#HOZ snippets

[lord-emerson]

It's [REDACTED]!

Welcome to

The Lordling's Abode,

delicious friend!

Journal updated: 23 May, 2025

I'm Seph (20s, any pronouns), Eastern European creative bastard. Here you will find a lot of content pertaining to my dear Lord Oswald J. Emerson (#the decadent parvenu), as well as my partner @letters-of-fire's Howard Underhouse (#the bandaged libertine). We share custody of these rascals.

You can see art, writing and videos of the good ol' "hoz" ship under the #damage of a collateral nature tag, as well as some relevant memes under the #howard/oswald and #howie meowie tags.

[At the moment, Noah and I are trying to save up for plane tickets so we can spend next summer together <3 If you'd like to support us and our further creative endeavours, you can contribute towards our goal on ko-fi. Thank you! ☕]

Under the cut you can find plenty of visual and writing references for Oswald, as well as a directory of all of my published fics and videos. I'd also like to give a special shout out to all the amazing content others have created of Oz; you can find it under the #made for me tag.

Without further ado, The Decadent Parvenu:

Lord Oswald J. Emerson (he/him, trans man)

All character art is by my sweetheart @letters-of-fire <3

My Writing (tag)

[full fics in bold]

Howard/Oswald

A Nocturne in C-Flat (Explicit + suggestive art)

The Power of a Name (General)

Jealousy comic + snippet (Suggestive)

Modern AU reunion kiss (General)

The World Through Your Eyes (Explicit)

Mimicking Your Embrace (Explicit)

Till Death Do Us Part (General)

Oswald talking about attraction (General)

In Case of Emergency (General)

An Apology of Sorts (Explicit)

A Short Visit (Explicit)

Fantasy AU snippet (General)

In Flagrante Delicto (Suggestive)

Ballroom dancing art + snippet (General)

Other writing

Howard/Oswald/Edison snippet (Suggestive + art)

Oswald/Cavendish snippet (General)

Adagio con amore (General, Aria/Elisa)

RP writing samples (Suggestive)

Oswald's backstory monologue (General)

Hand in Bloodied Hand (General, Oswald/Scrimshander&Silvia)

My videos (tag)

Howard/Oswald fanvids set to:

Smooth Operator

Chicago

"Do you think we love each other in every universe?"

Anna Karenina

Further links

Fallen London profile

Character playlist

Fallen London template

Summary of my first year on Fallen London tumblr

... And finally, The Decadent Parvenu Meme Compilation. Enjoy <3

[respheal]

WIP Wednesday

I was working on this Legend of Zelda post-TotK fanfic to get myself back into writing. It was workin for a bit, and I need to find the time spoons to finish it. I might just start posting it on Ao3 to see if engagement can maybe goad me into finishing it. It's post-totk and an excuse to dump some of my lore headcanons in a not-totally-expository way.

Elements include time travel, Majora's Mask and Hyrule Warriors shenaniganery, and Link being a traumatized little king. Also an OC of a sort.

Mid-story snippet after the cut (Progress: 6/10 chapters drafted):

The once-green fields and marshes of Blatchery Plain were covered in viscous red-black puddles. Like maggots on a corpse, Gloom-laden blin of all varieties crawled over the plain, more than Link had seen in years—in a century. Smoke, fire, and dust obscured their forms.

Captain Hoz and his squad had rushed to the plains as well, and they were already at the bridge, rushing towards the monsters with their weapons bared.

Darker shapes stirred in the heart of the plains, reflecting the evening light strangely—emitting their own light. Glowing purple lines traced their forms. One turned, revealing a bright blue eye.

Guardians.

Link choked. He fell off his horse and backed up against the mountain. He was certain the Guardian’s laser sight was already on him, despite the distance. Not again. Not again.

“Link!” Zelda yelled, snapping him out of it. “Please, we need your strength. Look at the Sword.”

Forcing himself to breathe, Link drew the Sword from her sheath. She was glowing, a cool white-blue light wisping around the blade.

The Sword only glowed in the presence of her enemy.

Link could taste Malice in the air, like copper and sulfur. But something else caught his attention, a dry feeling like the finest sand, a smell like frost.

“Do you feel that?” Zelda asked. “That’s time magic.”

Link’s jaw clenched. He was certain whatever was causing that would make itself known at an inconvenient time. He took the slate back, pulled out his paraglider, and wrenched it open with his hand and teeth. “I’m going down. Get to the big rock near the bridge and keep the river to your back. Stay near the roads no matter what.”

“We will. Be safe.”

“You too.”

Link launched himself off the cliff, holding the paraglider above his head. It yanked at his arm hard as it caught the wind, its shoulder brace—for his lost arm—dangling free in the wind. He couldn’t steer more than to adjust the angle downward with one arm, but it would have to do. The battle was ahead of him in all directions, after all.

[whump-cravings]

HI for the meme, may I request a snippet or something about Chromatic Mage idioms? 👀 -secretwhumplair

Thanks for the ask @secretwhumplair!!! :3c I found a whopping 3 lines in my idioms file lmaooo and uhh I think only one is actually an idiom, the other two are just common phrases "Lights/By the Lights!" -- exclamation of religious deities "Little light" -- affectionate term "His light fled him" -- phrase for dying abruptly ----

~280 words | Original Work: Chromatic Mage

Content: Minor (14) whumpee, autistic whumpee gone nonverbal, aftermath of captivity & torture, dead parent, royal whumpee/caretaker

"How is she?" King Kvizha asked quietly, looking down the hall. At the other end, Hoz Magus Zazoli sat inside a small room upon a bed. Alareh shook his head with a grimace. "Unchanged, sire. Though her wounds are mending, she's spent the last few days like... that.” The man made a small gesture towards her current state to elaborate. Staring at nothing, never speaking, barely eating or sleeping. “Have you been able to find out what happened?" The monarch's shoulders dropped further. "Iho'olt found where they were held." What was left of it, anyways. "Magus Voliarn?" The name was like a knife to the heart. Kvizha closed his eyes against it. If he hadn't seen the body himself, he wouldn't be able to believe it. "He may have been dead before the explosion." Alareh hesitated, then said, "They knew how to keep victims alive, sire. Zazoli is evidence of that. Those burns on her hands match any new violet user. It's probable that she—" "Speculation can only get us so far," Kvizha interrupted. For both his own sake and the girl's, he didn't want to hear the end of that sentence. It didn't make sense, either, not for a red user to suddenly exhibit the other end of the spectrum. "Better to hear it from her, when she's ready to talk." Though Alareh's eyes shown with sympathy, the man's gaze still slid off towards the girl. "And if she's never ready?" "Would you force her?" Kvizha demanded. "After what she's been through?" "You're the king, sire," the physician said quietly, avoiding Kvizha's accusing eyes. "What I would do and what you must do are very different things."

[tfrohock]

HOT SHOTS: AMULET, RELIC, LA LLORONA, THE LIGHTHOUSE, GANJA AND HESS, AND VAMPYRE

I keep seeing people requesting recommendations for horror movies, so I thought I’d round up a few of my recent favorites. I know people usually give these lists the stink-eye, because they’re not into torture porn, so I’ll go ahead and alleviate your concerns: neither am I. Just like with my favorite horror novels, I look for unique and cerebral horror in the movies I watch. That doesn’t mean they’re not fun to watch … it just means there a lot of cool layers to most of these films.

Presented in no particular order:

Amulet (2020)

This is a British horror film written and directed by Romola Garai (in her directorial debut) and starring Carla Juri, Imelda Staunton and Alec Secareanu, and was just released in the United States on July 24, 2020.

Blurb: An ex-soldier, living homeless in London, is offered a place to stay at a decaying house inhabited by a young woman and her dying mother. As he starts to fall for her, he cannot ignore his suspicion that something sinister is going on.

Sinister is a good descriptor for the undercurrents in Amulet. It’s a revenge tale that kept me off-balance throughout the whole film with the feeling that something isn’t quite right and nothing is as it seems. Tomas is a down on his luck ex-soldier, who seems like—on the surface—a nice guy. When a kindly nun offers him a place to stay with a mysterious young woman named Magda, who needs help with her dying mother and crumbling house, he discovers the truth about his own nature. Men might be perplexed by some of the behaviors and imagery, but women will see the clues exposed in Tomas’s actions and words. Even so, the ending took me by surprise, and I found the overall production to be enjoyable. I’d say more, but this is the kind of movie that the less said is better.

Relic (2020)

Directed by Natalie Erika James (in her directorial debut), from a screenplay by James and Christian White. Relic stars Emily Mortimer, Robyn Nevin and Bella Heathcote and is the story of mothers and daughters and aging.

Just as The Babadook used the demonic presence of the Babadook as a metaphor for the stress of dealing with grief, Relic takes us deep into the fear of aging and death. When Kay’s mother, Edna, goes missing, Kay and her daughter, Sam, travel to their remote family home to find her. They call the authorities and multiple searches turn up nothing, and then one day, Edna simply returns. Seemingly suffering from dementia, it appears there are darker forces at work, and with some genuinely spooky moments, James guides the viewer through a house haunted by the mind.

La Llorona (2019)

Written Directed by Jayro Bustamante, La Llorona is a Guatemalan film, starring María Mercedes Coroy, Sabrina De La Hoz, Margarita Kénefic, and Julio Diaz.

Blurb: An aging paranoid dictator, protected by a witchcrafting wife, faces death and the uprise of his people in Guatemala.

Forget all the other La Llorona films you’ve ever seen, this one is unique. Rather than the weeping woman of legend, director, Jayro Bustamante refashions La Llorona into a ghost story that entwines with recent Guatemalan history with a mother’s revenge. The movie begins with the trial of the Guatemalan dictator, Enrique Monteverde, who was responsible for the brutal genocide of native Mayans during the 1980s. Suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, Monteverde is found guilty, but his trial is overturned on a technicality, resulting in massive protests outside his home. When most of his staff quits, the family hires Alma.

The horror within La Llorona is more about Monteverde’s crimes than the weeping woman herself, but María Mercedes Coroy plays Alma in beautifully subtle scenes that leaves the viewer simultaneously in empathy with her and uneasy about her presence.

The Lighthouse (2019)

Directed and produced by Robert Eggers, who co-wrote the screenplay with his brother Max Eggers, The Lighthouse is billed as a hypnotic and hallucinatory tale of two lighthouse keepers on a remote and mysterious New England island in the 1890s, and golly, but you should believe the hypnotic and hallucinatory part of that description.

Still, Willem Dafoe is one of my favorite actors, and Robert Patterson is fast becoming another, so I eagerly anticipated my chance to see the movie when it streamed. The story (if you’ve been living under a rock) is about two lighthouse keepers and one of them is mad, or maybe both of them are … It’s a real toss-up at times. But as the story progresses, the film becomes one of psychological horror that enables the viewer to watch another person become undone by the environment and his own guilt. Eggers uses the sea and the lighthouse almost as if they, too, are characters in the unraveling of the men’s sanity, and it all blends together to make for intense viewing.

Dafoe never puts a foot wrong, and Patterson gives an outstanding performance of a man driven mad by his conscience … and a pesky seagull.

Retro flicks you should see:

Ganja and Hess (1973)

Written and directed by Bill Gunn, the film stars Marlene Clark and Duane Jones.

Blurb: After being stabbed with an ancient knife, a doctor's assistant finds himself with an insatiable desire for blood. Anthropologist Dr. Hess Green, who becomes a vampire after his intelligent but unstable assistant stabs him with an ancient cursed dagger, falls in love with his assistant's widow, Ganja, who learns Green's dark secret.

I loved everything about this film, probably because I grew up during the ‘70s—yeah, I remember seeing men in those polyester suits—but mainly because Ganja & Hess is a vampire story told within the framework of Black and African mythology. At times, it feels like the actors are improvising their dialogue, which makes them feel more genuine. Clark is beautiful and magnificent as Ganja and gives a stellar performance as a woman in control of her destiny. If you love vampire films, this one is a must-see.

Vampyre (The Dream of Allan Gray) (1932)

Written Christen Jul and Carl Theodor Dreyer and directed by Dreyer, the film starred Nicolas de Gunzburg under the pseudonym Julian West.

Blurb: A drifter obsessed with the supernatural stumbles upon an inn where a severely ill adolescent girl is slowly becoming a vampire.

Jul and Dreyer based elements of the film on J. Sheridan Le Fanu's 1872 collection of supernatural stories In a Glass Darkly to produce a surreal work that fell flat with audiences in 1932, but has become a classic due to its atmospheric scenes.

I’ve seen snippets of Vampyr from time to time, but I’d not had the opportunity to sit down and view the entire film until recently. The haunting shots lend foreboding to each scene, and Gunzburg walks through is role as if truly is in a dream, leading us from one horror to another.

Looking for more? Check out more Hot Shots right here.

[houseofzephyraina-blog]

HOZ Snippets

My little video (see below) to illustrate living with a mindset of gratitude, peace & love. 💗 If you are that way inclined, remove all the negativity and bad energy from your space with a white sage smudge. 🌿 Whenever I light the sage stick (or ‘sage wand’ if you choose to speak esoterically) there is something very healing about the gentle smoke that emits from the sage. A sense that the air is…

[houseofzephyraina-blog]

HOZ Snippets: A Treat A Day...

HOZ Snippets: A Treat A Day…

  After a long day who can resist the temptation of a treat?   A study found that when we’re tired, the area of the brain that controls willpower is depleted.  Researchers observed people during a working day and occasionally enticing them with rewards such as treats.  As the day progressed, people were more likely to act on impulse and accept the treats.   Results showed that that after a long…