#well i've been having a bad time but no Cogent excuse

[damnation-if]

once again writing things to distract from the bad times... this is the Twilit version of that previous scene i posted with Heluur hehe. (to clarify, it’s a scene some mcs Might get quite a few chapters ahead based on some choices, this time if you happen to be particularly close to Twilit). Definitely Don’t click this if you’re concerned with avoiding spoilers!

(the beginning part will be the same as the start of the other one lol so i cut most of it. there’s also Quite a trigger for body horror in this one though lmfao so bear that in mind<3)

“You’re going to regret this,” you add, as another lightning strike splits the sky, “but only for a very short time.”

[[And then the doors are rocked on their hinges by a series of powerful knocks…]]

A shadow seems to fall across the room, and you almost have to restrain yourself from laughing–the idea of Malkorath knocking to enter //anywhere// is utterly ludicrous, let alone a //church//. They seem to agree with you, if the loud, long-suffering sigh you can hear from outside is any indication.

“Look, I’m not knocking again. If you don’t open the doors, I’m just going to break them down.”

This causes some amount of nervous shuffling among the Inquisitors, also caught off-guard, before their leader rallies, holding up his holy symbol in the direction of the entrance.

“You shall not enter this holy place-”

Whatever the rest of what he was going to say might have been, it’s drowned out by the clamour of Malkorath crunching the great oaken doors in half like a matchstick and stomping inside. The candles are all snuffed out one by one, filling the church with darkness, and the air around you doesn’t taste so foul anymore (to you, anyway; your captor is far less impressed).

You wouldn’t have thought that Malkorath was close enough to affect you in that way yet…

“So //this// is what the inside of one of these looks like,” Malkorath muses, looking around, as they ignore the Inquisitors and casually brush an entire row of pews out of their way. “I’m not sure it’s really worth all the fuss, if I’m being honest. You still with us, $pcname?”

That question, the same one they asked you on that first day they took you to Hell, is almost enough to make you smile, despite everything.

“I’ll be better once you get me out of here,” you tell them, finding it somewhat amusing that the truth-spell agrees with you on that point, too.

“That’s what I’m here for,” Malkorath replies nonchalantly, seemingly unperturbed by the obviously aggressive intentions of the band of Inquisitors. “I have strict orders not to-”

One of the bolder of your captors lunges at Malkorath, spear outstretched, but they dodge it easily. Unfazed, the Inquisitor lifts up their own holy symbol, presenting it directly to Malkorath’s face, and you feel a twinge of worry–you don’t actually know how they’ll fare against holy magic, or if they knew they’d be facing it, coming here.

“You will burn in the light, demon filth!” the Inquisitor screams, voice shaking with holy zeal.

[[But nothing happens.]]

Malkorath’s grin is vicious and toothy as they reach out and pluck the holy symbol from the now-shaking Inquisitor’s fingers. “Will you look at that?”

A few of the others exclaim in shock and terror as the demon crushes the metal into a small, crumpled ball and tosses it aside, while their leader tries valiantly to stand his ground.

“I’ve always heard it said that the little rank-and-file murderers like you don’t have the strength to use your powers in the presence of archdemons,” Malkorath continues, huffing in amusement. “Seeing it up close is so very good for my soul, I have to say.”

An archdemon? Your heart begins to beat faster in your chest, relief filling you just like the pure, clean air that you’re now breathing. Twilit is here… and even closer nearby than Malkorath, it would seem. They came here to save you…

“I will slay you,” the lead Inquisitor is saying, his voice quavering, as he clutches tightly at the hilt of his sword, “for the glory of my god!”

Malkorath just laughs at him. “Not me, soldier boy. The archdemon is behind you.”

He whirls around at Malkorath’s words, petrified eyes jerking around the room looking for anything he might consider an archdemon, before finally alighting on something that seems to be down near your feet. Carefully, fighting against your captor’s terrified resistance to seeing what the others are staring at, you lift your head as much as you can, eventually spotting a single moth balanced delicately on the toes of your (her) booted foot, milky-white wings fluttering slightly as the air shifts.

The Inquisitor closest to you draws a hand back to swat at it at the exact same moment that the leader begins yelling at him not to touch it.

You barely even feel the blow of his hand connecting with your foot, Twilit apparently absorbing most of the force of it, and although you know Them well enough to be sure that They’re hardly in any danger, you can’t stop your stomach from lurching at the sight of the lumpy grey viscera coating his hand as he stumbles back away from you.

“Is it dead?” one of the others whispers, but you think that the anguished shriek that escapes from his lips as he falls backwards to the floor probably answers their question succinctly enough.

[[You can’t really say that you’re particularly surprised, but it IS kind of nice to have confirmation of that fact…]]

Dull grey ooze begins to spread across his hand, creeping under the sleeves of his coat, while inky black tendrils emerge underneath his skin, the palm of his hand swelling and bulging as something builds up beneath it. He screams again, fumbling for his sword with his other hand, but you can already see the black lines spreading up the sides of his neck and onto his cheeks–you don’t think him cutting off his hand would even //help// at this point.

“He’s corrupted… kill him!” the leader commands, obviously coming to the same conclusion as you, but all but three of the Inquisitors have already turned and fled.

Malkorath appears beside you while the others are distracted, ripping the manacles free from the altar beneath you just as they did the first time; the man who swatted at Twilit is now writhing on the ground as more and more bulges appear all over his body, the skin distending and slackening in some places and tightening into strange coils in others. The leader, swearing when he sees that he’s practically on his own, goes to kill the man himself, plunging his sword deep into the man’s torso, and then twice more into his stomach for good measure.

You sit up just in time to be able to see why the Inquisitors all scream in horror.

Emerging from the wound just below the heart (if the heart is even there anymore, you suppose) are fawn-skinned fingers, attached to a broad-palmed hand. A wrist follows after them, and then a forearm, the hapless man convulsing violently as Twilit reaches out from inside him, grasping at the pew beside him in the same way you would if you were trying to climb out of a deep hole, or maybe a well. Their fingers are sticky with that same grey ooze and the sloughing of blood and other fluids you’re not sure you want to think about, and the wood of the pew begins to collapse under Their touch, rotting and warping from the mere contact.

“H-how…” the lead Inquisitor manages to gasp out in between bouts of gagging, as Twilit’s other arm begins to emerge from what you think might have once been the man’s mouth.

“Ugh,” Malkorath replies from beside you, rolling their eyes. “Don’t ask Them that. They’ll //explain//!”

[[You can’t help but laugh at that. Malkorath’s not wrong…]]

“Your masters have told you that the source of My great evil comes from My envy of your perfect physical forms,” Twilit’s voice says, ringing throughout the darkened church despite the fact that you can’t see anywhere that it could be coming from. “But nothing could be further from the truth. A physical form is at best a temporary inconvenience, and at worst a prison. And if there is any essence of perfection to be found in the flesh that makes you up, it is in how extraordinarily //malleable// it is, under the right conditions.”

As if to emphasise Their point, the man’s body distends so completely that it splits open along some central seam, and They emerge from within, naked and dripping with grey and black ooze, standing up slowly as skin folds itself into more pieces of Them as though the man whose body They just were had been turned inside-out like a piece of clothing to reveal Them on the inside.

“A sculptor does not //envy// the clay from which they create.”

[onetruesporkbot]

Apparently, to some would-be gatekeeper, snarky criticism of bad writing, and snarky memes emphasizing those criticisms, are equal to death threats against creators.

I got notified by email that I was mentioned by someone I don't know, in this really long post about Tumblr users attacking creators, one of whom, allegedly, made threats against the lives. The post included some my past posts, some written, some photoshopped pictures I made, voicing my displeasure about James Tynion IV and his writing (specifically, how bad it is). The post was...not well structured (which may in part be because of Tumblr's format), and was not easy to read...or skim, for that matter. I don't think it's right to threaten a creator's life, so on that much we agree, but calling me out felt more like...

I don't advocate threatening writers or artists, no matter how much I dislike their work. If I find a severe lack of redeeming qualities about said work, I will point it out. If someone wants to disagree with me, that's fine. But to equate "here's why this comic/writer/retcon/story is total crap" with "GRRRR, ME WISH DEATH ON WRITER ME NO LIKE"...is intellectually dishonest on its face.

The post included "orders" for people to "leave the fandom" and "stop buying comics". Funny, since DC's been certainly inviting me to do so with so many terrible decisions for the past decade. Setting aside the erroneous attempt to command a complete stranger you took no time to genuinely engage with (regardless of what excuses were made), I have every right to share a viewpoint you don't have (or like), even if it's about a creator you enjoy. Plenty of people dislike things I like, I just don't make a crusade about it.

Don't lecture me about "thinking the characters were real" (but sure, if they were real, they'd TOTALLY think the way YOU think they would, and that's not a hypocritical fallacy at all). Someone did a bad job; his work made a poor-but-lasting impact on characters he never seemed to "get" as well as he claimed he did. He had absolutely nothing new to say or do with these characters, and warped them into something barely recognizable. They would be done more justice by abandoning the restrictions of pointless, reductive changes and hollow narrative ploys. One of my favorite characters was done horribly, and kept to a horrible standard, for inexplicable reasons. I've been told "everything's fine, they fixed things," only to find...that's not quite the case. I'm apparently supposed to be wildly impressed by minimal efforts in course correction, and just like something because it alleges to have a character I like, and if I don't like it, don't say anything. But I guess I'm crazy and evil for having a personal investment in a character and CARING ABOUT COHERENCY AND COHESIVENESS IN STORYTELLING AND CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT.

If that's not important to you, random blogger-person, then I can't control that. No more than I can control how you seemed to ignore OTHER posts I made, where I was much more diplomatic. But if you're not going to actually attempt to form a remotely cogent argument, and instead make some "rallying cry" to "kick people out" and lump drastically different approaches together...because you think you make the rules?...then you've already lost whatever argument you started.

I will continue criticizing as much as I please, if the mood strikes me. I will not make or endorse death threats, because I don't approve of such actions. However, if my words get a little...harsh...coarse...vulgar, if you will...that is due to factors that are, frankly, none of your business. You come off as one who, like many I've encountered before, choose not to see beyond their own opinions, and instead pretend to understand the opposing side when they clearly don't. Maybe you wrote this in a particular frenzy of emotion and got carried away (it's happened to me, too). But to suggest some Simpsons images and rehashed memes are the same thing as threatening someone's life? That's when you've need to take a few steps back and reassess.

I don't like the crappy, crappy, terribly awful and crappy reinvention for Cassie Cain. I feel she could be written better without that crappy, crappy, terribly awful and crappy reinvention.

Boo.

Freaking.

Hoo.

James Tynion IV may be a super guy at parties, I don't know. But I find him a barely serviceable writer, most of the time, and pretty bad the rest of the time. That is not me wishing or threatening death on him, or anyone. If you like him, go ahead and like him. Me criticizing HIM is not me criticizing YOU. Anyone criticizing anything you like, is NOT an attack on you.

I challenge you to meditate on that fact.

P.S. I actually haven't used Tumblr much for over a year...haven't much felt like it...but someone went and gave me a reason.