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crowbawt · 4 months

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I really should be sleeping but my anxiety so instead here's a very long disjointed post with thoughts about the Man in the Wall after playing Whispers

Spoilers obviously

So the climax of the quest was us somehow holding back Mr. Big Indifference using a memory of love. And it makes sense, because what is the opposite of Indifference towards others? Caring about them. Which is kind of our (Tenno) entire thing. To Take Away Its Pain, etc. There's also Rell, who was also able to hold back Wally, and how he was alienated by his peers and even Marghulis, and the Orokin society who feared and shunned him and didn't treat him as a fellow human being deserves to be treated. As some of the Red Veil blood scrawls in his quest put it, "What is evil, but indifference?" It works quite well, thematically. But Warframe doesn't really restrict itself to a singular, direct approach to invoking its themes. Shit's got layers. Which leads me to believe there may be other layers here, too. And at this point, I'm really not convinced that Wally is so simple as the cosmic idea of Indifference towards others, or even a personification of fear and other 'dark' aspects of the human condition. I mean, I believe he is partially that, we do get that dialogue from Sythel "The first scholar looked into the Void and felt fear, and that fear took form. That's how all this started." Albrecht also refers to himself as the "Father of fears" in his notes somewhere (I forgor) But... Fear is not Indifference. And the Man in the Wall not only shows great interest in many things (like Albrecht, and our Tenno) but he also shows a great deal of emotion. He is described by Duviri citizens as hungry, greedy, jealous. He has feelings, and he has a great deal of them. A being born of fear and indifference towards others doesn't really describe what we've seen of him very well. What Wally has been shown as time and time again is instead: a mirror. Our reflection. So here's the rhetorical question I'd like to ask: If Albrecht gazed into the grand cosmic mirror of existence, and his first reaction was fear, well... it wasn't really the Void he was afraid of, was it?

...Which probably doesn't seem like a point worth all this build up, considering how during the quest, Albrecht's flaw of showing indifference to others (Loid, specifically) is brought up a few times. Albrecht looked into the Void, his Indifference and fear seeped in, and the result was Wally. Makes perfect sense. To which I say, look at the scrollbar to the side of this post because I have soooooo much more bullshit to spew about my thoughts on this. Anyway. I've seen some theorizing that we're probably going to "defeat" the Man in the Wall by forgiving him or otherwise reaching out and showing him love, similar to the way we helped Umbra. Love will triumph over Indifference. And that makes sense and feels very Warframe and I do think that will happen. Buuuuut I don't think it's the only thing that's going to happen. Because if something is destroyed or undone by love, doesn't that... kind of undermine the message of loving an ugly, broken thing? Doesn't having the ultimate villain be some abstract space monster elder god representing pure un-love kind of jar with the very personal, human focus of Warframe's storylines? I don't think this is a Love vs. Indifference Pokemon typing match-up here, I don't think the Love requiem word is going to defeat the Indifference requiem word like a game of rock paper scissors. That would be too trite. Besides, it's not Wally's Indifference, really. It's Albrecht's.

And I've seen a lot, a lot of speculation that Wally "is" Albrecht, just a very derived evil alternate of him, and maybe Albrecht manages to convert himself into Wally as some kind of self-fulfilling quantum time-loop, becoming the reflection that reached out to his own self. It makes a lot of sense, what with the "We End as We Began" thing, and us encountering doppelganger smiley Albrecht in the quest. It works, thematically. This very well could be the answer and it wouldn't be bad storytelling per se.

However, for reasons I am not sure how to articulate at 3 am, I honestly kiiiiiind of hate it. It is not an ending to this that I'd be personally very satisfied with. Again, this doesn't mean it would be bad story-telling, or that other people wouldn't find it satisfying, it's just me and how I like my eldritch horror to be. So I choose to speculate other possibilities up until the point I am proven wrong, and if I am I promise to not be too annoyingly butthurt about it. Promise. Here's my preferred take: I think the "Great Indifference" name for The Man in the Wall is a massive red herring. I think it relates far more meaningfully to what he actually is if you instead interpret it as "undifferentiated."

As in, the Void is a massive roiling quantum soup of all possible outcomes that could exist, but don't--to us. Specifically, us, as in our unique conscious POV, or "personal timeline" or "Chain of Khra" or quantum observer "cone of light" or whatever you want to call it. We are a 3rd dimensional ant stuck walking down a Mobius strip of cause and effect, and the Void is everything that we can not perceive from our tiny tiny window of specific probability variables. We are unable to "change the frame," as Euleria puts it, and I interpret that as "frame of reference."

While a lot of the differences are more... semantic than anything, Eternalism is not actually just Warframe's funny in-universe stand-in name for the Multiple Worlds Interpretation of Reality. This is a whoooooole another post worth of word vomit I won't get into now but Warframe did not come up with Eternalism it's an actual established thing that they're referencing.

The Void is everything, all at once. And if something is everything, in a way it is also... nothing. No contrast, no ups and downs, no loss, no birth, no death, no questions, and no mysteries to ponder. Joy is the same as sorrow, alive is the same as dead, "change" as a broad concept is impossible. If there is an opposite of human consciousness, of being alive and having lived, that's the closest thing I can think of.

There's a reason why the Void is shown in stark black and white until we put color into it... and in his original logs, Albrecht speaks of "scintillating vapor pouring out of my very skull." Human consciousness, our "light," (and the meaning of Albrecht's name, and the significance of us accidentally offering to let Wally "take our light" in the New War, etc) interacting with and reacting with the raw potential of the Void. It makes sense with the Wall being a bleak brutalist expanse of unmoving bone and dust, too. That could Wally's original, natural state: a solid block of grey, meaningless everything. It would explain his jealousy of us, why he takes our appearance, echoes aspects of our personalities, uses our voices, picks at our memories and experiences. It's why he's fascinated with us. It is the one thing he isn't, the one thing he can not have. Or--at least, couldn't have, before Albrecht's intrusion. This is a side-note, but I find it very interesting that Wally's missing finger seems to have limited him in some way, that now he's constrained by the Chains of Khra, implying that before Albrecht, he was not. Now I'm going to rewind waaay back to the topic of Wally being Albrecht's fear made manifest, and us defeating Wally by showing him love, not violence. Because... I don't think our love is enough to fix things on its own. It isn't us who needs to show him love and understanding. I think it has to be Albrecht.

The syndicate's plotline exploring a group of animals who had consciousness forced upon them, suddenly and violently and without consent, the difficulties they face grappling with it--I think that might echo the origin of the Man in the Wall. Consciousness being forced on not an animal, but the Void. You know the quote, "We are the Universe learning about itself?" Maybe in this case, the universe had a very shitty teacher.

And imagine this consciousness being thrust into the Void, taking form within it as an out-of-control chemical reaction, how might it attempt to communicate with Albrecht, with the first 'other' it ever encountered? Perhaps mirroring his form, speaking in his voice, using an endearing and personal term from his childhood: "Little Bengel?" What if, for those brief seconds, The Man in the Wall was not actively malicious? What if he was reaching towards Albrecht not seeking to trap him in a predatory "deal," but out of a sincere desire for connection? How would if feel then, to have your outstretched hand met with fear, disgust--a rejection so violent that your very fingers are severed by him slamming shut the door, an injury that leaves you weakened. A missing part of yourself, and nothing on your side of the wall to fill that hole with. Well it would make you a little bit bitter, I assume. And if those fingers are then used to perform miracles of science, to serve as the foundation for the triumph of an entire empire... you might feel a bit like you're owed. That bitterness may be compounded by the hypocrisy of it all, because all that you showed Albrecht was his own reflection. You might start to fixate on that hypocrisy, on those human flaws, on the parts of him that he didn't want to see. The reflection that he ran from, but further warped to emphasize what he tries to ignore. His shadow self. And so you haunt him with his shadow, because you want him to be forced to see. To acknowledge those parts of him he wishes he wasn't, but you're everything: you know. You won't let him ignore you, to deny you. You are now a jealous, bitter thing. A hungry ghost. You shove these flaws and bits of self-hatred back in his face because you want to make him look at them. To look in the mirror. ....To look at you. To acknowledge you exist. To see you as a thinking, feeling being. And I do think our Tenno are capable of this. To see the Man in the Wall not as "The Other," but as Another. The opposite of Indifference. I think that will be an important part of our story. But our story is not all of the story. It was not just any memory of love that drove back the Indifference, it was Albrecht's love. Unfortunately, I don't think Albrecht as we know him is capable of this, at least not as he is. He speaks of Wally as a malicious force, a cosmic evil that must be fought and only he is brilliant enough to figure out how. Even now, he refers to his reflection only with terms of disgust and shame. For all his monologues about guilt and his grand designs of martyrdom... he still thinks only in terms of himself. He thinks he understands his own guilt, and Wally delights in demonstrating all the ways that he does not. "If I must be a demon, may I be an honest one." That statement is, itself, dishonest. Albrecht is not a demon. He is human.

And that's what he's so deeply, violently afraid of admitting, the fear the entire Orokin civilization built itself on top of as foundation. I believe that is the fear that manifested in The Man in the Wall. And THAT is the kind of cosmic horror I want to see, while also feeling very Warframe. Crossing my fingers we get something closer to this and not just Albrecht accidentally (or purposely?) becoming an evil quantum demon. There's actually like. A whole other section to this I was going to yammer on about but it's now 4:30 AM and whooopppsssssssss

#well having something to focus on does help anxiety brain so #wild and presumptuous speculation that probably only seems clever to me because of sleep deprivation #giant text wall. man in the text... wall. sorry #sorry for all of this #warframe spoilers #[the man in the wall]#[loreframe predictions]

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catierambles · 1 year

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Feral Instincts Ch.2

Pairing: The Rogue's Gallery (Geralt, Syverson, Mike, August Walker, Walter Marshall) x Stephanie Daniels (OFC)

WC 981

Warnings: Mentions of blood and injury but nothing graphic. Werewolf/Shapeshifter elements.

@mclsquared , @brattymum96 , @ouroboros113 , @peaches1958 , @summersong69 , @eldarwen333 , @omgkatinka , @identity2212 , @lucypaulette , @teamfan7asy , @ms-betsy-fangirl ,@pagina16ps , @enchantedbytomandhenry , @foxyjwls007 , @nofoolywang , @margauxmargaux07 , @mrsevans90 , @ilikemilkchocolateh @peyton-warren , @lizzystuffsthings , @raccoon-eyed-rebel

The ache in her arm steadily grew worse, the claw marks starting to throb. Mike had helped her clean the blood from her skin, turning on the shower so she could stick her arm under the spray. The water flowing over the wounds had nearly driven her to tears, the nerves raw and angry. He pulled her to his chest as the water irrigated the wounds, guiding her breathing by taking deep breaths of his own and letting them out slowly. Once her arm was dry, he spread antibiotic ointment on gauze pads and pressed them to her arm, wrapping more gauze around it to keep them in place.

A strange sort of restless energy started building in her muscles and she found herself pacing, shaking and clenching and unclenching her hand. She knew they were watching her, could feel their eyes on her, but it didn't feel threatening. Introductions had been made. The one Sy called "Walker" was August Walker, the one with the shock white hair and amber eyes was Geralt Rivian, and Walter Marshall was the one with a halo of dark curls and a thick beard. Sy's full name was Markus Syverson, but everyone, even his brother, called him Sy. Stephanie got the feeling that August didn't want her there, despite him saying she could stay until her…transformation was complete. He wasn't hostile towards her, just severely uninterested. Sy, Mike, and Walter were the most outwardly welcoming and supportive. Geralt seemed…indifferent.

"Okay," Mike said, "I hate awkward silences. Steph, what's your favorite movie?"

"Michael." August said.

"If she's gonna be staying here, we might as well get to know her." Mike said.

"She's not staying." August reminded him and Mike flashed him an annoyed look before turning his attention back to her as she paced.

"Favorite movie?" He asked and she stretched her neck with a roll of her head.

"What genre?" She asked.

"Horror." Sy said.

"The Haunting."

"Julie Harris or Liam Neeson?" Walter asked.

"I saw the remake first and the original later, I like both." She said.

"Favorite band." Mike said.

"What genre?" She asked again and he pulled a small smile.

"Metal?"

"Motionless in White." She said.

"Classic rock." Sy said.

"Toss up between Queen and Journey, Eagles are up there too."

"Classical." Walter said.

"Love Vivaldi and Beethoven. Mozart's Requiem is also a big hit, but not Tuba Mirum."

"Going back to movies," Mike said, "Favorite action flick."

"The second Die Hard with Jeremy Irons."

"Musical?" Walter asked.

"2004 Phantom of the Opera with Gerard Butler, Emmy Rossum, and Patrick Wilson." She said.

"Creature feature." Geralt said.

"Toss up between Tremors: Aftershocks and Pitch Black."

"Classic movie." August asked and her eyes, which had been closed, opened and she fixed him with a look at his sudden interest.

"The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, 1947 starring Rex Harrison and Gene Tierney."

"Favorite food." Mike said.

"Japanese anything, and fried cheese."

"Favorite color." Sy said.

"Purple and black."

“Black isn’t a color.” August said.

“Don’t be pedantic.” She said simply and he scowled at her.

"Asmr?" Mike asked.

"Asmr drives me up a wall. I don't understand how people can get enjoyment out of the sounds of someone taking a bite of something crunchy or tapping on a microphone with fake nails. Pisses me off." She said and stretched her shoulders, but stopped with a wince as it aggravated her arm.

“How’s it feelin’?” Sy asked.

“Sore.” She said simply and he pushed away from the wall he was leaning against, going over to her.

“Let me see, doll.” He said and gently took her arm in his hands, pushing up her t-shirt sleeve that was stiff with blood. Unwrapping it gently, he pulled the gauze pads away from it and growled slightly as he saw the ragged claw marks tearing open the skin. It had stopped bleeding, thankfully, but dark lines of corruption branched off from the ruined skin. The skin around the wounds was warm and she winced as he pressed on them, making him mumble an apology. “Upside is, the infection will keep everything else out and it should heal without a scar to show for it.”

“Downside?” She asked, looking up at him.

“Downside is that there is an infection.” He said, “Feral infected you on purpose, couldn’t tell you why. Normally they just kill people. Don’t know why he bothered datin’ you first.”

“Gee thanks.”

“Nothin’ against you, doll, it’s just how ferals are.” Sy said and she nodded, “Seein’ as it stopped bleedin’ and ain’t at risk of goin’ south, we can probably keep it uncovered, but if it starts up again, let one of us know and we’ll wrap it up.”

“Okay.” She said with a nod and he carefully pulled her sleeve back down.

“We should probably get some of your things if you’re going to be staying here.” Walter suggested. “Do you live far?”

“Town over.” Stephanie said and he nodded. “Was camping though when shit went down, if he didn’t get rid of them to cover his tracks, the stuff I brought should still be there.”

“You can show me.” Geralt said, “We’ll bring them back here.”

“I can--”

“No.” Geralt said, “He might be there waiting for you. You’re not going alone.” He let his arms fall from where they had been folded over his chest. “Come on.”

“I didn’t exactly run in a straight line.” Stephanie said, “Do you have a map or something I can look at?”

“Not needed.” Geralt said, shaking his head. “I can track your scent back through the forest.”

“Okay, then.” She said.

“You want me to come with you, sweetheart?” Sy asked.

“No, it’s fine, it should be fine.” Stephanie said.

“Geralt will keep you safe, don’t worry.” Sy said and she nodded, following Geralt as he left the cabin and headed for the tree line.

#henry cavill #august walker #walter marshall #hellraiser mike #captain syverson #geralt of rivia #feral instincts

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takiniteasynightcoreremix · 4 months

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edit: now on AO3!

in the first week after toki's rescue, skwisgaar figures out how to proceed (post-requiem/pre-aotd, 5k words, tw: references to torture, injury/medical stuff)

The doctor goes out of the way to specify that it's not a coma. "He's just tired. God. Don't be so dramatic." Even a human body claimed by prophecy can only endure so much, and Toki's has much to contend with, these days. There's IV antibiotics for the festering hole Magnus has left in his side, a morphine drip for the same reason, IV fluids plugged into the skin further up his arms. There's a glucose monitor plugged into his shoulder alongside the insulin pump, keeping close eye on the damage wrought by several months of untreated diabetes and a diet apparently consisting of, if Toki's bouts of incoherent rambling are to be believed, cat food. A heart-monitor cabled to his chest that almost looks like a stack of amps by the bed. There's medics checking in frequently, changing bandages or administering creams for the shackle-shaped rash around his neck. The periodic anxious visits of band members. The sedative shots they give him every twelve hours, because everyone is still worried about what state his already-fragile psyche will be in when he achieves sustained consciousness, and there's some desire to make his body habitable before forcing him back into it. There's a lot of hand-wringing and touching and disgusting displays of emotion over him. Even for an attention whore like Toki it must be exhausting. He never wakes up for more than half an hour at a time.

Skwisgaar questions the doctor with stoic indifference, like he's just trying to pass the time. He's in that hospital room continuously, keeping vigil at the bedside, and he's taken it upon himself to receive the periodic updates from the band's physician. He is forced to expand his English vocabulary to include words like 'neuropathy' and 'sepsis'. He doesn't understand the fine details of what is told to him (how does one even get sugar in the blood with an all-cat food diet? He's fairly sure there's no sugar in cat food.) He writes down notes for Pickles, because Pickles invariably asks, and then Pickles gets his own reports from the doctor anyways, because Skiwsgaar's notes 'barely count as English', and for some reason Pickles takes issue with the fact Skwisgaar's only remarks are about how his injuries will probably affect Toki's already abysmal guitar skills. They almost fight about it, once, and then Pickles sees something in Skwisgaar's face and cuts short his obnoxious scolding. He leaves Skwisgaar to his lonely vigil by their perpetually unconscious and now functionally useless rhythm guitarist.

They've only had Toki back for a few days, so the fact that Skwisgaar never leaves the bedside hasn't started to cause problems for him, yet. He's stayed up much longer than this before, usually while facing record deadlines and having to re-record guitar parts that had been so handily bungled by the man currently sleeping before him. Surprisingly boredom fails to be a problem. At this point, his life is so shitty and complicated and weird that it's actually a relief to be able to sit in silence, staring at the array of complex medical machinery. He sits for hours thinking everything and nothing at once, strains of random and disarticulated thoughts mingling with ideas for guitar riffs and new song compositions.

He doesn't remember anything from the rescue itself; he's thinking that their next song should feature a canon, two identical guitar riffs played out of time with one another. Being at the centre of a religious apocalypse prophecy is going to fuck with his identity as a nihilist; the canon should feature a melody that starts slow and gains in speed, like a chase. The sight of amateur sutures over an angry red slit in one side of Toki's sunken stomach; his canon won't be any of that classical major-key bullshit he despised in music school, but something epic, something ferocious. An upside-down cross; a dragon chasing a valkyrie through the melting ruins of Greenland, ice flying everywhere, fire ripping through pillars of frost. Toki mumbles something in his sleep, turning his head; Skwisgaar hears clearly a bridge of elaborate harmonic scales plunging in mutual abandon towards a frozen sea. After months of heavy drug use and every best effort at self-annihilation, it comes as a relief to sit with his own thoughts, dark and disarticulated though they are. He hasn't heard music in his head so clearly since before Toki's abduction, since even before Dethklok attempted to break up.

Unfortunately, he is interrupted often. His bandmates are embarrassingly eager to check in on their rescuee, and even Skwisgaar's mumbled warnings that all the attention will go straight to Toki's head doesn't deter them. Murderface comes the most often, usually with some harebrained scheme to try and make Toki "feel better"-- by making him watch Civil War documentaries, by gifting him exclusive Planet Piss merch, by reading him cat memes from his Dethphone-- the fact that Toki is soundly asleep through each visit Murderface doesn't seem to consider a problem, and it is only the appearance of the band physician that succeeds in driving him away (Murderface had acquired a hostility towards doctors that Skwisgaar doesn't care to understand). Pickles has a routine: he comes by three times a day with a bottle in hand, he receives Skwisgaar's update on Toki's condition, he asks Skwisgaar a few incredibly awkward questions about whether he's sleeping or eating much (Skwisgaar does not dignify these with answers), then he goes to Toki's bed, pours a healthy serving of liquor out on the floor near his pillow ('Jus' payin' my respecks!') and stumbles out of the room to find the physician. Nathan visits very rarely, and always seems overly-fragile and distracted when he does, unable to even look at their youngest band-mate except for while Skwisgaar is telling him about his new musical ideas.

"Just, uh…" Nathan concludes one exceptionally uncomfortable visit, hovering in the doorway, "Tell us when he wakes up."

Nobody's remarked on Skwisgaar's constant presence in the room. They haven't commented on the fact that he's been glued to Toki since they found themselves without recollection in the DethBus, and Toki-- emaciated, filthy, incredibly alive Toki-- was tucked under one of Skwisgaar's arms, holding onto his hand with both of his own. If Skwisgaar ever recovers his memories of that night, he'll seriously interrogate his own judgement, how he found himself in the dreadful situation of affectionate physical contact with Toki of all people-- but he'd held him like that for the entire ride home, and he'd practically carried him to the Mordhaus medical wing, and he's not left since. The rest of the band seems to have accepted this as normal-- Toki and Skwisgaar have been ]inseparable since the kid first joined their band more than a decade ago. Skwisgaar's constant presence here is little more than a refreshing return to the status quo.

This works in Skwisgaar's favour, because it means he's the only one who knows that the slumber that grips Toki is not a coma. He's the only one around when Toki wakes.

Toki wakes infrequently, incompletely. Most of the time he's confused when he does; high off his ass on painkillers and sedatives, his brain seems to pick moments from time at random to thrust him into.

Sometimes he seems to think he's a young kid, and he wakes up speaking Norwegian, asking for his mother or begging forgiveness for some chore-related transgression.

Other times he thinks he's in their old apartment, the first Mordhaus. "Skwis-gaar," he whines, without opening his eyes or moving his head from his pillow, "You says we goes to Ikea if de records sells a hundred copies… I buys pekhult."

And sometimes he's back in that abandoned building. "Don't wants no more cat foods, Magnus," he mumbles once to his pillow, "My kitty-friends says he only eats herrings now, you must bring Toki a herrings…"

During Pickles' next visit, Skwisgaar asks him to bring pickled herring, in case Toki wakes up and feels like a snack. The physician overhears. "Are you serious?" he says, "Have you even been listening to me? No solid food until his blood sugar's back under control. Also, pickled herring? He's already been tortured. Dicks."

The worst times are when Toki opens his eyes. It happens rarely-- Skwisgaar glancing up at the bed and finding himself subjected to a sunken-eyed, glassy stare. The first time, now in the harsh light of the hospital room, he notices that Toki's left eye has two new voids at the bottom of the iris, and he stares at them until he remembers that Nathan had blinded Magnus in the left eye. He's so disturbed that he looks away; he hears Toki smugly mumble, "You blinksed, you're a blinkster," and his throat can't manage to form a reply, and Toki falls asleep again soon after.

Probably an iris tear, the physician explains later, someone probably hit him in the eyeball, but is that really the priority here? He's dying of sepsis and you're worried about a cosmetic wound? Jesus.

But most of the time Toki sleeps soundly, and whatever delusions visit him seem pleasant, for he smiles in his sleep. Toki's always been prone to retreating into his own mind during moments of pain and stress-- a habit Skwisgaar understands, with his own tendency to shut down under duress-- however, whereas Skwisgaar's shut-downs draw him into a thoughtless churn of inner music, he's aware Toki finds more comfort in outright fantasies. Of course he's sleeping so much; he's probably off flying through clouds and rainbows in a stupid fairy world on Planet Toki. The real world, where his bandmates let him endure months of literal actual torture because they were scared to address an old drama Toki didn't even have anything to do with, probably seems pretty fucked up in comparison.

On the fifth day they've had Toki back, Nathan enters the room and tells Skwisgaar in no uncertain terms that it's his turn to be a sad piece of shit next to Toki's bed, so Skwisgaar needs to clear the fuck out. Nathan is the one band member capable of making Skwisgaar do anything, and it would be far too humiliating even now for him to fight over his cherished post, so Skwisgaar sulks out of there with only a warning that he'd better not even think about giving Toki any pickled herring. Doctor's orders.

Back in his room he feels intolerably alone-- he hates sleeping alone, how could Nathan not realise that's the only reason he's been in Toki's room all this time, because they're all acting so miserable and sappy that inviting some groupies over would make him look like a total dick?-- trying to postpone his collapse, he takes a shower that feels as if it lasts for years, spends a true hour applying various products to his hair, drinks half of the bowl of beef broth someone left in there for him. He sits with his Explorer for a while, drawing out the preliminary notes of the canon he's been contemplating in Toki's room, but sleep deprivation is turning the melody to mush in his head, everything sounds discordant, inferior, sloppy. Defeated, he throws himself into his bed, attempts to jack off, fails even at that, and, finally, lapses into an unsettled sleep.

Twelve hours later, Skwisgaar wakes in a thrashing panic. He doesn't remember what he dreamed about but he's convinced that everything after the rescue has been an illusion. He swears he remembers holding Toki's corpse. He dresses in a hurry, grabs his guitar, and goes back to the medical ward, trying to keep his pace slow so that nobody might notice his distress.

Inside the hospital room Toki is asleep and not dead. Nathan is also sleeping, doubled over in the chair by the bedside, his face planted into the mattress near Toki's hip. One of Toki's hands is buried in Nathan's hair, clutching a handful of greasy black tresses with a desperate strength Skwisgaar hasn't seen in him since the rescue. Duh, he thinks. Of course that sappy overbearing homo responds to physical closeness. With Nathan's hair to cling onto, he looks more peaceful than Skwisgaar's seen him in a long time.

When Skwisgaar resumes his constant vigil, he sits a little closer to the bed. He has his Explorer, this time, so he can whittle away the hours by composing that canon he's been thinking of. His playing doesn't seem to bother Toki, who sleeps soundly as ever, totally unappreciative of the fact that the world's pre-eminent Guitar God is giving him a private convert at his bedside. He still talks in his sleep, occasionally, and to Skwisgaar's indignation, it's not even about him. "Abigail? Abigail?" he moans out sometimes. Or, "I loves you too, clown, I loves you too." Or, "Fucks you, Moidaface, I goes to the water-parks without you…" He talks to everyone he's ever known at one point or another. He's always been the neediest of them.

But the canon comes along well, despite Toki's unconscious interjections. Sitting in this room, it's easier to recall the notes-- the white of the room evokes the punishing gleam of an ice-sheet, the beeping of the heart-monitor the steady wing-beats of a dragon in flight. The trick is making sure that every note will work with each other when overlaid; it's self-indulgently technical, the sort of music Skwisgaar loves to figure out: compositions that makes him feel like a genius. While Toki dreams his sedated rainbow dreams and argues with nobody, Skwisgaar plays, and he feels better for the practice.

He experiments with things other than music. Toki does seem to sleep more peacefully when someone is close to him or even touching him. When Toki speaks in his sleep, Skwisgaar moves from his chair and sits, instead, at the edge of the mattress, so that his weight dents it. Even this abysmal excuse for physical contact mollifies him, and his nighttime rambling always stops, replaced with a beatific smile. During one of Nathan's scarce visits, Nathan awkwardly blurts out that Abigail told him that she and Toki held each other for much of their captivity, and that his absence made her feel vulnerable. Skwisgaar, a perfectionist, is oddly chafed by the idea that this intrusive producer has managed Toki's well-being far better than he is able to now. As if she didn't realise that spoiling Toki with love will only do him a disservice in the long run.

But he has his composition, now, to serve as an excuse. The physician had mentioned diabetic nerve damage, and Skwisgaar uses a professional interest in Toki's musical aptitude to justify a battery of tests. He starts by pressing his fingertips against the sleeping man's fretting-hand, testing the response (it curls immediately, the fingers twitch towards his.) Next, later, he takes that hand in his own and presses his thumbpad to each of the fingertips; he finds the callouses are still there, but only barely, thin and inadequate over the sharp bones beneath. His next evaluation is to lace his fingers with Toki's. They're much more slender than they once were, even bony, and he doesn't sense much strength in them-- that will have to be rectified with practice, but perhaps the loss of finger-weight will somewhat compensate for any atrophy of skill. When he gropes along Toki's arms he finds them thinner than they were, muscles clinging tightly to bone and stringy under the skin. His shoulders, likewise, feel narrow and flabbier than they once were. Would a loss of muscle tone affect his playing? He factors this into the canon he's writing, forcing himself to run at a lower tempo.

They've had Toki for a week when the physician delivers an update. The major risk of sepsis has passed, it seems, and the nascent infection in the abdominal wound has been abating at impressive speed. The next step is to reduce his sedatives, introduce proper meals, let him regain a degree more consciousness, start thinking about therapy of both physical and psychological varieties. The update is given to Skwisgaar; he resolves not to pass it on to the rest of the band. If they hear Toki will be waking up properly soon, he'll never get them out of here.

So the meds are reduced, and Skwisgaar continues working on his composition. He soon realises that this isn't something he can do easily in analog; he needs a second him, someone to learn the same pattern and play it a few measures behind him, so that he can hear how it's all coming together. The second him he'd need to write this properly is currently sleep-mumbling a Dimmu Burger order, so Skwisgaar just has to make do with his imagination. It's sounding good, despite everything. Not quite as fast or as brutal as he'd like it to be, but he's going to be working with damaged goods, concessions need to be made.

There's one more test Skwisgaar feels he needs to run. The day the doctor cuts the sedatives, Skwisgaar waits until he's certain they won't be interrupted. Then he takes his guitar from his lap and gently, slowly, lies it across Toki's lap. He takes Toki's fretting hand-- the one that's loose, without tubes running from it-- and wraps it around the neck of the guitar. He holds his own breath and Toki's wrist and he waits to see what will happen.

He watches Toki's hand curl around the neck of the guitar. Fingers seek out strings on pure instinct, forming the shape of a nonsense chord, pressing very weakly down. Pure muscle memory. Skwisgaar lets out a long exhale.

Then he glances up and finds that Toki is staring at him bewilderedly. He's frowning, his eyes are puffy and ringed with near-black bruises.

"… Eugh," Skwisgaar says. "Thoughts you might…. urrrh…. needs… to practices."

Toki stares. He blinks slowly. Then he raises his other hand, with its train of tubes, and extends to Skwisgaar one stick-thin middle finger.

Once news gets out that Toki's awake, Skwisgaar bids farewell to his composition time. Toki isn't even really awake-- he still sleeps almost constantly-- but his intervals of waking can now be measured in hours rather than minutes. He can also hold conversations, now, though the painkillers do little to improve his already erratic train of thought. The rest of the band is eager to speak to him, which confuses Skwisgaar, because these conversations always seem to be about nothing. In fact, Toki hardly speaks, but he's awake and vaguely responsive and that seems to satisfy everyone else.

The first real conversation Toki has after waking up is with Abigail. Not twenty-four hours after Toki had begun to enjoy bouts of continued consciousness, they receive the news that Abigail was leaving Mordhaus' medical wing and returning to her own house, in her own city, far from the band who'd caused her so much grief. She comes to Toki's room to say goodbye, and Skwisgaar, still jealously guarding his place by the bed, pretends not to watch as the two abductees embrace each other and weep into each other's shoulders. It is Pickles who drags Skwisgaar out of the room after that first teary embrace. Skwisgaar is forced to join Nathan in miserable exile in the hallway, where they exchange some awkward words about nothing in particular and pretend not to listen into the conversation inside. The words themselves are indistinct, but neither of them fail to notice the genuine love in Abigail's voice, the tender affection with which she comforts the bandmate they'd almost abandoned.

"I think she's uh… mad at me or something," Nathan remarks at one point. "You know, I guess we kind of, uh… took a while… to save them… yeah, I think she's mad at me or something."

"Dat's womens for you," Skwisgaar replies without emotion, staring at the wall.

When Abigail leaves, Skwisgaar elbows back into the room and finds Toki wiping his face with the edges of his blanket. He looks a mess, sitting upright for the first time since he'd been back; his unwashed hair falling limp over jutting shoulder-blades, scarred skin pulled taut over prominent ribs. He looks up at Skwisgaar, both eyes brimming with tears. "She's leavin's me," Toki blubbers, "She's leavin's-- she's leavin's me-- tells her not to leaves me, tells her she can't leaves Toki, Toki loves her more den anythings--"

The first coherent sentences Toki's spoken to him since the abduction, and he's proclaiming his love for some woman they barely know. Skwisgaar makes a derisive sound. "She shouldn'ts has upsets you's." Toki gives him a miserable betrayed look; Skwisgaar ignores him, takes up his post by the bedside, and gets back to work on his canon.

Maybe it's the loss of sedatives, or maybe it's that Abigail's departure breaks something in him, because after that day Toki becomes much more childish. Skwisgaar has always thought of Toki as three different variants of himself: as well as Toki his musical counterpart, there is the fawning crybaby Toki who loves kid things, and the frightening megalomaniacal Toki capable of astonishing violence. He's the crybaby more often now. It makes him easier to deal with in some ways-- he's completely pacified when Nathan starts reading him Watership Down, for example, and Pickles' bringing him a care package of his deaddy bear and several colouring books delights him for a whole day. But the crybaby is also more prone to mood swings than he's ever been before. Skwisgaar finds, to his discomfort, that exchanges which once would've been natural for them now reduce Toki to tears-- any raised voice, any hint of criticism, any cynical statement, and he starts blubbering. It quickly begins to wear on Skwisgaar's nerves.

There's only so much he can take. He concedes. He starts letting his bandmates drive him out of Toki's room so that they can spend their own time alone with him. He has the melody for his canon, at this point, he feels confident about how the notes will fit together. All that's left is to refine it. He starts spending plenty of time in the studio, first recording himself, then playing over the recording. He sits on his hands before he performs the second part, waiting for them to go numb, the way he always does before re-recording Toki's tracks.

He hasn't brought up the canon since Toki's been awake. He's afraid that, if he does, Toki will dissolve under the pressure and start crying again. He'd offered to let Toki practice on his Explorer during one of his first bouts of proper wakefulness, and Toki had been predictable petulant about it, whining that he couldn't practise with those 'stupids tubes' in his arm. He'd shed tears because he'd thought Skwisgaar's offer of practice was an expression of disapproval, so Skwisgaar had stopped bringing up guitars after that, which left him with absolutely nothing to talk about.

It's becoming more and more difficult to ignore that the other band members are so much better at this than he is. Skwisgaar can't stand that he alone is utterly incapable of making Toki feel better. They've always provoked each other, even at their closest, but now that feels less like proof of their bond and more like a glaring fault.

As the week goes on, Skwisgaar visits less and less. It becomes easy to let himself go for days without doing so.

Perhaps it's for the best, his pulling away. The canon hasn't turned out how he wanted it to be. When he first imagined it, he saw fire and ice, dragons and valkyries; somewhere over these awful few weeks it has transformed into something darker and more hopeless. He's anchored the melody with a heavy thud on the lowest string at irregular intervals, which, as the two tracks play over each other, begins to sound like a palpating heartbeat, overlain by anxious minor scales, skittering rats. A pseudo-classical succession of repeating arpeggios evokes churches filled with ghosts. When he listens to his first recording, Skwisgaar finds himself thinking of damp and dungeons, an upside-down cross, crucifixions, shackles, impaled people, burning stars. He listens through it twice, and then he deletes the track.

They've had Toki back for two whole weeks and Skwisgaar is lying on his bed when Pickles lets himself into Skwisgaar's room. "Dood, the're sayin' he'll be allowed out soon," he says triumphantly. "They're takin' him off the drugs and everythin'! He's gonna be okay. You know? He's okay, we can say that now." Finally, a pause. "Uh, hello? Anyone in here?"

"Ugh," Skwisgaar says. He's been staring at the ceiling for the past while, his guitar lying in one arm like a lover, his other hand behind his head.

"You, uh, doin' okay?" Pickles asks. "You heard what I said or…"

"Yueh. Gots it."

A pause. "You should visit him, dood," Pickles says. "He's been askin' about you."

Skwisgaar makes a dismissive sound. Pickles shoots back something about moody teenagers never wanting to leave their rooms, and then he slams the door, leaving Skwisgaar to stare at the ceiling in silence. He's been lying there for some time, trying to decide what to do with the inadequate canon he's composed. He knows he should admit to himself that it's going nowhere, start writing something else, it's not like him to get attached to a failed piece of music. Writing something else sounds less appealing than simply staring at the ceiling. He's been spending a lot of time doing that in the past few days.

It's never going to work no matter how he writes it. The parts may be identical, created for each other, but they are not beautiful when they're combined. The second melody may be equal to the first, but when lagging behind its counterpart it is ugly and discordant, it evokes something resentful, maybe something even hateful, something deeply frustrated. Skwisgaar may have succeeded in evoking the chase he first imagined, but there are no dragons here, no valkyries-- there is a rabbit with a snared leg, designed for speed but failing to run. There may have been magic in this world, once, but Skiwsgaar can no longer capture it. Perhaps it was never his to capture.

And yet, he still wants to capture it.

When he arrives in Toki's room he finds that Toki's fast asleep again. Murderface is slumped over in the chair next to the bed, and a portable DVD player has been set up on Toki's lap; Skwisgaar hears the strains of some corny animated movie over the sounds of Murderface's snoring. He places the two guitars he's holding at the foot of Toki's bed, goes to Murderface's side, shakes Murderface awake. Murderface rouses loudly, begins cursing out Skwisgaar for startling him until Skwisgaar informs him that, if the tantrum wakes up Toki, he'll tell Nathan; the threat of retribution shuts Murderface up, and he takes his DVD player and leaves with only a cursory amount of resentful grumbling.

With Murderface departed, Skwisgaar waits to ensure nobody else will come in. He waits for several minutes.

He meant to wake Toki up. He meant to tell Toki about the song he was composing for them to play. He's brought two guitars-- his own Explorer, and one of Toki's Flying V's, not the show guitars but one Skwisgaar has taken from a shrine-like sconce in Toki's closet, an old battered guitar repaired with duct-tape in places. He'd been going to press the old guitar into Toki's arms and say, practice, for once in your miserable life, and he'll wait out the crying if he had to, and he'll guide Toki's hands onto the strings if it was required. They can't talk like this-- he hasn't been able to talk-- they need to play together if anything worth saying is to pass between them, and so Skwisgaar needs Toki to learn to play again. These past several months have been so desperately lonely.

Lying motionless in the hospital bed, his wounds barely beginning to heal, Toki looks absurdly like the guitar Skiwsgaar's brought to him-- second-hand, hard-worn, duct-taped back together. Skiwsgaar once scoffed at the idea of playing on such an instrument unless out of sheer desperation, but here he is.

He leaves the guitars at the foot of the bed.

Toki is fast asleep, and he remains asleep as Skwisgaar climbs onto the mattress next to him. He feels ridiculous, like a kid crawling into his mother's empty bed, desperate not to be alone. If anyone catches him he'll take all the morphine from that drip and kill himself on the spot. Awkwardly, trying to avoid any physical contact, he positions his body parallel to Toki's. His feet hang off the edge of the bed, dangerously close to the guitars; his head is on the mattress by Toki's shoulder. So positioned, choking on the shame of it, he tries to settle. Toki smells like blood and sweat and antiseptic.

Everything is already so fucked up, everything is already falling apart. They're embedded in some sort of apocalyptic prophecy and nothing will ever be the same. Carefully, Skwisgaar extends one arm and rests it over Toki's lap, low enough to avoid the wound Magnus has created. In theory he's cuddled with people before, but it's been a long time, he doesn't do that with his hook-ups, it's too much. This feels different. He doesn't know what he expected. Not this-- disproportionate smallness, horrid vulnerability. Toki isn't even awake to ridicule him for it, so he doesn't understand why it's so difficult. He shifts a little on the mattress, astonished by how uncomfortable it is. How could they have made Toki endure sleeping on this for weeks?

Suddenly there is a hand in his hair.

Skwisgaar freezes. He sees his life flash before his eyes. He thinks about jumping out of the window. He tries to think of any plausible excuse and finds nothing.

Toki's fingers tangle themselves in his hair, the tips of them sliding soothingly along his scalp before picking up a lock and squeezing it.

"Ams okay, Skwisgaar." Toki mumbles it as if he's just woken up. "There, there. Ams okay. Everything's okays now."

His fingers still move in Skwisgaar's hair. This is mortifying. He doesn't move away.

He shifts closer, lies his body against Toki's side, hides his face in the side of Toki's sharp ribs. Thank Odin, he does not cry, but he's guilty of sniffling a bit. Toki strokes his hair back, then pats him in a friendly way between the shoulder-blades.

"There, there," Toki repeats himself. "Ams okay, ams heres now. Don't worries, ol' Toki's right here to looks afters you."

Is Toki mocking him? Skwisgaar wants Toki to be mocking him-- it would be so normal, so comfortable. But the hand stroking Skwisgaar's hair feels too sincere. He grinds his face into Toki's ribs, marveling at his own shamelessness. Toki is literally the last person in the world who should be comforting him-- it should be the other way around-- none of these thoughts can persuade him to move away. He just lies there, a charlatan, a fraud, a weakling. Toki's playing with his hair again, petting him like a cat. He is so humiliated he could die. He does not move away.

Things have changed; Skwisgaar understands this. He knows things will never again be the way they once were. But at last, miserable and comforted and in spite of it all at peace, he understands something crucial about their weird new fucked up lives:

The end is not nigh.

#metalocalypse #it's mostly just a dumb of headcanons abt post-requiem skwis and toki :')#my fic

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darkheliotrope · 1 month

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The First World - Echoes of the Vanished

The planet convulsed - a dying titan in its final throes. The very ground trembled, as if mourning its own demise. I stumbled across the desolate beach, my boots sinking into the ashen sand. The sea, once tempestuous, now raged with a primal fury - an ocean of wrath. Its waves clawed at the shore, pulling ancient bones back into the abyss.

The Bones and Fossils:

More bones lay scattered - a macabre mosaic. Rib cages, femurs, and mandibles protruded like broken promises. These were not remnants of creatures; they were echoes of civilizations - their architects and dreamers reduced to calcified whispers. The fossils bore witness to cosmic indifference, their hollow eyes staring into oblivion.

The Storm-Torn Sky:

Above, the sky had unravelled - a tattered veil. The stars had fled, leaving only voids - black holes that devoured light. The Milky Way - once a celestial river - had become a chasm, its banks eroded by entropy.

The Atmosphere’s Demise:

The air tasted of sulphur and despair. The atmosphere had unravelled, molecules torn apart by cosmic forces. Steam rose from fissures in the ground, carrying with it the memories of lost cities. Debris - shards of crystalline structures - swirled like ghosts. The suns, feeble embers, cast elongated shadows - the last dance of entropy.

The Skeleton’s Scream:

And there, on the beach, sat the skeleton - a relic of defiance. Its bones were charred, fused by the heat of cataclysm. Its skull, tilted toward the heavens, bore the etchings of cosmic runes. Hollow sockets stared at the fractured sky, and its jaw hung open - a silent scream. What had it witnessed? What horrors had etched themselves into its calcium lattice?

I approached the skeleton, drawn by morbid curiosity. Its ribs seemed to vibrate - an echo of terror. Had it been a scholar, a lover, a heretic? Its bony fingers clawed at the sand, as if trying to escape its own fate. But the sky above was indifferent.

The Cosmic Tragedy:

“Why?” I whispered, though the wind carried my words away. “Why did you stay?”

The skeleton’s jaw moved - an illusion, surely. But I heard its voice - a rasp, a lament.

“Curiosity,” it seemed to say. “The hunger for answers.”

Answers that had led to oblivion. Answers that had unraveled the fabric of existence. The planet had become a cosmic tragedy - a requiem for forgotten souls. The last person - the one consumed by unspeakable horror - had left no trace. Only this skeleton remained - a sentinel of despair.

As the lava stream surged, devouring the beach, I sank to my knees. The sea roared, the sky wept, and the skeleton’s scream echoed through time. I closed my eyes, feeling the heat lick my skin. The planet pulsed - a dying heartbeat.

And then, as if in response, the ground split open - a maw of molten hunger. I fell, my fingers grazing the skeleton’s ribcage. Its scream merged with mine - a chorus of anguish.

The planet trembled, I couldn't surrender to the abyss - I had to leave. Electra why did you send me to witness the final threads of a dying world?

May its echoes linger in the void…

#dark heliotrope #dark art #my nightmare #dark world #space #generative ai #ai art #horror #macabre #macabre art #end of world #other worlds

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microraptorreactor · 1 month

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hii harro !!! i finally got around to getting time to yoink new requiem and midnight point for a silly fic involving them and i would like to know their personalities if you have time !! :D

ooooo! It'll be cool to see what you end up makeing!

These two live in my brain rent-free and there hasn't been an Earthmover chapter in awhile so they've bubbled straight to the top. So warhorse lovers infodump for you.

New Requiem is larger, slightly older, and more cranky. It loves its city's robots but is mostly indifferent towards the humans. It views the humans as something it has to tolerate, although its opinion of them has softened as time goes on. It has a couple joint problems from the war, preferring cold, clear weather because of this. Requiem is an introvert, and often moody. Other Earthmovers know it for getting way to invested in the lives of the people on its back and dropping the latest tea during rest periods. Requiem is very specific about when it has these rest periods and who it rests with, occasionally refusing to get up/lay down if it doesn't agree with its handlers. Total drama queen, love it for that.

Midnight Point is slightly smaller then Requiem, along with having fewer scars and an unusually dark paintjob. Its v friendly towards other Earthmovers, although it does talk shit about them it its handlers and very favorite other earthmovers. Point thinks of the city on its back as an honor. During the war it developed an unusual rest/fight cycle, where it would charge up its batteries as much as possible during the day and ambush other Earthmovers at night. It's still nocturnal, even after the fighting's over. Point is energetic and polite, sometimes coming off as a little overbearing to other Earthmovers. It also lives for the drama, so Point and Requiem will insist to rest/travel together as long as possible. Also because they are in love.

Hope this helps! Love these '''''little''''''' scrunklys.

#me when sun/moon themed lovers #stories for the blood thirsty #SftBT ask

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kaiismydivineruler · 5 months

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Ultraviolence

Just Kai being a depressed lana stan

Song: Ultraviolence by Lana del rey

In the dimly lit cityscape, Kai Anderson navigated the melancholic streets, haunted by the echoes of Lana Del Rey's "Ultraviolence." His turbulent life unfolded against a backdrop of sorrow and despair, much like the haunting melody that accompanied his every step.

Kai, a tortured soul with a penchant for chaos, found solace in the haunting lyrics that seemed to mirror the tumult within him. His days were a haze of disillusionment, fueled by the disillusionment of a world that refused to understand him. The city's cold, unforgiving skyline mirrored the icy grip around his heart.

As he walked the desolate streets, memories of a fractured past resurfaced. Lana's voice echoed in his mind, recounting tales of love turned tragic. Kai, too, had experienced the sting of heartbreak, his emotions spinning out of control like a tempest that refused to be contained.

The soundtrack of his life was composed of Lana's soulful ballads, each note resonating with the pain he harbored. The city, a sprawling canvas of shadows, bore witness to his inner turmoil. Kai's eyes, haunted and vacant, reflected the broken promises and shattered dreams that defined his existence.

Ultraviolence became the anthem of his existence, a hymn that encapsulated the darkness that consumed him. The dichotomy of his nature unfolded in the verses, weaving a narrative of love gone awry, much like the twisted tales he orchestrated in the pursuit of his anarchic ideologies.

In the dim glow of a neon-lit alley, Kai's reflection stared back at him from rain-slicked pavement. The raindrops mirrored the tears he refused to shed, the storm within him raging on. Lana's voice, ethereal and haunting, enveloped him like a shroud, each lyric a dagger that plunged into the recesses of his anguished soul.

Lost in the labyrinth of his own creation, Kai sought refuge in the desolation, his heartache amplified by the haunting strains of Ultraviolence. The city, indifferent to his suffering, witnessed his descent into madness, a tragic ballet choreographed to the mournful cadence of Lana's voice.

As the final notes of the song echoed in the urban abyss, Kai stood alone, a solitary figure in a world that had forsaken him. The ache in his chest mirrored the ache in Lana's voice, both intertwined in a symphony of sorrow that resonated through the city's empty streets.

In the fading twilight, Kai Anderson, a broken puppet of fate, disappeared into the shadows, leaving behind a trail of melancholy and chaos. Ultraviolence lingered in the air, a requiem for a soul lost in the discordant melody of a life gone astray.

Am I delusionnal for thinking he likes Lana just cause I do ??

#lana del rey #kai anderson #ultraviolence #lizzy grant #american horror story #he is such a cutie

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of-light-and-shadow · 16 days

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𝓐 𝓕𝓮𝓵-𝓣𝓸𝓾𝓬𝓱𝓮𝓭 𝓚𝓲𝓼𝓼 World of Warcraft OCxOC Action/Adventure/Romance/Hurt/Comfort Chapter 1 "This is the strange way of the world, that people who simply want to love are instead forced to become warriors." -Lauren Oliver, Requiem

There is comfort in conformity. Solace in routine is where Vela finds her tranquility, and it is a balm for her restless spirit.

She inhales deeply through her nostrils, exhales gently from her lips, grounding herself in the steady cadence of breath. Her body moves with a well-practiced grace, tracing the patterns of sword drills etched into her muscle memory. Each footfall lands with purpose and precision. Every swing and thrust of her blade is deliberate, a product of countless hours spent honing this dance of steel. The world around her blurs into insignificance as she immerses herself in this ritualistic ballet, each repetition a testament to discipline and dedication.

It's not just swordplay; it's an exercise in focus, a meditation that quiets the storm within her mind.

As the last tendrils of sunlight weave through the amber foliage of Eversong Woods, Vela is reluctantly drawn out from her trance. Her sword's graceful arc halts mid-swing, its metallic song lingering in the cool evening air as she lifts her gaze to the dancing canopy above. A zephyr stirs, carrying with it an intoxicating blend of heady perfume and wild orchids. The aroma tugs a fleeting smile onto her lips before it vanishes into a grim line.

The disruption of her rhythmic dance ushers in an unwelcome reality: that she must return to the Hall of Blood. Her stomach churns with apprehension at the thought. These transient moments spent in the comforting embrace of Eversong Woods are invaluable to her. Here, there are no stern Knight-Masters casting their critical eyes upon her every move. No fellow trainees observing and sniggering behind their hands, their whispers echoing with unspoken judgment. Here, it's just Vela, her sword, and the cadence of her dance.

With a heavy sigh escaping from deep within her chest, she begins to pack up her gear with a solemnity that mirrors the weight pressing down on her. The prospect of returning to that place fills her with dread—yet return she must.

Because the only thing she has left is the Order, and it is everything to her.

The journey back is a repetitive, unremarkable affair, and Vela slips into the Hall just as the massive doors creak shut for the night. She evades the penetrating stares of the Adepts, ducking her head low and quickly skirting around the closest corner to elude their scrutinizing looks. The corridors echo with silence as she retreats to the barracks, their walls draped in rich tapestries that narrate tales of heroic battles and great deeds—silent tributes to the Order's storied legacy. Vela risks a brief look at a portrait suspended from the wall as she rounds a bend, her gaze meeting that of the stern Matriarch of the Order, Lady Liadrin.

And she cannot help but feel like an imposter. She is not of noble blood anymore, nor was she chosen for her exceptional talent or strength. No, her place here is solely due to the pity of others, and it's a fact that she must never forget.

As Vela wearily trudges back to the austere barracks and her heart sinks as she hears the laughter of her fellow trainees already inside. With a practiced grace, she arranges her features into a mask of stoic indifference before pushing open the heavy, creaky door. The air in the room thickens with unspoken tension as she becomes acutely aware of how every pair of eyes turn to her, their gazes sharp and intrusive like shards of glass.

With a curt nod to acknowledge them, Vela strides across the cold stone floor to her bunk. It is nothing more than a thin mattress on an unforgiving metal frame but it is the only sanctuary from prying eyes that she has here. She hastily shoves her pack under the bed with more force than necessary and with an almost defiant swiftness, she crawls into it, pulling the threadbare blanket over herself till only a tuft of hair is visible. She's determined not to give them any satisfaction that they bother her, because she knows nothing she does will ever make a difference nor will it ever make them respect her. This place will never be home for her.

Vela is awoken by the shrill sound of a bell ringing through the barracks, signaling the start of another day of training. She groans and rubs her eyes. Sleep had been elusive last night, as it often was in this place, and she can feel exhaustion heavy on her like a cloak. Still she drags herself out of bed, quickly changing into her daily clothes and heading into the mess hall with everyone else. It’s bustling already as Adepts move about briskly, barking orders at each other or to the trainee’s. Vela takes her place at one of the long wooden tables once she has her food, a meager porridge this morning, and tries her best to ignore the occasional stares she receives.

After breakfast is the morning drill, and it is a brutal affair.

Vela finds herself once again in the unenviable position of being the training dummy for the instructor. As he outlines his drills, the biting sting of his polearm leaves a trail of pain on her body. A handful of snickers echo around them when an especially vigorous strike to her knees makes her falter, but she manages to maintain her balance and steel herself against further assaults. The real test comes when the Knight Master singles her out for a sparring match. His movements are a blur, his speed almost supernatural, and Vela barely manages to evade his strikes by relying on instinct alone. She can feel the whoosh of air as the polearm slices past her head, and she clenches her jaw in intense focus.

Victory against the Knight Master is an elusive dream; he's lightning fast, seasoned by countless battles, while she is still green. Her only chance lies in outpacing him and evading his relentless onslaught—a challenge that proves insurmountable when she feels a vicious crack against her face from the shaft of his weapon.

A cry escapes from between her clenched teeth as she is thrown onto her back, clutching at her bleeding nose with one hand while trying to scramble away from him with the other. The Knight Master advances menacingly towards her prone form, swinging down with deadly precision. It seems like it's all over until there's an abrupt clash of metal on metal that reverberates across the training yard, shattering its oppressive silence.

“I should not be surprised that you resort to bullying trainee’s, Haliom.”

Vela’s gaze lifts at the sound of that voice, and a ghost of a smile flickers across her face. Standing there with her shield raised high and eyes ablaze with determination is Knight Master Concordia Summersong. She parries Haliom’s polearm effortlessly, as though its weight was no more than a feather's. With a swift movement, she brushes the fiery strands of her braided hair over her shoulder and locks eyes with Haliom in an unyielding stare.

“Bullying? Or merely showing a trainee her place?” He retorts smugly.

A soft hum escapes Concordia's lips before she responds coolly, “Then perhaps it's about time someone reminded you of your own place.”

Tension crackles in the atmosphere as she turns sharply on her heel. In one fluid motion, she helps Vela to her feet and pushes her out of the small circle of trainees, who are frozen in shock. Concordia unsheathes her blade, and without hesitation, Haliom readies his polearm in a defensive stance. The training yard falls silent as time seems to slow down, each second dragging on endlessly. Then, with a burst of energy, Concordia and Haliom clash with a ferocity that is almost blinding.

Their bodies blur together in a deadly dance, their forms indistinguishable in their lightning-fast movements. The sound of steel meeting steel echoes through the air as they exchange savage blows and ripostes with lightning precision. Vela can barely keep up with their incredible speed and agility. Concordia is a relentless force, her every move calculated and lethal, each blow striking like lightning. But Haliom is no easy opponent; he deflects each attack with an effortless grace that speaks volumes of his own mastery.

Then, in a seamless motion that defies belief, Concordia dances around Haliom's oncoming attack with fluid grace. She pirouettes beneath his extended arm, her own blade flicking out to unseat his weapon from his grip. In the same breath, she slams her shield into his face with ruthless precision. A cry of surprise and pain erupts from Haliom as he stumbles backward, collapsing to the ground, hands flying up to cradle his bleeding nose.

"Knight Master Haliom," Concordia's voice cuts through the stunned silence like a winter wind, cold and biting. "You are an instructor, a mentor. The trivial resentments of the nobility have no place within these sacred walls." With a finality that leaves no room for argument, she slides her sword back into its scabbard and pivots sharply on her heel. “You would do well to remember your station the next time you think it wise to bully one of my apprentices.”

Her gaze sweeps over the rest of the trainees—a golden storm that dares them to challenge her. One by one, they lower their eyes, unable or unwilling to meet her glare head-on. But Vela is different; she meets Concordia's stern gaze with gratitude. She knows that this woman saw something special in her and took her under her wing, and for that, Vela will always be grateful.

She falls into step beside her knight master as she is signaled to follow. Their pace matches perfectly, both of them walking with purpose as they depart from the bustling training grounds. They stop only when they are finally away from prying eyes within the walls of the Order Hall.

"Show me." Concordia commands softly, and Vela obediently tilts her head up for the older woman's inspection. Concordia's fingers trace over Vela's broken nose, and a warm sensation spreads through her body. Sparks of Light dance off Concordia's fingertips as a sharp pain shoots through Vela's nose, causing tears to well up in her eyes. It eventually passes into an uncomfortable warmth, and Concordia nods in satisfaction once she’s done.

"Haliom has made a habit of tormenting you," Concordia observes, her words hanging in the air like a verdict. Vela nods, acknowledging the truth behind the statement. Concordia's eyes narrow, her brow furrowing in concern. "Why do you permit him, and his fellow knights, to treat you so?"

Vela responds with a shrug that seems more world-weary than defiant. "Master Summersong, you have always emphasized the importance of choosing our battles wisely. I see no merit in engaging in a fight I know I can’t win."

Concordia swiftly counters her argument, spinning on her heel to lead them through the echoing corridors. "You're not instigating a quarrel," she clarifies with emphasis. "You're standing up for yourself."

"Apologies," Vela murmurs as they navigate a sharp turn together, "but I fail to see the distinction."

The sudden pivot by her Knight Master and the firm thump of plated knuckles against her skull startle Vela into silence. "Enough, Vela’stae Nae’mora!" Concordia commands.

Vela feels diminished beneath the stern gaze of her mentor, a chastised child facing an authoritative parent. Concordia huffs dismissively and shakes her head as if disappointed.

"You are the one who teaches others how to treat you. If you let them disrespect you now, it only sets the precedent for them to do so in the future." Her voice softens as her expression does, stern gold dimming into a warm glow: "Don't let anyone treat you with anything less than respect, Vela. You are not someone unworthy of basic decency."

Tears threaten her eyes, and Vela bows to hide them, her hair falling over her shoulders at the gesture. “Yes, Master Summersong.”

“Now come, you’ve been summoned by the rest of the Knight Masters.”

Vela's curiosity is piqued, but anxiety twists in her stomach. "May I ask why?" she asks cautiously.

"No," Concordia responds firmly. "You will see once we arrive."

Vela's heart tightens at Concordia's stern response, though she expected nothing less. Still, the unease in her gut remains as they begin their measured walk together. Each step increases her anxiety, knowing that being summoned by a group of Knight Masters is rare and often results in either praise or severe punishment behind closed doors. Vela knows better than to expect any praise from her superiors; she has done nothing of note to earn such recognition. Instead, she can only imagine the harsh reprimand awaiting her.

As they reach their destination, Concordia holds the door open for her with an impassive expression. Vela hesitates, only for a moment, before steeling her nerves and stepping inside, feeling the weight of the heavy wooden doors closing behind her.

#my writing #world of warcraft rp #wow rp #blood elf #world of warcraft #wow oc #monster boyfriend #he's a demon hunter so it technically counts?#I guess that's what you get when you devour a demon soul cause of vengence

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thatscarletflycatcher · 10 months

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disclaimer i've never read little women (i know, i will one day) but having just finished the 2017 version i really have to wonder: why is 2019 laurie so MEAN??? he antagonizes meg at the party, publicly embarrasses amy, puts both of them down for even thinking of marrying rich men and instead suggests that amy marry him as if he's not rich too? were these added by gerwig, and if so, WHY?

I know you know, but you should go read the book! and then come tell me what you think! XD

As I have said before, the only Laurie that really resembles book Laurie is the one in the 1970 BBC adaptation. And I wouldn't inflict the rest of that adaptation on anyone.

The others have... varying degrees and angles of resemblance. 2019 Laurie is definitely much much more of a sort of indifferent/dismissive jerk than the original, either on purpose or by accident.

2017 on the other hand is too much of a softie and a wet puppy compared to the book character.

Book!Laurie is a very passionate and conflicted sort of character. When he's in a positive mood, he's radiant and contagious; when he's in a dark mood, it's an intense darkness. When he's infatuated, he's almost obsessive. And that creates an ambivalence that is difficult to strike.

But to your last questions: Meg and Laurie's party scene is closer to the book in 2017. He's disappointed and rather harsh at first, they reconcile, but he's sad in the end because she's still drinking and will have a terrible headache the following day, but he trusts she will make good of her promise and tell her family about what happened.

You probably noticed that Fred Vaughn was completely erased from the Amy in Europe plot in 2017, which naturally leads to a more easily sympathetic portrayal of the dynamic between Laurie and Amy.

The Christmas Ball in particular is a very important section of that plotline, and neither 2017 nor 2019 get it right at all. Like in 2017, Amy waits for Laurie, who comes on time, sober, and well dressed -in fact, he does promise Meg that he'll become a teetotaler the day of her wedding, and he does fulfill that promise- but with a rather flippant, infantilizing attitude that rubs Amy the wrong way, so she sets up to prove that she doesn't need him to have fun, and she does prove it. And as he watches her dance, he realizes that Amy is now a young woman, no longer a child he can play around with. He ends up convincing her to dance with him in the end, and they have fun together, and they then spend many days together.

They do have later on the fight you see in 2019, more or less, where she scolds him for his laziness and he criticizes her mercenary spirit, not even trying to love Fred before he proposes, even knowing he does love her. But he doesn't tell her to break up with Fred so he can marry her or anything like that. He leaves because he thinks things over, realizes she's right, and goes to try and prove himself and see if he can win Jo by writing a great opera or requiem that would show her his worth (The drama!). In the meantime, Fred leaves because his brother Frank is very sick, and Laurie and Amy write letters to each other back and forth.

So, book Laurie is meaner than 2017 but much less mean than 2019.

Why is 2019 Laurie like that? I don't know. I don't think Gerwig herself knows. But for the things I have read her say about it, comparing Laurie and Fritz in terms of who is the "hottest prize", or vague comments about Jo and Laurie being platonic soulmates in genderfluidity because she has a boys nickname and he has a girls nickname (which is hilarious when you know Laurie's schoolmates used to call him Dora until he punched them all into calling him Laurie)... I don't think she ever sat down to think who Laurie is as a character himself independently of what he is to Amy and to Jo (not that this is an uncommon sin in adaptations.

#ask #anonymous #Little Women #Laurie Laurence #anti greta gerwig #I guess

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high-justiciar · 5 months

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requiem;

A cool autumn night at the Dawnbane estate. Siphiah fingered the edge of her cowl, pulling it taut over her scarred cheekbone. She had not returned to Quel’Thalas since her last and gravest disfigurement; no soul, outside of her trusted comrades, had borne witness to her new form. No—her defeat. She squeezed her eyes shut against the tang of anticipated rejection, letting it pass over her tongue and twist her lips now, so that it would not show later. When she gathered herself enough to pass through the gates of her family home, her resolve was steel. A star falling out of the sky could hardly phase her, much less a stray glance or whispered gossip.

Measured steps took her through the courtyard, its bushes bare save for a few late-bloomed roses. She did not stop to admire, and soon found herself before the tall doors leading to the foyer. Inside, a servant took her cloak, though no words were spoken to the rarely seen visitor; they all knew why she was here.

Siphiah paused to lower her cowl, blood-red locks tumbling free from its confines. Her hair was long, longer than ever—she hadn’t cut it since her service in Darkshore, though the meaning behind this fact was unknown to her. Left down, it obscured her mangled ear somewhat, though did little to shield the burnt half of her face: the flesh from her cheek to hairline was roughened, discolored mauve. Her right eye had been spared, its sight narrowed by the surrounding scar tissue. All was healed by now, though no less shocking to behold considering that the Justiciar’s reputation, at one time, centered around her arresting looks.

Now there was no shade for the cruelty beneath.

Her journey into the bowels of the mansion was a relatively short one, though the weight of passing stares doubled its span. Her own gaze remained fixed ahead. Upon her entry into the eastern wing, she turned toward the threshold of the dining room and crossed it before she could hesitate.

At the far end of the banquet table sat her mother, and the children still under her thumb. To her right was Sirena, one twin of a set; then Silas, the eldest and least accommodating. At her left was Simeon, the second-born son who, despite being Siphiah’s elder, posed as much threat as a bastard. Given his poor chances at inheritance, he shrank at their mother’s call and took after their father in the frivolous ceremony that Silas couldn’t be bothered with. To his credit, he was genuine enough that the disdain leveled upon his sister’s approach was overcome by alarm, then pity for what was to come.

Sayana, the matriarch, rose a brow at the sight of her exiled daughter. No remarks were made regarding her appearance, which evidenced a close and recent brush with death; instead, she simply watched as Siphiah sat herself at the opposite head of the table. Silas and Sirena shared a glance that expertly smoothed any surprise they felt under a pretense of indifference.

The family had already dined, but a servant was quick to set a fresh serving before Siphiah: mussels steamed in a dry wine. Her stomach gnawed at the smell alone, but she didn’t think to eat. Instead she picked up a fork and pressed the pad of her thumb into the tines, knowing it was silver by the weight in her hand, how it resonated within her grasp.

Simeon regarded her like a tram careening off its tracks.

“I’m glad you could join us, Siphiah.” Sayana spoke, voice bouncing off the marble columns that fenced the dining room like an arena. Her gaze did not waver. “Late or not. I wouldn’t have called if it was not important.”

Siphiah lifted her chin, inviting elaboration.

“It’s about your sister.” A flat declaration which Sayana let hang in the air. “I understand she wished to follow you, which was well and fine as a fleeting interest. But she has not been home in months. Sirena is not able to reach her, which means her silence is…deliberate.”

Siphiah couldn’t stop her lips from conveying amusement. “You think I know where she is?”

“I think you were the last of us to see her. And to that end, you must have some idea of why she is reluctant to return.”

“That is already known to you.” Siphiah leaned back into her seat, leveling her response, and her gaze, upon Sirena. “Else I would not be here. These are dire stakes, little sister being careless with her reputation. Your reputation.”

Sirena’s expression instantly soured. Her ease to scowl was rivaled only by Siphiah’s own. “Please. I am not in the least affected by what she does.”

“Then you understand that I am not her keeper, either. Truthfully? I haven’t spoken to Simoné any more recently than you have. And if your eyes can’t find her, we are well and truly lost.”

Sayana made something of a wince, though her irritation didn’t reach her eyes. “A shame. Silas will be sent after her, regardless. We’d hoped you could point him in the right direction.”

Siphiah bit back what she wanted to say—no amount of direction could point Silas anywhere but backward. She finally brought her fork to her plate and twisted a mussel open with the flat edge.

“You know what I think? We should be happy that Simoné is developing a sense of self without any interfering influence.”

That was enough to make Sirena rise from her seat, chair legs scraping against the ancient tile floor.

“Damnit Siphiah, might you act your age for once? This is beyond a matter of pride or petty feuds; Simoné is not like you. Do not fault us for making sure she doesn’t end up shamed, or worse—broken.”

The barb was well placed, but the soft spot Sirena sought was no more. Siphiah ate and did not speak until she had finished chewing, her back straight, a bitter display of etiquette.

“I wouldn’t be so quick to track her down, sister. You will find that she has outgrown you, in both priority and ability, if you can believe.”

Sirena’s stunned look soon hardened. She whirled and stormed out of the dining room, signaling the end of their expectedly short-lived gathering. Simeon peered down at his empty plate, whilst Silas worked on burning a hole between Siphiah’s eyes. Sayana merely sighed, adjusting the ornamental comb that held her hair in place.

“Have it your way. I only ask that, if Simoné does reach out…let her know her absence is felt.”

Sayana rose then, with more grace than her daughter, leaving her remaining brood positioned in a foreboding triangle. The tension at either side of the table quickly overwhelmed Simeon, who excused himself to seek out more wine.

Silas spoke the moment their brother disappeared, in a biting tone. “I will not forgive you for this. For dishonoring our family so. For leading another astray.”

“You give me more credit than I am due, brother. I had no part in matchmaking. Trust, running off with a human was done on her own accord.”

“Though not so far from the example you have set. Light, we’d all be better off if the bastard who did that to you had tried a bit harder.”

Despite her preparation, she had no retort for Silas, staring blankly as he threw back his glass of wine and pushed up from the table. Still, nothing touched her heart. She waited until the sound of his heavy footfalls faded down the hallway outside, then enjoyed her dinner in the silence she was used to, and much preferred.

***

[tw: self-harm]

On her way out of the city, Siphiah stopped at the graveyard set by the Scar. Her mother’s missive provided an excuse for her journey here, though it was not her only purpose, nor her true objective: something else was gnawing at her heart, quite literally.

Her late fiancée had been one of few afforded a proper burial following Arthas’ raze of Quel’Thalas, one that Siphiah assured would not be disturbed by undeath. Still, her bones did not rest easy—not when steeped in the blood of so many kinsmen. This fact became apparent the last time Siphiah visited the Scar, during her ascension to a true Knight of the Grave. Sybil’s spirit latched itself to her own during the ritual, an unintended consequence. She had shouldered this burden for years now, secretly relishing in their connection, despite its inconsistency and imbalance.

It was a weakness. A remnant of her past that warranted release.

Siphiah could not call Sybil at will; her spirit was weak, evoked only by dire circumstance. Most reliably, when Siphiah was close to death—when the veil between them was thin. She last felt her essence during the encounter that had marred her so, when a great enemy struck her helm and sheared the plate like tin foil. Sybil’s spirit flamed to life, keeping Siphiah bound to her corporeal form whilst unconsciousness claimed her—else, she may have been tempted to let go. She trusted that there was a reason for her survival, though could no longer bear Sybil’s promise of security in good conscience.

Siphiah unsheathed the shortblade at her side, an exemplar of elven craftsmanship. It was the first weapon she took part in forging, guided by her father’s steady hand and ancestral knowledge. She’d taken a whetstone to it recently, ensuring the edge was primed and sharp.

She breathed deep, low to her diaphragm. The tip was set between her fourth and fifth rib, angled upwards. How many times had she aimed for the heart? She found it easily now, how heavy it weighed in her chest, a throbbing mass of stone. The blade pierced through her linen undershirt without effort. Once the cool metal drew blood, she gasped aloud.

Something inside her lurched.

“Sybil.” Her lips ached around that sound, that name. “You must part from me. I am nothing you know, anymore. I am no home for you.”

She hated the words as she spoke them. The blade sunk deeper as punishment, wedging into protective cartilage. The pain was blinding, but she stood firm.

The spirit didn’t communicate in any verbal fashion, though it buzzed with alarm. The further she pushed, the closer Sybil came to the surface, until Siphiah was able to grab her slippery essence. It was so cold as to feel hot—or was it the reverse?

Her blade dropped to the grave. Thirsty for blood, the earth quickly swallowed what covered it, and what dripped from her wound. She pulled Sybil's essence with great effort, her clenched fist trembling all the while. There sounded a hiss like a steaming kettle, then a snap like over-strained fishing line; when Sybil exited her, so did her breath. She kneeled and pushed her flat palms into the earth, smothering their glow. Only once the spell had finished—when she had forced Sybil to rest—was she able to gasp an inhale.

Her hand shook as she brought it to her chest, applying pressure. The wound needed prompt attention, though she lacked any urgency. Her gaze zeroed on the headstone, on the name etched into it, then the epitaph afforded to victims of the Third War. She hadn’t had the stomach to orchestrate more personal words, nor did Sybil’s family; too cowardly to face reality, the lot of them. She waited, willing tears to come.

Is it true? Are you still a coward?

A minute passed by. No tears fell.

#the justiciar #wow rp #tw: self-harm

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