#i love immortal beings. like not vampires specifically- what's the point of being immortal if you can't even eat garlic

[arielmagicesi]

like. immortal being that has to kill to survive and has begun to think there’s nothing human left in them at all / the strongest smartest person they’ve ever met who is tolerating their BS in the hopes they can get something out of it one day... IS one hell of a dynamic. all you Nandermo shippers have GOT to read Wild Seed by Octavia Butler

[shenanigans-and-imagines]

ANGST WARNING: How would Ace!Tav react to Astarion dying and being unable to revive him? Or vice versa -- how would Astarion react?

A/N: There is actually a lot to this, so here is a headcanon in three parts. Apologies for the length.

Warnings: Gore, Blood, Passively Suicidal Thoughts, Major Character Death, Heavy Angst

Astarion x Ace!Tav Masterlist

How Ace!Tav Would React to Astarion Dying and Unable to be Revived

In order for this to happen, it would be sudden and unexpected

There would be no preparing for his death

They always thought Astarion would outlive them, he's an immortal vampire, but, more importantly, he's a survivor, always has been

I'm thinking he'd have to be burned up in the sun or something else like it; revivify and raise dead both require a body and the sun would turn him into ash

Maybe he gets caught by surprise, maybe Tav can’t get to him in time or maybe he pushed them out of the way of a blast; the result is the same

No final words, no last touches, there’s nothing left, not even a body

Tav wouldn’t be able to move, the rest of the world going fuzzy at the edges and silent

It would take another party to get them to move, literally dragging them away from the scene like dead weight

It’s takes them several moments to come to their senses, to fight back because he can’t just be gone

There has to be something left, something they could use to bring him back

If it’s an ally with them then they’d hold them back telling them they need to get somewhere safe

They would be in full denial, trying desperately to think of something, anything, this can’t be how it ends

But there’s nothing, not a single thing they can do

Once that realization dawns, they just go numb

They spent so much of their life just surviving; they don’t want to go back to that, not when they finally had a taste of what it was to live

They’re just so tired, maybe it would be easier to just…sleep

Even the thought of revenge is too daunting, what would be the point? Astarion would still be gone. Can’t they just rest?

It would take their friends to pull them out of it

I imagine Lae’zel and Shadowheart specifically would lay into them about just giving up. What would Astarion say if he saw them like this?

Tag can well imagine, they can all but hear his voice in their ear

“And you call me dramatic,” he tells them. “Flattering as it is to know you miss me, there's still work to be done. Now get up.”

They want to ignore the words, but they have their own survival instincts to contend with

It’s a slow process

The first several months it’s an ordeal just to eat, but they do

Gale, Shadowheart, Wyll, Karlach, Lae’zel, they all take turns checking in, making sure they’re okay

Gale maybe even has them come to stay in Waterdeep just to keep a better eye on them and keep them away from the memories associated with Baldur’s Gate

It’s a kind gesture and one that slowly starts to pay off

They're able to watch a sunrise again without the urge to weep

They sometimes come in to talk during Gale's lectures, recounting some of their exploits with a smile

They never fully recover, their music isn’t quite as lively, there seems to be a spark missing behind their eyes, but they find a way to survive

They have their friends and find solace in knowing they’re not alone

Eventually they go on the road again, taking in every sight and sound, imaging Astarion seeing it with them

They never fall in love again, they knew that they never would and don’t try to force it

Still, they live; it’s brutal work, but they can’t stop now

How Astarion Would React to Ace!Tav Dying and Unable to be Revived (Dying of Old Age Edition)

Couple different options with this one

I picture Ace!Tav as human, so Astarion outliving them was part of the deal when they got together

All the same Ace!Tav dying of old age vs. dying suddenly and horribly, are going to spark two very different reactions

If they die of old age, Astarion has a much longer time to prepare

There's no hiding getting old, even if Astarion makes jokes about them being with a man four or three times their age

Tav is there to help him through it, even as they're lying on their death bed with him beside them the entire time

They don't want him to try and bring them back; they told him as much

They want him to keep going, to keep living, to find love again after they're gone

Astarion doesn't want to hear it, he doesn't want to think about them being gone even when they both know it's coming

One human life time wasn't nearly enough, he wants more, he always wants more

But the end does come and when Tav finally slips away, all he can do is weep

He wouldn't be alone though, he has friends, strange as it might have once been to admit

Gale, Wyll, Karlach, Shadowheart, and Lae'zel would all find their own way to help him as they too grieve the loss of their friend

He's not the easiest to deal with, he lashes out, he argues, he pushes, he finds himself crying at unexpected moments and mortified at himself for doing so

He wishes he could talk to Tav about all these emotions drowning him and ends up curled up on the floor all over again

But somebody is there to help him back up again

He can’t stay in their home anymore, too many memories bombard him every waking moment

Gale offers for him to come to Waterdeep for a time, but Astarion refuses

He needs to get out, go somewhere far away, someplace he’s never been before

So, one day, he packs a bag and just starts walking

The only thing of Tav’s he takes is a that damned violin, they did try so very hard to teach him how to play, but he always was a better audience

Still he can’t bring himself to leave it behind

He doesn’t know where he’s going or what he’s even doing, but he keeps going anyway

One of the nights, months into his travels, a bard plays at the inn where he's staying

He recognizes the melody, one of Tav's compositions

He had finally convinced Tav to write down some of their music, and even publish a few; this one isn't one of them

The bard plays it differently, emphasizing different words and finding a new meaning while still keeping the integrity of the song

He can all but hear Tav’s contemplative approval as they grin in that “I told you so” sort of way

The best ones live in memory after all

The bard is good, reminding him of Tav in so many different ways

He's not sure what exactly possess him to do it, but he offers them the violin, telling them that it's been a long time since he saw somebody play it properly, maybe they'd like a go

Gods do they play it,

Light and music flow from the instrument, evoking the same vivid display Tav had show him all those years ago

Astarion then leaves without a word, leaving the violin behind for the bard to take

He finally understands what Tav tried to explain to him, how much of themselves they put into their music and how even as the interpretations may change it’s still them

So, he keeps going, keeping their memory alive in what ways he can, mostly as an anonymous patron to promising young bards; he’s always been a better audience anyway

Years later he even meets that first bard, the one he gifted the violin; they turned to be a great performer and was thankful to finally track down the man who put them on that path

They form a true friendship, one that lasts years and allows Astarion to know he can form new relationships

Slowly, Tav's death doesn’t hurt the way it used to

They’ll never fully leave his heart; they were his first in so many ways

It would take him years, possibly even centuries to finally fulfill that final promise to love again, but he does

He’s a survivor by nature, but Gods does it feel good to live

How Astarion Would React to Ace!Tav Dying and Unable to be Revived (Dying Suddenly and Horribly Edition)

This can only end in blood

They're in a middle of a battle, something bigger and worse than they anticipated

Both are skilled in their own way, but they each know their strength lies in stealth and surprise, neither of which they have facing this threat

Astarion was sure they were safe, he was watching their back and vice versa as they had for years

He doesn't see exactly what happens, all he knows is one moment his love was standing in front of him and the next, they're pulp on the floor

Air leaves his lungs, the rest of the world fades as all that exist is their blood in his nose and their desecrated body and then everything goes red

He uses everything at his disposal, knives, nails, teeth; more blood fills the air, his body is covered in it to the point he can't even grip his daggers and just uses his teeth

He doesn't stop until the only thing breathing in the room is him

He then goes to Tav's body, and wraps what's left of it in any cloth he can find; he's not leaving them here, there has to be a way to fix it, to bring them back

He finds a place he can keep them, using what magic he can to preserve the remains of their body until he can find a better solution

He reaches out to any contact he has begging for help, surely their friends would come to their aid

What he gets is all but useless, no answers, no solutions, nothing but empty apologies and condolences

They even have the audacity to them him to let Tav go

They don't understand, they never could

After everything he'd been through, Tav was the first real happiness he found; 200 years of torture and just six months with them was enough to counterweight all that misery

He'd had years since then, and now they were just gone

How could anyone expect him to let that go, not when he had expected a life time with them

Their time together was already limited, he would not be cheated into giving up more; the world didn't get to do that to him

He curses his so called friends, burying himself in necromancy and tomes trying to find a solution

There may still be a way, a much darker way, one that would require sacrifice, but it would be worth it whatever the price

He knew that about himself the moment he started to fall for Tav, there was no telling what things he'd be willing to do, all for them

There is a part of him that hesitates, a little voice inside his head telling him to stop, that he can be better

It's the same voice that told him not to ascend, one he curses just as deeply as the rest of them

If he had ascended none of this would have happened; he would have been able to keep Tav safe, he could have made it so not even time could touch them

He had hesitated then, but he won't now

He'll find a way to bring them back and make sure they never leave him again

[kirain]

what do you think of this post about Gale? I saw it today and idk how to feel about it. h t t p s : // www. tumblr. com / galahadwilder / 741497332636467200

I couldn't disagree with it more, to be honest.

First of all, and I can't stress this enough, Mystra doesn't care about her followers. She cares about the state of the Weave and nothing more. If her followers don't worship her, if they're not useful to her, if they don't serve her purpose, they mean nothing to her. After she abandoned Gale, she had no interest in him until she realised she could use him to stop the Absolute—and she only wanted to stop the Absolute because it threatened the Weave. In general, Mystra doesn't care what people use magic for either, be it the most admirable heroics or the most depraved insanity you can imagine.

Case and point: Lorroakan. He is an arrogant wizard, far worse than Gale could ever hope to be, who uses magic for pure evil. When he beat Rolan, he undoubtedly used magic to do it. Do you think Mystra cared? Nope. You can help that nutjob achieve his goals, kill a demigod, turn him immortal, and give him free reign to abuse magic any way he wishes, but do you think Mystra cares? Nope. She doesn't. She doesn't care about people unless they benefit her. In fact, all three iterations of Mystra have a vast history of grooming, flat out 🍇, and the forced impregnation of unsuspecting mortal women. Despite being neutral good, Mystra is and has always been extremely vain, selfish, jealous, and problematic.

With that in mind, I'd like to break this post down piece by piece. Also, please be aware that when I use the word "you", I don't mean you specifically, anon. I'm more so addressing anyone who might be reading.

PS: Please no one harass this person's post. Their opinion is their own, and it's very respectful. At the end of the day, we're just talking about a video game.

Mystra didn't tell Gale not to juggle the torches. She didn't even tell him it was a torch. She let him go on believing it was a part of her missing Weave. Had she told him the truth, he would've stayed away. That's why he's so shocked in Act 3, when she finally reveals it's the Karsite Weave. He had no idea, and she likely never intended to tell him. She didn't before he went off in search of it, and she didn't the entire time he was locked away in his tower, scared and suffering. I can't for the life of me figure out why she wouldn't warn him, but I can only assume it's because she expected absolute obedience, or because she was getting bored of him and wanted him to mess up.

Whatever her reasons, she didn't tell Gale to leave the orb alone because he was "worthy" already. He clearly wasn't in her eyes, because he wanted her to see him as an equal. He wanted her to share her knowledge with him, which is perfectly fair in a healthy relationship. If you're dating a god and they treat you like a worshipper—that's all you are to them. A worshipper. A plaything. You're beneath them. You're unworthy. She told Gale to leave the orb alone because she wanted him to be complacent. She wanted to keep him in servitude. That's what she wants from all of her followers, though it's even worse when it's her lover.

In almost every story where a mortal loves a god, the mortal is either ascended into the heavens or the god gives up their divinity. And this isn't even specific to gods, but also vampires, werewolves, elves, and so on. Arwen, for example, gives up her immortality to be with Aragorn. Bella becomes a vampire to be with Edward. Hercules gives up his divinity to be with Meg. Elisa Esposito becomes aquatic to be with the creature. These are common tropes because it makes the couples equal.

Mystra contradicts herself by saying Gale was "always worthy", because her actions don't reflect it. He was a worthy distraction from her job, sure, but not worthy enough for her to treat him like an equal. So in order to prove it to her, to prove his love and devotion, he went after the one thing he knew she wanted—her missing Weave. Yes, she told him not to, and I agree he should've respected that, but this is on par with a woman telling her husband not to buy a bracelet she really, really wants because it's too expensive. If your husband worked extra hours and saved up enough to buy you that bracelet, would you divorce him?

Gale was completely unaware of the danger. He basically thought he was getting Mystra a bracelet. Had she taken the time to explain it to him, the whole catastrophe could have been avoided. He was just a hopeless romantic who wanted to surprise his girlfriend and prove he belonged at her side. The same girlfriend who very well could have made him her equal and shared her knowledge, but chose not to. Why? Because she's selfish. She didn't want an equal, she wanted a servant. We know this because, if you romance and ascend Gale, he will ascend you alongside him and give you your own domain! Mystra had the power to do this, or at least the ability to slowly ease him into it, but she refused. No matter how much he pleaded and proved his devotion to her, she refused.

Mystra did not save Gale when the orb embedded itself in his chest. He survived only because it fed on his gifts. He says as much, and so does she when you go to see her at the Temple. That's why, when we first meet him, he admits he used to be better at magic. He was once exceedingly powerful, but the orb basically knocked him down to level one. Mystra was perfectly happy to let him scramble to find items to absorb, knowing that he would inevitably run out and erupt. When we give him his third item in Act 1, the orb is becoming quenchless, and he knows his time is nigh. Mystra has nothing to do with satiating the orb until Act 2 and 3, and only because he becomes her wild card.

Gale: Mystra will consider forgiveness?

Elminster: She will consider ... what she considers to be forgiveness.

Even Elminster, her most faithful Chosen, knows her "forgiveness" isn't really forgiveness. It's an ultimatum. Do this for me and be welcomed into my hall, or die and literally go to hell. Why would Mystra make this offer? Well, because why else would Gale agree to kill himself only to end up in the Wall of the Faithless? How would that motivate him? Mystra didn't make this offer out of the kindness of her heart, she made it because she was desperate. Had the opportunity never presented itself, she would've let him die and suffer for all eternity, and possibly take hundreds of innocent people with him in the blast. She. Doesn't. Care. 🤷‍♀️

Now, one could argue Gale was asking for too much, but I'm going to have to call bullshit on that. First of all, Mystra showed him things no mortal has ever seen. It's only fair he'd want to share her world and learn as much as possible. Imagine if the Doctor from Doctor Who picked up some random people and took them on breathtaking adventures, but the audience got mad at them for wanting to see as much as they could. Amy, Clara, Rose, etc.—none of them could live a normal life after meeting him, and they wanted to learn as much about the universe as possible. But everyone loves those characters. They don't get mad. There's even several episodes where the companions call the Doctor out for not treating them as equals, and he admits he's wrong for doing that and adjusts his way of thinking.

I would argue that the only real divide between Mystra and Shar/Vlaakith is that Mystra doesn't inflict physical pain ... most of the time. That's it. Vlaakith and Shar only care about themselves and the effectiveness of their followers, but the exact same applies to Mystra. She is the Weave, and she only cares about the Weave; therefore, she only cares about herself. She had ample opportunity to help Gale or tell him the truth, but she didn't until it was convenient for her. The gods of D&D are basically the Greek Pantheon gods—a bunch of assholes toying with mortals, regardless of their alignment. The odd one is decent, but most are only out for themselves and their rule. Now, I will concur that Mystra is hardly the worst deity (in fact, she's unfortunately one of the better ones), but she's still not great and Gale is her victim.

To get a little controversial, I think the writers made a mistake. I know what they were going for, but I think they lost it along the way. At first, I was ready to stand with everyone and admit he belonged in the quintessential "overreaching wizard full of hubris" category, but upon researching the lore, getting to know Gale better, and doing several different playthroughs, I've come to vehemently disagree. First of all, before 5E (the current D&D edition), becoming a god was the ultimate goal for a lot of players, and that was perfectly acceptable, with many DMs providing celestial paths to make it possible. Moreover, many of the current gods were once human themselves, including Mystra!

Second, it's only hubris if you fail. Gale can ascend. He can succeed. Although it's not the canon outcome I would choose for him, he is right about the crown. He does his research and figures out how to reforge it. And he doesn't seek godhood to be worshipped, he seeks it to either free himself (and all mortals) from Mystra's chains, or for her to acknowledge and love him as an equal. His arrogance stems from insecurity; an insecurity Mystra herself planted and cultivated, and in the end he's not really arrogant atfter all. Does him wanting to be Mystra's equal make him selfish? Well, I suppose that depends on how you answer these questions:

Is your partner equal to you? If you don't think so, why are you leading them on? Why wouldn't you take steps to help them become your equal? Why are you holding them back instead of propping them up? If they show interest in your life, in your world, in the things you can do, why would you keep it to yourself, especially when you have the time and resources to share it?

Just some ambrosia for thought. 😉

[devildomditzy]

What Petnames they call you

I’ve seen quite a few blogs do this and I just want to throw my personal hc’s in the ring while I work through this writer’s block.

not exactly proof read, so sorry for any grammatical/spelling mistakes! It’s midnight lol.

Lucifer

my immortal Darling. It feels dark, mysterious, and romantic. The way his says it feels vaguely threatening but in a hot way. You feel like you’re dating a vampire.

Dove. Now this one can have a double meaning, depending on how you look at it. On one hand it seems sweet, like he finds you adorable like a little bird. On the other hand he sees you as something to possess, to cage away and own, like a little bird.

Besides those two, there’s not much else. He refers to you as his significant other or other half in conversations with other people, but he likes to keep it fairly straightforward. He much prefers the sound of your name rolling off his tongue.

Mammon

His favorite, of course albeit cheesy, is Treasure. He’s the Avatar of Greed and you’re the most important thing he’s acquired throughout his many, many years. It’s only natural to call ya what ya are!

Next in line would be Doll or Dollface. Not only does it flow with his cadence of speech, but he thinks it fits you perfectly! He’d never admit it out loud, but he loves to dress ya up in whatever cute little outfit he bought you from majolish this week, and he just finds you so adorable. But he’ll also use this one when he wants to be a bit more sultry.

He loves to call you Human when he’s teasing you, or specifically his human. He used the one generally at first around others when he was first assigned as your guardian. Now it’s my human whenever someone decides to get a little bit too friendly with you

He also uses Puppy when he’s teasing you for wanting attention or being needy in bed. You can fight me on this, and you will lose.

Levi

Henry. Yes yes we already know this one but it means a lot to him! It means you’re his best friend and his whole world! It means he can show his endearment through something he is familiar and comfortable with. And! It’s dorky!

He refers to you as his Player Two in the context of being his teammate, or the one person he can count on or wants to partner up with for any specific task. Wherever one goes, the other follows

He has the most trouble calling you Baby. It makes him so flustered! But it’s worth it to see the smile on your face.

Satan

He’s a big fan of Dear. It’s not too sappy and it’s not too flashy. It’s a classic, and he believes it conveys perfectly how he feels out you. There’s nothing in any realm more dear to his heart than you.

He’s read one two many fairytales and now he can’t stop calling you Prince/Princess. He wants to treat you like royalty, and trust that he will. Now if you want to call him your prince, he’ll absolutely melt.

Kitty or Kitten. OKAY LISTEN-

Asmo

Love! It’s short, sweet, and to the point. It embodies everything that he is and everything he sees in you.

He’s the Avatar of Lust, of course he’s gonna call you Sexy, and he does it in the most casual of ways? He’ll call across the hall to you with this nickname, not caring who’s around to hear. He’ll giggle at Belphie call of “gross”, and Levi’s rasp of “normies”

Asmo may call a lot of people Sweetie, but don’t get it twisted, you’re the only person that he calls that and MEANS it. No one can replace you! There’s no one better, other than hiself of course. But you’re okay with that, right Sweetie?

Beel

(oh gosh oh golly here come the food nicknames)

One of Beel’s favorites to cure his sweet tooth is Honey - and there’s on one sweeter than you! It’s like he can combine his two favorite things, food and you!

Babe. A lot of people give this one to Mammon, but I really feel it for Beel. He uses this one a lot in from of his Fangol teammates. As he gets ready to hit the field, he’ll give you a quick kiss before asking, “Will you cheer for me, Babe?”. It’s rhetorical of course, you’re his biggest fan.

Sugar. Okay, can you blame him? The only thing that can rival his gigantic cravings is his massive love for you. Plus, if your nickname is good related, it reminds him how hungry he is, then he can invite you to come snack with him. It’s a win-win!

Belphie

Belphie physically cannot stop himself from calling you Cutiepie. Gosh, he gets of have one of those cherished humans he was so fascinated by all to himself? and you’re just so adorable? He can’t help it when he fawns all over you.

Sunshine. You were the shimmering, beautiful light that pulled him out of the dark place he has hidden himself away in all those years ago. You helped him move on from Lilith, you helped him see the good in humans again, and you helped him see that his brothers really do truly care for him. Now, you are the light that guides him.

He uses Beautiful the most generally. He doesn’t feel embarrassed saying it in front of his brothers, and he gets to compliment you at the same time.

[ozthedm]

Vampire Ascendant Ramblings!

I love Baldur’s Gate 3. I love the vampire genre. I am particularly fascinated with the concept of the Vampire Ascendant for a number of reasons that mainly boil down to “what does it mean to be the Vampire Ascendant and what is the true cost of this power?”

This post is essentially a collection of my observations, thoughts, and headcanons regarding the ascension ritual. Think of this as fanfic inspiration material. Get ready folks, because we’re about to dip a toe into 5e lore and get existential.

What does the Rite of Profane Ascension actually do?

Raphael explains the ritual as thus:

“If he completes the rite, he will become a new kind of being - the Vampire Ascendant. All the strengths of his vampiric form will be amplified, and alongside them he will enjoy the luxuries of the living. The arousals and appetites of man will return to him, and unlike Astarion, he will have no need of a parasite to protect him from the sun. But the ritual has a price, as all worthwhile things do. Lord Cazador will need to sacrifice a number of souls including all of his vampiric spawn if he is to ascend… Your soul will set off a very wave of death, bringing Cazador his twisted life.” 

TLDR: If Cazador offers up the souls of 7000 vampire spawn, then maybe he’ll feel less like shit.

Other specific perks include:

The hunger for blood that plagues all vampires will no longer affect him.

His heart will beat again (Could he even be considered undead at that point?)

He still gets to remain immortal in the sense that he will never age

He can choose to extend his protection from the sun to his spawn, but this protection can be revoked

He can be reflected in mirrors.

There are some details that remain unclear, so here’s where we step into headcanon territory:

Running water will no longer harm him

A normal wooden stake won’t be enough to paralyze him. You’d be better off with a magical weapon

Although he will still need an invitation to enter homes, His enhanced vampiric charm practically makes it a nonissue

And now a couple of notes on Mephistopheles and the contract itself:

“Devils bargain with mortals to upend the divine order. They stake claims on souls that would otherwise go to the gods or be cast adrift somewhere other than the Nine Hells. If you are already a creature of Law and Evil devoted to no other entity, your damned spirit is of meager value.”

  - Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes

Mephistopheles is an arcane innovator. His realm, Cania, is essentially a giant laboratory where he conducts extensive experiments. 

When it comes to souls, Mephistopheles prefers quality over quantity. He mostly acquires the souls of highly accomplished wizards and sages to help him with his research. To demand the souls of 7000 vampire spawn seems uncharacteristically beneath him (especially for the power he’s offering) 

My thinking is that Mephistopheles is working on something that specifically requires vampiric energy and lots of it. The 7000 spawns are nothing more than fodder.

A devil’s deal never ends well. This is repeatedly stated throughout the game. Considering what we know of Mephistopheles and how little Cazador cares for his spawn, this whole contract sounds far too good to be true. So what’s the catch?

A few possible ideas as to the downsides:

Mephistopheles is always watching. After all, this is a completely new kind of being that warrants study. 

The Ascendant’s hunger for blood is replaced with a different hunger. A hunger that is indescribable and insatiable. He will always yearn for more. More power, more control, more anything. He may even return to Mephistopheles in an attempt to fill the void. 

The Ascendant’s own soul is included in the price, albeit differently. Where the other souls were simply consumed by the ritual, his will serve another purpose. (Not gonna lie, this one sent me on a whole existential journey trying to figure out what is means to have/lack a soul)

I might post more thoughts later, but this is enough for now

[aroaceleovaldez]

Any headcannons about Will Solace? he's an underrated bby (I think?) and I personally hc that he used to be a very moody kid but then decided to turn off all of his negaive emotions (most of the time)

oh i have SO many Will Solace headcanons built up from writing him on Deadangelos so much. Below the cut cause this is very long (and tumblr started glitching about the list format so manual it is):

- His roles at CHB are basically "Every possible medical personnel Ever™." He's camp medic, physician, surgeon, pediatrician, pharmacist, psychiatrist, therapist, dentist, optometrist, veterinarian, etc etc etc. Technically Chiron is also All Of That, but ever since Will joined camp most of the responsibility falls to him (at least in part because campers generally feel a bit more comfortable dealing with somebody their own age versus an immortal centaur), and Chiron just mentors him on it (unless they're running low on hands, in which case Chiron does pitch in, and sometimes the other Apollo kids help staff the infirmary if Will needs. In the past though it was usually just Chiron and whichever camper he pulled in that week to do first aid training with. Mr. D only really handles therapy stuff if Will isn't able to for one reason or another. Will gets very individualized training and has has own schedule separate from the rest of his cabin to account for all of that. Chiron basically personally took Will in under his wing as his apprentice and a not insignificant portion of Will's personal training is gross anatomy lessons with Chiron in the camp morgue. Will does not question where Chiron procures the cadavers for that. He probably should. They aren't campers. They are sometimes demigods, but not always. Most of the rest of camp doesn't even know there's a morgue, let alone that Will does gross anatomy dissection. It's not technically a camp "secret," Will isn't secret about it at all, but most campers treat it like it is and like to use it to try and spook new campers. The ones who find out about the gross anatomy portion and that there is exactly zero information about how Chiron is procuring cadavers are Mildly Concerned.

- Photokinesis and plague powers Will are both extremely fun. I love making him a son of Apollo Smintheus specifically and giving him pet rats and/or the ability to talk to rats and mice. He thinks they're soooo cute and is definitely the type to brag about how intelligent rats are. I also like to think he maybe had a pet snake at one point, like a big ol' boa. Will with a sunglow boa or something? yes? (I also just in general love the idea of Will's house back in Texas being a cute little ranch cause Naomi is rich and also a cowgirl and Will having a ton of different animals over the years. He probably originally wanted to be a veterinarian before he settled more on medic.)

- I just generally love playing with Will (not-so) subtly being the exact opposite of what people would expect from an Apollo kid. Initially he looks like the gold standard for an Apollo kid - sunny, friendly, chill, medic/healer, interest in science/arts/fandom, etc etc. Then you speak to him for more than 20 minutes and find out he loves snakes and rats and guts and gore and is fascinated by disease and mold. He takes gross anatomy classes taught by Chiron. One of his favorite hobbies is just dissecting stuff. He's into vulture culture. His idea of a perfect date is holding hands over a cadaver he is actively cutting into and passing the other person cool stuff he's fishing out. Also he's very vocal about thinking monsters are hot and the combo of all of that is exactly why he's into Nico. Everybody else thinks Nico's inherently cursed or something? Will doesn't mind being cursed - in fact he wants to be cursed, for science. He's swooning over the idea of Nico sacrificing him for some dark ritual in the middle of the night. He daydreams about Nico being a vampire that's gonna romantically kill him. The rest of camp is waiting for the day Will does something stupid and gets himself killed like, flirting with a monster (or the Hades kid) or something. Nico just generally doesn't know how to feel about the whole situation but is? (hesitantly) flattered?? that somebody is enthusiastic about him while recognizing and appreciating his Underworld aspects. Will is out-weirding him, somehow, and Nico never knew this was a thing that could happen.

- Related to that - I have a whole headcanon about "Bad Omen" demigods, which are basically the other main CHB cabin's versions of Hephaestus kids with fire powers being bad luck. For Apollo kids their "bad luck omen" super rare power is a plague-powers kid, and Will showed up during the Titan War, just a couple months before the Battle for Manhattan when nearly all his cabin died. He is very acutely aware of this superstition and fully believes he is a bad luck charm for the cabin and feels SUUUUPER guilty about it and so hides his plague powers. It's not that he feels bad about his plague powers specifically - he thinks plague stuff is really fascinating and his powers are cool and can be used for healing too! - he's just really concerned about how others will view him. (Very strong parallel dynamics between how Will views his plague powers vs the stigma around them & how Nico views his Underworld powers vs the stigma around them. They are handshake emoji).

- TTC implies that Apollo kids are more often than not summer-only campers, and I think it's fun to have Will's backstory being: He may or may not have "accidentally" caused a plague/pest outbreak at his old school early into the year and between that school having to shut down for a couple of months because of that and his mom maybe going on tour, they decided it was time for him to move to CHB and go there year-round. Except he goes from Texas to New York in the middle of winter and he's a son of Apollo, so he gets there and it's like sleet and slush and all cold and he's the only Apollo kid at camp and he hates it so bad. He eventually gets used to it but it is awkward when all his siblings come back in the spring/summer to find they have a new youngest sibling who's just been chilling all by himself for a couple of months. But then Austin and Kayla join so at least he's not the newest/youngest Apollo kid. (But then nearly all of Cabin 7 immediately dies in TLO and Will's right back to being in a mostly empty cabin and being in charge.)

- He definitely puts on an approachable/friendly, or at the very least calm, face 99% of the time, partially because it's expected of him and it's also maybe a little bit masking (it's a lot masking) cause he knows he can be a bit much. He is 100% the type of guy who feels like he has to solve all his problems himself and can't let anybody else know he has problems, and also that he has to help everybody else with their problems because that's his job, right? So he's constantly stressing himself out to the point of breakdown. He also half lives in the infirmary (which he totally has his own little office in) and he'll just shut himself in and spend like, a couple of days straight in there and probably not sleep. He's a workaholic just as bad as Nico and a total hypocrite about it/about overexerting one's self but he's working on it. Nico's too much of a take-no-shit kind of guy (and also him and Will are way too similar) so usually when Will nags Nico about that kind of thing it turns into Will looking in a mirror or Nico turning it back around on him and Will going "ah shit i need to take my own advice >:T"

- He's best friends with Drew Tanaka and he lets out his bitchy side when he's hanging out with her. they are bitching friends. they love to bitch. It's a great venting environment for him cause he knows Drew loves to hear him complain and talk shit so he can just let out all his pent-up frustrations and she'll just enthusiastically eat it all up. The two of them will gossip endlessly. Drew is mildly concerned about Will's romantic tastes though (again: monsters. cryptids. the Addams family. evils from the shadows. the guy from The Shape Of Water. Nico) and keeps trying to talk him out of flirting with things that might kill him. He does not listen to her.

- His only normal crush is Paolo but everyone is waiting for the other shoe to drop about how Will could possibly be weird about this one (there's an ongoing camp bet with different theories). He also dated Drew for like, all of a week but they both decided they totally hated it and preferred to stay just besties (bonus points: That was what Drew considered as her passing the whole Aphrodite-kids-breaking-hearts thing. literally neither of them cared).

- I know his full name is William but it's really funny if he lies about that and his full name is actually Wilhelm, named after the scream.

- ...He is a Swiftie. He's been a Swiftie since he was younger back with like, OG-era country music Taylor Swift and he's just stuck with it.

- Trans!Will is fun and I love it lots. Drew helping him with transition stuff is also very near and dear to me.

- His crush on Nico originates from them meeting for the first time during the Battle for Manhattan. Nico's attempt at flirting with Percy misfired and hit Will instead lmao. Nico parts the Titan Army in cool thematic armor and with three gods in tow, says a dramatic one-liner, and then is super badass in battle and Will is head-over-heels for him immediately. He then proceeds to spend the next year obsessing over Nico and being tormented by Nico never being at camp and never being able to talk with him. Ergo why when Nico shows up in BoO, Will is immediately like "HOLD MY HANDS. THREE DAYS IN THE INFIRMARY. HANG OUT WITH ME PLEASEEEE-" (and that's why Will was under the assumption that Nico was actively avoiding people rather than being ostracized, cause he had heart-eyes tunnel vision). Him in BoO though really is just seeing his crush and losing all his cool.

- For some reason he is just an absolute magnet for chthonic demigods. Nico, Lou Ellen, Cecil (who i hc is a chthonic Hermes kid), etc etc. He thinks Underworld stuff is super cool though (again, see: Will being super into spooky/gory stuff/etc). Also all the ex-Titan army kids decided they were his personal body guards immediately after the war cause he was nice to them.

- He is a HUUUUGE nerd. Specifically a sci-fi and disney nerd. They're his hyperfixations (/special interests if you lean more autistic!Will) <3 His favorite franchises are Star Wars and Avatar (the blue one). He loves conceptual alien biology/ecology and could go on about it endlessly. He will also very enthusiastically infodump about Disney history (both the art/animation side and theme parks side) and other sci-fi series. Ask him about Doctor Who (you will be there for several hours).

- Will being a micro-celebrity cause of his mom is very fun to me. He's been on talk shows and stuff before cause people love how snarky this country star's kid is. He has an extremely popular Instagram and Austin uses him as clickbait in his Youtube videos extremely often (including forcing him to guest-star or do like react content and stuff) (Will is more than happy to indulge him though cause he finds it funny).

- I also love the idea that Will and Piper have actually known each other since they were little, from Tristan and Naomi meeting at some point and realizing they had kids the same age and encouraging them to be pen-pals. Once social media becomes more of a like, Proper Thing™ they become mutuals on Instagram but just use it to periodically send each other silly memes (Piper's instagram is private and basically all she uses it for is dm'ing people). It takes them a solid week of being at CHB together to realize "WAIT, YOU'RE THAT [PIPER/WILL]?!" One of their hobbies is going into the city and seeing if people will recognize them/if paparazzi will see them and making games out of it (who can ruin the most photos, what types of fake gossip can we get them trying to circulate, etc etc).

- I am a firm believer that Will is an extremely loud out-and-proud type of guy and has been for awhile (again see: him being a micro-celebrity) and he spearheads or runs a lot of pride stuff at CHB ever since he joined. If there is a pride parade/event at CHB he helps organize it. If there's a GSA club at CHB he is the head of it. He keeps pamphlets in the infirmary of queer educational material and guides to different identities and stuff and is very passionate about making people feel welcomed and comfortable. Because of this, when he found out Nico was from the 1930s and severely not up-to-date on terminology and stuff, he considered getting Nico up-to-date his greatest challenge yet. It was a personal quest for him. There was also definitely at least a week before that where Will thought Nico might be homophobic or something and was going "I CAN FIX HIM" before Nico managed to explain that no, he's... very supportive (muffled coughing coming from closet), he's just also extremely behind and doesn't know what any of those words mean, thanks. Will set up the most extensive queer crash course possible for him and poor Nico was just going "slow down please,,,," the entire time. Will gets him up mostly up to speed eventually. I just love Will being that type of guy who will start explaining misc queer history with citations at the drop of a hat. It is probably another hyperfixation of his.

- Will and Annabeth both consider Chiron an adoptive father-figure and joke about being siblings and which of them is the favorite child, cause they both know they're definitely Chiron's favorite campers. They both get him father's day cards/gifts.

[kidlit-queen-competition]

Round 1 Poll 22: Raphaella La Cognizi from the Mechanisms vs Bonnibel Bubblegum from Adventure Time

Entry propaganda UNDER CUT IT GOT TOO LONG:

Raphaella La Cognizi

She literally threw herself into a black hole when she ran out of things to discover. AS AN EXPERIMENT.

“As cruel and evil as she is science”

Science officer in a band of immortal space pirates who maybe created her own mechanical wings? Loves unethical experiments and magnets. Described “as cruel and brutal as she is science”. Eventually threw herself into a black hole for science. Also has a very nice singing voice!

She is as cruel and beautiful as she is Science! Also she made herself immortal by giving herself a pie of wings. Probably. We’re not 100% sure

she’s an immortal space pirate. what else do you need to know??

She is a imortal space pirate. She has wings. The wings are the reason she is imortal. She died by launching herself into a black hole simply to see what would happen. (Also I feel like I should specific that the lesbianism here is a headcannon.)

After she becomes bored with mad lesbian science, she launches herself into a black hole for funzies. She loves magnets. She has wings. What else is there to say. also shes my wife

She is "as cruel and brutal as she is... science!" Her position on the crew of the Mechanisms is "science officer" and she cares a lot about Doing Science and not at all about ethics! She is confined by nothing in her endless pursuit of knowledge, whether that be time, money, laws of the universe, or moral codes. She's immortal, mostly, except at some point her death is finally permanent and that is when she threw herself into a black hole to see what would happen

Her first introduction ever was "as cruel and brutal as she is... Science!" Also she threw herself into a black hole just to learn something new one last time.

Princess Bonnibel Bubblegum

Oh she is so fucked up. She made a whole kingdom. I think she is jus <3

THE OG LESBIAN SCIENTIST OF KIDS CARTOONS!!! she created her own kingdom of living beings and considers them her subjects and she's been experimenting and creating and exploring ever since she was very small. she gay kisses her vampire gf in the finale! she probably has a lot of noms and im sure you know her but I love her and I want to see her here!

[writers-potion]

i am writing a story where fairies and humans historically have been at odds, and in present day, the only remaining fairies have all been enslaved by the nobility of the kingdom. these fairies are forced to "bless" the nobility and their families with elemental magic, with each fairy having dominion over a different element. appearance wise, the fairies all look like ethereal children, and they also behave similarly to children (loving games, loving stories, being petulant, etc). i want the reader to be sympathetic to the fairies and for it to be clear that they are being mistreated and deserve better. however i also want these fairies to have qualities about them that make them almost eldritch. the fairies are immortal but they can only keep their immortality if human babies/children are sacrificed to them, which the nobility does in order to keep the magic they have stolen alive. however im stumped as to what it means to sacrifice a baby/child to them. the only image that comes to mind is to make the fairies almost gollum lotr-esque and have them eat the babies/children but i also wonder if theres a better alternative

Just to wrap my mind around your worldbuilding and answer your questions more specifically, I am going to assume:

By being "enslaved", the fairies aren't allowed to use magic as they wish, limited to using magic that is of use to humans - perhaps by placing magical cuffs on them/some curse, etc.

This "sacrifice" of children is done by the nobility soley for the purpose of the fairies' sustanance, almost like feeding cattle so that they can be further exploited

While the nobility are capable of keeping fairies docile using sheer physical prowess, they still hold fear-induced respect(?) trust(?) in them deep down.

That said (I hope I understood your worldbuilding correctly, btw!), here are some suggestions:

In order to keep blessing the nobility, the fairies need to "unbless" children to keep the elements in balance. When a child sacrifice stands before them, they place their hand on the head of the child and sort of "suck" the life out of them to maintain their power.

Instead of eating the children directly, the sacrifice fairies need can be a little indirect, for example: they need to drink a bowl of infant blood every month/a special potion brewed from the bones of young children, etc. The nobility makes other servants prepare these 'special meals' which will then be served.

The fairies, in order to 'consume' the children, need to unleash their full form/power. The nobility constructs a cage/prison where they leave the fairy with the child sacrifice, then collect the remains after. (in this way, if you don't want to constantly describe gore, you can choose to just describe the before/after from the POV of someone on the outside)

The fairies need to draw power from the specific element they have power over. Each fairy is fed a different body part of the child, or the fairies take away one aspect of the child (sight, speech, body heat, the water their bodies, etc.) one by one until there's practically nothing left.

Maybe the fairies don't eat the children voluntarily at all. Although they're immortal, they've lost their will to keep living but the nobility starves them to an almost-mad state and feeds them children occasionally, which then they gobble up senselessly.

In order to stay immortal, the fairies "steal" time from other living beings. Thus when babies are sacrificed to them through some ritual, they grow old very quickly to the point that they die. The fairies get to live a bit longer, the child's lifespan added onto theirs.

Also, you might want to think about:

Why children? What do children/babies have that other human sacrifices don't? Is it their purity? Innocence? Or do the nobility take children from poor families just because it's easy for them?

What do the fairies need/crave? Do they need human blood, like vampire do, or is it the "life force" within humans?

Think about the tone of your story. Do you need horror/gore or mystery or tragedy?

[teecupangel]

Okay okay so.

Your thoughts on a Time Travel-ish fic where Desmond gets yeeted back to a little bit before Altaïr’s time and Bayek, Kassandra, Alexios, and f!Eivor become basically immortal bc of POE/Isu bullshit?

And then all the main characters after that become immortal bc of POE/Isu bullshit (including Desmond) so they’re just slowly gathering a bunch of immortal Assassin/some Templars and winging it til they hit the modern day era.

If you like to add a vampire spin to it, here’s the vampire idea a while back that does include a lot of main characters (but not all) getting turned into vampires.

Now, for this idea, let’s set up some things first.

Desmond is the primary immortal and nobody knows how it works.

They stop aging once they die and are revived for the first time.

There will always be a minute of death before their revival. (spawn rate)

Since we want to cover all main AC characters (although I love the fact that we didn’t include Basim in that list. Mirage isn’t out yet, Basim doesn’t count yet, I guess XD), I know you asked for Desmond being yeeted a little before Altaïr’s time so I’m hope you’re fine with Desmond being yeeted before or during Kassandra and Alexios’ time period. (I mean how 'little' is open for interpretations I say)

And how about we make this a little bit more interesting?

Desmond gets yeeted into the time of the Isus. To be more specific, he gets thrown into Minerva’s ‘temple’ during the final days before the Solar Flare.

He’s disoriented and maybe just ‘a bit’ traumatized because of the pain he felt when he activated the device so all he could do was try to understand what Minerva was saying.

About how she’s trying to save his life. That he must do what they all fail to do.

Find the true source of this anomaly, this singularity point that ensures a catastrophe hits Earth every few millennia regardless of what they do.

Because, and this is important, Desmond, even if you save the world from the Solar Flare, another catastrophe will happen. It is inevitable.

But you can find the reason why it has to be that way.

Desmond…

No matter what happens.

Never give up.

Keep looking.

I will do all I can to give you as much help as possible.

Good luck.

And Desmond falls asleep when Minerva pushes him into some kind of device that looked like a water bed.

When he wakes up, he finds himself staring at a confused-looking woman clad in armor.

The Layla Trilogy:

Desmond has no clue what this singularity point is meant to be but he assumes that he’s meant to find it now that he’s woken up… 2 millennia before his time, Jesus Christ.

Kassandra was just looking around the supposed ruins of Athena’s first temple. She believes he’s a demigod or a human turned demigod by Athena. She also thought he might even be Erichthonius but that idea was scrapped when Desmond showed her just how little he knows of the Ancient Greek world. He joins her because it’s not like he has any other clue and Kassandra traveling made it clear that he could cover more grounds if he stayed with her.

It’s because of Desmond’s intervention that Alexios (as Deimos) isn’t killed and the siblings’ relationship is rocky but Alexios stays with them in the Adrestria even if it usually comes down to Kassandra and Desmond making sure Alexios’ temper doesn’t get them into trouble. (Whether the other family members survive is your call).

In the end, it’s the whole Atlantis DLC that makes Kassandra and Alexios accidentally (or is it an accident, Minerva?) immortal. Desmond’s inclusion into the ‘vision’ screwed up the Isu tech and whatever is keeping Desmond immortal is copied into Kassandra and Alexios. They don’t realize it until later on when Alexios dies during a very fierce battle. Then a minute passed while Kassandra cradles her baby brother in her arms as she cries, Alexios opens his eyes and gasps loudly. Kassandra and Desmond would realize they’re immortal as well later on. No matter what they ask, Aletheia in the staff (Desmond doesn’t trust her one bit) doesn’t say anything at all. Desmond believes that their immortality might have been caused by one of the many POEs he had with him at the moment (he’s been hoarding every POE they find).

In this setup, Alexios would be Aya’s ancestor and it’d be more of a one-night stand that happened because Alexios was feeling a bit off that day and wanted some company. Whether they learn Aya is Alexios’ descendant is up to you. They meet Bayek during the Curse of the Pharaoh DLC while they were checking out the ‘curse’ and this is another case of Desmond’s immortality getting passed into Bayek while the POE is shrouding all of Thebes. Maybe even during the time they were in the Duat and Desmond is seeing people who haven’t even been born yet and that’s how he believed his desire to destroy the lies being shown to him caused Bayek to be infected by his immortality. They don’t know Bayek is immortal though but Bayek knows they’re immortal (maybe make one of them die in front of Bayek? They’ve become quite prone to risky actions because they know they can’t die) so when he realized he was immortal, he starts looking for them.

Eivor met them on the Isle of the Skye and Desmond’s immortality infects her during that time as well (maybe during the final confrontation with the POE?) but, as usual, they don’t know that yet. What happens is that Eivor returns to Ravensthorpe and the story continued until the end of AC Valhalla, maybe a few days later, Reda (who may or may not be an avatar of Minerva or her sage or something, the point is his immortality is not connected to Desmond’s… maaayybbee) introduces her to an old friend of his who is looking for someone who looks a lot like Randvi, a man going by the name Amun. At that point, Eivor already knows she’s immortal, Basim slicing her throat during their final confrontation was a dead giveaway, and Reda introduced them as ‘two people of similar circumstances’. They both realized that they’re immortals and Bayek (who Eivor knows as Amun) believes that the answer to their questions is with Desmond and the Spartan siblings (they’re not, they don’t even know they’ve been leaving immortals behind) so Eivor leaves Ravensthorpe to find Desmond and the other with Bayek, promising to come back once she has all the answers.

They finally catch up to Desmond and the others around late 1100s and Desmond doesn’t know how but he’s sure he’s the reason why they’re all immortals now. Without any other information, all they can do is be cautious and, later on, they decide that Desmond shouldn’t get too close to other people until they’re sure on how this entire immortality thing gets activated. Of course, that only means Desmond would feel bored (and maybe have bad reminders of his life on the Farm) so he was just walking a busy marketplace to take some time off his own spiraling thoughts, just looking around and that’s when he bumps into Altaïr.

Desmond’s Ancestors (Part 1):

Desmond didn’t even know Altaïr would be around these parts. Why would he? All he knew during this time was that Altaïr went with Maria to go travel, he didn’t know just how far the two had traveled during that time. Desmond desperately tries to get away because, fuck, there’s no way that he was going to mess up Altaïr’s life even if he desperately wants to because he has no idea what will happen to him if he messes Altaïr’s life so badly that Desmond Miles wouldn’t be born centuries from now. This only makes Altaïr interested in him and it ends with Desmond joining Altaïr and Maria in their travels, sorta forgetting to tell anybody else that he might have been half-kidnapped/half-went along with it?

So the current immortality gang is out looking for him while he’s making a life in Masyaf, becoming like an uncle to Altaïr’s children. Desmond keeps trying to tell Altaïr that Abbas is too dangerous to keep alive but Altaïr won’t listen, thinking that Abbas would not stoop as low as Desmond says, especially when the Apple doesn’t show him anything bad happening with Abbas. By this point, Desmond had told Altaïr everything so Altaïr know Desmond knows of a future but he insists that that future is no longer their future because they have changed things.

Altaïr and Maria still go with Darim to assassinate Genghis Khan but Desmond stays behind to keep an eye on Abbas. Unfortunately, this gets him captured and it’s only because of Desmond’s warning that Malik survived, taking Sef’s wife and children out of Masyaf on Sef’s orders while Sef stays behind to save Desmond. It ends in tragedy as Sef dies in Desmond’s arms instead even though Desmond begs for whatever is keeping him immortal to save Sef, to make him immortal as well. Desmond is taken deeper into Masyaf and tested on to find the reason for his immortality instead.

Altaïr’s return is heralded by a civil war between those who sided with Abbas and the Assassins Malik rallied. In the battle, Maria dies in Altaïr’s arms as well and, if you really want to hammer in the pain, Malik falls as well. When they finally took Masyaf back, Altaïr finds Desmond in the deepest part of Masyaf alive but… well… it’s not a pretty sight. Just as he frees a catatonic Desmond, Abbas stabs him from behind and Desmond snaps out of it, screaming as Altaïr falls into his arms. Remembering how Sef dies in his arms the same way breaks Desmond. Altaïr dies in his arms and revives a minute later, much to Abbas’ surprise. In the end, Altaïr kills Abbas and takes Masyaf back.

After the funerals are done and Masyaf starts healing, Altaïr tells the new mentor (Malik if he’s still alive or Darim if Malik is already dead) that he and Desmond are leaving Masyaf. That this place is simply too painful for Desmond right now and the only way he can heal is to be away from this place. The mentor agrees because they both know how much Desmond blames himself for the death of the people he and Altaïr loved. That not even Altaïr telling him it’s not his fault could reach him.

So they leave and a few days later the immortality gang reaches Masyaf but everyone is tight-lipped about what happened and if they know anyone that looks like Desmond (there were rumors that the people of Masyaf were experimenting on how to achieve eternal life and such). So it took them a long time for the mentor to confide what had happened (that’s fine with them though because they trust Desmond can take care of himself (oh boy) and they’re immortals, they have all the time they need) and the mentor isn’t sure where Desmond and Altaïr could be.

They’re in Monteriggioni. Of course, they’re in Monteriggioni. Desmond talked and showed Monteriggioni to Altaïr and his sons so Altaïr knew how much Desmond loved the town. They stayed there because Altaïr was hoping Desmond could heal there and Altaïr accidentally sorta-maybe bought the place while it was just a little thing and started expanding and stuff. They’re always known as descendants of themselves and they’re rumored to be brothers or cousins or something, anyway, the point is the town’s connection with the Assassins is a very hush-hush affair and the Italian Brotherhood grows with Altaïr’s assistance while Desmond just… does whatever he wants.

Desmond meets Ezio as a child when the Auditore family visits the town to pay their respect and Altaïr sees how happy Desmond is to play with Ezio and his siblings. He suggests that they vacation in Florence once in a while to visit the Auditores and Desmond agrees.

The Auditore execution doesn’t happen because Altaïr’s presence makes the Italian Brotherhood be more incognito. Giovanni is still loyal to Lorenzo (an ongoing headache of Altaïr’s) and he’s the mentor of the Italian Brotherhood while Altaïr has more of an advisory role but his connection to the other Assassins was great enough that he was able to coordinate a rescue mission when Giovanni was arrested. Federico and Claudia (who learned enough to fight in secret thanks to her Tio Desmond) were in the house and they got the others out while Giovanni stayed behind so he was the only one arrested and the Auditore family is given asylum in Monteriggioni.

Of course, the whole rescue plan had been in the making for a while now as a ‘last resort’ since Desmond told Altaïr what would happen and this pushes Ezio, Federico, and Claudia to join the Brotherhood in hopes of avenging what has happened to them.

Same thing happened as canon. The actions of the Italian Brotherhood (really, Ezio and his siblings) catch the attention of the immortality gang who finally catches up but they accidentally thought Ezio was the immortal with Desmond named Altaïr and that’s how Ezio learns about the whole immortality thing.

Ezio finds out he’s immortal after Rodrigo stabs him and he dies but revives. He believes his other siblings aren’t immortal though because he saw Minerva’s message for Desmond and it’s already changed. She’s speaking to Ezio and she tells him to “keep Desmond in check”. To make sure he remembers his mission. Ezio believes it’s not Desmond who gives immortality to random people but Minerva. That this immortality thing is something Minerva prepared to keep Desmond ‘safe’ and ‘focused’.

Desmond would have easily said that Minerva is going by a list of people Desmond cared about but he didn’t even know about Kassandra, Alexios, Bayek and Eivor before his death so that idea gets thrown out before it even fully forms.

Anyway, it ends with the immortality gang going on a newly refitted and upgraded Adrestia to start looking for this singularity point with Altaïr giving Monteriggioni to Petruccio who had been taking care of the finances and the little details for a while now. They stop by Constantinople as well and Ezio falls in love with Sofia, maybe he stays with her for a while and have two children? Idk. Anyway, the Auditore line continues…

Into the Kenway line…

Yeah, see that part one? Yeah, it’s because this got too long and I only answer/reblog on tumblr on a specific time frame to make sure I get things done. Sorry XD

I’ll get back to the others tomorrow (if work wills it) but if anyone wants to take a stab at this, feel free :)

(ngl, I was debating if I should make Malik/Maria/Darim and Sef immortal. I’m still on the fence with Malik being immortal. It would be a good angst fodder “Why you but not them?!!” kind of deal)

[ravixen]

hey hey happy spooky month!!

i love the mini bullet points you write for the aus and i was hoping you could add either of these to your collection please 👀

vampire! seokmin or werewolf! jeonghan headcanons

i’ve looked through your navigations to make sure i didn’t bother you by submitting a request you already did but i couldn’t find any specific hcs lol

but yes take your pick and have a nice day/night!!

vampire!seokmin

➔ au!ramble || requested || vampire!au

➔ warnings: none || 0.5k words ➔ notes: fluff, general ; hi there! unfortunately, spooky season/aeris-tober is over :') i hope you had a good one. werewolf!jeonghan would've been a fun prompt, but i decided to go with seokmin! thanks so much for being a reader. please reblog if you liked.

be glad that vampires have adapted over the centuries because seokmin and sunshine are inseparable. you can't imagine what it'd be like for him to hide away during the day like previous generations did

he has patience in spades, though his friends like to point out that it wasn't always like that. when he was turned, the newly acquired supernatural powers made him hot-headed—the quick to anger, slow to calm kind of guy—and it took time for him to get that aggression out of his system

there's just something about being near invincible that made him test the limits, and apparently it's pretty common for new vampires because his more experienced friends helped clean up his messes without complaint.

he outgrew it. like seungcheol always says, it always takes time or—in seokmin's case—a close call. vampires aren't invincible...just almost.

anyway, now he's incredibly patient and happy-go-lucky. sure, he can be rammed by a truck and walk off fine, but there's a thin layer of caution that follows every action, especially when it comes to how fragile humans are. he found out the hard way that he needs to hold back with high-fives

still quick to anger sometimes, but much quicker to cool

"does it ever get tiring?" you ask him once, waving your hand at the darkening sky. "this immortality thing?"

he stares down at his ice cream, smile sadder than you've ever seen it. his gaze is distant, and you wonder if you want to know what thoughts lie behind it.

"sometimes," he admits, barely a breath. "that's why you need to find the little joys in life. find little ways to enjoy every day."

and no wonder he's dead set on living life to the fullest and indulging himself. he knows better than anyone that if you let life turn monotonous, the decades fly by faster than you can blink...and not in a good way

during the day time, he dresses super cute! with his oversized sweaters with sleeves that cover his hands, his big floppy hats, his giant shorts. sunshine personified, you feel like

but night time, he's like a completely different person. fitted trousers and a tight button-up with sleeves rolled up his forearms and his hair slicked back anyone stages have a chokehold on me

"I thought you were a vampire, not an incubus," you blurt out the first time you see the shift. that makes him double over laughing, ears bright red but pleased with your reaction

you've only seen him bare his fangs once, a quick peek before you're pushed behind him as he snarls at the opponent blocking the path

that was when it really hit you. oh. having a vampire boyfriend is a dangerous thing. you close your eyes and block out the sounds of superhumans fighting, knowing that if you fully dive into the world of monsters, you won't come out the same

[homosexualmorelikehomiesexual]

GOD i cant stop thinking about how weird it is that twilight was inspired by MCR which was inspired by 911. when everyone else was caught up in this aggressve patriotism as a form of defense and an excuse for violent bigotry, mcr said lets make something beautiful. lets make something that will let us heal. and then twilight and harry potter used to have this whole fandom feud, but ended up almost being two sides of the same coin. both deeply terrible and written by bigoted white women who either did nothing to amend for the damage her respective writing did, or actively tried to make it worse. and how they ended up sort of being married together by the creation of My Immortal, which is arguably a twilightified fanfic of harry potter, written by someone that absolutely worshipped gerard way. and how mcr was asked to make a song for the twilight soundtrack to which they said fuck you and instead made Vampire Money, a song about what itd be like if they succumed to capitalist greed and devalued their art by leaning into the edgy aesthetic beyond the end of its shelf life and whored out their emotions for profit. and then they broke up because it really Was killing them. and now theyre back. and then the WWWYf tour happened. and That happened. they turned it into an opportunity to make a giant fuck you to that selfsame concept, dressing up as a parody of what theyd have become if theyd done what the public wanted of them, if theyd stayed closeted and suicidal and become consumed by the addiction of selling that pain for profit. a point underlined by the contrast with how theyve been presenting themselves the past 3 months on their real tour, specifically gerard, and how specifically BECAUSE they took a hiatus, BECAUSE they didnt give into greed for more vampire money and didnt destroy themselves, they are alive today in order to be onstage now in front of us. awake and unafraid. a giant celebration of trans joy and affirmation and acknowledgement and love between them and us, their fans, specifically their trans fans. how they finished the WWWYf show with Vampire Money and no one in that crowd got it because no one in that crowd Would get it, and that perfectly crystalized their absolutely scathing point. and then on their real tour they made the more blatant but less serious reference by wearing a twilight shirt and talking about robert pattinson, just goofing off and having fun being gay, bc with us they finally can. and in the meantime, jk rowling has written a self insert cringe comp book longer than the fucking bible trying desparately to cling to relevancy and make herself out to be the victim in her own transphobia, desparately whoring out her bigotry for profit. and the fact that 50 shades of gray is just a twilight fanfic that caused 365 Days to get written and also kind of caused the normalization of fanfic getting turned into actual monetized netflix level media. but ofc its only okay when its cishet. the smut turned netflix series exuality is only acceptable when its straight. and its all toxic af!!! but somehow its fine that THATS plastered on every billboard!!! but the original queer people it was inspired by were shunned and shamed and now that theyre back from the dead, everyones trying to capitalize on their return. and they said go fuck yourselves!!!! and meanwhile the same type of people who hate us and them ARE succumbing to that greed, and theyre fucking floundering!!! just.i just. i. uGHGGGGGG

[pass1onepr1ncess]

Went on a whole rant about DioPucci on Twitter so guess what my next post is about. Yeah, it's DioPucci. I hesitate to call this one an analysis just like I wouldn't really call the DiaDop one an analysis considering it's just me venting my frustrations about people being weird/difficult in the Jojo community but I will be talking about the "relationship" between Dio and Pucci and how I strongly disagree with shipping them. If you ship DioPucci, I'm not gonna go out of my way to harass you but I will unkindly ask you to please leave my blog and block me because you make me wildly uncomfortable.

First off, let's talk about that age gap, shall we? Putting Dio's 100 years of immortality aside, he was 21 when he used the stone mask in Phantom Blood and became a vampire, effectively solidifying his immortal age in his early 20's. Yes, he lived for 100 years after that, but that just makes him even older. In the flashbacks we see of Enrico Pucci meeting Dio, he was 15. Fif-fucking-teen. And then later on in the flashbacks of them talking as 'friends,' Pucci is still only around 17 and then Dio dies. At no point in the brief period when they knew each other was Pucci an adult. Would you be comfortable with a 15-17 year old in a relationship with (at MINIMUM) a 21 year old? I sure fucking hope not.

And keep in mind, this is ONLY if we're talking about the age gap and not, oh I don't know, the implication that Pucci was groomed by Dio for the Heaven Plan. And when I say this I beg of you to keep in mind that grooming doesn't inherently involve the end goal of romantic involvement. Grooming is any kind of manipulation at a young age to shape a vulnerable person's mental state into something that benefits the groomer- whether that be sexual involvement (which is what most people think of when grooming is brought up), romantic involvement (Another common assumption), personal satisfaction or pride (I hate to use this example just after she was released, but Gypsy-Rose is a good example of this, having been groomed by her mother into being helpless so that her mother could continue to take care of her just like her own mother did.), or other goals. Dio would fall into the latter category.

We know that in the Heaven Ascencsion Plan, Dio already had pretty much all the other pieces he needed. He had the 14 phrases (They were the lyrics to a lullaby his late mother used to sing to him), he had EASY access to the souls of 36 sinners what with his vampiric and stand abilities combined- not to mention the effective cult of devoted followers at his feet, though they were all picked off by the Crusaders in Part 3- of course he had his own stand so that one's a no-brainer. But the one thing he didn't have was a "trusted friend who is devoid of all earthly desires." Everyone Dio had surrounded himself with were sinners that craved some of kind mortal prize. Sex, money, love, power, etc. And Dio knew that he himself was no exception. His entire goal in all of his appearances throughout both Phantom Blood and Stardust Crusaders- AND in the Heaven Ascension Plan- was that he wanted power.

Do I think there was some capacity where Dio cared about Pucci? I think it's possible. But, I think that Dio would have had the exact same relationship with literally anyone else who fit the description for the Heaven Plan if he and Pucci never met. Pucci was a tool, no different than the 14 phrases written down in his diary. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised at all if Dio had been visiting churches specifically looking for priests and the like so he could find someone with "no earthly desires." Pucci just so happened to be the one that found him (tripped over him) and fit the bill.

Dio manipulated Pucci into becoming a "trusted friend" so that he could move forward with the Heaven Ascension Plan, and the only reason he gave Pucci his bone was both a failsafe and he believed that he might be able to be revived if he died. I don't think it was ever in his plan to let Pucci be the one to attain Heaven, I think that was just his last resort backup plan.

Am I saying that Dio sexually groomed Pucci? No, I'm not saying that at all. I mean, it's possible, but I don't think there's enough proof of that other than the fact that the two can be seen in a bed together and Dio has less clothes on than usual. But also it's the same amount of clothes he has on in the final moments of his battle with Jotaro. It's just his sleevless turtleneck without that gold jacket he normally wears, or he's shirtless. I'm not saying it's not true because I very well could be wrong and I haven't watched Stone Ocean in a hot bit, but also looking at Dio's character pre-Stone Ocean he didn't have any reason to sexually groom Pucci. If he wanted sex, he had a whole slew of minions in Egypt that I'm sure were more than willing to get his rocks off. Also, if he had sexually groomed Pucci, wouldn't that be entirely counterproductive to the whole "void of earthly desires" thing?

Also the only time we ever see him assault anyone in that way is that stolen first kiss with Erina in Part 1 but keep in mind that that was solely to piss off Jonathan and not because he actually wanted to kiss her. Also Jonathan, Erina and him were all the same age then. Dio is a villain, but given his character it just doesn't seem likely that he would have any motivation to coerce Pucci into a sexual relationship. And he's not above hurting kids as we saw with Kakyoin and his flesh bud and also the entire Dio v Jotaro fight, but that was with mind-control and physical altercation. And while we definitely see him where it's absolutely implied he's having mad vampire sex off-screen, it's always with adults. While Dio is a villain, I see no reason why he would sexually prey on a kid- especially one who, might I remind you, is supposed to be completely pure and rid of mortal desires such as sex.

I've been mainly focusing on Dio because he's obviously the one in power in this both from an age standpoint since he's a 100-year-old adult and Pucci is a 17-year-old at BEST, but also in terms of power since Dio was the one who gave Pucci his stand with the arrow and they talked about how Dio's stand is one of the strongest in the world (no pun intended). Pucci is at every disadvantage, so it would'nt make sense to victim blame him or accuse him of being the abuser here. In fact, I want to talk about his victimhood.

Not only was Pucci younger and weaker than Dio when they were first met, but they also just so happened to meet at a very crucial moment in Enrico's life. About a year after Dio and Pucci first met is when Enrico finds out about the truth that he and Wes/Weather are twins. This, of course as we see in canon, leads to some extremely unfortunate and stressful events that leaves Pucci without his beloved younger sister and sadled with the guilt that he was the one to blame for everything that happened. It's unclear if Enrico ever told Dio about all of this, but regardless he would've been in a fragile state, and that's when most groomers will swoop in and take advantage of that fragility and vulnerability and shape your mind and emotions to be favorable for them. I don't know if it's ever confirmed that Pucci told Dio about Perla and Wes, but nonetheless Dio would have noticed that Pucci wasn't in a stable state of mind.

This is likely where he put the idea into Pucci's head that Heaven could make things better than what he was experiencing; That if everyone already knew what would happen before it does, they could prevent it and avoid conflict and pain. In the ending of Stone Ocean, we see that this exactly why Pucci went through with the Heaven Plan even without Dio, because Dio gave him his own personalized reason to attain Heaven for Dio after he was gone.

Is Pucci innocent in general? Absolutely not, the whole thing with Weather and Perla was his own fault (and the woman who swapped Weather at the hospital) and at the very least in that respect, he's guilty. He could've handled that literally any other way but for some reason he got the fucking KKK involved and resorted to violence at first notice. Not to mention everything he does to the prisoners in Green Dolphin Street, including Jolyne and crew. But at least in this case, Pucci is very much a victim of grooming and manipulation. Did Pucci care about Dio? Absolutely. He holds Dio with a fondness, and there's no denying it. Whether that fondness is platonic or otherwise is not my decision to say since it's never explicitly confirmed, but he does/did trust and care for Dio and considered him a friend. But regardless of how he felt about Dio, Dio still groomed him and would've groomed literally anyone else had Pucci not been the one Dio found first. He wasn't hand-picked, he was simply whoever Dio first laid eyes on. And if Pucci didn't respond to the Heaven Plan the way he wanted him to, I'm sure Dio probably would've just killed Pucci and went looking for a replacement.

If you like DioPucci, like I said before I'm not gonna go out of my way to spend unnecessary time and effort and energy into harassing you but I will ask you to keep that shit far away from me. If you disagree with the points I've made, that's fine but again, I don't wanna see it anywhere near me or my blog. I'm not tagging this as DioPucci either. I'm not gonna invade that tag just for a rant on how I don't like them. But those are my thoughts.

[ma1dmer]

Vampire the Masquerade - Cuthbert Beckett NSFW

i am gonna impregnate this man

A = Aftercare (What they’re like after sex): he'll run his claws through your hair ,press a kiss to your forehead and probably return to his research , wouldn't mind you joining him even if its just to nap next to him, he’ll keep a hand in your hair as he reads through various texts and books while you rest before he probably has to rest as well, his body forcing him at that point to join you

B = Body part (Their favourite body part of theirs and also their partner’s): he knows he is a handsome man, he knows people want him but thinking of something specific for his body, or anyone's body if we are being honest, seems so pointless to him, vanity is such a mortal matter after all and beauty is flitting, he says with a sharp and knowing grin, since he knows he is immortal and very much considered hot. he likes different things on different partners. Different things that have his eyes wandering ,and provide some sort of distraction in his day to day.

C = Cum (Anything to do with cum basically… I’m a disgusting person): out of sight out of mind, hates having to clean up everything after he is done

D = Dirty Secret (Pretty self explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs): he is definitely a switch, depends on the person he is with of course and what they bring out in him, its always exciting to see how things will go, he likes to be surprised

E = Experience (How experienced are they? Do they know what they’re doing?): he has spent so many years on this earth ,of course he has quite the experience, and it shows, whore

F = Favourite Position (This goes without saying. Will probably include a visual): he loves taking you from behind, while he is doing his research he beckons you over before bending you over his desk ,scolding you if you crumple any paper or spill ink on his precious books

G = Goofy (Are they more serious in the moment, or are they humorous, etc): he seems like someone who would be very intense, but if you can't enjoy and be light-hearted with someone you bed whats the point, that doesn't mean he doesn't enjoy teasing you if you get overwhelmed and unable to keep up

H = Hair (How well groomed are they, does the carpet match the drapes, etc.): he doesn't care to trim or shave, especially considering he is a gangrel

I = Intimacy (How are they during the moment, romantic aspect…): he is both incredibly smooth and all types of romantic interactions fly right over his head, it really depends on the mood he is and how deep he is lost in his books, he could have you wrapped around his finger with poetry from aeons ago , and promises of the most delicious things, but also you could stand in front of him entirely naked and he’d get frustrated at you only raising his head from some ancient scroll and asking you what you want

J = Jack Off (Masturbation headcanon): enjoys being given a show, he likes knowing how much you want him, wants to watch you pleasure yourself, his only help his hand rubbing your knee as he keeps his eyes fixed on you memorising every detail of your expressions and body

K = Kink (One or more of their kinks): voyeurism, maybe one(1) daddy here and there but nothing more, some minor roleplaying , naughty librarian? desperate ghoul etc etc

L = Location (Favourite places to do the do): he prefers to keep such matters behind closed doors 

M = Motivation (What turns them on, gets them going): being challenged, he likes people that run their mouths as much as he does, he does get frustrated at first and annoyed meeting someone his equal, but he would be bored otherwise, and all that frustration does make for delicious tension that bleeds into his more carnal needs

N = NO (Something they wouldn’t do, turn offs): he hates being pulled away from important work, he’ll tell you once, that he is busy and does not want to be disturbed and expects you to listen, if he hasn’t told you so , he is open to being distracted but you can tell when he wants you to fuck off somewhere else, of course in kinder terms

O = Oral (Preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc): he loves both, he is very very very thorough when he gives, knows how to keep his claws and teeth out of the way , or not if its the danger you like, and he definitely won’t say no to a pretty little thing on their knees for him

P = Pace (Are they fast and rough? Slow and sensual? etc.): it depends ,he loves simply taking his pleasure from you fast and rough, but also simply having you spread out for him ,taking his time with you until you tremble

Q = Quickie (Their opinions on quickies rather than proper sex, how often, etc.): not a big fan, hates being taken away from his research will click his tongue in annoyance if you bother him

R = Risk (Are they game to experiment, do they take risks, etc.): he is a naturally curious man that thirsts for knowledge so it comes to reason to assume that extends to his more private matters as well

S = Stamina (How many rounds can they go for, how long do they last…): considering what he is and the fact he is pretty powerful i would say his stamina is unparalleld, it takes him a while to get in the mood but once he is , he tends to lose time, and can go for honestly far too long ,you’ll be crying before he pulls away confused like , what happened, check the clock and see its the next day or something, those damn vampires

T = Toy (Do they own toys? Do they use them? On a partner or themselves?): he can definitely appreciate them, he is slightly too old fashioned to truly enjoy them for himself, but he does enjoy the fantasy of stuffing you with a toy before letting you walk away, however the idea of you potentially getting in danger or being humiliated stops him 

U = Unfair (how much they like to tease): he is quite the tease, likes holding you down by the scruff of your neck, using your body while teasing you with his words, speaking almost matter of factly about how desperate you are for him

V = Volume (How loud they are, what sounds they make): besides his teasing words he is so quite, sometimes you forget he is behind you when he has you bent over and you turn to make sure he hasnt simply left the room but he'll press your head back down and tell you he was just admiring you

W = Wild Card (Get a random headcanon for the character of your choice): absolutely uses nicknames when he addresses you teasingly, pet or darling depending on the mood

X = X-Ray (Let’s see what’s going on in those pants, picture or words): knot? knot! 

Y = Yearning (How high is their sex drive?): quite low, he is very in control of his needs, he likes when you want him and he chooses when he allows himself to want you, when he can afford the time to indulge both of your interest

Z = ZZZ (… how quickly they fall asleep afterwards): if he could never sleep he’d probably be a happy man , so much work to do, so much research 

[goldeneyedgirl]

AILess Whumptober Day 27: Locked Up/Immortal

The final entry, late but complete! I figured that I put Alice through the ringer all the time, it might be Jasper's turn. I had a very specific image of how this would look in my head that did not want to be translated to the page. I've also looked at this so long that I cannot look at it any longer.

So, enjoy whatever this is! I hope you all enjoyed Whumptober and were suitably depressed after my contributions to this event my loves <3

iron & stone. (day 27: imprisoned/immortal).

twilight, alice/jasper, pg, one-sided vampire alice/demon jasper.

very non-graphic wound description

She finds him in an old church in Tulsita, Texas. It’s a tiny place, one that has less than thirty people.

It’s a grim little town, with worn buildings and cracked roads; the air is thick and hot, even late at night. It’s the perfect place to be forgotten about, to be trapped. It’s a place that feels like it isn’t part of the real world, and like maybe time has frozen.

There’s an edge of dread in the air, and she has to wonder about that.

But mostly, she just feels anticipation.

It’s taken her thirty years to find him, she’s looked everywhere. She’s read everything. She’s recorded all her visions and made all the notes. She’s learned Spanish, Italian, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin for him. She’s practically a scholar on him and his kind now.

She’s still nervous.

(There are three kinds of demons - the oldest ones who have existed for always, those are the ones that should never been disturbed or called upon. Then there are the ones that are born naturally - very rare but possible. And then there are the ones that are made. Not like vampires - in the demon world vampires are half-breed cockroaches, endemic to humanity, according to the books she’s read. The change isn’t half the pain and suffering that being turned into a demon is - she knows that.)

She walks through forest surrounding the building carefully - it’s unlikely that anyone will see her, but she prefers to err on the side of cautious. Especially since it’s very, very clear that someone does visit regularly (relatively speaking, of course - time moves very differently for immortals.)

The church is thoroughly abandoned, the pews rotten and broken and the floor tiles cracked and scattered - what would have been an expensive point of pride lost to time and neglect. What is left of the prayer books are ruined cardboard covers covered in mould. The altar is pulled right down and destroyed; all but one of the windows is boarded up. Glass crunches underfoot - a mix of the remain window’s panes, and broken beer bottles scattered around.

And as she stands there and looks around, she wonders how anyone set foot in this place, even just to hide and drink, when she can feel his presence right here? That boiling rage, that uneasy feeling in the air - the gift of animal fear, that whatever this place contains is dangerous and they need to run. It’s all around her, yelling at her to leave and never come back.

It wouldn’t be the first time.

Edward and Carlisle would be furious she’s come here by herself. When she’d worked it all out, when she’d told them what her visions had shown her, they’d acted like he was dead and gone and she’d just have to get used to walking the world alone. They expected grief and she’d been confused - Carlisle had insisted that he was as good as dead, and Alice needed to make her peace with that.

Alice could never bring him home. That the Cullen residence, the Cullen name, had no place for monsters and terrors and the things that little children hide from. And she had agreed with them politely, told them that she understood. And she did. They had thought she was mourning, taking her time to adjust to what her life would look like now.

Esme had tried to talk with her, but Alice had refused, and just closed herself up in her bedroom. And they had let her be.

They hadn’t expected her to pack her things in the same satchel she arrived with, to leave behind her locket with a letter thanking them for their hospitality; shedding the Cullen name and creed like an unfashionable winter coat.

If there was no place for monsters amongst the Cullens, then she certainly wasn’t welcome. They forget that she was a nomad, a vampire before she arrived at their house with a smile and golden eyes. They forget that she has a whole story before she ever found them, and that it’s not all pretty and kind.

(No place for monsters, when Carlisle went and changed four innocent people without consent? When suicide is a sin and so is murder? That she loves them fiercely but to be a family is to realize that none of them are perfect and holy and unsullied by their nature? The House of Cullen is so beautifully monstrous, she almost feels sorry for them for not seeing that.)

She had made herself once, exactly how she wanted, and she could do it again. Maybe one day she’ll visit them. See if they forgive her. Esme will. Emmett will. Rose might. But Carlisle and Edward… well, it depends on a lot of things.

Like what lies beneath the church.

It takes her a while to find the little trapdoor down into the earth behind the altar, covered with broken wood and tile, and chained up with a shiny new padlock that crumples like paper in her determined hand. The steps down are mostly rotten - slats of wood wedged roughly into the earth - but she is small and light, and slips down easily, down into a cellar dug too deep and too precisely to be created for anything but a very specific purpose, with the little alcoves in the wall with wells of oil to light the way - only a few of them are still barely burning, throwing bizarre shadows onto the walls.

Everything about this is screaming for her to turn back. Every instinct, every sign is telling her to go home. Except…

She saw him so many times, in hundreds of moments that will weave between them. The laughter and the jokes and the love. She’s seen the way he’ll protect her and change her, and she’ll do the same for him. He’ll look at her with loathing and then tolerance and smug power, and finally, soul-binding love and adoration. The scars she’ll bare will be in the shape of his jaw. She’ll trace his scars with her fingers and her mouth and her tongue; she knows all the little pieces of his story - the boring and the ugly and the difficult, as well as the fragments that are light and precious.

She can’t wait.

But this… this part she’s never seen properly and maybe her brain was protecting her.

The room is small, and little more than dirt and stone held up with rotting beams - buckled and warped, but holding steady for now. It smells rotten down here, almost burnt.

And then there is him.

He lies in the middle, on the stone, his head thrown back like a sacrifice about to be cut open in the name of some ancient god. His eyes are closed and if she didn’t know better, she would think he was asleep. She can see him properly like this, the muscular lines of his torso, the tendons in his neck, the strength in his arms and legs. He looks like a classical Greek sculpture celebrating rapture.

Except… there’s pain. The pain radiates off him like heat; most of the scars are old but the wounds are not. Or maybe they can’t heal. Burns and cuts and bone-deep gouges cover every part of him. There’s a tremor to his body that she doesn’t understand.

And then he hears her shoes on the stone floor and he lunges in one swift move, alert and ready, a snarl echoing in the space.

…Or what should have been one swift move.

Instead, it’s messy and horrific and takes her a moment to process, as she tumbles backwards, losing her footing as he comes at her.

He rips himself from the stone, pieces of skin from his legs sticking to the floor when he moves, leaving open wounds that looks almost like burns on every piece of skin that the stone touched. His legs buckle and shake at the sudden movement, evidence that he has not stood in a very long time.

His eyes are so black they look like empty sockets as he looms over her. Blackness spreads up his hands and arms, spidery black veins stretching from his eyes and throat. For a moment, she thinks she catches a glimpse of the wings; ghost-like and ephemeral in the corner of her eye, tattered void stretched over ancient bone, cracking into place no longer than his arm span.

(He’s magnificent.)

And just as suddenly as he hovers over her, he is ripped backwards and hits the floor with a hiss and the heavy clank of chains pulling tight and recoiling. She gasps at his visible pain, the way he struggles to get up, the demonic visage fading back into the skin of a man. A man in the worst kind of pain she’s ever seen.

“Get out.” His voice is hoarse, the kind that hurts to listen to, and he turns away from her. She can see the chains properly now - ankles, wrists, throat, and thighs, all connecting to a back-brace of iron. The wings have sunk back into his flesh, deep scarring almost outlining them on his back, and she hates to think how painful it was to stretch them imprisoned like this.

How long has he been here, like this? As beautiful as he is, she can see every hour, day, decade he’s spent here in the gaunt shadows of his face, in the decay in his clothing, in the layers upon layers of scars and open wounds. His eyes are hard; there is no hope or trust in them at all.

She always knew it would be difficult, but she never counted on what seeing him in this state would be like. How much it would ache to see this bitter shadow of a man, and the suffering he has lived through.

“I’ve been looking for you everywhere,” she says, sitting up. Her bag has survived the fall, but she prepared for it. Nothing in the bag is breakable, for good reason. He’s liable to get angrier.

“Oh?” He looks at her. “You long for death so badly?” His voice is mocking, but she can hear the strain, the rasp of his agony. He shifts to see her better, and she can almost see ghost of his future self.

“Only of a certain kind,” she murmurs to try and lighten the mood, but it falls flat - he’s giving her the kind of look Edward reserved for fawning classmates, so she feels adequately stupid and regrets being so flippant and crude. “You’re hurt. I want to help you.”

He is so badly hurt. The fresh burns smell like alcohol, raw and weeping blood. It’s oddly matte with no shine, but demon blood isn’t like human blood. There’s also a mottled black mark on his torso that she hopes is some terrible bruise and not broken bone just beneath the skin.

“Go away.” His voice is hard, no trace of the pain or misery he’s experiencing. There is a power and a rage there that makes her skin crawl and every instinct is telling her to run. He glares at her, and his eyes… she’s seen them red and gold and black, but right now they are demonic - a black sclera and pupil with churning red iris. But there is no shine to them, just a void. They scream of danger and she understands a little better why Carlisle warned her so grimly away from him.

“No.” She rummages in her bag. Aro had allowed her to use the library for a whole summer, to learn about demon physiology and healing. He’d been amused by her request - and by the discovery she’d left Carlisle’s family in pursuit of this demon. She knows that he’s already plotting, that nothing he offers is without strings attached, but she’ll worry about that later. She has the knowledge, and that is what is most important. “Let me help you.”

“Why do you want to help me? What do you want?” He’s holding himself oddly, and she realizes he’s trying not to touch the stone again, only the soles of his feet.

“To help you. And to talk.” She checks the bottles have not split in her bag; she’d used old water bottles, and a few of them are warping from the chemicals inside of them. But she’d gone over it a dozen times at least, and these will work. He just needs to let her help. “If you don’t like what I have to say, you can leave. Nothing about this is conditional.”

He stares at her. “You don’t want to be remade?” He asked suspiciously. His breathing is labored. “You don’t want all the secrets of the underworld? Wealth? To live again?”

She shakes her head. “I have money and a home of my own. And I have no memory of ever being anything else but what I am right now. The only thing I want is to help you.”

He lets out a bark of laughter. “You say that. But you’ll expect things. Everyone who comes here does. They always want. Humans are greedy creatures and vampires are parasites. You’ll want something, they all do,” he snaps at her and then he smiles, cruel and sharp. “Not many survive being remade. Maria tried to make a dozen of us. I was the only one of my batch that made it through. You have no idea what pain can be.” He scoffs. “Especially if the change was so overwhelming for you that you blocked it out.”

“I know.” She does. She’s read all the written accounts of being remade into a demon right back to some scraps of information from the Roman Empire; the rituals are mostly anecdotal. There was nothing about how it was done; even Aro didn’t have a full copy of how to remake someone. Several of the leads pointed towards the possibility of the remaining instructions being locked up in the Vatican, but even her visions couldn’t decipher if they were genuine or just a rumor.

The fact Maria of Monterrey had found a record and managed to translate it into a ritual that actually worked was awe-inspiring. It made her one of the most dangerous people on the planet - and one of the most powerful.

But the cost of it… how many people had she killed to create Jasper? To create her army? There were the newborn recruits, the blood for the army, and the ones that she tried to remake… that was thousands, more than Alice could comprehend in the scale of human life.

No, she’s not interested. Perhaps she even fears physical pain a little, because she has no memory of human pain, of the change. She’s never bled, never ached, never really suffered like that. And that unknown void of pain, a universal emotion understood by every living thing on the planet… she doesn’t have that.

But maybe…

“I’ve never been hurt,” she says softly. “Not that I remember. I can’t stand the thought of it. That something can feel like that. If I can stop it, I want to. That’s all.”

His gaze burns into her.

“Do you know how many people have come here and promised me things?” He sounds angry but tired. “They’ll free me, they’ll give me money and food and bandage me up. My own army. Girls. Boys. Anything I goddamn want. Do you know what happens to them?”

She sits cross-legged. “Don’t pretend you killed them.”

“You don’t think I could?” The look on his face is dangerous.

“I know you could. I know that if you really wanted to, I would have been dead before I saw you move. I know that you were the most dangerous man in Texas and Mexico for decades before I was even born - before you were remade.

“But I don’t see any bodies. No bloodstains, no bones, nothing left behind. There’s nothing here. Whatever they offered you, you didn’t kill them for it.”

“When I didn’t give them what they want, they left me here,” he says finally. “All of them.”

“Were there many?” That she is curious about. There are a hundred reasons to seek out a demon, but few people are brave enough, and fewer still with the information to find one.

“More than I expected.” He looks at her, his gaze hard and bitter. “What do you want?”

“To help you,” she says obediently. “To get you out of the chains and upstairs; maybe look at some of those wounds? I’m no doctor, but I think I know what to do.”

“And what is your price?” He sounds testy again, and she’s getting annoyed that he won’t listen.

“I’m a cheap date - maybe you can just not kill me? Once you’re free, maybe we could talk for a little while? I have a house we can go to where you can recover safely, if you want to. Otherwise we part as friends.” That would be a disappointing outcome but one she is prepared for. “As long as you’re okay to be alone. I didn’t go to all this trouble to let you go off on your own and keel over in the street dead.”

The surprise on his face is genuine. “I cannot die from this. That’s the whole point of being down here,” he said slowly. “I can only suffer. It would take much, much more to end me.”

He looks sad and tired when he says that, and she wants to hold him. To reassure him that it will get better. It can be wonderful, if he gives her a chance.

“Good. Then if you want to leave me, you can. Just let me help you, and everything will be okay, I promise.”

They stare at each other for a long time, neither of them flinching before he nods his head once.

“I hold a grudge. If you double-cross me…” he begins but she’s already moving closer.

“I understand.” And she does - she’s had visions of him in battle, and the sheer violence and blood-lust had scared her. He is a dangerous creature. But she’d be more likely to rip off her own arm than intentionally harm him.

“You’ll want to take off your shoes.”

It’s an odd request but she takes off her boots and moves forward.

One foot on the stone and she can feel the warmth inside of it; when she looks down, her stockings are already being to singe from the heat.

“Keep moving, or you’ll stick,” he warns and she’s horrified.

The stains on the stone that she had assumed were age were patches of blackened skin still stuck to the stone - his skin - that had torn away from him every single time that he moved.

And then there was the sudden awareness of that fact that his feet have been resting flat against the stone since they’ve started speaking, and she wants to scream, to pry him off the stone herself. She looks at him in naked horror and his lip quirks in quasi-amusement at her expression.

“It’s consecrated ground - no matter how deep it goes, it will always burn the likes of us - me worse than you, but I wouldn’t linger. And no, your shoes wouldn’t protect you.”

Consecrated ground. Fucking consecrated ground. She’d read about it - Europe was lousy with it, but much of it has faded away forgotten and unsanctified in the last couple of centuries as religion has lost its grip on the population. It’s much rarer in the states - most of it is in New England, allegedly. But this perfectly built little prison, complete with consecrated ground… she wants to ask a million questions about the how and the why, but she knows he won’t answer. Not yet.

Right now, she needs to get him off of the floor and out of this evil little room as soon as possible. And the first step is to break the chains embedded in the wall - where a single panel of rock is placed.

She’ll worry about getting the brace off of him once they’re out of here.

He watches her, almost entertained, as she tries to break the links, inspecting the chain carefully for flaws or weaknesses. But even with all her strength, they don’t even bend. They are stubborn and as cursed as this entire basement.

She can feel it - they cannot be broken. She can’t see a way around it.

But when she looks down at him watching her, at his dead-eyed stare of acceptance that he will not be leaving, she feels the weight of what she’s promised him. That he still believes that she will fail and leave him to his fate.

But she was Emmett Cullen’s sister for nearly three years, and Emmett had never met a law, a riddle, a trap or a rule that he couldn’t find a loophole for.

Which is why she brought a screwdriver. An entire toolkit, actually. Whilst vampire strength and speed could fix so many problems, there were some things that required the precision of a toolkit or a lock pick. And maybe the last gift Emmett ever gave her was a mini pink toolkit, and she’d taken that when she’d left.

If there was one thing that all her research had taught her was that magical laws are rigid and precise. The chains will not and can not be broken - that is clear to both of them. She probably isn’t the first that has tried over the years - she could only imagine that he’s tried to free himself hundreds, probably thousands, of times.

So they cannot break them.

She doubts anyone bothered to stop them from being dismantled.

He stares at her incredulously when she pulls the screwdriver from her bag, like maybe she’s some kind of fool. And maybe she is.

But when the first screw hits the stone, she smiles brightly at the look of shock on his face.

“Pick all of them up, I don’t want anyone knowing how we figured this out,” she says bossily, hopping between her feet - her stockings have burnt through, ragged blacked edges having stretched back up above her ankle. She has more clothing at the house, but she’s mildly annoyed at the architect of this building for ruining them. It’s an uncomfortable heat, an odd sensation, but it doesn’t feel too bad as long as she keeps moving.

He fumbles for the screws as each of them fall - they are smaller than it feels like they should be for the size and weight of the chains, but there are so many of them.

And then…

And then the heavy chains drop free of the wall, and he is free. He stares at them in total bewilderment before he looks back up at her.

“Now you’re free,” she says breathlessly, jamming the screwdriver into her bag, and goes to help him stand. He’s unsteady but takes a deep breath as he begins to peel his feet from the stone. It’s horrific as the skin of his soles tears away, blistered and raw but not yet blackened, thankfully. He lets out a groan of pain, one that makes him sound every single day of his age, every single day of his pain.

She doesn’t say anything, she just supports him until they are finally, finally back on the dirt floor.

“Do you want to sit?” She asks quietly and he shakes his head.

“I want to get out,” he says stiffly, and she nods, as they move towards the exit.

It’s an awkward trip back up the stairs; the staircase is narrow, but he needs her guiding support for now, his legs shaking with each step. It takes twice as long as it should, with him pausing every so many steps, as she half-shoves him onto each step. His movements are made awkward from the brace, and she’s already trying to figure out how she’ll pry that thing off him.

And then…

She shoves open the trap door, the wood splintering. And even the feeble moonlight shining down from the broken window feels like someone has just lit up the room - the darkness of the cellar feels inky and oppressive in comparison; the oil-wells dimmer than they were when she descended.

He lets out a shuddering breath as he climbs out, into the fresh air, his eyes darting around the space.

“It’s okay, it’s only us,” she soothes. “You’re safe.”

He nods, but he doesn’t look at her. He’s staring at the boarded-up windows, at the broken glass and rotting pews and forgotten prayer books.

The look on his face reminds her of herself, when she awoke that first time in the woods alone. She knew nothing, had seen nothing in person… just the appreciation and awe of being there, in that place. A moment of simply being alive and in the world.

She remembers it well.

—

They sit inside the old church in silence for a while.

After a while, she begins to pull out first aid from her bag. “Let me,” she says softly, and he doesn’t protest - though he refuses to let her see the wounds under his threadbare clothing. She hasn’t got anything that will stitch his wounds, but she can clean the wounds and bandage them so that they at least stay sanitized and protected. The chemicals she has to use burn her nose, but they seem to work.

“Now, let’s have a look at the brace,” she says soothingly, the screwdriver back in her hand. He eyes her with suspicion but nods once for her to continue.

It’s not as easy as the chains. The brace is too tight and has bitten tight into his skin. The screws come out slowly, ad she doesn’t care that they roll amongst the glass and the debris.

The brace doesn’t fall away. Instead, she has to peal each piece away, skin and scar tissue tearing, leaving raw open wounds in their wake. But he doesn’t make a sound as each piece hits the floor. He just stares up at the piece of sky he can see.

And then it is gone. The wounds will scar, she knows it. But he has movement back, real movement again. His neck, his arms, his wings… Free again, a little bit more.

“Done,” she says softly.

“I don’t even know your name,” he finally says hoarsely, and looks back down at her, as she packs everything back up.

“Alice Cullen,” she says, and thinks about correcting herself. She’s not sure what surname she should be using honestly. She never had one of her own, and nothing else feels like it would fit. She was supposed to be Cullen for a while and then…

Well, she didn’t want to get ahead of herself. Cullen was fine.

He nods in acknowledgement before looking back up at the sliver of sky visible through the broken window.

“I want to leave this place,” he says in a steady voice.

“Of course.”

She wants to offer to burn it down. To tear it down with her bare hands for him. But he won’t understand, not yet.

“Let’s go.”

—

He finds his strength as soon as his feet hit the grass, enough to stand on his own and move away from her support, onto the grass, shivering as his feet sunk in for the first time… in so very long. His turns in a slow circle, just staring up at the clouds and the trees and the world outside he’s hellish, cursed little dirt prison.

He… to call it a scream is not accurate. It is a scream, a roar, a holler, a flood of grief and rage and resentment. It is pain and loss, swearing revenge against the one that did this to him. It is regret and heartbreak and relief.

He is free.

His wings stretch out reflexively, the black staining his hands and face faintly, and the full horror of what the brace has done to him is revealed beyond the splitting and tearing and stretching of the wounds - his wings only open as long as his arm-span; the humeral and secondaries appear to have been crushed from the brace. And the humerus bone appears to have been snapped and reset so that it cannot extend. Half of his wings are limp and crumpled against his spine, a dead and mottled colour.

He has been crippled, possibly forever.

Except…

She’s never really been in the business of giving up. Of looking at something and accepting a bad roll of the dice. She looks at his wings, slack and broken, and she wants to fix them. She’s already considering it, mentally adding splints and bandages, breaking and resetting bone, stitching back together the thin flesh that stretches over them. It would be painful and miserable and it would take a long, long time. And it might not work.

But she already knows that if it didn’t work, she’d take him to Carlisle. She’d take him to Carlisle and use every single trick in her book to convince him to help. She’d promise that Carlisle would never see her again, that she’d never bother any of them, if Carlisle would just fix him. She’d take him to Carlisle, to Aro, to goddamn Maria, if it meant helping.

Anything he needed. Or wanted. She would get it - she had waited for this for so long.

He’s silent now, and he turns to look at her with confusion on his face.

“I looked for you, you know. For almost forty years.” Her voice is soft, and his gaze turns wary. “I get …visions of the future. Of the path that I’m on. And you have always been in them. I saw you with Maria in the south. I saw you when you left with Peter and Charlotte. I never saw what happened, and how you ended up down there but I tried so hard to find you. I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner.”

And he stares at her, the black receding from his body, the wings folding back into his body.

“What did you see?” He asks, and he sounds exhausted.

“That I love you. All of you, for as long as you’ll have me.”

He shakes his head, and for a second, he looks so young. “Did you see what happened when she remade me? When she worked out how to make her army more powerful?” He asks. “Did you see what it took to become this? Did you see what I became?”

“I did.”

“Ninety days. Of pain and sacrifice and being ripped into pieces and put back together. To feel the rage boil and burn until your skin,” he murmurs, looking back up at the cloudy night. “Of having this fresh, feral monstrosity of yourself fit itself inside of you and this… clarity of the world and how everything fits together. I’m not the man you want, Alice Cullen.”

“Yes, you are. And it’s … not Cullen anymore, not really. I left them because they wouldn’t let me find you.”

He’s silent, staring at her.

“They said I should think of you as good as dead and that wasn’t… you were still here. I just had to find you. I wasn’t going to mourn you just because you weren’t a vampire anymore. What Maria did to you didn’t change our future, so it didn’t matter to me. But it did to them. So I left them.” She shrugs. “I had enough money saved that I have my own home now - our home if you want it. But it’ll just be us.”

He looks at her hard, like he’s trying to look right through her.

“I was going to destroy you, you realize,” he says finally, his knees buckling but he sinks into the soft ground with dignity, leaning against a tree. “I was going to devour you whole.”

“I mean, with a safe word…” she begins and he lets out a chuckle.

“You aren’t what I was expecting,” he says finally, and she moves closer. She can smell rain on the air. “I’ve never met anyone who didn’t want to be remade like me as payment.”

She’s seen it. In a few decades, he’ll offer it as a form of protection. That the only thing more dangerous than a mated vampire and demon would be two mated demons roaming untethered to a master or mistress.

She’s seen futures where she accepts and they are … sublime. Glorious and terrible and so very, very happy. And she’s seen futures where she’s content with herself, and they are just as happy, just as fantastic and beautiful and fatal. It was never about the venom or the magic that flowed in their veins. It was always them.

“If you don’t want to stay with me, I can help you find Peter and Charlotte,” she offers. “You can recover in my home until then, and we can part as friends.”

He looks back up at the sky as the rain begins to fall, a smile stretching across his face as the water hits his face.

How long has it been since he’s seen and felt rain?

“I think I’d like to stay here for a while,” he says finally, and she can feel how tired and confused he is.

He doesn’t trust her yet - it will be a long time until he does, she knows that. Long after his wounds have healed - she’s certainly got some ideas for his wings, but it’ll be a while before he’s willing to hear her out - he’ll still treat her with suspicion. And that’s okay. She didn’t bet everything on him to be scared off so easily.

Sitting down beside him, she’s careful not to touch him. His eyes are glazed and dreamy as he watches the clouds and the rain, the darkness swallowing them up in the woods behind the church.

“You should rest,” she says softly. “We’ll have to leave before dawn, but we have a few hours.”

“I’m fine,” he corrects, but his words are slower and easier, and she doesn’t say anything else as he slowly drifts off, the cool rain on his face.

Jasper Whitlock. Major of the Confederate Army, turned by Maria of Monterrey back in 1863. The love of her life, who was supposed to show up at a diner in Philadelphia but never made it. The scourge of the South, a mythological monster forged out of pain and horror that most people couldn’t imagine, let alone survive.

And her reason for everything.

He looks… peaceful as he sleeps, the rain clinging to him and not even disturbing him. All the stress and pain and rage slipped off his face. He looked like a different person.

She doesn’t remember what sleep is like, and it’s strange to think of just not being for a while. To just be so vulnerable.

It’s a strange feeling, waiting for so long, and now being here with him. Watching him sleep in the rain, broken up into little pieces but somehow still standing.

The real thing is so much more than she ever anticipated.

Nothing will hurt him again. No one will imprison him again. He is free. She found him. Anything he wants, anything at all.

“I’ve got you, Jasper. I’ve got you."

[goblins-riddles-or-frocks]

In case you haven’t already been asked, can I please hear the soapbox about Aleksander being a direct take on Edward Cullen?

(Also your meta is astonishingly well written and well thought out and a delight to read!)

Thank you so much! That’s so sweet! Not to be vain, but well I am simply vain and like hearing that lol.

This is a fandom I’ve mostly avoided interacting with people in because I feel like there seems to be a very strong dichotomy between people who absolutely loathe the Darkling and all aspects of the villain ship and judge any engagement with it or conversely people who loooove him but are like “He’s never done anything wrong in his life ever and Alina’s actually evil and ungrateful for running away from him”

So I’ve mostly just been quietly posting fic in my own corner for as long as I’ve been on the periphery of the fandom. The current meta thing happened on accident but it’s been fun and I enjoy getting asks!

Anyway, this took me awhile to get to because I’ve been trying to figure out how to best articulate my thoughts beyond what I already generally said in that other post:

[Shadow and Bone was probably being written] towards the tail end of the post Twilight paranormal, and specifically vampire, romance boom. It was not at all uncommon to see unironic romances focusing on impressionable teenaged protagonists with poor self esteem, getting with 100+ year old love interests who, in singling them out (for their “maturity” and discontent from their peer group) validate their self worth, but also completely isolate and impose their own values on them.

The first half of the very first TGT book follows those same tropes pretty closely, and the initial romance heavy book marketing was basically indistinguishable from that crop of books.

To be clear, I think wish fulfillment stories are fine lol, but it’s really interesting to think of SaB (and the Darkling!) as a deliberate deconstruction in response to those trends.

So that does sum up my thoughts generally. But to get into it in more depth, let’s talk about Twilight.

Stories featuring teen protagonists and immortal love interests are older than Twilight, of course. But I’d argue that Twilight codified and popularized a particular version where the point is validation of self worth through the romance.

Comparing it to 90s versions of similar plotlines, BTVS, Vampire Diaries (the books), and Silver Kiss all have teen/immortal romances but the protagonist is already mostly self actualized or previously singled out as special in some way. It’s not dependent on the love interest noticing the protagonist to signify that she’s deserving of attention? If that makes sense? The romances instead hinge more on the protagonist having some sort of brush with death or other source of morbidity that allows her to feel kinship with the vampire and relate to him.

(I’m using specific pronouns because this is such a gendered and heterosexual genre and story type. I’d argue gender roles are an inherent part of how it functions)

With BTVS it’s Buffy’s entire alter life as a slayer and the violence and loneliness of it that her peers could never understand. Vampire Diaries and Silver Kiss both focus on loss of a parent(s) and the jarring alienation of grief.

Conversely, Twilight opens with Bella as an aggressively ordinary and unassuming girl. The narrative is very explicit about her not feeling very pretty or special in any way. She’s dissatisfied with her life because she constantly puts everyone else in it first, and though she is forever self sacrificing she also isn’t very vocal about it, so she gets no meaningful acknowledgement for how much she tries to do.

It’s also worth noting that Bella being the new addition to a very small town and all attention being on her is also a prominent part of the first book, so it’s really about superficial attention vs someone really Seeing Her. This is reinforced by her coming to Edward’s attention at all because a) he inexplicably can’t read her thoughts and b) her blood smells really good and is testing his morals and self control lmfao. Because again both of these things are superficial forms of attention and specialness and the particularly tasty blood— imo primarily being a very Mormon metaphor for violent sexual desire/impulses in men— is in-universe just overtly negative attention. But they fall in love despite all that, because she is pure enough and nice enough and interesting enough on her own merits that he sees past all that to who she is as a person.

Whether or not these themes are consciously employed, Twilight is inextricable imo from Stephenie Meyer’s Mormonism and that sort of very conservative perspective. In a way, the romance in Twilight becomes a metaphor for an inherently violent man (It’s not his fault though! He’s just cursed with sinful urges!) being faced with how pure and secretly special the protagonist is and being floored enough by it to instead fall in love with her. It’s about seeing her humanity and it being so shockingly unique to him apparently that it eclipses his predisposition to see her simply as one of three existing categories: an NPC, prey, OR despised temptation who exists solely to challenge his morals.

This is further explored by the werewolves as an incredibly racist mirror to this, and Emily as an example of someone whose violent spouse was not able to hold back… perhaps because she simply wasn’t special enough… or honestly perhaps because she didn’t see the value of their relationship and (iirc) didn’t want anything to do with him. Their relationship is apparently idyllic once she’s chosen to stay 😬 but that’s tangential.

This element of violence is something that the biggest and most well known Twilight imitator, Fifty Shades of Grey, definitely picked up on. (Unfortunately I’m also going to talk about Fifty Shades a fair bit to compare and contrast!) Where, its incredibly flawed swapping out of vampirism for perceived sexual deviance in the form of terrible BDSM etiquette lmao and just outright trauma notwithstanding, the main premise is just overtly “What if you were SO pure and sweet that an abusive and overtly sadistic man who is going out of his way to not see your personhood was forced to confront you as a human being and fell in love with you, enough so to change his ways entirely”

All this being said, I don’t think Twilight’s biggest impact on the paranormal romance genre as a touchstone was really as a metaphor for… uh being good enough to not be victimized by a man lmao. At least not all the time. I’d argue the most popularly recycled tropes are just that of an unassuming protagonist with low self esteem, who’s never really acknowledged by her peers, having her worth validated by an immortal creature. This validation comes from a hot immortal love interest being framed as inherently better and cooler than the guys all the other girls are dating, but also because immortality means that this older and more worldly character presumably has a much higher standard to clear! If this character is saying that the protagonist is shockingly special and interesting and worthy of love, next to all of her peers that he doesn’t even notice at all, that must both be true and a good thing. In this way, the love interest’s values, either inadvertently or deliberately, are the only values that matter. And rising to that standard is usually synonymous with isolation from one’s peers and even viewing them as lesser.

Meanwhile, another frequent trope in the genre is controlling behavior. This is typically just there as a way to highlight how much the love interest loves the protagonist, and maybe as a way to introduce some desirable undertones of danger/conflict. In Twilight’s defense, while Edward imposing his own values on Bella entirely, constantly ignoring the very few boundaries she sets, and being all around a controlling creep isn’t treated with a real understanding of its gravity, it’s also not presented wholly uncritically. There is a (very drawn out) arc over the course of the series where she allows her identity to be subsumed into him and existing only in terms of their relationship, but by the last book she does actually push back on plenty of his hard and fast rules— if still in that fundamentally conservative and Mormon way. She keeps the baby he doesn’t want; she gets to turn into a vampire and stay with him forever; her experience with vampirism ISN’T his experience with vampirism ie mindless bloodthirstiness lol; she doesn’t need to fake her death; her family and friends can continue to be a part of her life. But Twilight imitators usually don’t get that far!

So let’s finally circle back around to Shadow and Bone:

First of all let’s talk about its early marketing. Shadow and Bone’s earlier title was the Gathering Dark and iirc the first round of ARCs were even sent out with that title and this cover:

Notice the paranormal romance tagline of “A dark heart. A pure soul. A love that will last forever.”

Meanwhile this was the official blurb it was initially released with:

“Surrounded by enemies, the once-great nation of Ravka has been torn in two by the Shadow Fold, a swath of near impenetrable darkness crawling with monsters who feast on human flesh. Now its fate may rest on the shoulders of one lonely refugee.

Alina Starkov has never been good at anything. But when her regiment is attacked on the Fold and her best friend is brutally injured, Alina reveals a dormant power that saves his life—a power that could be the key to setting her war-ravaged country free. Wrenched from everything she knows, Alina is whisked away to the royal court to be trained as a member of the Grisha, the magical elite led by the mysterious Darkling.

Yet nothing in this lavish world is what it seems. With darkness looming and an entire kingdom depending on her untamed power, Alina will have to confront the secrets of the Grisha . . . and the secrets of her heart.”

And this additional very romance novel blurb that was on some other marketing material:

“Alina, a pale, lonely orphan, discovers a unique power that thrusts her into the the world of the kingdom's magical elite - the Grisha. Could she be the key to setting Ravka free?

The Darkling, a man of seductive charm and terrifying power. If Aline is to fulfill her destiny, she must unlock her gift and face up to her dangerous attraction to him.

But what of Mal, Alina's childhood best friend? Why can't she forget him?”

ALSO here is the romance heavy book trailer:

Fans of Darklina as an endgame ship will argue that this was indicative of there being an earlier romance focused version where they were intended to end up together. I… highly doubt that personally.

In all interviews, even the earliest ones, where Leigh Bardugo talks about the story and the characters and how she came up with them, she talks about it from a perspective that sounds in keeping with how the plot played out, as in, the Darkling existing to be a literal villain.

I think all this just places SaB as a Madoka Magica, or Doki Doki Literature Club type deconstruction where deceptive marketing is simply working very hard to preserve the twist.

I think the story itself engages with Twilight pretty directly. Alina, as a youthful ingenue protagonist with low self esteem, a feeling of alienation from her peers, and feeling constantly overlooked by everyone, including her childhood best friend who she’s in love with, fits into the starting point of paranormal romance protagonist really well. The question of superficial attention is even addressed by her being discovered as the Sun Summoner and having so many sudden expectations thrust upon her.

Her gaining the Darkling’s attention specifically is initially framed in a fairly similar way to The Tropes. He is the aloof hot immortal teenager, who for the purposes of the deconstruction, everyone already even knows is at least over a hundred years old. Moreover he’s essentially treated like their (desirable….) school principal lmao to just really hammer home that his opinions matter More but also to make it feel vaguely weird.

There are a lot of moments in early SaB where the Darkling singles Alina out in a way that’s meant to look flattering at face value but that she’s quietly a little unnerved by. Off the top of my head, there’s the bit where the Grisha students are arguing over who Alina will walk with (when presented to the Tsar perhaps?) and the Darkling sweeps in and is like “she will walk with me.” Obviously, when he keeps trying to single her out by allowing her to wear black, which is his personal super special color that no one else gets to wear. When Zoya, as Thee popular girl, gets called into the principal’s office and he reprimands her for shfhff breaking Alina’s ribs (I love Zoya so much), and in the way it is ostensibly a win for Alina— Zoya isn’t the favorite girl anymore— but it’s also so obvious, in a way that’s very accessible to modern teens, that he is NOT their peer. Like, in universe we know that he is their commander and has rank over everyone. But that’s a fantasy element that probably doesn’t mean much to your average teenager. Meanwhile there’s a strong 1:1 analogue for him being like a real adult in their lives, when they are deliberately framed as teenagers. And it’s genuinely unsettling!

(Worth noting that mid 2000s YA also had a fair number of uncritical teacher romances. Because in those again there is the element of the protagonist’s worth and maturity being enforced by this more experienced and cooler adult finding her desirable)

I feel like the grooming in SaB while genuinely the most integral and interesting element of the entire trilogy to me, is also in some ways the most poorly accomplished. Probably some sort of mix of debut clumsiness and what I feel like might be discomfort with the topic preventing Bardugo from really getting into it. But of the successful and subtler moments, something that stands out to me is Alina not feeling like she can talk about the Darkling kissing her by the lake. And then trying to downplay it like “he probably kisses a bunch of Grisha girls”

Like. If he is going around kissing teenaged students under his command that is WEIRD that is a RED FLAG lmao.

But Alina just doesn’t have that frame of reference! While slightly unsettled by his attention she is mostly, genuinely flattered by it. He believes in her! He doesn’t know why he cares about her opinions of him but he does 🥺🥺 She’s somehow, successfully managed to cut through his aloofness by virtue of her specialness, and seeing into his angst about making up for his ancestor’s crimes, and believing in his madcap quest to get an even specialer amplifier necklace (lol) for her so that they can save the world together! The first half of S&B follows the logic of a Twilight imitator paranormal romance very solidly.

I think it’s also really interesting how the Darkling’s scary shadow powers, and the concept of there being an ancestor/dark legacy separate from him that he supposedly wants to prove he’s better than works as an analogue for vampirism. There’s a pretty direct 1:1 of “It looks like he’s dangerous, but don’t worry it’s just a bad reputation. It’s not his fault and he feels really bad about it.” So it’s really clever imo when the reveal is that there is no ancestor, there is no separation, it was all him all along, he did it on purpose and he is not sorry! He is dangerous to her and it’s literally his own choice to be that way.

So if the Edward type is a love interest whose violence/danger is something that is inherent to him, but it’s also not his fault at all, and it’s something that can be overcome by Bella’s personal purity and goodness, the Darkling is completely the opposite.

The threat he poses to Alina is entirely of his own volition. It’s a cold and calculated choice to seduce her, and later to try to magically enslave her. Likewise it’s, in my opinion, absolutely integral to the story that his obsession isn’t with her as a person at all, it’s with what she represents. He can be faced with her, in all her vulnerability and complexity, as a genuine human being and simply not care to stop himself from wanting to hurt her or subjugate her. Her opinions and her personality do not matter.

She cannot simply love him into no longer posing a threat to her! It doesn’t work like that!

Anyway, as promised (threatened?) earlier I have some Fifty Shades of Grey thoughts pertaining to Shadow and Bone too. While Fifty Shades doesn’t have the immortal/magical aspect at all, it’s painfully blatant Twilight fanfic, and so Christian Grey still embodies this love interest type fairly perfectly.

And it’s just really interesting to read with the context of it being a contemporary example of the sort of thing SaB is riffing off of and presenting critically, where those same things here are presented to be desirable.

There is an instance in FSOG where the protagonist’s friend is warning her to be careful about the love interest— while still laughing about how hot he is. And it is simply meant to make him seem thrilling and desirable!

But it feels almost like a 1:1 with Genya warning Alina in SaB where the warning is very literal. And compare that to the direct line drawn between Genya being preyed on by the Tsar and Alina being preyed on by the Darkling. They’re very different circumstances, but when there’s the overt and explicitly stated theme of “Be careful of powerful men” I can’t see how these two plot threads existing in the same book and presented in the same breath aren’t meant to be read as in conversation with each other.

There are also similar beats during Ana and Christian’s (stilted! very clumsy!) conversations where she strongly has the vibe of a kid at the principal’s office, unsure if she’s going to be scolded, and getting very flustered every time he makes her feel special in whatever small way.

Which is very similar to early Darklina interactions. Like I said before, the grooming was definitely the weakest part of SaB even though it’s simultaneously (imo) the most interesting/important aspect. But both books being varying degrees of bad just make them even more comparable to me?

It’s just intriguing to see vaguely similar things play out with clearly different awarenesses and intent in terms of what the main takeaway from these beats is meant to be.

Also! Again as yikes as Fifty Shades replacing vampirism with BDSM is, [insert joke about Christian Grey being a shitty dom vs the Darkling’s sexually charged desire to put Alina in a magic collar and fetters, and to get her to submit to him]

Sorry this was kind of all over the place but I hope that answers your question?

[kiatheinsomniac]

I just came across your page and I’m obsessed!!! Your writing has me in a chokehold 😩 I was thinking, could you do headcanons for castlevania boys (hector and alucard specifically) with an Arab S/O, west Asia specifically (So countries like Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, Syria)? It’s ROUGH out here in pretty much every fandom as an Arab girl.

☾ ⋆ﾟ 𝐌𝐀𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓 / 𝐑𝐔𝐋𝐄𝐒

𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐄𝐒: okok I had an anon (not sure if it was you or someone else) give me some advice so I've looked into what they showed me about facial tattooing and I looked into some old Arabian martial arts (specifically equestrian-involved styles of fighting bc it was easier to find sources and it's so cool omg) but finding fashion was trickier?? For some reason I can only find ottoman stuff but some of the places you've asked for like Syria weren't under ottoman rule until AFTER the Castlevania timeline sobs, I hope I did alright despite the research being difficult for the late 15th century. I'm very open to any constructive criticism, you deserve rep and you deserve good rep!!

𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐀𝐂𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐒: alucard, hector

｡･:*˚:✧｡adrian 'alucard' tepes

♡ The first thing that catches Alucard's attention about you is your clothes and the tattoos at your chin and brow. He can tell you're not from Wallachia and it reminds him of his mother's talk of travels. He can only imagine how far away you've come from and he watches as a merchant at the stall you're standing at tries to take advantage of you clearly not being local.

♡ Being the gentleman he is, he steps in and sets the merchant straight with his silver tongue before joining you in wherever you're heading next. As you're only passing through the city, in search of something which you have yet to share with him, he helps you to find an inn the stay in for the night and even pays for your meal that evening.

♡ By the time you've told him that you're chasing rumours of the last Belmont being alive to learn how to fight from him, your city having been plagued by night creatures at the command of a local, powerful vampire, Alucard's invested in helping you on your quest and offers to bring you to the Belmont hold. You're exactly the sort of person that his village is looking to find! Someone who is in need of all the secrets that the combined Hold and Castle have!

♡ After seeing your weapons on you, Alucard had been curious about your fighting skills and they were certainly put to the test when you happened across two night creatures on the road. Never dismounting from your horse, Alucard had hardly reached for his sword by the time you had charged forwards, shooting one with a bow before running through the second with the spear you had been carrying around. Yeah, he definitely just fell in love with you a bit.

♡ By the time you're a guest in the castle and Alucard's helping you to learn about how to defeat the night creatures, you're teaching him about your equestrian martial arts that are very common where you're from, down to the breeding of your beloved horse companion and the importance it holds.

♡ He's tried offering you some wine at one point, wanting to be polite, but he's very respectful should he find out that your religion does not allow you to have alcohol - the same goes for any other dietary aspects (he's actually comes to love the tea you make so you can share a drink together, he's even learned how to make it from watching you so many times).

♡ Alucard Is immortal and he knows the long life and many opportunities he has ahead of him but he's still young and has yet to leave Wallachia: he's enamoured with all the stories you can share of your homeland. His mother believed in travelling to discover the world and explore humanity and he has every intention of leaving Wallachia once he can assure the Castle, Hold and village will all remain safe.

｡･:*˚:✧｡hector

♡ Your first meeting with Hector was quite a mess. When someone who was so clearly from far away knocked on his door, armed with weapons, he had thought you were there to kill him for having helped Dracula in his attempted genocide. So, he was very pleasantly surprised to find that you were not there to kill him but to learn from him. He was no stranger to having people will ill intentions knocking on his door so he was relieved to find that you weren't there as an enemy.

♡ He invited you in and listened to your story of how a local vampire had taken advantage of Dracula's death by raising their own army to try and conquer the land and all the people who were being slain by vampires and night creatures in the process. You had come here to learn how to fight fire with fire: you wanted to become a forge master and raise your own army to protect your fellow people. He warns you that forge mastery is not an easy art and will take time to practice but you came here to give your people and fighting chance and that's exactly what you'll do.

♡ In the time that you stay with Hector, he's watched you train o horseback, shooting at targets in the field beside his garden and it has him in awe every time how you can aim with such accuracy without slowing down or dismounting.

♡ While explaining all the required alchemical symbols in forge mastery, you catch on quick and explain that even the symbols in your facial tattoos have meaning. Hector had noticed them, of course, but had assumed it was simply a form of fashion where you're from and it led to a long conversation about other little cultural things. Hector had watched you speak with such close attention and you couldn't help but find him quite adorable with the way he was leaning forward in his chair, listening to you as you both took a break that was much longer than intended as you happily spoke about your homeland.

♡ He's come to love the type of coffee that you make, having come back from the market one day nearly bouncing in excitement after finding some from a travelling merchant at the market in the nearby city. It became regular for you two to take coffee breaks between your training where you would make the coffee and Hector would clean everything up afterwards.

♡ When the time comes for you to return home and build your battalion of night creatures, Hector decides to go with you. He's grown so fond of you in the time you've spent together and there are too many people in Wallachia who want his head so he decides to join in your fight to defend your people and hope that he can atone for all the deaths he caused in the meantime.

𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐄𝐒 𝐈𝐈: I hope I did alright and, again, I'm very open to constructive criticism! I quite enjoyed researching ab equestrian martial arts, facial tattoos, Arabic coffee and henna (tho I couldn't find a chance for appropriate use of henna with the story idea that I had for the headcanons).

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