#i found out what rendering was and became obsessed

[cry-ptidd]

Beast

[shuenkio]

𝙁𝙇𝘼𝙈𝙀 𝘿𝙍𝙄𝙉𝙆 /🍷 [REQUEST]

Paring: Down!bad!jay x male!reader

Cw: needy sex, cum filled, drunk sex, rough, friends to lover sex, obsession etc.

Genre: SMUT 18+

Summary: He has been waiting for this moment with you on this heat bed.

Read at your own risk.

Nonchalant y/n ಠ⁠∀⁠ಠ

Jay was a musician whose passion lay in guitars. He loved collecting various types of guitars that caught his eye, disregarding the cost entirely. When he purchased a new guitar, he didn't bother looking at the price tag.

As a dedicated cashier at the bustling instrument store, you frequently encounter Jay during his daily visits. His ardent love for guitars keeps him returning to your establishment time and again. However, it's not merely his passion for music that brings him back - there's an underlying bond between both of you that compels him to visit regularly.

Your initial meeting took place when Jay struggled to choose a guitar. You assisted him, making eye contact and smiling encouragingly. That moment sparked something between them - an immediate attraction neither of us anticipated. Your friendship grew stronger, leading to the exchange of phone numbers and weekend plans. They enjoyed each other's company both inside and outside the store, fostering a deeper bond.

As his love for you swelled, it became increasingly difficult to contain. His attachment to you grew stronger with each passing day, especially whenever you interacted with other men. Seeing them close to you sent waves of jealousy coursing through him. Afraid of losing you he decided to hold back his feelings, hoping for the perfect chance to reveal his true feeling.

Weekend approaching, you and Jay went to hang out at the Bar today, which is different from before.

While Jay stepped away to use the restroom, you found myself seated at the counter, feeling slightly vulnerable. Suddenly, a seemingly inebriated man sidled up next to you, attempting small talk. His advances were clear, and despite your attempts to maintain distance, he leaned in closely. His hands blocked your path as he tried to pull you towards him for a kiss. Panicking, I struggled to push him away, but his unsteady state rendered him almost jelly-like, threatening to collapse onto me.

Right when I was struggling against the aggressive man, Jay emerged from the restroom. Without hesitate, he throw a punch the man, who fell to the ground groaning before finally fainting. Relieved but still shaken, Jay checked on you touching your shoulders gently. When you assured him you're fine, Jay chose to end our night early. After settling the bill, he walked you to his car. Before entering, you hurriedly drank what remained of your beverage and let Jay guide you inside.

During our drive back, you suddenly feels a surge wave of heat. Even though the car's AC was running, it didn't seem to affect you. You thought maybe the drink was upsetting your stomach. But as he pulled up to your place, the heat kept rising, making you sweat uncontrollable all over. Seeing your struggle, Jay's brows furrowed with concern as he guided you inside your apartment. His worry added to your own confusion about this sudden and intense bout of heat.

Once inside your bedroom, Jay carefully removed your shoes and socks. His face mirrored yours - puzzled by this sudden, inexplicable heat coursing through your veins. He sat beside you on the bed, contemplating the situation. Suddenly, it dawned on him – maybe someone had slipped something into your drink.

"I'm s—oo i feel Too hot, Jay!" You gasped, clutching at the sheets beneath you.

"I feel so... H-hot i just want to-"

Your consciousness bye bye from my physical self, taking complete control as you struggled against the boil heat. Ignoring modesty, you frantically stripped off your clothes until only your boxers remained. As you went to discard them too, Jay's hand cut in, stopping you in mid-action. His touch was both comforting and alarming in this surreal scenario.

"You sure you wanna do this- M/n?" He asked, patiently waiting for your response.

"I want to .... Feel nghh You" Jay's ear twitching, hearing your magic words feel like he just won a lottery. Without misunderstood He want to make sure he get your consent of doing this so he asked you one more time.

"Say it again m/n, do you want me to help you?"

"I want you to feel me JAY, I need you to take this hotness away~ mm" Your hand roaming twirling around your own body, the medicine started to act up again, but now it's even worse.

His eyes turned dark, filled with a hunger that was both thrilling and disturbing. he licking on his dry lip slightly, eager with a desire craving.

"I've been waiting for this m/n, you'll never get it" his belt was flying across the room. Unbutton his top, while he's stripped down his fabric in a fleet motion. Exposed his stretch-long balls, with his length bouncing, hit on his abdomen, twitching non stop.

He waste no time, before pull your boxer down reveal your hard dick, affected by the medicine in your drink back in the bar.

"Y~oUr so Big JaY put It in mE!i waNt to feel it" Your chest heaving, begging for his meat inside you, you're so bold which turn him on even more.

No further do, Jay push his cock inside your tight hole without any warning. Both feeling mix with pain and pleasure as Jay buried his length inside you. Once he's fully all in, Jay began to roll his hip against you, as his thighs pressed against you in every slam thrusting, making wet noises echo loudly in your bedroom. His grinding let your gasp escape your mouth, with Your vocalisation spurred him on, driving him to fuck harder.

Jay's thrust grow harder in every powerful slam, he lowered himself down to capture your mouth, sucking on your bottom lip, swirling his tongue all over your inside. You return back his gesture, lost in the world of desire, message each other tongue together, taste the sticky saliva.

"Mmm oh-Ah argg your fucking shit is just perfectly fit my cock, M/N "

Jay roll his eyes to the back of his brain, melt under your tight entrance clenching his cock so well, each hip rolling one pushing both of you closer to the edge.

Dipping your nails on the skin of his back, leaving a fade red scratches on him, as the sensation continue drive you fucking good.

The bed creaked under their writhing bodies as, in unison. He tugging on your earlobes with his teeth before lift you up, Take both of your legs, hooking around his waist, carry on with the pace in a max speed. Your vision fading to black, is this how it feel like when they said you'll be see the stars in this heat bed?

Fire pooling low in Jay's abdomen, matching the orgasms that built inside your epididymis, where your cums store.

"S—SHIT it's coming I'm gonna filling you with my child M/N"

With a roar both of you reach the climax, shooting your semen on your own skin, before Jay blew his load inside your oral, filling you full with his hot seed. Your body shivered and trembled, collapsing on his chest, exhausted from the lustful encounter, not to mention that you're a virgin but not anymore.

Jay take a moment to catch his breath. As he settle you down back on the bed gently and laying down beside you, then he's grabbing you by your waist moving you closer to him skin-to-skin, still exposed, Hugging you tight in his warm embrace.

"This is the best day of my life M/N, there's will be a change between us tomorrow, i love you" He then pressed a kiss on your forehead. Closing his eyes, dozing off to the wonderland with you.

The flame inside your body's faded after an unforgettable night with him.

🗣️ please mind my English! ><

🗣️Reblog and like is much appreciated ♥

🗣️ lack of perfect words, my apologies ~

🗣️ crd to all over pics&dividers .

[meanbossart]

I was wondering, how did DU Drow took to Orins betrayal? To her being the one that stabbed him in the back, and so how did his infatuation and imprinting on her changed or twisted? Did he feel anything when he saw her again? Did his body or mind remembered how he felt about her once? Also do not worried for long replies because I’m a sucker for them 🧛🏻‍♀️

You know, actually I like thinking about the very moment of the betrayal a lot and the rollercoaster of emotions DU drow would have experienced LOL I don't know EXACTLY how Orin managed to get away after mushing up his brain (and him being immediately rendered unconscious sounds a little boring to me) but I assume, wherever they were at the time - probably mindflayer hideout at Ketheric's I believe - she lured him somewhere where she could make a quick get-away and leave him behind either locked away or stuck when he inevitably reacted to what she did, before his mind started drifting away.

Which is just to say he would have had a few minutes of consciousness left immediately after-the fact. Orin got a head-start because he simply could not believe what had just happened: lots of "what did you do? what did you do? why did you do that?" followed by unbridled anger as reality settled in. He assumed he was going to die, so, If he could have gotten to Orin in time DU drow would have killed her. Instead he was left alone in what was probably the most terrifying and anxiety inducing few minutes he ever had in his life before his body and brain just gave out lol

POST the tadpole he remembered nothing. He had no feelings of sadness or mourning when he saw her, just a lot of rage. The weird "imprinting" he does on people was reset when his brains got scrambled, and he felt no love or affection for her from that point on. That said, I think he found something a little gross in the satisfaction he felt upon killing her, like he finally "got her" - if you catch my drift.

What's a little ironic (and kinda sad) here is that it's thanks to his affection towards Astarion that DU drow could even begin to understand concepts like consent and boundaries - these would have been key to realize that the position he put Orin in for years was profoundly uncomfortable and unfair, and perhaps with that in mind he *could* have somehow reached out to her and maybe even spared her of her own fate (I'm not entirely sure about this because of how faithful she was to Bhaal - but it would have at least raised the chances THE TINIEST BIT), but since the relationship was only possible BECAUSE his memories were erased, leaving nothing but resentment towards her, that became an impossibility. You can't have both; his infatuation with her either ceased and he completely forgot he ever cared for her and hence had no motivation to save her, or he remained utterly obsessed and never developed the relationships necessary to understand his role in his own demise.

In that later scenario the best he would have been able to do by the time he got to her was insist they go rogue, fuck Bhaal and fuck this, come with me and lets go be crazy [together] somewhere else and of our own accord - but obviously, Orin would have had no interest in the offer lmao and things would have ended up the same as they did in the main campaign - except now DU drow is a slightly worse person and doesn't have Astarion to hone him in. Even after she died I don't think a relationship between them could have sparked either, likely BECAUSE his obsession with Orin would have skeeved him away entirely.

[prince-liest]

I'm OBSESSED with the way you portray asexual relationships--first alastor and vox, now alastor and mimsy! I was wondering, what are your thoughts on alastor and lucifer? can you see them in anything close to a committed relationship, and if so, how would it look like? -✨

Thank you so much!!! What good timing for you to have sent this ask, hahaha. This time yesterday I would not have had much to say, but, uh, I started writing the Alastor and Lucifer scene I planned for the Mimzy fic and accidentally became obsessed. If motivation lasts, I want to do a fucked up little qp multichapter fic with them.

I think my take on radioapple specifically is that they have a very interesting flavor of antagonism where Alastor is resentful both of Lucifer's power and his potential to usurp Alastor's position in Charlie's life (not as a father figure but as the person she goes to for help with the hotel), while Lucifer is, like, overall a pretty decent person at baseline but is getting driven up a wall of pettiness by Alastor's pinpoint accurate cold reads of his insecurities and subsequent trolling.

And even though they're the perfect people to make each other feel insecure, none of it can escalate into genuine violence. Not only because Alastor would get his shit absolutely rocked (I'm not entirely convinced this would stop him) but because the crux of their competition is Charlie, not their ability to potentially beat the shit out of one another, so they're stuck in this hilarious cycle of passive-aggressiveness and psychological warfare.

However, again: like Charlie, Lucifer is a fairly decent person at heart. He's not inclined to be sympathetic to Alastor when he's being an asshole, but he's also not the kind of person who would leave him if, say, he found out that he has a massive, gaping chest wound from a holy weapon. Meanwhile Alastor isn't inclined to be particularly grateful for any services rendered, but he is maybe more likely to think, huh, if I thought Charlie was manipulatable... well, she clearly gets it from somewhere!

And I think that's just the funniest start to a developing relationship, haha. I think they'd end up way more platonic than whatever the hell radiostatic have going on, but damn if I'm not gonna manage to write them co-napping at least once. I admittedly also just really want to write Alastor doing shit to low-key sabotage Lucifer's wellbeing in petty ways and then swooping in to rescue him from the very issues he caused. What's a little gaslighting, sleep deprivation, and psychological torture as a basis for a relationship, hmmm?

I think that if they ended up in anything describable as "committed," it would be committment through Charlie and through the hotel, through which they eventually end up in a weird little not-romantic not-platonic not-loving not-hateful definitely-overly-invested something, rather than because they actively pursued one another. Pavlovian-ass basis for a relationship.

[sebastianswallows]

The English Client — Four

— PAIRING: Tom Riddle x F!Reader

— SYNOPSIS: The year is 1952. Tom is working for Borgin and Burkes. He is sent to Rome to acquire three ancient books of magic by any means necessary. One in particular proves challenging to reach, and the only path forward is through a pretty, young bookseller. A foreigner like him, she lives alone, obsessed with her work... until Tom comes into her life.

— WARNINGS: none, but almost main character death lol

— WORDCOUNT: 2.5k

I

Tom stayed away for a few days. He stalked around some other rare book stores but found none of what Caractacus Burke was searching for. Still, it gave ample enough time for her to forget about him. He needed to be out of her mind before he carried out his plan.

He sat at a café outside her store one evening, waiting to see her go home again. Not able to stand another cup of coffee, hot and bitter, he decided to try something he’d seen so many other locals eating. It was called ‘gelato’. A frozen treat, it looked like clotted cream and was eaten with a little spoon. Tom regretted ordering it the moment it arrived, but with each bite, he became a little fonder of it. It was cold and vaguely sweet with a drizzling of cherry jam on top. He reached the bottom of the cup before he even realised, and licked the spoon clean afterwards.

She stepped out later this time, at around six o’clock. Tom got up not long after but he didn’t follow her. His gaze trailed after her from behind a pair of aviator shades — her white shirt fluttering with each step, hair soft upon her shoulders — and let himself enjoy the view until she disappeared beyond the curve of a building that bent like a wave. Then he turned the other way, the way she came from.

The lamp lights were just coming on, bathing the marble a sulphuric yellow. He took his sunglasses off and tucked them in his shirt as he slid through the narrow street the shop was on. There was nobody around, but he could hear the echoes of other people through the walls of the nearby buildings. The area was a mix of domestic and commercial, small old flats and little shops which made it quite unpredictable. It was a very intimate setting, and dangerous for that very reason — few escape routes should anyone appear.

He peered through the glass first at the organised chaos inside, the clutter and piles of precious old things that lifetimes would not suffice to explore. Between them, Tom saw his reflection staring back. He aimed his wand at each lock and muttered an Alohomora. The spell let him in like butter.

The shop was just faintly lit from beyond the large display windows, rendering every book and smooth wood surface into a little sunburst. The air was light with dust, and dry, and cold in the way libraries often were. The pillars that held the ceiling high were cinder-black, and carved so finely that the wood seemed lace and pillow soft. A sweet scent lingered in the cavernous construction. It really was a marvellous atmosphere… Tom wouldn’t have minded staying if circumstances were different. His grandfather’s ring trilled around his finger.

Regardless of how old the building was, the interior was certainly built to order. It had a hint of the Victorian with a Renaissance flair. Tom had been in enough rich people’s houses to tell. It amused him how much they were all alike in taste, as if they were part of the same secret breed.

He stepped further in. The floorboards creaked and, looking down, a small amount of dust flew up. Curious. Perhaps it really didn’t get that many customers so often. The other shops he had visited this week all seemed to have at least another two clients while he was there… Strange, as this shop was bursting with books, and in an accessible location too. Tom could only guess that either they were prohibitively selective with their clientele, or the place had a bad reputation.

He found her ledgers tucked underneath the desk. They were split into three themes: Letteratura, Religione, and Esoterismo. He opened the latter.

It was detailed, thick, and finely indexed with the most minuscule writing. Instead of listing their catalogue, it listed all the authors they seemed to have an interest in, whether or not they held any of their books. Prices were next to certain volumes, along with purchasing dates. Others were annotated with the shop or collector that held them. From Agrippa to Cheiro to Crowley, from Novalis to Paracelsus, Roerich, and Sepharial, they had their eye on everyone. He turned toward the end, pale finger brushing through the T’s.

They had nothing by Tamisso, another author on his list, although they did have a copy of The Lost Word by Trevisan — a more recent edition than the 1870 one that Mr. Burke wanted, but still serviceable. But what he was really looking for was Torchia.

And he found him. A whole half-page was dedicated to him, even if the books were few and three-quarters of the space was empty. They must’ve expected to find more of his works in the future.

But as he was reading, the ring started feeling heavier, like its black stone wanted to pull loose. Oftentimes, the splinter of his soul that was trapped inside was a bit of a canary in a coal mine, more sensitive to changes in Tom’s surroundings than he was… He gazed suspiciously toward the ring and put the ledger down.

Tom looked up at the ceiling. It was tall and too dark to see, absorbing the most highly placed volumes like a black hole, like a void. Looking down, between the floorboards, the same infinite darkness. It occurred to him that perhaps the place was cursed. An unlikely idea given that it was a building belonging to muggles, but he’d seen stranger things. And after all, he still didn’t know who the owner was.

He looked at the catalogue again.

Torchia, A.

Key to Captive Thoughts, 1653 — four three copies

A Curious Explanation of Mysteries and Hieroglyphs, 1655 — one copy sold to H. Àristos, 1949

The Three Books of the Art, 1658 — one copy, private ownership → Luce

He scanned further down the line, and there it was: Delomelanicon.

It wasn’t written up like the others. It had no number, no mention of its year of publication, nor even where it was. All it had was a strange symbol next to it, like a plus sign with a downward arrow. Tom couldn’t guess what it meant.

But they had it, they must have. He closed the book with satisfaction and an overflow of greed, and carefully put it back in its place.

II

With the bookshop all to himself, Tom explored at his leisure. He stepped lightly, almost reverently, through its misty dusty rooms veiled by growing darkness. He cast Lumos when entering the second room, which had no windows to the outside world. A thick red carpet muffled his steps.

His first stop was at the section where she had searched for Helena Blavatsky, assuming the shelves followed the logic of the ledgers and were organised thematically as well as alphabetically. He pulled the ladder over and started to climb, holding the wand between the tips of his fingers.

Names spread before him, ancient and powerful. Some of them were only mentioned in the most proscribed of texts, others he hadn’t even heard of. It was one thing to see them listed so economically, and another to see their naked spines, crack them open, part them, and touch their wavy pages.

He had to pause once he came across a 17th-century copy of the Cyranides. How many men died for merely reading this book… What horror, what beauty. He turned to the page on the use of bezoars and smiled. The illustration braided around the page was of a watersnake, unmoving, done with an almost childish hand. It was from a more innocent time when such magical knowledge was a thing of fear and wonder, exclusive and yet renown, whispered about, admired. Not hidden away.

Holding the wand between his teeth, Tom pulled the ladder and himself a bit further to the right. Its wheels were loud enough to make him wince.

He found a wealth of books in this place that made him feel things he had not felt in a while: greed, desire, admiration… He hadn’t seen so many wonderful tomes since Hogwarts. For long moments in large swaths, he forgot his mission. Eagerly, his hands picked up any volumes he could reach without the ladder tipping over, and he sipped in eager drops the ancient wisdom, a few pages at a time, admiring the crude but honest illustrations before, with a heavy heart, putting them back on the shelf.

Finally, he reached Torchia. A few of his works were there, the same ones mentioned in the ledger, but not the Delomelanicon. Tom brushed his finger on the shelf, and it came up with a fluff of dust. Hadn’t been touched for a long time…

It occurred to him as he climbed down the ladder that they could have had hidden compartments, as such bookstores sometimes did. Borgin and Burkes did too, although theirs was hidden by magic. Muggles would have had some contraption hidden behind a painting or shelf. He cast another glance around him before moving forward again, step by heavy step. Between those dormant shelves, he saw another surreptitious doorway toward another room.

III

The place grew labyrinthian. Tom felt as though he was disturbing a tomb, and without even needing to his steps grew gentler. The ring around his finger ached again, but he ignored it.

He was exploring a glass case with a pyramid of skulls in the corner of a room three doorways from the entrance, further in the building and blissfully chill on the exposed skin of his arms and neck, when suddenly he noticed something about the creaking of the floorboards: he couldn’t hear it anymore.

Tom looked down, his shoes soft on the carpet, and shifted his weight. No sound, but there was a bit of a tilt beneath him as the wood moved. He moved to the side and toed the carpet away. At first glance, he noticed nothing strange, but when he cast Revelio, a piece of metal shone and the edges of a trapdoor revealed themselves before him.

“I’ve got you now,” he grinned.

He stepped away, grabbed the edges of the carpet, and folded it further back. It was a trapdoor alright, large enough for two people to fit through. The area was clean, as if it saw regular use. Could it be a secret way into and out of the shop? Well, he’d seen her always use the front door, so it was most likely a storage area.

He dug into his trouser pocket for something, anything that he could use, and found the Swiss army knife he’d gotten from Clement. The thought occurred to him that it was a misuse of a gift to rob a bookshop with it, but that thought died quickly in Tom’s heated mind. He had a job to do.

He slid its blade between the folds of wood and pressed the handle down. Marvolo’s ring squeezed and pulled at his finger, and Tom cursed at it to be quiet. The trapdoor undulated at the strain as he moved the blade around, but the thing was as good as nailed down on all sides.

“Come on, you piece of muggle trash, open,” he hissed between clenched teeth.

He pushed, edging the wood upwards, and the bit of leverage made it flap as far as its hinges would allow. Holding the wand between his teeth for light, he moved it slightly, checking in every direction for a keyhole. The only thing he found was a burn mark that shone in the faint light, small and round and crested. It was probably a hidden button or a kind of keyhole, the kind of which he’d seen before in a couple of places both at Hogwarts and elsewhere. Tom grinned, moved the blade there, and pressed harder right beneath it.

“Aaaah!” he groaned, nearly dropping the wand from his teeth.

The ring was shooting pain all the way up his arm now, and his muscles strained. He clenched his teeth and pressed the blade in further, deeper, but the longer he tried to get it open, the more useless the attempt seemed, and he was overcome with a feeling of wrongness — as if he actually cared that he was trespassing.

He got up, sighed, and wiped the sweat off his brow. The feeling of guilt that had been bubbling in his stomach crested and crawled up his bones until he felt the sickness in his throat. He was overcome with the desire to leave and put this place behind him. A traitorous thought…

No, he wasn’t feeling sick. That nasty little door was enchanted. There was probably a curse on it, not too dissimilar to those placed on Egyptian tombs, meant to ward prospective thieves away. The emotions that swirled in his breast, the guilt, the shame, none of it came from him. It was something he was forced to feel by whatever enchantment guarded the place. What an insidious little spell… He frowned and pointed his wand down at the trapdoor again.

“Finite incantatem.”

Nothing happened.

“Finite incantatem!” he said again, more clearly and imperious.

The trapdoor mocked him with its silence. Tom looked down at his wand as if it were impotent.

“Of all the damned… Revelio,” he cast again, but nothing new appeared. “Alohomora!”

And that was when it struck him.

The spell worked, but just for an instant before it was undone and something fired back at him. A shard of death crawled up his spine and pooled inside his heart, pushing him backwards into the sharp edge of a table. The lamps on it rattled from the impact.

He felt dizzy for a moment, his body numb and cold, then nauseous when his senses came back to him at once. Pain billowed at his lower back so hard it filled his throat with bile. He clung to the edge of the table and kept himself just barely standing, managing the breath to groan.

“By Salazar’s f-fucking… Ow!”

Among all the sudden pain, he noticed that his arm was numb. The ring had stopped hurting him. It got its point across… The door was cursed, and so severely that, if not for his Horcrux, he surely would have died.

Tom clenched his teeth and hissed at the bothersome little entrance, cursing it in parseltongue. He kicked the carpet back over it and rubbed his aching hip where he already felt a bruise forming. There was nothing else he could do there, at least not tonight. He’d have to go back to his hotel, hopefully not limping all the way, and plan his next steps.

“I’ll get you yet,” he muttered with a parting glare. “And whatever mongrel of a mage made you.”

[chameleonspell]

HTDC commentary - 4: falling

[Looking back at HTDC after nearly ten years: comments on lore, character notes, influences, art, whatever. May contain spoilers for later chapters.]

chapter text: 4: falling

These early chapters tend to be short and jump forward in time lot, because I was just skipping to the next turning point, and Iriel isn't spending enough time with other people for there to be much interesting going on between. Especially now, because he's gonna be unconscious for a lot of it.

Much later, certain people would gravely refer to this period of Iriel’s life as one during which he “lost himself”

I had no idea who was supposed to have told Iriel this, later, and I still can't think who would be a plausible candidate. I said this purely for rhetorical effect. I feel like this makes me an unreliable narrator of my own story, though I'm not sure that's technically possible.

His conscious mind, cast adrift on an overwhelming ocean of sensation, became reduced to scattered thoughts and isolated impressions.

Seems like Ire was tripping on nature, before he was even tripping on sugar. I probably should have been less dreamily effusive, here, and saved it for the on-drugs bit, but I just really love the Bitter Cost! You don't need drugs to appreciate the Swamp! Despite the apparent similarities of the Pit being Iriel's shame and depression, Iriel being in the swamp was never at all the same metaphor, though it took until chapter 153 for me to really explicate this properly. Being in the swamp is mostly positive, if soggy. The swamp is comforting and accepting. The swamp doesn't judge.

The spongey texture of the luminous mushrooms he collected obsessively, and the ssschlucking sound they made when he yanked them out of the damp soil to lay them out in order of size and colour on the moss.

I got really into mushrooms (as organism, not drug!) after I wrote Iriel an obsession with them. Be very careful what interests you give fictional characters, because if you identify with them too hard, it's very easy to catch it off them.

All Ire knew was that he had found two small cloth bags of crystalline white powder underneath a crate on a small jetty, and that when he put a finger in and licked it, everything got better.

The story started with a concept and a shape, but no detail - that mostly came out of gameplay, at the start. The moon sugar was a happy accident, finding the bags in a random smuggler loot sack, and realising...  why wouldn't he?

Moon sugar is described as a numbing and euphoria-inducing drug, similar to an opiate. It's also the soft option, compared to its more refined form, skooma, so Iriel's still in the narcotics kiddie-pool, really. That said, we also know these drugs affect TES races differently, with men and mer being affected far more strongly than Khajiit. And we know that Altmer specifically are more sensitive to magic (for better and worse) than other races. Thus, Iriel is having quite an extreme reaction.

he found himself falling: into the glowing colours, into the soft, yielding swamp, and not caring, because when he spat mud and rolled over onto his back, he found himself falling into the sky.

The whole "sad elves falling in swamps" thing is, I admit, a private joke. Because someone once (somehow, unaccountably) found my website by googling for the string "sexy women falling in swamps", and when I saw it in the search referrals, I laughed about it for days.

The night skies of Morrowind are stunningly beautiful, viewed sober. Moon sugar rendered them a religious experience.

Morrowind skies being best skies is just facts. @valtheimm illustrated this scene beautifully:

If I say that he spent long hours lying in the mud, staring at the fractal patterns at the end of fern fronds, I’m sure you can fill in the rest for yourselves. Let’s skip to the end.

I guess I wasn't too consistent with the first person narration, but the narrator was there from the start! It just fell into the background, when other things were happening, or the scene didn't want that sort of external comment, only to re-emerge later, and make people question me about where it came from.

Who is the narrator? Me, just me, the author. Nothing complicated. I was used to books where that kind of thing is common, as a random interjection. I was reading a George Eliot book at the time, and she's always interrupting the action to discuss her characters in first person. It creates a sense of ironic distance, so you don't want to have it all the time, usually you want to be right there in the characters emotions. Other times, you want to add that distance, and deliberately get out of the character's head.

Here, we are watching Iriel flopping about the swamp from a distance, because he's out of his mind, so we are, too. We can go back closer when he returns to himself, try and feel the shock of that with him as much as we can.

Where he came from, the gods were not thought to actively involve themselves in the lives of their worshippers. This was part of what made them so admirable.

TES sets up a whole lot of metaphysical binaries, but the key one is Anu and Padomay, which for our purposes means stasis and change. This comes in a lot more later, but that bog body metaphor is already looking a bit prescient, innit? Here, we can just note that Iriel's home gods are the Aedra, which are Anuic, and therefore both unchanging and incapable of intervening or causing change themselves. Iriel thinks that in Morrowind, where other gods apply, things might be different.

Lying back down and dying was tempting, but Ire hadn’t survived this long by letting that part of his brain have its way.

Iriel is physically unimposing, cries easily and doesn't exactly tick many boxes on the socially-mandated "ideal masculinity" chart. He's scared of everything, because many things have hurt him, and life hasn't equipped him with many tools to defend himself. Does that make him "a weak person", as he himself believes? Or is he strong, for surviving, despite the odds stacked against him, for persisting regardless? What does it mean to be weak or strong, and is weakness even a bad thing? Questions I kept on coming back to, throughout the story.

Iriel is far from morally perfect, and sometimes does selfish things, especially while he's addicted to drugs. There wouldn't be much of a story, if he didn't make a total mess of his life, and have to try and clean it up. But he is strong, in lots of ways, and he will manage to be a hero, in lots of ways. Making him "an effeminate gay stereotype" was very deliberate. Because sure, that's a stereotype, but not for the hero. It's for villains and cheap-laugh side characters, where it gets laced with a lot of other homophobic tropes. Queer heroes, where they exist, tend to be indistinguishable from straight characters, beyond their sexuality - and that's nothing like the real people I know, it's nothing like me or my friends! Femme gay men exist, and are wonderful and diverse and incredibly powerful, actually.

Real-life queer people can't be stereotypes by definition, instead they have to constantly live with how their personal expression is interpreted and policed and refracted into cheap stereotypes by the dominant culture, stereotypes which are then used against them. I wanted to write a character going through that experience, that negotation of an imposed stereotype that has some truth to it, albeit in ways that the people using it against you don't understand. To be up-front about this: I'm queer, but I'm not a gay man, so I was always aware of the danger that I might misjudge something, and screw up. I tried to keep Iriel's specifically gay aspects as grounded as I could in non-fictional people I knew, or had read things by. In the case of real-life friends, I pray I changed enough details on any embarrassing anecdotes I stole that they can't recognise themselves here, and get mad at me.

Iriel set out in search of structure.

The moon sugar was extremely useful, narratively speaking. See, the wonderful thing about an addiction to hard drugs -- this sounds like I'm being facetious, but I've heard heroin addicts say exactly this -- is that it gives you something to do, when your life has no meaning. It forces action. You can't just lie face-down in the swamp forever. You have to go out, and get money, and get drugs. Which forces you, especially if the money part is challenging, into situations.

Playlist pick: Sparklehorse - Spirit Ditch. This is a song to lie in a swamp and get high to. By Mark Linkous, another junkie. Died by suicide in 2010. You always hope when someone writes songs that sad, that it means they have some kind of… answer. A different one, I mean.

next: 5: slide & 6: trap previous: 3: breathe

[genocidehim]

Telling Tuco that you’re pregnant and thinking he’ll be mad but he’s overjoyed

notes: render is female, unwanted pregnancy. words: 1037

When the pregnancy test came back positive, you realized you were screwed.

Really screwed.

And it was a reality that could have happened at any moment since your only forms of contraception were the birth control pills you took every day. The condom was abandoned after the second encounter when Tuco became obsessed with the raw, pure sensation of sex with you, and by the time your relationship became more serious, the contraceptive methods were only on your side, as Tuco was Tuco and there wasn't much to do about it.

But now the result of your carelessness was in that positive pregnancy test and the slight swelling of your belly that was barely noticeable. Maybe you were one or two months pregnant, but you weren't even sure because terror seemed to be the only thing invading your thoughts.

You had no idea how Tuco would react to the news, he never talked about family or children, despite his siblings and cousins having already settled down with a family. Tuco lived his life very differently from the traditional Mexican family model, and you followed in his footsteps. You were young, too young to even think about getting pregnant, but it was too late to turn back now.

You had been avoiding the topic for weeks, during which time Tuco had become a bit more dependent on the drugs he used, and with that came more violent outbursts at work, but never with you. Normally, those outbursts would happen when something got out of his control and he didn't like it, and the thought of how he would react if he found out about your early pregnancy terrified you... What if he became violent? Would he be capable of doing something?

All your worries and fears led you to that day when Tuco was busy cooking lunch without being chemically altered. You wanted to approach him in his sobriety and in the mundanity of everyday life.

"Amorcito..." you called him as you quietly walked down the stairs barefoot.

From the kitchen, you heard a 'Dime, amor' accompanied by the sound of the frying pan splattering oil and the smell of cooked vegetables. You approached the kitchen and leaned against the door frame while looking at him with a shy expression on your face, quieter than usual.

"What's wrong? Why do you have that look on your face? The food is almost ready" Tuco said as he scraped the pot with a spatula.

All of that scene was worth admiring. Tuco, in his sobriety, looked like such an attentive husband; his worried gaze on you, that pastel-colored apron over him, how his voice sounded much softer and honeyed when he spoke to you, and the way he reassured you with more words. All those things really affected you emotionally, wishing he could put another child inside you as soon as possible.

You shook your head slightly to clear your thoughts and resumed your confession.

"I wanted to talk to you about something important... Do you have a second?"

"For you, I have a lifetime. Tell me, what's going on?" he replied while continuing to cook.

It took you a while to get to the point, the anxiety filtering through your body and sweating through your pores. You didn't understand why you were afraid to reveal your pregnancy, why you felt like crying just trying to say the words, why the idea of him not accepting the news and leaving you scared you.

Your lips trembled before uttering the words, and you seemed deeply affected.

"My period hasn't come for months..." Your words came out soft, but that caught his attention instantly. His dark eyes widened at the moment and looked at you with surprise and seriousness, you trembled with fear. "And I took a pregnancy test and... I..."

When your words began to tremble and your eyes watered, Tuco let out a big sigh and turned off the stove to give you his full attention.

"And what about you?" His stern voice sent chills down your spine.

"I took several pregnancy tests and they came out positive..."

Silence filled the kitchen at that moment, the only sound you could hear was your heavy breathing and your heart about to burst. You couldn't look him in the eyes, you somehow felt guilty.

But Tuco's loud laughter snapped you out of your mental trance and forced you to look at him.

"¿¡Estás embarazada?!, Dios mío, no me lo puedo creer" The man had a smile from ear to ear that lit up his face, he looked so happy about the news that he couldn't stay still, going back and forth and babbling words of gratitude and blessings in spanish.

Feeling a great weight lifted off your shoulders, you sighed and let out a small cathartic laugh as you watched him in total amazement. Tuco approached you and held you tightly in his arms while dedicating sweet and cheesy words to you. When he pulled away and gave you a tender look, he placed his hand on your belly and touched the small bump with the palm of his hand.

"I can't believe my Amorcito is carrying my baby... How many months are you? Dios, I hadn't noticed the beautiful belly you have." His words tickled your ear and your smile eased the tension in your body.

"Two or three months... I don't know, just... I was scared to tell you when I found out."

"When you found out? And why were you scared?"

"A month ago and... I don't know, I was scared to think that you would hate me for getting pregnant and ruining your life..."

"Why would you think that? Corazón..." His lips landed on the softness of your cheek and he gave you a tender kiss. "I could never be angry with you for carrying my baby... Dios, what kind of man would I be if I hated the idea of you being pregnant?"

"We had never talked about this and well..."

"You shouldn't have worried your pretty little head with those mistaken ideas..." His lips now cradled yours in a tender and warm kiss before he continued speaking. "My God... You have no idea how happy Abuelita will be when she finds out you're pregnant. She will love you even more."

[undiscovered-horizon]

Hiii. May I request a Corinthian x Immortal Reader if it’s no trouble? Where reader was made immortal two or three thousand years ago and caught Corinthian’s interest when he had to give her a nightmare. Since then, it’s a game of cat and mouse as Corinthian became obsessed with her but reader kept running away from him. Thank you!

[MASTERLIST] | [Sandman-inspired playlist]

As many unbelievable stories do, this one also started with a dream: a dark alley, a blinking neon sign belonging to a run-down motel, steam from the subway erupting from underneath the drains, a smell of gasoline and old trash, a sound of distant motors.

You felt the hair on your neck standing up but no matter how frantically you looked around, the alley was unchangeably deserted. Shoving your hands further into the pockets of your beige macintosh, you marched on. In a minute you were going to be out of this unsettling narrow street and basking in the blinking, purple neon sign that once read BLUE IVY MOTEL (a more up-to-date version would be LE IV OTE, whatever that could mean).

Suddenly, you felt your head hit the grimy bricks between two trash containers. A painful ringing in your ears rendered you deaf for a moment. Your eyes wandered, a glossy look at the blurry world could not provide you with any information. Something definitely hit you and each second you didn't know what exactly did so, making your sweat only colder, your heartbeat quicker.

From the echoing ring in your head, a muffled voice emerged as if from far away: "I promise I'll be quick."

Forcing your mind to focus as much as it physically could in your state, you made out a silhouette of a man: tall, lean, confident. The distant blinking of the broken neon sign reflected off of something he was holding - long, thin, sharp edge...

"I'm too old for this shit," you murmured more to yourself than him.

With a clearly experienced punch to his wrist, you made the man drop the knife. The blade clattered against the wet, dirty pavement. The stranger appeared surprised at your skills, clearly having expected you to be nothing short of defenceless. When you had been alive for a good few thousand years, you're bound to pick up a thing or two, even if you’re not explicitly trying. Taking advantage of the confusion, you frantically shoved the man away and tun towards the blinking neon sign LE IV OTE.

A smile appeared on Corinthian’s face: you challenged him and that was something that happened quite rarely to him, if ever. His duty was only to scare you a little, live up to the title of a Nightmare, but by fulfilling his responsibility, he had found something a lot more interesting. Your fighting spirit was impressively vicious - more so than in other humans he had the honour to haunt in their dreams. Nevertheless, Corinthian had failed his one objective. Usually, such a course of events would frustrate him but now, there was a certain excitement inside him. Yes, actually, why should he catch the rabbit if he could chase it? And the rabbit, it’s bound to grow weary one day, isn’t it? He took in a deep inhale at the thought of that fateful moment: you’d be panting and staring at him with big, frightened eyes; begging him to spare your life, to leave you unscathed for whatever reason. There’d be no more strength in you to fight back when he slowly sinks his teeth into your neck. When your skin breaks, he’d ravish the ichor running through your veins.

Corinthian also pondered your words - too old? If he was asked to estimate your age, considering he had been alive for long long centuries, he’d say you were a child. But children don’t look evil in the eye with an impatient grimace; children do not snarl their teeth when trapped in a corner. But you did.

"I'll catch you," he sang under his nose, although you had been long gone by the time. A low chuckle left his lips - the hunt had just begun.



Things only became stranger since that night. Whenever you slept, no matter what horrors and marvels your dreams presented, he was there. Not always coming at you, sometimes he was part of the background, a silent voyeur you noticed only after waking up while recounting the nighttime fantasy. On other occasions, you were thrown into a frenzy trying to run away from him but no matter how fast you were going, he was right behind you, strolling only a few steps from your back. What made this whole game of tag even more disturbing, was that he never made any demands, never actually threatened you, just stalked. A glistening, thin blade in his hand.

But this nightmare had an odd affliction for becoming worse as time went by: from night terrors, the man in the sandy jacket flashed during your wakefulness as though this character had become so imprinted into your imagination, it seeped into your reality. In those short moments when the line between life and death is incredibly thin, between blinks and breaths, you saw him out of the corner of your eye. Watching. Waiting. Crawling towards you.



Your stalker seemed to disappear when you had travelled a few towns over - seeing that same sandy jacket around each corner of your hometown made you feel exposed, naked, as though there wasn’t a corner dark enough for you to hide in. Going on a trip to the middle of nowhere was desperate, there was no lying about that, but it was also very reckless: should the blade-wielding stranger find you again, how do you navigate your escape through streets you had never seen before? A rabbit willingly strolled into the lion’s den, it seemed.

The wind was cold as you were strolling through the deserted roads. Not a familiar face in sight - how surprisingly nice this felt. You were walking through the labyrinth of uncharted streets, busy with your wandering thoughts when a wraith of deja-vu breathed down your neck.

A cold shiver run down your spine as you recognized the noir-esque environment: a dark alley, a blinking neon sign belonging to a run-down motel, steam from the subway erupting from underneath the drains, a smell of gasoline and old trash, a sound of distant motors. Only this time, this wasn't a dream - you were sure of that.

Your back hit the bricks. The strong hand that had pushed you moved away from your shoulder. Opening your eyes, a leaded dread blossomed in your abdomen: a sandy jacket.

Corinthian leaned on his hand which was just next to your head, trapping you between himself and a trash container. Your heartbeat quickened as you felt his body against yours, pushing you further into the grimy brick wall behind you. Trying to calm your breathing down, your lungs were filled with the overpowering smell of musky cologne and a faint aroma of cleaning detergent. The cold blade grazing the skin of your cheek made you shiver - you were left disillusioned that if he did want to kill you, you wouldn't be here, alive. But such observation only complicated this strange game of cat and mouse (or perhaps rabbit and wolf? A lion?).

A humourless scoff left your mouth. With a slight shake of your head, you asked him: "Why do you keep chasing me?"

"Why do you keep running away?" he retorted in a quiet, raspy voice. His warm, surprisingly minty taking into account he's not of this realm, breath brushed against your cold cheeks.

"There's a guy with a knife who hunts me in my sleep.” You did your best to remain calm but the lack of distance between him and you made you unable to stay collected in the slightest manner. “I find it quite fitting to try and get away from him."

A low chuckle rumbled in his chest. Corinthian leaned in even closer, his lips almost touching your ear. You squirmed and he only continued laughing. "Come on, you can't have fun without at least a little bit of danger."

You moved your face away from his but that only caused the cold blade to put more tension against your cheek. "I don't find it fun or exciting to run for my life.”

"Then don't. Stop escaping and face the big bad wolf." You were fairly sure he was making fun of you but with a cold, sharp blade against your cheek, you couldn’t care less.

"I'll consider that once he puts the knife away."

He stared at you for a moment before he leaned away and slowly pulled away the knife from your skin. Closely watching his hand, you grabbed his forearm the moment he turned the blade away from you and towards himself to put it back into the harness underneath his jacket. With only static of panic narrating your thoughts, you drove the knife into Corinthian’s chest. He stumbled backwards and you run once again, never looking back. Dirty puddle water splashed on your light macintosh as you were mindlessly sprinting away from the Nightmare.

Corinthian watched you disappear around the corner. He didn't run after you, no, he simply stood there - a devilish grin on his face, the tip of the tongue darting between his teeth. Not a wince was seen in his playful expression as he pulled the knife out of his ribs. Great, the sweater was ruined…

If he was just a man, he'd lose all hope of ever crossing paths with you again but he was a hunter, a wolf - a beast born to stop pursuit only when their prey is bleeding out with his canine teeth sunk deep into your skin, devouring your desperation and submission.And the wolf... it only needs to find you once.

[humansarefake]

“Anorexia: my experience and thoughts”

Living with anorexia is akin to being ensnared in a relentless tempest, a storm that shrouds the mind and distorts one's perception of reality. It begins with subtlety, often masquerading as a mere desire for health or control, but swiftly spirals into an all-consuming obsession with food, weight, and the reflection that greets you in the mirror.

Each meal becomes a battlefield, fraught with anxiety and guilt. The mirror, once a benign object of casual glance, transforms into a cruel judge, casting a distorted image that never aligns with the reality perceived by others. Despite the relentless shedding of weight, the insidious feeling of being 'not enough' persists, gnawing incessantly at the core of self-worth and identity.

Anorexia isolates, drawing an invisible yet unyielding line between oneself and those who offer love and concern. Social gatherings, once sources of joy and companionship, become laden with dread. The fear of judgment and the compulsion to conceal one's struggles erect barriers, rendering it increasingly difficult for others to reach out and provide solace.

The physical toll is immense. Energy levels plummet, and tasks that once seemed trivial become exhausting endeavors. Hair thins, skin pales, and a persistent coldness invades the bones, irrespective of the weather. The body, in its silent plea for nourishment, begins to falter, prioritizing vital functions over the everyday activities that once brought pleasure and fulfillment.

Emotionally, the struggle is equally profound. Anorexia whispers deceitful lies, convincing the sufferer that their worth is inexorably tied to their ability to suppress hunger. It thrives on perfectionism and fear, leaving scant room for joy or spontaneity. The rigid rules and rituals surrounding food create a false sense of safety, even as they erode both health and happiness.

The path to recovery from anorexia is a journey that demands immense courage and unwavering support. It involves challenging deeply ingrained beliefs, confronting fears, and gradually rebuilding a healthy relationship with food and one's body. It requires learning to trust the body's signals, rediscovering the simple pleasures of eating, and finding new ways to cope with life's myriad challenges.

Most importantly, recovery is about reclaiming one's life from the tenacious grip of a disorder that thrives on silence and secrecy. It is about reconnecting with oneself and others, finding strength in vulnerability, and embracing the possibility of a future where food is seen as nourishment, not an enemy, and where one's worth is recognized beyond the numbers on a scale.

——————————————————————————

Living with anorexia has been a most arduous journey, fraught with the ceaseless turmoil of mind and body. It began innocently enough, a mere desire to sculpt a healthier version of myself. Yet, what commenced as a simple endeavor to improve swiftly morphed into an all-consuming obsession, a pernicious fixation upon food, weight, and the visage that stared back from the looking glass.

In the early days, I found solace in the perceived control over my diet, a semblance of order in an otherwise chaotic existence. But soon, each repast became a harrowing ordeal, each morsel a battle against the relentless voice within that whispered of inadequacy and unworthiness. The mirror, once a tool of self-reflection, transformed into a merciless arbiter, casting a distorted image that no measure of deprivation seemed to ameliorate.

As the weeks turned to months, my loved ones grew increasingly alarmed, their concern palpable in their furrowed brows and whispered conversations. Social gatherings, once a source of joy, became laden with dread, and I withdrew into the solitude that anorexia demanded. Isolation became my companion, feeding the insidious belief that I was in control even as my body withered and my spirit dimmed.

The day of reckoning arrived abruptly, as such days often do. My body, taxed beyond endurance, succumbed to the strain. I collapsed, and the world around me blurred into a cacophony of alarms and urgent voices. The hospital's sterile walls and the grave expressions of the medical practitioners laid bare the perilous state of my existence. My organs, they said, were failing; I was teetering on the precipice of oblivion.

During my convalescence, I was compelled to confront the stark reality of my affliction. The dedicated efforts of physicians, nurses, my family, and compassionate therapists brought me to a sobering epiphany. I had been ensnared by a malady that threatened not only my physical being but my very soul. It was a revelation both terrifying and liberating.

The path to recovery has been strewn with obstacles, each day a testament to the resilience of the human spirit. The struggle to reframe my relationship with sustenance, to see food as a source of nourishment rather than an adversary, is a labor of Herculean proportions. Therapy has been my steadfast ally, guiding me through the labyrinth of my psyche, helping me unearth the roots of my disorder and cultivate healthier means of coping.

Yet, despite the progress marked, the specter of anorexia is ever-present, a shadow that lingers at the edges of my consciousness. Stress and upheaval can rekindle the old fears, the pernicious thoughts that once held me captive. But I am bolstered by the unwavering support of those who love me and the strategies gleaned through relentless introspection. I am resolved to persevere, to continue my voyage towards health and self-acceptance, even amidst the tempest.

Living with anorexia has been a harrowing odyssey, a trial that has tested the very fabric of my being. But it has also imparted invaluable lessons in self-compassion and fortitude. Though I still wrestle with the remnants of this affliction, I do so with the knowledge that I am not alone. Each step forward, however tentative, is a triumph of the spirit, a declaration of my intent to reclaim my life from the clutches of this insidious disorder.

[a-typical]

It is worth noting that the main players in the recomposition project are women—scientists, anthropologists, lawyers, architects. Educated women, who have the privilege to devote their efforts to righting a wrong. They’ve given prominent space in their professional careers to changing the current system of death. Katrina noted that “humans are so focused on preventing aging and decay—it’s become an obsession. And for those who have been socialized female, that pressure is relentless. So decomposition becomes a radical act. It’s a way to say, ‘I love and accept myself.’ ”

I agree with Katrina here. Women’s bodies are so often under the purview of men, whether it’s our reproductive organs, our sexuality, our weight, our manner of dress. There is a freedom found in decomposition, a body rendered messy, chaotic, and wild. I relish this image when visualizing what will become of my future corpse.

When deathcare became an industry in the early twentieth century, there was a seismic shift in who was responsible for the dead. Caring for the corpse went from visceral, primeval work performed by women to a “profession,” an “art,” and even a “science,” performed by well-paid men. The corpse, with all its physical and emotional messiness, was taken from women. It was made neat and clean, and placed in its casket on a pedestal, always just out of our grasp.

Maybe a process like recomposition is our attempt to reclaim our corpses. Maybe we wish to become soil for a willow tree, a rosebush, a pine—destined in death to both rot and nourish on our own terms.

— From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death, Caitlin Doughty

[nachodroppedfood]

HEYYYY ITS MAN FROM THE FLASK INFODUMP TIME YIPPEEEE THIS IS GOING TO BE INCREDIBLY LONG AND KINDA INCOHERENT!!!

SO! Homunculus first. He's basically like,,,, OKAY i am GOING to need to explain something else before getting to him. And that is:Nightfalls.

Basically in the setting of MftF, there are these creatures called shadows, and they are like normal shadows except, they are alive. They can move around at night but are rendered immobile when day comes. They do minor damage and are kinda easy to dispel, however they tend to mindlessly 'hunt' in groups. However, if they come across something inorganic that has been imbued with magic (also known as AMM, abiotic magical material), they tend to get amalgamated a bit. See, the shadows are not creatures, they're more like the closest thing anyone has ever gotten to creating life solely out of AMM, so they're essentially clouds of VERY fine black powder. Cool? Cool.

Anyway when they come across more AMM, it kinda fucks with their magic and fuses them together. This is what is referred to as a nightfall. The AMM that fused them together is absorbed and stored at their center, most of the time, and is referred to as their core. Damage the core enough and you defeat the nightfall.

Homunculus was originally created with material from the body of a dead nightfall(they get a more physical form when fused together, they actually have 'flesh' of sorts that's kinda like putty but more gooey). A character called the Unnamed Alchemist is the person who took the material, and decided to try to mix it with plant matter and his own blood and meat/bones from livestock and hunted creatures, since organic material is inherently imbued with magic.

The experiment was carried on in secret for months, the Unnamed Alchemist knowing that if his mentor found out what he was doing, he'd go off on his whole spiel of 'how he was young and a prodigy at alchemy but that doesn't mean he should go against the rules. No making things alive(It's what originally created the shadows--which are huge pests-- and in turn, nightfalls-- which are VERY dangerous since they hunt down everything that moves with shocking speed) and'- you can see why he wouldn't want to get this lecture all over again. So he continued 'feeding' the flask of nightfall-flesh-plant-stuff. The... homunculus :)

Eventually, he became more and more obsessed with it and more and more paranoid that he'd be found out which CAN'T HAPPEN I'M ON THE PRECIPICE OF A HUGE ALCHEMICAL DISCOVERY OR SOMETHING HERE!! But eventually he just decided FUCK IT IM LEAVING I'M IN TOO MUCH DANGER. (he wasn't. literally no one knew about any of this. to everyone else, he was just losin it for SEEMINGLY NO RWEASON AND PUSHING EVERYONE AWAY WHY-)

So, one stormy night, he left. Climbed out of the window of his little dorm at the house he lived in with his mentor and just- left, in too much of a paranoid rush to bring anything with him other than the clothes on his back and the sealed flask containing his homunculus. In his rush away into the forests of the foothills where he used to live, he slipped on some mud and took a bit of a tumble to the bottom of it.

But, by the time he was at the bottom of the hill, a few seconds later, he was no longer human.

The flask that carried the homunculus was a strong tempered glass, but by the time these events took place, the material in the flask had actually eaten away at the glass, making it fragile. So, it shattered, and the Unnamed Alchemist was engulfed by his creation. This is the event that led to Homunculus(the character) forming in the first place.

Homunculus is an entirely new creation. He doesn't really have any memories of his past life as the UA... except what he sees in his dreams and nightmares. He knows that he wasn't like this, like his current body and self before he first woke up as himself. He thinks that the UA did this to him intentionally and doesn't have the full story. So, he sets out on a journey to try and find him through hints given to him in his hazy dreams.

However... you know how the homunculus(flask) was made from material from a nightfall? Material that is only "alive" and moving through AMM? And how nightfalls have cores that form around the magic that fused the shadows it consists of together? Well, Homunculus(character) has a core of flesh, both because of the things the flask was fed and because the flask homunculus engulfed the UA because, at its core(hah), it was a nightfall. Well... turns out that the mixture of AMM and organic material is unstable, and does not really mix. The only reason the stuff in the flask existed for so long was because of the enclosed space of the flask itself.

Anyway, over the course of the story, Homunculus deteriorates. First, it manifested as his dreams slowly becoming more distressing(and uncovering more of the truth about his existence), then as him physically deteriorating. By that I mean he uh. Let's just say He didn't know he actually had any sort of blood in his head until it came leaking out of his face as it started to fall apart and melt. Like he knew he got a soft skeleton and some dysfunctional organs in the rest of his body. But he thought his head was just. Blobby stuff. ANyway. He sticks around long enough to find out his own backstory and it's like severely scarring and stuff on him but ye!.

This is already suuuper long so I'll have to cover Wirm in another infodump so ye!!!!

Oh btw Homunculus pronouns is he/they <3!

WOWOWWWWWWEWOIEUADJWD

[idanwyn-et-al]

(XIV||22-27): Hail.

(Continued from here.) (♪)  

The heaviest sin to bear, of course, was putting her family at risk. House Bale had always been an unusual one, largely keeping its noble status through its ability to produce an Azure Dragoon every few generations. Her father’s brother, Alberic Bale, was one such; his adopted son, Estinien Varlineau, did not claim the rights of her House, but he had no need to. His merits stood on their own.

Perhaps some of her strength was derived from prideful competition with her cousin; they had been close in their youth, the feisty red-headed middle child and the orphan fosterling getting up to largely-harmless mischief in the Pillars.

Anne-Sophie doubted Estinien would be present at her trial; he was far too busy elsewhere with the Warrior of Light; someone that she also knew as the Warrior of Darkness. That heretical knowledge again; she had travelled to places only that vaunted Warrior was supposed to go. Another world; the First Shard. Instead of taking pride in a daughter of Ishgard devising her own independent method of travelling there, she was condemned.

--Previously, in the North Shroud, just outside of Fallgourd Float:--

"Once upon a time---because that is how all such tales start---there was a young noble, born into a minor Ishgardian House. Were it not for said House's ability to produce Azure Dragoons from time to time, they would likely long have fallen out of favor. This House, you see, holds its words in high esteem; suos cultores scientia coronat." The fire opal earrings and signet ring she wears glowed softly in the shade at those words. "Knowledge crowns those who seek her, it means. And this House fervently sought said crown. Knowledge deemed heretical was squirreled away in libraries; a country estate, too, now an icy ruin, but once a bastion of life. But this daughter of House Bale, though she was dutiful, sought another world; one where ceaseless conflict didn't plague her every moment. A land of dreams, of perpetual spring. Il Mheg, she learned it was called; from the faerie tales she consumed like a wildfire from her earliest days."

She paused here, listening to the gentle susurrations of the wind, checking in with her captive audience.

Rae-Hann closed his eyes as he listened, the better to focus on the words and not the oft-oppressive presence of the woods. He knew at least how much stock Ishgardians put into their houses from the little time he lived here, so that made well enough sense. However, he opens one eye as he hears a familiar name, half troubled yet half...well, still curious. "An Eorzean who knew of Il Mheg? I'll admit that was not exactly what I was expecting."

"You have read the tales, too? Then this is made much simpler!" Oppressive though these woods may be, she was either not sensitive to such things, or too focused on them as a place of refuge to allow the doubts to creep in. "Our Mystic Knight, having served her tours in the Dragonsong War, became...focused, she would say, whereas others may rightly call it obsessed with this Il Mheg. The possibility of this world not being an old tale, but a world in sooth!" Here, she closed her eyes and held her arms wide, then let them fall back to center as her eyes opened once more. "This image drove our Mystic Knight. And...she found it. Through dreams, and a faerie of her own coaxed from the ruins of Nym, she made a connection. Time and time again she tried to go, but she failed. Rituals are like that; one little leaf of furymint starts to turn, and the whole thing is rendered useless." Here, she exhaled sharply from her lower lip, sending a ripple through her copper hair. "But our Knight was determined. She found a way there. And...here, you will think me mad, but...our Knight was correct. There *was* a whole other world, and Il Mheg but a sliver of it! Beauty that defies words, but...sadness, too." She paused again, her eyes on the middle distance for a moment before looking to "R'hahn".

He actually laughed at the comment of finding her mad, as that is the general reaction he himself faces whenever mentioning the stuff of dreams. "Maybe it is a sort of madness, that which drives those who chase dreams. That does not make it wrong, however." He considered this for a long moment, but realized that she is implying she found her own way to his world. Some way wholly separate from the event that had brought his own band of Eorzeans there . Curious. "So... she was there, in truth?" he said slowly, not wanting to assume. "Not just in dream or in spirit alone?"

Anne-Sophie, for the second time that evening, found herself relieved. If he was going to think her mad and turn her over to the Inquisitors, he was doing an excellent job of hiding it. "She was, our Knight. Nearly drowned in the waters that had previously drowned the Kingdom of Voeburt...a name that she had not learned of in her tales, yet nevertheless recognized, somehow. Our Knight and her heavy pack made peace with the Pixies---a peace negotiated largely by the Nymian faerie, who has since..." she faltered, but picked herself up and carried on. "Who has since left our Knight. But all of these tales are...secondary. What is the cause of our Knight's heresy? You see, in Ishgard, a great column of aether opened from her tower in the Pillars. In fact, this happened twice; nine days apart, almost to the bell. When the first gate opened, our Knight left this star behind; when it opened again, she returned...and missed her mark, it should be said, crashing into the gardens below. But for our Knight, it had been just over two years. Subtle though it was, she had aged slightly upon her inglorious return to Ishgard; a quandary, wouldn't you agree?"

Rae-Hann recalled the lake in the mountains, a place he'd only had the misfortune of seeing twice despite having desired to visit so many times before that. He rubbed at his chin thoughtfully. "Well, you were lucky that your little friend was able to help you broker said peace because many that enter that place never leave. Even luckier still that those of the water didn't get to you first." Yet, it was with a rather mulish huff that he returned his full attention to Anne-Sophie. "I do find myself slightly vexed that an Ishgardian noble finds a way to travel from Norvrandt and back so completely, and yet I had to seek help from a -different- Ishgardian for a job done half as well. But, alas, nothing to be done about that now. I'm not entirely sure why three years there would equate to only nine days here, though, so yes, that is rather a quandary. Perhaps something did go wrong somewhere in your fumblings."

"Oh, it certainly must have been a miscalculation on my end. Even accounting for the path that the Warrior of Light and Darkness blazed through the rift, the beacon I placed within my mirror should have been absolute. And yet, by my calculations, I was thrown off by that very same esteemed personage's passage through..." she trailed off mid-theorem, stepping back a pace. "Not R'hahn. *Rae-Hann*. Wicked white, you're a *Mystel*?!" Sometimes, the scholarly knight managed to connect a few dots, even if the ink between said dots left her spluttering and smudged. "But...no, that....and your friend, with the souls, and....Norvrandt, yes, that's not written down anywhere, or at least it wasn't until they returned, hailing from the First Shard, and...and..." she sputtered to silence, utterly flummoxed.

The Mystel hummed. He'd heard rumors that the Warrior of Darkness had been from another world, though he hadn't put too much stock in it. From his little corner of Norvrandt, fact very rarely survived the changing of hands. Either way, it didn’t matter overmuch, as Anne-Sophie seemed to have come to a realization or two. "I knew you'd get there eventually. Yes, I am a mystel, not that I get to use that term much anymore." He tilted his head to the side then. "What wasn't written down, though? 'Norvrandt'? A bit strange that they would only name Il Mheg unless perhaps the tales were written by someone who perhaps saw the place in a pixie-given dream? It's possible, I suppose..."

Anne-Sophie was unable to reply sensically. "I...can I touch your hand?" she blurted out.

"Hmmm." Normally he was the one asking for people's hands, and yet this is the second time in as many weeks that it's the inverse. Still, Rae held out one gloved hand. "All right."

"I am going to draw my sword. This was supposed to figure into the next part of the 'faerie tale'," she put a little lilt on the words, sarcastic in nature, "but my Fury's Looking-Glass was a key part of my journey to your world. It serves as something of a focus for me. Do you allow this?"

"My previous comment of not wanting to be stabbed still stands, but so long as we're clear on that then I am fine with this." Probably. Hopefully. Rae was supposed to be working on the whole 'blindly agreeing to everything for curiosity's sake', but... Well. He wasn't very good at that.

The Mystic Knight was content to take the words as given, though she sensed his reservations. "No stabbing; terrible way to use a sword, anyroad." With reassurances thus offered, she drew Glass from its swordbelt. The sword hovered in the air, point towards the earth, as her hands released it. "Mirror, mirror, standing tall; share with me his aether's call." She took Rae-Hann's hand, and Glass completed one deosil rotation around the pair. All things considered, the rite was completed very quickly; under thirty heartbeats. As Glass displayed a telescopic image of Rae-Hann on the forest floor, some six ilms tall, Anne-Sophie spoke. "Curious...though your attunement to earth aether is strong enough to spark levin between its isles...there is but a void, dominating all. And Glass shows you..diminished, somehow."

She released his hand, and Glass returned to its place at her hip, singing through the air as it moved. "Yet you do not appear...lesser, in any way. Tell me, as a native of Norvrandt...how do you feel, here? And how did you come to be here? And what was the First like before the Light subsumed it? And what was it called before only Norvrandt remained? And..." she trailed off, stepping back. "M-my apologies. You were correct; when there is silence, someone will often opt to fill it with questions and chatter."

Rae shrugged as he flexed his hand briefly before crossing his arms. "The ambient aether here was overwhelming at first. Even after becoming accustomed to it, I still find myself tiring easily. I thought that merely a symptom of past maladies, but an aetherologist seems to think it due to the sparseness of mine aether." He took a moment to mull over the many questions before continuing. "However, I was born after the Flood, so I cannot say much as to what it was before. My family was not even from the continent. It's by chance that they were there in the years just prior." As for how he came to be here... "Well, the 'levin' aether you sense is, presumably, the remnants of the one who brought me here. Though, I don't mind sharing if you're truly interested."

"I...I would really love to hear it. Rae-Hann, yes? I did catch the glottal stop correctly this time?"

"Yes, that's correct," he affirmed with a nod. And from there he... stopped. Oh no, now he actually had to try and explain everything. Rae made a face as he tried to decide where to even begin. "I'm not much for storytelling, but I'll try to make it as comprehensible as possible without boring you with extraneous detail. Firstly, I had a device in my possession, meant to heal much as an aetherial healer would. However, it was eventually augmented with machinery, and tied into my own aether as well as that of a pixie's. The ‘why’ isn't exactly important anymore, but it could connect aether and dreams between there and here. When it accidentally pulled the souls of several Eorzeans to Norvrandt while they slept, I wondered if it could similarly allow me to visit this place in my own sleep. It did, and I spent quite near a year visiting in such a fashion."

He lifted a hand to tap at his chest, just below the collar bone. "I met someone on one of those visits. A witch, you could say. After one poor deal later, I realized I'd given her possession of my soul. I carry her still, so that when I die she takes my aether. Seeing as I'd already made one deal, what could another harm? So, I gathered her more aether from here and there, and in exchange she would make for me a body with which my dreaming soul could be placed. Or rather, her partner who had researched Allagan cloning made the body, and she is the one who dealt with transferring my aether safely. So, here I am, in a rented body, I suppose. It's done me well enough." He shrugged as his story concluded. "And... that's about it really. It's fairly straightforward."

Anne-Sophie drank his words in like a plant seeking the barest hint of rain. "By the Fury...your aether seems weak not because of your place of origin, but because you are a Dreamer." She reached out towards him once more, then let her questing hand fall.

"Hm! I hadn't thought of that, but it is very possible indeed." He nodded, glancing back briefly to the mushrooms as he thought this over. When he looked back, he canted his head to the side, bemused at her outstretched hand.

"Your body in Norvrandt; what has become of it?"

"I left it in Il Mheg, funnily enough. There was an amaro that kept following me around... I did tell it to not stick around after I fell asleep, but I honestly couldn't say what happened after for, ah, the obvious reason of being technically dead, I guess."

"Technically...technically dead! And with the Amaro! Those who remember my knight...oh, Oberic, I pray mirth lightens your vigil!" Her throat released a sound that was somewhere between a sob and a laugh. "I am sorry...it is just...all along, you said you were from across the sea, and...I had never expected said sea to be the Rift.” She continued, start-stopping her words; she was more reluctant to share another’s story than she was her own. “There is another like me, by the by...an Ishgardian who found herself in the First, and worked as a Crystarium guard. Sawyer Reeves. We met by chance...both there, and here."

Unsurprisingly, Rae-Hann didn't recognize the name of the enstoned knight, nor that of the other Ishgardian. Still, he drummed his fingers along his arm. "Hm. Two of my wayward Eorzeans were also Ishgardian, and another from Tailfeather. I almost half wonder if those from the area are more predisposed to phenomena involving the two."

"It might be, Rae. Because, you see," she took on her Scholasticate manner once more, "for those of us from Ishgard...we have ever sought the 'lived happily ever after'." Her lips pursed into a moue before she continued. "There are many parallels between Voeburt and Ishgard, too. Rak'tika and the Shroud; Amh Araeng and Thanalan and Gyr Abania, both. Nothing so neat and pat as to be perfect, but...reflections. Eulmore, even, reflects the fatuous nature of Limsans that fancy themselves nobility." She took a relieved breath, and concluded, "But I have ended the tale of our fair Knight, for now. She learned that the happily ever after is what you make of it. And so she returned like a comet, striking the earth, recovering from it for a full season or two."

Rae-Hann grinned at that, though without mirth. "Yes, it was fascinating to see how similar they all are despite their differences. Though, the other that told me that the worlds are but reflections seemed bent on the notion that only my own was the reflection. That this here is in fact the source of the reflection, hence its name. Might I ask what your view on that would be?"

She stepped back. "I do not have enough data points to determine a proper response to your question, Rae-Hann. By your own admission, you have curious points in your aetherial makeup that can be attributed to the one who gave you physical form, yes?"

He tilted his head to the side, bemused, but didn't press the matter. Eventually, he nodded. "That is true. Wouldn't do for her to lose track of me, after all. Are you saying that the fact that aether from both places can coexist would have a bearing on which point is true or not?"

"I am of the opinion that there is but one place that all originated from, and it is not even the Source; at least not as we know it. This theorem is heretical, even among the progressive minds of Ishgard." Anne-Sophie lifted her hands in a shrug, amused resignation playing across her foxlike features in the fading sunlight. "If I am going to be taken in for heresy...let them hear the full extent of my bizarre theories. Though I be found guilty, the words will lead those who walk after."

"So, you would posit that the Source is in fact... not the true source at all? Heretical or not, it is rather interesting." After considering this further, Rae arched a brow. "Mind if I ask why you believe that, though?"

She introduced her answer more like a professor leading a lecture than a peer; something that she was too awkward to notice as irritating at best, insufferable at worst. Using a bracelet with a shell-shaped gem as its sole ornament, she described her theory; that the shards were strung as a bracelet about some unknowable wrist, the chain between each bead a small portal that connected the worlds. In truth, Anne-Sophie had reached this conclusion by reading the works of much sharper minds than her own. From time to time, her wayward foster cousin Estinien would send her some treatise or the other that his companions were working on, and she devoured each one.

When she’d concluded her lesson, Rae ran his hand over his face, ears flicking backward as he filed what he’d learned away for later. Things to chew on after having some time to think on them, to consider over tea or something. He frowned, then spoke. “Knowledge does have its consequences. Though I am surprised that is what would cause Ishgard to pursue you to such an extent. I was more expecting... horrific experiments or something, not theory and knowledge." He paused. "I'm no oracle, so I couldn't say as to what will happen in the future, of course."

At length, the Mystic Knight stepped back, and offered him an awkward little bow in gratitude. "Keep the bracelet, petty a token as it is. Knowledge crowns those who seek her...and we risk much in seeking that crown. They have, ah." She frowned, then specified who ‘they’ were. "My House has suffered much for my reach. But I never conducted any horrific experiments; at least, not by your measure, nor mine. I am wanted because I sought another world, and found it. In so doing, I did make the Holy See of Ishgard aetherically vulnerable; twice, in nine days, actually.

Rae-Hann glanced back down to the bracelet with a nod. "Petty? Perhaps. Though I will find a use for it." When he looks back to her, Rae swivels one ear forward at her words. "I've never been one to get in the way of one with the ambition to bring their dreams to fruition, so there's little reason I would report your location to the Holy See. However, I do believe you are likely not safe here. This is the main means of travel between Ishgard and Gridania, after all."

"You are...quite correct, Rae-Hann. I have been made, as they say, twice in a sennight."

The Mystel sighed once more, turning his gaze to the heavens. "Ah. Stars above. How are you still a free woman? I'm not surprised that someone else has already spotted you. You haven't exactly made much effort to avoid public places, and you're fairly recognizable when compared to those posters they've got posted in the city. Who knows how far they've distributed those, as well."

"I actually was spotted. Before you did, I mean. By Baron Rosaire, as it happens!" She laughed; it had the tinge of exhausted madness to it. "Ahhh. And, at the end, he decided that my heresy was not meet with the current orthodoxy. What do you think, Rae-Hann? Was my crime worthy of Witchdrop? Ah...that is, being shoved over the edge of a cliff, left to fall to my death for heresy."

"A man of some common sense, from the sounds of it. I'd thought Ishgard was reevaluating its stance on heresy these days. Hm." At the mention of Witchdrop, his eyes glazed over. Right. "Yes, I know the place. But, no, I do not think that an appropriate response in this situation. If anything, what you really need to some proper sleep."

"Sleep! Yes. I do. I enjoy the Bobbing Cork, and its inn rooms immune to the orthodoxy. In a few moons, I will be on trial, and I will confess that I created a portal to your world for my own personal gain. My obsession that led to discovery. If...if you can find it in your heart to advocate for me, I would appreciate it. Futhermore, my trial aside...full glad am I that you avoided Witchdrop, and would like to know more about you. Possibly too much more. And...next time, I will buy you the meal of your choosing."

He blinked. "Advocate for you... If you think it would help, I don't see why not. I haven't been to Ishgard in some time, so that will make for an excuse to do so." His expression brightened at her offer. "Ah, but I could never turn down a free meal. You've an interesting mind, so I could see myself taking the opportunity to see what else is hanging about in there. Try not to get into too much trouble until then, though, hm?"

"I will...actually try to not. I am ashamed that I was so easily spotted, twice in a sennight. I think...I will spend one more night here, then retreat to the Gyshal's Greens until my summons take effect." She fiddled with Glass’s crossguard. "I have to ask, for personal interest. Are you lonely, here, in this world? This bead of the bracelet around the wrist none of us chose to adorn?"

Rae-Hann nodded, apparently satisfied with this place. However, as he turned to make his way back toward Fallgourd, he stopped in his tracks. He really didn't have to answer that, but... "No. Not here. Not anymore." With that, Rae shrugged before making his way back up the trail.

Anne-Sophie remained behind for half a bell longer, looking upon the fungi on the boulder. Now that night had fallen, their spots and gills emitted a faint glow. Life sprung from a stone. In time, she returned to her inn room and slept a dreamless sleep.

((Thanks again to @yokasaris for the awesome RP that spawned today's and yesterday's posts!))

(Continued here!)

[berattelse]

It is worth noting that the main players in the recomposition project are women -- scientists, anthropologists, lawyers, architects. Educated women, who have the privilege to devote their efforts to righting a wrong. They've given prominent space in their professional careers to changing the current system of death. Katrina noted that "humans are so focused on preventing aging and decay -- it's become an obsession. And for those who have been socialized female, that pressure is relentless. So decomposition becomes a radical act. It's a way to say, 'I love and accept myself.'" I agree with Katrina here. Women's bodies are so often under the purview of men, whether it's our reproductive organs, our sexuality, our weight, our manner of dress. There is a freedom found in decomposition, a body rendered messy, chaotic, and wild. I relish this image when visualizing what will become of my future corpse. When deathcare became an industry in the early twentieth century, there was a seismic shift in who was responsible for the dead. Caring for the corpse went from visceral, primeval work performed by women to a "profession," an "art," and even a "science," performed by well-paid men. The corpse, with all its physical and emotional messiness, was taken from women. It was made neat and clean, and placed in its casket on a pedestal, always just out of our grasp. Maybe a process like recomposition is our attempt to reclaim our corpses. Maybe we wish to become soil for a willow tree, a rosebush, a pine -- destined in death to both rot and nourish on our own terms.

Doughty, Caitlin. From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death. W. W. Norton & Company, 2017.

[joniebaek]

[female she/her] Welcome to Aurora Bay, [JONIE BAEK]! I couldn’t help but notice you look an awful lot like [IM JINAH]. You must be the [THIRTY THREE] year old [EX-CHILD ACTRESS]. Word is you're [STEADFAST] but can also be a bit [STUBBORN] and your favorite song is [SUNDAY MORNING BY THE VELVET UNDERGROUND]. I also heard you’ll be staying in [CRYSTAL COVE CONDOMINIUMS]. I’m sure you’ll love it!

pinterest. [ciara, 25, bst/gmt, she/her].

Tw emotional/financial abuse

Jonie Baek was born into the glitzy, high-pressure world of Hollywood. From a young age, she was thrown into the spotlight by her overbearing father, an unsuccessful actor who lived vicariously through her. Jonie’s mother, a famous director, facilitated Jonie's early acting career to appease her father and was just glad to not be hearing nonstop complaining about his unsuccessful career anymore. Jonie, a people-pleaser by nature, went along with their plans fitted with immense pressure to succeed. This relentless pursuit of fame led to significant mental health issues.

Despite her struggles, Jonie became a recognisable child actress, starring in several TV shows and movies. However, by the age of 20, she could no longer endure the demands of her career and decided to disappear from the industry. She fled to London, wanting a fresh start. Jonie dabbled in teaching acting classes, but her lack of passion (and talent for that matter) for the craft rendered her ineffective as a teacher. She also tried her hand at writing, producing a debut book that fictionalised her childhood in the industry. While the book garnered some attention, it wasn’t actually all that good and she stopped doing that too.

She attempted painting, but her works lacked depth. She ventured into photography, only to find her skills were mediocre at best. Graphic design, jewellery making, and even a brief stint as a musician followed, but none of these pursuits worked out. Defeated, embarrassed, Jonie relocated to Manchester, hoping to carve out a more conventional life away from her past.

At 27, tragedy struck when Jonie's mother passed away, leaving her a substantial inheritance. Her father, divorced from Jonie's mother and still obsessed with controlling his daughter's life, pressured Jonie to let him move to Manchester, eager to exploit her newfound wealth. He did, leaving Jonie feeling trapped once again in that little house with him, so she took the inheritance and set off to travel with no particular destination.

A month into her travels, Jonie found herself pregnant after a hookup. She continued to travel, anxiety growing, until accepting her child needed stability. Jonie returned to Manchester just before giving birth to her daughter, Jackie. The oppressive presence of her father made living in Manchester unbearable, as he continued to guilt her for abandoning him and traveling. When he died suddenly shortly after Jonie turned 32, she saw it as a chance to start anew.

Determined to provide Jackie with a happy and stable upbringing, and still grieving the complicated death of her mother and now father, Jonie used the remainder of her inheritance to move to Aurora Bay, a place far removed from her past. Here, she hopes to build a new life, free from the shadows of her father's expectations and her own failed pursuits. Though unsure of her future, Jonie wants to create a loving and peaceful environment for her daughter, finally prioritising her own happiness and well-being.

Extrassssss

Moved to Aurora Bay at the end of July.

Has Jackie in lots of clubs/after school activities&holiday clubs because Jonie needs to focus on what she's doing with her life. Right now that amount to wandering around the town aimlessly. So productive

Can come off as rude/standoffish but she's just straight to the point! (or that's what she says)

Will run if you mention her flop of a writing career

@aurorabayaesthetic

[athis333]

I was recently awoken in the night by lions, their eyes glaring in the dark from blunt rectangular faces as they stalked bison through an ancient, arid grassland. As I came to, however, I realised I was not about to be eaten alive. This was simply one of the perils of spending too much time looking at images of cave art on the web.

Cave artists could do it all. The faces of the animals they painted are exquisite portraits, while their bodies are rendered in perfect perspective. But wait – weren’t these supposed to be the great achievements of European art? After all, in his classic study The Story of Art, EH Gombrich tells how western art took off when the ancient Greeks learned how to show movement, that the perspective was discovered in 15th-century Europe, and that the communication of sensation rather than the seen was the gift of the impressionists. Gombrich had probably not seen much cave art. Lascaux, a series of caves in the French Dordogne, was a recent discovery when he published his book in 1950 – and Chauvet, also in France, wouldn’t be found until 1994.

“Since Lascaux,” Picasso is supposed to have said after he saw the famous ice age cave paintings in 1940, “we have invented nothing.” Sadly, the quote is hard to source. But he should have said it, because it fits the insight that pervades his work, with its appetite for influences from ancient Iberian statuettes to African masks. Namely, that art’s story is not a trajectory of ascent, but more of a looping spiral, constantly retracing its steps.

When the pandemic started, the Guardian switched its Masterclasses online and challenged me, one of its tutors, to come up with a theme. “OK,” I thought. “What about a virtual trip through the whole of art history?” But, like Picasso, I got stuck at the very beginning. And Picasso had a point: the more you look at images from the walls of Lascaux and Chauvet, the more you realise art really has invented nothing since those days at the end of the ice age.

It is hard to take in how comprehensively these ancient artists anticipated the future. It takes time to fully absorb this – say, a year in and occasionally out of lockdown. I’ve visited, in the flesh, some of the most spectacular caves: Cougnac, Pech Merle, Niaux. But, in the past 12 months, I have conducted an online odyssey into both the caves I’ve been to and those I’ll probably never see. (Chauvet and Lascaux are permanently closed while others can be reached only by experienced divers.) In that time, I have come to fully appreciate the stunning nature of this primordial creativity.

Cave art makes art history pretty much obsolete. That tale of upward ascent – of European masters gradually mastering reality, from the Parthenon frieze to the eyes of Rembrandt – is simply not true. It turns out that perspective, shading, movement and expressiveness are not, after all, hard-won western discoveries. Rather, they are part of the toolkit of the human mind.

How does ice age art reveal this? We – homo sapiens – evolved in Africa no more than 300,000 years ago. There is evidence of art, potentially even paintings, in South Africa up to 100,000 years ago. Then, 30,000 years ago, a stunningly accomplished artistic culture exploded on to the scene, at least according to what we have been able to find. This took place in the most recent of Earth’s ice ages, a time when Europe was anything but hospitable. Yet cave art shows why humans migrated there: to hunt mammoth, rhinoceros, hippopotamus and deer. The tradition of cave painting continued up to the end of that ice age, about 10,000 years ago.

To get this in perspective, the Great Pyramid at Giza dates from 4,600 years ago; the Parthenon sculptures from 2,650 years ago; the plaques from the Oba’s palace in Benin from up to 600 years ago; Hokusai’s Great Wave from two centuries ago. Cave art exists on a different time scale – so different that art historians tend to discount it, leaving its significance to evolutionary scientists. They’re wrong. For this art contains the key to a more human and complete story of art.

If ice age people who hunted and foraged and had no concept of literacy could draw and paint like Leonardo da Vinci, that leaves the narrative of art as an ascent towards noting but perfection. In fact, ice age artists had a lot in common with the Renaissance genius. For one thing, they shared an obsession with depicting animals. The joy of exploring cave art in lockdown, online and in books, was to see all these creatures closely: lions stalking bison, an engraving of an owl, a relief of a pike, a painting of a duck on a pole. One of my favourites is a charcoal drawing of a flatfish, about 1.5 metres long, in La Pileta cave in Andalusia. You can see its curious turned-over face, that touching evolutionary evidence that plaice and sole adapted from vertically swimming fish, flipping over their bodies to live on the seabed.

So here is a recently evolved homo sapiens depicting a strikingly evolved fellow animal. That’s what makes cave art so entrancing: it records the moment consciousness makes an entrance. Before 33,000 years ago, all our evidence of the natural world comes from fossils, which reveal the story of life from single-celled creatures to dinosaurs to mammals. Then suddenly humans appear – and they are doing portraits. As a consequence, the extinct animals of the ice age don’t only exist as fossils, or frozen remains from Siberia. They also live in art.

If depiction is not a slowly accumulated skill, built up by western artists over the centuries, but rather something that came naturally to the first humans, then art’s history cannot be a progress or ascent. Instead, it is story of choices. And a lot of those have to do with identity. Egyptian art, Aztec art and the sculptures of Easter Island all show strong powers of observation, but choose to embed that eye for reality within a formalised “style”.

Style exists to define – from the national to the religious, right down to the level of personal identity. We’re ancient Egyptians and we walk sideways with our faces turned – got a problem with that? Cave art has stylistic traits, too. Hand prints keep recurring, along with red dots and geometrical patterns. As well as pointing to all the ways later humans would use abstract symbols to define themselves, they look forward to modern art.

While my virtual cave art journey was fun, the real thing is unforgettable. A few years ago, my family and I visited Niaux, a painted cave in the Pyrenees. Niaux has a spectacular location, overlooking a mountain valley. The people who created the art it contains lived on the far side of the valley. They must have seen Niaux, across the divide, as a special place, akin to a temple or cathedral. Its imposing natural entrance, a soaring arch of overhanging stone, adds to its sacred aura.

To get to the art, you have to walk through long, sometimes narrow passages, lit only by your own helmet lamp. The artists of Niaux, we can deduce, did not intend the experience of seeing their art to be easy. After these passageways, you suddenly emerge into a grand, scary chamber, now called the Salon Noir. There on its walls are bison drawn in black charcoal – but with humanoid faces. They are mythic beasts, the ancestors of Picasso’s Minotaur.

When we emerged from the cave, our taxi hadn’t turned up. The site was closing and our phones weren’t working. But we weren’t worried. Maybe, echoing one theory about cave artists, we were high on oxygen deprivation. Or maybe this was one art pilgrimage that was worth getting stuck up a mountain for.

Across the planet, across the centuries, there are infinite varieties of art to look at and marvel over. But there is nothing better than this. That is why, with all the choice made possible online, I am continually drawn back to the cave.

[abovethissilentworld]

Autumn, 2010 Memory is often filled with the alluring filter of nostalgia that inks the experiences of day to day life from a quill dripping with pleasure. Even worse, this ink is difficult to remove. Memory is a fascinating creature that shapes itself around the craving of self-identity, so those unassuming, industrial days spent inside forced social institutions begin to emit the scent of roses and lavender by complete accident. There was never an autumn more poignant than the autumn of 2010. Tennis in gym class took place at these courts surrounded by the exclusively yellow leaves from shedding birches being sprayed in troves. That was around the time women became increasingly alluring and, yet, paradoxically intangible. The experience of those nascent hormones was as intoxicating as it was confusing, and just as I write this some thirteen years later, I feel exactly as trapped now as I did then. It’s that overlap between the glorious floral decay and blossoming expressions of youth overlapping at the exact same moment. I swear, every day I walked to school, I thirsted for the brisk frost and the still air awash with the scents of oak and maple. I was choked with the desire to love and its conflation with lust in my mind, and I found immediate romantic and sexual tangibility with most any woman who vaguely entered my midst whether I desired it or not. I felt like something important was about to happen, but I couldn’t yet know what it was. Music sounded richer, laughter held a tighter grip around my mind, and self-awareness suffered at their expense. It was a time for pure expression, the results of which were more often awkward and repellant than beautiful or inspirational.

I used to carry this staunch, fervent belief as a kid that the right woman for me would find me, that my capabilities in the world of dating were rendered completely inconsequential by my preconfiguration and that I would, indeed, find love eventually regardless of this. Yet, every day was an expectation that this could happen at any moment. It was clear that my obsession with my own desperation began this fateful autumn, well over a decade ago. It was neither entitlement nor escapism, it was the pure desire to experience myself outside of myself and through someone else instead. I sought the conclusion to the entire romantic process that I couldn’t participate in anyways, and in doing so, constructed a social and romantic identity that existed exclusively in my imagination.

I ruminate on this in search of the person I was then. This is not because I was any closer to my own pure self-identity then as opposed to now, but instead because I hold a desire to preserve the dissipating attachments to my own experiences as I age. I want to believe I was that same person through my memories, I want to feel that same suffering as an aspect of my own history. There’s only so much that can be held onto, though, without incurring a sombre backwards-evolution on one’s own emotional and psychological structures. I can’t let myself die. I look to my own memories of myself to keep myself alive.

Perhaps, then, I am equal parts a 14 year old, 6 year old and 27 year old, and every other age in-between, simultaneously. But I cannot think, see or feel anything now with the certainty that I used to be able to feel everything. That autumn in 2010 was a crucial point in my own self-understanding, where the limitlessness of heart-stricken desire turned into a pervasive war between beauty and hedonism, annihilating one to reach the other and vice versa.

But for all I write on this topic, I also realize I’m out of writing on this topic. I’m saddened by this absence of experiential perspective – perhaps adapting my mind to the mind of my teenage self is too exhausting and fundamentally limited in terms of complexity. Maybe I’m still that same kid, the kid who can’t outthink himself and simply waits for the world around him to catch up. Maybe I’m still those leaves, those hormones, those fleeting memories, those sugary lunches of nothing.

Maybe I’m not me at all. Maybe I miss being surrounded by people, by knowing and experiencing all that I liked and didn’t like, having a tangibility to a human existence otherwise alienated by my own self-perception. I should never have been this lonely, but I never knew how to integrate myself either. I’m lost in two worlds that I cannot exist in, and I miss those times when I didn’t actively have to chose between two parallel sufferings. The universality of love is undeniable unless you’re truly alone. At that point, the universality of the self risks gaining precedence, and after enough time, it becomes a logical inevitability.

The conquest of pure morality without love is a dark road to follow. Those who embark down this path do not follow it by choice.

If I’m the one forced to do it, then I’ll do it by force.

If I keep my journey to myself, it’ll ensure that no one else needs to know this route even exists.

If I keep my suffering to myself, I’ll save everyone from experiencing the pain of knowing such pain even exists.

If I ever love again, I probably won’t know what to do, but at least I’ll have at least some idea of how it’ll turn out.

More reflections on the Autumn of 2010, 9th Grade at WCS in Calgary, AB, aged 14 - contrasted with the perpetually elongating and dilating loneliness of myself at twice the age.