#wool Craft Easy

[woolenart]

Women Best Woolen Clothes Online India

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[milkweedman]

Edit: the last option should say "I find most or all of them to be similarly easy"

Also, if you're tied between a couple, pick your favorite

Personally spinning is always the easiest to do when my brain isnt working.

[poodlepincushion]

Mom and Dad! Do a little dance!!

I made these little silly puppets to give to Chili and Bandit’s voice actors since they were guesting at a local convention. I was able to hand them off and they were the sweetest people ever!

After making these puppets I’m dying to make more silly little guys!

[icterid-rubus]

I should have asked for bobbins for my birthday

[themethereoncewas]

Donderdag 26 januari 2023... eindelijk klaar!

[garust]

[bastardclownbaby]

WHERE can I find 35 large silver buttons I'm trying not to use am*zon

[feltandyarn]

4 Easy No-sew Felt Craft To Make Under 5 Minutes

You don't always need to have perfect skills like sewing or other to showcase your creativity. With just a few items, you can easily make these no-sew felt sheet crafts that are fun to make and some of which you can even use as decor items at home.

This no-sew project is an easy way to make felt crafts for adults and children from felt sheets if you are looking for an easy fun craft to make with your family. And as we’ve mentioned above that these crafts don’t require any sewing skills, you can easily make these crafts with ease that too under 5 minutes for each craft

[halcyone-of-the-sea]

Blood-Stained Wool Spun At Midnight (II)

AU MASTERLIST || PART III

PAIRING: Werewolf!Ghost x F!Tailor!Reader (Set in Van Helsing Era/Aesthetic)

WORDCOUNT: 7.7k

WARNINGS: Blood, very intense gore and body horror, angst, mutilation, violence, wounds, blades, death, being hunted, VERY intense religious imagery/references, nudity, protective!Simon, etc.

A/N: All I can say is that I'm sorry...take that as you will

*I do not give others permission to translate and/or re-publish my works on this or any other platform*

He was still watching you when you woke up, groggily blinking and your mouth dry. It was amusing to him, really, how you twisted your lips and furrowed your brows before you shoved your cheek back into the pillow away from the cold light. 

Simon tilts his head and stares—letting you come to your senses while he sits in his chair. He hadn’t moved once, thinking and stewing in questions. 

It wasn’t rare for him to completely forget what he had gotten up to in his…state. More often than not, he remembered only the scent of blood and wind; broken earth and the taste of the moon. This time it was different. 

You were different. 

Simon remembered your scent. Recalls tracking it down as he abandoned all the others in the air. Racing to it with a rapid heart like a simple fool. He knows he held you down, laid his great snout along your neck, and tried to scent you—layer your flesh with him so your sweet fragrance mixed with his own. 

The thought made his lips thin and his hands clench, the blanket sitting tightly wrapped around his waist as his body expanded with a tight-jawed huff. 

There was still a spark of pain in between his legs, but at that, he welcomed the grounding reality of it. In fact, a bit of pride even made his nose twitch. Simon’s lashes caress his cheeks as he blinks at you, shifting his thighs wider as his hands hang off the arms of the chair. 

He hadn’t expected you to come to this forest during his little problem—this could have gone very, very wrong. The man runs a hand over his head, pushing his fingers through his locks and watching you slowly sit up; confusion is seen in the lines on your forehead. 

“Can I ‘ave my fuckin’ clothes back now?” You flinch at the low question, sleepy eyes snapping open and locking onto the nearly nude man in his chair.

The air stalls in your lungs, strangled down as you bite your tongue so hard you taste copper. Brown eyes flicker to your mouth before Simon’s lips move in a thin smirk. 

“C’mon now. Easy, then.” 

“Mr. Riley,” you clear your throat, gawking at the rippling tension in his abdomen and the scars along his pecs. Your entire soul burns as you snap your head away from the image of his face—the first time you’d seen it fully. 

Stubble along a strong jaw; bent nose and carefully crafted lips with pulling disfigurements. 

“You…you’re back,” you push out, fingers intertwining into the sheets. Simon gazes into the sliver of flesh from above the collar of his shirt that you wear, licking at the corner of his mouth before he looks away. 

“And getting cold, Love,” he levels to you. The strips of his own clothes had been thrown on the table, no use wearing them as they offered no coverage. All he had was the blanket. “You hear?”

“Right,” you’re still not looking at him, nervous. Standing quickly, you stubble and brush your hands along the man’s top—flattening it before scampering to grab your clothes from yesterday. 

Ripped and dirty, you drag them to you while having to stand closer to Simon as his knee hits yours. He tenses lightly but doesn’t comment. 

“My apologies, Mr. Riley, I didn’t want to dirty your bed, you see.” Your hands are shaking. “I suppose I could have taken the floor, of course, but I admit, I didn’t think about—”

A hand grabs your one shoe and hands it to you, Simon having stood up and his chest against your shoulder. You still, breath hitching tight. 

You stare at the shoe before your free hand carefully moves out to take it, being side-eyed by an earthen stare and blank expressions. Fingers blush, and you have to swallow a sigh at the heat you feel emanating from Simon’s bareness. 

Taking your shoe back, you clear your throat. “Thank you.”

“No need to apologize—that’s my bloody cross, yeah?” He moves back from you, and your lungs take down air again. You don’t like how you respond to him or his touch. How you’re stuttering and stumbling over words. 

Sure you found him attractive…incredibly attractive, but with the knowledge you now held all of this became jumbled. The memory of your sheer terror flashes, a mad dash and gripping thorns. The murders. Your wounds pulse.

“Mr. Riley?” You ask, lips twisting at his comment. The man rubs a hand over his face, and you notice the bags under his eyes with a small bead of concern. 

“Simon,” he glances at you. “Just Simon. Figure with all I’ve done that’s better than nothing.” A hand hovers over the bottom of your sleeve, pushing it back a smidge to look at the bloodied bandages. “Fuckin’ hell, I do this?” 

He leans closer again, picking at the bandages as you explain. 

“No,” you breathe. You’re taken aback by his attitude—his flickering eyes as they slowly move to look up at you. “No, I ran through some thorns.”

“Can smell the blood.” Simon bluntly eases out, releasing you and taking a step back. “Get dressed—there’s a stream. I’ll get some fresh water.”

Before you can say anything, the man’s walking outside in nothing but a tied towel, the door opening and quickly closing behind him. Gobsmacked, you blink rapidly as you open and close your mouth, pushing your clothes farther into your chest. Inside your ribcage, your heart palpitates; the flesh is an inferno of contained fire. 

“My neighbor is a werewolf,” you breathe, putting a hand to your temple. “Simon Riley is the Ghost. Oh,” you drag. “Where’s the alcohol when you need it?” 

Dressing went quickly, and you hope Whistlejacket is out of the forest and was able to find shelter like you had. It became obvious as you tightened your belt and slipped your silver blade into it, that Simon would not hurt you—not in this state or the other. When you’d woken up, you’d feared that if the man was back in the monster’s place, he would snap at the sight of you. 

Damage control. But now…

“Now I’m just bloody confused,” you huff, glaring down at your one shoe as you wiggle your toes. Back in your skirt and shirtwaist, you frown at the damage done and vehemently avoid looking at Simon’s own scraps. It would only serve to make you angrier.

Pushing your gloves into your pockets, you grimace at the aching in your wrist and legs but push forward until you open the door to a small covering of snow. The world overnight had continued without you, it seemed, and you frown as you wrap your hands across your chest from the chill. 

Wherever you look, the forest rules. It speaks and lives—writhing and bending; this place wasn’t meant for you or your kind. It was meant for monsters. 

But was Simon a monster? 

You find with all the memories you have in your head, you can’t answer that question anymore. Before you can, you need to get answers. 

Real answers.

You wait for the man to return, and he does so with a wooden bucket sloshing liquid over his blanket-skirt. Blinking, you hold open the door and allow him in. He grunts in thanks, running his eyes up and down your outfit. 

“You fell from your horse.” It isn’t a question, but the tone makes it seem like he doesn’t know for sure. Simon places the bucket on the floor and gathers his clothes that you’d folded.

“Miriam’s horse. Yes.” You take down a breath. “Simon?” He stares hard at his shirt, nose twitching and eyes going small. 

The man’s fingers clench over the fabric before he comes back to the present. 

“What is it?” He forces the shirt over his head, blanket holding fast. Simon has to stop himself from shaking as your scent buries itself into his nostrils. A noose around his neck that makes his voice gruff and breathy. 

“You’re going to explain to me what’s going on.” He grunts. 

“Bit complicated, that is—”

“What’s complicated is that I just got chased through the forest by a dog as tall as a damn statue that stands on two legs. Not to mention the strange obsession you have with smelling me.”

“It’s not fuckin’ me,” Simon growls, eyes flashing. You tense and he settles, snapping his head away to glare at the far wall. He grabs for his blanket and you just manage to snap your head up before you see anything besides the very tops of his large hips and the dip of his pelvis. 

The fabric hits the ground and your under-the-skin hellscape spreads all the way to your curling toes. 

“You weren’t supposed to be in here.” The man pulls up his pants, shoving himself into them and pulling the strings tight. “Got distracted.” 

“I apologize for having work to complete,” you huff, still hyper aware of every sound from the man a few feet away. “I wasn’t aware that I’d get favored by a dog.”

A low growl lets you know his displeasure at the comment.

“Dog, yeah?” Simon grunts.

“Am I wrong,” you state dryly, glaring at the ceiling. 

“Bloody mutt can’t compare to me, Love.” The man scoffs and pushes his top into his pants, walking over to his trunk to peel it open and snatch at the pair of large boots inside. 

“Oh,” you breathe, slowly looking back to him and sighing when he’s fully clothed. “I’m so very lucky, Sir.” 

“Would you quit it?” Simon snaps. “Christ, just ask your damn questions. And use the water on your wounds.” 

Rolling your eyes, you walk forward and pull out a chair at the table—grabbing at the bucket and pushing up your sleeves. You tap at your forearms with your fingers, open your mouth as you think, and begin to speak. 

Yet something’s missing. A weight at your side. Something that was there before but is now absent.

Pausing, you blink slowly, finally able to calm yourself and get a handle on your emotions. Looking down at your hip where the comfortable weight of your satchel is supposed to be, you grow tense. 

Wait a second…

Simon pulls out a rough-looking jacket from the trunk, shifting his large arms into it and quickly fixing the collar as he rubs at his chin. 

“...Where’s my bag?” 

The man pauses, hand leaving the last few buttons of his shirt open to glance at you—confusion grows in his eyes. 

“What?” You’re already standing, turning in a circle. 

“My bag,” you say again. “I had it on Whistlejacket but now it's gone. I…must have dropped it when he bucked me off.”

Simon’s jaw clenches, expression going somewhat tight at the mention. “Thought you said you fell.”

You wave a hand and step around the bucket, walking swiftly to the door with your one shoe and intent on trekking back to the path. 

“Same thing,” your lips utter, frowning. “It must have slipped off my shoulder. Hell.” 

You’re only able to put your hand on the barrier before you’re pulled back into a firm chest. You’re reminded of the blanket of fur that had encompassed you just yesterday, and while the sensation might not be the same, the pure muscle underneath is still just as prominent. 

An arm circles your waist and you’re lifted easily.

“Hey!” You shout, but Simon says nothing until you’re dropped back down into the chair and you’re glaring heavily at him. His heat leaves for only a moment before he pulls up your sleeves with his large palms; fingers slipping under the bandages and caressing your skin with scars and calluses.  

Watching, wide-eyed, you grumble out, shocked, “What exactly are you doing, you brute?” 

“Making sure that you don’t get fuckin’ sick if you insist on being difficult.” You pull your head back, lips parted. 

“I’m the difficult one? Simon, you do realize that you turn into a god-forsaken gigantic wolf in your free time?” You’re leveled with an unimpressed look and dead eyes. “Don’t you stare at me like that,” your face burns, nose pointing up. “You know I’m right.”

“You speak too much,” the accent gravels, blunt. 

“Well you kill people too much,” is the answer, and none of the fear that should be there is. It’s as if the second you realized that the Ghost was Simon Riley, the terror had leaked out of you steadily to form annoyance instead. “And rip up all of my work.”

Simon clenched his jaw and reached for the water in the bucket, picking up a rag from the table and dipping it in before closing his fist around the fabric to wring most of the liquid out. 

“I pay you,” he tries, voice hissing. 

Growling, you glare into his head as he presses the rag into your small cuts. “Not enough.”

“Why were you in the forest,” you’re snappily asked. You try not to show how his grasp on your wrist makes you weak to him, the scent of his body so close bleeding into your nostrils. Even Simon seems to react to the close contact, a pulse in his veins making his grip tighten before loosening. Something flashes his deep browns; brows tight on his scarred forehead before he grunts and rolls his shoulders.

“I needed wool from the farmers.” You huff, body lightly shifting on the chair. “Why did you kill all of those hunters?”

“They were trying to kill me.” Tight orbs glance up as the inside of your forearm is soaked with the warmth of his touch—the essence of his inner care. You tilt your head, narrowing your vision. You could believe that, of course, but there was one man you couldn’t.

“And Mr. Lambert?” Simon pauses, chest expanding with a grating sigh. But even he knows you won’t be taking anything short of the truth. 

He shifts his feet, moving back to grasp your ankle and begin peeling at the wrappings there as you blink in surprise at his willingness to help. You rewrap your arm and frown, shivering at the slide of his hand under your calf; yet you can’t stop the shaky inhale you take.

The man delays, half-narrowed eyes turning their attention to you in slow intervals of flicking earth and glinting charcoal. He stares, not blinking, not moving. Exactly like the beast that had waited at the edge of the glade to lock eyes and turn your insides outward—splaying you open like a book and flipping the pages of your mind. 

You don’t know how someone can stare like that, can’t make sense of it. If those brown eyes kept stuck with yours, you wouldn’t find it entirely unpleasant.

Simon grips your leg tighter and blinks, tilting his head away. The rag lets water drip long down your flesh, but it’s wiped away by a thumb before the accented voice graces your eardrums. 

“He was trying to bite you.” You’re torn back to the present, your face and neck tight with burning sin. You clear your throat and re-think the words you’d just heard. 

Silence falls for a moment.

“He…what?” Simon’s lips flicker into some semblance of a smirk. He stands and tosses the rag to the table. 

“Vampire.” It’s like your heart nearly jumps out of your chest. 

A Vampire? Speechless, you stand carefully and turn your head to the side in rapid thought. 

“That’s not…” Simon interjects.

“Pinned him to the tree branch, right?” He had done that. “Never came to visit, ‘cept at night, yeah?” The man shrugs, putting his hands into his pockets. “Could smell it.” Watching. Dead burial-mound eyes. “Didn’t like him comin’ ‘round to bother you.” 

It’s how he explains this that makes you wonder, an internal understanding as you stutter a question.

“You don’t remember things when you’re…like that,” you breathe, “do you?” 

He had said the beast wasn’t him—that had stuck with you. The shock of Mr. Lambert being a monster sunk in, dots connected with thread. It made your shoulders tight to imagine what could have happened if Simon wasn’t there every time the other man was. There was no way you’d be able to fight something like that by yourself. 

The man blinks, and for the first time, he can’t answer that question honestly because now he truly doesn’t know how to. 

Simon hums, looking at the door. 

He only remembered you despite all else. 

“I’ll bring you back to the path,” the man grunts, moving to the door and exiting the hut with a last comment over his shoulder. “Keep the knife on you.” 

Simon slips out of the house, door open and the chilled breeze filtering through. You watch him take a silent deep breath and begin walking into the trees. With one last shaky twitch of your hands, you look at the journal on the desk and dart after him. 

It’s a silent affair until you speak, and Simon had known without a doubt that you would the minute the dark trunks were all around. He guides you with heavy steps.

“Why didn’t you kill me?”

“Don’t know.” A lie. 

“Why did you shove your head under my neck?”

“I don’t know.” A second lie. The man’s tone doesn’t change, a bare grumble as he walks ahead of you.

“What else lives in this forest?” Simon stops walking. The dead air all around you is thick and heavy, like a blanket of uneasy weight; you can put a description to it now, and your last question wasn’t only out of curiosity but a hunch. 

It felt like the very trees were listening when you spoke.

“Things like me. Things that are worse.” Simon turns and gives you a tight look as you stare up at him and barely feel yourself breathe. “So never for one second leave my sight.” He nods his head to your knife in a quick jerk. “And ever lose that if you don’t want to end up on a bloody butcher’s block, eh?”

You nod slowly, swallowing. The man looks like he wants to say more but refrains, making a noise in the back of his throat before he locks onto the shivering of your body. Not even noticing that the cold was getting to you, you had words coming off your lips in small chatterings of teeth. 

“W-Well, if all of the things in this forest will let me live, they can’t be that b-bad.” Squeaking, a jacket is layered over your shoulders, and in a flurry of skirts, you’re picked up into a bridal hold as your hands snap to wrap a thick neck. 

A voice in the shell of your ear.

“They’re not like me, Love.” Your eyes widen. “An’ they won’t take a fancy to you like I ‘ave, hear?” 

He carries you with as much ease as the trunks of fabric for your shop, stepping over rocks and easily stomping up ravines. From the side of his eye, he blinks at you as his smell surrounds your body to coat it just the way he wants it to, even if he hates the instinct with a bitter grudge. 

Why couldn’t you have just stayed away until he came back to the city? When all of his senses were eased back to normal, when the song of the wolf was no longer in his head—that call and primal embrace of fang and claw. 

There was a reason he left, there was a reason he always wore your clothes to keep him here—away from others and not to seek you out. 

Your scent.

The oils on your flesh that press into him and make his head swim; hold you tighter into him to take it in. Simon’s heart pounds, his eyes going small the longer you stay here with him. 

You were both a blessing in the dark and the very phantoms that haunt it at the same time. A hurdle and a stepstool. You made it worse, but, damn him, you also made it better. 

Grunting, Simon shakes his head once, staring straight ahead and willing away the sharp pinch of claws poking from his nail beds. He clenches his jaw as you melt into him, legs swaying with the loping movements of his legs. Your hands around his neck dig into the skin softly, letting it mold around you as you lick your lips and avoid his eyes, shy to this type of chivalry. 

You shivered far less than before. 

“Thank you,” you say, hesitantly. 

Simon huffs a chuckle at the tone. 

The man carries you through the bed of thorns that you remember, and he hikes you farther into his arms until not even a single one thinks to touch you—no sharp drag. Your face gently rests on Simon’s head, the top of his scalp as your nose itches at the feeling of his hair. 

You blink softly, holding on as he moves you back down after the threat is gone.

“What other monsters, Simon?” Your voice is tiny. “What’s out here with us?” He sighs, and you feel it. 

But he doesn’t answer you. 

“When I get you out,” Simon explains. “You don’t come back. You never come back.”

Your heart skips a beat. “And what about you? Do I just…” You trail off, licking your lips. “Do I just let you keep living like this?” 

“Yes.” 

“Simon,” his hands tighten on you in warning, but you continue without fear. “I want to help you. We know each other enough to care, don’t we?” You both make it back to the path and Simon clears off a rock with his foot before placing you down next to the large boulder from yesterday.

Simon turns to look around the area for your bag, glancing at you with thin lips. You grow more serious and ask him again, “Why didn’t you kill me?” 

“It’s nothing that you need to know about,” you’re glared at, though it holds no true venom to it. 

“I have been thrown from a horse,” you stand, pulling Simon’s jacket closer as you spot your lost shawl off in the bushes. “My practice insulted, and most certainly thought dead by now. Mr. Riley, I am not asking you for answers—” You set your jaw. “I am demanding them. So speak and be a good boy.” 

Simon watches you, his face blank and his mouth slightly slackened. He doesn't answer you for a long time, as if put in a trace as his eyes flash with life for a moment. You hear him clear his throat at your last sentence, cheeks gaining a sheen of red that could be played off as a reaction to the cold. 

His stomach flips. 

“It’s your scent,” he says, low and even like a steady promise. You had already started to gather that, at least, so it wasn’t as much of a shock to you—but it was still strange. “It’s like a fuckin’ opium. Can’t get it out of my damn head.” 

Simon speaks as he looks around as if to distract him from what he’s telling you. “Whenever I smell it, it’s like my head’s about to cave in, yeah? Like I can’t think of anything else.” 

He leans over the small hill to where you fell, and he hones in on long three-fingered drag lines along the earth. Simon’s brows pull in, eyes fluttering from one tree to another, his ears twitch. 

You don’t notice, sitting back on the rock and rubbing a hand on the back of your neck as the air changes. 

“But why, Simon? I don’t understand what’s so important about that—besides what soap I use.” You mutter the last bit and groan. “This is hurting my head.” 

“Stop talking.” The forest is dead. No bird wings flapping, no wind, even. No smells besides yours, which makes Simon back up a step. 

Yet, no…no there was something else. It smelled like flesh rot and maggots; a church’s pews that had been laid with black fire.  

You throw up a hand at the man’s comment. “Would you stop saying that to me—!”

A palm is placed on your lips and held there firmly, fingers digging into your cheeks. Simon’s eyes bore into you, far darker than they had been at any other time than when you’d been face-to-face with the wolf. You take in a swift breath, hand snapping up the wrist and gripping it in shock. 

The snow begins falling again, flakes sitting in his hair as Simon puts his free finger to his lips and motions you to not speak again. Growing more and more nervous, you nod twice before the flesh is removed.  

“Get your knife up.” It’s a deep rumble like a falling stone. Felt more than heard. “Stay behind me.” 

You do so with a swift hand, knowing something else is going on just by how he keeps glancing at you and then at the trees. That's when you hear it—the low whispering like it’s almost speaking in tongues. 

The same you had heard on short occasions when you’d been with Whistlejacket. And then far off into the woods, that shaping of bark. 

It wasn’t a twig—you’d known that. You glance at Simon and he seems tensed for something to jump out at the two of you, his large shoulders hiding you from most of the view. One of your hands grabs onto his shirt, your un-shoed foot freezing but you don’t make a comment. 

“Simon?” You whisper, and he holds out his hand to once more tell you to not speak. 

The long shadows in between the trees darken, and that whispering choir infects your ears—what is it saying? You can’t make any sense of it…it jumbles and jumps like these flakes of snow as they fall to the ground. 

Girl…Girl…Listen

You flinch—free hand releasing Simon and coming up to your head to grasp at it as a bad headache starts to form. The man ahead of you, for whatever reason, seems to not be affected by this.  

He stands rod-straight and you see his fingers curling into fists, the knuckles going white and facing deep into the open forest—wound up and tight. You try to speak but it all goes like metal on metal behind your skull. The whispers come into focus before the light is swallowed by a shade of gray.

It is a void of all else; you have forgotten what your heart feels like as it pounds in your ribcage.

I can show you the sound of your soul tearing in two.

You gasp and then the screaming starts. 

Dropping your knife you fall to your knees, your fingers both dig into your scalp and draw blood from the sheer volume of voices inside of your head—yelling in tones accumulated by victims and imprisoned specs of being. Old, young, middle-aged, yet still the rattle of diseased bones going through osteonecrosis; clacking of baby’s teeth. 

You’re screaming with them. 

Simon’s panicked face comes into view, grasping at your hands and trying to move them away from your flesh. He’s calling to you, loudly and in an ordering tone, but you can’t hear it. 

The screaming, oh, the screaming. This is what Hell sounds like.

Something in you is ripping, and you plead for it to end as Simon begins looking around the space, standing and bringing you with him as he keeps you to his chest; you feel his heart hammering twice as fast—hands grasping at your clothes and pressing you into him with all his might. He’s growling and snarling, trying to find what’s hurting you so he can help. 

The reverberation of his challenge is felt in the vibrations of his throat as you scream again. Simon flinches, cursing, and you feel the poke of claws on your spine as the scent of your fear enters the air—your suffering. 

Your body is shaking; quivering, and in the state of here and there reality begins to blur like a musty window, like mud on a cup. In Simon’s grip, you’re entirely slackened, coughing and choking down saliva. 

But then it all stops. 

You gasp so loudly that your busted vocal cords finally snap, blood is expelled from your mouth and it ends up all over Simon’s neck, staining his clothes and splattering onto his cheek. Trying to force down breaths, you push at the man’s abdomen—begging to be released weakly.

Your legs don’t work beyond the shaking. 

Watching you with wide eyes and panting breath, Simon’s canines had gone sharp, claws on your spine fully out; he’d even grown taller, your feet only brushing the ground as pale skin began to gain pigment along his neck. 

He lets you down just as you vomit all over the snowy grass, sputtering and letting vile tears make lines down to your chin. 

“What in the bloody hell..?” Simon breathes arms still around your waist. Your ears are ringing, high-pitched, and reverberating in your skull. “Fuck!” 

Whispered laughter makes you whimper through a sob.

Simon can’t get the smell out of his nose—the maggots, the black fire. He knows what this is, what game it plays. 

It wants a show.

Oh, you never should have come here. This forest…it wasn’t just a place of black trees and buried deeds; of monsters. 

It was a prison. And these lesser beasts were the wardens. 

The shadows grow closer, and Simon, as a wailing breeze picks up from the South, covers you with his changing body; hiding a breathless gasp on his lips as muscles tear and ears elongate. 

Pain encompasses him, making him bury his face into your neck and grunt out garbled curses as his teeth morph and shatter to re-form. You shake, shell-shocked, from under him, feeling the brushing of fur and the tear of fabric before you’re encased in a canopy of shaggy blackness and snapping jaws. The arms around your waist broaden and elongate, bones snapping.

You’re both panting now, breathing hard and in pain unimaginable. The glint of your blade is far off into the side of your fluttering eyes.

A figure forms from those wisps of shadow—those thrown-away memories of death and the recollection of ancient cities burning back to before the creation of metal machines or the wheel. Formed before oceans or continents and ultimately trapped here in ages long past when these trees were saplings. 

You felt it under fur and muscle just as the Ghost did atop you as your shield, his eyes now shining with rage and horror. 

This being was not old. It wasn’t even ancient. 

It was primordial.

Your eyes look up slowly from behind the curtain of obsidian, arms shaking as they twist into the Ghost’s lengthy forearms still anchored to your waist. His snout slips past your right ear, digging you into him as a low snarl emanates from the back of his throat. 

It stands on two legs, and has two arms—you could mistake it for a human at a far-off distance. But its body is malnourished, nothing but thin, twisting, skin over bone as if devouring maggots live under that barrier. Your terror increases the longer you look at it, snow hitting your eyes not even making you blink. 

This being was a very stain upon reality as if the body it takes is a rip in time itself—a ripple of disease and an unforgivable sin. 

Look at me.

You are looking. 

Looking at a featureless face and the large black hole that takes the place of nose, mouth, and eyes—unending and limitless as if what had once been there had been ripped through and replaced with eternity. The shadows writhe to make an imitation of wings on its back, a leaking circle above its head, and the slash of fleshy, pulsing horns that secrete blood down to the snow. 

Fingers that shake and twitch as if in the throes of death. Its arms are melting like gray wax. An appendage slowly leaks out from the void of its face, forming a hand holding something like rope, and then a long, blackened arm deeper than a moonless night. It turns over and the intestines, not ropes, are dropped from its grip. Long and viscera-coated; flies dig themselves out from the tubes and you have to stop yourself from heaving again as they flinch and quiver.

As if the owner was still alive.

The hand splays itself, waiting for another’s palm to slip over and grasp it. An invitation as it’s clicking body takes a stumbling step forward.

It’s calling to you.

Look at the face of God.

The Ghost roars and you snap your vision away, burying your face into his neck to shake the image from your brain. 

You don’t know what to do—what to think. But you knew you had to run. 

“Simon,” you gasp out, and the Thing laughs through muttering generations as sigils flare to life on its skin, words and powers that have no meaning to living souls. “Simon!”

A panting maw shifts to you and the threat of violence is still in the air. Large human-ish hands tighten as blood drips off your chin. 

“Run.” Your hand scoops back up your blade, and not seconds later the wind is making your clothes ripple all around you as you’re lifted and carried away. Arms around the Ghost’s neck, you breathe shakily, your head still pounding something awful as the Primordial watches Simon’s rapid dash—far faster than any dog or horse. 

It tilts its blood-slick head, and, for some inner intuition…you know it’s smiling. 

The beast below you keeps you tight to him, one hand pressing on the small of your back and the other under your knees, not at all slowed by your weight; he can smell your fear and it makes him enraged. 

The Ghost’s eyes are small when you press your face into his cheek, but they flicker to you as you send your bone-deep distress his way. He lets loose a low whine in between pants of breath. 

“S-Simon, what was that—”

There’s a glimpse of that monster from over his shoulder and you startle, head popping back up to stare fully as you pass trees at an alarming rate. But when you blink the maggot body is gone. Looking behind, you see it again as the Ghost runs faster, taking a sharp right and you once more get the view blocked by a large stone. 

Everywhere you look, that blackened halo shows up, hands grasping the side of a tree or watching from a river—its third hand outstretched. Whispering still dances in the shell of your ears, and in your heart, it feels like a string is being plucked; stitches undone from a tapestry. 

Until it ends up right in front of Simon in a blink of a second. 

All he can do is roar and twist himself, curl around you as his claws kick up snow and dark earth before there’s a sudden sweep of power that ricochets through the trees. It breaks down trunks and makes the world scream, and you, trapped under the body that does anything to protect you, hit the ground hard.

You think perhaps you flew through the air at first because you seem to remember the sensation of flying before the ground came up to meet you. 

Yelling Simon’s name, you shatter and slide, clothes ripping more, and other shoe gone to the wind. Flesh peels and tears, cheek skinned on harsh material. 

And the whispers laugh, and giggle, and speak in a million voices of the damned.

Look at me. 

You cough and stagger upward, stumbling with twigs in your thighs before backing up and immediately looking for Simon while keeping this monster at the edge of your vision. This was more than fear—more than terror. You can’t describe a feeling like this; can’t put it into words or thought. 

It made your body shake just by it being here, made you want to turn your blade—which you’d held onto, miraculously—on yourself to end it. 

Simon was the only thing to stop you, and you kept backing up, feet knocking over roots and stone. You find his limp body far to the right, wisps of shadow leaking out. You yell, glancing at the Thing as it limps to you with failing legs.

“Simon, get up!” You can’t get to him without taking your eyes off the Primordial—can’t risk that faster-than-light movement as if it wasn’t falling apart just by standing. Its third-hand dribbles black liquid from its fingertips; pooling it in its palm. Closer now. “Simon, fucking get back up!”

You can’t leave him here, but the instinct to run was infecting you just as much as your care for him. The more you looked the harder it was to turn away, mind slipping from you. But you can’t move your eyes from it either. 

What was this? This temptation and possession? Oh, God, it was sucking you in. 

The great blackened beast does not stir and you grasp your blade until your knuckles ache. 

This headache was ripping your brain apart, and you gasped and gripped your head again, noises of agony escaping your lips. 

It laughs, but the action makes it sound like an entire world is on fire. 

Groaning in suffering and wrenching your eyes closed, you send your palm into your skull; hitting it over and over again.

“Get out of my head!” 

Your voice echoes off the trees, breaking and desperate. Shaking your head back and forth, you growl and whine like a dog with a knife through its stomach—intestines in your body bunching and turning in knots.

The presence gripping your mind leaves. 

Immediately, you sag to the ground; knees slamming into the earth. Eyes still closed but able to think again, you take a breath, cold sweat falling quickly down your temples to mix with congealed blood and bile. 

Knife-hand burning from all of the force you’d exerted, you loosen it and sag forward to take a deep breath. 

A hand lightly captures your chin, and you sigh out easily, leaning your weight into the grip as a thumb caresses your cheek.

“Simon,” you open your buggy eyes in relief but only see a void. 

You freeze, comfort immediately turning to pure horror. Black sludge drips down your neck, staining your shirt and burning as it absorbs into your flesh. 

Its head tilts, and that blackened limb levels your face with the nothingness behind the vale of its ripped-open flesh. There’s a jumbled twitching and horns that make the tight skull dance like it's on a string. 

There’s a brush against your mind and the fingers dig into your flesh; pushing and breaking the skin. You can’t move. You can’t look away. 

Its face moves closer, demented elbow bending as your neck is dragged forward to meet it. Infinity rolls out behind your quivering eyes.

Don’t worry, it breathes, though you don’t know how because you can’t see its chest moving. God sees you. 

Your throat closes, and the black dig of its hand leaks into your open flesh, tendrils of infection that move like worms into your being and up your veins; maggots, flies. 

You start choking on air, your spine arching and your hands jerking around, tensing up closer to your chest. There’s foam at the corners of your mouth, eyes still stuck open into the bleak reality of your future. 

You smell rot. You smell like rot. 

Simon, you think of him—of his actions in the city and the way he always came to you to fix his clothes. You wondered then, in a moment of numb hysterics and revelation, that if he liked your scent so much then he must have stuck around you because of it. To feel your presence and bask in your company. Recalling moments of soft words and looks you could not decipher before. 

Surely he could feel when he was going to change, he could have slipped out of his clothes and left them somewhere. 

The question that you think of in the small moment before your hand twitches over your blade is like a spark of light.

Was he purposefully wearing them because he wanted you to fix them for him later? 

A sniffing nose can almost be heard in the clutch of your neck, and the whispers dim. One shoulder shaking and spasming, you’re able to push back just a small bit. 

Brown eyes and ivory fangs. A deep voice that you can feel against your heart. Blood runs from your nose, down your face, and splatters to your bent knees. It bleeds down your throat; your chest and your shirt. Bathing in it, mixing with black damnation. 

The grip on your lower face tightens, fingers drilling deeper until muscle tears and snaps.

Your fingers tighten along the hilt once more.

It clicks at you as its bones break in its throat, corpse-like body’s flesh opening to let unearthly tendrils of blackness leak out like it was a cup of wine only holding something until it can be drank down. 

The corpse shivers with pleasure. My Vessel shall please Him. Let your soul join His choir.

Your throat feels like it’s being slit, your very essence being corrupted. It’s hot, burning—it all gets brighter, like a fire and a pit of ice. A beast at the very center of Hell; three faces and bat-like wings under every chin. Great and terrible—beautiful and disgusting. 

A slobbering, wordless being punished just as all sinners for eternity unending. 

You throw up black blood, and as the concerning amount of gore floods you, your mind flashes one last time.

The man carries you through the bed of thorns that you remember, and he hikes you farther into his arms until not even a single one thinks to touch you—no sharp drag. Your face gently rests on Simon’s head, the top of his scalp as your nose itches at the feeling of his hair. 

You blink softly, holding on as he moves you back down after the threat is gone.

Simon, you plead, Simon, oh, my Simon. 

Your hand seizes over the blade and in a brief second of fading thought—mind flickering between screaming souls and black fur stuck in your ears as blockers—you force your watering eyes to blink. 

And when you blink you bring the silver blade up…and then stab it directly into the oblivion of a starless sky.

It rips its fingers out of your skin, screeching louder than a mountain being split in two. You do as well, arm jerking out of the gaping face and bringing the smoking limb to your chest. It was like you’d just put your arm into an oven—your sleeve was on fire before you fell backward and shoved it into the snow, yelling and screaming in pain.

It mirrors.

Third-hand snapping and waving as it whips its head back and forth, its halo quivers and melts atop of it like black fire; sigils glowing brighter. Smoke comes out of its face, wings jerking up and down. 

You notice none of it—mind fading fast with maggots still in your flesh. Worms. Parasites. You can feel them moving, up and down and to the sides of your ripped jaw, to your burning arm. 

Infected. 

Infected.

Infected.

All you can do is lay there and vomit them out—black writhing blood mixed with crimson. You feel empty inside, void of something important. Cut in half.

The Thing backs up and as it does it begins to bend in on itself, body splintering like a wet piece of paper before it begins to stretch back out. Reality shifts, time warps as you blankly watch through leaking eyes that hold burst veins.

Its legs break backward as its rib cage pushed in, but before it can entirely be sucked away, it points at you. 

You will never forget how it speaks. It’s a wail—a brand of unholy tongues and a world lost to distant memory. A clanging of war bells and dark deals signed in a night of eclipses and the hidden homes of shadow. But you know what it says to you.

I know the sound of your soul and I mark it as mine in Hell!

Something snaps in your chest, and you flinch wildly, bending over yourself and shrieking. 

And then there’s a strike of wind and a roar of rage, and the being gets sucked into itself without another word. 

You pant, slamming back down to the ground and laying limp—quiet. Dead to all else besides the agony you can now express. With one last wheezing breath, your eyes flutter closed and you pass off into a blessing of unconsciousness. 

—

The Ghost’s nose sniffs the air, eyes tight and small, head roving from where his back is large in front of you. You see his tail lightly swish, feet lifting and settling back down to the floor. 

Simon seems confused, one leg limping more than the other and leaning heavily to one side; he shakes his large head and his ears slap as he does.

It’s deep night now, and you slowly, weakly, push yourself to stand up. You’d been out the entire day.

Your blood is all over the snow, and as you stumble to your feet, you can’t speak beyond a slurred gargle from your ripped-open jaw. 

How have you not bled out yet?

“S–Sim…” A black head snaps to you, but there’s nothing familiar in those eyes. 

They shine in the moonlight and those ivory teeth glint. Ears swiveled forward with sharp tips and tiny whispers of tufts. Long arms that scrape the ground in front of a bent spine.

He doesn’t blink. 

Stumbling, one leg giving out, your only option is to breathe through your mouth in shallow gasps. 

The Ghost’s nose twitches, but otherwise he is deathly frozen. Too frozen.

Like he can’t recognize your scent.

Infected. 

Your burst eyes widen, but it’s already too late. 

An open maw bites down on your throat with a tearing of flesh before your neck fully snaps.

TAGS:

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[wordsinhaled]

21 24 !! hugs for dream boy !!

thank you for the prompt and i’m so sorry this is atrociously late, i just got done prepping for an exam that is now over! ❤️

from the soft prompts list — “this is a very long hug now sort of hug” and “just really needed a hug sort of hug.” and i threw in ‘i missed you’ as a bonus

-

Dream has not known himself to be one for hugs, or indeed embraces of any kind.

Of course he understands their appeal, from the slightly removed perspective that is uniquely his as the lord of dreams. He has crafted more than one reverie of nothing more complex than a single, protracted, yearned-for embrace from someone special to the dreamer.

He comprehends—if only academically—that a simple hug can be, under the right circumstances, blissful. Healing. Transformative. So say the psyches of the visitors to his realm.

Still, Dream is not prepared to experience this firsthand. He is not prepared for the unrestrained enthusiasm with which Hob Gadling bounds up from his chair and opens his arms to him, as though this too is part of their familiar ritual.

Nor is he prepared for how much he is pleased by this welcome. For how much he feels immediately eased to be once again in Hob’s presence, even after so short a time.

Dream has surprised him; it is not their usual evening of the week but a Sunday afternoon, and the Inn is mostly empty: only a few patrons sitting at the bar, Hob comfortable at his customary table, sunlight streaming over the papers surrounding him.

It should feel like Dream is trespassing—he is unexpected, and Hob had clearly been busy—yet somehow it does not.

Instead, it feels startlingly ordinary—a tableau of Hob’s day-to-day life; one Dream finds himself pleased to become a part of.

Hob says, “Hello, my friend,” soft and full of fondness, as though a year of weekly meetings has done nothing at all to make a dent in the joy of calling Dream such. He opens his arms wider.

Dream does not normally indulge himself in Hob Gadling’s subconscious, but Hob was daydreaming of just this not a moment ago, loudly enough that Dream could not help but to see flashes of it.

And Hob Gadling’s daydream is thus: Hob would hold Dream’s narrow frame as though each atom of his form manifested in the Waking were cherished, with enough cherishing left over to bleed over into the Dreaming as well. He would squeeze hard enough to lift him slightly from the floor—if Dream would allow such a liberty; for Hob would fain do only what Dream would find pleasing and not a thing more. Hob Gadling daydreams of what Dream would smell like at the crook of his neck, were Hob to bury his nose there; of how Dream’s hair would feel brushing his cheek. He imagines it soft as cornsilk and ephemeral as shadows, which is, impressively, not far from the truth.

And in Hob’s daydream he says “I missed you,” quietly enough that Dream might not hear. But—secret fear, or dearest wish, or both?—there is every chance that Dream could hear, for Dream, Hob knows, does not have the hearing of a mere mortal.

“I missed you too,” Dream says aloud. He cannot help himself. Who is he, if not a bringer of men’s dreams? This one is easy to fulfill. It requires only that Dream offer up a truth he finds suddenly easy to admit, standing here, sharing the same shaft of sunlight that pools in the smile lines around Hob’s eyes.

Dream takes a step towards Hob, until it is only natural that he finds himself within the circle of Hob’s waiting arms.

He drops his forehead onto Hob’s shoulder, and curls his fists into the thick wool of Hob’s sweater. His hair, shadow-soft, brushes Hob’s cheek, and he knows that in this moment he smells of all that Hob likes best.

(Later, when he thinks of falling in love with Hob Gadling, he imagines he began to realize it then.

For it was a single embrace that set his manifested heart to swaying like a boat settling at anchor; a single embrace that made of him a leaf drifting groundward on a warm spring breeze.

A singular moment of bliss.)

[bookshelfdreams]

just finished a years-long project, kinda playing with the idea of going easy on the crafts for a little while and what does my mother give me?

1kg carded wool (bergschaf & german merino I think)

[mishapen-dear]

“There’s a problem.”

Bad twitches, pausing briefly, but doesn't stop crafting. “What is it?” 

“The entity crammer won’t work,” Cellbit says. Bad’s hand crunches suddenly into the mine. He blinks down at it to see that a little red light, blinking sweetly, has been unearthed by the abrupt handling. He uses his thumb to gently push the explosive beneath the surface of the mine once again, smoothing the dirt back over it. He takes in a slow breath. 

“We could blow him up with mines.” He knows that won’t work. It’s worth saying, anyway. 

“It wouldn’t be fast enough.” Bad can hear movement behind him as Cellbit shifts on his feet. Bad keeps his ears perked for any sudden movements, but keeps his back turned as he works. If Cellbit suddenly turns against him... well. He isn’t going to just walk into a cage trap this time. “He has too many totems. We need another plan.”

There is another plan- this would be the perfect time to mention it, but the words stay locked behind Bad’s teeth. It would be so easy. All he would need is someone to keep Forever distracted while he sets up the scanner somewhere unavoidable, and then Forever would just need to walk through it, and that would be that. But that would be that for Bad, too. The scanner can take everything from Forever. The scanner can take everything from Bad. His warpstone and his enderpearls and his chorus fruit and his totems and his scythe- no, it’s not worth it. Bad remembers the cage. He remembers how quickly everyone turned on him. They’ve proved how much he can’t trust them with this.

He needs to find his kids, first. Then, maybe, he’ll let them know about the scanner. Then, if they really, truly, cannot find anything else... Then. It might be worth it then. For Forever. 

Bad promises, “We’ll think of something,” and he crafts another explosive. 

–

They think of mines. They think of the slingshot. They think of mobs. They think of everything. 

It isn’t enough. Forever has so many totems that no plan is good enough, and they’re running out of time. Whatever they do, whenever they do it, it has to work, and it has to work fast. Forever on the Risus pills is very happy, and a little dumb, but he isn’t stupid- if he figures out that they’re trying to take the pills from him… Bad doesn’t want to think about it. But every new plan is just another dead end and a fresh headache, and they’re running out of time. 

So- he does what he has to do. 

One night, only a few days after Bad and Cellbit had their conversation about the entity crammer, Forever leads Bad to the beach. On the sand is a lonely little picnic blanket, red, surrounded by red candles and bunches of roses. Wine and crepes and a chicken dinner. Bad asks if the blanket’s wool was stolen from his base, Forever laughs and says no. The stars twinkle mournfully down at them; the waves mute their voices; the sand is so, so soft. Forever doesn’t stop smiling. 

The candles are too dim to light them well, but the ring gleams in the moonlight. Forever holds it out to him, beaming, and Bad’s blood is rushing in his ears so thunderously that even as he sees Forever’s lips move he can’t hear the question over all this noise. 

It doesn’t matter- Bad knows the answer. 

He says yes.

--

It’s easy to play fiance. It’s so easy. Bad sits on his bed all day, spinning the Sunshine Protector over and over in his hands, and wonders if the world has always looked so dim. There is always a weight in his chest and a lump in his throat, and it feels like if he doesn’t move he’ll combust but he barely has the energy to stand. Most of the time, he feels stuck in standby. He can’t look for his children, because Forever gets agitated if Bad isn’t home when he gets home, and that’s against the whole point, isn’t it? The point to keep Forever happy. Keep him pliant. Pliable. Easy to worm into his heart so Bad can rip it open from the inside out.

It’s hard. 

He’s just… he’s sad. 

He’s angry, too. It sits below the surface of his soul, buzzing. He wants to scream. He wants to tear. Whenever Forever smiles at him Bad wants to chew his face off with his teeth. But Bad has a job to do, and he needs to stay reasonable to do it. He’s gone wild before- he knows what happens. He knows he needs to cling to his own leash with both hands and never let go. But Dapper is gone, and Pomme is gone, and there is a ring on his finger -not even diamond- and Forever is always smiling. 

It’s the pills’ fault. Bad knows it’s the pills’ fault. He still wishes that Forever would try to kill him again. That would make everything very, very simple, very, very quickly. 

But then the plan would be ruined, because Forever has so many totems that he could escape, and Bad- 

Well, by that point, Bad would probably be a little ruined, too. 

The door slams in the other room. He goes still, then stands. He can hear his fiance calling for him. “Bad!” Forever. He sounds cheerful. Happy. “Meu docinho de côco! I’m home!” 

Bad expertly pulls cheer into his own voice. There are many things he is good at, and one of those things is lying. “Forever!” he calls back, and exits the room with the Sunshine Protector still in his hands. Forever, as always, doesn’t seem to notice. He perks up at the sight of Bad, like a golden retriever whose owner has just stepped in through the door. His perpetual grin is still on his face, being perpetual. There’s a wide, almost wild joy in his eyes; his happiness is tacky, like hard-candy drizzled left in the sun and then drizzled with syrup. 

“Bad!” Forever cheers again, laughing. His white suit is perfect, the Brazilian flag pinned neatly across his shoulder. Every day, when he comes home, Bad looks for blood. As always, he finds none. Forever bounds over to take Bad in his arms and spins them both, as if they’re lovers long-apart finally reunited after a dangerous sea-bound journey. Forever leans in, quick, for a kiss. 

There is a game they like to play. Bad doesn’t know if it’s a game for Forever, but it is a game for him. Since their engagement, Forever has gotten more bold with taking his pills in front of Bad- he’s gotten more bold in trying to get Bad to take them with him. Bad has only ever accepted kisses from Forever on his nose, cheek, and forehead- even before he saw Forever, moments before trying to catch his lips again, slip a pill between his teeth. 

The game goes like this: Forever attempts to -literally- kiss Bad into oblivion; Bad dodges.  

This scene plays out like all the ones before it. Bad turns his head to the side just in time, and Forever, undaunted by yet another failure, presses an enthusiastic kiss to his cheek instead of his lips. His free hand is on Bad’s other cheek, pressing their faces together with unfiltered affection. His hand is warm, and a little rough with hard-earned calluses, and his beard tickles Bad’s skin. His breath fans hot across Bad’s cheek. 

He’s so happy. 

Bad has never lost their game, but he thinks about it sometimes. Even if Forever managed to get a pill into his mouth, there’s nothing that would force him to swallow. But there’s nothing that would force him to spit it out, either… And then he holds onto the Sunshine Protector even more tightly and he messages Phil or Cellbit about whatever mass-murder attempt they’re thinking about trying next, at least until he can think about anything other than- that. They’ve gotten Etoiles in on it, recently, and any day now they’ll come up with a solution. They have to. 

For now, Bad wraps his arms around Forever when he pulls back, grip loose, and plays his part by not stabbing him. “Hi, Forever!” he chirps. The enthusiasm feels wrong, but if he tried to pull up fondness he thinks he would just pull up bile instead. Maybe he should. Maybe he should spit acid into Forever’s face and see if that will kill his smile, make him angry, make them fight, just like they used to. He wants, more than almost-anything, to see Forever snarl. As a precaution to unfiltered impulses, Bad flicks his wrist and sends the Sunshine Protector back into his inventory. 

“Hi, Bad!” There’s a flash of the pill between Forever’s teeth, sparking white hidden in his smile, and then he swallows audibly. Nothing happens for a moment, and then his eyes dilate, he starts to shake, and his grin widens far enough to show all of his teeth. Forever’s trembles turn almost violent, every other breath catching on a giggle. He falls against Bad, his weight pressing heavily into his fiance as the drug makes its way through his system. His hand goes from Bad’s cheek to his hair, pulling hard and clinging to it like a lifeline. His totem-hand digs painfully into Bad’s side. Bad just tightens his grip, and holds. 

It never lasts for long. Soon, the two are left standing in an almost-peaceful embrace, with Bad’s arms wrapped securely around Forever and Forever’s cheek pressed against Bad’s shoulder. Forever’s shoulders are relaxed; his back open; his neck bared. If Bad’s leash were looser, he could lean down and tear his throat open with little more than teeth. 

His head stings where Forever pulled his hair too hard. 

Bad’s voice comes out too soft when he asks, “How was your day?” 

“Oh,” Forever sighs. “Perfect, just perfect…” He nuzzles his face into Bad’s shoulder, the scruff of his beard making little scrtch scrtch sounds against the fabric of Bad’s robes. “But it’s even better now that I’m here with you.” Bad’s heart twinges. “And I’m going to go see Richarlyson when he wakes up,” Bad’s heart weeps. “Do you want to come with me?” 

His tongue is like lead in his mouth. “Sure.” 

Forever beams again. He squirms, and Bad lets him go. Forever doesn’t pay him any mind, just wanders over to the nearest mirror to peer at his own face. There’s scrutiny in his expression- Bad almost feels hopeful, and then Forever asks, “What do you think of my beard, Bad?” 

“It’s fine.” 

“You’re too nice to me, Badboy,” Forever scolds brightly. He’s still watching himself in the mirror. There’s a glaze over his eyes, almost fevered. “I want to look nice for our wedding.” 

Bad’s stomach swoops. “Well-” he starts, scrabbling for yet another reason to delay it. He needs to wash his hair? No, he used that last time- 

Forever derails all of Bad’s excuses by not mentioning a date, and instead saying, “Can you help me shave?” 

Bad freezes. “What?” 

“My face, Bad,” Forever insists, grin blinding as he turns towards him. “My beard. O cabelo do meu rosto.”

“I know what a beard is,” Bad snaps suddenly, sharper than he intended. 

Forever’s smile twitches. “Great! So you’ll help me? Por favor, meu anjo?” 

Give and take, don’t push too far. He’s here to stall for time, not to fight. The further he pushes Forever, the less he can control him. Bad takes a deep, slow breath, and shoves the anger back down. “...Okay.” 

Forever beams. 

–

That’s how the two of them end up in the bathroom, Bad sitting on the counter as he watches Forever meticulously craft the supplies. Bad had offered one of his own (many) blades for the procedure, but Forever’s grin had just grown wider as he shook his head and shuffled Bad into the bathroom. 

It’s cramped in there, both of them in their full gear. Bad watches Forever mix the shaving cream, golden totem glittering in his palm as he awkwardly holds the bottle still. There’s a faint rushing in Bad’s ears. The knife is already prepped, laying on a warm, damp towel on the other side of Forever, furthest away from Bad. 

His eyes keep going back to that totem. The rushing in his ears grows slowly in volume, until he thinks that he’s never going to hear anything else ever again. Bad is holding a totem, too. A totem of death, darker in colour and promising more pain. It’s not as good as a totem of undying but, as long as he holds it, he doesn’t need anyone to pull him up after a fall. The both of them, holding totems. 

He’s surprised when he hears himself say, “Forever?” 

Forever hums a curious noise. “Yes, meu xuxu?” 

Bad swallows hard. He doesn’t know where this is going, but he has a feeling, and over a dozen code attacks have taught him to trust when he gets a feeling. Carefully, he gives voice to the thought that’s been nagging him, “I need both hands to shave you.” 

“Okay!” Forever agrees, unphased. 

“Forever,” Bad says. “I need to stop holding my totem.” 

Forever doesn’t- falter, but he twitches, a little hiccup in whatever happy little daydream he’s been living in. “Don’t you trust me, Badboy?” 

Bad thinks about the mines. He thinks about explosion after explosion after explosion at the end of a disastrous proposal. Bad licks his lips. “It’s not… about trust,” he says, words cautiously measured. He’s not the one on drugs, but he feels like vibrating from knotted-up anticipation. “You know I’ve been here a while. You know it was… hard. Even before the code. I’m…” Forever looks up at him. “I need your help.” 

Forever cocks his head to the side, still smiling. “My help?” 

Bad bites his lip, then, and doesn’t miss the way that Forever’s eyes train in on his mouth. “Yeah,” he says, warming to the lie. “Yeah. I need your help.” He starts unbuckling his chestplate. 

Forever freezes, mouth falling open. “Badboy?” he says, voice a little tremulous. It almost sounds like him. Bad is embolded into continuing. 

“You’re in danger, Forever,” Bad says, and oops- too true. He drops his chestplate into one of his backpacks, then continues, “As president, I mean. Not everyone loves the Federation. The code, political enemies- they all want to hurt you.” 

“Political enemies,” Forever echoes with a laugh, and Bad feels something rush through him at the almost sardonic look Forever gives him. 

Bad smiles back at him, letting it come out a little nervous. One by one, he removes the rest of his armour. Pants. Boots. His hands are shaking by the time he removes his helmet and drops it into the backpack. “I know what it’s like. That… worry. Even with your loved ones. So I don’t- I don’t want to scare you, Forever, but I want you to put your totem down, too.” 

Forever keeps grinning. “I don’t think that’s a very good idea.” There’s a sharpness to his voice, a grated edge that just promises more shouting and more pills. A risk of him running off, escaping, and Bad can’t lose this opportunity now that he’s got it. But Forever is stubborn, and this isn’t enough, so… 

Fudge. Okay. He’s committed now; he has to keep going. Bad takes out the Sunshine Protector just to obviously, visibly, tuck that away into his weapons bag. Anything, anything, he has to remember he’ll do anything. He starts piling the rest of his inventory into his backpacks. 

“...Meu anjo? What are you doing?” 

“I want to- to help you, Forever,” Bad promises. He feels so naked. He’s fully clothed. He has no armour, and his hotbar has no weapon to defend himself from the man who tried to kill him only days before. It- he exists in a strange state of limbo. It doesn’t matter how killable he is, because he can always respawn. What is death to a grim reaper? What is death to an immortal? What is death to a grieving parent? But- still. There’s a vulnerability to packing away his weapons, his armour, his things. All of his prep made obsolete, no scanner involved at all. “But I can’t- if you’re holding a totem, I need to hold a totem, see? But you want to hold a totem in our house, which is totally safe, for the same reasons I do. So, if- if you’re the most powerful player around, maybe- maybe you can put it down. For a little bit.” Bad puts the death totem into the bag, and closes it with finality. 

Forever is quiet. His smile looks hollow now. 

Anything, anything, anything. Bad hops off of the counter and throws his backpacks into the tub, out of reach, and draws the curtain for good measure. Forever’s eyes follow the arc of his hand. “There,” Bad pants, and turns around again. He stands there, bared but fully clothed, vulnerable in a way he hasn’t been since- since- since some point he can’t even remember. “Now I’m- it’s up to you to protect me.” Bad wants Forever to try to kill him. “Now- now it’s your turn.” 

“Bad…” Forever says, his voice softer than Bad has heard in… a while. “I don’t think this is a good idea.” 

Bad’s heart drops. He’s so close. He’s so far. The rushing in his ears is so loud. He wants to bite, and claw, and hurt. He wants to dig his claws into Forever’s skin and- “I’ll let you kiss me,” Bad blurts, the promise tumbling all at once from his mouth like a badly-kept secret. “Once I’m done shaving you. Just- please, Forever. You know what it’s like. Please. Don’t you trust me?” 

Forever cracks. 

Bad’s breath catches when Forever pulls out his backpack -the one with the totems. Forever’s knuckles are white where his hands grip around the straps, but he places the backpack carefully outside the bathroom door before he steps away again. He looks jittery already, like a wild animal, and brandishes the totem still in his hand at Bad like a cross. 

“I’m keeping this one,” he says, and his grin looks painful. “I’m- this one, I’m holding onto this one. Okay?” 

“Okay,” Bad agrees, breathless. There is a lump in his throat. It’s hard to keep his hands still. Is he shaking? He might be shaking. Forever only has one totem. Bad has nothing. Forever has one totem. 

Forever picks up the towel and the shaving knife with one hand, then carries them over. He holds them out. Bad takes them- the blade he accepts by its sharpest point, but he’s careful not to bleed. “Okay,” Forever whispers. Then, too quick, almost desperate, he takes out his bottle and gulps down another pill. He stumbles to the chair as the shakes start to wreck him, almost toppling over before he snatches onto the chair’s back to steady himself. Bad, still holding the knife, does nothing to help. 

Forever manages to climb into the chair just as the trembles subside. He slumps back with a loud, satisfied sigh, like he’s just completed some great feat. He tilts his head back to look at Bad upside-down, his relaxation a stark contrast to the tension from just a moment before. He smiles dreamily up at his fiance, and it almost even reaches his (dilated, too wide) eyes. 

“Oh, Badboy,” he sighs happily. “Come on, come on! We’re all ready now, aren’t we?” 

Bad can very clearly see the column of Forever’s throat, stretched out and vulnerable. “Yeah.” Bad’s chest feels tight. He steps up behind the chair and looks down- Forever’s throat is right there. It’s a nice throat. Bad thinks it would be easy to fit both hands around it. He starts with just one hand. The damp towel is wiped gently over Forever’s mouth and jaw, then down over his neck. He does it again, preparing the skin for the sharp edge of the blade. 

Forever hums quietly, appreciatively. He closes his eyes, and Bad’s blood sings. 

An open neck. An ignorant victim. A single totem. It doesn’t matter how empty Bad’s inventory is- he has a knife, handed to him by Forever himself. Bad should stab him now. Two quick slices to the throat, a spray of blood, and a fresh corpse. It’s what Bad would have done before- but. He’s tense. There’s a stiffness to his muscles, and he doesn’t have armour. What if he misses? They’re so close together, it’s impossible to miss. 

There’s something almost… ritualistic about a good shave, anyway.. Bad can’t put the blade to his throat, not yet. Forever will know if he starts too soon. He has no armour. He needs to do this right. The shaving knife disappears into his hotbar. 

“It’s been a while since I’ve done this,” Bad murmurs. He gently runs the towel along the bottom of Forever’s jaw, almost holding his mouth shut, but the president doesn’t seem to be bothered. Eyes still closed, he just makes a peaceful little humming noise. Bad moves the towel up a little higher- it hides the smile. It hides the smile, so Bad takes a moment to just… look. His stomach flips. Yeah, that’s Forever. That’s him. His lashes rest delicately against his skin, eyes shut and face smoothed into something peaceful. His hair has fallen into disarray, strands loose across his forehead, and Bad gingerly brushes them away.

He could lift the towel higher. It’s already over Forever’s mouth, and it could go over Forever’s nose, too. Bad could press down- or topple the chair, first, maybe, leave Forever falling into him as Bad suffocates him. Although- it would be difficult, but Forever could probably get a few good cuts into Bad before he suffocates, armourless as Bad is. But, then again, damp cloth is even better for a suffocation. Bad doesn’t think it matters if the towel is damp from water or from blood. Maybe he’d be able to keep the towel pressed down until he bled out. Maybe he’d die before Forever would; maybe he would fall across Forever and trap him beneath the wet cloth and the weight of his limp body, forcing the president to drown on the blood of his own fiance. Wouldn’t that be perfect? 

No. Too risky. It’s too risky. Forever still has all of his items. If he puts down a sponge and hits Bad hard enough, he’ll be able to get away before either of them could die. If Bad screws this up, he will never get a chance like this ever again. He has to be smart. 

So- cream, next, it’s shaving cream, next. Bad steps away as he throws the towel into his hotbar, then grabs the bottle and returns to Forever’s side.  “How did you learn?” Forever asks. Bad pauses a moment to realize what Forever’s asking, then laughs a little lowly.

 “I owned a pie shop, once,” he says. He pours the mixture into his hands to lather it. “I rented out the top floor to a barber. He was nice. Showed me a few things. Let me try a few things out with his clients.” 

Forever’s brows raise. “‘Try a few things out with his clients?’” he echoes. He’s -of course- still smiling, but there’s a note in his voice that Bad can’t read. 

“Yeah! Pies,” Bad explains. His heart twinges at the thought of simpler times. “They were pretty good. Now keep your mouth closed, Forever, or you’ll get foam in it.” 

Forever acquieses, but he purses his lips playfully until Bad gets his hands on his face. Once upon a time, when Bad first arrived on the island, his claws were sharp enough that he’d needed to wear gloves at night, just so he wouldn’t accidentally cut himself in his sleep. And then there were the eggs. Ever since Dapper arrived, Bad has taken a day out of every month to file his fingers down to dull, harmless nubs. Swords could do all of the cutting he needed, and what would he do if he poked Dapper too hard and ended up cracking him? He couldn’t bear the thought. 

But now. Bad uses the pads of his fingers to lather Forever’s face. If his claws were longer, they could gouge deep, bleeding ruts into his skin. As they are now, though, they do nothing more than scratch lightly over the stubble. At the worst, they leave a thin white line where they scrape over Forever’s actual skin.

In a moment of weakness, Bad swipes his dulled thumb under Forever’s eye, imagining the red tears that would bloom from the wound. Forever won’t cry over their lost eggs, but Bad could make him. 

Bad swipes his thumb again, pressing the pad of his thumb down with just enough force to feel at the edge of bone that gives way to eye socket. It’s an almost tender gesture, and Forever’s skin is soft. But Forever makes a little noise and Bad jolts, jerking his hand back. He swallows quickly, then wastes no more time in getting back to work. He lathers Forever’s jaw, his cheeks, around his mouth, a little way down his neck- he’s quick, and efficient, and doesn’t linger. And then… and then there’s nothing for Bad to do but wash his hands, and grab the knife. 

The shaving knife feels heavier. It falls into his hand from his hotbar with a solid weight. Inventories keep most items in the same state they were stored in, so the handle is still warm from Forever’s hands. 

Bad hand is steady when he puts it to Forever’s neck. 

His breath comes quicker, the rushing sound loud in his ears. Forever’s skin is warm and soft under his hand.  

Forever hums. His skin flutters beneath the blade. His eyes are still closed, his smile is wide. “What’s your favourite type of flower?” he asks. 

Bad hesitates for long enough that Forever opens his eyes to look at him. Bad swallows and doesn’t meet his gaze. He makes up for his hesitation by drawing the blade slowly up Forever’s neck, just an inch, and then summons the towel from his hotbar to wipe the shaving cream from the knife. “...Cornflowers,” he answers quietly. “Cornflowers are my favourite.” 

“Ah, cornflowers,” Forever sighs happily, smiling widely up at Bad again. Bad keeps his eyes pinned to Forever’s neck and draws the blade across a fresh patch of skin. “Those are the blue ones, right?” 

“Yeah.” 

“They’re nice.” Forever hums. Bad puts the blade to his neck again, but then Forever keeps talking. “I think they will look nice in our wedding. We can have flower eggs! Imagine them, Badboy, all of them in their cute little outfits, throwing cornflowers around.” 

Ow. He can see it so clearly, too. His little eggs all dressed up and covered in flowers as they march down the aisle… smiling. Happy. Bad swallows hard. 

“I think the colours should be all black and blue,” Forever says, and shuts his eyes again. “And then you can stand out all pretty with your black and red, Bad. Will you wear your hair down again?” 

“...Maybe,” Bad says quietly. “Now shhhh, Forever… I need you to hold still, and stop smiling.” Black and blue… He felt stuck on that. Black and blue. Like a bruise. 

“Stop smiling?” Forever giggles. “But there’s so much to be happy about, meu anjo!” 

“Are you sure?” 

Forever opens his eyes to look up at Bad again. Bad looks back at him. The knife drifts upwards, slow, to press against Forever’s pulse. Bad’s hand is already slippery from the cold shaving cream, but he knows that the blood will be warm. He twitches when something warm touches his face- and he realizes, abruptly, that Forever’s hand has lifted up to tenderly cup his face. “Yeah,” Forever says, smiling.

Bad’s hand is shaking. Not a lot- not enough to cut, but enough for him to notice. They’re close. How long has Bad been leaning in? He presses the knife more firmly against Forever’s artery, but he doesn’t slice. “Stop. smiling,” he hisses. The words feel like grit spat from his mouth.

Forever’s thumb caresses the skin just beneath Bad’s eye, a mockery of the purely violent gesture Bad had subjected him to just moments before. Bad flushes hot in- in anger, or something else, but definitely with some anger, and then- and then Forever says, “Okay,” and he stops smiling. He closes his eyes again and leans back -Bad is startled to realize Forever had been leaning up towards him too- ultimately taking the blade away from his own neck, and he stops smiling. His hand falls away from Bad’s cheek, but it falls to lightly rest on the wrist of the hand that’s holding the towel. 

Bad is quiet for a long, long moment, just staring down at his broken fiance. And then- and then he gets back to work. 

The knife glides easily across Forever’s skin, shaving away the fine hairs of his beard. Bad is out of practice, but not so out of practice that he makes Forever bleed. When he moves on from Forever’s neck he has to lay the towel down so both hands are free to manipulate Forever’s face. He carefully pulls the skin taut where necessary, and only presses his dull nails down too hard once or twice. Forever sits peaceful and blank faced through it all. 

And then- 

And then it’s done. 

Bad turns Forever’s head to one side, and then the other, and he barely has it in him to pretend he’s inspecting him for any missed spots. And then he lets go, and he steps back. The knife hangs almost limply in his hand.

It’s when Forever is grinning again, standing now and inspecting his own face in the mirror, that Bad asks, “Is it nice? Being happy?” 

“What?” Forever turns to him, smile a little puzzled. His eyes are downright twinkling with fevered joy. 

“Is it nice?” 

“Yeah! You did a really good job, Badboy!” Forever praises. Bad’s traitorous heart leaps at the rare praise. Forever bounds the half-step over to swoop Bad into his arms and spin them, the two of them almost knocking over thr chair in the small space. Bad clings to him, and the single totem digs painfully into Bad’s side. 

“Forever, that’s not what I asked,” Bad insists almost even before they come to a stop. He feels lightheaded. “Do you like being happy?” 

“Yeah!” Forever chirps. “I’m with you, aren’t I?” And he leans in. When he kisses him, Bad doesn’t dodge.  

Forever is so warm. His lips are soft and the kiss is so tender, gentle like Bad is a wild animal who might be frightened off at the first wrong move. Forever’s hand comes up to cup the back of Bad’s head, the other arm wrapping itself around his waist. Bad is pliant, and he doesn’t kiss him back, but his arms wrap around Forever and pulls him in closer. Their bodies are flush together with no room for even air between them, and Bad thinks that if he focuses hard enough he could feel Forever’s heart beat against his own. He splays one hand across Forever’s shoulderblades, pressing hard to pin him close, and he uses the other hand, the one with the knife, to stab Forever in the back six times over in quick succession.

Blood sprays on the mirror behind them. Blood coats Bad’s hand. There’s heat at Bad’s back as the totem pops! and the room is filled with a stinging, magical shower of green and golden sparks- his ears ring from the minor explosion. Forever gasps into Bad’s mouth, and he tastes like iron. The knife was deep in his back when Forever’s heart stopped- the skin is already healing over it, so Bad holds on tighter and rips the blade out. 

Forever gets pulled back violently with the knife- their lips are disconnected with a slick sound that makes Bad’s head spin. “Bad?” Forever gasps. His eyes are wide, but not with joyous fever- with shock. It’s a good look. “You- you stabbed me?” 

“I did.” There’s something wrong with Bad’s brain, some wires that must have been crossed on a bad respawn because he’s dizzy, he’s too-warm, he’s going to vibrate right out of his skin- he’s grabbing Forever by his hair and forcing his head down to kiss him. 

There must be some wires crossed in Forever’s brain, too, because he kisses him back. It’s not tender or gentle- it’s a fight, just another battle that both of them are too stubborn to lose. Their teeth clack together and it’s awful and Bad’s blood sings. Forever tastes like his own blood and Bad bites his lip, hard, just to taste more. Forever gasps into his mouth, faltering, and Bad presses his advantage. 

He shoves Forever backwards, towards the wall, stumbling forwards with him so they don’t separate more than a few inches apart. Forever makes a shuddery keening noise when his back hits the stone- and Bad knows it’s not just from pain, but he thinks it’s mostly from pain, because the knife had been between Forever’s back and the wall and now it’s been aquainted once again with Forever’s flesh. Bad pants hard, and it’s Forever who drags Bad closer and catches his mouth again. 

There’s so much blood. 

And then, suddenly, the blood is all that’s left. 

[[PRESIDENT]Forever was slain by BadBoyHalo]

The shaving knife clatters into the ground as Bad falls into the space where Forever’s body once was. He catches himself on the wall, startled enough to stop breathing. There, on the ground, is the knife, shining wetly in the too-bright light of the bathroom. Next to it is a small pack that’s left behind after each player’s death- the remains of Forever’s inventory. Bad’s ultimate prize. 

Bad is frozen for a moment. He’s vaguely aware of more chat messages coming in at a rapidfire pace- Cellbit, maybe, and Philza, and Etoiles and whoever else is awake right now, but he doesn’t look at any of them. He falls to his knees instead which are promptly stained by the bright-red mess across the floor. He finds out that doesn’t care- nor does he care when he stains the pack when he scrabbles for it, and and he doesn’t care when he stains the inventory items when he rummages, and he doesn’t care when he stains the pill bottle when his hand finally clasps around it. 

He stares at Cucurucho’s smiling face on the too-white bottle, surrounded by smudges of red, then wipes his dirty thumb across its eyes to blind it with even more bloody smears. The bottle gets thrown into his inventory, then- the briefcase, right Forever had a briefcase, too, Bad needs to grab that, and- 

and then that’s it. 

That’s it. 

Mechanically, Bad pushes himself to his feet. He leaves the shaving knife where it is. He gets dressed in his armour, gathers up all of his backpacks, and then he goes home. 

He gets changed. He lays down in Dapper’s room, curled up on the floor next to Dapper’s empty bed. He holds the Sunshine Protector with both hands, closes his eyes, and tries to sleep. Bad doesn’t sleep. Bad also doesn’t answer any messages until morning, and maybe that can count as rest. 

His mouth still tastes like blood.

[olderthannetfic]

This might be an odd or personal question, but could I ask how you started knitting and where you started as a beginner? Or what would you recommend? I’ve tried to join clubs and groups irl, but there’s so much drama and gossiping. When I said I didn’t want to take part in that aspect, they started ostracizing and gossiping about me. Any websites, yt channels or books you’d recommend for a beginner?

--

Haha.

My friend, this does not even register on the scale of deeply personal or odd questions people have sent me.

I've been trying to remember exactly how I started and why (like, even before this ask). I think it was on a family vacation to Scotland the summer before I started college. That would have been in 1999.

I taught myself from one of those awful 90s pamphlets with the line drawings. They're a nightmare compared to being able to see someone do the motions in person or even in a video. I had some awful plastic needles and no guidance on yarn and just knit with what I found at some shop there. Do not recommend!

I achieved what I wanted during college, which was to make a nice cable-knit sweater that I still wear, and then I got frustrated with crappy acrylic yarn and drifted away from knitting until a year or so ago.

The fact is, I basically didn't do beginner projects. I moved straight from making one rectangle to making grandiose sweaters or whatever else struck my fancy. (But if you want to know, I was using Viking Patterns for Knitting and a bunch of Alice Starmore books, all of which you can still buy.) I know plenty of people who did it this way, but you certainly don't have to.

And you definitely don't need to learn from a terrible 90s printed pamphlet!

Luckily, nowadays, you can find a tutorial on just about anything on Youtube. I enjoy watching the technical and historical types discuss quirks of knitting you might not think of without years of practice or research.

Roxanne Richardson is great, for example.

Look for somebody old, not wearing a lot of makeup, and not talking about their indie dyeing/yarn business and you'll avoid most of the clowns who learned to knit five minutes ago and now want to be knitfluencers.

When I want a super simple technique tutorial, I usually end up looking at either Nimble Needles or VeryPink Knits. I find her super annoying, but her tutorials are spot-on. Norman's voice is much more soothing and I just enjoy his presence more, but both of them have good ultra close-up shots of what they're doing (which lots of vloggers don't because it requires special equipment).

I'd just figure out what kind of finished products you want to use knitting for and then find patterns and tutorials geared towards those.

Cables are relatively easy. Stranded colorwork requires a fair amount of physical coordination and some people find it rather difficult at first.

Circular needles are far more popular than traditional straight ones for people starting today.

Cotton yarn is relatively less nice to knit with than wool for most people, but it tends to be the natural fiber available at a low price point from major retailers.

Picking up general tips like that by watching various youtubers will help you pick a project that won't be too painful to work on.

People who naturally knit loosely should consider grippy bamboo or wooden needles. People who naturally knit tightly should consider slippery metal ones.

My biggest piece of advice is that you're usually better off with something "hard" that you actually like rather than a "practice" project you don't care about, at least after you've made like one rectangle to practice doing a knit stitch at all.

--

Finding community can be hard, and yes, some crafting hobbies are infested with drama.

But if you just want to know how to knit, you're way better off with some video tutorials and a nice pattern you like.

[theminecraftbee]

OMG i got a better pc recently and i JUST realized i can play vault hunters now!!! :000 any advice for absolute newbies? (kinda scared of it)

YAY! you’ll enjoy it I have trouble playing normal minecraft now that I know there’s a Minecraft I can be playing that has Goals and Objectives and also Storage Systems.

and then yes I absolutely have newbie advice! don’t take any of this as gospel I’m hardly a top player these are just things I find handy:

make sure you’ve allocated at least 8 GB to the game before playing to save yourself some headache. 6 GB can work if you’re pushing it, but not much less.

vault hunters discord can be a useful place to join to find various advice and also things like community documents on everything in the game as you need.

you don’t need better armor than iron; since all vanilla armor was nerfed, diamond armor has the same protective strength as iron armor, just with more durability. save your diamonds for other crafts, like a vault enchanter, a diamond pickaxe, and the altar itself!

you do not need a librarian setup because the vault enchanter exists, but you will need some kind of emerald income. I normally use a classic sticks to fletcher in the early game, but more efficient trading halls aren’t terrible to have (farmers, for example, are also good). you can pick up a villager from the overworld as an item with shift+right click, just don’t do that with a villager that currently has a workstation, because that can cause pretty bad lag!

animal jars and animal pens exist! use them! an animal jar works by shift+right click while holding the jar on adult animals. place a jar with at least two animals into an animal pen to be able to breed them; hit shift to see how many animals is in the pen and the cooldown. you can use a bucket to get eggs from a chicken pen or a turtle pen. you can shear a sheep pen to get all the wool from the sheep, a bee pen to get honeycomb. to kill animals in a pen and get drops from them, just kill them with your sword. later, using some combination of modular routers and bee pens is helpful for automation.

JEI is your friend, but doesn’t show you a few vault hunters recipes (namely, any tool station or vault forge recipes). you can view those recipes in their respective workbench. however, JEI does have lists of what loot is found in each vault chest. that’s handy for pouch filtering!

a pouch with a pickup upgrade is your friend; multiple pouches is even more your friend. the sooner you can graduate to using a magnet to pick up items into pouches without using your shulker boxes, the faster you’ll get at running vaults, I promise! so as expensive as pouches seem early on, it’s really, really worth it to start using them. the filter is also handy to prevent picking up junk items.

similarly, breaking chests with vault tools will seem slow to you at first; it’s not it’s faster than manually grabbing the items from chests. you will get a quest about making vault tools, and a chest breaker should be one of your first tools when you do!

anything you find inside a chest in the vault you should keep; any vanilla items you find you should keep. however, any modded item that isn’t inside a chest in the vault can’t be an altar item, so if you’re short on storage space, you can throw those out.

early skill points should include at least one in heal and at least one in vein miner. strength is very good early game, especially all the way up to strength four. speed is really good but expensive so save getting speed until you’re ready. you only need two levels in un-specialized stonefall to negate fall damage altogether when you use the skill, which, if you’re like me and can’t mlg, is a lifesaver. I also recommend early points in dash and javelin. don’t be precious with skill points, though, they’re easy to change later! also unless you take the intelligence talent, early game you’ll NORMALLY have better strength than you do ability power for the skills that require AP. however, you can re-spec this easily later.

expertises, however, CANNOT easily be reset—you’ll get a free neuralyzer (check spelling haha) at level 50, but beyond that you need an omega pog, which is… expensive to say the least. so you SHOULD maybe be precious with these! experienced is the only one I’d say is definitively BAD. personally I recommend maxing out fortune and bounty hunter with your first 25 levels, but not everyone likes having the double bounties so that’s a “I prefer it” thing. late game, infuser and mystic are really good, but early game you won’t use those. angel is SUPER FUN and always really convenient to have but angel blocks aren’t cheap, so I never unlock it until I actually have the materials to make an angel block. jeweler is definitely actually good but I kind of hate perfecting jewels so I don’t take it, but most people who like maxing out tools do want that one.

I had a whole post about knowledge unlocks but basically, do the ones you want most as you need them, but drawers, the vault compass, double pouches, or stack upgrades are normally my first choices.

level matters more for gear than rarity, especially early game when you level through new tiers of gear quickly. if you get new gear with better implicit stats in a new, higher-level tier, replace your old gear, even if your new gear is common and your old gear was omega. later game is when having higher rarity gear will actually start to matter.

unless you’re very good at the game don’t try to be iskall, use a chestplate, not an elytra, in the vault. so you know, you don’t die.

keep up with the quest book! it’s handy like that! you can go back and read old quests too!

don’t be afraid to change your difficulty settings to whatever you have the most fun with—I basically always play in vaultMode casual and I like it that way!

watching other vault hunters like the hermits can help a lot!

and most of all: HAVE FUN!!!

[mybeingthere]

Bakarwal blankets: this pastoralist community makes them using wool from their animals. It has become almost impossible to continue with this beautiful and essential craft. Ritayan Mukherjee reports:

The woollen blankets are made by members of Scheduled Tribe communities – Megh and Mihngh, known for their wool craftsmanship. Once the blankets are made, they are washed and dried by the Bakarwal men. The thread and yarn for the blankets are usually made by Bakarwal women, and the yarn is dyed at home by Bakarwal families.

Mohammed Kalu has come from Khanna Chargal, a small settlement in a riverbed upstream from Pargalta. Pointing towards an old woollen blanket on which his little son is asleep he says, “[The blanket] lives as long as a human being or longer. But the market-bought acrylic wool blankets hardly last a few years.

He adds that blankets made of pachim (the local word for acrylic wool) take days to dry if they get wet, unlike pure woollen blankets. “Our feet burn and body aches after using the acrylic blankets in winter”.

“I can look at a quilt and tell you which family it comes from,” says Zareena Begum who lives in the same settlement as Talab Hussain.

“It is difficult to get people who still have mills,” says Maaz Khan. In his sixties, Khan is from a family that still processes wool. Many in the community say that the charkha (spinning wheel) is dead and have given up spinning.

As a result, pastoralists are also finding it difficult to sell wool. “We used to get at least 120-220 [rupees] for a kilogram but now we get nothing. A decade or so ago even the goat hair had a price in the market; now even sheep wool has no buyers,” says Mohammad Talib, a Bakarwal from tehsil Basohli, in Kathua district. The unused wool lies in their storerooms or is discarded at the shearing spot. The number of artisans working with wool has also reduced.

Maintaining a herd of animals for their wool is no longer easy as grazing grounds are scarce in and around Jammu. They also have to pay people whose land their animals graze on.

Recently a lot of areas around the villages in Samba district were taken over by invasive species, Lantana camara. “We can’t graze here. There are weeds everywhere,” says Munabbar Ali, resident of a small village in Basohli tehsil .

Many of the old breeds of animals have been replaced by the state and Bakarwal’s say that the current cross-bred sheep cannot stand the heat of the plains for too long, and neither can they navigate mountain paths, “When we migrate to Kashmir, they stop in their tracks if there is a small ledge as it is difficult for them to jump. The old breed would walk well,” Tahir Raza a shepherd told us.

https://ruralindiaonline.org/.../bakarwal-blankets-out.../

[15-lizards]

Hi! I love your redesigns for ASOIAF houses and the snippets of their house’s fashion history. I wrote a ton of fashion history papers in college so it warms my heart with your posts. 💚💛💚 (green hearts for Meera Reed)

What do you think House Velaryon would dress like? They have such an interesting history that it’s hard for me, personally, to imagine it. My first thought was Vikings because they’re sea faring like the Greyjoys but it wouldn’t match too much because they’re a political powerhouse with dragons and members in the Royal family… at least in the HOTD era. In GOT they’re much smaller and less powerful naval house under Stannis who obviously isn’t as flashy as the Targs or even his brothers. The fashion would’ve changed drastically throughout their history, especially considering the two very different houses their power has been tied to so I was wondering what your take would be on their different statuses being reflected in their clothes.

This got very long lol I love your energy with the fashion history side of the fandom so I don’t mind if it takes a while to answer! Great things take time after all💚

Hey this is such a great question!! I think I’ll do like a “timeline” of fashion for this one instead of one period on time.

Okay so they’re said to have arrived even earlier than the targs, so their earliest fashions would be older remnants of Valyria. Fairly simple clothing, since I don’t think they were very established in Valyria, but as they made their wealth, their fashion became more complex with added jewelry and finer materials, but they still hung on to their traditions for a while. Simple one piece dresses or tunics and sun protecting/religious headwear that got more complex over time

An unspecified amount of time later, when the Targs arrive, the Velaryons have grown nice and wealthy off of the constant wars on the mainland. At this point they’re still cleaning to tradition, but they’re also letting Westerosi influences come in. Leather jerkins and wool cloaks and velvet jackets etc etc. And at this point they’re starting to evolve into a sea faring family too so: cotton clothing that’s easy to move around in on ships, turbans/head wraps to keep hair out of their face on Driftmark and while at sea, rare jewels and metals found on expeditions.

By the time of the dance they’ve probably fully conformed to Westerosi fashions. And they’re rich enough to fully indulge in it too. Big frills and ruffles, wide skirts, embroidered clothing, jeweled headdresses, studded leather jerkins, carefully crafted doublets, the whole nine yards. I feel that since this is the peak of the Targaryen era it’s also the peak of the Velaryon era, since they’re so closely connected

By the time of Aerys II, I think that their peak has definitely passed, and the Velaryons are slowly falling from grace, though it isn’t as extreme or as fast as the targs. Their clothes are older and more worn, beginning to become mostly for practicality. Skirts are flatter, leather has become cracked, people are wearing the clothes of their mother and father. It’s not immediate, but there’s definitely a slow decline in quality as the house becomes less and less important to Westeros

By the late 290’s, I think the Velaryons are all but faded into obscurity. They have their noble name, but that’s really it. They were fading already by the end of the Targs, so the absolute shitshow Robert launches the country in cant really be good for them, or the fact that Mr. Stingy Stannis is their new liege lord. When Aurane comes to power, they’re essentially just dressing like landed knights. Their clothes are clean and fit well and don’t have holes…but that’s about it.