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qqueenofhades · 3 years

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The Green Knight and Medieval Metatextuality: An Essay

Right, so. Finally watched it last night, and I’ve been thinking about it literally ever since, except for the part where I was asleep. As I said to fellow medievalist and admirer of Dev Patel @oldshrewsburyian, it’s possibly the most fascinating piece of medieval-inspired media that I’ve seen in ages, and how refreshing to have something in this genre that actually rewards critical thought and deep analysis, rather than me just fulminating fruitlessly about how popular media thinks that slapping blood, filth, and misogyny onto some swords and castles is “historically accurate.” I read a review of TGK somewhere that described it as the anti-Game of Thrones, and I’m inclined to think that’s accurate. I didn’t agree with all of the film’s tonal, thematic, or interpretative choices, but I found them consistently stylish, compelling, and subversive in ways both small and large, and I’m gonna have to write about it or I’ll go crazy. So. Brace yourselves.

(Note: My PhD is in medieval history, not medieval literature, and I haven’t worked on SGGK specifically, but I am familiar with it, its general cultural context, and the historical influences, images, and debates that both the poem and the film referenced and drew upon, so that’s where this meta is coming from.)

First, obviously, while the film is not a straight-up text-to-screen version of the poem (though it is by and large relatively faithful), it is a multi-layered meta-text that comments on the original Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the archetypes of chivalric literature as a whole, modern expectations for medieval films, the hero’s journey, the requirements of being an “honorable knight,” and the nature of death, fate, magic, and religion, just to name a few. Given that the Arthurian legendarium, otherwise known as the Matter of Britain, was written and rewritten over several centuries by countless authors, drawing on and changing and hybridizing interpretations that sometimes challenged or outright contradicted earlier versions, it makes sense for the film to chart its own path and make its own adaptational decisions as part of this multivalent, multivocal literary canon. Sir Gawain himself is a canonically and textually inconsistent figure; in the movie, the characters merrily pronounce his name in several different ways, most notably as Sean Harris/King Arthur’s somewhat inexplicable “Garr-win.” He might be a man without a consistent identity, but that’s pointed out within the film itself. What has he done to define himself, aside from being the king’s nephew? Is his quixotic quest for the Green Knight actually going to resolve the question of his identity and his honor – and if so, is it even going to matter, given that successful completion of the “game” seemingly equates with death?

Likewise, as the anti-Game of Thrones, the film is deliberately and sometimes maddeningly non-commercial. For an adaptation coming from a studio known primarily for horror, it almost completely eschews the cliché that gory bloodshed equals authentic medievalism; the only graphic scene is the Green Knight’s original beheading. The violence is only hinted at, subtextual, suspenseful; it is kept out of sight, around the corner, never entirely played out or resolved. In other words, if anyone came in thinking that they were going to watch Dev Patel luridly swashbuckle his way through some CGI monsters like bad Beowulf adaptations of yore, they were swiftly disappointed. In fact, he seems to spend most of his time being wet, sad, and failing to meet the moment at hand (with a few important exceptions).

The film unhurriedly evokes a medieval setting that is both surreal and defiantly non-historical. We travel (in roughly chronological order) from Anglo-Saxon huts to Romanesque halls to high-Gothic cathedrals to Tudor villages and half-timbered houses, culminating in the eerie neo-Renaissance splendor of the Lord and Lady’s hall, before returning to the ancient trees of the Green Chapel and its immortal occupant: everything that has come before has now returned to dust. We have been removed even from imagined time and place and into a moment where it ceases to function altogether. We move forward, backward, and sideways, as Gawain experiences past, present, and future in unison. He is dislocated from his own sense of himself, just as we, the viewers, are dislocated from our sense of what is the “true” reality or filmic narrative; what we think is real turns out not to be the case at all. If, of course, such a thing even exists at all.

This visual evocation of the entire medieval era also creates a setting that, unlike GOT, takes pride in rejecting absolutely all political context or Machiavellian maneuvering. The film acknowledges its own cultural ubiquity and the question of whether we really need yet another King Arthur adaptation: none of the characters aside from Gawain himself are credited by name. We all know it’s Arthur, but he’s listed only as “king.” We know the spooky druid-like old man with the white beard is Merlin, but it’s never required to spell it out. The film gestures at our pre-existing understanding; it relies on us to fill in the gaps, cuing us to collaboratively produce the story with it, positioning us as listeners as if we were gathered to hear the original poem. Just like fanfiction, it knows that it doesn’t need to waste time introducing every single character or filling in ultimately unnecessary background knowledge, when the audience can be relied upon to bring their own.

As for that, the film explicitly frames itself as a “filmed adaptation of the chivalric romance” in its opening credits, and continues to play with textual referents and cues throughout: telling us where we are, what’s happening, or what’s coming next, rather like the rubrics or headings within a medieval manuscript. As noted, its historical/architectural references span the entire medieval European world, as does its costume design. I was particularly struck by the fact that Arthur and Guinevere’s crowns resemble those from illuminated monastic manuscripts or Eastern Orthodox iconography: they are both crown and halo, they confer an air of both secular kingship and religious sanctity. The question in the film’s imagined epilogue thus becomes one familiar to Shakespeare’s Henry V: heavy is the head that wears the crown. Does Gawain want to earn his uncle’s crown, take over his place as king, bear the fate of Camelot, become a great ruler, a husband and father in ways that even Arthur never did, only to see it all brought to dust by his cowardice, his reliance on unscrupulous sorcery, and his unfulfilled promise to the Green Knight? Is it better to have that entire life and then lose it, or to make the right choice now, even if it means death?

Likewise, Arthur’s kingly mantle is Byzantine in inspiration, as is the icon of the Virgin Mary-as-Theotokos painted on Gawain’s shield (which we see broken apart during the attack by the scavengers). The film only glances at its religious themes rather than harping on them explicitly; we do have the cliché scene of the male churchmen praying for Gawain’s safety, opposite Gawain’s mother and her female attendants working witchcraft to protect him. (When oh when will I get my film that treats medieval magic and medieval religion as the complementary and co-existing epistemological systems that they were, rather than portraying them as diametrically binary and disparagingly gendered opposites?) But despite the interim setbacks borne from the failure of Christian icons, the overall resolution of the film could serve as the culmination of a medieval Christian morality tale: Gawain can buy himself a great future in the short term if he relies on the protection of the enchanted green belt to avoid the Green Knight’s killing stroke, but then he will have to watch it all crumble until he is sitting alone in his own hall, his children dead and his kingdom destroyed, as a headless corpse who only now has been brave enough to accept his proper fate. By removing the belt from his person in the film’s Inception-like final scene, he relinquishes the taint of black magic and regains his religious honor, even at the likely cost of death. That, the medieval Christian morality tale would agree, is the correct course of action.

Gawain’s encounter with St. Winifred likewise presents a more subtle vision of medieval Christianity. Winifred was an eighth-century Welsh saint known for being beheaded, after which (by the power of another saint) her head was miraculously restored to her body and she went on to live a long and holy life. It doesn’t quite work that way in TGK. (St Winifred’s Well is mentioned in the original SGGK, but as far as I recall, Gawain doesn’t meet the saint in person.) In the film, Gawain encounters Winifred’s lifelike apparition, who begs him to dive into the mere and retrieve her head (despite appearances, she warns him, it is not attached to her body). This fits into the pattern of medieval ghost stories, where the dead often return to entreat the living to help them finish their business; they must be heeded, but when they are encountered in places they shouldn’t be, they must be put back into their proper physical space and reminded of their real fate. Gawain doesn’t follow William of Newburgh’s practical recommendation to just fetch some brawny young men with shovels to beat the wandering corpse back into its grave. Instead, in one of his few moments of unqualified heroism, he dives into the dark water and retrieves Winifred’s skull from the bottom of the lake. Then when he returns to the house, he finds the rest of her skeleton lying in the bed where he was earlier sleeping, and carefully reunites the skull with its body, finally allowing it to rest in peace.

However, Gawain’s involvement with Winifred doesn’t end there. The fox that he sees on the bank after emerging with her skull, who then accompanies him for the rest of the film, is strongly implied to be her spirit, or at least a companion that she has sent for him. Gawain has handled a saint’s holy bones; her relics, which were well known to grant protection in the medieval world. He has done the saint a service, and in return, she extends her favor to him. At the end of the film, the fox finally speaks in a human voice, warning him not to proceed to the fateful final encounter with the Green Knight; it will mean his death. The symbolism of having a beheaded saint serve as Gawain’s guide and protector is obvious, since it is the fate that may or may not lie in store for him. As I said, the ending is Inception-like in that it steadfastly refuses to tell you if the hero is alive (or will live) or dead (or will die). In the original SGGK, of course, the Green Knight and the Lord turn out to be the same person, Gawain survives, it was all just a test of chivalric will and honor, and a trap put together by Morgan Le Fay in an attempt to frighten Guinevere. It’s essentially able to be laughed off: a game, an adventure, not real. TGK takes this paradigm and flips it (to speak…) on its head.

Gawain’s rescue of Winifred’s head also rewards him in more immediate terms: his/the Green Knight’s axe, stolen by the scavengers, is miraculously restored to him in her cottage, immediately and concretely demonstrating the virtue of his actions. This is one of the points where the film most stubbornly resists modern storytelling conventions: it simply refuses to add in any kind of “rational” or “empirical” explanation of how else it got there, aside from the grace and intercession of the saint. This is indeed how it works in medieval hagiography: things simply reappear, are returned, reattached, repaired, made whole again, and Gawain’s lost weapon is thus restored, symbolizing that he has passed the test and is worthy to continue with the quest. The film’s narrative is not modernizing its underlying medieval logic here, and it doesn’t particularly care if a modern audience finds it “convincing” or not. As noted, the film never makes any attempt to temporalize or localize itself; it exists in a determinedly surrealist and ahistorical landscape, where naked female giants who look suspiciously like Tilda Swinton roam across the wild with no necessary explanation. While this might be frustrating for some people, I actually found it a huge relief that a clearly fantastic and fictional literary adaptation was not acting like it was qualified to teach “real history” to its audience. Nobody would come out of TGK thinking that they had seen the “actual” medieval world, and since we have enough of a problem with that sort of thing thanks to GOT, I for one welcome the creation of a medieval imaginative space that embraces its eccentric and unrealistic elements, rather than trying to fit them into the Real Life box.

This plays into the fact that the film, like a reused medieval manuscript containing more than one text, is a palimpsest: for one, it audaciously rewrites the entire Arthurian canon in the wordless vision of Gawain’s life after escaping the Green Knight (I could write another meta on that dream-epilogue alone). It moves fluidly through time and creates alternate universes in at least two major points: one, the scene where Gawain is tied up and abandoned by the scavengers and that long circling shot reveals his skeletal corpse rotting on the sward, only to return to our original universe as Gawain decides that he doesn’t want that fate, and two, Gawain as King. In this alternate ending, Arthur doesn’t die in battle with Mordred, but peaceably in bed, having anointed his worthy nephew as his heir. Gawain becomes king, has children, gets married, governs Camelot, becomes a ruler surpassing even Arthur, but then watches his son get killed in battle, his subjects turn on him, and his family vanish into the dust of his broken hall before he himself, in despair, pulls the enchanted scarf out of his clothing and succumbs to his fate.

In this version, Gawain takes on the responsibility for the fall of Camelot, not Arthur. This is the hero’s burden, but he’s obtained it dishonorably, by cheating. It is a vivid but mimetic future which Gawain (to all appearances) ultimately rejects, returning the film to the realm of traditional Arthurian canon – but not quite. After all, if Gawain does get beheaded after that final fade to black, it would represent a significant alteration from the poem and the character’s usual arc. Are we back in traditional canon or aren’t we? Did Gawain reject that future or didn’t he? Do all these alterities still exist within the visual medium of the meta-text, and have any of them been definitely foreclosed?

Furthermore, the film interrogates itself and its own tropes in explicit and overt ways. In Gawain’s conversation with the Lord, the Lord poses the question that many members of the audience might have: is Gawain going to carry out this potentially pointless and suicidal quest and then be an honorable hero, just like that? What is he actually getting by staggering through assorted Irish bogs and seeming to reject, rather than embrace, the paradigms of a proper quest and that of an honorable knight? He lies about being a knight to the scavengers, clearly out of fear, and ends up cravenly bound and robbed rather than fighting back. He denies knowing anything about love to the Lady (played by Alicia Vikander, who also plays his lover at the start of the film with a decidedly ropey Yorkshire accent, sorry to say). He seems to shrink from the responsibility thrust on him, rather than rise to meet it (his only honorable act, retrieving Winifred’s head, is discussed above) and yet here he still is, plugging away. Why is he doing this? What does he really stand to gain, other than accepting a choice and its consequences (somewhat?) The film raises these questions, but it has no plans to answer them. It’s going to leave you to think about them for yourself, and it isn’t going to spoon-feed you any ultimate moral or neat resolution. In this interchange, it’s easy to see both the echoes of a formal dialogue between two speakers (a favored medieval didactic tactic) and the broader purpose of chivalric literature: to interrogate what it actually means to be a knight, how personal honor is generated, acquired, and increased, and whether engaging in these pointless and bloody “war games” is actually any kind of real path to lasting glory.

The film’s treatment of race, gender, and queerness obviously also merits comment. By casting Dev Patel, an Indian-born actor, as an Arthurian hero, the film is… actually being quite accurate to the original legends, doubtless much to the disappointment of assorted internet racists. The thirteenth-century Arthurian romance Parzival (Percival) by the German poet Wolfram von Eschenbach notably features the character of Percival’s mixed-race half-brother, Feirefiz, son of their father by his first marriage to a Muslim princess. Feirefiz is just as heroic as Percival (Gawaine, for the record, also plays a major role in the story) and assists in the quest for the Holy Grail, though it takes his conversion to Christianity for him to properly behold it.

By introducing Patel (and Sarita Chowdhury as Morgause) to the visual representation of Arthuriana, the film quietly does away with the “white Middle Ages” cliché that I have complained about ad nauseam; we see background Asian and black members of Camelot, who just exist there without having to conjure up some complicated rationale to explain their presence. The Lady also uses a camera obscura to make Gawain’s portrait. Contrary to those who might howl about anachronism, this technique was known in China as early as the fourth century BCE and the tenth/eleventh century Islamic scholar Ibn al-Haytham was probably the best-known medieval authority to write on it extensively; Latin translations of his work inspired European scientists from Roger Bacon to Leonardo da Vinci. Aside from the symbolism of an upside-down Gawain (and when he sees the portrait again during the ‘fall of Camelot’, it is right-side-up, representing that Gawain himself is in an upside-down world), this presents a subtle challenge to the prevailing Eurocentric imagination of the medieval world, and draws on other global influences.

As for gender, we have briefly touched on it above; in the original SGGK, Gawain’s entire journey is revealed to be just a cruel trick of Morgan Le Fay, simply trying to destabilize Arthur’s court and upset his queen. (Morgan is the old blindfolded woman who appears in the Lord and Lady’s castle and briefly approaches Gawain, but her identity is never explicitly spelled out.) This is, obviously, an implicitly misogynistic setup: an evil woman plays a trick on honorable men for the purpose of upsetting another woman, the honorable men overcome it, the hero survives, and everyone presumably lives happily ever after (at least until Mordred arrives).

Instead, by plunging the outcome into doubt and the hero into a much darker and more fallible moral universe, TGK shifts the blame for Gawain’s adventure and ultimate fate from Morgan to Gawain himself. Likewise, Guinevere is not the passive recipient of an evil deception but in a way, the catalyst for the whole thing. She breaks the seal on the Green Knight’s message with a weighty snap; she becomes the oracle who reads it out, she is alarming rather than alarmed, she disrupts the complacency of the court and silently shows up all the other knights who refuse to step forward and answer the Green Knight’s challenge. Gawain is not given the ontological reassurance that it’s just a practical joke and he’s going to be fine (and thanks to the unresolved ending, neither are we). The film instead takes the concept at face value in order to push the envelope and ask the simple question: if a man was going to be actually-for-real beheaded in a year, why would he set out on a suicidal quest? Would you, in Gawain’s place, make the same decision to cast aside the enchanted belt and accept your fate? Has he made his name, will he be remembered well? What is his legacy?

Indeed, if there is any hint of feminine connivance and manipulation, it arrives in the form of the implication that Gawain’s mother has deliberately summoned the Green Knight to test her son, prove his worth, and position him as his childless uncle’s heir; she gives him the protective belt to make sure he won’t actually die, and her intention all along was for the future shown in the epilogue to truly play out (minus the collapse of Camelot). Only Gawain loses the belt thanks to his cowardice in the encounter with the scavengers, regains it in a somewhat underhanded and morally questionable way when the Lady is attempting to seduce him, and by ultimately rejecting it altogether and submitting to his uncertain fate, totally mucks up his mother’s painstaking dynastic plans for his future. In this reading, Gawain could be king, and his mother’s efforts are meant to achieve that goal, rather than thwart it. He is thus required to shoulder his own responsibility for this outcome, rather than conveniently pawning it off on an “evil woman,” and by extension, the film asks the question: What would the world be like if men, especially those who make war on others as a way of life, were actually forced to face the consequences of their reckless and violent actions? Is it actually a “game” in any sense of the word, especially when chivalric literature is constantly preoccupied with the question of how much glorious violence is too much glorious violence? If you structure social prestige for the king and the noble male elite entirely around winning battles and existing in a state of perpetual war, when does that begin to backfire and devour the knightly class – and the rest of society – instead?

This leads into the central theme of Gawain’s relationships with the Lord and Lady, and how they’re treated in the film. The poem has been repeatedly studied in terms of its latent (and sometimes… less than latent) queer subtext: when the Lord asks Gawain to pay back to him whatever he should receive from his wife, does he already know what this involves; i.e. a physical and romantic encounter? When the Lady gives kisses to Gawain, which he is then obliged to return to the Lord as a condition of the agreement, is this all part of a dastardly plot to seduce him into a kinky green-themed threesome with a probably-not-human married couple looking to spice up their sex life? Why do we read the Lady’s kisses to Gawain as romantic but Gawain’s kisses to the Lord as filial, fraternal, or the standard “kiss of peace” exchanged between a liege lord and his vassal? Is Gawain simply being a dutiful guest by honoring the bargain with his host, actually just kissing the Lady again via the proxy of her husband, or somewhat more into this whole thing with the Lord than he (or the poet) would like to admit? Is the homosocial turning homoerotic, and how is Gawain going to navigate this tension and temptation?

If the question is never resolved: well, welcome to one of the central medieval anxieties about chivalry, knighthood, and male bonds! As I have written about before, medieval society needed to simultaneously exalt this as the most honored and noble form of love, and make sure it didn’t accidentally turn sexual (once again: how much male love is too much male love?). Does the poem raise the possibility of serious disruption to the dominant heteronormative paradigm, only to solve the problem by interpreting the Gawain/Lady male/female kisses as romantic and sexual and the Gawain/Lord male/male kisses as chaste and formal? In other words, acknowledging the underlying anxiety of possible homoeroticism but ultimately reasserting the heterosexual norm? The answer: Probably?!?! Maybe?!?! Hell if we know??! To say the least, this has been argued over to no end, and if you locked a lot of medieval history/literature scholars into a room and told them that they couldn’t come out until they decided on one clear answer, they would be in there for a very long time. The poem seemingly invokes the possibility of a queer reading only to reject it – but once again, as in the question of which canon we end up in at the film’s end, does it?

In some lights, the film’s treatment of this potential queer reading comes off like a cop-out: there is only one kiss between Gawain and the Lord, and it is something that the Lord has to initiate after Gawain has already fled the hall. Gawain himself appears to reject it; he tells the Lord to let go of him and runs off into the wilderness, rather than deal with or accept whatever has been suggested to him. However, this fits with film!Gawain’s pattern of rejecting that which fundamentally makes him who he is; like Peter in the Bible, he has now denied the truth three times. With the scavengers he denies being a knight; with the Lady he denies knowing about courtly love; with the Lord he denies the central bond of brotherhood with his fellows, whether homosocial or homoerotic in nature. I would go so far as to argue that if Gawain does die at the end of the film, it is this rejected kiss which truly seals his fate. In the poem, the Lord and the Green Knight are revealed to be the same person; in the film, it’s not clear if that’s the case, or they are separate characters, even if thematically interrelated. If we assume, however, that the Lord is in fact still the human form of the Green Knight, then Gawain has rejected both his kiss of peace (the standard gesture of protection offered from lord to vassal) and any deeper emotional bond that it can be read to signify. The Green Knight could decide to spare Gawain in recognition of the courage he has shown in relinquishing the enchanted belt – or he could just as easily decide to kill him, which he is legally free to do since Gawain has symbolically rejected the offer of brotherhood, vassalage, or knight-bonding by his unwise denial of the Lord’s freely given kiss. Once again, the film raises the overall thematic and moral question and then doesn’t give one straight (ahem) answer. As with the medieval anxieties and chivalric texts that it is based on, it invokes the specter of queerness and then doesn’t neatly resolve it. As a modern audience, we find this unsatisfying, but once again, the film is refusing to conform to our expectations.

As has been said before, there is so much kissing between men in medieval contexts, both ceremonial and otherwise, that we’re left to wonder: “is it gay or is it feudalism?” Is there an overtly erotic element in Gawain and the Green Knight’s mutual “beheading” of each other (especially since in the original version, this frees the Lord from his curse, functioning like a true love’s kiss in a fairytale). While it is certainly possible to argue that the film has “straightwashed” its subject material by removing the entire sequence of kisses between Gawain and the Lord and the unresolved motives for their existence, it is a fairly accurate, if condensed, representation of the anxieties around medieval knightly bonds and whether, as Carolyn Dinshaw put it, a (male/male) “kiss is just a kiss.” After all, the kiss between Gawain and the Lady is uncomplicatedly read as sexual/romantic, and that context doesn’t go away when Gawain is kissing the Lord instead. Just as with its multiple futurities, the film leaves the question open-ended. Is it that third and final denial that seals Gawain’s fate, and if so, is it asking us to reflect on why, specifically, he does so?

The film could play with both this question and its overall tone quite a bit more: it sometimes comes off as a grim, wooden, over-directed Shakespearean tragedy, rather than incorporating the lively and irreverent tone that the poem often takes. It’s almost totally devoid of humor, which is unfortunate, and the Grim Middle Ages aesthetic is in definite evidence. Nonetheless, because of the comprehensive de-historicizing and the obvious lack of effort to claim the film as any sort of authentic representation of the medieval past, it works. We are not meant to understand this as a historical document, and so we have to treat it on its terms, by its own logic, and by its own frames of reference. In some ways, its consistent opacity and its refusal to abide by modern rules and common narrative conventions is deliberately meant to challenge us: as before, when we recognize Arthur, Merlin, the Round Table, and the other stock characters because we know them already and not because the film tells us so, we have to fill in the gaps ourselves. We are watching the film not because it tells us a simple adventure story – there is, as noted, shockingly little action overall – but because we have to piece together the metatext independently and ponder the philosophical questions that it leaves us with. What conclusion do we reach? What canon do we settle in? What future or resolution is ultimately made real? That, the film says, it can’t decide for us. As ever, it is up to future generations to carry on the story, and decide how, if at all, it is going to survive.

(And to close, I desperately want them to make my much-coveted Bisclavret adaptation now in more or less the same style, albeit with some tweaks. Please.)

Further Reading

Ailes, Marianne J. ‘The Medieval Male Couple and the Language of Homosociality’, in Masculinity in Medieval Europe, ed. by Dawn M. Hadley (Harlow: Longman, 1999), pp. 214–37.

Ashton, Gail. ‘The Perverse Dynamics of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, Arthuriana 15 (2005), 51–74.

Boyd, David L. ‘Sodomy, Misogyny, and Displacement: Occluding Queer Desire in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, Arthuriana 8 (1998), 77–113.

Busse, Peter. ‘The Poet as Spouse of his Patron: Homoerotic Love in Medieval Welsh and Irish Poetry?’, Studi Celtici 2 (2003), 175–92.

Dinshaw, Carolyn. ‘A Kiss Is Just a Kiss: Heterosexuality and Its Consolations in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, Diacritics 24 (1994), 205–226.

Kocher, Suzanne. ‘Gay Knights in Medieval French Fiction: Constructs of Queerness and Non-Transgression’, Mediaevalia 29 (2008), 51–66.

Karras, Ruth Mazo. ‘Knighthood, Compulsory Heterosexuality, and Sodomy’ in The Boswell Thesis: Essays on Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, ed. Matthew Kuefler (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), pp. 273–86.

Kuefler, Matthew. ‘Male Friendship and the Suspicion of Sodomy in Twelfth-Century France’, in The Boswell Thesis: Essays on Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, ed. Matthew Kuefler (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), pp. 179–214.

McVitty, E. Amanda, ‘False Knights and True Men: Contesting Chivalric Masculinity in English Treason Trials, 1388–1415,’ Journal of Medieval History 40 (2014), 458–77.

Mieszkowski, Gretchen. ‘The Prose Lancelot's Galehot, Malory's Lavain, and the Queering of Late Medieval Literature’, Arthuriana 5 (1995), 21–51.

Moss, Rachel E. ‘ “And much more I am soryat for my good knyghts’ ”: Fainting, Homosociality, and Elite Male Culture in Middle English Romance’, Historical Reflections / Réflexions historiques 42 (2016), 101–13.

Zeikowitz, Richard E. ‘Befriending the Medieval Queer: A Pedagogy for Literature Classes’, College English 65 (2002), 67–80.

#the green knight #the green knight meta #sir gawain and the green knight #medieval literature #medieval history #this meta is goddamn 5.2k words #and has its own reading list #i uh #said i had a lot of thoughts?

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crow-in-a-teapot · 3 years

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tower of nero spoilers

i have just finished the tower of nero. and before i go searching for other people’s thoughts and art and more of the characters i love so much, i want to write down some of my own thoughts because i know as soon as i delve into that ‘ton spoilers’ hashtag there are going to be complaints and criticisms and so much that i don’t want to hear, or essays that’ll make me upset, or things that’ll change my perception on the book (because on this website people really love to hate the trials of apollo).

i want to start with: i loved it. it didn’t feel earth-shattering or huge and momentous like some of my favourite riordanverse books (house of hades, the blood of olympus, the last olympian and maybe some of the magnus chase books take those pedestals for me) but it was satisfying. and i think it was satisfying because it in no way felt like an ending. whether because eventually rick will write that will-and-nico-go-through-tartarus-and-save-bob novella, or because we (or at least i) will continue writing and imagining and creating for this world i don’t know. he didn’t wrap up the story in a perfect little bow like ‘nineteen years later’, he simply put it on pause. gave us a glimpse of where every character was at at the end.

the only thing that makes me so angry and upset is that i did manage to get some spoilers for moments that i know would have been so good to experience for the first time if i hadn’t been spoiled for them. the moment where rachel mentions penguins in a mansion near her house, nico getting mental health advice from mr d, the fact that will and nico were going to be in the book for so much of the story, but the big thing was literally spoiled for me two days ago, it was the reason i sat down to read it as fast as possible because i was terrified of getting more spoiled and not being able to experience the moments for myself, was that piper had a girlfriend. i know that reading that for the first time would have been so cool and surprising, and the fact that when it came up for a moment in the last couple pages all i felt was disappointment because it was spoiled for me and because it was now tinged with whatever that person was saying about her having a girlfriend.

but i still had some warm fuzzy moments, the two parts where apollo thinks he’s going to die but nico comes up behind him - so good. impeccable.

Leader Guy spat. ‘Now, I kill you.’

He raised his sword... and froze. His face turned pale. His skin began to shrivel. His beard fell out whisker by whisker like dead pine needles. Finally, his skin crumbled away, along with his clothes and flesh, until Leader Guy was nothing but a bleached-white skeleton, holding a sword in his bony hands.

Standing behind him, his hand on the skeleton’s shoulder, was Nico di Angelo.

and

Nero raised his hand, ready to give the kill command, when behind me a mighty BOOM! shook the chamber. Half our enemies were thrown off their feet. Cracks sprouted in the windowsand the marble columns. Ceiling tiles broke, raining dust like split bags of flour.

I turned to see the impenetrable blast doors lying twisted and broken, a strangely emaciated red bull standing in the breach. Behind it stood Nico di Angelo.

gods. poetic brilliance. i can’t believe i’m still a nico di angelo stannie in the year 2021. in five years i have not changed (ever since the tv show announcement last summer i have managed to morph into myself from 2017)

from here i’m not sure where to go next i kind of want to go through everything, except it’ll be more difficult than my tyrant’s tomb reaction because i wasn’t reading on a kindle and thus can’t just do funny little reactions to screenshots of quotes, so i’ll just skim through the book page by page and see what i can comment on (i’m not planning on doing analysis today, no thank you, just enjoying the end of my childhood and trying to squeeze as much out of it as possible)

i have an emotional attachment to mr. snake from the very first chapter, and am very upset that he’ll never get off on his baltimore stop and get to see his wife, lu had no reason to shoot and kill him like that.

that brings me to lu, i liked her, it was interesting to see how rick kind of brought in not only the overarching theme of abuse, but also people who let the abuse happen, i have more i could say on this i’m too lazy to right now, and i promised no analysis - or the fact that Lu had conspired to make the show non-lethal to spare Meg’s feelings rather than - oh, I don’t know - refusing to do Nero’s dirty work in the first place and getting Meg out of that house of horrors.

And are you any better? taunted a small voice in my brain. How many times have you stood up to Zeus?

Okay, small voice. Fair point. Tyrants are not easy to opppose or walk away from, especially when you depend on them for everything.

the parallels to meg and lester heading to percy’s apartment, and then to camp half blood to the hidden oracle was so cool to read, every callback to the hidden oracle just there to remind us readers exactly how far apollo has come and how he’s changed; the entire chapter with sally, paul and estelle just felt sickly sweet, it just didn’t seem real how wholesome and good that family is, like i get why apollo broke down and just sobbed in that shower.

also rick really saying acab again in toa, i thought he was done after that elf cop chapter in magnus chase (the magnus chase series is a masterpiece) but apparently not, with A ‘good cop’ is still a cop... still a part of the mind game.

the grey sisters, i forgot about them completely but this threw me back into was it the sea of monsters when annabeth summoned them? i’m not sure, it could have been the lightning thief either, they really remind me of the disney hercules movie. the whole ganymede paragraph was gold, i love gods being canonically confirmed lgbt in the riordanverse. i also love the whole eye-tossing part -

‘He will crush our eye,’ Anger cried, ‘if we don’t recite our verses!’

‘I will not!’

‘We will all die!’ Wasp said. ‘He is crazy!’

‘I AM NOT!’

‘Fine, you win!’ Tempest howled.

also, the explanation for why dionysus chooses to look the way he does was perfect, because it was something i often wondered about and wasn’t expecting to get an explanation for, and i imagine the whole mythological dionysus to look like.. well like a more feminine apollo i guess, beautiful in a gender non-comforming way.

Other Olympians could never comprehend why Dionysus chose this form when he could look like anything he wanted. In ancient times, he’d been famous for his youthful beauty that defied gender.

...

In retaliation, Dionysus had decided to look and act as ungodly as possible. He was like a child refusing to tuck in his shirt, comb his hair or brush his teeth, just to show his parents how little he cared.

every scene with nico at camp just BREAKS ME, i would throw in screenshots of every damn quote but unfortunately, as said above, cannot and would rather not type every one; we’ll start with, obviously apollo confirming to him that jason is dead.

He didn’t look angry exactly. He looked as if he’d been hit in the gut not just once but so many times over the course of so many years that he was beginning to lose perspective on what it meant to be in pain. He swayed on his feet. He blinked. Then he flinched, jerking his hands away from Meg’s as if he’d just remembered his own touch was poison.

ugh then will talking about how nico’s doing, confirming that he’s suffering with ptsd, mr d giving him advice, helping him sort though what voices in his head are real and which ones aren’t, then the paragraph that just recounts every horrific thing poor nico has been through, how will has to reassure him that he’s okay and ‘with friends’ when he wakes up after shadow travel

will’s kindness to apollo, buying him clothes, and apollo finding seymour the leopard’s head in his bed, put there by mr d aaaa AAAA A A A A A THE ORDINARY, EVERYDAY CAMP HALF BLOOD THINGS..

i could go on for years and years about how much i appreciate rachel having a big role in this book, and the visit to her apartment, everything, her art, the fact that she got what she wanted, she’s going to PARIS to study ART, she isn’t forced to be someone she’s not by her dad, and gets to be a big part of a demigod mission and not stand on the sidelines for once.

i love that her landscapes are still visions, that she still paints the quests demigods go on - the burning maze, jason’s funeral pyre, caligula’s ships; and how nico ~appreciates art~

‘And, hey, di Angelo -’ she pushed him playfully away from the canvas he’d been ogling - ‘don’t brush against the art! I don’t care about the paintings, but if you get any colour on you, you’ll ruin that whole black-and-white aesthetic you’ve got going.’

i. love. rachel.

WILL GLOWS!! THE HEADCANONS FROM LIKE FIVE YEARS AGO THAT YOU’D SEE FLOATING AROUND ABOUT HIM MANIPULATING LIGHT!! CONFIRMED!! CANON!! AMAZING

I AM OBSESSED WITH THE TROGS, I LOVE THEM, THEY ARE GREAT, not gonna lie, i was expecting something more dramatic and spooky with how worried will was and how dionysus was going.. visiting the cavern-runners isn’t ♫ good for your mental health ♫ but the little hat frog gremlins were a good addition. i like them very much and their funky little soup shenanigans. quoting the ghost king himself: trogs good. nice hats. (IM SORRY I KEEP MENTIONING HIM BUT I JUST) also how apollo starts wishing for breadsticks a s ajoke and theY STRAIGHT UP HAVE BREADSTICKS? HUH? WHERE DID THEY GET THE BREADSTICKS FROM??

yeah, i’m also still very much upset by every mention of jason grace, it’s funny how ever since his death in the burning maze i have grown to love him more and more and that’s not fun for me, for that boy to become one of my main comfort character’s and have his death and sacrifice and nobility mentioned every few chapters. i’m pretty sure i cried when he appeared to talk in apollo’s dreams, and this time the tears weren’t from the effort of keeping my eyes open and working for hours straight reading this book (i remember staying up until 2am to finish the sequel to beautiful, broken things, it was very much worth it)

‘All right, Jason. We miss you, though.’

ALSO. THE FACT THAT THIS KID. THIS CHILD. HAD TO THINK ‘BUT IF A HERO ISN’T READY TO LOSE EVERYTHING FOR A GREATER CAUSE, IS THAT PERSON REALLY A HERO?’ A KID ISN’T SUPPOSED TO THINK ABOUT THAT AND BE READY TO SACRIFICE THEMSELVES FOR THE GREATER GOOD,, i,, ugh,, he’s supposed to be finishing school and designing temples not being the perfect hero and soldier,, spain without the s,,

as @couldnt-think-of-a-funny-name said: ‘thinking about how ghost! Jason didn’t seem to understand why Apollo was so upset about his death because he’s been raised to believe a hero’s sacrifice is noble and his life doesn’t matter in the grand scheme and also if he doesn’t understand why the person who watched him get horrifically killed is so torn up over his death he probably doesn’t even realize his other friends are grieving him..’

IM SO UPSET THE ARROW OF DODONA IS DEAD D: IT WAS ONE OF MY FAVOURITE CHARACTERS ALL THE FUNNIEST MOMENTS WERE BECAUSE OF THAT ARROW AND IT'S DEATH WAS SO SAD WTH LIKE WE FIND OUT HOW USELESS THE ARROW FELT AND HOW THE GROVE OF DODONA ALL THOUGHT IT WOULD BE CRAP AND WOULD FAIL APOLLO AND THEN ONCE WE FEEL BAD FOR IT, IT DIES??

the entire python battle was pretty grim, there is a part of me that's like because this is the last book series i would have loved say the magnus chase and kane chronicles gang in a giant battle with everyone like the battle of manhattan but even more dramatic, but even so, i did appreciate that python battle and the whole almost-falling-into-the-depths-of-tartarus thing.

him talking to artemis was cool, but JESUS: 'I turned and strode out of my room, trying to recall how the god Apollo walked.' like that HURTS. it was such a huge culture shock for apollo to go throught this huge character arc and be so human and understand the pain of others, to be around gods again who are so.. apathetic. also, zeus. 'Interesting how he put that: I had done him proud. I had been useful in making him look good. My heart did not melt. I did not feel that this was a warm-and-fuzzy reconciliation with my father. Let's be honest: some fathers don't deserve that. Some aren't capable of it.'

OKAY OKAY SO THE END?? CHIRON TALKING TO A CAT (BAST) AND A SEVERED HEAD (MIMIR) ABOUT SHARED PROBLEMS WITHIN THE PANTHEONS!! WILL AND NICO RECEIVING A PROPHECY FROM RACHEL TO GO TO TARTARUS AND SAVE BOB!! THE HUNTERS OF ARTEMIS, INCLUDING THALIA AND REYNA BEING BEST FRIENDS (qpr.. qpr..) HUNTING THE TEUMESSIAN FOX!! PERCY, ANNABETH AND GROVER, THE ORIGINAL TRIO, GOING ON A CHAOTIC ROAD TRIP TOGETHER!! - SO MANY STAND-ALONE SET -UPS PFSJSJSJ

okay quick word on the reunions at the end: funny little elephant visitation program with livia and hannibal. love that for them. calypso and leo's relationship seems rocky and complicated, but that's to be expected, i think even if they do get properly back together again it might not last long, because it does pretty much feel like a teenage relationship where the two aren't very compatible, but we'll see. hazel and frank are so funny with their gold plated necklaces. lavinia - tap-dance icon. almost cried at the mention of jason's temple-extension plan again. percy not being sure about what he wants to do in college is accurate and i like that that's left to be up-for-interpretation (rick does THE MOST for the fanfic writers pfsjsj). i am OBSESSED with aeithales, like i hate deserts so the burning maze setting is not my favourite but GOD that HOUSE, the vibes are off-the-charts. i'd love a house made of living trees that's also a greenhouse filled with dryads. meg gets a unicorn. that is so great.

i kind of wish the book hadn't ended with 'Call on me. I will be there for you.' because every time I imagine the friends theme song and i don't think that's the vibe he was going for, BUT i do love him talking to meg, that was genuinely emotional - 'You'll come back?' she asked. 'Always,' I promised. 'The sun always comes back.' ; i really wish it had ended with that, but i guess apollo does tend to break fourth walls and talk to the readers, like a lot of the protagonists of riordanverse books.

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flying-nightwing · 4 years

Text

The Wish to Make on a Dying Breath

Heyyyy people. It’s been a while! So this isn’t what I had promised but I wanted to experiment with words a little bit and this is what i came up with. Apparently I do love death as a central theme because this is about death again. Sorry!

Masterlist pinned/in bio

Pairing: Jason Todd x Death!Reader (gender neutral)

Word count: 2422

Warnings: Jason Todd dying a few times but don’t worry it’s not a tragic story, fatal injuries, talk about the afterlife

Summary: You are the powerful entity of Death, keeping watch on the Earth and making sure souls are properly transitioned into the afterlife. One night, you are called in person to a specific death, where you meet the one and only Jason Todd

You have seen a lot of things.

People being born and dying, the rise and fall of empires, the best and the worst of humanity, sometimes co-existing side to side closer than they would even know. There was not a lot that could impress you anymore, but sometimes there were circumstances, lone stars of events that still drew your curiosity. After all, human kind has always been an unpredictable species that managed to take you by surprise from time to time. Your work had changed since you had first been needed. There were too many people on the Earth now for you to handle personally, and you didn’t quite know what factor made you select some people over others.

The night grew silent as you appeared outside an abandoned building on the outskirts of the big city casting a bright light in the distance. You went in, navigating the filthy hallways slowly. It wasn’t long until you reached a bigger room filled with dynamite crates and gasoline puddles on the uneven concrete. In the middle laid someone bloodied and battered and a countdown frozen on the precise moment the last second flipped to zero.

You walked to them and crouched, noticing how it was just a boy. Young, yet wearing a haunted expression that added years to his traits. There was a single tear that had been rolling down his cheek, a tear of defeat and heartbreak, a tear that was too emotionally charged for a teenager. With a heavy sigh, you reached to him and gently cupped his jaw.

In less than a second, you felt his entire body tense like an electrical shock went through it and he leaped back, away from you. His eyes were wide as he frantically looked around, aggressively wiping the tear from his cheek. You stood up slowly, observing him. He sniffled, sending you a wary glare, until his eyes found the countdown. Incomprehension was written all over him in verses and his breathing was ragged.

“Am I dead?”

You have seen a lot of things. Good people pleading to live another day, children not understanding what was happening to them, painful unwilling resignation to cross to the other side. But as he spoke, his voice cracked and scared, you couldn’t help but feel a slow sadness creep inside of you. He was one of these cases that just didn’t feel right, but that had to happen.

“Not yet” You replied softly.��

“But I will be”

It wasn’t a question. You smiled sadly.

“Yes” You sighed, glancing at the countdown. “Once this reaches 0, I can only suppose this place will blow up with you in it”

He wiped another tear, smearing blood on his cheek. “Why can’t I feel pain?” He asked. “I can’t move, how am I moving?”

You gave him another smile. “I froze time, and by doing so, created a temporary plane of existence on which you are right now” You explained. “I can bend the rules a little more freely here”

His eyes turned critical. He understood what you were saying, easier than most people you remarked. He was just not sure whether to take your word for it, and his confusion turned into suspicion. “Who are you?”

You didn’t flinch at the harshness of his voice. “Have you not figured it out yet?”

“I dealt with enough meta, I don’t keep track of who can do what” He scoffed weakly, but you could see the fight in him. You admired the courage mask he had hurried to put on, because not a lot of people had the guts to stand up to Death itself like that.

“I see what you mean” You said. “But I am not a meta. I am Death”

His eyes narrowed before he looked up to the ceiling. “Yeah sure” He drawled out, setting his glance back on you. “And I am the crown prince of Denmark”

You chuckled. “You have quite the temper” You pointed out as you began walking around, stopping in front of a crate. A clown face had been spray painted on it, on every one of them. Then, you turned to the boy again, looking him in the eyes. “But I think deep down you know I am telling the truth”

He shifted on his feet. “You don’t look like Death”

“You mean the gravely old man, or the skeleton in the black robes with a scyther?”

He scoffed again.

“My form does change a lot, but those are myths” You answered. “I will appear to you depending on who you are and what you’ve done. Only terrible people are faced with terrible reapers”

“You look like an angel”

He seemed surprised by the words he blurted out as a blush crept onto his face. He hadn’t meant to say it out loud, that was clear. You looked down, trying to rein back the smile that wanted to break out on your lips. He was truly a unique case, and you began to understand why you had been called to him.

“It means you deserved an angel” You nodded your head slowly. “You should be proud of your time on Earth. You were a good person, and you did good things”

“Will it hurt?” He asked.

You shook your head. “It’s going to be quick, once I restart the time”

“What will come next?”

“I’m sorry” You apologized. “This is something I can’t tell you”

“What if I don’t want to come?”

“I’m afraid that is not up to you” You sighed.

He seemed disappointed, but nodded nevertheless. “Do your thing”

“Everything’s gonna be okay” You reassured with one last smile, gesturing for him to return to his initial position. He kneeled down, then let himself fall into the ground as he regained the plane of existence he belonged to. And just like that, he was once again frozen along with everything else. You took a moment longer to look at him before you resumed time.

The explosion took everything in its wake, everything but you.

---

The alley was dirty and wet, and even with time stopped, you could just hear pipes leaking and rat rummaging through the garbage.

Gotham hasn’t really gotten better since your last visit.

You walked deeper into the alley until you saw not one, but two figures frozen with the rest of the world. As you approached you noticed a leather jacket covering a red bat, even redder with a torrent of blood drowning it. Then your eyes trailed up to a defined face, scarred but beautiful, dark hair with a white streak hanging on his forehead. His eyelids were half closed as he stared up at the red haired man kneeling beside him, who seemed to be searching his pockets for anything to stop the bleeding.

Even without seeing his eyes completely, you knew who it was.

You approached him, and just like you did the first time, you reached for his cheek. His eyes fluttered open, finding yours quickly. You watched as they widened, letting you see the bright blue that had marked your mind forever. This time, he didn’t jump back.

“It’s you” His voice was no louder than a breath caught in the wind.

“It’s me” You smiled, watching as he sat up straight from the pile of old cardboard boxes he was leaning on.

You had heard of his comeback to life, of course you did. It wasn’t the first time it happened in history, and most times you had to find a way to tip the dominos so the balance could return to the normal. But you couldn’t hide to yourself you sometimes played favourites and let him be for the time being.

“I didn’t expect to see you again so soon”

“The feeling is mutual” There was a small scoff in his voice, but nothing mean or sarcastic. He was looking at you with wonder and curiosity, being way calmer this time around. “Multiple bullets to the chest is not how I envisioned my second death, to be honest”

“Rarely anyone expects that” You hummed.

“Touché” He sighed, looking you up and down. He then frowned. “ I don’t get it”

You waited for him to express his thoughts. You doubted he meant death, or the bullets for that matter.

“You still look like an angel,” He said, blinking. “How do you still look like an angel?”

“Nothing has changed, Jason” You replied. “You are still a good person, who has done good things”

His expression changed. There was a calculating look in his eyes, and emotion brewing under. “You know my name”

“I know most things in the universe” You chuckled. “That includes the names of the souls I reap, and you are hardly forgettable”

A familiar blush creeped on his cheeks as he cleared his throat. “And you think what I’m doing is good?”

“I don’t think so, I know so”

He looked down, letting yet another sigh. He took a moment to collect himself, then nodded slightly. His eyes met yours, a newfound determination in them. “I won’t hold you back anymore, I’m ready. Do your thing”

You smiled again. “I’ll see you again, Jason Todd” You reached for his chest, placing your palm flat on the bullet holes. “Just, not so soon, okay?”

“Wait, what does that mean?” He called as you backed up from him. His body moved itself to retake its position on the right plane of existence, staring at you expectantly. Your lips reached just a little higher, but you didn’t talk. Instead, you unfroze time and let yourself become invisible to the living again.

A second later, you watched as Jason gasped, his eyelids no longer heavy but instead wide open his blue eyes looking around for something that wasn’t there. You didn’t stick around for too long however, going back to work.

You have seen a lot of things. Reapers that ignored the natural balance, granting favors left and right to humans. Reality being bended at will, the balance being upset to the point of an almost reset. However, you knew the balance would be just fine this time. You were Death and Life, you had seen the world change and grow, and you believed it would be better off with Jason in it.

---

It was a sunny day when you found yourself on the porch of a small house in a small town, and you would have been sure you had somehow made a mistake if it hadn’t been for the sense of familiarity that echoed through the call that bekonned you there.

The wind was paused, but you could almost feel the breeze gently blowing through the trees, or the sun rays hitting your face. You looked at the house, then at the door and the knob. You went in.

You navigated slowly through the hallways, observing the lively wallpaper and the pictures hanging on the walls. Smiles and love stared out the frames, giving it back to the world. It was peaceful there, which was a nice change of pace for once. You ended up at the end of the hallway, where you could see through the open door multiple people gathered around the bed, their eyes teary and sad, but not in pain. You found an open space on the bed and sat down, looking at the man laying down.

His face was wrinkled, the traces of old age fusioning with the faded scars in a portrait of his experiences and adventures. His greying hair was mostly hiding the silver streak on his forehead, but you could still see its contrast. His eyes were closed, and he looked peaceful. You gently put your hand on his cheek, waking him up for what you knew would truly be the last time.

His blue eyes opened, and he smiled.

“Hello, Jason” You could see the spark in his eyes, one that was the witness of a happier life. In that moment, you knew he had made the best of it.

“My angel” His voice was a little bit frailer than last time, another sign of time making its mark on him. A warmth spread inside of you as you gently took his hand in yours. “I hope you don’t plan on sending me back out there”

You let out an airy laugh at his playful expression, shaking your head. “No, I can assure you this is the end of the road, for real this time”

“Good” He let out a content sigh. He wasn’t tense, there wasn’t an ounce of fear in his body. All you could feel radiating out of him was peace. “I’m tired. What a life it has been”

“A great one” You nodded. “I hope you’re proud of it”

“So you don’t regret sending me back into the world that night forty-five year ago?”

“Not for a moment” Your smile widened. “I believe it’s the best decision I’ve ever made”

He looked down, like he didn’t think himself worthy of this praise. You gave his hand a squeeze.

“I’ve never thanked you” He began after a moment, and you tilted your head. “For helping me out the first time. And for letting me live the second time. You’re the reason I didn’t fear Death as much as I used to”

“I’m glad I could change your mind about me” You chuckled quietly. The sun was hitting him in a perfect angle though the window, painting a golden halo around him. He said you looked like an angel, now he was one too. “And I’m glad this death seems better than the last one”

He let out a shaky breath, looking into every face around him for the last time. “It’s less traumatizing, that’s for sure”

“Are you ready?”

He nodded slowly before smiling at you. “I am”

“Close your eyes” You whispered, and he made himself comfortable in his bed before shutting his eyelids for the last time. He truly looked at peace.

Without moving, you restarted time to feel him let out his last breath. As his family noticed the new stillness of his body, you slipped away from the house without looking back.

You have seen a lot of things.

People being born and dying, the rise and fall of empires, the best and the worst of humanity, sometimes co-existing side to side closer than they would even know. You were Death and Life, you had seen the world change and grow.

Still, Jason Todd had been your favourite part of it.

#jason todd x reader #jason todd imagine #jason todd fic #jason todd x you #Jason Todd #red hood #red hood imagine #red hood x reader #dc #dcu #dc universe #dc imagine #dcu imagine #dc universe imagine #batfam #batfam imagine #imagine #red hood x you #outlaws

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purple-phantoms · 4 years

Text

Happiest Place on Earth

Modern!Reggie Peters x Gender-Neutral!Reader, Luke Patterson x Alex Mercer

Based off of: #95 from my bucket list, Spend the whole day at Magic Kingdom

A/N: This was requested by @i-should-be-writing-my-own-fic ! This is mostly going to be based off of research and memory. I’ve been to Magic Kingdom before, but only when I was 7 so I barely remember anything. In school a couple years ago I used to plan out which hotel I was going to stay in and which rides I wanted to go on lol. It’s such a shame that the pandemic had to hit. Also I’m basing this off of Disney World in Florida because I’m more familiar with that one. This is super long and not great, but hope you like it!

Summary: Y/n, Alex, Luke, and Reggie spend the day at Disney’s Magic Kingdom. Y/n and Reggie stay together while Luke and Alex pair up. Both groups try to hide their relationships from the other, until everything magically unfolds.

Masterlist

For reference, if you’ve never been to Disney World and have no idea what the rides are, I’m including links to pictures I used to write this.

For “Peter Pan’s Flight”: Youtube video, Google Images link

For “Be Our Guest”: Disney World website, Pinterest image

For “Pirates of the Caribbean”: Youtube video

For “Splash Mountain”: TikTok from Pinterest, Youtube video

The warm sun rose on the concrete. Thousands of people lined up outside the gates to purchase their tickets for the giant themepark. Them and the boys waited anxiously. They were just about to get to buy their tickets but there was a giant family of 7 in front of them. It felt like years before they called the next people. It felt like centuries before they were allowed to enter the paradise. The four of them split up into pairs; Alex and Luke, and Y/n and Reggie. They wanted to go their separate ways and go on all the rides possible and occasionally meet up to get food and relax.

The first stop for y/n and Reggie was to Cinderella’s castle for pictures. Reggie dragged them by the hand to get as close to the castle, pushing past a lot of people in the process. In their bag was a polaroid camera. It probably wasn’t the best idea to bring something like that to a theme park where it could easily be misplaced or stolen, but memories, right? Y/n took pictures of Reggie first. He did some poses both facing away from the castle and facing the castle. Next was y/n’s turn. Now, y/n was smart. They bought some Disney related things way before the trip. They bought Mickey Mouse earrings and ears for their outfit. Y/n did the same as Reggie and took pictures facing away and towards the castle.

Next stop was to It’s a Small World in Fantasyland. Y/n and Reggie sat in the boat together and swayed to the music as they started moving in the ride. The animatronics were cool but really creepy at the same time. “What if one of those just exploded like in a sci-fi movie,” y/n laughed. Most times y/n was capable of correctly anticipating what would come next in a ride. They could tell that this was just a chill ride, but it’s always fun to imagine the unlikely.

“If that happens, you should just snatch one of them up, and then we just have to run,” Reggie smiled as they laughed. Y/n and Reggie were always the ones in the group who thought that way. Obviously, they wouldn’t actually do that, but that doesn’t mean that it wouldn’t be cool if they did.

Next they went to Peter Pan’s flight. Peter Pan had always been one of Reggie’s favorite characters because of his youth. Obviously before getting in line y/n had to take a picture of Reggie. God, he was gorgeous.

The wait was longer than what they had expected but it was worth it. The scenery was a beautiful sight. When they finally got to the end of the line, they gingerly entered their cart. The ride was chill like the one they had been on before. Reggie kissed y/n on the cheek before laying his head on y/n’s shoulder as they travelled through Neverland. All the animatronics looked so life-like and accurate to the movie. It would be crazy not to take just a few pictures.

The pair got off the ride and went on to the next one, then the next one, until they got hungry. Reggie texted Luke and Alex to find a place to meet up. They decided on the Be Our Guest restaurant. Once they all arrived, they felt underdressed. The restaurant looked exactly how you’d expect it to if you were living in the castle. The walls and tiles were yellow and blue, and the ceiling was painted with a renaissance-like picture.

“You guys seriously couldn’t have picked a more low-key place to eat?” Luke grumbled. This kind of thing had never been his style. He “hated” talking about the Disney princesses, he said they were too “feminine” for him.

“We came for the vibe, not the reality, loser,” Alex said. Reggie and y/n shook their heads. Sitting down for a little bit was quite refreshing. All 4 of them ate all the food they ordered, and it was a lot. But hey, they need their energy!

They sat in a little silence as they waited for their bill to arrive. They were all ready to go on more rides, but also ready for a nap. It’s too bad they were only spending the day there. A kick to the foot knocked y/n out of their daydream. “Ow,” they shouted.

“Oh sorry,” Alex said. “Me and Luke are going to be right back.” Y/n and Reggie looked at each other and laughed.

“Reggie, get your friends,” y/n laughed. Alex and Luke had been like this for a while now, and it was a little weird.

“I think they just went to take pictures,” Reggie shrugged. Y/n laughed.

“Yeah, of each other’s lips,” y/n said. Alex and Luke being a couple was always a theory that y/n and Reggie would talk about. After all, most times movie nights are with a group of people, not just with one person. Well it’s not like y/n and Reggie could speak on that either. They didn’t want Alex and Reggie to know about their relationship because they just wanted to keep it to themselves.

Then the couple pair came back. Alex looked completely normal while Luke’s shirt was super wrinkled.... like as if someone was grabbing at it.

“So where did you two go,” y/n asked with a smirk. Bothering Alex when he’s flustered was always a funny sight. He would never be able to say a single thing without chuckling or running his fingers through his hair.

“We uh-” Luke had to pause to think. “We went to go find a map.” Then he pulled one out of his back pocket, which he totally had way before. Le-let’s go on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride,” He stuttered.

“Thought you don’t like that stuff,” Reggie smiled.

“Well now I do,” Luke said as he grabbed his stuff.

The walk to Adventureland was long, but funny. Reggie couldn’t stop talking about that one time he dressed up as Jack Sparrow for y/n’s costume party last year. The same costume party where y/n and Reggie expressed their feelings for each other. The same costume party where they purposely hid in the closet so that nobody would know that they were officially together. The same costume party that nobody knew the full story about. “Guys, it literally was like 7 minutes in heaven,” Reggie beamed. “I felt like I could’ve gotten married right there.”

“Hey Reggie, do you remember how we agreed to not talk about that party,” y/n lied. They never had an actual agreement. Y/n just thought that neither of them would get close to exposing the truth.

“No, y/n,” Alex put his hand up. “I want to hear this one.” Y/n gave Reggie the look, hoping he’d understand and stop talking. He didn’t.

“Are you and this person still together,” Luke asked. Stop egging him on!!

“Obviously,” Reggie smirked as he put his arm around them.

“WHAT!” Alex and Luke yelled at the same time.

“I knew it, I knew it!” Alex cheered.

“Can you guys shut up?” Y/n grumbled.

“Yeah, are you guys going to get on the ride,” the operator asked. Woops.

“My bad, y/n,” Reggie whispered.

“It’s fine,” y/n said.

“It’s not fine,” Luke yelled. “This is huge, why didn’t you tell us?”

“You know what, Luke,” y/n turned around to face him. “In this ride there are probably real skeletons being used as props. If you don’t leave me alone I will donate yours to this ride when you die.” Luke sat back in his seat and fell silent. Saying things like that always worked with the guys.

When they got to the battle part, Reggie reached to hold y/n’s hand in his. Y/n squeezed his. They weren’t mad at him, they already knew Reggie was an airhead. This would have happened one way or another.

The four of them decided to go on Splash Mountain next. Y/n did this on purpose. They knew none of the boys knew that they’d get splashed on the ride. Perfect payback.

“Luke and Alex, I think you guys should sit in the front for this one,” y/n smiled.

“Why,” Alex asked.

“What, you don’t want to be the first ones to see everything,” y/n said sarcastically. The two boys shrugged in response.

They got into the raft with Luke and Alex sitting in the front and Reggie and y/n sitting right behind them. “So why are they sitting in the front,” Reggie whispered to them.

“It’s so that they’ll get splashed the most,” y/n laughed. And they did. On the first drop, they were moving their soaking wet hair out of the way of their eyes and screaming profanities. It didn’t help that there were little kids on the raft with parents yelling back at them to stop cursing. Y/n and Reggie sat back and laughed as their friends got soaked.

Luke and Alex were mad when they got off the ride and saw that y/n and Reggie were completely dry. “Y/n you did this on purpose,” Alex shouted.

“Yeah, I did,” y/n laughed. “So when were you guys going to tell us that you were dating?”

Alex and Luke’s jaws looked like they were going to hit the floor. “How did you know?” Alex asked

“You guys literally left us to go make out,” Reggie pointed out.

“Riiiiight,” Luke blushed.

“Yeah, so Reggie and I are going to go do ‘official couple’ things like go find Mickey and Minnie,” y/n smiled. “Let’s go, Reg.”

Taglist:

@flashoe @carnationcreation @camihoran00 @joyjoyner @prongsy-parker

Add yourself to my taglist!

#reggie jatp x reader #reggie imagine #reggie x reader #reggie nolastname #reggie peters x reader #luke patterson x alex #luke x alex #luke patterson x alex mercer #reggie julie and the phantoms #reggie peters #luke patterson #alex nolastname #alex jatp #alex mercer #gender neutral insert #julie and the phantoms #disney world #purple-phantoms

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make-me-imagine · 4 years

Text

⚡13 Days of Halloween: Day 7

Prompt: ‘It was a dark and stormy night’

Requested by: @spuffyfan394

Pairing: Castiel x Reader

Gender: Neutral Words: 1,603

Triggers: None Genre: Casual + a little fluff

Supernatural Taglist: @kaashi

Note: Halloween Theme - 4/10; based around Halloween, no real strict Halloween theme. I wanted so badly to make this spooky but for the life of me I could not come up with anything. So this is what I got. Why am I so bad at making things Halloween themed? like, is it really that hard? lol

If you’d like to check out 2019 and 2018′s 13 Days of Halloween, as well as my 2017 general Halloween/Fall stuff here are the links: x2017x, x2018x & x2019x

You hummed to yourself as you wandered through the bunker, it was a dark and stormy night, the lights flickered occasionally as lightning struck nearby, thunder rumbling trough the bunker.

Pausing in your step as you stared up towards the bunker roof, the walls and floors seeming to vibrate as the thunder roared, slowly rumbling on, getting quieter and quieter.

Usually you found storms comforting or even exciting, but tonight it was different. Sam and Dean were gone, and you were alone. The bunker was big, and you kept getting the feeling that you weren’t alone. You figured it was just your own mind tricking you, causing you to exaggerate, like when you are watching a scary movie and you get the feeling someone is in your house when you know there isn’t.

It certainly didn’t help that you had made the decision to decorate the bunker with Halloween decorations. Various decorations in the corners of the room catching your eye, end up only being fake skeletons or masks. Your overactive brain was simply pumping unwanted adrenaline through you.

So, trying to ignore it, you focused on the rain, and the fact that Sam and Dean should be back soon. Hopefully. Just as you were sitting down at the kitchen counter, you heard a distant bang. You stopped, staring in the direction of the noise. Was that thunder? No. It sounded like it was in the bunker. Maybe something fell over? You had been rearranging one of the storage rooms earlier. That was probably it.

Even as you ran through the possibilities that it was nothing, you moved to a nearby case, opening it and taking out one of your guns. Just in case. It is probably nothing after all.

Hearing another sound within the bunker, your breath hitched in your throat, you realized it wasn’t something falling over, but a door opening and closing. Slowly walking down the hall, your hand gripped around the gun. Peering around a corner you see a shadow quickly disappearing around the end of the hall.

Silently creeping down the hall, now knowing full well there was someone here, you were prepared to fight. Stopping just at the corner, you hear a door open, you recognized the area as your bedroom door. Hearing footsteps approaching your direction again you quickly round the corner, gun raised, ready to fight.

Seeing the figure in front of you, you gasped out in surprise, just as the figure did as well. Quickly lowering your gun you audibly sighed out “Cas! Oh my God, you scared the shit out of me”

Castiel lowered his hands, which he had quickly raised in defense when you had rounded the corner. Adjusting his stance, he breathed out in relief as well “I apologize, I should have said something, but I didn’t see anyone here, so I was looking around for you, or Sam and Dean” he seemed to quickly add on Sam and Deans names, which he hoped went unnoticed by you.

You took a deep breath as you turned to walk back into the living room “Sam and Dean are finishing up a case a couple towns over, they should be back later tonight” Cas nodded, though unseen by you, as he followed you. The sound of thunder echoing through the bunker again.

As you entered the main room Castiel looked around the bunker at the various decorations “Ah, yes, Halloween is soon isn’t it?”

You looked back at him, seeing him checking out the decoration “Yup” you watched him for a moment before turning away from him, having realized you were staring.

You and Castiel had known each other for a few years now, only having grown close in the recent year. You had developed feelings for him, and sometimes you thought he might have for you, but other times he seemed indifferent.

“Have you ever celebrated?” you asked him

“No, but I have observed various cultures interpretation of the Holiday over the last few hundred years” he commented, as if it was the most normal thing to do.

You smiled “Sounds interesting, I’m sure you’d seen a lot of unique things over the years”

You fell into a casual conversation with Castiel as he talked about various Halloween traditions he has seen. The storm raging on outside was now pushed to the back of your mind. But as the wind grew much stronger, the trees closer to the bunker began swaying forcefully, the branches smacking into the windows.

As you tried to ignore it by talking with Cas, there was a sudden crashing down as glass crashed to the floor. You and Cas both jumped in surprise at the sound. Quickly running towards the sound and looking up, you see that a tree branch smacked into one of the old windows upstairs hard enough to break it.

“Shit!” you yelled as you ran towards the storage room, Castiel following.

He watched as you pulled an old tarp from the shelf as well as some duct tape, before running past him. Running up the stairs and towards the window, seeing that the broken glass was higher up you cursed under your breath as the rain spattered in through the window. Turning at a clanging sound, you see Castiel approaching with two chairs. Setting them down, you both climbed up on the chairs, hanging the tarp and taping it to the walls.

Finally managing to do so, even with the tarp flapping in the wind, you and Cas both stepped down from the chair. Looking at each other, you chuckled realizing you were both now soaked from the rain. Cas smiled at your amusement, watching as you looked back up at the window “Dean’s gonna be pissed”

Cas looked at the window as well “At least he can’t blame you”

You nodded in agreement before turning towards him again, hesitating as you saw Castiel reaching towards you, gently he touched the side of your face, before pulling away a small leaf that must have blown in with the rain “Oh, thanks” ignoring the burning you felt on your face from the interaction you cleared your throat before turning away “Let me get you some dry clothes” Castiel smiled lightly as he watched you rush away, knowing full well what he just did, and seeing how it affected you.

Now sitting in the main room of the bunker in dry clothes, Castiel took a sip of the cocoa you had made him “Thank you for the hot chocolate”

You smiled at him, sitting down next to him, now in your own comfy clothes “You’re welcome” as an echoing boom of thunder rang out, you looked up towards the sound before sighing “As much as I love rain, I wish this storm would pass already”

Cas nodded, also looking up “The thunder is less consistent now, I believe it is beginning to pass”

Taking a sip of your cocoa, you considered something before looking at Cas, who was already looking at you. Though slightly surprised by that, you continued with your though “Would, uh, would you like to celebrate Halloween with us this year?” you asked somewhat shyly.

Cas smiled at the invitation “I would be honored”

You smiled at his choice of words “We are planning a Halloween movie marathon, complete with a sickening amount of candy”

“Then it will be a new experience to add to my list”

“Good” you smiled at him before looking down into your cocoa “Oh, I was wondering Cas, you never said what you actually came her for tonight” looking up you met his eyes, which held an unusual emotion behind them.

He seemed to hesitate for a second, clearing his throat and looking away, suddenly becoming nervous “What is it Cas?”

Thinking for a second, he met your eyes again “I, already knew Sam and Dean were on a case” seeing your quizzical look he continued “And, I knew it was very stormy here tonight, and, I just, uh, I knew I would feel better knowing you weren’t left alone.”

As you watched him nervously explain his reasoning, a smile formed on your face “So you wanted to make sure I was okay?”

“Uh, yes” he looked up, and upon seeing the smile on your face, he seemed to relax “I know you can take care of yourself, but, I..worry, about you”

“That’s very sweet Cas. I’m glad you came. Thank you”

Your eyes met again, something seemed to click in both of you, as you understood where each of you stood. The tension growing between your gazes was broken when the front door to the bunker swung open, causing both you and Cas to jump in surprise.

“Damn storm!” you heard Dean yell out as he and Sam rushed into the bunker, now wet from the rain.

As Sam and Dean entered they saw you and Cas resting on the couch “Well don’t you two look comfy” Dean commented as he walked past,

Sam smirking at his annoyed brother. “You guys alright?” you asked.

“I’m fine, but, uh, a tree branch fell and smashed the back window of the impala” he commented.

“Oh. Well. Then he certainly isn’t going to be happy about the window here” you commented, looking over at Cas.

“What window?”

Suddenly from the other side of the bunker Deans voice echoed “Aw, what the hell man!”

“Same thing happened upstairs” you said to Sam who just sighed out as he turned and walked towards Deans curses.

Turning you looked at Cas who was smiling fondly at you “Told you he’d be pissed.”

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

Not sure if I like this one or not but whatever lol, hope you guys do.

If you’d like to be added to a taglist, let me know! :)

Please consider reblogging~ :) Comments and Likes are highly appreciated as well!~~

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chaoticspacefam · 3 years

Text

OC Music Meme

I was tagged by @raven-of-domain-kwaad , thank you! :D I shall tag (no pressure as always, only if you want to!): @mercurypilgrim , @mimabeann, @rainofaugustsith , @thelastenvoyyy , @a-master-procrastinator and anyone else who wants to do this one, yes, I promise I mean you!

Yaaay another music meme, I LOVE these, as any of my long-term followers/mutuals probably know :P Oh no, Raven what have you done! 🤣🤣

List one or more songs that relate to the following

*drags Rai and her three consecutive playlists full of songs in here and plops her down proudly* Now I’m not joking when I say combined her three playlists would run for ~10 hrs if I played them all back-to-back. Sooooo for that reason I will be trying to restrict myself to 3-4 songs per “question”, except for the last one which is annotated with an explanation there, ANYWAYS!

reminds you of them most:

Down To The Bottom - Dorothy :: This is a very new one to her playlist (discovered a few days ago), but it still vibes so well with Saarai’s attitude to love, and her need to have some sort of emotional closeness to other people, to love and be loved, or else she just doesn’t function quite right

Up The Wolves - The Mountain Goats :: This was one of Rai’s first EVER theme songs that made it onto her list as I gave the Ahaszaai the backstory that led to them becoming main characters, so it feels only right that I include it here. To me it perfectly sums up her character progression, from a frightened young woman with a lot of skeletons in her closet and no willingness to be a commander of anything or confidence that she could, to a strong and dedicated leader willing to do whatever it takes to protect the people she works with, and make sure that the person who once took it from her family will suffer the righteous justice he deserves for his actions. Oddly enough, Saarai never goes back to take over the Sith Empire as D’leah planned (in Subterfugeverse anyways), they do eventually “come home” and build something of their own with the other members of the Alliance <3

Bruno Is Orange - Hop Along :: This song is very important too. It makes me feel a lot of things and as I developed more of Saarai’s backstory and began tying everything together, it became an essential part of her backstory. This is 100% a “Saarai Song” in my brain (and I’ve had the script for that meme planned out for over a year, I’ll get to it soon :3), summing up the chaos and her own feelings on what happened with Tsâhis (and her mother and sister’s reactions to finding out about what happened, and Ty, the baby which resulted from that clusterfuck of a relationship)

Someone New - Hozier :: Kinda supplements “Down To The Bottom”, Saarai was a character who puzzled me sexuality-wise for a long time, she has a lot to unpack and a lot of nuances in her attractions, and for a long time (because it is the default for modern media) I tried to shove her in the monogamy box, except...that doesn’t work for Saarai LMAO. I remembered this song existed one day (I think it came up on Youtube shuffle or something) and it was the lightbulb that went on in my head that finally clicked and told me she was actually polyam as well (though ironically I forgot to actually put it in her playlist until @darth-bagel reminded me it existed again a few months ago LOL).

reminds another character of them:

All The Pretty Girls - KALEO :: (Sash - Zephyrverse AU) This one had a few options too, but I think this is the best song that Sash would associate with Saarai. Their relationship was slow burn, although there was near-immediate attraction there, Sash struggled with self-doubt and her own insecurities for a long time, firmly believing that Saarai would get bored of waiting for her to be “ready” to take things further and explore other options (she didn’t. They’ve been married something like 20+, nearing 30 years now, you’re stuck with her sweetie <3)

The Last of the Real Ones - Fall Out Boy :: (Lana - Subterfugeverse) “I know this whole damn city thinks it needs you, but not as much as I do.” Lana wasn’t looking for Saarai when she found her, but Lana wouldn’t have it any other way. Though Lana is a big pillar of support for Saarai, and Saarai in turn is the social “glue” that holds the Alliance together, what many people don’t realise is that the feeling is mutual and Lana relies upon her just as much. Saarai’s dependable, and trustworthy, even if sometimes she makes Lana want to roll her eyes into the ceiling because of her antics, she wouldn’t want to change her for anything, it’s that part of Saarai that she secretly loves the most because it reminds Lana that it’s okay to unwind and have fun or be silly every once in a while, especially with the people you love.

Shut Up And Dance - WALK THE MOON :: (Koth - Subterfugeverse) Koth’s relationship with Saarai took a lot longer to develop into something openly romantic because Saarai had a lot of stuff to work through before she could accept her own feelings for him, but the cantina party at the end of KOTFE was the moment that Koth realised she was comfortable with him, because it’s the first time she really opened up to him, the first time she asked him to do anything together, and the first time she didn’t flinch or jump away from him when he touched her.

reminds you of a relationship of theirs, doesn’t have to be romantic, can be paternal, friendly etc.: I’m taking that as an invitiation to do a song for each of the main ones of any kind and that means this one has like six songs because...Saarai has a lot of influencial relationships in her character arc, I’m sorry (but not really) :’)

Broken Crown - Mumford & Sons :: Saarai & D’leah (Familial, It’s Complicated). This one is probably gonna be the “controversial” song of this post but you know what I’m gonna do it anyway. Saarai and D’leah have a very complicated relationship, because on the one hand Saarai does love her mother very much in spite of the horrible things she said and did, and on the other...the last thing that she wants is to turn out like her. And sometimes, sometimes you gotta call your mom out on her toxic shit. Hey Brother - Aviici :: Saarai & Ni’kasi (Familial Love). “What if I lose it all? Oh sister, I will help you out. Oh, if the sky comes falling down, for you...there’s nothing in this world I wouldn’t do.” The “brother” part does not apply to the twins, gender-wise, but the essence of this song is undoubtedly Saarai & Ni’kasi’s relationship. When Saarai thought she had no-one else, Ni’kasi was there to pick up the pieces and get her back onto her feet. They’re ride or die till the very end, wherever Saarai leads, she knows Ni’kasi will follow her.

Son of A Gun - Lord Huron :: Saarai & Tsâhis (Romantic ”Love”, though I’mma be very clear here that he was a manipulative abusive asshole, but Saarai loved him so...quotation marks. Y’get it yeah? Good.) “Well she fell in love with that son of a gun, but he was not the man that she took him for.” This line in particular sums it up. Saarai was young, naive and a perfect target for someone like Tsâhis to take advantage of because she didn’t know any better and believed him when he said he “loved her”, only for him to pull the rug out from under her feet later on. (he got his tho, don’t worry 😈)

Youth - Glass Animals :: Saarai & Tyûk (Maternal Love). This is the closest I can find to a song that sums up their relationship, I have a lot of thoughts about it but there are very few songs (that I’ve found) that touch upon the essence of Saarai & Ty’s relationship. D’leah chose to blame Ty for his father’s actions, Saarai chose the opposite. She chose to love him in spite of what his father had done to her, and to make sure he grew up feeling safe, loved, and learnt to be better than that.

Curses - The Crane Wives :: Saarai/Sash (Romantic Love) Both Saarai and Sash have had difficult pasts, with a lot of emotional trauma, and they both had hurdles they had to overcome in order for their relationship to truly work and stay healthy. But with each others’ support, they’ve managed it and are all the closer for it. If you asked either of them where “home” was, they’d say the other’s name.

Sorry I Stole Your Girlfriend - Stereo Skyline :: Saarai/Lana/Koth (Romantic Love). Okay, I really really wanted to pick a more serious song from their playlist for them, BUT....this song is the song that started this ship in my brain so here we are. LMAO Originally, this popped into my brain as an idea of Saarai’s response to Koth’s attempt at getting between them in that scene of KOTFE on the Gravestone. Koth and Saarai’s moral compasses are very similar and I wanted them to sit down and have a proper, healthy discussion about their feelings instead of becoming enemies and sort of agreeing not to hold a grudge against each other, though I didn’t expect for that piece to get away from me and for Saarai to end up developing feelings for Koth too, I can’t say I’m unhappy with it. I love them and I will fight anyone who tells me I can’t make them an OT3, I can, I will, and I have. >:) (Healthy Polyam Good, Love Triangles Are Fucking Stupid (tm). No I am not taking criticism on this lmao) Though Saarai & Koth’s relationship isn’t sexual in any way, they love each other just as much as they love Lana, just express it differently. So even though the snideness of this song doesn’t really apply to them, I kept it in their playlist and it also became their ship name because it was too good to pass up, though “Stole” is in inverted commas as it’s definitely more of an inside joke between the three of them than actually seriously accusing them of stealing each others’ girlfriend. 🤣 (as always, Saarai & Koth thinks it’s hilarious, Lana rolls her eyes at the stupid pun but also secretly thinks it’s funny as hell)

#swtor #star wars: the old republic #swtor OCs #tagged meme #OC music meme #swtor oc: saarai ahaszaai #sith pureblood #the outlander #LS! eternal empress #subterfugeverse #ot3: sorry i ''stole'' your girlfriend #saarai/lana/koth #saarai x tsâhis #zephyrverse au #saarai/sash #the ahaszaai twins #the sith twins #yes i have written down a lot of stuff regarding the ot3's relationship and how it developed etc #one day i will throw them out into the world when i feel like they're ready #but they're not ready yet so sorry y'all you gotta wait #but trust me when i say this is very elaborately planned out #LMAO #[banging pots and pans] they're. poly. and. in. love. fucking. deal. with. it. or. leave #my ships my rules #complicated mother daughter relationships are complicated #projection? i don't know her #no sir #tw: manipulation #tw: abusive relationship

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sparklyicecube · 5 years

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Nap of a star theories - Hueningkai edition

So, apart from Yeonjun, Hueningkai has the most meta to unpack, let’s do this.

First:

He is the only one who seems to purposefully look at the camera, at us. Self-awareness perhaps? Or maybe he just knows much more than the others in general, not necessarily breaking the fourth wall.

His wings are the biggest and most obvious things at the moment, so to that it is!

They are very much mechanical, throughout the MV there is a constant theme of mechanisms, clockwork, gears and those sort of things. Hueningkai’s wings however seem very purposeful, like they’ve been built, they don’t even look like they can actually fly. Few theories:

- He is a fallen angel

So I sorta like this theory, either he’s been banished to be like this or he wanted to try to get back up there so he built these wings himself. But who is the ‘god’? The star? They did make a promise to the star that seemed to be directly related to it dying so maybe he knows who is behind the star and that’s how he got these wings.

- Another theory is that he is dead

Technically both theories could work at the same time, but could the star have sent him down here specifically to get all of them back together? After all, he seems to know the most, be the most composed, and is the one who helped Yeonjun in tough times.

Let’s have a closer look:

He is specifically wearing them. It is so obvious, and like I said, there are no coincidences in bighit. He can take them off if he wants, so why haven’t he? Everything seems to be mechanical whereas everyone else’s, even though Taehyun’s eye has remnants of clockwork (I’ll get into that in another post), Everyone’s are blantantly supposed to be biological, a curse that at least Beomgyu and Yeonjun seem to despise. Hueningkai though? My main theory about this is that he made these for himself to fit in.

Why does Yeonjun hate his horns? Because he fears that he is a monster, different, that he can’t fit in with anyone else anymore. That’s the reason why all of them are here in the forest even though all of them have been in society at some point (they have clothes ok) so why would Hueningkai want to give himself something which is considered different? He doesn’t want to fit in with everyone else, he wants to fit in with who he believes is his family, his friends. It doesn’t matter what everyone else thinks if he doesn’t fit in with his friends.

Even more than that- I can relate it to real life

Hueningkai is part caucasian, he isn’t fully Korean. For anyone else, you won’t be as discriminated! You can get jobs overseas and some jobs will favor you over others! He could’ve gotten a career elsewhere but he is so proud of his Korean heritage, and his friends, Tomorrow By Together, are all Korean. This is a ‘disability’ for so many people, both in the real world and obviously in the Nap of A Star MV but unlike his friends who try to get rid of it, Hueningkai makes himself his own ‘disability’ to fit in with his friends, because those are the people who matter, not society.

Going onto his suroundings

There is a gate, a very human structure in the middle of a forest. It seems to be abandoned, y’know, cobwebs and stuff but still very much an old house-in-the-woods material, haunted house much? How did he find this place?

He seems to either be sitting on a pedestal for a statue, a fountain, a bird feeder or... I have not much idea. It fits into what a old rich house would have in the garden, but it is bright gold! And he is also sitting on it very nicely! Did he stumble upon it? I think someone put him here, this place looks vaguely kept for, and the bird feeder-thingy seems to be shining very brightly.

There are other stars, normal looking ones I might add. Are all of them mechanical?? This gives me the question of whether they are in the same world or is Hueningkai in another world????

NO. I went a bit far but there do seem to be a deer, bats, and other animals we see in Soobin’s ‘prairie’. But the stars and the star does scream to me that they aren’t in our world. I have another rant prepared for the star tho, so more on that in another time.

Then there’s a rando skeleton and tomb in the corner. They seem to be there everywhere, or at least the skeleton. Yeonjun f**king lights a skull on fire with no hesitation or disgust so that apparently isn’t too much of a squeamish thing in their world? The fact that the skeleton has a legit grave unlike literally everywhere in the entire MV.

This tomb probably holds the remains of the owner of this place, or someone connected to this place, the skeleton next to it maybe was protecting the grave, or had nobody left to bury them and died next to their loved one. The fact that there are so many skeletons in the first place makes me think that a war happened maybe? I’ll ponder a bit on that and get back to it. I mean, or Hueningkai is actually one of those two deceased people, either the skeleton or the grave and that’s why he is right next to a house (there’s a gate!) very nicely on a pedestal with only one skeleton in his shot along with a gate.

Everyone’s masks in the opening shots are made of carboard but Hueningkai (he has wings, bighit was deliberate about this) I honestly remember having play-wings like that when I was younger. These seem store-bought, from their handiwork of their masks we can see that they probably can’t make such thin, perfect wings like that. So maybe it’s reasonably that he may have come from a better off family? This is a big leap, but big theory here:

Hueningkai was part of a sorta eccentric rich family that had a mansion in the forest. Mayhaps they were connected somehow to the guy in the star (because you need someone to operate that star, it ain’t working on no one) but Hueningkai had an accident, or maybe he was sickly, he died. OR or better, there seems to be some sort of war, or maybe a plague, just something that left the society around them desolate and... dead. His parents sent him and a caretaker to a masion in the woods to protect him... it didn’t work. His caretaker died next to his grave with no one to bury him. But the guy in the star, who seems to have power over a lot of things, brought him back. From that scene we see in the MV, maybe he had seen his friends from such a high vantage point in the star, he knows where they are and how they are so he makes wings for himself so that he can fit in with them, since they are obviously his main point of being at the moment. He rounds up the rest of TXT and they all help Yeonjun. Afterwards, the star is happy, because they fulfilled their promise, because Hueningkai is happy, because he now his chosen ones can do his bidding? (Idk what the starguy’s gender is so...)

This is all a huge strech and just literal theories but if I was the story writer, this would probably be the story I’d have been trying to tell so...

Next up- EXAMS! Yeah I have exams soon so I’ll try to post the last few but eh

#TXT #tomorrow by together #tomorrow x together #beomgyu #soobin #yeonjun #hueningkai #Taehyun #sparklyicecube rants about txt

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mutantsrisingrpg · 5 years

Photo

Congratulations ADDISON! You’ve been accepted as EPIMETHEUS with a FC change to JOEL KINNAMAN.

When writing Tierney’s skeleton, I tried to hint at how his emotions are something that can rule him - and you picked up on that right away. In fact, you picked up on it, wrapped it, and delivered it to us with a backstory that tore at my heart as the bow. ‘Had he always been a mutant?’ God, the way his power was discovered hit me in the face and I loved it. The theme of taking care of his family is one that I’m excited to see translate to the Blackburn Syndicate. I can’t wait to see Tierney flex his big dumbass energy on the dash!

Welcome to Mutants Rising! Please read the checklist and submit your account within 24 hours.

Out of Character Information:

NAME/ALIAS: addison/hellsign

PRONOUNS: she/her/hers.

AGE: 20

TIMEZONE & ACTIVITY LEVEL: EST, uhhhh activity level….6

In Character Information:

DESIRED ROLE: Tierney Sinclair, FC: Joel Kinnaman

GENDER/PRONOUNS: Cismale, he/him/his

DETAILS & ANALYSIS:

To sum him up, BDG - big dumbass energy. But anyway:

Tierney (Irish): lord’ or ‘master

With names like these, at age 40, why the hell was he just a hitman, a tool for other people to use? Like every man when close to power, he should want that power, right? With Tierney, I think that was the last thing he wanted. Let me explain.

The only time he ever came close to being a “lord” or a “master” was taking care of his brothers growing up. Not that he would ever demanded them to call him that, it wasn’t some kind of title he would’ve liked to keep since it never felt like he ruled over them. Power equated to responsibility and he was a boy forced to become a man. He does not trust himself with power, he doesn’t know what he’ll do with it. Being a hitman is simple. He can clearly see the line between success and failure and he knows what it takes to achieve both. That’s where he gets his comfort. Some people may perceive this as laziness. But Tierney had been alive for 40 long years now. It was about time things became easy.

Epimetheus (Greek): afterthinker, hindsight, foolish Sinclair (Scottish): pure, renowned, illustrious

“red eyes” “always with malice” “burn of whiskey” “rusty pipe…whole world a show”

Why was he so EMOTIONAL??? Perhaps, he was a fool because he was ruled by anger. I thought I had more thoughts than just this, but yeah, he’s just an emotional man showing signs of intermittent explosive disorder.

BIO:

TW: murder/death

Dallon Sinclair was a good cop turned dirty. It was the sort of thing that happens when you knock up your mutant informant. Katelyn Monroe never wanted this baby, but she wasn’t about to die getting rid of it either. At one point, what they had between them was love. This was that one point.

Regardless of the gun pointing to his head, Dallon sworn to protect Katelyn and his unborn child. But his tenure in the depths of the underworld didn’t last very long. After a close shoot-out, Dallon came home and begged Katelyn, please, let me marry you, let us get out of here. Her boss didn’t like that very much.

When Tierney first opened his eyes, the world was a bright flashlight. He was born in the back of a car, seats pushed down with sheets thrown on haphazardly. A night in July, new moon in the sky enveloping the world in darkness. Nothing spectacular about it. Later on, his mother would tell him the story of a car chase, screeching wheels, leaving flames in their wake. He would never remember it.

Here was what he knew: his father was a paranoid old fuck; his mother was a fleeting apparition; his brothers were the only ones worth anything. He would die for them. Really un-fucking-fortunate that he wound up killing for them instead.

Katelyn Monroe came back into their lives like a raging hurricane.

Look, Tierney was only a Sinclair through blood, never by meaning. All that fucking purity shit that was supposed to come with it, circumstance never allowed it. They lived on the outskirts of Chicago’s underbelly and he dove right in to provide for his brothers whenever his father would swan dive back into his own darkness. Fucking faster than going to college somewhere and getting a good job. Tierney fought for money. He scammed for money. He robbed for money. He had a damn line. But somehow, holding Keaton and Charlie in his arms, he couldn’t remember why he had it in the first place. She wasn’t going to take from them anymore.

Katelyn Monroe lied motionless, blood soaking the wood under her. Dallon Sinclair hung like an ornament, his head secured in the wall. The floating glass didn’t fall until Tierney collapsed to his knees.

That was the first time Tierney was aware of his powers. The second was later that night, floating his parents’ bodies into the graves hastily dug under the new moon. Now that he was a mutant (shit, had he always been a mutant?), more doors opened and more questions were asked. There were several syndicates for mutants in Chicago, but Blackburn caught his eye. Protection. And fuck, Tierney knew enough to know that he’d be way over his head to think he could do this on his own now (shit, had he always been a mutant?). Using his connections from the neighborhood fighting ring, he got some names and a way in. And the rest was history.

EXPANDED CONNECTIONS:

Okay, for CIARA SAWYER, I first noticed how young they were which gave me some pseudo-sibling vibes. They’re around his brothers’ age so I totally see Tierney taking them under his wing when they were younger. To Ciara, Tierney is why they still have a job within and outside of the syndicate. The two already work well together, but I think Tierney would’ve sought Ciara out even if they didn’t and make sure they learn how, projecting onto Ciara to cope with his failed relationships with his brothers. Ciara’s power is invisibility, but I also think personality-wise, they prefer to be unknown, or at least, try to be unknownable (“[Tierney doesn’t] ask too many prying questions” —so they prefer him). For whatever reason, they trust Tierney to see them and that means more to Tierney than he’ll ever say.

As for GERRARD BERMUDEZ!!!!!

“They have moral differences that clearly set them apart, but the similarities that they share are what makes Tierney hate them the most… What bothers them is how they notice the barely contained anger sitting behind their eyes because they’ve seen it too many times in their own mirror.”

DIFFERENCES:

Gerrard Bermudez: Jem Family, goals of a Mutant Supremacy.

They don’t kill/torture though.

Scare-tactic, bruiser

Doubles as a bodyguard when unassigned to a mission.

Hyperion - “God of Watchfulness, Wisdom and the Light”

1. One of the titan children that overthrew their father 2. Profitor on Cornerstone Convenience 3. No rules

Tierney Sinclair: Blackburn Syndicate, with a focus on being a safe haven, not necessarily political

Hitman - kills (+ malice = murder)

Epimetheus - “afterthinker, hindsight, foolish”

1. No positive trait for humans

I think it’s kind of ironic that despite being in different groups with very different goals, they are more closely aligned with each other’s organization.

The Blackburn Syndicate, for the past 17 (excuse me, SEVENTEEN) years, has been trying to shed its reputation as a crime-ridden mob. Here’s the thing though. Tierney is a hitman, he kills people but oh it’s okay because he’s one of the good guys. His anger feeds into a motive of justice. Gerrard is all bark and no bite, hiding under the Jem Family because of fear. Their anger is selfish and unproductive. Chaotic for the sake of chaos. That’s what Tierney believes anyway. To him, Gerrard is a victim that wants to be a school bully. Seeking revenge instead of avenging. In his post, his history with Gerrard “has long been forgotten.“ With Gerrard, their history is constantly brought up with snide remarks and an upturned nose. Tierney lies to himself because how can their history be forgotten when he can always feel it looming over him every time he’s in the same room with Gerrard? I think whatever happened between them solidified their morals and had them join different organizations with different goals. And it eats at Tierney to be so close to Gerrard—thanks to the treaty—but yet, they’re still lost to him. (This may change since I’m coming at this with the headcanon that the two were friends… not to god-mod Gerrard or anything). So really this hatred stems from heartbreak. (Tierney is a Cancer, of course).

AND LIKE… NOT TO GOD-MOD GERRARD OR ANYTHING, but if I were to hate Tierney, it’d be because of his hypocrisy and self-delusion. It’s like… what you do is bad but when I do it, it’s okay because I’m better than you. Which, bullshit. So I’m really interested to explore that.

EXTRA:

Honestly, the idea of Tierney having brothers stems from me thinking all white men look the same. I see one picture of Joel Kinnaman and I’m like is this Luke Mitchell?? Anyway, CHARLIE - Luke Mitchell, KEATON - Ross Lynch.

Okay, let me just get my family headcanons out of the way first.

Tierney’s oldest memory was of his little brother. He was six years old, eyes wide with wonder, with his hands reaching out for the warmth of his brother. They weren’t in a car this time. The Sinclairs finally had a house with a dining table, though the sheets might have been the same. Tierney wasn’t the first one to hold Charlie in his arms, but he was the first Sinclair to do so.

Tierney had his father, but Charlie had Tierney. And with those six years between them, Tierney always felt like Charlie was his.

Charlie, when he was younger, couldn’t pronounce Tierney so he called him Ernie.

Tierney used to walk Charlie home from school. Waited outside and everything because he got out earlier.

Being six years apart, they were never in school together so he had to teach Charlie how to fight so people wouldn’t mess with him.

Charlie never did like fighting though. And Tierney wasn’t above picking on kids so they’d leave his brother alone.

That was how he got a rep as a bully.

But if he liked you, he’d protect you too.

He got higher grades on the homework he did with Charlie because Charlie would ask him to explain everything and make him think through shit.

But usually he would do them during homeroom on the days they were due.

Tierney THINKS his powers activated on that fateful day, but really he’s had them this whole time and never fucking noticed.

It’s not that he’s good at finding things. He just subconsciously moves them closer.

He was able to hold Charlie because of his telekinesis. Charlie didn’t float because Tierney wanted to hold him in his arms.

At Fight Club, he expected to win with his punches and kicks, so he did.

Tierney had his fists locked by his side, but his mom flew out the door because he wanted it more.

He couldn’t join the Jem family because his father wasn’t a mutant and he had loved Katelyn, who was, and protected his family, who were. He couldn’t join the Jem family because his mother was a mutant and she hurt them more than anybody else.

Remember how I said that his connection with Ciara was to make up for his failed relationships with his brothers?

Charlie had a fiancé who was actually working for a small org that wanted to test mutation implementation (and Charlie were to be one of their victims). Tierney found out and mentally manipulated him to feel sick and disgust whenever he was with Charlie so they’d break up. Charlie found out that Tierney did that (but not the reason why).

Keaton never felt close to Tierney (mostly because of the age gap) and growing up, Tierney was mostly away working for the syndicate (not that Keaton knew that). Also, Charlie told him what happened and honestly fuck Tierney.

Tierney’s favorite color is yellow.

He never falls first, but he falls the hardest.

I mostly listened to THIS while writing this app. To me, it represents Tierney’s softness but also his desire to keep everybody at far more than arms’ length.

ANYTHING ELSE:

ok i was never into mob/mafia rpgs but i’m so FASCINATED by the premise of mutantsrising anyway anyway i’m super pumped for it. i would apologize for sending in like 2k of analysis but i know yall live for this soooo YOURE WELCOME i hope i did well and this MAKES SENSE I’VE NEVER CONNECTED SO HARD WITH AN OLD MAN

#accepted #accepted: epimetheus

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yanderes-galore · 5 months

Note

I don’t know if someone already requested it, but can you do a concept with Dust Sans where the darling are trying to survive against him?

Yeah, I can try. I'm not used to Undertale AUs but I'll try. I only really know DustTale from a fangame I saw so if anything is off, that's why. I tried to do my research and keep the personality still both Sans and Murder! Sans. I don't wish to offend the creator so I tried my best here. I hope you all like it nonetheless. I doubt the original author will see this but if they want me to take this down I can, just ask, I wish to respect them. This is just for fun.

Yandere! Murder Sans with Darling trying survive against him

Pairing: Romantic/Platonic

Possible Trigger Warnings: Gender-Neutral Darling, Hunting, Guilt, Death/Murder, Delusional behavior, Horror themes, Actually is a bit sad, Angst, Dubious relationship (as in, it's not even focused half the time).

As I wish to respect the author, I will try to keep Dust/Murder Sans as in character as possible.

Those who know the AU, even if I don't know all of it, know that this version of Sans is insane due to all the murder he had to do.

Sans’ goal is to kill all the monsters before Chara/The Human does.

Even his own brother, who he then hallucinates.

The most in character way to write something like this to me is this;

You are someone close to Sans before all the genocide routes.

He cared about you once… before all of this.

Then he saw you die… so many times.

It hurt… it all hurt.

I feel even if you were close he'd still end up chasing you down.

After all, DustTale appears to be a race to see who's stronger; The Human or Sans.

He wants to break this cycle.

Do the others even matter if they don't remember the resets?

I feel with this version of Sans there's a good chance you'd die.

By his hands… maybe as some sort of mercy killing.

Sans probably doesn't want to kill you, similar to how he felt when having to kill his own brother.

Yet as he falls into insanity… he feels it doesn't matter.

In reality, isn't he making sure you don't suffer?

You'll either die by the human once again… or him.

He'll make it quick for you.

In Sans' mind he feels this is for your own good.

You no doubt don't agree due to the fact you don't remember resets.

All you know is the skeleton you used to care about looks and acts different… and wants to kill you.

So now you're running through an abandoned Underground, trying to hide and/or escape from your old friend.

Sans' main goal is to defeat The Human.

However, I HC that he hesitates at some points right up until he loses his sanity.

Even during his insanity there may be moments of clarity where Sans recalls memories of you two together.

Maybe friends in one route, something closer another, but never really enemies…

Until now.

Some monsters have evacuated, some have been killed.

While running you may have even seen Sans kill some monsters.

The sight chills you.

Many know of Sans' killing spree, plus you fear you may not last through it.

Your fate, as it is in every route, is already sealed.

You can try your best to survive but you can only go on for so long.

You can try to hide, you can try to run…

Sans may just find you if The Human doesn't.

Part of him feels bad, part of him wishes there was a chance to spare you.

There isn't… not until he has The Human dead.

After resetting the timeline you two can be happy.

He's given up everything to defeat The Human, he's seen you and his loved ones die too many times.

You may not understand it… but he's doing this for the both of you.

Once he wins, you can be happy in a new reset.

Hopefully… the last one.

But in order to have that happen… he needs to have your power.

Surely you won't blame him in the end.

Perhaps you both know that deep down it's inevitable.

At some point, through Snowdin, Waterfall, Hotland, and that dreaded corridor… one of those places will be your final resting place.

If only you knew how much this hurt him.

If only you remembered all those memories you once had together.

Unfortunately, you don't, which makes things somewhat easier.

He keeps telling himself that this is for the better.

You can help him take down The Human.

He pushes that thought in his head when he corners you.

You plead to him, he tries to ignore it.

It feels horrible… But there's no chance for mercy.

He promises to you that he'll make everything better… that he'll fix things…

Right as he summons a bone through you.

While you wither away into dust, he promises himself he'll fix things for you.

After all, he already feels stronger!

He'll just… make it count.

If this doesn't work… he'll try again.

He promises he does this because he cares…

He's just lucky you won't remember this, you'll just see him as Sans in another route.

He hopes that's true for you.

He hopes this fixes things

He wants to be happy with you…

Which means he'll keep doing this, even if it means killing you, to obtain that happy ending.

Even if it's futile in the end….

#yandere undertale au #yandere dusttale #yandere murder sans #yandere dust sans #not your traditional yandere if that was what you were thinking #mostly just horror

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iamjjmmma · 5 years

Text

Sans’ Death in Handplates: WHO (I mean what) DUNNIT? (Featuring a Little Bit of Orthopedics

(Handplates is by @zarla-s)

Note: I am not trying to be morbid. I am not trying to be creepy. I’ve been studying medicine lately, and I've been reading up on diagnosing other people. I just thought it would be a fun thing to do and a great opportunity to teach others a little about medicine. Note that just like "Misery" itself, this does contain serious themes that may bring up trauma for some people, so if you do not feel comfortable with this, please hit the back arrow now. Thank you.)

In Tumblr user and artist zarla-s' comic "Misery", Sans dies of an unknown illness and Papyrus attempts to move on. Zarla has also mentioned that this comic was a "barely disguised vent [series] about death", making it a series entailing high personal expression. It's all beautifully sad, but there's just one problem...the illness is unknown.

So I, DETECTIVE PIKACHU, ask you to join me on the hunt to find this illness.

The good news is that Sans is a skeleton. This rules out all illnesses with other body systems, narrowing it down to a nice few hundred or so. (Don't worry! We'll only go through the more well-known ones.)

I’ve chosen to lay out six culprits here:

-Arthritis

-Osteogenesis Imperfecta

-Osteoporosis

-Osteosarcoma

-Osteomyelitis

-Acute

-Chronic

-Paget's disease of bone

Because most of “Misery” happened ex post facto, we don't have the time or the interest to dive into much information about Sans' illness However, we do know a few things. This illness is:

-Fatal (uh, yeah)

-Chronic. Chronic illnesses are illnesses that last for months or years. This isn't a very sudden (acute) illness. If it was acute, it would likely result in Sans very quickly falling down and Papyrus having to take him to the hospital.

-Progressive, meaning it gets worse over time instead of better. No, it does not mean the average Tumblr user, although medical terminology can be very confusing (that was a joke hardy har har).

-Very hard to treat. Alphys said there was nothing she could do for him, at least at the stage the illness was detected. If the current most brilliant mind in the Underground cannot do anything for him, I doubt anyone can. (https://zarla-s.tumblr.com/post/143139923780/i-dont-have-a-caption-for-this-sorry)

-Very unnoticeable, or at least noticeable enough to hide from at least one person until the final stages.

In addition, we have to analyze Sans' demographics: Sans is male and approximately in his 20s.

So let's examine our first culprit: ARTHRITIS.

By far the most famous skeletal illness, arthritis involves the joints becoming inflamed. This results in them becoming reddened, painful, and swollen.

Arthritis is chronic, which fits one of the requirements. In addition, it is also particularly difficult to treat, with most treatments being attempts to increase quality of life without treating the overall condition.

Whether or not it can be hidden from others depends on pain tolerance and how severe the arthritis is. And while *some* cases of arthritis can be progressive, it differs from person to person.

But while arthritis can decrease quality of life tremendously, it is not fatal in the least. And while arthritis affects both men and women, it affects women more often than men. In addition, it famously affects older people, specifically those 60 and older. So Sans obviously does not fit in this demographic.

We can clearly see Sans does not have arthritis.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/arthritis/symptoms-causes/syc-20350772

https://www.emedicinehealth.com/ask_rheumatoid_arthritis_life_expectancy/article_em.htm

https://www.rheumatoidarthritis.org/ra/symptoms/progression/

-Arthritis

-Osteogenesis Imperfecta

-Osteoporosis

-Osteosarcoma

-Osteomyelitis

-Acute

-Chronic

-Paget's disease of bone

The second culprit is osteogenesis imperfecta.

Osteogenesis imperfecta, also known as brittle bone disease, is very straightforward. The individual is born with brittle bones that can break easily, and sometimes for no apparent reason. is very rare, but is still relatively well-known. (And what's very interesting is that individuals who have this tend to have blue sclera from the defective connective tissue that comes with osteogenesis imperfecta. But we all know Sans' eyes are blue for a different reason...)

Osteogenesis imperfecta is definitely chronic, so we can knock it off that list. It is also almost impossible to completely treat, with most treatments aiming at boosting bone strength rather than reversing the condition. And all ages and both genders seem to be affected by the disease equally

As with arthritis, whether or not the disease.is progressive differs from person to person.

But the only ways you can die from the disease are either respiratory complications in infancy and childhood or if complications arise from one of the factures, which both we'd definitely notice in the comic rather than Sans falling over on a hill (https://zarla-s.tumblr.com/post/141061451866/its-always-too-soon). In fact, the disease would be so noticeable that if Sans had this condition, we'd know from the first few pages.

So we can safely say Sans does not have this condition.

http://www.kjophthal.com/article.asp?issn=0976-6677;year=2017;volume=29;issue=3;spage=240;epage=243;aulast=Das

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/15807-osteogenesis-imperfecta

http://www.oif.org/site/PageNavigator/AOI_Facts.html

http://www.oif.org/site/PageServer?pagename=RES_Glossary

-Arthritis

-Osteogenesis Imperfecta

-Osteoporosis

-Osteosarcoma

-Osteomyelitis

-Acute

-Chronic

-Paget's disease of bone

Ah, yes. The third culprit. Osteoporosis.

Also relatively well-known and a meme (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3NUIrVivPhso). Osteoporosis mainly involves bones greatly reducing in density. This causes pain, stiffness, a remarkedly changed stature, and most importantly, a higher chance of fractures. (I have lots of relatives and their neighbors who have this, and most of the time, even my hugs are little more than glorified pats.) Things like playful punches, bumps into the corner of the table, and tripping and falling turn from annoying to dangerous and fatal, especially for a 20-something-year-old. In fact, there are theories that the reason why Sans has 1 HP is because he has osteoporosis (https://www.google.com/amp/s/aminoapps.com/c/undertale/amp/blog/why-sans-has-1-hp-can-bleed/YWjI_bu1GjaVaNqa0pQ61oLaD4GozkE), but this is only for the regular Undertale timeline. In Handplates, we all know that Sans has 1 HP because of the nature of Gaster's experiment.

Osteoporosis is definitely chronic and progressive.

As with osteogenesis imperfecta, the only way you can die from osteoporosis is from complications with a fracture. And while it is difficult to treat, it is not so impossible that the most brilliant mind in the Underground wouldn't be able to do anything about it. It would be easy to hide in the early stages, but as it advances, it would become harder and harder to hide, which is something Papyrus would notice for months.

So we can see that Sans does not have osteoporosis. Sorry, meme world!

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/11/151108084919.htm

-Arthritis

-Osteogenesis Imperfecta

-Osteoporosis

-Osteosarcoma

-Osteomyelitis

-Acute

-Chronic

-Paget's disease of bone

Osteosarcoma, the third "osteo-" on this list, is more commonly known as bone cancer.

Osteosarcoma is, without a doubt, chronic. And while survival rates continue to go up due to advancing technologies, it still sits at 30 to 80 percent (the chances are probably worse for Sans because of his HP), depending on how early the cancer is caught. And as a society, we all know that any cancer under a 100 percent survival rate is a cancer that needs, that asks to be beaten.

Is it noticeable? Can it be treated? Those can be answered with a big fat IT DEPENDS. If the cancer has affected an arm or a leg, it would be very noticeable, but a bone like the ribs, the clavicle (collarbone), or the scapula (shoulder blade), could be relatively easily hidden by, say, a few layers of clothing or a hood. And treatment depends on the cancer's stage, available technology, and the patients' needs and desires.

Since there is nothing about this that gives any indication that "no, Sans definitely does not have this", this looks like the most likely culprit so far. But just to make sure nothing else is a likely candidate, let's continue down the list.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/osteosarcoma/symptoms-causes/syc-20351052

https://www.stjude.org/disease/osteosarcoma.html

-Arthritis

-Osteogenesis Imperfecta

-Osteoporosis

-Osteosarcoma

-Osteomyelitis

-Acute

-Chronic

-Paget's disease of bone

Osteomyelitis is when a bone becomes infected. Symptoms include a fever, chills, nausea, and swelling and pain at the infection site. (It's something I use in my stories whenever I want Sans or Papyrus to be sick, wink wink.)

When untreated, it is progressive, but it is pretty difficult to ignore simply because of how painful and weakening it is.

It can be hidden from others at its earliest stages depending on where it is, but eventually Papyrus would definitely notice Sans' pernicious fever and chills, and would most likely carry him all the way to the hospital. Is it fatal? It can be, but not in most cases.

Treatments such as removal of the infected bone, antibiotics, and even draining the bone of the bacteria are available, making this the most treatable of all the conditions we have. In addition, osteomyelitis is definitely acute. It is possible to go home and look at your foot and go "oh crap, my bone's infected, guess I'll head over to the doctors, get treatment, and go back home and move on from this". Okay, maybe not like that. But you get the picture.

Yeah...Sans DEFINITELY doesn't have this.

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/178819.php

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/osteomyelitis/symptoms-causes/syc-20375913

-Arthritis

-Osteogenesis Imperfecta

-Osteoporosis

-Osteosarcoma

-Osteomyelitis

-Acute

-Chronic

-Paget's disease of bone

Paget's disease of bone is a disease that interferes with bone destruction and regrowth. Your bones don't normally just add on. Osteoblasts add new, stronger bone, while osteoclasts take away bone that is usually old and weak. However, in Paget's disease of bone, the osteoblasts are unusually active, which causes bones to become fragile and misshapen.

It is chronic, and slowly but surely progressive.

However, there is no way you can possibly die from Paget's disease of bone or even suffer ill health effects that spread beyond the affected bone. And while not easily treatable, it can most certainly be helped by medicine that helps to regulate bone growth. In addition, there is no way it can be not easily noticeable, as a hallmark of this disease is unusual changes in bone structure. Also, it normally affects men in their 40's or older, and we know for a fact that Sans is not forty.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/pagets-disease-of-bone/symptoms-causes/syc-20350811?utm_source=Google&utm_medium=abstract&utm_content=Pagets-disease-of-bone&utm_campaign=Knowledge-panel

https://www.medicinenet.com/pagets_disease/article.htm

So the culprit must be bone cancer. After further research, I discovered a likely offshoot of bone cancer called Ewing’s sarcoma.

Ewing’s sarcoma is a type of bone cancer that is almost eerily specific. It is almost exclusive to males around the age of 20, which is a good bet of what Sans is throughout “Misery”. Ewing’s sarcoma also has a grim life prognosis compared to other types of bone cancers. Normally, the survival rate is 80 percent if caught early, but for someone Sans' age, the life expectancy for Ewing’s sarcoma is a tragic 30 percent. And with someone with Sans’ condition, that percentage would most likely be much lower.

Again, it would be progressive, but easy for Sans to hide from Papyrus, at least in the early stages.

Now, there is one iffy part of Ewing's sarcoma; treatment. Despite it being a life-threatening disease, there are multiple effective treatments. This would include surgery, which is impossible if we're assuming Sans would have it where he could hide it, like his ribs or his clavicle.

For radiation therapy and chemotherapy, they are both effective treatments.

But put yourself in Sans' shoes for a moment. Think about it. Both chemotherapy and radiation therapy can and will give you side effects that will greatly decrease your quality of life. But most importantly, they would put Papyrus- the most important person in your life-through watching you go through them.

Alphys would then have to make the heartbreaking decision to send Sans home to die.

And that, my friends, is the crux of "Misery".

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/ewing-sarcoma/symptoms-causes/syc-20351071

#handplates #zarla-s #this is why i haven't been on here for awhile

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visitationrpg · 6 years

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Congratulations, DOROTHY! You have been accepted for the role of Marco Vasile. You have 24 HOURS to send in your account, and don’t forget to look over the CHECKLIST!

Note from Admin Maddie: So, Marco was definitely supposed to be my angst bomb skeleton, but your application really made me feel a lot. Your third headcanon destroyed me? I also loved seeing the origin of his love for film, how it directly relates to the loss he experienced. More than that, I can clearly see the layers you added to him, that he’s a lot more than just angst. His character came so alive in the questionnaire, and I can’t wait to see that on the dash.

Welcome to Visitation!

OUT OF CHARACTER:

NAME/ALIAS: Dorothy

PRONOUNS: She/Her

AGE: 23

TIMEZONE: EST

ANYTHING ELSE? (hi, if the adoption thing is a bit of a stretch, it can be adjusted. I just kind of liked the idea of Angel being the pillar of the family because of the fact that he was their ‘Angel’ or miracle child, and yeah okay)

IN CHARACTER:

WANTED SKELETON: Marco Vasile

GENDER & PRONOUNS: Male, He/Him pronouns

BIOGRAPHY: The story of your character. This section can be formatted however you’d like — bullet points, a full biography, an analysis of the character. There is no maximum amount, but we would like at least 400 words minimum in second or third person, just to get a real feel for the character you’ve created, and to know you have a good grasp from the skeleton!

You spend your days shooting, splicing, and stitching together endless hours of recorded footage, perfecting the visage of a seamless production, wishing for a moment that your life could be edited just the same. If you could just wipe the memory files from your childhood, omit the expressions from your parents faces as they stood over Angel’s casket, jump cut to your retirement, and roll the credits onto a blank screen, you would. But life is not a movie, no matter how hard you wish it could be. There’s no skipping straight to the end, no synopsis you can read that will sum everything up, no way to bypass the suffering through each and every painstaking moment until you reach the happily-ever-after. The finality of it all is something that you despise, hoping and praying nearly every day for your M. Night twist, a moment that seems to never come.

Life at home wasn’t like the coming-of-age movies you and your brother watched most nights when your parents left you alone with the babysitter. You weren’t shy, your brother loved you and treated you kindly, and your parents made an effort to appear interested in your life and aspirations, though you wouldn’t be quick to say they went above and beyond. They met later in life, right as your mother was developing an inability to conceive children. But they made it work, and nearly two years later your brother was born. The procedure was brutal, taking quite the toll on your mother, and your older brother Angel nearly died on the hospital table. He was too weak to breathe on his own, but after nearly three months in the NICU and several operations later, your parents finally had their own baby boy. For a few years they were content in their threesome, finding that raising a child this late in their lives was much harder than they’d imagined it to be, but content they were nonetheless. It was your father who suggested adoption after months of hearing your brother complain of boredom and loneliness, and your mother didn’t require much persuasion before she agreed. They’d always been humanitarians, hoping to change their world through their actions, trying daily to leave a positive impact on the world. And that’s where you came in, fitting precisely into their lives as one of their own.

You never felt out of place growing up, always made to be just another part of the family, always given the same amount of love as your brother was, and for this you were grateful. As you grew up, you looked forward to spending time with your family, as the four of you always made time to play games together or sit down and watch movies. It was through these weekly Friday movies that you began to develop a love for films, consuming nearly any movie you could get your hands to reach as your father’s DVD bookshelf stood from the floor to the ceiling (and he’d learned to keep the more adult movies juuuust out of your reach). Your brother had his sports and his music, neither of which you performed particularly well in, but films – the glazed look in your eyes as you’d pass by a video store, the giddy smile you’d wear as you unwrapped DVD cases on Christmas, the home movies you’d cut into nearly short length feature films – they were your escape. While your parents had wished for you to put your focus into your school work, they weren’t the type to discourage you or your brother from your passions, and even went as far as investing good money into a proper camera and editing software, something you never thanked them enough for as a child, but can’t find the strength to say something now.

Fate had always been a major theme in many of the films you watched, and you loved watching characters deal with unruly circumstances being thrown at them, watching them as they adapted, thanking God that nothing bad had ever happened to you like that. But fate had other plans, ones no one foresaw, not even the gang members who shot your brother by mistake as he walked home from school, a brand new movie in his bag waiting to be watched by the pair of you. Graduation was not even three weeks away when he died, his life all too quickly ripped out from under him like a tablecloth and your life shattered like glasses during a bad magic trick. The funeral was held days later, a closed casket ceremony, which took away your ability to say goodbye. Angel had always been there right next to you growing up, he’d been your rock and closest confidant, someone who taught you the ways of the world in ways your parents couldn’t, and his death tore you into pieces you’re not sure have been fully put back together.

Family dinners were never the same after that week. The silence that now filled the once noisy house was more deafening than you could’ve ever imagined, the stares of your parents nearly burnt a hole in your head as you kept it hung low at the table. They tried to speak to you, to level with you, and include you in their lives as best as they could while trying their best to mend their own hearts as well as yours. But nothing was ever the same, and you could tell that while they were speaking to you, they were wishing it were Angel. You found yourself uninterested in talking, finding that no one but Angel had ever truly listened to you in the first place, so why entertain everyone with pleasantries when you could just… not? Your parents hated it, you could tell, as they began to speak to you less and less as you finished high school, withdrawing yourself to the art room nearly every chance you got, it being your only place of solace besides your own room. And when you were accepted to film school, you left without even a second glance back. Angel had been on his way to Julliard studying music, and you knew that in order to give his life any sort of credit, following your own dream would be the only way.

You spent four long and tiresome years behind a camera, not allowing yourself to truly ever come from behind it, which led to quite the lonesome and quiet life, though you don’t mind. Your craft is your company, the one thing that can ever truly understand you, sometimes even better than you can understand yourself. Though graduate school was just the next step for you, it took some time for you to realize that in order to truly excell, you needed to network or get involved in a project, one that might open doors in the future. Visitation was just the thing you needed, and it came at just the right time. Though you’re not a firm believer in the paranormal, you can’t help but find yourself invigorated by a fresh curiosity, the subject matter keeping you alert and intrigued, which is refreshing after all these years. You’re not sure where the show is heading, but you’re going to go along for the ride as long as you can. After all, Youtube is becoming a great leeway for creative minds to have a platform, and you’ve never been one to turn down a good opportunity.

ANYTHING ELSE? This section is optional, but feel free to put any extra headcanons or writing/musing here!

His never mentioned it to anyone, but Marco can’t help but hope that he can someday make contact with his brother. While skeptical of the paranormal, something in the back of his mind constantly pulls him to these thoughts (the need for closure, the estranged feeling of guilt Marco carries even years after Angel’s death, and he does his best to rid himself of them by frequenting the off-campus bar.

Marco made it his mission after Angel’s death to watch a movie every day of the week, as in consume 365 separate movies every single day. He started with Angel’s favorites, one’s he’d dismissed when Angel was still alive, finding solace in them, before moving on.

He deleted his parents numbers from his phone when he graduated college, though he still has the number memorized by heart. Sometimes he gets calls from the area code from where he grew up and his heart skips a beat, hoping it isn’t the call he’s dreading the most, that one of them has passed. He’s not even sure if he’d go to their funeral, but at the end of the day, they were his parents, and as much as it pains him to admit it, they always will be.

QUESTIONNAIRE:

Please answer the following questions in character. Format for this section is, once again, up to you! Feel free to set the scene as if it were an interview and answer each question individually or perhaps write it as an internal monologue from the past; it’s your choice, just remember to keep it in third person, please! This section is just to get an idea of your character’s voice.

DO YOU BELIEVE IN THE PARANORMAL?

“I don’t prefer to commit myself to any one idea or way of thinking,” Marco answered honestly. It was rare for him to answer interview questions, but watching his other co-stars and crew members answer, he’d been rather intrigued on what they had to say and felt inclined to share as well. After all, he’d been labeled as “the brooding one” of the bunch, which hadn’t really bothered him, but he knew he could cut himself some slack and give the audience a bit of what they wanted from him. “That being said, I’m not opposed to the idea of paranormal entities or activity, but until I experience an event that can give me concrete proof of their existence, I can’t say yes or no.”

HAVE YOU EVER HAD A PARANORMAL ENCOUNTER?

He raised his eyebrows at this question, though it hadn’t truly struck any sort of chord within him. He wasn’t a good actor, trained behind the camera and not in front, so his ability to conceal his true emotions weren’t as atuned as other members of Visitation, which is why when Lillian sent a look his way he knew immediately to change his face. Letting out a soft laugh, Marco shook his head, but took a moment longer before answering. “Personally, no. All I’ve had to deal with are a few soundbites and thermal images, but nothing I’d consider and encounter.”

IF NO, WHY NOT?

This question puzzled him, and took him another moment to answer. “I’m not sure…” He said, though some may have mistaken his statement for a question, as he carried out the words to their end slowly, as if he was trying to deliberate something. It seemed the interviewer was waiting on the edge of his words for more, something to conclude his portion of the interview, but more words never came, and Marco’s eyes shifted from their gaze to the floor.

EXTRAS: N/A

#accepted #marco

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mostlysignssomeportents · 7 years

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Halloween Gift Guide

♬ Darkness falls across the land ♩ ♪ The midnight hour is close at hand.♫ ♩Creatures crawl in search of blood ♬ To terrorize y’all’s neighborhood ♫ And whosoever shall be found ♬ ♬ With the cash for getting down ♩ ♬Will enjoy our Halloween Gift Guide... ...And stay alive where others died

XENI

Skull Table Runner

A handsome 14x72" graphic banner that can be used for any number of pirate parties, Halloween hoedowns, or other dark festivities.

BUY

MARK

Halloween Cat Favor Boxes

For your favorite trick-or-treaters, fill these 3.25-inch cubes with high-quality confectionery treats.

BUY

ROB

Digital Halloween Decor

At the Boing Boing store, we're proud to offer these spooky holiday decorations. They go in your window, startling passers-by. Now you too can frighten the neighbors without all the legal complications that come from standing there at the window naked in the dark.

BUY

JASON

Super creepy PVC Scooby Doo mask

This creepy Scooby Doo mask is both made of PVC and rather disturbing! Liven up your office party, or even better your spouses.

BUY

DAVID

Bag of 500 Self-Adhesive Googly Eyes

If only you could see what I’ve seen with your googly eyes.

BUY

CORY

Four anatomical models you assemble from 132 anatomically correct sub-components

The $45.28 Learning Resources Anatomy Models Bundle Set is a well-reviewed set of anatomical models: a 5" heart, a 3.75" brain, a 4.5" body and a 9.2" skeleton, all of which disassemble into anatomically correct sub-components that you assemble into the finished pieces.

BUY

JASON

Five fucking pounds of candy corn

I've heard from some folks they love candy corn when it is stale. They'll be thrilled with this 5lb bag.

BUY

XENI

Dia De Los Muertos Skull Swirlies

This 30-piece Day of the Dead decoration kit includes skulls and swirls in festive foils, and transforms any room or outdoor space within minutes of easy assembly.

BUY

JASON

Twelve cans of Barbisol shaving creme (sewing needle and lighter not included)

This halloween? Relive your youth! Prep a few cans of Barbisol for battle! Wait for those annoying parents who can't pick their kid up from a traffic circle to pass by the bush you've always thought would be a great spot for an ambush, then rain soap upon their parade!

BUY

CORY

Splorch ovipositor

For when you want to role-play stern schwa and sweet, submissive Whitley Streiber; comes in two models but the $120-130 Splorch is the clear winner.

BUY

DAVID

It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (Remastered Deluxe Edition)

More than a half-century since it first aired, Linus is still waiting for the Great Pumpkin to rise "out of his pumpkin patch and flies through the air with his bag of toys for all the children,” Snoopy continues his battle with the Red Baron, and Charlie Brown can’t get a break. A masterpiece of animated television that, like the Peanuts gang, never gets old.

BUY

ROB

Articulating lowpoly skull mask

Wintercroft offers this devilish DIY maskmaking kit (and more like it) for just $6 on Etsy: "Sometimes, we've just got to take life (or death) by the horns and do something a little different. The Horned Skull Mask takes our favourite symbol of warning, mortality, anarchy and independence and ups the ante with a pair of horns and a moving mandible."

BUY

JASON

Lion mane for your cat

This also looks very silly on small dogs.

BUY

XENI

Nightmare-black Nitrile Exam Gloves

Matte black nitrile gloves for cleaning up around the house, or whatever creepy stuff people do with

BUY

DAVID

Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid: The Book of Scary Urban Legends by Jan Harold Brunvand

Brunvand, the iconic professor of urban legends, compiled some of the greatest and grisliest tales of contemporary folklore into one book and wrapped them in compelling context. It’s a wonderfully creepy collection of modern myths, except of course for the story about the teenagers in the parked car who narrowly escaped the hook-armed maniac. That totally happened to my brother’s friend’s cousin and her prom date.

BUY

JASON

Sugar Skull Ducktape

A lovely holiday variant of everyone's favorite fix-all.

BUY

MARK

Vintage Halloween Scene Bobbing Apples Pill Box Pill Case

If you've recently purchased some esoteric research chemicals over the dark web and have been at a loss as to where to store them, this is for you.

BUY

MARK

Spider Web Thigh High Stockings

These unisex stockings can complement any costume, or can be worn on their own for a costume everyone will appreciate.

BUY

DAVID

John Carpenter Anthology: Movie Themes 1974-1998

Carpenter didn’t just direct some of the most iconic scary movies of the latter 20th century, he also scored them. The themes from Halloween, The Fog, The Thing, and They Live make for a fantastically groovy soundtrack for your own horror house. Available on vinyl for those who dare and CD or digital download for those who don’t.

BUY

MARK

Ouija Planchette Lapel Pin

Summon Captain Howdy on-the-go with this cartoon occult ceramic pin.

BUY

ROB

White Walker Halloween costume

Described as a "sexy white walker" Halloween outfit, this also doubles as a terrifyingly realistic costume of Sir Jimmy Savile in his current state of repose. It's $150 and comes in four sizes.

BUY

ROB

Pumpkin Necklace

There's a lot of cheap tatty Halloween jewelry to be found, but ForTheCross's offers year-round quality at a reasonable price. This necklace, for example, comes in under $40.

BUY

CORY

My Favorite Thing is Monsters: a haunting diary of a young girl as a dazzling graphic novel

Emil Ferris's graphic novel debut My Favorite Thing is Monsters may just be the best graphic novel of 2017, and is certainly the best debut I've read in the genre, and it virtually defies summarizing: Karen is a young girl in a rough Chicago neighborhood is obsessed with monsters and synthesia, is outcast among her friends, is queer, is torn apart by the assassination of Martin Luther King, by her mother's terminal illness, by the murder of the upstairs neighbor, a beautiful and broken Holocaust survivor, by her love for her Vietnam-draft-eligible brother and her love of fine art. It's a tribute to -- and critique of -- the classic monster comics and magazines of the era, which Karen is obsessed with, and through whose visual styles her story is told. It's a tribute to fine art and the pieces hanging in the galleries and museums of Chicago where Karen and her mysterious, womanizing, tattooed older brother Deeze brings her. It's a complicated story about friendship among girls, about gender identity and queerness, about family.

BUY

DAVID

Liquid Ass

Invented by a high school prankster with a chemistry set, it’s described as smelling like a fine combination of "butt crack, kind of a sewer smell with a hint of dead animal.” Don’t buy this. But do know that it exists.

BUY

CORY

Animatronic, maniacally giggling spooky eyeball doorbell

When you press the button, the eyelid flips open and a green, glowing, bloodshot eyeball peers around while one of several spooky recordings welcomes your visitors. It is surprisingly well-styled and the audio is surprisingly cool for a seemingly generic crapgadget, and I'm already scheming a teardown after 31st to see if I can program it with my own little recordings.

BUY

XENI

Ancestor Paper Dolls

FROM Tim Holtz, clipped vintage portraits that can be used to make collage greetings or party decorations, or added to a Day of the Dead art-altar.

BUY

MARK

Satan Loves Me T-Shirt

A great way to remember who to thank on the most devilish of holidays.

BUY

XENI

Goth Cotton Swabs

They’re basically really good quality ‘Q-tip’ swabs, with spiral heads, and they’re all black.

BUY

ROB

Skullcap Tee Shirt

Designed by Sarina Frauenfelder, this scary scull is topped out with our classic logo and terrifies your friends with its spooky, staring eyes. $20 shipped.

BUY

CORY

Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" - the pop-up book edition

Pelham and Wormell have serious pop-up/illustrated book chops. The seven pop-up effects they've prepared for this edition are extremely beautiful, and lend themselves to being "animated" by the reader -- for example, you can flap the Raven's wings in time with the "Nevermore's"or have Edgar throw wide his chamber's door at the precise moment you say, "here I opened wide the door."Poe's words are hidden on each page, nestled in fold-up/fold-down tabs that you have to open after each reveal, and as I read this to my 9-year-old daughter Poesy (it's not a coincidence that we call her "Poe"for short -- EA Poe is one of her namesakes), the double-reveal of the pop-up (not a dud among them) and the prose made for an extra bit of drama.

BUY

ROB

Bone-shaped battery charger

It's a bit of a reach, but it's the only other thing in our official store that's remotely Halloweeny. (We're all out of 99%-off lifetime subscriptions to Hell, but you can get one of those for free by voting Republican in next year's midterm elections)

https://boingboing.net/2017/10/13/halloween-gift-guide.html

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crimsonrevolt · 7 years

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Congratulations Taylor you’ve been accepted to Crimson Revolt as Marlene McKinnon!

↳ please refer to our character checklist

I’m so happy that you decided to apply for someone fresh, Taylor! Your application for Marlene was deep and thought through and left me with a very clear picture of how you were planning on portraying her. I could tell how much work you’d put into thinking through her past (specifically in this rp) and how it could potentially shape her future. I love how many different roads there are to her journey, and how you completely embraced the fact that she’s a less stable character than many we have in the rp. I can’t wait to see what you do with her and to witness you bring her to life within the rp! *your faceclaim change to Madelaine Petsch has been accepted!

application beneath the cut (tw: Torture, Kidnapping, PTSD, mentions of Eating Disorders)

OUT OF CHARACTER

INTRODUCTION

It’s Taylor! 18 (almost 19, geez.), CST, female pronouns!

ACTIVITY

Erg… normally, I’d say a 6-7/10, weekly. I can post some every week unless something comes up.

TRIGGERS

*removed for privacy

HOW DID YOU FIND US?

I’ve been here nearly a year now!

WHAT HARRY POTTER CHARACTER DO YOU IDENTIFY WITH MOST?

Oh man, uh – Ron. I do get angry and jealous, especially with those I love, but I would like to think I have a strong sense of loyalty for my friends. But there’s also a lot of deep-rooted insecurity and fear that he’ll never amount to the greatness of others that I really relate to, especially recently.

ANYTHING ELSE?

Ya’ll are angels. Pass it on.

Also, said I’d put in a new app to stick around, so here it is!

IN CHARACTER

DESIRED CHARACTER

Marlene Isadora McKinnon

FACE CLAIM

Madelaine Petsch. Or, Sasha Pieterse.

REASON FOR CHOSEN CHARACTER

When looking through the open characters, Marlene was one that I kept coming back to. She’s one of the first Marauder era characters I ever had a true fascination with, although I’ve always done my admiring from afar, instead of taking the chance to play her myself. There’s something about her that’s so fascinating to me - after all, the McKinnon family is killed personally by Voldemort himself; but why? Surely, he’s capable of sending his followers to take care of anyone he deems a threat. So what made Marlene and her family so special to be sought out personally, by the darkest wizard of the time?

Aside from that, the skeleton here for Marlene leaves so much to be considered, and honestly I’m amazed she hasn’t been taken yet. There’s so much about her that is left to be discovered and explored, especially in wake of the torturous kidnapping she endured at the hands of Voldemort already. The sort of pain he inflicts is bound to leave psychological marks, the sort of which can never truly be brought back from. Any return from trauma is something that can happen in many ways - some people use it as strength, using it to build themselves into better, less fragile versions of themselves. Others use it as a way to be broken down, never returning from the brink of agony; and then there are those who fester in it, putting on a face, pretending as if nothing ever happened in the first place. The latter of which is where Marlene falls.

She wasn’t always that way; no, as a child Marlene was a wild card. That much hasn’t changed with age. She was a very bubbly, charismatic girl, someone willing to jump in head first, make friends first, ask questions second. Her addictive personality was something that could be pulled in only by her beloved twin Marcus, the true heart walking around outside her body. He was always the one person Marlene adored without reason, or promise - some may say her affections toward him were obsessive or unhealthy; but in their Pureblooded family, Marcus McKinnon was the only one to truly love her. The one to remind her that her gender and personality were not reasons to be hated. She loves him for that, more than she loves herself - but in the wake of her trauma, it’s so hard to let him in.

Trauma has become a very pivotal part of Marlene, but don’t be fooled; that is not all she is. Her addictive personality once manifested in terms of nothing but having a good time - now, it has personified into an eating disorder and a drinking problem. Coping mechanisms are how she chooses to handle it, never allowing anyone to see the habits she’s fallen into. Aside from that, so much of her personality just speaks to me. The woman she is, is someone I can relate to very much, in many ways - she’s essentially just a child, who has had to endure so much agony and terror with no choice. It’s broken her beyond relief, but she’s a phoenix, trying to rebuild herself in the ashes, find a way to exist. There is so much to the woman that is so utterly fascinating, so many paths she could travel down in respect to finding a way to not only survive the war, but to exist with the battle scars she continues to be inflicted with.

PREFERRED SHIPS // CHARACTER SEXUALITY // GENDER & PRONOUNS

Marlene identifies as a pansexual female. Sex isn’t something she gives much thought to; if it happens, cool, but she doesn’t put many labels to it. As far as she’s concerned, life is too short to put much thought into who she shares a bed with. As for her gender, she truly hasn’t ever given it much thought; never has Marlene ever felt like anything other than a girl. It’s simply what she is.

CREATE ONE (OR MORE!) OF THE FOLLOWING FOR YOUR CHARACTER:

Aesthetic 1

Mock Blog

Playlist:

Trouble - Natalia Kills - absolutely her theme song Learn your lines, get your story straight, Broken bottles gonna seal your fate Happiness is just a glass away, I’m trouble Good Time Girl by Scouting for Girls You took me in and shook me up inside. You got the stuff, the stuff that drives me wild. Carmen by Lana Del Rey She said ‘you don’t wanna be like me- Don’t wanna see all the things I’ve seen.’ Hurricane - Halsey I’m a wanderess, I’m a one night stand Don’t belong to no city Don’t belong to no man I’m the violence in the pouring rain I’m a hurricane

Just One Yesterday by Fall Out Boy Anything you say can and will be held against you And now I’m here to give you all my love So I can watch your face, as I Take it all away

IN CHARACTER QUESTIONNAIRE

♔ If you were able to invent one spell, potion, or charm, what would it do, what would you use it for or how would you use it? Feel free to name it: “Well. I’m shit with names, so we’re not going to do that, but– a spell to fix hangovers. Not somethin’ many people would find ‘practical’ these days, I know, but bloody hell if it wouldn’t make things easier sometimes.”

♔ You have to venture deep into the Forbidden Forest one night. Pick one other character and one object (muggle or magical), besides your wand, that you’d want with you:

“Obviously I’d want Marcus. If I’m going into that place, there’s nobody I want by my side than my brother. No bloody idea what I’d take though - wait, I take it back, I’d want my broom. Just because I’m in the forest doesn’t mean I’ve got to trample along the ground waitin’ for those damn spiders, yeah?”

♔ What kinds of decisions are the most difficult for you to make? “The sort that take time - ‘least, that’s what I’m told. Guess I’m impulsive.”

♔ What is one thing you would never want said about you? “I went down without a fight. Call me a crazy bitch all you want, Merlin knows people do; but don’t say I was a coward.”

WRITING SAMPLE

TW: mentions of torture, kidnapping, and PTSD

When Marlene’s eyes opened, she had no idea where she was; she couldn’t move and her head felt as if it had been filled with static. It was as if all of her senses had been taken from her; she had no idea as to where she was, or what the date was. Any memory of what had happened to get her into the blind situation she seemed to have been put into were gone; the last thing she was capable of remembering was…gone. There was nothing.

A strong and horribly unpleasant burning filled her throat and spread to the back of her skull then, and a sharp wail of pain escaped from her before she could process the pain that shot through her. Pain welled behind her eyes and took away the already slight amount of vision that she had managed to regain. Breathing suddenly became very difficult, and Marlene became all too aware of the fact that her wrists had been shackled to a wooden chair by metal cuffs as her lungs began to feel as if they’d collapse unto themselves at any minute.

Memories began to flood through her mind then, incoherent and frazzled, none making any sort of sense in the sense that she was seeing them. Her eyes were shut and stinging from the tears that had sprung to the surface in her current pain-filled state, but she could see every memory flooding her mind clearly. As much as the physical pain seemed to be out to kill her, the things that had begun to go through her mind were much worse.

“What is happening to me…” The thought was fleeting, as it went through her mind, and another pain shot through her entire body, radiating throughout every limb and causing her to scream out in pain again. It was a feeling much like burning, and Marlene could barely form a feasible thought for what had begun to happen to her, let alone try and begin to figure out where the pain was coming from.

Pain continued to shoot through her, numbing her, until eventually the pain dissipated altogether and she drifted off back into unconsciousness.

Day 2 |

The next time that Marlene awoke — that she was aware of, anyhow — everything in her mind was hazy. She couldn’t remember what was real and what she had seen while she was unconscious; she knew for a fact, however, that she hadn’t slept in a day, at the very least. The burning had stopped sometime within the last twenty-four hours and had instead turned into a dull ache that had never gone away.

At some point during what Marlene could only assume had to have been a day, she had been untied from the wooden chair she had been forcibly spent the better part of two days strapped to, though she had yet to be released from the room she was still being held prisoner inside of. Her eyesight had returned at some point after the burning had stopped, and with that, she had managed to see that there was no way out of the dirt hole that she’d been trapped in; of course, there were doors somewhere, so she knew it had to in fact be some sort of room, but from where she was forced to be standing, there was absolutely nothing but dirt and mud all around.

There had to be doors. That much, at least, she was nearly positive of, if nothing else. How else would she have been released from the chair? How else would she have seen….but had that happened? She couldn’t remember. The line between things that had happened and the things she’d taken to imagining whenever she slipped into unconsciousness was becoming more and more blurry by the day, so much that it was nearly impossible for her to remember which things had happened even before she had ended up…wherever she had ended up.

The next day, it only got worse, as that was the day that she began to recognize the faces of the people who’d come to see her. It was the day that the physical pain became nothing on that of the pain she began to feel in her heart, the weight of which had suddenly become more unbearable than it had when she was a little girl, when she had become a disappointment. No, this was much worse than that.

Marcus appeared first. Then, her parents, James. Over and over again, until the words and the disappointment and the unbearable realization that not a single one of them truly had ever loved her or was proud of her, hit her with enough power that she doubled over. The weight of it all made her collapse, falling against the muddy floor without a second thought. The voices continued to get louder, the disappointment swallowing her whole, and her hands went to clutching at her head, nails digging into her scalp in a way to force her to focus on another kind of pain, on anything other than what she was hearing every person she had ever loved say , the words getting louder and louder by the minute.

Time continued to pass, feeling like hours, and then days, when in reality it had only been a couple of minutes. Marlene’s breathing became more and more labored as she attempted to stable and calm herself, to convince herself that none of what she was hearing inside of her head was true—but it didn’t work. The more she fought to ignore the noise in her head, the louder it got. Hot, fresh tears continued to leak out of her eyes, despite how tightly she had them shut, and eventually, she couldn’t keep the pain suppressed anymore. She let out a long and hollow, high pitched wail of pain that managed to block the noise out momentarily, before it came back altogether, this time bringing the burning with it.

When she came to again, it was thanks to her own screams. Her throat felt raw and as if it was on fire, her screams becoming more and more hoarse and hollowed with every wail that she released. Despite how dark her hole was, her time locked inside had allowed her to become used to the darkness—and she saw the blood that smeared her skin with perfect clarity, despite the darkness and her tired, drained mind. Her entire body felt as if it was made of lead, and then the voices came back again. They became louder and louder, the sounds swirling together inside of her head, while the red stains that streaked across her and mixed with the dirt stained onto her skin stood out more and more vividly with each passing moment.

The burning returned then, more vividly than before, and Marlene’s lungs began to feel as if they had stopped functioning altogether yet again. The pain all of a sudden blasted back into her, just as intense and horrible as it had been in the beginning, until eventually, she cradled her head in her hands again, paying no attention to the dirt and blood that inevitably was tainting the fair color of her hair.

A sharp, high pitched scream of agony shot out of her, so unlike the screams she’d grown accustomed to hearing herself make in the long hours in the hole. Hot tears of pain flooded out of her again, so much that it nearly surprised her—of would have, if she could feel surprise anymore. The pain grew more and more unbearable, breaking her down more so than it had before, until eventually the wailing died down and the final piece that had kept her sane until then broke. Then, she drifted back off into the darkness that came with the unconsciousness that she’d grown so familiar with.

… And then she woke up. Sweat matted long tendrils of hair to her face, salty tears swelling in her eyes as her frame shot up. Thick blankets were soaked through and clung to her legs, a reminder that she could never escape. “Bloody hell, McKinnon.” She mumbled, throat closing again. “Not again.”

#Accepted App

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