd figured it out. Yeah, he eats people too."

"I thought you were bringing us back dinner," your dad laughed, outstretching a hand and shaking Johnny's again. Johnny let out a tense chuckle, shaking the older man's hand.

"Sorry for the confusion, sir," Johnny spoke, doing his best to hide his southern accent. It wasn't a great attempt, but it was certainly an attempt.

"In that case, welcome to the family, son."

#johnny slaughter #johnny tcm #tcm #tcm game #texas chainsaw massacre #texas chainsaw massacre game #johnny slaughter fluff #johnny slaughter x reader #adapting to johnny slaughter

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yandereloversworld · 11 months

Text

yan!Azul with a soulmate s/o

notes: Just felt in the mood to write this instead of learning for my exam :D

important: gn! Reader; yandere and yandere typical warnings including: obsessive behaviour, disturbing thoughts, etc.

Other warnings: Self-esteem-issues (azul)

________________________________________________________________

- from the moment Azul heard of soulmates as a small kid he had a vision of a happy and domestic life visioned before his inner eye.

-He sat in a corner in his class, a bit abside from his classmates, but still in hearing range. He didn’t listen too closely to their conversation, halfway expecting to just hear them commenting on him and his pathetic body. The thought alone was enough for him to having to hold back inky tears from streaming down his face, knowing just well that it would make the mean comments just so much worse. That was until he heard what they were actually talking about. Soulmates!! When listening in closer to their conversation he couldn’t prevent himself from growing fascinated by the very concept of someone who was literally MEANT to be with him. A person, whom would love and cherrish all and every single detail of

himself instead of seeing what most others saw in him: A pathetic, fat, ugly-crying octopus.

-From there on out Azul thought every day about his beloved soulmate. It made the days where he got bullied so much easier, their terrible comments now not even getting to him, for he knew that his soulmate was the only person whose opinion mattered.

-This however didn’t mean that he was not insecure about himself anymore. No no no!! It would take far more for him to grow over that, but just the thought of his beloved somewhere out there waiting for him motivated him to work on himself without any mercy. He dedicated every second of his time to gathering as much knowledge as he could. How to make potions? He memorized every single potion recipe there was as well as how to improve its effects and prolong them. Laws? He went through the books for several weeks, till he could remember every passage word by word.

-What limited free-time was left he used to search the coral see up and down after his fated one, often even throughout the night, instead of going to sleep, seeing no sense in doing so, when it was clear that he could use his time so much better in striving for a beautiful life with his mate by his. Most of the times his parents were searching for him, worried for their small child out on its own when it was dark, his obsession not going unnoticed by either of them. They knew that this was not healthy and when his concerning behaviour did not stop but instead grew worse they decided to have a talk with him.

-The talk was mortifying for Azul. His own parents telling him how rare soulmates were nowadays and that they often just settled for someone else... someone who was clearly not meant for them instead of searching for their chosen one terrifying him.

-What made it only worse was when they told him that someone could easily be happy without their soulmate. That there was no REASON to go to such lenghts for a person, that he would never meet anyways. Telling him that they were not soulmates but still happy with eachother.

-At the mention of the last statement he SNAPPED.

-Everything around him became a blur as he screamed at them. How DARE they?! They knew NOTHING of the connection soulmates had, how important it was and how dare they cheating on their soulmates like that.

-After that he swam away as fast as he could, hiding in his octopot in a hidden corner of the coral reef.

-After that Azul distanced himself from his parents, unwilling to be near them anymore after they tried to ruin his happy future with his mate.

-Though still mad Azul couldn’t ignore their words.

What if he’d NEVER find his true love?

What if they shared his parents disgusting view on soulmates?

Or worse: What if someone else tried to take you away from him? To STEAL you?!

-Fearing these questions Azul hid himself deeper in his pot, hiding himself away from the terrible, disgusting world.

____________________

Timeskip (NRC)

Time moved by a lot slower for Azul, the terrifying doubts, as well as his parents voices never fully left his consciousness.

-At some point he stopped the nightly strolls through the coral reef, watching for any sign of his beloved. But not because he gave up. No!! He instead began to fully focus his attention on becoming more successful, knowing fully well, that along with his success, he would gain the resources to find you more effectively through informants and with the money and name he’d built for himself by then, he would be more than capable of protecting you and to take proper care of you and the family you would, without a doubt, build together.

-Along his journey of now trapping people into contracts, he met two young eel mermen called Jade and Floyd, with whom together, he made his way to become the new housewarden of Octavinelle.

-Now, at the beginning of his second year, Azul patiently waited for the new first-years to be assigned to their dorms, when suddenly...

-He felt his heart setting out a beat at the sight of a figure in the crowd of first-years. Upon seeing them, he felt himself unable to look away, resulting in the alluring figure to notice his stare and to glance right back at him, locking their eyes with his. As a reaction, Azul’s heart tried to make up for the missed heartbeats by now beating so loud, that Azul initially thought that the whole room would be able to hear it, not that he could bring himself to care, still being unable to look away from, what he now knew to be his soulmate. A heavy blush coating their soft cheeks, as they were starring wide-eyed at him, without a doubt realizing the strong connection that they had to him. He couldn’t help himself, but to stare logingly at them, even when noticing the twins low chuckle, without a doubt having followed his gaze and noticed his lovesick expression. Normally he would have given them a stern look by now, but still not being able to care for anything besides the sweet being, with whom he still locked and exchanged gazes until the next name was being called out by the headmage, by which they snapped their head up, and with a nervous last glance in Azul’s direction approached the mirror. Azul followed their every move intently, not daring to stare away for even a second from his soon-to-be-mate. With every fiber of his being he hoped for the mirror to send them to Octavinelle. To HIS dorm. In HIS arms.

-But, unfortunately the magic mirror did no such thing, instead announcing that they did not belong to any dorm, which resulted in hushed mumble to break out throughout the mirror hall, eyes, that a second ago didn’t even bother to eath the ceremony, now locked judgingly onto the new first-year, making them squirm uncomfortably, much to Azul’s anger. How DARE they making HIS mate so uncomfortable. And more important: How DARE this stupid piece of glass to put you in such a situation?! Even though he seethed with rage, he still had to put up a mask, even if it was only for his poor little mates comfort. He sent you a reassuring look, which seemed to calm you down atleast a bit, making Azuls chest beam with pride. He slowly approached the headmage, and you, his sweet and adorable mate, alongside him. Graciously offering you to stay at Octavinelle, alongside him with a charming smile, that seemed to make you blush in an adorable red shade, sending butterflies through his belly and turning his brain to mush for a second until he remembered that the two of you were still not alone.

-He now spent a good amount of ten minutes convincing the stupid headmage that you were much better in his care, time that would’ve been used way better if the stupid crow would just agree to leave his precious mate in his care. Time that he could’ve spent with you and starting this new life together, for which he waited all these years.

-After much too loong of a time the headmage finally, FINALLY!! agreed to let you stay at Octavinelle instead of throwing you out of the school, which was only immediately out of the way when the headmage realized that Azul wouldn’t hesitate to turn him into yummy chicken wings chould he not comply.

-After this was now finally settled, Azul turned with a sweet smile on his face to you, while offering you his arm, which you, extremely flustered and blushing, took and clung to HIS arm, making Azul the happiest octopus alive.

-He then began showing you the way to Octavinelle, and unbeknownst to you, your Happily Ever After.

_____________________________

Alright!! DONE!!! I initally wanted to write for the whole of Octavinelle and only make small headcanons, but seeing as Azuls part is already this long, I instead decided to just leave it at that for now. I’ll still write for the twins (and eventually some other *ahem* rook *ahem* characters) but couldn’t convince myself to make this even longer than it already is now.

What makes me actually sad about most yandere soulmate fanfics is, that only the yandere seems to feel this love at first sight, this “belonging” to the reader, and not the other way around as well, making the reader act like they were NOT meant to be , which they actually ARE in this au. I just see yandere soulmate au!s just in a different light in that way, that they are literally two parts of a soul which are meant to accept and love each other, which in my opinion should result in the reader to be more accepting of the characters yandere traits, but also to make the yandere (even) softer for the reader and less likely to hurt *ahem* jade/floyd *ahem*.

But yeah, enough of that already. I hope you enjoyed this small fanfic and feel free to send me requests and questions for future fanfics. I already uploaded a list of what I am going to write, so don’t be shy and just ask. (If a certain anime/manga, etc. should not be on the list, don’t let that discourage you, as I am sometimes really forgetful and forget to add something to the list)

Have a nice day!!!

#yandere #yandere twst #yandere twisted wonderland #azul ashengrotto #yandere azul #yandere azul ashengrotto #yandere octavinelle

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sebastianravkin · 22 days

Text

Another Book Recommendation for 2024

Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

Seems obvious and possibly pointless for the Tumblr audience, but hear me out.

CONTENT WARNING: mention of dark moments in LGBTQ+ history. If you would like to avoid, skip Point #1.

The below notes reflect a discussion concerning the book Good Omens I had with a group of my undergraduate interns over a couple of lunches last semester. Given that they all loved the show, I had assumed they had all read the book. Not all of them had, and for those that did, their knowledge of when the book was originally published and an understanding of its historical context was surprisingly limited. I thought that others may be interested in these points, and so am sharing them here.

1) *SKIP TO AVOID CONTENT WARNING* To understand the impact of Good Omens when it was published in 1990 on the LGBTQIA+ community, it helps to understand the cultural environment at the time of its publishing, at least in the United States.

The book came out towards the end of the height of the AIDS epidemic (1981 - early 90s). I can not stress enough how terrifying this was for the LGBTQIA+ community to live through. People were afraid - of dying, of watching loved ones die, of being separated from their loved ones as they died, of being ostracized, of being denied medical help, of being attacked and beaten. While there was a short fluorescence of nominal acceptance of the LGBTQIA+ community during the 1970s, the societal response to the AIDS epidemic was a huge step backwards. People became cruel(er), whether out of fear or ignorance or opportunity.

Good Omens came quietly onto the scene during this time, providing an alternate universe in which a gay-presenting angel (and his gender-fluid demon friend) could live in a world without the AIDS crisis. At the same time, this angel did live in fear of his world literally ending, and really would like to have just gotten back to his comfy chair and his Regency silver snuffboxes. Escapism reading at its best, really.

In addition, the book was published in 1990, so before many of the cultural moments that helped lead to social change but are now taken for granted. Such as . . . .

-Freddie Mercury died of AIDS in November 1991 (which, by the way, means there was a very short window of time where people were reading Good Omens while he was still alive).

-Sir Elton John came out in 1992

-“Don’t ask, don’t tell” became official policy of the U.S. Military in 1993 (finally repealed in 2011)

-the establishment of LGBTQIA+ centers on college campuses surged in the mid-1990s

-Ellen came out on her show in 1997

-Will and Grace first aired in 1998

-Matthew Shepard was murdered in 1998 (the Federal Hate Crimes Prevention Act bearing his name was not passed until 2007).

2) The book is queer coded for 1990. As queer coded as the show is for current times.

I have heard multiple comments from GenZ students along the lines of ‘there is nothing queer about the book’, and I have read commentary that Neil Gaiman caved to fan pressure in modernizing the script for the show. But I have also heard comments from GenX peers, including one of whom said “it was the gayest book I read in the 90s”. I have highlighted 15 passages in my teaching copy of the book that would have been queer-coded in 1990, 12 of which would go unnoticed today as far as I can tell based on discussions with many of my Millennial and GenZ students.

It is important to keep in mind that the vocabulary of the 1980s and 90s relating to the LGBTQIA+ community was exceedingly limited; Mr. Gaiman and Sir Pratchett worked within this limited vocabulary, and were working within the stereotypes of the times, to portray Crowley and Aziraphale. And readers are meant to love them. Possibly more importantly, the derogatory comments concerning Aziraphale come from unlikable characters, and so the reader not only ends up feeling defensive of the angel but also does not want to be associated with those who hold negative opinions of him. I can think of few better ways to create social change.

In terms of the show adaptation, whenever I watch a movie or show based on a book, my first concern is whether or not the adaptation makes me feel the way the book did. I am not an artist, so I do not know how one translates the written to the visual and I do not envy those attempting to do so. But I do know that successful adaptations are almost never a one-to-one translation. What I can say in this context is that, to me, the show does feel like the book in terms of its themes, its humor, its timely social commentary. So whyever and however Mr. Gaiman updated it, I would argue it was successful.

3) It is my understanding that Good Omens is the first book written by cisgendered heterosexual males for a general audience that portrays a gay-presenting character and a gender-fluid character as main characters in a positive light that does not end in a tragic way. This is huge. This is Captain Kirk and Uhuru’s kiss huge.

Historically, LGBTQIA+ people rarely get positive representation in mainstream media. Rather, LGBTQIA+ characters in literature were often portrayed as villains in early writing, and are often used as comedic relief in more recent work. When there is a sympathetic main character, their story usually ends in tragedy. While tragic stories are very much a reality for many LGBTQIA+ people, it is incredibly important to also have stories that do not end in heartbreak or death. And it is also incredibly important for LGBTQIA+ characters to be part of the norm in main stream story telling as this leads to broader social acceptance. Good Omens provided LGBTQIA+ readers with a sense of belonging in the greater world, while ‘normalizing’ the happy existence of LGBTQIA+ people to a broader readership. This type of representation, presented by heterosexual white cisgendered male authors (at the top of the power structure in 1990) is a key moment in the slow but steady grind leading to social change.

In summary, read the book. Whether you are a fan of the show or not, and regardless of your generation, this book has a lot going for it. Above and beyond its importance to the LGBTQIA+ community, the book includes broader commentary on religion, good vs. evil, right vs. wrong, and identity in general. The menacing humor of Gaiman and the loving satire of Pratchett is a combination that is unequaled. The book is funny, thought-provoking, well-written, and has a lot of great characters above and beyond a particular angel and demon (who are only in about 1/3 of the book). And as you read it, understand its historical context, and love it for the role it played in getting us to this cultural point in time.

#good omens #evelyntyler #books #books and reading #book reccomendation #neil gaiman #terry pratchett

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missdrake · 1 year

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I saw the gremlin asks and I’m all for that ✨

I found this on TikTok https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMFQ4STJM/

And it made me think of gremlin reader. Like say she has a habit of literally disappearing as soon as either someone blinks or they turn away from her for a SINGLE SECOND and when they turn back around, she’s gone~

In the red keep, it was said that there are secret passages and now the family is just terrified because they can just HEAR gremlin reader’s mischievous giggles and chuckles and the little pitter-patter of her feet cuz she’ll dump her shoes as to make less noise and they know that they are about a heart attack away from her just popping up behind them and saying something random or something along the lines of “so I found this albino cat-“

Viserys probably had his fair share of heart attacks

And Luke and Aegon are aware enough of gremlin reader doing this, so say during a feasting party, everyone turns away from reader for a second from her seat, even if she’s sitting RIGHT NEXT to Laena and Corlys who are VERY observant, POOF! She’s gone~

Cue everyone going silent and they wait with anxious breaths…. Then they hear it… the sound of pitter-pattering feet and little gremlin giggling….

Helaena is like “she’s in the walls….”

And Aegon and Luke are like “SHE’S IN THE GODDAMN WAAAALLLS-“ while trying to hightale it out of there cuz they don’t want to get spooked by her

Not the reader being the reason why the family discovers the secret passages. I am just imagining the thought of the family splitting up along with Criston to search the reader through those secret passages bumping into each other and never being able to find her. The only one who manages at times is Daemon.

Also, the first time they heard her in the walls gave them all a heart attack. Alicent nearly screamed when hearing giggles echoing. Luke thought all this time it was a ‘ghost’ haunting him only to sigh in relief when realizing it was actually the reader. Also, Aegon panicked a few times, he denies the reader telling everyone he shrieked when he heard her greet him.

It was Daemon's idea to keep her on a leash and everyone got angry at him (especially Viserys and Otto), saying that she’s not some dog to be pulled on. Only for Daemon to let the leash go and watch the chaos ensue. They usually leave her with Rhaenyra and Rhaenys as they are the only ones who manage to look out and catch the reader before slipping away.

Rhaenys’ mistake was leaving her with Corlys, because the second she comes back. The reader is gone and everyone is panicking looking for her. Helaena tries telling them where she is, but no one is listening to her except for Aemond who moves away from everyone.

But when Luke and Aegon can be heard screaming that she’s at the walls, it’s when they finally figure it out. Though when Criston goes, Aemond is there-out of breath with the reader under his grasp.

#yandere concept #yandere house of the dragon #yandere hotd

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lettersfromaphrodite · 9 months

Text

[9.00]

― pairing : Felix x fem! reader ― content warnings : fluff, vampires au, Felix is a vampire, reader manages to travel to a parallel universe, medieval settings, reader gets kidnapped for literally a paragraph but nothing happens because Felix saves the day ― word count : 4.380

― notes : this fic looks familiar?it is! I’m reposting ALL my works on this brand new blog and therefore please, bear with me! as always, askbox is always open and feedbacks are always welcome 💌

🧛‍♂️ VAMPIRE! STRAY KIDS SERIES

Chris // Changbin // Jisung // Hyunjin // Seungmin // Minho // Felix

Strange and unusual as it was considered by everyone in your village, for you, working as an archaeologist was only a source of pride; despite most people still thought that “it wasn’t a woman’s ideal job”, you simply settled for ignoring their unrequested comments and kept going to work with a smile on your face.

Knowledge was dangerous in your time, especially if a woman knew too much; luckily, you’ve never paid too much attention to them and slowly grow accustomed at people addressing you as a witch.

“Until they decide to burn me,” you constantly thought, “let them believe I’m getting informations by mysterious spirits and not from books.”

For more than two weeks you have been assigned to a small team, your days busy with trying to find signs of an ancient population. The excavation site was on top of a lonely hill which stood at a rocky mountain’s feet; apparently, a huge column had showed up out of nowhere, laying to the ground used and corroded by natural events.

Rationality prevented you from thinking that such a large column had come out of nowhere and therefore, you ended up spending most of your days at the excavation site, not bothering whether you were alone or if there was someone else with you; working by yourself was probably what you preferred, since you didn’t have to waste your time doing small talk with your colleagues.

It was early in the morning, and the birds were chirping all around you, keeping you company as you were busy cleaning a part of the large column with a soft brush; you were determined to find anything useful and therefore, you refused to give up on your research, although you still haven’t found anything.

Quietly humming a song to yourself, you didn’t realized about the fact that you’ve pressed the bush against the stone column a little harsher than needed, not until you heard a soft and unfamiliar clicking noise coming from the mountain’s wall.

It was incredibly weird, almost as if a lock had been unlocked, but where could it be? You were completely surrounded by nature, it was impossible for a lock – or a door, to be there.

Nervously biting on the wooden end of the brush, you kept curiously glancing around yourself, when suddenly, part of the mountain began to move. Your expression was a mixture between horror and utter shock as you watched a circular part of the rocky wall big enough to resemble a door, shift and fall to the ground as if it was being absorbed, completely disappearing.

An insane amount of dust was released due to the sudden movement of the door, but still you could see a faint light coming from the other side; despite the fact that you were terrified, your curiosity and your desire for adventure were slowly creeping into your mind. You stood there, motionless, pondering whether you should try to get inside it or not, when the door somehow seemed to decide in your place; it didn’t remain open for more than few minutes, and as soon as you saw the rocky wall slowly erupting from the ground in order to close that mysterious passage again, you acted before thinking, quickly running towards the now closing door and jumping over it.

As the wall completely closed behind you, you realized that you didn’t have a way out, if not moving forward; you decided to place your hand on the wall as you slowly stepped towards the faint light you were seeing at the end of the corridor, hoping not to find any dangerous situations, since your only weapon was the brush you were using at the excavation site.

Strange and intricate drawings met your fingers, and you noticed that they were elegantly written on the walls; you were incredibly curious, where did that door lead you to?

Quickly enough, you reached the end of the corridor, and you abruptly stopped in your tracks: the corridor led you to a wide rocky chamber, where a boy was sitting on the floor while leaning against a wall, presumably asleep. The first thing you noticed was the neat bright red circle written around him on the floor and you furrowed your brows, assuming for the first time in your life that it was something related to witchcraft.

“Where did I end up?” you thought, instinctively walking towards the sleeping boy with slow and cautious steps; his hair was light blonde and a bit long, his bangs delicately falling on his delicate features; his face was sprinkled with freckles, almost resembling as he had a galaxy printed on his face, making him look some sort of angelic.

Even if you felt bad for waking him up, you honestly needed to know more about where you were and how could you go back home. Carefully, you stepped over the circle without noticing that your boot smeared part of it; as soon as you kneeled next to the sleeping boy, his eyes fluttered open, and you held back a surprised gasp as soon as bright crimson eyes met yours. The boy gave you the brightest and most gentle smile you’ve ever seen, before tugging at your wrist and making you lean on his chest; your hand came in contact with his velvet jacket as you tried to push yourself up, noticing that he wasn’t try to hold you against him in any way.

«Finally, my bride came to set me free!» he said excitedly, and you were sure your eyes almost popped out of their socket.

«Your what?!» you shrieked, abruptly yanking your hand from his grasp, ignoring his sad expression at your rough gesture, and you sat on your heels, putting a bit of distance between the two of you.

«My bride,» he repeated with a pout, refusing to meet your gaze, «the demon that trapped me with this,» he added as his left index pointed to the circle on the ground, «said that only my bride would have managed to set me free!»

Pressing your fingers on your temples, you refrained from laughing in his face, since he was probably out of his mind.

«Listen, I’m not your “bride”, I simply stepped inside the circle,» you tried to clarify, «and now I want to go back home.» The boy – Felix, carefully listened to you as you explained that you had walked inside the door at the end of the corridor, and gently furrowed his brows in an apologetic expression.

«You can’t go back,» he shrugged, carefully standing up and stretching his limbs as he had been sleeping for years, «that door opens… Well, honestly, no one knows when.» Felix gently offered you his hand, and as you instinctively took it, he helped you to stand up; despite his hands were cold, his touch was extremely gentle.

«What am I going to do, then?» you mumbled weakly, more to yourself than to him, trying to do your best at hiding your panicked state; you weren’t doing a good job, since Felix awkwardly patted your head with a frown in the attempt to console you.

«Listen… I can ask to a friend, he’s a witch, but you’ll have to stay with me all the time, since it’s dangerous for humans to stay by themselves in our world.» Felix said, and your eyes went wide.

«He’s a what?!» you shrieked, «quit talking like you’re not a human being!» much to your surprise, Felix chuckled at your words, as if you weren’t noticing something obvious; you were so determined to find a rational explanation to everything that actually, you still didn’t realize that you’ve never met anyone with bright red eyes, and as soon as Felix slightly opened his mouth to show you a pair of sharp fangs, you swore you felt as if you were going to faint.

A month later, you still had troubles believing where you managed to end up; apparently, a whole parallel world was existing along yours, the two dimensions divided by a stone wall that randomly opened every now and then, allowing anyone to trespass.

Felix had insisted for you to live with him, and despite the fact that you had been reluctant at the beginning, he was the only person you knew and the fact that he offered to help you was both risky and comforting. Truth be told, when you discovered Felix was a vampire you didn’t sleep for the first three nights, afraid that he would sneak into your room and drink your blood until you were dead, but he never did.

However, anytime Felix was hungry, he’d simply say that he was going for a hunt and that «there’s plenty of food, don’t wait for me.», and you eventually ended up having your meals by yourself.

Felix also absolutely prevented you from going out by yourself, saying that there were too many dangerous creatures ready to take advantages on humans – since human trespassers were rare; you listened to him, but anytime Felix had showed you around the village, you couldn’t help but to want to see more.

Various and different creatures – some looking less human than others, were living together and in apparent harmony; you were forced to admit to the rational part of yourself that such a thing could not be explained, and that therefore, the supernatural really existed.

As you strolled the village, Felix always refused to let go of your hand, saying something along the lines of «my scent covers yours», a thing which you didn’t understand but didn’t really want to question, either. Inevitably, you found it easy to trust Felix, which was attentively looking at your naive astonishment with an amused face.

«Look at him!» you had whispered to Felix once, tugging his hand to claim his full attention, «he’s like a walking jaguar!» you exclaimed, your head tilted towards the tall blacksmith focused on his work; Felix laughed whole heartedly at your comment, thing that make you immediately blush for unknown reasons.

«He’s not a jaguar, he’s a Fadus.» he explained gently, as if he was suddenly talking to a child; you tilted your head, as if to ask what was the difference when he obviously resembled a really tall wild animal standing on his feet, «Fadus are like leopards, but they’re way more clever, and their skin is blue.» satisfied, you hummed to yourself.

«Another thing,» Felix exclaimed, bringing a finger to his lips and slightly leaning towards you, as if he was about to tell you a fundamental information, «don’t tell them they look like jaguars, Fadus are awesome, but they’re incredibly… sensitive about these things.» you immediately nodded, and eventually you ended up asking Felix about things that didn’t exist in your world; Felix was always more than eager to explain you everything you wanted to know, and slowly this had become your new routine.

Honestly, you found it impossible not to trust Felix, and you inevitably started to get along, quickly becoming friends; contrarily to your world, he had explained that no one had any kind of prejudices against women, and therefore, many of them held very important social and political positions.

“Sounds like the place for me,” you ended up thinking sometimes, wondering about the feeling of openly speaking about your interest without being looked down; actually, you already were having glimpses of how it would be like.

Felix was a vampire, and therefore, thanks to his age he knew a lot of things you didn’t; the two of you spent endless nights talking about your interests and the difference between your worlds – from the biggest ones to the faintest details, and you couldn’t help but finding yourself getting a little more attached to Felix each passing day.

Not only Felix was witty, caring, playful and sarcastic, he was also incredibly handsome; there was something in the way his nose scrunched when he laughed, baring his fangs and his eyes disappearing behind two tiny crescent moons that made the butterflies in your stomach do somersaults.

Felix was also a man of word; he had keep his promise, asking to his friend to find out more informations about the portal. Sadly, despite a month had passed, there weren’t any news and apparently, there wasn’t any way to predict it.

Felix was on a hunt, and you took advantage to take a hot shower; autumn had just started and therefore, the sensation of hot water on your skin was more than enough to relax you.

A white towel was safely wrapped around your body, reaching around mid-thigh, and you were about to brush your wet hair when you started hearing weird noises coming from your living room.

«Gosh,» you heard someone say, «it reeks of human in here.» you furrowed your brows, tightening the towel around your chest before walking through the living room with quick steps; you were decided to confront the intruder by grabbing the most dangerous looking object you could see in Felix’s living room but you didn’t expect for the intruder to look so hot: honey coloured skin, dark red eyes and black hair, something in his appearance was incredibly alluring. He was wearing a heavy black coat that reached his ankles, leather pants were detailed with leather strings that travelled on the mid of his thighs, leaving part of his skin exposed.

The stranger seemed to sense your presence, as he immediately turned his head on his left, meeting your gaze.

«Oh, now that’s interesting,» he mumbled more to himself, taking a step forward, «Is Lixie home?»

“Lixie?” you thought, remembering that only his closest friends called him like that; you slightly relaxed, realizing that you probably were not in danger anymore, despite the fact that he looked quite intimidating.

«No,» you admitted, «he should come back soon.» even thought the boy was standing on the opposite side of the living room, something in the air shifted; his eyes seemed more glimmering, and you started to feel warmer. It was as if you were feeling a strange sensation of pleasure flooding on your body and instinctively, you pressed yourself against the wall as he took a small step closer.

«Changbin,» Felix’s stern voice suddenly spoke, and you relaxed as you saw him appearing out of thin air, «keep your incubus tricks to yourself.»

«I wasn’t doing anything harmful!» the stranger – Changbin, groaned, «you guys don’t even let me play nowadays.» he pouted, and you saw his shoulders lowering in defeat as he quickly walked towards the small circular wooden table in the living room.

«I’m sure Hyunjin would let you have plenty of fun.» Felix chuckled, even if he kept standing in front of you.

«My husband isn’t food.» Changbin pouted, before placing a small velvet box on the table, «Here’s what you asked for. Make sure she never takes it off.» with that, Changbin vanished in thin air right after saying goodbye to both of you.

It took you few seconds to realize that you were still clutching the towel around your body as if your life depended on it; eventually, Felix slowly turning around and walking in front of you made you snap back from your thoughts.

«Are you okay?» somehow, Felix’s voice came out a little bit raspier, and you didn’t fail to notice his gaze flickering from your eyes, to your lips, and along the part of your slightly exposed chest; you nodded in a silent answer, confused about the fact that the strange feeling you felt when Changbin was in the room didn’t go away.

Felix lifted his hands and placed them against the wall, caging you between his arms; you felt your cheeks heaten as you felt your heart picking up pace and instinctively, you licked your lips, noticing that Felix attentively followed the gesture. You felt trapped, and you could feel the heat emitting from his body; it would be a lie to hide the fact that you fantasized about kissing him more than once, and the fact that he was so close to you and seemed so serious was enough to make you struggle to keep your breath even.

«Did he do anything stupid?» Felix asked again, imperceptibly inching closer to you; his breath was fanning your lips, and you desired nothing more to feel his lips moving against yours.

«He didn’t.» you mumbled, afraid that if you spoke any louder, the atmosphere would have been ruined.

«Good.» Felix mumbled back, as if he was desperately trying to say something to keep the conversation going and not wanting to move away.

«I… Should go get dressed.» you tried, hoping that he would disagree.

«Yeah,» Felix licked his lips, unmoving, «you should.» your hands were itching with the desire to kiss him, but you held back; you closed your fist around the towel, ignoring how you knuckles went white, and eventually, Felix moved. You strode towards your bedroom, closing the door behind your shoulders and placing your back against it. What just happened?

Eventually, you decided to walk out the comfort zone provided by your room just to see Felix peacefully reading on the couch in the living room; you could swear that a blush was dancing on his cheeks as soon as he saw you, but eventually, he got up and walked towards the small wooden table, pointing to the velvet box that Changbin had placed there.

A small necklace was hanging from a silver chair; it looked harmless and not too particular, you noticed.

«Thanks to a magic spell, this will hide the fact that you’re a human,» Felix said as soon as he noticed your confused expression; «you can go around by yourself every now and then. Just… never take it off.» Felix nervously scratched the back of his head, and you felt incredibly happy.

«Thank you.» you smiled, and without thinking too much, you reached out to hug Felix, which immediately tensed up; lost in your bliss to finally having the possibility to visit more of this world, it took you a while to realize what you had done, but before you could pull away, Felix’s arms hesitantly circled your waist, before mumbling a weak and embarrassed «you’re welcome.»

Turns out, the enchanted necklace was not a good idea. During a chill and sunny afternoon, you spent your time wandering through the village, keeping close enough to your house in case you felt insecure and wanted to go back when suddenly, a piece of cloth tightly pressed on your nose and your mouth startled you, and instinctively you inhaled; your throat started burning, and your head started spinning. You felt someone roughly grabbing your waist, probably preventing you from falling before you started feeling too weak to call for help. You didn’t know what kind of substance you inhaled, but you didn’t faint, instead, fear and panic creeped through your senses as you saw that you were being dragged through narrow and less walked alleyways.

«I’m curious, is Felix that eager to play with his food?» much to you dismay, you found out that your capturer was an incubus; the boy stood taller than you, and he had pressed you against the wall while tightly keeping a hand around your throat. You wanted to scream, to claw at his face, but you couldn’t move.

Despite the fact that he was an incubus just like Changbin, the aura they were emitting were totally different. Changbin emitted a pleasant aura, and when he used his influence on you you felt warmer and slightly in bliss; this incubus was using his aura to make you feel afraid. He touched your chin to lift your head, and as his cold hand touched your skin you felt nothing but disgust and repulsion; you started feeling numb, since he was probably already taking away part of you energies.

Even if you forced yourself to stay awake, you eventually lost consciousness, with the faint hope that Felix would eventually find you.

What you definitely didn’t expect was to wake up in your own bed; you tried to sit up with a pained groan, but petrified as soon as you felt your throat burning in a painful way.

“So, it was real,” you thought, but before you could try to voice your own thoughts, Felix walked through the door, sitting on the bed and looking at you with apologetic eyes.

«Please,» you felt your own voice shake with fear, «Tell me that nothing happened.» Felix give you a sad smile, understanding what you were implying and eventually, he shook his head.

«I found you as soon as you lost consciousness.» he spoke, and you felt relief wash over you. Immediately, you shifted, throwing yourself at Felix and hugging him like your life depended on it.

«I’m sorry,» you said, on the verge of crying but somehow holding it in, «I never took the necklace off, I don’t know what happened. I’m sorry.» you kept repeating like a mantra, despite the fact that Felix was gently rubbing your back while repeating that it wasn’t your fault.

«He had been following you for a while, I should have been more careful,» Felix admitted, claiming the blame of what had happened. It was strange, how both of you tried to place the blame on yourself but even if – after what happened, you were dreading any form of human contact, you didn’t want to part from Felix’s embrace.

«Come on,» Felix said during breakfast, turning his chair towards you, «lean in.» you wondered what exactly he had in mind, since it’s been two days and you unconsciously yanked yourself away as soon as he tried to touch you.

Hesitantly you did as he asked, and placing one hand on the edge of the table and the other on your knee, you leaned in; Felix moved hesitantly, but eventually placed his forehead against yours.

«I know you’re still shocked, but I want to console you somehow,» Felix said with a smile, his red eyes burning into yours from up close, «I can’t hug you, so this will do.»

Felix’s features were mesmerising, and you felt your cheeks heating up due to the sudden proximity; since the night when you were about to kiss, you’ve never been this close.

Honestly, you don’t know what came over you, but you found yourself leaning in and capturing Felix’s lips in a brief kiss, a simple and gentle peck; however, as you were about to part, Felix’s hand prevented you from moving away by gripping on your nape, pulling you to him in order to finally properly kiss you. Felix’s kisses were hesitant and gentle, and anytime the two of you parted to breathe, he always waited for you to start the contact in a silent way to respect your pace after what had happened to you.

What he didn’t know, was that you felt incredibly safe with him and therefore, you never wanted to part from him; slowly, that night, you trusted Felix enough to give yourself to him completely, finding the missing part of your soul as your bodies gently moved together on his bed.

«Hyunjin told me that the portal will open tonight,» Felix’s voice broke the peaceful quietness in the house as he stormed in through the front door, «I came back to tell you.»

«Oh.» despite the whirlwind of thoughts in your head, it was everything you could bring yourself to say; you politely thanked him, before eventually, going back in your room.

Honestly, you didn’t want to spend your last day silently weeping on your bed; at first, you wanted to create a lot of good memories to look back to once you finally got back to your world, but now, you found the idea of leaving honestly painful.

Things between you and Felix remained unspoken and unsettled, and you didn’t know where the two of you were standing; you couldn’t deny anymore the fact that you were in love with him, but what about him?

Felix had always made you feel loved with the way he acted or talked to you, but did he return your feelings? Was it okay for you to wish to stay with him?

Evening came before you realized, and you and Felix stood in the chamber where you met for the first time few months earlier; he didn’t let go of your hand not even for a second, as the two of you walked to the narrow corridor you’ve once walked by yourself. Felix could hear your quick heartbeat, and mistook it for your desire an anticipation to go back home when honestly, you didn’t.

«Then, goodbye.» Felix said after taking a deep breath, gently kissing your forehead.

«Bye…» you nodded to yourself; you wanted to tell him a lot of things, but the familiar click prevented you from talking.

The wall shifted slowly, and you could see a glimpse of your world and the excavation site you’ve been working on for weeks; you took a small step towards the door, but eventually, stopped. Leaving things unspoken and unsettled was probably the most coward thing you could do before leaving because despite everything, not only you loved this world more than your own, you also loved Felix. You wanted to give the two of you a possibility to be together.

With a gentle smile you kept to yourself, you stood motionless and eventually, you watched as the world you’ve once lived disappeared once again in front of your eyes; proudly, you turned around, smiling at Felix which was looking at you with a dumbfound expression.

«Oh!» you chanted, skipping towards him and snaking your arms around his waist, «looks like I missed it!» the smile on your lips was more than enough for Felix to understand that your decision would have always been the same: stay with him.

«I love you,» Felix said out of the blue, even thought he was originally planning to say something along the lines of “I thought I had lost you,” or “I was ready to jump into the next portal”; you smiled at him, relief washing over you as he spoke.

As Felix connected your lips in a gentle kiss, you knew you had made the right choice.

Do not modify, repost, translate or plagiarize my stories. I only publish my works on tumblr & AO3.

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#stray kids scenarios #fanfics #vampire series #vampires au #felix x reader #felix scenarios

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