i finished it, was kicked out of the game, and then spent the next 10 minutes drawing this. i will now go take a shower, most likely cry, and then go through the emotional turmoil of convincing myself to reset so i can do a geno run. i hate it here :D
they had to pause their morning workout to drive wash to the ER at 7 am bc he somehow got hit by a car while getting mail. there's traffic. maine fiddles with the radio and carolina is imagining herself parkouring over the other cars
You can feel it in the marrow of your bones– it weighs you down like heavy shackles, gold bleeding from your pores until it is all you know. The taste of ichor on your tongue, the warmth of its invasion beneath your skin, that gleam of gold that lingers in the color of your eyes like specks of dust.
You are changed, and you are whole.
But you are so unbearably broken.
A shattered piece of porcelain hastily put back together with gold to fill the cracks.
Decoration, in the end, for you are not fit to walk as "mortals" do. This gold had filled every empty crevice of your body, spilled the red into your frantic hands and made you bleed so it's callous gold could make room inside your body. It has taken from you many things, given many more, but you scratch and bite and tear until it drips onto the floor and even then it never leaves. It stains the floor no matter how hard you scrub– a permanent reminder of the sickening gold that molds you into something that used to look like you– that does look like you. Desecrated, yet so horribly divine.
All you see is a monster.
Something new, something old.
A hollowed out shell, wounds left to rot and fester until you suited the image of the Creator they bore upon statues and murals, the Creator worshiped in prayers spoken in hushed whispers and joyous chants praising your magnificence.
But what magnificence is there in detachment? What joy is there to be found in carving a God out of a human? They kneel like lambs before the shepherd, but the flock has made you– and you want to unmake them. Unweave the tapestry of their being stitch by stitch until it all falls apart and the world knows the cost of casting molten gold into the shape of a human, knows the price that has been left unpaid.
You want to take it from them. Watch them squabble and pray, blind sheep stepping into the wolf's open maw– to tear the seams of their being until the world is unwound by your heavy hands.
But you know it will not satisfy you.
Nothing does anymore.
You are no wolf. Only the shepherd who guides.
And with every drop of blood spilled, they ripped the humanity from your very bones until your body was the cast in which they made something anew– something gold, something horrific. A monster as much a God, a beast as much a man.
There is nothing left but absolute authority.
You try again and again to mend this act of desecration, to peel back the outer shell and rend the gold from your marrow– but your body cannot, will not, die. It mends itself back into place no matter how damaged, and all you feel is the uncomfortable tug of your body forcing itself to live. You cannot die, but were you ever truly alive at all?
Yet with every cycle, you know only one constant besides the thrum of golden ichor in your veins– cold.
Ice that burns, ice that spreads and festers and devours. Claws that pull you apart until the gold runs thick, teeth that burrow into your bones and rip it out from the source..eyes that witness the fall of a God with reverence– hungering, all consuming reverence.
You welcome it.
It is the first time you felt pain since you were cast into an image of a being you were not meant to be. The sting of cold upon your skin makes you shiver, your body tries to reject it, but you want to welcome it– for a brief moment that lasts only as long as it takes for you to blink, you see the glint of something familiar in the reflection of her empty eyes. Something achingly, horribly familiar– something human, all the more terrifying for it.
Even when Teyvat itself crumples like paper beneath the weight of her sins – of this desecration anew, this wretched heresy – you allow her hands to do it again. You grasp her hands in yours like chains, willing her to shackle you, willing her to pull you apart and make you whole again. To break you until the gold cannot put you back together again.
You long, each time, for those eyes like spears that lodge into your skin– burrow deep and sting deeper, making gold flow like water. You long for the biting tongue, the cutting words and those teeth like weapons– long to see the spite and anger and impure disgust aimed at the woman of silver who leads you down a hall that ends only in damnation. You follow each time like the lamb led astray by the wolf, but you do not wail in betrayal when she sinks her teeth into your throat and devours you whole.
For is it a sin if you welcome it? Has their God sinned, in the eyes of the flock, for welcoming such heresy with open arms? For allowing the wolf into their home?
Is it a sin to be broken beneath the only hands that have loved you?
Is it a sin to want to love, too, those hands and teeth stained in gold?
Then you shall be damned, you swear it. Damned, but gold no more.
For death is the closest you have ever felt to being human.
I have seen people question whether dios apate minor really needed to happen the way it did. it's the 'this could have been an email' of htn. 'augustine this did not have to be a threesome', I hear people saying. and boy do I have an obnoxious amount of things to say to protest this perfectly sensible assertion so here we go haha
1) yes it absolutely had to be like that. It says so on this piece of paper *hands you a piece of paper that says "because I said so and also it's narratively and thematically Sexy"* in my half-legible handwriting. seeing tamsyn muir describe harrow the ninth as a book about being a kid and realizing your parents probably had sex has given me such validation, I am unstoppable now. (to be serious for a moment, harrow the ninth is essentially a bildungsroman, and the threesome scene does a whole lot of thematic heavy lifting around harrow glimpsing elements of adulthood, relationships, and sexuality she clearly finds at the same time repulsive, bewildering and fascinating, and around opening her and especially our eyes to how much john is just a man with human longings still, under the god stuff. dios apate is crucial plot- and character-wise too -- it's a loadbearing threesome in terms of delivering the clues you need to piece together the mystery plot of the book, which is simply delightful -- but even more so thematically. and then the scene at the end where they confront john gives gideon some of that same opportunity to peek into adulthood and go '...well shit I guess', as a sort of mirror, just without the french kissing that time and more murder. the things magnus and abigail model for the girls about love and adulthood? mercy and augustine are providing the opposite-day batshit insane version of that fhdskjfa, you know, for contrast and spice)
2) listen... it gets lonely out there in deep space with your 'legendary unamorous' brother, two infant pathetic baby kitten sisters who you'll probably have to kill one day when you take another stab at god if they don't manage to get themselves killed along the way on their own, and the two people you've spent the last ten thousand years having separate yet connected married & divorced arcs with and also btw one of them is god... honestly a threesome over the dinner table is probably The most well-adjusted reaction one might hope for under those circumstances
3) on a characterization level I think Augustine is actually doing something incredibly deliberate with it: he's presenting John with yet another chance to admit what he did. which is notable especially since the deal he and mercy agree on as a condition for the threesome to happen at all seems to be that they're going to give the ol' godslaying another game try sooner rather than later. (I get the sense that it's not so much that he disagrees with her ultimate goal so much as that he thinks she's being dangerously indiscreet and hasty going about it, before. “though I think it will be the death of us,” huh.)
notice how he's structuring the whole thing: he's invoking the intimacy and love in their strange little threeway relationship and how long it's been by truly playing along with john's 'we're a happy family really when we're at home! :)' delusion (helped along by lowered inhibitions via enormous amounts of alcohol and what I've previously described as a joint mercy/augustine leyendecker themed thirst trap. ah, a classic). he brings up alecto and what happened to her -- or rather, he is clever enough to make john bring up alecto and how she is totally dead, right?? by seeming to make a careless statement that leads there and then acting contrite about it after. he (helped along by mercy, who I think realizes exactly what he's doing -- this is very much a two-man con) brings up how much they all loved their cavaliers, and wow funny how that's been haunting us for ten thousand years now huh :) wow, a lot of our other lyctor friends slash family sure are super dead in the name of some unknowable greater reason neither of us quite grasp and that you won't fucking tell us, aren't they. these are all the main grievances he and mercy confront john about at the end of the book, but put forth much more subtly and not phrased as an accusation -- he's baring his and mercy's vulnerabilities as bait, essentially. if john had, say, a conscience where his conscience should be instead of a black hole, it probably should have stirred something in him.
(also let me just say... the way augustine just takes a pneumatic drill to the TWO tender spots g1deon seems to have and then has the audacity to be like 'oh dear. did that upset him. ooof my bad *loooong dead-eyed slurp of his wine*' is just sooo... he's such a bitch!!! he's the only person who could ever have held their own in a ten-thousand-year bitch-off with mercy and I love him so much. well even if it wasn't all to get g1deon into murder range for harrow I think he wouldn't enjoy sticking around for the 'getting our tongues on god' part of the evening so maybe it's a kindness, really, and totally not pent-up aggression from the last twenty years or so breaking through)
he is all but shaking john by the lapels begging him to just... come clean about it already, to stop thinking he's still kidding everyone else along with himself. it's clear throughout the book that augustine knows exactly what john is at this point -- and all of the most cynical things he does say about it turn out to be distressingly right. john is always less sentimental than you'd think. john wouldn't forgive mercy, he will abandon in a heartbeat anything that isn’t necessary to him anymore, whether emotionally or in some other way. and still he seems to hold out some desperate absurd hope that the man he wants, the man he thought was there, is in there, somewhere deep deep down, if he just gives him the chance to show himself.
(mercy definitely has her own side of this whole thing, I'm just focusing more on augustine because this evening was like. his idea in the first place and I feel like we can Read Some Things into that fact lol. now that we have both ntn and htn to go from I sort of have this sense that the things augustine wants from john are more... personal? more interpersonal? they both love him equally, but mercy's love seems tinged slightly more towards the religious (augustine accuses her of knowing 'only worship without adoration', which like... also the eight house's entire Vibe lol) -- mercy at the end of that book is totally a person breaking up with GOD, not just with john -- while augustine's vibe is more like a man in the last not-with-a-bang-but-a-whimper days of a marriage that sort of felt like it could have been something real and good once but all your illusions about it have since been taken from you and trampled underfoot into the mud and you've had the divorce papers signed and ready in a drawer for over a year now, hell, as it turns out, is other people etc. lmao)
having a threesome over the dinner table with god is one thing, having a threesome over the dinner table centered on the one man and god who has yet again let you down in a way so fundamental it can barely fit into words and who you both still love in a way anyway, miserably, and also just reaffirmed your joint resolution to murder (all under the pretense that it gives your baby sisters the chance to murder your brother of ten thousand years yeah that's why this is happening no other underlying aching emotional motivations here haha)... listen mercy and augustine are simply on a different level, theologically. they've added horny shrimp colours to the religious spectrum. who else does it like them
I'm currently rewatching nightmare time and right now I'm watching Daddy and- I had totally forgotten that Ted is in that episode and that we do see him die in the nmt2 timeline. And it happens on the day of the honey festival. You know what that means? Pete says he's gonna miss the honey festival because of abstinence camp. Pete is going through everything happening at abstinence camp just to come back and be told that his brother was murdered while he was gone. That scene in abstinence camp where Ted is taking Pete to idontwannabang? That's the last time nmt2!Pete ever sees his brother.
in my second chance/no death game AU i like to imagine mai's bread shop (it's more of a bakery/patisserie here but whatever) becomes a common hang out spot for everybody :)
I’m so sorry if this is out of pocket but I need to know how hairy fujoneet reader is……. You mentioned her having bush already but what about everywhere else…
JKSDHFJS i do not want to get too detailed so people can still project but she virtually doesn't shave at all so do w that what you will. she tries one time for rin after they start dating and it hurts so bad she cries to him and he ends up finding her so pathetic they fuck again while he explains he could not care less.
so all in all as hairy as u wish to believe. her skin is too sensitive for that and rin would huff her no matter what
Team "would rather die than admit something's bothering them"
So for the first good chunk of their relationship, Bad Luck and Vash were more "fucking" than "dating". Bad Luck was really apprehensive about romantic entanglements, and had been taken advantage of by a friend, in the past. (While not THE reason he was kicked out of his community, it was definitely related.)
However, Vash-- aware of Luck's hesitance but not of the reasons why-- already had a little bit of a crush on him. So when Luck stupidly offered a FWB situation, Vash accepted, thinking he could be chill about it. He quickly realized, no, he could NOT be chill about it, and spent the next few months relentlessly pining and feeling guilty and wanting to broach the subject, but never saying anything.
Eventually, Vash's crush gets revealed, and by that point Bad Luck has kinda fallen in love with him and they get together and Bad Luck insists that it's all fine, water under the bridge. Truthfully, though, he feels a little betrayed, and has this sense of "why the fuck would you think that's a good idea" towards Vash, hanging over his head. But he also thinks he has no place feeling this way because he never told Vash why he was so hesitant (and still hasn't), and also he does love Vash now anyway, so there's really no point bringing this up now and messing with the status quo, right?
And that's just the beginning of their relationship. There's a whole bunch of other plot-related problems they never talk about until after things boil over. Eventually, they'll get their acts together and talk through everything, I promise. Eventually. It just, might take until after the plot's fully resolved for them to get there.
Do you ever read 570,000+ word, 130+ chapter fanfics that were started nearly 8 years ago and have current year updates, and as you get to the end of certain chapters along the way, you keep going "wow, I would have hated to be here in 201x and have to wait for THAT cliffhanger, those poor readers, those sad, desperate historical souls" and you're just so glad for yourself because you know you don't have to stop until chapter 139, and you arrogantly assume that's probably just extended epilogues or something (because you were previously conditioned by another fic to believe that), so everything will be fine?
Only to get to chapter 139 and SCREAM OUT LOUD because you jinxed yourself right into THE NEWEST WAVE OF CLIMATIC PLOT CHAPTERS WHERE ALL THE SHIT IS GOING DOWN and now you, too, have become the reader you felt such pity for?
Wait, you don't?
THEN GO OVER THERE AND DO WHAT I DID SO I DON'T HAVE TO BE ALONE IN MY HUBRIS. It comes with art. So. Much. Wonderful. Comic. Art.
I would like to stress (as I have done before) that I have never played this game. Not once. I had never even heard of it originally. Yet this is now the second absolutely massive Sans x reader/OC fic I have read in this fandom. Everything I know about Undertale, I learned because one day on a whim I decided to read a 480,000+ word, 170+ chapter fanfic because I liked the way @tricktster used words on some tumblr post (don't ask me which one, I've forgotten). I have re-read that fic at least once a year, if not more, for multiple years in a row because it's like a favorite book to me now.
If anyone needs me, I'll be comfort-reading it, again.
And then probably going back and re-reading JoAT, because oh my god that fic. I'm just so in love with it for a million reasons.
(Yes, it took me this long to see there was another glorious treasure in plain sight under @capnhanbers despite following @mod2amaryllis and it's just really embarrassing to be confronted by that kind of obliviousness, okay? Can I blame it on how, multiple times now over the years, I've gone months and months without looking at this app unless it notified me of something specific?)
I swear, I have never read fic in any other fandom where it was this easy to immerse myself in it with nothing more than some light googling along the way (the first time with CoBC), and the googling was just because I'm me and I like to know all the things. In both cases, you don't have to come to the table with anything other than an interest in supernatural-elements stories (monsters, magic, etc) and a love for snappy dialogue and funny (dad) jokes and HEART-WRENCHING FEELS and watching the author having a life journey in the notes.
(And yes, sure, an open mind about a skeleton monster and a human having magical sex, but if you know you're in a rated fic about monsters and humans, you must know that's going to be a thing.)
I must say - respectfully and enviously- that people hoping for a season 2 of the ones who live are way more optimistic and trusting than I am lmao like I can't even bring myself to assume they're both making it out of these six episodes alive. and if they do, more seasons just means more opportunities for them to be killed off on The Show That Kills People and tbh that's too much stress for me!! "but plot armor!" you say. gestures to carl grimes. "andy and danai wouldn't do that" you say. well I hope not but I don't know them! personally I have to assume the worst in order to be prepared for it and I do hope that I'm being paranoid for no reason! in fact, I would love nothing more than for people to tell me exactly why I'm being crazy but I did watch 8.5 seasons of the walking dead so my trust issues are warranted I think!!! and in fact I I've never been more terrified of a season finale in my life send help