#he craves violence and power but hes not strong physically enough to get it naturally

[crayonverse]

i need to mkae. m y own gacha react video so i cant stop being so sick and evil abut ein because noone gets him right . ramble in tags ok ay byteee

[bratz-kitten]

attack on titan characters - birth chart analysis 🌙

Here is my take on the big 6 of Levi, Eren, Armin and Mikasa of attack on titan/shingeki no kyojin! I kept their sun signs since we know the day and month of their birthday and since I think they’re absolutely perfect. If you want me to do my take on the others (like Jean, Historia, Erwin, Hanji, Connie, Sasha, Reiner, etc) please let me know! (spoiler warning!)

Levi Ackerman

sun in capricorn - levi mf ackerman is fuelled by three things and three things only: LOYALTY, a strong moral code and power. he is seen by most people as a heartless, unemotional bastard but is canonically the most emotional character - he shows love through very indirect ways and he’s the peak of capricorn in the sense that he represses his emotions – he smiled literally ONE time in four seasons, and didn’t once shed a tear. he’s very hard to read. has a lot of respect for his superiors and follows the orders of only those he’s loyal to. he’s driven by his moral codes in the sense that the protection of humanity is his prime motive for fighting titans. like a true capricorn, is the master of his field of work and cares the most about being a survey corp member. please protect this tragic baby. 

virgo rising - two words: CLEAN FREAK. this man has a strong need to be presentable at all times and hates getting blood on his hands for the single fact that he needs himself and his environment to be clean. his obsession with being clean is very much due to his childhood trauma and how he lived in in poor conditions in the underground. he has many quirks that correlate with this: the way he holds his cup, the carvat he uses bc of his mother, and the way he always cuts his own hair because that’s the way his mother used to do it.  intimidating and demands respect. DRY HUMOUR. 

moon in scorpio - i think he has many similarities with mikasa, especially in the moon and venus. introverted and hates people but will go to the ends of the earth to protect the ones he loves and respects. represses emotions and internalizes his hatred until he has a mental breakdown - which happens in the form of extreme violence. VERY sensitive and emotional even if he doesn’t show it. he’s very intuitive and often acts based on gut; he’s secretive and vindictive. very wise and great at giving advice. doesn’t let himself get manipulated and uses shitty situations to his advantage (like with the reeves company). trust is the most important thing to him.

mercury in aquarius - levi is extremely logical, and hates when others involve their feelings in the making of decisions. his decisions are always backed up by strong arguments and others often see him as cold and detached. i saw someone  mention something extremely interesting about aquarius mercury’s/people with their mercuries in the 11th house: despite not being very sociable, others are drawn to them for friendships – and often they’re the introverts who get “adopted” by extroverts. this is 100% levi’s case, hanji and erwin practically adopted him. being very vulgar with his words and having a distinctive sense of humour, he’s very humanitarian and is actually really talkative but only when he’s very comfortable around someone. blunt, always tells it like it is – like when he tells eren he can’t know what the right choice really is and he needs to choose it himself. teases and insults his friends as a form of affection.

mars in scorpio - levi’s a fighter, a survivor. he knows what it’s like to come from nothing and have to build himself up. very confrontational. reclaims his power by exerting intimidation and mastering violence. others fear doing as much as make a joke at his expense. understands other’s motivations and characters very easily. he’s very intuitive. very serious due to his need for having an intense and demanding presence, for being respected and valued. he’s the one who everyone sighs of relief when things go to shit and he appears because you know he’s the strongest and most dependable person.

venus in capricorn - good luck getting this motherfucker to open up. his trust is very hard to gain but is necessary for working with him – he places his full trust in his comrades and demands the same from them. very work-oriented and takes relationships very serious; it’s really telling that he cares little for romance because capricorn venuses are the ones to date to marry, and will only devote themselves to someone once they believe they’ve met the one. they either want a more powerful and mature partner or they exude that energy (levi is the latter). slightly parental – we see this in the way that levi is pretty much the dad figure. it’s called squad levi for a reason, after all. very responsible. takes care of loved ones and often uses tough love as a form of discipline.

Eren Jaeger - im not even kidding with this one, he has extreme aries energy

sun in aries - eren feels the need to be very independent and he hates whenever he has to depend on mikasa and others, wanting to be strong enough to reverse the roles. he’s very self-confident, bold and direct. very impulsive, he’s quick to anger but is also very quick to forget - especially seen with his arguments with jean, fighting him is basically a love language at this point. aries suns are very fast thinkers and their strong energy may come off as intimidating. they have great intentions but that often becomes muddled with their impulsivity and the fact that they don’t think ideas through. eren is unabashedly himself and fights relentlessly for what he wants. his aries energy also makes him extremely motivated! he believes in the impossible and will make it happen no matter what.

aries rising – aries risings are the trailblazers. they ooze intensity. eren has very much a baby face and, due to his impulsivity and childish charm, people tend to baby him a lot – in the sense that he’s this kid surrounded by adults who needs supervision at all times or he’ll get into deep shit. aries risings are also marked by their extreme need for action, they’re the ones to do now and apologize later instead of asking for permission to do something in the first place. he is guided by his passion and is a natural leader who inspires everyone to fight alongside him. aries risings have a lot of energy which they need to express in a physical way, making them be prone to be very athletic and lead very active lives. he’s also extremely competitive and is driven by the force of becoming stronger than mikasa, and often feels angry when he realizes how stronger than him other people can be. at the same time, this pressure to be better is put solely on himself. he’s a dumbass with a good-heart and pure intentions.

moon in sagittarius – all this motherfucker talks about is freedom and seeing the world past the walls. he craves adventure and is extremely optimistic. but even if a sagittarius moon needs their freedom, they are still absolutely ride-or-dies and once they’ve commited to something, NOTHING or NO ONE can stop their determination. these are also the people to try their best to always appear cheerful and full of determination to hide their sad façade – like when he was nearly vomiting when talking about the titans to the other recruits when they began the training in the military but still forced himself to say that the titans aren’t scary at all and that they aren’t a big deal; he naturally inspires others and fills them with courage. but the way they put on this strong and brave façade leads to a strong emotional turmoil, violent urges and a sudden hostility to others. they are filled with surpressed anger that can lead them through very destructive paths – and the happy-go-lucky child might just lose her hope. we see this in eren in the most heartbreaking way.

mercury in aries – LOUD!!! eren speaks what’s on his mind with NO hesitation whatsover. he’s very quick to defend his friends and points of view, and speaks openly about his passions and dreams. he’s very assertive and tenacious. short attention span and not afraid to give a different opinion from someone else’s. very passionate about what he argues about. very expressive and when an aries mercury disagrees with you, you’ll know it immediately by their facial expression. confident and thrives on inspiring others. remember him being mad when it was discovered the possibility of all titans being humans because now he didn’t know who the enemy is and he NEEDS to hate someone and blame them in order to keep going? ARIES MERCURY ENERGY!!

mars in aries - people look to mars in aries to lead them. they’re full of energy and dynamic, and very athletic - eren exceeds at hand-to-hand combat and, in the other subjects where he’s not so good, his determination makes him push forward and become better. VERY hot-headed and confrontational, which is both the source of all their problems and their strength - they are not afraid of going after what they want and are willing to go through any obstacle to do so, and they’re also not afraid of upsetting other people in order to do so. eren is courageous, loves to take initiative and is very enthusiastic - something that is very contageous. competitive and hates compromise, he likes getting his own way. aries mars are also very individualistic and can have a huge ego.

venus in pisces - i know this is going to confuse a lot of people - like, how does he have so much aries energy, how is he so intense yet has one of the softest venus placements? i deeply believe he’s a pisces venus, and here’s why. his friends are EVERYTHING to him. pisces venus’ love very deeply and are very dependent on their loved ones, and eren is extremely protective of his loved ones and is willing to do anything to protect them. pisces venus’ are very vengeful, too, something that people seem to brush off about them - they might not do anything when you mess with them but as soon as you mess with their friends it’s game over. i also get a lot of “there was no other way, the word had to be fixed” vibes from this placement? like, this placement gives me the energy of someone willing to commit awful crimes under the excuse of it being for the greater good, which is something he dramatically experiences as he grows older and witnesses the cruelty of the world.

Armin Arlert

sun in scorpio - armin very resourceful!! he easily adapts to the circunstances he’s in and works his way around it. very intelligent and with great memory. extremely manipulative, cunning and perceptive. scorpios are known for their capability to be great investigators due to their natural curiosity, and armin has this deep need to see the world outside of the walls and he studies all there is to know about it with great passion. determined to succeed. 

cancer rising - armin just wants to achieve his dream and it’s so soft. cancer risings are very receptive of other’s emotions and incredibly sensitive, but it’s difficult for them to open up to others. his appearance is very soft and delicate. loves to help others and has a naturally warm presence that makes others feel comfortable in his presence. give off a very grounded and stable energy, but this is often because they try to hide their most intense emotions and don’t know how to deal with them/don’t want to bother others by opening up about it. 

moon in pisces - one word: EMPATHY!!! very compassionate. tendency to become a martyr and be very self-sacrificial. VERY imaginative, he is the strategist, after all. can feel others emotions and read them very easily. avoids confrontation but feels a strong need to take the weight off of others’ shoulders and to solve all their problems. very loving and giving, in tune with his emotions and emotionally intelligent. on the other side, this caring side of him can make him see other people through rose-colored glasses, and he is prone to believing in the best in people and giving them the benefit of the doubt. but when they’ve proven their true nature to him, he’ll see them for what they are and will no longer defend them, even if still feeling remorse. notice how he’s always like “this had to be done, we had no other choice” to justify his actions.

mercury in scorpio - bro armin’s eyes are so intense. when he gets on his manipulative bullshit it’s IMPOSSIBLE to look away from his gaze. he practically communicates through the eyes. armin is very sharp and his innocent appearance has everyone still thinking of him as a sweet angel as if he isn’t a whole war criminal. he easily psychoanalizes others to know what they want and uses it to his advantage, like how he used berthold’s love for annie to manipulate him to let eren go after him and reiner kidnapped him. scorpio mercuries be knowing shit, they be knowing everyone’s secrets and others usually confide in them as if they’re their therapists. 

mars in pisces - mars in pisces makes a person avoid physical confrontation at all costs. notice how armin’s first response to everyone wanting to kill reiner and bertold/the marleyans was “please let’s just talk about this first”? he hates violence and deems it not worthy most times. he is very physically weak and aware of his limitations, unlike eren and levi, whose first instinct is to use violence in order to get what they want. no, armin has developed a much more subtle and effective way to get what he wants without using violence: emotional manipulation. he is the KING of appearing innocent and naïve and having people feel bad for him and want to baby him and protect him, and due to his extremely intuitive nature, he knows EXACTLY what to say to someone to get under their skin. he twists his words and emotions to get what he needs out of people and it’s both incredible and dangerous. also, very self-sacrifical and his goals are based on his emotions.

venus in cancer - he loves so much and it’s so beautiful and heartbreaking. he gives everything to the ones he loves and thrives off of being helpful and keeping everyone safe. reads a lot into the behaviour of the people he loves. very emotionally intelligent, wants stability and to maintain peace and may bend over backwords to achieve that. needs to feel understood and has a soft spot for troubled people, those who are more demanding and assertive (eren and mikasa), people he can take care of and who can take care of him in return. very affectionate and communicative. warm presence, you can pretty much feel the love radiating out of him. 

Mikasa Ackerman 

sun in aquarius - if you get past the emotional walls of an aquarius that has them appearing detached and distant because they’d rather use intelligence than seem emotional, you’ll be met with an incredibly soft, loving and caring person. an aquarius strength is their ability to be very unique, individualistic and humanitarian individuals - they truly march to the beat of their own drum. mikasa possesses a great deal of determination and isn’t afraid of being rebellious, especially when her loved ones are in danger. 

capricorn rising - people with capricorn rising had to learn to be very independent from a very young age. mikasa is very intimidating but she has a very doll-like beauty, common to many capricorn risings. these people have had to deal with a lot ever since childhood, but they are fighters and their determination has them being able to survive even unsurmountable odds stacked up against them. capricorn risings tend to be serious and disciplined, and with a melancholic aura to them – which mikasa perfectly embodies. but the fact that these people have cancer in their descendant makes them strongly emotionally attached to their loved ones.

aquarius moon - even under the most stressful and dangerous situations, mikasa always remains in control of her emotions. she thrives in those situations, it’s the adrenaline of the moment that has her being so good at controlling her emotions until it’s safe to be anything but racional again. aquarius moons are feel very misunderstood and tend to racionalize their emotions a lot. however, it’s only due to their fear of vulnerability that they build this emotional walls, because they experience very intense emotions. i always think about that survey corp member saying “what did you have to go through for you to be like this?” when she was perfectly stable in a life-or-death situation. 

mercury in capricorn - mikasa is incredibly action-oriented and she speaks in a structured but confident way. although she’s on the quieter side and is reserved, she’s able to inspire everyone when all hope seems lost, and she’s taken up eren’s words of “if we don’t fight, we can’t win” and uses it constantly in order to keep going. she’s very hard to read due to her usually expressionless face, giving her a mysterious aura. she’s very ambitious, persuasive and determined. 

mars in capricorn - when people say that mars in capricorn people are the scariest when they’re angry, they’re not wrong. they act so calm and collected until suddenly they’re fixing you with a death glare and you’re rethinking all your life choices up until this point. mikasa might be extremely rational and calm, but as soon as someone threatens the ones she loves, she’ll stop at nothing to eliminate the threat. it’s like she fears nothing but ever being unable not to save them. she’s very responsible and reliable, with a lot of physical strength and stamina. very PROTECTIVE, grounded and GIVING 

venus in virgo - this is one of the things that makes mikasa so similar to levi, the way they love. this bitch is LOYAL to her very core. she knows very well where her loyalties are - eren and armin - and is ready to kill all her close friends and superiors in order to protect them. she threatened to kill historia if she got in the way of getting eren back home safely, jumped levi on sight when he wanted to save erwin instead of armin, and got pissed at connie for doubting eren’s intentions after the whole marleyan ordeal. acts of service are very much her love language - she constantly picks up eren’s and armin’s stuff and carries it herself or orders them to rest while she works. it’s very hard to gain her trust and loyalty but once you do it’s forever, she’s very selective about the people she cares for. she’s possessive, too - giving historia the coldest death glare in the world when she saw her with eren. i’ve also noticed that venus in virgo are very difficult to declare their emotions!! they’ll just wait for the person to notice their indirect acts of affection. very attentive to the needs and details of loved ones.  

[degenerate-yandere]

Can you do a headcannon about Yandere Demon Tanjiro from Demon Slayer? Like Nezuko and Tanjiro switch roles on who became a demon. If you don't want to then just write about Yandere Tanjiro. I really like reading the headcanons you create.

I really, really enjoyed writing this, thanks for the great request! Might even revisit this idea for a scenario in the future if anyone wants it. I hope you enjoy!

TW: Yandere, mild violence, physical intimidation

Demon Tanjiro would be completely and utterly obsessed with you. He lacks the ability to truly understand the implications of his infatuation, nor does he acknowledge the social restrictions that prevent him from enacting upon his overwhelming desire. He’ll act indiscreetly on his impulse to be as close to you as possible, whenever he can.

His outwardly vacant expression makes it near impossible for you to initially distinguish his troubling attraction from platonic attachment. The way he latches onto your side and nuzzles against your neck is undeniably cute, and you won’t mind the way he seems to trail your every move. You’ll never suspect him of harboring any dubious intentions.

Tanjiro isn’t the talkative kind, but he’ll love it when you speak to him. He’ll grab you by the hand and whine softly until you start a one-sided conversation. He adores the sound of your voice, and he’ll vocalize his bliss with rumbled purrs and hums of contentment as he draws you into cuddle.

He’ll absolutely crave any sort of physical affection from you. Tanjiro will crawl over to you and place his head on your lap, tugging your hand against his hair. You’ll take the hint, your fingers brushing through his wildly locks. He’ll be euphoric - any interruptions will be met with a harsh grunt and a furrowed brow.

The creaking of floorboards in your room late at night will jolt you to terrified attention. But when you see Tanjiro standing expectantly beside your bed, you’ll be put somewhat at ease. You’ll ask him what’s wrong, only being met with a slight tilt of his head, as if asking for permission. Before you can even react, he’ll crawl into your blankets and nuzzle close to you - purring in satisfaction as his strong limbs entangle you in an embrace. The intimacy of his hold is confronting, yet you’ll dismiss any concerns under the assumption that he was simply lonely sleeping by himself. When you’re asleep, he’ll place a calloused palm against your cheek;

“….(y/n)” 

It’ll be quiet, nigh inaudible behind his bamboo mouthpiece, but the sound of your name forming in his throat will leave him ecstatic.

Whenever you’re separated (Which Tanjiro will avoid whenever possible), the only thing that’ll ease his mounting anxiety is the constant repetition of your name under his breath. It’ll be one of the few things he says.

Tanjiro will be fiercely possessive over his darling. Any man that gets close to you will be met with a deep growl; a warning to stay away from what’s his. If someone other than him even so much as touches you, he’ll snarl and catch their arm in a crushing grip. His scowl will express nothing but hatred, and his bulging veins almost threaten to burst. You’ll have to coerce him to let them go, convince him they meant you no harm. He’ll subsequently drag you away despite your protests - threatening to dislocate your wrist with the force of his grasp. You’ll scold him, demand him to let you go as he takes you to a more secluded location, entirely deaf to your words. He’ll force you into a hug in spite of any resistance you show, pressing his nose against your neck and inhaling your scent. He loves the smell of you more than anything. It never fails to calm him down.

If you’re ever threatened - by a demon or a human - Tanjiro will become ruthlessly protective. No amount of pleading or crying on your behalf will stop him from tearing the perpetrator apart, limb from limb. It’ll be horrifying in it’s completely unforgiving ferocity. You knew Tanjiro’s demonic nature granted him enhanced abilities; but you’d never expect him to display such brute strength. The thought of what he could do with that immense power to someone like you is nerve-wracking.

If you ever decide to confront him about his concerning behavior, he’ll simply stare at you with those vacant eyes. It doesn’t seem like he’s processing a word of it. He’ll eventually tug at your clothes, trying to ease you into another cuddle session. If you refuse and attempt to walk away, Tanjiro will get angry. You can only watch on with terror as his frame grows, until he’s completely looming over you. Each powerful muscle strains against his skin as a deep, commanding rumble resonates from his chest. His mouthpiece threatens to splinter by the sheer force of his fangs. He’ll trap you between a wall, his enlarged, powerful arms caging you against his tremendous form. His clawed fingers create indents into the hard surface as he leans closer to you. He’ll rub his cheek across yours, like a cat marking its property. You can only stammer his name as fear wells in your throat. Soon enough, you’ll be forced against his engorged body in a crushing display of affection - waiting for him to return to a more manageable size. 

You’ll eventually learn that what Tanjiro wants, Tanjiro gets. Even if he has to use a little force to persuade you.

[howling-harpy]

Ships as horror movies

Because I love horror. Naturally, read further at your own risk, all warnings apply:

Winnix - Body horror

A tale about helplessly witnessing a loved one to succumb to a transformation, if from Dick’s PoV

A tale about being infested with something foreign that slowly takes you over and destroys your humanity, if from Nix’s PoV

Horror comes from within. Your own body is your enemy.

Nix has fought it for so long, keeping it at bay and keeping himself together.

But now he’s reached his breaking point. He’s too tired.

Something lives inside him; something alien, something inhuman, and it’s growing, it’s taking over and slowly growing from inside out, and no matter how much he fights it, he can’t stop it.

Dick tries to help, but he can’t.

No matter how much he cares and wants to help, he doesn’t know what he’s up against. He can’t see it, he can’t reach it, and he’s powerless to stop it.

He is also afraid. The man he knows and loves is slipping away from him, he’s losing him piece by piece as the person he was is twisted and turned into something else.

It is painful. It is dirty. It is disgusting. It is hard to watch.

It’s also private and intimate. This tragedy is for the two of them. It’s the slow destruction of not only one person, but his relationship.

The thing Nix is turning to may be a monster of some sort (pick your location: woods for a werewolf, beach for a merman), or perhaps it’s a disease that rots him until he’s just a walking corpse. In any case, his humanity will be gone.

How long will love keep you from screaming in disgust and terror?

How deep can loss cut you?

Speirton - Slasher

Someone here is a killer. But who???

A secluded location, a group of friends and aquitances, no way out...

...and then the murders start. Gruesome, horrible, bloody murders, when the people get picked off one by one.

Ron is a killer who’s looking for the one who will complete him: his final girl.

Or boy. Because Carwood is the perfect mix of pure and strong, someone whose animal instinct Ron just craves to see awakened.

It’s a story about twisted love and obsession, and how everyone else around lovers becomes expendable meat in the elaborate game of survival.

Our hero has been seduced, played, and finally betrayed when his lover turns out to be the killer who just wants to take the game of survival to the extreme with him.

There’s going to be obscene violence and murders, and moments of tender comfort and encouragement that will really punch you in the gut when you realize what Ron is really up to

But it’s just love. Running through the woods makes your heart race. Struggling with a killer makes your blood pump. Torture is just physical act of emotion taken to an extreme. Pain and pleasure are so close to each other, aren’t  they?

Every killer needs the one victim who’s heroic, pure and willing to fight. Otherwise, what’s even the point?

Who doesn’t want to feel completed, after all?

BabeRoe - Cult/Possession

 Strange things happen in the deep dark depth of the swamp

People who haven’t much left their home have their own ways of doing things, their own traditions, their own... rituals.

It’s all really normal, if you just take a glance at it. If you’re an outsider, you’ll just pass through and that’s it, or maybe you won’t venture far enough from the town in the first place.

For Gene though, it’s home. Home he can never leave.

There are local businesses, bars and a school, but they are not quite right.

There are friendly neighbors, but they are not quite right.

There’s a church, but it’s not quite right.

Poor Babe had no idea what it meant to meet Gene’s family.

But it’s time.

Sooner or later, It needs to be fed.

This is a tale about a cult that has formed because a local spiritual leader was corrupted. An unholy creature has cursed an entire community and now feeds on their worship - and souls.

Gene has been demanded a sacrifice, and he planned to delived. Only, Babe earned his affections for real, and together they are willing to fight the unholy and defy the community.

Well... “Fight”. Or maybe just run. Perhaps only survive. Or maybe just die with their souls still theirs.

You can’t set the bar too high. After all, the swamps are dark and deep, and it’s so very easy to get lost.

Webgott - Creature Feature

The most unlikely team is out on a hunt for a Creature.

Web the scientist is naive, passionate and wants to study it.

Joe who’s accompanying him as a technician/driver/muscle/common sense doesn’t believe in monsters, but if he did, he’d hunt it.

Their small expedition ventures deep into the ocean, so deep there’s no light, but they do find grand underwater structures of a sunken city, just like their mysterious sources said they would.

(That, or a graveyard of ships. Either way, a maze of a location more interesting than just empty water, and that is hauntingly beautiful to look at.)

The Creature is real! Oh no!

The Creature is also not at all what they thought. It’s not an animal. It is smart, it is powerful, it is ancient, and it is terrifying beyond comprehension, and it hungers.

It is dangerous, it is mysterious, and it is Evil. And it wants something horrible.

It wants them for food, it wants to kill for fun, and it wants them for hosts of its offspring.

Selection of monster grossness: Slime, eggs, parasites. Maybe mindcontrol for extra terror and to really push that “the evil will corrupt and violate you in every way” angle.

Web wanted to study and understand It, so he’s the one who succumbs to its lure. He has to be rescued.

It’s not only the creature that’s terrifying, though. It’s the deep waters, the silent ocean, the oxygen tank that might run out or leak, everything else that lurks in the deep dark depths, and the crushing pressure of cold, unforgiving water.

How many will reach the surface, see the sun and breath fresh air again?

[eeemarvel]

Uncommon characteristics ask, Pyre, numbers 15, 30, 40 and Letter B please!😊

Let’s see if I can manage to not erase this response this time lol. Sorry for the wait and thank you for the ask!!

15. How do they speak? Is what they say usually thought of on the spot, or do they rehearse it in their mind first?

I’m gonna take the best stab at this I can because I’m not exactly the best at describing physical things (although when I think of Pyre speaking, I know exactly what he sounds like). 

I’ll say that he’s boisterous, loud, and explicit. He sometimes takes special care to enunciate words with an added degree of sharpness. I can definitely say that Pyre doesn’t rehearse the things he says, even if he does often sound like an actor delivering lines on the stage of Broadway. But his words are not premeditated; he’s got plenty of venom to spare at the tip of his tongue and everything he says, he says with the intention to sting. 

His desire to hurt people with his words coupled with his teasing and somewhat flirtatious personality is what makes the things he says so powerful (???). He’s definitely a pro at getting a rise out of people. He isn’t manipulative and doesn’t play mind games, but what he does is good enough. He makes people angry enough to give him a real fight which is what he wants. He just likes stoking fires. 

30. Who do they most regret meeting? 

It’s definitely not Victor, that’s for sure. Victor is a constant in his life that he has come to expect and has resolved himself to look for whenever it does not come immediately to him because.. well there’s a lot going on there with that, isn’t it? His relationship with Victor isn’t exactly the question so I’ll just leave it at this: Pyre is competitive and egotistical. Victor is the only one alive who he believes to be on his level and he wants to change that. Permanently. 

Pyre doesn’t really hold anyone in high enough regard or esteem to have as strong a feeling as regret towards their presence in his life. That being said, there aren’t many in his life. If I had to pick someone, it would perhaps be the Ares Island warden. The person in charge of the prison housing the world’s most dangerous super villains is no Mr. Rogers. At least when Pyre talks back to Victor, he has his powers to fall back on... on AI, he’s just some guy.

40. How sensitive are they to their own flaws?

Ah, now this is the passage that caused me the greatest deal of pain when i GOOFED and deleted it. 

Pyre is acutely aware of his ability level as well as areas that have room for improvement or evolution, so much so that he doesn’t need to be using fire in order to practice how to use it. For example, when he terrorized Victor with that huge burning bird, he said he got the inspiration when he heard the news about Victor’s fire flock. He heard that news while on AI but still managed to imagine a way to make that happen without ever having done it before. 

But this doesn’t necessarily reflect his own abilities of introspection. 

Pyre is stuck in a routine of seeking validation through trying again and again to best heroes at his game. And in a way, it works. Just because the good guys always manage to arrest him in the end doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve “won”. Some heroes come out of fights with him looking ... a bit crispy? And if not badly injured, they are most likely some combination of incensed, riled up, distracted, or dishonored in a way that is not befitting of a hero. 

Heroes are noble and good. They take the high road and do not behave the way a villain does: out of anger, vengeance, or spite. If a hero behaves that way, their image cracks a bit, and those cracks are harder to fix than a crack in a bone. If Pyre can create some of those cracks, that’s somewhat of a win, is it not? A hero with a wounded ego is easier to overpower the next time they throw hands. 

Oh wow, maybe he is manipulative?

But, I digress. 

Pyre is stuck in a routine of seeking validation because that is what he can afford to think about when it comes to imagining his future. To summarize the words of a very long and dead passage that I unintentionally murdered with my own hands: he’s not going to have a revelation on his own. Right now, the game he’s playing works for him. It gives him a goal, every day, for as long as he can keep it up, and those goals satisfy him. He has no reason to stop playing the game. And to be clear, the game is to get as many strong people as possible to prove to him what he’s already thinking: that he’s the best in the world. 

I’m not sure how much I want to elaborate on this right now because I’m still debating how much of his story I want to flesh out and with which characters... but for now, just know that he sees no reason in changing the way he does things, no reason to be introspective and take a step towards some change.

B)  What inspired you to create them?

When I originally imagined this fic, it was just supposed to be fluff about the YOI gang as heroes. But even back then, Pyre was still pretty much the same character that he is now. I made him specifically for Victor because Victor needed an “archenemy”. 

Victor has control over an entire spectrum of power. On one side of that spectrum, we have powers that are more often associated with “good”: water and ice. Those elements can be healing, defensive, or protective. The elements of heat and fire are more often associated with “evil” because it’s hard to do much protecting with something that hurts to the touch. To add insult to injury, he doesn’t really have a choice in the matter because he can’t use water during the day. If he wants to be a hero, he has to find a way to make his power work for him. Victor worked diligently to figure out exactly how to make fire gentle. How to turn a weapon into a shield. 

For most people with fire abilities, this isn’t really a problem. For starters, they’re not heroes lol. They just don’t have the sheer amount of power that Victor does. He can make a bonfire with a snap of his fingers without breaking a sweat. Comparatively, someone like Noor can light their fists on fire for a few hours before they start feeling woozy. So normal people don’t feel the kind of pressure Victor is under because they’re playing with matches while he’s got... idk... a bazooka? 

Pyre is on his level, but Pyre woke up and chose violence. And in this world, people kind of expect him to in an ironic (but definitely not ironic when they’re right) way... the social culture around powers is kind of like our culture surrounding astrology. People with fire powers are kinda treated the way we treat people who are scorpios or geminis. We just kind of expect someone with fire powers to have a “bad” personality. Idk why I’m rambling but I’m basically saying that Victor could be Pyre but far worse. 

Pyre is egotistical. Victor himself admitted he was a bit vain. They’re both competitive, Pyre to a horrible fault, Victor to some degree of regret and embarrassment (heroes shouldn’t behave the way he does around Pyre). Pyre and Victor are both teasing and flirtatious. They’re both dramatic. They both crave attention, in different ways, but again, they’re occupying opposite sides of the same spectrum. And they’re both insanely good at using fire; they’re innovative, sharp, and quick. 

Pyre is deeply flawed, horrible, and definitely sorta kinda yes definitely a murderer. Victor, while he has his minor flaws, is no where near the kind of evil Pyre is, so I’m not saying that Victor would just start terrorizing the town after having a bad day. I’m saying that if he wasn’t also compassionate and loving, he could’ve gone down a darker road. Pyre’s goal is to prove that he’s the best. Victor’s goal is to protect those who don’t have the power to do it themselves. That alone puts miles and miles and miles between them on that spectrum they occupy. 

Victor needed someone to give him trouble. I also needed a way to show the difference between a hero using fire and a villain doing it. 

So Pyre was originally made for the plot, I guess. 

TLDR: Pyre is naturally a drama queen, he doesn’t regret meeting anyone except maybe the AI warden, and I made him so everyone can appreciate the fact that Victor is good and not a dirtbag. 

[thetorturerwrites]

Puer Deus: Reputation

This amazing artwork was gifted to me by @faestae-writes​. Please do not re-use or re-post it without permission from them and/or myself. Don’t be a dickbag.

***

Captured / Hurricane / Sustenance / Liar / Scars / Proof / Strings

Summary:  All manner of trouble

A/N:  18+ only.  Physical violence; sadism; references to abuse; smut

Word Count: 4.5k

Day Eight

You were back in Ren’s room for all of five minutes when the cycle shifted from day to night.  You’d lost an entire day to his diabolical plans, and you were exhausted to the bone. Hux had chided you about your nearly-crawling pace, and you’d contemplated stabbing him right there in the hall; but finally, you slumped across the threshold into what your heart kicked up as “home.”

Tension and disgust kept you from crawling into the bed. You knew your brain would loop this day, searing the way he’d looked at you into the gray matter until you wore a constant mask of mottled need.  You sunk down in the very center of the room, huddled in on yourself, and stared at the imbrued floor. You were beyond pain and tears, mired in this quagmire of hate and hunger.

He had humiliated you, wholly stripped you of all humanity and personhood.  And you had all but begged him for more. 

Under his sheer dehumanization, your body had been charged, technicolor and dynamic.  Ren had systematically consumed every part of you, continuously conjuring up new ways to crucify you to feed his black need.  And at every turn, you had given him the anguish he craved; you had yet to deny him exactly what he wanted.

Would you ever be able to deny him?

Pressing the heels of your hands into weary eye sockets, you leaned forward over crossed legs, bent in half from the burden of your inner war. You weren’t sure you could live with the creature he was unearthing, but you weren’t sure you could live without the feelings he evoked, without him.

Moments later, Ren stepped through the door, flushed red and heaving.  His eyes were furious and frantic, and you scrambled away, putting distance between you and the raving lunatic he looked to be.  

“Supreme Leader,” Hux’s voice crackled through the commlink. “The rebels have launched an attack, Sir.  The Supremacy has been compromised. We have lost the starboard side entirely.”

Ren’s gaze settled upon you and darkened immeasurably.  Teeth gnashing and erupting with a snarl, he crossed the room in three strides and hauled you into his arms. The warmth that had been building in your heart evaporated, escaping through your lungs on stuttered breath. 

You cried out and turned your gaze to the floor, the heat of his breath scorching your red cheek. You knew there was no placating him like this.  This was the Kylo Ren who would beat you for insolence, batter your body for daring to patronize him with any hint of gentle persuasion.

“Get command to the Steadfast,” he replied through his commlink. “I will be at the Night Buzzard and will rendez-vous with you there.”

Angry digits dug into your upper arms so fiercely you could feel your pulse hammering in your fingertips.  He had you lifted so high your toes barely scraped the dirty floor, and you clung to his shoulders, trying not to hang like a limp doll.

You could feel it, the accusation rolling off of him like steam, causing the very air around you to fluctuate and waver.  When had you come to know the different shades of his rage? You shook your head wildly because whatever he was about to say, you certainly hadn’t been able to do it.

“Yes, you fucking did.”

He was nose-to-nose, and his absolute disdain for you was crushing.  After everything you’d suffered at his hands, everything you’d endured for him, he still hated you, still regarded you as an object to be used and crushed, and it sucked the light from your soul.

“I don’t have time for your nonsense.”

He passed his quaking hand over your face, stretched his great power into your cerebellum, and forced you into the inky void.

You dreamed of vast, blue skies and the sunlight on your face.  It was bright and crisp and vibrant. You turned into the wind and inhaled the deep, clean, briskness of it, feeling the wispy tendrils curl around your neck and shoulders.  You stretched up into the warmth, feeling the ache in your bones and joints ease, the tightness in your neck and back loosen, and the constriction of your ribs and lungs lessen under the blissful perfection of nature.

You lifted your face into a smattering of afternoon clouds, feeling free and weightless. No more walls. No more silent vacuum of space.  No more blinding, false light. This was life without Santcha, without your Master, without Ren. It was open and lustrous and beautiful.

And it wasn’t real.

As your senses came back into alignment, you smelled rust-tinged air mixing with the heavy remnants of oil and grease.  Instead of balmy sunlight, you felt only cold, recycled, stagnant output regulating the temperature. Curling fingers into the rough sheets where you’d dreamed freedom had been, you buried your face into the pillow and wept.

You weren’t free.  The universe had simply wrenched you from one sphere of suffering and delivered you to another. The only difference was that Ren made you respond in ways you never thought possible.  He was unique in his ability to make you want to suffer. But you were still his captive, his property, and he would never let you go.

“Quiet now,” the dulcet tone of his voice drew you further awake. “Sit up.”

You didn’t want to open your eyes upon this palpable, metal hell, but you complied, shifting so that you were facing him as he crouched at the foot of the dismal bed. You recognized the pattern playing out and didn’t object when he pushed a warm cup into your hands.  

He’d brutalized you yesterday; today, he would put you back together, mend the madness he'd rained upon you. 

“Your weapon,” he urged, turning his palm up to your lips.

Silent, you reached down to your thigh and the last swatch of surgical tape on your body.  Peeling the corner away, you uncovered the little scalpel blade hidden snug against the puckered skin.  You weren’t stupid enough to sleep with it in your mouth, but you hadn’t had any time to actually sleep before he burst in.

Ren huffed on an entertained smirk and tossed the blade away, reaching down to peel off that last strip of tape.  Over the last 2 days, you’d been discarding remnants as they frayed, but he’d been too busy dismantling you to notice.  

Your mostly-healed scars still looked fresh and bright, and he slid his fingers over the largest tracks, eyes lingering on the raised edges.

Ignoring the way he studied you and the gooseflesh his grazes produced, you sniffed the warm liquid questioningly.  You knew better than to object and swallowed down the soup, your upper lip curling at the stale, bland taste. When you finished one, he pushed a second into your hands, followed by a large cup of water. You hadn’t had solid food in two days, and he seemed to recall the doctor’s order that you not have it for at least 24 hours.

He didn’t speak, and the distorted closeness felt awkward, wrong.  He was doting on you like a partner, but you recalled the utter hatred he leveled at you earlier and the deep well of longing in your heart for the sunlight in your dreams.  Brow furrowed, you pushed his hands away and leaned out of his reach, preferring to brood alone.

Having never cared for what you wanted, Ren ignored the pained look on your face, discarded his light trousers, and sunk into the small mattress.  You were immediately crowded by his commanding frame and, unnerved, moved to escape his purview.

Too near his imposing incandescence, you would certainly burst aflame and beg for his touch.

You weren’t quick enough, however; and he slid a rigid arm around your middle, tugged you up into his lap, and mouthed at your jaw.  Fortified and fed, you tensed and worked to twist out of his control.

If he wanted to hate you, you wouldn’t argue, but you wouldn’t pretend to be his docile, doting slave.

“Time to be useful, puppet.”

His hold tightened at your curse and subsequent squirming, and you scratched at his arm, trying to contort your body into some strange shape that would jar his grip loose so you could crawl away.  You’d never felt so worthless in his captivity as being reduced to “useful.”

Ren pulled you back into the hard pillar of his chest, biting into your shoulder until you yelped and stopped fighting.  He was solid and strong, uncompromising and exacting, and you wondered when his unhinged demands started to feel safe. He brushed his nose into your hair, lips right at the shell of your ear, and he melted your resolve with that sensual inflection.

“You can sit; or, you can swallow, but I’m going to be inside you.”

His vulgar words set your core to clenching, and the idea of him burying himself into your body again socked you in the gut.  You yearned for that version of him, vibrant with the pleasure he found in you, and the satisfaction you’d seen in his features for just a moment. You ached for that feeling when you couldn’t tell where you ended and he began, when pain and pleasure bled together.

You told yourself that you didn’t want to be that person, that whore, for him.  You wanted your autonomy, to make your own decisions and to live a free life away from ruthless men.  

He held you, stroking your stomach and dipping his finger into your belly button, while he waited, listening as your struggle unfolded.

You sagged against him, eyes closing in resignation.  Your body and your brain wanted very different things.

Forcing your jaw to relax, you shifted onto your knees and turned to face the demanding deity who now invaded your every waking moment.  You let your eyes roam his perfect arms, abs, hips, thighs, cock, trying to decide which part of yourself to sacrifice. 

If you gave him your face, maybe he’d blow out the bastard vocoder, and you’d drift back into blessed silence.  But if you gave him your pussy, he would definitely demolish any resistance lingering in your brain.

He reached for you, intent upon ending the debate, but you brushed his hand away and moved to kneel between his legs. You forced yourself to meet his dark, eager eyes, blatantly ignoring his standing, straining, far-too-pretty cock.

Raising an eyebrow, you nudged his knees apart wider by spreading your own and relished the quick intake of his breath.  You told yourself it was because you needed the balance, he needed to know how it fucking felt, and you needed him to not kick you or asphyxiate you with his thighs.

A satisfied rumble descended from on high as you bent forward, pressing your nose and lips into his bruised thigh, and you knew that the curve of your ass was the highest point of your body in this position.  

You inhaled the musky aroma of his skin and hummed against the fuzzy patch of hair.  Your eyes danced behind closed lids as you remembered the soft, colored flesh in your mouth and the way he’d looked down at you, ravenous himself and pleased with your hunger. Your hips loosened and your pussy warmed, readying to accept him.

Something started to tingle inside your belly, and you angrily shook it away. This wasn’t how any of this was supposed to go. 

You were waiting for him to thread demanding fingers into your hair, to lift your face and force you down onto his weeping dick, to take away your complicity in this act.  If he took it from you, as he had been doing for days, you could pretend that you didn’t want this.

But none of those things happened. He was silent and still, and you glanced up at him, irritated and troubled and uncertain.

“You’ve caused all manner of trouble, puppet." 

His voice was smooth, and he tapped your lower lip on every single word.  

“Show me you’re sorry.”

You snorted, anger suffusing your nose, ears, cheeks.  Shot up onto your knees, you completely abandoned what he’d instructed you to do because you had done no such fucking thing.  You’d spent mere moments in his room on the Supremacy; and, then, you’d been in this hole, right here, unconscious for what was likely hours. 

“When, exactly, did I have time to cause trouble?”

You practically shouted it, and the smug grin that played at the corners of his mouth only enraged you further.  He didn’t move to quash your tirade, though, and you jabbed a finger at him, losing your composure entirely at his amusement. 

You knew his condescension stemmed from the sound of your voice, modulated, just the right pitch, and fully on display.

“I’ve been here, blacked out by your own fucking hand.  Before that, I was pinned down to a surgical table while you had your blasted doctor force things into my body.”  

You jumped off the bed entirely, standing alongside his crooked, relaxed knee and positively fuming at the calm, arrogant look on his beautiful, infuriating face.

“And before that, I was unconscious because you slit me open from chin to toes.  So, Commander,” you spit the word out as though it was poison, “when have I made all of this trouble? Or would you like me to go back farther than the last three fucking days?”

Ren sat up slowly, and the absolute animosity in his eyes pushed you a step back, your ire faltering.  He slid from the bed, unfurling like a great, storied behemoth, and stalked forward at you. You held out a hand, but you didn’t know if it was to stop him or to touch him.

Unclothed, he looked even more deadly as there was no fabric, no weapon to draw away your stare, and every rippling, taut muscle was an exhibit in transcendence.  

He was what men aspired to be, godlike and mesmerizing.

If he killed you now, it would be the pinnacle of intimacy with nothing between his raw aggression and your abject fear. He would press his naked form against you and surely end your life by sucking the very marrow from your bones.

He was every inch the infernal predator, and you were the prey that just pissed him off. 

“Yesterday,” he sneered, “You threatened to murder Supreme Leader Snoke.”

Your mouth dried out completely, snapping shut with a clatter because you couldn’t argue.  In your rage and fright, you had absolutely threatened to murder Snoke and everyone on board the ship, and it was clear from Ren’s response that Snoke had heard you.  

Terror flooded your veins, pushed out all the blood that was supposed to be there and replaced it with adrenaline.  Your mind screamed at you to run, now, get away, but your body could only slink further back into the room, sweating and twitching.

“Before that,” he reached out, wrapped his giant hand around your throat, and drew you in close, tightening his ritual noose until you gulped and wheezed, “You wounded me in battle.”

You could feel the delicate bones bowing to his snapping grip, and you clawed at his arm.  Surely, Ren’s patience had run out. You had done all of those things and more.  

Just today, you had denied him the feel of your mouth, your body, and you shouted at him, challenged him, in front of the Knights of Ren, his troupe.  Animosity had so clouded your judgment that you’d shucked off every bit of common sense and self-preservation.

You could not possibly be more stupid.

“Shall I go back farther than the last three fucking days, puppet?”

You paled, remembering that he’d caught you trying to escape the day before that, and shook your head in defeat.  His fingernails cut into the tender flesh of your neck, and you whimpered, standing onto your toes in a vain attempt to lessen his grip.  Your lips drew into a tight line, and you closed your eyes, surrendering to whatever punishment he would inflict.

Maybe you did deserve it.

Ren shoved you away, and you collapsed into a pitiable heap on the dirty floor.  Tears sprang to your eyes because the internal conflict was never going to end. You were flooded with shame that he was disappointed in you and fuming that you fucking cared to begin with.  This contention inside your own body was becoming unbearable, and you were so incredibly tired. 

It was all too much.

Snoke surely wanted your head, and Ren would have no choice but to deliver you to the slaughter.  Just days ago, you had been ready to die, but that had been for Ren, not Snoke. Your lips would hardly work, the emotion bubbling over and shunting your idiotic bravery.

Kylo, I can’t do this anymore….

He looked down at you, eyes dark and haunted; and even though you knew he was incapable of feeling or compassion, you lifted pleading eyes to his.  There truly was no going back, and the way forward had just been shut to you. Snoke would hunt you. He would send the Knights of Ren, and their Master, to hunt you.

You only needed a day's headstart.  Just long enough to find a tall cliff or a blaster.

Could you convince him? 

“Please, Kylo,” your voice quaked, “Please, let me go.  Or make all of this go away.”

But what you were begging for was for him to make you go away.  To end this seemingly ceaseless back-and-forth between acceptance and survival. Your torso punched low to the ground, and you erupted into broken, wretched sobs.

“I just can’t.”  You whispered as he crouched down silently and lifted your face.  You shook your head from his touch. 

“This isn’t me,” you rallied and shouted, “You’ve taken everything! There isn’t anything else. Just let me go. Let me go or kill me.”

There was something else, another possibility dancing just beyond your trepidation.  You knew that he saw it, but you still weren’t ready to take that leap, to let the beast out of the mirror and allow her to consume you, to burn away the parts of you that weren’t his.  

Ren’s strong arms gathered you up, caging your shuddering sorrow and caressing your neck while you cried.  He smoothed down your hair and rubbed the length of your back, murmuring into your pulse that you needed to take a breath and then another and then one more.

His very demeanor was disarming, and you felt the fight ebbing out of every single pore. Resenting the ease with which he placated you, you clenched your fists again and batted at his chest, shifting and pulling away.  Lifting puffy, red eyes, you glared at him, willing there to be more malice in your gaze than there was in your heart.

“No,” your voice was all harsh edges and angst.  “You don’t get to be nice now.” 

You twisted in his arms, kicking at his shins, but he only held you tighter, his arms a vice around your middle.  You sniffled and sobbed and tried to not let your anger die away. You needed it now more than you needed to breathe.  It was the only thing that was yours, the only thing you had left.

“You’re not capable of being nice.  You’re a monster.”

Ren dipped his face to yours and traced the curve of your chin with his lips. When you abandoned your bitter tirade, he slid long fingers up the column of your throat and squeezed, the way you’d asked him to yesterday.  He turned your face so you had to look up at him with your shining, crestfallen eyes.

“Dammit, Kylo,” your lips trembled, the false voice he'd given you cracking with feeling, “I need you to be a monster.”

“Stop,” Ren shushed you, lifting his hand to your mouth and sliding his thumb in to hook at your teeth.  

The gesture, unique to you and he in all the Galaxy, silenced you, and he held tight to your throat as though to punctuate the notion that, in this moment, there was only you and him. 

You sniffled and pushed against his broad shoulders, but he didn’t chastise you further. He tugged you in by the jaw and nudged his nose through your tears.

“The Supreme Leader isn’t coming for you,” he crooned against your temple, "I killed him for daring to take what is mine." 

Your whole body went rigid at his admission, and you blinked, too shocked to speak. He stroked your hip soothingly, but you felt strung too tight. This knowledge should have eased you, but something was settling in your mind that you hadn’t considered before.  

Kylo Ren would never let you go.

Because he couldn’t.

“I will not make this go away,” he cupped your cheek and dipped his face down to press a kiss to the thumping heartbeat under his thumb. “You were made to suffer for me."

You sucked in a pained breath, caught between a gasp and a sob.  The kernel of realization was spreading, growing by the second, and you were drowning, keening, lost to the implications of it. It raised your panic and your longing at the same time and shot through your body like lightning. 

"You want me to break you, puppet."

He clutched at your back, obscuring all the world around him and folding you into his darkness. 

"Almost as much as I want to break you." 

There it was.

Ren came alive when he was hurting you. He spread out into the universe like it was meant for him, just waiting for him to conquer the very stars.  But only when you were bleeding and crying at his feet.  

This was not the same man you first met a week ago. Gone was the unconquerable rage and tantrum, the explosion of too much turmoil. Gone, too, was the leash that held Ren's potential in check.

The man before you was calculatingly cruel with clear intent. His viciousness was purposeful, and he existed without boundaries, without limitations. He had entirely cast off all inhibition and conscience.

Kylo Ren was now the most skilled, destructive, horrible weapon in the Galaxy. 

And you were his whetstone. 

“The next time I hurt you,” he licked at your earlobe and whispered, “It will be because you begged me for it."

The gavel crashed down, and all you could hear was the rushing of your blood.  He’d cemented it, practically carved it into your skin.  

He would chase you into oblivion because you were the only thing that made him feel alive. This whirlwind of terror and feeling you existed in together was the only thing that ignited fire in him.

And you would let him.

You would worship your Child God in any and every bloody way he wanted because he was the only thing that made you feel alive.

It was only a matter of time.

You dissolved into tears all over again, collapsing against all of his unyielding and letting him wrap you up into that otherworldly embrace.  He tucked you against his heart, rocking you from side to side and soothing you with his steady pulse. He pressed his lips into your temple and murmured there that you were so pretty when you cried.

You couldn’t stop the sobbing now for anything, so complete was your heartbreak. 

You mourned blue and purple skies, pink-tinted sunrises, and twinkling sunsets; rushing, clean water and a rainbow of flowers; the frenetic disarray of the workshop and the tools you had been collecting for years that you would never see again. You lamented that you would likely never again be able to set yourself to a task, to fixing a broken thing, and see it finished and made whole.

You would only ever be the broken thing.

Most of all, you grieved for yourself. Because you knew that you would relent.  You would give him what he wanted because the part of you straining to belong to him was expanding by the hour.  Soon, she would be strong enough, and your freedom would be gone. You would let him defile you day after day.

“You will ask me,” he instructed, tipping your face up to taste your tears on a kiss, “and I will drown you in the clearest water I can find.”

You whimpered against his mouth and curled fingers into his dark tresses. He chased the sound away with a nip to your lower lip, licking at the quiver. He purred at you like a lover, and you wondered if this was pillowtalk for a man whose base language was violence.

“I will make you bleed on forest floors, and I will listen to your screams echo off of mountains.”

His warm breath mingled with yours, lips barely touching, as he coaxed the tip of your tongue up to touch his before canting your head to one side and kissing you so deep you forgot to breathe. He licked at your teeth and sucked on your tongue.

“And I will fuck you so hard the only name you remember is mine,” his voice was lower, all gravel and demand and lust. 

“You just have to ask me, puppet.”

Teeming with uneasy arousal, your body flushed in response to his words, to the conviction with which he said them. You lifted onto your toes to better receive his kisses, and he hummed in satisfaction against your mouth.  

It was as though he had promised you moonlight, paradise, babies, and your heart responded to each threat as though they were professions of love. He knew your fears and was trying to assuage them, to paint you a pretty picture so you would give in to him. 

You knew this wasn’t love.  Neither of you were capable of such a fanciful notion.  This was obsession, and it would likely be just as fleeting. But it would be absolute.

“Stop crying,” he said into your neck, molding the length of your body to his.

Ren slid your limbs around his body in that familiar way, and you squeezed at his sides when he lifted you. You buried your face into his neck, shaking silently and trying to obey, to get yourself collected.  

The war inside of you wasn’t over, and you hadn’t gained any ground today.  But you understood the battlefield better than you ever had before.

Crawling into the little bed with you, he shifted you so that you were lying beside him, your tight, anxious back pressed into his calm, steady torso. He slid an arm around your rib cage, tucked his hot hand in at your breast, and snuggled his erection between your buttocks.

You clutched at his arm, sniffling and fighting adrenaline tremors. 

Ren nuzzled the back of your neck, and you marveled at how today was so much different than yesterday.  You’d just begged this man, this monster, to end your life, to rise up to his reputation. Instead, he had weaponized kindness and thrown you entirely off kilter, to the point where you were entertaining his offers to persecute you throughout the Galaxy.

“Sleep,” he commanded, his voice almost gentle. “We’ll be there by morning.”

[kin-kendry]

Solace

CW: Violence/Murder

AO3

----------

“He’s safe now,” Aneela spoke as they took off through the woods again, leaving the cube behind them.

“Are you sure?” While Kendry trusted the other woman with her life, she didn’t want to underestimate the Lady.

“Well, the cube kept me safe when the Green was destroyed. There are only three people in the entire universe who can access them.”

“And what makes you think that Khlyen wouldn’t find out and lead her directly to him?”

“Papa wouldn’t do that… Not after everything. He kept Yala safe, after all,” Aneela didn’t sound so convinced herself, but she had to hold out hope.

They walked side by side through the trees in silence for hours. The crunch of fallen leaves and twigs, and the gentle breeze rustling the trees became white noise.

Delle Seyah felt like she could finally breathe again. Jaq was safe, and Aneela was back with her. She wasn't dead. While she didn't show it in front of Jaq, Kendry had been heartbroken when she found out that the Killjoys returned without Aneela.

Queens don't cry, remember? Jaq had parroted her words.

This one does, now. She’s a teeny bit broken.

She had cried, several times in fact, while Jaq had slept. Seyah Kendry crying after losing the one woman she loved, the only one she trusted in the universe? Illenore would be laughing in her grave… 

"Kendry?" Aneela's gentle voice pulled her out of her thoughts.

Delle Seyah had stopped walking without realising, and a lone tear track marked her left cheek. She swallowed the lump in her throat and her eyes focused on the woman in front of her.

"I'm sorry, I… I just thought… Gods, I thought I lost you for good," Delle Seyah sighed, suddenly feeling physically and emotionally exhausted.

"I'm here, Kendry. You don't have to worry anymore. I won't ever leave you again, and I will protect you," Aneela said, holding her partner's hands in her own. "I'm not letting you out of my sight."

Kendry collapsed into Aneela's arms. There was an intense need to be held by her, to be as close as possible. It wasn't something she would have ever thought herself capable of feeling or craving. But here she was, eyes glassy and slumped in her beloved's arms. 

"Oh, Kendry. Let's set up camp. You need to rest."

Aneela sat Delle Seyah down on a fallen tree while she began clearing leaves and other forest debris. Not long after, a camp fire was crackling as the sun set and a bedroll was laid out.

"I missed you so much, you know?" Aneela finally spoke once she set herself down next to Kendry, sitting so that they were pressed against each other. 

Delle Seyah was feeling uncharacteristically clingy, so she rested her head against Aneela's shoulder. It made her feel a little better knowing that Aneela was thinking of her even during such a stressful, life threatening time. 

"All I could think about once the Green started crumbling was you and Jaq. For a while I didn't think I'd make it. But you both found me. Jaq, he… He looks so much like me when I was younger. I see Yala in him too. But his personality… He has the same conviction. The same hunger for answers, and a brilliant mind just like his mother."

"Unfortunately he's picked up a lot of the Jaqobis traits," Kendry let out a derisive laugh. 

"I'm sure we can fix that when all of this is over," Aneela smirked.

"When all of this is over I'd like to take you to my home on Qresh. Show you where I grew up. We could rule together, if you're okay with settling with control over the Quad rather than the entire universe."

"Hmm, that sounds like a very tempting offer. I'm not really interested in dominating the universe anymore. I've got more important things in my life now," Aneela tilted Kendry's chin up before pressing their lips together in a tender kiss. “It’ll be good to see my old home planet.”

The two women relaxed against each other, the tension and exhaustion of the past few days melting away. Aneela could help but laugh as she pulled away.

"I still find it so odd that you're human again."

"I can tell you now that it is the worst," Delle Seyah grumbled.

"I'll have to do some tests first, but if you like I could try to convert you again."

"Oh, please. Feeling things, being so vulnerable… It's humiliating."

"And yet, you've proven to be strong and capable even without Hullen blood."

"Yes, well, I suppose survival is what humans are best at, despite everything," Kendry sighed.

Their conversation came to a natural end, and they just sat in silence, watching the sun set until the only sources of light were the moon and their camp fire. They settled down on their bedroll, wrapped in each others arms. Delle Seyah felt safe for the first time since Aneela freed her from that contraption Gander kept her in. Their faces were only centimetres apart. Kendry smiled and cupped Aneela's jaw.

"I love you, Aneela."

"And I love you, Kendry. Now sleep. I know you're tired."

Delle Seyah couldn't have protested if she tried. Her eyes wouldn't stay open and her body was already preparing for sleep. She felt fingers card through her hair, and Aneela's nails massaging her scalp. It was so soothing.

"Good night, little bird," Aneela's voice sounded far away as sleep enveloped Kendry in darkness.

----------

Aneela couldn’t sleep. They were exposed where they set up camp, and she already had time to rest while in hiding. Feeling Kendry’s body rise and fall with her even breaths brought comfort to her. It was a cool, cloudy night and the wind had picked up a little. Their campfire was reduced to a low smolder, so the only source of light was the moonbeams peeking through the clouds. It was calm, and calm didn’t settle well with Aneela.

Had she been less vigilant, Aneela would have missed the almost imperceptible rustle of leaves on the forest floor. The footsteps came closer until they were looming over the two prone bodies. A hand reached out slowly, ready to peel the blanket off the two women. Aneela opened her eyes and gripped the outstretched wrist, snapping it back until she heard bones crack. The potential assailant howled in pain and stumbled back, cradling their hand. Aneela jumped up, jostling Kendry as she did so. Delle Seyah gasped as she sat up, her eyes trying to track whatever was going on. But it was so dark and she could barely make out the five silhouettes. 

Aneela heard the sound of a bullet flitting past her and whirled around to face the next threat. She charged towards assailant, taking one shot to her side before gripping the handgun and crumpling it in her hand. The clouds above shifted and moonlight shone down in streaks upon the camp. Aneela could see that the bandits were covered in pelts and bones, with human skulls worn as helmets. She grinned as the current woman she was focused on cowered at the display of inhuman power. One of the others took a shot at Aneela, blasting clean through her shoulder. The wound healed instantly.

Aneela grabbed the woman by the throat and whipped her around to use as a meat shield. Another shot was fired, piercing through the bandit’s stomach. She shoved the limp body towards the third bandit before turning on the first one she injured.

“Wh-What are you?” The man asked, backing himself up against a tree.

“I’m your worst nightmare. You and your friends thought you found an easy target. Well, you’ve made a very big mistake,” Aneela hissed, her eyes wide and wild.

Aneela ripped one of the pointed bones from the man’s clothing and stabbed him several times in the neck, relishing in the gurgling as he choked on his own blood. The two remaining bandits were already on the run. Aneela grabbed Kendry’s bow and two arrows. She fired both off quickly, each hitting their targets and incapacitating them. The bandits cowered as Aneela approached, their arms and legs too weak to carry them very far. She stomped on their calves and drew a knife from her belt, the polished metal glinting in the moonlight.

“P-Please… We won’t cause anymore trouble. Let us go,” One of them begged.

“I can’t let you do that,” Aneela’s voice was quiet. “I’ve had a trying few days, and I need to let off some steam.”

“Oh god, no! Please no!” The other bandit attempted to escape again, but Aneela was quick.

She kicked the bandit in the face and crushed his neck with her boot, watching as he struggled. The hands clawing at the leather of her boot grew weaker and weaker as the human suffocated, eyes rolling into the back of his head. The other bandit had curled up on the forest floor, weeping and clutching his calf.

“Only one left. Whatever shall I do with you?” Aneela mused aloud as she played with the knife in her hands. “I could spare you, but then you’d run off and tell the rest of your group what happened. I already killed your friends, so I may as well just finish off the job.”

“Aneela, enough,” Delle Seyah’s voice echoed out through the trees as she approached her love.

“Kendry! Have you finally come to join me?” Aneela’s face lit up as she turned to the other woman.

“No, you need to stop this right now,” Delle Seyah wasn’t playing around.

She stopped directly in front of Aneela, looking her up and down. Her pristine white clothes were splattered with blood, and there were a few drops across her face from when she stabbed one of the bandits. Kendry sighed and shook her head, taking the knife from her beloved’s hands.

“I don’t understand,” Aneela frowned. “They tried to attack us. I was protecting you.”

“I know, but being cooped up in a cube for days doesn’t mean you get to massacre everyone in sight,” Kendry said before walking over to the remaining bandit and offering her hand to the poor soul. “Get up. This is the only chance you’re getting.”

The bandit was beyond terrified but took the kind offer, letting Delle Seyah haul him up on to his good leg. As he opened his mouth to express his gratitude, Kendry gripped his head and bared his throat. She made quick work of the man, slitting his neck and dumping him back on the ground. Aneela’s expression morphed from annoyed to confused, and finally settled on a mix of delight and lust.

“But- Why?”

“I wasn’t going to let you have all the fun now, was I?” Kendry smirked as she leaned down to wipe the blood off the knife on the bandit’s pelt. “You didn’t seriously think I’d changed, did you?”

“Oh, Kendry…” Aneela laughed in relief while Kendry tucked the knife back into her belt.

“I enjoyed watching you take down those pathetic ants. You know I love it when you get mad,” Kendry’s voice lowered into a sultry whisper, closing the gap between them.

“I couldn’t help myself. I’ve been itching to hurt something,” Aneela’s hands clenched and unclenched as she took a couple of slow, calming breaths.

“I think I know of a better way to release some of that pent up energy, Aneela.”

Kendry lips grazed Aneela’s and her hands moved to her hips. The kiss was passionate and demanding, both women running on adrenaline from their recent activities. A heady concoction of murder and lust was something Aneela and Delle Seyah found themselves experiencing every now and again, and it made for fucking phenomenal sex. They drew back from the kiss, both breathing heavily and gazing into each others darkened eyes. Aneela caressed Delle Seyah’s jaw, her touch soft and light.

“Gods, I’ve missed you, Kendry.”

[lechevaliermalfet]

Vae Victis! – A Look Back at Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain

It was the mid-1990s.  We were in the fifth generation of video game consoles, and gaming as a medium was eager to prove that it had grown up.

This had been going on before the fifth generation, of course.  The Sega Genesis sold itself on its contrast to the status quo.  “Sega does what Nintendon’t,” and all that.  Sega’s whole image was bound up in being the cool kid, the one who’d outgrown all those pokey “kiddie” games like Super Mario Bros. or Kid Icarus or Mega Man.  Sega fans played games like Mortal Kombat and Eternal Champions.  Even a mascot game like Sonic the Hedgehog had a kind of snide adolescent streak to it; leaner, meaner, and less patient.   Nintendo themselves had to butch up a little, even.  When their bloodless version of the first Mortal Kombat got outsold by Sega’s, which kept all the gore – despite otherwise being technically superior in every measurable way – they relaxed their standards and left all the blood and fatalities intact for the second and third games, and saw a jump in sales accordingly.  

The 90s were in part a decade of cynicism and ironic detachment.  Sincerity tended to be frowned upon as being kind of silly and naive, or else a cover for motives less savory.  Strong skepticism was the default mode, and in fiction, anti-heroes were all the rage.

Which brings us to Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain, described by its developers as a Legend of Zelda “for adults”.

Of course, any self-described adult who can’t bear to play a Legend of Zelda game because they feel it’s not grown-up enough needs to sit down and re-assess their idea of adulthood, and how secure they are in it.  If a tolerance for violence (if not a craving) is all it takes, then I was an adult at about eleven, when I was single-handedly mowing down whole armies of Nazis in Wolfenstein 3D.

But those were the times, and that’s how Blood Omen got pushed.  Which is unfortunate, because it misses the more thoughtful parts of the game’s story that actually did make it material mostly for adults.

“...the first act in my theatre of Grand Guignol!”

We begin in the world of Nosgoth, and if there’s a made-up fantasy word that screams “dark supernatural fantasy” more than that, I haven’t heard it.  Our main character is Kain, a nobleman caught out at night in a town where he can’t find an inn or tavern to stay for the night.  He is cornered by assassins and murdered, whereupon he goes to hell.  Or at least, we can assume it’s hell; I don’t think even a death metal band’s idea of heaven involves being cuffed to twin posts overlooking a literal lake of fire with a sword stuck through you.  Anyway, that’s where Kain is, cursing the fact that he can’t get revenge.  Which seems a little warped, on the surface of things.  You’d think if you were stuck in hell, then getting out, however impossible, might seem more important than getting back at the people who killed you.  But if you’re the kind of person who winds up in hell after being murdered, I suppose it stands to reason that your priorities may not be in order.

While Kain is in hell, lamenting his impotent rage and generally ignoring all the fine mid-90s CG scenery, he is approached by a necromancer named Mortanius.

The necromancer offers him a way back to the world of the living, and thus a chance at revenge.  Eager to oblige his overdeveloped sense of wrath, Kain takes him up on the offer, and fails to consider that there are only a few different ways, traditionally, that a dead person can cross back through the veil.  And none of them really involve returning to life exactly as you were.

Kain rises from his grave as a vampire, stronger than he ever was in life, and only too happy to hack up his assassins when he encounters them not far from the site of his crypt.  However, as he comes down from his vengeance-high, he hears a voice in the back of his mind – Mortanius’s voice, in fact – suggesting that his assassins were “the instruments of your murder, not the cause”.  Mortanius then urges him to seek out the Pillars to find the real reason for his murder, and its true culprits.

We need to rewind a bit.

IN THE BEGINNING, there were the Pillars of Nosgoth (in fact, “Pillars of Nosgoth” was the game’s working title for a while). Rooted who knows how deep in the earth below, and reaching up to the clouds, the Pillars are a structure that should be physically impossible.  They are somehow both integral to the natural order of the world, and also the embodiment of certain elemental principles. There are nine of them, embodying – in no particular order – conflict, energy, states (of being, not political), dimensions, death, nature, time, the mind, and balance.  Each Pillar has its guardian, a human endowed with powers according to the Pillar’s defining principle, and tasked with overseeing that Pillar’s particular province.  

A good while back in the past (how long is not detailed in this game, but probably centuries) there was a genocidal crusade of sorts against vampires, who were evidently a serious scourge of some kind.  In fact, the game opens on a view of a field – practically a forest – of stakes, with a vampire impaled on each.  Vlad Tepes would be proud.  This crusade was ordered by the Circle of Nine (the collective group of Pillar guardians), and carried out by the fanatical religious order known as the Sarafan Brotherhood.

Monsters that they are, the vampires did not take this well.  One of their number, an elder vampire named Vorador, decided to strike back.  Vorador was by this point in his unlife no longer quite human looking, with mottled grey skin (later series installments would make this varying shades of green), odd three-clawed hands, and giant bat-like ears. Blood Omen never elaborates on the reason for this difference.  At any rate, he singlehandedly stormed the citadel of the Pillar guardians while most of the Sarafan brotherhood were away (presumably looking for more vampires to stake), and wound up killing several of them (one of the sequels gives the number as six).  In the process, he even managed to beat down Malek on his way out, perhaps the greatest warrior among the Sarafan, and the one specifically tasked with safeguarding the Circle.

For screwing up his one job, Malek was punished by being made to do that job for eternity.  It might seem inadvisable to take the guy who failed to guard you and then make him your guard forever, but it helps if you rip his soul out of his body and bind it to his armor, thus making him a sleepless, tireless, unfeeling, and ever vigilant warrior fueled by pure wrath.  Which is what they (or rather, Mortanius) ultimately did.  At some point between this time and the present day of Blood Omen, Malek became the guardian of the Pillar of Conflict, so evidently he was fit for his role in the end.

Now we fast-forward a bit, to a point just moments before Kain’s birth. In fact, later games place this at the exact moment of that birth.

Somewhere around thirty years before Kain’s murder outside a nameless tavern in a random town, Ariel, the guardian of the Pillar of Balance, is murdered.  This is bad news for all the usual reasons, and also one or two unusual ones.  It turns out that her lover is the guardian of the Pillar of the Mind, the mentalist Nupraptor.  Her murder drives him insane, and being a telepath (among other things), his insanity infects the guardians of the other Pillars as well. This turns them from their usual purpose of upholding the natural balance, and instead sets them to destroying it.  This in turn corrupts the Pillars, symbiotically connected to their guardians, turning them from pristine white to a pitted and cracking grey.  With both the Pillars and their guardians respectively corrupted and insane, the natural order of things begins to fall apart.  Bad news all around.

Blood Omen is somewhat unusual in that it’s one of the few probably rare instances in fiction where a woman is stuffed into the fridge at the beginning of the story, and in order to drive the villain to extremes of behavior.

So.

Now we have Kain, in the present of our story, given to understand that his death was in some way connected with the Pillars and their corruption.  He makes his way to the Pillars, where he meets Ariel’s restless spirit.  She’s the one who lays out for him part of the business about her murder and Nupraptor’s madness, and the threat posed to the world by it all.  Kain is only interested in a cure for his vampirism (now that he’s had his vengeance, he wants no part of this undeath business), but Ariel persuades him that his best bet is to deal with the corruption of the Pillars.  So Kain storms off to go take care of Nupraptor, and ultimately to cleanse the Pillars by severing their connection to their now-insane guardians, solving the problem of their corruption by reference to his sword.  Go with what you know.

It’s at this point that Kain’s personal arc begins to unfold, as he becomes increasingly alienated from humanity, both the species and the concept.  While initially at odds with his vampirism, Kain spends the story coming to grips with the hypocrisy and corruption of human civilization, all the while becoming more and more comfortable with the seeming monstrosity of his new existence.  This is a matter of some necessity.  He has things he needs to do, he has to stay alive to do them, and so a certain amount of blood-drinking and slaughter seems inevitable.  

In his travels, he comes across Vorador’s manor, situated deep in a swamp teeming with monsters.  Kain seeks his help to destroy Malek.  Vorador, for his part, spends the encounter being lordly and largely dismissive of Kain’s quest.  He advises the fledgling vampire that meddling in mortal affairs is nothing but bad news.  Better to sit back and sate one’s hunger – or thirst, in this case – and let the mortal world turn as it will.  Humans are to be preyed on, not helped or manipulated or otherwise gotten involved with.  Best to stay above such passing concerns.  Nevertheless, he takes a liking to Kain, and gives him his ring to summon him at need.

Say a word often enough, and it starts to lose its sense of meaning.  Actions likewise lose significance with repetition.  They become rote.  And as time wears on, Kain seems to begin making a turn.  There’s a certain honesty in being a monster.  You always know what you are, and you always know how other people see you.  Kain may sneer at Vorador’s decadence when they meet, but at least the elder vampire is never less than one hundred percent honest about what he is.

And as Kain goes on, it begins to seem that Vorador was right.  So much of Kain’s and the world’s difficulties seem to stem from the selfishness, greed, shortsightedness, self-absorption, and general malice of the people he runs up against.  Eventually, he winds up accidentally sparking a second genocidal crusade against his own kind.  This has mostly to do with him traveling back in time to kill a man in the past who would grow to become a tyrant in his current era.  This mistake no doubt has its roots in his not having not grown up in a world with a whole sub-genre of fiction concerned with the merits or otherwise of traveling back in time to kill Hitler.

We will have such fun with time travel as the series goes on, let me tell you.

The game ends by offering the player a choice.  Kain’s efforts to cleanse the Pillars and restore balance to the world have made him the new guardian of the Pillar of Balance.  Yet, like all other Pillar Guardians slain at his hand, he himself is corrupt, and must die to complete the task.  So the player is asked: Will Kain willingly sacrifice himself for the greater good of Nosgoth, or will he refuse the sacrifice and choose to live in an increasingly broken and corrupt world.

The sequels take the second ending as canon, and honestly, it’s hard to argue.  This isn’t a story about hope springing eternal, after all.  The few people in it who are unambiguously good are either killed (Ariel) or largely ineffectual (King Ottmar, who comes to prominence briefly toward the end of the story).  The player may feel differently, but there’s little reason to believe that Kain would.  Proud, haughty, vindictive, wrathful, and growing ever more cynical and mistrustful of the motives of those around him, tired of being used as a tool for other’s schemes...  Why would he choose to sacrifice himself?

And so, canonically, we close on a shot of Kain sitting on a throne at the base of the Pillar of Balance, with it and all the other Pillars lying in a broken ruin around him.  He drinks from a goblet, and muses that Vorador was right after all: “Vampires are gods – dark gods – and it is our duty to thin the herd.”

The End.

“Nothing is free.  Not even revenge.”

So that’s Blood Omen as a story.  What about as a game?

On the balance it’s kind of uneven.  

On a technical level, it’s fairly impressive.  In its time, it stood as a testament to the potential quality of two-dimensional graphics in gaming, even as the entire medium was leaping into the third dimension, ready to ditch and decry anything made in 2D as inferior. The result from a technical standpoint is that Blood Omen has in some ways aged better than a lot of other games of its vintage, including its first sequel.  

But then you actually play the thing, and see where it sort of falls apart.

Let’s get the easy part over with, shall we?  The load times in Blood Omen are godawful, just the worst possible combination of long and frequent. It seems almost like a joke at times: “Really?  We’re loading again?  It was one fucking room!”  Were it not for the fact that it began development as a totally unrelated game, I would strongly suspect that the sequel, Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, used its data-streaming technology to avoid loading times altogether purely as a response to this criticism.  I still think that may be the case.

Once we dig past the issue of loading times, though, the game reveals other issues.

There are good ideas on display here.  Let’s start with that.  The game has a day-and-night cycle, and while you can walk around during the day, you deal less damage (and take more) while the sun is up.  Water is like the touch of acid to a vampire, and any time you’re in it, you’ll take constant damage.  Rain and snow will likewise damage you, and while there are power-ups that are supposed to eliminate this problem, I’m not sure they actually work.  At least, not on the PC version of the game, which is what I’ve mostly played.  

The game also requires that Kain drink blood periodically.  His health naturally drains very slowly, but constantly, so you always have to be on the lookout for a way to top yourself off.  There are some more abstract health restoration items, as well as a consumable item you can use, called the Heart of Darkness (this item will become obscenely important in later installments).  However, the game is structured such that most of Kain’s health restoration will have to come from either enemies or, more often, helpless innocents.  This ties nicely into the game’s theme of alienation from humanity, though the way the game often presents these situations –random strangers chained to walls all over the world, for no apparent reason – seems a little odd at times.  And it has interesting ideas about different creatures having blood that might actually be harmful to Kain, or inflict him with a long-term poison.

In addition to the graphics looking nice (the CG cutscenes are definitely of their time, but the in-game sprite work and lighting effects are quite nice), the game has a great soundtrack, dark and moody and ominous. And the voice work is superb.  All character interactions are handled with voiceover rather than on-screen text, and the cast knocks it out of the park.  Not just “good for the mid-90s video game voice acting”, but great, period.

The puzzle-solving is a little lackluster, though.  For something pitched as a “grown-up Legend of Zelda”, its puzzles largely consist of pulling levers and pushing buttons, and navigating mazes. Which is fine, but again, any game that’s going to self-consciously compare itself to The Legend of Zelda needs to bring its A game, especially with its puzzle-solving.

The game does offer you a lot of tools to use, in the form of different weapons, spells, and magical items.  But a lot of these boil down to more inventive yet questionably practical ways to kill enemies.  And considering that setting up a selection of these items for immediate access involves going back and forth to the inventory menu (requiring a load time both ways), it’s easier to just stick with your weapon and a handful of the most commonly used spells and items and call it a day.

Weapons themselves are another problem.  You’ll find that your iron sword from the very beginning of the game is the most generally useful. The mace will let you stun human enemies to drink their blood after just two hits, but it lacks the crowd-control effect of the sword, and also lacks the stunning effect on the non-human enemies that make up the bulk of your later-game foes.  It’s also useful for knocking down certain stone barriers, but these are few and far between, and necessary for progress only very rarely.  The twin axes let Kain cut down trees barring his path, and also let him cut down enemies by spinning like a saw blade… but this means you’ll frequently kill enemies before you have a chance to drain them.  The flaming sword burns enemies alive and leaves only ashes, preventing you from drinking blood that way.  And then the final weapon, the Soul Reaver (also an item of incalculable importance later in the series), deals massive damage as long as you have magic power to fuel it.  But while thus empowered, it detonates the enemies it kills, making them impossible to drain.  And when not empowered, it’s only as damaging as the iron sword, but slower and more awkward.

Combat in general gets frustrating at times, thanks to the iffy hit detection.  One enemy might walk right through your sword swing, while another you could swear was out of range will register a hit.  It never becomes a total deal-breaker, but it’s a point of frequent irritation as you go.

Let’s have another positive: Kain also gains the ability to transform into various other states as the game goes by.  In his wolf form, he can leap over certain obstacles, but his attack in this form has no combo ability and a long wind-up, making him vulnerable.  He can use his bat form to fast-travel between beacons and certain landmark locations, while his mist form allows him to walk on water without taking damage, as well as cross certain barriers without opening the door.  There are also two disguises he can use.  One transforms him into a peasant, while the other turns him into a human-looking version of himself so that he can pass as a nobleman.  The use of both of these is largely situational, required in a very small number of situations and then mostly pointless outside of them.

But perhaps the thing that stands out the most is its linearity.

This is to some extent mandated by the story.  Unlike The Legend of Zelda, to which this game invites much comparison, Blood Omen’s story is very much at all times front and center.  A Zelda game will leave you with bits of story here and there, and largely leave you to explore or puzzle your way forward or dick around in town or otherwise do your own thing for long stretches of time.  The story in one of those games is the starting point of the experience, a backdrop against which you play out the adventure.  Hyrule is to some extent defined by that openness, with its plains and deserts and vast forests and so on.  

Blood Omen lacks this.  Its story is the entire point and purpose of the game. The path forward is always clear and rarely has room for deviation or discovery.  There may be things hidden off to the side, but these tend ultimately to be cul-de-sacs, connecting to nothing else.  This is even subtly expressed in the game’s environments: lots of indoor areas, caves, narrow trails, canyons, and so on.  There’s little opportunity to go off the beaten path.  Blood Omen’s pathways not only discourage exploration, they often disable it. This is not your experience to own; it is Kain’s story for you to be told.

I feel like in story terms, that’s ultimately the difference.  Legend of Zelda’s story always exists to serve the game that Nintendo crafts.  Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain’s game exists to serve the story.

And just to be clear, none of this is bad at all.  It’s every bit as valid in terms of game design and mechanics as any given Zelda.  But if you’re going to compare your game to The Legend of Zelda and then fail to do the most essentially Zelda things in it – not just do them poorly, but not do them at all, missing the point entirely of what a Zelda game is about – then it’s worth commenting on.  I like Blood Omen, but I had to get used to thinking of it on its own terms.  The Zelda comparisons are easy to make. Even without the developers making them, the look and structure of the game seems to invite them.  

Like a good book, Blood Omen is a (mostly) straight shot from start to finish.  Its linearity is what allows it to control the story, to unfold its plot and explore its themes at a pace of its choosing.  The game to some extent revels in its edginess, but to be honest, it was perfect for me at the time.  I was sixteen when I first played the game.  Sixteen, and a bit of a loner with an odd and private (but intense) interest in vampires.  It was probably the perfect game for me at the time.  And it’s still ultimately enjoyable today, if you take it as what it is.  Not as a Legend of Zelda game for adults, but as a decent action-adventure game with a good story and top-notch presentation.  If you don’t mind the linearity and the relentlessly dark and sometimes disturbing story, it’s just about perfect.

Post-script the First: Likelihood of Re-release, and Current Availability

Eeeehhhhhhhhhh...

Here’s the problem: Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain was originally dreamed up and created by Silicon Knights and published by Crystal Dynamics (who also had a hand in the development, late in the process), with distribution to be handled by Activision.  Crystal Dynamics eventually got full ownership of the Legacy of Kain brand, and used it to make the first sequel to Blood Omen, titled Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver.  Silicon Knights was against this, but had less deep pockets than Crystal Dynamics, so they were ultimately the losers of the resulting court battle over the affair.  The lone bone thrown to them was that Crystal Dynamics had to acknowledge in the game that Soul Reaver was based on characters and ideas created by Silicon Knights.

By the time Soul Reaver rolled around, Crystal Dynamics belonged to Eidos.  Then, in 2005 (not long after the last Legacy of Kain game was published), Eidos was completely bought out by Square Enix, and was mostly refocused on creating western-style games under the Square Enix umbrella.  Crystal Dynamics still exists as a division within Square, where they’ve been making various Tomb Raider games almost exclusively ever since the acquisition.

The problem with any hypothetical remaster or re-release of Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain is that, for several years, it would have required some three-way legal wrangling to determine who really owned the thing, and what they could do with it (if anything), and under what conditions.  

As of about 2014, Silicon Knights ceased to exist (about which more later, because it’s a fun story), but that still leaves the rights an open issue.  Square Enix seems to own the larger Legacy of Kain intellectual property, but there’s the question of ownership regarding Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain specifically, and I’m not sure that question has ever been answered.  Silicon Knights doesn’t exist, but many of its personnel are still around in some capacity, and would presumably have something to say about anything involving it.

Venues like Steam and Good Old Games have released the every other installment in the series digitally (even Blood Omen 2), but nobody’s touched the original game.  Probably CD Projekt Red and Valve don’t have much desire to try unsnarling the ownership and licensing issues themselves, and none of the owners seem all that keen on it, either.

And it will probably stay that way.  The Legacy of Kain series in general has always been pretty solidly in the B tier of video games, from back when there still even was much of a B tier in the first place.  The fanbase for that kind of deliberately overwrought gothic supernatural fantasy was loyal, but never very big, and I’m not sure how much that’s changed.  Moreover, I’m not sure either Square is willing to bank on it having grown in the interim enough to do anything about this first game in the series.  The more time goes by, the less inclination any party has to make anything of the series, especially an early entry whose ownership may be contested. An indirect sequel, and also some kind of MMO, were both in the works at various points.  The MMO vanished after not very long at all on the market, and the indirect sequel never made it out of development.

Legal options for playing Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain are limited.  You can play the original PlayStation version on the PlayStation 1, 2, or 3.  It’s also digitally available on the PS3, although not for the PSP or Vita.  Infuriatingly, it’s one of a small handful of games that can’t even be side-loaded (a process that involves downloading a digital PS1 game onto your PS3, then copying it uninstalled to the Vita).  The PC version, meanwhile, can still be played, though there’s a special program custom-made for it that you’ll have to get in order to install it and run it on modern systems.  And this tends to run a little slow.  Music and sound are fine, it’s just the game actually moves slower than normal.  Or you could install a virtual desktop and play it that way.

Post-script the Second: The Death of Chivalry

So whatever happened with Silicon Knights?  

Well, the story is… not complicated, exactly, but not entirely straightforward, either.

Development of Blood Omen was troubled.  As we would later learn, this was not an especially novel situation for Silicon Knights to be in.  Two of their other big projects later on underwent some turbulence in production.  Blood Omen was originally to be created by Silicon Knights and published by Crystal Dynamics.  Later on, after Crystal Dynamics became part of British publisher Eidos, they were able to somehow leverage this connection to strongarm their way into ownership of the overall Legacy of Kain intellectual property.  They used it to make the first sequel to Blood Omen, titled Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver. This had begun life as a brand-new IP (originally titled Shifter), which helps explain some of the tremendous thematic, aesthetic, and design differences between the two games.  

Silicon Knights later maintained that they’d had their own ideas for a potential Blood Omen sequel, but never got around to it, and after Crystal Dynamics started making their own sequels, Silicon Knights lost interst.  I’m not sure how much of that is real and how much is just so much sour grapes.  Anyway, they went off and did their own thing for a while.  They published the survival horror game Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem for the GameCube, after having signed an exclusivity deal with Nintendo around that time.  It had originally been in development for the N64, but was ultimately moved up to the newer hardware after development delays.  For anyone who’s wondering, Eternal Darkness an excellent game, on the shortlist of must-own GameCube titles, even if you’re not necessarily a fan of survival horror.  It’s not perfect (among other things, you have to beat the game three times to see the true ending), but it does a lot of interesting things.  

They also developed the GameCube remake of Metal Gear Solid (likely under heavy scrutiny and supervision form Konami), dubbed Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes.  Much as I tend to prefer the original version of the game for its restraint (Twin Snakes has a lot of ridiculous high-flying wire-fu maneuvering in its action cutscenes), the remake is worth any Metal Gear fan’s time. Among other things, series creator Hideo Kojima has apparently declared it the canon version of events.  It also saw a re-dubbing of the entire script, since apparently when the original audio was played back at a higher sampling rate, you could hear the traffic in the background, which the ramshackle soundproofing used in the original hadn’t been able to entirely shut out.  The re-dubbed script also has the benefit of having allowing Jennifer Hale and Kim Mai Guest to ditch their put-on accents – Guest’s being particularly irritating, and borderline racist (maybe actually racist; I’m a white dude, and not totally clear on these things).

After this, they moved on to the Xbox 360 with their passion project Too Human, which had been troubled from the beginning.  Its on-again, off-again development cycle spanned a decade and three console generations.  It began development for the original PlayStation, then shifted to the GameCube when the developer did in the early 2000s.  It went quiet for a few years, then resurfaced as an Xbox 360 project that was ultimately delivered in 2008, two years after its projected release on that console.

Too Human was a notorious, news-making flop, and Silicon Knights responded to this failure not simply by pinning the blame on someone else, but by doing that and then actually suing them.  Specifically, they sued Epic Games, from whom they had licensed the Unreal Engine 3 to make the final version of Too Human.  The accusation was that Epic deliberately sabotaged developers who licensed their engine by providing an incomplete product, and that the difficulties stemming from this had caused development delays.  These delays, and the compromises they brought about, were supposedly ultimately responsible for the failure and the financial losses of Too Human.

Epic responded by then counter-suing, which was the beginning of the end for Silicon Knights.

Epic’s counter-suit stated that Unreal Engine 3 was a work in progress, and that they were making it essentially on the fly as they developed the first Gears of War.  The counter-suit further stated that it was readily and openly acknowledged that the engine was unfinished, and that when it was done, it might ultimately not turn out to be useful for the licensees.  Epic’s suit further indicated that these facts were all known and laid out in the licensing contract, and so like all licensees, Silicon Knights knew this when they signed for it.  

But it gets better (which is to say, worse, at least for Silicon Knights). Epic’s counter-suit also included the allegation that Silicon Knights had knowingly and wrongfully copied code wholesale from Unreal Engine 3 and incorporated it into their own engine without permission from Epic.  They had then gone on to use this hybrid engine on other internal projects without the permission of the people they’d cannibalized it from.  

Now, I’m not one to root for a big corporation, even (especially) a game developer.  But Silicon Knights had the misfortune of being run by Denis Dyack, a known con-man, grifter, shady bullshitter, and general ambulatory phallus.  He maybe wasn’t in the same category as a Randy Pitchford or a Bobby Kotick, but that’s less a matter of capacity and more a matter of opportunity.  Given the chance to operate on their scale, I don’t doubt he’d have fit right in with that crowd.  

As far as the court case went, the evidence was overwhelmingly in Epic’s favor. In addition to their own court costs and damages awarded to Epic, Silicon Knights was forced to recall all unsold copies of Too Human and X-Men: Destiny (another game they’d developed with their Unreal Engine 3 hybrid), as well as scrap all projects using the engine, which seems to have been literally everything they had in the works at that point.

So what happened, essentially, is that Silicon Knights sued Epic Games in an effort to offset their losses by making money out of the Too Human debacle somehow, and it backfired so comically that they broke themselves against their opponent.

But their end, one way or another, was probably inevitable in that console generation.  Looking at their release history, there’s really nothing that stands out as a hit or an absolute classic.  Eternal Darkness and Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes were both fine games, this much is true.  But Eternal Darkness was a GameCube exclusive, and the GameCube didn’t sell the way Nintendo hoped.  Meanwhile, The Twin Snakes is certainly nice, but as a remake of a different developer’s game, it has little in the way of originality, and very little of the material can really be said to “belong” to Silicon Knights, since it was someone else’s brainchild right from the start.  

They were never a hugely prolific publisher, with eight games published before they folded, and according to Wikipedia, seven known titles cancelled at various points during their existence.  These cancelled projects included two sequels to Too Human (which had always been planned as a trilogy).  Given the cold reception received by the original, both from critics and consumers alike, that seems questionable.  In for a penny, in for a pound, I guess.  But however you look at it, they didn’t have what you’d call a good ratio of finished to unfinished projects.  And while it’s worth mentioning that many of those unfinished projects were upcoming games they were forced to cancel because they’d been made (or begun) with their illegal Unreal Engine 3 hybrid, the fact is that when your business plan hinges on stealing another developer’s game engine to make your own games, you’re already in a bad place.  

Silicon Knights pretty firmly slotted into the middle tier of video games.  For my money, the middle tier is in some ways the sweet spot.  It’s more high-tech and technically involved than the indie set, yet not so high-budget that developers in it can’t feel free to experiment.  But that middle tier has all but vanished these days. It’s questionable whether Silicon Knights would have hung on long enough to find a spot in it today, even if they hadn’t destroyed themselves going after Epic, just based on the iffy reception of their games.  That’s without considering the general skullduggery it took to keep them going in the first place.  And I also tend to think of X-Men: Destiny as a bad sign.  There’s no shame in work-for-hire; it’s how a lot of major development studios (like Blizzard) started out.  But that’s the key: you start out doing work-for-hire projects to make the money to strike out on your own. Silicon Knights was moving in the opposite direction, and that’s a bad sign.

Vae Victis, indeed.

[girl4music]

Hercules VS Xena: Striking differences

If you want the defining difference between Xena and Hercules… it’s actually not so much to do with feminism or gender representation. Those are the finer details, sure. But from a first-look standpoint, it’s that Xena is made for audiences that can understand and relate to its depth in production and writing of the emotional and mental kind, and Hercules is made for audiences who enjoy the writing and production of the physical kind. The action and the excitement. Of course, you get both with both shows, but you can tell one is more geared to one side than the other side. And I think the shows grew with the audience rather than the other way around. The stories got deeper and darker and much more complicated the more the audience tuned in and asked for what they wanted to see and hear of more. Therefore, I have to bring up the striking differences between both shows. If you want a show with good characters that only do good, watch Hercules. If you want a show with good characters that fluctuate, watch Xena. Redemption is a huge part of ‘Xena: Warrior Princess’. There are many episodes that deal with the themes of redemption and reconciliation that are very powerful. The main character, Xena, never quite is of one side or the other side. She’s both and she comes to reconcile with both. As does those that love her and believe in her. She comes to be in balance with light and with dark, with good and with evil, with peace and with war. And it’s not just her that does either. Many of the characters in Xena deal with these themes in very different ways. From the few episodes I’ve bothered to watch, ‘Hercules: The Legendary Journeys’ doesn’t have that. It’s because the characters are innately good that there’s no depth, no complication, and no moral standing of which to learn from. I’m not saying it’s not an entertaining show. I mean, it’s action-packed, there’s lots of fight scenes and there are interesting characters that do deal with important issues. However, it doesn’t seem convincing because it lacks the negative sides of those issues. Avoids telling the darker stories and therefore, you can’t take it seriously enough. I’m not being hater; I’m just being honest. In my personal opinion, the better show is Xena because it’s just got so much more to it. It’s a lot more mature and intelligent. It’s catered to an older audience than Hercules is. Requiring a broader and expanded consciousness so that the serious and important matters can be understood. Children can watch it, but it is more for the adults I’d say, or at least young adults. However, many of its fans did watch it as a child. Shaping their world view and philosophy as they grew into an adult, and eventually coming to understand what they were watching. I’m no different to that. That is very much my background with the show as well. As I watch it as an adult, I acknowledge, consider and understand its themes and lessons so much so more than I ever did as a child. That’s why I’m saying Xena is meant for an older audience and Hercules is meant for a younger audience.

I remember reading this interview segment in a Tumblr post awhile back where Kevin Sorbo talked about Xena and what he believed was wrong with it. Two themes were mentioned, seemingly “issues” to him. He said that the violence and the lesbianism were the aspects of the show that were “issues”. I think the word he was really looking for is “controversial”. Xena is a more complex and sophisticated show and it used violence to make the point clear that goodness, righteousness and peace is not black and white. It’s very difficult to not result to violence in dire situations. They were not encouraging violence. They were using it to teach a lesson, as well as explaining that just because you do result to violence in certain circumstances, you’re not inherently a violent person. You just did what you believed you should do in the moment and that that’s okay. The violence and the darker themes to the show made those lessons all the more powerful and inspiring. As for the lesbianism… I can see why that would have been an actual “issue”. Consider that at that time, even multi-cultural and interracial heterosexual couplings was still very new to mainstream TV. They were pushing boundaries with that alone, never mind homosexual couplings. I think the producers and writers did the best they could with it. Overall, Sorbo’s views are very one-sided and he wasn’t thinking about the bigger picture. Which is that you can’t have the positive themes without the negative themes if you are to understand the importance of them. That’s what he didn’t realize and failed to mention in that interview. The point to this post is not to compare or judge or criticize. It’s to explain to people that if they want to understand the way life works and learn how to handle it, they’re better off watching the more mature, intelligent and darker show than the one that avoids those themes altogether. Furthermore, all the really interesting characters in ‘Xena: Warrior Princess’ are the ones that are “searching”. This showcases that it’s human conditions and conflicts that make for really great TV entertainment. People love characters they can relate to for their flaws and mistakes rather than their heroism. It’s definitely a huge factor as to why Xena stands the test of time and became more successful and popular than its predecessor, Hercules. That within this action/fantasy show, there were these themes and lessons that make it far more than just “the hero that saves the innocent”. That there is strong and substantial material that goes far deeper than the surface. So much so that you actually start to enjoy the show for its comedy and lighter episodes; such as ‘A Day In The Life’ and ‘Been There, Done That’. You begin to crave them when you realize just how dramatic and intense this show can be sometimes. It really adds to its vibe. The camp is something both Xena and Hercules is well known for. The exaggeration, the subtext, the homoerotic nature of the characters etc… However, I personally think for Xena, it propelled the show, but with Hercules, it degraded it. And that’s mainly because in Hercules, there wasn’t enough balance. The scales tipped more towards the silly and the satirical. Because of this, the drama and the tenser sides to the show didn’t feel honest or serious. Whereas in Xena, it did because it was not afraid to go in-depth with the darker side to the show. It made the audience question the characters and the storylines.

Okay, so getting on to the finer details of having gender representation, I’d like to explain another reason why I believe Xena was more popular and successful than Hercules was. They always tried to make Hercules “the man”. Had to consistently point out his masculinity and physical strength and ability to catch the female eye. They wrote the character as if he had to be a certain way to be the good person or the right person. Whereas with Xena, there wasn’t any of that. Xena was a woman who had all those so-called “masculine” traits while still being female. A female that could do anything a male could do… or in some cases… better than a male could do them. She had the physical strength of ten men combined. She wasn’t written to look or be like “the man” in particular. But because the traits and skills she had were more known for a man to be capable of than a woman in those times… she was stereotyped as a more of a masculine character than a feminine one. At least to me it seemed she was viewed that way. In my personal opinion (I’m not saying they were trying to make it look this way), Xena was the one that carried more feminine energy and Gabrielle was the one that carried more masculine energy. But that’s just my personal perspective. I have my reasons to think and believe that and to interpret those characters’ energies like that.

Before you get me wrong, I’m not saying that it’s just about female representation. It’s not just about showing these fluid traits in females. It’s not all about feminism! I’ll point out that in an episode of Xena, there is a female character that hated men. That blamed men for all their problems. That was always making them at fault for everything… just because they were men. But the show producers/writers gave the very clear message that it’s not always men at all. That sometimes a woman can be just as cruel and selfish and hard. That it could go both ways and women can abuse and misuse men just as much as men can abuse and misuse women. That there’s no “more or less than” between them. It depended on the situation that the characters were in than on the individual character’s gender or type. That very much stood out for me when watching Xena. From what I’ve seen of Hercules, (which isn’t very much, I’ll admit) it seemed to be that the women were always depicted as the dainty, soft and sweet little things that were always falling all over the men and didn’t have a bad bone in their body. And that the men were always the strong, capable, physical and abusive ones. Again, don’t get me wrong! I’m very aware it can be like that. But it’s not always like that. It’s just a stereotype. A stereotype is where if you see a certain characteristic or behaviour in one or two people, you immediately assume or interpret everyone to be in that same mentally constructed category that just doesn’t exist. It’s just not a realistic picture to paint of either gender or type of person because humans are very fluid in their energies. Xena showed the times when men could be the soft, compassionate and kind type of person. It also showed when women could be the cruel, selfish and hard type of person. There was no “she’s masculine” or “he’s feminine”. They weren’t trying to give the depiction that you’re either one or the other and it has to be that way. They were saying that it was both. That females have what is considered “masculine” traits and males have what is considered “feminine” traits and none of it was wrong or inappropriate. It made the statement that whether male or female… they were still the same species. They were still human. In fact, they didn’t only show it with humans. They showed it with the Olympian gods too. With immortals. Not necessarily considered human but shown in the human image. From my perspective, at least, I would say that’s a very strong and substantial reason to watch the show; Xena, over the show; Hercules, or to judge on what show was better produced/written, even if it was the same people that created and worked on both shows. Because it seems to me that one was definitely much more thought out than the other in producing and writing. Xena has definitely shown me what it is that I look for in TV shows/movies/books/games or other forms of entertainment and art. Good producing/writing and dynamic characters that are not stereotyped. That do not belong to any particular category or labelled in any solid or permanent way. Characters that are fluid and interchangeable and versatile. Characters like Xena and Gabrielle and Callisto, that can make you see the individual person in both positive and negative ways, enough to realize that they are completely human and real. Enough to be relatable and so you can resonate with their mindsets. I don’t understand how or why there is such striking differences between these shows. Because given the fact Kevin Sorbo didn’t play Hercules and the show was at the same level of producing/writing as Xena, I probably would have loved to watch it just as much, if not more. There were some potentially great characters (both male and female) from Hercules that weren’t introduced in Xena that could have done with a better or longer arc, so you could get to know them more and could see that they weren’t produced/written in a stereotypical way. Maybe I’m wrong. Perhaps both shows have dynamic characters and give the same messages and I just haven’t done enough research or watched enough of the other show to judge accurately. But this is only my personal perspective and opinion on both shows regardless. I’m not saying it is fact because both shows are left to interpretation anyway. Take out of it what you will. I think I’ve made a satisfactory analysis to draw from to create your own. I’d very much like to read or hear yours.

"Hercules is the hero we hope is out there. Xena is the hero we hope is in all of us." - Liz Friedman, executive producer for 'Xena: Warrior Princess'.

[sunyoonandstars]

🥀 Sanguinem || BTS Vampire! Mafia Boss! Taehyung x Vampire! Reader || AU SERIES || Chapter 1

October called for a fantasy AU. So, here you go, guys. Enjoy! 

📃 Sanguinem Masterlist

🎶 PLAYLIST 🎶

Pairings Vampire Mafia boss! Taehyung x You Vampire! Jimin x You

Word count  2.250

angst, hints of/at and future smut, hints of fluff if you squint maybe? 

🥀 Warnings 🥀 mentions of blood, death, violence, emotional/physical abuse (nothing gruesome, though, I swear)

When your eyes met for the first time, it was as if you could feel the entire universe implode around you. The sight of his inky black orbs knocked the air right out of your lungs. You couldn't quite believe he was real at first, were convinced your mind was playing tricks on you when he suddenly started walking towards you, making his way through the crowded bar without once breaking eye contact. You could feel his presence even from afar, drawing you in like a magnet.

"I was looking for you, angel."

Those had been the first words Taehyung ever aimed at you. And your first kiss, right then and there, sealed the deal. You readily offered him your everything. And he did the same. Or so you thought at the time.

CHAPTER 1 ||  decay

You never thought you'd see him again. Kim Taehyung. The love of your eternal life. Unfortunately. 

What you wouldn't give to rid yourself of the ghosts of the past, to shed every memory of him like dead skin and be reborn a new, free person. The woman you used to be. Before your paths had crossed centuries ago. In a Paris ravaged by the Second World War, it's glorious beauty tarnished by hunger, grief, and omnipresent anguish that seemed to seep out of every broken window and every pile of rubble like quicksilver, heavy, smothering, contaminating the air and poisoning the people. Watching those tiny, meaningless humans desperately struggling to get back on their feet and restore their precious, shallow city to its former grandeur after years of senseless warfare and pointless destruction, you almost felt pity for them. Almost. 

Over time, you had learned to know better than to feel for them. Those small-minded, greedy creatures that kept on repeating the same foolish mistakes over and over again. Death, destruction, hatred, jealousy. They never learned. They didn't want to learn. You had realized that soon enough. It only took you about two hundred years of immortality to see through humanity and come to terms with the fact that it wasn't you who was the abomination, but, in fact, the very humans you envied so much for their capability to lead the ordinary lives they didn't value. Money and lust, consumption and splendor were all that was on their minds. And you were disgusted by their ignorant frivolity. Which only made it so much easier for you to view them as what they were to you: No more than a source of food. It didn't take you long to entirely abandon your guilty conscience and lose all sense of compassion for the dozens upon dozens of existences you put an end to.

That was until you met him. 

Nothing was what it used to be starting the very second he entered your life. You had never even contemplated the reality of destiny, had never even considered the actuality of fate to be a possibility, just like you had always denied the presence of a higher power, a divinity so to say. Because, if such a higher power were to be, how and why would he allow something like you to be born? A creature abhorrent to nature that needs to kill mercilessly in order to survive? 

Coming across Taehyung, however, led you to call your previous beliefs, or rather their denial, into question. Because you knew the moment you first laid eyes on him: He was meant to be yours, and you were meant to be his. Two of a kind, your lives had been linked long before you were even aware of each other's existence. He held the piece your soul had been missing ever since you awoke at the bottom of a cliff with broken limbs and the burning desire to drink human blood over four hundred years ago, without any memory of how you had gotten there and who you had been before. Taehyung was your mate. The two of you were meant to be. For some reason, you were certain of that fact. More certain than of anything else in your life. 

When your eyes met for the first time, it was as if you could feel the entire universe implode around you. The sight of his inky black orbs knocked the air right out of your lungs. You couldn't quite believe he was real at first, were convinced your mind was playing tricks on you when he suddenly started walking towards you, making his way through the crowded bar without once breaking eye contact. You could feel his presence even from afar, drawing you in like a magnet. 

"I was looking for you, angel." 

Those had been the first words Taehyung ever aimed at you. And your first kiss, right then and there, sealed the deal. You readily offered him your everything. And he did the same. Or so you thought at the time. 

The first weeks and months were unbelievably intense. You spent them in a dreamy haze, rarely ever leaving your shared hotel room, breaking quite a few beds. Your hunger for each other rendered your never-ceasing thirst for blood meaningless. You went without feeding for days on end. And when your cravings eventually got the better of you, and you were weakened to the point that you were barely able to move your limbs, Taehyung presented you with the ultimate solution to all your problems: Sanguinem. A synthetic substitute for human blood. A drug. Solely designed to fit and sustain the Vampire metabolism. Created by Taehyung himself, invented over the course of centuries. And, just like Taehyung, the Sanguinem came to you as both your salvation and your undoing. 

Sanguinem was blood in its purest, most refined form, offering an all-new kind of high. One that lasted for days but left you with an insatiable longing for more. Just like he did. 

Soon, you could no longer imagine yourself without Taehyung by your side. And, just as well, you could not go a week without your dose of Sanguinem. Taehyung had managed to do what turned out to be his intention from the start: He had made you into his willing puppet, his property. When you were finally onto him and his malevolent agenda, though, it was already too late. There was no going back. Or at least it seemed that way to you. Because, back then, you were too weak. Too weak to resist, to fight off the effect Taehyung had on you, to escape his control. And once he was sure his power over you was absolute, Taehyung introduced you to his 'Crimson Circle'. A ruthless and influential organization that did not only reign over Paris, as you came to know, but dominated the market for blood substitutes all across Europe and East Asia and basically 'owned' nearly every single vampire inhabiting the area. 

You see, the Crimson Circle didn't demand payment solely in the form of money. If you didn't have the financial means to purchase the Sanguinem, there were always other ways to reimburse them. Services one was to provide. Debts that were to be repaid at a time when it came in handy to Taehyung and his mission – which was to protect and preserve the vampire race by seeing to it that a strict set of rules was being followed by every individual within his reach. A mission no one but Taehyung had been strong enough to fulfill so far, but that was more than necessary to be carried out since, during that time, vampires were close to extinction due to the atrocious name they had made for themselves. 

Your likes had been hunted and slaughtered systematically ever since human technology had evolved to a level that enabled them to develop weapons effective enough to combat vampires despite their unnatural strength and heightened senses. Under the cloak of World War One and Two, thousands upon thousands of your kind had been tracked down and executed without trial. Because your species wasn't considered human. You didn't have rights, were mere monsters, soulless, deemed to be even below animals. 

So, keeping a low profile, which meant keeping fellow vampires in line and sparing human lives whenever possible, was of immense importance when it came to remaining undetected and maintaining a steady count of your kind. And, somehow, Kim Taehyung seemed to be just the man to accomplish that. 

He was both cruel and caring, cold and deadly yet gentle and beautiful. A riddle. A living, breathing oxymoron, oozing the kind confidence and innate authority that allowed neither resistance nor objection and demanded to be recognized. 

Taehyung taught you to respect life again, reintroduced you to that softer side of yourself you believed to have killed and buried centuries ago. He gave you, and so many others, a purpose while steadily expanding his network and consolidating his position as the unchallenged leader of the Crimson Circle. 

And you admired him. No. You loved him. With all that was left of your heart. 

Years passed. One, two, five, ten, fifty of them. And, all the while, you were Taehyung's number one. His queen. His sanctuary. His pride and his right-hand woman. Boastfully, he showed you off. His brightest jewel and most valuable possession. And, most of the time, he approached you with reverence and care, handled you like the divine creation he saw in you. 

At the beginning of his reign, Taehyung still asked and valued your opinion on matters of high importance and demanded your presence at all his meetings. He never wanted you to leave his side, and his underlings learned to respect you. Nobody dared to question your dignity or position, and whoever did have the audacity to disparage you in any way possible had to pay with their life. Taehyung usually saw to it that he made short work of them in a quite public manner, setting a warning example for future offenders as he did with everyone who thought it to be a good idea to bend or even go so far as to break his meticulously implemented set of rules. 

For the first time after seemingly endless years of solitude, spent on the run, in fear and isolation, you felt safe, valued, appreciated, and cared for. 

Quickly, though, after a couple of decades that was, the tide started turning. It was little things at first. Sudden shifts in Taehyung's mood. Displays of unnecessarily violent behavior, not only towards his subordinates but directed against you, as well. He became greedy, driven by lust and rage, impatient, voracious, jealous for no reason. 

At some point, you were forced to admit to yourself that it was time for you to go, to leave Taehyung behind and get as far away from him as possible. Before it was too late. Because the power – and his unappeasable thirst for more of the same –, as well as the need to adopt a certain coldness in order to sustain it,  were beginning to consume him. 

What had started out as the noble endeavor to turn the vampire race into one that was respectable and could be part of the world it inhabited without disrupting it quickly turned into a dark, all-consuming vortex of corruption and intrigue. With each day passing, Taehyung diverged further and further from the man he had once been, the man you had hopelessly fallen for, and instead became the very monster people had always feared your kind to be. 

He became unfaithful to you, had affairs, held orgies. Started to treat you more and more roughly, both in bed and in life. To consciously and continuously degrade you, making you feel worthless and inferior and punishing you for his mistakes, abusing you both mentally and physically – a pattern that only led him to despise himself even more, plunging him deeper and deeper into a vicious, unending cycle of self-hatred and violence. 

When Taehyung had formerly preached the value and appreciation of both human and vampire life, he now murdered dozens of innocent souls of either kind in cold blood, just for the thrill of it and to act out the anger that would otherwise have been directed at himself or, even worse, you. Because, back then, there was still some part left in Taehyung that wanted to protect you. Shortly after, though, that last, compassionate fragment of him, too, ceased to exist, going out like a fickle flame once he stopped fighting the process and succumbed to the darkness that was slowly but surely making itself at home in his very core, spreading like a tumor. 

When there was finally no more warmth left in his gaze as it fell upon you, you knew you had to move on, however much it pained your heart to abandon Taehyung in such a state. Entirely consumed by evil. Because you had allowed him to be corrupted, lacking the strength to fight it for the both of you. 

You could tell by the way he sometimes still looked at you, quietly longing for the comfort you had once provided, that he was crying out for help. That he wanted to be saved. That he needed you to chase away the darkness in his stead and help him reemerge as the beacon of light he used to be. But you were too scared. Afraid that he would drag you down with him. And that there would be no going back. 

So you ran. Literally ran for your life. As far and as quickly as your legs could carry you. In the dead of night, while Taehyung was once more being pleasured by half a dozen recently turned female vampires, you packed up your things and fled Paris with the help and in the company of your and Taehyung's dearest confidant, Jimin, vowing to yourself to never look back. 

And you never did. 

As a matter of fact, Taehyung barely ever crosses your mind these days. 

But you have a feeling that is about to change when you turn around behind the counter of the bar you currently work at to pour another stranger yet another drink. Only to stop and stare when your unsuspecting eyes meet a set of onyx orbs you thought you would never get lost in again. 

“I was looking for you, angel.” 

To be continued ... 

← Previous Part | Next Part → Coming soon! 

Hope you liked it so far. 🙃 I’ll try to update as soon and as often as possible. But there are a few changes taking place in my life right now, so I can’t make any promises. 

Here you can find my full Masterlist in case you feel like checking out more of my BTS fiction.

NONE of the GIFs used are mine. Credit goes to the initial creators. Thank you for your hard work and dedication. 

[softjeon]

Through the Veil | Pt. 1

• Pairing: Yoongi x Jungkook • Genre: Angst / Fluff | demon!AU (→  Gifset Trailer) • Words: 4,5k | Co-Writer: Cat @cassiavioletblue​ ↳ (AO3) • Disclaimer: mentioning of alcohol and violence / death / graphic content

↳ Jungkook is pretty sure that he is a normal human being, but he is also sure that this book, he got from his grandma, is a cookbook. So when it turns out that the words he's reciting are not to cook some tasty meal but to summon something from the depth of the underworld - then maybe there are a few more suprises for him in stock. « previous chapter | masterlist | next chapter »

Cooking had never been Jungkook’s strong suit, but if someone would have told him that even opening a simple cookbook and reading a recipe would bring this much chaos, he wouldn’t have believed it.

Opening his eyes, Jungkook stared at what was in front of him and it was almost like he had a tunnel vision, staring through a hollowed-out crystal prism. There was smoke everywhere. His head was throbbing. The air felt thick and it smelled like sulfur out of a sudden. But he hadn’t even touched the stove yet? Jungkook shook his head, trying to blink a few times. Suddenly time slowed to a crawl and he could feel the air pulsing around him. A ripple in the air. Then tension. Like a storm was brewing. Jungkook could feel it, something powerful, lingering just beyond his reach. The tension in the air became thicker, heavier until he had a hard time even breathing it in. The thick air wrapped itself around his body like an embrace, caressing him in a way he had never felt before. Something pulled him in, heavy and warm – like maple syrup when suddenly the smog fell and he could finally open his eyes.

Yoongi nonchalantly brushed the dust and grime off of his clothes. He had chosen a dark attire that contrasted well with his white hair and almost translucent skin. He liked putting people off a little. They didn’t expect him to be beautiful. Or dainty. Or...well, like he was in his human form. Of course he could change his form into whatever he wanted to be but he felt most comfortable in this, the physical form that his body turned into naturally when he turned himself human - or at least as much human as he could. He hadn’t figured the eyes out, yet. There was always something wrong with them, but he figured whoever summoned him wouldn’t mind it all that much. They must have bigger problems if they were meddling with dark magic.

As calm as he looked on the outside he was still pissed. He hated being summoned. It wasn’t like there was any warning. You just were at your own place in the underworld, chilling, doing whatever and minding your own business and then - zap - you were pulled through the void without asking just to be stared at by fat, old, stupid humans…

Yoongi blinked. The guy in front of him was none of that. He didn’t even look like a grown-up. And the way he stared at him didn’t suggest that he had been the one summoning him at all. Yoongi looked at him more closely and his mood instantly changed. The little one looked delicious. And - he took a careful sniff and his mouth watered immediately - he smelled even better. Like purity. He was untouched. Completely, utterly untouched. The best treat one like him could get. A virgin.

He gave the innocent one a friendly smile and cocked his head a little, “Are you my offering?” Sometimes humans gave him sacrifices in an attempt to get on his good side and he shamelessly had to admit that it totally worked. That boy was absolutely stunning. He licked his lips in anticipation. He would definitely enjoy this.  

Jungkook stared at the person in front of him, letting his gaze fall to the book for a second, his mouth hanging open before he snapped his head back up. His mind and body took way too long to comprehend what was happening, but then he screamed, a piercing loud scream echoed through the room and Jungkook grabbed the next best thing that was in reach. A pan.

“Don’t get closer!” Jungkook screamed and held out the pan like it was his shield in front of him, taking a few steps back. His whole body was shivering, all muscles locked up tight until he could feel the kitchen counter at his back. There was no way further. “I…I…please don’t hurt me,” Jungkook’s voice was only a stutter and he swung the pan around a little to show he would use it as weapon if he needed to, “Take everything you want but please don’t hurt me. I won’t call the police!” Yoongi was enjoying this more and more by the second. He smirked at the cute one who had grabbed a pan and seemed to actually think that kitchen attire would keep him away, “Oh, sweety. Little one...they didn’t tell you, did they? What I am? I’m not here for money or some shit. I’m here for...”

Well, he didn’t have a clue what he had been summoned for yet but he did know that he would deal with those stupid humans later and take what he could get now. Playing with the tasty one was just too much fun right now, “I’m here for you. All for you, my pretty boy.” He came closer, slowly, not because he was scared of the pan or of the way the younger aimlessly swung it around but rather because he enjoyed stalking his prey. “Tell me your name, beautiful. What do they call you?” He didn’t care for age but he liked to know their names. Names were power. Maybe he could even get some information out of him before he devoured him. Information and a feast - the best combination he could think of.  “Th- they?” Jungkook tried to concentrate, even though his whole body and mind screamed for him to run – but there was nowhere to run. Something wasn’t right. The way the other was talking to him, the weird feeling in the pit of his stomach, the smell.

“For me? Here for…what?” Jungkook shook his head in disbelief. He felt dizzy and the sulfur in the air was making it harder for him to breathe, “There is no one. I…I am alone. I just wanted to cook some god damn spaghetti,” Jungkook’s voice turned into a murmur in the end but he held his pan further out. “Cook...spaghetti,” Yoongi snickered. Whoever had set the boy up with him had really played him dirty. He was curious as to how he had been summoned anyway. There was no pentacle on the ground, no crystals, no nothing. So they either were hiding real close or they had put a hex bag onto the boy somewhere to direct the summoned demon to his person first thing after arriving. He wondered who the summoners were and what they wanted. But they must want a lot if they were spoiling him so much right away.

Yoongi took the pan out of the boys grip easily and then caged him in against the kitchen counter. The younger leaned back to get away from him, eyes wide and breath shallow. He was absolutely breathtaking like that. His skin looked so soft, his lips were slightly parted from breathing so harsh and it made Yoongi want to taste him right now. But he wasn’t quite finished with him yet. “Tell me. Your. Name!” And this time he added a bit of magic, really just a hint of it, enough that the boy would talk, if he wanted or not. In his head Jungkook was sure he had spat back at the man in front of him, telling him to back off but somehow all that came out of his mouth was his name.

He had said it in such a sweet tone, that his hand soared up, pressing it tightly on his lips right away, staring at the other in disbelief. Something was so not right. He could feel his breath get shallower when he realized that he was starting to panic. Jungkook didn’t want to die. Not one bit. Not right now. Not here. Not like this.

“Who are you?” Jungkook shivered, leaning back a little more as he tried to get out of the persons reach, “What- what do you want from me?” Yoongi sighed contently. Such a sweet voice and such a sweet name too. „Jungkook…,“ He rolled the name on his tongue, testing and tasting it, like he would do with his owner in just a short little while. „What I want?“ He smiled at him sweetly, tracing the boys features with his eyes, the cute nose and the sharp jawline that would be really nice to nip at. „Oh, nothing much, really. Just your soul. And also your body first.“ He waited for the realisation to sink in before he continued, „So tell me, Jungkook...“ He reached out for one of the cooking ingredients that were lying around within reach and took one of the tomatoes. He didn‘t really have a craving for human food but he was one for dramatic effects and he liked the red of the tomato so he had grabbed a ripe one, biting the supply flesh and letting the dark, red juice run over his bottom lip. He wiped it away nonchalantly but it had the desired effect. Jungkook‘s eyes were solely on him and he was practically shaking in fear.

He couldn‘t just see it, he could also sense it. Which wasn‘t that much of a surprise. He could sense human emotions if he was that close to them as he was to the boy right now and focusing on them that much. What actually was a bit strange was that normally it would just be a vague notion, more a hazy clue than an actual feeling. With this one however is was differently. He could sense Jungkook‘s emotions running through himself, almost as if he could actually feel them. The boy must be out of his mind in fear. Or just really, really be a scaredy cat in general. He didn‘t mind. It would just make his meal more interesting. As long as the boy wouldn‘t scream too much. But then he could just severe his vocal cords, „Tell me, Sweetheart. Why didn‘t you have sex yet?“

The second Yoongi had touched him, Jungkook could swear that something pulled at his heart. It suddenly beat slower, like he was calm for a second but only until his touch left again. But there was no time to think about it further, when his mouth hung open when the other asked him about sex. “My private life stays private,” Jungkook stuttered, trying to sound in control, “How many times a week I sleep with someone shouldn’t bother you at all!” Jungkook tried to sound cool, collected and as if he was in fact no virgin. Though he was, there was no need for the other to know – but he wondered how the other know? Did he just guess? Jungkook gulped heavily, his heart beating fast. Yoongi laughed at him, straight in his face. „You, my dear, have never slept with anyone before. Ever. I can feel it…,“ He brushed his hand over the boys stomach, still covered by his sweater. „I can feel your innocence radiating off of you like…,“ He slipped his hand under the hem of the sweater and touched the naked skin, barely able to register how soft it was before a jolt like an electric shock went through him and hit him like an actual blow.

„What..?“ He jerked his hand back, staring at Jungkook who seemed just as shocked as he was. Was the boy protected? Did he have any protection spell tattoos on him? He ripped the boys sweater clean off him, baring his torso but there was nothing that could explain the invisible strike that he had gotten. „Who are you?“ He growled at him, baring his teeth, sweet words and teasing forgotten, „Tell me what this is all about or I swear by all the devils in hell I‘m gonna rip you apart limb by limb“

Jungkook had screamed when Yoongi ripped his sweater from him. Just like that. As if it was nothing. He wrapped his arms around his body in a weak attempt to protect himself, feeling the tears sting in his eyes when the other threatened him further. Where Yoongi had touched him, it felt like he left an imprint, but it didn’t hurt. It was rather warm…it was the same feeling he had felt before – like maple syrup. The voice sent a shiver down his spine. It was so cold. Almost animalistic. “I…I told you…,” Jungkook whined quietly, “I’m Jungkook…I don’t know what you want from me, please. I just…I was trying to cook and just when I started reading the recipe…. please don’t hurt me, please.” Yoongi growled again, fury spilling over and making him headless. He gripped the boy on his hips, where there was still cloth and then turned him around roughly so he had his back to him. Still no marks. Nothing! There was nothing on him!

But now that he was paying closer attention he could feel it, that there was something, something that he was missing! What did he miss? What had he overseen? He gripped the boys hair roughly to pull back his head and howled in pain. Everything, absolutely everything that was directly connected to the boy was causing him pain! And apparently the more roughly he treated him, the sharper the pain. Not with him! There was no way that he would let that little shit get away with this. He was gonna end him! Burning with rage he gripped the kitchen towel and wrapped it twice around his hand before grabbing the boys neck and pushing him down until his spine was bend and his body under his control. Jungkook’s attempts at freeing himself would have been futile anyway but he wanted the boy to feel powerless, to know that Yoongi was in charge here, little magic tricks be damned. “Last chance!” He grabbed a kitchen knife and held it the way Jungkook could see it, “Tell me why I can’t touch you or I’ll cut you open just like that.” He jammed the knife into the counter where it sunk in deeply, to show the boy that he wasn't joking about this. He would rather kill him if he couldn't figure it out. He wouldn’t let that kid play with him. Jungkook looked at the knife that stuck in his kitchen counter. That could be his body. Just like that. How was that even possible? Jungkook was already strong – at least he liked to think so with working out almost daily but the man in front of him. It was almost out of this world.

“I… I don’t know, please. I really don’t know. I told you all I know,” Jungkook didn’t know if he should either avoid the other’s gaze or not, but when he looked up he noticed the strange color of them.  He hadn’t looked at the other more closely out of fear. They were entirely black but there was something in them it almost looked like stars to Jungkook. It wasn’t normal. Nothing about the person in front of him was. Jungkook could feel the shiver that run slowly down his spine, “Who- who are you?”

„I am a demon and I am gonna end you! Say goodbye to your world, human!“ He plunged the knife into the boys side. Or rather he intended to. Because the moment the tip would have sunk into Jungkook’s flesh Yoongi screamed himself. The knife clattered to the floor and he stumbled backwards. There was blood gushing from his side and when he pressed his hands against his side he could feel the pain. Actual physical pain. He was wounded. He had tried to cut the boy and he had wounded himself instead! The boy was fine. Jungkook was absolutely fine! He stared at the human, disbelieving and in denial. That couldn‘t be. That simply couldn‘t…

Yoongi stumbled again, the surprise and the pain weakening him and he collapsed against the wall on the other side of the kitchen, sliding down and leaving a bloody trail. He was wounded. He was hurt. He didn‘t heal! His eyes flickered around the room in panic, trying to find a way out and there he saw it. The book. It was lying there, innocently, looking just like any other old and leather bound book. But Yoongi knew better. Every demon would know better. There wasn’t another human who had summoned him. It was the kid. It had been the kid all along. How didn’t he see it right away? How could he have missed it while the book was there, just lying around in plain sight? The answer was easy. Because it hadn’t happened in hundreds of years. He had become careless. And hungry. And Jungkook had looked so delicious and soft and like an easy meal. He didn’t think and he hadn’t taken care. But how had the boy managed to act so naive? Why hadn’t he told Yoongi right away that he held this power and instead let himself be toyed with like the innocent boy he pretended to be? This was dark magic, powerful magic. He must be at least somewhat gifted to even use it, let alone pull the whole thing off properly.

“What do you want?” He spat the words at him with as much disgust and disdain as he could manage. “Tell me, master-” His voice was dripping with spite and sarcasm, “- how can I serve you?” He had been bound. That little fucker had managed to bind him, Yoongi, to himself. Jungkook looked at Yoongi with wide eyes. What did he just call him? Why wasn’t he wounded? Why did the other bleed? Demon? His beautiful white walls. Jungkook whined at the thought of painting it anew but quickly kept his thoughts at place. “Ma-master?” Jungkook asked carefully, “I… I just want you to go.” Jungkook somehow realized that the other can’t hurt him, instead it only hurt himself. Still he bent down to take the knife from the ground and held it close to him – just in case. Bravely he took a step closer, “Who…or what are you? Why are you here? What do YOU want?”

Yoongi squinted at him. That little shit wasn’t pretending. There were no demands thrown at him, no orders. He said he wanted him to go. Was Jungkook really that clueless? Yoongi groaned when he scrambled to his knees, pushing a hand under his ripped shirt to send a spark of magic into the flesh to make it heal more quickly. Two seconds later the bleeding had stopped but it still felt annoying to wear a shirt soaked with it and to kneel on a kitchen floor. Also his pride was hurt. And it would be hurt even more if that stupid kid had actually managed to bind him by accident.

He observed the way Jungkook clung to the knife as if he still needed protection from him. Or as if he could protect himself from a demon with a simple knife. That boy was actually dumb. He was extremely dumb - and still, Yoongi was bound to exactly that kid. “Give me that book!” He decided to try something and waved Jungkook over to hand him the book. If the other knew that he could practically order Yoongi around and have him doing stuff for him because of the bond then there was no way he would run for him. Also if Yoongi wanted to find a way out of this he needed to know what kind of spell Jungkook had used. And if Jungkook had even one single drop of magical knowledge in him he would know that he should do his best to never let Yoongi near his spell books ever. Let alone give it to him.

Jungkook jerked up when Yoongi’s cold voice echoed through the room again making him react on instinct. He hadn’t had much time to think about how the other had healed himself – just with a little wave of his hand. Jungkook didn’t let go of the knife but walked over the kitchen counter nonetheless. “Why? It’s a cooking book,” The young boy said innocently and took it off the counter to bring it over to him, “There’s nothing special about it believe me. Also, I would really like for you to go now… please?” Jungkook tried his best to sound calm and polite, even though the intruder just wanted to murder him in his own kitchen. “It’s a .. what?” Surely, Jungkook couldn’t be that dense. He was fucking with him. “Just give it to me,” Yoongi snatched the book - and then jerked his hand back with a scream. He had been burnt. Again. Stupid protection spells! Yoongi was yelling curses that would have put the dirtiest sailors to shame and would have lighted at least a few fires in hell but up here with him being bound to a mere mortal absolutely nothing happened. “....goddamnit!” He ended his rant moderately, a bit out of breath from yelling and swearing so much. Now he needed to be careful. Jungkook couldn’t know what he had done. Or what Yoongi was trying to do.

“I can’t touch that book. Would you mind showing me what you read before I came and hold it up to me? I promise you, as soon as I have everything figured out, I’ll be out of your life,” The demon gave him what he considered to be a friendly smile and hoped that Jungkook would let himself be fooled. As soon as this bond was broken he would make mincemeat out of that guy. “I eh…don’t know,” Jungkook said quietly as he brought the book back to the counter, but keeping his hands on it, careful that he wouldn’t open it for the other to see, “Only if you tell me first why you couldn’t hurt me? What is this all about? Why did the book burn your skin? What is your name and what exactly are you?” Jungkook didn’t trust him one bit, but maybe knowing what he had to deal with here he would understand. It just couldn’t be. The thought was absurd. There was no way Jungkook just summoned a demon on accident, right? Yoongi only sighed, unnerved. Why did the boy have to start getting some sense right about now?

“Jungkook, sweety, look…,” He started, but realized his mistake the second he saw the frown on the other’s face, “Okay, I’ll tell you. This book is not a cookbook. It is a spellbook. And you, my dear, managed to summon me from my home where I was sleeping all on my own, minding my own business and doing no harm to absolutely nobody.” Maybe he exaggerated a bit with trying to seem harmless but Jungkook didn’t need to know everything. “So because you used this book, which is protected, you - you are also protected,” He ended lamely. Jungkook would find out about the bond soon enough if Yoongi didn’t manage to separate them. “But as you summoned me - I just can’t go away like that. You need to release me. I don’t know how and I bet that you don’t know either, considering how much of a…,” He had wanted to say ‘clueless idiot you are’ but figured that it wouldn’t help him to earn Jungkook’s trust so he quickly changed his sentence, “...how surprised you are about all this. So please, Jungkook, just help me read that book, where there must certainly be a hint as to how to severe the...as to how to...to let me go, okay? The sooner you let me read this, the sooner we won’t have to see each other again.” His smile looked strained. Why on earth was it so fucking difficult to be nice? All he wanted to do was to set the house on fire. Preferably with both the boy and the book in it.

“Release you? Wait…,” Jungkook’s eyes went wide and he turned around to open the book again, but there was nothing. It all was only empty pages. “I swear it was here,” Jungkook said hastily, still scared that Yoongi could harm him any second, “It said something in latin. I had it in school, but I barely remember any of it. I thought it was a cute quote, you know like it sometimes is printed down in books. Something inspirational. It sounded something like ei...eius….  eius sanguinem, in me. I was a bit thrown off because why would they talk about someone’s blood in my own in a cookbook.” He looked at the demon with hopeful eyes and tried a smile, “And what now?” Yoongi groaned desperately. “A quote. A latin quote in a cookbook,” He suppressed the urge to bare his teeth at the words that Jungkook spoke so carelessly, mumbling other parts of the summoning ritual under his breath, “...ad constringendum ad ligandum eos pariter et solvendum at ad congregandum eos coram me.” Yeah, he knew them. It was just as he had thought. That child had managed to use a binding spell and a bloody potent one at that. ‘Bloody’ being the key here. There was only one good side there: with how strongly it affected him it would also affect Jungkook.

He knew humans. They read the warnings and then ignored them, thinking they were way stronger than that. And well Jungkook didn’t even knew about the warnings, the side effects. Binding a demon to you via blood meant that the both of you got very close. And while the bond empowered you to order the demon around the closeness of the demonic spirit also strengthened the demonic parts in yourself. Your weaknesses, your guilty pleasures, the tainted parts of yourself so to speak. Be it greed or lust or sloth or whatever else you had in you anyway, it gained strength the longer the bond was intact. Afterwards it would all go back to normal though it was said that a purifying ritual did wonders to help. It was just that most people didn’t even last till the bond was broken. It just protected the human from the demon, not from death in general. So the demon could watch the human get himself in trouble, maybe even help a little and then - as soon as the human was dead he was free again.

With the book being blank all of a sudden (probably a protection thing, against evil spirits and with Yoongi being bound to Jungkook even he wasn’t ‘pure’ enough to read it now) this was the only way out that he knew of. He could try to reach out to fellow demons of course - only the nicer ones though who were up here and could be reasoned with. If someone down in hell would hear of him being bound then it wouldn’t just be shame that was waiting for him. He was also quite vulnerable with that mortal connected to him. Yoongi gave the little one a once over again and huffed, “I guess we should get used to each other then.”

A/N: HERE WE GO AGAIN! A new fanfic! Aahhgrrhgrh please leave a comment or send us an ask on how you liked it! I’m so nervouuuus! It’s something completely new but this story was so much fun to write! We’re almost done with the story already, so I can upload weekly updates for you! :) I really really hope you like it. Thank you for reading!! ❤

[saintaugustinerp]

Congratulations Aubrey! You have been accepted for the role of The Mad King with the faceclaim Benjamin Jarvis. Please be sure to check out the accepted applicants checklist! Also be sure send us a link to your blog within the next twenty-four hours. Welcome to St. Augustine!

Name/alias: Aubrey

Age (18+) : 20

Gender/Preferred pronouns: she/her

Timezone: GMT + 8

 IN CHARACTER

Desired Skeleton: The Mad King

Character Name: Nathaniel Théodore Rothschild

Age (18+): 22

Gender/Pronouns: male, he/him

Hometown: Zürich, Switzerland

Major: Philosophy

Desired Faceclaim: Benjamin Jarvis

Character blurb:

The moment the heel of his shoe clacks against the ground, the world shifts — there is a static that enters the air and all gazes turn towards him, a name dissipates in reverent whispers into the frigid alpine air. The signature silver of his hair, the striking sharpness of his features, the crackling unrest behind his gaze; you recognize him immediately and his name slips from your tongue, too. (If you don’t, there is no need to worry — someone will remind you.) He must be the sun, you think, for how he immediately he becomes the center of every room he steps into. He needs no cape, no crown, no scepter — he who stands before you is a king and you will recognize his birthright. He must be the sun, you think, for the imperious manner in which he illuminates every surface and sinks into every crevice. The tales of his glory, the talk of his name spares no thought to the unwilling or uncaring. You have heard, too, that he is never alone, that behind him follows his court — and he must be the sun, you think, for the way he walks as though all the world is underneath him, for the way that few are brave enough to fly close, for the way that all who come too close are doomed to perish. A subject slips a whisper into his ear and his gaze turns slowly but surely towards you. Unrest crackles fully into a spark, discontent transforms into a terror-striking curl of the corner of his lips. The static comes into a climax and saturates the air so fully that it replaces the air in your lungs, and your chest sinks in realization. You are wrong. He is not the sun; he is lightning and he is about to strike.

Developed Head Canons:

— WELCOME MY SON, WELCOME TO THE MACHINE;

Born to one of the world’s largest banking magnates and a Luxembourgian princess (who, by marrying his father, had given up all claims to the throne), there is a legacy that he carries heavily on his shoulders. His parents were often busy, occupied with duties that left them little time to attend to precious young Théo, to stoke the boy’s bright burning flames before they burned the world around him. If you ask him where home is, he will recite the address of their stately Swiss manor. If you ask him who his family is, his parents’ names will slip from his lips without hesitation. He gives no weight to these words (home, family) and thus strips them of any power they may have. He doesn’t blame his parents for their distance. It is how it is. He’s fully aware that his path in life has long been decided for him, and he knows that this is the path he must begin to travel the moment he leaves Augustine’s. Carrying this old, heavy name on his shoulders, becoming a banking magnate himself, marrying a respectable girl from a respectable family, producing a respectable heir, continuing the cycle and bringing forth the name Rothschild as his ancestors have done for centuries before him. He pretends he doesn’t know this is his life’s sole purpose, pretends he doesn’t give a damn, and perhaps he truly doesn’t — perhaps when he throws himself into his bacchanalia he does so with a light heart and no care to the collar around his neck, the tether to his future; but nonetheless the tether remains, and he will always wake up the next day a Rothschild. There are a few things that place themselves a hurdle upon his path, but he gives them even littler thought. (Some might even speculate he wished them to succeed, except, really. Théo could never handle life on his own, life without his luxuries, without his fortune, so he’ll do the very bare minimum to keep those, at least.) One hurdle is the events that had occurred that dreadful night, the knowledge of which in the wrong hands could pose a large threat to his future. A second is his stepmother, who detests him, and her two children are in competition with him, who could replace him in a heartbeat if his suitability were contested. The third, of course, is none other than himself and his disinterest in the life that his father leads.

— WE DON’T NEED NO EDUCATION;

Théo’s childhood was an unceasing, ever waging war to contain him — or at least to get him to behave for all of two minutes. Dozens of nannies and governesses and tutors and day schools and faraway estates of distant uncles fell victim to Théo’s unpredictable, thrill-chasing temperament. It wasn’t a craving for violence necessarily, nor was he short-fused and explosive, it was always an itch of boredom which he attempted to quell. Forever impertinent, eager to push the boundaries of what he could get away with, playing games both physical and emotional. No amount of money was sufficient compensation for the terror that Théo reigned, no attempt at discipline had ever procured anything but vengeful rebellion from the little child. Boarding schools had no better luck. Some he had attended for only weeks before expulsion remained the last disciplinary tactic, though more often he took around a term or so to stir up a sufficient amount of trouble, but he would, without a doubt, find it. He was tossed across Europe, in the Schule Schloss Salem, Leysin American School, Institut Auf Dem Rosenberg, the infamously disciplinarian Gordonstoun School, among many, many others. It came as a surprise to everyone when at the age of 14, he had taken an attachment to Institut Le Rosey. Some might ascribe it to the level of prestige of those who walked its halls, amongst whom Théo could not stand out. Others to the level of care Le Rosey provided, its staff attentive to the needs of every student (those, who, among the studentry are degraded as l’esclaves). The real reason remains a secret to most, a reason that even Théo himself might deny.

— ANY FOOL KNOWS A DOG NEEDS A HOME;

Wherever he goes, people gather around him. He loves the attention, loves being a king when it is something he will never truly be. He is unapologetic in what he is, but he will manipulate to get what he wants. A hungry dog is never loyal, and so as little as he actually cares about them, he will reward those who swear themselves to him. Some may call him a natural leader, but this assessment is rather off-base. He’s simply a strong personality that attracts others to him. Should the time to lead come, should the fall come to his court, he will drop each and every one of them to protect himself. Of course, he can never live without people around him, people to control and grovel at his feet. The same rings true for his relationships. He doesn’t ever like being single, but he has little loyalty to whoever he’s with. He gives in easily to his impulses. There are those who think themselves pyrokinetics, those who delude themselves into thinking that fire can be contained, and he loves them the most - he loves proving them wrong.

— ALL YOU TOUCH AND ALL YOU SEE IS ALL YOUR LIFE WILL EVER BE;

He lives an extravagant, libertine lifestyle, his name always associated with expensive alcohol, yachts, overpriced clubs, fast cars, girls on his arms by the dozens. Even this grows tiresome, and Théo is always seeking new opportunities for entertainment. Everyone is lower than him in differing degrees, so it hardly matters to him, and he goes with whoever provides the most excitement. He’s fond of giving into whatever impulse he feels like on any particular day, whether it’s dying his hair platinum, piercing his septum, getting a tattoo here and there, degrading strangers, buying entire buildings, climbing bridges to spray his name in paint across its body, taking trips halfway across the globe. He doesn’t particularly care for what’s perceived as proper (to a certain extent, anyway), and will break laws without concern for consequences. The irresponsibility of his actions have yet to get him into trouble, but one day he’ll push his luck a little too far.

— YOU ARE YOUNG AND LIFE IS LONG AND THERE IS TIME TO KILL TODAY;

Théo had never harbored any particular thirst for knowledge, nor passion for any particular academic field. His concerns rarely went past the minutiae of day-to-day life, always in search of his next great adventure. Wherever he went, he had never had trouble rousing others to action, collecting a court with unparalleled ease. Countless counselors have told him that his energy would be better put to use in positions of leadership, and in Le Rosey he had finally given in. This, mixed with the school’s emphasis on holistic formation, overtly careful guidance, and whatever natural quick-wittedness Théo had, paved his freedom in choosing a tertiary education institution. Fully aware of what lay in his path, considering no other future but this path that lay before him, Théo knew it did not particularly matter what and where he wished to study. His father had read History in Oxford, but his mother had studied Art in St. Augustine’s and the option was always open (though perhaps not encouraged) to him.

— WHEN YOU LOSE CONTROL, YOU’LL REAP THE HARVEST YOU HAVE SOWN;

Despite how it seems that Théo strives for chaos, often in line with what is interesting and entertaining, leading to a reputation of unpredictability, there lies a common denominator in all of his endeavors, whether he acknowledges it or not: control. It is by his will, by his hand that the world turns to chaos around him. Chaos that is beyond his control is a different creature entirely, and it tugs in competition at something deep and primal within him. It draws something truly unpredictable from within the depths of his guts to be thrust upon a situation that is wholly out of his control. And with the events of the past year: his involvement with the death of Frederick Wells, the blood that it has stained onto his hands, the loose ends that come with it and threat that it poses to his future; the way the False Prophet had seized control when it ought to have been he who had done it, and the way that the False Prophet had subsequently dropped him; the looming future which he knows fully well, which he can’t bear to step into, the consequences of their actions towards Frederick Wells, and the unexpected effect it’s had on him. Théo’s never had to learn the meaning of the word consequence, but as something dark mixes with the boredom that has reigned supreme for far too long, something that flickers in barely perceptible flashes behind eyes, in increasingly unappeasable bouts of ennui, it seems that whether he wants to or not, the consequences will come raining down.

Writing Sample:

The alcohol kept their blood hot, pumping through their arteries. The frosty midnight wind closed around the snow-powdered clearing in the woods, a bonfire crackling softly, its orange glow in competition with the moonlight. Some sat around in logs, bottles and cups in hand as loud, raucous conversation ensued. Some leaned against trees, smoke curling from white sticks pressed in between their lips, others pressed against each other, lips locked and bodies pressed together, barely hidden in the darkness of the woods. Music blared and dissipated into the air, hymnals to the frigid forest nymphs that slept within the evergreens - as much someone’s party playlist could be, haphazardly thrown together and tied with the bow of a slightly nauseating pun as a title. The alcohol flowed freely and drove the ease, the candor, the lightness that parties such as these promised. None were passed out yet, but most were just loose enough to be compliant to the path of most amusement. This was always Théo’s favorite moment, there was an invincibility that marked his every movement, potential was at its thickest and he itched for something to take, something to relieve the boredom that pent up in him like a gathering storm. There were no limits — everything that the moon lit was his to take. Faces he knew well, faces he vaguely recognized - his gaze ran over each one like a child picking out a toy from the shelf, deciding on a plaything to curl his fingers around and occupy himself with.

First he would have to rid himself of his little pet, one of the younger ones, a desperate young boy who was so very eager to please. It took so little to receive so much; really, one only had to ask for it. His desperation was amusing and useful, certainly, but tonight it grew blasé and Théo wanted something new. “I’ll tell you,” he said, his voice low, smooth. “There’s something I want to say first, though, and nobody’s listening.”

The boy didn’t even hesitate. There was no feeling greater than this, and really, it oughtn’t have been a thrill anymore, but it always was — the feeling of complete and total control, freely given, offered so willingly at his feet. The boy rose to his feet, called for quiet — and it was a party, of course no one gave a damn, barely even paying attention to the boy’s yells, but he was trying desperately, now finding a rock to elevate himself with and address the crowd. There was a wickedness in Théo’s smirk as he watched the boy in action, as he leaned back, and with a quick sweep of the area, found a gaze settled on him. A peer, an old friend, who shook his head in light-hearted disapproval. Poor kid, his friend mouthed, and a grin, wide and bright, shot into Théo’s expression. That was the point, after all, and his friend only sipped his drink in response, returning to his conversation in open defiance of Théo’s pet’s pleads.

The world crashed in disarray around the boy’s words, and he can hear the defeat sinking in with every one that went unnoticed. He wondered if he ought to reel him back in now, to tell him to go play with someone else instead, perhaps get one of the lost causes inebriated and get them to do something that would cut through the boredom that was so heavily settling now. Until, that was, he noticed a pair of eyes he didn’t recognize. Not that he wasn’t used to being stared at, but there was something in her gaze that intrigued him — curiousity. He didn’t know who she was, didn’t know her name, but he didn’t particularly care. She was average in all aspects and for now he had no need for her name or her story, but there was one thing that made her special. “You’re far too sober for this.”

“I am,” she agreed. She took a sip of her drink, accentuating his point.

His little pet had come back to his side now, a little pout jutting his lips. “They won’t listen. Tell me anyway?”

A cup to his cheek, tucking stray brown locks into his ear. Théo’s gaze bore into his. “Don’t disappoint me.”

That was all it took. There was the possibility that he might actually succeed, and in that case all it took was a speech or so, really, but for now all Théo had to do was bask in how beautifully the boy complied, shouting at the top of his lungs and embarrassing himself ever so painfully.

The girl was still staring, something akin to judgement behind her eyes. She was not new. The one who thought she saw through it all. Oh, she thought herself above the rest, but really.

“You’re observing.” He vaguely recalled now that she was someone’s guest, someone who usually didn’t attend these little soirées. A chance of temporary relief from boredom, in any case.

There was a sharpness behind the girl’s eyes, the beginnings of a strategy forming, the beginnings of over analyzation, preparing moves for a chess game that wasn’t a chess game — Théo didn’t play, or at least he didn’t play fair. He made his own rules, brought in his own pieces, and if all else failed, he had no qualms with torching the entire board. Perhaps she would be one of the moralistic ones. He loved those, it was always the most satisfying to allow them to discover the price of their own depravity, to allow them to discover the fact that there was always a price. Perhaps she could come to bore him, and he would discard her along with the many others. There were more people to sink his teeth into. Perhaps she would give the right answers — and of course, Théo never knew what those were, but he would recognize them as they came — perhaps they would slip miraculously from her lips, and she would break the storm and bring the relief he needed tonight. In any case, it was time to gauge his new toy.

“It’s always boring when you know what’s going to happen next,” Théo said, taking a slow drag from his cigarette. “Indulge me. What am I trying to do?”

Other:

i. [ pinterest board ]

ii. [ spotify playlist ]

iii. [ graphic ]

[mindibindi]

Gene/Alex Scenes That Made Me Go Whoa… [4/5]

So here’s a scene that made me go whoa in a bad way. Not long after finishing the series, I saw a confession on @ashestoashesconfessions that said this scene always made the confessor uncomfortable. Which got me thinking -- why is it there? Because -- let’s state this straight up -- violence against women should make us feel uncomfortable. Hitting a woman, in this case a completely defenseless woman, is not okay. It’s not cool. It’s not smart. It’s not strong. It’s not funny. It’s an act of misogyny and I don’t think of Ashes to Ashes as a misogynistic show. In fact, Ashes, even more so than Life on Mars, makes it clear that misogyny is a baseless, cowardly, immature, transparent joke. If you’re watching these shows and thinking that they’re confirming your misogynistic ideas then the joke is on you. They are not laughing with you, they’re laughing at you.

So, if we assume that Ashes is not a misogynistic show then there must be some narrative purpose to this scene. At first, I merely understood it as a necessary measure since Alex has just died. Something has to happen to pull her not just out of her own subconscious but away from the other side, back into Gene’s world. And whatever it is has to be powerful enough to quite literally wake the dead. Especially if we want Alex’s journey in Gene’s world (and this show therefore) to continue, which of course we do. So there’s that. It also illustrates the utterly unyielding will of this man who is so intent on saving lost copper’s souls. She’s one of his and he’s not letting her go, not without a hell of a fight. So in that sense, the slap is an act of mercy, as well as necessity.

But wait. There’s more.

For me, this act has further relevance to Alex’s journey throughout the show and series 3 in particular. This slap opens the final chapter on Alex’s journey, signifying the last issue she has to lay to rest before finding peace. After all, if all she needed to do was realise the truth about her parents’ death then she could have left after series 1. If she was only there to release Molly, then she could have headed to pub-heaven mid-series 2. But like Shaz, Chris and Ray, something else needed processing and, like Chris and Ray, it has to do trust. For the boys, it’s about trust and authority. For Alex, it’s about trust and love.

See, this final series, in my view, is all about Alex coming to terms with the man she loves. A man we all love but all find problematic at times. Like right here, for instance. LoM never really had to deal with the problematic nature of Gene Hunt (which is partly why it’s a much friendlier watch for your everyday misogynist). This final series of Ashes is, however, a culmination of both shows so it therefore has to acknowledge/process issues that LoM raised but never resolved. This includes how deeply problematic this character is for us to love, for his team to love and obey and, most of all, for Alex to love and want to be with. Of course, this strand that weaves throughout the final series is never completely convincing because we all know that, down deep, Gene is a good guy with a heart of gold, a shining, if warped, sense of justice and a squishy, gooey, caramelly centre. This is established wisdom. We knew it even back in 1973. And Alex figured it out in 1982, admitting to his face in 2.05 that he’s a “good, kind, decent man”. So...what’s the problem? Why is she suddenly seized by doubt?

Two words: Daddy. Issues.

In my opinion, all the Gene Hunt/Jim Keats stuff is about the men in Alex’s first life. Her dad, surrogate dad and husband all hurt her in some deeply traumatic way that she is not yet over. Firstly, there’s her dad, who killed her mother, stole her innocence, destroyed her sense of family and security. And, oh yeah, tried to blow her up. (There is an implication in the 1st series that this was information Alex always had but just had to piece together and accept). Then there’s Pete, with whom she had a rocky relationship, it is implied. He took advantage of her financially, maybe cheated on her and finally left her and Molly, upsetting her sense of family and security all over again. Finally, there’s Evan, the man she always thought of as her savior. The one she worshiped, was grateful for, could always rely on. Except, of course, that he lied to her her entire life, not just about her parents’ death but about the role he played in the disintegration of their marriage. This lie eventually robbed Alex of her life. (The bullet in her brain comes just after Evan presumably refuses to deal with her abductor). This is the man she is relying on to take care of her daughter. Him and her errant father. So this is as much about Alex trusting men for her own sake as for her daughter’s.

Into this convoluted mess, rides Gene Hunt on his blood-red steed. A man for whom violence is the norm, communication an anathema and romantic love a joke. A man who casually wounds her with his words and eventually wounds her with his gun. The shooting at the end of series 2 triggers Alex’s long-held fear, causing her to go on the offensive, to prime herself for the next male-inflicted trauma she needs to protect herself from. Intellectually, she knows the shooting was an accident, that Gene is good and trust-worthy and acted to protect her. More than that, she knows he genuinely cares for her. But on a purely physical level, in her gut (literally), she’s traumatised, fragile and wary. Because he hurt her. And here, he hurts her again. This ferocious slap sets Gene up as someone for Alex to fear, someone she loves who has the potential not just to wound her, but destroy her. Because it’s those we love best who hold the power to wound us most deeply -- or undo us altogether. This idea is sown throughout series 3 with good women that Alex feels sympathy for falling for bad men and meeting disastrous ends. She has the following exchange with one of them at the end of this ep:

ALEX: You know, the first time I ever met you, you were running. You've wanted to escape from this from day one, haven't you?

MARJORIE: Gary could've gotten away when he broke out. But he came to find me. It's a hell of a thing to be that wanted.

ALEX: You actually let him fracture your cheek.

MARJORIE: I love him.

ALEX: Even though he made you be part of all this?

MARJORIE: I fell for him from day one. Sometimes, you can't help which way you fall.

Obviously, the last line repeats Alex’s from the beginning of the episode. But the graze on Marjorie’s face, the fractured cheek that’s mentioned, echos the slap Alex sustains above. Marjorie running from her husband echos Alex running from Gene when he appears on all those screens in her subconscious. It also echos that familiar shot from the credits of her running down the gangplank in 1981, trying to escape his world and get back to her own. The husband’s return from jail likewise mirrors Gene’s risky return from abroad, his unyielding will and want of her. A want that she is starting to think of as spelling her doom, even if he doesn’t intend it to. Like Marjorie, Alex has been running from Gene Hunt since day one. Unfortunately for her, she also fell for him, from day one. This is a love with high stakes though, since it could potentially send her to hell for all eternity.

At least, that is the implication of the second pairing of a good woman and a bad man in 3.04. Alex clearly identifies with this female copper who has been abandoned undercover and left to fend for herself. In her effort to do so, Louise falls under the spell of the kingpin of this violent underworld -- a charming, grizzled older man who draws her over to the dark side before causing her death. Though it is the younger villain, the Keats substitute, that inflicts the final blow to Louise, it is the older villain, the Gene substitute, who puts her in danger, manipulates her love, skews her morals and sullies her soul. The devil is thus able to claim the soul of this corrupted officer, sending her to hell. None of which Alex knows but all of which she can sense. This instinctive fear incites her several times throughout this series to go to Gene and beg him to talk to her. Because this is what will make her feel safe. It’s the psychologist in her -- words, emotions, past deeds all fit together to create a full understanding of a character. This deeper knowledge of him that she craves is what will allow her to totally trust him. And some part of Gene wants to be known to her. A more innocent, essential part of him perhaps, as signified by the young Gene Hunt that constantly appears to her. The wraith of this wounded copper represents Alex’s wish to know the origin story, the truth, the heart, the depth and breadth of the man she loves. But it also represents Gene’s longing, so long and so brutally repressed, to be truly known and wholly loved.

Tragically, whenever Alex reaches out to him, tells him what she needs in order to love him, the old, jaded Gene shuts her down, shuts her out. He expects her trust, commands it. But will not foster it with confidences, believing perhaps they are beyond such irrelevancies. The only one talking to her throughout this series is Keats. He starts by visiting her bedside, talking to her there, sympathising with her. “We’ll keep talking,” he tells her later. “Do we need to talk?” he asks as Yazoo plays in the background and as Alex looks over her shoulder at the taciturn, distant, shut-up Gene. The comparison is clear. Keats isn't the one Alex wants to talk with but she gravitates towards him because the one she wants to talk with refuses to give her the assurance, the information, the intimacy she needs in order to feel loved and secure. For her, it’s like having a relationship with a brick wall. A brick wall with very pretty blue eyes. Gene has let her in -- but only so far. The intimacy he will allow has reached a hard limit. It’s difficult to know why this change occurs in Gene. For, following the trajectory of the first two series, and the second in particular, the intimacy between them should deepen, not stall. But perhaps, much like them, their relationship is in a limbo of paused action, recurring misunderstanding and frustrated desire.

What is clear is that the second Gene starts talking to her, Alex’s faith in him revives. When she finally gets the truth about Sam Tyler out of him on their date, she believes him instantly, instinctively, utterly. She’s completely reabsorbed by their connection. So much so that the trajectory their relationship had taken up until the shooting suddenly kicks back in as she invites him upstairs, into her heart and into her bed. The certainty with which she does this is touching, though it is undermined by her subsequently running out on him just as they about to consummate their relationship. For me, this last-minute bolt by Alex feels unjustified and constructed. For me, she quit running from Gene Hunt and decided to trust him in that moment downstairs. And she surrendered to loving him the moment her head lowered to his shoulder as they danced. The tender kiss he places on her forehead in this scene is the perfect opposite of the slap that opens their interaction for the series. It proves more than any words could what we and Alex knew all along -- that Gene Hunt is a man to love, not fear. 

[bi-apps]

Accepted - Dorcas Meadowes (SAW)

ashleyinwanderlust

submitted: Dorcas Meadowes Application

OOC Information:

Name/Age/Timezone- Ashley ( or Ash ), 25, PST

Activity Level- Currently about a 6/10. I work full-time so my activity fluctuates during the week. I’m most active Friday through Monday, but sometimes I’m around a lot midday if it is a slow at my work. Plus, I’m usually always around on mobile for plotting and chatting.

Ships/Anti-Ships- Chemistry and angst. To be honest, I’m just a real big sucker for the Dorcas / Voldemort rivalry I’ve built up in my head.

Did you read the rules? Yes, I did! :)

IC Information:

Character Name- Dorcas Ophelia Meadowes ( click for old inspo blog )

Age- 22, going on 23.

Occupation- Hit Witch

Traits:

( 3 Positive )

+ Headstrong || Dorcas is incredibly self-disciplined. In her life she has never been known for being stagnant. Both physically and physiologically, she constantly pushes herself passed her limitations in a daily stride to become better. It’s no easy feat, but it is one she is constantly proud of herself for pushing forward despite the obstacles.

+ Empathetic || When someone around her is in pain, Dorcas knows it. That pain becomes her pain. At first it was overwhelming, but over the years she has taken these whirlwind of emotions and turned them into something a little more tangible and far more understandable. She is a woman of action, so it only seemed logical that she try to combat the pain any way she could. Admittedly, she sees her empathy as a weakness, but it is a really important barrier; a vital form of protection that she needs to keep her feet firmly planted where they are and to distinguish her from her enemies. + Protective || As a hit witch, Dorcas is a natural protector. It’s an innate trait that she has always noticed surging at the surface of her being. That desire to protect those around her intensifies whenever dealing with her friends and members of the Order of the Phoenix, who she has deemed her makeshift family. When it comes to them, Dorcas is completely selfless. They are the people she reminds herself to be strong for; to fight a little harder for; to be strong for and refuse to ever give up on.  

( 3 Negative )

- Devil-May-Care || Dorcas definitely struggles with dissociation. She is wild and reckless and has yet to realize that she only has one life to live so she ought to tread lighter. Instead, she is passionate and volatile. One step too far and she might take the entire ship down with her. - Impulsive || You don’t have to look too deep into her soul to find this rebel wide awake; she comes out eagerly and persistently. In fact, Dorcas is typically bad in general when it comes to taking directions. Once an idea is engraved in her mind, it is there to stay. She has no problem going rogue if she thinks her methods might solve the problem on hand and simply deal with repercussions after the fact. A common theme of hers is, “ don’t ask for permission, just forgiveness. ” - Self-Motivated || It’s not always blind violence and protest. A power-hungry Dorcas is often scheming to manipulate any situation in her favor. If she sees any opening, it is almost guaranteed that she will make her move like a predator on the attack. After all, Dorcas has many great things planned for her future and reckons getting her name out there is the quickest ticket to her goals. - Enigmatic || Dorcas is a force to be reckoned with and she often doesn’t let any obstacles prevent her from doing what needs to be done. She is both a wild card and a loose canon; no one ever knows what version of her they’re going to fish from their hat.

Faceclaim- Felicity Jones, Krysten Ritter, Odette Annable, Alexandra Daddario

( I can add more options to this list if you’re not happy with anyone mentioned above. I was just too excited / wanted to submit before commuting home from work! )

KEY POINTS

( tw: violence, tw: abuse, tw: mental illness, tw: death ) Dorcas never recanted tales from her childhood to anyone. It wasn’t necessarily because the memories were laced with pain, but rather the lack of recollection stirred up a different feeling inside her altogether. She was told the initial years after her mother’s death were difficult on everyone. Her father retreated to the confines of his study like some kind of recluse, investing all of his time working on mysterious projects the little girl couldn’t quite wrap her mind around. He hardly emerged from his study, but on the offset he did it was usually to reprimand the child. The man was unusually particular about making sure no one stepped foot into his private quarters except himself, however, Dorcas watched from afar with curious eyes one too many times; she couldn’t resist the temptation to stick her nose where she knew it didn’t belong or try recreating the same spells she had seen him using again and again.

Unlike the well-controlled magic she’d witness Cyril Grey spinning from the tip of his wand on numerous occasions, hers proved to be a sloppy and careless spectacle. The almost six year old had stolen his twelve and three quarter inches of Dragon Heartstring with the convoluted idea the scene before her would somehow play out differently rather than sending a collection of her father’s most prized possessions shattering in midair. Dorcas faintly recalls in one of her earliest memories as the crystal shattered all around her feet - she even remembers the piercing sting as sharp shards bounced back, lacerating her flesh. She stood barefoot among the fragments unaware of what she had just done before shock began to settle. Naturally the sound sent Cyril running down the creaky corridors of their home and into his study where he discovered his daughter standing among his most treasured belongings. It was enough to send the man into a full-blown frenzy; if the neighbors heard his cries that night surely they must have thought someone died and all had gone straight to hell in that instant.

Dorcas didn’t have the faintest clue if the artifacts bestowed any true sentimental value or not - she sincerely doubted it in her adulthood - however the way he laid into that evening when he saw her standing among fragmented crystal and shattered glass would have conveyed a different story entirely. The truth was her father was not a man of great sentiment; everything had a purpose, otherwise there was no need for it. She recalls with bitter memory growing up without any pictures of her mother in that wretched house. It was always hard to tell if the heartless man was born that way or if the condition occurred subsequent to his young wife’s death.

When Dorcas was still just a child, Cyril violently entrusted her with the message that her mother’s passing was unnatural, sudden, and far too soon. The message was conveyed in a variety of different ways. Sometimes it would be delivered across her face in the form of a piercing slap or an abrupt jerk to her shoulder blades and, though the emotion of regret often varied in his face afterwards, he always stood behind his word that she was well-deserving of it. She learned at a far younger age than anyone ever should that grief and loneliness can break any man down and turn them into coldhearted stone. She was nine now and, though it wasn’t her fault her mother perished far too soon, she walked around feeling like it was. Later in life she would come to understand that the weak man that he was had a hard time living with a constant breathing reminder of everything he loved and lost when Sophelia Meadowes-Grey departed from this world. It was evident he had grown to be a sick man, but refused any acknowledgement of his condition which became increasingly difficult on Dorcas who desperately longed for a mother and now a father too.

Dorcas lugged that pain around everywhere she went. It grew to be a heavy burden - one that became nearly impossible to bare alone. She lashed out every chance she could by dressing up desperate cries for attention and calls for help with inappropriate behavior, which was met each time with indistinct violence and ill-rapport instead of the nourishment any child that age craved. She drove herself to isolation - anxiously counting down the days until she could start anew at Hogwarts. When the first of September finally arrived, she found herself to be a lion among men and for the first time ever the newly dubbed Gryffindor felt like she was finally at home.

Dorcas never returned to her father’s home after her fourth year of school. She shed her family name and adopted her mother’s maiden name Meadowes instead. Those initial years on her own were the most difficult to digest as she attempted to maneuver living a life on her own in a world she could never quite comprehend. Working random summer jobs to make ends meet was not sustainable and quickly she realized she was going to have to shift her focus elsewhere. That’s when her interest in the outside world began to expand - she took up a keen interest in politics and criminology pertaining to the Wizarding World. It was as if she had been instilled with a sense of justice and a craving for revenge overnight. She had a strange fascination for the workings of the world and the psychosis of each individual around her, but it wasn’t until she was nearing the end of her sixth year at Hogwarts that the witch was provided with some redirection her life was desperately in need of. A destructive rampage landed the now sixteen year old with an entire month’s worth of detention, but rather than just seeing her as a problem child like so many before him had, one of her professors witnessed something else entirely.

As Dorcas continued growing, she continued to keep putting walls up. She didn’t know if it was because she was ashamed of who she was or where she came from, but she knew those factors played a significant role. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why occlumency came so natural for the brazen young witch. She always expressed an interest in the subject, however, it wasn’t until she was working under an instructor’s guidance during her remaining years of school that she truly began to excel. Her final years at Hogwarts were fleeting; she passed the time with lots of quidditch. As a seeker she was able to greatly nurture her flying skills, which eventually allowed her to lead into a career as a Hit Witch. Dorcas was then introduced to a handful of people who became more than simple best friends ever could. They became her family - the only one she would ever truly know, which would not be complete until after she was recruited to join the Order of the Phoenix after graduating. Though she wants to be a strong-hold for the Order, she walks a dangerous line misguided by her own skewed moral compass. In an attempt not to succumb to her own power-hungry demons, she hurls herself headfirst into the arms of war as she claims no one but she is the great decider of her fate.

[writesandfights]

GO CHECK OUT THE ORIGINAL FROM THE TALENTED WRITER @all-alone-he-turns-to-stone The pack had warned you. You had been warned on numerous occasions, and you couldn’t come near him. You didn’t have the right to be in his presence. He was dangerous, a threat, and you were in danger any time you are around him. They were repeating it everyday and at the beginning, you had listened to them. You avoided being in the presence of the threat as best you could. You were trying your best. But you couldn’t chase away the emotions that roamed inside your body when you glanced at him, when he made his way into your head, his face, his eyes, his lips, imagining his hands on your body… Theo Raeken. You had done everything to avoid him, but he was the one who stuck with you when you were separated from the group. He had waited for the right moment, the perfect opportunity to isolate you in the locker room of the school, your back stuck against the lockers, he stood inches away from you, hands on both sides of your head, his face so close that you could feel his hot breath against your lips. So close, you were dying to cross the meager distance that separated you, a deep craving starting in your gut, your eyes wandered to his appetizing mouth. You knew You couldn’t, You had been forbidden, and the pack had even become hyper-protective towards you. There was always someone with you, but not today. And he knew it. He also knew the obvious and burning desire you had for him and according to Stiles who hated him bitterly, Theo would use your feelings against you. Against the pack. But there, his body pressed against yours in the empty dressing rooms, the sound of your breathing being the only perceptible sound in the silence, it didn’t jump to your eyes. He was devouring you with his eyes. “You’re so beautiful, Y / N. Why are you hiding? Why do you stay the little wolf with the broken leg that drags out of Scott’s pack? Why do you need so much protection?” He whispered softly against your lips. "Because I’m human,” You answered him just as gently, you unable to detach your gaze from his lips. “Stiles is too, and he’s not followed 24/7,” he added with a smile. That smile that was always able to make you melt. “Well,” You began, your mind blank of all answers. He had a point. Theo put his hand on your cheek and looked you straight in the eyes. “You’re strong, you don’t need them, you don’t need their protection. They slow you down, they want to hide your true potential,” he added in a sinister tone that gave you shivers of excitement in your back. “They say you’re bad …” “They say a lot of things … because they don’t like me … Scott wants to keep the control on his pack, that’s all he wants, he wants to keep you on a lead, he thinks you’re too stupid to act on your own will,” he continued, advancing a little more towards you. You drank his words like an alcoholic in need of his next drink. He was right. Scott was stopping you from flourishing. He was keeping you in a cage. Your breath accelerated when you felt his lips resting against yours, you magnetized. Theo put his hand on your waist and left the other against your cheek. You opened your mouth to ask for more, you wanted more, you needed more, to feel his skin against yours, his warmth, his smell, You wanted all this to belong to you. “Let her go! ” A wolf growl and then Theo was thrown away from me against the lockers. You opened your eyes abruptly to see the scene. Scott had rushed towards Theo, and held him brutally by the throat against the rickety locker. He was strangled and struggled as best he could, his face becoming more and more red. For his part, Scott was angry, his muscles were protruding under his t-shirt and even though he had his back at you. You could very well imagine the red eyes of the Alpha who was burning with hate. Without thinking, you rushed at them shouting. “Leave him alone!” You shouted, scowling at Scott’s back, not letting go. “Why do you defend him all the time!” He grunted. "He’s evil! A traitor! ” You stopped beating him, hesitant and then crossed Theo’s gaze who was still struggling. He nodded scarcely toward Scott and you understood. “What are you doing here Scott ��� you followed me?” Scott turned his red eyes at you, angry. “Well …” He started. “Why are you following me all the time?” You repeated calmly. “To protect you!” He added grumbling towards Theo. "I know how to protect myself!” You added, feeling the anger boil inside of you. “No you don’t know! You are naive and silly, looks where it led you!” He raised his voice. You were shocked by his words. You looked at Theo again. He was right; Scott thought You were weak, stupid and naive. And You were going to prove him wrong. You backed up without saying a word and grabbed a Lacrosse stick that was dragging on the floor. You hesitated for a moment, your heart pounding, but the rage blinded you. He didn’t like you. You aren't weak. It was on this thought that You pushed as hard as you could, the stick behind Scott’s head, which was thrown a few centimeters on the ground, thus releasing Theo who looked at you with amazed eyes, coughing. But Scott already started to get up again, angry, so you, in that time, didn’t hesitate and ran to him to knock him over and over with the stick until his face was covered in blood. The rage started to burn your muscles and controlling your body. Then you ran to Theo, helped him get up and ran away from the locker room without a glance at Scott. We were in Theo’s car, who was driving you guys to his hideout to make you safe. You kept looking at your hands, they were full of blood, since you guys got in the car, your breathing was jerky and fast, a buzzing in your ears. What had you done? And above all, why didn’t You feel guilty? The guilt would have consumed you regularly and made you cry, but you didn’t feel anything. It was just blank. "What does it do? ” You turned to Theo who glanced at you, satisfied, while keeping an eye on the road. “What does it feel like to be finally free and powerful? How do you feel after you have demolished the face of your alpha? ” You held his gaze and felt a naughty smile stretching on your lips. “Satisfied.” It had been several weeks since you had joined Theo and left Scott’s pack. Chaos broke out everywhere in the city, fires, deaths, blood flowed afloat. And you still couldn’t feel guilty. You had Theo by your side, You felt strong, powerful, invincible and above all, You no longer felt constrained to Scott’s stupid regulations. Don’t kill? Death is natural and violence is in the nature of the human being. You had nothing to do with Scott and the others. Your alpha was now Theo. You were waiting for Theo’s return, sitting in the car when your door opened and You were forced out of the vehicle before landing painfully on the ground grunting in pain. “At last we found you, traitor!” Growled a voice that wasn’t unknown to you. Malia. You wanted to get up, the rage bubbling in your body, but she put her foot on the side of your face to stop you . "Gently …” Another voice began. Scott, of course. “ Why? She killed and massacred many people!” Malia added. "She had to be controlled by Theo,” Stiles said. An inhuman laugh shook your whole body followed by a dark silence. “You’re so stupid, no one controls me,” You mumbled. “ This is who I am. ” “Then you’re better dead!” Malia grunted, catching you by the collar to get you to stand up to her height. It was the perfect moment, you took the knife out of your belt and sank it into her stomach. You saw the light of her blue eyes slowly extinguish and her eyes darkened as she let go of you to put her hand on her bloody wound. You took advantage of the general consternation to place two fingers in your mouth and whistle as loud as you could. Immediately, your alpha came out of the shadows and jumped into the melee close to you, a smile at the corner of his lips. “Well,” he began before putting his arm around your waist. “Theo …” Scott spited as he pulled out his claws while Stiles was with Malia. “Tut tut tuut …” Theo whispered. “You’re not strong enough, Scott. You are no more than the shadow of yourself. Your little protégé will not come back and you will never control her again. She’s mine,” he finished, ferociously pressing his lips against yours. You groaned with pleasure opening your mouth and Theo's tongue danced with yours for a moment in a passionate ballet, temporarily forgetting the enemy who were facing you. “Come on, darling, finish the work so that we can continue this,” he finished as he heads for the car, grabbing your butt as he passed with his powerful hands. You smiled and then turned back to Scott, who was staring at you with tears in his eyes. “Y / N … please, listen to me …” Bam. Scott didn’t have time to react and fell on his knees, with his hand on his stomach, blood flowing from the claw marks you inflicted on his chest . You had no regrets. “I don’t have to listen to you. You’re no longer my alpha,” You finished before getting into the car. Theo made the tires crunch and you flew out of the parking lot. “Are you hurt?” Theo asked you gently, glancing at you as he drove. You looked at your bleeding elbow, the only physical wound You had. “No,” you spoke softly. “It was really sexy …” He added, licking his lips. “When you put them down like that, the guilt on their faces. It was … exciting. ” You stared at him for a moment before approaching him like a cat, as sensually as possible while licking your lips, hungry. “How exciting?” You asked  before putting your hand on his crutch, which was already starting to get hard when you had barely touched it. He took his eyes off the road again for a moment to plunge his gaze into yours, burning with desire. "Incredibly exciting. I wanted to take you there, in front of them, and fuck you until you were no longer able to stand on your feet. Until you cry and beg me to let you come. ” My hand squeezed his crutch making him grunt. He couldn’t touch you , he had to keep his hands on the wheel, and you knew that it was a frustration to him, to the highest point. You continued to stroke his erection over his pants, first gently to raise the pressure, then more and more brutally, making him growl every time. Feeling that he appreciated the treatment, you started to undo his belt and jeans button before descending his zipper and releasing his privacy from the tissue barrier that imprisoned him. “Fuck, Y / N …” Theo muttered, closing his eyes for a moment. He wasn’t at the end of his surprises. You leaned over him and lowered my head until your mouth was a few centimeters away from his reddened cock, not moving for a moment in order to raise the sexual frustration. Then you gave a chaste kiss before licking his cock which made him groan. Satisfied by his reactions, You didn’t wait any longer and began to suck him. First from the base to the bottom, then taking it all in your mouth while your hand kneaded his testicles still trapped in his underwear, creating extremely erotic sucking sounds. Mixed with the many moans that came out of his mouth, the excitement in you rose more and more and you already felt the humidity between your legs, sign of the obvious desire that you had at that time. Then You felt his hand rest on my head and grab ahold of your hair to guide your movements and you let him do it. He kept groaning and grunting for a moment while continuing to move you against his erection, but that wasn’t what You wanted. You didn’t plan to let him come that fast. You put your hand on his to remove it from your head and raised it to cross his eyes. You smiled and pulled your pants out; You straddled him and put your mouth against his neck, which allowed him to still have a good view on the road. “Fuck, Y / N, you really want to do it now?” For only answer You planted my teeth in his neck, strong enough to cause him pain but not enough to cause bleeding. You packed your panties on the side to clear your very wet entrance and took your other hand to place his erection in the right place. Then, before he could say a single word, you lowered on his hard erection while groaning in his ear. “Fuck you’re so tight,” he grunted in a hoarse voice and You felt the car zigzagging for a moment. “And you’re so big,” you answered, licking his earlobe, satisfied. You began to move, first slowly, from top to bottom, still irritating him a little. But you weren't entirely satisfied and You didn’t intend to stop there. You retired almost entirely before You plunged again, very quickly and hard. You felt the tip of his erection bump the wall of your inside and You groaned hard enough against his ear, which caused the car to zigzag again. “Fuck Y / N!” Theo repeated with a pleasure grunt. You continued your movements, fast, jerky, powerful, while continuing to groan his name. You knew he was dying to touch you . To take you, to punish you, to slap your bum. And to have the control was exciting you even more. “I’m close …” He mumbled in my ear. “Me too ah …” A few moments later Theo came in you and You had a very satisfactory orgasm that left you panting, still sitting on him. Then, after giving him a quick kiss on the lips, you left him to return to your seat, a satisfied smile on your lips. “Y / N …” Theo began without looking at you, smirking. “Yes sweety?” You asked him seductively. "Wait a little until we get to the hide-out … you will get your punishment.” You put your hand through your hair before answering. “You’re the alpha…” GO CHECK OUT THE ORIGINAL FROM THE TALENTED WRITER @all-alone-he-turns-to-stone

[realmonstersrp]

❛ don’t get cocky, don’t get clever, don’t get cheesy on me cheddar

INTRODUCING AHN HAESUNG, OUR NEWEST STUDENT WITH THE POWER OF VICE INDUCEMENT.

WELCOME TO GUMI INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL FOR THE POWERED.

WHO ARE THEY?

PERSONALITY

(+) articulate, resourceful, astute (–) self-serving, vain, manipulative

BACKGROUND

300 kid : was the first label he’d learned to loathe. 300 kid, a child of the california court system, since his parents couldn’t keep their fists away from each other. they were deemed unfit for parenthood because of a house full of violence, but is it one hundred percent their fault if he’s the one in the background, pushing passive thought into motion and inciting idle hands into action? but is it really his fault if he doesn’t even know what he’s doing? if he doesn’t even know how to control it?

you always bring out the worst in people : learning to talk might have been the absolute worst thing for him. it’d be less damning if his ability had manifested during puberty (like you need those kinds of changes along with the ones already happening!), but he just wasn’t that lucky. foster home to group home to another, different, group home. he was never involved in any of the incidents that he was cited for, but when the chaos had been broken up–all parties always turned their fingers toward him. there were never any formal accusations; he was deemed low-risk and was never involved physically, so he slipped through the cracks of the united states criminal justice system.

shit happened how it happened so the past is perfect : his pre-teen years come, and with it a pair of foster parents that were different than any of the ones before. these two–they knew how to handle him, and he didn’t know how to handle that. most kids dream about a foster family that turns into a real one, but haesung didn’t know how to react when they reveal that they want to adopt him, permanently. but, what’s he got to lose? he leaves the us for south korea at fourteen with legal guardians that are intent on helping him control his ability. to haesung, it’s just another new place until he’s there for a year, then two, then three, and then it’s the closest thing to stable he’s ever had. his new legal “parents” both graduated from some place he only knows as gumi. college wasn’t too many years ago for them, so they’re more like older siblings than parents, but with the way they talk about it–haesung wonders if maybe he’ll be okay there.

trust no one that puts you in the wrong light : being the personal project of the two of them was refreshing but also suffocating, so when he was unleashed onto gumi, the freedom was almost overwhelming. at gumi, the idea of legacies were both familiar and strange all at once, but it was something he wanted to experience, even if briefly. alpha was a playground for someone of his type. pride, envy–all things he could work with. first year initiates were to be seen and not heard, so no one payed him any mind until it was too late (three upperclassmen alphas with latent grievances, pitted against each other by haesung, who whispered wrath cloaked in honey. the ensuing brawl was more than enough reason to throw him out–he’d barely made it into the legacy in the first place.) hellion was unfortunate enough to be his next target. there happened to be less of a specific concentration regarding vices, but everyone has their weaknesses. haesung, quite literally the definition of a ‘charity case,’ found more of a home in hellion, but even then his impulses outweighed his survival instinct. (here, he was more discreet, and his handiwork was spread out over a longer period of time. at the core of his abilities, self destruction is the ultimate endgame. but he would never take it that far–just enough to entertain. inevitably, once found, he was also stripped of membership from hellion.)

i hate the way the things i say incinerate a room : he hides any insecurities and shortcomings (of which there are many) with vanity and standoffish behavior. he lives off of reactions–with a constant chip on his shoulder and terrible impulse control, haesung thrives off attention, positive or negative. in fact, he seeks it out and craves it. sometimes he wished he’d made better decisions and cultivated better relationships, but the mini reputation he’d built in his short time at gumi is something he’s willing to shoulder if it means that people will look at him and pay attention.

WHAT CAN THEY DO?

vice inducement is the ability to evoke specific vices or sins that are contained within an individual’s soul. at it’s most powerful and potent (think demon), it calls forth the worst vices that plague a person or thing, which can cause them to chase this vice into self destruction (usually death or insanity).

***however, haesung’s power of vice inducement is always temporaryand not nearly strong enough to drive anyone to extremes, though the repercussions from those temporary states can sometimes be more damning than the actual inducement itself. mainly, he speaks the vices into the front of the conscious. though it is possible to use his ability through eye contact, his sway is significantly lower when conducted through this medium. the vices that haesung has sway over are envy, wrath, pride, sloth, and violence. when he is using his ability, a red outline forms around his pupils, seeping into the dark brown of his iris but never completely taking over the iris.

though everyone responds a little differently, these are the most common reactions that people have when haesung focuses his abilities onto them: envy: if a person’s main vice is envy, then it invites cruel and vindictive behavior towards those that the individual is envious of whether it is something as tangible as possessions or looks, or as intangible as achievements or reputation. wrath: those with wrath as their main vice usually hold some sort of lasting grudge. wrath inducement means the lowering of inhibitions and self-control, which in turn unleashes the full brunt of someone’s retaliatory, usually violent, instincts. pride: filters are often removed with vice inducement of  those with pride as their main vice. they will act as if they are above all those around them, asserting themselves inappropriately and overbearingly–the literal embodiment of a god-complex, if you will. sloth: targets of this vice oftentimes find themselves feeling extremely lethargic as well as feel a lack of motivation to do anything. they will oftentimes forget about things in favor of sleeping, sometimes forgetting to perform essential functions and therefore skip meals, etc. violence: while similar to wrath, this affects those with explosive personalities or tempers. the target often feels a sudden, murderous instinct and will oftentimes harm those around them without care. in the case of vice inducement in animals of monsters, this is oftentimes the vice that is easiest to induce in them.

WEAKNESSES

physical flaw: the ability is easiest to wield when haesung can be heard. his ability is most effective when spoken in soft, relaxing tones over a period of time as this “coaxes” the soul into giving into the vice. if the surrounding area is loud or chaotic, and the need to shout arises, haesung’s accuracy is thrown off, and the inducement will usually fail unless he utilizes other means (for ex: eye contact).

range: while best utilized in close proximity (about 1 meter/3 feet), it is still possible to use his ability up to 2 meters/6.5 feet away from the target. anything further and disruptions or distractions commonly prohibit him from carrying out the full inducement.

eye contact: while it is possible to induce vices through eye contact, the chances of success are cut by about 50%. with humans, eye contact inducement is extremely difficult unless he knows a person’s weakness, and aims to target that vice specifically. with animals or monsters, inducement through eye contact is easier than their human counterparts because of their (usually) simpler range of desires and emotions.

potency: at most vice inducement encourages the lowering of the inhibitions and encourages self destructive behavior. it cannot drive anyone into actual insanity, or induce a vice that is not already a major weakness of the target.

time limit: the longest time someone has ever been under an inducement was about four hours, but they had haesung’s complete attention focused on them , and he would intermittently tamper with them throughout that time period. as it is, most commonly haesung’s power induces a temporary mindset of an hour in a conductive environment, but only 30 minutes in a less ideal environment for inducement.

exceptions: people with extreme levels of self-control or those with abilities related to virtue inducement are for the most part, immune to haesung’s tampering. those with abilities related to other mental inducements can usually break free from temptations due to the similar nature of the abilities, as they are more likely to recognize the intrusive thoughts and feelings of his vice inducement.

repercussions: as his abilities are not particularly physical in nature, he does not become physically drained with overuse. instead, if he overuses his ability he usually has intense bouts of vertigo that can render him immobile. he’s never actually lost his voice before, but if he’s been continuously tampering with someone, his voice has a tendency to go hoarse, but whether that’s a side effect of his ability or just general overuse has not been exactly determined.

DID YOU KNOW?

for some reason he has immense eco-guilt without any particular inciting incident; once things settle and he has his own place he wants to start composting.