☆ de fontaine
{☆} characters furina
{☆} notes cult au, imposter au, drabble, gender neutral reader
{☆} warnings angst, suicidal thoughts, hurt / no comfort
{☆} word count 1.4k
This wasn't fair. This wasn't fair. This wasn't fair!
She thought, for one moment, she could put the mask down and breathe – for one moment of daydreaming, she thought she could just be Furina. She thought she would finally get to live the live she should've had in the first place, the life she threw away to play God to an audience who saw her as nothing but a circus animal, dancing to their whims. Furina just wanted to be selfish for one brief and fleeting moment..and it was gone before she could even grasp it in her hand. A comet soaring past far out of her reach.
She can barely keep her hands from violently shaking as she looks down at them – broken and bloody and more a corpse then a person – and she feels so numb she can't even feel the rain pelting against her back. None of this is fair, she wants to scream, why is it always me? But her voice is silent beneath the torrent of rain. She wonders if the ocean would take her if she sank into it's depths – just for a moment, she wonders how it would feel to finally be able to sleep at ease.
Furina is tired.
But Furina is nothing if not useful, isn't she?
So she forces her feet to move, dragging against the stone beneath her heels, and drags their bloodied body into the nearest empty building, letting the rain do the work of washing away the smeared blood following her path. The smell makes her feel sick, the feeling of it sticking to her hands and gloves makes her lightheaded, but she persists. Because Furina is useful, because Furina won't let them die out in the rain, because Furina won't stand by and just let them rot on the streets like some..pest.
Furina wants to go home. She wants to sleep and she isn't she if she wants to wake up, this time. But she keeps going anyway.
Because it's all she's ever done, and the habit sticks.
An Archon she may not be, not anymore, but the expectations of five hundred years still linger like eyes on the inside of her skull. They watch her, pry and prod at her thoughts, mocking laughter and judging eyes following her as she forces herself to dance to the song they weave with glee. Furina never stepped off that stage – she's still there, she thinks, watching the crowd stare at her in disdain as the curtain call looms above her like a guillotine. She still hears Neuvillette deliver her damnation and salvation with a trembling voice, still feels her hair stand on end when electro crackled like the crack of the whip, Clorinde's blade aimed at her like a loaded gun.
She's trapped on that stage and she never left, not really.
She hates it. She thinks she hates them, but it's not their fault. They didn't ask for this, didn't ask for everyone to turn against them, didn't ask for her to save them. Neither did she..yet here they are, she thinks.
She tries to tell herself she's in control this time, though. She can stop performing her part in this horrible, bloody play any time she wants. It makes her feel better, just for a little while, if she convinces herself she's still Furina, painfully human.
And Furina has always been good at lying.
It's the believing that's the hard part.
There isn't time for her to wallow in her own self pity, though. They're still bleeding out onto the dusty, creaky floorboards of some random, broken down house and she's just standing there as the blood stains the wood. She can fix it – she's good at fixing things. She's done nothing but fix things – try to, anyway – for five hundred years. She can fix a little wound, how hard could it be? Her hands are clenched so tight they ache as she kneels down, wincing at the creak of the floorboards beneath her heels– she hesitates just long enough to wonder if she's making a mistake before she peels away just enough of the outer layer of their clothes to see the deep, bloody gash across their chest. She tries not to think about it – it's deep, too deep, and she feels dizzy just looking at it, but she's handled worse, right?
Furina can fix it. That's what she's good at.
She doesn't feel so confident when she tries to wrack her brain for..something. Five hundred years, and a little wound stumps her? No, she had to have learned something, right? She's decidedly not trying to buy time because she's panicking, parsing through hundreds of years of memories like flipping through a book. Furina isn't made for this, not really – she's running on nothing but adrenaline and she's really not sure what she's doing, but she's trying. And just like before, it won't be enough, will it?
She'll fall short again – she'll be too late to fix it before she's alone again.
Furina was an Archon..used to be. What use would she have for that sort of knowledge? Which makes her predicament all the more harrowing and bleak. What was she supposed to do?
Furina had heard it first hand, that vitriol in Neuvillette's voice. She isn't sure she's ever heard him that..angry before. She's not sure he would listen to her if she tried, either. And that scares her more then anything. All of Fontaine was up in arms about this..imposter, yet here she was, staring down at them bleeding out in front of her, and she was trying to save them.
Why? Why is she throwing away her only chance at normalcy for a fraud? Why didn't she just turn them in?
They were dying – that should've been a good thing, shouldn't it? So why didn't it feel like it?
"Why you?" Her voice breaks as she speaks in harsh tones, grabbing the front of their shirt in trembling, bloodied hands. "Why now?" She wants to scream, to demand answers they can't give, to claw back the reprieve she was promised after five hundred years of agony..and all she can do is sob into their chest, pleading for an answer that will not come. "Why me?"
Silence is their answer, and it hangs heavy on her trembling shoulders as she cries.
Of course they don't, she thinks bitterly, no one has ever answered her pleas spoken in hushed sobs. Not her other self and certainly not them.
Furina has always been alone. Furina will always be alone.
Because Furina never left that stage, never left that moment when she looked at herself in the mirror and took up a mantle too heavy for her to bear. She always finds her way back eventually. There's no one on the other side anymore – she stands alone on a stage, waiting for an inevitable end she isn't sure will come.
"Please," She pleads through tears and choked sobs, clinging to them like they are all that keeps her from sinking. "Please don't leave me, too." The words burn on her tongue – how pathetic is she that she craves companionship from the bloodied body of the imposter? Perhaps she's truly lost her mind after all these years..perhaps she's finally gone mad. She must have.
But their presence is like the first feeling of gentle warmth upon her skin as the sun crests the horizon, like the gentle lap of tides along her heels, the sway of branches and leaves as the wind blows through them like an instrument all it's own. They are the soothing sound of rain against the window as she watches the dreary skies in fond longing, the first bloom of spring as color blooms upon the landscape like paint had been spilled across the hills and valleys.
They are like the faint spark she carefully nurtures and stokes, so fragile even the smallest wind could blow it out like a candle. She cradles it within her palms, pleads with whoever will listen – prays that someone finally listens, because if not for her, then for them.
She's failed to protect too much already, let too many people with so much trust in her fall between the cracks of her fingers like grains of sand. She won't let them go – she can't.
If nothing else, if she couldn't be saved when she begged for salvation from that five hundred year long agony, even if she never got that chance..
Furina will make sure they do.
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which character/s in colorquest is currently getting a redesign?
Gary is still getting tweaked here and there, it's a slow and on-going process.
While I don't plan on changing much else about him, recently I've decided to give Chickenstab's host a tail. (See: my latest doodle page from a handful of days ago)
I've been debating changing Hannah's initial outfit lately as well. She's from a part of Stolla that is much warmer year-round, but having moved much higher up, starting the story in mid-late October, it's rather chilly for her to be wearing thin shorts, flip-flops and a tank top. But, I've not thought too much into exactly what this new outfit would be, and I'd still hold on to this outfit for a different, warmer part of the story because I love it too much to ever fully part ways with it.
I've been fiddling with April's bangs lately too. I don't have a picture on hand at the moment but I'll try to tack it onto this post later when I do, but I've always been a little iffy about her bangs. Especially with Elliot's being similar, I feel like the bang style fits his hair more than it fits April.
Nobody has gotten a huge overhaul design change yet, but I definitely feel something bubbling within me to give a huge makeover to a character or two. I just have to figure out if there's a design I'm not happy with that I've just been suppressing. Because I tend to do that from time to time lol.
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ohh, i already love Bat and his singular brain cell… was he born without his leg, or did he lose it?
Tyyyy! He's my special little guy, I care him a lot ❤️
And he has amniotic band syndrome! Aka congenital amputation.
Discussion of medical nonsense below ⚕️
Bat was technically born with all 4 legs, but the constricted one was already dead and had fully withered away be the time he was a few weeks old. People who have cared for kittens with ABS have said the limb tends to die even with intervention- so I imagine it's sort of like band-castration in steers.
Bat doesn't remember ever having his right leg. It already had no feeling when he was born, so thankfully, he's spared from phantom pain that later-in-life amputees get. He does have a fully developed scapula and part of his humerus, hence him wiggling the stump in Moon 4 part 2!
I don't want to get into spoilers, but while Bat doesn't get phantom pain, he's not free from amputation related health issues. Little/domestic cats aren't a 1:1 comparison because Homotherium is (obviously) much heavier on their joints, and much more reliant on grappling large prey.
Make of that what you will for now...
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do u have any tips for uhh idk art term....highlight and contour but for art? specifically w digital art? w pencil and paper it feels super intuitive but then when i switch to digital it looks all flat.............
(is it shading? idk what im doing tbsh)
(also hope ur doing well i feel like im crawling into ur asks every two days or smth looking for art tips sorry T_T)
(yuuji comic made me cry so hard btw)
hi rin!!!!!!! that wld be shading/rendering yes hgbhgfjs there’s no One specific term tho so ur all good <3 also omg re: the yuuji comic IM SORRY I KEEP MAKING U CRY GHJKGJDSGHKJ its ok i made a lot of people cry if the death wishes/pos in the tags are anything 2 go by so ur in good company :D i teared up also
i would Also like to apologize in advance because fr me this is one of those Art Things that becomes more intuitive the more u do it so i am a bit. lost as 2 how to explain but i will sukuna voice ganbare ganbare !!!!
it’s all about light sources babes so pick a direction where the light is hitting from and use that as your main point of reference. If u need to remind yourself where the light is coming from i was taught to draw a lil arrow or sun somewhere on your canvas 2 keep track . areas closest to the light or planes that are more Elevated will be brighter than areas farther away or Deeper. When u think of a face, the forehead and cheeks rest Higher than fr example, the eye sockets, so those areas will catch more light and appear brighter. it /is/ kind of like makeup in that way.
also, shadows/highlights can have soft or hard edges depending on how . uh . intense, i guess?? the angle of the light is. like with a box vs a sphere, the former will have a lot more Cut and Defined areas of darkness because the plane where light hits is cut off more directly by the presence of a corner, whereas with a sphere the Slope means that the values follow more of a gradient.
tbh tho if you’re still starting out, to practice light sources and shading it actually might be good to scribble and shade some 3D shapes and spheres/boxes or maybe even draw from life so u can really take time 2 pay attn to how light catches different surfaces . it’s boring work but the practice is never wasted !! lighting can be tricky so try and take the time 2 form Good habits :'> references r ur friends here now more than ever.
other than that, which i feel more or less covers the basics n fundamentals, my wisdoms 2 u and any1 else who will have it: INVEST TIME IN2 FINDING GOOD BRUSHES omg i feel like a lot of that New Artist Look (tm) comes from using default brushes —which on its own is fine, but the kicker is not taking time to get comfortable with how to make the best use of them. the fun of the render is getting to play with textures and colours so find some brush settings that help add a bit of personality!! also . resist defaulting 2 the airbrush tool to shade it Rarely cooperates and can muddy a piece. uhhhh what else what else try not to shade with black for the same reasons ???? i'm scraping the bottom of the barrel here but i hope something here was of any value :'>>
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can we pls discuss how the cats are all so horny for them getting Big and Strong and Fit and Buff. If we lived in A/B/O world the locker room and gym would be flooded with pheromones at all times
you my dear anon have truly opened yap-dora's box with this one do not get me started on this please PLEASE you know how nasty this team would go at it in an abo-verse? the pheromones would just be in a constant feedback loop if these boys weren't forced to put on blockers and use suppressants because its really the way they talk about each other and the way their affection shows
and i think just the past few days we've had so many anecdotes of paul talking about how much fitter the cats are, or players commenting on their own physique or other players talking about how much they noticed how big other players have gotten is sooooo
so allow me splurge about all the stuff these horny cats have done that live on in my brain in an abo context because yap-dora's box has been opened. dear god save us all.
the sc celebrations on and off ice: all the neck nuzzling, sashas penchant for grabbing people by the neck/head (ekky, lundy) or just ragdolling guys (forsy) about because who can say no to pack alpha? hes pack alpha! let him do whatever he wants to you! guide his hand to where you want it most (your neck)! absolutely melt that hes letting you touch his neck in return he trusts you that much! feel safe and warm with his hand on you! go limp! let him move you about! pack alpha gets whatever he wants!!
ekkys also specifically brought up monty grabbing the back of his head and rubbing his forehead on his so hard it actually hurt after winning the cup and its always lovely to see some good ole pack bonding that is the forehead nuzzle because sometimes an omega does need hard touch to keep them present
and speaking of ekky... ekky being ekky and grabbing the nearest warm neck to stick his nose into because this poor omega has toiled since game 4 and riddled with anxiety aplenty and hes de-stressing by surrounding himself with pack lest he breaks down and cries again (despite the fact he absolutely did cry on the ice) needs to be reminded hes safe now its all over hes allowed to be spoiled again and filled with the scents of all the people that he loves to soothe him
also all the club e11even shenanigans are truly unmatched sasha being very mmmmghghg with lundy, sasha being mmmdgfdghd with everyone (because pack leader of course has to re-scent everyone in a crowded club his scent gets washed out by all the sweat and people and likes his pack to smell like him :( and whilst hes not super territorial sober he does get more possessive when hes inebriated, listens more to his base instincts screaming at him that he can barely sniff out his pack and thats a no-no he likes his pack to be his), ekky clinging onto sasha (because omega is feeling loveydovey and displaying submissive behaviours to appeal to their pack leader)
but also specifically benny holding maffhew by the neck is always fun to remember because he wasnt super super touchy with anyone that night but maffhew is always an exception of course and wouldnt want to scruff this fun flirty omega? especially one you have so much storied history we love play behaviours we love tussling to re-establish pack dynamics
re: to also expand upon possessive pack leader sasha, sasha making the finns wear a shirsey with barkov city at the front of it during his cup day because that was a thing that very much still haunts me because now they each just have shirts with sashas and theirs name on it. which im sure sasha is very pleased about and thisll probably be the most possessive we'll see him get in a sober context and by god did my jaw drop
also my favourite examples of all this big talk is when mikksy gets brought up and theyre like oh hes soooooo strong hes mean (froths at the mouth at how he can push them around) sorry yall this is my guy i will be annoying about him specifically very much we have a fun new overseer to put us in our place! unfortunately the omegas on this team are very much just in constant preheat at this point like where do i even begin WHERE
also do i have to mention anything about forsy ever? do i have to? presented without comment! the graphic!
(added bonus of all the shit paul said about forsy these past days lmao)
and i just think this team is horny for each at all times and theres so many more examples and pack goes crazy theyre all fucking each other THE LOCKER ROOM REEKS
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