#And it was specifically about him after the show... the various layers of thinking and not-thinking about it would change over the show

[capaldiera]

i said on the tags of a post once that mulcahy isn't homophobic and that was true but like it's just not that simple obviously and it bothered me a bit to leave it at that but the post was already a mile long and i can't elaborate further without like talking for an hour and not really saying anything by the end of it. anyway the only purpose the statement needed to serve in that post was that it's nice for gay students at the school for the hard of hearing mulcahy works at post-canon that their chaplain isn't homophobic.

[adickaboutspoons]

By the Neck; or, Pearls Mean Tears

I know we all love the idea that Ed snatched the pearl necklace from the neck of one of the guests (or possibly even the bride herself) on the wedding party boat, and how that ties in with his re-painted bride dolly and his longing to be Stede’s bride. I’ve been responsible for propagating the idea myself. So I hate to rain on our parade, but, oh my v. dears? We were wrong.

Stop looking at Ed’s soft, open mouth and beautiful, haunted eyes for a second, and take a glance at the bottom of the frame at what’s tucked up next to the left lapel of his big Blackbeard duster (srsly, how did I not notice those ridiculously oversized lapels in the trailer? I am so dumb sometimes). And lest you think that he, perhaps snatched the necklace sometime between unleashing “the kids” and the camera cutting back to him nonchalantly enjoying some cake? Here’s the necklace on “the day before that,” visible just under the curve of the top pistol on his chest:

And here it is again “the day before that,” two pearls on the strand just barely visible as he’s lighting his pipe:

So sorry my v. dears, but no. the pearls don’t represent his desire to be partnered with Stede. But that’s ok - we already have a piece of neckware that represents that: Stede’s cravat. Which Ed donned specifically so that he could die in it…

And we know that he did that, because he was only wearing the pearl necklace and his habitual gold chains from the first season just before he babygirled his way right into the path of the storm. (Also - since the crew were huddled in the hallway leading to the captain’s cabin just before they came out to find Ed angling the cannon toward the mast, do we reckon he already had it on him when he came out to take the helm? Maybe tucked away in his pocket? Where he used to keep his silk?)

But! When Ed gets to the Gravy Basket, only the pearls remain.

Similarly when he’s manacled to the railing after he awakens from his coma, he’s only wearing the pearls. There’s no good Watsonian reason to take the cravat and the chains, but LEAVE the pearls. If the characters were worried about him choking, it would make sense to remove ALL the neckwear. If Stede wanted his clothes back for some reason or Ed didn’t want it now that Stede’s back and he’s mad at him, removing the cravat makes sense, but why remove the jewelry that rightly belongs to Ed, meaning he’d still have his chains along with the pearls. If it was a matter of the crew taking Ed’s valuables as an asshole tax or something, then we’d expect chains AND pearls to be gone, leaving just the cravat. I can’t think of a single in-universe reason why only the pearls would stay.

That tells us that the pearls are SYMBOLICALLY significant to his character concept and, especially since they show up in the Gravy Basket where EVERYTHING is symbolic, integrated into his concept of self.

So if not all the bridal stuff, how ARE we meant to interpret them?

Well, first, pearls are tied to the sea, and I think it’s fair to say that in almost all iterations of his identity, Ed sees himself intrinsically linked with or near the sea (The Pirate Blackbeard, The Kraken, the Impossible Bird that never returns to land, Jeff’s Inn by the Sea, Blackbeard’s Bar and Grill and other Delicacies and Delights and Fishing Equipment, and Fisherman Ed). But various mythologies posit pearls are the tears of gods or goddesses, intrinsically linking them with expressions of sorrow. And beyond that, there’s What Pearls Are - an irritant that has to be smoothed over with layer upon layer of visually appealing cover to make it acceptable.

We know that Ed thinks he’s profoundly unlovable. He admits it to himself in as many words in the Gravy Basket, but we’ve known this from season 1 when he confessed to Stede that he’s not a good person, and that’s why he hasn’t any friends. We see plenty of people with whom he is on friendly terms, like Jack or Anne and Mary, or who respect or admire Blackbeard, like his crew and Spanish Jackie, and Jeff easily wins over the crowd on the French Party Boat, but Blackbeard and Jeff are protective personas he cultured like layers of nacre. They’re not Just Ed.

Just Ed made himself profoundly vulnerable and kissed a boy on a beach. Just Ed got abandoned on a dock. Just Ed got told that it would have been better if the English had killed him.

So I think it’s significant that he and Stede exchange their second kiss when he’s been stripped of his pearls in exchange for a cat bell.

This is Ed devoid of all the signifiers of his self-constructed identities - just like on the beach with his clean-shaved face and standard-issue academy uniform - no pretenses to hide behind. He’s able to be soft and vulnerable and honest - expressing desire and being receptive of it, clearly establishing his needs and boundaries. He’s able to be Just Ed and be loved and accepted for it.

So what does it mean that, once the cat-bell era is over, Ed choses to put the pearls back on?

I think it’s telling that, after a brief interlude with Ned Low, we start episode 6 with Ed in two scenes where he’s in a state of low-grade anxiety over the fruits of his Kraken era. First, we see him scanning a horizon for a storm that he can feel, but not see, which, as pointed out by @edsbacktattoo is more or less a premonition about the impending arrival of Ned Low, whom Kraken!Ed goaded into coming for him by breaking his consecutive raid record in a bid of passive suicidality. Then, we have Ed’s room of gilded guilt. All this represents, to Ed, tangible evidence of his inherent toxicity - the rotten core of him that has to be smoothed over.

I think it’s also significant that the pearls are there for the sex scene at the end of the episode.

Unlike the scene at the end of episode 5, this is NOT Ed giving and receiving love on his own terms. Ned’s appearance was his fault - the result of his recklessness and self-destruction, and Stede is the one who has paid the price for it. Ed consents to sex, though he wanted to take things slow, and is not really ready, but it’s by no means enthusiastic. It’s relenting. It’s a way of smoothing things over for and with Stede rather than addressing the underlying agitation.

Even though Ed rids himself of his leathers - the last trappings of his Blackbeard persona, dropped overboard just like the bride doll he painted in his image - he keeps the pearls when he assumes his “just a regular guy” guise.

Because this isn’t really Ed expressing and embracing his authentic self. Fisherman Ed is just another palatable persona (a whim borne on the back of one caught fish, because if the people in his life are going to keep telling him he’s whim-prone, he may as well lean all the way in and prove them right, right?). All the same underlying anxiety about being unlovable is still there, and it’s thrown into overdrive now that everyone wants a piece of Stede. After all, if he REALLY loves Stede, would it not be best to release him from the obligation of being tied to someone so fundamentally damaged? Let him find someone who can TRULY make him happy now that he can have his pick? So he picks a fight to push Stede away - tells him that their first time together was “a mistake,” tells him that he’s leaving (again), tells him that fishermen and pirates (read: Ed and Stede) have nothing in common.

So, while they are lovely, and he wears those fine things well, I hope that we might soon see the end of the strand of pearls. Because for Ed, pearls mean tears.

[moltengoldveins]

alright, TCU scenes in no particular order, but they’re all meant to communicate something about the humanity of the characters involved in relation to the act of creation and the appreciation of beauty or smthn idk-

Antarctic Empire has a very early scene in which we are shown Techno in his cell beneath the Pit, painstakingly enchanting his flimsy armor with scraps of stolen lapis and a pen he’s carved from a bone he took as a ‘trophy.’ This is juxtaposed with Phil’s introduction scene immediately prior, in which he is disguised as a young nobleman and is stealing things from partygoers while watching the fights. It’s revealed that he’s used the things he stole to enchant something to crack the spells on Techno’s cell. These scenes are used to show us that, while they may seem disparate, these two are actually extremely similar in skill set.

At the end of AE we get a similar scene to the one I just described: Phil darts his way through the camp before the final battle, grabbing supplies and food, only to join Techno in his tent and help him enchant their armor. The two sequences are shot nearly identically.

Somewhere in the retirement arc we have an entire sequence where Techno is embroidering and enchanting his cape using blaze powder, showing a clear connection between certain magical components and their effects.

Phil’s crows are at first assumed to be normal nonsentient animals, but there are plot beats (assumed to be plot holes) in AE that only make sense on a rewatch after Covenant’s reveal that they, similarly to Phil, are conduits of Death and capable of communication crime and conspiracy. Specifically, Phil knows where an ambush will be that Techno doesn’t expect while their relationship is still really rocky, techno ignores his advice, and Phil has to haul tail to save him.

We see Techno crafting the emerald earrings in an end-credits scene in AE. It’s a few long continuous shots and a lot of close-ups that obscure what he’s working on. He’s singing to himself as well. Considering the end of the film moments prior was The Throne Scene with the coronation (Kinda dark, violence was involved) it’s a an odd tonal shift. Phil calls to him from the other room, saying they’re gonna be ‘late for petitioner’s hour’ and Techno jokes that ‘he’s the emperor, he can cancel petitioner hour if he pleases’ but he drops his work and leaves, grabbing the crown as he goes. We get one last shot of the unfinished earrings before cut-to-black.

During Pogtopia, we have a long scene where Tommy and Tubbo (after the execution, before the Pit) are shaken and trying to rest in Tommy’s room. There’s no dialogue. They’re sitting on Tommy’s cot, slightly leaning on one another, in dead empty silence. Tubbo is shaking slightly. Without warning, Tommy’s patience clearly runs out and he gets up, puts a song on his record player, and pulls Tubbo into a dance. (I’m thinking something kinda jazzy and tinny? An old recording, like Beyond the Sea.) They manage a few shaky turns before Tubbo’s iron facade cracks and they both burst into tears, holding one another. We rotate to see that Tommy’s face is burning with fury. The Pit immediately follows this.

Tubbo, Ranboo, Tommy, Techno, Phil, Niki, Puffy, and Jack are all shown in various background scenes in the first trilogy to know how to knit, sew, weave, and/or crochet. In fact, the only character who cannot and is never shown trying to learn to work a fiber craft is Icarus Craft. The irony is rather obvious.

Phil has a medieval architect setup in his basement with a classic plaster drawing table (this is how the cathedrals were planned. The architect would pour plaster into a very thin layer on a tabletop, let it dry, and then use heavy metal compasses and tools to make thin precise lines in the plaster for their designs. They’d then fill the lines with charcoal or graphite and transfer the designs from there so the masons could access them easily) we see him using it once or twice, and at some point near the end of the whole series we see him teaching Tubbo how to use it.

Tommy picks flowers while out on a scouting mission with Techno (post- Welcome Home, Theseus) he’s carrying them in the bg for most of the scene and we see them in a jar on the kitchen table after Tommy’s betrayal.

[littlemisstfc]

So...No LAYERS For The Decepticons: How RID 2015 Fails At Critiquing The Prison Complex

Welcome back to this side of the Hundred Acre Woods. It’s been 84 years since I have written a blog post here, so forgive my absence. 😭 By the way, I will be at TFCon LA 2024 on both March 9th and March 10th. Feel free to say hi to me, I cannot wait to meet more of you there as well as meeting more voice actors and artists. Anyways, let’s get onto today’s topic. So…RID 2015, my dear friend. 

After making that compilation of the purple icon and the moment Fracture, I began to have thoughts about RID 2015. I will be coming out with a video retrospective that will hopefully come out later this year. My collaborator is dealing with a personal matter at the moment, so I’m respecting their space. Think of this as a preview to what we have here. I thought about doing a video, but I feel like my strongest strength has always been writing. 

RID 2015 is an interesting show in the sense that it has so much to say, yet never got the chance to fully explore what it wants to say. If you know me by now, you know that I am one of the most hardcore RID defenders in existence akskskskdjdkd. Let me make it clear: it’s a show that exists. However…it is MY show that exists. Like, compared to the very worst of the worst that Transformers has to offer, this show doesn’t even scratch at the surface. It’s a mid show that manages to keep me entertained and engaged at least. However, at the same time, its flaws are genuinely that egregious, and as much as the writers tried, I feel like they’re held back from fully exploring its potential. Like I said, I will go into the gritty nitty detail at a later day, so at the moment, let’s go discuss what’s perhaps the main issue I have with RID 2015…it fails at critiquing the prison complex.

The Prison Complex...BUT WITH FURRIES.

In case you don’t know what RID 2015 is about, let me summarize it really quickly. RID 2015 takes place three years later after Transformers Prime ended, and it focuses on Bumblebee now. After getting a sign from Optimus’s spirit to return to Earth, he does so, along with a cadet named Strongarm and a delinquent named Sideswipe accidentally joining him. Eventually, they all ended up at Crown City and they found out a Decepticon prison ship, the Alchemor, crash landed near here, courtesy of the caretaker Fixit. Then, after taking care of one escaped Decepticon, they were then joined by Grimlock and two humans named Russell and Denny. So, the entire series is focused on Bee and his team capturing the escaped Decepticon prisoners, while also having to deal with the shady behind the scenes of the Cybertronian government.

Now that we got the main premise out of the way, on the surface, it seems like it’s a harmless monster of the week type show. For most of the time, it’s just Bee and his team capturing Decepticons, who are also animals in this version. Okay, Beast Wars aksksksks. It seems like there’s not much issue. However…when you really think about the circumstances of these Decepticons, not to mention how oddly it portrays the police force in a mostly positive light (and I say that loosely), the show did not age in retrospect. It does not do a great job at critiquing what’s wrong with the prison industry.

Now that I brought it up, you may be asking why I did so. It’s important to bring it up, because it ties into how this show tackles the Decepticons and the Cybertronian police state. In a nutshell, the prison complex refers to the relationship between the prison system and various businesses, specifically how they benefit from incarceration being the end-all solution in tackling society’s problems. It relies heavily on the surveillance and policing of the population in order to make the quickest profit that really only serves as a bandaid to the elephant in the room. In case you want to learn more about the prison complex, I highly recommend doing your research by looking up sources, especially from those who work in prison reform.

Back to RID 2015, the show makes it seem like the Decepticons should be treated as menaces to society because the government says so. Now, let me make it clear: I am in no way justifying what these characters did. I mean, there are legit serial killers and legitimate dangers to society in there akksksksksa. It’s called nuance, folks. However, at the same time…these people should be getting help for their issues and/or get rehabilitation instead of being treated as animals (no pun intended). You look at characters like Springload and Filch, who are individuals that show severe signs of mental illness that heavily impact how they navigate the world. Then, you have Decepticons who only really committed minor offenses like Bisk. Now, I’m not saying that they’re justified in doing those crimes. I’m saying that the consequences should fit the crime, yet for some reason, the show likes to say that brutal incarceration is the answer. In the world of the Aligned Continuity post Prime, you get labeled a Decepticon for your crimes and you;re packed off to jail until you die or something. 

Then, we have the head bitch in charge himself, Steeljaw. Now, I’m saving my thoughts on his character and how he wouldn’t go away at a later date, so for now…Steeljaw may be a character that the show stubbornly refuses to let go, but I’m sorry, he brought up good points about the way things are runned. He is basically TFA Megatron if he was a furry aksksksks. While his intentions are ultimately a power grab and the way he treats his pack isn’t justified, at the same time, you do see where he’s coming from. The show portrays the premise in a very strict black and white sense, in which the Decepticons are all evil and the Autobots are justified in throwing all them into prison. Now, we do learn about the actual truth behind the Council and Strongarm is a genuinely good person, but still, the show is so committed to the anti Decepticon status quo that it makes the premise much worse. It lacks the nuance that Animated and Cyberverse to an extent had in portraying the two sides, so it’s insensitive at best and actually quite harmful at worst. 

So…you may be wondering, “wait, but what about Grimlock and Drift?” That’s where they both come into the discussion. To me, those two represent the nuance that the show desperately wanted to convey, but isn’t allowed to explore. They’re both reformed Decepticons who showed that they are not defined by their past, and they put in the work to change. Hell, there was even an entire ass episode dedicated to the team realizing that Grimlock did change for the better. In Drift’s case, when he was confronted by a figure from his past, he made it clear that he also changed for the better. So, if the show was willing to offer both Grimlock and Drift second chances, then why can’t it offer the same grace to the Alchemor prisoners?

This then leads to the character of Scowl, whom I honestly believe that he is capable of having a genuine heel face turn if the show GAVE HIM A FUCKING CHANCE. The instant chemistry he had with Grimlock reveals that he seems to be a cool guy. I think that once he’s taught to learn right from wrong and is given a support system, he can be redeemed. Yet frustratingly, the show goes, “nah bro, he’s 100% evil underneath his bro bro act.” It’s kind of hypocritical that it allows Grimlock to reform, but it puts Scowl and a majority of the Decepticons into a black and white box. They’re not allowed to be their own characters in the first place, so they received the short end of the stick even more. Just…UGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. Show, why do you test my patience sometimes? When I tweeted about this thought I had after I made the Fracture compilation, someone summarized it best right here:

"Legitimately, if RID15 wasn't aimed at kids, it would be a really nuanced show and likely would get recognized as better than Prime."

Kids are fucking smarter than we give them credit for. I was six years old when I watched Animated, and I noticed the deeper aspects of the show. I just didn’t have the words to articulate it until I became an adult. If RID 2015 was given the time and care it needs to explore this concept to its fullest potential, it would perhaps be the best well thought out show in the Aligned Continuity. I may get canceled for this, but it’s the LAYERS that Prime wants. However, because the higher ups wanted a toyetic approach and thought the kids are too dumb to pick up on LAYERS and nuance, we got this, and it honestly saddens me it turned out this way.

Conclusion: Even the most mid Transformers show deserves LAYERS.

Being a RID 2015 stan is the toughest battle God gives to his silliest little guys akskskskks. I criticize this show because I truly believe it deserves BETTER than what it was given to work with. You may look at me like I’m crazy for thinking about this way more than what a normal person would do…but I ain’t normal, lads. 

I'm saving my full thoughts for the retrospective like I said, but right now, the show has a lot to say, but it was sadly silenced. I honestly think it would've been one of those Transformers shows people will fondly look back on had it been given more time in the oven. This is why I appreciate fanfiction and fanon existing because they explore the LAYERS the show has underneath the silly vibes. I would do anything for this show to receive a comic book continuiation or a spinoff that explores its full potential.

Anyways, Pingu.

[iheartchv]

Hey I was hoping I could get a cod matchup? Sorry in advance for the yapping

Umm as for appearance I am 5’4” in my early twenties. I have layered curly brown hair that comes to just above my shoulder, blue eyes, freckles pale as hell, a few scars here and there that I’m kinda proud of (from various causes) I don’t really have a specific style it can range from a tank top and sweats to t-shirt and jeans or something completely wild, color coded decked out in jewelry, skirts, layers the whole bit. Relatively active build, used to be a gymnast until an injury now I just workout twice a week w a friend. Interests; I like movies top five rn probably Scream (1996), Spiderverse, 10 things I hate about you, the last unicorn, Dead poets society, +Star Wars cause I can’t leave it out. I like playing chess every now and then, I’d say I’m pretty good but I still have a ways to go. I’m also an artist, and I like music I can’t do anything music related I just like listening to it, all kinds. I like baking when I’m stressed, typically cookies during finals week at 2 am. My future prospects, or at least what they are currently, is just going to law school, after that I’m not really sure, I’ve thought ab going the military route, both of my parents served/are serving, so I’ve thought ab the possibility of being a military JAG or something in Intel, but I’m still feeling for it, I mostly like law cause I’m pretty good at it and I like knowing more than people. I’m Bi so my taste in Men/Women varies. As much as I’d like to say I don’t have a type, hot people are hot, there have been patterns in the past few fictional guys. Tbh my taste in men is shit, like I don’t have daddy issues, I have a great relationship with him, but my past fictional crushes say other wise. But basically, capability is HOT, if they’re good at something to the point of mastering it I’m entranced. Women are just pretty, there’s not much there. I’m relatively paranoid, even describing myself like this online is strange, I think it’s just growing up around military but I’m typically just cautious. That and trust issues. I’ve done some martial arts/self defense and I think sparring is really fun I just need someone to teach me. Also I am a huge simp (with shit taste as my friends say) I’m an ambiavert, so I like to be pretty adaptable depending on who I’m around. I’m also German/American but definitely more American than anything else, I ‘grew up’ in south Germany and we still have family there but since we moved here I’ve forgotten most of  the language. JFC in hindsight I am SO SORRY about all this I got carried away. I hope it didn’t come across as self absorbed 😭😅 thanks 

Sorry again 

🤔 I'll pair you with...

Captain John Price 🚬

Price might be the one to fall for you

If you ever decide/decided to join the military, him and Laswell will look through files and find you

He can't help but feel that you would bring something to the table

Recruiting you, along with many others, he'd be watching you

Through the tests, he'd be silently hoping you'd pass

When he asks to see you, you think you've done something wrong

Instead he just tells you that you've done a good job with all the training and tests he's put you through

"I admit, I thought you would call it quits anytime soon... but... you're determination surprised me."

"You've got guts, spirit. I like that"

He wants to take you under his wing and train you

He was right about you; there was something special there

Though he didn't know just how special you would be to him later on 🤭

After many months and near death experiences later, he'd come to realize he cares about you... a lot

💞

When off duty, he will take you somewhere to talk

Price doesn't play games, you know that

So... he tells you that he really likes you

All this time he'd spent getting to know you, he felt something he hadn't in a long time

One time, when he looked like he was about to fall asleep he was surprised that you showed so much concern for him; You wanted to do something, anything, for him

His hand gently held yours, showing how gentle he can be

"If you'll have me, love, I can make you happy... even if it takes my whole life to"

[kaicean]

Ya girl back with not shutting up about the Dragon Cry movie again. 

In a previous post, I spilled my feelings over Dragon Cry’s ending theme What You Are by Polka Dots and its English translation that perfectly captures Natsu and Lucy’s relationship through Lucy’s eyes.

Now I will spill my feelings about THE event that happened through Natsu’s eyes and a little but important detail that I haven’t seen brought up in other analyses:

The interesting detail I stumbled upon is the music that plays during this scene. From the movie’s OST, it is called 走馬灯 or “Revolving Lantern.”

For a refresher, you can watch this segment along with the specific soundtrack playing here.

I looked up the meaning of 走馬灯 because the name caught my eye when I was looking at the tracklist for the movie. Here are some of my findings:

A kind of 2-layered lantern. The inner layer revolves and has images cut into it, such that when it turns, the shapes appear to move around the lantern. In recent years, this soumatou has become associated with the “life flashing before your eyes” phenomenon that happens before death (走馬灯現象 / 走馬灯体験). (source)

Soumatou (走馬灯) refers to various memories coming back one after another, mainly at the time of death or when one's emotions are shaken. It is also characterized by the vivid recall of past events and the recollection of large amount of memories, ignoring the flow of time. It is used when the memory is revived as a result of overlapping conditions, rather than being recalled consciously. It is said that there is a flow in memory, and there are many cases where memories of a lifetime from birth to death come back in an instant, and memorable episodes such as memories with family come to mind. (source)

Soumatou (走馬灯（そうまとう）) is a type of traditional Japanese lighting fixture lantern, and is sometimes written as 走馬燈. It is also called a "rotating lantern" because the shadow picture inside the lantern is reflected as it rotates. Because of its shadow pictures, it was mainly used as a summer toy to please children. Nowadays the word soumatou is used to express good memories or memories of the past that are deeply emotional and nostalgic, as the spinning silhouettes seem to represent one's life. (source)

With these explanations in mind, here is what a physical revolving lantern actually looks:

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See the resemblance to Natsu’s flashbacks? 

I know it is pretty obvious just by watching the scene that Natsu was having “his life flash before his eyes” since he was on the brink of death. I just thought it was a really neat detail for the soundtrack to match it. I also loved the detail of Lucy’s scene having more of the “revolving lantern” feel compared to other guild members’ scenes with how her part was played like an old movie before it faded out to white.

It was the way he remembered her last and in a different setting entirely—outside the guild hall—that showed how he views her differently from other Fairy Tail members, especially when he recalled that specific scene without consciously (duh) thinking it.

Natsu’s VA Kakihara Tetsuya also highlighted the scene in the movie where Natsu asks Lucy what he looks like to her. Although more subjective/opinionated, Tetsuya said he thinks “those words [What do I look like?] are packed with Natsu’s feelings towards his nakama from the guild, whom he has known for 8 years, as well as Lucy, even though [Tetsuya] can’t explain what kind of feelings they are. Those words are packed with various emotions that probably only Natsu knows.”

Another moment of Natsu putting Lucy in a different light compared to others is in the 100 Years Quest sequel (chapter 62):

He said he has "nakama" (仲間) and "people/they" (奴等) who believe in him with the very next panel being a flash to Lucy in the background. The ENTIRE guild was literally around her during this battle but the panel only highlighted Lucy before he yelled he is no one but himself, Fairy Tail’s Natsu Dragneel. I thought this scene was a perfect callback to Dragon Cry.

Going back, I also wondered about the significance of Lucy’s tear dropping in Natsu’s mouth other than being the trigger for flashbacks of his relationships with Fairy Tail members. 

Another thing I read about “revolving lantern" is:

"Soumatou (走馬灯) phenomenon" means "a phenomenon that brings back old memories". It is said to occur in situations where emotional fluctuations are heightened, and memories overflow naturally rather than being intentionally recalled. For example, the sentence "The moment I passed through the school gate, memories of three years flowed like a revolving lantern." The above sentence expresses how the three years of memories have overflowed due to the heightened emotions of "graduation". (source)

Given the above passage, I like to also think her tear is what caused his recollection of her to have more emphasis than the rest of the guild members; her tear (that he basically tasted) being the physical thing that caused his emotions to fluctuate and recall that specific memory of Lucy before he woke up and was given a second wind. This along with Lucy having a significant impact in Natsu’s life other than Happy, said by Zeref himself.

I could also just be reaching lmao but that’s the fun of analyzing.

Fun fact: While this segment wasn’t in the original storyboard manga Mashima drew for the movie, he still drew it and only of Lucy as far we were publicly given. It was shown in the movie’s pamphlet which also had his illustration of Lucy embracing Natsu that I briefly mentioned in my other post:

真島自らが描いた、ナツの回想の中ルーシィ Natsu’s recollection of Lucy, drawn by Mashima himself

While the movie was nicely animated (though I still have a huge problem on how ridiculous the boobs looked, specifically when Lucy was climbing a tree...), I just love the fact Mashima himself included the flashback scene with how super involved he was in the production of the movie. Little things like that gives me hope for them.

And there you go. I do LOVE the theory some people have where that date-like scene didn't actually happen but is what Natsu's mind conjured up for Lucy. However, there are a few things to note:

Flashback (フラッシュバック) IS a synonym for soumatou (走馬灯) since it brings back old memories. However, "flashback" is slightly different than "soumatou" because it can refer to recalling both good and bad memories. Negative experiences/trauma are not depicted in soumatou at all though, only the unconscious action of remembering or recalling. (source)

Natsu's recollection of Lucy (ナツの回想の中ルーシィ) is from the movie pamphlet caption under Mashima's drawing of the scene. Reminiscence/recollection (回想) is another synonym for flashback (フラッシュバック). "Reminiscence" is to look back and remember the past. A scene that depicts the past of a character is called a "recollection scene". It is called a flashback scene not only in video works, but also in manga and novels. (source)

With that being said, I personally believe it actually happened. Which means?? We were ROBBED?? Of a NaLu date-like scene that happened OFF-SCREEN???? I can't BELIEVE the amount of blue-balling teasing Mashima gives for this ship I swear to god. Regardless, people can believe whatever they want to believe and have their own theories. Taking account above points, I genuinely love both sides. The thought of Natsu unconsciously picturing Lucy and himself on a date is *clenches fist* but that boy also consciously puts Lucy in a special spot, different from his nakama.

Natsu from the very beginning had never (officially) formed a team with anyone other than Happy until Lucy came along. Then Plue made a… gesture for it that Natsu understood and agreed to. It wasn’t a quick and thoughtless agreement either as he verbally reflected the Mt. Hakobe trip to find Macao. He acknowledged Lucy and said that despite her being a weirdo, she’s a trustworthy and good person.

(Upsetting Natsu understanding Plue was never explored since then but anyway…)

Sure he tricked her to come along with the Everlue mission (lmao) and Lucy herself called him out on it a second time, but Natsu also confirmed for a second time that “yeah it could’ve been anyone but we chose you, Lucy, because you’re such a nice person!”

… and WAY later we find out it was also her scent, for whatever reason unbeknownst to him until the VERY end, that always made him feel relaxed around her. I like to believe the mention of similar smell between her and Anna other than being blood-related was another factor in his quick attachment to Lucy in the beginning due to unconscious familiarity (Igneel’s scarf which he treasures so much was knitted by Anna after all) and this theory summed it well for me. Regardless, every time Anna gets mentioned to him his first thought is always “Lucy.”

In conclusion, I have some gripe when it comes to the overall plot and pacing of the Dragon Cry movie but when it comes down to all of its Natsu/Lucy scenes, it is absolutely perfect. I have two more scenes in the movie I’d like to write another analysis of so hope you look forward to more of my gross sobbing!!

[ban-joey]

ok im posting this. uh this is like, a pretty unhinged barely organized essay/stream of consciousness. I compiled a lot of this during a trip to my grandparent’s with a glass of good whiskey and brand new headphones, just after the release of the andor finale. I finished it when the rest of the soundtrack was released. I have a google doc of my notes, where I basically just gave every single track my undivided attention and made various connections here and there. this is specifically about cellos in the soundtrack.

(If you like music theory and loved the Andor soundtrack, I really recommend listening to Kirk Hamilton’s episode about it on his podcast Strong Songs. He also guested in an episode of A More Civilized Age which is a podcast that’s totally taken over my listening time and utterly Star Wars pilled me as soon as it started. Kirk does a really wonderful job taking you through music step-by-step and pulling out specific things you might not notice on your own, and really enjoys doing it. It’s a lot of fun and I’ve learned a lot listening to him.)

anyway.

STAR WARS: ANDOR and The Cello as a Character Device (and just a good instrument)

I just put my earbuds in. My phone is still on the track “My Name is Kino Loy,” just at the very end, when I turned my car off after getting home and sitting in it for a bit to finish out the song. It’s one of my favorites on the soundtrack, utterly spellbinding from beginning to end. It’s killer. The sheer amount of emotion in it even without the context of the scene it’s in is just phenomenal. 

The entirety of the released Andor score is about 2 hours and 40 minutes of some of the most engaging and interesting soundtrack I’ve had the pleasure of listening to way too often.

Andor (Main Title Theme) - Episode 1. The engine guns, the cellos are flying this ship. Everyone’s talked about how good this theme is. The fact that Britell composed so many versions of it, resulting in a core identifier of the show. A changing introduction every episode, setting the tone of what’s to come.

When I started watching this show, I was pretty instantly blown away by everything, but music is always the thing that reels me in for the long haul. It’s been a long time since I’ve heard cellos as the main focus in a score. I can’t think of a TV show or movie that uses them so prominently. In things that I’ve listened to and watched, cellos are used for solos in moments that are meant to invoke some strong emotion. They’re an instrument you feel in your chest, not meant to be the main feature throughout.

As I watched, I just couldn’t get this out of my head, that Cassian Andor and the cello are entwined in some way. I started to think about how he moves, how he speaks, the pitch of his voice, and then started really paying attention to when the cello shows up. As soon as I started listening to the soundtrack on the regular as it was released, I figured out what was going on.

“Rix Road” is firmly on my list of top tracks. It starts up right after the Time Grappler in the show, blending with the final few blows on that gigantic metal slab. The camera follows Cassian through Ferrix. We get a shot of his back as the cello comes in, and he seamlessly merges into the crowd while the cello is nearly entirely absorbed into the layers of this beautiful piece of music. The cello plays what we will soon recognize as a theme central to the community of Ferrix. 

(if you are my friend and you haven’t watched past the Aldhani arc don’t read the rest of this kthx) 

The musical identity of this place is delivered to us along with these extraordinary sets, costumes, details of a bustling community united in its work and each other. The music ties it all together in such a profound way—this specific melody, a funeral dirge, is played while Cassian walks down Rix Road. Where the Empire hung his father. God damn.

I unpacked my viola after having it stored away for months and learned how to play that solo shortly after hearing it, because how could I not? It’s gorgeous. At the time, I had no idea what it would grow into.

After I watched that scene, I decided the cello is Cassian. Diego Luna’s voice makes it work, frequently hitting that same register. More specifically, though, I noticed cellos really bring out moments of quiet for Cassian, bringing pieces of his internal identity to the fore in really interesting ways. Cellos only get a feature when Cassian is present in a scene.

Like, “The Night Before.” We get this gorgeous cello (I’m so biased, it’s always gorgeous, I love this instrument beyond words), this tremulous, high-pitched back-and-forth across the strings. Cassian sits alone in Maarva and Clem’s old ship, holding his father’s gun and spending the night awake. Waiting it out. Again, we only get the cello when he’s on screen. 

The cellos in the soundtrack are never confined to just one melody, they’re dynamic as all hell. They play counter to each other frequently, as in the theme for the second episode—which, to me, sounds like three or four different melodies struggling to unite in some larger identity, and almost reaching it, but they’re cut off too soon to resolve. Knowing what we do about Cassian, there’s definitely something there. How well does he know himself? How much is he afraid to confront about what makes him who he is, his past, his emotions, his pain, everything unresolved about Kenari? Is having so many separate pieces of self-identity part of what makes him so good at playing a role? It’s just the song having a few different cellos doing different stuff, it’s probably not intentional on the part of the composer, but the point is that it made me think and it’s just the intro music. It’s about 50 seconds long, but it made me think about the character in a new way, and I just think that’s really cool.

My number one track is the one that’s better as it is unmixed in the show. Pilgrim. I have pointed out a bazillion times that this track comes in after the line “If you can’t find it here, it’s not worth finding” because I am insane about this. Instantly, the cello, attacking the strings in a steady, hacking beat, absolutely sawing, taking us into the full orchestra, absorbed as we go. The camera pans down to Ferrix and the drums start in, to find Cassian walking through the scrap yard, fitting in to the world around him as the cello merges into the strings and we get that absolute banger of a drum solo. He walks in time with the beat. The cellos reemerge, soaring high in the theme and shifting even higher in a wail as the screen goes to black. It’s insane. It makes me foam at the mouth. Garage drums in Star Wars. It’s the best thing I’ve ever heard.

And again—that idea of Cassian blending into his environment, enhanced by the cello doing the same thing. Love it. 

“Past/Present Suite” is another on the list of all-timers. The ticking clock of the beginning, this slow build. The cellos begin as a quiet drone beneath violins and violas, and then the solos shine through with the main theme and counter-melody. The other strings are there, pushing everything forward, the percussion is there, there’s this driving bass that’s really good, the synth blends everything together in such a fantastic way, but the cellos are the stars of the show in the end. At first, they’re just repeating the same phrase. The brass comes in, taking over for the cellos, and the cellos take back command of the melody, driving forward in what I view as Ferrix’s theme. That funeral dirge.

And then, by the end, this culmination of astonishing emotion. The cello keens above everything else as the strings and brass and percussion fall away, Ferrix dropping away beneath the Fondor, taking an unwilling Cassian away from home. The interplay of his kidnapping from Kenari is striking, and that high tone of the cello is just heartbreaking. How painful must it be, to watch your life repeat itself in this way? The cellos pull that out, giving you an insight into Cassian’s emotional state that is driven and pinpointed by Diego Luna’s performance. 

After the first three episodes, we get way less cello. They’re still present in the intros, but not so much in the rest. Makes sense—the following arcs are less about Cassian as a person and more specifically about the world we’re in and how our cast responds to it, the roles they play, the institutions they serve. Cellos are of course still there, at least whenever the soundtrack falls back into a traditional orchestra. You can’t cut cellos out of that, they’re the best instrument. But, they’re not the main feature for a while.

So, like, obviously as soon as the cellos hit at the end of “My Name is Kino Loy” hand-in-hand with the brass I was knocked off my ass. That one’s on my top whatever list. An incredible blend to finish out (I THOUGHT) an episode that ripped my fucking guts out. And then we descend into the depths of Coruscant. Bye bye cello. Hello oh my god where are we and WHAT is Luthen wearing and oh holy shit

Anyway then the cellos show up again in “Heroes” because, duh, Cassian is back. The cellos are up front here, plus these absolutely bonkers horns and CRAZY triumphant drum hits, and finally it’s the end of the episode and it was a WILD fucking ride and this song does not dim the adrenaline rush that was that entire 40 minutes of top-tier television as we close out episode 10.

Also, worth mentioning, the cellos are barely in the intro for episode 11. It’s very sexy considering the musical end of the episode. When I say sexy I mean it makes me cry a lot. 

And, yeah, that musical end is “Your Mother Is Dead,” which is the entire reason I started typing this out. Nine cellos. NINE CELLOS. The barest hint of other strings behind them, but it’s all cellos. And it’s just Cassian, by the end. All alone. At the water’s edge. White-knuckled grip on his bag. It’s just grief. That’s the entirety of this song. It’s unending, profound, overlapping, waves of grief that just keep crashing down. It’s so painful. You get one look at his face in this scene and it’s so clear what he’s feeling, he can just barely lie, say that everything’s fine, but he chokes on it. (Diego Luna I am shaking your hand)

Episode 12 is all brass. I don’t need to say more about that. Y’all already know. Funnily enough, it’s actually violas that show up when we see Cassian on Ferrix again, which I love. It’s almost like the cellos were fully spent after the last episode, all of that emotion so overwhelming. But “Clem’s Stone” is just as cutting a piece as “Your Mother Is Dead”. On top of the grief, it’s achingly hopeful. It’s on my list as well. It���s only 2 minutes long, and remarkably effective.

The last place we hear the cello is in “Cassian Will Find Us”, for obvious reasons. It feels like a goodbye. I hope we see these characters again, but I don’t know. It’s blending in, not the focus at all, with all these other instruments and melodies that have been featured throughout the show—some of them not for a while! The percussion unique to the Aldhani arc comes back, tying a neat little bow on everything that’s happened to this character this season. Combining it all in droves, in a relatively unassuming piece of music, completing Cassian’s arc in this season, uniting him with everything he’s gone through and learned and lost.

It makes sense that the cello would be the main instrument to follow Cassian through a scene, considering it’s the lead in the main theme, and he’s, y’know, that’s his name. But, I’m so used to Star Wars soundtrack maintaining character themes only, to the point of overuse post-og trilogy. Having a specific instrument for a specific character, an instrument that is in itself so versatile and malleable, just like the character? Fucking rules. Having that instrument specifically single out his identity within and outside of groups of people and planets as well as his deeply internalized struggles and barely outwardly expressed emotion that’s boiling over? I go crazy for Nicholas Britell.

Anyway. I love this show dearly. It’s been really fun to watch and listen to, and I can’t wait to see what kind of musical lines they draw in the second season. I’ve feasted and I’m satisfied with this, but I am so eager for more.

[paleairlesscompanion]

Lost Sterek Fic Please Help!

TW: Fic contains past non-con/rape

I've posted this to Lost Fics in reddit but I'm desperate so posting here too.

I need help finding a Stiles Stilinski/Derek Hale fic that I remember certain details/plot points of, but no idea what the title was. I've put the various layers of details I remember below. I've been trying to find it forever - please help me before I go insane!

GENERAL:

- Was definitely on ao3

- Was definitely third-person Stiles POV

- I THINK it was about 2000-2500 words but it could have been longer

- I read it several years ago, pre-2018 if not earlier

- Main premise was that Stiles had been sexually assaulted in his early teens but hadn't been able to process what happened to him as being actual rape. He is then triggered when being intimate with Derek, but Derek actually stops when he asks which brings the trauma to the surface. Derek explains that what had happened to Stiles wasn't his fault, hurt/comfort etc.

MAIN PLOT POINTS:

- Stiles and Scott go to party

- Stiles ends up being raped by older girl (starts as consensual making out)

- Girl gaslights Stiles 'of course you want this/all guys want sex'

- Stiles is ashamed, doesn't tell Scott or anyone else what happened

- Few years on, Stiles exaggerates his crush on Lydia Martin to hide his trauma around intimacy/sex

- Meets Derek (canonical age difference), and actually wants to be intimate with him

- They make out but Stiles is triggered and wants to stop

- Derek DOES stop, Stiles asks why, Derek says because Stiles told him to

- Derek respecting his 'no', when the highschool girl hadn't, brings all the trauma/confusion to the surface and Stiles panics and runs

- Derek goes after him, Stiles tells him about his assault, and Derek explains that what happened to Stiles was rape and that it wasn't his fault

- Stiles cries in Derek's arms, Derek is very protective/tender

Super specific details under the cut

SPECIFIC DETAILS:

- Stiles and Scott are early teens (middle school age?) and sneak out at night to go to a highschool party

- It is Scott's idea - Stiles is worried about how angry/disappointed his dad will he if he finds out but goes because his friend wants to

- Scott leaves Stiles alone at the party (I think to go off with some cute girl from one of their classes)

- Stiles feels awkward and out of place surrounded by popular older kids he doesn't know

- He is approached by a hot older girl, and is mostly very flattered that she's showing an interest in him when he's so young/'uncool'

- She is some kind of athlete on a school team

*(I could have sworn it was the girls volleyball team, but this hasn't narrowed my search results so now I'm not sure)*

- They end up in one of the bedrooms alone and begin making out on the bed

- Stiles cant believe this is happening and is excited and willing at first when it's just kissing

- She ends up on top of him and starts escalating from making out to full on sex

- Stiles becomes uncomfortable and wants her to stop -- I can't remember if he says 'no' or 'stop' or 'I don't want this' but he definitely protests

- She is too physically strong (athlete) for Stiles to push her off -- there's a line about Stiles realising the strength hidden in her toned body and being afraid instead of turned on

- She dismisses his protests -- says something about 'don't be silly, of course you want this'/makes a comment about how all guys want sex (may have also said something about it being his lucy day and/or how many boys can say they lost their virginity to a hot older girl? i.e. bragging rights)

- She stays on top of him and rapes him - he's gone into a Freeze response, not participating but unable to stop her

- I can't remember if he comes or not

- She leaves him there - says something like "you're welcome", definitely keeps up the whole 'not even considering he wasn't willing' thing

- It takes him a while to un-freeze, when he does he's shaken but he cleans and dresses himself

- He finds Scott downstairs all happy/blushing with the cute girl from earlier

- I think there's a line about how different Stiles feels from Scott i.e. they entered the party as dumb kids but now Stiles has been changed by his experience, while Scott has stayed the same

- Stiles does not tell anyone what happened

* he's been messed up by what she said to him, lots of self-doubt, like he must have reacted that way because there's something wrong with HIM. Possibly alluded to the whole 'men cant get raped' bullshit. Worried no one will believe he didn't want it *

- The next part is more general description of the next few years going into highschool (and Scott getting turned etc cannon stuff)

- Stiles is super uncomfortable with his peer's increasing focus on sex now that they're all older

- SUPER SPECIFIC LINE but I can't remember the exact wording, something about guys thinking about sex every 7(?) seconds, and that Stiles also thinks about it that often but for a very different reason (trauma)

- He's terrified of being intimate with anyone, but since everyone else is focused on dating/sex, he tries to appear that way so no one knows how fucked up/traumatised he feels about all of it

- It's common knowledge he's had a crush on Lydia since they were little kids so he plays it up his attraction to her (canonical stuff about everyone knowing he's infatuated with her, making embarrassing public declarations about her, etc.)

- She is a safe bet as he knows she would never go for him/reciprocate anything, and his antics stop anyone else from showing interest in him

- There's a line I can't remember the exact words to, something like 'everyone knew Stiles was in love with Lydia Martin, so of *course* he wanted to have sex with her'

- There's also mention of Scott meeting Alison, being super into her and all the PDA -- It makes Stiles feel nauseous (trauma response)

- I can't remember the particulars of how Stiles and Derek end up being interested in each other but they do

- They're in a room in the abandoned Hale house and are going to make out

- I'm pretty sure there's a bit about how Stiles actually wants Derek, and how significant that is when he hasn't been able to feel attraction since what had happened to him -- and he's psyching himself up because he WANTS this and he doesn't want to start feeling scared/disgusted/etc, he wants to be normal and enjoy being with the guy he likes

- They're making out, I can't remember if it's Derek being on top of him, or if Derek goes to put his hand over Stiles cock through his jeans, but something triggers Stiles

- I think there's a line that draws a parallel to him behing young and weak against the athletic rapist, and him being older/bigger now but even more helpless against a werewolf with supernatural strength

- He freezes and says something like 'no' or 'stop'

- Derek stops IMMEDIATELY, takes his hands off Stiles and moved back to give him space

- Stiles is still frozen but is even more thrown that Derek had actually listened and stopped

- I can't remember the exact wording of the exchange but Stiles asks why Derek stopped, and Derek answers because you told me to but like it's the most obvious thing in the world

- It brings up all the buried shit for Stiles, because if Derek listened to him now it means the girl should have listened to him back then and it overwhelms him and he runs out of the house to his jeep

- Derek doesn't understand but knows something is very wrong and goes after Stiles

- They end up in the Jeep together -- I THINK Derek catches up with the Jeep as it's driving through the woods and Stiles slams the breaks OR Stiles is so hysterical when he reaches the Jeep thar he can't get the keys into the ignition and Derek finds him there

- Derek is very slow with his movements getting in the car and doesn't touch Stiles

- Stiles eventually starts to spill everything about his assault, but the way he describes it is through the lens of all the fucked up self-blame he has had about it

- Derek becomes obviously furious, he's mad at the rapist but Stiles sees the anger and looks terrified as though Derek is going to do something to HIM (trauma response)

- Derek deliberately calms himself because he does not want to spook Stiles

- Again, I don't remember the particulars but Derek gently explains that Stiles was assaulted, that it wasn't his fault, that it never should have happened to him, that she should have listened

- He ends up holding Stiles while he sobs and I THINK there's mention that he's going to encourage Stiles to tell his dad

[mousieta]

Review: The Novelist Series

The Novelist (2018) Mood Indigo (2019) Pornographer: Spring Life (2021) Pornographer: Playbook (2021) Pornographer: Continued Spring Life (2021) Country: Japan Platform: Various I truly think this series broke something in me, in the good way. I’ve had post-show depression since binging the whole thing and since I did binge it all in one go, I’m going to review the entire series as one. 

There are two orders to watch this show in, by air date or by in-story chronology. To do that latter, you’d start with Mood Indigo then watch the rest in air-date order. While story wise it may make sense to do so, I would argue that it is better to watch them in air-date order, even though that takes you back and then forward in in-story time. I watched Mood Indigo first, but I actually think the series is better watched in order of air-date.

The Novelist (Pornographer) is an erotic melodrama that tells the story of Kijima Rio, a published author of erotic fiction who gets his arm broken when college student  Kuzumi Haruhiko crashes into him with his bike. As Kuzumi cannot financially compensate Kijima and has apparently taken out his means of making a living, he agrees to transcribe for Kijima.

Mood Indigo is a flash-back/prequel to The Novelist exploring Kijima’s path to becoming a ‘pornographer’ and his relationship with Shiro, his editor. The subsequent series then pick up after The Novelist and see the conclusion of all three men’s stories.

The show is intensely erotic, the character’s often viewed through the lens of their sexuality. What the show does incredibly well is showing sex as multi-fasceted and capable of carrying so much more than lust. Sex is as complex and complicated as any other human endeavor, engaged in for a multitude of reasons and imbued with layers of motivations, manipulations and desires. This is, honestly, a thing in dramas that I didn’t even know I was missing so deeply.

Sometimes the de-sexualization of characters in dramas starts to grate a little. There is nothing wrong with romance and exploring it but the coyness and aversion to explicitly showing that our leads sometimes just want to rail the fuck out of one another, or are using sex as a subterfuge, or are confused but over-wrought by desire, feels like a part of the human experience is being missed. Thus, I appreciate Thai drama’s depictions of sex but don’t want it to just be the horny kind, or the romantic kind, because humans are more than just horny and romantic. And this show gives us that with some truly wrenching angst.

The series is truly good on every level, the acting gripping and compelling. Takezai Terunosuke as Rio traces such a believable character arc through his whole chronology. The writing is moving in its compassion for its characters and subject matters, allowing things to be messy and not completely resolved. I have more meta I want to write about it specifically, in particular about the character dynamics between Rio and Shiro because there is so much meat to chew on there, which I love.

I’m glad I finally got around to watching this, am sad I binged it too fast and it is now over and which one of my frens would watch it soon so I could obsess over it.

2022 Drama Reviews Masterlist

[suspiciouslackofclowns]

Do you have any autistic steve headcanons? Or any tidbits about steve to share lol i really enjoyed the lil steddie drabble u did!

Always!! I’m a sucker for autistic Steve, I love him so much hehehe

One of his special interests is dinosaurs, specifically dinosaur toys. He collects them religiously and his fav dino is the dimetrodon, so if he ever finds one of those at the store he freaks out and has to buy it. It goes in a special spot on his dresser

He masks a lot, but he has a tendency to let it slip when he’s around the kids, Robin, and Eddie. He’s a lot of fun when he cackles uncontrollably and makes crude facial expressions, and they love him for it because that’s Steve. Not whatever facade he wears normally

Polos and jeans are his go-to because he has sensory issues, turns out. Eddie discovers this when he plays around with dressing Steve up in one of his outfits and he barely lasts a few minutes with all of the rings and layers and belts

Steve likes to collect rocks. If he’s taking a walk through the woods, he can’t help himself if he sees a particularly smooth rock or a funky looking stick, he has to take them home.

In addition to that last one, I think that he got scolded as a kid for filling his room with junk from the woods on his walks home from the bus stop. His dad probably drove him down to the quarry and made him watch as he dumped all of his favorite treasures into the water, never to be found again, and little Steve could do nothing but stand there and cry.

It takes him a while after he eventually moves in with his s/o whether it be Billy or Eddie or both to feel comfortable and safe enough to start collecting again. I like to think that his partner(s) would encourage him to grab pretty rocks and cool sticks, and maybe even gift them to him when they find some themselves.

Steve loves loud noises and flashing lights. He enjoys the hell out of the first Corroded Coffin concert that Eddie invites him to because of it

His comfort movies are Back To The Future and Jaws, which are the only movies that he watches unless someone else insists on something else. Usually Dustin

Eddie enjoys sitting there and listening while Steve recites every line of dialogue perfectly, almost unaware that he’s doing it. He also enjoys the fact that Steve lets his guard down so much when he’s watching his favorite films

When Steve gets excited, he has a tendency to bounce on the balls of his feet and clap his hands. He only does it sometimes, seeing as he masks so heavily in public, but damn is his happiness contagious

His safe foods are mostly comprised of pasta, so that’s practically all he knows how to cook

He eventually gets more comfortable being himself around the people who love him, because these people really love him — not like his parents or Tommy H. “loved” him, but truly and deeply. Without wanting to change aspects of him to make him easier to swallow

Steve laughs his goofy laugh all the time when the kids or Eddie come into the store. He lets his blunt side show when he’s chatting with Robin, knowing that she doesn’t automatically assume that he’s uninterested in what she’s saying, and she continues to ramble on as usual. He actually allows himself to get excited when his special interests are brought up in conversation now

Like I briefly covered in the steddie drabble, he utilizes vocal stims a lot. Either whistles, pops his lips, or clicks his tongue among various other things. Some of them are actually tics, but he doesn’t know that

It takes some time, but he eventually learns to embrace the autistic weird Steve regardless of who he’s around. He collects pretty things from the woods, talks about dinosaur facts and Jaws and Back To The Future without fear of rejection, and his friends love him for it

Autistic Steve is the most interesting, funny, and smart Steve that there is :)) change my mind

[thetoxicgamer]

Food-Battling Strategy Game Ponders the Ethics of Culinary Combat

An egg can be boiled by just about anyone, and with practise, you might even be able to whip one up and cook it into a tasty omelette. What transpires, then, when you pit that omelette against a three-layer cake? The creator of the upcoming turn-based strategy game GladiEAT was approached by PCGamesN at WASD 2023 to ask him about Steam Early Access plans, the morality of culinary conflict, and the undeniable potential of cheese. The concept of GladiEATers is pretty simple – you cook up various foods and then send them to fight your opponent’s creations. You can bash out simple foods like boiled eggs quickly, or take time to cook something fancier (and stronger in battle) like a three-layered cake. It’s a simple but delightful concept that developer Oliver Georgallis from Milk Bubbles Games came up with on a long drive. “It was complete silence that was broken by, ‘Tommy, I’ve got this idea okay?’” Upon telling his friend, the response all but confirmed the idea in Georgallis’s head: “It could be called GladiEATers.” He loved the name so much that ‘Tommy’ still holds a small stake in the game just for those naming rights. “I love puns – a lot of things in the game are named after puns,” Georgallis tells us on the WASD show floor. “The team pulls me back on that a lot,” he muses, “For example, there’s only one combat chef in the game that can speak in puns, because everyone else said, alright Oliver, all the others need to speak normally.” Georgallis says the team wants the characters to feel varied and interesting, however, and each has their own specific dietary preferences, such as one who’s a raw paleo vegan. “That’s never really a point of humour, you know – no-one ever makes fun of someone for what they eat, or how they dress, or anything like that. That’s really important to us as well. So just real people, basically, that’s what we designed the characters after.” As a trained chef, Georgallis says, “Food is so relatable – I don’t need to explain to anyone what a fried egg is, you know, they just know. And I think that’s a sort of jumping-off point for building character or a creature.” GladiEATers - creatures made out of the tomato and egg dish ShakshoukaSome foods might be a little less familiar to some, however – Ratatouille is fairly widely known at this point thanks to the Disney film of the same name, but what about the tomato and egg dish Shakshouka? “So few people know what that is – I would love for someone to make Shakshouka in the game and then figure out how to make it in real life and find out it’s super easy and super tasty.” Roughly 50 creatures across three categories of eggs, pastry, and vegetables are currently available in-game, but there’s plenty of potential for new foods to arrive down the line. “Cheese – I mean, once we add cheese to the game… that’s cheesy vegetables, cheesy omelettes, cheese on bread, pizza, I mean the whole floodgates open, right?” That means even just one new ingredient creates a whole world of possibilities. “I mean, that’s kind of how cooking works,” Georgallis concludes. One question is burning on our lips, however. If this food is alive, brought into being by a mysterious force known as the ‘CAL particle’ that turns inanimate calories into food, what are the ethical ramifications of sending it into battle? “It’s interesting that, because you said ‘send it off to die,’ right? This is definitely a conversation we want to develop in the story,” Georgallis teases. “There are definitely going to be characters that question the ethics of fighting with these creatures, getting attached to them and seeing them die kind of hurts. And then if it comes back to life, is it the same thing? So there are questions that we want to develop later on in the story.” It’s certainly a unique spin on the ethics of cooking that we haven’t seen addressed quite in this way before. GladiEATers is currently planned to launch via Steam Early Access by the end of the year, with plans to introduce multiplayer modes including both co-operative play and competitive multiplayer in the future. For now, you can add it to your wishlist if you’re interested. In the meantime, check out more of the best cooking games if you’re feeling peckish, or some other great strategy games for those of you who love the more tactical side of proceedings. Read the full article

[a-weird-writer]

oh hi i want to give Uranus a very gentle kiss on his metallic face and hold his hands endearingly as i talk to him about plants because i think he’d have a fascination with plants

It's a bit "dead" to him, for lack of a better word. His passion for anything is...

pretty distant.

It is already hard for Uranus to attach, to love. Let alone one of Earth's human natives, its plants are no different. They don't necessarily disgust him, but clearly held them to no critical value, thus he maintains no major opinion on them for that matter.

Plants are insufficient organisms to Uranus, as are all weak lifeforms. Small things, lowers he never gave a second thought about. But he does care for his love, deep enough to do warrant second thoughts. Not stomping on them or referring too bluntly and inconsiderate to plants in your presence, since you hold them dear to your soul.

Uranus doubts he can effectively measure such endearment even if he really tried, that pure unadulterated gaze, filled with the same tenderness and compassion a mother shows their labor's fruit, how dedicated you are to various flowers and greenery. It can be uncomfortable for him, witnessing priceless emotions he can't wrap his head around; actions you don't understand, alien hearts and feelings.

Uranus's hatred for existence and youth isn't as incredibly extreme as his more notable (Terra and Sunstar specifically) brothers, but it is intense regardless. Despite this, he does contain reasonable layers of 'respect' to life, which is a lot in a Stardroid's case and already plenty. Note 'respect' in air quotes, just because Uranus loves you doesn't mean he won't mercilessly crush anything suddenly in his way. Plants aren't priority in that matter, the complete destruction of humankind however was.

Uranus is a bulldozer, a heavy weapon in a group of cosmic calamities, undergoing an eternity-long mission of pure devastation; huge, strong and mows through the surrounding areas-unlucky enough to be his path. Crashing. Crushing in clear purpose to destroy and conquer, and the Stardroids care not for guilt or empathy to follow after.

That said, it is not totally impossible for Uranus to change views, but it is difficult, and it wavers little. If not, then only slightly. Humans will always be bugs to Uranus; insects waiting their pitiful demise by a much larger hand, he stands by it just as his lordship Sunstar does. Humans; nevermore than dirty, monstrous beings, infecting the universe with lowly existence and their stupid, useless oxygen.

But you can have an immoveable view about something and an entire differing opinion on it, as weird as it sounds. One person can hate murder-the full concept of killing but can still commit such a crime in earnest purpose. Or absence of full retrospect.

Mayhaps it grows with you, a strange turn in his mission-his fixture.

A special someone in his life who he actually doesn't wish to see perish. Obliterating you into itty bitty pieces, into mere atoms and harmless molecules hasn't crossed his mind even once. You're his own little treasure, pretty and clean. A gold coin shining in a pile of worthless copper, the grass you take care to help flourish. Whom spends time-their own energy promising, ensuring someone like him is happy as a clam in high tide. And he is to the moon and back in love with you, falling long and hard.

Uranus is a statue; heavily blunt and evermore calm. But he is hardly empty, hardly ever mad when you are so eager to kiss him, to embrace and love him no matter how much he outweighs you. Fulfilling-proving your devotion, your possession. To counter his still, quiet nature with a powerful nature of your own, your floral love for him.

You bloom, petals out. You catch the stress and release all the joy in the air, thick with your laughter and friendly chatter. Fukurokuju would frown in jealousy at your happiness. Equipped with a sunlit smile, bright enough to water the blight running within his corrupted circuits. It ripens so beautifully for him. Nobody else in this small, pitiful world.

Growth ends in change, whether unintended or the opposite. This life you love to praise, these-erm-plants perhaps isn't as ugly as he was originally programmed to view it.

Uranus can grow to eventually love the Edens you so passionately describe, come to reflect-inflict your wise, compassionate tones and kind words upon his black heart, like how he grew to adore you. And if your cute lectures end in more kisses and delicious affection, that attention he so craves like a starved man, then it will be worth sitting through. Still a win for him, you make every end meaningful,

oh, how he wishes it didn't end.

A brick wall, designed to withstand anything at any time in any period. As immoveable as Uranus is, he isn't stupid. Shockingly, he is labeled as 'the wise one' of his numerous siblings. None in this world, in this universe over to the next, is indestructible. A beginning eventually reaches a climax, you can only delay the inevitable. In the end, death comes for everyone, it will take, and it will claim. And the Stardroids were created to be the very embodiment of it.

Quite unpleasant, to the receiver that is.

Anytime he parts from you is a bloody stab, a displeased throb within his nonexistent heart. He treats every moment with you like it is his first and last standing. Uranus is an alien robot, but he was made with the illusion and act of a "man", though beastly in truth. He longs and craves. One can't do without the motivation and curiosity to do so, and Uranus is bluntest of his brothers in receiving wants. He always finds a way back to you, ruthlessly and enthusiastically. It often surprises him, how much you long for him. How you truly miss him; how tightly you cling to him for dear life, like letting go will only meet your demise, how blissful your relieved sigh-a hot exhale-warms his broad chest.

He missed you too.

It's often too tight, too boring for Uranus in Sunstar's ship anyway, you're the perfect excuse to get freedom in a time where he was never meant to deserve it.

As long as it ends with you, nesting with his arms like seeds within the oceans of soil, cuddling comfortably,

he can at least pretend he does.

[boylikeanangel]

Further Reading on the Colour Red in Our Flag Means Death

so @edwardsilkheart made this fantastic post about ed being a red coded character and what that specifically means for him, and in the interest of us bouncing colour theory posts back and forth off each other I'd like to talk semi-briefly about how ed is not the only red coded character in the show. I think it's vital to understanding what the colour red means within the series by acknowledging that lucius is also heavily red coded. (once again I owe a lot to @lucius-spriggs for the help on this one - thank you, beloved <3)

many people (myself included, particularly in this post about the left/right dichotomy in the show) have pointed out that lucius, from a narrative standpoint, represents every positive thematically that the show at large is trying to push: namely, being nurturing and supportive to those who are struggling with internal conflict, being authentic to yourself, loving without restraint, and above all, being unapologetically queer. and the characters within the story acknowledge this - he constantly plays therapist to our romantic leads and is consistently the person to bring others out of their shells (see: pete and izzy). and no one sees this more clearly than ed does (which I go into more detail about here where I discuss their relationship throughout the season), which is why I think it's extremely interesting that they are both represented by the same colour.

when we consider lucius as a red coded character, what connotations does that give the colour red? lucius is warm, emotionally open, and promiscuous, as well as being the character most strongly connected to the love lives of the various couples across the cast (even when he doesn't want to be). red when it's associated with lucius symbolises warmth, passion, vulnerability, and love. in other words, it's an extremely positive colour when we consider it from this angle. and why is this interesting? because those are almost completely different connotations to the ones ed has with the same colour.

(this is the last post I'm gonna link to I promise) I mentioned here about how whilst ed is red coded, it's not exactly supposed to be a positive colour for him. when ed is embracing his blackbeard persona, he's framed with red lighting, signifying fire and danger. it's the colour of his heart, but that very quickly becomes synonymous with heartbreak when he throws away the red silk that symbolises it after stede leaves him, and stitches a bleeding red heart onto his flag as a reminder of his pain. red is a very complicated colour for ed; it has the potential to mean love for him, but all too often it becomes a warning of death and destruction, a testament to his fury and heartache.

the one thing, I think however, that red means the same for both lucius and ed, is this idea of vulnerability. the post by @edwardsilkheart I linked above sums this up beautifully by connecting this vulnerability, this nakedness, to ed's wearing of stede's red dressing gown in episode 10. he's more exposed than he's ever been here, and it's a new and scary concept for someone who is so used to hiding their heart under layers of leather. what makes it bearable for him, however, is that lucius is also wearing red in the scene where he visits him in the blanket fort. vulnerability is something that lucius revels in and encourages others to allow in themselves, and here he comes at ed's lowest moment to tell him it's okay, your heart is laid bare right now, but mine is too. I see your heart and I raise you mine. it's a very visible metaphor for how lucius is effortlessly able to connect with people who are so used to hiding everything away, through virtue of nothing more than unabashedly wearing his own heart on his sleeve. lucius is empowered by these feelings of love and being vulnerable in that love, and he's encouraging ed to reach a similar point in his own emotional journey.

so by coding both the character who represents the celebration of love in all its forms and the character who struggles the most with heartbreak as the same colour, I think it's this delicate balance of contrast that they really want you to focus on. lucius and ed represent the two ends of the spectrum for what the colour red means, and it's this struggle between the two sides of the same coin that becomes a central theme in the final episode. it's a balancing act between love and heartbreak, between vulnerability and destruction, between warmth and burning everything to the ground. lucius tries to comfort ed, to coax him into becoming the same kind of red coding as him, to leave the heartache and the fury behind him, and gets thrown off the ship for his troubles. it's not a coincidence that ed tries to kill the only other major character that shares his colour. seeing someone who is such a glowing standard of what could be if he simply lets go is too dangerous when he's trying to embrace the monstrous parts of him. lucius represents everything ed could, but simply cannot allow himself, to be. and that's why he has to be disposed of.

[jackrrabbit]

Adversary /// Overhaul x f!Reader (18+)

Summary: You make a deal with the devil to save your life, but it turns out Overhaul’s not interested in your soul.

A/N: Remember when I said I was going to do a fantasy collab and then dipped for like 9 months? Hahaha…anyway…

@pleasantanathema @ present-mel @shadowworks—if it’s not too late, here’s my part for the Pleasant & Strider Fantasy AU Writing Collab from a million years ago. Go check out the masterlist and gorge yourself on these amazing pieces!!

Tags/Warnings: dubcon, demon fuckery & occult things, big heresy/sacrilege/perversion of religion, sex in a church ft. Catholic sex guilt, other than that it’s not that bad lol, inexperienced reader, mild degradation, shameless camp and demon-fucking clichés, Overhaul calls you “little girl” 👉👈

He doesn’t look like a demon.

Not that you really know what demons are supposed to look like. But…red skin, right? Fangs and claws and swirling masses of bad energy. Maybe cloven hooves for feet. Yes, that’s the Disney version—but even if you didn’t expect a cartoon personification of evil, you didn’t expect this.

He looks like a doctor, you think. Lab coat hanging open, surgery mask pushed down under his jaw, stethoscope draped over his shoulders. No, he’s a little young to really look like a doctor…an intern, you amend, shifting back in your hospital bed. He looks like he fits right in here, not a hair out of place. Except for, you know, the polished black horns curling out of the sides of his skull.

Overhaul. It was written in the book. That’s the only thing you have to call him in your head.

He’s standing in the center of the sigil you drew at the foot of your bed before midnight, surveying the room critically without meeting your gaze. He looks annoyed—that’s not a good sign, is it?—but then again, of course he’s annoyed. You’d be annoyed too if you got summoned out of your cozy hell dimension in the middle of the night. According to the book, you’re lucky he even showed up…although ‘lucky’ isn’t really how you’d describe yourself most days.

“So,” Overhaul says after a long moment of silence in which you question every choice you’ve made in your relatively short life. “You’re dying.”

You nod.

“And you don’t want to be.”

You nod again, wondering if you’re supposed to be contributing more to this conversation. It’s a bit difficult when your mouth is so dry it feels like you’ve been eating dirt, but you suppose being in the presence of an unholy servant of Satan will do that to a person.

“Fine.” He sighs, frowns, and then finally lowers his gaze onto yours—and you shiver.

Those eyes. No human has eyes like that.

“Make me an offer,” Overhaul tells you, and through his open mouth you catch a flash of sharp white teeth.

Okay. Okay. The chirping of the heart monitor speeds up (as if it weren’t obvious enough that you’re terrified) and you fold your knees up to your chest and fidget with your ring and think. He’s giving you a chance to establish parameters. You’re supposed to start with his end of the deal, the thing you want from him. That’s what it said to do in the grimoire, aka the 19th century demonology volume your creepy cousin brought back from her pagan anthropology research trip in rural France. The one you keep hidden under your bed because your mother would burn it if she knew you were reading about summoning demons.

Offer nothing to a hell creature without first telling him your price. You know the words by heart, both the winding calligraphy of the original French from the grimoire and the rushed scrawl of the English translation your cousin left for you in sheets of lined paper layered between the pages of the book for you to read. Really, this is her fault. She was the one who slipped you the book, who told you that it worked, who snuck you the ingredients for the summoning. She was the one who left a bookmark at the chapter on this particular demon, one that specializes in ‘Contrat pour Remédier au Déséquilibre des Quatre Humeurs’, which she said meant a contract to cure any illness. Even his ‘name’ is translated in her hand, practically an afterthought in the margins of the page.

‘Le Malin qui Ravage et Rebâtit’— Overhaul?

You looked up the literal meaning of this phrase on your own. It did not reassure you.

“Girl.” His voice is cold, irate. Your eyes snap back up to his and it feels like that burning gaze is laser-beaming into your skull. “Do not test me. My time is limited…as is yours.”

You swallow. “How long do I have left?”

“Less than a single human year,” he tells you without a trace of sympathy. “Seven months, twelve days, three hours. Or so. You’ll be too exhausted to leave this bed in four months, and the pain will become intolerable in six… By the end, you’ll wish—“

“Stop,” you breathe out. The heart monitor is beeping wildly and you squeeze your knees into your chest, trying to calm down your breathing. “Stop, I—I want to live.”

“Of course you do.” Overhaul’s lip curls. “How very predictable.”

Be specific, you remind yourself, doing your best to ignore the stifling disapproval from the man—the demon—in front of you. Something about him (maybe how clean-cut he looks, maybe the indisputable authority in his demeanor) makes you want to impress him. But you didn’t turn your back on your religion—you didn’t draw pagan symbols on the floor in chalk, fill silver cups with various questionable substances (including your own virgin blood), and turn the crucifix your mother hung over your bed upside-down so you could let a demon make you feel guilty for wanting to survive. “I want to be cured. I’m okay with whatever natural death I have instead when I’m older, I just don’t want to die of this illness. I want you to make me healthy.”

“Simple enough. What else?”

‘Simple’? Your heart surges with something you’ve felt very little of since your initial diagnosis—hope. “T-That’s it. Just the cure.”

Overhaul glares at you. “Humans… Every vice in the world available to you, and you limit yourselves to the basest priority of survival.”

“But you can do it? You can cure me?” you persist.

Overhaul steps forward (quiet, so quiet you wonder if he really moved) and holds a hand out to you past the foot of your bed—you hesitate, and a second later you can see the muscles in his hand flex, stretching the latex of his plastic gloves tight over his knuckles.

Just do it. You give him your hand. Carefully. Like you’re scared the contact will burn you. It doesn’t (although his skin feels warmer than yours), but after a moment his grip tightens, sliding down past your hand to circle the fragile bones of your wrist and squeeze.

“Ow?” You wince.

The demon’s eyes flicker closed for a second, lips moving silently like he’s talking to himself—and then he drops your hand unceremoniously back onto your lap. “You could be cured before the sun rises this morning. I doubt your stay in the hospital will extend past the end of the week.”

He sounds bored, voice as flat and passionless as it was earlier, but your heart is soaring. Cured. You’ve lived with this illness for so many years, you can’t remember the last time someone told you you could be cured. And getting out of the hospital that soon? You can just imagine taking down all the decorations from the walls of your room here and setting them up in your old bedroom at home. You could see friends on the weekend and not take an oxygen bag, you could get a job or—or apply to college, you could have a life—

“That is…assuming you have something to offer me in exchange for the cure.”

Your stomach drops. You’d almost forgotten about the other half of the deal.

“Don’t tell me I came all this way for nothing.” Overhaul steps back, and the orange light of the candles you set sends strange shadows over his arrogant face. The fires look brighter now, and you find yourself tracing the lines of those shining black horns. In an odd way, they look natural—so organically framing his temples that you can’t imagine him without them.

“N-No, of course not. I have some money—I mean, my mom has some, and I can get it for you…” Which is half the truth. If you know anything, it’s that your mother’s spent most of her savings on your treatment and care. You probably have more debt than you have money in the bank right now—you’d try to get rid of that, too, if you hadn’t read in the book how important it is to keep your request as simple and straightforward as possible.

…Although it’s apparently not enough. Overhaul’s eyes narrow, molten gold irises carved into slits. “Even if I had a use for human money, do you really believe your life is worth so little?”

“No—no,” you say quickly. “I just thought—in case you were interested—”

The air crackles with energy, the candle flames spark bright blood-red, and the hair on your arms stands straight up. “I am not.”

“Okay! I get it.” You wave your hands back and forth, pulling your IV line from side to side with the motion. The book was very clear about staying calm and rational while you work out the terms of the deal, but that’s easier said than done when you have a real live (live?) hell creature in front of you. You always knew this was going to be the hard part—all the stories say there’s only one thing that a demon would be interested in, and no matter how inviting the prospect of living past this illness is, you know you’d rather die than sell your immortal soul to the devil. “I’ll give you anything except my soul! And—and don’t hurt anyone I care about, or— just don’t hurt anyone, okay? Other than that, if there’s anything I can give you, I will.”

Overhaul’s lip curls, baring a thin strip of those unnaturally sharp canines. “And is your soul really so valuable?”

This throws you for a loop. Isn’t that the standard deal? A soul for a wish? That’s how it’s supposed to work—at least in this twisted version of reality where you can summon a demon to perform unholy miracles for you. But if you think about it, it doesn’t really make sense, does it? Why would your soul be valuable to him? You can’t form an argument, especially since you’re not willing to barter it away in the first place.

Your mouth is pursed open as you search for a response, but Overhaul doesn’t seem willing to wait. A gloved hand wraps its way around the railing at the side of your bed, and he leans in closer. “Little girl…what makes you think you possess anything I desire?”

Little girl. You’re not a little girl, you’re a grown woman—and yet there’s no untruth in the statement. In front of him you feel insignificant, immature, weak. You have nothing real to offer, and something tells you that you’re not going to get rid of the demon you summoned without a sacrifice you’re not willing to make.

You twist your ring around your finger—the nervous habit you haven’t bothered to break because you’ve always had more important things to worry about—and the glint of silver in the candlelight must catch Overhaul’s eye because before you even notice him moving, your delicate hand is trapped in his larger one to give him a better view of the tiny piece of jewelry. “What is this?”

“It’s—um, a ring. A purity ring.” Has he never seen one before? Well…actually, that makes sense.

Overhaul turns your hand over in his without touching the band of silver. He’s looking at it closely, inspecting the lovingly engraved cross in the design and the inscription on the other side. “Matthew 5:8,” he reads out.

“…Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,” you recite cautiously. It feels wrong to speak the words in front of him, but somehow you can’t help yourself.

Overhaul’s hand doesn’t leave yours. “This ring is important to you.”

“It’s a symbol of a—a promise I made to God. To save myself for my future husband.”

“To ‘save yourself’? To save what?”

You can’t believe you’re explaining this to a literal demon. You close your eyes and inhale slowly and taste smoke. “My…virginity. It’s a promise that I won’t have sex until I enter into a biblical marriage.”

At this, Overhaul is quiet. You give him a moment to answer, half expecting him to question why you think God cares about your sexual status (honestly, you’d be lying if you said you haven’t wondered this yourself), but he stays quiet until you peek up at him to try and gauge the look on his coldly handsome face.

He’s still staring at the ring. He hasn’t touched it—maybe he can’t, because of the cross?—and through the latex, his skin feels hotter than a human’s is supposed to be.

“Is there…” you start, but you trail off when you realize you have nothing to ask. You give a little tug to try and take your hand away and you’re surprised when your wrist actually slides out of his grip to fall back on the nest of sheets in your lap. You didn’t think he’d let you go so easily.

Overhaul turns his head to the side, eyes drilling into you so you feel like you should lower your gaze. The candlelight flickers in strange shadows over his horns. “This will do,” he says quietly.

“What?”

“In exchange for your cure.” The demon taps his own left ring finger, the place where the purity ring sits on your hand, and your heart soars. He actually wants that? It’s just a simple silver band, not worth much, but you’re not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. Maybe it has some special significance because of the religious connotation. Your mother will be angry you’ve lost it, but you’re happy to cope with that if it means living to actually get married!

“Yes!” you blurt out before he has a chance to rethink his offer. Sure, you’ll miss the purity ring—you’ve had it since you were a kid, after all—but there’s no question you’re getting the better end of this deal. At least in your opinion.

Something flashes through his yellow eyes, something you don’t even want to try and identify. “The contract, then.”

You barely have time to notice that his voice has gentled, that it’s practically silken in comparison to before, when the candlelight flickers again and suddenly the contract is everywhere. Everywhere. Writing appears on every surface in the room, covering the walls, stretching over the ceiling, coiling around the sides of the hospital equipment and decorating your bedsheets until you and Overhaul are the only untouched surfaces in sight. The characters are inscribed in red, dark red like—don’t think about that, you tell yourself squeamishly. You can make out some of the letters, even a word here or there—French, you recognize, mixed with what looks like Latin and interspersed with what you can only guess are runes.

“I can’t read this,” you tell him, fidgeting with your ring for what you now realize will be the last time.

“I only need your name,” he purrs, and then you feel a fragile weight in your hand: a feather, pearl-black and glossy and too large to belong to any bird you can think of, its angled tip glistening with wet ink. There’s an empty space in the writing before you, and Overhaul’s gloved hand comes to yours again to guide you into place.

This feels wrong…then again, of course it does. Even if you’re getting off relatively easy and just losing your ring rather than your soul, you’re still making a deal with a demon. You sign your name, forcing yourself to think about the future you have ahead of you rather than a disapproving white-bearded caricature of The Man Upstairs wagging his finger at you for haggling with a literal servant of Satan. People have done worse things to survive, haven’t they? It’s just a ring.

You set the feather down and Overhaul sighs, thick black eyelashes obscuring his intense gaze for a moment—and then the contract is gone, leaving your hospital room as blank and sterile as it’s supposed to be (well, aside from the candles and all the other ritual stuff you threw together to summon a demon in the first place).

“Are you going to cure—heal me now?” you ask.

“…Patience, little girl.” He’s pulling his glove off, peeling it down his fingers to bare the pale skin of his hand. You catch your breath and wonder what this is going to feel like, and then the tips of his fingers meet your cheek and—

you stop breathing.

It doesn’t hurt.

Or if it does, you don’t remember the pain a second later when breath floods back into your lungs. What you do feel is energy. Strength in your muscles, blood pumping through your veins, every inhale and exhale as light as a bird and freer. You feel healthy. You’re surprised you even remember what health feels like but you do: it’s like you’ve only been half alive, and now life is surging into you and through you and around you, bubbling up in your core like a spring overflowing. You blink rapidly, thinking you might cry from the sheer pleasure of it, but when you open your mouth it’s laughter that comes out. You’re healthy. You’re alive. You barely notice the IV line literally falling off of your skin because the hole where it entered your vein is sealed shut and healed perfectly.

No more needles. No more hospitals. Even without all the monitors beeping out your heart rate and measuring your vitals, there’s not a shred of doubt in your mind that you’re cured.

“Thank you!” you laugh, looking up at Overhaul and for the first time, not caring that he’s evil incarnate. “I feel—I’m okay! It worked!”

“Of course it did.” His expression is inscrutable, but he lets you have a few moments to enjoy your newfound health.

You roll your shoulders back, flex each muscle you can isolate one by one to test, make fists with your fingers and then run them over your hair, which is already thicker and shinier than it was a moment ago. Your body thrums with energy—you want to run, to feel the ground against your bare feet and the cold night air on your face, and you think you could do it! Your legs are already swinging over the side of your cot, ready to run barefoot out of the hospital if that’s what it takes, but before you can stand up Overhaul’s pushing you back down onto the bed.

“Have you forgotten your end of the bargain already?”

Honestly you did forget, but only for a second, only because you were so excited to just be outside again. “Oh, yeah. Of course.” Your hand goes to your left ring finger, ready to slip the ring off and hand it over, but Overhaul shakes his head.

“Not here.”

“What—?”

You’re falling. Your hospital room is disappearing, the image of your walls and your window and your bed disintegrating into yawning black, and you’re falling through it into nothing, into emptiness, and Overhaul’s still-bare hand in yours is the only anchor you have so you clutch onto it and squeeze your eyes shut. You want to scream—that’s the sane thing to do when you’re falling through miles and miles of empty space, right?—but when you open your throat the sound is swallowed up just like the light was…

Overhaul’s hand burns into yours, an improbable lifeline that you pull closer more out of terror than conscious thought. The slick, empty air rushes around you and you think I am going to die like this and then, incredibly, as soon as you’ve accepted your imminent demise, you feel your back mold onto a chilled, flat surface, vertebra by vertebra up to the back of your head, as if you’ve been lain down onto it.

Your heart thuds in your ears and you brace for an impact because your body hasn’t quite accepted yet that it’s not falling anymore—but at the same time, you know you’re lying down on something. You pry your fingers away from their vice-grip on Overhaul’s arm and feel around blindly for what’s underneath you, and when it seems reasonably tangible you let yourself open your eyes.

Way above, vaulted dozens of feet over your head, is a ceiling studded with gilt-edged frescoes and stained glass. It’s raining (even though it wasn’t in the hospital, you think) but through the massive panes of colored glass there’s enough oily blue light to make out that you’re in a church.

You’re in a church, with a demon. Isn’t that against the rules?

You sit up stiffly and look over at Overhaul, who’s standing at your side and looking down at you…which is how you realize the soft, cold surface you’ve been deposited onto is the blanket on top of the altar in the sanctuary. “Where...did you take me?”

“You should know this place.”

And you do, when you look around. It’s empty now and you’ve never been here at night, but this is a church your mother would bring you to when you were little, back before the disease got so bad you couldn’t risk traveling to it anymore. This is where you took your purity vow…the ring feels heavy on your hand. “Why—why—“

“I can’t stand human hospitals. Filthy places… How that reek of illness and death doesn’t bother your kind, I’ll never understand.” Overhaul pulls his latex glove back on. He’s dressed differently now, no longer impersonating a doctor—black shirt, black pants, and a…bird mask in red leather and gold. So are you, as a matter of fact. Instead of your hospital gown, you’re in a gauzy white dress that’s already been pushed up to pool around the tops of your thighs.

The slip is too thin for the cold, and you can feel your nipples standing up under the cloth so you fold your arms over your chest and hug yourself. “Why did you take me here?” The sound of your voice echoes off the walls eerily and you wish you hadn’t spoken so loudly. The reflection of your words sounds girlish, nervous.

“I told you. Your side of our contract.” Even in this dark, the angular features of his face are clearly concentrating—on you. “Are you already having second thoughts? Such a fickle little thing…”

“You mean the ring?” You reach for it again, ready to tear it off and throw it at him if that’s what it takes to see your deal through, but Overhaul snatches your hand away, pinning it above you.

“Not the ring,” he says. “The promise.”

The…promise?

A chill makes its way down your spine despite the heat radiating off the demon’s body and onto yours. “I don’t understand.”

“The promise,” Overhaul repeats—and you hear a sound almost like wings flapping and then he’s on the altar with you, knees straddling your hips as a single hand holds both your wrists above your head. “To remain a virgin until marriage. Your promise to God.”

A streak of lightning cracks down on the other side of the stained glass window behind the altar, illuminating the room briefly in spectacular pits of red and orange and yellow…and then it’s dark again, and the only color you can make out is the gold in Overhaul’s eyes.

“I’m going to break it,” he murmurs, lowering his head toward your ear right as the answering thunder rolls through the sanctuary, up through the altar, up into you.

///

Méfiez-vous de son piège, the grimoire said. Beware of the catch.

Of course it wasn’t just a ring.

Overhaul’s fingers are in—inside you, his middle and ring finger pumping through the length of your cunt like they belong there, like you were made to be touched this way. A mixture of your juices and your own spit cling to the latex because he made you suck his fingers before he put them in you and he hasn’t bothered to take his gloves off—not that you asked. You’ve been too busy biting your lip to try and muffle the moans that he keeps forcing out of you. He’s bracing himself on top of you with one hand and fingering you with the other, so your own hands are free to push into your eyes and hide your face…until he yanks your arm back and stops.

“Look at me.”

Your eyes are screwed shut and you shake your head back and forth, the movement shuddering your whole body right down to your pussy wrapped around Overhaul’s fingers. He slows the movement and kneels back, pushing one of your thighs up into your chest as he does it.

“Look at me.”

And you’re not sure whether it’s some unearthly power he has over you or the plain old deterioration of your willpower, but you can’t refuse him. You crack your eyes open and he’s glaring down at you, skin pale as ice in the blue light. Once he’s satisfied that you’re watching, the demon leans back in to fuck your cunt with his fingers, slowly at first and then quicker when he hits something inside of you—a spot, a place on the inner wall of your pussy that makes you feel like you’ve been shocked— heat blooms through you like blood in water and you gasp and he curls his fingers up to pet over that spot again.

“Wait—wait, that’s—it feels—weird!” You’ve never felt like this before. You’re not supposed to feel like this, it’s wrong.

“I understand you’ve never touched yourself, but don’t pretend you don’t like it.” Overhaul says, voice as indifferent and calm as ever even though your cunt is dripping clear sticky liquid over the plastic of his glove.

He pushes back in and grinds his palm over the little button on the top of your pussy—your clit?—and you want to scream. “No, I—I don’t—nnhh...”

Do you like it? The demon’s body is so hot next to yours, like he’s running a fever except you’re the one going out of your mind… You’ve heard metaphors for sexual pleasure before (that it’s like having something to drink when you’re dying of thirst; or that it’s the ultimate act of intimacy, love in physical form) but all of that’s a fucking lie. There’s nothing to compare it to, no reference that makes sense, because it doesn’t make sense—you don’t even want him to keep going, do you? You’re only doing this because you signed your name on a devil’s contract, because you don’t want to die and there’s no alternative…but that doesn’t explain why you feel so warm from the inside out, why you’re squirming and your hips are rocking involuntarily no matter how much you try to keep still. This isn’t right. You feel like you’ve been lied to.

A good girl wouldn’t like this.

Overhaul isn’t going to let you close your eyes, so you don’t—but the sounds coming out of your mouth are so…indecent (and how can you think these things about yourself? the word feels like someone else is saying it when you hear it in your head) that your hand is drifting up to your mouth before you can stop yourself, trying to stifle all of it…

“Let your voice out. I want you to hear yourself moan.”

Long fingers slide their way out of your pussy and then move up to rub quick little circles around your clit and you moan, like a whore, like a girl getting her cunt rubbed by a demon— “Oh, uhhhn—something, it’s—coming—“ There’s something building up in your core—a peak, a climax, something that makes you fist your hands in the nightgown he put you in (so tight you’re surprised the thin fabric hasn’t torn) and tilt your hips up into him, begging without words because you don’t have any to express what your body is asking for…

But he doesn’t give it to you. Overhaul takes his hand away from your pussy and the shock of the cool air after his too-hot touch is almost enough to send you over that edge—almost. Not quite. And without it, you’re left shivering and quaking, thighs twitching as your baser instincts beg you to just put your hand between your legs for once and hump your fingers to completion if the demon won’t do it.

You’re not going to risk that, though. Not when Overhaul’s dragging your body closer, bunching up the blanket on the altar under your spine, so your pelvis is angled to his… He’s already shirtless and you hear him unzipping his pants but you can’t bring yourself to actually look at him, even when you feel something hard and hot nudging up against your inner thigh and then aligning to your sticky wet slit.

“This will hurt a bit, but I want you to look,” he says, and you don’t even understand at first until you make yourself feel it—his cock, pushing up against your tight cunt to finish this, this perversion of what your first time was supposed to be…

And what was it supposed to be? Roses and candles and soft kisses? A nameless, faceless husband unzipping your wedding dress and making love to you with the lights off? The way the demon touches you should be cruel in comparison but it isn’t, it’s lighting fires under your skin and turning your brains to mush, so how is your body supposed to tell the difference?

It’ll hurt, you know that, you’ve heard enough about sex to know that it always hurts the first time for girls…women. It was already a stretch to fit his fingers in your virgin pussy, so of course his cock is going to hurt. You turn your head toward the window at your side and try on look out at the rain drawing rivulets like veins over the glass, something to focus on instead of him.

“I said look,” the demon hisses, and his hips push forward a bit and you bite off a whimper of pain. “Watch me take your virginity…look at your tight little cunt swallowing me up just like it was made to.”

“N-No—“ you whine, even though it’s not like you can ignore it. “Don’t make me, don’t make me look, I can’t—“

“Then look at me.”

It’s what he wants, some kind of wicked satisfaction he gets off on, but you’re lucky enough to even get an option so you choose that one, shifting your gaze up into his face instead of the place where his cock is pressing deeper and deeper inside you. Overhaul’s eyes are half-lidded and it’s hard to tell from behind the mask but the look on his face is…pleasure? No, that would be too human. Restraint, at least. He could just thrust up into your body in one stroke, but he wants you to feel it for some reason.

Maybe because it’s a worse betrayal of your chastity if you want to get fucked.

Lucky for you, though, you can barely feel anything aside from the pain. The heat you felt building earlier is draining out of you even as Overhaul tilts deeper, layering his chest over yours. You’re almost grateful for the modest barrier the dress provides between your torso and the solid muscle of his abdomen. His cock in your pussy feels like it’s too big too deep too much and it’s the first time you’ve felt like your body wasn’t created specifically for this purpose so you hold it tight.

“Does it hurt?”

A second of clarity makes you want to snarl (of course it fucking hurts, I’m losing my virginity to a demon I summoned from hell) and you dig your fingernails into your palms to stop yourself from saying it out loud. Overhaul pulls out a fraction of an inch and then pushes back in and you feel like the breath’s being pushed out of your lungs. “Yes! Yes, it—it hurts—“

“I can make you enjoy it…for a price,” he sighs, settling into a slow rocking motion of his hips pushing into yours.

And you want to, every sore muscle in your cunt is telling you to give in and give up, give him what he wants so you can enjoy it like he says—but you’d rather hate every second of this than make another deal. You shake your head quickly and because you’re still too afraid to look away from him, you don’t miss the look of surprise that flits across his face before he tamps it down. “I don’t—I don’t want to—like it,” you gasp out between thrusts. “It’s better if—if it h-hurts…”

This time it’s obvious—his eyes really do widen, and you feel some petty triumph at having caught him off guard like this. Who’s predictable now? you think—and then he’s lifting one hand off the altar at the side of your head and tugging his glove off with his teeth, and you don’t even have time to be afraid of what he’s going to do to you because it’s too late, his bare fingers are already stroking over your mound and onto your core, massaging into the flesh of your stomach so he can feel his own cock sliding in and out of you—

and it doesn’t hurt anymore?

You only have a second to try and understand—he cured you, he healed the pain from your first time just like he healed your illness?—before he hooks his grip under your thigh and folds your legs into your chest so he can fuck into you harder than before. His cock slaps into your pussy and you can hear it, hear how wet your filthy little cunt is, smeared through with your juices. It’s sick—the sound of skin against skin, and the moaning you can’t hold back, you sound like a woman in a porno and you wish the pain would come back just so you could keep hating what he’s doing to you. “What—what did you do—“

The demon ignores you. “It feels good, doesn’t it.”

“Nn—“ It’s deeper like this…deeper and rougher and you can feel it. Now that the pain’s been reduced to the dull ache of a stretched muscle, you can feel everything—his cock sliding against that same spot in your cunt that makes you want to squeal, the friction of his body moving against your clit, all of it, everything you wanted to block out— he pumps into you and you hear your breath sobbing out a moan a second out of rhythm, the sounds of you bouncing on demon cock echoing over the walls. “Please—ah, ahhh…”

“‘Please?’ Are you begging—me, little girl?” Overhaul pushes your thigh up and drags his cock through you, excruciatingly slow, forcing you to feel the thick head slide over every gummy wall in your slick pussy.

You shake your head, mewl, try to force your hips to stop rocking back into his and grinding your clit against him. But you can’t. You’re a—you were a virgin, for fuck’s sake! Overhaul’s immortal. Probably thousands of years of experience on how to make you feel like you want this, like you’re only alive in the places he touches you… You’re at his mercy, if he has any. You never stood a chance.

“Then are you begging your god?” His body lowers directly onto yours and like you’re being controlled by puppet strings your arms fold around him and rake your fingernails uselessly into the smooth skin of his back. You can feel the vibration of his mirthless laughter through his chest. “It must hurt terribly…to know he isn’t listening.”

“Don’t—stop, please,” you sob. “Don’t say—don’t stop—please!”

“Listen to yourself, girl—“ Overhaul’s breath is faster now, but you don’t have time to question it because you feel your peak coming again, the tension rising up through your cunt and your abdomen, harsher and crueler than when his fingers were in you but you want it just as much. More. “Has he ever answered your prayers? Has he...ahh, fuck—who’s the one giving you what you need?”

“No— please, please just let me let me, please—“ You’re talking nonsense now, begging for the release—at least then it’ll be over, and you need it, you need it so badly you feel your muscles locking up, cramping, your ankles crossing each other behind Overhaul’s back.

“Good girl,” the demon breathes, and then he lifts off you so he’s kneeling upright with the two of you still connected, his thick, heavy cock still speared in your pussy, and his fingers come down again to rub at your clit. Everything’s so wet you can hear the motion of his fingers slicking themselves through your juices, sliding up and down the little button over and over and it feels so good that a tiny part of you almost wants to drag it out, to savor it, but the rest of your body is going to die, is going to go crazy if the demon doesn’t let you cum right now, right now, right now!

And he does. Praise the Lord. The pads of Overhaul’s fingers pass over your clit one last time and your head rolls back, your throat moves but you can’t even make a sound, your legs shake and you cum.

You didn’t know it was like this.

Your cunt squeezes down on his cock, throbbing and pulsing and your toes literally curl (you didn’t think that was a real thing!) and your vision goes black for a moment and—oh fuck oh fuck i want this i want more how is it possible that i’ve never felt like this—you understand, more intimately than ever, why sex is wrong:

because nothing that makes you feel this good could possibly come without a cost, could it?

///

It must take longer than you thought for you to come back to your senses, because when you regain awareness of your body you’re in your hospital bed. You’re clean, too, and you wonder for a second if Overhaul bothered to clean you up? Or no…he probably just snapped his fingers and transported you back to your room. You’re not really sure how it works.

What you are sure of, however, is that you just got fucked by a demon. You’re sore in places that you didn’t know it was possible to be sore, and there are already bruises forming on the flesh of your thighs from how tight he was holding you. You don’t really have time to inspect these, though, because apparently your…ordeal (if you can call it that) isn’t over.

Overhaul’s still here.

He’s facing the hints of sunrise through the east window, dressed again in the immaculate lab coat and surgeon’s mask. “You’re awake,” he says without looking at you.

You nod hesitantly. You’re not really sure what the protocol is in this situation, but at least you’ve finally held up your side of the contract, right? And so has he. Despite having been up all night doing sinful things, you’re still itching to get out of this bed and test the limits of your healthy body. “You’re…going to leave, right?”

“Yes—”

At that, you sigh in relief and settle back into your starched bedsheets.

“But there’s one more thing you owe me.”

“Goddamnit,” you swear for the very first time in your life. After what you just did, taking the Lord’s name in vain seems like a relatively minor sin.

Overhaul’s mildly irritated expression doesn’t change, but he holds his hand out to you, palm up, the way you imagine someone would if they were helping you out of a car or requesting a dance at an old-fashioned ball. And really, you want all of this to be over—you want to get out of this hospital, you want to taste what the air outside is like, you want to distract yourself from what you just gave up in exchange for a future. At this point you’re just going to have to hope God isn’t as picky about the whole premarital sex thing as you grew up believing.

So you put your hand in Overhaul’s.

Slowly, carefully, like he’s afraid it’ll burn him, he slides your purity ring down your finger and balances it in the palm of his bare hand. It sizzles when he touches it, glowing orange until it eventually burns down into a ash-black circle in the center of his palm. Once he’s satisfied that your pretty little ring has been reduced to nothing more than a scorch mark, he closes his hand around yours and you feel something sharp, painfully hot, etching onto your finger.

It’s over in a second, but you still yelp and yank your hand away from him as soon as he lets you. “Ah—ow, what was that?”

He burned you, he literally burned you! He’s already healed it, but there’s still a thin, pale scar, an intentional one left wrapping around the skin at the base of your left ring finger. Like a wedding ring.

When you look close, you can make out a symbol on the back of your finger where the cross used to sit—and even though your conscious mind doesn’t recognize it, the sight of it rings out something inside your ribcage, deeper and truer than flesh and blood. It’s the devil’s mark, you think. It’s his.

“…A promise,” Overhaul says softly, and even though it’s a chilly morning, you can feel the heat of his hands on yours a long time after he vanishes back into the dark.

[artingabout]

undefined

The Queen’s Thief themed nook-book made as a gift for @meganwhalenturner​

Behind the scenes:

My materials:

ae woodene booke

much paper in many layers and shades

craft knife

scissors

foamy-tape-stuff (technical term)

acrylic paints

brushes and roller

pens & coloured pencils

PVA glue

faux gold leafing

resin

metal ruler and cutting mat

milliput

fimo

wire

craft foam boards

card

black tissue

wooden dowels

chalk

This one, I’ve been planning for a while. Originally I was going to do a standard book nook, but then remembered these gorgeous wooden books I’ve had just lying around waiting for a purpose and BEHOLD!

Because I can never keep things simple for myself, I wanted to try different craft styles for each section so I’ll go through them one by one.

Phase 1 was challenging because it’s the shallow left side. I decided to do one of the iconic scenes that stayed with me long after I read the books for the first time in cut paper, because it would let me play with layers and the illusion of depth while also... y’know. Paper. It’s thin.

First off I made a background to add some perspective and depth to the box, so it looked much deeper than it is.I painted on a sky effect and then dug out this gorgeous paper that has a kind of marble texture to it and made the buildings.

Next I did a base sketch of the faces to get the sizes right and snipped out Gen since he has more layers because his arm is foreground.

I didn’t remember to take a picture of the paper I textured for his skin tone, but basically various shades of pinks/reds/browns/whites applied to watercolour paper in erratic layers to get some texture and depth. It’s sort of visible on the hand (which was the first piece I cut out and it strikes me as ironic that it’s the piece I kept losing because I was working on my living room floor 😅)

For Attolia, I picked different papers/cards to use, specifically a rather nice handmade off-white paper with dark red rose petals imbedded in it to serve as her alabaster skin with the smudge of blood.

Nothing says love like floating heads, amirite? I added some layers to Attolia’s hair and coiled the strands of the ringlets around a cocktail stick to get the curls. The crown and earring are both faux-gold-leaf card with slivers of resin as rubies. So much gold-leaf everywhere. SO MUCH. Details were added with a fine-tipped pen and some shading with coloured pencils.

The layers. So many layers. I think Gen has about 15 separate pieces to him. For his sleeves, I added some texture by using a rubber patterned stamp and copper ink, then splatted paint all over it :D

And to add even more depth to a 1cm deep space, I used thick double-sided foam tape (I have no idea of technical terms. Foamy squishy stick string) to elevate them off the background. A wee glimpse of it is visible just under Gen’s collarbone

Phase 1 complete!

Phase 2 was another beast entirely. Originally, I was planning on doing the scene from The Thief when Gen steals Hamiathes’s gift, but realised that would mean an image of Hephestia that looked very much like the image of Attolia I had already done. Plus I was planning to use The Return of the Thief’s cover which is also red, so I wanted to do something less red.

Pheris was kind enough to give me some beautiful descriptions of the half-built temple of Hephestia in TRotT and I love me some forced perspective :D And naturally, I had a slightly deeper box to work with this time (omg a whole 2-3cm! Luxury!) so of course, it had to be 3D.

"I studied the Great Goddess, shining in the darkness. The treasury was new, but her statue was much older; the wood from which she was carved showed through the gold leaf. The pillars supporting the dome were tree trunks, smoothed of their bark and inverted, so they were wider at the top than at the ground"

First up, the Goddess herself. Fimo on a wire armature with a throne made of balsa wood . Since the statue is described as old with wood showing through the gold, I figured she could look a little crudely-carved and rough. Also, she is smol and I have sossige fingers.

I cut dowels to size to serve as the inverted-tree-trunk pillars and add an illusion of depth. My art teacher would be so proud.

The altar was the easiest piece of the whole thing: chopped up foam board, some card for stability, cut and shaped and decorated with milliput to add the Hephestial Mountains, coated in black tissue to give a nice strong black base to paint. I used drybrush to get a nice stone effect (see a bit further down)

And conveniently, the entire background of the scene is black, so I added the dome for More Optical Illusions! Because hey, if it worked once, do it again :D And also started layering up milliput for the tree-pillar bits.

And the last and messiest step before fixing the pillars and everything in place. Gold. Leaf.

The last bits to get done were the pillars, which I fixed in with milliput and glue.

Once they were set and painted, I glued everything in place and gave Hephestia her orb and behold, phase 2 complete!

And both sides together.

Finally, phase 3 - the cover. To keep things (relatively) simple, I went with the blood-red cover for Return of the Thief. Gave it a nice red basecoat, sketched on the design in chalk because lol, who uses tools to draw lines? Not me!

No in-progress pictures because I did it all in one run while listening to a webinar.

And as a special treat, more gold leafing!! I love the shininess of the figures on the cover of the book and thought “hey, that’s a sensible option that won’t leave you finding gold bits in your kitchen for days!” :D

Note to self: do not do this on wood again, it is very very likely the leaf will cling to the wood and require some repainting. This is a lesson. Do not forget (this memory will self destruct within 10 seconds of leaving this post)

For comparison before I did some touch-ups because of the stupid leaf going rogue

And behold, it is done :D

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

I’m not sure if anyone requested this yet, but can you write some sweet headcanons where Malleus, Vil, Riddle, Azul and f!s/o bond with their child? Like they've all graduated from NRC and they're adults and parents now. Thanks Raven!

Curiouser and Curiouser...

As the ruling family of the Valley of Thorns, you are often busy with political and economic affairs. One day, your child will become the next monarch, so they follow you around to important meetings (when they’re not with their royal tutors) and sit in to watch you and father work. This way, they are able to learn while also spending time with their parents.

A beloved family past time is taking a stroll in the palace gardens, hand in hand--your child holding one of yours, and one of dad’s. Malleus knows just what their favorite flower is, and sometimes does little magic tricks to get them to giggle--a shower of petals, or perhaps making all of their favorite flowers bloom in unison.

Sometimes Malleus joins his child for their lessons! It can be boring studying history books or practicing the violin alone, so he might read aloud to them, or take up a string instrument himself to show them the ropes!

Malleus also joins his child for the occasional spar. Of course, he never really goes all-out, but he does try to push them to think quick on their feet. Each battle tends to end with Malleus lying on the floor and pretending he has been “slain”--and when his child cautiously approaches to check on him, Malleus strikes back by tickling them until they’re squealing with laughter.

He knows it can be hard to get a grasp on magic, so when the first sparks start to appear in his child, he makes the time to help them control it. Malleus keeps mint candies in his robes to help cool fiery belches, and he kindly guides his child through shifting from humanoid to dragon and back.

There’s always ice-cream--the king’s favorite treat--on hand! He loves to share it with his child (especially if they’ve expelled a fiery burp earlier). Malleus constructs large and elaborate sundae boats to surprise them after a long day of their studies.

Malleus’s imposing height actually makes him the perfect playground for his child! They love to cling to his back or ride his shoulders, all while reaching up for the sky--which they hope to one day soar through with their father.

His status as an A-list celebrity tends to keep Vil away from home for extended periods of time, but he keeps in touch with his beloved family! That means lots of video calls with you and his child--and it makes all the moments you do spend together all the more meaningful. (Your child has a habit of pointing at magazine covers and the TV screen whenever they see their father on.)

Whenever Vil returns from work, he typically has a gift in hand for his child. It could be merchandise from whatever brand he has partnered with at the moment, a souvenir from abroad, or a plushie, flowers, or candy from his fans. It always brings a smile to his kid’s face--because their dad is thinking of them, even when they aren’t together.

Vil’s his child’s greatest supporter. He believes they can do anything they set their mind to, and he actively encourages them to work hard toward those goals. No matter how busy he is, Vil will show up to every sports game, every dance recital, every awards show his child is in.

He takes his child on lots of outings! The movies, restaurants, parks, spas, stores... anywhere, really! He thinks it is important for his child to see and experience as much of the world as they can--and besides, he loves doing anything and everything with them.

Vil allows his child to dig into his vanity and wardrobe for things to use for playing dress-up! He’ll sit at the kitchen counter and pretend to be a commentator as his child struts out in various outfits and looks they’ve thrown together.

Occasionally, Vil will sit down and let his kid make him “absolutely beautiful” with his own cosmetics. There’s a whole photo album in your phone of your husband in crooked lipstick and liner, or wildly messy eyeshadow, courtesy of your child.

If they have trouble sleeping,  Vil will read a fairy tale to them--and he’ll crack a little smile when his child tells him he’s like the prince in the story. Other times, he’ll sing lullabies to soothe them. When they’ve, at last, settled into sleep, Vil will brush their hair aside and kiss them on the forehead, wishing them sweet dreams.

Riddle is stern, but not emotionally closed off. He has sworn to never be like the tyrant his mother was to him in his youth. Though he may be upset when his child does an oopsie, he takes a deep breath, brings himself down to eye level with them, and calmly explains why it is he feels the way he does. Together, they’ll talk out their feelings and find a compromise that works for both of them.

He plays tea party with his child, even going out of his way to properly address each of their stuffed animals by their full name and title. Riddle sits down in a small plastic chair and pretends to sip his “tea” (cola heavily diluted with water) and eat his “scones and sandwiches” (colored clay cut into lopsided triangles).

They look after the family pets--a pair of hedgehogs--together. Riddle shows hid child where the hedgehogs like to be scratched, and how to properly hold them and bathe them. They love to give the hedgehogs their food, the lie on their bellies and proper their faces up to watch the pets eat.

He sits down with them to help with their homework. If there’s something they don’t understand, Riddle can talk them through it--though he won’t just spout out the answer. He wants his child to be able to think critically for themselves--he’s there to provide a little nudge, if needed.

Riddle and his child often experiment in the kitchen. He’s sure to pick simple, kid-friendly and easy recipes, and makes sure that his kid follows proper safety precautions. They serve you up the dishes they make, from fruit sandwiches to pasta salads to no-bake cheesecakes.

Whenever he’s eating something with strawberries on it, he offers the fruit to his child, since he knows they also enjoy them. They typically banter back and forth a bit before agreeing to split the strawberries in half so both of them can enjoy~

He often takes his child out on strolls through the neighborhood so they can see what life is like outside of the house. If some neighborhood kids want to play with them, Riddle lets his child run freely--he’ll just keep a careful eye on them from a distance.

Like their father, your child is ambitious and intelligent for their age. You can often find them trying to negotiate with their father for various things: later bed times, more allowance for the week, cake for dessert instead of fruit tonight... Azul usually still wins in the end, but he’s a good sport about it and allows the conversations to drag on a little to encourage his kid to put together a coherent argument.

Speaking of allowance, Azul is sure to make sure his child earns that money through various small acts, like doing the dishes or taking out the trash. That’s part of how he shows his love: by instilling values of fairness and working hard into his kid. He also does his part to teach them about the benefits healthy eating and exercise, so his kid can live a long and healthy life!

His child sometimes surprises him at his workplace. Whenever that happens, Azul grants them their own special table in the corner and serves them himself. There’s plenty of free finger foods and endless refills for them, but he’ll gently scold them if they run the risk of overeating or indulging in too many unhealthy foods.

Azul takes his child to the pool or to the beach to swim! He’s notably less enthusiastic about it if he has to do so in his true form, but he’ll do it if his child begs enough. They’re fascinated by his many arms--and to be honest, they come in handy when Azul needs to make a quick rescue or prevent them from drifting too far out on their own. When they’re old enough, Azul holds their hand, and they dive deep to explore the depths.

When the winter comes, Azul personally secures his child in a scarf and several other warm layers before sending them out into the cold. The Coral Sea can get to frigid temperatures during these times of the year, and he tends to worry for his child’s wellbeing and health because of it.

Azul doesn’t give his child gifts often (he wants them to be appreciative for what they already have), but when he does, they are generous ones--a big kitchen playset, a cash register with tons of play money, a lightning-magic powered car they can actually ride in...

Family board game night! Azul has a cabinet full of tabletop card games and board games specifically for these occasions. Monopoly in particular is especially... stiff competition. There’s betrayal and drama around every corner, but you still have tons of fun regardless.