#let him know humans aren't all Evil

[idolpyre]

⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀just off of the pacific, lurking in the depths and hiding in coral caves — legend tells tale of a pod of sirens promised to protect, instead of bringing death and carnage. these creatures were lethal as they were beautiful, just as the folklores painted them to be, but they lived in harmony with humans instead of hunting them mercilessly, like so many people believed. rarely were they ever actually seen by the townsfolk, but they kept the waters surrounding the island safe from pirates and pillagers, bringing the village good fortune and good health.

⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀minjun has been taught these values ever since he was a young fry, that the humans inhabiting his island were to be protected. they cannot have one without the other ; a unity between man and myth. but we cannot be seen by them, no matter what. you must not show yourself unless they are in peril. and you must not ever leave this island, do you understand ? don't stray too far, minjun, they are not as kind to us elsewhere. and never, ever, ever trust a pirate — they will always lie and hurt us for their own gain.

⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀and so minjun would stay tucked below the roiling waves, always curious of what mankind had to offer, but too scared to act upon his desires. his mother would teach him to hunt fish, and eventually bigger game too — and when his sisters had been born, minjun had taught them everything he knew.

⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀it must've been just past his twentieth sun when minjun's curiosity finally got the best of him. he had spent so long watching humans below the surface, and when a pirate washed up on the lagoon that minjun frequented — he couldn't help but show himself to the pirate, to offer his song to heal the buccaneer's wounds. once the pirate's crew had found their lost sailor, they took one look at minjun and realized they had struck gold. the iridescent scales of the siren's tail was a rarity, believed to be worth thousands, if you could live to sell it that was. they had beached the siren, plucked his scales and when he had tried to cry, to sing for his sisters to come and find him, they had slit his throat and left him with nothing.

⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀when his sister's had found him near dead, they had pulled him back into the deep and healed his wounds, but minjun couldn't ignore the immense disappointment that leaked off of his mother's very being. she had warned him, and now minjun had paid the price. because of the scar on his throat, minjun cannot sing his song anymore, and everyday he can feel his magic slipping further away from his grasp, lost like grains of sand slipping through his claws.

[shanastoryteller]

i know supernatural is the show of missed opportunities but man. the trials really get to me - what a perfect way to reboot and reset this show that you're artificially extending for ratings. it could have been really, really good, actually

so the trials of god is a way for someone to gain the ability to seal the gates of hell and the gates of heaven

they have the translation for hell, they know that slamming the gates of hell shut means calling all the demons back home and locking the key. it's logical, then, to for them to believe the same is true of the one for heaven - that it calls all the angels back home and locks them away where they can't do any more damage

peace, for the people of earth, outside of the influence of angels and demons. that's got to be worth it, right?

so while sam is completing the hell trials, they get the angel tablet, kevin gets translating, to figure out the angel trials. or maybe metatron helps nudge them along to figuring it out, since him being the big bad here isn't really relevant and they are in a bit of time crunch

canon doesn't tell us what the heaven trials are, except that the first one involves a ritual using the heart of a nephilim. they make it sound like they're carving it from their chest, but what i would do is

have a nephilim offer you their heart from their chest (gain their loyalty in a binding ceremony)

create grace from freshwater (there is no rain that falls anywhere on earth that is safe to drink and god said let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters)

find a human soul to guide you to heaven (babel fell but the stairway was built and those with wings have no need of stairs)

so sam is in the midst of the hell trials when dean sort of accidentally on purpose completes the first heaven trial and then the brothers are on parallel train tracks heading in the opposite direction

sam works to close the gates of hell

dean works to close the gates of heaven

demons and angels both working to stop them

sam completes the trials. he restores crowley's humanity and he dies and the gates of hell are closed

but that's not the end

metatron says they can close the gates if they're willing to pay the price. canon says the price is sam's death, but frankly that doesn't make any sense. what's the death of one human against the horrors of hell? and remember, metatron doesn't know the winchesters. maybe another angel would make this comment, knowing how the winchesters have weighed the safety of the world against their brother and left the world out to dry, would think this a price worth warning for. but metatron wouldn't bother, wouldn't even think of it, if that was the only price

the gates of hell close and malevolent spirits explode across the globe, evil spirits and angry ghosts causing death and destruction everywhere

hell serves a function and now the gates are closed and every evil human soul is forced to stay on earth, causing as much destruction as it can

that's the price for closing the gates of hell

except. except. aren't the hell trials interesting?

kill a hellhound. rescue an innocent soul and return it to heaven. purify a demon and restore their humanity.

the trials are not to prove if someone is worthy of closing the gates of hell. it's to prove they're capable of setting hell to rights

the trials are if things got too out of hand, if things were taken too far, and hell had to be put back in it's place. sam dies and ends up exactly where azazel wanted him - ruler of hell. all the demons and souls are trapped with him and what he has to do, while he has them all there, while they can't escape, is exactly what he did to get there

he kills the hellhounds, leaving only those meant to patrol hell. he releases every innocent soul bound there. he purifies the demons one by one, who he either releases as innocent souls or who to pledge to do their job as demons of hell - punishing evil, containing evil - in penance for what they did before (how do i even begin to make up for what i've done, crowley had asked, and this is the answer)

meanwhile, dean, heartbroken, completes the heaven trials and dies

and the gates of heaven slam shut and all the angels are stripped of their grace and expelled from heaven and dean finds himself in charge of an empty heaven

the trials are for when things have gone too far and heaven must be rebuilt, after all

good souls pile up, no one who dies able to truly leave earth, and given enough time they become twisted things that must be hunted along with the spirits of evil men and women who cause chaos from their last breath

dean has work to do. he has one angel - the nephilim whose loyalty he earned in the first trial - and this is what he has to do. he recruits more, to replace the ranks, he creates grace and hands it out judiciously. he sends them to guide the good souls home, using the stairway that the former angels wouldn't be able to use even if they wanted to, and each good act and deed earns them a little more grace. former angels throw themselves into the fight for humans, because they know it's the only way that dean will return their grace to them and lift them back into heaven

and in fighting for them, in living like them, they learn to love these creations of their father that they'd despised. they see what he saw and the thought of destroying this place in a civil war becomes unthinkable to them. they are once more the angels god intended them to be

in this, dean and sam fulfill their destiny as lucifer and michael's vessels. not in letting them in, but in pushing them out, in doing the work each was intended for but refused

only when there is only evil human souls being punished and caged, only once the demons are once more working to run hell and earn their release to heaven, does sam reopen the gates of hell

only when there's a full choir of angels once more, committed to their cause, only once there are souls working with reapers as it once always was, does dean reopen the gates of heaven

they're called the god trials for a reason. above and below, sam and dean act as god, putting things back in their intended places

they could stay. they should stay. keeping house, making sure it all goes smoothly, eternally keeping earth safe from angels and demons both

they're called the god trials for a reason. not even god could resist the paradise inbetween that he'd created

dean doesn't know if sam is going to return to earth. he might stay in hell, and if dean becomes human once more, then what's the point? he'll live and die a human, get stuck in heaven, and be forever separated from the brother he loves

sam doesn't know if dean is going to return to earth. he migh not be able to, might be stuck doing his work - sam assumes if the hell trials did this to him, then the heaven trials did the same to dean, and the idea that dean could have failed the heaven trials after he dies doesn't even cross mind. if he returns and dean's not there then he loses it all, he never again gets to see the brother he loves

but when, exactly, haven't they been willing to risk everything for each other?

dean falls as lucifer fell, throwing himself towards earth

sam rises as michael did after the fall, pulling himself towards earth the same way michael once pulled himself to the top of heaven

what's the use of being a god without his brother, after all?

dean and sam are reunited on earth, human once more

no more angels, no more demons, heaven and hell functioning once more as they should. we're back to basics, a clean slate, all of the rest remade and set aside by their own hands (it's literal and a metaphor, the way the show could have remade itself with the trials, after setting aside kripke's plan while at the same time recognizing that the design of it - two brothers who love each other going across america and fighting evil - is the thing that made it worth watching to begin with) and now it's them again, brothers forged in blood and sacrifice and love, and a new appreciation for the humanity they gave up and returned to

and then we get my beloved monster of the week with no stupid too high stakes, convoluted bullshit involved, beyond the occasional angel who dean refused to reinstate and demon tracking down miscreant souls and, every once in a while, a person or creature or something in between squinting at them and going - weren't you two gods?

nah, they say, all corn fed grins and the dimples their momma gave them, we're brothers

[lev1hei1chou]

A What?

Gojo x reader Genre: Fluff Synopsis: You ask for a baby out of nowhere Masterlist Requests open!

"Hey, Satoru, I want a baby."

The man choked on his cereal. Milk splattered across the table, and he coughed, looking at you with wide, incredulous eyes. "You what?"

You grinned, loving his reaction. "I want a baby."

Gojo blinked, processing your words. "Like...a human baby? With diapers and all?"

You laughed. "Yes, Satoru, a human baby. Not a cursed spirit baby or a baby goat. A tiny human."

He leaned back in his chair, still stunned. "You can't just drop a bomb like that while I'm eating my Froot Loops, babe. Give a guy some warning."

You shrugged, leaning over to wipe a speck of milk off his cheek. "I thought you could handle anything."

"Yeah, curses and evil sorcerers, sure. But this...this is a whole new level of scary." He ran a hand through his white hair, making it stand up in more directions than usual. "Are you serious?"

"Dead serious." You sat down across from him, your expression softening. "I think we'd make great parents."

He looked at you, eyes softening. "Of course we would. I mean, look at us. We're awesome."

You snorted. "Modest, as always."

"Hey, it's not arrogance if it's true." He grinned, then grew serious again. "But...a baby? That's a big deal."

"I know. But I want to start a family with you, Satoru."

He was silent for a moment, then his lips curved into a smile. "Okay. Let's do it."

You blinked. "Really? Just like that?"

He shrugged. "Why not? I've always wanted kids. Didn't think about it too much because, you know, job hazards and all. But if you want a baby, then I want a baby. Simple as that."

You laughed, feeling a wave of relief and excitement. "Simple as that, huh?"

"Yep." He stood up, suddenly energized. "Alright, let's make a baby right now."

Your eyes widened. "Satoru, we can't just...it's the middle of the day!"

"Details, details." He waved a hand dismissively. "I'm the strongest sorcerer in the world. I can make time for baby-making."

You couldn't help but laugh at his enthusiasm. "How romantic."

He waggled his eyebrows. "Oh, I can be romantic. Just you wait."

The next few days were filled with Gojo's attempts at being "romantic." You came home to rose petals scattered all over the living room (which the cat was now batting around), a candlelit dinner (where he nearly set the kitchen on fire), and a bubble bath for two (where he splashed so much water that the bathroom flooded).

"You're really trying, aren't you?" you said, toweling off your hair after the bath fiasco.

He pouted. "I'm trying to set the mood."

You kissed his cheek. "I appreciate it, Satoru. But we don't need all this. Just you and me, together. That's enough."

He smiled, pulling you into his arms. "You're right. As always."

That night, lying in bed, he turned to you with a mischievous look in his eye. "So, about that baby..."

You laughed, swatting his chest. "Okay, okay. Let's do this."

A few weeks later, you found yourself holding a pregnancy test in your hand, heart pounding. Gojo was pacing back and forth in the bathroom, looking more nervous than you'd ever seen him.

"Okay, okay, okay," he muttered. "It's fine. Whatever it says, it's fine."

You glanced at the test, then at him. "Satoru, you need to calm down."

He stopped pacing and looked at you, taking a deep breath. "Right. Calm. I can do calm."

You held up the test, a smile spreading across your face. "We're having a baby."

For a moment, he just stared at you, then he whooped, lifting you off the ground and spinning you around. "We're having a baby! I'm gonna be a dad!"

You laughed, holding onto him. "Yes, you are. And you're going to be amazing."

He set you down, his eyes shining. "We're going to be amazing."

Months passed in a whirlwind of doctor's appointments, baby shopping, and Gojo's over-the-top preparations. He baby-proofed the house, even the ceiling, "just in case the baby is super strong and starts climbing walls."

"Satoru, that's ridiculous," you said, watching as he padded the corners of the coffee table with foam.

He looked up at you, serious. "Safety first, babe."

When the day finally came, Gojo was more nervous than you. He held your hand in the delivery room, eyes wide as he watched the process.

"You're doing great," he whispered, though it seemed like he was saying it more to himself than to you.

Hours later, when the baby finally arrived, Gojo stared at the tiny bundle in his arms, tears in his eyes. "Hi there, little one. I'm your dad."

You smiled, exhausted but happy. "And I'm your mom."

He looked at you, his expression full of love and awe. "We did it."

You nodded, feeling a surge of emotion. "Yeah, we did."

[dunmeshistash]

Why did Milsiril adopt Kabru

Milsiril might be one of the most misunderstood characters in dungeon meshi and I see people making assumptions of why she adopted Kabru based only on their races and not in the characterization, so I wanted to think about some of the "theories" I see the most often about what made her take him in and why I don't agree with them

(read more cause as usual I ranted a lot)

1 - Attention (white elf savior)

This is the one I have the hardest time understanding so I'm starting with it, I've seen people compare Milsiril to irl white wealthy women that adopt "exotic" kids to keep an altruistic appearance. Like a white mother adopting a chinese child because of white savior complex and for everyone to compliment them on how good they are but this idea ignores a core aspect of Milsiril: she doesn't like attention of her peers

Her bio reads: "The people around her teased her, calling her Gloomy Milsiril; partly as a result, she hates elves. (...) She secluded herself deep in the mountains and intentionally lives apart from other elves"

Milsiril is the type of person that has trauma related to her own kin, she was ostracized by everyone including her own family that sent her to the canaries, and as a result she herself refuses to engage with them even when they extend a hand as you can see with past Mithrun. The only other elf she's seen speaking to is Mithrun when he's sick and Helki. Her interest in raising short lived kids isn't seen as altruistic by other elves it's seen as another weird side of her so there's no incentive in elf society for her to do that. So she didn't adopt Kabru because of optics, she clearly doesn't care what other elves think of her and she hid herself from their judging eyes as soon as she was able to.

2 - She wants to feel superior to someone

Another one I find baffling but I can understand a little better since she's constantly seen in the caretaker role. But the evidence I see for this is literally the type of people she surrounds herself with.

The people we know she interacts with willingly are:

Her adopted short lived children

One of her prisoner partners (Helki)

Mithrun when he's in recovery

Based on these I can see how a very uncharitable view can interpret as "she surrounds herself with people that she's superior to" and it is somewhat true. But she's never shown mistreating or actually acting superior to any of them, if anything Helki is constantly hanging out around her (he was pardoned after Utaya and might be her servant now but their interactions seem very casual), Kabru says she teaches her children everything they want to know and she eventually let him go even if before she was hesitant to (as a overprotective parent) and Mithrun was still a noble with several servants when she cared for him so even if he was sick socially he was still the same. (considering both are noble outcasts)

The evidence both for and against the idea that she adopts children to surround herself with people "inferior" to her are all circumstantial so I guess it depends on how you want to see it. I myself think there's no evidence she thinks of them as inferior considering all we see she seems to treat them either as her babies (would you word your feelings for a baby as them being inferior to you?) or as someone she wants to nurture

3 - She wants to be in control of someone (Kabru is her doll)

Related to the above reason but slightly different, in this interpretation I see people assume she doesn't see Kabru as his own person but as one of her dolls to be controlled. As if she raises her children so she can play house and dress up with human dolls.

Honestly that's pretty cool and an amazing visual for an evil mom but there's zero evidence that that's the case. Starting with her actual dolls themselves they aren't dress up dolls or something she puppeteers in an evil way, they're literally her comfort toys she runs to when she's sad

She's making them by hand while crying cause she feels like she doesn't belong, her bio says the dolls are her only friends so it makes me a little sad when people act like her doll hobby is somehow a creepy aspect that makes her seem evil, since that's exactly how the elves think of her (creepy and gloomy)

Milsiril is clearly someone that enjoys taking care of others we see it both with her children and with Mithrun, but how to know if that's actual altruism or some twisted sense of superiority? How to know if she isn't the toxic nurse that just wants to be in power of someone? How to know she is actually helping the people she cares for?

Easy, she helped them until they didn't need her anymore.

She trained Kabru and taught him everything he knows, he's where he is because he had her help even if at first she wanted to prove he wasn't strong enough to go, he was. She sees Kabru as a small child because of their race differences but she still respected him enough to take the training seriously.

Mithrun actually recovered once she could take the time to help him, I keep reminding it but it was years after he was rescued that she went to help with his recovery (his bio says Utaya was what motivated him to finally come back and she was the one that went to tell him about Utaya and help out) right now Mithrun is able to follow a routine and live by himself, Milsiril isn't even someone he talks about as he is now.

Both people we know she cared for are completely independent of her now and neither of them even thinks about her much. A controlling person that wants to keep you within their grasp and keep you needing them would never actually help you be independent of them.

4 - Then why did she adopt Kabru?

I think it's an easy answer the way I see it: shared trauma.

What Kabru went thru is 100 times worse than what Milsiril went thru during Utaya, especially since he was just a small child back then and he lost everything, But Milsiril is still a war veteran, the things Kabru describes, people turning into monsters eating the others, all the death and destruction, Milsiril was there to witness it all and she failed to save them. her bio reads "After the incident in Utaya, she left the Canaries in disgust. She secluded herself deep in the mountains and intentionally lives apart from other elves" she was so traumatized by the events she both left "in disgust" and became a hikikomori. Earlier in her bio it also says "(...) The people around her teased her (...) partly as a result, she hates elves" I sure wonder what's the other part that makes her hate elves. (Probably is the way they dealt with Utaya)

I think she adopted Kabru because she wanted to give a good life to the only survival of the war she fought, the other destiny Kabru could have has would be the same Rin had, a traumatizing stay with the elves, Milsiril saved him from that fate when she adopted him. He wasn't a random brown kid she picked up, they share a traumatizing experience (once again: even if it was 100 times worse for Kabru).

The reason she adopted the other kids is also pretty obvious to me: she likes caring for people and she wants to feel loved. That's her ulterior motive to raise short lived children, she has elf trauma and she wants a family.

That doesn't make her a perfect mom or a perfect person tho*, she's just as flawed as anyone, I feel like people sometimes forget mothers are also human beings with flaws. Being flawed doesn't make her a monster, being loving doesn't make her an angel, she's just a person doing her best.

*She still has the ingrained elf socialization and clearly thinks of her children as babies, she treats teen Kabru almost like a toddler in some interactions. There's also the thing about her not fully understanding the importance of his cultural background. Struggles that I assume are common in interracial adoptions

Disclaimer cause this is the reading comprehension website: This is my interpretation of the character, some of it is very charitable towards Milsiril and I'm not talking about how Kabru might feel about her. I'm trying to think of their relationship thru her perspective and how she treated him because some interpretations seem to come out of nowhere to me. Kabru has complex feelings about elves and about his elf mom but overall I still think "overprotective foster mom" really summarizes his feelings. I don't think he resents her even with her flaws.

[callmerainman]

Alastor with a pure hearted s/o

a/n I'm fully aware that Alastor is aroace. My scenarios are meant to be interpreted as a deep, unconditional love, not necessarily romantic. I'm not aroace but I'm all for educating myself, so please if something's off let me (gently) know. Hope you enjoy :)

TW! canon typical violence

being a twisted person is not a requirement to reincarnate in Hell. Sins depend on religion, culture, societal norms. You were more of a victim, in fact.

you never got used to being in Hell. Surviving not only the Extermination but also the inhabitants becomes harder and harder every year.

it's kill or be killed, but you just can't bring yourself to do any harm to anyone, even if it means risking your own life.

as soon as you hear about princess Charlie Morningstar's new hotel for souls who want a second chance, your bags are PACKED

it's not like you really need redemption, you are pure hearted already. it's more a matter of understanding the reasons why you ended in Hell and coming to terms with them. maybe then the gates of Heaven would open for you. it's also a safer place for you to be.

Charlie welcomes you excitedly; Angel Dust, Husk and Vaggie aren't that friendly at first since your personalities don't match, but they eventually grow fond of you

and then there's, well...the Radio Demon.

you never met an Overlord before, and Alastor was supposed to be gone for years. But his presence wasn't frightening. A big smile spread across his face, he welcomed you like a gentleman.

you heard stories about his lifestyle and even previous murderous acts as a human, but for some reason you just can't bring yourself to fear him.

at first you were kinda pathetic to him. so naive, out of touch with the evils of Hell. he didn't dislike you. just thought your life was so easy to throw away in a society like that and that you wouldn't last long.

it seems like you two don't have much to share. he just wanders in his den, while you spend time in your room. you greet each other and have small talks, but nothing more than that. that's until he hears jazz music play behind your door.

he mentions it during dinner, and you start talking about your interest in 30s jazz music, especially the one of the Roaring 20s. you come from a later era, but you're very much cultured about jazz and its forms and that's enough for Alastor to develop an interest in you.

he has so many jazz artists recommendations, and you share some of your favourite pieces with him through your gramophone.

without even noticing, Alastor starts spending hours in your room just listening to music. some time even practicing swing dancing. and talking about jazz culture all around the world, and entertainment in general. he has many fun facts about the history of radio too!

the others at the hotel notice your growing bond and low-key support it, in their own, weird way. Angel Dust is especially convinced that you two are hooking up, as Husk not-so-kindly explains that it's more likely for Alastor to ascend to Heaven than express interest in sex.

you would start to open yourself up a bit to the Radio Demon. he doesn't understand why, since it didn't ask or never showed much empathy. but he just can't bring himself to tell you to stop. he wants to listen.

you manage to make him talk about some glimpses of his own life and thoughts. you knew that he was the complete opposite of you. incline to Evil, an enjoyer of all things that made your stomach clench. but he's still the one person who spends hours with you just listening to both jazz and your fears.

one day, Alastor decided that in no way you are walking around the city without him. it's just too dangerous for you. he tries to teach you how to use weapons and demonic powers to defend yourself but he doesn't feel like you can make it into Hell by yourself.

you like strolling through the streets with him, arms intertwined, chatting and laughing even if demons around you are shitting their pants just by seeing the Overlord walking around.

but one day, Alastor can't find you.

you're not in your room, or in the Hotel hall. No one saw you that morning. He starts to feel something he never felt in his life: fear.

he darts out the Hotel, trying to find you. that's when he sees you just a few streets away.

a group of animal-like demons is encircling you. you are on your knees, arms over your head to protect yourself. A lion-demon is holding a knife over you and your arms are covered in cuts. you hold something close to your stomach.

that's when Alastor realized that he had feelings for you.

when he threw himself between you and the demons attacking you.

it's the first time you see Alastor without a smile. his teeth are gritted, face full of unprecedented violence and will to kill, breathing heavily in and out in a sort of animalistic way, but there's no trace of his characteristic smile you love.

his body starts to morph into his full demon form. his horns grow exponentially, his body too as it hovers menacingly on top of your aggressors as they start to feel a pure fear they never felt before.

in a matter of a second, they are gone. Alastor has always been a calculated, elegant killer, but this time he only felt a raw, ferocious instinct to kill.

as he's done, he turns around towards you. he doesn't want to, but he snaps.

"W̶̞̐H̷̻͒Y̷̰̅ ̶̠͛D̸͕́I̸͔̍D̴̿͜ ̷̯̇Y̶̭͌Ỏ̴̬U̵̖̍ ̷̛͎Ģ̷̕O̸̩͑ ̷̹̈́O̶̮͆U̸͍̇T̴̙͆ ̷̧̀W̴͓̅I̷̞͑T̸̗͒H̴̹͒O̴̺̓Ṷ̵̂T̵̺̚ ̵̢́M̴̜̅E̶̬̋?̸̻͋!̸̦͂"

you flinch, you never saw Alastor lose his composure. he was always so calm and collected. his voice was static, choppy.

the tears that were cornering your eyes start streaming down your face "I-I..."

"Ţ̶̈Ḧ̴͙́Ė̵̩Ỳ̷̳ ̷̳̒Ã̸̡L̷̛͚M̶͇̚O̸͈̔S̴̜̎T̸͚̊ ̷̤͝K̷͊͜I̵̺͝L̵͚̎L̴̤̆Ẽ̴͖D̶͍̈́ ̵̻͝Y̵̰̑O̸̜͘Ù̶͍!̵̻͝ ̸͓̾D̴̯͒O̶̅͜Ṉ̶̌'̷̹͒T̵͎͋ ̶̺́Y̴̹͂O̶͍̅U̴̘͌ ̵̘̾Û̷̪N̸̩̊D̵͎̋Ȅ̴͜R̵̮͂S̸̰̄T̸̝̅A̵͓͘N̷̩͂Ḏ̴̀?̵̗̍!̸̭̎"

suddenly, your bleeding arms fall from your head. you expose what you've been protecting all along.

a vinyl, a really old record from Alastor's favourite jazz artist. a rare find.

"I-I know but...tomorrow it's your death anniversary and I wanted to give this to you...as a surprise. I'm sorry"

Alastor's face immediately softens. Eyebrows raised, smile still not seen. He's just surprised and...moved.

He doesn't say anything, he just picks you up in his arms and takes you back to the Hotel where he bandages your arms.

Feeling guilty for putting yourself in danger, you ask Alastor to come to your room in order to apologize to him.

As he closes the door behind him, he says that there's no need to apologize.

"I'm...glad that you are still in your room. Listening to jazz, alive"

words didn't come easy, but he did feel the need to say it. you smile at him.

you propose to put his gift on the gramophone and so you do. music starts to flow between the small space you shared with the Radio Demon.

that's when you and Alastor start slow dancing. his arms around your waist, yours encircling his neck. his smile is back, but soft and...almost loving.

with his silent agreement, you reach for his cheek and graze it.

"Thank you for saving me, Alastor. Even if you are everything I distance myself from in this life...I'm glad you are the person that you are with me. In my next life, I'll make sure to be a sinner again if it means dancing with you like this"

Alastor now understands his feelings. It's something deeper than care. It's love. But not the same love you reserve to a friend and not even romantic. It's something deeper, more visceral.

He doesn't answer, just closes his eyes and leans in to press his forehead against yours.

you later fall asleep on your bed to the quiet sound of the gramophone playing, hands intertwined on Alastor's chest.

[yelsapo]

I honestly think this episode was meant to be confusing in a sort of Alice-in-Wonderland-ish way, where the loose ends won't/aren't meant to be tied up later. It's confusing and random, but that's the point.

Kate tells Ruby, "It's what we all do. We see something inexplicable and invent the rules to make it work."

And I think that might be exactly what Ruby does. Stick with me PLEASE

The premise of the episode opens with a superstition: a fairy circle. Something surrounded by stories and myths that don't necessarily make sense, and yet many people form their entire lifestyles around these belief systems because they explain the unexplainable for them.

The woman that follows Ruby appears to chase people away from her, or convince them to abandon her, which is clearly a common theme within Ruby as a character. She's afraid of being abandoned.

Typically breaking a superstition means that you're going to suffer some sort of misfortune as a result, right? If you were to break a superstition that you believed in (ie. ruining a fairy circle), what misfortune would you fear most happening to you? For Ruby, it probably centers around her fear of abandonment.

We know that Ruby is supernatural in some way. She's definitely not a typical human. She can make it snow on command? Who's to say that the "silly little explanations" that she makes up to make sense of her unknown don't ACTUALLY come to fruition. What if she has the power to do that?

So, let start from the beginning. Ruby and the Doctor break a fairy circle, an action which culturally means bad luck. In Ruby's mind, her worst luck would be to be abandoned by everyone, and to never find her birth mother in the end. And that's exactly what happens.

Roger Ap William is a name mentioned by the Doctor in the first couple of minutes of 73 yards. The only information that is given is that he was evil, welsh, and almost brought the world to nuclear destruction. That's all Ruby knows. Mad Jack appears at first to be some arbitrary name Ruby reads on a piece of paper, but is later revealed to literally be Roger Ap William? How coincidental is that? I don't think that Roger and Mad Jack are actually the same person. In fact, Mad Jack probably WAS just someone's dog. They were just two names that Ruby had recently heard, and then drew an imaginary line between. To further the point, Roger is SUCH a caricature. His only three personality traits are quite literally evil, welsh, and likes nukes, which is all the Ruby knew about him.

Throughout the episode Ruby finds herself in a situation that doesn't make sense, so she comes up with her own explanations to make them make sense. She invents her own rules and her own mission. She comes up with a string of tasks that aren't logical to us, but it's the explanation she has come up with given the information that she had. She's convinced herself that it makes sense. She starts to form her lifestyle around a belief system that she created because it explains the supernatural she is experiencing.

And because of whatever supernatural abilities surround her, she's actually making her percepetion of reality the REAL reality.

(Edit: Not to mention that superstitions have been a common theme this season (ie. 14 invoking that salt superstition in WBY kicked off this season's entire plot) AND WBY is the first case in which we see Susan Twist as well...

It all leads back to that moment.)

[bet-on-me-13]

Danny was born as a Halfa

So! Jack and Maddie are a little More insane in this.

When studying Ghosts, they become convinced that the only way to defeat the Ghostly Threat is to make a Ghost of their own. One who will fight on their Side. And they do believe that a "Good Ghost" is Possible, but only if fused with a Human to balance out the "Inherent Evil".

So, when Maddie gets pregnant they take the opportunity to try and make one of these theoretical "Halfas" by testing on the Baby in the Womb.

Jazz if Born, and she is not a Halfa. She is merely an extremely Liminal Toddler, so Jack and Maddie consider the experiment a Failure. They raise Jazz as per usual, and then 2 years later Jack and Maddie try again.

They have Danny, and this time he is a True Halfa! They did it! Now all they have to do is turn the Baby into the perfect Weapon against Ghosts!

Danny is raised less like a Baby and more like a Weapon. His Parents still treat him well, and give him some amount of love, but there is never any doubt in his mind that his only purpose in Life is to be the perfect weapon against Ghosts.

The only person who really treats him like something more than a Weapon is Jazz, who likes to sneak into his Room and play with him when they parents are out of the House.

(Later addition: They also have Ellie as a Kid a few years later, but because they messed up the process she is not as Stable as Danny is. She is 4 years younger than he is)

Then, they day he had been preparing for his whole life comes. When he is 10, a Ghost manages to sneak through a Natural Portal into Amity Park, and the Fentons send him to go deal with it as his First Test Run.

But when he gets there, he doesn't find an Evil Ghost bent on killing everyone in town. He finds a Teenage Girl, with blue flaming Hair, crying to herself.

(Idk how long ago Ember died, so lets just assume she died around 6 years before Canon)

He doesn't attack immediately, and when the girl sees him she invites him to sit with her. Against his better judgement, he agrees and sits with her.

She talks to him for a bit, and eventually explained why she was crying. Apparently she only died a few weeks ago and had finally found her way back to the Living World, back home. But when she got there she found that nobody really cared about her Death.

She had died in a House Fire, and because she had spent her entire night waiting for her Boyfriend to show up for a Date, she was too tired to wake up in time to escape.

Her Parents had obviously mourned, but her supposed friends and her boyfriend had hardly cared. In fact, it turned out that her Boyfriend had stood her up because he was cheating on her. So she had run off into the Park and sat down to Cry about it, where Danny had found her.

And Danny is confused.

His entire life, he has heard that Ghosts are Non-Sentient Killing Machines. That they don't feel any emotion aside from Malice. That they aren't People.

But this Girl is as Human as anybody else he has ever known. Perhaps even More Human.

He decides to ignore The Fentons Orders, and lets her go back through the Portal she had come through.

When he gets Home, the Fentons are less than pleased. They are Livid in fact.

Their Perfect Weapon was a Failure after all! It's too much like a Ghost to ever side with the Humans! It's just another Spook!

And they know what to do with Spooks.

They lock him up in the Lab, and decide to cut him open Later to figure out what went wrong.

They'll be successful next time.

Thankfully, their jeers to Danny are heard by Jazz in the other Room, and she doesn't like this one bit. So that night, she takes Danny and Ellie with her and Runs away. They need to get out of Amity Park, out Illinois even. They run and run, sneaking onto Buses, hitchhiking, even jumping on Trains.

Eventually they end up in a place called Gotham City.

...

Ages at the end.

Jazz: 12

Danny: 10

Ellie: 6

[bloop-bl00p]

So there’s Voodoo but no Lwas?

Before everyone decides to jump me just know that I’m black, I grew up in a very Catholic environment and my grandparents implemented African traditions to worship God. Throughout the years of my dear old childhood, I also witnessed cults and beliefs outside of Christianity and know briefly of a few African Deities, spirits, syren, and many more.

So I can talk about voodoo, I still tried to do as much research as possible, and if someone sees any mistakes in what I say I apologize, be polite when pointing it out to me and I’ll modify it.

So here’s the first thing I want to address…

White people can do voodoo… what? You don’t believe me, here…

It’s been done since the 19th in New Orleans and whoever can worship is a much more nuanced issue.

You see in voodoo, there are these things called Houses (Humfo). It’s a temple where a community of people worship diverse Lwa and are led by a priest or priestess.

It’s a closed religion which means that you have to ask before entering one House. Some may refuse you because you have European ancestry, and I won’t lie Voodoo is mainly dominated by people with African origins due to its roots. You still could eventually find a house that’ll accept you but you can’t randomly start on your own without going through the process of initiation. Don’t mess with African spirits or spirits in general, voodoo is a group activity for a reason.

Now that all of this is cleared I want us all to come to one conclusion. Voodoo is only and ONLY for the people who will respect it. This applies to all religions.

And to writers.

Write about what you know and if you don’t know something research it! Don’t stop at Wikipedia, go on other sites, see documentaries or videos, and get books from the nearest library. Maybe you know someone who is more experienced in the subject you’re trying to write about?! I know it can be a long boring and annoying process, but sweetheart who told you writing respectfully about a preexistent thing was easy? If you’re unable to sit and open Google for research then don’t write about it!

Now that we all agree on something, do these scream respectful representation to you?

[“I care about representation!” Sure Viv, we believe you.]

Okay, voodoo dolls aren’t used for harm. That’s a myth from Pop Culture and Hollywood and it’s one of those examples of African religion being deemed as malevolent by popular media. Thank you Vivziepop for contributing to the stereotype, a big thanks. 🙂

Seriously, the usual voodoo dolls we see in media are usually tourist traps sold in New Orleans but aren't used by actual practitioners. But, there’s a thing called fetish or bocio, usually, those are figurines made of wood and hung on the tree in front of cemeteries to maintain a spiritual communication between the deceased and the living.

From a personal experience, when I was like 10 or 11 my parents saw safou (African fruit) growing near a restaurant, and the owner said to not get too close as fetishes were hung to avoid people from stealing the fruits. So it also has a protection function.

But I’m not here to talk about my childhood, see I mentioned something called Lwa, let’s see what those are.

Voodoo is a monotheistic religion, it teaches that Bondye [Bon Dieu in French literally Good God] is the supreme creator of this universe mirroring him to the Christian God. But he has no evil counterparts so no Satan or Lucifer.

Bondye is disinterested in humanity and innacesbile to us, but he still keeps tabs through the Lwas giving a polytheistic aspect of the religion. People pray to them and give specific offerings depending on which Lwas they want to please.

They also can communicate with us through dreams and possessions. All Lwas have multiple domains of expertise and if you want something specific you’ll have to call a specific Lwa.

Each Lwa has a symbol related to them they are called Veve. It helps them manifest in the physical world, offerings, sacrifices, foods, and drinks are placed upon them.

“Where are you going with all of these informations?”

Here are the symbols that appear every time Alastor gets spooky or threatens someone.

These symbols alone don't mean anything but they are drawings that can appear in multiple veve. Veves are usually much more detailed and they used complete ones with little simplification in the Pilot, since it’s still canon I’m counting it…

My little theory is that if they decided to simply it is because the animators were already suffering so they lifted up the pain by sparing a lot of details. I mean they used the complete symbols for trading cards.

With all of these it is natural for me to come to the conclusion that to get his powers Alastor calls on the Lwas that grant these extremely powerful ✨tentacles✨, weird red gremlins voodoo dolls thingies, deals-making abilities, and probably other things we haven’t seen yet.

Which means that Bondye exists—

“Th3r'$ n0 God in HH. 🤓☝️”

Sure I can work with that, the Lwas exist and are independent, I guess Viv still has creative liberties.

Since Alastor depends on them that means that he chooses specific spirits to gain the specific power that he has, so I decided to search for a few symbols that have a resemblance to the one of Alastor and we’re gonna test Viv's ability to make something consistent.

A rant about Alastor’s power:

Obliviously they are not all of the symbols in correlation with the one in Hazbin Hotel. I just took these to showcase something fascinating with Viv’s writing style.

1. Marassa-Dossou-Dossa:

They are androgynous twins. They represent the power and purity of children, families, and procreation alongside benediction, love, justice, and innocence. They are children, usually, you can offer them candies, drinks, or banana leaves. They are summoned at the beginning of each ceremony after Legba to signify their importance in the religion.

The Marassa are extremely powerful despite being represented as kids. They usually help people who have issues with getting a child or other important aspects like the death of a newborn. While they are mostly nice and all, they are responsible for bad luck and bring sickness when not correctly served or forgotten.

2. Damballa:

He is one of the Loa who helped Bondnye when making the cosmos and, you can imagine, a very important figure.

Damballa is represented by a giant snake and is often associated with St Patrick's. He is the keeper of knowledge, wisdom, and healing magic representing the symbol of life, peace, purity, and goodness. His partner is Ayida-Weddo who forms rainbows, together they use the same Veve.

They are extremely strict with rules regarding their ceremonies. Everyone needs to be dressed in freshly cleaned clothing, women need to wear a white headscarf made of silk. Alcohol, nicotine, and else are forbidden when calling upon him.

Damballa doesn't have legs, so during the possession, the possessed will fall and wiggle on the ground like a snake and sometimes hiss.

3. Le Baron Samedi:

He’s the spirit of the dead, resurrection, and the giver of life, it’s him you need to call if you wanna get in touch with your ancestors. He avenges the souls of the dead (witches, those who were wronged, etc, …)

Le Baron Samedi will heal your wounds if you’re willing to pay back, while it’s not his only ability the rest may be considered sinister since he’s a master of black magic and curses. If someone sends you a hex that brings death so long as Le Baron doesn't let you, you won’t die. Oh and you see the Christian Cross, it’s also his symbol.

Le Baron can manifest himself in our physical realm through specific rituals I won’t bother to describe how he presents himself just search his name on Google and look at the image. Despite being married to Maman Brigitte, he is still known for cheating. He’s also openly lewd quick to swear and likes to mess with people with a big ego.

Usually, his followers can be seen wearing black and purple as he favors these colors but it’s not obligatory.

4. Ayizan:

She’s a sweet grandma and protector of commerce. You can see her with a white dress and deep pockets buying groceries in local markets, and she gives candies to children and people who are respectful.

She’s associated with the rites of initiation in the religion, which is a ritual or ceremony to signify when someone passes from one group to another it implies a change of status in the society. (ex: passage of child to adult)

She’s a typical priestess and knows of the many wisdom and mysteries regarding initiation and the natural world. She’s one of the greatest healers of the pantheon and while she doesn't heal physical wounds, she heals psychically offering health.

5. Papa Legba:

He’s the spirit of crossroads, both metaphorical and literally. It’s symbolizes choices and opportunities. He’s also the intermediate between men and the spirit world people said he’s always in front of Houses. Papa Legba is invoked at the beginning of ceremonies to open the way for communication with other sprites and deities. While he’s mostly benevolent, he can be stern and enforce spiritual rules.

Some may also depict him as a fertility God, a tricker, or a protector of children. In Haiti, he facilitates communication, speech, and understanding. Children like him and he’s often asked to babysit.

He’s associated with Saint Peter since this figure also has keys that grant access to an afterlife.

Debrief:

With all of this informations, we can all agree that none of these spirits works with Alastor as there’s mainly associated with what we could consider a positive aspect of spirituality. Alastor isn't really an example of purity, goodness, and else. Plus his powers have no links to any of the–

“But there’s Le Baron Samedi, he does Black Magic.”

That’s true and he’s actually the only Lwa from my list who could potentially work with Al but there are a few issues. Le Baron Samedi messes with people with a big ego, even if Al decided to work with him it would be quite complicated. Add to that Alastor's respect for women, I don’t think he’ll like to work with someone who cheats on his wife.

But let’s actually think of the potential here, making him a tangible entity Alastor could speak to, would have led to interesting character dynamics with Le Baron mocking Alastor and making him rethink his decision every time he tries and acts selfishly. Le Baron Samedi could have been the one slapping Mister Deer Boy to reality.

Personally, I think it would have been cool to add hints of the partnership by making Alastor’s suit black or giving him purple accessories but Viv's palette of colors is unfortunately very limited to the same shade of red.

“You only listen to 5 deities that appear to be popular, maybe somewhere there’s actually a Lwa that is working with Alastor and you simply didn't choose to show it to us.”

There’s actually one spirit I can think of. Bakoulou Baka, I did not find pictures of his veve unfortunately.

What I can say about him is that he grants powers and wealth. But since he’s associated with dark energy, those things are finite and you’re royally fucked if you don’t repay him in time. He is so evil that people are scared of calling upon him.

Baka in general is a term used to refer to spirits willing to deal with very powerful sorcerers. They pretty much will do anything only if the price is right, they are malevolent spirits who’ll turn on you if you don't do your part of the deal.

Alastor was mentioned to be stuck in a deal, it would be a great twist if the one who got him in this situation was an Evil Lwa he underestimated and failed to repay when he was alive. But we know Vivziepop that won’t be the case.

“You’re too harsh on her those will be obliviously mentioned in season 2.”

Think back to all of the things I said in this post, the different terms like House, initiation, Lwa even the word Voodoo itself, are they even mentioned ONCE in the show? Did Vivziepop make an effort in the FOUR YEARS of production to include them? Did she make the slightest bit of effort to make sure that the new audience knows that Alastor practices voodoo?!! Even by watching the pilot you can’t tell it’s mentioned once fastly by Charlie AS A JOKE.

“IT’$ h@rD t0 Do that.”

Yeah, writing is hard you have to deal with it. And be for real, there’s a scene where Vaggie enters Alastor’s room and sees him eating a deer, rather than see him in the middle of breakfast that could have gone like that:

“What the hell are you going?

– Just a few offerings to keep the Lwas happy.”

Smart people would have been like “What What the hell is a Lwa?” They would have searched it on Google, and Bam people know Al does voodoo.

“But th3 szeN3 w@s to sh0w h3 was a canibal.”

We’re talking of the same guy whose bestie is the cannibal queen, when Rosie proposed fingers to Charlie he could have accepted it. Good now the audience knows he’s a cannibal too, yay!

Religion is an important aspect of characters as it explains most of their behavior. That’s the type of thing you introduce in the first seasons then expand on the second.

And we’re talking of the same show where Husk looked at the screen and told us each of the main character archetypes. I’m surprised Alastor hasn't been called Voodoo Man or something.

I thought of those rewritten scenes in the span of two minutes and you’re telling me Viv couldn't in four years?!

“But HH is b@seD 0n B|blic@l t3xt. Voodoo |s DifeREnt. 🤓☝️”

Are you aware Voodoo is essentially a very big salad of multiple beliefs mixed together rights? You know that one of them is Christianity right?! Some Lwas are associated with Saint, so nothing prevented Viv from making a new class in Heaven called Lwa whose job is to assist the Saints in their task.

When Charlie and Vaggie presented themselves in front of the gates, Saint Peter could have been the one holding the keys and Papa Legba would have been the one reading the book to know who was entering or not.

With the bare minimum in terms of research (1 week), I managed to think of quick easy but effective ways to implement voodoo in the Hellaverse in the span of 2 poor minutes. So why can’t Vivziepop do this when she had FOUR YEARS?!!

Or maybe it’s just that… she doesn't care.

She doesn't care

You need to have a very VERY blatant lack of care for the source material to present voodoo the way Vivziepop did it. Every time the veve appears around Alastor it’s to communicate one thing danger and threat, it’s a harmful stereotype that needs to end people pointed it out she refused to listen.

And it’s because of this lack of respect that bullshit like these happen in her fandom.

Alongside this, you can count the many comics of Alastor using voodoo dolls to hurt/control someone. I’m not blaming any of these fans, I’m blaming Vivienne Medrano for feeding such harmful ideas about the community and not making it clear enough that those symbols are part of a rich culture that people hold dear to their hearts and NOT A FUCKING AESTHETIC

You want an actual example of respect for foreign beliefs?

In the movie Exhuma, the main characters are a shaman and a geomancer, obliviously those who worked on the movie took creative liberties regarding shamanism in Koran culture BUT they actually called a Shaman. There’s a scene where one of the main characters is supposed to do rituals, the actors learn an actual choreography and do it as accurately as possible the shaman was there to supervise everything from beginning to ends.

All I’m asking is for Vivziepop to open Google and do a deep dive. It’s like a school presentation, you sacrifice at least 2 or 3 hours of your days to research your subject, and she had 4 years to do that a little bit of everyday.

Noo it’s too complicated apparently and come on look at these beautiful veve! It’s edgy if I draw them with red on a dark background they look EeViiiIil.

I said it I said it again, if you’re not willing to research as much information about a preexisting subject.

Don’t write about it.

If you don’t have a little bit amount of respect for a religion and care about representing them properly.

Don’t write about it.

Don’t be like Vivziepop.

[writersdrug]

Nectar and Bane - Pt. 1

Pairings: Hunter!König x Witch!Reader

Pt. 2

Summary: König is hired to hunt down a pesky witch by a warlock, who paints you as the most evil thing in the past three centuries. With the promise of finding true love (or, the closest thing the warlock can offer: a brainwashed woman who is forced to dote on the hunter), König sets out on his journey. However, you aren't what he was expecting at all, and he develops a newfound obsession with making you become his.

Warnings: dubcon, mentions of rape, manipulation, kidnapping, sex pollen (kinda? If you squint? not really, but better safe than sorry), corruption kink, mentions of blood and violence, mentions of consuming human organs, unrequited pining, angst at the end, death (not for main characters), cowgirl, missionary, mating press, biting, hair pulling, nipple play, power imbalance, handjob, obsessive thoughts and behaviour (please let me know if I missed any!)

Notes: thought I'd try my hand a fantasy au version of cod, or at least of König. This is really long (over 15000 words) so I split it into two parts. The next part is pretty much done, I'm just exhausted and wanted to at least crank out half. Let me know if you would like to be tagged in pt 2!

ps if anyone has any suggestions or tips on how to make collages or banners for fics, pleeeaseeee lmk

translations at the end

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Watch your every step. From the moment you step foot into those woods, you can’t trust anything you see.

That’s what the sorcerer had drilled into his head before he had begun his journey. He called you dangerous, cunning… “A sneaky, meddling bitch…” he had grumbled over the table in that crowded tavern.

Two small pouches, one of silver, one of gold, sat in between the two patrons on the table. Stains of ale and coffee rings littered the unvarnished wood. The wax of the thick candle had trickled down and formed small, hardened pools at the base – its flame flickered weakly, casting unflattering shadows against the man’s weathered features, and making the portentous hood covering König’s face only that much more ominous.

He'd listened warily as the sorcerer described the witch – you. Tens of centuries old, too much knowledge and too little wisdom to use it sensibly. You take whatever you want by whatever means possible, and your favored method was using your physical assets and the promise of sexual devotion to coerce those within your web to do your bidding. “Sometimes it’s for her personal gain – sometimes, she does it for fun.” The warlock added bitterly. “Akin to a serpent, she winds you into her embrace, and then crushes your bones before she swallows you whole, saving your heart for last.” You’d done it to him, ensnaring him into your alluring trap, before stealing his spellbooks, his potions, his most prized collections… and vanishing into thin air.

An enchantress, König had concluded.

The warlock’s request? “Kill her. And be quick with it. The sooner this earth is rid of that swine, the sooner we can all rest. And, better yet – bring me her eyes! Potent things, witches’ eyes can be – of course, that is if they’re still working. If the bitch has gone blind, don’t waste dulling your dagger. A handful of her hair would do just fine.”

König had killed much worse for much less, and this sounded like it would be on the simpler side of things. A few days’ worth of hunting and a quick, efficient kill – hopefully, one of his easier jobs, although with the way the sorcerer described you, that might not be. He’d dealt with magicians before; up until now, they had been rather boring to hunt – tedious, but nonetheless, boring. Most of the time, they tried to end him with some elaborate incantation in the few seconds remaining of their life after he’d ambushed them. His silver blade would be slicing across their throats before they could utter five syllables. They were always so intent on murdering their victims slowly and in a flashy manner. With König’s preference for a more immediate result, he was usually the one collecting the fingernails, teeth, and tongues.

(Over time, he’d had noticed that it was always sorcerers ordering the assassination of other sorcerers. He wondered why they had so much of an issue amongst themselves, but he didn’t question it. Whatever kept him fed and paid for his room, he would do it.)

The picture the warlock was painting of you, however, made you seem much craftier and more calculated. You couldn’t resist the glamorous ways of murder via magic – it was written in your nature as a witch. But you played the game with your charisma and wit, too; something magic users didn’t typically rely on (half of the time, because they weren’t charismatic, nor witty). You waited until your assailant would fall to your wicked charm, before dissecting him like nothing more than a toad for your cauldron. If not an easy kill, you at least sounded like you would be an exciting one – but König knew he could get something more from this client for killing you.

“What more can you offer me?” he asked.

The warlock chuckled. “The gold is insufficient, is it?” he leaned forward and hunched his shoulders, speaking in a hushed tone. “Tell me, what do you desire? Recognition and respect? Revenge against someone who’s crossed you? To bring back a loved one from the dead? Or, perhaps, to find a love of your own?”

König’s shoulders tensed, and the rest of the warlock’s utterances fell on deaf ears. Could he possibly give him a chance to find himself someone to love? Someone that he and only he can worship? It was true that he would be happier to live alone, in whatever way that would allow him to be independent of society… but the thought of being able to live alone with someone, someone who was devoted to him, someone who could decorate his hut with signs of life and warmth, someone with a kind smile and a sweet voice, someone who he could spend hours upon hours with, memorizing each curve of their body, the taste of their nectar on his tongue…

He called it love. Others would call him insane. He’d heard it all before – how no one would ever love him, given his profession, his awkwardness in carrying a conversation about anything normal other than how sharp his knives are, and how he uses them… that, and the fact that he never shows his face (“He must be hideous under there…” they would speculate). Nonetheless, he still craved the devotion of an obedient, warm body waiting for him in his cabin at the end of the day – once he did get a cabin. Why should he be denied what everyone else wants?

He knew he was a hypocrite; he couldn’t expect someone else to be so willing to leave everything and run away with him. Not with his insane ideations and obsessions – hell, not with who he was as a person. But if he killed enough healthy rabbits to keep her fed, and if he fucked her hard enough that her eyes rolled back into her head and she couldn’t muster enough strength to escape the mattress… would she ever care about what kind of man he was?

The warlock smiled slowly. “Of course… that’s what all of you sick bastards want.” He said, leaning back and folding his arms. “If it will seal our contract, I will give you whichever woman you choose. I’ll make her yours, and only yours, with unconditional love – even for your damned soul.”

A fair deal, König had thought. Which is exactly what had him currently trudging through the dense woods, searching for any traces of a witch – a sack with two loaves of bread and some apples hung over his shoulder, along with his well-worn tashka stuffed with the coin he had earned over time. His sword was strapped to his hip in its sheath, his dagger (a short sword, when it was compared to the average person) stuffed into the lead-lined, deerskin sheath on the side of his boot; and a pelt, heavy and thick, hung around his shoulders. All he had to his name.

König had done a day of research on you – testimonies and sightings of you ghosting the perimeter of the woods at an early age, hoping to lure some poor soul away as your very first victim. “I imagine she was a succubus in her previous life,” the warlock had spoken, “maybe too much of a whore for even the devil to handle.”

He had caught you one night by luring you to his cabin with the scent of a savory meal. Guessing by your inexperience, and the way you avoided using words as you snarled and thrashed in the warlock’s grip, he assumed you had not yet reached one hundred years old. You were still young and fresh-faced, appearing no more than twenty to human eyes. “After a few decent meals, and reintroducing her to the work of her past life – she’d settled in as the perfect student. It almost felt like having a pet.” He added with a smug smile.

König questioned how happy you were with being reintroduced to the work of your past, but he didn’t comment on it.

After living with the warlock as his student and whore for a few centuries, you turned into a strong, young witch. You didn’t care to go into town, preferring to stay at the cabin and watch over the brews whenever he had to make deliveries or run to the shops. The warlock had no complaints about your desire to stay holed up in his home – fewer people to ogle at you, fewer glimpses into a more civilized life that might tempt you to run away. He’d much rather you be a brooding, antisocial bitch, than watch one of his clients stare at you with a yellowed, lustful grin, like you were some harlot in the window of a brothel.

On one particular day, without any indication of what you were planning, he had returned home from his rounds to an empty cabin – not just empty of you, but of his potion stock, his rarest ingredients, and his most prized spellbooks. He’d run into the woods in fury, screeching your name and hurling threats into the trees around him – but you were gone. Not a trace of you could be found within a five mile radius of his home.

It was like you had never been there, save the absence of his personal belongings.

In König’s opinion, you didn’t strike him as an extremely dangerous individual. Sure, the warlock had harped on and on about how cunning and deceiving you were – but all you had done was lie to him. And from the way he had described the conditions you were under, König didn’t exactly blame you for running away. Maybe this job was a waste of his time…

Still, he couldn’t find it in him to complain, despite the nip of the mid-autumn air, and the fact that he was embarking on what might be one of the most treacherous endeavors of his career. He was getting a decent payout for it – that is, if he lived to finish the job. Additionally, the scenery was a comfort to his journey; wiry birch trees stood high and thickly clustered, their brown and black spots like ever-watchful eyes, staring at the gargantuan hunter as he moved. Their golden leaves mimicked the light of the sun, the real thing blocked out by the overcast skies. A whisper of wind flew by his ears, carrying down and blowing the leaves further along his path with a gentle sigh. As if nature herself was telling the world to be quiet, be still, and prepare for winter.

It was times like this where König became unsure of himself. What if he hated having someone else to care for? What if, deep down, he preferred the silence and the solitude? But then, the loneliness would strike him. The longing to be understood (if that was humanely possible), and the desire to have something warm, alive, and sentient to acknowledge him. It consumed him on those sleepless nights, perfectly warm by the hearth of whatever inn he resided at, yet so hollow without having someone to wrap his arms around.

A swaying movement in the branches above pulled him from his thoughts. Hanging down by a twine thread, tied to one of the spindling birch branches, was a tiny, burlap pouch. It reached a few feet above König’s head, and was drenched in a dark, thick liquid that dripped rhythmically onto the forest floor. Looking to where the drops landed, he noticed the matter on the ground was decaying – a steaming pile of rot was all that was left of the leaves that were once there.

He frowned. The trap was clever – for a witch in their first century. König had expected something a bit more dangerous for someone your age. Maybe the last hunter had been too gullible, and you stereotyped them to all be oafs. Or, maybe you were too old and couldn’t craft traps with the same skill and precision as your younger self.

He drew his dagger from his boot and quickly sliced the twine thread. The pouch dropped to the floor with a squelch, landing in the very puddle of death it had created. The liquid beneath it bubbled and hissed, and the bag soon dissolved to reveal its contents: bits of bone – a kind of reptilian foot, from the looks of it – dried pomegranate seeds, and a fuzzy layer of mold, all appearing to be drenched in some kind of blood.

He carefully stepped around the stinking mess, his eyes turning back onto the path to continue his hunt. He both hoped for and against finding more evidence of your existence. He wanted to get back to town as soon as he could, so he could hole himself up in an inn until his money began to run out – all the same, his mind craved a puzzle and a chase. Though, with how old you were, he doubted there would be much of a chase.

More leaking, swaying hex bags hung from branches as he trudged on, pointing him in the right direction. He didn’t bother to quiet the sound of the leaves beneath his footsteps – the rustling of the wind through the foliage was doing the job well enough. He held onto his dagger tightly, his other hand on his longsword, as he carefully toed through the dense forest. He had to be close – the smell of fennel and turmeric settled around his presence, along with the babbling of a nearby stream.

The sound of a distant tune danced through the trees. The voice was soft, yet clear, and whoever it belonged too was much too confident that they were alone in these woods. König wondered if it was actually you, and not some poor soul who had been foraging for the autumn mushrooms and berries – but he was nearly a day’s trek into the forest. No one would dare come out this far, unless they wanted to be alone. And, they were potentially hiding from something; their own past, perhaps.

He cautiously followed the sound of the tune, still disguising the sound of his own steps within the rustling leaves and wind. His heart thrummed with both uncertainty and excitement; he always did get too thrilled at the idea of a struggle and blood covering his hands. He took a deep breath in through his nostrils, focusing his attention on the voice that carried through the trees, pulling him closer and closer… He gripped his dagger tightly as he crept, reminding himself of the warlock’s warning: cunning, sneaky – be on your best wits.

The voice brought him to the edge of a clearing. The birch trees parted and encircled a few meters of earth, and a few bushes huddled along the far edge, dotted with purplish berries and thorned branches. A wicker basket, woven clumsily and rather lopsided, sat on the ground and caught each berry and branch that was tossed into it. A figure knelt in front of the bushes, carefully plucking the berries with thin, delicate fingers, stained purple from the juice of the berries, and nails that might need a trim soon, unless they were intended to be claws.

The cloaked figure confused König. The voice was too melodic, too clear and fresh for an old witch. He had assumed you weren’t much younger than the warlock, but still old. He remained a few yards away from you, shrouded by the trees and dense foliage outside of the clearing.

It was when you turned your head, dropping your handful of berries into the basket, revealing your face, that he realized how wrong he had been in his assumption.

Your skin was soft, he could tell even with the distance between the two of you. Your lips delicately moved as you sang your tune, your eyes sparkled in contrast to the dull autumn colors that surrounded you. Small wisps of your hair danced around your cheeks as the wind caressed it. Your entire body looked soft, warm, and pliable… exactly what he needed. Craved.

It wasn’t hard for him to imagine it: leaves tangling into your hair as he pressed his fingers around your neck, pushing you to the cold ground and watching as you gasped for air. He’d use his knife, but not to kill you. He’d drag it over your hardened nipples, watching them perk up even more at the prickling sensation, before he’d carve his name into your stomach. Smear your pretty blood all over your pretty face, watch as your eyes widen with horror, as you question how someone can be so deranged and cruel, how he can take so much pleasure in something so vile and horrible-

Or maybe, he could convince you that he just wants a fuck. You looked like you could use one – when was the last time you’d had someone’s lips on your breasts, or their cock in your cunt? It had certainly been too long for him… he couldn’t imagine how long you had gone without being thoroughly ravaged, living in these woods all alone. He could take care of that. He could be gentle, for a little while; holding your wrists above your head as he pushed you against a tree, whispering praise and encouragements into your ear, “… so gut, so Schön, genau so…” taking you from behind as your nipples perked up from the rough texture of the bark, listening to you whine and moan in that sweet voice of yours as he lets out months’ worth of pent up frustration by thrusting his cock into your warm pussy, over and over and over until you scream and tighten around his length, milking the cum right out of him as he fucks you deep, maybe sinking his teeth into the junction of your neck-

He growled quietly, palming his rapidly-growing erection as he tried to clear his head. Stay focused. Kill the witch, and then you’ll get what you want.

Remember the warlock’s promise.

Even if he didn’t need you to satisfy his needs, he could still make this interesting. Not like you could outrun him, anyway.

He stepped into the clearing, and as if by some ironic joke, the wind died down immediately. The crunch of his heavy boots was enough to make his presence known to any living thing within a mile radius.

Your singing stopped. You whipped your head in his direction, and immediately a look of fear fell upon your face. For a moment, the two of you were frozen in a staring contest. You reminded him of a doe, staring at the crossbow of the hunter you had noticed, wondering if this being was actually dangerous, or nothing you needed to worry about. He wondered what he must remind you of, and he wished to hear the panicking thoughts flitting through your mind.

Finally, you broke the trance – you gasped, stumbling backwards and awkwardly standing as you ripped a pathetic, little knife from your boot. You faced him and pointed the knife at him – you held it improperly, and if he truly wanted to make this messy, he could easily make you stab yourself in a struggle. He wondered what it would feel like when your nails dug into his rough skin, dragging marks down his forearms (or his back, if he played his cards right).

You pulled the thick cloak tighter around your body – you were tiny. Well, everything was tiny compared to König. But you were unexpectedly small. With the way the sorcerer had described you, he had expected you to reach his shoulders at least. But there you were, craning your neck to look up at him with fearful, owlish eyes.

“State your business!” You demanded, your voice cracking slightly.

König chuckled in response. You really were too pathetic for your own good, weren’t you? He took you in – your lips were pulled into a frown, parted slightly to reveal your perfect teeth, the way the fabric of your cloak quivered where it bunched in your fist… perfectly ordinary things that ordinary people do. But, besides the fact that you were a witch, something about you made it all so captivating.

“Hey!” you shouted, bringing his eyes back to your gaze. Your fear had given way to a judgmental ire. “Gods, have you ever seen a woman before?!”

König scoffed. “Woman? Yes, of course. I’ve seen witches, too. None as young as you, however.”

Your eyes widened in panic once again. You stretched your knife out towards him as he stalked over to where you stood. “S-stay back! I’ll kill you!”

Your meek threat didn’t slow him down. He continued his advance until he had corralled you against a tree, your one hand bracing against the trunk behind you, and the other holding the knife under his ribcage. The only thing between his flesh and your blade was his linen tunic, which wouldn’t do much to protect him should you decide to stab him – but were you capable of that? Your eyes were so filled with fear as they stared at him, your chin to the sky to take all of him in. Your fingers trembled around the handle of your knife as if the prospect of having to nick him made you uneasy.

“Not with magic?” he asked, his eyes flitting to the bush next to you. He plucked one of the berries between his thick, gloved fingers, rolling the onyx sphere between his thumb and middle finger before squashing it.

You pouted (a sight König could never grow tired of). “I’m not a wi-“

He snatched your forearm, and you yelped, dropping the knife to the forest floor. His fingers easily wrapped around you; he wondered how easy it would be to break it.

“Don’t lie, now.” He ordered, his eyes narrowing with a hint of annoyance. “You’re not good at it.”

He released your arms with a shove. You scrambled back with a fearful expression, swiping the blade from the ground. He watched with interest as you stood several yards away from him, pointing your weapon towards him once again.

“Fine.” You said, holding yourself a bit taller. “You’re right. What’s the crime in that?”

For a moment, König was lost. Why weren’t you trying to weaponize your magic? It was almost as if you had forgotten you weren’t a human. For someone who was supposed to be a cunning bitch, as the warlock had put it, you weren’t very smart.

“I’m not here for justice.” He replied, wiping his glove on his shirt. “Just doing my job.”

“Hunter?” you asked.

He extended his arms – gods, he could have crushed a pillar between those arms – as if presenting himself to you. “Was it not obvious?” he asked, and you could hear the smirk in his tone.

You huffed. “Well, you’re not a very good one. Most hunters don’t make conversation with their prey.”

Prey. He liked that you understood your position, that he was the one in charge here. Maybe you were a clever girl…

“I like to listen to the begging.”

“Begging?”

“For your life.” König folded his arms over his chest, inspecting you closely. The only thing you had to protect yourself was your cloak, and that hardly provided a shield against the wind. Even though you were obviously wary of him, it wasn’t wary enough. You had spoken too many words with the hunter, and had it been anyone else, you might have been dead long before now.

You seemed malleable – book-smart and spitfire, yet all too gullible. Easily manipulated. Just what he needed to brainwash you into loving him. Or, at least, being his pet. You’d never truly love him, he had come to learn that from experience. But maybe, if he could somehow convince you that you needed a big, scary man, who could protect you and fuck you nicely, it would be enough to make you stay. After all, you were too naïve to be alone out here, weren’t you?

Could the warlock perhaps make you his prize? It’d kill two birds with one stone, he could convince you to return whatever knickknacks you had stolen, and your presence would never bother anyone ever again – besides him, but of course, it would never be a bother to bed you every night.

Your expression turned sour. “I don’t beg.”

The tone of your voice sent a shiver down his cock. He’d have to pound that little attitude right out of you.

“Who hired you?” You asked indignantly. The knife in your hand had slowly lowered, now pointing at his feet. Your initial fear seemed to have worn off. Were you brave, or just that stupid?

“It doesn’t matter.” König replied.

“It does to me.”

“You don’t know? How many people have you wronged?”

You scoffed. “I haven’t wronged anyone. People just don’t like it when you call them out on their atrocities.”

König hummed. You had a point. “Your teacher – the warlock.”

For a moment, you scrunched your face in disgust. Teacher. Only a fool as mad as the warlock himself could consider he was any such figure in your life, other than a torturous one. Then, you sighed, shoulders slumping defeatedly, the knife now aimed straight at the forest floor. “That old toad can’t even kill me himself…” you muttered. “What payment did he offer you?”

“He promised me anything I desired of your possessions.” König replied, taking note of the change in your presence. He purposely left out the warlock’s promise to find him a “companion.”

“And what would you do with cursed fig seeds, or stag’s blood?” You asked, folding your arms over your chest (which, König noted, framed your breasts perfectly). “I have no gold – not enough to be a reward for the trouble of killing me.”

“He gave me three hundred gold coin, too.”

Your lips turned down into a scowl. “That’s all?! That absolute hypocrite!” You lodged your knife into the tree behind you and placed your hands on your hips. “I took everything from him, save that disgusting old shed he called home, and that’s all he’ll pay to kill me?!”

Your outburst pulled König from his obsessive staring. “You’re… insulted?”

You turned back to him and huffed. “Well, obviously.” You retorted. “I stole all he had to his name, and he treats me like a fly buzzing in his ear. I deserve a bit more recognition than three hundred gold coin.”

“You admit to it, then.” König said, stepping closer. You appeared to be too angry to notice how near the hunter was to you. “You are a thief.”

You laughed – a sound that König did not expect to be so sweet. “I’ve done much worse than thieving, mind you.” You shook your head. “And he’s done even worse to me.” You sighed, pulling the dagger from the tree trunk and sheathing it back into your boot.

Once again, he was reminded of how small you were. Why weren’t you afraid of him? Sure, you had the advantage of magic while he did not, but you weren’t even acting defensively anymore. You treated him like a traveler who had stumbled across your path, starting up conversation and sharing your story.

“What has he done?” he asked, his interest in you growing by the second. An outcast, despised, hated by others. He felt that the two of you were kindred spirits, and he would not risk losing a connection so rare – one he had never felt.

“You mean he didn’t even tell you?” you said, sounding more hurt than anything else.

“He did.” König sheathed his own dagger as a peace offering. “But I’m coming to think he was not entirely truthful.”

You sighed, looking down at your basket, then back at König. “I suppose I could tell you, since he brought you all this way to kill me. Walk with me – but keep your dagger away. And if you try anything, I’ll slit your throat. Understood?”

He suppressed the urge to laugh. Could you even reach his throat? “The warlock said you would lure me away to your hut, and carve out my heart.”

You huffed disappointedly, walking back to the bush near König. Completely calm, like he had only ever come up to you with the intention of finding a friend. “And yet, he’s still alive, after all the chances I had to kill him. We can stay outside of my hut, if it eases your mind. I’ll let you make your own tea, too. But if you aren’t set on killing me right this minute, I really should return to start drying these out.” You held up your basket. “Before too much time passes, and I can no longer use them.”

König had never given his prey more than a few moments to try and beg their way out of his crushing hands. He couldn’t believe he had even given so much lenience to your baseless trust in him – what he should have done was take the opportunity to grab your face and snap your neck. But he was starting to doubt the warlock’s testimony; you were a thief, yes, but had you really committed any crime? Or were you simply just taking the revenge you deserved from your captor – or, as the warlock called himself, your master?

König sighed. He gestured his hand out, signaling for you to lead the way.

You frowned. “First, give me your word.” You demanded.

“I will not harm you.” He said, with a hand over his heart. He didn’t care about forcing you to make the same promise – you were harmless enough. He did, however, make sure to avoid saying that he wouldn’t touch you. Although he was developing a few ounces more of respect for you, who knows? Maybe you would find a reason to drag him into your hut and satisfy both of your needs – and, if he was lucky enough to get that far, maybe you’d offer for him to spend the night in a warm bed, and he could be saved from sleeping on the cold earth for one night.

His word seemed promising enough to you. Threading your arm through the handle of the basket, you began marching through the woods, watching the ground carefully as you stepped over roots and twigs.

König followed by your side, watching you from the corner of his eye. You really were helpless – all it would take is a strong push from him, and you’d be tumbling down, maybe hitting your head on a stone, or rolling down the mountainside until your neck snapped. Even if the fall didn’t kill you, he could easily land one hit to your chest and pierce your lungs with your own ribs. But here you were, worrying more about the uneven forest floor than the lumbering creature by your side.

“What did he tell you?” you asked, pulling him from his fantasies. “About the beginning, when he took me.”

König laughed in pity. “He made it sound like he caught you, not that he took you.”

You sighed. “He didn’t catch me… well, I suppose he did. More like how animals are caught.” You adjusted your grip on the basket, still watching the ground beneath you. “I was the botanist’s assistant before he came along. Stared at me like I was naked. He would come more often than he needed to -  asked me where I was from, who my father was – things I didn’t understand why he needed to know. I still don’t.”

König didn’t understand himself. He continued to listen, the sounds of his footsteps drowning out your quiet ones. He began to wonder just how much of the warlock’s testimony was true.

“He came to the shop one night.” You continued to recount the story. “I was lighting the lanterns in the greenhouse. It was storming, and I didn’t hear him. He bludgeoned me and dragged me into the streets like I was some sort of animal.” You paused, turning your own words over in your head. “I suppose I was, to him.

He brought me back to his cabin – that’s when he started the curse. All I remember when waking up is feeling sick. I tried to stand, but it- everything felt heavy, like I was stuck in mud. I managed to crawl outside, and he was there. Saying my father wouldn’t recognize me, that he had killed the old lady at the botanist, that everyone would think that I had killed her… that I would be burned if I returned to the village. That I would forever be an outcast as long as I lived – as a witch. As what he made me.”

You paused again, for longer this time. König looked down at you, observing how your face twisted in… disgust? Anger? Your eyes were somewhere else, possibly somewhere where you could light the world on fire, drain the life from everyone who had ever done you wrong. König had felt that same hatred before, and he had learned to let it pass. You were still stuck there, wishing you could drive a blade into the warlock’s neck – and more.

“You stayed, then?” König asked, returning his gaze to the trees before him. “Why?”

You scoffed. “It’s not like I could go anywhere, not during the change. For the first fortnight, I couldn’t do anything but crawl on the ground and wail. And he let me – I’d get to the edge of the woods, and he’d be there to drag me back. Drug me into the hut at night and held me, fucked me, saying he was protecting me and similar bullshit. Of course, he was right; at that moment, I was as good as dead if I had ventured out on my own. And once I’d gotten my strength back, I was still a new witch. I’d never be accepted into the village – witches never are, despite the warlocks being the vile ones – and I had no idea how to live as one. So I relied on him for a while, until I knew enough to make it out on my own.”

König hummed in thought. Despite the initial desire to snatch you himself and have his way with you, his fists clenched at the thought of you being dragged around by the warlock. This life wasn’t one you had chosen, and yet the very person who had forced it upon you was killing you for it. It made something within him boil, something deep and buried, that he had thought had been tucked away for good.

You didn’t deserve any of this. He was fighting with himself in that moment, but the desire to show you what you should have been given was consuming him. He wanted to tell you that he knew what it was to be an outcast, he knew what it was like to feel lonely and crave being alone at the same time. To wish that you had the power to hurt anyone you deemed deserving of it, yet to have that someone who would never hurt you.

He would do it. He would be that person for you, he would be the one to kill for you. He knew he was getting ahead of himself – after all, he was hired to kill, you, not fall for you. And he knew it was just another one of his delusional fantasies… but he couldn’t help himself. You were like him, which was something that he had not yet been able to find. Something primal in him told him to sink his teeth in, to hold onto you until you stopped your struggling and realized that this would be good, for the both of you.

He was insane. But did it matter what he was, as long as he could give you what you needed?

“So, yes-“ you continued, bringing König out from the depths of his thoughts. “- I stole from him. Took the books he used to teach me, maybe a few ingredients for potions, a few seeds to start my own garden… but compared to what he took from me, I might as well have taken a loaf of bread.”

You stopped suddenly, and König came to a halt beside you. You nodded your head to the scene before you. “It’s not much, but it’s home.”

König looked ahead: the trees parted into another clearing, larger this time. A rickety hut leaned against a wall of rock, made of thin, birch logs and mud slathered on top to keep out the wind. In the center of the clearing was a large stone, positioned near a pile of ash and rocks. A log lay near it, possibly another place for someone to sit. A small garden sat closer to the creek before your hut – it didn’t look to be doing very well, but that was expected as winter approached.

By the creek, there was a large, twisted oak. Its roots hung directly off of the bank and down into the water. Its leaves had fallen to the earth and mingled with the rest of the foliage by now – the entire thing had crimson paths winding around it, hauntingly similar to blood-filled veins. Several pieces of clothing and fabric hung from the branches and swayed in the autumn wind.

As you marched ahead, placing your basket down by the makeshift firepit and disappearing into the hut, König took a few, cautious steps forward. He was both charmed by the simplicity of it, and despondent that you were forced into this lonesome sort of life. He wanted to drag you from this measly hovel and show you something better.

But how? He was no better off than you were. All his earnings were spent on a room at the nearest tavern and a decent amount of ale to help him fall asleep. He never cared about having a home, as long as he had a place to keep out the cold. He didn’t think it would be good enough to drag you back to the village and convince you to spend the night with him in a thin-walled, noisy inn… but, even if he didn’t end up killing you today (something that seemed more and more likely with each passing second), he refused to leave you in this hell. If it was a cozy cabin, built so far away from civilization for the sole purpose of privacy and comfort, he could understand. Maybe even plead his case to you so you would let him stay. But this – this was a last resort. A broken down spot in the woods that you made for your banishment, for hiding. This wouldn’t do.

Call him insane. Call him crazy, hopeless, sick in the head… maybe his desires were founded on the thought that he would give you what he had never received.

You emerged from your hut, the thin, wooden door clanging shut behind you. You looked at him with a puzzled expression. Why was he still standing at the edge? You wrapped your cloak tighter around yourself and made your way over to him, your hair blowing across your face.

He watched as you stopped in front of him, your brow creased with question. Your head tilted back to look up at him, yet any traces of fear that you had shown earlier were gone. You looked at him like you’d known him for the past hundred years. It made his heart ache within his chest.

How could anyone have painted such a wretched picture of the woman who stood before him?

“Is everything alright?” you asked, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear. “Like I said before, if you’d rather we stay outside-“

König interrupted you, reaching down and grabbing the sides of your arms firmly. You sucked in a breath warily, but you were still not afraid of him.

“I- you-“ Scheisse, what is he trying to say? He wanted to take you away, he wanted to show you how similar the both of you were to each other, he wanted to show you what (he thought) love was – slow, gentle, possessive, and strong. He wanted to keep you in his pocket, both to keep you safe from the world, and to make sure you couldn’t be taken from him. He wanted you, you, you –

This is insanity. He knew it. But that didn’t stop the fire in his chest, and the questionable throbbing in his trousers.

You knew. Your eyes said everything as they softened, as your lips pressed together into a knowing, sad smile. Were you going to turn him down? Would you say that you preferred it this way, that you liked being alone and living like a prisoner on the run? You took his face in his hands, and he had a foreboding sense in his gut that you might tell him to leave.

Quickly but gently, he cupped one hand at the back of your neck and pulled himself down to you, pressing his lips to yours before you could speak. It was only right, he thought, as he held the kiss – you didn’t understand that he could help you, he could build the life you deserved and keep you safe from any other hunters and warlocks. He placed his other hand on your lower back and pulled you in, moving his lips against your own and praying you wouldn’t deny him.

Like an angel answering his prayers, you tilted your head and wrapped your arms around his neck, standing on your toes and kissing him back. He tugged his teeth at your bottom lip, and you so graciously allowed his tongue to slip past your teeth, letting him taste you. He whined, flooded with relief that you didn’t try to shove him away and call him deranged.

His cock was quickly growing hard, but he ignored it. Right now, he needed to figure out exactly what he needed to say to make you-

A raven’s call tore through the air, piercing his thoughts. It was much too close than any bird would naturally be.

He tried to turn his head in its direction, but you dug your fingers into his hair, making him stutter and freeze on the spot. He grabbed your hips, about to pry you away-

You pressed your lips firmly to his, and he heard you faintly muttering incoherent words against him. The world around him was suddenly showered with colors: purples like the berries that had stained your fingers, oranges like the leaves that were scattered across the ground, silvers like the thick clouds that blanketed across the sky… The black spots on the birch trees suddenly blinked and flitted across his vision; thousands of them stared at him, and he heard your sweet laughter echoing in the distance as the world spun, spun, spun…

He felt the cold earth press to his cheek, and the last thing he remembered was a sickening ache in his stomach.

He should have heeded the sorcerer’s warning.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

"… so gut, so Schön, genau so…”

... so good, so beautiful, just like that...

[ckret2]

Chapter 41 of human Bill Cipher being really sick of being the Mystery Shack's prisoner: after absolutely terrorizing Gideon for projecting used car ads into Bill's dreams, tries to blackmail Gideon into working for him again.

But not before showing some unexpected sympathy for the plight of a child psychic on whose shoulders the family's financial future rests.

####

Dipper and Mabel were in the middle of a race on a roller coaster track when Bill wandered back downstairs. He sat on the couch armrest next to Mabel and precariously balanced as he crossed his legs. "So I've been thinking over this whole thing," Bill said. "I think I should apologize to Gideon."

"Work that out all by yourself?" Dipper glanced at the clock. "Wow. And it only took you half an hour."

Mabel finished a lap. While the roller coaster track slowly lifted her car to the top of the hill to start the next lap, she turned to give Bill an appraising look, ready to assess his work. "Apologize for what?"

"For terrorizing him! Is this a trick question?"

She nodded slowly—a little skeptical, but so far so good—but had to look away as she regained control of her car. "What's your angle?"

"I'm equilateral, work it out."

"Shut uuup, I'm serious."

"Why do I need to have an angle? Maybe I want to practice some of the apology lessons they're teaching on Color Critters! Aren't you the one who wanted me to be a decent person? You should be thrilled. You are thrilled."

"Bill."

"Okay fine, I want you to stop looking at me like I'm evil incarnate over a silly little prank letter." He nudged Mabel's head with his elbow. She smacked his arm away. "Isn't that the only reason anyone apologizes? To stop people from getting mad at them?" He lifted his eyepatch and squinted at the screen. "Goose in the left barrel."

Mabel swerved left. "Yes! Eat tail feathers, Dipper!"

"No no no no—!" His anguished groan mingled with angry honks. He tossed down his controller as Mabel sailed past his disabled car. "I'm not playing with Bill in the room."

Mabel laughed. "You're a sore loser!"

"I'll be out of your matted hair in a few minutes," Bill said. "You're cranky, go get a juice."

Dipper stomped from the room, grumbling. "Whatever, I'm getting a snack." He pointed at Bill, "Not because you told me to! I'm just hungry! It's got nothing to do with you!"

"Sure." Bill nudged Mabel again. "C'mon, let me use my training. Don't think I haven't noticed you're trying to mold me into a model citizen. Why bother if I never get a chance to act like one?"

Mabel looked at him thoughtfully. "You know what? Okay. I guess not wanting people to be mad at you is a good enough reason to apologize." She'd been hoping he'd land on genuine remorse, but she'd take what she could get.

"Great! Fisherman's out, Questiony's working, Sixer's gonna be in his cave til dinner, Dolores doesn't care—" Bill gestured toward the door, "so let's get the bracelets and get to the kid's house while the adults are distracted."

Mabel grimaced. "Oough. Right. We have to actually visit him."

"Unless you want me to mail an apology letter—"

"Definitely not." She sighed. "Well, if it's for the greater good... put on something other than a hoodie and let's go."

"You got it." Bill hopped off the couch and swung with one hand around the doorframe as he headed to the stairs.

####

Dipper tried to protest, but he'd missed his window to talk Mabel out of it; and so Bill and Mabel headed out, with Bill in a loose smiley face-covered Hawaiian shirt—Mabel approved of the friendly message—an undershirt, the leggings that looked like jeans, and his dress shoes. In other words, about as disarmingly unthreateningly un-Bill-like as he could get. He seemed to get bouncier and more energetic the longer they walked outside, until by the time they were turning onto Gideon's street he was cartwheeling up the sidewalk.

Bill waited for Mabel to open the gate in front of Gideon's house; but while Bill blithely passed through, Mabel lingered behind a few steps. Bill paused and glanced back. "Hey. All good, star girl?"

"Yeah." Mabel laughed nervously and caught up. "Just... haven't been to his house since before he got weird. Kinda gives me the willies now."

"Can't blame you. This is the guy who agreed to be my sheriff in exchange for custody of your bubble key."

Mabel cringed. "Did he really?"

"Oh yeah. Think he was planning to visit you in there until he wooed you? I never asked him. I didn't want the details."

"Ugh." Mabel shuddered.

Bill paused. "Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned that ten feet from his front door."

"It's... it's fine." She took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. "Greater good. Right?"

He didn't answer immediately, tapping a foot as he thought. "Listen. Once we're in there, do you want me to go somewhere private to talk with him? So you don't have to worry about him leering at you the whole time?"

"Would you?" Mabel's shoulders slumped as a little tension eased up, relief obvious on her face. "But how will I know if you've apologized properly?"

"That little tattle will tell you if I do an awful job." Bill laughed. "Come on! I don't need you grading me on a rubric! Gimme a chance to prove I can say 'I'm sorry' without my life coach telling me how to behave."

"Thanks, Bill." She gave him a quick hug.

"Sure, any time kid. I'm not about to let any creeps get to you on my watch." Bill stretched his arms out, fingers laced together. "Ready?" When Mabel nodded, Bill knocked on the door.

After a long moment, a worried-looking, gray-haired woman opened the door. "Hello?"

"Good afternoon, Mrs. Gleeful!" Bill offered a partial bow. "We're here to visit Gideon, he should be expecting us. Would you let him know we're here?"

"Oh. Yes, of course." Her voice was a hushed murmur, as though she were talking to herself—or perpetually concerned about being overheard. She didn't raise her voice much as she called into the house, "Gideon? You have visitors."

Voice muffled, Gideon shouted from upstairs, "Who is it!"

Joy glanced over Bill and Mabel, but her gaze lingered on Mabel's face. "Oh. Aren't you that girl he...?"

"It's Mabel."

Joy said, "It's Mabel, and—"

Gideon let out an alarmed squawk. "Ohmygoodness. JUST A MINUUUTE! Where did I leave my cologne—"

Joy watched the ceiling nervously, listening to the subtle thuds.

Bill glanced her up and down, as though sizing up what he had to work with; and then he smiled brightly and said, "Well, I'm sure the little star's preparing a big entrance! Shall we wait inside?"

Joy started a little. "Oh—yes, of course. Please, come in." She pulled the door open wider and gestured to the sitting area.

Bill and Mabel took a seat on the couch. Bill crossed one ankle over his knee in a casual figure 4, and gestured to the armchair as though he were the host giving his guest permission to sit. Joy hesitated, but took the seat, sitting straight up without touching the back of the seat, feet together and hands laced over her knees.

"And how has Gideon been lately?" Bill asked. "We haven't had a chance to catch up since last summer!"

"Oh—I'm sure he's probably fine," Joy said, eyes darting around—to the clean carpet, to the framed pictures hanging straight on the wall, to the doorway into the kitchen.

"'Probably'?" Bill echoed.

"Well. He's really closer to his father, you see..."

"Nonsense." Bill lowered his voice conspiratorially. "I trust a woman's intuition on this sort of thing." He paused. "I'd wink here, but uh..." He gestured at his eye patch and shrugged with a helpless grin.

Joy curled her lips into her mouth and, for the first time since she'd opened the door, for a fraction of a second, nearly almost smiled. But it faded quickly; and when she spoke, her voice was low enough that Mabel had to lean halfway across the coffee table to hear her. (Bill didn't even move.) "You should probably know before you see him: he... has seemed a little bit cranky, recently."

"Oh?" Bill prompted.

(Mabel mumbled, "'Recently'?" and Bill nudged her.)

"Nothing like he was when he—" Joy faltered and quickly course corrected, "before his arrest. But, a bit. But then he's going through so much—reintegrating into life on the outside, trying to make friends at school..."

"Say, that's nice to hear! Has he made many?"

Joy hesitated. "He's always been... such a precocious child. It makes it hard for him to relate to other... And honestly, I think most of the children are jealous of his talents."

Bill nodded sympathetically. "I'm sure they are. Kids can be so cruel when they notice someone special. The nail that sticks out gets hammered down."

Joy nodded. "Yes—exactly. And he's so... sensitive."

Bill gave Mabel a warning glance. She pursed her lips tightly and puffed out her cheeks. Satisfied she wasn't about to weigh in on why Gideon wasn't making friends, Bill turned back to Joy. "Do you think that's what's been bothering him lately?"

"Well, yes, there's that."

Voice a tad lower, Bill prompted, "And...?"

Joy paused. She twisted her hands together. "And—I think he might be concerned about his father's business."

"Oh, the auto dealership?" Bill sat up a little. "I hope it hasn't been struggling lately?"

"It's... been a slow few months," Joy said. "It must be weighing on him—"

"He doesn't feel responsible, does he?"

Joy quickly shook her head. "Of course not. It isn't his fault. But he's just a little boy, there's not much he can do to help. Besides perform in a commercial, maybe—and he doesn't like that, we don't make him do that anymore—or..." She trailed off. "Well. Not knowing how to help or what to do... I can imagine he must feel... guilty." She stared down at her hands as she spoke.

Bill's gaze never wavered from her face. He nodded slowly. "I'm sure the business must be weighing on the whole family. It can't be easy for you, Joy—keeping a household running during such a difficult time." He gave her a reassuring smile. "I'll see what I can do to help you all."

Joy stared at his face, eyes shining. "I'm, sorry—did I catch your name?"

"Mr. Locke is fine, thanks. I was in business talks with your son before his incarceration."

Mabel leaned against Bill and whispered, "You mean he hired you to invade my grunkle's brain—"

Bill elbowed her.

Footsteps scurried down the stairs. "I'm coming!" Gideon rushed into the room, tugging his sleeves down his wrists, all gussied up and reeking of three separate hair products. "Hi Mabel my honey pie! What a pleasant surprise, what brings you by so s—" His gaze fixed on Bill, and his sweet smile twisted into fury. "You!"

Joy quickly stood up. "I should be—vacuuming the dining room." She hurried from the room, giving Gideon a wide berth as she went. The sound of vacuuming quickly filled the house.

Gideon never looked away from Bill. "Just what do you think y—"

Bill was on his feet and sweeping across the room before Gideon could get more out. "Hello again! I don't think we were properly introduced. The name's Goldie Locke." He blinked. "Wink."

Gideon grimaced. "You serious? Goldilocks? That's the best you could do?"

"I thought it was funny!"

Mabel scooted up onto the arm of the sofa, took a leap off, and landed next to Bill. "I came up with it!"

Gideon smiled uncomfortably. "Oh—sure, sure. Real cute."

"We came by so Goldie here," Mabel poked Bill's arm with both hands, "could give you a proper apology for his... 'prank.'" She got behind Bill and poked him in the back, directing him toward the stairs. "So you two go off somewhere private and do that! Go! Go on!"

"Wh— private?" Gideon leaned around Bill to give Mabel a pleading look. "M-Mabel, aren't you coming too?"

Mabel laughed nervously. "No, definitely not. I'm staying right here."

"But—but—"

"It's fine! If he tries any—" her voice dropped to a whisper, "—weird space demon magic—you can just scream. But he's basically harmless! I promise."

"But... I don't wanna be alone with..."

Bill put a hand on Gideon's back, turned him around, and practically dragged him toward the stairs. "And she doesn't want to be alone with you, and I'm going to respect her wishes."

Gideon hissed at Bill. He wasn't quite sure what to do when Bill hissed back. No one had ever done that before.

"You've got nothing to worry about," Bill said, giving Gideon a very worrying smile. "I just want an opportunity to show you the sincerity of my remorse. A little heart-to-heart! And anyway, you and I have a lot of catching up to do."

####

The moment Gideon's bedroom door shut, Bill said, in an exaggeratedly innocent golly-gee-whiz voice, "'Well, Mabel, the thing is, I was just cranky because I haven't gotten a decent night's sleep in days, because Gideon's been broadcasting mind control dreams to the town multiple times a week! Yeah, you know how you've been waking up feeling hypnotically compelled to buy a car? Good ol' Gideon! But you're right, bullying isn't the solution! I should have just asked him to cast his brainwashing spell a little further from the Mystery Shack—'" Bill cut off with a laugh. "I take it you get the picture! Your flesh is as white as your hair! It's—it's creepy. Stop it."

Gideon was already on the far side of the room, holding a floating arm desk lamp toward Bill like a sword. Voice shaking, he asked, "How do you know about that spell? H-how are you even alive? And here like... like this?"

"Does it matter?" Bill meandered around the room, looking at Gideon's matching nightstands, his TV, the floppy teddy bear on his bed. "Here's the only important question: what's it worth to you for me not to spill the beans to your sweetheart?"

Gideon swallowed hard.

As Bill rounded the bed, Gideon backed away from him until his back was pressed against the wall between his vanity and his dresser. Bill leaned over to look under the bed and nudged a rolled-up tarp with his foot. It unrolled across the floor, revealing Gideon's magic circle. "Uh-huh."

"Please stop looking around my room."

"Relax, I just want to see what's changed! This is hardly the first time I've seen your room." He glanced down at the subtle depiction of his face woven into the pattern on Gideon's carpet. "I've had eyes in here since you were a baby." 

He leaned over Gideon's bed, studying his knit zodiac blanket. "Although this eye is new. You went with red, white, and blue? How patriotic." He tugged at the blanket's edges, straightening it out. "Lots of pilling on the yarn, this thing's been very well loved. Does it still smell like Shooting Star, you cretin?"

"You keep your hands off of Mabel's blanket, you—!" Gideon swung his lamp toward Bill. It missed by a foot.

Bill didn't even flinch. "You're very lucky that you missed." For a moment, his voice was inhumanly low.

Gideon's blood ran cold. He clutched the lamp against his chest. "W-what do you want from me? I'm sorry I disturbed your sleep, all right? Is that what you want to hear?!"

"It's a good start!" Bill sat on Gideon's bed and made himself comfortable, propping himself up on his elbows, ankles crossed casually, resting in the center of his own zodiac. "Now, promise you'll stop advertising in people's dreams, and everything's forgiven!"

"I..." Gideon bit his lip.

Bill grinned a little wider. "What's the problem, kid? It's not like your daddy needs you running his advertising campaign! The family finances aren't resting on your shoulders!" He laughed.

Gideon just bit his lip harder. 

"Oh wait. Maybe they are. Are they?"

He looked down at the tarp. "Mrrng."

Bill sat up, leaning forward until he caught Gideon's gaze again. "So sorry, Star Boy! I didn't realize how serious your situation is!" His wicked smile said otherwise. "Wow, that must be so hard for you—the family breadwinner, at such a young age. Knowing your family needs you to keep them afloat. And it's not like you can just go out and get a job! So what can you do, except... well, whatever it is you already know how to do? Putting on a good show, right?"

"It's not like that," Gideon snapped, ignoring the weight in the pit of his stomach. He looked down at his lamp weapon and tugged anxiously at one of his sleeves. "It—it's not as though we're broke! We just... might have to tighten our belts a little bit, that's all. It's normal, most businesses have their ups and downs."

"Of course. Just no big shopping trips for a while! Pity you're about to need a whole new wardrobe, though."  Bill casually pushed himself off Gideon's bed, taking a step closer. "Hey, wanna know when your next growth spurt starts?"

Gideon shrank down. "No."

"It costs a lot to keep a growing kid clothed. And fed, and stocked with school supplies... If father asks for a little help, how can you refuse? If you don't, you could lose the business, lose your house, lose everything... all that, plus knowing it'd be your fault for not doing what you can? It's heartbreaking."

Bill leaned over Gideon, propping himself up with a hand on his dresser, trapping him in his shadow. Gideon cringed; but Bill asked, voice unexpectedly low and almost gentle, "You're so important. There's a helplessness that comes from wielding that kind of power, isn't there?"

The weight in Gideon's stomach grew heavier. Bill must have been watching his life ever since last fall; that was the only way he could have understood what Gideon was feeling so well. And yet—hearing someone else put it into words was a strange relief. He'd cut to the bleeding core of the issue. Gideon was the only one with the power to do anything, so he had to do something. It was a helplessness.

"Yeah." Gideon put his lamp back on his dresser, defeated. "Yeah, there is."

Bill crouched in front of Gideon, meeting him at eye level. "It just so happens that I'm sympathetic to your situation, kid. I get it." It was hard to read the mood in Bill's alien gaze; but for a moment, Gideon was sure he really did see a glimmer of sympathy in his slit pupil. "So how about this: I could help you out. Make some calls, pull some strings... give the family business a little boost," he said. "If you do me a couple small favors first."

Outraged, Gideon shouted, "You're blackmailing me into working for you again?! You—!" With a furious grunt, Gideon shoved Bill away from him.

To his surprise (and immediate horror), Bill lost balance, toppling onto his back with a yelp. But he just rolled onto his side and hopped back to his feet, laughing. "No no no! I'm blackmailing you into knocking off the annoying dream spell. That's all! Cut it out, or I'm telling Mabel. And—heck, how about the police while I'm at it?"

"You wouldn't—"

"I am pals with the sheriff and the mayor. Mind control happens to already be illegal in Gravity Falls, you can thank Quentin Trembley for that—such a forward thinker! I don't think there are any state-level laws yet, but I bet they'll wriiite ooone just for yoo-oou." The last sentence came out as a singsong taunt. "Anyway: drop the mind control. That's all I'm asking for. Okay?"

Gideon had circled around Bill to his bed, where he pulled off his zodiac blanket and bundled it against his chest. He wasn't sure which sounded worse. Prison probably should, but the thought of giving Mabel a fresh reason to hate him... He looked down at the blanket, and heaved a shaky sigh. "Okay."

"So? We're agreed? No more dream advertisements?"

"No more dream advertisements. You win."

"Great!" Bill beamed at Gideon. "But then, completely separately, if you want help saving the family business... well, offer's on the table! In fact, I'd happily offer to help without asking anything in return—"

"—you should, it's mostly your fault—"

"—except that, with my own situation being like it is, what with the limited access to my usual resources... I need you to help me help you." He spread his hands apologetically. "Nothing I can do about it."

Gideon pressed his lips together, looking down at his zodiac blanket. A fold in the fabric displayed part of the ripped heart. Gideon plucked out the blanket until he could glimpse the top of the shooting star.

He swallowed hard. "No. Absolutely not."

Bill blinked. "'Scuse me?"

"I can't accept your help," Gideon said. "I lead a support group of ex-cons—the very same ones I stupidly led into battle for you—and what would they say if they heard I was working for you again?"

The indulgent smile on Bill's face vanished. Rage flashed in his eye. "What would they say if they learned you're the first among them to reoffend?" He pointed at Gideon's magic circle. "Wouldn't they be disappointed. Aren't they your followers these days?"

Gideon squirmed under Bill's glare, backing away until he bumped into one of his nightstands. "F... 'followers'?"

"Your devotees—now that your Tent of Telepathy audience has abandoned you." The new smile that twisted across Bill's face now was hard and cruel, and his eye fixed like a prison searchlight on Gideon made Bill seem much closer than he was. "Isn't being worshiped sublime, Star Boy? That unconditional love? A worshiper will always be more reliable than some girl's fickle heart. But even the most 'unconditional' love always comes with fine print. How far are you willing to go to remain worthy of their love?"

Bill pulled a folded piece of paper out of his back pocket and waved it in the air. "We both know you'll help your daddy's business. The only question is if you'll do it your way, or mine." He placed the paper on Gideon's dresser and tapped it with his finger. "My way doesn't even involve breaking the law."

Gideon shook his head. "I won't..."

"I'll leave it with you anyway."

Bill strolled around the bed. "Well! I think we're finished here, how about you?" He stopped in front of the door.

He turned back. "Gideon, you're gonna have to get the door, I can't..."

"What?" Gideon asked. "Y'can't what?"

Bill huffed. "I'm sort of under this curse? So. If you could just—"

Gideon burst out laughing in disbelief. "The Amnesia Limina curse? You can't open doors?! Are you kidding me!"

"I can still ruin the rest of your embarrassingly short mortal life, you twit. Just—just get over here—"

Still laughing, Gideon crossed the room and got the door.

"Yeah. Thanks. Great."

As they came downstairs, Mabel hopped off the sofa. "Sooo? How'd the apology go?"

"Great!" Bill got in front before Gideon had a chance to speak. "I think we really understand each other better. Isn't that right, Gideon?"

Gideon grumped, "I think it's the worst 'apology' I've ever heard."

Bill gave him a dirty look powerful enough to kill a skittish horse; but he flinched under the weight of Mabel's disappointed frown. He laughed nervously, "Okay, so I still need some practice with my delivery! Human tones are finicky." He stared at Gideon. "But you accept the overall content of it, right?"

Bill was giving Gideon the creepiest smile he'd ever seen. But Mabel, on the other hand, was giving him this hopeful look—like she wanted this to go well so badly, and only Gideon could make or ruin her day. There's a helplessness that comes with wielding that kind of power.

In the world Gideon had been raised in, if someone who has transgressed against you apologizes, you don't have the right to withhold their forgiveness—it makes you as bad as the transgressor. The only way he could refuse was if he told Mabel he hadn't even gotten any apology; but there was no way to say that without admitting what they'd really discussed. "Yeah," Gideon muttered at his shoes. "I s'pose I accept it."

"Yes!" Mabel pumped a fist in the air so enthusiastically she lifted a few inches off the floor. "Great work! Happy face stickers for everybody!" She smacked a sticker on Bill's shirt and Gideon's lapel.

They tugged out their clothes to inspect their stickers. Bill's had a giant yellow smiley face over the words "Good job!" Gideon's had a smiling whale surrounded by the words "WHALE DONE". They were both disproportionately elated by their prizes.

"So can we go now?" Mabel whispered, "I feel like Mr. Gleeful's new clown painting is staring at me."

"Just one second. I should have a word with the missus of the house." Bill waved back at the kids as he trotted from the room. "Be right back!"

Mabel eyed Gideon warily.

Gideon smiled winningly. "So, Mabel. As long as you're already over here, would you like to stay for dinner—?"

"Nuh-uh." She turned and headed for the door. "Goodbye forever!"

"Aw."

Bill followed the sound of vacuuming through the kitchen into the dining room, and rapped on the doorframe. "Knock knock."

Joy flinched and spun around. "Oh." She turned off her vacuum. "Yes, Mr. Locke?"

"Just wanted to thank you for your hospitality before we leave!"

"Oh—yes, of course. You're welcome."

He lowered his voice, "And I also wanted to tell you not to worry about a thing. I'm sure everything will turn out fine for your family—and for you." He flashed her a winning smile.

She hesitantly nodded. "Thank you."

####

As they walked to the gate around the Gleeful property, Mabel said, "You weren't just all talk with Gideon's mom, were you? You actually are planning to help her."

Bill gave her a surprised look. "Something like that. How'd you know?"

"You told her to call you Mister. That means you mean business!"

A crooked smile stretched across his face. "Hey! No fair, you know too much. You're figuring out all my secrets."

Out on the sidewalk, Bill did a cartwheel, attempted to turn it into a handstand, and fell on the sidewalk. He brushed off a scraped elbow with a grumble and got back up. Well, it matched his burn on the other side.

"4 out of 10."

"I didn't ask."

Mabel snickered. "You know—your conversation with Gideon might not have gone perfectly. But you realized you did something wrong, you apologized for it, and you're gonna do better." She patted his arm. "I'm really proud of you, Bill. That's some serious growth."

"Really?"

"Really."

He beamed. He couldn't remember the last time anyone had been proud of him. (Granted, he didn't generally tolerate relationships in which somebody felt like they had enough superiority over him to feel "pride" toward his actions. Generally "awe" or "admiration" were more common.) He was basking in the praise. He was over the moon. He was euphoric. He was the best person to ever exist.

The fact that the praise was horribly misplaced didn't faze him in the least.

####

Gideon had spent the past minute picking peas out of his pot pie and scooting them to the edge of his plate.

Bud cleared his throat. "Son, you really ought to eat your vegetables. And they'll taste better mixed in with the rest of your food than all by themselves."

"I don't want my peas."

"But they're good for you! Don't you want to grow up big and strong—?"

Gideon flinched. He pounded the table. "I said I don't WANT my peas!"

"All right, okay, that's fine! Just thought I'd suggest it."

Gideon grumpily scooped up a forkful of chicken, carrots, and corn, eyed the carrots skeptically, and took a bite. It was fine. "So, father. How was work?"

Bud sighed. "Oh, it would've made more sense just to close for the day. At least then I wouldn't be wasting money on air conditioning the office."

"Oh." Gideon stabbed at a lone piece of corn with his fork. "Maybe we oughta... stop with the nighttime ads. It doesn't sound like they're helping."

"Ahh, you might be right."

Gideon heaved a sigh of relief.

"I just don't know what else to try." Bud shook his head. "I've tried newspaper ads, TV ads, radio ads, billboards, fliers, sales, cutting brake lines..." He settled his hand near Gideon's spot at the table. "Son, you know I know you're doing the best you can to help our family, and it means more to me than I can say. But, if there's anything else you can think of...?"

Gideon tried to avoid his father's gaze—and instead, spotted his mother. She usually kept to herself during dinner, wholly focused on her own plate when she wasn't setting out dishes or cleaning them up. But tonight, she was looking right at Gideon. Like she expected something out of him, too.

He shrank into his seat. "Well. I've got one other idea I could try."

####

Gideon shut the door to his room—and, just to be safe, stuck his chair under the doorknob. Then he gingerly picked up the paper on the dresser and unfolded it.

The same tall, thin handwriting as on the letter he'd received—but even more cramped, cramming as much text on one torn-out book page as possible. A terse paragraph of instructions, a phone number, a numbered list of questions, a prepared statement.

Gideon got his mobile phone and a notebook, set up to take notes at his vanity, took a deep breath, let it out, and dialed the number. As the phone rang, he looked at himself in the mirror and muttered, "Heaven help me if I'm facilitating the start of Armageddon."

Then someone picked up, and he held the phone up to his ear. "Hello? Oh, right, er—" He read off the paper Bill had given him, "'But rises gold over the pyramid.' ... Yes. Mhm, I'm calling on behalf of... of Bill Cipher. ... My name's not important, I'm just the messenger—oh, oh you recognize my voice! Haha!" He mopped his forehead with the back of his sleeve. "A-always nice to meet a fan! Yeah, we know each other. Small world. N... no, he didn't give me my... I was—was psychic before I met him, actually. Sorry, I didn't catch your name—who'm I speaking to?"

Gideon looked at Bill's list of questions, wrote a 1. in his notebook, and beside it wrote "Sue Blime." One question down. "I have a message to pass on."

####

He pushed harder.

Her skin fractured and peeled off, strand after strand. It filled the spaces between his fingertips, wrapped up his arms. He could shut his eye but he still saw it through his eyelid, still felt it tickling at the corners of his mouth. He let out an angry, hysterical, broken laugh.

And then he laughed louder, and louder—higher, shriller, echoing all the way to the distant stars. "What am I doing?" He opened his eye and looked at his hands, tangled with gold threads and soaked in blood. He laughed again, gleeful. "What am I doing! None of this is real! This is a dream! We're in my dreamscape. None of this matters! I control all of you!"

Bill controlled all of them.

He effortlessly peeled his arm off the plane of his dimension into the third, still tangled in gore, and spun his finger. The golden shreds of skin let go of his hand, rotating around his hand in a loose tornado. Cackling again, he rose up into space, looping like a paper airplane on a breeze, telekinetically twirling the countless golden shreds with him like he was doing a ribbon dance. And wasn't it beautiful? He was changing their color—yellow green blue violet red orange yellow—he was melting them down to floating drops of liquid gold, he was making them vanish into thin air. There was no blood on his hands. There never had been. He had never killed. His mother did not exist.

He glanced toward the stars. "Am I gonna have any meddling from you? Want to sell me any cars tonight?"

The stars didn't answer. Good. He didn't want his show interrupted by a commercial break.

"I control you," Bill announced to the crowd of assembled worshipers below, numb and thoughtless and unmoving while the god of this dream had no use for them to live. "You answer to me!" He jabbed his thumb against his golden face—not the internal organs exposed to the third dimension the rest of the shapes had, but the exoskeleton he wouldn't start wearing until centuries after this memory. "The only life you have is in my head! All of you, all of you have been burned away for a trillion years!" He paused, then flashed two finger guns at a red hexagon in the crowd. "All except you, Hect. Always great to see a long-time fan!"

In the field of frozen shapes, Bill's memory of Hectorgon hesitantly waved.

"But..." Beneath Bill, still as aghast as he'd been so many eons ago, still playing his part to move this dream along, his father said, "But... what are we going to tell your followers?"

"Ugh, you're such a downer. Give it a rest, you old square!" Bill did something no prisoner of the second dimension had ever been capable of doing: he snapped his fingers. His father silently dissolved into origami butterflies and fluttered into space. "You barely even liked her."

He floated back down to the plane, lacing his fingers together to stretch his arms in front of him. "I don't need you," he muttered. "I've got this handled. I've always been the one who had this handled. Now let's end this dream the right way."

Time to sucker his suckers.

He swooped through the open doors to speak to his assembled worshipers as effortlessly as though he'd been doing this a trillion years: "My beautiful, loving believers! I have wonderful news. Your high priestess—my mother—has passed on; but, you should be celebrating! Because she hasn't abandoned us! Her spirit's just ascended—not up, but out of our dimension and into the third, where the spirits of all departed shapes live on! Her spirit's formed a bridge from there to me, and through me to you! She's revealed the true nature of the third dimension—a sublime realm of color and life—and I'll reveal it to you, too!"

The black starry void of the third dimension above Bill mutated as he spoke; now, it was raucous colors, beams of light, and glittery gold. Faraway neon-colored shapes danced deliriously through nebulas and clouds.

"I'll teach you the secrets passed down to us from the enlightened third-dimensional spirits; I'll show you how to see it all for yourself... and if you follow me, if you devote yourself entirely to my teachings, if you trust me blindly—blindly, for I can see what others can't—then I'll guide you INTO the third dimension! I will be your teacher, your divine guide, your muse! So tell me: do you trust me?"

The worshipers cheered.

"Do you worship me?!"

The worshipers screamed.

"Do you love me!"

The worshipers howled, mad with love for Bill, ripping each other apart in a spontaneous outpouring of zealotry.

Bill's shrieking laughter rose up above the roar of his imaginary crowd.

####

For the first time since his death, Bill woke fully rested. Dawn streamed in through the attic window, shining golden on the cloud of curly hair dangling in front of his eyes. And wasn't it beautiful? He ran his fingers through his hair, smoothed it back, and pushed it into the right shape.

He checked to make sure no humans were coming for a while, slid Journal 4 out of its hiding place, and flipped to the page where he'd stuck his "Good Job!" sticker. He'd used his stolen half-dried marker to blacken the sides of the yellow smiley face, turning it from a circle into a triangle, draining the last of its ink in the process. He wasted four pages with every detail he could recollect from this dream, going on and on about how easy it had been to assert his rightful control, how effortless to control time and space. If he ever found the human who wrote that lucid dreaming guide, he was giving 'em a planet.

At the end, he wrote in English, "You'll regret turning me down as your teacher, Stanford. You can't even imagine how many people would have committed murder to get that kind of attention. But I gave it to you."

He tried to remember how that sermon had really gone.

What did he need to remember the truth for? It must have gone something like that. He wouldn't still be here if it hadn't, would he?

####

(Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed, I'd appreciate a comment!! Next week we kick off with more of Bill's history—and then start ramping up for the biggest, longest plot arc so far.)

[askdacast]

hey block people fans, so I really love the Tanuki Joel/Smallishbeans fanart goin around as inspired by @mellozheist's design and it made me think, what youkai (Japanese folklore monsters) would we portray the other Hermitcraft/Life Series members as? Some of the more obvious and fun ideas I thought of:

Scar - Kitsune, easy. Charismatic, cunning wiles, enterprising, known for tricking people, tendency to be wet cat on the rare instance you find his weakness. Also kitsune are rivals to tanuki (although Scar and Joel aren't really rivals so much as occasional partners in crime). You could alternatively choose the bakeneko because it's also a wiley shapeshifter and cat connection (RIP Jellie).

Grian - Tengu, also easy choice. Not just for the obvious pesky bird connection. Tengu are also trickster beings. They are sometimes evil (abducting humans) but sometimes benign and teach humans secret arts. They are excellent fighters and leaders, but just like a regular crow, they can just as easily goof off for no reason at all. Dangerously capable but also goofy bird fits Grian to a T.

Mumbo - Kappa, maybe? He's not associated with water much iirc but the kappa from not iRL folklore but a certain series are associated with engineering, and I needed an appropriate one for the Redstoners lol

Etho - Kamaitachi. Weasel with sharp blades. Like a tanuki (Joel), but consistently sneaky, while also being just a little guy. Can probably team up with Skizzle and Tango for the traditional trio of sneaky people with sharp blades. EDIT: I know there's fanart of him as a kitsune to match Tanuki Joel, and I'm by no means contesting that, this is just a fun alternative.

Cleo - Yamauba/Yamanba. I'M NOT CALLING CLEO AN OLD HAG, LET ME EXPLAIN. DANGEROUSLY FIERCE AND INTELLIGENT WITCH WHO LIVES IN THE MOUNTAINS AND IS JUST AS PROTECTIVE OF HER (potentially foster) CHILDREN AS MUCH AS SHE IS A TERROR TO THOSE WHO CROSS HER.

Bdubs/Skizzleman - Oni. They beeg. They angery. They not necessarily dumb but they stronk and one of them has lived in the mountains at least once. I can even see Bdubs being like a Sakata Kintoki spoof (the "son" of a yamanba a.k.a Cleo)

Jimmy - Yosuzume. Birds of bad luck. Canary curse. Need I explain more?

feel free to give alternative suggestions or ideas for the others, or ask me what youkai I think might fit certain traits, I may not know much about the block people but I know a little too much about Japanese folklore so this is just a fun exercise for me

[fellthemarvelous]

Aziraphale hate makes my brain hurt.

Like let's be really fuckin' for real here.

Neurodivergent fans have repeatedly said that Aziraphale is autistic coded. I agree with them. I have never been diagnosed but I wonder about myself. If only I could get a doctor to take me seriously enough to test me for it, but alas, I'm a 43-year-old woman living in the good ole US of A.

Those with religious trauma have repeatedly said that they identify with him as well. I'm one of those people. I endured 12 years of Catholic schools and just as much time being taught a very black and white view of things that I've had to spend more than 20 goddamn fucking years working to unlearn.

I find that my views as a survivor of religious abuse are often dismissed because people keep wanting to say "Aziraphale doesn't have religious trauma." Yes, thank you, I get that, but unless you've been indoctrinated and brainwashed into a very black and white view of the world, you probably don't understand the kind of feelings Aziraphale's onscreen experiences evoke in so many of us. Heaven might not be real, but the feelings of "God is always watching" still stick with me today even though I no longer believe in God. I have entirely denounced Christianity because of my own personal experience, and I refuse to allow people to try and guilt me or shame me for trauma that I didn't ask for. I wasn't given a choice.

As a child I was told that God was real and always watching everything you do (just like Santa Claus) and can hear everything you say and knows everything you are thinking. Do you know what I learned to do in order to cope with this overwhelming and anxiety-inducing information as a small child? I learned to censor my thoughts. I never spoke up, and I have always felt like I was putting on a show for people because I had to be who I was told to be or I would get into trouble.

Aziraphale said "poverty is a virtue" during The Resurrectionists, and as someone who grew up in the Bible belt and went to private schools, I was taught this very same shit by the Catholic church. He learned in that very same episode that "poverty is a virtue" is actually a tool of oppression to keep the poor poor and the wealthy wealthy. I know we all watched the episode. He went into that episode believing what he said, but by the end of it he knew it was actually utter bullshit. Aziraphale is not ignorant. He's highly intelligent, and he has never been too proud to admit when he has been wrong. He accepts that the information he learned before is not matching up with reality.

And it's so obvious some of you have zero experience with that type of indoctrination because of how very little empathy you show Aziraphale for his "mistake" of "choosing Heaven over Crowley" and "making Crowley sad" so clearly Aziraphale must somehow be "abusive" and "manipulative" and "selfish" and "self-centered" because he didn't choose to run away with Crowley at the end of season two.

First of all.

FIRST OF ALL...

Aziraphale has a mind of his own.

Aziraphale is always going to try and do what is right.

Aziraphale is an angel. He's a being of love. And the reason he's so "bad" at being an angel is because he actually wants to protect humanity. He has always loved humanity. He repeatedly has to contend with what is "right" versus what is "good" and "wrong" versus "evil". Yeah, he has flaws. He's an angel, not a goddamn fucking saint. He has lived on Earth for more than 6,000 years. He has seen everything. He loves doing human things.

He's obsessed with magic. It makes him so happy. He's not very good at it...well not when he's trying to put on a show for Crowley.

He chose to learn French the hard way, so even though he knows every single language in the world, he chooses to be mediocre at French. Something that annoys and amuses Crowley at the same time.

He loves to dance even though angels aren't supposed to dance, and dancing with Crowley was what he wanted the most.

He owns a bookshop and refuses to sell any of his books because they are books he's had for as long as there have been books. He will chase customers away from his collection, and Crowley understands how much they mean to Aziraphale because he refuses to sell any when Aziraphale leaves him in charge.

He and Crowley have been speaking to each other in coded language for more than 6,000 years. They have to be very careful about what they say because Heaven and Hell are always watching.

Heaven has photographs of Crowley and Aziraphale sitting or standing together throughout history. Hell had one photo of Crowley and Aziraphale actually working together and it was Aziraphale's quick thinking and how good he actually is at sleight of hand tricks that managed to get that photo out of Furfur's hands so he wouldn't be able to turn Crowley over to the Dark Council.

Aziraphale saved Crowley from being taken to Hell again. He wasn't able to save Crowley from Hell in Edinburgh, but he sure as heck managed to save Crowley from Hell during WWII. He took Crowley to his bookshop and showed Crowley that he stole the picture from Furfur. He saved Crowley.

You get that, right?

Aziraphale SAVED Crowley.

People always talk about how it's "always Crowley saving Aziraphale" because apparently heroic acts are only heroic when they are grand gestures. The sleight of hand wasn't heroic at all, am I right? It wasn't sparkly and showy. It wasn't interesting enough, therefore not heroic. At least that's all I'm hearing when people start with their "blah Aziraphale deserves to suffer because I have no imagination or ability to understand the media in front of me blah", and all these reasons he deserves to suffer is because Crowley almost got hurt.

Aziraphale did that without flinching and I watch that part closely every single time. He's not scared for himself. He's scared for Crowley, and he managed to hold onto that photograph. He did not fail Crowley. He protected Crowley.

And so here's another thing that we like to point out. The way that Aziraphale, an angel who is effeminate and male presenting, an angel who is soft and full of love, an angel who is kind and forgiving because he has empathy and compassion, is somehow painted as abusive and manipulative. He's not violent, but he could easily fuck up your world. He doesn't use his powers. We have no idea how powerful he is because we only ever see him do small acts. He's used to hiding. It's the only way he has ever been able to protect Crowley.

And I'm not saying that Aziraphale has actually saved Crowley before means that Crowley hasn't also saved Aziraphale. Like, you get that those are not mutually exclusive and their relationship is not transactional, right? They have spent their entire existence protecting each other but never actually getting to be together because Heaven and Hell are always watching.

Yeah, Crowley fell. We all know this. We are aware of this. He was the serpent of Eden. He gave humanity the knowledge of free will.

But what we don't talk about is what Aziraphale gave humanity.

What did he give them?

We all know what it is!

Let's say it together!

He gave Adam and Eve his flaming sword because it was dangerous outside the garden and Eve was pregnant and she was already having a really bad day. He showed them compassion and gave them his extremely powerful angelic weapon so they would stand a chance on the outside of the garden. He gave humanity the gift of compassion. It's just unfortunate that his flaming sword became a weapon of War.

And then what did he do after that?

Ooooh, yeah, that's right.

God asked him about it and he straight up lied to her and pretended he had no idea where he'd managed to misplace it. She didn't say anything after that. He told Crowley the truth though. He told Crowley the truth even though Crowley fell.

Yeah, we know Aziraphale has done some really fucking questionable things. He and Crowley both suck at passing for human in front of observant people like Nina. They're not human. They are still learning, but they managed to experience human history together despite being on opposite sides and their experiences with humanity are what has shaped them into the compassionate and loving duo they are now. One of them is not better from the other.

This, my friends, is what we call meeting in the middle. It's why shades of gray is so important. Aziraphale constantly breaks the rules. Crowley refused to play by Heaven's rules. It's the reason he fell. He doesn't play by Hell's rules either. These two dorks figured out how to cancel each others' miracles out throughout human history in order to have more time learning about humanity and each other because working all day every day sucks when there are so many new things to learn and experience with the people you love.

We know Crowley and Aziraphale both love each other. Neither of them are good at hiding the hearts stars in their eyes.

But here's what's really fucking annoying about the Aziraphale hate.

Aziraphale was already crying when Crowley grabbed him and kissed him. Aziraphale is trying so very hard to do the right thing. He loves Crowley. He does. But he also has a duty to humanity, and he has taken that job very seriously since the creation of Adam and Eve. He sent them out into the world with a flaming sword so they would have a chance at surviving beyond the walls of the garden.

And he knows that Something Terrible is going to happen and he spent all of second season trying to figure out what that Something Terrible was while trying to have some sort of more honest and open relationship with Crowley, but again, they aren't human, they are a demon and an angel approaching life from opposite sides who met in the middle and fell in love with humanity together.

He wants more than anything to tell Crowley how he feels about him, but he wants to do something grand for Crowley because Crowley has always been grand and dramatic and sexy and a little bit scary.

Crowley is impulsive and has a temper and sometimes says the wrong thing but he has always trusted Aziraphale because Aziraphale gave him a chance even after he fell. Aziraphale chose to shelter him instead of smiting him while they stood on top of that wall. He knew he was supposed to kill Crowley, but oops, he gave his sword away to the humans so he didn't really have anything to kill him with and Crowley is the one who created nebulas. The Pillars of Creation is Crowley's work and Aziraphale was there to witness that, but he watched Crowley more than he watched the nebula. He witnessed the pure joy on Crowley's face when he said "let there be light" as a nebula full of colors exploded before their eyes. He was fascinated by Crowley.

But Aziraphale is going back to Heaven even though he has made it perfectly clear he absolutely has no desire to go back to Heaven. He told the Metatron this during their conversation. He spoke these words out loud. They exist.

But then The Metatron said this....

The Metatron. The very same angel who told Aziraphale in season one "to speak to me is to speak to the Almighty." He's the boss. He's the big guy. He's used to existing as a giant head and he had to give himself a body so he wouldn't stand out on Earth. And he knows that Aziraphale and Crowley have been working together since the beginning. He knows they worked together to prevent Armageddon in season one, and now he's made it clear he knows they were working together long before that. And let's face it, Aziraphale really wants to know what this Something Terrible is that Gabriel is running from so he can try to prevent it from happening.

It makes sense that he would want to take Crowley to Heaven with him because he would be able to keep Hell from getting their hands on him again. Aziraphale hates it in Heaven. He doesn't want to go, but Something Terrible is happening and Metatron isn't taking no for an answer, and maybe Heaven won't be so bad if Crowley is there with him. At least they can fix Heaven together.

But Crowley can't go back. We all get that. We don't blame him for saying no. It doesn't change anything.

Something Terrible is about to happen and Aziraphale has to figure out what it is. He wants to change Heaven.

He is fully aware that Heaven sucks. He still has faith in God. His faith isn't in Heaven. He deserted his platoon in season one and threw himself back to Earth so he could figure out how to make sure the war between Heaven and Hell doesn't happen.

But see, here's the thing. Heaven is at the top. Heaven has all the resources. Heaven is responsible for the creation of Hell. Heaven is empty and Hell is overpopulated. Aziraphale knows this. Crowley knows this. It's obvious every time we see either place. Both sides are desperate to go to war and will not hesitate to destroy humanity in the process. This is the opposite of what Crowley and Aziraphale want for humanity. If anyone can change Heaven, it's Aziraphale. He's the only one up there who gives a shit about humanity as far as we know. No one else is going to speak on humanity's behalf.

Some of us are so busy getting mad at Aziraphale for going back to Heaven and giving Crowley a Big Sad. Newsflash: Crowley is not the main character of Good Omens. Aziraphale and Crowley are equals, yet we wanna hold Aziraphale to higher standards because he's an angel, and when he makes mistakes it's proof that he's the bad guy.

Holy mother of all things that trigger my religious trauma, let me tell you. I spent my entire life hating myself every time I made mistakes. I've had to teach myself that just because I mess up sometimes doesn't mean I'm bad. It means I'm human. I still struggle with it. I probably always will. So when you say that Aziraphale deserves to be punished for breaking Crowley's heart, you not only ignore that Aziraphale's heart is also broken, you're saying he deserves to be punished for doing what he thinks is right.

Wanting to change Heaven for the better is not a bad thing.

And some of y'all wanna see him suffer for going back into the lion's den that is Heaven, knowing that he is already an outcast, that they have already tried to kill him once, knowing that he is a deserter, that he has been lying to Heaven about a lot of things, and you still think he's blinded by Heaven? You think he's just so naive and that's the only reason he's going back. He doesn't show his emotions the same way Crowley does so it means he doesn't care as much. He's expected to consider Crowley's feelings over his own when making choices. Like holy shit if all of that hasn't defined my experience as a woman with religious trauma in this fucking society. He's expected to be subservient to Crowley and if he doesn't do what Crowley wants then he's being unreasonable and illogical.

What the actual fuck, y'all.

Like seriously.

I'm sick of this bullshit. I had to step away from this fandom because of how toxic some people in this fandom are. It's not chasing me away, but the fact that I chose to hang out in a a more toxic fandom that is already notorious for being really toxic over a fandom that claims to be more open-minded and welcoming should probably tell you something.

It gave me a lot of perspective, and yeah, I'm still gonna speak up against the bullshit Aziraphale hate.

People are entitled to their opinions, but the Aziraphale hate isn't an opinion. It's just ableist, misogynistic garbage. At this point we all know y'all say these extreme things about Aziraphale because y'all get more joy out of the harm and alienation it is causing others.

Keep being loudly wrong, but if you think I'm not entitled to challenge shitty-ass, harmful, hateful discourse, bite my ass.

I'm not the one who lost the plot in this fandom.

[flowery-mess]

Just a dad Noah thought...

I think I sent this once to @starsomens as an ask, but I can't stop thinking about it lol

Imagine having a baby boy with Noah, after some time he starts going to shows with you with his big noise canceling headphones on. Everything is cute, Bryan takes cute family pictures for you, little waves from the baby to fans, until... he becomes a toddler and wants to be just like his dad.

Wears those fake tattoo sleeves, matching outfits, makes up words for BO song, until one day.

You and Noah are chilling in the living room, little Sebastian toddler comes in, in his black outfit with those tattoos on and wants to pretend that he's Noah at a show, so you and Noah are pretending to be fans, laughing and all that, until this little human you two created screams "THIS IS DETHRONE YOU FUCKS" into your faces and then takes off to his room with evil laugh, because he knows what he just said.

You and Noah just turn to each other, not sure if you should laugh or not and eventually you do.

And I'm pretty sure if you tell that to the rest BO crew they will demand performance from your little human every time they see him and because they are the 'funny uncles' they will let him say curse words when you and Noah aren't in the room. And he loves that.

[night-dazai]

Demons Wife

“fuck …oh my ….” full lips pulled into a smirk while sharp fangs peeked out “You even made me curse, such naughty lady aren't you, “ he said while white-gloved hands roamed your body pulling at your nipples and thrusting a finger into your wet weeping cunt.

“Seb…seabass….” you tried but nothing but strangled moans left your mouth, you had no idea how long it had been since you were in this position.

7 months into your marriage with Sebastian to save you from being a slave, you thought Ceil and his butler were kind men who had saved you and little did you know. You would sometimes question your husband's actions and behaviour, but with his gentlemanly aura you never even thought for a second he could be a devil or anything even close to evil. ”y/n we got married too soon, it might be a shock for you my dear, “ he said softly gloved hands creasing yours “Let's get to know each other and maybe one day we can consummate this marriage “ his smile angel like you could not thank god enough for such a caring and loving husband. In the 7 months, you guys would go on cafe dates and night outings cause that's when he was mostly free from his butler work. Holding hands after 2 months and kissing after 5 months broke it for you. You were sure you could give everything of yourself to him. “Sebastian, we can consummate this marriage, “ you said a month ago while you were out for a walk after dinner. His red eyes widened for a second and were soon replaced by a kind smile “Don't force yourself, love, it will be hard “ he said squeezing your hand reassuringly “But “you said stopping him “I want it to be you “You looked up dead in his eyes” I want you to take my virginity and all of me… I give it to you “ you said giving your hand to him. His red eyes looked at you quietly for a second before he got on his knees took your hands and kissed them “Your wish is my command y/n” he said smiling. You thought his eyes became darker for a second or maybe you were dreaming. But after the confession, your gentle husband made it his mission to get you accustomed to his touch, and light makeouts which left you panting for air.

“y/n I would like it if you looked at me more “ he said taking your hands which covered your tear-tainted face which was bright red. You looked up at him “Beautiful “ was all you could think but soon you pouted and turned your head to the side “No..not fair “ you said softly.

He chuckled kissing your jaw” What's not fair love ?” he asked innocently, you were sure he knew what it was. You lay naked and vulnerable on the bed while he was still fully clothed. You pulled at his shirt, chuckling at your cuteness “My my of course what is this rude behaviour of mine “ he said and moved back removing each piece of clothing with deliberate calculations and making sure you got a full show of him doing it.

“Now things are just going to get more rude “ he said pushing you back to the bed. The dimly lit room had both your shadows on the wall while some of the candles near your bed flickered a little due to the tension in the room.

That was when you noticed it fully, red eyes, fangs ready to draw blood and the smile of the devil, a shadow deep and darker than hell your husband smiled down on you creasing the side of your check “It will hurt, we have all the time so we can go slow okay “.

It was not a question, it was an order, telling you nothing will stop him. You have heard many call your wedded partner a devil and there were many questionable things that you have seen but …..” does it matter ?”.

Smiling you opened your arms wide “If you are going to hell or even if you are hell ..take me …”. That when the realisation hit you “I knew …… did not accept it “ you said “Claim me “

You did not know what effect your words had on him but his actions stopped, his dick right at your entrance while he stared into your eyes “Do…do you even know the meaning of the things you said ? What if I am a sinful being and ..not even human ?” he asked softly but there was no gentleness in it “that has nothing to do with me . You are my husband “you said still smiling like a child at a candy store.

The demon's red eyes flashed a dangerous red but collected himself he smiled, face filled with nothing but love “You surely will drive me crazy one day before that whiny master of mine does “ he said chucking and as you both were busy laughing his shaft moved right into you in one thrust.

Your back arching completely off the bed, air completely out of your lungs and eyes rolled back you held on to his shoulders for your life. Kissing your exposed neck, the devil smiled biting it, making you moan and yelp in pain and pleasure “All mine “ eyes red as fire and shadow darker than hell … The devil claimed his wife ………….

I always had a soft spot for the demon butler and also wanted one for myself ..but @chooyahh reminded me of my old lover. Thank you for that!💕

[d1s1ntegrated]

body worship. lets give our fav villain (shigaraki) some body worship

shigaraki genuinely is a beautiful fucking person.

his hands are cut up, hangnails and callouses and rough spots. but that doesn't change the fact that they're soft, with slender fingers. so much experience in those hands, so much guilt to carry.

his silky, slightly tangled hair that smells like smoke and sleep and rain. in any state, it's cute, but when it drapes over his angular face and frames the delicately marbled features, is when it looks best.

his tired sanguine eyes, filled with hurt and grief but still so capable of finding love in little things: his friends, video games, the feeling of being known and accepted. so young and tender still, even after everything he's been put through. fluffy white lashes fluttering as he blinks, slowly and lazily.

his cracked, scarred skin. like splits of sunlight rippling on the ocean, or the texture of a hard-worked painting. he's not gross, or crusty, or a freak. he only ever wanted to be okay. it's still nice to touch. he wants to be touched.

he's only 21. twenty fucking one. he never knew what it meant to be a kid, or a teenager. only a machine, put to work but never to rest.

his strong arms and legs are the result of that work. muscles rippling under the pale skin, a testament to all things godly. you wouldn't be able to tell from the baggy clothing he dons, but he's stronger than you'd know. his shoulders wide and buff, trailing down his chest, torso, to a gentle but strong tummy, abs peeking through his t-shirts.

he isn't scrawny or skinny to any degree.

if anything, he's fucking ripped.

when he stretches, his shirt pulls up, to reveal a deep v-line and the sliiiightest amount of squish on his lower tummy, with a scattering of fluffy pale hair dragging down from his navel to underneath the waistband of his pants. an invitation. a map. a command.

to take in the image of him is to worship something more than god.

his smile is the best part. his teeth aren't perfect, but no one asked them to be. sharp canines, the bottom row uneven, and not pure white- he drinks way too much caffeine for that to be possible. it makes his real smile that much more genuine.

his smile is real when you call him beautiful. when you make note of his flaws and rewrite them as details, like chips in glass.

not to mention his other features. his sharp, angular nose. his thin but delicate lips. scars running deep like hills and valleys, it makes him all the more interesting. how it feels to kiss those lips, feeling how he bites them and peels away at the layers of skin. sometimes, it tastes bloody, but it's only a reminder that he's just as human. he tastes like energy drinks and candy and hunger.

he looks like comets and stars and all things bright, blinding, a painful comparison to how dark he feels.

did you know he has a birthmark on his left shoulder blade? did you know he hates how only one of his toes is crooked? or how badly his fingers hurt from having to only use a few of them? did you know that he cracks every part of his body every morning, that his back constantly aches, that he can't stand the way he sounds when he cries?

he may be a villain, yes. he may be sick and evil in the eyes of society.

but he's still a boy. he's still a man. he's still so much more than what he believed he was doomed to become. he's not perfect, but he is still human.

even in his worst moments he is beautiful, a tragic display of what humanity does to those in need.

tenko shimura, the prettiest boy.

thank u for the request <3 i love tomura so fucking much, and he deserves every ounce of worship.

[rottenpumpkin13]

Sephiroth isn’t normally one to believe in ghosts. So what happens when he moves into a house that happens to be haunted?

*AGSZ enter Sephiroth's new apartment carrying boxes*

Angeal: I can't believe you got Lazard to agree on letting you switch apartments.

Genesis: He's impossible. The man refuses to approve the modifications I want for my apartment.

Sephiroth: That's because your renovation plans include a giant crystal bathtub, an indoor koi pond, diamond chandeliers, a private theater, and your own butler.

Genesis: I could not be more humble if I tried.

*The sound of ripping velcro makes them look over to see Zack strapping a life vest on himself*

Angeal: What are you wearing??

Zack: It's an anti-ghost protection vest. There's salt, sage and holy water embedded into it. You know, to repel the ghosts.

Sephiroth: What ghosts?

Zack: Lazard told me this apartment is haunted! That's why it's been vacant this whole time.

Genesis: And you believed him? What are you, a child?

Angeal: Zack, ghosts aren't real.

Zack: Yes they are.

Sephiroth: No, they're not.

Zack: They are!

Angeal: They're not!

Zack: Really? Okay! Then how do you explain the fact that my mind is racing a mile a minute and I feel terrible energy surrounding me?

Sephiroth: You have ADHD and you're standing next to Genesis.

Genesis: Rude.

Sephiroth: You can take that off, Zack. I assure you, there aren't any ghosts here.

*Suddenly the lights start flickering on and off*

Zack: AH! WHAT DID I TELL YOU?

Angeal: That's just faulty electricity.

*Sephiroth shivers*

Sephiroth: Is anyone else cold?

Zack: GHOST!

Angeal: LACK OF SHIRT

Sephiroth:

*Suddenly the faucet in the kitchen sink turns on*

Zack: How do you explain that!!??

Sephiroth: I'm sure there's a logical explanation for that. Right, Genesis?

Sephiroth:

Sephiroth: Genesis?

*They look over and Genesis is kneeling on the ground in prayer with his arms in the air*

Genesis: Minerva grant me your strength, shield me from darkness, protect my soul from all evil. SURROUND me with your divine light—

Angeal: OH, GET UP

*Suddenly the TV turns on and a knife flies across the room*

Zack: OKAY! YOU GUYS ARE ON YOUR OWN!

*Zack runs out of the apartment*

Genesis: You know what? I won’t let a paranormal entity intimidate me. I'll drive this creature out of here by my own hand. *He draws his sword* Come at me, you ghostly bastard!

*The table moves on its own towards Genesis*

*Genesis runs out of the apartment at a speed Neither Sephiroth nor Angeal knew he could run*

Angeal: They're being ridiculous, aren't they, Seph?

Sephiroth: They are. It's reassuring to know that at least two of us still possess sound judgment and logic.

*The mirror shatters on its own*

Angeal: IT'S A DEMONIC ENTITY. I'LL GO GET THE SALT AND SAGE. STAY HERE

*Angeal runs out of the apartment and shuts the door behind him*

Sephiroth:

Sephiroth: It's unsettling to realize that I'm the most sane one.

Sephiroth:

Sephiroth, sighing: I don’t understand. Even if a paranormal entity were present, it shouldn't scare us away. We've faced wars and dealt with threats far beyond human comprehension. We're SOLDIER, and more than capable of confronting a demonic entity without fleeing.

*A disembodied Hojo-esque laughter echoes throughout the apartment*

*Sephiroth runs towards the closed door, smashes right through it, and flees*

.

.

.

*Lazard comes out from behind a corner with a remote that was controlling everything*

Lazard: And I'll do it again.