#something something joke about spelunking in a cave

[ofspvrta]

quiet for cass !

μ::|| meme: “SUNDAY” THEMED PROMPTS (+18/CW) | accepting [ Ξ ]

θ::|| @herrage | cassandra

It had been a habit, hadn't it? Sneaking around when they were on the road. There was no safety in private chambers like there was at Haven. Out here it was either their tents or the wilds. A nice little cave provided some shelter from a heavy blanket of rain and as the group had decided to settle in for the night, the two women had decided to venture a little further in to ensure there wouldn't be any surprises. After a few minutes of checking, and finding nothing to worry about, Cassandra had decided to turn back for the tents when the Keeper put a hand on her shoulder and turned her back to face her again.

Putting a finger to her own lips, the Keeper jammed her torch in a crevice in the rocks and pulled the Seeker in for a passionate kiss. Arms holding her close, Kassandra didn't feel like waiting for that night to have a taste of the woman who had opened her heart to love once more. Maybe she was impatient, maybe she didn't care. Practiced hands moved to Cassandra's sides, finding the clasps that kept her armor on. "Shall we?" She whispered against her lips, "We'll have to be quiet this time, can't have the others thinking something is wrong." It would take a concentrated effort for both of them.

[thenamesblurrito]

eleven whole ask dumps

that’s a LOT! topics this time are: survivalists, cavemen, survival tv shows, Bloodron, plantformers, food storage, eating underwater, beast mode mouths, Rodimus and Abominus and flammability, and Rock Lords

as a matter of fact yes! it’s sort of difficult, because it’s a labor intensive process to mine, purify, distill, and store enough energon and other foodstuffs all by yourself unless your alt mode is like an energon refinery or something. so it isn’t a quick and easy solution for just anybody who has issues with the current regime. as it stands, it’s genuinely easier and safer for many junkers to hang around in the city than it is to rough it in the wilds, otherwise they’d be gone in a heartbeat.

but!

there’s certainly been folks who prefer roughing it to living in civilization. this has been true throughout history and isn’t specifically driven by the corruption of the Stratocracy. a popular counterculture in Kup’s youth was spelunkers/squatters who would specifically seek out old buried ruins and underground places to live in, like cavemen if you will, just because they could. there are antisocial folks and hermits and extreme introverts who would rather homestead than deal with anyone in their vicinity. there’s one crazy kook of a dedicated scientist in particular that i am still waffling about actually showing in SNAP’s storyline, but old gramma Glyph is definitely still kicking somewhere in the Forbidden Zone and has been since before size classes became a thing! she would absolutely fill the role this ask describes (not the same Glyph as the JAAT student, mind you, it’s just another common name)

there are still people who live in caves. no, not the folks i mentioned in the above answer, i mean like there are entire underground cities and everything. there’s a lot of stuff down there anyway! living underground is not unusual on Cybertron and a good percentage of infrastructure and industry isn’t even visible from the surface in some places

that said, there is archaeological evidence that the original Cybertronian civilizations actually developed below ground and migrated upward/outward! First City, a set of ruins swallowed by the Rust Sea, is the aptly named earliest appearance of a proper settlement aboveground, but it shows evidence of being a base camp before a proper city, and contains artifacts and materials thought to have been taken from belowground before being put in the city. the entire concept of Simfur was of a holy temple city that was already supposed to be underground before some great cataclysm sundered it so far beneath the surface that not even its original inhabitants could find it. so “cavepeople” were, in a way, the default from which mecha have branched out from to live on the surface

and re: eating mechanimals, that’s definitely a (relatively) recent cultural value, and it isn’t even universal. there’s been people eating mechanimals throughout history, and likewise there have been people squeamish and disapproving about it for just as long. the current social climate is disapproving, but that’s variable depending on when and where you look into history

fsdfhgljfsdghfk yknow what sure. on Carcer and Eukaris specifically because these are the cultures i think would be into that. the more widespread popular version of this is probably space travel survival instead of on-planet wilderness. like can you pilot a ship for a vorn with limited supplies out into the black and make it to your destination with minimal contact kind of challenge. not unlike those solo sailing challenges i suppose

okay so this was a joke ask from Jensen that has now fleshed out a piece of SNAP history thanks

Bloodron was a tyrant of Caminus during the Prime Wars who took over after the murder of the previous de facto Camien leaders, Solus Prime’s children Magnum and Pyra (the original Magnus and Mistress of Flame, respectively). he was successful where other conquerors had not been in part because of his ruthless execution of the original usurpers who murdered the twins, instead of trying to pander and please. while his methods were cruel, he was debatably the safest option for leadership at the time and was instrumental in putting down further unrest on the colony as even Cybertron was swallowed by chaos. he and his enemy/conjunx/??? Convoy (a name at this point, not yet a fancy title) worked together to thwart scheming insurrectionists vying for power amongst their familial and political blocs, which resulted in a mostly unified culture for Caminus many centuries later and gave them a legacy of being a very strong, put-together colony. the academic community remembers him and his period of history with mixed feelings. while what he did for Caminus was pretty good, all things considered, he was not exactly a good person himself

excellent questions!! i think the only plantformer i’ve got in my cast list atm is Botanica so i won’t have a lot of examples here. unlike beastformers looking like mechanimals, not a lot of plantformers actually take after a specific species of cyberflora. most seem to generate their own unique specimen, although in root mode many of them are quintoid frametypes

since cyberflora grow out of/need to be rooted to some kind of hotspots, plantformers often have very strong sparks, or at least a very high degree of energy cycling, and act as their own personalized hotspot. this gives them quicker and better than average healing, but it does mean they have a higher metabolism. some of them have alt modes that can process energon and/or package it. these are considered “fruit bearing” cyberflora alt modes, and are often given fuel processing functions much like vending machine, distillery, or refinery alt mode. this is really the only kind of food you’ll get from a plantformer, even though actual cyberflora are used for food in many many more ways than just energon fruit. most plantformer alt mode products won’t be eaten and are instead used in their function’s industry, or perhaps as a rare and expensive knick-knack in the same vein as some kind of handmade collector’s item

their mobility isn’t usually very high, in keeping with how most cyberflora function. filling a niche in the ecosystem may look like sifting metal, crystallizing minerals, conducting and rerouting electricity, or another small but significant part of planetary upkeep. as such, the majority of plantformers have alt modes designed to slot into a given environment where they can participate in the ecosystem, often moving only at the whims of their environment. a heavily cabled transmission tower tree meant to fit in amongst buzzing mangroves will have flexible bases and strong grounding roots as it connects to other trees with its cables. a lone lightning rod pine out on the prairie will have similar grounding roots that go even deeper and broader, meant to conduct lightning all the way to a planetary leyline, and windmill sequoias have perhaps the sturdiest, broadest trunks to brace their height against the movement of their milling boughs. on the opposite end of the spectrum, tangled cable tumbleweeds can unplug at any moment and be set adrift to seek out any new crevice or cranny to worm its wires into. it really depends on the plantformer’s individual alt mode. Botanica has root cabling to keep her steady when in alt mode, but her leaves and boughs are still mobile

this actually has less to do with stuff like mold or sour milk and more to do with expiring chemicals, decaying materials, and loss of charge. the point of energon is how it inherently carries a charge instead of just being burnt for power, but if you leave energon or batteries or what have you for too long, it’ll lose that charge. maybe it can be recharged, but you’ve lost an important part of your fuel just from waiting too long. undercharged energon is better than nothing, but it won’t fix your lethargy. expired chemicals can either be inert and useless or highly flammable/explosive/dangerous in some way depending on what it is and what kind of reaction it had over time. you don’t really wanna raid the pantry and pick up something that explodes in your hand because it expired a month ago. and decay isn’t always bad, with stuff like steel woolies turning into rust bunnies, but if you’re need an iron meal and instead find just a hunk of corroded rusty junk, that’s not gonna meet your nutritional needs. proper food storage is about minimizing corrosion and decay, preserving or restoring charge, and preventing adverse chemical reactions when possible, as well as keeping out pests like scraplets

that said, i think edible-grade energon can retain its charge for... at least a good while? it’ll longer than a month and still be a full meal, i’d say, if it’s just straight liquid energon on a regular charge. that’s why it’s kept in glass despite its delicacy, since glass isn’t a good conductor. so community pantries, dead drops, hideyholes and such are all fairly effective as long as everyone remembers to keep the spaces pretty clean and make sure nothing gets left too long, which is never a problem

ummmm.... hm. this is an off the wall question. i guess i think it would be weird and difficult. like, could you eat underwater?? could you take a bite of like i dunno what’s something that doesn’t instantly fall apart in water..... a candy cane? could you safely eat a candy cane underwater? probably yes if you were very careful to keep your throat closed and also try to force out all the water in your mouth before chewing and swallowing, but it would be hard. mecha aren’t in danger of choking/drowning like humans, and it’s safe to assume that if they’re already underwater then they probably have the seals for it, but still consuming a lot of water isn’t great for a mechanical species, and it’s not easy to make sure you’re not swallowing that along with your food

oh sure, like they’re perfectly functional mouths and all, the issue is just the connection to the fuel systems. no throat, as it were. whereas the folks who can eat in beast modes essentially have two esophagi that rearrange depending on what mode they’re in. for folks like Strafe who have intact beast heads in root mode, it’s possible they can use their jaw? like she in particular uses them as a second set of unwieldy hands, but a pocket is a good idea too, or a can opener, etc etc. chewing food just to spit it back out is probably something only a very determined person with a specific food craving is going to do, because most folks who aren’t able to chew would just get silted shakes to sip with a straw

oh all the time. Rodimus’s whole THING is setting himself on fire and just throwing himself into the fray. like that one Denethor scene in LOTR but madly cackling. he only bothers showing some finesse when around Drift who he wants to impress clearly requires more careful application of skill to beat. Abominus can’t set himself on fire like Rodimus can, but he can shoot flames from his beast head and will fan them higher with his wings, which means he can essentially generate a firestorm to stand in if necessary that will drive everyone else away. Elita 5 has some immunity to flame too as a pyrokinetic hero, but is in fact still vulnerable to heat unlike the other two. she won’t get scorched, but she does need to watch her temperature

in general mecha aren’t like extremely flammable, they have much much higher heat contact tolerance than humans, but ironically have lower atmospheric heat tolerance, because the majority of them use air cycling for cooling systems and so hot weather makes them overheat easily. buncha pansy computers. but they’ll think nothing of holding an open flame, picking up embers right from a fire, ducking through a burning doorway, setting off firecrackers in their hands, etc. their caution is more about smoke and soot clogging vents, or discolored paint, or getting dents from small explosions than actually burning. they start endangering themselves when the heat gets high enough to overtake their cooling systems or melt their kibble, or has enough force to punch like in an explosion, but even then they can struggle through until actual vital internal components are compromised, at which point they’re in danger of catching fire themselves. energon isn’t super flammable when in a controlled environment like their insides, and a liquid trail can catch fire, but it’ll take a mortal wound to really get someone burning up inside

hhhmmmmmmmmm i... don’t think i’m going to use them in SNAP, or at least this storyline. i’d probably make them extraterrestrial creatures sort of like what they were in TFA. they’d fit in with stories of demons and invaders for sure

[nameless-brand]

On the note of hydroponics, I did make a whole bunch of permit requests to build in the local caves in Gotham. Because underground farming is also an interest of mine - think about all the mushrooms you can grow!

Semi-joke aside. An underground environment also happens to be ideal for hydroponics. Natural humidity in the cave prevents desiccation and decreases water losses, while the temperature tends to be more moderate than the temperature outside - saving me on temperature control costs. These both naturally are immense cost-savings since they're literally everyday expenses. Furthermore one could also theoretically build underground as a means of expansion. It's also not as expensive as trying to buy land in the city proper.

And it's not like people cherish these caves all that much anyway, other than the random teenage spelunker.

In any case, every one of my eleven requests got rejected under the banner of environmental protection, which makes me want to laugh angrily. And when I politely requested about any cave system I could have, instead of suggesting something remotely okay like Gotham Heights or even Harborside, they suggested the cave system south of Cathedral Square? The one I specifically avoided requesting.

Why the heck would I want to develop on the strip of land directly adjacent to Blackgate Isle?!

Anyway, for a city that's so pro-business and environmentally unfriendly, I find it hilarious that cave preservation is the hill the city chooses to die on.

[apocalypticavolition]

Let's (re)Read the Hobbit! Chapter 5

Well, I suppose it’s time to get into the chapter that received the most attention from Tolkien. As The Hobbit was originally written with the intent of being a fairy tale for his kids, and only got turned into a significant aspect of the Legendarium as he began writing the sequel, quite a few aspects of the One Ring needed to be changed. Thus, there are two versions of this chapter, and as I’ve never read the original before I did so and will point out the differences as we go.

When Bilbo opened his eyes, he wondered if he had; for it was just as dark as with them shut. No one was anywhere near him. Just imagine his fright! I don't have to too much. I've been spelunking and when you can't see shit it's awful. Kinda surprised my mom still likes this book so much considering that when she was a girl in Iceland she fell down a hole spelunking. He guessed as well as he could, and crawled along for a good way, till suddenly his hand met what felt like a tiny ring of cold metal lying on the floor of the tunnel. It was a turning point in his career, but he did not know it. He put the ring in his pocket almost without thinking; certainly it did not seem of any particular use at the moment. You might think Bilbo’s coming into his own as a burglar here, but this is dark magic. Very corrupting influence already that ring. Most rings would at least have you think about how they came to be there. He thought of himself frying bacon and eggs in his own kitchen at home—for he could feel inside that it was high time for some meal or other; but that only made him miserabler. First time in awhile we aren't told it wouldn't be the last time Bilbo thinks of home so I guess this is the last? “So it is an elvish blade, too,” he thought; “and goblins are not very near, and yet not far enough.” It's a shame he didn't think to show it off to Elrond in Rivendell. It would have been cool to hear him tell its story, if it had one. Some of these caves, too, go back in their beginnings to ages before the goblins, who only widened them and joined them up with passages, and the original owners are still there in odd corners, slinking and nosing about. Honestly this whole sequence is a beautiful bit of environmental description that makes this cave feel truly unsettling and unpleasant in ways that thankfully real life caves avoid. I’d quote it all but I think illegally downloading 1600+ ebooks in a week is as much copyright infringement as I should risk right now. Deep down here by the dark water lived old Gollum, a small slimy creature. I don’t know where he came from, nor who or what he was. So that's a lie. Gollum got into his boat and shot off from the island, while Bilbo was sitting on the brink altogether flummoxed and at the end of his way and his wits. Bruh. You saw all those other passages. I get that going forward feels good, but you're in a cave. No reason not to think that the path to safety might not end up curving around.

And when he said gollum he made a horrible swallowing noise in his throat. That is how he got his name, though he always called himself ‘my precious’. I feel like there's a great joke here about how people who don't respect His Precious's chosen name and use the derogatory one are bad allies or something, but I can't quite get it in a way that doesn't feel low key shitty when I just want to be silly so consider this your chance to come up with an appropriate one for me! Winner of this contest will receive laughter! (Also, who gave Gollum his name? The goblins don't survive encounters with him. Did Bilbo do it because of this encounter? Dick move, Bilbo.)

“A sword, a blade which came out of Gondolin!” “Sssss” said Gollum, and became quite polite. Kinda cool that Gollum knew what Gondolin was. Hobbits a few hundred years back must have had better stories. Maybe because Gollum's family wasn't in the Shire but east of the Misty Mountains. Riddles were all he could think of. Asking them, and sometimes guessing them, had been the only game he had ever played with other funny creatures sitting in their holes in the long, long ago, before he lost all his friends and was driven away, alone, and crept down, down, into the dark under the mountains. They're called hobbits buddy. “Does it guess easy? It must have a competition with us, my preciouss! If precious asks, and it doesn’t answer, we eats it, my preciousss. If it asks us, and we doesn’t answer, then we does what it wants, eh? We shows it the way out, yes!” In the OG version of the text, Gollum offers to give Bilbo a present, which explains why Bilbo is very blithe about the offer going forward because it's nowhere near as nice a promise as taking him to safety. Doesn’t explain why he’s so chill about being eaten but let’s say “shock”. That was all he could think of to ask—the idea of eating was rather on his mind. It was rather an old one, too, and Gollum knew the answer as well as you do. Sadly I'm not much of a riddle guy, Tolkien. Gollum would be eating the shit out of me if I were in Bilbo's place and I know how the story goes! But just as Bilbo was beginning to hope that the wretch would not be able to answer, Gollum brought up memories of ages and ages and ages before, when he lived with his grandmother in a hole in a bank by a river... In the OG version Bilbo starts wondering about the present at this point. I am definitely going with “shock” to explain why he’s not so focused on the being eaten thing.

“Well,” said Bilbo after giving him a long chance, “what about your guess?” In the OG, he asks about the present at this point. I am rapidly moving toward “affluenza” being Bilbo is being such a spoiled little rich kid. [Gollum] also in his turn thought this was a dreadfully easy one, because he was always thinking of the answer. There's a good lesson here about how different environments train people for very different things and provide drastically different expectations of normal. Should you ever find yoursely in a riddle-game with a cave beast, keep this in mind.

I wish I had more to say about the riddles themselves except that they’re all pretty well-written. I wonder if Tolkien made up any himself or if he got them all from somewhere. Bilbo was saved by pure luck. Twice he was saved by luck at this point. Twice he’s getting answers by pure luck, which is a bit disappointing even though of course as a Wooster-esque figure we can't expect Bilbo to know much of anything. Or maybe even in the “final” text he’s still lying through his teeth so elves and dwarves will think he’s a punk at riddle games and then he can smoke their asses and get 1/14th of their estates. “What have I got in my pocket?” And of course, if getting answers by pure luck is unfair, getting the questions this way seems even worse, especially when it's such poor form! I'm rooting for His Precious now. [Gollum] tried to think what other people kept in their pockets.“Knife!” he said at last. Let's be real here Smeagol, knives are totally something you kept in your pocket, you creepy murderer you. But he felt he could not trust this slimy thing to keep any promise at a pinch. Any excuse would do for him to slide out of it. And after all that last question had not been a genuine riddle according to the ancient laws. In the OG version (yes we're back to the differences now and no I'm not going to stop giving it the stupidest title possible), the text says that Bilbo need not have worried because Gollum was on the up-and-up. No wonder Gandalf didn’t fall for it for more than the two seconds it took him to remember that “Hobbits cannot write down lies,” was only a hobbit fact he told dwarves. “Well?” [Bilbo] said. “What about your promise? I want to go. You must show me the way.” In the OG version, Bilbo asks about the present which he feels he "won fairly", which is so incredibly bullshit that maybe it disoriented Gandalf and made him unable to focus on anything else in the text. That's some Zapp Brannigan tier delusions there BB. But who knows how Gollum came by that present, ages ago in the old days when such rings were still at large in the world? Perhaps even the Master who ruled them could not have said. I can. Gollum recovered the ring about five centuries earlier. Thank goodness Bilbo only kept it to 111. It would have been horrible if he'd just skulked about Bag-End for centuries, eating fish and throwing spoons at the Sackville-Bagginses at night. Gollum was cursing and wailing away in the gloom, not very far off by the sound of it. He was on his island, scrabbling here and there, searching and seeking in vain. Literally everything between my last OG note and this one is entirely new and a bit of an expansion. In Bilbo's text, Gollum simply sails acros the lake to get the present as promised and can't find it.

The new version’s still amazingly atmospheric too. Tolkien was great with all of his landscapes, but he does caves so well that I kinda have to wonder when he went spelunking and what horrible monsters he must have found down there to write about Gollum’s hunting. “Losst it is, my precious, lost, lost! Curse us and crush us, my precious is lost!” Gollum is originally upset because not only does he not have the present to honor the game but he doesn't have it for himself either. “What has it got in its pocketses? Tell us that. It must tell first.” Instead of all this misery and cajoling culminating in Gollum demanding the answer to the riddle, Gollum just comes back, tail between his legs, really upset about not being able to honor his deal. He also tells Bilbo about the ring, that he got it as a birthday present and that it makes you invisible. But now the light in Gollum’s eyes had become a green fire, and it was coming swiftly nearer. Frankly this is only an improvement over the original, as it was quite unbelievable that Bilbo could threaten a so much as a paralyzed child with a sword, let alone successfully intimidate a semi-monster. Dude needs to spend more time in danger. He put his left hand in his pocket. The ring felt very cold as it quietly slipped on to his groping forefinger. This is not a convenient deus ex machina because of course he's corrupted to hell and back by the ring, which claimed the soul of a dandy like him in about fifteen seconds. No clue how Frodo pulled it off. Terrified he tried to run faster, but suddenly he struck his toes on a snag in the floor, and fell flat with his little sword under him. Normally I'd say it was a miracle he didn't stab himself, but as we're talking about Bilbo I think it's fair to say that not being able to stab anything under any conditions is entirely in character for him. Suddenly Gollum sat down and began to weep, a whistling and gurgling sound horrible to listen to. Frankly I just feel a bit bad for the guy. Like yeah he's a creepy cave cannibal but he's been a plaything of the ring for five centuries so it's hard to hold much of any of it against him – even the initial murder is a part of that. Poor Gollum. “Then let’s stop talking, precious, and make haste. If the Baggins has gone that way, we must go quick and see. Go! Not far now. Make haste!” Please do stop talking. This little monologue stretches on a bit long, it feels much more reflective of LotR's epic style than it does the Hobbit's plain fairy tale, and really could have been trimmed a little bit. Still there it was: Gollum with his bright eyes had passed him by, only a yard to one side. In the Bilbo variant, boy just gets escorted up and away. He puts on the ring briefly to try it out but takes it back off to be visible around Gollum for obvious reasons. “Seven right, yes. Six left, yes!” Intriguingly to pedants, originally it was six right, four left – one wonders why Bilbo lied about that little detail in universe or how Frodo could correct him. Also, obviously Gollum just takes him up quickly instead of crying at any point. There was Gollum sitting humped up right in the opening, and his eyes gleamed cold in his head, as he swayed it from side to side between his knees. You could try stabbing him, Bilbo. He can't see you. Good thing Bilbo didn't of course. Not because of the sequel. Just because, as I observed earlier, dude can't even manage to stab himself.

No, not a fair fight. He was invisible now. Gollum had no sword. Gollum had not actually threatened to kill him, or tried to yet. I pity Gollum too Bilbo, but he DID threaten to kill you way back at the beginning of this whole exchange. Did you just mishear him? Is that why you’re so chill about all this? Straight over Gollum’s head he jumped, seven feet forward and three in the air; indeed, had he known it, he only just missed cracking his skull on the low arch of the passage. Literally the only reason he could do this is that the DM- I mean, Eru Iluvatar- didn't want him to kill Gollum yet. If it were not for the literal grace of God Bilbo wouldn't have leapt half so high and still would have managed to bash his skull in somehow.

“If goblins are so near that he smelt them,” he thought, “then they’ll have heard his shrieking and cursing. Careful now, or this way will lead you to worse things.” In the lying version of the text, Gollum just refuses to go further and goes back to the lake. Bilbo listens to make sure of that before going on, but nothing comes of it. The passage was low and roughly made. It was not too difficult for the hobbit, except when, in spite of all care, he stubbed his poor toes again, several times, on nasty jagged stones in the floor. “A bit low for goblins, at least for the big ones,” thought Bilbo, not knowing that even the big ones, the orcs of the mountains, go along at a great speed stooping low with their hands almost on the ground. Half of this paragraph, in interspersed chunks, is different in the new version, but not in any significant way. The word "orc" not being used is the closest big change I see. They saw him sooner than he saw them. Yes, they saw him. Whether it was an accident, or a last trick of the ring before it took a new master, it was not on his finger. Fucking asshole ring. I think it just likes doing this. Probably jumped off of Sauron right before Isildur struck him down for the lols. A pang of fear and loss, like an echo of Gollum’s misery, smote Bilbo, and forgetting even to draw his sword he struck his hands into his pockets. I don’t wanna hear anyone say that my claims of Bilbo already being thoroughly claimed by the ring are just my usual hyperbolic, reductionist nonsense for comedic purposes. He’s had it for like an hour and he’s already echoing Gollum.

They yelled twice as loud as before, but not so delightedly.

By the by, these paragraphs are also a little different, mostly tightened up and written more strongly, so that's nice. At this point, the two texts converge again. It was still ajar, but a goblin had pushed it nearly to. Bilbo struggled but he could not move it. He tried to squeeze through the crack. He squeezed and squeezed, and he stuck! Imagine how awful it would have been if the goblins had tried shutting the door then. Also: thank goodness he’s been on such a restricted diet lately or he wouldn’t have even gotten this far! He was through, with a torn coat and waistcoat, leaping down the steps like a goat, while bewildered goblins were still picking up his nice brass buttons on the doorstep. “That creepy fish creature in the lake must have found a new toy!”

Bilbo had escaped. And so we end another chapter. Bilbo is alone in the wilderness! How will he fare with his slow wits, physical failings, and near-complete ignorance of the outdoors now that his entire party is-

*checks the next page*

Four paragraphs away?

Not much of a cliffhanger I guess, sorry.

[magnus-sm-writes]

Character Intro: Quincy, Devilspawn

Name: Quincy Marks | Species: Demon | Homeland: Hell | Sexuality: Pansexual | Book: (Demon) Hunting for Love | Picrew | Pinterest

Quincy is a hedonist, through and through. He finds great joy in doing exactly what he wants when he wants, whether that’s watching ridiculous demon hunting shows while drinking cognac or hosting a demon hunting show so he can play a long con on the other host.

It’s only when he falls in love with said co-host that Quincy seriously considers if this was a good idea or not. 

Backstory

Growing up in Hell isn’t exactly easy when you’re the Devil’s son, despite what other demons may think. Quincy’s had a target on his back ever since he was a little boy. Quincy’s childhood wasn’t good. At all. Even for a demon, it was rough. Satan’s not exactly a great father. After the first couple murder attempts, Quincy learned how to protect himself the best he could, and Satan went pretty hands-off after that. 

Quincy doesn’t really resent his father as much as he hates Hell and everything about it. Instead of playing the exhausting games of manipulation and backstabbing that his siblings and the other demons play, Quincy spends most of his time on Earth, living glamorously, and only visits Hell when he needs a favor or wants to gloat.

Personality

Other than being a hedonist with some serious childhood trauma, Quincy is pretty happy-go-lucky. He loves cracking jokes and spends a lot of his time grinning. He’s also one of those “Devil’s Advocate” type guys who loves pissing people off. Especially Otto, who is pretty easy to frustrate once you know how to push his buttons. Quincy loves to laugh, even if it’s at his own joke.

He’s someone who doesn’t take anything seriously. Even if it’s Hell-related. Quincy avoids conflict like no other, unless it’s about something ridiculous that he can get a good laugh out of. 

Quincy is also just pretty antagonistic in general. Since Otto’s Twitter user is “notvonbismark”, Quincy’s is “yesvonbismark”. The official Instagram for them is “DemonSpotting”, so Quincy’s is “DemonSquatting”. Dumb shit like that.

He has a doctorate in Latin (from… many many years ago), a love of cognac, and the ability to laugh at anything that happens to him. And the ability to be really, really annoying. Like, really annoying. To the point that Otto wonders if smothering him is the correct course of action.

I really love writing Quincy. Probably because he acts a lot like a mixture of my husband and I. My husband loves being the Devil’s advocate, and I have a nasty habit of being ridiculously giggly all the time. Combine that with our inability to take most anything seriously, and you get Quincy Marks.

What Makes This Man Tick?

For some reason, Quincy finds himself fascinated with Otto Reyes-Ma. Absolutely fucking enraptured by him. At first, he thinks it’s because Otto somehow managed to both summon and almost trap a demon on total accident, but then it becomes more… complicated.

He thinks it might be the fact that Otto is terrified of damn near everything supernatural, even though he can’t see them like Quincy can. Or the fact that, despite his fears of the paranormal, he spends his free time spelunking caves and rock climbing. You know, the two safest hobbies on planet Earth.

Suffice to say, Quincy finds Otto to be an interesting critter.

He quickly falls for Otto in a way that surprises him and leaves him wondering how exactly he, a centuries-old being, can love a human like this. Quincy has a crisis about this, of course. 

Looks

As a demon, Quincy looks pretty much what you expect him to look like. A little like a play on the classic Baphomet with the big horns, goat legs, serpent’s tail, and tits (gotta give my characters the same big-titted curse I have), but a human face. He’s not exactly… comfortable with the way he naturally looks as a demon, as a trans guy and all, so most of the time when he’s in Hell, he’s in just his human form with the addition of his gnarly horns.

Quincy is very particular with how he looks as a human. He has a curated aesthetic with his tattoos (Satanic and occult), his piercings (lots), and his clothes (rich kid faux-goth). I love writing a good vain character. 

My favorite tattoo of Quincy’s (besides the large Baphomet with wings extended on his sternum in true trans guy style) is his 666 tramp stamp, based on a Tweet I saw about the “mark of the beast” actually being a 666 tramp stamp. It’s lived rent-free in my mind and I had to give it to Quincy, because… duh.

Social Media

Quincy has a perfectly-curated social media. The type of Insta page that makes you feel inadequate. His captions are dry, humorous, and incredibly ironic. He’s pretty much perfect influencer-bait. When he makes a post on any DemonSpotting page, you automatically know it’s him. Quincy’s a huge fan of dry, self-aware humor. He has all his Instagram stories curated to different themes, and he’d rather die than have a post out of place.

His Twitter is a bit of a disaster though. Between sharing a lot of different academic tweets, pictures of himself (mostly shirtless), and behind the scenes content for DemonSpotting, it’s a beautiful disaster. 

I think Quincy’s Tumblr is where he’d really shine, though. It’s the perfect mix of artsy pictures of himself (again, mostly shirtless so he can show off those sweet demonic tattoos), Latin phrases (some in his own calligraphy), aesthetic posts, academic papers, and demonology stuff to make someone like me lose their fucking mind. It’s one of the only social medias that doesn’t have a username that’s an ironic take on one of Otto’s, and instead has been xxxDemonMarksxxx ever since he made it in the first place.

Playlist-wise, this man has a few playlists he thinks fit certain occasions. With beautiful covers, of course.

[intergalacticaquarium]

I Wanna Wear Your T-Shirt

Sooo...I made a post yesterday about how making the hellfire stuff horny made me feel kinda weird and then @kriffingstars gave me the PERFECT alternative so I wrote this

Summary: Eddie's girlfriend dons his Hellfire T in an attempt to turn him on but he can't stop thinking about the dudes. It works out in the end, though, when she thinks of something amazing instead.

Eddie Munson x Fem!Reader

content: no warnings just making out, just some fluff and some romance and Eddie getting to feel like a rock star. Also it's kind of a sequel to my princess Leia costume fic because it's in a very similar vein which wasn't intentional but I incorporated it anyway.

(fics masterpost)

1.4k

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Eddie would be out of the shower any minute and this time Y/N was sure that she had him. She played with her hair a little more in the mirror and looked at herself in the hellfire t-shirt without pants and grinned, sitting down on the bed nonchalantly and crossing her bare legs. 

When he came in with a towel wrapped around his waist and saw her his eyebrows shot up. 

"Damn you look…really hot." He said, a little dazed for a moment. She stood up and did a little spin and he grinned and did everything in his power to ignore the brief mental flash of Gareth burping his bardic attacks at Hellfire and get back to his super hot girlfriend. 

She leaned in and kissed him and he wrapped his arms around her. 

Fuck yeah dude- give it bigger horns that'll be cooler. He heard in Dustin's voice and he squeezed his eyes shut forcefully as she kissed him. She felt him stiffen and pulled back.

"You good?" She asked, concerned. He nodded too many times and leaned back in to kiss her, stretching her out on his bed. 

"I roll charisma to seduce the barmaid." "Jeff you can't just say that you have to actually seduce her-" 

He just tried to kiss her harder and will his Hellfire idiots out of his head. 

"Wait, why are you calling it the jizz cave?" "Because Mike wrote going spunking in the cave." "Spelunking! Obviously I wrote spelunking. I just have bad handwriting!"

The mental image of Mike Wheeler was a solid enough blast of cold water that he almost threw himself away from her. 

"Whoa, what is wrong?" She asked, concerned.

"It's the shirt. I can't stop thinking about the guys and its really killing the mood." He confessed hastily, and she barked out a laugh.

"Are you joking?" She asked, still thinking it was funny. 

"No! It's weird I don't want any part if hellfire to be sexy I can't think of anything less sexy than Hellfire it's just so many teenage dudes and that room stinks like shit and sometimes Gareth burps his spells and your brother is there- It would be like if I showed up in Dustin's thinking cap to seduce you."

"Oh God gross no way gross gross gross" she said whipping the shirt off her head and across the room.

"Shit, I'm sorry this is like the Leia costume all over again." He said, and she couldn't hold back a cackle remembering him blanching and saying Y/N, it's called the Slave Leia outfit its kinda hard to get turned on when all the can think about is what Jaba put her through. 

"No, it's fine honestly. Now I just wanna see if I can nail down your taste."

"I mean…I can try to think of something if you need a suggestion." He offered and she made a thoughtful face. 

"Nope, I have an idea. This one's gonna work." She said, and stood up to find another shirt. 

"You don't have to get dressed." He complained good naturedly, and laughed when she scrunched up her nose.

"I think I do because now I'm imagining Gareth burping spells and the mood is gonna need at least an hour to recover from that blow." She said, and he laughed too, pulling her into a hug.

----

The next Tuesday he and the band were setting up, and he saw Y/N come in wearing her denim patch jacket which was suspiciously zipped up to the top. She didn't come over to say hi like usual and they started to play to the unenthusiastic four drunks.

He kept his eyes on her as he played, picking her favorite next to his band mates annoyance. She was still sitting at the bar and she downed her drink and turned around with a grin. He felt his heart flutter in anticipation when he saw the look of a plan in her eyes as she walked over to the tiny stage and met his gaze so he could sing directly to her. 

He almost laughed in delight when she started to dance. Fully dance, headbanging and all with her hair flying every which way. She sang along to a few lyrics and casually unzipped her jacket while she danced and turned around grinning. 

When he saw her Eddie was a little star struck, seeing her six inches from the stage, dancing and singing along to an original song like she was their biggest fan in a packed stadium, and she was wearing his Corroded Coffin shirt that he hadn't been able to find this morning. 

She danced like that for the whole gig, alternating between losing herself and closing her eyes and making hard eye contact while they grinned at each other. 

For the first time since he began to play at the hideaway he saw one of the regulars start to Bob their head and shimmy their shoulders and pretty soon everybody in the bar was joining in on singing a classic with him.

He had never felt like more of a rock star. This time when they bowed off the stage everybody applauded, earning a few standing ovations. It was a bartender, four people on the verge of blacking out, and the love of his life and he felt like he was playing Madison Square garden. It could've just been her and he would've felt it. 

When he stepped off the stage she launched herself at him in a kiss that he returned with passion he wasn't sure he had ever actually felt so strongly before.

He couldn't even speak afterwards, just gaze at her goofilly until he ran into an amp while walking backwards. He gave her a one minute hand and helped the boys pack the equipment back in the van. 

When he came back he saw her sitting at the bar and running her finger around the rim of a vodka soda. He leaned on the bar next to her and eyed her up and down in his t-shirt and grinned. 

"Enjoy the show?" He asked too casually, and saw a smile play on her lips as she glanced at him. 

"As a matter of fact I did. I'm a pretty big fan." She said coyly.

"Yeah, I think I've seen you in the crowd before. Are you following us on tour?" He asked with a smile, and she looked at him with her big dark eyes under her thick lashes.

"Mmhmm. Can I let you in on a little secret though?" She asked, and leaned in conspiratorially. "Don't get me wrong- I love the band, but the reason I keep coming back is because I really want to sleep with the guitarist."

He grinned and tried to look thoughtful. "Ah, I see. Fans do say that he's the hot one."

"I know they do, that's why I need to get to him first." 

"But he's got this girlfriend, y'know? And like…the guitarist might be hot- he's got nothing on this girl. Total smoke show. Supermodel hot. And cool and funny and smart and brave-" He said, listing off compliments like it was nothing and watched her smile grow.

"That's too bad. I was really looking forward to going back to his place. I was kinda hoping that I'd look so good in this shirt he made himself that he'd want to take it off of me." 

"Yeah, too bad he's gonna miss out…guess you're just stuck with me then." He said, and her eyes narrowed and looked to her left in confusion. 

"Wait, I'm lost- are you not the guitarist in this scenario?"

"I was at first but then I couldn't figure out how to actually hit on you without making it seem like imaginary cheating." 

"Well, let's just consolidate it. I can be a girlfriend and a groupie." She said, the act gone and fully facing him. It was weird to be looked at with such devotion that it still caught him off guard sometimes. 

"Either way I feel like a damn rock star. I mean it- this show was…" he trailed off, unable to even explain how happy he felt in that moment, but the pride in her eyes told him she knew.

"Then let's get you home, rock star. I've always wanted to hook up with a guy at his concert." She stood up and put her arms around his neck.

"Lucky you, I think you'll get that chance…pretty much whenever you want." He offered, and she finally closed the gap to kiss him. He drew back and grinned at her, putting his arm around her and leading her out the door with an affectionate kiss on her head, and his finger hooked on the collar of her t-shirt.

[ackermom]

he's listening to taylor swift when it happens. okay, he's standing in the kitchen and leaning on the counter so he's just out of sight from the revelry in the hall, and he has evermore playing so low he can't hear it over the laughter and din, but the seconds are passing and he can feel it. that's what evermore is anyways. it's not just an album. it's an emotion.

and reiner swears his ex is psychic (among other choice words), because spotify is at 2:09 in right where you left me when he appears from around the corner with a goofily clunky headlamp around his forehead and an empty water bottle in his hand. he stops in the doorway, his sneakers squeaking on the tile, eyes flicking to reiner, before he continues past him towards the sink.

"hi," he says as reiner jerks upright and fumbles with his phone to pause the music. the laughter in the other room conveniently fades out just at that moment, and there's an excruciating three seconds as he slams his finger at his phone and taylor swift sings about breakups while his ex inconspicuously fills his water bottle at the sink.

"hi," reiner says when he's turned the music off. he swipes out of the app and shoves his phone in his pocket. he just barely glances at bertholdt over his shoulder. he can't help himself: "nice headlamp."

"there are more in the car," bertholdt says with his back turned, all too genuinely. he turns the tap off. 

"i'm okay," reiner says. 

he stays where he is and stares out the little pass into the living room as he feels bertholdt turn around and sip on his water. 

"you might want one," bertholdt says in between sips. "it's better to have your hands free."

reiner picks at a little tear in the wallpaper over the counter. it starts to peel off. shit. 

"i didn't know you were so into spelunking," he says, each syllable of the last word emphatic and plump on his tongue as he speaks. he smooths the little peel of wallpaper back and glances over to see bertholdt shrugging his shoulders. 

"well," he says. "it's what historia wants to do. and it's her birthday party."

"of course," reiner says, like he's not well fucking aware that this was going to happen at some point, that this birthday weekend at an airbnb in the mountains that's supposed to only sleep four but is currently hosting about ten late twenty-somethings was eventually going to leave the two of them alone in a room together. he's been avoiding bertholdt all weekend. he hopes that bertholdt's been avoiding him too. 

"you know," bertholdt says, a little lift in his voice that reiner recognizes with the hair raising on the back of his neck, like he's been here before, exactly here, "of course it's something she'd like. caves being... you know."

that's fucking stupid, and if they were still together, reiner would laugh. 

he peels at the wallpaper again. fuck it. "i don't know if vagina jokes are really your thing, hoover." 

"yeah," bertholdt says, laughs, even more awkwardly than the weird thing he said in the first place, and reiner has to make a point not to look at him, keeping his furrowed brow and wide eyes to himself as he tears up someone else's property. "but seriously, uh-" he clears his throat "-you'll want a head lamp."

"i'm not going," reiner says.

a pause. "really? that's why we came here."

"i'm going," reiner says, "i'm just not- i'm staying up here. there's supposed to be a little exhibit and stuff. a cafe."

there's not a cafe anywhere within fifty miles of the entrance to the cave, and they both know it. he feels bertholdt frown.

"it's supposed to be cool inside."

"yeah, well, they don't makes caves for these shoulders, so i'll stay up top and keep watch so none of you get stuck in there."

his shoulders are only half the battle. he doesn't want to admit that he's 90% sure he'd have a panic attack squeezing miles down into the earth between teeny-tiny crevices of rock just to look at some other, cooler rocks. he's never thought of himself as particularly claustrophobic, but he's really not willing to find out today. especially not in front of bertholdt, whose water bottle clinks on the counter as he sets it down. 

"you came all the way here just to go to a dinky little museum?" he asks.

"you don't know it's dinky," reiner says with a frown, glancing at him. "there are plenty of nice little museums. and i came out there to celebrate my friend's birthday. i made the cake, you know."

he sees something flicker in bertholdt's eyes. "i know. it seemed familiar." 

it's the way he sees that that for a moment- but it's funny, because all that time they were together, all those afternoons off baking cookies, they were all box mixes, just something to pass the time and an excuse to flirt, and it annoys him a little because the cake shouldn't be familiar, because bertholdt doesn't know him like that anymore and he's never tasted something reiner's actually bothered to buy a bag of flour for. he guesses that's the perils of unloading leftover baked goods on his friends, that they will eventually get back to his ex. at least now he knows what he's missing.

"caves aren't really made for tall people either," bertholdt says after a moment. "i could... stay up too, if you wanted some company."

of course he does. just not this company. he's not sure. not yet. 

"i'll be fine," reiner says. "you're much more inclined to caves than i am." 

he hears the lid of bertholdt's water bottle stop halfway through being screwed on as he gets the joke. "ah. because- i'm- see, that was better than mine." 

reiner glances at his water bottle. "you should slow down there. i don't think you're allowed to piss in the cave." 

another pause. “right. well, i’ll see you in the car, i guess.”

he leaves, disappearing into the clatter in the hall as the group readies head lamp and hiking boots. he thinks he could stay right here and none of them would even notice.

[wyverian-lady525]

Hello hello! Can I have something Angsty and fluffy with Kyle please? Thank you !!♡♡

Of course! Fluff and angst with our favorite tsundere❤

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It Came From The Shadows

You and Kyle discover a tobi kadachi variant in the Loloska caverns.

It was your idea to go spelunking in the caves. You wanted to find a rare type of egg, and the intel you gathered was that is was in these caves. As you guys went farther in, it was starting to get less icy and more rocky. Water dripped off the stalactites and plopped onto the rough ground. Patches of dead grass covered the ground and the only light came from the torch Kyle was holding.

"Ok, this is starting to freak me out." Kyle grimaced when a droplet of water landed on his head. The silence was deafening, as if no signs of life were present here.

"Scared Kyle?" Tsukino teased while putting her paws on her hips. Kyle glared at her while you laughed lightly.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of. The two of us can handle anything.” You said from your place beside him, the light of the torch glowing on your smile. Kyle resisted the urge to roll his eyes. You guys continued to walk in silence, the only sound was your footsteps echoing off the cave walls.

Suddenly, an aggressive hiss came from ahead. This stopped everyone in their tracks. 

“What was that?” Tsukino whispered, her eyes flickering around. You and Kyle glanced around as well. The sound came back, this time closer.

“Sounded kind of familiar...” You whispered while looking back ahead. That’s when you saw a looming figure approaching, barely being outlined in the glow of Kyle’s torch. Yellow eyes flickered in and out of the light as the creature blinked, stalking slowly towards them. Kyle narrowed his eyes and finally made out a figure.

“A tobi kadachi?” Kyle said while backing away slightly, grabbing your arm in the process to pull you back. 

“No,” you shook your head, “it looks different.”

You were right. The fur was a vibrant yellow while the scales were a deep orange. There was something else too, about that tail...

The variant roared and swung that tail. Kyle finally saw what was putting him off.

“Venomous spines!” He shouted while hitting the dust. You did as well, but not quick enough. Kyle turned to see you had a spine stuck in your calf. The rest of them hit the wall behind him. The hunter quickly crawled over to you and pulled the spine out. 

He searched his pockets, but couldn’t find any antidotes on him. The monster roared and thrashed its tail, readying another attack. The torch was gone now, making this beast a lot more capable of making another hit.

“Tsukino!” Kyle shouted.

“Affirmative.” The palico responded while pelting the monster with smoke bombs. Kyle could hear the beast snort and sneeze as it was totally blinded by the assault. The hunter then gently picked you up and was worried by how limp you were. He had no idea how this monster’s venom worked.

Were you even still alive?

He didn’t want to think about the alternative. He just wanted to get you back to camp and heal you up. Running as fast as his legs could carry him, he did just that with Tsukino on his tail.

Back at camp, Kyle finally got a better look at you. Clammy skin, pale face, and struggling to breath, but you were still alive. Barely, but alive. Kyle rested you by the fire and began to dig around his things.

Panic ensued when he couldn’t find any antidotes. 

Tears pricked at the corners of his eyes as he struggled. No, he was NOT going to let you die.

“Stay with me Y/N.” He quietly begged. Then, as if his prayers have been answered, he found a single antidote.

Faster than a nargacuga, he ran to you and administered it. Slowly but surely, your skin returned to normal and you were breathing fine. Kyle let out a sigh of relief as you opened your eyes.

“Thank you Kyle...” You whispered with a small smile. The hunter quickly wiped the tears from his eyes and said, “Anything to save you.”

You slowly sat up and wrapped your arms around him. Despite Tsukino’s smirk, Kyle squeezed you back.

“I don’t want to live in a world without you in it.” Kyle whispered to you with a smile.

“You would get bored.” You joked and he laughed slightly.

“Not just that...” Then the hunter kissed you. You returned the sweet gesture with a red face. Afterwards, you cuddled into him (much to his awkwardness).

“No more caves though.” Kyle ordered and you pouted. However, you complied. This man saved your life, and while you knew he would do it again, there was no way you were going to put him through that. 

Sitting together and watching the setting sun was a much better pastime anyway. 

[wildbootsappeared]

Continental Divides Chapter Discussion #7: The Prince of DevCo

Continental Divides isn’t exactly a feel-good story. I’m here because I have something to say about our world, and pokemon presents a lot of fun tools for unpacking current events in new ways. One of my big goals for the story is to humanize Archie and Maxie. I’m not out to make them look right, but I do want to present them as less obviously, stupidly wrong. The other side of that coin requires presenting a more tarnished version of Steven Stone than what we get in canon. Chapter 7: Stainless Steel is the first time DevCo shows its human face, but that’s not all there is to Steven Stone. Today I’m going to talk a little more about why I’ve chosen to represent him the way I do (and then recommend some more wholesome renditions of him as a palette-cleanser).

For me, most of the darkness in pokemon comes not from Edgy Teenage Boys and their Ash Betrayal fics but from canon, both what it does say and what it avoids saying. 

It’s clear to me that something is already awry in Hoenn--no one tries to summon a god to remake the world because everything is fine. Even if the Stones aren’t responsible for the current state of affairs, I’ve got some questions for Steven about power, privilege, and responsibility. And ORAS makes things worse.

I’m no canon purist--

--but for once I’m actually going to talk about what IS in the canon first, just a few things for your consideration:

Despite the emphasis on protecting the sanctity of nature (especially in Hoenn) and on renewables (like the wind turbines in HGSS’s Newbark and the solar pannels in Sunnyshore), the pokemon world also definitely has combustion engine vehicles, factories, refineries, and coal mines. (Not to mention at least 3 different evolutionary lines based on pollution.) Devon is canonically an energy company with a history of mining and resource extraction.

With all of that in combination, it didn’t feel like much of a stretch for me to rebrand DevCo as a fossil fuel company (especially given their links to literal fossils). 

I chose fossil fuels not because they’re maximum corporate evil and therefore maximum drama (though that’s also true!) but because I’m interpreting the Kyogre/Groudon clash as a climate change parable. Can’t talk about climate change without fossil fuels.

So where does that leave Steven?

He’s definitely a very nice and helpful guy. He gives the player character and the anime protagonists lots of cool swag, free pokemon, and occasional advice. He also doesn’t seem especially keen on following in his dad’s footsteps. (His dad can’t even get a letter to him without help from a passing traveler because Steven is hiding in a cave, goodbye. And in Emerald, a cave basically becomes his permanent residence!)

That’s all ... fine, but he’s also inarguably got access to a lot of money, social capital, and other resources. (I also thought I was joking when I gave Steven a shiny meta, but it turns out that’s canon, too.) So I’ve got some pointed questions for him about power and responsibility. In Emerald, he does step up to fight Magma with the player character, so he’s not just sitting on his hands. But the status quo doesn’t change. Whatever issues inspired Aqua and Magma are still there.

Some fic definitely depicts him stepping up to make a difference, even at his own expense. So other interpretations are totally possible. It wouldn’t be hard to write him as a rich kid trying to rebel against daddy and struggling figure out how to use his wealth and influence for good. But I’m most interested in a version of him that fails to unpack his privilege or put his money where his mouth is, because ... that’s the world I live in.

Two of my biggest sources of inspiration for writing Divides!Steven: 

1) This podcast about Don Trump Jr and his (surprise!) bad relationship with his dad. 

One thing that really struck me was how Donjr’s disinterest in business pushed him into outdoor hobbies like hunting (which reminds me of Steven’s spelunking, rock-collecting, and training). Like Steven has built a name for himself through the Elite Four, Donjr. leveraged his new hobbies to build political capital with conservatives. And, of course, the daddy issues here are horrifying and fascinating. Worth a listen if you can stomach hearing about Trump.

2) Gansey from The Raven Boys.

Gansey is as charming and generous as he is rich. He bemoans being reduced to his status, yet he can’t help being blinded by his own privilege, spending money without thought and repeatedly failing to consider how his words and actions might affect the characters who do worry about money. He tries, but he doesn’t always succeed in keeping his foot out of his mouth. He’s also hunting a kind of treasure, the tomb of an ancient king who may be magically alive after thousands of years. Oh, and he loves cars.

Here are a few tasty Gansey quotes from the series that I’ve been saving since last January (probably not quite exact quotes because I typed them on my phone while I read):

The world turns out its pockets for you.

Dizzyingly important to him in a way that he couldn’t begin to understand its shape. It was something more, something bigger, something that mattered. Something without a price tag. Something earned.

I am my money--it’s all anyone ever sees.

His feelings for [her] were an oil spill. He’d let them overflow and now there wasn’t a damn place in the ocean that wouldn’t catch fire if he dropped a match.

Divides is interested in what happens when that treasure-hunting has a political context. 

--

Alllllllllll that said, one of the fun things about fic is seeing lots of different interpretations of the same characters. For Steven Stans, I highly recommend Wolfyn. She’s great at writing this boy into peril. He’s not an idiot, but he sure does make some stupid decisions and then pay the price. “The Long Road” is an achnronological origin story, showing his journey from a smol kiddo to the champion we all know. “Final Gambit” explores what happens in a world where there’s no player character to save the day. And in “Deal with the Devil” ... Steven has a bad time, but you’ll have a good time reading it.

Some Chapter 7 music (links to Spotify):

- Easy by Son Lux

- Risingson by Massiveattack

- Currency by the Black Angels

- The Orb by Emile Mosseri

[ask-illinois-iplier]

Can you tell an adventure story? I've been feelin kinda down,would be nice 🙇no worries if you don't have one atm though-🤍

Did I make this unnecessarily depressing? Yes. Do I have any regrets? No. Did I write this was 2 am? Prefer not to answer 

Tw: Character death, mention of injury

“You good down there, Oklahoma?” The young man asked, slowly lowering the other man into the pit. 

  Illinois held a thumbs up and gave a strained smile. He was younger, not fully confident in himself. This was his first time leading a mission and he had to make it good. His assistant, Devlin Amora, was known for ridiculously bad luck, but at least he was kind and happened to be available for this mission. 

  It had become a running joke that Devlin would call him by the name of any state but Illinois. If Devlin wasn’t incredibly charming and humorous, Illinois would’ve hated it. Something about that small pause and twinkle in his eyes as he carefully thought about which nickname to use...

  Illinois’s feet touched the ground and he signed with relief. He anchored the rope to the ground and called up. “You can come down now! Grounds sturdy enough!” He silently cursed how awkward his voice sounded. 

  He could hear Devlin’s laugh echo around the walls as he came down. “Man spelunking is fun! Don’t you think!?” Devlin got down to the floor and started filling a bag with dirt. 

  Anything Illinois had to say got stuck in his throat at that moment, so he just nodded. He forced his focus onto the cave, pulling out his camera and flashlight.” 

  “Ohio! This way!” Devlin called, pointing his light towards a tunnel. “So. What are you hoping to find?” 

  “Aren’t we after a golden idol? Something to display in a museum!” 

  Devlin blew a raspberry. “Yeah sure, getting your name on a plaque and vaguely mentioned in a textbook is cool, but it doesn’t pay bills. What are you hoping to stuff your pockets with? I’m hoping for some jewels.” 

  Illinois hesitated. What Devlin was saying didn’t seem right, but Devlin was far more experienced than him. Maybe a lot of archaeology was picking and choosing what to give and what to keep. 

  “Did you catch a fever or catch feelings?” Devlin teased. Illinois turned away, trying to hide his blush. 

  “Uh er- Maybe there will be a bunch of statues? And since we’re only here for one I could… Keep a few? Put one on the mantle?” Illinois said, trying to sound confident. 

  Devlin suddenly stopped and put his arm out to stop him too. A large axe appeared, just missing the two. Illinois’s heart nearly stopped. 

  “Holy shit!”

  “Hmm. I was expecting more. Swinging axes are boring.” Devlin said, unimpressed. “Though I guess I’m one to talk since I lost an arm to one.” 

  How can you say that so casually? Illinois almost shouted, but his thought was cut short by the axe swinging the other direction. 

  Devlin held Illinois’s hand. Normally Illinois would be ecstatic at that, but he was preoccupied by being scared for his life. 

  Devlin seemed as calm as ever next to him. He was leading him at a brisk pace as several other traps just miss them. 

  “H-how are you so calm right now!?” Illinois stuttered out. 

  “I mean look at them. They’re not really doing much harm. I guess they expect people to be running for their lives.” Devlin gave him a reassuring smile. “That’s a good thing you have me to slow you down, ay Roraima?” 

  Illinois chuckled helplessly. “Roraima? That’s not even a state.”

  “Yes it is!” Devlin said, sounding offended. “It’s in Brazil!” 

  They made eye contact and both started laughing. Illinois barely noticed a spinning blade just missing them as they stepped into a much smaller tunnel.   

  They stopped and Devlin let go of his hand to examine some symbols written on the ground. Illinois tried not to feel disappointed.

  “Hey Texas? How good are you at puzzles?” Devlin pressed down on a symbol and flinched back as a bunch of arrows shot from the wall. 

  Illinois sucked in the breath and got down to Devlin’s level. There were four recurring symbols. A bird, a cat, a snake, and a mouse.

  “I’m guessing it’s like that one thing in Indiana Jones where you have to step on certain plates or you die.” Devin said bluntly. 

  Illinois swallowed. “Some birds, tigers and snakes are all predators. The mouse is the odd one out.” 

  “Well after you. Captain first after all.” 

  Illinois held his breath and stepped onto a plate with the mouse symbol. Something clicked, but no arrows fired. He moved his other foot onto the next, and the next, and the next, and then he was on solid ground. He took a deep breath and panted, adrenaline pumping through his veins. 

  Devlin was right behind him, patting his shoulder. “Hey, don’t worry. I was perfectly prepared to grab you if arrows started flying.” 

  Illinois was comforted by that thought more than he would admit. 

  “You trust me right?” Devlin asked, grabbing his hand. 

  “Yes.” Without hesitation. 

  “Then you’ll trust me when I say that nothing in this cave will harm you, no matter what.” 

  Illinois was sure his heart stopped at that moment. 

  “Come on. Times a’ wastin’.” Devlin marched onward. His confidence was contagious, starting to leak into Illinois the longer they were together. 

  Finally the room opened up into a large, open room. In the center was a dirty statue. Illinois reached out to grab it but Devlin stopped him once again, looking more serious than ever. 

  He brought out that bag of dirt from before. “You mean it when you say you trust me, right?”

  “Of course! I have no reason to doubt you.” Illinois said firmly. 

  “I need to know I can trust you to. Promise me no matter what happens next, you’ll do whatever I tell you. Even if it means doing something you don’t like.” 

  “I- I promise.” His throat felt dry. 

  Devlin carefully examined the statue. Quickly he grabbed it and replaced it with the bag. Then it was quiet. 

  Illinois started laughing. All that adrenaline and anxiety for a rather anti-climatic ending. Devlin soon joined him, slipping the idol into Illinois’s bag. 

  Then the pedestal that previously held the idol made a soft click and the room rumbled. 

  No time for words. Devlin grabbed Illinois’s hand and ran forward. All of the previous traps seemed broken, probably due to the crumbling infrastructure. 

  In the distance they could see light and the rope to freedom. The ground made a sickening cracking sound as a raven formed between them a freedom. 

  Devlin looked around frantically. “You have the idol right?”

  “You put it in my bag! Why?” 

  “Keep it safe for me. And try and get my name on that plaque. I had fun adventuring with you, Illinois.”

  Before Illinois could respond, he was being lifted up and thrown across the widening pit. He hit the ground hard and rocks crashed down, sealing off the tunnel. 

  Illinois forced himself up and looked around. He was hurt, but alive. The rope was right there. Where was Devlin? 

  Slowly Illinois pulled out the accursed idol. This useless junk that Devlin gave his life for. 

  He looked at the wall of rock before him, then to the idol, before putting it away and starting his climb up. 

[chicgeekgirl89]

Country Roads, Take Me Home: Chap. 4

Fandom: NCIS LA

Characters: Marty Deeks, Kensi Blye

Read Chapters 1-3 Here

                                    XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Deeks and Kensi were up early the next morning to start their drive to Nevada. All was quiet from Bill and Carol’s RV and they were able to leave without saying goodbye to their whacky neighbors. 

They stopped for breakfast on their way out of town at a small local diner that, according to one Yelp review, had “the best donuts in the world.” Kensi couldn’t disagree, they were pretty amazing.

“So, onto Nevada?” she said around a mouthful of Boston creme.

“Great Basin. Should be awesome. I thought we could tour the Lehman caves and maybe do some stargazing.” He wiggled his eyebrows at her. “Although thanks to your creativity we both already saw stars last night.”

She kicked him good-naturedly under the table. “That was a one time only. You have to come up with your own creativity next time.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” he said with a grin. His gaze caught on something above her head and she frowned. “What do you think happened there?”

Kensi turned to follow his gaze. On the wall was a large blank spot with some exposed wiring. “Looks like there used to be a TV there,” she said.

He raised his eyebrows and Kensi immediately shook her head. “I know what you’re thinking and there’s no way. It is not possible that we’ve stumbled onto yet another crime. Not on this vacation. We promised. We said nothing like this could possibly happen this year.”

“Can I get you anything else?” Carmen, their server, interrupted their conversation.

Deeks nodded toward the empty spot on the wall. “Hey Carmen, something happen to your TV?” “Yeah,” she said. “So weird. Somebody stole it the other day. Emptied the register too. Owner’s pissed about it.”

“You didn’t catch anything on your security cameras?” Kensi asked.

She shook her head. “We only have the one and it’s at the back door. Police are investigating, but it’s not a high priority, you know?”

“Sorry to hear that,” Deeks said. “I think we’re all set here, just the check when you have a second.”

“Stop thinking about it,” Kensi said as they walked back to the RV.

“How do you know what I’m thinking about?” Deeks asked. “You’re not in my head.”

Kensi rolled her eyes. “I know you and your detective brain. You’re still thinking about that TV.”

“Well you have to admit it’s a hell of a coincidence,” he said. “Bill and Carol show up with a TV, a TV near the campsite goes missing…”

“Maybe you need to stop thinking with your detective brain and remember with your lawyer brain that that is called circumstantial evidence and will not hold up in a court of law.”

“I’m not saying we need to do anything I’m just suggesting…”

“Well stop suggesting and start driving. Our cave tour is at three and we don’t want to miss it.”

Kensi dozed off as Deeks drove, waking up as they crossed the border into Nevada. “Hey there Sleeping Beauty,” Deeks said as she stretched and rolled out her neck. “Welcome to ‘The Silver State.’ Want to make a detour to Vegas and get hitched?”

She rolled her eyes at him. “We’re already married.”

“Vow renewal?”

“Only if I get another wedding cake out of it.”

“I think I can make that happen.”

They made it to the RV park with plenty of time to spare before their cave tour. “Stay here,” he said after he’d parked.

He stepped outside and made a big show of looking around.

Kensi wrinkled her nose. “Deeks what are you doing?” 

He poked his head back in. “Checking for Bill and Carol. Coast is clear. You can come out.”

“Oh thank god,” she said, walking out to check out the view. Even from the parking lot it was beautiful. “I’m ready for some peace and quiet.”

“No baseball games.” Deeks wrapped his arms around her.

“No dogs.”

“No sex advice.”

Kensi nodded. “Definitely no sex advice.”

Half an hour later they met up with their guide and a small group of other tourists including a few kids at the mouth of the caves. “Okay everyone, my name is Marcus, I’m going to be your tour guide today,” he said. “We’re just waiting for a couple more people so we’ll give them about five more minutes and we’ll get started.”

“Nope! Hey! No need to wait! We’re here!”

“No…” Kensi said in quiet horror as she and Deeks both turned to see none other than Bill and Carol hustling toward them.

Bill was dressed in his finest vacation dad attire; a pair of cargo shorts with about twenty pockets and socks pulled up to nearly his knees with hiking boots. Carol on the other hand was sporting a necklace that, had it been real, would probably have been worth hundreds if not thousands of dollars and was definitely not standard spelunking attire.

“Bill and Carol Weekes reporting for duty!” Bill said, both of them out of breath. “Sorry we’re late. Had a dog problem.”

“That’s okay,” Marcus said. “All right everyone please listen carefully I’m going to go over a few of the rules for our tour today.” “I cannot believe this,” Kensi said under her breath as she plastered on a smile and answered Carol’s excited wave. “How is this possible?”

“Did you tell Carol our entire itinerary when we met them on the side of the road?” Deeks hissed.

“No! I mean…I mentioned some of the places. But I never expected them to decide to follow us the entire trip!”

“Hi! Please make sure you’re paying attention,” Marcus said pointedly, causing them both to clam up and continue listening to directions about not disturbing or touching anything in the caves and to watch out for low spots in the ceiling. 

“Make certain to watch your step and if you have children with you please keep track of them at all times. We don’t want anybody left behind,” Marcus finished. “Now you can all follow me single file as we enter the caves.”

Try as they might Kensi and Deeks ended up directly in front of Bill and Carol and once they were inside there wasn’t really any space to move further up in the group. “What a surprise,” Bill said, clapping Deeks so hard on the shoulder that he almost stumbled into a stalagmite.

“Yeah it really is,” Deeks said.

“Well you know we were just thinking about how wonderful it would be to see these caves so we rushed right over here and wouldn’t you know, we made it just in time!” Carol said excitedly.

“Once my Carol gets an idea you can’t get her off it!” Bill chuckled. “She wants to see a bunch of old rocks, a bunch of old rocks it is!”

They proceeded through the entire tour with Bill cracking jokes and elbowing Deeks in the ribs like they were old pals, while Carol oohed and aahed with every new rock formation. They’d opted to take the longer tour, and Kensi regretted every single second. The caves were beautiful, but the company was not.

By the time they exited the last cave Kensi had a raging headache and Deeks looked more sour than she’d ever seen him. The only saving grace was that Bill and Carol hadn’t obtained a parking slot within the park, but instead had needed to park at a separate campsite nearby. “Oh please come on over for dinner, I’m making beef stew,” Carol pleaded as they walked down the trail.

“Next time,” Deeks said. “The little lady’s got a headache, gotta get her home.”

“You two are racking up quite the number of rainchecks!” Carol said. “All right then, have a good evening. Toodles!”

With a little wave she and Bill scooted away to hopefully go wreak havoc on some new neighbors.

“Have I mentioned that I hate them?” Kensi asked, rubbing at her temples.

“Me too.” Deeks wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Come on. Let’s get you back so you can take a nap and get rid of that headache.”

She woke an hour later feeling considerably better. When she sat up she found Deeks sitting at the table, laptop in front of him. “What are you doing?” she asked as she sat up.

“Sending pictures of Bill and Carol to Eric so he can run them through facial rec.”

She sat up. “What?!”

“Did you see that necklace Carol was wearing today?” Deeks asked. “She didn’t have that on the other day.”

“Women change their jewelry Deeks.”

“Remember the cruise ship? And Hawaii? And Jacksonville? When you just knew something was up?” He looked at her pointedly. “And your loving husband humored you and you turned out to be right and we took down the bad guys together?”

She rolled her eyes and scooted to the edge of the bed so she was closer to him. “Yes, I remember. Are you saying it’s my turn to trust your intuition?”

“I just feel like something’s up. We’ll run the background check and then we’ll know.”

“And then we can continue our vacation in peace?” She bent over and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, giving him a kiss on the cheek.

“Yes, then we can continue in peace.”

They’d just finished dinner when Eric called. “Hey Eric, you’re on speaker,” Deeks said, setting down his fork.

“Hi Eric!” Kensi said.

“Hey Kens, how are the parks?”

“Gorgeous. We’re totally loving it.”

“That’s awesome. So listen Deeks, I ran background checks on both Bill and Carol Weekes and they came back pretty clean. A couple parking tickets here and there, but no arrests, no domestic disturbances, nothing that would make them seem at all suspicious.”

Kensi shot Deeks a pointed look. “You’re sure Eric?” Deeks asked. “No incidences of dog violence?”

“Um…no?” Eric asked confused. “I didn’t specifically check for that though.”

“That’s okay,” Kensi said. “Thanks Eric, we appreciate it.”

“You’re welcome.”

“You didn’t mention this to anybody, right?” Deeks asked.

If he had, they’d never hear the end of it. “No I didn’t, but is everything okay?” Eric asked, tone turning concerned.

“Yep, everything’s great, just my paranoia kicking into overdrive,” Deeks said quickly.

“Are you sure? Sam and Callen could be there in—“

“Bye Eric!” Deeks hung up. “How long do you think he’ll hold out before Callen and Sam interrogate it out of him?”

“Depends,” Kensi said. “If they’re at the mission right now we probably have until tomorrow morning. If they’re not, we might have until tomorrow night.”

“We could ditch our phones and turn off the wifi.”

“Eric would just track our plates. They know our basic plan, we won’t be hard to find. Was it worth it?”

“I guess.” He shook his head. “I just really had a feeling something was up with those two.”

She reached across the table for his hand. “It’s okay if you’re losing your touch. You are getting older.”

“Hey!”

She stood, pulling him along with her. “Come on old man. The stars are waiting. Unless it’s past your bedtime already?”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Pretty soon you’ll be wearing cargo shorts and talking about how the price of cable keeps going up…”

He growled catching her around the waist and hoisting her over his shoulder. “Oh, I’ll show you who’s an old man!”

[petrified-teeth]

Holding Me Close

Illinois x Reader

Summary: You have a dream about what would have happened if you kept the monkey statue to yourself, and you wake up crying. Your partner is there to comfort you.

Warnings: some swearing, reference to k!lling Illinois in one of the bad endings, crying

“And this should be it!” The tall adventurer turned back to you with a smile. After a few hours of spelunking in a cave, you two had finally reached the end. It wasn’t an impressive hall, rather small in fact, but there was a pedestal- just big enough for the small statuette held tightly in your hands. “Why don’t you go ahead and place it down, buddy?”

Buddy? You snorted a little bit- he hadn’t called you buddy since way back when, before you two officially started working together. You had to admit, it brought back a little nostalgia, hearing the familiar nickname.

You give him a soft smile, moving the statuette towards the pedestal, when your eyes meet crystal, and suddenly you can’t remember what you were supposed to be doing. It’s too quiet.

And all at once, it’s too loud. Screaming and hollering from animals you can’t even see- it echoes in the dark tunnels, and you stumble back a bit, looking around in every direction for some source of the noise.

“Hey, buddy, you- you feeling’ alright?” Illinois’s voice breaks through the screaming, and you try to look back towards him, as he reaches for you. You try to reach for him, but your body pulls you back. “Woah, woah, easy there, tiger. I wasn’t going in for the kiss!”

You ‘re about to snap back at him- you’d certainly like that, wouldn’t you?- but your mouth doesn’t open. Sound doesn’t come out. Try as hard as you might , you can barely even get a squeak out. The idol in your hands seems to get heavier, dragging you down the harder you try to push it away.

“H-Hey, hey- Look at me, look at me!” With all the strength in your body, you finally turn your gaze towards him. He seems relieved.

“Do you remember when I told you not to look into the monkey’s eyes?”

You remember. Your body answers for you though, shaking your head no. He seems almost shocked by that answer.

“O-Oh, okay- Well, I did, and I was just wondering if maybe you wanted to stop looking in the monkey’s eyes...” He gives you a warm, genuine smile this time.

Again, your head shakes no, and you pull the statuette up again. The crystal monkey’s eyes shine a bright red- you were certain that wasn’t what it looked like before. Everything seemed to echo around you louder. Desperately, you try to scream his name, shout, do anything to get him to notice and knock this fucking statue out of your hands.

“Are you hearing noises, maybe crazy monkey noises?”

You weren’t sure how he noticed- maybe he heard them too? If he did, he was certainly good at playing off like everything was alright.. Another head shake from your body, that didn’t seem to be yours anymore. He sighed, and started to move closer towards you.

“Okay, listen pal, I think you’re not quite feeling like your-“ You’re pushed further away from him. A red ring starts to form around your vision, and you’re absolutely certain that you don’t like where this is going.

“self..” There’s almost a hint of sadness in his tone, and if you had been able to look into his eyes, maybe you’d have seen it there, too.

“Maybe you’d like to give... me.. the monkey statue?”

Again, he reaches towards you, towards this curse held tightly in your grasp, and you’re filled with relief. It’s almost over. He’ll just take the statue from you, and all this noise would fade away. He’d tease you, annoy you and make you feel guilty for looking, but you two would head back to camp, and-

“(Y/n)?”

Your grip tightens. Your eyes lock onto him. Your body is rushing forward, and before you know it, you’re lifting it above your head and-

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

You wake up with a sob, sitting up in your sleeping bag and burying your face in your hands. You had hoped it would be enough to keep yourself quiet but of course, the world had other plans.

“(Y/n), you doin alright in here?” Illinois was standing at the entrance of your tent, with his head poking through the entrance. Quickly, you tried to wipe away the tears before he could see.

“D-Doing just fine, Illy!” you said, forcing a smile. You could tell he didn’t believe you, and he made his way inside the tent, sitting down across from you.

“Come on, I new I was handsome, but I didn’t realize you’d cry over me~”

You knew he was just trying to crack a joke, and cheer you up, but the wording he chose only served to bring the tears back to your eyes, not going unnoticed by him.

“Hey hey hey, don’t cry, don’t cry!!” Illinois scooted forward a little, placing his hands on your shoulders. “C-Come on, it was just a joke, I’m sorry!”

Even though everything in him was screaming to just back away, that things would be better in the morning, that he shouldn’t try to help- he suddenly moved forward and pulled you into a tight hug.  Finally, finally, you let everything out, clinging to him and sobbing into his shoulder.

What felt like hours went by, though it was likely only a few minutes, with your adventuring partner just holding you close and rubbing your back soothingly, letting you cry, whispering little words of kindness into your ear. Every “shh, i’ve got you.“ and “you’re gonna be alright, darlin’.” helped calm down the storm of emotions ripping through your head. Eventually, your sobs had turned into small sniffles, and eventually, nothing.

“You wanna tell me what that was all about?” Illinois finally spoke up, tone soft.

“B-Bad dream..” You hid your face in his shoulder, thankful he couldn’t see your face. You were certain you looked like a mess- eyes puffy from crying, face red and flushed. You really didn’t feel like getting teased for that right now. He was probably already going to give you hell for crying over something as small as a nightmare-

“Do you wanna... talk about it?” Oh. You hadn’t really expected that.

You hesitated, but after a minute or so of debating, you told him everything. About the idol possessing your body, about how scared you were, how you tried to call out to him- about how you killed him. Not once did he interrupt, or make fun of you, he just held you. You were thankful for it.

Illinois, on his end, was shocked.

“So, you were scared of... hurting me?“ He spoke quietly after a moment. “Not being possessed, not being stranded in a cave, you were worried.... about me??”

He could feel you nod.

“Why?”

He couldn’t believe he said it. Illinois, handsome adventurer extraordinaire, who didn’t need or want anyone... wanted to know why you cared so much?

“You... you matter to me, Illinois. You’re my friend, my partner, a-and the thought of hurting you... I can’t bear it! Y-You putting yourself at risk during our adventures is one thing, b-but the thought of me being the one to throw you into harm’s way... I care about you too much to let that happen, I...” You didn’t say anything else.

You moved to pull yourself out of the hug, figuring you’d taken up enough of his time, but he wouldn’t let you. Instead, he held you tighter, this time burying his face in your shoulder. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had held him like this, like he was the one who might disappear if they let go, and he certainly couldn’t remember the last time someone had admitted they actually cared about his well-being when he was with them.. You could just barely make out his next words.

”Thanks, for.. for caring..”

Without another word from either of you, you rubbed his back soothingly, taking in his warmth. And if you could hear the sounds of soft sobbing or felt the dampness of your shirt right around where he was resting his head, well, you certainly weren’t going to mention it.

[christianserver]

Spelunking

Another g/t vore, this time with an actual giant, from the pred’s perspective.

Kansha shifted in her clearing as she saw Isaac enter it, a smile lighting up her face as she bent down to his level, tilting her head to the side in curiosity as she noticed he was holding a large bundle of rope. “Hellu,” she chirped, laying down on the ground. She winced as one of her legs slammed into a tree and knocked it down, scattering any birds that were nearby as it crashed into the ground. She was always so clumsy. Good thing she stayed in the forest, where she wouldn’t hurt anyone.

“Hey, Kan,” Isaac said, shifting the arm that was holding the rope. “How are you doing?”

“Lonely without you,” she replied. “So, what’s the rope for?” Isaac spluttered slightly, trying to come up with words to answer with.

“I... um... want to go explore a cave,” he said, making Kansha suspicious. He’d explored plenty of caves without being embarrassed. “A certain... type of cave.”

“No need to be nervous,” Kansha chuckled, poking him in the chest gently, causing Isaac to stumble backwards a foot. “Just tell me.”

“I want to explore your stomach,” he said suddenly, looking at the ground in an embarrassed manner.

Kansha paused in thought. “But that’s for people I don’t like,” she said, feeling like this was wrong. She ate jerks, not friends.

“I have rope, I’ll tie it around a tree or something so I won’t fall, and you’ll be able to pull me out,” Isaac protested, holding up the rope. Kansha frowned.

“But it’s... not right,” she replied, swallowing thickly.

“It’ll be okay,” Isaac reassured her, putting a tiny hand on her massive one. “How about we try it out, and if you really don’t like it, you can just pull me out?” he suggested.

Kansha hesitantly nodded. “Kay.” She settled down on the ground, watching Isaac tie the rope around his waist, then around on of the larger trees on the edge of the clearing, walking up to her face.

“Say ahh,” Isaac joked, and Kansha chuckled before opening her mouth as wide as she could. Isaac ducked and crawled inside, using her teeth as firm handholds to help him in before he started to crawl along her tongue. He tasted like plants and herbs, and Kansha shifted her tongue slightly, accidentally pressing him against the roof of her mouth.

“Howwy,” she apologized, lowering it again. She heard a click, probably Isaac turning on his flashlight.

“It’s okay, don’t worry,” Isaac said, patting her tongue like it was a pet or something. He crawled to the back of her throat, and she could feel him poking around at the edge of it. It tickled, and Kansha felt the urge to sneeze or retch him out, pushing it down. She felt more weight in her throat, and instinctively swallowed, her muscles pulling Isaac down towards her stomach. But then it stopped right at the edge, causing the urge to sneeze or retch to rise up again. “Can you sit up a bit, so I don’t hit the stomach acid right away?” Isaac’s muffled voice came from in her chest. She obeyed, sitting up and straining the rope until she scooched closer to the tree, leaving a shallow ditch in the dirt behind her. Then she swallowed again, pulling Isaac fully into her stomach. She felt the rope pressing against her throat and tongue, barely resisting the urge to chew on it where it touched her teeth. She could feel Isaac at the top of her stomach, probably dangling from the rope, one hand pressed into the side of her stomach. “Wow, this isn’t as big as I thought it would be,” Isaac’s muffled voice said from her belly.

“It stretches,” Kansha replied, struggling a bit to speak without closing her mouth. She didn’t want to accidentally sever the rope.

“Cool. Huh, there’s a half-digested bush in here... Ack!” she heard Isaac exclaim, and felt a splash in her belly. Kansha inwardly panicked and grabbed the rope, pulling at it to get Isaac out before something happened to him. He pressed against her throat, barely fitting and bringing the urge to swallow again. She fought against it and pulled him out roughly, her heart racing in panic and breathing a little heavily. She had been holding her breath when she pulled him up. She looked over Isaac worriedly, but he seemed okay. Soaked in her saliva, but fine. She let out a sigh of relief.

“Sorry, I dropped my flashlight,” Isaac said, scratching at the back of his head.

“Oh good, I thought something had happened to you,” Kansha said, holding him close to her chest and feeling his heartbeat and breathing against her skin.

“Did you dislike that? Should we never do that again?” Isaac asked, squirming slightly from her tight grip. She eased it up slightly.

“It was weird, but was kinda enjoyable. Maybe we can do it again in the future,” she said, using her nails to easily break the rope and roll onto her side, still holding Isaac close. “What did you think of it?”

“It was fun, like exploring a wet and living cave,” he replied. “Was a little scary when you were hauling me back out, little rough.” He shivered slightly, the air, Kansha’s chilly hands, and his damp clothes conspiring together to freeze him. He wriggled out of her grasp and searched through his bag, grabbing a towel and drying himself off slightly, then wrapping the towel around himself like a blanket to help shield him from the air.

“Yeah, sorry,” Kansha said. “Do you want a lift home?” she asked as she watched him shiver slightly, wishing her hands were warm.

“Yes, please, thank you,” Isaac nodded. She held out her hand, and he climbed on. Kansha cupped him in her hands and stood up, her shoulders just above the treeline as she started walking him home. She tried to cause as little collateral damage as possible, but there was only so much she could do when she was 5 stories tall. She tucked Isaac away inside her cleavage to help protect him from the branches she was breaking through with every step, and also figured it’d help keep him warm.

She came within a mile of the small town he lived in, and crouched down underneath the treeline, accidentally hip-checking a tree and causing it to tilt to the side before she grabbed it to stop. Then she used her free hand to pull Isaac out, setting him on the ground. Isaac looked at the tree she was holding upright, and chuckled.

“Looks like the Leaning Tower of Pisa,” he joked. Kansha blinked with a blank expression, not having any idea what he was talking about.

“Okay, now shoo,” she chuckled, waving a hand towards his town. “Before someone spots me.”

Isaac smiled at her warmly. “Fine, bye!” he said, waving goodbye as he walked through the forest back towards his town.

“Buh-bye,” Kansha called back, smiling a little sadly. She always disliked it when he left, but he had a life to live, a job, a family. Stuff she couldn’t have. She stood back up to her full height, reaching up and pulling broken branches from her hair in annoyance. Nothing like a tree’s worth of branches to ruin your hair. She headed back home, leaving a bunch of broken branches and half-fallen trees in her wake.

[wordsnstuff]

31 Days of Horror - Wordsnstuff October Writing Challenge

This is also available on wordsnstuffblog.com!

– The monthly challenges are back by popular demand! These are all a bit more detailed than usual so I hope you all enjoy this one. I look forward to seeing all of your guys’ responses here using the hashtag #wordsnstuffhorror and over on Instagram, where you can tag me @ writingandsuch.

This challenge begins on October 1st, but I thought I would give you guys some time to plan stuff out, because you may need to switch some days around to accommodate your schedule. You’re free to do one day’s challenge on another day if your schedule doesn’t allow enough time to complete that day’s challenge. Best of luck to you!

Patreon || Ko-Fi || Masterlists || Work In Progress || Studyblr || Studygram

☼ Prompt List ☼

Write a scene of a horror story with your 3 favorite actors as the main characters

Write a story in which the main character gets trapped within an uncommon object

Write about the creepy people who are buying your childhood home

After finally building up courage and killing your husband, you think life is going to look up. The night after you bury him in the desert, he shows up at your place of work looking alive as ever.

A biologist clones his daughter that tied in a tragic accident, but the person she matures to become is not his daughter..

A woman goes to bed with her child between her and her husband, only to wake up the next morning and find only a note on their side of the bed saying “you have 24 hours to right your wrong”

A serial killer volunteers at the local annual haunted house and is tasked with making props

All power in technology and machinery suddenly and mysteriously goes out, leaving the world in a planet-wide blackout

You are the first astronaut to find out what happens when you’re consumed by a black hole when your ship runs out of power and drifts for many years into the cold depths of space

A burglar attempts to steal from the cash register of a haunted hotel that is run by the sadistic ghosts trapped within.

A spelunker travels to a rarely-explored cluster of caves and experiences some unexplainable events before falling and passing out. When he wakes up, he returns to his hometown, but quickly notices that the people are acting.. different.

You’re a diver for a laboratory that researches sunken ships as they deteriorate over time. You’re sent on the most dangerous mission of your career in order to bring back samples from a ship that sank 300 years ago, only to reach the depths and find it completely intact.

You stay in an old Irish castle with your spouse expecting it to be mildly haunted, but the staff seems to be trying very hard to look inconspicuous.

A man finds some old 16mm film of family home video and in every single one, there’s another little boy that he nor his family has any memory of knowing.

The whole town is gathered in a park to witness the eclipse, and when it arrives, everyone is amazed. However, the novelty has long since worn off by the third day in the dark

You’ve spent your career researching the titanic’s lost passengers, identifying who the victims of the tragedy were. You purchase a storage unit full of old artifacts that someone had collected from ship-wreck sites, and find a rusty old chest full of bones. When you do a DNA test on one of them, you find out it belongs to one of the bodies that had never been recovered.

You fall asleep in front of the TV one night and wake up at 3 AM to a loud sound coming from it. You open your eyes to see someone shouting at you through the screen, begging you to help them. Static abruptly takes over the screen.

It’s 1865 and you live in a small town. A man shows up in your small community claiming that his sideshow has an incredible attraction opening that night. You’re the only one to attend, and he promises that it’ll be a sight you’ll never forget.

You are stuck in a dream experiencing fairytales in the role of the princess, but you quickly learn that you’re in the Grimms’ version.

You visit a medium as a joke with your date, and you play along as she asks you questions. However, she grows somber all of a sudden and asks to see your hand, telling you that she hears something strange. When she grasps it, she begins to choke and dies.

A woman wakes up from a coma in a seemingly friendly hospital, but when she leaves her room at night and curiously peeks into some other rooms, she finds out that every other patient in the building is already dead.

Every child in a small town is affected by a disease unlike anything ever witnessed. Except your son.

You find a small metal object on a trail when hiking one evening, and you take it home to end up finding it in a new place every time you’ve left the house.

You enter a hidden room in the home you’re about to buy. It’s empty and the white walls are covered in tiny photos of people you’ve never seen. Thousands of them. You touch one as you’re examining them and you’re transported to that moment. You witness the people in the photo die, unable to do anything to stop it.

You find a CD sitting on your desk when you come home from work one day. When you pop it into your laptop, it plays a short video that quickly cuts out and crashes your computer. The next morning, you wake up to a note where the CD had been left saying “thank you for freeing me. I’m sorry for what comes next.”

A chain email is circulating around the internet like an infectious disease. 30 days after you first hear of it on the news, warning not to open it due to the image attachment being a graphic photo of a confirmed murder victim, mass murders begin to take place all over the world.

A new restaurant opens in your hometown and the owners are a sweet old couple who’ve dreamt of opening their own diner since they were young. People in the town start disappearing, and you, the town detective, notice that they were all last seen exiting that restaurant.

You wake up in a hospital and the first thing you see is a doctor holding a needle and squeezing your ankle. You try to move your hand but your muscles won’t budge. The doctor says “I’m very sorry for the pain you’re about to endure, but you must be awake for us to monitor your physical reactions to this procedure.” You have no idea what he’s talking about.

You enter your home one evening after work to see that your walls are covered In photos of you that you don’t remember being taken.

Your children are dressed up as various horror characters for halloween and when they leave for trick-or-treating, you breathe a sigh of relief that you have an evening of alone-time. However, as soon as they’re out of sight from your view through the window, you hear a knock on the door. The real characters from the horror movies they’ve dressed up as are standing on your porch, and they refuse to leave.

When your mother dies, you are left in charge of your childhood home along with all of her belongings. Going through the last few boxes in the attic, you come across a brick in the wall that’s knocked out of place. When you pull it out, you reach in and pull out the bloodied fabric of a man’s suit and a woman’s gown, and then a box that has photos of you as a kid.. but between two people you’ve never seen.

–

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[theoreticalconstruct]

Hobbies (FFVII, Barret x Tifa, SFW)

Written for Barret x Tifa week. Meant to post it yesterday but I was really busy...

---

"How are you even doing that?"

That was the first thing that came to the big man's mind. Watching Tifa as she climbed up the ruined bits of highway was amazing for him; he couldn't quite figure out where she was finding places to put her feet, even.

Tifa didn't answer until she reached the top, which was probably best. "It's just practice," she said, only slightly out of breath.  "I grew up in the mountains and helped guide people along the paths. Learning to climb was a good idea."

"Seems like." He held out a hand. "You mind if I take a look at the grapples?"

"Sure. They're pretty handy - we didn't have anything this advanced when I was learning." She was flushed with exertion, most of her body wrapped in form-fitting clothes. Protection in case she fell, she'd said. Made sense to him - get something caught on the way down, you could end up with a broken arm. Or worse. "Keep your hand away from the trigger. Those things pack a punch."

"Yeah, looks like it..." He took a look, studying it. Fairly lightweight, for how strong it was. Definitely nice. "These would've been real nice to have in the mines," he said, half to himself.

"Mines?" She tilted her head. "You never talk about it much. You used to go into caves a lot, huh?"

"Natural ones? Only sometimes. More of a hobby." He smiled. "You can see I ain't much of a spelunker. Too big to get through the tight squeezes. Still, I liked looking at some of the natural caves. The mines were different - we had to blast the caverns open an' then shore 'em up. Make sure nobody got hurt. Wasn't too bad at demo work, if I do say so myself."

"So you were good at making things go 'boom?' Seems appropriate." She grinned back, and he couldn't help but smile at the joke too. "So, maybe someday we can go out and find a cave. Not as many of those around here."

"Sure thing, if you promise to teach me how to climb." He looked up at the wall. "That might come a little more handy here in Midgar."

"That's true. Mountains are a little different from places like this, but not as much as you'd think." She offered her a hand. "Deal?"

"Deal." He put the grapple back in her offhand before clasping the one she offered. "Might be a little tougher teaching a one-armed man the ropes, though."

"I think we'll manage."

[t100ficrecsblog]

an interview with blueparacosm (they/them)

what are you working on right now? right now i’m working on a multi-chapter merlin au (murphamy, duh). murphy as the sorcerer, bellamy as the prince, octavia as the half-sister sorceress, lexa as the painfully vague great dragon, you get the gist.

what’s something you’d like to write one day? i’d love to write a big canonverse adventure story with murphy and bellamy. i love the idea of a story of about 35k words of them traveling together, getting to know each other better, and having all the conversations they should be having in canon. hopping planets, anomaly shenanigans, cave spelunking, bardo breakout, whatever the hell etherea ends up being. mostly just because i want a snow kiss on nakara. i won’t lie to you. just something big and colorful and fun. the works. if i do end up writing it, it’ll be after the show is over and all these new weird settings have been? fleshed? i forget the phrase. surely it’s not ‘fleshed’… ed’s note: they mean ‘fleshed out’, probably.

what is the fanwork you’re most proud of? definitely “alone with you.” i’m used to writing kind of absurd and fast-paced stories and “alone with you” stands out to me as one of my more genuine fics that takes its time, and i was really surprised by how well that change of pace went over with people who read it. i really wrote that one for myself, it was almost a vent fic about depression and comfort and nature and solitude and other loser dork shit, and so to see that people resonated with its themes was so heartwarming and encouraging. i even had a few people tell me they were laying around, reading it outside, feeling comforted and calmed by the mossy rock of it all. so i suppose it’s my favorite because of the great response to it, and because it was so different from anything else i’ve written and was basically just me testing the waters to see if people would mind if i spent more time on imagery and character development and yet, apparently turned out actually readable. who would’ve thunk?

why did you first start writing fic? god, i must have been 14? so when s2 was airing, and i’d never read or written fanfic or even been part of a fandom, i just loved murphy so much that i had to talk about it with someone, so i joined twitter and inevitably found ao3. and i found i loved fics and i’ve always liked writing but didn’t know what to do with stories after i’d written them, so i thought i’d try my hand at writing and posting something. i think i got a pretty good response on my first few fics (orphaned since then because… good god) for a 14 year old with shitty grammar and a weird writing style and terrible dialogue but a lot of enthusiasm, and i thought it was so much fun to share my ideas and get nice feedback from others, so i kept going. :)

what frustrates you most about fic writing? i’ll be real with you dog: i never feel good enough. i swear i could write a fic with 1000 kudos and 1000 lovely comments and i would still think i could’ve and should’ve done better. it’s easy to forget we do this for fun and for free and that i could be a hell of a lot worse. at a certain point, i think my understanding of what makes a good story surpassed my actual writing ability, so now i’m scrambling to catch up and write something i’m proud of again. fingers crossed for that merlin au.

what are your top five songs right now? “those who can’t, cheat” by clarence clarity “georgia on my mind” by microwave “eggshell” by runnner “nice house” by joy wave “gay in the south”by susto

what are your inspirations (books, songs, other fic)? my inspirations are usually shows for structure and short stories for tone/style! my attention span is pathetic so i barely ever read books anymore which is … not promising for a wannabe writer and i should probably get that figured out if i want to continue improving but we’ll cross that bridge when i am prepared to admit i have arrived at it. but, mostly shows. i love watching tv and am constantly analyzing shows’ story structure and making notes of what i thought worked and what i didn’t like. getting a masterclass in suspense from black sails right now. all television is educational television if you try hard enough.

what attracts you to writing about Murphamy? what first attracted you?murphamy has such good bones. of course i’d want them to be canon, but their personalities mesh so well in the focused and organized and fun world of fics. there’s just something different about them in that they make every single AU their bitch. there’s nowhere they don’t shine and even if they weren’t already my only concern in the world, their adaptability makes them the perfect control variable for trying out a million different writing styles and lengths and genres. pirate au you got it. wizard au hell yeah. sports au let’s hear it for the boys. canon divergence release the beasts. fuck it i wrote them as witnesses to the crucifixion of jesus christ once and it wasn’t even that weird. they’re my favorite lab rats.

besides Murphamy, what’s your favorite ship on t100? i can honestly say i don’t care for anyone else. there are plenty of pairings i could boogie with and plenty of murphy ships that i joke about but none i’m actively rooting for or seeking out fan-made content about. murphamy or bust. i suppose i liked clexa, sea mechanic, and jonty well enough when they were in their prime but all good and gay things must apparently come to an end.

besides Murphy, who’s your favorite character on t100? oh sweet jasper… sweet jasper come home to me…

would you ever write a sheidheda/murphy fic? what about other rarepairs? i absolutely would. in fact i’ll do it right now. a story about those two going head to head would be a literal gold mine do you think this is a funny silly little game? it’s not. the tension between murphy and an ancient sexy demon is something that can actually be so personal but my mutuals are getting increasingly angrier with me for talking about it. not to say i’m stopping. as for other rare pairs i’ve been genuinely interested in ECHORI lately you know like an insane person. and i loved zev/murphy. it’s a cold, cruel world we live in. wouldn’t be opposed to one last gabriel/murphy hurrah before the show ended either. OH! OH! and someone should write some wells/murphy. not me because i’m writing sheidurphy.

what are some things you’d like to recommend? if anyone has a food lion near them, in the bakery they have these boxes of little sugar cookies and they’re only like four dollars but there’s like 25 cookies in there it’s unfathomable. 

also these baller writers on ao3: sapphictomaz, hopskipaway, oogaboogu, sadie18, and maunwocha! 

and for my finale i’m gonna plug my murphy playlist, and my murphamy playlist. because sharing is caring and music is good and i’m proud of them.

it was my absolute joy to interview blueparacosm! you can find them primarily on Twitter at slugcities. my favorite blueparacosm fics are: thirty-five paper frogs, an exploration of Murphy and Jasper’s friendship while they’re on the Ring together; the fantastic it’s good to be me, an absolutely poetic examination of prime!Murphy at the end of season 6; fish boy, the heart-wrenching mermaid!Murphy fic; and lastly, the old magic oddities show, a really weird fic that shows off the adaptability of these characters in a wholly new light.