@scxrytxles is having kal over.

Kalmar almost cringes under the soft (too soft) touch. Makes a disgusted sort of noise, buries his face again, but doesn't snatch himself free.

I don't know, says Lewis. Nothing's wrong -- More low, miserable laughter seeps out of him as he keeps talking, whenever he pauses or stumbles.

The memory is hazy. The feeling is the clearest part. "Ah, shallow focus," He murmurs, mercifully without thinking about it too hard. "Pot boiling over. Then flesh-hooked, then nothing but how badly it wanted to --" His blunt ungulate teeth dig sharp into the bones of his wrist for some moments. He tastes blood, lets go without argument.

Eager, he thinks, but it won't leave his throat. Enthusiastic. A sickly feeling like after forgetting to eat for too long. his brain overrun with imagined images and feelings and tastes he doesn't even like--

"It's," he starts again, and ties himself into an even tighter knot with a strangled whine.

He's scared. And ashamed. And he's an abomination. Who's scared.

🎨Skitter

Character inspo asks

🎨 (or “drawing”) + a character name to find out what drawings/paintings inspire receiver’s writing of that character!

Definitely the Yogzarthu from the Harbourmaster webcomic! Which… has much less to do with their appearance and WAY more to do with the kinds of ethical and societal questions the webcomic explores with them. But it’s a drawn story, so it counts, damn it 😝

Probably the Entomorphs from that comic, too, for actual visual inspo? I started reading the comic in my very early tweens, which is also around when I came up with Skitter’s design for the first time, and they are bug aliens. So it’s hard to imagine there wasn’t some inspiration drawn.

Koh from ATLA. Looming centipede dude with a face, hah.

All of those stereotypical Clone Lab depictions with people/creatures floating in Giant Aesthetic Glass Tubes of Liquid with Wires slskdjfhf.

Him Face. Another one where I don’t exactly remember clearly but the common thread is obvious and I know I was reading the comic at around the right age. 😂

All the excellent creature/alien designers on deviantart! I wound up in some fun scifi groups and got to see a lot of work that inspired me. Pieces like this and this come to mind.

For actual current inspo: Teefs, as drawn by guttertongue. I mean look at them. 👀

.

EDIT:

Holy shit, how could I forget the most important — just. All of the old mass market paperback scifi and fantasy cover illustrations from my parent’s library! I spent so long looking at the covers of those books as a kid, even the ones I never got around to reading slskdjfhf.

Special mention to this one, because it’s one of the ones I did read. I still have it and pull it out to look at and think about even now:

Yes, some of those covers back when that style was common were abysmal, and many were wildly disconnected from the content of the book. But I love them anyway. xP I still adore looking through old scifi covers pretty much whenever I get the chance.

little disco rp doodles featuring @discipulusmaleficus @scxrytxles and @desertfragments

6)  our muses have been separated from each other by circumstance for a considerable amount of time and have sex for the first time since being reunited.  - Kaitessa ♡

It's like breathing again, inhaling oxygen with lungs that he didn't know were shuttered. It's like the world has dropped away, every other beating heart in the building blurring into shadow. It's like living again, technicolor bright blinding him to everything except her her her--

Kai practically throws himself into her arms. He can't breathe for want. He missed her he missed her he missed her so much. Tattooed hands tangle in her hair as the force of him and his love knock her back until she slams against the wall.

He presses a kiss to her lips, teeth biting at her like he's starving. Quintessa's skin is warm and strong and reassuring and solid and REAL against him. When she kisses him, her tongue and teeth and touch catch and burn and blazes through him, brilliant, hungry fire in the pit of his stomach and aches in his chest and he needs her needs her needs her so so so bad.

A clawed hand cards through his hair, and Kai moans against her mouth. He doesn't want to break away, doesn't-- can't let her go. But he does with a gasp, brown eyes searching emerald green with a giddy smile. "Hi," he whispers. His arms slide around her neck as his knuckles trace her jaw. "Missed you, Tess."

He laughs breathlessly. Purple hair falls over pale skin as he rests his head on her shoulder. It's funny, he can hear her heartbeat, can feel it in her wrist, strong and steady and throbbing against his lips as he kisses her. "Y're not gonna leave me tonight are you?"

♥- me but only if you want to I understand if u don't wanna

(Positivity meme that I've been hoarding for months >_>;)

Yes hello I adore your execution of writing and art alike – lovely prose! Delicious art style! Genuinely inspires me to try to improve some of my own work. :) Your characters’ voices and thoughts and body language all come through so clearly and in really interesting ways. Your characters have such depth and complexity and I’m always 👀 when I get to hear more about their backgrounds and interrelationships.

And while we haven’t talked a ton, I’ve really appreciated the conversations we’ve had! Love all your writing ideas and I’m grateful for the chats about IRL stuff as well <3

@scxrytxles

(( wanted to clean up those sketch requests;; hope I got the colors right lmao ))

@scxrytxles @schattenmagier @justatouchjaded

My muse is dead. Tell me how yours is dealing with it. @scxrytxles

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah, yeah, Jer, I'll be fine." Xander waved off Jeremy, who lingered and peered in around the bathroom door.

"If you're sure. Call if you need anything."

"I know, I will."

Finally, Jeremy relented, closing the bathroom door, and Xander sagged against the counter he leaned on, holding himself up on both forearms. Unlike his, Jeremy's apartment was blessed with an elevator, but getting from the van to here had still been a trial by fire. All the hiking had caught up to him: every bone and muscle fibre in his legs ached, from the soles of his feet to the meat of his hips. Worse, trying to push through it was impossible: any time he found himself starting to grow breathless, he'd just as quickly grow light-headed; the world would spin; and the whole group would be forced to stop and wait for him. Even Cyrus had given him advice.

And that didn't even account for the injuries Nil hadn't fully healed. Every brush of his tattered clothes against fresh flesh or scab stung; pain ran currents from his soul to his body at the site of each injury. In a couple places, he felt warm dampness seeping onto his skin.

It was important to clean himself. It would protect him from infection. The dried blood stunk, and the mud was hardly better. The dirt itched. Yet, when he gazed into the shower, he felt every part of him cringing away.

He persevered. Limping over to turn on the hot water, he dropped heavy on the toilet as he began to peel off layers of clothes. First, his battle vest. Nil had offered to help repair it, but there was hardly any point: it was in tatters--nothing but the hilt remained of the sword painted on the back--and what little remained was stained a dark ochre.

Is all that mine? The thought made him taste bile, and he threw it away behind him, into the trash. His shirt followed suit without a second look, as well as his pants--as soon as he could get them off.

Screaming that drowned out everything. Hot, salty blood gurgling in his throat and staining his teeth. Warm wetness seeping down his torso--funny, there was something wrong about that. Didn't matter. He had to get up. The monster had Chester. His limbs felt so heavy. He had to get up.

Tears ran down his face as he came back to himself, and he hurriedly wiped them away, smearing the clean lines they had made. "Fuck," he whispered and turned his attention to the tub, as if that would be any sort of distraction.

The moment he set foot in there, this venture would well and truly be over. No more second chances. No last minute turnarounds. No more magic, or monsters, or Alice. He clawed at his throat, feeling the lump growing. He would go back to his normal life, back to before he found his Honeybee, back to being just Nadia Xander. He had given it everything. He was willing to let her hate him. And it hadn't been enough. It wasn't enough. Alice was gone, and that thing was still out there.

Gasping sobs choked out through gritted teeth. "Dammit," he whispered, voice shaking. Slamming his fist on the wall, his voice caught on a shout, "DAMMIT!"

He clutched himself as he cried, trying to hold it back even as it came pouring out. "Dammit, dammit, dammit," he gasped out. He was such a failure.

He gave up, letting the rushing emotions take him. Not good enough for Alice, not good enough for his friends, not good enough for those who he'd dared to give hope, and most of all, not remotely good enough for himself. No more strange little stories, no more soft songs, no more peculiar questions or trinkets left after a lesson. She was gone. There was no going back.

After a time, the tears abated. He stood up. He glanced back, and he wondered dully if Jeremy had heard and now hovered just outside the door. (He hiccuped.) It didn't matter. He had procrastinated long enough.

He got into the shower.

(Continued from here with @scxrytxles )

scxrytxles:

Alice listens. And she watches. And she tries, again, to imagine what the many lives the child has lived might have looked like. How they might have tasted to pucker his mouth and curdle his soft, sweet little face. Her expression mirrors his, only a bit and only for a moment before her cheer returns. A viciously bright sort of optimism that swings like a heavy pendulum. “That’s perfect!” She points at him, so hard and fierce and quick that the penz flies from her fingers and whizzes past his head. Whoops! She can’t stop, now, though, this is important. Alice springs to her feet, notebook loosely clutched between her fingers as she trots across the floor. Her shadow creeps across Diamond’s little form as she peers over him, searching for the purple sheen of her pen. Ooh, there it is. She drops to her knees, reaches past him and pats the ground until her fingers close around the cool metal and she brings it back to herself. Alice glances over her shoulder, considers going back to her place, but decides No. She’d rather sit here. Alice plops onto the floor, scoots close so that she can feel the warmth of a Person beside her, and Diamond can see her paper. Well. Almost. Her hair is… it’s kind of in the way. Alice quickly brushes it to the side, fingers raking through it to force it to stop, sit, STAY- “I, Alice Riddle-Tongue,” She begins, curled and looping letters blooming from the nib in a smooth line of glittery ink. It takes a moment for her letters to catch up with her mouth, of course, because it is important that it be legible. The recipe won’t do Diamond much good if he can’t read it, hm? “Daughter Life who was born of Mother Death, Sister to the Cicadas and Keeper of Creations great and small charge Diamond thus-” A pause. She gathers her words like river stones, looking for the smoothest and shiniest and prettiest - “Every seven days, he will follow his mother and father to my temple with an offering, be it drawn or written or cooked in the hearth, and he will leave it-” She pauses, flow interrupted. A soft, conspiratorial whisper. “Diamond? Can you describe the temple for me?”

Diamond hesitates as Alice settles beside him. She’s a god. But he’s tired, and she picked him up earlier with none of the wariness his parents fail to hide from him, and…

His fragile will cracks when Alice brushes her hair out of the way, and he cautiously leans against her side, head resting on her upper arm. Her skin is cool. It soothes the edges of the headache that’s been starting to build as he tries to answer her questions. 

He stays there, if Alice lets him; watches her write, skilled dark hands crafting glittering lines, and listens to the smooth, poetic rhythm of her voice. 

A rhythm that falters, coaxing out a fond smile and a silent breath of a laugh. Alice’s whisper has the air of a hushed conversation in a theater—a furtive attempt to avoid interrupting her own performance. It feels almost like an invitation behind the curtain, intentional or not.

“Sure. Ah…” Diamond straightens, fluffy brows furrowing with soft concentration as he calls the layout to mind.

“The temple looks like a cottage, with a garden in front. Inside, the middle part is this big room for, ah… groups. Meetings. Mostly the chairs are set up in lines, but sometimes there are tables or pillows. People hang things on the walls — quilts, and art, and news, and feathers and things they’ve found. It changes. There are some shelves where kids can put things they find or make, too.”

He lifts his hands to frame the air, describing a central building with two offshoots. “The chapel’s its own… wing? On one side. It has a — hm.” Atrium. He knows this, but only as a ghost-word; the wrong language. Diamond grimaces and flaps that hand. “An open part, in the roof, and a pool below.” Diamond’s expression softens as he looks around Alice’s room. “Kind of like here… less stuff, but with a fountain, and altar, and plants. It’s peaceful.”

He points to the other imaginary wing on the opposite side of the temple. “The other part is the ob—ob-serv-atory, and greenhouse. I haven’t been in it, but I’ve seen bugs in the greenhouse through the glass. And then… behind the temple, between the wings, there’s another garden. It has—”

Diamond blinks as he realizes he’s droning on, and rubs at his forehead with a small sound of discomfort. He’d… been thinking about the memories of making journals, and from there the rhythm of how he would record the temple’s layout and function had taken over. He looks sheepishly up at Alice. “Mm. Sorry… is any of that what you need?”

@scxrytxles

"I find it hard to speak at times." Cathy thinks, It's from lack of practice for many years.

Californication, calpirinha, painkiller.

𝑪𝑶𝑪𝑲𝑻𝑨𝑰𝑳 𝑸𝑼𝑰𝒁.

[ californication ]  what do they think is their greatest achievement in life?

Pulling himself out of the dark - although he admits there were many hands to guide him along the way. He knows how close he was to becoming permanently and irreparably lost.

Leading his family, friends, comrades, and unknown faces from near and far in a joint effort against a common enemy for the force of good. Seeing his world come together when it needed it most - ensuring peace among the shinobi Lands - is not something his childhood self could have even dreamed of.

[ caipirinha ]  if they could change one thing about themself, what would it be?

Gaara would like to silence the constant thoughts which tell him he is not enough, that he will never be enough. When his siblings and Baki tell him how proud they are, when civilians cheer their support after every speech, when young genin cite him as an influence for their shinobi goals, he would like to believe them. He would like to see himself as a human being who can love and be loved, and to shrug off the invisible cloak which seems to separate him from the outside world. For now, these blessings escape him.

[ painkiller ]  what is their greatest regret?

Gaara struggles with the concept of regret. He has hurt many people over the course of his life, and he has killed more than that. He wishes these innocent souls still lived, and he wishes a generation of children did not have to grow up fearing his very name.

But are these events even his to regret? The actions were his, but who put him in that predicament; who led him to the water from which his parched lips drank? His father who, in turn, felt his hand forced by the politics in play, and struggled until his death with his own unprocessed grief? Sunagakure's elders, with their belief that their village's survival necessitated the exploitation and demonization of an infant (in the end, were they even wrong)?

Besides - regret is a useless thing, and blame even more so. To dwell on the past is to leave no room for the future.

Chester lands silently on the counter behind Charlevoix. He'd been hiding up in the rafters, you see, trying to decide if he could manage the herculean effort of Being Social and Cordial and Pleasant without maiming the poor fellow.

He doesn't announce his presence, doesn't think to come out of his animal crouch or to sit, even, which would be decidedly more normal than... Whatever it is he's doing now, just stares, occasionally sniffing at the air.

It seems that he's cooking something. What is it though...?

“...which is why,” Charlevoix continues, with the vague air of someone who's already knee-deep in their chosen subject, “or, well, part of why it's called dead man's breath. Of course, it's at least half legend. It doesn't only grow in the shadows of gravestones. It just happens to prefer nitrogen-rich soil and limited sunlight.”

The basket of fungus he's prepping right now was foraged from a cemetery, yes, but his point still stands. It's just one of many options for Amanita exegetica hunting grounds.

“The other reason for the name,” he says, speaking more slowly as he concentrates on neatly slicing away the gilled under-flesh of a hand-sized frill, “is the poison. Hence the extreme care that must be put into preparing dead man's breath for human consumption, including harvesting the fruiting body at the exact right moment of its maturation, after the gills open but before the spores fully darken, the use of a warm knife to remove the gills and skirting, and the utmost attention to caramelizing the skin thoroughly in an iron vessel over open flame. If all precautions are properly observed, the dead man's breath is a true delicacy. However, in the hands of a careless chef or unskilled forager- AAAH! AAAAAAH!”

Mid-sentence, he turns around to reach for the cast iron pan, and in doing so catches sight of Chester crouched on the counter. It seems the poor man had been under the impression he was only speaking to himself. Finding out otherwise is startling.

B4 Kal. If there is one of mine you would like to draw, dealer's choice. But mostly b4 kal <3

@scxrytxles - expression meme

having a normal one <3

📚 - Oscar

Inspiration asks | Accepting a few more!

Not a lot tbh! I am woefully uneducated when it comes to tales and folklore. 😅

Beauty and the Beast I guess, on a very bumbling-merchant-and-roses type surface/aesthetic level. (One of v few tales where I’ve actually looked into the ‘original’/early versions, hah)

Otherwise, I guess the closest I can say is that Oscar himself is deeply inspired by tales and folklore in whatever given setting he’s in. (Which. Is obviously another very good reason for me to learn more on the topic!)

In this general direction, I do have a sneaking suspicion that Don Quixote might be. Uh. Topical? I have not read it yet but I am planning to when I find the time. (Yes it’s a classic not a folk tale. SHhh. I’m trying. xP)

I think u have many strengths as a role player. If I had to pick i would say 1. Distinctive character voices 2. Interesting world building and webs of characters and character relationships and alsoooo I love your art and 3. I think in the small amount of writing we have done together and the large quantity I read, you do an excellent job of yes and'ing the other person ♡

What do you think is my biggest strength as a roleplayer?

{ thank you!! I try really hard to build believable characters and a distinct world for them, something others can explore or learn about as they interact with my characters. And rping is all about the "yes and" the collaboration is what makes it so much fun!! }

Malyneia's shoulders jerk as she shrugs Keerin's hand off. The prying gaze of their adoring public has long since faded to a distant pinprick on the horizon, left behind at the venue still humming with activity.

Her teeth grind, her jaw aches, and the jagged, internal sound of bones and molars scraping against each other sets her further on edge.

"That was too last minute. I need more advanced notice, the next time you need a plus one." She says, coldly.

Keerin ought to be offended. Hurt, perhaps, by their friend brushing away their attempt at comfort. Their pale hand drops, gently shaking the budding frost off of their fingers with a bemused grin.

They should be upset.

But they aren't. It's a bit hard to care about such silly things in the face of inevitable loving annihilation. It's a bright, vivid peace that sits in the cold hollow of their chest- a black void that offers empty reassurance and infinite peace.

"My apologies," Keerin hums. "I would've invited Iroksa, but they happened to be busy tonight. Attending to my brother, I suppose." Their head tilts, silver hair glittering like stars in the flickering lights, eyes glancing over Malyneia not unkindly. "Do you need to sit down, my dear? You seem a touch strained."

Eliot's fuzzy face appears over the table. Alice follows soon after, peering cautiously up at Clemcy between the friendly little triangles twitching on his soft kitty head.

She isn't quite sure what it is he's doing. He keeps glaring at a notebook and muttering to himself, scribbling on loose leafs of paper stacked neatly at his side. His vibes are Bad! Bad mood vibes!

Maybe she can help.

"Helloooooo..." Oh, no. A cool stab of embarrassment fills her chest. She forgot his name. She freezes, unable to move forward without a name to address him with. Eliot meows, as if to help.

"Kuh-kuh, uhm-! Um, um, Clementine? Caramel? C-Clebold?" She knows it's not Chester. "Keyboard?"

Clemcy would have been tempted to pet the cat -- it would be a welcome distraction from trying to make sense of this blasted journal -- but even before she appears over the edge of the table to stare at him, he knows that Alice is here. Hovering.

So instead he continues to work, doing his best to ignore the presence of the god. Even if having her right there and yet still completely unhelpful is doing absolutely nothing to reduce his ire at the situation.

(Is some vague semblance of grammar or organization truly too much to ask--)

Clemcy goes still, closes his eyes, and lets out a long, slow breath through his nose as Alice absolutely mangles his name in her attempts to recall it. "...I want you to take a moment. Just one moment. And, perhaps, consider the actual likelihood that I would ever choose to be addressed as 'Keyboard'."