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ozzgin · 6 months

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Greetings! How you doing today/tonight?

This is not a request or anything

Hopefully you're doing fine, cuz I'm not, I have a shitty cold rn and I just finished 5 tissue roll papers in just a few hours

Anyway this ain't about me, just wanted to see how you were doing since I've been a bit inactive with tumblr with the past few days

Have a great day/night :3

-🎧anon

Aww, sorry to hear that. We’re definitely entering cold/flu season. Mid-October I’ve gotten ill with some virus, no idea what it was, but I had no other symptoms other than terribly swollen sinuses. Which, in turn, pressed on my tooth nerves, so I had massive tooth pain for days. Never dealt with anything like that before and it sounds downright ridiculous, turns out it’s an actual thing. Start taking immunity supplements and avoid visibly sick people!

I know you said it’s not a request, but I couldn’t help the thought of “How would the Baki characters take care of you?” So I did write some short headcanons after all. For you and anyone else currently bedridden. :)

Baki Characters x Sick! Reader

Featuring Baki and Jack Hanma, Kaiou Retsu, Katsumi Orochi and Pickle. And a reader that’s battling a cold!

Baki Hanma

There are two stages of Baki’s involvement. Once you’re not answering his calls he will be at your front door, worried and considering ways to break in. That’s when he hears the muffled coughing and sneezing through the walls and figures it out: You’re sick. He’ll return with a bag of supplies and offer to stay at your place until you feel better. His help consists of quick Google searches, because he’s never had anyone doting on him and consequently has no idea how to care for someone in such situations.

Second and final stage is him getting sick from you. You’ll wake up in the middle of the night to see him trying to hold back his cough, at first denying his poor health until you touch his forehead and it’s burning. The bad news is that you’re both bedridden. Baki is beyond embarrassed, attempting to justify himself and explaining it has never happened before. Eventually one of his or your friends will show up and pay the occasional visit to play nurse. At least you’re not suffering alone. You’re not sure if it’s an actual saying, but you’re tempted to believe colds go away faster in good company.

Jack Hanma

You don’t want to interfere with Jack’s routine, so once you wake up with the familiar sore muscles, you decide to quietly recover from home. Jack notices your absence and while he does not want to be nonchalant and potentially impose on your personal troubles, he can’t help the curiosity. In fact, he spends the whole training time wondering why you’ve skipped your usual visits. So when you hear a knock on the door you don’t think twice about opening it. Probably your food delivery. Only when you notice Jack’s massive frame blocking any outside view, you gasp in surprise.

“Oh. You seem to be ill.” Is all he states before turning on his heels and leaving. You stand there baffled and eventually return to your warm bed. Just as you cozy up, there’s another knock and you groan, throwing the blankets off of you. This better be the hot soup you ordered. Except it’s Jack again, holding not only your delivery, but also multiple other bags with groceries peeking out. “Y-you’re back?” You mumble. “Well, can’t do much empty handed. Here’s your order, but I got some extra things to help with your cold”, he states as he invites himself in.

Kaiou Retsu

You know Retsu will be worried about you, so you try your best to mask the symptoms over the phone. “That’s a stuffed nose. Are you sick?” He immediately points out. Uh oh. You fumble with some excuses and he promptly hangs up. Have you upset him? You’re starting to feel bad. He’s never dropped out of a conversation like this before. You try to call back several times until you’re distracted by the sound of your doorbell. You’re not in the mood for visitors. You continue your attempts to reach Retsu as you approach the door and open it. “I suspected as much.” Your head snaps up hearing the familiar voice.

Before you can say anything, you’re casually lifted up and brought to your bed. As if he’s been doing it his entire life, the Kenpo master tucks you in and pulls out an apron from his bag. “I’ll check what ingredients you already have in your pantry and go buy the rest. Before that, I’ll make you a tea. Any preferences?” You open your mouth to speak, but he’s already walking away, describing the best choice of drink for the common cold. Really, the best thing you can do right now is to rest and leave everything else to him.

Katsumi Orochi

Usually, Katsumi will avoid using the spare key you’ve given him. On the other hand, he was supposed to pick you up for your regular date night and you haven’t answered his persistent knocking, so you leave him little choice. He quietly apologizes for the intrusion as he unlocks the door and tiptoes his way in. The lights are off and he’s becoming increasingly anxious, almost sprinting to your bedroom. He stops in his tracks once he sees you buried under the blankets, passed out and sweaty from an obvious cold.

Ah. Well, that makes sense. He smiles to himself and gently pats your forehead to make sure it’s nothing serious, then sneaks out of the room. You wake up hours later, groggy and sore. It suddenly occurs to you that you’ve slept through your date and jolt up, nearly collapsing in the process. You erratically search for your phone and call Katsumi to apologize. Simultaneously you hear his ringtone nearby, so you limp outside, confused. As you reach the kitchen, a pleasant smell invades your nostrils. Katsumi turns to look at you. “You’re awake! I made something to help with your cold. I’ll bring it to your bed, so you can go back and rest. We can’t skip our romantic dinner.” He chuckles after the last statement.

Pickle

Pickle has been ill at least once in his life, so he can quickly guess that your coughing and runny nose is not something that’s supposed to happen on the regular. Although, if he’s honest, he has no idea what he should do. He’d deal with his sickness by just sleeping it out, or downright ignoring it. Seeing you like this, however, fills him with an overwhelming desire to help you. He does love you, after all. Witnessing your suffering isn’t something he does with ease.

He manages to gesture the situation to Baki, who follows him back to your place and proceeds to do the first aid he’d sporadically learned over the years. A rather clumsy attempt, but it’s better than nothing. Once Pickle has observed the steps, he swiftly shoos the young boy away. All he needed was a little bit of demonstration, some brief instruction on the modern ways. Everything else will be done by him. It’s only proper that the actual care is performed by your partner. You’re a little afraid of the potential outcome to this experiment. Especially once you hear the loud rattles coming from the kitchen. Don’t worry, it’s all made with love.

*My partner has insisted that I include Yuujirou Hanma just to say that he’d tenderly piss on you. I compromised on a footnote.

#baki #baki the grappler #baki hanma #baki headcanons #baki x reader #pickle baki #pickle x reader #jack hanma #jack hanma x reader #kaiou retsu x reader #kaiou retsu #katsumi orochi x reader #orochi katsumi #katsumi orochi

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celluloidbroomcloset · 5 months

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People in other fandom are criticising the 1st gentlebeard kiss again, and I think we need to discuss how this is the result of oversexualation in queer media

I’m assuming that other fandom refers to the Canyon? I’ve mostly either blocked or been blocked by them, it seems, which is perfectly fine by me. They don’t want to see me and I don’t want to see them.

I’ve written, as have others, about how there’s a clear progression to those kisses, from the very tentative sweetness of the first and the absolute confidence of the last. In that beach scene, Ed can barely get out what he wants to say, and Stede doesn't immediately clock what it means (because he's dealing with that initial emotion of "I make...you...happy?"). I’m not sure what was wanted with the first kiss? Like, full-on snog? How would that make sense to either of those characters at that point? It might even have looked like assault, since Stede is obviously surprised and not quite expecting it. The fact that it is gentle and unsure is part of their relationship - they’re figuring out who they are to each other, and Ed especially is being so careful about how he does it.

In terms of oversexualization generally...I'm not a queer media scholar or critic, though I've done work with queer theory and I know a lot of Hollywood history. So much of mainstream queer media was initially about subtext and suffering - characters that were typed as queer without being made explicitly so (because they literally couldn't), stories that treated queerness as a mental illness or that ended in death and destruction. So there's been a natural pushback against all that, often outside the mainstream and then more into the mainstream now. I think there was also a desire to shock the straight world, hence things like John Waters's films, Rocky Horror, etc. (not knocking these - I fuckin' love 'em), which are also in conversation with pornography.

With Our Flag Means Death and a handful of other shows and films (Good Omens, A League of Their Own, Heartstopper, etc.) there's been major movement forward, in part because there are more queer writers/artists/creators getting a say in mainstream texts. But there's still that fear of assimilation - because mainstream. So there's a cadre that will demand that if it's queer, it's gotta be explicit. It's gotta shock the straights. Which leads, eventually, to a sanding away of complicated emotions and nuance and not allowing characters or plots to progress in an organic way. There has to be space for sexualization if it's natural to the story, but it can't be forced.

I would absolutely have been upset if all we ever got was that beach kiss, and all we ever saw was Ed and Stede barely kissing each other. That wouldn't have made sense to the story that was being told. I even remember messaging my friend after "Curse of the Seafaring Life" that I was glad they "finally got a proper kiss." And looking back, even then, I was pretty much thinking that that's all we were gonna get, because I've been so conditioned to just expect crumbs in mainstream media. (Also, like, I remember very well how Ellen lost her sitcom when she came out, how people had an absolute fit about Will & Grace featuring a nonromantic same-sex kiss, and how all the interviews around Brokeback Mountain were along the lines of "how terribly uncomfortable was it to kiss a dude?!" So the idea of two straight actors maybe possibly not being grossed out by kissing each other is relatively new, in terms of media history.)

I think some of this is a desire for all queer media to be all things. That if any show doesn’t do ALL THE THINGS, then it is bad and problematic. And that’s just not the nature of art. It would be awful if they tried to do all the things. It wouldn’t work. But that's also a result of having so little explicitly queer stuff, especially from mainstream shows/films, that when something like OFMD or Good Omens comes along, it gets picked apart and people are upset that it didn't do all the things. The more queer stories there are, the less we'll have to depend on single works and the less infighting there will be.

Well, there, I wrote way too much. This is all very complicated and I'm not trying to pretend that it's easy to distill down or that I'm 100% right here. I'd be happy to hear other opinions or caveats (that are not "no, I love Izzy, therefore you're wrong").

#ofmd s2 #ofmd #queer theory #queerness #stede bonnet #edward teach #blackbonnet #gentlebeard #our flag means death #i will however block any straggling canyon folks #i am even upset that i know what canyon means now #bad faith arguments are not cool #i've been through the twitter trenches and i ain't doing that again #long post #it's an oldie but for early queer theory #do read the celluloid closet #not everything in there is 100% correct imo #but it's deeply important

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tainbocuailnge · 1 year

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German Dark Knight quests

This is an English translation of the German script for the level 45 and 50 dark knight quests (and some extra bits at the end), meant as a supplement to the translation of the Japanese script found in this and this post showcasing the large differences between Japanese and English Fray’s characterisation. Since haillenarte mentioned in their posts that the German script usually stays closer to the Japanese script than the English script does, and I can’t read Japanese but can read German, I decided to check out the German version and translate it for comparison.

UPDATE: Please check out my translation website! I have the entire dark knight questline translated on there, including an updated translation of what’s in this post, as well as many other scenes from the rest of the game.

Since the English script is already in the other posts I won’t put it in here too, but I will separate it into the same blocks as the other posts for ease of comparison. I’m also sticking to gender neutral pronouns for the WoL, though German is a highly gendered language so all the screenshots of the German script will reflect me playing as a male au ra. It’s been a hot minute since I formally studied German so if you spot any glaring mistakes by all means correct me!

Level 45 quest - What must be said

Fray: It’s your life and it ends again every minute... I’ve been thinking again about what you told me about the voice. Fray: Someone is trying to get through to you. Someone who needs your protection. But we don’t know any more. Fray: We have to perform another ritual as soon as possible. Maybe that will give us a clue about who the voice belongs to. Fray: After all, the voice resonates within your heart. Do you have someone you want to protect? More than anyone else? Fray: ...Sorry. I don’t feel very well lately... I’m alright. I’m just a bit tired. Fray: So, when you’re ready, we’ll perform the next ritual. Fray: Show me what you’ve learned. I’ll wait for you at Moraby Drydocks.

Fray: Do you remember? The sea... Fray: I told you before that I went on a journey once. With someone who... A terrible danger awaited us at sea. Fray: I wanted to stop them. But we’d already drifted too far apart. There was no stopping them from getting on that damn boat. Fray: It was like I was dying. They were the person I wanted to protect more than anything in the world. But my words didn't get through to them. That's why I'm...

???: What’s that? Isn’t the Maelstrom there to help us? ...I’m in need, goddammit! Styrnlona: The Maelstrom isn’t responsible for that. You should turn to the Yellowjackets when reporting something like stolen wares. Demanding dealer: The Yellowjackets... Before they get around to my case my newborn son will be an experienced sailor! Perhaps even admiral! Styrnlona: Hey, you! Aren’t you [your rank at the Maelstrom] [Name]?

Strynlona: You did us all a great favour when you defeated the primal Leviathan. The citizens of Limsa Lominsa are forever grateful. Demanding dealer: Whaaaat? There’s a real hero standing before me! Demanding dealer: You’re a godsend. I’m in a real bind and need help. Demanding dealer: A nasty Qiqirn has stolen all my wares! [cry] What do I tell my clients? [sob] I’m going to lose my good name as trader! [sniff] Fray: Do you remember what I told you last time? You can’t help everyone. You can’t carry all the world’s suffering on your shoulders. Fray: The Yellowjackets will take on his case soon enough. You should worry about your training as a dark knight instead and find a worthy opponent. There’s more important things at stake... Demanding dealer: Don’t leave me high and dry! If you don’t help me, no-one will!

>Yes, or nobody will help him.

Demanding dealer: You’re truly a hero! Thank you! Demanding dealer: The Qiqirn that stole my wares has to be some kind of leader or chief... It’s bigger and stronger than the others.

>No, I can’t help everyone.

Demanding dealer: But... didn’t you just say you were looking for worthy opponents? Demanding dealer: The Qiqirn that stole my wares is a real big guy! Bigger and stronger than the others. A leader or chief, I would say.

Demanding dealer: I saw it walking towards the salt strand, the Qiqirn have a camp there. Please bring my wares back! Fray: It always ends like this... When nobody wants to help, the heroes have to go... You'll never become a dark knight like this.

Fray: Cut that thieving Qiqirn down to size. Doesn’t matter how pathetically it begs for mercy. It shouldn’t have stolen the merchant’s wares... Fray: We’ll use the opportunity to prepare the next ritual. Show me everything you’ve learned as a dark knight.

[Duty battle dialogue] Fray the Dark: There’s quite a lot of them... This’ll be a right bloodbath. Fray the Dark: Now we just need to get the wares! Fray the Dark: The wares are definitely in this chest...

Fray: We... have the wares... [groan] Bring them to the merchant... [huff] Fray: Me? I’m just a bit... exhausted... [groan]. Go ahead, I’ll be right behind you... Fray: Bring it to an end...

Demanding dealer: Hello, hero! Do you have my wares? Demanding dealer: Yes, that’s the stuff! Thank you, thank you. Let’s see if everything is there. Demanding dealer: Nooooo! In llymlaen’s name, I can’t sell these like this! Demanding dealer: Those Qiqirn put their dirty hands all over everything! I can’t offer this to my customers! Or even worse, they’ll demand a discount! Demanding dealer: What should i do? It’s the end for me! I’m ruined! I can say goodbye to that vacation in Costa del Sol... Demanding dealer: I know! I’ve got a hero standing right in front of me! You’ll deliver me new wares in a snap! Demanding dealer: The skin of a dangerous monster... A treasure from a trap-filled ruin... A lock of hair from a primal...

Fray: ENOUGH!! Fray: Does it ever end? Is Eorzea populated entirely by children? Can nobody do anything on their own anymore? Does everyone have to keep begging the heroes for help? Fray: [Name] is also just a [your race]! With their own feelings and interests. Axe blades and thunder magic also hurt them! Nobody thinks about that, huh? Fray: We keep fighting for other people... Like back then, at open sea, against that watery primal... Fray: “We’re not chosen! Let the chosen one fight!” - Pah, you’re just hiding behind those words! What are you doing for Eorzea anyway? Fray: If you lot didn’t keep bringing in your troublesome business [Name] would’ve long since been a more experienced dark knight! Ugh, for real!

Demanding dealer: Who just blows their lid like that? I’m terribly sorry, adventurer... Styrnlona: What the... [Maelstrom rank] [Name], your anger isn’t entirely unfounded, but... Styrnlona: ...A short walk sounds like the right thing to cool your head. Have a good day.

Fray: That just had to be said. Don’t you think? Fray: Seriously, such an ungrateful lot...

>All that matters is the voice.

Fray: Right, the voice. You can’t ignore it. That would mean ignoring your own existence. Fray: I even know who the voice belongs to... Fray: But I can’t tell you who it is. You have to find out yourself. Fray: Well, let’s continue. Stick your hand out...

>I want to become a real dark knight as soon as possible.

Fray: You’re already a real dark knight, [Name]. The dark power, that’s real. Fray: But remember what I told you in the Brume? That you have to face your feelings if you want to walk the path of the dark knight - if you want to survive it? Fray: You’re not at the goal yet. There’s a place in your heart you still haven’t reached. But the voice will help you with that. Fray: Well, let’s continue. Stick your hand out...

>You’re completely right. It had to be said.

[Fray makes a surprised gesture] Fray: You also think I’m right? That’s great, [Name]! Fray: I know it’s not in your nature to lash out like that. But you can rest easy leaving that to me. Fray: I’m glad you’re finally realizing it... Fray: More important right now is that you find out who the voice belongs to. And what its true meaning is. Stick your hand out...

???: The weak call for you, [Name]. As they always do. ???: They call, they scream, they wail... So loud that you can’t hear your own voice... The pain... The anger... The sadness... Nobody wants to hear about those. ???: But you. You will listen to it. ???: You hear my prayers.

Fray: [Name]. Fray: You heard the voice, right? Fray: You don’t have to tell me what you heard. But I’ll ask you one thing: Are you prepared to give up everything to answer that voice? Fray: Your status, your fame, your fortune - everything? Only after losing everything will we have the freedom to do everything. If you’re willing to do that, then... come with me! Leave this Eorzea! Fray: Here you will never be able to fulfil your purpose. To be truly free. Here you will forever have to concern yourself with others. But if you turn your back on Eorzea - you can go your own way. Fray: You don’t have to answer right now. Meet me at the usual place when you’re ready. I’ll wait for you.

Level 50 quest - The knights’ core

Fray: [Name]... There you are again. I was already expecting you. Fray: ...Ugh... We don't have much time left. We have to travel again soon... Or it'll be too late. Fray: Too late for you... You don't understand it yet, but I want to help you. I'm starting to doubt whether you're really prepared... But we'll see. Fray: We'll meet at the Gates of Judgement. Call my name and I'll come.

???: That voice! Isn't that [Sir/Lady] [Name]? The hero of the Scions of the Seventh Dawn? Brave knight: Forgive me. I belong to Lord Drillemont's troops from Whitebrim Fort. Everyone in my regiment knows your name. Brave knight: It can't be a coincidence that I meet you here. It's the Fury's work! She wants you to help us. Nervous knight: A bit to the south from here lives a crowd of Gigas. They've been showing themselves in the region increasingly often and frequently raid caravans. It’s likely they intend to expand their territory. Nervous knight: The troops at Whitebrim Fort are well armed, but the Gigas are numerous and better suited to the cold than us. Nervous knight: They're better organised than other Gigas too. If we can disable their commander their advances will likely cease for now. Brave knight: Indeed. Our commander underestimates the danger and refuses to send troops. Please, won't you help us and hunt down the Gigas commander? Coeus the Loudmouthed, they call the beast. Then our problems will be solved.

Durendaire knights: Please help us. Durendaire knights: What could be more important? Please help us! Nervous knight: Thank you! You’re a hero! Brave knight: We believe we have a trail. Follow us!

Fray: That’s enough.... That’s.... ENOUGH!!!

Brave knight: That’s the place. We believe Coeus the Loudmouthed will come through the pass. Did I mention he’s always accompanied by his two bodyguards? They of course also have to be defeated. Brave knight: Keep watch a little further down the pass. The leader of the Gigas won’t be long. May the Fury preserve you!

Brave knight: You’ve defeated the Gigas’ leader! Thank Halone and you! Brave knight: That should stop their advance. We can easily deal with the few remaining unorganised Gigas. And if not, we know who we can ask. Brave knight: You have our thanks. We will inform Lord Drillemont of your deeds. Brave knight: And our comrades will hear of your heroic deeds too! They’ll all look up to you, if they don’t already. Brave knight: The troops at Whitebrim Fort can use any boost to morale they can get. Your willingness to help us will bring new courage. Brave knight: That reminds me... Could you perhaps autograph my shield? My name is...

???: March, march! Return to base immediately! Brave knight: What happened? Why the rush? Capable knight: Orders from above. Lord Drillemont heard that we’re working with [Name] and ordered us to return immediately. With them in custody, in fact. Brave knight: In custody? What’s the meaning of this? Capable knight: There have been... accusations. People are saying they’ve been spotted in the Brume... speaking with the corpse of a convicted heretic. Capable knight: I don’t believe it of course, but we both know how serious such accusations are.

Brave knight: Surely someone is trying to play us for fools... I mean, speaking with a corpse? Do they take us for idiots? Capable knight: Have you heard the accusations, [Sir/Lady]? They... have a certain weight, since they come from Temple Knights. Capable knight: It might be necessary... Ah, purely as a formality of course... To ask you to remove your weapon.

Fray: Ha, ha! “Remove my weapon”? After what happened in Ul’dah? Are they out of their minds?

Fray: Tomorrow will be the best day in your life, [Name]. Your breakfast will taste better than any meal you’ve ever had. Fray: That is, when you finally manage to look the truth in the eye. [Name], get ready for the evacuation of your soul...

Fray: You know already. You know whose voice speaks in your heart. You know who has to shoulder more suffering than anyone else in the world... You know who you have to save! Fray: Don’t act so surprised. Of course Fray was stone dead, right from the start. But you wanted it to be different. Fray: A sword, a crystal... All that was missing was a teacher. So you made yourself one. Fray: The soul crystal of the Dark Knight, in which all his experiences were stored. Your aether and repressed feelings... The pain that you locked deep inside your heart... All that suffering that you have to endure as a hero.... The fear that the Champion of Eorzea is not allowed to show... Those are the ingredients from which you made a new Fray. Fray: A mentor who could show you the feelings slumbering in your heart. Who could express these feelings for you, like you never could. Fray: You still don’t want to believe it, but you can’t deny it. You can’t deny what we have achieved. Fray: Haven’t I been good to you? I’ve given you a choice that none of your so-called friends ever gave you. Your so-called friends in the Scions or the Eorzean Alliance. Fray: The choice to say no. To not help. To think of yourself. To save yourself. I’ve given your innermost desire to say no a voice, and made sure you heard it too. Fray: Open your eyes! Look at me! Are you seeing it now? I... am you!

[Fray takes on your name] [Name]: Everything that happened until now was your story... [Name]: ...And everything that happens from now on is mine!

[Duty battle dialogue] Dark shadow: Fight me! As hard as you can! You can’t kill me, no matter how hard you try. Dark shadow: You can’t defeat me. I’m a part of you. Drillemont: [Name], I’ll help you! You helped us in our greatest time of need too. Dark shadow: Help them? Bet they’ll have to save you again?

Dark shadow: I... we were so close...

Dark shadow: That is exactly the problem! Dark shadow: Do you even know how ridiculous this struggle must look to the others? Dark shadow: Free yourself from the pain!

[Battle over] [Name]: After a battle everything else in life is turned down in comparison - you can deal with anything. [Name]: I made you strong. I have... given you all your strength... [Name]: Recognise the irony of your existence: Your strength is the cause of your pain. It makes you a hero, and as a hero you’re doomed to suffer.

Knight: [Name]! We’re with you! Cenota: [Name]! Believe in yourself! Believe in us! Clotairion: We know who you really are. Don’t forget that!

[Name]: They stand at your side... while you carry their pain. [Name]: But that’s what you want, isn’t it? You want to suffer. You’re always looking for someone whose pain you can carry. That’s your nature. [Name]: The nature of a dark knight. It’s your fate. Nobody will ever do it better than you... [Name]: You seek this pain. You seek that suffering. [Name]: You’ve brought the last offering. So take this reward... [Name]: [Name]... [Name]: [Name]... I’m the part of you incapable of being a hero. Hide me. Deep in your heart. [Name]: I will speak to you again. Because I know you’re stronger than me.

[Name]: What belongs together comes together. [Name]: I’ll return back into you and give you the power to protect the world. I’ll cry your tears. I’ll carry your burden. I’ll be your rage. [Name]: Let’s go on a journey together again.

Capable knight: We have you back, Halone be praised! For a moment there I thought we’d lost you to your innermost demons. Capable knight: I don’t really understand what happened here, but Lord Drillemont doesn’t seem too angry. Fortunately nobody was permanently injured... Capable knight: First up I’ll make sure Fray’s body is given an appropriate burial. Capable knight: And you? Are you sure everything is okay? You were a little... confused. But what am I implying... Forgive me, my lord. And farewell.

Notes and commentary:

"Das ist dein Leben und es endet jede Minute aufs Neue” is a quote from the German dub of Fight Club apparently, though I never watched it in any language so I have no idea what the context is.

German has formal and informal pronouns, but the only character in these quests to use formal pronouns for your character is the capable knight. That said, everyone still speaks fairly politely to you except Fray, who speaks so casually to everyone it crosses into being rude and overly familiar.

Personally I like German Fray a lot. They feel like the best of both worlds, keeping the emotional vulnerability of Japanese Fray while adding some of the bitter anger English Fray has. They also have a certain awkwardness to them that is really endearing, and which I’m not sure really comes across in just these two quests even with the lame breakfast oneliner. The lv35 quest has this exchange which I really like.

>That voice I heard. Who is speaking to me? >Why were you being accused by the High Tribunal anyway? Hmmm? -->Wild playing and endangering the elderly - shouldn’t that be punished severely? (This is the excuse the temple knights used to take away the old woman’s granddaughter)

Fray: R-really? But things like that just happen when kids play... Fray: A-haha, I get it! You made a joke! You really got me there. Seriously though, what do you want to ask me?

What stood out to me about German Fray next to the English one (and my limited knowledge of the Japanese one) is that they’re a bit of a jokester, though it doesn’t really show in the last two quests because they’re getting desperate. When you free the prisoners from the Amal’jaa in the lv40 quest duty, the enemy yells “You’ll pay for this with your blood!” and Fray responds “Send me an invoice!”

There’s also the exchange with Fray when you learn what happened to the old woman whose grandchild was taken in the lv30 quest, which in English goes like this

Fray: They might spare the girl, you know. Leave her with a few scars and a lifelong lesson. Fray: ...Or, we could beat every single one of them within an ilm of their lives and rescue the girl. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? [You nod, and Fray smiles] Fray: I knew you would.

and in German goes like this

Fray: Are you the dark knight that will stand up for this old woman? Think about it carefully, since it might cost you your head. Fray: Think about the enemies you’re facing, and the wounds they will inflict on you. Think about how you could just turn around and go lie in a warm bed, and nobody would suspect you. [You nod, and Fray smiles] Fray: I feared as much.

In the Japanese and English versions (and French, since French drk is just a direct translation of the English one) the original Fray legitimately lost his trial by combat, but in the German version the trial was rigged. The Ishgardian Citizen describes how Fray was winning until Halone herself struck him down with a pillar of fire - someone in the audience mumbled that it looked suspiciously like a Flare spell cast from the direction of the jury, but naturally the citizen immediately reported that heretic to the inquisition for doubting Halone’s judgement. The reason I even read the German version was because I got mad about translators making some shit up wholesale, but I have to admit I do like this particular thing that translators made up wholesale.

It also turns out Fray writing in the quest journal is unique to the English version! I really missed their commentary when I checked the German journal and it just wasn’t there. Another win for making shit up wholesale I suppose.

I’ve been told the scripts for different languages of the game are written concurrently rather than first in Japanese and then translated, so it’s not entirely fair to claim any one of them as the original that the others are unfaithful translations of. Even if that’s the case I still don’t think the different language scripts should be so wildly different in meaning from each other, but putting that aside I do like having these varying takes on Fray to rotate in my head and I wouldn’t have any complaints if the way they were implemented was through supplementary material like short stories or a manga or something.

I also think each version of Fray has something good going for them, and that they become better when put next to each other. I like how the English script has even your repressed feelings be so repressed that they cling to their front of smug superiority and righteous anger until the very end, and only manage to really express themselves in the journal where nobody would ordinarily look. I like Japanese Fray spilling their whole entire heart out and sounding permanently on the verge of crying from how desperate they are despite their imposing appearance. And my personal favourite is German Fray for how much they feel like genuinely just a regular person who’s in too deep and has no choice but to keep doing what they think is best.

#ffxiv #fray #fray myste #dark knight #translation

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ghostmartyr · 1 year

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-slams back a swig of water-

Other people who pay more attention have written great words about this scene and family dynamics and all that jazz. Meanwhile, I’ve been trying to figure out what it is about Yang’s expression in particular that makes my lizard brain hiss.

Ruby is clearly Having a Moment. A Time, even. Perhaps Several. But we’re not doing a nuanced group therapy session, we’re having what parental factions might term a tantrum. Blocks are being thrown, and it’s obvious that the child is going through some stuff, but that doesn’t make the behavior okay. Thrown objects hurt.

I don’t think there is anything more aggravating when you’ve hit your last nerve and start acting unreasonably than to have someone try to manage your unreasonableness.

Great, okay. I’m being terrible. Congratulations, you finally put a point or two into observation. Now you see me. Now you’re listening. To all the spite and nastiness and bitterness -- because it’s a problem and causing a scene and hurting people.

When you watch someone you love flame out, I think there’s often a point where you realize you can’t talk to them like this. You can try to engage, try to inject some reason and compassion, but sometimes they’re just past being able to hear it. Instead, you wait it out.

Calm down, use your words (wait no, not like that), and then maybe we can fix the problem. We can’t have a conversation while you’re like this.

The question on the other side, unfortunately, tends to be, how the fuck am I supposed to be anything else?

Ruby's pain is vicious and ugly and unfair. It is not the totality of her personhood, but in this moment, that’s all there is to feel. Festered agony spraying all over her loved ones after burying her.

Because Yang’s the responsible one, Yang’s the adult in this situation, Yang’s the caretaker -- Yang’s not going to throw blocks back.

But when you’re in the heart of your pain, sometimes that’s what makes it all worse. Because the fact that they’re waiting for you to calm down means they’re not engaging with you as you are when your suffering’s hit its max. It feels (however unjustly) like the entire storm of emotions you’re experiencing is being viewed as a temporary issue that’s beneath them, because they’re waiting for a better version of you to come back.

Well. You’re not the better version of you yet. Maybe not ever. This is you, this is what you have, would someone please treat it like it’s real.

Yang’s actively choosing to be patient, and isn’t that just the worst thing for your older sibling to be when your emotional reins snap and you bleed all over them.

#RWBY #Ruby Rose #tl;dr #rwby spoilers #spoilers

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kayawolfhorse · 6 months

Text

Supermoon – Chapter Three | Read on Ao3

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— ☾ —

The second day of traveling is quieter than the first.

Everyone had awoken at dawn in noticeably grimmer spirits. Tents were deconstructed and stowed away in inventories, breakfast was eaten, and horses were cared for and tacked up all with almost mechanical efficiency. There was light banter here and there, but the serious atmosphere weighed down upon everyone.

Grian checks the communicator on his wrist for their current coordinates, as the forest around them transitions from dark oak to birch. If his math is correct, they’re far enough away now from the second portal to begin searching for their destination. The thought sends a chill down his spine as he reaches for the first eye.

Grian calls for the group to slow as he steadies his arm, preparing to throw. Under the expectant gazes of his friends, Grian tosses the eye of ender in front of him, and it catches itself midair, floating upwards and swerving to the side. Grian glances towards the sun to calculate the eye’s position. Further north it is, then. They can’t be more than a thousand blocks away.

An unlucky throw; the eye breaks midair. With nothing left to linger for, Grian urges his horse forward.

Dread tugs at his stomach, and it only grows as Grian glances around the haggard faces of the Boatem crew. Though nobody has said it directly, he knows no one has gotten a restful sleep the night before. Grian thinks of his own terrible dreams and hopes none of the others had suffered the same.

Could the Watchers see them? Grian put an illusion over everyone before they left, making it seem like they were all still back at their bases, but all that smoke and mirrors stuff has never been his strong suit. If it has failed, he has failed, and they will lose the crucial element of surprise.

He may not be good at illusions, but he knows someone who is.

Grian turns to Scar, who rides next to him. “Hey, Scar, could you help me with something?” Grian may still remember some of his old Watcher tricks after leaving them, but Scar is a vex, far more skilled in misdirection and trickery than Grian suspects even some Watchers are.

After quietly listening to Grian’s explanation, Scar hands his reins over and dismounts, coming to stand in front of everyone. Another round of explaining is given to the other three, and Scar raises his hands, palms pointed upwards.

Scar’s normally green eyes, so vivid they’re akin to emeralds, glow a bright silver-blue. His hair changes to match them, white streaks threading throughout before devouring the brown entirely. Grian glances at Scar’s teeth to find them normal. Not full vex then; just the stage that Scar calls his ‘wizard mode’, allowing him to cast magic.

Small, elegant slivers of magic, so unlike the vex mob’s jagged points of it, dance across Scar’s palms as he turns them out towards the group, and though the slivers dissipate a block or two after leaving Scar’s hand, Grian still feels the effect of them, settling over his shoulders like heavy silk. Looking behind him, Pearl is the only other one that visibly notices the feeling, her antennae twitching slightly.

As Scar finishes his spell, the energy seems to evaporate off of Grian. He stands still for a moment before shaking his head and wringing his hands out, heading back for his horse.

“All set!” Scar confirms, coming to grip his reins once more. “So long as none of you get too far away from me, the spell is in place. I should be able to hold it pretty long with the energy I’ve got.”

“And our Boatem selves?” Grian asks, after giving Scar a grateful nod for his effort.

“Working on our mega bases, of course! Lots of staying in single, confined areas,” Scar says with a wink.

“Good thinking. Now, for the ‘energy that you’ve got’, how much do you actually have?” Vex magic always saps Scar’s energy, to a degree, and though he seems lucid enough as Grian assesses him, there’s sleepiness in Scar’s slightly slowed blinking.

Scar waves a hand dismissively. “I’m a bit tired, but nothing extraordinary. I’m used to it.” Grian believes him, mostly, but resolves to keep an eye on him anyway as they urge their horses into a canter.

If the Watchers can’t see them... Grian tentatively extends his vision beyond his own two eyes, a movement that has always felt like unfolding a spyglass, and is met with nothing. The trees they walk between appear completely uninhabited, save for the mobs of the forest.

Ahead of him, Scar tilts his head slightly, and Grian realizes that he must be able to feel the magic upon his own. “Just me,” he calls out, just loudly enough for Scar to hear.

“I know,” is Scar’s reply, soft enough Grian almost can’t catch it.

When the mountains from Grian’s map start to appear at the horizon, sun directly overhead, he gestures for the group to stop. “It’s close enough now we should be able to walk. Let’s leave the horses here, for safety’s sake,” Grian says, whipping out materials for a temporary fence from his inventory.

“Would we be able to fly?” Impulse asks, clipping a lead to his horse.

“We’ve got to stay in a pretty tight group to keep in range of Scar’s cloak. I’d rather not risk it.” Grian shakes his head. He wishes they could fly. Being on horseback instead of his own two wings for two days has him feeling restless.

Scar pats his mount’s neck. “I’m sure going to miss you, Peanut Butter.” The horse nuzzles his hand, and Scar feeds it a golden carrot.

“You named your horse Peanut Butter?” Grian asks in amusement.

“Well sure! They’re a matching set, you know,” Scar replies.

Impulse laughs before saying, “Ah, I get it. Peanut Butter and Jellie, I like that.”

Scar regales the group with tales of Peanut Butter and Jellie’s supposed friendship as they walk, mostly of the cat sitting aloofly in front of Peanut Butter’s stall and graciously allowing a single curious sniff from the horse before sauntering off to find a better place to lay. Grian’s grateful for the goofiness, amidst it all, and surrounded by the warmth of laughter and the afternoon sun above him, he tosses up the next eye.

— ☾ —

“That’s my last one,” Grian says, watching the fragments of his final eye of ender sparkle and disappear midair. “Does anyone have more ender pearls? I have blaze powder.”

“Yep, I’ve got you.” Impulse hands over a few ender pearls. “We should be getting pretty close anyway, right?”

“Yep,” Grian confirms as he crafts up more eyes of ender. “Just a couple more eyes should do it.”

“Good, because that’s all I’ve got left.”

Mercifully, the second to last eye Grian tosses up shoots downwards, burrowing under the grass beneath Mumbo’s feet.

“Well, looks like we’ve got our spot. Start digging, fellas.” Grian summons a shovel and starts clearing away dirt, Mumbo joining in next to him. Together they carve out a winding staircase, Grian mining the stone and Mumbo placing torches behind him.

“I’m not seeing it,” Grian says, their staircase surely far enough down now.

“Start poking holes?” Mumbo asks, grasping his pickaxe.

Grian’s about to confirm when Impulse shouts, “I’ve got it!” somewhere nearby. Following the sound of his voice, Grian and Mumbo tunnel towards him, and the group reunites atop blocks of stone bricks.

“Are we ready?” Impulse prepares to break through the bricks.

“Only one way to find out!” Pearl mines the block next to her, and after peering down it for a second, drops through it.

“Armor on, everyone,” Grian says, and follows Pearl’s lead down.

It takes Grian’s eyes a moment to adjust to the darkness around them, as he listens for the telltale thump of Mumbo, Scar, and Impulse landing behind him.

His vision brightens, and the view Grian’s met with is spectacular.

The ceiling, high above them, is supported by slender, curving stone arches spaced evenly apart that stretch from the top of the room to the floor of it, torches hung on every one to give the room a dim glow. The builder in him grudgingly admits the beauty to it all, but the arches remind Grian of a ribcage, and he can’t help but feel like the massive room has swallowed him whole.

Between the pillars, lines of unmoving hostile mobs stand in the shadows, and Grian does a double take before realizing that they, like almost everything else in the room, are carved from rock. The surly stone faces of vindicators, illusioners, and witches stare back at him. Grian only hopes there aren’t any real ravagers nearby.

The sight is impressive, but what really cuts deep is the chill, slicing through protective layers and directly piercing bone. Grian shivers without meaning to, and pulls at the jumper beneath his chestplate. He’s never liked the armor—too restricting, despite the flexible leather back to accommodate his wings—but he’s grateful now at least for another layer.

Grian and Mumbo huddle together for warmth as they search for traps, tripwires, anything. There’s no obvious lead to another room, as far as Grian can see. Beyond the difficulty of finding their way deeper into the stronghold, this all feels too straightforward and too still for what Grian would expect of the Watchers.

Scar voices Grian’s thoughts, “I hate to say it, but this feels too easy.”

Just as he gets the last syllable out, the room explodes into movement. The statues crack and burst open, spraying chunks of rock and revealing the mobs they were sculpted after. Witches crackle and pillagers load crossbows, all rushing forward at them, as Grian scrambles for his sword.

Impulse shouts a warning, and Grian whirls just in time to avoid a vindicator’s axe. He catches the edge of the axe with his own blade and shoves it aside, plunging his sword into the vindicator’s chest. From this close, he can make out the mob’s eyes, and with a sharp inhale, Grian realizes its irises are purple.

Grian disposes of the vindicator and runs to help Mumbo, who’s having troubles with a witch. To his right, Pearl holds a sword in one hand and a sickle in the other, slicing at the mobs after her, and behind him, Grian can hear the clang of Scar and Impulse’s weapons.

Swing, dodge, slice, leap back. It’s a stupid amount of mobs after them, and their tactic seems to be to surround and overwhelm each person. One pillager aims for the vulnerable part of Grian’s back, and he swerves, but pays for it with an arrow caught in a wing. Biting back a scream, he keeps going.

They hardly have time to breathe after the wave of mobs is finally dealt with. The few remaining statues lining the walls explode into life. Illusioners, the last mobs to remain encased in stone, hold up their hands, particles billowing above them.

Grian’s vision goes dark, and he blindly, desperately, feels around for something, anything, before it clears moments later. A strangled yelp comes from someone somewhere behind him, and it matches how Grian feels as he stands before an army with his friends’ faces.

— ☾ —

An Impulse thrusts an axe towards him, and Grian doesn’t react quickly enough to prevent it scraping against his chestplate. “Impulse!” Grian shouts, “Impulse!”

“Over here!” comes his friend’s reply, distant amidst the clang of blades and armor between them.

Even with the assurance that the real Impulse is not the one in front of Grian, it hurts to kill the doppelgänger. Grian stabs at Not-Impulse’s side, and his own heart aches with it. Without so much of a jolt, the Not-Impulse disappears, and a Not-Mumbo and Not-Pearl are quick to run up Grian’s flank and take its place, Grian rushing to keep up.

The worst part is the faces. Grian’s never seen such hateful sneers curve his friends’ lips, nor have their actual eyes ever held so much malice. His real friends’ eyes aren’t that terrible, terrible purple. They’re not real, they’re not real, Grian repeats to himself, over and over, as he fights the illusions off, looking for the source.

The illusions even manage to mimic the fighting styles of those they take after, and the Not-Pearl Grian fights now twirls its sword in an upwards arc, and as Grian’s distracted, trying to block it, sweeps a leg under his foot—a move the real Pearl favors when the fight isn’t completely clean.

Mumbo’s illusions place down end crystals. One explosion catches the side of Grian’s arm and it burns, its wake filling the air with thick, concealing smoke that catches in Grian’s chest. Hardly able to see, Grian swings his blade wildly, desperately, and it clangs against the actual Scar’s sword.

“It’s me!” Grian shouts, panicked, and Scar looks as relieved as he feels to see one of his real friends.

They share a nod, and in tandem, Grian and Scar move to protect each other’s back, cutting down the illusions as they come. Another Not-Mumbo places down a crystal, and it’s pure instinct that moves Grian’s hands, shoving Scar away from it and taking most of the blast himself. Grian curses beneath his breath in place of the whimper threatening to escape his throat, and Scar turns and kills the Not-Mumbo who’d placed it with a fury Grian hasn’t seen on him in a long time.

Scar switches to a bow, and one of his arrows finds the illusioner pretending to be Mumbo. Another shot kills the thing, and with its death the Not-Mumbo’s dissolve into nothingness, taking the smoking crystals with them. Moments later, Pearl gets the Not-Impulse illusioner with her sickle, cloak billowing out behind her, letting out a whoop of ferocious victory.

In the center of chaos, Impulse nicks the real Mumbo on the arm, and the distraction unsteadies Mumbo’s movements enough that a Not-Scar—who has now switched to a bow, to mimic the real Scar—is able to get a good aim on him, and releases its arrow. Grian, faster than he thought possible, darts between it and Mumbo with his summoned shield held aloft. The arrow meets wood with a twang, the projectile disappearing seconds later as the real Scar finds and kills his illusioner self.

The Not-Pearl and Not-Grian illusioners are found and disposed of mercifully fast after that, and, sweaty and exhausted, the group is given a real break.

“Nobody move,” Grian whispers between heaving breaths, lest their movement activate another trap. Slowly, carefully, he lowers himself to the floor.

Impulse and Mumbo sit together, Impulse murmuring apologies as he wraps Mumbo’s upper arm in bandages. Mumbo waves it off and hugs him to prove there are no hard feelings.

Hugs. Grian could use a hug. He turns, and after checking them over for any injuries, gives one to both Scar and Pearl. The solidness that marks their realness is reassuring.

The next couple minutes are spent eating, tending to wounds, and simply leaning against each other. As the adrenaline fades Grian’s side and wing start to ache with a sharp stab, and though the golden apple Impulse hands him helps heal the most of it and his wing entirely, where the explosion had most directly touched his skin still hurts.

The battle they’d just faced is burned into the back of Grian’s eyelids, and every time he blinks he sees flashes of himself, hurting his friends—not his friends, he reminds himself sternly—over and over.

Grian tried to coax his brain into not running endless loops of things he doesn’t want to think about. He’s drowning in the misery.

It doesn’t work. Grian’s grateful, desperate for distraction, when Scar takes a breath, as if he is about to speak.

“I’m sorry, I think we made that fight harder by being here.” Scar slumps against Pearl before jolting upright, attempting to shake the exhaustion from his face. It still shines through the cracks, in the worried lines on his forehead and crinkle of his eyes.

“Actually, I don’t think we could’ve made it without the extra help. There were five statues when we came in—we would’ve still had to fight them,” Pearl points out, and nudges Scar with her shoulder.

“Would they have just mimicked whoever came through here?” Mumbo asks, looking inquisitive in the same way he might looking at a complex redstone problem.

Pearl shrugs. “It’s possible, I guess. Maybe Grian and I would’ve just had to fight multiple versions of ourselves.”

Grian shudders. “Let’s all be glad we didn’t. Just one of each of us both is enough.” Pearl snorts, and everyone else is quick to follow with quiet, tired chuckles.

“Well! What do you say we get a move on?” Scar says brightly, after a few moments of resting.

“Um... I’m not sure where we can get a move on to.” Grian looks around the room. The stone walls are smooth and solid, and there are no indications of any rooms beyond this one.

After testing that movement won’t trigger another trap, the next task is to find a way to the next room that Grian’s sure exists—it would be stupid to have all this set up and nothing else, right?

Thankfully, it doesn’t take long, and Scar finds a trapdoor that Pearl confirms must’ve been under one of the statues.

The hole is dark, with a single long, wooden ladder mounted against one wall and a dim glow at the base. Pearl and Impulse climb down first, as arguably the best fighters among them, and Grian can just barely make out the displeasure on their faces as they reach the bottom and glance up to give everyone the okay to follow them down.

“Well.” Mumbo peers down the long, narrow corridor filled with lava ten blocks down, bits of broken floor sporadically dotted at the same level as their feet across it. “You reckon we could just build across?”

“I do enjoy completely disregarding stupid rules!” Grian moves to pull out a stack of cobblestone from his inventory. He attempts to place it down, and frowns. He tries again. No luck. The cobble will not leave his hand.

A pang of dread stabs at Grian’s gut. “Fellas, I don’t know what sort of magic they’ve managed to put here, but I think we’re essentially in adventure mode.”

Adventure mode is rare, used on servers and maps the admins wish to keep untouched. The Hermitcraft server should most certainly not be in it.

Pearl swings her pickaxe at the closest wall experimentally. The stone doesn’t so much as crack. “Well, that’s frustrating. And the hallway’s too narrow for flight.” She attempts to spread her wings only for the wall to stop her, proving her point.

“You think there’d be a lever or something at the end, that would put the floor back in place if someone manages to cross and activate it?- No, the Watchers aren’t that nice, that’d be boring,” Grian interrupts himself with a sigh. “Did anyone pack fire resistance, at least?”

As it turned out, Impulse did have fire resistance potions, but the lava was too low to simply swim to the other side, they quickly deduced.

“Guess we just have to parkour it?” Grian says, scratching the back of his neck. No one looks particularly excited at the prospect.

Just as Impulse is about to leap forward onto the first platform, Mumbo cries out, “Wait!”

It’s too late. Impulse is already midair, and the moment his boot touches down, a pressure plate clicks and the platform is slammed back into the wall. Mumbo and Pearl both lurch forward, making a desperate grab for him, but the distance is too far, and Impulse plunges into the lava below.

“Fire res! Drink the fire res!” Pearl and Grian shout in tandem, and Impulse is just barely able to get the bottle to his lips before slipping under completely.

Seconds later, Impulse bobs back up, and the sigh of relief amidst the adrenaline is shared four ways.

“Do you have any pearls?” Pearl calls down, and Impulse shakes his head. He’d given them all to Grian earlier, and Grian had made them into eyes of ender.

“Could we just throw a rope down? I’ve got a lead,” Mumbo offers.

“Oh, that’s not a bad idea.” Pearl nods, and the lead is cast down to just above the lava. Impulse grabs hold, and the four of them work to haul him up.

Orange particles float off of Impulse as he lays face up on the floor, heaving. The fire resistance had saved his skin, literally, but his clothing hadn’t escaped completely unscathed, bits of char eating at green cargo pants and his black-and-yellow shirt.

“You alright mate?” Pearl helps Impulse sit up and hands him a water bottle. Impulse nods, but mid gesture, he’s cut off by an awful, low groaning sound that reverberates all around them.

“Uh... Guys?” Scar points at the wall behind them, the way they came in. The wall steadily edges forward, stone grinding against stone. Grian looks up. The entrance has already been covered, the ladder broken beneath the moving mass.

“We go now!” Pearl shouts over the noise, taking a running jump at the next closest platform, to the right of the one Impulse triggered. Grian’s yell dies in his throat as Pearl lands, and the floor stays steady beneath her.

“Toss me the ladder!”

At the team’s confused glances, Pearl makes an urgent motion with her hands and raises her brows. Mumbo shrugs, gathers up the broken sticks on the floor, gingerly throwing them to Pearl.

She catches them with a grin, and breaks one of the pieces further. The stick she holds is just long enough to reach the next platform, and as Grian realizes her plan, Pearl leans over and jabs the pressure plate with the ladder piece. The floor holds. She leaps to it.

Grian crosses after Pearl and follows the path she makes, poking the plates as she goes, Mumbo right behind him. On the second to last step, Grian pitches too far forward and almost falls, flapping his wings as far as the walls will let him to no avail. Mumbo grabs his arm just in time, and they make it over.

At the end, Grian turns to watch Impulse and Scar cross together, the latter’s movements wobbly. The moving wall crashes into the platform just behind them, destroying it, and shakes the room.

Thud. Thud. Thud. Grian’s heart pounds in his ears, anxiety gnawing at his stomach. Come on, come on, he silently urges the pair, the rumbling too loud to speak over.

One last push and Scar and Impulse are safe, and together the five sprint for the next room, just as the wall envelops the parkour completely and comes to a halt with a shuddering slam.

Panting, Grian looks away from the group and takes in the room. It’s small, wooden- the only room so far that hasn’t been made out of stone. Two chests sit side by side in the center of the floor. Dread prickles at Grian’s fingertips. He knows what this is.

Wordlessly, before anyone can stop him, Grian steps up, and opens one of the chests.

“Grian, no, it could be a trick!” Impulse surges forward.

Inside the first chest is a brilliant blue, shiny stack of diamonds. Inside the second is two measly pieces of coal.

Grian knows this test. He knows what they want from him.

He takes the coal, leaving the diamonds where they sit. Impulse is unmoving next to him, and for a moment, everything is silent.

Something clicks. Grian’s held flint to steel far too many times to not recognize the sound. The wooden room is on fire, and they are trapped.

(Reblogs do more than likes!)

#they had a nice campfire last chapter now they get to Go Through It #kaya posts #my writing #hermitcraft #grian #pearlescentmoon #goodtimeswithscar #mumbo jumbo #impulsesv #boatem

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saphirered · 1 year

Note

For the winter prompts: Azriel x reader x Eris, blizzard. Not angsty. 😍

It's a short one but I hope you'll like it either way. No angst, just (affectionate) bickering that reminds me of three cats that fell in the bathtub. 😘

The dark heavy clouds above just a few hours ago should have been a clear warning. This warning, was instead clearly ignored. ‘We can make it before the storm hits’ those words echo through the mountainous expanse upon not but memory. Azriel doesn’t quite recall if it was you or the Autumn Court prick who had challenged nature so to the point all three of you now wander through a heavy layer of snow, pelted by wind and ice with a sight barely further than an arm’s length even with superior senses. He’ll happily shift that blame to likely the most guilty of all, but in reality it’s the sheer fact that Eris seems the least amount affected by the horrible weather. It is exactly that smug attitude that melts away every shard of ice, and snowflakes upon contact. Though this does not mean the Autumn noble isn’t equally miserable. The two have taken to arguing constantly, quipping back and forth to the point you have stepped ahead, so the wind may numb your hearing and block out their voices, to no avail.

“If it wasn’t for your need to show off, you could have winnowed us out of here already.” The Illyrian grumbles. That earns a snort from Eris.

“Oh I am terribly sorry for keeping your ungrateful arse warm through the ice mist. Next time I’ll let you freeze to death. You’ll hear no objections from me.” Azriel prepares to retort, offering a beat of his wing and sending an extra heavy current of snow his way. You’ve noticed this happening and stop, turning on your heels, the fuming expression you carry might as well have melted the snow around you but you wrap your arms around yourself tighter, pull tighter the protective garments that keep you perpetually miserable but alive in this harsh weather.

“Will you two knock it off! I’ve had enough of this endless bickering! Now shut it and behave before I throw you both off this mountain!” Eris bites the inside of his cheek to prevent some kind of witty retort to escape his lips leading you to make good on this promise. Azriel mirrors that expression and glances between the drop to his side, debating his chances. It’s not like he’ll fall far before his wings catch him. When you realise your comment Eris’ resilience breaks, a resolve you’re an expert at breaking away. Silver words, and cleverly chosen sentences have been his speciality but with you he sometimes struggles not to speak what’s on his mind, particularly so when it deals with your image of him so if he in this discomfort and unfair circumstances can throw Azriel under the proverbial carriage, he will in a heartbeat.

“My apologies, petal. It’s just I hardly think it fair to threaten me with a demise when he has wings. I’d deem it equally unfair to blame me for our predicament. Why don’t you put those wings to work, dear Azriel, and carry us out of here?” Of course he couldn’t hold his tongue. Of course neither could Azriel who joins your side, wrapping an arm around you and shielding you from the worst of the wind despite the numbness in his wings. He gives Eris a look as you curl closer to him and his wing curls with you as much as it can.

“I’m perfectly content flying the two of us out of here.” You’d gone over this before, in this weather it’s too risky. You and Eris would both be plummeting to your deaths with one savage gust not even a weathered Illyrian could brave. Of course Azriel had offered to take just you and leave Eris on the mountainside but you’d refused. It takes you just one look at him to say this was not going to happen and you’ll be suffering together, all three of you. You’d told him he could go off on his own but he’d never leave you alone in this. It’s not that he doesn’t trust Eris to assure your wellbeing, it’s just that he thinks he’s better at it. “The firebug can take care of himself.”

“That’s enough out of you. We’re not leaving anyone behind now can we please keep walking before my toes freeze off!” You shiver and remove yourself from Azriel’s embrace, hold out your gloved hand to Eris. He gives Azriel a look that one is mirrored when you lace your other hand with the Illyrian’s and push on.

“The ‘firebug’ can speak for himself, thank you very much. I much rather prefer this company to solitude.” And that’s about as much as an acceptance or admittance to affection you’re going to get out of Eris when he’s in a mood like this. The tension fleets and you continue moving, hand in hand, huddled together to bear the worst of it as you trail along this path. Just a few more miles you keep telling yourself. Just a few more miles until you can find shelter and warm up in their arms, engulf yourself in their embrace and be reminded once more that maybe the cold isn’t such a bad thing if you got these two to keep you warm.

#azriel x reader #eris x reader #eris vanserra x reader #eris x azriel #acotar x reader #azriel x you #azriel shadowsinger #azriel acotar #acotar azriel #acotar #acotar eris #eris vanserra #eris x you #eris vanserra x you #acotar fanfiction

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fizzydrink698 · 2 years

Text

illicit | yuta

kinktober day 5: hair-pulling

pairing: nakamoto yuta x reader

word-count: 3.3k

genre: criminal au, rivals to lovers

warnings: swearing, sexual content (oral sex, reader receiving), references to violence and general criminal activity

summary:

You swallowed, banishing the thought. “Are you trying to seduce me into being a hostage?”

Yuta’s lips twitched. “Why not?”

“This is a fucking terrible idea,” you muttered under your breath, as you followed Yangyang and his little detour through the alleyways.

“Don’t blame me,” Yangyang said, with a shrug. He didn’t seem to share your caution, strolling through the dark as if he were walking through his own home and not literally enemy territory.

Technically. It was in warehouse districts like these that territory boundaries blurred the most. That was the reason you’d taken this route in the first place – two blocks of warehouses would belong to the Blood Gate, take a left and you were in Sannoh territory, wander too far to the north and you’d stumble into Oya. It was hard to defend borders as confused as these.

You persisted. “If they want to talk, fine. Why the fuck should it be in their territory? It should be on neutral ground.”

The location was some nondescript restaurant, not quite at the heart of Blood Gate territory but close enough, as far as you were concerned.

“To be fair, what part of this city is neutral ground?” Yangyang asked. “We’ve managed to carve up most of it between us.”

“Maybe you should blame Ten,” came a voice from the back of the group, just a little too loud for a man so low in the hierarchy. “He was the one who lost us that sector.”

“Shut the fuck up,” you and Yangyang snapped in unison.

Ten didn’t lose you anything. The Blood Gate was about to launch a full-scale assault, and Ten chose to save lives and profits by clearing out the restaurants and casinos and various other semi-legitimate ventures your organisation owned, and left the Blood Gate to ‘reclaim’ a bunch of empty buildings and some dingy alleys.

But because there was no big dramatic fight, or blood spilled or people to avenge, small-dicked little shits like that guy wanted to complain about it.

Still, you quickened your pace to reach Yangyang, falling into step beside him and lowering your voice. “Seriously, Yang, I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

“It’s a risk, I’ll admit. But if anything happens to us, you know it’ll be grounds for a full-scale turf war. That’s why we’re being sent,” Yangyang pointed out, giving you a nudge with his elbow. “The almost un-expendables.”

You hated that he was right. The two of you were high-up in your organisation, valuable enough to keep close, valuable enough to avenge, valuable enough to justify war should you be attacked.

But not quite valuable enough to be protected at all costs. If you were killed, the organisation might suffer, but it would live to see another day when you would not.

One day, you were determined that would change. You would embed yourself within the company, make yourself essential, tie the survival of it to your existence and nothing else.

But until then, you had to grit your teeth and bear it.

Dinner was, amazingly, incredibly, miraculously, uneventful.

The subject of your talks was relatively simple. A new gang, barely shoved out of high school, so new that even their name hadn’t really been established yet, had managed to steal the docks out from under the Blood Gate’s noses. Your organisation had ties to shipping companies, and could get their hands on some impressive naval support.

In exchange for setting up a blockade around the docks to corner these upstarts while the Blood Gate made their move by land, your organisation would be given a whole bunch of stuff: money, weapons, a strip of new territory out by the commercial districts. Definitely nothing to sneeze at.

Your bosses gave the go-ahead over the phone, and you signed the deal. Simple.

Something very much not simple was the way that one of the Blood Gate members had been staring at you all night. You felt it constantly, his eyes trained on your every movement, the way you leaned forward in your seat when discussing blockade logistics, the way you traced the rim of your wine glass when you listened to anecdotes, the way you lifted your napkin to your mouth to dab away any errant smears of sauce.

You’d met him a handful of times before. Nakamoto Yuta. People mistook him for a thug and not much else, but there was a wicked intelligence behind his eyes. He knew how people worked, how they thought, where they would next strike.

At least, you’d thought so. Now, you wondered just how smart Yuta could be if he chose to stare at you so openly and so blatantly this whole time.

You’d made the mistake of glancing over and locking eyes with him twice over the course of dinner, and both times he’d smirked at you. Both times, you’d turned away.

You weren’t certain who had noticed. Yangyang might have, if he’d been paying attention, but the second the deal was signed, he’d been content to divert all of his focus on the pretty waitress assigned with pouring wine for the table. Yuta could have gotten out a switchblade and thrown it right at your face, and Yangyang would have needed a second to drag his eyes away from her legs before he could intervene.

After dessert, when the meal was winding down and settling into the ‘coffee-and-desserts’ stage, you excused yourself to the bathroom.

In there, you gave yourself a minute to decompress, to compose yourself as you tried to grapple with the evening’s events: smooth negotiations, no imminent threats of death, Nakamoto Yuta ogling you for two hours.

That wine had been nowhere near strong enough. You wondered if you could pull a server aside to ask the kitchen to slip a shot of whiskey into your americano. Maybe two.

You took some time to reapply your lipstick, and with one final deep breath, you unlocked the bathroom door and pulled it open.

To reveal Yuta, standing so close to the doorway that you almost ran face-first into his chest. In one quick motion, he pushed you back inside the room with a hand on your shoulder, and sneaked inside after you, locking the door behind him.

You raised your fists, stepping one foot back, assuming a defensive stance. “What the fuck is going on?”

Slowly, sharing exactly none of your urgency, Yuta turned away from the door to look at you. He shifted backwards, just slightly, leaning his back against the dark wood, hands in the pockets of his slacks.

He was tall, all lean muscle and long legs. Living up to the Blood Gate moniker, he was wearing a dark red suit, tailored perfectly, to match the rest of his delegation. Before tonight, you’d only ever seen him with his hair down, long and dark and so thick that it almost seemed shaggy, but now it was pulled back into a bun. Two pieces at the front fell loose on either side of his face, framing it perfectly.

“…You don’t seem pleased to see me.”

You blinked.

He didn’t budge, not even an inch.

Eventually, you rolled your eyes and dropped your hands, straightening up. “Figured that out all by yourself, did you?”

“I’m hurt.”

“I’m sure you are.”

He tilted his head, and you caught the subtlest flickers of curiosity in his eyes. “Does Yangyang know?”

“Know what?” You asked, lifting your chin, challenging him directly.

At this, Yuta grinned, his lips parting to reveal a set of perfect white teeth. Slowly, he took a step towards you.

“That you’ve fucked me…four times now? That’s a little concerning, isn’t it? Once, you could brush off as a fluke. But four times–”

“Three,” you interrupted, calmly, as collected as you could manage.

His brow furrowed just a touch. “Four. Shinjuku, Yokohama, Nagoya and Osaka.”

“Three. Osaka doesn’t count.”

“In Osaka, you rode my face until you cried, and you’re telling me that doesn’t count?”

“As fucking? No.”

He scoffed, and even as his grin dropped, he couldn’t hide his amusement. “Semantics.”

You folded your arms over your chest. “Is that why you followed me in here? Because if you’re hoping for another, you–”

“No,” Yuta said, simply, before adding in a slightly lighter tone. “Unfortunately.”

You narrowed your eyes at him, picking up on the subtlest of edges to his tone. You knew when Yuta was being insincere, and this wasn’t one of those times.

And then it hit you. “…No. No, you have got to be shitting me.”

“You signed the deal yourself,” Yuta pointed out. “Both sides are entitled to procuring leverage against the other, to ensure both follow through on their parts.”

“No,” you repeated, unmoved.

Yuta shrugged his shoulders, and you couldn’t quite tell if he was sympathetic or just amused. “I don’t think you have much of a say.”

“I say that all of you can go fuck yourselves if you think I’m just going to sign up for being a hostage.”

“‘Hostage’ is a strong word for it.”

You laughed. “Oh, really? Then, why don’t you come over and be our leverage?”

“Shotaro already volunteered,” Yuta sighed, as if his hands were tied.

“Well, Shotaro’s a moron.”

“Would it really be that bad? I can take the next few days off,” Yuta said, stepping forward again and closing the distance between the two of you. His hand drifted forward, the back of his knuckles coming into contact with your side. His gaze shifted from your face to follow the way his hand slid down. “I could finally fuck you in a real bed.”

Just as he probably intended, the image flashed into your brain of soft sheets, comfortable pillows, and Yuta’s hands gripping a bedframe so tightly that his knuckles whitened.

You swallowed, banishing the thought. “Are you trying to seduce me into being a hostage?”

Yuta’s lips twitched. “Why not? A little revenge for Shinjuku.”

You couldn’t help but smirk at the memory. You had sneaked away after your liaison with a USB drive Yuta had sworn to guard, and he continued to claim that the whole evening had been one big honeypot scheme. You pointed out how dumb he was to just drop the jacket in which the drive was pocketed onto the floor and forget about it, and that sneaking away with the drive had been an entirely unplanned happy accident.

As you reminisced, you must have fallen quiet long enough for Yuta to chance leaning in for a kiss. What a mistake on his part.

Your hand reached up and grabbed at his bun, pulling at his hair to jerk his head back. His breath caught, his long stretch of neck exposed. You could just barely make out the edges of his back tattoo, curling around the nape of his neck, peeking out of his jacket collar.

You smiled at him, raising an eyebrow. “Let’s negotiate. Give me your offer in full.”

“Do you always do business like this?” Yuta asked, and the angle in which you had him meant his eyes were almost obscured completely through his dark lashes. He gestured to the way your fist had wrapped itself in his hair.

You looked him in the eye, and let your grip relax slightly. After a moment’s hesitation, and with more than a little reluctance, Yuta went to pull his head away, and you snatched him back again, fingers twisting in the base of his bun. Already, it was starting to unravel.

This time, Yuta couldn’t help but grin. “You’re enjoying this.”

“Of course I am,” you said, with a shrug. “Now, talk.”

“Talk?” Yuta repeated, slowly, and you didn’t realise just how much filth one word could hold. “That’s not usually how I use my mouth when I want to persuade someone.”

Something deep inside your gut clenched. You managed a brief reply. “Oh, really?”

With just a wordless, charged look between the two of you, Yuta moved both of his hands to your hips before suddenly lifting you onto the counter beside the sink. Stepping closer, between your parted legs, Yuta went straight for the sensitive spot on your neck, right at the pulse point – a spot he discovered in Yokohama, after realising the ways in which the muscles of your body would tense to hide your reactions to anything that felt dangerously good.

You closed your eyes, arching into him slightly as you enjoyed the sensation, but the sudden memory of whereyou were gave you pause. Using your grip on his hair, you pushed his head downwards. “We don’t have much time.”

“You’re just impatient,” Yuta countered, rolling his eyes, but followed your directions. Slipping his hands under the hem of your dress, he pulled it upwards, exposing more and more of the soft skin underneath. You knew he’d glimpsed your underwear when he murmured. “Black? My favourite colour.”

“In Nagoya, you said it was blue,” you said, managing to keep your cool even as Yuta kisses just where the fabric ended and your thigh began.

“It changes,” Yuta mumbled into your skin, before turning his head and pressing open-mouthed kisses through the fabric of your underwear.

You felt the first gasp of breath leave you, felt the way your body began to relax.

Yuta was good – why else would you risk so much for this? He was experienced, and more importantly, he was intuitive. This was the fifth time the two of you had…connected in this sort of way, and he’d already figured out what speed you liked, what pressure. What your body thought it wanted, and how to give what it needed.

When you felt his tongue press against you, as if he were licking through the fabric, the hand gripping his hair began to slacken under the sweet relief.

Only for Yuta to pull away slightly, as he reached up with his hand to grab your wrist and very pointedly kept it pressed against his head. “Don’t stop.”

That was usually your line.

Intrigued, you went one step further, finding his hair tie and pulling it loose from his hair entirely. As it fell down around his head, you tossed the hair tie somewhere and instead grabbed a handful of his hair. You decided to test handling him a little more roughly, tightening your grip, and you were rewarded with a low noise from the depth of Yuta’s throat as his mouth was on you once more.

It developed into the perfect cycle. When Yuta made you feel good, your grip tightened in his hair, which seemed to only spur him on to do more. He didn’t even try to remove your underwear entirely, he just used to fingers to hook under the waistband and dragged them halfway down your thighs, just enough to give him the room he needed.

He seemed to like getting messy – or maybe it was just the enthusiasm he knew was essential in something like this. You couldn’t half-ass it and expect good results, you had to…

You cried out as his lips closed around your clit and he sucked, loud enough that you slapped your free hand over your mouth to stifle any other suspicious noises from reaching that kind of volume. But it was just getting so hard to remember why you had to, because all you could feel was Yuta’s mouth and all you could hear was his noises and yours and your hips were already rocking forwards and you were pretty sure that by this point you might even be dripping down his chin and you wanted–

“Is everything OK in there?”

Yangyang.

It took everything in you, every iota of self-restraint, not to groan in frustration at the sound of his voice. You couldn’t stop now, you wouldn’t, you were getting–

“You’ve been gone a while. Some people are moving to the balcony to smoke, and…is something wrong?”

Your hand shook as you slowly removed it from your mouth. Taking a deep breath, you tried to shout back. “No, I–”

Your voice cracked, breathing heavy, because Yuta chose that exact moment to run his tongue over your clit in the most infuriatingly perfect way. You looked down, trying to summon an expression of disapproval, and you were met with Yuta’s amused, utterly shameless eyes as he continued to eat you out with little to no regard for the consequences. You tried to pry him off by yanking on his hair, but he held on strong enough to stay within reachable distance, eyeing you the whole time.

Gulping, you steeled yourself to try again. You’d survived other kinds of torture before, and this was by far the nicest you’d ever experienced. You could do this.

“Sorry, Yang! I’ve…I’ve got stuff I’m trying to deal with,” you called out, proud of the stability of your voice. “I’ll be out in…uh, ten?”

Yuta murmured into the crook of your thigh. “You won’t last five.”

“Just go to the…” you cut yourself off again with a hiss, as Yuta returned to lavish his attention on your clit. “The balcony. I’ll meet you out there.”

To your intense – intense – relief, Yangyang seemed to take you at your word and left with a slightly awkward goodbye.

With him gone, you turned your focus back onto Yuta. “Fuck, you’re such…a dick.”

Yuta hummed in agreement, which was probably a calculated move, as the vibrations made you physically judder. Immediately, you clutched at him tighter, moving your hips more and more.

You needed it, you needed it, you needed the feeling it gave you, you needed the way it broke you just a little, the way it cracked open your shell, you needed Yuta’s face fucking ruined, you needed it, you needed…

“I…I’m…it’s…” you gasped, tears forming in your eyes. You were clutching Yuta’s hair so tightly that you were sure your nails were starting to dig into his scalp, but he didn’t seem to mind. Quite the opposite, honestly.

Your orgasm hit, white-hot and blinding, and your brain turned to mush. You couldn’t speak, you couldn’t think, you just gasped and shook with the after-effects. Like electrocution, intense, slow, violent.

Yuta let you ride out the last of it against his tongue, and eventually, you recovered. Your breathing began to slow, your body slumping with relief, your eyes fluttered to a close as you tried to come back down to reality.

Your grip finally loosened in Yuta’s hair completely, and you slowly began to card your fingers through it. It was so soft, almost reassuring in the same way stroking a beloved pet felt.

Yuta rested his forehead against your thigh, seemingly enjoying this softer treatment of his hair – nearly as much as he seemed to when you got a little rougher.

Your eyes were still closed when he finally spoke.

“We could have a week of this,” Yuta pointed out, slowly pulling your underwear back up your legs, putting them back into position. “Every single day. What’s stopping you?”

Maybe it was still the aftermath of that orgasm.

Maybe you were just tired of having to bottle everything up all the time.

You let out a deep breath.

“What happens after that week?” You asked. “It’s getting hard enough as it is, pretending like we hate each other.”

Yuta stilled. Something in the air changed, as if the very atmosphere between you two was surprised by the vulnerability that just escaped from you.

You felt the urge to take it back, pretend you’d never said it. But you were determined to never take a coward’s way out, so you bit your tongue, and decided Yuta would just have to deal with it.

You opened your eyes to find him staring at you, something in his eyes that you couldn’t identify between sadness and affection.

Without a word, he leaned in and pressed his lips to yours. These were the moments that always made it worse, the ones where you forget, just for a second, what lay just outside of those doors.

“We’ll figure it out,” Yuta declared, quietly, when he broke this kiss. “Just…please, say yes. Will you stay with me?”

You rested your forehead against his, exhaling slowly, and opened your mouth to answer.

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tohokuu · 2 months

Text

i fucking hate you

you’re the reason everything is so fucked up tonight.

but if we’re being truthful, it’s really my fault.

if i didn’t speak to jasmine about you and bilal breaking up, then this wouldn’t have happened.

but i didn’t know that you never told jasmine about the break up.

all i said was “i haven’t spoken to aya since her and bilal broke up” i didn’t even know you didn’t tell her

but brian says it’s all my fault. he says i need to stop yapping so much about other people and gossiping and shit. he said he knows women often do it but i do it way too often and he doesn’t like that

i feel like that’s a fair reason to break up with me

but calling me and texting me in the middle of the night and telling me that shit… js wow

you cut me off ? no, i cut you off bc you were emotionally draining. you talked my head off constantly about you and bilal and whatever was happening between you two when me and brian were already going through our own shit. him and i were suffering so badly everyday and you knew that but you’d selfishly call every day even when i was busy to talk about bilal

i felt bad for you when you guys broke up. i know how much you loved him. i was there for you when he wasn’t. i really tried but you were just… taking so much from me

i confided in you. i thought of you as my bestfriend but you js … using my personal stuff against me ?

yeah we talked when me and brian were going thru it and i confided in you at times

i told you about him moving and about us having to face long distance in august. i told you that. i told you about our planned breakup. the one that was gonna happen eventually when he left.

but that was then. that was january.

me and brian are doing good now. we’re okay and we’re waiting for whatever happens. we love each other.

if i had listened to you and broke up with him, we would never have been together today and happy.

you kept telling me to run and to leave and that brian was a terrible boyfriend but he’s my whole world.

i had to cut you off eventually bc you were draining and taking a toll on me. you talked all day about you and bilal meanwhile my head was a minefield of how i was gonna deal with brian once i put the phone down.

now i didn’t know that you never told jasmine so texting my phone and blowing me up with calls at 12 am on a sunday night sounds pretty unreasonable to me

telling me that my relationship is fucked up and that it has an expiration date is just sad. why would you say that at all ? saying you cut me off when really it was me and then cussing me out further

i’m glad i blocked you as quick as i did

but brian babe

how could you tell me that me crying over this is funny bc i’m the fire starter ?

that i’m the one that likes to start shit and then cry about it

like yeah it’s true but yk hearing you say that hurt

telling me you don’t wanna see me tmw or the next day or the day after that

that hurts

i know you said we’ll be fine going on a break but i can’t help but feel responsible .. we weren’t supposed to take a break on the day you and i were going out for each day of the week

i’m tired

it’s only 3 days and i know that sounds like a joke but being so close with you all the time and suddenly being apart isn’t easy.

i cried and i’m still crying. i’ve been crying for 2 hours. i hugged your sweater to my chest and hoped for a small scent of you to comfort the pain but i couldn’t even get that

#this is in no order #dk what’s going on #js #a rant

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27dragons · 5 months

Text

New Year Countdown: Dec 19

Well, why NOT have a Geraskifer Library AU?

Dec 19 - Geraskifer - Library AU - Mistletoe

Geralt came up from the basement archives, his arms full of heavy volumes, only to find his path to the reference desk blocked by a stepladder.

On the very top of the stepladder was Geralt’s boyfriend, stretched to the limits of his not-terribly-impressive height to reach the library’s high ceiling. The stretch had caused Jaskier’s shirt to come untucked and reveal a stretch of pale skin that made Geralt’s mouth water.

On the other hand, these books were really quite heavy. “Jaskier,” he sighed, “what are you doing.”

“I’m decorating!” Jaskier said cheerfully. “It’s almost Christmas, you know!”

Geralt knew. He wasn’t terribly excited about it, but he knew. He looked around for help, but Yennefer was helping a patron. “The library is already decorated,” Geralt pointed out.

“Yes, well, no one consulted me, and some vital things were left out.”

Geralt frowned and looked up at the ceiling. Jaskier was attempting to fasten a bit of greenery to the ceiling tiles. “Is that mistletoe?”

“Well spotted!” Geralt couldn’t tell if Jaskier was being sarcastic or if he’d just been spending too much time in the children’s library and hadn’t quite shaken that overdone enthusiastic tone.

“We left out mistletoe on purpose,” Yennefer said as the patron left. “There are already too many people trying to make out in the stacks, we don’t need to encourage them.”

“That’s why I’m hanging this one out in the open,” Jaskier said. “And at the entrance to the reference desk, so only people who work here should pass under it!”

“You think that will stop them?” Yennefer wondered.

“Well, no, but at least this way I have plausible deniability.”

Yenn and Geralt exchanged a long-suffering look. Unlike Geralt, Yenn was slender enough to squeeze through the tiny gap between the ladder and the side of the reference desk. She took three of the books off the top of Geralt’s pile, lessening the load significantly.

Geralt managed a smile for her, and she glanced around quickly before planting a kiss on his cheek.

“Oy! Jaskier complained. “Where’s mine? I’ve been under this mistletoe longer than either of you!”

“I can’t kiss you,” Yennefer said. “Your face is all the way up there.”

“You know what isn’t?” Jaskier suggested, waggling his eyebrows.

Geralt rolled his eyes. “Save it until we get home,” he put in. “And take down that stupid mistletoe.”

Jaskier huffed. “Fine, spoil all my fun.” He pulled the sprig free and put a hand on Geralt’s shoulder for balance as he jumped off the ladder.

Yennefer plucked the mistletoe free of Jaskier’s grip.

“You’re going to throw that out, aren’t you?” Jaskier sighed.

“Of course not,” Yenn said, She tucked it into her hair, where it somehow managed not to look ridiculous. “I’m going to take it home and put it in a new place every day for surprise kisses.”

“Can one of those places be over the bed?” Jaskier wondered.

Yenn hummed thoughtfully. “If you’ll finish the ordering for the digital library today, so I can get them all turned in on time,” she bargained.

Jaskier brightened. “I’m on it!” He folded the stepladder and tucked it under his arm and practically speedwalked toward his office.

Geralt stepped behind the reference desk and dropped the rest of his stack of books with a sigh of relief. “Those weren’t getting any lighter,” he said. Then he eyed Yenn. “Orders aren’t due until next week.”

Yenn winked one violet eye at him. “No, but if he can get it done today, then that gives me a few days to pare down his list to something that actually fits our budget, and he’ll be too happily sexed to complain.”

“Hm.” Geralt eyed the sprig of mistletoe in Yenn’s hair, then ducked to kiss her before turning back to his duties.

Maybe not all Christmas things were so bad.

#my writing #countdown to 2024 #the witcher #geraskifer #library au #this is ridiculous and i love it

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ow2requests · 1 year

Note

Could I request headcannons with Cassidy, Hanzo, Genji and Reaper with a male s/o who's really anxious? I've has really bad anxiety lately and I'd really like this, thank you!

Overwatch Headcannons with an anxious male s/o

TW: mentions of anxiety, overwhelming thoughts, throwing up, panic attacks,

A/N: Hi anon! I’m really sorry for the late response, life has been a little too busy lately, and I have been suffering from good ol’ writers block. point is, I’m back! I hope you like these head cannons! I tried my best!

also…I hope you’re feeling better! I understand completely how you feel, anxiety is truly something hard to get through and deal with, and nobody should ever have to go through that. My dm’s are always open if you want to talk about it! I hope you’re ok anon! you can get thru this, ur not alone!

With all that being said, here you go !

Cassidy

- Now, cassidy isn’t the smartest of the bunch, but he was able to detect your anxious tendencies from a mile away.

- Initially he thought you were just jumpy.

- But after looking into it a little more, he finds out that you have anxiety.

- It wasn’t like Cassidy hasn’t experienced his fair share of anxious hiccups, he knew what it was like.

- To an outsider, it may seem unexpected that a man as put together and suave as Cassidy could have an anxiety attack.

- But it was true, he cracks every now and then, just like everybody else.

- However, Cass never had anybody to comfort or help him through it.

- He feels terrible watching you cry. His heart breaks for you.

- and unfortunately, Cass is quite awkward when it comes to comforting crying people.

- Back in highschool, when his partners broke down crying—what he usually did was stare them down and cough at the awkward silence until they stopped. In short, he did little to console them.

- He was determined to help you get through this though! Especially when you were comfortable enough to open up to him about it.

- And because of that, he tries his best to help you through it.

- (Sombra is definitely confused when she snooped in his search history)

- “How to help anxiety person”

- He probably cracks some goofy jokes to keep everything lighthearted.

- He’s a good person to have around when you need a distraction from your thoughts.

- Over time I feel like he’d become more skillful at comforting, now that he’s more knowledgeable on the topic.

- He knows when to be serious though, if you were to have a panic attack, he’d drop everything and just hold you close to him.

- He’d reassure you that everything is okay.

- “I’ve gotcha darlin’. Let it all out.”

- You’re with him now, after all.

- likes to wrap his arms around you, while gently stroking your head.

- even when he’s busy with overwatch business, he finds time to stay supportive.

- Now, when you guys first started dating, Cass was really big on going out.

- He’d take you out to have a drink at the bar, to the movies, karaoke, etc.

- All very loud, bustling and lively atmospheres.

- but then, he noticed the way you shrunk from the crowd,

- he noticed how you’d get overwhelmed by all the different noises and unwanted stimulation.

- of course, after that, dates with him changed.

- He decided to take another approach.

- Nowadays, you guys usually do one to one activities. He’d take you to a park so you two can have a picnic, a walk along the beach, stargazing.

- Just anything that he thought would comfort you.

- very sweet to you.

- he’d never make you do something you didn’t want to do.

- he’ll switch things up if you get anxious because of it.

- If you were ever anxious about you both being guys and out together, Cassidy would not have it.

- no no, that can’t do.

- Cassidy will definitely reassure you that he doesn’t care that your a guy, and it doesn’t make him love you any less.

- and if people have a problem with that then…

- To hell with them!

- He doesn’t mind how many times you want to hear it, he’ll reassure you until your convinced.

- soft forehead kisses make everything feel better.

- Very understanding!

Hanzo

- hanzo on the other hand…

- he is someone who has had to live through guilt all his life.

- he had to tough it out, as he was the eldest in his family, he was trained to be an untouchable being, a Shimada was a big name to live up to, he had to adopt many skills and many hobbies throughout his younger years.

- Even when he tried his best,

- even when he murdered his own brother.

- It still wasn’t good enough.

- “Tears are for the weak, never let anything get to you, Hanzo. You are a Shimada. Act like it.”

- he is no stranger to anxiety, he knows how it feels to have your thoughts eating you away.

- much like Cassidy, he never had anybody to reassure him, he never had anybody to comfort him or tell him everything is ok.

- However, compared to Cassidy he fails in the comforting department.

- how he learns you have anxiety?

- Hanzo likes to people watch,

- it’s a habit of his.

- He noticed right away, just by the way you held yourself up.

- He is so lost on what to do with this information.

- he wants to help, he really does.

- But he has no clue how to approach you about it

- he’d rather die than ask for advice, so he decided to man up and question you on it.

- his suspicions were correct.

- Hanzo may not be the best at comforting, but he is an extremely good listener.

- You won’t ever have to worry about rambling, or getting lost in thought.

- He is very patient, he will listen to all of your worries.

- Although, it isn’t always the best. At times it feels like he’s brushing you off— it feels like he’s uncomfortable.

- He really isn’t!

- “…I apologize Y/N. I did not mean to come off that way.”

- He was never a people person, speaking to people and offering words of comfort— it wasn’t his forte.

- he grows more protective of you— but not in an overbearing way.

- He becomes protective in a way that screams ‘I’m right behind you every step of the way, and I will not allow anybody to hurt you.’

- if he notices you’re uncomfortable, he’ll hesitantly— but gently, hold your hand and ask if you’d like to leave to a more calmer place.

- He’s always right by your side.

- He tries his best to comfort you through physical affections.

- He isn’t the best with words, after all.

- His hand is always open to hold.

- Warm and reassuring hands.

- his hands are definitely calloused and have little scars littering them from the harsh training he had put himself through his entire life.

- definitely writes formal letters to you while he’s on missions,

- “Dear Y/N,”

- he just wants to check up on you 😭

- but sir…you have a phone, just message your boyfriend⁉️

- gentle face-touching.

- hugs and cuddles when he’s lost in what to say.

- definitely not big on going out.

- he’d enjoy more introverted-style dates, he enjoys a more simplistic environment.

- There is beauty in simplicity after all.

- he makes your dates perfect for the two of you,

- he prepares the best homemade dinner dates in history.

- He’s just so?? Good?? At everything???

- ( not everything, but you get my point !)

- makes the most scrumptious food ever.

- he may not seem like it, but he’s very maternal when it comes to caring for you.

- definitely makes you deserts to try to ease your anxiety.

- cookies, brownies, cheesecake, you name it!

- his food slowly becomes your guilty pleasure, but he doesn’t need to know that.

- All in all, very helpful if you want somebody to hold you, and listen to your concerns and thoughts, no matter how small or big.

Genji

- now admittedly, I firmly believe that Genji will be the most helpful in these situations.

- After Hanzo carried out the assassination attempt against him. He had suffered for a long time trying to accept his cybernetic body, accepting that he is man and machine combined, overcoming his feelings of hatred for Hanzo, overcoming his depression, waking up in cold sweats due to anxiety, his PTSD and nightmares intertwined, forgiving his brother, everything.

- all of these men have been in very dark times in their life, they are no stranger to the overwhelming rush of thoughts bartering in their heads.

- But despite all of that, Genji understands.

- Not that the others don’t, Genji just gets it on a deeper level.

- He truly feels you from the bottom of his soul.

- He can see you, he knows it hurts.

- “It’s not just a feeling, it’s physical.”

- There used to be nights where he threw up from how anxious he felt.

- Nevertheless, he overcame the hurdles life threw at him.

- With the help of his master, Zenyatta, of course.

- He picked up many healthy habits, and he knows how to put them to good use.

- It wouldn’t take long for him to find out about your anxiety.

- He is a great person to go to when your overwhelmed and upset.

- Genji never fails to lend you a shoulder to cry on.

- He’ll stay silent when you vent to him, he understands that all you need is somebody to listen.

- “Everything is alright.”

- “I’m here.”

- Definitely invites you to meditate with him.

- Even if it’s a short resolve, he hopes that silencing your thoughts —even for a little while— will help.

- In the situation where you cry or have a panic attack, Genji definitely resists the urge to envelope you into a hug. He doesn’t want to overwhelm you.

- He sits beside you and helps you control your breathing.

- He knows this method, and he used it a lot when he felt that he was losing control.

- It was called the 5-4-3-2-1 technique. Find five things you can see, four things you can touch, three things you can hear, two things you can smell, and one thing you can taste.

- It was a great technique for grounding yourself. It was a good reminder that your okay, and once you deviate your focus away from what is plaguing your thoughts — it’ll be alright.

- He will stay with you for as long as necessary.

- Afterwards, he will steal that hug from you !

- He is willing to help you with whatever concerns you have.

- Need water? He’s already filling up your water bottle.

- Do you want to vent? He’ll listen to you with all his attention focused on you.

- Do you want some peace and quiet? He understands. Just remember that he’s here, and he’s not going anywhere.

- Despite his understanding nature. There are times where you can’t tell if he’s messing with you or if he’s being serious.

- He is being 100% serious.

- He definitely drops random pieces of advice at different times.

- You could be in the toilet and he’ll just be like…

- “Y/N, I understand what you were upset about yesterday— your desire to take action is present and well-intentioned, however, every time you move, anxiety tightens it’s grip and-“

- ???

- HE’S IN THE TOILET. Genji please.

- He’s very metaphorical — he got it from Zenyatta.

- Sometimes it gets out of hand though.

- *sees a soda can rolling by*

- “Do you ever feel that you are that soda-can, y/n? Unable to stop moving despite being exhausted from the rush of adrenaline. You feel as if you have no control…”

- He isn’t wrong but…it’s just so unwarranted and RANDOM???

- In all seriousness though!

- Genji is very helpful to you,

- he feels peace with himself now. he wants you to be at peace with your mind as well.

- He’ll hold you gently if you’d like.

- And he’ll do it for as long as it takes, and even after that, he won’t stop trying his best to help you.

- Gentle caresses on your back and sweet kisses feathered on your hand.

Reaper/Gabriel

Gabriel:

- now if we’re talking about Gabriel.

- I feel that even though he may not fully understand your feelings, it didn’t mean he didn’t sympathize with you.

- he tries his best to understand you when you vent to him.

- your somebody special to him, and he doesn’t want to see you suffering.

- he tries his best to help, even if it’s not as extravagant as the others.

- he crouches down next to you, and holds your face in his hands, cradling you steadily.

- he murmurs reassuring words to you.

- he asks you if there is anything you need, and once your feeling better he’d go get it right away.

- he’d probably offer to go on a walk with you. he’ll buy you a snack and drinks along the way.

- as you two walk, the gentle breeze brushing though the two of you gives you pleasant shivers down your spine. It’s therapeutic really.

- definitely also enjoys going on rides in his car, it helps him center and ground himself when he needs to blow off steam.

- ‘it might have to the same affect on him.’ He thought.

- he’d take you with him, and you’ll both just be driving in his car. he’d play music of your choice because he isn’t very big on listening to music himself.

- a hug? his arms are wrapped around you in a second.

- he’s quick to tell you how proud he is of you.

- you are his number one.

- Gabriel probably heats up a nice, warm bath for you later on.

- his bathtub is quite large, so there’s room for him to join you if that would make you feel better.

- I feel like he’d try to encourage you to try to overcome something your anxious about.

- For example, if your scared ordering alone in a restaurant.

- he’d be behind you for support, and if he saw that you were struggling he’d swoop in to save you.

- he won’t force you of course.

- he just wants to help you feel more comfortable doing things.

- he’d definitely introduce you to his overwatch buddies if you’re comfortable.

- he values his work, and it’s extremely important to him, but he’s willing to put it aside occasionally. just for you!

- he’s always holding your hand.

- at first, your confused why everybody is so shocked that your dating him.

- until you saw the way he acts with his subordinates and trainees.

- he is one strict commander!

- your his soft spot, as much as he’d hate to admit it.

- your one of the only people who get to experience the soft side of Gabriel.

- He loves you a lot.

Reaper (sad :( feel free to skip !)

- now, this one might be a little painful to hear, but I really don’t think reaper is capable of comforting or truly showing love for someone at this point in his life. (Feel free to skip this part!)

- He isn’t the same Gabriel he was before.

- he was always confident in himself and in his actions

- he’d experienced anxiety a long long time ago, when he was still…Himself.

- but now? All he experienced was perpetual pain, the constant feeling of the cells in his body splitting every second, no ending in sight.

- It does not mean he didn’t experience guilt.

- but that wasn’t exactly the same, now was it?

- I’d imagine that he wouldn’t be the best to go to.

- no- actually, he’d be the worst to go to.

- reaper is a hard shell.

- he has zero idea on how to deal with emotion.

- how could he? he couldn’t even understand his own, or even fathom how to deal with it.

- if you were to cry, he’d stand and stare at you for a couple of seconds before walking away, giving you space— even if your fingertips yearned his touch.

- he isn’t much of a physical person anymore.

- if you were to hug him, he’d immediately go stiff before pushing you off.

- physical affection really freaks him out.

- he just isn’t affectionate in general.

- rarely, he’ll force himself if you really need it. but he isn’t a kisser, a hugger or any of that— not anymore.

- The extent his affection will go is giving you attention, stroking your head or letting you sit on his lap.

- it isn’t a fun time.

- he has grown into a cruel, and merciless man.

- but he isn’t heartless.

- I feel like, if you ever found comfort in wearing his clothes, he’d definitely leave them out for you. (his old clothes, like his beanie, or maybe even his hooded cloak that he mainly wears)

- checks on you, but you barely catch him do it.

- his footsteps are extremely quiet, it’s as if there’s a ghost in your house.

- definitely gets SO pissed when he finds you crying because somebody hurt you.

- that’s something he will not tolerate.

- he stays quiet when your crying but…

- the minute he has the chance, that person will meet their demise.

- “um…gabe, i just heard that…that the person went missing last night, did something happen?”

- it really doesn’t seem like it, but he still cares about you deep down.

- However.

- work comes first, and unfortunately, you will be the second choice in his eyes.

- that fact doesn’t stop him from getting you small trinkets or souvenirs that he thinks will amuse you or keep you calm for a period of time.

- he wants you to move on from him.

- he feels that you’re just wasting your time continuing to stick around and wait for him to reciprocate your love.

- he knows your in a fragile place, so he will push himself to be more supportive.

- all that he can muster.

- (which isn’t a lot 😧 but at least it’s SOMETHING.)

- yeah…It’s upsetting, but that’s my best guess on how he’ll act as reaper.

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caledine · 1 month

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Lil bit of OC writing , How i’ve started one of the books i’m writing c:

Was that it? Was he destined to hurt? Was he destined to suffer greatly only to keel over and die alone in an alleyway. No- No that couldn’t happen. Because that meant all his suffering had been for nothing. That all the times he could have given up, the times he kept trying, were for nothing? He was destined to suffer and then die? That didn’t seem right-

That meant that all the times he’d pushed on and continued fighting, ignoring the blade protruding awkwardly from his side. He should have stopped trying years ago. When he was just a child holding a gun towards someone he didn’t even know. He could have turned the barrel against himself and blew his own brains out.

He was never taught how to use a gun. He had been forced to learn while life stacked responsibility’s over responsibility’s onto a lanky teen, like an evil game of jenga. Everyone around him watched wondering if the next block would tear his entire life down. Why didn’t he give up and fall?

A sob echoed his body only making his wound ache more. He’d had a terrible life, he’d lost his childhood, yet he couldn’t even have a good adulthood? Let alone reach his adulthood. Let’s face it, he was dying tonight…IT WASN’T FAIR- his inner child screamed.

Another sob shook his body. He stared at the hand that clutched the side, the pool of blood on the floor only getting larger. He lifted the hand carefully, the hand that kept the little life in him from flowing out into the streets. If he was dying he might as well stop trying to prevent it.

He sniffed looking up at the moon. A waining crescent. He smiled crookedly and let out a wet laugh. What a beautiful night to be tainted by death. He ruffled his hair brown hair, now sticky with blood, so this was what death felt like?

“That was pretty anticlimactic…” his voice was hoarse. He chuckled to himself. He blinked up at the sky. He took a deep breath.

That was his last breath. Because that was the night Hayes Vale died.

#writers on tumblr #whump #writeblr #poetsandwriters #angst #oc #oc writing #oc whump #writing ideas #writing #tw death

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space-mantis · 1 year

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Some more batdr analysis! Spoiler Warning!

This has been rattling around in my mind since the game came out and I’ve finally been able to put it all into words and write it down properly.

So first off, the form we know as baby Bendy or little Bendy etc has only been in existence for around several months. This is something we know from the Keepers’ logs and the fact that Wilson himself says that he’s killed the ink demon. The ink demon has been gone for 211 days.

This form and the ink demon himself are one in the same, they’re the same person and not separate personalities. Everything the ink demon is supposedly known to be, an entirely evil and indifferent being, is completely suppressed in his smaller form thanks to the torture Bendy endured at the hands of the Keepers.

This has also left him with something very foreign to the ink demon. Something he’d never had before, emotions. Which do seem to carry across both forms.

However I also noticed that every time we encounter little Bendy it’s usually followed by demon Bendy and with each of these encounters it usually involved little Bendy either feeling scared, threatened or in danger. The first meeting ending badly with Audrey accidentally physically hurting little Bendy and with this, demon Bendy acting accordingly. Still feeling threatened, he tries to kill her on multiple occasions.

However, this changes when Audrey is finally able to speak to little Bendy while overlooking the city. Audrey does something that nobody else has ever done before, she treats Bendy with kindness and becomes friends with him. She apologises to him properly and says she doesn’t want to hurt him and he agrees, he doesn’t want to hurt her either.

After a little bit Audrey separates from little Bendy, leaving him for just a moment. This is where Joey makes another appearance and tells Audrey about who she truly is. It’s a lot to take in and it’s not something she can accept initially. Joey omits a lot of the downright evil things he, or rather the real Joey Drew, has done to get to this point and I like to look at it as him doing it intentionally, preferring to lie by omission rather than telling his daughter the full truth.

When Audrey returns to the ground floor Bendy is nowhere to be found so she heads to the entrance of the Gent building.

She’s stopped when demon Bendy jumps down in front of her, blocking the entrance. Bendy isn’t attacking her here, remember he’s afraid of this building. Audrey knows this, she’s the one who asked. It’s a bad place. This is where the Keepers are, this is where Wilson is. Bendy is scared for Audrey. This place is where he’s been hurt countless times and he doesn’t want the same to happen to Audrey. It’s exactly what happens when Demon Bendy saves Audrey from Shipahoy Wilson, she’s being directly threatened and hurt here so he acts accordingly.

Those feelings of being hurt, scared, threatened or in danger is how I think Bendy goes between forms. A little sad because I feel like it’s related to the torture that the Keepers put him through and the trauma associated with it.

Throughout the game demon Bendy speaks to Audrey, he taunts her by implying things about herself that she doesn’t know yet, her choices she’s yet to make and most importantly he doesn’t lie to her. He even directly tells her that Wilson is lying to her, however she doesn’t exactly have good reason to believe him and tells him to be quiet which he complies with.

After Bendy saves Audrey from Shipahoy, while she’s injured and in clear pain he starts with what at first looks like more taunting however it becomes clear that he’s mostly alluding to himself here. Everything he says here is a reflection of himself.

“It’s time, Audrey. Your road is broken. Join the dark puddles and give in to your suffering. You have nothing. You are without purpose. Your very existence was a terrible lie. You’re a mistake. A monster. Like me.”

Bendy truly does care about Audrey and fusing with her is his way of helping her. He doesn’t want to hurt her and what’s particularly striking about the ending as Audrey takes over the body to reset the cycle is the very little he actually does himself to regain control.

This is Bendy feeling betrayed here, after all, Joey is technically his father too. All anyone ever sees him as is a monstrous mistake, a soulless demon unworthy of being loved or cared for. Until Audrey, that is. Now he no longer wants to be seen as one of the many failures of Joey Drew.

Audrey gave him some meaning and her betrayal as she sides with Joey cuts deeply but he still can’t bring himself to truly hurt her.

This is not the same ink demon from the first game, he’s changed since then. He has emotions now, he’s capable of reflection and Bendy simply allowing Audrey to take control and reset the cycle after all of the pain and torture he went through at the hands of Wilson and the Keepers is entirely possible. He knows that he can’t be stopped. He can’t simply be killed, this is not even something that Wilson and the Keepers could do and it’s not something that Audrey can do either. Yet he calls for his followers fully knowing that this is completely futile. He’s the ink demon and this is his domain.

#bendy and the dark revival #batdr #batdr analysis #batdr spoilers #bendy and the dark revival spoilers #ink demon bendy #baby bendy #batdr audrey #audrey drew #joey drew #mantis mumbles #long post #finally got it aaaaaaall written down :3

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ask-sebastian · 1 year

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Sebastian -

I actually have to thank you!

Sorry - let me explain. Lately, I’ve been suffering from an intense creative block that has been giving me terrible insomnia. This morning while I was wandering the Hufflepuff Common Room caused by another sleepless night, I encountered your sweet little Nosy. We spent a good portion of the morning together and I couldn’t help but feel inspired to paint him while we were together. I noticed he also had your wand…unfortunately, I was too distracted by my sketching to think of grabbing it for you before he decided our time together was up - sorry for that!

I’ve included the painting I finished of your sweet Nosy - I hope you like it! I also hope you can catch him and retrieve your wand soon. I was also curious, if my art block returns, could I spend some more time with your Niffler? He seems to be a bit of a cure (and I think he liked posing for me, haha!) Maybe in the future I could even paint the two of you together? Either way - thanks again!

-💛

My first thought is to ask how in the blazes Nosy got into the Hufflepuff common room, but then I reminded myself that I'm not in the habit of asking questions to which I do not want the answer.

I'm sorry to hear of your troubles with sleep. I suffer them myself, but I'm glad that Nosy gave you some comfort and inspiration. Thank you for sharing your art with me. You're more than welcome to watch after Nosy any time, however I shall not accept responsibility for any of his mischief whilst in your care.

-Sebastian

#ask-sebastian #sebastian speaks #nosy

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theesteemedladydebourgh · 2 years

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i was talking to @hogwartslivy about getting back into TFTDC-land recently, and to kick my writer’s block in the rump she suggested i do little excerpts from other time periods in that universe, which my brain latched onto rather fiercely...and ten minutes later this existed! (and then i forgot to post it on here like the forgetful woman i am 😭)

i’ve been so tired lately that anything of length has felt like a struggle, but this was such a breath of fresh air to write that i’ll probably do some more!

if there’s any specific times/scenarios/one word prompts anyone would like to see from TFTDC jily, let me know! 🥰

25 September, 2004

“Velvette? Potter, are you insane?”

“It’s cool!” the boy insists. He has a stupid, wide grin on his face and Lily wants to hex it off. She can’t though, because Professor Morelos frowns greatly on dueling in class, and also her Divination grade depends on him.

She can’t believe they’re partners. This is by far the worst part of her fourth year. (Never mind that it’s only week three of term, she knows that it can’t get worse than this).

Lily settles for glaring at him, arms crossed. The Divination classroom is stuffy and hot, and it bothers her greatly that Potter doesn’t look the least bit inconvenienced by it all. Twit. “If you want your future children to suffer like that, be my guest.”

“They’ll think it’s cool.”

“I guarantee you they won’t.”

Potter moves his hands dramatically over the crystal ball set before them—what they were actually attempting to do, before he used his knack of segueing into a completely random subject to derail them. “They will!” he insists. He makes his voice all high and spooky. “I’ve seennn it—in the crystalllll balll!”

A short laugh escapes her, then Lily clamps her lips together. She flattens her mouth into a scowl. “Oh, fine,” she says. Potter’s been annoying her since the year began, so she doesn’t feel terribly bad for the meanness of her next comment. “Not that I’d expect any woman would be so silly as to marry you.”

Potter blinks at her. “Wow,” he says. He doesn’t seem insulted, just a little stunned.

Now she feels bad, regret pinching at her stomach—just because he spends his days purposefully aggravating me doesn’t mean I should sink to his level—but Lily tries not to let it show. She tightens her arms across her chest. “What?” she snaps.

Potter is looking at her with narrowed eyes. “You know what?” he announces after a second. He props his elbow on the table. His specs are crooked and his hair is too long by his ears and he bothers her. “I think I’ve finally figured you out, Lily Evans.”

With all the maturity of a fourteen year old, Lily scoffs. “Please,” she says. “What could you have possibly figured out?”

Potter’s grinning, but his eyes are a little bit sharp behind those crooked specs. “You’re nothing like everyone else thinks you are,” he says. “Everyone says you’re so smart and composed and perfect—I think you’re stubborn, and well, smart is true enough, I guess. And you’re opinionated, and just a little bit mean.”

Lily stares at him, flummoxed. “That’s—“

“True?” Potter offers. He grins and leans back in his chair. “And I think you secretly like the name Velvette.”

“I most certainly do not,” Lily says with as much dignity as she can muster. She adamantly won’t let Potter see that he’s unnerved her with his rather spot-on deduction of her character. She’s not used to sharing her emotions or private thoughts with other people, and she’s absolutely not going to let James Potter be the first to get her to confess.

Potter laughs, tilting his head back. Oh, Merlin, but this boy bothers her. “Keep telling yourself that, Evans.”

#the first time divorcees club #tftdc jily drabbles

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exitpursuedbyasloth · 10 months

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(So I originally wrote the following in a reply to the post screencaped above. I wanted to reblog this as the S3B is premiering in a couple days and I have major concerns over this potential plot direction. However OP blocked me for my reply and I can’t, however they’re my words so I will repost them as I see fit. Including the original post for context only, and I added some additional clarifying comments.)

…that would be pretty terrible, ngl.

Canon Radovid (in the games, he’s like 12 at the end of the books, although his future turn is hinted at) turns genocidal towards sorceresses and other non-humans both for political power, but also because of the festering resentment of the abuse, manipulations, and wrongs he sees him and father suffer at the hands of the sorceress Phillipa and Dijkstra, including his father’s assassination by an elf at the behest of Phillipa. Phillipa controls him throughout his teenage years. That hate festers in him for years until he grows up, and instead of simply getting revenge on those who personally harmed him and his family, he decides the only way to rule was with an iron fist, and turned that fist against all sorceresses, witches, magic-users and non-humans (both because he hates/fears them, but also for political gain, as these things tend to go). He encourages the non-human hate, uses humans superior numbers to overwhelm and destroy groups of non-humans and magic users. He’s relatively militarily adept too. He made sure of that, because he wanted revenge against Phillipa even as a boy. I don’t think the show would abandon everything that makes Radovid Radovid (but then again, Eskel...), I don’t think he’s just going to be Some Guy. So his sadistic bigotry towards and genocide against all non-humans and (most) human magic-users will come into play at some point. And if it does, his relationship with Jaskier will HAVE to factor in somehow, that’s unavoidable at this point. But should this theory OP mentions come to pass (and there is a good chance it might, I have been concerned about this since it the news leaked of who Jaskier would be paired up with), that would mean the show made a conscious choice to have adult Radovid turn villain…cause his boyfriend dumped him? His boyfriend of like a couple months chose his family of 20+ years over him, and that was enough to make him lose it and just start stabbing everything? Or cause he was angry that Jaskier was using him as a shield because Phillipa was threatening him? And Radovid, a grown ass man, cannot handle this? This would put a homosexual relationship at the core of a xenophobic campaign of witch-burning, be the catalyst of it. And they would put that on Jaskier’s shoulders? Because he dumped Radovid?

Why? What does this do but add cheap angst where it wasn’t needed? There is no need to A.) Start Radovid’s xenophobic hate campaign 15 years early (they have so many world-spanning plots they already can’t write well, why add more?), and B.) connect it directly to someone in the main core cast by having them be the inciting incident for Radovid. That’s unnecessary, that doesn’t offer any narrative improvement to the story at all (FFS, the world is bigger than Geralt, Yenn, Ciri, and Jaskier). And is this the reason Jaskier is now canonically bisexual? Was that the only reason they did that, just to make him the casus belli of a genocide? That really would not be the kind of queer rep anyone should praise, and by god, does it feels downright spiteful.

And to be clear, I don’t think every queer story has to be all sunshine and happiness or perfectly positive (something I’ve been accused of when criticizing questionable writing of gay/bi characters in the past). But there is a vast ocean of difference between “Sunshine and perfection” and “Hey! Let’s change this catalyst for this genocide from ‘Paranoid Fascist takes what should have been a beef between him and like 5 people, and turns it into a full scale witch-burning industry and non-human genocide, for both political gain and cause he’s a paranoid xenophobic fascist’ to 'gay prince super bummed his boyfriend dumped him’, and let’s make sure we wait to show the boyfriend as canonically bisexual until the last possible second, just so people wonder if that’s the only reason we even bothered ”. A vast fucking ocean.

I’m fine with adaptational changes that add to or improve the canon material, or are just different but stand strongly on their own. But this? Would be a terrible miserable hateful idea, and is just cheap writing for forced angst (and I honestly would not put it past the Witcher writers, which is the worst part).

How is this good? How would this an improvement? What does this add? How does this stand on it’s own? Why would they take a bloody campaign of witch-burning and genocide that had a believable catalyst already, and retcon it happening because of The Gays? Cause a dude dumped another dude? If they did this, the writers would have to consciously make the choice to change the catalyst of the genocide to ‘a gay guy was like super bummed that his boyfriend left him for a Witcher’. Do y'all see what that looks like?

#The Witcher #Jaskier #Radovid #The Witcher Netflix #The Witcher S3 #brand new kinds of homophobia #if they plan to keep Radovid to his canon route why change his personality and mannerisms so much??#[I mean I think I know why...]#[But that's another kettle of fish and another post entirely]#Honestly this is one of the worst choices the writers could have made #which is why I think they'll make it #Jaskier/Radovid #Jaskier/Radovid critical

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