#Modify from Black to Dark Grey

[nibeul]

clone force 99

(chapter 1 of my rewrite)

[id: it’s a drawing of the Bad Batch heads stacked together going Echo, Tech, Hunter, Crosshair, and Wrecker from bottom to top. Echo is wearing the cybernetic headpiece and modified arc armor with dual pauldrons. He is depicted with duller brown skin, burn scars that cover half of his face, some short hair, and a bit of facial hair. Tech, who is drawn with brown skin, reddish orange hair and a scar on his cheek, is wearing his usual light grey armor and black goggles. Hunter, also depicted with brown skin and his bandana, is wearing his dark grey armor, as is Crosshair, who is drawn as albino with freckles concentrated on his cheeks and forehead, and Wrecker, who is drawn with brown skin, rounder features, and a scar that starbursts from his left ear, which has partially melted. /end id]

[lalalychee-x]

BOOTHILL D!CK PROFILE ft. headcannons

♡ OK SO! Yk those comments that pop out hex codes about character's cock? Yeah, well, I'm going to do that too. Except its BOOTHILL! 's dick, so there's a few catches. gn!reader. I do actually describe his dick like this in my fics, but here's a PROPER rundown! ♡ BASICS!

girth: #1f2124 (almost-black kind of grey) body: #3b3b3b to #9c9c9c gradient (girth to tip) tip: #1f2124 (almost-black kind of grey) size: undefined/ usually 9-10inch. texture: ribbed/ridged/plated/cold thickness: undefined/ usually 2inch - 2.5inch. foreskin:  no.

BOOTHILL! 's cock isn't made of skin, obviously. It's made of metal plates like his torso, plated a bit like scales. So there's larger and wider plates at the bottom, progressing into thinner ones as you go from girth to the tip. The edge of every metal plate is also coated in rubber, so every edge isn't sharp and can't cut you. 

BOOTHILL! The plating design allows his cock to actually curve and bend like skin.

BOOTHILL! 's tip is made of rubber, like medical-grade silicone! Like thick, dark, smooth silicone molded into a bulbous shape, and surprisingly needs a lot of lubrication to slide in anywhere.

BOOTHILL! 's cock is obviously metal, so that means its hard HARD. God, it (in theory) never really softens, but just stays thick inside you.

BOOTHILL! 's cock isn't just a regular texture, but is ribbed and ridged along the thick of it from the aligning of the plates. And god do they feel good...

BOOTHILL! It's unscrewable. No questions asked. He can get another one made of any design and just screw it on.

BOOTHILL! 's mechanic gets regular requests from you. You messily draw a new design of a dick you want to try with Boothill, begging him to tell his mechanic to make a dick of what you were imagining. Boothill does eventually give in, raising his eyebrows in surprise at what you were asking of him. "Good fudgin' god, darlin'— y'want to do... what?!"  The mechanic is definitely a masc lesbian with tattoos who is now wondering if she should quit her job. 

BOOTHILL! probably doesn't actually wear his cock often; he'd take it off during work because it's just another weak point and he wouldn't risk a blow to the groin.

BOOTHILL! has no actual fixed size, since he can just customise whatever the hell is between his legs. Or not between his legs. But he'd probably go no more than about 9 inches with you, because he doesn't want to hurt you. Expanding from that, he's probably a real sweetie at heart, but will tease the hell out of you to be mean at times.

BOOTHILL! can't (in theory) ejaculate. I mean, where is the substance coming from (pun not intended)? But through a lot of begging, his overworked mechanic agreed to make it work. You still can't get pregnant tho, if that was a possibility for you at all!

BOOTHILL! ...I can't decide if he has balls or not.

Feel free to ask for other characters!

♡ Please do not modify, steal, plagarise or post on other platforms without asking. Thank you!

[mysteria157]

Pairing: Demon! Nanami Kento x Angel Black!Fem Reader

Rating/CW: grey morality, religious undertones, corruption kink, worship, power dynamics (subtle fem submission), monsterfucking, smut, tongue fingering, pronged tongue, vaginal sex, oral (f! receiving), mild blood/biting. MDNI!

Summary: The thick muscle of your wings press against cold ancient stone as he circles you with wicked, stone-faced intent. Glimmering obsidian fingers trace along your feathers until they quiver--fluttering with touch-starved bliss no angel should ever feel. It's forbidden--this sensation in your belly, this humiliating slick between your legs that be can smell, this overwhelming desire that you've spent eons trying to quell.

But now, trapped before a demon so captivating that you can't help but feel equally terrified and dreadfully aroused, reality burns your skin like the holy water that bubbles whenever it's within your reach.

You're not here to serve a divine purpose--you're an offering. And only Heaven knows if you'll fall to your knees before him, begging for corruption.

Author Notes: Here it is! My submission for @tsukimefuku 's Spookinky event! I had so much fun writing this. Thank you, Fuku, for hosting such an awesome event, and I truly apologize for the filth (I do not apologize). Thank you all for your support, and thank you, @aliasnnmknt, for letting me use your art for my banner and helping me create it. Your art really inspired most of this fic!

Header: art by @aliasnnmknt | Divider: @arcielee @enchanthings | network tag: @pixelcafe-network

JJK Masterlist | Twitter | Ao3

©mysteria157, all rights reserved. DO NOT copy, plagiarize, reupload, modify, or translate (without permission) my work to other accounts and platforms.

You’ve never set foot in a demon’s realm.

You’ve heard the stories—flames that burn flesh from bone, screams that echo for eternity, demons that feast on corrupted souls. For the many eons that you have been in existence, the pristine light you thrive in tells enough horrid stories to keep you away.

You do what you can to show you are pure in your thoughts and heart and that you will walk the line given to make the one above you proud in His selection of you. You’ve done well. It’s why you’ve been given this task—a pilgrimage to a sacred altar within this dark realm, to find the relic it holds and be promised enlightenment and a deeper connection to your spiritual life. For once, you feel special. You are special.

The relic you search for holds ancient divine text that the Heavens would like to make sure does not fall into the wrong hands. Your ability to decipher that text and other old tongues made you the perfect choice—though you try not to question why that ability exists at all. This mission feels important and they insisted you were the perfect choice. Your gifts would serve the greater good. Serve Him.

Maybe that’s why they sent you alone. A single angel, moving quietly through dark territory, would draw less attention than an entire group.

Finally, after so many years of wary glances and hushed concerns. Your many ‘gifts’ that have set you apart—the way ancient texts rearrange themselves under your touch, how you see patterns in chaos that other angels cringe from, your thirst for knowledge that shouldn’t be explored. Finally, it’s all paid off.

Or…at least that’s what they told you. Even as something in your grace whispers warnings you choose to ignore.

Angels bask in absolutes, in the pure warmth of divine light and the straightforward clarity of purpose. There is certainty in right and wrong, never a grey in between. Your wings should bask in holy breeze, not in this thick air that tastes of dreadful sin.

You expected the realm to smell of death and destruction, to look as if every natural disaster had run through the land so the shadows could roam freely to commit sin. It’s what you’ve been taught at least. This Realm specifically is forbidden and faith has been used as a boundary to keep other angels in line.

The outskirts of this realm is covered in a haze, a thick russet fog that smells of ozone and decaying flowers. It settles on your skin like an uncomfortable garment, scratching the surface and burning your dermis. Your wings curdle in pain, burning to ash and regrowing through your bleeding muscles. Gnarled, skeletal trees reach up like claws, the birds that sit on their branches malnourished and dying. Distantly, you hear the constant drip of water from a faucet, yet there is no water in sight. Whispers of sin and moans of agony carry on the wind.

Your white dress flows like liquid moonlight, now stained with ash and ember burns. The neckline dips lower than most angels would prefer.

“To be comfortable in the vessel He gave you is to honor His creation.”

Is what they had said, their justification now seems like a cruel irony as the fog caresses your exposed cleavage with burning fingers. The bottom of your dress trails on the ground as you walk, the dirt burning with red soil that seeps through the toes of your bare feet. It feels as if you’re walking on hot coals, the heat burning the fabric of your hem in tendrils of smoke.

You knew to expect this pain, but it’s different. There is a calculated precision to it, intentional in how it burns you as if testing if your form is solid, if your soul is worthy of corruption. The bell sleeves of your gown flutter in a nonexistent wind, ash and soot collecting in the folds of fabric that they once praised as divine elegance.

Your eyes burn, tears streaking melanin-soaked skin that cannot absorb the shrouded sun up above. As you navigate blindly through the oppressive haze, the shadows around you morph with the darkness and skitter past you on multiple hands and contorted feet.

An infinitesimal part of your grace shivers in fear. It’s small yes, pushed away and ignored like you have been taught, but it’s there in the quickening of your pulse and the break of sweat on your neck, it’s there as you walk further through the vicious landscape of horror and pain, as you try to ignore the gurgling of what you do not know from all around you.

Your wings curl around your body, a small gesture of protection that you fall into when the fog gets thicker. It slides languidly up your nostrils and down your throat, catching along the corners. You cough, sputtering wildly through ash and decay, your eyes bubbling with more burning tears. That fear flickers again in your chest and wiggles like a worm in search of moist dirt in your rib cage.

You can do this. You have been chosen. Your lips curl and part as you recite your prayer in silence, asking for strength even as your fear climbs higher to the surface of divine worship.

Then—through burning tears, you see it. A path of pure obsidian that cuts through the horror, its surface covered in a thin layer of water that reflects starlight not in the skies above. Your feet pick up in pace, moving before conscious thought, drawn to its dark beauty and vast difference of the world around. The moment your toes dip into the water-slicked stone, the moisture sliding off your skin without wetting it, everything changes.

The burning on your skin and feathers stops. The pungent fog parts like a curtain and dissipates into the air. You pull in a deep breath, savoring the thickness that is no longer there, your throat coated in clean oxygen. Your dress, moments ago stained with ash and fiery burns, returns to its pristine white. Once the tears in your eyes clear, you take in the changed landscape.

Perhaps the realm only transforms if one gets this far, because now there is no destruction but a defiance of what you see. The sky is tinged a permanent grey, overcast even though there’s a warmth to the low hang of the clouds. There are no lakes of fire, and the ground beneath your feet is no longer hot with clay-colored dirt that seeps between your toes. The obsidian path winds before you through tall garden walls of pearly white flowers, the leaves pitch black instead of earthly green.

Above the dark canopy of the garden walls, a monolith looms tall, piercing the grey sky as if demanding to be let into the heavens. It’s built to resemble a vast tree, its surface rippling with starlight, the bright core pulsing like a heartbeat, beckoning you deeper into this realm of misconstrued beauty. The garden path must lead to it. Even the pearly white flowers weaved into the walls all point forward, ushering you on.

Your wings furl closer to your spine as you shuffle to one of the garden walls, hesitantly reaching for the flowers twined in the vines and leaves. It’s a beautiful white, with small petals that curl toward a sage core. They’re littered along the walls, a beautiful landscape against darkness but the closer you get, the more you realize—

Hemlock

A poisonous flower, the symbol of death, betrayal, and sacrifice. It sits in it’s refined beauty, enhancing the black leaves around you, but they are just as dangerous.

You snatch your hands away as if stung, clutching the fabric of your dress like a lifeline. You try not to think about how the hemlock watches you with pale eyes. You try not to think about what they represent. You try not to question why these flowers would point and line a path to the divine relic you seek.

With every step you take, the pulsing from the monolith in the distance vibrates through the ground, the water rippling currents with each beat. The obsidian path narrows, forcing your wings closer to your body, your arms so close to the deadly blooms. The garden walls rise higher, leaves trembling in that same empty breeze.

While the air no longer feels thick, it is heavy with a taste both nonexistent and flavorful. Flavored with the knowledge you seek when others do not look and secrets that make your eyes linger even as your grace warns you against it. The questioning urges of your nature that Heaven always tries to quell stir awake like a beast being poked after centuries of rest.

You should ignore it. You should ask for forgiveness and count the blessings you have been given in this long existence. But your heart leaps at the chance you have also been given, right now.

The monolith’s base reveals itself slowly, the garden walls parting gradually with dark promise. Your breath catches at the sight—this is no crude demon architecture. The structure rises before you like an otherworldly giant, jet black vines weaving within its bright innards.

You’re struck by the beauty of it all, a resplendent sight that you never imagined would bless your eyes. And as you draw closer, the glass obsidian floors open up before you. From the open floor, a column of marble rises, its surface bleached bone and covered in aging vines and greenery.

On that altar, rests the relic you seek. It is no crystal that contains energy to create vasts universes. It is no seed that once planted will wreak destruction with its pollination. It is no amulet capable of manipulating time.

It is a book.

A single book that is thick with words of forbidden knowledge, its cover worn and weathered from eons of hiding in the shadows, its pages yellowing along the edges.

Such a simple relic, but you feel it’s dark power from your spot at the altar.

You’ve been tasked to tuck it away and sneak back to Heaven, to deliver it to your superiors and be given your eternal reward. While simple in theory, your hands hover over it, hesitating with shaky fingers.

Do not open it.

Do not look at it for longer than necessary.

Do not look inside.

These are your rules—your absolutes. And yet…

Your fingers twitch, reaching and pulling back at the elusive call of the tome, your feathers trembling with a desire you shouldn’t feel. Your eyes burn with tears of veneration as the symbols on the worn leather illuminate and rearrange before your eyes like dancing embers, the translated text reading in your mind like an endless scroll.

Do not look at it for longer than necessary.

You snatch it up, pressing it to your chest as a means to stop your racing heart. Your soul palpitates with want, a baseless need to curl your fingers under the lips of the book and tilt it open.

It’s temptation, that festering desire that always seems to coil in your belly when the explanations you are given never feel right, when the world around you seems too pristine and you want to know more, when you linger in the mortal realm, watching the humans with a curious eye that is more than what is required of you.

It’s quick and on a whim, you pulling the book from your chest to look down at it, as if by looking it will answer the questions you seek. You trail your fingers along it’s ancient skin, soft and unmarred fingertips feeling along ridges and scars along the cover. It looks as if the relic has gone through it’s own personal Hell, no doubt jerked around from realm to realm over the centuries, pried open and its secrets stolen. There’s a faint beat of sadness that you feel in your chest at the thought of what it must have gone through.

But your fingers still finger beneath the lid, the worn pages jagged on your tips as you worry it up with a slow movement.

Do not open it.

You squeeze the tome, pressing the pages inside more into each other in a silent attempt to seal it and your temptation away forever. Your toes curl into the water beneath you, cold on your skin but still passing over you dry and without moisture.

But once again you catch yourself loosening your grip, your fingers adventurous, your mind begging for more and it’s right here.

In times like these, you find yourself turning to the one manifestation that has never answered you, but exists in your very being.

“Father,” you whisper, voice shaking. “Give me the strength against temptation.” Your wings draw tight, your spine aching from the sudden action, before they expand in a glorious span, feathers opening like extended fingers before they curl around you to shield you from your own curiosity. “Guide me from this darkness, keep my thoughts pure…”

But even as you pray, your body rebels—your fingers part a page and slide along the rough texture of papyrus. There’s a power to the book now, a deep pulse that seems to be in rhythm with the monolith, beckoning you further. The ancient text burns brighter, the translated words whispering in your ears to give in just this once—look inside, soak in your knowledge, seek what others deny.

Your lips quiver, eyes burning with unshed tears at the way your body betrays you. You’re no better than a fallen angel, than a demon or a human who walks the path of darkness—easily tempted and consumed.

You’re not damned, you’re not, you’re not—

“What do we have here?”

The voice slides through your tumultuous thoughts like silk, rich with bored amusement and something darker. Your prayers die in your throat, catching along the edges of your esophagus, your body icing over with a chill of what you try to rebuke as fear.

You’re not alone and you knew the dangers of wandering this realm so freely. You call upon your grace, manifesting a celestial dagger of light and purity, before you whirl around to face the demon who pursues you.

But you’re met with nothing—just the empty garden path you came from.

When you turn back to the altar, your scream catches in your throat.

He stands with casual power and predatory grace. His skin is a pitch lighter than the obsidian paths, but still scattered with constellations. His hair falls in golden-blonde waves, the ends touched with flame that frames sharp features and elegant black horns that curl from the top of his head. His eyes are a burning yellow, studying you with a calculating hunger that makes you shiver.

He stands tall, an inhuman height that makes you feel incredibly small, his wings the color of dark flames spread lazily behind him, their edges flickering with crimson light.

The armor that adorns his upper body is otherworldly and crafted not by divine or mortal hands—navy as dark as night, trimmed with gold that wraps around his shoulders and sides, his chest bare. His hip rests against the altar as if he owns it, expectant like he’s been waiting for you.

He’s beautiful, a manifestation of dark and light, a being that walks his own line not predetermined. As you study him, something tugs at your memory—flashes of encounters that have grown fuzzy over time. In the mortal realm, when you linger in the shadows to observe the humans, a tall figure in navy and tan, warm eyes hidden behind glasses with no arms, hair not tipped with flame but parted clean and tucked behind his ears.

He lingers in the darkness, in damp alleys and abandoned buildings where misery and pain give birth to grotesque figures that terrorize the mortals. You’ve seen him—or you think you have—convinced it was a coincidence and ignored the way your wings would shiver at his distant presence, tilting toward him as if searching for someone lost.

And in your dreams too—dreams of large hands filled with experiences of the world, of whispers in your ear of eternal knowledge. You’d wake with your grace trembling, convinced it was just your mind playing tricks even as the apex of your thighs trembled with the sheen of your sweat and forbidden essence.

Perhaps that’s why your superiors ask for you after these dreams. Perhaps that’s why they press their fingers to your temples and bury the memories deep. So you do not have to worry. So that you can resist temptation. Right?

Yes. All of it is a temptation to test your faith.

But now he stands before you, solid and real, and those ‘coincidences’ suddenly feel intentional. Had he been watching? Waiting for this very moment?

You adjust your grip on your dagger, forcing away those thoughts that never seem to go away. You stagger backwards, your celestial dagger shaking in your hands, your prayer wielded before you like a shield.

“Our Father who art in Heaven,” you whisper, desperate words that feel as if they fall on closed ears, your fear radiating from your bare toes, through the strong muscles of your white wings, and up to the top of your skull. “Hallowed be thy—”

The demon moves towards you now, each step gobbling the distance between your retreating form until your back hits the garden wall, a gasp dying in your throat.

“That name,” he murmurs, sultry low as he cages you with muscular arms, “holds no power here.” His eyes drag down your form, cataloging you bit by bit, lingering on the sight of a shaking chest that is pressed to the tome you clutch.

He leans in close, too close, until you feel the burning heat from his skin. You press your back harder against the garden wall, dark leaves and hemlock brushing along your cheeks and neck as he inhales deeply along the column of your throat.

He smells like the archives you lose yourself in, like the green tea you love to drink in the mortal realm, like a dark concoction of burning honey that would make the noses of other angels crinkle but your nostrils open to inhale more. Your divine senses blur.

This is temptation, you tell yourself as your wings putter against the wall behind you. You’ve practiced for this, you know what you should do. But your body betrays you, your head tilting slightly before you can think about it, offering more of your neck for his inspection.

Horror at your sin, ice cold as it washes over you, makes you act. You press your celestial dagger upward, against his bare chest where one particular constellation burns brighter than the rest.

But the blade dissolves like sugar in the rain the moment it touches him, holy light scattering for a home as it shimmers across his skin to form new constellations.

“How interesting…” The deep voice inquires, hot as it puffs on your neck. “An angel, stealing what does not belong to them. Surely there’s a rule about that, is there not?”

You clutch the tome tighter to your chest, your mouth opening to snap that this is your mission, your divine purpose. But the book vanishes from your grip in black tendrils of smoke, your hand smacking into your breasts from the gap created.

“Give it back!” Panic rises in your throat as you try to meld with the leaves behind you, your fingers wrapping around vines and leaves like a vice.

A sigh, long and drawn out as if mentally exhausted, as if this isn’t the first this has happened, leaves his giant form and travels over your body.

“No, I don’t think I will,” he drawls, pushing off the wall and walking away as if your presence means nothing. He turns to face you at the altar, eyes half-lidded as he rests his forearms on the marble surface and opens the tome that is now manifested in his hands. He’s giving off every impression that the relic you seek will not be going home with you, and he is more than prepared to read it all until you go away.

“W-well, you…” you trail off, your eyes flickering to the open book in his hands. You can’t see the words inside, but you can practically smell the papyrus, a smell that warms you when you trail your fingers along the archives in Heaven. You tighten your grip on the leaves, flexing your wings to extend in a display of dominance, even though it feels as if this demon has read you the moment you stepped into this realm.

The tome sits like an infant in his hands, small and precious as he turns a page, long galaxy shimmered fingers gliding along the text as he reads. That curiosity beckons, a familiar pulse of sin that fires along the nerves in your legs to take a step toward him, to peak over the edge of the book and look inside.

“Demon,” you press, swallowing a lump of your frayed nerves.

His eyes flicker up at you, burning gold irises mildly offended.

“That is not my name.” He turns another page, pulling his gaze away from you, dismissive. “Though, I suspect you already know what it is.”

Why would you know his name? While the sight of him invokes some distant memories, you both have never spoken. The confusion mixes with your flood of panic, your eyes locked on the ancient text in his hands.

“I don’t—I’m here on divine purpose. The Heavens sent me to deliver this relic.”

“They sent you to steal this relic,” he corrects. He slams the tome closed, the sound making you flinch before he walks back to you in casual strides, his form almost gliding on the obsidian floors.

“I would not steal.”

“Coming to a place without invitation and taking the items inside is, indeed, stealing.”

You sink back into the flowers as he draws closer, your heart pumping erratically in your chest, your limbs filling with shame at the logic he draws. But still, you resist.

“I was invited.”

You’ve always been around to see the return of angels from long missions where they are surrounded by darkness and pain. They seem so strong, their chests puffed in pride, their wings shining brighter as a badge of honor. There’s a bravery that you wish you could have right now. But you’re afraid—whether that fear is pure or mixed with something sensual and dangerous—you still don’t know.

“I-I was chosen,” you insist, despite what you feel.

“Oh, I’m sure you were.” His head tilts as he regards you.

The book disappears from his hands before materializing in your own, warm smoke wrapping around your wrists before dissipating. “Take it. Return to your divine purpose.”

You clutch the tome, hoping for relief to fill your wings, but you can only feel disappointment instead. You hesitate, flickering your gaze up to the demon who stands expectantly with arms crossed, like he knows what the outcome will be. Like he knows you will be back.

You turn around and flea down the obsidian path. The garden walls adorned with pearl flowers blur past you until—

The walls part again, the altar and demon coming into view.

“That’s not—” you spin, turning back toward the path and running faster this time, your relic pressed to your body, your lungs burning with the truth that you’re trying to deny.

The hemlock flowers seem to laugh as you pass, their white petals pointing the way with mocking fingers until—

The altar. The demon, an eyebrow raised. Again.

“Stop this!” Your voice breaks as you turn around to try again, sprinting so hard that your wings flap against the wind, your toes touching the top of the thin layer of water below you. You come to the altar a third time, then a fourth, each leading back to his knowing and patient form.

“I’m not doing anything.” His voice holds a gentle pity that pricks at your skin. “But why? Why would they send their most curious angel into a demon’s realm? Why alone? Why you?”

Something in his tone, in the endearment wrapped around seduction makes your grace shiver. You long to have an answer ready on your tongue, and you do, but it’s more practiced, copied, and spit out and resonates in your bones incorrectly.

“The relic requires eyes that can transcribe so I select the right one. My abilities—”

“Your abilities,” he interrupts softly, materializing behind you, “the ones that they’ve tried to suppress. The ones that they’ve feared. Yet suddenly, all of it is for naught, and you’ve been given this divine purpose?”

The towering demon circles you slowly, analyzing you like a predator waiting for his wounded prey to finally submit. You swallow hard, fingers digging into the leather of the book, eyes downcast.

“They finally saw my worth,” you insist, but the words sound hollow even to your ears. “I am pure. Free of sin. I do not stray.”

Warmth by the shell of your ear, the rich smell of him forbidden, an erotic melody that makes your blood long to sing.

“Lies.”

Your wings slash through the air in deep powerful strokes, twitching in their plumage. “I would not lie!”

“Neither would I, little angel. But it seems you have been led here under false pretenses.”

“No.”

“There is no relic.” The tome in your hands disappears, it’s solid form no longer tethered to existence.

“Give it—”

“There is no mission,” he presses on. “There is no divine purpose. There is only you. Cast down here and given to me.”

“To you…”

“An offering, little angel.”

The word makes you chill over in disgust, the very thought of being a sacrificial lamb enough to make you sick to your stomach. You shake your head vehemently, insistently denying as best as you can even though your grace radiates with the truth.

“No. They would never sacrifice someone. They—they wouldn’t—they wouldn’t do that to me.”

The demon clicks his tongue, pity filling his otherworldly features with a slight pout of his lips as he studies you. Before you can take another breath, the realm shifts, reality bending in a plume of smoke. The monolith and altar disappear, the darkness of the garden walls fading to give way to the eternal light you recognize as your home.

The tall pearly gates that surround your kingdom smile down at you, pearlescent clouds that seeps beneath the doors kissing your bare toes. Your wings waft in the air with ease, pumping euphoria through your veins as you smile up at your home. The tome is back now, cradled safely in your arms, reminding you of your mission. With a hope bright in your chest, you rapt your fingers on the doors.

“Father! I’ve retrieved the relic! I’m home!”

But the doors do not open. There is no sound of movement on the other side, no shift in the white clouds around you. It doesn’t even feel as if someone is not home. You can feel your siblings, you’ve always been able to sense them in your grace, but this sensation is reluctant. As if they peak through closed curtains on the other side, watching through a window with their hand on the door to prevent you from coming in.

“H-hello?” you try again, voice shaking as you knock with more fervor, denial warring with growing dread. “I-I said I’ve brought the relic.” Silence. “Hello?!” You smack on the doors now, the holy wood splitting at your skin and healing over again. Surely someone must be home. Maybe they are away? Maybe they are busy and do not hear?

You press your forehead against the door, wings drooping. Through your grace, you feel them there, still watching. Waiting for you to leave. But not to welcome you home.

“Please,” you whisper, eyes stinging. “Will someone—”

“They will not open the doors, little angel,” the demon speaks from behind you.

You jump from his sudden appearance, your body drained of all blood at the sordid thought of what is happening right now. Reality shifts again, the divine light of your home sucking back into darkness, the monolith and marble altar and obsidian floors coming back into view.

Your legs threaten to give as realization washes over you. You shake your head, lip quivering as tears blur the edges of your vision, your fingers curling on the altar. How could they do this to you? You have always struggled in this life, always been so ashamed that you do not think like the others. But to cast you out? To give you these wings and then make you feel as if you are beyond saving?

“Perhaps it is a mistake,” you whisper, your hope crumbling with every word. You feel his large form next to you before you hear any steps. “Why would they do this to me?”

You have no choice but to look up at him, to seek some form of answer in his burning yellow eyes. There’s a flicker of something that crosses his face—amusement? Maybe pity?

“They have offered you to me. A sacrifice to take the darkness from their pristine walls and feed it to the realm it belongs to.”

The words hang in the air, the horrifying truth once again presented to you. Your heart lurches in your chest. You recoil, your wings drooping to brush along the water covered floor.

“They fear you, little angel,” he continues, voice softening. “Your potential, your curiosity, your unwillingness to follow their absolutes.”

You slap your hands on the altar, the sound reverberating through the emptiness around you. “I will not.”

The demon chuckles, a low, sardonic noise that crawls up your dress and wraps around your throat. “Such defiance,” he purrs. “It’s quite…alluring.”

You can’t help the noise of shock and anger that crawls up your throat, shooting him a dark look. “I will not be corrupted by the likes of a demon like you.”

“Like me? So you imply that another demon may have a chance?” His jests fall on rageful ears, your wings flapping in defiance as you gape at him. He leans in close, his breath warm against your lips as he whispers. “You deny it all little angel. But you already are corrupt.”

You try to pull away from him, but a large hand falls to the small of your back, his fingers weaving through your wings in a caress that makes you choke on a whine.

“Come now, my dear.” The tip of his nose trails along your cheek, the touch sending flames of desire down your neck. You curl your fingers into a fist on the altar, your body ramrod straight.

“I can smell it on you,” he continues, his voice a silken caress. “The insatiable curiosity, the yearning for more, the essence that pools between your thighs every night before you sleep.”

The fingers in your plumage massage your skin, your shoulders relaxing into a traitorous sigh before with a swift motion, he plucks a feather from its root. You wince, your hand flying back to bat him away before he holds the feather in front of you, its tip stained a deep, inky black.

“Do you not try to hide it? You sneak to the archives. You let them smother your dreams. You do not tell them that you sneak away to the mortal realm to watch them eat, and bathe, and sin.”

He turns your wing to expose the underside where the feather was plucked, your eyes widening as if you’ve been caught. The skin is marred with a dark scar, the muscle underneath dried with blood and presenting as damning evidence of you plucking those feathers over and over, your cheeks covered in tears as you did your best to hide them away.

“You pluck your true self,” he whispers, voice laced with dry amusement. “But they only grow back stronger, don’t they?”

A breath catches in your throat, his words piercing through your defenses that you have built with weak mortar and brick for eons. Your eyes catch his, your desire reflected in burning gold.

“Even so…I cannot leave?”

He hums in reverence, a pointy finger trailing along your collarbone to brush a lock of hair from your shoulders, exposing more of your scent for him to breathe in.

“You have tried to leave already and you cannot. There is nowhere for you to go. I can let you roam to any realm you choose, but the doors of Heaven will be locked for you forever.”

Your eyes bubble with tears. It’s an unfortunate hand that you have been dealt. A hand always opened to you in promise even as the other held a dagger behind the back of divinity. There’s a deep part of you that would try to find some sort of silver lining in moments of darkness, a silver lining that only benefits you.

“If I stay…what will you give me?” you ask, your voice small and defeated.

The demon sinks to one knee in front of you, his eye level now only a little taller than you, but still more humane than his hovering from before. He offers a slow, predatory smile, his lips parting to reveal sharp pearly white fangs.

“You already think in ways that will benefit yourself, don’t you? Whatever you desire, little angel, I will give it.” The sharp point of his nail trails down your cheek, casting a wave of arousal down your body, your stomach tightening. “Anything at all.”

You cannot deny the promise of whatever you want does not make you perk mildly with curiosity, the same curiosity that was always quelled.

You lick your lips in thought, a nervous habit that your siblings have always discouraged. It’s unbecoming of an angel, they’d say, a physical manifestation of want. But you’ve always like the way your tongue feels against the plump flesh of your lips.

“Anything?”

He inclines his head to you, eyes answering without having to say. You hesitate, your mind racing with possibilities, unleashed with nothing to hold them back.

“I want…” you begin, stopping short at the coil of desire that burns in your body. You’ve never given it a true voice, and now that you’ve been presented with the opportunity, you are unsure of how to proceed.

The demon’s eyes roam over your form before they brighten with understanding. “You wish to read the tome.”

You nod, unable to speak past the dry lump in your throat. He summons it quickly, the worn leather materializing in his enormous hands as he hands it to you like an offering of forbidden fruit.

“Take it,” he urges in a seductive whisper. “It is yours.”

You reach out with trembling fingers, your grace pulsing with desire, it’s feel growing bolder as you snatch it up into your hands and let it flow through you. The leather is cool beneath your fingertips, worn with the promise of centuries of words you’ve always wanted.

When you open the book and let your eyes fall on the faded script, they rearrange themselves like before, translating to you in a seductive dance that makes your toes curl. The knowledge overwhelms you, flooding your senses in a wave of information about this realm—its history and inhabitants and magic. You feel a thrill of excitement, a suppressed sense of liberation as you turn page after page.

From your peripheral, you see the demon offer that same predatory smile. With a snap of his fingers, the world shifts around you again. You are further from the monolith but instead of the altar, you are surrounded by looming bookshelves, all filled to the brim. Ancient tomes and scrolls, dusty relics that have been neglected over the years but kept in condition by this demon who rules this realm.

“This is a taste of what I can offer you. All of it is yours.” He steps closer, the energy that he radiates filling your space with darkness and seduction that terrifies and excites you. “There is so much more I can show you,” he whispers in your ear again. “Would you like that?”

Even though your body and soul buzz with satisfaction from the books around you, the shame is still there, still bubbling beneath the surface next to your dejection.

Sensing your unease, he places tucks a strand of your hair behind your ear, a gesture that you long to fall into before the world morphs again.

He takes you back to where you began, the realm’s outskirts. However there is no russet fog that is thick and smells of decay and misery, this time your vision is clear. The shadows that once hovered around you in your quest to the monolith now reveal themselves as souls—humans that you recognize from your years of observation.

“Do you remember her?” the demon asks, pointing to a small woman tending to a bush of flowers. “The woman from years ago who stole medicine for her dying child because she had no money.”

You do remember watching with tear filled eyes. It was an ancient time where death was a sentence given freely, and this mother had been called to the land of the dead for stealing bread.

“You watched her pray for forgiveness even as she did what was necessary.” His hand rests on your lower back, reassuring in its pressure. “Heaven would have condemned her. I gave her purpose.”

“How do you give purpose if you are a demon?”

The demon huffs, the corners of his mouth lifting slightly. “It is true that I gain my strength through corruption. But it is corruption through intellectual rebellion and questioning minds. I am strong because no matter how many years may pass, there will always be a soul that questions.”

Each soul that you pass triggers a memory—struggles you watched but could never reach out and help. And in each memory, you gain more clarity—he was always there in the mortal realm, appearing in navy and tan just like you thought.

“You’ve been watching me then,” you inquire, tucking your tome closer to your chest as you cast a sidelong glance to him.

“It is my nature,” he rumbles from next to you. “You understand the beauty in grey areas. The necessity of balance.” His fingers glide along the empty space where you plucked your blackened wings. “Here, you could judge with mercy and justice. Rule in the knowledge they feared.”

Power.

A destructive thing that has elevated so many and torn them down. But the call of it has always been sweet, and now you are the subject of it. The very thought of it makes your knees weaken, your grace fluttering like a leave in the wind. This could be something more honest, not Heaven’s sterile authority.

The soil that is no longer red vibrates beneath you, pulsing up your ankles and calves, around your waist and torso in thick vines that pull you to the monolith miles away.

“Easy, my dear,” he murmurs, a muscular arm sliding around your waist to prevent you from swaying further. “The first taste of true power always overwhelms.” Your grace flickers between divine light and seductive shadow, somehow grounded by his hold.

Every soul’s story calls to you now, complex choices and grey morality making your divine nature pulse with stomped out recognition. You lean into him, falling more into his scent, your wings brushing his back to seek balance.

“I…” you trail off, clutching the relic in your arms, using it to ground you through your thoughts that fight between light and dark.

“What else would you like?” he purrs in your ear, his hand reaching out to the realm beyond that begins to shift again. A vast kitchen filled with warmth and enticing scents. “Earthly pleasures are denied amongst angels.” The pristine counter tops are soon overflown with rich goods and goblets of wine. “Even something as simple as this.”

You’ve never had wine—it’s forbidden—at least for you. But the way it catches the warm fireplace behind it, deep and rich…your mouth waters.

“Freedom to roam where you wish.”

Glimpses of different realms flash by—clouds of different shapes and sizes, landscapes of mountains and water as clear as crystal, beings that take on their own forms as they wander the lands—places you’ve only dreamt of exploring, of asking to see and always been denied.

His voice drops lower, more intimate and hot on your cheek. “Or perhaps…” Another shift. A dark room you remember faintly—through gauzy curtains, you see two figures entwined in candlelight. The brown skin of limbs and curves wrapped around tan that shimmers faintly. You recognize the hips of the woman, the collarbone and hair, and you realize it’s you. You wrapped around this very demon next to you who appears in the mortal realm as a human with carefully parted locks and a height fit for yourself.

Your blood boils beneath your skin as you try to look away. But like every forbidden thing that’s ever called to you, your eyes are drawn back to the scene—to the way your dream-self arches into his touch, the way your neck cranes, the sight of his tongue sliding along the sweat of your brown breast.

He hums from behind you, his demonic form pressing closer as you watch his human glamour worship your other self. That familiar wave of shame wars with the desire in your body, trying its best to smother the arousal that tightens your nipples beneath your white dress. All of it you suffer night after night—your grace singing, skin hot and sweaty—essence coating your thighs.

“I—” you stutter for words, eyes locked on the human form that rolls his hips and swallows a moan that shakes from your other-self. “This is wrong…”

His starlight fingers trace your collarbone, mimicking the tongue of his human form. “Your body remembers what they tried to smother away. How many nights did you wake burning for this? For me?”

“No.”

“Yes.”

The realm shifts one final time, the familiar garden walls and monolith appearing before you, the altar pressing into your back. The demon circles you, giving you no time to recover as his prying eyes pick you apart feather by feather.

“Even your grace recognizes where you truly belong.” He reaches out, trailing pointy nails down your spine, your body arching of its own volition. “Here. With me.”

His hands engulf your entire waist, his touch making you gasp as he lifts you up to sit on the altar before him.

“Every dream they tried to bury,” his hands trail up your thighs, “every desire they made you forget…” he steps closer, taking the oxygen from your lungs that you expel, his naked chest a hairsbreadth from your searching fingers. “All of it has lead to this moment. To me.”

“I—” you try to protest, but it dies in your throat as he tilts your chin to face him.

“You were meant for this realm,” he leans in, trailing his nose along your shaking lips. “I will make you mine. As my queen, my consort, my equal.” You press the tome further into your chest like a lifeline as his hand rests on the side of your neck, his nails grazing the lobe of your ear. “You’ve always known it. Even in those dreams where you surrendered to me so sweetly.”

His lips are close enough to kiss you, but they brush your jaw instead, trailing electricity down your throat. “Anything you want,” he breathes against your pulse, smiling at the sight of it’s rapid flutter, “you will have, little angel.” His mouth moves to that sensitive spot behind your ear that you discovered one night centuries ago. “But you must surrender to me. You have been offered and now you must be consumed.”

You clutch the tome tighter, using it as a tether even as your head tilts to give him better access. “I should not…”

“Surrender,” he whispers, lips ghosting your shoulder now, each kiss punctuated with promises that you should deny. “Let me worship you.” A kiss to your collarbone. “You will never be denied again.” His mouth traces back to hover over your lips. “Submit to what you have always wanted.”

The burn in your body makes your skin tingle, your core pulse with forbidden need, your nipples tighten in pleasure. Everything you’ve always wanted, could be given to you right now.

All of your dedication to faith has only led to tears and shame and disappointment. But here, you could be rewarded for your curiosity, exalted for your power to see what others do not, consumed in pleasure without the eyes of disdain looking down on you.

Here, with this beautiful demon, you can have it all.

For as powerful and as dark as he is, despite the patient hunger in his golden eyes, you realize he’s waiting. You must give the final say. A final say to do away with eons of denying, of plucking dark feathers, of letting them bury your dreams…

“Please,” the words shake from your lips before you can stop it, the tome slipping from your defeated grasp.

His eyes flash with satisfaction, mouth twitching with the urge to smile, but he relents. “Say it properly, little angel.” His mouth brushes the corner of your lips in not quite a kiss. “Tell me.”

Your wings spread wider of their own accord, trembling and stretching past invisible threads that have always held them down. “I want…I will to surrender.”

You hardly finish your words before you feel the press of his lips against yours, gentle and almost reverent. It’s the first time you’ve ever kissed, and it’s as euphoric as you’ve always thought. Your toes curl in satisfaction, your body hums with arousal, low and beneath the surface but quickly growing.

The hand on your neck tilts you up so he can feast further, a wet tongue sliding along the seam of your lips in a quiet ask for permission. You let your body guide you, opening your mouth to welcome him with a groan.

He tastes like he smells—green tea and honey, a hint of rich bread that you occasionally try in the mortal realm. It’s intoxicating, dark mingled with your fading sweetness. One that speaks of corruption and surrender.

What started as gentle quickly turns hungry and consuming. Your grace shivers as you catalogue every shift in your body, learning from the lessons of his tongue. Each stroke of him feels like corruption, like freedom, like finally coming home and you arch into him for more.

Your white dress slowly disappears before you, your body revealing to him naked and shivering. You try to cover yourself, an urge ingrained in you since your coming of existence, but the demon’s large hand stops you, gathering both hands in his strong grip and placing them at your sides.

He does not wait a second longer, his mouth trailing in worship down your neck and across your collarbone to pepper the swell of your breasts, your core pounding incessantly as he gets closer to one nipple before he wraps it in his hot mouth.

A moan shakes from your mouth, unexpected and loud into the quiet air of this monolith room. Your hands reach up to card in his golden locks, they’re warm and impossibly silky, the flame colored ends burning more than the rest. You let the pain of it singe your fingertips, basking in the euphoric pleasure pain of your skin growing back and burning all over again.

His hand envelops your other breasts, his sharp nails teasing your nipple before he drags it slowly across your areola. Your fingers tighten in his hair from the pain, your core dripping on the marble altar you sit on.

“You taste wonderful, little angel,” he purrs into the wet skin of your breast, pulling away before he gently nudges you onto your back. Your wings stretch languidly to make you more comfortable against the flat surface. The urge to cover yourself is not as insistent as before, the desire eating you up without reservation. “But I must taste more.”

He leans over the altar you lay on, kissing your lips gently before his tongue slides along the skin of your neck and down your body. It’s longer than a mortal tongue, and when they circle your nipples again, you shake at the pronged tip that flicks your bud.

He worships down your torso to dip in your navel, over the dip in your hips before his hands push your legs up onto his shoulders and he licks your sopping core from bottom to top.

You arch sharply, teeth digging into your bottom lip in a futile attempt to stop the moan from shooting from your throat.

You’ve watched the humans many times in the shadows, transfixed when their mouths worship these parts of their partner, but to experience it yourself? To feel the demons tongue part your folds and circle the bud at the top that makes you cry into your pillows at night. Heaven has hidden away beautiful pleasure.

“Look at how much you give me,” he whispers, kissing the inside of your thigh before you feel his tongue on you again, prodding your entrance that you’ve sunken your fingers into at night.

You bite down on your lip, shivering in pleasure as he prods further and further, your legs widening with each current of pleasure until he sinks his wide tongue inside of you. You taste copper from your bleeding lip that heals over quickly, your bare feet digging into the demon’s broad shoulders as he feasts on your essence.

With every gasp, your wings quiver in anticipation, curling into your body to protect yourself from a euphoria that is growing so quickly in your stomach.

“Please,” you whisper in disbelief, hands twisting his hair with your divine strength. He hums in satisfaction, satisfied with what you give and digging for more.

His tongue strokes inside of you with purpose, caressing something along the roof of your hot walls, his nose brushing your bundle of nerves once, twice, the pleasure enough to make your jaw drop, to make you pant feverishly into the air, to make your back arch until the base of your spine hurts as you come apart by the seams.

Your release makes you cry out into the air, the sound brushing along the monolith, the constant pulsing stopping to take in your pleasure before it resumes its steady pulse.

He rises slowly as you struggle to catch your breath, his golden eyes tracing over your shivering form from head to toe. His grey obsidian hands slide up your trembling thighs as he leans over you.

“Beautiful,” he purrs before he kisses your lips. You swallow your taste—tangy and rich like the divinity that courses through your veins. “But I must have all of you to make this complete.”

All of you?

You look down to find that his pants are gone, starlight shining bright on his hips that seem to point down to the member that hangs between his thighs. Your eyes widen—he’s definitely bigger than mortals, purplish veins that trail along the sides, a tip that is darker than his grey, the skin flickering with those shimmering stars you are growing to love.

He’s beautiful, and without thinking you reach out to touch. He’s impossibly hard but also incredibly soft, and you watch in fascination as his dark flame-colored wings expand and shake in supplication.

He leans his head back to the grey skies, swallowing deeply at your touch and there’s a sense of power you feel. To know that with a single touch you can make this powerful demon fracture just a little.

He wraps his hand around yours to stop you, pulling you up so that he can sit on the altar instead. Even though he’s tall, you’re able to reach up and wrap your arms around his neck.

Your wings stretch and flap behind you, sparse feathers wafting in their air to fall around you both in white, grey, and black. Even though you feel loose from your first release, there is a subtle power that thrums with every flap of your wings.

You look at the monolith again. The pulse has picked up steadily, seeming to match your own heartbeat. Maybe there is a connection to the power inside of it and what might be coursing through you now.

As you tail up the length of it until it disappears into the grey clouds, you think faintly of those who cast you out. The pleasure fractures a little with pain, your eyebrows furrowing in disappointment.

“My angel,” he calls to you, softly, turning your gaze back to him. His golden and flame locks are messy, his horns pulsing with shimmering light, the navy and gold armor gone so that he is as naked as you are. “That pain that you feel will go away with time. I will make sure you will never know it again.”

The promise fills you with hope, and the press of his lips to yours makes the sordid thoughts fall to the wayside, your pleasure humming to life at the base of your spine.

The touch of his fingers to your core makes you whine into his mouth, pulling away with only a gossamer of saliva connecting you both. He strokes your bud, drinking your sighs and moans as your thighs and stomach tighten, your fingers digging into his soft shoulders.

He pulls you up onto your knees, your wet entrance brushing the thick tip of him before he guides you onto him slowly. It’s a stretch, far thicker than your fingers and foreign inside of you.

The initial pain makes you gasp, tears pricking your eyes. It feels as if you’re being split in two from your hips, torn apart with a strength that only makes you shiver and moan.

One hand slides along one wing to soothe you, his lips pressing to your neck. Eventually, the pain gradually melts into pleasure, his hands possessive on your hips as he guides you with careful restraint. You quake at the feel of him inside of you, stretching and molding your muscles in each euphoric stroke.

“Perfect,” he breathes against your shoulder. “Look how well you take me.” His voice resonates deep in your core, a sound that both terrifies and entices you, a forbidden melody that you are slowly learning the notes to.

You whimper in response, relishing in his praise as you begin to move faster on top of him, bouncing with a newfound sense of purpose. Your wings flap with more insistence, stretching and bending with the power that begins to seep out of your skin, white feathers less in abundance with each flap.

The demon’s nails dig into your waist and you sigh into the pain, picking up the pace until you’re not sure where he stops and you begin.

The power takes you higher and higher, your skin breaking into a sheen of sweat, your gasps dying in the air as you pant and moan above him. The pleasure at the base of your spine heats quickly, bubbling with sticky satisfaction as it slides down your vertebrae and into your core.

“That’s it,” he growls, nails digging into the flesh of your cheeks, canting your hips toward him so the tip of his member brushes that spot on your upper walls once again.

You choke on a moan, head thrown back in bliss, nails dragging down the solid muscle of his chest. Your wings curl around you, dark feathers replacing white with each thrust.

“Transform for me completely. Embrace what you truly are.”

“Yes,” you hiss, your mouth falling open as you struggle for breath. Your core tightens around him, the bundle of nerves shaking even untouched, and you’re falling, you’re falling, you’re—

The demon shifts again, his member leaving your hot core and denying you of release, your hands now pressed to the altar as you’re bent over. You whine in annoyance, looking over your darkening wings at his large form as he heaves with breath.

He regards you with a dark look, one that shows just how capable he is of picking you apart, and your mouth fills with saliva at the thought.

He draws one leg up onto the altar before sliding into you once more without pretense. You groan around the stretch of him, marveling at the pinch of pain that bleeds into overwhelming pleasure as he picks up his pace inside of you.

What starts out as reverent and gentle soon turns feverish. His strokes are deeper, his hips snapping against your open legs, a haze of pleasure clouding every crevice of your mind as he kisses spots inside of you that makes you groan, hiss, and whine.

The monolith picks up in speed, pulse matching your heartbeat as you climb higher and higher up a ladder of darkness that has always been denied.

You don’t know why, you don’t know where it comes from, but the last slivers of your salvation slide to the surface, tickling your throat one last time before they leave your soul forever.

“Please, please, Father,” you moan, eyes filling with tears of satisfaction as your body jerks with every harsh thrust of the demon behind you. One of his hands weaves into your locks, curling tight before yanking you back to him, arching until our stomach presses into the altar. “Forgive me.”

“We will have none of that,” he warns, out of breath. “You seek forgiveness to someone who is not listening. You pray to someone who has cast you out. And here you are. Under me. Calling for him as you weep on my cock in pleasure.”

His sharp fingers slide down your hip to circle over your bud of nerves and you cry out, tears streaming down your face, power radiating up your limbs. “Keep moaning, little angel. Keep begging.” He leans over you, pressing his hot chest into your wings, his breath hot on your ear as the tips of his pronged tongue slide along your lobe. “In your eyes you are soiled. Filthy. And my sweet goddess loves it, doesn’t she?”

You shake your head to deny, deny, deny. But a hard thrust, a stroke of his thick cock that kisses your cervix, and you sob in the pain that molds into pleasure. Your nipples brush against the cold marble, each icy touch shockwaves down your spine.

“I’ve watched you, my dove. When you study the humans in their pleasure. I’ve seen the way your pupils dilate. I’ve smelt the essence between your thighs. You dream of this don’t you?”

You try to whisper your Father’s name one last time, to show with your last breath of divinity that you were an angel who worked hard.

“You won’t say his name here anymore. Not in my realm—in our realm. Not in my arms while you cum on my cock. The only name you will moan and beg and plead is mine.”

Your wings flap in reverence, responding to his demands as they stretch around you. No longer are your feathers white, now they are inky black, as dark as midnight, as mysterious as the darkness you peer into.

The monolith quickens, a hummingbird’s wings, the bright core sliding up and down the tree-like structure and bleeding with vibration through the ground and up the altar.

Even as your mind tries to deny what you are becoming, your soul speaks otherwise, your core clenches around him unwilling to let go. The demon behind you grunts with each thrust, low and seductive on the back of your neck, his nose smelling the skin.

“I can’t—” you choke, fingers sliding on the altar from your sweat. “Please.”

“Please what?” he groans.

“More, please more, more, more,” you beg, words and resolve splintering in your throat as he rewards you with deeper thrusts, each one making you see the stars that shimmer along his skin.

“Say my name,” he demands, one hand sliding up your throat. You gasp at the subtle pressure on each side, not enough to do anything, but enough to make a dark current of pleasure pulse inside of you. “Let the skies above hear who you belong to now.”

You don’t know where the name comes from. He’s never given it to you. You’ve never asked. But somewhere, deep down in some ancient place in your soul, you’ve always known all along. Known him.

“Nanami,” it falls from your lips like a broken prayer. “Nanami, please—”

His teeth graze your pulse, sharp fangs dragging along your skin as pleasure builds in your body beyond reason. Your wings spread impossibly wide, your skin hums in arousal, hot and stinging.

The monolith’s pulse quickens with you, its light growing brighter as the power in your body travels through your veins to complete a transformation you can feel in your fallen grace. Even with every harsh pump of his hips, you feel worshiped. Worshipped by his hands. Worshipped on this altar in front of a monolith that watches over you both.

“You were an offering—a gift to me. Molded by the heavens. And now you’re mine. And your Father sent you to me,” he growls against your throat. “My dark goddess.”

His thrusts grow harder, more desperate, each one a brand searing its mark into your very soul. A mix of your essence and his precum pools on the altar where you are joined. The last embers of your angelic resistance crumble completely, replaced by an insatiable hunger that mirrors his own.

“Let go. Surrender to me completely.”

“Yes, yes, yes!”

That hot lava at the base of your spine explodes like a volcano of unholy fire as his teeth sink into your neck, marking you as his. Your release bursts from you, your core squeezing his thick member, your muscles seizing as your mouth falls open and your cries echo through the realm as divine light fractures into starry darkness.

All of your abilities that have been repressed swirl within the darkness and mix with the forbidden powers awakening within you. It feels like the very essence of your being is changing, transforming into something wild, a reflection of the demon who guided you with a sultry voice down this path.

You feel a rivulet of your blood trail down the side of your neck from his puncture, blazing with the essence of darkness that now pumps through your veins. He releases his teeth from your neck and turns your head to him with more force than necessary, sliding his tongue into your mouth as he kisses you senseless.

You can’t breathe, your body is loose, your grip on the edge of the altar slipping with each relentless thrust but you love it. Every smack of heavy balls against your clit, every slide of sweaty muscles of his chest against your wings and back, every pulse of your cunt around his cock.

Nanami pulls away breathless, the hand around your throat tightening imperceptibly, the sharp tips of his fingernails breaking skin. His pronged tongue slides along your cheeks to collect your fallen tears.

Every noise that leaves your mouth is against everything you hold dear, a sound of sin, debauchery and lust.

“I’m yours,” you whisper against his lips, your breath punching out of you with each desperate thrust. Nanami’s eyebrows furrow and his nose crinkles with a snarl, his wings pulsing with flame as his release climbs up his body as well. “I’m yours, Nanami.”

“Take my essence, little angel,” he demands, biting your lip until you draw blood. You lick up the coppery tang, falling into the prickly grip on your neck as he takes what he needs from you. “One day, when you have ruled with me for centuries to come, when you are one in your skin, perhaps my essence will take root.”

Your eyes widen at the implication, your soul no longer quivering in blasphemy but in satisfaction. How you would love that. One day. With him.

“Yes, Nanami,” you whisper into him, accepting one more kiss as he strokes once, twice, and a final time before he shivers from head to toe and groans with deep pleasure into your mouth.

His darkness seeps into the remnants of your light, a forbidden dance of shadow and flame now made true. He pumps hot semen into you, far too much for comfort and your essence combines with his demonic energy, feeding the power that still ebbs in your veins.

He falls into you, his hold on your throat vanishing to slide down to your naked stomach, pressing to the spot where he is still lodged inside. You reach back, carding your hands through his burning hair, reveling in the shiver he gives you.

He pulls out of you slowly and your cunt clenches around nothing, legs shaking at the feel of his semen dripping from you. He does not entertain the mess but gathers you in his arms, carrying you past the defiled altar and monolith that has fallen into a gentle ebb once more. The obsidian floors open up again, the thin layer of water rising within a large tub of water that steams with inviting heat.

He sinks you both into the steaming water, your new darkened wings flapping at the moisture that touches your plumage. When he dips your head beneath the surface, it feels like baptism in reverse—washing away heaven’s hold rather than blessing you with it. When you emerge, you feel reborn, your shame and disappointment for your former family now washed away.

You sigh at the effect hot water on your muscles, melting into the large expanse of his chest. He does not speak and you do not ask questions, content to watch him manifest a tray of oils and soaps that smell of green tea and burning honey.

He plucks a marble comb from the tray and drags it gently through your curls, each stroke bending with the texture of your hair to guide without tangle, each pass worship and calming.

Once your hair is untangled and silky, he washes your skin with the soap and oils that smell of him. You study him openly now—the way constellations shift across his skin, how his golden eyes hold both demonic power and intelligent precision, the careful way he maintains order even in darkness.

He dresses you in black fabric that flows like liquid shadow, clinging to your curves like his possessive touch. Instead of the starry sky, the black material is adorned by golden accents that match his eyes and armor.

The altar recedes into the floor and in its place, two large thrones emerge. Carved from pure white marble shot through with veins of gold, they’re identical in height and grandeur—a statement of what he promised you—equal rule.

Dark vines curl around their bases, blooming with black roses, while plush velvet cushions in deep navy make them as comfortable as they are magnificent.

He throws you an inquisitive rise of his brow, what was once used to pick you apart upon first meeting him, now make your lips curl in a smile. You pretend to ponder which you will choose, humming noncommittally before you sink into one chair, sighing into the softness around your body and wings.

Nanami bends down, taking a hand in both of his before he kisses your palm. “You look magnificent,” he purrs, your hand still in his while he sits on his throne.

With a snap of his fingers, the garden walls disappear, revealing the vast landscape that was once shrouded in horror and fear when you first arrived.

Now it appears without malice, without misery or shame, but of exotic greenery and souls who have been neglected for only choosing a path that feels wrong even though it is right.

The heavens is but a distant memory now, infinitesimal in the many years you will continue to exist. Now, you bask in the new power in your bones, in the brush of Nanami’s lips to your palm once more.

As the stars on his skin ebb and fade with light, you take in the muscles of his torso, the strength in his movements as he worships you without speaking.

It has taken eons to get to this moment, but some part of you preens with the satisfaction that Nanami has always been watching, waiting for you to come to him.

Thanks for reading and Happy Halloween!

[dustytufts]

Leafkit and Squirrelkit make "travelling herbs" for Sandstorm before she goes for a walk. They're delicious, she assures the kits, through tears in her eyes. They run away proudly, she rushes out of camp for the nearest creek to wash her mouth in. Nasty, she mouths, but she'll eat whatever they make. The kits' smiles make it worth a wet face.

~~~

Had a ton of fun with this one but don't wanna bog down the main post. A lot of unrelated-to-wc process talk below the cut!

So this was a bit of experimentation with a new brush which turned into exploration into gradient maps.

The original idea was simply to modify csp's mechanical pencil brush into something that felt a bit more natural. It started with simply turning on a bit of tilt-controlled thickness and setting my colour to about 80% grey, rather than black. It didn't quite feel right, but setting the brush to blend with the subcolour on each tip, setting the subcolour to the 80% grey and the main colour to the canvas' colour, then setting the brush's blend mode to darken gave me a brush that felt like it had FAR finer line control.

The lines themselves look like this (on a more saturated bg to show how the values layer/fade in and out with pressure and tilt):

(edit to pic: completely unnoticeable when on the intended base colour*)

This is where the gradient maps come in. The way I usually change my linearts' colours is to make a new layer, mask over it, and manually paint. It gives a lot of control to your end result, but it's time consuming and often takes many adjustments to make it feel like it has enough contrast to make the drawing actually *readable.* If I wanted to add a gradient map to the lineart, it would be unable to read the transparency and would pick from the single value that the lineart is (usually black), then the transparency would take over. This gives me a dull result.

With the "transparency" being an actual colour, that gives it an actual value for the gradient map to read. So instead of having your lines fade from black to the colour behind it (often desaturating as it goes), it'll go from something like dark blue -> reddish-grey -> orange -> yellow. It adds a little something i think, and while I absolutely don't have this down pat, it could be something interesting to explore!

I also wanted to go further with this piece, namely painting it rather than a shading layer set on overlay with the aforementioned gradient maps all over it but ... it wasnt happening. The art skills clocked out for the day. That said, I definitely want to explore how this would look if I coloured everything for realsies rather than doing the fallback method. Could be where they really shine!

[eaudera]

eaudera's detailed tutorial for skin rendering

okay loves i've put together a tutorial in text form detailing my step by step process of shading darker skin + the brushes and techniques I use and why I use them. you will be following along as we shade a piece together, you can find the lineart to the piece here. *turn off your true tone and night shift displays for the most objective viewing.

i wrote a lot on the preview pictures, if you find spelling errors (which you def will) or are unable to read my handwriting, you'll find the typed out version of the writing in the alt text feature.

disclaimer: i'm not an art professor nor am i academically/classically trained in art. a lot of the verbiage and techniques i'm using to teach you all here are from my current self taught and observed understanding of art, light, and anatomy

support me: kofi / ig / twt / commissions

firstly, here are my two staple brushes. you can find the second brush here, i modified it by making it larger.

the lineart brush is very good for easy sketching and simultaneously cleaning up that sketch to produce the final lineart you'll be using in your piece. the diffusion from the erased parts/the diffusion created by lowering the pressure of your pen creates a light graphite effect which i enjoy! give it a shot.

you'll notice quickly that there are lighter strokes throughout this lineart, these are simply acting as rendering guides for me in order to remember certain placements. i erase/draw over these lines a lot.

i initially learned to shade skin on a completely grey background with very slight orange undertones, and for a while this was very helpful in providing the most objective view of the base colors you're using (objective as in free of being effected by colors of different values). as you might know, using a white background for dark skin will seemingly darken the value and dim the vibrancy of your base colors, and using a black background will do the opposite. if you're using a darker skin tone, you want your canvas shade to be of a value that is proportional to your skin tone to avoid the same problems created by colors with too light or dark of a value. now if you're using a screened device to draw, you have the extra burden of screen reflections/wavering color output on different screens, so you're never really sure if the exact color you're using will be consistent across the board. priming your canvas with neutral colors will help with that. whereas priming with more vibrant colors will slightly change the undertone of your skintone (especially if you're using a low opacity brush), but it makes for a funner canvas and more creativity with your color palette imo. if you're a beginner i recommend you stay below the wavy line to avoid too light of a canvas shade.

for these same reasons i avoid keeping my lineart jet black. when you lay down the base colors under a black lineart it can look very unfavorable.

here are some skin tone variants that i tend to use the most, peep how i never wander off too far to the left of the spectrum where the reds are. i definitely favor red-oranges as compared to green-oranges for my skin tones, however, because i stay primarily on the left side of the color spectrum for my rendering, red can quickly become too much too fast. so i make sure to use a skin tone that can work very well with green-orange shadows. for this specific piece i will use the third shade (#2d1606).

heres where the gouache brush comes in handy. i use it very loosely to "prime" the canvas almost. if you've ever done oil painting you'll realize very few artists draw directly onto a completely white canvas, though i've already primed my canvas essentially by changing the background color, i loosely shade over it with the skin tone color using the gouache brush. i find this gives me a better grasp on the composition of the piece due to increased harmony between the canvas and the skin color. it also looks really cool to me and resembles a real canvas almost.

as stated before, priming your canvas with neutral colors (grey) can help give you a more consistent view of your base colors, when you get the hang of understanding the colors you most often use (i.e, how they interact with other colors), you can start using more vibrant and fun colors to color your canvas with! the gouache brush changes opacity depending on the pressure exerted by the pen, if you zoom in you'll notice patchy areas where the canvas color bleeds through the layer more prominently than it does in other areas. for some people this might throw off the consistency of the shadows, but you should be fine as long as you're using a consistently opaque brush (which we will be doing)

i know i recommended beginners use a grey canvas like i did, but since this tutorial is using my techniques i figured i'd also teach you guys how to use variantly opaque brushes to your advantage. we will be drawing on the pink canvas from here on out.

a reference is so helpful, i still rely on references to guide my shadows/lights. i'm past the point of relying on references for exact coordinates for rendering or lineart, but they are still incredibly helpful. in most references of darker skintones you come across, color dropping directly from the picture will give you very grey colors! we want to prioritize vibrancy in this case, so attempt to formulate your own colors or colordrop and increase the vibrancy :)! keep in mind i'm now using the lineart brush to shade. the diffuse/soft corners of this brush allows fewer pixels to be scattered wherever you lessen the pressure, this is perfect for color dropping medium colors to blend two colors together. you'll see how i blend colors later on.

as mentioned previously, red can become too much too fast- so i avoid monochrome rendering as much as possible by using shadows of different undertones. my most frequent combination is using a red-orange skin tone and then using a green-orange shadow.

the value spectrum will be your best friend in mixing values and undertones, i use it all the time to formulate the best less saturated darker shadow that is proportional (not too dark, not too grey) to my skintone value. if the shadow is too green simply increase the magenta, if you're looking for a "reflective" shadow, increase the blue.

when i begin shading, i always slide the curser to a truer orange color on the spectrum and increase the saturation (slide towards the right) while i decrease the brightness (slide down). heres how it looks when i'm jumping between shadows and highlights while trying to keep my colors proportional (but not identical) to whats happening in the reference ^. i most often times will rely on the value tool, however.

you will notice that a lot of darker skin tones have patches of orange vibrancy, these areas are most common on the nose and cheeks. this is only a detail to pay attention to if you're going for more of a realism rendering style :)

now onto how i prefer to bridge/blend colors together by utilizing the blend tool.

i do not like simply blurring colors in order to blend colors together, it can lead to overblending which can make your portrait look heavily gaussian blurred (think 2010 deviantart art... yea that). the brilliant thing about procreate is you can utilize brushes really efficiently, which include changing the brushes you use for blending. so in reality, artists who use the blending tool on its own can still have portraits that don't look it! there also exists plenty of brushes that have properties allowing it to blend into its surrounding colors are you draw. but in my case, the above photo is 99% of the times how i will bridge two colors together. doing this allows me to keep pretty consistent brushstrokes across the whole portrait, which i enjoy. it also gives me better control of the shapes i use in my rendering, an aspect that is pretty easy to lose when you're using the blending tool directly and solely.

in case the blending process is a bit hard too see, heres that same process recreated with different more visible colors:

now once you've placed your shadows where they generally tend to be (according to the reference photo), let's make those shapes a bit more specific and pick up on smaller details to make your rendering look more complete.

your base colors will never be as dark or as light as you need them to be when you begin rendering, making sure you have a decent contrast between your lightsource highlights and the shadows is key to capturing the essence of a light being cast on your character. it's much easier to keep building upon your shadows before rendering the highlights, i laid down the highlights only to create a guide/help me map my shadows better. do not darken the entirety of the areas affected by shadow, you'll find that shadows are rarely ever the same value, it's a gradual process affected by things like position, height, etc. so make sure the darkest of your shadow colors are preserved only in areas where the shadows are the or should be the darkest.

you'll notice i labeled some areas as "detail", adding very specific shadow placements is a detail. in the reference, the model has a pretty prominent brow bone, creating a shadow over where his eyelid creases just above his lash line, paying attention to feature details like this help enhance the rendering and its realism.

now that i've mapped my shadows i'm going to move onto to rendering my highlights and the region of the face where the lightsource is most prominent.

i described shadows as a gradual process earlier, this is because of the lightsource. light tends to spread when its further from the affected surface, creating a larger area affected by the light. of course, this varies depending on how intense and how close/far the light source is. in this case, the light is being casted above him further to the other side of his face, but again, remember that the face is not 2d and more prominent areas are affected more by light. it's due to this that there still exists a, albeit very minimal, shadow beneath his cheekbone. i exaggerate the shadow here for stylistic purposes, but it also helps in keeping me uphold that contrast between the highlight and shadow once again. so i refrain from blending the light into this area like i did in other areas.

midtones are the areas most unaffected by the light source, they're neither shadows nor highlights. and because light spreads, it is brighter in certain areas and darker in others. it is most easiest to blend the darker ends of the highights into the midtones of your portrait. you can emulate this by once again using your blend tool. blend the outer areas of the light and colordrop this color and use it as the darker light more proportional to the midtones. note that before i add even lighter shades to the areas where light is most concentrated, i blend what highlight placements i currently have there.

we're going to switch gears now and focus on the reflective shadow occurring on the darker half of his face.

this shadow is a reflection from the lighter background the model is up against, the light being casted above him is allowing for some bounce back from his surroundings, leading to very faint light visible in areas primarily affected by shadows. hence why i'm referring to these colors as "reflective shadows".

in this case, the reflective shadows are blue, or appear to our eyes as blue. on darker skin, "true" blues (blue-purple) are not often times present. what is present rather, is a very grey tone with cool undertones/a grey tone on the blue side of the spectrum, which creates a blue that is much more proportional to the value of the skintone than a true blue. in this case i used a deeper grey on the pink color spectrum, which is more purple. this was intentional, and was done in order to create some sort of color harmony between the contrasted deep oranges im using for the bordering shadows and the blue-grey i'm attempting to emulate.

while i utilize this blue-grey, out've a purely stylistic choice, i still introduce true blues to my rendering. in fact i love using blue/purple reflective shadows in my art, it creates a stunning and colorful render. in this case, i used the blue-grey as a stepping stool to introduce that trueer blue more naturally. you'll see this happening in the second picture above, where i used a slightly more vibrant and slightly more brighter blue, and used it on areas where this reflection was more prominent (and therefore brighter).

you'll notice how the shadows that border on these reflective colors are less saturated and darker than the shadows on his chin. introduce a darker and less saturated (more green) shadow to that area on his cheek and the darkest shadow of this photo, the sunken area near his nose bridge and inner eye corner. i emphasize this line in the lineart so you can follow this shadow more accurately:

this is also a detail in my opinion and can make your portrait more realistic if you include.

we're going to pivot to his neck area before continuing. you'll find the area of his neck with the most light is also the least vibrant, i laid down a grey base color to emphasize this detail in the portrait. afterwards i added key details. i wanted to stay at least somewhat true to the color dynamics occurring in the reference hence why i used the grey, but i'm not a very big fan of using blatant grey directly on the skin, so i made it more blue.

moving forward, the outer eye and the nose can be some of the most "detail focused" areas of the face when it comes to rendering. due to their more "bulbous" anatomy, light tends to curve around them in more complex ways than the flatter parameters of the face.

when it comes to the many creases that surround the eye, the skin folding over itself creates a very thin shadow from between the folds. the key to rendering this crease is to concentrate the blending to a very small scale, do not overblend the area because the hill created by the crease very easily captures light, creating an area where the shadow and highlight meet in very close proximity. slight blending is needed for this area, you can deepen the shadows in both horizontal corners of the eye for more accuracy. the midsection of the total eye area (eyeball and socket) tends to capture the most light, remember this is due to how bulbous rounder shapes tend to capture light from whichever direction its coming from.

this is of course the case for the nose as well. highlights are typically placed as a dot on the outermost part of the nose by artists, but highlights also spread on either side of the tip of the nose. the nose tends to collect a lot of oil, creating a sort of sheen on the upper parts of the nostril. when rendering a portrait where the position of the head is more cast to the side, the highlight of the nose changes from the bulb of the nose, to the upper nostril. in this case, the highlight spreads, causing a "half tone", or the remnants of the light on the bulb of the nose. this is the easiest place to blend highlights and shadows together. now for the shadow detailing on the nose, i'm actually drawing on top of the lineart on a separate layer. which i'll go into detail about in the next part. you want to focus the shadow on where your lineart is, the outermost part of the nose.

now were going to really detail your portrait by introducing a new layer, the detail layer! this isn't technically apart of the skin rendering, so i'm gonna keep it very brief. this is the layer you're going to render the lips, eyeballs, and eyebrows. more specifically, the purpose of this layer is to reduce the reliance on lineart. in terms of order, it goes above the lineart layer. we're going to soften and even erase the lineart in certain aspects. i use bolder/thicker lines when creating my lineart, but this can become a nuisance/hinderance when rendering.

starting out with the lips:

people w brown skin tend to have two toned lips, with the top lip resembling the same skin tone as the face and the bottom lip being redder/pinker and lighter than the upper lip. in my case, i prefer a more vibrant red for the bottom lip. once i lay down these base colors, i begin shading on the second layer.

i personally enjoy the look of a poutier lip shape, this includes emphasizing the middles of the lips as opposed to the ends. i've highlighted the shapes that this lip shape often entails. the small circles on the corner of the lip line are just pockets that occur when the mouth is closed and become emphasized by the fat around the mouth. the parameters of the lip lines do not often meet these round corners, theres often times a "double lip line", that exists around these areas. i love including that in the art, its very easy to emphasize by simply drawing a highlight from the corner of the lips along the curvature of the bottom lip towards the middle.

shadow mapping on the lips tend to go: highlight, shadow, highlight, shadow. the top lip going inward creates a highlight on the most outward part: the top of the lip. and the bottom lip curving outward thus creates a shadow on the bottom of the lip.

when it comes to the eyeball, i don't draw the white parts as solid white, nor do i make them too bright most of the time. they're most often times an orange grey, i also dont spread this color out if you can notice the uncolored white part of the eye. i do this intentionally to keep some of the shadows that are naturally present on the eye. very specifically right where the upper eyelid sits on the eyeball, it tends to create a small shadow that follows the curvature of the eye. this shadow is crucial, if you can see the first and second picture do not have this shadow, making the iris look more exposed and the eye appears to be held wider.

when it comes to the iris, i do very little. if i'm drawing a dark colored eye i will cover the entire iris brown, before darkening it with an almost black color. i leave the brown sides of the iris exposed to aid in bridging the values between the whiter parts of the eye and the very dark iris. this blended ring also appears on all eyes in real life. lastly, dark eyes tend to show light reflections much easier than lighter eyes. these reflections can be any color in art, in this case i kept it blue-green. i bend these reflections around where the pupil would most likely be depending on the drawing.

next, the eyebrow. i find it tedious to draw individual eyebrow strands when it comes to rendering, i actually prefer to blend the parameters of the eyebrows to create cohesiveness. sparse and fine eyebrow hairs are penetrated by light and shadows more than what you'd find on the scalp. it's harder to see light on someones scalp due to the bulk of hair crowding the scalp, whereas as its easier to see such light on the eyebrow. to introduce this concept to my art, i will initially draw the entire shape of the brow. then when rendering, i erase the parameters, leaving the darkest part of the brow. then i blend. the lower brow bone will be blended the least, whereas the area of the eyebrow connected to the T zone will be the most blended thanks to the shadow following the nose bridge. the far end of the brow by the hairline tends to be the lightest given the light source.

and lastly, i loosely draw a white border around the portrait for stylistic purposes. then i combine the layers (group together your layers, then duplicate and compress the duplicate group so that you still retain your individual layers) to edit. i typically add noise and play with the curve setting. and heres the finished image:

i hope you enjoyed!!

[theprissythumbelina]

So You Want to Write about Horses: Color Edition

Well, your knight better not be riding in on a white horse, because that horse is actually grey! And what do you mean a brown horse? Is your cowboy's faithful horse sorrel or chestnut and what does it matter?

I can help.

(Part 4! Enjoy this post? Want to know more? Check out So You Want To Write About Horses Part 1 and Part 2 and So You Want To Write About Horses: Medieval Edition)

Lets begin with base horse colors:

This is fairly easy. All horses are either red-based or black-based. The other colors of horses are all modifications on these two basic variations. A plain red-based horse is a chestnut horse. If you live West of the Mississippi river, you would call this horse a sorrel. Same thing.

A plain black-based horse is a black horse.

Easy, right?

Genetically speaking, the choice between a black or a chestnut is controlled by the Extension gene, represented as E/e. A black horse is created when the genetics are either EE or Ee, as the Extension gene is dominant. A chestnut horse can only be ee, the regressive form with no black hair expression.

However, black horses are actually not that common, relatively speaking. Most horses are some form of chestnut, ee, or a bay.

The bay horse is a variation on a black base. They have black manes and tails, black on their legs, and red or brown bodies. A bay horse is created by the Agouti gene (A/a), which changes the expression of the Extension gene (E/e). So a horse with EE AA will be a bay horse, like above. A horse with Ee Aa will also be a bay horse, exactly the same. In order for a horse to be black, they must have a dominant Extension gene and a regressive Agouti gene, EE aa or Ee aa.

Chestnut horses have no black in their coat, so the Agouti gene cannot affect them. They can be carriers, however, and make a bay horse when paired with a black horse. A chestnut horse could be ee aa, ee Aa, or ee AA, and look completely the same.

Congradulations, you now know horse color genetics! Now for the fun ones.

Dun Genes

If you've ever seen Spirit, Stallion of the Cimarron, you know this color

^This is the actual colt that Dreamworks animators modeled from!

Dun (D/nd1/nd2) is a gene that modifies all base coat colors. It can modify black, creating a black dun/grullo horse, it can modify bay, creating a bay dun, and it can modify chestnut, creating a red dun. In all of these variations, the body of the horse is lightened, the mane, tail, and legs are dark, and the horse has 'primitive' markings, including an eel stripe down the back, darker face, and leg bars.

If you notice, dun has three variations! D is the dominant form, so any horse with D is a dun of some kind. Nd1 is a variant in the same gene that gives the horse similar markings, but it is not dun, and will be over powered by the dominant D version. Nd2 is a horse with no dun factor, so no markings or lighter coat. Dun horses can be D/D, D/nd2, D/nd1. A horse with non-dun factor (and look similar to a dun) can be nd1/nd1 or nd1/nd2. A bay, black, or chestnut horse will be nd2/nd2.

Cream Gene

Another gene diluting color is the cream gene, which you may know from the famous horse of Roy Rogers, Trigger

Trigger is a beautiful example of a palomino, a red-based cream dilute. As you can see, Trigger has a pale mane and tale and a gold colored body. Cream (Cr/Prl/-) is a dilution gene, or a hypomelanism gene, meaning it prevents red color in horse hair. Any red on a horse will be lightened. Chestnut horses, being all red, will have their entire bodies, mane, and tail lightened. Bay horses, with red hair only on their bodies, will have the body lightened, but the black mane, tail, and legs stay black, creating a buckskin horse

But wait! That horse looks exactly like the bay dun horse! Yes. Yes they do. However, buckskins do not have eel stripes, leg bars, or darker heads, and are a completely different gene. In fact, you can mix the two get a cream dun (Dunskin). It might be a slightly lighter dun.

Because a black horse has no red, black horses with the Cream dilute stay black, IF they have only one version (Ee aa Cr). Cream is an incomplete dominant gene, meaning that two versions makes the effect of the gene even stronger. Double creme dilutes are Cremellos, and they are very pale (but not white!)

The double creme dilute overrides all the other genes. They are still there, but the horse is so pale, you can't see them. A variation of this color is the perlino, a horse with a recessive dilute gene called Pearl (Prl/-)

Pearl is recessive, meaning that one copy does not change the horse's coat. Two copies creates the perlino, and because Pearl is on the same gene as Cream, a false cremello can be created by a horse with one cream gene and one pearl gene. Crazy, right?

Now, there are so many more genes, but lets skip ahead to some patterns.

Horse Patterns

These are technically not colors, but rather genes that selectively turn off color in certain areas to create a coat pattern in horses. The most important of these are Tobiano, Frame, and Appaloosa genes.

Tobiano is the gene for the coats of Paint horses (a color breed with a registry) and one of the genes for pinto horses. Pinto means any horse with large splashes of white, which includes the Frame gene, also known as Overo.

Both of these horses are Pintos, but only the lower one is an American Paint Horse, or Paint, and the top one has the Tobiano gene (TO), while the bottom has the Frame gene (O). A horse can be double Tobiano (TO/TO), Tobiano and Frame (known as Tovero) (TO/O), but a double Frame horse will die an early and painful death, due to Lethal White Factor.

Lethal White Overo is when two Frame horses are bred together and the foal receives the O gene from both parents. The foal can survive birth, but has malformations of the intestines that are incompatable with life. ALL affected horses die within days of birth.

Appaloosa horses are a very interesting horse. Technically, Appaloosa refers to a breed, developed by the Nez Perce tribe in the Pacific Northwest. Appaloosa is thought to come from "a Palouse horse", the name of a major river in the tribe's area. When the tribe was forced on a reservation, most of the horses were slaughtered or given to local white settlers, leading to many Appaloosa horses becoming merged to the Quarter Horse breed. As a result, most people use it as a color term.

Nancy Wak Wak (Umatilla) on an Appaloosa, 1937. Oregon Historical Society Research Library, 018041

The genes responsible for the Appaloosa pattern is the Leopard Complex, controlled by an incomplete dominant gene (Lp/-), which turns on the complex when present, and turns it off when absent. Several other genes control the amount of white, the type of white, how big the spots are, ect. One Lp turns the complex on, but two Lps creates a mostly white blanket, or a fewspot coat.

This horse has double Lp. The horse above it has one Lp, creating the many spotted coat.

Not all spotted horses are Appaloosas! In Denmark, the Knabstrupper is a breed of horse with no relation to the Appaloosa, but with the same gene creating the same spotted coat. Completely different breed, different origins, but same genes.

In all of these patterns, the pattern can be maximal, or very visible, or minimal, and not visible at all. A horse can look solid colored, but be hiding a pattern gene. So if you want to make babies, test your horse's genetics first! You do not want to accidentally cause a genetic deficiency.

Finally, the famous white horse.

Grey and White Horses

Most 'white' horses are actually grey. White horses are very rare. Grey horses are called grey because they are born with a colored coat, but because of the Grey gene (G/g) they lose color as they get older. Grey horses go through many colors throughout their lives.

A grey foal and grey mother. Babies are born with the base color visible, but lose it as they age.

A dapple grey horse in the process of losing its baby coat.

A fully greyed-out horse at adulthood. Even all grey, the skin around it's eyes and nose is still black, because the skin underneath has not lost color, only the hair.

A white horse is born white, will always be white, and is never naturally any other color. The skin of a white horse is pink, because it, like the hair, does not have color.

Sodashi is a Japanese racehorse and a member of a super-rare white horse family. Several members of her family are pure white, due to a mutation that gives them extreme white pattern, much like with the Tobiano gene. Her relative, Buchiko, shows the minimal pattern that gives them their white color.

Same pattern, but maximal and minimal expression!

[kideternity]

[Image ID: A digital colour drawing of kamen rider character Electro wave human Tackle. She is posed in a martial arts stance with one hand in front of her and another raised up in the back, and her left leg bent. She is wearing a modified version of her regular costume- red pants with a dark stripe down the side, a long sleeved red jacket with shoulder pads and an attached short skirt, yellow gloves, a yellow scarf, and circular black and yellow chest and abdomen armour. She has a yellow belt with a large circle buckle on it, with silver embellishments- the buckle is silver, with a red inner circle, smaller grey and yellow dots around the circle and a large black t shape spanning across. Her helmet is round, with a red gem in the middle of long silver antenna, large round light orange lenses with yellow accents, a silver jaw piece and a red dome with large black dots on it. Wavy dark hair spills out from the helmet resting around her shoulders. There are random cool toned lines of purple green and blue apart of the linework and colouring. The background is blue, with a lighter blue lightning bolt going across the middle, with a white border around it and tackle. Besides Tackle's head is black writing bordered by white outlines for the first two words, which says “Kamen Rider Electric”. /End Image ID]

I just think Stronger would have been a better show if Shigeriu died and Tackle got to become Kamen Rider instead

[inlovewithgreta]

Fencing Master - Joan Ferguson x Fem!Reader

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

Summary: Your fencing lesson takes a surprising but welcoming turn.

Warnings: SMUT 18+, Dom!Joan, Sub!Reader, degradation, age gap, praise, glove kink, semi-public sex, squirting, swearing, slight size kink?

Word Count: 2.3k

Taglist: @shslbunnylover

© Do not copy, repost, or modify any of my works.

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

"Ugh- Fuck!" you groaned, letting your sword fall dramatically to the ground in defeat. "This is such bullshit," you huffed, crossing your arms over your chest.

"You're weak," a lowered crisp voice responded, long dark locks of black and grey stray hairs falling from your fencing partner's messy braid as she took her protective helmet off to scold you. "You're not shifting your weight properly, and your arms are like noodles." She grabbed your limp arm to prove her point.

"I'm doing what you taught me!" You tore your own helmet off, letting your gaze meet the darkened eyes of the woman in front of you.

"Not good enough. You're better than this," she stated. "Let's go again." She demanded, putting her helmet back on, and gripping her fencing sabre tightly with her dark, leather gloves.

Your eyes fell to her hand after hearing her leather grip, before letting out a deep breath and fixing your own helmet back onto your head. It was hard to ignore the beads of sweat along your forehead, after all, the two of you have been at this for hours.

After the sparring began again, you were quicker on your feet, planning your movements before attacking. But Joan was quicker. More advanced. More thought-through. She knew what you were doing before you even did it. Joan knew how you worked, how your brain thought.

She quickly picked up on it, and as soon as she felt your confidence grow, letting you think you were going to win, your movements becoming almost too predictable, she lunged at you. Her movements caught you off guard and you tripped over your own foot. Joan was quick to catch your hand but wasn't quick enough and was pulled down with you, both of you falling with synchronized grunts.

"What the fuck was that?" You huffed, tearing your mask off once again and tossing it beside you, too shocked by your fall to realize Joan had fallen on top of you.

"It's sad, really. How I know your every thought. Every move. It's pathetic. I thought I trained you better than this. To lead with your body, not with your mind. Your body knows best." Her own mask flew elsewhere, gloved hands sitting just beside your head as she talked down to you.

"Maybe I just need a better teacher," you seethed, gritting your teeth and letting out a much needed sigh.

"Or maybe you just need another lesson," she sternly stated, using a hand to undo the velcro holding her top together to allow herself breathe easier.

Joan caught the glimpse you stole from her neck to her chest that were coated in small beads of sweat, and took it upon herself to test the waters even more. After all, she did know you better than you even knew yourself.

"You must learn to control your body. Control your thoughts." A gloved hand slipped to your neck, the cold, leathery feel sending a chill down your spine and your body to shiver under her touch that didn't go unnoticed. "Do you think I haven't caught onto you? Your not-so-subtle glances in my direction. That pathetic little doe-eyed look you give me when I praise you. The hunger in your eyes when I degrade you. It's quite obvious what direction your mind goes in." Her knee slid between your inner thighs, forcing a quiet moan from you. "You're liking this, aren't you, little one?"

Your breathing was shaky as you laid in awe, hyper fixating on the leathery material wrapped around your neck and the knee that pressed roughly against your core. When you didn't respond, Joan squeezed her hand on your throat tighter.

"Answer me," she demanded. Lips hovered just mere inches above your own, and the smell of her musky perfume mixed with the leathery gloves were driving you mad.

"Y-yes, Miss Ferguson," you whimpered. Innocent eyes gazed at her with longing, and a dark, seductive undertone that the older woman was craving from you.

"Joan," she said. "You may call me Joan, but only when we are like this. Around others I am still your teacher, your superior. Got it?" She lifted a brow.

"Yes, Miss— Joan," you corrected yourself.

"Good girl. Now are you ready for your next lesson?" A smirk toyed at her tight lips at how easy this all was. You were always her best student. So quick to learn, so eager to do better, so... hungry for her validation, and Joan just wanted nothing more than to feed you it.

Her best student. Her neediest student. Pinned beneath her with a flushed face. Hair sprawled beautifully out around your head. Those lips parted, inviting her in. And those eyes. Fuck... Looking up at her through those curled wispy lashes. How someone like you could be so pure yet so filthy all at the same time. How someone half her age could possibly find her attractive, but she wasn't about to complain.

"Mhm," you nodded your head. "I'm ready for you to teach me about..?" you trailed off, with puppy dog eyes, expecting her to finish your sentence for you.

"Don't be stupid." You squirmed at her words, Joan's hand leaving your neck to unzip and rid you of your protective fencing top, with the help of you lifting your body to slide it off with ease. "You know exactly what I'm going to teach you, don't you? Or do I need to stop what I'm doing and teach you a lesson about listening first?" She gave a faux pout, retracting her hands all-together.

"No- please, Joan!" You instinctively grabbed her leather covered hand, and returned it to your neck, where it had since grown cold from her missing touch. Your expected urgency to keep her going forced a small chuckle from the older woman. "Teach me about control. P-Please. Help me control my body. I need it. I need you, Joan. Please teach me." Your hips bucked with desire, needing her knee to push your button harder.

"You're pathetic, dear." She admitted with a lick to her lips that your eyes followed. "But that's a lesson for another day." Her mouth crashed into yours, leaving you breathless. Her kisses were passionate. Hungry. Demanding. Tongue completely dominating your own, completely expected on both of your ends.

One of your hands grabbed roughly at her top, pulling her unimaginable closer while the other went to her hair. More specifically, her braid. Fingers wrapped around the messy strands and pulled, earning the most subtle moan from the woman.

As much as she liked it, you weren't the one in charge. This was a lesson. And you needed to be taught. She couldn't lose control. Not now. Not today.

She grabbed your wrist tightly, pulling away from her hair but still allowing you to touch her, leaving your hand atop her own that stayed holding onto your throat. This moment was about you, not her.

After repositioning herself to a straddling position, the loss of her knee against your core cause a whimper to escape, missing her touching your needy center.

"So disappointing..." she said with a frown, allowing you both to catch some much needed air. "Can't even reposition myself to better aid your lesson without you whining like a needy little slut." Her hand strained against the leather glove on your neck, wanting to squeeze tighter but having to refrain herself in fear of pushing you too far too fast.

"I'm sorry—" you were cut off by a finger pressed to your lips. "Don't you dare apologize. You do not apologize for that. You own it. Own up to what you are. Let me hear you say it. Say what you are." Her dark eyes gazed at you expectedly, awaiting a response. The correct response.

"I-I'm a needy little slut," you let out a shaky breath, finding it hard to read your fencing master's expression after your admission. Those words, however, helped the damp patch between her legs grow even more. She could get off on those words alone.

"See, that wasn't so hard, now was it? Hmm?" She planted a rewarding kiss to your plump lips as her hand trailed down to your pants. You mumbled a 'no' as velcro was undone, zipper went down, and your hips lifted as you shimmied out of your fencing uniform entirely. All that covered you was a thinly cropped white tank top, and a pair of fitted shorts that just barely covered your ass.

Joan held back a groan at your tinier figure. She was much bigger than you. Much stronger. Much more dominating. The idea of her much thicker, longer fingers, filling you had her heart thudding rapidly in her chest with anticipation. She couldn't wait to see how many fingers you could take. And you were thrilled to find out for yourself.

"Joan..." you faintly whispered the older woman's name as her lips made their way to your neck. "Need you.. so bad..please! I've been doing so good for you. So—so good," you begged her as she left marks along your neckline, soothing her bites with a gentle tongue.

Feeling generous to your pleas, Joan allowed a single hand to roam down the center of your chest, purposely ignoring your breasts as she ran her hand lower. The ticklish spot just below your navel etched into her memory when you let out a very audible hum and your belly twitched beneath her wandering fingers.

"Will you continue to be good for me?" she asked, allowing her hand to skim beneath your waistband but stopping purposely just before reaching your center.

"God- yes, Joan! I'll be so good. Such a good girl for you, just fuck me. I'm begging you. I need you." Her mouth returned to yours, hovering just close enough to your lips.

"I don't hear a please..." she tutted, fingers just barely grazing your clit.

"Please—" words were cut short when you let out your first sinful moan at her fingers circling your precious bundle of nerves. Joan loved that noise coming from you, telling herself she would do whatever it took to keep you going.

Her leather-clad fingers worked wonders as she occasionally pressed harder against your button that forced your hips to grind against the dominating woman's hand.

"Oh, Joan! Just like that," your eyes fluttered shut but the ravenette ceased her fingers. "Keep those eyes open, my little whore. I want to see you."

Your eyes glistened as you reopened them, gaze fixating on Joan's dark, hooded eyes, all color completely gone at her dilated pupils. "That's my good girl. Such a good listener for me."

"Joan...I- I'm gonna...." Your body twitched as you felt your nearing release. The woman above you smirking before shoving two digits inside your pussy, that clenched around her.

"Not yet...Fuck, you're so tight.." she moaned at your restricted walls as she began fucking you with her fingers. The new sensation drove you wild. Her fingers were rather large, more slender, and more skilled than yours. "This little pussy belongs to me now, yes?" She asked, raising her usual eyebrow.

"Y-yes, of course!" You shook your head with a cry when her fingers dove deeper and skillfully rubbed the soft-spongy spot that had your pussy fluttering around her digits.

"Say it. I need you to say it," she pinched your hardened nipple between her thumb and pointer finger, eliciting a hearty moan from you. "Say it or you don't get to come." The pain mixed with pleasure fills you with euphoric madness.

"My pussy is yours...All yours, Joan! I p-promise it's only yours from now on..." You felt dirty at the own words coming out of your mouth but at the same time have never been more turned on.

"That's what I like to hear. You're mine now. Only I get to fuck and stretch this tight pussy of yours. Only me..." She forcefully took your lips with hers, pulling your bottom lip between her teeth before shoving her tongue in your mouth.

Your walls clenched unimaginably tighter, making it harder for Joan's fingers to fuck you but she was relentless, ensuring you would get the release you were craving.

"Come for me, woman. Let me feel you." She whispered against your lips, your loud moans being muffled by her ravenous mouth enclosing your own in a hungry kiss.

Her palm pushing against your clit was the last straw to have your body filling with immense heat as you fell over the edge. Your body shaking, breasts pushing into hers as your back arched from the ground, and fingers mindlessly digging into the back of her neck as you held her.

"Oh...oh fuck! Joan—" You cried out, wetness covered your inner thighs as you mindlessly squirted from the monstrous strokes coming from her leather coated fingers that didn't dare stop as you rode out your orgasm.

"That's it, let go...Come for me.." Her husky voice caused a guttural moan to fall past your lips. She went to go suck the flesh on your neck, but your fingers pulled at her hair, forcing her mouth to lavish yours once more. Needing her mouth on yours more than ever.

"Mmmph..." Your teeth clamping down onto the dominant woman's bottom lip forced a groan from the ravenette as your pussy clamped tightly around her digits that slowly removed themselves from you.

"Congratulations..." Joan smirked, tongue darting out to lick her now swollen bottom lip, tasting a familiar metallic liquid. It slightly stung from your harsh bite as you partially punctured her, but she found herself to be proud of what you've done. "You've passed your first lesson. It's remarkable what one can do if they just... listened.."

Your tired and hooded eyes couldn't help but roll at words, knowing she was completely right, but you didn't dare to admit it to her just yet.

After all, you still wanted another lesson.

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

general masterlist | taglist

[webby-mogai]

cannibalizer / mutual / cannibalized

[pt: cannibalizer / mutual / cannibalized /end pt]

Modifiers for labels under the cannibalistic attraction umbrella(link) specifying if you want to be the one to cannibalize, have mutual cannibalism, or to be the one cannibalized respectively. These can also be used as their own label if one wishes.

These can be applied either to the front or to the end and can be shortened. Examples: mutual cannilial, cannamor cannibalizer, cannheshin-ized, mu-cannixual. The shortened version of each are zer-/izer- or -zer/-izer, mu-/mut- or -mu/-mut, and zed-/ized or -zed/-ized. The dashes aren't necessary but may help with readability.

You can also create combo flags if you wish.

simplified/accessible

[pt: simplified/accessible /end pt]

I'm insane I'm crazy insane nsane. I realized that some folks might wanna clarify their stance on things so I made these I hope they help :3

Based on the gendercannibal(link) flag

Special thanks to the folks on my discord helping me with the colors.

to cut down on the length of this post, after the first description of the stripes I'll remove the it for the rest of the flags with the same pattern.

[cannibalizer flag id: a rectangular flag with 13 horizontal lines. the 1st, 2nd, 12th, and 13th line are triangular. the 4th and 10th line are wavy, and the rest are straight. line sizes in this order from top to bottom: 2 thick, 9 medium, 2 thick. the 4th line has been made to look like it is dripping from multiple spots. colors in this order starting from the top and reflected after the last listed color: black, dark red, red, reddish orange, orange, golden yellow and yellow. in the center of the flag is a heart shaped piece of meat with yellow and orange flesh, and around the symbol are sharp white teeth. /end id]

[mutual flag id: colors in this order starting from the top down are: dark blue, blue, bluish grey, grey, off white, reddish pink, the center stripe is cut in the middle being dark red on one side and light yellow on the other, yellow, light orange, reddish orange, red, dark red and black. the symbol has red flesh. /end id]

[cannibalized flag id: colors in this order starting from the top and reflected after the last listed color: dark blue, blue, bluish grey, grey, white reddish pink and dark red. the symbol blue and red flesh. /end id]

[divider id: a transparent divider with cartoon drawings of a heart, an eye, and lungs in that order. it repeats 5 or so times /end id]

[simplified cannibalizer flag id: a rectangular flag with 13 horizontal lines. the 1st, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, and 13th line are medium thickness, the 2nd and 12th lines are thicker, 3rd and 11th are thinnest, and the 4th and 10th are thickest. colors in this order starting from the top and reflected after the last listed color: black, dark red, red, reddish orange, orange, golden yellow and yellow. in the center of the flag is a heart shaped piece of meat with yellow and orange flesh, and around the symbol are sharp white teeth. /end id]

[simplified mutual flag id: colors in this order starting from the top down are: dark blue, blue, bluish grey, grey, off white, reddish pink, the center stripe is cut in the middle being dark red on one side and light yellow on the other, yellow, light orange, reddish orange, red, dark red and black. the symbol has red flesh. /end id]

[simplified cannibalized flag id: colors in this order starting from the top and reflected after the last listed color: dark blue, blue, bluish grey, grey, white reddish pink and dark red. the symbol has blue and red flesh /end id]

[divider id: a transparent divider with cartoon images of a brain, a tooth, and intestines in that order. it's repeated 5 or so times /end id]

[banner id: a black banner with a white outline and white outlined text with a drawing to the left on a transparent background. the text reads "READ MY IWC" in big text and underneath it reads "anyone can use my terms but I will block you" in smaller text. to the left is a drawing of Higan drawn by John/TOOBOE squatting with her knees together. /end id]

[ponderingsoflife]

Almost there, the ghosts are so close you can practically taste it.

Grian Equinox:

Current Age: 26

Appearance: A pretty standard Grian. Messy light brown hair and eyes so dark they’re almost black. He usually wears a white button up under a maroon sweater as his workplace is kept decently cold, and a pair of khaki pants. A pair of glasses is constantly on his face but it’s a light prescription.

Backstory: One of two brothers who recently inherited a house from his recently deceased uncle. He gets a job at Cleo’s daycare and all seems to be going well for him until he falls out of a second story window while renovating the house. Now he has this annoying blonde guy following him everywhere and he wishes he would just leave him alone, but he never seems to do so.

Joel Equinox:

Current Age: 28

Appearance: Grian’s older brother so he is slightly taller but that’s not saying much. His hair is a good bit darker and his eyes are discernibly brown. He has his classic green stripe in his hair and he wears an outfit reminiscent of the limited life bad boys, with a leather jacket, a plain white shirt, and a pair of black pants. Nothing too fancy.

Backstory: The other of two brothers who recently inherited a house from his recently deceased uncle. He was relatively chill and laid back until his baby brother fell out of a second story window and now he seems to be seeing things. Still, Grian is a grown man and he trusts him enough to make his own choices… and to come to Joel for help if he needs it (and for anyone who figured out the method to my madness, yes, Joel should be a ghost, but that was a less fun idea and I was not dealing with the playboy nascar racer again).

Cleo Zemora:

Current Age: 46

Appearance: A tall woman with fiery red curls that go down to her mid back when tied up in a ponytail. Pale to a concerning degree, with green and blue heterochromatic eyes. A cheerful demeanor and a comforting presence abounds when Cleo is near. She usually wears a navy colored shirt with gold accents (a modified uniform) with a pair of jeans (or shorts depending on the season).

Backstory: The owner and manager of the daycare who runs the baby room alongside Etho. Not very physically intimidating but anyone who has worked at the daycare can tell you that she has screamed at negligent parents before with the fury of a thousand gods, and they are terrifying.

Etho Stone:

Current Age: 45

Appearance: An elderly emo at its finest. Short cropped grey hair and equally muted eyes. A stringbean of a man and deathly pale, somehow even more so than Cleo. He usually wears a simple white button up shirt and jeans, nothing fancy.

Backstory: An employee of Cleo’s working at the daycare in the baby room with her. Unlike his Losing Ghosts counterpart this Etho had nothing to hide. He’s just a chill guy who likes to act like he doesn’t care, only to be caught by Impulse and Cleo gushing over the kids and promptly getting mocked by the duo.

Impulse Siv:

Current Age: 29

Appearance: The only one of the early daycare staff who actually looks like he goes outside. Very short brown hair and deep brown eyes. A tall and large man with a prominent comforting aura. He wears a black button up top with gold accents (another modified uniform) and khaki shorts no matter what time of the year it is.

Backstory: The final employee of the daycare who works in the room with the kids who have aged out of the baby room (ages four and up, which is currently only four to seven). A gentle giant who takes a keen interest in the brothers who recently came to town. He’s also the biggest conspiracy theorist you’ve ever seen but in an endearing way and not the tinfoil hat kinda way.

Tell you what, if someone can name the ghost mentioned in Grian's character profile, I'll share that ghost's profile early.

[sol-consort]

Ever wonder how other aliens think about human UFO conspiracy theorists?

Especially since old human sci-fi aliens look a bit like salarians?

(Been doing a project on the Roswell Incident)

Probably something along the lines of "Humans are over-optimistic, not very imaginative, and kind of lonely on a fundamental speciose level."

The first depictions of extraterrestrial sentient creatures in human fiction—as most UFO conspiracies should stem from those—to no one's surprise, all predate humanity's most notable milestones in space travel.

It's muddy grounds to try and define aliens in fiction, do mythologies count? Are greek gods aliens? Should the sun god be asked to join the Citadel council? And how much designated parking space does a sky chariot need?

Old depictions of aliens mostly consisted of vaguely humanoid creatures in some shape or form, until 1859 when Darwinism took off and inadvertently made a turning point in the science fiction genre and subsequently gave us Les Xipehuz's The Shapes, A Martian Odyssey's Tweel, Mass Effect's krogans and turians, and eventually All Tomorrow's wonderful Qu.

The first depiction of the bobbly-head buggy-eyed grey-skinned lithe little dudes wasn't a depiction of aliens, but us! In 1893 Man of the Year Million

Because the enlarged brain & small body combo has always been a stable answer to "how the vacuum of space would modify a human body through the generations?" And it does hold some truth to it, muscles DO atrophy in spaces, spines DO elongate, and of course without much exposure to the sun, you'll be a sickly dull hue, and what's more dull than grey?

Eventually, this human of the future got rebranded as its own alien species.

Salarian: hey I noticed these depictions of alien life in some black and white human vids. Really cool how much they resemble us despite—

Human: oh yeah! Those are body horror movies lol we wanted to show just how horrid and twisted of a creature a human will morph into if they stay long enough in space

Salarian:....

Human:....

Modern depictions of aliens in media were inspired by the threat of nuclear weapons!

The Eternaut, by Hector Oesterheld, critiquing the dictatorship of 20th century Argentina. Of course, he disappeared under mysterious circumstances :)

Then there was the first ever documented incident of a human claiming to have been abducted by an alien in 1961, coincidentally the exact same year the first human spaceflight ever happened! How bizarre! What could it possibly mean!?

That claim didn't go far in court looking at our lack of connections to any galactic courts or law forces, or you know, lack of the knowledge that they even exist. But boy did it light up the brain of every single science fiction writer in the planet like a christmas tree! Movie after movie, book after book, comic after comic, and even copycat incidents.

And the Roswell Incident! If you're comfortable posting your project I'd love to read it and share it here. Jesse Marcel's confession became the thesis building block that allowed this conspiracy to stand on its legs. Then his son added fuel to the fire by reaffirming that his dad has shown him debris with alien hieroglyphics.

On the other hand you have the many breadcrumb trails humanity keeps leaving behind in hopes of stumbling into some other species in the dark. The calls we shout into space, the literal disk we flinged out not so long ago. This urge, whatever it is, clearly runs deep within all of us.

Even those, sadly, wouldn't have made it nearly far enough from our solar system by the year Mass Effect takes place. I received an ask before about what kind of pre-contact human relics would the aliens keep in their museums, and my mind immediately jumped to the Voyager Golden Record, arguably the most expensive birthday party invitation letter ever sent with the receiver titled: whoever it may concern. The furthest man-made object ever, is only 24,882,989,154 Kilometres away from Earth, which is nothing close to a full light year, not even half a light year, it's nowhere near a quarter of a light year, it can't even reach a single decimal of a light year.

It is 0.002630134 of a light year.

:)

it's... it's literally right over there, just right there, sitting on our porch, haven't even ventured into the frontyard.

Indefinitely the future awaiting all of human relics, to be fished up by the Alliance in a walk of shame cleanup, like that of a flop post you delete after an embarrassingly long time of it not getting a single not. I am fine. no really. I am fine :)

Art is a mirror, naturally humans have used it to reflect themselves and the circumstances of the current state of their world. We're not as imaginative as we claim to be; there are only 37 possible stories to tell. We hear of people's discoveries in the olden times and think how could they have possibly came up with that! Then, you trace back the timeline and surrounding events and it becomes abysmally clear how they came up with it, what went down, and what inspired them. It is not a coincident that tiktok shifting trends picked up just as corona quarantine did, and arguably at the height of Isekai tropes in anime and manga.

Do aliens exist? Yeah, indefinitely. As bacteria, most likely. The universe is vast. But because we are so very unimaginative, we think they must be humanoids and they must use flying spaceships. Maybe they prefer riding space ponies?

I mean... the singular animal (if it is truly that and not some eldritch abomination) on Earth that doesn't rely on oxygen to live, is theorised to be an evolved cancerous growth that eventually split off and formed its own semi-species. How cool is that!? A multicellular being WITHOUT a mitochondria! It's literally an alien right there! Henneguya salminicola is as alien as you can fucking get in a 0.002630134 light year radius. Have any of the science fiction writers considered NOT giving the aliens mitochondria ?? huh? HUH???

And if we go by evolution and natural selection, then aliens are most likely to look like crabs than oversized puny apes.

Anyway this all has been what I imagine a very caffienated Salarian to explain to you in the hallway, in an unskippable cutscene while you stand there squinting, wondering if this 3am bathroom trip was worth it.

[changelingsandothernonsense]

Some random notes on Joshi's design because I can.

Or I talk about accent colours on discord and paste it here. This is a long post that contains nudes, however it is placed under a cut with a disclaimer.

Joshi's main colours are black, beige and vermillion. I tend to describe his magicka aura as also being an orangy-red as well. Vermillion is his accent colour design wise.

The vast majority of his clothing is either black or neutral-toned, so that makes the accent colour pop.

So whilst that second one is an outdated design, it's using the same basic idea. Vermillion accents on neutral coloured clothing.

He adds elements of chitin plate as parts break or become extinct. So the armour has a large beige component by 4E199. But I haven't done a fully finished version of him in full armour just yet. It's essentially this Netch leather set that I've modified.

I use a lot of steppe cultural influences in his costumes, there's fun flippy toes from his gutals.

One day I'll finish the flats on these but this is his mid-game Morrowind armour, has a lot of ashlander elements to it for wandering through the blight infested areas.

It's mostly dark chitin plate and boiled netch leather. He's technically wearing a chitin helmet but it's wrapped in a plain linen wrap with a vermillion accent.

Both line arts are the same armour set in various stages of disrepair as he fights his way through Kogoruhn. Pants are a faded olive green, shirt is the same plain linen that wraps his helmet and the netch leather is a darkish grey purple. Salk chitin is used for his plate. Scarf and sash are vermillion.

Now for some talk on the secondary colour that I use for his nudes, under the cut due to blatant nudity.

Josh does have a secondary accent colour, which is violet. Mostly it's emphasised when I'm painting him without clothes, but his face tats dictate the colour of his Morag Tong tat (violet) and his prisoner serial number dictates the colour of his marriage tattoo (black).

So whilst his main accent colour is still surrounding him, and I've used it again in his lounge robe in the sfw piece. The nude shows the secondary colour is a dusty violet.

The purple I've chosen below is because it ties him to the Blighted hive mind, which is always presented as ash skin and darkness until one reaches Aetherius. (or becoming an Ascended).

Below I'm pulling magenta for an accent since it's a medium between the two main colours (as suggested by @naturalbornlosers who hit the nail on the head). I use the colour as his ash goggle lens tint too.

[argumentalist]

You know, I don't love the original Mobile Suit Gundam. And I didn't think the RX-78-2 Gundam was that great. But the more I build the more I appreciate this iconic design.

This is my first time building an Entry Grade kit. I guess I'm not entirely sure what I was expecting, but this kit genuinely surprised me.

We've got a bunch of these weird double runners. A1/A2 molded together. I guess I don't understand why you wouldn't just call the whole thing the "A" runner.

The molding is fantastic on this kit. Nice, sharp details. And the gates are virtually nonexistent. According to the instructions you can pop this thing together without any tools at all - not even nippers.

I used my nippers out of habit, and a glass file here and there... But, yeah, probably not needed.

I used a gold Gundam Marker on the eyes. They were just molded in yellow plastic and I didn't think they popped enough.

Fun fact - there's no black plastic in the head. That darkness around the eyes is just a shadow created by gaps/recesses in the plastic. Some smart engineering there from Bandai.

Surprisingly good articulation here in the torso - there's a couple joints in there to allow a fantastic ab-crunch.

And I'm loving the colors in this plastic. That yellow is nice and rich.

The color separation is also very surprising in this kit. There's no stickers at all. That "v" in the crotch is a separate bit of yellow plastic poking through the red. There's High Grade kits that don't have color separation this good.

The arms and legs are honestly kind of a let-down after the rest of this build. They're very hollow with very simple joints. The articulation isn't great. And it all feels very tight and stiff.

If I understand correctly, this is what makes it the Full Weapon Set kit - the addition of effect parts for the beam sabers, the beam javelin, hyper-bazooka, and Gundam hammer. A nice little bonus considering how cheap this kit is.

I wish there was an effect part for the beam javelin - that grey plastic doesn't look great. But I guess that just means I'll have to paint it.

This is everything you get in the basic Entry Grade RX-78-2 Gundam kit. While you do get the handles for the beam sabers, there's no effects parts.

I painted the sight/lens on the beam rifle with a yellow Gundam Marker - again, it just looked too plain in the grey plastic.

While the joints are stiff and the articulation isn't great, it can still pull off some very nice poses. And the light weight combined with the stiff joints mean that it'll hold any pose just fine.

That beam javelin just doesn't look great out of the box. And due to how the handle and hands are designed you can only hold it way down at the base. I'm definitely going to have to paint it eventually... And I might modify it a bit so it can be held up on the shaft.

This is really a very surprising kit. Much, much better than I was expecting.

The build was very simple and fast. It didn't have the satisfying complexity of a Real Grade. It doesn't have the heft or weight of a Master Grade.

And it's a very simple, anime-accurate design. There isn't a lot of surface detail to panel-line or anything like that.

But it looks really good once its built. And all of that simplicity means it should be very easy to customize.

I'll happily build another Entry Grade kit. And I'm already thinking about interesting ways I could customize one...

[jupiterswasphouse]

WASP REVIEW - WIND BEES (& COHORTS) (THE DENPA MEN: THEY CAME BY WAVE)

[Image ID: A screenshot of the Wind Bees from The Denpa Men: They Came By Wave /End IDs.]

Here's one of the games I've played through very recently! A silly little 3DS RPG called The Denpa Men: They Came By Wave, the first in the Denpa Men franchise, released in 2012. It's a fun little experience, a very casual game for the RPG genre, I would say, if a bit harder to play when you're not taking your 3DS everywhere you go (which I'd imagine even most 3DS owners aren't in the year 2024) due to the little gimmick of obtaining more Denpas through the presence of "radio waves", which wouldn't be a big deal of they actually meant radio waves, but it's actually more about the presence of possible internet connections. You can get them through QR codes partway through, but that's mechanically discouraged, and also besides the point for the purposes of this review! I would absolutely recommend this game, yes, but we're here to look at a particular set of enemies within!

In the first forest area of the game, you'll encounter Wind Bees, which are both recognizable as Hymenopterans and odd to say the least. Their body shape is very clearly wasp or bee-like in nature, with the expected black and yellow markings, and the proper wing count. But their wings are also a bit oddly shaped, with a strange bend in them near the base, as are their forelimbs, with modified, scythe-like tarsi/tibias (possibly even the femur is modified, it's very difficult to tell at the resolution of the Nintendo 3DS). These forelimbs bring two families of insects to mind, those being the shield-handed wasps and the mantidflies/mantid lacewings.

[Image Sources: iNaturalist, david99, and The Michigan Nature Guy | Image IDs: Two photos, one of a black and yellow shield-handed wasp, and the other of a red, yellow, and black wasp mimicking mantidfly, both on different types of green leaf /End IDs.]

They also seem to be missing a pair of legs, but they've gained one more feature, a sort of horn that protrudes from their heads, and appears to be just as sharp as their forelimbs. Speaking of their heads, they don't appear to have occeli, nor mouthparts of any kind, the only other notable features of their heads apart from their horns being their antennae, which oddly stand in such a way that they're positioned slightly backwards, and their compound eyes, which are purple, a color only really found in iridescent species of Hymenopterans. Their stinger, too, something that is most typically black, is purple in these deadly bees, as well as being oddly big and visible. Finally for their appearance, their mesosoma (functional thorax) seems to be quite dark, while their head and metasoma (functional abdomen) are lighter in color, a feature found in a multitude of Hymenopterans, but not the ones we generally call "bees".

Ah, but they're not the only bees in this game, as there are several other reused assets bee variants to be seen, notably the Killer Bees and Doom Bees (I feel like I remember a blue variant too but I'm not sure and information on this entire franchise is honestly kinda sparse 💀 so do tell me if I missed one).

[Image IDs: Two screenshots, one of them being of the Killer Bees, a red and white variant with yellow wings, while the other is of a Doom Bee, a black and grey variant with red eyes and blueish wings /End IDs.]

The first one, the Killer Bees, have a red and white coloration that resembles very few bugs, perhaps vaguely comparable with certain ichneumon wasps amongst Hymenoptera, but much closer to the colors of a red cotton stainer from the order Hemiptera.

[Image Sources: BugGuide.net, Judy Gallagher, and Lucidceentral, PestNet | Image IDs: Two photos, one of a red, black, and white ichneumon wasp on a green leaf, and the other of a red and white, red cotton stainer bug on the underside if a very thin twig /End IDs.]

While the latter, the Doom Bees, I actually can compare directly something we would typically categorize as a bee, Megachile aurifrons, or the Golden-browed Resin Bee! Not a one-to-one comparison with that golden brown frons (the particularly fuzzy facial plate), but at least it's something.

[Image Source: Nature's Place/Being Mark, Mark Berkley | Image ID: A photo of a grey, black, and golden brown Golden-browed Resin Bee with red eyes preparing a burrow /End IDs.]

Theeere's not all that much else too 'em though, and they all generally have the same attack pattern too, with a slashing gust of wind from their forelimbs and a direct charge reminiscent of a horned mammal. Oddly, they don't used those massive ovipositors for anything at all, maybe this is a family that doesn't have that stinging venom, in which case they'd more likely only really use them on something they'd consider to be prey, which is a good thing for the Denpa Men I suppose.

That said, there's not much more that can be extracted from the game in terms of their behaviors, considering they're enemies in a fairly simple RPG with no in-game encyclopedia or Pokédex equivalent to speak of, and there isn't much documentation on the Wiki for them anyway. Even the screenshots I had to get directly from the game myself, and the Wind Bees are very early game! So, I believe we can end things off there, my conclusion being, they have some similarities and an honestly really cool design, but they're obviously fantastical in nature, and thus not very accurate! That's entirely fine for a fantasy creature, but since we're being analytical here, my rating has to be...

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Overall: 5.5/10

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Leave your wasp review suggestion in the replies, tags, or askbox!

[pleistocene-pride]

Balearica pavonina better known as the black crowned crane is a species of large bird in the family Gruidae which is endemic to the wetlands, grasslands, croplands, marshes, lakes, and rivers of subsaharan Africa. There are two recognized subspecies: the West African black crowned crane (B. p. pavonina) and the Sudan black crowned crane (B. p. ceciliae). Black crowned cranes typically live alone or in pairs but maybe found in groups of up to 20 birds. Black crowned cranes are generalist feeders, with a diet consisting of seeds, grains, nuts, fruit, grasses, insects and other invertebrates, and small vertebrates such as lizards, amphibians, and fish. Black crowned cranes are themselves preyed upon by crocodiles, large monitor lizards, wild dogs, large cats, hyenas, and large birds of prey. Reaching around 3.41ft (1.04m) in length, 6.9 to 8.8lbs (3.1 to 4kgs) in weight, with a 5.9 to 6.6ft (1.8 to 2m) wingspan, these large birds sport long necks and thin legs. Naturally, it is characterized by its dark slate-grey to black plumage, and it has stiff golden feathers at the top of its head which make up its crown. Other distinct features of these birds include the white feathers on the upper section of their wings and the small pouch of red skin, the gular sac, hanging underneath their chins. Juveniles are mostly grey with a brown crown and a nape, grey to brown body. Breeding occurs from may to December for the west African cranes and july to January for the sudan cranes, varying depending on the local weather. Nests are built within or on the edges of dense wetlands and are constructed with grasses and sedges modified into circular platforms. Here 1 to 3 eggs are laid and then incubated in shifts by both parents for 28 to 31 days until hatching. Chicks will forage with their parents in grassland areas the day after hatching. Fledging takes place between 60–100 days. Under ideal conditions a black crown crane may live up to 30 years.

[crying-over-cartoons]

Ninjago Characters in Petz

[image ID: Zane, Cole, Nya, Kai, Pixal, Lloyd, and Jay from Ninjago, redesigned as cats in the video game Petz. end ID]

You see these critters? I made these. I meant to make a post about them but then forgot, so I'm doing it now, lol

This post is pretty lengthy, so here, have a readmore:

Briefest possible introduction to Petz: It's a series of virtual pet games from the 90s, and it has a prolific modding scene. You can read more about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petz

The creations I will be talking about in this post were made for Petz 4.

Terminology:

"Hexing" refers to the process of creating a mod for Petz, since it required a hex editor in the early days, before dedicated programs were made. Hex editors are still used for some modifications, such as changing a petz' personality values.

A "hexie" is a breed or pet created via hexing.

The first NinCatGo (yes that's what I call them) hexie I made was Zane, because he's my favourite character. I initially intended to only make Zane, but he was so dang fun I decided to make some more.

[image IDs: Zane from Ninjago recreated as a cat in the game Petz. he is grey with silver and light blue accents, a blue nose, and blue whiskers. he has pale blue eyes with white pupils. in the third image, he is wearing neon green shutter shades, a green tail bow, and a sweater patterned with the aromantic flag. end ID]

Next up was Jay. He blends in incredibly well with most of the carpets and rugs in this game.

[image IDs: Jay from Ninjago recreated as a cat in the game Petz. He is dark blue with lighter blue speckles, a dark grey nose, and blue whiskers. his tailtip, legs, and ear insides are lighter blue. he has yellow eyes, freckles, and pawpads. end ID]

After Jay was Nya. Designing her was SO fun! Like Jay, she also blends into the carpets and rugs. She's doesn't act as angry as she looks, but I based her off of the Black&White Shorthair from the original game, and those cats are just kinda like that...

[image IDs: Nya from Ninjago recreated as a cat in the game Petz. she has blue fur with black tiger stripes. her belly, face, tailtip, and ear insides are lighter blue. her nose is dark grey, her whiskers are blue, and her eyes light blue. end ID]

Next, I made Kai. I used Nya as a base, but recoloured the tiger texture I was using, and made his tail and ears crooked by borrowing some code from the Alley Cat, a base game breed.

[image IDs: Kai from Ninjago recreated as a cat in the game Petz. he has red fur with brown stripes. his belly, tailtip, and ear insides are orange. he has a red nose and whiskers, and bright red eyes. he has multiple kinks in his tail, and his left ear is shorter than the right. end ID]

After that came Cole. He's the first one I made a texture for; all the other textures are either from the game, or downloaded from other websites. Cole's lava texture though, that's all me!

[image IDs: Cole from Ninjago recreated as a cat in the game Petz. his fur is black, and his face, belly, and ear insides are orange. his tail and legs have been textured to appear to be made of lava. he has black whiskers, a dark grey nose, and yellow eyes. in the third image, he is carrying a pink yarn ball. end ID]

Then came Lloyd. I left him for last (I didn't plan to make Pixal at the time) because his modifications are the most complex, requiring me to make a new tail, ears, horns, and mane for him (modifying the original tail and ears wouldn't work, because it would cause the animations to break and just generally be horrifying).

[image IDs: Lloyd from Ninjago recreated as a cat in the game Petz. he has green scales, with blonde fur on his legs, tailtip, face, throat, and ear insides. he has a blonde mane, and two black antlers. he has black whiskers and bright red eyes. in the third image, he is wearing shamrock-shaped glasses, a yellow collar, and a yellow tail bow. end ID]

Shortly after creating all of these guys, I decided I hadn't had enough, and made Pixal as well. I used Zane as a base, and created a new circuit texture for her. Considering there's a total of like, two purple colours available in the game's palette, I'm very happy with how she turned out.

[image IDs: Pixal from Ninjago recreated as a cat in the game Petz. she is light silver with white and purple accents. Portions of her body are covered in a circuitry texture. she has blue whiskers, a blue nose, and green eyes with white pupils. end ID]

Congrats on reading this far! If you like what you see, may I suggest giving Petz a try? For new players, I'd suggest downloading Petz 4 from this site: https://mazzew.neocities.org/ (warning for flashing imagery!)

You can also see some more images of these guys and a bunch of other neat Petz stuff on my own site: https://thecatingrey.neocities.org/

I hope I can manage to inspire at least one Ninjago fan to pick up Petz. It's an incredibly fun and low maintenance game, and unlike games like Animal Crossing and Nintendogs, time doesn't pass in-game when it's not on. This makes it the perfect virtual pet game for someone like me, whose Neopets are currently languishing and whose Animal Crossing island is in shambles.

Not to mention, the community for the games is incredible. I always struggle to describe it in words. Never before have I seen an online community this friendly and welcoming. The amount of talent I see every time I visit a new site is mind-boggling. I've genuinely been inspired to learn new skills because of some of the amazing things I've seen.

There are people who have been in this community since the games came out, and there are some websites that are nearly as old. Finding this community opened my eyes to a whole new world- one that I thought disappeared before I could use a computer. But the old web still exists, and there's a place for you in it.