#he is a curse and a plague

[floweryred]

Let’s play a game! I’m going to show you four players who have been allied with Jimmy at some point in the life series, you have to guess which season they were allies with him! No cheating, so the name of the person is kept hidden until you click read more. (Though the first is fairly obvious)

Okay, here you go:

Scott:

*Tango (Soulbound):

Joel:

Martyn:

*Please remember that each season has a different number of people in it, so Tango actually did worse (2nd eliminated and not 4th) in Double Life.

Thanks for playing lmao.

[glouris]

I do not agree with the notion of characters' gameplay paths not being their 'lore' paths at all.

imo they wouldn't be called 'pathstriders' if the paths we were shown were not correct at all. the way I see it, a person who's personal ideals and actions allign with one path could easily belong to a larger faction that follows another eon as a whole.

excuse the genshin allegory here, but I think hoyo made paths funcion like visions - a character on the path of the hunt could easily be following preservation, like a character with a pyro vision could hail from fontaine. but then also an emanator of nihility could not be something else, like an electro archon could not have a dendro vision.

so, I decided to take a look at (almost) every character and propose some reason for them being assigned their path

Nihility: things losing meaning, falling into fears and hopelessness

Erudition: pursuing or keeping vast amounts of knowledge

Destruction: eradication of the self or what's around you

Hunt: condemning something, leading it towards your judgment 

Preservation: protecting what exists in this moment

Abundance: letting life flourish, continue in the future

Harmony: not letting a single part of the collective to collapse or overpower the other, keeping things ‘whole’, peaceful

if we take, for example, Dr. Ratio - even his gameplay kinda makes sense. he launches follow-up attacks when there are enough debuffs on the enemy - he's eradicating the influence of Nihility. same thing with Acheron.

some reasons I'm thinking off here might be wrong, or there must be much more to think of here, but I'm pretty sure that the gameplay paths are the actual paths of the characters. plus, it's been stated that the pathstriders could change their path, unlike eons and emanators.

[deerspherestudios]

head empty only Mychael

Sounds about right,, 😭❤️🍄❤️

[toxintouch]

Absinthe & Sugar:

"They" pronouns used for MC, Unspecified background, no gendered language or descriptors used. WARNINGS: MDNI. Suggestive content/non-explicit smut (very little description used). MC is specified to be the receiving partner (penetration) for a round. Exact relationship dynamic is left heavily to interpretation but I'd say skip if you are sensitive to toxicity. ✦Read on Ao3.

The only difference between Leander and the Senobium is the uniforms, Vere said.

The sex isn't quite the way they intended.  Leander is eager, desperate and overly affectionate.  It rattles them, incongruent with the playboy image of a man they thought they were inviting into their bed; the casual escapade they were inclined towards doesn’t seem to be what they received.

They try to exert control—they do exert control, though it feels like a hollow facsimile at best.  He accommodates their whims, accepts and welcomes their harsh treatment even as they dig their cursed nails into his flesh, press bites against his lips when he seeks their kiss.  His eyes never seem to leave theirs, even as they parry and avoid every intimate gesture he offers them.  Their first fuck is rough—a relief—absolution and damnation in equal measure.

They’re high on adrenaline for the second, nerves singing as he sears worshipful kisses against their golden fissures, laces their fingers together with his, murmurs nonsense.

They lose count of the rest.  Their mind is lost in the heat and the sweat, the green haze they wish they could blame on liquor.  It’s a dream—feeling someone so completely, without any of their usual visceral fear.  But it’s a nightmare.  The way they tip their head back to hold back their tears and end up showing their throat, the way they swallow his whispered promises.

Leander doesn’t behave decently.  Doesn’t escort himself out afterwards.  He spends all night crowding them in bed, arms encircling them, his heavy weight trapping them against his chest.  They shove at him, weak and ineffectual, exhausted from the night's activities.  While their eyes droop, fluttering closed against their will, his stare is vibrant, an affectionate smile upon his still-wet lips.  As they drift off they feel the press of his mouth against their temple.  They tell themselves they hate it, lips too numbed with impending sleep to protest aloud.

They mean to rebuke him when they wake.  Deride his terrible etiquette as a one night stand.  Tell him he smothered them with his body heat and hogged the blanket, contradictions be damned.  They spend a long moment internally repeating what they’ll say—studying his sleeping face, the stress he carries during waking hours so obvious now that they see him not bearing the burden.  The moment slips away when he opens his eyes, words momentarily caught in their throat as they admire the color of them, as they listen to his easy pillow talk.  The curve of his smile, the crinkle of his eyes at their stilted responses.  His warm embrace.

He holds them all night only to get on his knees for them in the morning.

The pleasure is so intense, they feel like they’re about to lose their own mind.

They dig their nails into his back when he fucks them, snapping his hips in a rhythm that steals their breath away.  They hold him with the same fervor he held them.  (As if that might be the tipping point—their last ditch effort—they’ve scared away anyone they’ve ever wanted just by wanting—)

And he says it; into their ear: “I love you.”  And his voice is wrecked but he still manages to make it sound like a prison sentence.  “I love you.  I have you, I have you, you can—”

They score a punishing red line down his scarred bicep with one cursed hand, gripping his hair with the other to wrench him away, to make him look them in the face.  He groans low in his chest, eyelashes fluttering—a true masochist—but his gaze meets their own with intent.  He pauses, pulses inside of them but doesn’t come.

“Maybe I have you.”  They spit viciously, though they don’t think they do.

He’s immune to their poisonous tone like he’s immune to their curse.

But they’re weak to whatever he is.  To his soft retaliation.

They try to tug their hands away from his reaching grasp, but he doesn’t even acknowledge their resistance.  He laces his fingers with theirs, saccharine sweet, pressing the backs of their palms into the mattress.

“I’m glad,” he says tenderly.  Affectionate like he has the right, like he’s anything more or less than the worst decision they’ve ever made.  “I want to be yours.”

His absinthe green eyes seem to peer right through them.  

“And you're mine, too…aren't you…?”

The only difference between Leander and the Senobium is the uniforms.

They wonder at the fact that they listened to Vere, believed him wholeheartedly, and still did this.

[kurithedweeb]

An idea I had last night: Jacob survives.

So, instead of the amulet just making everyone drop dead, we're going with the curse being a plague. (Thank you @irenes-journal for turning the plague amulet idea into what it is today.)

In canon, the amulet kills everyone save the person holding it, so the plague amulet would theoretically grant one person immunity, or at least resistance. How it grants some kind of immunity/resistance is by releasing antibodies for the plague, slowly at first to acclimatize the body a bit before it floods the system, and Jacob got some of the antibodies before he gave it to Aaron.

He was the first to fall ill, and he took twice as long to succumb to the illness than anyone else infected did. The town doctor died before Jacob did, so when he fell into a coma that looked a whole lot like death, he was mistaken for dead.

Lily was barely holding on herself at this point, and Aaron came back from burying the day's dead to find his wife and son dead in Jacob's room. Lily worshipped Menphia and some minor gods, being from Tu'la, and raised Jacob to do the same since Aaron's side of the family doesn't worship any recognized religion (Ultima stuff is for later), and there was a small tomb previously made for when Lily and her children died according to Tu'lan burial practices. Which gives Jacob some more time than he'd have in a grave to get out before he runs out of air.

Aaron goes on burying bodies and surveying the sick while he mourns his own family's loss. Jacob wakes up maybe a day or two later in the dark with what remains of Lily. Obviously, he freaks out, crying out for help, and no one comes. Fueled by adrenalin and fear, he manages to open the tomb door just enough for him to squeeze through, and he finds the streets covered in graves. He has no idea what's going on, no clue how long it's been, but he runs home and his dad's not there and all the streets he's run down are empty and stinking of rot. He needs his dad to not be dead, so he comes up with this idea that obviously Aaron thought he was dead like everyone else and left.

And so Jacob packs a bag and sets out to leave Falconclaw, and he leaves barely an hour before Aaron gets home. They just miss each other.

Jacob isn't well. He collapses on the road and wakes up in a merchant caravan bound for some village way North. He asks if any of them have seen his father, says he's the son of the Lord of Falconclaw, and one of the mercenaries hired to guard the caravan sees an opportunity. By the time the caravan reaches its destination, Aaron is already in O'khasis being groomed by Zane to become a Juror.

Jacob is snatched off the street by the same mercenaries who were guarding the caravan and sold to someone visiting from Tu'la, and he winds up a servant boy for one of the king's vassal clans. Maybe Nana's, maybe the one his mother escaped from. The plague left him incredibly scarred, so for a long time he's a faceless, bandaged figure in the shadows of the house, all this anger and frustration building up inside him at not being able to figure out a way home, until one day the master of the house thinks it'd be funny to match a servant boy against one of his soldier-apprentices.

And Jacob wins. No training, having thrown away his weapon and beaten the other boy with his bare hands until they were dripping in blood. He's sent to the gladiator pits, maybe the same ones Liochant grew up in, and as long as he has his anger he dominates. His contract is bought by some wealthy noble with a penchant for collecting pretty, broken things, and on the road he kills them and flees into the night.

By the time he gets back to O'khasis, Aaron's time on the Jury is over and he's disappeared completely, having forsaken his own name and become The Stranger. This is when Jacob finally hears about, finally confirms, the fall of Falconclaw. He goes to Zianna, waiting for her to be out in town before he approaches her. She and his mother considered themselves sisters, once, and Zianna had been an excellent spy in Tu'la, if anyone would help him it'd be her. All Zianna has to give him is rumors, but anything is better than nothing.

He takes it, he thanks her, he goes on the road trying to find his father, and gets waylaid a bunch on the way by saving people and taking out the mercenary company that sold him to that Tu'lan visitor and into years of servitude and gladiator rings. He had a number of names in Tu'la, but he goes back to the name from a lifetime ago, introducing himself everywhere he goes as Jacob Lycan, son of Aaron Lycan, last Lord of Falconclaw, in an effort to see if his father will be drawn to the man using his son's name. By the time he makes it all the way around to Phoenix Drop, it's the middle of the Irene Dimension time skip, and since no one knew who The Stranger was or ever really saw his face, they don't realize that that's exactly who Jacob is looking for.

He goes back to Falconclaw, thinking maybe he can find some clues where this all started. It's practically the same as he left it since everyone thinks the land is extremely cursed, and in looking through their home he finds books on the teaching of his father's faith. He fits his father's old clothes, his old faith. He takes whatever he cares to keep from the Lycan estate and visits Lily's tomb before he leaves, and not a day later he comes across Abby, who's taken to the road hoping to find a lead on the woman she believes killed her father, Lady Katelyn the Firefist, who disappeared without a trace years ago about the same time High Priest Zane Ro'Meave and a few other Jurors did. She and Jacob agree to help each other and become good friends, and eventually they round back to Phoenix Drop.

A week after Aaron died.

Jacob introduces Abby first, notes that the Lord, or maybe she's the Lord's mother, seems to know who Abby is, and then he introduces himself. As Jacob Lycan, son of Aaron Lycan, last Lord of Falconclaw. And the look on this Lord's face is indescribable. She asks to speak with Jacob alone.

She tells him about his father in the last part of his life. She tells him how he saved her several times, taught her to fight, saved her guards, those two over there. That one he sacrificed himself for just last week, when he saved the man from another realm and finally got vengeance for his family and village. How he once said that when his journey was done, when he had taken the life of the man who cursed them all, he would finally be at peace with his wife and son.

Then there's a child's cry, and suddenly Jacob is being introduced to two little girls who his father helped raise. To his sisters.

He can't even process it properly before he hears Abby scream, and suddenly he is running to pull her off a blue-haired woman and holding her, thrashing and spitting vitriol, yelling how she thought of Katelyn like her mother, as Katelyn explains what really happened that day, and everything Abby has been keeping inside her for years spills out in wave after wave of tears. She clings to Jacob, and he finds himself crying too. If only they had known the truth earlier.

If they'd only learned the truth earlier, Abby wouldn't have spent so long hating an innocent woman she once adored, and Jacob could have seen his father again. Maybe if he'd known Aaron was The Stranger, if he'd known to wait in Phoenix Drop, Aaron would be alive. He would have had his son to live for.

They can't make themselves stay there once they know the truth. They're not ready. Abby tells Katelyn she'll be back to catch up later, and Jacob tells the Lord he'd like to meet his sisters another time, and with Jacob's quest over they go to hunt the Jury of Nine for Jeffory Goldenheart.

[cryptidfrenzy]

”Pardon me, sir…. Was that perhaps a cough I just heard? No? Are you sure?”

[luna-the-cretar]

Shepherd needs to be pegged

[snobgoblin]

you know that quote like "when you are not fed love on a silver spoon, you learn to lick it off of knives". yeah i feel like that's Lucio. bc like... yeah, Morga loved Lucio. but she never communicated that in a way Lucio understood, he grew up feeling entirely unloved and now he's SO over the top attention seeking- for one, he became a mercenary soldier and put his life in danger regularly just to be seen as a hero. and even though his friends all openly hate and insult him he still insists they love him and he wants to hang out with them because really what else does he have. he insists everyone loves him. because he NEEDS them to love him. he gets into relationships with people who despise him and he just thinks the world of them (see: Nadia. Valerius. The Apprentice) because love has always been difficult for him to obtain, it's always been disguised with discontent, it's what he's used to, why should that stop now

[iicaru2]

thinking about this fucking thing

[quantum-temporal-anomaly]

i think if abomination, plague doctor and duelist fused into one person, it would make just the protege

got the over ambition and killing someone you cared about of duelist,

the justification of doing horrible things in the pursuit of knowlage and mutilating a teacher figure of plague doctor

and the over confidence, isolation and using your curse of anger to help people in spite of it of abomination

[sailorsenshishitposter]

Zamasu was right

What the hell is going on with youtube reccomendations?

[plaguethewaters]

ocs save me,,, ocsss

[starry-mang0s]

WIP!! :O

Trying out something new with my rendering :>

[cult-of-dollbabies]

pissing him off like he gets paid to

[jonathanbyersphd]

Why am I still up? (I'm in the Google doc writing Jonathan Byers head over heels in love with Nancy Wheeler)

[snobgoblin]

what if Danny did the "character wears their most traumatic experience on a t-shirt" thing?

HELP i hadn't actually heard of that one before but it sounded fun, "being cremated alive after coming down with the plague and slowly coming to terms with your own inevitable death, only to be revived with no motor abilities" has gotta be up there