#roi serpent

[lepetitdragonvert]

Die Schlangenbraut/ The Snake’s Bride

1894

Artist : Heinrich Vogeler

#heinrich vogeler #king snake #roi serpent #bride #fiancee #fiancée #knight #princess #princesse #fairy story #fairy tale #vintage illustration #old illustration #bird #oiseau #vogel

[fcbformulaeri]

no thoughts, just kieran culkin in his actors on actors interview

I'm okay btw (I'm not)

#kieran culkin #kieranculkin #kieran culkin for Variety #actors on actors #variety #variety actors on actors #claire danes #roman roy succession #succession hbo #succession roman roy #igby goes down #igby slocumb #sookie stackhouse #the essex serpent #successionhbo #roman roy #romanroy

[evilhorse]

The flame from its nostrils is actual fire that melts our arrows!

#adventure comics #green arrow #oliver queen #speedy #roy harper #underwater #serpent #Godzilla? #uh oh #robert bernstein #lee elias #dc comics #comics #50s comics #silver age comics

[savage-kult-of-gorthaur]

FENDING OFF UNHOLY MONSTROSITIES IN THE THURIAN AGE -- CONQUERING ALL.

PIC(S) INFO: Spotlight on the dawn of the Serpent-Men of Valusia in the Marvel Universe -- Cover art to "KULL THE CONQUEROR" Vol. 1 #2. September, 1972. Marvel Comics. Artwork by Marie & John Severin (siblings) & John Rosen.

PIC #2: 1972 Marvel house advertisement for the aforementioned "KULL" issue.

Resolution at 1421x2099 & 1088x1600.

Sources: www.tasteecatcomics.com/k-letter-comics/kull-the-conqueror-2-k69.html & Diversions of the Groovy Kind (blogspot).

#KULL #KULL Vol. 1 #Robert E. Howard #Marvel Comics #Thurian Age #Thurian #KULL the Conqueror #Sword and Sorcery #Bronze Age of Comics #Marvel Universe #Marvel #American Style #70s Marvel #REH #Serpent Men #Serpent-Men #Valusia #Marie Severin #John Severin #Sam Rosen #KULL the Conqueror Vol. 1 #Roy Thomas #Kull #Cover Art #1972 #Super Seventies #Serpent-Men of Valusia #Sword & Sorcery #Marvel House Ads #Dark Fantasy

[arickaandherfictionalothers]

Skeet Ulrich f/os

Chris Hooker, the craft (1996)

Aricka x Chris Hooker, the jock and the theater girl

Billy Loomis: Scream (1996)

Aricka x Billy Loomis, Ghostface and the woman in white, Ghostface boyfriend 🔪

Tim Mason: chill factor (1999)

Aricka x Tim Mason, rolling down the river with you

Kevin Mitnick: takedown

Aricka x Kevin, somebody to love

Billy Raedeen: nobody’s baby

Aricka x Billy R, 1+1=3

Ray Singleton: the magic of ordinary days

Aricka x Ray; the farmer takes a wife

Jake Green: Jericho

Aricka x Jake G, love you forever til forever falls apart

FP Jones: Riverdale

Aricka x FP, the serpent king’s queen

Roy: Supercell

Aricka x Roy; spin me round like a twister 🌪️

Colin; Parish

Aricka x Colin, fight for me fight beside me

(We don’t have any gifs of Colin yet but have another Skeet gif-)

#Aricka x Chris Hooker #the jock and the theater girl #ghostface boyfriend 🔪 #Ghostface and the woman in white #Aricka x Billy Loomis #Aricka x Tim Mason #rolling down the river with you #Aricka x Kevin #somebody to love #Aricka x Billy R #1+1=3 #Aricka x ray #the farmer takes a wife #Aricka x Jake G #love you forever til forever falls apart #Aricka x FP #the serpent’s queen #the serpent king’s queen #Aricka x Roy #spin me round like a twister 🌪️ #Aricka x Colin #fight for me fight beside me

[onlylonelylatino]

Shining Knight and Hawkman versus the Feathered Serpent by Adrian Gonzales

#shining knight #hawkman #feathered serpent #adrian gonzales #dc comics #bronze age #roy thomas

[isabelleneville]

Roy from the American version of The Office in renaissance garb prophecising the French Revolution was not in my The Serpent Queen/Starz period drama bingo.

#the serpent queen #I was like surely it can’t be Roy well it is

[tdciago]

Fargo: I Was First Through the Door

I previously theorized that Gator, like Oedipus, would kill his father at a crossroads over the right of way:

https://www.tumblr.com/tdciago/735728888343298048/fargo-theory-gator-and-the-right-of-way?source=share

In "Insolubilia," Roy's one-sided conversation with Jesus in his church gives more subtle clues about this scenario.

ROY: It's the crossroads, no question, and we know who's waiting there.

As Roy approaches an archway outside the church, on horseback, we hear him say, "The midnight man. With his serpent tongue."

We know who has the serpent tongue in season 5. It's Gator. His character bio compares him to the snake in the Garden. His LOL tattoo has forked tongues on the Ls. He's got a "Don't tread on me" flag featuring a snake in his room. He stopped at the Gas 'n Go to "drain the snake." He left an empty Slim Jim wrapper in Donny Ireland's evidence box, that looked like a shed snakeskin. He said that Munch came up "snake eyes."

As Roy passes through the arched doorway, he starts to disappear, like a ghost. He says, "Old Baylor Maze cut his children to pieces and hung his wife with a curtain tie, and I WAS FIRST THROUGH THE DOOR."

We've seen Gator collide with two people and get a bit huffy about it while passing through a doorway: Josh Hunk at the diner and a customer leaving the Gas 'n Go.

Is it significant that Roy turns into a ghostly figure while we see him pass through a doorway and hear him talk about being first through the door?

"Determined never to revisit Corinth, Oedipus wandered to the city of Thebes. At a crossroads on the way he met Laius, attended by only a small retinue. When a dispute erupted over the right of way--in an early example of road rage--Oedipus struck and killed the king and all but one of his company."

#fargo #fargo fx #fargo season 5 #fargo spoilers #gator tillman #Roy Tillman #Oedipus

[bredforloyalty]

Hii would you like to share your favourite fics?? In any fandoms tbh i just trust your taste a lot 🫣

oh i am an animal i don't think i have good taste i have the taste of someone who's always horny and a teeeeny tiny bit fucked in the head jcsgbhy but i'm honored you asked and i'll share<33 you said you don't care if it's more smut or more plot so i didn't worry too much about that 👍

first off, a warning: most of these are explicit, involve incest, rape, child sexual abuse, and more!!! also most of them are on the shorter side + all are male slash! you'll be able to tell based on the pairing and the concept (i'll describe them a little) so just go by common sense and, idk. beware ahaha i'll go from some pairings to assorted and then the rick and morty ones will be under the read more (i feel like i can't leave them out because some of them genuinely made me insane and changed me as a person or allowed me catharsis like very very few fics before and even though it's repulsive to most others i can't deny that. there are big favorites in there. favorites of all time if i'm being fully honest). let's go..

gcest:

ghost dancer - by the lovely and talented rye @ supersonic1994!!!! noel overdoses on coke. i looove the image of kissing your brother when you think you're about to lose him forever,, does that make sense? love is love is love when one is desperate and if it's deep then it can transcend taboos and boundaries of self and all that shit. you know

things we never see - told through jill furmanovsky, their photographer, noel comes back (after they had almost broken up and he went to san fran without telling anyone). when it comes to them i do love an outsider pov. speaking of outsider pov,

you never notice you are blind - five times alan mcgee thinks he catches something between them and one time he definitely does. it is what it is

i don't really want to know - Nawt consensual, made me a bit sad hehe liam is not sick like him

some that are like, unhealthy jealousy possessiveness dubcon angst and so on: sins like scarlet, fishhook, what am i gonna dream now

samdean:

hungry til well fed - by the wonderful bug @ deanjohn (and mandymovie)!!! iconic cannibalism fic, just so them

brighter wound - wound blood pain codependency babeyyy

take the things you love - hathfrozen is iconic also.. i loved the heaven fic (you'll find it. if you want) but i want to share this because i like how conflicted sam is about their relationship and about the way dean treats him. smutty though

manhattan for beads - what i wrote down is this is the one where they try and it doesn't work and it's heartbreaking. so yeah candle_beck can be trusted w spn, iconic too

serpent round your heart - one of the first ones i read haha ^^

deanjohn:

where the evening splits in half - bug fic also!! all of bug's fics are great do check them out if you're interested in this pairing or dadson at all, seriously.. "Sam says, "I know how you felt about the man." No, he doesn’t. He doesn’t know that Dad was a pig. He has no idea how far down Dean was in the mud with him. How dirty they both were, how much Dad ruined him."

midnight midnight - first time, dean hooks up with men so john can take blackmail pics and he gets jealous and yeah, hooray

and you learn how to settle for what you get - sex again but they're fucked up so it's always fucked up. dean never asked for it

waltjesse:

like i'm underwater - by the amazing @ kuleaxoxo!! yayyy power imbalance!! "Mister White's showing him off, isn't he?"

monaco - jesse gifts walt the watch. dubcon

i'm asking you to - rape roleplay, ignored safeword

others:

countercontrol - terence fletcher/andrew neiman, "Andrew leaves; but he always comes back. He likes to think that it’s of his own accord. But then he thinks of those paintings of staircases with the optical illusion of the stairs going nowhere except winding into each other, going the same place again and again, and ultimately going nowhere."

beach fag - roman roy/jeryd mencken, "Roman wishes he was a kid with an adult boyfriend."

the serpent under it - aaron stampler/martin vail, look i fucking love primal fear this is post-canon they get together etc. important to me

simple pleasures - edward nygma/bruce wayne, this is a big favorite i can't leave it out because when this was um coming out i was fucking obsessed. it's long i don't even read long fics

there's a head in the refrigerator - michael afton/william afton, this one's sort of self-explanatory..... i felt we needed necrophilia representation here

rick and morty:

bitter and begging - FAVE.. after the jealousy and possessiveness in vindicators 3 (the episode with the avengers copies that morty is enamoured with. who rick slaughters when he's off his shit and then covertly confesses how much he loves morty basically). this one really got me i think i cried because it's all so sad but um. full of love

that's my boy - this is the first of a series, i like that it's the start of.. the sexual abuse and they're still uncertain like i enjoy the in-betweens and when lines are crossed

love is a solitary thing - this one i love so much, it's about morty's fantasies and unrequited feelings for rick

safe - gen, morty starts talking with another morty whose rick rescues mortys from abusive ricks. i always really liked how the multiverse is like a prism? you can explore the different facets of their relationship and the possibilities and the extremes through it, you can have your characters meet their worst and their best versions, i just think selves from different dimensions are a great tool. in storytelling. and eliciting emotions. anyway rovingotter is fucking solid here

hands - a favorite.. the atmosphere... "He wonders if he'll still be sitting here in ten years, handing Rick his screwdrivers, feeling that hot instinctive rush of pleasure at knowing what Rick is going to ask from him before he even asks: bred for it."

the shape you made me - morty's stream of consciousness. i usually don't give stuff like this a chance but when i tell you that this affected me. because fuck it did affect me

the damage has been done - um..... internal cardiac massage fic 🥴

repurposed - "Is it ethical to leave the horrors of the universe at a boy's fingertips?"

and last but NOT least there's this series that i haven't read in full, just a little bit broken, that fucking killed me. tbh! i sobbed at some parts legitimately. maybe that's just on me i don't know maybe it isn't. the first 5 are crazy. admittedly alcoholism runs in my family too (lol!) and their relationship is so tragic.... this fic is about when rick quite literally stole the kid's dreams, concocted an entire plan to erode morty's love of heists and make him stop writing his heist movie script (and having any aspirations or plans outside of rick). when i watched that episode these are exactly the emotions i wanted more of.. it's madness......

#thanks for the ask 💞 sorry it took me ages haha #i haven't reread some of these in a while (or at all..) so if i find out they're bad i'll apologize later HXDGCY #ask

[massimogilardi]

Jeune chasseur blessé par un serpent. 1827, Petitot Louis Messidor Lebon. Musée du Louvre - Paris France.

Sculpture commandée le 29 mars 1825 par le ministère de la Maison du Roi. Entré au Louvre en décembre 1827. Placé au musée du Luxembourg, le 28 mars 1829, et catalogué à cet emplacement de 1829 à 1858. Mentionné en 1870 dans l’inventaire du ministère d’État (escalier dit « du Ministre », vestibule). Transmis en 1991 par le ministère des Finances avec l'ensemble du mobilier décorant les appartements de l'ancien ministère d'État.

[astreiants-archive]

a sapphic lit primer 🌸

also known as, an opportunity to insist you read my favourites

if you’ve ever found yourself wanting to read more sapphic books, but not quite sure where to start, let this be the post for you! if you’re looking for even more sapphic books, i hope you find something in here too.

there are a few books on here i’ve not read, that i wanted to include to raise awareness of them, more than anything. those are marked by *. as such, you will probably also see a fair few more well known books and authors missed off (but i promise i know about them!).

this is not meant to be at all exhaustive! it’s a collection of sapphic books that i’ve read and would rec, meaning there are still tons more out there. & you can find some of those more at @sapphicreadsdb​, readsrainbow (which i co-run with @tenderpotter), sapphiclitbot on twitter & my list of every sapphic book i’ve read.

as ever, this was meant to be a relatively short post. haha.

(i promise i did put links on this post, but for some reason those aren’t working on the blog page. dashboard version seems fine, i think.)

🌼  middle grade

🌻  contemporary

hurricane child by kacen callender

in the role of brie hutchens... by nicole melleby

hazel hill is gonna win this one by maggie horne

candidly cline by kathryn ormsbee

how to become a planet by nicole melleby

proud of me by sarah hagger-holt

the science of being angry by nicole melleby

middletown by sarah moon

p.s. i miss you by jen petro-roy*

almost flying by jake maia arlow*

in the key of us by mariama j lockington*

kenzie kickstarts a team by kit rosewater & sophie escabasse*

⚔️  fantasy

the strangeworlds travel agency by ld lapinski

the tea dragon society by kay o’neill*

📜  historical

tell no tales by sam maggs & kendra wells*

⁉️  mystery/thriller

goldie vance by hope larson

pepper’s rules for secret sleuthing by briana mcdonald

drew leclair gets a clue by katryn bury*

🦇  paranormal/horror

artie and the wolf moon by olivia stephens

🧪  science fiction

our sister, again by sophie cameron

🌼  young adult

🌻  contemporary

we are okay by nina lacour

this is what it feels like by rebecca barrow

the gay girl’s guide to ruining prom by siera maley

the liar’s guide to the night sky by brianna r. shrum

i kissed shara wheeler by casey mcquiston

the flywheel by erin gough

amelia westlake by erin gough

how to make a wish by ashley herring blake

taking flight by siera maley

like water by rebecca podos

don’t date rosa santos by nina moreno

all the invisible things by orlagh collins

orpheus girl by brynne rebele-henry

the henna wars by adiba jaigirdar

you should see me in a crown by leah johnson

love and other natural disasters by misa sugiura

rise to the sun by leah johnson

epically earnest by molly horan

if you still recognise me by cynthia so

truth be told by sue divin

thieves by lucie bryon

ask the passengers by a. s. king

starting from here by lisa jenn bigelow

annie on my mind by nancy garden

laura dean keeps breaking up with me by mariko tamaki

the stars and the blackness between them by junauda petrus

the last true poets of the sea by julia drake

i kissed alice by anna birch

fiebre tropical by juliana delgado lopera

melt my heart by bethany rutter

laurel everywhere by erin moynihan

every body looking by candace iloh

something certain, maybe by sara barnard

⚔️  fantasy

a dark and hollow star by ashley shuttleworth

the scapegracers by h. a. clarke

girl, serpent, thorn by melissa bashardoust

down comes the night by allison saft

engelsfors by mats strandberg & sara b. elfgren

summer of salt by katrina leno

from dust, a flame by rebecca podos

spellbook of the lost and found by moïra fowley-doyle

girls made of snow and glass by melissa bashardoust

out of the blue by sophie cameron

witch, cat & cobb by j. k. pendragon

girls of paper and fire by natasha ngan

the afterward by e. k. johnston

the never tilting world by rin chupeco

the midnight lie by marie rutkoski

the dark tide by alicia jasinska

the midnight girls by alicia jasinska

sweet & bitter magic by adrienne tooley

wench by maxine kaplan

way of the argosi by sebastian de castell

ash by malinda lo

the raven and the reindeer by t. kingfisher

the last magician by lisa maxwell

shatter the sky by rebecca kim wells

we set the dark on fire by tehlor kay mejia

queen of coin and whispers by helen corcoran

ghost wood song by erica waters

these feathered flames by alexandra overy

the bone spindle by leslie vedder

into the crooked place by alexandra christo

edie in between by laura sibson

crier’s war by nina varela

the winter duke by claire bartlett

sofi and the bone song by adrienne tooley*

girls at the edge of the world by laura brooke robson*

dauntless by elisa a. bonnin*

📜  historical

dangerous remedy by kat dunn

forgive me if i’ve told you this before by karelia stetz-waters

the pearl thief by elizabeth wein

heavy vinyl by carly usdin & nina vakueva

valiant ladies by melissa grey*

a curse of roses by diana pinguicha*

⁉️  mystery/thriller

far from you by tess sharpe

the girls i’ve been by tess sharpe

people like us by dana mele

summer’s edge by dana mele

the truth about keeping secrets by savannah brown

i hope you’re listening by tom ryan

eight pieces of silva by patrice lawrence

bad things happen here by rebecca barrow

the things we don’t see by savannah brown

the hollow inside by brooke lauren davis

throwaway girls by andrea contos

you’re next by kylie schachte

a lesson in vengeance by victoria lee

the sullivan sisters by kathryn ormsbee

cold by mariko tamaki

the killing code by ellie marney*

rules for vanishing by kate alice marshall*

🦇  paranormal/horror

the dead and the dark by courtney gould

to break a covenant by alison ames

shallow graves by kali wallace

wilder girls by rory power

afterlove by tanya byrne

house of hollow by krystal sutherland

specter inspectors by bowen mccurdy

burn down, rise up by vincent tirado

hollow by shannon watters & branden boyer-white

missing, presumed dead by emma berquist

perfectly preventable deaths by deirdre sullivan*

the dark beneath the ice by amelinda bérubé*

ghost walk by kay solo*

🧪  science fiction

joyride by jackson lanzing & collin kelly

crownchasers by rebecca coffindaffer

the good luck girls by charlotte nicole davis

cosmoknights by hannah templer

jane, unlimited by kristin cashore*

🌼  adult

🌻  contemporary

summer of the cicadas by chelsea catherine

take a hint, dani brown by talia hibbert

in the event of love by courtney kae

night tide by anna burke

beautiful world, where are you by sally rooney

spell heaven and other stories by toni mirosevich

far from home by lorelie brown

once ghosted, twice shy by alyssa cole

spindrift by anna burke

cow girl by kirsty eyre

the split by laura kay

tell me everything by laura kay

everyone in this room will someday be dead by emily austin

transcendent kingdom by yaa gyasi

the fat lady sings by jacqueline roy

conversations with friends by sally rooney

flamingo by rachel elliott

the wrong end of the telescope by rabih alameddine

a map of home by randa jarrar

mostly dead things by kristen arnett

patsy by nicole dennis-benn

little fish by casey plett

undone by bryce oakley

satisfaction guaranteed by karelia stetz-waters

tack & jibe by lilah suzanne

all at sea by cheyenne blue

i kissed a girl by jennet alexander

january embers by hildred billings

the simple answer by lily seabrooke

under the rainbow by celia laskey

the world cannot give by tara isabella burton

la bastarda by trifonia melibea obono

the one hundred years of lenni and margot by marianne cronin

all are welcome by liz parker

the romance recipe by ruby barrett

disoriental by négar djavadi*

the thirty names of night by zeyn joukhadar*

bastard out of carolina by dorothy allison*

among other things, i’ve taken up smoking by aoibheann sweeney*

marriage of a thousand lies by s. j. sindu*

honey girl by morgan rogers*

too much lip by melissa lucashenko*

delilah green doesn’t care by ashley herring blake*

the secret lives of church ladies by deesha philyaw*

the barrens by kurt & ellie johnson*

28 questions by indyana schneider*

there are more things by yara rodrigues fowler*

⚔️  fantasy

the unbroken by c. l. clark

the jasmine throne by tasha suri

wild and wicked things by francesca may

the true queen by zen cho

isola by brenden fletcher

the impossible contract by k. a. doore

foundryside by robert jackson bennett

the traitor baru cormorant by seth dickinson

the empress of salt and fortune by nghi vo

the bone shard daughter by andrea stewart

blackheart knights by laure eve

the velocity of revolution by marshall ryan maresca

the gracekeepers by kirsty logan

in the vanishers’ palace by aliette de bodard

the priory of the orange tree by samantha shannon

thorn by anna burke

penhallow amid passing things by iona datt sharma

sing the four quarters by tanya huff

city of lies by sam hawke

moontangled by stephanie burgis

burning roses by s. l. huang

a master of djinn by p. djèlí clark

ashes of the sun by django wexler

fireheart tiger by aliette de bodard

bestiary by k-ming chang

the black coast by mike brooks

night flowers shirking from the light of the sun by li xing

the councillor by e. j. beaton

silverglass by j. f. rivkin

water horse by melissa scott

high times in the low parliament by kelly robson

into the broken lands by tanya huff

the fire opal mechanism by fran wilde

among thieves by m. j. kuhn

the factory witches of lowell by c. s. malerich

the forever sea by joshua phillip johnson

the final strife by saara el-arifi

brother red by adrian selby

the winged histories by sofia samatar

the vanished queen by lisbeth campbell*

the northern girl by elizabeth a. lynn*

the bladed faith by david dalglish*

the worthy by anna k. moss*

📜  historical

the wicked cometh by laura carlin

the pull of the stars by emma donoghue

she who became the sun by shelley parker-chan

infamous by lex croucher

devotion by hannah kent

under the udala trees by chinelo okparanta

after the wedding by courtney milan

heathen by natasha alterici

mrs martin’s incomparable adventure by courtney milan

the night watch by sarah waters

tell it to the bees by fiona shaw

kept animals by kate milliken

a lady’s desire by lily maxton

the ophelia girls by jane healey

that green eyed girl by julie owen moylan

the perks of loving a wallflower by erica ridley

the companion by e. e. ottoman

her countess to cherish by jane walsh

paris, 7a.m. by liza wieland*

mademoiselle revolution by zoe sivak*

dark earth by rebecca stott*

⁉️  mystery/thriller

dirt town by hayley scrivenor

the lighthouse by fran dorricott

after the eclipse by fran dorricott

the final child by fran dorricott

proper english by k. j. charles

the last place you look by kristen lepionka

the better liar by tanen jones

fortune favors the dead by stephen spotswood

real easy by marie rutkoski

the best bad things by katrina carrasco

the case of the good-for-nothing girlfriend by mabel maney

the kill club by wendy heard

bury the lede by gaby dunn

beloved poison by e. s. thomson

the lady upstairs by halley sutton

ash mountain by helen fitzgerald

last call at the nightingale by katharine schellman

return to blackwater house by vikki patis

payback by charlotte mills*

a reason to kill by eve zaremba*

the heard by andrea bartz*

snare by lilja sigurðardóttir*

amateur city by katherine v. forrest*

the savage kind by john copenhaver*

the dime by kathleen kent*

the verifiers by jane pek*

🦇  paranormal/horror

abbott by saladin ahmed

the animals at lockwood manor by jane healey

black water sister by zen cho

hearts in the hard ground by g. v. anderson

they drown our daughters by katrina monroe

meddling kids by edgar cantero

yellow jessamine by caitlin starling

our wives under the sea by julia armfield

briefly, a delicious life by nell stevens

dead woman’s pond by elle e. ire

tripping arcadia by kit mayquist*

🧪  science fiction

a memory called empire by arkady martine

this is how you lose the time war by max gladstone & amal el-mohtar

the unspoken name by a. k. larkwood

the space between worlds by micaiah johnson

dead space by kali wallace

the quantum thief by hannu rajaniemi

ninefox gambit by yoon ha lee

ancillary justice by ann leckie

motor crush by brenden fletcher & cameron stewart

unconquerable sun by kate elliott

compass rose by anna burke

a big ship at the end of the universe by alex white

the light brigade by kameron hurley

empress of forever by max gladstone

the doors of eden by adrian tchaikovsky

seven of infinities by aliette de bodard

hard reboot by django wexler

last exit by max gladstone

sisters of the vast black by lina rather

gods, monsters, and the lucky peach by kelly robson

so happy for you by celia laskey

battle of the linguist mages by scotto moore

bluebird by ciel pierlot

an ancient peace by tanya huff

god’s war by kameron hurley*

barbary station by r. e. stearns*

this will kill that by danielle l. roux*

valkyrie by meg ludwa*

night sky mine by melissa scott*

the stars undying by emery robin*

🌼  poetry

if not, winter by sappho, trans. by anne carson

floating, brilliant, gone by franny choi

evohe by cristina peri rossi

bestiary by donika kelly

soft science by franny choi

rummage by ife-chudeni a. oputa

the world keeps ending and the world goes on by franny choi

bone by yrsa daley-ward

dream work by mary oliver

living as a lesbian by cheryl clarke*

womanslaughter by pat parker*

oral tradition by jewelle l. gómez*

the black unicorn by audre lorde*

hermetic definition by h.d.*

#sapphic lit #wlw books #sapphic books #wlw lit #sapphiclitnet #book recs #recs: lgbt #.txt

[shivvroys]

a quiet apology (what are you worth if you don't make a sound?)

karolina-centric oneshot set during chapters 5 & 6 of beneath the underdog

read below or on ao3

i know I’ve lived as a quiet apology,

i’m sorry to you, and i’m sorry to me

Karolina wakes up with a pounding headache and a two-tonne weight pressing on her chest. As the gin from the previous night pours out of her, the shame fills her right back up. Treacherous fucking mouth.

It’s not the first time she’s done this. Not the first time she’s let it fester inside, the longing and the loneliness, and all that fucking hunger.

It starts the same, every time. A face, either the wrong one in the right place, or the right one in the wrong place, and Karolina’s eyes, like the hands of Eve reaching out towards the apple. Her father had always warned her about her eyes. About how they spoke too much, and would bring her nothing but trouble. About how a man’s greatest weapon is not what he has to show the world, but how well he can hide from it. Okno do duše, Karolina!

-

She ignores Shiv, which she has learnt is the sharpest sword she can wield against the other woman, and the wound that bleeds the hardest. She knows it’s wrong, and resigns in the face of the well of shame that settles at her core. She is a coward and a liar, and she knows she only has herself to blame. Shiv isn’t some pure, innocent soul, which makes Karolina feel even more disgusted with herself for hurting her. For extending her hand in the first place, only to reveal an empty palm, a ghost of a promise she never intended to keep. With serpent hands, eyes and mouth that grab at things that aren’t meant for her, Karolina knows she’s fucked. Damned if she does, and she always fucking does.

She responds to e-mails with punctuation marks that aim to sever, and keeps her personal phone on silent and on the far edge of her desk, face down at all times. She sews her ears shut and realizes too late that the screaming is coming from inside out.

She deletes Shiv’s texts before any replies start to form in her mind, and throws her phone under the covers to muffle its vibrations. Out of sight, out of mind.

Except Siobhan Roy, it turns out, is not someone her eyes can burn the sight of away, nor someone her mind can file away in some hidden corner to gather dust.

When her phone lights up at night, when she knows it’s past three am in Stockholm, she gives in to the plague of her skipping heartbeat, and lets the text burn brightly on her retinas.

“I wasn’t the one who made that fucking call.”  

And she’s right. It’s all Karolina’s fault—had been since that goddamn night on the balcony. With the weight of Logan gone, she’d felt like a cockroach suddenly bathed in light, scurrying to and fro without cover. So, she’d let her hands  wander, and grabbed at the one beside her like the pin of a grenade.  The blood is all on her hands.

“I’m sorry, but I think this is for the best. Please, respect that.”

With eyes closed, the phone ringing in her hands feels like a blast going off.

-

Suddenly, like a severed chord, the e-mails stop coming in. Her phone stops lighting up. She allows herself maybe one second of guilty relief, before her nerves turn into bleeding wounds. She learns from Shiv’s team that she’s stopped going into work. They don’t know who they should report to in her absence, so they flock to Karolina like orphaned puppies to a stray cat.

It’s fine, she tells herself, though she knows by now how bad of a liar she really is. That telling tall tales only works when you’re telling them to people who weren’t there to see the carnage. In the time she’s gotten to know Shiv she’s learnt what this means. How loud of a warning siren silence is when it comes to her. But still, Karolina tells herself everything is fine. That bad things don’t happen to people like Shiv—that her wealth is a shield that will protect her against herself, like it has done for her brothers time and time again. That it somehow makes what Karolina’s done inconsequential.

That, like Logan, Shiv can put a price on hurt and swipe her card without blinking.

-

Tom flies out to Sweden in the middle of the night, and Karolina has a panic attack in a dirty bathroom stall.

She grips her phone tightly and sends an okay to Gerri with trembling fingers. In front of her, she sees you’ve got this scribbled on the stall door, with an arrow pointing towards it that leads to a sharpied-in fuck off. She splashes her face with water and wonders just when her eyes had grown the same violet tendrils under them as her mother’s.

Does she have more years behind than in front? Has she made something of them?

She leaves the café without her to-go cup, not trusting her hands to keep it from spilling. She reaches out to a few trusted contacts in Sweden—just to make sure, she tells herself. To keep the company image clean, in case of anything. She doesn’t trust herself to fool Gerri, so she doesn’t ask her any questions about Tom’s impromptu trip. Still, she feels her chest burn under the other woman’s gaze during their scheduled meeting.

When she finally gets home, she drinks half a bottle of wine and sleeps with her phone shoved under the bed.

Tom comes back two days later with slumped shoulders and a short temper. For the first time since Logan’s passing, Karolina feels like a dog waiting for its owner to find some dried up puddle of piss behind the couch. Her unreliable mouth gets the better of her, and she finds herself asking Tom about Shiv, under the guise of pacifying the Swedish team’s anxiety. She hopes that his newfound status had kept Tom from mingling with the masses and reaching out to Shiv’s team himself, and her foundation is enough to cover the heat she feels spreading across her face.

“Right. Siobhan has taken a leave of absence, which might become permanent. So, um, I trust you will be able to offer them some guidance while we sort that out.”

“Oh. Alright.” she grips the pen she is holding and prays it doesn’t break in her hand.

“Yeah.” His eyes remain uncharacteristically empty, though she can see his neck straining under the rigid collar of his shirt. “It’s not a certainty yet, though, so…Just some unofficial forewarning.”

He offers her a tight smile that Karolina can’t scrub off of the back of her eyelids for the remainder of the day.

That night, she follows up with her contacts and comes up empty, which frightens her more than she can admit. She isn’t Shiv’s anything, but she thinks she might know her. And the Siobhan she knows is not an absence. Karolina can’t accept that. She stays up all night trying to find something, anything that will lead her to Shiv. Just to be sure. Really, she’s just being diligent—preparing for the next fire she’ll have to put out.

Her eyes keep darting to her phone, the link she’d severed because of her own cowardice. Because she’d clung so tightly to the cage she’d built around herself. The life she keeps telling herself she’s living, though she’s starting to realize this life has grown more as an idea than a dent in the world. That, for all the living she has done, Karolina might actually leave this world unaffected, the ground forced to carry her bones like dirt at the bottom of a handbag. A crumpled up receipt of a life.

She makes a list of reasons why she shouldn’t call. Mostly, she just reminds herself that she has no right to. She isn’t Shiv’s anything. Why should she be privy to her unraveling, when she’s the one who’d pulled at loose threads in the first place? What would she even say?

It’s only right to disappear when I’m the one who’s doing it. I’m worried about you, about the hurt I caused. I’ve never let myself hold things, I’m sorry I broke it.

Ultimately, she doesn’t call, resigning herself to her own misery. She had been too afraid to let Shiv in, so she figures it’s only fair to suffer being kept out.

She goes to work the next day with red-rimmed eyes and a tension headache, and avoids Gerri’s increasingly suspicious looks.

-

She needs to get out more. That’s the story she decides to go with, anyway. Idle hands are the devil’s workshop, so she figures burying them in someone, at least for the night, might keep them from breaking more things. A right face in the right place, and she’ll sort herself out, remind herself that small pleasures are all that her small flicker of a life needs anyway. That she wouldn’t even know what to do with something bigger than a spark, so why risk running straight into a blazing fire.

That’s how she finds herself in a bar, some gentrified hole-in-the-wall with good enough alcohol and lighting just dark enough to let her hands wander towards the first warm body she can find.

And they do, those wretched things.

She introduces herself as Caroline, and learns that Laura, besides having terribly inviting lips and a mesmerizing head of dark, luscious hair, owns a luxury beauty salon. Or is about to open one. Or she’d just gotten back from getting her hair done. Something or the other. It doesn’t matter, though, because Karolina is happy to nod and let her head fill up with static as long as she gets to watch Laura’s mouth move and her cleavage rise and fall with every breath.

Something shifts, though, and she realizes Laura also has an awful interest in getting to know her, which means Karolina has to start taking longer sips to fill the spaces between the careful omissions she is twisting into stories for the other woman. 

“What’s your favorite color?” Laura asks after a while, eyes sparkling in Karolina’s gin-induced haze.

Karolina feels a knot tightening in her chest, and downs the rest of her drink, signaling the bartender for another. The lamest question you could’ve fucking asked.

Her answer is a clipped black, and the other woman sighs in disappointment. They trade similarly lackluster answers until Karolina feels herself start to grow annoyed. Here she is, with a beautiful woman who wants her, wants to listen to what she has to say and store that information away like it’s meaningful, like what they are doing could ever exist outside of a bar or a bedroom, and all Karolina can feel is annoyed. Like she can’t quite remember if she’d left the curling iron on. Like the fact that she is sitting at a bar with a beautiful woman is not what she is here for, but what’s keeping her from something.

She’d already ruined one thing by drinking too much, so she decides another drink is just what she needs to keep this from becoming a thing in the first place. The more she drinks, the more her hands wander, and before long she’s got her tongue down the woman’s throat and her clumsy fingers gripping at her thigh. Laura doesn’t seem to mind, resigning her dream of romance for this dirty dalliance across a beer soaked bar-top.

They’re just shy of classifying as an act of public indecency when Karolina spots them across the bar.

Roman.

He doesn’t notice her, too engrossed in conversation with the leggy blonde he’d come in with. Tabitha? A millionaire heiress with model friends, a penchant for champagne and a relatively low profile. Out of every woman Roman had paraded in front of his father, Tabitha had been the only one Karolina hadn’t needed to keep a bookmark on her computer about, so she’s almost relieved when she sees they’ve kept in touch.

She withdraws her hands from Laura’s leg as if burnt, and excuses herself to the bathroom. Once there, she stares at her reflection in the mirror and tries to count the drinks she’s had. She can’t decide between four or five, until she looks down at her hands and feels all the blood rush to her face. So, one too many.

As she makes to leave the bathroom she almost gets run over by a pair of slender legs and a mass of blonde curls. Tabitha. She smells like lily of the valley, and laughs lightly as they almost crash into each other.

“Sorry.” Karolina catches the woman squint in vague recognition, but she doesn’t give her the chance to say anything before bolting out of the bathroom.

To her misfortune, Roman is right outside.

“Oh, shit, hi, Karolina!” he shakes his head.

Karolina blinks, trying to keep herself from hurling all over Roman’s pointy shoes.

“Roman, hi.” she manages to say, though it comes out all strangled.

“What, uh—fuck, how are you, I guess?” he shrugs.

She had been perfectly content to keep the sum of her interactions with the Roy’s youngest son within the single digits.

“Good. Um—I’m okay. You?” she says, swallowing harshly to keep the gin from crawling its way back out.

“Oh, great. Lost the family business I was taught practically since birth to fight over, but nothing much besides that.” he smiles wickedly. Right.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—” she tries.

“Nah, fuck it! It’s fine. I’ve actually never been better.” Besides the too-closely-shaven fade, Karolina could actually be inclined to believe him. “How’re things over at fuck factory, anyway?”

“Good.” Karolina gulps. “Great.”

She thanks God for Roman’s inability to keep an interest for long, because he takes in her answers with feigned acknowledgment, his eyes looking glazed-over already.

Karolina’s spared from having to come up with a more detailed answer by Roman’s date returning. The woman looks down at Karolina, wearing the same shark-like smile she’s used to seeing on Roman. If she didn’t know better, she would find their relationship balanced against their similarities at least vaguely creepy.

“Oh, hey, roadrunner.” Tabitha grins.

“Hi.” she blinks. “Sorry, I have to go. It was nice seeing you.”

She doesn’t wait for an answer before turning around and all but running back to the bar, though she does catch the faint echo of Tabitha’s laughter.  

-

“Hey, you still with me?” she blinks to find Laura smiling at her, a trace of concern etched on her features.

“Yeah, sorry.” she clears her throat. “Just a bit tired.”

From their position at the bar, Karolina can’t see any trace of Roman or Tabitha, but the moment they’d walked in her night had turned sour.

Again, she finds herself with an incredibly beautiful woman, soft and pliant under her wavering hands, and all she can think about is how terribly inconvenienced she feels. How relieved she’d feel if Laura suddenly decided Karolina wasn’t worth the tight skirt and middle-shelf alcohol. She tries and fails to keep some semblance of a conversation going. She decides to save herself further embarrassment and just take the other woman to bed, but then some errant memory of a messy living room or a dirty kitchen island opens itself up to her like a great escape. The more she wrestles with herself, the more morose of a companion she becomes—though, to her benefit, Laura remains just as sweet and charming. The realization that this woman is not only gorgeous, but might also turn out to be a kind human being turns Karolina’s stomach, twisting something deep and ugly within herself.

She looks down at her phone, checking the time. Without meaning to, she corrects the time to Sweden’s. The pit at the bottom of her stomach threatens to swallow her whole. She lifts her gaze up to Laura’s face, her rosy cheeks and soft lips. What a terrible waste.

“I have to use the restroom.” she doesn’t even realize what she’s doing until she’s pushing through the now crowded bar, planting herself in front of Roman’s table. “Can we talk?”

Their table is right next to the crowded dance floor, so all she gets in response from the table are two sets of furrowed brows. The lights are dark and her head feels like it’s been stuffed full of cotton, so she isn’t sure how she manages it, but a minute later she is dragging Roman out to the dirty alley behind the club. Behind her, Roman is exchanging bewildered shrugs with Tabitha, who’d somehow also trailed along.

Karolina only hears fractures of their whispered conversation.

“Okay, I am not getting into a threesome with the lady who made my pee-pee disappear from the internet.”

She catches Tabitha wiggling her eyebrows at him suggestively. “Mind if I get into a twosome, then?”

“Can I watch?” he fires back. Tabitha nods solemnly.

“Sorry to drag you out here.” Karolina clears her throat, effectively ending their exchange before she lets her stomach express her opinion on the matter.

“Oh, no, I like what they’ve done with this area. The pungent smell of piss really ties the place together.” Roman fires back, gesturing to the sketchy alleyway.

“I was just wondering—have you heard from Shiv, lately? She’s taken a leave of absence.” she tries to maintain eye-contact, despite the horrible dread rising inside of her.

“Oh! Uh huh, yeah, sure. We’ve, um—we’ve spoken.”

Roman’s facial expressions betray only his bewilderment at being asked about his sister by Karolina, of all people.

“Oh, good! Good, that’s—great. Is she—how is she?” out of the corner of her eye, she sees Tabitha watching her intently. Under her gaze, Karolina feels herself shrink down to the gravel on the ground.

“You know, she’s, um, yeah she’s good. Good as ever!” he nods, as if satisfied with the version he’s decided on.

Despite the alcohol, Karolina’s mind sets off like a firework, accustomed to what good means in their language. Sensing her alarm, Roman starts shifting on his feet, before raising a pointed eyebrow in Karolina’s direction.

“What’s it to `ya, anyway? Pretty sure if you propped a mop up in her chair it would get the same amount of work done.”

What is it to her?

“I just…” she trails off. What right does she have to know, when she isn’t Shiv’s anything? When she’d made an absence of herself in the first place. Karolina shakes her head, the weight of the night bearing its full force down on her. She should go home.

Before she can come up with an excuse to drop the entire conversation altogether, Tabitha speaks up. “She’s not okay.” 

“What?!” she blurts out, at the same time as Roman shrieks “Tabs—the fuck?”

“She’s worried about her, Rome.” she says softly, tilting her head in Karolina’s direction. Again, Karolina feels herself shrink under the other woman’s knowing stare. She feels like she’s wearing her skin inside out.

“Yeah, I don’t think dad programmed them to do that.”

“Rome.”

“Fine—fuck it.” he turns to Karolina. “You’re probably gonna have to deal with all of that so, uh, it might be lights out on the…” he points to his stomach.

Karolina feels something collapse within herself. Something like panic, or low blood sugar, or the weight of everything she’s broken washes over her. She needs to sit down.

She finds a tall curb and unceremoniously drops herself down on it, the trim of her trousers soaking up the mud beneath her shoes. She feels her blood rush to her ears, and a knot tighten around her chest. She thinks Roman and Tabitha might be talking to her, but she covers her face with her hands, trying to get her breathing under control.

Every step of the fucking way, she’d promised, before grabbing the first exit out.

“But she’s alone.” she blurts out, failing to keep her voice from shaking.

Tabitha looks like she might understand, which makes Karolina even sicker to her stomach. No one says anything, letting that truth linger in the air like poisonous gas.

“Does she even know any doctors in Stockholm!?”

She doesn’t have a mirror to lash out at, so she spills her anger out onto Roman. Her hands are shaking, and she’s starting to feel the soaked up muddy water on the back of her ankles. In front of her, she sees a cockroach frozen on the ground, as if terrorized by its newfound company. She resists the urge to stomp it out.

“Relax, I’m pretty sure she’s not gonna pull out the old coat hanger.” Roman says. “They got abortion clinics in Sweden, right Tabs?”

“Yeah, they do. The medical care system is kind of the best, actually.” her voice is carefully light, as if Karolina’s got a detonator strapped to her chest.

She should have never done this. She should have taken that woman home and kept her thick head in the sand. When she’d told Shiv she’d gotten a piece of herself back, she hadn’t known she was emptying the other woman out. That the little inconsequential escape they’d been building had outgrown its carved out hole in the world, had spilled into their lives and swallowed everything up like a great wave. That she’d left Shiv to drown in it. 

The door opens loudly, all three of them turning harshly towards the intruder.

Laura.

“Oh, hi, excuse me, who the fuck are you?” Roman sticks a thumb out towards the woman.

Laura takes a step forward, leaning down slightly to Karolina’s huddled form.

“Caroline?” Roman mouths the name at Tabitha, frowning. “Are you okay, do you know these guys?” she sweeps her eyes cautiously over them both.

“Yeah, I’m her smack dealer.” Roman says, before pointing towards Tabitha. “This is my hired muscle.”

The woman fixes him with a weary gaze, taking another step towards Karolina. The less distance between them, the more the knot in Karolina’s chest tightens. She feels everyone’s gaze burn every inch of her skin.

“Laura, sorry—I think you should go.” she tries keep her voice steady.

Laura takes another step towards her. A shiver runs down Karolina’s spine, sending her nerves on edge.

“What? But I thought—“

She cuts Laura off.

“Look, can you just—fuck off, please?”

For the first time that night, she sees the woman’s face shift to an expression she feels worthy of. Anger mixed with disgust. Karolina welcomes it like soft silk between her fingers.

“Yeah, sure, no problem. Don’t fucking call me!”

With that, the other woman is gone, her heels echoing like a judge’s gavel in Karolina’s ears.

Tabitha is the first to turn her attention away from the now closed door. “She seems nice.”  

As if reminding herself of their little meeting’s order of business, she shakes herself lightly, before patting Roman’s forearm.

“What?!” he shrugs, his arms planted firmly on his hips. Together, they look like a pair of exasperated parents dealing with a sullen child.

Karolina tunes them out, still trying to wrap her mind around Roman’s earlier revelation. She closes her eyes and can only see Shiv, small and alone in a hospital bed, skin made translucent by the harsh glare of neon lights. Her husband a shadow on the other side of the ocean, and the last text from Karolina a brazen declaration of what was for the best.

Whole lot of good that best had done for the both of them. 

Roman and Tabitha’s evolving argument pulls her out of her thoughts.

“Okay, may I be excused from this thrilling showing of The Vagina Monologues?”

Karolina can hear Shiv’s voice in her head, making some remark about Roman being scared of vaginas. She shrugs it away like a tremor. She watches Roman pull out his phone, at Tabitha’s excitement. Her brain’s still soaking up all the gin she’s consumed, so Karolina doesn’t realize what he’s doing until he starts speaking into the phone.

“Oh, hi sis! What are you doing up?”

Karolina sits up suddenly, almost stumbling over herself. She clenches her jaw, shaking her head at Roman. She can’t hear what Shiv’s actually saying, only the soft sound of her voice.

 “Okay, crabby. I was just, uh, out with Tabs— she says hi, by the way.”

Roman extends the phone above his ear, allowing Tabitha to get closer to it.

“Hi, Shiv!” she yells out, before Roman returns the phone to his ear.

“Anyway, we were just out at this bar, and you’ll never guess who we just bumped into.” he locks eyes with Karolina, wiggling his eyebrows.

Karolina continues shaking her head, trying to get Roman’s attention.

“Ew, I said we were at a bar, Shiv, not a daycare.” Roman continues, slapping away Karolina’s protest.

“Roman, don’t.” she tries to keep her voice down so Shiv won’t hear her, a coward till the end.

She catches glimpses of Shiv voice. She sounds tired.

“No, I actually already told Tabs that would be weird. And turns out, she’s already got one Roy kid’s nipples in a twist.” he winks in Karolina’s direction. “Here, bitch, she wants to talk to you.”

Before she has a chance to protest, Karolina finds herself holding Roman’s phone, a picture of Shiv glaring up at her. With shaky hands, she puts the phone to her ear. 

“Shiv?”

She hears the other woman exhale roughly.

“What the fuck do you want?”

Karolina bites her lip, taking a few steps away from Roman and Tabitha, trying to find some kind of privacy within the miles of static separating them.

“Roman told me, about…” she finally says, almost whispering.

“Oh.” she hears Shiv scoff lowly.

“I just wanted to see if you were—” she begins to say, before being interrupted by Shiv’s sharp tone.

“You wanted to check up on me?” she almost laughs. “Yeah, I could tell how worried you’ve been about me. So worried you couldn’t pick up the fucking phone.”

She can picture Shiv’s furrowed brow, thumb pressed harshly between her teeth. She doesn’t turn around, but she can feel Roman and Tabitha’s eyes burning holes in the back of her head.

“I’m sorry.”

Her voice starts shaking again.

“Uh, huh. Well, I’m fine.” Shiv interrupts bluntly.

What right does Karolina have to contest that? How could she tell Shiv she doesn’t believe her, when she’d lied and hid like a coward? Like a broken fucking clock, only able to tell the truth when she’s drunk in dirty alleyways.

What could she say to Shiv that would prove more than her absence?

“Okay.” Karolina sighs. “Could we talk? Maybe I could call you tomorrow and—.” she tries.

She hears Shiv take a sharp inhale.

“Could we talk? I don’t know, Karolina, are you going to sober up and pretend I don’t exist again?”

Karolina fixes her gaze on the ground, wrapping an arm around herself. By her foot, she sees another cockroach frozen in place, as if begging to her for mercy like a God. She scuffs her shoe next to it, sending the creature scurrying away.

“Yeah, I deserve that.” she relents.

She thinks she may deserve worse, and she knows Shiv is capable of giving her just that, but she doesn’t want to put her in that position. Mostly, she just wants to see Shiv, to see her real and burning with life and not as a ghost haunting the corners of her mind.

“No, like is it a kink or something?” she hears Shiv swallow harshly. “Do you pretend or do you actually get drunk when you make these calls? Do you roofie yourself and let random girls fingerbang you in the bathroom?”

Karolina lets the shame fill her up, takes all of Shiv’s anger and makes a home of it, if only to feel held by the other woman.

“Shiv, stop.”

For all of her million dollar paycheck, she finds herself running out of words. She’s never really been good at it anyway—not when it comes to telling the truth. Not when it comes to Shiv. They’ve mostly spoken through touch, her careless hands claiming what she’d never allow herself to say she wants. Her eyes breaking their sacred duty of hiding her desire from the world. How can she apologize to Shiv when she can’t see her, can only grasp at static?

“Fuck you, Karolina. Don’t fucking call me.”

The call disconnects and Karolina remains frozen in place, begging some merciful God to crush her into the gravel.

She turns to find Roman and Tabitha watching her, a mix of pity and amusement lighting up their features under the dim streetlights.

“Sounds like you guys sorted everything out.” Roman gives her a thumbs up, receiving a sharp elbow in his side from Tabitha.

Karolina doesn’t respond, can’t find any words to explain, hide or defend what they’d witnessed—what she’s just let spill onto the cold damp street. She just hopes it’ll all get washed down the drain by the rain. She’s gotten so good at hiding things for others, it only makes sense she’d forgotten how to hide herself—always found it easier to be a shield than something that needs protection.

Her jester-gods, in a divine act of kindness, don’t ask her any questions, calling a car and letting her scurry back to her dark apartment with a simple wave. Once home, she goes to bed feeling like a prisoner on death row who’d finally received his final date—in a fever hold of dread and relief.   

-

“Got any plans for New Year’s?”

Karolina drags her attention back to Gerri. She’s been doing it a lot lately, letting her thoughts slip away from herself—sloppily so. She knows Gerri’s grown increasingly suspicious of her near-constant state of distraction.

“No. Honestly, I’ve barely kept track of the calendar.” she sighs, hoping it registers as their usual brand of exhaustion. “I didn’t even realize when Christmas passed.”

Gerri quirks her head to the side, features painted with a lingering curiosity that she doesn’t seem sure she wants to engage.

“I guess the sweatshop’s kept us pretty busy.” she finally says, though she still looks as if she’s drafting approach strategies.

They lapse into silence, which only drives Karolina’s mind further away from herself. She looks out of the tall office windows, at the angry clouds painting the horizon almost apocalyptic. She can’t remember the last New Year’s she’d celebrated properly, before she stopped looking forward at time. She’d been keeping her back turned to the future for so long, she can’t even remember. Maybe when the world was still an open map, and her job was just something she could shake off of her shoulders at the end of each day, in a dingy bar with cheap beer and a stereo stuck on one-hit-wonders.

“Do you think this is it, for us?” she doesn’t realize she’d even spoken out loud until she blinks herself awake from her daydream, and turns to find Gerri looking at her oddly.

“What?” the other woman shakes her head.

“Sorry, I was just thinking out loud.” she swallows a nervous breath.

She doesn’t know how she’s become so hell-bent on destroying her reputation with every person around her, but she finds herself unable to stop. The feeling of taking a step forward and feeling the ground behind crumble under her foot gives her a dangerous sort of thrill—like she’s twenty again, and crowding bathroom stalls with friends for whatever they could find to dull the edges of the world. Like death was just a cautionary tale, and life was whatever her fingers could reach. 

She looks at Gerri, wondering if she feels the same. If she’d spent her life like it was a newly bought couch, wrapped in plastic, never letting herself sink into it properly. Waiting for some right moment to feel worthy of letting that life wrap around her.

But Gerri has daughters that she speaks fondly of, and a husband that she’s loved and lost and now gracefully holds the memory of, which looks a terrible lot like living.

All Karolina has is a cold apartment and a heartache an ocean away. She looks down at her fidgeting hands—numb now, without something to rip apart. She clears her throat, grasping the loose thread of her previous question.

“Well, do you think, in terms of our careers, and barring—you know, becoming a dictator or something, is there…more?” she sees Gerri’s face light up with concern, and realizes she must sound vaguely suicidal. “How do you know you’ve finally conquered the mountain?” She finally settles on a less desperate version of her existential problem. Ironic, to experience existential dread when one barely has any existence to show for all her dread.

The version she settles on doesn’t seem to dissuade Gerri from looking worried.

“Well, do you like the view?” she says, voice carefully controlled. “If you don’t, then you haven’t climbed high enough.”

It sounds easy when Gerri talks about it, though awfully lonely. Karolina decides to press harder on the bruise blossoming on her heart.

“What if you’re climbing the wrong mountain?” she can’t raise her voice above a quiet murmur, afraid of the walls trapping her thoughts like cigarette smoke.

“A mountain is a mountain, Karolina.” Gerri concludes.

And with that, Karolina knows the conversation has ended and been tossed into the shredder, already forgotten.

One of the most important lessons she’s learnt from Gerri is how valuable a short memory can be in a place like Waystar. How easy it can be to teach herself how to forget, at least until she starts smelling the smoke in the walls.

-

There’s a box in the back of Karolina’s closet that houses everything she’s gathered from back there. The life she could have had housed between thin cardboard walls. Black and white pictures crumbling at the edges, of people she’s never known but grew up feeling close to.

Her parents had never forced religion on her, and she figures this is why. That her small hands could never wrap around some far-away God. But these things—pictures, tiny porcelain figures, worn out cassette tapes that spark to crackling life in tongues she’s only ever grasped at, this she could hold to be holier than any ancient proverb. That, even as a child, she could feel the weight of the scale they’d put her life on, the weight of what they’d traded. All of back there, the familiar roads and wild bloom of life enduring despite the violence surrounding it. All of that, for Karolina’s here.

And what has she done with it?

Kept it all in an even smaller box. Shrunk herself down to a matchbox of a life. Spent the years that stretch further back than ahead building everybody else’s box. Let others live here and now for some imagined promise of making time for herself too—someday.

She thinks about the past year, and sees it sketched out on a monitor like a flat-line, more power wasted in keeping it turned on than the life it’s meant to be showing. Then, just at the tail end of it, she sees it—a small spike, the faintest trace of a pulse, a tiny hill of pixels come to life.

That night, she tries to sleep and can’t help but think of mountains. Of the sights they promise and the biting cold they offer. Of how dreadfully lonely and small a person can feel once they’ve reached the top, and how the greatest mountains can only be climbed by stepping over bodies like landmarks.

The more Karolina contemplates the mountain she’s been climbing, the more she feels the urge to look down. There, at the foot of the mountain, she sees a hill, with flush green grass and a bright patch of light shining down on it.

A mountain is a mountain.

In quiet desperation, she briefly weighs the risk of calling her mother. She wants to know what it took. What gave them the strength to give up everything for one shaky promise—a faint silhouette of a hill on the horizon. And if she thinks there might be some of that strength in Karolina, too. If her eyes carry more than a loud hunger, her hands more than a weak grip. If she can gather more than shadows under eyes to put in a box at the end of it all. More than a crumpled up receipt.

She picks up her phone, but she doesn’t call. Instead, she lets the drumming noise of her heart echo in her ears like a siren call, and follows it into a cab.

-

The man checking her passport asks her if she’s there on holiday. She flashes him a polite smile, grip tightening on the handle of her carry-on. Something like that.

The car ride is shorter than she’d anticipated, and they’re almost there when Karolina starts to wonder whether Roman had even given her the right address, or she’s about to end up at some brothel on the wrong side of the tracks.

Whatever side of the tracks she ends up on, she steps out of the car and looks up at the tall building in front of her. All she’d gotten from Roman was a street name and a building number, and she starts to feel the adrenaline slowly rush out of her, making room for the familiar grip of anxiety.

As she takes a few reluctant steps towards the building, she sees a flash of red out of the corner of her eye. She feels her lungs expand like a vacuum sealed bag sliced open, taking in air as if she’d been held underwater until now.

Karolina watches her for a second, hair a bit longer, clothes wrinkled and loose, but still the Shiv she remembers—still burning bright, with cold-bitten cheeks and a secretive smile.

Not an absence, but an abundance of life. A clear path bathed in light.   

Karolina takes a step forward.

“Shiv?”

#my fics #shivlina #succession #siobhan roy #shiv roy #karolina novotney #i fucking FORGOT i set chapter five around christmas #so i had to speedrun their angst so i can somehow do something involving new years #fun fact i only did that bc i wanted to compare tom to jesus #dag_holding_gun.jpeg #shiv x karolina

[evilhorse]

And stretches herself like a cat…or else a serpent.

#the savage sword of conan #Conan #conan the barbarian #salome #cat #serpent #sexy #lounging #sword and sorcery #fantasy comics #black and white comics #roy thomas #john buscema #marvel comics #dark horse comics #comics #70s comics #bronze age comics #dat rack

[savage-kult-of-gorthaur]

MARVEL MONSTROSITIES OF THE THURIAN AGE -- IN THEIR FIRST FEARSOME APPEARANCE!

PIC(S) INFO: Spotlight on Marvel house advertisement for "KULL the Conqueror" Vol. 1 #2. September, 1972 [featuring the first appearance of the Serpent-Men of Valusia]. Marvel Comics.

PIC #2: Cover art to "KULL" Vol. 1 #2. Artwork by comic-book artist siblings, Marie & John Severin & Sam Rosen.

Sources: www.tasteecatcomics.com/k-letter-comics/kull-the-conqueror-2-k69.html & Diversions of the Groovy Kind (blogspot).

#KULL #KULL Vol. 1 #Robert E. Howard #Marvel Comics #Thurian Age #Thurian #KULL the Conqueror #Sword and Sorcery #Bronze Age of Comics #Marvel Universe #Sword & Sorcery #Marvel #70s Marvel #Serpent Men #Serpent-Men #Valusia #KULL the Conqueror Vol. 1 #Roy Thomas #Kull #Cover Art #1972 #Super Seventies #Serpent-Men of Valusia #Sam Rosen #Marie Severin #John Severin #REH #American Style #Marvel House Ads #Dark Fantasy

[talonabraxas]

Anantasayan (Vishnu Reclining on Serpent Ananta) by Sagr Verma Anantasayan (Vishnu Reclining on Serpent Ananta)c. 1890Shri Gobinda Chandra Roy

[twistedtummies2]

How would Rook call your Twst Ocs in his own way?

Oooooh, that's a toughy. Let me see...

Nakoda = Monsieur Serpent. This one is obvious. XD Billy = Monsieur Géant. This can be taken as him just calling Billy by his natural last name, or referring to him as "Mr. Giant," because Géant literally means "giant" in French. Either way, it's fitting.

Elias = Monsieur Encre. "Encre" is "Ink" in French.

Reno = Monsieur Joueur. "Joueur" is "gambler" in French.

James = Roi des Pirates. One of only two OCs of mine that Rook refers to as "Roi;" he typically saves that title specifically for Housewardens, but I decided to cheat in two cases, James being one of them. This means "King of Pirates" or "Pirate King."

Smitty = Monsieur Lunettes. "Lunettes" means "glasses." In the original book for "Peter Pan," Barrie makes a point of Smee's glasses, at one point saying he has a habit of cleaning his spectacles after killing people. (Yeah, for the record, at least in the book version? DO NOT PISS OFF SMEE.) Of course, both Smitty and the Disney Smee he is based on (who thankfully barely seems capable of swatting a fly, let alone murdering anybody) also wear glasses.

Maelstrom = Monsieur Tourbillon. "Tourbillon" literally means "whirlpool" - or "maelstrom" - in French.

Theodore = Monsieur Corbeau. "Corbeau" means "raven" in French. This is in reference to Theodore's arguably somewhat birdlike traits: his sharp features, his love of flying, his dark clothes, and even the raven feather in his hat. It's also a sort of sideways reference to how the Wicked Witch of the West, in the original Oz book, sent a flock of blackbirds to attack the heroes at one point.

Grit = Roi de Pierre. Like I said, Rook typically saves the "Roi" title for Housewardens in the game, but since Grit is actually based on the Nome King, I felt he deserved an equally kingly title. The full nickname means "King of Stone."

#ask #answer #q&a #disney #twisted wonderland #oc ask #ocs #nako #nakoda #nakoda spivak #billy #billy geant #eli #elias #elias inque #reno #reno rovar #james #james killian #smitty #smitty mccarthy #maelstrom #maelstrom baleno #theo #theodore #theodore hamilton #grit #grit gravelle #non-oc #rook