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squivulous · 7 months

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My Podcast Masterlist

I have a long commute, giving me two hours a day to listen to podcasts. Here is my documentation of all the audio dramas I’ve consumed plus a little blurb. I just wanted to organize them in a list and also (selfishly) get recommendations if anyone would be so kind. Or maybe you’ll see something that’ll interest you. Enjoy!

Podcasts I’m Caught Up With

The Penumbra Podcast: I’ve made an animatic for this one. I’m down bad. This is the one that sucked me into this podcast world.

Malevolent: Arthur dating sim when??? Everyone wants him. Also it took me way too long to find out it was an actual play podcast.

Red Valley: Gordon fan all the way. Normally I do like the Sad Boy but Gordon is that type of dorky that makes me want to protect him.

Caravan: Interesting world and love a main character that makes questionable decisions. Everything is going to be fine :)

WOE.BEGONE: I’m obsessed. It happened slowly but now I think about it every day… And the music is so good! Mike Walters is cringefail, bbygurl, easy to manipulate, and saws his left arm off at the shoulder.

The Cellar Letters: Legit gets me spooked at times. Steve and Nate are good vibes. I’m sure glad nothing ever happens to them.

Harbor: Love that Sam being a malewife ruined his life.

Rifted: Aurora, another Sad Boy to add to my collection. Daniel should give him a kiss to make him feel better.

Heroics: Pls come back some day… I need more Josh. He’s in his slay era.

Second Fiddles: Max is owning being a bbygurl. Also there are a lot of poop jokes which is weird but I’ll look past it.

Hand in Glove: idk anything about baseball but these baseball players are smoochinggg.

Find Us Alive: Lancaster in booty jorts. It's canon. Don't look it up. I'm right. ALSO HE NEEDS TO TALK ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED TO HIM PLS.

The Kingmaker Histories: The kiss is still the subject of much historical debate. Eisen <3

The Viridian Wild: It hasn’t been updated since 2021 but I still have hope.

Dos: After You: Ghosting GONE WRONG

Brimstone Valley Mall: SEASON TWO IS COMING. 90’s mall setting is really fun and I’m here for the thing Asmoraius and Trent have going on.

Levian: It starts off with a bang! Well not quite since his sister walks in oops. Excited to see where this pirate tale takes us.

Midnight Burger: Each episode is a delight and as someone who is bad at science, I appreciate Gloria and Caspar. Caspar pls stay forever and also Brodie <3

Return Home: I’m really listening to it for Buddy and DW.

Raythe Reign: Sometimes you need a yaoi.

The White Vault: At this point, I know what I’m getting into and yet still decide to get attached to these characters

The Amelia Project: Please don’t hurt the Interviewer! He’s too goofy for all this drama. I’m scared!

Fawx & Stallion: James Stallion being canonically hot in any situation is such a win

Victoriocity: Inspector Fleet has had a long week and needs some days off

Yokai Detective Agency: I’m always a sucker for detective stories and I’m looking forward to where this one is going

Desert Skies: Charming characters and love that the plot has a nice pace, not dragging things out

The Grotto: the music is so good but also please help. The emotional turmoil is torrential.

Camlann: Yo…. Dai, for real???

Podcasts I’ve Completed

Dash: This might not be completed? This is actually the first audio drama I finished. Classic noir but supernatural and boys are smooching!

The Two Princes: This was wholesome and had good vibes. I prefer the first season but it was still a fun time.

The Magnus Archives: Arrived late to the party on this one, but I love all the fanart. Awakened my interest in pathetic men.

EOS 10: I also am not 100% sure this is done but I enjoyed the shenanigans!

Wolf 359: Eiffel, my beloved. I liked the silly and dramatic parts of this story. It hurt my soul but it was worth it :)

Time:Bombs: noahdeaart's fanart made me think this was going in a different direction... Still a fun one!

Valence: Love this one WAAAAHHH! Pls listen. I love Nico. Sad Boy but hides it under their chaos energy.

The Bright Sessions: I would 1005% listen to a spin-off just about Mark. This Sad Boy keeps collecting trauma and I need to see him and Oliver maybe go on adventures or something. ANYTHING.

Roommates: I, too, had a pandemic college experience. It's kinda bizarre that there's already a story about that and I love it!

Look Up: Wholesome. Briggon Snow kept me fed.

Moonface: Appreciate having an audio drama from an Asian American perspective. Didn’t realize how much I needed that.

Murray Mysteries: Must protect Jonathan.

Kaleidotrope: More wholesome content. I got more into it by the second half. The hosts have a fun dynamic!

Re: Dracula: Still thinking about Inside You.

Wooden Overcoats: Rudyard is my fav. Chapman deserves the hate.

The Vanishing Act: this Rudyard wasn’t my fav. I was happy to listen to him suffer but also happy when he fell in love. A win for Griffson!

Greater Boston: Michael Tate <3

Ars Paradoxica: Nikhil Sharma <3

Podcasts I’m Catching Up On

Life with Althaar: I knew that plant lady was sus

The Night Post: Ashley……

Love and Luck: I’m on ep 87 now some magical things are going down

Going Lowbrow: I wasn’t expecting a musical but I’m not complaining.

SAYER: There are no bees on Typhon :)

WTNV: I got behind during high school and now I’m too scared to get caught up… one day. It's been so long at this point I think I'd need to start over.

BRASS: I fell behind on episodes :(

Not Quite Dead: If there are vampires, I'm automatically interested. Only a few eps in.

Hi Nay: I’m listening to Murphy respectfully.

Podcasts I’ve Dropped

Moonbase Theta Out

Dreamboy

Archive 81

The Sheridan Tapes

Jar of Rebuke

I’ll keep this updated every so often. Most of these I’ve found either from scouring rec lists or seeing nice fanart.

Please let me know of any recommendations you may have! Thanks for reading if you got this far. Mad respect.

Last updated: 04/14/24

#podcasts #podcast recs #audio drama #squiv speaks #I didn't know I listened to this many

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shroudkeeper · 5 months

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Darkness consumed her, clinging to the curvature of her silhouette, transforming and defining her attire. She was adorned in her proper raiments, garments which billowed around her ankles. The shadows of her hounds rose, scaling the walls, climbing high above the awnings until the sliver of moonlight had all been engulfed in nothingness. He wanted this, to push her to the brink of enshrouding herself. To see her for what she was.

One of the lanterns peeled away the tenebrous shadows; from above one came to life suddenly. The ghastly light descended and a terrible maw formed then divorced, giving way to a tongue that rolled out, with a glaring eye was fixated on the target of its mistress, whose frigid touch held it in place.

"Finally, you're here..beloved."

His mouth watered at the idea of tasting divinity, to feel those same hands she denied him pressed against his face in praise. His beloved indeed, his beloved. In this state of hers, he would finally prove himself worthy, to stand at her side, even if everyone else had to fall for the sake of this. To his knees, and into a pool of rain, he fell before her. She saw what had become of him as the light finally reached his form. His features revealed themselves to her. This is what envy, desire, and loathing do, give birth to a demon, one who pollutes the tranquility of their soul, their heart decays, and any purity it holds diminishes and allows another to gain control. To manipulate.

"My lady," he could barely recognize his own voice as he addressed her, but the feelings were still there, sprouting with each word. "Would you accept it now, that I am the only one who knows what you are, who can protect you, who can give.. and take."

Each word fell on deaf ears, nothing but an insect's buzzing escaped his lips. Her eyes glanced at him but once and soon settled upon the blade that he flaunted, brandished. Still, there is no expression on her features, her gaze is as empty as before. Sympathy, anger, despair? She was numbed to it all. But to destroy lives, trap the souls purged from their physical forms, followed by the audacity of offering them up to death as if they were a prize.

It was offensive.

The wails and agonized whispers resonating from this accursed blade would be silenced, and these souls would find release.

Without warning, his throat was seized by tendrils rising from the penumbra at his feet, betraying him as she watched them take form and grow defined. He was going to be dragged under by hands, hands that took the form of the people he killed, of the corpses he left behind. Mercilessly they scratched and pulled, trying to sink him into the stone, to be devoured by the shadows of her manifested domain. Into the world of darkness.

"I have killed for you! Always for you! Yet it is not enough!"

He hated it, always being second place. To the clan, to his brother, and now she would treat him like the others. Never good enough, even compared to some worthless merchant who would piss himself if he confronted the monstrosities she loved.

He hated her for it.

And if she would not have him. He would have her, her life, her soul, her body.

"I will be the last thing you see!"

Against his bindings, he lashes out and pushes off the ground in unnatural strength, like a beast that has been taunted too long. Even Kikyo had to take a slight step back, though there was no semblance of fear in her steady gaze, a hint of disappointment graced her lips but dissolved within a heartbeat as her eyes shifted to a space behind him, looking beyond where he knelt.

The indignation he tried to keep in check, shatters past the delicate binds that kept his mind from unraveling, it erupted at once in a strangled roar as he clawed at the fronds of his shadows, but kept a hand clutching the sword he offered, refusing to release it to save his own life.

Then his wail soon joined the cacophonous symphony played into the air as her geta pressed to his wrist and a gruesome crunch splinters through the cries. There is no satisfaction on her face, only watching his desperate attempt to grab at her ankle, only to have his arm pulled back by force and snap at an angle that would send an ordinary man buckling to the ground. But despite breaking his bones, the humiliation of her giving her back to him caused him to foam at the mouth.

Broken bones would not stop him, the umbral bonds were broken and he launched himself forward, but stopped suddenly. Her hound's claws took hold of the demonic horns and snapped them in a sound akin to a twig. A piercing pain and head-splitting sound imploded in his head, and darkness flashed behind his eyes like a Rorschach test.

Limb arms swung, his claws swiped at the air, at fabric, trying to get to her flesh, to disfigure her. To imprint his agony on her in any way, any method, he could. This was his vengeance, for choosing a lesser creation he would brand her as a reminder.

Then suddenly a flash of light and steel broke past the gloom.

And the world grew silent.

The flame of his life was suddenly snuffed but it was not by her hand, nor that of her shikigami who stood vigilantly, but by another. Another who despite his own injuries, still adhered to his orders, who would not sway from his duty.

#ffxiv #ffxiv screenshot #ff14 screenshot #ffxiv writing #tw: blood #I promise it is almost over #well it is over for HIM atleast

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mrsmarchw · 1 year

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Queen of my pitiful soul - James Patrick March

you can see the next chapter here

I. Piercing gaze under penumbra

The week had been long. I knew it would be exhausting, a sudden change with no forewarning. But I did not expect such intensity. Well, I suppose I had it coming. May my stubbornness be cursed.

The company I had called home for several years closed its doors in the city. Yet, management saw value in me and offered two options: transfer to a branch or face unemployment. Oh, yes, I could have continue working there. Times have changed. In 2022, many companies have embraced the idea of working from home and even flexible schedules. However, technology has never been my strong suit and, to be honest, it holds little interest for me. Is there something about the internet that cannot be done in the flesh?

This is what I told my dearest loved ones as I bid them farewell. Little did they know that I was in great danger. As it drew closer, I knew that I could not turn back or remain standing idly by. Every fiber of my being screamed for me to run, to escape the impending threat that loomed before me. My heart pounded with fear, but I steeled myself for what was to come. I would not let this danger defeat me. I would not let it consume me.

I must also confess that this opportunity fell into my lap at the ideal moment and provided a convenient excuse to burry that place - and my past - as deep as possible. In any case, it was not in my nature to remain stationary. And so, I made my decision. But it was a radical move, and upon further contemplation, perhaps I was not ready for it.

It was mid-September, the temperatures were starting to drop and the smell of autumn was already present in the air. The cold wind hit me with force before I got into the taxi, causing me to shiver and eventually sneezes through my sensitive nose. It was already clear that I was impatient with the traffic and with the driver who almost got us under trucks a few good times, due to his lack of attention on the track and the excess of it in the rearview mirror.

The man could not take his eyes off me, like a predator eyeing its prey, stripping me with his gaze. I was used to stares, thanks to the alluring force that embraced the boundaries of my body and also due to my own beauty, it was routine. But an unusual wickness overpowered the taxi driver's face, I could see the face of a demon - ironic. The mere presence of him caused a fire to ignite within me. I couldn't shake the feeling that something about him was off. Was he even who he claimed to be? Or was there something more sinister lurking beneath the surface? A normal person would never see such inhumanity with such cleverness, however, I was far from ordinary.

At times, when we stopped at the stoplight, he would turn back to stare at my legs with such a hateful look that it seemed capable of lifting my skirt a few centimeters. As I came to understand that he was, in fact, just a deeply flawed human and not some supernatural entity, I felt no fear - it was he who should have been trembling in terror at the thought of facing me. Rather, I would later discover that his repulsive behavior had brought to the surface a desire I thought I had buried forever ages ago.

The sudden vibration of my phone pulled me from my thoughts. 'Estelle', the screen read. Mother. I counted 15 seconds in my head, hoping the call would drop before I had to answer. Of course, that was not to be.

"I am well [...] yes, Mother, it is excellent here [...] no, you may not come."

The call was mercifully short. After all these years, she remains concerned with the trivialities of the mortal world. In any case, it reminded me of a nostalgiciac time that brought a smile to my lips. A time when I was not Melinda - and I would've never dreamed of being.

As the summer sun began to set, its beauty was undeniable. However, in the city of Los Angeles, the heat can be unbearable and bring out the worst in people, causing tempers to rise and conflicts to erupt. My journey was filled with the sounds of honking and insults from other drivers in the congested traffic.

Finally arriving at my destination, I stepped out of the dirty taxi and was greeted by a dark purple sky and a hotel sign that was flickering and making a buzzing noise with its broken letters.

I stood before the very gates of hell.

HOTEL CORTEZ

As I made my way through the opulent lobby, my eyes were drawn to the stunning Art Deco aesthetic that adorned the space. The rich burgundy hues of the armchairs and small tables exuded luxury, and the gold and black edges added a touch of elegance. The grand chandeliers hanging from the ceiling only added to the splendor of the room, and I couldn't help but feel a sense of envy at the thought of calling such a lavish space home.

I knew in that moment that I had arrived in a place of exceptional sophistication. Though I was tired to the bone after a long and trying week, I was determined to treat myself to a bit of indulgence and pampering. As I stepped over the threshold, I felt the weight of the world lifted from my shoulders, if only for a little while.

The bar was empty except for one person - an unusual occurrence on a Friday evening after work. The dim light made it impossible for me to see their face. All I saw was a tall, slender figure with their back turned, dressed in a shadowy garment. I approached cautiously, taking a seat at the bar. It wasn't until the person turned around and came face to face with me that I was able to get a good look at them. In that instant, one hand went to their chest while their eyes widened and the other palm covered their open mouth in shock - revealing their dramatic nature. The sight made me silently laugh, not because I found it funny, but because of the fabulous diva before me.

"Don't scare me like that!" the lady shouted.

She was adorned in a long, navy blue evening gown adorned with shimmering sequins that made a delightful racket as she moved. A white turban was perched atop her head, the fabric arranged in such a way that it revealed glimpses of her silver-gray scalp, visible beneath the shaved strands that were just starting to grow back. Her eyes were smoky, matching the shade of her dress and lined with Egyptian kohl. Her lips were painted with a bold red lipstick that barely showed on her thin lips and her nails were painted an enormous silver. She was magnificent. The confidence radiating from her was seductive.

"I'll have whatever you have." I gave the perfectly dressed woman behind the counter a tired smile, both of us with curious eyes.

She served me in silence, watching me in the same way that I watched her. I was certain that our relationship would surprise me, and I eagerly awaited it.

"I'm Liz." She said after a long moment of silence, simply looking at me with interest. The woman turned her back, searching through the shelves for a glass like mine to pour herself a drink as well. "And you, Melinda, are a beauty for our guests."

The revelation came as a shock to me. I had foolishly believed that no one in this hotel had taken notice of my presence or even my name - not even her. That's how things were meant to be kept, that's how I had intended them to remain. However, I was naive to think that I could go unnoticed anywhere. I took a deep breath, gazing at the remaining amber liquid that she had poured for me and affected a look of surprise, before downing it all in one go. I forced my lips into a slight smile. While I valued discretion, I couldn't deny the pleasure of being flattered.

Eventually, the establishment filled with other patrons and Liz left to attend to them.

From the moment I stepped through the doors of this building, I felt a pair of eyes fixed upon me, following my every move. It was no different at that very moment. A week had been more than enough time for me to realize one of the reasons this hotel was so peculiar: it was home to more of the dead than the living. And I knew exactly who was accompanied by vital energy and who was not. Tragically, few souls were willing to reveal themselves to me, it was said due to my nature. But he was not afraid. In fact, he stayed dangerously close. A considerable part of me longed to see the face of the man who watched me day and night.

I undid my hairdo, unbuttoned a few buttons on my blouse, and slipped off my heels, leaving them beneath the bench. Several hours passed in silence as I took one dose after another that Liz brought to me.

As I was left to my own devices, my thoughts inevitably turned to the issue I had been avoiding for weeks, desperately trying to distract myself with petty tasks like work and moving. I even found myself picking at the nail polish on my fingers, a nervous habit I thought I had left behind. Desperate for some form of comfort, I frantically searched my bag for my pack of cigarettes and lit one, inhaling deeply as the cancerous smoke filled my lungs. Anxiety twisted in my chest like a vice, causing me to wonder if I would ever be able to escape this predicament I had found myself in.

Being immortal does not mean one is impervious to all harm.

"What's worrying you so much?" My thoughts were interrupted by the woman from earlier. She had moved so stealthily that I barely noticed her approach. Now, she had poured herself a glass and was leaning on the counter, eyeing me with an empathetic gaze.

"Work," I lied without hesitation, rolling my eyes and pretending that this was indeed the cause of my worries. There was no need to expose my true concerns to this woman, especially as I had only just met her a few minutes ago.

She raised her eyebrows and pulled a bench over to sit down, never taking her eyes off of me. My short, curt answer cut the mood, making it clear that I did not wish to discuss the matter further.

"What a beautiful and sweet voice you have..." She commented out of nowhere. "I can tell you're not from Los Angeles."

"I am most grateful for the compliment," I said, smiling softly at the young woman. I tucked a stray lock of hair behind my ear. "I, too, am a singer, though perhaps not a professional one. But I have a great love for it all the same."

As the hours passed and the crowd thinned, I found myself alone with Liz and the bottles once again. Though I was immune to the effects of alcohol, the hours of drinking had still taken their toll on my already exhausted body. All I desired was a hot bath, some jazz music, and a cigarette in the comfort of my own room.

As I made myself at home in this hotel, I found a new sense of comfort that I had never felt before. Perhaps it was because of the other troubled beings who lived here, just like me. I knew that no matter what I did, the outside world had no power to affect my home within these walls.

I slid my credit card across the counter to Liz. Despite my exhaustion, I was determined to make it to my room and escape the chaos of my thoughts. I could tell that Liz, too, was aware of the turmoil swirling inside of me. As I placed another cigarette between my lips, I took a deep breath and tried to focus on the task at hand.

"Keep this." She raised a perfectly groomed eyebrow, my gaze piercing as I looked at her with a mixture of curiosity and confusion. The flame of the lighter illuminated my face, casting shadows across my features. "The master paid your bill."

With a flick of her wrist, she gestured towards the man at the other end of the bar, whom I had not noticed was present for but a fleeting moment.

In the very second that our gazes met, I knew without a doubt that he was the owner of the hungry eyes that had been following me constantly. The penumbra only served to enhance his mysterious and inviting appearance. A bolt of electricity shot through my body at an incomprehensible speed as I quickly and involuntarily took in his entire figure, from head to toe.

He was thin, but not too thin - I could see the defined muscles of his body even beneath his tailored suit. He was tall, with jet black hair perfectly styled back. A thin mustache above his lips and the eyes, oh my, the eyes... In an immense shadowy and intriguing intensity. They pierced me with their intensity.

They were half-closed while locked onto mine. I knew it was him who had been following me, and he knew that I knew. His lack of reaction betrayed a pain that I hadn't felt in many years, and as if he had read my thoughts, his lips curved upwards into a sly smile. He slightly raised his whiskey glass in my direction as a greeting.

I tilted my head slightly to the side and shaped my lips into a sweet smile, silently thanking him. It wasn't my usual approach to approach anyone, but the fascination that he had awoken simply by showing himself was captivating. I needed to know why he had been watching me.

I quickly slipped my shoes on, eager to satisfy my curiosity and find out more about the mysterious gentleman who had caught my attention. However, when I looked up to where he had been standing, he was gone, and so was Liz.

#james patrick march #james march x reader #james march #ahs hotel #american horror story #evan peters #evan peters smut

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unaduessa · 5 years

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You know that thing where you spend a really long time slowly making your way through a tv show or book series or what have you and when you finally finish it everything is great and you feel accomplished.........but then a few days later you stumble on some free time and your first thought is “oh, I’ll go back to finishing that thing” and then you remember you’ve already finished it? And then you have to sit down, reevaluate your life, and mourn like you’ve lost a loved one cause that one thing was with you for so long it became part of our routine?

I hate that, but I do it every damn time and I don’t think there’s any escaping it.

#death note #my hero academia #fate zero #sherlock #umbrella academy #band of brothers #the pacific #portal #portal 2 #the penumbra podcast #welcome to night vale #peaky blinders #and all the other fucking things that consumed my damn soul

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sideblogformindtrash · 3 years

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CW: SELF HARM; feelings of shame and self hatred; past trauma; blood/cuts; whump of a minor; drug mention; whipping; institutional abuse; religious themes; deshumanization, my complete inability to write linear stories;

He hates himself for this, but up to this day, even if he feels he has escaped the claws of that place, even if he rejected the dogma, even when he engages in heretic behavior and rejects the very concept of sin… He misses the stupor of repentance, the sheer emptiness that followed it, and the sharp, terrible pain that resulted.

Orfeu tells himself that it was poison. And he knows it was. Those moments were poisonous, and he was manipulated into it for far too long. It made him hate himself, as a broken little sinner, even if at that time his only crime was being born with sharp teeth, being born wrong despite being made by a God who was the source of all perfection.

And he reminds of that day were he sneaked in the ceiling of City Theater, were they were performing old tragedies the entire week and, that day, Orpheus and Eurydice. How he decided that would be a more fitting name than the one he had before.

Orpheus, who lost Eurydice, who should never, ever had looked back. Orpheus who lived eternally in the courts of the underworld playing his harp for Persephone ruler of spring and of death.

But he did look back, just like the fallen hero had, and now he had to live with a shadow of doubt and regret. He missed the stupor his mind went into the rituals, missed feeling clean and pure right after it. The days were candlelight casted the shadows of angels in carved walls of the temple, the cave-like ambiance in penumbra, hundreds of voices singing in perfect harmony to elevate their spirits over to reach the merciful God Above, all done under the sorrow-filled eyes that stared down from the cross.

And like the one crucified: All merciful, all kind, and terribly wronged both by His Father above and by those below, they should offer themselves as human sacrifice so their sins would be forgiven.

A line of man and woman in penitence – and he the one teenager among them –, kneeling in the cold stone floor, singing praises, while the whip singed in the hands of the elder. The candles consumed the oxygen, the air was pestered by strong incense, the half-darkness was hypnotic, the gregarious voices all around them penetrating his very soul.

The whipped marked his back and he felt nothing but a distant stinging. His sins were cast crimson like blood, but they would be purified. Even if they were crimson, they shall be white like snow. It was only for a mere second, when leather contacted skin, that he felt pain, and soon, it faded again into the harmonious stupor, as his soul was distant wandering somewhere above, trying to reach the heavens.

It’s only later laid in the cave-like bedroom, in the old mattress, that he will feel the marks on his back. Every single lash hurting like the fire of hell, making sleep impossible and grounding him in reality with sharp burning agony. Only when the chanting is over, when the pure bliss that follows is gone, then all that is left is pain, and exhaustion, and traces of a feeling he only could describe as a hangover.

And there on the dark, after his candle burns out, he would cry and tell himself that this couldn’t happen again. But it always did. Sometimes he thought he needed it, sometimes he wanted it, sometimes it was pressure, or fear or even force.

And just like that, drops of blood fall into the shower floor and he feels nothing, as he moves the blade in curves, unconsciously humming tunes he barely remembered, in a pale imitation of the stupor he used to put himself into.

…It’s superficial but it tints the shower floor in red. Red like his sins, red like searing pain, red like knocking on a wooden door and dragging his mind back into reality harder than any pain every could. Blue and white and gray like the person waiting outside.

He breaths. How long has he been there, carving skin, staring into the emptiness? Another shy knock this time more desperate. And he needs all his strength to sound convincing, so the voice doesn’t crack.

“…Darling. Just a second”

He looks down. And now that feeling is gone and it hurts. But he deserves that pain. As he turns on the faucet, blood swirls down the shower drain, the sins he cast in red turn white like the shower floor.

He dresses himself quickly, not wanting to look at the mirror. It felt okay to do this before. More okay than now. He was alone. It never mattered. But now someone is waiting, someone who needs him to be there, despite how much of a failure he is at… anything. At caring for others, at caring for himself. At keeping himself sane.

Haru needs him. Little Haru who needs all the courage he can gather to even knock on the door. Little Haru named after light and spring, and with a heart far too big for his body, in constant overflow. Little Haru who needs him to do better, be better and truly take care of him.

Needed him to crawl out of the underworld and escape Hades without looking back.

He opens the door and smiles, scared blue eyes staring at him, clutching the tiny notebook close to his chest, he falls on his knees immediately, a shaky hand holding a piece of paper.

‘It is sorry for disturbing Master. So, so sorry. It was wondering if Master needs help. Pet wants to stay close and help Master with anything please. Sorry if not. It is sorry for being a bother”

He stares at the paper for a second. Then he noticed the dark clouds forming and distant lightning as the storm approaches, the strong wind curving the trees outside.

“No, you didn’t disturb me at all. I actually was going to call you in a moment.”

Haru sighed in relief, and nodded with expectant eyes waiting to see what his Master wanted next. Of course Orfeu knew it didn’t really matter what it was, he just didn’t want to be alone. It was going to rain, and rain terrified him.

“I was, hm, thinking we could watch a movie? Would you like to?”

He nods eagerly. Thunder cracks outside and Haru flinches and grabs his sleeves for a moment, eyes shut tight, but then quickly let’s go, even more anxious now, eyes widening as he starts to scribble an apology, writing fast as if terrified the notebook would be pulled away at any moment.

He waits. He doesn’t really need to see what he is writing to know. But he waits. And surely, he gets shown an apology, lots of unreadable worlds, a mess of pronouns and fear and tear-stained paper.

“Hey, hey. Its fine” he says, offering his arm again “You can hold me. It improves the experience of movie-watching by a lot.”

He stares for a second, fear-filed eyes, and slowly holds his arm again. He closes his eyes and leans his head on Orfeu’s shoulder, as if relieved.

They sit together to watch whatever. Haru fights to stay calm and watch the movie, even if each thunder causes him to tremble and hold tighter. If his nails were long enough, they might be sinking on his arm now. That would be okay too. An anchor to reality.

Taggging: @whump-me-all-night-long @whumpzone @twistedcaretaker @cupcakes-and-pain @oofthatsgottahurt

#oc whump #orfeu and haru #they are 100% watching sharknado #whump writing #whump

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fishmongeringstudies · 3 years

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scene fifteen: in moments of deep and debilitating anxiety remember that someone out there is thinking about how to fit a horse-shaped figurine up their ass and that they will probably succeed

in the history of sexuality: volume one michel foucault puts forth the idea that we as a society have gotten bad at dying due to a lack of practice. in the place of death, he posits, we obsess with life. every tedious stage of it, spotlit and burnt into our retinas so that even when we lie awake in bed with our eyes shut, visions of the future stalk through the darkness like specters. we are categorically unable to predict what lies ahead on the yellow brick road and obligated to try. as a result, we have become shrewd, planning creatures.

we have lost our touch with death. we are out of touch with it. we do not die enough, even though everyone you speak to will likely agree that each of us only dies once.

in a half-hearted bid to help its students cope with the fact that the world had been consumed overnight by a pandemic which was steadily eating away at the sanity and sanctity of life as we knew it and everything was fucking terrible, my college came up with a plan wherein instead of four classes in the fall, we would only have to take three. in exchange january would be given up to a four-week speedrun of one more class, so as to complete the holy rectangle. consumed with hubris and distracted by the legend of zelda: breath of the wild, the game which had eaten up the last five months of my life and promised to follow up with the rest of it, i decided to take a philosophy course on personal identity. on the first day of class i logged onto zoom, my personal sleep paralysis demon, at eleven on a monday night to my professor asking us completely seriously: what makes you you?

my toes, i guess? i have ten of them. i mean most people have ten toes, but mine are pretty weird looking. are we done here?

we were not done here. we proceeded to investigate every aspect of the twenty-first century conception of the self, from the lumpy flesh bag which contained our affectionately soft and squishy parts to the memory, the continuous narrative that held all our dimmest and brightest moments together. we doubted each one, flirted with it; then we cast it away. was the self the brain? no. was the self the body? no. was the self the memory, the shreds of past glories, was the self actually a collection of selves? is the you who plucked that goldfish out of the pond at age seven because you thought lungs meant you were invincible the same you who wrung their hands nervously together as they stood in front of the cashier this morning, waiting for the person behind the counter to ring up your groceries?

there was a counter for everything, you see. i know this because i presented a quarter of them. it's fun to shoot things down, less fun to be shot at; having been gunned out of the sky several times in my life i make it a point to keep my eyes trained on the horizon when i am out and about these days. so yes. people are not really. really what? they simply aren't. we have been living in a farce of reality, telling ourselves we matter when we have never been able to articulate with certainty the exact nature of that 'we' to begin with. or should i say me?

one night in late january while lying in bed after a three hour breath of the wild korok hunt, drifting peacefully into the ether, a thought flashed across my mind: WHERE DO PEOPLE GO WHEN THEY FALL ASLEEP.

i bolted upright in bed, heart hammering like there was a hammer in my chest and a little man holding the hammer and that motherfucker was swinging like he had hell to pay.

it turns out my extensive history of making jokes about immortality isn't just a reflection of my overinflated ego. it's a reflection of this:

michel foucault was sometimes criticized for his armchair philosophy style of tackling what were, at heart, deeply empirical human issues. even if the epistemic foundations were sound, there was often a clear disconnect between the ideas he espoused and the communities which they were to be applied to. this is a criticism every philosopher deals with at some point in their life. this is a critique of philosophy as a whole. stop smoking your damn bong and get back out here, skinny academia man. there's a whole world to see.

in season three episode eighteen of the penumbra podcast by sophie takagi kaner and kevin vibert a character named buddy aurinko stops in the middle of a debilitating fit of coughs, and admits in a wet, cracking voice that she does not want to die. 'i don't want to die,' she says to herself, standing in her office and overlooking a heist of astronomical proportions. her heart is made of steel; it pumps gasoline through a body more metal than flesh. she is half human in the most literal sense, with a clockwork soul and a gunmetal smile. in spite of the alarming state of decay the radiation exposure has left her body in, she wants to live. she fights for it. she leaves the heist to her crewmates and escapes to a room that will protect her from shock waves that would otherwise stop her mechanical heart. kicking her heels off and running and stumbling down the hallway, she makes it to safety just in time to hear the explosion go off.

life is a firework show in the sense that we are surrounded by highly-flammable and explosive objects which look nice from afar and are a threat to our safety up close. this analogy made sense when i started typing it but it seems i've come up short. life is a firework show. i like things that eat darkness. i am a firefly. i make fire take flight.

i think michel foucault was right, in some ways. we are living in abundance. i do not mean a physical abundance, a pile of tailored suits at the foot of the bed; i mean an abundance of life. the distribution is disastrously uneven. but the average is high. we emerge into a life which assumes we will stay for a long, long time, which fluffs the pillows and plans the high school graduations and sets aside money in a bank account for our first car, our second apartment, our third lover. we emerge into celebration. happy birthday. cue candles. cue applause.

but on a purely individual level, is it really that bad to be gorilla-glued to life? should we expect the other shoe to drop at thirty instead? what about the mid-life crisis? what about the cat on the windowsill? as death grows to terrify us, so does life. they are two sides of a coin which, when flipped, always lands heads-up. but i propose a counter-argument. i propose joy. joy in standing in the supermarket and running your hands across rows of blushing apples. joy in starting an argument you know you will win. joy in waking up to the shrill screech of your alarm only to discover that today's morning classes have been canceled due to the snow piled up outside your window. we have progressed too far down the yellow brick path to be caught up in false dichotomies. you can love something you fear. you can soak yourself in it, drench yourself in it, tip it down your throat like champagne. flip a coin and it lands both sides up. flip two coins. flip the table and sit on its belly for a while.

are we done here? never. not in a thousand years.

06.04.21

#the author would like to add at this point that foucault's point re: life is that the state deployed biopower to control it #and this was not very great #think family growth policies or the obsession with the birth rate and population growth. not very great indeed #however the author did not start this blog to talk about the state as they do this enough in their stupid papers #so they will talk about the individual instead. because it's summer. and summer is about the self (yahoo answers said so)

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mspainttaz · 4 years

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do u have any other podcasts u would recommend to someone who likes taz and tma and wants more Stories to consume

Hm Stories. now that im thinking about it, i dont actually listen to a lot of podcasts, and the ones i do arent story centered. i KNOW that theres some really really excellent ones out there that i WANT to get to, but for now these are the ones im capable of reccing.

the penumbra podcast- its fun, its different, its endearing, and if you can get into it, theres a lot to love. WILL say this though: genuinely hated the juno stories at first jkajsdfkdjsk im sorry but the tone and storytelling was so different from what i was used to that i had to force myself to listen to it. but the seasons are very short and by the middle of the first one i had decided to love this strange martian detective podcast anyway, which was a good decision because hey turns out this one rocks.

(the creators redid the first two episodes and i would suggest starting with those. its also like. tpp is the host name for several dif stories, theres the juno stories and theres second citadel. they arent connected as far as i know, i havent finished juno yet and havent started citadel so i can only rec juno.)

welcome to night vale: im SORRY i know everyone recs this one but. its good and mindless and relaxing. the type of existential strangeness framed as completely suburban mundane that really activates something inside of you. not really story though, or at least, a very slow build to story. more like the aesthetic of worldbuilding. good for falling asleep to. somehow.

within the wires- barely listened to any of this and its not so much story a s taz and tma but im reccing it anyway because its really messing me up. guided meditation but youre part of some really messed up research facility?? place?? idk it unsettled me in my soul and i liked that.

sawbones- medical history podcast. i like listening to it while getting ready for bed. also not a story podcast. im sorry. BUT it is very interesting.

honestly i cant remember any other podcasts i listen to right now, im sorry this is Exactly not what you asked for but its what i got chief asjdkf

one last rec that is not a podcast but this is my post so you get it anyway: the mechanisms. its a band that tells tragic stories set in fantasy space settings. the lead singer is jonathan sims from tma. yes that one. an album is a full story, and theyve all got such an interesting and fresh vibe. you get to hear a story and listen to music at the same time its great if you love having Too much going on at once which i do.

#tinymacaroni #tpp #wtnv #within the wires #sawbones #m #rec

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sasorikigai · 3 years

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17 + 19

Send a number to find my muse... || @sonxflight || accepting

17. Feeling lonely.

19. Staring at your muse.

▬▬ι═══════ﺤ 🔥 || Interlaced sublimity manifests into crimson rivers that live and permeate in the reflective sky of Scorpion’s dwelling infernal flames. Not as spillage of blood, but as memories unfurl and duplicate between the unsteady and opaque trickle as the burning sapphire eyes hold the dull dark and ashen smoke emanating from the whiplashing scorch of hellfire against his heart, flapping like the breathless bird. Scorpion is an anguished wraith waiting, succinctly resting in-between two realms, defiantly trying to retain the drifting light in his charred heart, as he shifts and splits through the tenebrous darkness; undisguised and through the textured, bleeding scarlet sky, Hanzo Hasashi’s thoughts remain divine as wild indigo midnight soul takes a soaring flight beyond the voluminous flow of indanthrene ocean of his unblinking, motionless stare.

Like very air and breath coalescing to fuel his flames to burn ablaze without lowering the volume and extent of its intensity, awakening further and further as Scorpion’s dauntless gaze remains distant on the horizon of the desolate Outworld. Through desiccated branches, dried and withered thickets and nature’s silhouette reducing him into the penumbra of a miasmic haze as roughened fingertips graze the sovereignty of this immortal land, perpetually threatening the Earthrealm for its usurpation.

Before any force dares to breach the realm’s edge, they would have to go through this vindictive specter, hellbent on righteous justice and bloodshed. For he grasps the intensity and effulgence of the rising sun in the depth of his soul. In the eternal limbo of his subconscious, the burning coals of his heart reveals further sorrow and regret. How Scorpion suffers, his heart blacker than the cosmos at night. All the crashing and bashing of memories pulverizing him further and further into his vigilant oblivion. And the risen, recently freed wraith of the Netherrealm screams as the hollowed emptiness renders him dazed and distant, all of his screams and desperations leaving him as the metaphorical ghost of being unwanted and hopelessly lonely, for marrows of his bones still sing, interlocked with Harumi’s tender ministrations and her breaths, along with the throbbing palpitations of his gentle heart, echoing against his broader expanse.

For both his heart and eyes are wandering travelers; reflecting Scorpion’s wayward soul searching through revivified life of his freedom. Visiting place after place, meeting fate after fate, never feeling at home in place nor in person. Nowhere, he could find comfort, for having no home is to have no sense of belonging. The sheer, utter depravity of love and limerence and happiness sharpens Scorpion’s ragged, serrated edges and all-consuming flame, engulfing the fragile structure built upon his insecurities and vulnerability. How one moment, no one becomes his anything, as Scorpion is bombarded with the onslaught of absence of it as he plummets headfirst into the hazel depths of Ryou Sakai’s eyes, with all of darkness and deathly silence haunting him to the core imminent as the sheer, unbidden viscerality of his torment and tribulations breach with reflected resoluteness and viciousness. ▬▬ι═══════ﺤ 🔥 ||

#✗ the ineffable testimony of spawned hellfire (scorpion)#✗ hellfire fibrillating beneath his skin (iv)#(mortal kombat 2021)#(relationships; samurai jack)#(have this sad. sad wraith)#sonxflight

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of-muppets-and-men · 4 years

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Penumbra

Chapter 3: Split Horizon

I got an AO3 now, link right here.

Rukia was gifted two precious days with Katsumi after giving birth. A mere 48 hours may not seem like much, but they were everything to the new mother. No matter how tired her arms got, she never let go of her daughter. Every smile, every whimper, every little thing the newborn did sent her mother’s heart aflutter. It took an hour of convincing to finally let Isane and Yoruichi have the chance to hold her. And when they did, they understood why.

As Katsumi snoozed in her aunties’ arms, neither of the two captains could find the words to express themselves. The little one was an angel. An angel that would tug at your hair at any given opportunity, but an angel nonetheless. Fortunately, the Seireitei was a quieter place since the Quincy war ended, meaning Isane and Yoruichi had no better place to be than here.

But alas, all good things must come to an end.

Rukia’s body had more or less healed and her swelling had come down to a point she could get away with. It was time for her to resume her life as a Shinigami. And though every fibre of her being screamed at her not to, she must leave Katsumi with Yoruichi. Isane had gone through the liberty of fetching Rukia’s shihakusho so hopefully nobody would get too suspicious. In the midst of changing, Rukia had nearly forgotten how to put the thing on, prompting Yoruichi to help her.

But upon finishing, Rukia couldn’t keep herself from tearing up. The pain in her heart was unbearable, regardless of it was for the best. The Lady of the Shihouin led her to a secluded back entrance of the manor; out of the way of prying eyes. Katsumi still bundled up in her arms, Rukia tentatively approached the door. Her breaths shaky as well as her arms, Rukia felt a hand on her shoulder. Yoruichi stared back at her, golden eyes as forlorn as her own.

With a deep sigh, Rukia caressed the sleeping newborn, tighter than she ever had before. This was it, the last time she would ever have any role in Katsumi’s life. She delicately placed her child in Yoruichi’s embrace and kissed her forehead.

“I Love You…” Rukia whispered, but couldn’t see Katsumi smile as she turned away.

A hand raised to her mouth to stifle her sobs, Rukia vanished into the night.

“LORD BYAKUYA!!”

The master of House Kuchiki looked up from his notes to see where all the fuss was about. A lone attendant of his family came barreling through the door, nearly breaking it in the process. Byakuya shook his head at the young man’s stupendous lack of grace. The attendant panted heavily, trying to regain his breath after his sprint. However, his master was in no mood for such tomfoolery. His grip found his zanpakuto and pointed at the young man’s throat.

“Do you have a reason for barging into my quarters at this ungodly hour?” Byakuya interrogated.

The attendant whimpered in fear “A thousand pardons my lord, but there is something you must know.”

“Well, spit it out.” he threatened.

“It’s Lady Rukia… She’s returned.” The attendant answered, his forehead slack with sweat.

Byakuya’s eyes widened with surprise, resheathing Senbonzakura instantly. He pushed the poor young man out of the way, making a hurried march out of his office. He made his way through the winding halls of his estate, trying hard not to flash step through any walls. At last, he reached the courtyard just beyond the front door and stood before him was indeed Rukia. Byakuya slowly walked towards her, the gravel crunching beneath his feet as he made sure he wasn’t dreaming. Byakuya stopped mere feet away while Rukia gave him a reassuring smile.

“Brother. I’m home.” Rukia announced just loud enough for only him to hear.

Without even thinking, Byakuya embraced his adoptive sister, catching her off guard. The diminutive woman took a moment to process what was even happening before it clicked. She returned his embrace as he began to stroke her hair. He half-heartedly pulled away to look at her once again.

“Where on earth have you been? After so long, I had begun to fear you were dead.”

“I know… I’m sorry brother. I should’ve notified you about where I was going…” Rukia admitted. “After Renji proposed, I needed some time to think.”

“Four months without any contact is pushing it a bit, don’t you think?” Byakuya chided.

Rukia’s eyes drooped to the floor “It’s been… turbulent for me to say the least.”

A smirk bloomed on her older brother’s face. Unlike his normally stoic demeanor, Byakuya was acting surprisingly animated; a notion that warmed her heart. He did care, even if his pride suppressed it most of the time. The head of the kuchiki led her inside, ready to give her a proper welcome.

“Would you care for something to eat?”

“Yes, Please.” Rukia beamed, practically starving after the past two days.

“Alright. I’ll notify Abarai in the morning. For now, just get some rest. You look unwell.”

Rukia swallowed a lump in her throat as her brother guided back inside. It felt like forever since she’d been here; her own home seemed so alien, so foreign. It was fairly normal for the manor to be relatively quiet, but this. This emptiness felt like it would consume her. She reckoned it would never feel the same way again; not without Katsumi. It took much of Rukia’s remaining strength to keep her hands from shaking, praying Byakuya wouldn’t ask questions.

Fortunately, Byakuya was preoccupied with getting one of the cooks to make her something to eat. His concern helped take her mind off things, at least for the moment. After just barely managing to stomach her meal, Rukia excused herself to her room to hopefully get some sleep.

But as soon as she slipped between the covers, her emotions all came flying back at her at once. Tears streamed down her cheeks and onto her pillow. Her heart ached so horribly, she grew tempted to rip out of her chest. Penance or not, this was slowly becoming too much to bear. Rukia’s pending marriage was no comfort either. She did love Renji, but not in the way he loved her.

Her eyelids grew heavy, mental and physical exhaustion catching with her. It wouldn’t be until late next morning she would awaken to the sound of a familiar voice.

“RUKIAAAA!!”

Before Rukia even had time to rub her eyes, Renji came barrelling inside without any regard for privacy. His arms entangled themselves around her petite frame alongside deep breaths. Two unavoidable and smothering hugs in pretty much the same day. Lovely. Still groggy from twelve hours of sleep, Rukia barely had the strength to let him know he was crushing her.

“Renji, you idiot. Let up already.” was all she could muster.

Loosening his grip revealed to her the tears forming in his eyes. Bumbling fool.

“Forgive me. I’m just... glad to see you’re okay. I mean, where the hell have you been? No note or anything for months. I mean what were you thinking?”

“RENJI.” She placed a hand to his cheek, appreciative of his fretting.

“Sorry.” he whispered.

“Don’t be. I know I should have said something, but I really need some time to think…” Rukia explained, being intentionally vague.

“But where did you go?” her fiance pressed “Even Kisuke didn’t know where you were.”

“Because I asked him not to look for me.” Rukia frowned as the white lie passed her lips.

Kisuke had only found out about her pregnancy by sheer happenstance, and she swore him to secrecy. Damn near threatened to kill him if he didn’t maintain her facade. Lucky for Rukia, Kisuke was well acquainted with keeping secrets. Even more lucky that Renji was an idiot.

“Well.. I guess it doesn’t matter anymore. You’re here now, safe and sound.” Renji breathed, his voice filled with relief.

Renji resumed his embrace, a notion Rukia mirrored. If only to hide away her fervent anguish. This was the path she chose; a path of lies. She hated it, hated herself, but there was no going back from here.

Two months after Rukia returned to the Kuchiki estate, she married Renji and he was absorbed into her house. It was a magnificent affair, the guest list being all of the Gotei 13. Many tears were shed; a true blessing after the accursed Quincy war.

Booze and enough food to stuff everyone in the thirteen court guard squads. The noble house of Kuchiki spared no expense. Renji had cleaned up fairly nicely, but he was nothing in comparison to his wife.

Rukia looked divine, no soul in the Seireitei could argue differently. In any other circumstance, this would have been the happiest day of her life. But she and her two attending confidants knew better. The one person she wanted to see waiting at the end of the aisle, didn’t even know what was occuring today.

It stung, but not as much as being without her daughter. A daughter she wouldn’t see again for several years.

In that time, she would give birth to another child. Ichika, Renji’s daughter. A beautiful child with her father’s vibrant hair and spunk. Her love for Renji may have been fleeting at best, her love for Ichika was strong and true.

But… she wasn’t her Katsumi.

But an opportunity would finally arise.

Late one evening, as Acting Captain of Squad 13, Rukia had the illustrious task of filing her squad’s paperwork. With no current lieutenant, the poor woman was forced to do it all by her lonesome. She struggled through every page, her eyelids growing heavier by the second. Her saving grace, however, came in the form of a butterfly. A death butterfly to be specific.

The delicate little messenger landed on her finger and through it she heard Yoruichi’s voice.

I hear you have a little one now. As it so happens, I have one too. Perhaps we could have a playdate sometime?

Rukia’s eyes widened, fully aware of what Yoruichi was implying. And so she gave her answer.

Yes. I would like that very much.

This took longer than I wanted it too so I’m sorry if I left anyone in suspension of disbelief.

#Bleach #ichiruki #Ichigo X Rukia #rukia x ichigo #ichigo kurosaki #Rukia Kuchiki #yoruichi shihouin #byakuya kuchiki #Isane Kotetsu #renji abarai #Penumbra

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sushipizza · 3 years

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Everlasting sleep

I guess I should put a warning saying that the next writing can be considered a little too much for people who are going through a rough patch. Considering that, I hope that you enjoy :)

The droplets trickle slowly with no path, no flow, no hope. Falling, decomposing, crumbling it all dissipates, everything that had been worked for is gone. Mistakes that make even the strongest metal break, mistakes that leave a permanent stain. Nothing of worth can help aid the penumbra that covers even the most hidden corners of the soul. A dark aura surrounds showing no mercy, no pity…no remorse. The droplets trickle slowly one by one as not even the pleasure of crying can be permitted. Slowly they fill a once empty bottle until it can hold no more, until it burst, until it no longer salvageable. No end in sight, a feeling of loss and desperation, desperation to know….to know if one day the ability to feel more than blues will come back. Sorrows and a mournful atmosphere surround the hollow body, the body that once was home to warmth millennials ago. Time is irrelevant as it feels like a never-ending day, a living nightmare that is explored by helpless minds, helpless vessels that became consumed by it. The droplets that trickle become the only thing that is felt as it descends, reminding you of the inescapable truth that lays in the head. The head that so maliciously plants thoughts and emotions that lead you down a path that no one should take, thoughts that make you doubt, thoughts that eat you whole…. thoughts that haunt a forever scream in the back of your head until it becomes the prominent voice. The voice that guides my decisions, the thoughts that enables and limits…the thoughts that rule even with met resistance….it always finds a way, a passage, a crevice to seep through. The body that no longer holds a soul, a body that is ruled by him.

#writing #writer #lol #sad?#idk #bro #i have a problem #no idea #poopoo

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pricryo · 4 years

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Axel 👉👈

Ⲷ KINTYPE AND EMOJI - axel (kingdom hearts) 🔥 SIGHT ⲷ a sunrise after a long, long night 🔥 ⲷ perfectly stacked papers ⲷ a long, spiderweb-like crack in a mirror 🔥 ⲷ ripples across a once-still pond ⲷ flickering streetlights in the dead of night ⲷ intensely saturated neon signs ⲷ an ocean of grass rolling in the wind ⲷ the facets of a newly polished gemstone ⲷ stormclouds gathering on the horizon ⲷ something unreal in your periphery vision 🔥 ⲷ the grandeur of old architecture ⲷ rust building on old machines ⲷ dirt and mud tracked through a building ⲷ a long road stretching into the distance ⲷ the sun glinting off metal 🔥

COLORS ⲷ wine red, rose gold, & aqua green 🔥? ⲷ terracotta orange, puce, & tan yellow ⲷ chocolate brown, blush pink, & white ⲷ apricot, royal purple, & desaturated red 🔥 ⲷ seafoam green, navy blue, & silver ⲷ gunmetal, bronze, & rust red ⲷ pastel pink, baby blue, & cloud white ⲷ military green, dirt brown, & mustard ⲷ eggplant purple, peach, & warm blue ⲷ flamingo, bright yellow, & electric blue ⲷ mint green, burgundy, & royal yellow ⲷ sepia brown, abalone, & mink grey ⲷ amethyst, emerald, & sapphire ⲷ bubblegum pink, salmon, & tiger orange ⲷ scarlet red, mahogany, & ebony black 🔥

HEARING ⲷ birdsong in the pre-dawn morning ⲷ the scrape of a knife across metal ⲷ the gentle rustle of sheets in the morning ⲷ voices raised in song ⲷ the crunch of footsteps on the forest floor ⲷ the rising tone of emergency sirens ⲷ utterly contagious laughter 🔥 ⲷ rainfall hitting a tin roof ⲷ gunshots piercing a perfect silence ⲷ many people talking at once ⲷ the crash of sea waves against the shore ⲷ ringing in your ears after a loud noise 🔥 ⲷ something shattering into pieces 🔥 ⲷ the thump of something hitting the carpet ⲷ a scream cutting through the air

MUSIC GENRE ⲷ classical, opera, & acoustic music ⲷ electronic, lo-fi, & downtempo music 🔥 ⲷ rock, prog, & industrial music 🔥 ⲷ disco, funk, & soul music ⲷ jazz, ragtime, & swing music ⲷ pop, indie pop, & worldbeat music ⲷ hip-hop, trap, & rap music ⲷ metal, nu metal, & thrash music ⲷ folk, country, & skiffle music ⲷ experimental, acousmatic, & noise music

TASTE ⲷ the taste of something honey sweet 🔥 ⲷ the aftertaste of something bitter 🔥 ⲷ the taste of something extremely sour ⲷ the taste of something very salty 🔥 ⲷ the taste of something intensely spicy ⲷ the taste of something dry & bland ⲷ the taste of many strong seasonings ⲷ the taste of something gilled & smoky ⲷ the taste of something juicy & flavourful ⲷ the taste of something rank & rotted ⲷ the taste of something extremely bitter ⲷ the taste of something clean and fresh ⲷ the taste of coppery blood ⲷ the taste of dirt or clay ⲷ the taste of tobacco

FOODS ⲷ a meal of lobster, risotto, & scallops ⲷ a meal of a burger, fries, & a milkshake 🔥 ⲷ a meal of bread, cheese, & water ⲷ a meal of steak, potatoes, & mushrooms ⲷ a meal of a beef bowl, rice, & an egg ⲷ a meal of scrambled eggs & orange juice ⲷ a meal of tamales & grilled corn ⲷ a meal of fresh salad, & grilled kale ⲷ a meal of spaghetti, garlic bread & salad ⲷ a meal of various cakes & candies 🔥 ⲷ a meal of grilled cheese & tomato soup ⲷ a meal of grilled fish, quinoa, & veggies ⲷ a meal of curry, flatbread, & samosas ⲷ a meal of lentil stew & challah bread ⲷ a meal of whatever you can put together 🔥

SMELL ⲷ the scent of the first rain of the season ⲷ the scent of a strong perfume ⲷ the scent of engine oil and dirt ⲷ the scent of wet fur ⲷ the scent of something burning 🔥 ⲷ the scent of something old uncovered ⲷ the scent of rot and dead things ⲷ the scent of newly poured pavement ⲷ the scent of freshly picked fruits ⲷ the scent of the salty ocean spray 🔥 ⲷ the scent of spilled alcohol ⲷ the scent of bleach and cleaning solution ⲷ the scent of sweat lingering in the air 🔥 ⲷ the scent of newly opened paints ⲷ the scent of fresh coffee

EMOTIONS ⲷ an all-consuming rage 🔥 ⲷ hesitantly bubbling happiness 🔥 ⲷ jealousy you can’t ignore ⲷ an emptiness where emotion should be 🔥 ⲷ anxiety that you can’t get rid of ⲷ a deep sadness that you can’t hide 🔥 ⲷ a feeling of disgust and superiority ⲷ unending boredom ⲷ anticipation for the future ⲷ love and adoration that feels like home 🔥 ⲷ unwavering devotion 🔥 ⲷ happiness that’s practically contagious ⲷ deepfelt remorse and guilt 🔥 ⲷ simmering resentment over the past ⲷ overwhelming terror

TOUCH ⲷ water crashing against your body ⲷ a hand running through your hair 🔥 ⲷ the bite of a brisk wind ⲷ fire scorching your skin 🔥 ⲷ the tenderness of new bruises 🔥 ⲷ a pounding headache that won’t go away ⲷ an old, scratchy blanket ⲷ jewelry bouncing against your body ⲷ a hand heavy in your own 🔥 ⲷ a numb tingling across your limbs 🔥 ⲷ the sting and ache of a fresh injury 🔥 ⲷ something squeezing you tight as a vice ⲷ a tense grinding of your teeth 🔥 ⲷ static zapping your skin ⲷ running your hand over a bumpy wall

TEXTURES ⲷ something that feels gooey & messy ⲷ something that feels rough & abrasive ⲷ something that feels granular & coarse ⲷ something that feels fluffy & soft 🔥 ⲷ something that feels squishy & plush ⲷ something that feels smooth & silky ⲷ something that feels bumpy & unusual ⲷ something that feels wet & slippery ⲷ something that feels stiff & leathery 🔥 ⲷ something that feels sharp & painful 🔥

LOCATIONS ⲷ a home you’ll never get to see again 🔥 ⲷ somewhere out of this world ⲷ a forest older than man itself ⲷ the back alleys of a towering city 🔥 ⲷ the penthouse of an expensive hotel ⲷ a club with pulsing lights and loud music ⲷ your own space, away from everything 🔥 ⲷ a dune in a scorching hot desert ⲷ a cliff alongside a rocky beach ⲷ the peak of a high mountain ⲷ an under-personalized office space 🔥 ⲷ a library full to the brim with rare books ⲷ an abandoned and forbidden place 🔥 ⲷ the fields of an isolated farm ⲷ a bridge overlooking a city view

CONCEPTS ⲷ history that repeats over and over again ⲷ hurting someone in a way you can’t fix 🔥 ⲷ breaking free from your inner demons 🔥 ⲷ learning to accept the world as it is ⲷ the haze of something you’ve forgotten 🔥 ⲷ questioning a deep set morality ⲷ joining technology and nature into one ⲷ the nature of fate and consciousness ⲷ the inescapable inevitability of death 🔥 ⲷ the existence of some higher being ⲷ the simplicity if minimalism ⲷ acting on base instincts 🔥 ⲷ the idea of the philosophical zombie ⲷ the world as one interconnected system ⲷ the tenuous concept of family

ACTIONS ⲷ slicing into flesh with something sharp 🔥 ⲷ walking faster than everyone around you ⲷ dancing with no inhibitions ⲷ pressing down on the trigger of a gun ⲷ shaking someone’s hand for the first time 🔥 ⲷ working without taking a break ⲷ breaking something beautiful ⲷ toying with a glass of wine ⲷ running away from something dangerous 🔥 ⲷ digging a deep hole ⲷ banging against a door ⲷ creating art or playing music ⲷ laying down after a long day 🔥 ⲷ tapping against an electronic screen ⲷ bouncing on the balls of your feet

TIME ⲷ the clock striking midnight ⲷ the witching hour ⲷ the first minutes of dawn ⲷ stolen moments during a busy day ⲷ the start of solar noon 🔥 ⲷ the long hours of the day ⲷ the early hours of the evening ⲷ the last moments of dusk 🔥 ⲷ time set aside for a good meal ⲷ the time we lose to sleep

VOCABULARY ⲷ the words love, ineffable, & ethereal 🔥 ⲷ the words verdict, authority, & ensnared ⲷ the words aerie, melody, & serendipity ⲷ the words epoch, epiphany, & solitude 🔥 ⲷ the words oblivion, death, & ephemeral 🔥 ⲷ the words harbinger, pyrrhic, & penumbra ⲷ the words leisure, halcyon, & cosmic ⲷ the words opulent, wine, & coquette ⲷ the words carnage, ire, & basalt 🔥 ⲷ the words denouement, furtive, & labyrinth ⲷ the words sin, debasement, & iconoclast ⲷ the words liminal, solander, & sonder ⲷ the words petrichor, numinous, & fjord ⲷ the words apotheosis, metanoia, & divine ⲷ the words moist, smear, & secrete

send me one of my kintypes and i’ll fill out what their aesthetic is!

#tim.txt #don't reblog ////#ask response #kin #flurry of dancing flames #long post ////#untagged otherwise ///#best of men and best of husbands

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adventuresloane · 5 years

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Love Was a Kind of Emptiness

Read on AO3

Relationships: Dani & the Quell, Dani/Aubrey, Sylvain/the Quell

Rating: T

CW for body dysmorphia, disordered eating, heavy angst

For Danbrey Week 2019

"You're her."

This time, she didn't run. In the days since she had started following them, she had always skittered back into the woods whenever she got spotted. With how bone-pale she was, she shouldn't have been able to disappear into the black shadow that quickly. But she had slipped into the penumbra the way sugar in hot coffee dissolved to become a part of the amorphous dark.

Now she was still, and not. She was the potential for movement, like a frozen deer primed to spring away. Potential energy herself. Felt for miles around.

"And you're Dani," she responded. Her head inclined slowly and smoothly to one side, just a little. As always, a waist-length swath of straight and shiny black hair moved as one curtain. "Am I just 'her' now? What are my names, that you know of?"

Dani couldn't answer that, and not only because of the way her jaw had begun to lock up in fear. She didn't know how. As far back as she remembered, everyone had been loathe to give a name to this, had acknowledged this at all only with reluctance. There were names she vaguely recalled seeing in schoolbooks, with Ancient Sylvan pronunciations she couldn't have wrapped her mouth around even if she did remember them well enough. These days, even after the crisis had been averted, still people spoke obliquely. The Quell. The Storm. Hardly names at all, really. They described something that one did, not something that one was.

Those titles had seemed appropriate enough when they were all simply talking about a natural force, something that acted, and acted violently. But that wasn't what stood before Dani now. This was a woman, just like her, and also not like her at all.

"I see," she said. Dani wasn't sure what she was responding to.

"You shouldn't be here." She surprised herself at the force of her own voice. She supposed that she had some practice in speaking with gods. Just that morning, she had talked the avatar of her planet's life force out of filling an old dried-up lake with maple syrup. But it was easy to forget with Aubrey. Aubrey, whom she knew as her love first and as Sylvain second, whose presence had felt as easy and natural as breath long before they had learned everything. It wasn't easy to forget when the waves of dark power radiating from this woman overtook her. Potential energy. A fault line, a land mine, a fragile slope before a landslide. She was all of these things and much more. Dani could feel it, and she wanted to run with all she had, but already her knees had ceased to bend.

"Yes I should. We have to talk."

"Why?"

"You..." The Quell hadn't made eye-contact all this time, something for which Dani would have been grateful if she were capable of feeling anything but anxiety at the moment. She had been focused on a spot somewhere just below Dani's eyes. Now she glanced away entirely. Her eyes flashed, and not in the way people normally talked about eyes flashing. Light glinted off them as though her gray irises were made of chrome. Or like there was lightning in them. "You are always with Her."

"No."

"You are Her companion."

"No. You're not getting near Aubrey."

"You couldn't stop me if I wanted to see Her, you know." The Quell still had her head cocked, out of...what? Curiosity? Scrutiny? Did she even have feelings? "You're afraid of me. Why?"

Dani couldn't bring herself to move her mouth, even if she had had a way to reply to that. She thought of the leveling of her world. For months now, she'd been traveling around to witness it. She'd seen forests of trees gone horizontal, prostrating toward the setting sun. She'd seen mountains smeared into flatlands as if they were wet clay under a thumb. Marshland where there had been fertile valleys.

And well before any of this, she'd seen, as a young child, the refugees surging through the gates of what was today the city of Chicane and what had then been the whole of Sylvain. People who had fled the other cities overtaken by the Quell's violence. She had watched them slump in, looking as though gravity affected them more than most, with their shoulders sagging and the very skin of their faces pulled down by frowns. Seeing them, she had felt dread for maybe the first time in her life--not for herself or out of fear of them, but at the idea that an entire existence could be so easily lost. Despite her parents' reassurances that their home was safe from the Storm, she still sat alone in her bedroom for ages, eyes closed, trying to imagine what it would be like if the whole house suddenly vanished with everything she'd ever known inside it, along with every other house on every other street she'd ever seen. She couldn't, back then.

"It's because you've seen what I can do."

"Stop it," Dani managed through tight teeth. This was too much. Her brimming brain could barely process the Quell's presence, let alone her words.

"What?" There was short pause before she shrugged. "I can't help that I get impressions of what you think and feel. I can do the same for everyone born on this planet. It's like asking me not to feel the wind."

And had she felt the desperation of those she had displaced? Had she felt the panic in the half-seconds before some had been utterly consumed by the Storm's madness? Had she done it all in spite of that?

"I do wish you wouldn't fear me, though." The Quell stepped closer again. There was a twinge of what might have been a smile on her face. The chuckle that came out of her sounded quiet and ragged as the crunch of dead leaves underfoot. Everything she said sounded like that. It was assault to Dani's ears. "You know, you're just as much my child as you are Hers."

"No." She forced just enough air through her slowly constricting chest to say it. At the Quell's words, anger had started up somewhere just behind her sternum and started to spread through her body like a drop of ink in water. The adrenaline was almost enough to break the hold her nerves had over her. "You just...you wreck."

"What of it?”

"I'm an artist." She pushed past the quiver in her voice, in her legs. "I create, just...just like Her and j-just like Aubrey. N...none of us are like you."

"Do not try to tell me about Her."

"Stay away from Aubrey."

"Don't tell me--"

It was only three words, but the three had been enough to knock her down. The quiet voice had exploded suddenly into a multitude. Some flat. Some screeching with static. Some so deep that they were more felt than heard. Some glitching and skipping like a scratched record. It hurt. Physically, it hurt. Dani felt the noise tear through her as it tore through the air, felt the cacophony.

Dani dropped to the ground, or, rather, her body finally went totally stiff and carried her down with it. She stared at the grass with her hands over her ears and her fingers in her hair, and she tried to regulate her breathing, but she hardly had control over even the expansion of her chest. She was a soul bumping around inside a sack. It felt as though she had pulled herself out of her limbs, that her consciousness had retreated to somewhere deep within the core of her body to protect itself.

"I'm sorry. I'm..." The Quell trailed off. Her voice had returned to normal, and yet had not. Her tone was more hushed. Frailer.

All the same, any sound right now made her shrivel deeper into herself. It was one more input out of far too many, and it made it harder to focus on regaining control of her body again.

And anyway, how dare she be sorry? There was plenty to be sorry for before now. So many lifetimes of things lost. Did she feel the weight of it? Did it bend her spine like a punishment, the way it did Dani's? Or was she even corporeal?

The color began to fade from her vision. By the time the mist had rolled in entirely, everything was blank and gray, blotting out the world. It wasn't too unusual--fog often rolled in among the trees of this forest. Except that this fog muffled not only her sight but her hearing. The whoosh of the wind in the leaves seemed less obtrusive now. Everything did. And while she likely should have been nervous, she couldn't help but be glad for this cloud cocooning her from her surroundings for awhile.

When she finally felt her heart beating rather than vibrating, she slowly glanced to her left to see the dark silhouette of a woman kneeling on the ground beside her. She, too, had not moved the whole time.

"Is that helping?" the Quell quietly asked. "Good," she said before Dani could reply. That should have made her angry, but she was too tired for anything beyond dull irritation now. Even the fear was muted.

"You would rather not speak out loud right now, I take it?"

Dani shook her head a little.

"May I say something, then?"

She waited for a long while before she shrugged. To her credit, the Quell waited for that.

"I..." She came to a halt. "I'm not good at apologizing."

Dani looked her way and felt her eyebrows raise before she could stop herself.

The Quell huffed and said quickly, "Thacker claimed that I shouldn't try to hold power over people or try making them afraid simply because I feel afraid, so I apologize that I did that to you. Is that right?"

She was too distracted to give an answer to that, as she questioned what could make the embodiment of destruction afraid.

"I've just missed Her," she murmured. The mist had nearly dissipated now, and Dani could see her arms crossed over her knees.

And if she felt any sympathy for the Quell in that moment, it left her like a dying breath when she thought of the tree that used to stand in the center of town when she was growing up. Itslong, willowy branches hung heavy with tear-shaped purple seed pods strung along them, she could sometimes see it from the window of her house waving at her in a strong wind. It had waved, too, when she had been kept at sword- and wand- and spear-point, backed up against Sylvain's gate. She'd seen the slow lift of the thread-like branches over the heads of the crowd gathered to see her disappeared for good. She didn't see her parents or her brother in the crowd. She hadn't known why, and she hadn't had much time to think about it before being shoved through the portal. Maybe they had just gotten lost in the throng. She hoped so. She hoped that they had at least shown up, that the moment she had been dragged from the house and arrested wasn't the last they had seen of her.

For the brief time between when she was brought into custody and when she was sentenced to banishment, they didn't really explain what it was, exactly, that had done her in--someone reporting her bad-mouthing the Minister of Preservation and his bad sideburns, is what she had always assumed, but it could have been something else. Maybe one of the new laws. There were new laws made all the time back in those days, so quickly that hardly anyone could keep track of them all. Ignorance of the law, naturally, was not considered an excuse.

"Sorry." The word was nearly soundless this time. Dani wasn't sure to whom she was speaking. The Quell's next sentence, though, was certainly directed at her. "How did you bear it?"

Stop asking leading questions, Dani thought at her in the most deliberate way she could manage. She focused on the words and her own aggravation, trying to keep the memory from creeping up on her. You know I can't help trying to think of the answer. It's not fair.

"I am not used to communicating with someone who can't hear my thoughts too. Even just speaking is still strange to me." She paused. "Your kind...Brightfangs, isn't that what you're called up here? You're some of the closest to Us, you know. To She and I both. I felt you come together in the soil from where I rested in the center of the planet, before you rose fully formed from the ground."

She didn't know what to think of that. Instead, she thought, My family used to tell me that. Though, to be honest, I'm still getting used to the term 'Brightfang' again. Humans called me a vampire for so long. And I think they thought we rose out of graves or something.

"Goodness," she said, with a soft sound that was suspiciously similar to a chuckle. She rubbed her foot through the grass but stopped just before the scrape of it became enough to bother Dani. "Was it difficult to put up with them? Humans, I mean."

No, she thought.

"That's not how you really feel. And don't be upset. I can't help it."

Dani felt herself frown. She wanted to think about anything else other than the early days in the lodge. Those memories came on anyway. She felt the approach of them the way one feels oncoming nausea, and she was back to the first moment that she had taken on a human form. She had looked down at herself, at this new body attached to her like a tick, and had not seen the familiar glow of her skin like the glow of the Crystal, and had felt blunt teeth behind her lips instead of the sharp points she had liked to tap her fingertips against, and it had felt too short and too warm and too much of everything after everything had already been too much.

She had cried, and sometimes she had screamed, and even though Mama never flinched while patiently waiting for her to calm each time, she had felt shame that only made the tears fall hotter onto the foreign flesh of that new body.

In the earliest days, she remembered wearing that form like an ill-fitting rubber suit. Maybe it wasn't as bad as she remembered, or maybe it was even worse. But looking back on it, she recalled hell. Everyone had said that there would be an adjustment period, and they had turned out to be right, but even two years on she had still felt how much it was not her own. This body needed food, and it felt a hunger that couldn't be satisfied by the hot springs or by Sylvain's light. At seventeen, she started skipping meals and would just wait to feel the scrape of pain deep in her belly, just so she could feel some measure of control over this form that she had been forced into. That was until Mama noticed and, after a drawn-out scolding, made her eat dinners with her for awhile. That might have saved her. She knew that, but still felt a twinge of bitterness nonetheless.

And if she were to be truly honest with herself, maybe some of it did have to do with how she thought about humans. She didn't particularly want to be one. There were their strange traditions, the rapid speed at which their lives progressed. Mama, at the start, trying to explain that humans assumed things like gender based on appearance--that while no one at the lodge would ever judge her for how she decided to look, Dani had to be prepared for strangers to do so, wrong as they were. And of course, everyone on Sylvain knew about the missing shard of the Crystal, but she had never really considered that if the piece were still where it belonged instead of on Earth, then she would still be where she belonged instead of on Earth. For the first months, on the rare occasion that she got out of the lodge or otherwise saw an unfamiliar human, she had to suppress the urge to hiss and show her now-blunted teeth. That instinct left her, slowly. Over time, the anger completely dissipated. Truly, it did, albeit more gradually than she would have liked to admit. But years later, she never stopped making excuses to stay and draw or garden whenever Jake asked her to hang out with him in downtown Kepler. Sometimes she looked sideways even at the humans she knew and trusted and loved, and she would feel only lonely looking at them, thinking that they would never quite comprehend what it was like. Not even Mama, and certainly not Jake's friends or the park rangers or Leo or Duck or Ned--

Ned.

Sometimes she had wondered whether she could trust Ned. Everyone had on some level, she guessed. Now, every night after Aubrey had gone to sleep beside her, she lay awake for awhile and shivered with the knowledge that she should never have wondered.

"You can't blame yourself for hating them.” The Quell had been quiet up until now. "You felt like they had taken your home from you. Like you wouldn't have been on Earth if it hadn't been for them destroying the Crystal." It wasn't a question.

I didn't hate them. I loved some of them. I love them now. She hoped the Quell felt a new force to her thoughts. What? Are you going to tell me that's how you felt, too? About Sylphs taking...Her away from you?

"I'm not saying it was right to think so." She stared at the ground. The mist circled her now, and her image wavered slightly. "But you tell me, mortal, what was I supposed to do when for centuries on end I had felt only Her absence? Of course I was going to want to feel anything else, even if it was anger, or hunger. What would I have done without anger, or hunger?"

It was still your decision to act on it.

"Was it?"

Before she could swallow it down, the thought of the sarcophagus bubbled up from her stomach. By the time she had emerged from that bright tomb, whatever small part of her had remained lucid felt only the fear. Felt her body hurtling unstoppably forward. And then there was the blood, and the bang, and the flesh giving way to her now sharp teeth. And through it all, hunger, hunger like an engine as she plowed into the man who had put himself in her way to save her, and not knowing what she had done, and then the terrible knowing after she had woken up again--

And then Aubrey. Aubrey being there even when Dani felt not all there herself, even when she couldn't bring herself to speak for hours on end. Aubrey never smothering her, but never far either. Aubrey warming her even when they were apart. Aubrey holding her when she finally broke and carefully kissing the tears from her cheeks. Aubrey murmuring against her skin, skin that had felt more sacred to her than it ever had before, because it had been touched in this way. Aubrey crying herself and still whispering to her, "You didn't kill him. I know that wasn't you."

Who are you, really?

For all the Quell claimed to know her mind, she apparently hadn't been expecting Dani to say that. It was some time before she answered, slowly, "I am this planet's force of destruction. I clear things away. It is Her role to create them."

That's what you do. Well, no, it's what you have done, I should say. Destroying, I mean. That doesn't have to be all of you. Wouldn't you rather be something else?

"What sort of a question is that?"

It wasn't the familiar feeling of home that had drawn her to Aubrey at the very start, though that sensation would come in full force soon after. Instead, she had seen this woman walk in and immediately thought that she was seeing someone who knew herself. She took up space--not just with her wide stance and the thick poof of candy-red hair standing high on top of her head, but also with the way her voice filled the room without her trying, the heat of the flames she made filling every empty corner. She was utterly herself, and she wanted everyone to know about it, to see her. And Dani saw her, alright.

How comfortable she seemed in her own skin. It was sort of contagious. The more she was around Aubrey, the more she wanted to feel that way, too. At times, she almost did. That was usually when Aubrey would do things like kiss her all over under the covers and count out each one, claiming she was giving her a kiss for every one of her freckles. She would never reach the end of the count--they would both either dissolve into giggles or into sleep, but either way, Dani would be left grateful for her form, for the freckles that covered it.

She had also thought, at first, that Aubrey would be the last person capable of understanding what foreignness felt like. It appeared that she, the traveling entertainer, could make a home anywhere she pleased, could be comfortable anywhere. And anyway, she just felt so familiar. Dani eventually found herself to be wrong about many things, of course. The knowledge of all she had gotten wrong started with the night that Aubrey sat on the bed, hands folded between her knees, speaking quietly about her mother and the empty lot where her house had been.

And it turned out that she didn't know herself as well as Dani had assumed, either. She didn't know how good she was. She spent so much time worrying about how her fire could destroy that sometimes she hardly seemed to see how much light she gave off. Dani wasn't sure how best to make her see it. She tried to show her anyway, where she could.

The Quell cut in, "Well, of course She was full of light. She is the Life-Giver. She is not capable of making anything that is not beautiful."

Sylvain is inside her, but Aubrey is herself. She's all human. She thought a bit more. Humans are all so different. They're kind of...flexible, I would say. They have to spend a lot of time thinking about the kind of people they want to be. I don't think that's a bad thing.

The Quell let out a hum.

By the way, is that really what you think now?

"What? Oh, about the beauty of the surface, you mean."

Yeah. You think so? After all you did to it?

The Quell faced the sky, eyes wide open. "I believe...before, I simply rolled over the surface of this planet. I saw all of it as only obstacles. Now that I'm made to just...just be, I see that it was all Hers. I was so busy searching for Her that I could not see Her in everything she had done, in front of me."

Dani hated to admit how much she understood.

"I...I feel ashamed." Her head snapped in Dani's direction as if she had just recalled something. Then she sighed once more. "You still don't want me to see Her."

"No, I don't." Dani finally managed to speak aloud, albeit shakily. "And I...I don't forgive you either, yet."

"I see."

"But I might, sometime. She might."

The Quell smiled, really, for the first time. "Then I will speak to you again."

I didn't say I wanted that, she thought. Talking to her, Dani found, was still sort of exhausting.

"You didn't have to." She did not move, but the long shadow of a tree stretched to blanket her, and she seemed to have never been there to begin with.

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sonxflight-a2 · 4 years

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@kathexismania:

Isn’t it odd, how all it took to feel free was to be entrapped? It says quite a bit, does it not? That under his own prior circumstances, Hanzo’s mind felt as though it were dead? Hanzo Hasashi had not felt the spark of lightning in his heart in months, perhaps years even. He had forgotten the flame of passion that consumes his soul at the prospect of creation of love. He had forgotten the euphoria of not only planting the seed of affection, but cultivating it. He was simply a hollow shell of an artist he once was and that he yearned to be.

Yet now, with his world paralyzed, with the daily trudge that he’s named routine on hold, with the sempiternal isolation seeping into the now empty crevices that were once filled with the mundane, the ardor of cultivation is bursting from his fingertips, as fingers curl around the other immortal’s abdomen. He’s letting himself consumed and creating art at its essence, for life with unlife is so much more than the repetition of history he made it out to be before. For their reciprocated love is a kaleidoscope of everything the spectre could ever dream of.

He breaths love, as a lightning flash of nerves tingle within him, as the velcroed limbs curl and tighten around, as shoulders droop forward, as the swellness of his cheek melts like ghostly wind on the nape of Jack’s neck. He could simply let himself be the somber grim penumbra, a mere stealthy statue of a silhouette that would stand static and immovable, but he does appreciate the magnanimous warmth emanating like the very setting sun’s raybeams, casted upon his own everburning embers that would fuel his aria, to attune himself for the hopeful future.

Express Your Muse’s Feelings Towards Mine In My Inbox Without Saying A Word Meme, from the spectre to Jack.

Sole abiding tune from the sonorous chorus of long-passed mantras, there was no goodliness for him within this solitude, insidious and whist in its mantling zephyr as its true heaviness found itself hidden beneath the perceptibility of ought. The lashes of crude whip, his haggard esprit grew tolerant of their incessant pace long before the asserted stagnancy of semi-divine… Such a ruthless pulchritude it is, for the blows to steadily become more seldom and his very wholeness to finally perceive all the magnitude of once applied lacerations, vulnerable to bleed with their translucent hemorrhage, only for the oozing purulence to be replaced with the agglutinating balm of liquid gold.

In this lack of heliacal luster, the gentle aura of his exposed skin shines brighter the most radiant sol - at last, his hectic universe seems to lessen so frenzied pace as Jack Ryou once again obtains vigor to try and keep up, discovering the long-known familiarity of nurturing solace anew. At last, the imperceptible mist of partial oblivion vanishes from the vertices of his unabridged tale, making him breathe the mountain air unhindered despite it being rarefied… The presence of Hanzo is now the boost for his very halitus, synchronized and undisturbed just as the feather-light voile of his dormancy, no troublesome obstacle for the near-instinct of responding affection.

With the entwining tenderness of nestling him cordiality, he is nothing but the semblance to the yet unseeing cub, nonetheless impeccable to recognize the tangibility of dear flame more than clearly. The wing of his arm, its motions are soft in their unevenness, covering the encircled tightness of limb while the coarseness of palm and long fingers gingerly melt into the other hand - the trunk of maple slightly curling to the meeting it branches of oak, his serene visage turns and the curve of neck cranes, allowing the rhythm within his jugular to be heard and caressed without any qualm. For the further mutuality of love and trust shall be sprout without grains of uncertainty as they both dream to reach the chimera of halcyon absoluteness, while remaining grateful for the feasible verity of this, slowly alleviating them cure of devoted appeasement.

#✧ 𝕥𝕙𝕖𝕪 𝕔𝕒𝕝𝕝 𝕞𝕖… 𝕛𝕒𝕔𝕜 ✧ ║ ic #kathexismania #submission #✧ 𝕡𝕣𝕚𝕟𝕔𝕖 𝕨𝕚𝕥𝕙 𝕥𝕙𝕠𝕦𝕤𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝕖𝕟𝕖𝕞𝕚𝕖𝕤 ✧ ║ verse

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princegabriel · 4 years

Text

Dear Rule 63 Writer

Welcome to the party, pal!

For this particular exchange, since I’ve been fortunate lately to have found and consumed media that mostly has gender dynamics I like, I’m mostly interested in seeing “the further adventures of character A and character B” except that one or both of them has a different gender. Doesn’t mean I don’t think anything would change about them, and I don’t mean to stifle your creativity, it’s just that there’s no specific Thing I want to see w/r/t gender.

Here are some general things I really like:

Matter-of-fact declarations of love/friendship.

People being productive while pining–either acknowledging their feelings but realizing they still have important things to do, or straight up burying the feelings in work.

Women And Nonbinary People Getting Stuff Done

Fake dating

Black comedy

Silly comedy and bad puns

Conversely, people being very extra and having THE MOST feelings, in the style of 19th century romance

Stories where STUFF happens due mostly to people just being people

Places with secrets

Game narratives, as in, the MC(s) are playing some kind of immersive, fantastical, high-stakes game. See: The Game of Sunken Places, Doctor Who: The Ghost Monument. IDK how that would apply here, but they are neat and if you come up with a concept that you think would work, I bet it would be cool!

I know I didn’t put this in my sign-up, but here are some general DNWs:

Rape/dubcon/torture porn

Major character death

Tooth injuries

Misgendering

Characters’ defining characteristic being “in love with this person”

Unrequested non canonical ships

Diet talk

A/B/O dynamics

Any bodily waste products being used for sex

Unrequested AUs

Now for the specifics:

1. The Magnus Archives

Rating: G-M

Ships: F!Gerard Keay & Gertrude Robinson, Sasha James/F!Tim Stoker, F!Robert Montauk & Julia Montauk, F!Michael "Mike" Crew & Jude Perry, F!Adelard Dekker/Gertrude Robinson, F!Trevor Herbert & Julia Montauk

I love Gertrude Robinson very much. She’s a stone-cold badass and I love how straightforward she is when it comes to resolving some problems (just blow up the building where the ritual is, duh) and how sneaky her approach is to other problems (”why the tape recorders, you ask? well, I'm just an old-fashioned lady, haha!”).

I’m a big fan of her mentorship with Gerry, and how she is explicitly not a mother figure. Like she has more experience and Gerry is a baby but they’re colleagues, really. I wouldn’t mind Gerry having some complicated feelings regarding Gertrude as a surrogate parental figure, though. I love Gerry being whip-smart and capable but still lacking in things that come from a healthy upbringing (you know, where one of your parents doesn’t murder the other and then recruit you into their spooky magic plots).

I’ve chosen to extrapolate from the bits and pieces we get that Gertrude and Adelard are the kind of close friends where even if they don’t speak for years they know where they stand with each other and can pick right back up. Of course, we also know that Gertrude didn’t let very many people get close to her, so there’s a pretty wide spectrum of possibility in there. In the case of a romantic relationship, I think Gertrude would not really want to talk about it while Adelard would. I also like how Adelard is characterized as terse and efficient in the “Distant Cousin” episode but more poetic in letters and statements to Gertrude.

Sasha/Tim is just cute. I’d love to read more of their banter, maybe see them working closely together while researching a statement, or see what they’re like outside of work. I’d rather this be set during season 1 or earlier, or have an AU where Sasha doesn’t get got by the Not-Them. There are some lovely fics where Tim is trying to figure out how accurate his memories of Sasha really are, but they are very sad and I can’t read them all the time.

Oohoohoo, Julia Montauk. I love Julia Montauk. She goes from having a seemingly normal childhood to her mom disappearing, but that’s okay because her remaining parent takes good care of her, then that rug gets pulled out from under her, and everything is wrong. And she really tries to be normal, and then Trevor saves her and not only is normal not really an option any more, weird and horrible is so much more fulfilling.

I’m not a big serial killer fan, but Robert Montauk is just trying to keep Julia safe in a world that is so much worse. How do you do that, how do you kill that many people, after losing your wife, and still come home to your kid and make sure she’s safe and happy and has no idea what you do when you say you’re going to work?

And then there’s Trevor Herbert—homeless, recovering from addiction, and risking incarceration and worse because there are things out there that people don’t understand that can and will kill them. Trevor Herbert, who saves and inadvertently adopts an adult to form a little monster-killer family.

Mike Crew and Jude Perry: I just really like the idea of their being buds and hanging out or comparing stories of tormenting innocent people. Or maybe they have a weird symbiotic relationship—how do the Desolation and the Vast relate to each other? Are they rivals? Or do they have their own (Leitner) book club?

In terms of changing names, the only one I’d feel super weird about keeping the same is Robert—could be shortened or turned into Roberta, whatever works.

2. The Penumbra Podcast

Ah yes, my one-stop gender shop. I love the way this show approaches gender and sexuality, that even if characters don’t spell out theirs (which I think only happens once, with Jet), we can usually assume they’re not both straight and cis. Also, despite the show being a noir/scifi story set hundreds of years in the future, it feels very realistic w/r/t identity and personal interactions. Fandom-specific DNW: coming out. One of my favorite things about Penumbra is that everyone just knows everyone else’s pronouns. It’s not that people can’t or don’t realize their gender identity or sexuality later in life—they do even in the show, it’s just that I like the way canon covers it so much that I’m all set.

Rating: G-M

Ships: Juno Steel & NB!Rita, Buddy Aurinko & F!Jet Sikuliaq, F!Peter Nureyev/F!Juno Steel

I love Juno’s and Rita’s friendship so much. Would love to see them working together, especially after the events of Soul of the People, when Juno finally, explicitly starts treating her better. I love seeing characters getting to exercise their competence, so Rita’s hacking combined with Juno’s detective skills: *chef’s kiss.* Are they solving a case? Are they working a heist? Is it a heist that turns into a case?? Alternately, maybe they’re just hanging out. Juno needs a better work/life balance, and Rita’s a lot better at that.

Buddy and Jet are also very much friendship goals. I love how Jet has Buddy’s back no matter what, which definitely includes calling her out when she’s doing something destructive, and Buddy loves and appreciates Jet for that. They know each other and accept each other, but they also grow and change together. Meeting when they were both in a really unsteady place could have helped that. I’d love to see one of them comforting the other during a difficult time, or doing a job together either before or during season 3.

Peter/Juno: I mean. This is my jam. Maybe something set during season 1 that plays up the thief/detective dynamic? Maybe something set during season 3 when they’re trying to navigate their relationship in a healthy way when they’re both simultaneously terrified and also just want to make out already? Pairing specific DNW: please please please no Peter alone in the hotel room at the end of or just after Final Resting Place.

Rating E:

Peter/Juno: I mean. This is my jam. Everything above applies here. Smut likes: praise kink, frottage, masturbation, phone sex, teasing, edging, sex when the characters are def supposed to be doing something else, sex in public places where other people probably can’t actually see them but it *feels* risqué.

3. Wolf 359

Ship: F!Daniel Jacobi/F!Warren Kepler

GOOD SHIP. The trust. The loyalty. The King Lear quote when they meet! I love the rare occasion when Kepler lets Jacobi in. I love how they try to let each other know how they feel through actions rather than words. I’d love another time-out from the job like in Mission Mishaps: No Complaints, or a high-stakes situation where they have to defuse a bomb or blow something up, or something in between.

Thanks for writing for me! I hope you have fun with this!

#ao3 letter

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