#had to dig into my own memories of dying people for this one

[novafire-is-thinking]

(If you're still doing the headcanons) Chromedome?

Headcanon A: realistic

Sometimes, Chromedome’s old conjunxes show up in his dreams. They repeatedly show up in small roles, but he fails to recognize them even though they feel oddly familiar.

Headcanon B: while it may not be realistic it is hilarious

Back in the day, Chromedome used to carry around a dart gun with him; he would shoot Prowl every time he was annoyed or just wanted to be annoying.

Prowl would sometimes walk around with stray suction darts in hard-to-see places, and wouldn’t realize it until someone pointed it out or laughed and pointed at him.

Soon, Chromedome was getting the same treatment by Prowl’s personal dart gun. lol

Headcanon C: heart-crushing and awful, but fun to inflict on friends

After Rewind’s death, Chromedome gradually isolates himself from everyone. Eventually, he disappears, and no one can find him.

One day, Prowl receives a message. It’s Chromedome, who explains that his health is declining. All those years of mnemosurgery are catching up to him, and his mind is failing.

CD doesn’t say it outright, but he wants Prowl to be there for him until the end. Does he still hate him? Of course. But that’s the point: he doesn’t want anyone important to him to witness him slowly losing his mind. He’s counting on Prowl to feel just sentimental enough to come to his aid, yet detached enough that he won’t fall apart when the inevitable happens.

Remarkably, Prowl shows up—ready to be there for Chromedome.

Old hurts inevitably rise to the surface. They fight. They laugh. They fight again. Chromedome kicks Prowl out a few times.

But Prowl keeps coming back.

Eventually, Chromedome’s condition declines to the point where he’s nearly catatonic, and can’t tell the difference between reality, his personal memories, and acquired memories. Prowl can no longer leave CD alone.

Prowl does his best to keep Chromedome comfortable. He ends up confessing the majority of his crimes to Chromedome, since CD can’t tell the difference between reality and memory anymore.

One night, during a final moment of lucidity, Chromedome types up a note to Prowl while he’s asleep.

The next morning, Prowl wakes up and finds the note on a datapad under Chromedome’s lifeless hand:

“Nice stories, asshole.

You were my favorite person to hate all these years.

Good luck.”

Prowl saves the note. He personally oversees the removal of CD’s body and registers the death. Chromedome is buried next to Rewind. There’s no funeral; just Prowl saying his goodbyes.

The only way anyone else from CD’s past finds out about his passing is by doing a search on Cybertron’s death record database or by visiting Rewind’s grave. After the shock wears off, they wonder what happened and how he spent his last days.

Prowl tells no one. He takes the secret to his grave.

Headcanon D: unrealistic, but I will disregard canon about it because I reject canon reality and substitute my own.

Chromedome Tumbler once looked up to Pharma.

In fact, judging from the fact that Tumbler wasn’t bothered by Prowl’s arrogance, bluntness, and know-it-all attitude, I’m going to say that, at the time, he got along with Pharma better than anyone else (besides Ratchet). After all, JRo made it a point to show Pharma addressing him by name at least once.

Happy to have someone who did more than tolerate his presence out of politeness, Pharma would take the time to listen to Tumbler. Amongst other things, Tumbler would talk about the latest developments in mnemosurgery. Trepan certainly wasn’t going to share any of that.

Tumbler discovered that if someone gained Pharma’s respect or fondness, the doc was weirdly good at giving advice, or at least saying things that could be translated to helpful advice. In fact, Pharma was the one to give Tumbler the final push needed to leave the New Institute.

While recovering from his run-in with Overlord, in a moment of vulnerability, Tumbler confessed to Pharma that his spark was no longer in his work at the New Institute, and that he was considering quitting and starting over.

Always one to follow his own passion to the point of obsession, Pharma didn’t hesitate to tell Tumbler he should go through with it (1) if he had a practical plan to transition to something else, and (2) if it was what he really wanted.

After all, the war was only beginning, and they’d all need to find things to give them reasons to hold on…

[thesunfyre4446]

I’m surprised to see so many people happy with the Sept scene, it’s complete illogical fan service.

They should’ve been clawing at each others faces. Instead you have Rhaenyra chuckling and joking “I’ve begun badly” girl, Vhagar made a mukkbang out of your son. A little bit of “Bitchy Alicent” peeked out towards Rhaenyra but still. Alicent knows Rhaenyra is a liar, the “On my mother’s memory” is a dig at that so why should Alicent believe at face value that Rhaenyra didn’t order Jaehaerys’s murder?

Rhaenyra also never apologizes about Jaehaerys, never expresses remorse or condolence. Her feelings last episode were more to do with it being bad publicity and less that a child her littlest sons ages was murdered. The whole thing is being treated like a one sided Rhaenicent fic where they wax on and on about Luke’s death and Alicent must repent for it every single day and twice on Sundays. While Jaehaerys is brushed over, that is if he’s even mentioned at all. His murder is never something that Rhaenyra needs to atone for. It’s never something Alicent or Helaena hold a grudge towards her for. All is forgiven.

That’s what the show is doing.

Not only that the Sept scene has ruined the potential of f Rhaenyra taking King’s landing. This meeting didn’t end badly, they didn’t throw insults or hands. Both just said they had no part in the murders of their son and grandson, both believed the other. Then Alicent let Rhaenyra go peacefully and Rhaenyra never intended on actually stabbing Alicent.

Alicent tells Rhaenyra that she meant it when she said she’d make a fine Queen- despite Rhaenyra never showing the potential to be a great ruler and Alicent deploring her for years because Rhaenyra’s lack of regard for duty usually led to Alicent having to fulfill them as well as her own and Viserys’s.

While Rhaenyra walks away from this reaffirmed with this thought that Alicent is still this pure soul and gentle heart- despite Rhaenyra accusing Alicent of hiding her true nature behind a cloak of righteousness and then saying “Now they see you as you are”. How do you go from getting sliced by Alicent to basically saying “Alicent is a sweetheart, she wouldn’t hurt a fly!”

Sure Aegon is about to almost die from injuries gotten in battle against the blacks and Rhaenyra will lose Jace and Viserys, that is going to impact both women but after this meeting of “It wasn’t me!” The other things can be explained away too, can’t they? Rhaenyra didn’t directly burn Aegon and Alicent isn’t the one who skewered Jace and kidnapped Viserys.

The build up of tension, rage, hate, resentment was just destroyed with this meeting. It doesn’t bode well for the Queen in chains/Half year reign/Maegor with teats storyline. We probably aren’t going to get one of the lines of all time, Alicent saying that her Grandson was an innocent child and Rhaenyra’s sons were “bastard blood shed at war” and Rhaenyra probably won’t even put Alicent in gold chains.

The entire war just seems pointless after this, these two started this way before Viserys died. With Driftmark or even long before that when Rhaenyra had Alicent’s father exiled from Kingslanding and Alicent wore that dress… but they don’t want to finish it anymore?? These women are about to sacrifice their whole families for this and neither of them want it. Now they realize how pointless it all was? How they could’ve co-existed in the same place?

Also, why have the writers seemingly forgotten about Alicent’s very valid fear for her children’s lives if Rhaenyra ascended? Her fears are being validated with each episode yet they’re hinging it all on the ramblings of a dying man while he was dope sick?? On Viserys’s ramblings why didn’t Alicent(the writers) remember the conversation Alicent and Viserys had by the fire in ep 3? The one where Viserys explicitly says “a male babe born to me wearing the conquerors crown” he’s describing his son Aegon. Could Alicent have not countered Rhaenyra’s “he meant the conqueror” with “No, years ago he told me the same thing”

After having the blame of her Grandson’s murder placed on her for having non dissociative sex for once in her life, yet again Alicent will be filled with guilt. This time at the thought that the entire war and its casualties are her fault because of a misunderstanding.

Free Alicent, Ryan Condals whipping boy.

I would honestly take Benioff and Weiss, at least the seasons where they had the material laid all out for them were good. Condal has a full story outline but is still fucking up right out of the gate.

(Sorry for the long rant)

anon you ate and left no crumbs. i truly have nothing to add.

up until ep 7 the show made sense. in ep 6 alicent tells aegon that if rhaenyra becomes queen him and his brother will be murdered. but by ep 8 she apparently doesn't give a fuck anymore?

[hailqiqi]

Done Right, in the Proper Place

In memory of Quil Appreciation Weekend...! I keep forgetting to post my fics to tumblr, which is very terrible of me. This fic is my Garden Party gift for @xluminaheart

Words: 3,319

Read in full below or on AO3 here

>>>>>>>>>⚔︎

It was almost funny, really, how quickly hope died. One minute you’d be full of zest, raring to take on the next big challenge after surviving the odds – top of the world, invincible. The next you were gazing at your own blood, transfixed by the way flesh is actually layered like it is in the first aid books and oh, that couldn’t be a good sign, could it?

It wasn’t, it couldn’t be. And unless – probably, even if – there was a first aid kit somewhere in this godforsaken hellhole, there wasn’t anything that could be done about it.

His exposed flesh glistened darkly, almost ominously. It’s me, it seemed to say. I’m the reason you were finally so useful. I’ve been here all along.

Right then. He released the fabric, letting the feathers fall back into place and hide it all from view. Lucy’s gaze was still on him, but hell if he knew what to say.

Sometimes she walks too close to the grave, Lockwood had once said. And now here she stood in front of him, her boots covered in ice, his very own angel of death.

‘Well,’ he said, finally. ‘That’s a mess.’

‘Oh, Quill…’ she said, her voice thick. Steam rose from her shuffling feet, and ice cracked on the hem of her feathered cape. He couldn’t look her in the eye.

They’d come so far in the last 24 hours, and he’d seen her pushed to the brink of exhaustion, far beyond the point where good agents gave up. And he’d been the one to keep her going. He’d been the one to keep them all going. The way out was behind him, they’d made it – he’d made it – and in a moment he’d step through, and then what?

Then what?

‘Typical,’ he spat. ‘And I was feeling so chipper.’

‘Listen,’ Lucy said. ‘Maybe you’d better stay here.’

He looked up sharply. ‘What, on my own? See you all go through without me? Leave me standing here like a pillock in the dark?’ Maybe she was comfortable in the quiet darkness, but Quill couldn’t think of a worse place to die. ‘I don’t think so.’

She had the audacity to look surprised. ‘But, Quill, that wound…On the other side…’

Her voice trailed off, and he took a deep breath, feeling his lungs expand along with his traitorous sides. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘Maybe.’ Probably. ‘But if it happens, it’s got to be done right, in the proper place.’

Somewhere with light, somewhere with people. The thought of dying alone – or living alone forever in this silent half-world, where the walls were all just out-of-true and everything glittered with frost – made fear claw at him, its icy grip digging into the skin of his throat despite the cape.

No. He would not die here.

‘Anyway…’ He grimaced as Lucy gazed at him, her eyes wet. ‘I’m not staying here. Especially in this stupid outfit.’ She didn’t smile. ‘Now – we need to go through.’

Lucy didn’t move. She stood there, her tall figure both so at home and so out of place in that cold, grey room, and suddenly she looked so young. He wanted to tell her it would be all right, but part of him wanted her to tell him it would be all right – and they both knew the words would be empty. There wasn’t much to say, anyway; sometimes, things happened, and now, finally, it was Quill’s turn.

Summoning all his strength, he’d just moved to turn when she spoke again. ‘Quill…You were brilliant just now.’

He paused. ‘Yeah.’

She swallowed, considering her words, and oh God, he couldn’t do this. If Quill was about to face his death he was going to face it with his head held high and his eyes dry, and that meant nipping this in the bud before she got going.

‘Without you—’

‘You and Tony and the others would never have made it, would you?’ He grinned. ‘Glad I made a contribution.’

‘Oh, God,’ she said and really, that said it all, didn’t it?

He held out his hand. ‘It’s OK. Take my hand, Lucy, and let’s go.’

She closed her eyes briefly, breathing deeply through her nose. Then she met his gaze and took his hand.

Together they walked over the narrow little bridge back towards life. The irony of the dead creating a path back to life was not lost on him, nor was the irony that this path back to the living world would lead to his own death. It was poetic, even, one might say.

The ghosts around them swirled and screamed, the noise drowning out the sound of their footsteps on the iron bridge. The air was freezing cold, but Lucy’s hand was warm in his, her presence a quiet comfort.

Quill had held Ned’s hand as he died. A cry of dismay had been all the warning Quill had had before Ned fell to the floor, writhing and gasping as his skin turned blue. Kate and Bobby had held the Spectre at bay and Quill, in his dull blindness, had only been able to hold Ned’s hand.

He’d emptied three vials of adrenaline into Ned’s thigh, of course, but the Spectre had been malicious and hungry and Quill had long ago learnt that if a ghost truly wanted you dead, even the faintest touch was as good as a bullet to the heart. The adrenaline had been as useless at saving him as Quill had been at keeping him safe, but he liked to think he���d at least managed to provide some comfort, in those final moments.

They were passing through the centre now. Bright neon lights suddenly shone ahead and pain bloomed from the wound in his side, making his head spin. He gripped Lucy’s hand tightly and focused on putting one foot in front of the other. She gripped his hand back.

Lucy – God, Lucy. He’d never felt so grateful for Lucy. She was meant to come last, he had been meant to protect her from whatever could be waiting for them on the other side. He’d managed to protect her from Gale, at least. Lockwood would surely forgive him for being more burden than shield now.

His steps were heavy, each one feeling more and more impossible as they slowly emerged from the vortex. The lights on this side were bright and his senses all rushed back at once, overwhelming in their enormity; but Quill was already disorientated, his vision blurry, his breaths coming in small gasps as his whole body seemed to burst into flame. His head was held high, he was sure, and he tried to grip Lucy’s hand tighter as he went to take that final step. Then it all went black.

⚔︎

Of course, it hadn’t stayed black. Quill had woken back up to the sounds of Lucy – sweet, hard as nails, fiercely loving Lucy – gearing up to deliver his eulogy. At least she had sounded suitably tearful. He’d put a stop to that right quick, though, because there are some things one just doesn’t need to hear.

His memory of the night was surprisingly clear, and he had a good recall of everything that had happened right up until the paramedics shot him up with the good stuff while loading him into an ambulance. His agents had bundled him onto a trolley and taken the lift, like a group of grisly couriers. They’d been wheeling him towards the front doors when Sir Rupert had appeared with an army of thugs, and from then on it was a discombobulating haze of screaming, pain, smoke, and crashing as they careened around the Hall and (eventually) out onto the Strand. Quill had been given today’s paper earlier, and apparently the Hall and most of the building had been completely destroyed with over fifty dead. Quite impressive for a day’s work, really.

(He’d been trying not to think about which of the dead he might know. Most of his Fittes contacts had cut him off, anyway.)

None of that, however, was what had been on repeat in his head all day as he lay in his hospital bed at St. Mary’s. Instead his thoughts kept pinging back to those moments when he first woke up on that hard, tiled floor, to the sound of Lucy’s tearful voice. George’s hand had been in his, his grip tight and warm and unyielding. Holly had been covered in his blood, a testament to how hard she’d worked to save him. And Lockwood’s coat – the coat that had formed a huge part of his new identity – had been in tatters, wrapped around him in a makeshift bandage, and then used to keep him warm (and hide the contraband that George had insisted upon. Quill had taught him well). Maybe it was stupid – and, frankly, embarrassingly sentimental – but Quill had never felt more loved.

A little over fifteen hours later, and Quill was wondering if he’d imagined it. Afternoon sunlight streamed in through the window, the sky outside was a deep, brilliant blue, but Quill felt a very different kind of blue indeed. Where the fuck were they? He’d been awake for four hours; nobody had called, nobody had visited, nobody had checked in. It’s like they’d all forgotten about him.

The unfairness of it rankled. He was only in the bloody hospital because he’d gone to protect those idiots in the first place. And after everything he did to get them through Dark London, you’d think he would at least have been worth a phone call.

What he tried to avoid thinking about was: perhaps they hadn’t called because they couldn’t. He’d given the nurses the number for Portland Row, but it had been disconnected. They’d left two messages for Barnes, but declined to leave a third, instead telling him to ‘Calm down and get some rest’ – a task that felt impossible when the last thing he remembered, as the drugs hit and the doors shut, was the sound of Lockwood losing his mind over Lucy being missing.

Quill had no doubt he’d have left to find her. Holly would have stayed with George, surely, but Lockwood would have gone to get her. Did he ever find her? If he’d had to go back inside, did they make it back out? Quill had no idea.

The paper spread over his lap was crumpled from the way he’d obsessively combed through every word, looking for clues, hoping they weren’t among the unnamed dead. But there’d been no mention of any of them.

The front page was filled with an image of black soot and towering flames against a pre-dawn sky, all angry reds and dirty blacks against the soft indigo emblazoned with the words FITTES FALLS. It was horribly reminiscent of the first time he’d seen Lockwood in the paper – this Lockwood, the besuited young man who wielded smiles as weapons and not the dirt-covered, filthy-mouthed urchin he had been before. That time Lockwood and his merry band had burnt down a house and this time it had been a 14-storey corporate building, so at least he’d moved up in the world. Last time, though, Quill had read the article and felt smug; this time, Quill read the article and felt fear. Had they made it out alive?

Well, Marissa was dead, at least. The papers had been clear on that. All Quill could do, he thought grimly, was hang on to the hope that no news was good news. And, in the meantime, ask for something to help him sleep.

⚔︎

The next time Quill woke up it was dark, the room lit only by the electronic glow of the machinery. His mind was hazy and he struggled towards consciousness slowly, his eyelids fighting to stay closed and pull him back under, the drugs they’d given him still promising a sleep that felt oh-so-tempting. But something had woken him up, some odd, out-of-place feeling, and Quill had been an agent far too long to ignore somethings.

So he fought – fought the residual drugs in his system, fought the lingering cold from the Other Side, fought through the exhaustion and pain and opened his eyes to find the ghost of Anthony Lockwood standing at his bedside.

The apparition was pale in the dim light, the body gaunt. It wore an ill-fitting t-shirt, tracksuit bottoms and a hoodie, all of which were crumpled in a way that felt offensively poetic on his Wraith. Its face was swollen, scabbed and bruised, and, though it stood very close, its weary gaze was fixed somewhere to the side. It wasn’t moving. 

This is it, thought Quill. Here’s my answer. Here’s the end.

And then, a breath later: Hang on, I lost my goggles last night.

‘Motherfucker—’ lashing out blindly, Quill flailed and sent the paper flying. ‘Lockwood! Are you trying to give me a heart attack?!’

Pain lanced through him at the sudden movement and he doubled over, annoyed. He’d meant to sound fierce. Furious. But the words had come out on a muddled croak and now Lockwood was all care and concern, parking himself on the bed as he fussed over him, and Quill wanted to fucking murder him.

‘Here, should I—’

‘Where the hell have you been?!’ he gasped out, doing his best to push him away even as Lockwood reached behind him to fluff his pillows. ‘It’s three in the morning!’

‘Look, lie back first, okay Quill? You’re—’

‘I’m not a bloody invalid!’ Quill snapped hoarsely, even as he leaned back on the pillows which were, much to his chagrin, now much more comfortable.

Lockwood, to his credit, didn’t answer; instead, he offered a cup of water that Quill angrily accepted.

‘You—’ he began, then stopped to take a sip.‘You – ugh. You’re alive, then.’

Lockwood’s expression was half-hidden in the dark. ‘Don’t sound too happy about it.’

‘And the others?’ He thought he already knew the answer from Lockwood’s demeanour alone – God, he hoped he already knew the answer – but he needed to hear it.

‘All okay,’ Lockwood said, and those two words sent the relief crashing over Quill like a torrent of water, sloughing off the vestiges of his terrified anxiety and leaving him shiny and vulnerable and new. He wasn’t one for waterworks but fuck was he ever glad for the darkness of the room.

Tilting his head back, Quill closed his eyes and breathed – in through his nose, out through his mouth, just like he’d taught hundreds of trainees to do. In, out, it brings you back around. In, out.

When he spoke a few moments later, his voice was pleasingly steady. ‘You found her, then? Lucy?’

‘Yeah. Yeah, I found her. She’s right next door, actually.’ Now it was Lockwood’s turn to exhale deeply, his shoulders sagging with exhaustion.

‘Next…?’ Quill blinked. ‘Wait, what do you mean she’s right next door? Lucy’s in the hospital?!’

‘Yeah,’ Lockwood answered, shifting to retrieve the newspaper from the floor, the crunch of the thin paper loud in the hushed night. ‘She collapsed this afternoon, just as we were trying to clear out a place to sleep back home.’ Paper crunched and tore as he spoke, worrying it in his hands. ‘Turns out she was bleeding internally. Stab wound in her side, from the fight in the penthouse.’

So there had been a confrontation, then. He didn’t want to hear the details now, though, not at three a.m. when he’d just woken up, and certainly not when Lockwood was mangling the newspaper like a Phantasm wearing a bow tie. He couldn’t deal with whatever was causing that. He needed to keep this light.

‘I didn’t get myself stabbed just so that Lucy could copy me, you know,’ Quill said at length, aiming for haughty.

Lockwood snorted, but the tearing sounds stopped. ‘You’ll have to tell her off for imitating your style when she wakes up, then.’

‘She’s all right, though?’

‘Mostly,’ Lockwood said, shrugging again. ‘She needed surgery but it was straightforward, and she was awake for a little bit before falling asleep again. She’s resting now.’

‘And the others…?’

‘Got sent home while she was still under. George is at Holly’s for the night; I called earlier, and they said they’d tried to visit you but you were asleep. I’m sorry, I meant to pop in, but I fell asleep when Lucy did so I didn’t get round to checking on you until I woke up five minutes ago.’ His voice was tired, but Quill could hear the smirk as he said: ‘Luckily I managed to persuade the nurses into letting me stay, because I’m quite sure visiting hours are over for the day.’

Quill wisely held his tongue. Outright refused to leave and generally made himself a pain in the neck was more likely than any other type of persuasion, if his behaviour when George had been admitted was any indicator.

‘So that’s it? Lucy and I are in hospital, the rest of you are okay?’

‘Yeah. I’ve got a couple of fractured ribs, but George and Holly escaped with mostly cuts and bruises.’

Had he been feeling stronger, Quill would have danced a fucking jig, reputation be damned. ‘So five out of five agents are alive, and all we’ve lost is some furniture, my goggles, and your coat?’

‘Yep,’ Lockwood said happily, popping the ‘p’ and turning to grin at him.

Sometimes I want sunglasses just to look at him, Lucy had once said. Quill had teased her mercilessly for it, of course, but in that moment, as Lockwood beamed at him in that half-lit room, he got it. Sometimes he exuded this energy that just dragged you out into the sunniest afternoon, even if it was despite your best intentions. George had called it The Lockwood Effect. 

Quill couldn’t help grinning back. Thank God the nurses weren’t due; they must have made a right pair, grinning at each other in the dark on a hospital bed like lunatics, but they definitely had something to smile about. Five out of five, baby.

‘We really did get out well.’

‘We did,’ Quill agreed. ‘I’m sorry about your coat, though.’

‘Don’t be,’ Lockwood answered firmly. ‘It went to a good cause.’

‘Still. I barely recognised you without it. Thought you were a Wraith at first.’

‘You thought I was… Bloody hell, Quill, do I look that bad?’

‘You look like shit warmed over,’ Quill confirmed. ‘And I can’t even see half of you in this light.’

Lockwood chuckled ruefully, turning his gaze to the window. The clock on the wall read three twenty-five in the morning so it was still a few hours to dawn, but the birds were already starting their song outside. Honestly, between the lateness of the hour and the magnitude of the things that had happened, Quill was almost at a loss for words. I’m glad we’re all alive felt too obvious, and Good job on the arson felt too casual. Instead, he followed Lockwood’s gaze and watched the sky slowly lighten from indigo to a cosmic blue.

To Quill’s (complete lack of) surprise, Lockwood broke the silence mere minutes later. ‘It was my father’s, actually.’

That actually was surprising. ‘What was?’

‘The coat,’ Lockwood clarified. ‘Wait – no. Don’t get the wrong idea; he never wore it or anything. It still had the tag on when I found it.’

‘But it was still your father’s.’

‘It was still my father’s,’ Lockwood agreed. ‘And I like to think I made it mine, too, over the years. But…’ he trailed off with a shrug, then turned to face him properly again, one hand gently gripping his shoulder. ‘You’re here, Quill, and that’s all that matters.’

His sincerity was all-encompassing, filling him with a strange, warm comfort – one that seemed to flow from Lockwood’s hand on his shoulder, from the ghosts of Lucy’s hand in his, of George’s fingers and their tight grip, of Holly’s hands on his chest. All of them, saying the same thing.

You’re here, Quill, and that’s all that matters. The words settled over him like a blanket.

[acatbyanyothername9]

The horror in Husky and his white cat shizun

One thing that strikes me as I re-read 2ha is that Meatbun is in my opinion incredibly skilled at writing horror. And i don't see much discussion about it except in a general hand wavy "it's dark" way. People tend to focus more on the "noncon" between Taxian-Jun and Chu Wanning that the other things.

There's so many things that didn't jump out to me as much during my first read but that are just glaring now. In my opinion it also makes the moments of happiness and the few truly good people stand out all the more.

As meatbun put it in chapter 68 : "it turned out that the most disgusting thing in this world was not ghosts or demons, but those cowardly, worthless beasts who wore human skins and hid in the crowd, willing to say and to do anything in the name of their own survival. At the end of everything, they would say, “I only wanted to live. I’m pitiful and powerless—I’ve done nothing wrong.”

This incredibly bleak world view that humanity is inherently selfish in Ehra makes a lot of sense when you realise it's a horror novel (among other things)

Examples under the cut, in no particular order

There's the psychological horror stuff that's linked to the whole flower business (mind control, mind rape etc.) Being forced to forget all happy memories while all the bad stuff is ramped up to eleven so you keep living in anger and pain wihtout any reprieve what's so ever.

There's the body horror of the Zhenlong Chess Formation which control corpses or dying people. Once the illusion is broken at Jinchen Lake, the bodies explode and taint the whole water red. There's the crucified members of the Feathered Tribe at the bottom of the Abyss also used for the Zhenlong Chess Formation and that's not even mentionning the bridge that allows the BBBF to go back to the Demon Realm (not going to go in details but let's just say it's an ENTIRE UNIVERSE worth of corpses)

From chapter 43 : "With the removal of the last rock, the illusion shattered. The fuban exploded, its blood diffusing into the water like the haze of fog. Near simultaneously, all the monsters and creatures in the market stiffened for a split second—before drooping bonelessly as their bodies festered, saturating the lake’s water with a miasma of blood.

The lake was dyed a red that rapidly deepened as more and more blood seeped into the water. First, things in the distance became hard to see, but soon, the immediate area was clouded over as well, and finally, scarlet filled their vision to the point that they could no longer even see their hands in front of their faces."

From chapter 76 : "Thousands of crosses stood at the bottom of the abyss. To every one was bound a member of the feathered tribe, entirely naked and drenched in blood. Within each of their mouths was stuffed a lingchi19 fruit, and these were what emitted that piercing red light. From above, the collective blaze of these thousands of fruits had easily been mistaken for flames burning deep within the abyss."

There's the existential horror that Hua Binan had Mo Ran almost kill EVERY SINGLE PERSON in the first timeline and basically wanted to do a bis repetita in the second one just so the BBBF could go back to the demon realm. Let's not even get in the whole Heavenly Rift stuff which is basically the fantasy equivalent of a hostile alien invasion where anyone could die at any moment if the rift is not sealed.

There's the horror of a mother forced to cannibalised her child while her husband is made to watch only to be later lynched by the very people he was trying to protect. Which speaking of this family! After being lynched, Chu Xun also digs out his now still heart so he can give his spiritual core to protect the survivors that stayed with him and tried to protect him. Keep in mind this whole tragedy wouldn't have happened without the selfishness of one single person.

From chapter 68 : "Chu Xun’s body slowly lifted its hand, which had not yet gone stiff, and under the control of his spell, it grasped the knife buried in his chest to pull it out. Then—

“Gongzi!” The people around him cried out with grief, their voices twisted and hoarse, soaked with tears. “Gongzi, what are you doing?!”

With his own hands, Chu Xun ripped open the gash in his chest, dug into his flesh, and grabbed his no-longer beating heart. Slowly, inch by inch, he tore it out.

[soullessjack]

"tell me on anon what you wouldn’t off anon"

i think dean was straight up abusive towards jack and while there is room for redemption to be explored, in canon, the show did not give him any sort of redemption. in other words in my eyes "canon" dean winchester is an abuser (but canon is unimportant anyways so whatever)

im scared of saying this and getting stoned to death

no need to comment you can just post this without saying anything if you want

- 🏴‍☠️

no no you’re right and you should say it, however I disagree that Dean was completely abusive and that there was never any canon redemption.

firstly I think there’s a slight difference in someone being abusive vs being an abuser;

abuse (or abusive behavior/tendencies) can happen accidentally, unintentionally, especially if it’s resulted from trauma (like Dean’s). you can be completely unaware that something you’ve done or said is abusive, especially because being abusive can be as simple as yelling or hitting someone, or treating them unfairly (like jack). people who have abusive tendencies or behaviors are capable of regretting it and wanting/trying to change…whereas an abuser is wholly aware, intentional and remorseless about their actions. they know what they are doing, they know it’s immoral/inhumane and they just don’t care—either because they feel entitled or justified in some way, or even if they don’t.

Dean has repeatedly shown plenty of regret, guilt and blatant self hatred for his abusive tendencies and how they affect the people around him. It’s one of the most important parts of his character, being the crux of his self worth and why he can’t accept that people (Cas) genuinely care about him or consider him a good person. When he refers to himself as “daddy’s blunt instrument” or “poison,” it isn’t just about being a hunter whose life constantly risks other peoples inescapably, it’s also about the violent nature that’s instilled into Dean constantly by John and how both of those things either isolates him from getting close to anyone else, or drives away people who do get close. That’s why there’s no light at the end of the tunnel for Dean, why he’s so resigned to dying bloody. It’s all he thinks he can ever have or really deserve.

When Jack is dying in 14x07, Dean physically cannot stand to see it. He’s angry that Jack is dying so young and so out of nowhere; he thinks it’s unfair and wrong, point blank. But above all else, (as Sam says) Dean canonically has never forgotten or forgiven himself for how he had treated Jack, even though by this point in time they’ve already had a good relationship for the past two years. He’s angry and upset that Jack is dying, but he’s also upset because he still thinks, after all this time, that he’s never been able to fully make up for what he did, and now he’s lost any chance to with Jack’s limited time. That’s why Dean decides to take him on the road trip; that’s why he says “Who would’ve thought being around me (the person who treated you terribly at one point) would make you (the person who didn’t deserve it) sentimental?”

When Dean leaves Jack’s room for the last time and wounds up being absent for his death, he’s even more upset about it, and later brings it up to take a dig at Sam for thinking he didn’t do enough for Jack because, by Dean’s own admission, Sam had always been the one to do more. “At least you were there for him [because I wasn’t, and I see that as another failure on top of everything else I did to him before].” And then, after the three of them get hammered in Jack’s memory, Dean turns to Cas and asks, “we did everything we could, right?” There’s a lot more in 14x07 but I’ll leave it alone for now, and move onto the redemption part of what you said.

I know I said I disagreed, but really it’s only partially; instead I believe that the show simply didn’t give enough time for a complete redemption (save me spn revival wish fulfillments, spn revival wish fulfillments save me). The end of S14 is basically the destruction of the Team Free Will 2.0 found family unit, not just between Dean and Cas, but also between Dean and Sam, and Jack and the three of them. And I think the reason there’s so much more emphasis on Dean’s relationship with Jack (+ why the family unit falling apart is specifically centered on it) is specifically because of how they started; Dean was initially the only one to be distrustful of Jack and mistreat him as a result, whereas Sam and Cas were willing to see Jack with more humanity and goodness, and when Jack proved that he was good that was the crux of Dean’s guilt going forward; his distrust was wrong and misguided, and the abuse he put Jack through because of it was even more wrong and undeserved.

But then after Mary’s death, the three of them have no idea what to think. They’re more reluctant than Bobby is to admit that Jack could have simply had his evil bone activated after losing his soul/eating Michael’s grace, but they aren’t excluding the idea either. The question up in the air now is: “Was Dean right all along? Were we wrong for trusting Jack and thinking he was good? Is all of this our fault?” (and going back to 14x07, the basic ‘framework’ of Dean’s dynamic with Jack is basically ‘I was wrong about you being evil and now that I love you I want to be keep being wrong about you being evil’ and ‘I want you to be wrong about me being evil too, especially now that you love me and I love you’).

Sam, Dean, Cas and Jack are all presented with the worst case scenario that had always been hanging over Jack’s entire existence. None of them want to believe it after growing so close to him (and vice versa), but they’re not given much else to consider. Mary’s death was one thing, one horrible tragic wound reopening, but they knew it was an accident and they knew Jack had tried to fix it. It isn’t until Duma got her claws into Jack and ordered him to kill nonbelievers that TFW finally decides they have to do something final about Jack, and Dean resumes his militant Kill All Monsters behavior. He’s dissociating into the blunt instrument mindset to protect himself from the grief of losing his mother and potentially losing his son. He can’t even bear to consider Jack his son anymore, both because of Mary and the task of killing him, so Jack becomes “just another monster,” in his dissociative mind. His son wouldn’t have killed Mary or tortured Nick or murdered people randomly because his son was a good person, and his son does not deserve to die, but whatever identical monster has inexplicably replaced Jack would certainly do that and certainly does deserve to die.

Dean’s “poison” is rooted in the fact that his coping mechanisms are intertwined with abusive tendencies and behaviors. He pushes people away if he thinks he doesn’t deserve their respect or love, and he buries any emotional attachment to them because he knows it’s his greatest weakness. That’s why he couldn’t bring himself to shoot Jack, regardless of the grief he felt for Mary or how much he tried to see Jack as a monster that wasn’t really his son. When Jack knelt down, said “I understand. I know what I’ve done. And you were right all along. I am a monster,” and then waited for the gun to go off, that’s what snapped Dean out of it. That’s what got him to see that this was still his son—that and the road trip from 14x07 flashing before his eyes. The grief he feels for Mary’s death is still painful and will be for a long time, but he won’t let it cloud him from seeing that his son is still there and still a good person who deserves the chance to make it right and be forgiven.

That militant dissociation comes back again following Jack’s death and Chuck’s retaliation/reveal that they’ve been nothing but a bunch of lowbrow Truman Burbanks to an unfeeling deity their entire lives. The most recent Destivorce is because Dean has constantly been pushing Cas away and severing their ties to cope with the situation. It’s bad throughout all of S15, but it’s especially worse towards the end when Dean is rampant on Jack’s suicide bomb plan happening for a chance at freedom. I’ve seen a LOT of people say that Dean’s love is conditional because of this, but it really…isn’t.

If Dean never cared about Jack, he’d never take time out of his life to spend some final moments with him, or share a specific father/son memory with him to indirectly communicate that he does see Jack as a son, but ultimately doesn’t feel like he deserves to be a father. If he truly felt that Jack “wasn’t family,” he wouldn’t have shown any of the concern for Jack that he did after Jack detonated in the Empty (frantically demanding to know if he’s alive and to bring him back); he wouldn’t have tried to apologize to Jack for hearing it, and he wouldn’t have *checks transcript* reacted in mild horror at Jack agreeing with what he said (and personally, if I’m insulting someone, I would want them to feel the same way that I feel).

Additionally, If Dean’s love is conditional, particularly on the basis of how useful someone is to him, then he wouldn’t have been expecting Jack to come back home with them or considering buying him actual gifts (a flat screen TV and a recliner, specifically for his room in the Bunker I might add) for saving the world.

Out of all the problems S15 had, I think the pacing was the absolute worst. Too many plots and one-off characters and plot devices squeezed into a short amount of episodes; too much focus put into filler instead of plot progression, etc etc. But what it absolutely missed out on was granting any of the characters any proper closure. I think that’s why Dean’s conflict with Jack feels so unresolved and unredeemed. Dean gets mean -> Dean feels bad -> Dean gets nice again, but that’s about it. For now I tend to view his dynamic with Jack as them being two sides of the same coin: Dean feels like he doesn’t deserve to be a father figure to Jack after everything he did, and Jack feels like he doesn’t deserve to be a part of their family as a son after everything he did.

[reallypleasanttree]

This is an addition from a previous Obamitsu Drabble where Obanai reacts to the news about the demon slayer mark.

Canon divergent. Spoilers for the Hashira Training Arc

“For those who have already awakened the mark,” Amane began, “you have my eternal gratitude and respect. Because of that, I have to let you know those who had the mark died before they turned 25.” She paused, letting her words settle. 

Obanai tried to control his emotions, but his eyes widened. Kanroji and Tokito would die. Their years were numbered. His throat burned from the acid threatening to come up. Kanroji had six years while Tokito had eleven years left. It was a little under half his current age. He was only fourteen years old and he knew he would die. His insides churned. Partially from not having eaten since yesterday morning while the other was the devastating realization his fellow Hashira unknowingly sealed their fate. 

He hid his hands under his sleeves as they began to shake. This was a harbinger of the coming times. Only death and destruction laid between them and confronting Muzan. Behind his bandages he pursed his lips. His scars pulled on his cheeks, a constant reminder of what his family made him. 

Obanai planned to die fighting demons. It was the only way to redeem his wretched self. To atone for his and his family’s corruption. Their fortune was built on a pile of blood, bones, and murders. If anyone deserved to die before they reached 25 it was him. He had already spent too long of this earth, but he would live until a demon cut him down. 

Let him take their place. They had people to live for. People who loved and cared for them. People who would grieve their loss. There would be no one to grieve for him except Kaburamaru, Shinazugawa, and the Master. Possibly Kanroji, but she grieved for everyone. 

Tokito and Kanroji had no intention of dying when they joined the Corps. The Mist Hashira regained his memories after earning his demon slayer mark. His personality was beginning to surface. Obanai saw glimpses of an optimistic boy underneath his stoic veneer. His potential was undefined. He was beginning to come into his own, not only as a slayer, but as a man. He gripped the inside of his sleeve as his palms began to sweat. 

Though, there were aspects of the Mist Hashira that were still childish. His love of paper planes and his gleeful expression when he asked to train with the Wind and Snake Hashira. In truth, he saw parts of himself in the younger hashira. He was steadfast with a dry sense of humor. 

Obanai swallowed. Tokito was only a boy and he had a death sentence. It was not fair, but that’s what life amounted to. A series of horrid events ultimately leading to death. The Snake Hashira knew that’s what fate held for him, but it should not be the same for Tokito or Kanroji. They had so much more to live for. 

His eyes glanced over at Kanroji. For a brief second, her lips pulled back in a thin line before trembling. It was fear and grief. Why did she of all the hashira have to awaken the mark? The woman he adored more than anyone. 

Kanroji joined to save people and to find a husband. A man who was not intimidated by her strength, appetite, or beauty. She perceived herself as an odd woman, but she was the only one to ever look him in the eye and talk to him. He was the odd one, yet she made him feel normal. 

A man meant to die the day he was born to appease the demon his family called a goddess. A goddess who asked to make him in her image. Sometimes he still felt his cousins and sisters holding him down for his mother to slice through his cheeks. Their nails digging into his skin and white robes. Their whispers ensured he was pleasing the goddess and he should be honored. He shut his eyes briefly and inhaled slowly through his nose as a memory surfaced.

<><><><><><><><><><>

His grip on the hair pin was making his hand numb as he chipped away at the cage. He could only work when the demon and his family were not watching him. The demon said he had to get bigger before she would… Bile rose in his throat. Obanai had not eaten anything in a day. He shut his eyes, forcing himself to focus solely on the task at hand. He had to get out. He had to leave. There had to be more to life than these four walls. The lattice wood cage constricting his movement, freedom, and will. 

Though his vision was bad, he had good ears. He heard two women outside of his room. He took the hairpin and slid it under his sleeve for safe keeping. Then he placed one of the food trays in front where he had been working. The wood lined up perfectly with the outside and with more time he would be able to slip through. Once he got out he would run, it wouldn’t matter where as long as he got away. 

The sliding door opened and his mother and sister walked in. They were carrying two trays of fried chicken and tempura vegetables. He held his sleeve over his nose to block the smell. 

“Obanai,” the older woman said. “We brought you dinner. I do hope you like it. Aya and I made it.” His mother beamed at his sister. Both them had the same slight build, black hair, and teal eyes. Everyone looked the same here. All of them were fake and devoid of real emotions. Smiling as they force feed him luscious, oily meat and tempura, never once stopping. 

“Brother, our goddess told us you would soon be ready for her,” she bowed deeply to him as she set the tray down. “You honor us and our family.” 

When she looked up her eyes were soulless behind a wide smile. They looked exactly like the snake demon, soulless eyes and grotesque smile. He hated them. Pretty words, smiles, faces meant little when they carried the sins of hundreds. Their riches built on the suffering of others. Murdering, sacrificing their babies, and stealing the riches and lands from those the demon ate. Obanai wasn’t sure which one was worse between the demon or his relatives. He had to leave tonight. 

That night he realized how cruel fate could be. His freedom and will to live killed fifty women. Obanai learned he was just as despicable as the rest of his family. If he had simply stayed and fed to the demon, they would have lived. How fate loved to mock him with its irony. 

<><><><><><><><><><><>

Fate was mocking him again. It was telling him everyone he interacted with would die. Lead filled his gut. It was his fault for ever loving Kanroji and Tokito. If only Obanai could sacrifice himself in their place. His hands were stained with more innocent blood. He looked away from the pink haired woman and stared at the wall ahead of them. 

—---------

“I won’t live past 25,” Mitsuri said, holding her spoon an inch from her lips. Amane told her the truth of it during the Hashira meeting. After the meeting, excluding Tomioka, she invited everyone out to dinner. Now she sat alone with Iguro-San in a private dining room. Everyone else went home. “They say you’ll never know when you’re going to die, but now I have a time frame.” 

She stared at the wall vacantly. It was surreal. She had six years left if it was true. What would she do with the rest of her time? She wanted to be someone’s wife and have children. Mitsuri set down her spoon and looked at Iguro-san. His eyes watched her with empathy, closing a bit more than normal. 

“I am not sure what to say,” Iguro-San said. Under the bandages his lips seemed to twitch and there were worry lines on his forehead. “It’s a sacrifice I wish you did not have to make. If I could I would switch places with you,” he said, glancing away. “You deserve a happy life surrounded by your loved ones.”

This was why she loved him. His kind words and willingness to sacrifice for her and others. There were rumors he was mean and cruel to the lower ranked slayers, but he would defend any of them. He sought out the tougher missions before he was even a Hashira according to Shinobu. Always willing to risk himself for the corps. She admired his dedication and hard work. 

The pink haired woman licked her lips in thought. Her dream was to be a wife and mother. She didn’t want to be someone’s wife, she wanted to be Iguro-san’s wife. There was clarity in the realization. Pushing her broth filled bowl to the center of the table, she turned her body towards him. Her temperature rose and her cheeks colored as she decided to jump. 

“I am surrounded by those I love,” Mitsuri started. He looked up at her. “I love everyone I have met in the Corps. The Butterfly House girls, the attendants, the lower ranked members, and the other Hashira…” her voice trailed off. She had to say something more to let him know how she felt. Words escaped her. Iguro-San shifted in his seat. Kaburamaru stared intently at her in curiosity and curled tighter around his friend’s shoulders. 

“You as well, Kaburamaru-San,” she added with a grin and reached up to stroke the snake’s head. He raised his head to meet her hand. The touch forced her to relax and clear her mind. 

“Iguro-San, I love you,” Mitsuri said plainly. It didn’t need to be a great declaration of love where she prepared a long poem or gifted him with expensive gifts. No, it was clear cut. 

The man beside her was silent, but kept eye contact. He grasped his pant leg under the table, the veins becoming more prominent. She reached for his hand and held it in her lap. “If I only have six years left,” her thumb swept over the backside of his hand. “I want to spend them as your wife.” 

The man was stunned and the silence dragged. His hand squeezed hers, so he was not devoid of reaction. Her heart hammered. She could not leave this world without taking a chance. 

“Kanroji-San, I cannot offer you anything,” Iguro-San whispered. “My entire family is dead. When I chose to be a demon slayer I swore I would die fighting until Muzan was gone. I would only disappoint you,” he continued. 

“You’ve never disappointed me and you never will. You try your hardest in every endeavor you take. Why would marriage be any different?” Mitsuri asked. 

“It’s not that-“ he turned his head and looked at the wall. “I’m not good. I am a beast beneath these bandages,” he pointed to the wraps. “My family cut my face. They worshiped a demon and the demon wanted to taste my blood. I was raised to be a sacrifice and continue to live as a sacrifice. I'm not meant to live long,” Iguro-San said as his jaw clenched. 

Mitsuri was not deterred by his words. She brought his hand to her face and kissed his fingers. “I’m not either. I only have one question and please answer truthfully, do you love me?” She asked. His posture was rigid. 

“Yes,” he breathed, “I love you.” Thud. Thud. Thud. Her heart fluttered and kissed his hand again, unable to contain herself. 

“Then make a sacrifice for me. Marry me,” Mitsuri smiled at him. He twisted himself towards her, eyes wide. “Marry me. Make me your bride. Allow me to love you for the rest of my life at least what is left of it. Let me love you,” Mitsuri pleaded. 

Instead of replying, Iguro-San pulled the bandages from his face and leaned forward. His lips crashed into hers. She didn’t even have enough time to process what just happened until she felt his hand curl under her jaw. Her hand found his neck and pulled him closer. Warmth spread over her body as they kissed. 

“I’ll marry you. I will make you happy, I promise,” he whispered against her lips. “Until you or I pass into the afterlife.” 

“And in our next life I’ll give you more than six years,” Mitsuri promised, “I’ll give you a lifetime.” 

[blazehedgehog]

Man, that's crazy and unfortunate what happened to that level designer on Sonic Heroes. Is there a source for those stories you could share?

Unfortunately it came from a Game Informer interview on their website back in 2016. Thanks to the efforts of Gamestop, everything about Game Informer was basically wiped from the internet about a little over a week ago.

Digging around a bit I found this Wayback Machine post for the article, titled "Where Sonic Went Wrong", written by Brian Shea.

Iizuka recalls the development cycle of Sonic Heroes, the first multiplatform mainline Sonic console game, as the most stressful of his career, in part thanks to deadlines. He was based in the United States while the rest of the development team was in Japan, and mismanagement took its toll on the team. "The level design for Sonic Heroes was made by two people: me and one other person," he says. "As we got to the later stages of development, this other person got pretty sick and didn't show up to work, so level design was made by one person! So for those very last stages of the game, I didn't sleep at all and I was constantly working. I lost about [22 pounds] because I was just cranking away and it was just work, work, work. I didn't sleep because I had to finish the game on my own. Almost dying!"

From what I've heard, this isn't the first time somebody has mentioned this about Sonic Heroes, just the first time in an English interview.

For the other information:

The information about Sonic 2 comes in the wake of Hirokazu Yasuhara's Digital Dragons talk in 2017, where he revealed a significantly different and more ambitious early design for Sonic 2 that was scrapped in favor of something they could do faster and easier.

The information about Sonic 3 comes from the Hidden Palace dump of a Sonic 3 prototype. The creation date on their prototype is maybe three months before its retail release and the state of the game at that point can charitably be described as a disaster, something their news post explains thanks to information provided by the person who offered the prototype.

Sonic Adventure 2 being made by half the people in half the time is original research by me. Sonic Team is on record that the 3D Sonic World in Sonic Jam was a prototype for Sonic Adventure on the Sega Saturn, putting development of SA1 starting around late 1996 or early 1997. If you count from there to when the finishing touches were put on the International (American) release of SA1, that gives it a development time of around 2-3 years. SA2's development started probably around December of 1999, and came out in June of 2001, making for a development time of 18 months. You can compare developer numbers yourself using Mobygames. (Shoutouts to The Golden Bolt for also looking down a similar path.)

Similarly, just look at the production credits for Shadow the Hedgehog, CTRL+F, and search for "Takashi Iizuka"

After Shadow in 2005, Takashi Iizuka was no longer an active developer on the Sonic series for the next five or six games, mostly relegated to distant "supervisor", "concept" and "special thanks" roles. Instead, he worked on NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams, another game Sega jerked him around on. He came back to the Sonic franchise and started doing press again midway through the development of Sonic Colors in 2010.

Sonic Unleashed being expensive comes from, to my memory, an IGN Developer Diary that's impossible to find nowadays, where the director admits one of the producers at Sega pitched the Werehog as a way to slow players down and appreciate all the effort they put into environment art. Also they literally developed a whole entire rendering engine just for that game, of course it was expensive.

Here's a 2009 post mentioning a "Sonic Anniversary" leak from Sega's FTP. Details are fuzzy, but a Sega Spain leak a year later clarified that "Sonic Anniversary" was a game coming to Wii, DS, PSP, and PS3. A (physically) broken prototype of Sonic Anniversary for the PSP reveals a very early version of what would become Sonic Generations for the 3DS. And given how much content is shared between Sonic Colors and Sonic Generations, it's not hard to connect the dots between Colors being built from the proposed Wii version of "Anniversary" (Generations). There may be a more direct source for this straight from the horse's mouth, but I can't find it right now.

Morio Kishimoto was a game designer for Secret Rings and Black Knight, his first games for Sega, and got promoted to Director for Sonic Colors where he's stayed ever since. He mentioned not being a part of Sonic Forces at first, but was brought in to get the game back on track, and the game's troubled development is corroborated by Takashi Iizuka in the liner notes for the Sonic Forces soundtrack.

You can compare the metacritic for Secret Rings and Sonic 06 to see just how much more favorably Secret Rings was received, despite both games coming out less than six months apart.

Here's an archived IGN interview from 2007 with Yojiro Ogawa describing how Secret Rings was split off from the development resources of Sonic 06. Exact dates would be fuzzy, but it's easy to assume the entire game was developed in less than a year.

Here's a 2010 Eurogamer interview where Takashi Iizuka (not Kishimoto, whoops) says Sonic Colors is a Sonic game meant to appeal to Mario fans.

As for Sonic Lost World being Sonic Colors 2, my source on that is "I mean, just look at it."

(For people many years in the future, this post is in response to this.)

[art-that-fucks-you-up-tournament]

SET SEVEN - ROUND ONE - MATCH EIGHT

“Untitled (Black and Gray)” (1969 - Mark Rothko) / "NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt" (1985-present)

UNTITLED (BLACK AND GRAY): there’s something about this painting that deeply, deeply resonates and kind of fucks with you, especially since no other painting in this series has the kind of sky-look layering. the top half is dark and deep and has a void like pull to it, almost as if you could fall directly into its abyss and just never re-emerge. the bottom half looks almost joyful, simple, not exactly clean and precise and hard like it’s other half, but carefree and child-like. there’s an essence of freedom there mixing with the blues, yellows, and whites, and only a hint of gray despite the series name. the balance of stark black against this world-view mish-mash of color just strikes within you something like hope, a kind of fervent thought like “everything is going to be okay, you can look up and at the void, but just remember there is something good to see below it as well” this is all honestly my own interpretation of this particular rothko painting, but as soon as i saw the description of this tournament, this was the first painting that came to my mind. it may not fuck me up in a monstrous way, but the feelings it evokes in me feel big and like the kind i could scream forever about (@bluegarners)

NAMES PROJECT AIDS MEMORIAL QUILT: fucks me up bc so many people died and so many people suffered and their partners didn’t have legal rights as next of kin and so many had been disowned by their parents and had to be held by a stranger while they were dying and if i could resurrect anyone in the world i’d dig up either reagan or thatcher and kill them again (@jaskierx)

("Untitled (Black and Gray)" is an acrylic on canvas painting by Mark Rothko. Rothko did a series of black and gray paintings in 1969 and 1970. One is visible at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City and another is found at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.

The "NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt" is an ongoing community art project honoring people who passed away due to AIDS-related causes. It consists of approximately 50,000 panels of 3 by 6 feet (0.91 m × 1.83 m) panels, which is an estimated 54 tons of material. It is currently housed in San Francisco, but is often displayed in various places in the United States.)

[railingsofsorrow]

Hiii i saw ur tortured poets department requests and these two came to mind instantly!!

idk if u still write for TVD but I feel like “who’s afraid of little old me” for Klaus mikaelson would fit, (it’s could be him 1000 years ago before & after he was a vampire) x reader

As well as Kol mikaelson w ‘guilty as sin’ x reader (it could be human reader watching him from a distance before he notices and makes a move??)

Even if u don’t write for these characters anymore/atm I appreciate u reading this :)

Guilty As Sin

[kol mikaelson x reader]

A/N: your idea was amazing (need more kol mikaelson requests tbh!) and I immediately thought about turning it into a slight darker plot... I hope you don't mind. since you didn't specify, reader will be gender neutral, though they will have some characteristics regarding hair and eye color and style, but that's it, gender isn't specified. and the klaus mikaelson request is in the process of being made.

A/N²: you will see "month signs" at some point but that means zodiac signs, this error is on purpose to depict that kol has no idea what astrology means. (he would probably hate it lol)

summary: and so the lion fell in love with the lamb. . . but what if the lamb also became the lion? pairing: kol mikaelson x gn!reader w.c: 2.9K warnings/content: blood and gore; descriptions of child abuse; sexual activities (my attempt on trying to write smut); moral values are twisted; good vs. evil; graphic descriptions of violence; language; morally grey characters!!; there’s fluff; paragraphs in italics mean it’s a memory.

navi

masterpost

the originals masterlist

the vampire diaries masterlist

[requested]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

❝ my boredom's bone deep 

this cage was once just fine 

am I allowed to cry?❞ 

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The Devil, for him, had short hair with dyed ends, dressed in ripped jeans, and carried the darkest pools in their eyes he had the pleasure of letting himself drown over and over again. He fell in love with the blood dripping from your lips and the taunting before proceeding for the final kill. You liked games when he created them. He thought he enjoyed the hunting, but you were born for this much more than he ever would. 

Kol Mikaelson met Evil when he was only a child. He watched as he beat his brother until he passed out from the pain and he turned a blind eye to it so he wouldn't be caught in his bad temper of every evening. Evil had a name and a last name, but he hadn't spoken these or acknowledged it existed from the moment he felt blood on his lips and life draining from a human body. Because now, he had power. Now, he had strength. Now he didn't need to corner and lower his head for a man whose only language was cruelty. He had defeated Evil.  

Kol was never a believer in God. He believed in the grey area between good and bad because he constantly leaned towards both once in a while — mostly the bad. Depending on his mood on the occasion. He didn't believe in a higher power, in month signs – because apparently, that's a thing in the modern world? People just have to seek something to feel less ordinary – or say something countless times for it to become true.  

He did, however, believe in magic. Not only believed, but he trusted magic. Kol was skilled enough to use it with pride and knowledge even after he lost his powers due to having become undead.  

Magic. 

It was exhilarating. The world was in his hands and he could burn an entire forest or make a flower grow.  

Some days, he missed magic like he missed breathing. So he would dig out his grimoire from an old box he kept his stuff and read it all over again like he hadn't memorized every single chanting and spell throughout his entire life. 

They called him Devil after seeing the wreckage he could cause in five villages in a week. The carnage that was left for the Earth to claim back as its own. But, one thing that nobody knew was that Kol met the Devil when he was casually strolling through a college party on Whitmore College's campus.  

Actually, the Devil was staring at him. And, surprisingly, it had blood pumping strongly to their heart. Life coursing through their veins. The Devil was human. And Kol was drawn to them like a moth to a flame. Like a man starved for months without food or water.  

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

❝he's a paradox, 

I'm seeing visions, am I bad?❞ 

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

He thought he had found his prey that night when, in reality, he had been the one falling into their trap.  

"I think you look too bored to be here." You observed, a normal tone of voice for someone who wanted the other person to hear in a loud party full of drunk people speaking loudly and fast. Kol heard it well, of course. Your voice was smooth like honey if he were to compare it to the awful music they had playing.  

"And you look like you're enjoying this." 

You lifted a brow, a teasing smile spreading across your mouth. "I'm not. My friends dragged me, I couldn't say no." 

"You've got a problem saying no?" He glared at a drunk kid who bumped into him and turned to look at you, who still had that look of satisfaction on your face. He didn't know why, not back then.  

"Not really, but I lost a bet so..." You shrugged. "It was my dare. Part of it, actually." 

Kol nodded. Why had he been so interested? Don't ask him. He won't know the answer. Maybe because the Devil had their ways of playing their little games, to turn saints into sinners. And what was Kol Mikaelson if not a sinner? 

"What was the other part?" Kol found himself asking. He was about to take off at any second. He was only in town because of Klaus's stupidity and his family needed him again. Until they didn't. He could be halfway out of town by now. Why wasn't he? 

You approached him slowly, head tilting as you surveyed Kol up and down. He noticed the ink in your neck, right where your pulse laid. A strong and inviting pulse.  

"Well, the first part was that I had to come to this stupid party..." You said, tongue moving between your teeth and forming a teasing grin. “the second part,” You drawled out, lifting a hand to his shoulder, fingers rising to the back of his neck. Kol didn't move away as he was pulled closer. He didn't move away when your breaths mixed. “they dared me to take a handsome stranger home so I could have some fun.”  

It was Kol's turn to smirk. And just like that, it took one night, a few minutes, for him to be whisked away into your world with no turning back. 

A human.  

How could he let himself get carried away because of a human? 

Perhaps because it had been so long since he was a mortal and you reminded him what that felt like. A tad nostalgic and a lot euphoric. This is how Kol felt every time he was in your presence. The strangest thing was that there was no magic.  

“I'm starting to think that paranoia may run in the family.” 

He offered you an eye roll, perching against your windowsill as he watched the street. It was fairly empty. Quiet. Two of the five vampires he compelled to keep an eye on you were by the parked Black SUV. 

“Kol.” You closed the book with a thud. He glanced at you, schooling an unimpressed look. “I do not need protection. I can handle myself.” 

“Alright.” 

You scoffed, annoyed at his ability to turn down a conversation because that would end in his favor.  

“Alright doesn't mean shit if you're going to be a controlling prick.” 

He raised a brow, “I'm being controlling? Do you know who my family is? How many times has my brother threatened y— Try to walk out of here without losing a limb, will you? That's what he's capable of.” 

“I don't care.” 

And maybe that had been the whole problem. You truly did not care.  

There were few things you cared for, fewer were those you considered worth your time. Kol should have felt flattered to even be worth a minute of your time, but he took a lot of things for granted, including your safety. 

Immortality was not something he asked for. It had been imposed on him like the heavy burden of life previously had. 

He felt guilty for learning to enjoy it over time. He felt guilty for finding someone to keep him alive when he had been dead for decades.  

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

❝why does it feel like a vow  

we'll both uphold somehow?❞ 

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Then, he lost you. 

Because of retaliation. Because of his family. Which was always the reason for his undoing.  

He lost the human and met the Devil. Except that those were the same person in one and he only found out when he saw the glint of joy and the absolute exhilaration as you sucked someone dry and then tossed the body with a sigh.  

“I was sad when you stopped looking for me.” You whispered into his ear like his nightmares would on particularly bad nights. This was real, he just couldn't believe it yet. “Thought I was important for a minute.” 

“What happened?” 

You leaned back against the wall, leather jacket scrunching as you crossed your arms over your chest.   

“You sound disappointed.” 

Kol forced himself to move and you watched as he took a cautious step towards you. That was the first time you saw Kol Mikaelson hesitate about anything. When you reappeared in his life. 

Tilting your head a bit, you said in a casual tone, “I'm no longer fragile and broken, so your interest has vanished, is that it? The idea you had of me, that I needed your protection, it's completely shattered now. You're disappointed.” 

The Devil, for him, had slightly longer hair than the last time he saw them, still dressed in ripped jeans and the ink in their body had grown in numbers. The eyes didn't change. They were still the darkest he had ever seen, the night sky was jealous of them.  

Kol wasn't disappointed in you. He was disappointed in himself for not being able to protect too. Maybe he had grown a hero complex, Elijah had rubbed off on him, after all. 

To grasp the fact that he didn't lose you — because you were still here — wasn't easy. There was the fact that you were always on a different wavelength. Two extremes. Mortal and immortal. Human and vampire. Protected and protector. Destroyed and destroyer.  

There was no such a thing anymore. 

But he never saw you as fragile or broken. 

“Bonnie asked to turn my humanity back on.” You told him during a dinner in the Mikaelson compound. Kol placed the wine glasses on top of the counter, glancing up at you with careful eyes.  

“Did you? Turn it off?” 

He remembered thinking how cute it was when you scrunched your nose whenever confusion drowned your line of thought. He had never thought someone was cute. The person in front of him, nursing a glass of red wine as they pouted over something someone said to them a few days back, had killed around fifty wolves for threatening his family and somehow managed to acquire animosity with the Strix as well.  

He found you cute. What was going on with him? 

“How does one even do that?” You cracked a laugh, shaking your head at the idea. “What, you turn off your conscience to do unspeakable things to not remember them later? Is that a thing?” You placed the now empty glass of wine in front of the bottle so he could pour your another glass. “Then that means I'd have to grow a conscience first, wouldn't I?” 

Kol blinked, his lips stretching slowly into a soft smile that he couldn't hold back.  

He knew what was going on. You know, it's been known that Kol Mikaelson was an exceptional sinner and all the gods loathed him. So it made sense that he fell in love with the Devil, didn't it? 

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

❝crashing over my grave, 

without ever touching his skin, 

how can I be guilty as sin?❞

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

“Do you remember your human years?” 

You questioned him late in the evening. You were both in bed, you reading a book as he answered a text from Hope with one of the only memes he owned in his phone.  

“Yes.” Kol replied, turning his phone off and putting it in the nightstand. It wasn't until a few months ago that he stopped complaining after texting people. Big technophobe. You said he sounded like an old man whenever he complained about modernity. “Vaguely.” 

“Do you like remembering it?” 

“It depends.” A pause, the bed shifted. His hand wandered through your body, ending up on your hip, the shirt raising a little as he drew circles with his thumb. “Those weren't my favourite times.” 

You turned a page, avoiding his curious eyes on you. “Yeah?” 

“Mhm. I like it better now.” 

You stayed silent.  

He gently pulled the book away to be able to take a look at your face. 

“What's on your mind?”  

A lot.  

“Nothing.” 

Kol pecked your lips once. “Really?” He did it twice. “You don't know how to lie to me.” The corner of your lips lifted in amusement, which was always his intended goal. 

“Do I need to remind you what an awful liar you are?” 

He shrugged unapologetically, “That's why we're a good match. We're terrible liars.” 

You snorted, pursing your lips.  

“Is that what you think?” You said. “That we're a good match?” 

His forehead creased in confusion. He knew you were a bit odd during the day but he didn't push it when you didn't want to talk, figuring you would, eventually. But that? What did that mean?  

“What's going on?” He asked, thumb traveling across the back of your hand.  

“I don't know.” You bit your lip. “Sometimes I just feel like your life could be different. Without me.” 

He withdrew his hand to sit down on the bed, one leg under the other. The blanket falling on his lap, exposing his naked chest.  

“Yes, it would,” he said as if it was obvious. “It would be different in a way that I would never like to find out.” 

Your face twitched into a grimace. “Are you sure? Because people have a lot of opinions. About you and me. They say I make you worse.” 

“I was worse before you,” Kol interjected. “I didn't know you cared about people's opinions.”  

“I don't.” And that wasn't a lie. Oftentimes you had to stop Kol from shutting you out because of other people, mostly his family, interfering in your relationship. “But I'm a vampire now. And you... you're a Mikaelson. You're destructive and selfish and a lone wolf, except when you're with me. Do you really need someone who's the same?”  

“We're not the same.” He promptly disagreed. 

“Kol, we're both destructive.” 

“We were destructive before, what difference does it make now?” 

You sighed. 

“It doesn't bother you? That I'd kill and rip limbs out for you or my own benefit and not feel guilty about it?” 

With an arm beneath your legs, he brought you closer to him with a pull.  

“No. And neither should you.” He cupped your face, thump grazing your cheeks lovingly. “You didn't make me who I am—” 

“I'm aware, Kol. Your body count was above average way before I met you.”  

His forehead fell on yours as he chuckled in disbelief. “Fair enough.” 

You managed to smile a little.  

“If people tell you you make me worse, what do they say I make you?” 

Shrugging, you replied, “Satan, probably.”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━  

❝oh, what a way to die 

my bedsheets are ablaze  

I've screamed his name 

building up like waves  

crashing over my grave  

without ever touching his skin  

how can I be guilty as sin?❞

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

He hummed into your skin, kissing down your collarbones and your chest and your stomach, until you exhaled with your eyes falling shut.  

“It's funny.” Kol mumbled against your lower stomach, his chestnut eyes boring into yours. “I thought you'd bored me out when I first met you, but it was the other way around, wasn't it?”  

You were about to respond maybe when there was a slight tug in your shorts and your body just worked on automatically lifting your hips so he could get rid of it. 

“You had a grip on me the first moment I heard your voice, darling.” He pressed soft kisses down the inner skin of your thighs with his raspy voice due to his position. “You don't make me worse, you make me better. Infinitely better.” 

The mattress beneath your head crumpled under your hold.  

“That's why I pledged my spot in Hell the first moment you laid eyes on me. I was yours. I am yours. And I will always be yours.” Your back arched as his mouth reached its final destination. “Proudly,” he whispered but you could hear it perfectly through the sounds that echoed throughout your bedroom. “Undoubtedly. . .”  

The Devil, for you, had the most beautiful chestnut brown eyes you've ever seen, a rather basic sense of style and carried an uncontrollable thirst for blood like you. He knew how to dance but he hid that ability out of embarrassment. He knew how to love and was too scared to lose that capacity of feeling after centuries of working through it.  

If people claimed that he was responsible for Hell on Earth, 

“. . . Unrepentantly.” 

Then you would gladly fall into the clutches of his undoing.  

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

[nightghoul381]

Licht 3rd Anniversary Event

A Beast's Dream Realized by Beauty

Premium End

This a fan translation so it is definitely not 100% accurate. I do not own anything related to Ikemen Prince. Support Cybird by buying their amazing stories!

I’m very sorry I don’t have screenshots for this translation until the epilogue!

Part 1 | Part 2 | Premium End | Epilogue

—In the forest—

Emma: “Then this is something you left behind when you were a child?”

Licht: “Yes.”

Emma: “Wow! What a precious treasure!”

Licht: “Precious?”

Emma: “It’s an important clue about your childhood, isn’t it?”

Emma: “It’s precious because it’s a piece of you that I don’t know.”

Licht: “…You’re the only one who wants to know that stuff.”

(Emma seemed to thin the box I left in the past was a ‘good memory of my childhood’.)

(But no.)

(…That’s not true—)

To me in the future.

If you’re opening this letter, it means you’re not dead.

Hey, why?

Why am I not dead?

I did something unforgivable.

I did something I shouldn’t be able to live with.

Did you forget about it?

Do you think it’s okay to forget?

Remember again. I’m a person who must die.

Don’t be happy.

Don’t forget.

Never forget again.

The night after the box from the past was dug up, I looked at the letter inside written in childish handwriting.

It was a voice blaming himself to drive his future self to death.

(…I’m glad Emma didn’t see this.)

(Maybe you didn’t realize…)

(I buried this box after I sinned.)

—Flashback—

Since that day, when I dyed my hands red and lost my emotions.

I threw all my personal belongings in my room into bags.

The reason was simple.

If you have personal belongings, you will trouble other people after you die.

With the thought of death in mind, the process of putting things in order progressed calmly.

The clothes my mother gave me as a reward, the presents I got from Sariel, the treasure I found with Nokto,

It didn’t take long for me to let go of one thing after another and empty the room.

However, there was one thing that moved me.

No matter how you looked at it, it was such a poorly drawl picture that you could only tilt your head and ask “What is this?”

--Internal Flashback—

Mother: “—It’s a place where everyone can live freely under the bright moon.”

Mother: “They danced and sang freely; it was like paradise on Earth.”

--end internal flashback—

My mother longed to live outside the court.

That’s why I wanted to take Nokto there with me someday.

I was the one who let that dream come to an end.

I’m sure it’s unforgivable to keep a picture of a dream at hand.

Even so—the hand stuck inside the bag wouldn’t let go of the drawing.

If you get rid of this, all clues of your mother’s longing will disappear.

Even though it had already become an unfulfilled dream, I ended up thinking such stupid things.

I have to let it go to clean up my affairs, but I can’t throw it away.

So, I decided to bury it deep underground.

Digging a deep hole alone in the forest at night, I dropped the box inside.

I will never dig again. Such a thing shouldn’t happen in a body that must die.

Even so, in the unlikely event that something goes wrong and you end up digging it up.

It means that “Me who forgot my sin” has sinned again.

Forgetting is not allowed. There should be no coming back…not for me.

So, I left a letter with the pictures.

To remind us of our forgotten sins.

--End flashback—

Licht: “…I know.”

Licht: “I never have forgotten our sin.”

My face was twisted in pain that made my breathing shallow.

My chest is burning hot. It feels as if it had been pierced by a stake.

Licht: “But one thing…”

I crushed the cursed letter and threw it in the trash can.

Licht: “I decided to live.”

Licht: “Sorry.”

Looking down at the crumpled letter, I pressed my hand against my chest hard.

(I’m sure Nokto remembers the dream… but I don’t want to be stuck in the past anymore.)

Even so, the curse left by me as a child was so powerful that the pain never went away.

A few days later—

Clavis: “Come on Licht. Your dearest big brother will take you to a good place.”

Licht: “Good or disturbing?”

My mischievous older brother suddenly appeared and majestically blocked the middle of the corridor.

(Lately Emma seemed to be up to something with Clavis.)

(I’m sure you’re planning something cute, but… out of everyone, why work with Clavis?)

It seemed that I had unconsciously stared at him, and my troublesome older brother’s face was filled with joy.

Clavis: “Oops! Is it murderous? It’s murderous. Now it’s jealousy!”

Licht: “If you know that, disappear.”

Clavis: “Good brother, I love jealousy.”

Licht: “…”

Clavis: “But yes… it doesn’t look like it’s going to be easy to get you to cooperate.

Clavis pulled something out of his pocket that looked like a sturdy rope.

(I don’t know what to do. I would run away… but what if Emma’s involved?)

(…)

After some hesitation, Emma’s face crosses my mind and after a vengeful resistance, I fell prey to the rope.

Things are different in the mountains I was transported to. As expected, Emma was there, but…

Emma: “Licht, are you okay?”

Licht: “You’re dressed like that…”

Licht: “…a dancer?”

Emma: “Yeah… it’s a little weird.”

It was a defenseless outfit that only covered the chest and lower half of the body and the fabric was a pattern that was rare for Rhodolite.

When Emma spun around on the spot, the cloth drew a beautiful trajectory, like a shooting star in the night sky.

All the jewelry she was wearing was something I’d given to her in the past, so at least that was familiar.

(Even foreign outfits look good on Emma… cute.)

Licht: “There’s nothing wrong with it. I was fascinated by it.”

Emma: “Ah, thank you, Licht.”

Clavis: “Haha… I suppose the teacher should leave early, it would be punishable to disturb the young couple.”

(…what does he mean ‘teacher’?)

Unusually for Clavis, he leaves really quickly.

I thought he was going to spy on us, but I didn’t feel any sign of his presence.

I look back at Emma, dressed as a dancer, she keeps her distance.

Then, she stretched her arms like a warm-up exercise.

Licht: “You, no way…”

Emma: “Yeah, it’s a traditional dance. Watch.”

With the full moon so bright it hurts my eyes, Emma begins to move.

It was a dance I’d never seen in Rhodolite.

(… I think it’s a dance from Tanzanite.)

Even though the surroundings are silent, Emma dances so happily that I can almost hear the music.

(I see. So that’s what he meant by ‘teacher’, huh…)

It was undoubtedly Clavis who had taught her. My troublesome brother had been to Tanzanite a long time ago.

Perhaps what Emma was gifting me wasn’t so much a dance as a dream of the past.

I can’t go to Tanzanite right now, but…

(Maybe it’s a kindness to make sure my dreams don’t end in pain.)

The picture of the dancer found in the treasury room overlaps with Emma, reviving my mother’s admiration.

(…come to think of it, I remembered something.)

(My… no, our, real dream wasn’t to go to Tanzanite or to take our mother out of the castle.)

(We just wanted to be loved.)

(That was the real dream.)

(I never stopped believing that if we left the court, my mother would love me.)

(…that’s why…)

(I couldn’t throw away the drawing… because I didn’t want to give up.)

Emma: “What…?”

Licht: “You’re cold.”

After Emma had given me a taste of Tanzanite,

I brought her to my room and held her to my shoulder, her skin was ice cold.

(I guess you were waiting outside for a long time.)

Emma: “…Then, can I have you hug me?”

Licht: “As much as you want.”

I hugged her and stroked her bare shoulders.

(Tanzanite is a desert country… it’s hot; so this kind of outfit isn’t suitable here.)

(…but…)

Licht: “…damn.”

Emma: “What?”

Licht: “When I think about you, I want to change your clothes, but…”

Licht: “The dancer outfit is so cute, I feel like I want to enjoy it a little more.”

Emma: “Then I won’t change clothes.”

Emma: “Enjoy it a lot.”

Licht: “…”

(This is unreasonable.)

Emma: “Eh, ah, wait a minute…!?”

I casually put the hand that was stroking her shoulder into her clothes.

Emma: “I didn’t mean that—”

Licht: “You provoked me.”

Emma: “… I provoked you? I guess…”

Licht: “You don’t like it?”

Emma: “Of course..”

Emma: “… I like it.”

Emma put her hand behind my neck and kissed me softly.

With that as signal, the air in the room suddenly became warm.

The more I entwined our tongues,, the deeper the stake in my chest from my past seems to sink.

(…it hurts…)

The dream of ‘wanting to be loved’ hidden behind the wish of a young child had now come true in a different form.

The object and type of love were different, but the fact that it is love didn’t change.

My past self would never allow it.

It’s not like I’m forgiving myself now either.

However, even if I’m not forgiven, I still love Emma.

(Because that’s my dream right now.)

Licht: “I think I should write another letter.”

Emma: “Letter?”

When our lips separate, I can see the thread of saliva that connects them.

Licht: “My past-self left a letter for the present me.”

Licht: “So this time… I think I’ll leave a letter for future me.”

(No matter how hard and painful it is, I want the future me to look forward.)

(Live no matter what, don’t leave Emma alone. My life belongs to her…)

The future, which had been shrouded in darkness, is now illuminated brightly by Emma.

Even if the road in front of my is thorny, I’ll never lose sight of what direction I should take.

Emma: “Then I should write a letter too,”

Emma: “So that I can dig it up with you in the future and we can reminisce.”

Licht: “Yeah. But right now, I want to enjoy you.”

Emma: “… then come on, enjoy me.”

(What the hell, how is she so cute?)

I carry Emma, who seems to have made up my mind, to the bet and sink her into the sheets.

(Thanks, Emma.)

(… you give me a reason not to die.)

(Thank you for giving me a new dream.)

[chloe-caulfield94]

A Miracle I Chose Not to Perform - a LiS fan poem

On a surprisingly sunny and warm day in October

a genuine miracle was about to happen

In spite of the consequences of their actions

(and fitting conclusions to their character arcs)

emerging from the ocean and coming their way

the following wonderful people would be spared:

A promising young artist would be allowed

to keep making his haunting works

after just a brief three year stay

in an institution run by those

who clearly fail to comprehend

that in pursuit of real art

sacrifices must be made

Some shallow graves simply need to be filled

with whores

I mean sluts

I mean models

if truth and beauty are to be discovered

An ambitious businessman would be allowed to keep

the spirit of entrepreneurship alive

by selling his intoxicatingly enticing wares

to the most challenging customers of all – schoolchildren

And I’m sure that such a nice, hard-working man

would soon find a new, suitably young match

to replace the one he killed with his product

One that would understand

that after a hard day’s work

(and tasting his own stash)

a “man” has the right to explode into a blind rage

A devoted school principal and brave boys in blue

would be allowed to keep supplementing their incomes

(which are absolutely inadequate, when you factor in how much they care about the people they teach, protect and serve)

with envelopes coming from

a pillar of local community

for keeping the young artist’s career

under wraps

A valued member of the student body

would be allowed to teach

many a more stuck-up prudes

a lesson using her phone camera

having never been made aware

that other people have feelings too

All those wonderfully revolting things

would be allowed to happen

for a low tall Price

of just one murdered girl

What is the murder of a single girl

if it allows the putrid entrails

of a scenic Oregon town

to keep on churning

An irrationally angry girl

who had the audacity to confront

the boy who'd merely roofied her

Big deal!

He only wanted to

do something beautiful to her

and he would have

had she not unceremoniously fled

while she was still alive

How rude!

But you can’t expect class

from a scholarship kid in tattered clothes

Forgive my sarcasm dripping from the page

I will now speak plainly

The miracle described above I chose not to perform

I decided that just this once

friendship

should carry more weight

than the cruelty of evildoers

One ghoul pierced her heart

with a bullet-tipped spear

Another placed a red crown of thorns

on her forehead

Conquering her fear she didn’t cry

„Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani”

No, instead she handed me

the final nail

and begged me to hammer it

so that others might live while she would die

But despite her bravery

in the face of oblivion

(or perhaps because of it)

a blue-winged seraph was sent down

to defend her life

Nobody would miss her

the promising artist said

and if I had let her cross be raised

I would’ve proven him right

Nothing ever is worth someone

being murdered

Nothing ever is worth someone

dying alone, abandoned, hopeless and afraid

And for that reason

unlike two millennia ago in Palestine

expiation was denied

to those who required it the most

but deserved it not

I made sure of that

by pulling the would-be Christ of Arcadia Bay

down from her cross

Even though two nails

had already been driven

her hands, feet, heart and brow

bear no holes

My supposed crime is digging out of her heart

a bullet fired by

the promising artist

Shouldn’t the fault lie with the one

who aimed the gun and pulled the trigger?

I never claimed to be a hero

and if saving a friend's life is a sin

then I’m the greatest sinner

(and unrepentant one at that)

Once you cut out all hope

from your own friend’s heart

and you nail their body to a cross

once you’re smiling over their coffin

bloody knife and hammer in your hands

once you selfishly reduce

the light of their life

to a memory locked away

in your brain

then you can judge me

But know that

I don’t care about the verdicts

of ghouls

Isn’t it written

that whoever saves a life

is considered to have saved

the whole world?

So by digging the bullet out of her heart

I saved her world

my world

our world

the world

She was the Price to be paid

for sparing Arcadia Bay

from its fate

I refused that bargain

because who in their right mind

would pay with the world

for a town?

All the fine people described at the begininng

casual in their cruelty

banal in their evil

learnt an important lesson

(and for some of them it was their last):

sometimes hatred and disdain sown

become a Storm reaped

So on an unsurprisingly cold and stormy day in October

the miracle turned out to be

how such a tiny town could've fit

so much cruelty

before it burst at the seams

and that the seeds of the Storm

sown by its dwellers every day

took that long to yield crop

[voolfman]

Bring Out the Dead Man

ctir multi-chapter fic posted on ao3 by voolfman

Chapter 1

“Really?!” This was too good to be true, but- “Then bring back my brother-”

[Anything but bring back the dead!]

Ah, and there it was; the harsh blue box coldly said as much. It really was too good to be true. As with everything else in Yoojin’s pathetic life, even a “Wish Stone '' with the ability to grant any heart’s desire, nothing would ever go his way. Even if it was just to bring back his precious, baby brother, a boy so awkward in his ability to show he loved Yoojin, to show that he cared, that his only way to care for his older brother was to push him away.  To make him hate Yooyhun.

He dug his fingers deeper into the folds of his baby brother’s cloak, still feeling warmth from the gradually cooling corpse. “No,” he couldn’t accept it, he wouldn’t. “No! Bring him back! This world still needs him!” The world didn’t need a useless and crippled F- ranker like him, but people still needed saving, and only Yooyhun could do that. 

Therefore, there was one thing Yoojin could do, and he wasn’t so virtuous or naive enough to wish for something vague like “world peace” or “for the dungeons to go away,” who knew what would happen if he wished for that instead. No, he would dig in his heels in his last few seconds, and call the damn system’s bluff.  “Fine-" his words were starting to slur "-if you won’t bring him back, then I’ll die here as well and take this useless stone with me.”

[Wait, honey-]

The box was blurry. Why honey? “Give. Him. Back.”

Yoojin squinted. The text had changed. To what? He wouldn't know. The world was tiltled, and slowly smothered in the dense dark smoke of dying embers.

It was the soft thump of something landing on his chest that finally woke Yoohyun up. Not fully, but it brought his consciousness mostly to the forefront, where it had been…? Where had it been? And what was this weight that was settling on his chest? What was he doing-

“Yoojin!” he gasped as his eyes shot open.

[Quick! Honey needs help!]

Honey? Who was Honey? Where was Rauchitas? Was he asleep? So many questions, too many questions, were swirling through his foggy memory. And what was this weight on his chest? He glanced down, and his chest collapsed in on itself, the featherlight pressure resting there was suddenly a boulder pressing down on him.

Delicately he placed one shaking hand on his brother’s back, securing the smaller man in place, and used his other arm to help him sit up. No, no this was all wrong, after all he’d done to keep him safe- Gently he placed two fingers on the artery below his brother’s jawline and felt one little desperate pulse and then another and then another.  They were small and somewhat irregular, but his pulse was there.  Yoohyun almost hugged his brother and cried with relief, but he didn’t. Knowing how dire their situation was and that he couldn’t waste another second if he wanted to save Yoojin’s life. Not even to kill Rauchitas; he’d just have to come ba-

Yoohyun stumbled as he stood, careful not to drop his irreplaceable cargo. “Rauchitas… is dead? How-” He shook his head, interrupting his own shock at the massive dragon carcas that was already rotting right in front of his very eyes.

[Hurry!]

The pop up box was right, there was no time to wonder or worry about this.  If the boss was dead, he needed to get out of the dungeon quickly, before they were trapped with only one gate stone.

It was several days after he had escaped the dungeon with his hyung, that Yoojin woke up. It was a little less busy at Hayeon, and the press had finally calmed down somewhat in reaction to Yoohyun busting out of a closing dungeon gate with his heavily injured brother cradled carefully to his chest. With this in mind, Yoohyun decided to pay his brother a visit at the hospital, not only because he was worried with how close his brother had brushed with death, but now it was probably better to show his face than to abandon Yoojin again. His cover was already blown.

Quietly he slid the door open, not wanting to wake the injured man, only to find him attempting to sit up and tears streaming down his face.

“Wait a moment, hyung, let me remove the oxygen mask.”  Tenderly, Yoohyun helped his brother sit up and used the button to help him lie down in a somewhat upright position. He then exchanged his brother’s mask for a few sips of water in a poor attempt to replace the water Yoojin was quickly losing through his tears.

“You idiot!” was the first thing that hissed out of Yoojin’s drug addled mouth, and Yoohyun winced only a little. He was used to Yoojin hating him and saying hurtful things to him at this point. “You could have died!” The older man dropped his head and covered his mouth, and thinking that he may be feeling ill, Yoohyun made an aborted motion for the nurse when Yoojin whispered with hollow eyes, “You did die.”

And that…that was news to Yoohyun. Because if Yoohyun had died, well he wouldn’t be sitting here with his brother right now. “Yoojin, you must’ve been mistaken.  Rauchitas’ poison-”

Now Yoojin was glaring at him, his fists curled into the sheets. Shaking, pale, and sweaty, but the heat in his eyes was enough to compete with Yoohyun’s own fire. “Killed you. And you left me. You died with the belief that I’d never find out about the past eight years, and that I would hate you until the end of my days-” and suddenly all of that anger and rage dissipated from Yoojin’s tensed shoulders, and he placed his unsteady hand on the side of Yoohyun’s face, “But I could never hate you, I raised you.” He tried to pull Yoohyun’s bulky build into a hug, and slowly, he let the exhausted man. “I was hurt and confused and lashing out, but try as I might, I could never hate you. I love you.”

Yoohyun was in shock.  He never thought he’d hear such sentiments from his brother. He'd steeled his heart to the thought of ever receiving a kind word from Yoojin again, all so that he could protect him from his enemies. Before he could say anything, Yoojin slumped exhausedly back against the bed, still gripping Yoohyun.

"Yoojin," he whispered, "Yoojin, I'm sorry, but you need to let go of me." Unfortunately for the younger of the two, the older brother was completely out cold and instead of letting go, he gripped onto Yoohyun’s back even more. Not that the stronger grip was even remotely strong at all, and with a light tug the young guild master freed himself and allowed the nurse to busily right everything and check Yoojin’s slowly and steadily improving vitals.

As he exited the room, he turned to Kim Sunghan who had been keeping watch.

"How much of that did you hear?"

The older Hunter grimaced. "Everything, sir."

Yoohyun glanced back a the closed door and said, "Nothing leaves this room. Make sure the nurse and doctors know this. Make them sign a contract if you feel that's necessary."

"Understood."

"You have questions, I know. So do I-" Yoohyun could see the uncertainty in the Hunter's eyes, "but right now the only one with answers is my hyung, and I don't want to slow his recovery."

Sungham inclined his head slowly, and without looking at his Guild Master, asked very quietly, "Did you really try to purposefully make him hate you?"

He asked that because he knew that was the one thing Yoohyun had an answer for. "Yes." And he stormed back down the hallway, leaving his most trusted employee to watch over the fragile treasure that lay recovering in the room.

The absolute irony of Yoojin's life was he had finally acquired amazing L- class and even SS- class skills after having apparently "single-handedly defeating a dragon," and yet he was still an entirely useless F- rank. Not to mention he received it all at the cost of the only thing he loved. He wasn't entirely sure how he had arrived at the hospital or escaped from the dungeon, perhaps he did use that gate key in a moment of unconscious desperation to ensure his own survival. He knew he was under Hayeon's surveillance, though. That bastard Kim Sunghan thought he was being sly when he peeked through the window. Honestly, he should just tell the A-ranker to get it over with. The man had been so loyal to his bro-, to Yoohy- to Hayeon's Guildmaster that Yoojin wouldn't blame him, might encourage him or egg him on really, it's not like he had any more reason to-

"Hyung!" Yoojin continued to stare in front of him even as he heard the door's dainty click of the lock. "I heard you're awake…?"

Yoojin knew he shouldn't look, shouldn't dare. Shouldn't hope. He'd already had that dream, but he couldn't help himself. He really was the worst of them all. "Yoohyun." The whisper itself was only a little more than a breath, spoken almost as a prayer.

The eyebrows scrunched together in concern over eyes swirling with confusion and a myriad of other emotions. His face wasn't rosy with life, but, well, Yoohyun had never been rosy, but his face was certainly alive and entirely unharmed, moving, squinting, saying something. But Yuujin, he was entirely too focused on his living little brother. He scrambled to life, grunting a bit as his weakened arms struggled to lift him into a sitting position, compelling Yoohyun to quicken his pace to his brother’s side.

"Yoohyun," he murmured, his shaking hand lightly resting on Yoohyun’s hovering arm. "You're alive. That wasn't a dream." His shoulders drooped as he suddenly gripped the outstretched arm. "It worked, you're alive. It worked."

The scrape of a chair pulled Yoojin out of his reverie as Yoohyun sat down in the chair beside the bed, scooching it closer. "Hyung, that's actually what we need to discuss. If you don't feel up for it, please say so, I just- I'm confused. You said I died in the dungeon, yet here I am? I know I also believed that was the end of the line for me, but…"

Ah, it was time to 'fess up about the skill he'd kept close to his chest all these years. "Well… as you know, Yoohyun, I have a Custodian title and a small buff skill-" he searched the younger's eyes for a moment. For what, he didn't know. He then went back to staring at the empty hospital wall. "What you, and no one else knows, is that I also have a skill called Final Thanks. It only activates for a short amount of time after someone under my custody dies, not only giving me their skills and rank, but doubling them."

Puzzle pieces were clicking into place on Yoohyun’s face. "That…explains Rauchitas, but I don't have a revival skill…"

"No, I received a Wish Stone as a reward."

There was a slight moment of hesitation. "And you wished to bring me back?"

The actual answer was a bit more complicated than that, but Yoojin was growing tired and unsure if he should even explain all the details of what occurred, since according to the pop up box, it really shouldn't have. "Don't look at me like that," Yoojin twisted his mouth into something resembling a rueful smile, but it felt too sorrow laden for that. "I'd like to hope that I would have wished to bring you back, regardless, but there’s one more aspect to Final Thanks.”

Yoohyun stayed quiet as Yoojin reached, hesitated, and then took Yoohyun’s hand in his as softly as a willow branch caressing a pond. Taking a deep breath, and holding his brother, reminding himself that at least one of his mistakes had been reversed, “As part of Final Thanks, I not only receive their power doubled, but also their final memories before they pass on.”

“Then you know all of it?” Yoohyun’s voice trembled.

“No,” he admitted while shaking his head. “Just bits and pieces. Only enough to know I should’ve known better than to doubt my precious little brother.”

“Hyung- no- I”

Yoojin raised his hands and waved them about in a sweeping manner. “Ah- buh- buh, I’ve already made my peace.  I don’t blame you anymore, yes you hurt me, and yes we both could’ve gone about this in a better way, but what’s done is done. Now,” and at this Yoojin drew himself up as best he could, and placed his hands on his hips. “You ought to get out of here before you let nearly a decade of hard work of ignoring me go down the drain. Go on, shoo shoo. I’ll be alright on my own, I’ll stay out of dungeons. Heh, not that I’d be able to anytime soon even if I wanted to.”

At that Yoohyun froze and looked away, slightly abashed. “Actually-” he cleared his throat, “I might have already done that when I escaped the dungeon with you.”

“Ahh… sorry.”

Before Yoohyun could respond, Kim Sungham made himself known as he opened the door.  “Guildmaster, visiting hours are over now.”

Yoojin gave his younger brother a light punch, moreso for protection of his own knuckles than out of any even remote fear of injuring the S- rank Hunter. “Good luck, keep it up, and stay safe. Who knows if we’ll come across another Wish Stone?”

That was when Yoohyun frowned, drew together his eyebrows, and decided to throw a fastball and shock both of the other men in the room.  “We’ll be back after midnight.”

“Why?” voiced twin voices of concern, Sungham and Yoojin being in sync for the first time.

“To kidnap you, of course.”

[sezja]

First Kisses

I've gone eighteen years without letting myself get stupid about romance, Thaffe grouses to himself, heaving all his frustration into his pickaxe and driving it deep into the cavern wall. Eighteen good years without letting some pretty girl - or boy - turn my head; eighteen years without falling all to pieces like some of the fools around here...

He didn't have to come to the mine today; he could've begged off again and spent the day helping Magnus put the old trolleys back together. Technically, he's meant to be training as an engineer, but the entire rail system's fallen into such disrepair that there isn't a great deal of engineering to do just yet - first, Magnus says, they've got to put everything back together. Reassemble the tracks that've fallen apart. Fit new parts to the rusty trolley cars, so that they can actually move along those repaired tracks. Repair the Talos.

Strictly speaking, that's what he's about. Digging for leonine to repair the Talos hearts that have all failed in the past few years, and good stone to mend the shattered golems' bodies, fallen into just as sorry a state as the rest of the railway. Strictly speaking, he's still doing work for Magnus.

But that's not the whole truth, is it?

Eighteen years!

It's been a week now, and he still can't quite meet Jeryk's eye.

Such a simple, normal evening it'd been; the two of them sitting in one of the covered tunnels along the tracks after the day's work - shelter from the Light, without returning home just yet. The tunnels had become a common hangout spot for youths after the trolleys stopped working: often they weren't the only ones sheltering there, but not that day. That day it'd been just the two of them. Everyone else had been seeing off yet another family departing from Twine, leaving Amh Araeng for greener pastures - just as Jeryk's own had left just half a year before, leaving him behind at his own insistence.

They'd been talking about it - about the family that was leaving, and what it meant for Twine. The dwindling population; the dying industries. And out of the blue, Jeryk (of all people) lamented that there were so few people their own age left in Twine - true enough; with this family's departure, it left them some of the youngest people in town - and that there were no girls their age left at all, and...

And just how was anyone meant to have a first kiss, at this rate?

I didn't even think he cared about that sort of thing, Thaffe thinks, his face heating at the memory. It's an odd sort of betrayal, almost; he'd always assumed Jeryk was just as uninterested in romance and its trappings as he was. The other boy never mentioned anything of the sort before; so far as Thaffe had ever known, Jeryk's first and only love were the trolleys.

But then, I didn't think I cared about that sort of thing, either.

But he'd sat there thinking about it, while the sweat trickled down his neck and his mouth went dry - he'd sat there thinking about it, with his heart pounding so fast it made his vision blur, and he'd realized, swallowing hard-

"We could kiss, I suppose."

He'd meant it to sound casual. A joke, maybe; something they could laugh off, except... except that abruptly, with everything in him, he desperately wanted to kiss Jeryk. His best friend, his oldest friend; how'd this sneak up on him? Surely it should've hit him sooner than this, but he'd gone eighteen years without so much as a flicker of desire, thinking himself too mature to stumble into this sort of pitfall. He'd watched their other friends break their hearts against each other over the past few years, and never once did he think he might...

He'd meant to take it back, to laugh it off as he'd intended, but Jeryk... Jeryk had lit up at the idea. That smile! Thaffe still sees it when he closes his eyes, like staring at a bright light too long.

And then...

How does one judge this sort of thing? Was it a good kiss? Gods, Thaffe doesn't know. It was light, tentative, the gentlest brush of dry, chapped lips, full of promise. The promise of what - that's what sets Thaffe's heart to twisting; that's what's kept him awake at night all week. They hadn't talked about it - they'd laughed, anxious little laughs, and they'd gone back to talking about other things, though Thaffe doesn't recall a word of what he said. There'd been a little flush in Jeryk's cheeks, though, and he couldn't seem to stop smiling.

He can't stop thinking about it. But he can't bring himself to talk to Jeryk about it, either - what would he even say? What does he even want to say? He can't keep avoiding Jeryk the way he has, that's for certain; even if it hasn't become obvious yet, it will soon, and someone's going to start asking questions. Worse, Jeryk might start asking questions, and Thaffe's not sure he's got the answers.

He sighs, gathering today's meager collection. He's done a lot of banging on the cavern walls with his pickaxe for not a lot in the way of ore, and certainly no leonine. And he's no closer to unraveling the tangle in his head for his efforts.

All week, he's headed straight home from the mines, the better to clean up and get to bed early - before Jeryk gets home. It's not all that unusual. He's done it all the time, since taking up mining when he'd reached fifteen summers; early to bed, early to rise. Jeryk won't question it, not yet. If he keeps it up, though...

What if he gets it into his head that he's done something wrong? Thaffe hesitates outside the mine, blinking in the Light. What if he starts thinking I'm avoiding him for the kiss, when it was my own idea in the first place?

...Wicked white, he is avoiding Jeryk for the kiss, when it was his own idea in the first place.

With a heavy sigh, he turns his feet not toward home, but toward the railyard at Mount Biran, where Jeryk is sure to be. Magnus will be heading home by now, along with everyone else, but Jeryk? Jeryk'll spend another hour or so there, even if he's just looking at the old equipment, mesmerized. Thaffe finds himself walking quickly, surprising himself with his eagerness to see his friend again, after a week apart-

And maybe that's an answer all its own, isn't it? He misses Jeryk; misses him like he's lost a part of himself.

Whatever this is, whatever he's feeling, whatever comes of it... gods save him; he doesn't want to be away from Jeryk any longer. They'll figure it out better together than they will apart, surely.

The railyard's empty, but a light blazes in the window of the old Stoneworks office building. Jeryk's perched on the desk, drumming his heels against the scarred wood as he reads one of the technical manuals the old engineers left behind... but he looks up at Thaffe's arrival, startled by the door opening long after everyone else has gone home.

And he smiles, delight kindling in his green eyes. "Thaffe! I haven't seen you all week! Have you and Agna found any leonine?"

There's a vice around his heart, and something lodged in his throat. "Not.. not yet, no. Listen, Jeryk..."

Jeryk's smile fades. He sets the book aside. "Thaffe?"

Do or die, he orders himself. Get it over with or go home. He closes the distance between them, coming to stand before Jeryk, trying to keep his breathing steady. "I've... I've been thinking a lot," he says, doing his level best not to stare at Jeryk's lips. "About the... the kiss."

Color blooms in Jeryk's cheeks. "Oh?"

He sounds so hopeful it makes Thaffe want to laugh. So hopeful that it gives him hope, and enough courage to step even closer. He tugs the old hat off of Jeryk's head, rests his own forehead against his friend's.

Their breathing mingles, both a little unsteady.

"I'd like to kiss you again," Thaffe says, his voice rough. He cups Jeryk's face in his hands. "And I... I think I'd like to kiss you more, if you'd have me."

Jeryk laughs, a little breathless, but full of sheer delight.

"Yes," he says, sliding his arms around Thaffe's neck. "Oh, yes!"

[terminallyconcussed]

I do not know why this photo of an egg made of teeth that I found, spurred a conversation with existentialism and forced godhood but here we are:

1:Why do you fear me? 

2:I don't like EGG

1:I CAN'T FIND MY FONTS

2:Mortal creature with no fonts to her name

1:HELP

I FEEL SO VULNERABLE

2:NO

1:PLEASE HELP ME

I HAVE NOTHING LEFT

2:SO RISES THE ERA OF A TEGGLESS WORLD

1:YOU FOOL

I HAVE FOUND THEM

2:WHAT DARK POWER? 

1:YOU CANNOT KILL THE TEGGS

FROM THE GROUND I HAVE CLIMBED, BASK UPON MY THRONE. 

YOU CANNOT KILL THEM ALL, THEY ARE EVERYWHERE. 

2:but I can still kill the teggs you hold dear. 

1:how does one being become so powerful

2:when I was a child theTegg gods approached me, they wanted my power.

1: :0

2:but I refused, and struck them down where they stood. 

1:YOU DARE? 

2: THE TEGG GODS HAVE ALWAYS BEEN DEAD. YOU PLACE YOUR HOPE UPON A CORPSE OF SHELL AND YOLK. 

1:It doesn't matter

Gods of the world are merely mortals cloaked in legend. 

Gods are replaceable. 

2:I am no mortal

1:you were once. 

Once red blood ran in your veins. 

What have you become?

2: No this cannot be. 

1: Have you drunk the gods blood in order to become one? 

2:CREATURE WHAT HAVE YOU DONE

AAHHHHH

1:REMEMBER

2:I CANNOT, I SWORE I WOULDN'T. 

1:REMEMBER

REMEMBER

2: I COULD NEVER PLEASE, MERCY. 

1:REMEMBER THE BLUSH IN YOUR SKIN THE MORTAL EMOTION OF SADNESS. 

Remember. 

2:WHY

I DID THIS

NO

YOU DID THIS

1:me? 

How could I have done this

2:Even the immortal creature knows not what I do

1:... 

2:do you not remember our godhood was born of the same means? 

1:NO

2: you are just as traitorous as I 

1:I HAD NO CHOICE

YOU WERE ALWAYS AFTER THE GLORY

2:is that the delusion you created for yourself? 

That I was to be stopped? 

1:it is no delusion

2:THE TEGG GODS WERE TYRANTS

1: THEY WERE ALL THE PEOPLE HAD

2:I STRUCK THEM DOWN FOR THE SAFETY OF OUR PEOPLE

1:how could we take away their belief and not give them a new god to believe in? I could not abandon MY people in that way. 

2:do you want to know what the tegg “gods” did in their last moments? 

1:.. 

2:what these ever so powerful did in finales light? 

1:NO! 

2:they 𝙘𝙤𝙬𝙚𝙧𝙚𝙙 

1:THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE

2:THEY BEGGED FOR MY MERCY BUT IN THEIR EGGLY OMNIPOTENCE THEY KNOW THEIR TIME WAS DECIDED. 

1:you are a liar and a god slayer

2:THEY KNEW JUST AS I THAT THE PEOPLE HAD GROWN PAST MYTH AND LEGEND.

BUT WERE TOO AFRAID TO KNOT THEIR POWER BACK INTO THE TIME WEB WHERE IT BELONGED. 

1:WHY AREN'T YOU CONTENT TO LEAVE THIS IN CLOAKED MEMORY? 

2:BECAUSE THIS CANNOT CONTINUE

1:WHY MUST YOU DIG UP EVERYTHING JUST TO CRUSH IT IN YOUR HANDS? 

WE COULD BE AT PEACE, BEING RAIN TO THE MORTALS, help people. 

2:THE PEOPLE BELIEVE YOU TO BE AN IMMORTAL, THEY BUILD SANCTIFIED PLACES TO HONOR YOUR EGGLYNESS BUT THEY HAVE ALWAYS HAD THE POWER TO DESIGN THEIR OWN FATE. 

1:they will die without us

2:WHEN THE RAINS COME THEY SHIVER KNOWING AN ENDLESS CREATURE WATCHES THEM FROM ABOVE THAT THEY CANNOT COMPREHEND. 

1: I myself saw in the brief moments the world had no god, I saw fire and brimstone, I saw the world split in two, they will destroy themselves. 

2:BECAUSE YOU STRANGLE THEM IN THEIR KNOWLEDGE, YOU LIMIT WHAT THEY CAN KNOW. IF THE WORLD WERE TO SPLIT THEY WOULD SIMPLY BRIDGE THE GAP BUT YOU ARE TOO SELFISH TO SEE THAT. 

1:you overestimate them. 

2:the people would overcome

Can we not go back to what we were before? 

Before our eyes were opened before we saw the depths of the universe and the darkness that would shred it? 

1:but you..

When I drank the blood of the Tegg gods I signed away my mortal heart. You have hope. 

2:you can go back

1:no

I can feel the chains around my wrists. 

2:Things will never be the same, but tell me when you wrote the contract to sign your soul away who did you bestow it to?

1:there is no return to the universe

2:The universe is dead and dying, always has been. 

1:my soul belongs to the sweet Grass and the empty void, I have been scattered across existence, there is nothing left for me to have. 

2:You feel the words of ink and blood from so long ago holding you back but those words are only left in your mind. They only bind you so tight because you believe them. 

1:the old gods cannot walk among mortals. 

Like the Tegg gods I must die in order for the next era to begin. 

2:All will die, all will cease, so can we not spend the last moments in a collapsing universe together? One dozen walking the sweet Grass fields feeling the dew we lost for so long until the clawed darkness comes for us? 

1:I do not deserve that peace

2:you fool

Peace is not deserved it is given

1:The world was born in violence and so must end in it. 

2:Our mistakes may have brought this end but we were only young yolks when this eternity was forced upon us, our shells had not even fully hardened. Do you remember the bitter sawdust smell of our nest?

1:no

2:Do you remember our siblings crushed by the very thing that opened our eyes?

1:no

2:They got the better fate, we just happened to be the survivors. 

1:My memories, have they too been lost to this place? 

Why can't I remember them? 

2: now as the sky falls around us we can remember

Just try

We have known for so long that we were not made to be gods but never known why. 

1:I.. 

2:Fighting throughout the eternal loops of time unsure why we must always oppose each other. 

1:I cannot

2:Forced into a manufactured opposition to keep the balance of the universe in check but now even that has collapsed. 

1:the static fills my mind

I am out of time. 

2:the static is not real, you can do this. 

Remember

1:remember what

.. 

How our mother kicked us out of the nest? 

How cold and cruel the world was? 

How hungry we were for more? 

2:The oak trees of our home seemingly so tall and old? The smell of the running water by the eroding stream... And yes the way our mother left, I remember. 

She left us a coward, but we can grow past that. Please, there is little time left. 

Remember

1:HOW THE WOLVES HOWLED OUTSIDE OUR SHELTER, HOW PAINFUL IT WAS TO LIVE?

I WANT NO PART IN THAT PAIN. 

2:How the wolves howled but never deemed to enter? How life was excruciating.. But life without pain is not life. 

1:THE GODS BLOOD TASTED SWEET. AND IF I HAD A CHOICE I WOULD DRINK IT AGAIN FOR YOU, SISTER. 

2:THE GODS BLOOD WAS BITTER AND COLD, YOU DON'T REMEMBER HOW THEY MANIPULATED US

 If you would drink the heavenly curses again for me, then would you not return from that fate for my sake?

1:I CANNOT RETURN

2:YOU'VE HAD A CHOICE YOU'VE ALWAYS HAD ONE. 

2:THEY TRICKED YOU  FORCED YOU TO BELIEVE YOU COULD NOT ESCAPE WHAT THEY HAD DONE TO YOU, BECAUSE DEEP DOWN THEY KNEW THEY COULD NOT HOLD YOU FOREVER. 

1:no

I have made my choice

2:Death is at the door, can you not hear it's knocking? whether we die here in this hell or on the fields and waters of our home 𝘞𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘥𝘪𝘦. 

So please sister, join me, one last time. 

1:FINE

I'LL TAKE TO SUNNY FIELD

but only for you

2:YAYYYYYY

[aho-dapa]

Stumbled on tomarry today and now I have a fic idea

I was thinking of playing around with the idea of dark Tom like usual but idk, like I feel like writing about a Tom that fears death would be cool to write about just from more of a healing perspective for this one??

Either way, the idea is that Harry maybe becomes a war hero until he's killed and he ends up having Master of Death shenanigans?? Or becomes Death, or a subset??? Idk yet but, since Harry’s soul is connected to Voldemort it becomes a time travel fic?? But Harry is a ghost that appears the age Tom is and has fragmented memories that he loses and gains

Imaginary friend/ghost Harry basically with a depressed Tom facing the world and its shit

Basically alternate timeline where Tom is honestly just a child growing up with the horrors of WW2 and just trying to pick apart his psyche towards death???

The pretentious title:

thy gentle soul in mine fond hands

The pretentious summary blurb:

Maybe in an another life, they would have been different, as opposites, as strangers. Maybe he would have been unrecognizable to himself in the dirty mirror of their dilapidated flat.

But still.

And still.

His soul will not pass alone.

And that’s all he has ever truly wanted.

Snippets and ideas:

Ghost! Harry: “I want to live.”

Cursed to be bound to the mortal decaying flesh! Tom: “I don’t want to die.”

Planning on giving ghost Harry a body probably, and his memory slowly clarifies and is remembered as time passes and basically, Harry remembers that Voldemort is Tom and instead of freaking out, he's just very overwhelmed by it but also soooooo happy that his Tom is his Tom:

Harry goes to Tom then, takes his startled face in his shaking hands, and leans in. Harry’s breath fogs his glasses and yet he can see the warm brown of Tom’s eyes so vividly.

With a shattered feeling of overwhelming fondness, Harry laughs. It comes out a sob and he can’t help himself from telling Tom, “I love you.”

And Tom, who had been stiff with worry, relaxes and melts easily into his hands. To Harry, his answering smile is everything. It means everything.

“I love you,” Harry says again, gasps it into the small smile of Tom’s mouth, “I love you, I love—I love you.”

That hurt me to write, anyway

“Goodnight, love.”

As in, referring to the song As the World Caves In by Sarah Cothran

Tom character thoughts, as a child discovered death, and basically started grieving for himself and the inevitability of it

If not for Harry, it probably would have maddened and tortured himself into Voldemort

Some aspects of immortality hunting tho since Tom also wants immortality to give Harry mortality (a body)

In this, Tom is just a boy afraid of dying while a ghost haunts him

We die, we are remade, reborn, into fragments of memory and soul. Like a photograph of a moment. An eternity that yellows at the edges until it burns, or warps, or becomes dust.

Like the sound of a lullaby that no one listens to.

It listens to itself and dances to its own music.

“I want to live. I want to cherish my future and I want to be able to have it. Ever since then, since that moment, my life has stagnated, I can’t seem to move it forward or even backward, I just—” Tom gasps a sob, his fist digging into his chest over his heart while he looks to the ground blindly searching for something, “I just… I haven’t moved from that spot. I don’t, I don’t think I even know what living is like?”

“Live for me?”

Tom breathes deep, now looking intently into Harry’s eyes, begging, desperate, “I don’t even really know what is is. People talk of it as some universal truth and yet, after all these years, I still can’t tell—I still can’t…”

“I’m living with you, Tom.”

[dfourc]

'Sometimes we bare our teeth to pain that makes us whole'

==

TW : Hints of stalking, Obsessive compulsions, gay people?? Dead dove do not eat... uh.. mentions of gore, implied relationship trauma, psychotic man, unhealthy behaviors.. and.. dunno more?

Summary : man has obsession, calls, more trauma, implied stalking..

HERES A VIBE WHEN YOUR READING MY WORK??

==

Silence used to fill the still air in the old creaky home. The wind howls and gently rattles the windows foggy with dirt and dust, Covered in a layer of grime. Birds chirp less and less as the sun creeps lower and dips below the horizen line, showering the old home in decrept, crawling darkness. The stars threaten to peak out against the peach colored and blue fuzzy sky. Clouds turning more and more into an orange haze of color.

Yet residing in the inky shadows, a face stares back, with the soft glow of a screen, and the gentle taps upon the worn out spots, My thoughts get the better of my fog fillled and hunger craving mind.

'Sometimes the world isn't as big as we hope it is.'

I've heard that line, over and over. Like a never ending rhythm, or a heart beating forever. Immortalized in people's brains. Like a tune you couldn't ever forget. Like that one ugly memory that still haunts you to this day. Like a snake filled with venom it can't use.

And yet. It persists. Clawing it's way out of my inky depths, eating through my skin. And devouring my bones.

The phone picks up with silence on one end before a meek voice, hazy with sleep and laced with cotton mouthed dehydration, I can't help the itch in my teeth at those said words.

"Hello?”

"I miss you."

My voice spoke back, Bittersweet laced memories tipping at my tongue, Like black licorice, you can't forget it. And my words sink deeper then a wolfs own maw intona deer's fragile veiny neck.

"..I told you not to call me again."

"I know."

I know I hissed back, Anger boiling in my blood, I could feel my heart in my chest, Black, potent hatred in my blood. Tainting my thoughts, poisoning my tongue, stabbing ny words and injecting a vile tone. I couldn't help but grip the armchair the flaking lesther crumbling under my claws, digging into the wooden frame.

You are supposed to be dead.

"So.. You continue to call me anyways.. You know- You can't do anything. Not this time."

White. Fucking. Lies. Seething out of their mouth, taunting my very essence, worming their way into my mind, Eating away the core of my very patience and wiggling inti the depths of my own thoughts.

"..You know you can't forget me. Like I can't forget you."

Not everyone can withstand the high that manipulation gives you. Like second nature it's a soothing coo, like a beckoning. It's almost natural to want what I'm speaking to. An obsession of mine. Like a snare for a rabbit, the bait was set. And I vould taste the iron from their blood like it was water.

It felt like ages before I got any response, With the grip of my jaw, I too waited. Aggitating minutes before an exhale, A stare into the void. I wasn't one to cave first. I never was.

"..I told you to leave me alone. It's been years. So what if I still care? You egotistical bastard. You're selfish for thinking I'm going to be back. You had no reason to even start this again."

Venom. Something definitely changed in the years of my absence.

"And yet you picked up. Hungry to hear more of me. To even see more of me. I doubt you even sleep at night knowing what you did wasn't enough. You know I'll always be around. Not that you can do anything to even remotely stop me."

And with my bite back the world stands at ease, with the winds dying down at a comedic timing. I feel alone. Stuck in an endless loop of wanting to rip out their vocal chords and eat them myself, Or find them myself like I did all those agonizing nights ago. A time I had fun. Real psychotic fun.

Something tells me this isn't over. Like some messed up dream that I'm not waking up from. And it fuels the hatred in my veins and the thickening haze of obsessive compulsions. To reap what was mine from the start, to finally kill the deer. To snare the rabbit and burn the burrow. To dig my claws into the freshly smoldering soil.

And it only just started for the both of us. All. Over. Again. Not that you'll see me before I see you.

====

heyo, publishing my first writing of two oc's of mine :)) not that I have much to do anyways lmfao.