texas-gothic

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When ogres travel, they do so in human shape.

They hate doing this. They think it’s beneath them. But they do it anyway.

The Vicomte Graoul de Saucisson – and this is another thing about ogres. Ogres as a species are nobility. There is no such thing as a low-born ogre. There is always room in the ogrish peerage for another vicomte, another prince, another branch to tie to the rotted tree – strode up to the chateau in human shape. The roses in the garden shivered as he passed by. The huge, high doors opened by themselves and he walked through them without a shift in his stride.

When the doors slammed shut behind him, he moved to shrug the shape off his shoulders like a coat.

Then he saw the woman.

He froze. He stared. She stared back.

He slowly pulled the shape back on. “Who are you?” he asked.

She looked mildly appalled. “Who are you?” she asked. “What are you doing in my home?”

“Your home? This is–” He stopped. He reconsidered. “I am the Vicomte de Saucisson,” he said. “I’m looking for the Marquis de Pamplemousse. He is a… colleague of mine.”

“Oh,” she said. She could’ve looked more abashed. “I’m sorry, monsieur, he’s never mentioned you before. You must be here to share your congratulations, of course, I can fetch him right away.”

“He’s never mentioned you either,” the vicomte did not say. “Of course,” he said. “Congratulations. What about?”

She looked surprised. “Have you not heard? Monsieur, the curse on my husband has been lifted.”

He stared. His lips started to form the words “What curse,” and then there was a sound like a horse falling down a set of stairs and a man he had never seen before wearing the marquis’s clothes came barrelling down the hall.

“Vicomte!” said the man with the marquis’s voice. “My human friend! The curse has been lifted, and I am a human once again!”

He was slightly out of breath when he reached the woman. He clasped her arm and grinned at him with manic desperation. “This is wonderful news! You must be here to share your congratulations!”

“Lie like hell,” said the man’s eyes.

The vicomte stared. “Oh!” he said. “My – human friend! Human once again! Words fail me. After all these–” (there was the slightest hesitation) “–years?”

The woman put her head at an angle and narrowed her eyes at him.

The man walked up, still grinning like a rictus chimpanzee, and clasped a hand on his shoulder. “Yes, of course! Darling, me and the vicomte are going to have a manly one-on-one conversation while he shares his congratulations, as we human men are wont to do.” And then with a strength that could only be ogrish, the marquis pulled the vicomte by the shoulder down the hall and into a drawing room.

When the bolt of the lock clicked into place behind them, the man wearing the marquis’s clothes visibly sagged.

“What the hell,” said the vicomte.

“You should’ve sent word ahead that you'd be coming today.”

“I never do.” He gesticulated and tried to conjure a single question out of the swarm buzzing in his brain. “What the hell is going on? Who was that? Why are you pretending to be human? What curse are we talking about?”

The marquis groaned and crumpled into a chair. As he did he shifted out of human shape, clothes magically tailoring themselves to contain his ogrish form. He looked a bit like a moose crossed with a wolf.

“I had a moment of weakness.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t a stroke?”

“I got married.”

“And that’s another thing–”

“Graoul, please.” He sighed and put his face in his talons. “Last winter a merchant broke into my home. He stole one of my roses, and in exchange I asked him to send me one of his daughters to be my bride.”

The vicomte nodded. This at least was a sacred and recognizable ogrish custom, and he did like to see the old ways in practice.

“And it was fine! It was perfectly lovely. She’s a wonderful woman, but one night I decided to put on a human shape to change things up in the bedroom, and she lost her mind! Started talking about how I was clearly an enchanted prince and that her love for me must’ve broken some curse and turned me human again! I had no idea how to tell her otherwise, and now I’ve done it for too long to back out.”

The vicomte stared. “Sorry,” he said. “You decided to turn into a human to spice things up in the bedroom, and that was the face you chose?”

The marquis growled. “If I knew I was going to be wearing it for the rest of my life I would’ve gone with something better.”

[texas-gothic]

I wonder if this was what being an orc was like. In like The Lord of The Rings.

Wake up, take in the fresh morning smog, head to work at the pollution factory, or the torture store for the next 15 hours. You have to walk there, of course, because all the taxes and plundered gold get poured into the war machine, and there's no room left in the budget for basic infrastructure. Except, of course, for the giant, insane tower your boss lives in.

You catch the Mouth of Sauron sitting down with some horrible undead ghoul talking about Isengard's right to defend itself on your 15 minute lunch break. He assures everyone that each and every one of those little kids the Uruk-Hai ripped limb from limb were definitely part of the Rohirrim. And if they weren't already, then they definutely would have joined as teenagers or young adults. Theoden was hiding in the Westfold, so really, there was no way to proceed without burning it.

You might hear from the head honcho himself every now and then, but he's literally older than time, so he doesn't really make a lot of sense anymore. The last time you heard him speak he started going on about Isildur, the King of The Noldor. The Nazgul assure you that the Dark Lord is as sharp as ever, and that any insinutation that his age may be becoming a problem is simply a display of prejudice against celestial and/or demonic beings. And besides, now is not the time for derision. There's a war on, and any comments about Sauron or his policies are ultimately only helping Denethor.

Night falls, but it's impossible to tell because the sun never really got through the smoke, and ash, and omnipresent preternatural evil anyway. Eventually, you clock out, collect your meager starvation wages, and head home to eat rat meat and fall asleep in the dirt drunk on rotgut. Wake up the next day, lather, rinse, repeat.

Eventually, you get shipped off and die fighting in one of the countless wars Sauron is waging against everyone, everywhere, at all times.

#this is feeling really relevant again

[texas-gothic]

[texas-gothic]

#the HRE may not have been holy nor an empire #but it was if nothing else #just a little roman #anyway #tucking this one away in back in case I ever get desperate enough to resort to cheap romance novels

[texas-gothic]

TWO HOURS AGO: an incredible photo taken by a ut austin student capturing something deeply poetic in my opinion, a line of state troopers eagerly waiting to arrest student protesters standing just behind a sign that reads "what starts here changes the world. its starts with you and what you do each day."

[texas-gothic]

Injustice is so fucking stupid. It'd just so fucking stupid. It is the ultimate extrapolation on all of DC's brain dead "philosophy." Killing the Joker somehow means Unlimted Genocide apparently. By Superman of all people. Fucking spare me.

#dc #dc comics #injustice #there hasn't been a single functioning brain in that writers room since the 90s #even the gameplay is kinda lame #way to make a worse mortal kombat guys

[texas-gothic]

When I was a kid my family pretended to get raptured so I would think I was left behind on earth while they all went to heaven.

I was like 8 years old and my sister and mom had gotten really into the Left Behind novels (bible fan fic about the rapture). In the books when the rapture happened the clothes that people were wearing when they got raptured were left behind in neatly folded piles.

One day when I was getting home from school my family decided that they would leave piles of neatly folded clothes around the house, and then hide in the basement.

The intended effect was that I would get home and see the clothes then, think that my family had been raptured and that I wasn’t good enough to get into heaven… or something?

The problem was that I had never read these books, and didn’t really think about the rapture very often. There was no reason that I would see some laundry on the floor and think “The rapture happened and I’ve been abandoned by God! I’ll never see my family again!! Oh nooo!!!!”

I just sat down and watched cartoons and eventually my family got bored and revealed that they were all hiding in the basement.

It’s a good thing I didn’t understand the joke, otherwise that shit would have been traumatic.

#least abusive christian fundamentalist family

[texas-gothic]

Four more years. Pause.

#he is coming dangerously close to a jeb bush moment

[texas-gothic]

Honestly, it's just poor sportsmanship.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO THEY CAN'T DO THIS! IT ISNT RIGHT

[texas-gothic]

So I finally saw a Cybertruck in person, today. It was kinda astonishing, honestly. I was walking through the parking lot, and there, right in front of the store, was this massive, hideous thing. It looked like it was from a N64 game. Banjo and Kazooie were fixing to rev up the engine and vehicular manslaughter Gruntilda with it, or at least they would if they weren't immediately turned into paste by the impact. The Tesla Cybertruck really is just a deeply unattractive machine. It both looks and is, mechanically, stupid. Of course the guy who owned it only came in to hassle us for allocated bourbon. Walked up and the first word out of his mouth was "Blanton's." Fucking typical. Hope he enjoys his $122k death trap and his $90 gasoline.

#cybertruck #tesla #elon musk

[texas-gothic]

It really puts into perspective how close this series is to ending that, while for us it may still be another year or two, in-world, the World Government is in the very best case scenario merely weeks away from complete collapse. The Marines have about one pay period left in them. In the very best case scenario. We only get like ten pages every week (if we're lucky and don't start hitting hiatus too often) but in-world? Shit is absolutely hitting the fan. The Emperors, the Marines, the World Government. Luffy is folding all of it like a literal house of cards. Doflamingo went down and it was all over from there on out.

#one piece #one piece 1113

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[texas-gothic]

#son of a bitch just came up with a plan to steal christmas

[texas-gothic]

An Israeli colonist intent on taking down a Palestinian flag walks into an obvious booby trap, 21 April 2024

#you can always take adventage of ravenous hate #because hatred is ignorant and unthinking #had this zionist pig been able to see past his own blind hatred for even five seconds #it might have occured to him that the middle of a vacant field is a very odd place for a flag and that maybe not everything was as it seemed #but he could not #so here we are watching all his piggly wiggly bits fly in different directions #rip bozo

[texas-gothic]

You know, the chance of being in a plane crash is about 1 in 11 million. But with the rate that Taylor Swift is going at this, we're bound to hit the point of absolute certainty eventually.

#taylor swift

[texas-gothic]

was lamenting the fact that my eczema is flaring up when the thought "the itcher" popped into my head fully formed and unprompted and now i can't stop laughing

[texas-gothic]