#and update it weekly when i do.

[sticktrix]

Duel, a one-page two-player Caltrop Core TTRPG

A small TTRPG about improv and dueling your worst foe, your best friend.

A simple rule set written like a story. Built off the caltrop core by @titanrpg

check it out on Itch at https://sapph-ink.itch.io/duel

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

A fierce duel commences!

[deoidesign]

My comic is so pretty...

The hiatus is letting me take a little extra time on these episodes, and I'm definitely putting it to good use!!!

[whatlovelybones-if]

detective kaufmann finishes their cigarette with one last drawn-out drag. they let the embers brush against the edges of their fingers, singeing the almost-healed scabs of burnt skin. for all it’s worth, they don’t react to the pain; instead, they just drop the cigarette and crush it beneath their shoes.

running their fingers through their light blonde-hair, the detective turns to the constable who is watching them a little warily. hiding behind that wariness, however, was a hint of respect for this tall, young detective in their white button-up and an overcoat.

“any additional information i should know about the crime scene we just examined?” the green-eyed detective asks, their tone losing its usual playfulness.

the constable hesitated before taking out a plastic bag with a piece of paper inside. “just this. it was found in the front pocket of the victim’s polo shirt. the people who got the parcel confirmed that they don’t recognise the man or the handwriting.”

the detective opens the bag and carefully fishes the paper out with their gloved hands. aside from noticing that it must have been a post-it note from the colour and type of paper, there was nothing extraordinary about it.

they turn it over. even though detective kaufmann knew that the note wasn’t intended for them, it still makes their hackles rise in slight alarm. they purse their lips as their suspicious gaze falls on the people who received the ‘package’.

the detective always trusted their instincts and this time, their gut told them that something was amiss here; there was something that these people weren’t being honest about. because written in blood-red ink, there were four chilling, yet puzzling words:

are you afraid yet?

[horseslur]

"hey yeah we didn't feel like doing long questlines anymore :) sorry!" feels like an ao3 author's note who stops posting and leaves their fics unfinished on chapter 25/27 because they moved fandoms, except this is a (supposedly) professional company getting paid to produce a product people are paying for who are just leaving not just the event questline but like half a dozen proper questlines in general abandoned and unfinished in their game on what is essentially a whim.

Finishing a project is a skill that is quite literally expected of university students, let alone working adults, and offering good experiences to your players means giving them satisfactory endings to quests after stringing them along for years.

Any goddamn professional who goes "hey these long questlines aren't working, lets shift to a more stand-alone shorter style of quest development" should still have the goddamn decency to finish the ongoing quests instead of abandoning them entirely. It's messy and immature not to.

"oooo but [insert name] left the company!! so we don't know how to finish it :(" the only thing less professional than just throwing shit out unfinished is to have entire parts of your process rely on a single person with no way to pick it back up if that person gets sick/quits/gets fired. do fucking better.

[collegeboysam]

Summary:

After many years of self-destructive reflection, Aemond Targaryen has come to terms with the conclusion that he needs Lucerys Velaryon getting run through. Be by his sword or by his cock, he does not care. Both, perhaps, if he’s being honest with himself. So, when time comes for Lucerys—heir to Driftmark and second son of the Queen—to become betrothed following the old costume of political unions, all his suitors start to drop like flies. Aemond watches with amusement the chaos that the harm and disappearance of high-borns causes across the realm, all with a perfectly composed expression. Mostly. He knows it won’t take long before someone in the small council or his family finds out the entire thing’s his doing. Doesn’t matter. His dear nephew simply cannot belong to anyone else when he still has so much to repay to Aemond first. Flesh for flesh is what he wants. No, what he needs. More so after realizing Lucerys himself might be plagued by the same desperate hunger Aemond has been fighting for years. Can’t have any of it if the little fucker is getting married to someone else.

Fic on AO3

Pairing: Aemod Targaryen/Lucerys Velaryon

Rating: Explicit

Main Tags: Enemies to Lovers, Canon Divergence, Aged-Up Characters, Hate to Love, Mutual Pining, Mutual Lusting, Slow Burn, Mutually Obsessed Body Worship/Sex.

[reireichu]

dear friends, romans and countrymen, it is with sincere regret and pain that i must inform you that as of s02e02, ARMAND HAS NOT YET FUCKED THE OLD MAN.

[lilacxquartz]

Don't Make Me Feel Alive I Chapter 4

Kenjaku (Pseudo-Geto) × Fem!Reader

[This fic contains Shibuya Arc spoilers and is updated every Saturday.]

ABOUT: Diagnosed at an early age with an illness that slowly deteriorated your body; you went from being a promising sorcerer to a retired husk of your once former self until he found you, offering you an opportunity to live instead—not that you had a choice to refuse.

CHAPTER SUMMARY: Your bond with him thickens but there’s still a lot to uncover. Meanwhile, Kenjaku plots something a bit different than what you agreed to.

TAGS/THEMES: (starting next chapter): »yandere, chronically ill reader, forced dynamic, non-con, dub-con, violence, caretaking, unrequited feelings, sorcerer reader, dead-dove, mixed pov, potential interpretations of dubious sorcery«

< Previous Chapter • Next Chapter >

4. Bonding

You tried to understand why he was so beaming despite how he treated you the day before, but with little avail.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” you warily asked.

“Oh,” he seemed to be caught off guard that you caught him but recovered nearly instantly, “I decided on something.”

“On what?” you asked.

He glanced down at you with his expression suddenly cold, before returning to an unreadable smile, “You’ll see.”

After that strangely cold interaction with him last night and after such a strange morning, such behaviour seemed to never repeat ever again. Even when the continued practice of the technique seemed to wreck its toll on the energy output and even when such drainage sent you off to an early night—he never once repeated such coldness with you again.

As a result, you decided that it was best to not dwell on it again because it didn’t make sense for you to be upset over such trivial things. The agreement was to help him out as he figured a way out to help you live, that was it, so as long as he remained conditional to his promise, you decided that how he treated you in the end didn’t really matter.

However, as the days continued to pass you by and you invested more time into researching ways into improving both energy input and output, you couldn’t help but feel more and more curious about what your involvement actually was here.

“No seriously, what am I helping you with?” You asked once more, having done so just a moment ago. You felt frustrated, finding that you didn’t quite like how he ignored you the first time.

Kenjaku in the meanwhile resisted spilling you the full truth, biting onto his tongue as he held back a smile, “As I already told you, you’re going to fight.”

Oh, how he wanted to spill it all, but he knew better than to tell you the full truth. It was already a miracle that you were fighting someone from your side; rather, that you switched sides immediately in exchange for life.

Mortality was so easy to play around with.

“Who?” you persisted.

“That’ll depend when the time finally comes,” he replied, leaving more questions than answers.

You sighed in response, finding yourself growing increasingly frustrated as he purposefully kept you in the dark, “What time, though?”

“You’ll know when I tell you,” he simply replied as his eyes squeezed with his smile, pointing straight down at you.

“But-”

“—Don’t worry about it,” he dismissed, leaving you utterly frustrated.

Despite finding your frustrations amusing, he did have his reasons for keeping you in the dark about his plans that went beyond just losing your willing participation, even if he could force your hand. There was the experiment he was running on the cursed tool for one and he didn’t want to feed into unnecessary stress that could likely deal more strain for the battery.

At least for now, he wanted to keep the drainage minimal which is why he excluded you from strenuous activities while assisting you with the tedious ones; such practice that he dubbed training, even if it was just helping your body to relearn eating independently, to utilise cutlery efficiently again, to aiding you in walking and even to helping strengthen your mind through reading and puzzles.

Even if you didn’t realise it, all of these tasks helped you gradually decrease energy consumption. Just like he planned initially.

As he noted earlier on before too, the company that you offered him wasn’t half bad, so he didn’t actually mind assisting you during such tasks, no matter how pointless or boring they seemed to either of you. Moreover, he introduced you to the concept of helping him with his own work, such as aiding him with the more tedious aspects of his planning.

However, despite giving you such independence, he still kept you relatively closeby, just in case another hiccup resurfaced.

“Hold still for a moment,” he instructed, taking the pendant slightly away from your chest but within reasonable reach so that you wouldn’t drop dead, tinkering around with it as you patiently waited. Cursed tool manipulation wasn’t an easy task, but his intentions were to maximise the efficiency of the item so that’s what he did.

However, as he placed the amulet back against your chest, something then went strangely wrong. He did his best to observe your reaction carefully, understanding that perhaps too much energy cast upon a body unused to it was overwhelming on your being.

As a result, your body began to feel off and suddenly you felt terribly dizzy. Again. In a different way though.

It was beginning to get a little tiring, he thought.

Standing up to try and determine what was going wrong, you accidentally ended up plummeting more energy, causing your body to take a heavy hit. Something about it made you feel similar to how you felt on the deathbed just before you met him; something sinister lurking within your instincts and pulling—dragging you off to a place you shouldn’t explore.

You gulped as the pendant waned and the glow subsided as though there was nothing left to keep it fired up and running anymore.

It was then that you felt stiff as your body fell, a dull thud drumming against the floorboards—the wood failing to echo the hit. You felt strangely cold as the feeling persisted; a sensation of pure dread enveloping your senses, anchoring you down into an early demise.

Kenjaku initially reacted slowly, incorrectly thinking that you would recover just like the previous times before. However, as you remained limp and your body grew colder, he froze in place as he realised you were on the verge of something irreversible.

His project had been going so well yet suddenly, it showed signs of failure.

“Hey, wait,” he backtracked, feeling caught off guard due to its sudden failure, unable to mask it so well this time. He was simply just surprised though, not panicked. He mostly just didn’t understand what went wrong.

He didn’t want for something that he had already invested so much time into dying off so early on, especially before your full potential could shine.

Thinking quickly, he transfused some of his own energy into the pendant while extracting the excess energy from your body. It was a slow, intricate and daunting process, however it seemed to be working as your body soon stabilised—your breathing returning back to normal and your flesh once again saturated to its usual complexion.

You later woke up feeling much worse from before though, wondering exactly what had just happened as soon as you sat back up.

“What was that…?” you groaned, your mind begging for answers.

As usual, Kenjaku continued to keep you in the dark yet again as he withheld answers.

He smiled, pushing you gently back down into bed, “don’t worry your pretty little head, I won’t try it again,” his fingertips stifling your lips, “get some rest instead.”

“But-” you let slip.

“—You’re alive, aren’t you?” he stifled, his eyes once again devoid of any emotion, he wasn’t going to answer a single thing.

Too tired to protest, you hesitantly nodded off as your body continued to nod off into a deeper sleep, your body feeling oddly heavy as you succumbed to a weary state.

Kenjaku then sighed a deep breath the second that you did so, continuing to remain locked in place as you slept, slowly inching closer to keep a watchful eye as you did so. Just like always, it was just in case something went wrong.

He sighed again as the familiar emotion resurfaced from before but in a different form, finding that he didn’t like how it made him feel. Eventually though, he too grew tired as his eyelids drooped, unintentionally leaning against the bed as his body yearned for some shut eye. It was then that he decided that it didn’t hurt to even share the same bed, just to monitor you and your sleeping habits if so.

But in doing just that, he secretly felt some form of relief as your safety was now secured, however finding that this might have been too just a little too close for him to be.

Something troubled him as he considered it all, determining that he had to be more careful with his experiments, hoping for some reason in particular that this couldn’t happen again.

That’s why he considered something new—something he wouldn’t usually do.

His mind internally conflicted, trying to convince himself that he shouldn’t risk it.

After all, you weren’t that special to begin with.

(Or were you?)

***

Your recovery was slower this time as it took a couple of days to get you going again.

As you figured out how to get back to right where you were before, you adopted a streak of independence in doing so and usually when dabbling in technique mastery, Kenjaku would often detach from someone who was getting the hang of it, letting them find their own way—but he couldn’t quite do so with you.

Finding that in fact, he didn’t like it at all.

And as he watched you slowly recover and train yourself without him, he didn’t feel a single shred of relief or pride for any longer, as it turned out.

Instead, deciding that since you were his project, that he didn’t trust you to seldom practise anymore. Finding that while it must have seemed irrational, that he preferred it when you were much more dependent on him instead—enjoying your company much more when you seemed to be unable to even function without him.

For some reason finding that it actually made him feel more attached to you.

Not that he could fathom why.

And as he continued to tinker around with the pendant yet again, you didn’t suspect a single thing when he changed something rather drastic in its function. Nor as his tone of voice grew slightly unstable.

“The battery is on standby unless I activate it with a condition now,” Kenjaku said as he offered an unsettling grin, the direction of his change feeling off as though he wasn’t actually addressing you.

“Why though…?” you asked, confused by the sudden change.

He then redirected his sights to meet with yours, leaning in a little closer with his smile falling flat as he did so, “Do you really think I’d trust you to do things like that alone?” He asked, his stare intensifying, “You’re already a lot to work with, you know.”

“But, I really don’t like that,” you chose to protest instead.

However, he didn’t really care about what you liked, only about what he preferred. Yet rather than arguing with you back and forth and getting nowhere, he instead tried to manipulate you that this change was for your own good—your freedom be damned as long as you remained docile and dependent on him, a feeling he unashamedly wanted more of.

“Just think,” he said as he leaned closer, “I can keep you safe from yourself forever,” his breath hot against your temples as he leaned in, “isn’t that so much better?”

Feeling cornered and distressed, you didn’t want to continue this strained dynamic, realising that you were no longer content with helping him out if all he was going to do was to keep you so restricted.

You knew that you were getting into something weird, but you didn’t quite realise the extent of his true intentions until now when he kept pushing nonsensical change after change upon someone he seemed willing.

As a result, you then pushed him aside.

He let you do so though as his lips formed into slightly curved lines—slowly rising to his feet and following you closely behind as you tried to leave the room. Just as you tried to take your chances with leaving through the front door however, he deactivated the pendant to minimal output, prompting you to be hit with a wave of exhaustion instead.

He then grabbed your wrist as you succumbed to the sudden hit of tiredness, leading you back into the room and locking both the door and the window on his way out, leaving you alone for the remainder of the night.

The energetic feeling from before returned.

Perhaps he would talk you into a binding vow, after all.

Maybe you were that special to keep around.

[tangledinink]

are you guys ready for a monday in which i do not publish any new fic for the first time in almost six months.

[captainjonnitkessler]

When a fantasy book series doesn't end it's usually because the author just stopped writing it, whereas fantasy webcomics will update religiously for twenty years and still never end

[verflares]

so it’s totally okay if u don’t wanna answer, but when do you think the next chapter of dragonsong will be out? i know writing block can happen — trust me, i am NO stranger — but an update on what’s going on with the story would be cool! like if life is just too much rn you can just say that and that’s totally fine :) honestly i will wait till the end of time for this fic, it’s too good 😭

hi!! no worries, i appreciate the question ^_^ it's fair too, i don't think ive really mentioned what's going on outside of like. tags on various personal text posts tht u'd have to hunt down. honestly i'm a little shy talking abt it or some of my other og projects on here LMAO which is mostly just. that's how i Am and i know most of my followers that i have now are here for my art and maybe my insane ramblings from time-to-time

anyways, atm i don't really have a clear date for when i'll get the next one out... it's still sitting in my files and i Still have an outline for what i want to happen in it + the next few chapters planned out right till the fic's conclusion. but yeah, planning versus execution is a whole other beast.

i Do want to finish it so much, and i Will... its mostly just various combinations of irl, writer burnout, and i've kind of also just been enjoying getting better at art more these past few months - so i'm doing that in my free time instead of writing x_x. so i guess the state of it rn is temporary hiatus?

i've considered some ways in which it might be easier to say, trick my brain into continuing too LOL. i could try putting out shorter chapters, but i worry if itll upset the flow of all the other chapters that came beforehand... feel free to let me know or any other potential ideas and i'll see what i can do!

[yekokataa]

the end of season 3 of skinwalker ranch was kind of a disappointment. you could tell they thought launching the rockets would be a big finale, and when the main rocket misfired, they had nothing to fall back on and had to resort to what was basically two episodes long of a clip show where they summarized their findings to the former govenor of utah and then the audience

[congregation-of-the-spiral]

I have officially started working on my fanfic

[aromanticasterisms]

yknow i was a little miffed when yoimiya got her second story quest but i can't even be mad that cyno's getting his. he's been around since manga days he deserves it

[goldkirk]

being the youngest person on my team by like 10 years sometimes is REALLY obvious because everyone is talking about home construction and high school kid sports and stuff and my weekly update is “I got a Razor scooter and some new glitter paint”

[bubbleteasing]

I know I just posted something but it’s still going to be a while until I can update my fics again.

Please bear with me for another week or two 😭