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window shopping? :: open

send 👀 for my muse’s reaction to your muse checking them out (reversible)

@serandipity sent: 👀 Iris is also looking at Raguna.

They don't call it the dog days of summer for nothing. Even this late in the evening, when the sun had sailed its way over the horizon, the hot echoes of a rainless day lingered. That's fine! Raguna appreciates a good chore, after all. And with some tenacity and sweat, it had gotten finished without a problem. The problem, was just how hot it was. And an invasive thought follows (since he's by himself and the bucket is right there).

After plunging it into the well, he dunks himself over the head with water. And it's everything he wanted. Far from a dip in the hot springs to be sure, but the relief is immediate. Hair slicks down over his face and his clothes stick to his chest.

"That's wonderful..." He observes, just to then realize that Noire had shown up at the right time to see Raguna sopping like a wet dog. But also... before he could fluster and apologize, she didn't seem to not like what she saw?

"Hey, Noire. Uhm. Why are you looking at me like that? ...did you want to get splashed too?"

He'd gladly oblige if she was going to tease him.

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window shopping? :: open

send 👀 for my muse’s reaction to your muse checking them out (reversible)

@serandipity sent: 👀 Bianca is looking (disrespectfully)

The fault lies with him, fundamentally. By not obsessively locking the doors within the grand home Diluc invites unwanted (or at least, unexpected) guests. After a period of time he needs to learn that Bianca operates on her own whims and standards. Or, perhaps, accept the truth that something in his own mind was at play here with their arrangement and how much he was allowing...

During an earlier meeting with a lively representative a drink had been spilled on his shirt. How he felt about the mishap is another story. So, a change was needed. The timing was fine enough, with evening drawing closer something more comfortable would be welcome to better appreciate the pleasant temperatures.

And, with his shirt pulled off, Bianca was now appreciating something else that could be argued as pleasant from the doorway. He spies her with a small flinch of realization. The momentary tense of reactive and ready start relaxing on realizing it was Bianca. And not only that, but for a moment he spied that she had been biting her lip before being noticed.

No, he would not continue removing his belt as he had been in the process of doing.

"...ahem." Diluc clears his throat, but does nothing to cover himself or shoo her away. Instead perhaps, a polite reminder to the heiress. "Did you need something, miss Bianca, or are you simply loitering again in my home?"

She was never going to beat the allegations at this rate, but then, neither would Diluc if he wasn't going to dissuade it... after all. Were their roles swapped... no. No he would certainly conduct himself more properly than to be this brazen.

"You're not even going to feign an accident, are you..."

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It's progress, at least? Though towards what the sinner had nary a clue. He's far from a teacher. Or a role model. Or any other proper noun as you'd sort that rubbish. The best Heathcliff can hope for really is to bounce the naïve fellow on a less embarrassing path. Ironic. He's like a kid. Sorta.

"Bah. Forget it. Just eat." Heathcliff sniffs. Hardly an issue to apologize for, as it were- so long as they were acting now in a way that wouldn't itch on the man's narrow nerves. Even now he felt an urge to flip something. Some form of physical expression to vent whatever intent was fizzling in his thoughts. Damn if he didn't have too many of them that he could hardly sort through. (More rubbish).

He settles for a nice stab with his fork into the last piece of his own plate. For now.

"Hahh?" The response to Yi Sang's investigative query isn't the most heartening sound. Though maybe some reassurance can be found in how he does take the moment after to contemplate it. The time with the Syndicates. Yeah, that was after he had left the tepid tensions of the manor, filled with spite and disgust towards himself, and the manor, and even...

"Mate. Nothing was easy in that District. You know that well as I do, I wager. Specially after seein' all of that back in the fathoms back there in K Corp. That I had the hours I did in the days was right lucky enough. Some unlucky blokes in the Nest don't even get away with that."

Heathcliff turns the fork on the plate, needlessly, imagining however briefly the face of a clock as the points turn through the mash.

"You say forage like I had to go through the garbage or some business. Wasn't that bad. But you had to put your work in to keep it that way. Which meant we Rabbits were up to some dirty jobs."

The smile that finds its way to his face isn't the most settling.

"Some of the stuff we do here makes that all feel easy now. Not that I'd go back. Limbus Company, closest I've had to a right proper job."

And maybe that'll be something worthy of impressing her. Right?

Exasperation (but that has to be preferable to anger) comes at the other's response. Strong enough for sound, not strong enough to spray the chewings into the other sinner's face. Wrong message? Or did Yi Sang have a less than ideal spine in that shrimpy back of his. Heathcliff finishes the bite of his messy sandwich and gestures the arm holding it.

"Bugger, you think I'm here to nab your nosh? And even if'n I was, you give up that quick?" Feels kind of stupid to ask the question, a single glance at the placid gaze of the smaller man is enough answer anyone needs to know the truth. A mug of melancholy. "Well, not like I didn't use to do that business." Observed with a sardonic smirk, a brief recall of the syndicate days- but it's accompanied by sliding of the plate. Back to Yi Sang.

"But bloody hell if you don't look like you need a whole cart for a meal, let alone a damn plate. Nah, mate, I just wanted you to eat the stuff. It's giving the jeebies when you stare at every minging thing." For as Heathcliff perceived it, maybe there was such a thing as too much reflection and consideration. If you spend all that time without taking action or doing some business, ain't nothing going to actually happen.

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👻୧‿︵‿︵  Send me a 👀 for my muse’s reaction to your muse checking them out.

Alternatively, add 'reverse' for my muse to check out your muse.

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How would Wylan phrase his greatest regret? That stream had carved a path so far downstream from his earlier life that the embodiment of it felt elusive to a simple statement. Did he regret lying to everyone around him? Did he regret fighting back against those who could have helped? Was it not acquiescing to his detractors?

Maybe he regret the ire he held in his heart for his parents. For dying. For leaving him.

But as he- Wylan- looks up, once whatever cold wind had torn him into that dark maw sees fit to drop him- he sees that other face. The one that had brought him to question anything at all.

"Heh." He barks out the small laugh, pulling lips back into a sardonic grin. "It's exactly so." He replies to what is surely a spirit. Not real. And yet the features of the face were uncanny to the point he felt goosebumps rise on his arms. A thrum in his chest and a tightening of his throat. A quick inventory of himself shows he is in fact, himself, and not Zach. As if he needed another layer to the strange uncanniness.

"Why are you still waiting, anyway? Didn't I make it obvious before you couldn't rely on me? That boy is loooong dead. And if you ask me? That's a good thing." He bobs a finger in the air, before using it to try and shove whatever apparition this was, back. An attempt to get to his feet.

"I can't stay."

How the sound of a trumpet could be playing when there was no head or mouth to play it, is anyone's guess. A hall congregated with individuals all patiently awaiting the woman to finish her procession. All of them sans any head on their shoulders. The orifice left behind is black and dripping with tar as they bow before her. One after the other.

They speak, but words aren't heard. Resonating in the royal's head like a ringing in the ears.

[We've awaited your return, your highness.]

The hall opens into a large chamber, where a peculiar tree roots in the stone of the floor. A permeating sound of suffering reverberates with its long tone, harmonic noise that gently bounces through the stonework. On the tree's leafless and lifeless branches, numerous skulls and faces hang like fruits. Flesh in various states of decay. Expressions in various states of horror or acceptance.

Of them, a familiar face stares unblinkingly at Zelda. Whose is it?

"You're gonna make me repeat myself." Wylan snorts, a strange sense of irritation taking over him. Maybe he wouldn't usually bother with this, allow the underestimation or misconception root in the other person so he may be take advantage of it later. But. A strange brand of familiarity continues to line and dot this conversation. "If I'd left well enough alone, listened to what people told and asked of me like a good little boy, I'd have been dead long before we'd have met. Just like the rest of them." It's not a derision, but a sigh that leaves his lips as his eyes continue to flit from shadow to shadow to Charlotte.

The other knights. He'd almost pitied them at a certain point of time. When he'd snuck into the castle, the alias of Wylan still relatively fresh on his soul, and so too the reign of Ganondorf, they'd still remained mostly human. At least on the outside, inside was another story entirely. He couldn't see it, but their evil was worn blatantly on their sleeves. His own shadow not entirely absent either.

Bones were bones. Whether or not they had their flesh with them.

And now that he was surrounded by them (the bones) (hopefully not the corpses of those knights he'd dispatched), other feelings and sentiments from time past demanded to rear their heads. Or so Charlotte seemed to imply, her demeanor continuing to be concerningly vague and admonishing. Cold in a way that almost made Wylan want to heed the warnings were it not for that contrary spirit of his. He never really cared for how nobles just expected people to listen.

"Show me yours and I'll show you mine. Takes more than some ominous epithets for me to pop my diary open. Pfft. Give me a break. You're pushing a rather uneven conversation here, Char." Wylan disregards her, but heeds the warning enough to at least. "I made enough peace with the past that if I do see it, I might even have a word or two."

And as if to punctuate the statement, he lifts a hand and snaps a small bit of magic into his fingers, a crackle of energy as the light comes to life. It illuminates a scant amount of the area, the oppressing miasma of dust and darkness denying the paltry magic trick its full capability. At least it didn't hurt as much, for whatever reason.

It's the last question, that sets him at unease. What does the Queen want the most? One could suggest any number of lofty ideals. Power. Peace. Prosperity. But Wylan doesn't think of that woman who stood at the front of the kingdom when pondering the question, he thinks instead of a girl. Her eyes downcast as she sits dejected under the shadowed eve of a stable roof.

She wanted freedom. She wanted someone to listen to her. And he, no, Zach, had been so insecure in his own lot in life at the time. How could they ever be the one worth relying on? That's why he killed him, isn't it? Killed that part of himself and threw them into an unmarked grave deep in his mind?

Or maybe he's just something that emerged from his own corpse. Maybe not properly alive himself.

"Not that we can change the past, not in a way that matters." He mutters, continuing to wonder at the prompting and letting his imagination run. "You think ghosts would accept a sorry? I doubt there's anything else I could give them that they'd want." He muses, taking a step as the daydream continues. The girl lifts her head, holds out her hand. A rolling rumble in his head. If he had reached out at that time back then in those years past...

In the mouth of the temple, Wylan reaches out his hand with the light, and in the revealed darkness, comes the same figure, a pallid figure with vacant eyes and an uncanny smile. Wordless, but there's a morbid appreciation before it yanks him with supernatural strength into the dark tunnel. The rogue all but vanishes before he can even gasp in response. The light off his hand blinking into the depths at impossible speed in a whorl of wind.

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"I like- no, love the honesty, you're pretty brazen! Not often a woman can be so up front about it, careful you don't make yourself too desperate or I'll be the one thinking you're messing with me~"

Whether or not he's wise on her subtle ploys against him, Wylan is already caught up in the idea just as much as the woman was laying it on. Maybe it was because the entreatment was so thick that the man wanted to find out more about it. About her. It's like. Can it really be this easy for him? It shouldn't be. It really shouldn't be. Because she's a stunner in that suit- one ill affording a leisurely afternoon.

Yet it's what she was asking for? Oh. Wylan thinks to himself. She must be suffering at whatever job she's at. Here I am perhaps witness to a woman stuck in the monotony of a parasitic career. It's not beyond possibility, even if this feels sudden. There were more than a share of anecdotes of workers at black companies that lost more than their spark to the oppressive regimen and hours that employers might subject.

There'd even been a monster to that effect, hadn't there? A manifestation of the slime and impasse of work, that clawed and dragged others down with it after they were changed. Even Kamen Rider Gamble had been tested there, hadn't he? Facing his own duties as something beyond a responsibility and his own personal endeavor to accomplish and ascend it.

After all, he had reminded himself, it wasn't just him that he was fighting for. This technology- a remnant from his late mother- and now emblazoned further after seeing what happened to his sister. He's carrying more than their hopes- but their dreams.

Which is exactly why he should be humoring this lady? Oh, that connection feels like a stain on their memories. Indulgent and fraught with distasteful implications. But he is unapologetically Wylan, is he not? Superficial. She wouldn't find that here...

"Uh, yes. Obviously I won't turn down an invitation from a lady this pretty and in need of my skillset. Don't you worry, I'd say you're in pretty good hands here. Even if it's just an evening I can fill out." Wylan notes confidently, his posture straightening in fake soldier-like fashion whilst he takes a natural spot besides the woman and offers an arm for her to take. "I'm guessing there's not too much of this city you've seen, what with all the work?"

The question is made with lifted brows.

"I've lived a dozen different places in my life, but something about this city in particular has sucked me in. Maybe it's just how unpredictable each day can be. The people are so strange, it's hard not to feel at home with it. I mean look at me, are you surprised?" He queries, the façade of proper manners from a moment before already starting to weather away in the face of his incessant whimsy. Assuming she had agreed to move with him (arm or no), he points ahead with a spin of the finger.

"Now look over there. Know where we're going?" The moment of distraction, does it afford him a chance to slip his arm around her shoulder so he may lean in? Regardless- "That's the waterfront. And you can get this incredible frozen custard from a little truck that parks next to the boardwalk."

"I know, you've got to be so embarrassed." The man chortles, betraying no sense of whether this too me be part of some extended plot. Was it? Not exactly. With everything that life threw his way, Wylan simply soaked in each moment as it came to him. A quick pivot for each expectation. Each stoplight perhaps a random point of diversion that creates with it an infinite number of possibilities. The woman could've slapped him on being called out, and he'd enjoy it take this also as another diverging moment.

A shy smile, an intense gaze. Then a curious collection of words that follow from her terse lips. Wylan's hesitance to reciprocate the greeting and gesture was borne from curiosity more than it was any wariness of danger or concern. For a woman like this who seemed so interested... there was an aloofness there. Solitary. Isolated. Isn't that so cold?

Clap! The gesture reciprocates off-beat, a strong shake after Wylan leans in with a lifted brow and earnest grin that would unsettle many a stranger with how unapologetically enthusiastic it was.

"Hoo~ Don't know who I am, and yet you were trying to find ways to approach me, eh? Isn't that something. You got me pretty curious what it was that strung you along. Because it's feeling more and more to me that it was my good looks or incredible ability to light up a street."

He pulls back the hand, shifting posture and position so that his hands now folded behind his head, canting a bemused expression to the side as he regards her. Is there restraint? Maybe now he's more compelled to mess with her.

"You can call me Dick, short for Richard. Nice to meet you, Nara."

Absolutely going to mess with her. Something in him said it was entirely necessary to use one of his favorite undercover names from back when he was in the business. Something shirked now that he was Kamen Rider Gamble, of course. But not everything was left behind. He was still Wylan. And that's... probably what Kat would have wanted.

Not for him to mess with random women, though.

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#when you’re spencer and spencer is you

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Yeah. DK Bananza was everything I wanted and more. What a great fucking year for video games.

Couldn't have asked for a better love letter to the DKC trilogy. :')

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@ebb-n-fl0w sent: what's your take on samus's identity, both gender presentation and preferences? why?

My portrayal of Samus is a cis female as far as technical gender goes. Her biology is all over the place, but I always believed that her human element was an underrated source of tenacity that separates her from the ... jfc... two strains of chozo dna and metroid dna that shares her blood plus any echoes of phazon one may argue (technically eradicated but yknow). Still, it's the human in her that continues to win out hence why she still looks like she does underneath the helmet.

But I also prescribe to the notion that how Samus carries herself is indifferent to social norms and rebellion. She dresses barely feminine lean, which for me is something leftover from her time working with the federation- but her behavior is whatever she deems necessary or preferable moment to moment. And that comes from a life of primarily solitude and utility over socializing. Community is fleeting, and vulnerable (how many has she seen fall?) So. Usually she's being quiet and looming in a room, but she's also using coarse language if necessary and wearing what's comfortable.

As much as she finds interest in culture (my portrayal has full scan logs and records) her own personal investment in it is, again, fleeting. Though her deepest connection would be to the Chozo in her, even if she was born human. How she carries herself is ... incredibly selfish. It's the only thing she has left of herself- what she does outside the moments of her manifested roles and duties. It's not masculine or feminine. It's just Samus. There's tank tops and leather jackets and pants and jeans and whatever she deems 'yeah this works' 'yeah i like this'.

In the end we know she's most at home wearing the suit.

The romance vector is small enough to be nonexistent, as she's jaded to the concept of finding personal love- see above with her feelings on herself in community- involving herself to that degree is a death sentence despite one of my favorite fanfics as a kid exploring it along with her having children. Love and enabling love for others however is something she finds important. It's a facet of protecting life after all. And we know she's got a soft spot for kids.

Her sexual vector is moderate, and has no m/f preference with directions. Or whatever applies to compatible(?) alien races. I've left it largely unexplored so far. Shrug! Probably not against casual encounters but they'd be fleeting and without any strings. As one can imagine though, it takes a lot to impress her. And she'd rather not deal with any headaches.

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:)

So restless at work. Just want to go and pick my cat up from the vet now that her surgery is done. Productivity? Nah.

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i love making ppl laugh . its like ….. u liked that didnt u 😏 lol

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So restless at work. Just want to go and pick my cat up from the vet now that her surgery is done. Productivity? Nah.

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Malkuth doodle

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Asiyah guys!!

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sam sifton, from the nyt “what to cook right now” newsletter

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invasive thoughts :: open

send 🧠 + an intrusive thought for my muse to have, and they'll react to having it!

@wisdomchosen sent: 🧠 + The ribbon in her hair is new! (For Wylan)

Zach hadn't noticed it at first when the princess had come down to the stables. The ribbon, that is. Her hair was different, he realized that much. What, do you think he's blind? Hardly. But Zelda usually faces him in conversation. Whether it's to patter on about what was bothering her that day- Or what he was doing that irritated her- So. He didn't see that at first and how it was tying back her hair.

The moment is taken to do so while she's taken a brush to go about brushing the mane of the horse. He'd been midway through setting up the mare with its tackle for a run.

The horse is far less interesting than the ribbon. In fact, the muted colors of its ashen coat only brought out the scarlet silk and glittering threads of said ribbon all the more brilliantly. To say nothing of her hair... what does it feel like?

The ribbon. That is.

"When did you get this?" He says, pulling it out with a gentle tug of one of its ends. This move elicits the expected reaction, with the girl spinning with indignation which Zach can't help but smile in response to. "Easy~ I'm not taking it! I was gonna tie it up a little differently. That's all. Give me a break. Here."

A roll of the eyes, and clear suspicion from the girl met with his claim. Zach can tell she's not sure whether to turn back to the horse or chase him down, and take it back. Or kick him in the shin now. There's something in her expression that Zach reads the possibility. But he's given free reign through some small blessing.

He runs a hand through the gold locks, sighing with feigned frustration as he pulls them up in a slightly higher ponytail. With a few deft twists and pulls- a bow is left from the handiwork. Not unlike what he did for his sister now and then.

"Oh. Right. There's no mirrors here. So you'll just have to trust me this looks nice..."