#I have normal feelings about dog imagery

[saintofhounds]

[cinnamonest]

Can we talk about boobs? 👀 like im wondering if the boys are crazy over em or not since it's like... both intimate and perverted at the same time or one or either

Like it can also be super embarrassing for the reader when she's getting the life sucked out of her tits for like... minutes on end?? Just trying to pry these virgin boys off. It's also not "pleasurable" for either party in the sense that it gets you to climax (unless perhaps we're talking about Albedo who is insane), but if you're a horny yan boy you might not care

The Albedo slander I can't— but you're right he can and will get you to cum from nothing but sucking on your tits, no matter how many tries and experimentation with various substances it takes. Which you find laughable, mockingly tell him that he as an academic should know women don't work like that… until he makes it happen and you eat your words, somehow. It's equally humiliating for you as it is amusing for him… the sly you were saying? as you lay there shivering and panting makes you all flustered, turning your face away to bury into the pillow.

But hear me out — the animal boy club, most of them at least, have a predisposition to titty affinity.

Gorou and Tighnari experience this the most strongly. Stronger primal mammalian instincts mean he has a much stronger drive than a normal human man to very specifically be drawn to indicators of fertility and suitableness for reproduction and healthy offspring. Regardless of size, your breasts automatically send off all the right signals when he lays eyes on them — milk for the offspring, a good breedable mate… it's torturous that they're right there yet human social conventions demand he can't do anything.

Animals don't really have a sense of shame in that regard, so there's less natural inhibition holding him back, he has to make an active effort to remind himself that he can't just walk right up to you and sniff at you, press his face into your chest… the thought of how embarrassing it would be in hindsight is all that's holding him back.

Once things develop, though, and he has you behind closed doors and available, he can't keep his mouth off of them. It feels natural, instinctive, popping your nipple into his mouth and suckling like that for ages — he could keep going forever if you didn't stop him eventually.

The downside of this is that you have to remind them to be careful… it turns out they both have some rather pointy teeth. Dogs have more rounded teeth, but still a powerful biting force that you have to watch out for, whereas fox teeth are much sharper. He's being careful, promise! It's just very easy to get lost in the bliss of the moment and maybe start to nibble a bit too hard, making you jolt and squeal… except the high-pitched sound and the feeling of struggling against him mimics a little prey animal fighting back, and that triggers a whole new set of instincts, now you have much worse problems as you're getting bitten everywhere else, jaw locking down to hold you still as he ruts into you.

Razor has the exact inverse going on. Sure, he's technically not any more naturally inclined towards it than an average human, but his upbringing has long since wired the proclivity into his head. Thing is, with she-wolves, theirs swell outward from the body only once they're pregnant, so for him, seeing human breasts, which are constantly in a state of being pronounced from the rest of the body, might as well be a perpetual onslaught of blatantly provocative imagery.

Unlike the other two, though, he has the exact opposite degree of inhibition. He got the whole “personal space” talk already once or twice, he just… forgets.

However, unfortunately, by the time you meet him, no one has given him the “inappropriate staring” talk yet, so the moment you're introduced by the knights, you see his eyes widen, his head tilts slightly downward, his gaze fixates, and… stays there. No shame, no attempt to conceal what he's looking at, mouth slightly ajar in a dumbstruck stupor. You pause in confusion when he slowly reaches his hand up and out, fingers stretched out as if to grab something, only to be stopped at the last second by one of the knights who spotted the incoming social disaster just in time, grabbing him by the wrist and trying to change the subject with an awkward laugh.

Once he has you to himself, though, he develops a fixation with them. He will come up to you and just sort of… plant his face in the middle, like recharging energy, nuzzling and, to your dismay, sometimes trying to chomp down on them, which you have to actively discourage. During your naps in the sun, you often find yourself waking up to the sudden sucking sensation — and he’s relentless about it too, latching on firmly and refusing to let go. He’s a bit disappointed to learn that no milk comes out, though, at least not yet.

Xiao is the exception to this natural affinity — avians don’t nurse, so it’s a bit of a foreign concept… but the human form is still drawn to it. Except he’s more fond of them for softness, so once he’s more comfortable with touch (which does take a while), he tends to use them as a pillow, opting to rest his head on them for long periods of time. It’s comforting in a way that he can’t really articulate, it just makes him feel at ease.

And then there’s the staring — he’s more accustomed to human norms and social etiquette than Razor, he just sort of… gets distracted for a moment. You just bend forward in just the right way, or perhaps take a bouncing step or come down a flight of stairs, and it just grabs his attention to such an extent that there’s a solid few seconds where he’s left dumbstruck and completely captivated, trailing off anything he was saying, just staring downward in a slack-jawed daze… until you wave your hand in front of his face and he snaps out of it, going fully red in the face. You say you don’t mind, but that only serves to make him more embarrassed…

[silverzoomies]

Cunning Linguist

pietro maximoff x reader smut

warnings: cunnilingus, porn with (slight) plot, blow jobs, dissociative identity disorder, dissociation, existential crisis, smut, shameless smut, halloween, canon divergence

word count: 3,990

a/n: i meant to finish this ages ago. but i always overthink shit. i rewrote this several times, and it still doesn't feel worth posting. oh well !! just meaningless filth - same old story, different clothing. i wanted to play with the concept of pietro as an alter in ralph's head. again. lol

he's a little ooc here. but i'm blaming the brain fog. i'm running on three hours of sleep every night. fuck it, we ball. also, not including a tag list because tumblr's system kinda sucks for it. sorry !!

Pietro recalled the moment his consciousness came to light.

Agnes waved her spooky hands in his face, as though she were taunting him. She muttered incantations under her breath. The words of which Pietro didn’t recognize as English. After implanting sentimental memories in his mind - based on stories of Wanda’s childhood - she sent him off on his own. Like letting a dog loose, free to roam. 

Pietro’s mission? Find Wanda, have a gabfest or two, extract information. Or something along those lines. Pietro hadn’t paid much attention while Agnes yapped about it. Why focus on that, when the mystery of his own sentience piqued his interest instead?

He was given an easy enough job to do. No problem-o. Pietro had a talent for pestering people til’ they cracked. That’s what Agnes told him, anyway. He wasn’t too sure why she wanted him to play undercover rat. It had something to do with magic. Pietro knew that much. There was some kinda witch-on-witch rivalry in the works. But unfortunately for Agnes - and maybe fortunately for Wanda - she might have to take a raincheck on her duel of the sorceresses.  

Pietro could be a bit of a dipshit. Was he stupid? Not so much. He had brains where it counted. He could be crafty. Even sneaky. But his expert level slyness didn’t make him any less of an idiot. Pietro couldn’t refute that factoid about himself. Around Wanda, he forgot how to function like a normal person. Which he blamed on the fact that he wasn’t a normal person. Being brutally honest with himself; Pietro technically wasn’t even a person at all.

More like a conceptual incarnation of human sentience, really. Simple enough.

No ifs, ands, or buts about it, though - Pietro carried the irksome flaws of a human. Often, he acted thoughtless when he didn’t mean to. Without filtering himself first, Pietro unapologetically spoke his mind. He’d drop fourth-wall breaking quips here or there. Sometimes, his careless habits made for entertaining slip ups. Perfect for sitcom shenanigans. Other times, his blunders resulted in pain. Lotsa pain.

Halloween night, Pietro found himself whisked away by a forceful wave. Conjured by Wanda’s potent magic. The same power Agnes wanted her wiggly witch fingers on. After going aerial in a wild whoosh, Pietro got up close and friendly with some Halloween decorations. But, hey, what’re a few broken bones between pseudo siblings, eh?

Wanda sure had a helluva temper. She quickly banished Pietro from ever setting foot in her house again. Talk about a major bummer. Pietro suffered a huge loss on that front. One part because he’d have no choice but to crash with Agnes again. Ninety nine parts because he’d miss his troublemaking nephews. Those fun, lil scamps.

Tough luck, Quickie. Try and do better next time.

Honestly, he’d prefer if there wasn’t a next time.  If Agnes wanted to make small talk so bad, she could do it on her own. Calling it quits for the night, Pietro wandered off to a Westview bar. To his surprise, he found the place still in operation. And despite Pietro’s memories - vague imagery of Busch beer cans crushed under his fist - he hadn’t had a beer since his consciousness manifested. Shit. Did he even like beer? Whether he cared for it or not, a subconscious instinct drew him to it.

He assumed that instinct was none other than Ralph himself. The poor dude wanted to drown his terror in alcohol. And after all the twisted shit Agnes put Ralph through; who was Pietro to deny him one of life's simplest pleasures?

The mellow atmosphere of the bar oozed Halloween spirit. Kinda unnecessary, in retrospect. Considering Wanda never stopped by for a drink. Why bother sprucing the place up with her wispy magic, if it never saw any use?

The bartender’s clever quips reminded Pietro of Cheers. Another totally bonkers concept. Pietro had memories of watching Cheers, sure. But he couldn’t decipher if they were Ralph’s or not. For all Pietro knew, they might be a part of the ‘dead brother’ package deal. False memories, meant to give Wanda someone to relate to. Making him liable to tear down her defenses when she least expected it. 

But why did Pietro get the sense he was more of a Frasier guy anyway?

Sitting at the bar on a rickety stool, Pietro spun around to satiate his boredom. He cradled a beer, inhaling all of it in a single beat. Superspeed really did have its ups and downs. Consider quick consumption a positive. As far as negatives go…well…inebriation was completely unattainable. Sucks for Ralph. As Pietro flagged down the bartender for another beer, he tuned his ears to a radio broadcast. On a shelf amidst dollar store Halloween decor; a radio droned old fashioned tales of wicked witches. Subtle.

Outside interference interrupted the broadcast. Voices intermingled between buzzes of static. Whispering soft, but panicked mantras of 'Wanda? Wanda, are you there?' Pietro narrowed his beady eyes. His ignorance of the world outside Westview should’ve stayed intact. But whatever the reason, he knew exactly where those voices came from. Why he carried such knowledge was anyone’s guess. Maybe Agnes let too much her own insight slip into his psyche. Whoopsies. Oh well. Shrugging, Pietro flagged down the bartender for another beer. Deja vu.

Bored outta his mind, his thoughts explored elsewhere.

Pietro dreamt of something a little more down to earth. He remembered a cutie-pie neighbor new to Westview. A ‘next door’ kinda type, with a quirky sorta charm. They had no idea why they were in the city to begin with. Pietro knew these details, only because he gathered the what’s what on just about every person in town. It took him all of two seconds to do so. Zip around. Observe. Make mental notes. Report back to Agnes. Spill the deets.

Anyway, about you…

Call it a crush, loneliness, or even instinctive lust; whatever the case, Pietro thought you were cute as could be. You didn’t remember how you got to Westview, or where you even came from. One day, you woke up in town, and found yourself wearing unfamiliar clothes. Threads evocative of decades long past. But hey, it happens to the best of us. Pietro was well-acquainted with feelings of confusion and alienation. That mingled sense of being both lost, and born anew.

For crying out loud, he was the very materialization of sapient awareness itself. Agnes forbade him from that knowledge as well. But again, Pietro credited his oopsies and ding-dongs to her shoddy miracle work.

Whenever you questioned the reality around you, the world only stifled you into silence. The everyday citizens of Westview seemed so content with life as it was. Acting as if you had nothing to worry about. Wanda’s sitcom setup was nothing beyond sunshine, rainbows, and television tropes. But Pietro could see the unspoken terror hidden deep in their eyes. The truth Wanda kept hush hush.

Just thinking about it was enough to give Pietro the heebie jeebies. And if his intuition was anything to go by - it never proved him wrong yet - you had a bad feeling about Westview too. Way to go! You caught on even quicker than he did. Which was kinda nuts, if he thought about it. Wasn’t he supposed to be the fastest at everything? ‘Cuz speed was his middle name or something. Or…well, it wasn’t. But it could be. Who’s to stop him from seizing his own destiny at this point?

Pietro Speed Maximoff.

Eh, maybe not.

In Westview, you had no friends or family. And much like Pietro, on Halloween night; you found yourself at the bar. He caught your curious gaze from down the counter. You were dolled up in a scanty, witch's dress, leaving Pietro to wonder why witches were such a recurring theme in his life. Looking too much like a manchild goober, he spun around a few more times in his seat. His sneakers kicked against the stool’s railing. No matter what, he couldn’t sit still. He thought he might be embarrassing himself. But his antics appeared to make you smile even brighter.

Tilting your head, you shot him a look of familiarity.

You weren’t familiar with him, though. But there was a chance you saw him appearing and disappearing around town. During his impromptu stake outs, more than likely.

Bringing your drink to the seam of your lips, you stifled a playful giggle. It was obvious you were gawking at his costume. Arching a brow, Pietro grinned into the rim of his beer bottle. To be fair, he looked supremely ridiculous. The blue tights under his cut-off jean shorts rode up in the crotch a little too much. He dipped his head, staring at the frayed edges of his shorts. Yeah. It was clear he did the job cutting them himself. A hasty one too. Since he was too eager to pull pranks with his nephews.

Damn. Pietro missed those kids like hell already.

The dirty blond hair/ear-things atop his head bounced every time he knocked his neck back. As Pietro downed yet another beer, he lost track of how many he drank. A dribble of it plummeted into silver. Creating a sheen against the lightning bolt duct taped diagonally down his shirt. Pietro sighed and pursed his lips. 

His outfit was an all blue ensemble. Garnished with a spritz of silver here or there. Quicksilver. His hero name, apparently. Pietro knew he’d never live up to it.

A bit of friendly conversation later, and the air between the two of you shifted. Your playful look morphed into something a little wanton, the more Pietro acted in silly ways. Holy shit. Seriously? He hoped he wasn't misreading your signals. Because really, your attraction was too good to be true. If you honestly wanted him, where should he proceed from here? How much freedom had Agnes even allowed him? And furthermore - if Wanda’s happy, dream town ran on a curated schedule; what if credits rolled just as the two of you finally got handsy?

Maybe sitcom rules didn’t apply to conscious manifestations of witch hocus pocus? Wishful thinking on his part.

Outside the bar - in an alleyway too uncannily clean, like a set straight out of Hollywood - Pietro beckoned you in with kisses. Technically, he played the role of Agnes’s deadbeat husband. And if that were the case, did kissing you count as cheating? Shit…was Pietro committing adultery right now?? In the midst of macking on your sweet lips, he pressed a palm to the wall next to your head. Pietro pretended to do so for balance, as he devoured you with his mouth and tongue. 

But unbeknownst to you, he cracked an eye open. Just to double check for a wedding band.

Nothing there to prove he ever got hitched. Go figure.

You giggled coyly into his lips, letting a soft moan ease through your teeth. Bringing your hands up to the hair/ear-things on his head, you toyed with them. Your pretty voice teased him, as you played with his hair in gentle strokes of your thumbs.

“Ooooh…such a good boy, huh? Fast too.” You cooed, the same way one might praise a puppy.

Oh. Fuck yeah. To hell with sitcom tropes and bogus wives. Agnes scared the ever-loving shit out of Pietro anyway. He had no semblance of a domestic connection to her. Not that she gave much of a damn herself. With how often she threw insults his way. Agnes always used Ralph as her little punching bag, before hijacking his body for her own gain.

No wonder your simple praises got his proverbial tail wagging.

A chuckle hummed in the back of his throat, as Pietro purred into your lips, “Speed’s kinda my middle name, y’know?”

You snorted one of the dorkiest laughs he’d heard since cognisant birth. And with a sudden spark of primal urgency; Pietro felt something else spring into transcendence down below. 

Sifting through Ralph’s sidelined psyche, Pietro came to realize how much of a recluse he was. The guy never seemed to get out much. In fact, Agnes might’ve even been his first partner. If one could classify her as such. So, really, Pietro was doing him a major favor. If Ralph knew he planned on using their body for some frisky fun - on an otherwise lonely Hallow’s eve - surely, he’d give his brain roomie some thanks.

Pietro’s hands were vascular like a wired-up machine, clad in arm-warmer paws. Grabbing hard onto your curvy hips with them, he pulled you in closer. He sought the friction of your crotch against his. And after some seriously sloppy making out, Pietro dropped you an invite to his place.

Or…Agnes’s place.

Uh…or…was it technically Ralph’s? Shit, this sitcom roleplay sure gave way to some mental gymnastics.

You didn’t expect Pietro to zip you off at superspeed. Moving abruptly fast, he brought you straight to his disaster of a man cave. Laying you back on the futon, he gave you little time to adjust over the blankets. The wrinkled fabrics reeked of pot, in desperate need of a wash. You got as comfy as you could on the skunky sheets. Blinking your needy gaze up at him, you tugged his white belt, pulling the band undone. Pietro grinned lazily, colliding his swollen lips into yours. His primal instincts left him wreckless with want. 

Burying his tongue in the cavern of your mouth, he brought with him the flavor of cheap booze. As you tasted him, you moaned, shucking his dumb jorts down his hips. A sizable swelling twitched in his tights, squirming under muted blue. Your eyes bulged in their sockets, cartoonishly wide. The way you whirled your tongue across your lip gave off a vibe of animalistic hunger. As though you were eager for an all dick dinner. With Pietro as the appetizer.

And the main course. And the dessert. He hoped you'd rate him five stars.

Restaurant metaphors aside; this was the very first test of his capabilities as a lover, after all. If he couldn’t live up to his superhero name, maybe he could make a name for himself in other ways.

Pietro Speed Maximoff. Quicksilver. Cunning Linguist.

But first…he really should satiate your hunger.

One, generous tug downward, and Pietro’s - or Ralph’s - slightly above average length sprang out. Bouncing in your face in mesmerizing oscillation, his cock appeared pulsating and roused. Thick veins weaved like threads through his shaft, akin to his vascular hands. His balls bulged in his tights, his jorts hanging halfway down his thighs. Pietro took his blistering cock in hand. Aching for the kind of stimulation Ralph never got, his desire painted him so flush and ruby red. 

Since you looked so delighted at the sight before you; Pietro gave his cock a few strokes. He played with himself for your viewing pleasure. And as his firm grip tugged his shaft, the world pulled suddenly back. It was as though Pietro viewed life through a third person perspective. Metaphorical cameras fixed their lenses on the two of you, in an all too human position of closeness. 

The weight of a cock in Pietro’s hand felt both familiar, yet weirdly foreign. Combine that with the sight of another living, breathing body below him; and his nerves buzzed uncomfortably. Frenzied in such a way that matched the quick pulsing of his heart. Focusing instead on your fluttering eyes, Pietro weaned himself out of dissociation. Your hands braced his hips, thumbs circling the fabric of his tights. The gentle gesture brought chills throughout his body. Inching forward, you teased his bobbing cock with a flick of your tongue.

Wet heat grounded him in reality. Upon racing to the forefront of his own mind; Pietro’s breath hitched with a husky groan. He held your head, massaging his fingers in your soft hair. Cute mewls spilled from your lips as you flitted your eyes shut. Swirling your tongue over his cock’s puffy head, you lapped any tearful pearls of precum. His thickness sank between your plush lips, and Pietro’s own lips parted for breath.

Of all things to happen on Halloween night, getting his dick sucked wasn’t on the docket.

Not that Pietro had any reason to complain. This? Wicked awesome. Ralph was really missing out.

You drew lazily back just to lap his balls over his tights, staining fabric with slick saliva. Rolling the tip of your tongue up the underside of his dick, you giggled in that dorkish way again. Pietro’s teeth pulled his lip as he tilted his head back. His dick twitched, throbbing while the heat of your mouth embraced him fully. He moaned, smiling wide enough to show off his dimples. You pumped his cock at the base, teasing his veins with your tongue.

Pietro’s brows turned inward. You suckled his head like you longed to guzzle anything he could give. He sank his fingers deeper through your hair, holding on tightly as he rutted his hips. With each slam of his weeping tip into your throat; he hoarsely grunted. You really did try your best, just for him. Even as tears spilled down your cheeks and your lips began to swell. Plush and puffy, circling his slick length. Pietro kicked up the speed at which he rutted.

Fighting his instincts, he was cautious enough not to choke you. Or, he wanted to be cautious. He braced his hands on both sides of your tear stained face, his arm warmer paws soft against your cheeks. Sinking his dick even deeper between your lips, he accidentally went balls deep. The wet fabric of his tights smothered your chin. You sputtered on his cock, which made your throat wring him so tight. As your tongue curled, sliding under the thrum of his veins; Pietro cursed. Playful chuckles and shameful apologies fell from his lips.

Bitter heat coated your tongue in sweltering jets, thick and explosive down your throat. Pietro’s groin twisted in a blossoming surge of pleasure. And as he ruptured your esophagus with his sticky load, he found himself that much more grounded. As if such a bombastic nut somehow tethered him to reality - securing Pietro from any further derealization. 

Righteous. His first big O since Agnes blessed him with the gift of consciousness. Significantly more electrifying than any sad, jerk sesh Ralph had in the past. And since you so humbly took him like a champ - giving Pietro a most euphoric experience; he saw it fit to return the favor ASAP.

Neither Pietro - nor Ralph, it seemed - had any experience toying around with partners. But he did have a vague knowledge of how to do so. Thanks to the backlog of not-so-safe-for-work memories deep in his subconscious. Raunchy porn, mostly. Magazines. Tapes. Jesus, Ralph…why’s there so much dirty stuff in there, huh? Lots and lots of it. Pietro would have to do his own research later.

He gave you no time to prep for his oncoming nose dive. Perched on your knees, coughing and clearing your throat - you found yourself abruptly resting on your elbows. Your upper back pressed into the futon. Pietro lifted your hips, using his strength to hike your thighs over his broad shoulders. As you parted your swollen lips to protest, blinking your reddened eyes; Pietro pulled your panties to the side. He kept the soaked lace pinned under a thick thumb. Burying his lips in your cunt, he lapped up your honeyed heat.

A sudden addiction, triggered by something carnal, overtook him instantly. Pietro became hooked on your fragrant flavor, swirling your cute bud in high-speed circles. He worked your stiff clit like a microscopic joystick, flicking wet heat in a spastic whirlwind. Alternating between drawing patterns, and sucking your precious pearl hard. Pietro so easily made you squeal - even without any prior experience - until you scratched your fingernails deep into Ralph’s sheets. Kissing your cunt, he let his thirst take over, and dove deeper.

The tune of his name melting through your moans made him wish the night would last forever. A small fraction of him hoped Ralph would never take over again. If consciousness offered rewards this scrumptious, Pietro wanted to stay sentient into eternity. Not to be selfish or whatever, but he almost considered playing minion for Agnes again - if only to secure the lifespan of his psyche.

Your supple, pussy lips parted as he wormed his tongue through your slick walls. Smooth, bumpy heat squeezed the fuzzy ridges of his tongue. In milliseconds, your fluttery love gushed over his taste buds and leaked down his chin. Tears teased the edges of your eyes. You cried whines of sugary bliss. Pietro’s thumb kept your panties pinned, his other hand locked around your thigh.

He smirked into your pussy, deep chuckles burning hot on your mound. And since the position wasn’t exactly the most comfortable; he allowed you some reprieve. Pushing you past your breaking point at light speed, Pietro bashed the sopping slickness of his tongue into your clit. You trembled, shuddering through powerful waves of orgasmic intensity. White-hot flashes of light flooded your vision. Under Pietro’s zippy tongue, your sweet pussy quivered.

Totes mcgoats. If he learned anything tonight - aside from the obvious lessons in subtlety; Pietro now understood why the everyday man lost his doggone marbles over puss.

After your first release, he eased your tired body into the futon. Your back met cozy blankets, engulfed in that skunk weed scent. Before you relaxed, he edged you even longer, drawing out your pleasurable suffering. Pietro sank his fingers deep into your heat, pumping the length of them inside you. His digits curled perfectly, finding every spongy spot that made your core burst with a desire to cum again. His tongue teased your swollen nub until you grabbed at his hair. You mussed the funny looking ear things atop his head, pressing your palm into his forehead to try and push him back.

You begged him to stop. Pleading in disoriented whimpers, your noises went straight to his limp dick. A few more hot, wrathful waves of pleasure later - he finally stopped. Only after your cunt erupted in one more, wet burst. You leaked like a fountain into his lips, soaking his chin, even making a mess of his makeshift costume. More than worth it. Pietro sat up on the futon, admiring his handiwork. He wiped his mouth with one of his arm warmer paws. Your mouth fell agape as your lungs begged for air. More tears sparkled on your flushed cheeks, mirroring the twinkle of your pussy. Pretty as a rose in a rainshower.

With your sluggish arms, you gestured for Pietro to climb over you. And once he did, you pulled him into a lazy kiss without a single care. You paid no mind to the taste of your sweetness on his lips, or the scent of your musk on his chin. Sleepily blinking, you bravely asked if you could stay the night. Too tuckered out to even consider a long walk back home.

Pietro could just as easily speed you over to your place. But even at the risk of his not-wife catching him in bed with someone else - he felt too adverse to loneliness. Besides...your company brought him more delight than he ever expected of anyone. Settling into the futon, he popped on Ralph’s old TV set.

Cheers was on. Pietro snickered to himself, rolling his dark eyes.

“What’s wrong?” You asked, snuggled up against Pietro’s strong form. He’d changed clothes at some point in the night, finally foregoing the tights. Oh, and he lended you one of Ralph’s shirts too. A Grateful Dead t-shirt, of which you were very grateful. Hah, “You don’t like Cheers?”

Pietro shrugged, sipping a beer. A Busch beer. He scowled at the taste, curling his lip.

“Eh. More of a Frasier kinda guy.”

[rkart221]

Lyf's metamorphosis

This is an unstructured rant!! TW for lots of gore and unpleasant imagery

I think Lyf goes through a metamorphosis. While he survives the Bifrost and escapes the Yggdrasil system, he's hardly unscathed. Seeing the effects of the great old ones and directly staring into the eyes of Yog-Sothoth changes him in a way I think about often. I think he very much could've died, though due to the nature of his survival and the fact he is now rapidly travelling through the cosmos, with the knowledge of the great old ones, they keep him alive. He's insistently their unknowing vessel, subconsciously spreading their powers further and further into the galaxy. Anyway onto his metamorphosis. It starts off small. Mild headaches and aches of the body as his cells and skin struggle to compute with the sudden environment shift that happened on Midgard. Pains that only grow. I like to think being around him gives people headaches too. A sort of unexplainable crawl of the skin, an itch that doesn't go away. Taking inspiration from the Dunwich horror I like to imagine animals start to resent him, dogs growing aggressive in fear, rats and other urban animals fleeing weeks before he arrives. People start to associate him with the dread inducing call of a Whippoorwill.

After he leaves people tend to feel ill, falling sick, feeling like their insides are melting. Depending on how long they were around him it ranges from a mild headache to multiple organs shutting off as the aroma of his presence melts the body from the inside out. No matter what Lyf does he cannot stop what he causes, instead opting to keep travelling, only continuing the great old one's plan. Now on to his body. The headaches are constant, though sometimes they're weaker than other days, allowing him to think. Other days they're so bad he fears his brain will explode. Cracks start to form, his skin rotting and starting to fall off. Bald patches in his hair grow as the skin grows weaker. There's an unbearable itch beneath his skin that he's never able to get rid of no matter how hard he scratches. His bones ache, body sweats with thickening pale mucus, obviously he's sick, throwing up rather a lot. His sick is black and has the residue of oil, staining whatever surface it touches. Perhaps by occasion, eyes glance back, hidden in the inky black mucus.

Additionally taking inspiration from Wilbur Whatley, he gets the whole tendrils in the stomach thing. I like to think he binds them to still appear somewhat normal.

Whenever he gets cut or hurt by any nature it's healed. Despite his body rapidly trying to die he cannot, the old ones will not let him. The rotting is a reflection of his body unable to keep up with his mind. If he were to get a deep cut black tendrils would morph out of his skin, wrapping it air tight. Over the next few days it'll remain, slowly melting away his skin, bones, veins as it rebuilds whatever is hurt back from square one. If someone were to somehow get it away from his skin then they'd be met with a strong acid and a significant lack of skin underneath.

Anyway I wanna slowly explain all my Lyf lore because theres alot!! I think I'll just do unstructured rant posts like this, doubt anyone will care much but if anything it's useful to have all my information together :)!!!

[queer-whatchamacallit]

So I decided I was going to rewatch The Bear and take notes, partly bc autism and partly bc I want more interesting details for fics and just to get to know the characters even better

(Also, I’ve been curious about what makes Carmy blow up vs what makes him dissociate)

So here’s some things I noticed that you could also pick apart like I have here

Carmy has his apron on in the dream, maybe it’s just because that’s what he’s been wearing pretty much all the time for the past couple weeks or because his work is so tied with his family (w/ bears as symbolism for that) but idk

Him waking up on a random counter in The Beef confirms my headcanon that he falls asleep in weird places OR he fell asleep in the office and sleepwalked there

In this ep, any imagery or mention of Michael is pretty much always tied to religious imagery

Carmy calls her Sugar and him Mike, I’m always inclined to have him say Mikey instead but I don’t think he ever does. Also, Fak calls Carm Bear :]

“What’s UPS?” Is the first in a long string of times where someone tries to talk about something other than the kitchen, and it just doesn’t click with Carm

Syd’s “I know who you are” and Carmy’s “Yeah?” and he just listens to her completely riveted is so funny to me. Tell this man you know he was the CDC at one of the best restaurants in the United States of America and it’s like saying “walk” to a dog

Carm’s “I’m saying something >:[,” starts the classic Berzatto dilemma of no one listening to each other but wanting to be listened to

Reminder that Syd can speak Spanish :D

Richie talks about their “Italian heritage” and later says abt the labels “this is the most Polish shit ever,” which show how close he fits in with the Berzattos and his dislike of his bio family (Jerimovich is Polish right.?)

Richie talks about putting his family back together and him not coming home, and Carmy instantly dissociates

Him asking “Why didn’t he leave it to you then?” Not like a comeback, but a genuine question gets me every time

Carmy’s not good with words, so while this is something that just makes fun dialogue, in universe, it’s interesting to see how often his responses are parroted (ex: Marcus’ “that shit was straight up fire” and Carm’s “Straight up done now Chef”)

When it’s work time, it’s work time. When Fak stops looking at Ballbreaker to mention that he wasn’t able to go to the funeral but he sent flowers, Carm just says he wasn’t there either and swiftly changes the subject back to work

The three siblings and Richie all have gold necklaces. When Sugar shows up, I don’t know if hers was one of the matching ones, and I couldn’t figure out what the charm was on it

Tina says “Why doesn’t your sister come around here anymore?” Implying that she used to. I also feel like T wouldn’t have asked if Sugar stopped coming when she moved out and didn’t have to do what her mom told her to. Maybe Mikey kicked Sugar out of the restaurant too, but she wasn’t too bothered by it

Unlike with Richie, when Nat calls him out on not saying hello, just trying to get work done, he listens, and he slows down. Richie feels like his space in the family is shaky, so he’ll take a lot more shit from them while Nat won’t. She inherited a temper, just like her brothers, I feel like she’s in therapy and likely tackled how to stand up for herself when her family was treating her like shit, and she’s the “normal” middle child between a loud older brother and a worrying little brother, so she probably had to fight for her family’s attention at every turn

Nat mentions their mom and Carm’s eye contact instantly breaks, and it seems like he has to remind himself to breathe

His stutter shows up when arguing that he doesn’t want Jimmy to buy it

Carm’s “I’m gonna fix this place” vs Sug’s “No one’s asking you to” just hits so hard for some reason

When Carm tries to flee back inside, she uses “I love you,” like it’s an argument to keep him from throwing himself back into the restaurant or as a reminder that there’s people out there who want him to be doing well when she thinks the restaurant is hurting him

Sweeps is more of a background character but omg he just quietly looks out for everyone :] (he made sure Syd got to try Carm’s beef recipe :]]]])

Fak was also close with Mikey. I don’t know why I imagine Fak as being not quite as close with everyone as Richie, but they came to Christmas too, edit: Fak’s “but it got fuckin dark at the end” showed that he too knew something was up when Carm didn’t

Carm very much gives off the vibe of being allergic to cats, but I’m going to ignore that and squeeze in my headcanon that he loves Fak’s cats, Ralph and they love him

Richie’s dialogue is such a fun juxtaposition of him trying to feel superior to whoever he’s arguing with with large vocabulary and overconfidence but often falling back into vulgar insults because that’s what he knows best. Also, later in the ep he talks about “up in Napa” with the foie gras and shit to mock Carmy, but Napa isn’t up from them, it’s in California

Richie says “You have no fuckin idea what you’re doing here” and it’s like a switch, Carmy’s comebacks and annoyance with Richie stop, and he’s completely dissociated again. Richie shoves cans of spaghetti sauce into his arms and slaps at his face to steady him because he can probably tell something’s not right with him, but he just ends up leaving him to it

One of the Berzattos main love languages is physical touch via back and shoulder pats

And finally, Carm tosses the can of spaghetti sauce which I’m saying is because he just needs them to fucking listen and trust him when he’s saying no more spaghetti but there’s probably also some kind of Michael significance there too

Edit: I think I just had the realization that family stuff is what makes him dissociate while work stuff tends to make him panic and snap at people. It makes sense, snapping at his family would only escalate things and dissociating separates him from something he’s expected to fix. And Claire is kinda off in her category but falls under the panic response

So yeah!!

That’s pretty much what I got from 1x01 - System

I don’t know when or if I’ll do more of these, but this was so much fun, literally love dissecting these sad little goobers

[34saveme34]

ok so on one hand, I fucking love Puzzles, he's like a chew toy for me and I'm like a very excited dog

but also the idea that he would come back so soon seems..... weird....

something doesn't add up here

I can't be the only one, right?

they just

JUST

defeated him

it hasn't even been that long at all

we got like 1 normal episode

like like like

I can't be the only one feeling like there's something weird going on, right? it just doesn't make sense from a narrative standpoint!

especially cuz I would've guessed he wouldn't come back at least till like July or August

by come back I mean start stuff again

and not a movie immediately

that does make me wonder n I don't think I've seen others talk about it

what do yall expect from Puzzles coming back?

personally I would like to see him make more things happen and be. a bit more mindful this time, learn more about his backstory, the symbolism behind his puzzle imagery, how even Puzzle Vision became a thing

how did his head go TV in its place even go, like cmon, they're not afraid of blood

I don't know if I'd want redemption

although, because I have the marware brain eating fungus, the idea of like a long going epilogue going on with Mario trying to hide Puzzles and like let him become a better person by his side while also having to hide him considering how his friends feel about him

in general I hope Mario gets more of a role. HE was the only one having a different reaction to Puzzles, in a way, he was absolutely essential to beating Puzzles, even if he wasn't there for the getting over 5 stars rating thing

and EVEN the ending, it's so....... it feels like he should have way more to do with it next time

should because writing doesn't follow my logic all that much

for example I would've made 34 canon in wotfi 23, I'll say it

besides that I can hope for one thing that will probably happen, more maniac Puzzles! probably my favourite part of the movie ngl

[creatingnikki]

twenty-six things I’m grateful for at twenty-six 

growing up. the feelings of helplessness and frustration slowly washing away as you gain access to money and information. 

strawberry cream cakes, strawberry cheesecakes, strawberry chocolate brownie cakes, strawberries. 

a good night’s sleep. sleep that is 7+ hours, sleep that is not disturbed or day time sleep. but sleep at the “normal” night hours, sleep that is deep and restful. 

book readers who annotate their books and write the year/place of when they were reading it on the first page because when I come across second-hand books like that my heart.

fleeting intimacies. those brief, beautiful conversations and moments you share with strangers that you will never meet again. at a café, at the airport, at the open mic night. connections that are purely happenstance and a time being in your life. the beginning is the ending. but it doesn’t matter. they add something, if not to your life, but to your energy. even if you can’t trace it. 

the concept of crying. the release, the relief. if I didn’t have this, if I didn’t have this way of letting out my disappointment, overwhelmingness, tiredness, frustration, sadness, and pain, what would I do? what would I even do. 

dog/cat/pet owners who understand that just because they love their pet not everyone has to and some people are genuinely afraid and not horrible human beings for not going awww but uhhh when they see their pet.

translators, more specifically book translators. thank you so much for all your effort into making sure I can enjoy such beautiful literature from other cultures and languages. 

people who realize they were wrong about a certain perspective or life philosophy or stance and then course correct and acknowledge the same.

credit cards and essentially having quick access to credit in times of absolute need (fine line between hating cc and capitalism and using it to your advantage, I know). 

people who introduce me to new imagery which sounds so simple but hits my brain like the freshest of oxygen like my father saying my mother’s face began to glow like the moon when she smiled or a tumblr writer saying something makes their heart beam. 

earrings. long earrings that dangle against my neck and make me feel grown up, sometimes graceful, sometimes sensual. other types of earrings too. jhumkas. hoops. 

sunflowers. filler flowers. flower shops that keep newspaper to wrap flowers in. people who show up to my apartment with flowers. 

emails. I like that emails can be that perfect distance in communication but also so very efficient. they don’t demand instant replies like instant messaging. functional and timely. emails at work that exist in place of long meetings and emails from friends and lovers. my inbox feels like a mix of a treasure chest of precious words and an arcade of advertisements. 

older women who look at me not as competition but with this sentiment of wanting to protect/guide me, with this feeling of fondness, words of advice that aren’t patronizing but so very well meaning. 

good-quality, well-researched, engaging articles/blogs. blogs full of facts and figures that put things into perspective. blogs written in a witty and humorous tone that feel like you’re having a conversation with someone smart and warm. 

my family. my friends. for loving me even when I am difficult. even when I am bratty. for understanding the subtext of my words and actions. for accepting me even when I don’t accept myself. for reminding me of who I am when I can no longer understand the concept of self. thank you. 

clothing brands that have sizes bigger than large. clothing brands that have beautiful clothes and designs for sizes other than xxxxxxs. 

people who know how to make important days about you like your birthday and your first day at work and your heartbreak date idk. just people who aren’t so dense and don’t know what their energy/focus needs to be at what time when with others. 

glitter. glittery eyeshadow. glittery phone covers. glittery everything. all that glitters may not be gold but it does something to my brain and I love it. 

people who can help me let loose. goofy and silly and light doesn’t come naturally to me. my disposition is pensive, internally. even though externally I may seem so exuberant.  

context. the context behind a painting at an art gallery. context behind a meme. nothing is anything without context. so people who give you context, content that gives you context. 

selfies. give me a sense of control over capturing myself and my moments because with someone else behind the camera I am as awkward as awkward can get. 

the moon. stars. the sky. faraway things that are more complicated than just pretty things that make me calm. that make my mind calm. that make my heart feel less lonely. 

space. physical space, emotional availability, mental headspace. in me and in others. required but rare. 

all my past selves, all my younger selves for being. thank you for your wholesomeness, thank you for your resilience, thank you for your pureness, thank you for your decisions, thank you for your hope, thank you for your hard work, thank you for your crazy, your messy, your real, your beautiful. thank you for it all.

today is my twenty-sixth birthday and I wanted to take a bit to list down everything that makes my life lighter. there’s much more but now it’s time to go eat cake and click blurry, happy selfies. 

[brayneworms]

fearful, wonderful | scaramouche

general tags. kabukimono!scaramouche, trans!scaramouche, yokai!reader, gender-neutral reader, slowburn, yokai lore/imagery, very slowburn, food consumption/eating, tatarasuna.

content warnings. gender dysphoria, allusions to war and death.

word count. 4.9k

notes. this is an 18+ blog. minors and ageless accounts do not interact, you will be blocked.

synopsis. agreeing to house the puppet has taken its toll. you take him to niwa, and he comes to several realisations about himself.

masterlist | prev | next | ao3

II. MOUTH OPEN, SILENT AND BLUE.

There are spirits in your eyes, and a ghost in your home. 

‘Ghost’ is the most apt thing you can conjure to describe the puppet that has taken up residence there. He wanders from one room to the next with childlike curiosity, seeming to take interest in the most mundane of things. An object that remains of seemingly perpetual fascination to him, much to your dismay, is your collection of seto teaware. 

Most times, when the house goes quiet for too long, you’ll wander out into the parlour and find him sitting cross-legged in front of your dresser. He doesn’t touch—not since that first night, when you snapped at him and snatched the cup from his hand. He just looks, those glimmering ice-blue eyes tracing every pattern and crack. You think it’s the gold paint sealing it all together that fascinates him. Possibly he’s unused to the concept of someone wanting to repair something broken. 

Possibly he’s unused to the concept someone could love something enough for that. 

After that first night, you’d woken up with the dawn, sat up—only to find the puppet already awake. He was sitting straight up, sort of just… staring at you. It had unsettled you so badly that you’d flinched backwards, slamming your head into the wall. 

“What are you doing?” you spluttered, rubbing at the inflamed crown of your head. You were sure a bruise was flowering as you spoke; by breakfast, the skin beneath your hand would probably feel like a rotten vegetable. 

The puppet blinked. “I was waiting for you to move.”

“I was asleep.”

He seemed to consider this. “I don’t think I need to do that, then. Is it normal to be asleep for so long?”

You glared at him, despite the needling knowledge at the back of your head that it wasn’t really his fault. Considering how tired you are, you doubted you’d slept for more than five hours. “It’s usually longer,” you snapped, and then your grouchiness began to ebb, and you sighed. “So you don’t sleep. You don’t seem to breathe, or feel cold. Do you need to eat?”

The puppet shook his head. “I watched other things eat in the Pavilion. I supposed they must have been doing it… for some reason, but I knew I’d never experienced it.”

“Most things need to eat to live.”

The puppet’s expression had become shuttered, then. “What does that make me?”

You didn’t reply. You got up and made breakfast instead. Eggs into a pan and rolled with vegetables and slivers of cured meat. It spat and sizzled over the fire. The puppet crept out of your bedroom to watch like a sulking child, like a dog whose tail you’d just stepped on by accident. He watches you eat like he’d watched you sleep—like you were a curiosity, something fascinating. 

The rain had stopped in the night, the last rolls of water making their way slowly out of the valleys. When you crack the window open the stifling petrichor slides over your nose, warm and thick and damp. The earth studded with lavenders beside your house is looking very dark and swollen, but it’s not totally aflood as you’d feared. You have a tendency for underestimating things more resilient than yourself.

The puppet stares at your food as you eat. You hold out a mouthful on two chopsticks. “Do you want to try?”

He bites the inside of his cheek. “O-okay.” His lips close over the morsel. You watch his jaw move unnaturally, too stiffly for standard chewing. It’s like he has to remind himself how his teeth work. His pale throat flexes when he swallows. 

“It tastes good,” he says, surprised. 

“Well. Thank you.” You stir your food around your plate, embarrassed. “I make it every morning.”

“Some hilichurls had a campfire once in the Pavilion,” the puppet says thoughtfully. “They were roasting some fruit. After I defeated them I tried a little of it, but I hated the taste. My body rejected it. I thought that meant I couldn’t eat human food.”

“What sort of fruit was it?”

“Um… small. Purple.”

“Sounds like a lavender melon. Like on the tree outside. I don’t like them either, they’re very sweet. It might be you just don’t like sweet things.”

“You don’t like sweet things either?” The puppet presses closer to you, a new eagerness gleaming to life in his eyes. You fight the urge to edge backwards. “That makes us similar, doesn’t it?”

You glower at your plate. “Only superficially. Not in any way that matters.” And you’re too cruel, maybe, to feel guilty as you watch the hope falter from the puppet’s face, as you watch his shoulders droop and he shrinks back under his curtain of hair. Still, your appetite abruptly vanishes. You push your plate towards him and stand up. “Finish that off, if you want it, then get dressed. I left some clothes out for you on your bed.”

The puppet glances from the plate to you, his rosebud mouth a little ‘O’ of surprise. “Why do I need to get dressed?”

“We’re going to see Niwa. He’s a friend of Katsuragi’s,” you say crisply. “He’ll be able to teach you to read and write.”

“Niwa.” He repeats the name slowly, with an expression of concentration. “Niwa. Katsuragi. Your name is Y/n.”

You nod, feeling stuck all of a sudden. The puppet’s lips work themselves into a frown. 

“Why can’t I have a name?”

Your mouth works soundlessly for a few moments before you press your lips together hard and appraise him. He looks up at you with that frustrating, wide-eyed earnest, the same look that communicates that there is no way he is trying to push your buttons on purpose. 

“It’s not that you can’t. Most people are given them when they’re born.” Your eyes linger on the sleeves of his jinbei, the swathes of bone-white cotton that hide the strange markings on his joints, the ones you hadn’t wanted to look too closely at. The mark of something inhuman, like a branding. Puppets were made, not born—and you supposed their facilities for being named depended much more on the sort of person who had created them. You think of that slim golden feather, tucked into his belt. You’d stashed it away in one of your cupboards, but you knew what it was. The mark of nobility—and here in Inazuma, that could only mean one person. The Shogun. He looked like a younger, shorter, more androgynous version of her, from the flawless pale skin to the big moonstone eyes and curtain of purple-black hair. 

You change tactics as his expression starts to tremble. Do puppets cry?, you wonder, then abruptly realise you don’t want to find out. “You can always give yourself a name.”

He cocks his head. “What sort of name?”

“Anything you like.”

A shy dart of his eyes. “I like your name.”

Your skin prickles. “Well, you can’t have that one. Pick something else. Or… just stick around this village for long enough. People will undoubtedly give you one, whether you ask for it or not.”

“Everyone has a name,” the puppet says sulkily. You’re beginning to pick up on that—that childish, bitter streak that seems to be slashed right through him. “Every human. My mother didn’t even give me one before casting me out. I didn’t realise things had names, not really, until a group of adventurers wandered into the Pavilion one day. I heard them talking, laughing with each other.”

“Your mother…” You were echoing his sentiment before you could even help it. Wasn’t it strange, to think of your creator as your parent? But then, how would you know? You supposed he was entitled to think of her in any way he chose. The gold feather burned guiltily from behind the wood of your cupboard. 

You’re jerked sharply back to reality when you realise the puppet has sidled closer. He has an intense sort of look on his face. “Can’t you give me a name?”

I’m not the one to raise him, Katsuragi. 

You wouldn’t be a parent. You’d be a friend.

“No.” You lean away. “It’s not my responsibility. Get dressed, okay?”

The puppet slinks off to the bedroom, dejected. There is a pang of pain in your stomach that you quickly ignore, like the hard swallowing of bitter medicine. 

Your whole life you have been swallowing bitter medicine. You’re hoping it will take effect, someday soon. 

-

Niwa always smells of the furnace.

Hot metal and oil and smoke. It clings to him even after a bath, like if you sliced him open at the skin, showers of sparks and the smell of burning steel would leak out of him. It’s not a smell you find particularly pleasant—you find that it reminds you of the smell of your armour, minus the blood that tended to cloak it—but that’s not to say you find Niwa unpleasant. 

Quite the opposite, actually. 

Niwa is soft-spoken and affable, coasting through the village like a warm spring breeze. You find him and his small family tolerable—they’re a quiet but kind presence, keeping mostly to themselves until someone shows up to bother them for assistance. It’s comprised of Niwa’s older sister, Honoka, her two children, and Niwa’s grandfather, a frail and elderly man who rarely steps outside their house to see the sunlight. You think briefly that they will be good company for the puppet, then wonder why you care. 

He trails behind you on the walk, kicking up wet earth from the wobbly paths; his eyes rove helplessly over the whole village with awe, taking in every shack and cabin, the modest redwood temple and shrines, the trees spilling sakura petals over the sidewalks. He pauses at a field of golden corn, running his fingers down the thick stalks, the slumping ears of the vegetables nestled in their leafy cocoons. In winter the cut stalks freeze over near the path—they can be just as deadly as a blade if you fall into them. Most parents don’t let their children take this path for that very reason—the lake is structurally unsound and prone to flooding, and this path often soaks itself. On winter nights it ices over; one slip and those cut stalks will scrape up your skin to ribbons.

You don’t relay any of this to the puppet. For one, it’s not winter. For another, he has no skin. 

 Niwa’s family lives someway up the hill. Their house is modest, as the ones in Tatarasuna go, but it has to be for five people living there—a traditional noka house with enough rooms for all of them. The only thing distinguishing it from the others nestling in the crook of the mountain below is the miniature blacksmith forge attached to the left side. Scraps of jewel steel pile up against the anvil, ready to be softened and reformed into blades. Bags of soft-pine charcoal and ironsand slump against the clay tatara, ready for that long process of turning iron to metal; the coal fire sputters on endlessly, spurting out plumes of thin black smoke. The puppet watches, fascinated. 

“What is that?” he breathes, tucking himself closer to you. 

“It’s a forge. Niwa is a bladesmith.” You catch his look of confusion. “He makes steel into swords and weaponry.”

A soft gasp rings out over the hillside. “Tsukumo! Tsukumogami!”

Your head snaps up; two children gape down at you, wide-eyed and flush-cheeked. Honoka’s kids, a boy and a girl, both with flat shiny black hair adorned with those characteristic scarlet streaks. The boy, the taller of the two, races down the path to you. 

“When you didn’t come for ages Rie thought I made you up!” he gabbed, panting hard from exertion. “But you’re real! See?” He yells the last part up spitefully to his sister—Rie—who looks away and picks at her shirt moodily. The blossom blush on her cheeks darkens steadily. 

Honoka hurries around the side of the house, lugging a basket of white linens. It’s half-full; she must have been in the middle of hanging out her laundry when she heard the exclamations. Honoka is older than Niwa, pushing thirty you think, with the exact same messy auburn hair as her brother. She peers down at you, surprised. 

“Y/n,” she says tremulously, using your real name rather than the moniker her son addressed you with. “Shinsuke, come back up here, now!” 

The little boy sighs, full of the sort of petulance only young human children can carry, and makes his way back up the hill. Sweat shines on the back of his neck as he goes. You begin to follow him up, gesturing for the puppet to keep up with you. It’s only as you get to the top, where the real path to the Hisehide house begins that you realise he’s taken hold of the fabric of your shirt. It’s so baggy you barely notice, but it still makes you stiffen. 

Honoka regards you with a cautious mistrust that you cannot begrudge her for. Her son, Shinsuke, said it best—you are tsukumogami. More fool her to trust you completely. 

“Are you here to see Niwa?” she asks, swapping arms for her laundry basket. “Katsuragi said we should—” She cuts herself off, scratching at her arm. “He said we should expect a visitor. Is everything alright?”

Her greyish eyes slide unsubtly to the puppet behind you. You can feel him shrink in on himself, hunching up into his newly-washed karaginu. 

“I need to talk to Niwa,” you answer carefully. “It’s, um… sort of hard to explain.”

Honoka nods. She is cautious, but not prejudiced. Fair, in a way you’ve learned a lot of humans are not. “I’ll go get him for you. He’s just in the garden.” She taps her children on the shoulder once. “Shinsuke, Rie, go play around the back.”

Rie and Shinsuke spare you one lingering curious look before shuffling off to their back garden. Honoka trails after them, and you feel the lack of invitation into their home like a sting. Again—this is not something you begrudge the Hisehides for. 

Maybe they can smell the blood on you. Maybe they can sense the inhumanity, both of you and your companion. 

“Why did they call you that?” the puppet wonders as if on cue. He’s still holding your shirt. “I thought your name was Y/n.”

“It is.” You take shallow breaths, wishing your lungs were bigger. “Tsukumogami… is what I am.”

The puppet’s eyes are huge and pale. “Y-you mean… you’re not human either?”

“No.” Your brow furrows, just slightly. “I’m yōkai. I thought Katsuragi would have told you.”

The puppet’s eyes are huge and luminous. He opens his mouth to answer, but—

“Y/n, as I live and breathe. What can I do for you?”

Niwa’s voice rings out cheerily. He strolls around the house, pulling off thick gardening gloves; soil streaks his billowing trousers. His tawny hair is pulled back into a ponytail, curling around his boyish face. 

“Niwa,” you greet with about as much respect that any human can pull from you. “I’ve come at a bad time, I see.”

“Not at all,” Niwa says mildly. “Just tending to the trees. I like to help out when Honoka’s busy—it makes her think twice when she next threatens to kick me out.”

His voice prods for a laugh that neither you nor the puppet provides. He remains undeterred. 

“Who’s your friend?”

“This is…” You fight back a wince as your conversation about his name returns to you. You can practically feel his reproachful eyes boring into your back. “Katsuragi found him wandering the beach last night. I’ve taken him in.”

“Is that so?” Niwa’s eyes gleam with interest. He cocks his head at the puppet. “Hi there. I’m Niwa Hisehide.”

“Hello,” the puppet returns quietly. “I don’t have a name.”

That embittered streak is back and stinging. You resist the urge to roll your eyes. Niwa’s gingery lashes flicker in surprise. 

“Really, now?” he says, still neutrally. “Well, don’t sweat it. You can give yourself any name you like. In the meantime, was there something I can do for you?”

“He needs to learn to read and write,” you say; your tone is still businesslike but you allow an edge of beseeching to soften the edges. You’re aware you’re asking for a large favour, even if it had been Katsuragi’s idea. “Katsuragi mentioned that you tutored his niece. He thought…”

“I see.” His hazel eyes linger on you for a minute, asking the question his mouth wouldn’t dare to—why can’t you do it, again? “Well… as it happens, I am teaching Honoka’s youngest at the moment. Her name is Rie.”

You incline your head. “I just met her.”

“You’d be very welcome to join,” Niwa says, speaking directly to the puppet. His body stiffens at the attention. It occurs to you that you and Katsuragi did a lot of talking around him rather than to his face. Niwa puts your meagre efforts to shame simply by existing and being decent. 

You really shouldn’t be taking care of this puppet. 

“Thank you,” is all you say. “I appreciate it.”

Niwa gives you a crooked smile. “Really, it’s nothing. Could I ask you for a little something in return?”

“…Sure.”

“Come by the house every once in a while. My nephew adores you. Honoka likes you too, you know.”

“She doesn’t trust me.”

“Not the same thing. Just… come by and get your friend after his lessons are done, that’s all.”

… It is fair. Niwa is fair, too, just like his sister. It must run in the Hisehide blood, same as those red streaks of hair. “Fine.”

“Thank you,” Niwa says like you’re doing him some big favour. The part that makes you feel cold and sick is that maybe you really are. “You’re always welcome here, you know.”

On the walk back—quiet, as the watery sun makes a slow arc overhead—the puppet speaks again. “Niwa had short hair.”

Your eyes snap automatically to his dark waterfall of hair. “Well. Yes.”

“So did Katsuragi. And that little boy.”

“Shinsuke.”

“Shinsuke, right. Do all men have short hair?”

“No, not all of them.” This is the most neutral conversation you’ve had with the puppet so far. “In fact, many warriors keep their hair long. In some cultures, they add a braid to their hair for every battle won, and when they are defeated they cut it all off in shame.”

The puppet fiddles idly with a lock of hair that swings by his soft cheekbone. “I was created with this hair. As long as it is now. It never grew.”

“You were created in the image of your mother,” you say, though you’re only guessing this to be the case. “It’s not surprising you inherited some of her features.”

“My mother—the Shogun,” he says, voice growing quieter with each word. “She’s a woman.”

“Yes, she is.”

“If I am created in her image… am I a woman?”

Your lashes flutter in surprise, and you pause. You’re outside the cornfield, the one he stopped to admire earlier with such intensity, but now he doesn’t even glance at the crops. He looks straight at you with a burning need for his question to be answered. 

Except you’re not totally sure how to answer it. You lick your lips. “Do you… feel as though you’re a woman?”

The puppet considers this. Finally he says, “I feel as though… I was intended to be one. But not… that I am.”

You consider this. “All humans are crafted in their parents’ image. That doesn’t mean they are a replica of them. I think the same can be assumed for you.” And your voice dips lower, gentler. “You should be whatever you feel. It doesn’t matter how you were made. All that matters is what’s inside.”

“You mean my heart?” the puppet scoffs. “I have been informed I don’t have one.”

“That doesn’t mean you can’t feel,” you say. Your eyes trace over him—his clothes are that of a noblewoman, from the delicate veil to the karaginu, cut to accommodate a high chest and flaring hips. His face, sharp as carved marble, with his round lips and big sparkly eyes and long curling lashes. The fountain-arch of hair spilling from his scalp, running straight down his back to his waist. Intended to be one, indeed. But it doesn’t mean he is. 

The puppet looks more confused than ever—there’s something small and helpless in his expression, something that makes you take pity.

“You don’t have to decide today,” you chide. “Think about it. Alright?”

The puppet nods, slowly. “Alright.” There’s a pause as you keep walking, and then the puppet says, quieter, “Thank you.”

Your jaw clenches briefly. “In the winter,” you find yourself saying, “be careful on this path. It ices over, and the cut corn stalks are dangerous. Okay?”

The puppet blinks. “Okay.”

“Good.” A sharp nod. “Let’s get back.”

-

The puppet comes to you a few days later. He’s had one session of tutoring with Niwa. 

“It went well,” the swordsmith had confided in you when you went to retrieve the puppet in the afternoon. “He has a very natural grasp of it. It’s… not like teaching a child to learn from scratch. It’s as though the mechanisms of how it all works are already present in his head, it just has to be explained to him. Like someone who once knew how to read but forgot.”

“Another thing he inherited from his creator, no doubt,” you say. Your eyes linger on the Hisehide’s front door whilst you speak. There’s a wreath nailed into the wood there, a cluster of red camellias. They make your whole body prickle with electricity the longer you keep them in your line of sight. 

In any case—two days after this, the puppet approaches you. You’re sitting outside, staring over the lavender field, thinking about your dead friends. You’d think after thousands of years you’d begin to forget it, but if that is the case you’re still waiting for it to happen. As it is, they’re all you think of. All you dream of. 

“Y/n?” you hear, timidly. The puppet looks at you with caution as he lingers at the door threshold. 

“What is it?”

“I’d… I’ve been thinking about what you said,” he says. “And… I’d like to cut my hair.”

You blink in surprise. “Oh. Well, alright.”

Shocking you further is when the puppet flushes. You hadn’t known he could do that—and he fidgets with his clothes in an awkward tic. “Could… would you… help me? Please?”

You think it’s the please that catches you, like the nick of an arrow, like a fishhook behind your heart. You stand up, feeling your pulse move slow and sickly through your body. “Take this chair,” you dredge up. “I’ll be right back.”

The way the puppet’s face lights up makes you feel sicker than ever. I’m no jellyfish, you think nonsensically. I have a brain, all right. Why can’t I use it?

Maybe because you also had another thing jellyfish didn’t. A heart. 

For all the fucking good it does you. 

The puppet scrambles past you to sit, tucking his knees up under his chin, as you brush past him into the house. You head for the spare room, open up one of the closets. Your shorter knives and blades are slung up in soft leather holsters, dull and lusterless from not being tended to as they used to. You select one, a tanto knife on the thinner, longer side, spanning just about the length of your forearm. 

You haven’t held a real knife since… 

Just to experiment, you give it a twirl. Muscle memory kicks in at the speed of light, and it flies through your fingers as though caught on a breeze. You stop it short, disgusted with yourself. 

The puppet is craning his neck to look for you when you wander back outside. “I thought you may have changed your mind,” he says softly. 

You hold up the blade. “Just had to sharpen the steel. I couldn’t find my whetstone. Are you sure about this?”

The puppet nods sagely. “I’m sure.”

“You said your hair doesn’t grow. If you cut it now, you’ll never be able to get it long again. Do you understand that?”

An expression of petulance steals over his face. “I told you I thought about it, didn’t I? I thought about all of this.” He looks down at his lap. “It’s what I want. Please.”

You weaken again, helplessly, foolishly, like butter left out in the sun. “Alright. Alright.”

You stand behind the chair and draw his hair back over the wooden back. You comb your fingers through it to search for tangles, and the puppet shudders. Your hands fly back as though burned. 

Cool sweat lacquers your palms no matter how many times you wipe them against your shirt. Holding your knife is starting to make you feel feverish, and you almost let out a screamy laugh to the sky. This puppet trusts you with a blade near his neck. Doesn’t he realise…?

No, you suppose dully. He doesn’t.

You gather his hair into a band. It’s so soft, pin-straight and silky, running through your fingers like warm water. You can’t help but ask again. “You’re certain?”

“I am. I’m certain.” The puppet mirrors your language. You’ve noticed that, too. His appetite for learning seems to yawn, gape, and it frightens you a little. There is nothing good to be learned from you. 

“How… how short?”

“Like Niwa’s. Or Shinsuke’s. Around here.” He gestures vaguely to his jaw and chin. 

“Alright. Alright. Ready?”

His chin juts up defiantly. “Ready.”

Your hand tightens over the clump of air. The other, the one with the knife, worms its way beneath. It brushes over the nape of his neck, and the puppet shudders again. Your knife, so close to such a vital part of the body. If you cut him, would he bleed? Would he die?

Your blade slices upwards, towards your own head, cutting through the makeshift ponytail like butter. 

A good twenty inches of hair droops to the ground like a fluttering of raven feathers, making a melancholy wreath at your feet. The puppet gasps, hands flying to the newly naked back of his neck, his shoulders, feeling the blunt edges of his new hair. He flings his head around to look at you, and for a moment you can’t decipher his expression. His eyes are wide as coins, lips parted, neat brows knitted up. 

A sudden sick, cold terror seizes you. Is that sorrow? Regret? I’ve ruined it, you think blindly. I’ve ruined him—

“Thank you.”

It’s whispered fervently, with the sort of reverence one might reserve for worshipping a deity. The puppet looks up at you like you’d hung the stars in the sky. “It’s so much better. I—I love it. Thank you.”

Your expression cracks. The fear falls away as quickly as it came. “You—it’s nothing. I mean,” you catch yourself. It’s not nothing. “You’re… welcome.”

And tears glimmer in his eyes, making them brighter and more luminous than ever. For a moment it’s like looking into the moon. And then his smile slips. “You… you’re bleeding!”

You look down at your hands, surprised; the pain only springs up now that the puppet had called attention to it, but he’s right. The tips of two of your fingers, the ones holding the hair whilst the other cut, are stinging horribly. The uppermost part of your nails are hacked clean away, the skin at the precipice of the digit cut up. 

The puppet takes your hand in both of his, cupping it like it’s a dying animal, a bird with a broken wing. Something gets stuck in your throat; the urge to yank away hits you like a ton of bricks, but in the wake of his cool skin against yours you feel rooted to the spot. 

He strokes the pad of his thumb over what remains of the nail on your index fingers. It pools on his own skin, and he looks at it with the same fascination he would a new species of flower or a fruit he had never tried before. Considers it, almost. 

“Are you alright?” he asks almost frantically. “You’re hurt! I—did I hurt you? I’m sorry!”

Finally, your throat unsticks. All of you does, and you take your hand back, folding your fingers into fists. “No. What? No, you didn’t do anything. I wasn’t paying attention.” The look of panic on his face unsettles you. “I’m fine.”

He springs up. “I’ll go get a bandage,” he blurts out, and turns on his heel towards the house. You turn to watch him go, and you feel your heart jump at what you see. The back of his neck, before cloaked with that thick fall of hair, stares straight back at you, startlingly pale and stamped. The Electro mark. You’d recognise it anywhere. That jagged three-legged spiral, another tattoo of his creator. A brand, or a goodbye kiss?

Your answer depends on what you are—yōkai or jellyfish. Brain or no brain. 

As much as it embitters you, you’re leaning towards yourself. This puppet was made with love. The golden feather is enough proof of that. She wanted him to have a good life. But then why is he here with you, and not with her? 

You rub at your eyes, suddenly exhausted. 

You really should give the puppet a name. 

[frosty-the-killer-doll]

I’ve been thinking about tommy and Oliver’s friendship a LOT lately (probably because I just posted an edit to Instagram about Tommy’s death and started writing a half baked thought in my drafts.) and I was wondering if you had any headcanons about their friendship?

sorry this took a while, i was in horror mode! ik i have proudly cultivated arrowverse freaks but if anyone wants to send me horror asks too,,,,,,, yknow 👀 

OKAY PLATONIC TOLIVER TIME !!

i think i've said in the past that i didn't really fuck w toliver but i meant it as an exclusively romantic ship, they r so important as a brotp

oliver vowed to never kill again after tommy died, that's canon. but we know he had to break that rule. so, the first time oliver took another life after he couldn't save tommy's? he practically drowned himself in what used to be tommy's favorite wine.

ik tommy told oliver that he was better off not knowing what twilight is. but they totally watched the movies sometime after that.

i think it would be sweet if they measured each other's heights as they grew up in ink on the wall, but did everything they could to hide that part of the wall from moira and robert so it wouldn't be cleaned off, so they just have these sloppy little notes in sharpie hidden behind a painting in the queen house. their boyhood friendship is forever ingrained within oliver's house and no one will ever know. it's a secret they took to the grave  

i just love how casually affectionate they are. we know oliver has issues with touch, but he always hugs tommy. they just grew up so close that i don't think touching tommy would even really register as something oliver could be averse to. it just feels like the most normal, natural thing, he's already so conditioned to it

listen okay listen. i don't ship them romo style but i do not see oliver as straight and i do know that if ollie was struggling with his sexuality and getting bicurious with it as a young adult pre-gambit, tommy is the only guy he would trust enough to do anything with 

we KNOWW that tommy wanted a pup as a wee boy and i think oliver would've been one second away from buying it for him at all times but the queens wouldn't allow it bc of how often tommy was over, the dog would've just became their responsibility instead of that of the merlyns

oliver has had to watch a tommy die three different times. earth-1, earth-x and earth-2. not even counting hallucination tommy. do you think about that? i think about that. 

AND THEN- AND THEN OLLIE GETS W A PROUD JEWISH GIRL. AND THE NUMBER 3 IS DOING SOME SHIT IN JUDAISM; 

"3 - the unity between two extremes" i cant even like communicate what the fuck that means to me but LISTEN OKAY LISTEN. jewish people are instructed to ask for forgiveness thrice; even if they're not forgiven, the one in the wrongdoing is believed to be atoned. DO YOU GET IT. MAYBE ISAIAH 6:1-6:3 WILL HELP

"In the year that king Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up, and His train filled the temple. Above Him stood the seraphim; each one had six wings: with twain he covered his face and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. And one called unto another, and said: Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory." the angels said holy three times and the word twain is a term for two, like a duo, and tommy's rotting into the ground six feet under and oliver watched his oldest friend die three separate times. DO YOU UNDERSTAND MY VISIONS.

tommy and oliver might be christmas enjoyers but that doesn't mean i can't get them w jewish imagery and symbolism okay, felicity's jewish and a talker so i think it's plausible she would've laid this all out for ollie too

during oliver's lost years, do you think tommy ever looked out at the beaches of their home port city and couldn't help but wonder if his best friend was truly down there. do you think he smelled sea salt and thought of running through the queen halls with oliver behind him. that he saw oliver's blue eyes in sea shells along the sand, that he saw the sand itself and thought of oliver's hair. do you think he ever reached into the coldness of the water and it felt almost like home bc those waters and that coldness was supposed to be oliver's home now. sniffles

THAT'S ALL I HAVE TO SAY FOR NOW I HOPE THIS IS DECENTLY COHERENT ❤️❤️❤️

[grimescum]

im in the mood to yap so i chose to yap about hellsing ships. i dont partake in shipping usually but i still find them interesting to think abt

all of this is my opinion!!! i dont hate u at all if u ship anything i happen to not like or agree with. if you dont want 2 see someone being judgemental about something u enjoy (understandably so) feel free 2 scroll past

also no being annoying. questions and comments r fine but anything else jsut shut up

ALUCARD X INTEGRA 10/10

goated. there will never be anything better than girlboss x malewife im sorry

though i'll say i dislike the interpretation of integra where they tone down how badass and stoic she is just to make her. like. a little bit tsundere. u cant make the gnc couple gc like that fucka you

ALUCARD X SERAS 5/10

SERAS X PIP 10/10

silly guy x silly girl will never not solo, especially when fucked up angst and cannibalism imagery is involved. heavily tied with alutegra for me

SERAS X INTEGRA 10/10

CUTE!!!! i dont see any fanart of this ship that i dont like. lesbians know what theyre doing and they do it well

don't take my lack of input as me disliking it or anything i just ship to project

ANDERSON X INTEGRA 8/10

cutie...... i see anderson as a big softie even if he's fucking crazy and scary and i greatly enjoy softie guy x serious gal. i dont see much angst potential though unless u bring alucard into the mix and make him jealpus as fuck

i also think the idea of alucard's master cucking him with his own arch enemy is hilarious so it gets a bonus point for that

ANDERSON X ALUCARD 7/10

love the rivalry, love the enemies to lovers, hate how often alucard is twinkified as if he isnt built like a pot of spaghetti. my biggest pet peeve is when people prettify characters and i happen to see this a lot w the content of it i stumble across

if someone makes alucard just as fucking wank looking as he is in canon i will gladly bring this up to a 9 or 10/10. stop being pussies u guys

WALTER X SERAS 6/10

read a very cute fluffy fanfic on this once!! i'm a little mixed about age gaps but as long as the younger one is a consenting adult i see no reason to freak out

good potential for angst with the age gap considered, though i dont think walter would date someone *that* much younger than him for the same reason. i think they'd be very sweet regardless of if they're friends or not

i have father issues so this ship will be getting an extra point

okay, this one i admit can be cute? i quite enjoy the silly normal girl x scary traumatized guy dynamic, but i personally dont like how sexualized a lot of the fanart is, or how they tend to baby-ify seras as if she didnt cannibalize a man. not much flavor here in my opinion. ive never been a fan of heavily heteronormative ships

ENRICO X INTEGRA 4/10

WALTER X INTEGRA 5/10

love the girlboss x devoted malewife dynamic, dislike how the little content i've seen of it comes across as creepy imo. i can def see there being jealousy with how alucard is essentially integra's dog and gets all the attention while walter is just the butler... i dunno

more old men need to get bossed on girlstyle but alucard x integra still does this better i think

WALTER X ALUCARD 5/10

the jealousy to lovers pipeline never made sense to me as a jealous bitch myself but i suppose i can kinda see it since jealousy is not far from admiration... very interesting in the angst department, but i cant imagine how any romantic interactions with them would be like aside from light playful banter

as long as its not baby walter then i'm fine with it (girlycard x 14 y/o walter is 0/10 booo booo tomato tomato)

ive only seen this ship once, i can only assume its appeal comes from hot lady integra beating the shit out of enrico's annoying ass

snarky x serious is a very good trope but unfortunately i think alucard x integra does this better, AND with a romantic aspect that i can see. enrico also annoys me

JAN X LUKE 0/10

DOC X THE MAJOR ?/10

i love the silly dynamic but because i dont feel much for either of the characters i really cant say

WALTER X RIP ?/10

CUTE!!! LOVE LOVE LOVE the crazy girl x normal(?) guy trope, i tried 2 do that with my oc claudine actually!!

i dont dislike anything abt this ship i just wish there was more canon substance

ALUCARD X THE QUEEN OF ENGLAND 5 billion/10

i think its funny and also i enjoy their canon interactions... the 5 billion is mostly satire i'd put this along with the other ?/10 ships

ALUCARD X MINA ?/10

whatever . i see people be very annoying about this ship and i'm aware not everybody is but it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.. same thing with andercard but the fanbase for it is a lot bigger so i'm more forgiving

i saw this once and i want to be thorough.. um . they are brothers . if thats ur thing then whatever but its not mine

[sincerelystesichorus]

astarion, anne carson, & autobiography of red - small character study blurb

In which I've written 40k words of Astarion character analysis fanfiction and I'm definitely still normal.

Astarion used to be blue, but ever since that night two centuries ago, he was reborn red. And he had spent at least the past century thinking that red was irreplaceable. It was – red, it was in his blood and the little blood Cazador would let him wring from rats, corroded and stained. His very life force. He was Cazador’s, his spawn, his jewel, his ruby. There was no cure for red. Not until you became the successful means to an end. He had been sure of it. Being red wasn’t good. It made everyone who wasn’t red, and that felt like most everyone, stare at you like you put off a certain aura… like they knew you were a monster that could only act off of instinct and emotion. And it was so frustrating, because parts of Astarion were blue still, knew what was better, but they were nothing in comparison to the suffocation of red. The emotions, and especially anger, fear, came on so strong. It was hard not to act on them, to test out what the boundaries of pure action were. Astarion knew the color and impulse all too well.

I expand way more on the idea of people as colors within my writing than Autobiography of Red does, where Geryon is the only one who is red. This further pushes Geryon's feelings of being separated from humanity in his narrative, but there's a lot of inherent evil and fucked up things within Faerun so I felt expanding on colors and specifically shades/hues was a better way to communicate this for Astarion.

Geryon's red is tied very instinctually to emotion though, and so representing red as a chaotic force of emotion in my fic didn't feel like too far a step. I took a lot of inspiration from Magic: the Gathering's color pie lol. While you never get an exact description of what's wrong with Geryon, you get a lot of the symptoms, reminiscent of some sort of innate childhood mental illness, on top of the obvious trauma present in his story.

Back to Astarion, though. I've just never not been able to code him with CPTSD, I think that's obvious, but I also know that poor bastard has a personality disorder skffkjdf. The game always hammers in he has no sense of self outside of his looks, which he can't even be sure of because he can't see himself. Astarion has to work his confidence and self-image off of memories of his body and face from two centuries ago, and from his master's word. Cazador has assigned him to this seduction role (or, I feel its at least implied that Astarion was ultimately forced into it because he was seen as the Szarr runt, he was pretty and easy to push around, and I'm also pretty sure Petras has a line about getting to eat dogs now and then?) and Astarion fulfills it because it's all he can do. All he feels good for. His actions aren't his own for two hundred years, and in a morbid way of coping with constant sexual trauma, he functions off of "Well, at least I'm pretty," but even that assumption comes from Cazador's rule.

Astarion had decided he was mostly pure red, splashes of black and blue coming in, bright and visible. The remnants of his past and an even deeper level of Cazador’s corruption, bruising his psyche.

Carson is again sparing with other color imagery as to fully emphasize Geryon feeling like this big red monster, but I love this little excerpt on fearful anger.

Black/shadow is already a strong force and theme within the game so it was easy to work with, acknowledging it as a sort of staining evil. Astrion has his later lines about how he never stopped viewing himself as Cazador's slave, and I think showing that corruption is obviously important. He's hurt but can still heal (as opposed to an ascended Astarion... who I have little if any hope for sdfkjdskf).

Cazador had spent the last two centuries branding it into his skin and mind, breaking his psyche to the point Astarion was worried there’d always be little cracks that remained. That he’d always be Cazador’s wilted poppy, ashamed and folding in on himself, his neck miserably drooped aside for the taking. 

Cazador is Astarion's Herakles, and I think that metaphor works even better considering that whole little side lore with Vellioth in the ruins. Herakles kills Geryon because he must, Geryon is a way for Herakles to ultimately reach a life free of consequence, but it's not like Herakles is innately malicious in the act. He is hardened after already facing so many labors and the trauma that was forced on him by Hera that induced his journey in the first place.

Cazador wants power, some part of him is probably truly convinced he's easier on his spawn than Vellioth was to him (a lot of insults to Astarion are about his feelings and "whining", Cazador feels vindicated in his trauma and is far gone), and sacrificing Astarion is simply a part of that journey. There is no world where their destinies do not intertwine. Geryon will always be pierced by Herakles, and Astarion wouldn't be the Astarion we know without being pierced by Cazador (and without his ultimate decision to finally separate himself from him, or to become him.) Astarion, understandably, will never not feel some sort of shame or agony over this moment, from natural emotions and I'm sure years of Cazador victim-blaming him. He consented to Cazador's help that night after all, didn't he? (And we simply won't acknowledge the coercion.)

Astarion’s attempts to prolong the inevitable were shattered by thick layers of stone suddenly slamming in front of his face, muffling sound and casting him into a void. He could hardly hear Cazador’s foul laugh as he departed. Astarion waited all night for Cazador to return. And then all of the next day, and the next one after that. Days became weeks. Weeks became months. Astarion started to agree that dying would have been easier. More peaceful. He had pondered hundreds of ways to attempt to kill himself while stuck in this abyss, the voices that had started developing only giving further inspiration, but it was impossible. He was sure.  All he could do was wait. Beat and claw at the stone around him. Curse. Repeat. Sometimes he'd wonder. If he'd ever get out of here. If Cazador would remember after forgetting. If this would be his forever. The voices began to recite to him again. Just how long eternity can be.

I think this is the greatest and most obvious similarity between these two, within Carson's retelling. Geryon feels somehow trapped and doomed by the narrative from his early childhood, and receives some blunt confirmation of it when he faces early sexual abuse. This affects his entire life, his early relationships. Geryon can't be older than ten in this excerpt, but knows the pain of isolation because of his trauma and for feeling different.

Astarion was plucked up by Cazador right out of law school. While for us it's not all that young, for elves he was fiercely immature, basically just starting to come into himself at his first big-boy job. Astarion was likely raised with a lot of privilege that also made him a bit more naive, his book smarts not meeting street smarts, which has him meet his end. In his undeath, that basically flips, Astarion plays his manipulation games and indulges in petty crime and seduction, unable to dedicate himself to studies. He reads and he's witty, but can you imagine the Astarion we know as a judge? It's giving Divorce Court. It's giving Judge Judy. (Honestly maybe that's what got him whacked in the first place.)

Astarion is already constrained to what Cazador lets him be as a slave. He's less than a person, and his own body is one of his greatest trauma sources.

All of this, to be punished so supremely when making an act of slight self-preservation. Astarion wanting to maintain some of his principles and let someone go. It becomes his greatest regret, his worst and most defining punishment. It's how Cazador breaks him.

I restructure some of the circumstances within my fic, as to better tie in the main romance, but it still functions as a punished act of self-preservation for Astarion. I'm also sure most people are familiar with the pain that solitary confinement can bring, but if not, it's genuinely inhumane and dehumanizing. Lack of stimulation is extremely damaging to the psyche, I wrote in Astarion breaking into psychotic episodes while enclosed, but even in game, he speaks about going catatonic. I'm sure minorly from exhaustion after fighting, but also from the isolation. His mind likely just drifted and dissociated beyond belief, and I can't imagine it. This is my favorite piece of Astarion's story we are given, it really is just so pivotal and heartbreaking, to be punished for having freewill in the most objectifying circumstances.

In summary to Astarion Ancunin I just sorta feel like this I guess...

ddfsdfdk but yeah just emo about my poor boy feeling so weird and disconnected yet so drowned in his own emotions you know...

[my homage to autobiography of red, fic series page, my ao3 page]

[invisibleraven]

“ maybe i’ll stay here, stare at you all night. “ “ i'd appreciate it if you don't. “ = MASSIVE WILLEX VIBES.

All his life, Alex was told he had to adapt-get used to things. don't like broccoli? Too bad, it's what we're eating with supper and you can't get up until it's all gone. Not a fan of church camp? Well that's unfortunate because you're still spending all of July at Camp Enlightenment hearing about the wonders of Jesus.

So Alex adapted, made himself accept things just to get by. Like powering through his anxiety as best he could when his parents refused to get him meds. Drumming helped with that, but it wasn't until he started seeing a therapist who got him some Ativan in college that Alex knew what it was like to live.

He made himself small, invisible, straight until he couldn't keep it in any more. And found out no matter that he hadn't changed really, this new part of him made his parents incapable of loving him. So Alex refused to adapt, refused to take it back, and left home.

But this? This is something Alex doesn't know how he can adapt to.

"What do you mean you're a vampire?" he hisses at Willie during one of the dates.

"I meant what I said," Willie said with a shrug. "I got bit back in the eighties. Stupid mistake really, trusted this guy who promised me the ability to skate forever."

"But-but I've seen you out in the sunlight!" Alex protested.

"Oh yeah, that's a myth," Willie replied. "I mean I burn like super easy now, but SPF 100 exists for a reason."

"And the blood sucking?"

"Only with consent, and never enough to turn someone," Willie said. "I usually just go to this vamp friendly butcher instead. I can eat regular food too. Just no garlic obviously, gives me wicked hives."

Alex spends a lot of time that day learning all about vampires. Yes, the stake through the heart thing is true, but that would kill anyone to be fair. Willie does have a reflection, but is also allergic to silver in the worst way. He doesn't have a coffin, but he does tend to sleep later in the day. But he also works at a club for vampires at night, so the nocturnal thing makes sense.

Alex however, is not nocturnal, and by the end of it, is yawning. They'd gone back to his place hours ago. Willie had laughed at the inaccuracies in a vampire movie he found while they shared popcorn and soda. A completely normal night, if not for how WIllie popped his fangs out when Alex asked and just... never sucked them back in.

He yawned again. "Okay, time for me to hit the hay. See you tomorrow?"

"I dunno, maybe I'll stay here, stare at you all night," Willie joked.

"I'd appreciate it if you didn't," Alex said wryly.

"So no to snuggles then?"

"Not if they are gonna be creepy Edward Cullen snuggles, no."

Willie barked out a laugh. "Fair enough." He pulled Alex in for a kiss, sweet and tender. "But if you change your mind... well you know how to find me."

Alex snorted. "Yeah, I'll call if I change my mind about being stared at all night, sure."

"Sweet dreams Alex."

Alex nodded and waved as Willie took off. He curled into bed, and almost immediately fell asleep, his dreams full of blood red imagery, Willie in a fancy cape, and some fun in a velvet lined coffin.

It was a weird dream.

And when he wakes up, it's still dark outside, Alex feels... lonely. Restless. So he pulls out his phone.

'The offer for snuggles still open?'

Willie texts back, 'On my way spider monkey.'

Alex grumbles at that, and really hopes that nickname doesn't stick. He had just gotten Willie to stop calling him hot dog after the incident on their first date. But he still smiles when Willie arrives a few moments later, spooning him back to sleep.

And he's still there in the morning, snoring softly in Alex's ear, though the blackout curtains are decidedly more closed than they were th night prior. Alex grins and snuggles further into Willie's hold, wondering what small sacrifices he could make to wake up like this every morning.

He turns and looks at Willie, thumbing over his brow, his cheekbones, the plush fill of his lips. Only to have Willie crack open an eye at him, smiling. "Creeper."

"You love it."

Willie pulled him in for a deep kiss, neither of them caring about morning breath, panting as they pulled back. "Yeah, I really do."

[mxvanrichten]

We did a lil fun questionnaire for our characters in our Curse of Strahd campaign so I wanted to post the answers for Silas.

1. What location encountered in the campaign has your character felt the most “at home” in, or just generally liked the most?

Blue Water Inn is probably the most at home I feel. It’s cozy, surrounded by good people, and it was our first safe space, so it always feels safe even now.

2. If your character had time to pick up any artisan’s tools, game set, instrument, etc., what would it be?

I think cooking tools because Silas would love to pick up cooking more. He is good at making teas and drinks, but cooking is something he hasn’t quite mastered.

3. Does your character ever want to “settle down” with a spouse, children, house, etc.?

I don’t think Silas has ever really thought about that. He’s never really had someone he’s ever considered that with. I don’t think he’d want kids, but I could see him settling down with someone and having a dog.

4. What battle in the campaign has been most memorable to your character?

I mean I think we all know this one lol. In Berez when he got his ass handed to him by Baba Lysaga and her bitch ass house.

5. If your character wasn’t whatever class they are, what would they be instead?

I could see him being sorcerer or something way different and not magic based like a ranger since he prefers to take fights from afar rather than up close typically.

6. What animal best represents your character?

I think a dog because he is protective of the people he loves. Oh, and because he begs for attention. Lol.

7. Does your character regret any particular choice the party has made?

He is not feeling great about leaving Emil behind with Ludmilla.

8. What would your character say their best trait would be?

He would say his looks.

9. What is your character’s greatest fear? Deep, irrational?

He is afraid of dying alone or being forgotten. He’s also afraid of heights.

10. What are your character’s hobbies and interests outside of their class?

He loves writing. He keeps a journal that he fills with random thoughts, feelings/emotions he’s afraid to share out loud and just general note keeping.

11. What would be your character’s theme song/favorite band/favorite genre of music?

I feel like he would listen to 70s/80s goth shit for sure.

12. What stereotypical role would your character play in a high school AU/if they attended a normal high school? (Nerd, jock, bully, goth, etc.)

Goth nerd

13. What colors are associated with your character?

Red and black

14. What is your character’s favorite spell? If they don’t use spells: what is their favorite personal weapon/combat maneuver/skill/etc.?

Spirit guardians because he channels things that have meaning to him for the imagery to motivate him.

15. What is your character’s favorite food? Beverage?

Food? Probably warm soups or stews. Beverage? Wine or Tea

16. What makes your character feel safe?

His mom’s necklace he wears and his loved ones.

17. Where does your character see themselves in 20 years?

He always saw himself traveling and helping different churches around. He’s not particularly religious as in his youth (because he had to be), but it’s what he knows. Now he still wants to travel and help people, but maybe in a different way.

18. What is your character’s guiltiest pleasure?

He loves good gossip and loves going to bars and flirting for drinks.

19. What is your character’s biggest flaw?

His fear of showing emotions/feelings

20. What, currently, is your character the most curious about?

If there’s any way to get out of his deal with Sykane.

How van Richten feels about him.

[haventdecidedyet]

Fav part of every TTPD song -

Fortnight = the outro. thought of calling ya/nother fortnight lost in america/buy the car you want but it won't start up til you touch touch touch meee. it's so crazed

TTPD = who's gonna hold you like me? who's gonna know you if not me? and all its repetitions

My Boy... = the second half of each chorus. cause it fit too right.../cause i knew too much... perfectly bitter

Down Bad = bridge bridge bridge. I loved your hostile takeovers encounters closer and closer all your indecent exposures how dare you say that it's !!!

So Long, London = bridge! AND YOU SAY I ABANDONED THE SHIP/AND MY FRIENDS SAID IT ISN'T RIGHT TO BE SCARED

But Daddy I Love Him = i'm running with my dress unbuttoned screaming but daddy i love him i'm having his babyyy - whenever it comes up

Fresh Out The Slammer = as i said in my letters now that i know better i will never lose my baby again (so satifsying)

Florida!!! = bridge and fuck me up Florida

Guilty As Sin? = what if he's written mine on my upper thigh??!! in the last chorus, obviously

Who's Afraid...? = so who's. afraid. of me. in the outro

I Can Fix Him = on a six-lane Texas highway, his hand so calloused from his pistol softly traces hearts on my face?!?! pop off with the imagery taylor, and so ethel-cain-core

loml = the last chorus. it just keeps going. what a valiant roar what a bland goodbye/i'll never leave never mind/your arson's match your sombre eyes!! (this song is becoming such a favourite)

I Can Do It... = he said he'd love me all his life!-- but that life was too short... and its counterpart: he said he'd love me for all time!-- such a good illustration of having to keep those miserable thoughts in check

The Smallest Man... = well clearly the whole raging bridge (YOU SAID NORMAL GIRLS WERE BORING BUT YOU WERE GONE BY THE MORNING)

The Alchemy = i can't lie. no part of it really wows me.

Clara Bow = i'm not trying to exaggerate but i think i might DIE if i made it/DIE if it happened - prechoruses

The Black Dog = the choruses, particularly the one that comes first and last. you jump up but she's too young to know this song that was intertwined with the magic/tragic fabric of our dreaming!!

imgonnagetyouback = say you got somebody i'll say i got someone too EVEN IF IT'S HANDCUFFED I'M LEAVING HERE WITH YOUU

The Albatross = also a song that does not hit me at any point. sorry.

Chloe et al. = the choruses. say i loved you the way that you were/say you've always wondered... also i/you just watched it happen... :(

How Did It End? = bridge bridge bridge the unsympathetic unfeeling roboticness and post-mortem detail and the rhythm and rhyming oh my god (say-it once-a gain-with feel-ing)

So High School = ARE YOU GONNA MARRY KISS OR KILL MEEE and also truth, dare, spin bottles... and all that. satisfying rhythm and rhyme strike again

I Hate It Here = choruses. the I read about it in a book when I was a precocious child/I dreamed about it in the dark the night I felt like I might die line. and no mid-sized city hopes and small-town fears i'm there most of the year cos i hate it here....

thanK you aIMee = lowkey an annoying song for me.

I Look In... = the verses, especially all the south south south and now now now now downtown downtown downtown parts

The Prophecy = and i sound like an infant feeling like the very last drops of an inkpen, a greater woman stays cool!!

Cassandra = so they killed Cassandra first cause she feared the worst is the best line but i don't particularly like this song.

Peter = THE WHOLE SONG. love. verses and choruses and bridge. chef's kiss. maybe best moment is YOU SAID YOU'D COME AND GET ME BUT YOU WERE TWENTY FIVE

The Bolter = verse 1. childhood anecdotes always hit

Robin = the bridge, I cry, reminds me of Ronan, you got the dragonflies above your bed, the echo of you have no idea...

The Manuscript = verse 2, the theme of growing up again, she wished she was thirty/she only ate kids' cereal

that's all thank you bye

[blogtaculous]

I read The Deep by Nick Cutter and I have some thoughts. I’m also going to spoil the shit out of the whole thing.

The first 100 pages are almost sublime. I couldn’t read fast enough. The world literally falling apart from the seams from the disease feels so real. People are just losing the ability to be human and everyone else is trying to carry on like normal. It feels eerily prescient considering it was published years before the same thing would happen during the first heights of Covid-19. The Disease itself is very cool, and only teased at (eventually it’s revealed that it’s basically Colony Collapse Disorder in humans, but the cause and transmission are not explained), but for the first 100 or so pages it feels like it’s going to be a dynamite reveal (it won’t be) and it’s so exciting.

The characters are interesting and the conflicts as initially presented are memorable and even fun. The terror of the deepest depths is so visceral, and the backstory lore teases are well done.

Unfortunately, it fucking unravels fast.

The things I liked:

- Luke’s son vanishes and has not been seen for years. It’s spooky and haunting, a parent’s worst nightmare. The conflicts that arise from that aftermath feel grounded and it is a good bedrock of terror that’s much more real than, say, being 8 miles underwater and having hallucinations.

- Luke’s mom is evil, and at the start she truly feels like the actual antagonist, the 11th hour see, she was the real horror all along, and the delight she takes in being awful was good. She sucks but it made for good reading. This will change later.

- The technical details feel grounded enough to make you think that a research base in the Mariana Trench could be possible. The Ambrosia, also, is well introduced and seems like a neat macguffin that will play a cool part in the story to come. It’s just sinister enough to get the ball rolling, and I was really looking forward to more.

- The body horror was (mostly) very good. Sick, twisted, and flirted with The Line enough to be fun instead of just uncomfortable. I was squirming in a few sections. Alice’s body being incorporated into the evil beehive and her face peeled open and birthing some monster was a highlight, but the scars upon scars corpse was also good.

And now… The Bad

- Killing the dog for shock value is stupid, and it’s also stupid to draw out that entire incident into like four pages.

- Luke’s mom is revealed to have sexually assaulted his older brother numerous times, and then he poisons her to death. This is how the story acknowledges Luke’s brother is a psychopath. It wasn’t the unspeakable experiments be performed on animals, or how he didn’t care for anyone else on earth, or how he tried to make deals with extradimensional evil… it was when he killed his abuser, a Good and Right thing to do.

- The plot just fucking derails. It does this in two ways. First, the actual plot doesn’t take very long once Luke and Alice (I’m not calling her Al) get to the Trieste so the length is padded out with an absolutely insane number of dreams and flashbacks. They exist to feature some creepy imagery, but most of it has no bearing on the plot or characters. And they’re long! Let’s talk about the goddamn tickle trunk, as an example.

What is the tickle trunk? The short answer is it’s a fairly innocuous toy box with some clowns on it that Luke’s abusive mother forces into his bedroom. That’s it. Does she use it as a torture device? No. It literally just sits in his room and is vaguely creepy. The worst part about it is that while Luke is having his little dream-flashback about it Alice is also having one… about half of a corpse of a submariner she worked with in the Navy plaguing her with guilt about his death. Which do you think would make a better spook? The box, or animated bloated corpse? Like… come on. Alice is like “wow I had this horrible dream about this gross dead body chasing me with my own guilt” and I had to sit there and think about how instead of diving into that I was reading about a toy box.

I’ll bring this toy box up later, don’t worry.

Other bad flashbacks include Luke gathering frogs for his scientist brother and seeing a spook in a gated tunnel and anything to do with the “millipede.”

And second, the Big Reveal sucks. I’m just gonna dive in because it’s so bad.

Ambrosia is a tease to get humans to build a research base in the Mariana Trench. Why? Because two extra dimensional beings of terror have been banished there. Most egregiously, how do we know this? Because they literally fucking sit Luke in a chair and explain the entire thing like a fucking Scooby-Doo villain. The entire scene reeks of Dumbledore talking to not-quite-dead Harry fucking Potter. It’s so fucking bad. And the worst part is these motherfuckers somehow planned the whole fucking thing. There were three researchers on the base, and all of them were specifically groomed by the baddies to be there so they could manipulate them into going looney so that Luke could be brought down there to free them. That’s right, Luke was a Chosen One all along.

It’s further revealed that the monster in the tickle trunk and the gated tunnel were real the whole time. The extra dimensional horrors, despite being banished 8 miles under the ocean for being evil can force project monsters to terrorize people. They do this to slowly torture all the researchers their whole lives to lead them to the Trieste. In fact, they fucking kidnapped Luke’s son.

I cannot begin to describe what a stupid thing this was, and how fucking stupid it was for the extra dimensional horrors to just flat out explain it to Luke like it was a college lecture.

Like, what even keeps these motherfuckers down there if they can so easily do all this? They also reveal the following complete bullshit:

- The Disease was a happy coincidence for their plot. Just background noise. Shrug!

- All the torture and dreams and bla bla bla was just for fun. To quote the extra dimensional horrors: “For fun. And games.”

That’s right, literally less interesting than fucking Jigsaw. Just for funnies. Jokes, even. Their presence, often described as curious, was just silliness. They already knew everything there was to know and were just having a ball.

All right, so prior to Luke being soft-captured to witness this monologue of total garbage, he had grabbed some Go To Sleep medicine (that he knew how to administer since he was a veterinarian) and it just sat in his pocket. He didn’t use it to spare the dog from being Assimilated into evil, or to spare Alice from her ecstasy of pain and suffering, so when he gets captured I’m thinking “okay, here it comes, this is important.”

The extra dimensional horrors reveal that they’ve kept Luke’s son “safe” (he’s a monster now, by the way) and they want Luke to merge his consciousness with it. They explicitly tell him they need him to do this and that it will help them escape to the surface to bring horror and madness. I smiled, “Aha! Luke will use his Go To Sleep chemicals to kill himself, preserving life on earth and rejecting the Thing That Is Not His Son, showing how he has grown and healed.” I was confident in this assessment because Luke literally tells the bad guy that he won’t do it. He knows that this monster isn’t really his son and he’s ready to die.

NOPE!!!!! !!!! !!1! That motherfucker does it! He just fucking merges with Not Zach and lets them out. No big moment, no deep breath, no clarity. Just “yeah I guess.” So what happens? The unholy amalgamation of Luke, his son, and two extradimensional horrors goes to the surface in the only submarine and they get out. The last line is like “what emerged was unspeakable” but what I thought was unspeakable was how fucking stupid this plot was!!!!!!

Read the first 100 or so pages then chuck it in a bin.

[fantasyfantasygames]

HellBlaster

HellBlaster, Black Dog Games, 2009

HellBlaster is a blasphemous game of Satan worship and demon-summoning that will scare your parents and make your pastor faint. It is Totally Metal and evil as fuck. At least, that's what it tells you.

HellBlaster combines some generic devil imagery, LaVeyan Satanism, the games of id software, the more notorious parts of AD&D1e, and a big dose of Judas Priest and Manowar lyrics. Your characters "fight evil with evil". Examples given include burning down a house to kill a serial killer, and summoning a demon just to murder it. There are no real sample scenarios or "here's how you get your band together", it's just assumed that you're all there to kick Satan's ass in the name of Satan or something.

It's class-and-level-based, uses exclusively 6-sided dice, and has stats and skills that are both on the 3-18 range. Stats are Might, Speed, Power, Wisdom, and Cool. Classes include the Demon Summoner, Face Eater, Pyro, and Doom Reaper. Spells and level-based abilities are almost entirely focused around the game's janky combat, and the rules are too. To their credit they slimmed down the rules compared to AD&D1e - no weapon speed factors or encumbrance - but you roll both attack and defense, you roll both damage and damage reduction from armor, you roll both psychic power and magic resistance, etc. It all has twice as many rolls as it needs while still lacking any real tactics. It has detailed critical hits. Explicitly detailed.

The art is... um... evocative of its subject matter. I can't say it's badly drawn, but I can say that I would rather not look at a lot of it. I do like that the interior uses a 2-color process: white paper, black text, day-glow green accenting. It's reminiscent of the green used in DC Comics' Underworld Unleashed crossover, where they had a normal 4-color process but also this really vibrant, fluorescent green.

The spells are described at length. Each one of them is at least half a page, so there are only maybe 80, but you'll know exactly what your character is writing, chanting, and burning while they cast. There are no in-the-moment combat spells; instead you sacrifice something earlier in the day so that you can throw fireballs or call a Razor Demon later on. Everyone gets magic. Some classes are better at it than others, both in terms of power level and breadth. Balance seems ok.

I had a real hard time figuring out whether this game is in on the joke. I knew a fair number of people back in the day who were semi-serious about evil-metal-satan stuff and who would now find this book hilarious, but the book itself has no feeling of tongue-in-cheek. It's all delivered as if it were completely serious about getting you, the reader, into someone's misguided idea of the occult. I'm still not honestly sure how self-aware the book or its author are. I guess it's up to your play group to decide whether you can keep a straight face while having your black-leather-clad Exotormentor cast Devil Scream at a slasher with a demonic conjoined twin.

HellBlaster has two supplements. Devastation of the Lamb is a scenario, and Damnation Highway is a more-demons-and-spells book. If you're looking for any of them, luckily this was published well after the Satanic Panic. A lot of Black Dog Games' work is out of print, but this had a reprint recently enough that you can probably find copies around.